Chapter 8: The Steelyard
The girl whispered into my ear to wake up, as the cool, crisp watery texture splashed all over my face, bringing me back into the real world, the hell of the steelyard.
"Run!" She shouted.
Trog groans soon filled the air of the steelyard.
I ran after her, but soon I saw three trogs pounce on her. She yelled at me for help, but I stood immobile. The trogs ripped her left arm right off of her body, as she screamed, and thick tears rolled out of her eyes. The other trogs soon joined her maimed body, and one took a bite of her stomach, while she screamed and howled like an animal hit by a vehicle, agonizing in pain.
I ran, but soon I turned and turned, without the knowledge of what to do next, or even of where to go. The fear of the trogs had rendered the pain in my torso non-existant, and I soon grew dizzy in trying to figure out what to do next. Then, I saw a small room. I ran to it, and closed the door. I quietly shut it, and through the opaque window, I saw several trogs wandering around the steelyard, several atop the defunct trains, and atop one of the now defunct factories towering over the steelyard.
I sat down.
I felt my hand over a flashlight, and turned it on. Out came a dim light, which I thought to myself as being good, so that that way the trogs wouldn't see me. There was a computer on the desk in the room, and there was a steel rod smashed inside the monitor. On top, there was a first aid kit, and inside it were several stimpaks, med-x, and jet. On the floor next to the desk laid a skeleton, clutching a .32 pistol in his hand. I quickly grabbed the gun, and opened the cylinder, to find five of the six chambers occupied with .32 bullets. The man had committed suicide.
Should I put a bullet through my head? It would surely save me the pain of getting ripped apart by the trogs! If the first one didn't kill me, I'd have 4 left to do the job.
Surely I was delusional! Only I could see men in white suits, taking me for a stroll in 20th century Pittsburgh! Perhaps by the end of the week I'd lose it, succumbing to the pain and torture it is to survive in the Pitt! Perhaps I had lost my nerve!
But as I brought the gun to my head, I couldn't pull the trigger. My finger was incapable of pulling the lever. There was a thought in the back of my head, itching like a bad case of dandruff. I shook and shook my head, but the thought grew bigger. What if the dream had been real? What if there was a chance of clawing out of here!
I sighed in desperation, pulled back the hammer in the pistol, and placed my hand in the door knob.
As I pushed the door open, all the trogs feeding on the girl that had saved me turned around to look at me. I ran, clutching the gun in my hand. The trogs followed. I ran straight to the dumpsters, where I climbed up. From there, I jumped upon a red factories' roof, while the trogs below me growled and growled, and I threw a steel ingot on the head of one, killing it.
I counted to three. After a long exhalation, I jumped from the roof, using the loud noise of knocking over several ingots of the opposite side of the factory as distraction.
I ran, and in the distance, I saw a steel walkway. As I approached the walkway at full speed, one of the trogs that had been standing on top of the defunct train rushed towards me, and as he jumped I placed a bullet in between its eyes, its human-like face expressing a fit of rage, angry at its condition, but accepting of its savagery.
I finally stood atop a steel walkway overlooking the mill, with the view of the steelyard and the mill, and the trainyard, where trogs reined, and pain was the only currency left in this wasteland of the Pitt.
Hell. This place has no hope. This place could use another atom bomb, and hope that this one finishes the job. But that is what a normal person would say. Perhaps I really am here to serve his will. Perhaps it is my will to bring order to the Pitt!
This place really does have potential. We simply need to get rid of the trogs. We need to get rid of the mutations that make people's skin peel, and turns them into beasts. We need to produce and survive, not succumb and consume! The mill works, and that's a start! Now, if we only got it running…
I walked towards the outer set of steel stairs of the tallest factory with the big chimneys to Haven. There lived a merchant-raider band, although this, of course, I did not know yet.
I walked determined to build a true place out of this, to build a base upon which my successors could build a great city.
I was determined to build a new foundation upon the deaths and the labor of countless of innocents. Instead of killing themselves and using their energies for destruction, I instead thought that it would be better to have them use that energy to build a new world, although I didn't have the slightest clue of how to do so. I had left but a small gun and some rags.
But as I approached a sign that read Haven, with a bunch of bodies hanging upside down, with steel hooks going through their bodies, and men lighting fires, feeding people to them as if they were firewood, I understood that the human condition only understands pain, and only pain changes man to adapt to necessary ways. This gave me an idea.
