• Claire I - The Junk Yard

    Claire sat on top of the junk heap, rummaging listlessly through the scraps piled up under her feet. She poked through old and broken appliances with a long slender pipe she had found in another pile. She wasn't looking for anything in particular. In fact, she didn't feel like looking for anything at all. But this was what she and her parents had done day after day to survive. And even though her parents were gone now, she still needed to survive.

    But sometimes she didn't feel like surviving.

    She was small, young, little. She had no one and nothing. Why was she even still here, surviving, while her parents were happy together up in the sky?

    She frowned deeply. "I hate this." She said petulantly.

    There were others roving the junk pile. Destitutes like her. She didn't even know what destitute meant really, but she guessed it was people who have to loot junk piles for a living.

    A loud 'CAW CAW' behind her made her jump. She was so startled she fell from her perch, rolling headlong partway down the junk heap. She fetched up against the side of a rusted out washing machine. Her shoulder was bruised. She rubbed it fitfully while glaring at the carrion crow, for that was what had startled her. But it took no notice of her, flying overhead and away, torwards the far end of the dump site.

    She squeezed her eyes shut against the tears of pain that came so easily to her. She rubbed the back of a small, dirty hand across her face and sniffled. She was in a fowler mood than ever now. Thoroughly fed up with everything. She stood up and kicked at the washing machine. Even though it was rusted through, it stood up well against her tiny bandaged feet, making her wince as pain shot through her toes.

    "Grrrngyah!" She screamed at it incoherently. She stalked off, down the junk heap to the ground. Piles and piles of rubbish, junk and waste rose up all around her. She took no notice of it, it was her home.

    She hated it. The junk piles, surviving, carrion crows, everything! Maybe next time the carriers fly by to dump fresh garbage on the piles she would stand right on the ground, wide open.

    The carriers didn't like people being in the junk piles. The others always hid. Her mother and father always hid her in a little hut made from scrap metal when they flew overhead, their searchlights inspecting the area. Everyone always stayed absolutely still. The carriers didn't have time to do a thorough inspection, so if you didn't move, they wouldn't spot you. If they spotted you, you were shot until you stopped moving.

    Maybe she should let the carriers shoot her, then she could be up in the sky with Mommy and Daddy. She hated it down here anyway. Anything that had made it bearable was gone now. She sulked a bit more, glaring at the sky, daring a carrier to come by, even though it was daytime.

    But she saw no carriers, just another carrion crow, flying overhead. It was soon joined by another. They were heading in the same direction, off to the edge of the dumpsite. They were followed by three more.

    Claire frowned. She had never seen carrion crows act like this before. They usually just flew aimlessly overhead. She thought that they were looking for something. Maybe they had found it.

    It was pretty far to the edge of the dump site, so she ran. She squinted into the sky ahead and saw a small, black feathery cloud gathering in the distance. When she got close she stopped running and bent over and wheezed for a bit. She wasn't used to running that far, and her legs were tiny. She stayed still and puffed for a bit.

    By this time the black cloud of carrion crows was drawing attention from the others. They looked up from their digging and sorting, some with dismay on their faces, others with interest.

    One old man, who had seen the crows gather many times in his lifetime, just shook his head sadly. "Seems the upper class still uses it's garbage dump for people as well as trash. I guess people lose their usefulness eventually too." And he went back to his work.

    "People?" Claire said to herself. She watched as the carrion crows descended on a small trash heap. Was there a person in there?

    She stepped slowly forward. The carrion crows made an awful racket, cawing and fluttering their dirty black wings. Sticking out of the trash pile she could just make out a pair of heavy black boots, fastened with three wide leather straps and thick metal buckles.

    "Just another dead body." Someone muttered behind her.

    "Shouldn't we bury them?" Claire asked without looking up to see who was behind her. She didn't really care who it was. Her attention was on the carrion crows.

    "Too late." The voice said. "Crows already got 'im."

    She remembered that they had buried her mother and father shortly after they had died. Because of the carrion crows, they had said. Didn't want to feed them.

    As she looked at that gaggle of crows, pecking and cawing and ruffling their feathers a strange feeling welled up inside of her. It isn't right, that when someone dies they are torn up and eaten. They should be buried so that their bodies could sleep in peace while their spirits went up to the sky. The spirits didn't care about their bodies. But the people on the ground did. They didn't want their loved ones to get eaten up.

    She gripped her long thin pipe tightly in her hand. Did the body h+-6ere used to belong to someone who was loved, who would care if it was eaten up? Probably not, since it was thrown into the trash. No one cared about it. She shouldn't care about it either.

