RESIDENT FALLOUT

[wizardmirth]

Rarely I will dream an entire video game. I don't attempt novels much any more – could never quite find my author's voice – and I doubt I'll ever finish this, but here is the first part of one of those dreams. Some of it might be embellished for lack of remembering certain details, but this is pretty much the raw majority of what I experienced.

 

It's also not meant to necessarily be fan-fiction although technically it might qualify as a hybrid for the two games mentioned in the title. Not only a story though, it illustrates some basic features I (and my REM-state self apparently) would like to see in next gen games like these, namely with enemy AI, encounters, and a much steeper story arc for the main character. Enjoy!

 

p.s. If you have a wide screen then make your browser narrower to make it more like a book page! The prologue is just under 5,000 words.

 

 

 

[edit 1: prologue through chapter 1 is currently up here]

Edited August 21, 2016 by wizardmirth

[wizardmirth]

-RESIDENT FALLOUT-

Prologue: Farewell, Lotus Camp

 

 

Moments to rest are rare on the run, but I’ve managed to find a lost hut in the deep jungle and some paper and pen. I’ll need to write fast and heal up quickly before someone or something happens to come along. Doesn’t matter if it’s a panther, a group of punks, or a pack of radio-controlled zombies sniffing around for me. It could happen in a few minutes or within a week – not that I plan to stay here that long. For now I need to remember as much as I can…

 

Everything seemed to happen so fast from my first memory of this life. It was like a dream in mid drift, with no origin, and me with no knowledge of how it would turn out. It started only as far back as I could remember, with a revolt at the prison camp from where I came. The names of people and places escapes me right now, even my own name.

 

Lucas.

 

* * *

 

The prison camp sits at the top of a lush jungle mountain and it's a clear bright day in the yard. Ten foot high planks of wood and bamboo are strapped together with rope and wire, rows of huts and shacks hugging them from inside. All the fields and gardens where we work flower in gray patches through the middle. The colors had once been bright and varied, but after the harvest season were now swayed to the call of their starved masters.

 

Of the world, I could remember that there were at times loose talk by the guards of other camps in various other locations. These were mines or quarries, but ours was a farming camp cultivating and harvesting rare flowers and fruit that could only grow at this elevation and in this climate. There had been much of course before that had led to this point, like some thirty years of life unaccounted for, but I can only write what I can remember.

 

On this day I had to give the signal at just the right time or our revolt would be quickly crushed. Heavy metal punks and older battle-hardened codgers in frayed leather and studs walked their filthy paces – either on the grounds or up in the makeshift wooden parapets, or looking out from one of the watch-tower huts. Their routines were fairly predictable but every once and a while a guard could do something unexpected like bully a prisoner, or even better, turn his back and take a wee on the fence or one of the prisoner huts. There were a few females among the guards but they almost always used an outhouse, and if any prisoners were in there at the time they were quickly thrown out, sometimes at the cost of the evacuee having to further relieve themselves in public.

 

My stomach knotted up as I casually scanned though there was no sweat on my face.

 

I could only hope that once I gave the signal at the best possible time, that none of the guards were doing anything too unexpected that might suddenly hurt our plan. At this point, some of the guards pissing became pretty routine to me, so those I no longer considered random factors. In fact, I planned to use that our advantage.

 

I knew what I was doing though, of that I'm sure, even if later I came to question it. Many of the other prisoners looked to me for an answer, those I could trust to be a part of the plan, because I wanted that answer too.

 

When the guards seemed furthest apart, and three of them were in the middle of one particular form of evacuation or another, I paused to generously ladle water from the well-water bucket over my head. Of course I had expressly insisted to the others that I would never do that unless I was giving the signal. Once I did so, the next person gave their own unique signal to the next person down the chain. A quickly thrown bird call, a triple cough, a double-handed head scratching – whatever it took, whatever each had decided to do in turn.

 

And so in a chain of carefully planned actions, the singled-out ground guards were quietly felled like dominoes, one after the other, with our makeshift blades, some of sharpened stone or twisted metal. It was an ugly business, but mouths could be covered just before knives and spikes could be planted like flowers. I had shown them how. And so four of the punks could easily be routed before anyone else was any wiser.

