by Orion, W. J.
Regardless, the crab remained still, and silent. If it slept, it slept soundly, and with its eyes open. She returned her full attention to the invader and held her mom’s phone high. She stepped up on a concrete block that hadn’t been smashed apart and got a good look at the top of the crab’s back.
“Nothing,” she muttered. “This armor looks different. Not a shrimp, not a full size crab. Not a crab tank either. Some other variant. It’s lighter, looks faster. Few more tentacles on the front. Mostly white with a little gray and blue in the shell, not red or black. So weird.” She got down on her stomach again. The craziness of going prone in front of an interplanetary killing machine flew over her head, and she saw the underside of the thing.
The segmented armor along the crab’s belly had disappeared. It hadn’t been destroyed; no damage was visible, but the armor was gone nonetheless. It seemed like a large plate had been removed, or slid into a recess. The crab was hollow.
Curiosity out of control, Yasmine winced and crawled under the hulk, shining the light up into the opening beneath the monster’s belly.
She didn’t see what she expected to.
Rather than an empty set of armor, missing its wearer, she saw a packed machine. A weird kind of machine, but a machine nonetheless.
Knotted masses of dried-out muscles were attached to a skeletal frame that the armor surrounded. Muscles that had an iridescent, translucent quality to them. They looked more like spun fibers of glass instead of flesh and when she reached out to touch them, they felt tough, and leathery. Thin wires embedded in the muscles ran to a central unit mounted against the monster’s back. The “muscles” surrounded the empty core of the crab, and terminated at an empty socket ringed with tiny metallic or crystalline receptors where the wires connected. Something in the gaping hole she had reached up into was missing. Something that plugged into the socket. Something that powered all the muscles that ran the crab vehicle.
Not the crab’s armor. A crab vehicle. Whatever she had thought the crabs were; they weren’t. The world was wrong about them. Whatever went inside this empty hole in the belly was the real crab. A small creature; one no larger than a beagle, or a toddler. And the cockpit they rode in contained the power source that plugged into the mechanical, electrical socket she stared at.
“Trey… what didn’t you tell me?”
Yaz opened the messaging application on her phone and saw she had one bar of service. She remembered her mother explaining how the icons worked, and Yasmine had a hunch a message would go through to him if she tried.
“Wait, better outside.”
After extricating herself from the insides of the abandoned or dead crab vehicle and ignoring the simmering pain of her reopened back wound she limped to the culvert. As soon as she strode into the night air, another bar appeared. Feverishly, she messaged Trey.
Why didn’t you tell me there would be a crab carcass here?
There was no way for me to know if it would still be there.
But you knew it COULD BE? DUDE. NOT COOL.
I’m sorry. There are things… that I need to explain to you, and the only way you’d believe me is if you knew more about crabs.
I’m so pissed at you right now.
I expected as much. I’m sorry. Are the meds still there?
There are like, 25 containers. I haven’t looked. I’m still cleaning up my pants from crapping in them.
Ha, I’m so sorry. Did you bring a spare pair?
Not the time for jokes, Trey. Not the time.
But you just… never mind. Are you home?
No, I’m standing in the culvert, messaging you angrily.
Well get out of there, ASAP! Dead crab plus mother lode of medical loot equals huge risk. Grab what you can and scram.
I can’t grab much. I’m hurt pretty bad from a spill I took trying to escape from THE CRAB YOU DIDN’T TELL ME ABOUT.
Damn. I’m really sorry. Will you be okay?
You better be sorry. I’ll be fine. Maybe.
I am sorry. Get stuff, get home. Please.
I will. Hey Trey…
Yeah?
You’re a dickhead for not telling me about the crab.
I know. Just trust me, and know that there’s a lot more I’m going to tell you real soon.
Real soon.
Real soon.
She went back into the tunnel, all her previous fears of the place discarded. She walked past the hulk of the unique crab vehicle and went straight to the plastic cases. She pried open the sealed flaps of the closest one on the tunnel floor and grinned ear to ear when she shined the light from her mom’s phone in.
