There were lots of humans out there, lost humans, people who had a luck worse than mine and trapped here out of nowhere.
There were anomalies everywhere too, but for some reason, they all seemed the same for me… regardless of the fact that I could somehow know whether they are humans or not.
Perhaps humans looked terrified. Yes, that's why… What could it be beside this?
"Please, anyone!" A human woman cried out, pleading. "My child is starving! Please, anyone!"
I looked at the child who was hiding behind her back then looked around. Everybody else seemed to be as desperate as here, and somehow… that hunger wiped the fear of seeing unusual things from their minds.
Or maybe that happened because the anomalies didn't act after seeing humans walking around.
"It seems weird if I think about it again…"
If the anomalies see humans as random ugly creatures as we see them (or as what I too used to see them), then why didn't they act after seeing them this time? Or Did the Carnival have a different way to deal with outsiders?
"I don't know—"
I didn't even want to think about these things! All I needed was to go find my team and get out with them safely! That's all!
But,
Agh—
The small crying of the child made me ruffle my hair roughly.
I had the food,
But what could grantee that it would be enough? That child wasn't the only one who needed food.
"No."
Stick to the plan, those people have someone else to save them.
They should just wait.
Yes,
Wait for help—
Suddenly Silas's word about what could happen if the Disaster Management Authority couldn't help the people who got trapped in the Vessel just hit me.
They would just abandon them. The priority was always for the majority.
So, if things got bad, those here would die and be forgotten…
"Why this thoughts in this time!"
I was screaming in the middle of the place like a madman when I remembered that this place was literally a complete entertainment resort. The way to see the three I came to see would took me four hours of non-stop walking and ten if I took my time—
Now if I stopped to help people then I may reach them in more than that, and that wasn't an option!
"Think, Nathan. Think."
You have to do something, anything.
I looked around, but couldn't figure out anything.Then by chance, when I looked at my hands, a faint golden light caught my attention.
It was the map again…
The one that showed me that this place is perhaps a whole city that somehow became a carnival where anyone could enter.
Oh,
City?
I looked at the map again with one goal in mind: find a place that they won't renovate it for the opening.
A place that they wouldn't need for the carnival. A place they wouldn't even think about using…
I checked the map two times before stopping at a fairly large remote place.
The Scrap Yard…
Yes, that's it! That place won't be touched even if they didn't have tickets. At least until the end of the Carnival.
Now I will genuinely leave future problems to its people and I would do what I could do so I wouldn't regret it.
"Now…" I took a very deep breath before going to the mother with her child. I bent down to the child's level and gave him the biscuit, then looked at his mother. "If you need it too, I'll give you… but you have to follow me to another palce before that."
"Where you are trying to take us?"
Did I sound like a kidnapper or something?
Okay, maybe. But that's not my problem.
"To a safer place." I answered, then looked at the eyes that wanted to eat me a live in distance. "You too. Anyone who needs the food, I'll give him as much as he need to survive. The only condition is to follow me. Not as a flock, but each one alone and scattered. Don't be the reason we get caught."
I didn't say anything after that. I just walked to the Scarp Yard without looking back.
Fortunately, it only took half an hour to teach it. And after waiting there for another half an hour, I was facing what could be barely more than thirty human beings.
That was a good number since I couldn't afford giving more people food…
"Okay, now separate yourselves. Women and children aside, men aside, teenagers aside."
Surprisingly, that 'teenagers' category was the majority. They may have seen that "don't open the envelope" message and just opened it to see what's happening… and now they can't even know where they are.
"I'll give each person three things: water, biscuits, and bread. No one is allowed to give his food to anyone else, and if that wasn't enough for you then just go away and get out of here."
"But—"
"No objections allowed. If you don't like what's happening then just get lost."
"..."
Perhaps I looked a little bit angry, but I couldn't imagine that that may work until I saw it happening. Was I such a scary person?
"Come on. Yes, you." I called one of the teenagers and gave him the water bottles I was putting aside. "If anything happened or if you didn't give everyone exactly one then I'll choke you over there at the gate, You will be such a great lesson to others."
"O- okay."
He took the water, and after ten minutes he returned empty handed.
"This is yours." I gave him his bottle. "Did anyone say anything about taking someone else's things?"
"No, Sir."
"Fine. Go to your group."
This time I called a man who barely looked older than me and gave him the biscuits to distribute it.
Fortunately, the play in my mind was repeating about how will all of these people fight for other's food and so on didn't happen at all.
Maybe I've watched lots of survival documentaries or so when people build camps and start to join groups in order to survive.
"They were here for three days at most. Nothing big could happen in a matter of days." Right? What could happen in three days besides losing your mind and starving?
"Now, you are free to go wherever you want, but the chances to stay safe here is better than any other place… it's your choice."
I simply left the Scarp Yard after that without looking back. I hesitated a little before putting my hat on but I did it anyway.
The task before my eyes was simply: find my group. I've lost an hour but I thought that I could manage to do it.
I thought—
After what felt like eternity but was two hours in fact, I was half a way.
I could breath at that level, couldn't stand straight, nor even got a place to sit and relax, since I was walking in beside the main place to collect the tickets. What I could barely do was to think…
Thinking about how things ended up this way.
I usually could walk for five hours straight but somehow this place drained all my power after just three hours.
Maybe that happened because I was focusing too much on not focusing on anything… that seemed like a reasonable reason to feel this tiredness.
"Nathan, do you hear me?"
Dean's voice suddenly echoed in my head, waking me.
"Yes, I'm listening."
"We've changed the place." "What?!"
"We are now near the ticket collecting place."
"Oh, really? I'm near it too."
"Great, then stay where you are and we will come to find you. It's better than walking in cycles this way."
"Right." I looked around then found an old tree near the old huge billboard. "I'll wait beside the huge billboard, under the tree."
"Deal."
Dean just finished the conversation that way, and I went to the tree and sat at the old, worn-out chair under it.
I drank my water, and picked up some cheese bread to eat but before I put it in my mouth, my glasses made something glow slightly in gold.
A figure,
A human being was walking from the very end of the street, towards the place I was in.
I ignored it, since it was absolutely Dean or Drew, and continued to eat my bread… two minutes later a huge shadow fell on me so I looked up to see who's that who came first and decided to be mysterious.
And I ended up screaming, as if my soul had left me.
"So you did get here too?"
"E- excuse me." I swallowed hard, didn't know what or how to act. "Do you know me?"
"No."
The blue man from the Disaster Management Authority looked at me with those cold grey eyes and I felt as if he could read mindes.
Fortunately, he didn't seem as if he got my lie so I continued, making sure that my tone wasn't as creepy as what it was seconds ago. "Do you know where this place in?"
"They told me that a man that looked exactly like you helped them gather in a relatively safe place."
"They?"
"Are you playing stupid?"
"No." I frowned. "If you meant the people I gave some food to then I know. But I didn't gather them or anything, they came by themselves."
"Right…"
He was about to say something but turned his head without a warning when two figures came from behind.
When he became more aware, I looked at what he was looking at and a burning scream choked in my throat—
They were there,
The three I came to see.
No human heads, and fully equipped as if they were a special unit in the army or something.
And absolutely planning to come to me, even if they could see the Disaster Management Authority agent standing here…
Agh—
What kind of situation is this?