InsaneJournal

Week Six -- Monday
Who: Blaze and Ruby
What Blaze gets himself in some trouble and Ruby finds him!
Where: A couple miles from town near the south-western banks of the Belle Fourche
When: Monday early afternoon



Blaze loved days when he was able to sneak out before his brother and the others awoke. Mornings like this he avoided the curious questions from his brother and the untrusting gaze of Sensei. God, it was like every time he went out it was a game of twenty questions. What did they think he was going to do anyway? All he wanted was some of his own time to explore. Most of the people in the Carrion were of a younger persuasion and they had a tendency to get on his last nerve. It wasn't that kids bothered him, he just didn't want to be around them all of the time.

He left the hospital at dawn in the warmest clothes he had: jeans, t-shirt and a black hoody. Needless to say they didn't do much to keep out the biting wind and the threat of an oncoming snow storm but it was more than some people had and he was grateful for that. He often wondered why it was Wyoming they had to be stranded in? Couldn't it have been somewhere nice and warm like Arizona? Of all the places to be at the end of the world Wyoming was perhaps last on his list. He liked snow, hell he even liked cold weather but being stuck inside for days at a time was not his cup of tea.

He ran from the city that morning, trying to get his body heat up. He planned to go quite far today and it wouldn't do to get frozen to the bone within the first five minutes of his journey. The place where he was going he'd only been once before. There was a little shack practically in the middle of nowhere to the southeast of the city. Last time he'd seen it he'd been out scavenging with a group of Carrion. He didn't draw attention to it, having proffered the idea of exploring it on his own. In the backpack he carried there were bits of cloth and water for the adventure he had planned.

The shack was at least two hours away from the main city on foot so his running didn't last long. He followed the river until he saw the two crossed pine trees that he had made a mental note of last time he'd seen the shack. It was about a half miles walk from the river, straight through the pine trees. It was a small thing made from grayed pine boards and looked like it had seen better days. Vegetation grew all over it and the few wooden steps that lead to the door were all but swallowed by vines and brush. Blaze straddled the remaining edges of the steps and brushed off the door with his sleeve. Painted red on the door was a familiar diamond shape, and within that shape were three letters: TNT. Below that was a skull and crossbones.

Blaze was pretty sure that he wasn't going to find what he was looking for. The government normally took care of places like these ages ago. Still, it was possible that one site had been missed. There was a lot of exploratory blasting done in the Sundance area decades before the Vance Copper mine was discovered and various remnants of such days still lingered in the forested plains of the area. This shack was one such remnant.

Blaze dug his fingers into the door jam. The handle that had been on the door had long since broken off but the door was swollen shut from the weather it had endured year after year. After what seemed like ages of prying at the door it finally gave way and sent him tumbling backwards. He sat up rubbing the back of his head and small of his back where he'd landed on the canteen that was in his backpack. "Jesus Christ, the things I go through for this stuff..." He crawled back onto his feet and stepped into the darkened shack.



There were a few wooden crates near the walls of the shack but most of it looked to have been wiped out awhile ago. They were all labeled with the same symbols that had been on the door. He couldn't help but grin to be in the presence of such a large amount of explosives. Granted, the majority of it was probably moot from having sat around so long but there was bound to be at least a few useful sticks lying about. The first crate he managed to pry open was nothing but what looked like a mushy pile of yellowish goop. Still, he could see the end of a stick of dynamite sticking out of it in the back. The only light in the shack was what managed to seep through the hole in the roof and the slats in the walls so it was hard for him to see exactly what he was getting into.

He pulled back his sleeve and reached down into the crate to grab the end of the dynamite with his thumb and forefinger. It slid out of the goop with ease but he almost dropped it from his faulty grip. Before the stick hit the ground he grabbed the middle of the deteriorated thing with his hand. He regretted the action immediately and let out quite the howl when his skin made contact with the stick. An almost unbearable burning sensation tore through his palm and he dropped the dynamite anyway. His eyes widened for a moment as it hit the floorboard of the shack. It rolled towards the door and stopped. Nothing happened. He let out a sigh of relief when the dynamite didn't explode. He knew enough to know that TNT this old was a ticking time bomb. One wrong move and the whole shack was gone.

He held his hand to the light, it was still burning furiously. He glanced at the yellowish goop again. Nitric acid, he should have known. He wiped the goop off of his hand and onto the wall with a cry of pain. he would have wiped his hand on his jeans but the acid would have eventually eaten through it and burned his leg. The burning was so bad that it brought tears to his eyes. He had no idea what to do for an acid-burn and the thought of infection terrified him. Perhaps this wasn't such a good idea.

He reached under his hoody with his free hand in an attempt to tear a strip of cloth from the bottom of his t-shirt. The motion sent him off balance and into a stack of nitroglycerine soaked crates behind him. The moment he hit them it was like the survival mechanism went off in his body and when he hit the floor he flung himself upright again and out the front door of the shack as fast as he could. He was barely able to clear the line of fire when the shack exploded behind him. The force sent him sprawling and inevitably made him hit his head on the nearest rock leaving a nice gash above his left eye.

His ears were ringing so loudly and his head spinning. When he first opened his eyes he thought he was blind for the stars that he saw. Luckily the vegetation around the shack was so green that there wasn't much to burn and luckily for Blaze most of the dynamite in the shack had indeed been moot. He pushed himself up with his uninjured hand to look at the shack. If that hadn't been a close call he didn't know what the fuck was. He closed his eyes and promptly fell back onto his back. His hand was throbbing and burning but all he could do for the moment was lay there and catch his breath. That was when he started to laugh, because it was the best thing to do aside from pissing his pants or crying.