    But she did. She did care. The thought of a person without anyone to care for them made her angry, angrier than she had ever been before. She hefted up her pipe and ran at the crows. She flailed around, swinging the pipe as hard as she could. She hit a good many of them before they realized what was going on. Because no one had ever attacked them before. Very quickly though their natural reflexes kicked in and they flew into the air in a great swarm.

    Claire kept swinging and swinging her pipe. Her eyes were scrunched tightly closed. She hated the crows, she hated not having her parents, she hated the junk heap.

    She hated the whole world. She hated a world where there were people whom nobody loved, and threw them away like trash. She hated a world where there were those like her who no longer had anyone to love.

    Finally the crows gave up and dispersed. She fell to her knees panting hard, tears streaming down her face. She dropped her pipe and put the backs of her hands to her eyes and sobbed and sobbed.

    "Why do you cry?" A voice asked her, dull as weathered stone, and empty as death.

    But she ignored the voice and kept on crying, until her tears dried up and her eyes and throat were sore and she just sat there hiccuping. She saw then that her knees were touching a pair of legs lying in the junk pile. She realized then that they belonged to the body and leaped back in fright.

    She heaved a sigh of relief when she put a couple of feet distance between her and the body. "Are you better now?" The voice asked her, as dry as dust.

    "I'll be fine." She said dismissively with the wave of a hand. She didn't bother looking for the person who was talking to her. She didn't care who they were. She folded her hands in her lap and tried her best to look haughty and uncaring while her heartrate slowed down to normal speed.

    She was just thinking that they had gone, when the voice asked again. "You scared away all the crows." It merely stated the fact, with no emotion, flat.

    Claire said nothing. She just wanted this person to go away and leave her alone. She knew she was being childish, but she didn't want to have to deal with anyone. Plus, she was only a child, she was allowed to be childish.

    "Why did you do that?"

    Claire scrunched her eyes tight and gritted her teeth. She was getting really annoyed now. "Look, don't you have better things to do than to ask me stupid questions?" She said, trying to keep her voice calm. Couldn't this person see she didn't want to talk right now.

    "No." The voice said simply. It reminded her of a slight wind going through a desert.

    She was at her breaking point. "Well, just leave me alone! I don't want to talk about it!" She threw her hands up in the air.

    "If that is what you wish." The voice said simply.

    Claire crossed her arms over her chest. "It is." She said.

    Suddenly the junkpile in front of her moved. The body underneath sat up, sending scrapped bits of metal and busted personal electronics cascading down the pile. Claire was so startled she jumped. She didn't get to her feet though, she just fell on her back.

    The body stood up then. It wore dark colors. A long, dark brown cloak and hood, with the hood down. It was a tattered mess at the ends. The black pants were of leather and extremely worn. Wide straps snaked up both long, skinny legs and over bony hips. The cloak covered everything else.

    Claire just stared, her eyes wide. The face held her gaze. She saw it in profile and could not look away. It was so different, alien, unusual. As strange as it was, it was also distinctly male. The skin was perfectly smooth, under the dirt and looked to have been carved from stone the color of soot. A long thin nose and thin lips, eyes that were tawny marbles. The face was thin, the cheekbones showed. And under the eyes the skin was drawn.

    It was when the man started to walk away that she finally came to her senses. "W-wait!" She said, reaching out a hand and catching his cloak.

    He turned to her, looking at her. His expression was blank, waiting.

    "You're alive!" Claire squeaked, dropping his cloak quickly.

    "Mostly." He said, flat, emotionless.

    "What were you doing in there?" She started to ask, but stopped. There were eyes on her. Lots of them. She looked around. There were people all around. But they all seemed extremely busy with what they were doing. Paranoia bloomed in her chest. "Not here. C'mon." She grabbed his cloak again and led him away. No one followed her, but she could feel their stares.


    ***


    "What- who are you?" Claire asked. They were safely ensconced in her hut. It was really only large enough for herself, but they both managed to squeeze in, with the body's legs and feet sticking out.

    "I do not know." The body said. He wasn't looking at her, but looking outside through the opening in her hut.

    "Well, what do I call you?" Claire asked. She could feel herself getting annoyed again.

    "It doesn't matter to me."

    "Don't you have a name?" Claire asked, starting to feel very frustrated.

    "I do not know." The body said.

    "How did you get into the trash heap?"

    "I jumped."

    That surprised her. "You jumped? From where?" There were no structures near the garbage piles, except for the wall. But the wall was heavily guarded and there was stun wire running along the top.

    "I do not know."

    Claire drew her knees up and rested her face on them. "Why did you jump?"

    "I wanted to die." Still no emotion, just a simple statement of facts. And still he looked outside.

    Claire knew that feeling. Sympathy welled up inside of her. She reached out and put a hand on the strange body's shoulder. Her hand felt something hard under the cloak.

