Under Dark Sky Law
“Argon, get off me,” she said.
The man groaned. “Just a few more minutes, I'm wiped,” he said.
She let out a loud puff of air and grunted, moving her hips underneath the weight of his sweaty abdomen. “Yeah, you’re wiping it all over me. Now get the hell off so I can go take a shower,” she said.
The room was dark, but enough light trickled in from a few illegal lights around the perimeter of the building that she could see the spiky outline of the top of Argon’s hair. Stubble from the side of his cheek scraped against the soft white skin of her chest, and the sweat festering between them added to the sticky chafing.
He pushed himself up with his arms, the long top curl of his bright orange hair falling across his left eye. “Man, Xero, you’re such a killjoy,” he said and finished rolling off her. “There’s no hot water right now anyway.”
She shimmied her legs off the side of the bed, her toes dangling a few centimeters from the dirty floor. The wood had slowly been deteriorating, breaking apart under the corrosive environment. A barefoot trip across the planks almost surely meant at least a few minor splinters prickling your heels. At least they had wood floors—most people in this district were stuck with sludge and mud floors that never quite dried because of the rising water table and landfill debris slowly heaving towards the surface.
She stuck her tongue out into the dark. “Yuck, I hate it when you grind your fucking spunk into my goddamn belly button,” she said. She brushed at the tacky tendrils that were rapidly drying into a hearty crust. “I would much rather take a cold shower than just let this shit dry on me.”
Argon flopped on the bed with his arms sprawled wide like a starfish, with the worn grey sheets tangled into a ball around his left foot. His toes found their way through a gaping whole in the dingy sheets and he kicked for a moment to free himself. “Fuckin’ sheets,” he muttered. “Need to do another raid and get some better stuff back in here.”
She turned her head around to stare at the outline of his figure in the dark. “I’ve been saying that for months. This place is falling apart again,” she said.
He covered his eyes with the palms of his hands. “Just go wipe yourself off with a wash cloth or something and come back to bed. I don’t want to sleep next to you while you’re all cold and wet,” he said.
“Tough titty, fucker. And when I get back, you better have that shit wiped off real good or you can sleep on the floor with the roaches,” she said and smacked him hard on the bicep. He grunted and the sheets rustled underneath him as he groped in her direction.
She vaulted off the bed to avoid getting smacked in return, and her feet skidding against the floor a few feet from the bathroom. “Fuck,” she whispered as splinters slid into her flesh.
“Bitch,” he called after her.
“Love you too, asshole,” she said and walked the rest of the way into the bathroom.
They were lucky enough to have tiles for their bathroom floor. Their squalor was downright old world Beverly Hills ritzy for this area, but still, the formerly white tiles were broken and cragged like the surface of an active volcano, spotted with mold from too many years of excessive moisture and bacteria seepage. Having running water that was somewhat clean was another luxury in and of itself, and Xero wasn’t one to bitch and moan when shit could be way worse. Shit could be far better too, but this was only a temporary situation. She was of a mind that you had to take life by the balls and make things happen if you wanted to make anything change. A few months of a little cold water, mold, and dirty sheets wasn’t about to stop her.
The window in the bathroom had crusted over again with river debris, and the door was too narrow to let in any of the stray light that had snuck into the bedroom. They were all proficient in wandering around in near total darkness, but there was something so vulnerable about taking a shower. Maybe it was a lingering effect of too many horror movies when she was a kid, or just too many nights of getting jumped in the pits, but she wasn’t a fan of depriving herself of too many senses or defenses. They actually had a good supply of votive candles and old school matches from one of their most recent runs. Deep in the pits there was just too much CO2 for things to burn smoothly, so they weren’t worth much in terms of trade commodities, but they were useful for some moderate home lighting down in the river flats.
