Dreamworld (closed for Darkened_Star)

[RedTimberWolf]

Twelve years ago, the world as we knew it ended. There was no forecast for this disaster, no signs or portents, no ill conceived plan to head the end off at the last moment. There were plans to manage the outbreak of a lethal viral plague, nuclear war, even Apophis-style asteroids. Quite simply, no one saw it coming.

It started, it was believed, in Japan or thereabouts, though reports differ wildly. It matters very little. Let's say it was Japan. Their day ended, people went to sleep and all seemed normal. Gradually, night crept over Asia and then into the Middle East and Eastern Africa and Europe. It was about then that something was apparently wrong. Things that should have started in Japan hadn't, as if they'd all slept in late.

There must have been frantic phone calls, desperate attempts to rouse some sort of response from Eastern Asia. Maybe some got through? If they had, what would they have been told? One could imagine some poor Japanese father sobbing over a long distance line because his family wouldn't wake up, and nor would his friends, or his co-workers, or the bus drivers, or, indeed, anyone. They'd all gone to sleep and now appeared to be in some sort of coma.

Frantic, generic plague contingencies would have been put in place. Europe and Africa would have started to find their beds. Calls to China, Korea, even India, all silent, all asleep. Perhaps some pockets of resistance, and all those twenty four hour people working their shifts, perhaps they knew something was wrong and started to try to do something about it? But, in honesty, they were in the minority, and really how many of them were in positions to take action? Not many. Not enough.

Sleep crept over Europe, warm beds as sure an end as the most virulent disease and infinitely more seductive. Isolated, the Americas alternated between outright panic and an incredible controlled dedication to averting whatever disaster had occurred. How long did they work? How many stimulants did they take before they, finally, had to succumb to sleep or insanity, or even both? Perhaps they made progress, perhaps they didn't, it all ended the same way. The world went to sleep and never woke up.

Well, not the entire world, of course. A few slept and woke to the apocalypse and, after a time, tried to put the world back together. But they were too few and the knife edge of a civilisation based on high technology too sharp and precarious to be clung to for long. The world tumbled back down the slopes of advancement to where the basics of survival became daily necessities. If Maslow's hierarchy of needs were applied, the bottom tiers were all important: food and water, security and shelter, that sort of thing.

Many banded together, forming communities, safe havens from the encroaching world. No longer held in check or beaten down by an endless, ravenous need, mother nature began to take back what was hers piece by piece. But mankind was not about to let her take everything. Some knowledge still retained, some technology still kept in a form of repair, humanity clung to the flotsam of past glories with voracity and tenacity.

Twelve years. Almost long enough to forget there was any other world before this and yet not quite long enough.

~

As the sun set, he camped in the ruins of what was once a small railway station. The roof had long since collapsed on the main building, but a tool shed nearer the corroded rails still held out against the elements. He had to break in, shattering the rusted lock with a strike from a hammer he kept for these occasions. He'd hoped to find something useful, something he could salvage, but the shed had never contained much of use in the first place. Nothing he could carry, anyhow.

He placed his pack a corner and his rifle right next to it. He'd clean it later as, almost more than anything else he'd brought, he needed it to work. He was a man on a mission, a hunter on the trail of a beast. His trail was marked in death and began a hundred miles or more before, over hill and prairie and the shell of some city or other.

As he stoked a small fire to keep off the evening chill, he remembered their faces, the ones he'd lost and those who he'd seen slain on the way. He'd put a stop to the killing, to the senseless, torturous death. He and his rifle, they'd put a stop to it and then, perhaps, there'd be peace.

 

[Darkened_Star]

Running, always running, the dark corridor seemingly getting longer the faster she tried to run, the more desperately she tried to escape. Every door was shut fast, the wood decayed and damp, dark shadows spreading from the edges, sealing the doors shut. She was breathing heavily now, gasping in fear as it came closer and closer behind her. She felt, rather than saw the long fingers reaching out, centimetres from her hair. She tripped, crying out as she fell forwards, hands outstretched to stop her fall, knowing this was it, she was caught.

