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Time passed. Moments occurred when the fog was broken by lightning strikes of rage In those moments they became aware of the carrion birds who circled overhead, and the dull fear and certainty of death. In the Barrens everything alone is prey.
The silhouette of a long-neglected wind turbine sprouted from the flat horizon as Cyr moved closer.A reminder when this land was used to graze cattle in the thousands. Now scrub grass barely had time to grow between waves of ravenous locusts swept the ground bare. Hours passed at a snail''s pace before its rusted and screeching form towered over them. Slow, but it was miraculously still turning in the desert breeze.
The windmill''s shadow was a reprieve from the baking heat, even a few degrees was a relief. The trickle of water it managed to pull from beneath the earth was a cool blessing on their lips. They lowered themself into the trough and let the water dribble upon them. The memory of rain accompanied the drops as they ran their way over their head. It was shaved, although a week or more of growth crept up between the crisscrossing scars of raised brand burns. A testament to the time it spent on the run since their escape.
The freshest of the brands still ached, it was likely infected. Cyr''s former captors, the Rawhide Knot, took pleasure in expressing their cruelty with heated steel rods. The Knot were flesh eaters and bandits, not slavers in the same sense as the clans farther east. They kept a few prisoners from raids on the sparse settlements and trade caravans who crossed between them. Not for labor but for entertainment, and eventually vittles.
"If it is poisoned, at least it will quicken the end," they thought as they raised their mouth to the spigot, catching the tiny stream between cracked lips. "Here would not be the worst place to die."
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He called himself the Marquis de Carnivale. It was a point of pride to him that the local settlements in the no-man''s-land along his loop between the 7Wonders outposts to the west and the Free States to the east used him as a cautionarytale to their children.
"Don''t go out alone or the Marquis will snatch you up for his dinner pot! don''t wander too far from the campfire or you''ll be carried off! Bury your scat or the Marquis will sniff you out!", the parents would tell their young ones. The Marquis had no interest in children, Babylon only accepted adults for conscription and the free states only cared for their own escaped slaves. They were in the midst of some foolish eugenics program and avoided introducing new stock.
After packing away the solar panels the other figures idled lazily adjusting respirators and checking each other''s gear. They were covered head to toe in a synthetic black material, snugly fitting over their rough mottled skin. Genetically, they weren''t strictly human, though they might pass at a glance. Their limbs were proportionally too long, and they had a tendency to drop to all fours for few strides especially when moving quickly. And they could indeed move quickly. Easily keeping pace with the truck as it crept through the badlands at a steady 40 km/h.
Buzzards circled to the northwest. The figure atop the ladder spoke a few words into a radio headset when the last rays of sunlight slipped below the horizon. With a few clicks, the electric motor came to life and the rig lurched forward quietly. The lanky forms of the hunters moved like shadows in the starlight as they fanned out into a "V'' ahead and abreast of the vehicle, probing for hazards and scenting the air. They could smell blood on the wind. They crept ahead carefully in the direction of their quarry.