The Wastelander

by Tipsy Wanderer

  “The outpost is straight ahead!”

  59 Selling the Goods

  Cloudhawk peered through the dark press of trees. Nests for these hideous spiders graced the crown of nearly every tree and the victims didn’t eat hung from branches and cracks in the bark. They were used as fleshy sacks for their young to grow in. Like gloomy and gruesome fruit, they swayed in the stuffy breeze.

  The trees were their homes but also hunting grounds. Thick ropes of acidic webbing stretched across them, creating a network the spiders used to get around and communicate. Through their network of webs, they could race from one tree to another and never had to touch the ground.

  Besides being everywhere, the webbing was exceedingly sticky and tough as steel. Getting caught in one wasn’t an option, because even a knife couldn’t cut you free.

  But every tree was home to at least one spider nest. There were too many of them!

  The spiders used their webs as the main means of attack. They skittered along the tendrils to quickly descend upon unwitting victims from overhead. Corrosive spider silk was spat out to smother their prey before they moved in to seal the kill with a poisonous bite.

  Cloudhawk continued to move forward with the rest of his team. But rustling sounds were coming from the trees around them.

  Shhrrr! Shhrr!

  Three or four of the spiders traveled amongst the trees along their network of spider webs. The thick trees sometimes hid them, and sometimes their beady eyes appeared glinting in the darkness. Every time they reappeared, the spiders were a little closer.

  “Kill ‘em!”

  Fighters began firing arrows into the forest. In front of them, one of the spiders took a shaft to the head but didn’t die. Instead it pounced at the humans with a hiss and its eight legs outstretched.

  Leonine heaved his saber, carving a deadly arc through the air. By the time it finished its trek, the spider was on the ground in two pieces, twitching erratically. Purplish-red blood, thick with poison, flowed out of its mangled body like sludge.

  The rest of the spiders charged at them from the left and right.

  Globs of corrosive spit flew at the travelers and they dodged the best they could. One of the beefier fighters swung his war hammer and knocked a spider to the ground, to which Cloudhawk followed up by jabbing the sharp end of his staff into its brain repeatedly. The mutated insect screeched and struggled to flee while its wounds hemorrhaged violet filth. Wounds like these were difficult to recover from, even for creatures that healed quickly. Even if Cloudhawk’s vicious strikes didn’t kill the thing, it was at least out of the fight.

  Several more spiders took its place, with more coming with every passing moment.

  It didn’t take a genius to know the spiders outnumbered the humans, a fact Cloudhawk was intimately aware of. If they got surrounded, the chances of getting out alive would be slim to none.

  “With me!” Leonine cut away some webbing and cleared a path out over the corpses of several spiders. “This way!”

  Before them spread an area carpeted in spotlessly bright eggs. Each one was roughly the size of a fist and as Cloudhawk stomped through the area, fluid as sticky as glue burst out. It caught his feet and a gut-wrenching stench permeated the air. This place had to be the spiders’ spawning ground, where their eggs were gathered and hatched. Crunching beneath their feet were some new eggs and some old split shells. Covering the ground, shrubs, and tree trunks was a writhing mass of brown. Everything was covered in palm-sized spiders.

  “Motherfucker! It’s all spiders!”

  Cloudhawk’s legs, head, and back were covered in spiders as large as his hands. Young though they were, their age didn’t make them any less fierce. They charged at the intruders fearlessly, ready to kill.

  “Ah!”

  “It bit me!”

  “Ah fuck me! This is a spider nest!”

  As the crew stumbled through the egg fields, it took no more than fifty meters for them to be covered with spiders from head to toe. Cloudhawk thought he had to have suffered a dozen spider bites along his arms and neck. Blessedly, young spiders had weaker poison and their hunting skills had not yet developed. Though the bites caused the affected areas to swell sizably, they weren’t life threatening.

