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NOTES: Not that this one took a while to write, it's more like I left it for a while because I was going through a terrible creative block. I actually had a majority of the chapter written down before I left it, so now that I've continued it, it didn't take too long until I was happy with it.
Chapter 4
He-e-e-elp…
“Huh?”
Zig looked to the East.
Somebo-o-ody…
“Whuzzat noise?”
He loosened his grip on his shovel.
Ple-e-ea-a-ase…
Zig was one of three men; the first to notice the peculiar cries over the sounds of shoveling that dominated the air. Suddenly, the shoveling died and the remaining two would turn their heads towards the cries, as well.
“Oh, I dunno,” Gorrik replied.
“Is that a ghost? Creepy!”
Beht shook his head doubtfully, “Sounds like a man crying inconsolably.”
Then, Gorrik, to Beht’s answer, “Like real? Or a ghost?”
Beht tried to ignore him.
It was most likely the weeping that they all heard came from a very real and very distraught man, but the trio had already been out in vast isolation for (what felt like to them) so long – isolation long enough for them to wonder whether or not the weeping was really there. In the end, the three men concluded that the cries may as well be real, after all.
“Ah man….” A sour tinge of guilt poked at Zig.
“I don’t think I ever faced a time where I’d end up feelin’ like that. It’s already rough as it can get out here.”
Beht and Gorrik shared with him the same sentiment.
“If there really is a man lost out there, then we gotta find him! Help the poor feller out!” Gorrik suggested.
Zig nodded enthusiastically. “Let’s go, then!”
The three men picked up their shovels, then it was towards the noise they went.
“You know, Gorrik, at the same time, that whole ghost thing you mentioned could be true as well,” Beht commented.
“I mean, this whole planet is a giant graveyard if you think about it.”
“Whaddaya mean?”
Gorrik turned his head, to which Beht noticed. He noticed Zig do so too, both his younger brothers looking at him as if they had no clue about what he had just said. But then he remembered that Zig and Gorrik weren’t exactly well-read, or interested in reading at all, and decided that he didn’t want to waste his time spelling out to them the history of Menahat for the rest of the day. He sighed.
“Anyways, Zig,” Beht began.
“You don’t think the boss is going to find out we’ve gone off track, do you? This might take a while.”
“Now that ya say it…”
“Hmm…”
Zig thought for a moment.
“From how the fella sounds, how long d’you think he’s got left?”
Beht tried to remember the sound of the weeping.
“He’s dehydrated, for sure, but he might still have some life in him.”
Zig thought some more.
“No harm in just heading on over there, if you ask me!” Gorrik interrupted.
“We can even work there! Who knows? Might have what we’re looking for?”
The annoyed look on Zig’s face immediately disappeared.
“Ah! That’s right – the ruins! Let’s go faster!” Zig agreed, and the three of them picked up the pace.
No matter where he walked, Gorrik never looked straight ahead. Even if he tried, he’d only last at most thirty seconds. It never mattered how tight or populated a place was – whether or not he was in a bustling business district or whenever he would go out clubbing or raving (as he often did, particularly in his early twenties), he’d constantly bump into people and objects, knocking things down from small glasses to tall, heavy shelves. It was always that Gorrik found something that grabbed his attention in one way or another. Here in the desert, he saw a lone cactus. He saw the sand and the way that the sunlight glittered on its many grains. He saw shapes in the sky; a few of them, some of Menahat’s many moons. And then he noticed the clouds, how they were so thin and scattered.
Suddenly, there shone a foreign dot, a bright dot which dragged behind it a glowing trail. Gorrik caught sight of that, too.
“Did I just see a shooting star? A meteor? In the day?!”
Zig and Beht exclaimed with surprise, wondering how that kind of thing would be even possible.
“Are you sure? That’s an incredibly rare occurrence,” commented Beht.
Gorrik flinched in astonishment.
“It’s rare?! Like, how rare?”
“Crazy rare.”
Gorrik observed the dot more closely. It was still in the sky! Then whatever the dot was, it was no shooting star.
“It’s gettin’ closer!” noticed Zig.
“That a UFO or somethin’?”
“Technically, you’re right…” reaffirmed Beht. But, even being the most knowledgeable of the three, Beht admitted he had never seen such a thing before.
“Straight outta fiction, ain’t it?”
“Absolutely. ”
“This could be huge! Crazy!”
The three curious men continued to marvel at the mysterious object in the sky until it finally disappeared behind the mesas ahead.
Gorrik turned immediately to his two older brothers.
“Oh man, we gotta see what it is! We gotta check it out!”
In the direction of the dot’s descent, Zig went.
“Well, let’s go!”
Then, Gorrik exclaimed in excitement and was soon jogging behind him.
Finally, followed Beht at the back. For the last time, he glanced at the direction of the weeping man. “Are we just going to forget…”
But, he saw Zig and Gorrik were already far ahead of him.
“Tsk, never mind. Maybe we can just come back later.”
