Author's Note

“Step by step they were led to things which dispose to vice, the lounge, the bath, the elegant banquet. All this in their ignorance they called civilisation, when it was but a part of their servitude.”
― Tacitus, The Agricola and The Germania

Invasion

The alien sun slips down in the sky as late afternoon becomes evening. It is the sixth day.

The Pioneer grimaces at the artful work of her hands. She’s set four types of traps: the Apache leg trap, the drowning snare, small game snares, and two extra proximity alarms bolted to blue barked trees. If anything dares show itself in the hunting grounds of the raging judge in Eden’s noontime, they will not be breathing long. One way or another.

She is good at what she does. Her knife cuts and her hands tie and her eyes scan. A decade and a half of survival with no help and every disadvantage has honed her into a sharp little point. At least, as much as she has let it do so, so it has done.

She cannot help but sigh. It isn’t that she is overly sentimental about the process. Humans are more important than beasts to her, and there is no comparison. She would kill even the kindest beast to save the life of even the most surly human without hesitation. This Pioneer has not had the luxury and leisure which so often devalues humanity. Yet she had not given herself over to the darkness of an age that reveled in blood and iron. She had never kicked a dog in her life. Scraps that were not necessary for her own life she spared with smiling. It was more expensive to be kind in her brave new world, but it was not yet impossible. Her father had never read her a single word of the bible her mother had left behind, which had burned in the blacksite facility, but she remembered reading once about two naked newlyweds and how they were friends with every beast that flew or crawled or walked.

She feels the shaking in her head before she hears the proximity alarms shrill warning. She freezes, dropping the vines tied in a small noose as her hand went for the gun in its cracked leather holster. She did not draw it forth, not yet. But it aches to be used now.

She concentrates on the noise and thought: Cut sound. Report.

And in her sight there was suddenly floating a blue dialogue box. The implant that the blacksite had grafted to her very bones takes over and she sees the source of the alarm.

Something is nosing around the caslte. Her Castle, she corrects, grinding her teeth together.

But she doesn’t move. Not yet.

What could it be? That is the question, isn’t it? This is not her world, and wherever she may go and whatever she might tell herself, anywhere her proverbial flag is set is an invasion on virginal soil. She is the Pioneer--she is the Invader. It is her castle, but it is most rightly the castle of those who were born within the same universe as those stones and the strange, cracked art which baffles her. She has precious little to judge the inhabitants of this land. The only clues are scarcity and war.

A scavenger, perhaps. A scout of the army that had destroyed that place? Or animals. Some small game, maybe, but maybe not. Maybe something awful. She sees a creature in her mind’s eye that is all teeth and eyes and grabbing, flailing flagella. It knows nothing but hunger. No wonder the forest is empty--it has eaten everything there.

Her heart riots in her chest. She breaks out into a cold sweat.

And then the Pioneer roars in frustration at her own heart and pulls her father’s gun. It shines in the dying light and she sprints back for “home”.

Log 6, addendum

Goddammit! God-fucking-dammit!

Everything is just… fucking… everywhere.

I had to tear the earpiece off so I could just… cuss at nothing by myself for a few minutes. I’m not any less angry now, I’m just not as much in a shooty mood.

My camp is trashed. The Mule has been opened and dug through. The tent is knocked over, my little firepit in the courtyard has been bothered. They uprooted one of my proximity alarms even! And…

Shit. They found my day-rations. Three of them are crushed, just ground into the dust. I’m going to starve to death. Two days and nothing in my snares, three days of food gone just like that… I’m going to die. I’m gonna… I…

I’m sorry. I didn’t handle that well.

I need to focus on what’s in front of me. One thing at a time. First, log. Second, pick up everything. Third, hydrate and rest. Fourth… fourth, I don’t know. I’ll figure that out.

What have I been up to since last time? I set up two dozen traps. Some are fancier than others, with some jerryrigged vine ropes. Most of them are more like hole traps, those Apache sorts. All of them covered as best I could and disguised well… but marked so I’ll recognize where they are. If I break something out there I’m done for, no buts.

God, I’m trying to be calm, but I need to know what did this. I don’t think it is a who… I’m pretty sure. It’s just too random feeling and nothing was stolen. One of my first thoughts was that the Feds had gotten the gate working. Imagine the heart attack that caused! But they would have this place staked out. I’d have been shot before I even saw the damage.

I feel violated.

I can’t even be optimistic about my traps.

