THE BUG EATERS

Four hours later Faina got up, choked down a cold breakfast straight out of a can, and then got herself ready for the day. She stretched her aching muscles, tied her chestnut hair into a loose ponytail, and then splashed some water on her face in an attempt to offset some of her fatigue. It was only a conditioned response, but it helped her a little.

Although it was always Jazael who made the most noise about it, Faina could tell that all three of them were still sleep deprived. A few more hours of rest would have felt like a godsend, but four would have to do. They were back to work.

The trio stuffed their bags with water, protein bars, and basic medical supplies. They then each picked up a rifle and strapped a few ammo pouches to their belts. Nobody was expecting a firefight and nobody wanted one, but being prepared for an emergency was always worth the extra weight.

The rifles were built in Daybreak about 40 years ago, in the factories of the Linkt Industrial Zone. They were relics of relics, outdated before they even went into production. The ruling class of the region, the PLM, were Marxist-Leninists clinging desperately to the imagined glory of foreign nations that had long since ceased to exist. The rifles, SVD-130s, were essentially just off-brand Soviet SVT-40s. Aside from the name, the weapons had hardly been altered from the original 1940s design.

It was still dark as they left Lamplight, with the sun rising only as the buildings and burn barrel glows of the town began to recede into distant specks. They had wrapped up their preparations in good time, and Faina was glad that this journey would be a bit shorter than the previous one. The group marched together at a brisk pace.

Although they were going in a different direction to yesterday, direction hardly made much of a difference in this area of Smoke Desert. The same towering cliffs could be seen in the distance, the same sun blasted their tanned skin, and their boots were still being worn down with each step. Despite this, and despite her tiredness, Faina was in relatively good spirits. A mech core was absurd, but a quick and tidy profit was still likely.

She found herself admiring the morning sky. A vibrant pink lit up the desert hills and cut through some of the usual gray before pushing up against the starry blanket of the night. In the other direction, the cliffs in the distance had turned a mellow blue, sedating the violence of their jagged appearance. It seemed to shine with beauty.

The approach to their destination was clearly marked out by scorch marks and spent shell casings. They cautiously climbed a dune overlooking what they surmised would be the main battleground. Along a dusty road were a couple of crushed pickups, a tank, a blackened APC that looked like it had been dipped into the deepest pits of hell, and the collapsed wreckage of a once-mighty mech. Smoke had drifted in from the desert, giving the scene an even more devastated feeling.

“Well, fuck. I’m glad that thing is definitely not getting up,” said Faina, shocked to see it despite having been forewarned. Mechs were already pretty rare and dead mechs were even rarer.

It seemed to be a variation of NOMAD TWO, perhaps the most common mechanoid frame. One of its two legs had been ripped clean off, and it had clearly collapsed sideways before it was able to lower itself onto a pair of steel plate chain tracks fitted to its front. It was riddled with bullet holes around a large dent in its hull that suggested an even mightier mech must have walked right over it at some point. The sight was somehow pathetic. Its potential for intimidation had been completely drained away by the implication of an even more powerful predator.

“Shit, we left it too late,” muttered Tulio, clearly irritated but still trying to keep his voice low. “You see that, by the mech? A pair of guys are going through it right now! If we’d slept less, or maybe just walked faster, we’d be the ones down there. They’re going to take all the good stuff! They could have the core in their bag right now.”

“Don’t get too stressed. If there are only a few of them, there will be a lot of valuable parts that they can’t carry, just like there’ll be a lot of stuff that we can’t carry. They’re just going to fill up their bags and move on. We’ll go in after they leave,” Faina said calmly.

“No, screw that! It was you two who wanted to sleep! I wanted to get back out here and make some money. I’m not going to miss out on a big haul just because of one poor decision that I was forced into.”

“Hey, don’t pin the blame on us. You were tired too, and being tired can kill out here. Anyway, what would your alternative be? There isn’t anything we can really do about this. We have to wait.”

Tulio’s stoicism had been shattered, but only briefly. He took a few long and deep breaths to return himself to level-headedness before continuing the conversation. Faina knew that it wasn’t just for the team’s sake but also for Tulio’s own self-image that he worked to remain calm. It was common in Daybreak, sometimes even religiously motivated, for people to feel shame about intense emotional responses.

The two scavengers in the distance were still completely unaware that they were being watched. They were shouting happily about one of their finds, clearly not too worried about drawing attention. It seemed unlikely to Faina that they had come from Lamplight as veteran scavs. They were probably inexperienced and had just stumbled upon the wreckage by chance.

“Okay, I’m sorry for losing my cool, but I do have a plan. It should be simple. We’re going to sneak down there and get behind that APC. Then, we’re going to jump out and point our guns at them. They’re going to hand over whatever it is they’ve picked up and make themselves scarce. We get the first pick, we go back to Crumb, and we get rich.”

“Seriously? Your plan is to rob them? That’s not how we work. They haven’t done anything to hurt us, so there’s nothing moral about it, and you know how risky it is to turn your gun on anyone, right? They’re almost definitely going to be armed. Jazael, tell him.”

“Eh, well, I’m not going to pretend like I’m above this kind of thing,” Jazael said sadly. “I don’t like holding people up, but I’ve done it before and had it done to me too. No one actually wants to steal from others, but everyone needs money, and it’s hard out here. There’s no way to get rich that doesn’t involve stepping on someone else’s toes. It’s just how things work.”

“I still don’t like this idea at all.”

“We’ll be quick about it and nobody will get hurt. If there’s actually a mech core down there, well, I can tell you now that you’ll forget you ever had any doubts about doing this.”

