“Move! Move! Move!” a guard shouted as the line lurched forward.
Michael stumbled along as indignant grumbles intermingled with frantic footsteps.
“Water! Water here!” a stumpy merchant shouted as he raced alongside the line. He wore a cask similar to Michael’s, but there was a strange, brown liquid sloshing within.
Several desperate men called out to him, their coinage held high in trembling hands.
“Keep moving!” the guard shouted. “There’ll be water enough for those selected.”
Michael glanced about at his fellow hopefuls. There were bald-headed Garfaxmen; the mutated Tritanese with their black, diseased encrusted flesh; the Nefrafe Isle men, cast outs with large X scars branded across their faces. There were even races he had never seen before, no doubt from Alg or beyond the Isle. Men covered in piercings and tattoos, woman with great patches of scar tissue where their breasts had been. He even saw a man with gems in place of his eyes, most likely a criminal who had been caught stealing in the island nation of Jarink.
But we all have one thing in common now, Michael thought. And that was the hunger for work, for coinage — the siren call that drew them from their many slums and rat-infested swamps.
“Third sun of the fifth quarter,” a timekeeper cried in the distance. “As the eagle flies.”
Michael’s stomach growled like a caged beast. It had been days since his last meal: a vile mix of sand rat and draba he’d won in a scorp duel.
“Move it along,” a guard barked beside him. Like all Overwatch men, he wore a patchwork of rusted metal molded together beneath a rotten tunic. His pants were fashioned from laptane flesh dyed brown to match the Overwatch colors, and his feet were bound in leather wrappings woven together with wire and rope. As he approached, Michael noticed a black brand glistening upon his neck: a long sword split in half by a bolt. Another cast out, Michael thought. Even the Overwatch sends its dregs here.
Michael staggered on, sweat coursing down his face and back. When he tried to wipe it from his eyes, he stepped into a coil of wire that wound about his ankle and sliced into his flesh. “Damn it,” he growled, tossing the wire into the nearest heap.
Leagues of garbage lay simmering beside the lines, long since abandoned possessions dropped out of desperation or exhaustion. Even the horizon betrayed wreckage of the past, great silhouettes of forgotten outposts and bunkers baking beneath the unyielding sun.
Michael pressed on, his father’s voice echoing through his skull. “Culver makes a man of ya. That much I know, boyo. One day in that place and you’ll be carved out of steel.” His words stabbed at Michael’s soul like a thousand daggers. It had been almost six turns since his death, but he could still see his purple body hanging from the rafters of their shack.
But that wasn’t my father, he thought. That was just a shadow of the man . . . a shell that some ghost had come to possess.
The white-hot sand baked the soles of his tattered shoes as waves of heat pressed against his sunburnt neck and shoulders. When he looked up, he saw countless flocks of draba circling high above, no doubt waiting for their next meal.
“Take a good look,” a guttural voice quipped behind him. “You’ll be riding those wings straight to hell.”
Six footfalls of hairy fat towered above him. A cretin, Michael thought, dread welling in his gut. Probably Barrow Clan. The enormous savages usually kept to the edges of the Waste, preying on those foolish enough to break from the lines. This one must be an outcast, Michael thought. Else he wouldn’t be rotting away with us.
The cretin drew closer, whispering over Michael’s shoulder. “You should let me hold onto those shoes, boy. Be a shame to waste ’em when you’re snubbed out.” With that said, he pushed past Michael and moved down the line.
Michael stood silent, his pulse racing. The gob in front of him turned and laughed. “Smart move. That one strangled a man not more than a call ago over a pair of breeches.”
Michael sighed. When in the Waste, one held his tongue. Unless you want it cut out, he thought.
The unending line now resembled a diseased vein weaving across the desert. Beside it, a gnarled mystic mounted a rickety podium and draped himself across its cracked, wood surface. As he caught his breath, he scoured the crowd with two glassy, adreena-starved eyes.
Michael tensed as the man’s gaze scrapped across his body. The work selections had begun. Those lucky enough to pass muster would soon be sent into the Waste to work as trap disarmers, sand rakers, nagra hunters, and countless other deadly jobs. But at least there’s the promise of coinage, he thought.