  They waded into a sea of spiders, with spiders in front, behind, and on both sides. Twenty to thirty fully mature spiders were catching up. Desperation, hopelessness. These were the only words to describe how they felt, but pure survival instinct urged them on. Eventually, just as the large spiders were about to catch up, they exited the nest and entered what was beyond.

  Cloudhawk plucked a particularly hateful spider from his neck and smashed it against the ground. It sprang back up and tried to run, but Cloudhawk brought his foot down on it and smashed the bug into paste.

  The young demon hunter was in a pitiful state. His neck and face were swollen and his hands were inflated to twice their normal size. The rest of the crew certainly wasn’t in much better condition, except for the Bloodsoaked Queen who looked completely free of bites.

  The trees above rustled as suddenly, a large spider emerged. Threads of silk were fired at them like arrows, trying to pin them down as they fled but falling short. Acid sizzled against the ground, releasing caustic white smoke.

  These goddamn things are still chasing us?!

  These unpleasant surprises continued to waylay them. The spiders didn’t let up, spitting corrosive silk at them from up to twenty or thirty meters away. Each shot moved like it was fired from a gun, so the humans couldn’t slow even a little. They ran headfirst as fast as they could through the oasis.

  Spiders kept on them, until…

  Bang-bang!

  Two cracks rang out from the darkness around the trees, like a pair of muffled gunshots. The arachnids in pursuit dropped to the ground, dead. Cloudhawk fought through his surprise – judging from the sound, the shots had to have come from far away. Was there anyone who could make a shot like that, from so far away and through a forest?

  “Snipers from the Greenland Outpost!”

  “We made it!”

  Another salvo was fired. Each crack of a gun being fired meant another spider dropped dead. Cloudhawk noted that each shot was not just long-distance, but also deadly. They entered the head and penetrated straight through the entire monster, leaving a large exit wound in the rear.

  Finally, the spiders broke off and disappeared into the brush. A short distance later, Leonine shouted out his identity to the marksmen.

  Several men appeared. They emerged out of nowhere, covered in leaves with faces smeared with camouflage paint to let them blend in expertly. More appeared from behind rocks and dropped from the trees above, all bearing sizeable guns and equipped to tackle the forest.

  In terms of skill, they were no less impressive than Blackflag Outpost’s elite squad. However, they were hundreds of times better equipped. There were only a handful of places in what was left of the world with the power to raise a force like this.

  Greenland Outpost had power.

  “Not a bad harvest this time, Leonine.” One of the jungle rangers, who appeared to be the leader, looked over those who had survived the forest. “Alright, let ‘em in.”

  Cloudhawk didn’t understand. Not a bad “harvest”? What did he mean?! Leonine had crossed the wastes with nothing but them, twenty-odd foreigners.

  Two of the jungle soldiers flanked their group with weapons half raised. They spoke harshly. “What the fuck are you dopes gaping about? In!”

  For the first time, Cloudhawk saw the large walls, choked with vines. The wall itself was the remnant of some ancient architecture, tall and thick like some kind of fortification. It kept most of the oasis terrors at bay.

  When the Outpost was spread out before him, Cloudhawk was absolutely floored by what he saw.

  The center of the outpost was an ancient metropolis, its grace lost to time but still serviceable. Most of the buildings still stood, though they were badly rusted and were co
vered in moss and vines. In the gloomy evening, the buildings cut dark shapes against the sky, dense and somewhat otherworldly. Through the darkness, he could faintly see people bustling along the streets.

  This outpost was built on the ruins of a bygone city. The inhabitants coopted the city’s foundations for their own to create a new settlement.

  In terms of scale, it was huge, at a minimum several times the size of Blackflag Outpost. Eighty percent of the place was arranged around the city where most of the population lived. A fifty to sixty meter tall building with a four to five thousand square meter base towered over the smaller structures like a titan.

  Lights flickered inside. It was a tower large enough that the whole Blackflag Outpost could fit inside.

  It was called Greenland Fort and was situated in the center of the settlement with several other structures scattered around. A conservative estimate revealed there were perhaps forty to fifty thousand residents altogether.

