Snippet #1990832

Her back was straight as she was walked into the Ruins of Chathair Tús Nua. It was the first time since her feet had been on unfamiliar ground that she’d done so. In the days before the slavers found her wandering lost in the Wasteland, a straight spine had egged on the ache in her stomach, made it impossible to forget what she’d last eaten. Flowers and a bite of soft tart goat cheese. The yellow trumpet shaped flowers had been peppery on her tongue, the spice of their round leaves awakening her appetite. She’d gobbled up the sticky cheese curds, licked up the sour white cream from her fingertips, and been disappointed when she couldn’t find any apples in the dugout cold pantry. They’d had a good year, and she’d been able to indulge in a meal between breakfast and supper without feeling she’d stole it from her winter stomach. Had she known how far away from that beautiful pantry she would end up, she’d have devoured the two boars hanging there, bones and all.

Ten days after that, she’d been close unto death. She’d wandered over prairie grass with nothing she could recognizably call food between one hill and the next, and little frame of reference of where she was or where she was going. Standing on the crest of one such hill, there had been mountains rising up in the distance, curving around her horizon. At home, the forest had made it impossible to see the mountains, which she only knew were close because Cameron didn’t take more than three days when he took the nanny goat into them to breed with the wild billies. She couldn’t remember collapsing or being found by the slave caravan, but she presumed it had happened. There was no other explanation for her current life.

The meals since then were much like what she remembered of bad years: thin gruel with more gristle than grain, and topped with a quickly congealing layer of spoiled grease, meant to save some muscle on the slaves so they could walk under their own power. It had turned quite a few of their number into cows, chewing numbly the scant offerings of food to have the food come back up on them moments later, only to be swallowed down again. Retching was bad manners toward their generous hosts. Very bad manners and very punishable. Memories of dirt biscuits that Junie had made to ease her stomach aches during bad years were cruel reminders that there was no such comfort now, and nothing but her own will to safeguard her, as there wasn’t a shred of camaraderie among slaves. Imogen had been right on that score: no one in the outside world was going to be her friend, and no one possessed enough kindness in their soul to shelter the life of another. Food was stolen by those stronger or more desperate, and she watched passively when her own was occasionally taken. It wasn’t worth fighting for when it took more energy to protest than was available in the bowl. Not that her protesting stomach listened to reason.

It wasn’t so bad as to be unbearable. There were a few things she knew, and she was clever enough to learn and adapt. Except for the issue of water, she didn’t feel especially deprived of resources. Even the inedible portions of the gruel were useable. Cammara did not touch the rancid fat to her tongue, instead using it on her lips and feet, striving to keep her skin from splitting. Dirt got into the grease, making it cake and crack, but saving the flesh underneath.

Once, she had tried smearing the grease on her hands. The act was not repeated. From what she could understand from the row she’d caused, greasing wrists was the action of a rebellious slave trying to escape. If she had any further confusion about what a slave should and shouldn’t do, the lacing of welts hidden under her leggings would bleed until the lesson was permanently written in her skin. It was no secret at least one of the slavers made up rules and imagined transgressions, all too eager to hear pain bleated out amongst wordless cries for mercy. There was no ward against men like Johno. When she had begged, lost all semblance of pride and debased herself before the slaver, Cammara had believed he’d stop breaking her body, satisfied by her broken spirit. She’d been wrong. Stupidly wrong. Even after learning that, she couldn’t stop herself from screaming and choking on her tears. The pain hadn’t changed, hadn’t lessened. Why should her reception of it be altered? She’d seen other slaves take the hits and not respond, faces still as stone, though their blood ran freely, more red outside than in. It wasn’t in her to be silent. Maybe if it had been, certain devils wouldn’t have delighted so much in tormenting her.

It was the people and the sky that had put her on edge for so long. The people who used discipline as cover for their violent insanity, the sky so wide it threatened to spill over and take the ground from under her feet. Thinking on either made her dizzy. The slavers were infected with the madness that ate away their humanity, the one that consumed their soul with greed and filled their mind with power. The slaves were scarcely better, but she watched them, remembering Imogen telling her animals would sense danger first. It seemed true. She could gauge the moods of the slavers from the posture of the slaves, reading there more than the body language written in the slavers themselves. All of this day, the slaves had been jumping from two shadows, unable to bolt to safety from either. One, she knew, was an old shadow, the slavers. The other was new, and yet it called to their ancient primordial nature, invoking fear afresh.

