Remain Human: Changed

Part 8: Sewer Rat (Part 1)

5:36 PM

Sinkholes.

One moment, you're walking on an open field, minding your own business. Next moment you're suddenly falling down with the ground down a giant chasm that decided to pop in to ruin your day.

For context, sinkholes, especially in an urban environment happen when old water pipes end up collapsing. They can also happen due to an overabundance of surface water suddenly rushing in and making the sewer tunnels underneath collapse due to the pressure of said water.But from your perspective, it appears to be a birth-child of both. Given how deep you and the UTV have fallen.

You're sitting inside the UTV right now, the interior lamp casting off a somewhat dim blueish white light which made it like a primitive torch in the darkness of the sewers you've crashed into. You finish putting up the finishing touches on the new head wound you got from bashing your head against the control board.

Shit, make for a pretty good bruise to tell anyone about. If there was anyone at all left to tell about.

You reach for the bag at the back then step out onto the wet, uneven brick pile. Much of the water from the surface has followed you down here, along with the floor of the previous level.

In short, you crashed through 2 levels here in the sewers and got moved around by the water flows here, all of which either severely damaged or destroyed the suspension of the UTV and the wheel frame. Not that it matters to you anyways, since there is no way on gods' green earth you're going to get the damn thing out of the sewers and it being wheels-deep in rubble is also the least important part of the problem.

The headlights were turned on, providing you a bright enough light to gauge your surroundings.

You're standing ankle deep in water within a large tunnel-like chamber. Water laps around the rubble pile which you stand upon, occasional rebar sticking out like mangrove roots you've saw in pictures before. Behind you, a constant waterfall of dirty water from both the sewers and the outside rainwater falls upon the left side of the UTV and the pile, making churning waves across the chamber, disappearing into the darkness.

You decide on grabbing what you can from the boot, seeing how you'll have to make your way back up to the surface through 2 levels and large amounts of water now with whatever you can carry.

Opening it up, you feel around and start to take inventory.

It's very useful and handy to take inventory of your things every other day, especially in this time where you're all by yourself with a lot of things around you. Even in the worst of times, keeping track of things can go the long mile in many circumstances. Circumstances like here. Now.

Unwrapped from your tool bindle, you have 3 wrenches of varying sizes, 3 crowbars of varyings length, a aged claw hammer, a small sledgehammer; the head being larger than your palm by 2cm, a industry-grade hacksaw with some well-fitting industrial hazard stripes, a folding shovel, a broken solder, some tape, 2 screwdrivers for both heads and some metal garbage. In addition, you've got a industrial lamp, a tire pump with the 2 tires sitting there, their use now plummeted gretaly along with some industrial-grade rope and a scissor jack. You've taken both boxes of ammunition and the med-kit but still kept the .308 ammo box and the rifle. You could try to collect it later, seeing that you'll be overburdening yourself. As a final note, you have the snub-nose S&W .500 with 3 loaded speed-loaders which you stole away into the bag.

And for the stuff on your person, you've got all your clothes on, including the military belt with the pouches, cargo vest, cross-body bag and your main bag. You've got both the Mossberg and the pistol too along with the police flashlight, the swiss army knife, the slim crowbar and another pocket knife complete with partial-noise cancelling earplugs. Supplies wise, you have mostly snacks with a few bottles of water and canned food inside with another med-kit for a lack of the term of medical overkill. You took out the existing tools inside the bag since it felt kind of unnecessary considering the other implements. To add, you have batteries and that solar-powered power bank as well.