Two Halves: chapter 21

two halves chapter 21

He walked along the narrow dock towards the hut. The old metal the building was made out of looked to be iron, from the small glimpses of it you could see. Rust hung off it in greats swaths looking like some grotesque plants. Darris walked up the rickety stairs towards the door, and kicked it. Something snapped and the door opened, the grind of metal on metal broke the silence of the island. Darris entered and was gone nearly a full minute, several crashes that sounded like things being tosses aside sounded from inside the building. Despite the ruckus both Zeckle and Nicolas were still standing at the foot of the stairs leading to the hut. Darris reappeared in the doorway later carrying to chairs.

 

“I normally come out here alone, so I never needed more then one seat.” he began to walk around the porch to the opposite side of the building. “Come on, can’t be waiting all day. If I’m gone for more than a few hours Machone is gonna worry himself sick.” He disappeared around the front of the building. Nicolas was the first to brave the staircase, and even though he had seen it support Darris’s weight we was still wary of it. The metal creaked and groaned from his and Zeckle’s combined weight. Zeckle looked down at herself seeing that she was still wearing the heavy scale armor. She shut her eyes for a moment concentrating and in a blink he had morphed. She was again wearing the clothes she had received from the market, and luckily these were much more light weight. Some of Nicolas fear over the crumbling metal vanished. They reached the top of the stairs with a small sigh of relief, and rounded the building.

 

From the looks of it, it appeared to be all one room. A small round window revealed the interior. Dust lay heavy on everything, and the window was grimy with age, but he could just make out a few sparse furnishings. He could see a writing desk pushed into one corner, and a pile that contained several more chairs like the ones Darris had been carrying. A bookshelf dominated the wall, and the other had what looked like a map of the city. Limp strings hung from where they had once been attached to this wall. It appeared to be much like Darris’s office in the compound except it hadn’t been used in what appeared to be years. Nicolas stopped gazing and walked out to the other side of the hut. Where Darris was already sitting in a old worn chair; the other two dust covered ones sitting on either side of him.

 

“Sit, this story is gonna take a fair while,” he reached under his seat and pulled out a small bag of tobacco. Its surface had a faded red and blue pattern covering it. Darris reached inside and took out a pinch of tobacco, and slowly rolled it into a thin cigarette. “It’s funny. I’m not a smoker, but when I come out here I feel like I always gotta.” Darris reached into his pocket and withdrew a small pack of matches, and struck one to light the cigarette. He took a long draw from it and blew out a neat smoke ring over the black water. It hung lazily in the air as it drifted over the oil and slowly diffused. Nicolas sat in the seat beside Darris, and Zeckle lounged in the one on the far side.

 

“So, I guess I should tell the story from the beginning.” he took another puff from the cigarette, and tipped the ashes onto the ground beside him. A small pile lay there from countless other smoked cigarettes; butts stuck out at odd angles from the small ash mountain. “Me and Bestalel grew up together. We were practically brothers. Grew up in a village called Muckcap; you wouldn’t know it, nobody does. It’s much farther down than this, ‘bout another mile and a half. The entire town was about a hundred people; remnants of some maintenance team sent down there ages ago. The team got stuck, and scrapped a living from the sludge.” Darris looked out over the water, and across the dam towards the edge of the world. He didn’t really seem to see it though; his eyes were glazed over.

 

“ Our births were like any other in that village, carefully planned. Down there, there isn’t hardly any food. They gotta make sure everyone’s got enough to eat. Your entire life in that town they shove one message down your throat. Never try to leave. They say, it’s too dangerous; you’ll get yourself killed, and bullshit like that. That’s why we left” Darris turned his head and smiled at Nicolas. “We thought there would be a better life up here. We pulled together every spare past we could find, and made ourselves a raft. One day, when everyone else was asleep. We pushed off, and never looked back.” Darris laughed a mirthless laugh. His eyes were mournful from the memory.

 

“They were right ya know. It’s not a good life up ‘ere. It took weeks for us to find our way to a service station. We got loss over and over, and probably went in circles. Our supplies were runnin low, and we’re nearly out of electricity, and once it went dark there… Well it stays dark. We’re turnin out the light just before we were a goin to sleep. I thought it was my imagination, but I saw somethin. A light out over the water. Turned out to be a service station. We had gotten lucky and went down one of the oil routes that led by there, and if I a hadn’t insisted on us conserving electricity we woulda never a saw it. We paddles over fast as we could; all tired and hungry, and they took us in. Was just two guys and a mech-drone, but they took us in. Told us it was another week before an elevator came down that low, but we could wait. We waited ten years already.”

Author's Note

I wasn't able to get a chapter out on time like normal yesterday. So today I present you with a special DOUBLE CHAPTER DAY!!!

Reviews

[Miss Coral]

Great chapter, but a lot of grammatical errors in this one, especially towards the beginning. Could be cleaned up.
Plot wise, excellent job.

[Daniel Gardner]

"Drools" Just like your avatar lol. Great job

[Aggie Skeleton]

So much tension, so much fun...

[RosylnPeaches]

Tension progresses the book to a delighful suspense. But you do need to go over your work make sure you edit simple grammatical mistakes. :)

[James Watts]

The old metal the building was made out of looked to be iron, from the small glimpses of it you could see.( left out what before looked. You could also reword.
From what he could see, the building was old and constructed mostly of metal, iron by the looks of it. I did use an -ly here in this example, but it was one those would actually help the sentence read cleaner.)

A lot of the same mistakes as I previously pointed out, don't fret I still make a lot of the same mistakes I have made from day one. Editing in the final stage will cover it and the few grammatical errors I saw. My biggest thing the way your word sentences. Too many of them are structured in a similar fashion. Try to vary that out a bit. A good way to learn different sentence structures is just read. You will see what I mean. I still reword a lot of stuff in the final draft because I make the same mistake. Not bad though and the story is taking some shape.

[Dutch Jr.]

Two chapters in one day... impressive...lol. But this is a good installment to the book and it pushes the plot and tension right along.