A/N: Welcome back and all that! So anyways I'm going to announce that I'm going to tone it down with the musical references! Since last chapter was crazy with reference after reference I'm only going to put music where it fits with the story in some way-
OH MY GOD A SONG FROM THE 1930'S!
"Some bright morning when this life is over,
I'll fly away, fly away!
To a home on God's celestial shore,
I'll fly away, fly away!
I'll fly away, fly away, oh glory!
I'll fly away, fly away, in the morning!
When I die, Hallelujah, by and by,
I'll fly away, fly away!
When the shadows of this life have gone,
I'll fly away, fly away!
Like a bird from these prison walls I'll fly,
I'll fly away, fly away!"
"I think it's broken," Ben admitted guiltily as they continued along. Along with the three sets of feet moving across gravel Ben's radio was continuing to blast out music since he dropped it. For the last three hours it had blasted out songs that spun through the 50s to the 90s along with the accented voice that was at the other end. Ben had kept it on 108.23 mostly because every other channel blasted out nothing but the whine of static.
"Oh well that's great," Kurt said as he rubbed his eyes, no one had gotten a good night's sleep since their sudden exodus from the campsite. "Out of the three of us you have the most advanced radio I've ever seen and it breaks when you drop it once," Kurt shifted his gaze at the strange spherical device, "how did you come across that, Ben?"
"I just found it really, it was just on the side of the road," he explained as music continued to pour from the radio's speakers.
"Well it must've been there for a while, no one has come to this part of the country in years. In fact most of the southwest coast has probably been abandoned by now," Kurt sighed as they continued down the road, "in fact walking around like this is already pretty dangerous."
"Is that because of the Black Hand?" Michael questioned, "whatever the Black Hand is I guess," he added hastily.
"In part even though I have no idea what the Black Hand is, some people seem to refer to the Black Hand as a group of fucked up people. However…," Kurt paused for a second as he thought back on something.
"However…?" Michael questioned, waiting for a response.
"The two men we killed always said they came from the Black Hand, which makes it sound more like an actual place more than anything else. However that is beside the point if it's a physical location or group, the point is that the lack Hand is one of three things keeping people away from the southwest."
"What would the other two be?" Ben questioned who, after various attempts to somehow turn it off, had dropped the radio in his backpack, releasing the muffled playing of a guitar in the air.
"Well far off into the east there's a desert filled with zombies and is still infected with the Rotting Plague in some places. Plus only the people who are insane or have a death wish ever go in there, if they managed to survive they would probably kill anyone who gets close.
"And no one ever enters the marshes to the far west, no one. The Black Hand managed to take what was originally the capital of the land and the forest around it, but there is a group which has managed to take control of an entire subcontinent. An organization called the Red Arrow has taken control of the entire Marsh, miles upon miles of land and most likely over a thousand people under their command.
"Of course the red Arrow only attacks anyone who approaches their cities, anyone who is from the Black Hand attacks anyone they see," Kurt finished. For the past year and a half he had been trying to figure out the secrets of this world and had studied everything he could find.
"Well I wonder what the difference could be," Ben muttered to himself but Kurt, who was always carefully listening, spring up with an answer.
"The difference is leadership. The two collectors we killed said that they took orders from a man named Zachery who seems to also command various other people. From the few whispers about him that I've heard he's a very violent man and before the Black Hand was a bandit with a man named Randall, who is the same man who was following us. The person who controls the Red Arrow is a woman named Ashlen who is rather smart about her plans." Kurt took a deep breath as he continued to think about the geography of the world.
"So is there a place in this world which is actually… safe?" Michael questioned.
"Well directly north of us there isn't much but forest and a few ruined castles," Kurt murmured as he reached into the satchel he had hung on his right shoulder. Wincing slightly as he pulled out a few sheets of paper Kurt immediately put a hand over the bandages on his left shoulder and handed the papers to Michael. "To the east beyond the desert is a few military camps and the city of Romero," Kurt said as he shrugged off the slight pain in his left shoulder.
Taking the papers Michael could see that they were a stack of eleven crumpled sheets of parchment that had very rough and primitive maps sketched on them. Some of them consisted of only the old road leading to Grimdale, some of the entire forest, some of what appeared to be the desert, and then one which was of the entire land. Looking down at the paper Michael could see two different styles of handwriting scrawled about on the paper.
