Frozen Wasteland -- Part 1
**Well, some of you may have read Scarred Part 1 which I suggest you do if you want a longer read than this little short series I'm working on. Probably will only be one or two more parts. Anyways, enjoy! Oh, and PG-13 for the violence/mild language. And lastly, if you want me to post Scarred part 1 here, I'd be happy too!**
The road stretched on for as far as one could see, always visible despite the distance until going over the horizon. Even then, it continued. Dormant forests lined either side as they waited for an endless winter to pass. Small groups of people wandered this road, either on foot, or for the lucky few, had a working vehicle. However, any vehicle in a condition to move was more than rare. Most spent months finding parts and enough fuel so that they could attempt to reach a rumored haven in the mountains. There were few settlements still standing, the roads serving as the lifeline between the shantytowns. Another group of about fifteen people had left earlier that week, four of them being a family consisting of the parents and their two sons. With little left, they sought the haven in hopes of finally being down with this hard way of life. The road had many dangers, including the threat of other people.
Mother Nature was just as unforgiving. Blizzards and whiteouts claimed many lives, especially of those who traversed the roads. Death out here was cold, slow, and lonesome. Too desperate to realize how small of a chance they had of actually even reaching the foothills, the small group pushed on. The reality of the harshness of everyday life was difficult to grasp for many. The least understanding of the remnants of humanity were the children. One would expect this, but the parents deliberately hide the horrors of their existence to make the lives of their loved ones easier.
One such child was Noel Greenburg. His parents hid from the many attacks upon their village, telling him that all of this was just a bad dream, and convincing Noel that the mountain haven was real. In the minds of the parents, they knew that place probably did not even exist. However, it gave hope to the young.
The small band of survivors ventured on, planning on gaining more distant before night fell. A few pushed makeshift carts with mounds of extra supplies stacked high. Despite their previous plan, they stopped sooner than they would have wanted to. Up ahead, a long tendril of smoke rose in the sky. A few of the older members of the group exchanged glances, knowing that another settlement had fallen. Not too far ahead, the group went right at a fork in the road heading away from the smoke.
The next morning, a deep rumbling from the overcast sky woke the group. Similar sounds had been heard for years now, but the source remained unknown. After the source of noise passed, they dismantled their camp and continued on. The enigma happened several times that day, but did no more than grab the curiosity of them. However, a new sound echoed from the distance. The sound of tires squealing and the revving of engines. Turning back, many in the group knew what was coming. They scattered in a panic into the forests on either side of the road. They hid to the best of their abilities.
A couple minutes passed and then they arrived. A screaming, insane convoy of fists, guns, and death. The cannibals, rapists, and sadists that filled the mob crowding in and on the cars shot randomly into the forest along with a few grenades. Some of the people hiding panicked and ran only to soon be gunned down. Once the onslaught had ended and the fearsome mob was well beyond the horizon, the survivors gathered their belongings and continued their trek, a few members less.
------
Noel, at the time, had only existed for eleven cold years. He tightened the hood of his coat and gripped his mother's hand. Looking up at her, he hoped she was smiling but with the mask covering most of her face, he could not tell. She wasn't anyway; there was not much to smile about anymore.
Releasing his mother's hand to fuss with the zipper to his coat, Noel asked his mother something he had questioned her about often. "What do you think it will be like, Mama?"
She looked down at him. "Hm?"
"The Haven," Noel said. "Will the clouds be gone?"
"Yes," she replied indifferently. "They will."
"Oh," Noel said, looking down at his feet. "That's good."
A silence fell upon the group as they marched on towards the never-ending horizon. A man with grey hair, probably in his forties, suddenly collapsed. A couple stopped to see if he was all right. They crouched by him and shook him a few times while the other felt for a pulse. Sighing, they stood and ran to catch up with the group, leaving the body behind.
That night, another layer of snow fell upon the ground. Shaking the snow of their tarps, they followed a path out of the woods back to the road. An overturned truck lay in the middle of the road, a corpse hanging out of one of the windows. The group approached the wreck, a couple going through what was left inside and around it.
------
“We’re going to run out of fuel in another thirty kilometers if we keep this pace up,” a bearded man yelled over the roar of the engine while trying to stay in his seat as the car bounced about. “Slow down! The road’s blocked!”
The vehicle lurched forward as the brakes locked. It skidded for several meters before finally coming to a stop. Both of the men inside exited, one reaching back in to grab his machete. Not too far down the road, they observed a group of people swarming over the wreckage of a truck.
“Do you think they’re crazies?”
Scratching his beard, the other replied. “Not sure. Don’t look like they’re bein’ too violent.” He turned back and took his place in the passenger’s seat. “Come on, we have enough stuff, lets see if they are willin’ to do business like civil folk.”
------
The truck contained nothing much. Whomever had wrecked it had nothing left, save for a few pairs of extra socks – a small blessing. Upon hearing the trader’s truck coming down the road, the group initially panicked thinking it was another band of crazies. A few ran off into the woods but soon came back out after realizing who was actually coming up the road. The trader’s vehicle stopped after they used the plow on the front to push the wreck out of their path. The two men inside hopped out heading to the rear of their vehicle and opened the doors.
“Hello,” the one with the beard said in a friendly manner. “First bit o’ business, what d’ya have t’offer?” He looked among the pale faces of the group hoping for one of them to speak. He bent down and sat on the step leading into where they left their supplies. “Well, then my name is Roger. I just can’t hand out this stuff for free, so what are ya offerin’?”
Noel’s mother took her backpack off and unzipped it. After a couple moments of searching, she pulled out the group’s backup map. It was intact for the most part and maps from the old times were hard to come by.
