This started out as an idea from BigBadBen and kinda took off from there. Introducing a side character that will only have a few or so scenes for the foreseeable future. But it felt like the right place to put him.
Special thanks to all of you who decided to throw yourselves on the Patreon. I'm currently in contact with Mikezzzzz on Deviantart for the commission. Some of you in the Worm community should know that name. So let's hope to see something in the foreseeable future.
A Lone Man on a Mountain I
Taking in a deep breath of the cold, mountainous air, he released it slowly, watching as it steamed from him. It was one of the few accompaniments he had in this dreary landscape. His gaze slipped from the rising sun to the valley down below, to the remains of what had been the city of Eagleton, his home.
Now it was nothing more than a graveyard infested by the Machine Army.
An overgrown crumbling ruin of a city, which nature was reclaiming inch by inch. One where danger often hid in plain sight.
Yet, in the nearly twelve years since they had emerged, the Machine Army had learned to leave him alone. The exact reason why they had chosen to, when they had made it a point to kill every other human they encountered in their territory, he didn't know. But he had a feeling that somewhere, someplace, in those ones and zeros, he had earned a grudging respect from them that it was not worth the effort to remove him from their domain.
There was no peace between the machines and himself. There would NEVER be peace between them. But grudging respect? Leaving each other to live and let live? It was tolerable. Over the years he had just become…tired. Going through the motions of life, waiting for the inevitable day when he was finally reunited with his family.
Rubbing a hand through his unkempt beard, he pushed the memories back. That was the trick really. Focus on the now. Live in the moment.
So he kept living, waking up each day with tasks in mind. Complete the tasks. Sleep. Wake again. Enjoy the little moments of nature unspoiled by other people.
Because there was no one else around. Just ghosts. Old memories. Little reminders.
Focus on the tasks.
He shouldered his pack, jostling the weapons on his back. He had a boar to track.
xxxxxx
The sun was high in the sky. The gravel crunched under his boots, and the grass pushed up through the cracks of the road he walked along. Animals were amazingly adaptive. Where they would have once avoided this part of the city, now they crossed through it without fear. The short memories of their lives were blessings in a way.
Rost kept his eyes moving. Taking in the broken display windows, the mannequins with water-stained clothes.
Maria would have commented on that.
He bit his lip.
Don't go down that road.
Taking another look ahead, he slowed to stop. Intuition was a funny thing. It was the brain's way of saying that it noticed something, but it wasn't certain what
it was. Gut instinct was a powerful thing, if you could start respecting it.
His years before returning to Eagleton had trained him to respect it. It saved his life quite a few times.
Alright…break it down. What was he seeing? Rusted cars. Crumpled post box. Broken shop windows. Grass moving in the wind. His grip on his spear tightened. Guns were too complex, the gunpowder ran out years ago. Bows, arrows, spear. Metal tools were fine. Most survival tools lasted.
Collecting a scrap of rubble at his feet, he aimed and let fly. The pebble flew true, clanging against the mailbox. The sound rang out in the silence like a gunshot. He waited. The sound faded. Yet still, he waited.
With a metallic shriek, the mailbox unfolded. Nothing humanoid, just a ramshackle collection of limbs, and hinges. It was completely lacking in symmetry, but somehow able to fake a damaged mailbox. Just not convincingly enough.
It warbled and chittered, a bladed limb jabbing in his direction. He lowered his stance, ready if needed. Live and let live only went so far. There would NEVER be peace.
A fight didn't seem to be in the forecast today. The machine backed away, before turning and taking off in an ungainly scamper.
He relaxed, adjusting the pack on his back. Daylight was fading, it was time to track his prey or he would go hungry this evening. There was no benefit in standing still.
xxxxxx
Sighing, he kept low. Human voices on the wind as the patrol walked by. The added weight of his kill on an improvised sled was not pleasant, but like most discomforts it could be ignored.