While most of the coast seemed to be filled in Michael could see that the north was mostly left blank, the only name that went to it was "WINTERLOCKED." Above it, most likely done by Kurt, were multiple question marks and a single square near what seemed to be mountains labeled "GIDEON'S PLACE."
"Back when Jerry used to travel with me and Audrey he drew these all the time. He was much better at it then I am but it helped me get a good bearing on the land," Kurt explained.
"Who is Aud-" Ben began but Kurt quickly cut him off.
"The only safe place would be Over the Hill," Kurt continued, "but no one has even been able to find it."
"What's Over the Hill?" Michael asked, deciding to not press anymore on whoever Audrey had been, "some kind of city?"
"It's one of the three safest places in the world," Kurt explained, "the second being the Black Hand if it is a physical location and the third being Over The Hill. What makes this place special is that it was built long after the Collapse."
"The Collapse being when the NMTC was wiped out, right?" Michael asked he had a feeling things like that may be important things to know.
"Correct, it is a rather large place built by people like us," Kurt said as he pointed at Michael, Ben, and himself. "Some people call it the Village, other Townsworth, but they all mean the same thing. What makes Over the Hill especially safe is the fact that you can only find it if the people there want you to find it."
"How does that work?" Ben asked, confused, "I mean they're normal people just like us, right?"
"Well not much is known about it," Kurt explained, "some people, the last heard; say that when they were mining for stone when the Village was just being built the people uncovered something. Something that shields the village from anyone who isn't welcomed."
"Well after all that has happened lately I guess I can't really question that," Michael groaned, "my 'suspension of disbelief' is at an all time high."
_(=I=)_
He had been thinking for a while. Running a hand through his short black hair he shook his head and sighed, rising from the large recliner. Emptying his head of what he had been thinking the man stood up and stretched and after hearing a few cracks come from his knees made his way across the room. Listening to the clunk of his own shoes on the stone floor he walked to the bookshelf on the opposite wall and switched on the dusty standing lamp that was beside it.
Surveying the shelves the man reached into his dress pants pocket and pulled out his wire framed reading glasses and put them on and blinked several times. When his eyes finally adjusted to the bookshelf he squinted down at the dusty spines facing him and mumbled the titles as he scanned them, looking for something he had only read a few times. By this day and age he had read every single book on the shelf a few times and was now looking for ancient volumes he had only read a minimum of four times. Reaching forward he let his hands drift over each volume as he finally picked one from the shelf of classics which had all been printed by the NMTC.
Taking the book from the shelf he clasped it in his hand and turned back to face the recliner which stood under the crooked head of a reading lamp. Turning the reading lamp on the man put the large volume in his lap and looked down at it as he quickly polished his reading glasses on his white shirt. In the yellow light of the reading lamp the man could see that in bright bold letters on the ancient cover was: THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH. He had already read the story long before those old scientists had offered him his current book collection but he still took it, pulp paper was much easier to carry around then stone tablets.
Opening the book he flipped through the first few pages to where the epic actually began and looked down at the slightly yellowed paper. Reading the first few verses of Sumerian text he laughed as he remembered a long forgotten memory back when he witnessed the book grand tale being written. As he continued to read the ancient Sumerian tale he wondered if he had brought any of the original stone tablets with him, the story was one of his favorites.
After reading the entire page of Sumerian text he flipped to t he next page, he was doing this every minute or so. Reading the tale for about half an hour and getting about a quarter of the way through the huge epic he stopped. Memorizing the page he was on and the sentence he had stopped on he quickly put the book on the arm of his chair and stood up.
Why not have a bit of music? the man considered as he walked across the stone floor and went to one of the empty walls of the room. The small reading room had, in fact, no way out until the man laid his fingers on one of the stone bricks and started to tap a certain code on the cold surface. After a few seconds the stone began to heat and the wall split open to reveal a doorway that lead out from the reading room.
Walking through the small stone hallway the man stepped out into another room which was full of maps and ancient weapons loaded on ancient iron hooks. However the man quickly stepped through this room and ignored the entire collection of ancient blades and instead opened another doorway. Now crossing into yet another room the man ignored the various machines that clinked and chattered around him and instead turned his attention to a large set of metal doors set in the wall.
Above these doors was a dial in the shape of a semicircle cut into four alternating pieces of black and white with a red needle currently on the section marked "3." Taking a small black metal circle the man was able to pry a small rod from it, making it into the shape of a crank. Placing the black crank on the wall beside the metal doors he listened to the small crackle of electricity and then started to turn the crank.