Suddenly the ground was whisked away, she spun in a lazy somersault until she was facing upwards. It wasn’t flying, she was falling upwards, screaming through the centre of a spiral staircase, long hands reaching out to grasp her, to tear at her hair, her clothes. Their owners mere shapes, flashing past before she could get a proper look. She was falling towards another shadow, one even more massive and indefinable, with an echoing scream she fell into it, the staircase was empty.

The Patchwork man was in front of her, a smile on his colourful face. A blue square surrounded his right eye, the left half of his face was yellow. His clothing was even more colourful, appearing to be sections of cloth sewn together with large, childish stitches. An oversized knitting needle protruded from a pocket. But despite this, despite the colourful attire and painted face, beneath the deceptive outer layer the face of the Patchwork man was as cold and proud as a prince of hell. Perhaps he was…
______________________________________________________________

She woke with a whimper, eyes wide and the sheen of sweat upon her brow. The lightning flashed across the entrance to the subway, he was there! No, it wasn’t him, he couldn’t hurt her here. But she wasn’t safe here; she scrambled around, rolling her few belongings into the groundsheet and securing it with frayed cord. She slipped a hand into her coat, stroking the butt of the battered revolver for comfort. It was more for show than anything else, she’d never fired it, didn’t even know if it would still fire. She’d pried it out of the cold hands and mouth of a corpse three months ago. There were still four bullets, if the worst came to the worst she could barter it for food or other supplies, and it would serve as useful persuasion if she was desperate, which she so often was.

She stopped at the entrance to the subway station, looking back at the sleeping forms of the other survivors. They had been kind to her, feeding her without any expectation of repayment. But the dreams had caught up with her, the nightmares, they always did. And she couldn’t continue to press on these people’s hospitality any longer, she was restless. It was time to move on. She left the subway, wrapping the long coat about herself against the wind and rain. Behind her, in the shadows, one of the sleepers stirred, their eyes snapped open…

 

[RedTimberWolf]

He slept fitfully through the storm that lashed the shed, wind rattling the door he'd roped back to its frame. He thanked the gods of fortune for the shelter, exposure a sure a death as any in this time after hospitals and emergency rooms. Thunder clapped him awake as the storm head passed him by but this was not his first foray into the wild and he found a light sleep despite.

The rain kept up in the morning, dawn's light arriving late through the clouds. He always woke with the light, even when indoors or underground. Just a knack, an instinct in tune with the world. That was part of what made him an excellent hunter, those instincts combined with an uncanny understanding of aim and timing. It had kept him alive.

He packed the few things that he'd removed from his pack and checked his canteen, sloshing the contents near a practised ear; enough for the day, but he'd need to find more soon. Fortunately, the rain would make that easy.

He breakfasted on dried meat and an aged apple he'd saved from his last forage. Again, he checked his supplies, never too careful. Adequate, but he'd keep his eyes peeled. He, like everyone who took to the road, could afford nothing else.

Pulling his weathered tan duster around him, a wide brimmed hat firmly on his head, he pulled his pack on, swaddled his rifle, and set out into the wet. Back on the trail, west and a little south, following the remnants of the railway line towards another brittle corpse of a city. By his estimate, even given the weather, he should arrive at the outskirts by nightfall, though he'd not venture in 'til the following morning.

He walked in silence, calmly alert to his surroundings. A pair of deer watched him pass, skittish but not moved to flight. He briefly considered pausing, fresh meat often worth the effort, but he did not want to lose the time. Onwards, he walked, looking for the next signs, looking for the next mangled bodies that would indicate he was on the right track.

 

[Darkened_Star]

The cheese was hard and relatively tasteless, the last of a large chunk she'd traded in exchange for two of the bullets from her revolver, it was proving to be a valuable item, whether it worked or not. She nibbled again, before sighing and standing up, wrapping it carefully in a scrap of frayed linen and slipping it into a pocket. She had to be careul, decent food was hard to come across without hunting, and she hated having to kill.

The building's of the city towered around her, most were untouched, but here and there were the marks of small skirmishes amongst the cities inhabitants. Even now, in the face of so much hardship, humanity couldn't put aside it's differences for the benefit of mutual survival. The burnt out wreck of a car was testament to a more vicious cycle among the locals. There was a burnt and twisted figure on the bonnet, whisps of charred rope showing that the burning had been no accident.

