<center></center>
A grim look passed between the two girls.
“You need to eat before you go.”
Elshi eyed the empty box behind Amber.
“I’m not really hungry, you have it.”
Her thoughts slipped into silent prayer, not to a god who stopped listening when the alien spacecrafts showed up, but begging her body not to betray that statement.
“Elshi, I have seen how little you’re eating.”
“Yeah, here, cos i’m eating all the chocolate bars I find out there!”
She didn’t stay and give Amber chance to argue.
Rubbish slipped down the street, tumbling wild from gaping bags. Mounds of it blocked junctions, sectioning the streets into narrower passages. Elshi was done with the waste game, fighting for the chance to drag bags back from the huge gates, sifting through them to find next to nothing worth the blood and sweat. She was after the bigger prizes these days.
She lifted a skinny leg over a trolley, twisting into a macabre mimicry of a cot no longer needed, wrapping her scarf against the flies.
Thick swarms of the bugs engulfed the bin bags, hunting for missed morsels.
She’d once joked to Joey, ‘if we could eat the bloody things we’d be fat as bakers’ only for him to tell her there was a stand down by old library, some couple were netting the critters, squishing them into patties and frying them up in god knows what. Not worth it, he assured her, the bitty biters scratched just as much on the way down, and kicked mighty hard once they got down there.
Elshi didn’t need warning. The ratters down by the river, those families died faster than the bagdraggers near her.
She ducked under a newly formed bridge, connecting two teetering piles of useless garbage. Three years ago, before all this, Elshi had seen the adverts about food wastage, and how much people threw away. Rotten luck had a whole new meaning these days. She was done bringing back rancid scraps and watching Amber struggle to maintain a blood sugar level that kept her conscious.
Glancing up, she wafted away the closest insects, following the skyline. In the ever shifting maze of rubbish, she had to orientate herself against the one permanent fixture seen no matter where she was. The glimmering green teardrop of an alien spaceship, suspended above the city. She spotted it instantly, it was hard enough to miss, and took the next left, heading towards the fences.
Her eyes hit every face heading towards her, looking for the familiar shape of Joey. He was always hanging around by the fences. He was either the luckiest bastard alive, or just plain cursed. Joey had been a police officer, right up until the day before it happened.
Joey claimed, every time Elshi made the mistake of going near the subject, that his superiors knew this was coming. He tells the story pretty well, called into the chief's office the day before alien spaceships arrive, told he had a classified under cover op, that the only way he will be safe for it, was if they actually fired him.
It had been a good story, three years ago, Elshi had been getting a little tired of the same insistence he was just waiting for his assignment to come in. Although thinking about it, she realised he hadn't actually brought it up on a while, it was so obviously wearing thin.
A familiar trench coat lent against the fence, worn hands caressing the mess of flailing tendrils Joey called a beard.
“Sup Princess.”
“If it isn’t my hero with half a can. You set?”
He nodded; hair, attempting to unite with his wayward beard, flopped around to accentuate the ascent.
Joey led the way. The passage through the tents, the debris, the stands and rubbish shifted like dunes in a desert, moving with each wave of people staking their claims. Everyone on the outside wanted to get close to those fences, the corporate havens. They’d popped up all over the country within weeks of the alien appearance. Unidentified objects had swooped into the sky, vaporising everyone on a government paycheck.
At first people celebrated the lack of governance, the freedom that came with it. It didn’t take long for Elisa to realise one man’s freedom was another mans hate. A gaping void of power had opened up, and into the breach, corporations had crept.
Joey tugged at her sleeve, the coat over her actual coat, bringing Elshi to a cautious stop.
Shooting down a drone was illegal, but that didn’t stop people making a living out of it, and after the first few months, the drones started shooting back.
A distant hum reverberated through the air. There was one passing this way.
Elshi could feel the tension shift in the street behind her, people ducking out of sight as others stepped forwards for a better view. Most didn’t want to get caught on camera, the drones transmitted a live stream back to the Google-plex, the Amazon-bowl; every gated community within range. If they got your face on camera when a drone went down, the next drone that saw you would start shooting the moment they did.