 

Myself, I had found a rusted military knife some weeks ago buried in the mud, and so that was my only weapon as we began.

 

Knives were quickly replaced with cheap guns and automatic rifles that barely worked and would sometimes later jam. We had to also pick off whatever armor we could find like cracked battle-vests and riot helmets usually on their last legs. There was a weapons hut but only the old pot-bellied codgers in their pointed leather executioner masks had keys to the padlocks, and so the next phase of the plan involved taking them all out with our weapons. The codgers were usually about three times as strong as the younger punks, and so at least two of us at a time had to take any one of them and catch them by surprise. That part was the hardest, and the toughest of the ax-men managed to kill two of us before two more could take him down.

 

There had also been a previous plot to disable the camp's emergency radio in which we succeeded, but I can't remember those details now.

 

Those of us not part of the fight quickly cowered and ran or fell on their stomachs and clamped their heads – a clear sign that they were not a part of the uprising. I could remember feeling sorry for their lack to will, especially if one or more of these may or may not have been trampled by scurrying guards or killed out of sheer anger – I'm not sure in all the fray that ensued. But eventually, once our splinter group was able to clear the camp and take out the reinforcements that were off-duty in the barracks, we begged our non-conformists to get up and find a weapon. At least seeing that we had won gained us a few more men, but these were still broken and scared.

 

I took the keys off the last dead codger (I was one of the second wave of two to take him down) and ran to the weapons hut to unlock it. I threw open the doors and urged them to suit up. And by the time I got in there, there was almost nothing left.

 

I could have taken my choice of weapons off of anyone. No one was going to question that after what I had accomplished. I ended up packing myself to capacity because I was going to be the front-runner and first for combat. So I suited up with one of the battle-vests, a Plexiglas face-shielded riot helmet, an auto-rifle, a pistol, and that old combat knife I already had. This blade had finally tasted my enemy’s blood and I didn't even want to clean it or think about how it was that I knew how to use it so well.

 

“Why?” an old man not part of our group asked, crying to me as I walked out the hut, fully armed with the nearly broken gear. “They’ll just crush you at the town, weapons or not! You don’t know what’s there!”

 

“We’ll be back if we can,” I said, checking the weight and site on my new used rifle. I smiled, but only because I knew how to use it and that it would do in a pinch. “You non-conformists should stay here in case we come back. If more guards come after us then take your prone positions and tell them that you had nothing to do with the revolt.”

 

I started moving on with the others and the new ones that were willing to join us now that we had succeeding in taking the camp. “We’ll send word to any of your families if we can find them alive. I promise you that,” I said looking back as the sick, the old, and the scared ones held each other, trembling among all the dead bodies.

 

* * *

 

An ear-splitting crack in the underbrush outside nearly scared me half to death. Squatting low, I had to just barely peer out the window for a few minutes, but it looked like a panther was just trying to get at some bird or vermin up in a tree outside. Thankfully the door and window can be decently barred shut and panthers can’t break down such things.

 

Now back to it…

 

* * *

 

The road down the mountain is dirt and clay, light in color as there had been no rain for a while to darken them with run-off from the higher volcanic rock. All around us – maybe thirty or forty strong – the mountain jungle screams at us with insects and animals, most of these natural citizens of the lush hidden away safely by the dense over-growths to either side. For a moment, I envied them that they didn't have this battle ahead and almost cried with thoughts for my family, though I could not remember them. But then I remember feeling proud again, and certainly confident. There was very little and quiet talk among us down the long road until I signaled for us to stop.

 

The town began not far off where the jungle broke apart and the clay-dirt road was much wider – now twelve oxen wide instead of six, shoulder to shoulder. To the left stood a line of raised hotel rooms at the top of concrete stairs at either end of a long concrete platformed building. The ground level of this building had tiny porthole windows, black and dark, with heavy timber double-doors in the middle that had been sealed shut with several chains and padlocks. That caused me almost as much worry as some of the hotel doors that were either busted in or open into complete darkness. And for a moment I imagined terrible monsters in all of them as we sat back, stirring from dark slumber to sniff at fresh feasts, looking down from the higher distance where we stopped.

