Weekly Drabble #214: The Roosting (Patreon)

This week's drabble is based on Pyro Hawk and Thiemo Gunther's prompts, both involving feathers. That got me thinking about an older drabble I'd made, and I decided to add a little bit more to the setting. Here in Not!Comorragh, we see once again the lives of the 'free' humans within the city of Horrak-Sarn and how they interact not only with each other, but some of the other residents. Enjoy!

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Roost:

The City was a dangerous place. For men and women of all kinds, but especially for children. Particularly children who’d lost their parents, had no gang or any other form of protection from the many predators – literal and figurative – that filled the City’s eternally darkened streets.

There was no sun here, at least no kind of sun that anyone who remembered their homes on Earth would find familiar. Even under a cloudless summer noon upon the highest peaks of the City’s greatest towers, the sun’s light was muted. Down here, in the bowels of the sprawling necropolis, only the tiniest slivers of light slipped through the shadows cast by the impossibly tall buildings. It was a life of darkness for the City’s human slaves, only broken up by lanterns, trashfires, neon signs and whatever other artificial sources of illumination that they could make for themselves.

It was a dangerous life. The thousands who dwelt here avoided – most of the time – the attentions of the Masters, but there were many other threats within this place. There were gangs who warred with each other and those in the upper levels of the City were only one of them, but they were far from the worst. Humans had been here in Horrak-Sarn for hundreds of years,  more of them taken whenever the Masters needed to replenish their populations or expand their holdings. Some might slip through the grasp of the City’s strange rulers, but there was nowhere for them to go. You could escape the Masters, but you could never escape the City.

Roger had been on his own for a year now, ever since his parents had been killed. He’d found several other children, also orphaned by the City and they were doing their best to survive on their own, at least until some kind of order would come back. The gang war that had taken his parents had weakened both factions to the point that neither of them could meaningfully control the region. In that power vacuum, worse things had risen up from the shadows to swarm through this part of the City. The Uglies. The things that maybe once had been human, but now were that in shape only – and that, only rarely. Many of them were mutated, either by long exposure to the effluvia that spilled down from Horrak-Sarn’s higher levels or intentionally. The alterations were either done by themselves, or most often, by the Masters to satisfy some curiosity or capricious design upon their servants, only to be discarded and left fend for themselves. Most died quickly, but the few that had survived dwelt in the darkest, worst places of the City and had grown frown scattered individuals into bands and tribes.

The Uglies were among the most dangerous of the City’s inhabitants. The gangs usually kept them out. Not that things were all that safe even with the gangs, but they kept the worst of the City at bay – or at least in check. The gangs also brought in food, either by controlling the grow-tanks speckled throughout the city, or by raiding stores and hijacking the shipments in the upper levels of Horrak-Sarn. There was no law in the City – nothing but the Masters’ will, but the gangs at least offered a modicum of protection and constancy. Not anymore, though. Not here. Right now, the survivors of the recent war were too busy trying to stay alive themselves as the Uglies came up out of the dark, along with all the other players that had been kept under control flexed their muscles.

Food was always scarce in the under-levels of the City. For all their other faults, the Masters at least kept their slaves well-fed, and the helot populations never feared starvation. Where the free humans dwelt was another matter entirely. Most of their nutrition came from algal food tanks either scattered haphazardly by long-forgotten builders, or constructed over the centuries by survivors and scavengers. It was a bland gruel, but protein rich and it kept you alive. The gangs guarded their food tanks viciously. Anyone without access to them had to make do with whatever they could find. Fungi, moss and lichens were one source. At least the edible ones. You could occasionally catch animals, too. Strays from Earth and other places that had adapted to the City. But for those truly desperate enough, their fellow inhabitants would do. All too often, a lone child would be seen not as someone in need of protection, but an easy meal.

