Leonine appeared once more with several men in tow. Cloudhawk nervously watched him approach. He hadn’t fought the old man but he knew he was on par with the likes of Mad Dog. If it came down to a battle, he was sure to lose.
“Alright, put away your weapons.” Leonine’s voice exuded an eerie calm. He spoke unhurriedly. “Number two wasn’t worth shit. He started a fight he couldn’t finish. Even death won’t clear his shame. From today onwards, you’re gonna take his place as my number two.”
That was all the attention Leonine was going to pay to the brute’s death. Now Cloudhawk was his victim’s replacement?
“You got fifteen minutes to prep.” Leonine plucked a canteen from his person and threw it towards Cloudhawk. “After fifteen minutes we’re movin’.”
Cloudhawk caught the canteen and shook it. Inside, water sloshed around enticingly. It was full, much to his delight. Full of life-saving nectar!
He pulled open the bung and handed it to the Queen. He didn’t do it out of any altruistic moral sense. Cloudhawk knew he wasn’t strong enough so he needed the Queen at her best to keep him safe.
These wasteland savages were vicious and cruel, but they were good at adapting to circumstances. Cloudhawk’s bloody showing had made a deep impression, to say the least. They were like different people now and respectfully addressed Cloudhawk as “Second Brother.”
The Bloodsoaked Queen gulped down half the canteen’s contents. She felt like a sunbaked desert after a blessed rain. From head to toe, from inside to out, it was like she could feel every cell in her body being nourished. Being reborn.
Cloudhawk drank what was left. He really was parched and didn’t leave a single drop of water remaining. As he drank it down, he felt the water infusing him with vigor. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this good.
Fifteen minutes later…
Cloudhawk and the Bloodsoaked Queen found themselves part of this band of wasteland outlaws, headed for a place called the Greenland Outpost.
56 Land of Ruins
Cloudhawk and the Queen rode atop a giant lizard, the light of the dawn casting their shadows long across the dunes. Here, the monotony of the wastelands was broken when the desert gave way to a cluster of ruined structures.
Metal husks rusted beneath the beating sun. High walls crumbled away like the flesh of ancient, long-dead beasts. What remained of the city stretched out across the horizon as a concrete and steel jungle, far as the eye could see. Baked by the sun, beaten by the winds and sand, the magnificence of dilapidation was laid bare before them.
The group wandered for a few dozen meters until they found a crack in the wall and slipped into the wasted metropolis. Even after years of erosion, even now after the weeds had reclaimed this place, the towering wreckage remained a testament to the splendor of the old world.
As the humans picked their way through the ruins, they were dwarfed by its scale. Cloudhawk and the others were insects in comparison. More than just broken skyscrapers peppered the landscape. Statues, temples, and palaces dotted their path. Great peaks, collapsed burrows, and all manner of debris were interposed throughout. Strange sites with stranger histories. Who knew what this place used to be like in its heyday? What sorts of experiences waited along its streets and in its buildings? All of it was lost to the inevitable march of time.
The ruins would probably protect them from the winds and sand. Shrubs and low foliage could be seen all around, traces of life everywhere they looked. The city had become a collapsed labyrinth that Cloudhawk and the others could get lost in forever. Even experienced wasteland rangers would have a hard time finding their way out.
It wasn’t Leonine’s first trip to the Greenland Outpost. He was experienced enough to avoid detours and misleading roads. He also knew when to skirt dangerous lairs where fell beasts lay in waiting. As they made their way through the ruins, nothing made passage difficult.
About an hour later…
A strange howl echoed through the cluttered, dilapidated streets all around them. No one could distinguish what it was or where it came from. That is, until an arachnid-like monster skittered from the ruins. It leapt from the darkness, whipping its four limbs with incredible speed, and landed before one of the soldiers. The human victim brandished his weapon for protection and was quick enough to thrust it at the beast.
But the monster was faster than anyone could have expected. It allowed the weapon to plunge into it as the creature opened its black maw and buried its fangs in the warrior’s shoulder.