Log 7

I’m not alone.

I went out this morning to check the traps. Found nothing, came back, ate, went back out again. Worried over them. Dug a few more pit traps closer to home. Checked again. I wasted a lot of energy but I’m gettin’ really damn anxious about finding something. I managed to forage as I went and picked up enough of those waterfruits to fill my backpack up all the way, so that helped. Half a dozen of those were my not so filling dinner.

While I was picking them off one of the weird blue trees, I kicked something in the bush that gave a little metallic ping. I stopped, looked down, and then saw it. A used shell. I picked it up and turned it over in my hands. Cold, hard, no longer angry. It was a big casing too. Whoever shot this was not playing around.

I found like two dozen. After awhile I just stopped counting. Someone went full-auto rock and roll on… something. It was like Amarillo all over again. I felt like I was little and momma...

I found the damage as I kept going. A lot of shots went wide, or they went right through because they tore up one of the trees. How the hell did I not hear all this? There’s blood in the grass just… just tons of it. God, what happened? It smelled like a slaughterhouse.

I’m not alone… and I need to move some of my traps. Nothing is going to be in that area now. Whoever the hell followed me, and I know they did because those were .45 auto, they’ve chased half the forest away murdering something.

I’m furious. I’m gonna starve because some stupid bastard went on a fuckin’ lark. And you know what? I’ve got a good idea who or what. The Federal troops must have gotten enough out of the labs to get here. God, what if there’s a whole squad? One would be bad enough, but more? I don’t know what’s worse, a whole bunch of those fascist assholes stomping around or one quiet one in the shadows.

I need to do this now. I can’t waste time. I’ll head out… I can come in late.

ADDENDUM:

Night is falling. I feel like I’m being watched.

God I hate this so much. I’ve left the pits alone but I dismantled a few of the small game snares and I’ll repurpose everything. None of them had anything because of course they didn’t. Someone’s on my territory now. God help anything that gets in my way. My nerves are shot and I know it.

I’ve got the earpiece in and I’m recording this log just so I hear something beside the occasional night noise. It’s like that night when I was a courier, waiting to get jumped in the woods by those creeps on the Oklahoma line… It’s the same feeling I had when I saw that weird animal, the horse goat thing. My skin crawls. Hell, I take that back, I feel like I want to crawl right out of it. Every little shadow is waiting to kill you. The air just presses down. My breath is catching. What is this? I…

You know what? I think there’s something out there. You know what else? It’s the fuckin’ sabbath but I know it ain’t god. Or maybe it is. Maybe it just waited and waited and let me walk all over the place all alone and now I’ve done enough and it’s bored with me because we found out where it lived.

I’ve stopped moving. I know something is out there. I feel it. Someone. It’s gotta be whoever shot all those fuckin’ bullets. Judge is out.

Alright! Alright, come out. Right now. I know you’re there. Is that you, you Federal sonsabitches? I saw all those shells you left behind! Your mommas never teach you to clean up after yourselves? Wonder if you even knew her!

I feel your eyes on me. I’m not afraid of you. Let’s talk.

Nothing. Of course there’s nothing. Feds don’t suffer loudmouths gladly, so it ain’t...

No! Something. Right there, come out now!

It’s gone.

I feel like an idiot but I just felt so terrified. It was that stupid creature from a few days ago, the one I first saw. Remember? It reminded me of a horse... It had the same cloak and everything. I probably scared the crap out of the poor thing, but it scared the crap out of me. I yelled at it and got a glimpse of it in the semi-dark as it ran. I know it was the same--saw it’s head this time. Same weird tag bangle things. It’s got like… a mane, I guess? It’s mamamalian. Looked like a mohawk on its head?

What a world.

Log 8

Noontime. Ate my ration for the day. Stared at the ones that were left.

Whatever is watching me continues to watch. I feel its eyes on me constantly wherever I go in the castle. As soon as I leave the grounds, it gets worse. I tried checking my traps this morning but after five minutes into the woods I just came back here because…

I can’t describe it. What the hell is wrong with this place? Or is it me? Am I sick? Is this something that that weird horse thing does? Dammit. Dammit! It can’t. That’s insane I can’t even see it, I’m just… I’m just under a lot of pressure.

God, it makes my skin crawl. It’s just so wrong. The woods are still beautiful and they look the same but now I look at them and I just want to fuckin’ hurl. It’s so twisted. It’s wrong. Wrong is the only word I can think of now.