Or not so fresh. Cammara wrinkled her nose, certain someone ahead of her in the line had dark urine running down their legs. One of the slaves, for sure. The slavers had the luxury of stopping and seeking privacy if they desired, but not the slaves. Plus, there was a very unhealthful edge to the scent that came with dehydration. It piled on top of the odor of sweat and unwashed bodies, of blood and pus, and of the myriad of bowel problems brought on those who ate the gristle and fat. She daydreamed about Junie’s lye soap and buckets full of water to rinse away the filth. A little bit of soap could wash away the perfume of slavery, if only she could get her hands on it.

Within the Ruins, the skeletal remnants of skyscrapers loomed, breaking up the expanse of sky into manageable chunks. They were so much taller than the trees of her home, so much thicker. “Humans used to build mountains,” she thought, gazing up at one. The ravine had forced her attention to tunnel forward into a rather dispiriting view of the slave train, but this, this was magnificent. The tug on her wrists reminded her she didn’t have the luxury of stopping to gawk, and she clipped the heels of the slave in front of her, catching up before the brief lag was noticed. The Ruins had the familiar feel of a well picked site, complete with dusty piles of immovable rubble and haphazard paths created by foraging survivors. The carefully planned geometry of a city wasn’t evident from ground level, but then again, this was no longer a living city, so why should it retain that touch of civilization?

Someone ahead of her had fallen. Cammara took little note –she wouldn’t have been able to see anything from her vantage point on the line anyway- momentarily glad the slaver’s attention was elsewhere and that the slave hadn’t been so close to her that she risked Johno’s favoritism. He was so loud. His vulgar mouth echoed in her ears, painful in the dry air. She was spared the usual migraine, and blessed that distance once again. She should adopt Imogen’s oft said adage “keep trouble far from us”. It could be put to good use in circumstances like this.

There was a disturbance in the usual pattern of clinking chains as a few of the slaves shifted from foot to foot, waiting to get moving again. If their whispers were to be believed, they walked into the home of Scavengers. Cammara heard plenty about them at home, in the relative safety of knowing nothing would attract one to her corner of the woods. Yet another reason she should be there, instead of here. She looked back at the skyscrapers, seeing them with new eyes. Were they more threatening now that they housed monsters? Positively. This was a deathtrap, and make no mistake: lined up and chained together was as defensible as a prone corpse. Moving or standing still, it wouldn’t make any difference; they were fresh meat placed before the beasts. Anywhere those towers cast a shadow was no man’s land. It was suicide to be here. People must have gotten very stupid in the last seven hundred years. Or it was a symptom of the slavers’ madness. There was a strong correlation between distance from Scavengers, and sanity, and this, this was Crazy Territory. There was some skepticism among the whisperers, but she paid it no heed. Over twenty generations did not go into hiding from imaginary monsters. There was real reason to fear. She was as convicted in that as anything. But if the other slaves doubted, her vindication wouldn’t serve them better.

For those who maintained belief in Scavengers, it was too cruel, to endure degradation and abuse maintaining the hope that your life at least would be spared even if your spirit was not, and to discover instead you’d walked into your grave. Sheep driven there by madmen. Renewal of despair. It seemed there were infinite deaths awaiting a single spirit. She could have lived quite happily without learning that. But knowing she’d die here, likely very soon, made her heart easier. She wouldn’t walk very far before a Scavenger ensured she didn’t reach the destination the slavers’ had in mind. The greedy bastards wouldn’t profit from the lives of this lot, and if the god was just, the slavers would be dessert, eaten slowly over the course of days.

Another slave crumpled to the ground. Or had fallen unnoticed before and had been recently discovered (she had a low opinion of Johno that couldn’t get much lower, but more to the point, she could personally testify that he couldn’t comprehend beating and screaming at people who were unconscious didn’t accomplished anything). Regardless, that one wasn’t going to get back up. Exhaustion and dehydration were the most likely culprits, especially with no sign of their impending doom, the fabled Scavengers. To come here and die so unspectacularly was anticlimactic, but far more merciful than any death at the hands of this skeletal city’s inhabitants.

But too soon, another fell, and another. Too many too quickly. Slaves and slavers both. She stood stock still, eyes picking up more dying in her peripheral vision, but she was stubbornly focusing on some memory. Both were dying, and the thought kept echoing, trying to tell her something. Imogen and Junie had told her so many reasons not to venture into the world; she had trouble remembering the name of this specific one. It was a plague. It had been the mages’ fault. Before civilization was destroyed, human scientists had experimented with technologies to give power to normal humans, trying to safeguard humanity from magical oppression. Scientists had almost leveled the playing field, but they had made a crucial mistake: they had invited the mages to help create it as a gesture of goodwill, and the jealous, spiteful mages had poisoned the noble work. The god had been just, and when humans died, so did the mages. Both had died. People were dying all around her, and she was doing nothing –she swatted at guilt, reminding it there was nothing she could do- nothing except remembering old lessons. Did it really matter what it was called or how it was created? There was no cure. Had their death been lurking in the water? Was the water poisoned? The water she couldn’t remember having? Cammara licked her lips and closed her eyes. If stupid thoughts were a symptom, she was going to drop dead any second now.

