He looked down at the food wrapper. Reasonably fresh, ration crumbs still clung to it. Whoever had camped here had only been gone for a day or two. No sign of fire or any more sophisticated setups, but with sand covering the floor of the ruined building, it would be easy to hide. Some of the sand in the corner was stained brown. Looking closer, it had clumped in pockmarks, like drops of liquid had fallen there. Whoever had been here was likely injured and bleeding.
It wasn’t more than a few people, and given that only a single food wrapper and single plastic water bottle was here, Spike guessed it was only one person. Could maybe be a lone soldier, but that was unlikely. There definitely had been a military presence here once, but he doubted they were still around since the bots were freely scavenging their stuff. There was another, far more likely possibility.
Lyre.
He didn’t know how far away they had started, but if he had to guess, right now they were close. Close enough that it seemed like his attempts to escape then had amounted to nothing, and close enough that unless he could figure out what direction they went in, he’d risk running right into them if he tried to travel more.
They were wounded. It might mean they were slower, or they might not. Any vehicle made for this sand would be large enough that he’d have seen evidence of it, so they were moving on foot like him. Injury would also make them easier to fight off if it came down to it, but if they had a ranged weapon it may not matter at all. They’d simply shoot him before he could get close.
If he’d managed to hold onto the gun, he’d feel much safer right now. But no. He’d been lucky to get away with what he had. He’d made a stupid gamble and nearly paid for it with his life. That’s really what his entire decision making process had been since waking up here, a series of gambles and calculated risks. And now, he had no choice but to make another, as whatever tracks Lyre had left had long since been swept away by sand and wind.
Stay here in this ruin and hope they didn’t double back, or flee and hope he didn’t run into them?
If they could track him, fleeing was a slightly better option than staying put. That being said, if they could track him, he wasn’t sure there was any option that would save him. If they were searching blind, they’d be less likely to double back, but they might need to come back here for shelter even if they’d already searched around here, or they might be running a circuit and checking spots like this, waiting for him to grow exhausted and choose one of them to rest.
Probably the best option would have been to hide in a sand dune forever, but the idea was so unappealing he decided he would be happier dead. He didn’t really have anything to live for anymore, but there wasn’t nothing.
Some small, stupid, childlike part of him still harboured hope that he’d see his family again, and no matter what he did, he could never succeed in killing it.
He wondered if he’d be happier if he did kill it. Then, he could find some quiet, peaceful place. Somewhere scenic. Sit down, finally cease wandering. Sit and stay there until his mind and body rotted away into the moss and leaf litter, runoff draining into a waterfall or babbling brook. It wouldn’t hurt. Nothing really hurt anymore. Give up. Give in. Let go of the stress of trying to remember, trying to survive, the fear he understood and the terror he didn’t.
What had his dog's name been again? He didn’t really remember. Started with an R, he thought, probably one of those stereotypical dog names like Rover. He didn’t remember any names, not his parents, not his teachers, not any of his friends. He remembered them, but in blurred, warm impressions, the faces smudged, the voices heavy with interference. His mom made him hot chocolate in the wintertime, with dyed marshmallows and whipped cream and dark chocolate chips on top, but when he tried to remember what it tasted like, all he could think of was blood and metal and ash.
If Lyre found him and killed him, would that really be so bad?
He snickered. It was kind of funny, after all the effort he had put in to try and survive this place, only now was he considering whether he actually wanted to. Really, what was left for him? More wandering roadsides. More laying on park benches until a cop forced him to leave. More time alone, surrounded by people who didn’t give a shit about him aside from the inconvenience of him taking up part of the sidewalk.
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He’d lost everything in that blur of time he couldn’t remember, and now, he was finally becoming lucid enough for it to catch up to him. He’d been half asleep for months, and now that he was awake, he didn’t want to go back into semi consciousness. He wanted everything he had lost back, wanted to finally be able to go home, his dog knocking him to the ground with dirty paws and licking his face with smelly dog breath, his mother yelling at him for hours about how worried they’d all been, his dad making him mow the lawn and shovel the driveway and wash the car to ‘build character’.
His teachers piling him with all the homework he needed to catch up on, a stupid quantity he’d need to pull several all-nighters to finish. His friends teasing him about being such a pussy that he’d rather run away for months than… do whatever stupid dare they’d last challenged him to. He couldn’t remember. He’d never live it down, and they’d spread it around the whole school, more embarrassing with each retelling.
He’d kill to have that again. And if he couldn’t have it, if this monotonous purgatory was all he’d get, then maybe he’d just kill himself.
