Snippet #1996786

Utter chaos. Milo fought to keep his head. The big fellow behind him, a real brute of a man, was helping heave the rope towards the fallen slaver who held the keys. Screams? Milo had difficulty hearing anything over the incredibly loud pounding of blood in his ears. Everything seemed so unreal. There had been a few times when something had gone wrong on the boat; a torn sail, a violent storm, an unseen reef. He knew what panic and desperation and fear felt like. Unmistakeable. Their stench soaked into your clothes, made them cling to your skin. This was like...enlightenment. Or drugs. Sound distorted, fading in and out like a poorly tuned radio. Everything was in slow motion, and Milo found himself picking out individual flecks of rust on his manacles for examination. He briefly wondered if he was dead, or unconscious, or hallucinating. Maybe this was the trick of the Ruins. Some biological weapon from the past or seeping chemicals from some plant or something made people turn into raving lunatics and they ended up killing each other or themselves. Maybe that....thing...over there eating the corpse of a woman with such gusto was just a regular person gone mad and Milo was just imagining him or her as a monster.

Before he could go much further along this train of thought, which made a lot more sense to Milo than what was actually going on, a slip of a girl shoved a key in his hand. She said something, but Milo didn't really comprehend the words. It took him a second to realize that he held in his hand the very key he had been trying to grab. The key. The key! Frantically, Milo scrabbled a his manacles, his shaking fingers trying and failing to line up the crooked bit of metal with the keyhole. Finally, after what seemed like forever and a day, Milo succeeded in getting his hands free. The leg shackles proved easier. Flexing his sore hands and rubbing raw wrists, Milo glanced back at the Scavenger. Still busy with its meal. Not that that meant much, seeing as it's friends were on their way. Good god. The girl was long gone, but Milo swore to himself that if they both got out of this mess alive he would debase himself in thanks and grovel at her fucking feet if need be.

Milo considered the key in his hand and looked back at the line of slaves. The big fellow, Gozer, was closest, but Milo was reluctant to let him off the line. He was a bully, and unkind to the other slaves. Like they needed to be made more miserable. A girl, also. Face to face with...a wolf? A wolf. Just...hanging out. Observing the madness. Milo briefly considered his hallucination theory but decided he didn't quite have enough faith in it to test. The girl was probably in the most immediate danger, but Milo was reluctant to go near the wolf and present his juicy, chaseable ass for din-dins. So the big fella it was. Milo worked his knees for a few seconds, getting used to having a full range of motion after months of restricted shuffling, and picked his way over to Gozer.

"Hang on a minute, mate...God damn it!"

Milo muttered swears as he worked the key into the rust-clogged keyhole, starting with the leg shackles. Doing the wrists first would have made more sense, but Milo didn't want Gozer potentially taking the key and fleeing without freeing the other survivors. The lock clicked and the shackles fell free, and Milo turned his attention to the other set or restraints. These took even longer than the others, partly because they were so tight on Gozer's massive wrists that the locking mechanism was under high tension, forcing Milo to walk a fine line between turning the key hard enough and breaking the damn thing. That was the last thing anyone needed.

As Milo worked, there was a distant clatter of metal on metal. It drew closer and closer, accompanied by rustling and chittering. Milo glanced back and immediately regretted it, because he spotted the first of the Scavenger horde cresting the crumbling road leading deeper into the Ruins. Their variety was innumerable. Tails, spikes, claws, teeth, wires...Every Scavenger seemed to have swapped body parts at random for cybernetic replacements. If not for the pants-shitting terror he was experiencing, Milo might have been amazed at their complexity. One of the Scavengers had a row of sharp metal horns protruding from her skull and down the base of her neck. Formidable enough on its own, but then the damn thing lowered its head and impaled the nearest corpse in the leg. With a casual flick, the entire limb was torn clean off. The Scavenger retreated to the side, much like the herald who had arrived first on the scene, and began to systematically devour her prize. It was sickening to watch, particularly because the Scavenger had the body of girl no older than 15. It was grotesque and unnerving.

There were only three or four now, and they seemed busy with the corpses up front, but those would not last for long. It sounded like dozens were on their way, and Milo was confident that they would work their way down the line with no preference for dead or living flesh, and would just as readily dismember one of the survivors.

Swearing more loudly now, Milo gently urged the key to turn. He was so afraid it was going to snap off in the lock that it made him sick. He couldn't bear to leave even a brute like Gozer to those flesh-eating creeps, though, and so he stood there like an idiot begging and coercing the lock between breaths.
Finally, finally, the wretched thing clicked open. Without wasting any time, Milo sprinted to the girl facing off with the wolf. Unlike Gozer, her manacles were plenty loose enough for her to unlock them on her own.

"Hey! Here!"

Tossing her the key without paying attention to whether she caught it or not, Milo spun on his heel and followed the girl who had freed him. He didn't know what she was looking for, but his fishing trident was in that caravan. More than food or water, Milo wanted a weapon.

Leaping onto the back of the caravan, Milo started digging frantically through the piles of stuff. Garbage, useless trinkets, complete trash! Where were the weapons? Milo panted as he worked, letting out a short, soft keening sound with every exhalation. The approaching pack of monsters was louder than ever, and they were all running out of time.