Buried city part 1

    It was a city, now it belongs to the desert. Sand drifts and piles into dunes against adobe walls, brick walls, and piles of stone that once marked where buildings stood, houses, resturaunts, various businesses, as well as wind breaks for them and ornaments for their lawns. Most of the smaller structures' roofs have collapses, windows broken in or out, doors smashes or hanging loose paining not a picture of natural degredation but that in the time between abandonment and now, closer to then, they were looted, attacked, whomever was left in this wasteland of a city trying to survive on what little was left behind by those who could relocate. There are six skyscrapers, only about fifty stories high each, still standing as there is little to rust them away in this dry land. Almost every window however is cracked in some way, some broken, the wind has blown so many small rocks and contious batterings of sand over the many years that it is no surprise even the hardest of glass would be tempered down by it. The bigger breaks however don't look natural; and closer examination will find that fire has spread through this city unabaited more than once.

   The city now is home to sand drifts covering what once were streets; a contrast to the surrounding desert; which is primarily rocky. This city of loose sand constantly blowing about in the wind is the result of the people who once lived there. They cleared away spaces to have backyards, golf courses, a dog park, and the vast open spaces for roads and parkinglots. Without water these grassy places dried up, the introduced soil drying up, caking away, and blowing free in the wind, combined with the general loose surface sand of any desert this city became one big trap for sand drifts giving it an even more desolate and ghostly apperance than the land around it with its sparse vegetation. Wild life even seems rare here save for very small creatures. Nothing descended from the animals humans had introduced is to be found, either having moved away to better hunting grounds, died off without humans there to provide food, or else eaten by the few people who tried to survive here.

    On the surface it appears serene in its desolation. The lack of vehicles to be found among the drifts save a scant few including some that suffered the same blazes that struck some neighborhoods in what wasthe suburbs of the city, would seem to imply the city is a ghost town, no different than others that speckle these vast desert lands; some dating to centuries older even than this city. That some disaster elsewhere cut this city off from water, distribution of food, of fuel; of power; forcing its inhabitants to abandon it or die. Leaving behind some people who couldn't escape. Bleached bones are to be found in nearby mountains of some who tried to make it by foot, signs of some settlements out in the desert also long abandoned and left to either decay slowly, be bleached by the sun, or burned and melted by the heat and raiders who tried to live there away from the city. People however cannot live long without water. Among the sands, within the more closed up houses one may find the mummified remains of a few people, the bones of others, signs of violence, fire, or simple thirst and starvation. They waited for help to come, trying to live their lives as if nothing were wrong, succumbing to mania, depression, or clinging to hope till death claimed them by those others, themselves, or nature.

   But why, why was this now sand choked city abandoned? Outside the city where the rocky outcroppings break up the sand and the ground is sturdier with stone the sand drifts grow thinner till one can find a mighty pair of roads, cracked and broken by time, but in this land where little grows these massive paved roads while bleached of paints are still visible, bridges passing over them to connect the roads to the downtown area, a long abandoned and completly devoid of vehicles air port, where inside one can find the long empty cots, and out behind it a mass grave; and inside even more bodies, more decayed by being inside; those who had buried the dead who had no one to bury them; the last remnants of resistance to the death that swept this city. Uniforms, medical supply boxes, stores of uneaten and long since inedible food stuffs kept secret from those who had fled the city by foot or held off in their homes. Clear signs the air port had become the refuge of the "aristocrats" who either failed to flee in time or realized there was no where to flee too; deprived of their down town pent houses and apartments which had become the target of whatever happened here. The outside of those buildings are simply cracked, the inside paints another picture, barricaded stairwells, elevators crashed and burned out, apartments with a few bodies in them, but almost all raided and gutted by those desperate to survive. Living high above the ground, cut off from supplies, only made them sitting targets for those who no doubt blamed them for their suffering; or else simply were desperate to stay alive and searched for any potential store of food and supplies. The air port has left behind weapons, shell casing, signs of explosions set off along the walls and streets; there was fierce fighting here. But surely a few survivors who didn't manage to leave could cause such a military response.

    There was food, supplies, machinery kept on generators, was this the last haven of the rich, or the last haven to escape whatever death had swept the city? The garages full of military vehicles sitting and slowly falling apart with neglect, ammunition, rations. Exits reinforced with barricades, barbed wire, and metal plates. At some point these people decided they could not let anyone else in or to leave. They too seemed to be waiting for a rescue that wouldn't come.

   All of these observations are being made by something, something that just woke up. In the city, a building whose lower glass windows are caved in has a spot on its floor disturbed, the sand blasted away by powerful jets of air from below, an almost coffin like white pod ascended from it, its hatch opening and out stepping a being with a body like a human woman made of white smooth almost plastic like material, blue glowing lines ornamenting her frame and segments, a short neck length hood immitating hair; her face is stiff and mask like, her eyes are overly large for what she is an immitation of, her irisies rotate and glow blue as she observes everything around her in every spectrum. The sand does not bother her, nor the intense heat, she is far more complex than the machines she finds in the houses, buildings, even the ones that may still work although are stiff with age. She has wandered back and forth following the two great roads as they move through the and beyond both ends of the city and the many branching roads. Wandered out to find a "ranch" where only bones remain of about a dozen people and many more animals. She has determined what burned, but not what happened. Most of the houses have bodies that her bio-scan detects died of blunt force trauma, asphyxiation from stangulation, massive bodily trauma, burning, bullets, as well as those even showing no signs of lethal trauma, but signs malnutrition, dehydration, and even heat stroke were the causes of death. No one cause other than being cut off from medical supplies, and the growing desperation to be found among a population that can neither escape nor is recieving any help. So what then caused the air port to cut its self off, those people to barricade themselves inside.

