"Outsider"(short story)

"Outsider" (Extract from "Confessions of the Lost": Case 104: Part 1)

It was a terrible storm, and I don't think that I would have survived were it not for The Alighted. As much as it pains me to admit it.

I was out scavenging from my hometown "Ackoumb" which is around 6 or so miles of straight south from waists from the old ruins of the pre-fall.
And of course that was where I was, right in the middle of the crumbling shit hole. But it was where the loot was, so that's where I went.

Anyway, the desert dust and storms still blow through the old towers and ruins of the city, and this can be almost as bad as it is out in the open. The winds, you see, get squashed and concentrated about the buildings, and they act sort of like as gorge or high up valley.

So what does this mean? 170 MPH winds blowing through the streets dragging metal, glass and concrete a thousand meters or more across the ruins. Although if you're lucky you can get into a building that just sticks out from the storm, so you could look out and see the whole city and all the dust and shit flowing through the streets like a river.

Well, I was not lucky. As it happens I was very UNlucky... I didn't notice the storm until I was in the middle of it. Normally I would have seen it a hundred meters away, even in the ruins. But this time was different...

Once I saw it I ran. I was terrified and once or twice I could see a great mass of "thing" out in the dusty gloom, smashing past and breaking into a thousand pieces just beyond my vision.
So I lay there, huddled and scared for hours, waiting to die...

But something happened... One moment I could see a horrible mass of building about to collide with the building I was sheltering under, and sending me to hell in tiny little puddles of mush. But just as I could see the individual steel supports and beams interlacing the building fragment, it crumbled into tiny pieces in a flash of light and a crack of thunder.

I think I saw one or two dark figures, wearing what looked like armour, with every inch covered with sensors and lights, built into the plating of their suits. And below the waist hung low ragged cloth, secluding their lower half from sight.

One of them saw me and came closer. His face was covered with metal plate and blue lights and his voice was distorted and muffled.
"We have a living here." He says after looking me up and down for one or two seconds, then signaling to his companion.

I hear a whirring by the side of my head, but my vision becomes a swimming mess of black and flashing blue lights.