Boxes and boxes of plastic-wrapped bottles of ibuprofen, and acetaminophen. She opened another box and found more shrink wrapped packages of toothpaste, floss, and toothbrushes. Five cases later she found locked bins with bulk bottles of prescription medicines. She found baby formula too. A stack of cardboard boxes held cans of spray paint, glue, rope, and other small tools and gadgets. Giddy beyond belief (but in more pain than she deserved to feel) she stuffed a decent cross-section of the loot into her mostly empty backpack, took several pictures of the empty crab vehicle with her mom’s phone, and got out of Dodge. She winced and nearly cried out from the agony she’d put herself in.
She made sure she had extra toothpaste, brushes, and inhalers.
Getting the remainder of the haul would require less sneakiness, and a whole lot of help.
Not just help. Partners. She’d need a partner.
Maybe a friend.
Chapter Sixteen
To Listen. To Trust. To Join.
Schlepping across the ruined suburbs and business areas south of Shant took Yasmine far longer than it should’ve. The seeping wound in Yaz’s back and the pain it radiated slowed her to a tortoise’s pace. She stooped so low as to grab an uprooted road marker with a rectangular reflector on its top to use as a walking aid.
She’d never needed something to help her walk before, not even when she broke her foot and had to hobble a half mile back to her basement home. She’d just set her teeth and got it done. She still limped in the cold months.
But this was some next level pain. She didn’t dare take more of the white pills Dr. Sonneborn gave her. Overdosing was a real concern, seeing as how she didn’t know much about medicines, or how long she’d have them to take. Hoarding was a good trait. She already felt lightheaded and was sweating profusely and couldn’t risk more. She’d ran out of water at the halfway mark. What if she blacked out, right before a scalding dawn, all alone?
She’d be dead by high noon. Dried out and cooked to a golden brown by the malicious sun in the sky.
In another terrible twist of bad luck, her gate nemesis Gordon drew guard duty on the southern gate and when she approached she fully expected him to refuse her entry again. It wasn’t quite dawn still. She puffed up, ready to tear into him, ready to throw a bloody bandage up into the guard tower he stood in (maybe the road marker too, if he chose his words poorly), but as she got ready to unleash the full fury (and the road marker) on him the scrap metal gates opened up for her with a grinding creak.
Sheepish, she limped through the narrow gap, past the two guards shutting the gate behind her and into the central road that led to the market, the solar stills, and the downtown buildings with their red bricks, and fabric-covered streets. The settlement smelled nice. Food was being cooked somewhere, and she could hear kids waking.
She needed to talk to a couple people, and one of them was the good doctor.
She still had the road marker.
The little bell on the door hadn’t finished ringing before the doctor laid into her from his seat at the clinic’s front desk.
“Yasmine, we had an agreement. Are you peeing in the jug? Not much pee in your jug. And hey, you were to work for me to compensate me for your debt owed, and yet here you are-“ he started. She didn’t let him finish.
“I’m hurt. My wound opened,” she managed before her legs gave out. She dr
opped to the hard carpet, her spent body unable to do more. Her walking aid bounced off a chair seat and clattered to the carpet with a dull metallic ring.
“Oh Lord,” Dr. Sonneborn said. “You’re drenched in blood. What did you do? Let me get my kit.”
“Get Brent. Get Kim. As soon as you can,” she gasped as the world darkened. “It’s important.”
“Let’s stop the bleeding first,” the doctor said.
“Okay,” she mumbled, and let the darkness consume her. Then, for the first time in a long time, she was pain-free.
“How do you think she did it?” Yaz heard Brent say in the hallway outside her room at the clinic.
The door was a bit ajar, and the single fluorescent tube in the ceiling cast an ugly, flickering beam into her sanctuary. Shadows moved across the light as the people in the hallway shuffled about. Their presence comforted her.
“She fought another crab!” she heard Owen say, his voice filled with awe and excitement. “She’s the crab-destroyer of Shantytown!”
“Calm down, Owen,” Brent said to his youngest son. “Right now she’s the most injured person in Shantytown. Doctor, any idea?”