The sun is wrong! The sky is wrong! This stupid castle is wrong. Everything is so wrong here. It looks the same but I can’t help but feel like it’s all horrible. It’s like a kid’s drawing of the world… the water is blue but water ain’t really that blue, and the trees are never that green and that brown and.. This whole world suddenly seems like it was created for children. Too big and rounded and perfect. Where’s the people? Where are the towns and the roads? The sky is too clear.

I know this sounds crazy but I can’t help how I feel. Suddenly I’m jumping at every shadow. I holed up in between the two thrones because going outside scared the crap out of me. I keep expecting the proximity alert and then I’ll hear some godawful noise and then something huge will sorta slouch into the great hall and it’ll be impervious to bullets. It’ll be all teeth and eyes ‘cause isn’t that how aliens are in all the movies and pictures and old world things? And then they chase you down and two bites and you’re done. Or they’re big, tall, muscular things that toy with you and then trap you like I’m gonna trap some stupid critter and then gut you while you scream. Or they just shoot you with lasers from the sky or they suck you up into some big, shining ship and they do stuff to you while you’re still alive. It’s stupid but what if it isn’t wrong? Gates to other worlds was stupid but here I am, and I’m stupid for being here, so why not? Why the hell not?

Maybe I haven’t seen anyone because this place just ate them. Maybe they made some kind of freak experiment and it killed them all? What if I find a dead world outside of the forest and all that’s left is the hunter?

Some kind of super alien disease. Bioweapons. Plagues.

Wrath of God. Maybe that’s who’s out there watching, not that weird horse thing from last night. Or maybe that thing’s got God’s beady little eyes and I’m bein’ weighed already. That’ll be great! Hey, guys, guess what? Y’all found the portal to purgatory! Congratulations! Hell’s this way and it’s a view to die for! Step right through!

I have no expectations because how much do you really expect to get from a few days of probes? Nothing, that’s what. Nothin’ friggin’ useful. Oh, sure, it’s nice now, but what if I wake up tomorrow and I find out that sometimes this nice world rains fucking razer sharp hail? Or that every few months it just decides to freeze over for awhile or...

This is an alien world. If my own damn world wants to kill me, how much more will one that I’m completely foreign to?

Two hours since I paused my log. The feeling left a few minutes ago.

Now that it’s gone, I’m having trouble understanding the first half of this. I keep replayin’ it and all I get is more confused. I mean, I don’t doubt I was nervous. I remember feeling nervous. I just can’t understand why.

This place is beautiful. It is! I haven’t said that much since the beginning, but it’s pretty great. So quiet and peaceful. So it can’t just be the castle and such. It’s gotta be what happened last night getting on my nerves.

I’ve decided that the best thing to do is to check my traps as soon as I’m off this recording and just try to forget about this morning. Honest to god, listening to it was humiliating, but it don’t sit right to just erase it. I said that stuff. It stays. This is the only story there’ll be.

For now, while I’m coming down from all the fuss of earlier… I’ve decided that I need to start talking more and narrating less. It’ll be good for me, I think.

Future plans! Havin’ plans is good, even if you probably can’t get around to them. Daddy was pretty clear on that when I was younger and he was, you know, sober. And alive. Gotta have goals. So I’ll set some.

First, I need to secure me some food. That one is obvious.

Secondly, I need to really, really fortify this camp somehow. I mean, hell, it’s already in a castle but I think I may try some non-lethal traps here and there if I can find something to make them with. Poximity alert is a godsend miracle, but it won’t cut it. I’m reacting. Even with a warning, I’m still one step behind. I figure a good tripline or snare or something can stop an intruder long enough that I’ll have the upper hand for sure. I might can figure out what trashed the place, too, while I’m at it.

Thirdly, I want to find whoever it is that built the castle. I mean, in general, not specific. I get the feeling that whoever built this place either lives forever or they’re long dead. Maybe their kids’ kids are around somewhere. I’ll have to leave the forest to do that, which might take awhile. It’s kinda big.

Speaking of the forest, I figure I should describe it for whoever comes along, when y’all come along.

