10th July 2196, somewhere about ten kilometers away from southwest Dick Town. a
"Hey, watch it, you little rat, don't have any bad ideas. It is no trouble breaking your neck!"
The shouting brought me back to reality. I took a look at the middle-aged man who talked with an air of arrogance. Unshaved and unkempt, also a little bald, he was in tattered uniform for guards from Dick Town nearby. There was a homemade rifle in his hand, which appeared to be full of rusty textures. However, a shiny glitter reflected from the muzzle made me believe without a single doubt that the rifle was indeed still usable.
It seemed that the middle-aged man was the head of the others. They all followed him obediently.
"Not far, just follow me." I got a bit bored.
"I hope your collection would be as valuable as your head!" The middle-aged man sounded full of irony.
People like me were called scavengers. We traveled around. If we found a treasure, we would trade it as soon as possible. We barely hid them. I was lucky that I disguised myself well back then and fooled these people by bragging. Otherwise, my body would have long become animals' feces. Those mutant animals wandering in the wild were hungry as hell.
In fact, there wasn't any collection at all. I was just buying time, looking for a chance to escape.
I had a really bad day.
The mid-day sun was quite strong. And it made people more depressed with soil-colored gravels all around. In a discarded ditch near Dick Town, I encountered a strayed mutant rat.
After exposure to radiation, mutant rats could grow as big as an adult hound. Their fur was dark gray, their eyes were always glowing quirky red lights, and their teeth were extremely sharp. However, although these mutant rats looked fierce, for a scavenger like me, they were only preys of entry level on this discarded hunting ground. It shouldn't be too tricky dealing with them.
I pulled out the straight-ridge machete on my waist and stabbed strongly to the rat's eye with a rush. With its blood splashing, I could feel the point of the machete ripping the flesh open. After I drew out the machete from the eye of the mutant rat, a lot of foul blood mixed with foreign matters came out from the cut. And this beast died thoroughly after struggling slightly. Cold weapons were the first choice to deal with mutant rats. Their movement was fast. If I used guns to shoot, it would be easy to miss their vital spots. Moreover, for a scavenger like me, bullets were also scarce.
Skins of mutated rats were ideal materials to make protectors. Elbow pads or knee pads made of them had excellent performances. Meanwhile, in the low-end market of Dick Town, they were in a way hard currency. They could be fully used to exchange some stale brown bread or a few bottles of exotic-flavored water.
I took out my sharp skinning knife, squatted in the ditch and started to peel the rat carefully. Should I make a new pair of knee pads, or exchange it for some brown bread for dinner? That was a difficult decision to make.
"Hey, you in the front!" Suddenly, there came a yelling from not far away.
I raised my head and saw some armed personnel with guns were coming towards me. Judging from their clothing, they were probably guards from the town. Damn it! Why were they here? These men were only called guards when they were still in town. Once they were out of town, they were no different from marauders.
"Bloke, tell me, what are you doing here?" A guard stood on the earth slope against the ditch looking down at me and asked with a loud voice.
"I am hunting..." Even though this was obvious, I had to answer honestly. Surrounded by these guards with guns, I didn't have a choice.
"Hmm, hunting?! Did you have our permission?" The guard didn't sound like asking—he was more like teasing.
"This... needs permission?" I replied in a low voice and started to feel ill at ease.
"Of course! Without our permission, you are poaching!" The guard interrupted me right away with a righteous expression on his face.
"That's enough! Jones, why wasting your breath with a wanderer, just do it quickly." Another middle-aged guard said with an impatient voice and hurried him.
The guards took away my weapons and supplies. Then they pushed me down, hit me and made fun of me willfully. In the end, they pointed a gun at me. I guessed they were done torturing me and wanted to kill me. Even though I was humiliated, I didn't dare to fight back. In the face of upcoming death, I had to lie that I had hidden something good, which I could bring them to it in exchange for my life.
The guard moved the gun away from me. However, I knew in my heart that eventually, they would end my life, whether I could hand in the collection or not. These men would never let off a possibly existing danger even though killing me was no harder than killing a flea.
"Bloke, I didn't know that you would have Anti-radiation Capsules (Qing Fu Ning), is that possible you have hidden more?" The middle-aged man turned to me and asked. But his eyes were still on the capsules in his hand.
"Yes, I have more." I could only keep lying.
Apparently, the half box of Anti-radiation Capsules on me successfully intrigued these guards. Who would not be interested in some medicine that could treat radiation damage? It was a rarity.
In Dick Town, a box of Anti-radiation Capsules could exchange for five slaves, a service rifle with bullets or even a suit of hard shell armor made of mutant buffalo skins—a local product in Dick Town. Either of these was a good choice. A few days ago, some businessmen were robbed and killed. I scavenged this half box of Anti-radiation Capsules around their dead bodies. And there was only half box left.
"Oh, my, this is awesome. Suddenly I feel the savage stink of you turn so much thinner." The middle-aged man laughed out. It was a windfall for him.
Without a word, I started to lead these men on the road in the wilderness. All the way they kept talking in whispers, from mutant fruit wine to wasteland women, they didn't even get tired.
In half an hour, we passed a high mutated ruderal grass. I saw a sewer line outfall next to a dry river way. Bottle-green sewage with a foul stink came out of it from time to time and permeated into the rimous ground.
