Jack's story - Team black part 3

We were trapped in a cage, waiting for our time to be carved up and eaten by the cannibals that had taken up residence in a weird little fortress they had cobbled together.. Then this dark skinned athletic woman with a long pony tail, carrying several weapons, many that she had grabbed from a rack of weapons nearby, opened the cage, and dropped them in front of us. Most of us were ready to get out, and this was the chance we were looking for. My name is Jack, I am a scavenger for the Gero corporation, a small company that is trying to make some money by scavenging the areas in the wastelands. It's a dangerous job, but it pays well, I have been thinking the job doesn't pay well enough, until this angel show up and free us from a horrifying fate. We burst out of the cage, my wife Heather running beside me, I hadn't seen her pick up a weapon, but one appeared in her hand none the less. I had grabbed a thick stick with a sharp piece of metal attached to it, making it look like an ax. Heather was eying our savior, obviously a little jealous, but not making any moves to harm her.

I ran up to a guard whom had just shot one of the other prisoners, and brought the club down on his head. Heather was at my back, guarding it. I looked up and saw another guard pointing his rifle at me, but I was able to duck behind a barrel and the shot just punched a hole through it, just inches in front of my face. I looked for heather and saw her standing behind the man that had just shot, she appeared to be whispering something in his ear. She is very finicky, sometimes she helps me, other times she tries to kill me, the guy started to grin and leveled his rifle at the barrel. I had no where to run, I hid behind the barrel hoping that it would protect me enough to keep me alive. A shot rang out, and the guard screamed. I looked up and saw my wife holding a smoking gun up to where his head was. As I said, she is fickle. One of the escapees suddenly got riddled by bullets, sending a smoking gun flying from his hand, tumbling in my direction. I dove for the gun and grabbed it just as a knife slashed down mere inches from my face, another guard had just missed me. I bounded up, my shirt getting cut from another swing from the guard, just missing my gut. I brought the ax around and slammed it into his arm, severing it just above the elbow, and cutting into his side a bit. He screamed and jumped away, grabbing his stump with his last hand. I took a look at our savior, saw her battling the cyborg, it looked like she had it under control. I shot the injured guard, no sense in having him recover and threaten others that might happen by. I saw Nickolas, another escapee, shoot the cyborg in the head, killing him and helping our dark skinned savior.

Our savior looked like she got hurt possibly some broken ribs. I walked over with my wife and we took stock of who remained. Just five of us: Me, Nicholas, our Savior, Heather and Prius, a woman who wasn't able to leave the cage, since she was missing a leg, a victim of the cannibals. Heather walked up to me her brown hair flowing in the breeze, looking just a beautiful as the day I first saw her. Her brown eyes sparkled with mischief, her mouth pursed, her skin a alabaster white with only a crimson red trail leading from the bullet hole in her head.

* * * * * *

Four years ago, we were investigating some old ruins, the building was remarkably intact. There was several boxes that we were going through, looking for items that might fetch a good price on the market.

“Jack, what's that box over there?” Heather said pointing to a partially opened small box sitting on top of a table.

I walked over to it and opened it up and saw a handful of small rings, each set with a small diamond.

“Jackpot!, I exclaimed excitedly.

“Oh, jack, those look like they could be worth a fortune, we could pay off our house with our share.” She said as she reached for one of the rings.

She took one out and slid it on her finger. Suddenly she shrieked, ripped at her hand, trying to claw it off. It was to late, I recognized the signs immediately, she had been hit by the nano-phage (I am not sure on it's spelling). She screamed and a feral look showed in her eye, she reached for her gun, but years of training took over, I drew my gun and shot her, square in the forehead. I dropped the box, the rings spilling out onto the ground, scattering and disappearing among the rubble just like our dreams. I don't know how long I sat there, looking at her body, knowing that I had killed her, even though I had no choice, it didn't make the pain any less real.

Another member of our team came running in, having heard the gunshot, I no longer remember his name, time has expunged such minor details from my brain as it was his first outing with us and I never saw him after that. He pulled me from my stupor and took me back to the vehicle. Over the next year, I tried to deal with my loss, but the only thought was of how she had looked lying dead before me, and knowing that I was the cause of her death.

Then one day there was a knock on the door, to my surprise it was Heather, she said that the bullet hadn't killed her, and that the nano-phage had some how knit her back together, but in doing so took all the power from the little robots, giving her control back. She still had the single line of crimson running down her face from the bullet hole, still visible on her forehead. She claimed she wanted to keep that there to always remind me how I had left her to die in the wastes. She was bitter after that, reminding me of it often. My friends kept on trying to tell me something about her, but they didn't know her like I did, so I didn't pay attention to them. Over the past several years, my friends all left me, leaving only me and my wife, who had only gotten more bitter over the years. She had attacked me on more than one occasion, she had yet to hurt me, usually the bullet or blade passed within a hairs breath of me. I had threatened divorce, but she always called my bluff. She is now my constant companion, my only friend ,my worst enemy, and a constant reminder of my failure as a husband.

