Chapter 06: Derelict

Background color
Font
Font size
Line height

Despite the cold, despite the dead bodies he'd found so far, despite the pain he was in...Greg actually felt kind of good. Not physically, more mentally. His goal was clearer than ever, and there was decent evidence that at least someone was still alive. Although, as he walked along the road, the frost on it glittering in the early morning sun like diamonds, he did find himself wondering about the second Pelican. There had been two when they'd initially come down, where was the second Fireteam? Was it possible that the interference that had hit his own ship had missed theirs? Possible, he decided, but highly unlikely.

So where had they gone down?

Technically, there were three other potential survivors from his own squad. Serrano, Bell, and Masterson. And there was a potential baker's dozen other survivors from the second squad. Though that also seemed unlikely. While he pondered this, he found his thoughts slipping to Masterson. He'd apparently been in the squad the longest after Brink, almost a year. A lifetime at this point. Masterson was something of an enigma to Greg. There had been air of quiet serenity about him, of calmness. He was a little like a monk.

Or how Greg imagined a monk might be. A warrior monk.

Well, a doctor warrior monk, technically speaking.

Masterson didn't have much to say, just the occasional comment or, if anyone had a question for him, an answer. He almost never hesitated when he answered, and his knowledge of medicine seemed encyclopedic. When the situation called for it, he was soothing. He had an excellent bedside manner, which had put Greg off a little. He'd initially mistaken Masterson's quiet demeanor for social discomfort, but his social skills were nearly as well developed as his medical ones. During the few extended conversations they'd had, Masterson had carried his end of the exchange on without a problem and seemingly with great joy.

Now that he thought about it, really thought about, here, alone, walking down this nearly silent frozen road, Greg thought he might finally have figured out what made Masterson tick. And it was nothing. Okay, maybe that wasn't precisely accurate. It was more what didn't make him tick. If he had to guess, Greg would say that Masterson had nothing to prove. That was genuinely rare. He couldn't really think of anyone else he'd met who had nothing to prove. Everyone had something to prove, it seemed.

Mostly how tough they were.

Greg had sought to remove that aspect of himself as much as possible, pride along with it. Pride and proving yourself...got in the way. It made you act irrational, prevented you from completing tasks sometimes. He personally didn't have a whole lot to prove to anyone anymore. He was strong, he was fairly fast, pretty decent in a fight, great in a firefight, he had a lot of endurance, was smart enough to get by. Clearly he was good at survival, or at least very lucky. He'd have to be to have survived all the crap he'd been through so far.

There was another car up ahead, he saw as he came around a bend in the road.

That sparked off a new thought as he picked up the pace. What had happened here? It was something he kept coming back to. There had probably been some kind of evacuation of the island, but what had made people just abandon their vehicles? And, furthermore, how many were dead on the island? God, on the planet? He didn't think that whatever it was was a widespread problem, but after all he'd seen, it was hard not to worst-case-scenario everything he came across. Greg tried to put that from his mind as he approached the car.

Obviously, someone had been by already.

The trunk was pried open and one of the doors had been left ajar. He spent a few minutes rummaging around through it. The glove compartment was empty and he found a few empty wrappers from a pair of candy bars and a bag of chips. Someone had definitely been here. Maybe even the survivors from his squad. Had they faced the vargs? Or any of the other nasty wildlife this place had to offer? Probably.

The car searched, Greg walked on.

As he approached the road that led to both the campgrounds and, farther on, the private cabins, he came across an interesting sign.

It read: TOWN OF MILTON. 10 mi.

The small town he'd seen. It was called Milton, evidently. Not a great name, but they couldn't all be great. Well, at least he had his next destination after this. The road that led to the campgrounds and beyond was less well maintained than the primary road, the pavement cracked and broken, with obvious potholes in some places. He continually scanned the frosted treelines to either side of him as he walked on, hunting for signs of vargs or other things. He glanced up, too, wary of whatever the hell volar were.

But the skies were clear.

