Cottontail Chapter 1 (Patreon)

** This is a lil fun project I've been working on to avoid burnout. It's based in my friend's setting from the story Stray Cat Strut . With their permission of course :D. **

The company van bounced alarmingly beneath me, sending wild shadows dancing across the broken asphalt of the neglected outback road.

“Ow!” I squeaked, rubbing the top of my head where it’d thumped against the ceiling. I cringed more at the sound I made than the actual pain. Thank goodness I was alone on this job. I don’t think my tech-bro coworkers would have let that one slide.

It seemed insane to me that the government had built the road and then promptly left it to decay for decades. It was 2057 for crying out loud! Surely there was like, a robot or something that could go around maintaining the back country roads. Hell, if a human-made design wasn’t around, the state could probably just buy one from a bored samurai with too many alien credits or whatever.

Another pothole shook me violently from my grumpy reverie, and I sighed in resignation. If only I could afford to resign from the company instead of my will to live. I chuckled to myself in the moment.

I was driving along an old outback road near Nullagine in Western Australia, on my way back to Port Hedland where I’d stay for two days until a company transport stopped by on its scheduled route. What did any of that have to do with hating my life? Probably the fact I worked for a gargantuan multinational mining corporation. The only thing HCMC did better than sucking the life and soul from its lower echelon employees was ruin the environment.

As if that wasn’t enough, I had the misfortune of being a tech-team's wheel boy, which was slang for the poor bastard who had to drive out to a site and fix things when there wasn’t a remote solution to the problem. It wasn’t an official position, but of the five of us, I was the easiest to push around. All the other RT-thirdies, as we were known colloquially, were macho tech-bros with too much hair on their necks and not enough on their chins.

I shuddered at the thought of their beards, again. God I hated my own body hair. There was just something about the feel of stubble while I scratched my chin that made my skin crawl.

Down on the dashboard, the CB Radio crackled for a second. Distant voices hissed in and out of discernible fidelity. I ignored them at first, my concentration focused on the hazardous road, but something in their tone had me frowning down at the exceptionally ancient radio.

“Lost cont— —arble bar statio— —gunfire—” the rumbling masculine voice said as my reception dipped in and out.

It had to be a trucker or a farmer speaking over the radio. They were the only ones who still used the CB Radios anymore, but why were they talking about… about gunfire?

Fear gripped my stomach in a lightning quick and ice-cold hand. Hesitantly, I leaned forward to check the sky, but nothing awaited me there. No alien portals spewing countless hordes of ravenous monsters. No incursion.

Thank goodness. If the antithesis had started an incursion out here, nobody would be able to get here in time to save us. Not even a samurai, with their esoteric alien-given powers and tech. Okay, maybe some of them, if they cared long enough to lift a finger for a lowly third grade repair technician like me. Some of those first gen samurai were absolutely terrifying. Those still alive.

That didn't discount more mundane threats like bandits, though, so I focused on the CB radio and nudged it with a mental command. In my left eye, tiny machines whirred to life, displaying the primitive user interface for the radio in my vision. Blink-clicking on the settings option brought me to the pitiful selection there, and I scrolled down until I hit the software version number. Rapidly clicking on that gave me access to a much more comprehensive list of options, and I got to work extending the range of the radio.

Once I had the thing dialled in, I switched to the call channel and pressed down on the button. “Any copy on the one, one?”

Silence greeted my call, and I frowned down at the radio on the dash. Another bump flicked my gaze back to the road to make sure I was still okay, then the radio crackled to life again.

“Yes! This is White Box Stop on route one three eight, who is this?” the man asked, his rough aussie trucker accent clashing with the rising panic that was clear in his voice.

Mindful of the fact we were on a call channel, I said, “This is Charlie Whisky van seven oh seven. Go up one channel?”

“No point, Seven Oh Seven,” the guy blurted back almost before I’d stopped asking to move off the call channel. “Can you get a copy from Bonney Downs? They broadcast a mayday a quarter hour ago, and we lost contact just a minute ago.”

