by Orion, W. J.
Yaz sat back down on the stool and kept her mouth shut.
“I agree to her demands,” the teenage boy blurted. “They’re reasonable and she’s earned it.” His transparent motives were cute, if ill-placed.
‘”As do I,” the elderly lady said. “Let’s give her one of the empty apartments. But, we must discuss the accounting of it. Who will measure the water she drinks, the food she takes? Who will keep her honest?”
The group broke into a detailed discussion of how the town would track Yasmine’s expenditures and she felt her stomach turn inside out. To hear people talk about her—talk about her honor, and integrity—like she wasn’t there made her ill. Didn’t they know her? Couldn’t they see who she was on the inside?
“Don’t worry about it,” Kim whispered. “They’ll come to an agreement that’s fair and easy. Everyone loves you here.”
“If they loved me, they wouldn’t be talking about keeping me honest right now,” Yasmine spat back in a whisper.
“Young lady, they love you. But they also love their water, and their food, and only their love of those two things keeps them alive. Don’t worry about it. Once you move into Shantytown, everyone will get to know you like Brent and I do, and there will be no problems.”
“I don’t want a house here,” Yasmine whispered back.
“Good, you’ll probably get an apartment.”
Yasmine sighed. “Kim, I have a home already.”
“And now you’ll have two. Use the new one to store things, or turn it into a shop. Trade directly with your own storefront,” Kim suggested with a proud smile. “You can do anything you like, all inside our safe walls.”
“I’m safe in my place too.”
“Oh? When was the last time you were there? I can’t say it was recently. You’ve been here or on the move for… well. Not important. You’re going to have a new home here, use it if you like. Brent, Owen and Liam would love it if you were closer.” Kim turned back towards her boys and pointed at them.
Yasmine looked at the boys playing in the back of their father’s stall and had a twinge of excitement at the idea of being closer to the family. Not in their apartment… marooned with a bad wound, borrowing a bed, but healthy and nearby. She could come and go as she pleased, and-
“It’s not safe out there,” a man’s voice said close to her ear.
Yasmine fell backwards off the stool, slamming her wounded back onto the throw rug on the floor in Brent’s booth. The wrapped man with the smooth black goggles for eyes had gotten within arm’s reach of her, and had spoken to her. She grunted in pain and he extended a hand wearing a brown leather glove down to her.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, his voice muffled.
She took his hand and he pulled her to standing with ease. Despite his gaunt frame, he was very strong.
“Please never get that close without telling me your coming. I don’t like it,” she snapped, glaring up at his vacant black goggles. “Personal space.”
“I apologize. I forget what it’s like to be around people. I… I am sorry,” he said, turning his palms up to her in surrender.
“Yeah well... my back doesn’t accept your apology.”
“I will find a way to make it up to your back. As I was saying, it’s not safe out there. Moving your home to Shant is a good idea. I applaud you.”
“I’ve done fine on my own for a long time.”
“No argument. You’ve proven your abilities to many. But, the wasteland is changing. The crabs are almost all gone and the void they leave is being filled by those hungry for what they think they can find out here.”
“Scavengers have always been in the wastes,” Yaz countered.
“True. War always brings out the worst in people. But of late… raiders from the city have been coming out further and further. I encountered a few just the other day. I hear things. Bad things about them.”
Yaz’s stomach turned again, and she thought of Trey. “The Monoliths?”
“I see you hear things too,” the masked man said with a wave of his long arm and hand. “The best salvagers and traders listen. The Baron and his lackeys have eaten their fill of the city’s offerings. Now… something wicked this way comes.”
She sighed.
“You’ll be safer here. They are unlikely to make war with a place like Shantytown. Too many armed men and women, walls, and a chance for good trade. The costs of attacking could outweigh the potential gain.”
“I guess,” she said with a shrug.
“I hope. The world has seen enough bloodshed.”
“I hear they… they kidnap people.”
He nodded. “I’ve heard the same. Slaves.”
“You’re kidding,” Kim said. “No way.”
The masked man with the long arms and thick gloves nodded. “People see things, people talk. No reason to believe they lie.”
“Or tell the truth,” Kim countered.
He shrugged. “Is it so unbelievable that the most powerful man leading the most powerful group in the city has used terror to achieve his position of power? Subjugation is a tool for survival.” He turned to Yasmine. “You’re brave. I respect that. I also respect caution when it’s appropriate.”
“Who are you?” Yaz asked. “I don’t know you.”
He nodded. “As I like it. I’m a trader with roots here. No more, no less. Call me Joe, if you need a name.”
“Right,” Kim said. “Trader Joe.”
“Indeed. It is a pleasure to have met you, Mrs. Murdough, and Miss Yasmine. I wish you safe travels, and plentiful days of cool water.” He turned and took several steps away before stopping and turning back. “And if you were curious, I used my tenuously obtained voting power just now to grant you all you need, and for you to have a home here. Shant and the world at large are better for having you.”
“Thank you,” she said like her mother taught her to.
He bowed with a flourish and left them for good. As he passed the voters in the middle of the garage he shook Brent’s hand before leaving.