Well, almost clear. He saw a heavy cluster of clouds on the horizon, dark gray and no doubt heavy with snow. This seemed like the kind of place that got hit with snowstorms often. From what he remembered of last night, he really didn't want to get caught in one of those. He'd visited snowy or icebound planets before, and knew how easy it was to die in a snowstorm. If he got caught in a whiteout, he could walk around in a circle for hours looking for shelter that might be fifty feet away. He suddenly wondered how they'd managed to make it to shelter from the Pelican last night. Maybe they'd gone before the storm had gotten there.

He had no idea how long he'd been out, and snowstorms could appear very suddenly.

There was the first campsite. It wasn't very impressive. In fact, he saw as he stepped onto the trail leading to it and got a better view of it...it was actually empty. Greg sighed and kept walking. Well, he did find it hard to imagine many people coming here for recreational purposes. Who the hell would camp in a freaking place like this? He supposed there were survival junkies who went looking for tough situations to survive in, or maybe looking for that balance of appearing to be a tough place to survive while really being not all that far from safety.

He supposed this place was dangerous enough, especially with the wildlife. But Greg just couldn't understand the desire. Maybe it was just because he had spent so much of the last six years of his life dealing with high stress, dangerous, toxic, or otherwise lethal environments and trying to survive in them. He often didn't have a choice. His idea of a vacation was a goddamned island in the sun with a beach, no hostile wildlife of any kind, and one attractive woman. Preferably another Marine, since he now seemed incapable of connecting, even sexually, with anyone who wasn't a warrior. Although maybe that was telling of his future.

Maybe, because he'd spent so long in the fires of madness and extreme environments, he'd find himself looking for it again just to feel like he was doing something worthwhile. Of course, Greg had a very difficult time realistically imagining not being locked in perpetual warfare with the Covenant. He'd either die or...well, yeah. He'd probably die before this war was over. This was the kind of war that, even if they won, would probably take another century. Greg would fight this war for the rest of his life, be that years or decades.

Or months.

Then again, Earth was being assaulted right now, so it was getting harder and harder to imagine any kind of scenario where humanity survived, let alone emerged victorious. He still had no idea why the Covenant wanted them dead.

These were the thoughts that drifted through Greg's mind as he searched the campsites he came across. The first four were totally empty, void of anything save a wooden table and a little frost-covered grill that the park provided. The fifth site had some remains of the previous occupants, mostly just trash. Maybe someone had been here after the event had happened and had since moved on. How many people were left alive on this island? He really needed to find them, even outside of his own squad, given it was his sworn duty and moral obligation to help civilians. The sixth site had an actual tent, but it was shredded.

There was frozen blood on the pair of sleeping bags inside, and a scattering of empty foot containers that looked like vargs had been through. God. He performed a quick search and found nothing he could use to help himself, then left the site. As he progressed on, he came to another little road leading to an open area hosting an orbit of cabins. Greg hesitated, frowning. Had he already come to the private cabins? No, he surmised finally, these weren't private. They were probably lower rent cabins you had to share with other people. Greg took a moment to survey the area, making sure he wasn't missing anything.

There were three buildings, one small, one medium, one large, each on its own side of the lot. There was a little gravel parking row to his right along the road, a big bonfire pit in the center of the lot, some picnic tables and benches scattered around, and farther on, he could see a frozen pond in between two of the cabins. No signs of life, though the door to the big cabin was open. He decided to start there and struck off towards it.

Greg settled into search mode as he entered the cabin. He moved slowly through a living room, dining room, kitchen, two bathrooms, and four different bedrooms. The minutes passed by in cold silence. As he searched, he was extremely grateful to notice that the pain in his arm was almost completely gone. The burning had receded, and all that was left was a dull ache and the sting of the actual bites themselves. And he could deal with that. Of course, this left him with a bigger concern: future varg poison.

He had one shot of antidote left, and who knew how many vargs out there.

They were going to be top on his priority list, and he imagined they would be rare.