The blur of blades crested a collapsing rooftop as Joey grabbed her, pulled Elshi behind some half shredded tyres.
“Are you?”
“No,” Joey assured her, “I just don’t wana be, come on.”
He led the way on all fours now, crawling between the tyres. They had a schedule to keep, and stopping to let a drone take-down play out wasn’t part of the plan. Elshi had a much bigger prize in mind; Green Street.
<hr/>
Amber sat in the dim light of the half boarded window, she held her hand out, trying to practise forcing steadiness. A thin clammy film coated her skin, her heart jumping erratically as hunger bit in her stomach. She hated herself for this, for the burden of having a more pressing need. She knew full well Elshi was skipping meals so she could have more, Amber couldn’t bear to let her realise that wasn’t enough to maintain her blood sugar.
<hr/>
On the other side, no one lived near the fences. The gated communities built their houses in the centre, as far away from the stench of societal collapse as possible. They built their warehouse, however, with in tantalisingly impossible reach.
Green Street.
The slums stacked against the fences. Once every couple of months, a huge snow clearer would roll out of the compound and down the streets, crushing the shanty towns, sweeping everything away from fences. But Green Street, it always came back.
Green Street didn’t just back onto the warehouse district beyond the fence, it backed onto the ones most worth the risk. The medical synthesis unit sent drones shooting out at every order received, the grain silo sent them out all morning, there was never a ‘safe’ time to break in, and never a time it wasn’t worth the risk.
Joey was a regular with the notorious Green Street Girls, and the lith former yoga-practising textile workers had found a way over the fences, and upgraded to martial arts. That was where Joey came in.
“Kassie!”
The thick twang to Joey’s accent always came out strongest around his neck of the woods.
The muscular girl sauntered out of the wonky hut, a long pole resting over her shoulders. The grubby fabric of her crinkled shirt, the frayed patchwork of her thick trousers, it was easy to lose her against the background of assorted junk.
“Joey-boy!”
Kassie slapped him firmly on the back.
“Is this ‘ere the lady friend you’ve been taunting me with?”
Kassie gave Elshi an exaggerated wink, elbowing Joey hard in the ribs.
“No wonder I lost out to this un, she’s pretty alright!”
Elshi’s scoff slipped into an undignified snort as the prospect.
“Nah, this ain’t my little Lulu, this is Elshi, but tell yah, yah stand a better chance with her than me!”
Elshi couldn’t help her thoughts slipping back to Amber, how close she’d got to a seizure the night before, she wasn’t in the mood for banter.
“Are you a woman who can get me over?”
Kassie grinned.
“Aye, i’m hooker alright, call it what it is.”
The woman smacked of sass, everything from the way she dressed to her stance spoke of a tenacity that wouldn’t ever give up. Everything, except her eyes, those brown pools held the blood stained shadow of loss.
Kassie led them inside the slums; the shanty town set up hid wall to wall tech.
In the windowless room, the green light of control boards washed them in it’s eerie glow.
A short girl sat hunched over a keyboard, she span round as they walked in. Elshi looked her over, she couldn’t be more than fourteen.
“How we looking Coco?”
The young girl hit a few keys, refreshing the screen.
“No orders going out, no drones requesting air clearance to come in, looking good for a dummy order. You slinging a line?”
“What dya say Joey?” Kassie turned back to them, “You going over this time?”
Joey blushed a little under the matted ropes of his hair.
“Just this one,” he nodded towards Elshi.
That had been the deal, Joey would take her, but he wouldn’t go with her. He instructed the Green Street Girls, he’d been trained by the force back when that meant something, and he trained them in return for supplies, but he never went himself. They would help her as his payment this week, Elshi hadn’t been able to think of any other way to get the insulin Amber needed.
Kassie had pulled a deep cardboard box out from under a table, rifting through strips of grey, slightly reflective fabric.
