"This third year, how you say in English? Wednesyear. See sky? How you not know anyway?"
"What are you doing?" For a moment, Jim thought she was going to eat him.
"You are too clean! Clean American speak and not know time of year... You are from rocketship?" Under his jacket, Jim was wearing a T-shirt he bought at Kennedy Space Center, and Karen had obviously seen it.
"Uh... no, not really." Karen looked disappointed.
"How you come here from America then? Big sea is infested and I not seen any balloons. You come with me and tell."
Karen folded her pole in two and started walking towards the armored carriage's remains. "Is it safe?"
"Greeners like those thrown away from tribe, no marks on them. Should not be more. Now come on, tell story!"
Jim started to spill the beans, only neglecting to mention why he zapped himself with a high-energy particle beam in the first place.
"You are from the Before?"
"If you mean before the War, well, yes. Who started it, the Russians?"
Karen smiled again, then started to look through the rubble. Mosquitoes had already popped out of nowhere and started swarming over the dead orks, some of which were a sight so grisly Jim almost puked. The primitive steam engine had blown to bits right in the middle of them, and even an experienced junkyard diver like him could see very little that could be salvaged, also because he could see very little that wasn't covered in mutant entrails. "Help get coal, then I tell you story, yes?" Karen said simply, and started looking around. Jim took a second to notice that she would raise her head and look all around every few seconds.
Apart from some of the fuel, a mixture of coal and tar, there was very little of any use. Jim did notice from what was left of the carriage that what he thought to be a simple steam engine was in fact Stirling cycle like the one he had on his bike, except that there was no way something built so crudely would ever have worked. First my taser thinks it's in a Star Trek episode, then an engine that would never work with these tolerances... not to mention the sky. Has it always been like this here? Jim turned to Karen, who was calmly impaling the ork gunner on an axle to make sure he was in fact dead. To his credit, he threw out only after seeing the mutant's brains ooze out of the hole in his head.
"You take the gun, is too big for me." Karen said, tossing the ork's shotgun and a bag half-full of shells at Jim. Still musing about what was fundamentally wrong with this world, he swung it behind his back. "What do we need the fuel for?"
"Food. Not want to eat these raw, trust me!"
For a moment, Jim thought that she was referring to the orks themselves, and felt nauseous again. He felt a little better when Karen produced some sort of slab of brownish fungus from under her cape and wrapped it around a piece of debris. Starting the fire was only a matter of finding a piece of scrap hot enough to ignite the fuel.
Once roasted, the stuff turned a dark red and Jim was surprised to find it rather acceptable. It still tasted like overcooked chicken that had been dipped in gasoline one or three times too many, but judging from the surroundings, being picky was not an option.
"Tastes OK, what is it?"
"I saw you vomit before, so I not tell you, or you vomit again and waste it!" Karen replied with that disarming tone of hers. "Now, we safe here, fire keeps dograts away. Tell you what? I need some sleep, so I tell you story of war later, yes? When horizon turn red, you wake me and we go, talk on the way."
"Uh, okay, sure... Can I know one thing, though?"
"Yes?"
"Why did you help me out, and why are you trusting me?" Jim somehow thought this was, well, out of character for someone who just killed a downed enemy in cold blood. He found it rather unlikely that humans generally got along in a place like this, so that was not it either...
Karen yawned. "You help me first, greeners looking for me for two sleeps. And besides, you know you don't last long here without me. I not have sleeped for a long while, so now stand guard. Night!"
So said, she curled up in her cape and fell asleep on the spot. Something howled in the distance, and Jim clutched the heavy shotgun and frowned. Night he thought is that just a phrase she picked up, or there is some sort of day/night cycle here?
Whatever the sky had to say about it, things looked dark.
Sat Nov 10 02:05:33 2001
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