Like a vulture, the croon studied every muscle and pore, dissecting and rejecting flesh with deliberate pause. Another failure, Michael guessed as the mystic moved on toward better prospects.
The gob in front of him stumbled, kicking up a cloud of dust. When he recovered, Michael noticed a large, waxy scar on his neck resembling a broken arrow shaft. Brand of a Tritan exile, he thought. He wondered what the lout had done to be shipped here.
The wind slammed against the mystic’s robe, pressing the tattered red fabric tight against his emaciated shell. “Keep it moving,” he shouted, waving a muddy bamboo cane above his head.
Michael lifted his shirt to his face and wiped sweat from his eyes.
“Go quicker,” a guttural voice bellowed behind him.
Michael turned. It was a man this time, his flesh covered in tattoos and piercings.
“Deaf boy?” the man spat. “Move along!”
A Barrow scrapper, Michael thought. Unlike the cretin, he stood well over seven footfalls tall, his reddish flesh bulging adreena-infused muscle and veins. Michael stepped back as the man’s lifeless, white eyes met his. Desert blindness, he thought. Or at least the early stages of it. A widespread trait among the more seasoned Wasters.
“I don’t like you, pale face,” the scrapper said. “Line ain’t no place for you.”
Michael pretended to ignore him, but the lout grabbed his shoulder and spun him round.
“You don’t turn your back on me!”
The mystic took notice and raised his staff. “Steady your tongues over there.”
Grinning, the scrapper reached into his moldering leather trousers and withdrew a single gold coin. “You blind for next five minutes, eh, magic man?” he said, tossing it at the mystic’s feet.
The coin spun wildly, its hypnotic ping ending abruptly beneath the mystic’s tattered boot. “You bought four, dreg.”
The brute approached, both fists balling at his sides.
Michael turned to those standing closest, but none offered any help. They were already busy taking bets on the fight’s outcome.
“Wager well, scags,” the scrapper growled. “Kremwa tastes blood before next crow flies.” And with that, he lunged forward.
Panicking, Michael stumbled backward. Within seconds, the brute was on him, hands clasped around his throat like a vice grip. Michael caught flashes of men shouting and grinning and felt his feet lift off the ground as the brute tightened his grip on his windpipe.
“Break it off!” someone shouted at the back of the line. “Ya damn scags, I said break it off!”
Michael tried to cry out, tried to pry himself free, but the scrapper’s grip was too strong. This is it, he thought as darkness crept in around the periphery of his vision.
“Culver rats think they so brave . . . so strong,” the scrapper hissed. “Just wait until we’re alone out there. Wait until you see what watches from beneath the san—” A mace slammed into his head, denting his helmet and knocking several teeth into the sand.
Michael fell limply to the ground, splashing into a puddle of muck as the scrapper collapsed beside him.
“Move it along, you damn slogs!” a guard shouted at the onlookers, his sunburnt flesh bulging through a patchwork of rusted steel. “And you!” He pointed a stubby finger at Michael. “I’ve got work needs done in the Boiler Fields. You just bought yourself a spot on the lines.”
A shiver danced down Michael’s spine. The Boiler Fields! Breeding ground for every elemental and ground trap roaming the Waste.
I should have let him kill me.
“Let’s go,” the guard shouted as he dragged Michael to his feet.
Michael lurched forward, stumbling over the scrapper’s unconscious body. Out of habit, he reached into his pocket, hoping against hope that his secret stash of coinage was safe. But to his horror, it was gone.
“Wait!” he hissed, breaking from the guard’s grip. Behind him, several coins lay glittering in the mud.
“Coinage!” someone cried.
Within seconds, every dreg within earshot fell upon the area. Like hungry vultures, they slashed and clawed, blistered hands snatching a coin here, a coin there. A wild frenzy. And through it all, the guards watched silently with amused delight.
“Move along!” the mystic barked from the safety of his podium. “You’ll have time enough to earn it back. That is, if you live long enough to collect.”
