Isolation-#Wattys2015

Excerpt 39- Humanity VS Machinery

Alcatraz and I walked for about 12 hours after the encounter with the Rhino. The sun was merciless the entire way. My downpipes were fully open the entire time and I felt like someone had wrapped me in a blanket of white hot metal. As much of an annoyance as the heat was for me, if I overheated, I could come back from it pretty quickly, but after that business in the lab, I was worried that if Alcatraz overheated and passed out that I might not beable to wake him up. As annoyed as it made him, I forced him to keep pace with me so I could keep a very close eye on him. We stopped every so often to catch our breath and re hydrate and once or twice to procure more water from some crystal clear, icy cold lakes that my guess welled up from the Kojak. About 5PM, we had ten miles left till we made the lab, but it was getting dark and cooling off very fast.

"Hey Skyline we gotta start thinking about some kind of shelter here", Alcatraz said.

I stopped where I was standing and looked up at the sky, the sun was sinking below the horizon pretty quickly and darkness would soon envelope the forest, making it impossible to navigate, especially if Martin's creatures would be out.

"yeah", I said setting down my ruck in a hole between some roots, "what were you thinking of for a shelter?"

"Something that gets us off the ground", Alcatraz said.

I looked at the tree roots in front of me, "if we find strong enough logs we can build a platform between these giant roots, I already have an idea how it should work."

"Let's get working then", Alcatraz said.

He set down his pack and then the two of us walked around the area bit. I figured to support the both of us we'd need sticks about half to three quarters inch thick. Given that all the trees around were Jafu's, that wasn't too hard. We each picked up everything we could carry and then returned to the tree. We had enough sticks to cover the area we would need to have a comfortable night, problem was, the roots were sloped where we needed them to be level. We didn't have what we obviously needed, which was a machete, so Alcatraz, in a stroke of "genius", said we should use my Katana.

"What?", I asked, 'your crazy."

"Any other ideas?", Alcatraz asked.

"That's a seventeen hundred year old sword", I said, "you can't use it to chop a tree."

"What are we supposed to use?", he asked, 'we need a blade."

I sighed and pulled it from my back, "I don't get that back, your ass is terminated."

"In your dreams", Alcatraz said turning to the tree.

I focused on climbing one of the trees for some of the giant leaves to make a canopy for our shelter while Alcatraz ruined my sword. Once at the top of the tree, I could actually just barely see Biosphere in the distance, as well as two more missles launching into the golden evening sky.

"Alcatraz", I called through the radio.

"Yes", he answered.

"Two mores missles just launched."

There was a pause.

"You certain?"

"Looking right at them."

Another pause.

"Thanks for telling me I guess", Alcatraz sighed.

I huffed and put away the radio. I pulled out my ballistic knife and quickly collected six of the giant leaves for the canopy. I let them fall to the ground and then descended the tree. Alcatraz, now done with my blade, handed it back to me and I returned it to it's sheath. As he started laying the frame work for our platform, I sat down on another root and started stitching the leaves together. Jafu leaves have some pretty interesting properties to them. There about as flexible as your T-Shirt when you bend them slowly, but if you were to say, fall on top of one, it acts like a steel rod and won't budge in the slightest. Back when I was still in captivity, Chy had used the leaves of the tree she was hiding in as supports for her fort.