I'm disturbed from my slumber by a loud, annoying beeping noise coming from the table. I groan, unsatisfied by last night's rest, but I know there isn't much daylight to burn. There's no time for rest for the Damned, after all.
I try to reach for my watch--which also doubles as an alarm clock--from the hammock, too comfy in bed. I just can't quite reach it, so I try to stretch a little more--and suddenly the hammock flips and I fall onto the floor with a large thud. Oof, not a great start to my day. Hopefully the little perv downstairs didn't hear me. If he did, that'd be rather embarrassing-
"Hey, is-is everything okay up there?," sounded a voice from below, muffled by the wooden floor. Ugh, aaand they heard me. Great, now I seem like a complete moron.
"Uhg, yes, I'm fine. Why do you care?" I shout back, picking myself off the floor and rubbing my face. Whatever feeling of tiredness that was in my body before has now--quite literally--been knocked out of me. In no interest to hear a response from the little perv--which I suppose is their name now, it does suit them--, I quickly get dressed, grab my goggles and sledgehammer, throw a backpack over my shoulders after quickly stuffing as a can of beans and a soda for the road in the pack, and grab my watch. I turn the handle of the bunker door, flip up my hoodie, and step out into the bitter cold.
After I close the door behind me, I open my watch, activating the screen. It's a nice, pale orange rectangle for the background, and the text is a bright silver-white. The UI consists of a small radar which detects other electronic activity nearby, as well as the distance in both meters and time the storm is from my location, as well as a basic compass. I check the segment for the distance of the storm. "Half-an-hour, plenty of time", I say quietly to myself, pulling my sledgehammer up and resting it on my right shoulder.
I put my watch away and flip down my goggles with my free hand, which paints the world in a shade of red. It acts as a basic night vision and heat seeking, allowing me to see just a little bit farther. The goggles were originally just that: night vision and heat seeking goggles that I found in an abandoned military outpost, but I figured out how to hack it so it has full access to the criminal databases and downloaded the program that military personnel used to hunt down elite convicts. When the goggles detect said convicts, it displays the crime they're wanted for, as well as an estimated value of how alert they are of my presence. The UI that shows up when I see a convict doubles as an alert system of hostile location, and if that isn't enough to convince you that this thing is fucking awesome, whenever I...neutralize...a convict, the goggles think I am an official military soldier and reward me with bounty from the military treasury once I take the goggles off! Hahaa, fuck youuu, government that probably isn't even working anymore!
For some reason, whenever I've gotten multiple bounties in a row, I feel...stronger, and I am definitely stronger. Once I had collected...about five bounties or so, and I completely demolished this one hostile scavenger with one hit with my sledgehammer, like completely shattering his skull! I mean, I'm not complaining. One downside is whenever I take off my goggles, when the program triggers the bounty collection function I lose all my bounties, and I lose my extra strength.
I take a deep breath and begin to traverse through the snow, looking behind me and seeing the bunker fade into the fog. Even though I've done this hundreds of times, perhaps even a thousand times, seeing my place of safety fade away is...terrifying. While I'm scavenging for supplies for the day, the fact that I'm sometimes miles away from my home is just so nerve-wracking. I know that I'm capable enough to defend myself from an attack, but the fact that inevitably someday I won't return to my home is just so scary.
I sigh, pushing the thought back into my mind as I approach what appears to be the ruins of an old outpost of sorts. I ready my sledgehammer, zooming in the lenses of my goggles to get a closer look of the ruins. It appears abandoned, and my goggles aren't detecting any convicts registered in the military database, so I conclude I should be safe looting it.
I slowly trudge through the snow, biting my lips at the biting cold. It's times like these when I wish I had found some pants instead of just a skirt, because the cold can just blow right under it and wrap my legs in the dangerously chilly breeze. Or perhaps a belt of sorts would be nice, because I could tie it around my legs to wrap the skirt around me, but then that'd severely limit my mobility.
I shift my focus to the task at hand once I arrive at the outpost, and I release a sigh of relief as I see that it is, in fact, abandoned. I do see plenty of supplies, though, so the past inhabitants must've left relatively recently and without warning. I swing my backpack off my shoulders and catch one of the straps with my left hand, bringing it to my face to bite the zipper, opening the backpack with my mouth. I enter one of the tents of the outpost, and am extremely grateful to find an entire medkit, as well as a few cans of beans. I grin to myself as I drop the backpack to free my left hand to quickly shove the supplies into my bag, not even daring to release the sledgehammer with my right hand.
After the beans and the medkit are in my bag, I pick the bag up once more and proceed to the second tent in the outpost, hoping to find just as much goodies. Sadly, this tent wasn't as full of useful items; all I was able to scavenge here was a bandage and some tablets of sorts. I take a closer look at the engravings in one of the tablets, which reads "GG-961" on one side, and on the other side reads "500". Ah, goodie! I've found amoxicillin tablets, each 500 grams. If nothing else here kills me, this'll keep me alive for another day.
The reason why these tablets are so valuable is because everyone on this planet eventually develops this strange disease of sorts. I haven't heard much about it, but from the little snippets I've overheard from other scavengers before I robbed them is that it's an incurable disease that's constantly present in the atmosphere. Once you're inevitably infected by the disease, it slowly starts to spread through your entire body, weakening you before eventually claiming your life. Amoxicillin tablets like these--as well as some antibiotics of sorts that I've found once or twice--apparently slow the infection down, allowing you to survive longer. I haven't heard any confirmation if this is true, since these are just rumors, but from what I can tell I'm not dead, and I feel pretty healthy, so it must be working.
I pop out a tablet and quickly swallow it, because I haven't had one in a week or so, and happily bag the rest. I check my watch which says the storm is getting close, but that I have more than enough time to return home. I zip up my bag and sling it on my back once more and begin to walk out of the second tent, humming happily, very satisfied by today's salvage. I only make it about ten feet from the camp before something blunt cracks against the back of my head, and everything turns black.
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