A Reason to Live pt 7
*Disclaimer*
The following (part 7 of the series 'A Reason to Live') contains both mystical/metaphysical and Judeo-Christian Religious aspects. If you are offended by any/all of these subjects, you are strongly encouraged to avoid reading this or any subsequent works with the title 'A Reason to Live' that are written by me. Thank you for your compliance.
Note: Parts 6 and 7 happen at the same time.
A Reason to Live pt. 7
The two Furs slept as the night went on. True to what Raymond had said, no creatures came to investigate the bodies of the slain guards and merchants. The fire burned on, oblivious to its lack of fuel.
The wolverine, Raymond, as he slept with his arm around his wife, protecting her, shielding her, dreamt of strange and mysterious things. Though these were only bits and pieces of things; memories, perceptions, thoughts, assembled in random order, what he would remember upon waking would trouble him.
The eagle, Roxanne, rested only fitfully, the cold seeming to assail her very soul. During her intermittent periods of deep sleep, she too dreamed. Visions of lost summer days and cool summer nights interspersed with scenes of what had been, and what could still be.
From inside the cascade of boulders and rubble, triggered by the man in black to seal off the mountain pass, the sounds of work could be heard. Inhuman voices groaned and hissed, contrasting with the sharp screech of stones being dragged and the hollow, chilling echo from falling pebbles.
Overhead, clouds hung like curtains in front of the crescent moon. An ancient human crafted timepiece began to beep. The sound roused Roxanne from her slumber.
"Raymond, wake up. Do you hear that?" she nudged her husband.
"Huh wha?" he said groggily. "No I don't hear anything." The beeping continued.
"Listen, baby, the beeping sound, you don't hear it?" Roxanne stood up, pulling Kyle's cloak tighter around her. Raymond stood up as well, turning his head, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound.
"Okay, I do hear it. Sounds like its coming from over there." He gestured towards where the majority of the bodies lay. "You stay here by the fire, all right?" he walked off towards the sound. He stopped when he came to a body. It was the corpse of a human caravan guard. The beeping came from the watch on a chain around his neck. Raymond picked up the watch. "It's just a damn watch." He called out to Roxanne. He threw it down on the ground, where it struck a rock. Metallic bits, springs, and gears flew everywhere.
"At least we know that its three A.M." Raymond joked. With the watch permanently silenced, the sounds of the desert once again dominated the canyon. Raymond walked back to the fire and sat down next to Roxanne. Roxanne's eyes glistened dully in the firelight.
"Baby" began Raymond. "You alright?" he wrapped his arms around the shivering eagle.
"I'm fine" came the eventual reply. "Cold, and tired, but I'll survive." Raymond took off his jacket and draped it over his wife's shoulders.
"You'll need this more than I will."
"But what about you Ray?" Roxanne objected. The steady sounds of the excavation continued.
"If I get cold I'll just take a coat off one of the dead guys. Now lets try to get some sleep, it'll be morning soon."
The two Furs once again drifted off to sleep. Minutes later, unheard by either of the two, rocks and debris crashed to the canyon floor. A small hole appeared in the rock detritus that blocked further progress into the arroyo. Sickly green light flooded through the opening. No longer muffled by the rock, the noise from the digging echoed out into the night air.
The cloud layer obscuring the moon seemed to thicken, blocking out more of the reflected sunlight. The desert, already dark for lack of any light source, suddenly got even darker. The greenish glow became more brilliant in the pitch black. The sounds of shifting stones ceased without warning. The sand absorbed the sound of footsteps, but it was clear that something was advancing down towards the mouth of the canyon, because the amount of area bathed in the glow expanded every few seconds. As the glow turned a bend in the canyon, its source became apparent.
Creatures, bipedal and roughly humanoid, but with only one arm and no heads, trudged down the canyon, groaning and hissing in their strange language. The mutants' feet were once human, but now had between four and seven toes on each foot. The monsters' arms, if indeed they could be called that, were long and tube like, with bands denoting each segment of appendage, similar in appearance to giant earthworms. At the end of the tentacles was a fanged mouth, disturbingly alike to the jaws of venomous snakes. The bodies of the monsters were a pale, pale white, in some cases nearing translucence. The monsters varied in height from around five and half feet tall to over six feet tall. Stalks of varying heights and diameters protruded from all over the creatures' bodies except for the arm and mouth. These supported radioactive-green orbs that served both as eyes and ears.
The monstrosities noticed the two sleeping Furs near the fire and moved towards them, leaving tracks that glowed just briefly in their wake. They shambled towards the fire and the couple. Within moments, the group had surrounded the couple. The monsters did not attack, they simple observed, curious as to what these beings were. They had never before had time to study any other sentient beings; everyone they came upon either attacked them or fled. The creatures noticed that the ears of one of the Furs were twitching slightly.
Raymond woke up instantly. He had heard sounds in his sleep, and his unconscious mind decided they were the sounds of danger. He looked around even as he waited for his vision to clear. He fought to keep from panicking when he saw the creatures encircling them.
"Uh Roxie? I don't want to scare you, but we have something of a situation here." Roxanne had just settled into a deep sleep. She woke when Raymond gently nudged her. Her eagle eyes needed no time to focus, and immediately she saw the creatures around them. Out of instinct and panic, she screamed. She quickly covered her mouth with her hand. The mutants, perhaps themselves startled, moved back as one.
"What do we do, Ray?" the restrained fear was audible in Roxanne's voice.
"I don't know Roxie, we left the guns and out stuff where we hide in those rocks." The misshapen creatures overcame their fear and moved closer in, tightening the circle.
