Book Eight, Chapter 50: Outpost

The outpost was a shopping center with a large metal fire lookout tower rising above it. At first, I thought the military, or whatever this storyline was calling their troops, had constructed it themselves. But as I got closer, I noticed that it had advertisements on it. One was for a BBQ restaurant, and the other was for a clothing store.

Had the tower been there hundreds of years earlier, and the military had only reinforced it? The glass was tinted, so I couldn’t see inside.

A large fence had been erected around the shopping center’s parking lot, with an electric gate that opened as we arrived.

We had been On-Screen for quite a while, and we did our best to give that scene some emphasis because, due to our strange pathing, this outpost was the most intact building we had come across.

But it wasn’t exactly full of life. There was no one in the parking lot, which had been converted into a defensible position with lots of sandbags and barricades made of upturned cars.

In fact, we didn’t see anyone even as we walked to the entrance, which, unlike the gate, didn’t open on its own. However, there was a familiar-looking speaker system that could have been seen throughout the buildings at the terradome.

“This is Echo Squad,” Antoine said. “We’ve been instructed to resupply at this outpost.”

“I hear you loud and clear, Echo Squad. Admission is granted. The troops are out on maneuvers right now. Please respect all posted signage. Things out here don’t work the way they do back at home.”

“Can you tell me where Captain Charles Stone might be found?” Antoine asked. That was his character’s brother’s name.

“Out on maneuvers,” the voice called back over the intercom.

There was a buzzing sound, and the door to the shopping center opened. It was clear that many upgrades had been made to the interior, including a decontamination room that would allow us to take off our suits. We thought it better to just remove our helmets. We didn’t know whether we would have to leave in a hurry.

As soon as we got out of decontamination, the next door opened up to a system of hallways and rooms not unlike those that could be found back at Culver’s Bay. But again, there were no people.

Antoine walked over to the nearest intercom and buzzed it.

“Miller’s Crossing Outpost,” the voice on the other end said. “Tower Command. What can I do for you?” It was the same voice as before.

“This is Captain Antoine Stone. Can you please direct me to where I might find the field commander of this outpost?”

“Out on maneuvers,” the voice chimed back almost instantly, but there was a nervous breathiness to it.

“You’re telling me that every single person in this outpost is out on maneuvers right now?” Antoine asked.

“No, sir. Captain Stone.”

“Then who is available for me to talk to?” Antoine asked.

“You’re talking to him,” the voice responded.

I didn’t know if it was the speaker’s sounds or the dialogue that was creeping me out. There was a ghostly quality to it.

“And who is this exactly?”

“Tower Command communications operator Dwight Teague, sir.”

We all looked at each other because the man’s tone was beginning to sound disturbing. At first, he had been chipper and helpful, but now it seemed strained.

“When can I expect others to be back at the outpost?” Antoine asked.

There was silence on the other end. Antoine buzzed a few more times, hoping to get a response, but he never managed to.

We were still On-Screen, so Antoine said, “Restock our provisions. See if you can find us a place to sleep for the night. And if you find someone, do an all-call over the intercom.”

“Yes, sir,” we responded.

Off-Screen.

“So let’s find out what happened to the soldiers,” I said. “It sounds like we might have one loony holdout. Be careful. They may be doing some sort of gone-mad-on-the-edge-of-society type of play. This guy could be dangerous.”

“Let’s hope he’s not dangerous, because we don’t have any guns,” Camden said.

“I feel like there’s something supernatural happening,” Cassie said. “I don’t have a trope to tell me what’s going on, but I feel magic or psychic energy or something. Do you, Riley?”

It was time to use my third eye.

“It’s hard to feel anything through this suit,” I said, “but yes, it feels like we’re being watched. That being said, I am carrying a shoulder-mounted camera, so everything might be just transmitting back to base.”

“No, that’s not it,” Cassie said. “Something is very wrong.”

“A post-apocalyptic storyline with magic,” Anna said. “How often does that happen?”

I scanned my memory trying to find a prominent example from cinema, but nothing I thought of satisfied me. Maybe a prominent book or two existed, but I had few other references.

“It’s definitely possible,” I said, “especially with the weird dreams my character has been having. I think this may just be a case of a supernatural world that came to a pretty mundane end.”

What happened to all the things that went bump in the night in a world that had ghosts and ghouls and goblins after the humans made a dumb decision and bombed everything? It’s not like they would disappear. Unfortunately, that type of genre mishmash wasn’t as successful as some others because it combined competing types of escape fantasies.

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Worlds with magic were about wonder and discovery, whereas post-apocalyptic worlds were about exploring a place where the rules and the past didn’t matter so much anymore.

But Cassie was right. There was magic here. I just had to wonder if our characters would have the vocabulary or cultural knowledge to be able to call it out, given our upbringing. Would we lose points if we figured things out immediately? Was superstition a trait that belonged to a vault dweller?

We were about to find out.

I felt safe traveling around the abandoned outpost because I could see when I was about to go On-Screen, and since that number never jumped up to five seconds or something, I knew I wasn’t being attacked. But just to be sure, I put my helmet back on like I was paranoid and did my best to be oblivious.

These guys had left so much behind, from ammunition to food provisions. When I found the soldiers’ bunks, I counted only two dozen or so soldiers at the outpost, because those were the only beds that had been made.

I noticed something strange as I walked along. I found myself perplexed with shadows in a way that I had never been before. Whenever I came across a dark room, it was like I was drawn to it in a way I couldn’t describe. Like the potential for a monster to exist in the shadows itself was a force that my psychic abilities, inherited from my fictional grandmother, were picking up on. Then I would flick on the light, and suddenly that sensation would disappear.