"Wasteland Tales" drabbles by Jonathan Mills

telosat avatar

To Greet Hell.

Wasteland Tales #31

He stares down the barrel of his assault rifle, listening to the night. Everything is quiet. The Hole hangs in the air, still, innocent. He knows his brother Watchers think that’s a good sign. They’re getting complacent.
He’s never been that trusting.
It’s been quiet for weeks now.
Like it’s waiting for something.
Let it wait. When it finally burps some fresh monstrosity into the world, he’ll be ready. Just like always.
He came to the Wall to find death. Now they call him Reaper. It’s a name he’s earned in blood.
Let hell come. He waits to greet it.

telosat avatar

Everything as it should be...

Wasteland Tales #30

The cold breath of a wasteland night hits him like a slap. Deaks opens his eyes.
He’s back where he started, about as far south of the Darklands as he could get. He’s called those lands home for most of his life. He knows them by feel.
He rises stiffly. Arms, legs, head. Everything as it should be.
A dream?
Must be. He rubs his eyes back into focus and…
sees.
The wasteland, green, lush, unspoiled.
The wasteland, a burnt out, blackened cinder.
The wasteland, a litter of bones and broken corpses.
Futures dance around him.
He sees them all.

telosat avatar

Arrival

Wasteland Tales #29

Darkness. Nothingness. Endless void.
He had a name. Gone now. A life, a body. No more.
Now he is but a thread of fragile thought, a brittle spider’s web in place of a mind.
And still, he goes on, spiralling into infinity.
Come to me.
can’t find you, don’t know, please, stop
Come to me.
small scared alone please
Come.
And he stops. He arrives.
She is beautiful, terrible. She is love and fear. She is everything.
See.
And he sees what she wants him to see. He sees everything.
Go.
She flings him back into the abyss.
Help me.

telosat avatar

End of the line

Wasteland Tales #28

Time melts into a haze of light and dark, heat and cold. Minutes disappear. Seconds evaporate. His only measure of existence is a foot in front of the other- forever.
And there it is- the Darkland. Site of the world’s ending.
The very air is black, filled with clinging, choking motes of dying earth. The ground is charred and crumbling, lifeless. The sun hangs in the midnight sky, a blackened, sober silhouette.
Nothing alive in there, he thinks. The air moves, the wind croons. Suddenly he knows better.
Helpless, he walks into death itself.
The Darkland swallows him without chewing.

telosat avatar

Pilgrim

Wasteland Tales #27

The next he knows, the wastes are around him. It’s happened before, a dreamy sense of dislocated time, waking to find his body moving on invisible strings. He can’t stop. It’s all he can do to grab his canteen- blessedly full- pour water down his dry throat.
James Deaks, bounty hunter, sharpshooter- now a Pilgrim.
It happens sometimes. For no gain and no reason, Pilgrims leave their lives behind and walk north. You couldn't stop them, short of killing them. Now people hardly tried.
The lucky ones die in the wastes. The unlucky ones don't.
He’s never been that lucky.

telosat avatar

Oblivion

Wasteland Tales #26

Jim Deaks staggers into the night. He’s drunker than he’s been since he was 16, his first bounty with Scar’s crew, more money than he’d ever seen and a newfound wealth of sins to spend it on. He chokes down more of that burning liquid oblivion.
It’s not enough.
He still feels the pull, the need, insatiable and deadly.
It started weeks before, a dream voice, a deep longing, homesickness for a place he’d never seen. Then he’d come north.
He’s nearly there now. More scared than he’s ever been.
Come, she says. He drinks, and fights to ignore her.

telosat avatar

Another Poison

Wasteland Tales #25

“Curfew!” The barman rattles his heavy bell. “Finish up and fuck off!”
Grumbling through clouds of smoke and stale air, his customers shuffle out. Except-
The man hasn't moved. He isn't old but the wastes had made him so, tanning his skin, bleaching his hair.
“Curfew, buddy. You deaf?”
“Another,” slurs the man. His shoulders move just enough to add the two revolvers on his belt to the request.
“Can’t do it. Curfew.”
The gunman sighs, rolling back his sleeve. The hunter’s mark shines in the gloomy bar.
The barman hands him a full bottle.
“Now fuck off,” he says.

