Word of Peter’s ability to sense BTs even reached a delivery organization on the West Coast.
They were an organization slightly smaller than Fragile Express and they had offered him a job. The organization operated in an area where Bridges didn’t have a presence, and they wanted him to join them so that they could expand.
The reason Higgs had begun transporting cargo was to support himself as a prepper child, but his purpose for carrying out this delivery work gradually shifted away from keeping himself alive to helping other people. The preppers in his area now completely relied on him for their deliveries or they wouldn’t be able to survive. I’m needed, he realized. After growing up all alone, he now had partners. They connected people. Peter wondered what his father would say if he could see him now. The father who had always said that the outside world was dangerous and all they could do was live and die in their shelter. Peter wondered what his old man would make of him.
Then his partner died. It was while they were crossing the mountains to make a delivery.
They were making the delivery in a team of two, but his partner had become lost in some fog. Just as Peter received a radio communication to ask for help, everything cut out. His partner was probably already in BT territory by then. Peter could see the light from the voidout from where he was. He wondered how many partners he had lost now. There were hardly any of them left anymore. There were barely any porters remaining who were yet to succumb to porter syndrome and become MULEs, and could still carry out their deliveries “sober” and in control of their own senses. His organization didn’t have any porters who could sense BTs, or any decent equipment, either. And on top of all that, he could feel his own vital abilities waning. He had to do something. He needed more power. An even greater power than before. Peter craved it from the bottom of his heart.
Humans are made up of a ha and a ka. Once the two are separated, a person passes on from this world, but as long as a soul has a body to return to, it can come back. People used to use human-shaped caskets adorned with masks to preserve the body for all eternity
Peter had read all about it in an old book called The Wisdom of Ancient Egypt. The golden masks of the pharaohs were decorated with magical adornments to show the power and prestige they had possessed in their previous lives. Peter had no doubt that the appearance of the Beach proved the Egyptians were right about life and death.
Then I will turn myself into a living casket. I’ll offer my soul to this world while I live. I’ll adorn my own face with the mask of a pharaoh. Maybe that will transform this measly power of mine into that of a king. Starting today, I abandon my bare face. That’s when the porter threw away the name Peter and became the man known as Higgs.
AMELIE’S BEACH
“Amelie!” Sam shouted.
Sam was heading this way. A shabby man desperately trying to survive. Higgs considered it uglier than anything else in the world. So much so that the very sight of him made him retch.
Higgs placed the mask in his hand over Amelie. She didn’t resist.
“You ready to end this? Before the end of everything?” Higgs asked before he thrust both arms into the sky, where Amelie hung in midair. Sam’s grim face was fanning the flames of Higgs’s belligerence. The debris and rocks scattered around the sandy beach ignored the law of gravity and flew into the air, surrounding Amelie in layer after layer of rubble. Everything was moving as he wished. Just as he had envisioned. Several umbilical cords stretched out from Amelie’s abdomen, creating a spider’s web. Amelie lay across the center, both like the prey caught in a trap and the predator lying there in wait. It was all just as Higgs wanted. “I’m just doing what I’m supposed to do,” he said. “I’m keeping the Extinction Entity safe until the slate is wiped clean. Those of us with DOOMS. Her. We’re all bound here for a reason.”
Sam was shouting something back. But no matter what he said, Higgs was never going to hear. Even if Sam had reconnected the world, he was still just a laborer who moved things from one place to another. He hadn’t accomplished anything great. Higgs decided to put him in his place by showing him what kind of place the Beach really was.
The sands swelled and several whales appeared. They cried as they breached the surface and slammed their massive bodies onto the shore. More followed suit, stranding themselves on the sands. The entire Beach was getting buried in the corpses of whales that neither came from the sea nor could return to it.
“We’re all of us a part of the Death Stranding,” Higgs declared.
It didn’t seem to matter how Higgs explained it, but Sam never understood. As long as all he wanted was Amelie, he would never see the truth. Higgs had once been the same.
“And this place, this fucking ‘Beach.’ There’s no repatriation here, no. One of us dies, that’s it. He goes to the other side. Nice, huh? Lucky loser gets to put an end to this rinse-and-repeat bullshit once and for all. So… No BTs, no voidouts, no bullshit. Just a good old-fashioned boss fight. Stick versus rope. Gun versus strand. One more ending before the end… One last game over.”
All Sam had was his ID strand. It didn’t take a genius to figure out how this fight would end. Higgs aimed his assault rifle and pulled the trigger. This gunshot will sound in the beginning of this rite of extinction.
It wasn’t long after Peter assumed the name of Higgs that he joined forces with Fragile Express. He may have professed himself to be the God particle and may have worn a mask to imitate the pharaohs, but he was still painfully aware of his own lack of power. The leader of the organization, Fragile, had DOOMS more powerful than Higgs had ever seen. Her organization was better than the one Higgs was a part of, too.
Now that Bridges I had finally departed on a mission to rebuild America, terrorist attacks and assaults by Homo Demens were on the rise, and that, combined with the BTs and the MULEs, made it harder and harder for Higgs and the others to work. That’s why it was better to join forces. The more porters they had, the easier it would be to cover the entire continent. Luckily, Fragile agreed with Higgs and they began working together.
Fragile’s DOOMS was even more incredible than Higgs had first heard. Not only could she sense the Beach and the BTs, she could actually use the Beach. Compared to that, Higgs was nothing. All he had was the power he had received as the human corpses necrotized and became BTs. But now he didn’t need it. He could use Fragile’s abilities to make deliveries. Higgs didn’t want to rebuild America as it once was, like Bridges. He wanted to create a new world on this continent, one that protected the freedom and liberty of every single person living within it. Higgs was practically drunk on that vision.
Yet he knew that it was a brittle and fragile dream.
AMELIE’S BEACH
Jeering at Sam, Higgs thrust the rifle at him. Out of bullets, it was now just a steel stick to beat Sam with. Even though he had a spare magazine, he no longer felt like using it. He wanted to fight Sam man-on-man.
Sam had already lost a lot of blood and was gasping for air, but he had lost none of his fighting spirit and continued to glare at Higgs. Unlike Sam, Higgs barely had a scratch on him.
“You just don’t get it, do you. What do you think you’re going to achieve by struggling like this? Fragile was the same. She gave up her time just to save a town that was gonna to get destroyed anyway. It’s not like they’ve got long left here after all this. Now she’s stuck livin’ inside that shriveled body, just giving them hope for a fake future. Listen up, Sam. There is no future. If all there is to do is waste away waiting for tomorrow, isn’t it better to graciously accept extinction? That’s what the planet wants. So, you’d better start groveling before me. Then at least you might be remembered as a wise man. If you don’t want to, then kill me,” Higgs declared, waving a knife at Sam and slamming it into his windpipe. Sam managed to get away with a stagger, but Higgs simply tutted and closed in on him once more. As Higgs lunged, Sam’s ID strand caught the arm that was flailing the knife. As he pulled on Higgs and Higgs braced his feet against the ground, their strength was evenly matched. The ID strand stretched longer and longer, looking like it might snap at any moment. Sam was breathing heavily with his shoulders, but it didn’t feel like he would loosen his grip anytime soon.