Chapter 4
The next few hours were hard, most surprisingly, for me. I had never imagined that having company would be so overwhelming. Even though there was a 19 year old girl behind me it still felt as if I was being walked to my execution. I flinched at every crunch of glass, every cough, every shadow that was cast in front of me by this godforsaken girl. All that was nothing though, until she walked up alongside and started talking to me.
"So why are you out here all by yourself?" she asked.
"I told you, your dad sent me to look for you."
"No, I mean what were you doing before that?"
"That's none of your business."
"I was only asking, what's your problem anyway?"
I stopped and turned to look at her.
"My problem is that I lost my entire family because one of the group we were travelling with talked too much. We were trying to leave the city, so we were making our way around through the suburbs. We were passing an old grocery store when the Skulkers ambushed us. We were outnumbered, outgunned and we had nowhere to run. They only came because of one person using his stupid gob too much. So do us both a favour and try to keep yours shut."
As you can imagine, thing's went pretty sour after that. I guess this is what I would call a teenage strop that I was having to endure. It involved stomping off ahead, her hands in her pockets and head down, making sure that I could hear and see everything that was going on in front of me. Which was incredibly hard not to, considering there was nothing else to look at save the old husks of cars and the occasional rest stop by the side of the road. Noticing that our shadows were becoming more and more elongated, I craned my neck to look behind me. The sun was just kissing the tops of some mountains way off in the distance, and I was glad of this. For starters, I was fed up with the constant stomping and scuffing. Plus the temperature was due to drop to more tolerable levels. If we were in a built up area then we would have needed to find a secure site sharpish, but out here there was nowhere to hide and excellent field of view, so we could afford to keep going for a bit longer.
I like walking at night. Almost everything swings in your favour. Creatures shrink at your presence, the moon lights the way for you like its your ally. In the darkness you are invisible, almost undetectable, as well as having the greatest advantage – the element of surprise. Ever since man invented fire there has always been this constant fear of the dark. When the light goes out there is a little jolt of panic in everyone, no matter how big or small. It takes quite a lot of experience of living and simply being in blackness before you adjust. Fortunately for me my experiences as a child were all beneficial. I used to sneak out at night and explore the woods outside my house. There was an old silver mine hidden in the woods which the locals always told their kids horrible stories about, just to make sure they never went looking for it. I however thought it would be a fantastic idea to go searching for the place in the hops of finding myself some silver and becoming rich.
I eventually found the mine, and found that even the dark of night outside seemed bright compared to what lay within the mine. Inside the sounds were distorted, the flickering lights of a lantern cast disfigured shadows on the walls, but were no match for the black void that lay in wait just feet in front of me. I never did find any silver, but the mine did teach me a valuable lesson which I still respect to this day. Embrace the darkness, wear it like a coat. Else if you light the way it will retreat and reveal you, leaving you alone and exposed.
Whereas I was perfectly comfortable walking at night, it was clear that someone else wasn't. The girl jumped at every sound or movement. She was constantly looking around, trying to find some source of light, but only ended up winding herself into an even bigger panic. I didn't know the reason why she left her dad, but she had clearly done it in a hurry. Sure, she was pretty skilled with a blade, but out here, where there's not a lot else but you, she wouldn't survive. She needed to be trained to survive on her own, if push came to shove. I stopped walking and let the night envelop me.
It had only been a day, but the girl was already scared of the man. She didn't really know whether she could trust him, and judging by his calmness about just about everything, it seemed as though he knew exactly what was going to happen. It was a rare occasion when she was outclassed somehow by someone, but this guy outclassed her completely. He had picked up her machete, the same one her and her father owned for over 25 years, and expertly launched it into a road sign. A 2 inch thick road sign. She was accurate with small knives up to 20 feet, but something that big isn't designed to be thrown, it should be too unstable and inaccurate to throw. But he flicked it like he was skipping stones across water.
It wasn't long before she became aware she was alone. Scanning her torch around the scene, the beam shattering the veil of black, there was no one, no hiding spots, nor anything else, for over 100 feet. Just the endless dust bowl they had been trudging through for the past 16 hours. She started to grow uneasy. Had he been snatched, or dragged off by some animal or something else? No he can't have been, as there would have been some sort of sound, even if he was completely silent. He couldn't have turned round and walked off the other way either, as the boots he wore made a distinctive clink-chink as he walked. The girl began to pick up the pace, hoping to try and find some shelter for the night. If the man had really left him, God help him if they ever bumped into each other again.
