Islet Abandoned

Chapter One

Crraackkkk

Islet cast her sights to the crumbling buildings towering above her, most of the structures no more than skeletal remains of Before Time.

Shit. A hunk of falling masonry from a derelict skyscraper was headed straight for her.

Leaping aside, she narrowly dodged the cement block as it hit the ground and exploded in a cloud of gritty dust, ricocheting fragments spewing at her with the rapid-fire velocity of artillery shrapnel.

Covering her face with a gloved hand against the pulverized particles, Islet kept moving.

Scrap metal and other assorted rubble had turned this part of the City into a goddamn obstacle course. In every direction, rusted junk stood in her way. The debris of mass destruction littered her narrow path, essentially preventing her from getting where she was going.

Islet kicked some twisted rebar aside. Screw it. Pussies didn't get rich. Neither did heroes. But sneaks would inherit the fucking earth. Though who'd want this dump now that it'd been irradiated? Her one and only ambition was staying alive in this bombed-out wasteland while making a little easy barter on the side. Any barrier she couldn't go around or vault over, she'd plow through, her patched sack on her back. Her ass was on the line here. Hesitate, and she'd get caught before ever reaching the Citadel.

Pulling in a shallow breath, Islet bounded up the side of an aluminum mountain, scaling the none-too-steady pile of metallic refuse, hand over hand. Caution was the name of the game here. One clumsy move would trigger a tinfoil avalanche that would alert Maniot guards of a trespasser in their midst.

Trespasser. Ha! That would be her, all right. Might as well add illegal Scrounger to the description too. She answered to both, and a whole hell of a lot more, none of it good.

As she approached the top of the scrap heap, Islet slowed her pace. Sinking to her belly, she crab-crawled over the summit. Fuck planting a flag. No time to spare, she slid back down on her shapely derriere and jumped to her feet on the other side.

Go her. She'd made it. The dicey climb went off without a hitch, and she took off at a sprint, determined to make up costly lost minutes.

Shards of glass imbedded in the lifeless dirt hacked at her boots; a zillion tiny machetes whacked the flimsy hide soles. Though every painful stab and prick pissed her off royally, Islet sucked up the misery and skittered across the jagged ridges. Extra thick socks cushioned her feet from the worst of the butchering. Gloves reduced the likelihood of lethal puncture wounds to her palms. But no amount of protection would ever be enough. Any random slices and bloody nicks she'd patch up later, back at the bunker…

Whoa. Hold up. Lethal puncture wounds. Bloody nicks. Butchering?

She had to be bat-shit insane to be making this run again. Why else would a sneaky Scrounger like her, with a deep and abiding affection for her melting pot skin, keep pushing her luck like this? Infiltrating the Maniot's high security zone night after night wasn't exactly a sign of stable mental health. Islet shook her head. No! Don't go there. Not now. Stay in the moment. Stop being such a damn sissy-girl and keep on target. You know the drill.

And she was prepared. All she had to do was stay cool. The Citadel's fortress was up ahead. She'd broken into the Maniot inner sanctum umpteen times before, and she'd do it again tonight, dammit! A few hundred yards or so, and she'd breach the fortified stronghold.

That is, if a guard didn't catch her.

God, she was twitchy. What was up with her tonight? She kept losing her focus, her nerve. All this self-doubting was shooting her concentration all to hell.

Get it together, girl.

Her wheezing echoing in her ears, Islet ducked into the sagging doorway of a Before Time relic. War, neglect, and the ravages of old age had eaten away at the internal grid until only the façade, a face without bones, remained. Though the framework was pleated like the musical bellows of an accordion, the girders were still standing. They'd shelter her in a pinch.

She needed to stop. Just for a minute. Stop. Until she got a grip. Stop! While she managed her panic. She was getting a little hyper. If she didn't watch out, her bio-systems would shut down and she'd be left as gutted as the buildings surrounding her.

Spots bouncing before her eyes, she curled up into the corrugated gridwork and lifted her wrist. Even that small move took effort. When her dizziness receded, she squinted at her dented military watch.

23:35:41 hours.

See that? No reason to assume a fetal position. Yet. Despite her slight detour into hysterics, she hadn't overshot her schedule. She could still make it.

Her lungs unclenching, she gulped down an unrestricted mouthful of air.

Judging guard rotation was a crapshoot at best. She'd memorized shift schedules, but who knew how these jokers really operated? Roaming Maniot patrols could turn up anywhere, at any time.

Before going back out into the open again, she rechecked the wreckage-strewn terrain, darting her gaze left to right.

All clear.

Except for the scrawny rat, an interloper just like her, scurrying from one ruin to the next, ferreting out anything edible among the decaying garbage. Uptown, during daylight hours, starving people did the same, often eating their nocturnal competition for lack of anything else. Mmm. Boiled rat. But for her Scrounging job, she'd be dining on rodent du jour too.

"Fuck it." Yanking off her protective gloves with her teeth and stowing them in a pocket, she tunneled her filthy hand inside the loosened drawstring top of her Scrounger's bag for a moldy crust of bread - all that remained of her one meal for the day. She'd been saving the treat for later.

A toss sent the stale bread to the rat. While her new pal nibbled away on a greenish crumb, Islet hoisted her Scrounger's bag onto her shoulder and crept back out into the bottleneck.

Immediately, a shiver shot through her. Jitters again. She could see trouble hanging heavy in the air, smell it in the cold sweat pooling under her arms. Trouble coiled like a snake in her belly, ready to strike. The salty taste of trouble dried the moisture from her tongue. What if a Maniot bagged her?

She knew the score. The Citadel was off-limits to Squatters. Male violators were conscripted into the Maniot pirate fleet. Female transgressors wound up pressed into sexual servitude at the port. No one dared to complain when people - friends, family, neighbors - went missing. Terrified silence had replaced free speech in the City. Fair treatment didn't exist under the rule of the Maniots. Expecting justice from the blood-feuding buccaneers was as useless as expecting breadlines to dole out edible food. And too beaten down to fight back, Squatters had all but given up the struggle to improve their lives.

Not her. Not while she still drew breath.

Time to roll. She had a job to do. Hugging the alley's sharp metallic edges and crouching low to the ground, Islet zigzagged down the back street. As she rounded the last corner, she sensed a presence.

She was no longer alone. Someone was watching her, most likely had been watching her from the start of tonight's run. No time to react, she stood there, frozen, as her worst fear materialized from out of the dark.

A gnarly hulk hunkered down before her, his bulked-up body blocking her route, his hooded serape shadowing his face.

Ambushed. Jumped. Totally screwed.

"Fuck me," she muttered under her breath.

Just her rotten luck. Not bad enough for any run of the mill Maniot guard to catch her, she'd just gotten herself nabbed by a rad mutant freak.