"911, What is you emergency?"
"Uh, yeah, hi. I wasn't really sure who to call about this..."
"I'm sorry?"
"Well, it's just that, I'm over in Rachel and, well, uh-"
"Sir, if this isn't an emergency-"
"No, no, it is. This is gonna sound crazy, but it's, like six in the morning and the sun didn't come up."
"What?"
"Are you listening? I said that the sun just...didn't come up this morning."
"You're haven't been drinking, have you, sir? Have you used any recreational drug-"
"Dude, I'm not high. I'm telling you, the sun isn't there. The sky is totally dark. I can't even see any stars."
[SILENCE]
"Wait, I think I see something. What is tha-"
[CALL IS DROPPED]
"Sir? Hello?"Archived 911 Call from Rachel, Nevada - Circa 2013
Mesquite Relocation Zone, Nevada
Warm air blew across the desert landscape, carrying with it the usual menagerie of smells. Flowers, the scent of cacti, blood, shit and vomit mingled in the air around the small diner. Refugees, carrying their belongings in their satchels and bags, passed by frequently, followed closely by soldiers. Valerie knew where they were going. The relocation camps, re-purposed from the town's once vibrant golf-courses and country-clubs, were being filled with the thousands displaced by the Zone. Even years later, they were still coming. Whenever some Zone settlement was raided or the right survivors gave out the right bribes, the troops would march them into the camps and begin processing. Three weeks of tests, examinations and questioning. They'd take any kind of sample you could think of; urine, saliva, blood, semen. Anything that might indicate you were anomalous, and if you were, you'd quietly disappear. Someone might make a stink about it, but if you were lucky, you'd get some handwave "matters of national security" explanation. If not, one would hope they found your body later.
She sighed. They could treat the refugees like hell because people let them. Everyone was so desperate for some semblance of security around the Zone that they were willing to forego even the most basic liberties. Or, at least, that was how she looked at it. She cracked open her canteen, taking a long swig before sliding from the decrepit stool. A thin layer of dust covered the countertops, occasionally being blown away by the odd wind gust. Valerie slinked behind the counter, thumbing over the piles of broken dishes and dead roaches. Whoever had worked here must have bugged out quickly, she thought, noting a long smear of blood across one of the coffee makers. Or they hadn't gotten out at all. She rose to her feet, finding nothing, and headed back into the diner lobby.
Miller was taking his sweet time. If her suspicions were correct, he was probably sneaking around the refugee camps, trying to nab his next fix. Whether it was trying to find some "Stan" or the so-called Salk Tonics, the man was always hunting for something. Said something typically involved getting higher than a kite. She'd checked his bag once, out of curiosity, and found that he rarely ever packed anything other than drugs. How the man had survived in the Zone for as long as he had, she couldn't say. The best explanation she could muster was that he was probably a wizard. In another time, she might have scoffed at that thought, but nowadays, nothing was out of the question.
The interior of the diner was decrepit beyond belief. The few booths that weren't torn to shreds were tossed around like toys. When she arrived, there'd even been a few human (and not so human) bones laying around. Stools laid scattered across the floor, intermingling with shattered white tiling, where a few rogue plants had begun to grow. She recognized a few, but as far as she could remember, most flowers didn't have teeth. The kitchen had been left in similar order. Pots and pans strewn about or, in a few instances, melted together. The worst part had been the freezer. The food had been looted out, but pools of dried blood coated the floor of the now deathly warm metal room. In the corner, she had found the desiccated corpse of some humanoid creature. It was gaunt, and though it probably had been quite tall at one point, the corpse had decayed to such a degree that it was hard to really tell. It's mouth was frozen in a face of abject pain, and it didn't take her long to understand why. It's entire backside had been fused into the wall.
Shaking off the memory, Val snatched her bag and rifle from behind one of the overturned booths and headed for the door. If Miller wasn't going to take her seriously, then why even bother. She had just shoved the creaking metal door open when a voice called out to her.
"Valerie. Over here."
She swung around, finding Miller leaning against one of the rusted cars, a long cigarette hanging from his mouth. She sighed. Of course he had to make a dramatic entrance.
"Where the hell were you? We were supposed to meet up, like, twenty minutes ago."
"Scouting."
Val raised an eyebrow. Sensing her confusion, he smiled. His toothy grin was offputting, and coupled with his amber aviators and dark-blue button up shirt, he looked like some half-baked narco. He continued.
"I was scouting around for some folks to help us out. I figured that, if we want to make it to the epicenter alive. We'll need help."
She put her head in her hands. The sun beat down on her dirty brown hair, it's tempo matching that of her throbbing headache. Every neuron played the same message, the same desperate request. Just fucking shoot him. It was supposed to be a covert mission; as few people as possible with a singular, simple goal. Reach the center of the Zone. Now, Miller had complicated that. He'd probably promised them some kind of payment, or a reward, or a cut of the earnings, or something to get people to tag along.
"Fuck, Miller" she said, still nursing her headache. "I told you we didn't need any more people."
He shook his head, adjusting his wide-brimmed hat as he did.
"Val," he said, stepping forward. "If you want to head in there and get yourself killed, that's fine, but I don't have a deathwish. I don't have any family to speak of, and I sure as hell don't have some dead husba-"
She raised her hand, shooting him the dirtiest look he'd ever seen.
"Don't you fucking dare, Miller."
As the last words escaped her lips, her entire body went into revolt. Pain shot up her back and her lungs, shrieking in anguish, forced her to her knees. Miller stepped forward, dropping his satisfied facade for one of genuine concern. Val coughed and sputtered, spitting a rather large splatter of blood across the ground. He stepped back a bit at that, then, finally gathering his wits, helped her back to her feet. She batted him away, weakly, and propped herself against the melted carcass of a Harley. She quickly wiped the blood from her mouth and tried to catch her breath. Briefly, her thoughts drifted back to the endless doctor's visits, where she had spent hundreds for a battery of physicians to look her over in confusion. Singularity Sickness, they called it. A symptom of Zone exposure; experiencing things the human body was never meant to experience. The coughing wasn't even the worst part, she mused, if anything it was-
"Look, I'm sorry, alright?"
Miller cut her thoughts off with a half-formed apology. Valerie caught herself; shaking off the anger and forcing it back down. She wasn't the kind of person to anger easily, but Miller knew just the right buttons to push. He knew exactly how to get her roiled up, and he knew exactly what he had said. That was what he thought this was about, she knew it. He thought that all this work, all the expeditions and missions into that god-forsaken place, were to achieve vengeance. That wasn't true. She needed something, anything to help her understand why. The place had claimed her husband, dozens of friends and acquaintances, and her chance at a normal life. There had to be some reason, something that could explain what she'd done to deserve this.
Brushing away the thought, she turned back to Miller, still irritated.
"How many?"
"What?"
"How many people did you find?"
He scratched his head, a bandolier of shotgun shells jingling on his chest as he did.
"Um, a few?"