A few minutes later a pleased Brent returned to his stall and his family within. He kissed his wife, ran a loving hand over the heads of his two boys, and then gave Yaz a hug against her will. Well, not entirely against her will.
“I got them to agree to everything. I’ve already got an apartment in our building set up for you. There’s a bed, and a bureau, and Kim set some clothes aside for you-“
“Is there a pee jug?”
Brent and Kim laughed.
“As long as there’s a decent pee jug, and roof access, I’ll consider it.”
“Good,” Brent said, and looked at his wife. “We’ll get her a porcelain, gold inlaid pee jug. And you can always get to the roof. I’ll set you up on the top floor.”
“It’ll be nice to have you close,” she said to Yaz, putting her hand on Yaz’s. “I worry.”
“My mom worried all the time,” Yaz said. “Said it was good to worry. Kept us safe.”
“I guess,” Kim said. “All I know is like your mom I want you safe and sound, just like the rest of my family.”
“Yeah,” Yaz sighed. “Brent, who is that guy that came over just now?”
“Your competition.”
“What?”
“He’s the other guy Shant relies on to get things for us. He’s a scavenger extraordinaire. Everyone calls him Trader Joe,” Brent said. “He’s weird, but he gets the job done as often as not.”
“Competition huh? Never thought of it that way,” Yaz mused.
“I doubt he does either, and that might be what makes you both great,” Brent said. “Now, when do you want to start moving in?”
Chapter Nineteen
Moving Makes People Do Weird Things, Like Talk to Empty Rooms
“Do you want help?” Brent asked her a week later. “A rickshaw to pull behind you? Wheelbarrow? Another bag?”
“No. I’m not bringing much back today, but thank you.”
&n
bsp; “Okay. Take it easy. You’re still healing. And don’t take too long out there. Kim will have a fit.” He tried to tussle her hair, but she dodged his reach. She finally felt good.
“Kim must learn to understand I am an independent woman,” Yaz joked. “But I will try to get back quickly. I’ve still got a couple days of work left with Dr. Sonneborn, so I can’t be out late.”
“Yeah. He’ll negate your deal for free healthcare if you miss the cross on a T.”
“He likes things done right. I like that about him.”
“The people of Shant who put their lives on the line with his healthcare like that too. Now go, it’ll be dark soon and you’re gonna want the whole of the night to travel to and from, or chase waste squirrels, or whatever it is you do when you’re out there.”
She agreed with a nod and a wave, and skipped away out of the parking garage.
Yasmine had been taught by her mother to always look over her shoulder. Figuratively, of course. Literally as well, actually. She explained, “Never let anyone follow you. Never let anyone know where you’re sleeping.”
Yaz couldn’t stomach the idea of anyone knowing where she put head to pillow. Having a second home base inside Shant seemed like a sensible idea now. Emphasis on second home base. She wouldn’t abandon her basement shelter unless crabs were tearing the building above it down on top of her.
Could happen.
Yaz had lived in multiple holes in the ground with her mother as she grew up. They headed where the water seemed to be, or where the food was, and when they found a plentiful source of something (plentiful being a relative word in the wastes) they would find a safe, securable place nearby, and hunker down for as long as they could. As long as they felt safe. Sometimes the mother and daughter would move on peaceably, and sometimes they ran, leaving almost everything behind. They always found more. They knew where to look.
The basement had been Yaz’s home for almost two years now.
She’d found the bulkhead of the home after taking shelter from a wind storm under the dried out fallen tree that had crushed the house one day. The thick oak’s trunk cast a shadow big enough for her to curl up in under a blanket and enough shelter to cut away the worst of the stinging sand. She’d stared at the smashed frame of the house, sweating and frustrated as the storm blew the world about, inventing a back story for the family that had lived in the three-bedroom home before the crab ships entered orbit and ruined everything.
She’d decided the father was a policeman, and the mother was a nurse. Doug, and Mary. They had two boys and a girl. Phillip and Doug Jr. shared the big bedroom where the main tree trunk fell, and their little girl Amanda had the last bedroom. They escaped to the dry Midwest right before the war started, and were doing well raising goats. She had stared and stared, unable to find rest in the storm despite the cover until the wind blew the edge of the sand off the metal bulkhead door. A few minutes of frantic digging later, and she entered utopia.
Utopia being relative, of course.
Behind the light on her mom’s phone Yaz explored the cool, dust-filled dungeon beneath the crushed home and the tree on top of that. As the specks of dust fell through her beam of light like the falling snow her mother told her about, she found a comfortable couch, a television with DVD player, shelves covered with movies, and plastic containers filled with clothes in plastic bags.
By sundown she’d discovered the home belonged to a retired insurance underwriter named Phyllis who owned six cats. Phyllis had a niece named Brianna, and Brianna must’ve loved the AV Club in the basement.
Yasmine knew this because Brianna decorated the space at her aunt’s house with a hundred drawings of mythical creatures made of rainbows, posters of handsome boys, and dirty socks. She wore the same size socks Yaz did.
