One of the first structures erected was a workshop. Mind, this was after the vital sleeping quarters were constructed, and it was barely a free-standing structure, let alone a adequate shelter. Yet they had somewhere to store and work with construction materials and Ophelia had formed herself a makeshift bench, which was really just a large plank of birch wood rested atop a pile of spare cinder blocks and metal beams. On it was a mess of wiring, some piped with bright colored plastics, circuit boards, and a set of tools, Ophelia's most prized possession other than her father's rifle.
Phe worked quickly when it came to almost everything else, but as she formed pipe bombs, tripwires and basic hunting traps, she worked with nearly deadly precision. As everyone else slept, Phe reserved for herself a couple hours, working by sheltered lamp light, to construct these defensive measures for their budding settlement.
After a couple of days, an adequate enough collection of traps rested in the corner of the small, shed-like structure. Ophelia had asked someone to fetch Joe Salinas, one of their newest residents, while she pondered over the pile with her arms crossed and lips pursed with thoughts of where to stake their newfound traps. She had been the one, along with Max, to plot out a general area for the encampment, and the piecemeal fences, made of metal slabs, wood pillars and whatever else they could scavenge, indicated a loose outline. But as Phe thought the settlement map in her head, she found that there really was no concrete plan.
The one thing she was sure about was her selection of Joe to aid her. The man was strong and sturdy, a gem when it came to the non-Military outliers that the Stronghold produced (what were they feeding them in there? were they feeding them?). But that was not what prompted her decision- it was that he was new and painfully sullen, quite like Max was when he first came to them. Ophelia figured that through the common task of erecting this new castle, she could probe a word or two out of him, even if it was just to learn of his favored gun type or foodstuff.
While their budding settlement, if it could be called that, was a far cry from the dense, well-guarded warren of Stronghold, it was much better than sleeping alone, taking shelter where he could find it. Quite often, he’d found no shelter at all. Joe had spent many nights sitting in the dark, waiting. Watching. Afraid to light a fire, knowing that the light might attract unwanted attention.
God. Living among the drifters was uncomfortable, like an itch he couldn’t scratch, but he grudgingly supposed it was better than that.
Well. Mostly better. The message from Ophelia Warde put him on edge before he’d even reached her and her shed. What did she want from him? Admittedly, he hadn’t contributed much yet beyond guard duty, but neither had he pissed anyone off. Joe stepped in, glancing warily from corner to corner, and saw nothing but Ophelia herself and a pile of...stuff.
Hm. Joe was swift enough to realize this was purposeful stuff, stuff she’d worked on, but he couldn’t quite identify what it was for at first glance. Crude weapons of a sort?
“You wanted me?” Joe asked, looking from the heap in the corner to Ophelia. He couldn’t imagine what for. He’d been able to survive out here, but he’d found that most of his skills were next to useless when it came to thriving. He didn’t know how to build a proper shelter or dig a well or build furniture or grow crops or anything especially useful. Thus far he’d fetched and carried for people who actually knew what the hell they were doing. It felt undignified.
Booted footsteps and a gruff voice asking "you wanted me?" turned her attention away from the traps to Joe, standing there as if nothing disinterested him more. That did not dampen Ophelia's spirits, where a bright smile spread across her features, making her face seem almost youthful under the layer of grime and stress.
"Joe! Thanks for coming," she threw him a small wink. "And thanks even more for not making a big stink about it." For there were a couple of drifters who admonished Ophelia's beckons, on the knowledge that they would be handling one of her dangerous contraptions. A reasonable reaction, though Ophelia always insisted that she made her devices safe for the user.
The drifter leader bent over to scoop up a handful of the stuff, which she then slid into a duffel bag and indicated for Joe to take one. "That ones yours," she said with a smile, as she continued the same process until both duffel bags were overflowing with wires and small wooden stakes and delicate, little triggers that were carefully placed atop. She lifted one of the bags with surprising strength and control, minding that the bag was nearly half the size as she was, and shoved the contents into Joe's arms.
"Super exciting task today- we'll be setting traps!" Ophelia exclaimed with genuine excitement, as she shouldered on the other bag. "Be careful with the bag- wouldn't want a pipe bomb or two to go off." The leader snickered, adding afterwards, "That's a joke."
Joe, not entirely confident in his place with Ophelia’s outcasts, had not yet taken to complaining. He hadn’t voiced any of those complaints aloud, anyways. They hardly counted in the privacy of his own head.
He took the duffel bag without complaint, then, though he’d eyed the contents with a degree of trepidation as she stuffed them in. Traps. Alright. He still wasn’t entirely sure how the wires and little fiddly bits on top would work, but ‘pipe bombs’ sounded plain enough. It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d dealt in with the Clubs—or if the Clubs did deal in this sort of thing, none of it had passed through his hands. People who wanted to kill other people in Stronghold as messily as possible favored guns and knives and that. Not...wires and fiddly bits.
He’d learn something new, then. Or explode. Who could say what the day held?
“Traps,” Joe repeated, stepping after Ophelia. “You think we’ll need these, with guards?”
Personally speaking, he had no idea. The more protection the better, yes, but he could also see the danger in, say, an unwary hunter having their foot blown off on the way home. Perhaps that unwary hunter would be him. He was not much of a woodsman. Nature...man. Whatever.
As she stepped out of the makeshift workshop and into the afternoon light, she let out a humorful chuckle at Joe's question. "Traps don't fall asleep on the job," she responded, throwing the colony member a playful look. "Plus, it can't hurt to have 'em. Can't hurt us, anyway." She set out in a direction north of the camp, away from the lake downhill, which glimmered atop deep blue depths, expecting Joe to follow as she did not turn her head or inquire on whether he was coming.
