On Forage

This piece is based on the flash fiction prompt posted yesterday and follows my personal guidelines as described in this post.

Genre: Speculative fiction

Subgenre: Biopunk / Post-Apocalyptic

Seattle, South of Pioneer Square Station ruins; 73 years after The Fall

Kit Keyes could just see the daylight at the end of the tunnel from where she stood on the rusted, flaking remains of light rail tracks. There was not much sun to set the the end of the tunnel alight, as the perpetual twilight of the monsoons filtered out most of it before it even had a chance to get to the ground. It was pervasive gloom that came with the winter months around November and sometimes lasted until as late as May. She half-disbelieved the elders when they said that it had not always been this way; she had known nothing but the winter monsoons for her twenty years of age.

She watched for shadows in that twilight. Patrols regularly cleared out the tunnels of the dwindling population of raiders and ne’er-do-well types that tested the clan’s defenses on a perennial basis north of The Square, only to discover the defenses had only hardened since their last attempt. A few hundred meter south, on the other hand — that section had never been properly secured. Something about that open mouth bothered her this morning. She could not put her finger on what, something that bothered her more than the empty space itself.

It just so happened that south of the Square was some of the best fungus forage on the Line.

“Jackpot,” said Miri, her otherwise soft and damnably pleasant voice a cutting knife in the silence.

Kit jumped at the sound, swinging her AR-47 in Miri’s direction. Damn, but she was jumpy this morning. She flicked back the safety on the gun, not even remembering she had disengaged it to begin with.

“What’s up?” Even in the dim light of the tunnels, Miri’s ashen hair seemed a glow with a light all its own. Behind her was a mostly-intact mural of Seattle’s skyline done in a tiled mosaic the way it must have looked eighty years ago. It looked almost nothing at all like the mosaic, as far as Kit could see.

“I’ve just found a motherload of oysters, they were picked over by someone else last time I was down here, but they’ve recovered and everyone’s going to enjoy them tonight.”

“I assume that’s a kind of mushroom, not the kind we find out on the beach.” Kit hoped not, anyway. The beach variety were toxic as hell and slimy. Everyone knew that except the occasional seagull found next to the broken remains of a mollusk. Seagulls were dumb birds, though.

“Yes,” said Miri, not even attempting to hide her enthusiasm. Her inexhaustible exuberance was one of the many somethings Kit liked about Miri, though you would not catch her saying so out loud. People did so very much like to tease someone when they discovered they had a crush on someone. “Pleurotus ostreatus; nutritious and delicious”.

“Oh, yum,” said Kit without much enthusiasm and turned back to the light at the end of the tunnel. She would eat fungus, but Kit did not count herself much of a fan. Mushrooms creeped her out, especially their gills. Once sliced and cooked, no problem, but before that… Kit shuddered at the thought.

The sound of water rushing by was louder than usual, maybe the was what had her on edge this morning. Although everyone said water filling the tunnels close to the Sound, rushing through and washing everything in its path away, was unlikely or impossible, Kit could not help but recall her childhood nightmares of exactly that happening. The giant wave would rush over her and drown her and her loved ones in a tumbling and churning boil of debris and filthy water.

“Hey,” Kat said forcing her eyes away from the tunnel’s entrance. “You about done there? I’d like to start headi—”

Miri had her arms wrapped around Kit’s neck and her warm, full lips pressed against hers. Stunned, Kit just let the kiss happen to her, much like she let the rest of life just happen to her, her head filled with a sudden fog that made thinking a very hard thing to do.

Miri leaned back, using her hand on Kit’s neck for balance and looked Kit in the eyes. “This is the part where you kiss me back,” she said with a smirk. And then put her lips back where they had been moments before, but this time with a hunger.

Kit surrendered, letting Miri’s tongue probe hers as they kissed for what felt like days upon days, the combined heat of their bodies warming them against the damp winter chill as they pressed closer together.

