Apocalypse: 2.15 Burnout (Patreon)

Burnout 2.15

Shayne HayesOctober 2015

It was the start of October when we headed out on our glorified scavenger hunt. The autumn chill was in full swing now. The nights were getting longer and no one was especially happy to be leaving. Then again, we all understood that we wouldn’t have many chances to do this again, not with the cars the way they were.

I decided to keep the group small. We had four electric vehicles, one SUV and three passenger cars. For safety’s sake, I decided each car should have one person as a spotter alongside the driver, making eight men in total. The rest of the space was dedicated for cargo.

We were a sorry lot. The rangers were a semi-official group in Carnelian Bay, but it wasn’t like we had uniforms or badges. We looted what we could from the police and forest ranger stations, mostly vests for the pocket space. We carried a variety of guns, crossbows, knives, and packets of powders the farming group extracted from the oddish.

Most of these men were familiar to me. There were Pete and Donnell, who I remembered from my last trip to Truckee. Donnell had been the babyfaced guy who looked like he should be in high school. Turned out, he just had to grow out his facial hair a bit. Henry, the big Samoan dude who saved my ass with the sandshrew, was also here. So was Jarvis, my second-in-command. 

The other three were a man and a pair of women by the name of Andrew, Abby, and Ashley. I didn’t know them very well, so I defaulted to calling them the “triple As” in my mind. Abby and Ashley were identical twins, making this even more confusing to me. Well, that was why Jarvis was here. He was so much better at this “leadership” thing than me.

With us were my pokemon as well as the pair of poochyena, Nibbles and Spike. Henry and Donnell were their unofficial trainers.

“Morning, bossman,” Jarvis greeted. The tall, dark-skinned man still managed to maintain a military-grade buzzcut in a post-apocalyptic town. I was mildly impressed. “You got the shopping list?”

“I do. Let’s get going everyone. Drive slow, we’ll have to clear out any debris off the roads as we go. Our mechanics say these golf carts run longer at about twenty miles per hour so that’s what we’re going with,” I replied as I got into the driver seat.

I looked over our shopping list as Jarvis drove. Just about everyone in town added something they wanted and I spent the night prior sorting requests into critical, noncritical, and leisure goods.

At the top of that list was, of course, medicine. Dr. Lansdowne and Nguyen had first call on pretty much everything. Though these days, there weren’t too many things we could still take from the hospital and pharmacy in Truckee. Tom Swanson had moved medical examination tables, chairs, magnifying glasses, or whatever else back to Carnelian long ago.

This time, I was interested in a resupply of pills. According to the docs, pills in their original packaging could easily last four or more years, which meant they were still good. Pain relievers especially were always in demand. Acetaminophen and ibuprofen, more commonly Tylenol and Advil, were over-the-counter fever reducers and worth their weight in gold now, especially with winter coming.

Doctor Nguyen made a special note to ignore things like epipen and insulin. Syrups and solutions in general. They had a shelf life of about eighteen months at best. Truthfully, all the type one diabetics had passed away. Type twos would just have to cope.

I also needed to bring back clothes and blankets, especially winter jackets, thermal pants, and the like. Thankfully, this was the Sierra Nevada. Virtually every clothing store stocked up on activewear meant for chilly trails and snow-capped peaks. 

Ideally, we’d be able to find things that could help us keep everything powered. Portable generators, even one of those pedal machines would be fine. Shane, one of the mechanic twins, said we’d really luck out if we could get our hands on a set of solar panels, but his brother thought that was wistful thinking.

More likely, we’d have to settle for charcoal. The benefit of living in an outdoorsy sort of town was that we had plenty of people who loved camping or barbecues. There were at least ten different stores that carried their supply. And, since they tended to be bulky, at least some of them were probably still there.

After that came the noncritical goods. Tara, Xavier’s babymama, was a schoolteacher and wanted writing supplies. Austin, the same, said they could use more practical how-to guides. Woodshop, mechanics, survival, that sort of thing. A few of the folks from the canteen were talking about how their butchering knives were growing dull. It truly was an unending list.

