The Crater Chronicles

Eye Contact

To be a scavenger is to choose a life of chronic fear. Everything can kill you, and most things will try. To be a scavenger is to be alone, and sacrifice numerical safety, a concept even the wild beasts hold sacred. One could opt for a scavenging group, but the scarcity of scrap renders any more than three people working together inefficient.

The economics of scavving are simple: less people, more profit; more people, less danger. That does not, however, account for human indecency. I have heard many a tale of the sorts of bastards who will join up with another person, and murder them once the day's work is over, taking all the scrap for themselves. The practice is so prevalent that we've got a title for them.

Turncoats.

Uninspired Crater naming at its finest.

Because of those sorts of people, I relegated myself to the position of the lone wolf scavenger. By and large, solitude served me well, but there were several occasions when I would have cut off my right arm in exchange for another human's presence.

The most memorable of those was a Wednesday in the earlier part of my 22nd winter.

What started as a miserably cold day had become a nightmarish blizzard. My initial plan had been to head into Monument for a few hours in the morning and return to my camp on the outskirts of White Mesa at midday (there's no way to scavenge for a full day during the winter, unless you're partial to trench foot, hypothermia and a whole slew of other cold-related sufferings), but the weather's sudden onset forced me to take shelter within a nearby obelisk.

As with the other obelisks in that part of the city, the structure was squat, and built primarily from metal and moldstone (a substance Cyril has since told me was properly named "concrete"). There was some structural damage, as always, but it seemed to be intact.

Keenly aware of the body heat the blizzard was sapping from me, I ran inside with as much haste as the deep snow and strong crosswinds would allow for. Compared to the full brunt of the elements outside, the cavernous and uninsulated interior felt as if it had a burning stove in each corner. For about an hour, I was content.

The problem with common sense? It rarely leads you to unique solutions--hence the "common." While I paced the length of one of the walls, trying to fend off the chill I had begun to feel in my extremities, I noticed strange echoing noises coming from one side of the building. Initially, I dismissed them as a product of the storm, perhaps some rocks flung into the side of the obelisk, or the clatter of a piece of debris dislodged by the wind coming in contact with the floor; however, as time trudged onwards, I noticed an unsettling regularity to them. I was able to predict what sound, of what timbre, would ring out at what time. No storm's destruction could be so punctual. It seemed I was not alone.

Thus, I found myself staring a dilemma in the face. I could either face the storm, going outside to try and find another place of shelter, but risking getting lost and/or trapped, or I could stay put. I chose the latter, which put me at the crossroads of another consequential decision: would I try to hide from whatever was in there with me, or try to find out what it was?

As unpredictable as life in the Crater can be, there are a few things you can always count on.

It will always be cold.

You will never be able to find flammable materials when you most need them.

Animals will always be bigger than you.

You are always prey.

The species of my companion mattered little. Whether it was a bear or a dart-tooth, it would not hesitate to kill and eat me. Knowledge of what it was would make deciding how to hide easier, but I was not about to approach it if nothing required that I must.

Praying that the storm would let up before my inactivity leeched me of my body heat, I made a sort of nest atop some sort of metal shelf I found, and settled in for the wait.

For what was probably several hours, all went well. It felt as if I was freezing my toes off, but, rebar knife in hand and burrowed into my sleeping bag, I managed to fall into an uneasy sleep.

Turns out, I was stuck in there with a Gazer. I know that, because I woke up with it breathing down on my face.

I suppose I was fortunate, the creatures being so named for their odd preoccupation with eye contact. So long as I held its gaze, it stayed its teeth.

I cannot fathom how long the two of us spent staring at each other. It felt like an eternity, but considering I did not freeze to death, it could have been a few hours at most. Once the blizzard died down, the beast lost interest in me, and prowled off, leaving me to sit there and pant, sweating profusely despite the frigid temperature. That day was a fortunate miracle.

Since then, I have been unable to look people in the eye. I can stare at their nose, or their eyebrow, or even the bottom rim of a pair of goggles, but I have to look away if I see iris. Should I ever meet another Gazer, I better hope my spear is at the ready.

-Excerpt from the journal of a "Marin Kitania" found tucked away inside a large backpacking pack containing several other oddities. Dated 27th Fall.