Even other children could be dangerous. Robert had known a trio of boys; two older brothers who’d adopted a much younger stray like him. Several weeks later, the young boy was gone and the brothers had full bellies. Robert was careful; he led a small group of other orphans. He’d been careful, only choosing the ones that were the most trustworthy. There were seven of them; four boys and three girls, none of them older than ten. It had been rough for them at first, but they’d been shown a small algae pod in a forgotten part of the water system. That kept them alive. Robert’s mother had helped tend to the gang’s food tanks and he’d often helped her. She’d told him it was a good way to show the gang he could be useful and not someone to put on the streets with the patrols.

They’d gotten the tank running again, diverting some water from the underground ducts into it and sealing up the passages to prevent anyone else from finding it. That gave them food and water, but there were other things that they needed. Clothes, spare parts, scrap to build and trade with. They couldn’t let anyone know that it was just them, so they pretended that were runners for a small gang, and they were always, always careful.

Never go out at night.

Make sure you’re not being followed.

Never let anyone know it’s just us.

It’s better to miss a chance than risk yourself.

Those were the rules for the camp, summed up in two words: Be careful. They always were. Robert and his six companions knew what the City was like and they did their best. They’d been lucky – and one time very smart – but luck didn’t last forever in Horrak-Sarn. Sooner or later it ran out and then... then you were in trouble.

“What do you think?” the man with a gap between his front teeth said to his companion as they strolled towards Robert and April, the two children trapped in a blind alley. “Good cuts?”

“Naw,” the other man said. He was shorter and heavyset, with beady eyes. Both men had belts bedecked with knives. A little ways away was their cart, one body already tossed into it. “Too scrawny for that. Stew meat and soup bones.”

“Yeah,” the first agreed with a nod. “I think you’re right.” He looked up from his partner to the children. “C’mere kiddies.” They were Trappers; Betty’s men. Butcher Betty (as she was called) was one of the shop owners in the region, a survivor in more ways than one. She was a grotesque blob of a woman, with arms and legs almost as big as Robert was and a face that far too wide with seemingly too many teeth. People said the darkness had gotten into her, and not just in the metaphorical sense. She ran a butcher-shop. Most of her wares were animals caught by her men. Mostly rats, other vermin and some of the larger animals whenever she and her Trappers could catch them. She also provided a selection of ‘long pork’ for those who asked, but the gang had made sure her predations were kept to those deemed unproductive or inconvenient. Now that they were gone, Betty had expanded her offerings. In the wake of the war and the spread of the Uglies, a lot of people had turned to her if only because she could keep them fed. Given the choice between cannibalism and starvation, a lot of people chose the former and they didn’t look too close at where the supply came from.

April hissed at the men, branding a small shiv. She was younger than Robert. When he’d found her, she’d been more like an abused dog than a person. She only rarely talked, as if still frightened of whomever had beaten that terror into her. She could be vicious and unsettled the other children, but Robert refused to abandon her. She was another victim of the City and the Masters, just like the rest of them. If the others complained too much, he reminded them how good April was at scavenging and how effective her survival skills were.

Robert hadn’t even known the Trappers were there; they would have caught him. Only April’s instincts had saved them from an ambush, but the children had been corralled into this alley. The men approached slowly, drawing their knives. The taller of the two had a blank expression, but in his eyes Robert thought he could see pain. He knew what that man was telling himself. It has to be done. This is the way things go in the City. If it wasn’t them, then it would be someone else. Better at least that it was humans who did it rather than the children fill the bellies of Uglies or worse things.“C’mere,” he said again. “It won’t hurt much. I promise.”

The other man... Robert had seen him before at Betty’s side. The darkness was getting into him, too. He didn’t regret what was going to happen. He was looking forward to it.

Robert had a spar of metal in his hands, holding it like a bat. “Fuck off,” he told the men. “We’ll hurt you.” The prospect of a fight, even against children, had scared off other predators before, but they’d been alone and they hadn’t been men who hunted people as their job.

Fat chuckled. “Terrifying.” He took a small bar from his belt and thumbed one end. It extended into a long pole with a wire loop at the end. A mancatcher. “This’ll go easy or badly, you little stewmeat. You get to choose.”

