Caravan

<center> ## CARAVAN ### by Jon Farrar ## [[Begin|Page 1]]</center>

## Chapter 1 For the first time in his life, Michael knew what it was like to be truly alone. His parents had left the house on occasion before, but between his young age and the terrors stalking the wasteland outside, they had little reason to stay away from home for too long. This time seemed different, however, and that was why Michael had taken it upon himself to walk after them to Summerset. His parents hadn’t been too specific on the exact location or nature of Summerset, though they did seem to look forward to some sort of vacation while they were there. As Michael’s eyes swept across the horizon, seeing little more than dead plants and scorched earth, he found himself wondering what kind of resort they could have possibly found. As far as he could see, all there was to enjoy was a dull, brown void of a world, and they had told him countless times how dangerous it was to venture out into it…and yet they had, and soon, he had as well. The sun only served to scorch the land further, and the sun hung alone in a cloudless sky, leaving the poor child absolutely nothing to shield him from its intense rays. He felt the sun bearing down upon his short and straight red hair, and found himself wishing he had brought a hat. After what must have been hours, Michael was no longer alone…though he found himself wishing he was. The company he'd found was some sort of grotesque bear-like creature. This was unlike any bear Michael had ever encountered in his storybooks, however. This one was an enormous beast wearing a line of faintly glowing spines down its back. When the creature noticed Michael quivering in fear, its next action was to stand up on its hind legs, its enormous frame blocking out the sun, but doing nothing to alleviate the fear in the boy’s heart. Michael tried to run, but he felt an enormous paw swipe at his back, bowling him onto his stomach. He managed to roll over just in time to see the towering mass of hair and teeth descend upon him, its gnarled claws ready to perform their grisly duty. [[Next|Page 2]]

Suddenly, the beast was being pried from atop Michael as he looked on in shock. He watched in amazement as a bald and enormous man, easily a match for the bear in both size and power, lifted the creature over his head. Michael didn’t know where the big man came from, but he was happy for his help all the same. “Thank you…!” he managed to gasp despite the intense fear that had gathered in his throat, creating a lump that it was difficult to talk or breathe around. “No thanks needed, lad!” the large man grunted in a deep, raspy voice as he threw the mutated bear to the side. With the struggle concluded for the time being, Michael could clearly see the man’s arms, morphed into a grotesque shape due to the bulging muscle beneath and covered in various scars, likely from the same source. “Caravans ‘elp people; that’s wot we do!” “C…caravans?” “’old yer questions, please…?” Without warning, Michael was swept up in the freakishly large arms of his savior and taken aboard a nearby bus that he hadn’t heard approaching over the sound of the mutant bear’s assault. With a meaty paw, the man shut the door behind him as the bear came crashing against the door, rocking the bus onto its left wheels briefly. As it came crashing back onto the road, the large man placed Michael in a seat in the front of the bus, next to a pile of crates. In a flash, he fired up the engine and sped away from the scene of the attack. [[Previous|Page 1]] | [[Next|Page 3]]

With the altercation concluded, Michael finally managed to catch his breath and assess what had just happened, as well as ask his savior a few questions. “Wh-wh-who are you?” he stuttered. “Call me Convoy,” the large man replied without turning his head away from the road. “Everyone else does. Wot were ye doin’ way out ‘ere in this sun, lad? Tryin’ to ‘ave an ‘eat stroke?” Michael answered the question as he watched the bleak, featureless scenery of the post-apocalypse scroll past the window. “Well, sir…Convoy…I…Mommy and Daddy went this way and said I couldn’t come. Then there was a scary noise, and I wanted to find Mommy and Daddy to make me not so scared.” “Where’d they go where ye couldn’t?” “They called it a…re…something. Summer…um…” Convoy let out a forlorn sigh. “Cripes…Summerset Steppes Resort?” “That’s it!” Michael confirmed. “How’d you know, mister?” “Folks in this caravan…we ‘eard the name before, ye know?” Michael nodded. “Oh yeah, the caravan! What is a caravan, mister?” “Ye’ll find out in a few minutes.” True to his word, Convoy pulled the bus to a stop a few minutes later in a small town, and wordlessly began hauling the crates past Michael. The child watched in rapt attention as a group of people ran up to the crates and cracked them open, revealing food, water, and all sorts of other valuable sundries. Michael ran over to one of the crates and unfastened the seatbelt tethering it in place, hoping to help Convoy unload the supplies, but even with all of his strength, he couldn’t even pull the crate from its seat. “Well, he can lift a bear,” the boy remarked to himself. “Damn!” a voice from outside shouted. It was the sort of voice you would expect from a fair and delicate being, but the words it spoke were anything but. “Man, who’s up in our supplies?” Before Michael could think to hide, a thin and beautiful man stepped aboard the bus, a pair of large white wings folded against his back and a large sniper rifle in his hands. Suddenly, his eyes met Michael’s, and his rifle slowly raised against his shoulder-length blond hair, ready to fire. [[Previous|Page 2]] | [[Next|Page 4]]

Before the winged man could open fire, Convoy appeared in the nick of time once again. “Enough with that, Angel! The lad’s with me…!” The winged man lowered his rifle and flicked a small switch on its side. “Yo, you sure? Wait, he ain’t why you was late…” “That ‘e was. ‘is folks left ‘im behind to go to Summerset.” Angel lowered his head, his voice losing its belligerent tone. “Summerset…huh. Damn, that’s mad harsh. Still, C-dub, y’all gotta take him to see Ace. It ain’t up to you or me what happens to the kid; it’s up to Ace.” “Ace?” Michael parroted. Before anyone could answer him, however, Convoy and Angel left the bus. “Come ‘ere, lad!” Convoy’s voice commanded from outside, prompting Michael to run out after the two men. Even after he caught up with them, he had to run occasionally to keep up with their large strides. Once Convoy spotted the child, he took the chance to explain things more thoroughly. “Ace is the leader of the caravan…Ace makes all the decisions. See, lad, the caravan brings people wot they need to live—food, water, clothes…” “You’re all good guys?" Michael asked. "Even Mister Angel?” “Just Angel,” the winged man retorted. “No ‘mister’ bullcrao, you got that?” Convoy released a hearty chuckle from deep within his gut. “We’re all good guys, the whole lot of us,” he confirmed. “Even Angel." [[Previous|Page 3]] | [[Next|Page 5]]

"We’re all nice, too, lad," Convoy continued, as the three of them strode through the small settlement, "so don’t be too afraid when ye lay yer eyes on Ace…or Four-Eyes. ‘e’s not so bad either. Ace would have to be nice to take us all in as part of ‘er caravan, right?” “Why is that, Convoy?” Michael wondered aloud, careful not to call him "Mister Convoy". “We’re all mutants…Abnormals, they call us now. The radiation…” Convoy stopped in mid-sentence to glance at Michael. “…aye, the stuff that made the world all icky? It does some weird stuff to people. Some come out right as rain, but others…well, look at me and Angel.” “Abnormal…is that what they meant?” “They…?” Before Convoy could get all the way through the word, Michael had already disengaged his tail from his pantleg, and was now holding it across his hands. It was a long, pinkish tail that had once been red and lumpy, but now exhibited the same color as Michael’s skin and gracefully tapered to a point. “Ye’re Abnormal too, eh? I should have guessed. Wonder wot it can do…?” Convoy quickly shook his head, as if to dislodge the thought. “Let’s just get you to Ace…Ace will want to see the tail, lad, so don’t be afraid to show ‘er.” Michael nodded in silence as the three of them continued to walk. Before long, Convoy and Angel stopped in front of a man and a woman examining the crates before them. “Yo, Ace,” Angel announced, “Convoy brought someone to see you.” Michael expected the man to turn to face them, but it was the woman who stood at attention. “…what’s this about?” she asked after a bit of silence. “We’re busy with inventory.” “Ye better sit a spell for this one,” Convoy declared, hoisting Michael into his arms. [[Previous|Page 4]] | [[Next|Page 6]]

“Who’s that?” Ace spat. Michael winced a bit at her tone; it reminded him of his parents, and the way they'd talk to him when he was in trouble. Oddly enough, though, Ace kept her eyes on Convoy and seemed relaxed, almost dissociated. Still, Michael hoped that she wouldn't always talk like that. “My name’s Michael!” the child told the caravan leader, trying to establish himself as a friend. “Your friend Convoy saved my life!” “Wondeful.” Ace broke eye contact with Convoy in order to meet Michael’s eyes, but only just long enough to hear him out. “Taking him back to his parents?” “’is parents went to Summerset,” Convoy informed her, his voice heavy with sorrow. “…Summerset? So he’s…” Convoy nodded and gave Michael a gentle shake. At first, the boy had no idea what to do, but he eventually caught on and displayed his fleshy tail for Ace to see. “Lad ‘ere’s an orphaned Abnormal.” “Just like someone we know.” Ace nodded slowly. “Do you want to take him along?” “What?” Angel barked, his somewhat calm demeanor having shattered in an instant. “There are days where we can barely feed ourselves, and you want to bring another mouth to feed onboard?” Ace responded with a simple cracking of the knuckles, but even this was enough to make everyone present take a few steps back. Even Convoy, the man who had thrown a bear less than an hour ago, assumed a more resigned position. “I lead this caravan,” Ace reminded her companions. “Remember that before you step out of line again.” Ace’s attention returned to Convoy. “Can he work?” Convoy shrugged. “We can teach the lad somethin’,” he said. “’e ain’t dumb or disabled…” “I can see that.” Ace turned away from the men for a few moments, her head silently bowed down in thought, before she gave her verdict. “He’s your responsibility, Convoy. If you can handle him…you can keep him.” “Thank you, Ace!” Michael cheered. He wanted to hug her in that instant, but thought better of it, reaching for Convoy instead. [[Previous|Page 5]] | [[Next|Page 7]]

“Aye, lad, see, that was better than ye expected,” Convoy guessed aloud as he hoisted the boy onto his shoulders. “Four-Eyes, are ye not gonna greet the lad?” *“Que…?”* the man next to Ace muttered, his voice heavy with his nonchalant mood. As he turned to face Convoy and Michael, the boy spotted holes in his shirt, underneath his arms. Once he had turned all the way, all he did was silently thrust his hand out forward. Michael hesitated before shaking the man’s hand, and nearly jumped back in shock when three other hands wrapped around his own, all of them belonging to Four-Eyes. Convoy seemed to note the shock in Michael’s posture. “Aye, lad, ‘e’s Abnormal too. ‘e also speaks a foreign tongue…don’t know much of our language, either.” “How does he know what to do?” Michael asked. “Curious, lad? It’s a good thing to be sometimes. Four-Eyes, ‘e knows enough words to get by. We just point him to a bad guy, and ‘e shoots ‘im.” “Shoots…?” Michael shrugged. “That doesn’t sound like something a good guy does!” “It ‘as to be done from time to time, lad, if ye want the bad guys to stay away from us good guys.” Convoy shook his head. “Least, that’s what the others say. I’m no fan of violence me’self. They say it’s a right waste of muscle, but I’m not one to hurt others. Understand?” “I…think so.” “Don’t worry if ye feel overwhelmed, lad. Ye’ll come to get to know everything there is to know about the caravanning business in no time, and ye got me and everyone else in the caravan to help.” “You sure are a nice person, Convoy, sir,” Michael observed. “My parents went to vacation without me, and you wouldn’t let a bear eat me even when you didn’t know me!” “We…help people,” Four-Eyes muttered after having kept so quiet for so long, startling Michael. “That is…what we do.” ## End of Chapter 1 [[Previous|Page 6]] | [[Next|Page 8]]

## Chapter 2 “Can I ride with you guys?” Michael begged, resisting the odd urge he had to cling to Ace’s pantleg. “I learned a lot from Convoy, but I don’t know any of you very well.” “Kid, you’re mad harshin’ my style, yo,” Angel rebuked with a proud flap of his wings. “C’mon, Ace, tell this punk to—“ “You can ride with us,” Ace muttered sternly, silencing Angel’s rudeness in the process. “Man, what’s the deal, yo? Don’t tell me this kid’s got y’all on his good side, too! Four-Eyes, help me out here, dawg!” When Four-Eyes simply responded by pushing his glasses up on his nose and shrugging, Angel only got angrier. “Kid’s a mad waste of space, yo!” Suddenly, Michael found himself face-to-face with the angry winged mutant. “So, brat, what good are ya?" Angel demanded, his breath cloyingly hot on Michael's face. "What’s this tail do, yo? Is keepin’ you around gonna do us any good…any better than havin’ more food for us?” Before long, Michael felt the neckline of his shirt pinching together under Angel’s grip, and gasped as his feet left the ground. “Gimme one good reason why I shouldn’t throw ya back where we found ya…go on, tell me why I shouldn’t feed ya to the rock hares.” Angel’s wings began flapping angrily, taking them both into the sky. Before long, however, a sudden and powerful force sent both of them crashing to the ground. “’ere’s one reason,” Convoy’s voice protested before Michael could even begin to shake off the dizziness from such a rapid descent. “If ye see the lad off, Angel, I’ll be seeing ye off as well.” Angel took to the skies alone without so much as a word in reply to Convoy’s threat. “Don’t worry about him, lad. ‘e acts mean, but if we accept ye, he accepts ye, whether he likes it or not.” [[Previous|Page 7]] | [[Next|Page 9]]

<center>{(link:"Save Bookmark")[ (if:(save-game:"A"))[ Bookmarked! ](else: )[ An error occurred while saving. ] ]} | {(link: "Load Bookmark")[(load-game:"A")]}</center> <center>(print: (passage:)'s name)</center>

--- (link: "Jump to Chapter")[Jump to Chapter [[1|Page 1]] | [[2|Page 8]] | [[3|Page 15]] | [[4|Page 22]] | [[5|Page 29]] | [[6|Page 34]] | [[7|Page 40]] | [[8|Page 47]] | [[9|Page 55]] | [[10|Page 62]] | [[11|Page 70]] | [[12|Page 77]]] Caravan © 2012-(current-date:) Jon "the Red" Farrar (link:"https://jontheredrc.itch.io/")[(open-url: "https://jontheredrc.itch.io/")]

Convoy led Michael to the vehicles of the caravan, both of them patiently awaiting their next adventure. “It’s sad to ‘ear,” he lamented, “ye won’t be on the bus with me…” As the big man said this, he swept an arm in the air in front of his vehicle of choice, an enormous bus completely spackled in the dirt and grime of the wasteland. It wasn’t much to look at, but Michael took the fact that it was here as a sign that it worked just fine. “…but ye do need to get to know everyone else in the caravan. Ye met them a bit already, but I think it’s a fine idea to spend a bit more time with them.” Convoy pointed a huge, veiny finger at the pickup truck parked in front of the bus. “That’s your ride there, lad,” he said. It was caked in just as much dirt and grime as the bus, but looked like it was kept in far better condition. “Angel makes sure the thing’s always clean, lad, so no worries there. After all, wot good would our caravan be if it didn’t work?” As Convoy discussed the ins and outs of the caravan and its duties, Michael found himself staring as the other team members climbed aboard the truck, with Four-Eyes taking the driver’s seat and Angel sitting in the truck’s bed, his back leaned against the cab. What really attracted the boy’s attention, however, was Ace. He watched in awe as she yanked on a handle protruding from her back. With a flourish, she was suddenly grasping an ornate sword with a narrow blade. Michael could practically hear how sharp the blade was as she gave it a few test swings into open air and nodded in satisfaction with its performance. “…so ye see, lad, the world needs us caravans to go into dangerous places to fetch the valuable food and water within,” Convoy finished, having completely missed the fact that Michael had not been paying attention. “Do ye ‘ave any questions?” “Um, no, Convoy, sir,” Michael answered quickly in order to keep Convoy blissfully unaware of that fact. “Ye learn fast, lad…let’s ‘ope that extends to findin’ ye a job, eh?” Convoy waved as he left the child’s side in favor of his precious bus. “Now, be on yer best behavior around Ace, ‘ear? She’ll let me ‘ave it if you cause trouble.” Convoy briefly shuddered at the thought before disappearing through the doors of his bus. [[Previous|Page 8]] | [[Next|Page 10]]

Michael shrugged and made his way toward the truck, where everyone else was staring at him expectantly. “Hurry up,” Ace grunted as she opened the passenger side door for Michael. “Angel’s getting impatient.” “Damn right I am!” Angel confirmed. “I’m damn near ready to throw this kid under the tires and start the car up myself!” “…would you shut up?” Ace motioned toward the open truck door. “Get in.” Michael gasped and nodded, making a run for the truck with his tail dragging through the dirt behind him. When he finally arrived, he had to jump and climb just to make his way into the enormous vehicle. Once he had finally scrabbled his way onto the seat, Ace slammed the door behind him and nodded at Four-Eyes through the window. At a turn of his key, the truck’s engine came screaming to life, startling Michael with its deafening roar. “This is cool!” he blurted. Four-Eyes noticed the boy’s excitement and gave him a thin smile. “¿Te gusta?” he asked, appearing to be too happy with himself to care that the child couldn’t understand a word he said. Michael found himself nodding just to appease Four-Eyes. “It’s so loud…!” A look of confusion replaced Four-Eyes’ excitement, and all he could do was shrug at Michael’s complaint. “Oh…right.” Instead of striking up a conversation with someone on the other side of a language barrier, Michael was instead content to gaze out the window and watch the scenery roll by, brown and featureless as it was. What few plants and animals could survive in a world like this were all twisted and misshapen by the radiation blanketing the land. The more Michael watched, the more he regretted his decision to not ride with Convoy. [[Previous|Page 9]] | [[Next|Page 11]]

“This is boring,” he muttered into his hands. The truck was a fascinating vehicle, but the real fun was likely to be had in driving it. Being the child that he was, Michael found himself unable to sit still. Instead, he slid open the window looking out on the back of the truck, to try his hand at conversing with Angel and Ace. “Hey!” he shouted at the pair as their eyes gazed sternly at Convoy’s bus behind them. “Where are we going?” “Riverside,” Ace answered curtly, her speaking voice surprisingly audible over the sounds of a vehicle in motion. “It’s a town next to a small river. The locals can’t use the river itself due to contamination, but the river’s source is said to be fresh enough to drink.” “Com…tam…er…what?” Ace shook her head. “It’s poisonous.” Michael had heard a similar sentiment from his parents; they had warned him of the dangers of the outdoors. “Oh. That’s sad.” “Right. Sad.” Ace sighed. “We’re to locate the river’s source, and bring back some fresh water if we can find it. We’re welcome to take some for ourselves and some for other settlements, too.” “What if that water is com…poisonous too?” Ace hesitated for a minute before she gave her answer. “That would be the end of Riverside.” [[Previous|Page 10]] | [[Next|Page 12]]

