Episode 402: Shepherd's Hope, Part Two

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Epilogue

Joshua: (shushing tone) Wait, wait, wait. Let’s not say that out loud. In front of our passenger.
Nika: If we don’t say it out loud, it makes it not so.
Joshua: If that’s the case?
Nika: Let’s just keep walking.
Joshua: Do we actually expect to find any survivors, if that’s the case?
Nika: I don’t know but we ain’t leavin’ here until we at least look.
Joshua: I know…

He trails off, listening to something. Joshua hears the thin sound of a human voice in distress. He checks for the direction and alerts Nika.

Joshua: Over by where the buzzards are congregating. Somebody in pain.
Rina: Okay, who takes point?

We stop at the corner of the last deserted house and survey the area. Nothing appears to be moving—besides the birds and the wind—and this part of town seems just as deserted as the rest of it. However, we can hear screams. More than one person. Muffled and strained—perhaps trapped under a rock or something? Nothing clear or articulate.

Rina: (getting the picture) Ohhhh my god. They got one and now they’re exacting their revenge.
Joshua: Okay, okay. Stop.
Nika: Rina.
Rina: What?
Nika: If your imagination runs away with you one more time I’m gonna turn around and clock you in the back of the head with this rifle.
Rina: You’ll thank me later.
Nika: My imagination’s goin’ wild enough.
Joshua: (listening hard) I … I think … I hear sounds of somebody, like… I don’t know. There’s something off about it.

Off about it? No. Really?

It’s two hundred feet from the tree line across a broad area of cleared land all around the silo. All comers will have to cross it to get to the silo. No one shoots at them. No fighting comes upon them. A few buzzards are on the ground, fidgeting in front of the open door of the silo as if unsure about going in. Birds being birds, even those the size of buzzards, generally shy away from people.

Joshua: I wonder if there’s somebody inside.

Rina’s got the feeling that they’re being watched. She can’t pinpoint from where the watchers are or even where that feeling is coming from. There are so many places someone could observe covertly from. Every empty house, every window, every shadowed doorway. Rooflines and tree tops. Small dips in the land. The surrounding hills even. She scans them all from her position, hoping to spot a tell-tale figure silhouetted against the sky or the background, searching for the glint of light off binoculars or rifles sights. Nothing. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t being watched, no. It just means she hasn’t found the watchers yet... She eyes the roof the silo, realizes it’s the tallest manmade thing around.

Rina: Oh, geez! You put a guy on the roof of that silo, you can see everything. (convinced) They already know we’re here.
Joshua: Rina. Zip it.
Nika: (sighing) Stay in the tree line. Joshua and I will take point and go ahead and see what happens. And for God’s sake if they start shootin’ at us, run.
Rina: (to Kiera) You and me, let’s cover them.
Kiera: I think we can do that.
Rina: (points) I’ll take this position, you take that position and we can do a field of fire right this way.

Meaning they’ll have the entire arc of the silo approach between them. Nika, Arden and Joshua go ahead and about fifty feet from the entrance the smell hits them.

Deathsmell.

And with the odor come the sounds that led us to the silo. They are definitely human…or were human. Nothing articulate, nothing possibly with fully functional…faces. There is definitely something or someone alive in there and a lot of dead things.

A lot of dead things. Joshua can pick that up right nicely, thanks to his Reader abilities. He can feel the deaths as a palpable thing pressing on his senses. He stops and breathes deeply to keep himself together.

Watching from the tree line, Rina comms him.

Rina: You gonna lose your cookies?
Joshua: I’m fine. It’s not so much the smell—it is the smell but it’s also a lot of people died here.
Rina: Yeah. Psychic residue.
Joshua: Yeah. Complications, complications.
Rina: Oh, geez. It’s been a month. Are you out?

Meaning his Flomixipan. It helps him block out other peoples thoughts and emotions. However if what we suspect to be true is actually waiting in the silo, it may be that no amount of Flomixipan will help him now.

For her part, Kiera’s dividing her attention between what’s happing in front of them and the twitchy person next to her. Rina’s making her a little bit nervous. Rina notices and calls Kiera on it.

Rina: You’ll find out later that I’m right.