Roger’s eyes lit up when he saw the map. “If yer willin’ to give that up, I’ll give ya all the clean water I can spare!”
With the exchange of goods, they said their goodbyes and went their separate ways. Soon after, the familiar thunderous roar from above the layer clouds made itself known.
Several kilometers up the road, the group had passed through a patch of thick fog. Once they had emerged, the mountains loomed before them. The stone titans were barren; consisting of dull grays and browns until they rose to their snow covered peeks, the forests no longer luscious or alive.
Once in the foothills, the deafening roar above the clouds became louder and more frequent. At certain times, it was so loud that the group would march on with their hands cupped over their ears. Sections of the road had fallen away from mudslides, leaving just enough room to inch their way along the edge opposite of the steep mountainside.
Within a couple of days they had stopped. The water they had traded for was almost gone and began rationing what little food they had left. They had settled in a clearing near the side of the road. Almost immediately, members of the group forged for any miniscule amount of food.
Once the scavenging team had returned with backpacks full of refilled water bottles and food, smiles spread through the camp. A minor victory.
---Years Pass---
Noel leaned on the shovel, staring down at the grave that held his mother. She had fallen ill that winter and had never recovered. Despite the horrible things he had seen, not having her around still left a hollow ache inside. Sighing, he ran to catch up with the rest of the group as they began their migration back into the valley below.
Not too far down the road, a figure stood in the center of the road with a rifle resting on his shoulder. The group stopped, waiting to see what was going to happen. Noel turned around only to see two more armed men wander from the edge of the forest lining the road. On an outcropping of rock above the group was another individual with a rifle as well.
Knowing that being robbed would mean death in the near future, the group began running to the guardrail to their right, attempting to get down the steep slope. Before they could even manage to cross into the other lane, a shot rang out. A man behind Noel fell to the ground as a bullet tore through his neck. He was not immediately killed; he just lay on the ground gurgling as he drowned in his own blood. The gunshot echoed endlessly through the valley and everything else remained silent. Noel turned back to glare at the man above them with his dark green eyes. The man pulled back on his bolt-action rifle, ejecting the smoking casing and loading another round. The silence continued.
“Now,” the man down the road began. “Let’s not try something like that again, okay? Just leave your carts there and keep going.” He walked casually up the road towards the group. He stopped just short of the group and looked them over, inspecting each and every person. “Come on now. We don’t have all day.”
The man’s face changed from smugness to confusion when a member of the group came to confront him. He opened his mouth to question what the approaching man was doing but the confronter’s arm pivoted up, a revolver in hand. A single shot rang out, the bandits’ leader’s face exploding into a red mass and the back of his head blowing open. Even before his body could collapse to the ground the group rushed down the road. The remaining bandits opened fire, managing to kill a couple people. Noel ran and continued to do so. Several others had managed to make it around the bend in the road but as Noel looked back, he saw that many had been gunned down during their escape.
As Noel returned his attention to the surviving people he noticed they had completely stopped. “What the hell are you doing?” He screamed at them.
A woman turned to face him, her round face and brown eyes full of fear. “Engines.”
Noel saw a couple trucks come swooping around a corner below them, the engines audibly straining against the steep angle of the road. With bandits behind them, crazies now at the front, and a cliff face to the right the means of escape was downhill. They could almost physically feel the constriction of the noose surrounding them. Noel’s heart raced; his mind rushed different scenarios through it. Then, coming to a conclusion, he ran to the rusty guardrail and followed the few who had already leapt over the edge. He rolled and bounced violently down the steep slope, the bits of dead plant life crunching beneath him. Eventually, the ground became muddy, slowing his tumble. When he finally did stop sliding downhill, Noel turned so his head face downward and began pulling himself through the mud towards the next section of road below. By the time Noel finally reached the cracked asphalt below, one of the trucks was coming around the bend. Thus, he leapt over the next guardrail and repeated the process.
It took him a long extraneous hour before he finally reached the flat empty plains of the valley. Millions of years ago, glaciers had carved out the valley leaving nearly vertical stonewalls and a relatively flat bottom. Noel stumbled along the barren terrain for most of the day without coming across any of his comrades. He was alone; no one else had made it as far. He knew his chances of surviving the winter had plummeted to nearly zero. There was no way he could manage to keep himself alive if he became ill or was wounded. An infected cut out here could mean the death of you, as well as a broken bone.
It took sometime for him to notice, but Jeremy finally felt an excruciating pain in his side. He guessed he may have cracked a rib or two during his tumble down the mountain but he pushed on, leaving the sensation of pain as far back in his mind as he could. His only option now was to keep going until he dropped dead. The valley wasn’t safe anymore.
That night, before he could even manage to close his eyes, as he got ready to sleep, the familiar roar from above the clouds filled the air. An orange glow emanated from the clouds, making them appear to glow as if they were ablaze. Jeremy stood and ran, ignoring the searing agony from his side. His muscles in his legs felt about ready to separate from his bones but he continued onward. He scrambled as fast as he could up a hill that, oddly enough, had a perfectly flat top. In front of him were two huge perfectly circular concrete caverns or tunnels. At the entrance of one of the tunnels, an immense fan stood still, no longer spinning as the one next to it was. Noel entered the tunnel and was absorbed by the increasing darkness. He fell a few times, the rough surface scraping his hands and tearing his gloves and pants.
Finally, he felt the handle of a door along the wall of the tunnel and turned its’ knob. A blinding light filled his vision.
Holy shit, he thought. There’s a goddamn city here.
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Thread: Frozen Wasteland -- Part 1
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