Without stopping her still panicked gallop, Betsy kept heading straight down from Belasia, everyone’s expression still exhausted and filled with frustration from having left Akito and all of those good men and women die in the hands of senseless violence.
After a while, they calmed down as they began to ride down into the more densely packed urban colossus, Betsy began slowing down allowing them to better see in which direction they were heading now.
“We’re definitely on Santa Fe Avenue, no?” Adriana asked, looking around for potential points of interest.
“I think so, it’s hard to tell though… Everything has changed so much since any of us passed through here.” Lindbergh stated with a concerned look.
“Didn’t Akito warn us not to come through Santa Fe?” Cornelia doubted. “Supposedly this was the worst possible way to The Cordón.”
Advancing through the avenue filled with hollowed out buildings, the nearby streets along the main road were completely blocked by piled up vehicles, collapsed buildings that acted like giant rubble impassable mountains, and broken displaced pavement that sealed access to the various streets along the approaching downtown area.
“I don’t remember there being so much devastation when I left here…” Cornelia muttered in shock.
“Remember that after the bombs there were seismic aftershocks caused by the sudden displacement of the tectonic plates.” Lindbergh calmly explained.
“Yeah, seeing this much wreckage is unbelievable. Maybe certain structures and government buildings resisted the aftershock downtown?” Titus thought out loud.
“You mean just the government buildings or the surviving government as well? Like the one that survived downtown?” Adriana wondered.
“It’s a distinct possibility. I still don’t think that after so much conflict, desertions, and their seemingly unstoppable intent of controlling everything gave them much breathing room to continue their corrupted practices.” Lindbergh steadily pointed out.
“You mean to say that there’s a change to find actual survivors down there?” Cornelia curiously asked.
“I’d gather that there are a few getting by around there, I do hope that they’re not like the crazies we’ve come across up until now.”
“Well, let’s not get too worked up over this… This place is giving me the creeps, everything is so quiet. We haven’t even come by a single rat” Titus nervously affirmed.
“Speak for yourself, I’m looking at one right now. Ferrets nowadays, one day you teach ‘em how to talk through futuristic genetic engineering bordering on animal abuse, the next day they’re already thinking they’re no longer cute little rodents.” Lindbergh snickered.
“I’m not a rodent, you insensitive man!”
“Maybe it’s better this way, right?” Cornelia sighed. “That means the bombs wiped out any non-human life out here, right?”
“I think that the term being human has taken on new meanings in this New World, chicuela.” Lindbergh clarified with a dry chuckle.
“Well I hope that Dios lights our way in this final push towards our goal.” Adriana sighed in relief.
“Speaking The Lord and miracles… What’s that over there?” Lindbergh pointed over to a large makeshift barricade in a wrecked intersection.
In the crossroads between the Santa Fe and Coronel Diaz avenues, there was a huge haphazardly put together barricade made of old buses and cars with wooden ramps on the sides to act as improvised watchtowers.
“This looks done on purpose, I wonder how long has it been abandoned?” Adriana wondered.
“Maybe it’s the settlement that the Matrona talked about before?” Cornelia stated with an astonished look. “The one that was overrun.”
“Or maybe a bunch of crazy survives dug themselves in the buildings around here, waiting to snipe anyone dumb or crazy enough to walk down their streets.” Lindbergh openly speculated. “Maybe they’ve never seen a Racha, so they try shooting down our poor old gal.”
“I think Lin’s right. We should leave Betsy out here if we’re gonna explore down those streets. If there are any survivors, maybe we can talk some sense into them and ask them how to skip this rubble labyrinth and quickly get downtown.” Cornelia proposed as she got off Betsy, leading her over to the more secluded part of the outer barricade.
“We’ll seems that we’re agreed.” said Lindbergh as he turned to Betsy. “Don’t worry, girl. We’ll come back for you in a bit. Don’t go anywhere and I’ll bring you back a treat.”
Traversing through the rusted vehicle wrecks and debris, they begin to see the charred remains of various large insects, along with giant rats and dogs. The way they were distributed all over the avenue and their bodies still being in an early decomposing stage, showed clear signs that there was a conflict around there not long ago.
