"In the name of the M-Mother and her Saints we return one of her beloved children, to the b-blessed Earth we give his mortal remains."
Kruger's boy was doing a fine job of filling in for the old Pastor, especially now that Pastor Kruger was dead and being buried. Jerimiah did a great job giving last rites to everyone, only really messing up when it came time to bury his own father.
Something irrational and ugly rose in my chest then, a mix of anger and envy at Kruger even as I slowly lowered his sheet wrapped body down into the earth. He got to die and his boy got to live, it was the natural way of things, eventually the child buries their parents.
Me? I got to live in failure and bury my son and husband.
"Annabelle, you alright?" The man opposite me whispers as we lower Kruger's body. "Your eye is bleeding again."
"M'fine." I whisper back.
I had to hide the twinge of pain as I reached up and quickly brushed away the blood leaking out from under the bandage. The body jerked on our end briefly and I grit my teeth as I let the rope slide slowly and smoothly through my hand. It was hot and I could feel the rope pull away bits of skin but the calluses were good for something I guess. The relief I felt at not dropping Kruger's body overwhelmed the ugly feelings and they went back to simmering where I could ignore them.
"... ashes to ashes, dust to dust." Jeremiah intoned with a handful of dirt tossed atop the lowered corpse, shining rivers of tears running down his cheeks.
Looking down at the wrapped body just lying on the dirt as we slipped the ropes out from under it I couldn't help but feel angry again. Kruger deserved a proper burial with a proper casket, not six feet and a sheet away from being buzzard bait. But well… Most of our carpenters were dead. Enough of them were gone that making actual caskets would have taken far too long, even if all we were doing was making long crates. Then there was the fact the generator was just plain unfixable, being little more than bits of metal all over the valley. So no power tools to work with.
The final fucking nail to all that was that there just wasn't enough decent lumber, scavenging materials or no.
'Just a bunch of damn holes in the ground and scrap planks are all that'll mark em.'
Looking over to two graves specifically I pause. I helped lower them like the others despite offers to take my place. There had been no time taken to really stand around and grieve, I just lowered them and then helped with the rest. Maybe I should just go over and just…
My fists clench and I feel the stickiness of blood in my rope burns, my missing eye throbs like it's still there and there is warmth. Whelp, according to every other time that happened my empty socket was leaking like a spigot again.
Best go find that healer and make sure nothings wrong.
Twenty minutes later I was grumbling and scratching at dried blood. You'd think finding a bunch of bleaters hanging around in the ruins of town wouldn't be that hard! Fucking goats, always disappearing behind rocks so they could butt you off cliffs.
But… well I guess I shouldn't call them bleaters, even in the sanctity of my own mind. Earl was particular about that, especially once he extended the hand and didn't get bitten for it. Earl was particular about a lot of things, even more when it came to stuff that was always done. And when the stories started spreading about Sonic he didn't hesitate to take advantage. He reached out to the blea- to the goats and tried to find a compromise for all of us.
To this day I am still not sure how he talked the local tribe into letting us prospect so close to their home. Any other prospector town would have gotten raided day and night until they all died or drove the goats out. Not exactly an easy thing to do! Us prospectors at the end of the day have to compete with one another for decent claims and no one will cry foul if we get run off by our own. Maybe them goats have tribal conflicts and such but ain't nothing that brings fighting family together better than a threat.
If one tribe or clan gets shoved out, two typically show up to kick ass and bash heads.
'Us humans have plenty of trouble just getting along with one another, not a surprise people not human want nothing to do with us as neighbors. How the hell did you do it Earl? How did ya walk up to a goat and ask for peace and then get it instead of a horn in your eye?'
Earl was great at that come to think of it, it certainly got him lucky with an angry, drunk lonely widow. Though most men wouldn't think it lucky getting saddled with another man's kid so I guess it came around to me being lucky too. It-
THWACK!
"FUCK!"
My boot met an old rail tie and I ended up tripping over it and facing planting into a pile of gravel. Cursing and grumbling I brushed myself off and looked around to see where I had taken myself in my ruminations.
It was the mine…
Before I could stop myself I turned my head to look at that spot. I know there was nothing there to see anymore, we had just finished burying everyone. It didn't matter though, it was as if I could still see him there, lying broken, bloody and just so very bruised. Pulverised and desecrated.
It wasn't enough I had to see the man I woulda married if just had more money to do it right dead and mangled, Emerson was there too. My son, my own son, butchered and broken… and I knew the animal who'd done it.