Still, she didn’t like wasting things, so they went without extra light whenever possible. She groped across the edge of the bathroom sink, knocking some half-used tea lights into the bowl before her hands snatched a small box of matches. She inhaled the almost pleasant sulfur sent from the match strike and lit three of the white tea lights. It wasn’t really enough light to do anything significant with, but at least it made her feel moderately better. If nothing else it might help keep Argon from getting the drop on her if he felt like getting back at her for giving him shit.
The mirror above the sink was cracked in half diagonally and the top chunk had long since bit the dust. Flecks of rust dotted the remaining chunk, and she leaned in close to a spot that was still mostly undamaged. Her right eye was a clear and bright green, but she leaned to one side and put the left eye up close to the mirror. The blood that had seeped into the white part was slowly fading, but it was still visible, and a healing purple and yellow bruise ringed the bottom quarter of the orbit like a puffy half moon. It was a good reminder of what would happen if you were too slow or lazy down in the pits.
Her neon green mohawk had spikes shooting up in a frizzy mess in several directions thanks to the aggressive ride she’d had on the bottom with Argon. He was a royal pain in the ass, and sometimes a straight up dick bag, but he was always good for a hard lay, and he played one hell of a mean guitar. The shaved sides of her head were starting to grow back and she made a mental note to take care of that on their next run out of the flats. She’d begun leaving her thick black eyebrows alone except for her slight unibrow, which she preferred to keep plucked, but that too had grown back after too many weeks stuck in the shack.
“Gross,” she said under her breath when she discovered some of Argon’s spunk holding up a chunk of her ‘hawk like trailer trash hair gel. This was worth breaking out some actual soap for. They were down to one half bar of genuine soap. After fishing it out from under the bathroom cabinet, she quickly tossed the molded wrapper and scraped off a few pieces of fuzzy blue mold that had taken hold on the surface of the smooth white soap. She shook her head in dismay—nothing was sacred here, not even the soap got to escape the effects of the mildew and grunge. Sometimes she wondered why she even bothered trying to keep things clean in the first place.
The torn shower curtain was clear with faded green dots, which was nice because it helped obscure some of the predictable mold. Whenever they finally left this place behind for good, it would be too soon before she ever saw another clump of fucking fungus again. Part of her wondered if they ever really would be out of here for good. There was something about the place that kept them coming back again and again. Disgusting as it was, it was always a little more like home than the pits, but at least in the pits it was too dry for any spores to take hold anywhere. What she wouldn’t give to smuggle some bleach out of the narrows.
“I hear paper crackling in there, are you using our last bar of soap?” Argon called. “Over a little spooge? Save that shit for the next time we have to do a sewer crawl for fuck’s sake!”
“Fuck off,” Xero called back. She turned on the taps in the bathtub and missed whatever he said after that over the roar of the water. “If we have to do another sewer run, odds are we’ll get soap again anyway.”
The water tank must have absorbed a good amount of the heat of the day because the water was blissfully warm. It
wasn’t anywhere near an actual hot shower, but it was a small step up from the nipple biting dousing that she was expecting. Partly to enjoy the unexpectedly warm shower and partly to piss off Argon, she soaped herself vigorously from head to toe, working up a big sudsy lather. After she was convinced that their abused loofah had been rinsed enough to be just this side of disgusting, she smeared the bar into it and used up almost all of the soap, smothering herself in loofah induced suds.
With the water going full blast she couldn’t figure out what he was saying, but she could hear Argon screeching something out there in the bedroom. She was going to be pissed off if he barged into the bathroom and ruined the nice shower vibe she had going on. It was too bad she didn’t allow anyone in the crew to do Alphamine, because it would seriously chill you out, and Argon seemed like he was on the verge of tweaking. Until Neptune figured out a way to take the edge off some of Alphamine’s doping effects she wasn’t going to let anyone get away with zonking themselves out with that crap. They say a true professional never does their own product, and she was a believer in that.