   A fragment in the sand as she wanders that way catches her attention, it is a splinter, a splinter of bone, her bio-scan indicates it is human. She is standing on dunes that were once a parkinglot to a mall, she scans through the sand finding many fragments, torn and cut to pieces, and chemical residue to suggest the long decayed remains of over a hundred people. The cause of death, suddenly being chopped to pieces. The mall was one of the structured burned, but now a closer inspection inside finds the cause, a helicopter crashed onto the building and exploded. But this was not what killed all those people in the parkinglot. Knowing what to look for now she wanders the streets again, here and there she finds them, tiny traces of burned bones, splintered fragments of a person, dogs, horses, and even machinery, pieces indicating they were once cars, trucks, vans, and other civilian modes of transportation, not enough to be all of them. But the decay rates, what happened here as her bio-scans indicate, happened in stages.

   The city shows signs it was at first abandoned, cut off, people fled, or died from each other or the elements. Many gathered it seems either at the air port or the mall. At some point a military force came in to aid the survivors, gathering people at the mall and airport. But then something else hit this city, something that targeted the mall, destroying a helicopter, starting a fire, and violently killing via completly shredding them somehow every person and living thing they could find. Her bio-scans indicate the paths taken by what ever this was, at least four or five somethings moving in different directions down streets; but only streets, never into a building, scooping up it seems and shredding anything unlucky enough to cross their paths. The mall was nearly at the other side of the city from this assault; did the military forces there really manage their barricade reinforcements in such a short amount of time; was this what they were fighting against?

   She moves back to the air port, examining the outer doors that before she simply lept over through a window or hovered about as she somehow can a few feet off the ground. There are signs on the exteriors of the buildings, only on the garage doors and the roads of something slicing at them, chopping up soldiers going by the buried cloth fragments and dented up medal badges and gear left to be buried by the encroaching sands. Projectile weapons chopped up, human remains. But whatever this was never tried to enter the building proper. She scans the bodies again, signs of a virus. Biological warfare, or else something spread among those trapped inside that they had no way to care for; she cannot determine this.

   That however seems the end of it, this military after locking down and being hit didn't retreat, yet also never recieved it seems any reinforcements. They too cut off by whatever happened here. But whatever these were that attacked those just struggling to survive are not here anymore. But they did leave trails, trails of bodies. Following them however is sporadic at best, as they either found no one for lengths, or wandered into the desert. However in the area of the suburbs the most damaged by fire she has found the cause, an explosion, and in the center of it, what before she had overlooked as burned out debris of some machine is a large vehicle, thick armored coverings, armored wheels, several long mechanical arms with grasping hands, and down the center of it a series of metal parts clearly designed to grind, crush, and slice apart anything entered in one end and thrown out the other. Someone had thrown a bomb inside it to destroy it, but its explosion started a massive fire.

   She realized her ability to hover was based on a surface being near her, as such she hovered up the side of the tallest standing building, not wanting to disturb the barricades inside more than she had.Atop the building she could zoom in her eyes to other spots, out by the mountains she found glistening in the sun something large, building like a spider but zooming in found each leg ended in a cylindrical pod full of spinnable blades and the under belly of this machine covered in spinnable blades as well; the damage to it would indicate an air to surface explosive hit it from above; the helicopter. She ponders if it was the same one and she got the sequence of events wrong, or else there were some reinforcement, or else that parkinglot was ground zero but just where some of them appeared, perhaps others came from outside the city. Indeed she sees them out away from the mountains, more in the distance, in ruins. Some like the spider, others like the vehicle like one. Even a mangled pile miles away that looked like it was a more loosely put together pile of spinning blades. Whatever happened these manglers were clearly taken out at some point, and the few people left in the city left to die. Perhaps afraid more of these were out there, or perhaps no more came when no one was left to kill.

 It is a curious thing to be certain, there are deaths from before and after those in the streets. It would seem the function of these death machines was just to isolate the people, keeping them trapped till they die. This city was clearly not a strategic location, or worth any greater effort than using as far as she can tell hastly constructed mechanical murderers. But why not use them to just level structures as well, granted at least one was taken out with considerable sacrifice by the locals. Answers she can't figure out, however as she wanders away from the city to examine some of the larger machines and their wreckage, realizing just how big some of them really are and how the damage to them isn't just that of the explosives and projectile firearms she has seen so far. Something else, something familiar. Something inside her clicks, as she hovers backwards and aims her hand at one of the larger manglers, blue energy gathering from her fingers into her palm and firing a blue bolt that completly severs one of the legs of the robot.

   She shakes her hand, an action that seems to re-lock the weapon, something she hasn't thought of in the several days she had been wandering around this city, and driven by some internal calling to find people, to figure out what happened to them, locate the aggressor, and...destroy it.

  Something is missing, she knows stuff, can piece all this together, and never asked who she herself was, and why she was doing this. She heads back to the city, to figure that mystery out.