But then again, it would be pretty stupid if he actually did have a chance at getting home, and wrecked it by taking the easy way out. He probably didn’t. He was 99% sure he didn’t, but hey, he could always do it later. May as well give it a few years of effort first.
What was he doing? Right. Lyre was here, and he needed to get the fuck away from them.
After a bit of deliberation, he decided it was slightly - only slightly - less risky to keep moving, based on what he knew. So he turned around, walking out the gaping doorway, and kept moving in what he guessed was the opposite direction Lyre had gone. He thought he saw clumped sand over to the right of the doorway, so he went to the left instead.
As he was shuffling along, his foot hit something solid in the sand. He stopped, bending down, and dug around with his good hand to unearth part of it. It was metal, and his fingers jerked back for a moment before he continued digging. It was flattish and round, from what he could tell-
He was in a desert minefield.
Well, easy enough to solve. Go back exactly the way he came. Only issue was, there was a strong wind blowing, and sand scattering enough that his tracks had been completely wiped away. So he could try and retrace his steps, but he’d almost definitely mess up somewhere and get himself blown up. He was lucky that mine hadn’t set it off. Must have been a dud.
First of all, was there any way to visually identify the mines, even just some of them?
Not really. There was a section of sand dunes that looked… suspiciously regular, but the area he was standing in looked normal. So, definitely mines there, stay away from there, but also probably mines in other directions. Better than what he knew before, but not by much.
He could try throwing his old shoes, but he only had two, and he was pretty sure they were too light to set the mines off so he couldn’t trust them to check if the ground was safe. Maybe if he moved extra slow, and sort of felt around in the sand in front of him before putting any weight on it, he could find and avoid the mines. It would take a stupidly long time, but that was better than dying of recklessness.
He turned around, got down on his hands and knees, and buried his hands in the sand, gently digging through the area in front of him as he shuffled forwards.
After a little while, his hands brushed against smooth metal in the sand. He withdrew, carefully skirting around where he’d felt it, and kept going in a hopefully straight line. He wasn’t sure quite how spaced out the mines are, so he stayed as close as he could be to the one he’d found without worrying it might go off. He was pretty sure that mines only exploded if you touched them, so as long as none of his weight rested on it it would be fine.
His movements were clumsier than he would like. Rather than carefully sifting through sand, his hands swung around a bit jerkily, and often with more force than he was comfortable with no matter how hard he tried to control them. It was dangerous, but this was the least risky option in an array of terrible solutions. He kept crawling through the sand, hoping none of it got under his bandages. It probably did. He did a shoddy job of covering it up.
One arm slammed into metal with an audible thud, much harder than he had intended, and he flinched, curling up into a ball on the sand.
Several seconds passed in silence, the only sound a soft whispering of sand tossed by the wind. The mine did not explode and he did not die. He looked up, at where the mine in front of him was, and saw no movement or other irregularities. Another dud. Depending on how old these were, most of them might be duds, but like hell was he going to take that chance. It only took one bad roll of the dice to get himself killed, so he’d rather roll as little as possible.
After travelling about 400 meters without encountering any more mines he hesitantly declared himself safe and stood back up again. Well, it was kind of a shame, since Lyre almost certainly didn’t cross a fucking minefield to get to him, and therefore putting that between them would serve as a good deterrent. Then again, they were pretty unhinged. He could see them simply walking across with zero hesitation, and in a ridiculous stroke of luck, crossing without incident.
He’d travelled in a different direction than he thought he had. The ruin was just a little dot on the horizon. That was fine, it didn’t really matter since he didn’t know where he was going anyways. As long as he wasn’t following Lyre’s tracks, he would hopefully be moving away from them. There was the possibility they were walking a circuit or doubling back on themselves, but he couldn’t account for everything so he’d assume a straight line for now.
He fished out the water and took a few sips, just in case. He wanted to be at his best if there was a confrontation between him and Lyre. He didn’t know anything about them beyond what they had shared, which was not much, so he had no way of knowing how it would go. If he was lucky, there would be no danger to him, and they may even be helpful. If he was unlucky, even his top performance wouldn’t be enough to save him. Most likely things were somewhere in the middle, so he shouldn’t go in automatically on the offensive or defensive, but he should absolutely be prepared to fight or flee if he had to.
He said ‘if’ there was a confrontation, but the more he learned, the more he felt like it would be inevitable. He simply didn’t have the information or physical ability he needed to get away from Lyre. His fists tightened as he walked.
His chance of getting home again was so slim it probably wasn’t real, but if Lyre tried to take it from him, he would do whatever it took to make sure they, and anyone or anything else he came across, never endangered it again.