Bask breathed a sigh of relief, still smiling. “Sank ‘em.”
“Good job, soldiers!” I said appreciatively. “Now that’s what I call teamwork! Everyone helps out and together we reach our common goal. Now, the most important question of the evening: how do you guys feel? Before you answer, let me explain. The system wants us to patrol main hallway 29 for two hours. Just boring old walking back and forth. Are we up to the task? We’ll get fifteen sol apiece.”
“That’s a hefty sum!” Yorka sighed, flexing her left hand and touching the head of her club. “A hefty sum...”
“I’m in.” Bask said.
His reply was too quick. I knew he was feeling like a dead weight to the party, blind and wounded, and he was willing to do anything to prove his usefulness.
“Bask.” I leaned towards him. “I need you to tell me the truth, and only the truth. How do you feel?”
“The pain is gone. I can get my shots on the way to main 29. You can visit the medblock, too. We can grab dinner nearby so we don’t have to work hungry. I know a long story — two, even! One is about zombies and the apocalypse, and the other is about zombies and a hot princess. You won’t be bored, that’s for sure!”
“That’s great! Yorka?” I looked at her. “What about you?”
“I feel fantastic!”
“Good,” I nodded. “I’m gonna accept the job.”
My interface flashed, the green description got brighter, and the timer started blinking.
“Let’s move out, fighters.” I stood up first. “We have a shitload of marching ahead of us. How far is it, by the way?”
“The Cursed Bridge isn’t too far from here,” said Bask. “Less than half an hour of easy walking. Five minutes in the medblock and another five to get our food cubes. When do we have to be at the job site?”
“At eight.”
“We’ll make it in time.”
“Of course we will,” I said.
The system knew our location. It wouldn’t have offered us this job if we didn’t have enough time to get to the destination.
“Hold on a second… Why did you mention the Cursed Bridge?”
“Main 29 leads into Main 30, and two hundred yards later it hits the Cursed Bridge.”
“I see… Let’s hurry then, goblins and zombies. I want to take a peek at that bridge if we get there early.”
“Why?”
“We’ll have to cross that bridge sooner or later on our way to Drainagetown,” I replied. “I’ve heard so many wild stories about it, and I want to see it with my own eyes before setting foot on it.”
“They say you can see Drainagetown from the bridge,” Yorka added as she filed out of the Jolly Plux behind us. “And other beautiful sights.”
“Beautiful sights?”
“Yep!”
“Let’s go sightseeing, then.” I nodded. “Now tell me, goblins, did you enjoy smelling that meat?”
“We sure got a noseful, blow up and die!” Yorka sighed.
Bask just nodded sadly.
“Watching all those rich fuckers chow down just made me mad with envy!” Yorka pouted angrily.
Bask let out another sorrowful sigh, and gently patted his wounded, rumbling stomach under the black t-shirt.
I laughed and tried to cheer them up:
“That’ll just make the food cubes taste even better! Don’t you worry, we’ll get us some meat! Lots of fatty, delicious meat. Now let’s move out. We’re headed for the Cursed Bridge, goblins and zombies. To the Bridge!”
My team cheered, and we set off, following Bask’s lead. I hadn’t asked him how he lost his eyes — I hadn’t had a good opportunity. But we were going to have a plenty of time during our long, boring patrol. We could pass the time with a decent story. Maybe Yorka would tell us how she lost her arm, too.
I made a mental note to arrange a nice meat dinner for my team as soon as I could.
After all, I had promised them we’d be eating a lot of fatty, delicious meat. But definitely not pork…
Chapter 10
“THAT’S UNSETTLING,” I admitted, standing at the end of main hallway 30 and looking dumbfoundedly out at the... landscape that opened up in front of me. That’s right, a real industrial landscape. After all the narrow hallways and closed-in rooms, even though they were big, standing and looking out at this vast expanse made me feel a little dizzy.
The familiar cramped hallways were behind us.
In front of us stretched a practically endless space.
There wasn’t much light, but I could still make out some details.
It looked to me like an expansive canyon with straight, vertical walls. It had to be at least a mile wide, and at least a mile and a half long — so, fairly short as far as canyons went. Almost like the heel of a gigantic foot had come crashing down, leaving a dent in our world, and we were standing at the edge of it. A wall extended a hundred meters to the left, and there was a rift to the right, with lights blinking far off in the distance. A long, metal bridge began right under our feet, perched upon hundreds of ironwork supports that stretched down into the depths. This was the Cursed Bridge. There were no railings to speak of — it was just a flat metal strip crossing the rift, running straight into a solid cluster of lights on the other end. That must be Drainagetown. The bridge was twenty feet wide, and I immediately recognized the same traces of dismantled equipment and shiny patches of metal worn down by foot traffic that I had seen in hallway 30, ending at the entrance to hallway 29, where the hallway was conspicuously built-up. Some form of rail transportation had once run along this bridge — something electric, like a tram. Then it was removed, the rails taken down, seeming to send the message that the mile between Drainagetown and hallway 29 (which, as Bask explained, served as the border of the Outskirts) was an easy walk for hard-working goblins and zombies. No need for transportation. It was just as likely, however, that the tram or whatever it was just stopped working, and the system had no way of replacing its non-functional steel heart.
Plenty of new additions to my road atlas. A map of this world was gradually unfolding inside my head...
The Outskirts were behind us, the border — a section of which we would soon be patrolling — two hundred yards away. The area in front of us was like a buffer zone, made up of the Cursed Bridge, the Stench, and the Stagnant Cesspool. Drainagetown, the upper district of Murkwaters, was a mile ahead of us. Above us... Above us was the same old ceiling and a big observation dome, but it moved erratically, with strange jerking motions. Mismatched pipes ran all across the ceiling towards Drainagetown — or away from it, depending on how you looked at it. Below us was the Stagnant Cesspool. One step forward took me right to the edge of the canyon. I looked down at the bridge supports disappearing into an impenetrable off-white fog that started about fifteen yards down. It was impossible to tell how deep the canyon was, and neither Bask nor Yorka knew.
So this is the Stagnant Cesspool...
I stood on the edge and looked at the fog for a few minutes, scanning the intricate supports, keeping my ears open. My party members didn’t disturb me, just looked around and talked quietly. Well, Yorka looked around. Bask used his ears, turning his head like a radar detector.
And the Stench...
There was no mistaking it — you would have to be blind not to notice the thick brown mass sliding down the wall, flowing twenty yards down into a welded chute that ran parallel to the bridge, across to the other side of the canyon. The brown mass made my stomach clench in disgust. The famous Gutterfall. It started from a long gap — the entrance to the Stench. From where we stood, I could see a metal platform on the side of the gap closest to us. Steep metal stairs led to it, so steep they were almost vertical. I counted six flights. The lowest one, not quite as steep as the rest, ended at the entrance to hallway 30, about five yards from us. If the poor armless, legless souls crippled by the system were really kidnapped by bogmen to be fattened and slaughtered, then this would be the final path they took — unless there was some secret, less obvious route.