“There’s not much we can tell you. You’re new, you haven’t got any references, and friends or relations in town. Nothing to stop you trading all of us in for a life of luxury.”That was expected. In their situation, I wouldn’t have trusted me either. Nonetheless, it was irritating. Almost as if even they couldn’t figure out the town’s backstory, so they were just going to handwave it to avoid awkward questions.
“Right then. So you’re all going to the surface, and you need me to keep you safe. I’m not making any promises, but I can give you a few tips. For starters, don’t wash anymore. You’ll stink, but so does most of the surface, you can blend in better.” I started, wanting to get this over with. Not that I didn’t like this place, but, well, claustrophobia can be a bitch. I kept thinking that the roof would collapse, that I would be buried under tonnes of soil, helpless. A terrible feeling, and by the sound of it they wanted to keep me trapped down here for a long while.
So I taught them, as quickly as possible. I went over the basics of scavenging, what to avoid, had them eating tiny meals- after all, they’d probably want to get used to that sooner rather than later. For their part, they were fairly good students, listening carefully. It took barely any time to get them used to stuff like standing properly still, so that you didn’t make a sound, didn’t stand out, just faded into the background. I could remember how it had saved my arse hundreds of times. How once, when I was scavenging, I’d been cornered by the lizards. I had been frozen in fear, completely still with only a few boxes between me and them. I just stayed so still, and it worked. They moved on, and a few minutes after they’d passed me by, I got up, and got out. That had been a few months ago, and since then, it had become one of the most useful skills I had. And I had no choice but to just give it, and all the rest of my tricks, to a bunch of mouthbreathers who’d never earned them, never relied on them to survive. We sometimes spoke, at first, but I just couldn’t take it. They were so damn entitled. They’d rode out the apocalypse in relative comfort, while on the surface there were people struggling and dying constantly. I’m not a people person, as I’ve made abundantly clear, and so I avoided conversation as much as possible, keeping any conversations short.
That said, sometimes I did get suckered into longer conversations. One time, I was speaking to one of the recruits- a blonde called Amy- about life on the surface for a full hour. She was fascinated, by how people could survive up there, how nobody had thought of teaming up against the lizards.
“After all,” She would say, “There must be more of us than there are of them, so surely if everyone worked together we could beat them back!”
“Not quite. There may or may not be more of us, but that doesn’t matter. Those things are… They could kill anyone who they found, if they need to. Any groups of more than 5 have a very short shelf life- they get hunted down like animals. And even if you could gather enough people, how’d you keep them fed and armed? It’s far better to simply keep scavnging and live than try to fight back and die.”
“That’s a defeatist attitude. Besides, I for one would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.” She seemed very fond of that phrase. It seemed like an utterly alien sentiment top me, though.
“If you live on your knees for the moment, you can get back up when it all blows over- something that wouldn’t happen if you went and got yourself killed for your so- called ‘honour’. You know what happens to honourable people? Do you? They get sent out by smarter people to fight and die, and if they survive, they’ll get sent out again and again. When you’re willing to fight, you aren’t a person, you’re an asset! And assets tend to get used!” I was shouting by the end, angry at her naivety, how she believed all the garbage she was being fed.
Other than a few other scraps, nothing major happened, and despite myself, the other recruits grew on me. I learned, too. Things like how to win a fight quickly and quietly, how to search as part of a group. Not terribly useful to me for the most part, but still, I could actually a bit of what I was taught, and it made them feel useful.
Of course, it couldn’t last. After a few months of training, it was time to go out on a mission, to destroy some description of barracks. It was meant to be coordinated with several other attacks, to cripple Shewins armies so that they couldn’t crush us the moment they found us. It was the start of a war, and despite myself, I was excited.
Gadgeteers 