“These dogs like the Guardianes we’ve seen before… Just seeing their decaying bodies like this still sends a chill down my spine… They’re so huge.” Cornelia nervously remarked as they walked by the battered road, observing the devastation within the barricade.
“Poor doggos… I hope Dios has them in His Glory, and they’re able to forgive us for turning them into such monstrosities…” Adriana sadly commented hanging her head. “Who in their right minds could do this to one of our closest animal friends?” she added, taken aback when she stumbled upon a large decaying skeleton of a Guardián with a giant rat corpse still caught between its enormous jaws.
“I don’t think that even OptoGenica contemplated that their projects would end up causing so much violence and destruction.” Titus thought out loud, sitting on Cornelia’s shoulder.
“I don’t think that anyone thought about what truly living in the end of the world would actually be like.” Lindbergh calmly remarked while he inspected the strangely blocked buildings along the street. “Everyone wanted for the world to end, now that they have it, I don’t see anyone celebrating it.” he let out a dry chuckle. “Meh. Come to think of it, maybe some already did.”
Being a few blocks in, they began seeing more and more fresh corpses, among which were a few people with their eyes completely rolled back into their skulls. Before they could react to the increasingly disturbing apparent killzone, a pile of rubble began to move and out of nowhere a crazed man threw himself onto Adriana, yelling unintelligible phrases as he desperately tried to bite her:
“He needs us! We must be the food for our future! He will judge us! We must be faithful to Him!”
“Hey! Get off her, maricón! The hell is wrong with you?!” Cornelia yelled out as she rushed over to help her, gripping her knife tightly in her hand.
All of a sudden, they could hear the sound of a loud trot of long-nailed paws followed by a huge shadow leaping onto the insane man, knocking him onto the floor as the now visible Guardián began ripping his throat out, killing him almost instantly.
Without being able to move from the shock, the massive canine turns toward them, snarling at his new prey. Its frenzied barking as he charged them was cut short with a loud shot that pierced its left eye, making it let out one last yelp of pain before passing on, the fateful sound made everything fall silent as it echoed through the streets, when suddenly a voice called out to them from a faraway balcony.
“Oi! Yeah! You guys! C’mere! If you want to live, get off the streets!”
Contemplating his offer for a moment, they all decided to run over to the sniper’s building, rushing through the adjacent streets they couldn’t tell precisely which building it was, until they were stopped by the man’s voice once more as they almost ran past his building.
“Hey! Through here! C’mon, hurry up!”
Everyone heeds his words, as they head inside through the once lavish entrance made of varnished wood, crystal frames that looked out from the lobby, and bronze coated door knobs and metal decor, now replaced with a makeshift barricade made of broken wood and metal sheets weigh down by other pieces of scrap.
With all of them already inside, the seasoned looking man secured the front door. He appeared to be in his mid 40’s, a thick beard covered most of his small face and fair skin. His tall and fit stature made his outfit stand out even more, sporting black fatigues resembling the ones that the Federal Police wore before the war. Bearing a long-scoped rifle on his back, and a compact Five-Seven pistol on his hip. Promptly aiming his rifle at them, cocking a bullet into the chamber he proceeded to ask:
“If you were smart enough to understand me and come here, then you can’t be one of them. Who are you?” he inquired, staring at them menacingly. “Are you agents of that sick fuck? Who sent you?”
Everyone raises their hands up as far up as they can, fearing being shot. Cornelia comes forth in an attempt to explain:
“N-no one sent us… We come from the N-North…”
“Liar!” the man aggressively exclaimed, almost shoving the barrel of his rifle into her face. “Don’t take me for a fool! No one survived up North… Even if they were, no one in their right mind would try coming back here! Unless… Unless they’re with that miserable bastard!”
“Yo! Hold it! We don’t even know anyone around here!” Lindbergh anxiously interrupted his rant. “We don’t know who you’re talking about!”
