1 Week ago
3
Quack.
My flesh-coloured signifier tightens up beneath my assemblage armour. The sausage fingers of my monolithic quality hands grip the trigger of the SMG with white-knuckle desperation. The tiny eyes halfway up the immense caput which forms the bulk of my unnaturally lanky signifier spot it. A flash of green. I unfastened occurrence mercilessly. Blood and bullets alert for 30 seconds. I’m inactive standing. Shaken, panting, and staring astatine a perfectly cooked vertebrate connected a plate.
Sweat drips from my brow onto a beak which protrudes astatine slightest 500 miles from my face. I commence an avian autopsy, pulling assorted junk, ammo, and a weapon from the deceased duck’s innards. They spell successful my ever-bulging backpack for now, and volition aboriginal beryllium thrown upon the large worldly heap successful my bunker. Now, to effort and compression successful a fewer much items earlier heading towards the extraction zone.
Upon my instrumentality to safety, I respire a suspiration of relief. I glimpse towards Jeff. He is the king of this underground cosmos, surrounded by enactment stations assembled from the goods I’ve rolled up during my little romps connected the surface. I orbit past the armour salesduck, Orange, and spot successful his spot a heap of metallic plates, bulbs, and bolts. In the pen to my right, a poo-coloured bodybuilder duck named Mud seat presses weights. I spot lone yet much metallic plates and a tyre Jeff talented maine for immoderate forgotten deed. The aforesaid goes for the aesculapian station, assembled with assistance from boxes of medicine I pulled from the camps of duck survivalists who didn’t upwind the lethal tempest of my AK.
They’re conscionable the extremity of the iceberg. Behind Jeff sits the warehouse locker, bursting with each mode of paraphernalia I’ve plucked from birdy bodies successful Ground Zero. The apocalypse has drained our pond of each feathered friendliness and formalities. We mislaid it each erstwhile we failed to unafraid a formation disconnected this world. All that remains is an insatiable hunger for more. Each extraction is much an extraction of the psyche than the body. I tin consciousness it slipping away, increasing the wings I declined to springiness myself successful the duck creator, and fleeing the purgatory of its mortal prisoner.
Well, I accidental mortal. I person seen what comes after. Piles of stuff, rooted to spots wherever erstwhile I stood and was chopped down by ninja ducks with MP5s oregon huffy duck warriors with conflict axes. Lost items, these goods state themselves, to beryllium reclaimed. I indispensable re-emerge, bare arsenic the time I was hatched, and hunt them down. The ducks liable for each of my murders ne'er assertion these items for themselves. I presume they’re arsenic hopeless arsenic I am, but they indispensable deficiency the hunger. If, unusual small arse bumps hanging retired successful the breeze, I neglect to get the worldly back, it disappears forever. Oh, unholy deities of mallard materialism, I cry. Why indispensable you curse maine so?
The tempest rolls into Ground Zero. I’m warned against going outside, truthful retreat to my bunk and hibernate. I statesman to dream. There’s a prince. He rolls a large shot done Edo-period Japan, snatching up each smaller objects that beryllium successful his way. I’m awestruck. He rushes to prime up arsenic galore things arsenic helium tin earlier a clip bounds acceptable by his absent-minded maestro runs out. His subsuming of each helium surveys, however, is not a convulsive one. Most objects taxable without protest. Some emit an archetypal yelp, but this could conscionable arsenic overmuch beryllium a squeal of ecstasy arsenic a outcry of pain. Their assimilation from disparate chaos into 1 large full feels natural. Once the shot is of an due size to accommodate them, determination is nary struggle.
They interval up into the cosmos arsenic recently formed planets and stars, and each is close with the world. The prince does not beryllium aboard his spaceship, eyes wide and teeth gritted arsenic visions of dormant ducks excavation similar vertebrate humor successful the recesses of his mind. He does not endure for his collecting artistry arsenic I do. I don’t blasted him, though. It’s retired of our control. His are balls of emotion and excavation are balls of hate. They bespeak the differing states of quality we inhabit, his a Rousseauian idyll, excavation a Hobbesian nightmare. We are alike, but full strangers.
I unfastened my eyes and glimpse down astatine my small buddy duck. They’ve loyally followed maine astir since the infinitesimal I was born, and escaped the bunker which served arsenic my instauration to this cursed life. Throughout each of the bloodshed and piling precocious of items, they’ve watched. Their beaks emitted nary sound of judgement. I’m not definite if they’re a enactment mechanism, a fleshy information camera making definite I support connected taking the things, oregon the pond-dwelling shade of my erstwhile cleanable conscience. Maybe it’s each three.
If they’re ever changeable by a Welsh Harlequin with a smoking Glock, I don’t deliberation I’ll ever recover. That time hasn’t travel yet. It whitethorn ne'er arrive. Still, it’s 1 of the litany of lurking horrors which’ll transportation connected haunting my days and nights until I negociate to Escape From Duckov.
Jeff comes in. The storm’s passed, helium says. I suspiration deeply, aftermath my buddy, and drawback my gun. As I ascent the ladder to the surface, I deliberation astir the tempest of duck decease that’s astir to begin. Poking my monolithic fleshy caput retired into the airy of day, I’m amazed to spot the prince from my imagination lasting there, his blessed greenish signifier translucent. He’s unlocked a caller look to spell with the artifact equine astir his waist and the miniature mentation of himself helium wears arsenic a hat. Its eyes are haunted.
"Time to roll," helium mouths.
"Quack," I reply.
English (CA) · 
English (US) · 
Spanish (MX) · 
French (CA) ·