Tales of the Parodyverse

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By Dancer okay? Little me.
Sun Oct 02, 2005 at 06:30:05 pm EDT
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Far Away - Part 2 - A continuation of a story I still don't think I can finish ;-)
Originally
Another unfinished PV story (to celebrate Mike's place being mostly OK and to cheer him up)
In Reply To

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Sat Oct 01, 2005 at 04:22:38 pm EDT
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    Katarina Allen woke up, sore and happy. It took her a moment to work out why, and how the two were connected. Then it all cascaded back. The explosion. The devastation of Bienville. The months of being hunted by monsters and Soldiers. The mysterious stranger with no memory. The sex.

The very good sex. That was one hell of a first date, she admitted to herself. And at least he gave me dinner first, even if it was a slaughtered pig-dog thing that tried to rip me to shreds beforehand. She tried to feel cheap and slutty for letting a guy she didn’t know into her sleeping bag the night before, but she didn’t really have enough guilt left. The Katarina Allen who’d made her fiancée wait four months before giving him what he wanted wasn’t the Katarina Allen who’d survived sixteen terrifying lonely weeks in apocalypse central.

She reached out for Miles. He wasn’t there.

“Crap!” she swore. She fumbled for the camping lamp and flicked it on. Its dim light lit up her meat locker refuge. No sign of the man. She hurriedly scrabbled over to her hidden stash of cat food. He’d not taken it.

He’d not taken anything. Except her.

He’d left his leather jacket behind, but then again he’d given that to her. Maybe it was the end-of-the-world equivalent of leaving twenty dollars on the nightstand?

“Crap,” she said again. Now she felt cheap and slutty. And stupid. How many guys had to promise they’d look after her before she got the message? Edward had made her believe that, right up till she’d found out about him and Rita.

Miles never promised to marry me, she told herself scornfully. What did you expect? Playing post-apocalyptic Adam and Eve?

“Crap,” she said yet again. Miles hadn’t asked about birth control. Maybe he didn’t remember it. She hadn’t thought about it either. She tried to count off days to work out how much trouble she might be in. There was the day she’d almost been killed down at the broken water tower. There was the day with the bat-pterodactyl-goat thing. The day the Blood-Hand Soldiers had swept the town. The day the Searchers had demolished the library. What then? Oh, the day she caught the two rats. That had been a good day.

There was a metallic clang. Someone was operating the locking bolt on the freezer room. From the outside.

Katarina scrabbled for her knife. She wished she had time to drag on her clothes too. If the Soldiers had found her she didn’t want them to…

The door creaked open and Miles slipped inside. He had one of the bat-pterodactyl-goat things draped over his shoulder. Its skull was caved in.

“Morning,” he said.

“Good… good morning,” Katarina quickly found her clothes and scrambled into them. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to be naked in front of this stranger, even if…

It had been very good sex, a subversive part of her reminded her. If she’d become Mrs Edward Montmorice she’d never have experienced that wild ride.

“I got us breakfast,” Miles told her with a satisfied little smile. “I was hoping it would taste better than pig-dog-thing, but don’t count on it.”

“Well, it can’t taste worse,” the woman admitted. “Can you, um, stare at it till it cooks?”

“I guess. Slice it thin and we’ll pretend it’s bacon.”

Katarina got to work. Miles unfolded a big piece of paper he’d got from somewhere and began sketching on it with a charcoal stick. It looked like a town plan, the one that used to be framed outside the tourist office. “I did an early morning reconnaissance,” he reported. “Got a feel for the lie of the land.”

“So you are a Soldier!” Katarina accused. “I knew it. Nobody human could cook bat-pterodactyl-goat just by frowning at it.”

“I really don’t remember. But I feel human. What makes you think these Soldiers you’ve seen aren’t?”

“When they take their helmets off, they’re more like… Neanderthals. Some of them. Others are more lizardy. Or cat-like. There are factions. I don’t know about the flying orange-armoured ones. You could be a flying orange-armoured one.”

“I suppose. I went back to where you found me. I don’t think there was a bomb blast there. No scorching, and the debris patterns were wrong. I think… well, I think I fell on the house. From above.”

