Wasteland Darling: Ch.2/ Day 1-2

Preface:

This is a story told from two disparate perspectives. As such, there will be overlapping information witnessed and repeated from different points of view. It is our hope that you'll enjoy the process of seeing these two points of view clash, then come together both figuratively and literally, as indicated by the right and left idents noting the shift in perspectives.

In the near future, the world as we know it is no more. The wasteland covers what was once the continental U.S, and only small pockets of humanity have managed to survive and settle in the new world. In this world, however, new humans with dangerous gifts have risen to prominence, preying on the weaker humans with their ability to change their size and density at will. These 'Shifters' roam the wasteland, struggling to survive much like the remaining humans, even with their natural, predatory advantage.

Here we find the story of two people living in this world. So different from one another, soon to clash, and from then on to relearn what it means to be human after humanity has fallen....

Day 1-2

Maya slept for a good hour or two. She could never be precise with the time, though being familiar with the sun's position overhead gave her some sense. When she woke, it had fallen lower on the horizon. It was time to move.

She pulled herself to her feet and removed her tarp-dress, the brisk air of twilight blowing over her completely bare skin. Neatly folding up the tarp and placing it beside her van, she released a long exhale as her body started changing. A minute vibration which could only be seen at close range enveloped her skin, and in moments, she'd reduced her height back to normal. Even then, she was tall. At normal human proportions, she stood at a proud six-feet, two-inches tall, and she enjoyed the perks that came with it while disguised.

She stretched and rolled her shoulders, about ready to move away from the rubbish pile when she heard a noise. It sounded human, like whimpering and crying. Had she missed one? She was instantly on alert. Her fast metabolism had sped up the demise of those inside her but she still had a paunch from their remains, now crushed and compacted to fit her new size.

"Who's there?!" She called out, met with a scuffling noise, though no one appeared. Fine; she'd go to them.

She focused on her hearing and determined the sounds came from a little cavern of garbage to her right. Confidently, she strode forward and inside. There, she found the trembling, black haired boy she had ignored earlier.

"Alright. Get up," she snapped. "Don't try anything stupid." She grabbed the rifle he had tossed away and leveled it at him. "Get up. You're coming with me."

He froze at how quickly she found him. Frankly, it was his own mistake for choosing to wait for her to leave instead of sneaking off while she'd diminished. Adam couldn't believe that the towering abomination who'd murdered his team was now at human height standing over him, barely clearing the low ceiling of the unnatural cavern.

Yet now, the term 'abomination' was hardly appropriate when she loomed naked over him. He'd never seen a woman nude before, and his fear became amplified by the confusing feelings her presence elicited from him.

He cringed away, diverting his gaze so to not be distracted or offend his assailant, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!! Please, just let me go!!" His voice was cracked and timid, obviously no threat to the confident shifter that held him at gunpoint.

"Get up," she said coldly. "You're coming with me." Repeating herself, she lowered the end of the rifle and whacked his left shoulder, "I said now, or I'll bust cap in your ass and not blink." The heavy accent she spoke with made it harder for him to process her words, but her gesture to the opening behind her illustrated her point enough, "Are you coming? Or dying?"

Her words were as powerful as any bullet, biting into him to either act or accept death. Clearly going with her meant he'd live beyond this ordeal, but until when? Maybe the honorable thing to do would be to die here, on the battlefield that claimed his sworn brothers and sister...

Adam stood, his legs shaking as he forced one in front of the other to walk around the blonde shifter. His eyes never ceased their frantic cycle between hers and the gun barrel, slowly easing himself out to the cave entrance as it followed his path.

Once out in the light, he saw the abandoned clothing and gear haphazardly thrown all about the clearing, another chilling reminder of what transpired. Adam swallowed pitifully, he'd been a coward for abandoning his team. He should've been with them, just a few feet back in the killer's guts.

