Weekly Drabble #333: Bedtime (Patreon)

This week's prompt comes from Tyronne with 'dying light', bringing us back to Horrak-Sarn. Originally, this was going to be a bit of an anthology, touching base with several characters from the previous stories and their reactions to the beginning of the dark season, but as I was writing Janice's part, it kind of evolved into a story on its own, so we get some more of Horrak-Sarn's first, yet unofficial, ecologist.

Enjoy!

~

Bedtime:

Janice Seymour latched the door behind her and secured the heavy deadbolt and shucked off her backpack on the small table in the apartment’s sitting room. It was seventeen stories off the ground and the walk up to it had been exhausting, but the messages had been right about it. Just like hobos of Earth, the grounded in the City, particularly the scavengers and explorers like her, used signs scratched, etched and scribbled onto walls and ruins to communicate with one another. A square with three vertical lines, not unlike a barred window, signified a safe room ahead.

Today had been a long day, but she wasn’t done yet. She’d already swept the apartment, riot gun steady and ready for use with an ease that would have shocked and horrified Younger Janice, but the place was as advertised. Once that was done, she made sure nothing else would be getting in. The deadbolt was heavy and not part of the original design, and the inside of the door had additional latches and plating to keep anyone or anything that was outside, out.

There was a small filtered cistern on the balcony, cunningly concealed inside some rubble and several jugs of water. There was a note – more like a diagram – instructing visitors to refill the water bottles before they left. In what was now the kitchen, several different someones had scribbled more instructions on the door of a cupboard in several languages.

TAKE SOMETHING, it said, LEAVE SOMETHING. She looked inside. There was a three-quarters-full lighter, a pair of cans of corpse beans, half a bottle of local moonshine and a stack of explicit photos.

Janice flipped through them. Most of them were of a redhead who looked a few years younger than her, with faint freckles and unkempt pigtails. There were plenty of her with a young brown-haired man with a lithe but strong physique about her own age. The self-styled exo-ecologist bit her lip. For her needs, she’d always preferred the written word to imagery, but the literature market on Horrak-Sarn was woefully underdeveloped. She’d met more than a few other grounded who couldn’t read at all.

The young woman flipped through the photos again and decided to keep them, the canned beans and the lighter. She left the moonshine. Younger Janice had liked to party, but today’s Janice didn’t drink. In place of what she’d taken, she left some copies of her notes on treating of slither-vine poisoning – this area was thick with them – a full bottle of alcohol that she’d found in a discarded pack several days ago, and a dozen bullets of various calibers, none of which fit her revolver or shotgun, but someone else could probably use them. She’d learned not to throw anything away.

After dealing with the supplies, Janice surveyed the rest of the apartment. The angles of the walls, the curved ceiling and architecture made it clear that this place hadn’t been made by or for humans. It probably wasn’t even intended as a home, but scavengers like her made do. Whatever it had been before, now it was a small sanctuary within the City’s never ending struggle to survive. The mattress was dirty, but not enough to put the young woman off from using it. Several crates and boxes had been dragged in to create makeshift furniture; a pair of tables with seats, something resembling a sofa and a lumpy, stained pillow that felt like it had been stuffed with pigeon feathers.

In a side room, probably just a closet or small storage space, was a rudimentary shower; a bucket with holes punched in the bottom set up so that the water bottles from the cistern could be placed above it and drain into it, accompanied by some dubious-looking but dry towels. Or, old bedsheets that had been ripped up into towel-sized pieces. Close enough, though.

Upon seeing the accoutrements of this safe house, Younger Janice would have turned pro-gun just long enough to blow her own brains out rather than spend even one night in squalor like this. Today’s Janice thought it looked closer to heaven than she’d seen in months. But she didn’t let her guard down just yet. In what passed for a bedroom, the window had been completely blocked up with a stack of crates and there were heavy curtains across the large sliding doors that led out into the balcony. Janice looked outside, confirming there was nothing dangerous in the vicinity. Then she turned on her flashlight and set it on the counter, aiming it at the balcony doors. She stepped outside, pulling the curtains shut, and examined them carefully for any rips or tears through which the light could get out and signal that there this room was occupied.

Nothing. Not even a sliver of light from the edges of the window. That was good, better than she’d expected. Seventeen floors from the ground didn’t make you safe. The glass – if it even was glass – on the windows was thick, but not as thick as the safehouse’s front door, and even that wouldn’t hold off some of the threats Janice had encountered here in the City.

