Aethosphere Chronicles: The Rat Warrens by Jeremiah D. Schmidt Page B

leaning with her knobby elbows resting
on the table, and it occurred to him how loose and baggy her
tank-top hung off her shoulders. Through the sleeve of her armpit
he could even see clear on through from one side to the other, and
how her homemade bra wrapped around fleshy ribs rather than any
sort of breasts. There wasn’t an ounce of fat to be found on her,
anywhere, and that got him worrying. Their father had been in a
similar state when they’d dumped him into the Axillary. He’d been
so light, hardly heavier than a piece of damp cardboard, and now
Fen shuddered to think of the same thing happening to Lydia.
    “Here,” he offered his plate up.
    “I already ate,” she said tiredly, and pushed
it back.
    “What…like yesterday? You on some sort of air
diet now?”
    “Funny. Just finish eating, Fen.”
    For four days Fen tried to find some sort of
contentment in crawling through trash heaps and drain grates and
narrow catches with his sister and her gals; sifting through
up-level flotsam; but it just reminded him of why he’d left it all
and joined the Bednest Gang in the first place. When contentment
failed he tried reason alone, but when days of scrounging had
brought them nothing but a few product boxes and some spent
tobacco, the hours of labor looked less like making a living and
more like torture. He was sure kids sent to the sweaty were better
off. At least they got fed and could count on a token a week.
    But day after day took its toll; wading,
breath held tight, sometimes in mud, sometimes sewage, and
sometimes in waist-deep rotted food littered with broken glass; and
his mind drifted to the stash with more frequency. Here he was
slaving just to survive when a fortune lay waiting for him. He
wondered what his mates might be up to, or how they’d taken to his
sudden disappearance. Fen tried to find them at one point, but they
were off causing mischief, and Lydia was something of a
taskmaster.
    “We’ve a narrow window with some of the more
choice locations, Fen. Those high-dwellers dump on a pretty regular
schedule and there’s not a scrounger who hasn’t taken note—”
    “I know, I know.” Fen grumbled as he tromped
behind his sister through ankle deep muck along some long-buried
access way. “I used to do this too.”
    “Well not for years, and things change.”
    “Yeah, like your gals,” He’d looked around
the darkened passage to a trio of squat forms lumbering just past
the circle of light thrown out by Lydia’s arc-torch.
    “Fen Tunk, what is that supposed to
mean?”
    “‘ Supposed to mean’ ”, he repeated as
though his sister was being dense. One needed only look at the
girls. They looked like they’d each devoured another person and
double in size for it. No more than a few years back they were like
Lydia, thin, and each with their own enticing attributes. Sasa with
her charcoal skin and perfect complexion, fiery Dalana, and coy
Mitz with her ample features. Though he’d just been a kid when they
came around on the regular, he remembered them fondly. “I just
don’t know why you’re all skin and bones and those three look like
they’ve been feasting on the regular.”
    “Well…we all find different ways to survive,
Fen,” she’d whispered, “and sometimes consorting with the rat
lord’s bartermen brings in much needed perks.”
    Fen pointed off to where Lydia’s friends
probed the darkness. “Maybe they oughta try taking less of those
perks.”
    Right then and there Lydia had turned on him
and smacked him in the face. Wearing gloves, his sister’s assault
wasn’t particularly painful, but it was shocking. “These girls are
out here for us. They don’t need to be scroungin’, Fen, and they
don’t need some creep like you putting them down for nonsense that
don’t affect you one bit. Their life’s goal ain’t exciting you, so
if they take extra today, ‘cause tomorrow there might be none, then
that’s their call, and we should be happy for ‘em. Their