The PRT did not send their best to Quarantine Areas. They sent two types; the undisciplined and the zealous. The zealous were those who believed the hype. Believed that they were the thin line keeping madness at bay from escaping. They went about their duties carefully. Equipment cleaned. Helmets on. Procedure followed to the letter.
The rest were undisciplined. The washouts. The troublemakers. The ones who were an incident from being judiciously cashed out, or just couldn't handle their job, but the system couldn't just terminate them. They walked about with scuffed up gear, smoking, joking, and wandering around when they should be keeping a tight patrol pattern.
Capes fell into these categories as well, they just came with a brand of their own troubles in addition. Most of them were angry and itching for combat. They wanted the action, they wanted the fight. He had wondered in the past if this was a condition of the capes, because almost every single one he had encountered assigned to the Quarantine Zone shared these traits.
He did his best to avoid them. Not impossible, just difficult. They changed their patrols often. Twice in the past he had been caught and questioned. The first time he had tried to explain that this place was…home. Even destroyed as it was, he felt at peace here.
The second time, he just kept quiet. The outcome didn't change in either case. They relocated him to the nearest city. He would hike back past their patrols and just kept on living. It hadn't been hard to set up in Eagleton. The PRT didn't expect anyone to break in. Or if someone did, it would usually be Capes who wanted to steal something or use the Machine Army for their own ends. Some attempts were picked up by patrols. The rest made it in and were found by the machines. The Machines generally won those fights.
The men passed by, chatting and letting their weapons swing loose. Sloppy and amateurish. It was clearly evident that they were content in their own superiority.
No matter. Night was falling, and the sky was growing dark with rain clouds. He would have to hurry to make his evening camp. He had dozens spread across the zone. But few could be used to dress and care for his kill. It wouldn't do to waste precious meat.
xxxxxx
Scratching at his jaw, he huddled closer to his fire. April weather in Tennessee was usually temperate, but the cold front had brought rain with it. It wasn't enough to be freezing, but it was enough to carry a chill. Yet, despite the inclement weather, his demons had been silent for a while now. Being in the forest helped keep them quiet.
Not the same quiet as the house. That was the quiet of a tomb, of old memories waiting to jump out at him. It was only here, now, with the fire going, and the day's work done that he would let himself remember. Happy memories, of successes and shared hopes, of mundane moments that were now so precious.
It took effort to not think of the later times. Hearing the news while he was half a world away fighting someone else's battles. Fighting battles that made no difference in protecting his family from falling to bloodshed at home. Where they should have been safe.
The wind picked up, sending sparks spiralling in the air. The trees groaned as they swayed, and the fire crackled and shifted. Leaning back on the log, he looked up to the sky and noted the clouds starting to part, the rain giving way to the still of night.
He stoked the fire, now free of the threat of rain and fed a few more sticks to the hungry flames.
"If you walked any heavier, the patrols might catch you."
"And if you keep growing that beard, they might think you're a bear."
He looked up, watching as a younger man ambled into the light. He had a pack on his back, a sturdy pair of boots and clothes fit for a time in the woods.
"What do you want, Clark?"
"Can't an old friend drop in and say hello? Swap stories about how lovely the forest is at this time of year?"
He snorted, "The last time I saw you I held a gun to your face. If you call that friendly behavior, then I wonder who handles your mental evaluations."
"Sometimes the best of friends have disagreements at gunpoint," was the other man's blase response, coming to a stop beside the fire, motioning to the other log, "May I?"
For a brief moment, he wanted to be petty and tell the other man off. But the one thing that everyone knew was that the man was persistent to a 'T' once he set his mind to it. So instead of telling him to pound sand, he merely motioned to the other log, and Clark took a seat on it.
"What do you want?"
"A lot, but we can start with you putting aside this 'mountain man' aesthetic and come with me to do some good."
He honestly knew it was going to be that, he thought to himself with a sigh.
"Fuck off."
Clark leaned back, uncaring of the bite in his words. "Oh come on, Rost, I came all this way and tracked you down, the least you can do is pretend to be interested. Just a little? Please?"
