Chapter 3
Three and a half hours later they stopped in place and started looking for a strong hole. The sun was setting, the shadows getting longer and soon the hazels and other deadly things of the Deep Scour would come out to fight, fuck, eat and play.
“This looks good,” Ash called out, standing in front of a twisted mess of steel rebar. It was the strut of a collapsed building, which meant they could get under it and weld themselves in. It was strong and wasn’t likely to collapse in the night.
Chirp fluttered down and gave it a quick scan.
“Fuck yes!” he said and flew up to keep watch.
“Sounds good,” Raj said, dropping his pack. They took out their cutters, turning them up high for quick and dirty slicing and started hacking into the pile. Soon they’d dug down under the pillar, pulling out any smooth flat pieces of metal they could find. There were always flat pieces of metal siding scattered under collapsed buildings. Once the hole was big enough and far enough in, they lined the hole with metal siding and welded it closed, making a somewhat sealed metal cocoon.
“Need to hurry,” Kin commented from the ledge he’d perched on, looking around with his luminous green eyes.
A faint yowl carried over the Scour moments later and was answered by others that seemed far too close.
“We’re done. C’mon,” Ash said, pulling his pack into the hole.
Raj followed, Chirp fluttering down to sit on his shoulder as he crawled in. Kin jumped down from the ledge, landing in a jingle of loose washers and bolts piled ankle deep in this area. He slipped past Ash, rubbing against him and walked to the back of the hole. Ash and Raj pulled junk down, obscuring the hole they’d cut before pulling the final piece of metal into place and welding themselves in.
Any hazel wanting in to eat them would have to dig through spiky metal to pierce their sealed container. Apart from some airholes, there was no way for anything to get at them.
“The hazels are coming,” Kin whispered, his whiskers pressed against the metal wall, feeling the vibrations through the pile.
Ash and Raj had stayed out overnight before but not for a year at least. Most of the time you sealed yourself in, the hazels either didn’t find you or were too lazy to bother. Even if they decided to scratch their way through you could fight them off with your cutter, swiping at their paws. If it got bad you’d burn your way out the back and dig further down into the pile, welding it shut behind you.
Ash sat there feeling his heart thud in his chest as the yowls of the hazels grew louder. The metal cocoon echoed with the sound of their heavy feet as they bounded over the pile and came closer. There were oils and scents you could buy to mask your position or draw the hazels elsewhere but neither of them could afford that cost.
There came a low growl that sounded like it was directly outside. The sound of digging. Metal clinking against sharp claws as the hazel scratched at the ground, following their scent but unable to get closer to them.
Soon there was another yowl from outside, then silence before an explosion of fighting and high-pitched screaming. Something heavy thudded against the pile and it creaked ominously around them. In the pitch dark, Ash couldn’t see Raj’s face but he knew his already pale skin would be turning even whiter. As the pile moved, cavities could open and you could drop hundreds of meters. Or your metal cocoon would start to crumple and then collapse under the pressure.
“Stupid hazels,” Kin whispered to himself.
There came another thud and scream and then it was gone as the hazels outside bolted.
Ash and Raj sat in the silent dark, waiting for them to come back. After a long possibly forever, Ash relaxed and opened his pack. He pulled out his bedroll and unfurled it. As soon as it was out, Kin made himself at home down the tail end.
They ate pap in silence before Raj took a deck of luminescent cards out of his pack and started dealing.
Chapter 4
Ash awoke in darkness with Kin nuzzling against his face, a low purr rumbling through his body. He reached around his cat and pulled him close, stroking down his back and scratching under his chin.
“Nearly day,” Kin said, his voice distorted by the purring.
Ash heard Raj stirring, Chirp no doubt fluttering against him to wake him. Today they would find the fallen missile. Today they would find a fortune.
Or if not a fortune, enough to meet the quota.
Lies I tell myself thought Ash.
He stroked the back of Kin’s neck as he snuggled closer, pushing his small face under Ash’s chin, kneading his chest with his paws. When he was six, his father had made Kin and he’d been awakened on that birthday like this—with a tiny bundle of fur purring and kneading at him.