She turned off the water and threw open the tattered shower curtain. Argon was still causing an obnoxious ruckus, but she held back a retort long enough to ring the water from the long green fringe of her Mohawk. After debating whether it was worth searching for an undoubtedly mildew-ridden towel, she bent down to look for a one, and was glad she had bothered to light the candles. Without the water going she could hear Argon giving off quiet squeaks in between the louder outbursts. Thanks to the candles she was able to see the skeleton straddling his ass, strangling him with a piece of wire.
Argon’s face was smashed into the pillows, and he was using the considerable strength of his upper body to try and push himself up and away from the bed and the bite of the wire around his neck. But the skeleton had leverage—caught in a vulnerable facedown position, Argon was at terrible disadvantage, and they were locked in a see-saw battle of wills as they pushed and pulled against each other. If it hadn’t been on obvious skeleton perched on his back, she would have been turned on by what might have been a spontaneous sexual encounter. Casual sex was anything but unusual in these parts, and she had walked in on more than one unsavory scene involving Argon and choice passersby of various genders. She was glad for the STD blasters, but taking a shot of one of those in the thigh was never pleasant. She would have quit banging Argon long ago if she hadn’t been just as bad herself.
After a moment of considering whether Argon might take a roll with a Skeleton just for shits and giggles, something new, she shook her head once to clear the last water blobs from her forehead. Even Argon wasn’t stupid enough to fuck a skeleton, but he was stupid enough to let one of them get the drop on him.
She forced a jet of air out between her teeth. “You fucking idiot,” she said. The skeleton didn’t have a good enough hold on Argon for him to be in imminent danger of passing out, but with the limited lighting she was worried about more skeleton invaders hiding in the rest of the house. Fortunately, Xero was the kind of person that believed in being ready for anything. They had gone back and forth again constantly as a group about whether or not it was worth hoarding any firearms for emergencies. In the last three years the Dome Drones had really upped their gun monitoring program capabilities, and they had decided it was too risky to keep any guns in any house that might be connected to their business. It was a decision that had been paying off—they had seen many a rival fall without any of them lifting a finger because even old school six shooters were too easy for the grid police to pick up these days.
Guns or no, she was ready. She reached behind the bathroom door to find one of the many weapons she typically kept stashed discreetly around any of their operations. Given the sharp nature of most of these implements, she typically would have tread carefully around these arrays, but once her hand struck blank wood she panicked. More splinters dug into the calloused flesh of her palm while she flailed for any of her normal weapons, her eyes fixated on the battle between Argon and the Skeleton. Sometimes she wanted to stab that fuck, but she didn’t actually want him to die. And Neptune was more of a sociopath than any of them—if her pet chemist were killed Xero would never live it down.
She squinted her eyes and slammed her fist against the door. “Son of a fucking bitch,” she said. The door was naked. All of her weapons were gone, and she didn't have time to think about what might have happened to them. Some heads were going to roll, and hopefully it wouldn’t be Argon’s. He had a big dick, a big brain, big hair, and big fingers. Replacing him would be difficult.
Given how hard it would be to find a substitute for Argon, she shouldn’t have cared about the bareknuckle boxing. It was the thought of all of the blood, and the knowledge that she’d just blown their last soap supply on a petty vengeance extravaganza that made her hesitate. Blood was just this side shy of better than semen.
It had only been a few moments since she’d emerged from the shower, but an eternity had probably passed for Argon. When he thrashed, the wire let up around his neck for just a second, and he was able to pull a few gasps of air into his lungs. She wanted to shush him. His loud noises were still obscuring the other environmental cues that she wanted to pick up. The light from the candles gave her a faint glow that extended just past the bathroom and onto the gruesome battle on the bed. Ironically, if they’d been out in the pits where technology was supposed to be dead, their lux estate would have had all the surveillance equipment that they needed. In the flats they lived like they were supposed to live.
