Doomsday Deeny

The morning was cool and damp. The heat had not taken over yet. The cities where The Elite resided were temperature controlled behind their steel walls. In the villages that sprawled out across the vast expanse of dry cracked earth that covered most of the continent, they were lucky to have one water pump in town to share.

Geraldeen was not fortunate enough to live in one of those towns. Deeny, as her family called her, had to travel several miles to the one grassy and shaded area within a day's journey where a natural spring allowed several of the people from the surrounding towns and villages to collect water.

Deeny braided her waist length curly locks carefully and pinned it on top of her head. She wrapped herself up in thread-bare cotton that would protect her from the harsh sun without getting her too hot. She had laced up her boots and tucked her loose cotton pant legs into them. You could barely distinguish her as female and that's how Deeny liked it...it was much safer that way when you were out on The Road. The Enforcers that patrolled this area were particularly vicious toward female travelers.

Her village was relatively safe compared to most. Almost everyone had grown up there and they were all equally poor. You got the occasional drifter and even many of the locals were involved in illegal dealing, not that that was difficult these days with the strictly enforced laws that poured out of the cities with much more gusto than water or food ever did, but almost none had a predilection toward violence.

The Road was a different story, not least of all because of the frequent patrols of Enforcers that you would sometimes run across. Be stopped by one of them and you had an eight in ten chance of never making it home. The key was to be inconspicuous and keep your head down. If you looked like you had nothing worth them confiscating, they usually didn't bother.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the window over the kitchen sink as she filled up her canteen from one of the jugs they kept there. She has dark freckles across the bridge of her nose, and although she was only 20, her hard life had already produced crows feet at the corners of her eyes. Her lips were natural rosie color but were always pale and chapped from lack of good nutrition and exposure to the elements.

She leaned forward and opened the window. The air was still cool outside and it would make it a tolerable temperature for when her sister Lisbeth came down to make breakfast for the little ones and her father.

She remembered sheltering with her mother in the downstairs bathroom when she was only four. Her head pressed against her mother's pregnant belly Lisbeth safe inside while chaos rained around them. Her father had been coming home from work. His tram was one of the ones that had collapsed when the railways were destroyed. He had survived, but was badly injured and after that day there had been no easy access to hospitals or clinics anymore.

When her mother had gotten pregnant with the twins it had been a surprise to everyone. Her father's condition being what it was, but nine months later the twins, Olive and Hazel had come and a fever had overtaken her mother. Claiming her when they were just a month old.

With her mother gone and her dad crippled, it fell to Deeny to figure things out. She had learned how to repair generators from a man in town who had been acquaintances with her father years ago first and then moved on to other machines. She hoped to save enough to eventually move them to a bigger town where her father could get better care and her sisters might be able to learn trades to get the jobs inside one of the cities. They still had a long way to go...

Geraldeen pulled the canvas cover off her old red pick-up she had managed to fix up and after a few attempts got it to crank. It was sweltering by the time Geraldeen was halfway to the watering hole. She had both windows down but the stagnant air barely circulated with the movement of the truck. It rattled and jingled down the barren desert landscape. Dust whirled around and stuck in the sweat on Deeny's face. She drove slow and alone up the road. Squinting through the dust clouds and sometimes having to lean out the window to see around the cracked and now filthy windshield.

With her vision limited the commotion ahead snuck up on her and she had to stop abruptly.

Two Enforcers had stopped what appeared to be a young woman with short mousey hair apparently on horseback. The horse lay still on the ground. One of the Enforcers stood over it with smoke curling from the barrel of his silences weapon, all The Enforcers weapons had silencers to keep the secrets of their crimes.

"You killed my horse you bastards! How dare you! I'll kill you!"

"You shouldn't be out here alone, pretty, and with all these little trinkets, I bet we can find all kinds of reasons to hold you."

With his other hand The Enforcer that had her by the hair dumped out a dusty duffle bag and all kinds of metal and glittery objects fell into the dust. Deeny barely had time to process what had happened when The Enforcer who had shot the horse turned his firearm on her.

"Aye! You! Step out of the automobile!"

He was approaching the truck now. She could chance it and floor it and leave the scene in a cloud of dust in her rearview but...if one of these men were sharpshooters...well, it would not be the first time they shot someone running for their lives in the back.