“Faina, you’re outvoted this time,” Tulio said with an air of authority. “Now, both of you, get your rifles ready. We should make sure that it really just is those two before we jump them. Scan the landscape for possible threats as we move.”

Faina let out a quiet sigh of resignation. Her team was her entire life and they had to move as a unit. If they were going to do something, even if she didn’t like it, she had to be part of it. She would watch their backs and do whatever needed to be done.

It wasn’t as though she didn’t understand their mindsets either. They had some kind of choice, sure, but it wasn’t much of one in the face of their miserable surroundings. Most people will do extreme things when put into extreme situations.

They held their guns steady and mentally prepared themselves for danger. When the two scavengers by the mech had their backs turned, Tulio gave the signal to move. They scrambled over the ridge of the dune and slid skillfully behind one of the vans. From there, they dashed behind the ruined APC. Faina’s heart was beating fast as she clutched her SVD-130 close to her chest.

Before they had time to compose themselves, they heard sand shifting behind them. Swirling around, the three came face to face with a kid who looked to be in his early teens. He was short and dressed in dull yellow rags that were quite a bit too big for him. They were similar to the ones on the scavengers they had been planning to jump, which made it obvious that the boy was part of the same group. There was a machine pistol in his left hand.

“Ah, fuck,” Jazael muttered, as the kid aimed the weapon towards him.

The boy’s cheap dust mask was down, exposing his youthful, frightened face. He had caught them off-guard, but with a move that had clearly not been premeditated. Now, the boy had no idea what to do with them. He didn’t say a word to them, he didn’t call out to his friends, he just kept the gun aimed at Jazael. His pupils flitted between the rifles that the three were carrying.

“Hey, kid, put the gun down,” Faina spoke gently, removing her hands from her weapon and letting it dangle on its shoulder strap as she faced her empty palms towards the boy. “We don’t want anyone to get hurt. We’re out here just trying to make a living the same as you, and your people got here first, so we’ll just back off now and promise not to cause any trouble.”

The boy didn’t reply. He didn’t even blink. His eyes were as vast and as harsh as the desert itself as he examined the trio. Faina got the impression that the boy had, despite his age, seen far too many horrors to be trusting of strangers. His machine pistol lowered for half a second, but only half a second, and then he raised the gun right back up to where it had been before. It was clear he wasn’t just going to back away, but they had to try to defuse the situation.

“We’ll throw our weapons on the ground, okay? Is that okay?” continued Faina, nodding to her gun and searching for some sign of approval.

No such sign of approval came. The boy’s dead stare carried on, stretching a few seconds of silence into a terrifying eternity. Faina looked back at him with sorrow, hoping desperately for a way out. Then, in an instant that came so fast and sudden it seemed sharp enough to cut into her very soul, the boy tore open the overstretched silence with a panicked shout.

“Help! Over here!” he squeaked to his comrades.

The trio flinched, and that was all the boy needed to send him over the edge. He pulled the trigger and sent a burst of 9mm rounds straight into Jazael’s chest. The veteran scavenger’s back hit the APC behind him with a thud. He left a dark red smear on the metal as he collapsed into a slumped position on the dirt and entered a state of shock.

Tulio reacted with almost superhuman speed, raising his rifle and firing a single shot through the boy’s skull. The bullet exploded out the back of his head in a flurry of bone and viscera, but Tulio had already turned away from the gruesome sight. He gestured at one of the trucks and then made a quick dash for it with Faina close behind.

From a crouching position behind the vehicle, Faina easily worked out where the other two scavengers were without even looking. They had gone quiet after hearing the gunshots and were now trying to sneak up on the APC, but this battlefield was not an easy place to remain stealthy in. Faina’s keen ears had picked out their footfall disturbing bits of scrap half-buried in the sand. She nodded to Tulio and they used their fingers to count down from three for a surprise attack.

The two of them jumped up, fired their rifles a few times over the bed of the pickup, and then ducked back down again. A shrill cry of pain echoed through the air, confirming that at least one of their shots must have hit their mark. Still, they could not be certain of having actually downed anybody.

Counter-fire struck the other side of the truck with loud and rapid crashes. Faina couldn’t register exactly how many shots were fired, but she could tell they were still coming from two separate guns. She could also tell that their enemies were firing erratically, their shots weren’t being aimed carefully, and this gave her a small burst of confidence. They were panicking.

“One more time, let’s get them!” growled Tulio.

“Go right,” replied Faina.

They counted down again. Three, two, one. Faina leaned left out of cover and Tulio leaned right. They fired a series of shots at their panicked foes, dropping them into the road. It was all over in a matter of seconds.

“Fuck!” shouted Faina. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

Jazael and the boy were on one side of the APC, and the two scavengers they had just downed were on the other. One of the scavengers was clearly dead. A bullet had gone through his eye, and he had more holes in his arm and chest. The other scavenger was not far off from joining his friend. He had been shot in the neck and was making a nightmarish gurgling sound as blood gushed forth from the wound. Faina felt certain that it was one of her bullets lodged in his throat, and thinking about it made her feel sick.

She had killed before, but only in the kind of self-defence that was do-or-die from the outset. This time, it was her group who had planned on drawing first, even if they had been caught out in the process. Dizzy with emotion, she understood that it exposed a capacity for ugliness inside of them that must have always been there. They had been ruthless.

Tulio ushered her away as he walked over to the dying man and finished him off with his knife. It was the only option for easing the fellow scavenger’s suffering. Although Tulio’s face remained stern, his hands were shaking slightly as he drew his bloodstained blade away.

Faina went to check on Jazael. She was hoping that he had somehow survived his injuries, or that she’d at least be able to say goodbye to him, but these hopes were in vain. Their teammate was dead.