After what must have been hours, Four-Eyes finally eased the truck to a stop, rousing Michael from a nap he wasn’t fully aware he had had. “Huh?” he murmured as he sat upright. “Are we there…?” *“Siesta,”* Four-Eyes grunted in a token attempt to explain the situation. Michael simply watched as Four-Eyes wrenched open the truck door, revealing the same empty brown landscape that the child had grown so bored of, now cast under an oppressive pall of darkness. “So…we’re not here?” “We’re resting here,” Ace explained as she opened the door for Michael. “If we stay on the move for too long, we’ll crash.” “Mm, Four-Eyes needs to rest his eyes, yo,” Angel confirmed, with a mouth already full of food. “Angel…I thought I told you to wait until we were all ready to eat.” Angel began to plead his case, with the occasional spray of crumbs flying from his lips. “What’s the big deal, A-dubs? It ain’t like no one else eats.” Ace stomped a foot into the dirt, kicking up an intimidating dust cloud. “You know that’s not the problem. The problem is invento…wait…” Ace pointed a slender finger past Convoy, who had just stepped out of his bus with a frying pan. “…where did you get that?” “Found it.” Angel lifted his hand into the pale moonlight, revealing a fistful of bread. “It ain’t none of your business.” Michael gasped and leapt backwards as Ace planted a quick right hook against Angel’s cheekbone, sending the pretty boy spiraling to the ground. “It is my business!” she said, her voice barely raised, but enough so to warn everyone nearby. “It’s White Wind’s business! And if you won’t play by my rules or theirs…I’ll have no choice but to put you back where we found you.” Ace sighed and shook her head. “You know I don’t want to do that…but you know I will.” Angel had been ready to throw a retaliatory punch, but quickly abated when Ace made her unusual threat. “A’ight, fine, yo, fine,” he conceded as he rose to his feet. “It ain’t gonna happen again.” “It better not.” [[Previous|Page 11]] | [[Next|Page 13]]

Michael sighed and turned his head sideways to face Four-Eyes, who was carrying a box of matches in his hand. “This trip didn’t go so well,” he admitted. “You’re the only one in this car that really talked to me…and I don’t even know what you said.” “I am sorry,” Four-Eyes slowly replied, his accent thick with discomfort. Michael quickly shook his head. “It’s not your fault. Does that make you sad, not being able to talk to the others?” “I am…*vaquero*. No talking…just…” Four-Eyes made a gun with the fingers on his upper-left arm, presumably to help himself remember a word. “…shooting.” “Vack…ear…what?” Michael shrugged. “Oh, forget it. I’ll ask Ace or Convoy.” Four-Eyes nodded. “I am cook.” “Oh, so you do the cooking here?” Michael glanced around expectantly, and when nothing happened after a few seconds, he found himself confused. “So…what are we eating?” Before the child knew what was happening, the four-armed foreigner had quickly turned himself around, brandishing a revolver in each of his hands. “That,” he grunted as he fired all four guns simultaneously. Michael watched in amazement as a long-necked, featherless bird spiraled to the ground before his very eyes. Before long, a fire had been started, and strips of the bird’s flesh were sizzling away in the frying pan. Four-Eyes expertly wielded the pan with his left hands and a spatula with his right. As Michael watched the spectacle in awe, he felt the desire to lean over and ask Convoy a question or two. “Hey Convoy,” he began, “what’s a white wind?” “Ye mean the White Wind,” Convoy clarified. “It’s where we got all our equipment from! Wot, ye thought we found it all ourselves, lad?” He shook his enormous bald head at his own question before he continued. “No, no, no…White Wind is an enormous agency that keeps all the caravans in check. They give us vehicles, weapons, food…and they also give us work. Deliver food ‘ere, drive off bandits there. We get a job, we do it, we get rewarded with more jobs and supplies.” “How do they know when you’re done?” “Eyes in every town, lad…in fact, that’s wot Ace was doing when you first met ‘er. She was checking in with a White Wind agent to confirm us bringing supplies to that outpost there. They made sure everything was in order and sent us along to Riverside.” “Cool,” Michael mused, both at Convoy’s explanation and Four-Eyes’ cooking, as the man flicked the pan and sent the strips of meat flying into the air, landing them all on their uncooked sides. The meat had transformed from its original pink tint to a more appetizing shade of golden brown. [[Previous|Page 12]] | [[Next|Page 14]]

After watching Four-Eyes poke at the strips for a bit, Michael found another question to ask. “What’s a vackermo…um, what’s that thing Four-Eyes is?” “*Vaquero*?” Ace said, having seated herself on the other side of Michael and in the way of Angel. “They’re desperados…hired guns. A whole society of people who learn one thing and learn it well.” “Shooting?” Michael guessed. Ace nodded. “Huh. Smart kid. Yes…they grow up learning how to handle a gun, and then they head out into the world to sell their skills. People on the outside…they see a vaquero in action, and then they want to hire one themselves.” “And then those ones bring in more people…and then more of them get hired…and…” “Yes, just like that. Most caravans will hire at least one, and they love the job since it keeps them supplied…with food and targets.” “Targets? Like what?” Michael’s question was quickly answered by a deafening roar from the right. He turned to see a series of lights rising from a hill to the left, and a slobbery set of teeth along with them. “Targets like that,” Ace replied as she drew her sword. “Stay back. We’ll handle this.” Angel had also pulled out his weapon, and was soon flapping his wings and hovering in the air over the campfire, carefully lining up a shot. Michael began to quake in fear, but a hand left Ace’s sword to tenderly rub his hair, causing the child to relax. “That glow bear shouldn’t even get this far. Angel can be a handful to us, but to his enemies…” As if on cue, a strange muffled sound emanated from overhead, and the glow bear’s head snapped back in shock. When it regained its facing, the light from its spines illuminated the bloody eye socket that Angel had presumably put a bullet into. Before Michael could question why Angel’s enormous gun was quieter than Four-Eyes’ armaments, another muffled gunshot signaled the loss of the bear’s other eye. The beast reeled uncertainly back and forth on its legs before deciding to stay on its original course. With another roar, it was running straight toward the campfire. Michael averted his eyes as the creature ran straight toward Ace, only daring to look when he noticed that he was not being attacked himself. He looked up to see Ace having barely moved, with the bear split into two halves around her, one half in the dirt on each side. “Nice try,” she mused as she shook beads of dark green blood from her weapon. “Food is done,” Four-Eyes announced, though how anyone could eat after a show like that was lost on Michael. ## End of Chapter 2 [[Previous|Page 13]] | [[Next|Page 15]]

## Chapter 3 “Y’all must be the caravan from White Wind,” the man in charge of Riverside greeted the gang as they drove into town. From the amount of sweat that had gathered on his brow, he looked as if he had been waiting out in front of the town for hours. Most of his hair was gray and thinning; only his impressive mustache had managed to keep its volume intact over the years. “Mighty obliged to make your acquaintance. Name’s Wayne…I’m the sheriff ‘round these parts.” Before Michael could ask why he called himself a sheriff, Ace put a hand in front of his face, swiftly silencing his questions. “I’m Ace,” she replied curtly. “We’re here about the river.” “Y’all don’t mess around much, do ya, missy?” Sheriff Wayne sighed and continued. “Look, y’all, this here river musta been a right boon fer these here parts back before everything got all up an’ contaminated…an’ we’d like to get ourselves back in business, hear? Now, word is that there’s a bit of fresh water way up the river…an’ I wanna send y’all up to investigate. Think y’all are up to it?” “If we weren’t up to it, we wouldn’t be here.” “Huh. Well. If y’all can handle it, I’ll be waitin’ back here fer whatever ya find.” Ace simply nodded and motioned for everyone to return to their vehicles. “Nobody talked to me before,” Michael mused as he glanced at the truck before deciding to walk toward Convoy’s bus. “I’m coming too,” Ace’s voice called out from behind him. His eyes widened as he turned to see the caravan leader making her way toward the bus along with him After a slight pause, she explained herself. “Those two can handle themselves.” Convoy was already seated behind the wheel, and simply shrugged. “Ye’re coming along too, Ace?” he asked his superior. “Let’s just go.” [[Previous|Page 14]] | [[Next|Page 16]]

As Convoy drove along the side of the river, behind the truck with Four-Eyes and Angel, he proved to be much more willing to engage in conversation. “Ye think there could really be an ‘ealthy drinking supply this way?” “Yeah,” Michael chirped in agreement, “Mom and Dad always said that everything outside was poisonous.” “It does seem odd,” Ace concurred, pushing a lock of curly blond hair out of her face. “The river’s source is on a high mountain, but what would cause the water to be contaminated further down…? That’s why I’m here, in case you boys were wondering. I’ll watch out these windows for any sign of danger or contaminants.” “Oh…oh…so I should be over here?” Michael instantly leapt across the aisle of the bus, landing in the seat directly behind Convoy. “You’re a quick thinker.” Ace nodded. “Right, then…the river is right out in front of your window. If you see anything special about it…be sure to tell us.” “I can do that!” Michael pressed his face against the window, excitedly scanning his eyes across the sickly green river not far below his window. It seemed like a rather narrow body of water; the distance between the river banks was about the same length as the bus. What it lacked in width, however, it seemed to make up for it in depth, since despite its relative clarity, he could not see the bottom. “Nothing yet,” the boy announced. “You don’t need to tell me that,” Ace snapped without a moment’s delay. “Just tell me if there’s anything out of the ordinary.” “Like what…? I’ve never seen a river before. Ooh, there’s one of those weird bird things that Four-Eyes cooked…is that supposed to be there?” Either way, it looked far more majestic in the water than it did on land; while the few steps last night’s meal had a chance to take were clumsy and inexperienced, this bird seemed to be at home in the water, with its hooked beak occasionally plunging into the water. It came up empty every time, however, leading Michael to wonder exactly what it might have been searching for. “Still nothing…?” Ace grumbled after an hour or so of silence. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to say that!” Michael gasped. “But…no…nothing.” “Odd,” Convoy quipped. “We’re almost at the source, and nothing seems to ‘ave ‘ad an ‘and with polluting the river.” [[Previous|Page 15]] | [[Next|Page 17]]

It wasn’t long before they finally crested the hill and made it to the river’s source, answering their questions. The reservoir of water sparkled with help from the sun’s rays, casting smaller rays of light on the surrounding trees that had been left blackened and leafless by radiation. “It’s pretty!” Michael said in awe as his eyes widened at the sight. As hideous as the trees were, it was still one of the few places where they stood at all. “So…those people in Riverside can drink this water, right?” “We’ll see,” Convoy replied as he pointed at Ace, who had already exited the bus and was making a beeline for the water. “Ye might want to chase ‘er, lad, and see wot she’s up to.” “Oh, alright.” Michael did as he was told, his tail dragging behind him as he ran. When he reached the water’s edge, he attempted to stop himself, but far too late. By the time he had slowed down enough, he could already feel himself falling toward the water. At the last moment, however, he felt a fierce strength yanking on his tail, sending him flying away from the water. He landed safely, albeit roughly, on the ground. After pausing briefly to shake his head, Michael looked up to see Ace gripping his tail in her hand. Her other hand and her eyes were locked onto a small device in her hand that he had never seen before. Michael wasn't even sure if she'd looked up at all to save him. Her device small and rectangular, with an even smaller antenna poking out of its end; Ace had the antenna pointed toward the water, her facial expression worsening as she watched her device. “Careful,” she muttered as an afterthought. “This water isn’t safe.” “It’s not…?” “No.” [[Previous|Page 16]] | [[Next|Page 18]]

Ace held the device in her hand aloft. “This measures harmful radiation," she said, still not looking up from it or at Michael. "The more radiation it detects…the more it makes this noise.” Michael stopped to listen, as he had failed to do before, and it was soon very apparent that Ace’s device was emitting a fierce crackling sound. “Come here," Ace demanded, waving for him to follow her away from the water. Michael obeyed, and listened in amazement as the device counter began to crackle less and less. “Do you understand? There’s less radiation over here than in the water.” Michael suddenly found himself unable to stand. “…it’s not safe to drink?” he finally managed to ask. “Drink? I wouldn't dare touch it.” “Then who told those poor people in the town that they could drink this?” Ace shrugged. “Might have been an idiot. Might have been a bandit.” Michael shook his head. “I’m sure it was an accident…” “Don’t be. There are people out there willing to kill entire villages in order to—“ “Ace!” Convoy barked as he scooped Michael up in his arms, sitting the boy on his gargantuan shoulder. “Wot kind of talk is that for a lad ‘is age?” “The truth,” she shot back. “Why lie to him? Riverside is history.” “That is the truth, but why tell it to ‘im now?” “Not everything has a happy ending, especially out here.” “But does ‘e need to know that?” “He’s better off for it, yes.” Michael watched helplessly as the caravan’s professional driver argued with his boss, his head flicking back and forth as he looked into each person’s eyes as they made their rebuttals. It pained him to watch them fight, and he could only tolerate it for a little while longer. “Stop!” he finally screamed as tears welled up in his eyes. “Just…stop…!” “He’s right,” Ace quickly acquiesced, though her reasoning was not with Michael’s feelings. “We need to tell the sheriff about this water.” [[Previous|Page 17]] | [[Next|Page 19]]

“Shucks, that so?” Wayne finally groaned after being informed of the contaminated water. “Well, ain’t that just the worst.” “What will you do now, sir?” Michael blurted before Ace could silence him this time. The self-proclaimed sheriff took a knee in front of the child. “Son, I dunno what to do. We done all we can to get by without bein’ able to make much us of that there river, but…most folks don’t come out all this way, so I dunno what help is gonna be able to come. We can’t keep livin’ here the way we do; we held our ground ‘gainst the varmints hasslin’ us ‘cause we was thinkin’ we’d get some use out of this ol’ river yet, but since y’all told us otherwise, we ain’t gonna have no reason to stay here. Well, ‘cept that we got nowhere to go an’ no way of gettin’ there…” “Yep, sucks to be you, dawg,” Angel blithely remarked. Wayne rose to his feet, glowering intensely at Angel. “’least we still got our manners ‘round these parts…” “Wait, nowhere to go?” Michael repeated, shaking his head. “What about that other town?” “Other town? Boy, what’re ya goin’ on about there?” “Well, I was walking, and then a bear tried to eat me, and then Convoy saved me, and then we kept going straight and left some stuff in a town, and then we kept going straight…and then we were here.” “Lad, it’s not quite right to call that a town,” Convoy mused. “More of an outpost right now…they can’t ‘ouse all these people or feed all their mouths.” “Why not? They made a whole town here…why can’t they make one at the…um, at the outpost?” “If only it were that simple…” “Well, shine my boots!” Wayne suddenly exclaimed. “Boy’s got himself a point. If this place ain’t sufferin’ so bad from the animals, us here from Riverside oughta go over there an’ build our own homes! We’ll fix the place up to be a proper town ourselves if we gotta!” “That would put them much closer to common trade routes,” Ace thought aloud. [[Previous|Page 18]] | [[Next|Page 20]]

“*¿Problemas?*” Four-Eyes yelled from the driver’s seat of the truck. “No,” Convoy shouted back before returning his attention to the deal at hand. “No problems at all, especially with current trade routes coming close to that place.” “Would White Wind be willing to allow for detours?” Ace asked her driver. “Quite! It adds ‘alf a mile at most to the usual Summerset-Divide lane.” “And the reason these people have had it so rough is because of their distance from the caravans…and yet they managed to survive.” “Yeah, see?” Sheriff Wayne finally piped up. “Take us all to that there outpost an’ we’ll do fine, y’hear? But first…” Wayne returned to his kneeling position in front of Michael. “…first, I oughta thank this boy for savin’ our hides. What’s your name, son?” “My name?” Michael repeated. “My name is…mm…” He caught himself before he managed to blurt his real name, his mind suddenly hatching a strange idea. He found himself contemplating the names of everyone else in the caravan…Ace, Four-Eyes, Angel, and Convoy couldn’t possibly be their real names. Michael didn’t know if they had a reason for using those pseudonyms, but he quickly found himself searching for one of his own. Only one word would come to his mind, and even then, it took awhile to get there. “…call me ‘Lad’!” he proclaimed with pride. “Son, what kinda name is…” Wayne laughed away the remainder of his sentence. “Guess it don’t matter none. Thanks fer stickin’ up for Riverside, Lad. The folks of Riverside are gonna know that name fer a long time, I reckon.” [[Previous|Page 19]] | [[Next|Page 21]]

The boy shook his head. “No," Michael said, grinning up at everybody. "You should thank Convoy and Ace…oh, and Angel and Four-Eyes, too! They’re the real caravan people!” “Ya mean they ain’t calling ya a member, Lad?" Sherrif Wayne asked, rubbing his chin. "Well, they oughta after today…!” “…true,” Ace eventually muttered in agreement. “The White Wind liaison at that outpost should have a badge to make it official.” “Wow!” Michael squealed. “You really think they would let me be a real part of your caravan?” “Didn’t anyone tell you? Caravans help people. Your idea will help these people a lot.” Ace nodded. “It’s only fair that you should be a member.” “You mean nobody else thought…?” “I was too busy thinking that this place had seen the end of its days,” Ace admitted with a sigh. “Nobody was being optimistic enough to think that they could just start anew somewhere else. You succeeded where I failed.” Michael got concerned for a moment while Ace stared off past him, into the sky. But eventually, she turned back around, and Michael thought he saw a smile on her face for a split-second. "I still have much to learn. You, Lad, you're a natural." “Big deal,” Michael thought he heard Angel growl. Regardless of what he had said, Angel quickly took to the sky on his beautiful wings, all to make it back to the truck as quickly as he could. “…did Angel just say something?” Michael asked. “Don’t pay ‘im any attention, Lad,” Convoy reassured the child. “’e’s just acting up as usual. I’m sure ‘e won’t keep it up for too long.” ## End of Chapter 3 [[Previous|Page 20]] | [[Next|Page 22]]

