The Enthusiasts

7

Some time before Sasha broke into the janitor's closet, Emerson stood with both feet firmly planted back at street level. He was reluctantly equipped with an AK-47 strapped over his backpack that was pulled tightly at his shoulders as he neared the checkpoint at the main gates of Raven's Tower. He had already built another identity for himself days earlier, leaning on personal hunches and best-kept history as to what he might expect the current procedures at the local Spectra checkpoints to be like if he were to try and enter a facility through the front door. And that was a big IF that he had tried his absolute best to avoid up until now.

He and Sasha had left their home at Ranchlands to break into the Spectra data storage facility in an act of desperation, built on hopes that Emerson would gain intel as to where any sparsely seen Spectra-held caches may be left in and around the city. He did everything he could to keep the residents at camp from knowing what the food and supply levels were looking like, but only he and Teddy (who acted as the camp's second-in-command, although no one, with the exception of Teddy, called or thought of him having that title) really knew how low their supplies had dwindled as of late. Teddy still held tight and firm to the importance of adhering to a chain of command, along with titles that he thought put people in control of others; to that point, Emerson and Teddy mostly disagreed, but regardless, they each knew things were bad in the stockroom. Contrary to Emerson thinking he was a good liar or keeping a calm and collected attitude that would shield the others from knowing how dire their situation really was getting, the other six members that made up the small camp knew almost just as well what was going on. Everyone had seen the portion sizes shrinking at meal times, even with the camp population plummeting drastically over the last two years. You can't keep secrets from hungry people when the truth is panging at their stomachs every few minutes. They were only halfway through winter and current inventory left one, maybe two weeks of the vegetables that had managed to survive through harvest in the late summer/early fall, along with a few frozen pigeons, squirrels, and a possible prairie dog still on ice. Anything else left was a mish-mash of non-perishables they'd managed to score from the rapidly depleting Spectra caches. This winter's lot was by far the worst yet, barely covering the floor of Ranchlands' lockers and cold storage units.

Living had become increasingly difficult outside of the Spectra-controlled territories since Emerson had left the company, but nothing had felt as dire as the last six months. With drought making any decent crop growth near impossible in a Canadiana growing season, keeping a camp like theirs going was impossible without breaking and entering into the remote caches hidden throughout the city. These caches were stockpiled with weapons, ammo, and more importantly non-perishable goods that were meant for the military service workers within the company to access on their rounds throughout the city. North Garrison — like every other city in the Americas — was under the occupation of The Spectra Corporation. There was an understanding among some that the company was doing what they could to try and offer support to the declining areas outside of the company-operated districts through spending on military sweeps to protect outsiders from the growing number of gang strongholds sharing a much more violent discourse. Anyone living outside of the Spectra safe zone was always at risk of being mercilessly hacked and slashed by opportunists making their way around town, overtaking camps' resources and people. The increasing violence within outsider camps or tribes conflicted regularly with the local gangs. Whatever the difference was between a gang, tribe, or camp, no one really knew; there were just some groups of people who seemed fine with living off the land, away from the Spectra regime, willing to share or join with others, while others lived to take and dominate, likely hoping to ultimately dethrone Spectra themselves. That word: domination, was the one Emerson suspected to be the real key as to why Spectra had launched the welfare sweeps around the city. The homesteader camps seemed encouraged, or at least relieved, when they saw Spectra-armored vehicles trolling around, occasionally sweeping out the most ruthless gang strongholds, and admittedly Emerson occasionally was too. But more importantly, he knew Spectra had to exert dominance over the civilization as a whole. The thought of any outside gangs becoming a threat to them was the real call to action by Spectra in Emerson's view.