“None,” Sonneborn said. “Could’ve been as simple as a tumble over some rocks. Or… as Owen here asserts, she found another crab.”
“A little bit of both,” she croaked towards the cracked door.
“Yasmine?” she heard Kim say, and the door opened.
Someone pulled the chain on the light bulb connected to the extension cord coming through the wall and she could see the faces of everyone entering. Brent and Kim were first through the door, followed by the two young boys (Owen; excited, Liam; nervous) and the doctor. The couple seemed worried, but happy, and the doctor wore an expression of relief.
Yaz didn’t know what she herself looked like, but she knew she was smiling. She couldn’t help it.
“What’d you get yourself into now?” Brent asked her with a cocked eyebrow.
Kim sat on the side of her bed and clasped Yaz’s hand. Yasmine let it happen. She didn’t pull her hand away at all.
“Did you kill another crab?” Owen asked.
“She hasn’t killed any crabs,” Liam said. “She just made that up to sound cool.”
“I did kill a crab,” Yaz said, defending her honor and reputation to the older son. “But I didn’t kill another crab.”
Owen looked away from her gaze.
“How are you feeling?” Kim asked her.
“It hurts. Everything hurts, but I’ll mend.”
“How bad is it?” Brent asked Dr. Sonneborn.
“Tore the stitches open. Might get infected. Might not. Won’t know for a little bit,” he said back. “I hope whatever it was you did last night was worth the scar you are going get out of tearing that open.”
“Scars don’t matter to me,” Yaz said. “But what I found last night does.”
“Where did you go?” Kim asked.
Yaz became nervous. Up until her last statement, everything was her secret. Her mom’s phone, the messages from Trey, the evil of Baron Monolith, the hidden cache of medicine…. If she said anything else….
“Maybe we can have the little guys leave? It’s an important secret,” Yaz said.
“I can keep a secret!” Owen blurted, hurt.
“I know. But it’s Yasmine’s decision to decide who she shares her secret with,” Brent said to his youngest. “Maybe later she will feel comfortable talking with more people, but that’s up to her.”
“Liam, can you take your brother to the lobby? Read some of the magazines on the tables for a few minutes?” Kim asked.
“We’ve read them all. Dr. Sonneborn needs to get more. I don’t wanna read them again,” Owen complained.
“Boys, I know. Please just give us a few minutes to talk,” Kim said. “Play a game.”
“Sure. Whatever,” Liam replied. “Come on, Owen.”
The two boys exited, holding hands. Brent pushed the door until it was almost closed.
“Go ahead,” Brent said.
“I found a drainage ditch south of Shant while picking. I got through the mesh covering the tunnel that came out from under the road and found a bunch of stuff stashed inside, around a corner.”
“Okay,” Kim said. “How’d you get hurt?”
“There was a crab in the tunnel. I saw it, and when I was running to get away I ate it in the ditch. That’s how I got hurt. But the crab wasn’t alive.”
“What?” Brent asked, shaking his head. “It was intact?”
“Yeah. Standing there. No damage. Inert. Empty,” Yaz said.
“Bull. Crabs have a self-destruct device that goes off when they’re taken out. Acid melts the interior and leaves nothing but the charred outer armor. We’ve never salvaged a suit of their armor after fighting one and we’ve never found a suit of their armor abandoned intact.”
“It’s not armor,” Yaz said. “It’s a vehicle.”
“Say what?” Brent said back.
“There was an opening on the belly. A compartment underneath it where a power source gets plugged in. About the size of Owen. I think a small cockpit too. I found a nodule, or node, or whatever you want to call it that had wires coming out of it. The wires connected to these clear, tubular manufactured muscles that powered the vehicle. Long story, whatever, but there’s an intact crab in the tunnel, plus what I found.”
“What’d you find?” Dr. Sonneborn asked.
“Hand me my backpack,” Yaz asked, letting go of Kim’s hand. Brent handed the bag to her, and she unzipped the main compartment. “Here,” she said, handing Kim the toothbrushes and toothpaste she grabbed. “We’re even for the bread, water, and dirty sheets now.”
