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Eli doesn't go down easy. He pulls that quantum ... stuff (Robbie didn’t understand it and the Rider didn’t care) from wherever he’s connected to, flinging carbon and diamonds and justifications as they fall, burning, in the dark. The Rider burns him and burns him and burns him and Eli grows back; bigger, stranger, more monstrous. Eli does something and they’re flung apart. The Rider falls like a burning star and crashes to the ground, flames guttering out and leaving Robbie panting on stony ground. The air was thick .
Coughing, Robbie struggled to his knees, then his feet. There’s no sun in the steel sky, a stink in the air like that one thing in the ‘fridge you just can’t find, and nothing but rocks and sharp black gravel to the horizon. It seemed lifeless but Robbie knew it wasn’t - the Rider burned in him, driving him towards vengeance .
Whatever was wrong with the air left Robbie breathless and struggling after just a few steps but he pushed on, what else could he do? He figured he’d better get used to places like this.
Eventually he stumbled across a crumbling roadway and picked a random direction. Robbie knew the Rider hungered for vengeance but that didn’t tell him shit about where to go. “Too bad the devil doesn’t have GPS,” he wheezed. Or his car.
Night fell, abrupt and pitch black and the silence of the day was filled with creaky, whistling, scratching noises. Robbie swept the chain off his shoulder, fire racing from his fist down the links and casting a flickering circle of light. Dozens of things flinched back from the light of his cursed fire. “Christ!” Robbie swung the chain wildly because thing was a compliment to whatever those monsters were. Scrabbling claws, eyeless skulls, jagged, broken teeth as long as his hand surrounded him. They moved quicksilver fast, avoiding his strike, crowding around his vulnerable back. Claws swept along his jeans, so sharp he didn’t feel pain until blood was running down his leg and sending the creatures into a wilder frenzy.
He stumbled faster, gasping in the heavy air. They kept pace, harrying him, dodging in under the chain to slash and dart away, squealing like sirens when he caught one, crushing it in a burning fist as the Rider lent him strength and power. There were always more, a never ending tide, and when the sky lightened (though no sun rose), Robbie was lying in a blood spattered circle, more dead than alive as his flesh knit back together under the Rider’s impatience.
There was still nothing on the horizon, just the crumbling ribbon of the road, and Robbie struggled on; a day, another bloody night, another bitter day.
On the fifth one, sensing the approaching dark, Robbie crawled onto a stony outcrop for another fight through the night. Height allowed him to see across the crumbling landscape to what he’d missed before. Faint lights in the distance. There were no stars in this place so they had to be something else. They were also too far to reach before dark fell. Robbie wrapped the end of his chain around his fist and pushed the lights to the back of his mind. He had to survive to get there - he’d worry about what there was when he did.
The lights weren’t what he found first.
“Fuck, yeah,” Robbie panted, stumbling a little faster. It was a ... vehicle, some kind of tracked armored truck broken down, torn apart, and listing to one side. But it was close enough to a car that he could (maybe) fix it. And it was something man made, something that proved this nightmarish place wasn’t empty aside from one damned soul and millions of hungry bug things.
When he got closer, Robbie realized that man made wasn’t right. There were bones scattered around the truck, broken, chewed on, but still kinda fresh. Robbie had a good idea what human bones looked like by now. These were not that. He kicked a pinched, narrow skull then tensed, chain sliding from his shoulder when he heard a faint rustle from inside the truck. Bug things; he’d have to clear them out.
Bellowing, Robbie rushed the truck, chain heavy in his hands because the Rider was fighting his pull for fire. The shrieking in the truck was nothing like the bugs (and they never came out in the light anyway so -??), a glimpse of liquid dark eyes, a long narrow skull and a fragment of sharpened metal that nearly took Robbie’s nose off as he slid to a frantic halt as he realized the creature in the truck was no monster. It was, if the comparison between the scattered bones and the creature before him meant anything, a child.
“ Shit - okay, okay. I’m sorry.” Robbie backed off, spreading his hands apologetically. The kid rushed out with a scream and tried to gut him. Robbie leapt back, knife whiffing by inches from his belt but managed to grab the creature before it darted back into the cramped safety of the truck. It wailed and bit him and he hung on - wrestling with all four of its arms before he managed to immobilize it. “ Ow! Stop biting! I’m not going to kill you! It’s okay - I won’t -“
It burst into wails and weird alien thing or not, Robbie knew it was crying. “I’m sorry,” he said wearily, looking at the ragged bones tossed like trash around the alien truck. “I’m sorry.”
