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Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12
Part 13
Part 14
Part 15
Part 16
Part 17
Part 18
Part 19
Part 20
Part 21
Part 22
Part 23
Part 24
Part 25
Part 26
Part 27
Part 28
I dreaded the thought, but knew right then that I would have to return to the village. In all my wandering, I haven’t seen any trace of civilization apart from that well hidden community, so the odds of reaching a hospital in time to save my leg seemed vanishingly slim.
“My leg”. What an uncomfortable notion. It was disposable to me until recently, just a mobility appliance. Now it no longer feels like a tool, to be used until broken and then thrown away. Being stuck with it for this long, especially in such a demanding environment...I’ve formed a relationship with the damned thing.
My arms, too. Biceps bulging from my near-constant exertion since the crash. My torso, gleaming with sweat, developing unmistakable pecs and abs. The fruit I’ve been eating must somehow accelerate the accumulation of muscle mass?
Or maybe this is just what happens when I actually use my meat parts. When I put them through their paces, while also ensuring that their needs are satisfied. Clean water. Clean air. Nutritious food. The shortcomings of the flesh that I worked so hard to escape now seemed instead like symptoms of neglect.
My biological parts never performed how I wanted...because I never gave them a chance to. I never paid attention to the signs they weren’t getting something they needed, just pushed them until they broke down before buying replacements.
My body communicated those needs to me, I just didn’t listen. I thought of eating, sleeping and so on as inconveniences I could cheat my way around. I’m done cheating now. I never knew my muscles could feel this powerful! I never knew they could perform this well.
Save for the infected wound on my leg that is. I limped my way through the undergrowth, brushing some ferns out of my way. Every fern, even little blades of grass brushing up against the swollen skin proved agonizing.
My body, finally fighting back now that I can’t just cut off whichever part of it gives me trouble. Somewhat reminiscent of the GMO flora overgrowth problem. You’d think they’d have learned something from the rampant, uncontrolled spread of kudzu in the 20th century, but history moves in cycles I suppose.
There comes a point where you push nature too far, so it begins pushing back. Really throwing its weight around to remind you how small you are. If it’s not methane bubbling out of the ocean, it’s a GMO jungle swallowing up the North American continent. A creeping green infestation which expands faster than it can be killed away.
The prohibition on controlled burns due to emissions restrictions had a lot to do with it. But so did gross overestimation of how hardy those trees and other plants would need to be made in order to cope with the desertification they were created to combat.
Asherah couldn’t be more delighted about that. Our loss, her gain. Then again it could be a win for us both, if we lived differently. Sighting the periphery of the village in the distance cut short my cogitation. In large part because several of the huts were on fire.
The closer I drew, the more I could make out. The more I could make out, the worse it got. There were bloodied bodies strewn everywhere. I could hear the sound of a woman sobbing, but not resolve the source.
Suddenly, a gunshot rang out. I ducked as low as I could without crawling, and drew my pistol. I wished for the opportunity to test fire it, but circumstances did not seem to accommodate that desire. Male shouting. Angry by the sounds of it.
A woman screamed. Not the same voice as the sobbing, near as I could tell. I crept in the direction it seemed to be coming from. Argument? I couldn’t understand either voice, muffled as they were by the walls of the hut.
I instead slid up around the outer wall with my pistol at the ready, then slowly peered around the edge of the doorway. It was the chieftess. Battered, bloodied and at the mercy of a hoary looking white man with matted brown hair, a stained white undershirt, swim trunks and flip flops.
He turned towards me, but before he could react, I shot at him. My hands were shaking, but my aim was true enough. Struck in the neck, blood bubbled out through the hole as he collapsed against the inner wall of the hut, gurgling feebly.
I didn’t bother to check on him after that, content that he was dead and deserved his fate. Instead I focused my attention on the chieftess. “Who was that?” I whispered. She glanced fearfully over my shoulder. When I followed her gaze, there was nobody in the doorway.
“Others?” I whispered. Eyes wide and tearful, she nodded at me. More male shouting, and another gunshot. Close by the sound of it. I crouched to one side of the door, just inside and concealed by shadow. I gestured for the chieftess to do the same.
“Where are your weapons?” She pointed to a rack of axes and bows on the wall. “No, I mean your real weapons. What have you been hiding from me? You can’t have been sitting on biotechnology like this without anybody coming to try and steal it. How did you repel them?”
She wiped away her tears and insisted they had no more sophisticated weapons than that. “We’ve never needed to kill anybody before.” Me either, I thought. My hands were still shaking and I couldn’t bring myself to look at the blood pooling under the intruder’s body, still slumped over where it fell.
I took an axe from the rack, double checked the remaining rounds in the pistol and slunk out. Being unlit during the day, the hut interiors were nicely shadowed by contrast with the bright sunlight outside of them, and made for perfect cover.
When I sighted the source of the shouting, I again ducked inside the nearest hut. I then waited and watched. A familiar scene. The lanky, bedraggled figure furiously beat one of the villagers he’d restrained to a tree.
I poked just the tip of the pistol around the edge of the doorway, sticking my head out only as far as necessary to take aim. I didn’t manage to kill this one so cleanly. He spun around and cried out in pain, struck in the midsection.
He got off a few shots, none of which came anywhere close to me. The second shot struck his shoulder, whereupon he dropped his gun. My third shot finally did the job, carving it’s way into his eye socket and through the brain.
He toppled over and the blood began to pool under his remains. Two more of the invaders came running to see what the ruckus was about. They were unarmed though, and upon witnessing what I’d done, they turned tail and fled.
