Scavengers Box Set

by Sam J Fires

  I turn and sprint into the border city. It’s relatively quiet at this time but even so, there are still all sorts of people on the move. I run through the narrow streets, dodging and ducking between, beneath and besides an array of characters all doing all sorts of odd things considering the hour. I pass between a group of men rolling zinc drums, which presumably contain water. I slide beneath a stall table where a man stands, selling what looks like dog meat and I run straight into a topless woman, who is obviously a prostitute trying to market her wares.

  Regardless of what gets in my way, I just keep running. Neither fatigue nor external impediment will stop me, but I have no idea where I’m running to.

  I think about running back to the place where Olly and I had been staying but there is nothing there that I can’t just leave behind. At the thought of Olly, I get a heavy feeling in my bowels, and the icy, radiating pain in my shoulder begins to return.

  This won’t do. For the time being I have to exile all thought of Olly from my mind and with it the snowstorm swirling inside of my body. I know the sharks will soon be after me, if they aren’t already hot on my heels. I know that they will turn the border city apart looking for me, that all vehicles, traders coming in and out will be halted and searched and since the sharks have seen my face, there probably will be hand drawn pictures of me already in circulation.

  And even if by some miracle I do manage an escape today, by tomorrow there will be a bounty on my head or assassins after me, if not both.

  There is only one course of action to evade the sharks; change my appearance. If I can just do that for now, I can figure out the rest later.

  I consider myself a pretty resourceful boy. This is something Olly has fostered in me from before I can remember. In this moment I feel as though Olly has been preparing me for this sort of situation my entire life and all at once an idea of how to escape from the border city dawns on me.

  But I won’t go without my brother.

  I make my way to the place where Olly and I had been staying and gather our belongings, making sure to be seen by the owner who had rented the place to us. I take the bag and hide it in a storm drain making sure that nobody sees me. Even though only a couple of dozen sharks have seen my face and would be producing pictures of it, it’s unlikely that they would recognize me if I don’t stand out. So, I do what little children in border cities do. I strip off my clothing down to my underwear and affect a walk not too dissimilar to the way the prostitute had been walking.

  This world is sick, but my survival depends on how I can leverage this sickness to my advantage.

  As I walk, I felt the eyes of some of the border city natives upon me and I force myself to wink and wave at them licentiously, emulating the behavior I had witnessed from the prostitutes in border cities everywhere. As I strut the street, like a cat in heat, a shark engaged in a frenzied search looks directly at me but then carries on searching. Then another pair of sharks do the same, and another and another.

  As the evening progresses, the people of the city appear more and more annoyed by the spectacle of the search and the sharks looking completely defeated and demotivated until eventually a group comes marching through the streets, dragging a man who I initially don’t recognize. Then as they drag him past where I’m standing, I recognize exactly who it is. The inn keeper, the owner of the residence where we had been staying.

  The man kicks and cries as they drag him off and I note that one of the sharks has found Olly’s possessions and has them in its hand. The inn keeper screams out for all to hear; “I told you already. I don’t know where he is, he left in a h…” and then he passes out from a blow to the head by one of the older, more bulky sharks.

  Chapter 5

  Liberty, Fraternity, Equality

  T hey buried Jacob on the very day that he had been executed.

  Ally took to her room for more than a week, refusing to talk to anyone, hardly eating. After Jacob was murdered, she first wailed painfully for all to hear and then fell into a semi-catatonic state. She was carried to her room and Olly was taken in by the mother of one of his friends under the instruction of Bryan.

  Adam, for his part was pleased by the outcome of it all. He had been worried that Ally would take his place when Bryan was ‘done’, if not by his appointment then at least in the eyes of the people, or worse - by both. He was not sure what would hurt him more, being betrayed by Bryan or being undermined by the people. But now he hoped Bryan could see how unfit Ally was for leadership.

  Surely Bryan knew that the people could not have a weak leader. But after a week Ally emerged and naturally her first port of call was making sure that Olly was okay. Thereafter she re-asserted her dominance within the commune, continuing as normal. Adam was perplexed once again as this appeared to endear her even more to Bryan and the people.

  Shortly thereafter, the virus was released globally, and the commune shut itself to the world. In the commune, life continued as usual, except that Ally became more and more prominent within the decision-making processes and climbed the rungs of commune leadership. Adam remonstrated about this both privately and publicly. He once complained to Bryan, who merely smiled and said “Adam, let terror live outside of this place.”

  Decades prior, in the plan of action for the release of the virus, it had been agreed that at least four months would have to elapse for the virus to run its course. After three months, Ally gave birth to her healthy little boy. Her second son, Israel.

  She recovered quickly from her birth and began planning along with Bryan and Adam, for what would ensue once the four-month isolation period had elapsed.

  It was determined that because the FF had been the source of the viral plague, this was to be struck from the memories of all FF members globally and never spoken of again. Once the FF emerged on the specified date, they would tend to the survivors and destroy all the 4IR technologies.