“These are brand new,” Kim said, shocked. “Still in the box, untouched.”
“Wait for it,” Yasmine said, feeling the excitement build around her. “Soap, Tylenol, hand sanitizer… for days.”
Brent took the pills, read the label, and handed them to the doctor, who looked like he was about to burst with unrestrained joy.
“And, I grabbed a couple of these,” she said and handed Kim two inhalers for little Owen.
The mother’s eyes erupted in tears of gratitude. The woman leaned in, laying on top of a flustered Yaz and squashed her with a hug. Kim tightened and tightened until Yaz couldn’t breathe.
“Stitches,” Yaz croaked. “Oww.”
Kim squeezed tighter.
“Kim. I’m bleeding,” Yaz squeaked.
“Oh I’m sorry,” Kim said, letting go and sitting up. She held the inhalers up and started to cry harder. “It’s just... this will… you can’t know.”
Over Kim’s shoulder she saw Brent cover his eyes and turn away. His wide shoulders heaved as he tried to hide his emotions from her.
“I have some idea. I hope you never have to use it,” Yaz said. “I hope it works if you do.”
“Thank you,” Kim said.
“Thank you so much,” Brent said, his voice breaking into little bits.
“You’re welcome.”
“How much more of this stuff is in that tunnel?” Dr. Sonneborn asked. “We need to go get it before someone else does. You know the Monoliths from the city are scavenging in the wastes now. I guess they’ve picked the city clean and now want everything out here too. They’ll take it all and leave us for dead soon enough. Maybe they’ll just try and kill us and take what they want. Do us a favor and be direct about it. Either way, we definitely need to get out there before the crabs come back for whatever they left behind.”
Monoliths out of the city? Are they here because I’m talking to Trey? Do they know?
“I also grabbed these. Random bottles just to show you what was there,” she said, and tossed the doctor a few of the white plastic bulk bottles containing prescription medicines. “I can’t even say the names of the stuff.”
“Allopurinol. Cephalexin. Do you have any idea how useful this stuff will be?”
“Yeah, some idea. If it sti
ll works.” Yaz said and felt bad out of the blue. What if it didn’t work? What if it was all expired? What if, what if, what if?
“How do we get it all back here, assuming of course Yaz intends for us to go get it for Shantytown…” Brent said.
“I do. I know the people here need it.”
“What’s in it for you?” the doctor asked her, showing his skepticism. “You never do anything for free.”
“I do plenty for free, I just don’t make a big deal out of it. People find out I do stuff for free, and all of a sudden no one will barter with me. I want free medical care for life,” Yaz said, thinking of the most recent issue that had put her into so much debt. “And a reasonable amount of water and food when I visit.”
“That’s asking a lot of a lot of people. We’d have to convene a council,” Brent said. “Get people on board.”
“I’m not being greedy. I just… want to help, and I don’t want to worry about getting hurt while I do it,” Yaz explained.
“No, no,” Kim said. “You deserve peace of mind. You do a lot for a lot of us. Let’s get the stuff, and when people see what you’ve brought to Shantytown, I think a council will happen in your favor without doubt.”
“For what it’s worth,” Dr. Sonneborn said, “I’ll give you the care. No council needed for my consent.”
“Great. Thank you. We can figure out the other stuff some other time. Brent, I’ll show you where the stuff is tomorrow.”
“You’re not moving for a week,” Dr. Sonneborn said. “Doctor’s orders.”
“But…”
“No buts. You’re hurt, Yaz. No point getting free medical care for life if you spend the rest of it tending a fire on your butt because you never healed right. I’ll tie you to that bed with a rope if I have to.”
“But I don’t want you to get the stuff without me,” Yaz pleaded. “And I’ll eat the rope until I’m free.”
“You’ll get the credit, kid,” Brent said. “Show me on a map, and I’ll go get it myself with a couple friends I trust. People who can keep a secret.”
“I don’t know,” Yaz said. “It’s not about who gets credit.”
