"Ever pining for an end that is never to come"

Golden rays stabbed and tore through amber air, followed by a tinkling explosion. Scion strode out of its epicenter and into a mob of alders, hollies, and mournful firs. Each held a jaundice luster as they caught the light from a baleful sun. She scanned the horizon and the voice that accompanied her in her helm informed her, "By the Core's reckoning that sun has yet to set in the last millennia."

"Ever pining for an end that is never to come," she mused.

She brushed her metal fingers across a branch and noticed the trees' brittle limbs moved like arthritic fingers. The suit examined the cells and told her what she instinctively knew: every ounce of every living thing existed in perpetual torture. The audio-radio enhancers strained out to nearly a kilometer. It only registered the stifling silence of this living mortuary.

"Liv, do you have his signal?" She asked.

"There is a trace of his imago within a 30 hectare region of this dismal forest," the suit replied.

"Dismal is a proper description for this place," Scion quipped.

Liv's matter-of-fact voice answered, "Dismal Forest is its proper name. Long ago is was Forêt de Désir, 'an emerald in the midst of a beautiful realm.' Or so the travel logs declare."

"That was a long time ago," Scion mused. "And that is a long distance to cover."

"If we sustain a five kilometer rate, we will reach the signal within three to five days," Liv answered.

Flaxen fabric billowed in Scion's periphery. Her hand strayed to her holster. She knew no wind blew and yet she did not hear a sound in her sensors. She switched to a different spectrum and the world lit up with energies. Rich yellow waves flowed in lazy currents toward and away from their source. She turned toward their center and gasped.

Thirty meters away stood a fell figure with a crown of horns extending from his scalp, one set of ivory like a rhinos in a radial like sunbeams. Another stretched out on either side like starched stag antlers that smouldered on their tips. These bone branches all rooted in a smooth face that appeared to shift and writhe in an unsettling manner. Long, noble fingers stretched out of bony hands and ended in talons. Liv identified the energies even as waves of it swelled within Scion's stout heart.

"Panic."

The warrior woman turned and ran. She shattered limbs off sympathetic trees in her flight. The weeping garden closed in as if to shield her from the following terror. Wisps of yellow traced after her like banners on a breeze. The seasoned hunter felt what she assumed her prey usually did. In the shrinking logical part of her brain, she wrestled to regain control. The best she could do was latch onto the breadcrumbs Liv provided: The distress beacon.

Somewhere in the fog Scion heard the suit say, "At our current rate, we will arrive at Deep Six's location in two days if you don't die of exhaustion."

Simultaneously she heard a song plucked on her very ligaments like a bone fiddle, accompanied by a dreadful melodic voice:

Suits of iron in a wooded glen

Should not have gone,

King upon blood-soaked lawn

Should never have been,

Death welcomes you both to
Lost Carcosa

Art Source: "The King in Yellow" by Grivetart
Story and Characters: (c)/by Corey Blankenship, King in Yellow (c) Robert W. Chambers

Invasion - Picnicus Interruptus

The war was over, had been over for decades, but everywhere we looked there were remnants to remind us of how close we came.

I spread the picnic blanket out and Sam put the basket on one corner. Our perch gave us a bit of a windbreak if we sat down, but a freak gust could still flip the checkered plastic fabric up. Better safe than sorry. I stood and stretched my long limbs, luxuriating in the bright sunshine. The plains stretched out as far as I could see. I knew they went on for miles at least. Mountains were a gray blur at the very edge of the horizon going east.

"Hey." Arms came around me and Sam's body heat radiated into me, chasing the chill of the cool breeze away. "Whatcha thinking about?"

I grinned. "How lucky I am to have you in the midst of all this." I turned and we hugged until the embrace became lingering kisses.

Sam giggled into my mouth. "We do this too much longer and the food is gonna get cold."

"Can’t let that happen." Things were still scarce and good food was one of those. The waving grain forty feet below was testament to the fact that food production was coming back online. This generation was the first to come up looking like something worth eating.

We sat in the bowl made of the mecha's gun platform. The soy noodles and sauce were still warm. Freeze dried veg made up the bulk of the nutrition. Clean water from a jug tasted better than any wine and my appetite was whetted by the fresh air. We ate and drank noisily, slurping and smacking. I leaned back against a console and belched loudly.

"Gross. And thank you." Sam grinned at me, mouth and eyes wide. A flash of red light reflected in those pools of green and white.

The roll of what sounded like thunder rumbled across the open sea of grain. It wasn't thunder, though. The sky was as bright blue as it ever was. I popped my head over the metal lip. "What the hell?" A massive ship of some kind was landing about a mile away. I'd lived on these flat lands long enough to know my guess of distance was good, even if just a guess. "Give me the..." The telescope slapped into my outstretched hand. I brought it up to my eye and focused on the thing.