“Oh.” Katarina had vowed she’d die before she became a mistress to one of the Soldier factions.

“If I’m a flying orange-armoured soldier, where’s my orange flying armour?” Miles asked reasonably. “It’s more likely that I was fighting them and got knocked out of the sky.”

“Can you… fly?”

Miles rubbed his leg ruefully. “Apparently not. I’ve made some practical experiments along those lines. I have painfully ruled it out.”

Katarina served up the bat-pterodactyl-goat bacon. “So what can you do?”

“Enhanced senses, enhanced strength and speed, seeing through walls. And I seem to heal up fast. Look.” Miles showed her the holes in his chainmail shirt. The lasers or bullets or whatever had burned right through it, and there were matching holes on the garment’s back. Miles’ chest just had some raw pink marks now.

“Eat your bat-pterodactyl-goat while it’s still hot,” Katarina told him. “How did you catch it, anyhow?”

“Whoever I am, I’ve got a good baseball pitch.”

“You’re secretly Han Aaron?”

“I’d prefer to be Joe DiMaggio.” Miles suddenly remembered Joe DiMaggio and the rules for major league baseball.

The ate their breakfast in companionable silence. Then Miles turned back to the map. “As near as I can figure, this area here is all there is of the town.” He outlined the blocks where Katarina and a dwindling number of other survivors had eked out their miserable existence. “Beyond that the terrain’s very different. Geologically different. In fact I don’t even know if we’re on Earth.”

“Not on Earth. Uh huh.”

“It’s happened before. All of Parodiopolis once got transported to another planet on the far side of the galaxy. And how the heck did I know that?”

“Maybe you’re starting to remember things?” Katarina suggested. “Baseball and alien kidnaps and stuff.” Maybe he’ll remember his wife and three kids next, she thought to herself miserably.

“Also, I don’t think the stars that were out last night are known constellations.”

“It sounds a bit Sci-Fi Channel to me, I admit, but I suppose it would explain the monsters. But why would bug-eyed aliens want Bienville? This seems like a lot of trouble for them to go to just to put my hand-dyed cloth shop out of business.”

Miles’ brown wrinkled. “We’ll find out, Katarina. We’ll have to.”

“Why? I mean why do we have to?”

“Because you were right before. Nobody could survive in this environment indefinitely. We need to work out what happened, and why, and who’s behind it.”

“And ask them for a bus ticket home?”

“No.” Miles grinned. “We demand a bus ticket home.”

“First class.”

“With complimentary peanuts.”

“It sure sounds good the way you tell it, Miles, but if we leave the ruins we have no cover. The Seekers will find us before we get five miles.”

The stranger nodded. “I’ll deal with the Seekers if I have to, but it will be dangerous. I can leave you here if you’d prefer.”

It wasn’t until he mentioned going without her that Katarina realised how much she wanted to stay with him. “No, that’s okay. I was running out of different ways to be almost killed here. It’ll be nice to have new things trying to eat me and shoot me.”

Miles chuckled again. It felt good to laugh. “I don’t remember anything about my past, but I’m sure I’ve never met anyone quite like you.”

“Oh sure, you say that now we’re on this alien planet of yours and I’m the only female without a beard for a zillion light years,” Katarina teased. She tossed away the remains of the bat-pterodactyl-goat thing into the trash bag. She’d take it out and abandon it far from home later.

“Ready for desert?” Miles asked her.

A number of erotic possibilities flashed through the surprised woman’s head, but what her new boyfriend had in mind was even better.

“Chocolate!” she gasped, grabbing the Hershey bar. “Oh, I love you! Where did you get chocolate?”

Miles indicated the pouches on his belt. “Seems I have survival rations, a first aid kid, a couple of flares, a sewing kit, and… well all kinds of stuff.” He thought mentioning the handcuffs might give Katarina the wrong message. “And I also had this.”

His companion looked up from the joy of chocolate at the proffered object. It was a plastic rectangle hardly bigger than a business card, laced with circuitry. It was neatly snapped in two and partly melted. A laminate cover was scorched off, leaving only a metallic security watermark clinging to one corner.

Katerina turned it over in her hands. “What is it? It has… circuitry inside?”