  “Hurry up, mutants!”

  They were led to a dig site in full operation, where a dozen or so burly mutants were combing through the remains. Occasionally, they dug out some ancient tool or useful material.

  Mutants lived in the Greenland Outpost? Most deformities made them quick to anger. Keeping them here was like living with ticking time bombs.

  The Bloodsoaked Queen gave Cloudhawk a sharp slap. She had a strange look in her eye as she extended a finger. His gaze shifted to where she was pointing and he froze like he’d been struck by lightning. His eyes went as wide as saucers, and a cold sweat sprang up all over his body.

  A large, wastelands-style airship was moored to one side of Greenbelt Fort.

  It was Cloudhawk’s fourth time seeing this vehicle.

  The first time was after his first mission with the mercenaries, after they finished their task. The second was when these benefactors betrayed his former colleagues. The third was when Blackflag Outpost was overrun. The black-clad freak’s airship was here, before his eyes, and yet none of the Outpost’s people seemed bothered by it. What did this mean?

  Did they brazenly walk into a trap? Did they slip the noose around their own necks?

  Whatever else, if the airship was here, it meant there were sweepers nearby as well. But more importantly, they couldn’t ignore the possibility that their three mutant lieutenants could be around the next corner!

  Cloudhawk spoke to her in a whisper. “It’s too dangerous here. We have to slip out fast as we can.”

  As Cloudhawk prepared to lead the Queen away, a group of outpost soldiers rushed their way. Consisting of both humans and mutants, they quickly surrounded the group.

  “Tie ‘em up!”

  The twenty newcomers did not resist, even as iron shackles were clapped to their wrists.

  “This is a quality crop,” Leonine said to the leader. “Among the best survivors from out in the wastelands. The price –“

  The guard leader cut him off with a grunt. His manner was gruff and abrasive. “You don’t set the price. Bring ‘em inside first!”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Leonine, you fuck, are you selling me?!”

  The wastelanders shouted in anger and disbelief. Suddenly, Cloudhawk and the Bloodsoaked Queen understood why the grizzled old man would take such risks while seemingly empty handed. His goods were with him all along – it was them!

  This piece of shit was a slave trader!

  Bang! One of the guards brought his fist down on a particularly vocal wastelander. “Don’t get outta line! Starting now, you all are the property of Greenland Outpost. Slaves. If you start trouble, I’ll personally waste your ass.”

  Guns from the outpost guards were trained on the twenty freshly sold captives.

  They were livid, horrified. After surviving the devilish forest, they were all exhausted and couldn’t fight back even if they wanted to. These soldiers were well trained and even better equipped, leaving them no hope for escape!

  “Take ‘em away. Lock ‘em all up!”

  With their shackles affixed, the slaves were forced to waddle like ducks after their captors.

  Cloudhawk and the Queen surveyed their situation with tightly knit brows. This outpost was much larger than the one they’d come from, so it was safe to assume skillful fighters were as common as clouds. If they tried to escape with no plan, they weren’t going to get anywhere. Yet if they didn’t try to flee, they would be slaves in a place that had some connection to the demon. Staying here was clearly very dangerous.

  Run? Even if they could get away from their jailors, where would they go? They hadn’t forgotten the terrors of the oasis all around them!

  60 Exposed

  Greenland Outpost was able to sustain a population of fifty thousand because, unlike the rest of the wastelands, it had food and water aplenty. It also had acres of unexcavated archeological sites which were filled with tools and materials. In other words, the only thing this place needed was people to dig those things up.

  There were kilometers of dig sites waiting to be plundered and fields of fertile soil that needed to be cultivated.

  Considering its surroundings, the outpost needed many soldiers to help keep the oasis’s less friendly critters at bay. Workers were needed to forge and maintain equipment and pretty girls were needed as entertainment for the affluent denizens of the Outpost who otherwise wanted for nothing.

