| Shadow |
[05 Oct 2005|04:48pm] |
Things are always moving at Beowawe.
Prisoners getting shoved back and forth, with gun barrels lodged between their shoulder blades. Demons marching around in uniform, off to this mission for the device or that one for punishment. Trucks coming and going, bringing supplies, scrap metal, occasionally more people that Hannah thinks got snatched up from the highway. Stragglers. Folks nobody’ll notice.
One night, when the camp’s gate was opened to let a truck through, she tried to escape. Hannah was little enough to sneak by without much trouble, and by then her skin was the same color as the dirt all around them. She made it all the way to the gate before the pain stopped her. The electricity shot through her body, the worst bolt of anything she’d ever felt, and knocked her flat on her back.
All she remembered after that was getting dragged back inside by her hair. That practically felt good, compared to the electricity. She just kind-of let her body go loose and went with the tug. Better than to fight outright. She’d seen how that went for people.
So now she just works, and waits for a better way to escape. Eventually, she knows there’ll be one. Until then, she keeps her head down and does mostly as she’s told.
Deep, deep down in the mines, there isn’t a lot of air to breathe. Most of it’s choked with dust that gets kicked up whenever they drill, pound, walk, or even move, it seems. Hannah’s gotten smart to the process. Now whenever she gets sent down there at night, she stops by the pump first and coats a piece of cloth with water. Once she’s down in the shafts, it gets wrapped across her nose and mouth.
It feels hotter that way, but it keeps her lungs from sounding like that. Like everybody else’s do. All tight and filled with grime and congestion. Worse than any smoker she ever heard, and she’s met some people in the diner who had more in common with chimneys than anything else.
Hannah’s too slight to do much drilling, or make any progress with mining picks. Instead, she carries bits of rock out of the way and makes them into a pile. The demons say the silver’s for the device, whatever that is. So far as she can tell, they’ve gotten about enough silver to fill a cavity in the back of somebody’s tooth, but who’s she to argue? Anyway, the rest of the metal is coming from scraps they bring in from time to time, on enormous trucks.
Hannah looks out for Rachel with the weak bladder and big, blue eyes. It started that first night, when they’d gone out to the water pump. Hannah formed a tiny human shield for the fifteen-year-old while she stripped off her pants and washed the urine out. No sense wearing them that way. She’d smell in no time, and besides, it would irritate the skin.
Now Rachel’s her wide-eyed shadow always, even in the mines. Hannah picks up the rocks and deposits them in Rachel’s shirt, and she walks over to the pile and dumps them out. Over and over, the same routine, until they get sent back to the mess hall for gruel and to the bunk room for sleep.
Sometimes Rachel has bad dreams. She’ll wake up with Hannah’s fingers over her mouth, trying to drown out the sound of frightened tears.
Tonight they’ve been working for hours. Hannah can see that Rachel’s starting to get tired. When she turns to pass off an armful of rocks, she launches into her favorite game. “Ice cream sundaes,” she whispers.
( Louder Than a Whisper )
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| Swing Low, Sweet Chariot |
[05 Oct 2005|09:35pm] |
When not putting the meat to work in the mines, detainees were rounded up (at random) to perform 'maintenance' in the camps. Outhouses needed to be dug (and emptied), cleaning the Scourge living quarters, structural repairs to the rotting infrastructure.
Digging graves.
There were a lot of graves littered just past the south fence. The majority succumbed from a mix of starvation, heat exhaustion, and dehydration. Some from the toxic conditions of the mines. A few died trying to escape. One man, part of the grave digging detail, slowly bled to death after accidentally crossing the unmarked perimeter, the ankle bracelet decimating his right leg.
In about a week's time, Hannibal -- leader of the Scourge -- surmised, the dead would outnumber the living. Not a large concern, certainly. Humanity populated like rabbits. Livestock was plentiful. Or it would be until the device was completed.
Ever the tactician, Hannibal knew another raid on a population as large as Las Vegas wasn't feasible. They needed to work in secret; he wouldn't have a repeat of their failure in Los Angeles nine years ago. A detailed map of Nevada was spread out on the east wall of his office, with several circles scratched around cities in differing counties. Tonopah. Mesquite. Battle Mountain. Searchlight.
The meat would receive a night of rest. And a fresh crop would join them soon enough.
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