Resurrection

“Might wanna hustle up a little, Doc. Ain’t got that much time left.”

“I am just about done,” Sam replied to the man at his door, fully armed and armoured. The man nodded and left, leaving Sam to his himself. Sam stared at the rucksack that sat between his legs, going through a mental checklist of items: First-aid, ammunition, rations, a hovertent, his journal and map, binoculars...all was ready, save for one which he considered to be the most important, though his hopes for its usage were not high. He walked over to his desk and lifted a small enforced case, roughly the size of a pencil case, and ran his hand over its smooth surface. He walked back, and gently inserted the army-green case into a spot he had previously left verily for it. Then, zipped shut was the rucksack, and on his back it went. He grabbed the gun he had propped by the door and emerged into the darkness of predawn, letting the heavy metal door slam behind him. Most of settlement around him laid still in a calm darkness, the road that ran through it empty of man, save Sam himself. He headed westward, to the rallying point not far from his home. He would be not be back for quite a while, to those who lived here, but to himself the trip would take but a few days. That was how it was in the Outback: one may embark upon a journey with a daughter of yet under-aged, but return to find an old women who claimed her father had abandoned her. That was what used to be, at least. As such a phenomenon was gradually recognized, people began to become reluctant to migrate or even travel, and became content with simply staying put. Such was the case in Sam’s settlement, at any rate. He looked back at the east, where the darkness was beginning to disperse, torn by the gray light of day. No sun. He had, with his very own eyes, been unable to witness in full the light and warmth of the sun in the some twenty-five years that he has lived, much like others of similar age. To them, all the sun was was a slightly brighter patch in the sky, casting down its gray and powerless rays, illuminating the gray sky, and the black forests beneath it. Such was innormal, Sam knew, for he, when he was a young boy, heard tales from his father that, in his very early days, there used to a bright, golden and warm shinning globe in the blue and pure sky, so bright it teared the eyes of whom who beheld it directly. It was warm, even hot too, under its rays, unlike the feeble sun now, whose rays gave little heat. More mythological still, were the words that described the Moon, how it was a pale plate of jade in the sky, how it maxed and waned every month, at times a full coin, at times a sharp hook. Sam did not have the luck to see it before it disappeared, shrouded by the smoke clouds that now ran from one side of heaven to the other: a ceiling of gray smoke, that was Sam’s sky, and that of many others.

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Sam sighed, and walked on. Soon the houses on either side began to grow scarce, and the woods filed in within the gaps. His settlement, his home, was not large. Helmrow was its name, a mere town of some one thousand men and women and children set upon the hillsides of a circling ring of tall hills, too tall to be called hills, yet as mountains they fell shy of the standards. The townsfolk lived their own life, cultivating such plants as they have tamed through the years: planting seeds, watering, tending, harvesting, repeat. The crop fields occupied most of the space in the basin, and the accommodations of the townsfolk were on the hillsides. The ring of mountains, the Shield-barrier, opened in the west, a sudden and gaping fracture in its continuous and undulating body. There,in between the two near vertical precipices that were the ending sides of the Shield-barrier, a large gate manned by vigilance was set, rising from the bottom of the vale to the top, interlinked with the tops of the Shield-barrier.

The Gates of Helmrow.

It drew into sight now, as Sam made his way forward. He was to rendezvous at the Gate with those that would join him for the trip. Or to be exact, those whose trip would be joined by him. They, were the Rangers. Scouts, guerrilla forces they were, comprised of some fifty fighters most elite of Helmrow. To the people of Helmrow, they are their guardians, their shields against the cruelty of the world outside. The Rangers were looked upon with reverence and gratitude, and all felt morally obliged to offer what help they could to them whenever it was needed. The Rangers, bought the people of Helmrow their lives of somewhat peacefulness with their own lives and blood, their limbs and their sanity, for whenever a threat arose, it was the Rangers who would leave the sanctuary of their home in the basin and obliterate it, whether it packs of mutant monsters, or ill-minded humans. The latter was rare, and most of the casualties suffered by the Rangers were the doings of the previous. Their casualties were, naturally, high, but at least Helmrow does not lack able fighters, despite its small population. This had to do with, of course, the way they trained their children.

