Prologue:
"Visitors stopped by our world and left as quickly as they arrived, leaving behind their trash and waste, the remains of a messy picnic, but their trash is our treasure. Everything in the zone is fantastical and beyond our comprehension. Room temperature superconductors, invasive species of cotton which exclusively grow on metal surfaces, and infinite batteries which asexually reproduce are just some of the wonders left by the visitors, who are so impossibly more advanced than us, that we couldn't even catch a glimpse of what they are."

>In a dark room, overrun with the shadows that accompany the silver tones of moonlight, A single face was made out against the murky interior of the room.
>The man's visage was marked by a beard, trimmed at the jawline and rendered in an inky black by the sole glow that illuminated him.
>His eyes showed to the moon in a dim gray imparted by the galaxy itself and so did his hair. The two pok marks in the right side of his face were made apparent only by a slim margin, a small circular mark no larger across than the widest portion of a pen point on his inner jowel, and the other, a strange mark reminiscent in shape of a zygodactil claw or the head of crescent wrench, no larger than the eraser on a pencil, sitting just at the edge of his right eye socket.
>A small scar, which could be seen with a high enough degree of concentration, graced the bridge of his nose, and a long thin scar presided, running down his left cheek toward the man's sternum, from the edge of his other eye socket to just above his lips.
>The tingling he felt in his side was an eerie reminder. Things that came, Things that would come, people who would come. People who had. All flashed before his eyes while he gazed out to the moon, hoping to burn his eyes open, building a form of inertia toward the eyes being open while he scanned for things in the wilderness that surrounded the room.
The room was arranged somewhat like a regular bedroom. A dresser sat to the man's left side, empty, as he had no family to bring him clothing to wear on this occasion. Whether they would have been allowed to would be a subject of speculation. The bed on which he sat upright was relatively centered against a wall. Potentially offset by a few inches, but ultimately flanked on both sides by two symmetrically placed nightstands, rendering the room symmetrical save for the dresser. The dark shapes of the room, the recessed led lights interspersed among two skylights on the roof. The man could only think to the strange events and circumstances, the objects and the actions that he last remembered.
>He had no family to bring him clothes to wear. He'd not be possessed of them for some time in his estimation, but for now, it was probably better that he was out on his own devices. The unfortunate part was that he was not entirely alone. He could count them on his fingers, but with a sigh, he could count his spirits higher that THAT person wasn't present for the time being.
>He could lay back and rest.
>As he looked onto the haze obscured gibous moon, and his consciousness seemed to withdraw from the world around him, he could just faintly make out the noise though he was just too far gone to notice the voice.
>"Hey! You're here! You okay?"
>The man was Injured. The kind of injury that time might heal, but it would take moving on. It would take a long time moving, and great deal of "on," whatever that might be.
>The man however, also, was tired. He'd spent a long time in this place. Maybe one day he'd get back out.
>It was the kind of tired sleep doesn't fix.
>He knew who had come. He'd choose to slip away even if he could make the choice. For once, something had gone his way this... Month?
>Was it this month?
>Had it been a month?

>The time was seven in the morning. Bright eyed and bushy tailed, a clean shaven man of twenty eight years made his way from the lobby of a gray building in downtown Las Vegas. Just behind him lay the reception desk of "California Stalker services." Beyond the desk now behind him was a small lobby, and then the strip.
>He walked down the hallway past the reception desk, being led by a cute redhead with an hourglass figure in a slightly tight dress shirt and a pencil skirt, and were it not for his suspicion that his aspiration to professional adventurism would be hindered if he were reprimanded before the interview process even began, he might have made a pass at getting her number.
>For now, he'd have to be content with having spent the prior night with a girl he picked up at a local bar.
>In general, he felt it a poor choice to hook up with women at bars, let alone loose women in Vegas of all places, but being that he intended to interview for a dangerous assignment, it just felt right to go out and get laid before he shuffled off to some place from which he might never return.
>Even if it didn't scour away that scent that seemed to cling to him afterwards, at least she was kind enough to let him use her shower.
>He was finally shown into a room where several other people sat back. All of whom directed their gaze, non committal in nature, to the door.
>"Get your pound, guys!" the woman said before swinging by him with the door behind her. She paused for a moment, exchanged glances with the man wearing the easygoing smile, Smirked, cocked an eyebrow, and then continued with the otherwise fluid motion of closing the door and heading back out to the desk.
>The man turned his attention to the six people who were sitting before him.
>They were eyeing him up.
"So... Shall we get this interview started?" He asked confidently.
>"You're hired."
"Well then."
>"So you're the seventh one." One of them, a woman stated.
>His face shifted to one of Arrogance as he asked. "We waiting on an eighth?"
>"Yeah. We're waiting on that eighth. Take a seat. We'll give our introduction when that last one comes in."
>The man took a seat at the table, next to one other open chair, swiveled over toward the door, and then proceeded to gaze into the door frame.
>About forty seconds passed before the door opened once more, this guy, looking like he'd never had a beer. The man observed as much as possible.
>The person in the door seemed passive. The woman at the door, this time showed closed body language, this time, closing the door without the slightest hint of pause. Come to think of it. She seemed measurably less delighted by this one's presence.
>All eyes fell upon him, and for a second, he saw the boy, probably about nineteen, hesitate, carefully navigating his way into the presence of the others at the table...
>"Well, with that settled, why don't you sit down, and we can all introduce ourselves. Then, we walk through the door on the other side of the room."
>Introductions ensued.
>Then it was a brief profile of each.
>Then it was off to endoc.

Chapter One. Day One In The Zone.
>life had no tendancy toward emulating the fantasies of adventurers. The part that made any adventure an adventure, was the conflict. The risk.
>The size of the indemnity statement which he'd had to sign to get in was... quite the bulk.
>If anything, it showed him that the zone was an extremely hostile place. He'd see and much faster comprehend the dangers the contract referrenced faster in a two month tour of the zone than he would in the time it took to actually read the contract.
>Were his life part of a fantasy novel, he'd be the example set forth, in his opinion, of why an adventurer should be weary of dangers, and of course, not allow one's self to be seduced by the pleasures, cerebral or of the flesh, offered up by some dark sorceress clad in skimpy purple robes, or, back in life, the riches offered by a company that wished one to sign a twelve-hundred page release of liability statement should he be crushed, scrambled, dismembered, disfigured, disemboweled, or disappeared in a high risk, comparatively high reward venture into a hostile environment that tended to kill at every turn.
>Of course, in the fashion a book layed out the better part of a century before, in the nineteen seventies, cheap hardware store nuts and bolts were the prime thing to throw. Rocks might have been cheaper. Maybe something else. It seemed a waste to take a piece of metal that was turned and single point threaded, or die cut, then broached or slit in order to do a particular job such as fastening something, and just throw it around in order to navigate. Ultimately, however, it made not the slightest difference if it was a bolt, a pebble, a bullet, or a slug of solid gold, if it was big enough to see as it was tossed, it would do for detecting anomolies. Of course there were graviometers for Mosquito mange, or as the scientist in the book called it, gravioconcentrates, but such things would not detect their counterparts until they were within the weakest areas of their gravity wells.
>Often... that was too late
>The ride in the boot was an unpleasant, monotonous and ultimately boring experience.
>When they reached the frontier of the zone, they couldn't have been more than a few dozen miles into the state. Maybe somewhere around old Pollock Pines. Maybe Grass Valley.
>It'd certainly been boring enough when they went through Primm. But then riding sealed up into the zone from the borders just beyond the Mojave Highway held its own special challenges, such as letting the team's women rest themselves on his Shoulders.
>"Get It Right Next Time" was playing in Kyle Rall's head and in the passenger compartment of the boot. He came to acknowledge, then dismiss his mistakes in order and enjoy the moment. On one hand, he was one of eight people in what could essentially be considered a modified APC. He didn't really have much to do. Not many responsibilities.
>His first mistake was leaving home. Granted, the FBI stand off had killed Susan, but while that part of his life experience mirrored his father's, he didn't have to echo his actions afterwards. Not that he'd gone and killed FBI agents afterward. They'd been captured. The rest of their treatment could be imagined with little effort by anyone with a working knowledge of the vandals over the last several decades.
>It wasn't their treatment of surviving FBI that made him leave. Nor was it Susan's absence, though the big, busy vandal colony seemed just a little more empty without her following him around practically from the time he ate breakfast to the time he went to work and then from getting off to going to bed every day. In truth, he just needed some less static scenery for a while. Then came the dangerous jobs and most recently, the adventure.
>The second mistake he'd made is that in the ten years and change since, he'd never gone back. Though, if he could tell his dad today what he'd been doing with his life, he got the feeling he'd be either proud that he was going out and doing what he felt he wanted to do and wasn't letting himself be tethered, or disappointed in the folly he displayed seeking this temporary thrill.
>To his left, Emma, a young budding woman, old enough to have grown in by now, rested her head on his shoulder. She seemed to be what his father had described as a typical example of an inhabitant of some community or other who had ultimately pushed the proverbial plate over the edge of the proverbial table. Her green bobbed hair would probably look about as appealing as it did to him in a week. It'd probably smell like body odor or the oils that saturated the hair rather than patchouli or whatever vanilla strawberry and cheap cigarette scented perfume it was that she preferred to wear when she wasn't heading into the zone with a somewhat minimal amount of gear and an automated vehicle filled with rations for eating and drinking over the course of a month.
>To his right, Molly, a woman five years older than him rested her head on his shoulder.
>She seemed fairly reserved. In observing her during endoc, he found that she seemed to interact with the crowd best from the rear, where attention wasn't directed toward her, and slow down a bit when all eyes were upon her.
>When she was in town, she had this strangely enticing vibe about her, which he felt had a role to play in her ability to deal with people one on one. It was strange. Despite some of the things, like Ruby red lips, Long eyelashes and the button up shirt and pencil skirt being absent, she generally seemed like she'd be at home in one of those monochrome detective films of a hundred and twenty years ago.
>Some things about the woman didn't add up entirely, however. Being that she was thirty three years old, she'd held up very well, not exactly showing that age anywhere on her body, down to the face of the woman whose age could not be determined beyond somewhere between adolescence and full maturity, the husky, yet timid and less than womanly, truly girlish voice. The only thing he could think of that MIGHT betray age was the one thing he hadn't seen yet, and that was her body. However he vaguely received somewhere, the impression that she was not at all infirm.
>The one place she DID seem to show her age, however, was in how she spoke to him, a person only five years her junior.
>"Easy there, young buck. I'm not as young as I used to be."
>"Slow down." She'd wheeze during a jog, struggling to keep up with Kyle, her long red hair, teased into a curl at the ends, bouncing less and less as it became soaked in sweat.
>Somehow, it seemed to Kyle, that Molly's stamina had at some point wilted from that of a youthful young woman and left her an abnormally youthful early middle aged woman. Though, not much about her background was known to him beyond that she'd been a nurse who grew tired of the long nights and shitty lights.
>Kyle Looked across the boot, seeing Charles, Nelson, Peter, James, and Andrew, each of whom had their own histories, some of them fairly curious, Nelson for example, didn't seem to really have a last name, and while he was in great shape for a man his age... For reasons that were extremely apparent to a Vandal, however... There may have been a reason he seemed to speak in thickly veiled innuendo that made his mind accelerate and the hairs on the back of his neck stand.
>Charles was a roughneck with a drawl that could sway the panties off any farmer's daughter this side of the planet and the physique of a man who drives railroad spikes for a living. He couldn't be described as anything but the most likable of men. He'd grown up working on the farm and like anyone here, he had his reasons for seeking out the adventure of the zone. Somewhat of a profit motive, but in his other summary, he'd said that he'd "Wanted perspective." Which Kyle figured meant he wanted to do something "hard" or "complicated" so he could go back to the simple life of raising himself a family and working on a farm and appreciate how good his life was.
>James was a man of about thirty. He didn't really tell much about his background, maybe he felt it was uninteresting or indistinct, but what he lacked in background, he made up for in his tendency to be forthright and straight with people.
>Peter was a man who seemed often to be unsure of himself. Kyle hoped he woudln't, though he secretly expected, that Peter would wonder off to work on his own and start coming back empty handed or with loot, or that he may wonder off, never to be seen again.
>Finally, the boot came to a halt, and the classical music of the twentieth century was replaced with a robotic voice announcing the arrival at camp five.
"Wakey wakey, ladies." Kyle said as he watched the door of the boot's cargo bay smack into the dirt behind the vehicle. "It's time to get settled in."
>With no audible protest, but a visible internal one, Emma rose from her position on Kyle's left shoulder, picked up her MK-18 and bent very deliberately at the hip as she walked away and off the ramp of the vehicle, standing up for the first time since Primm.
>Kyle looked over to Molly, to be sure she wasn't leaning on him, and with his numb arm, grabbed the MK18 and stumbled out of the boot, Standing straight up and being greeted with the clatter of his back bones finally being uncompressed.
>Molly followed suit, stopping within Kyle's shadow and standing at his shoulder.
>Kyle stood and looked around for several seconds.
>It wasn't all that unlike the ramparts of the vandal compound. It was just less populated. Certain fortifications that were aimed at protecting from ballistic fire were replaced with crude spikes as though to protect from animals.
>They'd said there were animals thought to have been skunks and various species of deer, Elk, Antelope and even a bear strangely enough. Reports had circulated of an animal that might have at one point been a squirrel. No proof had yet been provided.
>Kyle finally noted a presence just a foot behind his right shoulder, and turned to see Molly stoically looking on from almost within his own personal space.
"What's up, Jackie Blue?"
>"Nothing, just..." Molly began before trailing off and shrugging.
"Alright. Well, lets drop our gear and get after it."
>As Kyle began to move forward toward the camp tent, he saw Emma look back to the two, glancing briefly before averting her gaze and walking on to like all others, arrange things into their place, and prepare for the inevitable first patrol.
>"So, the rumors about squirrels..." Molly prodded, much to Kyle's amusement.

1.1 First expedition.
>"Hey, Young buck, check my pack." Molly said, hefting the pack up onto the arch of her back.
>Kyle looked over the pack, which seemed to be tightly packed. Noted that nothing seemed loose or out of place, and gave her a pat on the shoulder and a verbal notification that "It checks out."
>Certain markers had been left in the dirt by stalkers that'd come before. Usually a pot hole dug somewhere with a marker sticking out of it. A piece of rebar from decaying structures, left to rot for decades. Of course there were other markers. As ominous as they were. Colorful balls that floated in mid air were generally things you shouldn't get close to. They weren't made of flesh or anything, but they WERE made of clothes. Some other things that were only advisable to avoid were walking between vehicles that looked like they just rolled off the lot and cars that were rusted out, touching transparent spider webs, and touching the occasional blue jelly that seemed to glow with the blue flame of a butane lighter. That stuff was known to make hard dense bones into flaccid noodles that one could tie into a knot. An exactly similar substance was described in a book Kyle's father had made him read.
>As the eight stalkers looked out the gate to the camp, they each quickly recognized at least twenty such markers over the next three hundred yards, and one floating ball of cloth, which seemed to have been the remain of an unfortunate soul who ventured just a little too far from the beaten path, and threw perhaps just one bolt too few.
>James and Nelson took the lead, followed by Charles and Andrew. Peter and Emma finally left the gate in their staggered collumn before Kyle and Molly brought up the rear.
>As they exited the gate, they each walked a little slower to let some distance build. Such a distance would prove useful if one of the more random anomalous events were to occur in the middle of the group, or worse, if one of them pulled an object toward someone in a particularly hazardous fashion.
>Kyle had exited the gate second to last with Molly trailing him by about fifteen feet. And he'd get about four hundred yards when the pairs had split down different paths to explore different areas.
>Two Stalkers exploring the zone is one. Three is a research team. One is a contaminated trespasser who should be shot on sight, or a duplicate, who should be dealt with at the earliest convenience.
>"How much longer until we really get to explore?" Molly asked, allowing her Mk18 to sag on its sling before retrieving her bag of bolts and checking its contents, which sure enough, were bolts.
"Probably a couple hundred more yards. Honestly I wonder why we'd be using bolts. It seems like a lot of effort to manufacture something that some asshole's gonna throw into something from which it can never be retrieved."
>"Eh. They're cheap."
"True enough."
>A hundred yards away from them, lie the ruins of a city. Across the horizon, High rises cluttered the skyline. Forlorn looking storefronts, warehouses and apartment complexes stood among themselves crumbling in the distance, dotted by buildings, vehicles and structures that seemed as though someone had been secretly taking close care of them, and even more strange among the buildings, obvious metal scaffolds built into structures like antennas and towers seemed to stand or lie, depending on their state of decay, in their familiar forms, but seemingly from the distance, swollen over and dyed a strange fluffy white.
>As Kyle and Molly stared on at the city, picking out obvious anomalous features, such as "new" buildings, cotton growing on metal surfaces, vehicles that were factory new just feet away from vehicles that were rusted and decayed, the began advancing. Tossing bolts ten yards, advancing, picking it back up, tossing it again.
>After about twenty minutes had passed, They found themselves in a ruined store, determined to see whether they could pick up an artifact.
>As Molly watched the entrance, Kyle threw a bolt toward the artifact.
>Kyle tossed the bolt just short of the artifact, and to his surprise, he watched it travel seemingly further than it should have.
>The bolt, intended to land just short of the artifact, flew just further, between the two discs of the artifact, and passing through the empty space between the two ends, which appeared to be two copper disks, perfectly aligned as though they were part of the same cylinder, though as it sat upright upon a pile of debris, causing one of the disks to levitate in mid air.
>Kyle tossed yet another bolt, this time, higher, and watched as this one, just high enough that it should fly close over the top disk, fly faster and much higher over the top than it should.
>Kyle took a third bolt out and threw it just high enough to scrape against the roof. This one however... Stuck.
"Hey, Molly, come take a look at this." Kyle called as he retrieved a light from his belt as well, and shined it directly at the bolt.
>"What? It's a bolt stuck to the roof."
"Yeah. Mosquito mange. This one seems mild. Or there's a singularity going on a floor or two up, but this one doesn't seem to have sucked up that floor."
>"Oh."
>A crackled was heard in the distance, and soon, Kyle felt a rumble.
>A distorted signal came over their radios as the signal fought through solid materials.
>"Kyle! Moll-... Are You--eeing this?" the radio hissed out.
>"What i- at thing! it's to the north we-" the radio hissed again as the rumbling grew louder, stronger. Faster.
>The ground felt like shockwaves were coming every three seconds, as though every three seconds, a bombardment was dropping on the city. Soon the Rumble grew loud, no more a dull thud, but a higher one as well, supplemented as though parts of buildings were being scrambled.
>Kyle and Molly walked out to the street and looked around. It was all of three seconds before Kyle saw it, but he didn't believe it.
>A leviathan the size of a six story building stood among the ruins not a mile from where he stood, striking a high rise, and pulling chunks of two floors at a time out of the building, chewing them with a thunder that could make a deaf man's ear ring.
>"Kyle! What is that?" Molly shrieked as she grabbed onto his shoulder, attempting to guide him inside as he stood dumbstruck and slack jawed.
>The Leviathan that could dwarf even Goliath turned its head, and looked straight at him.
"It's a squirrel."

>A smack across the base of the neck woke him from his mesmerized state as he watched, his awe turning to terror as the back of the leviathan arched and began to extend in a bound.
>Kyle looked toward the source of the sting and sprinted after her, feeling the presence of some apocalyptic object howling through the air at an extreme velocity.
>As he got into the shadows of the building, following after the newly emerging, and fluttering light atop Molly's bump helmet, he felt the first shock, as though the ground had shifted up and down from its nominal position two inches, bounding back and forth in diminishing distances.
>Kyle followed as fast as he could, lunging two steps at a time up to the second floor between frantic bursts from his radio.
>He completed two flights of stares before he realized that retreating into the building was probably a poor solution, even worse than simply running the other direction.
>FUCK, he couldn't very well back out now. As the second shocks reached him, he decided that he had to at least make sure Molly didn't fall into some blue liquid, or at the very least, get crushed to death alone.
>The fourth floor was reached before he realized that not only was Molly headed toward the top of the building, a less than ideal place for them to be, she was headed for the top of the building, the literally last place one would want to be in the event of a building collapse.
>Three more floors, and ever increasing tremors saw him finally catch up to Molly, breathing at a frantic pace as she attempted to kick open a door for roof access. 
>Kyle was Attempting to get a hold of her when both he, and the sagging figure that remained of Molly, her energy drained by the run up the floors and attempts to slam the door open, swayed and fell onto each other, each staggering against themselves and the other as they attempted to rise and continue to flee with ever decreasing options.
>Kyle finally managed to push himself away from the ground, yanking Molly to her feet as her frenzied breathing proved insufficient to keep her going at the rate she was going. Even in his own fervor to continue moving, and his own shortness of breath, Kyle noticed.
>As she attempted to once more charge the door, he grabbed her, shoving her onto her back feet, and in a way, 'placing' her by the wall as he turned.
>Kyle wound up as an undulation died down and drove with the force of his entire body and all the muscles in it, his boot into the bolted side of the door. He seemed to have damaged the door jam, likely made of thin stamped sheet metal.
>Kyle wound up again
>THUCK
>Another tremor, this one only inches, seeming like feet, toyed with his delicate balance of retaining stance, and struggling to take in enough oxygen to feed his body, straining as he this time, backed up into another kick that would carry more inertia.
>The door jam bent slightly more, a thunder of chewing dying down from an indeterminate direction.
>Kyle backed across the hallway, pushing back Molly, who was beginning to advance again, this time, guiding her gently to the wall from which he'd charge, and holding her at the shoulder for about three seconds, this time, gesturing for her to wait.
>He turned, Ran a few feet down the hall, and turned back.
>He ran and built his speed to the best of his ability before redirecting himself off the wall and jumping.
>As he sailed across the hallway, he extended his right leg with all his might, in a flying kick that might have only been seen in a wrestling match.
>He was greeted by a hard stop, and the door finally swinging open slowly, revealing a soft blue glow.
>Kyle began to get up when out of the corner of his vision he saw Molly Rushing past him toward the room before he reached up and snagged her arm, pulling her whole body down across his legs in a motion that he immediately didn't remember performing.
"NO!" He Screamed as he looked into her eyes, practically bulged out of her skull.
>He pulled her, against her thrashing, into his side, bring his left arm to her jaw and directed her face to his, while his right held her in place.
"NO!" he screamed straight into her face at the top of his lungs, partially losing the volume of his voice as he didn't have enough wind to maintain the roar.
>Kyle Sucked in air as he lifted himself and Molly to their feet, searching for a split second decision to make about where to run.
>Just in that instant, an undulation, this time gargantuan in force relative to the last shuddered the whole building.
>As Kyle stumbled off to the side, he saw sunlight begin to shine through with the thunder that shook the building, causing the puddles of blue glowing liquids to fall with the floor just ahead of them.
>A roar so loud that even under the communication headset it physically hurt the ears screeched out from below as five more rapid undulations followed before one more massive quake as Kyle attempted to Usher Molly away from the side of the building on which the squirrel was rampaging.
>Kyle Let go of molly and began running, getting within ten feet of the stairwell before the ground shifted something that HAD to have been feet under his feet and twisted him onto his back.
>Kyle watched as a piece of the roof fell toward him, proceeded only for a fraction of a second by Molly, before everything turned to black.
>"HOLY FUCKING SHIT! THAT THING JUST HIT THE TRAIL! FAST!" Charles' voice came from the radio, finally taking the shape of something other than frantic buzzing in his ear.
>Nelson chimed in. "IS THAT WHAT RAPED THE SYSTEM? A FUCKING SQUIRREL? KYLE! MOLLY! COME IN!"
>"Nelson, calm down on the chatter."
>Kyle assessed what was left of his situation. Light. So he wasn't buried COMPLETELY. His radio worked. So that was good.
>Just on top of him, he felt something softer than concrete. Warmer too. And at least for now, she was breathing, and doing so slower than she had.
>Below him, he felt all the same things he'd felt when stumbling. The difference now though, was that he now noticed them. Shards, glass, blunt metal corners. Jagged concrete.
>The only thing that he didn't feel was himself crushed to death. At least he could hear things and see light through the cracks of the rubble. His ears were ringing, but he could just make out words coming over the radio.
>Kyle found his hands among the mess. They were pinned, his left under rubble without room to move it to his mic switch, and his right was pinned.
>"What happened?"
"The... The r-roof fell on us." Kyle muttered tiredly to the face inches away from him and covered in dust.
>"Well, young buck, you're not that lucky, what say you we call out for help?"
"Radios work. I can't get to my mic. You give it a try."
>A hand pulled away from the rubble and glided up Kyle's side as she pushed herself away from his body just enough to click her radio.
>"Nelson, come in!"
>"Emma! Come in."
>"Pete. Come in."
>"Fuck. Hey, Young buck, your radio working? Mine's broken."
"I mean, I for one was thinking we could just enjoy it for a couple days, but since you're so into having... space, and working limbs. Just let me see if I can get a hand to the mic."
>Kyle reached his hand up, trying to find the gap to slide his hand into for the mic switch.
>He managed to raise his hand to about the level of his sternum before his elbow ran out of room.
>With some effort on his part, and Molly attempting to writhe her weight away from the hand, he eventually managed to reach the switch.
"Anyone else there?"
>"Affirmative." James voice crackled over the radio.
"Hey, could you do me a solid and get us the fuck out of here? We're trapped in a space about.... six feet long, two feet wide and call it two feet tall. We've got air barring another collapse, but we can't get to any of our provisions and we're basically trapped in a locker."
>"Which floor are you on?"
"We're on the seventh floor trapped under rubble, but we're basically stuck in a locker."
>"Okay. We'll be up in a couple hours, we need to get rope. If you could see it from our side, you'd understand why we're pretty sure we'll need it."
"Wilco, but I don't think we've got more than a day. Out."
>"Hey, young buck. Before you came out here... You tell your family you love'em?"
"I should have. But, there's always right after we get out of here to send my parents a letter."
>"So. Kyle. Are you claustrophobic?"
"Tell you what. That can wait until we're not basically stuck in a locker. Okay?"
>"I mean... We've got nothing else to do while we wait..."
"Hey, you're not a nurse."
>"Yes I am!"
"Still, No."
>"Then what do we do until they come and figure out how to dig us out?"
"We don't have water. So we wait."

>Time would pass in hours as the sun set, and the rest of the team made their way back, this time with supplies to haul pieces of debris off the two.
>In two more hours time, Kyle would be back to camp five, sitting in a tent and writing by candle light to his mother.
"Dear, ma, I know it's been many years, and you and dad have probably figured me to be too far gone to be recovered for years now. I'd have written sooner, but I didn't want to write the words 'you're right.' on paper and tell you of the dissolute existences I've observed in the last decade. Speaking candidly, after spending time buried alive just hours before writing this, I think it, being buried, AND being outside the compound is a highly overrated experience and I think you should avoid it if at all possible. As for the force that buried me, well... If that thing was here in seventeen, I can see why this place is empty. Having already contracted to spend two months here, only now do I truly wonder, after a decade, if it's truly too late to go back. Tell Dad to write, and tell me how the others have been. The last I've heard of the colony was that a horde of diversity demanded entry before being told the only definitive version of 'LEAVE' that can really apply."
>"Oh wow! You really weren't joking! You're really writing to your mother!" a giggling female voice muttered from behind him, as though to a bystander.
"Fuck you."
>"Hey, don't be so touchy! I'm only foolin' with you." Molly said as she sat down next to him.
>"Look. I just wanted to say... thanks for stopping me in front of that door. Actually, come to think of it, thanks for following me at all. I know it would have been easy to cut and run. Especially with that... squirrel. But if you hadn't come after me, I wouldn't be here."
"Don't worry about it. Pure luck aside, you've got Nelson to thank more than me. He figured out how to dig us out. I just got really luck that our backpacks tore and a shitload of our equipment crushed so easily. Otherwise we'd probably have both been impaled on our crushed ribcages."
>"Do you think this is going to be trend?" Molly asked, turning her head fully to Look Kyle in the eye.
"I hope not." Kyle started before meeting her gaze. "Discomfort aside, I like living. High mortality rate in being buried. Most people who're buried are dead." Kyle said before shifting his gaze forward again.
>"You know? If it weren't for the amount of shit that sticks to your back, I almost wouldn't mind."
"It's amazing we aren't flat. Don't jinx it."
>Kyle got up and walked to the sleeping tent, where he finally dropped his boots, stripped off the dust permeated fatigues and field shirt, checked himself over for glass sticking in his back, or arms, and crawled into his bag.

Chapter Two: Probable occurrences.
>Day two began. Kyle groaned to life as a chill entered his bag, flowing down from his shoulders and down his front.
>"It hurts like hell, huh?" A voice rang out, booming into his head.
"Huuuuuuunggh?" Kyle groaned as he made the first attempt at standing up.
>"Kyle, just make it easy on yourself and stay down."
"What did I miss?"
>"The others have all gone out. They're hoping not to run into the squirrel. For now, it's just the three of us."
"How's Molly doing?"
>"She wanted to watch you, but she collapsed on top of your bag as soon as she knelt down to look at you. She's a couple bags over. Hasn't woken up since."
"That's unfortunate."
>"Yeah. Poor ol' girl took a beating. Come to think of it, I'm not sure how you're awake right now. You took an even worse one. She missed a few pieces of glass in your back and elbows."
"Yeah, I think she has a concussion, now that I think of it."
>"Well, enough about that, On your feet when you're ready. Move around, it'll help the soreness... I think. I don't know. 'Case you didn't notice, the nurse is in a coma."
"Fucking hell. Wonder what James is doing."
>"Pff. Probably shoeing Emma off of him. Poor bastard."
"I need some coffee." Kyle muttered before Attempting to move.
>Kyle moved, first his arms, then spine, and the legs followed, resisting in a cascade of rattling wet pops that came from bubbles popping in beaten joints.
>The sound as he rotated his spine, bent forward and backward, and side to side, was the most noticeable thing besides the strange sensation as his spine decompressed.
>DAMN the sensation. Such a strange sensation. Vaguely unpleasant... but also pleasant. The only thing better would have been to be drawn from all limbs.
>"I HEARD that." Nelson chuckled.
"What?"
>"The popping."
"Can't be helped."
>"I'll watch Molly for now, you just get yourself fed and watered before you try anything and keel over."