She shuddered, pulling the coat tighter around herself, a sudden chill had run through her. She looked around, the streets were empty, but somewhere, on the very edges of her senses, there was a single shrill note. A scream. Of rage? Fear? Perhaps everything, she couldn't tell. The sound bounced off the buildings, the still air offering no barrier to it. It echoed around her, going on for longer than any natural lungs could have maintained it. THen, just as suddenly, it died away. As though the city had tired of it's new plaything and tossed it onto the pile of other sad discarded toys.

She had to leave, when she could get the outskirts she could choose another direction to travel, see where the wind took her. There were stories that some operated boats in the Atlantic, maybe she would be able hitch a ride, explore the rest of the world. She would see when she got there, planning ahead was useless now, it was hit or miss whether a settlement would still be inhabited next time you came that way, but somehow, humanity struggled on.

 

[RedTimberWolf]

Cities seemed a peculiar anachronism to him. Urbanisation was a product of the need to bring people to the centres of industry. Prior to that, people had been quite happy living out in small communities, living off the land. Okay, perhaps a slightly romantic view of a peasant's life, but the point was that the need for cities was as a place to house all these people working at these central facilities, hives of industry and commerce.

In the world of collapse, post the Big Sleep or the TKO or whatever one cared to call it, industry and commerce on that sort of scale no longer had any meaning. So why did people still gather to the cities? He supposed it was habit, combined with the need to find other survivors and the sense that people and cities should walk hand in hand. He'd never liked them, even in the time before. They stank. They were crowded. And they were always so noisy. These were attributes that failed to endear them to him.

No danger of crowds any longer, of course, and with the reduction in people and machines there was a corresponding reduction in noise. Unfortunately, cities still stank. They stank of corroding metal, of sewer systems over a decade in disrepair, and of the habitual lack of care that often travels with the despair that people feel when they reach a city and realise there's still so few left, that this one wasn't the one that magically escaped the cataclysm.

He camped as close as he cared to, maybe three miles from the city limits, with the last rays of sun providing enough visibility to pitch his tent. He'd normally not bother, but the rain had left the ground sodden and he didn't like the look of the clouds overhead. No storm any more, he felt, but a significant chance of rain. Besides, the tent was easy enough. Lightweight, exceptionally strong, it was a product of the heights of engineering. Now quite weathered, it still managed its job admirably.

Another reason to camp further away from other people; he didn't want to end up in a quarrel that might require him to spend some of his precious ammunition. On the whole, he wasn't especially worried for his own safety facing two or three would-be bandits. Often underfed, with firearms primarily for show, their capacity was far outmatched by their desperation. No, his main worry were gangs, organised and bloody. A few years back, he and a few of his comrades had dissuaded a roving band of marauders from raiding the homes of their community. His rifle had claimed more than a few, every one a necessary evil. Bloodied, the gang had moved on to find easier prey.

As night set proper, he watched fires in the city. It was common for newer arrivals to stay to the edges, often for months, while they negotiated with the longer standing inhabitants for access rights, provisions, or even the cost of rent. A dozen large fires, plus the same again in smaller flickers, told him that a larger than usual number of people had made it to this place. The railway tracks might have drawn them here, much as he'd been following. Or perhaps it was just a coincidence of population distribution. No telling, of course, but he liked to think on these things, look for patterns in the chaos. He'd once been told that this was part of what made him a good hunter, the ability to see the connections between small things and the trail that lead between them. He didn't know about that, but he liked the thought.

He ate little, his custom in the evening, but just before he turned in he caught the scent of something acrid and charred, smoke with a chemical edge. Not near, so it must have been from the city, but he disliked the smell all the same. He resolved to be careful in the morning when he planned to head inwards.

