Wasteland (Prologue)

“Well hello there. Looks like we’ve found ourselves a motherfucking glory hole,” Aticanda whooped.

Robert Vargas glared at the new addition to his team. Robert stood alongside Aticanda Deep, the newbie, and Aticanda’s sister, Sarita, Robert’s trusted partner. The trio stared down into a pitch black hole in the ground, a thick deciduous forest looming overhead.

“How deep you think it is?” Aticanda continued. Without waiting to get a response, he leaned over the pit and let a long loogie drip. It pooled at the center of his lips, seemingly trying to decide which fate was worse, the grizzly swirling of Aticanda’s mouth, or the mysteries down below, then it took the leap.

“Real professional there, rook. Your goddamn spit isn’t gonna tell us the first thing about how far down that hole is,” Sarita said back to Aticanda. “Quit being such a dumbass.”

“You can’t tell me what to do anymore! That’s for him to decide.” Aticanda pointed to Robert.

Sarita continued after her brother. “My name is the one on the business, not his! If I tell you to do something, you’d better fucking do it!”

Aticanda tried to come back with an insult but defeated by her logic, the boy turned to violence. He shoved her, letting loose a series of obscenities that presumably made him feel better. Caught off guard, Sarita stumbled back, bumping into Robert and nearly tumbling to the ground.

Robert had ignored the argument to that point, gazing down into the pit, but Sarita’s collision with him brought the man back into the fold. Robert didn’t have much experience around Aticanda, but even he could tell this wasn’t just some friendly sibling banter. Robert’s hand rode down to his holstered 9mm, where he cocked back the hammer, making sure the noise was audible. He kept his eyes locked on Aticanda, making it clear whose side he was on if the argument continued.

Aticanda backed off. Robert knew Sarita had shared plenty stories with the boy about Robert’s past endeavors, and Robert had a moment where he finally understood why Sarita loved to embellish.

“I don’t have time to deal with squabbling children right now. Get your shit together. We’re going down,” Robert said.

Sarita let off a triumphant grin at her younger brother. Robert muffled an urge to smile with her and lifted his hand from his gun.

Robert finally broke his eyes from Aticanda, then turned to find an anchor for his rappelling gear, dropping a subtle wink towards Sarita as he worked.

As Robert secured his rope around a massive chestnut tree, the siblings joined him in preparation to enter the hole. Sarita went about finding her own tree, but Aticanda seemed compelled to do things differently. The boy started his prep by struggling to get into his harness. Concerned, but also amused at the flailing, Robert turned to Sarita and spoke to her in a voice just quiet enough so that Aticanda wouldn’t be able to make out his words.

“Hey Sari, you sure the little man is up for this? I mean, he’s clearly got the delusional teenager’s confidence to make him willing, but he also has the delusional teenager’s confidence that makes him think he doesn’t actually need to learn how to do things.”

Sarita grimaced while she finished securing her rope. She looked up to see Aticanda hobbling on one leg, attempting to pull his other leg out of a slot meant for an arm.

She grunted as she joined in observing her faltering brother. “It’d be pretty fucking embarrassing for us if he killed himself on a dumb little extraction job, huh?”

Robert nodded in agreement as she went off to help her younger brother. The boy had been begging to come out with Robert and Sarita for years, and now that he had finally joined them, he wasn’t going to be stopped by something as trivial as not remembering how to put on an article of clothing properly. Robert still wasn’t excited about the proposition of Aticanda permanently joining the team, but if there was any positive to be found in the boy’s complete inadequacy to this point, it was that Robert now had proof that the kid needed time to mature. He wouldn’t be joining Robert and Sarita out in the field again anytime soon.

While the Deep siblings bickered about Aticanda’s lack of preparedness, Robert whipped out a flare from a compartment in his vest and dropped the bright green stick into the hole. Aticanda was caught off-guard by the sudden cackling of the flare, silencing the disagreement with his sister. Sarita kept reprimanding, but Aticanda was gone. The boy hobbled over to the hole to look down, earning more disapproval from Robert at the lack of respect for his elder. Robert kept the observation to himself though, focusing on the light down below.

The hole was several hundred meters deep, best Robert could tell, with a metallic frame creating a bottle shape that led down to the floor.

After a final safety check and a tightening of his carabiners, Robert turned to Sarita.

“You ready to tarnish all of your hard-earned rep by bringing this shitbird into the family business?” Robert pushed hard to maintain his deadpan tone.

Sarita matched her partner’s humor with a light nod and a visual examination of her brother.

“Fuck both of you,” Aticanda said, then emphatically thumped his chest and let out a whooping war call as he jumped into the hole.

Dropping the joke, Sarita responded honestly to his question. “He’s got the big, dumb balls of our father, so yeah, without question, Robert. I trust him.” Then she jumped in too.

“Family loyalty is so fucking stupid,” Robert whispered to himself, just before following suit and joining his two companions on their journey inside the Shenandoah Research Facility.

