A Slow Death

Skaler didn’t have a last name. Truth be told, she wasn’t supposed to have a first, but she had chosen it herself and liked it. Last names were for people with families, and there weren’t a great many of those left. But she deserved a first name, her Ma had always said so, and she had listened.

Steam rose like whispers off the shallow pools of bubbling water around her, and the sun bled dully across the small patches of her dark skin that were exposed to the elements. Her hair was bunched up into two curly buns atop her head, held with black ribbon that she’d thankfully not had to replace in a long time. Flowing red fabric, brighter than blood, ensnared her silhouette, and the wind slapped sand across her. Shards of rust gave moving patches of the breeze a coppery-white sparkle that never truly stopped being beautiful, in its own strange way, but which made it no less difficult to breathe in spots. The scarlet material wound its way up her neck, and over her mouth and forehead, covering her from the micro-metals which littered the air.

Skaler sat on a tearing, ancient saddle, swaddled in cracked leather that burned in the heat. The dark chestnut colour of her perch contrasted garishly with the neon pink of the paint that streaked across her silver wálem; itself walking dutifully across the wilds.

Her machine’s six wide, multi-jointed legs were comparatively slow compared to others, but reliable. It was an older model, certainly, but one that hadn’t let her down yet. Its ‘walk’ - equal to a sprinting human - was unsteady, and made it clunk like a dying power generator, but Skaler found that endearing. She had named him Spit, for the way his head-like camera module occasionally sparked when she refuelled him.

Most spoors refused to anthropomorphise their wálem, and certainly never named them. But as far as Skaler was concerned, that just meant Spit and her were one and the same, and she liked that too. Besides, if she were to have a companion on her travels, it would seem rude not to refer to him properly.

She tapped a small patch of what appeared to be black rubber grafted into the centre of her palm. After a few, painful seconds, her PID did her the courtesy of waking up, and it projected a small rectangle of light above her hand. The rectangle was a device that supposedly allowed her to do all sorts. Alas, most of the features had long-since ceased working properly, but that didn’t mean they were useless. One, whose option was represented by a shape like a crescent moon, displayed a series of numbers with no real purpose. However, each produced a different tone when touched, and Skaler often played with it to make something dangerously close to music.

She ignored it this time, and prodded the icon that looked like an upside-down teardrop, displaying a map of her surroundings. The map was wrong, but then the map was always wrong, depicting the lands as they were in The Bygone Age. Still, it was useful to have a direction, and it always gave her a solid idea where to spoor. A quick glance showed her a promisingly large cluster of squares that once stood to the East.

Unfortunately, Skaler had heard rumours of silver rain pelting down near there for weeks, and realistically no prize would cover the repairs she’d need to undertake after. However, North West there was a smaller U-shaped mark. It was vastly less enticing, but Spit’s gauge was starting to run into the red, so options were limited. She knew she was only a couple hours' ride from a settlement she’d passed before, so trading was a sure thing. Soon enough, she figured it was worth the potential disappointment, and used the strange-shaped bar that sat atop Spit’s back to shift him that direction. 


***

Re-checking the map, Skaler found she was almost there. The sky, usually a dirty miasma of browns and ambers, was starting to blacken. She’d wanted to turn on the headlights which sat in Spit’s front shoulders, but she couldn’t bear to waste the charg. As such, his front camera node had steadily begun jerking skittishly side-to-side, trying to read the terrain, but to little avail. After an hour of that, and the stumbling that came with it, she’d switched her wálem to manual, and used the pedals and bar to get herself the rest of the way. Finally, she came to a stop, and the rugged hum of Spit’s engine gave way to silence.

The land before her was flat, dusty, and unremarkable. To untrained eyes, nothing differentiated where she had been with where she was. But Skaler knew better. Telltale pock-marks crevassed the patch, roughly half a mile across.

Skaler had parked Spit next to the closest divot, and tested it with her foot. It bounced, and shifted, but didn’t collapse or open. The girl dismounted her wálem, and pulled the fabric down her face, to sit round her neck like a scarf. Her face looked younger than it was, and was lightly scarred from her time with her parents, but her puffy cheeks gave her the appearance of someone who was always smiling.

Spit stood motionless, and she moved around to the pack which sat behind her as she rode. Piled high with bedding and supplies, it was also bookended by a dented spool of rope, and her shield and spear. The spear was a basic wooden beam, with the blade of a well-kept knife embedded and screwed to the top, whilst her ‘shield’ was little more than an ageing Bygone sign that she’d reinforced. Steadily, she unsheathed the spear from the restraints that crisscrossed her pack, and began to unspool rope. With a few deafening slams from the base of her spear, the divot caved into a natural tunnel, heading steeply downwards. After tying the rope around her waist and crotch, grabbing a hemp sack and a dimming head-torch, she dove in whooping. 