After a humming came from behind the metal doors they opened up with a ding to reveal a small metal box on the other side. Yanking the crank from the wall and placing it back in his pocket the man stepped into the metal box and watched as the metal doors closed. Now inside the strange metal box the man turned his attention to a set of buttons on the wall to his right and pressed the "4" button which sent a shudder through the box.
As the elevator started to descend a floor the man considered that this was rather monotonous and that some would regard this as a large waste of time. He, however, had more than enough time on his hands and had way too much time for the last thirty nine years and never minded the long walk. If anything it made time go a bit faster, however the man was pulled from these thoughts when another shudder went through the metal box and the metal doors opened.
Entering a stone hallway that was almost completely dark save for a few weak electrical lights set up in the ceiling the man walked slowly to the nearest door on the left. Quickly and mechanically the man traced a certain pattern into the stone beside the door which was much more a sheet of metal set in the wall. After a small rumbling from the wall the sheet of metal was retracted up with a quick swipe to reveal a small dark room.
Reaching through the doorway the man pressed a small button right beside the door and watched as a heavy electrical hum filled the room as the entire enclosure seemed to come alive. A large spot light switched on from the ceiling and illuminated the room as various amounts of panels light up along with a few screens. As the man stepped in several of the screen switched on to show a rather distorted view of a countdown clock.
Apparently ignoring the looming clock that was and appears to have been ticking down to something the man instead went to a set of cabinets set off in the corner of the room. Opening them the man lugged out a dusty wooden box fitted with speakers and an opening on its faces, the man put this next to the corner of the room where a stone brick had been removed. Taking the beginnings of two wires from the opening in the wall the man connected it to the strange jukebox like machine and then crossed back to the cabinet to pull even more things out.
Now with a handful of about seven vinyl records the man started to look over the selection he had grabbed from the cabinet and scanned them over. Unlike the bookshelf the man possessed he had not listened to every single vinyl and had placed them so far down to resist listening them to them all. As he started to organize them into a good order the man considered that he did have a special thing for song and poetry, always had always will.
Taking the covers off the man dropped the records into the opening on the jukebox and listened as a heavy clunk sounded from inside the small dusty machine. After three records the man heard the final clunk and a small jittering of electronics as the opening of the jukebox sealed up preventing him from dropping anymore records in. He had, of course, put this in to keep him from listening to every single vinyl and had programmed it so that it would only be able to open in three months.
Carefully placing the handful of records back into the cabinet the man stood up and took a few steps away from the jukebox and was about to walk out of the room until something caught his eye. One of the screens that were positioned down the road was blinking at him and when he turned to look at it he could see the countdown was replaced with what appeared to be a map. Staring down at the strange map he could see a mass of red dots moving towards a lake of ice near a small deserted town, he knew what it was but it didn't make him feel any more comfortable.
Turning to face another screen the man could see that the timer was now very close to zero and was actually only four minutes or so from it. Biting his lip he listened to how a burst of music came from the speakers set around the place, a stream of music constantly being interrupted by a warning. It was rather strange and was actually a lot creepier then he had first pictured it would be, but he was able to keep his clam.
The timer seemed to be counting down fast but by the time it hit two minutes the man was already out of the room. But he had left the music playing and occasionally pausing as an electrical voice sounded out.
"All I need from you,
Is a good…
Conversation!
Conversation!
Because it giv-
ALERT!
-es me sweet…
Inspiration!
Inspiration!
And to tell you I,
Have ne-
ALERT! ALERT!
-ver felt this way before.
I know there is somewa-
WARNING! APPROACHING DANGER!
-y today.
Love your-
BLACK HAND APPROACHING!"
The counter was at zero.
_(=I=)_
"What's this?" Ben questioned. He pointed to a black mark stretched across the road, almost burned into the stone that marked the edge of the road. Pausing in their tedious walking Michael and Kurt looked down at the black mark that continued to dip in and out of the stone line that stretched by the road.
"Looks a bit like a tire mark," Michael said and looking closer he could see that the skid stretched far down the road and seemed to head towards a turn in the road. "Someone's driving a car?" he questioned furrowing his brow in confusion, he looked around the quiet forest almost in search of any kind of car.
