The next half an hour was spent in silence. It seemed Lara had some thinking to do, and Birdie was fine with letting her be. Birdie had helped her load up the truck again, and she had just left with it filled to the brim.
Birdie returned to mining, slowly. Slamming around with the pickaxe was quick, but it had not left a very smooth or wide passage. He wanted to fix that. He was running the stone saw, starting from where he had branched off of Tunnel 350. The saw was given to miners because it allowed them to create smaller chunks of rock to break off with their other tools. Birdie didn’t use it this way.
Birdie used the stone saw to neaten up his work. He cut in as far as he could reach, and then used the hammer and chisels to break the uniform chunks off, flattening the floor and digging out the walls.
“Birdie, a man just ran into the processing plant screaming about some monster. Do you know of any monsters?” But he had expected this.
“Just ignore him. Some tunnels make people go crazy. Finish unloading the truck and get back to work.” That was a lie. It was lunch time, so some people who were used to eating would run from work with lame excuses.
“Okay… I’ll come back.” Birdie had brought up about fifteen feet of the tunnel to his standards before she got back.
It took an hour this time, Lara loading up the truck. Birdie decided not to help her, and she struggled with the rock’s sizes and weights. He didn’t care. He had made it another hundred feet. It wasn’t his job to clean. It was his job to dig, and so he dug.
Birdie didn’t notice Lara leaving, but when he looked up she was gone. He turned his comms to 66 to talk to Mint. It was his lunch break, so he would likely be on. “Hey, a full truck is heading to the processing plant. Please help them unload before eating. I know it gets chaotic around lunch time. I’ll send her to Channel 67.”
“Sure, but you owe me one.” The reply came through.
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll help you clean up when you are done. I’m getting back to work. Made quite a mess over where I am, and I’m fixing it.”
“Ok, Channel 67? Got it. Bye.”
“Cya.” Birdie switched back over to the 350 channel, and continued neatening up the space. He was waiting for a call.
………
“Hey, Birdie?”
“Hey Lara. What’s up?”
“There are a lot of people holding up the processing plant.”
“And?”
“They look like they are defending themselves against something.”
“Are they saying anything?”
“Wait a minute.” Birdie stops working, and waits for her to respond.
“Someone says that the hysteric guy has gone missing.”
“So?”
Lara hesitates. “They say a creature attacked him.”
“Ha.” Birdie lets out the sound involuntarily.
“What’s funny?”
“I thought this would happen. Don’t worry about it.” Birdie picks the saw up. “I have a guy on channel 67 coming to help you get through and unload your truck.”
“A guy?”
“Yeah, he looks old and should be right nearby.”
“Old guy? There isn’t…” There is a pause. “Oh wait, I see him.”
“Good. Just get back here when you are done. You still have a whole lot of ore to pick up so we can go home on time tonight.”
“But…” Birdie shuts off comms. There isn’t any more reason to talk to Lara at the moment. He needed to put things back in order before the end of the day, and explaining himself was not getting work done.
Birdie had made it another 50 feet in the time Lara was gone. He had sped up, but he wasn’t moving at the pace he wanted to. He needed to speed up even more so that he could finish, and then help Mint clean.
Birdie hadn’t finished yet by the time Lara was ready to go again. He had made a promise to Mint though, so he told Lara he was going to the processing plant with her. He packed up his tools and jumped in the truck.
He frowned as they left. The tunnel was frustratingly still messy, small, and uneven. Even after all the work he did over the past 4 hours he was only a quarter of the way to where he had dug.
It was a bumpy and uncomfortable ride back. Birdie was not in the cab because he wanted to bring the statue he had carved with him. He held the statue as he sat, cursing the previous diggers for their lazy unskilled work.
Lara offered to stop and let him in the cab multiple times, but he said no. The statue was more important than a sore butt.
“This statue is for that old guy who helped you out earlier. It’s very much in the likeness of a friend that we haven’t seen in years.”
“Your friend looks a little weird. What’s with the one eye, digitigrade legs, and tail?”
“That’s what the lab does to you, changes you in a way you would never believe possible.”
“I hope I never have to go there. I’m shaking just imagining it.”
“Everyone hopes that, but if you save up enough, you can sort of choose what you want to become.”
“Sort of?”
“I mean, you can get up to a 99% chance you won’t die. You get a characteristic you want, and the rest of you basically goes to shit.”
“That guy you probably saw this morning with the wings wanted to fly, so we paid for him to fly. Mac wanted to be strong, so he paid to be strong. That woman hanging out with the guy with wings wanted to be fertile. So they gave him reproductive organs.”
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“Who’s Mac?”
“Oh, you’ll probably meet him. The guy has stayed in the cells for 13 years. He’s been around since he was 17. He was teleported somewhere yesterday, but he’ll probably be back.”
“You said the rest of you goes to shit. What do you mean by that?”
“The guy with wings? His organs are all screwed up, so now he can only eat certain things, and he walks weird. Mac has a whole bunch of colored patches under his clothes where they cut him open and replaced his muscles with some metallic substance. He’s stronger, faster, and more magnetic than any other person on the planet. The woman was a man before going to the labs. They made him fertile again, yes, but gave him a whole different reproductive system than he was born with. Now he is a lesbian I guess, but he was a man so he’s straight? There was a girl he liked, but she turned to goo in the labs, the product of asking for too much.”
“What’d she want?”
“She wanted to be able to turn into different animals. Something went wrong, which is why I said there is a 99% chance you will survive if you pay.”
“*Uuugh*. Did you go to the… What the Frick?” The truck jerks to a stop.
“Hey!!! Don’t stop so… What the frick?”
There are a bunch of dead bodies strewn about the floor, around sixty of them, with their guts hanging out. Some are missing arms, some are missing legs, and some are missing heads. On one of the bodies is a creature. A white creature, half its body hidden behind the processing plant.
