Penguins of Anarchy IV: Endgame

Eleven

The sky bled. The ground moaned. The trees fell prostrate to the awesome power of the detonated nukes, though they had gone off hundreds of miles from here. Drake, Camo, and Gostt tried their best to escape the destruction, but they could never escape an earth so wounded by Omniscion's recklessness.

Every tree that fell near them they thought would crush them, and they were sure the ground was about to split open from how violently it shook. Camo barely leapt out of the way in time as a tall cedar collapsed before him. He tried to stay near his brother and Gostt, but they were so slow in coming that he could barely find the patience to wait for them, especially while the forest around them was being desolated by the aftershock of the blasts.

"I'm going to try to get our bearings!" Camo yelled to Gostt and Drake, the latter almost collapsing again from his injured leg.

"Don't wander off!" Gostt yelled back. "We're going to have to keep moving!"

"Stay on the same path! I'll catch up with you!" With that, Camo took off toward a nearby ridge that peeked above the tops of the trees. As he reached the summit, he could see smoke rising in the northwest, presumably from the crash site. The three of them had been heading south.

Camo quickly leapt from the ridge, unconcerned about damaging his cybernetic legs, and sprinted in the direction Gostt and Drake had gone. They hadn't made much headway, so he caught up with them quite quickly. "We're going the wrong way. Follow me!" he instructed his companions. Gostt struggled to get Drake to turn 135 degrees without injuring him, and then they followed Camo, trusting that he wasn't mistaken.

By the time they came in sight of the crash site, the ground had begun to settle down somewhat, though certainly not back to normal. A tree would still fall in the vicinity every couple of minutes.

Camo was startled to find their four companions sitting around a fire outside the gunship. Riker was sprawled out on the ground unconscious, and he was missing an arm. As Drake and Gostt reached the camp, Dreemo, Felly, and Glyphton looked up at them wearily. Dreemo looked completely exhausted, Felly appeared especially sad, and Glyphton seemed somewhat traumatized. "What happened to you guys?!" Camo demanded.

"Riker's arm was getting worse," Felly explained weakly. "You guys were gone so long that Glyphton had to take care of it."

Camo grimaced at Riker's condition. "He's not going to make it."

"He'll make it!" Felly snapped. Camo and the others were surprised by her hostility.

"How are you, Dreemo?" Drake asked as Gostt helped him to sit by the fire. The only response he got was a shrug. Drake's heart ached. His nephew had been reduced to a hollow shell. How could he possibly bring him back from this? How could this still be the penguin who could rally nations against the Alliance?

Dreemo coughed hoarsely as Glyphton managed to rouse Riker and get him to drink some water. Felly seemed to look more and more downcast by the second. How could the general mood have gotten even worse since they had gone to scout for shelter?

But now they had to address the primary concern. "What could have happened to cause all this destruction?" Camo asked.

"I'm pretty sure we're just feeling the reverberations," Gostt replied grimly. "I feel sorry for the poor souls caught in the middle of it."

"The ground shook so hard...I can't imagine what could have happened for us to feel it so strongly all the way out here," Drake said.

"And we have no way of communicating with anyone to assess the damage," Camo added darkly. "We're stuck out here with no way to contact anybody."