“Y-yeah… We’ve come all this way from Tigre, we’re trying to find a way out of here… Someone told us that if we turned the power back on we could use the Pretoria to get out of here.” Cornelia nervously explained.
“If what you’re saying is true… Then you’re even crazier than those lunatics over there!” the policeman frantically exclaimed. “I would advise you to watch carefully your next words from this moment forth. They may be your last.” he warned with a stern expression.
“I don’t doubt it, chief.” Lindbergh tensely acknowledged with a chuckle. “Look, first of all, there are a bunch of people alive in the North… They’re all a bit looney, but in a good way. I think…”
“You’ve got to believe us… I got out of downtown shortly after the disaster.” Cornelia confessed with a saddened expression. “I lost everyone I ever knew, nobody understood what was happening, I still think no one does.” she explained. “According to what people told me, there was some sort of plan to establish a safe zone… But every time I reached one, everyone was gone…”
“Nothing came out as planned… Everyone got separated, some left by their own will, others were taken away… Most didn’t even get a choice. What few were left started killing each other for the few supplies that were left.”
“So we were told…” Cornelia confirmed. “A lot of people told us about this Cordón in downtown, when we saw the barricade at the intersection among the collapsed buildings, we thought maybe that was it…”
“You really don’t know what The Cordón was? Wow you must’ve left in the first few weeks after the bombs then.” the man remarked with surprise. “After the initial shock and aftermath, the army stepped in, securing people in these refugee camps near the docks in Puerto Madero, they said that The Cordón was for ensuring a safe return to normality to some degree.”
“What happened after their announcement then?” Lindbergh curiously inquired.
“Long story short, they didn’t foresee that the dangers that spawned in the ruins weren’t gonna wait around for the military to set up The Cordón. The soldiers were so caught up in finalizing their pet project that they began neglecting the people, getting more and more authoritarian as time went by.” he explained with a tormented look in his eyes. “People began going missing, they focused more on establishing an improvised form of economy with their caps, setting salaries, issuing jobs to accelerate the construction of The Cordón, before long there wasn’t a thing you didn’t have to pay to use. Everything began having a price, even people’s time. The malcontent among the surviving police and soldiers manifested itself in several riots and protests, eventually dividing everyone into split groups that fought their way out of the grip of the profit-driven Cordón. People didn’t wait long till they started losing their minds, violence erupted shortly after… The rest you’ve already seen the result of, especially after that bastard convinced so many in following him.”
“Dios mío… It must’ve been horrible to endure so much in so little time. I hope The Lord has them high up in His Glory.” Adriana wholeheartedly said as tears rolled down her cheeks.
“See! I was right, you are one of them! I swear I’ll kill you and then that sadist that you call a leader!” the man exclaimed in a sudden aggressive violent outburst, pointing his rifle to Adriana’s forehead.
“Yo! Stop it, dude! Who are you talking about? You’ve been rambling on about people we haven’t even seen yet. We were the only ones on the street besides that crazy guy that tried to eat us.” Lindbergh inquired, making the man slowly lower the barrel of his rifle.
“They… They disguise themselves as religious fanatics, but in reality they’re disgusting degenerates.... They follow that hijo de puta…”
“Who’s this asshole that’s got you so worked up? What did he do to you?” Cornelia asked.
“Padre… Padre Jorge…” the policeman hesitantly answered, gasping for air.
“Whatever that happened to this guy, it must’ve been some heavy shit.” Lindbergh affirmed as he held the large man’s shoulder. “Hear me out, man: Adri isn’t one of them, she’s a bit big on the whole Dios thing, but she’s a good lass.”
“I’m sure he has his reasons for being this way.” Titus added.
“Did… Did that thing just talk?” the man asked, staring at Titus in disbelief.
“Yeah. he’s a special case there... Just like Lin said, Adri’s harmless and Titus is just a curious little furball.” Cornelia explained with a nervous smile.
“A lot of strange things have happened since the war… I guess this shouldn’t surprise me.” the man heavily sighed. “Come up to my apartment. Let’s talk about this more calmly.”
