Let me tell you about the time...
~joneworlds
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Let me tell you about the time I got away from that ogre[1][2], and
a couple other adventures after that on the way home.

I get knocked out cold before the hunt really gets started, when
the ogre sneaks up on us. Good thing I had a bit of sorcery on my
side that morning, or else I would have been have been killed right
there probably. (Thanks again, S.) When finally I come to, I can
hear my crew shouting in the distance, and soon there's some gun
cracks and the sounds get fainter and fainter. I'm guessing things
must have gone well, until some time later when I see the ogre's
head pop up above the ridge where I'm looking up to. And then I see
it start to come down over to me, and I know I'm in real trouble.
Guess things didn't go so well after all.

I get my ass up off the ground and start to run. Zigging and
zagging and hiding and zigzagging some more, trying to lose and
confuse it. Because everyone knows you'll never outrun an ogre, in
the long or the short. But it's no use - every time I hide and look
back, it's still coming for me. It must be really hungry. 9 hours
later of this, I have no idea where I am anymore, it's getting
dark, and I'm dog tired too.

Finally I catch a break. I come to this small-ish river with deep
rocky cliff banks, and there's this rope and plank bridge over it.
I cross over, and I cut the bridge down with my hunting knife. I'm
thinking maybe that'll make it give up, or at least slow it down so
I can rest a bit. I go further into the woods on the other side,
and find a hollow log to hide in. I still can't believe I fell
asleep in there at all given the circumstances, but I was so
exhausted I guess I didn't care any more. I slept all night.

When I finally wake in the morning light, there's that few moments
of peace amongst the forest-chatter just before I remember why I'm
here. And I grind back into gear. I head back out to the cliff,
looking down and along the banks as far as I can see. And sure
enough, way downstream I see that ogre again. It's somehow found a
place to make it down and across, and is slowing climbing its way
up the cliff. It'll be up here soon, maybe 20 minutes. Time to
move. I head back into the woods and the hills again, and soon I
can hear it coming, but I know I don't have another day of this
chase in me. Something has to come up, or I have to go down.

When I climb down the other side of the ridge and into this
clearing, I am surprised to see tall concrete pillars holding up a
high monorail train track, about 40 meters up or so. Now at least I
know about where I am. The Basker Line is this ridiculous mono-rail
elevated train track, that they built at huge cost some decades
back. It starts somewhere out beyond Stanton, and goes through the
hills and the outer rural areas from the quad-cities towards the
more urban areas to the west of that. Why did they make it? Trying
to avoid the settled areas, but connect them for commuting or
something? Trying to spur real-estate development in the middle of
nowhere? I don't know. No one ever knew, that's probably why it
never hardly got used. But the elevated tracks are all still there,
and part of that runs right through here.

And then I get an idea. There is a metal ladder going up the side
of the concrete pillar, for maintenance I guess. I don't think that
big old ogre with its huge hands and feet could ever follow me up a
little ladder like that, so up I go. When I get to the top, I swing
up over the guard rail, and I start to run along the inner edge of
that track. Maybe if I can get along here far enough, it'll give up
before it figures out a way up here? Can't think of anything better
right now.

Got to say, my heart sinks pretty hard a while later, when I look
down the track, and I see that ogre is somehow climbing the access
ladder up one of those pillars, squeezing one toe and finger into
those rungs I guess. And then I see it hoist up and over the
guardrail, straddling both sides of the track as it bounds along
after me. So much for this plan. But I then I get one last idea.
When I check my Casio, it's 7:37am, and I can't believe my luck.

See, this old Basker monorail line is so ridiculous, that even
though they shut down all the stations years and years ago and the
whole thing is basically abandoned, there are still some trains
running on it every day! They don't stop anywhere, they don't pick
up anybody, they just run in a useless circle from nowhere to
nowhere. Did they forget how to shut down the computer or
something, or turn off the power? Does somebody have some weird
50-year contract to operate it that they have to honor? I don't
know, I don't care, but it's 7:37, and the signs on the other
railway tracks down on the ground tell me that I'm getting near to
Stanton. And thanks to my head full of trivia, that means that some
old empty monorail car will be coming down this track here in
precisely 2 minutes. Despite everything else, somehow at least the
trains keep running on time around here.

There's a freight train rolling fast right now on those tracks
below us, and the noise is pretty big. I turn around and start
running towards the ogre which is still moving closer to me pretty
quick. In just a bit, I see the monorail car come around a bend in
the distance. I can see it, but the ogre doesn't, and it can't hear
it either what with the freight train noise below. Also ogres don't
hear that well anyways. It's all sight and smell for them, as you
probably know.

By the time the monorail car gets close, I'm so close to that ogre
I can smell it. When I get to the pillar, we're right over the
freight tracks. I swing over the guard rail just as the ogre makes
a grab for me. I lunge for the ladder, and I barely save my life up
there as I hang on with one hand. Just then, the ogre looks back
and notices the monorail car coming upon it. Too late! It makes a
try to get over the rail to the ladder, but that's a tricky move
for a big ogre. The empty car plows full on into the side of its
hip.

It's about impossible to much hurt an ogre with blunt impact, even
from a train, but as I clung to the ladder I see it get knocked off
its feet, and fall down a long way from the elevated track. By luck
and timing, it lands into the the very last car of the freight
train passing below, an open hopper car full of powdered sulphur.
And as I pull myself up over the guard rail again, I can see it
leaning over the edge of the hopper car, covered in sulphur and
glowering at me as the speeding freight train carries it away east.
Pretty soon it's gone, and I climb down to the ground.

Safe at last. And never in my life have I been so glad to be alone
in the quiet of the morning and the stink of creosote ties.

It's a long walk home. I slowly make my way northwards, to take the
scenic route through country I'd hardly ever been to before. By the
evening, it's raining hard, and so I take shelter in this gazebo
outside a small house by the old secondary highway I'm following.
In the morning, this woman who must have lived there finds me
sleeping. She invites me inside, for which I'm very grateful. And I
notice she keeps two alpacas in a large pen behind the house, and
there are pansies growing in the front. Which I find very strange,
as this was back in early March. She barely speaks a word to me,
but feeds me fried eggs and grape tomatoes which I really needed.
And then she goes outside and disappears. I did not see her again,
though I spend the day at her house and feeding her alpacas from a
basket of apples I find. By the morning, she still has not
returned, and so I leave. And I notice at that point, that both the
alpacas and the unlikely pansies in front of the house are somehow
gone. I don't know what to make of that.

Following that old highway, eventually I find myself in the
mountains near the reservoir where the fresh water comes from for
the quad-cities and Vernham to the west. It's a restricted area for
sure, but I'm still surprised to see all these military people and
trucks there at the access road entrance gates. And I see all these
strange orange tanks and pumps on trailers behind the trucks, which
they have parked alongside the buildings of the treatment plant.
When they spot me taking all this in through the chain link fence,
they come over to me and haul me off to some room in a portable
they had set up. They yell at me for a couple of hours before they
let me out, threaten to come after me if I tell anyone what I saw,
and finally tell me to fuck off and don't ever come back. And I
don't know what to make of all that either.

And eventually I got home again.

[1]
gopher://republic.circumlunar.space/0/~joneworlds/2021-02-27-hunt-is-tomorrow.txt
[2]
gopher://republic.circumlunar.space/0/~joneworlds/2021-03-08-epilogue.txt