Meanwhile in town.
>James walked along, leading the column as they went from building to building, throwing bolts, picking them up, and then throwing them again before eventually deciding every building with a visible odd shape in the roof, or the product shelves that they'd checked was empty, having found nothing of value, or in a few fortuitous instances, batteries and whirligigs, maybe before the day was out, they'd find an empty if one of them didn't step in some goo that made them all melt.
>"Why don't we split up? Charlie and Pete can take Andrew with them, and we can go check the next store while they work across the street."
>"Yeah, Nah." Jim replied as he picked a battery out of the wreckage.
>"Charles could be heard muttering to Andrew. "Rejected."
>The feeling of being tired was starting to get to James. He'd been out all day. He had to tow the green haired wonder-twat with him, the other two were alright, but Andrew... Andrew couldn't find his own ass with two hands and a map, and he knew it. Too acutely.
>This fact made Andrew's usefulness decline sharply, as he didn't trust himself to navigate.
>James paused, and contemplated the worth of looking at just one more building.
"Fuck it. One more." James muttered to himself as he turned and started to make his way around the corner.
>What he saw in the store, just a hundred and forty yards beyond the last marker, was an artifact that seemed entirely alien in the history of this zone.
>An empty protruded from the roof of a convenience store.
>Between the two copper endcaps, a blue material hovered, possibly as a liquid, possibly a solid, sat in perfect alignment, a cylinder of blue between two cylinders of a metal that appeared to be copper.
>"Holy shit, it's an empty... and it's full." Andrew muttered as he came across the corner.
"Well, we're gonna be rich. A full empty's an unheard of artifact. Only one other's ever been found."
>"So uh... How're we gonna get it down?" Andrew asked timidly.
>It had just occurred with his question, that it was surrounded by multiple bulges, spheres that hovered in mid air around holes in the roof and floor that stood between the floors of the building. There were potential holes, however getting the item out from between them would be an elephantine task.
>To start with, the way to hold the empty was unclear.Or rather, too clear. The anomalies that tended to be scattered around where any artifact lie weren't usually visible to the naked eye on their own.
>Second, how much would a full empty weigh? Probably suck to move at the end of a stick. Or dislodge from the cement.
>How to engage it?
>how to get it between the anomalies? 
>"Mosquito mange is a BITCH." Charlie remarked.
>"See any webs?"
"Huh?"
>"Webs. Don't touch them if you see them. Bad for your heart."
"Riiight. THOSE webs. Yeah, Emma, mark it on the map and lets get the fuck outta here, I don't wanna be here after dark."
>"Right." Emma said as she pressed the "mark" button on her GPS unit, clipped onto her sleeve. "It's done. Let's go see if the others are still alive."
"Right. Charlie, with me. Pete, you're on Relay, Emma, bring up the rear with Andrew." James commanded.
>James took the lead, walking as closely as possible to the footprints they'd left in the dust.
>Charlie fell in behind him. Then Pete behind him. Emma behind him, and Andrew at the rear, watching for wildlife, or any other thing that might accost them, occasionally looking forward to Emma for visual stimulation, or just to make sure she was still in front of him.
>Meanwhile, back at the camp, Kyle was able to relieve Nelson from watching Molly sleep.
>Kyle stood over her, taking in the details. Scratches on her forhead, a bruise on the back of her shoulder.
>She was warm, at least. She was breathing, at least, though Kyle wondered if she might be brain damaged, or if it might be more humane simply to strangle her in her sleep. He wouldn't act on it. He didn't feel he had the knowledge to make that judgement.
>For now, Kyle would be content to just observe her. Maybe he could establish some form of measurement of response, but it would be an hour at least before his curiosity overcame his distaste for pointing a 600 lumen flashlight directly into some poor woman's eyeball while she slept.
>Her scarlet hair hair, which had stood well a day before, had taken on a dingy appearance following the collapse. For the time being, she lay motionless in her sleeping bag, disturbing only the surface of it above her chest, moving part of an inch every dozen seconds or so.
>A grim stoicism was cast on her face. Kyle considered seriously whether she would wake up.
>Nelson look out on the perimeter of the camp and detected a pack of feral creatures. They looked very similar to dogs.
>"So this is what the veiled god of Mammon sows." Nelson remarked to himself as he flicked the selector of his rifle to auto and placed the red dot upon the skull of one of the approaching animals.

>The first burst shattered the air as the rounds struck the creature's stout and cranium, embedding themselves in its neck and shoulders.
>The pack of animals hesitated as their leader tensed, his whole body not only seizing, but bending to one side along the spine and rolling back onto its side.
>As the second burst caught another one in the skull, kicking up dust behind it, the other four turning their attention toward Nelson and beginning a charge.
>Another burst followed, sparsely interrupted to aim for the fourth. With two of them left, Nelson laid on the trigger for the fifth burst, scattering dust behind the creature as it tumbled, incapacitated from charging any further. The last ten yards weren't enough as Nelson dropped the dot on the creature closing fast and pulled the trigger again, this time, rewarded with only one shot and another that sounded incomplete.
>Kyle looked over his shoulder to see, after only a couple seconds of fire, Nelson releasing his grip on his rifle, letting it fall to its sling as he reached for a blade on his hip, motion interrupted by a mass of matter the size of some overgrown wolf punching into him and knocking him off his feet.
>As kyle got up and lunged toward his own rifle, he saw an upward motion to the melee, a sane, but distressed expression faded from Nelson's face as he reached the eight inch blade awith his right hand, and Jammed it into the creature's neck.
>Kyle was flicking the selector to semi automatic when he saw the beast recoil slightly, freeing Nelson's left arm from its maw before a punch came to the creature's throat, which jolted it just backward and visibly off the ground. As Kyle attempted to put his own red dot upon the creature's head, he was frustrated to see Nelson's body in the way, and then shocked at what he saw next.
>Nelson toppled the animal, pinning its neck to the ground with one hand, and grabbing a leg with the other.
>Distress flooded the animal's face as it growled savagely, attempting to get its teeth back into the man.
>Nelson bent the front leg laterally from the body of the animal before bringing his own right leg out and kicking the limb, visibly shattering the bone and leaving it jutting out before the real terror began.
>The creature's growls turning into something approaching a distressed roar as its leg broke, but it didn't continue at that low, savage pitch when Nelson placed his whole left hand into the mouth of the creature and put his palm, and the weight of his body onto its upper jaw.
>Nelson's right hand wrapped itself onto the creature's lower jaw and in a second, he plied the entirety of his body against the creature. Kyle was in awe as he watched the creature go from a desperate aggression to a definitively helpless attempt to, with its remaining legs, scramble itself from Nelson's control. 
>Nelson's right arm came free, Kyle ran to him, intent to prevent him from doing anything to hurt himself more and of course, finish off the animal.
>As kyle got within ten yards of Nelson, he saw him drop something from his right hand before restabilizing himself and picking out the blade from the writhing, struggling animal's neck, and then adjust his position as he stabbed and stabbed and stabbed away at the animal's neck, the whole time, the animal flailing, writhing and kicking agsinst whatever its feet could purchase, almost entirely air.
>At about the tenth or fifteenth stab the animal finally got purchase on Nelson's hips and kicked him back, flailing to its remaining three feet and running out of reach and away at a speed no human could match.
>Together they watched as the animal covered forty yards in just a couple seconds before slamming over, upper front teeth first into the dirt, flipping on a pivot that must've been placed in its neck.
>Kyle looked to the steady blood trail, every couple feet, another two inch splotch of red.
>He followed it back to where he and Nelson were standing before he realized that not sll of the blood at Nelson's feet was the animal's. He looked at the puddle forming under Nelson's left arm before he made any attempt to speak.
"Nelson, let me get a look at that arm, I don't want you losing it."
>"Huh?" The man muttered, something approaching sanity finally returning to his face.
"You got fucking insane on that thing, dude, I've never seen anything like it."
>Kyle glanced to whatever it'd been that he ripped off the animal, and saw that it was in fact, its jaw.
"Holy shit! You ripped its JAW off!"
>"Yeah, uh... Can you clean and bandage that? I don't wanna do it one armed."
"Sure."
>"Also, can you shoot that thing a couple times? Just make sure its dead."
"Yeah."
>Kyle turned and raised his rifle, flicked the selector to auto, firing ten rounds into the animal in a burst before following Nelson to the medical tent.
>While Kyle got started on cleaning Nelson's wounded hand, and arm, he heard a groggy voice outside the tent complain about cold sleeping bags and "fucking shit buildings."
>"Guess Molly's up. Just took a little gunfire and the better part of a day." Nelson remarked
>Kyle heard the sound of Lowa boots being laced, footsteps wondering about. A gasp in the distance.
>"Why is there a disembodied JAW here!?"
Kyle called out, "You wouldn't believe it if I told ya!"
>"Hey, Kyle, I'm not gonna have to go home already, am I?" Nelson asked.
"I don't think so, but lets get a second opinion from the nurse."
"Hey, Molly! I need yoyr opinion on something!"
>"Coming."
>Molly walked into the medical tent and saw the Nelson's tattered arm.
"Think he can still shoot and do shit?"
>"Well, not now. Maybe in a week, he might, but for now, he's pretty fucked up. Judging by the shape of his right hand, that's gonna need some cleaning at least, but for now, I don't think he should doing anything heavy."
"Thanks, now go eat something and get some water in you, we gotta hold the camp until the others get back, in case there's anymore of those wolves out there."
>"Okay." Molly said, turning and walking out, giving an unattentive wave as she did.
>For a moment, Kyle looked at the spot where she'd been thoughtfully.
>"Don't think too much of it."

Twenty minutes later.
>Kyle watched from the gap between the barricades as the others who'd gone out to search the ruins came into view.
>They all stopped to marvel at the wolf like creature, tumbled over in the dirt with no jaw on it, and twelve bullet holes.
>Kyle watched as Emma and Andrew seemed to glance at each other, as though sharing a thought and communicating through telepathy. A perturbed thought, but the same thought nonetheless.
>The group continued into camp, settling themselves into various areas. Somewhat spread out from each other.
>Kyle decided to search out James in the corner of the camp he'd settled into.
"Jimmy!" Kyle challenged.
>"What's up, Kyle?" James asked.
"How long have Andy and Emma had their heads together?"
>"I wasn't aware of any such thing. I've just had them bringing up the rear for about the last forty minutes of our walk in."
"Right. I'd be careful with them. Could lead to some bullshit. When are we going out next?"
>"If you're feeling up to it, tomorrow. I noticed you two have gotten back up."
"Yeah. Tomorrow then. I'll keep my eye out too, but I want you to be mindful of who goes where when everyone gets back. Could lead to some bullshit down the road."
>"Right. I'll keep an eye out and an ear open."
>With that, Kyle turned and began walking out of the tent.
>"Hey, Kyle. Is Nelson going to have to go back?"
>Kyle stopped just short of 'out of sight, out of mind.'
"It's ultimately up to him, but he's got a few minor lacerations to the right hand, and major lacerations to the left hand and forearm. Wouldn't be a bad idea, even if I doubt he wants to do it. On the other end, in about a week he'll probably get almost full use of his hand back."
>Kyle once again turned before being interrupted.
>"Hey. Why shouldn't we keep an eye on you and Molly too? You two seem to gravitate toward each other."
"Never said you shouldn't. Point of fact, you probably should." Kyle responded over his shoulder.
>He waited a second or two for any further reply, but heard none, and promptly walked away.
>He walked to the camp entrance and took a seat as he just stared out at the wastes beyond the barricade.
"It's gonna be a long fucking month." he thought to himself.

>At some point, Kyle felt a presence as he watched out along the open spaces among fields, prairies and plains.
>A head of limp green hair, assuming a murky quality, appeared sticking just past the barrier and looking out for a second, then scanning to the left before happening across him.
>She walked out of the border and sat down about eight feet from him, first leaning against the barrier, then sliding down the wall.
>"So... He walks."
"And?"
>"Just wondered how you've been holding up."
"I'm fine. A bit sore, but it'll stop in a week. Maybe Nelson'll be fine in a week. Maybe he'll have to go back."
>"I wanted to get the story from you about the jaw and the blood in the dirt. Nelson isn't telling."
"Don't blame the guy. Looked like it hurt."
>"So uh... what DID he do?"
"You saw the... wolf, I guess. He saw a pack of them, started firing bursts into them, maybe laying on the trigger just a little more than he should've, and then he got to that last bit of ammo when that one got to him, so he started fighting it with a knife, broke its leg, ripped its fucking JAW OFF, it was the most metal thing I've ever seen, and then got his knife back and stabbed its throat out. Shit belongs on a metal album cover."
>"So... he ripped its jaw off with his bare hands?"
"Yeah."
>"Damn. That's fucking horrifying."
"Yeah. Anything of note today?"
>"Uh... oh! We saw a full empty."
"A full empty? I didn't see you bring it back."
>"We found it too late in the day. First there'd be the issue of finding a way to get it down. James hasn't found that yet, then there's carrying it. It's surrounded by like twenty fucking anomalies." She lamented.
"Well, cheer up. We're gonna get rich if we can make it through a couple months."
>"But what's it all worth?"
"What would you make of it? What would YOU, Emma Langsworth make of those riches? Material indulgence? would you use them to sustain some newfound meaningful life filled with fulfilling endeavors and the things that have made people happy for millennia? Would you blow it all on material things for the ever depreciating cheap thrill? Start some mercenary endeavor that you'll relentlessly pursue until it's only too late to realize that the good path has been trod over and worn to a rut for centuries? It's all what you make of it. THIS..." Kyle gestured outward to the landscape "...is the land where my father grew up. Where he lived his life until his early twenties. This is testament to that last option."
>"What do you mean?" Emma asked, perplexed at the proposition that something was to be found here.
"This was the LAND of those unscrupulous interests. Mercenary interests were BASED here. Many elsewhere, but there were plenty here. They subdued the populace. They indoctrinated people to be willing fodder and pawns, and then they set them loose. THEY were the ones who took over a couple nuclear assets and with the help of one of the sailors, they ACTUALLY launched them. Imagine being my father, or uncle Berdan, and you're walking out in the woods when there's a flash, or you're driving away into the hills and BAM. MILLIONS died here. MILLIONS. Over dollars."
>"That's pretty fucked up."
"Doesn't end there. HERE WE FUCKING ARE. Digging through these people's graves, taking shit left behind because it's valuable. We're grave robbing, and we're doing it PROFESSIONALLY. Only been what? A few decades? And businesses are getting their pound of flesh digging through millions of people's graves. I don't know if they are, but I'd like to think my grandparents are buried here somewhere."
>"Okay. If all this shit's so fucked up, why the fuck are YOU here?"
"Suppose I've been marred, being out in the wilderness for about ten years. I wasn't meant to leave the vandal compound."
>"What made you leave?"
"Well, had me a girl once. Her name was Susan. The FBI tried to make a bloody war sized example out of us. Came over the wall and started shooting indiscriminately. They killed eighty people, mostly our women and children. Susan was among them. Of course, everyone at the compound has a gun nearby or carries one. Most of the agents were killed in the ensuing gunfight, about twenty captured. I wanted to rip their fucking throats out on live television. Cooler heads prevailed and I couldn't abide that. Life just seemed a little empty without Susan following me around, so I decided I needed time to wander. Told the parents and the siblings goodbye, and the friends of the family, and then I walked out the gate. What's your story?"
>"Parents were fascist dick wads, they wanted me to learn to cook, and work and 'feed myself.' and 'do things that make you happy' with no understanding of what that is. You sound a lot like them sometimes." Emma remarked.
"Did they ever ask you to work a non service job?"
>"I don't know. They kept saying I needed to 'interface with reality.' whatever they thought that meant." Emma replied bitterly.
>Kyle's eyes bulged and he felt a buzzing in the back of his skull.
"It means exactly what it sounds like, Emma. Look around. See what you don't like. You don't have to embrace it, but you DO have to acknowledge it."
>"What do YOU know about me?" Emma challenged, a sharp inflection in her voice.
"See that out there?" Kyle gestured. "THAT is reality. There's no criminal law. There's no justice system, there's no courts. A matter of conflict will be settled two ways. One party flees or one party dies. There's not a thing we can do to banish mosquito mange. NOT. A. THING. Mosquito mange IS. The ZONE is. There's no debate about what change someone makes to their body that inhibits its function is valid or isn't, because all of that simply isn't. People who're having to fight for their survival don't have to worry about these high minded ideals and abstractions. There is no tolerance here, there's no forgiveness here, and there's no sin except that which does not serve the purpose of simply gaining the ability to BE for another day, week or month. We even have it easy. We don't have to find our own food or water. All we have to do is fight off whatever comes. Be ready, Emma. I have a feeling that squirrel and those wolf things were just the beginning."
>Emma was silent. Her face grew absent as she seemed to really cogitate on what Kyle had said.
>Kyle was pleased to see that she'd at least contemplate what he'd said. Though he didn't necessarily feel he'd set out to make such a tangent.
>Y-you... You don't know me! You don't know anything!" Emma exclaimed out of nowhere.
>She stomped to her feet and began to storm off, pausing as Kyle started, unimpacted by the great umbridge that she'd taken with his statement, neither amused nor annoyed.
"Oh don't I? Watch what you see out here, away from the artifice of a civilization insulated from nature. It cares very little that you've dyed your hair. Nor does it care for any sense, misplaced or not, of being a rebel. You will see nothing out here that ISN'T."
>Emma's facial expression changed, and Kyle knew he'd gotten to her before she attempted to make an about face as she continued to storm off.
>Kyle continued to watch as darkness fell, the cold came, and eventually, he grew tired.
>He got up and made his way to the sleeping tent.
>He fell into his sleeping bag and tried to sleep through the chill.
>Soon enough, thoughts faded to quiet.
>Winds seemingly faded to a background noise and the sense of space around him faded to a pocket of still and frigid darkness.
>"PSsst"
>The darkness gave way to silver tones of moonlight.
>"Hey, Kyle, my sleeping bag's too cold, can I snuggle up with you?" a feminine whisper jolted through his haze.
"What? No, tighten the bag up." Kyle responded half asleep.
>"Well too bad, crawling in." he heard as the bag was yanked open at his neck level and he saw a shapely female leg slide down and in front of him in front of a firm butt and midsection before a head of long limp hair finally settled just in front of him and the top of the bag was pulled shut, the woman snugging herself against his front and pulling his arm over her for tension.
>Eventually, space would once again fade to a pocket.

The next morning.
>Kyle came to consciousness just as the sky was turning blue, and the hill on which the camp was stationed became illuminated in the blue hours of the morning.
>The dingy red scarlet hair was the first thing he saw, as well, the first thing he smelt.
>The scent of dirt, and something that gave him a familiar sensation in his core filled his nostrils.
>Kyle wiggled his right arm out from under Molly and patted her on the shoulder before sliding deftly from the sleeping back, wiped himself down of the last two day's grit with a couple baby wipes, brushed his teeth, and got dressed.
>As he donned his drab shirt, he felt a hearty pat on his shoulder, and looked back to see James giving a head only gesture, a side-ward nod, more or less, which quietly and intuitively instructed him to follow along.
>Once they got sufficiently far to not disturb the rest of those sleeping, James spoke.
>"Alright. I could use your brains."
"Full empty?"
>"Yup. SURROUNDED by anomalies." James exclaimed quietly.
"Alright. We'll need a full bag of bolts and some time then, won't we?"
>"Maybe a stick too, and some kind of rope."
"Got it. I'll get some modular poles, some five-fifty cord and about... ten?"
>"Not that much, but make it fifteen just in case."
"Fifteen feet of rope."
>Kyle began to turn around before he was interrupted.
>"Hey, real quick. The fuck's Molly doing in your sleeping bag?"
"She got cold or something, I don't know."
>"Okay."
"It's not gonna be an issue, is it?"
>"No."
"Alright then."
>Kyle turned and went about assembling the rest of his gear, as well as the needed extraneous equipment before the rest of the team woke up.
>Breakfast went by, and so did a couple mild amphetamines before the rest of the team would wake up, and undergo the same process Kyle had.
>Their gear assembled, boots on, and stomachs fed, minds fueled with stimulants, the team set out for the location of the priceless artifact in mind.
>As before, James led, followed by Kyle, Then Molly, Charlie, pete, Andrew, Emma and last, Nelson, who couldn't be expected to provide muscle, given the state of his arm, but could still shoot, and insisted he could still, because of this attribute, be useful.
>"Hey, young buck, what are we after today?" Molly asked as they went beyond the barricades.
"Alien shit. Suppose it could be fuel, or the waste product of burning fuel, or whatever. I'm not sure what it is. They call them 'empties'"
>"I know what Empties are, they're like a jar with two endpieces made of what looks to be copper, but between the two ends is nothing and not a thing known to man has been capable of moving them in relation to each other or marring them."
"Yup. Well, this one's got the much spoken of blue stuff between them."
>"Jesus."
"Yup, we're stealing the devil's spent fuel. You know? It just occured to me. This keeps up like it does and in some time, everything inside the zone will be out."
>"I'm not sure I'm comfortable with those implications."
"You shouldn't be."

>Somewhere in the back of his mind, Kyle had a twitch of some terror coming. he didn't mind it. Or, he did his best not to mind it.
>He took inventory of where everyone was. There was something of a column going on the way down the known tracks, where stalkers could walk freely and relax. It was important to mark these, as crouching low to the ground, throwing a few bolts everywhere you could walk ahead of you, and advancing by only dozens of feet in an hour quickly grew to be tedious and strenuous.
>Eventually, The team had reached their destination a few hundred yards from the camp.
>Nelson took his position on guard outside the shop, which must've been a media store of some sort before the insurrection era. 
>Shelves stood empty and forlorn, partially eaten by the rounded orbs that floated around the empty. The blue material filled the space full, which was something unheard of in the history of "zones" save for one instance when a man nick-named Red helped scientists retrieve such an artifact.
>"Hey, Kyle. What are you doing after all this?"
"Stalking some more. Maybe a few batteries around. Or white whirligigs."
>"I meant... You know. AFTER."
"Don't really know. Wander until I find my rest?" Kyle said, gazing at the cluster of translucent balls hanging around the glowing blue rod in the roof.
>"Not THAT far. Like tonight." Molly prodded.
"Haven't even thought THAT far... OH, I see it." Kyle remarked, seeing a way to move the empty.
>"See what?"
"So, if we can somehow hook it from the BOTTOM, and then drag it down WITHOUT contacting the mange, we can just pull it right toward us, carry it back to the camp. The only way this could be easier is if we had a MULE."
>"That's why I we pay you the big bucks, Kyle." Charlie cut in.
>Kyle pulled out his bag of bolts, some modular poles, and began to set up a rudimentary islet, and affixed the rope to it in such a fashion that he could tighten the rope at the end of the pole into a noose for the empty.
>Kyle maneuvered the pole and the rope snare to the middle of the empty, and held it in place while Charles tightened it with all his might.
>Eventually Charles, Andrew, Kyle and Peter began pulling down on the canister like object.
>It broke free, and the men struggled to control it as they lowered it down just above the anomalies that sat below it, and proceeded to pull the stick back.
>At long last, after a few minutes, but no major complications, the sought loot was free, and all that remained was to carry it, few dozen by few dozen yards, back to camp.
>Kyle personally instructed James to guide them back in their foot steps, and the other men took turns hauling the piece of material in pairs.
>After roughly an hour, the men had managed to haul the empty back to camp. They'd broken a sweat, but they'd not been thoroughly fatigued, and at nine in the morning, headed back out.
>Somewhere in hell, a takyon machine was warming up for the eight of them, and Kyle was feeling it.
>Throughout the next seven hours, the sounds of bolts skittering across concrete, slapping walls, chipping away paint filled the air in a refrain of tedium as the team split up and poked through the ruins.
>Kyle tossed a bolt and came over the counter of what might have been a convenience store before the insurrection era.
>Kyle jumped the counter to see if anything valuable had been left behind, dropping his right foot about four inches from a pile of white whirligigs.
>he reached down and picked one up, spun it around his finger, noting that like it should, it continued to spin without seemingly losing velocity for twenty seconds upon his stationary finger.
>Kyle opened his pack, and began stuffing the items into it, which sat on a pile about four inches tall and a foot wide.
>Kyle decided that he had picked enough artifacts and began to make his way back out of the store, and then, back to camp.
>After he got about twenty yards, he heard the pattering of footsteps catching up to him.
>"Soon enough I'll be rich. I found like five whirligigs." Molly's voice came from behind him.
"I found... must be fifty."
>"Really?"
"Yup. I'm a rich man."
>"Nice. What're we on? Day three?"
"Yup. And we've probably already paid for our gear."
>"So, how do you feel about today? dangerous?"
"Doesn't seem so. Long as the squirrel doesn't come back."
>"That's nice."
>A silence just a little too comfortable for Kyle's liking took hold.
>They stopped about half way up the slope between the town and the camp.
>Kyle looked back and found himself in eye contact with Molly. An unfamiliar smile sat across her face. An expression he'd seen in his life before, but...
"You okay?"
>Molly's expression didn't seem to change, even though she answered. Not that Kyle really caught the reply. He was too caught in that strange, Easy, contented smile.
>Kyle realized the nature of the smile, and his face shifted to a sneer, annoyed that she'd seemingly become unresponsive.
"Whatever, lets keep going." Kyle said as he turned and continued to walk with a roll of the eyes.

Later that night.
>"Alright. We've got the artifacts loaded into the boot. I think we can rest for a few days." Charles reported
"I can't wait to see what turns up next. Maybe some nerve gas."
>"Kyle, only YOU would want nerve gas." Emma remarked
"I GOT nerve gas, there's a dump in the camp with FUCKLOADS of nerve gas and blistering agents. I should send a letter asking what it's for... And where the tube is, because I want to light that fucking town up the next time that squirrel comes through."
>"Wait, wait, wait, you're saying we have chemical weapons IN camp?"
"Dow Chemical don't give a shit."
>"Hey, Kyle, can we go ahead and NOT gas ourselves?" Molly inquired.
"It's like you think the weather is entirely dependent on some erratic wind direction that's liable to blow it back onto us." Kyle said sarcastically.
>"But... Whatever, if I get deformed because you did something retarded, I OWN YOU. You understand?"
"Deal." Kyle said dismissively, met with a sigh as he went off to write a request for replenishment of chemical stocks and a tube from which to launch chemical weapons.
>Time would pass, the boot would leave, and Kyle would eventually move to sit out and watch the darkened valley as it sat dead in the night.
>Kyle sat, eyes adjusted to the dark, watching the silver tone reflect from the features of the landscape while he watched for animals.
>"Quiet night, isn't it?" said a familiar voice.
>Kyle's gaze shot to his right side and he was startled to find that Molly had come to his side in an impossibly quiet manner, and was sitting mere inches from him.
>Kyle saw the blue eyes right there and jumped involuntarily.
"How did YOU get there!?" Kyle asked incredulously, his right hand only stopping just short of flicking the selector of the MK18.
>"I just came and sat down while you were looking into the middle distance. You have quite the thousand yard stare."
>Kyle nodded slowly.
>A silence took over the air while the two looked out over the terrain. Molly, much to her chagrin, found it exceedingly difficult to break the silence.
>Never the less, she'd force herself to speak.
>"Where are you from?"
"Vandal's Camp."
>"Sounds familiar."
"Bad shit happens there every few years. Last I heard of it, my little brother gave a crowd of the encroaching 'diversity' a lead shower when they demanded integration. Three years before THAT, I was there, and had never left more than briefly on errands. Hunting, fishing, occasionally heading to the city to familiarize myself with the dissolute urban existence that one would encounter moving through such environs."
>"Oh, you're from THAT place. I'm starting to look at you differently. Like... Maybe I ought to run like hell."
"I wouldn't advise it. First, I'll catch you, second, you might run into mange. And I'll still catch you."
>"So... why are they CALLED that? There must be something to it."
"Our first leader changed his last name. Then, like ten years later, in the leadup to the insurrection era, he said at a get together, basically a frat party, but bigger, he was advocating for a separatist policy and the building of a parallel society. This woman, I mean, this other guy, a lot less energetic, more afraid of rocking the boat so to speak, and this woman in the crowd, this one an actual woman, one of the guy's wives screams 'RAPE HIM!' and everyone laughs, naturally it goes a little further and our first leader says. 'Alright, we're like a big family here, so we'll be passing around a sharpie, and anyone whose last name isn't Vandal by the end of the night is getting raped.'"
>Molly's amusement at the absurdity of the statement was visible.
"You laugh now..." Kyle remarked with a grin. "...But that's a factual account." He chuckled.
>"What's it like? Living there, growing up, what's it like?"
"Feels like home. If you're a boy, you learn a little from your mother, a lot from your father, girls learn a lot from their Father and a lot from their Mother, you get married, have a bunch of kids, they go to work in some form or fashion in their teenage years. Real peaceful. Where are you from?"
>"Louisville Kentucky."
"Now it's YOUR turn to tell me about your childhood."
>"SHIT. I guess I have to."
"Yup."
>"Okay, well, I lived outside of town, my grandpa bought it, passed it down. We had a shooting range in the front yard, and we'd play in the woods. It's a lot like out here, just louder. More things out there to scream 'fuck me' at the top of their lungs."
"What do you like to do in your spare time?"
>"Shoot large animals with large guns, eat them, shoot steel targets at long ranges, hike around woods and hills at night, call people and say racist shit to some of the local populations." Molly listed.
"What's your favorite color?"
>"Green."
"Mine too. Birthday?"
>Time would pass and the two would eventually fall asleep after hours of delving into prior life experiences and stories told of various extreme encounters.