## Chapter 4 Now that Michael’s name had officially been logged in White Wind’s records as “Lad”, and ever since he had been given his official employee emblem, he felt as if he were indeed walking upon nothing but a revitalizing breeze. The caravan agency’s logo was a simple one, nothing more than a pair of white italicized Ws, held together by their own motion lines. Nonetheless, Lad found himself completely unable to take his eyes off of it, for it now adorned a sky blue band of cloth around his left wrist. “So now I’m a real caravan person?” he gasped. “That ye are, Lad,” Convoy concurred. “I’ve told ye a hundred times now…!” “Can you say ‘yes’ another hundred times, please?” Convoy growled playfully as he slowly wrapped an arm around Lad’s head and scratched at the boy’s scalp with his knuckle, sending the child’s hair into disarray. “Why, ye little…ye were just leading me on…!” Lad giggled uncontrollably as Convoy’s horseplay continued. “Hey, cut that out…!” “Quiet, you two,” Ace commanded. Neither of them dared ask what would happen if they didn’t. “The radio…!” Ace ran to the truck as the CB radio within buzzed with unidentifiable noise. Lad and Convoy hurried behind her, eager to hear what the concern was all about. [[Previous|Page 21]] | [[Next|Page 23]]

Once Ace had answered the call, the dangers became all too clear. “Oh, wow, another caravan?” a voice on the other end gasped. “You’ve got to hurry! Bandits…they ambushed us…we can’t hold out much longer!” “Where are you?” “We were making our way to West Divide…to deliver them supplies…where are you?” Ace shook her head slowly. “Not far away. We can be there soon.” “Good, because we…oh no…they found me! Please, you have to hur—“ Before the voice on the other end of the CB could finish its sentence, a sudden gunshot left the radio emitting dead silence. “Bandits…?” Lad whimpered. “They’re…they’re the bad guys, aren’t they?” “In a manner of speaking, Lad…they are,” Convoy replied. “They’re the inglorious cads that make their living by…well, things like this.” “They’re mad crazy,” Angel growled, a sadistic edge to his voice. “They won’t hesitate to off some snot-nosed kid like you.” To accentuate his point, he formed a pistol with his slender fingers and pantomimed a shot at Lad’s head. Convoy put a reassuring hand on Lad’s shoulder before the gesture could drive anyone to any extreme emotions. “Rude as ‘e is, ‘e ‘as a point…bandits are past the point where they would ‘esitate to try and ‘urt you…but that’s why we won’t let them.” Even Four-Eyes seemed to sense the heavy atmosphere, and did his part to make Lad feel better. “You…you no shoot,” he clarified as he jabbed a thumb into his chest. “I shoot.” “At least you all already want to go save those people from those bandits,” Lad sighed, his voice heavy with relief. “I don’t think I could tell you guys to go do something so scary.” [[Previous|Page 22]] | [[Next|Page 24]]

Lad watched the barren brown landscape fly past the bus window, wracking his brain for a question to ask about something other than the bandits. “Where was that other caravan going?” he finally managed to ask, each word requiring a fair amount of force to get past the lump in his throat. “Divide,” Ace answered, her voice as devoid of emotion as ever. “A town split in half by a large canyon. There have been scattered reports of the Abnormal and…normal populaces engaging in minor feuds, but those reports have died down ever since all the Abnormals were forced to stay on the eastern side of the canyon.” “Why are they being so mean to the Abnormal people?” Ace shrugged. “We don’t have that information…nor would we ever. Unless they specifically call for aid in that situation, a caravan’s job begins and ends with bringing them vital supplies. White Wind has also been trying to stay neutral when it comes to Abnormals…they won’t say they’re inferior to non-mutated people, but they won’t espouse equality either. Their only decisive statement on the issue is that Abnormals have their uses. That could easily mean either equality or slavery.” Lad tilted his head in confusion. “Um…I don’t think I understood that.” Ace waved his concerns away with a flick of her wrist. “You don’t need to.” “That didn’t help at all,” Lad grumbled to himself as he returned his attention to the rocky wasteland stretching out in front of the window. It didn’t take the child long to notice a difference in the landscape, however. After spending so much time watching an empty world pass him by, seeing an enormous plume of smoke rising from the horizon was a simple task. [[Previous|Page 23]] | [[Next|Page 25]]

“Hey, look over there!” Lad shouted, waving Ace to his side of the bus. She was soon leaning over him, peering through the same window at the same column of smoke he'd spotted. “That must be the caravan that sent the distress signal,” she surmised. “I’m ‘oping not,” Convoy protested. “I don’t much like the looks of that.” “We’ll check in advance.” Ace leapt to her feet and was soon wrenching open the door of the bus, leaning out of it with a hand firmly grasping a nearby safety bar. “Angel!” she shouted to the truck ahead as Lad switched seats in order to watch her work. The winged being seemed to have not heard her, however, and was content to carelessly pluck away at the strings of a guitar Lad had not seen him play before. “Oh, Mama, I’m in fear for my life from the long arm of the law,” his honeyed voice sang, audible even despite the distance and background noise. Ace groaned loudly and released her sword from its sheath, and jabbed it at the ground with such speed that Lad doubted what he had seen. Somehow, this action had rewarded her with a small rock, and with a grunt, she threw it directly at Angel, striking him in the shin mid-verse. “Angel!” “Ow!” he shouted as he leapt to his feet, his eyes narrowing instantly when he figured out what had happened. “Damn, you crazy…! Look, A-dubs, what’re you after?” “Angel, fly up high and investigate that smoke! We think it’s the caravan…” “Ya mean you lazy nothin's can’t just go over there and check it out yourselves? Man, what’s the deal with that?” “…you're calling me lazy, but it sounds like you're rather sit in a slaver’s cage than fly a little,” Ace responded without missing a beat. “Low blow, woman,” Angel shouted as his wings began to flap, taking him far above the caravan’s vehicles. [[Previous|Page 24]] | [[Next|Page 26]]

After spending a few moments in the sky, Angel quickly descended to face Ace eye-to-eye. “The smoke’s coming outta this wrecked van,” he reported. “Overturned in a ditch. No sign of anyone around, though. They all stuck in the van?” “Not much choice but to go see, eh wot?” Convoy muttered with a hint of resignation in his voice as he steered the bus toward the smoke, with Four-Eyes driving alongside him in the truck. As Convoy and company approached the crash site, Lad struggled to see any signs of nearby life. As hard as he tried, however, all he could see was the usual rocky brown landscape scattered around the blue van and its pitch-black smoke. "What happened, do you think?" he asked, not caring which of his fellow caravanners answered. "Hard to say," Ace said flatly. As glad as he was that someone replied, he was a little bummed that it was Ace. "Bandts ambushed them, no doubt. But beyond that…maybe they left." "Then someone might be trapped in there!" Before anyone could react, he was sprinting toward the crashed vehicle, mouth agape at the ruined White Wind logo painted along the side. “Hello?” he shouted to the empty scenery. The only reply came in the form of a red light dancing along his legs. He lifted his tail out of reflex, and ducked away as the light approached his face. Suddenly, Convoy was upon the child, rolling through the dirt while a gunshot rang through the air. “Lad, be more careful!” the strongman cautioned his young ward. “There’s a sniper here…!” “Someone tryin’ to take the kid’s head off?” Angel seethed as he took his own rifle from his back. “Can’t let him beat me to it, yo…” As Angel’s rifle swept back and forth across the horizon, hunting for a target, dastardly figures began to appear from all over. From over the hill and behind the van, leather-clad punks began to fill the area, making it appear more active if still quite brown. Regardless of their advance, Angel still let out a triumphant laugh as he squeezed the trigger of his sniper rifle, summoning a spray of blood from dozens of yards away. “I’m the best there is,” Angel taunted his victim as he turned his attention to the spectacle erupting nearby, firing potshots into the crowd. [[Previous|Page 25]] | [[Next|Page 27]]

Meanwhile, Ace and Four-Eyes had also taken to the battlefield, stepping well in front of Convoy and Lad to allow them to retreat. As the battle-ready duo stood their ground, the bandits came swarming in their direction, armed with everything from knives to machine guns. Convoy fled the scene with Lad draped across his shoulder, prompting Ace and Four-Eyes to leap in separate directions, seeking cover behind some rocks. Lad watched the scene behind Convoy explode into a whirling frenzy of guns and blades. Four-Eyes stayed behind his cover, only partially revealing himself in order to take a shot with his trademark revolvers. With his four arms operating autonomously, the bandit gunmen couldn’t hope to keep up. They seemed to have realized that Four-Eyes was at his most vulnerable after six shots, but it was a trivial matter for him to open fire with one pair of hands and reload his revolvers with the other. Even with his firepower cut in half during reloading times, Four-Eyes made enough of his shots count as to make the difference trivial. Being limited to two guns did not seem to be much of a concern when his accuracy. As Four-Eyes calmly rained lead down upon the bandits, Ace completely subverted Lad’s expectations, as well as her usual emotional detachment, with a very berserk approach to combat. Despite being silent the whole time, she waded through the crowds of melee-oriented bandits with the help of her impossibly sharp sword, slaughtering the fiends as she went. Most of the bandit gunmen were shooting at Four-Eyes because Ace was effectively taking cover behind other bandits. Shots in her direction ended up hitting either the dirt or the enemies around her. Lad fully expected her to be able to split an incoming bullet in half with her sword. If she had done it there, it was during a blink of his eyes, which he also wouldn't doubt. After what must have been minutes of combat, but had felt like hours, the last of the bandits fell to the ground, her blood oozing down Ace’s sword. With a satisfied grunt, the caravan leader shoved her victim off of the blade and onto the heap of corpses that had piled up over the course of the battle. Lad wasn't sure how to feel. As cool as his friends made it look, it was still killing and death. [[Previous|Page 26]] | [[Next|Page 28]]

After the team had shaken off the stench and fatigue of battle, Lad watched in bewilderment as they set out to work. Ace and Four-Eyes hauled bandit corpses into the van while Convoy took supply crates out to the bus. As they worked, Angel snaked a length of rope into the van’s gas tank, a sinister smile on his face. “My favorite part,” he muttered to himself as he withdrew most of the rope, now soaked in gasoline. As Angel hauled his end of the rope close to the truck, Lad was sick of being so confused. “What are you all doing?” he asked anyone that went past him. “*Perros de la muerte,*” Four-Eyes replied without pausing in his task. As the *vaquero* passed back and forth in front of Lad, he continued his explanation in Lad’s language as best he could. “Animals…eating the dead. From far, they come to feed. Quick to anger…no quick to kill.” Lad scratched his head. “So you have to get rid of the dead people?” “Yes.” Four-Eyes came back after throwing the last of the bodies into what was left of the van. “*Perros de la muerte*…no eat these dead.” He stopped his explanation to nod to Angel, who had since found himself a matchstick. “So much for them,” the sniper mused as he lit the match on his pants and touched it against the gas-soaked rope. A burst of flame dashed along the length of rope and into the gas tank of the van, filling most of the ditch with a gorgeous fireball that roasted everything within. Convoy watched the scene from Lad’s left, and the explosion finally moved him to words. “Those bandits used this caravan as bait…it was a trap,” he said. “I thought it would be,” Ace admitted. “Could've been that they crashed and set up a smoke signal. Or that the bandits forced them off the road. Or just that the bandits made the call themselves." “You knew?” Lad gasped. “Why did we come all this way, then?” “To do our duty as a caravan.” Ace rapped her fist against a box of newly-acquired cargo. “These supplies need to get to the town of Divide.” ## End of Chapter 4 [[Previous|Page 27]] | [[Next|Page 29]]

## Chapter 5 “Don’t let it get to ye too much, Lad,” Convoy cautioned the child as the caravan took off toward the town of West Divide, and away from the scene of the ruined van and its ambush. “They ‘ad a spot of bad luck, is all. It’s sad, but it ‘appens.” “Yeah,” Lad sighed into the window, creating a small circle of fog. “Why do the bandits do…that?” “Many a reason, Lad…they’re just as varied a lot as us caravan workers. Everyone ‘as their own reason for wot they do.” “What about you, Convoy?” Lad wrenched his face away from the window and leaned toward the driver’s seat. “Why are you here?” “Me…?” Convoy shrugged. “I don’t ‘ave much of a reason for a little boy to ‘ear.” “Oh, come on…please tell me!” “Ye won’t ‘ave it any other way, Lad…oh, alright. Ye see, when I was a boy, there were no caravans…everyone ‘ad to make their own living.” “Wow, really? How long ago was that?” “And wot, tell ye my age?” Convoy rebuked with a chuckle. “I’m older than Ace, I’ll tell ye that much.” “And how old is Ace?” Michael wondered out loud. When Ace failed to respond after a sufficient pause, Convoy let out another chuckle. “Looks like it’ll be ‘arder to find out than that!" [[Previous|Page 28]] | [[Next|Page 30]]

Lad looked up at Convoy as the man cleared his throat. "Right, then," he began, "I lived in a right small place. We struggled every day…’ad to be careful to not let someone ‘ave too much water, or the whole place would go thirsty, and everyone ‘ad to learn a thing or two about ‘unting. I didn’t want a part of that ‘unting, though…I wanted everyone to live, people and animals both. The more my muscles grew, the more the others pressured me to go ‘unting. Once White Wind was up and running, though, so was I…running away from ‘ome, that is.” “So you tried to help them by bringing them food that way?” Lad asked, leaning in a little by sheer reflex. Convoy shook his head. “By the time I got a job that brought me back to my ‘ometown, no one was left. Not sure if they left, starved…all I know is, my ‘ome was no more. So ‘ere I am, ‘elping all the other people around the wasteland instead.” “Oh…I’m sorry.” Michael sat in silence for a few seconds before prodding Convoy further. “Does that mean you’ve worked with Ace for that long?” “No, Lad, this ‘ere caravan is a bit new…only a couple years old. I did join it when it was brand new, though…that might be a long time for ye, Lad.” “Sure, sure…!” Lad nodded. “After all, I am only el…wait, if I can’t know your age, you don’t get to know mine, either!” Lad’s secrecy elicited more laughter from Convoy. “Fair enough, Lad…fair enough.” Hearing about Convoy's past excited Lad. He wanted to hear from everyone, even Angel, about where they'd come from. But with Divide already beginning to claw its way up onto the horizon, he knew it'd have to wait. [[Previous|Page 29]] | [[Next|Page 31]]

Lad saw the enormous pillars rocket into view far before the rest of the town of Divide showed itself. Buildings wrought from scrap metal were dotted all around, all safely cradled within a protective fence to keep the bandits and wild animals out. It was only after still more driving that the reason behind the pillars became clear. The last thing to rise from the horizon was an enormous bridge, anchored in place by the four tall gray pillars. Despite wearing its age on its support beams, it looked wide and sturdy enough to support the passage of vehicles. Plenty of residences were peppered around both sides of the bridge, and the end result confused Lad to no end; he wasn’t sure if it was all one town, or if the canyon served as a town line between two residences. Before long, the caravan passed a sign welcoming them to West Divide, and came to a stop in front of a nondescript building not long after. A man burst forth from the house in short order, clad in a duster and fedora that both bore the White Wind emblem. “Can I help you?” he rasped through bearded lips. Ace had somehow left the bus without Lad noticing, and was already answering the man’s questions. “Caravan number: nineteen sixty-five nine seventeen,” she recited from memory. “Reporting in.” On her cue, Convoy brought out a box of supplies that had been salvaged from the ruined blue van. “Approximately two hours ago," she briefed, "this caravan intercepted a false distress signal being played over White Wind airwaves by a bandit ambush party using the radio of caravan four one two six. No members of that caravan survived. Evidence suggests that we were the first to reach the source of the signal. We left no survivors.” “And the bodies…” The employee shoved a thumb into his fedora, lifting it far above his dull green eyes. “…that fire was you…?” “Affirmative. All corpses present were incinerated, and all supplies present were brought here.” “We were wondering what was keeping them…well, we know now.” With a sigh, he fetched a brown leather bag from his duster and handed it to Ace. “Suppose you’ve earned their reward, at any rate.” [[Previous|Page 30]] | [[Next|Page 32]]

Ace accepted the reward bag without thanking the White Wind contact. “Any open jobs in the area?” she asked. “No ma’am," he replied. "You should rest in West Divide for the night.” To accentuate his point, the contact jabbed an index finger into the sky, bringing everyone’s attention to the setting sun. “Try to avoid the eastern part of town…lots of ornery Abnormals are over there on the other side of the bridge, looking for a reason to start a fight.” Lad watched as Ace’s hand began to raise, as if to raise a counterargument along with it, but it quickly fell. “Understood,” was all she said. Her business meeting complete, she turned back to her own subordinates. “Those are your orders. You are to stay in West Divide until we move out tomorrow.” For her next sentence, her hazel eyes turned directly toward Angel, catching a fierce glint of sunlight. “Try not to cause trouble in the meantime.” Oddly enough, Angel lacked any sort of comeback to Ace’s accusatory remark, instead choosing to silently take to the skies. “He’s been quiet,” Lad whispered to Convoy. “Stay out of his way,” Ace warned, having somehow heard the child’s whispers. “Stay far away from him.” “Well, OK…I want to go look at the bridge anyway!” Before anyone could offer any other plans, he was already dashing through the town, making his way to the impressive architecture that connected the halves of the town. Seeing it so far away from town should have been enough of a hint, but only after getting so close did Lad finally realize just how enormous the bridge was. It managed to span the enormous canyon in what must have been a five-minute drive’s worth of length, and looked to be one of the smoothest surfaces Lad had ever seen. A few steps on and off the bridge confirmed his suspicions, as he marveled at the feel of his tail sliding across such a well-maintained surface. Lad gasped as a sudden epiphany hit him, and he left the bridge to stand on the edge of the canyon to look in. He was rewarded with an equally majestic sight, as the walls actually managed to bear dark reds and grays in addition to the usual shades of brown. “Showtime,” Angel’s voice suddenly chuckled behind the boy. [[Previous|Page 31]] | [[Next|Page 33]]

