Chapter 4: Green eyed despair.
Took him another hour and a half of searching. He climbed hills, trying hard not to kick so much dust off of them, and looked in the highest places and in the places that were tucked deeply between these earthen portrusions, too, and he found it up high, on a platform. When his eyes found the large, dark opening on the side of the mountain, he felt glad. He was doing good time, because in another hour and a half, a guard with one brahmin would be on his way to the hill base, and it would take him about two hours to get to the right coordinates. In that amount of time, he would deal with whatever was inside and even get a chance to relax at the safehouse until his contact arrived. One hand reached up to the ledge, and subsequently, so did another. Rem hoisted himself up to the platform, and the moment he did, the wind carried something foul into his nostrils. It was coming from within the cavern.
He sneered, clearly disgusted, and he scrunched up his nose again. It was like the smell he encountered in the safehouse, just worse, but the smell didn't chill him this time around. This time, he was ready for it, and it wasn't like he hadn't encountered the strench of rotting human flesh before. Oh, how eager he was to get this over with. Eager to get this over with without a scratch to show for it, though. There was one thing that he found solace in now as well, and that was in the fact that it wasn't going to be much of a problem to keep his footing while shooting. So, he didn't have to keep the carbine on his back. He reached up over his right shoulder with both hands. One hand tugged on the noose, loosened it, and the other pulled the weapon in front of him. His index finger slipped into the trigger hoop and the three fingers beneath that slipped into the lever hoop. There was a bullet already in the chamber, so he didn't need to perform the lever action.
Alright, time to get this over with, he began pacing in with light feet, looking to not leave so much as a foot print in the ground, and entered the confines of the cavern. It smelled worse inside, but when he considered that, he quickly put it in the back of his mind. He didn't want the smell to steal away his focus, and so he immediately began paying more attention to the sounds he made, the sounds everything else made, and the terrain ahead. Everything was silent, even while he was walking, just the way he liked it. As he walked, he stayed close to the walls, and he kept the carbine's long barrel pointed downward so that nothing would see the tip before they saw him, and every time he reached a corner that he had to turn around, he paced up to it as gently as he possibly could and peered around.
Odd, he thought to himself. It didn't look like anything had been dragged this way. By now, he figured he would have seen blood trails along the ground, or signs of something being dragged in general, but there was absolutely nothing. As he went through the possibilities of what it might be, the slow realization that this might not be a night stalker terrified. The only creature he'd ever encountered that had the physical capabilities to hoist someone up and carry them somewhere was a Deathclaw, and fuck, he was not ready for a Deathclaw. He stopped, his breath almost lifting further than he wanted it to, and began thinking about turning back. Before he was done contemplating, he pushed the flap of his trench coat open and looked inside. There were two frag mines, not enough to fight a Deathclaw or worse, multiple Deathclaws, by far. Likely wasn't even enough to give him a chance to survive, much less win. Furthermore, the Trail Carbine was a respectable weapon when facing geckos of any kind, humans, cazadores, night stalkers, but not Deathclaws. Shit, he cursed. In or out?
It was still early to conclude if it was a Deathclaw, however, because he'd never seen one exhibit the behavior of lifting anything up, but he was still so worried that it might be. If not a Deathclaw, if not Night Stalkers, what the fuck did it? Wait a minute, maybe there was another cavern. Maybe he had the wrong one. No, dumbass. It smells like someone's been dead in here for a while, so whatever did it is in here, or has been. His inner monologue kept twisting and turning, looping over, shooting straight up before falling back down, and in the end, he had no fucking clue what was going on. Then all of a sudden, he knew exactly what was going on. He was overthinking this. He had to leave, and he had to leave really fucking fast. He turned around and . . .
"Grrrrr . . . " he heard, followed by breaths, and pebbles falling from the walls, somewhere towards the entrance. Whatever it was, he could feel it moving through the cavern.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, he panicked, but thank god for his previous experience with caverns, because he immediately conjured a plan of action. He turned back and began moving further into the cavern, away from whatever had come through the entrance, quicker than before. He remained standing up this time however, so his trench coat wouldn't drag, and he kept close to the wall so no tracks would be smack in the middle of the path. The trail carbine was held up this time, forward, and he'd shoot the brains out of anything that was hostile. Didn't matter what it was, because now, he was in a fight, whether he'd been seen yet or not. The last thing he wanted was to trip, so while he was on high alert, he made it an undeniable fact that he'd avoid stepping on something that could cause him to lose his footing.
