Red - Part 1
The barren trees whipped in the winds, bending and swaying but never breaking. In the distance behind me, the dust devils began to form, but they were at least a half-hour away. Still, I pulled my goggles over my face, and wrapped my head in the tattered, thin scarf that some poor soul no longer needed at that gas station. I kept walking west, following the setting sun, knowing that I’d need to find shelter before the night grew dark.
Above me, Scout screamed. While I kept walking, I lifted my forearm and pressed the screen implanted in my skin. Scout’s feed came live, displaying a distant, red structure, likely metal and rusting. It would provide a wonderful structure for tonight. I called Scout back, and she fell from the sky in seconds.
The stainless steel slammed into the loose sand nearby, blowing sand in every which direction. I walked over to what my companion had transformed into, and picked up the can. I brushed the sand off, and put it in my bag. My wrist told me that her battery was still high from the radioactive samples I found in the bunker a week back.
I plodded on to shelter.
The rusted boat was mostly in one piece, but with only a few holes rubbed away by the sand. It sat precariously on a sand cliff, probably docked over a drop off when water was in this land. The wind would shift the sands, and the iron would creak. However, in all of the time of the Red Waste, it hadn’t fallen off the sand bluff yet.
The sun was low and the sky was red when I clicked my tactical light on my rifle to investigate the ship. I doubted I’d find anything, but there isn’t such a thing as too cautious these days.
I stared down the barrel of the carbon steel M14, and set the heavily modded weapon to burst-fire. If there was a beastie in the boat, I couldn’t fire wildly, because that would draw more beasties to me, but I also knew that it was best to always double-tap when shooting to kill in the Red.
I carefully stepped into the hull of the ship through a half-buried open door. The sand under my feet gave way after I stepped, and down into the beast I tumbled.
Oh well, there went my element of surprise.
After brushing myself off, the ship creaked and groaned. There were long, dark corridors every which way. With my tactical light on, I wandered down the hall which seemed the shortest, which meant that if I needed to run I could.
After ensuring each nook and cranny in this side of the ship was empty, I came across the captain’s quarters and found a deteriorating hammock suspended between two iron girders. Though it was falling apart, it still held some semblance of strength.
Enough to support me, anyways.
I pulled Scout out and tapped my underarm. Unfurling from her can-shape, she twitched to life as her systems rebooted individually. She chirped awake, and I smiled. She cooed, or whatever that sound is.
“Hello, sweetie.”
“Hello, hello!” she repeated. “Where are we? Are we safe?”
“I swept the perimeter already, don’t worry about doing a biometric scan. Don’t want you burning your batteries for that.”
She tilted her head, and stared at me questioningly. At least, her face emoted that she was questioning me.
“Oh nothing, sweetie,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. Someday you’ll figure it out.”
“Okay, papa. Whatever you say,” giggled Scout.
I smiled, and she emoted a smile back. “So, what am I up for, then?”
“Oh, I just missed you. Wanted company. It’s been a while since we’ve talked.”
“Silly daddy, you saw me yesterday.”
Mmhm. Right.
I told her jokes, and she laughed. I loved her laugh. It may have been an audio file in that silicon mind of hers, but it was her audio file.
Night fell, and I needed to conserve her battery. As always, the hardest part of these conversations.
“Hey Scout? Could you do me a favor, baby?”
She smiled, and chirped affirmatively.
“I need you to turn off your camera feed and count to ten.”
“What? Don’t say strange things like that, daddy.”
I shook my head, and wiped my sweaty face.
“Close your eyes, hon. Please. It’s a surprise.”
“Okay! I love surprises!
Her lights dimmed and died down as her cameras turned off. I exhaled sharply, and tapped my underarm. So innocently, my arm asked the hardest question.
Do you want to turn off Unit 1-C?
Yes/No
I clicked yes, and she became the metallic can again. I picked her up and put her in my shoulder bag, and I felt a little heavy-hearted doing so.