* * * * * *

We followed the directions of Shaka, the name of our savior, to my camp. The vehicle was destroyed, the tires slashed, the battery removed by the cannibals to power their own vehicles. There was no way we could make it home on this vehicle. Shaka gave us a solution, we could join their group, but they would be traveling to the other side of the continent, it was a long and dangerous trip, and they might not make it or we could strike out on our own and try to walk back, the choice was obvious, even Heather agreed.

When we got back there was Chaos, apparently they got attacked by most of the Cannibals, thankfully they didn't loose that many. The had six cars and one military transport. But one of their drivers had lost an arm, and they couldn't drive a vehicle right now. I volunteered, but they chose Prius, even though she only had one leg, I think it was a girl thing, since most of the group was female.




We set out a couple hours later, skirting the edge of the city. We saw some Huskers, they were keeping their distance for some reason. We think that there was something happening in the city that was distracting them. We occasionally heard a loud rumble, as if a building was falling down. We stopped later that day to recharge our vehicle.

Lou, the leader of the group, said he had a plan for recharging. He removed some large devices that was placed on their charger. He claimed that they were charged up while they were moving, they could use these things to charge their vehicles. Each device would store enough energy to charge up one vehicle, in about the same time it took to charge up one vehicle from the bus, afterward they could re-attach it to the battery to recharge it for the next time they needed it. It wouldn't save much time, but every minute counted if they were to have a hope to even get second. Once the charging was done, we started moving again.

“These people are crazy, you would think that traveling across the wastelands was dangerous enough, they don't need to be careless and race across them.” Heather said to me.

“Just be grateful that someone came along to help us.” I told her.

“The wouldn't have touched you, your inadequacy no doubt even inhabits your flavor.” Heather said icily.

I looked away from her, seeing Nickolas making eye contact with Lou, while scratching his head with his index finger. If I didn't know better I would swear that the finger wasn't touching his head at all. Lou nodded, as if Nicholas had just passed some information on to him with the look alone.

Suddenly we saw a vehicle tearing out of the city, it was clearly a union vehicle and it was heading straight to us. It looked like a military vehicle, but it had suffered a lot of damage. The huskers had all disappeared since we saw them last, so we didn't know what he was running from. The vehicle had pulled up ahead of us and stopped. Blocking our path, pretty ineffectually since we could just go around him, a guy got out, his suit covered in blood, some of it was clearly his own, as there was a hole in his abdomen, still leaking blood. He hazily waved a gun at the vehicles and yelled at us to stop. Not that we could hear him, but his intention was clear enough.

The group stopped and Lou got out, several people followed, many with guns drawn to take down the guy if he did anything sudden. He glared at us, looking as if he was about to fall over.

“I should kill you all! You did this, you and your racing. Incompetents, Morons, you have no idea what you are doing here.” The guy screamed, half in rage and half in madness.

“Easy, put down the gun and lets talk.” Lou said cautiously, moving slowly forward.

“Talk? You want to Talk? That's what got us in trouble in the first place! We should have just killed you all.”

“We haven't spoken before, I think you have us confused with someone else.”

“No! No! I remember you!” He said waving his gun at the group, “The vehicles, the racers, you caused it, You killed all of them!”
“Calm down, just tell us what happened” Lou said trying to avoid the guys gun as he waved it around haphazardly.

“We had just moved out, to let you through, you blew up the building blocking your path, but we knew it would attract attention. So we were out of there before the huge husker that it would attract could show. We were on our way back when suddenly war robots started coming out of the wood work. They were coming out of every building, shooting up our vehicles. We found ourselves beset on all sides. But that we could handle, we recognized what had happened, someone had set off a homing beacon! Someone couldn't get out of town like they should have, and were mucking about in the areas they should not be in!” The guy slumped to the ground, his blood still seeping from the wound in his side.

Lou took the gun from the guy, who was too weak to stop him, and he motioned Nickolas over to help him out. Nickolas seamed hesitant to help someone who had just threatened them, but started in on taking off the guys armor anyways.

“The war robots weren't the biggest problem.” The guy said, his voice getting weaker with every breath, “No, the big Husker that you had woken up, he heard the battle, he came barreling into the middle of the firefight, started throwing our vehicles around like toys, crushing us and war robots alike. Our guns were useless against that thing, I barely made it out alive. Everyone else dead, because of you!”