We were forty minutes into our drive when Scout let out a shark chirp. Not danger exactly, but something he thought was worth stopping for. I flung my hand outside the window, bringing us to a slow stop.

Cautiously, I climbed onto the roof of the SUV through the sunroof, being careful as to not hit Sir Swagsire’s head as I exited the vehicle. “Scout? What’d you see?”

“Tran,” he trilled. He didn’t seem too worked up so I allowed myself to relax a smidge. “Quill. Tranquill.”

“Wait? Here?”

“Tran,” he chirped in confirmation.

Rocket snaked up onto the roof and nudged my hand. He took a sniff of the air and yipped, “Linoone. Linoone-lin.”

“Shane, for those of us who don’t speak pokemon, please?” Jarvis called.

“Stantler herd, and… an ursaring chasing them,” I called back, loud enough for the other three cars to hear, too. “We let them pass.”

“Really? What are the odds–”

He was interrupted by the nearby stamping of hooves. Without the dull drone of the car engines, and now much nearer than before, they were easier to hear. In seconds, the herd crossed not sixty feet away, where the game trail met this gravel road.

It was one thing I learned in my time in the wilds: Deer, animals in general, were creatures of habit. They had their own highways that the observant could see, stamped into the forest floor over generations and countless hooves. Frequently, such game trails crossed roads, which was why so many people ran over deer in rural areas.

I watched, fascinated, as a group of nearly twenty deer ran by. They were roughly an even mix of mule deer, the most common variety in the Sierra Nevada, alongside stantler. On average, the stantler were slightly smaller, but far, far faster and stronger. They led the herd, leaving the family units of mule deer trailing behind.

I considered taking a shot, but thought better of it. Sure enough, the bear caught up. An ursaring, easily eight feet tall on its hind legs, crashed through the underbrush. It moved with far less grace than the cervids, but it was a pokemon. In a straight line dash, it easily caught up to a doe.

Its paw glowed white. That aura condensed into its claws, extending them until they were the length of machetes. With a single, violent Slash, it decapitated the doe in the middle of the road.

“Holy shit,” someone whispered. Similar murmurs swept through the men.

“Your call, Shane,” Jarvis muttered. “What now?”

I eyed the magic bear, and the doe in its jaws. This wasn’t the first time I’d run into an ursaring. I couldn’t be sure, but given how large a territory bears could have, there was a decent chance that I’d run into this ursaring in particular.

I obviously did my best to stay away from the apex predators. With Rocket’s nose and Scout’s eyes, we could easily keep our distance. Even during the odd times that we did draw near enough to see each other, we merely acknowledged one another and went our separate ways.

“Do? Nothing,” I said as Scout alighted on my shoulder. He didn’t screech or make any threat displays, but his presence was a comforting weight on my back. “Just wait and let the old bear get its kill off the road.”

“J-Just like that? We can leave?” Donnell asked in disbelief.

“What? Were you expecting some grand showdown? Ursaring aren’t stupid. It’s got its kill; there’s no point in fighting.”

“I… I guess so…?”

The bear looked at us, saw the warning look in my three pokemons’ eyes, then thought better of it. Whether it could see itself winning or not wasn’t the issue; we just needed to not be worth its time. And, with a dead doe already, that was easy enough.

It offered us the smallest of nods before dragging its kill into the woods. The road fell silent as we processed what we’d seen. Even as rangers, we didn’t typically see nature take its course in such proximity.

“Come on, let’s get going, everyone,” I said, ducking back inside the SUV.

“You know, I’ll never get used to pokemon killing shit,” Jarvis said as we drove on. “I mean, they were my childhood. Then, I see this fuck-massive bear decapitate a deer like it’s nothing.”

“You’ve seen Rocket do it, too.”

“Yeah, but the bear’s bigger.”