I hopped in the faded, lightly torn hammock, turned my music down and turned off my light.
I was in my lab again, tinkering with that stupid prosthetic design that I wanted to make work so badly. While there wasn’t a cure for paralysis, a metallic spine would certainly allow mobility for those without feeling neck-down. I was messing with the configurations this time, seeing if I could somehow get the spine to translate the messages from the brain into demands from the various appendages. I hadn’t ever had luck with it, but there’s no harm in trying.
Cassie walked in and put her hand on my shoulder.
“You should get some rest, Ben.”
I shook my head and took off my glasses.
“You don’t get it, she doesn’t get it. I know I’m resting right now, but you’ll never know it.”
Cassie proceeded as always, acting as if I had said nothing. I mean, technically she hadn’t heard what I said.
“Your work will be there in the morning, just come to bed. Please.”
“Yeah, my work will be there in the morning, but Sarah is still going to be in bed. Today, tomorrow, the day after. The only day she won’t be is when I get this goddamn machine working,” I played along. I’m pretty sure I said something like that, but it didn’t really matter what I said. Cassie always responded the same way; she acted as if my message hurt her.
“Ben, you know she appreciates your work. You know I appreciate it. Hell, even ProsTech appreciates it. I mean, they’ve got nothing to complain about.”
“I don’t give a damn about ProsTech, never have and never will. Sarah is what matters to me,” I thought aloud. But, as always, it didn’t matter what I said. This scene was written in stone, never changing in any way.
In reality, now’s the time where I got up from my stool and went to bed with Cassie. In reality, Sarah stayed in her bed for every day after this day. In reality, I failed miserably.
I heard a distant rumbling, and this threw me off. This wasn’t in the dream. Not typically, anyways, and it’s not like these dreams ever change. The rumbling grew louder and louder, and I snapped awake.
I shot up from my hammock, and grabbed my rifle. I sprinted out the door and tried to locate the rumbling, though it grew closer and closer. The sun was just rising, and the weather seemed clear. To the northeast, I saw a dust cloud rise, so I scoped out the hubbub from a couple miles away.
It was a car.
It was a fucking car.
It was a fucking car, and it was heading my direction.
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
I tapped my forearm and awakened Scout. This time, I awoke her using Combat Protocol.
A hole tore in the rusting ship’s deck as Scout shot through the structure to join me on deck.
Her lights glowed red, and she whirred and screeched.
Scout was ready to go, it seems, and she didn’t even know what she was hunting. I pointed in the direction of the car and told her to hunt. She snapped her beak twice, and shot up into the sky like a rocket.
I turned back to the dust clouds, and took out my rifle. The car grew closer, and I could see more and more of the car. It had one passenger wearing leather all-over. Scout was a black speck in the sky, and she circled the car miles above it, patiently waiting for my command. I scoped the car, took a warning shot into the passenger seat. The car swerved, and gassed faster towards me. I sighed, and called Scout down.
The air screamed as she whistled like a missile down onto Earth. I touched the car’s engine on the targeting system in my arm, and received an affirmative ping.
Scout shot directly down into the car’s engine, completely crumpling the car’s hood. Like the ship’s deck, Scout tore a clean hole right through the metal surface and embedded herself in the sand to distribute her kinetic energy.
The car skidded and tumbled onto its side in the sand as the driver rolled out of the driver’s seat and onto the sand. I pulled out my rifle and scoped the driver out once again.
Though their lungs were rapidly heaving, the driver didn’t get up from the sand, and I sighed relief. This meant: a) I was safe for now and b) I didn’t have to kill today. Probably. Hopefully.
I hopped down into the soft, red sand and jogged over to the body.
The body was red with burns, and the already-red ground was dark red with blood. It appeared to be a guy, but you never really know these days. He looked up and saw me approaching, so he tried to crawl backwards as quickly as possible.
“Guh-guh-get away from m-me, y-you sick fuck!”
