Gallows Humour | Watty's 2023

The Cook

Sweat stung in all the open wounds they'd collected. Half the air they puled intot their heaving lungs was concrete dust. They swung their shovel again, again, again, again. More often than not they struck at ghosts. The factioneers crept through the dark and the dust with the efficiency of sharks prowling familiar waters. True hopped fallen scavengers in pursuit of the wraiths in the dimness.

Swing. Swing. Swing-thump. Swing.

Their arms grew leaden. They were in good shape, but they weren't Heracles. They tripped over the body of a merchant whose face had been slashed so hat True only recognized her from her fin-shaped hand. An agonized shriek echoed off the damaged concrete rafters. Ahead, the ferrety shape of Jonesy straddled a body. He weilded a butcher knife the length of his forearm, his soppy eyes darted from True to a third person who emerged from the swirling dust between them. A bold red cross shone alarm-light bright on the stranger's back. True lunged to ram their shovel handle into the base of the factioneer's skull. The factioneer's head whipped forward and True hauled her back to acquaint her eye socket with their fist. Their knuckles popped, the factioneer staggered back, and they kicked her away into the dust with a boot to the soft flesh below her sternum.

"We have to run," Jonesy cried from his place on the floor, a young merchant cadled close to his chest. Thick grey dusted turned the merchant two-d and stickeresque, natural skin tone and depth stamped flat except for a fat ribbon of blood running from a swollen round welt on her crown. That wound looked nasty. It looked like the kind of wound that would give her trouble walking.

"Fuck off," True exhaled, unconvincingly since they had to lean over and rest their hands on their knees. They needed a minute. It was broiling hot down in that car garage and their throat felt like someone had shot a sandblaster into their open mouth.

"Look around, we're not saving this place," Jonesy said, trying to heave the merchant woman up. She groaned, eyelids fluttering. Her ankle had been lost under a chunk of rubble and her leg stretched out uselessly from her otherwise unbloodied body. She would have had a better shot left there where the rubble hid her from the soon-to-be-incoming shadow dwellers.

"I can't carry her on my own," Jonesy's plaintive whine got punctuated by a scream and an immediate stream of hushing and inaudible soothing. Consequences of Jonesy kicking the rubble chunk. On instinct, True stuck more distance between them and the noisemakers. In spite of the misguided effort, True chewed on the notion that maybe Jonesy meant some of that pastered-on honey-thick caring.

"True—"

"Fine! Fine, just be quiet," True hissed, cutting back to Jonesy and the merchant. He had his arms around her, coddling her head. True wedged between his arms to clamp her mouth shut and kicked the rubble off. Spit and hot breath slapped their palm, chased by a couple warm tears. They hooked the merchant under her armpits.

If nothing else, Jonesy had lived as a satellite colony of this After Market for as long as True had been visiting, and he knew his way around. True was pretty sure they'd been going in circles on their own. Plus, he was right. A little. The place was done for.

"To the exit," they instructed.

They wound through the dungeon, skirting silhouettes, hopping lumps. The merchant woman sagged of their left side. They'd been right about the welt, she wobbled uncontrollably, stopping twice to empty her stomach while just ahead, Jonesy took his sweet time leading them to safety. Consciousness abandoned her, or rather, kited around her. There, but useless as far as running went.

At last they came to a short, narrow hall that ended in a metal door. Giant curls of paint shed from its surface and lay in the dirt piled before it. A flit of black in the haze caught True's eye as they approached the edge of the hall.