fic: boneyards, finding

I sat down and coughed up this 2,222 words in one sitting. I'm only stopping now because it's nearing eleven and I should go to bed.

It's a very rough draft. There's no editing. Enjoy!

Finding

After years of traveling with Wyndham's crew, Code had forgotten how hard it was to go through the backlands alone. He only had a small pack with him and a coat with proofing thin enough that just one night of rain would render it useless. Code's only option, then, was to move as fast as possible immediately after the acid showers ended and hope he found shelter before the sky darkened again. It wasn't practical, but it was feasible, if only barely.

Unfortunately, "shelter" was rarely an accurate word to describe the places he sought safety in. The one he was in now was really just a glorified hole in the ground. A piece of uneven, thinning metal acted as the roof. The ground was littered with corroded rocks and sand. Code had to gather these into a pile, sit on top of them, and then watch gloomily as rain leaked in, eating away at the foundation of his sanctuary.

Twenty years after the Darkening, the rainfall was lighter than before, nor as frequent, but that didn't mean much. Code's right arm, covered with scars and oddly mottled skin under the bandages, was proof of that.

He sat with his boots under him, most of his weight on his toes. It was uncomfortable, but only his boots were sufficiently proofed. His coat he kept above him, far away the gathering liquid. The level was rising far higher than he'd anticipated, but it wasn't like he could do anything. Worse still, if any backland creature caught him here, he was near-defenseless.

As if summoned by his thoughts, Code heard the distinct crackling sound of feet stepping in sand. His eyes snapped to the opening at the top of the shelter. Moments later the scant light was blocked by a silhouette.

Code reached for the knife tucked securely into his belt. It was Wyndham's most prized possession, ostensibly a gift from his mother. Code had felt guilty for taking it. Now he only relieved.

Code suddenly frowned. The silhouette he saw was in possession of a head, and two arms, and two legs--but that was impossible. If it was a human, he'd be screaming or writhing in pain, as Code had, once upon a time. Maybe it was the angle. Surely no human could stand in the rain like that.

He changed his mind a second later, when something--someone--dropped through the opening, landing with a splash that made Code wince. He didn't even notice the few droplets sizzling through his clothes, though. He was too transfixed at the sight of the man in front of him.

Code had never seen someone completely wet before, except when his little sister was born, and even then it was because she was a newborn covered in amniotic fluid.

It was amazing. He was just standing there, rain dripping off him, completely unaffected and unbothered. Maybe he was proofed. Ilsa had been going on about that before Code had left, but common sense dictated that even if there was a way to proof a human being, he shouldn't be standing so casually like that.

"Would you look at that!" the man said. The words startled Code. The accent was strange--too much emphasis on the consonants, maybe--but...

Surely, if he was from a nearby crew, they'd have heard of this miraculous proofing. Or maybe it was new.

"How can you stand in the rain like that?" Code asked, face completely blank.

His eyes were yellow.

"You're from a crew, aren't you? You must be, huddled up like that."

When he grinned, he revealed sharp teeth, causing Code to move involuntarily back. When some of the rocks shifted, skittering down, he froze, his entire body tense. The yellow-eyed boy in front of him laughed.

"Are you a scout? Because if you are, you should hurry back and tell your crew not to come anywhere near here."

"I'm not. I mean, I'm not a scout. And I left my crew," Code managed. The words stuck in his mouth and against a suddenly clumsy tongue, garbling half the words.

Sharp eyes narrowed. "Oh. Then I should probably kill you."

That was the only warning Code received. The man darted forward. Code brought the knife up, thrusting his upper body forward to bear the weight. He felt it slide pathetically easily into the man's flesh, skidding against a rib before jarring to a stop. Then they both tumbled back, and Code screamed in fear or pain or maybe both. He managed to jerk his body so that he landed on his right arm.

Ilsa had told him that he would never feel anything with it again, that the rain had washed off his nerves. She was wrong. Worse, the water hit his leg and torso, and although the coat stopped most of it a second later it didn't matter, because it leaked through.

Sense burst clumsily through the agony, somehow. He remembered that the stranger was proofed, somehow, and he threw himself with a pained grunt against his assailant. A moment later the man was under him, breathing harshly, wild eyes glaring up, like an absurd living platform on which Code found relative safety.

He really was proofed, Code marveled, because water was seeping into his knife-wound and he wasn't bothered at all. The man jerked up, maybe to grab at him; Code just reached forward, grabbed the knife, and twisted. The man screamed and aborted movement.

The rain was lightening, finally. Code jerked the knife free, then reached forward and in a practiced movement slit the man's throat.

He died without any fuss, already weakened from Code's initial strike.

The burns didn't hurt, not yet, as if his brain was filing the fact away for later. He was breathing hard. His arm, already of limited movement, now wouldn't move at all. When he stood up, he stumbled, because of his right arm.

He needed filtered water, to wash off the acid, and he needed clean cloth, to wrap the new burns. He had access to neither; his fight with the man had resulted in his pack being thrown into the deeper waters. He wasn't about to risk using anything he'd stored in there.

Code poked at his coat with the tip of his knife. Maybe a quarter of it was still dry. Gripping the section between his knees, he managed to roughly cut the salvageable portion, which he then used as protection for his hands as he stripped himself of his ruined clothes.

Somewhere, in that quartered-off section of his mind, the pain registered as he peeled wet cloth off his body.