“Heh, you think that’s bad? How about the fact that stantler keep regular deer around just to use them as buffers like this?”

“Huh… Now that you mention it…”

“They’re hypno-deer. Venison with a side of mind-fuckery.”

“That’s dark.”

“I keep telling you, man. Pokemon are smart, but intelligence doesn’t necessitate human values,” I said.

“Fair point, but still. Dark,” he grunted.

We fell into a companionable silence after that. He drove while I tried to suppress my mounting concerns.

Personally, I wondered how long that bear would keep quiet. There was a roaming snorlax somewhere in these mountains. I knew of a handful of ursaring across the Tahoe area. And with winter coming, they’d probably gorge themselves.

Carnelian Bay was… It was a big target. We had food, including the only grove of pokemon world berries for miles. I already had people keeping watch, but I truly didn’t know what more I could do about it.

X

We were back. Tahoe Forest Hospital was a monumental place in my mind. It was my first ranging with the folks from Carnelian Bay. It… hadn’t gone well.

As best I could tell, some mutated, ice type sandshrew had dug into the foundations of the hospital, making their home in the basement. I didn’t know if they were running from a pack of sneasel or the sneasel found them later, but there was a pack in the hospital as well. 

That agitated the sandshrew and made them aggressive. One of our teams came in to scavenge supplies, only to all die from one pokemon or the other. When they didn’t report back, we grouped up again to investigate. 

We found the sandshrew in the basement. There, the Sonic lookalikes used Rollout and shattered the arm of some guy named Luke. Without a modern plaster cast, there wasn’t much Dr. Lansdowne could do. 

I heard he still didn’t have full functionality even months after the fact. He’d retired from the rangers and wasn’t exactly my biggest fan. Truthfully, that had been one of the initial reasons I’d kept my distance from the town. People saw him and saw a reminder of how deadly pokemon could be.

After that disaster in the basement, Alex, Luke’s brother, blamed me for leading us down there. He was pissed about his brother and wasn’t thinking straight. He punched me, Rocket opened his arm to the bone, and that was that. Even after his stitches scarred over, he quit the rangers and refused to have anything to do with me.

I wasn’t the only one with bad memories here. Pete, Donnell, Henry, and Jarvis had all been there. Jarvis had even gone back inside the hospital alongside me and ol’ Tom to take care of the sneasel pack when no one else volunteered. That kind of arguably self-destructive loyalty had been why I made him my second.

“We’re back,” Pete said as we pulled into the parking lot. “Shit, this place brings back some terrible memories.”

“It does, but it’s got supplies we need,” Jarvis replied calmly. “Your call, Shane. How are we doing this?”

“We go in. Two teams of four. I take one, Jarvis takes the other. Jarvis also gets the pupper twins since I have Rocket and Swagsire. Scout will remain overwatch,” I said. “Now, here’s what we’re looking for…”

I briefed the two teams and led mine inside. Jarvis had Scout and the poochyena, which meant Henry and Donnell had to be on their team. That left the triple As and Pete. With the twins wanting to stick together, I ended up with Abby, Ashley, and Pete, who was the only one I actually knew.

Rocket was by far the strongest pokemon we had and Sir Swagsire was most effective in close quarters. Naturally, that meant we would be the ones heading into the basement. Jarvis and his crowd were to comb through the rest of the hospital while we kept the known pokemon occupied. Hopefully, without any more surprises.

“Uh… What’s that?” Pete asked. He was gesturing to the stairwell that led to the basement.

There was a skull there, picked clean of flesh and bleached white by the passage of time. It was not quite as large as the skull of a human child, but not that much smaller, either.

I was no expert, but it looked predatory, with sharp fangs. The canines especially were massive for its size, about two-thirds the size of my thumb. Just by the edge on those teeth, anyone could tell that this was a carnivore. More to the point, it’d obviously been set here intentionally.

“It’s a skull… Is this normal?” Abby asked quietly. She kept her hand on her pistol and made sure to stand behind Rocket. “It doesn’t look like it was left here on accident.”

