PART 2 - The black desert
CHAPTER 7 - Coming Home
White knuckled, Tails gripped the joystick as his battered plane finally breached through the cloud bank; rising out of the grey like a submarine surfacing in a ghostly ocean. Heavy beads of moisture streamed off the wings and down the windshield. Tails sat bolt upright, the terrifying take-off still replaying in his head. Thank god I decided to enclose the cockpit!
The night air was still and almost serene above the clouds and soon Tails' breathing slowed and he relaxed back into his seat. Minutes passed slowly and soon became hours, his relief passed quickly and soon became boredom. Tails checked the clock, 4:53 am. Down below the storm clouds seemed less intense and through them he could see some faint lights shining up. Freedom town, tails frowned, I wonder how things are going down there these days.
Freedom town was a depressing place. Its ramshackle huts and shelters had been constructed hastily in the weeks after the bombs. No running water, barely enough food, but still survivors had poured in, escaping from the craters that they had once called cities. He had been one of the lucky ones, or so they told him, and for a time Freedom Town had offered shelter but the walls had quickly became a symbol of all that was lost. Tails remembered the day he finally repaired the Tornado, plotting a course for Cocoa Island, the only speck of light in an endless night.
The lights soon dimmed and Tails drifted off to sleep, awoken some hours later by an annoying beeping. 'Destination approaching' flashed on the autopilot screen and Tails once again seized control of the joystick. The black storm clouds had given way to grey now, less dense but moving quickly. Bracing for winds he turned the nose downwards and dived back into the fluffy shapeless gloom, wrestling the controls as the biplane jolted from side to side. A deadened blackened wasteland swam into view, the first glimpse of Mobotropolis, his old home. Tails watched as great gusts of wind whipped black dust into the air, throwing it about back and forth in angry little whirlwinds. Hundreds of broken ruins jutted haphazardly from the flat plain, barely visible until dangerously close. The sideways cross-winds shook the tornado violently as Tails surveyed the ground for a landing spot,The runway, thought tails, it may still be usable, and he squinted through the haze, trying to pick details from the featureless graveyard. Wait. I think that's it!
Turning the plane into the wind Tails gripped the stick tightly, the long flat straight was becoming clearer now and he braced himself for a rough landing. Pushing the joystick forwards he bounced violently in the turbulence, slamming into the sides of the cockpit and jolting up and down. Something's wrong! To his horror Tails could see the end of the runway, or what used to be the end of the runway, in it's place, the ruins of the air control tower were strewn on the ground. Fighting the stick he tried to pull up but the tornado was too slow to rise. The wheels hit the ground with a thud, the wall of debris approaching like a speeding truck. Desperately he jammed the controls hard left, almost rolling the plane as it turned at the last second, skidding over the loose bitumen. A cement block as big as a bus screamed past his right windscreen, tearing off a wing like paper and sending tails headfirst into the windshield. The plane rolled forward and let out a terrible grinding shriek as metal on tarmac skidded to a stop.
There was relative quiet for a moment as Tails fought the urge to pass out, the sound of alarms blared out loudly at him but they seemed distant and distorted. In a daze the young fox pushed hard on the cockpit roof, dragging himself out he crawled through smoke and onto the dusty ground. His arm shielded his eyes from the daggers of sand whipping at his face. This is bad, this is bad, this is so much worse than it looked from above!
Tails dragged himself to the ruins of tower wall and collapsed in the corner. The wind was ringing in his ears but a new sensation snapped at his attention, a burning pain throbbed in his leg. He strained to look, to assess the damage, but a wall of darkness was fast approaching. The wind wailed around him but tails could not hear, his eyes closed and his head fell to the ground.
Tails awoke in a start, an icy droplet of rain soaking into the fur of his cheek. How long have I been out? He looked up at the sky, now dark and blotted out by thick black rain-clouds. The storm, it's here...