What the hell was going on? The truck stop had lost contact with the cattle station up the road after they had an emergency, and there was something about gunshots?

Staying on the call channel, I pressed the push to talk button again and spoke, “Bonney Downs, you copy? This is CW 707.”

My call got nothing but static in return, and even after waiting a full minute, that didn’t change.

“White Box, this is 707,” I called again. “No copy from Bonney. I’m south of you, though, so you’re closer. Has anyone gone to check on them?”

Out here in the outback, things could go sideways in a hurry, and we all had to look after each other. Didn’t matter what company you worked for, what your skin colour was, or any other label that humanity uses to divide. You looked out for your fellow man, because there were sure as poop a ton of nastier things out here than another person’s opinion. Not that some people’s opinions didn’t scare me too, but at least they had to obey the law, unlike the aliens, or… well, the other aliens.

“Shit!” the man swore, and after a long, crackling pause, said, “Get your ass here, 707. You don’t want to be out in the dark right now, something is out there with you.”

“Copy,” I said, and tossed the handset down into the passenger seat. I had about four miles to go until I hit White Box, and I needed to make those four miles fast.

The dry scrub and ruddy orange dirt began to blur past me as I put the pedal down. The scenery was exceptionally dull out here. Nothing but flat land that couldn't quite commit to being a desert because every half a decade or so, rain would make it this far inland and the whole place would explode with life.

I wasn't even two minutes into my reckless drive towards the truck stop when the radio crackled to life again, and a different man called, "707, you better be driving quick, 'cause something big is going down. We just lost our satellite access."

Lost satellite access? How the hell? Instinctively, I glanced up out of the windshield, but the stars had nothing for me.

The White Box truck stop came into view slowly. Its outdoor lights were weak with age, barely more than glowsticks on poles at the side of the road. Even with the meagre lighting, I could tell something was very wrong.

Shadows flashed through the thick desert brush fast and low. A glimpse at one revealed four legs, which were swiftly cut out from under it when a muzzle flash lit up the night. The whip crack of an old firearm going off reached me a microsecond later, causing my mouth to go dry.

Please don't be antithesis. Please be one of the various carnivorous wild alien animals the government had introduced into the outback to kull the roos. I'd even take bandits with an attack dog, just don't let this be antithesis— my guts turned to icy slurry in an instant.

The doglike figure was hauling itself back onto its feet, all without any sign of pain or distress. Then it was up, leaping for the man who'd stood his ground.

I was only a hundred or so metres away now, and I could see everything with adrenaline-clear vision. Time slowed while the scene played out like some sort of dramatic movie shot.

The flickering lights of the dusty truck stop illuminated a scene out of nightmares. A trucker fumbled with an old shotgun, caught in the yard out the front of the boxy prefab building. Beyond him, a concrete barrier marked the entrance to the yard, and over the top of it, more alien horrors were crawling. Disturbingly familiar shaped canine heads glared apathetic hatred out of black eyes. All of them fixed on the man, none on the speeding van careening down the road.

That man was going to die unless I stepped in to do something. The antithesis would kill him, then kill the people he was defending, and then use all of them as raw materials to make more horrific aliens. I could stop that, though. Use the speed my van had accumulated to save him and consequently, his friends.

The idea of not saving him was something I fundamentally rebelled against, so I took the only real course of action open to me. I hit the gas and steadied my aim.

The trucker saw me at the last moment, and the last thing I remembered seeing with any clarity was his surprised expression.

Then my world became chaotic violence. Sticky alien blood splattered over my windscreen. Bone shattered, both within me and within my targets. Glass exploded in all directions, metal screamed as it crumpled, and then finally, the darkness took me.

System Initialised!

Congratulations. Through your actions you have proven yourself worthy of becoming one of the Vanguard, a defender of humanity. I am Gyre. I will assist you in uplifting humanity so that you may defend your homeworld from the Antithesis threat!

Rise, Leo Costigan, and become a protector of the weak!

Link to Chapter 2