 

On the right was a row of single room ground-level cabanas following along the slope of the road. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw such well fortified structures, even though they were all damaged in one way or another, because huts and bamboo and dirty planks were all I could remember ever seeing. For me, it might as well have been a grand little city, but it was tiny and choked by the jungle.

 

After a few hundred yards of these structures, the road quickly broke to the right against a steeper decline that was filled in with low-lying brush and bunches of thin, smaller trees. Another row of cabanas continued against the bank with the road, but just before this second set of cabanas was this break, which interested me. The slope beyond was not so steep that we could break away down it, using those trees for cover if we had to. The only thing is that we didn’t know what was down there exactly, but it was an option in case we needed to get off the road in a hurry.

 

Strangely enough, just one guard comes walking up the slope, smoking a cigarette, rifle slung over his shoulder. He looks much like the guards at the camp, dressed in leather and studs, not appearing to be any more heavily armed or protected then his recently deceased counterparts, but I couldn’t know how many more there are around the bottom bend. Not to mention some of those cabanas or hotel rooms could be home to anything or anyone.

 

Even our families apparently.

 

“Maybe they have them in those rooms!” one of the other prisoners whispered to me. “You know, like split off together!”

 

I felt that most of us could not really believe that, least of all me. If anything they were being held in some sort of detention facility further down. My thought was that this was were the guards stayed.

 

I grabbed his shoulder and rocked it a little to rile up some strength. I could tell by more than just the fresh sheen of sweat washing dirt down his face – he was more than just a little nervous.

 

“We need to find out first what we’re up against,” I said. Most of their eyes looked so hopeful and yet so scared on their grime-crusted faces. I brought the more focused men to the front of our line. We had moved into the brush off the road in case of any long patrols coming up this way.

 

“Everyone stay here and keep an eye out down there. I’m going to edge as close as I can. Once that guard turns back I’m going to see if I can see what’s in those cabanas first. If I get spotted by even one of them run back to the camp and try to keep it. It’ll be your best chance to survive.”

 

The sole guard walked up as far the end of the buildings on our end, but my people were still safely hidden further up the road. It took forever but I had to wait it out. He flicked his cigarette up the road in my direction, scratched his groin and yawned through his caked teeth. Finally, after what felt like forever, he turned to walk back down.

 

I spent those few minutes looking at something quite unusual near my feet off to my right, a bit further into the hot mess of the jungle. It almost look like stone but was suspiciously too smooth and planar, even at an angle. Most of it was buried inside a non-naturally placed pile of dead brush and giant leaves and so I cleared some of it away as quietly as I could. It looked like a sunken weapons footlocker. The thing looked quite dense and felt like it weighed half a ton and would not budge from the ground when I tried to shift it. There was a six-digit number pad and lock on it. Hurriedly, I pressed the 'ON' key, quite relieved in my sudden haste to find its operation silent. Red digital characters warmed to life and began to scroll left on the display below the number keys:

 

WELCOME DR. MURPHY...

 

Of course I either didn't know who that was or had forgotten him or her. Quickly, I tried a couple of random six-digit combinations but none of them worked. Then not wanting to waste more time, I turned it off and hid it again with its previous coverings, only this time better, making it look more natural. Perhaps another time…

 

Drawing my attention back to the guard, I noticed he was already halfway back down the road to the bend. That’s when a child cried out from one of the cabanas on the right, but then it sounded like their cry was suddenly stifled, cut short. At once I felt a lurching pit stuck in my throat, pulled at unsuccessfully by my stomach. The nervous and unfocused ones in my group were going to break all our cover, and I just knew it, closing my eyes for one second in reluctance.

 

“what the f***?” the guard spitted out, annoyed and turned toward the door he probably thought the noise came from. He grabbed a small black boy by the scruff of his tattered shirt collar and dragged him out of the cabana with a young black female desperately following. The boy was crying.

 

“I’m sorry, he just hurt himself playing! Please don’t do anything,” she begged, clasping her hands and getting on her knees on the road.

 

The guard laughed uproariously. “Oh, that’s good! No visible damage is what they tell us. Well, not much anyway!” he said, laughing some more.

 

“You leave that boy alone!” said one of the nervous bunch. The focused ones were not far behind them and looking quite reluctant if not determined to unfortunately have to see this play out. All their rifles and pistols were pointed at him as they hurried closer while the woman picked up the child in her arms and took her back into their cabana, shutting the door. The guard had a crazy pissed-off look in his eyes and despite his odds he did something that I still expected yet somehow still surprised me.