She walked for a bit, past the budding structures and colony members working hard to complete them. She nodded and smiled in greeting at every individual that passed, even stopping for a moment to converse with a pair hammering metal sheets into the ground, which would eventually become the reinforced walls to the armory. Soon, they reached the perimeter of construction, past the piecemeal fences, and into the surrounding area, which was half forest, half open area.
At first, she was quiet, sensing the broodish aura about Joe. She had in her hands a flattened and rolled up piece of leather, which, when she unfurled, had crude outlines etched into the fabric with a primitive charcoal pen of the general area of the encampment. On the edges were spots marked in "x"s, some with tiny letters scrawled beside them in cryptic writing that would have been illegible to all that were not Ophelia Warde.
"I forget how loud the world can be," Ophelia said, her eyes forward yet her voice clearly directed to her companion beside her. It was enunciated by the distant clang of tools beating from the direction of the burgeoning settlement. "When you've wandered as much as I have, every little sound's amplified. The scurrying of a chipmunk can set you on edge."
In truth, this was Ophelia's way of getting to know Joe. She had no inkling to his background, but judging by his strength and size, could have very well been from the Stronghold.
Joe trailed after Ophelia, nodding to the people they passed. Agreeable, if not exactly friendly. It felt almost unnatural, holding people at arm’s length like this, but then again, being among drifters at all felt unnatural. He’d killed people like this, once. Not often, and generally not intentionally, but he’d gone along on a handful of raids. Looked for supplies, by whatever means necessary.
Thus far, none of them had recognized him from those days. Thank God for small favors, ha.
He glanced over her shoulder at the map, curious, and looked away after a second of scrutiny. At a glance it was impossible to tell whether the scribblings were a cipher or simply the product of bad penmanship. Maybe he’d find a way to snoop on it later. Not because he thought she was hiding anything, mind, but simply because he was a snoopy bastard.
“Uh-huh. Seems quiet to me,” Joe replied, studying the trees. Ophelia might’ve been able to differentiate them, somehow, but to him they were all trees. Big ones. Short ones. Medium-sized ones. They generally came in shades of green and brown. That was about all he could say for them.
As for chipmunks, well, he had no clue what those were. Something small? Some type of lizard?
“We didn’t get many chipmunks in Stronghold,” Joe said, volunteering this scrap of non-information grudgingly, mostly out of a human obligation to fill the silence. “I expect they’re around every corner out here.” He wondered whether you could eat them. Tag : Ophelia Warde
"Really?" she said with an incredulous laugh. "I'm surprised, with how those bastards get everywhere." Joe could've been lying, he could've been telling the truth, he could've been two lizards stacked on top of each other and masqueraded in a human suit. Ophelia did not easily trust outsiders, but once someone was an Oucast, she regarded them with the same respect and comradery as all the rest. There was no reason to rob, or cheat, or ruin the small unit of outcasts- they had almost nothing of value, and almost less in terms of personal grievance. They were just a group of downtrodden souls, fighting to survive, same as every other creature in no man's land.
It was why, when Ophelia caught Joe's eyes glancing over the map, she tilted it towards him to allow him better access. Over the parchment, she gave a lopsided smile at Joe, like she were both pleased and amused that he had taken a furtive interest in it. "It's a map of where we're putting the traps and explosives," Ophelia stated. Her finger graced one of the cryptic sentences. "These are the different types of traps we're planting. The type's dependent on landscape and strategic location." Her finger touched an x, one that was surrounded by the smudged outlines of what seemed to be trees. In front of it, a badly drawn circle, or a normally drawn oval, depending on how one chose to look at it. "And that is just up ahead."
When they looked up, they were in front of a boulder that rivaled the height of some of the conifers around it. It was also incredibly narrow, like one could wrap their arms comfortably around the width of it. She rolled up the map and stuck in her pack pocket. Then, she slid her duffel bag off her shoulder.
"We'll put the outer traps in first. I would hate for one of us to accidentally stumble across a tripwire on our way back."
Joe returned his attention to the map, intrigued. Traps and explosives. Different types. Alright. He didn’t like thinking that he might be carrying anything explosive in his pack, but he’d just...leave that for now. Ophelia was an expert, anyways. Right? There was no need to worry.
No need to worry. He’d repeated that to himself often enough in his Old Life that the words had worn grooves in his brain. Driven themselves in like stakes.
He’d remember Ophelia’s marks, though. Joe liked picking up knowledge. It might not be all that useful beyond Ophelia’s maps—maps she was willing to share, it seemed—but it’d stick with him.
“Is that...natural?” Joe asked, glancing at the boulder as he shrugged at his bag. Or column. Or whatever it was. He supposed it didn’t matter; he’d run across any amount of human-made things being swallowed by the wilderness during his time on the Outside. Mostly, it was just a distressing reminder of his inevitable death out here.
As she pulled out supplies, her eyes flickered to where Joe suggested, the boulder he had inquired about. Ophelia shrugged. "Not sure. I think somethings written on the bottom, but it's illegible to me." A reason for the cryptic symbols on the map- Ophelia could draw figures, as was the most basic communication, but she could not write, not as she spoke.
Ophelia did not give the strange cylindrical boulder much more thought. She was curious, sure, but if she stopped to think about every single strange moss covered statue or other remnant of the Old World she'd come across, she wouldn't make much ground. Her attention was focused on the practical, the things that would aid in her and her group's survival. Though she were not sure if this tendency was because of her personality or her need to live.
"You know how to set snares?" she asked and lifted one by a toothed arc for Joe to observe. It was a thing bolted together with whatever metal, copper and other alloy that she could scrape together. The two flat rows of deadly looking teeth looked large enough to trap a man's foot. The mechanism was ugly, but it would get the job done, Phe hoped.
Posted 09-21-2021, 09:47 AM
new castle
