Two beams burning holes directly into my sleeping flesh, enough to bring the spite from my heart and open the veil of darkness from my eyes. I can hear traces of its disgusting, raspy breath on the wind. I stand and take a look around. The moon is high in the air and full, hanging in the sky like an eye that sees all. The haziness of the air makes it look like a smear. The thick air is hard to breathe, and it feels like I could drown by taking to deep a breath. Lungs could fill with radiation at any moment and collapse, so it was better to take shallow breaths and attempt not to physically exert too much. I throw myself to my feet from my woven bed roll, and my hand goes immediately to the hand cannon on my right hip, ready to draw and fire. They always come at night. They always rouse me from sleep. If there was anything in this world that seemed to be a constant, it was the fact that they'd always be here to keep me moving. The disgusting things. I know not what they call themselves, but I have taken to call them Nightmares since they only appear at night, or while I sleep.
Bloodcurdling was its scream as it leapt from behind a nearby boulder. The noise sailed through the night air, cutting it like a thin, sharp knife, and leaving the humid air itself to bleed. I could feel the shriek cut my flesh, causing the hair on my arms to stand on end. The Nightmare sailed through the air like a blade, multiple feet up in a display of agility I have never seen before in my life. Its red skin glistened with some sort of writhing mucous membrane, and its pair of yellow eyes glared down at me with enough anger to make them physically glow. Disgusting tendrils hanged from its arms like streaming corpses tied to a branch. Briefly, for a moment, it stood between the moon and myself, casting me into a momentary darkness from the blue illumination covering the entrance of the mouth of this cave.
A flash of bright light lasts for a moment and is accompanied by a loud ringing in my ears. My finger, wrapped around the trigger of my cannon, pulls twice. I am blinded from the first pull, as well as deafened, and the second isn't much better. My ears ring a constant high-pitched note, and my vision slowly fades back to black from the flash of white from before. Two firm shots to the chest, and the creature lays in front of me. Its corpse rolls with the momentum from its leap, leaking its acidic blood across the stony entrance to my home. The stone itself boils in the yellow liquid, melting away into a smog. I quickly struggle to grab and slip the goggles from my forehead to my eyes. I may have already risked contamination by forgetting. The last thing I'd want is for them to take my sight from me as well. My scarf stayed planted on my face and nose while I slept, thankfully that served as a sort of barrier to the sloppy substance and my lungs. As I watch the corpse begin to melt due to its own corrosive liquids seeping out, I back up against the wall of the cave and slowly begin to lower myself to the ground, taking deep, fearful breaths. My hand falls to my side, and my hand cannon loudly clacks against the stony floor as it slips away from my fingers. I am utterly exhausted, but I know I can't sleep. One means many. I need to get moving. But… a moment of rest is one that I can't easily look past.
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Dawn rises on another day. Soon, I will need to stop and find camp. My buggy rattles beneath me as the batteries display that I have about 5 miles of fuel remaining. It is a rusted, mechanical automaton I uncovered many nights ago. I know not what sort of being made it, and I was surprised to see that I could get it up and running with relative ease. There was a skeleton in the seat that I sat once, picked completely clean of flesh by the Nightmares. A disgusting smell constantly hung over the inside of the buggy, one that I can only assume is the bits of whatever person that was that got left over. I try my best to get it out, but no matter how hard I try, it always remains. I am starting to believe that it isn’t the buggy that smells.
The automaton is powered by solar technology built into the roof. The creator was extremely adept at wiring and machine work. In fact, it was extremely hard for me to find the wires for the solar power supply in order to get the engines running once again. It appears that the solar panels, built into the buggy's structure, charge a series of large batteries inside of the buggy. These batteries then charge and power the engine, which allows for locomotion at a pace that is significantly faster than the Nightmares. The engine makes little to no noise, but the vehicle itself is so old and rusted that it constantly rumbles and shakes with a metallic noise. I am honestly surprised with myself for discovering the way to make this work. It is very clear that I've tampered with this, for sure. Wires and cords run from the cracks in the body of the machine and make it appear to have been worked on by a less-than-average electrician. The tape I used is also reflective, making it really stand out that this isn't the original condition I found it in.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The solar-powered elements of my machine perfectly flips my schedule. Due to the reliance on solar energy, as well as the attacks by them, I need to move at night or risk getting stuck without my vehicle to take me away from the Nightmares. It charges the batteries during the day and drives me for the period between dusk and dawn. I also can't complain about that, either. If I were trapped in the sunlight for too long, I may burn to a crisp. It is ravenous and constantly demands fuel, even if that fuel is myself. The daytime is hot and miserable. I would much rather travel at night. While it is extremely cold, it's not so much inside of my vehicle, due to the way it heats up during the day.
I have been travelling for several months, I believe. I stopped counting the days I have been moving many weeks ago. It is needless to count at this point. Nobody else is here. I believe that the Nightmares got to the people who lived in this world, if there was anyone here to begin with. I have found no ruins. No landmarks since leaving my home. Just the buggy as I ran from them. No faces, no voices. I am convinced that I am the last person on this planet. The loneliness is crippling, but is also accompanied by company that I can't escape. The Nightmares constantly pursue me. I don't know why I run. There is nothing to run to. I just keep moving to preserve myself. Maybe I hope to tell my story to someone, if there is anyone. More than likely I will end up like the skeleton I found in this very seat. In fact, if there is a way I must die, it will be to them. There is no possibility of salvation. Only survival. I live my life in constant blocks of scheduled time, which is virtually pointless in this world that will eventually consume me.
I like to free my mind from the crippling reality of the world by looking at the clouds above in the yellow-tinted sky. It's always nice to see the greenish-gray puffs congregate before a storm. It is oddly soothing to see a storm on the horizon, moving over the brittle ground and peppering it with the sulfuric rain as I pilot my vehicle. It's refreshing to imagine that some day, the acids will wash away the filth from this world. Long after I'm gone, maybe the imps will die off as well and leave this barren planet to rot.
I begin to hear a strange noise from my vehicle; the radio, from which I normally played a few CD's I had found, was bellowing a strange white noise. I had it flicked to radio, but typically never heard anything but silence. I usually kept the music setting to CD, and right now was one of the exceptions where I just wanted to drive and clear my head, so I paid it no attention. What did it mean, the static buzzing from the speakers around me? Was this some way that the Nightmares snuck up on us? I parked my buggy about 15 feet inside of a nearby cave so that the rains wouldn't damage it, but the sun would shine on it enough to charge the batteries up for a little bit. A dead tree stood outside, guarding the area with a watchful eye. I watched the radio as the wavelengths began to dance like crazy. Then, there were a few strange noises that I could faintly hear coming from the machine. An electric, ringing noise that repeated in a similar pattern. Three short beeps, followed by a pause. Three long beeps, followed by a pause. And then three more short beeps, before a longer pause. This pattern beeped on for several minutes, before I shut off the buggy.
I'm not taking any chances. If they are coming for me, I will accept my death. I am running from nothing but the inevitable. I grab my cannon and fling my backpack over my shoulders. I took a few steps outside of the cave, and got a glimpse of my surroundings. I heard nothing but the dancing of sand against the stones and tree trunks, and the howling of the wind. In the distance, over the horizon, I noticed something I hadn't witnessed the Nightmares do before. There was a large pillar of smog, in the same putrid greenish-yellow that billowed overhead when I killed one of them. It was also rather black in color. Were they planning something? I began to move in the direction of the smog, my hand locked on the wooden hilt of my hand cannon as I walked. No chances. Not a single one will get away as long as I have bullets in my chamber.