The Rangers were, however, not the only ones who would leave Helmrow: Helmrow had their own trade caravan, a band of valiant and bright men. Once every two months they would pass through the Gate, and head out into the unknowns, bringing with them the goods that Helmrow produced. For days and weeks they would journey, to reach other settlements they knew of, and bring back exotic items and crafts of other men, some necessary for the continuation of Helmrow, some merely for refreshment. Their numbers were not large, but their deeds’ significance may surpass even the rangers: Helmrow, like an organism, could not survive entirely isolated on its own, and needed “trace elements” from the outside world. The caravan ensured that the supply of these life-sustaining substances did not dry.   

Soon the gates towered above him, a massive gray wall of stone built upon stone, solid and immovable. A mere look at its flat and rough yet not jagged surface would dishearten one’s attempt to penetrate it by force. Sam could not help but wonder at how their people manged to complete such a feat, with the little resources that they had, once again. He approached the Gate, and laid his hand upon its cool surface. He walked along it southwards, towards the left end of the Gate, running his hand on its uneven surface, feeling the power that the stone gave off, the power of indestructibility, the power to withstand the wash of both physical rain and that of time.       

Eventually, he found himself before large house of wood, built against the inner surface of the Gate, unpainted, like most of the buildings in the settlement, showing only the light lavender of the timber that it was built of. Three stories it had, and was mustering place of the guards of the Gate, and the Rangers.

He approached the steel door of the house, and knocked three times. A narrow window at its upper center slid open, revealing a pair of gray eyes.

“Ah, Doc. They have been expecting you.” Said the owner of those eyes in a calm voice. There came the sound of a lock disengaging, and the door opened.

Welcoming Sam in was the Keeper of the Gates, Walton. He was a nearly a head shorter than Sam, but was much stouter of build, a muscular man. Occasionally the men would joke with him saying he was wider than he was tall. That was, of course only a product of jest, but it was not that far off the truth. Walton, as the Keeper of the Gates, was in charge of the house where the two now stood, and the working functions of the Gate. Unlike the guards of the Gate, who took monthly turns to man the Gate, Walton spends the majority of his time here in this house at the very edge of Helmrow. He minds it little, for he had no family, and hence naught forbidding him from just living here, and it was hardly lonely, with the guards around. The man was of a joyful and diligent nature, and with him around, the house always well-arranged and spotlessly clean, and the Gates would never malfunction. Sure, he would complain when the guards brought in too much dust and throw their weapons without order onto the shelves, or when a weary Ranger scout returned weather-beaten after a journey bringing both foreign tidings and foreign mud, but he would, of course, still clean it up, or at least lay the responsibilities back onto the right shoulders while joking with his favourite line: “If you want me to clean up after your arse, I’ll do it with the manscorcher’s leaves.”

He entered, and walked with Walton through the rows of gun shelves that were placed on the ground floor, the room dimly lit by a few weak bulbs that hung from the unadorned ceiling, the light shed by which reflected upon the weapons below. A part of the shelves were empty, the guns taken by the guards of the Gate, but the others were lined orderly with clean guns, though their wear was visible, all maintained by their gunsmith. They went up a flight of stairs with crates of ammunition stacked beneath, and came onto the second floor. The floor was, just like the one below, dimly lit, only that the floor was not at its full illumination capabilities. The second story was the dorms and living space of the guards, with steel barracks lining the room, leaving only a small space enough for a few warn armchairs facing a fireplace. One the chairs was occupied by a man who sat with his back facing them, hood draw over his head, and whose body rose and fell with rhythmic breaths, seemingly asleep. The fireplace was nearly dead, only a few sparks of orange could be seen in the dust.

“The Captain awaits you above, if you do not mind...” Walton said to Sam, and walked away towards the fireplace. He threw in several more logs and stroke the fire, and it came alive once more, its yellow tongues licking the already blackened wall, as smoke rose through the chimney. The fire gave emitted a light fragrance unique the the trees of that area, a pleasant scent that soothed uneasy souls and calmed the furious, a scent that made men adrift yearn for their homely beds. The figure in the chair stirred a little, but went back to sleep. Walton walked away silently, extinguishing an oil lamp on a nearby table.

Sam continued upwards, and came into, contradictory the two previous stories, a floor thoroughly lit. Some ten chairs were circled around a stand upon which a delicate hand-drawn map, all occupied by stout men. A tall and lean figure stood by the map with a clipboard in hand, with his gray hair that was mattered with white cut short and a clean beard on his chin.

“Ah, Sam, you have come, take a seat. Good, then we shall begin.” Said Captain Overton.

Sam found a seat in the corner and sat down.