He was now standing half-naked above a dead man. If his little sister were to see him, she'd make her usual out-of-place joke, probably involving necrophilia. And he'd laugh in response, and then hit her.

Except, of course, she wasn't there. Code looked up into the sky, which was now clear. If he was lucky, he would have a few hours at least before the rain came again. Somehow, he'd have to make it to the next shelter in time before then, even with a wounded leg.

It never occurred to Code to rest, to stay in this shelter until he felt better enough to move again. He had to keep moving. His little sister was running out of time.

-

Code was lucky. The rain didn't come again for a long time--or maybe it was that the seconds were stretching longer, with each limping step sending bursts of pain through him. It was only his right side that was really injured but his entire body was suffering.

The next shelter he found was a lot more reliable. As before, it was a hole in the ground, but there was a proper and respectably deep ditch for the rain to collect in. He was beginning to suspect that someone, maybe some group of adventurers, had set these shelters up in the backlands on purpose, to help whatever idiot next decided to travel through them.

He sat down, back against one dirt wall, and tried not to shiver. When he pressed his hand against his forehead he thought his skin was hot. He hoped he wasn't coming down with a fever, or an infection. His sister couldn't afford that.

The rain was very light, this time. It would let up soon. That was good. Despite the... the interruption, he'd made good time today.

In the back of his mind, in the same place he shut away the agony and doubt and fear, was the nagging worry for food. Backland animals were too poisonous to eat, as were any vegetation he'd come across. What food he did have he'd left next to the man's corpse, and anyway it would be soaked through by now and too dangerous to consume.

Water, too. He didn't have the equipment needed to purify water.

Code closed his eyes, feeling a headache building. All this worrying was frankly useless, so he tried to dredge up happy memories, instead.

Most of them revolved around his sister, with her sweet face and bright eyes. Her personality didn't at all match her innocent appearance, but that was what Code loved about her. She was at once worldly and naive, able to sing songs that made Code blush and yell, but there was a lot she didn't know about.

She didn't know about their mother, and she never would, because Code would never tell her. And she didn't know about life before--all this. The rain, and the poisoning, and the fires.

Code did, even if his recollections were hazy, like a dream. For him, life started the moment his sister was born. Everything before that was blurry, indistinct; everything after that was sharp, like a too-long film Code could peruse at leisure. She'd been a perfect miracle, the envy of the crew. And then, years afterwards, when they'd joined Wyndham's crew, she'd been a miracle to them, too, and a source of hope. Babies could be born, perfect and whole. You just had to be lucky enough.

Code opened his eyes and realized with horror that he'd been sleeping.

It was still raining, or maybe it had started raining again. It was completely dark. He tried to sit up and found that something was covering him.

He groped at the material and thought, blanket. It had the waxy, alien feel of something that had been proofed.

Then he realized something else: His right arm was covered in bandages, as was his leg and the wounded parts of his chest and hip. His fingers skirted uneasily over the cloth. He felt horribly awake, his senses sharpened. He smelled the sour-red scent of some sort of medicine. And something else--

Meat, Code realized, and sat up. The blanket pooled in his thighs.

There was the whisper of movement, and then light flooded the shelter.

Code's eyes took a second to adjust. And then--

"I just killed you!" he blurted, slamming his entire body into the corner of the shelter. The movement jarred him, but he didn't care. He groped for his knife, but it was in the man's hand, held in a lazy, comfortable grip.

The man grinned at him, showing again those sharp teeth. In the dim, yellow light, Code saw the line across his neck. And his shirt was stained by dried blood. "You did," he confirmed. "Hurt like a motherfucker, too. And would you relax?" he added disdainfully. "I went through the trouble of patching you up, why would I bother to hurt you now?"

"You... you did all this?" Code said.

"Yeah. I followed you for awhile, actually, thought it was pretty pathetic the way you limped along like that."

Code just stared. He couldn't have spoken if he wanted to.

The man held something out. It was the meat Code had smelled earlier, and the scent made his mouth water.

"It's safe for you to eat," the man said at Code's stare.

Still, Code didn't move. The man had failed to die, or he had died and come back to life, but Code had injured him. He could be injured. And, although he was taller, his frame was far lighter. Code weighed more. If he threw himself at the man now, when he wasn't expecting it, he could escape, since the man had gone through the trouble of giving him a proofed blanket. With the blanket and his boots, he would be safe in the rain.

And he could get his knife back while he did it, twist the main around, maybe severe his spinal cord this time--see if he could recover from that. Take the time to break his neck, break every bone in his body if it came to that, before he fled. It would be easy. Code was good at surviving.

He lunged forward. His fingers curled around the meat, and then he was back in the corner, huddled like an animal, wary eyes on the man's amused features.

"Thank you," he said, the words coarse against his throat.

"Sure. You're welcome," the man said, and grinned. He stepped forward, put the knife in front of Code, and then stepped back, the torchlight shifting with each step.

Code ate, first. It was good meat, and he didn't die immediately, so perhaps the man hadn't been lying. Then, he inched forward, and curled his fingers around the hilt of his knife. He looked up, but the man didn't move, just watched, all signs of amusement gone.

Code went back, under the blanket, his knife secure in his hands. He said, "Do you have any water?"

Labels: _fiction, c: code, c: liam, verse: boneyards