Speaking of animals…
I looked back towards the mine and saw the Foreman leading a bunch of goats out of the mines, the one leading down to the ruins and jewels it looked like. Wearing a worn and dirty pair of overalls, his baker's boy hat hiding that premature bald spot and his hilariously tiny specs. The foreman was carrying a detonator while one of the goats unwound a roll of detcord behind the group as they moved up the spiral path.
"Foreman!" I called out and walked over to meet him.
"Miss Jackson." Foreman Welk nodded at me somberly before frowning. "You're bleeding, Jackson."
"It started during the… service, fresh hurts and all that." I really didn't want to get too into it and tried to downplay it all with a shrug. "Came looking for one of them healers and see if I can get it looked at again."
The cloth I was using was really starting to get irritating, what with the blood soaking it and drying. I'd probably have to tear another strip to use to cover the socket. It was a damn shame that nearly all our medical supplies went up with the town.
"T'would be me you're looking for." A deep though feminine voice spoke.
Out from among the goats came one of them, a hornless lady goat that wore a vest and nothing else but the typical foot and hand wraps. Kinda odd when you looked at the men and they all wore knee length dresses and were covered in body paint.
'Mobian weirdos, the whole lot of em.'
As the healer goat got closer I saw that her vest had tons of pockets sewn onto the front, many of which were bulging with fresh herbs. She came to a stop in front of me, crossing her arms over her chest and tapping a foot impatiently.
"Well? You want me to climb you to look at that eye?!" She glared and pointed down. "Sit or something!"
"Little goat fucker…" I grumbled though obviously not quiet enough if the sudden smirk on her face was anything to go by but I sat down.
Sitting down on crossed legs I avoided looking at the goat now in my face easily enough, what with the whole right side of my face being a blind spot. I looked back to Foreman Welk and wondered at what they were blowing. Didn't seem like we'd go back to mining any time soon and seemed more unlikely the goats would help with that.
"What's with the detonator, Foreman?" I decided to ask. "It's a bit early to go back to mining ain't it?"
"Remember those warnings our… neighbors gave us when we set up shop here?" He said in reply.
"That if we find any ruins we should bury them back up and pretend we didn't?" He nodded gravely at that. What really, he can't mean…
"This isn't the first time a dig has stumbled across apparently cursed ruins, Miss Jackson." Welk sighed in regret, the various nearby goats looking on with dead serious expressions. "I wasn't a foreman at the time but I still remember the first time I saw a ghost. The thing laughed at bullets and whatever else we tried to attack it with, had no choice but to leave our dead and wounded behind. We tried to prepare to go back in but the minute the sun fell it came out after us."
"... You never said anything about it before." Part of me didn't want to believe him, wanted to go find a ruin and wander around calling for whatever spooks were around to come out so I could see for myself. Another part of me remembered all the ghost stories I ever heard and began to realize they all had something in common at the core of them.
"Because the company demanded we shut up and I didn't want to believe what I saw!" Welk snapped at me before taking a calming breath. "I was a fool then and I was a fool now to let myself get talked into excavating the ruin for treasure. Maybe there is no curse and it was just bad luck but I'm not taking any more chances!"
"A wise step to take even if it is late in the taking." A gruff voice and I turned to see a goat wearing a dusty brown cloak walk to the front of the goats. "Healer Brandybuck, how is your patient?"
"Either her nerves are dead in this socket or she's depressed, Chief." The healer replied and I bristled at the words. "She hasn't flinched at any prodding but it looks like the wound was reopened by blood pressure."
"Hmm." The goat Chief hummed and walked closer.
I got a better look at him. The goats had always been great at disappearing behind rocks but that cloak he was wearing could probably let him hide in plain sight. Under the folds of the cloak hinted at body paint of even fancier designs than the average goat. It made sense, he was the boss goat of the lot after all. He had a staff that was probably about as ornate as this clan could afford to make and probably wasn't meant to be used as a weapon. His eyes gleamed out from the shadows of his hood and his long beard, streaked with gray spilled out.
"You have the look of loss and rage in that eye, lass." He stated plainly and I glared at him.
"It ain't none of your business!" I growled and then yelped at the sudden jolt of pain in my empty eye socket.
"If you're going to be angry, be angry but at least stay still while I work!" Healer Brandybuck huffed at my glare before returning to work on my eye socket with a small brush covered in a kind of cream.