Before Lad could react, he felt a strong push upon his back, sending his feet over the edge of the canyon. He thought he heard a laugh from Angel, but before long, he was screaming too much to hear much of anything else. The walls were steep, but not too steep for Lad to be sent into a painful slide down the canyon wall. Thinking quickly, he adjusted himself to place his tail between his legs, turning his mutated appendage into a makeshift sled. After a lifetime full of dragging the tail on all sorts of rough surfaces, it managed to become a very durable body part despite its somewhat nauseating appearance. It was all Lad could do to keep himself against the canyon wall. As much as he wanted to turn and peer up the rocks in hopes of seeing exactly what had happened, it appeared to be out of the question. After enough tail-sledding to satisfy Lad for a lifetime, he finally hit the bottom of the canyon with a painful thud. As he rose to his feet, his legs began to tremble after having been put through such an ordeal. Only after the wobbling abated did Lad realize that he was standing amidst large piles of trash. Discarded items of all makes and materials had found their final resting place down here. The ground was completely strewn with everything from car parts to rusted guns to dusty White Wind supply crates. After another long period of observation, Lad made one more disheartening discovery, All of the materials there bore large teeth marks, metal and all. Lad saw no way out of the trash pit. As far as he knew, no one was aware he'd fallen in, either. He wasn't sure what to do, just that he wanted to figure it out before he found out what made the tooth marks. ## End of Chapter 5 [[Previous|Page 32]] | [[Next|Page 34]]

## Chapter 6 Lad had managed to reach the bottom of the canyon relatively composed. Now that the situation had fully dawned on him, though, he felt the sudden urge to scream bloody murder. “Help!” he shouted up the canyon walls. “Convoy! Ace! Um…Four-Eyes? Angel? Anyone…? I need help…!” When no one answered, he turned his attention back to his current predicament, and began looking around at all the trash strewn about in order to find something that might help him exit the canyon before nighttime. It was hard enough to see his way around during sunset, since the high walls of the canyon were insistent on letting very little light reach the bottom. At night, this annoyance was sure to become a danger, when the risks of falling onto some sharp piece of detritus would be too great to allow a whole lot in the way of movement. As Lad pawed his way through the heaps of trash all over the place, he eventually attracted the attention of an animal he had never seen before. It was some strange dark red creature with bright red fur. It stood on four legs, and had a pair of long ears that flopped around as it moved its head. Its eyes began to track Lad’s movements, making him even more curious. “Oh, hi,” he greeted the creature with apprehension. “What are you…?” Instead of answering Lad’s question, the beast hopped closer on its powerful hind legs, easily clearing a pile of rubbish to land in the next clear spot. “Oh…wow…you sure can jump!” Lad tried to turn away from the cute critter, and was surprised to see it pop up in front of him. “Oh, hey, excuse me…” It didn’t take him long to gasp in surprise; even before he turned and saw that the first beast was still in the same spot, he suddenly knew what was happening. “Oh…there’s…two of you!” he realized. Before long, even that claim was debunked. “Oh…three…four…fi—no, wait, seven…ten…” [[Previous|Page 33]] | [[Next|Page 35]]

As more and more floppy-eared heads poked their way out of the garbage, Lad eventually gave up on counting and returned to his search for helpful implements hidden among the garbage. Eventually, however, it became clear that the fluffy creatures were not about to let that happen. Lad ducked with barely a moment to spare as one of the beasts leapt for his head, and had to start running through the garbage quickly when the others began to follow suit. “Whoa! Hey…what are you doing?” His question was answered when he spied one of the beasts hop up to a jagged piece of rusty metal. All of a sudden, its mouth came wide open to reveal an enormous pair of buck teeth, which made quick work of the metal. Lad watched in amazement as the beast chewed and swallowed the mouthful of metal, apparently uninjured by such a sharp and dangerous object sliding down its gullet. “Uh-oh…” With his predicament being what it was, he saw fit to make one last attempt to contact the outside world. “Help!” he hollered once again. He watched the upper reaches of the canyon, hoping to spy someone that had come to answer his plea, but no help came. The attacks from the red creatures kept coming, however, forcing Lad to stay on the move. Nothing in the canyon caught his eye, and he quickly surmised that any helpful tools must have already been munched down to the paint chips by these ravenous beasts. After several minutes of searching and dodging, however, Lad eventually came across a wonderful sight. He looked on in awe as one of the creatures, somehow still oblivious to his presence, approached a dark red pile of metal he had not noticed before. With a mighty bite, its jaws closed around the metal, but surprisingly, the very teeth of the creature broke into pieces on contact, sending tooth shrapnel spraying in all directions. The beast continued to attempt to bite its way through the metal, meeting with even less success without its teeth. Lad giggled at the sight for a bit before having an idea of his own. He hurried over to the defanged vermin and lifted the meal it had failed to eat, finding himself amazed to know that what he held in his hands was actually some sort of helmet, with a nearby cuirass to match. As he lifted the armor into his hands, he saw that it had been propped onto a beautiful sword that had managed to survive in this valley without suffering a single scratch. [[Previous|Page 34]] | [[Next|Page 36]]

His hands trembling in excitement, Lad quickly hid himself in the oversized armor, taking extra care to find space for his tail. He lifted the sword in both of his hands. The creatures continued to pounce at him, but their teeth were no match for his newfound gear. “Lucky…!” he whispered to himself as he began to swipe at the monsters swarmed around him. They seemed to take the hint, and with so many of their teeth having been broken on Lad’s armor already, they decided against pressing their attacks any further. To his amazement, it didn't seem to keep a new one from showing up and trying to get a taste. Suddenly, Lad watched in confusion as one of the beasts stopped its lunge in mid-air, dropping to the ground. It was only after it had fallen completely that Lad noticed the spray of blood that trailed it into the dirt. Lad looked up to see Four-Eyes standing tall in the middle of the bridge, blasting away at the creatures in the valley. “Hey!” the child shouted up at the *vaquero*. “Four-Eyes! It’s me! Lad! Hey!” “*¡Caramba!*” Four-Eyes shouted, only vaguely audible from so far below. “Yeah! Hey! Can you help…hey, wait! Where are you going?” Lad’s protests seemed to be ineffective, however, as Four-Eyes disappeared along the bridge. Lad let out an agonized sigh and returned to defending himself against the creatures by himself. “I bet I don’t even taste good!” he protested as he warded them away with swings of his sword. They didn’t seem to be able to bite through the armor he had found, but he lacked the confidence to depend on it. After a few more minutes of this, the critters began to fall out of the sky mid-lunge once again. Lad looked up expecting to see Four-Eyes on the bridge, but was amazed to see Angel descending into the valley on his wings instead. “Miss me?” he quipped as he landed next to the surprised child. [[Previous|Page 35]] | [[Next|Page 37]]

“Miss you?" Lad spat, as Angel gently fanned his wings. "Didn’t you push me down here?” Angel didn’t seem to notice the accusation, however; he was too busy collecting the slain vermin. “Four-Eyes was right!" he said. "Lots of rock hares down here! We’re gonna have ourselves a mad feast…!” As Angel began to fly away, Lad gasped in anger. “Hey, don’t ignore me! Can’t you lift me out of here too?” Angel swiftly fell back onto the ground and wrapped an arm around the child’s waist. “Well, damn, why didn’t y’all just ask?” Before Lad could point out that he actually had asked, he was being lifted through the air, the wind toying with his red hair as he rapidly left the frightening ordeal in the canyon behind him. Once Angel let him go on the bridge, however, confusion rapidly set in. “Wait, Angel,” he stammered, “didn’t you push me in…?” “What?” Angel gasped indignantly. “You think…boy, why would I do that? Y’all know what Convoy and Ace would do to me, yo? Y’all ain’t worth it.” “So…you didn’t try to push me in? But I heard you behind me…you said ‘showtime’ and then I felt—” In a flash, Angel had bent over in front of Lad and taken an angry grip on the boy’s shirt. “Forget what y’all heard,” he growled. “Forget what y’all felt. Nothin’ happened.” With a sudden yank, he added one more sentence. “Got it?” “I was sure it was you,” Lad mused, “but…alright, if you say you didn’t do it…” With that, the grip on Lad’s shirt was released, and Angel had returned to a standing position. “Great. Glad we could clear it up, dawg.” As Four-Eyes came running to inspect the scene, Angel turned to him with a fistful of rock hare corpses. “Your meat…?” [[Previous|Page 36]] | [[Next|Page 38]]

“You’re sure it wasn’t Angel?” Ace asked for what felt like the millionth time. “I thought he pushed me in too,” Lad said, “but he said it wasn’t him.” “But…Convoy and I saw him fly to where you were, and then you were in the canyon.” Ace shrugged. “Either way, the locals are amazed that you survived at all down there. ‘South Divide’, they call it. It’s their garbage dump. It tends to attract the rock hares. Now, you found something down there for me…?” Lad nodded and stepped to the side, removing himself from the line of sight between Ace and the salvaged equipment. “Ta-da! The sword is like yours, i—” Rather than wait for him to ask his question, Ace chose to shove him aside, her excitement having taken over completely. “Remarkable!” she cooed. “This sword does match mine perfectly…and this armor…the emblem is familiar to me, somehow…” Lad leaned in for a closer look, since he had worn the armor far too quickly to inspect it. It was a deep shade of crimson, its color brilliant despite the thick layer of dust coating the ensemble. True to Ace’s ramblings, the left side of the cuirass bore an image of three snakes, two slithering in straight parallel lines and a third zig-zagging between them. “You’ve seen this before…?” Ace shook her head. “No, but…let me see your armband.” Lad nodded and thrust his left hand toward the armor. Ace began to explain her reasoning as her finger darted back and forth between the two logos. “You see? The snake in the middle…it traces a jagged line between these two others. Now look at White Wind's logo. The two Ws between two lines form a similar pattern." “What does that mean?” “I’m not sure,” Ace admitted as she shoved Lad’s hand aside. “It’s probably a coincidence. I know that this armor has to be old…no other material we can create or find today can completely resist rock hare teeth like this must have been able to do.” “Oh, it does,” Lad noted with a giggle. “It’s the only reason I was OK!” [[Previous|Page 37]] | [[Next|Page 39]]

“Hm, this is an incredible find," Ace gasped, cradling the helmet of the armor Lad had found. "But what was it doing at the bottom of a canyon like that? Perhaps the bearer was less fortunate in his descent than you were…or perhaps a townsperson discarded it, not knowing its worth…or…hm…regardless…” Ace suddenly stuck out her hand. “…we have you to thank for recovering it.” Lad shrugged and shook his leader’s hand. “Angel got me out of the canyon, though,” he said. Ace scoffed and quickly rose to her feet. “Angel is lucky I keep him around anymore…but you may have guessed that. I should study this discovery further.” “You study?” Lad asked incredulously. Ace looked all around before she answered the boy’s question. “It’s why I run a caravan,” she admitted when she was sure no one else would hear her. “When I found my sword, I knew it was old…I just knew that it had to have come from before the end of the world. I left everything behind to join White Wind, so I would have the supplies and the companions to get me around the wasteland…so I could search for more clues. When the other caravans didn’t take me anywhere helpful, I just made my own." Ace gave a small shrug and added, "It's not as if I think the caravan job is unimportant. I just get to have two motivations to keep going, that's all. I don’t know what waits at the end of this trail of clues…but whatever it is, I think it needs to be found.” Lad slowly shook his head. “Wow…that’s cool! A great big treasure hunt…and all these people we help along the way!” Ace nodded. “And this is a major clue…there’s no denying that these swords were used in pre-apocalypse times. It’s impossible to know if they were used by soldiers, mercenaries…whoever used them wore a uniform, at any rate. Whoever they were, they got around. I found my own sword hundreds of miles from here. Either way…this snake emblem must be important. This is what we need to look for.” ## End of Chapter 6 [[Previous|Page 38]] | [[Next|Page 40]]

## Chapter 7 “Criminy,” Convoy muttered. “Lad, come away from the window for a bit.” “Too late,” Lad replied, his eyes widening in horror at the sight of so many dead bandits piled on top of one another. They weren’t slain quickly like the bandits at the ruined van, either. Many of them showed signs of having been brutally tortured. Despite being a child, he could already see what all the victims had in common. “Bandits hate Abnormals too…?” “The safest places for an Abnormal to be are in a slaver’s cage or a caravan,” Ace mused. “And the cage will make you wish someone could kill you.” “But…these Abnormals are in bandit clothes…” “They don’t care. If they kept an Abnormal in their midst, even one with a useful mutation, they would have to stop and think of how to best take care of that Abnormal, or how their mutation would best serve their cause. Bandits don’t think…bandits steal and kill.” “But…but…why?” “Life in this world is too tough for a lot of people to handle. Some of them kill themselves. Some of them become bandits, to try and live lives of decadence by killing other people.” “And some of them ‘ave a go at caravanning,” Convoy interrupted. “Don’t let it get to ye, Lad.” “Hey, wait, this all reminds me,” Lad piped up, “what about those people in Divide? How they had the Abnormals all on one side? Why can’t we help them?” “We had to leave,” Ace answered quickly. “We have another job. An underground city is just a few hours from here, and they need supplies. They dug deeper underground, and found some sort of strange building buried there. They want a caravan team to help investigate the area just in case.” “Oh…I guess that’s important too…” [[Previous|Page 39]] | [[Next|Page 41]]

“Don’t ye worry about Divide, Lad,” Convoy said. “If the situation gets out of ‘and, someone will call a caravan.” “But it’s already…oh, forget it,” Lad grumbled, pouting in his seat. “Lad, I’m Abnormal too. I know it’s ‘ard to ignore ‘ow badly some of us are treated…but the supplies we brought there will make their way to East Divide. That won’t ‘elp them with everything, but a caravan ‘elps as many people as it can…while we take days to ‘elp Divide’s Abnormals, wot ‘appens to everyone else?” “I guess,” Lad sighed in resignation. “We have to help the whole wasteland, not just one town.” Deep down, however, he wondered if their reasoning was entirely what they said it was. Before he could call them on it, however, he watched as a cloud of dust billowed up from the horizon. “What is that…?” “Corpse mutts,” Convoy answered. “*Perros de la muerte*, as Four-Eyes calls them. They sniff out rotting flesh, and ‘ome in on the scent to eat the dead. We burnt all those bandits because of these ‘ounds, remember?” “Well, sure, but…they just eat the people and move on, right?” “Wrong,” Ace barked. “They run to their food in a straight line. Anything in their way ends up either trampled or violently attacked. They also exhibit fierce territorialism when at the site of their meals. They have been known to attack entire caravans that were just passing by.” Once the dreaded dogs managed to show themselves, Lad understood the others’ fears. Even from a long distance that was rapidly getting longer, each mutt seemed to be about the same height as Ace. Up close, they had to have been at least the size of the bus. Their pack was as large in number as the hounds themselves. Lad counted at least ten of the beasts traveling together, before their bulging eyes and copious amounts of drool motivated him to look away. “Yuck,” Lad gagged. “I don’t want to see one of those ever again.” “Dispose of the dead properly," Ace said, "and you’ll never have to.” [[Previous|Page 40]] | [[Next|Page 42]]

Lad gasped as the bus suddenly tilted downward, steadily entering a hole of impenetrable darkness. “Hey, what’s going on?” he shouted as even the bus around him disappeared from view into the murky depths. “Lad, it’s an underground tunnel,” Convoy explained. “The light won’t reach in ‘ere.” “So this is where the city is? Is the whole city dark, too?” Convoy shook his head. “They dug ‘oles to let the sun shine down.” As if on cue, a dim light appeared at the end of the tunnel, illuminating rows upon rows of buildings sculpted from the very dirt they rested upon. As the caravan vehicles reached the city itself, Lad found himself straining his neck to look upward, and his straining was rewarded with a gorgeous view of the sun. It filtered in through a series of nine evenly-spaced holes in the earthen canopy stretched out overhead, with a cross-pattern of steel bars guarding each one from having anything fall through it. “See?" Convoy said. "Ye won’t be in the dark, even ‘ere.” “Wow…how did they do that?” Lad asked. “Ye may ‘ave a chance to ask that yourself. ‘ere comes someone now.” True to Convoy’s word, they were quickly being approached by a man completely covered in both dust and facial hair; his head seemed to exist only to support the enormous forest of a brown-haired beard he sported. “’ello, mates,” the man greeted them with a tip of his mining helmet. “This ‘ere’s the city of Shroud…diggin’ is just about all we do down ‘ere. What brings ye down ‘ere?” “White Wind business,” Convoy replied through the window. “We ‘ave supplies, and we also came to assist with the excavation…” “Oh, right, right, the buildin’ we found way down ‘ere! Well, sir, ‘ave yer employees unload those supplies, an’ you can follow me right through ‘ere to the dig site!” Convoy shook his head. “I’m not the leader, chap. I’m just the driver.” “Ye…ye ain’t? But…neither were yer mates in the other car…if a good, strong fella like yerself ain’t the leader, who is?” “I am,” Ace shouted as she threw open the door to the bus. At this point, she had equipped herself with the ancient gear Lad had found in the valley, and was now an intimidating specimen armed with two swords. [[Previous|Page 41]] | [[Next|Page 43]]

The bearded Shroud representative scoffed. “But…ye’re a woman." he said. "Quit foolin’…the big guy luggin’ the crates there, ‘e’s gotta be yer leader.” “’fraid not,” Convoy admitted as he unloaded supply crates from the bus. “She’s the leader.” “Crikey…first ye bring Abnormals down ‘ere, then ye tell me ye let a woman do yer work? But all them muscles…” “So you turned to harassing women once you drove out all the Abnormals?” Ace growled, her right hand caressing one of the sword hilts protruding from her back. “Man, I know, right?” Angel’s voice shouted as he swiftly swooped in from afar. “What few babes there are ‘round here are mad busy workin’ all the house jobs. I found a few hot honeys on the east side, but here they won’t come outta the kitchen long enough…guess that means I’m on Ace’s side for a change, yo.” “Deplorable,” Convoy muttered. “I drove the bus slow to keep Lad from ‘aving a fright, and you were chasing skirts? Wot’s Four-Eyes been up to?” Lad’s restless gaze lucked upon the sight of a tin can flipping high above the rooftops of the buildings, only to be perforated in an instant by a well-timed bullet. “Showin’ off…winnin’ me some bets.” “Honestly, Angel,” Ace sighed. “At any rate…” As much scorn as Ace must have been feeling toward Angel running off like he had, the bearded man from Shroud had it worse. Michael saw the anger in Ace's eyes flare as she turned away from Angel, so much so that he swore he felt it. “…we’re going to the building excavation. Now.” “Fine,” the bearded man relented. “Maybe somethin’ in there will have a good snack outta ye, mates.” “Whatever.” Ace pushed her way through anyone in her way, heading straight for a dark tunnel on the other end of the city. She motioned over her shoulder for everyone else to follow. “Angel…go get Four-Eyes.” “Yeah, yeah, I’m doin’ it,” Angel muttered, having already taken to the skies. “I gotta collect my winnin’s anyway.” [[Previous|Page 42]] | [[Next|Page 44]]

