by Orion, W. J.
Yeah, like, REALLY. I like putting a face to the name. I mean, my mom used to say that. I’ve never talked to anyone I didn’t see the face of. You’re the first.
Yeah, wow. That’s a big bite to chew, huh?
Yep. Spill the beans, homie. Wait, do you want me to go first?
Yeah that’d probably help. Spill YOUR beans.
LOL. Alright. I’m tall for a girl. 5’8” and skinny, but everyone is pretty thin nowadays. I have shoulder length light brown hair I always keep in a bun or a ponytail.
I wear hats a lot.
Trey didn’t answer. One minute ticked off into two and Yaz felt her anxiety start to grow. The same gnawing itch at the bottom of her ribcage grew and grew until she couldn’t take it anymore. She started to tap another message in, but then Trey answered.
Will you tell me what color your eyes are? I’m a sucker for eyes. Windows to the soul, right?
Relief consumed her, and she sighed.
Hazel. In the dark they’re green/gray. In the sun they become mostly gray with flecks of orange at the center. My mom told me I have a constellation in my eyes.
You sound… pretty.
She blushed in the dark.
Your turn.
I’m tall for a boy, 5’8”…
Don’t even. Be you.
I’ll try. Okay. I’m perfectly average. So average physically I bore those who know me to sleep. I’m not thin, I’m actually a little heavy, but that’s because I read a lot and don’t get enough exercise.
My hair is actually gray, and super thin. So thin you’d make fun of me if you saw it.
My eyes are brown, and a little large for my face.
…I think they used to call this a ‘hard sell.’
LOL.
I think you sound like a perfectly nice person.
Phew. That’s a relief. I’m nervous about this stuff.
You did great.
Thanks. You too.
Sooo… Now what?
Got me. I’d ask you how your day went, but when you’re locked up in solitary confinement in a closet I don’t think there’s much to say.
You got that right. I sat and thought about talking to you all day.
Really?
Yeah. You’re the best thing in the world right now.
You’re just saying that because I’m the only thing in your world right now. :P
I can’t argue with that logic, but I’m being sincere. I like you. I hope we get to know each other better before…
Yeah. Maybe you’ll talk me into rescuing you.
I certainly won’t do it describing my ravishing good looks to you.
LOL.
I got an idea, one last question before I crash.
Perfect. I’m almost out of power too.
Okay. What’s something you know a lot about? I, for example, know a lot about solar power, and cell phones.
Explains how you keep your device up and running. How did you learn about all that?
Mom and dad had a small folding solar panel for camping. Hard plastic case so it’s lasted. Mom and I used to play on her phone together at night. I listen. I watch. I learn things.
We are so very alike, it’s like, a sign that we met.
Yeah yeah yeah. So answer the question. What’s something you know a lot about?
You said two things, so I will as well.
I am very knowledgeable in electronics and computer coding, but you already knew that.
Yep.
I’m a cartography nut.
Maps?
Yep. Love ‘em. Love looking at ‘em, love making ‘em. I have… hundreds I’ve done myself. Helps me find my way around. Helped us find stashes of supplies.
So you’re a huge nerd?
…and now I wish I hadn’t said anything.
No, no! Sorry! I meant that as a compliment. I think it’s awesome. I make my own simple maps now and then for the same reasons. You should teach me some tricks.
Maybe I will. Of course, there’ll be plenty of time after you rescue me for that.
Truth.
It was nice talking, Yaz. Please be safe out there.
I’m always safe. I’m brave, but I’m smart.
Two amazing qualities. People are amazing.
Some of us.
Truth.
Take care Trey. Same time tomorrow?
Same time.
Goodnight.
Goodnight.
Yaz plugged the phone in, and popped the ear buds into her ears. She queued up a soft piano solo concert her mom had downloaded, and let the mellow music lull her into a quick sleep.
She didn’t hear the tone when Trey messaged her again much later in the night. She read his second conversation after waking. His two sentences read:
I looked at one of my older maps and found a place that might still have the medicines you asked me about. We’ll talk about it tonight.
To say she felt giddy did the word giddy no justice.
Chapter Twelve
The Word of the Day is… Hope
Filing, organizing, coding.
Filing, organizing, coding.
None of the engrossing work she did could hold a candle to the thought that Trey might know where needed medicines were. An inhaler for little Owen, Epsom salt for Dr. Sonneborn and who knows what else was out there, somewhere. Yaz couldn’t focus, and when lunchtime rolled around, she begged the doctor to be set free into the streets of Shant. She needed fresh air, and maybe some food. He obliged her and Yaz scampered away through the fabric-covered, war scarred streets to find Brent in the parking garage market. She ignored the larger than normal number of people giving her odd looks as she cut corners and jumped over the piles of rubble laying just out of the way. She didn’t see the old lady begging for gasoline and water, which might’ve been a good thing, or a very bad thing.
She found the dark skinned goliath in his cool market stall, sitting on his worn stool, eating a piece of meat on a dainty stick. He had an air of accomplishment about him, and a smile that made her smile too.
“That smells amazing,” Yaz said as she ducked under the sheer fabric that doubled as a door to his stall.