These thoughts and all of the sights were too much for him to stomach, and without thinking for his safety, he took the chance to juke to his left and make a mad dash for cover, escape of any kind!

"Fuckdamn!" Maya yelled. She swung the gun and fired off one round. She was an alright marksman, but good enough to fire past him. She fired, and rather than shooting to his side as a warning, the bullet grazed the timid kid's knee and dropped him like a sack of rocks. He cried out while Maya stomped over to him, grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and hauled him through the garbage to her van. She opened up the door and dragged him up the steps into the vehicle.

Tossing him on the bench seat and buckling him in, she pulled his face up, watching the fear in his eye to find any trace of possible resistance. Seeing none, she pulled out a set of bungee cords and tied his hands together for good measure. Then she grabbed him by the chin and turned him to face her once more.

The woman's violet eyes glowed with ferocity as she spoke, "You will sit here and you will stay. I am going to get dressed and collect the supplies my meal dropped earlier. If you move, I eat you next."

She patted his cheek in a rough, condescending way before standing and walking to her bedroom at the back of the van.

The pain in his knee became manageable after a minute. At first he feared she'd blown his leg off until his senses came about. He wasn't strong enough to resist or cunning enough to remember his gear when she hauled him across the way to her large metal vehicle. He was thrown in callously and had a set of restraints locked on him. Pulling on them proved useless, loosely locked around his waist and torso to let him move, but not enough to slip from its leather strapped hold.

When the initial panic died down, and the shifter went out of sight to the back of the vehicle, he got a chance to look around. The cabin was messy, scattered oddities littered the floor in different piles. Weapons, clothes, food, tools, she kept a substantial horde in what seemed to be a machine of human design. Did she use this place to travel?

Then she returned, trying to fit on a worn but clean looking pair of jeans and a cross-striped button up. His stare inevitably was drawn to her gut, still peeking out from under the shirt. Somehow, beyond physical possibility, all of his team was in there. Melted away, erased from this earth. A chill ran down his spine. Why did she need him?

It was a struggle to get dressed since her abdomen hadn't yet returned to normal but she managed. Her belly hung over the waistline of her pants and out from underneath her shirt. It made sloshing and gurgling noises as she walked, still obviously working on its hefty load. She caught the timid human staring at it and smirked. "You'll join them one day. Maybe tomorrow. Too full tonight."

He didn't wait long for his answer. Her casually cryptic warning set him into deeper despair, clutching against the taut leather of the bench he was fixed to.

"W-w-why am I alive? If you're just gonna.... eat me, why not just shoot me and move on?"

Her face remained indifferently smiling, like this was a funny joke she'd enjoyed countless times before. "Because that would be a waste," Maya said. "I prefer my victims alive. Besides, I could use a wimpy little guy to lure in stronger, braver humans. Those taste so much more delicious. You have any of those that'll come looking for you?"

He didn't answer, though the hallow, sunken cheeks told her his mind was dwelling on that exact possibility. His drifting thoughts gave her an opening to swoop in directly to his front, crouching down to meet his eye level. She leaned forward, her soft, menacing smile ever present before dragging her tongue up the side of his face. The wet muscle felt and looked like a human tongue, if it weren't for the knowledge of what she did with it that made him squirm at its touch.

His cheeks sunk when her sticky tongue, the same vessel that conveyed his friends to their demise, ran up his face. It left a cool sheen of drool where it traced his cheek to his temple, and her appraisal only deepened his fear.

"Mmm. Not bad." She undid his gear with much more care than she had his comrades, then tossed them to the floor, intending to organize it all later. She then left the van, going out to gather the weapons from the humans had no more use for, including the electrified harpoon. Holding the dreadful thing, she glanced at her hand, noting the open wound now dried from earlier. "Hmm...I should clean that before too much longer," she mused.

