Where Reapers Dare Not Tread: Preview

Where Reapers Dare Not Tread



Chapter One

When the World Has Turned



         Thomas Underhanes woke up that day just like he did every other day – in a pile of trash.  He dug himself out of the broken tissue boxes and plastic bags that he called his bed and took a minute to take in the morning sunrise, shaking his head as he did in a vain attempt to dry his hair.  It was a beautiful orange and yellow, the kind of sky you see after a very long rainy night; it rose over the mountains of waste and garbage like a seagull over a newborn ocean.  He loved getting up this early to see the sunrise, because it was one of the few beautiful things of his day.

         After the sky turned its natural shade of blue, Thomas scaled down his bed.  He hit the bottom with a thud, and then proceeded to look around for any food. He doubted he'd find any, but sometimes he got lucky and the wind blew him a box of half eaten crackers or cookies or something similar to that.  Unfortunately, today was not one of those days, so he had to leave the trash mountain to find food.  He grabbed his duffel bag and headed out.

         He walked for about a third of a mile through trash before he came to a large object.  It looked similar to a truck, except that in the front there were two nozzles pointing straight out.  Thomas knew enough about the World Before from all the spare history books he had found to know that it was called a disposer.  Thomas stared at it with a cold, yet somber look.  He remembered when he was younger and his mother had started it up.  The fires that had leaped from from those nozzles had singed almost all of his hair.  Thomas had attempted to get it started many times, but the power source had overloaded from the Night, so he stood no chance. 

         After another half mile of walking, Thomas came to a large electric metal fence.  Unlike anything else in this wasteland, the fence was still running.  He knew because one time, when he was trying to go get some food and water from the outside, he had accidentally brushed the fence and woken up the next day, dazed and unaware of his name.  It was a Mesmer fence, named after the man who invented it.  It worked very similar to an electric shock treatment, and it was highly useful for important places.  Thomas never knew why it was there because he definitely didn't consider the trash important, and he knew nobody else did either, mostly because there was nobody else.

         He climbed through the hole in the fence, taking care not to brush up against any part of it.  When he had managed to scrape through, he dusted himself off, a habit he had picked up from an old movie he had seen called The Godfather.  It was a good movie, he thought, but it was so old that it wasn't even in 3-D, and that made it very hard to watch.  Well, that, and the fact that it was just under three hours, much longer than any movie he had ever seen.  Thomas loved movies, and if he cared about his future, he would definitely have wanted to be a movie director.  But because there were no movie firms, he never attempted to become one.  It would have been hard, though, because there were no universities either.

         After getting through of the fence, Thomas made his way to the only source of food he knew, the city.  It was about three miles east and very dangerous during the day, but he really didn't have any choice on days like this.  He would take the road for about a mile and a half, and then walk through a half mile forest, and then take another road for the last mile.  It normally took him about an hour if he didn't run into any Others.

         The first road he took used to be called Eisenhower Road.  It was a big road, two air lanes on each side and three land lanes on each side as well.  Thomas liked imagining what cars and aircrafts were like; he had been born after the Night, so he had never seen one.  He never met his parents either, but he did admire them.  They gave him hope.  If two people had managed to survive every country in the world firing a nuclear bomb, perhaps others had too.  Thomas didn't count the Others.

         It was about halfway down Eisenhower Road when he saw one.  It was a Slider, an Other whose legs had been blasted off in the Night.  These were the only kinds of Other Thomas could handle without a weapon.  Thomas may have gotten a lot of exercise from having to walk and run everywhere, but that didn't mean he could take on an atomically-powered mutated human alone.  This Slider had both of its legs vaporized at about the same spot, right below the kneecap.  From what Thomas could see, it must have been relatively close to an explosion, because it was covered in burns and the entire right side of its body was pitch black.  Its jaw was hanging by mere threads from the rest of its face, and its eyes were oddly moving around in their sockets, but Thomas didn't even flinch.  Before, when he was a kid and his mother was still with him, Thomas used to feel sorry for them.  Others never asked to be Others; they used to be humans just like he was.  But after his mother was killed, he never felt like that again.

         Thomas did his best to avoid the Slider, but like always, it spotted him.  Thomas had very bright blonde hair, and apparently it attracted the eye of Others like nothing else.  He attempted to prevent this by covering his hair in dirt and making it a brownish blonde, but he didn't know that Others could see through this sort of trick, no matter how helpless or stupid they appeared.  The Slider slithered towards him, hissing at the top of it's charred lungs.  Thomas sighed, knowing what he would have to do.  He walked over to the creature and stomped on its head, once, twice, three times, until its blackened ears started oozing a disgusting sludge.  Without a word, Thomas kicked the Slider twice more, making sure it was dead, and then kept walking.

         Eventually, he got to the forest.  He dusted himself off, trying to remove the smell of the trash off of him.  He had always done this, even when his mom was alive.  His mom was the one who introduced him to the forest, and it was for this reason that he loved it.  The forest reminded him of his mother, so peaceful and serene.  It was the one place he had been to in his life that he had never seen an Other.  He always felt that the trash smell dirtied the place, and so he took to the habit of dusting himself off before he went in.  He walked in, his busted sneakers making almost no noise on the freshly-rained on ground.  As he looked around, light shone in through the few spots of open air that the tree's leaves provided.  The beams of light looked like flashlights, shining in brilliant places.  Thomas was never a very religious man, but he felt that these were signs that this forest was from heaven.