“Little bit of lizard on a stick,” Brent said through a bite. “Cures all that ails ya. You have something to eat? You look skinnier than usual.”
“Um, no, actually. I ran here to say hi and didn’t get anything yet,” she replied.
Brent nodded at the man across the way cooking the same meat over a barrel fire. The man had a simple stall positioned under a bomb hole in the concrete ceiling. Smoke vented upwards through the space. He had a small line of eager, unwashed customers.
“Go get one from him. He owes me at least ten more of these for some stuff I got for him. Tell you what; grab three. I want one more.”
Had she not been starving Yaz might’ve argued over his generosity, but she was so hungry she didn’t. She jogged down the center of the almost-empty market and took her spot in line. After a minute she reached the front of the line and all she had to do was throw a thumb over her shoulder at Brent and she had their lunch. She returned and Brent took one cooked lizard on a stick from her.
She devoured her food and he watched with a smile.
“Whuh?” she asked as she chewed.
“Watching a woman eat is something I take great pleasure in. I can watch my wife as she eats dinner without blinking. For days. Soul satisfying.”
“That’s weird.”
“Ain’t that the truth. I hope you enjoyed it.”
“I should’ve eaten slower,” she said, patting her stomach. “I barely gave my face time to taste it.”
They laughed and Yasmine took a seat on a stool several feet from Brent. She looked around at the plethora of junk in the bins on his tables and tried to think of a way to start the conversation she wanted to have with him. He beat her to the punch, even though he didn’t want to talk about the things that she did.
“So the town meeting last night…” h
e started. Their collective smiles faded a bit.
“Oh yeah. How’d that go?”
“I wish you’d come. I won’t say it went badly, but there are a whole lot of people skeptical of your story in Shantytown today.”
“Why? I’m not lying. What do they know?” Yaz felt… angry. Why would they doubt her? They had no reason to.
“Hope, Yaz. People haven’t seen a crab around here in a good long time. If you’ve actually seen one, and killed one, that’s a scary thing, and scared people lose hope.”
“But it’s reality; I saw a crab,” she said, still feeling angry.
“Of that I have no doubt. But remember, kid; people have lived their entire lives in denial of an obvious fact right in front of them, because they couldn’t wrap their mind around the truth. Give them time. They’ll come around.”
“So what’re they going to do?”
“Nothing. Well, not nothing. We’re going to add another guard to the rotations,” he laughed. The chuckle was a dark sound, not one of joy or humor.
“What?”
“One guard won’t change a damn thing.”
“No,” she said, somber. “One guard won’t.”
She remembered what the one crab did to the library in the school. The bookcases exploding all around her, the fire and smoke, her hair standing on end. It’s implacable advance, her inability to harm it… One guard with a spear fashioned from an old boat oar and a shard of aluminum wouldn’t even scratch the armor of a crab. They’d be cooked alive by the creature’s powerful electrical weaponry.
“You know how I know you saw a crab?”
“How?”
“Because of the look on your face just now.”
Her face turned red, and hot. “What do you mean?”
“Drained. Hopeless. No bravado. You know what fighting against just one of those things is like. And I’d bet you another skitterer on a stick you’ve thought about what having a posse of them coming after you would be like.”
“You’d win that bet,” she said in a sigh.
“I fought against them. Right here in Shantytown. Right in this parking garage. In the city too. I did my time in the resistance. I was a cop you know. I was able to fight. Had the guns, the training, knew the streets and where we could resupply.”
“How many crabs did you kill while you fought?”
He looked down at his propped up feet on the low spindles connecting the stool legs. His toes fidgeted in the sandals he or his wife or son had made with the sewing equipment she’d picked in the wastes. He looked up at her, and she saw the same expression on his face he saw on hers.
“Eleven.”
“That’s awesome. That’s a lot,” Yaz said, almost reaching out to pat him on the leg, congratulating him.
“At the cost of hundreds of fighter’s lives, Yaz. Hundreds. Thirty to one ratio over four years of fighting. We’d blow one up and two more would get dropped off by one of their ships the next day. Can’t win that war. Couldn’t then, and we sure as hell can’t now.”
“Maybe if we fought a war against them differently?”
“Maybe, but I don’t know how that’d work. We fought with every weapon we had, including a few nukes, and sure, we killed a bunch of them, but the cost wasn’t worth it. No sense annihilating our own world in the efforts to expel the crabs.”
“No one tried talking to them?”
“Sure, plenty of people tried. Music, colors, math, pheromones, every language under the sun,” he sighed and tossed his thin wooden sticks on the table behind him. “But they never replied from their ships, and never as they walked around in their armor. Either they never understood us, or didn’t care to talk to us about what they came to do. Maybe they think of us like we think of little ants. Something to step on.”
“That sucks.”
“That’s what hopeless feels like. No matter how hard you try, nothing good happens. Easier to turn an eye, and stop trying altogether, right?”
“I understand, but I can’t say I agree,” she said.
He smiled again. “You’re a tough one, kid. I see it. If we had more fighters like you back then, we might’ve won the war. I’m proud of you.”
She felt her face turn red again. “Thank you.”