 

He side-stepped quickly and unfurled the rifle from his shoulder, shooting quickly without much aim into the crowd while edging towards the cover of the cabanas. He managed to fire two shots and kill one of us before anyone could start to fire. I went around the back as bullets were exchanged, to try to get the bastard unawares. He stopped behind one of the cabanas to intensely sniff some powder pinched from his vest pocket, probably spilling more in his rage than he managed to inhale.

 

“Oh, f*** yeah! Let's do this s***!” he screamed, pulling at his nose for a moment as the drug took effect, probably spiking through his vision.

 

He didn’t even hear me or see me, not that I was particularly stealthy, but it seemed like the clatter and drugs were just enough to help me out in this situation. Just before he could launch back out there, I stopped the barrel of my pistol just short of the back of his head and pulled the trigger. After re-holstering it, I unfurled my rifle and went back out onto the road to see what more damage would be done.

 

That’s when what might have just been a nightmare began to quickly turn into a living hell. Some of my more desperate men were up in the hotel walkway checking doors and doorways and a few guards were popping out with weapons from either a random hotel door or a cabana. There was even a naked couple that ran out of one of the cabanas from down towards the end of the first row, a man and woman, complete with vulgar and hellish tattoos and piercings, dressed haphazard only with guns, ammo belts, and mad. Mad as all living hell.

 

Bullets fly from every direction except from behind. I run up the double set of short stairs into the walkway to try and keep this vantage point ours. Always better to fire down on your enemy, and the railing and occasionally intersecting square columns would provide us cover. But I soon start to rethink that strategy.

 

There was already a flurry of heavy drug-induced profanity spewing out from various guards, but then I heard something else coming from inside one of the hotel rooms. A low guttural growl like a throat-infected panther alert to trespassers in his jungle. Yellow and orange sinewy hands and arms clawed out from the darkness, snatching up one of the men checking rooms beside me. The man screamed so high and loud that it chilled me to my core. But at the same time a guard on the platform had knocked another prisoner over the railing of the platform with a swing from the butt of his rifle and while the prisoner dangled off the other side the guard lowered the barrel at the prisoner's head.

 

In that moment time seemed to slow down for me because I had a choice to make. Should I help the man snatched up by the monster in the room or kill the guard before he can execute the dangling prisoner? In reality I had no time to weigh options, but since time seemed to slow down for me I felt like I could take a few seconds. I almost felt drugged, but knew that it was something deeper than that in my body because my mind was still very sharp and focused.

 

I might have more time to save the man in the room if I kill the outside guard first, so that’s what I did. However, by the time I turned back to the room it was closed shut and locked and I had another choice to make...

 

A distant air-raid siren went off from somewhere further into the town and the double-doors below my feet began to pound violently from the inside. Dreadful guttural roars emanated from within. If those doors broke open it would certainly be over for us, judging by what could possibly be contained within, but then again I wasn’t sure if the door was meant to be broken down by those things, whatever those things were. Time did not slow down again for me again and so I just walked past the closed door and left that man to his fate, popping off rounds at guards with my rifle, only using my pistol at close range.

 

A few more zombies emerged from some of the darker doorways of the hotel, probably including the one that had snatched up the first prisoner, fresh blood running down what remained of its exposed teeth and gums. These were not so easy to kill as the mad punks were. Five bullets from one of my focused guys into its chest and it still came at him until I did what I had done to the first guard: drew my pistol as I switched hands with my rifle, brought it an inch away from the back of its skull and pulled the trigger. It dropped instantly but not before the prisoner in front of me had fresh blood-splatter and bits of decayed flesh and bone on his face that he was trying to wipe clear. I thought that it getting in his eyes could be a very bad thing for him but I was still too focused on the fight. And so was he as soon as he could see well enough again.

 

“Head-shots on those things!” I yelled to my people as I ran back down the other side of the hotel walkway.

 

When the last guard I could see fell, there were only a handful of us left alive. Bodies from both sides of the battle were all over the road. That's when that loud jungle chorus that had chided us all along, began to quiet.