  Bryan kept in touch with all other commune leaders globally on a regular basis, sending out and receiving messages by radio using something called ‘Morse code’. Up until that point, everything was going according to plan.

  After the fourth month, the big day arrived. On the special day when they were meant to emerge, Bryan gathered everybody and read a speech about “Liberty, Fraternity and Equality” and then chose Ally as the leader of the unit. This new unit was now meant to go out and meet the survivors of the old world.

  Adam was visibly disturbed by this but kept his rank. They made their way back to their nearest city as all the FF members from the communes across the world had begun to do. They had expected to arrive in the cities to find few survivors, just a handful of lost souls amongst the quantum cities. They had expected these scenes to be the same in every city globally. But as they entered the cities, they found the quantum world was in ruins with the cities torn to shreds. Nothing of the quantum world they had left behind remained.

  People by the tens of thousands ran around attacking one another in the streets. Some charged at Ally’s FF delegation who were at first sufficiently armed and trained to mow them down quickly enough. Ally was visibly distraught.

  Bryan screamed out, “What the fuck is going on here?”

  More hordes of people came charging at them and they, in turn, fired round after round after round trying to disperse crowds of attackers whilst trying to retreat to safety. The unit of forty was attacked by wave after wave of crazy, bloodthirsty survivors and they soon started to dwindle in number.

  The forty were now no more than twenty and after being attacked by the waves of rabid humans, there was eventually only seven left.

  It was only due to Ally’s leadership that three of the seven were able to make it back to the compound, Ally, Adam and a distraught and traumatized teenage girl named Cecilia. The three were pursued from the city all the way to the compound. The advantage they had over the zombie-like horde was a self-driving vehicle able to transport the three in their injured condition back to safety.

  None of them
were mortally wounded but all three had been bitten in multiple places. When they arrived at the compound, Bryan was mortified to hear them recount their experiences.

  Naturally, after being shut away for the four months while a virus ravaged the earth left the FF figurehead somewhat disconnected. Bryan took to immediately contacting the leaders of the FF globally and the news was all the same. He was able to weave together various strains of the narrative from the reports he received from the other FF leaders.

  Apparently once the virus had been released, it began to mutate into numerous strains. The ‘Black Biology’ was unstable. It had been ‘successful’ in wiping out at least half of the world’s population in the four-month period. Certainly, some were immune, but the virus also developed a sub-strain which made the infected sick and then drove those poor souls insane.

  Another sub-strain, which acted almost like rabies, turned those infected into carnivorous cannibals who eventually did die but not before first spreading the virus through their saliva. Before the evening was over, Ally and Cecilia both become ill and within hours began to attack and feed on the other inhabitants of the commune.

  Adam was able to escape with some of the children and members of the commune, including Olly and Israel. At first, they all assumed Adam too was immune but on the following day, he too went crazy and attacked the survivors he had managed to save only the evening before.

  Young Olly managed to flee with baby Israel and a few other survivors. This unlikely band was comprised of two children and other remnants of the FF who were now alone in the madness of the new world they had helped create.

  With time the crazy all died but not without first taking millions along with them either as food or fellow travelers on a sojourn to a painful, violent, crazy demise.

  For his part, Bryan sat chewing his pipe until the very last, until Ally and his children sunk their teeth into his numb, tingling body. He hardly felt any pain from their bites, but his soul filled up with such a terrible weight that a black hole of despair nearly opened at the point of his death. A terrible demise for anybody, let alone a lofty one such as he.

  Chapter 6

  Life is Cheap

  I continued my charade as a faux child prostitute, preying on the drunk and depraved in the early hours of the mornings. I managed to rob at least five men and women and now I’m worried that the sharks will catch on to the reality that I have not in fact vacated the city fleeing for my life.

  I will have to flee eventually but I refuse to leave without Olly. I don’t even want to think about what Olly might be going through and whether they have transformed him into a heap shark. Or worse.

  Whatever plan I come up with will have to be put into action soon. I’ve considered breaking into the heap as I’ve done dozens of times before but I’m worried that the sharks might have grown wise to this tactic, that they might have beaten it out of Olly. Besides, even if I break in, I wouldn’t know where to start looking for him.

  Olly has been my only family for as long as I can remember. He taught me everything I know, how to read, how to fight, how to survive.

  In the beginning there had been three others; an older man, a teenage girl and another kid about the same age as Olly. But by the time I turned five, the teenage girl had been traded into slavery, the other kid had died and Olly had dealt with the older man.

  I have no other memory of the other kid but according to Olly he had been a friend of his from the FF commune from Olly’s earliest days. Shortly after fleeing from Adam and those infected by the mutated Z-strain of the virus, Olly’s friend had begun to struggle. Despite having undergone the same training and education as Olly at the FF commune, he simply lacked the mental resilience to employ what he had learned in the world. They were only children. He had been a liability to the group and proved to be so more and more with every day, with every encounter.

