"Wasteland Tales" drabbles by Jonathan Mills

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Thunder

Wasteland Tales #11

Heavy calibre rounds pummel the air above him. He knows without knowing the thunder of a SentryUnit’s autocannon.
The nightmare totters as the bullets hit. Then it carries on.
He watches- fascinated? Can he be fascinated?- as the twisted mixture of meat and metal takes a step forward. Another- and then the bullets cut it in half.
It lies, steaming- twitching. Then it is still.
The SentryUnit stops firing. A face appears on its chest display- a face he saw for the first time moments ago.
His face.
His voice.
“You probably have questions.”
A smile.
“I know I would.”

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Distant Conflict

Wasteland Tales #10

Alarms shriek. Warning lights strobe, painting the walls red.
Who am I?
Distant gunfire. Explosions. Cracking stone.
He won’t find answers here.
He staggers to his feet.
Left- medical, biological testing, cybernetics, genetic manipulation. Right- security, archives, armoury, living quarters. He’s never seen this building before, but he knows it intimately. How? Another question for later.
Right now, naked, defenceless, the armoury feels like the natural choice.
He stumbles to the right, learning to run.
Then the wall behind him explodes, sending him sprawling. Through the hole steps a nightmare of raw, flayed flesh and twisted metal.
It roars. Charges.

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Rebirth

Wasteland Tales #9

Floating in darkness, voices whisper in his mind. Knowledge, secret, ancient, drips into his subconscious.
Then- light. Sudden, terrible light, spearing into eyes that have never opened before.
The tank breaks. The nutrient solution that buoyed him up spills thickly onto the floor. The feeding tubes withdraw from his pale flesh and he drops to the floor like a landed fish, coughing green fluid from his lungs.
Muscles that have never been used, only maintained, push him to his knees.
Where am I?
In a thick shard of glass, he sees his reflection for the first time.
Who am I?

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A Crippled Serpent

Wasteland Tales #8

Crawling in the dirt, she can’t feel her fingers. She can barely feel her arms. The night reels around her swimming head. Shadows swirl as the fire blazes at her back.
She is not afraid. Not anymore. The pain racks her ruined body, silver-bright in the darkness. She doesn't care.
Everything that was her, cut to shreds and bled into the waste. All that she was burned away in the fire.
All that is left is rage. Hate.
Elise crawls on, a crippled serpent that means to kill before it dies.
A needle presses into her neck.
She sleeps.

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Resolve

Wasteland Tales #7

Elise smells meat cooking, sweet and foul.
It’s her.
So much pain. Such crippling fear.
Lie here, she thinks. Not long to wait.
Not a good life. A bad death, just like so many others. But hers.
Not long to wait.
Then something in her heart gives way, something in her head breaks.
Such terrible rage.
She rolls on to her belly, blackened, smoking.
Not a good life. But hers.
And they took it away.
She crawls into the darkness.
Let the night terrors come. Let the witch take her, if she could.
Somehow. Someway.
She will get her revenge.

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Mind the light

Wasteland Tales #6

A life flashes before her eyes. Hers?
“You mind the light, children.”
Sitting around the roaring bonfire, the Junker children listen in wonder as the old woman speaks.
“Why Mama?”
Mama Payton takes a bite out of her meal. “’Cos the dark’s no place for little folk. ‘Cos when the world changed, the night changed with it. Now there’s things out there, things you’ll never see, never hear, ‘til you’re in their teeth.” She pauses, chewing. “And worse.”
The children shiver. “What could be worse?”
“The witch,” says Mama. “The witch of the wastes.”
The fire roars, inside and out.

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Scream

Wasteland Tales #5

Consciousness faded in, blurred out with the unknowable rhythm of an alien tide. Shock numbed her, dulled the blade as it cut and gouged.
“Scream you little bitch!”
It was like a dream. A nightmare. Fear and blood. But no pain.
“Scream!”
That would come later.
“SCREAM!”
And when she wouldn't, he dug his hook into her shoulder, hoisted her in to the air, a frail, bloody scarecrow.
In the freezing dark of the wasteland night, the caravans burned. Stripped of worth, burned for fun.
“Some toy you were,” he sneered, disgusted.
And he pitched her into the flaming wreckage.

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Play Time

Wasteland Tales #4

Meathook roared as blood spurted from his forearm. She hoped he’d drop her- not great, but enough time to recover a little.
Instead, he threw her.
Elise sailed through the air for an endless, breathless moment. There was time to wonder if she’d stop, if she’d learned to fly- and then her head hit the caravan with a thick, awful crack. Her neck seemed to fold inwards, her stomach lurched with sudden nausea.
Then, darkness. Nothingness.
Her eyes opened. Meathook towered over her, her own knife in his hand.
“Like to play, little girl?” he growled.
Then he started cutting.

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A Hook for a Hand

Wasteland Tales #3

Elise fired, but fear shook her. The bullet veered a bare inch past Meathook’s visored face, and he laughed as he closed the distance.
One more bullet. Had to make it count.
She pulled the trigger.
The rifle jammed.
And he was on her, wrenching her into the air by her throat, hook tearing the useless weapon from her hands.
“Hey ladies!” he screamed at his raiders. “Looks like I got me a new toy!”
Shaking her like a doll. Choking her.
Her knife sliced the flesh of his good arm.
Dad always taught her to have a backup plan.

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Night Battle

Wasteland Tales #2

Her father taught her to fight, not wanting to, not seeing an alternative. Fighting was his life- for her, he wanted better. Better she be a doctor, a scholar- but that wasn't their world anymore.
She learned well. “Deadeye,”, the guards said, only half joking.
He didn't teach her control, how to put away the fear and rage of the fight and shoot true. Her hands trembled, and she missed as often as she hit.
Still they came, screaming, insane.
Out of the darkness, a huge shape, armoured, face hidden by a welder’s mask.
A meat hook for a hand.

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The Junker's Daughter

Wasteland Tales #1

If there’s still good in the world after the end, you won't find it in the wasteland. That’s what Elise thinks as raiders boil out of the darkness, screaming, laughing, charging.
The guards raise quickly, iron hard veterans with guns ready. Against 2 to 1 odds, they probably would have won.
She watches the odds lengthen.
It’s not a good life, a Junker's daughter trading luck and guts and sheer bravado in the ruins for scrap, supplies, anything that they can trade at the settlements.
Not a good life.
But it’s hers.
She picks up a rifle and starts firing.