telosat avatar

Witch of the Wastes

Wasteland Tales #24

“Revenge is yours,” says Lizard. She hadn't seen him, knew he was there anyway. She’d forbidden him to help, but couldn't stop him from watching. “Congratulations.” His voice is utterly flat. Sarcasm, sincerity- who knew?
She grunts into her ventilator.
“You feel better now that they’re dead?”
She doesn't answer. She doesn't know. Emotions churn inside her, a dizzying, kaleidoscopic swirl.
“No,” she says, at last, and knows it for the truth.
“No?”
“There’s others like them. Psychos. Someone has to stop them.”
He nods. “Ready to leave, Elise?”
“Call me Witch. They did.”
They set out into the darkness.

telosat avatar

Reborn

Wasteland Tales #23

Footsteps in the dark wastes. Slow. Closing in.
“You’re not real!”
He hears himself whimpering the words over and over, a child trying to ward off some fading nightmare.
There she is, at the edge of the light, a deeper shade in a sea of shadow.
She can’t enter the light!
But she does. A small, shrouded figure in a hooded leather coat. Her face-
-but there is no face. A featureless mask. A ventilator covering the mouth. A black aura of hatred.
Desperate, his hook swings for her throat.
Her bullet ends his wasted life.
And hers begins again.

telosat avatar

Fear in the night

Wasteland Tales #22

Meathook has time to see the guards he set around his campfire drop to the sand, dead. Then the bullet takes him in the knee.
It’s her!
Falling, he reaches for his gun with his good hand. Another bullet turns it to bloody pulp.
She’s out there!
First one of his outposts went dark, picked clean in the silent night. Then another.
The witch!
An angry spirit from the old world, crazed and looking for meat? Superstitious crap.
Fear the night.
Bullshit, he told himself.
But as feet crunch over the blood soaked ground, he finds himself changing his mind.

telosat avatar

A Beautiful Word

Wasteland Tales #21

Vengeance.
The word fills her with the clean, elegant simplicity of a razor’s edge.
The night swims in green shades of night vision. Lying on the sand, Elise sights down her rifle.
It’s them. She recognises the faces, the tattoos. She should. She sees them in her dreams.
She pulls the trigger. The silencer coughs out muffled death. The first target falls.
She aims. Fires again. The second target is dead before the first has hit the ground.
Again. Again. Again. They die, quick clean deaths that are better than they deserve.
Is this justice?
Doubtful.
But it feels good.

telosat avatar

Why

Wasteland Tales #20

“Why?” It’s all she can think to say.
He shrugs again. “I repaired the tissue damage to your face as much as possible, but your eyes were beyond saving. Your hands-“
“Why-“ Elise gasps, forces the words out. “Why- bother?”
He watches her, silent. “You should have died. Dragging yourself from the fire as you were should have been impossible. Yet, you survived.” His eyes bore into her. “I need survivors.”
“Need?” She snorts. “Why- should I- help you?”
“Because I can give you what you want most.” He stares into her soul. “I can give you vengeance.”

telosat avatar

Replacements

Wasteland Tales #19

He shrugs. “Could have. Didn't.”
The syringe presses into her neck. There’s slight pressure, ghostly pain- and nothing more.
“Don’t- touch me!” Her voice sounds wrong- breathy, oddly mechanical.
“Don’t be afraid.”
Elise tries to grind her teeth, tries to snarl. “Not- afraid!”
“Good. That’ll save time.” He studies her, detached, professional. “I have bad news.”
She lies silent.
“Your lungs were shot. Irreparable. Had to replace your respiratory tract.”
She gasps despite herself. It echoes through the ventilator that replaces her mouth.
“Your arms, legs- and eyes. I couldn't save them,” he says. "Had to give you new ones.”