...And so came the next morning.
>Kyle woke up in a haze of gray.
>He stood from the pile of sandbags, looked around and looked for any sign of the situation in which he'd drifted away.
>There was nothing.
>The sandbags on which he'd sat himself the night prior looked forlorn.
>Behind them, was no camp, but an empty void, a rock field.
>The normal tan color of the area was replaced by an ashen gray. Clouds that seemed to glow a horrid orange lost their glow, and gained a gloom that blocked the sun.
>Kyle looked back out to see that the trees that'd been in a state of decay the night before had become lifeless black totems to the world whose rotting remains had given way to time.
>Where the town of Pollock Pines had stood, there was nothing but a gray field of saplings.
"Fuuuuck. It's like I've jumped twenty years forward." he said to himself aloud.
>Kyle turned around thinking he was just having another of the weird dreams that always seemed to take place wherever he was. At the very least, when he faced the camp, he didn't hear the screams that he'd heard at home.
>He looked to the northern entrance to the camp, where a pair of headlights, belonging to an SUV and not a boot returning with supplies.
>Two figures that were very familiar, but much more withered by age than he remembered disembarked.
>A man gray of hair and eye approached him, stopping ten feet forward of him and placing a familiar sidearm on the ground.
>Slowly, the woman approached from the SUV, her green eyes standing out as though they'd been lit up.
>She said something in a language he'd never heard before, knelt down and placed what appeared to be a personal effect of Susan's.
>The man said something, as though speaking to someone who wasn't there, then they turned and walked away.
"What the fuck? Was that-"
>Kyle came to consciousness to see that Two people he didn't immediately recognize standing over him. A man with sharp anglo features and his face arranged into a distantly familiar 'default' scowl, his gray eyes peered down at the man sitting on the sandbag, only now coming to.
>The silver haired woman looked over him, and he sensed some undercurrent that told him she was about to lunge at him and give him a hug, her green eyes betraying restraint behind her stone face. Something told Kyle, maybe a buzzing in the base of his skull, that she sensed the man's restraint would break any second now.
>He sensed the man's face was a mere mask, as though he were playfully scoffing. "Well, there you are, ASLEEP ON SENTRY DUTY." he seemed to say with just a twitch of the eyes.
>As another second passed, Kyle recognized them and opened his mouth, only beginning to draw the breath to say "HOLY SHIT!" before he was cut off by a swift movement of the mans finger to his lips, bidding him to remain quiet.
>Kyle was locked in place, having hardly moved a thousandth of an inch.
>"Kyle. You know how to follow tracks. Once you get HER off you, come find us. Our tracks are safe." the old man whispered.
>The two turned and started walking off. Kyle noted that, Ironically, the man, who he knew to be somewhat loud for a few reasons, walked with an inhuman quiet about him, his steps so silent as to have been less than soundless. The woman, on the other hand, walked with a sound alike to that of a man heavy on his feet and wearing hard soles.
"Fucking geists giving me weird dreams." Kyle thought to himself.
>Kyle sighed, looked to his right to see Molly sitting beside him and slowly moved and propped her on the sandbags before following the tracks into the woods.
>Kyle had no trouble making out the tracks as the dark blue scatter of the sun reflecting off the clouds faintly lit the sky.
>Eventually, he found a site where he knew the two had to have holed up. The area screamed dead end, and so too did the tracks disappear.
>Kyle looked around and immediately caught the area where at least ONE of them would be hiding.
"Okay, Aunt Kathy, Uncle Mike, come on out." Kyle uttered.
>Kyle was almost taken aback when he felt her squeeze up against his side.
>"So, my nephew fell asleep on sentry duty..." the gray eyed old man remarked, wrapping his arms around Kyle and giving him a hug. >"...We've missed you, Kyle." he finally said.
>The two stopped hugging him, only to get just far enough from him to look him up and down.
>"Let me get a look at you!" Ekatarina ordered. "Good GOD! You're the spitting image of your father!"
>"I'll say..." Michael began "... aged faster, maybe, you look exactly like he did when I met him. So tell me, boy! Who's the redhead?" he asked.
"A business associate. There's eight of us, one of them's from one of the Vandal's sister organizations, but he's resting after an injury two days ago."
>The two looked at each other, and then back at him with an expression that could only mean "I see Right through your SHIT."
>"Riiight, and as a professional you just happened to fall asleep on sentry duty with her leaning on your shoulder." Ekatarina said with a smirk.
>"So did you jump her bones yet?" Mike asked, exchanging a sly glance with Ekatarina.
"Damn, man! Calm down! Did I ask you about YOUR sex life?"
>"Come on, sonny Jim. It took a good deal of convincing to get your father not to come and injure himself trying to get through the zone at... how fucking old is your father? He's like HOW OLD?"
"Sixty nine."
>"Yeah. And I'm sixty one. And not only did I have to convince him not to come, or your mother and your brothers, but I had to convince uncle Anon and Aunt Emily to stay behind and NOT come out here and get fucking killed because they don't know how to navigate a zone, so, sonny boy, please at least indulge me. What's the story with you and that rather happy looking redhead."
>"I had to put HANDS on both of your little sisters to keep them at home, so do an old rifle a favor." Ekatarina scolded.
"Fine, fine." Kyle said as he backed up and sat down around the spot where they camped. "So, I've been batting her off, it is after all, not good policy to just... DO SHIT in a fever. We seem to gravitate to each other naturally and get along well, but as of now, I'm on about day six of knowing her name, and I can't really say I know her that well. Other than being something of a stranger, she's not bad, and even though I keep telling her to slow the fuck down, she still seems to follow me around like a puppy. Honestly, at this rate I can't say anything for sure, but if it all goes like it has, I'll probably be bringing her home by christmas."
>"You know? Until your letter reached the compound, it'd been ten years and we had absolutely fuck all idea where you are."
"Yeah. I know."
>"Why didn't you at least write? Your mother was worried after the first week, and your father... Well, old man was ready to be out here with us."
"I don't know, Uncle Mike. I just felt like I needed to get away from it all, you know? Like there was this hole in the ground that glowed all night and the only way to stop noticing its glow was to just... get away from it."
>"I suppose that's understandable. I came from a place not more than a hundred fifty miles from here. You can believe me when I say I felt the same. Then again, maybe it was the fact that I'd woken up to my girlfriend at the time on top of me, trying to strangle me in my sleep. After that little struggle in which only one of us could win, I wanted to get the hell away from here as fast as I could. And I did."
"I didn't want to stay away... I just never felt right about going back."
>"I reckon you've seen some fucked up shit, boy. So tell your aunt, because she hasn't really come to believe me in all these years, what's life like outside the camp?"
"I think you have a pretty naive view of it, Uncle Mike. It's everything you said and worse. Now granted, as I understand, you two didn't live in the cities, but holy SHIT. It's a dissolute life out there. There's always those who feel it, and they may live on the outskirts of society, maybe they become radicalized or radicalize themselves, they tend to go crazy, maybe they even become Vandals, or something approaching the vandals. The rest are wrapped up a much more unsavory and extreme version of what you describe."
>"Boys, boys, anyone notice the sun's gonna rise soon?"
>Kyle and Mike looked around to the sky and realized it was quickly turning to a mild glow of blue.
"It's looking like the rare clear days. Before I head back, because you know, the others are gonna be up soon, I gotta know. How did you know I was out here?"
>"Your mother got your letter." Ekatarina spoke up.
"But I JUST sent it two days ago, are you expecting me to believe that the boot made its way with the letter to Vegas, and then the letter made its way to the camp, WHERE MY MOTHER GOT IT, AND THEN ALERTED EVERYONE TO THE FACT, AND you got here all in the span of two days?"
>"Uuuuuhhh..." Mike stalled.
"That just doesn't seem a realistic time frame."
>"Don't underestimate me! I may be an old babushka, but I'm pretty spry for my age." Ekatarina warned.
"So what were you doing on the way to this side of the country? If I had to bet, you were within a few hours of here already, and were contacted by the parents to check on me just last night."
>"Clever boy. In time. Meanwhile, young buck, we'll keep a respectful distance, let you do what you will without prying eyes. Maybe we meet again somewhere."
"Strange. She calls me that too."
>"Huh?"
"Young buck."
>"Is she older than you?"
"Five years."
>"Well, not my business if you wanna make a go with a girl who's older, just you know... think it through. In the mean time, see you around." With that, a flash appeared in front of Mike just before he caught his R1 and turned to walk away.
>Ekatarina dwelled just a few moments.
>"Don't come out here again. Things get worse as you get further south and further west."
"Yeah. Careful going that way. There's a squirrel."
>Ekatarina stalked off after Mike toward the south.

Ten minutes later.
>Kyle walked back to the gate at the camp and found Molly in the place he'd left her, leaned against some sandbags on a barricade in front of entrance to the camp. None of the alarms were sounding, so no advanced radiation threats were occurring, including animals, winds blowing in a certain heading range, or anomalous people who'd been deceased before the place was nuked.
>Kyle decided he didn't want to wait around at the entrance or go back to sleep on the sandbags, instead opting to pick her up and put her into her sleeping bag before going to his own, and seeing if he could get away with getting to sleep before James or Charlie woke up.

Chapter 3: Inevitable Occurrences.
>The start of the day came late, maybe about nine in the morning.
>The sun was already up as Kyle was awakened by the glare of the sun.
>It was time to get up.
>The sound of jack shit rolled over the bluffs while Kyle went about finding his chest rig, Mk18, and his bump helmet.
>He looked around and seemed to feel he could go out by himself today. No one else seemed to be up as far as he knew.
>Kyle walked out of the camp toward town and walked down the bluff.
>In a few hundred yards he finally reached the town and began to poke through the ruins.
>"Hey!"
"Who said that?" Kyle demanded to the empty town.
>"In the empty record store! Two hundred yards down!"
>"COME ON! What're you waiting for? I'm in Woodland Records!"
>Kyle looked down the street a ways to see a fallen sign on a store conspicuously styled as a record sort, a 71 record painted and shaped onto the facade of the shattered storefront.
>Kyle moved to investigate the noise, bounding from point to point and tossing two or three bolts between every movement, watching, scrutinizing their arcs ever so carefully to check for any deviation.
>Kyle eventually found himself in the record store.
>"Please, open my case!" The voice called to him.
"Where are you?"
>"Down, to your right." the voice said.
>The voice sounded like something out of a cartoon, but obliged anyway.
>Kyle found what appeared to be a rectangular crystal case, inside it was a matrix-esque grid of items that appeared to be butterscotch colored tiny size chiclets. He picked up the case and noted their seemed suspension by no manner of material, but instead, some unknown force that held them in a uniform distanced lattice.
>One of the chiclets moved, bending, with a linear split across the middle, like a mouth moving mid speech.
>"Open the case! Please?"
>Kyle had misgivings about opening a case for what appeared to be something out of a chocolate cereal commercial. But, nevertheless, he knew just what to do, how to check, and what he'd do in case of any outcome that wasn't 'die instantly.'

Meanwhile, a block over.
>Emma was searching the ruins at the request of Molly, who'd been scrambling to get to her kit while Emma was on her way to poke around herself.
"Molly's just paranoid, Kyle's fiiiiine." she muttered to herself aloud.
>"What? Why did you close it?" a nasally voice, like one of the Alien toys from toy story cried out.
>Emma quickly turned a corner to see Kyle Holding a Transparent rectangular jar filled with bright orange and blue globules of something, opening his mouth to scream.
>"I WON'T LET YOU EAT THE EARTH IN THE FUTURE!" Kyle shouted feverishly as he wound up.
>Emma looked on in confusion as a fevered Kyle pitched a rectangular crystal case full of orange and blue balls into a sphere hovering in mid air.
>An audible "NOOOOOOoooooooo" could be heard coming from the case as it reached the border of the sphere, distorted, as though it were spaghetifying in a black hole, and then disappeared into nothingness.
"Hey! Kyle!" Emma called as she looked on at Kyle "Was that box case talking?"
>"You heard it too?"
"I was half expecting it to say 'The CLAAAAW.'" she remarked
>"Well, I killed it!"
"Why though?"
>"Far as I can tell, it was the blob but orange and blue."
"The fuck is the blob?" Emma demanded in confusion.
>"It's a hundred year old horror movie monster and it expands until it eats the world."
"Uh...huh." Emma answered, attempting to comprehend what she'd just heard.

>A small body could be seen sprinting down the hill through the known trail markers in the distance.
"I guess she finally found her shit."
>Emma turned to view the body running down the hill.
>"Hey, Kyle, while she's out of earshot..." Emma spoke in a low voice. "... I notice she's been kinda monopolizing you. You two an item?"
"I've been keeping it in limbo. Truthfully, I like her. I really do. I just don't want to dive into things in a fever."
>"YOU don't want to do something in a fever? You were just throwing a box into a black hole."
"True. But look at HER. Sprinting. Downhill. Because I guess me being out here alone equals me out here in danger?"
>"Well, it IS dangerous out here."
"No more than usual." Kyle remarked as he watched Molly reached the bottom of the hill, sprinting down the known safe trails.
>"You know... judging by the way she's running, I think for her, it's real." Emma said in a perfect deadpan.
"Yeah. Suppose I should stop freezing her out soon... But for now, play it off cold, will ya?"
>The two watched as Molly continued a sprint, and crouched, slower, but still hurriedly along the bolts littered on the ground.
>Kyle went wide eyed as she moved along them, ready to call out should she make take the wrong direction.
>An incredible string of luck held out as Molly reached the two without encountering anomaly.
>"Kyle*panting* Thank god you're *more panting* Alright!" Molly started.
"What's wrong girl? Timmy's fallen down the well?"
>"NO!*pant* WE have *pant pant pant* to get out of here!" Molly panted.
"What's wrong? Billy Joe jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge?"
>"Event! They sent us heavy weapons and armor!" Molly exclaimed.
"Alright, lets calm down, and get back up the hill. But before that, DON'T DO THAT AGAIN! THAT WAS FUCKING STUPID!" Kyle exclaimed, thrusting a finger toward Molly. "You do that again, you're not going outside the wire. Come on." Kyle said, grabbing Molly's arm and leading her, like an errant child, past the anomalies.
>Soon enough they made their way back to the camp where they watched the weather change and the hours pass.
>Blue skies turned to clouds, daylight to dusk, empty ramparts to a few heavy weapon positions.
>Kyle would think back to his younger years when he'd go out with the geists and his father and a few friends to go fishing while he waited for whatever event was expected to occur.

Sometime in 2040
>Eric led his three sons and their dog, who he'd named Trey, down the trail toward a fishing hole, every so often, checking to make sure that Kyle was keeping Jason up with the rest.
>Eric decided to break the silence, and began devising a method for doing so.
"Well now, take down your fishing pole, and meet me at the fishing hole, we may not get a bite all day, but don't you rush away."
>Eric Junior sang as the second in the column "What a great place to rest your bones, and mighty fine for skippin' stones, you'll feel fresh, aaaas a lemonade, a-sittin' in the shade."
>Kyle and Jason were third, and started singing along as well. "Whether it's hot, Whether it's cool. Oh what a spot. For whistlin' like a fool."
>Eric picked the song back up.
"What a fine. daaay to take a stroll, and wind up by the fishin' hole, I can't think oooof a better way, to pass the time of day."
>The four whistled the next part of the song.
"We'll have no neeeed to call the roll, when we get to the fishin' hole. They'll be YOU, ME and old dog, Trey, to do the time Away!"
>"If we don't hook, a perch or bass, we'll cool our toes in dewy grass, or else Pull. UP. A weed to CHAW, and maybe set and jaw."
>"Haaaangin' arouuuund, takin' our ease, watching that hound, a-scratchin' at his fleas."
>"Come on, take. Down. your fishing pole, and meet me at the fishing hole, I can't think. Ooooof a better way, to pass the time of day."
>Everyone present was happy to have sang the upbeat tune.
>The fishing hole was only minutes away.

Present day.
>Kyle checked the packages that arrived in the boot, four of which were large boxes and two of them were smaller boxes which had been addressed to him from the vandal compound.
>Kyle was amazed that things got from a point A so far away to a Point B that was remote and isolated at best.
>He pulled the boxes from the boot and began opening them with his knife.
>Inside he found four specially designed machine guns. They'd been something of a brainchild of a friend of the family, one Jason Rogers, chambered in .338 federal and essentially made of a modified lightweight M-240 variant and a larger bore. The gun was functionally, the same, however, aesthetically, many distinctive features of the M240 in it, were absent.
"The real, is only an imitation of the consciousness of the ideal. When you portray the real as the dysfunctional, and ONLY as the dysfunctional, instead of the ideal, soon, the consciousness inverts, and the dysfunction is idealized, while the ideal is looked on as a front to hide dysfunction." Kyle rambled to himself.
>For a moment, he shut up, and heard something straining on the wind, voices just close enough to be heard, yet too far to be distinguished.
>Footsteps reached his ears, gravel crunching under feet.
>Kyle looked up to see a man stopping across the camp, about five feet from the corner where a tent had been. The man was not one of the eight people who should be here.
>He was not one of the two who had an agenda. They'd been away for days.
>He was clad in a trench coat, made from a dark leather, wearing gloves and a fedora. His foreboding gaze cutting at his being.
>Something in his visage evoked the air of some sort of official.
>A wry smile crossed the man's face as Kyle stood and ran toward him.
"WAIT! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?" Kyle screamed as he sprinted toward the man.
>The man turned to his right and walked around the corner of the tent near which he'd stood.
>Kyle rounded the corner no more than two seconds later to see that he was no longer there. 
>Kyle walked past the back of the tent, and scanned the horizon, seeing nothing save for fortifications and the sounds of two panicked team members whispering sharply, and scrambling to do something before Kyle could see.
>Kyle sagged against a hesco barrier and fell to a sitting position.
>"Is... He not talking about us?"
>Two sets of footsteps made dull clatters in the soft dirt.
>Andrew and Emma darted around the corner to find Kyle sitting on the ground.
>"Kyle? You okay? What was it?" One of them blurted.
"He was here..."
>More dull clattering reached them as Molly reached him.
>"Kyle! Did you see the guy in the trench coat and fedora?"
"You saw him too?"
>"Yeah! He walked around a corner and then he was gone!"
>"What a strange occurrence."
"The zone's an inhuman place. It must be why the chekist roams."
>Kyle scratched his head, rose to his feet, and began walking just outside the camp.
>He looked out to the woods, seeing a few hundred yards in the distance as several animals crawled through the treeline.
>Something caught his eye, maybe a bug, or a wolf... or a squirrel.
"That works too."
>Kyle turned and ran back into the camp, finding Jim getting ready to demand what all the fuss was about.
>"Hey! What's the bi-"
"Shut up, the squirrel's back! Get me the chemical weapons and the mortar tubes, we're confirming some fucking sightings"
>"WHAT?" all five people present demanded with various degrees of exclamation.
"You fucking heard me, look outside the hescos!"
>Jim and Andrew ran to the boot and began grabbing Mortar tubes and baseplates while Emma and Peter ran to attempt to break open crates of shells loaded with various blistering agents.
>Crates filled with white phosphorus, chlorine and a specialized mix of mustard gas.
"Molly! Get outside the barriers with me and give me a wind check!"
>"Got it." Molly yelled as she mobilized.
>Kyle turned to Jim and Andrew.
"Start bracketing the edge of the city further to the west! It's about three thousand yards away, bearing zero eight seven!"
>"Moving?" Jim yelled.
"About one mile an hour, it's idle at the edge of the city eating buildings! MOLLY! Waiting on the wind check!"
>"WESTERLY!"
"COMING EAST?"
>"GUSTING WEST, PREVAILING EAST."
"Guys, KILL THAT FUCKER!"
>Kyle ran to a crate and kicked the side of it, breaking two sides before dragging it toward the mortar that Jim and Andrew were shooting before he went back to get a crate of white phosphorus shells to drag over to Emma and Pete.
>Somewhere in the corner of his vision, he saw Charles shoulder a crate of mustard gas shells and carry it to a spot before he grabbed a tube.
>"Kyle! Help me shoot! MOLLY! Spot our shells!"
>The dull thump of mortars firing began to speed up and continued to occur for several seconds before molly sighted the first impacts.
"Molly! Where are they hitting?"
>"Yellow white smoke right on! Yellow a hundred yards short! White smoke fifty feet right!"
"Charlie, we need to adjust a little further out!"
>"DO IT."

>Kyle adjusted downward on the elevation of the tube to bring the gas slightly closer to the squirrel, by his judgement, 110 yards further out.
>The tube shuddered once more as the shell ignited at the bottom of the tube.
>"It's running! CEASE FIRE! CEASE FIRE!"
"What?" Kyle called out as he stood erect and looked to the entrance of the camp, looking directly at Molly as her head peered into the camp.
>"It's running!"
"No fucking shit!" Kyle said as he ran between the hescos and looked in the direction Molly pointed.
>He saw the squirrel, a creature the size of a building, who'd buried him just days earlier, running, clouds of gas and fire and all the other toxic things blooming on and around it.
>In his mind, he was seeing a near perfect image. It was almost cathartic. The only problem was that, while he assumed it had been running west, and maybe it HAD been running away when Molly called out, it was NOW running east, and had passed the point it was standing when he'd last seen it. He calculated quickly that it was fifty-five hundred yards distant, and closing at a rate which must've been over a hundred miles per hour.
>Kyle turned to see in the Corner of his vision, after only a second and maybe a half, Molly's fiery head idly turning and opening up in alert to the sight of the squirrel.
>Kyle Grabbed her arm as he began running into the camp, tugging her in tow.
"IT'S RUNNING HERE! HIT THE DECK!" He yelled as he felt the first of the tremors.
>Kyle ran without thinking toward a cluster of barriers around a few rocks and an ammo dump, getting just about twenty feet short before a shudder of the earth jolted he and Molly from their feet.
>Kyle toppled to the ground, only a tenth of a second later feeling Molly bounce on top of him and roll, carried by her remaining velocity, over his head and neck before finally landing just two feet further and a foot to the right.
>Kyle rolled onto his back to see the sky become obscured as IT came to place.
>With a motion of the arms a creature that size shouldn't be able to manage at a speed that it shouldn't, the squirrel heaped over the western half of the camp's barriers and flung them somewhere into the sky.
>There were sounds in life, that one would never associate with a sight. The sight of a tree squirrel the size of a building, roaring like a dinosaur in one of those vintage movies about amusement parks and the upsetting of nature, was one of them.
>The squirrel proceeded forward, flinging spots in the dirt skyward to the east, and pounding the dirt with an ear shattering thunder and a ground shaking tremor that brought one's heart to an ached frenzy.
>The last thing he saw before he unthinkingly rolled himself over Molly in an attempt to shield her, was an uprooted tent and five hesco barriers, deflating of their dirt contents, apparently launched to what would be within a dozen or so yards of his location.
>The world went black as Kyle closed his eyes, and braced for the end.

Time Unknown.
>Kyle awoke atop a shuddering set of breasts, wherein he felt his head being clasped.
>His head, and back brought him to anguish as he felt the sting of what might have been some sort of impact point.
>The only thing he could do was minimize his anguished verbalization of agony.
>He began to notice that he was hearing some sort of pained whimpers.
>He brought his arms under him and fought to raise his head, greeting Molly's bloodshot blue eyes, filling with shock, but she seemed to calm down a little.
>The thing that worried him, was that on the left side of her head, the dingy red hair that'd been muted by dirt was now darkened by blood.
>Kyle forced himself up higher, and probably much to her chagrin, when Molly attempted to bring her arms around him, he pinned her down at the shoulders, after which tears began to well in her eyes, rolling feebly down her temples.
>He put his hand on her jaw, and rotated her head away to her right, so that he could examine the wound on the side of her head.
>He got a look at the cut on the left side and decided that it was minor in nature, even so much that it shouldn't have bled enough to create the stain that was present in her hair.
"Shhhh. Shhhh. It's okay. You're going to be alright." Kyle whispered to her.
>Kyle managed to haul himself upright, despite the pain in his back, and the growing flame in the right side of his head, and set himself on the ground.
>As Kyle watched Molly sit up and scoot herself closer to him, he noticed something. There was blood on her neck.

>Kyle felt the side of his head and withdrew his hand from his head, finding that his hand was soaked in blood, which unlike that upon Molly's chest and neck, fresh, and red, the other sample having stuck to her skin like glue, darkening and congealing like blood does.
>He looked down upon his hand and realized that he indeed hurt.
>Blood was caked upon the right side of his head and the sensation of warm fluid made itself known to him as it slowly grew cold and drew heat from him.
>In a moment, Kyle's situational awareness returned from him, unbeknownst to him, lapsing for a moment, and he realized that Molly'd been moving to lower him to the ground, and get her hands on his head.
>His head was rotated to the left, then returned to center. He watched as Molly left him bleeding on the ground, in what he assumed was a search for either the other team members, or medical supplies to treat his wound.
>For the time being, all Kyle could do was stare into space.
>In a moment, all was white, and he was before family and friends.
>The year must've been twenty forty-five.
>Kyle was in his teenage years, maybe sixteen. Standing in the field, he was with his brothers, his sisters, and his parents.
>Beside them were the Berdans and the Rogers.
>Aunt Ekatarina was scanning the tree lines with her binoculars and pointing out places the animals like to hide.
>Aunt Marina was laying in the snow, holding the AK-74, scanning the trees, blanketed with snow.
>Uncle Mike and Uncle Jason were busy discussing matters of tracking.
>Eric and Jane, his parents, were inspecting prototype rifles while discussing various matters to which Kyle was not cognizant.
>Soon enough, the Rall children walked in tow with their parents and their friends in pursuit of a bear that had been seen around the compound, and had made enough of a nuisance of itself that it needed to be addressed.
"Dad, why do we have to track these during the day?" Kyle asked.
>"Well, on one hand, we could just get out the night vision goggles and wait all night until it comes out. Here's the problem with that, son. We got work to do in the morning. We have no less than THIRTY PEOPLE EACH who are counting on us. You gonna let them down? I'm not. I've had to miss work before. And you know what? I would NOT do that unless there was NO WAY I could get to work, or I couldn't get out of bed. NEVER choose to let the people who count on you down, boy."
"I suppose so. So we're tracking it on the weekend, in the broad daylight, and when we find it, we're gonna mulch it."
>"That's right. Keep up, and make sure your younger siblings keep up."

Dawn.
>Kyle came to the sky just turning blue and looked upon it from the cold dirt.
>Doing the bare minimun to turn his neck, he noted that first, he could see something on the right eye socket just on his forehead, and second, that he saw one body bag with the silhouette of a male body outlined against the background of the remains of camp.
>Turning his neck to the right, in an attempt to look away, he noted that Emma, unconscious and badly marked by some form of laceration upon her face, lie next to him, her head having naturally rolled itself to the side, in a position that would haunt him, almost as though she'd looked to him to ask for the assistance that never came, the pained expression on her face, in all aspects save for the eyes, asking "why?"
>It occurred to Kyle that it could only be dawn.
>He clumsily roused himself to his feet, turning as if drunk to face the row of bodies that lie next to him, of whom Emma was only the first.
>He saw that Charles had broken an arm and had been splinted, his arm slung close to his body, and various signs of cosmetic encephalon injuries had been for the most part bandaged, but for a part lower on the head, Sutured.
>The other two in the row were Nelson and Andrew. James and Molly were nowhere to be found, but looking around, the camp had become a wreck, and it did not seem that anything could be done by them to repair the shamble that the camp had been reduced to.
>His mind turned to the absence of three of the people who he expected to be there. At the very least, visually, he could establish that the rest of the people lying in the row had been breathing, and would at least be accounted for.
>Kyle turned from them and stumbled toward the body bag.
>He fell to the knee and unzipped the bag to see who was inside.
>He hesitated, then he let out a sigh.
"Rest easy, Pete." Kyle bowed his head.
>Kyle sat down. His jaw was slack as he contemplated the facts he knew of the present, and the possible occurrences that could have occurred between when he was last aware of the situation.
>With the possibilities run through his mind, he rose sharply to his feet and Began searching the camp for Jim and Molly. He didn't have to go far before he heard Jim on the camp phone yelling.
>"NO! LISTEN, there is a SQUIRREL, acorns and all, about the size of a building headed east into Nevada!" he exclaimed into the handset.
>"NO, I'M NOT HIGH!"
>Kyle couldn't help but chuckle as Jim slowly, and condescendingly enunciated "Squirrel. SQUIRR- EL." loudly into the phone.