At last, stillness and quietude. There wasn’t anything like the exhilaration of victory. I only felt gutted as I surveyed the full extent of the carnage. The chieftess joined me. “Who did this?” I asked.
“Some of my scouts came upon a sort of shipyard, just a short ways inland from the coast. Built into a mangrove swamp, the ocean is accessible from there by a deep canal they must’ve dug.” A shipyard? I asked her to describe it more completely.
“The scouts...were followed back to our village. But before the men with guns came and began killing, the scouts told me that some sort of preparation goes on there. Many white men with crazed eyes, trembling always. They package up white sand. Sharp little pieces, like broken glass. Then they put it into the boat.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Criddlers? Even out here? If they’re Crazy Dave’s men, it wouldn’t surprise me. Very little could surprise me at this point, after the events of the past few days. I knelt and picked up the helmet of the man I shot.
It bore an etched logo of some sort on the sides. A crucifix surrounded by the outline of a flame. No fuckin’ way. Really? Apparently I ruled out Remnants a bit too quickly earlier. These fuckers lost the civil war but never stopped fighting, hiding out in the ever-swelling GMO jungle that’s engulfed even formerly arid states.
Still, to find them in South America…? What the hell are they up to way out here? The ferns rustled, about ten yards from us. I trained my gun on them, only to lower it when a group of surviving villagers cautiously emerged.
The chieftess embraced them one at a time, and cried with them. I could summon no tears. Not for lack of feeling! On the contrary my heart felt like a tempest in a teacup. Rather I still felt dumbstruck and painfully sobered by the experience of killing for the first time.
Once the dead were buried and the fires put out, I told the chieftess of my visions. Of the beautiful apparition I’d spent the last few days cavorting with. She seemed wholly unsurprised. Still preoccupied with the attack of course, but there was something else. A mixture of indifference and irritation.
“Of course. You partook of the sacrament, so she came. She always comes when we drink.” It all just rolled off her tongue like it was the most self-evident fact in the world. Like I was some sort of stunted invalid for presuming to inform her of it.
Maybe I am? I don’t know. They must’ve done that ceremony what, thousands of times? Still, difficult to express even a fraction of what I felt to a people for whom the impossible is a routine occurrence. So much so as to be banal if it weren’t sacred.
“Where did you run off to that night?” the chieftess demanded. “Had you stayed, you might’ve-” I showered her with apologies, confessing that I’d simply been terrified by an encounter with something wholly outside the realm of my experience.
She seemed somewhat placated. I added that I was never very far away, given the walk back took less than an hour. “My VTOL crashed nearby. I’m surprised you didn’t see it.” I had to describe what I meant by VTOL, but her eyes soon lit up in recognition as I did so.
“Oh! The flying metal things. One of those landed close by the morning after you fled the ceremony.” I frowned, and set about narrowing down the possibilities. Could Remnants get ahold of their own VTOL? They sure as hell can’t build one.
That’s not their style, based on what little I knew of Remnants from documentaries. They live underground, to evade thermal imagers. It’s speculated their bunkers and burrows are sealed, that they’ve rigged scrubbers to purify the air inside. Otherwise the gas storms would get ‘em.
They emerge from those tunnels and chambers only to travel, and then only beneath the jungle canopy. Their apparent operation of a meth lab in the mangrove swamp could explain the degree of recklessness they would need to hijack a VTOL and fly it during the day.
I looked up to find the chieftess squeezing out one of those strange, bulbous pods onto her wounds. The juice exhibited the usual healing effect. All the other surviving villagers were busy doing the same.
I took this opportunity to bring up my swollen leg. She winced. “Have you tried to treat it?” I confirmed that I made use of the first aid kit I found in the crashed VTOL. “What have you been eating then? Garbage I’ll wager, if your body can’t even fight off this infection despite that treatment.”
I groaned. “You sound just like her. Asherah, I mean.” It only pleased her to hear that. “My dad too” I added. “He never shuts up about how what people these days really need is good, wholesome organic meals in their bellies.”
She shrugged. “He’s right. Sounds like a smart guy. I wonder why you didn’t inherit that quality from him.” Just outside, villagers were still hard at work regenerating the charred fronds comprising the outer skin of each hut.
“Listen, this isn’t over. If I know criddlers...and I’m afraid to say that I know them all too well...they won’t take this lying down. They’ll be back, and in greater numbers. You can’t deal with these guys the way you dealt with the missionaries or aid workers. There is no gentleness in them. Their hearts are nothing but fire, hatred and speed.”
She asked what I planned to do about it. “I need you to level with me about where all this GMO plant tech came from. I can tell you guard that information closely, but hopefully you agree circumstances warrant sharing it with me. What are the limits? Can you make guns out of it?” She looked troubled and reluctant for a moment.
“Non-lethal weapons are fine” I clarified. “I just need something with stopping power. Do you just plant seeds for each type of tool or weapon? Are there specific seeds for every-” She abruptly stood, took me by the hand and led me to a hut tucked away at the edge of a pond.
Inside was something I’d not yet seen. Some kind of undulating, veiny mass of green plant flesh streaked with purple stains. “So...what? This is what the seeds come out of?” Once again she didn’t bother explaining. Then again, this was the sort of thing that must be seen to be understood.
She took my pistol, and extended it towards a massive egg shaped bulb at the top of the mass. Its roots, dug into the soft dark soil beneath us, writhed in recognition. The bulb then peeled open like the petals of a flower.
The chieftess placed the pistol into the center of the open petals. Slowly, they folded shut. Nothing happened for a little bit, until the hideous thing started to churn and pulsate. I’d estimate ten to fifteen minutes passed.
Stay Tuned for Part 30!