“Howdy, Doc.” Said the man with a round and bald head that sat on a short yet thick neck who sat beside him. It was Bottas.

“Now, gentlemen,” Overton began. “As we know, one of our scouts have returned, bringing ill tidings, only some an hour ago. I was briefed before he went down to rest, and it is time now that you all know.”

“Winds of change blow. Giavoni, who seldom extended its reach to such remote locations as ours, have become active around of late, and only this week the sent several dropships and bergs fleets to our area, seemingly patrolling, or, as our scout put it, searching for something, along this river, the Ribbian, and areas around it.” He pointed to a coloured line that marked the river on the map. There was a vertical bend in it, and it was marked with a symbol denoting danger. “This we all know,” he made a well-placed pause “BUT, as some may already have realized, this area intercepts the returning route of our trade caravan. The problem is, as we have already learnt, Giavoni does not offer locals like us much hospitality, and...as some of you may have realized, out caravan...is late. Four days late. They, by their own words, should have returned some four days ago. A delay not unprecedented, but concerning, for they have returned somewhat on time every journey this year.”

“We know not their purpose of coming, for in the decades of late all Giavoni had to do with this river was that their material synth plants were, and are still, set up all along it. However, Giavoni forces, both aerial and land-going, have been seen by our scout around the area. This concerns us greatly, for we all know how many brothers we lost to them, and their contracted raiders have for long troubled many, in and out of Helmrow. I believe none here would relish the knowledge that Giavoni forces are operating so near.”

“The Outlands are unpredictable. A delay of any length is within comprehension. The caravan includes our most experienced and skilled Rangers, surely they could avoid contact, or even avail in contact with Giavoni forces. Perhaps the delay is a mere result of a detour,” Bottas said.

“Reasonable,” replied Overton. “But their women are worried, and so am I. I have to fear even the least likely of ends, which in this case...I need not say. The women keep asking, but I cannot continue to meet their inquires with an ‘I know no more than you do’.”

“Hence, I propose here, an initiative for evaluation: we send a reconnaissance squad to area and see if we can make aught of the doings of Giavoni, and also see if we can find traces that indicates the passing of our caravan. Might as well check that abandoned place they found on the hill and made into an emergency shelter, since we are going that way.”

“I say yes,” said Bottas, as soon as the old man finished. “Exactly what I had in mind. Get there, get back. Just a quick investigation.”

“I am against this,” said a man with a hoarse voice. “I say we wait longer. I entrust the faculties of  our men. If they failed, how much better could we possibly do? Besides, without communication, we don’t even know where they may be delayed, for it may not be in that area at all. If they still so not return by the end of the week, we conduct a search operation of a larger scale.”

“This calls for a vote then.” Overton said, holding his chin. Sam could see the man dithering through his grey eyes.

It turned out that most were for carrying out a reconnaissance, even though some said that they were unsure.

“Very well then,” Oventon said, placing his clipboard back onto his desk at the other end of the room. “We shall go, and more than one shall come. I do not wish, or plan to engage, but if the circumstances press, than we can’t afford losing more men due to lack of numbers. We shall muster five men, including me, as well as Sam, for all our corpsmen are away or occupied at the moment.”

Overton chose five volunteers, including Bottas and himself. “Prepare now, he said to them. We set out at full bright of day. We travel light and on foot.”

Someone opened the curtains, and Sam saw the whole of Helmrow slowly revealing itself under the growing light, grey-white paint that diffused itself across the lavender-coloured lands.

He had a sense of foreboding.

*      *      *

Darkness. Suffocating darkness. Like liquid, it enveloped him, and he sank, ever deeper. He could draw no breath, for his lungs were filled darkness also. He wished to thrash about, to re orientate himself, and find the surface, to reach it and feel air once more. Yet he found he was without a mortal body, all that remained for him to control was nothing exceeding an abstract consciousness. Pressure, grew by the seconds, as he sank to unthinkable depth, farther from his desired surface. The darkness compressed him, crushing his consciousness to a point infinitely small. He panicked, as imaginary pain of hypoxia reached him: he had no body, after all, but his mind lacked the oxygen that was light. Over him was darkness, under him also. Around him was blackness, within him also. He could see only the nothingness, for so dark and black it filled his eyes.

A sharp pain spiked in what would be his neck, should he still have one.

All the darkness vanished, only to be replaced by something worse.