Eventually, Ace had cleared the path of passersby enough for Convoy, Lad, and Four-Eyes to walk in her wake to the dig site, with Angel descending in from overhead. Once there, the only light in the area came from lamps situated atop the mining helmets of the workers therein. Lad marveled at the pale freckles of illumination they provided. Most of them revealed nothing but more dirt, but some lights fell against the unmistakable gray of metal. The caravan approached a worker straight ahead, and Ace summoned his attention with a tap on the shoulder. “We’re here to help investigate,” she stated. “Crikey, mates, ye’re late,” the miner replied without bothering to turn away from his hand-powered drill. “A few of the men already went in deeper. Go find ‘em…oh, an’ ye need one of these.” A hand left the miner’s drill in favor of his back pocket, fetching a small rectangular piece of plastic. “We found ‘em lyin’ around in the buildin’," he added as Ace leaned to and fro, her eyes locked onto the plastic. "We ain’t sure what they’re good for, but ye’re the one goin' in, so you ‘old on to it. Oh, an’ ‘ave that minin’ ‘elmet there, mates. It’s our only spare, and there’s five of ye, but…shouldn’t be too bad.” “Right.” Ace snatched both items, swiftly handing the mining helmet to Lad. “Make yourself useful and put this on,” she instructed the child. As he did so, she activated the light on the helmet, causing a spotlight to follow Lad’s gaze into the darkness. Before long, his helmet illuminated the entrance to the building, a broken set of double doors. The doors were little more than impenetrable slabs of metal, jutting from the wall and resting in grooves along the floor of the doorway. “Everyone, through there…and stay close,” she said. Normally, when she gave an order, Ace's voice remained stern, flat, and pragmatic. In this ruin, though her words were the same, Michael could hear something in her voice that had changed. It got worse as she turned to move ahead. Normally, she naturally kept her companions' paces, but now, lad struggled to match her speed. [[Previous|Page 43]] | [[Next|Page 45]]

“Like I need this, yo,” Angel scoffed, his fingers fumbling across his sniper rifle. He began to peer through the darkness of the complex through the rifle’s scope, though he seemed to be bored with what he could have possibly seen. “I don’t care if you have night vision on that rifle, Angel," Ace said. She flung a hand in his path. Even then, it took him another step or two to be hindered by it. "My orders are unchanged. You all need to stay close.” Angel and Ace continued to argue back and forth as the gang slowly made their way through the darkness. Before long, they found themselves in a narrow hallway, forced to go single-file. Lad had the dubious honor of walking in front, while Angel held up the rear. Lad’s light leapt from side to side as he constantly examined the walls of the hallway, some of them bearing doors. “Should we go in these?” Lad yelled over the sound of the argument. “Can you read?” Ace paused her scolding of Angel to ask. “Read what they say. One might lead to something useful.” “Alright…’custodi’ something…’restroom’…’danger high voltage’—“ “There,” Convoy suddenly shouted. “We’re going in there.” Lad shrugged and wrenched the door open, his helmet soon resting its light upon an enormous engine in the middle of the room. “Hey, what’s this thing?” “A generator! Me old ‘amlet ‘ad one of these…it’s the only way we lasted as long as we did, it was! Oh, and a spot of gas to go with it…we’re lucky!” “Convoy, you don’t know what this thing does,” Ace warned the excited driver. “Sure I do!” [[Previous|Page 44]] | [[Next|Page 46]]

Convoy rushed to empty a red plastic can of gasoline into the engine. With a grunt, he yanked a cord hanging from its side. The engine let out a deafening roar, then began to cough and sputter to life after what must have been ages of inactivity. Lad gasped as the hallway behind him began to flood with dim light, the trace amounts of illumination provided by small lights hanging in pairs along the walls. “Ye see?" Convoy said, jutting his thumb at the light in pride. "It turns the lights on…keeps some awful buggers of the night away.” Ace nodded slowly. “I see," she muttered, giving a short nod. "Perhaps we should return to the entrance…there may be something we missed.” When they returned to the first room, they saw all the miners standing outside the broken doors, marveling at the sudden illumination. Lad’s mining helmet had failed to illuminate the fact that this room was an enormous circular area, with a desk curved in the opposite direction in the center. The caravan had ignored the desk in favor of heading to its left, and had completely missed the logo plastered on the walls directly to the left and right of the entrance. “’Serpent Worldwide’,” Lad read aloud, slowly sounding out the words the way his parents had taught him. The second word was laid between two lines, the Ws bouncing back and forth between them. He turned to Ace for some sort of explanation, and it was then that he realized the resemblance between the snake emblem on her armor and the two Ws in the word “Worldwide”. ## End of Chapter 7 [[Previous|Page 45]] | [[Next|Page 47]]

## Cbapter 8 Ace quickly tore off her armor and held it up against the wall, her smile growing as her eyes shifted back and forth between the two logos. “This is an amazing find!” she said in a hushed tone. Michael looked up at his fellow caravanners for a moment, but their attention was firmly on Ace's reaction. “This ‘Serpent’," she cooed toward the wall mural, "if they truly spanned the world as their name suggests, they would have needed many soldiers spread out in all sorts of locations. This is further supported by the acquisition of these swords in such distant locations. Perhaps they did indeed cover the world…” “Yo, A-dubs,” Angel growled, “what’s any of this got to do with our mission? My wings are lookin’ mad awful down here.” They didn’t appear to be damaged, but the light did give them more of a yellowish tint. “Quiet.” Ace slipped back into her armor. “Perhaps other clues in this building will guide us to other Serpent outposts. We will need to explore this facility further to know if such a course of action is ideal.” “So…we just gotta do what we came here to do in the first place.” Ace rolled her eyes as she turned to face her caravan. “Yes, Angel, our orders are essentially unchanged.” Before he could split from the group and explore on his own, she took a firm hold of one of his wings. “I said our orders are unchanged. That includes ‘stay close’.” Angel let out a pained groan, to which Ace responded with a shrug. “We don’t know what might be down here. If you go off on your own and get killed, no one will mourn you.” “Ha, I knew y’all was scared.” Angel released a derisive laugh from his lips. “C’mon, we mowed down dozens of bandits yesterday. What’s one measly serpent?” Ace slid her grip on Angel’s wing down to its base, where it jabbed bloodily into his shoulder blade. As he let out a scream, Ace’s opinions remained, unwavering. “We’re sticking together, whether you like it or not.” [[Previous|Page 46]] | [[Next|Page 48]]

Stick together they did; they combed over the entire Serpent facility, searching for any items of interest. In the hallway that had housed the generator, many other rooms split off in a similar fashion. Next to the generator room was a room completely wallpapered with small colored tubes. They came in a wide variety of sizes and colors, and silently slithered their way from the floor to the ceiling. “What are these?” Lad asked, jabbing a finger into the plastic roots. “Wires,” Convoy answered. “In me ‘ometown, we ‘ad to connect them from our generator to our lights.” “That's neat! What else can wires do?" “Plenty, by the looks of it." Convoy swept an arm back toward the illuminated hallway. "‘opefully, the lot of it’s good.” Lad shrugged and left the wire room, absentmindedly pulling open the door directly across from them. Ace began to shout in terror, but quickly silenced herself when the room proved to be devoid of life. The caravan made their way into the room, their feet sinking slightly into the cushy covering on the floor underneath them. Lad walked up to one of the many chairs in the room and helped himself to a seat. When it proved to feel like a cloud underneath him, he felt himself filled with the sudden urge to relax and look around. Two machines graced the opposite corner of the room, one of them housing strange packages behind a sheet of glass. Soon, Angel had also spotted this machine, and it didn’t take long for him to shove the butt of his rifle through the glass. “Nothin’ gets in my way,” he said as he examined one of the packages. “Angel!” Ace scolded him, quickly snatching the package from his hands. “You’re lucky nothing happened…!” By the time Lad turned back to Angel, he already had a second package in his hand, and he had already torn it open. Inside was a bar of an odd material, a strange brown substance that stained Angel’s hands slightly as he turned it around in his grip. “What’cha think these are, yo?” “How would we know? They could be fuel rods, or pesticide, or—“ Despite Ace’s pessimistic guesses, Angel began to sniff the bar in his hands, quickly moving on to shoving it in his mouth. [[Previous|Page 47]] | [[Next|Page 49]]

“Or it’s delicious!” he protested through a mouthful of brown bar as he grabbed more from the broken machine. “’Cho…co…late’…? Weird name…but I ain’t gonna say no to somethin’ so good!” “Can I have one?” Lad asked, his eyes bright with wonder. “Piss off.” Angel stuffed two more of the bars in his face, and was already grabbing for another. “If y’all wanted it, y’all should’ve been a little quicker.” With a demented chuckle, he proceeded to pile up all the other small packages in the machine into his arms. “That cho-co-late thing was awesome…wonder if these other ones are any good.” Ace groaned and turned to the exit. “I think we’re done with this room,” she grumbled. “Aw, but the other machine…!” For once, Lad found himself agreeing with Angel. He was also curious as to the contents of the other machine, adorned with a picture of a bottle of brown liquid. “We’re done.” Despite Angel’s repeated complaints, the group moved down to the end of the hallway. Many of the doors were emblazoned with names and titles. Upon seeing one marked “Human Resources” turn out to be devoid of any actual resources, however, the group decided to skip most of the others. Instead, they made their way to the end of the hall. “’Pharmaceutical Laboratory’,” Ace read from the words adorning the door at the very end. “’Authorized personnel only’. Hm…” Lad joined in her confusion when he noticed the distinct lack of a doorknob on the door. “There has to be a way in…” Before she could conjecture further, Angel had already smashed the door with his rifle. Since it was not made of glass, however, the attempt was much less successful than before. “Well, if there is a way in, I sure don’t see it,” he mused. Ace shook her head. “You’re certainly not going to break this door down. Convoy, you try.” [[Previous|Page 48]] | [[Next|Page 50]]

Convoy nodded and took a few steps back down the hallway. Everyone else opened a nearby door and stood in the rooms therein, all of them bearing a resemblance to the Human Resources room. “Tally-ho!” Convoy bellowed, his voice shaking the walls of the facility. Before long, Lad saw the enormous man dashing full-speed toward the mysterious door, leading the charge with his shoulder and forearm. A mighty thud soon followed, and everyone poked their heads out into the hallway, only to see Convoy on the floor gripping his shoulder. The door next to him remained intact. “Cripes,” Convoy cursed at the door. “If Convoy can’t force it open,” Ace said. She trailed off and thrusted her hand skyward, holding the rectangular plastic piece that the miner had given her outside. She promptly set to work trying to slide the car into any crack in the door she could find, in hopes of prying it open. “We were told we might need this…” Before long, however, Four-Eyes pulled Ace away from the door with all four of his hands. “No working,” he pointed out. “So it would seem..” Ace turned back to the others, her hair having fallen into disarray. “But something has to…” “This?” Four-Eyes pointed out a small device jutting from the wall to the right of the impenetrable door. Even as he suggested it, however, he looked upon the device with an obviously nonplussed stare. Ace joined him in staring at the device, eventually resigning to jabbing at it from every conceivable angle with the plastic in her hand. A lucky downward swipe through a slit in the side of the device was rewarded with a pleased beeping sound, and a green light flickered to life over their heads as the door slowly slid open. “Hey, it worked!” Lad gasped. “We can go in now!” [[Previous|Page 49]] | [[Next|Page 51]]

If the wall device had left two of them nonplussed, however, the wide-open space that awaited them within left all five of them completely baffled. The sides of the room were home to a wide variety of containers and tubes; some still housed liquids of odd colors, but most of them were broken and otherwise left in disarray. A few small white boxes lay mixed in with the mess, some of them having been left open. The caravan rushed over to investigate, only to find a confusing pad of letters and numbers inside each one. Ace hesitantly jabbed a finger onto one of the letters. It gave beneath the weight of her finger and let out a soft click, but nothing happened. “What are these things?” she wondered aloud. Lad stepped over to another one of the boxes, lifting his tail in his arms to keep it away from the glass covering the floor. Having seen one button do nothing to Ace, he allowed himself to press every button he saw at least once. Only one button seemed to have any effect. When he pushed a circular button adorned with a circle and a line, the box began to hum and sputter to life. Before long, light became to pour from the other section of the box, and this light gave way to letters. “Hey,” he said, “what’s a boot sector?” “A what?” Ace asked, already looming over his shoulder. He could see her out of the corner of his eye, peering excitedly at the glowing box. “Huh. I don’t know…but judging by these words here, it’s something that somebody must have broken.” Ace shook her head. “How did you get this to do this, anyway?” “I pressed this button!” “Well then…” Ace gave Lad an approving nod. The ends of her lips attempted to curl themselves upward, but they were quickly forced back into Ace’s usual frown. “…everyone, we need to examine these other boxes.” “This one ‘ere has a wire running into it,” Convoy noted. “Maybe that…no, it says ‘ere someone broke the boot sector.” Convoy leaned to his right, where Four-Eyes was mulling over one of the machines as well. “’is says the same thing.” “Somethin’ ‘bout boots here too,” Angel confirmed. [[Previous|Page 50]] | [[Next|Page 52]]

Ace pressed the button on her box again, causing the light to suddenly extinguish and the words to disappear. With a concerned yelp, she pressed the button once more, bringing the machine to life once again. “This one is working this time!” she shouted, summoning all of her caravanning crew to her side. “I just pressed the button more, and…that appears to have fixed the boots.” Everyone stared into the light in confusion, with Lad struggling to peer at the box through everyone else that had crowded around. A variety of light patterns stared back at them, with the word “welcome” briefly appearing before being lost in yet another sea of confusing symbols. Eventually, the screen of light came to rest with a few remaining symbols, though these proved no less puzzling. Superimposed over the bottom of a picture of a man and child were a variety of smaller images. Folders, globes, lightning bolts, and even an odd sideways bowl emitting curved waves awaited the caravan. Next to the bowl were a series of numbers and symbols. “A six, two dots over each other, and a fifty-two,” Ace reported. “PM…what does that mean? Six-hundred-fifty-two PMs?” “Is that a good thing?” Lad asked. “I don’t know. What about these other pictures?” Ace tapped her finger on the screen. “This one has ‘Project Venom’ written under it…some sort of poison? I want to see more.” Ace’s eyes flicked to the bank of buttons below, and her endeavors eventually caused one of the folder icons to glow blue. “I think that did something.” A few more taps of her finger confirmed her suspicions. “These arrows…they move the blue to the other pictures. Can I do anything else to it? Open it…well, this button says 'Enter', so maybe I can enter it." With another tap of the keys, the screen was flooded with a white void, completely masking the picture of the two people. The other folders also disappeared, replaced with tiny pads of paper. “Let’s start from the first one…” The upper-left paper icon took on a blue hue at Ace’s command, prompting her to press the “Enter” button once more. When a massive wall of words greeted her actions, she began to read aloud. (font:'Times New Roman')[(text-style: "expand")[(colour:"#b1c6c1")[(background:"#103c3b")[I began this electronic journal to absolve myself of blame…these pages were to tell the story of a man who begrudgingly did as he was told. The closer those Commie bastards got to finishing their superweapon, though, the less I disagreed with the decisions of my superiors. At this point, I decided to remove all traces of the old journal, out of pride and paranoia alike. The things I wrote about my bosses would certainly earn me a visit from Snake’s Head.]]]] [[Previous|Page 51]] | [[Next|Page 53]]

“What does this all mean?” Lad couldn’t help but ask. “I don’t know,” Ace replied. “This doesn’t say anything about any poisons, though. All it says is that whoever wrote this wanted to turn it into a book for everyone to read. I can’t imagine anyone from before the apocalypse wanting to read this.” Ace’s finger hammered rapidly on the key bearing a downward arrow, causing the text on the screen to pass them by and make room for more text. “Here, this part looks interesting," she said, finally stopping the rolling text. "I’ll keep reading.” “Boring,” Angel sighed as he began to pace around in the enormous room. (font:'Times New Roman')[(text-style: "expand")[(colour:"#b1c6c1")[(background:"#103c3b")[Project Venom was our only hope against those pinkos. Our plan was to coat their lands in toxins concocted by Serpent itself…the perfect plan. Even if the plane carrying Agent Venom was shot down, the toxins would still be able to spread from the site of the crash; there was no way we could fail. The cocktail of poisons would strip the leaves from their trees, leave their soil cracked and barren, cause irreparable damage to their wildlife, and even cause painful and horrible alterations in their people’s physiology. Agent Venom was to bring them to their knees and leave them begging for the antidote…an antidote we at Serpent were in complete control of.]]]] “’ey, a picture!” Convoy exclaimed as Ace continued to skim the document. “I was getting right tired of this bloke.” The relief that Convoy felt, however, was replaced by a unanimous feeling of horror at the pictures that appeared. They showed a series of comparisons, with each picture on the left being labeled “Before Agent Venom”, and the pictures on the right bearing the caption “After Agent Venom”. “Hey, a rock hare!” Lad shouted at one of the “After Agent Venom” pictures. “And that’s a corpse mutt!” [[Previous|Page 52]] | [[Next|Page 54]]

“This Venom,” Ace muttered to herself, “must have…ugh, we have to keep reading. We have to find out more about the antidote this person mentioned.” (font:'Times New Roman')[(text-style: "expand")[(colour:"#b1c6c1")[(background:"#103c3b")[Our plans with Agent Venom succeeded, all right. They succeeded all too well. The toxins are spreading far faster than we had anticipated, and doubled our initial estimates of the affected radius two days ago. Oh, how I miss the skepticism I once nursed! If I had not wiped this journal clean of its older entries, you could see how correct I was to assume that President Viper would try to control the flow of the antidote all by himself! One man cannot hope to contain Agent Venom…we designed it to be more resilient th]]]] The journal readings were suddenly interrupted by a thumping noise loudly approaching the gang. Everyone turned to face the noise, a horrible series of footsteps coming from behind a door labeled with yet more warnings. It was impossible to read them, however, because the door was quickly knocked to the floor, revealing an angry corpse mutt attempting to protect its meal from the caravan. Its bony frame barely fit within the narrow hallways of the facility, further supporting Lad’s prior hypothesis that the creature rivaled Convoy’s bus in size. “Finally,” Angel mused as he raised his rifle toward the new threat, spilling packaged foods all over the floor in the process. “I had enough of this readin’ crap anyway.” ## End of Chapter 8 [[Previous|Page 53]] | [[Next|Page 55]]

