Apocalypse: 2.8 Burnout

Burnout 2.8

Shane Hayes
September 2015

We found the boys where Rocket had first indicated. They were wrapped up like cocoons, or maybe a juice box would have been a more apt description. Their positioning itself was a testament to the ariados’ intelligence.

The boys were situated halfway up a tree, far enough from the ground to avoid the opportunistic predator. The branches above them provided a similar shield against casual flybys from bugs and birds. Surrounding them, there was just enough webbing for an unwary ledyba to tangle itself, adding to the spider’s larder.

The ariados had also been smart enough to cover their mouths but not their noses. The webbing was tight enough to constrict the ribs, but not so much as to prevent shallow breathing.

The stands of silk used were stretchy, with a bit of give that reminded me of cellopane or rubber, yet much of it lacked the sticky coating that made cutting through so difficult. It was designed to allows the prey to struggle and tire themselves, while continuously pressing down on their air supply.

I had Rocket cut them down. He slunk up the tree and sawed away at the boys. We lowered them in their cocoons and checked them over. Two were breathing, albeit shallowly, but the third was obviously beyond help.

He had tan skin and a patchy beard that he probably thought made him look more mature. His body was bloated and when I put my hand on his shoulder, his entire body seemed to wiggle, as if I’d pushed a water bed.

A pair of puncture marks on his neck told me all I needed to know: He’d been injected with the ariados’ digestive enzymes, and they’d quite literally liquified him from the inside out. Now that I was closer, I could smell that his body had begun to rot.

I stood up slowly. Looking around, I gathered the boy’s personal effects. He hadn’t expected to stay the night, so he hadn’t brought much. It wouldn’t much trouble to carry it all.

I set them in a small pile with my own things before turning to Rocket. “Dig us a hole, won’t you, bud?”

He let out a quiet chuff in reply. A few seconds later, I rolled the boy into a shallow grave. It wasn’t lost on me that he was getting the full “ranger experience.” Poor bastard.

I looked down at his corpse, wondering what I should do. A part of me wanted to say something, but I wasn’t his friend. I sure as shit wasn’t a priest, either. I didn’t even know who I should pray to. Arceus? Giratina was the death god in Pokemon cosmology, right? Or maybe he was just their Satan analog?

Instead, I gestured for Rocket and Swagsire to dump the dirt back over him. Maybe it would have been kinder to wait for the other two to wake so they could say their last goodbyes. Or maybe it would have been an additional cruelty, forcing them to face the consequences of their own actions and bury their friend.

I didn’t know. All I knew was that I was tired and wanted to get back to town. I got out my sleeping tarp and rolled the other two onto it. The ariados carcass also sat next to them as well. It was macabre as hell, but I hoped the doc or Sab could learn something from dissecting it.

Lastly, I grabbed as much of the webbing as I could, taking care to distinguish between the hard, taut thread and the stretchy, sticky variety. I wrapped them in individual spools before tossing them on the pile as well. I had no idea what they could be used for, but getting something out of this shitshow made me feel a little better.

With nothing else to do, I began the long trek home. 

X

“Mmph!!!” I heard behind me. The makeshift harness I was using jostled as the two boys regained consciousness. They probably saw the ariados carcass leaking its entrails over them.

I looked back with a field barren of fucks to give. It’d been three hours since I killed the ariados and packed them all in a tarp and I’d been dragging them around behind me like the Grinch who stole Christmas. Sure, Rocket was much stronger and could easily carry two teenagers and an ariados, but he was also the one who had to fight unencumbered.

“Rise and shine, punks,” I said. I let them tire themselves out a bit before dropping the ropes so I could pull the silk from their mouths. 

“Sh-Shane?” One of the boys stammered. He looked a little like Olive so I pegged this one as Dennis. I supposed this was the original mission accomplished. “W-What happened?”

“Listen, kid. You were poisoned and strung halfway up a tree. The only reason you and your buddy are alive is because the ariados probably wanted to keep food fresh. The other kid didn’t make it.”

“What? J-Jose… Shit…”

“Yup. Now, can either of you feel your toes?”

“N-No, sir,” the other kid said. He was black, hair in short cornrows that were slick with sweat.

“Then I’m not going to bother untying you. Best you don’t move too much.”

“No way, let us go,” Dennis said, though it came out more as a whine than anything.

“What part of ‘You were poisoned,’ was unclear to you? Maybe it’s harmless and your body’s processed it all already. Or maybe not. Either way, I’m no expert so I’m going to keep you two still until either Dr. Lansdowne or Dr. Nguyen can take a look at you.”