Feeling an enormous sensation of relief from defusing the tense situation, they get up to the policeman’s apartment, passing multiple intrinsic, complicated traps along the way made to incinerate, electrocute, impale and even explode whomever was careless enough to trigger them.
Once inside his residence, the man immediately stepped into the kitchen, placing a banged up kettle on the stove as he shuffled around the cabinets. After a few minutes he places some crackers on a plate, bringing along the piping hot kettle with his mate kit.
Serving the mate and passing it along to Lindbergh, the man looks more relaxed as he says:
“You’ll have to forgive the precautions, you can never be too safe nowadays. It’s not much, but I hope the matecito and crackers offer a bit of consolation for my rudeness.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Cornelia assured him with a slight smile. “Forgive me for asking but I’m still wondering: who’s Padre Jorge? What did he do to you? What happened here?”
Taking back the mate from Lindbergh’s hands, he refills it, after taking a sip he sighed with a nostalgic reply:
“That unholy bastard took my daughter from me… He took it upon himself to destroy everything that we worked so hard to build here, and… He succeeded.”
“Was that when the military was still hunting down deserters with their Peacekeeper robots?” Adriana inquired.
“Yes… those Peacekeepers robots replaced us a short while before everyone was fed up and decided to desert. It was almost like they were counting on it to thin out the number of mouths to feed.” the policeman explained. “We did manage to shake them, relying on the relatively stocked supermarkets and hospitals around here, we began setting up a small settlement between these essential spots. Things were going good for a while, after those first few months that guy began preaching his radical nonsense… Problem was, people began listening to him, thinking he was a beacon of hope or something. One day it got to its boiling point, nothing was the same after that--” the man stopped, lost in his own thoughts.
“We don’t have to keep talking about it if you don’t want to.” Adriana assured him.
“N-no, it’s nothing, you guys deserve to know if you haven’t been through here since before the war. Everyone deserves to know what that motherless hijo de puta did.” the man remarked with a determined look as he took a long deep breath. “He began gaining followers, radicalizing people to his apparently innocent movement. He began justifying doing some pretty messed up stuff to people’s bodies after they mysteriously disappeared, preaching that it was in the name of some God, that its purpose was above our own insignificant existence. The pompous bastard.” the man expressed as his face began to turn sour. “One day everything blew up, quite literally. He convinced his followers to place bombs in the entrances of all the buildings that the settlers were living in, trapping them in the name of his God. Hearing people agonizing for being caught in the explosion or under the rubble as their families cried out for them, it still haunts me most nights. Some of the surviving servicemen and I managed to trap him in the church within the old Hospital de Niños close by, huge mistake… I’m sorry.” the man stopped once more, looking sickly as he remembered what happened.
“Listen, you don’t have to go through the trouble of making yourself sick just to tell us… It’s enough to have lived through it once, we know what it’s like.” Cornelia expressed in an attempt to comfort him.
“It’s no trouble… I have to get it out there at some point, might as well be now.” the man paused with a drowned burp. “I don’t know if I’ll have another shot at telling this story after. Just gimme a minute.”
“There’s no rush, we’re here to help if we can. It’s the least we can do after you saved us.” Adriana said to him with a tender smile as she finished her turn with the mate, returning it to him.
“You really are a different bunch, y’know?” the man let out a dry chuckle. “So we got him cornered in the church, when we realized that we were the ones trapped with him. He began dropping large pieces of rubble and furniture on us with the help of his crazed followers. We tried getting our guys out, but then these maniacs began hacking the survivors to death, a couple of officers and I managed to escape their ambush. When we got to our building, we saw huge pools of blood dripping down the stairs up to the apartments and smeared all over the lobby’s walls. Passing the multiple skinned corpses that they left scattered on each floor as if they peeled their skins off using only their teeth. I ran up to my apartment fearing the worst, when I found one of those degenerates holding my 6 year old daughter from her leg, dangling her over my balcony as he laughed maniacally. I tried rushing them before they could react, but as soon as I moved he let her go, those screams that I heard that day as my daughter fell down the seventh floor will always torment me until I die… I shot those bastards until you couldn’t even recognize their faces, even after cutting them up to bits, covered in their blood and guts I couldn’t shake the maniacal laughter that I heard from Padre Jorge, celebrating his victory on top of the bodies of everyone we had come to care for. Even my partners didn’t make it, because when I went back down to check up on them, they were chopped up in pieces and being dragged away along with the rest of the bodies to that hellish hospital. Their insane grins are still burned into my memories, it makes my blood boil just thinking about it. Being the only survivor and not being able to do anything about that hijo de puta.”
