-Rookie-
Morning light shines in through the open door and my eyes snap open. Being deep in hostile territory makes it difficult to go into a deep sleep and my mind is up and active within moments.
Crap, I fell asleep at some point. We didn’t even set up a watch. What if we had gotten attacked?
Taking in the small room, I find the Sergeant still sleeping in one corner, slowly recovering from his injuries. Across the space is the Perverted Imp. She is laying on the ground with one arm on her pillow propping up her head as she reads her book. Behind her, her tail sways lazily up into the air before gently hitting the ground behind her, repeating as she turns the page.
I blush a bit as I remember her calling me attractive, but I quickly push that aside and force myself to focus.
She notices me moving and shifts her attention to me. Yellow halos adorning black sclera locking on to my eyes.
“Oh, you're awake? You could sleep a bit longer. The sun has only just come up, I imagine you’re still pretty tired after yesterday.”
“Ahh, no I’m good. I’ll get some proper rest when I get back to base… Did you stay up all night?”
“Yup…” She says shifting her attention back down to her book, turning the page.
“Oh, I’m sorry… We should have set up shifts for sleeping. How are you holding up?”
“Hmm? Oh, you don’t need to worry about that. I don’t sleep. It’s weird, but I guess I just don’t require sleep anymore.”
“Wha… How does that work? Everyone needs sleep. You just don’t sleep?”
“Yah, I honestly have no idea how it works. I can still get tired and mentally exhausted; I just don’t get sleepy anymore. Laying around and reading a book or just plain relaxing seems to be all I need. So, you don’t need to worry about nights. I’ll keep watch while you guys' sleep.”
“Well… thank you then, I guess… I’ll get the Sergeant up and then we can figure things out from there.”
“Ok.” She responds with the wave of a hand, turning another page.
I get up from my spot in the corner and walk over to Sgt. Lenz. It doesn’t take much to wake him and soon he is slowly pulling himself up into a sitting position, letting out a few groans as his wounds get pulled. Digging out some MRE’s we eat our food. I have some shredded beef in barbeque sauce and Sgt. Lenz, a chicken burrito bowl.
Lain, off to the side ends up digging out a bag of dried veggies, nuts, and berries. Munching on a couple handfuls before putting the rest away.
No meat, I guess that’s a bit reassuring. Somehow knowing that she isn’t a carnivore is helping me relax a bit.
She looks up from her book and points to our food, “MRE’s huh… I haven’t seen one of those in a while. My family had some stocked in our emergency supplies, but we ran out after the first year because of the winter.”
I grimace as I think back on that winter, it wasn’t a great time, even for those of us on base.
“Ya, we have a warehouse full of them. We keep them as emergency rations and for missions only. At the base, the farms grow most of our food.”
“Oh? That sounds nice. So, there’s lots of food at the base?”
She doesn’t seem to actually care that much, just talking for the sake of conversation, her eyes occasionally flickering towards me before returning to staring at her book.
“Ya, well, we have lots of fruits and veggies, potatoes and onions. Meats a bit of a hot commodity though. Lots of people are too scared to try and raise livestock in case one of the chickens mutates or something.”
“Hah! Giant evil chickens.” She giggles a bit to herself.
She smiles and looks up from her book, “Oh! On the way down south, I saw a herd of mutated cows. They were huge. Like moving hills. They were covered in long hair and had a bunch of plants and stuff growing on them as they grazed in the field. The next time I find one, I want to ride them. They seemed pretty chill.” She nods to herself happily.
“I haven’t seen any of those yet. I have seen a mutated rabbit though.”
“No shit?”
“Ya. In one of the extensions built off of the base for refugees. This guy had apparently caught it and was trying to sell it. It wasn’t much bigger than a large rabbit, but it had a unicorn horn growing out of its head. Drew quite a crowd.”
“Huh, horned rabbit, that’s a classic. I wanna see one… Anything else interesting?”