“Here,” she tossed a bundle at Elshi, “wrap up.”
Elshi began to wrap the fabric around her, the shining finish glowing in the light.
“The other way around!”
Kassie yanked the strip of out Elshie hands, turning it over, placing the reflective side against Elshi’s clothing, the soft, crumbled grey on the outside.
“It’s for the infrared cameras.” Joey explained in a whisper.
<hr/>
Kassie stood at the highest point of the slum block, peering over the top fence. She held the long rod, bouncing it on her shoulder, building the momentum for the flick.
Watching from below, Elshi could barely make out the line whipping over the fence, it’s barbed tip biting into the roof of the warehouse beyond.
“Got ourselves a secure line!”
The voice rang down the street, it was a regular call, only turning the heads of a few less regular passersby.
“Clear in here too!”
Coco, muffled by the hut, gave the final go ahead. If she saw anything now, it would be too late to warn them.
As she scaled the roofs of the shanty shack, towards Kassie waiting to attach her to the line, Elshi tried to suppress the rising anxiety. The reality of what she was doing pushed down on her like weighted shoulder pads.
<hr/>
Amber found herself jolted up, a heavy haze of confusion pressed into her mind.
Her ears rang with a sound she couldn’t recall hearing, still deafening her with the screech of it’s ghost. She knew this sound, she had heard it before. It was like trying to find the end of a roll of sellotape in the dark, her thoughts slipped beyond her. She fumbled, trying to reach it.
Suddenly, the wires connected, she remembered. A gunshot. That’s what did this, gun shots, explosions. The initial relief of having completed a thought was quickly drowning in the slow fear of realisation. She had just heard a gun short, or an explosion. Close as well.
She sat, half propping herself up on the makeshift bed, trying to think clearly. <em>Was there any food? She needed food, sugar. Sugar. Then she’d be okay.</em>
Fumbling over the blankets, looking for anything she may have missed - a single sugar cube would bring her back.
Her hands crumpled the fabric, pulling sheets aside, grasping at everything within reach.
A warmth embraced her wandering fingertips. As she lifted them, she realised they were wet.
It took a few minutes of puzzled staring for Amber to realise the sticky, ruby warmth was blood.
Glitter pushed in on her vision, desperation shoved her fingers greedily into her mouth, the sweet iron tinge of blood mixing with her rapidly pooling saliva.
A few moments later, Amber was disgustedly hawking pink-swirled blobs of spit onto the floor.
She crawled out of the bed, rolling onto her back she stared up a the ceiling, a steady pulse of blood dripping through the floorboards from the room above.
Something shifted in Amber, fear conspired with hunger, dragged her to her feet. She could barely think straight. <em>Could Dauph upstairs be dead? Someone upstairs was dead, did they have any food left? They wouldn’t need it now…</em>
Staggering to her feet, Amber pulled herself up the crumbling stairs to the floor above.
Dauph had been a thug, cut out for this type of world, they’d heard the screams from up there late at night. Elshi had never liked living so close to him, but Amber had convinced her that next to the wolves den, they’d be safe from bears.
Dauph lay sprawled in his makeshift bathtub bed, his blood having soaked through the cushion layer, spilling out onto the floor through the unconnected drain.
His face was pitted with the cartilage crushing spray of gunshot, his punctured, perforated eyes staring open right at her.
On another day, Amber might have been sick, at least shuddered at the sight, but the need for sustenance was crippling her, she could feel the edges of blacking out closing in.
She flung herself at the cupboards, half yanking the doors off their hinges as she pulled them open.
A row of cans glistened like the treasure of the gods, and resting atop them, unbelievably, were individually wrapped snack bars.
Amber ripped one open before she had chance to register the brand or flavour, shoving the sticky cereal bar into her mouth, the heavy effort of chewing worsened by the age of the bar.
It was enough to bring her back, and as her mind began to turn again, Amber noticed a solar panel, it’s wire leading to a pile of cardboard.