Well, not exactly like this Ash thought. When he was six they lived in an actual house on the rich side of town, hundreds of bugs at their command with multiple hasdees printing whatever they wanted. They were never behind on their quota—their number green on the first day of the year, paid well ahead of time. Now, ten years later, he was in a metal cocoon buried in the pile deep in the Scour, down low on the quota in a family fallen far from grace. A father who’d walked off into the Scour taking all their bugs and wealth with him, pushing them into poverty, vanishing. A mother who carted shit and piss for a living, a younger sister who tended bar, drinking so she could bear it and the youngest sister, Silver, sick as always, coughing and sneezing on a good day, hardly breathing on another, burning alive with streaks of red corruption creeping across her skin.
At the thought of his sisters, the cold tendrils of fear slipped around his heart again. Nola would be at home after staggering in from her late shift at the Wire Pub. Customers bought her drinks or she served herself when Burl wasn’t paying careful attention.
Maybe Silver would be asleep, curled in a ball of bones, her skin stretched tight over her skinny frame. Or perhaps she’d be awake, messing around with scavenged electronics. Trying to repair or rebuild or program something from scratch. There was some business to it but not much. Families with a broken toaster might pay her to fix it because it was cheaper than paying for the toaster tempcube or trading for a new one. But that was a thin slice of people. Rich enough to own a toaster, poor enough to not just mill it to make a new one.
Their mother would be getting ready for the day, eating pap for her meager breakfast if the bloody hasdee hadn’t broken down. So close to Feed they couldn’t lose a day instructing their bugs to mill it down and make them a new one. Despite it slowing down, shuddering and leaking, they kept it running, hoping to get through.
She’d be eating fast, no time to waste between sleep and day, shoving the small amount of food in her mouth before bolting out the door, grabbing her squeaking cart and pulling it off to the first house of the day.
Ash would be up at the same time, eating pap, gathering at the gates with everyone else, waiting for the light and another day of scavenging, hoping today was a good find day but they almost never were. With all the bugs flowing out of Cago, nibbling and carrying, you had to go further and further to get good find. But the more time you spent walking, the less time you had digging so a trip out too far might only result in a half-pack full.
Ash opened his eyes and saw the darkness had taken on a lighter gray. Light was leaking in through a small airhole at the front of the cocoon.
They were on the thin edge of nothing. You couldn’t even say every day was the same. It was the same, largely, but incrementally worse. Slightly less pap. One fewer bug. Silver a little sicker. Their mother a little more worn out, a little more bent over. Nola, running ragged day by day, tiredness fighting with youth but youth would soon give way. And him, Ash, walking further away into the Scour every day just to come back with nothing that good. Only enough to knock a few points off the quota.
“You awake?” Raj asked.
“Yeah.”
“Kin, how long till dawn?”
“Ten minutes,” Kin said, his voice coming from somewhere under Ash’s c
hin. His purr was a low throb in the darkness.
“Is there anything out there? We need to be ready to go.”
“I’m busy, ask your bird,” Kin said.
“Fuck no!” Chirp said.
They lay there for a few minutes, Ash scratching behind his ears until Kin’s claws pricked his skin and he felt a patch of wet as Kin drooled on his chest.
“Okay buddy time to go.”
He pulled Kin off him, still purring and sat up.
“I want some food.”
“As soon as you tell me if there is anything outside waiting for us.”
Kin lowered himself to the floor of the cocoon and put his head down so his whiskers touched the metal.
“Nothing there,” he said after a moment. “Do you have fish?”
“Not today. I have pap.”
“I guess that will do,” Kin said sourly.
Ash and Raj stowed their bedrolls and ate their pap in the gray darkness, sharing their food with Kin and Chirp. Once Kin announced the official sunrise, they took out their cutters and opened the cocoon. As they cut, it creaked around them, the weight of the junk on top of it threatening to collapse it.
“Careful,” Raj breathed, pushing the metal up. Some junk and rubble had collected on the other side during the night. They pushed it away until the hole was big enough for Kin to creep through.