The trip to the base of the cavern was standard fare for Robert and Sarita’s line of work, but Aticanda lacked their training. He dropped far too quickly, and the combination of changing air pressure, flickering light, and hissing and shaking of the rope during his descent was enough to make the kid sick. Upon hitting the ground, he tried to rush off to solitude, but he forgot to detach first and wound up tripping over himself and puking all over his own boots.

Robert and Sarita joined him on the ground moments later, shaking their heads at the kid’s lack of situational awareness.

“Hey, Sari. Did I ever tell you about the time I made a guy shit his pants while we were playing cards?” Robert asked.

“Ah, that’s a good one. I mentioned that to Raffy one time, and he said the guy’s wife wouldn’t let him back into the house afterward. She clocked him in the face with an umbrella when he got home.”

Robert laughed. “What like an opened umbrella?”

“No, no, it was wound tight from what I hear. Got him clean in the ear.”

“Well, damn. I don’t even remember him smelling much worse than he did before.”

“Oh, no. It wasn’t the smell. It was the embarrassment. Married to a man that shit his pants in a card game? The wife was going to be the laughing stock of their community. Only way she figured people would forget about the grown man that shit his pants playing cards, was if they started remembering him as the guy whose wife openly hit him in the face with an umbrella.”

“An umbrella… What a weapon.”

Aticanda wheezed and drooled as he eventually got up. He ignored the story.

Aticanda picked up the flare and marched over to a space where a hole had been blown through the cavern wall. Robert and Sarita followed, still chuckling about the umbrella couple.

The hole was precisely the same diameter as the one from up above by Robert’s estimate. Whoever had cut the first hole had almost assuredly created this one too. Robert couldn’t decide whether the precision of these human-made holes indicated scientists trying to escape, or high-class scavengers trying to get in.

Aticanda stepped through the new hole without a second look, attempting to light the way. As Robert came in behind the kid, he could just make out what looked like a massive storage room.

Robert ignited a new flare, washing a greenish tint across the contents of a battle-torn warehouse. Skeletons littered the area, their flesh decomposed, their lab coats and businesswear still clinging to their appendages like dry paint that had dripped from its canvas. Whoever had attacked this room made sure to take out anyone and everyone. This was planned in advance, Robert thought to himself.

“Jesus Christ…” Aticanda whispered, his voice peaking at a higher point than Robert had expected he could still hit.

“This way,” Robert grunted out, before plunging past the wreckage. The three explorers drove deep into the facility, Robert driving the crew down the necessary route to the stairs. Robert had never been to this particular location, but all of the original facilities for the TechUP program had the same cookie cutter layout. Once Robert figured out where he was, he had no problem navigating them towards the vault they were looking for.

After 11 floors of stepping around massacred bodies, Robert and the Deep’s finally arrived on the hub floor. Aticanda had grimaced and twitched at each new body along the way, while Sarita kept her focus trained on pushing her brother forward. Robert was put off by the logistics of all the abandoned bodies, but the bodies themselves weren’t a reason for him to be anxious. The decomposing corpses were just a part of nature now.

Upon arriving at the hub, Sarita finally seemed to gain some recognition of where they were. “Alright! We’re getting close now, yeah?”

“Right past the decontamination ward here on our left,” Robert said, glad that Sarita had finally caught on.

“Good, good. And I assume you know what we’re looking for?”

“I’ll let you know when I see it.”

Robert and Sarita entered the hulking atrium of the hub side by side. Aticanda dragged behind. He seemed to avoid taking in his surroundings. Probably worried he would embarrass himself or stumble upon something more repulsive than the dead bodies, Robert figured.

As they walked past the decontamination ward and towards the vault room, Robert continued. “We head just through that door there, and our merch should be waiting for us. This one’s going to get you excited, Sari.” Robert couldn’t help but let some excitement creep into his voice.

“Well alright, gramps. Here’s to hoping all those dead bodies don’t mean we’re left with jack shit.”

“I told you, I’d strongly prefer if you didn’t call me gramps.”

“Right, right. My bad, Rob.”

Robert was about to protest Sarita’s continued teasing, but Aticanda broke up their banter.

“Fucking, thank god the bodies have finally cleared up.”

Robert immediately came to a stop, realizing his mistake.

“Fuck.” He reached out for Sarita, but she had already swung the door to the vault open. An explosion greeted her as flames engulfed her face, tossing her hard into Robert.

Robert slid her off and reached for his pistol, but a prick in his arm stopped his movement. Robert stared at a dart protruding from his skin. His limbs went rigid as he strained to keep his eyes from rolling back into his head. He made one last effort towards his gun, but he wasn’t even sure whether his limbs moved when he told them to. As his vision faded into nothingness, a man stepped into view, familiar, but Robert’s brain no longer held the capacity to recognize who it was.

As Robert passed out, he just made out the name “Lee” before everything went dark.