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inktober2022 wip: "scurry" [wintersberg]
eventual wintersberg.
The signal was still coming through strong, which was good, but it was pointing him directly at the swamp, which was bad. Karl checked the readout again just to make sure, but the little green light hadn’t changed its location the last three times he’d looked at it, so it was idiotic to expect it to do so now. Yet here he was, a big, mud-covered idiot.
“How much you want to bet those goopy fuckers are all over the damn place in there,” he told Sturm, which merely whirred at him in its usual way, sounding inquisitive.
He hadn’t programmed it to be inquisitive, so that was just the anthropomorphizing, but damned if the thing didn’t sound like it sometimes.
“Cleaning this shit out of your joints is going to be a bitch,” he groused, and Sturm whirred at him again, in agreement this time, he imagined.
Goddamn but he was becoming some sad, lonely sap in his old age.
“Well,” Karl said, looking Sturm over one last time–its metal frame was still mostly clean, gleaming; Karl was the one who kept falling on his fat ass–and resigning himself to a day wasted on detailing his damn robot, “Get in there.”
Sturm obeyed immediately, its four limbs sinking far too deep into the muck–he hadn’t designed its feet for this shit, fuck–and slowing its progress somewhat. He followed along behind it, frowning.
“I wouldn’t, if I were you.”
“Jesus fuck!” he hissed, spinning on his heel to face the voice.
It was just the man from earlier, he should have known. “Christ, Ethan,” he said, whistling for Sturm to heel and stomping over to him. “Trying to give me a fucking heart attack?” he’d realized belatedly that he’d grabbed his chest like he was really about to have one and had hastily dropped his hand. Sad old man, he reminded himself acidly.
“There’s gators,” Ethan said simply, his expression the same as it was before, just that bland, dead-eyed stare. His skin too pale, the veins standing out starkly.
“Gators,” Karl repeated, and then the implications started to sink in and he felt all the quick-burning ire just melt away. “They just as fucked up as everything else around here?”
Ethan continued to stare at him. Or rather in his direction; his eyes were fixed somewhere in the approximate vicinity of Karl’s right ear. “I told you you should leave,” he said eventually.
“And I told you I have business here,” he said, his attention drawn by the sad little plops of Sturm’s footsteps as it struggled through the mud, finally coming to a stop at his side. “Don’t–” he tried to warn, but it sat down anyway, resting on its haunches just like the dog he’d designed it to resemble. It sunk down a bit immediately, its weight too much for the mud. He sighed, and turned back to Ethan, but Ethan was gone.
“Wish he’d stop doing that,” he grumbled, scanning the surrounding area for any sign of Ethan. There weren’t even any footprints that he could see. A sadder, older, lonelier man might, at this point, start to think that he was dealing with a ghost. Luckily Karl wasn’t that much of an idiot.
“Wanna bet the reason the Connections didn’t want us checking this shit out in person is because of some new bioweapon fuckup?” he asked Sturm.
Sturm, now covered in more mud than it had been previously, whirred at him. Damn thing never wanted to take his bets.
**
He waffled about going into the swamp anyway for about an hour, squelching through the mud along its edge hoping for some kind of path, or boardwalk, or something.
There was nothing but trees and muck and bugs and the thick blanket of humidity that was making it increasingly difficult for him to breathe.
“Goddamn fucking miserable shit hole,” he told the swamp, and would have been embarrassed his voice came out as a wheeze on the last four syllables if anyone but Sturm had been around to hear.
And Sturm wasn’t really doing that much better than he was. It had followed along dutifully beside him the whole time, until he’d noticed how much it was lagging, its joints gumming up with mud and half-rotten leaves, and had ordered it to wait further back where the ground was more solid. It was sitting up there now angled in such a way that its optics could follow him.
“If I die out here,” he told it, raising his voice to carry, “go straight to the Connections and self-destruct in whatever location allows you to take the most of them out.”
Sturm beeped in confirmation of the order and Karl nodded, steeling himself.
The swamp waited just where he’d left it, undoubtedly fucking teaming with bio-organically weaponized alligators.
“Fuck me,” he said, and started making his careful, cringing, way forward.
The swamp immediately rushed into his boots, the detritus at its bottom trying to suck them clean off his feet. He kept going, hating the feel of the water, the constant swarm of bugs–he probably had some kind of fucking mosquito disease now, or even several–and most of all the fear that he couldn’t quite squash, that any moment now some souped up crime against god and nature would just burst out of the water and shred his ass to bits.
He had the locator in one hand, the little green dot leading him onwards, and his Beretta in the other, for all the good it would do if he did run into something out here; it sure as shit hadn’t done much against the other mutants he’d encountered back up near the house.
But it was better than nothing, and he wouldn’t be caught completely with his pants around his ankles at least.