It was a scene of gore so revolting he would never forget. He came, into a room of flesh. The walls were soft and slippery with blood and mucus, the walls pulsated, and blood dripped from the ceiling. He was frozen with fright disgust. Suddenly, the room gave a turmoil, and began to shrink, its was closing in with wet, squelching sounds. Yet, just as he feared they were about to touch him, they all...

Melted. Like ice in a fire, the bloody room quickly gave away around him, first into a mass of blood-red liquid, then to vapour, and was gone, swept away by the wind. Only a patch of ground beneath him remained red, stained by the blood. The surface beneath him...it was covered by a layer of what appears to be snow, but was not cold. He looked around, and had just the time to descry a far lodge in the snow, familiar in a way, yet he could not quite grasp how, before the ground beneath him changed again. The snow was gone now, only to be replace by an odd surface that was neither liquid nor solid. Abruptly, only just before him, the ground shot up swiftly, and separated in the middle, creating two mountains of whiteness. Yet mountains they were not, for they moved. They wrestled with each other, like giants in a melee. It was as if they were fighting to obtain something...something, in comparison to their monstrosity seemed to fade from existence. Yet they wrestled, and the ground beneath him gave away once more, this time like a silk tablecloth that was pierced, it wrinkled and broke asunder.

He fell again.

Only this time he landed.

Emmerly Karrson jerked awake, returning from what he thought was inevitable death.

Karrson surveyed his surroundings. He lied in a soft bed with a blanket over him, in a room lined with other beds akin to that upon which he lied. It was a rectangular hall with beds lining its two lengths, there were windows only on the side behind Karrson, through which casted the gray beams of the near-noon Sun. His whole body was wet with cold sweat. There was a door to the right. Karsson removed the blanket, preparing to get off the bed.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” A sudden voice from nowhere froze him in his act. He turned, slowly, towards the direction from which the voice came, and saw a man, in his late twenties, with slightly curly, shoulder-lengthed black hair standing beside a set of curtains, presumably behind which he hid when Karrrson woke.

“Don’t be alarmed. I mean no harm, I assure you. I saw signs of your awakening and thought a good idea to hide so as to not scare you, but I guess I messed that part up and gave you an even bigger fright.” He smiled awkwardly.

He waited for a response, but when none came from Karrson, he continued.

“Not so very talkative, at least not at the moment, eh? Normal. Anyway...I’m Sam, and...umm...welcome to my clinic. I’ve been caring for you for the last couple of days. And you should lie back down, more rest’ll do you good.” He held out his hand.

Karrson dithered for a moment, but at last still took it, and received a vigorous handshake, though he himself had not the strength to return the same.

“Emmerly...Karrson. Fill me in, if you do not mind. Events of late have been...bewildering...” Memories began to slowly return to his mind.

“Let’s see...where do I start...” Sam said.

“I got shot. I was facing certain death,” Karrson said. “Yet here I sit.”

“Ah...right. True, I had little hope that you could survive when I found you, but it turned out that,” he shrugged, “you recovered better than I expected. We both have a story to tell, guess I’ll start.”

He walked over and seated himself in a chair facing Karrson’s bed.

“Sometime ago, I headed out our settlement with a couple of others to...um...let’s just say to find something, a group of men, actually, and we found that ill fate had befallen them, and only a few were alive. We searched in the areas nearby for the others, but found none. We did, however, stumble upon you, lying in the woods and nearly bleeding out. I am a doctor, actually, so I did what I could to patch you up with such as I could access at hand. It’s a miracle you were alive when we found you, and just in time, too. A wait any longer and you would have been none our business. You were hit, I think, by a hybrid plasma weapon, and it nearly destroyed your left shoulder. Luckily, the plasma with its high temperature actually burnt the tissue around your open wound thus acting as hemostasis, and staunched the bleeding of your major vessels, or you should have bled out long before we found you. As for how I manged to revive you...you will find out in time, for it is likely incomprehensible to you at the moment. Be not hasty, for eventually you will learn of all.”

Karrson was silent for a moment. “How long was I unconscious?”

“Some five days. I thought it’d take longer you know. You surprise me with your speed, for I have seen none like you.”

Karrson looked at his left shoulder. His entire left arm was limp and immobile, and a burning sensation had begun to grow from where he was wounded. He suddenly noticed that, the clothes on his body, the bandages(there was a darker path in the middle,perhaps medicine or blood), and even all the bed-ware in the room were of a light lavender colour. Somehow it gave him a soothing sensation, a reassuring calmness. Exactly not what had expected to find in a post-Armageddon clinic. It would be more like a dark, dirty room lined with bloody beds and reeking of death in his mind, from which every aspect of the room in reality contradicted, as if telling him that somehow the End was not so cruel as he had thought it be. Where was he, anyway?