Yaz moved her backpack in as soon as she could, and built the hidden hole in the ground into a palace beneath the rubble and the sands. She transported steel lockboxes down to store her things in, she moved a full sized mattress that was pretty clean into the room, and stored all her treasured finds there. She had stacks of comics, novels and magazines, another hundred movies she picked up where people left them in their living rooms, strings of dim Christmas lights strung from the uneven rafters and powered by the cells she charged with her small solar panel. She also had all the food she didn’t trade. Yaz was partial to cranberry relish, the jellied kind. She still had six cans in the basement, and when she packed up some of her things, she took three of the cans for her second home in Shant. She grabbed more than that too.
She sat down on the edge of the bed with the sheets that needed a scrub in water she didn’t have. She had a washing machine in the corner of the basement, but sadly… no water for that either. Then again no one else seemed to have any to spare for cleaning clothes.
The dim white pips from the holiday lights strung just above her head illuminated the room like tired stars in the distant sky. She looked at the flat television screen that she’d watched a thousand movies on with the subtitles running and the volume turned down. Beside the bed was a tiny portable DVD player that served the same purpose when her batteries were running low. Yaz looked at all the posters she’d put up beside Brianna’s drawings. (She’d taken down the posters of handsome teenage boys. Those had no value to her at the time.)
She sighed, feeling a strange alienation from the place.
“I love you, basement,” she said to the room. “I’m going to go live some in Shant, I think.” She smiled. Just saying Shant with that thought in her head made her happy. So weird. “But I want you to know I’ll be back. I’m not taking all my things. Just some food and clothes and comics. A few movies. Nothing big. I’m gonna leave some water too. A few liters. Just in case, you know.”
She stood up from the bed and walked down the side of the room, running her fingertips on the faux wood paneling that Phyllis or some contractor she hired put up before the war. She stopped and looked at the throw rug she’d brought in to make the floor more comfortable to walk on. She stepped onto the braided rug and bounced up and down a few times, feeling the comfortable padding squish beneath her.
“I love this rug.”
She bent over and rolled it up.
“I’m going to go into the city soon,” she said aloud to her home. “I’ve been talking to a boy who got into some trouble there. He needs rescuing.” She paused, as if the room told her it was a bad idea. “I know, I know. You’re afraid. I am too.”
She tossed the rolled up carpet on the bed and tied it shut with a length of string she got from a drawer in an old office desk Phyllis got from her job. At least that’s what Yaz figured.
“But he seems like a good guy. I think he’s one of the people worth risking my life over. People like Brent, and Kim, and Owen and Liam.”
She went to the metal shelves she dragged into the basement and grabbed a few gadgets and tools she’d been hoarding. She might not need them in Shant, but they’d be good trade value if she discovered she needed something.
“I like him. But… there’s something about him that’s weird. I think he’s afraid I’ll get hurt. I also think he’s afraid to meet me, like he’s nervous.” She paused and reflected. “I’m nervous to meet him. Huh. Yeah.”
She grabbed a worn duffel bag from under the bed and stuffed the folded sheets from a desk drawer into them. Following that she pushed one of her cleaner pillows in too. She assessed her packing and sighed like she’d moved a refrigerator.
“The city makes me nervous. Real nervous,” she scratched her head and shook some dust out of her ponytail. “Bad people there. Of course there are bad people out here too, but these people sound real scary. But I have a weapon against them.”
She smiled.
“What? What’s the weapon I have? Oh, well, you see Trey is at the top of their building, and he’s told me about everything he saw on the way up. He told me about their patrols, all about their weapons, and cars, and all about their boss. You might say I know more abou
t them then they know about themselves.”
She sighed again, but this time the sound was one of excitement, or impatience.
“And the best part…? Well that’s the fact Baron Monolith himself talks right in front of Trey, and doesn’t know Trey can tell me all about everything. For example, I know the Baron’s main group is away from base right now, patrolling. “
She hefted her duffel bag, her backpack, and her halligan tool. Her lower back injury only ached a little now, and she felt good. She had purpose again.
“That’s not the best part. The best part… is that they don’t know I’m coming. I’ll be back. I can’t say when, but maybe when I’m back, I’ll introduce you to my friends.”
Friends.
What a concept that was.
Yaz would work on the idea of family soon enough.
Chapter Twenty
Knock, Knock
“Owen, please. Not there. Put it over there. Up on the dresser,” Yaz instructed to the little boy.
Owen held a prized possession of Yaz’s; a boar bristle brush. Her mother had found it when they were skulking around the city of Madison. They’d found it in a fancy house’s bedroom in the vanity. Her mother had left the makeup atop it, but took the brush. Hair had to be manageable. Eye shadow; not so much.
“Okay,” Owen replied with cheer. He carried the brush over to the dresser and went to his toe tips to reach the top of it. He pushed the brush up and over the edge until it remained on the top and then turned to her, seeking approval.
She stared at him for a second until he started to show disappointment, then grinned at him. “Thank you Owen! You’re the best.”
He perked up and did a spin for joy.
She’d been in the apartment one floor above the Murdoughs for two days now, and while the welcome had been sweet (literally, two of the Shant locals from the floors below had made her some kind of nutty sweets as a welcoming gift) she was thirsting for change.