Before Robert could tell the Trappers to suck his cock – most of his defiant repertoire he’d learned from his father – he froze as a shadow passed overhead. There was a fluttering of wings and then from behind the Trappers came a a soft clicking hiss, a sound that made the blood of every man, woman and child in the City run cold.

Ke-ke-ke-ke-ke.

The blood drained from the Trappers’ faces as they slowly turned. Perched on one of the outcroppings on the nearest building was a Watcher. Her wings were extended; their feathers were a shiny, iridescent black like an oil slick on pavement. Her feet were like those of a raptor, her hands clawed. She wore sleek armour, and a featureless helm over her face with bulging red lenses over her eyes. Her hair was tied in a long braid that hung off her shoulder like an untied noose. On each of her thighs lay a pistol of uncertain provenance and a long serrated knife, its blade hard and sharp enough to pierce even a Master’s armour.

Ke-ke-ke-ke-ke.

Her wings quivered. Drops of clear saliva dripped out from under her mask. Though none of them could see it, Robert knew her mouth was open, rows of sharp, serrated teeth glinting wetly. Watchers were the City’s apex predators. They descended from their aeries and roosts in the heights to prey upon anything that moved. Some said that they were another of the Masters’ discarded experiments, but one that had flourished. Others said the Masters used them as a means to control the City outside their direct influence, accepting the occasional death of one of their own as the price for it. Others said that the Watchers came from a band of former slaves who’d traded their humanity in an attempt to equal the Masters, but instead succumbed to their new desires.

Whatever the truth of their origin, the Watchers patrolled the City’s skies as they searched for prey. They were most active at night, but there was no time of day where you could be truly safe from them. They were merciless and completely without pity for the creatures they swept down upon and tore limb from limb in frenzied, bloody feeding.

The Trappers bowed in terrified obeisance, though they didn’t dare look into the red lenses of the newcomer’s helm. To meet a Watcher’s eyes was a challenge. Her hisses turned into a threatening yowl and she reached back, her hands wrapping around the hilts of her blades. “Our apologies,” Fat whispered. “We didn’t know this was your game.” He grabbed his companion’s arm and pulled him away, the Trappers inching along the side of the alley farthest from the Watcher. They didn’t dare turn their backs on her.

A few seconds after they disappeared from view, Robert heard their footsteps as they took flight – more figuratively than the Watcher could – and the hurried squeaking of the wheels of their cart as they ran, doubtless towards the first canopy or roof that would hide them from above. Once the men were gone, the Watcher swung her head to regard the children cowering at the end of the alley. She made a series of hisses, clicks and chirrs. Though they had a language of their own, with teeth that were intended to shred flesh and tongues that stripped meat from bone, Watchers were no longer capable of ordinary human speech.

“We were being careful!” Robert replied as he lowered his makeshift club and April put away her shiv.

The Watcher tk’d and mmrm’d skeptically, pointing back to where the Trappers had fled.

“It was one time,” he argued. “We won’t let it happen again.”

Even though she was wearing that mask, he could feel the Watcher’s eyebrow raise. She chattered and trilled in remonstrance. He nodded in acquiescence. They had been lucky she’d been here. “We’ll be more careful,” he promised. Next to him, April chopped in head in a determined assurance. “We promise.”

From behind her helm, the Watcher stared at the two young children for several moments. Then she straightened, her wings beating to build lift just before she leapt into the air, carrying herself out of the shadowed depths and into the sky. Back onto the hunt. By morning, she’d have a full belly of something red and dripping and the City would be home to one fewer life.

“Come on,” Robert said to April. “Let’s go back and grab the bags we dropped before anyone steals them.” His companion nodded eagerly. The children hurried back to collect their scavenged treasures. Night was coming again, and they needed to be back in their safe little hole before it fell. Seven children on their own. They’d been lucky indeed to make it on their own for as long as they had, and they’d been very smart one time. Watchers might not show mercy, but they still felt gratitude.