Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery/Make me a poster of an old rodeo

[wheyoftheadept]

She took the long way home, planning to stop by a chopshop she knew over in Sophocles, ask after medication for the Villeres.  But heading towards Sophocles meant heading towards the Verge, and when she smelled smoke on the wind she knew that trouble had come pouring from that wasteland.

‘Jisan had told her that the Verge had been wealthy, once, like all of Redmond.  But then Mt. Rainier had blown, part of the end of the Ghost Dance War that had led to the independence of the Salish-Shidhe territories.  Redmond had been buried, and some areas had never been dug out.  The Verge was one of them.  No one lived there but scavangers and half-mad neotribals, plus half a dozen cannibal gangs in an ever-shifting configuration.  Periodically the stronger and saner gangs would sweep through, make the area safe for their smugglers, but it never took.

Saturday takes it slow, pausing every now and then to scan the horizon.  It’s getting dark; hard to see where the smoke is coming from.  There’s a sound gathering on the horizon, the details just out of her perception.  Coming closer…  a chorus of coughing engines, war whoops.  Screams.  Gangers or neotribals, out on a spree.  For a moment, she hesitates.  

Then her training takes over and she ditches off the side of the road, letting her bike fall under some scrub and sliding down the embankment, flat against the ground.  Her elbow catches a rock and she ignores it, listening hard.  And curses her luck when the bikes sputter to a halt above her.  Verge gangs are crazy; not beholden to anyone, adhering to none of the usual agreements.  If they spot her, they won’t care that she wears the Center’s patch on her arm.  It’ll be her or them.

There’s a lot of them, or at least a lot of engines.  She breathes slow, calms her heart, counts.  Three.  She’s gonna say three.  She can handle three, and starts to creep up.  

They start to talk amongst themselves.  Five voices, or close enough.  She can’t handle five. 

And then she hears other voices, sobbing, someone pleading.  Snatches of do it here and fucking christ, fine and he’ll be pissed.  Before the screaming starts.

Saturday digs her fingers into the ground.  Firelight and road flares flicker above her.  High-pitched, dying-animal screams.  She stares, eyes dry and hot.

Be safe, Makoto.

She promised, and she knows she can’t fight five.  She knows this.  Three, maybe.  But not five.  One day.  Not now, not at just fourteen.  

Saturday covers her ears, squeezing her eyes shut, and shoves her face into the ground so she won’t scream.  So that not inhaling dirt can distract her from what she can hear above her.

She stays that way for a long time, until the motorbikes have been gone for a good long time, until she’s definitely going to be late for dinner.  Then she crawls up towards where her pedalbike lies, not looking at the cracked and ruined street.  She grabs her bike and walks down to the bottom of the embankment, to walk along for a few hundred years before going back to the road.  And doesn’t look.  And doesn’t look.

When she gets home, there’s a plate warm in the oven for her, and she and ‘jisan watch one of his old movies.