Suddenly tracks began to emerge out of the darkness on the road ahead. As she aimed the beam of light down, she jumped in fear. The tracks were completely inhuman, yet far too big for any animal she knew. Each footprint stretched over 2 feet in length, and consisted of 3 toes, each with prominent claw marks ahead of them. Going by the span between each print, the creature must have a height of over 15 feet. She let out a whimper, picking up the pace and making sure she kept the trail to one side of her. Maybe this was the thing that grabbed the man? As she pointed the beam up, a face lit up just inches from her face. She screamed. It was the strange man, his face as still as stone, holding his hands together in front of him. He looked at her and said,
"So begins your first lesson."
She stared back at him in confusion. Just who the fuck was this guy?
"Your first lesson, as I'm sure you've already guessed, is how to move in a hostile environment. There is the way you move; clumsily, slow, hesitant. Any one of those factors is enough to kill you. For the past 10 minutes I have watched you swinging that torch around like it was a baseball bat, and yet I was still able to evade you. In fact, I stood right next to you in the process. Yet you were so noisy, so clumsy you failed to notice."
"Bullshit," the girl replied.
"Really?" the man asked, "then how did you come to lose your knife?"
Her hand shot to her side. The machete was gone. She looked at him in disbelief.
"How is that possible? I would have noticed!"
He grinned.
"You would have, if you weren't so focused on looking where the light was pointing." By now you should've also noticed I'm not wearing my boots. This is how I was able to get so close to you and avoid detection. The dust out here is so thick it's like sand. Wearing big boots on roads and rock is fine as it protects your feet, but at night they'll get you killed. Boots on sand will sink in, causing you to spend more energy and make more noise to keep moving. Take them off, you become like a cat – nimble, flexible, expending almost no energy yet achieving all your goals."
The girl frowned.
"Right, but how do you explain the alien footprints? Those were done by you, weren't they?
He smiled and shone the torch on his feet. They were wrapped in frayed ends of rubber, presumably salvaged from a nearby wreck.
"In a hostile environment such as this, an inexperienced person is always on edge. You could throw a twig in front of him and it would give him a heart attack. However for someone with combat experience such as yourself, the trick is not to try and scare them straight away, but to unnerve them gradually. I could see from where I was that you were growing more and more restless as you followed the trail. Had you followed it all the way you'd have seen it lead to a hole in the ground."
The girl turned to where the trail was, and cast the light up until it reached a small circular hole in the middle of the road. She walked over to it and shone the torch down it. There was a smell of old stagnant water emanating from it. Looking back at the man she asked,
"What's this supposed to be?"
Pulling his pack of his back the man strode over.
"Our room for the night."
He pulled out a climbing rope, went over and tied it to the axle of one of the old cars nearby. Running the rope along the ground and covering it with dust and grit to disguise it, he fed the other end down the hole, grabbed hold, and abseiled in. Upon reaching the bottom, he waited for the girl to abseil down, then tied the rope to the bottom.
"In case some asshole decides to try and steal my rope."
They made their way further into the tunnel. This had once been a storm drain access point, in order to allow crews to come down and attempt to clear any blockages or make repairs. It wasn't designed for comfort or to accommodate people for long. As a result it was impossible to stand up straight; the highest the man could stand was hunched over. The floor was damp from leaking pipes, not from any recent storms though. The only storms that occur in this part of the world these days are dust storms, so the fact that there was any standing water here was a miracle.
The man looked over at the girl. She was clearing a space in the corner, getting ready to lay out her bedding.
"Wait", the man said.
The man pulled out a clear plastic bag with sand and dust which seemed to have been collected at some point on his travels. Confused, she watched as he sprinkled the dust over the floor, leaving no spot untouched. Once he was done there was a layer half an inch thick of dirt on the floor.
"When it comes to sleeping, I don't do a lot. But when I do I like to be relatively comfortable. And dry. The dust will absorb the water and keep your stuff clean. When you're finished in the morning just pack up your stuff, and brush the dust off. Nice and clean."
The girl laid her bedding out, which turned out to be the remains of an old poncho, took off her jacket to use as a pillow then got ready to get in. the man pulled her machete out of his pack and took a look at the blade.
"I guess we can skip the lesson on maintaining your weapons. It's a nice length, very well looked after. Here, keep it close."
He tossed it to her, where she then propped it against the wall by her bedding. She watched him place his pack down, where he unrolled the back, into what was clearly a cleverly disguised sleeping bag. He climbed inside, placed his head back and closed his eyes.
"Get some rest," he said. "Lesson two starts tomorrow."
She snuggled down into her bed and closed her eyes. The girl smiled.
"Can't fucking wait", she thought.