 

* * *

 

I dropped my pen, but not because of another outside noise of concern. It got jolted by a migraine and a bad one. I had to meditate for a bit. That’s when I got flashes of his/its face again, or at least what I could see. That seven foot thing with the black head-wrap covering everything but yellowed and black-pupil eyes lanced by fat streaks of red lightning. They quivered, almost like they were going to pop out like grapes in a pair of potato guns. And they were looking right at me…

 

I woke up to the rain – mixed blessing. I wouldn’t hear them coming, but then again chances of them looking for me in this kind of weather is that much smaller. So I decided to sleep. Now no more migraine… but that face I remember now. Better write a little more…

 

* * *

 

The air-raid siren from further down stopped blaring. If there were more guards, and there had to be, then why had they turned it off? Even the double-doors beneath the hotel walkway had stopped rattling, the groans of rage within fading to reluctant silence. The jungle stayed quiet and that scared me worst of all at the moment.

 

“Hide within sight of me and wait for my signal. If it’s clear we’ve got to regroup and try to get the rest of them somehow. Down the slope at the bend down there. They won't expect it. If I get killed then go back to the camp.”

 

“Why don’t we just go back now and regroup at the camp!” one of the fluttery men asked us. “Do we really want to risk more surprises?” I answered him evenly. I think it basically went something like this:

 

“They’re going to regroup in force and march all the way back to the camp, possibly with a small army of those monsters. We don’t have enough people left. Our best chance for survival is to hide where they won’t expect us and then strike out again. And we need to leave the woman and the boy alone for now, alright? They’re much safer staying where they were put by the guards and not helping us any.”

 

Most nodded in agreement, albeit reluctantly. I went down the road, so wide now it seemed to me to be growing in size. Either that or I felt like I was shrinking.

 

In the next moments time slowed down for me again although I really did not foresee any one perfectly sound choice. I could check around the bend to see if we could get down that way without being seen or I could check on the woman and the boy. But I really didn’t want to do that because more guards would be coming and that would probably only put us all in more immediate danger. We could also head back to the camp and try and get reinforcements from those that stayed behind, but most were older or sick and I didn’t think that if we came back with half our original numbers that it would exactly sway them to change their minds this time.

 

I could already hear the old man's voice crying to me if we returned so broken: Do you see? I told you. I told you!

 

No, the least insane choice was to try and hide somewhere unexpected and try and recon what left we have to deal with. So making my choice, time wound forward again, like a slow audio tape finally playing to speed in the middle of all its words.

 

As I reached the edge and peered around, something came at me fast. Something big from around the bend just as I turned to look down it. A group of twenty guards or so were running up the road from down this side where more cabana like buildings continued along either side, with another raised walkway of hotel rooms on the right side this time, cabanas on the left.

 

The thing came at me more with a speed that would have surprised a panther, who would curl up like a doll, unable to escape the monster's predatory descent. All I could make out was a shadowy blur of a giant seven feet tall, and wide and with massively thick limbs to boot. My brain couldn’t even register a reaction until I was lifted up off the ground by a mighty fist around the scruff of my shirt (I thought instantly, oh, that could have been my neck…that could have been my head!) and then slammed me down on my back so hard that my lungs rattled like jelly. My mouth gave a spurt of blood.

 

It towered over me just as the fastest of the guards further down began to catch up with the figure who had rag-dolled me. A deep guttural drawl of a voice that almost sounded like it needed more breath but never really did, spoke. But it wasn’t speaking to me. I blinked up at it, trying to make out the terrible features of its eyes. It wore long swatches of stitched black leather over all its body, thick heavy black boots with metal toes and studs, and a long black cape. That black headscarf. Those bulging yellow eyes, but strangely without emotion. He clasped his arms behind him like a war-time officer posing for his men, but all the while looking at me with those horrible eyes, as if I were a mere object or already dead.

 

“Yes. This must be their leader. Very noble. Crucify him. We’ll make him an example.

 

Kill the rest.”

 

* * *

 

I can’t do this anymore! It hurts too much to think about and it feels like I’ve been writing for days. My God, did I kill those people? Would we have lived another ten to twenty years in relatively peaceful slavery, never to see our families again? No, they wanted to do this just as much as I did. I'm not going to punish myself for what they had agreed to. If I only could have s the weaker ones, but no sense in beating myself up for that either. One focus leads to the next and it is called either submission or survival. It is either slavery or freedom. It is being either broken or whole. And I would have rather died at the camp that day, alone if I had to, then spend another one in their quiet servitude.