“Fuck… That Padre Jorge has to be the biggest asshole that we’ve ever heard of. Coño… I-I just can’t put into words how sorry I am for your loss…” Cornelia commented, sadly hanging her head.
“We may not have weapons training like you, but I think that something has to be done about that sadistic prick. You can count on us.” Lindbergh assured him with a serious expression.
“You don’t have to put yourselves out there like that. I do appreciate the thought though… Thanks for listening to an old man’s ramblings, I honestly don’t know what to do with myself anymore. I’ve been shooting down anyone and anything twitchy that comes down that road from the hospital.”
“I still don’t get one thing though: what exactly do they claim to believe in?” Adriana wondered.
“We never understood it either. According to them it was some sort of necessary sacrifices to appease their God or something.”
“The Lord would never compel anyone to commit such atrocities. People living preaching blasphemous lies will eventually burn in His Judgement.” Adriana sternly remarked.
“That’s what I thought, but being alone for so long… My mind began distorting things, as if it was eating itself. I think that talking to you has been some sort of divine sign, huh? It’s definitely helped…”
“Sign of what?” Cornelia curiously asked. “What do you plan to do now?”
“That I have to carry on somehow. I don’t know if things will ever be okay, or we’ll ever find normality again, but I do know that staying here only makes those memories worse. No one should live like this.”
“Well I do think that the venting and mates have been a good form of post-apocalyptic therapy. Now that I think about it, you never did tell us your name, my good man.” Lindbergh pointed out with a smirk.
“We didn’t exactly introduce ourselves either, Lin…” Cornelia whispered to his ear. “Hi, I’m Cornelia, it’s good to officially meet you. This smirking doofus is Lindbergh, that’s Adri, and this little guy is Titus as you already know.”
“The pleasure is all mine everyone, my name is Maximiliano. You can call me Maxi if you want though.”
“Not to sour the mood, Maxi… But are those loonies still in the hospital?” Titus inquired.
“Yeah, last time I checked. They haven’t gone out in a while though, they usually ambush anyone dumb enough to fall into their traps. After they drag someone inside, they’re never seen again.”
“If you had told me that before the whole story, I could’ve sworn you were talking about some sort of a cannibal cult or something.” Lindbergh confessed with a chuckle. “I don’t think that’s the case though.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure, man. In this New World it seems that anything goes.”
“Well that’s true… I didn’t think anyone could pull off restoring some civilization to the world like in Mar-To, Niuberi and Belasia. They’re separate places, but they all wanted to improve how they were living somehow. I imagine that they were trying something similar down in The Cordón, right?” Cornelia commented with a hopeful tone.
“Those places that you’re describing, they’re actually real?” Maxi asked in disbelief. “What do they even do over there?”
“As far as we were able to see: Mar-To is an old ferry that got stuck with the low tide along the Luján River, some survivors fixed it up and made it into a fully self-sufficient settlement with a few pre-war luxuries to boot.” Cornelia explained.
“I can’t believe that a place like that exists… How did they manage to pull it off? They’ve got to be engineers or something.”
“They actually are… On the other hand, Niuberi was built in the old Capital airport, spearheaded by a mysterious woman dubbed the Matrona and her Cleaners. They converted the desolate airstrip into a huge trading outpost, complete with its own racetrack.”
“Fuck me… Are you sure that’s real? It sounds like something we could only dream of. What about the last one, Belasia was it?”
“Belasia is a commercial hub that formed around the old Asian neighborhoods in Chinatown. They managed to make trade routes with other settlements and wandering merchants that stopped by to barter. The problem with them was that they recently had a conflict between the dominant factions there, we don’t know if anyone survived the clash since we were there, it was pretty brutal.” Cornelia affirmed with a saddened look.
