The Gaming Outpost

My name is Hiawathaa Lily Cooper, and while my fingers slipped the skinning knife around inside the fur of the dead rat, my eyes lit up to see Rachon on the far side of our Squatter’s Heaven. He was so cute, with his dusty rose curls, and his cheekbones as he lay there sleeping stretched out across a couple barrels with only a blanket to serve as a pad underneath him. My man he was.

Crying broke my happy trance, and I looked to my left at my girl laying on the floor on a pad of several blankets. She had a rosebud mouth when it was not open in a wail, and a permanently suspicious look at the world which was well-earned.

I made to pick her up, quickly, dropping my skinning knife, but then realized my hands were all bloody. Rachon rolled off the barrels with that stunningly easy grace of his, and came to my rescue.

He scooped up little Carly, and put her on his shoulder, and a second later we both heard…

“burp.”

I stood up and kissed Rachon on the cheek, and then the lips, and leaned into him, smelling his skin under the dirty shirt. Once, I would have been horrified at dirt, but in this universe, squatters did not have electricity. It was some nonsense about the carbon fingerprint, never you mind that everyone knew the sun was running a bit cold. The people in the skyscrapers downtown, the lit up by day and night skyscrapers, made the rules.

One of them was no children. Which is why I had found Carly, or Carlissa Mountain Cooper in a pile of junk.

“You are a duck of the first water.” I said warmly to Rachon, and he laughed, and it sounded like Carly did too, not that she got the joke. Rachon just liked it when I told him wild stories of other universes, and when I used some of the phrases they used.

‘Best singer in outerspace’ was an insult. ‘Duck of the first water’ meant a true natural at some skill. ‘Dubber-dubber-dubb’ meant ‘I love you’ which is what I said to Rachon and to Carly as I held them close with my forearms instead of my still bloody hands.

Then I went back to the rats we had trapped. Some verser named John Hammer had reccommended learning trapmaking, and I had to admit he was right. With just a knife and some rope, I was keeping us fed.

The neighbours came, and I gave them some as well. It was never explicitly stated, but I felt better with them knowing I had a baby if they also depended on me for food. The reward for turning in a baby to the government was decent.

After they left, Rachon wanted to play, and truthfully so did I. He was so cute. But Carly wanted her food, so I ate some more latinga grass, which one of the old women among the squatters had told me was good for helping a woman produce milk.

I may not be able to bear a child as a verser, but I can feed my adopted little munchkin. A munchkin who was developing teeth, I mentioned to Rachon who looked startled and interested.

Rather than watch me, he went out to go play coin-flipping with some of the other guys outside. Our primary source of cash was Rachon’s dexterity with coins, although sometimes he took Parkour Bets. I told him not too, but he simply smiled.

Have too sometimes, baby. Need the money. Basically, someone bet to see if you could jump from one building to another, fail and you’re dead or injured badly. Win, and the surrounding crowd would force the bettor to pay up.

We did not need to do such things, but Rachon liked his occasional bottle of beer, and the beef jerky. I liked the beef jerky he bought too. Much better than rat it was.

After feeding, I burped Carly, changed her diaper, and we fell asleep with her over my heart.

I lurched upright, still blind, and befogged from sleep as a loud bang ripped me awake. My eyes started to focus, and I saw the door had been ripped off its hinges. Large men in black uniforms, Planned Parenthood SWAT, on their arm badges, and autocannons in their hands bustled into the room, and shone lights in my face.

Carly began to cry, and I reached for her, but then a backfist knocked me back, and my baby was lifted like a sack of garbage. She wailed in pain and fear.

I staggered up, my head ringing, to see Rachon in the hallway, surrounded by the PP. He was undamaged, and talking to me.

“Hi, we’re in. They said, a babe with teeth, well, with your and my test scores, we’re in.”
In?
I looked at my baby who was swinging like a pendulum from some brute’s hand.
“In the club. We’ll be skyscraper folk. Good food. Electricity. Showers.”
“We’ll dispose of the fetal matter.” Said one mechanized voice.
I stared at Rachon, and realized he was not the man I thought he was. He loved me, or lusted after me, but he had just seen Carly as a tool.
No. I looked at him, pleading for him to overcome his brainwashing, his selfishness, and see the bright life dangling from this thug’s hand. He smiled at me perplexed, and I realized he would drop me as hard as Carly the instant some prettier girl batted her eyelashes at him.
I closed my eyes, and kneeled down, with my arms outstretched to the left and right. The knife slipped into my hand, slicing my palm, but that did not matter now.

I stood, knife in hand, a two inch blade, and all the heavily armored men backed up a step.

“Carly.” I said, my voice breaking. “Come to Mommy.” And then I stabbed myself in the aorta. As I fell, I hoped I heard ‘Mama’. But I had no idea if this would work.

Oh, I had been told that if someone loved you more than life itself, they would follow you. But did Carly even have the idea of following me?

Rachon came and shouted at me, and I would have spat in his face for pure hate, but I had no air in my lungs. Instead, I versed out. I hope I left him with the realization that the worlds I had told him of, that were better than this nasty place, were real, and he could have been immortal and walked them with me. Instead, he would have to be satisfied with his filthy little club in a world that died because it hated children, and it hated itself.

I woke on orange grass, ah, I had been here before. And I staggered, then nearly fell, and finally got to my feet. I saw my knife. No, that was not it. I saw my backpack. No, again.

And then I heard a wail which stopped. I turned and saw Carly laying on the orange grass plain, sucking on a piece of grass with a curious expression on her face.

“Yes, little darling. Here, the grass is edible. Tastes kinda like lemon.” I collapsed alongside her, and took some grass to eat myself. Carly giggled.