Story of the Wild Ones

A Shadow to Let Live

         Tired. I was tired. The hot desert sun seemed to almost target me. Boiling the blood beneath my skin. Drying out my exhausted body. I had walked for so long. Where I had come from I could not remember for certain. Why was I out here? Why was there nothing but barren, cracked land? My body gave way to the exhaustion and I hit the ground knees first. I had to squint to see anything as the light just seemed too bright now. I could have been seeing things, but as my mind fought for consciousness, I swore I had seen something in the distance.  Something moving. Before I could make out what it was, it was lights out for a while. Maybe even forever.

         "Over there. Do you see that?" A man dressed in black rags asked a woman dressed about the same who stood next to him. 

        "Not without the binoculars I don't." The woman rolled her eyes and held her hand out with a sigh as she waited for the man to hand her the tool he still had in his hands. 

         "Oh... right. I think it's a person." He handed her the binoculars and squinted as he still tried to look at the thing he had spotted in the distance. 

       The woman took them and looked out to where he was pointing. "Why are you even looking in this direction? F.E.A.R. is in the other direction. The abandoned towns aren't even this way. There is nothing this way. Just miles and miles of barren desert."

      "I like to be thorough. Do you see it?"

      A gasp left her mouth as she spotted what he had been looking at. "We have to alert the wild ones. There is someone out there. I think they might be dead."

       They both left their post at the top of a small metal stand that looked to be leftover remnants of a building. They ran through an area with tents and makeshift metal buildings bustling with people dressed much similar to them or people clad in black shorts and tank tops with black paint covering their skin and masks covering their faces. They all wore necklaces with the star of the legion hanging from them and carried handmade weapons. 

      Soon the two made it to a group of five men chatting in the center of the tent colony. They both panted heavily and had to rest on their knees to catch their breaths.

   "Sirs! We found someone to the south. They aren't moving. We think they might be dead." The man blurted out as he stood straight. 

     The woman nodded and stood straight as well. "They are in clothes not from here. I could not see their face. They looked like a shadow... but not a shadow of F.E.A.R."

      The five men they had run up to listened to them carefully. Four of them looked up to the man in the middle who was much taller than them. He was thin and had piercing blue eyes. He was clad in black leather and his jacket had one sleeve completely cut off. His hair was short but flopped over the right side of his face. He was the leader of the Legion. They called him the Prophet. 

      He turned to his group. "Two of you get a tent ready. Keep it close to ours. We've never had a stranger before. Keep your guard up." He then looked at the two scouts. "Lead the way."

      The three of them rushed as quickly as possible through the crowd and past the post. The Prophet had the others stay back near camp once he spotted the person. He was very fast and cleared the large distance with ease. Walking now, he approached the body with caution. 

       Up close it was clear now that the person was a female. She wore a worn long-sleeve shirt that was a dark wine purple and ripped black jeans with worn leather boots that went up to her calves. Overtop of the shirt was a black tattered canvas jacket with the hood up over her medium black hair. Her eyes were covered with goggles that had thick black leather that went over her forehead and the top of her nose. She was pale, but what little exposed skin she had seemed to be drenched in sweat.