Throwing the stack aside, Amber saw the impossible. A tiny refrigerator.
Pulling it open, Amber couldn’t help but wonder if she had indeed blacked out. Inside, rows of vials. Insulin.
She had had no idea Dauph was diabetic. It wasn’t the sort of weakness anyone let on to having, it had taken Amber months to confess it to Elshi, and had sincerely expected to have parted paths with her after that.
Re-covering the fridge with the array of cardboard discards, Amber couldn’t help but wonder who had killed Dauph, and not even checked the cupboards.
Unless they planned to come back.
She heaped the cans and bars into her dress, lifting the hem to make a sack of sorts. She had a stash hole below the wall cavity downstairs, it would at least be safer there. She had to get Elshi, to tell her. It might not be safe here. She should move the fridge. Her mind swirled with a tornado of thoughts.
<hr/>
The thin wire didn’t look strong enough to hold the metal handlebars Kassie slung over it, let alone Elshi.
“On the count of three.”
Kassie wasn’t looking at her as she spoke, her eyes darted through the compound beyond the fencing, looking for the slightest hint of movement between the buildings. She could outwit the infrared, she knew better than to completely trust Coco’s all clear.
“One.”
Worn hands gripped Elshi’s waist, pushing her closer to the edge of the rusted metal roof. It was the only building taller than the fence, the flimsy flaking steel hid the supports below. A drone scan would determine it couldn’t hold weight, as the metal roof began to bow with a deep groan Elshi wondered how close to the line the Green Street hookers really cut it.
“Two.”
Kassie gave her a gentle squeeze.
“You’ll be fine, I always get my girls back.”
It was a whisper between her words.
“Three!”
Kassie’s firm lift pushed her over the edge, her arms jarring with the sudden drop of her weight as she found herself dangling.
The induced breeze hurried through her hair as she ripped down the wire, the wavy locks rippling behind her; a battle flag. She wouldn’t give up, not now.
Amber had found Elshi, battered, bruised, her tears lost in the blood stained dirt. Her short firey hair had glowed auburn in the green tinted sunlight reflecting from the hanging spaceship. Amber had stood her ground for them both then, it was her turn now.
The first few days had been the worst, the ships had appeared over every city, and without warning, every person on a government paycheck had crumbled to dust. Vaporised where they stood. It had been hell back then, years of selfish greed had people already well trained in survival. They took, and they took with force.
It was two days after the ships appeared and Elshi had been ready to accept the easy way out, watching her blood glistening away from her, when bristling Amber had shot from the shadows. She was so small, her nymph-limbs barely seemed able to hold the threatening pose she took. Elshi had closed her eyes, expected this naive stranger to die with her. Amber had headbutted the first man to get close enough, sending him reeling backwards, spitting after him. They kept coming, Amber gave as good as she got, struggling to hold her ground.
Somewhere in that desperation, Elshi had found the will to stand, her broken ribs tightening her breath, she had stood back to back with the stranger who had come to her aid, and somehow, they had staggered away, alive, together. Elshi knew she should have died then, in a way, she had, and feeling the weakening pulse of fear in her chest, reminded herself, a dead woman can’t die again.
She dropped from the wire, forgetting to brace, the impact of the ground slamming through her knees. She was inside the compound. The fenced community that had sprung up within weeks of the spaceships had thrived. Security forces had seized assets and resources, fences had encased areas in the dead of night, and before anyone knew what was happened, they were on the outside.
Rows of carefully erected, identical warehouse buildings squatted inside the fencing, but there was only one that mattered to Elshi.
<hr/>
Wrapped under the heavy padding of a coat far too big for her, Amber slipped out into the street. She had to find Elshi, Amber could tell she had something planning from the sparkle in her eye as she’d slipped away with that chocolate bar line.
The air, choked with tiny flies, was foul with the midday heat of rotting rubbish. She’d taken everything she could, the cans, the bars, even found some books tucked at the back of a cupboard, and stashed it. The door to the flimsy ground floor flat didn’t lock, but locks were suspicious, they meant something worth robbing. She’d done what she could to spread it out, hide a can or two here, a bar or two there, but the fridge, that had been hard.