 

[Darkened_Star]

At least it wasn't raining, since the collapse the weather systems had fallen into disrepair, the heights of the city often trapped the storms, but the last one seemed to have blown itself out. Nothing really worked anymore, not fully, even the most powerful of the old devices worked only fitfully and even then at less than their full efficiency. Still, if you could get your hands on any advanced old tech it was worth a fortune, and often your life. She'd been in a settlement once when news of an old tech find came up in the desert. The bandits had attacked two days later. They rarely approached settlements, not unless they were particularly bloodthirsty or there was something particularly valuable. It was a pity the 'old tech' had turned out to be so much worthless junk.

She'd managed to hide from them. But she'd heard the other women in the settlement. The bandits had enjoyed them, she'd found two of them, their throats slit. The others had been taken with them, they would've died in a few days as it was. In this society, the strong took what they wanted, if you couldn't defend yourself, you were helpless.

Humanity had proved weak in the end. Despite all of their power and technology, there had been nothing they could do against the Sleep. Nothing anyone could do against it, now humanity had sunk back into a feral age, technology of a past age seen as sorcery, not science. Perhaps that was where it had all gone wrong.

 

[RedTimberWolf]

He woke in the small hours of the morning, long before he'd intended, in absolute darkness. The sky still clouded over, no moon or stars to lend even their ghostly shimmer to the shapes of the landscape, he could see nothing at all. Normally he'd rouse in the false dawn brightening of the sky. This was too early. And something was wrong.

He found the butt of his Bowie knife, ten inches of carefully sharpened steel designed for close quarters fighting, and slid it from its sheath. The hiss of oiled metal on leather all the keener for his lack of sight. Quietly, he disentangled himself from his sleeping bag and pushed open the tent flap. Night air chilled his face but he ignored the cold. His ears intent on potential danger, he paused there at the tent entrance and let his surroundings settle into his sightless understanding: the wind in the long grasses; rustling of leaves on a nearby tree; faint sounds of nocturnal fauna going about their business. He listened and waited, knife in hand.

No threat emerged. He waited longer. The night continued much as it always had, largely ignoring his presence. Yet he could not shake the feeling that something was wrong. This wasn't the first time he'd felt this way and part of him believed that this was why he was still alive to be on this single-minded hunt. So he waited, shifting weight when he needed, skin cooling with each passing minute in the cold night air, fingers light and ready on the knife. In the dark, his rifle would be useless, just in the way. The knife, though, he could use on anything he could reach, and if he could reach it then he could kill it.

Forty minutes later, the sense of wrongness passed. He had never really tried to describe it, even to himself, but if he did then he might feel a tingle or light pressure at the back of his head, just where the neck meets the skull. The pressure eased. Even so, he waited five minutes more, just to be sure, before closing up the tent, sheathing the blade, and finding sleep once more. Still, sleeping, his fingers stayed gently curled on the haft of the knife, waiting, always ready.

 

[Darkened_Star]

She stared out into the darkness, the knife balanced on her lap, the revolver secure inside her ragged coat. It was empty this far into the city, these streets were uninhabited, despite the dwellers, they tended to stay away from the inner city, too many memories. Perhaps not their own, but the city was like a carcass, full of the memories of it's old glory, it's life when it had once been a great beast of the continent. No more.

She shivered wrapping her arms around herself, stubbornly refusing sleep, scared of the dreams, the nightmares, the terrors. No, she wouldn't have them tonight, she felt, relaxed, at ease, she could usually tell when the dreams would come, would turn bad. It didn't feel like one of those nights. Slowly, knowing she couldn't resist, her eyelids came down.

Around her, the city still slept, another soul joining the great pool of life that swam above the city. The light dropped further, a dark time for dark deeds. But none tonight, she slept soundly, undisturbed, quiet, peaceful. Stirring hardly at all as she slumbered dreamlessly...

 

[RedTimberWolf]

He stood in a field in the sun, a cool breeze on his face. The oak tree behind him seemed familiar and comforting. He'd shared his first kiss in its boughs with a giggling bundle of red curls and freckles. He smiled at the memory.

In the distance, a horn sounded. A train. Was there a train so nearby?

On the platform, rain fell on the awning that kept waiting passengers dry. A crowd gathered to greet the oncoming train, great bellows of steam from her chimney, hands waving from every carriage and bunting in the colours of some regatta. Everyone seemed so happy. Why did he feel so sad?