## Chapter 9 “Ya wanna eat me, do ya?” Angel taunted the incoming corpse mutt. “Huh? Well, eat this!” With a guttural battle cry, Angel fired shot after shot into the beast. His bullets only served to confuse and anger the beast even more, however, and it slowly stalked its way into the room. Even a high-caliber sniper rifle round to its eye was not enough to halt its advance. “Angel, stop it!” Ace shouted. “All you’re doing is making it angrier!” “*Perros de la muerte*…they are already dead,” Four-Eyes added. “At least, that’s wot people say,” Convoy clarified. “After wot we’ve seen…” Four-Eyes gave the group a four-armed shrug. “If no shoot…what do we do?” “Wot bloody good will it do to fight it? I say we lock the lout back up!” Ace and Lad both instinctively turned toward the door they had used to enter the area, relieved to see another device like the one on the other side of the wall. “We just have to put that…that thing in that slot again!” Lad noted, followed by a chuckle from Angel. Before anyone could ask the winged man what he found to be so funny, the corpse mutt lunged at the group, forcing them to take cover among the messy tables. “It will take too long for the door to open.” Ace said. “We’ll be eaten before we can escape…and we can’t just open the door and run; it closed behind us too fast.” The mutt’s breath began to pour over the area, heavy with the stench of both the recently deceased and the long-dead meals it had consumed. Exposed veins and muscles throbbed through its legs with every step it took, as it examined the surroundings to plan its attack. “Eww, it’s so gross!” Lad moaned, his hands covering his nose and mouth. Unfortunately, the deranged animal seemed to take this as its cue, and pounced directly through the tables to reach Lad. “Oh, no,” Convoy shouted, suddenly rising to his feet and charging toward the corpse mutt. “Ye’ll not be ‘aving a snack on my boy!” [[Previous|Page 54]] | [[Next|Page 56]]

As he ran to defend Lad, the beast turned to face him, stopping his advance early. Instead, he resorted to waving his arms to the right frantically, a signal for Lad and the others to make their way toward the exit door. They complied as the mutt thrust its enormous jaws toward Convoy, prompting him to roll through the glass to his right just to get out of the way. “Ooh, that ‘urts…!” Convoy groaned as he rose to his feet, blood seeping out from around the dozens of glass shards stuck in his arm, not to mention the leg he had dragged along the ground so quickly. “Wot luck to ‘ave an animal like this in ‘ere.” Meanwhile, Ace quickly slid the card through the device near the door, only to get a red light and an angry buzz for her troubles. “That’s not right,” she gasped as she tried again, only to get the same response from the machinery. In a panic, she nearly dropped the card, though Four-Eyes was quick enough on the draw to catch it and try his luck with the device. Oddly enough, his swipe was the one accepted as genuine, and the door slowly began to slide open. The mechanical buzzes and grinding had caught the corpse mutt’s attention, however, and it was soon making its way toward the caravan once again. “Come on, dumb door!” Lad shouted, frantically pounding on it with his fists. “Open!” Once again, it was Convoy’s timely intervention that saved the child’s life; this time, it was by yanking him away from an incoming bite by his tail. “’onestly, Lad, ye need to be more careful,” Convoy scolded him. “I can’t keep making all these sudden moves…all this glass ‘urts too much.” “Oh, but we’ll be out of here soon, and we can take care of all that glass…!” As the automatic door slammed shut, three pairs of eyes fell upon it: Lad’s, Convoy’s, and the corpse mutt’s. Lad let out a soft gasp when he realized what this meant. Ace, Angel, and Four-Eyes were already out of the room, and he and Convoy had been trapped inside. “Hey, open that door if ya wanna,” Angel’s voice whined loudly enough to be heard through the wall. “I sure ain’t stickin’ around for it!” [[Previous|Page 55]] | [[Next|Page 57]]

The corpse mutt tried to investigate the source of Angel's voice, but quickly gave up in favor of the meal already in the same room. Convoy grunted as he leapt out of the hound’s path, a good section of his pantleg getting caught in its teeth. “Too close," he said to himself. "I just can’t keep ye out of ‘arm’s way like this.” Before Lad could protest, Convoy threw him toward the exit door and began to yell and scream to keep the corpse mutt’s attention away from the child. Lad decided to take his chances and shout through the door. “Ace!” he whined. “Ace, open the door!” “Lad, give me a minute!” Ace’s voice responded, much to his relief. “There, got it!” As usual, the door signaled its movement with a mechanical noise and a green light. Convoy looked on as the door opened, tears gathering in his eyes as he continued to make noise. “Lad!” he shouted as the beast’s jaws came flying at him. They attempted to close around the rotund Abnormal, but his muscles bulged in an effort to hold them open. “I didn’t know ye for long, but I think ye grew a lot in that time! I’m glad I got to see it ‘appen.” “Come on, Convoy, you can still make it!” Lad protested, equally teary-eyed. “It ‘urts too much…and I couldn’t run so fast to begin with.” Convoy shook his head as the corpse mutt’s teeth began to perforate his palms. “A bit late for that either way, is it not?” Before Lad could argue against Convoy’s plan any further, another yank of his tail pulled him through the automated door just before it slammed shut. He looked up to see Ace, her fist full of his tail. “We have to leave,” she ordered. “There’s nothing we can do.” “But Convoy,” Lad tried to dispute, “he’s…” Somehow, hearing the man’s screams and the mutt’s noisy chewing was worse than simply seeing the gruesome results. “…we can’t…I…he…” [[Previous|Page 56]] | [[Next|Page 58]]

“He just became dog food, yo,” Angel muttered. Before Lad knew it, Angel was sprawled out on the floor. He looked up to see Ace, her fist clenched and her breathing erratic. “We just lost a member of the caravan,” she growled, shaking with quiet fury. “The least you could do is show some sympathy.” “Likewise, yo.” Angel rubbed a palm against the side of his head where Ace’s fist had landed. “Don’t talk like that!” Lad shouted. “We can still help him! He’s hurt, but we can make him feel better!” The child could no longer hold his emotions back, and found himself sobbing uncontrollably. “He…he…he’s part of the ca…caravan…” “We can’t stay here,” Ace responded. Her voice was just as cool and emotionless as ever, but her willingness to kneel in front of Lad and put a hand on his shoulder made her sympathy clear as day. “Convoy did what he did so that y…we could make it out of there alive. If we open that door, that mutt is going to come through here and after us, and maybe even the entire city of Shroud.” “B-b-but Convoy…we can’t give up…!” Ace slowly shook her head and scooped the crying child up into her arms as she stood. “We’re not giving up on him.” She continued to attempt to soothe Lad as the remaining caravan crew dashed out of the Serpent complex as fast as they could. “He gave us the ultimate vote of confidence…the things we do mean enough to him that he was willing to give his life to let us continue our work.” Lad’s tears still continued to pour forth, however. “Why can’t we have both? I want to do our work and have Convoy…!” “Then ya should’ve moved faster, idiot,” Angel said. “Angel!” Ace barked at him. She looked ready to hit him again, but scooped Lad into her arms instead. He cried into her shoulder, and she laid a hand on the back of his head, cradling him on the way out of the facility. [[Previous|Page 57]] | [[Next|Page 59]]

Soon, they had made it back to their vehicles, and were standing around outside of them. “Lad…what Convoy let us leave that place with wasn’t just you, or me, or the knowledge that some pre-apocalypse buildings might still be standing beneath the sands of the wasteland…he left us with a clue on how to fix the entire wasteland, a clue that the Shroud miners seem to have missed.” “You…you mean that Venom stuff?” “Yes…remember what the journal in the light box told us? The awful state of the world is because of this ‘Agent Venom’ weapon, and a man from Serpent hid away all of the antidote somewhere. If we bring this information to White Wind headquarters when we stop by for a resupply, then they can send out an order to all caravans…we can all work together to find and distribute the antidote.” “I think I understand,” Lad gasped, having run out of breath from all of his crying. At this point, he had calmed down considerably, though a fine mist still shrouded his eyesight. “We…we have to make the whole world better…for Convoy.” “That’s right,” Ace confirmed, “I…I want to find this antidote stuff and make the world better again…and make sure no one picks on Abnormals ever again…and…and…” “If this antidote works as well as it sounds, there won’t even be Abnormals to discriminate against. Everyone will just be…people.” “When can we go tell the headquarter people about the Venom?” “After we drop off the supply crates we have left. We just have to make one more stop, alright?” “Oh…OK.” Lad blinked the mist from his eyes, and no tears came to replenish it. “I won’t cry now. I have to be big and strong like Convoy was. Where do we still have to go?” “I don’t know. Let me report the results of the Serpent exploration. They’ll tell us where to go next.” Ace slowly lowered Lad to the ground and made her way to the White Wind outpost on foot. [[Previous|Page 58]] | [[Next|Page 60]]

While they waited for her return, however, Angel found a few more things to say. “It’s your fault, ya know,” he teased. “Stop it,” Lad grunted. “Ace said Convoy did what he did to protect all the stuff we learned in the Serpent place.” Angel scoffed. “He died ‘cause y’all couldn’t book it outta there with the rest of us. He died just ‘cause of you.” “If Ace was out here, she’d hit you again…!” Lad very nearly felt like performing the deed himself. “So what? She ain’t so tough. It’s just Convoy I gotta worry about.” Ace let out a brief chuckle that sent a dark chill down Lad’s spine. “Well, not anymore, yo.” Despite what Angel had said, he quickly assumed an innocent and distant stance when Ace reappeared from the maze of buildings that made up the city of Shroud. “Just one more stop,” she kept mumbling to herself. “Ace, you’re back!” Lad shouted, more relieved than he had ever been to see her. Keeping a brave face on in the face of Angel’s insults was starting to take its toll on the child. “So…? Did they tell us where to go before we get to go to the headquarter place?” “Yes,” she answered solemnly. “Just…one more stop.” “Well, where are we going? Where is this ‘one more stop’ you keep talking about? Come on, Ace, tell me!” Ace sighed as her gaze fell to her feet. “Summerset Steppes Resort.” [[Previous|Page 59]] | [[Next|Page 61]]

Lad stayed unusually quiet on the three-hour drive to Summerset. Then again, he had had an unusually eventful day, even by the standards of the caravan life. Every so often, he would stand in his seat and peer over the back of the driver’s seat. He didn’t know why he expected Convoy’s bald head to peek up from over the seat back at him. Whatever pushed him to try, though, it was still Ace’s curly blond locks that he ended up seeing. During many of these peeks into the driver’s seat, Lad briefly contemplated striking up some conversation with Ace, but the words refused to come to his mind, and so he plopped himself back into his seat in silence. He also took frequent gazes at the landscape scrolling past his window. If Ace was correct, Convoy’s disappearance meant the restoration of all of these lands. Lad couldn’t quite grasp exactly what that meant, but the images he had seen on the glowing box had promised that a green and serene planet had existed before Agent Venom had so thoroughly blighted everything. Perhaps, if the antidote Ace had read about could be found, things would be restored to their pre-apocalyptic state. Lad could reluctantly accept that reality. One of the things he had frequently heard from the other members of the caravan was how helping more people was better. Deep down, however, he told himself these things to distract himself from Angel’s harsh words. Everyone had made it through that troublesome door just fine on their own except for Lad and Convoy, and Convoy had only stayed behind to assist Lad. On some level, Angel had to be right. things would have gone much more smoothly if Lad had been able to avoid the corpse mutt without any help. In some twisted form of logic, Convoy’s death had to have been Lad’s fault. Ace had told the child not to take it personally, to take it as the price that had to be paid in order for the wasteland to be restored, but he had no idea how to think of things on such a widespread level. When it came time to worry about Summerset, Lad tried his hardest to empty his mind of all thoughts. He had plenty to think about without the possibility of seeing the parents who had abandoned him so long ago. Even though his adventure had started because he was trying to find them, he found himself doubting if he even wanted to talk to them at all. In fact, he struggled to remember why he had wanted to seek them out in the first place. It was hard to miss them after having met the good people of the caravan. Despite Convoy no longer being in the picture, he still had Ace to care for him, which she had done to a degree that rivaled even his parents’ attention. It was the soothing memories of Ace that finally allowed Lad to push the maelstrom of thoughts from his mind in order to take a much-needed nap. He would worry about Summerset when they arrived there. ## End of Chapter 9 [[Previous|Page 60]] | [[Next|Page 62]]

## Chapter 10 “We’ve arrived,” Ace whispered, gently nudging Lad out of his nap. “Huh…?” the boy groaned as he pushed himself into a sitting position. “We…we’re where?” “Summerset.” Ace pointed a finger toward the windshield, through which Lad’s eyes spied an enormous fortress of a place. Armed guards clad in bulletproof vests and helmets patrolled all around the tall wall around the estate’s perimeter; men were stationed both outside and on top of the foreboding gray stone walls. The only way inside that Lad could see was a red metal gate that arched above even the resort’s walls. “Do you want to wait outside?” Ace asked. Lad was a smart enough boy to know that Ace was trying to shield him from his parents, but he felt as though he didn’t need such protection. “I’ll come inside,” he said. He was far more afraid of what might be lurking outside the resort than what was sure to be within. “Alright. Listen carefully to what you’re about to hear. I’ve been here once before.” Ace hopped back into the driver’s seat of the bus, and overtook Four-Eyes’ truck to lead the caravan inside. Before Lad could even ask for an explanation, she had one ready. “Summerset doesn’t even trust a caravan led by an Abnormal. If I lead the way and the rest of you work silently, there shouldn’t be too many problems.” “Oh.” Lad felt as if he could have been able to guess that reasoning, though Ace had let out one new piece of information. “You’ve been here before?” Ace nodded, her eyes still on the road. “It’s a beautiful place. The water is blue and the trees are green…it’s not the brown wasteland you’re used to. The high walls must have protected the area from the bulk of Agent Venom’s effects.” As Ace approached the gate, she shouted into a small box on the wall to her left. “Caravan number: nineteen sixty-five nine seventeen. Reporting in.” Her roll call complete, she turned back to Lad. “Alright, here it is. Listen carefully.” [[Previous|Page 61]] | [[Next|Page 63]]

As the gate slowly opened inward, the box on the wall began to talk back. “Welcome to Summerset Steppes Resort, caravan,” it greeted them in a cordial female voice. “If you have any Abnormals in your possession, remember to keep all of them near you and out of human-only areas at all times. Failure to keep your Abnormals in check will result in an unsatisfactory performance review sent directly to White Wind, resulting in a variety of possible penalties up to and including revocation of your caravanning permit. Summerset Steppes…you’ll like what you see.” As Ace slowly eased the bus through the gate, Lad did indeed like what he saw. True to Ace’s word, the dull brown emptiness of the wasteland was nowhere to be found here. What met his eyes instead was a lush canopy of green trees suspended over an even greener ground. The trickle of a brook winding its way through the area was barely audible over the sound of the caravan vehicles, and the vehicles made their way across the brook by way of a multi-hued stone bridge that formed a gentle arc from bank to bank. “This is so pretty…!” he gasped, rapidly leaping back and forth across the aisle of the bus to take in all of the amazing landscape at once. Before long, a stunning rainbow of plants rose into view on the right side of the bus; Lad’s eyes went wide as he gazed upon the strange plants and their beautiful tops. “Ace, what are those things?” “On the right? Flowers,” she replied. “Flowers…” It was a word that Lad had never heard in the wasteland, and for good reason. Nothing as beautiful as these flowers could possibly grow in that harsh wilderness. “Ace, could high walls really keep this place so…so wonderful?” “There is little reason to believe it could be anything else.” “Well, sure, but…” Lad shook his head. “No, you’re right. Besides, we have to talk to the headquarter guys soon…we should be thinking about that!” “Right, Lad,” Ace wheezed, obviously trying hard to stifle a laugh. [[Previous|Page 62]] | [[Next|Page 64]]

“You’re about to laugh, aren’t you?” Lad teased, excited to have found a soft spot in the armor Ace wore around her emotions. “You’re not such a great big tough lady after all, are you?” “Don’t be ridiculous,” Ace said, trying really hard to keep her usual demeanor. Lad found himself having the laugh that Ace wouldn’t allow herself. “You’re just a big softie…!” “You can’t be soft when you lead a caravan. Especially not one with Angel in it.” Lad swiftly took the hint. “That’s why you do it, huh? Maybe you can go back to being an ordinary person when we find the antidote stuff.” Ace shook her head. “Sometimes, I wonder.” Before long, the caravan skidded to a stop in a gorgeous circular area, a ring of dirt around a beautifully carved water fountain. Lad briefly stopped to wonder how the local populace could waste water so freely before exiting the bus. He made sure to stay as close as he could to Ace; he didn’t want to get the entire caravan in trouble. As Angel and Four-Eyes helped each other carry the supply crates out of the bus, the gang was approached by a beanpole of a man wearing a black suit. The closer he came, the better Lad could see his thin black mustache and slicked black hair. “Good day to you, my lady,” he said in a proud voice, his eyes locked on Ace. “My name is Beef Wellington, one of many in a proud tradition of butlery. Come, now, you must be exhausted from having to care for these animals here, hm?“ “What an odd name,” Ace muttered to herself. “It must be connected to some pre-apocalypse tradition.” She quickly shook the anthropological thoughts from her head. “I’m Ace. We brought the requested supplies…though there must be some mistake. Is this drop-off intended to be scheduled for five supply crates? The population here does not meet the numerical requirements…” “Oh, but my dear…what good would a resort such as this be without an abundance of supplies to match our tenants’ desires?” [[Previous|Page 63]] | [[Next|Page 65]]

