Young Writers Society

"A miner and an accomplished scholar," Gideon mused. "You have quite the life, young man." There were quite a lot of words being thrown out here that he did not understand. That vexed him slightly, but definitions could come later. Winning trust and establishing who was who was more important just now, especially when it came to the snappish old woman. She seemed shrewd, if a little proud, and was the oldest one here. That spoke to experience, though Gideon had known many people older than him to be utter fools.

Sky barely avoided cracking up at the Minecraft-miner confusion. If someone had been watching her face closely, they might have seen her hidden amusement, but otherwise it was well-covered other than the very faintest of smirks.

Everyone had said their names now. The group seemed peculiar and strange, like someone had searched the human race to make a list of weird but unique people. If that was so, then she wondered why she would be part of it. Sky had far too many questions about this place and the people around her.

Maybe I should get them talking to see what they're like, and if I can trust them. That doesn't need to be done now, but in the meantime... Maybe I can get them to trust me first by helping out.

"I've got snacks in this bag," she offered, slipping her backpack off one shoulder. "Not all that much, they were meant to be for emergencies and just for one person. But it could last us a couple days, and it might be hard to find food. So just come to me when you need food and I guess we can ration it out. Hopefully we've all eaten today."

Offering to share was something Skyler hadn't done in a long time. It wasn't because she was greedy-- in fact she very much liked helping when she could-- it was simply because there was never anything to spare. One bad day on the streets could mean being unable to pay her weekly rent, which meant having to find an even cheaper and trashier apartment. Being generous always meant risking herself, but she knew she wasn't going to let anyone here starve while she could do anything about it, even if they were practically strangers.

Levi's stomach grumbled.

He did his best to ignore it. Sky had a point when she brought up rationing. It was hard to tell what they could find here. And while Levi could theoretically stomach things that most people probably couldn't, he couldn't risk dying from something as stupid as food poisoning.

"Thanks," Levi said. He could wait a bit before eating. "Hopefully, we won't get to a point where we need to ration."

He thought back to when he had teleported to the top of the building. There were plants, but he didn't recognize any of them. It was too risky to eat one of those. They could try catching some random animal lurking within the buildings. Those likely wouldn't be deadly.

Still, a city like this had to have some kind of market. Even with an apocalypse, there would be something there. Levi wasn't stupid. He knew that if they weren't the first group to come through and those other groups had someone smart on their side, they'd probably swing by the market first.

If he was remembering that view right, the direction they would need to go to get the city's center would be...

He looked past Gideon.

There.

"We should go that way," he said, pointing towards Gideon. "I was in one of the buildings when I got here. I didn't climb all the way up it, but I caught a glimpse of the city. That's the center. If my guess is right, we should be able to find some shops there that we can get supplies from."

"Get supplies from" sounded a lot better than "raid the stores clean", but Levi had a sneaking suspicion they'd pick up on the implied meaning.

"Well, we do need to think about what happens if we run into someone or something," Emma pointed out. "West Virginia and Pennsylvania were full of raiders-- you couldn't" go more than three miles without running into four or five brutes with shotguns and clubs. Apart from her cane--" she motioned to the president-- "we're weaponless, even if we're potentially superior in numbers to anyone or anything we find."

"So you're serious about this nuke thing?" Winthrop asked.

"Indubitably. I've seen the ruins of New York, Nashville, D.C., Philly-- the whole nine yards."

"Hmm... So, you have survival skills and have learned to adapt... can you navigate?"

Emma shook her head, sighing. "No, that was my father's job. He'd be able to get us anywhere by looking at the sky for a few minutes, and then we'd go on our way."

Winthrop turned to the others. "Do any of you have a compass? Or a sewing needle and magnet?"

Jam hoped his stomach didn’t grumble aloud at the idea of food. Not that he liked being the stereotypical always hungry college student, but he was feeling like the stereotypical always hungry college student at the moment.

