Cool air rushed over Miss Pauling's face.
After what felt like hours of stumbling around in a dark cave, Pauling found her exit. A slither of light at the end of the tunnel.
Now that she thought about it, the Administrator had a habit of hiding her bases in caves. They were out the way, dark and most people wouldn't stay longer than necessary. Plus, the winding tunnels would throw anyone off, even Miss Pauling. She squeezed through the thin crevice and into the New Mexico desert.
From the high rocky walls were Pauling stood, she could see the lone strip of road leading to the town of Teufort. The sun hung low in the sky and stung at her light-deprived eyes, the flecks of cotton white clouds moved lazily across the sky. Far away Pauling could see the endless grey-blue sky meet a sandy brown horizon. Dead bushels and tanned red rocks dotted the land beyond Teufort, looking like mere dark splotches from where Miss P was standing. A swirl of smoke billowed in the distance, rising up from a much larger, dark splotch. Probably just a new pile of burning tires.
Miss Pauling looked around. If her moped was anything like her gun, it'd still be around. She'd parked in a nook. The nook had once been home to some kind of miner or hermit, furnished with a tin roof, stool and various tools. The Administrator assured that the hermit had since moved on.
By the time Miss Pauling found the nook, she realised that she'd overlooked it four times. It was bare, even the tin roof was gone. There was no trace of the moped
"Just my luck." Miss Pauling muttered. It seemed that she'd have to settle for traveling on foot.
Walking in sand with kitten heels was hard enough, walking down a sandy hill in kitten heels was worse. Miss Pauling wasn't phased, she'd run on worse.
Ten years, she thought. Ten years for a body to decompose. Ten years for a moped to get stolen. Ten years later, where would the mercenaries be? Miss Pauling's mind began to wander as she took off her heels and headed towards Teufort. If they got decommissioned most of them would go home. That would mean Heavy's in Russia, that's no good. But Gray Mann was still a threat, he wouldn't just leave. Ten years..
Miss Pauling smirked to herself. Maybe Scout would finally mature, he'd be 33... That'd also mean that Heavy and Medic are around their early 60s and Demoman and Soldier are getting there. Hmm. Really they should have retired but it was unlikely that they would. After all, some mercenaries stayed together even after the grey hairs came through.
Pauling's feet hit the warm tarmacked road leading to Teufort. The surface had baked a soft grey and seemed less looked after than she remembered it. There were defiantly more potholes and cracks. Miss Pauling was suddenly glad that she hadn't ruined her wheels on this track.
After replacing her heels, Miss Pauling followed the road. She noticed that the "Welcome to Teufort" sign was missing, then found it in the middle of the road several yards away. Ten years to fail to replace a sign. Something wasn't right.
The assistant wandered into town, heading towards the town hall. She passed some shops without a glance and weaved through some crashed cars. Wait, crashed cars?
That's when Miss Pauling noticed the quiet.
The town of Teufort stood still, in an unpleasant silence.
The buildings creaked as the wind whipped around them. Gunshots were carried on the breeze. The hairs on the back of Miss Pauling's neck stood on end.
She stared up at the back of town hall with it's broken windows and sunken roof. The pristine walls and pillars were chipped and charred. The white paint that used to mask the concrete as marble had peeled in the baking sun.
Miss Pauling picked up a new noise. She could hear tinny marching drums and a cheerful flute, some patriotic song. The sound was getting louder. The all-American music did not fit Miss Pauling's mood.
Movement caught the corner of Pauling's eye. She whirled and raised her gun. A round, metal object floated out from an alleyway and into the road. Several aerials blossomed from the backend of the sphere, a metal grate covered the front of it. As it buzzed closer, Miss P noticed various stickers slapped on the side of it: Bonk! Atomic Punch and DeGroot Rum were the only two she recognised.
The music faded out as the object came to a halt. Miss Pauling stared at it. It hovered four feet off the ground, within arms reach of her. She was about to make a move when the machine beat her to it.
"If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight!" A very familiar, static filled voice barked.
"Soldier?" Miss Pauling laughed in relief, "Soldier you would not believe how happy I am to hear you! I-wait how are you doing that?"
"Sun Tzu said that," Soldier declared, "And I'd say he knows a little more about fighting than any of you maggots do because he invented it!"
"Soldier, I know ab- it's me. It's Miss Pauling."
"Listen up you maggots! This fight will not result in victory if you do not sign up to fight immediately! If you have already signed up then go sign up again you lazy hippie!" The object floated impassively.
"What fight?"
"Dying for your country will be the greatest honour you maggots will ever receive! Sign up today!"