         As he walked through the forest, he walked into a clearing, the same one that he always did.  When he got to the middle, however, he got the sudden feeling that he was being watched.  He twisted his head, scanning the darkened trees for an intruder.  He heard nothing, however.  No leaves being crunched, no twigs snapping, nothing.  So he kept an eye out and kept on walking.

         Eventually, he got to the end of the forest.  He turned onto the next road, a road named Thorn Road.  This road was much different than Eisenhower; there were no air lanes.  From what Thomas had gathered, Thorn road had been built before the invention of aircrafts, back when The Godfather was made.  Thomas sometimes wished that he had been born back then, too.

         Thomas was walking in the middle of the road, keeping his eyes out for any Others, when he got that feeling again, the feeling that he was being watched.  He scanned the area much more intensely, checking behind him, above him, and in front, before realizing nobody was around.  He cleared his throat, another trick he had picked up from The Godfather, attempting to draw whatever it was out.  However, when nothing showed, he hurried his pace and continued onwards. 

         After about forty minutes, he reached the city.  Thomas could read the sign on the road that lead into the city.  “Welcome to Fencetown,” he mumbled, “home to food, water, and more Others than I can name.”  Thomas stopped for a moment and opened his duffel bag.  Inside was a canteen, two water bottles, medical supplies, a flashlight, a peculiar looking gun, and a lot of room for food.  With almost no effort, Thomas grabbed the gun and pulled it out.  It was held together with dirty duct-tape, and the black and gray paint was peeling off, but it still glowed with an ominous green color.  Thomas had found it once in the city, inside one of the old buildings that he later learned was a bank.  It was called an RT-67 back in the World Before, but Thomas called it a Hum because of the noise it made.  He held the Hum in his left hand and headed into the city, fully prepared for anything.

         He made his way to the supermarket.  Whenever Thomas ran out of food, he always came here first.  As he rounded a street corner, however, he noticed two Others.  One was a Slider and was barely moving, and Thomas had to double check to make sure it was actually alive.  The other was what Thomas liked to call a Handicap, because it had one extra arm.  The Handicap had a second left arm, but it was covered in blisters and boils, and its face looked like it was constantly melting.  Thomas began thinking of other ways into the supermarket.  He realized the front door was the only way in.  He loaded the Hum and stepped around the corner wall.

         The Handicap saw him first.  It somewhat cried out, making a low growl similar to a dog's bark.  It started lumbering its way over, its three arms moving in a circular motion.  Thomas raised the Hum and pointed it at the Handicap, putting his left index finger on the trigger.  He aimed for the head and fired twice.  The Hum spit out a green bolt of electricity at the Handicap, missing it's left eye by a hair.  The second shot hit it square in the chest because of the recoil, but it knocked the Handicap on its back.  Without a word, Thomas discarded the empty cartridges and reloaded, setting his sights on the fallen Other. 

         Suddenly, he heard a loud rumbling.  The uncut hair on the back of his neck shivered as he turned around and stared at the direction of the noise, almost instantly knowing what it was.  His fears were confirmed when from around the street corner came one of the largest Others he had ever seen, an Ogre.  Ogres were about ten feet tall and carried large objects to use as weapons.  The Ogre's legs were like pillars.  Its arms were so long that as the Ogre dragged its feet to move, creating a trail of blood, they drooped on the pavement beside it.  They were also, unfortunately, some of the smartest Others, making them formidable opponents.  Thomas sprinted towards the supermarket, his adrenaline pumping through his veins.  He heard the rumbling behind him and was grateful that Ogres were so slow.  This one, luckily, only had one eye, so Thomas knew where to aim.  All Others, after all, were nothing without their incredible eyesight. 

         When he got to the supermarket, Thomas turned directly around in front of the door.  Quicker than the Ogre could understand, Thomas shot two shots from the Hum into its chest, dazing it for a second.  That was all he needed as he rushed into the supermarket, the Ogre unable to figure out where he went.  He hid underneath the cash register, reloaded, and waited for the Ogre to leave.  With a roar like a hungry lion, it crashed through the door, swinging a lamppost like a baseball bat, knocking down part of the entrance onto itself.

         Thomas took advantage of the beast's lapse in judgment to put two more rounds into it.  One hit it in the eye, which finally blinded it. Thomas smiled and decided he wanted to finish it off with some flair.  He went to the cash register again and grabbed the weapon he always kept there for emergency purposes.  It was a chainsaw, and so he revved it up, ready for carnage.  He ran outside to the blinded and stumbling Ogre, dodging a swing from its makeshift club and slicing right through its right hand. 

         Injured and angry, the Ogre screamed again, this time more in pain than anger.  It tried to smash Thomas with a swing of its fist, but Thomas was just too quick.  With another slice of the chainsaw, it violently ripped the Ogre, causing its torso to fall one way and its legs another.  Thomas knew that this alone couldn't kill it, so he took the chainsaw and stabbed it straight through the Ogre's skull, putting the Other out of its misery.  He took a sigh of relief, glad it was all over. Then a steel object hit him in the back of the head, and he slipped into unconsciousness.