Tales of the Parodyverse

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Sat Oct 01, 2005 at 04:22:38 pm EDT
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Another unfinished PV story (to celebrate Mike's place being mostly OK and to cheer him up)
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    The pain woke him up. Pain and a smell of cinnamon. The pain won.

    “Aaagh. What happened?”

    Soothing fingers on his head, with a damp cloth. The water felt good. “It’s okay. Relax. I think a building fell on you or something. Hold still while I mop the blood off, okay?”

    That was okay. He didn’t feel like moving anyway, not till the reflex to vomit went away. He forced himself to open his eyes, though.

    “Aaagh.” The fading sun was too bright, dazzling. He winced.

    “Oh thanks,” the woman leaning over him said. She was the smell of cinnamon. “Way to make me feel special. I know I could do with a wash and a bit of make-up, but really...”

    “Not you. The sun’s a bit bright, that’s all. I think I have a concussion.” He shifted to try and sit up. “And yeah, some ribs that aren’t where they should be,” he winced.

    “What happened to you?” his nurse asked. She’d got some water in a broken metal saucer and she was mopping his head wound with what had previously been her sleeve.

    “I don’t remember.”

    “You were in this ruin when the bomb went off. You probably got hit by some rubble.” She checked his head then washed the bloody rag out and went to work on his arm. “This isn’t rubble damage, though. This is laser scoring. Were you running from a patrol?”

    “I… I don’t think so.” He sat up, ignoring the stabbing where his ribs were grating.

    That alarmed her. She backed off, scrabbling over the dirty floor to where she’d left her bowie knife. She hadn’t expected him to recover that fast. “You’re not… you’re not a Soldier, are you? I didn’t do anything!”

    He heard the panic in her voice, saw the dear on her face. “I don’t know,” he said. “When I say I don’t remember, I mean… I don’t remember anything. I don’t remember who I am.”

    She was suspicious now. “Just stay away from me. I can defend myself. I’m a survivor.”

    He believed it. She was dirty and ragged and thin as a rail, but she held that knife as if she knew how to use it. She was edging towards the gap in the wall, and then she’d be gone.

    “Thank you!” he blurted. He didn’t know what else to say. There was a huge void where there should have been memory, context, experience to help him out on what to do next. “For helping me. Thank you.”

    “I didn’t know you were a Soldier. I’m sorry!”

    “I really don’t remember. I don’t want to hurt you. You helped me.”

    She poised on the brink of escape. “Honestly? I thought you were dead when I pulled you out. I was hoping you might have been carrying food, or weapons.”

    “Was I?”

    “No. I was going to take your jacket though. It looks warm. And then I heard you breathing.”

    “You can have my jacket.” He checked himself. The leather garment was ripped at one seam at the shoulder, and there were a dozen neat bullet holes over his heart. Perhaps he hadn’t been the first wearer. Then he realised that the shirt underneath was some kind of body armour, a chainmail mesh weave in some kind of light polycarbide. A bulletproof shirt.

    “You are a Soldier,” the girl accused. She stared at the bright shirt under the jacket. “But what faction? The stars? I don’t know that one.”

    “I really don’t remember anything. All I know is I was hurt and you helped me. Thanks. So if you want this jacket you can have it.”

    He held out the desired garment and she looked at it longingly. Night was coming, and it was already getting bitterly cold. She wore ragged track suit bottoms and she’d just torn the sleeve off her grubby blouse in an act of quixotic stupidity.

    “It’s warm,” the stranger promised her.

    She cautiously leaned forward and took hold of it. But then the man suddenly jerked it back towards him, toppling her into his grasp. His hand closed over her wrist like a vice, forcing her to drop the machete, dragging her down over his lap.

    He winced as her weight fell on his broken ribs. “I should have thought that one out better,” he admitted. But he didn’t let go.

    The woman struggled, but he was far, far stronger than she was.

    “I won’t hurt you,” he said. “But I need some answers. That’s why I couldn’t let you go.”

    The fear was back, a hundredfold. He wondered what she’d seen, what she’d experienced, to sow so much terror in her eyes.

    Then the shadow fell over them. His captive squeaked and pressed herself down on the ground. Above there was an electronic humming. The frequency was low enough to set their teeth vibrating.

    “What is it?” the man asked.

    “A Searcher! We have to hide. They’ll find us!”

    Something in the urgency of that tone convinced him it was better to move, fast. Without letting go of his grip on the woman he slithered back into the shadows where the remaining roof of the devastated building formed an overhang. His companion found a gap behind the fallen roof debris and squirmed inside. He ignored his complaining ribs and an aching leg he hadn’t registered before and dragged himself in after her.

    The humming became louder. He strained to see in the gloom, to find out what was making the noise. Then he saw it.

    Above the building was a grey, saucer-shaped piece of technology, hovering motionless. Shimmering around it were much smaller versions of itself, meticulously mapping the wreckage of the building. Sickly green light played in lines across broken surfaces as the drones explored.

    The girl stiffed her free hand into her mouth to stop herself from screaming.

    Then the entire flotilla lost interest and rose to join their mother-vessel. The noise receded until the night was again deadly quiet.