“I… But… Fine…” he grumbled out, as if he had a choice in the matter.

“Now, how about you boys tell me what you remember? Starting from you sneaking out of town with a bottle of whiskey.”

“We weren’t sneaking. It’s not against the rules. Anyone can leave town if they want.”

“If you weren’t sneaking, you would have checked in with your uncle, Jonah. I’m not mad that you left town for a bit. I’m pissed that you numbskulls didn’t think to tell anyone where you were going.”

“You do that all the time!”

“I tell people!” I snapped back. “Sabrina. Jarvis. Xavier. Everyone who matters knows where I’ve gone, why, and about when I’ll be back. That’s true of the rangers as a whole, too. When ol’ Tom scheduled trips to Truckee, the whole town knew about it.”

“We just wanted people to stop treating us like kids…” Dennis’ friend muttered quietly. I still didn’t know his name.

“Why? Why the hell would you want that?” I asked him. I understood of course, I was a punk teenager not too long ago. “Being an adult is a pain in the ass. There’s nothing glamorous about being a ranger.”

“You get to go outside. You get to have pokemon. People look at you different. People respect you.”

I laughed. It was a cold, bitter laugh, with more vinegar than I meant. “Yeah? Respect? That what this is about? Because their ‘respect’ is what’s got me out here hauling two kids and a dead spider on a ten mile hike. You think I’m having fun here?”

They remained silent so I continued with a tired sigh.

“Look…”

“Elijah…”

“Look, Elijah. You boys see the respect. You hear the whispers. You see the big game Rocket, Scout, Swagsire, and I bring in. But you don’t see the shit we went through to get it. More often than not, rangers don’t fight; we run. Because that ariados? That’s not the scariest thing out there.”

“No one told us…”

“Maybe they should have. Or maybe they did and you just weren't listening. Did I ever tell you about my first trip to Truckee? Really, my only trip there.”

“What happened?” Dennis asked, interested in spite of himself.

So that’s what I did. I spent the rest of the hike telling those two about the freaky, ice type sandshrew and the weavile and sneasel that preyed on them. I talked about how I almost died to a territorial sandshrew, not because we were hunting them, or even because they were hunting us, but simply because I was at the right place at a horrible time.

Their eyes widened as they listened to me talk about how Tom, Rocket, Scout, and I killed the weavile. I supposed with Tom’s passing, no one had told them the details of that day.

“So you just left the weavile there? For the sandshrew to find?” Dennis asked. “Why?”

“Because pokemon are smart,” I told them. “This isn’t like the games where you can train one up with the push of a button. They understand the concept of debts and favors. I’m hoping that when I eventually go back there, they’ll be a bit friendlier towards me.”

“Will that actually work? What if they take it as a threat?”

“Then that’s fine, too. The main reason for me to go back to that hospital would be to get more medical supplies so while I’d prefer they work with me, leaving me alone is acceptable.”

“What if they decide to attack?” Elijah asked. “Then what will you do?”

“We’ll run,” I said simply. “I don’t think you kids understand just how much of being a ranger means knowing how to pick your battles. Now, how about you boys tell me how you ended up stumbling into an ariados web?”

The story came out. Jose, the kid who died, had snuck a bottle of Jack Daniels from Guilermo’s store when he wasn’t looking. Fucking idiots. Whiskey was a decidedly limited good these days and I could guarantee Guilermo would notice. Even if they hadn't paid hell for it out here, the gruff shopkeeper would have given them hell once they got back.

Things went well at first. Then, they chased a deer and ran into a herd of stantler. The stantler cast some kind of illusion on them, probably Hypnosis or Confuse Ray, making the hallucinate. Filled with fear, the boys ran in a blind panic until they stumbled into the ariados’ feeding ground.

“Then Pierce ran like a fucking coward,” Dennis said bitterly. I stopped walking long enough to reach back and smack him over the head. “Ow!”

“And what the fuck was Pierce supposed to do for you?”

“I don’t know! Maybe he could’ve gotten one of us out!”

“Or more likely, he’d be dead like Jose. Or stuck in a spidey sleeping bag like you two. Does it feel shitty that he ran? Sure. But that was the right call. I don’t think he was thinking about ‘right calls’ at the time, but running probably saved his life.”

“So what? You just leave people?”

