Savage World

by Jennifer Slusher

  “I can, thank you, Major!” Dr. Nordin's face was lit up as she sat, practically dancing in her seat. “The artefact that Corporal Richards found is stunning and I think there is truth in what she said. The Mesopotamian people were one of the most artistic, next to the Egyptians. To think, they created full, anatomically correct figurines when your hunter-gather cul…”

  “Oi, Gunny, say that again…”

  Shooting Tom a hairy eye for his blatant attempt to turn the woman off, Jules winked at the doctor. All the squi… uh… scientists were demoralised by Dr. Hall's death and it didn't escape her notice this discovery was giving them all a little more colour.

  * * *

  Throwing a frown over his shoulder, in the general direction of the camp, Derick tapped his link again. “I said 'Roger that. Let's go, French'.” Derick gave the Frenchman a pointed look, before receiving a sharp nod in return and fell into step beside the shorter man.

  Moving forward as one, the two men advanced into the tunnel, flashlights cutting into the darkness. More cobwebs and interwoven flora blocked their way, but they made short work of it, finally breaking through after several minutes. Now free to concentrate on something else, Derick finally noticed the odd, crude carvings along the wall. In the beam of his light, he counted two bare, smooth tiles and one carved one. Two more blanks and a carved one. Following the pattern, he ignored Dr. Nordin's excited chatter in his ear piece.

  Finally, the passageway emptied them out into a large chamber.

  “Hold,” Derick said quietly, noting the echo of his voice. He glanced up but only darkness greeted him. “Dr. op a light, French.”

  Behind him, Dupree pulled a chemstick from a cargo pocket, twisted it, and tossed it over a shoulder, keeping the light behind them. Within seconds, a soft greenish glow surrounded them.

  The men moved forward, their torches lighting the ground in front and a trail of chemo light breadcrumbs illuminated their path from the door. Pulling the torch off his rifle, Derick held it over his head to try and get a better idea of the room they were standing in.

  “This place is huge,” he stated upon seeing that the beam of light didn't seem to reach any kind of wall or overhead. Only blackness.

  Heading deeper in, Derick stopped short when an ornately carved column appeared in his path. He made to go around it when excited chatter filled his earpiece.

  “There! Captain, I need to see that column!!!”

  “You heard Dr. Nordin, Gunny.”

  Captain Curran sounded amused and a lot more patient than his best friend. Obliging, Derick took a step back, keeping his cam trained on the column to get as much footage as he could. Several hushed whispers chimed in at once before he was given an impatient 'keep going' from Tom.

  As French into step with him again, Derick exchanged a smirk with his fellow Shark. They advanced into the room, leaving their bright trail behind them.

  Only when the beam of his torch bounced off pale, white tiles did he stop. Another excited gasp hit his ear. Raising his light, it revealed the tiles leading to a dais or a raised platform of some sort. About twelve feet wide and ten feet high, the tiles continued up wide steps, flanked by pitted, rough statues.

  “Oh, my word! That looks like some sort of altar,” Dr. Nordin's exotic accent faded into another language for a moment.

  Derick moved a little closer to the dais, where intricately carved images decorated nearly every inch of it. There were several figures, like the one from Ren's figurine with image upon image of plants and animals. There was even a formation that appeared to be a set of constellations.

  “Yes, yes, yes, I'll need a closer look, but I would say this could be a historical record of their civilisation. Certainly, the room you are in held some importance in the lives of these people. Judging by the centre slab, this might very well be a temple. Are we able to see further into the room?”

  “Yes ma'—”

  “PUTAIN!! FAIS CHIER!!!”

  The Frenchman's sudden, blistering curse caused Derick to bring his rifle up in a quick, practiced jerk. In the beam of light, French stared slack jawed above him.

  “Gunny! Do you see thiz?” Dupree exclaimed, followed by several more words from the streets of Paris.

  Standing beside him, Derick looked up. “Fuck a dead dog…” he breathed, light joining French's strobe to illuminate their find.