"What the hell" whispered Raymond. "If we're supposed die tonight, then there isn't much we can do anyway." Raymond stood up and walked closer to one of the creatures.
It jumped back, not used to having a sentient confront it like.
"Well!" shouted the wolverine. "Get on with it then!" The creatures began to talk amongst themselves. The hisses and groans of their dialect sounded, if one listened closely, slightly sad. An agreement of sorts was reached among them. They broke the circle and shuffled away from the Furs. Before the couple could make a move, the leader of the mutants, easily six foot eight in height turned around. It shuffled towards Raymond until it was chest to chest with him. It raised its mouthed arm until it was about level with Raymond's face.
"Jus...st...look-king," it wheezed. "Not...hur...rtt." With its message proclaimed, it turned around and rejoined the rest of its group, which had gathered the bodies, examining them.
Raymond spat into the sand. "Stupid fucking mutants." Roxanne had retrieved their backpacks.
"It's almost four now, no point in going back to sleep. So what do we do know, Ray?"
Raymond sat down across from wife, careful to choose a place where he could keep an on the mutants.
"Those freaks had to have come from somewhere; maybe they found a way over the avalanche. Maybe we should just start walking farther down the canyon." Raymond had gotten his pistol from the bag. He checked to make sure it was loaded.
"What if Kyle comes back? Should we leave him a note or something?" Roxanne rummaged through her pack looking for the food Kyle had packed them.
"I think he'll know where we went, babe. Let's get moving then." He bent down and kissed her, then pulled her to her feet. Roxanne laughed.
"You're in an awfully good mood all of a sudden." Both Furs shouldered their packs and started walking away from the glowing mutants, deeper into the canyon.
"Hey, I just stared down a whole pack of rad mutants, I'm feelin' alive." Roxanne laughed playfully.
"If you're feeling so good, why don't you carry my pack for me?" she handed it to him. He slipped it on over his backpack. True to his word, the added weight didn't seem to faze him.
The two Furs walked on. Ahead of them, the canyon walls narrowed. Blocking the path was a mountain of fragmented rock and great sandstone pieces that were dislodged from the walls themselves. A small passage had been cleared through the debris. It was not a tunnel, for the rock and dust was too weak to support one. The passage was more of a channel cut straight through. The rest of the canyon was visible past the rockfall.
Footprints showed that the mutants had come this way. Raymond took point, keeping his pistol ready. The debris plume was not very large, less than fifty feet from back to front, and less than twenty from side to side. Time continued its ceaseless forward march, and soon it was nearing five in the morning. In less than two hours it would be dawn. Exactly how much less than two hours was anyone's guess. A light dew had fallen inside the canyon, gravity dictating that the water molecules fall as close as possible to the center of the planet. Moistened by the dew, the gravel and sand particles of the floor of the canyon clung to each other. This effect served to further dampen the sounds of the traveling duo; however, it also exaggerated the boot tracks they left behind.
No one followed the pair; however, some had tried to, but were stopped.
Two scouts, sent by the man in black himself, were sent to reconnoiter the canyon. With silenced weapons drawn, they stepped into the mouth of the canyon. The green glowing monsters were still examining the bodies of those slain during the raid. When they spotted the two armed scouts, they continued to observe. The scouts, equipped with silenced weapons and light body armor, had had previous dealings with mutants. They opened fire as soon as they saw them. The fired rounds, lower velocity to start with, to reduce flash and sound, combined with the effects of the suppressors, glanced harmlessly off the mutants glowing hides. The fierce looking creatures, normally quite docile, turned to defend themselves from the lackluster assault. Not knowing the scouts couldn't have harmed them, the mob charged the stunned scouts. The fangs in the mouths, usually used to puncture barrels and other radioactive waste storage containers, acted now as razor blades to rend flesh. Just as soon as it had begun it was over. Nothing remained of the scouts but their equipment, bones, still wet with blood, and the scouts pools of blood rapidly soaking into the sand. The tissue of the two had been scattered all around the area, some clung to the mutants, other bits to the canyon walls.
Raymond sighed. The two had walked about five miles into the canyon, and there was no end in sight.
"Why is it that no ever tells you the important things in life? Things like 'don't make deals with humans in powered armor' for example." Raymond ran his hand down the smooth walls of the canyon. He sat down with his back against the sandstone wall. A very faint amount of heat, trapped during the previous day, still radiated outward.
"Your just stressed Ray, otherwise you wouldn't be asking rhetorical questions." Roxanne sat down next to her husband against the wall.
"Sometimes Roxie, sometimes this all just gets to be too much to bear. I mean, here were, lost in the desert, our guide captured or worse, fleeing from a mad god. When was the last time we even slept in a real bed for God's sake?"
"Ray, baby, don't be turning into a fatalist on me now. And don't you remember? Two nights ago back in Kyle's shack, he had that bed there. Sure it was dusty from years of not being used, but it was a bed just the same."
"No I remember that. But I mean a real bed, not some ancient mattress on a rusty frame. It's not just that either, though. When will all this end? If we give him a ticket, will he leave us alone, or will he just be angrier?" Raymond sighed again. Neither Fur spoke for a few minutes.
At last Roxanne broke the silence.
"We'd better start walking again, Raymond. And so what if he doesn't stop chasing us? We're like fugitives on the run, and frankly babe, that gets me hot."
Raymond's eyes opened wider in surprise. His smiled slyly.
"Roxie baby, we just might have to stay here a little longer then."
To be continued...