Every inch further inside he was, every foot, was terrifying. He kept pointing everywhere sporadically, with his steps still as light as can be, and then he found himself aligning the iron sight with something humanoid. A human head, with bright green eyes staring back at him. A young man, trapped in a cell improvised from two shopping carts. And then another, a young female, with green eyes, too, staring at him, in the same predicament. They began making noises out of the tape around their mouths. Savior, they must have thought, but he lowered his weapon, pointed his index finger at them and whispered an intense few words, "Shut the fuck up." Rem's eyes were wide and intense. He looked around afterwards. This was the end of the cavern, and he knew what he was looking for.
He was screaming inside of his head, wishing, hoping, begging for a break, and then he saw it. A crawl space, a place that ants and other post war insects made a home out of, and enough to fit his body into. Fuck did he forget about staying as silent as possible. He moved towards it as quick as possible. He made sounds this time, but before long, he was inside. The two teenagers watched as he tucked his body into the hole, squirmed and scooted further inside, and they were scared again when they couldn't see him anymore. They were confused, was he going to help or not? Once Rem was inside, he turned his head to the cavern where the two teens were held and saw things he missed in his fearful stupor. Body parts, strewn throughout, and blood. Machetes, and bags. When he looked into one of the bags, he saw one blue eye staring back at him, swimming in a ball of human body parts and organs.
What manner of fucking freak . . . he asked himself, and then he saw it. Not a night stalker, and it wasn't a Deathclaw either, but he almost thought it was. It was tall, ten feet tall, actually, and he had seen these things before. A super mutant, green-yellowish, vascular, and with its teeth gritted tightly against each other. It had a vicious look on its face, and it was soon joined by more of them. Six more, actually, making a total of seven. Each of them was armed with either submachine guns, assault rifles, and one of them had a mini gun. What in the fuck had he gotten himself into?
In a few select places throughout his body, he felt some minor, stinging pain. The crawl space that he had gone into had small earthen spikes protruding from its uneven circumference, specifically the ceiling, and in his haste, some of them had gashed against his clothes. His left arm stung but it didn't bleed because the tip of the spike hadn't penetrated the trench coat he was wearing. His stomach hurt, too, and there was blood there forming above the small gash, staining his white shirt. Even his face saw some of it, but even as a thin trail of blood crossed the expanse of his cheek, he couldn't stop looking back at what was going on in the cavern itself.
They sauntered, these creatures. They carried their enormous height and weight with an ungraceful laziness, looking burly and slow like bears, and it was something that he remembered. Again, he had seen them before, but never like this. This was positively the first time in his long stretch of life as an adventurer in the Mojave Wasteland that he had ever seen super mutants act this way, and there was something odd about their . . . skin color. The fatc that they were so different was what hit him hardest as he looked around and saw all the blood, saw all of the gore, and especially when he saw the vivid fear in the teens' eyes. They were sweating, quivering, and when he looked closely enough, he realized that not every bit of moisture on their faces was sweat. They were crying, too. The idea that he was going to help them was so innate that he didn't even consider that it'd be easier for him to get out alone, but how?
After all of the super mutants were done hoisting their oversized bodies into the last clearing in the cavern, one of them walked further than any of them, straight towards the two teens. The seconds slowed down, Rem's mind started processing the tense scene very quickly, and for a moment, it was as if the minds of the three humans were synchronized. Like mice faced with a snake in one small enclosure, their instincts brought them to wonder not when, or how, but who was up next. The super mutant's eyes shifted from one of them to the other with all of the disgusting indifference in the world, and the two teens looked up with terrified eyes. No, Rem begged, as the super mutant reached out. When it finally grabbed one of the improvised cages, it felt like he had been waiting hours to see who it'd be.
She turned to see, and started crying even more than she had been before as she watched the young man get dragged away, towards the rest of the super mutants. She started screaming through the tape, "HELP HIM. PLEASE." It came out muffled, unintelligible, and while she was screaming as best as she could with her mouth under wraps, she was staring in Rem's direction. He felt her eyes, and it didn't feel like any normal gaze that had ever been placed on him. He actually felt it settling in his chest and stomach, taking his breath away and making him breathe faster and harder than he wanted to to take it back. The female tugged and shifted her hands as fervently as she could, and she ignored the burning sensation that came from the friction of the ropes against her wrists. "DO SOMETHING," she yelled, but it all came out muffled. Rem understood what she was saying nonetheless.
