Meryl Stryfe: Justice Walker by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Meryl-Stryfe-Justice-Walker-1275707038#image-1

Meryl Stryfe: Justice Walker ANIMATION

The Last Hum of the Whisper Locus

Meryl Stryfe’s car, a once-reliable sand-skimmer now resembling a gutted metal insect, died with a final, phlegmatic rattle. The silence that followed was not empty. It was a presence, a thick, woolen quiet that swallowed the echoes of the engine and left only the thrum of her own panicked heartbeat. The Dasht-e-Margo Wastes lived up to their name—the Plain of Death. And her transmitter was a dead, plastic brick.

“Perfect,” she muttered, smacking the dashboard. A fine pink dust, radioactive and glinting, sifted from the roof.

She had been chasing a lead on a missing settlement, a puff of rumor on the wind. Now, she was the story. The sun, a bleached-white coin, baked the landscape into a cracked ceramic glaze. In the distance, the jagged teeth of a derelict geothermal silo bit at the sky. Shelter. Maybe salvage. A grave.

She shouldered her pack, the weight of her derringer a small, cold comfort against the vast, watching emptiness. The mutants here were not the clumsy, roaring brutes of the inland deserts. Reports spoke of things that moved like smoke, that chittered with a sound like breaking glass.

Halfway to the silo, the sand erupted.

It was a nest of them. They were pale, hairless, multi-limbed things, their skin the color and texture of hard-boiled eggs. They moved in a terrifying, scuttling unison, dozens of black, pupil-less eyes fixed on her. Meryl fired twice. The reports were obscenely loud. One creature spun, a limb dangling. The others didn’t flinch.

She ran. The silo door was a massive, rusted wheel. It refused to budge. The chittering was close now, a dry, rasping cacophony. She threw her weight against the metal, a sob of frustration in her throat.

“Applying force counter-clockwise usually helps,” a voice drawled from above.

She looked up. A man sat perched on a gantry ten feet up, legs dangling. He was lean, dressed in patched, dusty leather, a wide-brimmed hat shadowing his face. A long, polished rifle lay across his knees.

“Open it!” she screamed.

“Ask nicely.”

A mutant lunged. Meryl sidestepped and kicked, her boot connecting with a sickening crunch. The creature recoiled, but two more took its place.

“Please!” she yelled.

The man moved. He didn’t jump down; he seemed to flow from the gantry, landing silently. He spun the wheel with an infuriating ease. The door groaned inward. He grabbed her arm, yanked her into the cool, dark throat of the silo, and slammed the door shut. The scuttling, chittering fury outside became a muted, scratching echo.

In the gloom, Meryl wrenched her arm free, bringing her derringer up. “Who are you?”

He struck a match, lighting a small oil lamp. The flame revealed a face younger than his voice suggested, sharp-featured with intelligent, amber eyes that held no warmth. A long, thin scar traced his jaw. “Dorian Vale. And you’re the insurance girl, Meryl Stryfe. You’re a long way from the Bernardelli offices.”

“You know me.”

“I make it my business to know who’s wandering into my territory.” He held up his hands. “You can point that pop-gun elsewhere. If I wanted you dead, I’d have let the ‘Flickers’ have you. They’d have picked your bones clean in minutes.”

“Flickers?”

“They’re drawn to noise. Heat. Fear.” He smiled, a thin, humorless line. “You were broadcasting all three.”

Meryl lowered her gun, not holstering it. The silo was a cathedral of decay. Rusted catwalks spiraled into darkness above; the air smelled of ozone, rust, and something sweetly organic, like rotting fruit.

“This is your territory?” she asked, incredulous.

“For now. There’s something here. Something valuable.” He started walking down a sloping access tunnel, lamp held high. “And since you’re stuck, and the Flickers will nest around that door for hours, you might as well make yourself useful.”

The alliance was born of pure, desperate necessity. Dorian was a repository of grim knowledge. He pointed out phosphorescent fungi that could poison a man with their spores, and whispered of the “Whispers” that sometimes drifted through the lower levels—half-heard voices that could curdle sanity. He was a criminal, he admitted it freely. A thief, a smuggler, a man who’d done terrible things for worse people.

“And now you’re a treasure hunter?” Meryl asked, chewing on a tasteless nutrient bar from his supplies.

“Now I’m a sur
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