>As Kyle headed back toward the south westward part of the camp, he felt he didn't have all the facts.
>With each heavy, plodding step, Kyle considered a new angle.
"'There were reports' they told us."
"'Rumors.'"
"'Clown world is just the transitioning phase for piss earth.' daddy told me."
"Dad, you were right. Piss earth is gonna suck in five years. And I just unleashed half of it."
>Kyle thought of the book he'd been told to read, which he'd been unable to put down out of sheer morbid shock. The book title was "Piss Earth 2025," and it was published during the period of insurrection.
>It had been a book about the dark future of man, written in the 21st century, with the lessons of "1984" and "brave new world" placed behind them, focusing less on the big brother, though acknowledging him, but also bringing to the light of day, the rule of chaos and the power of the powerless, bringing with it, a greater foresight into the much nearer future of the time, focusing more on the nasty little cunt that is the little brother of chaos, and the state enacted control of the population through the enforced lack thereof.
>In this whirlwind of thought, much of which came from here and now while the other half of which came outward from an internalized there and then that stretched off into infinity as far as he could remember, a stray thought that matched nothing of the things on his mind, from where the hescoes had flown off to, and what it must've felt like to be Peter in his last moments, a stray occurred to him.
"I wonder what old man Jones is up to."
>As kyle wandered about the camp toward the west, he finally came to the last of the questions.
"How's Molly holding up?" Kyle asked himself.
"How am I holding up?" He finally thought, baffled at the prospect that he'd been able to withstand all that he had and still walk around like he did, not so much as feeling the wound in his head.
>He stood on the precipice of a crater where once there'd been barricades.
>He looked down to the crater, where a squirrel had stomped its paw into the ground, sending parts of the camp flying.
>He thought of what he'd seen of Peter's remains. He was identifiable, but only due to about a third of his face snaking up from the left side and then left to the center of the forehead at the brow and up to the crown of the head.
>It nauseated him moderately to think of the sight of the head crushed inward, and caused a convulsion to run up his spine, shaking him from his gut as the shudder traveled up his spine to the base of his skull.
>His jaw fell slack to assume the position it'd be in when he doubled over and expelled any solid matter in his stomach onto the ground.
>He sucked in air and expelled it quickly, wishing it'd be over, that he'd ultimately project his contents onto the ground and be done with it, that he'd purge the sickness that dwelt within his body. Ultimately, however, the convulsions would settle and he'd once more feel solid as his stomach finally settled.
>With a first step more like toppling his center of gravity off his back foot, he plodded down the center of the crater and then up the other end, searching around to see whether he could find her.
>"The state of the structure has grown so decrepit that in any major center, all pigs and system whores could be annihilated and it could not significantly affect the course of the system at all."
>Kyle looked to the source of the voice to see Nelson sitting on at the end of the remnant of the barrier wall talking to himself, sitting with one arm clasped upon his knee and staring blankly into the distance, jaw slack, and his eyes glaring through the distance while his brain warped around the process of his thoughts.
>At the moment, he found the idea of sitting in shock and quoting from Siege to be relatively appealing when confronted with the alternative of realizing his powerlessness as the hands of the squirrel. But at the moment, he didn't much care about the things he felt physically or internally, at the moment, his mind, even should he have desired otherwise, was set outward.
>He happened upon the sight of Molly, lying out where the wolf had been killed days before and looking out on the destroyed remnants.
>Kyle decided it was time to take a walk down the hill, and chambered a round just in case he happened upon wolves, or any other creatures short of the abomination that'd most likely by now, etched itself deep into the minds of America by now.
>without incident he sat himself down by Molly and looked out on the view before him.
>The ruins seemed to look back in a predatory manner as he stared off into the distance.
"Holding up?"
>"You shouldn't be walking around like that."
"Suppose not, but I'm not laying around while there's a whole zone of critters intent on killing me out there." Kyle replied.
>"We're being recalled." she offered.
"Don't wanna talk about it?" Kyle asked.
>Silence stood between them for several seconds.
"No? Not about how you are? How you feel? What you've seen?"
>Molly turned her head just enough to put him in her peripheral vision, as if to make only the most cursory assessment of him. Her jaw was slack and she seemed to tease at prying out some reaction... then her blank face went stone as she closed her mouth and turned her head away.
>"...."
"Alright." kyle said, Standing up without prodding or prying at her, and moving in just such a fashion as to avoid poking her, lest she explode like a water balloon.
He wanted to say "I'll go check on the others. I'm always open if you want to talk." However, he knew there was no remedy for her that would not come only with time.
>Kyle walked solemnly up to the camp where he met with a paranoid looking Andrew.
"What's your ailment, Andy?"
>"What the fuck was that thing? Y-Y-y-you saw that fucking thing, didn't you?"
>"Come on! TellmeI'mnotcrazy!"
"No, no. I saw it, Andy. But you ARE crazy."
>"No, no, no! It was all so real! It CAN'T have been a hallucination."
"You're EXACTLY right."
>"SOI'MNOTCRAZY!"
"NO. You are right. But you're still crazy. You volunteered to be here. That thing was what you signed up for, knowing so or not."
>"So I'm not insane?"
"Well, you're not hallucinating or seeing anything that isn't real. You just signed up to be here."
>"Okay." Andrew said as he looked at on at Kyle's calm and composed visage and took a deep breath, calming as he eventually slowed down to a resting pace and slowly began to walk around the camp.
>James came toward him as he looked on after Andrew, who walked away like a zombie, before sagging to a sitting position and looking out over the hills.
>"We're being recalled to Vegas." James informed.
"Molly told me."
>"I just found that out forty seconds ago, how would she know THAT?"
"It's probably logical in her position. That said... do they know the boot is wrecked?"
>"Yeah. The new one will be here in a couple hours."
"Wonderful. Andrew's conscious, since we're by it. He's pretty fucked up."
>"Yeah, I expected as much from the kid. He's gazed straight into the eye of Squirrel-thulhu. Don't expect anyone's getting out of that unscathed."
"Squirrel....thulhu. Yeah, I guess that explains Molly, Nelson and now Andrew. So what's needed?"
>"Well, I don't know about the rest, bunch of them are unconscious on account of taking a tentpole or something to the skull, You got a headwound, Molly's got a headwound, Andrew's stayin' noided and Nelson's babbling about the god of Mammon and shit. What's Molly up to, anyway?"
"I think they're going their own way about decompressing. Being attacked by a squirrel puts one under high pressure and a microscope. I think what they all need, whenever Charlie and Emma come to, is privacy, wherein they can talk to themselves, selectively talk to others, and just vent out that stress and depressurize themselves."
>"How's Molly? I saw you come from where she was."
Kyle heaved a long, sullen sigh as he decided how to phrase it. "She won't talk to me."
>"She told you to go away?!" Jim reacted in surprise.
"No, it's exactly what I said. She told me I should lie down and that we're being recalled, then she shut up like a clam when I asked how she was."
>"Ah. THAT."
"She just needs her space. They all just need their space."
>"What about you? You okay? For a man with a pretty bad headwound, you act unscathed, and you've had more exposure to it than almost all of us."
"I guess I just haven't had time to think about it. In my dream, I was in a prison of the mind, but not the spirit, and every day I made friends." Kyle stated.
>"What did you just say?"
"Just that I don't think I had time to think about it."
>"No, the second part."
"What second part?"
>"Ne- Take care, man. 'till the ride back."

Vegas. That night.
>Kyle found himself in a bar. Somehow, though he'd never been particularly given to drink, nor the perils of alcoholism, he fould it felt like home.
>Some differences of course, found their way to his sight. Old man Jones wasn't behind the counter. The place was rowdy, though perfectly in line with his experiences. Instead of George Jones, or some other famed country music he'd grown up hearing at Roscoe's, there was a classic techno song called "love beam" by a now long past french artist named Agrume playing loudly.
>The wall of course, was not covered in pictures of people he knew, instead, they were clad in old fashioned printed photographs of people in what dad had described as "G-Suits," denoting that they were a professional known as a "Fighter pilot." 
>the bar was called the Tommy Knockers, and though it didn't quite match, it was close enough to be Roscoe's or better, seeing as he didn't have the pain of looking at the pictures of Susan or the strange emotion stirred by the picture with the woman named "Monica."
>Kyle sat at the bar listening to the techno, which he admitted if only to himself, was quite catchy, while he downed his third shot of Rebecca Creek.
"Hey barkeep!" he yelled over the music, eliciting the desired response of an approach.
>"What can I get you, brotha!" The strangely accented old man asked.
"More Rebecca Creek! this time, leave the bottle!" he said, slipping up a fifty dollar bill.
>"You got it!" he yelled, retreating to advance once more with a bottle of the whiskey.
>The old man, slid the bottle to him as he asked about the bandages.
>"Get into a fight?"
"Not particularly fair, but I suppose you could call it that."
>"What happened?" he asked as Kyle poured a shot and dropped it at the speed of gravity.
"You wouldn't believe it. I saw this big ass animal and it just about mauled the whole campsite." Kyle said, pouring another, this time pausing.
"I don't know what it was, but I think it's a new species of squirrel." he said as he raised the glass and downed another shot.
>"Telling a tall tale, brother."
"Not as tall as the animal." Kyle said before the bartender gleefully turned to serve other customers.
>"Hey!" a familiar voice demanded his attention from his side.
>There in most of her splendor, was Molly, wearing a dress, and her hair standing out in a much sharper red after being washed.
"What are you doing here!?"
>"Easy there, young buck, we have some business to discuss."
"I don't know that you and I have ANY business."
>"Business, Pleasure, maybe the same, will ya shut the fuck up and let me talk?"
"You can start talking, but you say some bullshit and I'm out."
>"Look, I just wanted to thank you for shielding me, pulling me away from the animal, all that shit."
"Okay. You're welcome. But I take it you don't just want to tell me how great I am, or you'd be wasting your time following me." Kyle remarked.
>"Look, I think this would be better in private."
Kyle mulled the idea for five seconds in his mind, turning it over and out, before deciding.
"Alright. Where did you have in mind?" Kyle granted.
>"I was thinking...." Molly trailed off, leaning into Kyle's ear.
>"...Mandalay bay, room 1848." she whispered. before backing off.
"Alright." Kyle granted again.
>Molly Slowly fell away from him and hovered outside.
>A few minutes passed, and another shot before Kyle picked up the bottle and walked out.
>About fifteen minutes after Molly did, having prior knowledge, and sobriety on her side, Kyle found Room 1848 just drunk enough to be giddy, and knocked on the door.
>His knuckle had barely touched the door for the third time when it came open.
>He scarcely had time to identify the red haired woman behind the door as Molly before an arm lunged around him, pulled him into the room and threw the door closed behind him.
>Had he been sober, he might have resisted what came next out of some notion of discipline. But now he simply let her initiate the act when she went for his belt before he seized the lead, and simply moved her, and rolled up her dress.

Day Nine.
>Kyle sat next to Molly in the boot.
>He looked across the boot to meet the eye of Jim, which seemed to appraise him and Molly, both of whom, through a lacking sense of self control and a near constant state of inebriation, had come across marks about the face and neck.
>Kyle sported bite marks about the neck, a little dark spot that should've been a cut about his right ear, the subtle but easily missed marks of teeth having nipped at his lower lip, and of course, the subtle but visible red marks just peeking out of his shirt, which betrayed the marks of nails skidding across skin.
>Molly, for her own part in the debauchery had little in the way of bite marks or scratches, but did have pressure marks on the side, which seemed to evidence that a hand had found its way there and clasped down.
>More worrisome to those who'd noticed their marks, was the fact that they could only be the visible tip of the iceberg, with a vast majority of marks, of unknown number and severity hidden beneath surplus combat shirts from the twenty-thirties and Newly requisitioned plate carriers with anti stab inserts 
>While the two appeared to have been marred more by their time away from the destructive influences of the zone than their entire time there, all others appeared had returned to an air of normality, and lack of injury, having undergone minor medical attention for the most part, as they'd had four days away from the zone in order to recover from their wounds and clear their heads, of course, this all came after a brief inquiry that lasted all of two hours, but in the end, no footage had been forthcoming about a cluster of reports about a wood squirrel or tree squirrel, depending on the source, the size of a building having crested the hills near Las Vegas.
>With all concerns addressed, the team had been cleared to go back to the zone, and would in time, find themselves in the destroyed camp five with all the equipment they'd need to repair it.
>Their contract had been altered, however, in the wake of Peter's crushing death.
>This time, they'd be granted a bounty for every animal among the local wildlife they culled, and a grand sum of forty million dollars for the documented bagging and tagging of a building sized squirrel, to be awarded upon confirmation. In addition to their typical objectives, they'd also be tasked with aggressively hunting wildlife opportunistically.

Chapter 4: From the start.
"In my mind, I think, it was never to be anything but a hunting trip. Thousands of rounds later, hundreds of miles of hiking. Without reserve or remorse, we went forth, old enough to be tired to our bones across a stretch of land none had inhabited in a couple years, a stretch of land that our instructor had escaped from initially. The things you see in a place like that in a time like that are terrifying. But ultimately, they change things in your perspective." -Anonymous member of deep California expedition, 2019.
>The morning of the tenth day was something strange.
>Kyle woke to the feeling of Molly stirring against him, attempting to tighten the sleeping bag around her, almost certainly not to make herself warmer, as she was glistening in a film of sweat, but simply to tighten the bag around her.
>As he slipped himself out of the bag, he briefly observed the marks on her body, many of which were on her posterior side, and those on his own, which he knew from the agitating scratches on his skin, were present in abundance on both the posterior, and anterior sides.
>He stood and clad himself for the day, which could only consist of hunting for animal and artifact alike.
>He looked at the fledgling sun as it just crested the horizon, still obscured, mostly, by the disgusting haze that was held back by the hills, standing as a solemn barrier between himself, and a better place.
>As he began loading magazines and indexing them in his chestrig, he wondered if this was the way his father had felt in those times he told of before his first wife, before the vandals, and before mom.
>Standing in a land of ill state and looking off to the undefined void beyond the bound that he knew to be better. Calculating the worth of each action, knowing rationally that nothing was worth staying in these bounds of early twenty-first century California, but subconsciously pondering the terror of having to flail his arms into new territory wherein he knew not a person or thing around, and had no connections, wherein he'd have to forge new ones on his own and damn fast.
>Somehow this place had an attachment, morbid in nature, to those who'd seen it.
>Maybe that was the reality, detached from that of His father and uncle, that people had talked of and wrote of for decades and decades.
>It sickened him to think that he could be attached to this place. He looked out on the serene trees and wilderness of doom with a sneer. His brow arched into a hostile set of convex shapes as his whole face seemed to shift away to the left side of his head, a bitterness at the prospect filling him so completely as to be possible to spit out like venom.
>He turned his head and let the darkness go.
>Soon it flooded out of him like a lightning rod directing energy to the ground.
>He felt as though his core temperature had dropped, and he was free of a cloud of discontent.
>He knelt down and placed his hand on Molly's cheek, eliciting the response he'd expected, seeing her eyes flutter as they opened.
"Well, hey there, angel of the morning." He said with a smile. "Gear up, take a wipe bath if you need to. We're in for a rough one today."
>Molly raised her head just a little, and pursed her lips to catch a peck from Kyle before he went off to get breakfast.

One Hour later.
>The seven walked out of the shattered perimeter at a brisk pace, and headed straight to the other side of the town, scanning around and finding that various features of the wildlife had come back to infest the area in the last few days, as though they'd reacted to their very presence with an intelligent hostility.

>Kyle watched, press checking his rifle when he saw the wolfs poise to attack, and then retreat, running along the same direction as if to find a better spot to pounce up ahead.
"I just saw three wolves to the right." Kyle muttered into the radio.
>Kyle started scanning around for any remnant radio signals being broadcast on his second channel.
>To his surprise, he found himself hearing something on 920 hertz amplitude Modulation.
>"Good morning vineland, you're listening to KVIN the vine, this is your host Roman Guzman with your vineland weather report for July twentieth, twenty seventeen, we're experiencing a low of fifty and are expecting a high in the upper nineties or low onehundreds in the afternoon, this has been your vineland weather report, Now back to the greatest music of all time."
"I wonder where KVIN was located." Kyle wondered to himself.
>The sound of a song by the Hollies began playing in his headset as he scanned the streets for movement.
>Kyle advanced, when out of his periphery, he caught something strange.
>The object seemed to call to him.
"Hold!" he called, watching for acknowledgement from the rest of the team in the form of a halt.
>After a few repetitions, he saw he had the desired result. Before he did what he felt some force calling him to, he flicked the switch on his rifle to full auto and took a few bolts in his hands.
>He broke from the formation, throwing a couple bolts as he proceeded to the object.
>Much to his surprise, there was nothing to keep him from it. No mosquito mange, no webs.
>Kyle picked up the object, a six inch wide ring with a length of about two inches, and a half an inch thick. To his surprise, the object weight nothing.
>It shown in a mirror black finish like that of stones smoothed to a .2RA finish, and for an object of its size, it seemed to have a mass that would be impossible to achieve with any material he knew of.
>Something about the ring shaped object immediately betrayed it as being of Alien origin, and if nothing else, it was an artifact which would be valued dearly.
>Keeping his rifle handy, and his head up, kyle dropped his pack and unzipped it with the hand which held the object, stuffed it in while scanning his surroundings for approaching animals.
>He brought his pack back upon his shoulder and stood, walking quickly upon the path he'd trod back to his place in the line.
>A stern, but still girlish voice came from ahead of him in the line.
>"If I was your mother, I'd tell you to put that back... But I'm not your mother." Molly admonished.
"I'm listening."
>"Well, what did you find?"
"I don't know. I just had to pick it up. It was shiny."
>Molly was about to make a remark, having just had time to part her lips before a howl too present to indicate anything other than aggression filled his ears, even through his muffs.
>Kyle's head rapidly began scanning around him for the animals, he wished they'd show themselves so he could start shooting already.
>He got his wish.
>Kyle began a process of selection, aquisition, bringing the sight between his eye and the target, squeezing out a burst, and then picking another.
>The snarls of wolves turn to distress as round after round impacts their bodies.
>In seconds, Kyle feels the recoil impulse in a lighter fashion, prompting him to reach for a new mag, dropping the one he'd had to the ground in a brisk reload process.
>The retreat had started, Kyle had noticed that Jim ran past him.
>In the flurry of activity, he found a moment when no targets were nearest to him, and he checked over to Molly, to see her loading in a fresh mag.
>Behind her, a wolf crept out of the crevasse present in a building, and as he brought his dot to it, he saw it lunge.
>He squeezed off a long burst as he smoothly followed the wolf across a third of the street, Riddling it with lead before it could reach Molly.
>Nevertheless, it did reach her, though not in the double bound it'd planned.
>The creature tumbled over and bounced slower, but still with some velocity, into her back, knocking her over.
>Kyle ran to her, checking his flanks for wolves, but luckily finding none.
>As the sounds of multiple automatic rifles clattering out layered over, he found himself over Molly, and scanned around him, making sure it was at least only risky to attempt to pry her from under the animal.
>Kyle knelt down with half his body between her and the sidewalk, wherein, an alley stretched behind them for forty feet.
>He saw her moving, struggling as he pushed at the animal.
>Suddenly he felt a shove in his side as he fell over and saw Molly bring up her rifle, laying on the trigger as a growling wolf stumbled and twitched in an effort to recover itself from the ground with so much of its body shattered by fractures and stinging pain that came with being struck.
>Kyle brought his sight over its head and squeezed off a four round burst, feeling the bolt lock back, and prompting a reload.
>Another one came from that alley, this one also being met with a burst, but only staggering just feet short of her, and snapping at her as Kyle struggled to coordinate his hand in bringing a magazine out.
>Molly desperately shoved backward at its neck and punched at its nose as it lunged 
>As kyle seated the magazine, he heard her shout, her fumbled at the bolt release as she swung her arm in its path, the teeth sinking in and rending flesh as he managed to just barely push the release.
>The wolf's head shook loose from Molly's arm and sprung back inches, beginning forward toward her neck.
>Brutututtut
>An audible yelp came from the animal as Kyle laid on the trigger, sending a twenty-three round burst from its neck down to its back hips and back up to its chest.
>The creature became inert and fell half on top of her before a frenzied shove pushed it back a foot, and in her right arm, a pistol came forward, firing as though it were on some form of low rate of fire fully automatic format.
>The slide locked to the rear.
>Kyle recovered himself, and went back to her, pushing the animal that'd lunged at her earlier off her legs, and pulling her onto them.
"Are you alright?" he asked as he pulled her into him, where he could hold her upright.
>"Arm's bit, knee and ankle hurt."
>Kyle put the muzzle off his rifle to the offending animal's skull and unloaded his last seven rounds before letting it rest on its sling and seating the next magazine.
>Andrew ran by, but stopped when he saw Molly being held up.
>"What happened?"
"She's been trampled, I need you to help cover me, and get Emma and Nelson to help."
>"Easy now, I can walk on my own." Molly replied.
"Alright, I'll cover you" Kyle said, dumping her back into her feet, and checking the area he hadn't faced for the last several seconds.
>Kyle was surprised only slightly to hear grunts of pain erupt from behind him and then the sounds on gear hitting the griund as Molly toppled over, and let loose a groan of agony.
>"Unnng! Kyle! I was wrong! Carry me, please!"
"Alright." Kyle said as nelson reached him.
"Cover me, I need to carry Molly on the way back."
>"With pleasure."
>Kyle rolled Molly off her face and positioned her and began pulling lifting when she quipped "Princes carry, please."
"This isn't the time." Kyle scolded as a burst of fire rang out, and the sound of a wolf dying followed.
>In seconds, Kyle would have her over his shoulders, and would have to carry her back to camp.

One hour and a half later.
>Kyle sat with Molly, testing her legs in the medical tent, He placed a hand on her knee, and with his fingers, prodded it, prompting a twinge from Molly, and a squeeze on his shoulder.
>"Stop! That hurts like hell."
"It's supposed to. Better than the alternative after what you've just been through."
>"Is that so?"
"Well, If the zone takes you, I can't have you!"
>"How romantic. So, what's the diagnosis?" she said dryly.
"Looks like you haven't broken anything, no sprains. Just the aching and the soreness that comes with striking a joint. And a little mark of course from falling on your face a couple times. Could go away, could scar."
>"So I should be fine."
"Should? You ARE fine. Give it something like a couple hours and you'll be walking around like nothing happened. Couple days, you won't even ache anymore. Meanwhile, I'll keep you doped up on a drug so illicit, it carries the death penalty to posses."
>"Really?"
"Yeah! It's called... Motrin." 
>"Oh."
"I don't wanna hear no 'Oh.' outta you, You don't need any painkillers... But you CAN drink with me."
>"Will it make the sting go away?"
"Of all the wonderful properties of alcohol, being a good analgesic isn't one. Will take the edge off, though."
>"Yeah. Maybe just one... or five"

Later that evening.
>Kyle sat in silence at the edge of the perimeter, staring out onto the ruins below.
>The evening brought him to a sense of being watched.
>Kyle could feel sets of eyes boring holes in him, but he just couldn't see them.
>What was next? Mutant wolves, bears, a squirrel the size of a building. He'd seen it all in the space of a week. Was it gonna be the predator next? Somehow, he didn't doubt it as much as he should.
>"Kyle! Letter came for you." Jim called out.
"Well, that was fast."
>"Hey. Mind if I ask what happened in Vegas?"
"You won't get an actual answer, but you can ask."
>"Oh well. I have a different question then. You're a vandal?"
"Yup."
>"Why?"
"Born into it."
>"And you left because you couldn't take living among a bunch o-"
"You keep talking, you're liable to eat your eyeballs."
>"Okay, then. If you don't mind my asking, why DID you leave?"
"I don't have that many repetitions of the story in me."
>"That's fine."
"Why did you come here?"
>"I used to climb mountains. Now there's this zone, and I'd finally found my way to it. Sees rather an anti climax after wingsuits. But I can make enough money here to go wing-suiting for a long long time if I just stay with it."
"You think you'll make it?"
>"After all I've seen? I'm betting we get through week three."
"We've lost one to something we don't see everyday You think we're about to see a surge in deaths?"
>"hmmm... You get to day 22."
"Why?"
>"You notice? Just a few wolves. The squirrel. Then the swarm. God damn, there's no way we're not already dead."
"What was life like before you came here, man?"
>Jim sat down next to Kyle and handed him the letter.
>"It was boring. Dreary. I eventually got tired of all of Florida man's bullshit, deadly herpes monkeys, Liquor stores robbed with Alligators, Meth labs everywhere. So I started wing gliding and the other extreme shit. Ever been in a gunfight?"
"Yeah."
>"That's Florida. Not much of an upgrade from this place."
"Yeah. Shit neighborhood."
>"What was the difference when you got out of the vandal compound?"
"When you get out of there, something they teach you as a child comes to mind, and you realize it remains a very rightly perceived truth. The most common feeling among Americans in the early twenty-first century is that there's something wrong."
>There was a silence that settled over them as Jim pondered what Kyle had just said.
>He looked out into the pass before he found himself transfixed.
>.....
>.....
>.....
>.....
>"Hey... Kyle... Do you get the feeling we're being watched?"
"Yup. That's why I'm here... We're in SOMEONE's park. Besides. It ain't safe to have everyone sleep while this shit is watching us. Boring holes in us with their eyes."
>"Uh... Yeah. Anyway, Molly's been looking for you. She'd have brought you the letter herself, but she doesn't want to walk anywhere at the moment. Go on. She could use some company. I'll put Charlie and Andrew on this. See if they assess it the same way we do."
"Right."
>"No. Really. Go."
"Fine." Kyle sighed as he rose from his chair and began his walk toward the medical tent.
>Kyle entered the tent, seeing Molly dejectedly sitting alone. He immediately perceived that she was visibly depressed and had become lonely, staring at her feet, and appearing absently deflated.
>It hurt kyle to see her like this.
>His face contorted in the atmosphere of the room.
>Finally, she realized Kyle was in the room, snapping to him and shaking from the stagnant nature of the room and beaming with joy as Kyle advanced toward her and wrapped his arms around her.
>He pulled her tightly into him as though to non-verbally reassure her of her safety and she buried her head in his shoulder. When he turned his attention to her surroundings, he noted a half empty bottle of vodka and a hardly touched bottle of motrin next to her bed, which appeared to have been abandoned in favor of vodka.
>Kyle pulled away from her just enough to bring her eyes into contact with his.
"What's wrong, Molly?"
>"Pleash don't leave me here alone." Molly slurred with tears welling up in her eyes.
"The fuck's wrong with you?" kyle thought to himself.
"Okay, Molly. Tell me what's wrong, and what it is I can do to make you feel better."
>"I don't know what it is." Molly Gasped out with a shudder.
"That's fucking bullshit." Kyle began calmly, and carefully keeping his voice in level. "It's apparent you think SOMETHING and it's nagging you. Come on, you can trust me, or I can't trust you."
>"I just feel so USELESS."
>Kyle drew a breath, straightening his back and considering what arguments he might be able to get away with in telling her that she wasn't right.
>He couldn't. For all intent and purpose, she WAS useless, and may just as well have been evacuated to Las Vegas.
"Look." Kyle said, holding Molly by the shoulders, and retaining her in eye contact. "It's not your fault. If we'd switched places, I'd be lying there where you are now. Just as you are, legs fucked up, one arm shredded."
>"What if you WERE lying here?"
"I imagine I'd feel as useless as you do. Maybe want to be evacuated. But at the moment, with that unavailable, I'd be happy to have you there for my protection and to keep me company in the day or so before I can walk normally again." Kyle said with a smile.
>Molly Slowly allowed herself little by little to show a smile.
>Slowly she felt the core of the pain that had overcome her disappear and slowly she offered Kyle a smile and the bottle of vodka.
>Kyle took the bottle, and took a sip.
>Molly motioned for him to come closer, and she put her arms around him, pulling him just a little bit closer.
>She rested her head on his shoulder, seeming to settle her chin into it.
>With a grin on her face, she whispered something into his ear.
>Her grin widened as she felt his cheek shift with his expression against her temple. To her, she felt that she'd just made him look "Into the camera." in a fashion alike to an old television show she'd watched when she was a child.
>Kyle pulled his head back, his expression stonefaced.
"I didn't need to hear that."

>Somehow, Kyle felt as though he was being toyed with, but he decided he didn't want to see the proof.
>In a period of hours, the two of them would be drunkenly exchanging words, then slurs, which soon turned to guttural sounds as the two managed to drop a bottle of vodka in the space of a couple hours.
>Soon morning threatened to come, bringing with it a new challenge in pilfering the wastes.
"Ow eh gehd ooin?"
>"Is oso ad" 
>The tent flap opened and a figure appeared in the portal.
>"Kyle, can you please stay with Molly whi- oh GOD, you're shitfaced." the voice remarked.
"udu u no." Kyle slurred
>"HA" Molly laughed.
>"Just... stay here and keep molly company."
>"Yaaay!" Molly exclaimed.
>"Ok, good, Molly's down. See ya, kyle."
>Kyle's eyes, glossed over in drunken haze, shifted to the silhouette as it disappeared and the tent closed again.
>Kyle felt thoroughly uncoordinated. From what he could tell, a blurry silhouette had just exited the tent after telling him something he only vaguely remembered.
>Soon enough, he found himself trying to climb on the cot far enough that he might stay on, assisted by pulling from Molly, who evidently was too drunk to really feel the stinging in her legs.
>The two collapsed, discombobulated from their effort, and fell into a drunken stupor.
>The both of them quickly found themselves slipping away into a warm embrace of exhaustion and a position which wasn't exactly heavenly, but in and of itself was not uncomfortable enough to muster the energy for either to move one's self.

