Chapter 27 – Where the Bridge Goes

Mk23 -IRJ Droplet – Class 7 – Carpe Victoria (Wrecked)

Sector - Unknown

Planet - Unknown

11th July 2342 (BSST)

Stepping over the remains I pause at the entrance. Inside the camp there are a few simple huts and lean-tos. The lean-tos are arranged in a circle around one of the campfires, well the remains of one. A circle of rocks charred black by the ash and fires that repeatedly lick up against the stone, painting its surface with shades of grey, sit peacefully. Some ashy, half burnt logs remain in the centre of the circle, the partially burnt sections falling out as powdery remnants whenever the wind gusts. The lean-tos are mostly intact though a few have been smashed to bits.

These simple survival shelters consist of two sticks pushed into the ground with either a fork at each end that another stick rests within or a stick lashed across the top of them. Onto this frame more sticks are laid until a triangle shape is achieved. Then plant material like leaves, shrubs and branches and moss are laid on top to waterproof and insulate the shelter.

More padding and plants make up a sleeping mat under the shelter and often more sections at the ends cover up the sides to further shelter the sleeping arrangement.

Though crude, the lean-tos make very good shelter for those unfortunate enough to be stranded. A big one could hold a couple of people in relative comfort and it looks as if this was the case here.

Moving around, my eyes roam along the walls until they discover the next item of interest.

A small stock of firewood rests up against one side of the walls. Enough for a couple of weeks for a group the size that would have lived here. The wood looks wet still and unsuitable for firewood.

Green wood, especially stuff that isn’t protected from the elements makes for very poor firewood. The fires don’t get very hot and huge billowing clouds of smoke form as the moisture and saps burn up. The pyrolysis of the plant material forms creosote that is quite smelly. Now I don’t know if the humanoids are attracted to the smell but I sure as hell wouldn’t want to take the chance.

In the centre of the camp is a big fire, much the same as the one I use for my clay tasks and cooking. The wood I expect was mostly used here. It seems as if they had some clue what to do as a few pots and various knickknacks litter the ground. The fired clay shattered as the pots were knocked over.

Despite the evidence of life here, I feel it is most likely they were another group that had been taken here, abducted like myself. The level of tech is primitive at best and shows that at least someone had a basic idea of what to do. But an advanced civilisation that could get me home is certainly not what I’ve found. Well, I haven’t even found them yet. Hopefully they escaped from the camp and survived. But sadly, I expect not.

Stepping inside the camp feels momentous for an unknown reason. A feeling of overwhelming anxiety and dread bubbles up from my stomach. Like a heat wave it overpowers me until it is almost all I can comprehend. Advancing through the hole I look around once again. Hiding behind the walls are a few drying racks on my left side. Whilst on the right-hand side, where the bridge crossed over the walls, the remnants of another treehouse stand scattered on the floor.

The rope bridge is detached from the building and it swings freely in the wind, one of the guiding ropes hooked over the dagger like branch of one of the trees supports the bridge, keeping it from touching the ground.

A forlorn sight if ever there was one. It told a tale, dark and twisted. A tale of regret and terror. The powerful emotions seemed to have sunk in deep to the very atmosphere that lingered. The silence and solitude of the place had a disquieting effect on me. What would normally raise hairs and send shivers down my spine now feels like a blanket. Suffocating yet comforting it dampens down any fear or alarm I might have felt and threatens to drown me in a sky devoid of stars, a sea without a rock to cling to as it sweeps me down to the abyss below. Taking me along its journey no matter my protestations.

The ends of the bridge swing with a slight creak as the wind picks up in a gentle gust. It whistles a melancholy melody as the following silence sings out its heart, telling the story of what has happened.

The remains of the building to which the bridge once attached were leaning up against the tree that had once supported its weight. The rope to get up and down the building was laying up against the debris, wrapped around the splintered, shattered wood. Speared in places and half shredded. The fraying ends losing fibres in the wind that blew up against the other broken fragments, colouring it in mottled browns and faded greens.

Approaching the wreckage, I feel a knot forming in my stomach. Somehow, I just know what I’m going to find inside. Call it a sixth sense if you want. Personally, I thought I could sense the signs in the air. The rich, metallic smell of blood. Like a shark I home in on it, I can smell it upon the air, a scent that would change my world. I could feel it from my bones to my skin, permeating and infectious. Like a mist seeping into my pores. Inevitable and unavoidable I know I must take the final step and confirm that I’m right. Just one small step.

I take it, by god I wish I hadn’t.

What on earth possessed me to do that.

