A Jaded Life

Walking along one of the walkways they had installed between the partially crumbled buildings, Jack was staring into the distance. Something, a small part of his mind insisted, had changed about the mountains and the forest covering them. Something beyond the original weirdness, where the very mountains themself had shifted in an impossible manner. Mountains didn’t just move around, shrink or rise, at least not within a humanly appreciable timescale. And yet, after the Night of Insanity and Fire as some had taken to call the end of the world as they knew it, the mountains had done just that, their very outline altered along with the rest of the world. Roads he had known, had walked along just the day before, suddenly led elsewhere, street signs couldn’t be relied upon any longer and buildings were crumbling left, right and centre, as the world was trying to cope with that insanity.

And the people had to try to cope alongside the world, trying to survive in a reality that now included zombies, both the slow and the fast variant, blue boxes appearing out of nowhere, a system apparently classifying everything with numbers and, last but not least, the complete and utter collapse of society. Yeah, people had to cope but at the end of the day, it was either to cope or to curl up and die. Some had done just that, either in suicidal charges into an enemy far too numerous and powerful to overcome and others had chosen a different way to end their lives. Luckily, enough people had managed to cope with the changes to form a somewhat stable society in their corner of the insanely large field of ruins Colorado Springs had somehow become and in the last few months, they had come across other survivors, eeking out their existence in other parts of the ruined city.

Contact with those people had been somewhat furtive, the ruins weren’t all that safe, but the survivors had learned that somehow, their city now composed of what used to be multiple cities, snatched up from an area more than a hundred miles across, and smooched together into this conglomerate of ruins. How that worked, how anything like this could work, nobody had an idea and so far, nobody could even pretend to understand. It was a case of accepting this insanity as part of their new reality, just like all the other insane and inexplicable occurrences. Jack had accepted the insanity and yet, there was the conviction something else had changed with the mountains. He just had to figure out what.

It took him a bit of time, studying the distant treetops and trying to place the source of his feeling but finally, he managed to find it, unobtrusive as it was. If not for his nagging feeling, he wouldn’t have managed to spot the small, thanks to the distance between them, alteration, the glinting protrusion of black material just barely sticking out above the treetops. Even now, knowing where to look, it was hard to see, the black thing somewhat blending in with the mountains further back, it wasn’t tall enough to stick out above the distant mountains, just to stick out above the trees.

Sadly, spotting it was only half the battle, figuring out what the thing might be as an entirely different subject, which is why Jack decided to get help from one of the people he trusted most, the one who had established herself as second in command to the group he usually led out into the field. Samantha, or Sam most of the time, was a brilliant woman with a mind sharper than any blade and about as tough as hardened steel, so if anyone would figure out what the thing that might look like a crown if one squinted just a little, could be.

Getting Sam was the easy part, getting her to see what he had spotted was a little more difficult. Despite him pointing out where the thing was, it was difficult to make out and for a bit, Sam had been convinced it was just three particularly strange trees sticking out above the rest. They had argued for a bit until the Sun started to set and it was time for another group to take over their guard duty before they would have to guard again during the day. Afterwards, their group would be free of that tedious chore for a few days and able to venture out to explore once again. They all followed a solid schedule, allowing every group time in the field, while all shared the vital duty of guarding their small settlement, as advised by some of the military people who had made their home among them.

“Jack,” Sam’s voice caught his attention as he moved along the walkways once again. Her voice had a touch of alarm to it but luckily, it wasn’t an actual call to arms, so he didn’t have to worry just yet. But he had to quickly finish the rest of his round and find out what was going on. Thanks to the military people, their rounds were spaced out randomly and they had to try and keep every direction under observation, a difficult challenge with only five people. Granted, their job wasn’t acting as the primary line of defence, it was to act as an early warning system and give the teams on break a chance to assemble and join them, so five people was sufficient but, at the same time, it didn’t feel like it was enough.

“What’s wrong,” he asked the moment he caught up to Sam, his eyes roaming across the ruined city around them, frantically trying to spot what had alarmed his second.

“Over there,” now it was Sam’s turn to point into the distance, just like he had the day before, but luckily, it was a lot easier to spot the thing now than it had been before. For a moment, Jack could only stare, his mind once again playing catch-up with an impossible reality, to the point that he took the time to rub his eyes and even asked Sam to pinch him in an attempt to dispel the insanity. Sadly, the pain shooting through his arm from her vicious pinch was all too real and the thing didn’t disappear in a puff of logic.

“Am I going insane?” he quietly asked, staring at the orb of orange and black something that hovered above the three spires he had seen the day before. “Am I going insane, or is that the Eye of Sauron, staring in our general direction? I mean, I have been tempted to cast the One Ring that enslaved me into the pit of Mount Doom after the divorce but I didn’t think Sauron would take it this literally. Do you think my feet will turn furry?” He muttered, babbling a little at the strange sight. It was almost as if the distant eye was staring right into his soul.

“Wasn’t her name Sharon?” his old friend asked, her mind apparently struggling just as much as his with the sight presented to them.

“Same difference,” Jack shrugged, “But what on earth is that thing?” he couldn’t help but ask, his mind inexorably pulled back to the staring eye. Why was it staring at him?

“My guess is as good as yours, but with the last few months, it could really be anything,” Sam shook her head, as flabbergasted as Jack.

“Is that the Eye of Sauron?” Daniel, another member of their group asked, joining his two leaders as they stared at the thing in confusion.

“Looks like it. I noticed something stuck out of the forest yesterday and now that eye hangs between those sticks, or whatever they were,” Jack explained, shaking his head once again, hoping that the world would make sense once more if he kept doing that.

“So, it’s a building?” Daniel asked, only to receive shrugs of ignorance, as neither Jack nor Sam had any real idea what they might be dealing with. Other than, something strange. But, sadly, that answer applied to far too many things in this strange, new world of theirs, so the conviction that an occurrence was strange was starting to become normal, as mind-bending as that was.

Sadly, despite their best efforts, nobody was able to explain just what the hell the strange, burning eye sitting in the mountains actually was. Theories were exchanged, explanations proposed and while some of them made the smallest amount of sense, none of them came even close to being reasonable. Instead, the five members of Search Group One decided that they would head in that direction during their exploration shift and try finding out what the thing might be. Their job was to explore and bring back information and resources while improving their own combat capabilities, so exploring a strange occurrence was par for the course. They would just have to be careful while trying to get there. For some reason, the central area between them and Sauron’s Tower was filled with a lot of powerful zombies.