"Someone WAS driving a car," Kurt explained as he started down the road again, "if you couldn't tell already this isn't really the place for things like that. This tire mark belongs to one of the NMTC vans, but none of them work anymore.," Kurt explained. He looked back at Ben and Michael waiting to see if they would follow, "come one. We have to keep going."
"Um…," Ben ran up to Kurt and staid at his side, "how exactly do you know that?"
"The same way Michael knew about Randall," Kurt explained with eyes still locked on the road ahead of them, "dreams."
"I've been meaning to ask you about that," Ben said as he turned to Michael. They had been moving on the road for perhaps half an hour in silence. "How did you know about Randall?" Ben questioned, "I mean you just got us moving right as they were about to attack us, how did you know?"
"There was a dream," Michael explained, "usually when I go to sleep I have these weird dreams; they seem like something completely real but at the same time all these impossible things keep happening. And this one was probably the most bizarre and truthfully… I think we might be in trouble."
"Well in this dream… what happened?" Ben questioned and listened with wide eyes as Michael began to explain.
_(=I=)_
The man quickly ran through the door and out in the hallway whilst the warning signal continued to blare overhead and echo in his ears. Biting his lip the man headed down the hall and went to the last door on the left which had been kept closed for quite some time. Pressing in a pattern on the wall beside the door he watched as the sheet of metal retracted and let out a gust of dusty air as an old room was opened up for the first time in years.
As he went through the door he could hear that the alarm which had been sounding for the past minute had silenced itself and was replaced by something else. Reaching for a light switch in the room the man watched as an overhead light flickered to life and exposed a whole room of equipment that he had not used in years. Back when he first moved into this place all those scientists had simply left this room empty, the man was able to get this put in there with some outside help.
"THE BLACK HAND HAS ARRIVED
ASSUMING PROTOCOL 4-8112
NEW COUNTER HAS BEEN DETERMINED
NEXT EVENT WILL OCCUR IN:
57 DAYS, 13 HOURS, 56 MINUTES, 17 SECONDS"
He had work to do.
_(=I=)_
Michael stood on the cliff and looked down into the valley below. At first the valley was empty and seemed to be empty for a rather long time. Suddenly he could see something move across the valley, something that appeared to be a small golden orb surrounded by a ring of metal that floated through. After a large space of time Michael then saw a city grow from the ground that was constantly visited by the strange golden orb that all the people in the city seemed very happy to see.
Suddenly Michael found his vision torn upwards and he watched as his vision was of the night sky that was dotted with a plethora of stars. As he watched the night sky he could see that one star seemed to be growing brighter than the others, a strange red star that was alone in a small dark section of the sky. Watching it Michal could then see that the red star was becoming bri9ghter and brighter and actually seemed to be getting bigger; whatever it was it was heading towards him.
Unable to move Michael continued to watch the falling star as it entered the atmosphere and started to burn with a great fire that seemed to light up the sky. The falling star burned red in the sky and sent a shuttering screech through the air as it passed above him and sailing through the air, a horrid intruder in a peaceful world. As the terrible red star continued to sail through the dark sky and eventually started to near impact far into the north.
He watched as the red star finally came into contact with the land far north in a distant set of mountains and as the meteorite crashed Michael's vision went dark. Just for an instant in the darkness of his vision as he heard the far away crash of the meteorite Michael could see a strange symbol, a red flame that he had seen many times before. Looking up again he could see the falling star had knocked into a mountain and had sent a pillar of molten rock flying into the sky.
Down in the village Michael could see that the people far below him were in a state of panic with many people lost in a complete crowd of chaos. The entire land to be shaking sending a few buildings in the town crashing to the town as the dark sky became a dismal red as everything seemed to fall into bedlam. He could even see that the small golden globe that usually monitored the town was in a strange state of disrepair as it seemed to shake and falter. Suddenly it flew from the town and went into the north with a sudden burst of energy.
Feeling growing horror Michael stumbled backwards and watched as suddenly a mass of clouds started to come from the north and started to send down snow. Even though he was still falling Michael watched as snow covered the entire landscape in a matter of seconds with everything winterlocked when he crashed to the ground. Now in this strange frozen wasteland Michael got himself up and looked around again to see everything had changed.
In the valley was a very small town covered in snow with the small golden orb nowhere to be seen and in the distance was a horrid red light in the mountains. However Michael looked down and could see that there was something moving in the valley beneath him, a small machine slowly makings it way through the snow. The small vehicle that was moving towards the town had the letters NMTC on the side.