Chapter 4: New Sun Rising.
>Kyle woke in a start as he perceived the presence of a low hum, similar to that of heavy machinery resonating through the hull of a diesel powered ship, an omnipresent orange glow shining through the fabric of the tent.
>rapidly, kyle rotates himself on top of his feet, and then over them, falling to the floor on his back before he can coordinate any muscles in his legs to move. He hit the ground with an inaudible "FUCK."
>"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" He heard as Molly erupted into consciousness screaming bloody murder. Much to his gut's dismay, her first act was to scramble onto a numb leg and a throbbing leg, crumpling from the waist down and cushioning her fall with an elbow braced for impact against his gut.
>out of some feeling of recognition, he grabbed Molly and held her by her arms as she flailed to get to her feet and Run out of the tent.
>Kyle's first impulse was to make sure that she wouldn't be able to leave the tent, where he'd lose track of her in the orange glare.
>Kyle carefully brought himself upon his feet, while making sure to control Molly, bringing her to his side as he stumbled to the door flap, opening it to see three orange spheres hovering in place over a hill a couple thousand yards different.
>"KYLE! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?" Molly shrieked.
"I don't know!"
>Kyle watched and waited for several seconds before just as suddenly as this phenomena had started, the spheres evaporated into nothingness.
>The two stood for several seconds, staring at the burn marks on the hill. Kyle began to notice a smell, but struggled to recognize it among the scent of burnt pennies that permeated the valley.
>They both looked on, with their mouths wide open.
>"w-w-What the f-f-f-f-fuck was that?" Molly finally managed to verbalize
"There aren't nine of us..." 
>Molly began to feel something she'd not noticed during the terror, and the feeling of being mortified came to the back of her mind.
>"Kyle! Molly! did you two SEE that?" Emma exclaimed from among the rest of the team, who'd been scrambling back to camp.
>Kyle looked on, struggling to comprehend the sight he'd just seen. Molly, supported against his side trembled, and in the terror, had wet herself. Altogether, the event had lasted but a single terrible minute, but the experience it had conjured in their minds had made it feel as though it had been an hour.
>Kyle drew a blank as he thought about what to make of it.
>Kyle soon came to realize what he smelled, but decided it was ultimately unworthy of concern in his current situation.
"Hey, Molly. Wanna get changed?" He asked gently to the rapid nods of the red eyed and shuddering woman, Averting her gaze and fidgetting in place. "Come on, it's been a rough start." He commanded gently as he led the limping woman back to the medical tent.
>"H-hey. Can you find me some fresh clothes?"
"Sure."

Twenty three minutes prior.
>James walked down the empty streets where just yesterday they'd been attacked. At the moment, they were down two.
"Things are strange, don't you think?" James asked back to Charles as he tossed a bolt toward the air to his front.
>"Not really. Them two had that crazy about them. Maybe they'll get the poisoning. Take their troubles somewhere else." Charles stated.
"You can't really think that they're bad luck." He answered throwing another bolt.
>"Just yesterday Molly got half chewed up and nearly broken, and Kyle carried her away. Seventy feet behind me. Today there's no Kyle, no Molly. There's no wolves either. No animals at all. Now we've got nothing to worry about except the nominal bullshit."
>James tossed a bolt and watched it fly.
>It seemed so unremarkable.
>Then, as if it'd hit a wall, or an impossibly transparent window, the bolt stopped dead in its flight, bouncing off the air itself and falling back to the ground.
"... What the fuck?"
>James tossed another bolt into the same place, achieving the same result.
>James walked to where they'd landed, picking them up and ensuring that his hand was the furthest forward part of his body.
>He picked up his bolts and pouched them before deciding to take a gamble.
>Taking a step to where the bolts had been, he reached his arm out into the air, met with a stopping of his hand as though he'd touched something solid.
"It's a wall. A literal wall. It's invisible."
>James tapped it and it made a sound similar to tapping on the side of a glass bowl.
>His face contorted in confusion.
"What the FUCK?" he said, lightly jabbing at the air, meeting the same immovable resistance.
>"What is it?"
"It's a fucking invisible wall!"
>Suddenly What appeared to be purple arcs, flashes of electric current so bright as to be blinding in magnitude, passed before his eyes in a flash that simultaneously flashed bright before his face and darkened his field of vision, he lost his coordination and fell to the ground on his back, placing a hand before his face to partially shield his eyes from the flash as it ascended into the sky, magnitude diminishing from a deadly brightness to a bright glare.
>It kept going up. And up.
>Finally, little more than a purple glow, it disappeared into the sky.
>James' eyes were bleached from the flashes, so much that he could barely perceive a thing in front of him save for the sun and the sky.
>"What the unholy fuck was that?" Charles asked.
>"JESUS FUCKIN' CHRIST! YOU MADE THE AIR ANGRY!" Andrew yelled, halfway joking to himself to cope with what he'd just seen.
>James closed his eyes and was met with a wall of gray, opened them again, and was met with gray holes in his perception.
>Andrew bounded forward and pulled him up to his feet.
>"You alright?"
"It's like I got arc flashed, I'll need a few minutes."
>"Arc flashed?"
"Like when you weld and see it go for a couple seconds without a visor. Leaves you hard pressed to see a damn thing in front of you, but it'll go away after a few minutes."
>"Flash blinded?"
"Yeah. It goes away."
>Minutes passed, and as soon suspected, the gray spots went away. In about ten minutes time, James found that he could finally see well enough to make the trip back to the camp, though he asked Charles to lead the way.
>Ten minutes into their walk, They'd found themselves nearly back to the camp, where they'd planned to rest and figure out what they could do about the strange wall of nothingness that floated before their very eyes.
"My eyes itch."
>"Alright, lets stop. Andrew, you're closest, take a look at him." Charles commanded before turning to face him.
>Charles' eye was immediately draw to a large orange orb, glowing in the distance across the divide and over the hills, out several thousand yards. "What in the unholy FU-"
>The orange glow turned to a glare, forcing his hands over his eyes, before a strange sound coming from its direction enveloped him several seconds later.
>No one present could help but panic, as they started running up the hill.
>In a series of events James couldn't later rationalize, he'd find himself at the top of the hill, panic and fear subsiding with the subsequent discontinuation of the noise. Looking upon Kyle and Molly, apparently awakened from their drunken stupor. Kyle stood stoic, though wide awake. Molly, appeared utterly mortified. Her cheeks, for the first thing, were as red as her hair, and her face shuddered as though she were about to cry from embarrassment.
>He watched as she limped back to the medical tent with Kyle, a large dark stain prominently shown against the tan fatigues as she limped within Kyle's shadow, almost as if she were shielding herself from view like a small child hiding from sight.
>Ten minutes later James had set up a spotting scope, and set it upon the intersection where he'd run into the "wall".
>Slowly, he was engrossed in every detail, committing pieces of debris on the ground, and the various state of ruin and features of the buildings around to memory.
>He heard the unfurling of a map behind him.
>"I expected you to come over here. It seems like we have these moments a lot." James said knowingly.
"So what I hear from Emma is that first thing, you ran into some sort of invisible wall that couldn't be passed through, and then it arced or something into the sky, and then a big orange globe appeared and started glowing, and second, she's going off to catch Andrew 'before it's too late to.' and 'his consent isn't a factor.' So, should we do something before we find him tied to something?"
>"Nah."
"Alright then, down to business. Where did you run into it?"
>"You see that building down there at the intersection? By the overturned sedan?"
"Yup."
>"What street is that?"
"Let me see... 'bout seven intersections down?"
>"Yup."
"Egad. Ceaser Chavez way and Martin Luther King junior boulevard!" Kyle said dryly.
>"That's it? the one with the stop sign, right?"
"Yup. Mind if I take a look through the scope?"
>"Go ahead." James answered, stepping away from the scope.
>Kyle stepped up to the scope and began observing, taking in the details of the intersection near which the "wall" had been encountered.
>"How's Molly doing? Any redder and she looked like she was gonna pop."
"She's still wobbly on her feet, but she'll be fine. Just a little rattled around is all. Hungover and pissing yourself at whatever that thing was is a hell of a way to start a day. Hell, I had a hard time keeping her from running off and not pissing my own pants. Speaking of our team members and their well being, though, have you or anyone seen Nelson? Just occurred to me I haven't seen the guy since we got back."
>"Nelson?"
"Yeah, it just occurred to me that I haven't seen him since we got back."
>"That's concerning."
>Something caught his eye, a glaring irregularity on a traffic sign. It appeared to be missing a letter, however, the spacing where the 't' should have been, did not exist, as though it were never there, and all the other letters were seemingly pristine.
"Hmmmm. There's something strange about that 'SOP' sign..."

>"Sop?"
"Yep! S-O-P."
>"Jesus. I'd have noticed if my eyes weren't so damn itchy, I swear."
"Alright. Grab your gear, rest up, get ready, we'll go out hunting in a couple hours."
>"Says who?"
"Says you, and you know it."
>Kyle departed, dutifully making his way back to the medical tent. Considering just how he got to this point, weighing the options of how he would spend his time until the hunt began. Part of him wished that they had some low light goggles or even a set of antique night vision optics like his father had worn in those old pictures on Roscoe's wall.
>If they'd had that, they could probably hunt at night. Probably.
>The image, which he hadn't seen in a decade caught in his head, forcing his mind away from the present.
>He could see the picture now. A man that looked like him,toting a rifle and wearing a helmet with a set of goggles attached, a woman who didn't look like mom, an ATV, a rockfield in the background, covered in snow.
>Kyle walked into the tent to find Molly standing and slowly walking around in circles, rubbing her hands on her temples.
>"Are we going back out?"
"Yes."
>"Hey.... have you seen Nelson?"
"I was just asking Jim the same thing. Maybe Emma, but she's probably tying Andrew to something as we speak.it's probably gonna be the four of us."
>Soon enough Kyle would find himself leaving the tent to get some alone time, and to see if Molly was capable of following him.
>He set his radio to nine-hundred and twenty kilohertz and listened in as the sounds of the Vine, broadcasting from somewhere along the ruins on interstate ninety-nine in Modesto. Somehow, despite what pre-zone records indicated to be its proximity just south of the city's west end and miles south of the city's east end, the arrays that broadcasted its signal hadn't been vaporized like the city so close by.
>He looked down on the city as time passed. He cleaned his rifle, he glared at the town and thought of his plans for the future.
>He'd found himself somewhere, he thought, on the end of the earth, staring out into the pass, beyond which was a valley, mostly unexplored, that stretched on to another set of hills, and then to oblivion.
>"How much longer?" Molly demanded impatiently as she appeared ready to go with her pack on her shoulders and her MK18 slung across her chest.
"Forever." Kyle answered as he pushed the cotter pin back into the bolt carrier. As he crossed the firing pin with the codder pin, a flash of white caught his eye, and he slowly turned the multitool to his eye and looked at the laser engraved logo that caught his eye.
"Voda? Maybe dad knows that brand." Kyle whispered to himself.
>"HEY! Answer the question." Molly demanded.
"What question?"
>"What's your price?"
"To what? Compromise something that means anything to me?"
>"Maybe. Or to own you. Like literally buy you."
"More than you got. Maybe you could pay for it as an indentured servant."
>"Or I could just tie you to a radiator while I brainwash you."
"Where's the fun in that?" Kyle asked as he slid the bolt back into the receiver.
>"Where's the fun in hunting a bunch of radioactive wolves?"
"Not much to be had the way they swarm you every time you get near them."
>"So you're not having fun with it?"
"Not having fun? WOMAN... There's a reason god gave us full auto." Kyle said as he popped the pin back in place, swung himself to his feet, and started toward the town.
>Molly stared at him for a moment as though he were insane before she realized that he was right.
>"....Yeah. Wait for me." she muttered as she ran after him.
"Jim! Come along! We're going hunting! Emma, untie Andrew and catch up with us."
>"HEY! I DIDN'T TIE HIM UP!"
>Kyle would've been more surprised if the affirmative remark he heard wasn't "HMHMH RHNMHM!"
"Catch up, tards. We're hunting." Kyle stated without bothering to look for the source of the voices. 
>He heard the fast paced footsteps as Jim met with him, pack shouldered and mark18 at the ready. He racked in a round just to be certain.
>"So where to?"
"I have an idea for a spot. Oh, and I hope you brought food. We're staying out all night."
>"Of course, I always plan to get caught out."
"Good. We're heading to a warehouse about twelve blocks into the city and we'll see if we can observe any animal activity."
>"Should we split up? Get some interlocking fire or something?"
"Fuck no. NEVER split up here. All it takes is about five seconds and you could get mauled to death in a spot where we'll never be able to help you."
>"Yeah... Where the fuck is Nelson? Crazy fuck disappeared."
"Probably had some cognitive overload and he's off looking at shit somewhere that confirms his beliefs straight from Siege by James Mason."
>"So you think he's off somewhere cursing the place like the whore of Babylon?"
"Almost certainly. We had a guy like him but less cogent back home. We called him 'Read Siege.' When the FBI siege started, a negotiator came up to the front gate demanding we surrender. He walked up to him, and when the negotiator shrank away from him a little bit, he GRABBED the poor bastard, licked the side of his face, and went 'I can taste your FEAR!' The look on the poor bastard's face was priceless."
>"I'd remark about it, but..."
"Watch, he'll turn up covered in blood."

>Kyle waited for a few hours as the sun went down, tossing stones and bolts around the room in which he and molly had decided to watch over the street and an adjacent alley to the building where Emma, James, and Andrew had holed up. Charles laid atop a roof two hundred feet away from where the others had holed up.
>It all felt somehow... wrong. Like he'd wondered into the wrong place, or as though he'd gone boar hunting with a call in his pocket.
>For the moment, he felt like the two best actions for the moment were to sit tight, and to keep his eyes open.
>Kyle took his place at the window and waited for the sun to come up, as he suspected then animals of the zone would be active at daybreak.
>But while he waited, he decided he'd be on Sentry for a while, and see if Molly was in good enough shape to take over, and wake him up when she saw something.
>That's his decision.
>The nondescript room awaits.
>In the dark room, lit only by the glow of a red cyalume stick, he saw some movement from his right, where Molly sat.
>Moments passed before he heard a clicking sound coming from the wall to his right, where Molly was resting.
>Two clicks of the tongue drew his eye to her.
>Her soft features were arranged into a pout, her arms were outstreched, palms in, fingers flexing and extending toward him, calling him onto her.
>Kyle tried to subordinate his desire to answer to his need to keep his eyes up.
>With a barely audible groan of displeasure, Kyle hauled himself up and crouched down in front of Molly, leaning forward into his arms.
"How're you feeling?" He asked as his arms lifted her by the shoulders, everso slightly, off the floor.
>Kyle loosened his grip on her, then felt her lift just a little bit higher from the floor, her grasp growing tighter.
>"I'm feeling a lot better. Than I was a day ago. Maybe you're the nurse? in which case, maybe you could give me a spongebath?"
"Maybe once, but I gotta do sentry until the animals start moving."Kyle straightened himself upright to a crouch, but Molly came up with him. "You're not letting me go, are you?"
>"I have a special request." Molly lilted into his ear.
"You'll scare off the animals." Kyle appraised.
>"About that special request-"
"Let me guess, 'choke me.'" Kyle muttered, somewhat scoldingly.
>Silence filled the air.
>For seconds Moll was silent. Calculating, assessing, thinking.
"You okay?" Kyle asked to no answer.
>Molly loosened her grip enough to slide below Kyle's face and make eye contact with him.
>Their eyes met. Kyle saw her face with mouth agape as she looked up into his eyes.
>Kyle looked into her eyes with a face of stone.
>"I'm just caught off guard... How did you know?"
>Kyle felt relieved he hadn't, as far as he could tell, hurt her feelings.
"Two of three." Kyle said with a smile as he stood and pulled her with him to her feet.
"I'd do it, too..." Kyle whispered "...but pleasure is silver, silence is golden."
>"You're no fun."
"You're no stalker." Kyle whispered with a smile.
>"I'm not..." Molly sighed as she rested her head on his shoulder. "...But what am I?"
>Kyle let several seconds pass in silence and stroked her hair, slightly greasy from a few days back in the zone.
"Get some rest. I'll wake you up when its your shift." Kyle whispered as he disengaged himself from the woman and took his place once more at the window.
>Molly lowered herself softly against the wall and slipped away.
>Kyle looked over into the building across the way, where he was met with silence, and stillness.
>Slowly the hours remaining until dawn passed, eventually the dark sky began to illuminate, and glow blue.
>Over the hours, Kyle's mind grew weary, his eyes red. He felt like he could close his eyelids and receive a burning sting for several seconds, finally subsiding into relief for only the first couple seconds, before they once again felt as though they were rubbed in sand.
>"Hey, Kyle. It's time for me to take my shift." Molly whispered, having crept silently into Kyle's shadow.
"Take over."
>Kyle softly fell into a corner as his eyes finally closed, stung for several seconds, before a relief set upon them, and finally, they sealed his mind away from the world.

A place of the before, a time elsewhere.
>"SON! Are you paying attention?" Dad asked.
"Yeah. I was just thinking, isn't this dangerous?"
>"Yes, that's why, like with guns, we do it in a fashion that mitigates the risks."
"Why not do it all on the computers and be done with it?"
>"Because it's all about proportions, son. There's too much prep work in using a computer machine, unless the part has some complexity we couldn't replicate manually. And we're making a Barrel today, so we're not anywhere near that level. Just go along with it, son, and soon enough you'll be a skilled tradesman."
"Okay. So... FIRST we need a twenty-one inch by two inch section of 4340 chromolly steel roundstock, and we'll have to calculate out two-hundred feet per minute surface speed."
>"That's right, son. So before we go cut our stock, lets do the math. Do you remember your formula?" Dad asked.
"Three point eight two times surface speed divided by diameter of spinning work piece for turning, diameter of cutter for milling."
>"Very good, son! Now three point eight two times two hundred is..."
"seven hundred and sixty four."
>"Divide by two."
"Three hundred and eighty two."
>"Alright, and now, what's the closest speed to that on the lathe?"
"Three fifty-one."
>"Good, now just pull the clutch up one click, and turn the dial where it needs to be."
>Kyle found himself turning the dial on the servo-shift leblond regal when he heard the intimidating sound of the servo engaging, shifting the drive gear in the gear box to the correct gear to achieve the theoretical three hundred and fifty-one rotations per minute.
>Suddenly, from nowhere, he seemed to hear a voice of the pitch the servo whined at.
>"Kyle. What's that smell?" he heard as he noted a smell much like a finely aged organic coolant, having sat just to the point of being ripe, ready to be replaced, but not yet to the festering point in which the milky blue white coolant would begin to form green and yellow cultures of bacterium feeding on its organic compounds and floating atop its surface.
>Kyle tentatively turned on the lathe, and made those first cuts, guided by his father. He had made a high speed steel cutter himself, and he had ground it to shape, just as the reference plate had dictated. Twelve degree rake, something like a 27 degree relief angle, he'd even rounded the radius to 0.030" just right, having meticulously learned to make a cutting tool, and just how to grind it to avoid tempering the metal. But, even using a pedastle grinder to so intimately make a tool to cut on a lathe didn't prepare him for that first cut.
>Everything seemed smoothe enough, save for the withering uncertainty any apprentice would have toward the task, not knowing whether the scratching noise of metal cutting against a high speed steel right hand cutter was normal, fearing he'd destroy his tool, that he'd hear something loud and not know whether to scream or shit his pants.
>Sudenly, he seemed to hear a howl from the coolant collecting in the bed as he made his first cut.
>"Kyle. Wake up." it hissed.
"KYLE!" it hissed sharper than before.
>The shop seemed to fade to gray before he soon found he was somewhere shaded at first light.
>Molly stared at him with the intensity of a thousand stars and held her hand over his mouth.
>He could sense that something had agitated her, the hair on her arm stood up and she seemed on edge, ready to react harshly to the smallest stimuli.
>"Something's got the animals spooked, they're yelping and running through the streets like greased lightning." She remarked, halfway between a whisper and a silent mouthing of the words.
>She signalled him to come to the window, and he slowly got onto his feet, where he first began to notice a migraine inducing howl from a horde of dogs, who were running not down the street to the north east, as they'd expected, but to the south east, and at incredible speed.
>A fowl smell hung in the air, something that reminded him of home, but more rancid than any of the fowlest he'd smelled there.
>Somehow, the image came to mind of a reservoir of machining coolant, however, the scent seemed to be more that of a long curdled milk or other short lived fluid that slowly congealed and turned into pure gelled fowlness when aged.
>The last dog in a pack of animals that must've been three hundred strong passed at what must've been thirty miles per hour past both thresholds of the intersection.
>Two seconds passed as the smeell gree stronger, before suddenly, the source made itself visible.
>With the sound of a wave of water from the ocean washing upon the beach, a blob of matter, simply, matter, as no other descriptor seemed apt to the monstrosity, thirty feet tall, and twenty feet wide, with a shape like that of some inane cartoon, a ghost from pacman, a slime creature from some turn of the century cartoon about the future, anything at all amorphously shaped, to the height of a two story building and the width of a helipad, oozed, or washed, or whatever it did in its self locomotion, through the intersection at a speed which Kyle never even thought to quantify in his dopumbstruck state.
>The creature appeared to have been a milky blue in original tone, but its surface was litered with inconsistent puke green, mustard yellow, mud brown and foam green spots, and at the time it passed, the smell had grown so overpowering as to have waken Kyle completely from his drowsy state of two thirds alertness to a fully alert, and mentally engaged state, attempting to cope with the task of decreasing the power of the burning stench as it struck the nostrils.
>It smelt like rot, decay, and every other fowl stench a dead thing gives off when rotting in the sun, most distinct, was a note of machining coolant.
"Molly?" Kyle searched the room with a low tone
>"Yes, Kyle?" she answered in a tone that only betrayed confusion.
"I think it's some kind of monster that grew out of machining coolant."
>"How?"
"Most of them are natural oils. Germs feed on them."
>"...."
"Molly?"
>"Yes, Kyle?"
"I'm scared."

>The radio finally rang to life in his ear as he listened to the cries of confusion, anger and frustration wailed into his ear over the radio.
>All this communication equipment, and there was nothing they could actually have to say.
>Comm sec. And there was nothing worth keeping secure. Dear god! The world needs to KNOW! THEY NEED TO KNOW! THIS PLACE IS DEATH! THEY MUST NOT COME HERE!
"HEEEEEYYY!!! DON'T FUCKING COME HERE GOD DAMMIT! STAY THE FUCK OUT OF CALIFORNIA! IT'S A FUCKING TRAAAAP! YOU FUCKING RETARDS! STAY OUT!" Kyle screeched into the mic as he clawed at the PTT on his chestrig, only barely getting a thumb on the button, yet still pressing it in so firmly as to almost break it.
>A voice rang into his head as just a fraction of a moment before he felt a hand fall on his wrist, pulling it to gain his attention. "COME ON! WE HAVE TO MOVE TO CHARLIE'S POSITION!" She yelled.
"LETSGO!" he yelled, leaping down to the first floor of the ruin and running out, coming to the building on top of which Charles had set up.
>Upon reaching the roof, Kyle found himself feeling out of breath and in a moment of internal quiet.
"It seems like the man may have come around for me today." he thought in reference to a thing he'd heard in his childhood many years back.

>As he waited for the rest to regroup, he decided to take a seat as everyone made for the roof and read the contents of that letter he'd received before they had set out, figuring that he'd otherwise probably never know at least what was inside.
>He tore the seal on the letter, a traditional wax seal with a buffalo across a two fielded flag, and unfolded it, finding a hand written letter.
"Dear Son, It's been too many years. When we received your letter, it took all the effort in the world to prevent your father from rounding up a posse and exterminating half the living beings in the state to drag his boy home. Your little brother Jason's been fighting to prove himself to everyone, but as always, he could conquer the world, crush them to the last, hear the lamentations of their women. But, to Judith, he'll still always be little Jason. He'll still always be the sweet older brother to Mary. To Junior, he's still Jason. In the time since his passage through the Vandal Academy, he's been absent much of the time, taken away on evermore nebulous operations, able to tell us ever less about even where he's been. Junior's been standing ever closer to some form of power, though his ascendance has been yet another nebulous affair, though he has his things to talk about, living his own life the way he ought to, though, maybe in a more mental field of work than your father would like. That said, he's no lop. Your sisters are of course, married into the Moody family, and I am some twenty times a grandmother. All this I see and yet here I find myself after ten years wondering how I can phrase the question. Why have you been away these last ten years? Will you ever return? Your sisters told me to relay that they love you and they miss you, as do your brothers and your father, and as of course, do I. When you get the time, write back, and expect a rifle to arrive if it hasn't at the time of you reading this, your father made it specially for you with love."
"The Moodys..." kyle muttered to himself, watching Emma and James come up the stairs, folding the letter and sliding it underneath his chestrig.
>"What's the letter?" Molly asked
"Mama wrote me. My sisters married into the Moodys. Good for them, I guess. Other than that, typical shit, Mom's worried about her son, eldest sister still treats my little brother like a child and he's been quiet lately. Guess I could get home as soon as... Christmas?"
>"Maybe we should think about surviving this shit first." She said, flicking her selector to fully automatic.
"Yeah, but at least I won't die wondering what's in the letter." Kyle said, rising to his feet.
>Kyle hovered over his heels for a moment before he firmly planted himself onto the ground beneath his boots.
>Like everyone else on the rooftop, amid a barrage of sharp metallic clicks, he swiped his selector to full auto and made one final administrative press-check on his rifle, before letting go of the charging handle and tapping the forward assist under his palm to ensure that the bolt had fully locked.
>"So. Odds?" Charles asked as he advanced down the stairs, leading the way to the first defensive position.
"One."
>"In?"
"I don't know."
>"Yeah, lets leave it there and set up." Jim said.
>With that, kyle followed Charles down to third floor, where they both peered down the stairwell.
>From below, the howling beasts' frenzied vocalizations reached them.
>Somehow, they both glanced at each other to acknowledge what they were hearing.
>A small, slightly sharper pattering reached them among the sounds of the duller treading that was being done outside.
>The patter intensified gradually.
>It grew sharper as the men glanced into their periphery vision to check first, whether their backs were covered, and then to see when the wolves would come up around the corner of the stairwell, and its steel grating.
>Finally, a surge of beasts came forth, met with the sounds, sights and forces of two rifles firing in full auto.
>Charles' rifle ran dry first, covered by a third second burst from Kyle's, which ran dry next.
>The wolves had receded several feet, but began their surge once again by the time Charles seated his bolt and laid on the trigger, covering Kyle as he ran past him, in turn, seating his bolt.
>In seconds, Kyle knew that they could not keep the tide back, but he may as well make the dirty abominations work for every scrap of meat.
>Kyle stuck his muzzle down the stairwell and pinned the trigger to the rear for a couple seconds while Charles passed and turned to cover him, having met with Emma, sliding to the side as Kyle began to turn and sprint once more, up the stairs.
>As Kyle passed Emma, simultaneously removing a mag and placing it into a dump pouch and reaching for a new magazine, he felt his seconds counting down as he calculated the time it would take to retreat to the roof, the number of times they could possibly dump three or four bursts per mag into the horde of advancing mutant wolves or whatever these were.
>Kyle Fired a long rip from another magazine as Emma ran back up the stairs, and then covered Charles, who met with Molly to form a funnel of fire, past which Emma could be expected to slip, and then he'd move again.
>Soon, he'd be out of magazines, running past Andrew and then he'd have to consider how BEST to die.
>This cycle repeated itself twice more.
>Kyle felt himself reach for the last mag with a cold weight standing on his diaphragm.
>Somehow he could feel his organs dropping out of him as he prepared to provide his final covering fire before trying to find a spot to throw Molly into before he imagined he himself would forget about her and focus on getting torn apart as slowly as he could.
>He'd make sure to make this one last.
>Three rounds here. Six there. Eight there. Four here. An indulgent nine round burst to dole out the hate.
>The bolt locked and he dropped it in order to keep the gun clean more out of instinct than any reason.
>Kyle passed the top of the staircase and wound up on the roof.
>He looked around. If he hadn't felt the sensation of his heart dropping out of his chest, he did now, because he could see nothing but animals for twenty yards out from the building that were packed in densely, with the blob creature approaching from downwind.
>He felt as though his esophagus had detached and fallen into a heap with the rest of the organs at the bottom of his body as the creature surged forward, trapping several beasts in its surface.
>In barely more time than it took them to yelp in distress, the animals were displaced entirely, sunken into the amorphous blob.
>As though they were eyes, two tendrils appeared atop a dome like shape at the top of the creature and pointed down and out, first toward the wolves, who were now letting out a cacophonous chorus of yelps that was unpleasant even under ear protection.
>The tendrils pointed toward him. Flesh. Still. Not retreating. Doomed.
>A red flash half way caught his eye in mid flight, though only truly registering as it landed on the street.
>A flame rose from the street, and spread as the creature quickly came to shriek as it became a growing fireball, which soon began to rapidly traverse up and down streets, as if it were jettisoning material with its movement, though, in his frozen astonishment, he couldn't tell whether it actually HAD done so, however, since it crossed the street in front of him at multiple distances, a block away going to the right, one quarter of the way up. Two blocks away to the left, flame two thirds of the way up the back. Three blocks away, it crossed once more to the right, flames burning dimly on the top of its being. On the fourth block, it crossed to the left, burning a bright fireball, having left for the last several blocks it had traveled, a literal trail of fire fifteen feet wide.
>Kyle's mouth felt like he'd just swallowed a gallon sized jar of cotton balls. He didn't know just what he had seen. Just how he'd come to live through this encounter was a thing he had seen, yet not believed. Was Nelson watching over him? Had he thrown a flare into the creature's oily residue wake?
>As the street burned with the sludge of some strange coolant monster, a tall slim man with a dark full beard and a helmet adorned with an F5032, an NVG Kyle recognized as a rare relic even in the height of its production, emerged from the building the flare fell out of.
>"Hey, DUUUUUUUUDE! YOU ALRIGHT?" he called from across the street.
"Y-Yeah!" Kyle attempted to yell, only managing to hoarsely raise his voice slightly above normal speech.
>"I remember my first time seeing one of those too! They're really scary! I'll be up there in a minute, sit tight." he assured from several stories lower and across the street.
"Fhhhhucking Parched." kyle rasped to himself while he reached for his canteen.
>Several minutes later, Molly, Emma, Charles, Andrew and James had emerged from the stairwell and sat down on the roof.
>The slim man emerged from the doorway, his boots covered in rust colored blood congealing upon them.
>"Name's Paul. You guys alright?"
"Yeah. How did you know how to kill that thing?"
>"Welp, must've been about two years ago now my old friends and I got them 'round where we lived. We'd get around them, hide from them, then we figured out they're made of oils, some of which are flammable, just enough that we found we could burn them."
"Thanks for the help. Name's Kyle, by the by. If you don't mind my asking, where's your friends? Far as we know no one's lived in this whole state in a long time."
>"They're not with us." he answered Mournfully.
"Sorry for your loss."
>"Don't be. We had a good time while we were all together. Rough times too, but I think those were the most important experiences. I'd do it all again. If Julie was still around, I'd still be farming in place." 
"I like your spirit, Paul. Allow me to introduce you to my team. our leader over there, with the glare is James, the guy built like a tank is Charles, The little guy is Andrew, the redhead is Molly, and the attention seeker with the green hair is Emma. We steal strange artifacts and kill animals for money. Take a seat, fella. We'll rest here for a little and go back to camp."
>"Alright." Paul answered as he took a seat.