With her out of the cabin, he had his one chance to escape. Unfortunately, the restraints he was in proved too durable to tear through. An attempt was made to reach a nearby knife with his foot until he heard footsteps approaching from the open door. Adam resumed his silent compliance as she entered with all of the gear Charlie-6 had carried out of the settlement. Weapons that the town sorely needed. Not to mention how much was inside this vehicle that would benefit his people.

A plan was forming in his head. Maybe he was powerless now, but tonight while she slept, he might be able to break out, kill her while she slept, and return to the people with a haul of bounty, including what must've been some complicated machinery in the cart itself.

Finished with gathering the equipment and hauling it all to her van, she stowed everything away before turning to look at her prisoner. "Tell me what you and the rest of my meal were doing out and about today," she said.

She spoke to him after loading the gear. Her question threw off his train of thought. No matter Adam would work out the details for his escape later. Might just yet be able to get something out of this disaster and not let his friends have died in vain. "Uhm... we'd been scouting for parts in this region, looking for electrical wiring for our homes... and equipment."

"Parts? Where? I heard of a small treasure trove around here but haven't found it yet," she said. She pulled a beer from the refrigerator, popped the top, and sat on the table as she drank it.

"Tell me where it is. I need parts for the van. The heating element went out. I want heat when I sleep and drive so I need the parts." She took a long drink of her beer and sighed happily. "So good. A perfect drink to wash down human." She belched and patted her stomach.

"You're sick..." a mindless utterance at her callousness that he immediately regretted.

Her expression turned deathly serious, striding closer and looming over the boy, "No, I'm Maya. And you are Snack," she said cooly. "Now what building? There are quite a few out there.""Not asking again. Tell me where the junk is."

"... I don't know. We were just going to dig in the crumbled building here and pull out the wires in the foundation..."

She moved fully onto the table and put a foot on either side of the human. Now he was practically eye-level with her bulging gut. "Tell me right now, Snack, or maybe I gorge myself a bit early." She said.

He was getting exponentially nervous each time she moved close to him. By the time she was a woman sitting directly in front of him, asking a simple question, the horror of what she could and would do should he not comply is all that compelled him to speak. "The one with the book... the broken sign with a book I think... Farley would've known better..." a twinge of guilt hit him, sharing the small, offhand appraisal to his teammate now reduced to soup inches from his face.

"We didn't know if there'd be anything, we just found an air circulation unit the other day and thought it worth checking for more. Please, that's all I know." He was shivering, talking with her pushing every fiber of his psychology closer to the breaking point.

Her deadly frown held true for another few seconds, before her face entirely lit up, the deceptively enchanting smile returning in an instant "Good boy." She patted his cheek and slid off the table, "that's a gooood snack." She walked forward in the cabin, and plopped into the driver's seat and started the van. A button on the overhead dash closed the sliding door on the passenger side. She shifted into gear and began rolling back along the trail she made.

The jolt of the van starting shocked him, the static vibration after that and the forward motion that followed left him uneasy, and yet still in awe of the technological marvel it represented. A moving vehicle! Not a horse or a bike, but an electrical carriage! If he did manage to pull off his mutiny, he'd be bringing home a remarkable treasure.

It only took a couple minutes to get out of the trees. From there, it was careful navigating to the building her snack had spoken of. When she arrived, she parked and looked up at it through the windshield.

"Where in the building did you find the air unit?" She asked. "The sun is getting low and I don't feel like searching the whole damn thing tonight."

"Uh, it was outside. Just in the ground, like it'd been knocked out when the building fell... we took it back days ago..."

"Well shit. Fine. I'll start with the bottom floor then," she said. She stood and looked back to her captive. "You stay here. Touch anything, I eat you. You try and run, I eat you. Simple, ya?"

She gave him a hard look with her violet gaze. "I'll be back shortly. And I'm not leaving the van running." She stashed the keys in a pocket of her jacket and left. Closing and locking the van, she left to scavenge what she could with the boy trapped inside.