Moments later, the dead littered the ground. She wasn’t on the ground. Wasn’t dead. Cammara checked herself over, wanting to be sure. She’d been spared. Halleluiah. Johno was dead. Hurray for small mercies. In her exuberance over not dying from the Mechanophage virus (how had she not been able to come up with that earlier?), her earlier primary suspect of her demise had arrived. One of the Scavengers was eating someone. Once again, she saw nothing. She heard quite a bit, and not even the repetitive dry firing of the mind-broken slaver could stop those sounds from reaching her. The big man, the one she suspected had been crudely carved from a boulder and meanness breathed life into, was positioned perfectly to block her sight. Good. If it worked its way down the line, it would go for him before it reached her. Give her time to accommodate the notion her bits were going to be ripped off and her bones pulverized for tasty marrow and easy calcium.

When it left, she resumed breathing. Not the faintest notion of when she’d stopped.

Survivors were going for the key, muscling their way to it. The bodies before her were dragged along, strong armed by a very determined boulder of a man: Gozer by name, and scary as hell by reputation. They all were at the mercy of whoever reached the key first, and unless that person majorly deviated from the conduct she’d witnessed for the past week, there would be no mercy, only self-interest. But it would be worse if Gozer got it first. She couldn’t imagine how, but it would be much, much worse.

She really didn’t want to die. Scant moments ago, there had been no doubt death was imminent and she’d accepted that wasn’t something she had control over. Even been a little content, knowing she wouldn’t have to walk any further. But she wasn’t dead. She didn’t want to die. The slavers were not going to stop her now. Those three facts seemed mighty important.

When she’d woken bound in chains, she should have been concerned about her apparent status change from Lost to Slave. Instead, Cammara had only a mind for her numb hands and feet. Dangling in the arms of a stranger had allowed the blood to pool in her extremities, and made it impossible to move them during those first minutes, until a slaver beat the circulation back into her. Nothing like pain and blind panic to get the heart racing and blood pumping. Dehydration and salt deficiency kept her hands swollen thereafter, to the point where she couldn’t recognize the touch of her own fingertips when she wiped the sweat off her brow. She jammed cloth between the manacles and her skin, and it did manage to save her from the chafing and bleeding the others suffered, but the tight fit brought on the telltale tingling and she had to pump her hands into fists to keep her nails pink and her nerves responding. The cloth rags dampened with sweat and she packed more in, adding holes to her makeshift shawl in the process. Each morning she suffered thousands of glass needles pricking her flesh, and would stare in horror at the discoloration. Her hands were her life.

Now, they were going to save her life.

Cammara grabbed the rags with her teeth and pulled them away along with some dead skin. Underneath her wrist was pale and shrunken, the exposed skin decorated by every fold and scrunch the rags had held. She braced the iron cuff between her knees, forced her thumb and small finger together and slid her hand free. The lead chain dropped down to her feet. No grease needed. By some miracle, the swelling and bloating had dissipated. The slavers had worried about all the wrong things.

She walked past the dead. The rattle of her ankle chains was indistinguishable from the clinking of the dragged chains as the survivors struggled for the key. She picked her way through, stepping on a few bodies and moving faster when she nearly tripped, despite the awkward foreshortened gait imposed by the ankle chains. Shepherding Nan the Goat had given her an interesting perspective on walking, but it was helpful now. Gozer she gave wide berth. He spoke like the slavers, had always been too much like them. She spotted the fallen slaver. Her eyes strayed to the supplies, the only place her PET could be hidden if they hadn’t left it where they found her. She wouldn’t leave it behind.

She went for the key. She needed to be able to run full stride more than she needed a disfunct hunk of metal weighing her down. When the key was in her hand, she looked to Gozer, keeping an eye on the distance while she jammed it in first one keyhole and then another. There was dirt in the last, her other manacle. The key was no use to her anymore.

“Here,” she said, addressing a slave for the first time. With the exception of crying, screaming, and begging, she hadn’t found much reason to vocalize as of late. He was not Gozer, he was the man who’d stared a Scavenger in the face, and that’s all she knew. “Take it.” Cammara pressed it in his hand as she darted past.

The supplies. She needed something to hold water or she’d be back where she was when the slavers found her. If she found PET too… she wouldn’t leave it behind. If she’d truly been willing to lose it, she wouldn’t be here, and not even all these horrid experiences could change that. But she had to be quick. The Scavengers wouldn’t wait, and they certainly weren’t going to give her a headstart.