  Laborers, soldiers, and women were the goods Greenland Outpost sought. And where there was a need, there was a market and merchants to meet demand.

  Greenland Outpost had a cadre of slavers, with Leonine being one of their most notable. He scoured the wastes and attracted the unfortunate with promises of surplus and comfort in Greenland Outpost. Those who survived the journey were sold as slaves, put in shackles, and thrown in cages where they were “domesticated’ through torture.

  It wasn’t the first time Leonine had sold a batch of humans in this way. He alone had brought a hundred and fifty high-quality chattels to work in the outpost. Most became soldiers or laborers, but he’d brought a few valuable women as well. Leaders of the outpost were pleased with his products.

  As the prisoners yelled and spat, levying curses on him and all he touched, Leonine was unmoved. He watched with cold, unfeeling indifference.

  His goods would be escorted by armed guards to the slave vault, one of the most highly policed areas of the settlement. Guards were posted everywhere inside and out, and the goods were locked behind massive iron doors. Once slaves entered the prison, any chance of escape was gone.

  Slaves were forced to bear inhuman treatment, molded little by little until they were broken and accepted their fate. They were worked to death digging wells and then fed to beasts while the women were reduced to toys. All of them were consigned to terrible fates, and eventually, they would die.

  Leonine felt guilt for none of this. There was no place for it in the wastes.

  The outpost guard leader spoke as they walked towards the slave camp. “As always, we take forty percent, you keep sixty. For the time being, just wait for the word.”

  This fuckin vampire. He was making a killing without any risk, but Leonine had no option but to accept the guard leader’s shakedown. If he didn’t, the guard leader would either fudge the reports or undersell his goods and Leonine would suffer. He had to swallow his pride and take it.

  Leonine used some water to scrub himself clean, changed his clothes, and went home. He made his way to a squat stone building, one of the remaining structures from the old city, and gently rapped on the door.

  “Who is it!?” An anxious voice called out from inside. It sounded like a young boy.

  “It’s me.”

  The door opened just a crack and a small head peeked out. A boy no older than ten looked up at Leonine, and though young, he was very vigilant. He clasped a revolver in his hand.

  When he saw who it was, the boy’s eyes lit up. He threw his arms open and gave Leonine a hug.

  Suddenly Leonine’s loade
d, wrinkled scowl disappeared and he smiled. He wrapped one of his arms around the child in a hug of his own. When he spoke, he did so with a gentle and fatherly tone. “Look at this guy with the gun I gave him. You plannin’ to use it on me?”

  The child vehemently shook his head. “You said that I was a man. I have to protect my mom and my sister!”

  “Yeah, good boy.”

  Leonine picked him up and walked into the shabby dwelling. Inside, a modest-looking middle aged woman was perched on the side of a bed. She was looking after a small girl, maybe five or six years old. The little one had a head of tousled flaxen hair that made her look like an adorable little imp, only she was all skin and bones. A large growth had taken over the left side of her neck – some kind of malignant tumor.

  This woman, the boy, and the sick child were a family. Yes, a family. This frail clan was everything Leonine had in the world!

  Although they were staying here, they weren’t citizens of the outpost. It cost a significant amount of money to house them here, and just getting water and grains for his young ones was a great expense, especially since they couldn’t work. Sometimes it was so much of a burden that Leonine found it hard to breathe.

  One disaster after another had plagued the slaver.

  Half a year ago, his daughter had started to show signs of illness. The growth had started to show, bulging out of the left side of her neck. Day by day, she seemed to get weaker, frailer. Leonine did everything he could think of to try and save her, bringing her to doctors in the outpost who were equipped with high technology from the old days. However, enlisting their help came at a staggering cost.

  Leonine had to earn more and risks would be necessary. Slave trading was a way to increase his income so he could save enough for his daughter’s treatment. It was definitely an arduous situation and he wasn’t sure how long his little girl would last.

  Leonine put the boy down. He made his way over to the bed and took the woman’s hand in his. “How is she?”