Polybius - The Stranger II

[Zardoz]

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February 24th, 2021

The shattering of glass created a clear bullseye, a swift motion that ushered forth a whirring spin and resounding scream. Medical malpractice had occurred here once again, brought by a dosage of their own medicine.

Going back to the camp again was not a safe move, they were still likely to be suspicious of my absence and the only real hotspot left was The Hive. Despite having been there countless times by now, each stop was cursory and for a specific purpose, either seeing it with my own eyes or bringing another such as Ramos to bear witness to it all. Now with an EB-28 hazardous materials outfit used by Infestation Control teams given to me by The Watcher, likely a former member, I was ready to return and properly investigate. I thought I would find nothing more than I did last time but sometimes being wrong is better than your wishes coming true.

For the third and final time, much like The Watcher's bunker I hoped this to be my last visit to the hospital building and it nearly was. We knew a massacre had taken place there with The Trader's presence being noted by his vehicle. Some sort of deal went wrong and with nearly the whole town's population left inside that building. I always wondered what the exact precise angle was behind those killings. Sometimes cruelty for cruelty's sake was not off the table, but these guys were more organized than the camp of survivors out here. They had a fleet of vehicles, each of them heavily armed and had connections no doubt thanks to The Trader. Business was their end goal and they had enough knowledge to work together rather than stab each other like complete clowns. No, they had no morals but they were not crazy and that is what I feared the most.

Wiping out a population they could no doubt have used for them to pay tribute or trade with was a costly endeavour, even for a dirt poor town like this. They were getting something out of this place one way or another and wanted nobody to witness the aftermath. Unfortunately they never accounted for The Watcher and his hidden security cameras. Only trouble is nobody was alive inside the building to tell what fully transpired. I on the other hand had just about seen every body until I remembered downstairs was dotted with fewer corpses covered up in body bags and sheets to obscure them. Did any hospital just leave its half-operated dead as you step through the front door? For what it was worth, there was a lot of deceased that I figured had no connection to the killings upstairs.

Unzipping each bag and removing each covering revealed that the victims had huge cavities with missing chunks of their bodies, and a noticeable lack of organs. Whoever operated on them did not even bother to stitch the wounds back up, just sealing the bags up and calling it a day. At that point I turned to search a crate left outside containing 40s era surgical supplies which confirmed that an organ harvesting operation took place downstairs. The rest of the town must have remained upstairs to be selected one by one before they were all finally killed off, preventing any rumours from being spread about The Trader's business practices. Only someone well connected with the wealthy and powerful back in the cities could afford an organ transplant all the way out here. Turns out our former trading partner knew human was pretty cheap out here. Slavery, the trade of one man's body as a possession was taken to the next level. If you paid enough you could have eyeballs, hearts, livers and kidneys from any unfortunate soul out here.

Just as I was about to get to the bottom of this mess and the crate, that feeling without fail returned once again. I was being watched, and not by The Watcher, otherwise I would not have been so compelled to turn around and find another masked man. It was not The Stranger as I hoped but what appeared to be some scavenger, or well so I thought before they charged right for me with their bat.

The small tomahawk I brought with me to pry open the crate with had to be used to swiftly block the baseball bat out of blind desperation. This attacker did not expect me to be so willing to defend myself as I fell to the crate after parrying his strike. He warned me several times that I should have stayed out of this and that I had to stop looking. Irony was that I was being watched from the very start of this sorry mess and they expected me not to be vigilant out here? I had no time for wise cracks or quips, he was coming to strike me down. I was by no means a fighter so I dodged out of the way again with a swift roll before they could beat me down. By some blind stroke of luck he missed, charging right into a window.

The shattering of glass created a clear bullseye, a swift motion that ushered forth a whirring spin and resounding scream. Medical malpractice had occurred here once again, brought by a dosage of their own medicine. Using my own tomahawk the deal was sealed and I myself barely believed what had transpired. Shards of broken glass coated him and myself, but he had a lot more than a simple cut lodged into his shoulder. This bastard thought he could get the jump on me before I even knew what hit me, now he was on the ground squirming in agony. I asked the man why he came here and where his friends came from, yet he stubbornly refused. Time was running out, this asshole was going to bleed out on me. I asked again this time kicking him in the ribs then levelling a shotgun to the side of his temple that I was scarcely able to grab before hand. No answer other than a cry to 'Zuri' before his body gave up. Part of me wanted to twist the blade in so I could force a confession out but it only ended up with me twisting it out instead, retrieving the tomahawk.

This desert has a way of carving people down into their true selves, in order to survive you had to be uncompromising with what you wanted. I wanted to live but more than anything I wanted to know where the rest of them was hiding. His body contained no information, only a gun that he could have used on me. Being cheap out here was their signature move, why waste bullets when you can beat or slice a man to death? Next time they were not going to spare any expenses by issuing a warning and a home run, my days were numbered. I grabbed what I could find including the keys to the van he arrived with. I still had no idea where they were hiding but it had to be somewhere closer than I thought. You don't just send a man for miles in a desert with a baseball bat to kill an eyewitness. Only other thing in the town was a bunch of corpses and zombies, they knew I was here.

I just hoped The Stranger would return shortly, hopefully in one piece.