Nickolas looked at Lou and shook his head. The would was too deep, he had lost too much blood, there was nothing they could do for him. Lou grimly pulled out a knife and slit the guys throat, ending his suffering.

“Check his vehicle, see if there is anything we can salvage from it, then lets get a move on.” Lou said

“We could just take the vehicle itself, it still can move, we can use every vehicle we can get right now. Who knows what will happen later on” Erwann said.

“Who would drive it?” Lou asked.

“I can drive it, I am familiar with these vehicles, I used to drive our vehicle we used for Scavenging stuff. I know the dangers of the area, I can guide you. My wife can be my co-pilot.” I piped up.

Lou and the others exchanged looks, clearly not sure if they should allow me behind the wheel of the vehicle, I wasn't sure what the problem was.

“Fine, you can drive it.” Lou said resignedly, “Just don't make me sorry I did this.”

The vehicle was shot up. Many bullet holes weakening the armor in several spots. But overall it was in good shape. I got in, and looked around, there were several grenades,a couple sniper rifles, and a box labeled rations. I started up the vehicle and we got on our way.

* * * * * *

The next couple days were pretty uneventful. The wasteland was a bleak place and we had gotten into the even less hospitable part of it. The temperature was hot during the day and at night it dropped down close to freezing. The vehicles weren't heated, so during the night we had to wear layers or we could freeze to death.

Lou had been keeping up on the cube, watching the other teams. Group one, which consisted of four racing teams was now down to only one racing team who had not had significant casualties, they were foolish enough to bring along a camera crew, just more mouths to feed and a distraction when the chaos starts.

Group three was completely wiped out and the last few members had joined group one.

Group two was way ahead and maintaining a lead, but it looked like team one had started alternating drivers, some were sleeping while the others were driving.

Some suggested that we should do that, but Lou nixed the idea. He said that was best for a short term sprint. Long term it will just tire the team out and cause them to make mistakes. Travel on the wastelands isn't like traveling on a paved road. There are lots of bumps and jolts you get when traveling, getting a good nights sleep is nearly impossible. They will just wear themselves down, and result in them making mistakes. Mistakes in this place will get you killed. Let them get ahead, he said I would rather live. Their ace in the hole would hopefully be the charger devices they have.

* * * * * *

They continued driving until Lou had signaled for the group to stop. The cube had shown an electrical storm approaching the other groups, we were lucky to be out of it's influence. That could fry our electrical systems and leave us stranded. Lou signaled us to get out of the vehicles, it was close to time to stop for recharging, but it was still a bit early.

“Okay guys and girls, we have a problem.” He said as he motioned to the ground in front of the vehicles.

During the fighting, this area was hit by some pretty powerful weapons, the intense heat turned the ground in some areas to glass, and this area was no exception. This area was known as the glass sea, even though no water existed. It was a huge area of glass that covered the ground, only here it was different. It looked like recently there was some some cluster bombs released on the place, the ground was thrown up , shards of glass jutting out from the ground as far as the eye could see.

“There is no way that we can travel over that without loosing our tires and pretty much every spare we have. We have to plan a new route, unfortunately with Garry dead, I have no clue where to go next.”

“I can help here, I worked as a scavenger for a while, and I have been through this area before. Although it didn't look like this then. “

“Okay, so what do you propose?” Lou said handing me the map.

“I wouldn't tell them about the chasm, you know that we were forbidden to go there. It is just to dangerous” Heather whispered in my ear.
“I think they can handle it.” I replied looking at heather.

I looked up at Lou, who was looking at me like he just made a mistake and said, “Well there are two options, we can go around the glass sea, this will take us way out of our way and cost you a day or two. But since time is of the essence for you there is another way”

“Don't tell them you moron, you know what they will want to do” Heather yelled at me, I ignored her.

“There is a ...” I started but stopped as Heather swung a knife at my face.

I barely dodged out of the way, and swung my fist at her, hitting nothing but air, as she slid out of my reach.

“You tell them about that and you will doom us all, you know that!” Heather screamed at me.

“We owe them the truth!” I screamed back.

“If we get killed, I will never forgive you!”

“You never forgave me the first time you died, why would this be any different.”

Heather stalked off in a huff. I looked back at the rest of the group who was looking at me like I had just gotten exposed to the Nano-phage. I showed the the map and pointed to a crooked line not far away from where we were.