  High above them, like some humongous blue whale display in a museum, a life size sky crab stood authoritatively over them, carved in stone. “Holy shit. Luke, you getting this?”

  “Yep, Red Lobster made it out here. I'm trying to enhance the image.”

  Derick shined his light around him. “You think they worshipped them?”

  * * *

  “Well not surprising I suppose,” Tom crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the 'monument', his memory still raw from the assault on the Firefly. “The beasties fly, generate storms and shoots electricity out of their arses. Primitive lot like these would think they're gods or something.”

  “Absolutely,” Samara agreed. “The Mayans and Aztecs were sun worshippers while Native Americans identified their gods with the animals of their environment. The list goes on.”

  “Right then,” Tom spoke up immediately, hoping to keep a full recitation of 'the list' at bay. “Resume your sweep so we can call it secured and let the squints get a proper crack at the place.”

  * * *

  “There are some openings off the main room. We're gonna check those out.” Derick glanced up once more and shook his head as he motioned French forward.

  Like the main entrance, there were no doors, but the two men still approached cautiously. So far, too much crap had happened to them to assume they were safe just because the place was empty. Plus, Derick wouldn't admit it, but he'd probably watched Indiana Jones one too many times.

  “On three,” he told French as they took up position on either side of the first entry. “One, two… three…!” The Frenchman entered first, with Derick right behind him.

  Their flashlights illuminated a small, not quite empty room. Like the rest of the place, cobwebs piled with dust, hung from every corner and nearly blocked a spiral staircase carved out of the same stone as the walls. Pulling his knife, Derick cut away some of the cobwebs, revealing carvings like those in the main chamber. In his ear, he could just barely hear Dr. Nordin's chatter and thought he caught a question from her. “Does she want me to clear the whole thing?”

  * * *

  “Negative,” Tom replied after Dr. Nordin shook her head at him and went back to her assistant.

  Glancing at Jules, he noted her pensive expression as she studied the screen.

  Was she thinking what he was? Why no one had been here for millennia? If so, why? Even ancient ruins usually held kind of remains, right? More than one bit of figurine. Even with a mass evacuation or a plague, there was always something left behind.

  Pompeii had its skeletons frozen in time. The lost Roanoke Colony left behind food and tools, material too important to discard if its people left on their own volition. Hell, his first mission with the SAS was to a planet where the entire terraforming survey crew was killed by a spore contaminating the water supply. When his squad was sent in to investigate, all they found were the dead.

  So, where the fuck were the bodies here? The tools and weapons? The skeletons?

  Frowning, Tom hit the link again. “Gunny, keep an eye out for anything that might explain why this place is so empty?”

  If Derick didn't find anything (which Tom suspected would be the case), then whatever had taken these people out, did it by complete surprise.

  A chill raced down Tom's spine and he swore he heard his old crazy cat lady neighbour droning about someone walking over his grave.

  * * *

  There was nothing here but cobwebs and enough dust to send a germaphobe into cardiac arrest. Derick acknowledged the order anyway and glanced at French. “You heard the man.”

  “Oui.” French
's reply was solemn and quiet.

  Yeah, right, there with ya, bud, Derick thought to himself as they returned to the main chamber and headed for the second door.

  * * *

  How the fuck did I get here?

  This was a question Private Jeremy Anderson, aka Thing One, asked himself nearly every day for the last six months. Of course, he knew the answer. He was a petulant, blue-blooded little bitch (his father's words) who turned down Harvard and in doing so, had apparently thrown his life away.

  Jeremy (he preferred Remy) could still feel the burn of his father's words in his conversation with the head of admissions. Of course, the old man hadn't listened. Hadn't bothered to find out his son got accepted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he really, really wanted to go.

  No, instead the elitist fuck told Admissions his 'ungrateful pissant of a son' had made a mistake and was 'listening to his dick' and 'of course, he would attend Haaavaahd' (the monied pronunciation). How could he not? It was his 'legacy'. Seven generations had graduated from the Ivy League school, everyone except Grams, who had apparently gone to Duke. Major Escandelo in the Anderson and Wentworth families.

