Project LOSS

Chapter 2

Kai pulled the digger from the last hole it had dug. Rust covered every part of the ancient machinery but the worn tips of the teeth. They glinted in the harsh sunlight, reflecting dazzling orbs of light that made Kai squint. Aside from its tarnished appearance, the digger seemed otherwise intact, maybe even salvageable.

            Taking a step back, Kai sniffed the dust from his nostrils and tilted his head, admiring the artifact. “Think the building team could use this?”

            “Sure, it’s great.” Milo hesitated. “But... aren’t you meant to be doing your special job?”

            “I am,” Kai huffed. “What? I can’t pick up some stuff up on the way?”

            Something about the giant vehicle filled Kai with a joy he couldn’t explain to the others. Yes, his job was important, he knew it and so did everyone else, but sometimes he just wanted to get away. Forage for treasures. This ancient machine could do nothing he wasn’t capable of, yet he loved coming across these little pieces of the old-world.

            “It’s awesome,” Jack cried, leaping into the drivers' seat. “I wonder if it still works.” He yanked at levers and slammed down on the pedals.

            “No, no, try this...” Milo jumped up next to Jack, bumping him to the side as he tried the ignition and various buttons that clicked inertly beneath the boy's dirty fingertips.

            “I think we’ll need a resto artist to get this baby working,” Milo said.

            Kai sighed. “Getting one of those guys in town takes way too much paperwork.”

            Jack feigned shock, falling to one side as he pretended to faint. “What? Kai following the rules? This really is the end of the world.”

            Watching the pair play on the machine, Kai questioned his decision to let them tag along. They were peas in a pod; Milo a thirteen-year-old and Jack with the mental age of thirteen. They even looked similar, with messy blonde curls, long limbs and rosy cheeks. A pair of over-grown cherubs. They were a healthy distraction from his often unpleasant job, but man, they could get any more annoying?

            “You know,” Milo turned to Kai, “there’s a woman in the building as well as the mutie.” He was making the face, the, ‘please help’ face with big sad eyes.

            Kai turned his attention to the crumbling office complex in the distance, stripped almost bare and sinking into the dust like the skeleton of an ancient giant. It was one of the few places to seek shelter on the way to the free city and that made it a target for the Muties and mind-controlled alike. He did not have to concentrate hard to hear the woman. He was well aware of her location, but knew she would be safe for the moment, tucked away in hiding as any sensible human would be.

            It’s not my fault she wandered too close to the dead zone. Stupid humans... always being so stupid.

            “There is something else too,” Jack squinted in the direction of the crumbling office complex. “Something with a strange mind. It’s like... all blurry.”

            “That’s a baby,” Kai informed him.

            Milo’s face transformed with worry, big eyes becoming tearful. “Kai, a baby! You don’t have time to waste on this.”

            “They’ll be fine,” Kai tutted. “As long as she doesn’t...”

            Kai heard the woman’s heartbeat increase, her ragged breaths evening out.

            No, she wouldn’t be that stupid...

            “Oh, shit.”

            Without pausing to explain, Kai ran at top speed, cutting through the red dust and concrete wall that spilled pipes and wires like spaghetti. He stopped only when the tactile sensation of flesh pushed back against his form. Even with the sharp brake, the monster still crashed heavily into the adjacent wall, leaving cracks in the plaster and revealing the pattern of brickwork.

            Hair whipped past Kai’s face, obscuring the horrified face of the woman standing just inches from the mutant, transfixed in the moment of death that had never arrived.

Kai ignored her, focusing on the beast as it slowly pulled itself off the ground. The thing shook clumps of plaster and dust from its colossal form as it searched for the source of the attack. Giving it no time to get its bearings, Kai mounted and clung to the mutant with ease despite its desperate flailing and shaking until when an opening presented itself. He extended his jaw and sunk his large teeth into the bulging veins of its neck.

An inhumanly loud squeal pierced Kai’s ears as he held firmly, sticking to the monster as its flails became less vigorous and it shrunk back to its original size.

When the convulsing died down to mild twitching Kai stood and wiped blood from his mouth onto his already heavily blood-stained leather vest.

“You... you... you,” the woman stuttered, struggling like a scratched disk. “You saved me,” she spat out her sentence at last. “Thank you,” she whispered, and produced a sound that was somewhere between a choke and a cry. “Thank you,” she repeated.

“I didn’t,” Kai told her as he checked the pulse of the other man.

“Save you that is,” he explained after a minute, dropping the man’s arm across his chest, “I saved him.” Kai gestured toward the man who had not a moment ago been a monster.

Kai looked up and got a decent look at the woman for the first time. She was barely more than a child, eyes dark with dilation, skin slick with sweat and blood.

Silly human, why didn’t you stay hidden?

“In fact, I never even noticed you were there,” Kai revealed with a humourless laugh. “A pure coincidence, or dumb luck?” he shrugged.

“You don’t understand,” spluttered the woman, ignoring the denials of heroism. “You saved my baby… my baby!” She ran off to retrieve the infant.

She returned, staring down at the baby with a shaky smile. “He’s still asleep. How can anything sleep so much?” The woman smiled and laughed but tears made tracks down her dust-covered cheeks. “He’s done little else but sleep and feed since entering the world, so I don’t know why I’m so shocked. I know little about childbirth and motherhood. I mostly travelled with men.” She laughed. “That’s probably one of the reasons I ended up in this condition. Sorry. I’m blabbering.”

Kai made no comment. His attention turned to the former mutant, dirty and sparsely covered in split rags, muttering and staring at his hands. “I can think,” he was repeating to himself again and again, then burst out with far too much enthusiasm, “I can die!”

 “Not till I get you home you can’t,” Kai huffed.

 “You know, this is hardly the place to bring up a baby,” Kai commented. He was attempting sarcasm, but the girl didn’t pick up on it.

“My group abandoned me when I went into labour three days ago. They said it was too dangerous to linger in an unrestricted zone, even this close to the free city,” explained the mother. Her lowered eyes said she was ashamed of the calibre of the company she had kept, but in such times, he could forgive her for taking any form of protection. Safety in numbers was, perhaps, the only defence strategy an ordinary human had left.

“Will you take me with you?” asked the woman, eyes suddenly full of hope. The thought of survival was almost too much for the girl to handle. She momentarily stopped breathing, as though her excitement had taken physical form and clogged her throat.

“They’ve only paid me for one rescue. Not two and a half!” Kai cried, rolling his head back, cringing at the thought of extra work for no reward.

The older man pointed to Kai. “It knows he is here; nothing will dare come close now,” he whispered before returning to his mutterings.

Kai glanced briefly at the sleeping bundle in her arms and thought back to Milo’s worried face at the mention of the baby.

“Oh fine, whatever. You can follow us, but I’ll be walking at my pace. Whether you can keep up is up to you.”

Kai’s pace was that of someone who had better places to be. If he was going to have to walk at an annoyingly human pace, it would be a fast human pace. He did not need to slow down the entire walk back, having a limitless supply of stamina. At times he thought the woman would fall behind and become lost in the wretched, endless red dust cloud that clung to his sweat and filled his boots, but he made sure to slow down just enough to stay in her sight.

A storm raged in the distance. Bouts of lightning racked the land at a rate of three strikes per second, creating a light show that was both beautiful and terrifying. Kai had seen it all before. He stopped to listen out for the woman over the sound of thunder and found her struggling. She would never make it back.

Shit...

He dashed back and scooped both the mother and infant as she faded and collapsed into his arms. When Kai re-joined the former mutie and matched his pace, the man shot him a confused look.

“Tell anyone about this, and your time as a healthy human being will be short lived.”