The Lost Tomb : Sea Of Sands

Chapter 35: The Past

The man shook his head and said, "How did we get here? We weren't here, we were there." The man pointed to the sand dune outside the truck and said to him, "This was originally a factory, with many houses and tents. I also don't know why we had to come here, it's been so long and I can't remember the details. After thirty years, all I remember is that we were on a mission. We were the permanent convoy assigned to this place, responsible for transporting goods between here and another factory."

"These are trucks. Of course I know they were used to transport things." Li Cu retorted.

"It's not that simple, because we had to transport in both directions. Most of the things we brought here from outside factories were basic necessities like gasoline. But often times, we delivered strange containers that were covered in rivets." The man said, "The containers were empty when we brought them in, but they were full of something when we took them out.

"There was no doubt that the contents must have been produced in this desert. But I couldn't ask what it was, because when I did, I was told that it was a top secret mission and we were only responsible for transporting it. Each of our trucks had a Secrecy Commissioner, and in case one of the trucks flipped over near a village, the Commissioner would take out his gun to keep any people in the vicinity away while we waited for our own people to come. We transported these things out of here every day without stopping.

"One day, after we transported a batch of those strange containers from here and came back, we found that the factory was closed. We were on standby at our logistics base without any new missions, but my instincts told me that there must be something wrong. Even if we didn't transport any goods, our resources and water would slowly run out since we had always been bringing some resources in. But it was very strange that we didn't receive a mission and had been on standby without any commands from above.

"Since our trucks were from an independent company, we ran out of daily necessities, and we were sure we had nothing to eat, we asked our superiors for help. We called the factory, but the person who answered the phone didn't speak. We didn't know what to do. Since it was an important matter regarding whether so many of us would starve to death here, we all discussed it together. At that time, I thought it was very strange. If we had nothing to eat, then what about the people in the factory? They hadn't come out to give us any explanation, nor did they ask for any supplies. Unwilling to wait for death, our squad leader took us to the factory leader to find out what was going on, but when we arrived, we found that we couldn't find the guard. The factory's buildings and power supply were intact, but there was no guard at the gate. We stood there for a long time, but no one answered.

"We drove through the fence and entered the factory. It's very difficult to build a house in the desert, so concrete blocks were usually embedded into the sand bit by bit in hopes of securing it deep into the rock. Doing so takes a long time, so the factory here wasn't built very high. We barged in to try to find the person in charge or at least someone who normally contacted us, but we couldn't found anyone. Not a single living person could be found, and the whole factory was empty. Did they already withdraw, and we just didn't know?

"But we had thousands of people in our team who were all stranded here. With so many eyes, it was impossible for them to sneak past us. Moreover, there was no reason not to let us know, and no one would make a big mistake like forgetting us here. What made us really feel like something was wrong was when we found the dispatch room responsible for contacting us and entered. We discovered that all the telephones were disconnected, and when we used our walkie-talkies to ask our colleagues to call this place, we found that the phone didn't ring at all. In other words, if none of our calls came here before, then where did they go? No one knew.