Perhaps, my chance consisted in this intricately constructed sewer.
"A rat is a rat, even his living place stinks, are you sure it's here?" The middle-aged man asked holding his nose.
"People like me, we are lucky even just having a place to hide. Let's go." While speaking, I jumped down to the dry river way and went below the sewer opening. Then I grabbed the rusty ladder and climbed up first. Although the sewer had existed since prewar, no distinct damage could be seen from outside of it. Its structure was relatively intact. But the floodlights on the sewer wall were already out of action because of the power outage. Of course, nobody could guarantee these floodlights could still function properly even if the power came back.
"Do you have a flashlight?" I asked the guards who came along. Apart from the exit, it was all dark inside the channel. It was impossible to see the way without a light.
"You don't have a flashlight? Then how you enter and exit?"
"Before I only used oil lamps bought from the town, you know they are cheap, flashlights are too expensive for someone like me." I had to find a reasonable excuse, but that was also true.
Batteries were scarce, but not because there was no way to produce them. The ones in Dick Town were commodity brought by some trade caravan from the north. According to some men from the trade caravan, the north owned great power and took control of numerous factories prewar, where the batteries were from, but the output was comparatively limited. Batteries were valuable in Dick Town. One of them could exchange for a certain amount of food and ammunition. For defense affairs, the mayor of Dick Town equipped the guards with flashlights and a few batteries.
"Wretch! You are such a troublemaker." The skinny man took out a flashlight from the hanging bag on his waist and handed it to me. In the meanwhile, he mocked me along.
"You lead the way, and don't try anything," the middle-aged man said and put his gun against the back of my waist.
A bunch of people moved forward at a slow pace in the sewer full of foul stinks. And the sounds of footsteps and splashing water made people sick. I didn't like this feeling.
I knew nothing about this sewer. As far as I could see, it was intricate. If I could make full use of it, it might be my only hope for escape. If it were in the wilderness, I guessed my head would be shot into pieces before I could even run too far. After all, it wasn't just one gun pointing at me behind. It was several guns.
After walking for ten minutes, we saw a small room in the corner not far ahead. Its iron gate was open. Looking at the collecting pipelines on the top ceiling, I assumed that it should be a switching room, which was designed for centralized maintenance of lines and maintainers to have a short break.
Wola~hoo-ha~
The moment we saw the switching room, waves of water suddenly clattered down from the channel behind us. It seemed something was approaching. I started to feel uneasiness. What would be in this gloomy sewer? Mutant cockroaches or mutant rats? Or would it be other adventurers?
I looked back and saw the middle-aged man and another guard take out a flashlight, shining it to the channel behind. All the guards pointed their guns at the sound source. At this moment I was somehow neglected, but I didn't have any weapon with me. And this was how being trivial made me feel. I turned to see the open iron door to the switching room and suddenly came up with an idea.
A horrifying sound of hiss appeared. Then a huge mutant snake with two gigantic head sprang out from the corner of the sewer. The head was as big as a grown-up human body, wagging tongues as if they were long whips. It was apparent that the guards had never seen such a terrifying creature. Their faces turned pale. And they took a step backward all together. Even their guns trembled because of their shaking hands.
Yet I underestimated these bloodthirsty marauders. After getting shocked in the beginning, the weapons in their hands seemed to help them gain their confidence back. Perhaps, it wouldn't be difficult to kill a mutated snake like this. The guards raised their rifles and aimed at the mutated snake. Looking up at the green eyes like fists, I felt scared.
"Fire!"
After a short confrontation, the middle-aged man gave the order to fire. Sparks kept coming out of the muzzles of their homemade rifles, which was abnormally visible in this pitch-black sewer. Although the mutant snake twisted its body when hit by the bullet, it was just a natural reaction under attack. The horrible thing was, the bullets didn't do much harm to this huge snake. I even saw some scattering sparks. That must be caused by the bullets hitting the squamas.
The attack was in vain. What came to the guards was the desperate counterattack from the mutant snake. Seeing the snake swirling its body coming at us, I ran without thinking. Those homemade rifles were no longer useful in this situation.
"Ah!!!"
Soon enough there was screaming. I looked back and saw a guard get bit by the mutant snake. That was the skinny man. The sharp teeth of the snake impaled his chest and his body suddenly shook in a weird way. When the snake loosened its mouth and withdrew its teeth, I saw dark green liquid coming out from his chest—that must be the venom from the fangs of the snake.
This terrible scene made the other guards start running for their lives. One of the guards probably got too scared and he fell down on the ground when he turned around. When he rushed to stand up again, he got entangled by the snake. The snake tightened his body so fast that I could hear his bones being dislocated. The guard cried in great pain and soon he died bleeding from his nose and his mouth.
I rushed into the switching room, closed the iron door and leaned my body against it tightly. The guards who followed kept bumping at the door and swore at me. Each time they bumped, the door cracked a lot. But they couldn't open it. However, they had to quit bumping shortly and ran away fast after the snake went close to them.
A grating sound went through outside the iron door. I knew that was the mutant snake leaving to chase its prey.
Soon it was quiet again. I could finally give a sigh of relief.