"We have lost people too, lass. One of my sons was paying respects to his mother when the machines defiled her grave." At his words my anger sputtered out, I didn't want to stare him in the eye anymore but I refused to look away, Momma ain't raise no coward and I wasn't about to be one now. "He and many others died trying to protect our sacred places. The survivors told us of the machines rampaging through these lands but we were far too late in warning you."
That brought up a bunch of confusing feelings I wasn't at all comfortable about. Even with them having not attacked us before, the sight of the goat warparty seemed like certain death after the town was blown up. Nothing happened though, we didn't have to try to make a stand with whatever guns we had on ourselves when the attack happened. It was hard enough work trying to ward off goat raids with long rifles, with mostly just revolvers? You were asking for death. But instead they helped us with the wounded and then came with us back to town.
And back in town we found nothing but pain and soul deep hurt.
Well nothing but all the nearly untouched guns in the ruins of the armory anyway.
Most of the men were badly wounded or dead but the rest agreed with us that we needed to do something. Even if it meant trusting the goats with our children and our wounded we had to pay back the pain. And so we followed the goats to their home and grouped up with their warriors. We paid back the pain… even if it cost us a limb or an eye.
Thinking about how we fought together reminded me of a few things I thought I'd never get to ask a goat.
'Well if we're being all sentimental with one another.'
"So… why did you let us prospect so close to your homes?" I asked. "I've seen towns get raided constantly even at half as close as we are."
"Hrm, it was the first time in my life a human had ever asked to be our neighbor." The Chief replied simply. "At least… asked without implying it was some kind of threat. He came to us, Earl Thompson, heart on his sleeve and no malice in his eyes. 'Please will you let us live in peace?' he asked us. It would have been easy to remember all the times we hadn't been left to live in peace. But Earl Thompson asked for peace in truth and in spirit, this I saw in his eyes. And so I agreed and aside from the doom you suffered from more than we did we have not regretted it."
"Yeah… that sounds like Earl alright." There was an overwhelming mix of grief and affection in my chest and it took everything to mask a sob as a swallow.
"... He was your husband wasn't he?" The Chief said and I didn't answer but he didn't need it anyway. "I am so sorry, you have lost a great man."
This time I wasn't able to hide the sob and had to grit my teeth to stop anymore from coming out. Mother and Saints preserve me, don't let me bawl like a little girl in front of all these people!
"Well, good news!" Brandybuck said snidely. "Your tear ducts are still working and making a mess of my work!"
"Right! Sorry!" Despite her tone I was thankful as it cut through the grief I was being overwhelmed by. Sniffing and wiping at my remaining eye I looked back to the Foreman. "So you're going to blow the tunnel leading to the ruins?"
"Yes I am." Welk nodded as he finished wiring the detcord to the detonator. Placing hands on the plunger he gave a loud call. "FIRE IN THE HOLE! FIRE IN THE HOLE! FIRE IN THE HOLE!"
The goat mobians ducked low to the ground and a moment later there was an echoing explosive. The ground shook and the sound of heavy rocks crashing echoed back up at us. I would have sat up to take in the damage but the healer hadn't budged from her spot and kept working on my eye socket. It didn't sound like the explosion had only taken out the tunnels leading to the ruins. If everyone stuck around to continue prospecting they'd have to excavate the whole area or just dig a new pit. The ground loosened by the explosion wouldn't allow anything else.
"Well that's that." Foreman Welk said with a sigh. "I hope you are satisfied, Chief Took."
"I asked and you agreed at once." The Chief replied with a nod. "It is good to know you have the sense to beware old things. Our ancestors left great danger buried and locked away, often for a reason, sometimes it killed them to do so but these things are better left buried."
"I am not going to pretend I don't know that anymore." Welk nodded solemnly. "I'll have to put up a vote but it's not like our financial situation has changed any, if anything it's gotten worse. I think we're going to be sticking it out, recovering and trying to mine the other spots we tested."
"I hope you do in fact stay." Chief Took said to my and Welk's surprise. "Your group has done us no harm directly and your presence will likely keep away those who would do us harm. It is your claim after all that the companies respect and not ours."
"I'm sure it will quell a lot of worries my people may have about staying Chief." The Foreman replied with some visible relief.
At that point the healer wrapped a fresh bandage around my head and stepped away from me, brushing hands clean and putting supplies away.
"We done?" I asked.
"Tis finished, try to keep your blood pressure down." She huffed and immediately walked away.