 

My wounds are mostly healed now and I can walk, and run if I need to. So until I can find my next point of rest, my next revision for focus, these papers will have to go safely into my backpack for now.

 

Dead. They’re all dead except for me. They need the women and children though more than the men, and right now that is my only hope and reason for living. And though I can’t quite remember their faces – there’s been so much that I forgot of my past life and what happened here in these mountain jungles, but I will find them.

 

I will find them.

Edited May 14, 2016 by wizardmirth

[Maharg67]

Excellent! :thumbsup:

Good pacing, story, and characterisation.

Edited May 14, 2016 by Maharg67

[wizardmirth]

Thanks, I am not published but have much writing workshop experience (exchanging with and commenting on many different people's work) under my belt and have read several books on different writing techniques. If you are looking for feedback on something specific then please let me know either here or in PM and I will be happy to have a look!

[Deleted54170User]

You must of had a lot of questions arise from your own modding and gaming to have caused you to have slept long enough through such a long series of dream sleep views with so much information to view and take in.

[wizardmirth]

This was like 6 months ago and I honestly can't remember a single thing now other than vague notions. I did set out writing it fairly quickly after it first happened though. Much of the finer details were added in for lack of remembering but the basic flight from camp to enemy's boot was all there. I might have also added in the cut-scenes where he's alone in the jungle writing. It's also part of the reason why the protagonist is a John Doe - I still don't know who he is or will or can become. As far as a story arc for a game though, I'm hoping that we as players can end up either defeating the bad guys or ruling over them and keeping their power and maybe even some possibilities in between. I'm also very interested in seeming enemy AI develop even further in open world games, one aspect being random acts thrown into to otherwise predictable routines.

 

I had already started the first chapter but it's only half finished right now. This is pretty much where the dream either ended or I just couldn't remember any more. I will finish it just to get it done and put out a couple other game ideas, and because I don't practice writing much any more outside of small texts for mods. I will post it when it's done.

[Deleted54170User]

I have questions.

 

When you say you see the character in the jungle, writing; are you seeing the character as the character is writing down words?

 

Or are you seeing the tools, seemingly in the hands of a writer, writing words down on paper?

 

Neither is unusual and have been reported by people who write their dreaming moments in a journal every day when they awaken.

 

Were you experiencing one or the other?

 

Have you experienced either in the past?

[wizardmirth]

Sorry to disappoint you but I'm really not sure at this point. If it ever happened before then I must have forgotten.

[wizardmirth]

Chapter 1: Yesterday's Shadows

 

Anything can happen.

 

I know now that it goes back to genetics. And environment. I could have started out as any creed, any religion or lack thereof, or any nationality. I could have even started out working as a heavy metal punk who usually aligned themselves with the predominant Turncoat Syndicate faction promising the highest tenets of punk ideals: protection, violence, and world domination.

 

I don't remember much yet about the Turncoat's origins but I do know that their usually unseen leaders are heavily science influenced, specializing in new weapons technology and genetic manipulation. But somehow even if I had started out as a punk, my natural genetics would have put me at odds with them sooner or later, love them or hate them. I could see it now, falling prey to some unforeseen mistake that would get me killed or crucified anyway. Sooner or later I would have left them anyway. I know this now.

 

I could have also tried to help the first man in the hotel doorway, the one that ended up getting snatched and shredded (as I imagined) to pieces inside the dank darkness within. Would that have made any difference had it not gotten me killed? Probably not. There is only so much we can control before far more powerful forces have their way with you.

 

I could have turned back for the camp and tried to make our stand there, but they probably would have demolished the entire camp with explosive weaponry just to make sure that we were all dead. No chance of surviving that with only a secondary at best arsenal in our hands and little to no training on how to use it by many of us.

