Isolation-#Wattys2015

Excerpt 38-Dead Jungle

With a two day walk ahead of us, Alcatraz and I started forward. The silence of the jungle seemed to only worsen the further we walked, eventually even the wind stopped. There were no growls or rumbles from the carnivorous trees that made up the entire forest, their vines hung limp with their mouths open, dead from incompatibility with the Agent 41 Virus. Alcatraz and I watched our step, making sure we left the trees and the many dead animals that were strung around and half eaten undisturbed, respect mostly. Now, I'd seen dead bodies before, this was nothing new. I was very, very hardened to death, suffering, etc. I had personally come to the point where I could look Satan himself in the eyes and not flinch. Now that being said, I don't care how badass you are or think you are. You can be doing 54 life sentences in prison and killed two million people, when you lay eyes on the sheer amount of carnage, blood and death in this jungle, your stomach is going to turn, your eyes are going to look away, weather you want to or not, you are going to want to puke and go the other way as quickly as possible and you are certainly not going to be the same after a hike through it. The carnage, though somewhat scattered, was still dense enough that you could step over a long and put your foot into a mush that used to be large intestine. The scary part was that I saw no sign whatsoever of scavengers, no buzzards, flies, maggots, not shit. I would be surprised if even Primal Xenomorphs would touch this. The dead animals and plants were so heavily contaminated that all my internal warning systems were going crazy and giving me a headache.

On top of the constant buzzing in my head, the sun had given Alcatraz and I the middle finger and decided it wanted to be EXTRA hot today. It had gotten so hot that Alcatraz had stripped off his T-Shirt, tank top and the armor pieces on his arms, now just wearing the armor pieces on the front and back of his Exo, while I had taken off my jacket and my T-shirt, down down to a tank top myself. The humidity was also fucking horrible. I had water condensing on my exo and Alcatraz was complaining about water and sweat dripping down in between the connection points and skin.

"Suck it up Al", I said climbing over a log, taking care to avoid a pile of meat on the other side.

"Well forgive me for not wanting metal that is wrapped around my bones to rust and make me sick", Alcatraz said.

"Don't they seal it up?", I asked.

"They don't if your skin is sensitive to it", Alcatraz said joining me on the jungle floor, he'd been using his Exo's ability to navigate steep surfaces to it's full extent to keep me in the know about what was ahead, as well as stay out of the gore, so far it had been working, "hows your head by the way?"

"Still pounding fucking crazy", I said, "the morphine isn't helping."

"Crikey", Alcatraz said, 'Morphine? Is it really that bad?"

"You have no idea", I commented, "what's up ahead?"

"Same old", Alcatraz answered, "dead shit, more dirt and trees."

"How much distance have we covered?", I asked looking at the sky, I could just barely see the position of the sun in the sky, telling me it was around 2 in the afternoon, sunset wasn't till 9 according to Alcatraz, we still had a long way to go.

"About 8 miles", Alcatraz said.

I sighed, "long ways to go."

We kept going. About an hour or so later we stopped in a large clearing that had good shade and what looked to be a home made by an indigenous person. The hut had been long abandoned, as was evidenced by the broken pottery pieces and single, broken metal sword and stone pickax.

"Hey check this out", Alcatraz said picking up the two pieces of the blade, "wonder how old this thing must be? It's made of bronze, hasn't been used on this planet in some 20 thousand years."