This is the first tale in a series of short stories based on the world of Punkapocalyptic, which we hope will help you to imagine life in the Wasteland.
The last assignment
Not every day you have the chance to make History. My master was near to madness sometimes, that I knew well, but no doubt he also was the smartest guy in all the Wasteland, or at least in the part of it I know. He had been with a Junkers band in his younger days, but after finding some old books he had decided to settle in a lonely, isolated rickety house in the hills to devote all his time to his experiments.
In the last few months, after painfully waiting for all the components he needed, he had
begun to get energy from the Sun itself, only with some sheets of metallic aspect. So long he had managed to operate small devices gathered in the ruins of old cities. Devices for simple tasks, but that for most of the Wasteland inhabitants seemed like magic: a machine similar to a boomerang that released gusts of hot air, several light tubes or a screwdriver that spinned on its own. But those were but small tests for what he had in mind. He was convinced that the Old Ones were still alive and communicated through the air, using what my master called “satellites”. The apparatus he was working on would let him listen to what they said, or even communicate with them. It was time to make it work.
He had sent me to buy some supplies to a group of traders who were passing through the area. Those bloody vultures didn’t want to bargain a single bit and had ripped me off two bullets for everything.
The first thing I noticed out of the ordinary was the smell, similar to that you can feel in some of the devices the Junkers make, that of processed chemical products. Right then I saw a column of black smoke rising behind the hill where my master’s house was. It wasn’t the first time that one of his experiments had caused an accident, but I had the feeling that something was not right at all. I drop the stuff I was carrying on the ground and ran to the house.
When I finally could reach the top of the hill and saw the house, my eyes almost jumped out of its sockets. There were half a dozen of what seemed like men, but dressed with some kind of armour of a shining green hue. Two of them were using a weapon that threw fire to burn the house to the ground. Another two were seemingly standing watch, fact that made my brain finally release the order to my body to lay down behind a rock to avoid been seen.
The remaining two were with my master, who was tied in some way I couldn’t explain, as something similar to pure energy that sparked with blue tones held his hands together. One of them put a small device I could not see clearly from that distance to his chest. My master´s body started to shake and have terrible seizures, until it fell forward with a spasm and foam came to his mouth. The men I could only describe as torturers grabbed him from the arms and dragged him, with the rest of the group closing behind. The nearby plain started to curl, in a much similar way to the effect you can see in a really hot day. And there, right in front of my eyes, appeared a huge vehicle. The six men, still dragging my master with them, went up a ramp that had opened in one of its sides and that closed slowly behind them. Soon after that the vehicle started to ascend in the air on its own, powered by some unknown energy, hummed for a while and then disappeared.
There, in the place I had lived in for the last eight years, were only some charred ruins and a lot of questions left. Questions I promised to myself I would never ask.