Dead Man Dunes

ShadeTruth Media

Date: 2086-02-14 By: News Van Dan

Audio Extract from The Van Man's Fan Clan. Transcribed via agent.

Hey Hey Hey! Got something fresh off the presses, exclusive scoop for my van man members. Only the best from the man with the plan, News Van Dan! Well, alright I guess it ain't SO hot off the presses. Truth is, its dated to a good couple of months ago, right after those manastorms in Africa started to clear up. Fishy timing, right? I know, nothing slips by ya. That's why you're listening to me and not those Big News companies that are poisoning your mind with their conditioning. It's all it takes! They prep you for these commands and little by little, they get you. It's psychology, man! Oh yeah, sorry, off-topic. The file we're gonna be lookin' at got intercepted off a transit relay in the mediterranean sea. A military transit relay. Right?? Big stuff. To be honest, I can't get a read on it. It's uh ... here. Why don't we both take a look and then I'll say my piece. Don't want to be putting thoughts in your head, right? Ha! Uhm. It's a bit graphic so like ... if ya get squeamish easy ya might not want to be here for this one. Fair warning? Fair warning. Right. Here goes.

Simsense Begins.

Your eyes snap open. Pain. Pain everywhere. Registering before any other sense is terrible pain. Bruising, aching, crushing all over. Your legs seem to be the worst part. White hot and piercing but your training tells you that's good. At least, better than numbness.

The other senses begin to follow suit. Your mouth tastes like ash and iron. It smells like smoke. You're surrounded on all sides by steel, warped and twisted where it once stood in clean lines. There's no sound save for a low, repetitive ringing in your ears. It's dull. Heavy. Your head feels like a gong, still reverberating after a strike.

A tank. You're in a tank. Some of your mind fog has been pushed aside and you remember you're in a tank. What was a tank. The metal surrounding you looks more like a ball of crumpled paper than an engine of war. Your legs are stuck beneath a particularly bent section. Panic builds in the back of your mind but you're able to push past it. Focus on the mission. The mission. What was ...

No time for that. Sweet adrenaline has begun to circulate through your bloodstream. The pain is dulling and you slam the hatch above you. It's stuck, too, but you fill it give. You slam it again and again and then once more before it snaps off. Sunlight and sand pour across your face in greeting. Your attention turns to your legs and the mechanisms of your capture. There is some give, the pain was stopping you before. Now, the task does not feel so insurmountable. You wrap your hands around the edges of the hatch and you pull with all of your might. There is a terrible, grating sound and your legs hurt and then numb and then hurt again and then ...

Freedom. FREEDOM. You pull yourself out of the iron coffin, out of the hatch and onto the hot sand outside. You feel the muscles in your face twist into a smile at the victory over this inanimate foe. The pounding in your ears is lessening and you can just faintly here the sound of man shouting at you in Arabic through a micro-transceiver. You aren't thinking in words right now and his voice is too far away to respond. You push yourself up, painfully to your feet. You can stand. You're clad in armor that covers your entire body although its been pierced in places. You're covered in blood. Some of it is yours but some intellectual part of your brain helpfully adds that it cannot all be yours. You would be dead if it was. With that nuggets of optimism, you look up.

And see a wasteland before you. The wreckage of heavily armored vehicles. Tanks. Helicopters. Trucks. Crumpled and torn to pieces and decorating the dunes. You see an empty shell casing the size of your forearm in the sand next to you. Your gaze lingers on the upper half of a corpse, next to you. It is covered in a thin layer of sand and a large bird is pecking at its exposed entrails. This bothers you and you run towards the corpse, yelling and waving your arms. You can only barely hear the words you yell. To you, they sound miles away but the bird, apparently, hears them perfectly fine. It flees and you are left alone with the torso. You brush off their face. You feel like you know this upper half of a corpse but you cannot think of a name. You feel something that is not pain or fear. Like a weight upon the cerebellum.

There are more. Many more. All of them are half-buried in the sand. Pieces of people, all across the dunes. Instinctively, you find yourself patting at your own arms and legs with shaking digits, checking to make sure none of the dismembered segments belonged to you. Luckily, all of your limbs are accounted for. That weight on the cerebellum continues to press down against you and you find yourself walking, dumbly, through the wreckage. It seems to be getting more concentrated as you walk or you are walking to where it is concentrated. One of the two. You could not say which. The corpses are piled on top of one another now.

Then you see it. There, at the thickest part of the carnage, you see it. In the midst of the very worst of the viscera is a perfect, unbroken circle of untouched sand. The very concept seems alien after what you have just waded through but there it is, only a dozen or so meters from you. Not a drop of blood stains it but radiating outward, clumped up at the edge of the perfect circle, is flesh and bone and steel and sand. They are not shaped like people or armor or vehicles anymore. It is as if their shapes had been forgotten.

And there is a figure, sitting within the circle. Its back is to you and much of its body is obscured by a ragged, sand colored cloak. You see a thick arm and leg with grey, stony skin protruding from one end of the garment, however, and a line of smoke rising for it. Then, the source of the smoke is revealed, clasped in its other hand.

It is smoking a pipe.

A terrible feeling begins to wash over you and the weight upon your cerebellum is the heaviest it has been. You reach for sidearm, holstered at your hip but your hands are shaking. Mute fingers close loosely around the handle and as you attempt to draw the weapon, you instead half-drop, half-fling the pistol onto the crumpled hood of a nearby vehicle. You hear it bounce. You hear the man shouting in Arabic now. "Report!? Report!? Are there survivors? Report!?" Your whole body is shaking now. The figure upon the unbloodied sand continues to smoke his pipe.

You can no longer bear the weight. You turns and start to run. Past the corpses. The helicopter. You run until you fall. You're adaptive. You crawl instead. Past the torso. Past the tank. The man is still shouting but the weight is growing lighter. You see sand dunes ahead of you, ones not covered in corpses. Nearly there.

And then you stop. Every neuron in your body stops firing, every thought in your head quiets, every muscle holds still. There. On your shoulder. A large, grey, hand.

You feel yourself being turned, twisted around to face the owner of the hand. You can do nothing. You were defeated long before now. You shut your eyes, raising your hands to cover your face. Your lips are moving, muttering prayers. Powerful eyes are boring into you, observing the very depths of your self. A glimmer of combat training informs you that the weight upon your cerebellum denotes the presence of magic. Powerful magic. You are being witnessed. You are being found wanting.

Then, a voice. Deep but quiet. Gravelly from disuse. Echoing within your skull. Spoken into your mind.

"You. Those on the other side. Bring me your warriors."

The feed terminates with a wet snap.

Simsense ends.

Yeah! So uhm ... God, gives me the chills. First I thought it was some kind of viral ad, horizon desert wars stuff, right? 'Cept the encryption wasn't any of the corporate standards, none of the metadata lined up and I haven't seen any part of it used anywhere else. It's months old, right? Figure there'd be SOMETHING. I can't wrap my head around it. I ... I don't know. For once, the News Man is stumped. I don't know what to make of it.

That's not gonna stop me, though! I'll be gettin' to the bottom of this ASAP or my name ain't Dan.

That ain't admissible in court, by the way. You can't prove drek.