“Hey, I’m going to run that thing over. It attacked everyone here, and I think it’s going to attack us soon.” Birdie can hear the fear and determination in Lara’s voice as the truck rev’s up.
“Wait a minute. Let me take care of this, but first I need to talk to somebody.”
“OK, but I’m staying in the truck.”
“Yeah, I’ll be back.” Birdie jumps out of the back of the truck, leaving his statue in a secure crack in the rest of the rubble. He then flips his comms to channel 66.
“What the frick are you doing?”
“Wait a minute, I’m still eating.”
“Fine, but I’m coming over.” Birdie walked towards the white thing, seeing it in it’s entirety after turning the corner to the processing plant.
White sunken in skin, digitigrade legs, large and smooth head, talons for fingers and a large serpent like tail. It was a creature from a horror movie, and it was digging into a gut pile, flinging flesh, blood and bones everywhere as it chewed. That was Mint, a man thrown into the cells for eating allied soldiers as dinner.
Mint had paid the lab to be better equipped for eating humans and surviving toxins. He got both, growing up to 8 feet tall, and becoming a monster. He also didn’t age, and could release illusion inducing pheromones. Too bad his bloodlust didn’t subside until all nearby living organisms were dead, and he could only eat living or recently killed organisms. Otherwise, it would be the perfect transformation for war.
“OK, what did you want to say before rudely interrupting my meal?” The head of the creature turned to him covered in flesh and blood.
What looked like a big eye covered the bottom half of the things face, but looking closer, you could see row upon row of teeth around the pupil. Currently the eye looked bloodshot from all the gore in his mouth, but usually the “pupil” of the eye was black, like the tongue and back of his throat. The “iris” of the eye was gray, surrounded by white gums which the teeth could contract into. The man could not see, but his hearing and smell were leagues greater than any man could hope to have.
“What the FRICK is that mess outside? I know I said I’d help you clean up, but you threw the guts everywhere, and I Mean everywhere!!!”
“Sorry.” Mint sarcastically says.
“Of course you aren’t sorry, you did the same thing last time I was here 3 years ago.”
“I did.” The monster's chuckles sound like static and hissing. Its mouth closes and opens, the teeth retract and extend.
“I’m going to invite that woman from earlier to channel 67 again. It’s important to introduce people before any misunderstandings lead to problems.”
“OK, meet you there.” The monster’s static and hissing cuts out, signaling the change in signal.
“Hey Lara?”
“Birdie? What’s going on? Why aren’t you getting attacked? Why does that thing look like the friend you carved?...”
“HOLD ON!!” Birdie yelled, stopping her in her tracks. “I’ll explain everything to you. Just switch to channel 67 and we’ll talk.”
“Ok, but I’m not leaving this truck.”
“If that makes you feel safe, I guess… I’m going to 67. We’ll speak there.”
“Hey Mint, I’m here. Lara should be joining us in a moment.”
“Should I scare her?”
“Maybe later, after you guys get acquainted.”
“After we get acquainted, what?” Lara asks.
“He’s going to scare you.”
“Really? You had to tell her? You’re no fun.”
“Of course I was going to tell her. Little white lies are fine when you are trying to gain someone’s trust, but a straight up lie you know they are going to catch? I’m not that immature. Anyways. Lara, this is Mint. Mint, this is Lara, she’s a pilot.”
“Nice to meet you Lara, and I’m sorry I couldn’t greet you properly earlier.”
“I’m not so sure it’s nice to meet you Mint, seeing as you just killed all those prisoners.”
“I understand. For humans being prey is hard and scary to think about. That’s why I was thrown in jail in the first place.”
“Well, I don’t understand. What I don't understand is why you guys haven’t killed me. Based on how Birdie was calling that statue of you a friend and the way he talks to you, I can see he is fine with all this killing and eating you do. Why did you call me back before Mint killed all the people here, and why did you call Mint to help me when everyone was grouped up?”
“Wait, you made a statue of me?” Mint asked
“Nope, that statue was of Lent. It’s been a while since we saw him, so I decided to make a replica.”
“Oh yeah, that man ran to the surface and didn’t come back after surviving the explosion. I wonder if he got back to Bator.”
“Lent? That was the guy who was brothers with Alf, right?”
“You knew them?” Birdie looks at Lara.
“Yeah, I watched as Alf was shot down by an aircraft. That’s also when I was saved by you Birdie.”
“Birdie saved a woman? Why have I never heard of this?”
“You have never heard of me saving a woman because I have never saved a woman. The last person I saved was an Overseer, and that time I got stuck in a hospital for 9 days. Imagine. You have 10 days to live without working for a year, and you almost die because a hospital restrains you there for 9 of those 10 days. I never went out of my way to save someone again.” Birdie tried to change the subject. “And to answer your question about why I kept you alive. I saw you were a good worker, but mostly, we need a pilot.”
“You found a way to get rid of the collars?” Mint accepts his change of subject.
“I have found a way, without blowing them up. I just need a few test subjects to find the correct positioning of two magnets while taking it completely off the head. So far, we have gotten the collar off, but as soon as the sensors no longer read that there is matter in the area of the collar they blow.
“Wait, you aren’t going to test the magnets on me, right?” Lara asked
“No, we still need a pilot. Speaking of test targets though, how many people are left. I only counted 60 bodies here.”
“I counted killing 82 people, so there should be about 15 people left, including us.”
“Perfect. We’ll just capture 15 test subjects and clean up the bodies before going home for the night.”
I also had to go back to tunnel 350 to fix the mess I made, and collect all the stone and ore and bring them to the processing plant. That would take about 7 hours to complete and give me 4 to 5 hours of sleep without a bed, food or my newspaper tonight. Why is life so unfair?