Persistent, and annoying. Yeah, that was Clark.
"I'll listen, but that doesn't mean I'm going to say yes."
"See, I've got a problem. I was asked to put together a team of killers. The kind of team who will get shit done, keep their mouths shut, and who work well with the strange and the unexpected. And, of course, kill it."
Clark pulled his arms wide, "Not a lot of people can achieve that. Even less when you consider the new blood running things. Which means I need to pull a few dusty relics from storage for the job," he then leaned forward slightly, a damnable smirk on his face, "You're the relic in this case…in the event you missed that."
"Another war to fight in some far-flung corner of the world? Doing the dirty work for people who don't care and will never see the consequences of their actions? I'll repeat myself," Rost frowned, looking over the fire. It would need wood soon, "Fuck off."
"See Rost, that's where you're wrong. We ain't hunting some Russian oligarch too big for his britches this time. No more globetrotting and killing someone cuz our bosses think they looked at America the wrong way. The dirty work is happening right in our backyard. Home soil. And it's Ryan putting this soirée together. You think Ryan doesn't know the score?"
That brought his retort up short. Taking the moment to collect his thoughts, he tossed a few more branches into the fire, setting the embers flying, "Ryan wouldn't go for it. Not here at home. Not worth the mess if things got out of control."
Clark shrugged, "Things have changed. Ryan thinks it's worth it now. Not sure if you saw the news, but the PRT has been making 'shitting the bed' an artform lately. Ryan thinks with the PRT finally getting its well-earned 'Caesar and the senate' treatment, there's a chance we can make a joke of their dog and pony show. Frankly, I think it's about damn time."
For a moment, he felt a surge of rage at the mention of the PRT. It had been them that had failed to protect his family. It had been them that had decided that it wasn't worth doing anything about the Machine Army, instead choosing to wall it in and forget it. But as quickly as it was there, it was gone, replaced with the familiar emptiness.
"I'm not that person anymore, Clark," he finally said, using a stick to stoke the fire, "I left it behind me."
"Bullshit, Everett. You
never leave it behind, not until your dying day. You're lying to yourself if you think you can lock it up and throw away the key. You were the best tracker the Marines ever had. You've survived in the heart of the Machine Army's territory for over a decade. I need your skills to help me deal with problems none of those pansies in DC have the guts for."
"Who are you going after?"
There was a moment of silence, before he got his answer.
"The Slaughterhouse Nine."
He raised an eyebrow. That was a name he had heard from time to time, usually over the radio when he chose to listen to it. The Slaughterhouse Nine, a group of murderous capes who went from place to place. Why they still seemed to exist had always bothered him, it was nothing that a few precision-guided bombs wouldn't be able to solve. Only it seemed the government was quite content with keeping it a cape issue.
Seems like someone had finally lost their patience
"Why now? You've had years to deal with them."
The other man smirked, "Things change, like they always do. New allies, new tech, new enemies, new possibilities. Does it really matter, Everett? This is going to happen. I don't know what the odds are, I don't ask. But the odds are better with you, then without you."
"So," the man leaned in, "are you in?"
He didn't answer immediately, instead choosing to stare into the fire, searching for answers. There was a part of him that yearned for what Clark was offering, to get back on the horse and actually do something to make a difference again. But there was another part of him that felt like by doing so, he would be dishonoring the memory of both Maria and Alana.
But was he really? Was he actually honoring them by doing this? Not quite living, but on the other hand, not quite dead either. Just existing, shuffling through what was left of his life, waiting for death to finally reunite himself with them.
Was it fair to their memory?
He knew the answer to it and he hated it. Because he knew exactly what Maria would say to him, even if he didn't want to admit it.
Closing his eyes, he released a sigh. Looking for something - anything really - that could stop him from doing this. But there simply wasn't an answer there.
"Alright," he finally said, "I'm in."
Clarke's smile was all teeth, as he held out a hand.
"Welcome to Rainbow."