Why oh why would I take that one small step!

What greets me upon taking that momentous final step is perhaps the most gruesome sight I have yet seen in all my years of life. Through the frontier and battling beyond, from the fights on stations to the revolutions to the Odrath camps and others, things I’m not allowed to talk about, this takes the cherry.

Worse even than the horrific sight of Emily – one of the most harrowing sights that has breached my eyes.

The last step takes me beyond the range of the doorframe allowing me to look inside. From the cream-come-brown of the light wood on the outside, the stark contrast with the black stained wood is very apparent. The rough wood fibres that stick out, slowly drip the blood down to soak the ground in nutrients. A small colony of bugs seem to have made this magical nutrient shower their home and thrived because of it. The nearby meal a boon in itself. The bleeding walls make the scene much more harrowing as the sheer area of chaos and death is extended and even now, so long after the event, it remains traumatic, a scene sure to fill my dreams with tormenting sights and sickening smells.

In almost a sort of trance I stumble forward, on locked out legs and janky movements, in autopilot. I move forwards, my entire being focused on the scene before me. Entering the building the smell assaults me with new vigour. Sickeningly rich and sweet. The musk in the air has the - still liquid - blood stench pervading it so strongly that I can taste the all too familiar flavour upon the air as a snake searches for its prey. Tasting the air to fulfil the canvas of my senses. My stupid brain eager to absorb the full horror of what’s in front of me.

The treehouse was supported by a central beam, load bearing and a few other supporting beams anchoring it to a tree. With the treehouse having fallen down the beams had snapped allowing it to fall and dooming its occupant to a fate I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy.

The sorrow and empathy I felt within my heart is burning me out of me, a small candle flame searing and erasing it. Engraving the scene into my very being, lowering the bar for what shocks me, or raising it depending on how you view it.

Greeting me inside the broken treehouse is a man, or what used to be one, now it is only the ruined remains of one, a broken-down body.

Resting horizontally like a distorted version of sleep, the body has its appendages flailing out, hanging unsupported in the air. The neck extended as the head twists to stare at the floor, a result of gravity. The arms hang limp and unnatural as the shoulders have popped out, the pale flesh pock marked as the numerous insects attack it.

One of the hands resting on the floor has been severed and only a thin strand connects it to the forearm. A tendon perhaps, it’s a translucent gristly cable stretched out taut as it pulls on the body.

His right leg is missing, ripped from his body the socket pulled out of shape slightly from the force with which it was removed. The blood-stained cuts and gashes that litter his body like morbid tattoos are still bleeding slightly as the body moves, a result of my weight on the floor.

The fact that blood doesn’t coagulate here due to the summer heat makes the scene much more gruesome. Despite it being cold now the blood decaying causes the clotting platelets and fibrin to no longer work to solidify the blood and so it remains as a liquid.

Pushed through the torso is the supporting beam, the sharp dagger like wood spines at the break point coated in a crimson film as they emerge like an iceberg from the sea. Forced through the body carrying with them traces of the guts and organs. Impaled upon said spikes is a section of the intestine. Skewered like a sausage on a spit the slimy tubing lies limp and dead.

In a fork of the beam, a vertebra from the spine has been forced up and out of the body and it rests in a divot coated in a silvery membrane that has captured some of the slowly flowing blood like a water balloon fit to bursting. Its white colour disguised by the viscous bodily fluids that ooze over it

The body has split open with the force of gravity pulling it down. Sundered from sternum to hips, the ripped flesh discoloured and weathered from exposure seems to boil in the cold as the maggots writhe and squirm in their dance of life. Lumps forming like a water balloon on a tap, filling and draining as the larvae eat their way through the corpse.

I stare at the man, from his dirty feet to the ginger hair, coated in blood. From the rip in his guts as he was impaled to the bulging nacreous eyes that seem to fill the eye cavities to excess. I can’t help but imagine popping them like a pimple, a stream of pus flowing out as they deflate.

Urgh.

Back tracking, I leave the scene quietly but certainly quickly, I’ve no wish to stare at the unfortunate soul any longer.

When I leave the building, I take a look at the rest of the treehouse. It takes me a few minutes, but I believe I’ve pieced together what happened.

The man was hiding in the treehouse, or perhaps there by chance when the humanoids breached the camp. He tried to stay out of their way, but they found him. Evidence of slash marks on the support beams and trees show they ripped down the treehouse and the man fell to be impaled on the central beam. His right leg being closest the humanoids ripped it from him before abandoning the man for easier prey.

A true shame!