“Safe,” he called back.
They cleared out the hole and Raj climbed out, Chirp fluttering into the sky to keep watch. Ash passed out their packs and crawled out, careful not to cut himself on some of the sharper pieces of metal.
The sun was rising, the night chill swiftly searing away. It was going to be another blistering day, perhaps even hotter than the previous. Ash and Raj went off in separate directions to piss into empty bottles which they then stored in their packs. No scavenger would piss on the ground. Apart from leaving a scent for the hazels or Scabs, there were too many stories of trapped or lost scavengers staying alive thanks to drinking their own piss. In a desperate moment you could instruct your bugs to build a little hasdee to reprocess shit into pap too—provided you knew what you were doing and were carrying the right tempcube to reprogram your hasdee. Ash had one of Silver’s stored in his pack just in case.
They covered their cocoon as best they could—they’d be staying there on the way back—and started their long march. Most of the morning they followed a long winding path heading roughly northwest through the junk.
The temperature rose degree by degree every minute, the sun searing down upon them. They didn’t talk, saving moisture lost from an open mouth. They walked and listened. The chances of a hazel attacking in the day were virtually zero but there were other dangers. The uncollared Scabs were first on the list. They were vicious and violent cannibals who loved nothing more than feasting on scavengers. They allegedly owned hasdees—but preferred fresh meat.
The corridor of junk grew narrower and disappeared into a dead end. Ahead of them was a steep sloping wall of rough concrete and iron rebar sticking out, twisted and rusting. At the base of the pile were broken glass pots and a half-smashed pram, one wheel nearly intact. They both had a quick look—sometimes there were broken tablets stuck in pram pockets—but this one held nothing.
“Fun, fun,” Ash muttered and led the way, climbing the pile of junk, feeling it shift under his feet. Kin climbed next to him, using his sharp metal-tipped claws for traction.
Raj followed after instructing Chirp to fly up to see if anyone was around. He called back fuck no! in his high voice before fluttering back but Ash still wasn’t taking any chances. Scabs often sat out on the tops of hills or other high places, sometimes with binoculars, looking for prey. He reached the top of the pile but stayed low, looking around. No smoke from cooking fires and no movement. Raj climbed next to him and flattened himself to the ground as best he could atop somewhat spiky rubble.
“See anything?”
“Still checking.”
Ash squinted across the mounds that stretched out for kilometers around them. In the far distance, the piles grew higher until they were like mountains. One was surrounding a toppled skyscraper that sat on a forty-five degree angle, split open, revealing its naked iron bones to the sky. He knew beyond that was an area marked on all maps as Death. The Scabs lived on the periphery of it, a deep canyon that split the earth. There were a thousand stories about it. Giant bugs lived there that would eat you. The ghost of every criminal ever hung on a rope was waiting to pull the living down to join them. There was treasure but it was cursed. Sometimes bastardos bragged they’d sneaked through the Scab camps and pissed over the edge of the canyon. No one believed them even as they laughed at the story. The plain fact was anyone who went too close died.
Everything around them was in shades of brown, black and gray.
Ash looked south at the white glow over the horizon. Even in the day it was bright, as though competing with the sun itself. No one knew what it was. Perhaps a city surrounded by fences and lights. Perhaps something else. From their vantage point, he could see the Gap and the sharp edge where the junk cut off abruptly. The line of the edge curved until it crossed the horizon, implying a circle of enormous size.
He glanced to the southeast, back at Cago. It was hidden from view by a wall of junk but it was still comforting to know it was there.
“Anyone?”
Ash shook his head.
“Not that I can see.”
“C’mon Chirp,” Raj said. Chirp fluttered down to sit on his pack.
Ash climbed over the pile and down the other side, Raj closely behind him but offset so if he fell he wouldn’t take Ash down too. Kin leapt from place to place, avoiding any sharp edges, landing lightly. It was slow going—the threat of avalanche or collapse was very real.