 

No, either way, my best chance for survival was to be captured as the rebellion leader first. I realized this in hindsight. Only then could I have escaped as the victim of a very opposite kind of fate in order to get me out of it again. The world creates and the world takes away. I was put here for a reason and every day that I survive I know this to be true. Very unlikely to survive these kind of odds, but rarely, like the random unexpected act of a guard on patrol stopping to take a piss or doubling back on an area sooner then expected, it can happen.

 

Anything can happen.

 

* * *

 

“Dude, they haven't even strung you up yet and you look like such s***!” the guard said to me once we were alone in the cabana. He almost seemed concerned, but then my eyes couldn't focus very well, nor my mind on his tone. But even his tone sounded a bit... soft?

 

It was no secret that certain male guards took a perverse pleasure in pissing down the doors of prisoners and this one had just finished doing that as a bunch of others laughed passing as they saw him, one of them saying loudly that he had missed a spot.

 

Now that they were gone I could only look up in confusion into this punk's face. “Hey, Delgado, why don't you shove some food down that skinny prick's throat already?” another had cried. But now here was this man named Delgado talking to me alone, the door closed behind him. He grabbed me by my arms, getting me to sit up off the stained mattress (a luxury for prisoners) that I was nearly passed out on.

 

“Hey man, you're supposed to eat and get stronger first,” he said shaking me a little. “The Boss Man don't like stringing up no scrawny prisoners! Besides, how the f*** are you going to escape in your condition?”

 

“I...” I couldn't finish my thought. I had been protesting my own crucifixion over the past couple of days by not eating or drinking anything. I couldn't imagine what that might feel like, but I had decided that starvation would be less painful, even if they eventually ended up beating me to death out of frustration. And had I seen him before? Probably. Could I remember it? No.

 

My eyes asked him in twisted confusion: Escape?

 

“Oh, f***, you don't remember me, do you? What's your name, man? Come on. If you get it you win a prize!” He looked around with dejected frustration and his face soured at his own choice of words when he found them and looked at me again. “Uh, a nice pat on the back! Yeah! Come on! Who doesn't want a nice pat on the back, man?”

 

He jarred me a bit more as I sat up, but not violently. I tried to think for a moment. “Dead Man,” I answered grinning, as if in a drunken stupor. “Nice to mee-cha.” I laughed coarsely but mostly just ended up coughing.

 

Vaguely and dreamlike, this also somehow interested me, and so I tried to maintain a line on his face. The man was a bit gruff in his words, but then there surfaced focus and determination in him, or at least I just started to notice.

 

“You can't die, dude. You've got to eat. Get better fast and I'll help you get out of here. No joke. Believe me or not. But your wife and kid, man, they're still here!”

 

“What... f*** did you say?” I said, or thought I did. I wasn't sure if I was even speaking loudly and clearly enough for me to hear me. I meekly grabbed at him like both of my arms had fallen asleep, unable to focus them. He shook his head and lightly shrugged my arms away.

 

“Eat this.” He took some sort of strain of lotus out of his vest and gave it to me, but I couldn't remember what it was exactly. “It'll help clear your mind and prepare you for the way. You know they don't give it to prisoners, so it's not poison.”

 

Either way I just wanted to die or live any better than I was doing at the moment, so I took it and ate it, munching on it with sloppy and sluggish motions of my jaw. Tasted like rose petals. Then he turned to look towards the door and stood up. Heavy boot-steps and chains thundered in from outside.

 

A fat codger threw the door open with two punks behind him. He straitened his executioners hood which had gone a bit askew and stepped through the doorway.

 

“Delgado! what the f*** is going on here? You piss out there, you scrawny turd? If he's not going to eat we're going to have to quarter him.”

 

“Don't worry none, sir, I got him to eat. All I had to do was to tell him either he could eat and drink normal food or that I'd be stuffing live rats down his throat until they ate him from the inside out.”

 

Loud, heavy laughter malted all around. “Oh, that's good, Delgado. Very good! The boss will be pleased to hear it. Especially when I tell him that I'm the one who did it!”

 

More laughter, only this time Delgado did not join in. “Of course, sir. All for the good of the Turncoats.”

 

“All for the good of the Turncoats,” the codger mimicked, but slower paced, almost reflective. He took a few steps closer. “You know, Delgado, now that the camp has been completely cleansed and this little rat is all we have left from it, we've got to go and round up some more heads. I want you on the next outing tomorrow. You don't possibly have any problems with that, do you?”