>Somehow in Kyle's mind, the moment rendered itself into his mind as something he'd experienced somewhere months in the past. Somehow the memory of seven people on a rooftop sitting as silent and motionless as if they'd been frozen in time, a tableau forever preserved in its own unseen place. It seemed too far from lucid and lived to have been a real memory.
>He could feel the air, setting placidly in the sweat that had condensed into a cold coat against his skin. He looked around with his eyes only, seeking not to disturb the quiet that had come around him.
>All the faces of the people present, were disengaged from the presence of others. Eyes stared into the concrete of the roof, minds, as he could see, turned inward.
>In each face, he saw the look of a mind calculating its own equations. A mind that could only be expected to be reflecting upon times past, just what had brought it here, what could have been done better, what was done better.
>His eyes hovered over Molly. Between her feet and forward just two thirds of a yard, her gaze fixated. He could see her anatomy arranged in the array of indifference one typically displayed when they were turned away from the world. The Blue irises were as constricted as they could be. Her hair had turned dark, displaying little suggestion of color as it hung limply against her skull. Her chestrig had begun to soak up sweat on its upper edge, and thanks to the thoroughly soaked shirt underneath, Kyle could see under The bra underneath, and track as her ribs rose and fell, as though tracking the ebb and flow of the gentle breezes that came through the hills.
>Were it not for the sheer sharpness of the impression to his eyes, he'd wonder if he was dreaming.
>Jim began to slowly rise to his feet and just like that, the tableau was lost forever, existing henceforth only in the living memory of those present, finally eradicated by the heads of all present except for those of himself and Molly, having instead locked eyes.
>Kyle didn't mind the time passing, and he had a feeling that Molly didn't either. 
>He was shocked out of it when a hand grabbed his shoulder and shook him in place by about six inches. Kyle's eyes darted to Charles, whose arm retracted away as quickly as it had come.
>"Come on, kids. You can make googly eyes at each other later."
>Kyle's eyes shot back to Molly only slightly slower than they'd shot to Charles, and he saw her giggling, her cheeks, flushed with and covered in sweat, growing just slightly more red.
>Kyle lunged forward, carrying himself to his feet by force of momentum alone, made sure he had everything he needed before he began walking down the stairwell, and went about the task of navigating down the stairs, cluttered and in some places stacked with the carcasses of creatures of the zone.
"Hey, how would we go about tagging these? We need some kind of proof of death to send the company for our pay."
>"We'll come back with a sack and cut the left ears out."
>Kyle laughed at the thought of the supply depot getting a bag full of bloody animal ears. Somehow he felt he'd receive a disgruntled message from the company asking just what the fuck was wrong with him.
"What a mess." he thought as he clambered over bodies that'd once been malevolent creatures intent upon killing him, and rustling among casings that must've numbered into the thousands of rounds after all the shooting was said and done.
>"Hey, Kyle, you look a lot like someone I know..."

>"So what happened when I was stuck here?"
"Lets see... ASMR was outlawed, which made it move underground. As it did so, even stranger triggers were discovered. Eight hour soft speaking was replaced by ten hour guttural screeching, complete with scratching performed by pale, emaciated mole people with stainless steel claw attachments."
>Paul's face contorted in bewilderment that someone could conceive of something so bizarre.
>"What year did you say this happened?"
"I think it was... twenty thirty-one."
>His face expanded into awe and dumbfounded thunder. His eyes grew distant and his jaw fell slack as though he'd lowered his mandible to speak, but no words came out.
"What's wrong?"
>Paul's eyes remained distant and vacant for a second.
>"What year is it now?"
"We presently reside in the year of our lord two thousand and fifty Seven."
>"Okay, now seriously." Paul said as he slid himself down a carcass pile and onto the stairs again.
"Twenty fifty-seven."
>"Now I don't believe that."
"Why? You came out here to loot illegally, didn't you?"
>"NO! I've lived here since before the nukes! And I've been trying to get out ever since."
"Oh."
>"You realize that means I would have to have been here for forty years. I'd have to be in my sixties!"
"I find that unlikely."
>"You see, I have very few reasons to believe I've gotten that old. I'd look at my tax documents because I'm SURE I've seen them more recently than forty years, but they were burned for fuel so long ago."
"Hmm?"
>"Pff. Young'ins. Say, if this is twenty fifty seven, what year were YOU born?"
"Twenty twenty-nine."
>"Huh. So kids who haven't been born yet already grown to the cusp of middle age Come after just a few hundred days and..." Paul whispered to himself.
>"So uh... Is this guy a ghost or something?" Andrew quietly wondered to Charles.
>"Wouldn't be the strangest thing we've seen in the last two weeks. Squirrel. That thing a few minutes ago..."
>"I mean, there's no WAY this guy's been here forty years since the nukes, had tax files and all that shit, and somehow he hasn't even started graying." Andrew pressed.
>"Yeah. Yeah." Charles acknowledged.
>"Who knows?" Charles started as he found his way out at the bottom of the stairwell and soon out into the streets heading back toward camp. "Maybe there's no 'here' here."
>"Whadda you mean?"
>"No future and no past. No one could foresee the end that came so fast. Hear the prophet make his guess that paradise lies to the west, and so join in his quest for the sun."
>Looking forward, Charles and Andrew could see that Kyle had turned back to them, watching them for a couple seconds and then turning back to the trek up the hill.
>"Kyle!" Molly yelled, prompting him to turn around.
"What's up?" He yelled as he scanned down the road hundreds of yards, then to the sides before his eyes settled on her, starting to limp.
>"My leg's acting up!" she called to him.
>As Kyle went to her, he couldn't help but mutter toward Charles and Andrew.
"Trapped in a never ending present. Minutes seem like days since fire ruled the sky."
>"Kyle, what are you talking about?" Molly asked?
"Oh... Nothing, sweetie. Nothing."
>Internally, while he helped Molly walk, he couldn't help but worry that this land was indeed frozen in a never ending present, with no future, and no past, only barren fields with naught but the rising and falling of the sun to mark the passage of time. In truth, the temperate to hot year round climate of the state and all but its highest and northernmost regions probably meant that the passage of time itself mattered extremely little or not at all. The more he mulled over the idea in his head, the more he came to the unsettling idea that in this land, time may as well never pass if it even passed at all.

>The time passed him by as Kyle measured, weighed and comprehended the implications of what he was thinking. The questions mounted, though answers seemed entirely unobtainable. In light of his presence, he only felt that he'd piled on what had already been a mountain of questions relating to the uncertainty this posed of his own future.
>In the meantime, while he absently pondered, he'd watch the sun begin its descent while daylight waits to die.
>Before long his mind wandered far enough that he'd lost his focus on his survival, and the strange things he'd seen and heard, and fixated on further distant things.
>Should he go home through the blood forest in Idaho, or the sniper preserve in south Dakota? On one hand, assuming he'd take Molly along, she might not appreciate the blood forest, as it was only mildly dangerous, however, the things that were reported by vandals who'd returned to the site in the following years were something of a mix between missing four one one legends and Appalachian crypto-zoology.
>The sniper preserve, placed to preserve the native wildlife of snipers in South Dakota among the badlands and various other ecosystems scattered in nearby regions wasn't so spooky as the blood forest, though it WAS a place with dangerous wildlife. In the years since its inception, several of the roads through it, such as the stretch of highway between exit one-sixteen and one-twenty-seven, which let off into minute man missile historical sites delta one and delta nine, had garnered the name "Ballistic Highways" among locals. In the last fifteen years, an extreme sport now considered moreso than climbing K2, had developed of getting through the stretches of trails and roads between Prairie wind overlook and the ancient hunters overlook. Some of the more extreme thrill seekers would attempt it on foot, and those who got through alive, were considered legendary.
>There were few people who'd take on such a challenge. Fewer survivors.
>The sun was set. The orange of the horizon faded as twilight filled the sky.
>Kyle stared intently at the glow, as it passed for the night. Spellbound by the nothing.
>"Hey, GRUMLEY!" Molly sharply yelled in Kyle's ear.
"Grumley?"
>"Fair'a hair, dull about the eye, slack jawed with a vacant expression." Molly drawled as if quoting something.
"Are you quoting something?"
>"Yeah. Don't worry about it. I'll..." She said, dismissing the issue as though for the first time since meeting him two about two weeks prior, she'd completely and utterly disapproved of him. Instead of explaining, she pulled out a pen and a notepad, writing something down inside before putting it away.
>Her eyes Placed themselves back on him and focused with an intensity that Kyle could feel. He felt an urge in his stomach to avert his eyes, but kept eye contact with her.
>The effect was seemingly multiplied by her darkened and unwashed hair, which was limp and seemed to give her an air of being tired, and given to being short with him.
>"So why were you just staring into the sun? What's going on in that head of yours?"
"Sunset's pretty. It's quite a sight when it glows this much. As far as you're concerned, however, which do you like more, the Blood Forest or the Sniper Preserve?"
>"Come on, I know there's more on your mind than which I think's more dangerous." Molly scolded.
"Yeah. Shit's weird. I'm trying to reconcile that it's current year and the guy we ran into says its no later than a decade before I was born."
>"There's a couple ways you could reconcile those things easily. Could be he's a kook. Could be he's a ghost, or something out of a book. People dead and buried before the aliens visited walking the lands in which they lived their whole lives..." Molly started with an intentional drawl. "...In any case, young buck, I wouldn't spend too much time thinking on it." She continued, before affecting an elderly rasp. "The world ain't what it seems, is it gunny? You keep that in mind, moment you think you got it figured? You're wrong!" she spoke, clearly doing a voice which Kyle didn't recognize.
>Kyle stared at her, cocking his head ever so slightly.
>"What? Don't look at me like that, I'll fucking rape you, you forest nigger."
>Kyle scratched a raised Eyebrow and blinked a couple times as though he'd just been attacked by a flying one legged cat, and then drew a breath to speak.
"You're forest people too, Louisville."
>Molly pulled her notepad back out and wrote something in it again, put it away, and found a spot next to him, watching the sky finally turn dark.
>"Running out of ammo, running into things we can't kill... Y'know, young buck? Sometimes I don't think we're gonna get to the end of our contract."
>Kyle put his hand on her shoulder.
"Probably."

Somewhere in the southwest side of Pollock Pines. One hour after Sunset.
>"Lets seeeeeeYE. John Wayne was president from 1936 to 1845 when he was drafted to Perform in "Without Reservations," a 1632 Eastern film in which he played .44 magnum toting homicide investigator and Cattle Baron Hondo as he traveled the streets of Seattle in order to rape the fenceposts for killing his mother, Katie Elder. His boy sidekick, Speedy Gonzalez, played by Burt Lancaster, sacrifices himself in order to allow Hondo to escape from the skinbandits after he is wounded in an inevitable throwing knife battle with Andrew Jackson and Eddie Van Halen." A pale and grimy man sputtered out to himself.
>He had finally Done it. Just how he'd managed to get away with it, he chalked up to sheer luck as he'd found it, and moved it, along with its ammunition, a very... special payload, out of camp, and eventually to this end of the town all unnoticed.
>This building had some of the glowing blue liquid in it, but he managed to get to the roof without having to step in it or tiptoe around it, which was handy given the weight of the recoilless rifle that he now aimed.
>As he looked outward, he saw the moving object against the sky, almost entirely shaded, but he could see it. He watched as it moved, and determined where it would be. He watched as the behemoth slouched toward the town. He calculated in the mid rear of his brain where it would stand eventually. He dialed in the M-29. He pulled open the case in which the M-388 rested.
>Where it came from was probably Area 2, but that mattered very little in this moment, when the black haired woman commanded him to kill that thing, and thus protect the children of Eric.
>He loaded the M-388 into the tube and waited for the squirrel to appear nearby. He calculated the mark where the squirrel would be at to walk into it.
>He waited. And waited. Finally, Nelson screamed.
>"I AM RAPING THE SUN."

Back at camp.
>Kyle sat on a barrier with Molly staring out at the remains of the town where they might yet meet their ends, she was telling him of her fondest desires of the humid forests of Kentucky. She was gleefully dictating to him the terms of "If we survive this." and how he would have to live with her for a while to determine if they were a good fit for each other.
>He listened, considering whether they were too fast, knowing each other for only approaching three weeks when suddenly he felt a boom in his ear, leading him to snap his eyes out upon the horizon. 
>A scant three quarters of a second later, he saw a flash on the horizon that appeared to be a nuclear flash with a nearby hulk of mass, taking less the shape of a building and more that of a blob falling nearby.
>Molly's voice stopped mid word before four and a half seconds passed, and then a deep boom and a distinct pressure wave stuck them.
>Kyle's heart surged for a minute and Molly drew a sharp breath as she panicked, then shielded her head as she curled uo behind the barrier. Kyle stood looking on at the apparent nuclear explosion, knowing that even if the situation were dire, it'd still be too late to actually do anything to save himself. Luckily, he figured, if that was a nuke, it was too small to blow him up, and by the lack of sun overpowering brightness, he probably hadn't received a large enough dose to cause more than a couple rads of absorption.
>Even still, he wondered with great concern what caused such a bright explosion to illuminate most of the town with the brightness of a streetlight. His teachings from the academy told him that it was a nuke. A small one, but a nuke, nonetheless.
>"Are you crazy, get down from there!" Molly scolded sharply.
"Get back up here, sugarplum. Duck and cover doesn't work on rays. You took exactly as much as I did before you even realized what it was."
>"That a nuke?" Molly questioned as she stood up and worked herself back up to Kyle's flank.
"Probably. Small nuke. Maybe one kiloton. If that. We might get sunburns from here but that was dim, so we're probably in for no more than a few rads from here. You know. Inverse square." Kyle said, glumly looking on at the small, lingering pyrocumulous cloud. He suspected from things only remembered by an inkling from his mid teenage years that the first bang must've been a firing, which would've meant that it was fired from a recoilless rifle or a cannon, more likely the former by the first percussion being heard so close to the explosion of much larger magnitude, and in the same direction.
>From the fact that they both came from the same general direction, he determined that it was fired from a recoilless rifle, and if that fact remained true, then the scale of the explosion gave away that it could only be this one he remembered instructor Rogers speaking of, ironically named the "Davy Crocket."
"Hey... where did the davy crocket come from? Did WE ship that in?... Jason's gonna be PISSED when I tell him about this."
>"Probably some deep dark cave somewhere that the government would like you to forget is there."
"Yeah..."
>"So uh... Anything we should worry about?"
"Well, lets see... Any repetitive sickness 'bout the time you wake up?"
>"No."
"Missed menstruation cycles, unusually healthy or bright complexion?"
>"NO." Molly stated firmly, catching onto what Kyle was prodding at.
"Then shut up and go grab a geiger counter from the supply tent so we can scan ourselves."
>"On it." Molly muttered as she nervously bounded away from the barricade and ran away to the supply tent to grab one of the geiger counters.
>Much to Kyle's amusement, he could easily hear her frantic sprint, and then her rummaging through the supplies to find the geiger counters and the antirads.
>He heard her let out a muffled "PRUSSIAN BLUE." from the supply tent across the camp.
>"Hey, what's all the commotion?" Charles said, startlingly close to Kyle.
"I think someone set off a tiny nuke. Molly's getting a geiger counter." Kyle replied, hiding the fact that he'd been startled.
>"So... If it were a nuke, even a small one, wouldn't we be dead?"
"No. I heard a smaller bang before the thud. I think it was fired from a recoilless rifle. A guy named Rogers told me of such a thing once upon a time. It was a warhead called the Davy Crockett and it was made for a recoilless rifle. No way whoever fired such a thing was even on this side of town. I think he shot something down on the farside. Tomorrow, we should set out to investigate it."
>"Alright, I'll go tell Jim." Charles shot back before making his retreat. In the meantime, he heard Molly making her way back to him, her feet clicking to the dirt, panting.
>She raised the probe to him and waved it over his body. Her face arranged itself so that he could see that she was confused. "What the fuck is zero point zero four GY?" she finally asked.
"Four hundredths of a Gray. That's four rads. Literally nothing. Hand it here?"
>They exchanged stares as he raised the sensor to her body, over her head, then neck, then down over her breast and stomach, and then her arms before he drew his satisfied conclusion.
"You've taken Four rads. Same as me." Kyle remarked flatly, before deciding to amend. "...If you haven't taken that Prussian Blue, DON'T. If you have, BAD GIRL!" pointing at her for comedic effect.
>"Ok, so I won't be needing this?" She inquired, holding up a tube of blue paste.
"If you take it, you'll shit blood and it'll have no positive effect. Tomorrow, baring disapproval from Jim, we'll set out and investigate the site, in which case the Prussian Blue might be helpful to have on hand."
>"Won't we... you know, glow in the dark?"
"Aren't you a nurse?"
>"Yeah, but I was a trauma nurse, not a radiologist." Molly answered.
Kyle looked it her intently for a moment, then decided to simply answer her. "No. It's all dust over there once the flash ended. So bring enough Prussian Blue for everybody, wear a maskpack a spare set of clothes, down to your bra and panties in a sealed plastic bag, and we'll all bathe and burn our clothes when we get back, and it won't be an issue. Just make sure to cover up."
>"Okay. Should I start packing now?"
"Nah. We got time. Seriously though, don't eat the Prussian Blue."

>Kyle found himself a canteen and took a drink of water, ate out of an MRE that he expected may be about two years past expiration, and then proceeded to find a comfy spot to sit down and fall asleep on the outside of the camp perimeter, just away from a breach that'd been made when the squirrel killed Peter.
>Looking out on the black abyss he felt a chill run down his spine.
>He closed his eyes and began to fall asleep, when he felt a weight sink down on him, and opened his eyes.
>He saw her blue eyes staring back it him.
>"I just... need you to hold me."
"Alright."
>Molly Wrapped her arms around Kyle's neck and rested her head on his shoulder. The two fell asleep.

Chapter 5: New Moon setting.
>Kyle opened his eyes and gazed out on the town. The scent of greasy, unwashed and dirtied hair cut straight into his senses as he realized that he was straddled still with the weight of a woman who seemed to have deadened so much as to be nearly inanimate on top of him. Somewhere in it, a note of the scent cut through his head and all his senses stood on end like a single hair on the end of a spine.
>Moving his head, to look around, he felt her hair and skin brushing against his neck, along with a couple pops. Looking down, he saw a circle that had been drawn around them in the sand outside the barricade.
"Smartasses." He thought to himself before he jostled Molly awake.
>Her eyes opened and smiled a warm smile at him, slowly constricting, then dilating as he met her gaze.
"Come on, we're gonna have a long walk ahead."
>Molly climbed off of him and stood. Kyle waited for his legs to have feeling again, eventually greeted by the stinging of needles and pins.
>Molly faced the site of the previous night's blast as a gust of cold wind blew a cloud of dust over the camp.
"Cold winds, tide moves in." Kyle muttered as he stood, looking down at the circle in the sand around him.
>"Uuugh. Is it just me or does this dirt taste salty?" Molly asked, drawing Kyle's eye in time to watch a shiver run down her spine.
"... shivers in the salty air." Kyle remarked to himself.
>"What?" Molly asked.
"Yeah, don't breathe in the dirt. It might be radioactive. Go have breakfast and get packed, don't bother to bathe, you're gonna do it when we get back to get the radioactive shit off you. Go tell the others to do the same, too."
>"You're going to the same place I am, you could do it yourself, you know." Molly protested, looking to Kyle sternly.
"Do as I say, woman." Kyle said with an equally hard stone carved expression.
>Molly Turned away with a scowl and briskly walked into camp.
>Kyle stood at the scene, and looked for foot prints walking away from the camp.
>Any number of thoughts flew through his mind. Had they passed by on the way out? Had someone else done it? Did Nelson, or some apparition shoot the nuke last night? Eh, someone in camp likely found them like that and decided to draw a circle around them... Someone with a taste for classical.
>Kyle walked a few dozen feet from the front of the camp, took a leak, and then walked back into camp to put together a pack for venturing near the site.
>"Hey, Kyle, how can I help you guys today?" Paul asked.
"You got a spare set of... everything but gear?"
>"No, why?"
"We're burning all of our clothes when we get back if you don't have spares to burn, go ahead and stash your gear, grab some spare clothes out of the supply tent. Don't take anything you can't replace, because we're burning EVERYTHING, you'll also need food and water for the day. A good deal of the way is in known safe passages, but I'd say about half or so is gonna be uncharted, so grab bolts for passing anomalies. Come on, I'll show you."
>"Kyle!" A voice called from the interior of the camp
"What is it?"
>"Did you see it?" Andrew called out.
"See what?"
>"It's the squirrel! It's like it's been blown apart!"
"What in the Kentucky fried fuck did you just tell me?"
>"I think the explosion last night was what killed the squirrel! Come look!"
"Paul, you've been out here, you know what to do." Kyle said before he began running toward the voice, finding Andrew and James by the barricade with the spotting scope pointed in the direction of the animal.
>Looking through it, Kyle was now certain that the trip was entirely unnecessary. However, it was also possibly extremely lucrative.
"We should try and get a sample of it." Kyle stated before pausing. "You got your kit packed?"
>"Yeah, everything replaceable or consumable is packed."
"Alright, good. Go ahead and add  jars to that list."

>Kyle walked off to the supply tent and started picking out supplies. He grabbed a couple gallons of water, a few MREs, a geiger counter, some extra ammo in clips to reload magazines, Extra batteries for flashlights, a rail mountable headlamp to go in front of the muffs, and a list of other things that might make someone remiss to think it would all be burned and buried afterward.
>In an hour the column would head out into the wilderness following known safe paths until the end of the trail, with a few miles to go still at the end of the path.
>Jim called Kyle forward.
>"So we're at the end of the safe zone... What do we do now?"
"The fuck do you think we do? We throw bolts and spray the ground with paint to carve a path."
>"And that's safe, right?"
"Yeah, I know it's been like two weeks and all, but you can't forget shit like that so fast. It'll take forever, and we might be out here for about a day or so, but we'll get there."
>"Yeah, but... That sucks." Jim remarked.
"Quit being a pussy, Jim." Kyle said before reaching into his bag of bolts and tossing them, leading the way forward by example.
>After hours passed and the miles did too, the afternoon greeted them to exacerbate the stench of a rotting corpse the likes of which they'd started smelling miles prior.
>The carcass was a behemoth to behold, leviathan in scale and at the right shoulder, had been blown asunder into the centeral chest cavity.
>Rotting flesh lined the streets, some charred and other raw, leaving craters, spatters and puddles where it'd impacted for about two thirds of a mile in any direction from the carcass.
>From under the damp cloth, the stench seemed to funnel directly into the nostrils, like some acrid form of burning sulfer, feces, bile and with a merciful note of molten pavement to prevent the smell from overwhelming and wringing the stomach like a rag.
>The various notes of rot, of bacteria reproducing on festering decay, of necrophages aerosolized and diffused by pustules bursting on the corpse make the composition of the air almost as acrid as anyone on the planet could stand, and would probably render the most seasoned mortician in the world hard pressed to keep his lunch down.
>The dust, at least, had settled, which was a welcomed condition among the ruins around the squirrel, for the small blessing it bestowed on them, in that they didn't have to wade through a veritable cloud of radioactive dusts made of innumerable compounds and elements.
>Kyle slowly approached the beast, tossing nuts at it to make sure his way was clear.
>swinging his pack to the ground in front of him, he withdrew three small jars, and swung his rifle to his back.
>He drew his knife, and to the wonderment of those watching, he started jamming it into the skin of the dead animal, and climbing its carcass toward the blast wound that'd been blown out of its shoulder.
>"Are you sure that's safe, cowboy?"
"Quit nagging and start collecting jars for yourselves." Kyle said as he climbed slowly onward to the wound.
>With a great deal of effort, Kyle reached the end of the wound, and began grabbing samples.
>With one jar, he took a sample of fur, with the second, a sample of subdermal tissue, and with the last, he took some blood.
>"How's it goin' up there, Young Buck?" Molly called to him.
"It's just peachy. I've got all my samples." Kyle called back. "You gonna climb up here?"
>"Nah, I'll settle for some ground tissue."
"Alright, everyone just make sure you're damn thorough about checking for anomalies before you just go slicing into grounded meat."
>"Man, this shit sucks." Andrew remarked.
"Think of the money and use your knife. For all we know this squirrel could be an anomaly in and of itself."
>"Jim, what do you think of it?" Emma called out for council.
>"It's a big fucking squirrel."
"Yup. Hard to believe this thing was chasing us a couple weeks ago. Come to think of it, hard to believe a creature as large as it ever lived." Kyle grunted out as he made his descent from the carcass. "It's fucking HUGE. Jim, Andrew, Charlie, sack the fuck up and climb on top of that thing. How else are you gonna get any samples?"
>"Well I was figuring on cutting through its skin and getting it that way." Andrew answered.
"Yeah no, that thing's got a good six inches thick of skin at least, go get you some exercise."
>Kyle looked on as the three shrugged and decided to climb the squirrel with some sense of pride that they'd decided to stop being bitches and climb the squirrel.

"There's a risk involved here." Kyle thought to himself. For a moment, his mind was quiet as he considered all the things that might be lurking, lying or waiting in the area surrounding him.
>A bolt hit him in the shoulder as he stood spellbound, and he looked to see Molly throwing another at him with a grin.
"Haha. I'm in danger."
>Slowly Molly closed the distance to Kyle. Throwing several bolts directly at him, all bouncing off as he watched.
"The fuck are you doing?"
>"It's fun."
"Ok." Kyle answered indifferently.
>He squatted down and picked up one of the bolts off the ground, then proceeded to only half way wind up before projecting it in a straight line, bouncing directly off her center of mass.
>"Hsss- Aw fuck! You trying to tell me something, BOY?" she playfully demanded as she felt the sting of the bolt in her abdomen.
>The two of them both halted and snapped their heads left as they heard an ungodly howl down the street.
>About a hundred yards down the street, stood a pack of what could only be assumed to be wolves.
>The animals started running, making an attempt to close the distance.
>As Kyle attempted to raise his rifle, he was stalled when he saw an old man in a blue smith and wesson hat and a shirt covered in the brands of old gun companies run out into the middle of the street and take a low ready stance.
>A loud and harsh beep came pierced the streets themselves as his rifle rose.
>A flurry of bursts that seemed like full auto swept the street, and killed half of them before running to the side, dropping the rifle and grabbing what looked to be a shotgun before running back out into the middle of the street.
>he raised the shotgun, the animals now just under half the distance they'd been. when they started out, and issued out a rapid flurry, double tapping each before they could close another fifteen yards. Kyle would never forget the strange cry he issued out. "HEYOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
>With that, the old man turned to them, his aviator shades and mustache clearly visible aside the creases in his face, set in from years of high concentration.
>He slowly began to walk toward them, checking the shot time on the fringe of his pocket.
>The fear set in and all present were petrified as they watched him approach Kyle directly and reload the shotgun from tubes.
>"Hey, try this one out, it's pretty trick." he said as he reached Kyle, and then offered him the shotgun.
>As Kyle accepted the shotgun, and placed his hand on the bottom of the receiver, he watched the man seem to evaporate into thin air.
>"Did everyone else just have the same fever dream I had?" Jim asked, trembling atop the carcass.
"Everything in the zone is fantastical, and beyond our comprehension... Who was that guy? Was he a sponsored shooter?"
>"I... I think that was Jerry..."
"The guy who outshot the android in 2025?"
>"Yup..."
"Christ."