We continue to chat as we eat our MRE’s, occasionally Sgt. Lenz will contribute a bit or ask a question of his own. Lain tells us about some of the different things that she has seen while traveling and about her family. Asking if either of us recognize them, but neither of us do.
Eventually, Sgt. Lenz decides that it is time to go, so we pack up and get ready to leave.
“Alright, first order of business. We need to go and check if the rest of the team actually was able to get out of here. Lain you said that you found no trace of them?” The Sergeant asks.
“That’s right. After I pulled you out, I went back and tried to find them. The area they escaped from is collapsed, so nothing was able to follow them in. I headed back to where you guys originally entered and back tracked from there in case they were stuck, but I didn’t find anything.”
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“Hmm, I would like to double check. I mean no offence, but there is the possibility of you missing something or that you are lying to us. So, we will check before we leave.”
She doesn’t seem particularly bothered by the potential accusation and consents with a shrug, “Eh, fair enough.”
“Good. After that, we will be falling back and returning to base. If they made it back to the last camp, they will have left a note for us. Is it safe to assume that you will be coming with us?”
“All the way back to base? No. I came out here to negotiate safe entry for me and my friend. I’m not risking approaching the gate with a wounded soldier and a rookie separated from their team. Sniper might think I took you hostage or something and shoot at Sky or me. Not risking it. I’ll bring you as far as my house, give you a letter, and then send you on your way from there. I don’t live too far from the base. Then your higher-ups can figure things out from there. You’ll know where to find me. Besides, I don’t want to leave Sky by herself for too long.”
“That’s fair. I can promise you that if you help us get back safely, I’ll do what I can to help you get in and back to your family.”
She smiles at that, looking very happy. “Cool, thank you very much! I guess I’m on an escort mission now.”
“Alright, Rookie. Help me up. I’m going to need to borrow your shoulder.”
“Yes sir.”
Back on his feet and leaning heavily against me, he calls for us to head out.
“Alright Lain, you were able to follow us all the way out here. Surely, you can lead us back out. You have the front.”
She snaps her bare feet together and gives a salute, sledgehammer resting casually on her shoulder.
“Yes sir!”
Pivoting on one leg, she turns at a sharp 90⁰ before then marching to the stairs and heading down.
The Sergeant and I give each other a look but are soon slowly following behind her.
From a few steps down she then quickly calls out, “Oh, and don’t call me Sherly!” Before barking out with a laugh.
“Uhhh!” Sgt. Lenz groans, “Rookie, if I were to order you to shoot me. Would you do it?”
“No sir.”
“Why not?”
“Because then it would be just me alone with this weird little Imp, Sir.”
“Traitor…”
“Sorry sir, but if one of us has to suffer, then all of us do.”
He laughs a bit at that as he fights through the pain of going down the stairs on injured legs.
At the bottom of the stairs, Lain is revealed to already be busy with clearing away the barricade that is keeping the door sealed shut. Working away in pure darkness even before I can bring about the flashlight to shine on her. As the light touches her body, I watch as the shadows that where accumulating on her body quickly flee away from the light like scattering snakes.
She doesn’t seem to care in the slightest as she carries away large pieces of her barricade.
Does she have some sort of night vision or something? I still want to know about what’s going on with those shadows too. It’s not natural. I’ll have to ask her later…
Thankfully, now that we are on the main floor, Lain doesn’t try cracking any jokes and becomes serious. Remaining quiet and moving stealthily as we cover ground. Her steps are barely audible as she slinks ahead of us; checking corners and keeping her head on a swivel as we slowly follow behind her.
The Sergeant comment with a whisper, “No wonder we had a hard time spotting her. She could have been right behind us, and we wouldn’t have ever noticed…”
My thoughts go back to last night when I first met her. How she was literally right behind me and yet I couldn’t find her until she let me. It’s a bit scary to know that there are people that can be that stealthy.
Up ahead, something begins to round a corner. Its head showing as it lazily moves forward on four reptilian limbs. Its appearance resembles something of a giant gecko with three eyes. It’s skin slowly shifts in color between different shades of reds, blues, and greens.