"Brandybuck has no bedside manner unlike her mother but she makes up for it in talent." Chief Took commented before he and his people walked after her.
I took a moment to carefully prod the bandage the healer wrapped around me. Gotta admit it was hard to trust a mobian healer, reputation for good natural drugs or not. Anyway, now that I had my eye checked out I had one more place to go today before I'm ready.
"Miss Jackson." I heard Welk say and met his concerned gaze. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine." Brushing my clothes off I begin walking. "Just have to do one more thing today."
"... AJ." That was a new one from mister prim and proper, so I stopped and looked at him again. "Are you okay?"
"... My son is dead and so is the man I woulda married." The anger was back, I tried to keep a lid on it. The Foreman didn't deserve it and doctors orders said to keep the blood pressure down. "How do you think I feel, Foreman?"
"Just… just promise me you won't do anything rash, okay AJ?" He said, the anxiety and worry clear to hear.
I scoffed, spit in my face why don't ya?
"Momma ain't raise no coward, Foreman!" I pointed at him, glaring the best I could with one eye. "Only reason I'll check out early is if I get sick or someone saw me out!"
That seemed to relieve Welk and he let me leave. Before I left I stopped back at the camp we all managed to piece together. I picked up Earl's knife and Emerson's revolver from my tent and put on my wide brimmed hat and duster coat, finally I strapped my hunting rifle over my shoulders and finished my preparations. It was going to take most of the day to travel where I needed to go, I needed to be dressed and armed for it.
Thankfully everyone was too busy trying to recover from what happened to pay much attention to me as I left.
It was evening by the time I arrived, the hike was harsh but I made good time otherwise it would have been night.
Looking down into the canyon I took in the sight of the battlefield.
The crazy doctor's machines were scattered all about, shot and bashed to pieces. There were plenty of crates and other non-robotic machines left lying about, no doubt Foreman Welk would be coming here to scavenge and try to recoup losses and repay the company for destroyed property. Come to think of it, all my weapons weren't completely paid off either and were still company property. Wish I cared I was going to make it harder on them all when this was found out.
Looking over the canyon again I noted the scorch marks from many explosions.
'We didn't get all of them, that bomb hucking one got away.'
What an utter pain in the ass to nail that one had been. Don't even think we managed to get it very often despite how many of us were shooting at it in the end. Thing danced about like it saw our bullets coming a mile away.
I looked over to the spot I had been lying at when I had been sniping with the others. There was a mostly collapsed jagged ledge there now, the missiles had done a number. It had killed some but maimed and injured more.
Some feelings of guilt rose. I hadn't helped in that fight as much as I could have or at all to be honest. How could I? The moment I saw that rabbit I just knew who I was looking at and knew what I had to do. It was obvious now as it was then. A machine wouldn't have bothered to kick someone while they were down, even more so when that someone was already dead. A machine would have broken my boy and moved on, not brutalize him more. No it took something alive to do that kinda evil and there was only one living thing down there.
I had realized this the moment I lined up his head, I can still remember the jolt to my heart when I knew that shit colored rodent was the one that killed my family. And of fucking course it couldn't be easy!
Somehow he had seen me coming, just turned his head to the side and dodged the bullet. It had been enough to make me freeze. Was the killer of my family some kind of super freak?! Something like the Blue Blur!? How fucking unfair could it get?! By the time I had shook myself out of it he had almost reached the next line of cover. I whipped my rifle up shooting again but again he had dodged the bullet, this time jumping over it and slipping into cover. Desperate to cause him pain I had shot at his exposed ears but he saw that coming too.
The way the animal that killed my family was managing to avoid me had made me sloppy. I fell for his tricks and tried to shoot him when he poked his head out but he feinted me. When he slung a machine over his back as a shield I had grown desperate to hurt him and started wasting bullets on trying to shoot through it. It hadn't been enough.
Then more machines came charging out of the ship and those crabs blew us all to hell.
The explosion had cost me an eye and scrambled my brains. I owed my life to another woman that died that day, if it wasn't for her I would have just slid off the crumbling edge and smashed my head open on the rocks. Eventually I managed to get back enough of my wits to realize my family's killer was getting away.
Bleeding and dizzy I had sighted him anyway and tried to kill him.
The distance had been too great, his swinging about too unpredictable. I had missed every shot and he managed to get aboard the airship as it took off.
'I'll never forget that fucking mocking grin he sent me. That piece of shit knew who I was too! I just know it! He looked directly at me and smiled.'
