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Edited by DJCornford: 3/21/2015 3:36:01 PM
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Survivors of The Wastes - 1. Today there are Seven

Rusted, broken husks of cars lay scattered across what once would have been a highway. Where it was visible, the road surface was pitted, cracked and overgrown. Elsewhere, craters were gauged into the world as if a vast ravenous horde had descended and ripped mouthfuls out of it. The large ones had swallowed what had once been roadside buildings. Parts of signs and what would have been power poles when there was still power to be carried leaned out of the smaller. It was all old, overgrown and decayed. The wreckage was from an age no one remembered. Cars, power lines. Civilisation. None of that existed out here in the wastes. None of that had existed for a very long time. No one remembered the destruction that that had seen it all end either. The apocalypse. It was a tale whispered in the precious moments where people were not fighting to survive. That was all there was now, the desperate, ceaseless struggle to survive. “There, that one. You see him?” “Him?” Mirim shrugged her shoulders, flakes of crusted dirt falling from her torn and threadbare jacket. “Him, it. Whatever”. She gestured slightly with the barrel of her battered rifle. “There, near the building entrance”. Jaspiel shuffled within the small confines of a battered shell created from the fused carcasses of a metal shipping container and a small car. Using it as a makeshift bunker, the two of them could watch the immediate area in relative safety, a narrow open space between the two previously separate objects providing a space just large enough for them to see and aim their weapons through. Beyond them were the Fallen. Jaspiel counted seven, four Dregs and three Vandals, ranging through the debris of a former truck stop. He spotted the one Mirim was talking about, a Dreg poking around the interior of an old lorry cab split open like an oyster shell. “Yeah, I see it. What about it?” “Wait for a moment. He, it, will do it again”. Jaspiel turned away from the looting aliens to look at the woman. “Do what?” Mirim gestured again with her rifle barrel. “Just watch”. The Dregs and Vandals continued to wander through the wreckage of a former age, scanning the debris for anything of value. Ever alert, the aliens ranged as a pack with the Vandals seemingly more attentive on the further surroundings and the Dregs searching what was immediately before them. “I don’t see anything stra…” The Dreg Jaspiel was watching suddenly stumbled and fell to its knees. “What the hell?” The other Fallen scampered to surround the Dreg on the ground, standing over it and chittering noisily to one another as the Dreg shook its head violently. Finally, it climbed to its feet and searched the clear ground around it as if trying to find what had caught its legs. After a moment, the Fallen dispersed and continued as before. “I've never seen these guys just fall over before”, Jaspiel breathed. “They run, they prance, they jump. They’re like acrobats. They don’t just fall over”. “Exactly” Mirim agreed. “I've been watching them for the past few days, ever since we arrived. He’s only been stumbling until yesterday when he first fell over. Today he’s done it three times”. Jaspiel stared at Mirim. “Its new”, the woman explained. “They don’t do new unless there is a very good reason. They are smart, deadly smart. They do what works and don’t deviate from that. Ever since we came here it’s been the same story. They flyover, they land and scout. The same over and over. They wander the debris, poke about at it, shoot something that moves then they go away and are replaced by others and it’s always the same number of Fallen. Twelve. Eight Dregs and four Vandals”. “Only today there are seven”. Mirim blinked. Slowly she nodded her head. “Today there are seven. Something is happening”.

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