"What?"
"I bet you maggots have no clue who's even talking to you. I've been fighting these tin cans since before you knew they even existed. I know how to-"
CRACK
PING
Soldier's voice went out with a burst of static. The machine clattered to the ground with a trail of smoke and sparks.
Miss Pauling automatically dove for cover, ducking down behind a burnt out car. She stared at the machine as Soldier's voice spluttered incoherently from behind the static.
"Oh don't be scared, little girl! We won't hurt you!" Crowed a voice, followed by a shrill giggle.
Little girl?! Who do they think they are?
Whoever it was, they fired another round. It pinged off the car's bodywork.
"Boss! We got a clean one!" Called another voice.
CRACK
PING
That bullet hit the bonnet.
To Miss Pauling's surprise, smoke began to spill from the battered vehicle.
She glanced around for more cover. An alleyway? That would work.
CRACK
PING
The car was getting warm.
Miss Pauling made a break for the ally. Just in time for the car to explode, smoke mushrooming into the sky.
Pauling's back hit the brick wall. A bullet had grazed her leg, laddering her tights and leaving sticky red blood in its wake.
A hand landed on Miss Pauling's shoulder, "Got you, little girl." Growled a voice.
Miss Pauling spun on her heels to face her attacker. He was skinny, pale and young, with deep bags under his bloodshot eyes. Strips of metal and leather were tied to him. His hand had dirtied her sleeve. Pauling glared at him.
"I am not a little girl." She hissed before firing her gun, hitting the man between the eyes. Surprise crossed his face as he let go of her and dropped dead.
Miss Pauling surveyed her surroundings, then she crouched down. She was disappointed to find that the man only held a lead pipe and that his armour was practically falling apart. Pauling swore and sat up. It'd become quiet again.
When the assistant looked to her left she found that she was on the outskirts of Teufort. The large, smoke spilling splodge could be seen. It stood tall and crooked against the horizon. Odd. Miss Pauling pushed up her glasses and squinted at it. Doesn't look like there's a fire over there.
"Pike! You lost the little bitch, didn't you!" Barked a feminine voice from Miss Pauling's right.
"She just slipped away! I didn't see her! Rusty went after her but I heard a shot!" Came the same croaky voice who'd fired the first shot. Miss Pauling glanced down at 'Rusty', then back up towards the road.
"Where was the shot?"
Silence followed. Miss Pauling automatically looped her arms under 'Rusty's shoulders and backed up beside the building, holding her breath. She brushed against a wooden door and grabbed the handle without thinking. It creaked open, allowing Miss Pauling and the body to slip inside.
It was dark.
Thin slithers of light broke through the boarded up windows. Miss Pauling could see dust particles floating in the stale air. She was in some sort of storeroom for one of Teufort's few shops. Except the wire shelves were bare and the crates were falling apart.
Miss Pauling dragged the corpse behind a crate and crouched the corner beside it. She made note of the two exits, the one she'd came through and the one leading to the shop floor. What happened here?
"You can't hide forever." Came a voice from outside.
Teufort, the fearful but resilient town, stood in shambles. She looked down at 'Rusty'. Are these the only people left? Just a bunch of creeps? Ten years. Where was the Mayor? The little old lady? Anybody?
Not that Miss Pauling really cared about Teufort's residents. Or perhaps it should be previous residents. They'd caused her enough grief over the years. As Pauling thought she dabbed at the bullet gaze on her calf. She winced, it stung but it was bearable. It'd be best if she could clean and bandage it.
Miss Pauling pulled at the crate beside the body and peered inside. Her eyes widened at the small stacks of $20 bills within. Both 'Rusty' and her wound were forgotten for a moment as Miss P grabbed the wads of cash. There must have been twenty stacks of twenty dollar bills. It wasn't until then did Miss Pauling realise that she had no way of carrying it. She didn't have a big enough pocket to carry her screwdriver, that was tucked into her belt.
"Rusty? Where'd the bitch go?"
Besides, money wouldn't help her fight. Unless she could pay them to stop. That just might work.
"I'm gonna make you bleed all over your pretty clean clothes."
Maybe not.
If there was a bag, then she could take more. Hell, she could carry everything she needed.
Pauling listened carefully, the people outside had apparently calmed down moved on. She crept through the beaded door curtain and cringed at the jangling sound they made.
She vaguely recognised the store, a small grocery. There was a faint sweet smell coupled with mothballs, which was how all of Teufort smelt normally. She peered over the counter to see that the shopfront was empty. Stuffed into the counter, Pauling found what she was looking for. A canvas messenger bag. She tugged it free and almost dropped it, it was a lot heavier than it looked. She unfastened the buckle and opened it.
