Dominion

Chapter Twenty Three: The Wastes

Chapter Twenty Three: The Wastes

Run.

That was the only thing my instincts were screaming at me as I watched the black cloud of ash edge closer and closer to Outpost Harmony. I couldn't shake that word, either. We were venturing into a place not meant to sustain the living. A place somehow deader than the dead world it was a part of.

"Here," Vera tossed me a pair of goggles. Eyeing them for a long moment, I reluctantly strapped them around my head, but not over my eyes just yet. I gently lifted my hat off of my head, sitting it on the small fence that separated Outpost Harmony from The Wastes. Vera watched me as I did, wordless. I wasn't certain any words were needed; I had told her what we were heading into. A storm of ash and an army of Dominion soldiers.

I watched her gear up, pulling her goggles down over her eyes, and took note of her lack of hesitation or reluctance. Her parents could be in there somewhere, hidden with the rest of the rebels. This was the closest she'd ever been to finding them. I wished I had that motivation. I would instead be burdened with every step closer increasing my desire to turn back around.

I still wasn't sure what would happen if we did find the rebels. My sister wanted me to find them, but I didn't know what she expected me to do when I did. Join them? My world may have shifted, but my views on them had not. Against The Dominion, they were a lost cause. So why was I looking for them? Perhaps just to talk to the people who knew Ash, to find a sense of closure. Or perhaps I had idea but no other plan.

I lifted my face mask up to my nose, the back half of it over my head. Then I pulled my goggles down over my eyes, leaving nothing of my face to be seen. This would not be a pleasant trip.

Vera headed off first, pulling open the fence's gate. It creaked as she did, dust falling from it. It hadn't been moved in a long time. I pulled it back into place as I stepped beyond it, looking back toward the outpost as I did. There sat my hat on the fence post. Someone would come along and take it sooner or later.

Alive or dead, I doubted I would be coming back here.

I turned around to find Vera looking at me. I couldn't read her from behind the mask, but somehow I knew what she would've said if she could've. That much I knew from her extending her hand. I took it, and hand in hand we took our first steps into The Wastes.

The ash reached us quicker than expected, and vision became next to impossible. We kept our hands locked solely so as to not get separated, trudging forward slowly but steadily. That didn't change the fact that we had no idea where we were headed.

The last time I was here, with Paxer, he seemed to know exactly where to find whatever it was he had been looking for. There hadn't been an ash storm back then, but this place was impossible to navigate with or without one. The constant lava flow shifted the landscape too often for it to be mapped, and the unpredictable weather made trying dangerous enough that no one dared even thinking about it.

My foot stepped on something and a crack followed. I stopped, stopping Vera with me. She looked back at me, but I looked down to the source of the sound. It was a bone. A human bone, old enough that my foot snapped it in half. I looked up to Vera, and neither of us needed our masks removed to know what the other was thinking.

I hadn't mentioned to her that The Dominion dumped dead humans here, so her line of thought was probably somewhat more ominous than mine. An unfortunate traveler, his or her remains left here for longer than we had been alive. The truth wasn't much better. Whoever the person was just died somewhere else.

We kept moving, somewhat more cautious in our steps. Time passed slowly, but the cloud began to let up after a little while. It only faded, though; it wasn't gone completely, but our vision became clearer. It began to resemble The Cloud from Lake Michigan, just darker. I could almost hear the same silent roar warning the living away. But whereas The Cloud had a chill too it, The Wastes radiated heat. Hot, cold, it was all The Dominion and none of it was good.