Looking up at the street, overhead lamps pooled the side walk in sodium yellow, dully glistening in the puddles by the side of the road. The gutters all blocked with detritus from the storm, the puddles collected wide into the road. He stood alone and suddenly realised that the buildings were all facades, painted walls from some old western set with nothing but wooden buttresses behind to keep them standing. Not a living soul.

He ran but the street became infeasibly long, or perhaps he was running very slowly. Too slowly. The pursuers followed, grasping arms, long hands, reaching, grasping, grabbing...

The street was empty. Heart pounding. Buildings towered around, all in disrepair, the world decaying a brick or girder at a time. A sheltered corner, an out of the way place, a figure slept and he watched. He felt his anger building but he could not say why. From the shadows, an arm stretched out and pointed at the figure. Long, hooked fingers. Eerie. Unnatural. Then a face loomed from the darkness, all blue and yellow, smiling happily, and yet entirely terrifying, a picture of hell.

He snapped awake, ready to deal murder to anything in range. The tent around him offered him no targets, just the faintest pre dawn glow. He sat for a moment, found his canteen, and tried to wash the dream away. Gradually, his pulse calmed but the disturbing face did not leave him for another hour, and even then haunted much of his day.

Shortly after dawn his things were packed and he was on the trail again, heading into the city. He'd not travelled more than a hundred yards before he found what he assumed must have been left for him in the night when he was first disturbed. A deer, eviscerated, and laid out carefully, almost ritualistic in fashion, head pointing to town, tail back the way he'd travelled. He'd seen the innards of deer before, gutted a fair few himself, but this unsettled him. Someone had taken the care to do this and leave it for him.

He picked up his pace and resolved to be more watchful. Along the railway tracks he travelled. Next stop, city limits.

 

[Darkened_Star]

She woke, refreshed, after an undisturbed night. There had been no dreams, no nightmares. One moment her eyelids had been feeling heavy, the next she was awake again, though now thoroughly refreshed. She stretched, standing to look out on a city silhoutted by the rising sun. Long thin shadows cast by the streetlights and signs laid thin bands diagonally across the roads, like some dark chasm to fall into beside the safer sunlight. She always felt better in the sun, there were less shadows, the terrors of the night chased away and annihilated by the cleansing power of the sun. She was safe there.

She could hear the sounds of life, just on the edge of her senses. People coughing awake, others setting up junk stalls to sell what little wares they could scavenge, hoping to barter for the food and materials needed to survive. She rounded the corner, seeing a thronging market, here, deeper in the city was a thriving community of traders and scavengers it seemed. Weather beaten men lounged on barrels, cradling chunky looking rifles. They each wore a green bandanna about their neck or on their head. Some sort of guard perhaps? Regardless, they only seemed to be there to keep the peace.

But she had nothing she wanted to trade at the minute. She had all the food she could carry comfortably and wouldn't need more for a few weeks if she rationed it carefully. Though the people here looked fairly well off. There were still items of technology in the city that were valuable, sometimes even tinned or canned food. Though that was mostly gone now. It was not quite as affluent a life as those of the farmers on the plains but they looked well-fed and happy. These people had seen a world collapse about them, and despite that they had battled against all ahrdships to create a semblance of civilisation among the carcass of the last. She had to admire them.

 

[RedTimberWolf]

People were rare enough that any new arrival attracted attention. It was almost a ritual, he felt, where the locals sized up the arrival and assessed where they would fit in their world. Was the newcomer a threat, mark, or potential friend? Gang colours would put one straight in the threat category, as would brandishing any weapon openly. Conversely, looking like a waif in rags with nothing much of value could equally have one pinned as a mark, charity case, or simply another bottomless hole to pour in limited resources. For those somewhere between these obvious extremes, it was down to the local culture.

And for the new arrival, how the inhabitants went about sizing you up said a lot about them and their environment. Did they bolt for their safe places, their hidey holes? Or did they come out in force and line the streets with obvious menace? Were they starving or sick or hollow-eyed lost? All these things said something about the locals and told a wandered what he needed to know.