At the question of weapons, he found this group a bit impressive to already be thinking about how to survive here. Then again, this was some kind of apocalyptic world, so maybe it was good for them to figure out their skills at the beginning and not in the middle of an important battle.

Jam shook his head, patting his pockets to remember that he had passed out onto his bed for some time, before waking up and all.

“I woke up from a nap to find myself here, so I have literally nothing. But I did wake up passed out in some house, in case we don’t see many stores at the center building, or whatever. At least I know that place didn’t have a locked front door, so we wouldn’t really be breaking in, ya know?”

Gideon did, in fact, have a magnet, but he had no intention of producing it.
"We can navigate by the sun," he pointed out, gesturing to the sky. "That's simple enough, is it not? I find compasses to be rather unnecessary unless the clouds are too thick."

“Raiding a market,” Sky muttered, as she had very much picked up on what Levi was really suggesting. Jam also had a point that nothing was really considered breaking in here. “Well, if there are no laws here anymore, I suppose it’s not exactly a crime...”

It still felt like a misdemeanor, but it wouldn’t be hurting anyone. Even so, her stomach hurt at the thought and she felt a little sick. She didn’t like theft at all. Some days, it had been tempting to swipe another thing to eat at the store whenever she bought food, just to have a more complete meal. Sky never did it, though. She didn’t want to face the consequences for robbery.

They didn’t have much of a choice though, right? It was probably less bad than she was making it to be. Skyler’s backpack had always held food for emergencies, but they couldn’t live on a dozen protein bars and a bag of trail mix for too long. It was almost amusing how of all the emergencies she could have used this food for, it was being tossed on another world with a weird team.

“A compass isn’t too useful right now because besides this market, we have no idea where we’re headed,” she added. “There’s no point in heading north or southeast or anywhere in between. But if we did ever travel that way, Gideon’s right about using the sun.” It never occurred to her that her Swiss Army knife was a weapon, and so she didn’t mention it.

Levi nodded in agreement with Sky. He didn't miss her muttering what he was implying about the market; he could tell she wasn't exactly excited by the idea. But they had to do what they could to survive right now, and they were more in need of the food than the city's nonexistent inhabitants.

Still, for the first time, he was actually a little impressed by the ingenuity of the group. Sky had a point about the compass, but Dorothy also was onto something when she originally suggested it. And Emma's comment about a weapon was smart, too. Levi kept forgetting that he'd need one of those if he wanted to keep playing his part.

"We could look for weapons on the way," Levi suggested. "We'll probably have to get creative with whatever we use. I doubt we're going to find swords or guns lying around."

...On second thought, swords weren't the most normal weapon to mention first. But there was little he could do to take it back now. Old habits died hard.

He eyed the road ahead of them.

"...Maybe we can find some broken pipes," he mused.

I'm a radical feminist and have the sharpest tongue this side of the Mason-Dixon," Emma thought to herself. [i]I would scare the powder off of the Founders' hair. Heck, I'd probably scare pollen away forever, and then we wouldn't have to beg the sky for rain just so we could breathe and then cry about the humidity year round...

"Ayuh*, even a simple sling of cloth and twigs is better than nothing," Winthrop agreed, "although I daresay my cane is at least enough to deal with any small crittahs we might find in a down cellah** or out and about."


*Ayuh - Word from the state of Maine that expresses agreement.
**Down Cellah (Down Cellar) - Basement

At the mention of weapons, Gideon reached under his jacket subtly. His revolver was still in its holster; good. The small pair of knives at his belt were in order as well, and his little bag of tinkering tools was on the other side. Genesis was in his left jacket pocket.
Satisfied that his tools and various implements were safe (though not certain the revolver was in working order; he would have to check that later), Gideon relaxed slightly.
"I would certainly like to take a look at the market," he said. "If it's abandoned, it means we can easily acquire supplies. If not, we can at least get our bearings."