Lad looked from the Summerset representative back to the pile of supplies he was here to oversee. “But these could go to people who need them,” he said, “not just people who want them!” “For once, I’m with the brat,” Angel admitted. “Why should you get all this swag anyway, yo?” “Oh, but I just told you,” Beef replied. “We have to deliver the very best to our people, which means they simply cannot go hungry, not even once.” The butler’s eyes quickly returned to Ace. “Ah, but such refinement is lost on animals such as them, no?” “Animals?” Ace repeated. “These are people…these are my companions, my friends. They are the secret to my success as a caravan leader, and as a human being. Please refrain from making such comments about them in my presence.” “You really mean that, Ace?” Lad asked, surprised that she had been so forthcoming with her emotions. “Oh, I knew I recognized that voice, honey!” a familiar woman’s voice crooned. Lad gasped as the source of the voice came into full view. “Mom?” She was clothed in a pink floral summer dress with a matching hat, and wobbled around the corner on pink high heels. Her hair had also taken on a strange shade of pink since Lad had last seen her. “Relax, pookie,” an equally familiar voice responded, this one doubtlessly belonging to Lad’s father. The boy’s suspicions were confirmed when a gentleman strode into view with his nose pointed skyward, a peacock of a man dressed in an array of colors that easily blinded those used to the sea of brown outside the walls of Summerset. “It couldn’t possibly be…” When Lad’s father turned his head to face the caravan, he nearly dropped his hat. “By jove, it’s Michael!” “These are your folks?” Angel muttered. “I can’t believe it.” [[Previous|Page 64]] | [[Next|Page 66]]

No heed was paid to the winged man’s complaints, however. All eyes were currently fixed upon Lad’s family reunion. “Oh, Michael, we didn’t think you would make it,” his mother said. “Who’s Michael?” Lad snapped. “I’m not Michael. I’m Lad.” “Quit being so silly, child! Oh, you and your imagination…so, did you think you could sneak into Summerset looking like that?” Lad shook his head, mustering as much pride as he could find. “I’m in a caravan! It’s official!” He sensed his parents’ disbelief, and decided to pre-emptively show off his White Wind wristband. “Egads!” his father shouted. “You’re with those ruffians going around th—“ “Don’t call them that,” Lad growled, interrupting his father mid-sentence. “They’re my friends, and we work together! They take better care of me than you did!” “Hm, a bit sour about our little departure, are you? Well…for your information, Michael, we were dying out there in that cramped little home of ours, with so little food and water. We came here to escape that dreadful wasteland, harrumph!” “Your father’s right, dearie,” Lad’s mother interjected. “It was either him and I living the good life, or the three of us wasting away out there—now what would you have me choose? This was the best thing for the most people.” It was a phrase Lad had heard many a time, but something about this particular use left an awful taste in his mouth. “People keep saying that!” he shouted. “But they never mean it…it’s just an excuse. They just don’t want to say they’re sorry to the people they don’t help, and that’s…just…really…mean.” [[Previous|Page 65]] | [[Next|Page 67]]

“Well, son, to be honest, we’re not all that sorry,” Lad’s father replied. He carried on as if he didn't notice the onlookers gazing at him with renewed disdain. “Boy, we did what we had to do to get by, as did you…shacking up with those infernal caravans…that’s just the way this world works at the moment, my boy. Survival is so difficult to come by that we have to make such decisions sometimes…it’s like your mother said. Either she and I landed in this lap of luxury, or all three of us would have starved to death.” “Yeah, but…I’m your son!" Lad said. "What if I starved? Don’t you love me…?” Lad’s father thrust his nose ever higher, as if to pierce the heavens with it. “I do believe we love life a bit more, hm? What good is family and togetherness if we’re all killed?” “That can be arranged, yo,” Angel muttered, his finger anxiously itching the trigger of his sniper rifle. “Pardon me?” Lad couldn’t help but feel relieved as his father’s scrutiny was turned on Angel. “Do I know you, cad?” “Naw. Y’all wouldn’t know me.” Angel slowly shook his head as he lifted his sniper rifle to his chest. “Though I am damn near ready to acquaint y’all with my little friend here.” Ace quickly intervened, swinging an open hand down on top of Angel’s rifle. “We should go,” she commanded. “Now.” “Indeed,” Beef Wellington agreed, having stood quietly on the sidelines of the entire argument. “Some of the other tenants are beginning to stare. Please do not disrupt their enjoyment of Summerset Steppes.” “Yeah, wouldn’t want y’all to get in the way of all this sittin' around y'all do up in here,” Angel growled, his hands still firmly grasping his rifle. “Yeah,” Ace echoed. “We’ll just be on our way.” [[Previous|Page 66]] | [[Next|Page 68]]

As Four-Eyes diligently prepared yet another meal of rock hare meat, everyone else took a seat around the cooking fire. Convoy’s absence from the circle was painfully conspicuous, but Lad barely managed to keep himself from crying. Ace seemed to notice something amiss regardless of his efforts, however. “Is there something wrong?” she asked as she dragged herself along the ground a little, moving closer to the child who had curled himself up into a ball. Lad certainly wasn’t about to withhold any information from her if she was going to ask about it. “Convoy’s gone,” he muttered, starting with the obvious. “Mom and Dad don’t love me anymore. I’m all alone again.” “Yep,” Angel remarked, his voice rife with its usual sadism. “That’s how the wasteland works, yo. Everyone just throws ya away like trash when they’re done puttin’ up with ya.” “Angel, is that really how everyone acts?” “Pretty much. What do ya think is gonna happen to this caravan if we find that antidote crap an’ make it so the world don’t need no more caravans?” Lad shook his head. “I know what I’ll do…I’ll be in charge of a whole town one day. I won’t let anyone be mean to Abnormals, and I’ll make sure everyone gets lots of food and water, and it’s going to make Convoy real proud. Oh, but we can all still be friends, right? We can visit each other and—“ Angel quickly leapt to his feet. “I ain’t friends with nobody. It just ain’t worth it.” “Because you think they’ll throw you away when they’re done with you?” Ace snapped. “'course.” Angel’s wings began to flap, giving the cooking fire a little difficulty and causing Four-Eyes to look away from his preparations with anger in his eyes. “This is borin’ me, dawgs. I gotta get outta this.” [[Previous|Page 67]] | [[Next|Page 69]]

After Angel departed, Ace allowed herself to scoot closer to Lad. “There, he won’t bother you for awhile,” she assured Lad. Her voice still carried its usual low monotone, but the child felt an odd warmth from hearing it. “And you’re not alone. You still belong to this caravan.” “Yeah," he said, struggling to talk and keep from crying at the same time, "but…” Ace shook her head. “It must be tough to have your parents say such a thing to your face. Don’t let it get to you like it did Angel, alright?” “Angel?” Lad repeated, his jaw dropping. “You mean he…” “Yeah,” Ace confirmed as her gaze flung itself to the stars. “When I found him…it was while he was on sale at the slave market. I passed by their cages on the way into town. They were all held there like wild animals. Even if they broke their bars, the anklets they wore would slow them down too much to let them escape. In the early days of my caravan, it was just Convoy and I…it was his idea to buy one of the slaves and allow them to work with us. Angel never really trusted anyone, not since his own parents sold him into slavery in order to go to Summerset.” “That…that happened?” Lad suddenly wondered just how unfortunate he had been, considering his own parents’ departure had only led to Convoy and friends. “That’s the story he tells. The longer he works for me, the less I believe it.” Ace let out a low, forlorn sigh. “He thinks of me as his new captor. I’m no different to him than the slavers that caged him in the first place. Even he would admit that I treat him better than they did, though.” “Of course you do.” Lad suddenly felt an uncontrollable urge to throw himself against Ace’s side in an affectionate embrace. “You treat everyone so well.” Ace put a hand around Lad’s shoulders. “I try. I may be out here to learn about the wasteland, but I could stand to learn a thing or two about people too. I’ve been hiding myself from people…first with my studies, and then with my caravan duties. I never let myself look soft in front of my caravan.” Ace seemed to be attempting to restrain herself, trying to hold back her inner thoughts, and she seemed to be failing. “You know, Convoy also suggested that I hire a *vaquero*.” “And me!” Lad blurted. “He brought me along, too!” Ace released a small gasp. “That’s true. In a way, this is really his caravan, not mine. I’m not sure how I’ll run it without him.” “You won’t have to for much longer, right?” Ace chuckled briefly, earning a surprised stare from Four-Eyes. “If what we learned in that Serpent building was true, maybe we can make the whole world feel like su…” Ace suddenly leapt to her feet, not bothering to finish her sentence. “Ace…?” Lad cooed as he slowly pushed himself upright. “Ace, what’s wrong?” “We have to go to White Wind as soon as we can,” she replied cryptically. “We might have to postpone sleeping for this.” ## End of Chapter 10 [[Previous|Page 68]] | [[Next|Page 70]]

## Chapter 11 “Ace, why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?” Lad asked over the back of the driver’s seat of the bus. No matter how many times he tried to pry information from his leader, however, she remained oddly silent, her shoulders hunched over the steering wheel. She was also driving much faster than Lad had ever seen her go before. At this speed, even the smallest of bumps provided dangerous amounts of hang time that threatened to destroy the bus’ suspension. “Can’t you at least slow down, please?" Lad pleaded. "You’re scaring me!” Not even an appeal to pity would sway Ace from her daredevil course. Lad’s frightened pleas fell on deaf ears as she sent the bus screaming through the darkness of the night. Not even the emergence of enormous insects from the shadows seemed to raise any concern with her. Giant bugs began to appear in great numbers, walking on four long and hairy legs in the rear as they threatened to use the massive blades on their remaining two legs to tear the bus to shreds. “I don’t have time for locusts,” Ace growled as she hammered her foot even harder into the gas pedal, reducing the fearsome nocturnal predators to a windshield full of locust ichor. They barely had time to turn their huge heads toward the bus. No locust could find the time to analyze the situation with its red compound eye, crystalline and glowing in the darkness. Ace felt no sympathy for her victims, however. She merely flicked on the windshield wipers and kept moving, but they could only do so much. As soon as they had wiped the windshield clean of locust giblets, a new mess swiftly arrived to replace that which had been cleaned. [[Previous|Page 69]] | [[Next|Page 71]]

Lad screamed as locust after locust met its demise at the hands of Ace’s front fender. “Ace, please, no more!” he shouted. It had never occurred to the child that Convoy’s bus, normally a safe haven where nothing was hurt, could itself be used as such a gory weapon. The realization was enough to send him diving between the bus seats, in the hopes that he wouldn’t have to watch the locusts splatter. “Slow down!" Lad kept begging. "We never drive at night, and I guess this is why…it’s so scary! But…I’m more scared of you, Ace!” Something Lad said must have finally shone through her mental fog of anger, and she finally began easing up on the gas pedal a bit. “I…I’m sorry, Lad," Ace said, pulling over for a bit. "I want to tell you everything, but…you’re still just a kid. If I’m right, then this is something you won’t want to hear.” Ace resumed driving, and even though she'd slowed her pace somewhat, it was still fast enough for Lad to feel numerous jarring thumps as more and more locusts exploded from the force of the bus’ impact. “I don’t even want to believe it myself," Ace continued. "I don’t want to say anything because I hope that I’m wrong, and this is all a grave misunderstanding.” Even over all the noise of the bus’ engine and its victims’ odd chattering noises, Lad could hear Ace breathing heavily and slowly, trying to calm herself from the enigmatic rage that had consumed her. “But…I still have to know right now. Try and bear with me until we reach headquarters, please.” Ace had never given Lad a reason to distrust her, and found himself casting a vote of confidence despite his fear. “I’ll try, Ace.” [[Previous|Page 70]] | [[Next|Page 72]]

“Can you see it, Lad?” Ace announced. “We’re almost at headquarters.” Lad didn’t need her to tell him that, however. He could have easily guessed from the enormous defensive perimeter and its blinding spotlights. Lad briefly thought of Convoy’s origin story, of the man’s usage of generators to drive away locusts and other nighttime horrors with artificial light. The building in the distance had little use for such protection, because the enormous walls lined with barbed wire appeared to be more than enough to deter even the omnivorous rock hares. No living thing was stupid enough to come at White Wind headquarters head-on; the locusts, rock hares, and even the bandits knew to keep their distance. “Wow,” was all Lad could say at the sight. “Yeah," Ace said, "they know how to welcome a caravan. They make Summerset look like Riverside.” Ace’s simile was mostly lost on Lad, though he didn’t know how much of it was Ace’s uncharacteristic state of mind and how much of it was his own underdeveloped logical abilities. Regardless, the caravan made its way to the front gate, an enormous metallic shutter that was otherwise similar in design to Summerset’s entrance, down to the talking box device. “Caravan number: nineteen sixty-five nine seventeen,” she recited as usual. “Reporting to headquarters for a scheduled resupply.” “Understood,” a gravelly male voice approved from inside the box as the shutter slid to the left and out of the way. “Welcome back.” Despite the familiarity of the box’s greeting, it was the first time Lad had been in the White Wind headquarters, and the first time he had seen anything like it. Even the ground beneath the wheels of the bus was different. It was a strange gray surface with yellow markings instead of the rocky brown dirt roads around the wasteland. There were also a variety of new vehicles scattered about, a sea of vessels in a variety of different colors, shapes, and sizes. Lad looked upon it all in awe, somewhat disappointed when a right turn took the bus away from the vehicles, and a left turn robbed his view of everything else outside. Before he could crane his neck to peer out the windows in the back of the bus, a metallic door came sliding down to the ground with a resounding crash. Lad shrugged and departed the bus behind Ace, and artificial light quickly flooded the area to reveal that Angel and Four-Eyes had parked the truck nearby. [[Previous|Page 71]] | [[Next|Page 73]]

“The hell is all this about?” Angel shouted as he quickly approached his leader. “Ain’t we usually tryin’ to get some sleep at this hour?” “I already told Lad,” Ace responded, “that you’ll all just have to wait and see. I really don’t want to put any ideas into anyone’s heads if it turns out that I’m wrong.” “Man, this ain’t like y’all at all. That kid’s messin’ with your head, A-dubs. It’s all the food he eats.” Ace shook her head. “You’re still on about that? Lad eats less than you do.” “An’ I eat less than I wanna!” Angel rolled his eyes. “We don’t have time for this.” Ace swiftly left Angel in her dust, making her way through a pair of black double doors that swung back and forth behind her. Lad waddled after her, only to find yet another strange sight awaiting him on the other side. Most of the building must have been taken up by this one room, a wide-open place with a ceiling full of enormous lights and a floor full of odd white tiles. White metallic shelves separated the room into dozens of tiny rows, with each shelf carrying a wide variety of items. To his left, Lad spied a wide array of clothing, with some articles on display being oddly free of the dust of the wastes. To his right, the shelves housed bottled water and meats from a variety of wasteland creatures. Ace eventually noticed Lad’s awe, and gave his hand a gentle pull to urge him back into action. “I know it’s a lot to take in,” she admitted, “but we have to keep moving.” As the group made their way through the area, Lad found himself weaving through aisles of vehicle parts and weaponry. Angel let out a low whistle upon sighting an enormous rifle with an attached tripod for accuracy, but there was no time to stop and smell the gunpowder. Ace was leading the way, and she was never one to get sidetracked. After a few minutes dedicated entirely to walking across the area, Ace barged into a room where a bespectacled man scribbling furiously into a ledger was very surprised to see her. [[Previous|Page 72]] | [[Next|Page 74]]

“What’s the big idea?” the White Wind employee demanded. He spoke in the same gruff voice as the box in front of the gate. “We need to see Colonel White,” Ace growled. “Now.” “Now? You can’t see him now; he’s asleep…!” “We just need to ask him some pressing questions about the Shroud dig…about something called ‘Agent Venom’.” Those two words were more than enough to get the man’s attention. He leaned over another talking box contraption and held down a nearby red button. “Sir, there’s a caravan here to see you.” “Don’t you know what time it is?” a loud and gravelly voice eventually blared from the box. “Tell them to take a hike, private!” “But…it’s about Serpent…and Venom…” The box groaned. “Alright, private, buzz them in.” “The colonel will see you now.” As if to punctuate his sentence, the man behind the desk pressed a different button, this one causing a nearby door to let out a quiet click. Ace led the way through the door to reveal a muscular figure standing in the middle of the elaborate room, his frame barely contained within a drab green uniform and black boots. A messy tapestry of small metal accessories pinned to his chest gleamed in the artificial light, and his gray hair was cut to a flat top. Lad was a little impressed; if the man outside was right, this Colonel White was sleeping in these clothes. “What in the stars and stripes are you lollygaggers doing here so late?” he shouted in the same voice as the box in the previous room. “I ought to have you all stripped of your caravanning permits!” “Colonel, you know why we’re here,” Ace reminded him, undaunted by him yellling directly at her face. “We know about Agent Venom…and we know there’s an antidote.” [[Previous|Page 73]] | [[Next|Page 75]]

Colonel White turned away from the group, staring up at a set of armor on his wall identical to Ace’s. “I didn’t think there was any more," he sighed. He turned back to Ace, disappointed to see the same armor wrapped around her lithe figure. “Well, aren’t you just the pride of the flock, lady. Now, show the proper respect! I am a high-ranking official, and I demand to be addressed with ‘sir’! We have rules here, missy!” Ace’s hand leapt to her back, wrapping itself around the hilt of one of her swords. “You know something about all this, don’t you?" she asked. "This is connected to Summerset being so…green, isn’t it?” Colonel White let out a deep-bellied laugh for a few seconds, though all the laughter quickly ceased when he lifted an enormous drum-fed shotgun from the desk behind him. “You sure are a bright one, aren’t you? Got it all figured out…?” Ace nodded slowly. “I do. You know all about the Venom and the antidote, and you tried to hide it all away from everyone, just like the man from Serpent in the light box journal.” “That had a journal in it?” White slapped a palm against his forehead. “Dagnabbit, how’d you get one of them working?” he asked. “You knew everything,” Ace continued, ignoring White's question. “You tried to get rid of all the evidence…when you heard there was something to be found in Shroud, you sent men down there to destroy everything. When caravans helped move all the Abnormals in Divide to the east part of town, one of them found this Serpent armor, and you ordered them to throw it into the canyon, to make sure no one would find it. Only Summerset received the antidote, allowing them to flourish so…but why?” “Why? Let me show you something, missy.” The colonel walked behind his desk, fishing a strange orange ball from one of the drawers. “Do you know what this is? We found it when we took over this area…it’s some kind of food called a ‘fruit’. It grows on certain trees in good ground, and eating it keeps away waste rot.” “Waste rot?” Lad parroted. “Waste rot, maggot! You know, how all the old folks start losing teeth and bleeding from the mouth? This here’s the cure!” It was an affliction that Lad had never heard of until now, though he was vaguely glad that he had not. “Impossible,” Ace gasped. “No one has found the cause for waste rot.” “If you eat these fruit things,” Colonel White argued, “waste rot doesn’t ever come for ya! Ain’t you ever wondered how I managed to live for seventy years?” “It…does make sense. Most people are taken by waste rot by then.” “Exactly, missy!” [[Previous|Page 74]] | [[Next|Page 76]]