Suddenly his view changed and Michael was looking down into the small valley and could see that people were leaving the small village below him. In the middle of this exodus came an entire hoard of the undead at least seventy strong that quickly covered the town. With only half of the original exodus able to leave the town and head into the cold Michael continued to watch the small town as it seemed years seemed to pass.
He watched as a few buildings fell and collapsed in the snow, quickly being forgotten after being covered in ice. The few buildings remaining slowly became dark and dirty, rotting silently in this frozen waste. As years past Michael watched as a few more buildings fell under the weight of snow with the few remaining falling into dilapidation. Turning away from the abandoned town Michael turned around to face away from the valley town and then found himself in darkness.
In this darkness Michael suddenly heard what appeared to be music, coming in from some unknown source. It was a strange song and also had a peculiar undertone of electricity but it still came in rather clear.
"-got me thinking,
You got me thinking!
There were times, I thought,
That I was sinking,
I was sinking!
But I always,
Want to be in that position where I,
Can see more clearly!"
Suddenly the music stopped and Michael was joined once again by silence he looked around to see that this strange landscape was empty. He could remember the other time he had dreamt of things like this and there was always that man, typing forever into some vintage computer. Looking around Michael could see something far off into the distance and started to head towards it; after taking a few steps however he found he was standing directly in front of it.
Slightly confused he looked at the thing in front of him to see that it was a strange box mounted on a pole coming from the ground. A few wires lead from the box into the ground and seemed to give the thing power. On the face of the strange box were a black speaker and a red button that had HENRY GALE on it.
Biting his lip Michael pressed the button and took a few steps back from the device as static came through the speaker. After a few seconds of silence a voice came out and started to speak.
"Michael, I most apologize that I cannot speak to you directly right now but I am leaving you this message because you are in great peril. You must heed these words: what you are experiencing right now is not a simply dream you must act upon the things you see or hear in this place.
"I must also tell you Michael that I also apologize for what you had just seen. That had happened only because of my own fault. The place you are in now is the future, the future that will happen if you fail your quest and so you must act on these words: You are being followed and you must wake up now and get the others to get to Grimdale as soon as possible.
"You have to act on this as soon as possible; I have made it so you will now that this is real. Remember you must succeed in your quest to save you and your friends. You must succeed to save us, to save all of us."
Michael woke in a cold sweat. The tent he was in was still cold with the night air and was still filled with a few jumbled sleeping bags of the tent's last occupants. Taking in a deep breath he sat up and looked around in the dim until his eyes fell on something in the darkness. Slowly his eyes began to widen.
_(=I=)_
"So you dream of him, too?" Ben asked breaking Michael's rather lengthy narrative of the strange dream. "Whoever this Henry Gale guy is," Ben questioned as they continued down the road, "because he's been in my dreams a lot too."
"Yeah, " Michael murmured as he began to think and then he pulled open his backpack and started to dig around in the contents. "And when I woke up this is what I found," Michael explained as he handed the item to Ben.
For a few seconds Ben looked down at the object with wide gray eyes, trying to understand what exactly he was seeing, or how it could even be there. Looking the object over, he then handed it back to Michael very slowly as if it was some kind of explosive and bite his lip. "Well I guess it's meant for you," he mumbled, "how is that even… possible?"
"I don't know," Michael said as he placed it back into his backpack, "I guess I'll open it later," he said as the object made a heavy thud in his backpack. "Truthfully, Ben," Michael said as he stared forward down the ancient road and towards the strange city of Grimdale, "I'm not sure about anything anymore."
_(=I=)_
A/N: So many new questions! In fact let's list them all along with all those old ones: What is the Black Hand? What was the purpose of the North Maine Trading Center? Why is Randall so obsessed with Michael and Ben? What is that strange Man in Black who has disappeared for some reason? What were those strange whispers? Who or what is Henry Gale? What happened to Audrey? What does this strange flame symbol mean that keeps appearing? And finally: How did they get there in the first place?
Well if anything a good 35% of these will be answered in "Season Two" so just keep hanging! Oh and I must also apologize for not updating last week but it was 9/11 and to be truthful I didn't really like the idea of posting that day. Well, see you in the next chapter!
Songs used:
"I'll Fly Away" by Albert E. Brumley (1929)
(The version I have is by Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch)
"My Conversation" the Uniques (1969)