“Where...and how...” Karrson could not quite put the sudden sum of questions expanding in exponential growth into words.

“Ah, I see.” Sam said with a look of understanding. “Can you walk? Seeing what is outside holds will partially answer your questions, yet only to give birth to more. Some fresh air will help you too, I think.”

Karrson shifted his legs and hung them on the edge of the bed, his feet touching the ground. He brought himself up slowly, stumbled a little as his legs nearly collapsed again in their weakness, but he steadied himself, and stood once more. His left arm was in a sling fashioned with the lavender bandages. It felt reassuring to feel firm land beneath his feet again.

“At least I know all this is real...” Karrson breathed as he followed Sam out the door, into a room that looked like some sort of living quarters, then shortly out another door, and out to where no roof and walls sealed them in...

Awaiting outside, was not the scene of destruction, catastrophe, death nor pain...but...a fair countryside enclosed in a ring of tall hill-mountains afar, with no hint of disorder or, as Karrson had come familiarize himself with, Distortion, or at least the Distortion he knew. Around him was a plain of lavender coloured grass, of knee-height, farther, were...fields...squarely, ordered patches of agricultural fields, crops of various kinds grew, their individual plants forming ordered yet packed throngs, shuffling against each other in the gentle breeze. In another direction, were forests, with canopies of different shapes, yet of uniformed colour: dark tones of purple, nearly black. The purple woods were dense in places, and sparse in others, where paths led to and from them. He could hear the light rustle of their leaves, a whisper so gentle and fair it was nearly lost when he breeze carried it to him, like running with a shallow plate water. Farther on the hillsides were houses, actual houses, mostly built of hewn wood and mason-handled stone, with only some that were, as Karrson imagined that they would be, built with rusty scrap metal, yet even those were better built than he would have expected. He noticed that, interestingly, the soil in this area was all lavender. This would perhaps explain how all those purple sights came to be. The scene was breath-robbing, like the brainchild of a contemporary whose most favoured colour was purple, and he drew, with heart and mind, with a brush that was interlinked with his deepest impulses, upon canvas that absorbed those paints and took them for its own, revealing, in a indulging dream, the artist’s vision for his heart’s accommodation, a out-worldly place where his heart could rest eternally untouched.

All that told Karrson he was not taken by the divine touches of such a gifted artist, was the sky. To match the picture, it should have been a crystal blue so clear it hid the true boundaries of the sky, but here...

It was a grey shell, an impervious curtain.

The dust, nearly the same as Karrson remembered it, persisted.

“Welcome to Helmrow, Emmerly,” said Sam, as he took a deep breath of the fragrant air. “Our sanctuary.”

Subconsciously, Karrson touched his own face, and realized that he wasn’t wearing a gas mask. But he noticed also that Sam wore none.

“So...the Distortion Radiation here, it is weak enough for human habitation?”

“The what?” Sam looked at him with a look of puzzlement.

“Oh...um...the cause of all this strangeness and these unnatural things,” Karrson said, pointing at the odd purple woods. “That is what the...um...let’s say...scientists refer to it.”

“Hum...” Sam furrowed his brows and looked at him.

“When are you from?” Sam asked.

“Caterpool, East-hill end...wait,” Karrson stopped abruptly. “When?”

“Yes. From what time? You may use the unit years-from-GF, for ‘years from the Great Fall’, which is when all this,” he scanned his arms around, “came into being.”

Karrson feel into thought. It came back to him now, recalled from a overlooked crevice in his memory, the words of Emmrich. Distortion Radiation could alter and bend time, much akin to Einstein’s theory of relativity: the greater the Distortion, the “slower” the time passed. As he currently had no idea where he was, hence no way to speculate the distance he had traveled when he was unconscious, he could not tell how far he was from Ground Zero. Not too far, he thought, for he had been rescued in time before death took him for his own. Yet, few places could surpass the Radiation strength in Ground Zero, so time must have “crawled” along when he was in it and the area surrounding. Thus, for all he knew, he could be talking to someone born decades or even centuries after he was, and still be younger.

“Ground Zero, that the is GF for you, occurred only some a week before for me,” he said.

Sam nodded slowly. “It has been some decades here, for I am the third generation to live here. You will learn all that has come to pass...in time.”

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