2
Michael shielded his eyes as the low level dust devil devoured the line. Curses instantly rose from his fellow dregs as sand stung their unmasked faces.
“All right, all right, ladies,” a voice shouted through the telltale distortion of a laptane mask. Michael looked up. On the easterly side of the line, mounted like a statue atop a massive dune, stood an indifferent guard with arms akimbo.
“Listen up!” he shouted. “I’ve been told that four slots for the Stix need filling. Who’s the lucky ducks going in?”
Grumbles echoed throughout the lot, but no one volunteered.
“A work gang got itself petrified yesterday. I need four bodies to replace them. Double pay for volunteers. Any takers?”
Michael pushed his way to the front and raised his hand. If I’m to die, he thought, I’ll at least collect double pay.
“I’m in!” he shouted.
The guard nodded. “Anyone else?”
A Tritan man stepped forward, his black, sun-scorched flesh caked with sand. “Here!”
“No gobs,” the guard spat. “Anyone else? Come on! Double pay!”
A Garfaxman stood a few men behind Michael. Like many of his kind, he was mutated, his gnarled, tentacle like arm glistening with sweat. He stubbed out his smoke and approached the guard. “Take on the gob and you’ve got me!”
The guard laughed. “You two lovers? What do you care if he works?”
“If he’s willing to take the risk,” the Garfaxman said, “his sweat is as good as mine.”
The guard spat out a wad of adreena weed and frowned. “I said no damn gobs!”
“Let them pass,” a voice said.
The guard turned. A pallid boy stood a few footfalls behind him, his features concealed beneath a Circle cloak.
“I need men,” the boy went on. “I don’t care who or what they are.”
“Very well,” the guard laughed. “They can die together. As for the rest of you, you’ll be taken into the Chelder Downs for trap disarmament. Normal rates.”
The gob glanced at the Garfaxman, his cracked, oozing face indifferent. “Don’t expect me to take warm baths with you, squiddy.”
The Garfaxman smiled. “You’re welcome.” He then turned to the cloaked boy and nodded his thanks.
Michael followed the gob and Garfaxman toward a distant row of laptane tents. As he walked, his stomach soured at the thought of working alongside the gob. Most of the traps and poisons they would be cleansing were of Tritan make. The same ones that drove Dad mad, he reminded himself.
His blood boiled as the mutant’s shadow intermingled with his own. Twisted and inbred, the Tritanese had lived cut off from the rest of the realm since the end of the Meridium War. Shunned and embargoed, they did little now but molder beneath their rusting dome. But every now and then, a few trickled into the Waste, cast outs and scrappers with nowhere else to go.
The cloaked boy stepped down from a dune and joined the group. Pale in complexion and topped with black, curly hair, he stood in stark contrast to the diseased rabble surrounding him. An apprentice, Michael thought as the boy’s ill-fitting blue robe rippled in the wind. Probably fresh from the Isle. He wondered whether he was here voluntarily or just another insubordinate cast into hell.
When they reached the fitting tents, an enormous brute strapped in shoddy Circle armor ducked out of the largest tent with a crate in hand. “File in before the mystic,” he shouted, dropping the crate at the boy’s feet.
The mystic mounted the creaking box, his bravado waning as he looked over the three men. “My name is Harold Waxguard,” he announced.
A greenhorn, Michael thought. Follow his rules and you might just get paid by day’s end.
“We ride for Sector 5WX2234, northeast of the Boiler Fields. You’ll leave your possessions in the red tent and then grease up for suit fitting.”
Michael stepped forward. “What of pay? We were told double rates.”
The mystic withdrew a black box from beneath his robe. With a gentle click, the lid opened, revealing dozens of brass sprockets spinning beneath a piece of clear glass. In a blur of motion, he tapped on the device, drawing pops and clicks from its internal mechanisms. Seconds later, a tiny piece of paper curled out of a slit cut into the bottom of the box. “Work gangs cleansing the Blackened Stix receive . . . five coinage per day, based on Nimrada’s scales.”
“That’s too low,” the gob grunted. “We received triple that in the Noradic Horn.”