“Kill it!”
A handful of the men attacked, stabbing it repeatedly. But even after a dozen or so strikes, the beast still lashed about. Eventually, it stopped moving when a war hammer smashed its brains to bits.
Cloudhawk had a chance to look at it more closely. It only had four limbs, a head, eyes, ears, and a nose… familiar features except for the greyish-black flesh. Its legs and arms were twisted grotesquely. “Did this thing used to be human?”
Leonine pulled out a saber. The weapon was roughly five feet long, large and unadorned, with a blade just as long as the hilt. It was perfectly straight and about as wide as one’s palm. Though it was nicked and etched with blood, the saber still managed to twinkle with a cold and lethal light. The grizzled veteran was sinister enough, but with the saber in hand, he looked like he could cut down a whole host of enemies.
“Leonine, what the hell are you doing!?!”
Leonine had just thrown himself into the crowd like a shooting star. His saber streaked through the air with all the force of a raging river, right for the wide-eyed warrior that’d been bit. The unfortunate man’s head soared high and hit the ground several meters away. Meanwhile, his body collapsed in a spray of blood. He was dead before he knew what had happened.
The others gaped at Leonine.
“That wasn’t a mutant. It was a walking corpse.” Leonine stood tall with the dagger tight in his grip. Not a spot of blood was on it. “If ya get bit by one of em, you turn in less than a day. You join the ranks of the walkin’ dead. He had to be dealt with.”
It was the first time Cloudhawk had ever heard of anything like this.
Leonine continued. “Zombies like this move in packs. We gotta leave, now.”
As though on cue, the wailing rasp of zombies called out from all around. Like nightmarish insects, the dead started closing in on them, skittering over walls and out through cracks in the ruins. They crawled and groped with hungry scarlet red eyes. Dozens of them were closing in already and there were more coming.
Cloudhawk’s face fell. “There are so many of them!”
Leonine hefted his dagger. “Y’all come with me. Careful you don’t get bit and try not to get any of their blood on ya.”
Indeed, these corpses weren’t mutants. They were monsters, human flesh transformed into beasts through some evil poison.
A zombie’s poison was primarily in its saliva and secondarily in its blood. One bite and their disease would be passed on. Anyone unlucky enough to feel their teeth was as good as dead. If any of their blood got into an open wound, the chances were also good that the disease would be transmitted.
There was no medicine. No cure. That’s what made these monsters so terrifying! Cloudhawk was willing to fight against all sorts of creatures, things that lived only in nightmares and the darkness of the wastes. But he sure as shit wasn’t interested in tangling with the dead.
Leonine led the way, racing ahead. His dagger flashed and two rotting beasts barring their way were cut in half. Still more poured in from all around – they clearly did not know fear and were willing to die en masse during their attack.
“Shit! One got me – it bit me!”
One of the warriors let loose a crisp cry of pain. One of the zombie had bitten off half his hand. The sound of his cries was heavy with pain and horror, filling the others with fear much worse than would normally be caused by the sight of his injury.
“You fuckin’ animals, I’ll wreck ya!”
The warrior threw himself at the zombies hysterically only to get pulled down by a host of them. He screamed in bloody agony as their blackened claws disemboweled him and pulled his intestines free of quivering, shredded flesh. Zombies fell on his body like he was a rare delicacy. The scene made the other humans shudder with a bone-deep terror.
Cloudhawk was suddenly blocked by three of the beasts. He didn’t know which one to attack. They were too fast and focusing on one would leave him open to getting bit by the other two. If one of them took a chunk out of him, that would be it.
The three corpses didn’t give him any time to think.
Cloudhawk was frozen in a panic so the Queen made the first move. She seized his exorcist rod, whipping it around with practiced movements. One, two, three – the monsters’ heads exploded in no particular order, spraying brain matter all around.
