Quite frankly, it was disgusting. Even she wasn’t proud of what they were doing, though she couldn’t quite deny the satisfaction boiling in her gut at the sight of it. Bodies dropping, faster than flies. The efficiency of it all. The sheer horror of it.
Spotting the small desert town in the first place had been kind of surprising. Of course, she’s heard about such refuges before, and she’d maybe caught sight of a few in her brief travels throughout the Zones, but the thought - the idea that so many people had managed to cram themselves into so small of a space. It was almost amazing, if it didn’t further her disgust at how pathetic and pestlike such an existence had to be. Rodents, all of them. Dirty and frantic, like the animals they resembled.
Rachel hoped they’d be finished soon. For her brother’s sake.
Speaking of… Rachel squinted out towards the lip of the town. The settlement looked to be no more than a great deal of carts and crates all piled up on top of each other, more in the shape of a market than anything else, and the entrance itself was a little hard to decipher. In the end, the two had just made it easy for themselves and blocked out the whole road from where a path divulged from it into the tiny colony. Anyone who tried to skitter down the path to escape was met with a quick, fast end. There were a couple of corpses littering the trail now that she stepped over, gesturing behind her for her team to collect, but it had been a while since anybody else had dared to come out. Maybe they were finally done.
Donning her mask, Rachel crept into the colony with her hand at her hip, ready to draw her weapon at any moment. The air inside was still thick with gas, and inside, it was almost impossible to walk without tredding on the dead. Grimacing to herself at the thought of the comfort she would have to offer him afterwards, she continued to search for her sibling, finally finding him standing still in the center of the marketplace.
He was holding something. As Rachel approached, she could see that Caleb was holding a child, one with half its face missing, blown away by one of the gas grenades they had set off. She stopped, and Caleb looked up at her, the smallest of frowns on his face, and she watched him quietly as he set the body down with an apologetic half-shrug, like he was more guilty about getting caught than he was for what he’d done, even though she knew the opposite was true.
“Don’t pick favorites,” she grunted. “It could be any of ‘em.”
Rachel clicked her tongue. “Not our fault, anyway… Fuck’re you doin’, bringin’ a kid out here. All you’re doing is setting it up to starve to death.”
Caleb shrugged again, stubbornly keeping up his act of being unphased.
Whatever. Rachel shot a scowl over at him, then glanced around him. “You can get back to the truck, then. I’ll search for survivors, but I think this’ll be enough. This was the last one… okay?” She frowned at his face.
… She’d known about the tests and experiments and what results were left in him, but it was still strange to see the effects in action. Caleb seemed completely unbothered, standing there within the fog without the smallest bit of equipment to help him through it. She kind of hated the advantage it gave him above her, who still had to wear this clunky, ugly mask…
… Caleb hadn’t moved yet. Rachel got closer and gave him a nudge. “Hey. Unless you’re feeling sick or got something to say… I gave you an order. Go on back. I can handle this.”
“… yeah,” he finally replied, all the exhaustion he’d been holding in ravaging his voice. He glanced back at her with something grateful in his eyes before he stepped carefully away from her, over the kid’s corpse (as if to prove that he could) and down the path she had taken.
Rachel watched him leave. When the halo of his hair finally disappeared into the dark cloud around them, she finally looked away, frowning at the ugliness around her before she continued to tredge forward. Might as well make this quick…
Jake squinted in the direction he’d come, using both his hands to shade his eyes. His jaw worked as he chewed on a bit of orange plastic he’d found along the way. Once he’d spat out all the dust that had been on it, it was pleasant enough to chew on. Something to do. But it made him hungrier. The air was white and hazy today with dust, after that storm had blown through, and his sister emerged from the rippling cloud like a mirage.
Kate was slower, as usual. She was more careful to take in their surroundings on these hunts, thought she might could find something if she was careful. Jake thought it was bullshit. First, there was nothing to find that wouldn’t be in plain sight, someone would have taken it already combing the desert like her. Second, if they found something fresh to eat, it would be in plain sight, eventually. It was summer. The desert was exceptionally brutal. Recent defectors from Battery would be dropping all over the place. The key was to find them before they were spoiled by the heat.