Bottle caps?
Most of them were red with a yellow "B!" printed on top. Bonk? No, that only comes in cans, not glasses. The few blue bottle caps Miss P recognised as BLU beer.
Miss Pauling shook her head dismissively and upturned the bag, wincing again as they clattered on the lino flooring. She slipped back into the storeroom and began stuffing the bag full of cash. Twenty stacks. A lot of money. Maybe not enough money to hire mercenaries for more than a day but still, Miss Pauling could get by on it.
Next, priorities one and two; the wound and the body. Pauling looked around, 'Rusty' could probably fit in the now-empty crate... but there was no lid. Maybe if she shifted the crates and made some sort of cover. Miss Pauling pulled at another broken crate, she blinked in surprise when it thumped to the floor as if it was on raised ground. She looked at were the crate once was.
A hatch. A metal hatch in the ground. A cellar perhaps? That would be a good place to hide, either herself or that body. It was locked.
But Miss Pauling knew how to deal with that. She pulled out the screwdriver and plucked a bobby pin from her black hair. Picking locks was all part of her job, she wasn't the best at it but this lock was easy. A few twists and hopeful jiggles later, the lock clicked in surrender.
Miss P hauled the hatch open with a creak and a sudden crunch. She was faced with yet another skeleton, it's brittle hand had broken away from its body when Pauling had opened the door. The skeleton, disturbed of it's resting place and missing a hand, tumbled down a set of old, wooden stairs. Miss Pauling stared after it. It was too dark to see the bottom of the staircase.
"Boss, she's probably in one of the buildings." The voices from outside returned.
At least nobody else had been through the hatch.
With no other choice, Miss Pauling looped her arms under 'Rusty's shoulders and dragged him into the hatch. She let go of him to reach out for the hatch door, only to groan internally as she heard the body slide down the stairs. Why were corpses like this? She closed the hatch sharply and plunged herself into darkness. Real, pitch black darkness.
Miss Pauling swallowed and instinctively reached out for the handrail. She used it to crawl down the staircase, it creaked under her light weight.
After a while her eyes adjusted. She could make out the walls of the cellar, plus a few tables, chairs and wire shelves, these ones fully stocked. Miss Pauling considered searching them but decided against it; she didn't want to risk knocking one over, her attackers could be right above her head. Instead, she felt around the ground. Her hand touched something cold and glass, with metal parts above and below it. A lantern, she thought, thank god for Teufort being old fashioned.
Miss Pauling's mind flicked to the skeleton. If this was theirs, they'd have matches, right? She reached around the foot of the stairs, looking for anything vaguely body-shaped in the darkness. Her hand landed on the back of 'Rusty', his body still semi-warm. She pulled him aside and heard the tell-tale rattling of bones. Pauling's hand made contact with the weirdly smooth bones, she searched the pockets of its waistcoat and found what was looking for. A matchbox
She fumbled with the lantern, once she had pulled down the lever she took the matches. It took two strikes down the side of the box to light the match. In the tiny orange glow, Miss Pauling moved the flame under the glass and prayed for oil.
The wick lit, the room was bathed in a warm glow.
Miss Pauling lowered the glass and picked up the lantern.
One corner of the cellar stood out in particular. A wall had been knocked down and behind it was a tunnel. A hastily dug tunnel, by the looks of it, with lopsided, wooden planks for support. Miss P held her lantern in front of it, casting light as far as she could. It was heading east, toward that tire-burning pile.
A crash sounded from upstairs. Dust rained from the ceiling. Miss Pauling stepped into the tunnel, then pulled a crate in front of its entrance before following the path.
The tunnel was long. Soon, when Miss Pauling turned around all she should see was darkness. Either she'd travelled far or the lantern was dimming. Do lanterns even dim?
As time went on, the tunnel itself got more and more shoddy. At one point it was close to touching the top of Miss Pauling's head. Anyone taller than herself (which was pretty much everyone) would be forced to duck or slouch. She couldn't imagine someone like Heavy or even Demoman being able to comfortably pass through.
Finally, she reached the end and was met with a rusty metal ladder. Miss Pauling frowned and held the lantern above her head. At the top of the ladder was what appeared to be a manhole lid. Strange, this is no sewer.
Miss Pauling tested the ladder with one foot. It didn't break away or even creak, but the top layer of paint did crumble and grate away under her shoe. She put the lantern down, then put her full weight on the bottom rung, then after a moment's adjustment, she began to climb.
