~It didn't take long for the tunnelers to finish picking apart the black armored ghost's remains. It took exactly 50 seconds from when the last man in the platoon was overwhelmed by the pack for the tunnelers to wander back onto the trail to the south. Over the decades I've been alive, I have come to understand just how much humans love patterns. They're safe, and they make a whole lot of things easier. Other living things like patterns too, those monstrous hunters from underground are no exception. Today it was my job to make sure they wouldn't steer off the path back to their nest. It'd be bad for everyone if the last few remaining caravans in the mojave had an unexpected visit from a group of scaley shadows. Normally the pack will migrate on their paths in bursts. The pack moves for around 30 seconds before they stop for about 10. My best theory for this is that they are listening, and feeling the ground for vibrations in a pattern. And today they caught something, things actually. A little ways south west of the Understone and south of Quarryville is some ghost town that was wiped out by a plague years ago. Normally the biggest threat there is a few scary looking dogs. Today however, a group of military men happened to be going through the remains of the town's old saloon. And one of them started making noise during the 10 seconds they shouldn't have. No amount of firepower they had could stop the crowd tearing through them.~

Orion closed his journal seeing the tunnelers had moved down a hill southward out of view. Carefully he descended the small cliff he had been perched upon amidst the bloodshed. He quickly began searching through the remains of the small platoon. Taking the small amount of ammo and food they had. Disassembling most of their weapons, and wrapping them in some of the soldiers garments before stuffing them in his bag. He rolled the final soldier over, the one who had fallen last. Seeing that scorched and ripped patch of a two headed bear on the soldier's coat under the dim dark red rays of the sun desperately trying to shine through the toxic clouds in the atmosphere was an all too familiar sight slowly becoming less and less frequent. As Orion took the last few bullets out of the corpse' hand. He looked back over the hill towards the south. The Tunnelers were back in his view, only because they had gone further south onto elevated ground. Having now made sure the tunnelers wouldn't be interfering with the caravans heading to the Understone, Orion wandered up the hill at the northern part of town. Reaching the top he saw a small graveyard, what was strange though was most of the graves seemed to be freshly dug within at least a few weeks.

Orion then hears a cough ahead of him

"Like the handywork?" A man in a straw hat and a shovel on his back walked out from behind the water tower pointing a small screwed together pistol.

Orion did not respond as the man approached him.

"Quite the firefight down there, you wouldn't happen to have any ammo would you?"

The man asked him with an actual crooked smile, his jaw clearly having been broken.

"You'll be getting some soon if you don't run off."

Orion said his right hand on his hip beneath his coat.

The man coughed as he laughed in response, clutching his chest and losing his breath. The man kept stepping closer, however his coughing got worse and worse as he did. Until he finally fell onto the dirt in front of Orion. The man groaned looking up at Orion, but then sighing.

"I'm sorry.. I can't help myself sometimes."

The man mutters

"What the hell are you talkin 'bout old fool?"

Orion looked down at the man annoyed by whatever game he seemed to be playing.

"For years i've just been *cough* finding bodies out in the wild and.. burying them here."

The man said, Orion looked around the graveyard puzzled.

"It *cough* made me feel like I was bringing them peace. Even though i'd constantly put myself in danger *cough* just to get to the damned things. It brought *cough* me peace too for a while, but now the plague that killed this town has finally *cough* gotten to me. I thought I was the lucky one, to not catch it when everyone else did. I was wrong."

The man began coughing more and more as Orion stood there listening uncomfortably.

"I know you have *cough* no reason to do this. But please when I die, bury me like I did everyone here."

The man looked up at Orion, for the first time in decades Orion saw a man who was desperate and afraid. Not because he was scared to die, but because he was scared he had not lived. Orion sighed and after a few moments nodded. He then looked over the hilltops as he helped the man onto his feet. Looking over the horizon he could see the heart of the Mojave. A tower with the mocking reminder of how much everyone had lost just within 20 years