It was all shards and angles, like some broken glass and barbed wire sculpture. Not human make, at least not any human I knew about. There were stories about aliens, we told over the campfires. Could this be them? Fire licked at the grass around the landing site. It would soon become a blaze eating up so much of the precious resource. Of course, if whoever was in that ship wanted us dead, it wouldn't much matter.

"What is it?" Sam's voice was afraid, but not terrified. We were both soldiers, or as close to it as anyone was. We'd fought hard for our supplies and our home, killing when we needed to.

"Hard to say. A ship obviously, but I don't know who or what..." That's when I saw them start to crawl out and down. They had four limbs, like we did, but they were attached at odd places, nearer central mass than the four corners. "Can tell if they're creatures or 'bots." Either way, this meant our picnic was over.

Art Source: Summer Love on http://www.simonstalenhag.se/
Story and Characters (c)/by Scott Roche

#action, #Suspense, #PostApocalypse, #Invasion, #Love

Living in the Dark

Becca pulled the black steel ring mail over her face. The biters wouldn't be able to get through it. Hot as hell, it was at least comfortable thanks to the silk backing. The rest of her outfit was just as pitch, making her hard to see, and it was treated to mask her body odor. Before she pulled on the kevlar gloves, she made sure the tactical tomahawks at her hips were in place. Held in quick draw rigs by rare earth magnets instead of snaps, they wouldn't go anywhere unless she got in a knock down, drag out. By then, she should have already pulled them free.

Gloves on, she grasped the six foot long pole. Each end tipped by a metal version of the tinkertoy wheel, short blunted spikes radiating out from their perimeter. It served as both probe and braincase buster.

Ten steps to the door.

She walked to the exit from her bunker and ran her hands over it to the locks.

Click. Click. Click.

The door swung open silently. There was no fresh biter smell. No sound of shuffling feet. She walked out into the evening air and closed the door behind her. With practiced hands, she slid the key into lock after lock and secured it. She wasn't as worried about her relentless neighbors getting in as she was about any unknown passers by finding and taking advantage of her hospitality. She walked up the stairs to street level.

Feet scraped across pavement nearby.

She stopped and waited to see if they got any closer. Her pole swept the ground in front of her.

When her weapon tapped the shambling bag of rot on one foot, she swung the pole. It connected and the vibration shuddered up to her hands. The gloves absorbed the shock. A heavy thump told her she’d connected with its head. After pausing to listen for it rising, she continued on her way. It was a long walk to her destination and she wanted to make it there and back by midnight.

The tabi and knowing how to walk in them minimized the noise she made as she moved. Decades of living on the dark and moving silently, at first for fun and of late for survival, meant she heard the man coming. He was quiet. Not as quiet as her, but enough so as not to attract the attention of the biters or even most people. The smell of body odor and smoke teased her nose. She eased to a stop and listened to him pass by. In the park now, she had plenty of plant cover. The former playground was a riot of undergrowth and scrub. It wanted to trip you up.

When the man fell, cursing, it was all she could do not to laugh. Given how big he must be, based on the sound of the fall, she held her mirth in. She didn't want to tangle with anyone that large.

He spoke to himself, this big man. Some of it was unintelligible even to her sharp ears. "Hate the city," was the first thing he said, which she could clearly hear.

She couldn't blame him. She hated the city too, but there was no way she could leave. Unless she could find a sighted person, the idea of learning such a new swath of territory on her own scared her more than this new world she lived in. Hoping she could learn who this new man was, before taking any kind of initiative, she followed him a good dozen paces behind.

"You're good."

The voice came from her left, a lot closer than it had any right to. She whipped her pole around and it stopped suddenly.

"Nope. Don't wanna end up with a concussion."

The pole was plucked from her hands effortlessly. She took a defensive stance, arms guarding her face and torso. "Neither do I." She spoke back, voice a little rusty from disuse.

"I give this back, and you don't try to hit me again?" There was a trace of humor in his voice.

"You be nice, and I can make that bargain." She thought about drawing one of the knives she had on her person, but he wasn't attacking.

His movements were gentle as there was no whistle of the club splitting air. Instead, he held it out and waited for her to take it. "I ain't about to kill anyone who don't ask for it. Don't worry about me."

"I'll worry." She took back the pole. "But that's just me engaging in an excess of caution. I'm Becca."

"Good to meet you, Becca. I'm Chris."

They had been quiet in their brief conversation. "Well Chris, good to meet you, too." The breeze brought a strong smell of rot with it. "Especially since we're about to fight some biters." She backed away a few feet and brought the pole into a guard stance.

He swore again, and she felt as much as heard him shift his stance as well. Together, they waited in the dark for their shared enemy.

Art Source: Menswear on Now Fashion
Story and Characters (c)/by Scott Roche

#action, #Suspense, #PostApocalybse, #Zombie