“Definitely not natural, or we’d have the rest of the body,” Pete added. “Think the sandshrew did this? As a warning?”

“You know, I don’t speak pokemon, but I’m pretty sure this says, ‘Fuck off or die,’” Ashley chimed in. Compared to her twin, she was louder, a little more fearless. She poked at the skull with her finger. “This is kinda cool, in a morbid sorta way.”

I picked up the skull and tossed it up and down. Slowly, but loud enough for my footsteps to echo, I began making my way downstairs. “I think you might be wrong. This says, ‘Hello, we see you.’”

“How do you figure?”

“Pete, remember what Tom, Jarvis, and I did the last time we were here?”

The older man, in his late twenties, nodded. He had a wispy mustache that he never bothered to shave that made him look like a homeless person. “I do. You three fought a pack of sneasel. I remember you bringing the bodies back for Sabrina.”

“That’s right. And one weavile. I left its corpse right here, alongside a bloody jacket to show them that we took care of their little sneasel problem.”

“So you think this is their way of acknowledging that?”

“Probably. This skull’s just about the right size for a weavile, anyway. Come on, let’s head down.”

“Sure, but I’m staying behind you and the murder-ferret. No offense.”

“None taken.” As we headed down, I had them wrap their flashlights in cloth to dim the lights. “Keep the lights pointed down. If they’re cave-dwelling, they probably have very sensitive eyesight.”

The basement had undergone some renovations since we were last here. We hadn’t gotten to look around back then, but there must have been surplus bedsheets, scrubs, and pillows stored here. Boxes of them had been torn open, the fabric shredded to make a comfy nest in the corner of the room.

At the center, the leader of their little colony sat waiting for me. He was a sandslash. Sure, he was blue, but he was definitely a sandslash. His fur was a baby-blue that reminded me of the clear sky. His spikes were a set of large, icicle-like growths along his back. His paws were tipped with massive claws that looked disproportionately large. Each were as long that ursaring’s after Slash.

Not that the Sonic lookalike was small. I’d never seen any rodent, or whatever the fuck shrew were, this big before. The damn thing stood at nearly four feet tall, the size of a small child. Given how stocky he was, and the spikes of ice on his back, he probably weighed more than a human of comparable size, too.

“Holy shit, we’ve got Sonic,” Ashley whispered. “I want one so bad…”

“Is this really the time, sis?” Abby admonished her twin.

“Hey, I was a Sega kid. And so were you.”

“I like living more than I like video games. Hush.”

I coughed awkwardly. Taking a step forward, I motioned for Rocket to stay close, but make no aggressive movements. “Hello, are you a sandslash?”

The sandslash nodded. “Slash. Sandslash.”

“Congratulations on your evolution, then.”

“Sandslash. Slash?”

“My men are going through the hospital looking for supplies. That won’t be a problem, will it?” He considered it. At his cautious look, I clarified, “Things that humans want. Furniture, blankets, pills, that sort of thing.”

“Sandslash. Sandslash-sandslash?” he asked, gesturing with a claw towards a set of metal shelves that lined the wall. They were filled with cardboard boxes, some of which had been torn into.

“Are they spare blankets? Can we take some?”

“Sandslash.” He gestured to the weavile skull, then nodded.

“Thank you.”

“Holy shit, this worked?” I heard Ashley mutter in quiet disbelief.

“Seriously, how much pokespeak do you actually understand?” Pete asked.

“It’s not that complicated guys. Rocket and I took care of the sneasel pack and they’re repaying the favor,” I huffed. I nudged Pete and the twins towards the boxes. “Come on, go grab a few of the unopened boxes.”

“Hospital bedsheets aren’t the greatest. They’re kinda thin,” Ashley pointed out.

“They’re packaged, sanitized, and built for industrial use. We can grab thicker blankets when we find them.”