Rina pulls her attention back to her self-assigned targets: the roof of the silo, the ground approach to it, the house to the right. She wraps the strap of her rifle round her arm to steady it and leans against a tree for support.

The search party gains the silo without incident and walks in.

The silo roof has a skylight and the morning light filters in all the way down to the silo floor. A few of the braver buzzards strut around on the floor. Some rats scurry aside as the search party walks in. Bugs and flies are everywhere. Suspended over the floor on what look like meat hooks are about a dozen people. Or rather, what used to be a dozen people. They’ve been flayed, their bodies free of skin, rather like rabbit carcasses hanging gloved in a butcher shop window. Also in classic crucified position are three men tied to the walls about ten feet up. Two of them have been pretty horribly cut up in the face. They are the source of the sounds that led us here and when they see Nika, Arden and Joshua, their voices rise in a frantic effort to communicate. Their faces and possibly their tongues, however, are too mutilated for them to articulate intelligibly. The third hasn’t been cut upon but appears to be catatonic.

Arden immediately moves to cut the victims down from the walls. There’s a ladder nearby that would serve and he puts it to good use. Nika lends him a hand as Joshua thumbs his com.

Joshua: Rina. It’s gruesome down here but it’s clear. Come on down. Please.

Back in the trees, Rina cuts the channel and jerks her chin toward the silo.

Rina: (to Kiera) Come on. We’re going.
Kiera: All right.

Joshua knows what needs to be done. He doesn’t want to do it. He knows he’s going to regret it, but he has to know. He says quietly to Nika of the victims:

Joshua: The third one is what bothers me.
Nika: Yeah. We’ve seen that before.

Nika looks at Joshua grimly. She well remembers the four men we rescued off Pandora.

Joshua: I can read them. (gestures) The other two…
Nika: Read one of them. If it is what we think it is, we’re gonna wind up puttin’ a bullet in all of them.
Joshua:' (not liking it) Okay. I’ll read one of them, one of the two that’s not catatonic.
Nika: I’d thought you’d prefer the catatonic. I don’t know, would you?
Joshua: Actually, that’s… (not liking it one bit) … yeah. I actually might be better with the catatonic—I don’t know. Like, it’s all bad. It’s all bad.
Nika: I agree. This is bad.
Joshua: Yeah. Let’s bring them down.

It’s not pleasant work or a pleasant sight. The victims are in panic mode, as if they don’t feel safe in our presence, even though we’re cutting them down and trying to alleviate their suffering.

Crossing the open field to the silo, Rina still has that feeling they’re being watched and Kiera picks up on it and starts scanning the area all around. The trees, the houses, the hills… She checks the windows and the doors of the houses we walk past, looking for ambush behind the shattered glass and wood. Nothing reveals itself. Nothing jumps out. She checks their backtrail.

Kiera: There’s nothing moving in the trees or anything.
Rina: There’s satellites. There’s drones.

Because those could be watching us from afar and we’d never see them.

Rina’s through the door in time to see the first of the victims come down off the wall. She sees the cuts on the unfortunates, recognizes them as bladed cuts, and immediately suggests that Reavers were behind the mutilations… or it could be a psychopath or a serial killer whose signature is carving up his victims.

Nika: Or a whacked-out cult.
Joshua: If he’s a serial killer, he’s got serious talent.
Rina: Or he’s got serious help.

Kiera sets her rifle carefully aside and helps Arden. She sees that the cuts on the victims were shallow and some were crudely sutured. And by crude, she sees they are done with staples. The victims’ tongues have been split.

Rina: Hey, that sort of thing is right up your alley.

Meaning reconstructive plastic surgery.

Kiera: Yeah. But let’s stabilize them first.
Rina: Hnnn… the sutures….I don’t remember sutures or staples on the other ones.

The scene here strongly resembles what she encountered on Pandora, save for the aforementioned sutures and staples. Nika’s on the same page.

Nika: Maybe it was too soon for that.
Rina: Either the Reavers are evolving or…
Nika: (Jesus!) Woman!