>Kyle inspected the shotgun. He'd have to check the records the next time he was outside the zone regarding a mossberg 930 JM tactical class, but altogether, despite its seemingly bulky size, it was light in the hands and the traction on the checkering was remarkable.
>Looking down at it, a thought crossed his mind. "...Did I just get a gun from a ghost?" he thought to himself.
"Alright, get the rest of those samples and lets start heading back."
>"Don't care to remark upon what we just saw?" Andrew asked.
"I think I've seen enough in the zone to say I'm not even gonna question it at this point." Kyle said as he felt the bolt, which locked and unlocked only under its own spring tension, as a well made autoloader should.
>Kyle stood guard while the rest continued to collect their samples and after another ten minutes, they set off, stopping at dusk to find shelter and sleep for the night.
"It's strange to think that there might still be one person just hanging out out there. Maybe they're on a farm somewhere and were spared the fate of this ruin that passes as one of our states. Almost as strange to think there's ghosts. And mutants. Come to think of it, fuck it. This place is strange."
>"Okay, its strange, and perhaps beyond comprehension. Is it that bad though?"
"I mean... Compared to that time I was guarding the wall at the compound... Still, yeah."
>"Really? We're in a place that practically rains money on you and you still think it's that bad?"
"This place is full of mutants that want to eat us and ghosts. And mutants that want to be godzilla. There's no reason to come here except to take shit out of here that could potentially be used to make the rest of the country LIKE here. It's pretty bad."
>"When you put it that way ANYTHING can sound shitty, Kyle."
"Yup."
>"... Ain't it strange?"
"What?"
>"Seems shit's more happy when we're all three minutes from death and dismemberment. I'm almost done with my period and I haven't had so much as a cramp."
"Didn't need to know that. But people are adapted to physical danger. The more cerebral problems of modern life are a new thing. So is mathematics. We're more naturally inclined to adapt."
>"I'm starting to wonder, were you ever close to starvation as a child?"
"There were a couple lean winters, but I don't think we were ever like two meals from starvation. We have a society, and with that organization and collectivization comes the capacity to create contingency plans. When one family of Moody's had a thin harvest, there was another with a thick harvest. It's usually never a feast, but it's also never a famine. Even when the FBI tried to attack our crops. And our women and children. And our material depots. The FBI are right cunts. I'd behead 18 more without hesitation if I had the chance. Your family ever have a lean winter?"
>"No. We lived in modern civilization like normal people." Molly stated glibly.
"Government get fucked. This place is a testament to the folly of these lofty governments. They nuked themselves because most of this place disagree with them to a mild extent. Took millions with them and most of those who escaped were corralled into reservations. Many of them were kept there by other states because Californians were viewed then, rightly so, as a deranged group of lunatics bent on mutual self destruction."

>"What brings one to know of this place?"
"A question of curiosity or indignorance?"
>"Curiosity."
"My father is from here. I never met my grandfather. Don't know where he ended out. Dad doesn't either. This place was once a heaven on earth. Then hell. Now, simply a waste in name too, as well as reality. Like a beautiful young woman turned into a filthy meth whore and then to a bloated festering corpse, feeding the birds, the worms and the fish. He left scant days before the nukes turned this into a waste. My uncle came back in the late end of the first decade. He said it was filled with skinwalkers and ghosts."
>"Specifically though... what happened here?"
"So there was once a city, a burgeoning metropolis named 'the city of angels' in spanish. To us, that's Los Angeles. They grow into the biggest den of hedonism since Sodom and Gomorrah. Then we start to see them radicalize. This mohammad ass motherfucker gets to be mayor. Then shit goes wild. Some LA residents take it upon themselves to become submariners. They get to be the fire control. Their sub just HAPPENS to get stuck in the dry dock. The mayor announces the situation and makes demands on July first of twenty seventeen. nineteen days later, after the army goes in, and makes several failed attempts to secure the town, the nukes go off to LA, and over a dozen other major cities, disrupting the infrastructure. If you had a car made after about 1980, it probably no longer ran thanks to an electronic ECU, and like most cars at the time, being newer than model year two thousand, a myriad of other vital electronic systems being fried by EMP. With no power, internet, cars or the supplies, tools or knowledge to revert to primitive methods, and an impending rain of fallout on their fertile fields, most who weren't killed in the blasts or near the border were trapped in a situation of impending doom."
>"That's a fucked up way to go. Worse than we ever had."
"What happened in your neck of the woods?"
>"We had a mosquito infestation of nearly biblical proportions. So there were were one day having ourselves a cookout, and I was maybe Ten, about twenty thirty-four or so and then we start to see this huge superdark cloud appear and OH SHIT, it's a whole fucking swarm of mosquitoes, because of course no one wants to dig out the ditches that drain the roads because EPA regulations are gonna fuck us, and then they flood and become mosquito farms. So we all have to run inside as this cloud of dark haze starts to drown out the whole world around us. We thought we were dead even after my pa had the brilliant Idea to bring the charcoal grill inside the house and use it to keep them out. My mother and I had said our prayers when dad managed to shut the vents. Soon after a swarm of huge bugs, I don't know which kind, showed up, left, and we'd nearly suffocated when we opened the door to a bunch of clear air. My Brother was shaking in the corner, who can blame a four year old for that? He didn't like going outside for a couple years after that, in fact, anytime one of us would see bugs we'd both almost vomit, or shake with disgust."
"That's fucking rough. Ever consider writing a book?"
>"Who'd read it?"
"Oh... Right. Thank god for Terrance Coldwell at least."
>"The president of the 2040's?"
"Yeah. His uptaking of the resurgent ANP was pretty masterful, as well as his acknowledgement of some trends of aspiration to some... innate qualities of people. His novel 'The Supreme Life: Standing in good faith in the age of mendacious merchants and capricious carpetbaggers' was my older brother's favorite book while we were growing up."
>"Older brother was politically minded?"
"Since it became the thunderdome of the twenty-first century it's hard for many not to be, but it's a particularly prominent trait among vandals. Personally, I liked 'What if the people consent?' by Phil Merrick more."
>"Ever read "Alice in wonderland?'"
"No. I haven't. I could never get past the first couple hundred pages."
>"I thought it was pretty good. What makes it so indelible to me is that you can compare it to anything. There was a piece of fiction my grandfather liked as a young man that he showed to me, it was called 'FarCry 3.' It was, with exception to the protagonist's girlfriend and some other subplots, an allegorical telling of 'Alice in Wonderland.' And also I think, after having played grandpa's entire collection, it was still the peak of the series. If I wanted to, I could make our story in the almost three weeks we've been here into an allegorical telling. It's very easy to do that with even just the first hundred pages or so."
"Something something lost. Something something dizzy. I hit my head that one time, boom, I've done it."
>"There you go! The movie didn't do it as much justice as you just did."
"Yeah, movies aren't a great format for content of that length. Well, weren't, I should say."

>"Kyle, do you ever feel like you at least owe your family SOMETHING in the way of correspondence before you potentially die?"
"Yes. That's why I write to my parents. I owe them at least some explanation to why I felt adventurism was more important than being safe enough to go about a happy and fulfilling life. Maybe, if they're still hanging about, you should write your own parents."
>"Okay. But here's the thing... I don't know what I'd say, could you imagine dad's reaction if he found out I went here?"
>Images of Kyle's father, Eric reacting to the news that his kid was in the zone at the age of sixty-nine played through his head as he imagined the old man taking several other old men to stop him from departing for the zone.
"No."
>"..."
"..."
>The two sat in silence absorbing their surroundings in the darkness.
>"Kyle, why does it feel weird?"
"hmm?"
>"The air feels weird."
"Maybe there's a low pressure system stirring up."
>"What do those do?"
"Usually they create a vortex and then the dew point goes up a little. Then it rains at higher temperatures."
>"Rain carry anything with it out here?"
"Maybe. Probably an increased risk of absorbing radioactive particles."
>"Lovely."
"You wanted safety? You chose the wrong job. You want money? We're gonna be rich as hell. Just... After the rains. We're about what? seventeen days in it feels like? I've lost track."
>"Something like that."
>Slowly time ticked by. Consciousness would escape them. They would wake up to the soft patter of rain striking the parched earth, softening its hard crust.
>Kyle rose to see a rabid looking man murmuring as he bounded like some form of mutated animal down the street.
"There will come soft rains, and the smell of the ground..." He spoke softly, noting that the man appeared to be heading in the direction they'd travel to camp.
>The light of the newly formed morning seemed something out of a strange dream as the mist of water splashed up from the street and served to create a kind of haze along the ground.
>He sensed a presence creeping up behind him, over his shoulder.
>He turned around trying to see what was... Nowhere.
"Fuck." he thought as he picked up his gear and his rifle. 
>This day too, would come to pass as those before it. And in three days, they were officially three weeks into the expedition.
>Life had Taken a strange turn in the time that they had been back at camp, and had disposed of all equipment they could not easily decontaminate.
>Kyle had made a two day solo trip into the wilderness, where he'd seen the emergence of several new mutant creatures, very much seeming to be mutated elk and deer.
>Molly had written her parents and as luck had it, gotten the letter into the boot just minutes before it departed to make another automated supply run to Las Vegas.
>Andrew had began spending a large part of his time alone, as if needing to take care of some need for solitude, or maybe he just couldn't decompress in the presence of of others. Maybe he was a loner. Kyle couldn't tell.
>Emma had begun after a day and a half, searching for Andrew, taking upon herself, the responsibility of accounting for him.
>Charles had decided he would take a solo expedition, and set off with supplies for several days.
>James and Paul began coordinating night time expeditions into the town for loot.
>As kyle stood out on the ridge with a rifle marked, "VR-10: Inspected by E.R. for use by K.R." he glassed the hills for these strange animals, more akin to Elk than the wild mongrels and wolves he'd grown accustomed to.
>Walking past however, he soon saw a gray figure, as though visible only to him, weaving around and past them.
>His clothing, he could tell through the scope, was greasy and discolored. His face was gaunt and ashen, his eyesockets had become dusky from exposure. He was similar to a ghost, but he was certainly a man, as certainly as the sun dully penetrated the clouds sitting overcast above him.
"Nelson?" Kyle thought.
>He watched as the figure slowly passed, toward the camp and out of sight.
>On the next day, Molly would receive a letter back from her father, who told her of the life she'd left behind. He and her mother had missed her. Her brother had come into his own right, having moved to Rural Virginia and had two more kids in addition to the two she'd already known of. He was interested to hear that his daughter was in the no man's land known as California, and questioned even her best assurances that with a little wit about her, she'd leave just as safe as she'd entered weeks before. And though the questioned point of those assurances was the presence of two members of the team who'd been raised to take on conflict, he admitted that a Vandal was almost certainly a safer set of hands to be in than those of any normal citizen of the united states, or even some of the splintered groups that sheltered in the impenetrable and almost unreached Appalachian territory even further out and harder to reach than the community of which her younger brother had become a part. The most intriguing thing in the letter besides the promise of unconditional support, which made her wonder whether he himself had been replaced with some abomination of the forest, was that he said to say something to the Vandal.

Day 25
>Kyle slouched in a lazy supine looking over the town as the sun set. Time had been set aside for the past few days to wind down and then back up after dealing with the squirrel. By the time he'd taken his seat, the others had begun to grow restless.
>The world around him felt idle, as though it were perfectly relaxed, asleep in the embrace of the afternoon heat. The wind was calm, and in this moment, it couldn't have blown even if the planet stopped spinning. Reality had become a spell under which to sit while he waited for the next expedition.
>Molly approached him from the side, and stopped in front of him.
>"Hey." She said with a somber tone. Kyle's ears, were they capable of such a feat, would have perked up as he heard that.
"Is something wrong?"
>"I think maybe we should... Cut our contracts short."
"Cut them short?! Why? Is something the matter? Are you pregnant?"
>"That's not it. It's something..."
>Kyle's back straightened and he began leaning upright.
>"I was thinking of something I read about you and I wanted to say..." Molly hesitated.
"Where the fuck are you reading ABOUT ME from?" was the thought that flickered across the back of Kyle's skull.
>"I stand at the bridge between you and the rest of an unfulfilling life."
"EX-FUCKING-CUSE ME?! WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?" Kyle yelled so loud that he could have been heard across the state.
>Molly's eyes opened in alarm.
"How do you know that chapter?"
>...
>Kyle lets the moments in silence pass by like sullen and ashamed wanderers not fit to meet his gaze much less look him in the eye. A minute must have passed in total silence.
>The wind itself dare not speak up to Kyle.
"'I stand at the bridge between you and the remainder of an unfulfilling life. From where you stand, it's difficult to see that this bridge isn't worth crossing, and so I burn it. As the flame works its way over to your end, you scream and cry and shake and argue. In your eyes, I've taken away the world. In my eyes, the opposite is true. There's no room for sandbagging in the reformation.' Do you know what it means?"
>"...."
"Speak!"
>"No." Molly answered meekly.
"Think on it. Come to me when you know. That is ONLY the first paragraph of the chapter."

Night time had come, and Kyle had set out in the company of Paul, searching.
>"I can't believe I forgot I had that in my pack after all this time."
"I can't believe we have so many helmets running around and so few mounts and night vision goggles these days."
>"Huh?"
"Most night vision systems have stagnated. Thermal's easy enough since it's digital, but tubes rely on physics and you understand how it works, all things being equal, you can only invest so much refinement into something before diminishing returns come in."
>"So what's new?"
"White phosphor is still a fashionable thing, but it's stayed up in the price because the knowledge to figure out how shit works has kinda regressed in most of America. There's a lot of enclaves around to prevent the smart ones from assimilating with the low IQ population. Of course they don't quite have it down to WHAT's causing the percipitous average drop. If not for automation, honestly we'd be well and truely fucked by famine." Kyle observed as he tossed bolts.
>"So where does this leave optics?" Paul asked.
"Tubes from the 2023-2030 era are considered the peak of night vision tubes. Slight regressions have occurred, sinking back to OMNI IV levels. Traditional optics have retained much of their quality, though 2020 is ultimately considered to be the highwater mark outisde of Vandal clan industry, but that's because our optics were relatively basic back then."
>"Vandal clan? You mean like the guys who passed around the sharpie for some name changing?"
"Yup. We've been rather industrious since about 2023"
>"So, how's the PVS-14 compare?"
"Reminds me of using the old nods. Someone had an old Harris pair that I'd get for night patrol. Gives me flashbacks." Kyle answered.
>"Did they ever go through with that academy they were talking about before they broke out?"
"I went to it. Made having a girl shadow me a little inconvenient what with being responsible for her safety AND needing to pass stealth, infiltration and assault courses with a teenage girl in tow."
>"Man, what the fuck were they doing?"
"I'm not one of the scientistic boys, so I don't really know. Maybe forced bonding, maybe some kind of impressioning."
>"So tell me, Kyle. You know a guy named Eric Rall?"
"Yeah. Father and older brother."
>"No shit? Hang on a minute and tell me if this is the guy." Paul said as he knelt down and swung his pack in front of him, producing, at the time Kyle had taken a knee next to him, a photograph, and lighting it with a flashlight.
>"This him?" he said, pointing to one of about seven people in the picture.
"Looks like its dad. When was this picture taken?"
>"May of seventeen."
"You must be a ghost or something."
>"Why so?"
"That was about forty years back."
>"Huh... Bullshit."
"by the way, there's an animal behind you. Big one." Kyle remarked as he slowly took up his rifle.
>He looked at the animal through the scope, deciding that it must've been an elk once upon a time. With slow, deliberate movements, he worked the straightpull bolt to the rear, and then back forward. The bolt slowly locked into the barrel extension.
>Paul slowly dragged himself away from the muzzlebrake before giving Kyle a pat on the shoulder.
>Kyle squeezed the trigger as gently he the reticle hovered over the animal, which must've been blind and deaf not to notice the two men throwing bolts through the zone as they walked through the darkness.
>Such things did not matter, as it would in a mere sixteenth of a second receive a shattered shoulder and a perforated heart, lung, liver and spleen.
>Such was the nature of shooting mutant animals.
>"Well... Figure we got a long night ahead of us."

Two hours into the hunt.
>There's always something to think about.
>Sometimes there's a constant stream of problems with your rifle that you need to work or you die.
>Other times, something, Truly, Truly, unexpected, happens.
>Kyle and Paul were traversing the slopes of the hills as the feeling set in.
>"Kyle."
"Hmm?"
>"You feel it?"
"Kinda... Balmy... actually, no I feel it, it's gonna rain."
>"No... That's not California rain. Maybe Florida, but... here... this..."
"Some kinda storm?"
>The view through the monocular Kyle wore turned to a solid emerald colored circle in his eye before the autogating started, and the tube darkened.
>Kyle reached to the back and rotated the familiar ITT rotary switch a click over, blacking out the tube, and flipped the unit up to look upon the horizon.
>As though he were looking at a glowing neon light, the horizon to the west glowed like a star had been amassed and set alight in a valley across the town's husk.
"What the FUCK?" he thought to himself as he scanned the horizon, bracing for what he expected was his inevitable green doom.
"This is what we deserve..." he thought. "...We are bad people!" His mind shrieked."Why did we usher forth the green apocalypse?"
>Kyle watched as his doom approached... or so he thought.
>Seconds passed, and yet Kyle's horror turned to confusion as the green glow of the distance, as if out of spite, refused to bring forth his doom.
>Soon he heard the radio come to life, A youthful voice, furious and confused, screamed in babbles of madness at them.
>"PAUL! KYLE! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING!?" Andrew's voice garbled over the radio, before a more enunciated female voice called out very specifically.
>"KYLE! GET THE FUCK BACK HERE!"
>For all he knew, Time had stood still without them, and decided that the thing to do was pause a detonation over the mountain pass into California.
"Yeah... Right away."
>Kyle turned down the comms and began playing with the FM and AM radio bands, scanning the spectrum while he walked back toward the camp, finding music stations, which were usually not audible in this area were playing just fine, and coming in loud and clear. While he was as much an idiot as the next guy in the arena of radio transmissions, he had some theories about how of all things, FM radio could be reaching the valley.
>While he didn't understand the physics with any degree of precision, he understood quite precisely that 92.3 KOMP in Vegas had begun to transmit loud and clear into the mountain pass.
>As he listened, Van Halen's Panama was interrupted with a beeping siren.
>"We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you this emergency message. Suspected electromagnetic events have caused what, according to eyewitness reports, is a sickly green glow, emanating from the western wastes of California and Oregon. Please, remain indoors and away from any windows, do not leave your place of shelter until further notice. Anomalous event warnings are in place for Las Vegas, Virginia City, Carson City, Henderson, Pahrump, Goodsprings and Searchlight."
"Holy shit, they see this in Nevada. Sounds like they're going to emergency preparation in the mojave."

>"Emergency preparation?"
"Sounds a lot like a CONELRAD alert."
>"CONELRAD?"
"Old acronym, meant 'control of electromagnetic radiation.' It was an old civil defense thing. They'd tell you to stay indoors if a nuke went off."
>"So what happens next?"
"I don't know, but we should cause it."
>"WHAT?"
"If it's lethal, I figure we're already fucked, so here's my proposition. We MAY have another Davy Crockett, and I'm CURIOUS what happens when we chuck a nuclear warhead into it."
>"You're... Fuck it, lets see what happens!"
>Kyle keyed the radio and took a breath.
"Molly, wanna get laid one more time before you die?"
>"Kyle! Where are you? WE'RE ON OPEN COMMS!"
"We're on our way back now, do we have any more nukes?"
>"NUKES? ARE YOU FUCKING HIGH?"
"No, I'm fucking you, but go ask Nelson first."
>"NELSON? WHY?"
"HE knows where he got a launcher and a fucking nuke, GET TO IT WOMAN!"
>Kyle heard Molly take a breath sharply, and then pause...  He could almost FEEL her subordinate herself to him as the radio squelched.
>Paul and Kyle jogged along the path they'd tread in the dirt, and in a few minutes, they'd be back at camp.
>As Kyle went along, he felt as though he was growing too physically active to calm down for any purpose. He felt as like he was becoming too energetic to do anything but run, and bounce off of walls, and maybe fight some animals.
>It took thirty minutes, and they were out of breath, but they had made it, and they hadn't stepped into any anomalies. Nelson was cackling and carrying a recoilless rife tube yelling "THE DIPLOMAS WILL COME IN HANDY WHEN THE SHIPMENTS OF TOILET PAPER STOP COMING!"
>Molly stood, arms crossed and scowling at him.
>"What's gotten into you?" she asked as she looked at him, rather cross. Kyle didn't reply, or rather couldn't, as he gasped for air.
>"WHAT IS THAT THING?" She demanded, as though she somehow expected Kyle or Paul to have the answer.
"BRIGHT." Kyle panted out as he doubled over and gripped his side.
>"Come!" She yelled as she began walking off. To which Kyle obliged, following the clicks of her boots' hard soles against the dirt as he took slow, deep breaths to slow his heart beat.
>"First time you've ran like that in a while, huh?" She asked.
"Yeah." Kyle answered as he finally caught his breath enough to talk, as the clicks stopped before a scrape signaled her pivot to face him.
>Their eyes met.
>"Kyle... The plan isn't really-... You're not serious, right?"
"Yes. It is. We're throwing a nuke at it, just see what happens. Also we should probably get medical tests before we think about anything without protection."
>"Why?"
"Radiation, potentially DNA damage... I figure anything radioactive that's bright enough to glow at this range that bright is probably too much for us to survive this place anyway, but it doesn't hurt to plan for the possibility that death doesn't come."
>"Why aren't you foaming out the mouth like Nelson over there? I thought a vandal would be hopping for joy."
"Mister Atomic Weapons over there is a devout follower of a guy long dead. He wrote a news letter in the 80's and he turned it into a book with a little editing and it's very quotable. He's been waiting for a chance to nuke California... Probably since it got nuked the first time. Not that I don't share the sentiment, but it's like being put in a room with FDR and being told what he did without understanding what he did, and being expected to shoot him. For me, the answer is 'I guess.' For someone who understands what he did, look no further than Nelson."
>"So are we gonna..."
"Alright, but I don't know how long we're gonna be on our feet, so we gotta make it quick."
>"Way ahead of you." Molly answered before she looked around and once she saw no one was around, swung an arm around Kyle's neck and pulled him around a barrier, just outside the perimeter.

June 10. 2057....
Chapter 6: Finally Awake.
>The team scouted haphazardly as they heaved the davy crockett down streets to get within striking distance of the glowing green orb. Taking risks they otherwise may not take, they threw bolts, and if they didn't immediately arc laterally, they were considered good paths, and no extra bolts were thrown in order to determine the safety of the paths.
>Time may have been on their side or not, though they knew they could not count upon the former, and so counted on the latter.
>Nelson looked at the sphere and said. "Stop here."
>"Deploy the tripod. Shit's about to get hectic."
>Kyle did his part as well as he could. The tripod legs were spread and then the mount was set so that the barrel could be mounted.
>Nelson mounted the barrel and calculated the aim, while Jim and Andrew loaded the nuclear munition, approximately a century old, into the barrel.
>This fact was not lost upon Kyle. This munition was, if one was inclined to a notion of predestination, was made, specifically for this moment, this projectile was ordained no less, to sit for a century, to be used by a team of men the engineers's own grandchildren would probably never meet, and of a nature the engineer's wildest dreams couldn't conjure.
>Men of extreme backgrounds, bent around by the ideologies of the times and their results, to a complete opposition in what could optimistically be called a regression to a distant historical mean, or pessimistically a shift back, to a new start in a new, and chaotic direction.
>Women of moral character that at the time, would've been considered disgusting even to whores... well, maybe not Molly... Maybe.
>Derelict cowboys from Louisiana, child soldiers remaining from what could only be called terrorist organizations, knowing only to quote books about not just accepting loss, but turning it into a malicious event for those who inflicted it, and hastening the defeat to the point that they'd survive.
>Men like James, who seemed only to appear out of the earth, or otherwise lack a background entirely... 
>All this and more flashed though Kyle's head as he realized that he too, had been ordained to meet this moment.
>He was born twenty eight years earlier, in 2029... To shoot a small nuke at a glowing green ball of what he could only guess to be plasma.
>The rest too, had been born for this moment. Every bit of training, every step on the long trail of isolation that brought them here, every patient treated, every danger embraced, every reason to get away from home to try one's self, or just escape inconvenient entanglements, be it honorable or not.
>2029 to 2057... simply to do this in the most probable end.
>Nelson tied a lanyard with the coordination of a true veteran artilleryman, who'd fired countless crew served recoilless rifles.
>In a series of well coordinated motions, he set the lanyard to length, where he stood.
>In a rare moment of admiration for the man, whose homeland he understood to be too small, a mere seven hundred pages in a book of coherent madness, Kyle allowed himself to note the command of Nelson's presence, how his motions, without any prompting, seemed to command the others out of the backblast without a moment's hesitation.
>Perhaps in another time, such a man would've been a distinguished officer any military would've been proud to call their own.
The rest took positions, where they expected the buildings might offer some degree of protection from oncoming rays.
>"CLEAR BACKBLAST!"
"CLEAR!"
"CLEAR!"
"CLEAR!"
"CLEAR!"
"CLEAR!"
"CLEAR!"
"BACKBLAST IS CLEAR!" Kyle shouted after checking that everyone else was indeed, clear.
>Nelson pulled the cord.
>The M388 flew off in an arc, and Nelson strolled casually into cover.
>Nelson made no attempt to rush himself, or move at any pace greater than that of total leisure.
>Kyle knew that if anything he imagined would happen did, taking cover was only an irrational, and instinctive measure to make the guarded, and razor edged minds of those who did feel more at ease, in what was ultimately a pointless act.
>Kyle reconciled the facts in the coming seconds, and decided to walk into the street, and he watched as the nuke flew into the green orb.
>There was a flash, and in a moment, it expanded, rapidly, and just as Kyle believed that it would engulf and kill them, it stopped only eighty yards short, before the surface began to undergo erratic spikes, and pulsations.
>What happened next, was something out of his imaginings, though perhaps not as painless and annihilation inducing as he expected.
>The ball of energy seemed to jitter as if being disrupted before it collapsed totally, in only a half a second to no size at all.
>Kyle could only helplessly watch as the dome pulled everything in a vicinity of it toward it, regardless of weight, structure, integrity and material before then pushing it outward, including, to enough of a degree to knock him down and throw him thirty feet, HIM.
>All around the sphere of influence, pulled and then pushed twice as hard outward, every mosquito mange in the city in all directions did the same, in a sequence relative to its proximity to the initial anomaly.
>Zones of gravitational distortion expanded to one and a half times their initial hemispheric depth, before contracting in and in a speed near sufficient enough to warrant the use of the term, blasted walls of bricks and mortar, chunks of cement, girders and even shards of broken glass long forgotten by time as if all the rest wasn't enough.
>Kyle watched all the buildings around him shatter into projected fragments just before losing consciousness.

In AN Ether.
>Across Kyle's darkness, all he could see, in his mind's eye, was a two lane road. On his flanks he saw that a kind of terror had engulfed the once serene woods to either side of the road, and he heard screams, voices familiar, but long distant in memory.
>Walking down the overcast and fog shaded road, he came to a town, couldn't have housed more than three hundred people, and at the mouth of road leading into it, sat a dark haired woman by a campfire.
>Kyle Approached, gently, and respectfully, waiting to be acknowledged.
>"I'm not your mother." The woman said without looking up. She continued. "I once promised to watch over all sons and daughters of Eric Rall. I've kept that promise."
"How do you know my father?"
>"I've watched you for a long time, you errant drifter. Truthfully I'd expected you to come along far later than you did. I had bet with Roger that Jason would be the one to come along first. Youngest son, runt with a need to be living proof of his strength. But YOU. NOW. What would your parents say?"
"I can't say I know. You look familiar though. You know me... where from?"
>"I should I watched you look at the picture on the wall of Roscoes bar too many times for you not to remember my face. Though in truth, we never met in life."
"In life? Wait, you're from the picture? That would make you... Huh. I never learned your name."
>"I'm Monica. I was the mother of Eric Rall's firstborn son, Paul. He was named for a friend of his who died in California. He'd have been your half brother."
"You said we never met in life. Does that mean I've-"
>"MAYBE."
"Maybe?"
>"Well, you're walking down the ages. That town there is Sattley. It sits on route 49 and 89. At this time I've picked, 49 live here. I always wanted it to see it."
"So... maybe..."
>"It's too soon to tell. If you find yourself in nature and someone comes to you calling you an unfamiliar name, you'll know you didn't wake up."
"What could I do if that happened?"
>"Nothing. As soon as it happens, either you've got some duties that bind you to this world, or they take you home."
"Then why are you here?"
>"It's peaceful here. Eric used to talk about this place. He could get past it. I could never let go. I always kept the helmet he got me close by. Goggles always mounted. Just in case I needed to protect my head at night in the woods where there's little or no light."
"Goggles? Is that your grave that has the old airframe helmet?"
>"The very same. Pity for me it didn't do me any good. But, if it did, I suppose you'd never have existed. Eric having never met Jane and all."
"So why am I face to... brick. A brick hit me, huh?"
>"A lot of bricks hit you. Luckily you're pretty tough. Maybe tough enough yet, boy."
>A familiar voice called from the woods. Kyle couldn't make out words, but the voice was certainly in distress.
>"You should see if you can go back, boy. It's going to hurt."
>Kyle began to walk back toward the voice, but before he could move take more than a step, something occurred to him. He turned back to Monica.
"How am I doing out there?"
>For the first time, Monica lifted her head and pointed it toward him, rather than staring at the fire, acknowledging him in more than just word. "You're badly beaten, injured and bleeding internally. You'll recover with proper medical attention in time. That woman's pleading over your body. There's three people with her. As near as she can tell, you're on the brink."
>Kyle's face shifted, and momentarily Monica's expression even shifted to confusion, and then realization.
>"You meant in a broader sense. Right. You're doing great, kid." she said, cracking a smile.
>kyle walked away, back up the road. Soon his joints began to ache, and so did his body. Nevertheless, he dragged on, carrying himself forward until finally, he rolled over on his back, and passed out.