“That’s true. This is better than nothing. Besides, we’ve got a lot of people who’ll want extras.”

As we were leaving, I got an idea. It’d been niggling at the back of my mind for a while now. I figured that there was no harm in trying.

“Say, Sandslash,” I called.

“Sand?” he responded.

“Wanna come with us? You know, back to town. There are a bit less than two thousand humans who live together along the lakeside. We’re pretty lacking in pokemon, though.”

“Sandslash? Sandslash-sand?”

“What do you get out of this? Food? Safety in numbers? Easy access to water? Fish, if you like that. Oh, and we have a pretty large orchard and farm set up with oran and pecha berry trees.”

At the mention of the berries, I heard a series of chittering squeaks. Several sandshrew emerged from the nest of torn blankets and holes in the walls. “Sandslash… Sandslash-slash. Sandslash.”

“Yes, you’d have to listen to us in exchange. We have geodude, graveler, oddish, gloom, and skiddo as well.”

“Slash…” I could see him mulling it over. Then, he held his claws out towards Rocket. “Sandslash. Slash. Sandslash.”

“Lin? Linoone?” Rocket asked. A fanged grin spread across his mouth. Even without my burgeoning aura, I had no trouble understanding that.

“Outside,” I said. “We do this outside.”

“Slash,” he nodded. With a few, quick barks, he and his burrowed into the walls and vanished.

I turned and picked up a few boxes of my own. “Come on, you lot. We’re going to the parking lot.”

“What’s going on?” Abby asked as we made our way upstairs with our loot.

“I think Sandslash over there just challenged me and Rocket to a pokemon battle. If we win, he and his crew come with us.”

“Huh… You know, you live a very different life than the rest of us, Shane. But you don’t have a pokeball.”

“And? I’m sure people had pokemon partners before apricorn balls were a thing. A ball isn’t what guarantees loyalty.”

“I suppose so…”

Ashley slung an arm around me. “You better win, boss. I want a sandshrew as my starter. They’re so damn cute.”

“Cute? You didn’t see one of those sandshrew shatter a grown man’s arm in one hit,” Pete said. “Boss, I know you’re a trainer and whatnot, but you sure this is a good idea? There are people who won’t like them nearby.”

“Luke and Alex,” I said. 

“Not just them. Hell, I’m pretty nervous around those things after seeing what one can do to a guy. James, too.”

I pursed my lips in frustration. James was a member of the team that died here. Most of those guys had been killed by the sneasel, but he’d had his head smashed open by a sandshrew’s Rollout. “You’re right. He probably had friends.”

“You still think it’s worth recruiting them?”

“I do. Tahoe winters are rough. Several inches of snow. Multiple feet, even. You know that as well as I do. Ranging becomes damn near impossible. Cutting some firewood, checking a few traps, that’s about the best we can manage.”

“But with an ice type, that changes. I can see it. Get a pair of snowshoes and a pokemon that can build shelter or dig you out in an emergency and the winter becomes a lot more manageable.”

“Yeah. Back in the Middle Ages, people died every year to pigs. We still kept them. And unlike pigs, sandshrew are a hell of a lot more rational.”

“I… Fine, you’ve got a point. You’ll be the one telling everyone about this, though.”

“I’m told that’s what being the ranger captain means,” I said wryly.

He clapped my back with a laugh. “Heh, wouldn’t want to be you.”

Author’s Note

Ah… It takes me so long to write chapters of this story. I have ideas, but it’s hard to get them to paper for some reason.

A group of shrews is called a colony or whisker. A group of moles is called a company or fortress. Neither of which matter because sandshrew and sandslash are both “mouse pokemon,” which means a group of them should be called a mischief.

Animal Fact: Male lions have a lot of sex. During mating season, they can mate twenty to fifty times per day, roughly every fifteen to thirty minutes. Some estimates have even chalked this number as high as a hundred times a day.

That said, sex is quick for a lion, about twenty seconds. That’s probably a good thing, given they have barbed dicks.