“It’s pretty advanced, whatever it is. Was. Some kind of transmitter, I think.”

“The mystery deepens.” Katarina finished her share of the chocolate miracle and licked her fingers. “So what else have you got for me, GI Joe? Nylons?”

“I’m afraid I’m all out of surprises now.”

“Oh, I doubt that.”

They bundled Kat’s things up inside the sleeping bag and strapped it to Miles’ back. Miles checked all was clear by looking through walls. They made a quick trip to a broken-roofed house where rainwater gathered in a blocked shower tray and filled their bottles up.

“I’ve hated doing this every day for months,” Katerina admitted, “but I’m almost frightened at the thought that I’ll never do this again.”

“We have to move on,” Miles told her. “Look, it’s almost noon. Very hot. I’m counting on most of the big predators taking a siesta. We need to get out of town and away from the perimeter into some kind of cover, then we wait and travel by night, okay?”

“You are some kind of soldier,” Katerina concluded. “You think like a soldier. You hike like a soldier. But I don’t think you’re one of the Soldiers from round here.”

“A soldier? Really? I was hoping I turned out to be a big football hero or something.”

“You have the shoulders for it. Should I keep an eye out for a cheerleader outfit?”

That perked another memory from Miles’ muddled past. “Green.”

“Sorry? What?”

“Nothing. Just a thought that made no sense.” He jumped up and hefted his backpack. “Let’s go.”

They moved cautiously along Museum Street then through the wrecked houses to avoid the thoroughfares where the Scavs might have set ambushes. On one occasion they startled a ragged man rummaging in a fallen trash can in a side alley. He yelped and ran before they could stop him.

“He always does that,” Katarina said. “But he must be a pretty good runner. He survives.”

A while later they had to lie low while a half dozen troopers in black and yellow uniforms moved past. Four of them rode some kind of bike that hovered without wheels. The other two were in some kind of unfamiliar half-track.

“I don’t recognise that ordinance,” admitted Miles.

“You don’t remember anything,” Kat said. “Except baseball and what chocolate is for.”

“Some things trigger flashes of memory. Those things… I don’t know that technology. There’s all kinds of circuits and things I’ve never seen. And I can’t see all the way through that tank. It’s shielded.”

Suddenly the patrol came to alert. Miles tensed but they sped off down the street. A moment or two later there was a raucous crackling noise and a short scream.

“What was that?” Katarina asked.

“I don’t know,” Miles lied. This time the fast-running bin scavenger hadn’t been fast enough.

They moved out, keeping to the gardens, until they reached the very edge of the town. It was a defined perimeter. Houses had been neatly sliced in half at the edge of the zone.

“What could do this?” said Katarina.

Miles shrugged. He looked out across the dusty red terrain beyond. There wasn’t much cover amongst the bleak crags, but there was some. He led the way along a faultline ridge that kept them out of view from one direction at least.

The sun was brutal. Katarina was glad Miles had made her find something to cover her head.

“You seem to know which way to go, mystery man.”

“Yes. I can hear something that way. That’s what I’m making for.”

Katarina strained. “Guess it’s not something humans can hear.”

“I think it’s radio chatter. But encoded. I can’t understand it.”

“You can hear radio? Can you get cable too?”

Miles thought that was pretty funny. “Nothing worth watching.”

About a mile out of town the ground got dustier. A grey ash mixed in with the red rock fragments, making the place seem stained. Miles sniffed the air. “I can smell something.”

“I told you, I ran out of bath salts so there was no point showering.”

“Over that way. Blood, I think.”

“Human blood?”

“I can’t tell. Look, do you want to stay here while I check it out? I can smell burning oil as well.”

“I’ll come.”

Over the ridge they spotted the thin column of black smoke coiling into the sky and saw the remains of one of the half-track tank vehicles. A pair of the hunting lizard-hound beasts were tearing apart a fallen trooper.

“I need to go down there,” Miles said.

“Why? Have you remembered that you’re suicidal or something?”

“I need to look in that vehicle. See if it has communications apparatus. Weapons. Maps.”

“Good reasons. Damn.”

“Hide on this ridge. Don’t come out till you see me signalling.”