***

Roughly four hours later, Skaler climbed back out with a king’s ransom.

The abode inside had been enormous, and scattered with wheeled beds. Crammed and filthy, it had made navigating the cave-ins and piles of foreign equipment a true ordeal. The world had apparently been better before, so Skaler would never understand why the Bygones had built all their fragile, stench-filled residences underground.

Constrained to her back, which now felt like it had been slammed several times into a wall, was an industrial battery. She also carried a sack full of food (mystery non-perishables in shiny silver cans), that she’d found in storage. At her best guess, Skaler decided the building must have housed a village, before. She was delighted.

Her heart has leapt into her throat the first time she spotted one of the batteries, but neither of the first two had lit up upon being tinkered with. But the third, the glorious third, had displayed a small red light. As Skaler threw her spear down to the ground, she gently untangled the battery from her form and let it rest on its three shattered wheels. Producing another device from her pack, she finally sat on her knees by her reward.

The device she had was a charg-meter. Truthfully, she had no idea how it worked, and thought of it as a kind of magic. It unfurled like a hand, and a small black square was extended outwards. A single blemish in the metal pointed towards her and displayed a ‘0%’ made of light in the air. She held the black end of the meter towards the battery and waited. Moments later, the display changed, and Skaler’s body vibrated with excitement.

The light showed ’3%’. Not 0.3%, or even 1%. 3% unrefined charg. She could trade that, and earn enough to refuel Spit over halfway. Hell, she might even afford lodging for a night or two. Skaler couldn’t believe her luck. Absentmindedly, the young spoor affixed everything to her pack, grinning with reckless abandon.

Booting her wálem, she mounted it and allowed herself the luxury of Spit’s headlamps. Soon enough, he was walking on auto, and whisking her toward the nearest settlement. Having raised her mask, there was little more for her to do. Skaler was slumped in her saddle, satisfied and eager to rest, when the sand around her exploded in a frenzied flurry.

The night gave way to sounds of violence. Skaler screamed in fury, her ride upended with a protesting whirr, which left her thrown to the surface. Sharp, spasming tendrils of machinery convulsed toward her, rising out of the ground, trying to shred her flesh: Scrabblers, left as traps by the cunning and the cowardly. She counted two of the things, moving so fast they had nearly no definable form.

Recovering, she drew her spear and shield from under Spit, and readied herself. The Scrabblers screeched and whirled, and Skaler had to duck to avoid one walloping mass of blades that leapt over her head. The other tried a direct approach, the pair trying to flank her. Like a wounded beast, the girl howled, slashing wildly at her targets. One of the monstrous devices lunged suddenly, and cleaved the shield she protected herself with in twain. Discarding the ruined sign, Skaler rolled sideways, avoiding the thing behind her. Their discordant scraping and horrific exultations made her teeth itch.

Whirling the spear around her, Skaler suddenly jumped forward. The motion sensor in one of the Scrabblers failed to keep up, and she jutted her weapon through its shivering mass of death, piercing its core-stem. It crumpled to a heap, sounding for all the lands like several wálem crashing into each other.

The second Scrabbler span around by her ankles, slicing through her clothing and ripping chunks from her right leg. Tears dampened her mask, as she yelled out in agony. Again, it struck forth, and Skaler was forced to fall backwards to avoid it segmenting her spear. It leapt over her, and she cried out, closing her eyes and stabbing forth one last time.

Blades stabbed into her shoulders and arms, and for a moment she thought she was dead. When her eyes opened, Skaler could see that the trap had been impaled on her spear, and its arms had fallen loosely around her body, cutting her ever-so-slightly.

Throwing it off, Skaler’s ragged, rapid breaths gave way to fits of sobs.


***


Finally, Skaler and Spit were alone again, out in the wilds. She had righted him, repacked her things, and was on her way to what passed for safety.

Humanity had technically survived The Crisis, but it often didn’t feel like it. Not to Skaler, whose wálem trudged onwards with all the wanton energy of a corpse. Her body was sore and bleeding, her muscles screaming from the fight and her hunting. She knew her work was dangerous, and gruelling, but it was still somehow better than being condemned to a junk camp, or (god forbid) being wived. No, Skaler refused to end up like her Ma, used as cattle for savages. She clutched the locket around her neck, a golden pendant shaped like a heart. It was the only thing that remained of her mother now, and she felt the tears well up again.

She would arrive to another underground community soon, where ashen faces would greet her, downcast and suspicious. This wasn’t survival, she thought bitterly, this wasn’t anything close to living. It was simply a slow death.

After a few moments, she opened her PID and checked the map once more.