Harold shut the box and tossed aside the curled paper. “Scale pay is set, but it is independent of salvage brought in. Find a good haul and your rate will increase. That’s not a bad deal.”
“What about cleansing rates?” Michael asked. “It usually yields ten percent death pay atop the normal rate.”
Harold locked eyes with him. “You’re a volunteer, right?”
Michael nodded.
“Then take the pay, and be thankful we’re going only a few miles in. The last detail that went beyond this sector never returned.”
Michael shook his head. “I’m not risking my life for pittance. You want a warm body . . . then I want death rates.”
The mystic stirred uncomfortably. “According to sector bylaws, you may each haul up to a thousand pounds of scrap or its relative value in salvage from any zone. That is, as long as it’s neutralized and cleansed upon return to the docks.”
Michael quickly perked up. Perhaps we’ll make some coin after all.
Harold cleared his throat. “Now are there any other questions? No? Then let’s be on with it.”
Michael turned to the Garfaxman. The man wore a boiled leather vest and a pair of faded leather trousers. He also donned a belt hung with everything from smithy hammers to draba-skinning blades. He’s no virgin to the lines, Michael thought.
The Garfaxman spit a wad of tobacco at the mystic’s feet. “If the rate is true, I’m in. The others can do as they wish.”
“It stands true,” Harold replied. “But only for the next three calls. Then the rates will change according to sector selections.”
The Garfaxman nodded, “Very well.”
Michael shivered as the mutant stepped back in line. Does the same fate await us all? he wondered as he stared at the man’s gnarled, tentacle like arm. He’d already seen enough blind and diseased Waste landers to know there was no escaping the Culver’s wrath. Sand rot, wind burns, black lung — these were just a few of the deaths awaiting those foolish enough to linger here too long. That very morning, he’d seen a man limping atop a petrified leg and another burnt so bad by a fire elemental that he had to be gagged to staunch his screams. He’d also heard rumors that a dozen men lay dying in one of the medicine tents, their lungs singed by a poison trap triggered somewhere in the Boiler Fields.
“Anyone else?” Harold shouted.
“What if we demand triple rates now?” the gob asked. “You need four, yet you only have three. We could easily become zero.”
M
ichael eyed the mutant with growing disdain. The filth was bluffing, of course; he knew the rates as well as the next dreg. And the mystic’s were hard to beat. A typical gob, Michael thought. Greed outweighing hunger.
The Tritan man lit an adreena stick and took a deep puff. “You cinch your purse, yet I heard nine gangs were lost in the past month. Is this not true, boy?”
Harold visibly swallowed. News indeed traveled fast along the lines. Particularly bad news. “Yes,” he replied. “Nine . . . all lost.”
Michael’s stomach tightened. Thirty-six men and women killed or mutilated in one lousy month. Bad odds, he thought.
“But I promise you,” the mystic continued. “If proper precautions are taken, the risks will be negligible.”
“Oh, enough with it, gob!” It was the Garfaxman this time. “You know the risks. Take it or leave it.”
The gob rounded on the Garfaxman. “Mind your own coinage, squiddy. If you know what’s best.”
The Garfaxman chuckled. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”
Michael stared at the twisted gob. They had earned their moniker well. Where human hands had once been, clawlike appendages now dangled at his sides, the fingers elongated and bent and topped with razor-sharp nails. His flesh was black and covered in infectious sores, the oozing lesions glistening in the baking sun. Some believed the meridium-infused walls of their city were the cause of their degrading state.
Whatever the case, Michael thought, he slogs it out alongside us now. This warmed his heart. For who better to suffer the Waste than those who created it? After all, was it not their factories that churned out weapons unseen save for nightmares, all designed and cast in the secret recesses of their dome?
Michael shivered as he recalled the artifacts the many traders had rolled past the lines: catapults, fire arrows, Garbat Bristles, and razor bows. Hundreds upon hundreds of death machines spewed into the Culver for their weight in coinage. How many men like my father went mad disarming such devices? Michael wondered.
Sand and Scrap Page 3