  Remy sighed. If he missed anyone from home, it was Grams. She would have brought him back down to Earth and talked to her son about her grandson. She would have punched gentle holes in his glorious, naive idea of travelling the systems, writing gritty tales about the life and adventures of a space Marine.

  Yeah, if he missed anyone, it was her. She would have told him the truth. Reality sucked ass and boot camp was fucking HARD. Despite a background in team sports like crew sailing and football, he'd struggled. But boot camp did exactly what it was designed to do. After Remy Anderson, Captain of his school's crew team enlisted, he'd been deconstructed and rebuilt as Private Jeremy Anderson, US Marine (now SHARC).

  His last phone call home, to tell his family where he was assigned, had been full of his father still being pissed at him. The fuck hung up on him before he'd had the chance to tell them.

  He hadn't been on the Eisenhower two weeks before everything had been destroyed. His assignment saved his life, and, in the end, it had been Private Anderson still standing when Edward Reginald Anderson and his Haavahd blue-blood burned with the rest of Earth.

  Standing in the shadows of several trees, taking up the six as Sarge chopped and hacked his way into an alien jungle, Remy realized something.

  He had plenty of material for that book.

  CLANG! “FUCK!”

  Startled out of his memories, Remy winced. Someone's mamma bore the brunt of Sarge's temper as the darker skinned man shook his hand out. The machete dangled from the wrist strap of his other hand as the ancestors of someone's mamma were now cursed.

  “Sarge?” Remy asked from his position, craning his head to see around the stockier Private Frank 'Frankie' Lorio.

  “I hit something,” Sergeant Jackson growled, yanking at the high grass in front of him and shoving it all apart to find a hip-high, bullet shaped piece of stone sticking out of the ground. It had been smoothed and polished white and was covered in odd symbols, etched right into the rock.

  “Huh…” Sarge grunted as he hacked at some of the thick grass to clear around the stone.

  Meanwhile, Remy surveyed the immediate area. Spotting another one of those bullet shaped rocks through a group of saplings, he headed over to it. “There's one here, too.”

  A moment later, Frankie also chimed in with his own discovery. Within ten minutes, the three men uncovered at least a dozen stones. While shaped the same, each stone was carved with a unique set of glyphs.

  Running a thumb over the markings, Remy frowned before turning to study the others. Wait a second… a flash of inspiration, followed by dismay struck him.

  “Shit!” he yanked his hand back as if bitten. “Sarge, it's a graveyard!”

  “Yeah, I just realized that myself. Don't disturb any of them.”

  “Aw man!” Frankie crossed himself quickly and muttered something about forgiveness as he danced from one foot to the other, trying to find a safe place to stand.

  “Dude, it's not like lightening is going to strike you dead,” Remy rolled his eyes. This wasn't the first time he'd seen his friend's very Roman Catholic, Italian sensibilities challenged. “Just stand still.”

  “Lorio! Chill the fuck out!” Sarge snapped. “They ain't gonna mind where you stand.”

  “But Sarge…” Frankie didn't look up, too busy trying to find a place to put his boots.

  “Am I fucking talking to myself? STAY PUT!”

  Frankie froze and hell, even Remy froze. Sarge was turning into Gunny.

  “Gunny, we've found what I think is a cemetery. We found several…”

  “Twenty,” Remy spoke up.

  “Approximately twenty gravestones.”

  * * *

  They had cleared the two other rooms and were now debating the spiral staircase. Derick didn't relish crawling through all that dust (and probably fucking spiders) and he could tell French wasn't too fond of the idea either. When Jackson first called him, static crackled through the line. Derick thumbed his link. “A what? Say again?”

  The sergeant's second time was heard clearly.

  A cemetery? Crap.

  “Luke, take a scan and find him a way around,” Derick ordered, just as he heard the rasp of a lighter. Where French had found a Zippo, he didn't know but he motioned for the man to put it away for the moment. “Sergeant, you know the drill.”