The Bloodsoaked Queen was far more skilled than Cloudhawk. With the slightest influence of her will, she summoned the strength of the staff, so little in fact that no one could tell she’d galvanized the relic at all. It was just enough to crush these zombies’ skulls and nothing more. She used only as much energy as was needed, as opposed to Cloudhawk who always struck with his full power.
Leonine’s voice rang out. “There’s more of ‘em comin’! Don’t let ‘em surround you or you’re dead!”
Cloudhawk then noticed that as they fought, the undead only increased in number. Sooner or later, they would be overrun. How many of these fucking things were there out in these ruins!?
The Bloodsoaked Queen flipped around and lashed out at anything nearby. She dealt with the zombies while Cloudhawk steered the giant lizard, following the others as they fought to break free of the slavering horde. All the while, Leonine led the escape, his long saber cutting this way and that. A dozen corpses were cut down, left in pieces on the sand.
They continued to fight and run wildly. The undead gave chase.
Scores more humanoid beasts joined them until there were more than a hundred zombies chomping at their heels, skittering all around like spiders. No matter what they did, the monsters stuck to them like foot maggots. So far, six of Leonine’s crew had disappeared and that number was only going to keep rising if the living dead stayed on them.
Just as the unpleasant thought crossed his mind, the ground began to quake. A disk-shaped titan erupted from the earth in a shower of sand and debris. This new monster was the very image of a crab, only several dozens of times larger. Six gnashing pincers clacked and swiped. It was covered in a shell so thick even bullets would be useless!
Two unfortunate men were too slow in getting away. The crab-monster’s pincers unceremoniously snipped them in half.
Cloudhawk gaped at what was happening before him. They couldn’t catch a fucking break! Before them was a giant mutant nightmare and behind them was a whole mob of shambling corpses. What were they supposed to do? Yet Leonine wasn’t alarmed with the appearance of this newest threat. He pointed in another direction and shouted at them. “This way!”
They followed him down a fork in the road. But the zombies had caught up.
The crab lurched forward as the wave of zombies closed in. It used one of its pincers to smash a group of them against the ground and used the other to pick them apart. Severed limbs were scooped into the crab’s maw and disappeared down its horrifying gullet. The other zombies hesitated when they witnessed the fate of the first wave.
These giant crabs were the zombies’ natural enemies. The crabs survived by feeding off these poisoned corpses.
Though the dead didn’t have minds of their own, they were still creatures of instinct. When they came face to face with their natural enemy, their immediate reaction was to flee, for their teeth couldn’t crack the monster’s armor-like shell while its pincers felled them with ease. Fighting it served no purpose other than giving the monster a free meal.
The giant crab’s timely arrival had saved them.
Leonine’s party kept moving forward for fear the living dead would find another way to reach them.
“Listen up. There’s a canyon ahead, and the oasis region of Greenland Outpost is on the other side.” When he spoke, there was no note of relaxation in his voice, like the journey was nearly over. Just the opposite – his voice and countenance grew more severe. “No matter what you see, don’t touch. You’re dead if you do!”
Cloudhawk was puzzled by Leonine’s warning. Oasis? What oasis?
He wasn’t puzzled for long. By the time he and the others reached the lip of the canyon, a jaw-dropping scene spread out before him. The basin was an expansive area of rolling hills that separated the valley into different areas. Every dip and crevice was covered in a blanket of green. Plants of all sorts covered everything and grew with abandon, and at the very center was a glittering lake.
It was an oasis, huge and awe-inspiring.
Never in his wildest dreams would Cloudhawk have imagined a place like this existed in the wastelands. Whole forests of trees spread out below him, carpeted with grass and weeds that flourished while surrounded by desert. It created a natural barrier, a maze of green that kept out wasteland fiends and roving monsters, protecting the oasis camp from the terrors that plagued other outposts.
It was an emerald paradise in the middle of the desert!
57 The Desert Oasis
Walking into the oasis was like entering an entirely different world. Cloudhawk could not believe there could be so much green in one place. He was shocked by how tall the trees were and how many different-colored flowers were all around. The whole area was rife with natural vigor and simply standing before it filled him with excitement.