Colonel White began to pace back and forth in front of the gang, idly tossing the fruit up and down with one hand and cradling the shotgun against his chest with the other. “All I had to do was make a nice little plot of land to grow the fruit from," he explained, "and a whole gaggle of people who wouldn’t blow the whistle on the whole thing.” Ace’s grip on her sword tightened. “Summerset…!” she gasped. White snatched the fruit out of the air, swinging it in front of Ace with an excited gesture. “Right again! Those folks will do anything to get themselves some paradise…and some fruit! Why, they even grow it and ship some to me! I just keep their neck of the woods safe and luxurious, and they keep me from rotting…!” “Yo, dawg, sir,” Angel interrupted, “why even run this caravan bull if y’all just wanna have this…fruit?” “It’s all a diversion, maggot! All the fellas with the guns are busy doing what I want ‘em to, and all the other people out there don’t know any better than what’s in their own little cities! If word got out about me and these fruit things…why, just imagine what everyone would do to me to get ahold of some fruit for themselves!” “So y’all keep their faces stuffed, usin’ the toughest guys out there to haul some meals around, an’ it’s all just to keep your little fruit game goin’?” Angel shook his head. “That’s really somethin’, chief.” “Don’t you know it, private…!” White shouted, pleased enough with Angel’s analysis to stop screaming words directly into his face. “Don’t y’all know so much…! Too much, really.” As if on cue, the door behind Lad swung open, revealing an imposing figure dressed in a full set of Serpent armor. “’fraid I can’t let y’all outta my sight now.” “So what, you’ve sent him to kill us?” Ace spat, unsheathing both of her swords in a flash. This drew the ire of White’s guard, and the two of them quickly ended up locked in combat. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Angel interjected, waving his hands back and forth in front of his chest. “I like a good fight as much as the next guy, but I’m sure I wouldn’t have a whole lot to say about this fruit crap if I had a piece of the action…maybe in Summerset…” “Angel, what are you—“ “A deal, son?” White screamed. “With you?” “No,” Angel replied as a wicked grin spread across his lips. Before anyone could question his motives, he swiftly drew his sniper rifle and painted the walls of the room with Colonel White’s brains. In a flash, he had switched his weapon with White’s gun, one that was much more efficient in such close quarters. “Age got the better of ya, old man. Y’all must’ve been quicker on the trigger in the old days.” “Angel!” Ace shouted, turning to face the power-hungry Abnormal. “Stop this right—“ “No!” he screamed, lifting Lad against him by way of wrapping an arm around the boy’s throat. “You stop! Y’all don’t call the shots no more…I do!” ## End of Chapter 11 [[Previous|Page 75]] | [[Next|Page 77]]

## Chapter 12 “Hey!” Lad croaked, his neck pinned tightly between Angel’s arm and chest. “Let go…!” “Angel,” Ace pleaded, “don’t bring the boy int—“ “Shut up!” Angel interrupted. “Take so much as one step over here, and this kid is dead!” Lad felt the cold steel of a gun barrel poke his temple. “I’ll do it!” Ace sighed and dropped her battle stance. “I know you would. You’ve been trying to get rid of him this whole time, haven’t you?” Angel nodded. “I would’ve left him in that canyon if y’all hadn’t told me to pick him back up.” Ace gasped, her eyes narrowing in anger at her latest thought. “The corpse mutt…” “Yeah, I knew shootin’ it wouldn’t hurt it none…but it sure got mad!” “You killed Convoy!” Lad squeaked, desperately struggling to breathe. “Eh, I was hopin’ that thing would do away with you, but Fatso there got in the way!” “Why do you even hate Lad so much?” Ace asked, trembling in place as she restrained herself from taking action. “I already told ya…he’s eatin’ all my food, drinkin’ all my water…same reason the rest of y’all need to clear outta the way!” Angel threw Lad to the side, smacking the boy’s face against a wall full of the deceased colonel’s gray matter. “But I run this caravan now…naw…I run this whole damn wasteland!” Lad gasped for air, suddenly feeling very nauseous after being exposed to the gore on the wall. He was so distracted by that that he failed to retreat from Angel, and the deranged Abnormal restrained his hostage once again. “White sure don’t run nothin' now," he added. "You don’t…four-Eyes don’t…this brat don’t…” [[Previous|Page 76]] | [[Next|Page 78]]

Four-Eyes looked up when his name was mentioned, having missed the entirety of the conversation due to language barriers. He had been waiting patiently in the corner, reloading and cleaning his revolvers, before Angel called his attention to the tense standoff that was happening. But now that he saw that one of his fellow caravan workers was in danger, he was more than ready. “Angel,” he said, struggling with a language not his own, “why?” “Because I can’t die,” Angel replied with a flourish of his wings. “I clawed my way up from nothin’…now I run this whole operation! Not that you’d understand…y’all don’t understand a damn word I’m sayin’.” “I understand…Lad needs help.” This caused Angel a very audible amount of pain, as evidenced by his groan. “You let the kid get to ya, too? Damn, Four-Eyes, I had high hopes for ya. I might’ve even let ya join me.” Four-Eyes shook his head. “My loyalty…it is to the caravan of Ace.” Lad watched in awe as Four-Eyes turned to his leader. “Ace, Angel is not in the caravan?” Ace nodded. “He said it himself,” she confirmed. “Angel left the caravan. He’s holding a member of the caravan hostage.” Four-Eyes nodded and pointed all four of his revolvers at Angel. “It is how I thought.” “Hey, now, *amigo*,” Angel pleaded, “let’s not get carried away, yo! In fact…” Once again, White's shotgun was shoved against Lad’s head. “…let’s point those guns up, *vaquero*. You know…up! I hope y’all know how to count, ‘cause y’all got ‘till the count of three to put ‘em up there, or this kid is dead!” Four-Eyes sighed in disbelief. “I know counting.” Lad watched in horror as the vaquero’s might was turned to the ceiling. “That’s more like it, dawg,” Angel complimented his former co-worker as he snatched the fruit from White’s dead hand, keeping Lad firmly in danger with his other hand and the shotgun within it. [[Previous|Page 77]] | [[Next|Page 79]]

“Now, then,” Angel said, trailing off as he stared at the fruit. He shrugged and plunged his teeth into the thick skin of the fruit, quickly withdrawing and spitting all over the place. “Man, that’s mad nasty…!” His eyes soon regained a light of wonder when an odd-colored liquid slowly oozed from his teeth marks in the fruit. He hesitantly put his lips against the holes, and sucked up the juice that had leaked from them. “That, though…that’s good!" he said. "Guess the good stuff is all inside.” Angel nodded at the fruit, his satisfaction with White’s legacy renewed. “Well, I got mad time to learn, yo…I ain’t gonna die some starvin’, rottin’ nobody out in the wastes. I’m goin’ down in history…everyone’s gonna remember Angel…!” “As a total nutcase,” Ace remarked. Angel slowly shook his head before suddenly thrusting a finger at White’s guard, still standing in the doorway in his full suit of Serpent armor. “You! I’m your boss now, dawg…” Angel threw the fruit in his hand to the guard, whose body language conveyed nothing but confusion. “…yeah, it’s food. Ya eat it. Stops waste rot for good. Y’all can have it if ya murder this lady here.” The guard shrugged and resumed his swordfight with Ace, his single sword against two of hers. The air sang as the weapons collided, amusing Angel to no end. “Hey, she did what you said!” Lad growled from within Angel’s grasp. “Why are you doing this?” “No reason,” Angel admitted. “I was just gettin’ bored of all this talkin’. I wanna see a fight!” The winged man soon had what he wanted, as Ace and the guard tumbled into the previous room where they had more space to fight. Ace quickly took to the offensive, taking her blades into a whirling dance of death. Neither blade seemed to have much effect, however, against the guard’s ancient gear. When her attacks abated, the guard seized his opportunity to take a swing at Ace’s unprotected legs, sending her to her knees. “Damn,” she muttered, staying within her cold and emotionless character even in the face of death. “All this armor…I can’t hit him!” She gasped as the guard silently stood over her and pointed his blade at her helmet in a gesture of victory. “That armor…” [[Previous|Page 78]] | [[Next|Page 80]]

Suddenly, a second wind flowed through Ace, and she stabbed her swords in a gap in the guard’s armor that Lad had failed to spot, a small slit exposing part of his neck. As infinitesimal as the gap was, it was still large enough for one of the finely-sharpened blades of Serpent to find its way inside and dig out a nauseating spray of blood. Ace struggled to her feet as the guard landed face-down in the blood that had pooled in the room. “It’s over, Angel,” she growled. “No one’s left except us—“ “And the kid,” Angel reminded her hastily, shaking both the child and the shotgun in his grip for emphasis. “Ya murdered that one guy. So what? He was probably gonna kill me anyway, what with how I did his boss in, yo.” “You used her!” Lad shouted in an epiphany. “Ha, glad someone here got my drift. Give up yet?” Angel nodded toward Four-Eyes, whose revolvers were still pointed skyward. “Four-Eyes did…I always knew he was a smart fella. Shame about his contract, though. I would’ve loved to have him along, yo.” “Four-Eyes!” Ace gasped from the other room. “He’s not involved in this either, Angel! Leave him out of it!” “What, and let him shoot me?” Angel shook his head. “Ain’t happenin’!” Ace sighed in anger, throwing her swords to the ground. “I’m stuck,” she admitted, horrifying Lad even further. “Four-Eyes, what about you? Can you take a shot?” “Not without bringin’ his gun down,” Angel taunted, “and when he does…this kid’s history!” Four-Eyes shook his head in silence, his eyes locking on to Lad’s. The boy thought he saw some sort of apologetic look in the *vaquero*’s eyes, but it was never easy to tell what Four-Eyes was thinking. Suddenly, Lad screamed as he heard a gunshot blare through the room, rendering his eardrums useless. As he fell to the floor, he noticed just how dark everything had suddenly become. He instinctively curled himself up into a frightened ball as he went face-down in the colonel’s carpeted floor, shrouding everything in impenetrable darkness. [[Previous|Page 79]] | [[Next|Page 81]]

“Lad!” a voice echoed in the child’s head, much to his confusion. “Lad!” As the ringing sound in his eardrums faded, he recognized the voice more and more. “Lad…?” “Ace!” he shouted, suddenly bringing himself upright. He was confused to see nothing but the colonel’s desk before him, in the same darkness that he had hid himself from before. “Why is everything so dark?” “Four-Eyes shot the light,” she explained as she helped the child onto her shoulders. True to her word, he could barely see the fixture swinging back and forth, still tethered to the ceiling. “The bullet ricocheted and hit Angel.” “I shoot,” Four-Eyes’s voice confirmed from somewhere to the left. “I shoot good.” “Indeed.” Lad felt Ace’s hair shift against him as she nodded. It was the first time that Lad had felt her hair up close, and he was rather happy with the new sensation beneath his fingertips. “Angel wouldn’t let him lower his guns, so he shot straight up.” “So…it’s over…?” Lad wrapped his arms around Ace’s forehead. “It’s over, Lad.” He listened in confusion as she smacked something against her hand. “I found some notes in Colonel White’s desk while you were passed out…the antidote is real, and it is here.” “Wow, really? So we can make the whole world look like Summerset again?” “Yes.” Lad’s eyes began to sting as Ace walked into the light of the main room of the building, the room filled with shelves of food and guns. Ace’s distant and emotionless facade suddenly dropped as she gave Lad’s tail a gentle squeeze. “We have you to thank.” “Me?” Lad repeated, not nearly as surprised at Ace’s sudden onset of emotions as he would have expected. [[Previous|Page 80]] | [[Next|Page 82]]

“You,” Ace confirmed. She wore a geniune, unhidden smile for maybe the first time, and she aimed it straight at Lad. It was hard for him to contain his excitement just from that, but then Ace continued. “You found the clue in the canyon at Divide that bridged everything together…the same clue that White tried to dispose of. White had learned everything we did, and from his base of operations, he had given the order to move out to all Serpent locations and have them ransacked.” The smacking sound emanated from Ace’s hands once again, and Lad looked down to see a thick and messy stack of papers in her grip. “These reports contain success stories from nearly every Serpent facility location," she explained. "Only Shroud’s report is missing.” “That’s because we got there first, right?” Lad guessed. Ace nodded again. “They had just found the area when we were called in to investigate. Our orders were to retrieve anything we could, but the stories of a raging corpse mutt were more than enough to dissuade anyone from wanting to go in there ever again.” “So…what happens now?” “With these papers and the antidote in our possession, we can fix the entire world…I can finally see what everything looked like before the apocalypse, before Agent Venom. It’s not quite how I dreamed it would happen, but it will do,” Ace added with a chuckle. “But…I don’t want to bring you along, Lad.” “What?” he gasped as he watched the aisles of wasteland survival gear scroll past his view. According to Ace, none of this would be so sorely needed for long. “Why not?” “Colonel White and Angel both killed and schemed to control the Venom antidote themselves. I fear that a caravan full of the antidote would attract just as much mayhem.” Ace’s hand patted Lad on his knee that was resting next to her ear. “You’re lucky you weren’t hurt today…I don’t want to take any more chances.” “But…but I want to help! I’m in a caravan, and caravans help people…” “Hm…” Ace stopped walking for a second, quickly resuming her stride after an enlightened gasp. “You can still help, Lad. I can drop you off at the outpost where we first met, and we can tell the locals there everything. Do you think you could give away Agent Venom antidote samples to caravans passing by the outpost? If we spread stocks of the antidote around, the risk of being robbed is reduced greatly. Not to mention, it makes the healing process faster.” Lad was almost too excited to spit out his answer in time, but he eventually managed. “Y-yes!” [[Previous|Page 81]] | [[Next|Page 83]]

“And then they made you mayor,” Ace muttered, shaking her head in disbelief. “Well, not right away,” Lad corrected his friend. “It’s been twenty years…these things take time. Oh, speaking of which, I asked the doctor about my tail.” Instead of having to lift it up in his hands, Lad had since gained the ability to move it around himself like any of his limbs, and he was using this ability to show the tail to Ace. It had taken on a dark pink hue, with each joint within the tail creating a very small and shadowed rift. Overall, it gave his tail the appearance of being a series of banded segments. “It’s apparently because of the antidote," he said. "The mutations of Abnormals can’t be cured all the way, but they can be treated so that they look…well, better.” Lad chuckled as he swished his tail around in the air for a bit. “I was worried about how looking like a rat would hurt my chances of staying in office, but…you and I are the only reason normal creatures like rats even exist these days.” Ace let out an amused sigh as she helped herself to another glass of water. “You’re lucky that you just have rats to deal with around here.” Lad leaned back in his chair, a comfy recliner that had been reverse-engineered from the designs of a relic found in a Serpent building. “I heard about that! You and Four-Eyes are some sort of…hunters, was it?” Ace nodded. “We prefer 'Rangers', but you're close to the mark. Everyone’s done so much to rebuild…we’ve recovered technology and methods from the old world that let us make our own clothing, grow our own food…” “…build our own chairs?” Ace nodded. “You’re not the only one with one of those chairs anymore, you know…entire businesses have been made out of selling ones just like them. It hasn’t really taken off just yet, but nothing has; we’re still recovering from Agent Venom.” [[Previous|Page 82]] | [[Next|Page 84]]

Both of the survivors’ eyes instinctively moved to the window, and to the grass and flowers that had grown there. “Everything is such a slow process," Ace said, "including the repair of the ecosystem.” Lad turned an ear toward Ace. “The eco-what?” “The balance of life, basically.” Ace nodded to the flowers. “These plants are lucky. Some wasteland creatures haven’t been exposed to enough of the antidote to become their former selves…Four-Eyes and I have resorted to killing the more dangerous ones.” Lad’s thoughts briefly revisited his departed friend Convoy. “Including corpse mutts?” “Oh…have you not seen our new vehicle?” Lad shook his head, guffawing all the while. “How could I miss it? No one in this town drives a tank. You must have salvaged that antique…?” Ace downed the rest of her water in one long gulp. “The pre-apocalyptic military had some fascinating weapons. The giant gun on the front shoots an explosive round that reduces even corpse mutts to a fine red mist.” Ace’s hand was suddenly on Lad’s shoulder. “No one else has to die like Convoy did, don’t worry.” Lad brushed her hand off as he rose from his seat and moved to the window. “You think he’d be proud of me?” he asked, his voice shaking slightly. “Of course he would,” Ace assured the rat-tailed mayor. “You’ve turned this place from a dusty old outpost into a thriving community…who knew you’d grow up to be such a good leader?” Lad shrugged. “I learned from the best.” Ace turned away from the young man, but not before he saw her cheeks beginning to turn red. “You know I’m still not too used to compliments like that.” “Sorry, sorry.” [[Previous|Page 83]] | [[Next|Page 85]]

The two old friends stood in silence for a few minutes, staring at the green of Lad’s lawn, before he found something else to say. “I’ve finally come up with a name for the town,” he blurted. “Something you all agreed on?” Ace rebuked, her skepticism obvious. “How did you manage that?” Lad shoved a thumb into his chest, a gesture absolutely dripping with pride. “I found a name that captures the spirit of this town perfectly.” His tail waved behind him as he continued. “New roads are being designated all the time, but for now, this is one of the only towns sitting at such an important intersection. We’ve also taken in a lot of Abnormals, and our population is split nearly down the middle…we went around finding out how many people are here, and in the meantime, we found out that fifty-six percent of the population is Abnormal." Lad smiled at the window as two children ran by in play, one mutated and one not. "Ace," he said, gesturing at the window, "this is a place where people from all walks of life come together, a cross-section of everything life has to offer!” “…huh?” Ace muttered, looking up from a vase on Lad’s coffee table. “I’m sorry…I wasn’t listening.” “I was getting to the name,” Lad whined, having quickly figured out what Ace meant. “You still like to cut to the chase as soon as you can, huh?” Ace began tapping her foot impatiently. “The name…?” Lad rolled his eyes. “Fine…it’s Cross Town.” ## The End (link:"(Now where have you heard the name Cross Town?)")[(open-url: "https://jontheredrc.itch.io/the-fox-and-the-thief")]