Into the Living Engine 1/X

The videograph began with a clattering and a rolling of the tape, the small black-and-white screen briefly showing a few numbers before cutting away to a vast, open plain, with a cloud of dust being kicked up by a brightly-coloured buggy, which soon came to the foreground and passed the camera. With a tinny voice full of vigor and pep narrating, and with a dramatic musical flourish of saxophones and trumpets sounding out, the videograph came to life.

     This is a message from your fellow brothers of our fair Tuzkinn land! News-reels are arriving in your neighborhood today! Delivered via high-speed Courier!

The videograph showed a saluting Courier, brave and ever-ready with a daredevil grin in another buggy before he too left the screen.

     This is Fairland News!

The videograph depicted a busy maintenance garage where sacks of letters were being loaded onto more buggies, with others being assembled repaired and being driven out.

     Mechanized transport - the new king of commerce!

The image cut out to the dash-display of a buggy, tyres bumping over rocks and remains as it went over harsh, blasted wasteland.

     Across all twenty-three Confederate states, old-fashioned pony caravans, boats and messenger birds are no match for the modern Messenger!

     Shipments have never been faster! Mountains, Valleys and Rivers? No problem for these growling animals of the road!

With a dramatic sound from the sound output, the scene harshly changed, to a montage of brutality accompanied by dark tones from the pre-recorded message's soundtrack.

     But with modern mechanized transport comes modern mechanized bandits - the villainy of the South. Hunting the plains between the settlements for loot and cargo, and even the all-too-frequent slaving!

The videograph showed bandits ambushing and destroying a buggy - from a long distance away - with some sort of large-bladed contraption, and then it cut to the same scene only later on, where several bandits were clustered around the struggling form of the Courier driver, taking their pleasures on her while others looted the buggy itself.

     But take heart! Confederate militias and private security forces have responded, raising their own forces to fight the criminals! To beat the devils at their own game!

A flying, rotored contraption fired a rocket at a fortress, ending the hail of fire that had been coming at the flying machine.

     Score one for the good guys!

The videograph's display clattered to a stop, before a grimy hand depressed a button and the power to the small, boxy device's display died out.

~~~

Frankly, Robert wished he was on the plains. Anything was better than this Northeastern coastal rain. It was dank, tasted bitter, irritated his skin and what was worse, his rad-fungus changed colour to a harsh red, showing that it was irradiated as well.
Robert was a plains man, through and through. When he had signed up for service in the Infatry, he had expected to spend his time fighting mutants and crazed cultists out on the Front alongside his Countrymen.
Then again, it was him who was to blame. Nobody but him who signed the Draft paper, and handed it to the Officers.
They made it look so glamorous! Shining buttons, Clean uniforms and healthy complexions made them look positively dapper in comparison to his home's bustling masses of citizens moving to their workplaces.

His thoughts turned grim, and bitter as he recalled that day. Nobody was particularly negative, merely shocked as he strode over the settlement square and handed in his signed Draft notice. An official had stamped it afterwards. He was given the address to the Infantry lodging house, which he already knew. He was sent on his way.
He had arrived at that lodging house, where a few of his childhood friends were. He played darts, and poker and the rest of the games he enjoyed like normal. Then the Officers strode in, and he was loaded up with a backpack, given a rifle and sent on his way.

His reminiscing hazed - the memory of the trudge across the Wasteland returned. Frequent attacks, fast orders from the Officers. Rifle up, your hand forward more, have the butt of the rifle be closer to your shoulder... His first taste of combat as a Confederate Infantryman was before he even reached the region's Fort, Bragg's Dune.
As was the case for many of the Infantry's recruits. It was considered good luck that all of his recruiting-mates arrived. Good luck and reliable weapons.

That same rifle was in his lap now, being held in a grip of death by his right hand while his left fumbled to put away the boxy rectangular device that was his only connection to home.

Then the door opened, and an officer came through. A Sargeant, whose features immediately soured upon seeing the Infantryman's attire.

"Did you not hear the reports? All fighting men and women are to man their battle stations!"

"Sir. I am at my battle station, sir." Robert's tired voice came out as a croak due to hours of inactivity and not speaking. The officer blinked and looked up and down the hall he was guarding.
Evidently, the officer found nothing to complain about.
"As you were." The sour Sargeant said, closing the hatch and removing the only light coming into the corridor. Robert sighed, sitting back down and cricking his back while he did so.

The thunder boomed, briefly illuminating the hall as the passageway to the ship's outside faced the elements. Robert shrugged. He was just glad that he wasn't outside.
Then, the ship rocked. Violently. Robert's inertia evidently hadn't caught up with the sudden change, because he was rocked hard to the left, smacking his helmeted head against the wall and with the change in the deck's tilt, he was pulled out and down along the hallway.
As he tumbled, he briefly heard the sound of alarms blaring with red light accompanying their sources.
Then he hit his head on a door and blacked out.

When he awoke next, he had stinging rain hitting his face. His lower body was encased in water, and his breath was intensely ragged.
He quickly fell unconscious again, to the sound of rolling thunder... no, Stubber shots... far away...

~~~

He had fallen unconscious when he had hit his head, and now he awoke to blinding pain by hitting his head. On a sandy shore this time. He blinked away stars in his eyes and rolled over, splashing into water.
Spitting out the coarse salt of the sea, Robert scrambled to his feet. His training kicked in, and he stumbled forward onto more solid ground. As soon as his feet left sand, he moved to draw his rifle... which wasn't there.

Robert's eyes widened, his throat grew tight, his palms grew sweaty and his knees gained the consistency of spaghetti. Then, after he had sunk to the ground in despair - those rifles were valuable, and masterfully made! - he heard a clunk of metal against wood. Turning his head, he saw the the subject of his despair floating alongside a plank of wood near a bunch of rocks.
Embarassed, he retrieved it. It was still in good condition, after he drained the barrel out. Patting down his uniform, he retrieved a soaked cloth from a pocket, wringed it out and started wiping away the wetness, as well as cleaning out the bolt chamber.
Some time later, he put the cloth away after it was drier than him. Then, standing, he looked out to his environs.

He was in somewhere... tussock-y. Except that these tussocks were massive. He raised his rifle and advanced into the large tussock-covered terrain. What he found was... unusual. Nothing like what he had known before.
It seemed as though a camp was ahead. Robert covertly crouched down, and leant up behind more of the large tussock, obscuring himself from its source. He quietened his breathing to listen.