He didn't intend to leave. Yet. Now was the perfect chance to assess his surroundings and come up with a plan. She made a point of showing him the keys, implying they were necessary to activate the vehicle. He'd get them off of her when the deed was done.

His restraints still fixed him loose but tightly against the bench, only able to move a few inches in any direction. It'd come down to how far he'd be willing to bend his limbs to get out of his snare. From then on, it'd come down to what weapons to use. Bullets didn't harm her when she was shifted, but what about at human height? It'd be a gamble, if he lost it'd mean his life. Objectively it was fair, one of them would have to die. For the memory of his fallen comrades, he'd make sure it wasn't him.

Maya searched the bottom two floors until the sun sunk too low for her to see. She sighed in frustration, coming up with nothing and forced to call it a day too early for her tastes. She would search the final two floors tomorrow. Tonight, she needed to park the van in a concealed spot so she could sleep easy.

She hurried down the stairs and to the van. It unlocked with the key fob. The passenger door slid open with another button push. While it was cold inside, it was better than being outside with the high winds that tore through the area at night.

"Alright, Betty," she said. It was almost like she was talking to herself. But she caressed the steering wheel as she spoke. "Let's find you a bed for the night."

"That's not my name..." a meek voice replied from the back. True to her demands, he hadn't moved from his spot. He regretted drawing her attention to him, but it gave him a reason to look her way, to see how the keys were used to turn on the machine.

She didn't put the keys in the machine. It was as simple as pushing a button. Maya snorted when the man-boy spoke. "I wasn't talking to you, snack," she said.

Starting the vehicle up, she headed around the side of the building, thinking she'd spotted a good hiding place while searching the building. Sure enough, her assumption was correct, there was a large overhang of another crumbled building that formed a spacious cavern. She backed the van inside and parked, getting up from the wheel and started stripping down to nothing. Her passenger immediately flinched and looked away, drawing a smirk from her.

Tossing the clothes onto the kitchen counter, she stepped outside and quickly expanded her height. The gravity of her shift was barely audible in the reverberating cave. She eyed a large piece of sheet metal on the drive in and folded it around the front of the cavern. Stepping inside to reduce her height somewhat where her head brushed the ceiling of the cavern, she was able to close the metal "door" completely.

Satisfied with her work, she dropped back to her normal height and went inside the van. The interior lights of the cab had turned on automatically in the darkness. Her stomach was still a sickly bulge as she pulled her clothes back on. "All nice and tucked in for the night," she said. She looked to her pet? Snack? Future meal? Whatever he was, she pointed him to a small enclosure above the front of the van. "You'll sleep in the bed over the cab tonight. I'll have you in the morning."

"The what? Wait-"

The thing that disturbed him most was her routine. Not what she specifically did, but moving on from the slaughter she committed like it was another day; a normal day in the wasteland. She didn't look evil, her demeanor was tough but amiable despite the morbid teasing, and her actions were as much for self preservation as they were for cruelty. Her words to the team before she killed them rang in his head, a morbid piece of hindsight. Had they just moved along and left her alone, they'd be alive.

"I--I have to know. We hear stories about your kind. Today I saw one play out, beat for beat. I just-- why? You don't seem so bad?" This was his other plan. Appeal to her. She wasn't dumb, so maybe he could make her believe he wasn't a threat even more through conversation.

"Can't you eat normal food? What led you all, err, or just you, to eat... us?"

"I do eat normal food." she offered simply, leaning against the far wall with her knee propped up, "Part of my diet is normal humans.". She moved around, turning off individual lights around the camper, "it's somewhat cumbersome with how annoying you are, but it is what it is."

She grabbed a step ladder and put it below the bed loft, dropping the cargo net and pulling the boxes of materials off the small cot. She tossed them to the floor before stepping down, then briskly crossed to her room and retrieved a blanket from under the mattress frame.

"I don't get to eat humans that often. It's not like I go out of my way to find you. But if an opportunity presents itself, I don't have any problem gorging myself. Higher on the food chain, after all."