When Rem looked towards the boy, he was crying, too. He was pulling at the ropes as hard as the girl. No, harder, because he was nearing the last moments of his life. Adrenaline was pumping through his veins, his emotions pushed his body to a degree he would never be able to reach under any other circumstances. The ropes loosened, much to everyone's surprise. Moments later, his hands were freed, and he reached out just when the green freak was undoing the cage. His fingers gripped both carts, one with each hand, and he pulled back to keep it closed, unwilling to be taken out. "Pitiful human!" it yelled. The way it spoke made it sound more like an uneducated man that had only recently learned how to speak. "I'll crush your bones! And eat your brains!"
Rem watched with his eyes still wide, unblinking, and breathing hard. The super mutant stuck his fingers into the openings in the boys' cage and turned around in one sweep, dragging the cage along the ground, and releasing it in the direction of the others. The boy held on for dear life as he bounced around inside, but the cage didn't open. They all stared silently at the human's insolence after that, and then one of them had simply had enough. The one who had the mini gun stood up, taller, bigger, and meaner than the rest. The boy looked up, terrified, wondering what this thing was going to do, and then it simply kicked the cage in one surreal moment. When it did, it did so with such strength that the two shopping carts came apart, broke two of the boy's fingers, and freed him from the cage. He rolled towards one of the walls because of the force, and when he stopped rolling and opened his eyes, he was staring right into Rem's eyes, who was at arm's reach. Rem stared back, thrown aback by the situation he was just put into, and his hands started to shake. He twitched, almost reached out to grab the boys' arm, but he stopped himself. He had been in situations similar to this before, and this was what it resulted in. The experience manifested in a resolute kind of control that he had been proud of for the past few years up until this very moment.
The boy, on the other hand, immediately reached towards Rem, hoping to be pulled into the safety of the crawl space, but all he saw was Rem pull away. How could he . . . Before he could crawl in, a large green hand grabbed his ankle and pulled him back. "You wont escape me!" one of them yelled. The boy reached up and pulled the tape off of his mouth, "Help me! Please! They're going to chop me to pieces!" The mutants ignored the statement, figuring he was randomly begging for help. Rem felt an intense tingling sensation in his chest. Surprise, but not at what the boy said, but because he saw one of the super mutants grasp a bloodied machete. No, he silently begged again, gritting his teeth. All of a sudden he pointed the carbine, losing control of himself. The barrel stuck out from the crawl space but nobody saw it, and he aligned the iron sight with the thing's head, ready to blast its head into two pieces. His finger hovered over the trigger. But . . . he realized again that this wasn't the right thing to do. This would be an early shot.
If he fired, there was no way he'd be able to get out of the crawl space and mount a successful attack before getting peppered with bullets, himself. "OH GOD," he heard, and then a piercing scream unlike any he had ever heard in his entire life resonated through the cavern, jettisoning into the wasteland outside, for nobody to hear. This thing, the super mutant, it started hacking, slashing, butchering the boy like he was beef. It was unsure if whether Rem's mind was blocking out everything but the boy's head, but all he realized he could see was his face, and he had his eyebrows furrowed while he continued yelling in horror at what was being done to him. Rem's hands continued shaking, the iron sight still aligned with the super mutant's head but then . . . he turned it away, and found himself pointing at the boy's head. Here was the correct shot, but he kept hesitating. Don't do it, he compelled, If I shoot now, we're all dead. But why was he still pointing the gun? Why was he still so ready to fire? His humanity was clawing at him, evoking every shred of decency that he had inside, attempting to convince him to take the shot because that was simply the right thing to do. To end the boy's suffering. But . . . but, again, it was an early shot
The female screamed each time the boy did, and each time the super mutant swung the machete. It got worse when some of his blood landed on her, splattering across her pretty face. She eventually started to lose herself. Her mind was a mess. She kept thinking about how much it must have hurt, about how scared he was, and about how that man who had come in here earlier could sit by with his hands free without doing anything about this. It was true. It really was true. Everyone in the wasteland . . . everyone, was on his or her own. There was no humanity, only survival, she thought. And then her muffled yet intense screams under the tape got softer, and eventually turned into nothing but delicate whimpers. She didn't have the strength, or no, she just didn't have the will anymore, to struggle.
The screaming stopped in a painful, pitiful squeal that Rem would never, ever forget. And when he lowered the trail carbine and looked, the boy was done. Blood all over the place, body parts left and right, and . . . and . . . greedy fingers . . . reaching for the remains. Rem couldn't believe it anymore. Quite simply, he couldn't. His chest bulged, and he vomitted into his mouth. The girl? She just watched. She stared, tears still streaming down her cheeks, quieted by the fact that there simply wasn't . . . anything else to hope for.