Katarina caught him as he went. “Try not to die.”

Miles nodded and raced off down the slope. The hunting beasts saw him coming and abandoned their meal to deal with the fresh meat.

Miles caught the first one by the throat as it leaped and used it to bludgeon its mate to death. He stomped them flat before moving on to the smoking vehicle.

Katarina saw him step over the half-eaten Soldier and heave the door off the side of the battered half track. Then she heard a movement behind her.

A power rifle warming up.

She turned round and found three more Soldiers had crept to surround her. Stupid, she told herself, of course there’d be a full patrol. She couldn’t see most of their faces under their visors, but she didn’t like the way they were grinning at her. Three red spots of light appeared on her blouse. All the Soldiers had weapons pointed at her.

One of them barked an order in a rough language she didn’t understand. From the gestures it was something like “throw away the knife.”

Katarina wondered if she could stab herself with it before they got to her.

“Oh please,” she shouted to them, “Don’t hurt me!” Her pleading sounded theatrical and false to her, but she knew that Miles could hear things from a long way off. Maybe he could hear her now.

The Soldiers gestured again, so Katarina dropped the bowie knife. Then two of them moved forward.

The third soldier crumpled as he was hit from behind by a fast-moving body. The other two turned and fired but their rifles both jammed, the power batteries overloading and sending them back in electric spasms. Katarina’s rescuer somersaulted over and landed with a foot in each of their faces.

Miles vaulted over the ridge to rescue her. Miles was too late. Miles wasn’t the one who’d downed the Soldiers.

“Are you okay?” the newcomer asked Katarina, and helped her off the ground.

It was a woman, dressed in a danskin and leotard, with a mane of coiling black hair held back with a fluorescent scrunchie. She looked like she’d just stepped out of a fitness video, except for the travel stains.

“Yeah. Fine thanks,” Katarina answered uncertainly. It didn’t look like the newcomer was a Soldier, but she might have been a Skinwalker. Or something worse.

“Who are you?” Miles demanded, positioning himself between the dancer and Katarina.

The woman looked sheepish. “Good question. I was hoping you might have a clue.”

“What?”

“I was hoping you might have a copy of the script? Especially the page that sets the scene and tells me who the cast list is.”

Katarina and Miles exchanged glances. “You’re saying you’ve lost your memory?” Kat asked slowly.

“Well, not so much lost it as misplaced it. I woke up on top of a pile of rubble with a splitting headache, but I can’t remember how I got here or who I am. It must have been one hell of a party.”

Katarina shook her head. “Is there an amnesiac’s convention in town or something?”

“You don’t remember anything?” Miles questioned the newcomer. “Your name? Why you’re dressed like that?”

“Look who’s talking. What’s with the July 4th chainmail?”

“I guess I should thank you for saving my life,” Katarina said. “It was very brave and deeply stupid. If those Soldiers’ guns hadn’t happened to misfire…”

“Dumb luck, I guess,” the brunette shrugged. “So, the story so far…?”

“We’re all stuck on what might possibly be an alien planet,” Miles replied. “I found some maps in that half-track down there.”

“They were chasing me,” the newcomer declared. “Then I think their engine blew up for some reason. I kept running.”

“Good move,” Katarina agreed.

“I can’t read the writing on the maps,” said Miles, “but matching this ridge to the charted terrain I identified the ruins of Bienville. There’s some more ruins in that direction, maybe twenty klicks or so. And there’s a dome another thirty klicks on, in the direction of the radio chatter.”

The newcomer looked carefully at Miles. “You look familiar,” she admitted. “I think I remember you.”

Katarina felt a spike of jealousy. Here it came. The other shoe.

“That’s possible,” Miles agreed. He dredged the numb parts of his memory for a moment, and wished he had a cup of java to nudge his brain into action. Java. Coffee. “Sarah?”

The woman’s eyes widened. “Maybe so. Yes. I might be Sarah!”

“Wonderful,” said Katarina. “And you remember Miles?”

Sarah shook her head. “The name doesn’t ring a bell, but…” She moved closer and looked at the stranger’s rugged face. “But I think he might be my husband,” she admitted.


Continued…???



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