We woke up, hours later, outside The Camp.
The Camp is usually the first thing we see when we go into the ZEL zone-space. It used to be a boy scout camp named after what had at some point been a local Indian tribe. I'm not sure whether or not the driver falls asleep during this transition. It is--or was--a very straight road from one side to the other. Maybe delvers get lost sometime on the way. That's what four-wheel drive is for.
When the arrival event occurred, we heard lots of reports of what happened out here. Boys of all ages arriving at the local hospital with a manner of different physical and psychological ailments. Some deaf, others burnt. They spoke of a light that said things without words, or a humming sound that dimmed their vision. It became so endemic that the entire camp and several nearby towns were evacuated, or at least cleared of those who would evacuated. Some, it's said, stayed.
Anyway, the camp's front gate somehow shocks us awake when we pass near or by it. There's a large square wooden arch that used to hold up a sign that had 'Camp Skawginaw' written on it. That's where we stop. You don't want to wander any further into the zone in the trucks--it's just too dangerous moving anything that large. The men have to go in alone.
The Camp Skawginaw sign lies hanging from a single broken chain in the misty wind. It's been affected, but the lettering is still identifiable. Some lad of sixteen or seventeen made this by hand with a metal drill. The work is impressive, the font clearly based off some Basque or Portuguese technique. It almost appears counterculture, as if such an attitude would be praised in any camp run by the Continental Boy Scouts. Or was it the Boy Scouts of the Americas?
There's a long, long way to go to the nearest town. Probably four miles via the road. The visitors didn't take care to let us know when or where they left their deadly detritus, so you have to rely on an experienced Zoner to let you know where you have to be careful and what areas to avoid. Sometimes I think that the shape of the hills change over time, but the patterns essentially remain the same.
I leaned over towards Dick. "It's time to roll."
He was already gone. The track was unloading, somehow I was last to get out. Must be the mist, I said to myself. It was weird. Things would be different if I was the driver of these investigations. We arranged ourselves into a line and started moving forward.
"Alright, I want us to make sure we're all aware of who all is here, so count off starting with one!"
"One!" said our newest greenhorn. He had a large '1' on his suit, his helmet, even his gloves. This helped identified corpses, or the parts we felt safe enough to recover.
"Two!" said an older gentleman of twenty, with a slightly higher voice.
Something halfway instinctual. Staying five paces apart to make sure that if one of the Hellsuckers floated our way that we would have some method of scattering and reorganizing once it had passed. A 'sucker always took someone away when it showed up. But they only started screaming when the other guy did. And that, among Zoners, was a bit of a joke.
We kept shouting our numbers through the long walk. The air out here was still fine. It wouldn't kill you as quick as the stuff in town. And town was, by and large, where the stuff was. Sure, there were interesting things buried out here where the strange plants that still grew laid their leaves in growing piles and immense three-headed snakes curled in the trees. Why did these bizarre reptiles grow to such enormous size? Did the local winter not affect them here?
More importantly, how did the invisible landmines that littered the landscape not kill them constantly?
No; it was the men who were constantly killed. Anything that walked on two legs here would die; even the birds wound up getting it after long enough. Something that the Visitors had left behind was transforming this place into whatever their home-world looked like. Where old trees split at weird angles and monstrous insects hissed with mammalian teeth. That last part, the bugs with teeth, hasn't technically been confirmed in the latest reissue of the Official Z.E.L. manual, but old zoners, those that can still talk, claim that they're out here. Maybe that's what makes the snakes so healthy.
We kept shouting off our numbers. Through the trees, I could see the lake. We never go down to the lake. The highway, as a kindly acquisition of the WPA in these parts, loops down that way towards a boat launch where a pristine aluminum rowboat sits even now. We walk along it with some trembling, as parts of Viking Rick have been permanantly set inside it. Rick is the first mile marker, and he was got by the Crystal Sickness. Now him and the boat are one, his body degraded by parts. Maybe by wind, maybe radiation. Maybe it's just the way that things go out here.
The air by the lake is okay. This is the smoke 'em if you got 'em point of the trail. We pulled off our hoods for a quick breather. Lots of guys have a cigarette here because if you need one by the time you get to town, you've got a death wish. Speaking of the death wish, those with one go down by the lake. Viking Rick did, and we screamed at him not to.
I was there so I think I can tell you what happened.
He got down to the shore and something terrible occurred. A lightning bolt, a tendril of light and horrible noise, rose out of the lake. It touched him and it was like he was never there. It invaded his body with awful purpose--you could see his tattoos through his protective lining--and he just exploded. It made a horrible popping sound as it happened. I might have pieces of him still embedded in my face. That would certainly explain my resurgence of acne, what with the horrible things that Zone-stuff still does to you.
Well, the biggest part of him landed in the metal boat out here. It's still there. And that's how we all know not to go down near the water's edge: it's dangerous, it's risky. I wish someone knew what occurred. I wish it was something more sinister, after a fashion--that he was infected with some kind of misanthropic life-form that let him go back to the outside and overthrow the government or eat his family. But the Zone just kills. It measures in somethings and nothings, and the somethings it keeps for itself. Those it lets go it infects with substance abuse issues and a mistrust towards other humans. I should know.