She quickly assessed the scene. The Enforcer holding the girl was still struggling to subdue her. She had seemed to have hit him square in the nose with one of her furious fists, causing him to drop the duffle bag, and seize her with both hands. Blood poured from his face and down his black uniform as he shook her violently and ripped her shirt open. The other had begun quickly approaching her truck, gun still pointed.

Deeny's heart pounded.

If she let him take control of her she would be discovered as female, and judging by how they were treating this other woman, she could hardly count on her compliance with law in regards to her hair to spare her any harm. The Guardian fighting with the short-haired woman had begun to throttle her.

"Hey!" The Enforcers approaching her shouted.

Deeny, deciding in an instant what to do, jerked the wheel at the same time she stomped the gas. The Enforcer's rifle whistled as it fired off the quiet but no less deadly shots. Thinking of her family and what it would mean to their survival if she was lost, she stamped the gas harder until she felt the tire overtake him.

"Stop!"

The other Enforcer had released the young woman who had fallen to the ground behind him. He was running toward Deeny now, reaching for his weapon. Deeny froze for a moment, but then, she saw the young woman behind him on the ground reach into her boot.

She knew what would happen an instant before it did. The woman sliced the man's Achilles tendon, cutting through his leather boots like butter. He screamed and dropped to the ground, before he could regain his barings the woman was astride him, wild-eyed and shrieking, burying her knife over and over into his back and sides of his throat.

The man lay still, the woman dropped the knife and fell to the side. Deeny cut the engine. The truck still sat at an angle where the front passenger's tire rested on top of the man she had just killed...and for a second the scene was still and all Deeny could hear was the coughing of the young woman and her own pounding heart beginning to slow.

The woman got to her feet slowly. The sound of her groaning broke Deeny from her shock. She jumped out of the truck and ran to her.

"Are you alright?!"

"Fine, she rasped."

Deeny helped her to the tail gate of her truck and offered her the canteen.

After taking a long swig the woman spoke.

"Thanks. Rosie." She said, offering her hand.

"Deeny." She clasped the woman's hand in return.

"Nice work back there. No doubt we'd both be dead or worse right now otherwise."

"Oh, well." Said Deeny still shaken. "I have sisters and a father who need me...dying just...well it just wasn't an option."

Not that she had ever thought killing would be either…

Her eyes began to water as the reality set in on her of what she'd done. Rosie searched her face for a moment before she spoke.

"No sense in worrying. Enforcers are murdered all the time out here by rebels and criminals."

Deeny flinched at the word murder.

"Safe to say The Elite care little more for them than they do for us. They will provide them certain comforts while they are alive, sure, but after they are dead…"

Rosie hopped off the tailgate and made her way over the pile of trinkets and began to scoop the back into the duffle bag. Silent tears carved lines in the dust settled on Deeny's cheeks.

Rosie walked back to her looking at something in her hand. She held it out to Deeny. It was a huge golden heart-shaped locket.

"Here take this, and no sense in asking where I got it, it'll just upset you more."

Deeny did not reach to accept it.

Rosie's expression soften slightly,

"Listen, you did me a great service today and you said you had a family. Take it, go get your water and when you come back this way this will all be cleaned up. I have some friends s'posed to meet me here soon and it'll be like it never happened. While you're at the wateringhole clean up any blood off your truck and when you get back to town and some time had passed...look into selling this...it should help you and your family out."

Deeny met her eyes and she saw sincerity there. She tentatively reached out and took the locket.

"Thank you." She said quietly

"Don't mention it. And hey, if you ever need more of that," she gestured to the locket. "For your family I mean, I am here every morning after the new moon. I might have some work for you."

A half an hour later after Rosie had helped her move the crushed Enforcer out from under her truck and she drove off toward the little oasis in the desert she looked down at the locket in her hand. It would fetch enough to finally move her family, but once they moved...how would she sustain them. She had never thought that far before, always just thinking about the move, never quite fully picturing what would come after, what it would cost to maintain a better life.

Deeny braked hard and whipped the truck around. Rosie had been staring in the distance at an approaching convoy that must be her friends but turned when she heard Deeny's approach. Deeny rolled down her window and called.

"I'm very good at working on machines. I am decent at surviving on very little but I do have a large family. I plan to relocate them and, thus, plan to be compensated for my skills and risk adequately."

Rosie beamed at her as he held her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun.

"I think that can be arranged"