Arden and Kiera immediately administer sedatives to the two agitated victims. Rina gets out of their way, letting the doctors do their work. She goes over to the hanging corpses and tries to find out more about them. They’re suspended over her head and there’s not much she can do without touching them. Maggots squirm, pallid, fat and glistening on the dead. The bodies are still dripping and looking down at the silo floor she sees puddles and runnels of … stuff. Scarlet, black and brown trails meander and curlicue in all directions—the tracks the rats and the roaches and other vermin have made through the gore. She also sees evidence of our bootsoles going through the puddles as well, checks her feet, and swears.

Rina: Dammit! We’re messing up evidence.
Joshua: (appalled) This is not—! Focus.
Kiera: Rina. Come over here and stick your finger on this. Cuz this is bleeding and I need someone to hold it still for just one sec—Thank you.

Rina marches right over and plugs the hole with her forefinger, still looking around and going from one detail of the silo to another. Focus, Joshua said. Rina’s already narrowed her focus down to the up-close details. If she widened it, she wouldn’t be able to function.

Kiera moves Rina’s finger to a different spot on her patient. So far, so good. Kiera thinks that her patient will be…okay… but both the mutilated survivors will need extensive reconstructive and plastic surgery at a good hospital to come out of this in decent shape. They are beyond any treatment she could render them in her container suite. She releases Rina from medical finger duty. Rina absently wipes the gore off onto Kiera’s shirt and crosses the silo to look at something.

Focus. Details. They keep the horror at bay.

Meanwhile, Joshua’s reading one of the mutilated victims. He’s not getting anything coherent, certainly nothing resembling a narrative. He’s getting mental snapshots and snatches of emotion. He feels something like a knowing panic from the victim. As if the victim’s been through this sort of thing before, like it’s not the first time he’s seen this. But it’s clear that it’s Reavers. More images, more emotion. Then Joshua gets a glimpse of the man racing out trying to hide his children. He doesn’t see any children’s bodies, thank God, but what he does see is horrific enough. Joshua sees a growing scene of people all around the silo. In fact, looking around he can see pools of dried blood where others had been tied up… and the collection in the center getting bigger and bigger, as more and more people get hung on the hooks.

And then….

There’s just one guy. One Reaver. He appears to be wounded. He has only arm. And he’s torturing the victim Joshua is Reading. The Reaver has a watching air about him. He also seems interested in the catatonic victim. Joshua sees the Reaver from over the shoulder of the man he’s Reading. The Reaver is trying to talk to the catatonic victim. Or the Reaver is talking at him. The Reaver himself is wounded and bleeding, but is far from a pitiable figure. After all, he’s a Reaver and is torturing people.

Joshua brings the Reading to a close, turns aside and promptly throws up. Rina’s at his side in three strides and gives him her handkerchief. Joshua clears his throat and spits.

Joshua: Gahhg... Remind me to never do that again. (takes handkerchief) Thank you.

Arden wants to get the victims to the Gift’s med bay immediately now that they’ve been stabilized.

Arden: We have room for them in the wardroom.

A little more recovered, Joshua straightens and starts delivering his report.

Joshua: (weakly) Three things, but…no, two things. (deep breath) First thing—children.
Nika: Children? Where?

Nika immediately starts checking the corpses for the bodies of children.

Joshua: He was trying….he was trying to hide his children… Like he knew. When he saw the ship coming. Like he’d seen it before.
Nika: Where? Where would they have hidden the children?
Joshua: I don’t know.
Nika: So you didn’t see anything?
Joshua: No… The second thing is—catatonic man over there held a lot of interest for one of the Reavers. There were a lot of Reavers and then there was one Reaver with only one arm. And while he was talking to the catatonic guy … like he… Something about that guy is, is, of interest to that Reaver or, or the group of Reavers—I don’t know but it… He’s gonna be… If we bring him, he’ll be—I can’t say no, don’t bring him—but he’s going to be… He’s Reaver bait. He’s like, he’s like…drawing lightning. Like… I don’t know. I don’t know what he wanted with him. And…he might be back. I don’t know. If we’re going to move people to the ship we should do it now.

We try to take that in. It takes a minute.