“I’m still having a hard time believing that there were people alive up there all this time… Were there a lot of them? Are you guys sure weren’t just delicious from roaming the ruins?” Maxi asked, his face still frozen in disbelief at Cornelia’s words.
“Well if everything we told you was a figment of our imagination, then we definitely have a serious mental health problem after making up those mutated abominations we had to face on our way here.” Lindbergh chuckled.
“It’s just that I still can’t believe there was more to this world than just fighting those wretched mongrels and sadistic assholes. Fighting the same battles every day makes you disconnected from everything else, now I’m glad I came across you guys.”
“I know you haven’t seen much outside of the Capital, but I’m sure you’ve come across the giant bugs roaming out there, right?” Cornelia wondered with a curious smirk.
“Do you mean the giant ants and vermin?” Maxi asked, with a thoughtful look. “I haven’t seen much beyond that and a few white spots in puddles from overflowing sewer grates. I thought it was some sort of trap left behind by those lunatics.”
“Yeah… Those white spots are actually a fungus known as Salina. They infect people when they come into contact with their skin, rooting themselves in and when enough time passes by it takes over your body, twisting it into a nameless abomination. We saw a lot of them in the outskirts, along with a scattered few here in the Capital. We’ve also seen the Rachas, apparently they used roaches for an experiment to create some sort of resilient, easily maintained and reproduced cattle and transport in the event that other farm animals weren’t available.”
“Wait… What?! What are these Rachas and Rey you’re talking about? Sounds like you smoked some strong shit to come up with those wacky concepts.”
“We didn’t smoke anything, we’re telling you the truth, dude!” Lindbergh wholeheartedly affirmed. “If you can’t take our word for it, come with us and meet Betsy. A word of warning though, she’s our queen, so please don’t shoot her or scare her.”
“Who’s Betsy?” Maxi asked with a shocked expression. “Did you seriously leave someone alone out there?”
“Betsy’s our Racha, she was gifted to us by some tribals as a means of thanking us for helping them out. Come with us and see for yourself, Maxi. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.” Cornelia assured him with a grin.
“I’m thinking I do have to go with you just to make sure you don’t hurt yourselves in your search for this mythical Betsy. I don’t want you guys getting hurt, you’re good kids. Let’s go check her out, if we can even find her.” Maxi snickered.
After a short while walking back through the rubble, and torn-down barricades, they come across the final makeshift watchtowers in which they left Betsy earlier.
As soon as she saw them, Betsy began jumping excitedly, rattling all of the crates and supplies strapped around her massive body. Maxi widened his eyes in shock, instinctively aiming his rifle at her as he trembled in fear.
“What in the hell is that thing?!” he frantically exclaimed. “Get away from it, guys! I’ll take care of it!”
In one swift movement, Lindbergh grabbed the barrel of his gun, pointing it away from Betsy as Maxi absentmindedly pulled the trigger, causing a thunderous noise throughout the entire area.
“What the hell did I tell you back there, man?!” Lindbergh annoyingly reproached. “Don’t. Try. To. Shoot. Her. Just chill, okay? Look…”
Looking up at Betsy, she was cowering in a corner, her body still shaking from the gunshot. Cornelia slowly approached her and began stroking her side, making her let out small happy chirps.
“See, Maxi? She’s harmless.”
“I think that she’s more afraid of you than you are of her.” Lindbergh points out with a chuckle. “Don’t be that way, she’s the one that got us all the way down here.”
“Sorry guys… I thought you were pulling my leg.” Maxi sheepishly confessed. “Is this thing really that friendly? Did you guys give her that bow?” he curiously asked. “What a weird world that we’re living right now…”
“Yeah, we gave her that little bow. Now she’s our little polkadot queen.” Lindbergh affirmed as he turned to Betsy. “Aren’t you, girl? Who’s our apocalyptic queen? You are! Yes you are!”
“You’re really fond of her, aren’t you? It may take me