Sitting up, tails groaned in pain. Everything felt bruised, his right ankle was on fire. Through spattering drops of rain Tails could see the remains of his beloved plane strewn out along the runway, It had been a narrow escape. One of the wings had been torn clean off, twisted and torn it lay on its side. The other, a bi-wing no-longer, hung limply from the fuselage, it's supporting struts snapped in half. The engines looked charred and the propeller, or at least most of it, was nowhere to be seen. Using the wall, tails struggled to his feet. The cockpit! My supplies, thank goodness it's okay. Tails limped labouredly toward the upturned cabin, it's cracked windscreen still open from his hasty escape. He leaned in, and, with some effort, pulled out a large supply crate and set about filling his satchel.
The rain was coming in harder now and the powdery black dust of the wasteland was quickly turning to mud. Tails shivered as he lumbered forward, using a strut from his broken wing as a makeshift crutch. He now wore a raincoat but his fur was soaked and an icy wind bit hard against his face; the temperature was dropping. I need to find cover, somewhere to camp. Tails looked all around himself, peering into the haze, In the distance a dark outline caught his eye, a large structure, it looked enclosed. Arduously he lumbered towards it.
The shape was like a giant dome and as he drew closer tails could tell that, unlike the surrounding cement ruins of buildings, this was made of something else. Something… metallic. A bolt of lightning shot through the clouds and tails caught a glimpse of the lit up paint. Eggman! The death egg! It sat on its side, badly damaged and half-buried, a reminder that nobody had been spared when the bombs had fell. Not even Robotnik. Mad till the end.
The shadow of the fortress now loomed over him and tails slogged through the muddy ground towards the edge. A large broken strut hung down from above creating an overhang, a brief respite from the pounding rain. Tails looked around, following the curve of the hull, the entrance, if there was one, was nowhere to be seen. His stomach dropped as he looked out at the fain falling harder and harder. His leg throbbed and he shook from the cold. This was a terrible mistake, I can't stay here! The cockpit, I need to get back to the cockpit! Desperately he searched the boundaries of his vision for any familiar landmark. His footprints, left mere minutes before were almost gone, seemingly swallowed by the quickening deluge. Heart pounding, he picked a direction, a best guess, and silently threw bitter curses at himself as he stepped out from below the shrinking cover. Why didn't I use my bloody compass!?
The biting wind was pulsing now, driving shards of heavy rain hard into the mud; freezing cold and drenched to the bone, Tails staggered forward, shivering uncontrollably, a feeling of panic starting to grow inside him. Desperately he scanned through the rain, I need some shelter, anything! Nothing. He stumbled forward blindly now, veiled by a grey sheet of water that fell before his eyes. The cockpit of the tornado, his only remaining hope was nowhere to be seen, his tracks long since vanished.
The tree trunk looked like any other debris. A greyish mangled form, black and charred, poking from the murky ground. Tails had stumbled close and paused for a moment to catch his breath, when he was suddenly struck by a strange thought. This is the only tree I've seen… how did it survive? He looked closer. The tree, shaped almost perfectly like the base of a large oak was strangely unburned by fire, In fact, it looked as if it had melted slightly. A mesh frame was just visible behind the charred remains of a very convincing false bark. Behind that… hollow! Tails staggered closer, could it be? surely not… I would have known about it! With his shivering hand outstretched he felt the sides and moved around the trunk of the tree. c'mon c'mon… suddenly he felt a click as he touched a jutting bark chip, and, as if by magic, a small door in the side of the tree opened inwards. Tails pushed the door in and leaned down to look inside, it was almost pitch black, but it felt dry and without a second thought he stepped through the doorway. Straight into a hole.
Tails fell, tumbling forwards, faster and faster down a steep smooth slide. Head first, back first, he skidded down the slippery tube and before he could even sit back up he was thrown out at high speed, sliding across cold smooth concrete in a pitch black room, hitting a wall with a light thud. Grimacing with pain he struggled through his dizziness trying desperately to make sense of the inky blackness. He touched the wall next to him and moved his hands upwards. There was a tickle, a buzzing noise, and suddenly a sharp jolt like static electricity shot through him.