The fanciest words Cloudhawk knew couldn’t describe what he was looking at. The oasis was a wonderland that left an impression on his very soul.
The Bloodsoaked Queen also concealed surprise as she gazed upon the lush green landscape. For such a beautiful place to exist in the harsh and perilous wasteland was just as astonishing to her as it was to Cloudhawk.
Anyone witnessing this for the first time would be stunned by the view.
“Don’t forget, this is a wastelands oasis. You underestimate it and you’re underestimating the wastelands!” Leonine warned. “I’m tellin’ ya, this place takes more life than anywhere else. It was blood, not water, that fed this place and made it grow so large.”
Leonine pointed ahead to a tree laden with fruit. They were fist-sized and thickly dotted the tree, red as fresh blood. Both sight and scent were delectable. Leonine fished a scrap of dried meat from his pack and threw it to the base of the foliage. Suddenly, a writhing mass of vines whipped out and caught the meat mid-air. The vines wrapped it up and squirmed like hungry serpents, issuing a sloppy chewing sound.
The others stared in shock and horror. The tree was carnivorous!
Leonine waved his hand, a sign for them to go on.
As they traipsed through the jungle, Cloudhawk encounter one unbelievable sight after another. He learned that any flowering plant had the potential to kill him and the briefest moment of inattention could spell disaster. Leonine was richly endowed with experience and pointed out the predators hiding in the brush. His keen eyes caught mantises trying to blend in with the deadly flora. Every encounter was heart-pounding, but they were in no danger with him at the helm.
“I thought we found a paradise. Instead this place is more dangerous than the wasteland.” Cloudhawk muttered to the Queen while he watched his feet, carefully picking his way along the path. “Without Leonine’s experience, we’d be dead before we knew it.”
“Don’t you find it suspicious?” Her voice was made deep and coarse by her mask. Her physical condition had continued to improve over time. “Judging by his degree of knowledge, he’s most likely a mercenary for the Greenland Outpost. He seems to come and go often – but for what purpose?”
When she said it, Cloudhawk realized she was right. It was strange.
If Leonine was a mercenary, most of the others in
his party clearly weren’t. At least two thirds were scoundrels picked out of the desert, so why was he bringing them back? Was it really just for protection? Often smaller groups were safer out in the wastelands.
If he was a merchant or digger, he’d be out to make a profit. Merchants sometimes wandered the wastes selling cigarettes and wine, ammunition, machinery… these items were widely sought and could fetch a good price. But Leonine’s crew wasn’t carting anything. It certainly was suspicious.
Wastelanders were sinners by nature. Cloudhawk and the Bloodsoaked Queen had to be on guard!
The Queen was recovering well. She still couldn’t move around too much but she’d kicked the fever. Now she had enough strength to resonate with a relic if needed, so even Leonine wouldn’t be a threat. Throughout their journey, she’d made it a point to avoid fighting. Instead she focused on regaining strength and hid her power in case she’d need to use it.
Just then, one of the fighters exclaimed as he looked at another companion. “Eh? When the hell did you get so skinny?”
The other looked at him, baffled. “The hell are you on about? Whadda ya mean ‘skinny’?”
Cloudhawk sized the man up and indeed, he spotted the problem. He’d been a bulky fellow before, even a little fat. Now, that sheen of blubber was entirely gone and his face was pale to boot. His appearance was more than strange.
What was going on? He had to be sick! But what kind of sickness worked so quickly?
The fighter realized something wasn’t right. He tenderly lifted up his shirt and suddenly, everyone’s face drained of color. His abdomen, waist, and back were covered in bulging critters that pulsed as they took in blood and fat.
“What the fuck?!”
“That’s gross as shit!”
The others sucked in breaths of surprise and disgust. They instinctively backed away from the man.
The poor fighter began to panic. When did he get covered by these things? He never felt them. Desperate to get free, he began to slap and wipe at where the creatures were attached to him. [1]
The Wastelander Page 43