Suddenly I heard a scrabbling noise come from the canyon walls below me. Before I could lean over to see what was causing it a hand appeared at the ledge. Soon a man was pulling himself up over the ledge and he was soon followed by some snake mobian with metal limbs.
"Firm flat land at last!" The snake exclaimed. "I am never doing ze free climbing again for as long as I live!"
"Quit your bellyaching, Jacque!" The man said. "Not my fault the bots burned all our climbing rope in the jeep! At least we found what Robotnik was looking at."
"But what does it mean Monsieur Jones?" The snake, Jacque asked. "If zere was treasure he took it with him. All zere was left was ze strange glyphs, no?"
"It was glyphs I kinda recognized." The human, Jones replied. "From an expedition that doesn't happen all too often, it doesn't bring back much but…"
"Er… Monsieur Jone we have ze company." The snake said as he finally noticed me.
"Dammit! Woah there!" The man had obviously been distracted by his own thoughts and tried to subtly reach towards his side arm. I was faster.
"Woah yourself, friend." I said warningly, keeping Emerson's revolver up and aimed between the two, ready to pivot to either in an instant. "I remember the two of you, didn't ya stay behind in the mobian town?"
"Hey this wasn't our fight!" Jones protested, whining like the coward he was. "We weren't even supposed to be here!"
"Then why were you here?" I asked, guard and revolver still up.
"Well…" Jacque hesitated with a quick look at Jones. The man was muttering angrily to himself however and the snake continued. "Monsieur Jones in his research found ze trail of a relic. We tracked it down but ze the locals… well zay were not so happy with us. We had to give up ze relic but were told to get a different one as well for penance."
"At least they didn't check our pockets." Jones grumbled. "Gave them what they wanted but we found a lot of little stuff that'll be worth a lot."
"Monsieur I am certain zay never thought we'd actually get ze artefact." Jacque said, his servile tone breaking briefly and showing some irritation. "We could have just left!"
"And what do we do if we have to come back to the region someday?" Jones retorted. "Just sneak around and hope we don't get run off because the locals remembered how we didn't keep our word?"
'The hell?' I thought as I watched the two shoot the shit. 'Did they just forget about me? Well, it doesn't matter I guess.'
"You boys leaving soon I take it?" I said as I deliberately holstered Emerson's revolver. They were surprised at me reminding them I was there and doubly so at my next words. "Take me with you."
"Boys? Lady please!" Jones protested again as he stood up, nice and relaxed. "What do you have to make it even worth it?"
"I can pay my way." I thought of money buried in a little quiet corner, meant for a marriage that was never going to happen now. Might as well use it for something.
"That… will help but it's not what I meant." Jones said with a sigh.
Suddenly there was a blur of movement, Jones had his own pistol up and sighted me square in the chest. Emerson's revolver was up too but I was a fraction of a second slower. It didn't matter to me none, if this was it so be it. I'd be pissed my last moments weren't spent taking my family's killer with me but at least I'd see them again. I stared down Jones, his eyes were dark emotionless, neither of us flinched.
"... It'll have to do." Jones finally said after a long moment and eased his pistol back into its holster, something I did as well. "Bit of advice. You're going to have to retrain yourself how to shoot a little. You lost your right eye so everything will look a bit off to you. Your aim was off by a couple inches, you'd have shot nothing but air."
I could feel my face flush.
"Fucks sake…"
"It can be fixed. Either learn to shoot left-handed or hold your guns differently so you can aim with your left eye." Jones said reassuringly before waving for me to follow him. "We got the car hidden in a crevice just this way."
As I moved to follow him I couldn't help but look back to where I had last seen that rabbit, the killer of my family. The now empty spot in the air above the canyon.
'I'll get that rabbit if it's the last thing I do.'
-TBC-
Author Note: This part did not want to be written and I had to sit myself down and try to wrap my head around it for a couple of hours. I really wanted to do this part in third person since I've got a lot of experience in that but I'm not going to get any better at writing in first person if I ignore every opportunity to do so and practice. So I wrote this part in first person and struggled for much of it to really find AJ's "voice" in this part. I think I've done a decent enough job showing her thought process as different from Red's but some parts I can't help but feel sounded a bit too much like him.
Overall I'm not entirely happy with this segment but neither was I expecting to "get gud" in only 10 chapters.
Anyway this is the final chapter of the first story arc! Next chapter is the start of Arc 2: Underboss.