I was driving across a bridge, toward a country I have never visited before, On the other side of the bridge, I can barely make out what seems to be a series of homes that look to be abandoned, for there is no one in sight. There is a train station with a steaming locomotive parked on the track.
The series of homes looked like a place to start, so my partner and I made our way to the first abandoned looking house. First, we peeked in the windows to see if anybody may have been in there, but it seemed clear. I cautiously opened the front door and snuck inside while my partner did the same with the back door. My flashlight quickly scanned the inside of the room, but found nobody. The only thing interesting my flashlight picked up was an aardvark unicorn sculpture sitting neatly in a glass case. My curiosity won so I walked over to the unique sculpture.
Sculptures of mutant animals were very rare in the world today. I thought to myself, it wouldn't hurt if I swiped this sculpture and made some money off of it. Right now, it appears to not have an owner. I broke the glass case and quickly snatched the sculpture and put it into my pocket. Suddenly, from right behind me, I heard a whoosh of a baseball bat. My instincts instantly told me to duck. It was just in time too because a baseball bat was lodged into the wall right where my head had once been.
When I ducked, I pulled out my assault rifle and aimed it into the general direction from where the bat had come from. The only thing in that area was a pile of cucumbers that was easily 4 feet tall.
"Jay. We're not alone," I whispered into my headset.
"I know," replied Jay.
"Clear the basement. I've got upstairs."
"Yes sir."
His voice sounded very demoralizing, so I added," Don't worry. Just call for back up if you get into trouble. Besides, you've got a light machine gun."
"Yeah, nobody will stand a chance if they get in my way."
I slowly made my way around the first floor of the house. Everything seemed to be nice and neat, there were no signs of a struggle.
"I wonder why this house was abandoned. It's so neat."
"Not in the basement. It smells awful here and it's so messy."
"Well besides that, it's super neat."
A man with an AK-47 was sitting at the bottom of the stairs. He appeared to be watching for something; something I am unaware of.
"Sir are you-"
The man quickly turned and let out a stream of words of an unknown language and started to aim his weapon at me, but I had already shot a three round burst into his heart. I had no choice, I could not communicate with him, and he also did not look like the type that would change his mind.
"Deron, you alright?" asked Jay through the headset.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Just a little resistance."
I looked at the man. He looked like he had some things on him so I went through his pockets of his pants and his jacket and found his wallet. Inside, there was some extra cash, some credit cards, and a driver's license licensed to a man named Fauntleroy.
"Hey dude, you ever hear of the name Fauntleroy?" I asked Jay.
"No, but it must be pretty common in this country because I met a Fauntleroy dude before we crossed the bridge."
"Let's hope it wasn't the same one. The upstairs is clear."
"Basement's clear too. Let's get out of here."
"Alright."
We stepped outside of the house and moved on to the train station. It appeared to be abandoned too.
"This place is a ghost town," I told Jay.
"You got that right."
"Like last, you take the back, I'll take the front."
"How 'bout I take the front and you take the back for once."
"Fine. Have it your way."
I took the back entrance and found a train sitting in the middle of the railroad. The locomotive was a huge black beast with flame and skull decals on it. Steam still came out from the train
"I think I found the most tricked-out train in the world Jay. This thing's got flames and skulls on it. I'll check it out. It's also still steaming, which means somebody's been here recently," I told Jay.
"Oh. That's not good. Hope we can find the person who was here," replied Jay.
As I got closer to the locomotive, I finally got a feel on how big this beast was. It was giant, at least 25 feet tall. In big bold print on the drivers side was the name of the train, Hannah. Great, I thought, I've got a train with a name. I opened the driver's door and found a neat arrangement of buttons, papers, and dials.
"Hey Jay?" I called into my headset.
"Yeah?" Jay replied.
"What do you think happened here? It's way too neat to be a ghost town."
"No idea."
"While we're talking, you find anything?"
"No. Nothing yet."
The rest of the train soon proved to be empty. I climbed out from the caboose of the train and started to head for the back entrance of the train station. As soon as I stepped onto the ground outside of the train, I heard a weird blowing noise. I started to turn toward the noise, but something hit my neck, and caused me to black out.
I awoke in a small, straw bed in a oddly familiar house. I sat up groggily and quickly reviewed the situation I was in. Nobody appeared to be in the room, and there was no sign of anybody ever being here. Also, there were no chains or ties on me, which surprised me because usually these were used if you were captured. The downside to this room was that their were no windows, which made the door the only exit.
Unsure of what to do, I tried to come up with an escape plan to get out, but could not come up with anything besides trying to get out through the door. I got nothing to lose, I told myself after deciding to just knock down the door and run. Kicking down the door was much harder than most doors. The door didn't even move after kicking it 20 times. I'm trapped, I thought, This is the end. After all the kicking, it finally came to me that I had never even tried to see if the door was unlocked. This lit a spark in me, and I instantly jumped up to the door and attempted to turn the handle.
The handle turned! I became free! I started to walk down the hallway when suddenly, it hit me. This was the first house Jay and I searched. This proves we are not alone, I thought. Without my headset or knowledge of how long I was out, I wasn't sure if looking for Jay was the right decision. I looked through the upstairs window, and saw that it was no longer day time. It was probably midnight because it was pitch black outside.
I also lost my assault rifle, so running out in the middle of the night with only a pistol probably isn't the smartest thing to do. Going back to where I last was where I decided to go. I walked down the stairs and noticed that the weird aardvark unicorn sculpture returned back to its original place. How? The people that captured me must find this sculpture important.
"Do not steal that sculpture again sir," said a voice from behind me.
I quickly turned around and saw a young, thin man with a blow gun in his hand standing in the doorway. He looked to be no more than 25 years old, but was very muscular. His smooth, olive skin looked misplaced with the torn T-shirt and ripped jeans.
"I'm sorry sir. Won't happen again," I reply.
"You don't understand do you?" the young man asked.
"Understand what?"
"The aardvark unicorn is the reason why this town became deserted."
"How?" I asked feeling a little stupid.
"It was the first warning from Wall."
"Who's Wall?" I asked, again feeling stupid.
"He's the ruler of this country. He is a very bad man. Dictator he is. He threaten our people. Said we die if we don't work more hours of the day. We disagreed. We tried to escape on that train, but Wall's people came and captured most of our people, and took them away. You've got to get out of here before he come back. Quickly get your other friend. He's in one of the bedroom's upstairs."
"Okay. We will leave at once."
I turned back to where I had come, and retrieved Jay from the other bedroom. Fortunately, he had just woken up, so I did not have to drag him out of the house. When I helped him up, I said," Jay, we need to leave, NOW."
"No duh. Let's go."
We ran down the stairs and turned to where the young man and I had our conversation, but he was no longer there.
"Guess we can't thank him," said Jay.
We ran to our car outside, and jumped in. It took us no time to get back to the bridge. Our car sped away from the broken country. After we crossed the bridge, we made sure never to go back to that country again. When we got back home, we checked the map to see what country we were, also finding it weird that we didn't need a passport. On the map, there was no sign of land where we were.
"What the heck?!" I yelled.
"Where were we?" asked Jay.
"I guess we'll never know."