Nika: (slowly) Do Reavers let … people… and damaged Reavers stick around? I’ve never heard of that.
Joshua: I don’t know.
Rina: Do you think the injured Reaver was left behind by the rest of the pack because he wasn’t—
Joshua: No. The injured Reaver seemed okay. I mean, he was torturing … (gets a grip) … He was torturing people, like he was….
Rina: Where’s the Reaver now?
Joshua: I don’t know. I’m not like a GPS, Rina. I don’t know.

From what little we know of our own encounters with the Reavers and what reports have trickled out about the Reaver Battle over the Universe Moon, we’re pretty certain that Reavers take no prisoners. But then again, what anyone knows of Reaver habits is limited because no one sticks around to study them. They’re usually too busy killing them in self-defense or running away.

So what can we make of Reavers from Joshua’s report? Will taking these victims aboard the Gift draw the Reavers to us? Would the Reavers take exception to our absconding with their victims? We don’t know.

Kiera: In a strange way, I’m agreeing with Arden. We need to get them on the ship.
Rina: (quietly) I’m not disagreeing with that.
Joshua: Let’s do it.
Nika: Take’em. Go now.
Rina: What about the children?
Nika: I need to look around.
Joshua: I don’t think the children are here. I think that’s what they’re coming for.
Rina: The Reavers were coming for the children?
Joshua: (quiet) I don’t know.
Rina: Maybe they have cellars.

Could the children be hidden in one?

Joshua: I don’t know. The impression I got—
Rina: Reavers don’t take the dead.
Joshua: The impression I got was that, that he knew they were coming. Like when he saw them, like it had happened before. And he went to hide his children. Like he knew this would happen.
Rina: So this parent went ‘Oh shit. Not again.’ Why?
Joshua: Just because of the fact that we haven’t seen any children either…um…but whatever it is, I think we should—
Nika: Okay, so under your conjecture we know that Reavers don’t take the dead. At all. Knowing that, where would you hide your children?
Joshua: We don’t know. We don’t know what the—
Nika: (answering her question) In a place you know they’re not going to go looking.
Joshua: We don’t know crap.
Nika: There’s gotta be a church.
Joshua: Why would they not go looking?
Nika: There’s gotta be probably a graveyard. Maybe a crypt where they could hide the kids.
Joshua: Why would they not go looking in a graveyard? Or a church?
Nika: They don’t take the dead so they would have no interest in that spot.
Rina: They bury the dead underneath the floor of the church.

Like knights crusaders of old, and poets and kings. Okay, so maybe this village didn’t have anyone that illustrious, but still.

Nika: Maybe, maybe not.
Arden: We don’t really know all that much about what the Reavers would do. We know that they skin people.
Nika: We know they skin people. We know they torture people. We know they take certain people and turn them into Reavers.
Joshua: It seems too logical.
Rina: We know they eat people.
Nika: We know they eat people, yes.
Joshua: No, it just…it just seems too logical. Let’s get the people on board.

Less speculating. More focusing on what we can do. Kiera rolls her eyes at the debate and starts helping Arden with the injured.

Rina: Okay, let’s get these guys taken care of and transferred to the ship.
Kiera: We may have to drag them.
Nika: God…
Rina: And if we have to, we’ll let the doctors to their doctor thing and the rest of us can search and kick down doors.

We quickly find some poles, some sheets from one of the nearby houses, and make some stretchers to transport the patients. The two injured patients take up a stretcher each and each stretcher takes two of the crew to carry it. Arden, Nika, Rina and Kiera divvy up amongst the stretchers. Joshua takes the catatonic victim in hand. The man can walk but he does so in a weird hunched-over position, as if he’s forgotten how to stand or hasn’t walked in a long time. Joshua notes that while at first it appears the man had been punched in the mouth, the blood caked on his lips do not appear to be from a wound.

Rina: Oh, crap. You don’t think they fed him pieces of his own buddies, did they?

Ai ya tien ah! Leave it to Rina.

Kiera doesn’t stick around to hear anything more out of the twitchy Russian but hauls on her end of the stretcher to get this wagon train moving. Arden follows to avoid dropping his end. And with everyone set in motion, we all leave the abattoir of the silo.

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Part 1
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Epilogue

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