Craig of the creek: From beyond the creek

The Elders

"Great ancient wisdom is what we seek" shouted Craig "so we call upon you, the elders of the creek !" there was some rummaging inside of elder rock before Elder Mark came to the opening of the rock "come on in !" shouted elder David from deep within the rock "shut it David I'm the one that gets to tell them to come in ! uh, come in" elder Mark moved out of the way to let Craig, Kelsey, Mortimer, and J.P in, once inside they were greeted by  Elder David and Elder Barry, it didn't look like they were doing much today, normally they spent the day playing a campaign on their role-playing game, but today looked like a particularly relaxing day, for the elders at least, Elder Barry was reading his book of magic party tricks, Elder David was playing power punchers on his computer, and Elder Mark was sitting in a chair writting up a new campaign for another day "elders, do you know anything about The Gulch?" asked Craig, Elder David paused his game and started paying attention, but no one noticed "is that a place on the creek? because otherwise I'm not sure..." answered Elder Barry  "what does it it look like ?" "well... it's..." Craig struggled to remember what Will had said about the Gulch he then remembered "it's stormy, Polluted, hum what else?" "stinky, did he say it was sticky?" piped in J.P "yeah, he did say something about smoke..." answered Kelsey, Elder Mark scratched his chin "no never heard of it... how about you Barry ?" Elder Barry shrugged "Nope, never heard of it, the closest thing I know are oilspill Island stages from slide the ferret" "I knew that description sounded familiar" thought Craig before getting his thoughts interrupted by Elder David "is it by herkleton industrial lane ?" he asked "herkleton what ?" said Craig "it's past herkleton mills, lots of factories, bad air quality, good neighbors, high chance of  geese taking dumps in your front yard, you know, average industrial suburbs" said Elder David "how do you know of this place David ?" asked Elder Mark "well I was wondering where the creek began since it just seems to keep on going forever and ever an-" "the short version" interrupted Elder Mark "well, I went to loogle earth, found our creek, followed it past herkleton mills, and saw it, also the creek comes from a place called benedict spring, which was used to feed a nuclear power plant until 1985, since then all the radiation from it's vicinity has been cleaned up,  and it's grounds were open to public until 1989 when the Dupont family bought the land to build the DuPont steelworks and electronics factory, which ran until 2005 when it was closed due to a worker union lawsuit, and the grounds were made public again as part of-" "OK stop the history lesson David" interrupted Elder Mark  "what I want to know is, for how long have you known of this place ?"  Elder David scratched his helmet "when did we do that campaign when the bard was a thief and killed us on the spot when he robbed us ?" "David that was 2 years ago" Mark said with a dissapointed voice "so how come you never told us about it ?" asked Elder Barry, Elder David Shrugged "You guys never asked" "HOW WERE WE SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT PLACE EXISTED !" shouted Elder Mark "you could ask" answered Elder David, Elder Mark was about to shout back at Elder David, but got interrupted by Kelsey "so how far away is it ?" "about 2 miles north from herkleton mills, a 5 minute car ride there" answered Elder David "oh and one more thing who told you about this place ?" "a new kid, he says he's from there" answered Kelsey "I didn't belive him at first, but now..." "Well, maybe he can show you around there, it's a 30 minute walk from here to there if you follow the creek upstream, but be careful" warned Elder David "in the border between Herkleton Mills and Herkleton industrial lane is a Wall of machinery, like an overpass, but there's something off, look" Elder David turned the screen around for Craig, J.P. And Kelsey to see, 

in the picture were the green woods and lively atmosphere, the water flowing freely  but it was cut off by some sort of wall, similar to the overpass where the green poncho was, but it didn't have a road for cars to go through, on the other side of the wall was a rather horrible view, everything inside the wall was withered and dead, and the water was a deep blue, like it had been treated with something, ramps of concrete went down to the artificial river, there was no birds, no leaves nothing, it was like an apocalyptic creek, the few scattered trees were like hands, grasping for fresh air, attempting to escape this awful place.  

"that Wall goes for miles around something, but the smoke at the center is so thick that not even the satellite can see through it" Elder David spoke as he scrolled up to the thick cloud of smoke he was talking about "I really hope you guys aren't planning on going there, it doesn't look safe"  Craig thought about it, it did look like a dangerous journey to take alone, and even if more kids of the creek were to go with them more things could go wrong, the terrain is unfamiliar, but, if they somehow made it out alive they would be regarded as legends of the creek, now if only they knew someone who could help them...  "no we aren't planning to go... yet"  everyone turn to Craig "look, the place looks like no man's land, what if the kids from there are looking for a new home ? what if we are going to get invaded by them ? you saw what they did to the king's domain, they took it over by barely lifting a finger !" everyone  thought of this "but that Will kid helped us get rid of the guy who took it over ? didn't he ?" said kelsey, slightly skeptical "yeah, but before that he was trying to get my map, he even fought us to try and get away with it !" "but he defeated the earthquake guy, doesn't that redeem him?" asked Kelsey "yeah, but in the end he got all friendly with him ! I am pretty sure it was staged, for us to trust him, which you are, but I'm not about to let another threat wander into this creek, we already had a close call with the king last winter !" "well, but what if we're wrong ?" asked J.P, and mortimer chirped worriedly "yeah, we could make an enemy ! and I think we already have enough" answered Kelsey nervously, Craig shook his head, new enemy or not they still had to protect the creek, but first they needed supplies "thank you elders" thanked Craig "we shall come back another day" and just like that they climbed out of the hole and walked away, leaving the elders alone once again. 

after making sure that Craig and Co. were gone Elder mark turned to Elder David "good job you scared a bunch of kids into believing that a secret place exists" he spoke sarcastically "but I'm serious, just look will you ?" answered Elder David loudly, and Elder Mark begrudgingly agreed, and scrolled through the map, all the way until  the blot, Elder Mark tried to zoom in, to no avail, he then tried street view, after getting placed under the clouds something rather odd happened first everything was alright, the screen was a little staticky, but they could see, it was the inside of a factory, but little by little the static turned to black, and letters in white appeared on the screen "DATA CORRUPTED" Elder David reloaded the page, again, and again, until the letters read "stop trying, let me rest" Elder David reloaded the page again this time it read "who are you ?" Elder David typed his name, the page reloaded now  it read 

the computer then shut itself off leaving the Elders in silence once again...