Rusted treasure

Chapter 1 

Welcome to Rust 

"OOF!" I groaned as yet another fist flew into my stomach. 

"Come on gentlemen, let's be reasonable about this." I groaned in a falsely cheerful voice. My captor gave me a cock-eyed grin.  

"Reasonable? Mate, we left reasonable behind when you tried to backstab us and cut us out of our fair share of the treasure! Reasonable isn't an option. Your death, however, is. So, I'll ask you one last time." He said as his angry eyes got closer and closer to mine. I could see every wretched old scar on his battle worn face; feel every breath of air coming from his lungs. And it wasn't a nice spot to be in. "Where is the map?" I stared at him speechlessly defiant. The man, taken aback by my show of courage leaned in even closer, and whispered so quietly that only he and I could hear it. 

"Alright. But I'm warning you, when I'm done, you'll wish you'd never lived." 

I spat in his face and he jumped back. Then wiped the spittle from his one good eye and threw his head towards the heavens. 

"Ha, ha, ha, ha!" Each laugh was like a gunshot. The crew of pirates that was holding me down all started to laugh nervously along with him. They had no clue what their captain was laughing about. But in most of those cases it was best just to agree with him and move on.  

"So! You still got a bit of life left in ya? Well, we'll see how fast that little bit left drains out when you see what my plan is for you." At this the crew all laughed maniacally. This time they knew what to laugh about. Only trouble was. I didn't.  

They grabbed me roughly and hauled me out of the room we were in.  

Once we were out I took a deep breath and was once again awed by the clouds all around us, and the red sun, still rising, seemed, majestic in the sky. The ship we were on hummed with life, engines rumbling, buzzers buzzing, beepers beeping, the air pirate flag flapping high above us, the air whooshing past us. The pirate holding me cut the ropes that bound my arms behind me, let go, and immediately backed away. We were on a small un-railed platform on top of a zeppelin in the sky. The rest of the crew sauntered off of the platform until it was only me, and my torturer, who was incidentally also the captain of the zep. The captain put on a parachute, but didn't offer me one. 

"It's just you and me now." He shouted over the rushing wind. "And we're gonna play a little game called push and pull. I think you'll figure out the rules rather quickly." And with this he let out a blood curdling cry and rushed towards me with every intention of pushing me off into the abyss of sky below us. I ducked down and he tripped over me. Then I turned and smashed the back of his head into the deck. I quickly pulled the parachute off of his back and started running towards the edge. As I neared the edge of the platform I held my breath, this parachute had better work, I thought to myself as I leapt off of the platform and began falling down towards the bulbous, round, object that was earth. I struggled to pull the parachute on, free falling the first couple hundred feet. Then I yanked on the cord and a giant dirty old parachute flew out of my back. I started floating slowly downwards. Then I heard a sound that was very unnerving. 

"WHIZ-WHIZ-WHIZ!" It was the sound of bullets flying by me. They were shooting at me! "Shoom-shoom!" And that was the sound of bullets ripping through the dirty canvas above me. I started hurtling faster and faster towards earth. More bullets flew by me, and one even hit my shoulder.  

"AIEEEEE!"I shouted as the bullet tore into my soft flesh. I clutched my shoulder, then realized that that was the least of my worries. The giant thing called earth hurtling towards me was most definitely the worst. I couldn't see where I was going, the air flying past me stole my breath away, and my vision started to blur. As my eyesight got darker and darker I looked around in desperation for somewhere soft to land. I was above a giant junk yard. And everywhere I looked there seemed to be nothing but sharp edges. I was only 100 feet away, and closing in fast. Then I spotted it, a big carrier van. I could land on that and it would take some of the fall for me. I began to zero in on the roof of it. I was 30 feet away now, nothing more I could do. 

"OHH CRAP! AHH-THUD! I hit the van and crumpled. I felt a wave of pain shoot through my body, and then everything went black. 

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I something prod my chest and I immediately shot up from my position on the ground. It was a dog!  

"Get outta here!" I shouted as I slapped him away. He yelped and ran. I immediately regretted having done so with my left arm, due to the fact that it was connected to my left shoulder, which had a bullet lodged in it. I looked around, where am I? I thought to myself. This place was nothing new; it looked like everything else on earth. But I had never been here before.  

The world around me was a world of decay. It was a wasteland, a junkyard with mountains of metal everywhere. There were destroyed buildings and smoldering fires at every corner. It seemed as though the place had been destroyed, and then rebuilt entirely out of junk.  

I was alone in a wilderness of waste. No, not alone. At the edge of my vision, I could see things shifting, moving slowly. But whenever you would look in that direction it would stop. You would only occasionally see the tail of some unknown monster or insect crawling into some nook or cranny to hide, always waiting, waiting for its next victim to pass by. Everything was quiet. There was no life. Only death, the sun was red. The dust was everywhere. Everything was dark. Even in the day. The world wasn't a world. It was dump. Smoke was everywhere. But you would never see the fire. There were no clouds. No puddles, no water. Nothing grew, only withered. There were no trees, no plants, only metal, rock, and dust. But our world wasn't always like this. It used to be giant, green, and prosperous. But then humans came along. We took from the earth, and never returned. Wars broke out, we built up huge bombs, and we blew up one another. The world was destroyed. So they left. They built goliath sized ships and left earth, went to space to destroy more planets.  

But we didn't all leave. Some couldn't afford it. The homeless, the lost, the abandoned, and the separated. We were left behind. Left to go and make the best of the worst. They left us nothing, but we still survive. This place was earth, now, it's Rust.