“If we have no way to get them back, yes,” I stressed. That stopped them cold. “That’s what we’re dealing with, Dennis. That’s the quiet part that none of the rangers say out loud: When push comes to shove, you save yourself. If you can’t save anyone else, you run the other way.”

“W-Why?” he croaked out.

“Because it’s not about us. If that one guy can get back to Carnelian Bay, maybe Sabrina can figure something out from whatever he managed to observe. Maybe that information will save lives. Or if worse comes to worst, maybe it’d give the town enough forewarning to evacuate.

“Humans aren’t at the top of the food chain anymore. We’re not the top dogs in this forest. And yea, I’m including myself. If I ever die because I encountered a pokemon none of us can feasibly beat, I’d want Rocket, Scout, and Swagsire to leave me be, not join me in some pointless quest to avenge my death.”

“I… It’s like the snorlax all over again…”

“It is. Get used to it. So yeah, Pierce made the right decision. His only mistake was running out of blind panic. He should have kept his composure and headed towards town. Navigate his way to a river and follow it downstream to Lake Tahoe. Maybe then, I would have had more information about the ariados because that fucker almost killed me with a Shadow Sneak.”

The rest of the trip was spent in silence. I’d ripped off their rose-tinted glasses of the rangers, but that was a good thing. Reality wasn’t kind. My life wasn’t a happy-go-lucky pokemon journey. It was a harsh lesson, but at least these two got to survive long enough to learn it.

In a way, I understood. These two probably saw the snorlax last year. Maybe not directly, but they must have been in the area. Old enough to know what was going on, too young to do much more than evacuate, not that anyone else did any better. Even so, I felt I could understand their sense of helplessness, just a bit.

Soon, the town wall came into view. Jonah was there, for once not slacking on duty. Then again, Dennis was his nephew. He slid down the back of the wall and ran out to meet us.

“Boss! Boss! What happened? Is Dennis alright?” he demanded even as he gulped for air.

I waved back to the boys behind me. “Dennis and Elijah are fine. Jose didn’t make it. Pierce got separated from the group so I’ll have to go back out to look for him.”

“Thank God… What is all this?”

“Ariados webbing. They were bitten, probably with a paralytic. I wasn’t sure if I should move them so I decided to drag them back like this. Have one of the docs check them out before cutting them loose.”

“Y-Yeah, I got it.”

He and another ranger took the ropes and began dragging the boys towards the doctors. Part of me wanted to go with them to make sure they were okay, but I had to get ready to head out again. Instead, I headed to the ranger station so I could mark the ariados nest on a map. Some of the boys could go look around if they got the chance. I also needed to resupply.

I made sure to pack enough food for myself to last a few days. In the anime, Brock seemed to have a hammerspace bag that could store any amount of goodies. That wasn’t me. Any more than a few days of food was pushing it for a team like mine. I also checked my first aid kit, to be thorough.

After a quick stop to the station, I headed to the sporting goods store with the pieces of my crossbow. There, I found Guilermo Chavez, cleaning a gun like he was in an Old Western.

“Shane, you’re back,” he grunted. His thick mustache quivered like caterpillars. “Heard about what happened.”

I slid his half-full bottle of Jack across the counter. Next to it came my mangled crossbow and spools of ariados webbing. “I got something that belongs to you.”

“So it does…” He slid the bottle back. “Keep it. I’d feel like shit if I drank it now.”

“Suit yourself, Guilermo. Any chance you can repair my crossbow?”

He stared down at my crossbow, then back at me like I was the dumbest fucker alive. The ariados had bitten clean through it. The bite marks were smooth, almost like glass worn down by the ocean. I had a feeling it was due to Shadow Sneak’s ghostly properties.

“Just grab another crossbow, dumbass.”

“Hey now, this one’s sentimental. Shit’s saved my life more times than I can count.”

“Then hold a funeral for it ‘cause I ain’t touching it.”

“Ugh, fine.” I walked over to the shelves and picked one out. It was on the larger side, with a thick, sturdy frame and a sleek, black bow. The label boasted a 190 pound draw weight.

“You sure you want that one? 190 is a lot. It’s kinda inconvenient for smaller game.”

“I’m not hunting small game. Lately, it feels like I’ve been running into more and more pokemon. Maybe I’ll only get a shot or two off, but I’d like for those to count.”

“Suit yourself. You do have a handgun, right?”

“Of course.”

“Alright, Shane. Bring that back when you get back with Pierce. I’ll see if I can find a speedloader for you.”

“Thanks, Guilermo,” I said with an honest smile.