    The man reflected that he seemed surprised by the silence. He’d been expecting traffic sounds. He could hear drops of rain dripping from a sodden bedsheet caught on a broken spa half a mile away but he couldn’t hear any cars.

    The girl was staring at him miserably. She was trapped in her hiding place now. There was no way to freedom expect past her captor. He let her wrist go and she rubbed it to revive the circulation.

    He asked “Who are you?”

    “I’m the girl learning not to be a Good Samaritan,” she answered. “Please don’t hurt me.”

    “Your name.”

    “Katarina. Is this an official interrogation?”

    “Where am I, Katarina? What happened here?”

    She shook her head. “I’m not falling for that one. Maybe we’d have bought it back when there were lots more of us, when we believed there wasn’t anyone here but humans. But now we know about the Soldiers. We know about the Scavs. We know about…” Her eyes went wide. “You’re not a Skinwalker are you? Oh please don’t take my skin!”

    “I don’t know who I am,” he repeated. “But I’m human.” Except you can hear raindrops half a mile away and you saw that Seeker and its drones through solid concrete, he pointed out to himself. And your ribs seem to be mending.

    “Alright,” Katrina conceded. “Say you are human, not a trick. Say you really did lose your memory when you got hit. Why should I help you? You’re holding me hostage.”

    “Prisoner. I’m holding you prisoner. You’d only be a hostage if I was trying to use you to force someone else to do something.”

    “Oh right. Well I feel way better then.”

    He tried again. “Look, I’m hurt and I’m confused and there’s a big grey flying saucer trying to hunt us. Do you think you could cut me a break and tell me what’s going on?”

    Katrina snorted, or maybe sobbed. “Four months ago. At least I think it was. I don’t have a watch any more. So let’s say four periods ago I was shopping in the mall, when…”

    “Which mall?”

    “Arcadia. Bienville. In Louisiana?” She brushed her dirty blonde hair from her face and looked at him defiantly. “You don’t remember America?”

    “I remember America.” It sounded right when he said it. He realised the emblem on his shirt was almost a reworking of Old Glory.

    “Well anyway, I was shopping when it happened. The skies changed colour. The ground shook. There were… I don’t know. All kinds of things flying about, and a big shrieking, and then the loudest bang in the world.”

    “A bomb?”

    “I don’t know. Some of the people said after it might have been a nuclear explosion. I think… maybe there was a war? You know, a world war. The bombs went off and this is all that’s left?”

    “That was four months ago? No aid came? No FEMA, no National Guard?”

    “Only the Soldiers, and the Seekers, and all kinds of monsters.”

    “These soldiers weren’t US troops, I take it?”

    “No so much. They first ones wore some kind of creepy orange armour and… and they flew. Don’t look at me like that. They flew. They had these backpack things. And… well, they took some people away, and the old ones were shot, and the young ones were divided up and marched off. And some of the women…”

    “I see. And you?”

    “I hid. I’m good at hiding. For a while I ran with a gang of survivors who’d been in town from Lake Bistineau, till the Burrowers got them. Mostly I just hid, and ran, and scavenged, and hid again.”

    “Sounds like a winning strategy.”

    Katarina shook her head. “Not really. I’m starving and freezing. I won’t last much longer. But I won’t give myself up like some of the other women did. I’ll die first.” She saw the strange look in the strangers eyes as he stared around at the gathering darkness. “What are you doing?”

    “Looking,” he answered. “This is all wrong. If this is Bienville then Driskill Mountain should be prominent, but it’s nowhere in sight. There’s a dozen blocks of shops and housing and then nothing, not even roads. No bomb could have wiped out the traces that thoroughly and yet left that strange red vegetation untouched.”

    “So what are you saying?”

    “I’m saying that we’re not in Louisiana any more, Katarina.”

    The woman snorted back a laugh, and for a moment her face lit up and was beautiful.

    “What?” demanded her captor. “What’s funny?”

    “You don’t remember the Wizard of Oz, either?”

    “I do now you’ve mentioned it. Frank L. Baum.”

    “There was a movie too. Judy Garland?”

    “I’m not a movie fan. And I have no idea at all how I know that.”

    “You’re a scary sonovabitch, whatever you are,” Katarina admitted. “And full of crap. How would you know that Driskill Mountain’s not there if you had no memory? It’s dark now. And how were you nearly dead when I found you but now all the bruising’s turning purple and the cuts are just thin scars?”

    “Good questions.”

    “I’ve got a better one. Can I go? Please? I’ve told you what you want to know, and I need to get back to my safe place before the night predators come out in earnest.”

    Another glace at the night. “I don’t think moving from here would be a good idea right now. There’s some very large creatures moving along the street half a block from here, and judging by their dental arrangement and claws I think they’re carnivores.”

    Katarina shifted uncomfortably. “How could you know that?” A sly look of understanding dawned across her face. “Oh, I get it. I have to stay tucked away here, cosy with you for the night, is that it? And you’ll comfort me in your arms? Well think again, buster.”