“This is the Chasm of the lost. At least that's what my boss used to call it. Anyone who goes in there didn't make it back out. To say the least it is dangerous, we don't know what's in there. It's a deep chasm that will take you from one side of the Glass sea to the other. The military had sent some troops in there and they came out, but they are far more well armed than your typical scavenging team. You might have the armament to make it through, you might not. It's up to you.”

Lou took the map from me and looked at it like it contained some disease, then steeled himself and folded it up and put it away. I looked at my hands, to see if there was some strange dust on them, or something, but saw nothing unusual.

“Okay people, you heard him, what's it going to be, the Chasm or loose a day going around the sea?”

There was much discussion, but in the end, they chose the Chasm. I just hoped that Heather was wrong, and the Chasm wasn't going to be the end of us all.

* * * * * *

The trip to the Chasm was short, it was a giant gap in the ground, originally caused by an underground river that has long since dried up. There was a ramp that led down, placed there by earlier visitors and was still in good shape. The ramp was covered in sand, and made the trip down it fairly risky, since the cars half slid have drove down it. But everyone made it down okay in the end.

The walls rose up on either side of the caravan, for a good fifty feet as we started into the chasm. As we continued the walls kept rising, sometimes the rocks jutting from the walls in irregular intervals blocked out the sun . The ground here was uneven and the every noise we made echoed down the chasm. The shadows bordered on darkness in some locations and everyone chattered nervously about how something might be hiding in them, but whenever they turned their lights on the shadows, there was nothing.

The chasm kept getting deeper when they came across a large tunnel that intersected the chasm, it led deep into the earth and was huge. The darkness was absolute, our lights did little to alleviate it. I knew what could make a tunnel like that, a huge husker. This would be bigger than anything I have ever heard of. Easily twice the size of anything I have seen in texts.

Just as I mentioned it to the group, there was a bellow from the depths of the tunnel, something was awake, and it was angry. The vehicles started peeling out, I could hear people swearing over the comms, panic setting in. Then it revealed itself, barreling out of the tunnel, sending some rocks flying away from it, it's head towering above us a good sixty feet. It's foot came down on one of the Archangels car, crushing most of it. I could see Inga, trying to get out through the side door, which was jammed shut. I could also see the blood from Maryana pooling on the ground on the other side.

Rockets, machine guns and flamethrowers surged to life as they did their best to hurt the beast, but the weapons appeared ineffective. I saw a rock fly from a casual toss of the beasts head, it flew through the air and landed on the bus, only then did I understand the enormity of the thing, that wasn't a rock, that was a full fledged boulder, and it smashed the bus's rear end , crumpling the metal like it was a paper cup under a bowling ball. Luckily the boulder fell off before it could totally destroy the back end, but there could have been some significant casualties inside it. I then saw a sight that got my blood running cold. Heather had gotten out of the vehicle, and she was standing in front of the beast, shooting her little pistol at it. I didn't even hear her get out of the vehicle, I couldn't let her die, so I slammed on the gas and sped to her.

I threw open the door, and told her to get inside. Then the vehicle was jostled as the beast had bit down on the top of it, lifting the vehicle up, send me tumbling about the inside. I saw a giant tooth come through the window, spearing the passenger side seat, sending puffs stuffing all over the interior. I looked about in desperation, and laid eyes on the grenades. I wedged the box under the passenger seat, pulled the pin on one, and dove out the driver side door. I fell a good ten feet, landing on the ground heavily, I could feel several bones break, then I heard the explosion, followed by several more explosions. Pieces of metal flew all around me, I felt one pierce my left leg. I looked up to see the thing, it's mouth hanging open in an unnatural way. It swooned and started to fall, it was going to fall on me, I looked over to see Heather looking at me. I could see her mouth two words before the shadow fell over me -- 'I forgive you'. I gave one last smile as the thing slammed down on me.

* * * * * *

Lou looked over the thing, Jack was crazy but he had sacrificed his life to save the group. He was going to make sure that people knew about it, if they made it through. The car's power plant had taken damage and it blew the things jaw apart, killing it. Unfortunately they lost two vehicles and the bus was damaged. Maryana was dead, Inga had a crushed arm and leg, Nickolas had been knocked out, possibly he had a concussion. They salvaged and fixed what they could then continued on. It was a dangerous place out here, death was a very real possibility. If lou didn't know better, he could have sworn that Jack had a look on contentment on his face, just before his death. Obviously just his imagination.
They traveled on, following the rest of the chasm, and finding a second tunnel, this one with a large dead husker roughly the same size as the previous one. Several wrecked military vehicles were laying about, they didn't bother to stop, they just kept going until they got out of the Chasm in one piece. Once out, they stopped and grieved their losses.