Argon’s cries were becoming more strident with each passing second. She rolled her eyes, took one last look into the ether, and leapt towards the skeleton. Both of her fists made contact with the Skeleton’s mid-back, striking against the meat of the assailant’s ribs with even more force than she intended. Leverage was everything. With the wind knocked out of him, Xero had a second chance to catch the Skeleton off guard. She was taller and heavier than your average female, and that was just fine with her. That extra height that gave her automatic command over her subordinates and she it gave her a definite advantage in fighting.
First priority was getting the skeleton off Argon’s throat. She reached around its head and grabbed it by its eye sockets. As she dug her thumbs into the skeleton’s eye holes, she jammed her knee into his spine, torqueing his head and back into a painful position. The skeleton kept screaming, and as annoying as it was, she was glad the intruder was such a pussy. With all that commotion, any back up would have already made its way there. Either they thought this would be an isolated hit—a random takedown of a slightly wealthy Flats dweller, or the skeleton’s shift leader was a complete and total fucktard. Sending one person to take on multiple Grease Weasels was straight up suicide, although Argon’s less than stellar reaction time wasn’t speaking volumes for their reputation
Thoughts about whether or not it would be worth torturing or testing the subject crossed her brain in milliseconds. Too much work. With another quick jerk she pulled back again on the Skeleton’s head and flung all her weight towards the opposite wall. By pure luck when they crashed into an old wooden dresser on the other side of the room, the skeleton was the one to smash face first into the hard wooden drawers. There was another bonus to landing next to the dresser, besides its face-smashing abilities. With another set of fluid movements that had a dancer’s grace, she stomped the skeleton’s head against the floor with her foot, reached behind the dresser, withdrew a long machete from a small depression in the wall, and rammed it through the center of its chest.
The skeleton was already unconscious, and he didn’t make a sound as she ran him through. Something of a waste of a blade—now she’d have to clean it, which wouldn’t be done to her usual standards while they were stuck in the flats, but at least the skeleton was guaranteed to be out of commission. Even if he wasn’t dead, he was completely pinned to the floor by the blade of the machete. You couldn’t be too careful out in the flats these days. It used to b
e a step up from the pits, but things were changing at a quick pace. Argon used to tease her about hiding weapons everywhere, but now she had a great example to show him about the importance always being prepared. If her weapons hadn’t been moved or swiped, then she may have taken care of the skeleton a lot more quickly. That could have meant the difference between survival and death in the event of a sneak attack like this one, especially if they had brought a proper gang of thugs with them. Shit like that happened all the time in the Pits. In a lot of ways things had gotten better since they weren’t allowed to have guns in all the forbidden districts. It was just way too easy to get caught by stray laser fire, and before the firearm sweeps the district had been one giant blood bath. Being cast out of the Domes had been a certain death sentence. Now it was just a probable death sentence. The tenacious were able to make it. At least until the cancer got them.
Blood was pooling around her feet, and the stick warm ooze was flowing in between her toes. Gross. She was going to spend another long session in the shower getting that shit out from underneath her toenails, and she had used up most of the soap and hot water out of spite and indulgence. Karma was a total fucking bitch.
“Yo Argon, you okay?” she said. She backed out of the expanding blood pool, her feet making sticky slap slap slaps as they stamped bloody prints across the floor. Where was Trina when you needed her? Trina was usually good about trying to at least keep their shack clear of outright biohazards, but she’d caught a bad rip of lung zaps, and her Zone Pass had been revoked until the virus cleared up. Not that anyone in the government really monitored the Flats very well anymore, but the local gangs were pretty hardcore about keeping various epidemics out ever since a bad bout of coyote plague had ripped through the area five years ago and killed over a quarter of population. You so much as sneezed in the wrong ghetto and you could find yourself missing a head to sneeze with a second time. Luckily they had Milo to make sure none of them bit the dust from the latest viral mutant or the parasite du jour. Xero was a doctor too, but not really the urgent care sort.
Under Dark Sky Law Page 1