Sky nodded, very slowly. Some people had a voice in their head that spoke up every now and then to be someone’s conscience. To her, the voice sometimes sounded like Kyla— young and delicate, often with a nervous tremor to it. She knew she would sound less youthful now if she’d stayed around, but the voice sounded the way she remembered it as. Today, Kyla’s tone was disapproving.

One thing Sky was good at was learning the unique parts of a person’s voice and easily reading the emotions in them. She thought of it as each voice having its own kind of melody, where they all sounded different, and it meant she could recognize a person by the sound of their voice if she’d heard them talking enough. That meant Kyla’s voice seemed to have been seared into her mind, and so Sky could hear it as if she was standing here right now. Kyla would never steal an item, even if it didn’t seem to belong to someone anymore.

Sky sighed. She hoped her sister would understand.

“The market’s our best bet,” she said slowly, keeping her voice low and quiet so it was harder to hear the strong reluctance in her voice. It felt like someone, even if they were worlds away and couldn’t have known, was disappointed in her, and that feeling hung heavy on her.

Levi took his glasses off and started wiping them with the corner of his shirt just as Gideon subtly reached underneath his jacket. He knew exactly why Gideon would be reaching there right now: he had to have some kind of weapon. Cleaning his glasses was just an excuse for looking down. If he glanced out of the corner of his eye, he could see what Gideon was doing.

Gideon didn't mention weapons when he spoke. Levi took it as a sign that his guess was right.

He would have to be careful, then.

A little paranoia didn't hurt.

He slipped his glasses back on and readjusted the straps to his backpack. It was a good thing he had put most of his books in his locker before leaving school. There was plenty of space to cram miscellaneous supplies in.

The group headed towards the market.

It didn't take long for them to get there. They really hadn't ended up all that far from it. Levi could have made small talk, but he didn't feel much like talking right now. He just wanted to get from Point A to Point B.

Jam sure hoped he wasn't expected to have to carry a weapon around or anything, as he would not put himself as a good person to be in any kind of role like that. He was excited to learn more about this place, and that the market looked right out of a book he probably read at some point.

"Do we have any idea of what the currency is here? Like, what should we try to barter with?"

He twirled his thumbs, tucking them into his jacket to not be a distraction. From what he had read or watched, there was always something that was deemed valuable or necessary in a world post-apocalypse thing.

...That was something Levi hadn't considered.

"Hopefully, we won't need anything to barter with," Levi said. He could just barely see the market now. Within the next few minutes, they would be well within it. As it was, he could just barely make out the broken, forgotten stalls he had seen from his aerial view. "When I looked at the market from the ro-om, it looked like it was abandoned. We won't find anyone to barter-"

He came to a stop.

He hadn't seen anyone in the street before. There still wasn't anyone beside them. But when he stared out through his glasses, he could make out figures standing behind some of the stalls. The postures were all weird and contorted. They looked like someone had tried sculpting a human but had given up on the proportions and realism of the poses halfway through.

Levi marched on ahead of the group, only stopping when he got to the first stall in the row.

He stared at the stall's sole occupant.

The occupant stared back with lifeless, empty eyes.

He was right. This market was abandoned. He reached out a hand across the stall and felt the person's arm crumble in his fingertips. This thing wasn't really a person. It was just the remnant of one. His mind flickered back to the documentaries he had watched at least a decade ago. Some reptiles shed their skins. This looked like one of those shed skins. Maybe not as soft as a snake's - his first mental comparison - but maybe as hard as a scorpion's. Those shed skins had always looked tough.

He glanced back at the market.

Behind almost every stand was one of those skins.

...It made Levi wonder what had happened to their original owners.

Emma reluctantly slinked behind Levi, glaring at the skins. "Um... let me be the first to say, ew." She glanced at the other skins, then at the people around her. She thought back to just a few minutes ago-- talking about the game. Her mind started to wander as her train of thought switched tracks, half-curious about what these were, but mostly curious about how to kill them if it came down to it.

"Young'uns," Wintrhop mused, "we're gonna need a biggah flyswattah."