It’s huge. Remember that first. Massive. There are actually a few paths, but I’ve not used them much. I want to meet the people who live here but… not yet. I want to be ready for that, and if they use those paths I’d rather not be caught out in the open before I’m ready. Scare them and I might end up with a face full of lead. But it’s not just my safety I’m worried about. I’m painfully aware of the chances that I might be the only human they ever meet and… I mean, even if it means nothing, I want to be friends. The only human that ever comes here, and if I can be their friend maybe that would be worth it. Hell, I’ve always tried to be neighborly when I had neighbors to be it with. Which, okay, wasn’t often on account of all the drifting and the shooting but… I tried. And it’s nice.

But yeah, the forest. Sorry. Big. Got that part down! The terrain is tough here. It’s not the worst I’ve been in, because honestly these days? I was in Nebraska once, in the sandhills. It sucked before but the way the world is going, its hell now. I-35 wasn’t much better, least the parts I rode on horseback. The trees here are all twisted and old, and the briars get thick. I got a bunch of holes in my shirt now from them, which is annoying but only a little.

The weirdest thing is the lack of animals. I’ve seen some birds out there, and heard a bunch I haven’t seen. I thought I heard something yesterday, but I didn’t mention it because I never saw anything and my traps were empty, which left me feelin’ low, as you can guess. Also, I was a bit… preoccupied.

I miss them, really. I always liked animals. My favorites? That’s a tie between Miss Yule’s dogs in Shreveport when I was a girl and the horses at the Courier service. The dogs barked a lot but I was a young girl and they were always willin’ to play with me. The horses because… I don’t know. Maybe it’s the look in their eyes, you know? Horses have these big watery eyes, cows too, like they know and feel a lot more than they let on just standin’ around. It doesn’t hurt that those horses saved my ass a couple of times on the road. I always felt safer when a longer or urgent route meant I could check one out from the paddock. My favorite was a brown mare named Sapphire. I stopped over in one of the shanty towns in the outskirts of Vicksburg once just to rest my aching ass from riding all day and that little horse was the only reason I got out of that place alive. Survivalists, Federals, Commonwealth police… those I all sort of get, but I’ll never understand the junkies. The ones all strung out on the newest shit. They know that stuff is cut with fillers that just make it worse and they really honestly don’t care. They scare me. Scared Sapphire too, which is probably why she was so quick even after a long day.

I’ve been thinking about my traps. I hope that animal from a few days ago and yesterday doesn’t get caught in one. I want to live, but I also don’t want to hurt it. If I have to… God, I hope whatever I catch is edible. I don’t want to have it on my conscious if the lab module says it isn’t. The water is clean--I mean, everything’s cleaner and safer than the water in the rivers back home, cause nothing can friggin’ live in that stuff anymore--and some of the fruit is safe… It’s just not enough to keep me going. The module doesn’t lie.

But enough of that. It seemed like a smart critter. It’ll be fine. And I’m going to be fine too. I’ll be back in a few hours. Wish me luck.

The Pioneer walks in the cool afternoon in the shade of the thick canopy of the forest. In the cool of the day, on her feet, it is easier to again feel that this is a good world. It’s a little easier to feel safe again.

The feeling of being watched does not return. The traps are empty, and it dampens her spirits, but she tries to keep herself positive.

It never occurs to her to fish, but she cannot be judged too harshly there. Given time and desperation, it would make itself known. Her father had fished when he had been a boy, but even the waters were going bad.

Why? Industry, at first, and sabotage later. Even before the schism and the civil war, there had been rumbling rumors of conflict and then open warfare the world over. Everything teetered at the edge of some sort of finality, and then veered off at the last moment… only to land on hard ground. Wars were won abroad and lost abroad, won and lost at home. Fanatics tend to win in the short run, but they have a bad habit of holding the other side of the stick of dynamite still when it’s long since time to have thrown. A long way to say that nobody who knew anything about surviving in the wastelands south of the Ohio valley fished anymore, and few dared look at the new breeds of old foes and food too closely.

Mostly, she thought of steak. She’d been in a steakhouse once when her father was alive, when he had a job in Shreveport. He was a factory worker. The Republic was newer and optimistic in those days, and putting people to work. They would save whatever they could. They were going to rebuild America, so the people said. And they believed it to, those cowboy hat wearing moneybags from North Dallas. They thought it was all a done deal already, soon as they started. The Feds were gonna lose, everyone knew that. Commonwealth had the hearts and minds of what was left of America and soon more states would join them.

It went south, of course. Literally, though no one laughed. Concordat cut short the hopes of a unified front. The Feds lost a lot of territory, sure, but nothing they really cared about anymore, and in the end there was no second front until years later. Troops and material no longer employed in keeping an unruly population under control moved west. The Mississippi churned with blood. The front stalled. The bombing campaign of Shreveport began.