They continued on, climbing up and down hills, getting closer to where Chirp had marked the crash site. As they did, the quality of the garbage under their feet changed. It was as though someone had dumped a few tons of nuts and bolts around the area. In some places it was ankle deep. Most were rusted, corroded away and useless but some were still pristine, made by some ancient process that kept the rust away. Mixed in with the nuts and bolts were shards of wood weathered by rain and sun, some still shiny with varnish. Wood was always a good sign. It meant no bugs had been there recently or perhaps the junk dune had turned over, bringing treasures from the deep.
Ash glanced at Raj and he nodded back in unspoken agreement. They could be walking over a fortune. Every time the junk moved under his feet, Ash has to resist the urge to dig down just a little to see if anything good was hidden under the surface.
They had to get to the crash site as soon as possible before the hole it made collapsed in on itself, the missile exploded or worse than that, the Scabs came and took everything.
They stopped for all of two minutes for lunch, gobbling down pap, Kin lapping water from Ash’s cupped hand before they moved on. The sun beat down above them, a stinging heat Ash could feel trying to suck the moisture out of his body. If it became any hotter they might be in serious trouble.
Ash resisted gulping down all his water, instead taking small sips to ensure he didn’t slip into dehydration without noticing.
They kept marching until Chirp started jumping around on Raj’s pack.
“Fuck yes! Fuck yes! Fuck yes!”
He fluttered in the air and looped a circle.
“Get the fuck down here,” Raj told him.
“We must be there, look.”
They were standing at the base of another hill of junk. Most of it was rusted and covered in a fine layer of dust but here and there were shiny pieces of metal. Halfway up the hill a piece of yellowed paper fluttered, trapped under a rock.
“I love paper,” Ash said.
The climbed the hill which soon revealed itself to be the outer rim of a deep depression with a wide dark hole at the bottom.
“There’s the fucking missile hole!” Raj said.
“Shh
. Over there,” Ash said, waving his hand at Raj to keep down.
In the distance a curl of smoke drifted from behind a hill before being smudged away in the upper air.
“Six, seven, eight hills. Fuck that’s close,” Ash said.
It was definitely Scabs. No way would a scavenger be so stupid to light a cooking fire.
They looked at the hole cut into the junk. The sides were smooth, as though the missile had been hot when it sliced into the pile. It was a good three meters across. Piled around the outside were thick heavy concrete beams with twisted rebar sticking out of them. Plenty of places to connect a rope.
“Let’s hurry the fuck up and get rich,” Raj said.
He lifted Chirp off his shoulder and held him close.
“Chirp, listen to me. Sit on the hole to keep watch. Don’t fly too high unless you see movement. Do you understand?”
Chirp turned his head to the side, blinking his black eyes.
“Fuck yes!” he said and fluttered off Raj’s hand to land on the junk. Then he started hopping around the rim of the depression, moving to the far side.
“Careful, careful,” Ash said as they clambered closer to the hole. It wasn’t too steep but there were plenty of tiny pieces of metal and concrete rubble under their feet. Some bits came loose and slid down the slope to fall into the hole. Every time a piece dropped over the edge, Ash prayed the unexploded missile at the bottom would stay that way.
They climbed as close to the hole as they dared, planting their feet and taking off their packs, removing ropes and pinions.
Ash ran his rope through his hand as he unwound it, feeling the fraying. It was getting weaker day by day, just like his pack and his clothes. Like everything. This was the rope’s last trip unless they found something amazing today. He threaded it through the electric winch on the harness and strapped himself in. Raj was already a step ahead of him, welding metal pinions to rebar with his cutter, ensuring three points of contact.
Once his gear was set up, Ash welded pinions into a different piece of rebar growing out of a long concrete beam that disappeared into the pile. It was wide and thick and if it did happen to slip, Ash hoped it was big enough to jam across the hole rather than falling down it. Going down holes was always a risk. You needed to tie yourself to something heavy so you didn’t fall. But if it slipped, it might pull you down into the depths. If the hole crushed in on you at least there was a rope tied to your dead body. Someone could dig down and recover your collar, getting a bounty from your family and sparing them seven years of quota debt.
Feed the Machine Page 2