Caliburn - Prologue

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I figured I might as well start posting this, since I'm so backlogged with schoolwork (already!) and band camp that everything else has pretty much come to a stand-still.  This story is fairly new, as I haven't even posted it to my FP or DA account, and I consider it to be my first real attempt at sci-fi (with, admittedly, a dash of fantasy -- mecha, anyone?).  More information will come (possibly) as I finish more chapters.

Caliburn
Prologue - The Waste Land

A cold, dry wind whipped across the Waste, picking up dust from the blackened plains.  The man in the yellow suit shivered but did not falter, and kept his sight fixed on the river.

“Wade!  We’re not paying you to stand around on the job!”

Startled, he turned back to face the foreman.  “But… Mr. Sherwin, sir!”  He had to shout to make himself heard across the wind.  “I just saw something, sir!  It was out on the river—”

“Impossible,” the other man barked firmly.  His voice, even muffled by the gas mask, was firm enough to be heard through the wind.  “Everything on this godforsaken island has been turned to Waste, and there isn’t a single living thing out here, not even Fey.  You’re just seeing things.”

The man called Wade hesitated.  He was tempted to look back at the river once more, but decided that some things were better left unknown.  He trudged back to the pit’s edge, next to the foreman, looking out over the small army clad in biohazard suits that was steadily digging away at the black walls of the pit.  A large truck had returned from the rail-station and was already being loaded with even more Waste.  When he had first come here, he was shocked to discover how deeply the land had been infected by Gaines; there didn’t seem to be a grain of soil left.

The wind ceased.  It was replaced by an unusual heaviness in the air that suited Wade’s tension.  “…Uh, sir?”

“What?”

“Why are we mining out all this Waste?  I mean… What good is it?”

“It’s not our job to question orders,” the foreman replied; the volume of his voice had decreased, but the firmness was still present.  “Whatever DCD tells us to do, we do it.  ‘For the sake of all that’s left,’ and some such.”

The DCDAG’s creed never made much sense to him, and neither did salvaging the Waste.  Even so, the foreman was right.  There hadn’t been a single breach by the Fey in the refuge zone’s security since it was first constructed more than a decade ago, so the DCD must’ve known what they were doing.

Thunder sounded from across the plain.  A distant, damp gust rattled the dry skeletons of what were once buildings.  A clock tower, though forever silent, still defiantly pointed towards the swirling gray skies.  Rain was coming.

“…Funny,” the foreman mused quietly, the firmness completely absent from his voice.  “I hear it used to rain here all the time.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”  There was a long pause, broken only by another clap of thunder.  “…Heh.  Before I took this job, I’d never been to the British Isles before.”

Wade made no comment.  The first drops of rain began to fall, perhaps the first to touch the dry, arid Waste since the Gaines outbreak.

“…Well, I’m on break for the next half-hour.  Keep an eye on things for me.”

“Yes, sir.”

The foreman walked off, heading towards the small tent pitched next to the emergency tram.  Wade remained where he was, overlooking the pit.  The rain now fell more heavily; the chill of it soaked through his suit and into his bones.  A fog seemed to roll over the landscape.

…Picking the bones of the dead to preserve the living… Doesn’t make much sense at all.

A hot gust of wind blew at his back, against the cold breeze that accompanied the rain.  Without thinking, the man turned to find its source—there was a horrible stench and a strange shimmer in the air, which soon solidified into glowing eyes and yellowed fangs the length of his entire body.

He stood stock-still with the realization that he and every other living thing in the area were already dead.

“F—Fey!!”

 ---

The rain soon passed, rolling into the depths of the cracked, sterile land as if it had never fallen.  The stagnant river was only briefly stirred.  The man by the river reeled in his line.  He was not as carefully attired as the yellow-suited men, but he didn’t seem to suffer any more for it.

“It won’t be long, poor soul.”  He spoke as if there was someone beside him, but there was nothing—even the Fey had vanished, with the rain.  He wiped the scum off the hook with his tattered shirt before readjusting his line.  Blood pooled on the riverbank, around his waist.  “Good Arthur will be awake shortly.  He’ll put you to rest.”

He cast out his line.  The hook soon disappeared into the murky depths.  There was another sound of thunder; within it could be heard a howl.

A small smile came to his face.  “I see…  Dr. Gaines is mad again.”