Things fell apart. They tend to do that.

The Pioneer stops and examines an old tree and is rewarded by a sight that briefly chases away her dark thoughts of starvation. It is a beetle, slowly making its way along. She makes a soft cooing sound, more happy to see anything alive at all then specifically this creature. She doesn’t like bugs particularly, but any company is good company.

Eventually, it flies away and she watches it as best she can with a smile roughly the size of Texas. She’d know, she’s been all over it on foot and horseback and a few times even on lo-speeder.

It wasn’t like the world she had left behind didn’t have things like trees and beetles and streams. It did. It had these things in abundance, even if most of the streams she knew weren’t safe to bathe in anymore without boiling the water and perhaps an act of God just in case. But in a new frame, it was easier to really see these things.

She had always liked trees and forests, but it had been harder to enjoy them before, and now at last she felt she could. It was paradoxical and stupid and she couldn’t really explain it. Maybe it was the onrushing potentiality of death that made it easier to slow her walk. Maybe it was the beauty of the slowly setting sun that pierced the gnarled branches like a defiant fencer. Maybe it was the fact that at long last, she was on her own with no master.

Or maybe it was just because she liked the woods. Who knew?

The Pioneer stops briefly by another stream and fills both canteens.

The forest around her is quiet. Deathly quiet? Perhaps, but not for her. She still enjoys the stillness of her undisturbed walk.

The problems don’t go away for long. As she straightens and stretches, they come back with a vengeance. She has only a few days of guaranteed food. With water, she can extend her survival a few more crucial days, but she’ll be too weak to do go far before long. If she even makes it that long--whoever fired all those shells and fought with whatever bled all over the grass was out there, and they could easily find her given time. They might already have.

And the locals. The horse thing too, and the nagging possibility that it had caused her sudden descent into paranoia somehow.

The Pioneer was ignorant of many things, but surprisingly knowledgeable in the strangest areas. Books had been her companions many times in the bombed out and rundown towns of a beleaguered southwest. She had raided dozens of libraries and pilfered the bookstands of a hundred abandoned pharmacies. She had read everything from the the Gospels to inane self-help. By flickering lightbulbs she’d bought with a day’s wages in a rented upper room she had read a copy of The Brothers Karamazov with perhaps four dozen pages missing, another dozen marked up in cyrillic, and all of it smelling repulsively of sweat and cloying decay. She had read the meaner forms of science fiction in the lobby of the Courier office in between pauses to spit foul liquid into a cup from her dip (she’d given it up when it was too expensive to maintain). So the idea of mind control was quite present in her mind. She did not discount it.

The labcoats and the scowling soldiers of the blacksite facility had not left her completely in the dark. The labcoats stressed the possible dangers. The soldiers had been clear on how they, personally, would handle those dangers. They rarely agreed about much, but the core things they were in perfect unity about: a new world is a dangerous world.

Really, it was nothing new. Mankind had been finding new worlds since he knew he had a world at all. Britain was a new frontier for Rome. China found a brand new empire in the west, a little China in their own mind. Sailing Polynesians found islands everywhere they went. White-skinned Englishman found a virgin land in America, more in their minds than in reality. Spaniards found gold and slaves. On and on and on. New worlds. A new sun. New constellations.

Be cautious, they had finally agreed. Keep your eyes open. Watch and learn. Don’t shoot first, but don’t hesitate too long. Be friendly if you can.

It’s best to start there, at least, even if most of us know it rarely stays there.

A new land is a promise. An opportunity. It’s adventure, with spoils for the great heart and the steady sword hand. All of this runs through the back of the Pioneer’s mind, though it was not how she would have said it. Never how she would have, yet it persists… the drumbeat that summoned a hundred empires.

Imagine what’s beyond the horizon.

Imagine if it was yours. All of this unspoiled peace. The new sites, the new smells, the new good earth. All of it, yours. You could start over. And if it went bad? You could keep starting over.

The Pioneer hums to herself, her mind going off in strange new directions. It is in this thoughtful and strange mood that she waltzes into camp and discovers the stranger sitting on one of the great and ancient thrones, clad in a long coat and looking over some notes on a thin pad. He looks up. He smiles, even as she pulls her gun with lightning speed and points the riotous instrument of judgement at him.

She opens her mouth.

“Who the everliving hell are you?”