I raised my hands in submission, showing him that I meant no harm. I did not, however, put my rifle down. I threw a bandage wrap towards him. He fumbled it in his hands, but it didn’t hit the red sand.
“Wh-what the f-f-fuck was that, man? Th-that was like, a, uh… fuckin’... uh… missile. Jesus.”
I sighed, and I pushed the tattered scarf away from my mouth. “I shot a warning round, didn’t I?”
Through his heavy breaths, he nodded. “Yeah, yeah… I know, my fault.”
“So, uh…”
“Sorry, gimme a sec, man. Gotta wrap the wounds before sand gets in them.”
I raised my eyebrows in shock at his casual nature, and slowly shook my head.
A couple minutes later, he patted his wrapped-up injuries, wincing slightly with every impact. “All good, man. Thanks for the clean bandages, you know? I was in a really tight spot. A bind, if you will. Hah!”
I raised my rifle and shot another round just shy of his knee. He yelped. “Look, I don’t want to kill you. But, I also don’t know anything about you, either. Let’s start with asking some questions before we get to the jokes, shall we?”
He nodded and sat up.
“What do you want with me?”
“What? Oh, you thought I was driving towards you… haha, nah. You got it wrong, mister. You see, I kinda screwed some of my boys over back in Rockjaw, but they didn’t die like they were supposed to. I was driving away from them.”
“Are they chasing you?”
“Yup!”
“And you didn’t think to tell me this five minutes ago?”
“Well, you attacked me, and I don’t really respond well to anger, so it’s sorta your fault--”
I grabbed one of his straps and pulled him off the ground onto his feet. “I don’t have time for this, we’ve got to go. I’ll ask questions later, but for now we have to leave.”
I sent Scout into the air on Recon Protocol, and she reported back some red dust clouds a couple miles east heading this direction. Since the car was evidently totaled, we had about ten minutes to run back to the rust bucket and hide.
Needless to say, we sprinted.
The distant roaring grew closer and closer as the distant rusty speck got bigger and bigger. Every step was hard-fought in the loose terrain, but we didn’t have a choice. It was run or die, and we chose to run.
Just as we got to the side of the hull, the cars came into sight of the ship. They were mere minutes away. We scrambled through the torn opening in the hull and into the dark belly of the ship. There were a couple empty shipping containers, and the stranger decided to clamber into one and shut the door. With a screech and a clunk, the bar shifted into position over its rusty mechanism. The heavy metallic impact rung in the chamber, but it was barely noticeable against the roaring engines of close-by cars.
I clambered onto the deck of the ship and overlooked the oncoming convoy of cars. They pulled up the sandy-red hill dune that the ship sat on and hopped out of their scrap-metal automobiles. They were stripped buggies, just like the stranger’s car that I had destroyed. I hid behind a large piece of metal near the railing, and I called out to the people.
“I don’t want trouble! Just leave!”
The sounds of footsteps padding through the soft sand stopped. Some gentle murmurs, followed by a couple weapons being drawn. Sounded like wood and some dense metal, likely just bats or other melee tools.
“He’s here, innit he?” A female responded with an angry edge in her voice.
“What? I’m here alone, this is just my camp--”
“We saw the bloody car, mate! For fuck’s sake, there’s footprints from it leading here! We ain’t stupid, and neither are you.”
I sat silently for a couple moments. I hadn’t wronged these people quite yet, so they weren’t hunting me, per se. On the contrary, actually. I could turn this situation into an advantage and find out more about this stranger, maybe earn a favor with a small-name crew in Rockjaw.
“Why do you want him?”
“He fuckin’ trashed our goods! We want his head, and we’re gonna get it!”
I didn’t respond. Her voice got quieter. Presumably, she turned to her crew.
“Come on, then, ya daft bastards, let’s get ourselves some rat.”
A couple grumbles of affirmation, and then some steps. I got out from my spot and unshouldered my rifle, pointing it at the encroaching gang.
“Not another step, or somebody dies.”
***