Which they wouldn’t, if Kate didn’t pick up the pace.
“I’m coming!!” Then a quieter, distant “Jackass,”
Jake rolled his eyes and swiveled around again to take stock. He knew which direction they were going, more or less, and tried to envision in his mind landmarks he was familiar with from here. Trading post wasn’t too far. Wouldn’t find anything there, not for free. Guy with the trailer that way, and he could be talked into handouts, but it was at least another two hours’ walk. And then there was the little refugee town, which…
No, that was it. That was where refugees from the city and elsewhere squatted, there were bound to be plenty of discarded things to eat and pocket there, this time of year. He looked back to Kate, who was only a few yards behind him now.
“Let’s go that way. To the shanty town.”
“Yeah. They always let us take stuff if we have guns, and there’s gotta be dudes who can’t take the heat.”
“You know I’d rather not eat that if I don’t have to, right… they gotta have shit like cans, what’re you so hyped about dead dudes for…”
“Whatever, come on. I wanna get there today.”
Just get in the truck. Rachel’s order replayed itself in his head, over and over, as he dragged his feet towards the way out of this hell he’d found himself in. That was all that was left to do. No more deaths. No more screaming. No more vomiting, convulsing, hallucinating people to haunt his dreams for years to come. The second he got in the truck, he could hide himself away, and finally cry out all the feelings he’d been cramming down since this had all started.
It was easier said than done.
The gas the Company had decided to use worked slowly. It was a gruesome way to kill someone, ripping apart their psyches as they suffocated. He started to slow down as he walked, unable to keep himself from searching the bodies for any sign of life. He didn’t know what to do when he’d find one. Every time he saw so much of a shudder, he turned away and walked away fast, too much of a coward to put them out of their misery himself.
Too much of a coward to do anything but obey, really.
Biting his lip, he finally eased himself back towards the road, noticing the stragglers still laying on the ground, slowly and haphazardly getting picked at by the Draculoids that were accompanying them on this mission. Feeling sicker still, he crept past them, making himself as small as possible. If they didn’t notice him, maybe they wouldn’t ask for his help, and he could just hide away like he wanted and pretended he was far, far away from here.
Her brother’s name drifted low out of her; too low for him to hear, at some 20 yards away, bent over one of the many corpses littering the ground.They were everywhere, stretching indiscriminately into the shanty-town, between lean-to’s, crowded under tents and crates, piled haphazardly on top of each other. Especially here, at the south opening. As if everyone had tried to run this way. No bullet wounds; no blood. What was at the north end? There was no scent of death in the dry heat, but there would be after sundown. A burnt chemical smell like lightning did linger faintly in the air, though. She couldn’t place it.
His head twisted immediately towards her. Kate could see her own expression mirrored on his face, though he tucked something away into his back pocket. Confusion. Wariness. Lost a bit in the way the sun made their faces screw up, the stark shadows it threw over their features. Strands of his hair twitched and fell over his face in the faint breeze, and she knew hers did the same. They were still and looking at each other for a long moment.
“Something’s not right. Right?”
Jake broke the gaze and looked back at the body he was crouched beside. He nodded.
Jake stood and stepped over another body, bent down to pick something else up and pocket it. He shrugged.
Another nod, eyes scanning the ground, the shabby structures piled everywhere. “Might as well pick up whatever’s right around here.” He glanced at her again. “Then we can go.”
“‘Kay.” She began to look around, too, but without much care; she was distracted. Her eyes returned again and again to the end of the winding makeshift street, towards the north entrance to the shanty town, cut out of sight by the clutter of dilapidated buildings and camps. No distant sound; no rising fumes or exhaust through the sky. And yet she found her blaster in her hand as she nudged tents open, piling cans indiscriminately into the sack at her hip. She saw Jake had done the same.
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