It hadn’t taken long for her blood sugar to pick up, and feeling a little more with it, she’d quickly realised she couldn’t leave the fridge where it was. It was a gamble, and one she had to hope would pay off, but she’d unplugged the solar panel, it was too conspicuous, and put the tiny fridge the cold crawl space.
Weaving through the maze of stacked bin bags, her eyes darting up to the huge spacecraft, a shining green teardrop hanging up the city as she orientated herself.
She had suspected Elshi had been meeting up with Joey, they worked together a lot, but there was no sign of the dishevelled man hanging around the fences.
Everyone knew Joey enjoyed his weekly Sunday romp with the Green Street Hookers, the sickening thought occurred to Amber that Elshi might have actually gone with him.
<hr/>
The sparse lighting did little for the dingy warehouse, mainly visited by drones. Elshi lifted the door on it’s hinges slightly, holding the weight as she closed it behind her. She was fairly confident there would be no one close enough to hear the squeal of unoiled wheels, it was obviously the full sized door was rarely used, but she didn’t need to take the risk.
The lofty warehouse had been sectioned up; the partitions, just above eye level, obscured the manufacturing machines from vision. The drone entrance hatches, tucked below the roof, cast squares of bright afternoon sun over the concrete flooring. Five large dispensing units filled the section Elshi had crept into, four on one wall, one on the other.
Elshi had slipped Coco the note, exactly what she needed, all she had to do now was wait for one of the machines to light up in anticipation of a drone that wasn’t coming. Getting inside had been easier than she’d thought, easier than Kassie had said, and Elshi felt a cold uncertainty creep in.
She’d heard tales of the people caught in warehouses. They never came back. From what she knew it had never happened to a Green Street Girl, but they did this for a living. She backed against a wall, alongside the lone dispenser. Up close, it didn’t look the same as the others. The other four had hatches into the partitioned maze beyond, where as this one rested against the metal sheeting of the exterior wall. It occurred to Elshi it might be the manual input, one where an order could be put in in person, although from what she had been told, the Compounders never got this close to the fences.
With a loud ping, the machine next to her flashed into life. The relief was instant, coursing through Elshi as she swung round to face it, awaiting her order.
The display looked wrong, it was large, there were no input control tucked under it, no docking spot for the drone. The display had been swirling lines of white text when she came in, but despite its luminescence, it appeared black now.
“Come on!”
Elshi assumed the machine was loading, a single white dot flashing in the centre of the screen. It must have received the order Coco had been planting in the system, according to Kassie the screen would light up with a picture of a drone, she just needed to wave her hand over the red light sensor, and the machine would pay out.
It didn’t happen, instead the unit blared out a deafening incomprehensible screech. Elshi staggered backwards, panic gripping her heart. She didn’t notice the machine behind her light up, it’s small square display depicting the outline of a drone.
As the sound filled the warehouse with it’s overwhelming tone, the fear clamouring up Elshi’s throat ceased to be for herself. Amber needed insulin, Elshi could see it, at first they had been able to trade food for it, but it had been weeks since they’d found anyone willing to sell.
“No!”
Anger gripped her.
“You can’t do this. Not now, I can’t lose her!”
Her voice was lost to the static garble hurting her ears with its volume. She was fairly certain they must be able to hear the sound beyond the fence.
“You have no idea what i’ve been through! What she got me through…”
In the screaming defeat, Elshi poured out her heart - everything she’d carried for too long. The pain, the heartbreak, the love she had found along the way she let it all gush out. The words leaving her lips were whisked away from her, freed, by the sheer volume of what she knew must be an alarm.
It had to be over.
<hr/>
“Joey?”
Amber yelled at the top of her lungs, trying to make herself heard over the blaring sound spilling out of the compound. Panic had held on to the directions the bums down by the fence had given her, the desperate concern for Elshi’s recklessness had fuelled her feet, and she’d stumbled panting onto Green Street.