    “It’s nothing like that, Katarina. I was only…”

    “Look, are you going to keep me here against my will or are you going to get out of my way? Because I swear I won’t let you hurt me without a fight, and it starts right now unless you back off so I can go!”

    “I’m backing off.” He was quite impressed with that fire. She really was a survivor.

    He shifted out of the crawlspace and she slipped past him and quickly retrieved her knife. “I hope you get your memory back,” she told him. Then she disappeared through the hole in the wall.

    He paused for a minute, considering his options. He tracked the passage of the hounds along Hazel Street past the shell of the Bienville Depot. Yes, they’d got Katarina’s scent all right. They were splitting up to stalk her from all sides.

    He picked up a chunk of the concrete rubble and experimentally closed his fist. The block shattered into dust.

    Strong. X-Ray Vision. Super-hearing. Fast healing. “Am I by any chance Clark Kent?” he asked himself.

    There was an unearthly howling. They’d cornered Katarina.

    Whoever he was, he didn’t want to be someone who stood by while people got ripped apart simply for stopping to help an injured stranger. He jumped over the wall and set off for the Depot as fast as he could. Which turned out to be pretty fast. Add super-speed to the list.

    Katarina was at bay, her back to an overturned car as a half dozen of the hunting beasts flanked her. They were roughly the size of cows but they looked like a cross between a dog and a frog. Katarina intended to go our fighting.

    The stranger vaulted over a collapsed shopfront and pounded the first of the beasts into paste. The others sensed a threat and oriented on him. They came faster than he’d expected, and their jaws were able to tear his skin.

    Then training he didn’t remember cut in. He moved methodically, pounding the monsters together and tearing them apart. He ripped the throat out of the last one with his teeth.

    Katarina cowered against the overturned Vauxhall Omega. There was blood on her knife.

    The stranger wiped more of the foul-tasting blood from his chin. “You forgot your jacket,” he told her.

    “Silly me.” She forced herself to stop trembling. “What are you?”

    “Still don’t remember,” her rescuer admitted. “But I think I’m called Miles.”

    Katarina Allen looked at him for a long time. “Lay the jacket down,” she said at last. She didn’t pick it up till he’d put it on the floor and backed off.

    She glanced round at the remains of the hunting pack. “Do you think these things are edible?” she asked at last.

    “Only one way to find out,” Miles replies.

    “Do you promise to behave?”

    “Scout’s honour.”

    “Were you ever in the Scouts?”

    “I remember how to tie knots.”

    Katarina relented. “That’ll do. Bring whichever monster looks the juiciest. I’m inviting you to dinner.”

    “Thank you.”

    Katarina pulled on his jacket. It was far too big for her. She led the way through the ruined town and finally slipped into a shattered butcher’s shop. There was a meat locker at the back, long since cleared out, but it had an iron door and it could be opened from both inside and out. “My safe place,” she announced.

    Miles followed her inside. There was a sleeping bag and a camping lamp, a concealed bundle that his x-ray sight told him was a stash of four cans of cat food, and a stack of scavenged magazines. “Homey,” he said.

    “Lock the door. I don’t want the patrols seeing any light.”

    The insulated walls of the refrigerator would mask a thermal signature. Miles pulled the door shut and slammed home the bolt. Katarina had removed the catch from the outside of the door, making it hard for anyone with less than human dexterity to lever it open again.

    Katarina turned on the lamp. “I know it’s a waste of batteries,” she confessed, “but the dark has always scared me a little bit.”

    “In this place, you’re right to be scared of the dark.”

    She leaned over the pig-frog-hound monster’s carcass. “Do you prefer breast or leg?” she asked, flexing her knife.

    “Raw?”

    “The restaurants round here all close early. It’s this or nothing. And I’ve got to tell you, this is the best meal I’ve had for a long time, Miles.”

    “I think… I think I can make it better. Stand back and don’t be alarmed.” Miles stared hard at the strip of meat, concentrating his x-ray sight on it. It took ten minutes to heat it to cooking temperature, and it didn’t help his headache.

    “You are very scary,” Katarina told him, accepting the meat.

    “Yes.”

    Katarina stared at his face. “Can I trust you?”

    “Yes.”

    “How do you know that? You don’t even know who you are. You might be a brainwashed Soldier, or a Skinwalker, or, or something even worse.”

    “You can trust me. I promise. We’ll shelter here tonight, then tomorrow I’ll scout the area and try and get some answers.”

    “I’m going to my bed, okay,” Katarina said. “I’m going to get in and turn out the light. If you’re going to murder me, please make it quick, while I’m asleep. Okay?”

    “I’ll keep you safe.”

    Katarina switched off the dim camping lamp and the room was plunged into absolute darkness. She hated the darkness.

    She hated the silence too.

    Nobody murdered her.

    “Miles?”

    “Yes.”

    “Are you really going to keep me safe?”

    “Yes.”

    More silence.

    “Miles?”

    “Yes.”

    “Are you cold?”

    “No.”

    And more silence.

    “Miles?”

    “Yes.”

    “Would you like to get into my sleeping bag anyway?”

    “Yes.”

    And then Katarina was not alone in the dark any more.

    

Continued???








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