The problem was that with both hands full he couldn’t do anything about the bugs, and they were well and truly swarming now, getting in his eyes, in his mouth when he’d go to curse them. He kept jerking his arm up in an attempt to swat them, for all the good it did.
The swamp was getting deeper too, up to his waist now and slowing his movements even more. He hoped it wouldn’t go much deeper, considering he couldn’t fucking swim.
Karl hunched his shoulders and forced himself to continue on. He hadn’t come out here for nothing and he’d been through worse shit than this. Once he retrieved the Soldat he’d have that as backup too, and Sturm could make it through the swamp, he knew its capabilities, he’d built the damn thing, he could call it to him if he needed to.
Something up ahead moved in the water and Karl froze.
His grip tightened on the Beretta and he trained it, slowly, on where he’d seen movement. All he could hear was the buzz of insects, the gentle lapping of water, and his own blood, pounding in his ears.
Then he heard the growl, the trip over into a hiss. He’d seen enough nature shows to know what it was.
“Fuck me,” he said, with emphasis, and braced himself to move, eyes flitting back and forth, trying to gauge which shore he was closest to.
He heard the sound again, this time from behind him, and threw himself forward without thinking, splashing loudly through the water right as something heavy thrashed right where he’d just been, water lashing his back and head, dripping down into his eyes.
Movement again, ahead and to his left, and he couldn’t stop, couldn’t afford to stop, just had to make for the shore on his right.
Just try to outrun several alligators in a swamp, great idea, Karl.
He shoved the locator between his teeth and spun, getting his back up against a tree and aiming–
God fucking damn it but that thing was huge–
Fired three rounds between the eyes of the gator heading right for him–
It hissed, its wide jaws stretching to reveal a pinkish-white maw, teeth a kind of insanity, just poking out in every direction, an impossible amount of them, and Karl aimed again and fired right down its fucking throat.
It jerked back, thrashing, black water blinding him but he was already moving again, his heart in his throat, pumping out a painful rhythm, heading in the direction of the shore.
The second gator was out there somewhere, fuck if he knew where, and it wasn’t like he’d planned for this shit, he only had one extra clip, a third if you counted the backup Sturm carried in its cargo compartment, and there was no way Sturm would make it in time anyway–
Karl screamed around the locator still held between his teeth, beyond pissed off with himself, for his own stupidity, and with the Connections, for theirs, and–
Something struck his side, knocking him off balance and sending him to his knees in the water.
It was deep enough that it rushed up to cover his head, blinding him, pouring into his ears, the sound of it blocking out everything else–
He scrambled upright, sputtering–he’d lost the damn locator–he still had the gun but–
Jaws snapped down right where his hand had just been frantically, stupidly, tearing through the muck for the locator.
Panicked, Karl aimed and fired blind, forcing himself backwards as the dark mass of the alligator hurtled towards him–
His free hand hit something, something in the water, closed around it, was already bringing it up, an instinctive defense, as jaws opened up, as the gun clicked empty–
The weight of the gator was tremendous, knocking him backwards and then down, and he had to drop the gun, getting both hands around the branch he’d grabbed, holding onto it with all his might as it speared through the gator’s upper jaw, piercing into its brain–
He could barely see, blood and swamp water blinding him equally, and he kept trying to keep his head up, get it up out of the water, but the gator was thrashing, threatening to rip the branch from his grip, and his animal brain was telling him that was the only thing between himself and certain death, so he held on–
And held on–
And held on–
Wood splintering out into the meat of his hands, but he held on, gasping for breath any time he’d surface, he held on.
The gator stilled, finally, and Karl got his feet back under himself, still kept his hands locked around the tree branch; stood there panting as the water rippled back into calm.
It took him some time to convince himself to let go of the branch, but he eventually managed it. Spent a few tense moments feeling around at the bottom of the swamp for his Beretta before he couldn’t stand it anymore and headed right for the shore.
If there were any more of those damn things in that swamp he didn’t want to run into them unarmed. Fuck this whole thing for a lapse in fucking judgement, he’d fucking known better.
Karl drug himself out of the swamp feeling like some kind of primordial fish creature that had just discovered dry land and lungs. Drug himself further and further inland and then just collapsed onto the earth, panting, squeezing his eyes shut, squeezing his hands into fists and feeling the blood ooze from where his skin had been torn trying to hang onto the branch.
He got up eventually and squished his way through woods and swampy earth until he made it to some kind of shed. It was nearly collapsed, and there was nothing helpful inside it, but he stood next to it for a while all the same, hardly even having the energy to startle when Ethan appeared again, his voice completely devoid of emotion when he said, “I told you not to go in there.”
Karl turned to look at him. At his disheveled and filthy appearance, just slightly better than Karl himself now, at his dead stare and his frustratingly neutral expression.
“Fuck. You,” Karl said.