>Kyle awakened to see a badly bloodied face with disheveled and heavily dinged red hair around it, beneath a helmet with a visible hole in it.
>Her eyes were glassy, with tears streaming down her dirtied cheeks.
>She was frantic, and he couldn't hear a word she was screaming. Her hands reached down to his face, examining his open eyes. Her frenzy seemed to slow as she noted that his attention, though not smoothly delivered, did indeed move between her finger, her face, her helmet. For a moment, Eric could see behind that blood and dirt covered face, something he couldn't really be sure of. Could it have been a spark of hope?
>She picked her head up and began calling something he could only hear as distant and muffled murmurs.
>Who was she calling to? It didn't matter. He could address it later. He was tired. His eyes felt like knives turned in their sockets every second longer that he kept them open.
>He once more fell into the warm embrace of darkness.

>In a dark room, overrun with the shadows that accompany the silver tones of moonlight, A single face was made out against the murky interior of the room.
>The man's visage was marked by a beard, trimmed at the jawline and rendered in an inky black by the sole glow that illuminated him.
>His eyes showed to the moon in a dim gray imparted by the galaxy itself and so did his hair. The two pok marks in the right side of his face were made apparent only by a slim margin, a small circular mark no larger across than the widest portion of a pen point on his inner jowel, and the other, a strange mark reminiscent in shape of a zygodactil claw or the head of crescent wrench, no larger than the eraser on a pencil, sitting just at the edge of his right eye socket.
>A small scar, which could be seen with a high enough degree of concentration, graced the bridge of his nose, and a long thin scar presided, running down his left cheek toward the man's sternum, from the edge of his other eye socket to just above his lips.
>The tingling he felt in his side was an eerie reminder. Things that came, Things that would come, people who would come. People who had. All flashed before his eyes while he gazed out to the moon, hoping to burn his eyes open, building a form of inertia toward the eyes being open while he scanned for things in the wilderness that surrounded the room.
The room was arranged somewhat like a regular bedroom. A dresser sat to the man's left side, empty, as he had no family to bring him clothing to wear on this occasion. Whether they would have been allowed to would be a subject of speculation. The bed on which he sat upright was relatively centered against a wall. Potentially offset by a few inches, but ultimately flanked on both sides by two symmetrically placed nightstands, rendering the room symmetrical save for the dresser. The dark shapes of the room, the recessed led lights interspersed among two skylights on the roof. The man could only think to the strange events and circumstances, the objects and the actions that he last remembered.
>He had no family to bring him clothes to wear. He'd not be possessed of them for some time in his estimation, but for now, it was probably better that he was out on his own devices. The unfortunate part was that he was not entirely alone. He could count them on his fingers, but with a sigh, he could count his spirits higher that THAT person wasn't present for the time being.
>He could lay back and rest.
>As he looked onto the haze obscured gibous moon, and his consciousness seemed to withdraw from the world around him, he could just faintly make out the noise though he was just too far gone to notice the voice.
>"Hey! You're here! You okay?"
>The man was Injured. The kind of injury that time might heal, but it would take moving on. It would take a long time moving, and great deal of "on," whatever that might be.
>The man however, also, was tired. He'd spent a long time in this place. Maybe one day he'd get back out.
>It was the kind of tired sleep doesn't fix.
>He knew who had come. He'd choose to slip away even if he could make the choice. For once, something had gone his way this... Month?
>Was it this month?
>Had it been a month?

>Time rolled past, steadily the moments turned to minutes and then to hours.
>The moon rolled off the windows and the sun slid about the horizon wearily as the inertia of the world wearily brought about the unstoppable day.
>The desert outside rested as lazily as he did as he looked out the window to the rocky, desolate landscape beyond.
>The door to the room opened as silently as the dark haired woman who walked in.
>As if she were an apparition, she moved, like only the softest of outlines, around the wall of the room. Her appearance broken up by the shirt she wore.
>Slowly, Kyle allowed himself to notice her, and turned his head to see a dark haired woman with bright brown eyes.
>"I've tracked you a long way, and a long time to find you here. Are you still searching for that special place?
"Witchy."
>"How long has it been? Ten years?"
"Where's Molly?"
>"She had complications. She's asleep right now. She's very lucky that she didn't die from what the doctors could tell. Not that you were in better shape. She was up and about just a few hours ago."
"Why are you here?"
>"I've been watching you ever since you left. I watched you in Camden, in Baton Rouge, I was even watching you in Kansas city and in Miami. You took so many steps to make sure you weren't followed, but in the end, you always stuck out, even when you blended so perfectly that law enforcement couldn't even see the vandal boarding a plane."
"Enough of your feverish talk. Where is Molly."
>"She's resting in the room next door. I wouldn't wake her though. It could be bad."
"Why have you come here?"
>"I just couldn't let you stay out here after I managed to track you down in a hospital, in this condition. In fact, I've already contacted your parents about your current location and they're making arrangements to get out here as we speak. Your aunt and uncle are also in the waiting room. They've been there as long as they've been allowed the last few nights."
"What? Where am I?"
>"You're in a private hospital facility courtesy of the stalking company, since you were in the zone. I lied and said you were family, so I got in, and your aunt and uncle were coming out of the zone when the wave occurred, so they're allowed in as well. Right out there, is Utah."
"Utah... Why bring me here?"
>"Because you, and those of your team who survived, are high interest subjects. You'll be here for study, at least until your recovery that is."
"Those arrangements to bring me back... Do they include Molly?"
>"Yes. But I'm not letting you stay out here. You belong in a sheltered meadow, not a meatgrinder."
"There IS no sheltered meadow, Witchy."
>"What?"
"There's no place in this entire part of the world where the tendrils of the plague that infests these times has not reached. There's no where you can run to rest your weary bones. Nor should there be. Why should I find a place to rest while my brothers have dug in to fight this plague that seeks them out in their own homes? Why should I have peace when they've turned around and met the fight? I met it once, and then, like now, I woke up after going under in a hospital bed with you watching over me. My wife died and I sought to get away from the front, only to jump, until now unknowingly in the belly of the beast."
>"We live in peace at home... okay, most times. Are you telling me you didn't LIVE in the sheltered meadow?"
"No. I want to get back to it. But it's not a sheltered meadow. It's a fortress. And the only one yet worth defending."

>Witchy Turned to look out the window. She only too perfectly hid any trace of expression from her face, which to Kyle only betrayed more openly the pattern of thought behind her face. He needed only the subject matter and he'd have known what she was thinking.
>"I wondered what you would say for ten years. Of all the things I imagined you'd say in my mind, while I've been keeping tabs on you, in ten entire years I never once imagined that you'd start with hope."
"What happened to her must happen to us all. The only question is if we choose to face it or if it comes to our last hiding place."
>"Of course it must. But before you say the sentence I've guessed you'd probably say next for two years, go ahead and hold that thought. And uh, don't worry about government agents. Private eyes. They're watching you."
>Witchy put Kyle behind her and walked from the room.

June 24, 2057.
>Kyle walked achingly through the gates of Vandal's camp. The old man on sentry duty, looking as if a rippled curtain was placed over a frame chiseled from stone, stared at the battered and still visibly injured man and woman passing by as though he saw someone who'd gone out to scout something ten years gone come back from the same event bloodied but not defeated despite all odds.
>Kyle met his gaze, and smiled. The man closed his eyes, shook his head and opened them again as if shaking away visions.
>Kyle thought he looked familiar, though he couldn't place him.
>The man slung his AK74 that he'd held low and walked away from the barricade toward kyle.
>Kyle stopped as the man approached.
>"Rall? Is that you?"
>The beatings all came back.
>Beatdowns.
>Sparring matches.
>Pushups.
"DAMN! Uncle Jason, you got OLD!"

>"I've always been old, ever since I woke up in Florida.  It's just come to the surface, boy! Not looking so young yourself, what grave did you come out of?"
"California. It's a bit less dead than one would hope."
>"The fuck were you doing there? Is that where you pulled this woman from?"
"Oh, you know. Dying. If you could see the shit going on there, or the wildlife, I'm sure you'd be running through that place too."
>"Eh. I've seen enough of the planet. After you've done what I have, you just want a nice place to settle in where you know people, you're not hours away from a walk in nature, and you got enough privacy that you don't have to worry about prying eyes when you're with your wife. But I imagine you might be learning about that soon."
"It certainly has its appeal. Like the old bar man used to say, cold beer, warm pussy, and some place to take a shit with a door on it. Speaking of, is he still 'round and about?"
>"Well, he's old as dirt, but I think he's still hangin' about. Walks the woods and such every once in a while. They say he watches over the innocent and the found."
"... Is he a ghost?" Kyle asked with a look of pure incredulity upon his face.
>"No, he's not even dead! He just appears every now and again in a picture, in the haze, out of focus or whatever because he's walking around in the treeline or something. Who knows... Maybe he's watching over you, boy."
"So anyway, If you see my dad before I do, or uncle Mike, tell'em not to go to California. Shit's mad."
>"The fuck's going on there?"
"Well, first there was a giant ass Squirrel, and we had to use a NUKE to blow it up, then there was a big green glow ball, and Molly here had to drag me out of the rubble, since I was taking a nap under a nice blanket of bricks. I think I saw the splorch under there."
>"The splor-... You know what, don't ever bring that thing up again, go in and find your family. They're waiting for you. And Molly."
>"Yes, sir?" Molly answered dutifully.
>"Welcome. I know it's a trip at first."
>"Thank you."
>Kyle began walking again with Molly, and passed the gates of the compound.
>Sights began coming back, watching the world, ten years gone by, come back, slowly enveloping him and returning around him. Integrating with him as much as he integrated with it.
>Molly observed Kyle as he seemed to become colored into environment that surrounded them. Where colors on his face seemed to be lifeless, and those in the world around him seemed to be full and vibrant, the colors on his face would become vibrant, and where the colors on his boots seemed sharp and colored out of the background, they slowly turned that telltale tan gray that came of boots in this environment.
>As they walked, Kyle regaled her with tales of things that used to happen and have probably happened again in the same spot ten times still since his leaving. He pointed out places and things and people.
>Soon enough, the walk ended and he came to the house that he'd grown up in.
>An old woman with grayed hair and a neatly formed stance and facial features sat sewing outside the front door of the home.
>She sat rocking restlessly in her chair as she slowly came to notice the two people standing in front of her, one, a blonde haired man covered in harsh bruises and marks and the other a red haired woman, also covered in such marks and bruises and scars caused by being bombarded with bricks.
>The old woman's eyes shot up and focused on the two standing twenty five feet in front of her.
>She recognized almost in an instant that the two were a couple, seeing how the woman had more or less physically linked herself to the man, and within a few seconds, it occurred to her to take her glasses off and stare at the two until her eyes focused.
>As she realized what she was seeing in front of her, she inhaled a deep breath.
>"ERIC! OUR SON BROUGHT HOME A REDHEAD!"
>"HE BROUGHT HOME A WHAT?" Kyle heard coming from inside the house.
>Molly pointed her face to Kyle as if to demand answers.
>Kyle's gaze met hers and he spoke.
"I don't know either." Kyle stated before bringing his gaze back to the door and watched as the screen door opened and an ancient man burst out like he was seventeen and got the call.
>"Holy shit, you're not kidding honey."
>"I TOLD you he's gone astray!" the old woman shouted, plopping her knitting into her lap and crossing her arms.
>"Son! Let me take a look at you, boy! What were you doing all these years?"
"Dangerous jobs. This is Molly, she and I met at the last one and she was with me when I got marked up."
>"You got marked up pretty bad, did you shower with-"
"Bricks."
>"First we had matching scars, and now you got more scars. So, look. I know we haven't had the chance to talk in ten years, son, so you two come on in. Molly, it's nice to meet you. You must be pretty special for him to go to all the effort to bring you out here. I've got some coffee on the burner, and Jane can still get some jokes in about Kyle." Eric turned and walked with Kyle and Molly on his heel into the house.
>Jane stood up and followed suit.
>The room was decorated with a rug made from the skin of a bear that Kyle had killed when he was only a boy, several bucks were mounted on the wall, as well as some elk.
>Kyle and Molly sat down on a couch wherein Eric and Jane could sit down in front of them.
>Eric stepped out of the room and went for some coffee.
>When he came back into the room, he handed everyone a cup of coffee before taking one for himself.
>"So son. Are you back to stay?" he asked directly.
"I'd like to. I've had my fill of adventures, and Molly and I both have the scars to prove it. I guess all I can do anymore is make an honest go of it."
>Jane cut in. "Now, I was young once too, so son I'd like to know how confident you are in this decision."
"Well, Mom, I'm as confident as I was in the direction I was going before. You know."
>"I see. I just wish you'd have sent letters or something. You left and for ten years, NOT ONE WORD."
>"Settle down." Eric commanded with restraint. "The boy had his reasons. I seem to recall we BOTH uprooted ourselves when we were younger."
>"My situation-"
>"I'll hear no more. I know why he did it, and you do too. Besides, if I didn't do the same for the same reason, would we have MET?"
>Jane's expression changed as she thought about that day decades earlier and she was reminded of the photograph that hung upon the wall in the bar. A picture of her own husband, imperceptibly younger than when they'd met, and with a different woman. A woman she'd never met. A woman whose grave she'd visited, and whose headstone bore the last name of her husband. 
>In that instant, she realized her error.
>"I know you had your reasons." She said somberly. "Well, enough about the far past. You're back, and I reckon you got plenty of catching up to do with your siblings. Molly? I simply must know. Where did you come from? How did you come to be so attached to my son?"
>Molly, prompted for the first time, was caught off guard.
>"We met in a briefing room. I think where we really bonded was in the physical assessment when we partnered up. We ran together, we did exercises together, we were tested together. When we went to California to make our money, we went to the field together, we scouted together, we found artifacts together. We're inseparable."
>"And when exactly did you come to this conclusion?" Eric asked her.
>"First day. We were running up to the top of this building when the structure collapsed. We spent what felt like eight hours pressed together. When they pulled us out I never said it, but aside from the danger of being crushed to death, I really didn't feel like complaining. And about two months later, here we are."
>"I hope you'll forgive me for saying this, Molly, but this story sounds familiar." Eric said.
>After stating that, Eric knowingly smiled at Jane, and caught her gaze, and her expression of consideration changed to a grin.
>Jane spoke, this time warmly, to the couple sipping coffee on the couch. "I am fairly old. But one thing I am not young lady, is blind. And if I'm seeing what I think I'm seeing... again, then I have a single important request. Call me mom."
Kyle turned his head to look at Molly's expression, momentarily lapsing and revealing that she was dumbfounded before recomposing her face.
"Well, honey, Ma came around quick."

>Kyle had sat around the table with Molly and his parents and the four had many things to discuss.
>Among the many issues that come up when one brings home oh so similar yet oh so alien a woman to their parents were things like general outlook, temperament, the value placed on those around, how open one might be to some notions and ideas that, from the outside world looking in, may seem to be shocking or outlandish, but from the inside looking out, would be no more than a simple mater of course.
>Jokes were told.
>Laughs were had.
>Questions were raised.
>Impressions were formed.
>Then SHE came in.
>Her face was frantic, and she carried two helmets.
>"ERIC! KYLE! AN FBI TEAM HAS BEEN SPOTTED IN THE WILDERNESS!"
>"Oh for fuck sake." Eric muttered, seemingly too quick to be out of his chair and armored up.
>Molly, out of some irrational compulsion, called "What about me?"
>"You stay here. Witchy, keep our ladies safe, we'll go deal with it." Eric replied.
>Kyle lofted the helmet to his head and followed suit after his father.
>As Kyle walked briskly, he'd wished that he had a pair of night vision goggles on this helmet. However, he couldn't be expected to have any but what he provided.
"Dad?"
>"Yes, son?"
"Have they be trying to raid the compound a lot lately?"
>"No, but occasionally you just gotta cap a few of them."
"Well, at least FBI niggers glow in the dark."
>"FOCUS son. I don't want you getting religious after I just got you back."
"Religious, dad?"
>"Holy."
"Oh."
>As the two continued toward the outer wall near the last sighting of the FBI team, Eric looked back at his son with a knowing, yet approving grin.
>Eric was proud to see his own son, his progeny, grown and having made his own way in life, and even more profoundly to him, to have in such a similar way to himself, made his own way back home.
>In a few minutes, they'd reached the outer wall, where a hastily organized militia that was arranged to be ready to respond tonight had assembled.
>Kyle peered around attempting to identify familiar faces, finding the age old problem of identifying people obscured by night vision goggles and aged ten years on persisted, even half way through the twenty first century.
>"Ooooh, I remember you." One of the men said. "We'll catch up later, you'll be owing that to me, bud. Meantime, go ahead and hang here. You still like night vision, right?"
"Yeah."
>"Well, we don't have a helmet set up and ready for you right now, so I'll go ahead and ask that you stay back here and play with the thermal scope."
"Thermal... Right."
>"You scored crack in the academy. You're our best pick."
"It was expert, but thanks. I won't let you down."
>"Even better, come with me. Eric, you're geared, but you're old, you're gonna be on overwatch for the team taking the southern flank."
>"Yes sir." Eric responded.
>The man who'd addressed them took the lead and Kyle followed to a to the north in the wall, where a permanent observation post was set up on a set of hatched loopholes that could be opened and closed to take pot shots at the various forces that had at various points tried to make the community a target over the decades since their divergence from typical "American" society.
A couple minutes later, a man with two rifles came with a duffel bag over his shoulder.
>"This the guy you got for me?"
>"Yep, Rick, This is Kyle Rall, just got back from the world, Kyle, this is Rick Ferguson, He's a bit younger than you, but he's another expert qualifier from the Academy."
>"Nice to meet you, Kyle. I'm Rick," He said, extending a hand, which Kyle shook firmly. "I'm the go-to sniper around here."
"Likewise. Now you say Go-to, does this happen frequently?"
>"Occasionally there's this type of thing. It's not infrequent, but it's not endemic. Sometimes just some uppity teens from the not too distant cities that we just nscare off, other times we've confirmed agent provocateurs from the FBI trying to infiltrate the compound."
"Well. lets get to work." Kyle said, prompting the other men present to begin to brief him on the situation.
>To the east of the wall, somewhere in the treeline, there's a couple of gunmen who were seen sighting in on the walls.
>When they were spotted, the sentries were told to duck their heads down so they didn't skyline themselves into catching a round to the neck.
>From a gate to the south, a team was departing into the treeline equipped with old fashioned pure intensification night vision goggles and from the north, a team of five with two of them wearing fusion systems headed out into the trees.
>From behind the wall, in two more hides than the one in which Kyle found himself, teams of three men, two shooters equipped with rifles with COTIs to the front of day optics and one spotter with a similarly equipped spotting scope, scanned the treeline, and observed for signitures through keyholes in the wall.
"You know, Rick? We can't see well through screens if we put them up, right?"
>"Right."
"We better fucking hope they don't have thermal too..." Kyle remarked.
>A silence hung in the air after he said that.
>Kyle could feel Richard trying to ignore that air of bad luck that had just rose over their hide Justin, a Friend, and cousin to the late Susan, was less tolerant, and after about thirty seconds had passed, snapped.
>"Alright, close the shutters, you've jinxed us."
"Wait a minute, I see them."
>"Huh?"
"They're about... thirty feet into the woodline... and they're wearing Thermal camo."
>Kyle took out a lensatic compass and took a bearing on the position while he studied a gently, everso slightly moving dark spot just to the left of a tree with what appeared to be a heart carved into it.
"Heading.... One zero... eight. Reference the tree with the heart on the trunk."
>"Hang on... Haaaang oooon. Got it."
"'Bout three feet to the left, there's a dark spot. Does that appear to be moving rhythmically to you?"
>absolute stillness engulfed them as Rick observed for another forty seconds.
>"Yeah, Kyle, that does indeed appear to be moving."
>Kyle watched as he noted a slight movement of the dark spot, the slightly cooler than ambient mass repositioning itself?
>Preparing for the shot, maybe?
"I'm taking 'em."
>Kyle settled the reticle on the mostly obscured mass.
>Its coldness not being enough to save it from his cold gaze.
>He milked the trigger.
>Slowly.
>One pound...
>Then two.
>Then three.
>He started to calmly exhale.
>radio chatter that he'd been ignoring turned into simple toned murmurs as his world consisted solely of a monochrome display of black white and varying shades of gray in between that made his sight picture.
>The three and a half pound trigger began to slowly, ever so slightly move back, tense, and tightened like an arm holding a body below it to a cliff.
>There was a white flash, covering a portion of the gray spot.
>Before Kyle had time to react, the tension was released, the trigger limply retreated from his finger any way it could...

>Kyle flinched back in pain when mildly speedy fragments of the wall and the bullet that'd just hit it, deflected off the corner of the firing port through which he'd just fired, embedding themselves at just slow enough a pace, that he'd not have to spend the rest of his days drooling on himself in a wheelchair, and struggling with monosyllabic words.
>That did not however, excuse the fact that whatever glowing FBI nigger was out there had effectively shot him in the face, and Kyle would've gone right back to the loophole to fire again were it not for the plain and simple call of "HE'S DEAD!" that Kyle heard as he he opened his eyes and took the time to assess.
>He's dead.
>Kyle thought for a moment.
>He Didn't see a reason to think that it'd be over that quickly.
>He also didn't see a reason to go back to the firing port, as he focused past the burning, embedded pain in his cheeks and jaw, and past the seeming attenuation of his ears after the round smacked right in front of him as loudly as if the gun had fired unsuppressed and with unprotected ears to play into.
>The ringing of further echoes, rapid, rhythm defying percussive staccato bursts played a bass act against the bare skin of his arms. He knew all the better that the snipers were dead or leaving the world in the next ten seconds with no need for his intervention as the sound of shots slammed into the wall of the night.
>Kyle gritted his teeth as he stood straight and resumed his position with the other men.
>They were staring at him as though he'd suddenly grown a genital on his forehead. He knew what'd happened. And he was less concerned with it in itself than what Molly would make of it when he returned home for the night.
>He took this moment to look back through the thermal sight, and reacquire the sniper's hide.
>He scanned, found the tree again, and this time, as reward for his discipline in the face of what could've been death, there was a stream of a white spillage from the near ambient gray mass.
>The form had been poised rigidly, deposited evenly over its position, after the shot, however, he'd become slightly flatter, as his gray matter was destroyed, and his cranial vault was vented into the thermal camouflage shroud he wore.
>The use of the Thermal Camouflage would've been effective prior to the shot. After, however, it'd become soaked with the heated blood of the man who wore it, and thus, his face shroud brightened under the thermal imager.
>There were some skull fragments on his back.
>Silence had once more consumed the pleasant evening air.
>CRACK!
>CRACKACKCACKAKCK

Chapter 7: A Prosaic Hero.
>A young man of 24 years old slinked among forest vegetation with four more amorphous forms.
>Their thermal camo would have made them difficult to see were it not for the fact that they were unobserved.
>As they moved, obstructed from view by a mound in the dirt, they heard the beginnings.
>Two shots occurred, almost simultaneously, as the group stopped their slow movement.
>Then a long winded clattering of shots proceeded along the next several seconds, like some sort of three act parade, orchestrated expertly for the ear of any who listened from a detached distance.
>The streaming concussions of fire stopped, and then serene silence once more consumed the night sky.
>The man looked to his Compatriots as he slowly exhaled. He savored every breath after he felt the impending dread of a shoot out come and go without so much as a threat to his own personal safety.
>At 24, he'd seen far too many instances of such things to fail the test of appreciating such good fortunes.
>Minutes passed as the silence of the night washed over them like cool waters of relief.
>An eruption burst out as fully automatic fire began to trade and issue forth from both the fortified wall and the vegetation behind the treeline.
>The bursts multiplied and intensified, as more flashes were discerned, and fire swept forth, pouring onto whatever source had been sighted.
>He began moving through the forest in echelon with his men.
>Soon they found that they were being raked by inaccurate harassing fire that sporadically poured out of the walls to be greeted with returned fire from well hidden shooters, only receiving suppressing fire in return to prevent advance until muzzle flashes were sighted, permitting the shooters on the wall to quickly dump belts worth of ammunition into those points.

>One by one, they watched as dozens of flashes and positions populated with two to four men received belts worth of ammunition, and men crumpled under the impacts of rifle caliber bullets.
>The fire on the wall, oft concentrated, continued, and for the moment, The team in the woods waited, until he decided upon his course of action.
"Hey, wait until the FBI start shooting at the wall, then while they're doing that, fire ONE round, ONE. Aim for their heads."
>"Copy." Came the reply.
He keyed his radio "Patrol post, this is sliver, we're at the side of lines from the south watching FBI agents firing at the wall of the compound. I count a dozen positions manned by four men each, marked strength for one platoon in the eastern sector. They are located approximately three miles north of gate twelve."
>"Copy, Sliver. We'll send more force out to reinforce you, you are cleared to engage at your discretion, but we may not be able to reinforce you for some time, manage your risks appropriately."
>Hours would pass, and soon, it was three in the morning. Fire picked up, and the FBI agents who were left retreated in order to prevent themselves from being caught in the pincer that started to form around their positions as patrol units began to filter out into their sides and harass them with withering fire. 
>Towards three in the morning, it was time for him to walk back into the compound.
>This patrol had been long, and he'd been at the end of it when the shots started.
>He'd personally killed 12 before they realized they were being fired on from the sides, and turned on him.
>Light fire from their other side caused them to fuck off.
>This fight, like so many others after the first hundred, was ignominious.
>He approached a situation that should've been easy to contain only to find it just out of control enough to evade his power.
>The fight ebbed and flowed JUST hard enough to nearly kill him.
>But... He did indeed survive with not so much as a scratch.
>And he managed the fight well enough not to die. He watched the FBI retreat. Was this the twentieth?
>He walked back into the walls and headed home.
>He dropped his gear and he showered before he got a phonecall.
>He was told to go to the Rall residence.
"No rest for the wicked." he thought through the type of mind that lives behind bleary eyes.
>He did as he was told. He was clad though not in his cammies, but in summer shorts.
>He walked toward the house where he was instructed to come visit.
>When the prosaic hero walked in, he was surprised to see a strange woman tending to a familiar looking man, his face muddied with dried blood from superficial encephalon injuries.
>Her hair was red, and her features seemed slightly soft and puffy. Her eyes, two laser focused sapphire blue orbs, didn't so much as glance away from the familiar looking man.
>He looked to be an aged mutation upon a face he recognized. Could this really be...
>He struggled to control a wince as a fragment of a bullet was dug out of his face with a pair of tweezers.
>"...Kyle?"
>The tweezers found their mark, and dug out a particularly large fragment and the woman drew back, lowering the tweezers.
>Kyle looked at the young man before him, too old to be his 24 year old younger brother.
>Kyle stared for a moment. He matched up the weathered features of a hard worn young man who'd had ten years to age and seemed to manage fifteen.
"...Jason?!" Kyle roared as he bounded up from the chair, face bloodied, and still now bleeding and shredded by wounds.
>Kyle cleared the room in seemingly two steps and hugged his brother.
>"Holy shit." Jason muttered as he pushed Kyle away a foot.
>"Are you finished with him, miss....?" he spoke clearly and carefully as he leaned his head over Kyle's shoulder to make eye contact with the woman.
>"Molly Kaye. And no. I take it you're the younger brother I've heard about?"
>"You've heard of me?" Jason managed to ask, his face drifting halfway into an absent expression of atrophy.
>"Something about shooting urban protestors?"
>"Oh... I uh... Yeah, I did that." Jason answered.
>"Well, if they come back, I'd be thankful to you if you shot even more. Meanwhile, can I have my man back? He still has a little bit of metal embedded in his face."
>"OK. Kyle, go ahead and sit down for. That lady YOURS?" Jason asked, turning his attention back to his older brother.
"Yeah."
>"Well, sit down for your lady, let her dig all that shit out of your head, you and I can catch up later today when I'm not dead tired, but it's great to see you bro. Just one thing though... our sisters are going to hit you."
"I'd like to see them try." Kyle replied with a chuckle that quickly turned into a wince.
>"Seriously. Sit down and let the lady take that out of your face and stop the bleeding. Ma and pa are pretty particular about you staining the rugs with your blood."
"Okay." Kyle muttered in exhaustion.
>Kyle, with a graceful expression, slowly hovered over to the chair, and lowered himself back into it.
>Jason turned and walked out.
>Kyle and Molly both watched Jason seemingly hover away with no more presence of mind than a computer places into sitting wherever it is it sits.
>An occupied mind, not presently occupying its body.
>Molly turned her attention to Kyle. "Those eyes were vacant. Is your older brother like that too?"
"No. Jason's just tired. He gets like that. He's more lively when he's rested. Junior's endlessly charismatic. I can't say I expected more. Last time I saw him, he was barely starting to grow up and now he's too old for his age. Something's been eating at him."
>"Maybe so. Please hold still, hon. It's gonna keep stinging." Molly answered without much concern.