  Wars had been fought over holy land and even though the people of this world were long gone, they still had protocols to follow when encountering consecrated land.

  * * *

  Luke was beginning the survey when he'd heard Sergeant Jackson's announcement. On his screen, the headstones glowed pale and nearly luminous next to the grey silhouettes of the Sharks. Tapping the spectral coloured screen, he zoomed out to study the surrounding area.

  “Okay, Sarge, take ten steps to your left and then proceed compass north for 35 meters. That should get you past it and up to the walkway around the structure.”

  * * *

  “Copy that.” Sarge made the careful half turn to his left as Luke relayed directions to Lorio and Anderson.

  “Copy.”

  Remy could hear the relief in his friend's voice. It didn't matter if the body in the grave beneath him wasn't human, it was still a grave, and Catholic doctrine dictated a healthy respect for any gravesite.

  “First, we find their city, then we find their graves? Those eggheads really dropped the ball huh? I thought we was gonna be the only ones here?”

  “Well,” Remy kept his eyes down to count his steps as he moved across the ground cautiously. “It's not like we had much of a selection, or time to be sure of anything.”

  “True dat. It's just… its turf, you know? Where I'm from, turf is a big deal. You don't mess with another people's turf. You do, and bad shit happens, man. Real bad shit. They may not be so happy to see us moving in.”

  “Both of you, stop jawing and pick it up!!”

  Sarge's rebuke startled them both and spurred them into moving faster than before. Remy had just stepped onto something hard when he heard Frankie's shout behind him.

  “Fuck!”

  “Frankie!?” Remy shouted, turning just in time to see Frankie disappear into the brush. “Frankie!! SARGE! Lorio's in trouble!” he called out, already moving to the last spot he'd seen his friend. He could hear something crashing through the underbrush.

  “What's going on?” Sarge appeared next to Remy so fast, he did a double take. Before Remy could respond, he'd touched his link.

  “Not sure yet! Standby!”

  Remy shoved past a sapling, not caring when he heard green wood cracking under the pressure.

  “Frankie?!” he called out, skirting around a thorny bush with the Sarge close behind him. He was about to hop over a downed tree when he was yanked backwards by his harness.

  “Stop!” Sarge ordered
and pointed over the tree to where Frankie was standing at the bottom of a crater, getting to his feet.

  “Frankie, you okay?” Remy called down to him, noting the trampled greenery and discarded Shark equipment marking his friend's path.

  “Yes, dammit…”

  Remy tossed the Sarge a smirk. “He's okay if he's cussing.” When the Sarge only frowned at him, Remy cleared his throat. Right. “I'll uh… I'll toss him a rope,” he said as Sarge turned away to talk to Gunny.

  “Everything's okay, Gunny. Lorio fell into a hole.”

  Glancing back at his sergeant, Remy shrugged out of his pack and dropped it the ground. Kneeling beside it, he pulled out the high-tension steel lined cable the Sharks called 'rope'. He listened with one ear while he secured the line around the nearest thick tree.

  “Looks like a crater of some kind. Tough to see because it's all overgrown but you wouldn't see it until you were right on top of it. Yeah, hold on.”

  Tossing the cable down to his friend, Remy waited as Frankie searched out his lost equipment.

  “You alright, Thing Two?”

  “Yeah, Sarge. I'm fine,” Frankie grumbled as he claimed his gear. “Just feel kind of stupid - like Timmy in the well you know?”

  “Well no one's digging your ass out so on your feet soldier, unless you broke something.”

  When the sergeant had turned back around to finish his conversation, Remy shot his friend a sympathetic look. “Ready when you are,” he called down, wrapping a length of line around his gloved hands.

  After a few minutes, a disgruntled Frankie was dusting himself off and trying to inventory his gear.

  Helping him get sorted, Remy looked over to where the Sarge was aiming a laser ruler across the opening. “What do you think? Meteor?” he asked Frankie, who shrugged.

  “Don't know. Didn't get many meteors in Little Italy, man. The only craters we saw was the dimples in our grandma's thighs.”