Eventually it tired out and, warily, Robbie patted it’s knobby back (probably it’s back), and let it down. The kid rushed back into the truck, peering out at him with those enormous, pitch black eyes. It piped like a small bird, sweet and delicate. Robbie just shrugged. “I only know Spanish and English, kid. Sorry.”
The kid had made a little nest of sorts in the broken truck, dragged bits of armor over the holes to try and keep the night monsters out. The truck was an island of safety and a trap at the same time - there was nowhere safe within reach before dark fell. Still, the kid hadn’t just laid down and given up. “Stubborn, huh? I get that.”
It was wearing a colorful sari/cape kinda thing, torn and filthy, and clutched its makeshift knife like the lifeline it was. Robbie slung his chain and crouched down, trying to look less scary. “Hey,” he rasped. “I know I’m just some two-armed monster here but I ain’t gonna hurt you, okay?”
The kid bared flat, grey teeth, and waved it’s knife warningly.
“Yeah, I don’t blame you.” Robbie scrubbed a filthy hand over his filthy face and eyed the truck. This close, he could see that it wasn’t going anywhere without a full work-up from a shop like Canelo’s. Since that wasn’t happening, he was stuck with feet. But the kid gave him hope, there were people - sorta - here and that meant he could do something. What the Ghost Rider had brought him here to do; find the guilty take ‘em out and move on. No problem. He’d just leave this kid here to die.
Sighing, Robbie settled down, leaning against a broken door and stretching his legs out to wait. It was getting close to darkfall, he might as well make his nightly stand here. When the light came back and the Rider let Robbie out of the passenger seat, he crawled back to the truck. The little alien was still alive and still there, knife sticky with monster bug goo. It had done some fighting too.
“You can’t stay here,” Robbie mumbled. Kid or not, the Rider would eventually drive Robbie to move on - the Ghost Rider punished, it didn’t protect. “Yeah, that’s gonna change,” Robbie rubbed his tired knuckles and crouched down to peer at the kid. “You gotta come out of there.”
He held out his hand and went quiet, waiting. He could drag the kid out but what good would that do? It’d be fighting him the whole time and ... he remembered Gabe taking his first trip outside the house after the accident, struggling with his wheelchair. Every time Robbie tried to push, to help , Gabe would snap at him until Robbie learned he had to wait and let Gabe take it at his own pace.
It took awhile but the kid eventually crept out, laying one long, grey fingered hand in his. It was dragging a pack, clutching the knife and something that might be a toy in it’s other hands. Not stupid, this little kid. Monster or not, Robbie was its best chance at survival.
In the harrowing night that came, Robbie found a crevice to stash the kid and - for the first time since they’d arrived - fought the Rider’s impulse to move on in the dark, made it stay between the kid’s crappy shelter and the monsters. Made it protect an innocent instead of just avenging one. That was nearly as rough as killing endless bug monsters but the kid was still alive in the morning and the Rider might be steaming, but it let Robbie take control again when the light came. The kid came out when Robbie held out a hand. It must have seen the Rider, watched it fight and main and burn and kill and kill but it didn’t seem afraid of him. Robbie swept his gaze along the broken rocks, the bitter grey sky, and the greasy mounds of the dead. In this world, Ghost Rider wasn’t no big deal.
Late in the day, they came to the end of the road. Which was also the lights. And a junkyard. Trucks and bus-like vehicles, things that were clearly some sort of ‘fun day a the desolate beach’ or whatever they did here, others that looked like military tanks. They lined the last few miles of road while a mountain loomed ahead. The kid got cheerful, chirping and pulling on Robbie’s hand to try and get him to go faster. He couldn’t really, the air had never gotten better and, except when the Rider was in control, he always felt like he was slowly suffocating. Finally, they drew close to a massive wall. The road ended abruptly there - there had to be some kind of gate but Robbie couldn’t see it.
Dust puffed at Robbie’s feet and he froze. He hadn’t heard it but that had been some kind of bullet. The kid let out a piercing whistle and, at the distant top of the wall, Robbie could see figures moving, watching, and some clearly had weapons.
Robbie let the kid’s hand go and urged it forward with a gentle push. “It’s your turn to save me, okay?”
It rushed forward and the wall ahead parted with only the faintest tremble in the ground and a narrow band of pale light, swallowing the kid up. Tense, not daring to even shift his feet, Robbie waited while time passed and the coming darkness drew closer. It took longer than he liked before that narrow strip of light appeared and a cluster of small figures walked towards him, one smaller than the rest.
The kid held out a hand, and waited.
TBC (5/9/18)