“Your mom and dad… they’d be proud of you. You know that, right?”
“I think that. I can’t know that,” she said.
He put a hand on her arm where it rested on the table. His fingers and palm were cool, and enveloped her hand and wrist. The touch felt good.
“You can know that.”
Several hours later, at 3:33 in the morning Yasmine sat on the side of her comfy white bed in the back of Dr. Sonneborn’s Shant clinic, her mom’s phone in hand, ear buds in ear. She felt hot, almost sweaty, and her dirty bare feet tapped on the worn tile floor like the beat from one of her mother’s dance floor electronic songs.
Her mom’s phone dinged, and the screen lit up. Trey had messaged her.
She unlocked the phone and maneuvered to the messaging app so fast she nearly tossed the phone against the wall. Yaz was frantic to read what he had to say.
Hey.
That was it.
That’s his whole message?
Seriously? After dropping the bomb you dropped on me last night, that’s all you have to say?
Well, yeah. It’s polite.
Sigh. Okay. Let’s get down to business. Where are the meds?
Are they for real? Can you lead me to them?
Let me say a few things before you go off the deep end, ok?
Okay.
We found the stash of meds a couple years ago. No way to know if they’re still there.
Okay.
No way to know if the medicines have expired.
Okay.
No way to know if other people have taken up residence where we found them.
They might fight to protect them.
Okay.
Not okay. That means you could get hurt, or possibly have to kill people.
Are you willing to kill people for these meds? Can you? Do you have a gun?
I… I don’t know. I don’t think I would take a life. Not unless I absolutely had to.
You have to promise me that if they’re guarded, you’ll leave.
Why? Are you afraid I’ll die?
Yes.
I guess I should thank you. That you’re concerned about me.
You’re welcome. And remember; a big part of this is self-serving.
What?
I’m still really hoping you’ll consider coming to rescue me.
Or finding people who might rescue me. If you die… I’m a goner.
No other phones showing up in the area?
No. Just you.
Well, don’t get your hopes up, but if these meds turn up as real…
They’re real. Or at least, they were.
Funny that my hopes for the future require a remnant from the past.
Don’t be dramatic.
It’s all I got. I’m locked up in a closet talking to someone I’ve never met and waiting to die.
At the hands of a guy that calls himself Baron Monolith.
I wish I was kidding.
I’m sorry. Really.
Don’t be. You’ve given me some hope, and that’s something.
She looked up from her mom’s phone and stared into the dark room. Hope. It’s the word of the day.
I’m glad. So time might be short for these meds, and I don’t know how long it’ll take me to find them… so can we get started?
Yeah, sure. Got something you can write with?
You know I’ll have all the messages saved right? I don’t actually need to write them down.
What if you lose your phone? Or the battery dies?
I see your point. Let me find something.
Chapter Thirteen
Sometimes Being Sneaky is Weird
Yasmine had never snuck away from her mother. Not once in the thirteen years they sp
ent together. The young girl loved her mother, trusted her mother, and feared the world without her. She never would’ve betrayed her.
Since her mom’s death Yasmine had lived a solitary life, which meant there was no one to sneak out on. No one to let down, no one to rely on. When she lived in her basement shelter, filled with comics and old magazines she could come and go as she pleased. No one cared about her movements.
Well, Brent and Kim did, but they had two kids of their own and lived inside the walls of Shant and she was a mile outside those walls so it was moot.
But here, now, with only a dark blue horizon and a darker blue sky above to show for the day’s sun, here she was, sneaking away from Dr. Sonneborn’s clinic.
She felt a weird twist inside her belly as she let herself out the front glass door. The feeling of dread and looming disappointment she knew the doctor would feel if he knew she’d skipped out worsened when she controlled the door’s closing to remain silent.
Sneaky. She was almost always sneaky, but this was different. This was deceptive-sneaky. This was letting a man she owed something to, down.
Well, not really. She could return before dawn (if her nemesis Gordon let her back through the gate) and catch a few hours of sleep before the lanky dentist even knew about her trip. All she’d have to do is double down on staying focused the next day, and no one would be the wiser.
Until she gave the doctor the meds. That’d let the cat out of the bag, but she could wait a few days to do that. Pretend she had picked them on her next trip out.
But then she’d be a liar, too. A sneaky, deceptive liar.
And people wondered why she wanted to stay out of Shant. Dealing with people made her feel guilt, shame, disappointment, anxiety, stress and…
A little appreciated, and maybe a little loved.
She slipped from shadow to shadow, shoving the thoughts of emotions where they didn’t bother her, and she headed for the southern gate.
She’d written Trey’s instructions down on a slip of paper but she didn’t need it. She read it ten times after they’d let each other go the other night, and she’d read it thirty times again earlier in the day. His directions were imprinted into her memory as clearly as her mother and father’s faces.
The two hour late evening trek due south through the suburban ruins was cake. She went slow to stay vigilant for crabs or shrimps moving through the dilapidated houses and businesses, but she saw no people (other than the nighttime fires of a few hermits or isolated families) and she saw no red alien eyes mounted on the faces of biomechanical, armored machines roaming the wastes, looking for human victims.