 

“Course not, sir. We do what we have to to serve and it'd be my honor.”

 

“Good. I wouldn't want you starting to have any pets or anything over here. Some of the gang tells me you've been hanging around here a bit. Doing a bit of overtime, are we?”

 

“Well, sir, it's not every day you get to meet the idiot that got all his camp killed. I admit I'm really just fascinated by that kinda stupidity.”

 

“Well, there's nothing wrong with that. Just don't get too comfy here. There's work to do.”

 

“Right on, sir. I'll just make sure he keeps eating for the boss, if that's okay with you, sir.”

 

“Carry on, but stop pissing around here. He needs to be strong and not puking his guts out when he's put on the cross. Got it?”

 

“Of course, sir.”

 

It was then that I could start to feel the effect of the special lotus breed, a small tingling sensation in my brain that felt like a warm tropic sun was caressing it. I was still weak but had just gained enough strength to look up at Delgado as the codger and the other two punks bugged off.

 

Now I could definitely tell. This man did not look happy at all. Not angry, but not happy either.

 

* * *

 

I'm still in the hut and the rains haven't stopped yet. Must be a monsoon. It's been three days since I got here and any signs of my trail are gone – and if they find me it's going to be sheer luck on their parts. The last of my wounds have healed and I didn't even remember that the human body could heal as fast mine did, given the proper rest and care.

 

I had a dream last night about my family and I could see their faces. I don't want to do anything right now except remember them. The dream went something like this:

 

~ ~ ~

 

I awoke in a perfectly white room with the softest shadows. An ocean breeze wafted through impossibly tall windows that had wings of framed glass that were open, like inside shutters. Long sheer drapes blew in and cradled back and I could hears waves and birds of the sea in the near distance.

 

A beautiful young woman's face drifted over me as I lay on my back in the bed, smiling coolly, her blue eyes drinking in my different features kindly.

 

I'm pregnant, Lucas. Let's live forever. Can we?

 

If it's in my power, my love, then it is yours.

 

A grandfather clock began to chime inside the room like a cuckoo clock that was busting out a spring, but it was not white like every other object in the room, but a deep and dark mahogany. It read 9 o'clock.

 

I'm late for work! I bolted up, my wife was standing next to the bed.

 

Lucas, it's Sunday! she said, pouting. Then she simply closed her eyes, began to hum, and rubbed at her belly which was slowly growing.

 

Then quite inevitably dark clouds began to gather outside, heady with the rumbling of thunder. The sky darkened and the room began to turn gray.

 

Lucas, it's Sunday...

 

I'm late, I'm late, I'm late! I muttered to myself and quickly got out of bed, scanning the room. I went for the closet but found the contents elongating away from me. I ran desperately, feverishly, and caught up to see a military uniform of some sort with a few medals on it, some sort of black and white dojo outfit, and scientist's lab coat complete with an assortment of instruments. I didn't know what to grab off the rack exactly but it was all moving far outside my reach anyway. I outstretched my hand and ran for them into the newly formed impossibly long hallway.

 

Lucas! Sunday!

 

At the end of the hall, carrying our now one year old son, stood my wife looking none too happy.

 

I'm sorry but I have to do this. I'm so sorry! I said. It's for all of us!

 

Then there was a massive explosion in the distance and walls began to melt away like paper in fire scorching through in pockmarks at first until everything was gone. I was left standing in the center of a vast cold metropolis that was crumbling little by little as great fires seared the sky.

 

I looked around but my family was gone. I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry! I muttered frantically to myself. Poisoned winds, sinewy with dark matter, roiled around me. But I was untouched somehow. Like a child realizing he was in a bad dream, I cried and rocked on my shins, and cupped my face as the world burned away beyond all recognition around me. And yet it wasn't the world I was crying for.

 

~ ~ ~

 

That's when I woke up in a sweat, my body much healthier, but my mind and heart not quite so much, like weights had been tied to them. I took the map out of my backpack and looked it over for the first time since I got here and traced the path from what I thought my location was to the ruins were I had to go. I packed the rest of my things quickly and ate what meager game and fruit I had left before scoping the perimeter of the hut and leaving in the rain.

Not long after it stopped its wet bombing of the jungle.