She turned back to her captive and looked him dead in the eye. "You try and fight me and I will tear your face off. Got it?"

The answer she provided was chilling in the logic. It wasn't just that she could become a towering maneater, but she had the option to live a normal life and chose to act as she did.

Maybe that was life in the wastes. Adam grew up in the confines of Barstow, raised in the commune and trained to cut himself off from the outside. Giants were indeed the top of the food chain, letting them survive out here as they wished. Would she have just let them by had they not interfered? Second guessing didn't help here. He had a plan, and contingencies to support said plan. Coward he was, Adam wasn't going down quietly.

"I'll sleep where you want, just get me out of these straps."

"You're a mouthy little one," Maya teased. She licked his face once more and hummed in pleasure. "Hold still now, Snack."

She stayed close to his face, locking his gaze with hers, as she undid the seatbelt and helped it off him. Then she pulled him to his feet. In another second, the scrawny little man was over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She carried him effortlessly up the step ladder before tossing him on to the bed in the loft, leaving his hands bound as she put the cargo net back in place. Once it was in secure, she looked back to her captive.

"Stick your arms through and I'll unbind them," she ordered.

As if his pride couldn't fall any lower, being manhandled like a cargo was a humiliating ordeal. He really was just food to her, not a thinking, living person. Every word she spoke was to get information or tease him. Nothing she said implied any value of his autonomy or free thinking.

Still, he was a prisoner. No one should expect kind treatment under such circumstances. Hauled into the cramped compartment, he reached his hands through a hole in the mesh as she requested.

"You could Just let me go... I could help you find the parts and we could say farewell... I won't come after you, and the people that might I'll turn away... just let me go..."

His face was clammy, progressively clamier as he spoke. A fact his teammates knew about him that their killer didn't was that he would get physically sick whenever he lied. A condition that marked him as a softy, overly sensitive with no spine. Here, it meant any moment he might unload the meager contents of his stomach into his captor. He tried to repress this reflex with all of his will to see if he could convince her.

"Not happening, Snack," Maya said. "Now sleep. Big day tomorrow for ya."

She removed the rest of the ropes before snapping her teeth at his fingers. She laughed loudly and uproariously at his reaction. "You're a cute one, kid. I'm sure you'll be delicious."

Maya hopped off the ladder and put it away, confident her little snack wouldn't escape. Turning off the cabin lights before changing into some thermals, heavy socks, and a layer of sweats, she shut the door to her quarters to permit some privacy from her food's sight. Hopefully her nest of blankets and warm sleepwear would keep her warm through the night.

She snuggled under the blankets, her long legs sprawling out under the heavy covers. Her arms tangled themselves amid a mess of worn, mangy pillows she'd collected on her travels, weaving around like one would embrace a stuffed doll for comfort. Soon enough, she drifted off to sleep.

Snack. Delicious. How was he supposed to sleep when his immediate future was so grim? He was going to die. Like his friends, just dragging behind the team as always.

It was his fault they were all gone. If he were just more careful and didn't slap the ledge with his rifle, she wouldn't have noticed them.

Though, the way she spoke, it seemed like she knew they were there the whole time. And for what good their weapons did to her, how would a fully coordinated attack have done any differently? He was only partially to blame for the fault of the others for even wanting to kill the giant. If anything, the guilt he felt was for not fighting with his team and dying with them...

Even so, now he could still do something. From his waistband, he pulled out a knife he'd seen under the table and across from his bench. Pulling it out, it proved small, probably not used for fighting. Ideally, it still cut, and he began quietly wielding away at the cargo net.

The knife would turn out to be incredibly dull, barely cutting through even the outer grains in the netting. Still he wouldn't relent, putting hours upon hours into dismantling the thick barrier. He didn't distract himself with keeping the time in his head, telling himself that each cut mattered, maximizing his efforts were the only chance of escape. He'd take short breaks when his hands both cramped up, comforted by the dark that still lingered outside before resuming, making slow but sure progress on the crusty, weathered material.