The main cabin had been tossed, he learned, and thoroughly enough that he didn't think it was just his missing squadmates that had been through. The kitchen was empty, cleared out of anything that hadn't had the chance to spoil. He tried the faucets and found the pipes frozen. The medium sized cabin, which just sported a kitchen/dining room area, a bathroom, and a pair of bedrooms, was equally drained of any potential resources. Though so it shouldn't be a complete waste, he did take the opportunity to go to the bathroom.

In the final cabin, he made a discovery.

Greg stepped into the almost single room structure, sweeping a kitchen area and a bedroom section with his gaze, and intended to find something here. There had to be something. This couldn't be a complete waste. Although he knew that wasn't true at all. There didn't have to be anything at all, because that wasn't the way the universe worked. He set to work, methodically going through the most obvious areas first: the kitchen drawers and cabinets, the fridge, the oven, the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and under the sink, the drawers of a small desk tucked away into one corner. Then he checked under the bed, behind the toilet, behind or beneath any of the furniture in the area, and time and again he was stymied.

There was just nothing.

After twenty minutes of exhaustive hunting, Greg stood in the center of the cabin, doing a slow three sixty, looking up and down and everywhere. He was positive he had missed something, or maybe that was just hope.

Or stubbornness.

And then he saw it: a square of wood cut from the rest in the upper right corner of the kitchen area. A little trapdoor. Grinning fiercely, he shoved the armchair beneath it, stepped up, and pushed the trapdoor up. It flipped open. He pulled out his flashlight and then, balancing as best he could on the back of the armchair, he poked his head up through the square hole. Shining his light around, he scoped the little attic area out.

Nothing up there but dust, and...

"Holy crap," he whispered.

Jackpot. Motherlode.

There was a civilian issue ten gauge shotgun with a dusty gray barrel and a box of shells next to it. An 'in case of emergency' stash, he imagined. Well, this was definitely an emergency. He grabbed the shotgun and the box, then got down and marched over to the kitchen counter. Setting the shells down, he checked over the shotgun. It hadn't been used in awhile, but it did look to be in good condition at least. It was empty. He opened up the box, finding a dozen fat red shells inside. He began feeding them into the gun one by one until he'd gotten six in there. After pocking the remaining six shells, he aimed the shotgun, tucking it into his shoulder.

It seemed solid, and would definitely be useful against the damned varg.

Feeling way better and more satisfied about his prolonged search, Greg stepped back out into the chilled sunshine.

Something shifted, then growled, to his right.

He swung around, raising the shotgun, and felt his confidence drop right out from beneath him. Maybe ten feet away, on the road he'd come in on, was a giant creature. A drub. An alien bear. The mammoth beast was staring right at him, down on all fours, gray fur bristling. It let out a loud warning growl.

"Oh...crap," he whispered.

The drub began to come for him.

Greg snapped the shotgun up and tucked it into his shoulder once more, holding it good and tight as he quickly zeroed his sights on the face of the immense creature. Like the varg, it sported four red eyes, all of them staring balefully at him as it roared and charged him. He was probably only going to get one chance at this...

Greg waited until it was nearly upon him, then squeezed the trigger.

There was a deafening blast and the alien bear's head half-disappeared in a plume of dark gore. He cried out in shock and disgust as a wave of its blood and pulverized brain matter splashed his armor and uniform, and then leaped to the side since its body was still being carried forward by momentum. He narrowly avoided being crushed under its bulk, tripped, and cried out again in pain as he hit the dirt and gravel ground, his abused body shouting its own agony to him. He groaned as he slowly got back to his feet, then turned to look at the creature.

It was freaking huge.

If it stood straight up on its hind legs, it would probably be ten or even twelve feet tall. It was bulky with muscle and fat. This thing would have murdered him without hesitation or even difficulty. That had been a lucky shot. Well, not all luck, but an appreciable amount. Greg let his breath out in a long, slow sigh of relief and then fished another shell out of his pocket and slid it into the weapon. He looked up and around.

He was alone again.

Greg set off towards the private cabins, intent on finishing his sweep of the area.

You are reading the story above: TeenFic.Net