Grab the paperback and check what it is.
Noticing the car that just arrived, Rico waves at it and moves closer.
"Couldn't resist the call of Armageddon Party, could you?"
After talking, he gets in his car and slowly starts driving inside.
((PW, could you perhaps describe the junkyard in some more detail please?))
You walk back into the room and pick up the book in the corner. It's got a cartoonish picture of a widely smiling man with a hard to place expression on the front. The text on the cover reads "The Apocalypse Codex by Charles Stross"
Great, the universe has a sense of humor.
Continue being driven.
I suspect not! What's your name? Seeing how things have gone to shit, we might as well get aquainted. I'm Pat.
It seems anyone with our... state is immune to whatever's causing the madness - based off of a personal assumption, that is. I'm fairly sure that were something like the not true, I'd have gone insane already, since it seemed to start with the doctors. It only makes sense for us to collaborate - it makes our chances of surviving that much more likely... if anything can survive this, that is. I'm Samuel Richard. Me and Pat were in the same apartment complex when it started burning.
Drive behind the other guy into the yard.
All three of you drive into the junkyard, and Rico shuts the gate behind the other car.
The junkyard is a vast expanse of dirt and dead grass, frostbitten and dusted with salt from the sea breeze that blows in from the south. Originally it was owned by the airforce, who kept dead planes here, waiting to be parted out or repaired; the airstrip is still sitting in the center of the complex, a crumbling line of grass laden asphalt with mounds of crushed cars and scrap metal squatting beside it. After the end of the second world war- or was it the vietnam war?- when the super fortresses no longer needed to crawl the skies, the area, along with several miles worth of vacant dirt, and its contents were purchased by some corporation or another, which began using the site to store scrap. That what it really is, just one stop on the death march of old steel to some smelter up north in Michigan, a temporary holding place for the overflow of this and the surrounding states. It's nearly 10 miles long and two or so wide, 4 at its widest section, with much of that empty at the moment. But near the entrance, and the train tracks which cut through it over toward the east, there's a seemingly endless series of monoliths, free standing stacks of cars and metal like the standing stones erected by the primitive natives of the car obsessed 50's. And over, a bit farther south, are the skeletons and not quite so skeletons of the ancient aircraft. In all, a quiet, largely inhospitable wasteland with little to attract anyone starved for food or water.
That's... odd. Probably a bad idea, but it's worth checking out.
Taking pistol, go check out the doors and building exterior. Don't go in yet, but poke around and peek in windows and such. What's going on?
You take the pistol, keeping it concealed in one pocket as you carefully check the exterior of the building, walking the perimeter. Most windows are too far up to easily peer into, but the ones nearer to the entrance are down far enough for you to look through. It's dark inside, but from what you can see, or at least think you can see, the library has been ransacked. It looks like several shelves near the entrance have been toppled over and desks and chairs are scattered about. Worryingly, the desks and shelves have metal rods sticking out of their bases: they were bolted into the concrete before someone tore them out and flipped them over.
(( Hmm.... Alright, that will work. Yell at me if this is too meta and I'll just head to the junkyard XD ))
Ooooo, my head... what was that? Interference... or just more corruption? Maybe a wired connection would be clearer...
Drive to the library. Watch the city on the way
The city, from what you can see, is in shock. Rioting and looting hasn't started yet, but the scattered throngs of people and the roving gangs of guardsmen make it seem as though it can't be far away. There's a palpable tension in the air, fear and insecurity building. Soon more fires will start, soon people will start to get hungry and angry and they'll start looking for safe places. The instincts, burned deep into simian brains since they emerged on the grasslands of Africa, will take over and the hunting and gathering, the tribal segregation, the warfare for territory, it will start again as though the last 7000 years of civilization was just a momentary diversion. The lions are at the doorstep, and the old fears were never truly forgotten.
As you pull up into the library parking lot you notice a man walking around, peaking into the building's windows. He's got his hand in his pocket in a rather worrying fashion, holding something in it like it's his one lifeline out of the clawing cold sea of uncertainty which everyone seems to have suddenly found themselves in.
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Topic: THE END IS NEAR : Warning: May be more rational than reality. (Read 48630 times)