telosat avatar

Rage against waking

Wasteland Tales #18

Elise struggles against waking. In this muddled twilit nowhere, there is no pain, only a sense that it is near.
She pushes the world away. It pushes back harder.
She wakes.
The room makes her think about the hospitals she scavenged with her father, except it is white- spotless. It’s the cleanest thing she’s ever seen.
She cannot move. Muzzily she realises that she can hardly feel her body either.
She hears a door open. A hypodermic hovers above her.
“Something for your pain,” says a voice. A man’s voice.
The rage fills her, boiling, toxic.
“Should- have- killed me.”

telosat avatar

Survival

Wasteland Tales #17

He stands among the wreckage, gun smoking in his hand, and he’s never felt less human.
An hour ago, he’d never fired a weapon. Unremembered training took over. Advanced arms tactics came like second nature. Now, only he remained.
There was no fear. There should have been, but wasn’t. It was a gap in his mind, a shape defined only by its absence, like a hole where a tooth had been.
Mark Baker. His creator’s name- his name. Too human. Doesn’t fit him.
From the ruins, a lizard darts towards safety.
Lizard. Another survivor.
As good a name as any.

telosat avatar

Unfamiliar

Wasteland Tales #16

A cyberframe?
As the monitor fades into darkness, he stares at a body suddenly strange and unfamiliar. Skin and synthetic muscle over a metal chassis. No bone, no organs. A mostly human brain in a less than human body.
Activate.
The thought invokes the command. Microsensors in his skull begin feeding his internal processor. His Heads Up Display reboots, overlaying his vision with pale green data.
Not a man then. More. Less. Either. Both.
More explosions outside, muffled by the armoury walls. He stuffs tools and supplies into a pack, takes weapons from the racks.
Time to meet the natives.

telosat avatar

Grew You

Wasteland Tales #15

“I estimate- maybe 50 years before you can even approach- our creation. Doubt I’ll see tomorrow. So- I took a cyberframe.” He’s croaking now, blazing eyes in a pallid, dying face. “Grew you around it. From my DNA. Fed you knowledge- science, surgery, tactics, combat. You won’t need food. Some water. Made you a survivor. That’s what the world needs. Not a hero. A survivor.”
He slumps over his desk.
“Tired now. Gotta rest.”
Struggling to stay awake. To stay alive.
“The Eye. The Eye we gave the world.” Slurry dream speech.
“Close it.”
A last choked gasp.
“Fix it.”

telosat avatar

The Truth

Wasteland Tales #14

“So- that’s it. The truth about the apocalypse. We wanted to save the world. We made the choice that nobody wants to make- the world over the people in it. Sin in the name of science. And we screwed up.” The image pants, wretches, struggles for air.
“We- paid for it. Probably not enough, but- I think I'm the only one left alive. Got off easy.” Blood bubbles between lips already turning frosty blue. “Soon- not even me left.”
He spits, thick and red.
“Death’s not enough. I want to fix it.”
His eyes burn.
“That’s why I made you.”

telosat avatar

No One to Hit

Wasteland Tales #13

The Sentry rocks on its suspension as his fist connects with the screen on its chest.
“You- bastards! How could-“
Just a recording, he thinks. Nothing listening to your insults. But a recording attached to a mobile gun platform designed to respond to threats with extreme prejudice.
So maybe stop hitting it.
On screen, his image coughs. Embarrassment? Or illness?
“I did say you wouldn't like it. I don’t think any of us liked it. But there was no other option. It was this, or the end of the world.”
He looks sick. Dying.
“Turned out it was both.”

telosat avatar

Unfortunate

Wasteland Tales #12

“Unfortunately,” the face on the screen says, “I can’t give you all the answers.”
The SentryUnit rolls hastily down the corridor. He follows it, automatically.
“My name- our name- is Mark Baker. This is a recording. I can be reasonably sure how you’ll react- you’re me, after all- but I can’t know exactly what you’re thinking.”
The thick doors of the armoury thud shut behind them. He’s already struggling into a combat suit, feeling like he’s done this before.
“So,” the screen says. “Here’s my best guess. I warn you, though.”
A stricken frown.
"You aren't going to like it."