  The group had begun to use him as a lookout for whatever operation they would be running, as the cities and towns were still filled with people infected by the Z strain who were the biggest problem, running around and attacking others, spreading the disease like rabid dogs.

  By the end of the year most of them died but not without taking many others along with them. Another strange variation of the disease induced madness and physical deformity. The mutations caused by this strain of the virus resembled leprosy and didn’t seem as contagious as the Z strain. Those who got that strain went mad and spent the rest of their days wondering around like lunatics but were for the most part not harmful. They were also completely immune to the Z strain and tended to repel those infected with it. The original form of the virus had all but dissipated.

  Olly told me stories about our parents from as soon as I was able to understand. but he was always careful to omit the full details of their respective demises. I always felt that Olly had been holding something back, but I didn’t dare to ask. For some unknown reason, he just couldn’t bear to share this with me.

  On one raid of a grocery warehouse which was still surprisingly filled with supplies, I had been left behind with the teenage girl as it was considered that we could be a liability to the operation.

  The other three set out but only two returned, Olly and the older man. What had happened to Olly’s friend was unclear. He had been acting as the lookout as he normally did. Olly and the older companion went out to conduct the raid but by the time Olly had returned to regroup, he found the young boy’s body limp and lifeless. He had been strangled.

  Their older companion found Olly with his friend in his arms and with his usual crass insensitivity merely reminded Olly that they had to move quickly, or risk being attacked.

  A few years had passed after the young boy was killed and we were managing to navigate the dangerous wasteland of the new world quite well although we had yet to begin raiding the heaps. Our formula had shifted slightly though. The older man had aged too much to successfully conduct raids and remained behind with the teenage girl and Olly and I went out alone and foraged for the goods we needed.

  With those infected by the Z strain long dead, the greatest danger had become other humans, people who had managed to avoid and survive every strain of the virus; hard, damaged people.

  The older man had become inept at evading people on the road but was an exquisite trader. Whatever extra Olly was able to forage, the older man seemed highly capable of trading at outposts and the border cities. Outposts and border cities were largely treated as hallowed ground in the sense that there was some semblance of order there. Our older traveling companion appeared to do well and was definitely an important part of the group. But Olly never did trust him and never left me alone with him.

  Olly entered his teens and grew into a gangly young man with sinewy muscles across his body. There seemed to be a growing attraction between him and our female companion. But on returning from a raid one day she was gone. The older man told Olly that she had run off with a boy from an outpost, but Olly knew this was untrue.

  Olly always carried a crowbar along with him on raids for both protection and as a tool for getting into warehouses and other places where useful things could be found. Olly beat the older man with that crowbar until he confessed to having traded the girl to a group of men traveling from city to city to use for both their utility and presumably their gratification. She was traded for tobacco and alcohol.

  Olly beat the older man into a stupor and had intended to leave it at that and pursue his friend, but the old man blurted out one more confession; he had strangled Olly’s companion all those years ago.

  Olly tossed the crowbar aside and kneeled over the bloody old man. He wrapped his strong hands around the old man’s throat and squeezed and kept squeezing until every drop of life had evaporated.

  With blood-covered hands he gathered what essentials we needed and we set out in pursuit of the band of men who had taken his friend. No matter how hard we pursued, we always seemed to miss this band of men.

  As we moved from city to c
ity, we began to need to establish new ways of surviving which ultimately lead to us beginning to raid the heaps.

  As the years went by, heap raiding became the focus of our nomadic lifestyle and Olly’s female companion was all but forgotten.

  Chapter 7

  Suffer the Little Children

  I stand watching the tavern. Soon enough a drunk will emerge, looking for someone to pour his lusts upon. I’ve done this now at least five times so far and know exactly how to lure a punter. I’ve watched the prostitutes of the city, young and old alike and learned to mimic them. But unlike them I won’t trade myself. I just incapacitate them and take whatever they have.

  I have no compunction in doing this; robbing punters is no different to robbing Heap Lords and it’s safer. The evening is cool but not chilly, a gentle breeze whistles outside the tavern. I stand ready. A group of drunks emerge and I step forward and pose for them to notice me. One seems to take notice and breaks away from the rest. The loner begins to stagger toward me.

  When the man is just a few yards away, I reach behind my back and wrap my fingers around a steel bar I have tucked into the back of my pants. Just a little closer….. I grip the bar tighter but suddenly the man stops dead in his tracks.

  I panic, wondering whether I have given myself away. I’m about to turn and run when someone grabs my left arm. I try to pull the bar from my waistband but another pair of hands catch that hand too and pull it to my side.

  I try to shake myself free, but I’m held too tightly by hands on either side of my body. One of the assailants slides something over my head and everything goes black. I haven’t quite passed out, but I’m successfully restrained.

  Obviously one the sharks finally caught on and captured me and is now taking me deep into the heap to be punished for my transgressions.