He waved me off. “Call it a perk of being the captain, eh?”

“Don’t you fucking start.”

“Heh.”  He picked up one of the spools of silk. “And what the hell is this supposed to do for me?”

I shrugged. “Dunno. It’s ariados silk. Two kinds. One’s elastic and sticky. The other is thinner and more rigid, like tripwire. I figured you can hand some out to people who might know how to work with this stuff.”

“Maybe… Alright, I’ll see what I can do. You headed out now?”

“Canteen first. I got about three hours of sleep last night and I’ve been running around all day. My team and I can all use a meal, maybe some coffee while we’re there.”

“You do that. Good luck, Shane.”

“Yeah, thanks, Guilermo.”

X

The town’s communal dining area was as busy as ever. If someone was too young or otherwise lacked the skills to acquire food on their own, this was where they could go. Naturally, it became one of the main informal gathering places for anyone who wasn’t currently busy.

Mayor McAllen had instituted a currency system revolving around round river rocks. When I first heard it, I thought it was stupid. Now that I was plugged into the town’s management a bit more, I could see the reasoning behind it. People needed to be kept busy. If they had purpose, and if the currency had tangible worth that could be measured in terms of food, it would become a stabilizing force in the townspeople’s psyche.

Coins and bills would have worked well enough for a while, but we couldn’t “mint” new bills. For that matter, I suspected it was a way of starting fresh. No one was rich or poor because the Benjamins anyone might have had meant jack shit. Instead, everyone was rewarded with a new currency according to their contributions. There was a certain romantic idealism in that that I found myself agreeing with.

As the person who brought in the most amount of red meat, I was obviously paid rather well. Funnily enough, because I took a cut of my kills for me and my pokemon, I didn’t actually use my river rocks much. I had a sizable rock collection in my camper that I sometimes handed out to a few kids.

This was one of the few times I’d bothered to take out a “deposit.” The public canteen had been transformed. There was the butchering station, kept a ways off from the dining area, as well as the smoking and drying room, cold storage, and even an amateur brewery. Apparently, people had high hopes for mead. And a potato... wine…? I wasn't sure if they'd get much distillation done so I didn't think it counted as vodka.

But my attention was on the general goods store. This used to be part of Guilermo’s sporting goods shop, but the town decided to separate it out into its own thing. Now, it sold everything from spices and dried herbs to cigs, playing cards, and writing stationery.

I was there to buy coffee and grab a meal before heading out. Powdered beans and whole roasts had gone bad years ago, so the instant stuff was all they had left. Even that had gotten scarce, and so the price of a packet of instant coffee was as much as a whole rabbit these days.

As we were finishing our food, I ran into Sabrina. She was with a woman I vaguely recognized as one of the teachers for the younger kids.

“Shane, glad you're back safe,” Sabrina greeted. Her blonde hair was a mess. I doubted she got much sleep last night, either.

“Yeah, me too. Spiders can jump out of shadows. This world sucks,” I bitched. I felt like I earned the right to a bit of bitching.

“Ae you heading out again?”

“I am.”

“Will he be okay?” the woman asked. “Pierce wasn’t ever the outdoorsy type. What if he got hurt?”

I gathered that this was likely his mother. “Ma’am, him being a bit more athletic or not probably wouldn’t make a difference.”

“Shane!” Sabrina chided.

I sighed. “I’m really not good at this… What I meant to say is that his odds are about as good as anyone’s.”

“You’re really not helping…”

“Look, I’ll find him. I needed to grab a meal and a replacement crossbow, but I’m headed out now.”

“Please,” the woman pleaded, a single word that said it all.

I hated that look. It was so much expectation, so much pressure to perform. The worst part was that I couldn’t blame her. I was the one with the pokemon team. Who else was she supposed to ask?

So, I offered her a few empty encouragements and hit the trails again. Hopefully, I’d find Pierce before something else did.

Author’s Note

The tone of this story is very different from anything else I have. I wouldn’t say it’s dark, but it’s more… solemn? Yeah, I think that’s the right word. Writing this is a nice change of pace from the lighthearted comedy or slice of life that I usually lean into.

The recommended draw weight of a crossbow for hunting bigger game (e.g. deer) is anywhere from 150 to 175 pounds, but some exceed over 200. Shane’s is on the heavier side for sure.

Animal Fact: The tail of a horseshoe crab, called a telson, is not a stinger, or any other kind of defense mechanism. It is more like a rudder than anything else. On land, it can also be used to right themselves if they get flipped upside down.