The moment Miss Pauling pushed open the manhole, she received a face full of fine dirt. She spluttered, grateful for her glasses for once and tossed the manhole cover aside. She was outside.
Miss Pauling balanced herself on the lip of the manhole. The setting sun glared at her. Behind a pile of strategically placed rocks, Pauling could see the town of Teufort, roughly half a mile away. When she looked to the east she saw the tire-burning pile, standing tall around five-hundred yards away.
Except the smoke was not billowing or black like she'd first thought. Close up, it looked more like steam or the smoke from a campfire, not a bonfire.
What she assumed to be mounds of tires was actually one great metal wall, spread out in a wide, lopsided circle. The walls were a bleached, almost white, blue. It was like some huge metal dome, in the middle of the New Mexico desert. It was hard to make out all the details with the sun in her face but Pauling was sure she could see more marking on it, around the base.
Miss Pauling stood and spared a glance back toward Teufort. There was no movement, no scruffy character running across the baked earth toward her. She looked down the hole she'd come from. After a moments thought, she replaced the cover and after some experimental shakes, she rolled one of the smaller, free rocks (which still came up to her thighs in height) atop the lid.
Now then, Miss Pauling adjusted the strap of her messenger bag and pulled out her revolver.
Five-hundred yards wouldn't take that long to pass. Five-minutes? Less than that. Miss Pauling raised a hand to her forehead to block out the unforgiving sun.
The wind picked up, messing her hair and whipping at her skirt. Pauling held her free hand against her skirt to keep things decent while she picked up her pace. While the baked dirt was better to walk on than sand, her kitten heels still weren't ideal. They'd get stuck in the deep cracks that scattered out in every direction, forcing Miss Pauling to tug them free without losing her footing. But she wouldn't take them off; spiky plants were a big risk.
The wind blustered again and Miss Pauling huffed at it. She turned to the south as if she'd see where it was coming from. Her heart stopped when she did.
A dust cloud. Dirty beige and barreling towards her.
"Oh crap." Miss Pauling said to herself. She took off toward the walls, she hadn't been caught in many dust storms but she remembered being on her moped when one hit. She'd almost crashed. The walls would give shelter.
A memory bubbled to the front of Miss Pauling's mind, of when the first dust storm hit a base with herself and the mercs in. She remembered the Europeans staring at it incredulously out the windows. She could almost hear Demoman complain that "A thing that bloody big has no right to be moving that bloody fast".
Miss Pauling could feel the dirt in the air now. The wind howled and whistled. The sky dimmed, both due to the setting sun and the dust thrown up in the air.
In one step, the foot behind her didn't lift. With the heel of her shoe jammed in a crack, Miss Pauling fell forward, landing rough on the packed-in dirt. Her glasses toppled to the floor.
"No!" Miss Pauling grabbed her glasses before they could be blown away. She held her messenger bag in front of her face, something she vaguely remembered Engineer telling her, and searched for her missing shoe. She squinted. Her eyes felt dry.
The sky dimmed more, the sun had turned the world a hellish red. Her shoe was two feet away. Just within arms reach. But it didn't come easily. With a hard tug, it came free, but at the cost of a heel. Miss Pauling shoved it on her foot and stood, then crouched. She looked toward the walls then stumbled back when she made out two bulky, humanoid figures running towards her.
She raised her gun but with the wind she could barely hold it steady. The figures were bulky with squarish heads and unnaturally tall shoulders. Robots, Miss Pauling thought.
To Miss Pauling's surprise, they stopped a few feet away from her. She couldn't make out many details in the darkness, expect from the headlamp one of them had, but they weren't acting like robots. The one in front, weaponless, even held its hands up placatingly. The one behind wielded some two-handed weapon that Miss Pauling couldn't distinguish.
The former took a step toward Miss Pauling, unaffected by the battering winds. Miss Pauling let her bag fall beside her and gripped her gun with two hands. Her vision was almost immediately obscured by dust and dirt. She fought back a choke and stood her ground.
"Hey, it's okay. We're not gonna hurt you." The first robot said. Its voice was staticky like Soldier's had been. Like it was coming through a radio.
Don't come any closer, was what she wanted to say when the first figure stepped toward her again. Instead, she fired a shot, the round pinged off the shoulder robot's metallic physic. It glanced over its shoulder as if someone had simply nudged it.
The headlamp moved away and pointed toward the south.
"Look out." Said a different, still staticky voice. Both Miss Pauling and the first robot looked toward the south. Miss Pauling turned just in time to see a metal panel, like a tea tray, fly toward her and hit her square on the head.
She didn't even feel herself fall. All she saw before blacking out was the first robot surge towards her.