Letting out a breath, the young woman re-entered the building and turned her light off. She needed to save the battery for emergencies. She had a small pack of matches and a pair of kerosene lanterns that she normally used for light, but she indulged tonight and used her new lighter to ignite her lanterns, providing a soft, dull orange glow throughout the safehouse.

Janice grabbed a couple jugs of water, giving them a quick test. Not exactly glacier water from the Rockies, but you could drink it. Testing strips were a precious commodity, and these were better than anything you could find on Earth. Water was hard enough to come by here on Horrak-Sarn. Water that wasn’t swimming with lethal alien micro-organisms, industrial runoff, general pollution and waste or would just kill you through good old-fashioned dysentery was even harder to find. The safehouse looked like it was running through the spirit of camaraderie, but all it took was one piece of shit who figured they’d add a little something to the water here and help themselves to what the thirsty dead left behind to ruin things.

Satisfied that the water wasn’t going to kill her, the young woman stripped out of her clothes and unfastened the bottle tops, putting one up into the shower to feed into the bucket. She stepped under it, relishing the feel of the limp pattering of water on her head and shoulders, its rivulets leaving streaks down her skin as they rinsed away the dirt, sweat and grime of days of travelling.

Just two more days and she’d be back in town. The dark season was just about here, so she planned to stay for a while. That would make Honest Dave happy, though she knew he’d be more happy to see specific parts of her. The last time they’d talked he’d said he’d gotten his hands on a new pedicure kit and some actual honest-to-God pumice he was dying to use on ‘those poor, abused, but lovely’ feet of hers. She didn’t how he’d managed that, but Honest Dave had ways of getting things no one else could and his prices were fair, even when she paid in trade – and those negotiations were better than most.

Janice laughed, running her hands through her hair. Like being grateful for a pigeon meal, or a night in this dingy, makeshift domicile, her arrangement with Honest Dave was far beyond what Younger Janice would have considered acceptable, but Younger Janice wouldn’t have survived the City. Today’s Janice was, if nothing else, a survivor, and while she missed that naive, idealistic version of herself, she knew she wouldn’t have lasted long as that person.

Honest Dave wasn’t the only one who’d be excited to see her. She’d done it. It had taken her weeks of tracking, too many close calls with less than benign wildlife, Muties, ferals (and one heart-stopping encounter with a Watcher), but she’d done it. The horn in her pack wasn’t from a buffalo. It was from a cow. There was a herd of cattle in Horrak-Sarn. She had pictures. She’d seen them; touched them.

They weren’t as fat as human cattle. On Earth, they’d be an unmarketable or even unhealthy level of lean, but they seemed to be doing reasonably well here. They’d adapted to the City. Even the cows were scarred, sullen and hostile beasts and the herd’s bull had almost gored her when she’d gotten too close to one of the calves, but they were here. They must have been here for generations, living well away from the human settlements, but she’d found them. Megafauna could survive on the surface. Her provisions had begun to run low, so she’d had to turn back, but she found them once. She could find them again. This was huge. If there were more, if they could survive out in the wild...

We could never have ranches. The Masters would burn any settlement that looked like it was growing too big, but free-range, if those cattle could survive on their own... We’ll have to be careful not to overhunt. I’ll have to be careful who I tell, but... milk and meat. It would help, and even more importantly, if there was enough for the cattle to eat out there, then it meant there might be something for humans, too. Every grounded settlement walked a razor’s edge between having enough and starving to death, so this... this mattered. She had to find out more. She had to get back out here and study them, but not now.

The days were becoming dangerously short and increasingly cool. Not as cold as winter on Earth, but the dark season put a pervasive chill in the air. She needed to get back to town, at least for a little while. She didn’t like being around others too much, but going it alone during the dark season was much riskier than usual. She’d get back into town, rest and resupply and make a plan for more research.

Letting the last of the water drip down her bare skin, Janice grabbed the dubious towels and dried herself off as best she could. She didn’t bother changing as she sat in front of her hot plate, cooking a can of corpse beans. So faint that she only thought she heard it came the baying of tar hounds as they emerged from the Beneath into the city far below as the sun set and complete darkness settled across Horrak-Sarn. At least she was as safe as she could be, but she still kept her weapons close at hand.

Her belly full and her thirst attended to, Janice slumped into the lumpy mattress, shifting position to test it out. It would do. As long as she didn’t wake up sore this would be fine. Finally, she fished the dirty photos out of her pack and selected a choice few.

A couple more days and she’d be back in town. Until then, she’d do what every other scavenger on Horrak-Sarn did. She’d make do.