For the past half mile, he was aware that his path was being stalked in parallel by at least three others. He'd not turned to look; he just knew they were there, following him. Maybe they were just wary, keeping an eye on him at a safe distance. More likely, he felt, they were wondering if they could take whatever of value he carried before he made it into the city. He kept his rifle nestled in the crook of his arm, still swaddled, but plenty visible, a profile unmistakeable. It seemed that was enough to keep the scavengers at bay.

Early morning, he passed city limits under the watchful eye of three teenage boys sat atop a bus flipped on its side. Everything useful had already been stripped from the structure: electronic, mechanical, tyres and gears, even the windows. Just a shell remained, much like the city it once served.

Still, the locals had some sense of order. Scrawled signs hung from posts pointing to a medical centre and the market, amongst others. He had no wish to trade, but at this time people would be congregating at the market and he could continue his hunt there.

He cast his mind back.

They'd sheltered her for a fortnight, back at the homestead. Not him personally, but friends. They'd all been friends, comrades of the aftermath. She'd stayed for a fortnight and they'd be happy to help. Too few left to turn away someone they could help. Then she'd gone, up early one morning and slipped away without so much as a farewell.

They'd searched for her, of course, to make sure that she'd not fallen in a midnight wandering, or gotten lost. But nightfall came and they abandoned their search. Indeed, his good friend Aaron reported he'd seen tracks heading west but that he'd lost them at the stream. Aaron had never been much of a tracker, but footprints in the soil were pretty hard to miss.

That evening, they resolved to let her go. After all, they felt she owed them nothing and it was clear that she'd travelled before. And she'd taken nothing else, so there was little reason to disturb her peace, or whatever it was that had her leave.

The night came and went, and the day following they returned to their usual routine. And another night came, and with it the death. He wondered whether he'd have been caught if he'd been there that night, if he'd have died with the others. Useless thoughts, of course, but he wondered all the same. He'd gone ranging in the day, hunting for game, and he'd stayed out that night as walking in the absolute dark was a hazard all of its own.

It looked like the homestead had been torn apart by wild animals, except that he couldn't think of any that would have killed and then left the bodies without feeding. When he realised there was nothing he could do, perhaps nothing he could have done, his mind snapped back to her departure just a couple of mornings before. Was she responsible for this? The more he thought on it, the more sure that she had something to do with it. And the more certain he became, the more furious he was with it.

Then the fury went cold. Stone eyed he walked the homestead, collecting what he needed. Stone hearted, he buried his friends. Then, with the last spade of earth, he resolved to find the woman who'd skulked out before the massacre, so conveniently. Find her... find her and...

He had no words, nor even clear intentions. First, he had to find her.

Three days behind her, moving slowly to keep her trail, he'd followed her to the city. She was here, somewhere.

Ramshackle stalls laid out wares from food to furniture, some salvaged, some made or grown by the locals. People wandered from stall to stall, some idly, others with purpose. Easily the largest market he'd seen in some time, it even came with its own security, green bandannas signifying some sort of official status. Two such, each trailing a heavy looking automatic rifle of post-collapse design, blocked his path into the market.

"Mornin', stranger," said the first, cheeks scarred deliberately in some ritual marking.

The second eyed the swaddled rifle, then its bearer, "You'll not be causin' trouble, now, will ya?"

He was tall, but this meat wall topped him by three inches clear. Brothers, perhaps. He tipped his head up, steel in his expression, "No more than you." His tone all bass with a little gravel, reverberating from a heavy frame.

The first brother shifted. Younger, perhaps, more impetuous.

He shifted his weight, sensing the fight.

But the older brother, clearly the wiser of the pair, intervened, "Stand down, bro'. Stand down." More to the stranger, his own brand of no-nonsense talk, "See to it you keep yer weapons away an' there'll be no trouble."

He didn't reply, just kept his eyes on the younger one. Then the moment passed, and the fight with it. The guards parted, though they kept their eyes on him as he moved on in. He pulled the brim of his hat back down and started a circuit of the market, looking for someone who looked like they might have an eye and a memory for those passing through.