He'd been able to cut through seven of the sixteen points he needed to in order to tear a large enough hole when a gleam hit his eyes. Blinded by the shine, he held his hand up and looked for its source. A small spot of dim, early sunshine breaking through an exposed hole in the metal door the giantess has placed. Even as light normally acted as a metaphorical beacon of hope after the night, it spelt doom for the imprisoned human.

It was already morning! He had to keep cutting, there still had to be time before she woke up! At that moment he cut through the eighth thread and began trying to tear the rest open with his bare hands. The frayed ends gave him friction burn the harder he tried to pry them apart, drawing blood from his fresh blisters and callouses.

When Maya's crude alarm went off, she groaned under the sheets. She wasn't particularly ready to leave her warm nest, but habit pushed her up. Her mass of dark blonde hair was splayed in multiple directions, a result of the daily bedhead she honestly couldn't care much about. Getting herself tidied up was low on the to do list with only a day of scavenging ahead of her. There were still the remaining floors of the building to search in hopes of finding the needed piece to repair the van heater.

She pulled herself out of bed, stripped her pajamas off, and hobbled to the lavatory immediately to the right of the room. Sitting down roughly, she relieved herself quickly, groaning a bit as she pooped, evacuating the remains of yesterday's meal. Several flushes and a thorough hand washing later, she was ready to start her day.

She walked out to the living area, turned on the lights, and scowled at her captive. "Look what you did! You've ripped a hole in my good cargo net!" He hadn't anticipated her entrance, jumping in the dark and freezing when the light was turned on. She strode forward, stepping onto her toes to inspect the tears he'd made. "Aah... You'll pay for that."

In the light, it was easy to see the effect that the cold had on her body. Her nipples were erect and protruding from her breasts. It was also clear that her stomach paunch had completely disappeared, returning her abdomen to a flat, taut state.

He froze, hiding the knife back in his shirt before the light had turned on. Quick to find a distraction, he spit from his mouth, making it look as if he gnawed through.

Her nudity once more intimidated him, hindering any words he might've said on her entrance. He'd wanted to have something to say, practicing several speeches about how wrong she was, even fantasizing straight out declaring his escape before jumping down and striking. In the moment, the cat had his tongue, making him a shivering mess when she expressed anger at his progress.

That, and her trim stomach. Perfectly flat, no sign of the large meal she'd consumed. Chances are that he was next.

"Please don't... I can still help you search, w-we can hold this until later?"

Maya didn't say a word. She simply used the ladder to step up and undo the cargo netting, letting it dangle and leaving the ladder in place. With his egress setup, she turned away toward the main door and walked outside. Stepping lightly over the litter and mess scattered against the cracked concrete, she willed herself to begin enlarging with every step she made toward the cave entrance. Still blocked by the crude metal seal she set up, she reached her maximum height that the cave allowed and pressed her hands against the huge plate. Rather than lifting it, she exercised her muscles to push it along the ultimately smooth, cement ground, sliding it across the ground outside and letting the sunlight bleed into the cave.

Once exposed to the fresh air and open space, she stepped out and expanded further to the height she'd made use of yesterday, towering over the mound where her vehicle was hidden and the surrounding buildings. It was nowhere near her maximum potential height, but she'd never really pushed to go further than this rough estimate. She stretched pleasantly into the sky, some birds mid flight forced to dodge her invasive fists as they raised up and held for several moments. Maya let her arms relax, letting out a peaceful sigh, then looked back to the debris-cave.

She crouched down, unable to fit inside while standing, but still able to crawl with her head and upper torso inside until her face and crossed arms came to rest just a few feet beyond the camper's door.. "Alright! C'mere, snackie," she called cheerfully, an eager smile blossoming on her pretty, tanned face. "Think it's about that time, don't you?"