The doors were all shut up, everyone had battened down at the first sign of trouble.
“Joey?!”
She moved from structure to structure, shouting outside the windowless walls.
A panel eased open, the shaggy head of Joey poking out.
“Amber?”
She rushed towards him, yanking open the door.
“Elshi?!!”
He let her tumble through.
“She’s gone Amber, she was in there when the sound started.”
“Oh dear God, has she triggered the alarm?”
“That’s not what the alarm sounds like…”
Amber hadn’t noticed Kassie, slumped in the shadows against the wall.
“...that’s a sound i’ve never heard before.”
Amber looked around the small, tech filled room, noticing a young girl hammering away on a keyboard in the corner.
“No alarm triggered in the system,” Coco piped up, “but there is some kind of alert that went out, not from the pharmacy units though, got ourselves an inbound.”
Amber rushed towards her, squinting at the screen, not able to make out anything from the streams of numbers and symbols.
“I’m sorry, the assignment…”
Joey rested a heavy hand on her shoulder, grief and condolence dripping down his face. Horror curdled inside Amber, and she pushed him away, stumbling back out of the frame-less door.
Back under the open sky the sound, returned to it’s full volume, had a deeper rumbling note.
Engines.
In the deserted street, Amber rushed to the nearest section of exposed fencing, peering through the tiny gaps.
A convoy of suited men pulled up in open top vehicles, bright stripes decorating their lapels.
The numbing relief of shock took hold of her hammering heart as the Compounders made their way towards the warehouse closest to the fence. Amber could still see the slight indent in the roof above them, left by the hastily retracted line hook.
<hr/>
The envoy arriving at the warehouse had not expected to find anyone inside. The sobbing wreck of a girl, screaming silently at the deafening machine took them all by surprised. Elshi however, didn’t register them as they dragged her out of there, unable to stop the outpouring that had begun.
As they carried her from the warehouse, shaking sobs her only resistance, the blaring static roar suddenly ceased, leaving a momentary ringing silence in its wake.
“BRING HER BACK!”
The loud electronic voice echoing from the unit inside the warehouse was accompanied by a sight not seen since the arrival of the spacecraft.
The huge glimmering teardrop above the city began to rotate on its axis, panels opening as it twisted, the spindle points responsible for vaporising millions of people on that first day protruded, threateningly.
“BRING HER BACK, NOW!”
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<em>I started this so long ago but only just got it finished in time, so it is really not as proof read as I would like, I was really feeling one of these sort of stories, with this sort of ending, and as always @tygertyger really delivered with her imagination pushing prompts. I didn't think I would manage it but in the end hopefully it came together. Not been online much recently and I have a lot to catch up on <3</em>
<b>This is an entry to @tygertyger's contest #electricdreams - check out all the entries under the tag cos there have been some amazing ones [this round.](https://steemit.com/electricdreams/@tygertyger/tyger-s-electric-dreams-short-story-contest-17-and-winners-of-16-win-sbd) - pretty close to the deadline but there are a good few hours left (i think).</b>
There were, always, three amazing prompts this round:
#1 Ufo’s have shown up over every county on earth and have vaporised the governments. After this was done no more action was taken and they have been hovering ever since.It has been 3 years. Every attempt to communicate has been ignored until now. What has happened on earth since and what is the nature of the communication and it’s consequences and who the hell is in those spaceships ? #2 the story must include the sentence “ Joey enjoyed his weekly Sunday romp with the green street Hookers“ #3 the story must include a dead man in a bathtub ” Take it from here and let's see where it goes
<h3>[Photo Credit](https://pixabay.com/illustrations/man-people-girl-woman-women-girls-1971200/)</h3><sub>which is an image I am sure I have used before, I just love this artist so much, [tsukiko-kiyomidzu](https://pixabay.com/users/tsukiko-kiyomidzu-1850874/) doesn't have much in the public domain, but it's so powerful!</sub>