    He continued to face the opening to the hut. But his tawny eyes were directed on her as she sat on his knees and pulled the cloak away from his chest. Her eyes widened and she gasped.

    This strange body had no arms. She should have guessed earlier by the way he moved, but she had been preoccupied with getting away from prying eyes and how the body had managed to get in the trash heap. There were three wide metal strips over each shoulder, starting from the front of his shoulder and going into the his back, on the shoulder blade. One over where the shoulder juts out the most, then one across the middle and one underneath. The metal was worn and beaten up, but didn't look rusted. It seemed to be attached by bolts, embedded through the ends of the strips and into the stranger's chest and back.

    "How did you lose your arms?" She asked.

    "I do not know." The body continued staring outside.

    Claire was quiet for a long time after that. She sat in thought until the sky darkened into night. During this time the body did not move. It was unnatural at how utterly still he was. A normal person with blood flowing and heart pumping and lungs breathing will always move, even if they try to be as absolutely still as stone. But this body, when he chose not to move, was no different than rock.

    So, when he did finally move, she was startled from her reverie immediately. It hadn't been a large movement either. Just a slight turn in his head, his eyes following something outside.

    Claire peered outside. Men were heading their way. Three of them, from what she could see. She didn't dare stick her head out to try to see better. She didn't like the looks of these men who were heading towards her hut so purposefully.

    She was getting a bad feeling. It started in her stomach and went upward, squeezing her throat. "We have to leave." She said. She decided it then. They should leave now, before the men reached the hut.

    The body obeyed her simply, with no thought of questioning or arguing. He slid out of the hut and stood, there wasn't enough room to stand up inside. Claire followed him, eyeing the men warily. They had stopped about ten feet from the hut, spread out about two feet apart.

    "What do you want?" Claire asked, peering out from behind the body. Her voice trembled slightly and she hated it. She stepped out from behind the body and took a more defiant stance.

    "The body is coming with us." The middle man stepped forward. Claire guessed he was the leader.

    "What? Why?" Claire said, taken aback. "I found him first!"

    "He could be a spy from the Upper Class." The leader said. "Everyone knows they want to exterminate us from the junk piles."

    "That's impossible!" Claire said. "He was thrown out. He wasn't sent down here."

    "Maybe that's just what they want us to think." The man to the left of the leader cut in. "He could be leading carriers right to us!"

    "How is he gonna lead anyone anywhere? He's got no arms!" Claire asked, getting angry now. "He's harmless to anyone!"

    "And you're just a kid! What do you know?" The leader yelled. "Now, he's coming with us!" He walked up to Claire and the body. She could see a crowbar in one hand. in fact, all three were armed with a piece of scrap metal. "They sent him down as trash? Well, we'll dispose of him properly."

    "No!" Claire screamed, stepping in front of the body with her arms wide open.

    The leader didn't even pause, he lifted one arm and brought it down on her face and neck hard. Light exploded behind her eyes and she felt her feet leave the ground. She landed on her shoulder hard. She didn't move, her eyes were scrunched tightly closed, her body was stunned. All she could do was whimper.

    She heard a yell and managed to open her eyes a little. The pain was nearly blinding, but she was able to see the leader go sailing off the junk pile and into the next one. The other two looked at the body stunned. But they set their faces grim and hefted their weapons. They advanced together.

    Claire saw the body's cloak whip up and suddenly there was a heavy black boot under one man's chin. Then he was flying into another junk pile. The body spun and the other man was thrown sideways onto the ground.

    Claire's vision faded in and out and her head throbbed. She couldn't be sure of what she was actually seeing. When her vision cleared again there were two black boots in front of her face. The body knelt down. "Can you move?" He asked, his voice was still flat and emotionless.

    "Ugh...." Was Claire's response.

    "We must leave, and I cannot carry you if you do not get up." He stated.

    With a horrible groan Claire willed her body to move. She sat up and the world spun. She closed her eyes for a second before she got sick.

    "Climb up, if you can."

    She stretched her arms out blindly. Her hands found his back and she circled her arms around his neck and clung to him. She felt him stand and dizziness overcame her again at the movement.

    "There are some loose straps by your hands."

    She felt a bit and found a strap that once was bound around his chest, but had been snapped. She tied both ends around her hands and held on for dear life. She felt him walking slowly, but steadily forward. "Where are we going?" She asked.

    "Away." was the only answer she got.

    She looked back at the junkyard. Hot wetness ran into her eye, stinging incredibly. "Good." She said. "I don't like it here." She didn't ask how they would get out of the junkyard. She just closed her eyes, concentrating only on the slow steady rythm of his walking.