We try to signal to her to fall back and hide as we grab some cover, not wanting to be spotted by a giant lizard. No matter how lazy it looks.
Ignoring our hand signs, Lain explodes forward with hardly a sound. In the blink of an eye, she is already above the creature and kicking off a wall, rocketing towards its head.
The lizard is none the wiser as her sledgehammer smashes into its skull with a loud crack of shattering bones.
It quickly collapses on the spot, its heavy weight falling to the ground with Lain standing atop its back. With a pull, she yanks her heavy weapon out from its sunken cranium. Blood and grey matter soon begin to flow down its head like a popped open barrel of wine as the blockage is removed.
From atop it back, Lain looks around for any other threats and then signals for us to follow before jumping down. She makes hardly a sound as her feet touches the ground, the shifting of her pack being the only noise I can hear coming from her.
What the hell!? With one blow!
We catch up to her and I give the newly made corpse a look. Its back half had not even finished passing the corner and was still hidden from view.
This thing is easily forty feet long. How the hell do you kill something like this with one blow?
Up ahead she waves for us to follow her.
Sgt. Lenz pats me on the shoulder, “Don’t worry about it Rookie, priorities. Follow the Imp.”
I nod my head and we go to follow her. Shortly after, we reach the site of where the wall collapsed. Thankfully there is no signs of the giant winged creature that caused the mess.
On the walls and floor are giant scars of claw marks left behind by the beast from where it had tried to dig its way in.
Without a word, Lain sets aside her hammer and starts moving fallen debris out of the way. Moving pieces that should way hundreds of pounds before gently setting them aside. I move Sgt. Lenz to a nearby bench and then join her in moving aside what I can. After about half an hour of digging, we manage to make a path leading through.
“Come on, you’ll be able to check their escape route and then we can leave.” Lain tells us as she walks through the new opening.
Retrieving Sgt. Lenz, we carefully move through and search for our teammates.
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Searching the tunnels and warehouse reveals nothing but a handful of rat corpses. The others are not here anymore, and they had managed to kill everything that made it through the collapsing wall to chase them.
Soon we are back outside, the door that we first entered when we arrived now behind us. The tarmac is spread out before us, and the surroundings look clear. Following behind Lain, she leads us as we leave the airport and travel through the train yard, thankfully avoiding running into anything.
Back in the warehouse district, we give a wide berth to the building with the roach nest and make our way through the area. Lain seemed to want absolutely nothing to do with it, even letting out a little scream as a big roach surprises her. She ended up freaking out and crushing it with her hammer, leaving a small crater in the ground. I don’t fault her for it in the slightest. Those things are horrid. A couple of times while we are moving through, Lain ends up smashing the heads of any unlucky creature that gets in our way. Often killing them before they even have a chance to react. Besides the roaches, she doesn’t appear to be all that squeamish about being near ugly or scary looking monsters. Or caving their skulls in and getting covered in blood for that matter. She just seems oddly resigned to it, and sighs tiredly as she tries to wipe some of the filth off her shirt.
We make a much quicker time as we move through here than we previously did. Even with Sgt. Lenz being injured, we eventually reach the camp with plenty of daylight to spare.
Settling in, I bring Sgt. Lenz over to a booth and help him get seated. Looking over some of his bandages, it appears that some of his wounds reopened while we were walking. Digging out the medical supplies, I work on recleaning his wounds and replacing his wraps.
Wanting to ask Lain some questions and ask her to find the note that they left for us, I turn to her, but I stop as I find her standing next to the window, a serious look on her face. She catches me looking and asks, “Do you hear that?”
Next to me, Sgt. Lenz peels back the tarp on the window behind him and focusses on his hearing, his face growing deadly serious with each passing second.
“Gun fire… The others…!”
We both go to get up as the realization hits us. We are stopped when Lain shouts for us to stay here, throwing her pack to the ground as she takes off out the restaurant at top speed with nothing but her hammer. Soon she is out of sight, swallowed by the woods and disappearing from view.