So we walk by the waterfront. We act like it's not even there. The swings, the barbeque pits, the beach, the tennis courts, and, yes, even what remains of the archery range out there. The fiberglass bows are still visible by an old pine tree knotted with ancient warts. Like the bossman says, anything humans make, we can get on the outside. We aren't here to clean, we're here to reposess.
There's a two-mile straightaway between the camp and the town. Above it, a series of high-voltage towers, long abandoned, string their lines across the highway. From those hang Stiller Vines. You cannot touch or move them, because even attempting to manipulate them with a stick will get you so violently ill that you won't make it out alive. Remember that by the end of this trek, there's still a three-and-a-half mile walk ahead of you. But if you can make it to the town, you can make yourself a lot of money.
I hope you remembered your flashlight. Without that, you won't find God's Smallest Violin. Motes of dust that you can store in a plastic cap that fetch enough money on the open market to buy a very new used car. Of course, that's not how we work. The unit catches what it kills and splits everything after ZEL takes its standard 10% cut. We leave out some extra for next-of-kin, which encourages us to keep everybody alive.
"Seven!" "Eight!"
After all, if you're encouraging a suicide mission, what fucking point is there?
That's what gives you the drive to stay alive.
Before we got to the Vines, Dick nudges me. "Something feels amiss today."
"What," I asked, "Like the Zone is different today?"
"Can you smell it?" And I did; a scent on the wind like rusted metal. It started giving me a headache. "Should we head on back?"
Our numbers were doing better than expected. Usually by now someone was gone, but my counts indicated that we were still ten out of ten. "Nah," I responded, "Lets zip up and get into town."
That he had asked at all was bad news. There was something off, and delving headway into the risk was stupid and risky. We could lose all ten men. Or, you know, either of us could get stuck.
I hope in my heart of hearts that anybody got back at all. Because we got through those vines--an erie passageway seemed to have been opened up on the median between the two concrete abutments. Going down there was dangerous, but a New Zealander who went by the absurd name of Kane made the first passthrough. I followed, uneager to be the last guy off the bus and the third one through the next ritual passage. Dick and the others were through shortly. I could already see the lights of town.
Well, the lights aren't what they once were.
The remains of a gas station has something that looks like the crystal sickness consuming its neon signs. Warped representatives of Bud Light and Camel Crush bulge out the front windows. I don't know if it eats the gas or the glass in the neon tubing but it shines like a being that wanted us to know that it was not intelligent but ready to interact. Wearing eye protection, though optional, was recommended at this portion of the grand tour.
Past the gas station is a bar with no name. Past that, a Methodist church. A six-legged dog sits on the stunted grass lawn; one side of its face has three eyes. The dog's name is Cerberus. It rises like an omen of the apocalypse and saunters out of view towards the woods. Did I really see that? I hope so and also not. I don't bring it up to Dick.
Now comes the high school. Up until this point, most the the town has been cleared out. The last big find we had was in the basement of the same church that I just noticed Cerberus staring at me from: a chunk of flaky metal that shined with an internal glow of its own. How did it get there through the doors that had been sealed since before the Zone was? Did some ET walk through the oaken exterior entry, walk towards the bathrooms and supply closet, turn to notice the nave and the stained glass windows depicting the Son of Man only to shrug and shuffle onward into the darkness with its cargo of unlimited clean energy before turning back? What sense did that make?
Still, everyone was here. None of the boys had died yet. This was not normal in my experience. Was this a dream? Did you sweat in dreams? I could feel the moisture collecting on my forehead. Probably not. It stung my eyes as we made our way to the Field.
Something about the artificial turf out here seemed to collect 'divots,' which were strange, transparent pockets of space that seemed to push out other stuff. They had to be tagged and bagged with clamps and specialized kevlar sacks. Nothing else seems to be able to grip them. I've heard that the sacks and clamps are actually made from other ET tech that previous missions have pulled back out of here. I'd like to meet the guy who figured out how to use these things to exploit more of it; I'd give him a sock in the mouth for turning my life into the nightmare it has become.
That's unfair. Lots of blame can be assigned to me for that. Nobody told me that it was a good idea to drop out of school. Then again, nobody warned me about the addictive nature of gambling, cigarettes, alcohol, cocaine, or anything else that got me fired from every other decent career on the Good Earth, if you discount all the warnings I heard from every angle imaginable. Then yes, it was indeed their fault.
But hey, I do get to scoop some extraterrestrial culture's roadside rubbish, so that part is pretty cool.
Those were the thoughts going through my mind when the screaming began. We had just entered the field through the broken-down fence, snipped open by brave frontiersmen who came before us. Our eyes had been on the ground, on the field before us where we could get a good haul in while the sun was out. A hellsucker must have been floating overhead--possibly near the moss-covered scoreboard--because it dipped silently out of the air and grabbed number 2. Tentacles that shimmered green-blue-purple-brown in the horrible light dipped down and wrapped not merely around his jacket but seemed to penetrate his skin like fingers pushing through smoke. He screamed bloody hell before the tendrils yanked him upwards and we all began to scatter. The screaming stopped, and I kept running.
That was my first mistake. Well, if you discount coming here in the first place.