Eventually, the pleasure had to end. They were needing to get back on task before the others started wondering if something had happened to the two women. Miri ended it as she had started it, abruptly. That was her way and yet another thing Kit adored about her.

“Not to sound as if I am complaining,” said Kit. “But what the hell was that for?”

“Silly,” said Miri. “You didn’t seriously think that no one knew you had your eyes on me for, like, forever.”

“I’m afraid I am as silly as charged. I thought I hid it better than that.”

“You’re terrible at hiding things, just so you know. You’re also oblivious.”

“I’m… oblivious?”

“I got tired of waiting for you to take a hint, so I took matters into my own hands.”

“Oh.”

Miri gave her a quick peck on the cheek and winked. “It’s kind of adorable, to tell you the truth.”

Adorable. Not a word Kit associated with herself. Miri… Now, she was adorable, but Kit never thought she had ever been confused with adorable before.

“We should start heading back,” said Miri. “But first!”

She rummaged through a bag and dug out two braided jute twine hoops. One, she draped over Kit’s neck. On the end, hung a small, almost comically flimsy-looking rusted key. Miri put the other jute necklace over her head. On the end dangled a tiny padlock that had seen better days and was mottled with its own pockmarked patchwork of tarnish and rust. Shadows and lightning played at the far end of the tunnel, followed by the crash of thunder.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “But I was thinking it might make you happy if we tried migrating from being good friends to, erm… Being a couple?”

It was the second time Kit had been left without agency to say or do anything to react that morning.

“I mean,” stammered Miri. “You don’t have to feel obl—”

And they were kissing again, except that it was this time that Kit made it end. “Absolutely, Miriam Glass. Let’s see where it can take us.”

They held hands as they trekked back up to the Pioneer Square checkpoint, swinging their arms in unison. “You like my symbolism?” asked Miri.

Kit was confused, but did not care. “What symbolism?”

“That you, Kit Keyes, get to wear the ‘key’ that unlocks my heart?”

Kit stopped and stared at Miri, who bit her lip in nervousness. She burst out laughing. “Oh my gods, that’s terrible. I’m so glad that I’m not the only one with an awful sense of humor.” She grabbed both of Miri’s hands.

“Promise you never tell anyone you said that. I understand, but…”

Miri burst out laughing and they both laughed until the screaming started closer to the tunnel’s exit.

“What the—” started Miri and Kit already had the rifle in her hands and the safety off.

“Help meeeee!” shouted someone. “I don’t want to die!”

Kit was in a full run seconds later, eyes chasing shadows, scanning for threats and not seeing any in the dim light of the tunnel before she skidded to a stop. And almost too late.

A man with raider tattoos marking him as one of the Ghosts was sprawled on the tunnel floor, an old hunting knife still in its sheath, his gun useless and out of reach. Not that he could reach it if he wanted to.

The Widows’ Lantern’s vines had the Ghost bound up tight as was sending out new shoots of tendrils out to secure the writhing man further. He was not struggling against his bondage, the plant’s neurotoxin overwhelming his pleasure centers as it tightened his grip.

Miri had caught up with Kit. “Oh gods,” was all she could say. She did not need to tell Kit that it was too late to save the man, although anyone would be hard pressed to find a reason to spare a raider this fate. They showed no mercy themselves, and could hardly expect any in return.

Kit might have considered trying all the same had the man been on the fringe of the vine carpeting this section of the tunnel but the patch was too dense and the Ghost too deep within the Lantern’s territory. Chances were, he had been stalking the two of them and had overlooked the Widows’ Lantern, a plant incredible difficult to see against the backdrop of a city in ruins except at night, when its blooms would take the shape of hand-held lanterns and glow with a faint violet light.

In the daylight, they resembled corrupted Creeping Charlie. In the dim of the shadowed tunnel? They were near invisible.

Tendrils sensed the two women’s presence at reached towards them, and they stepped back although they were hardly within the plant’s reach. As they backed away, the Ghost was already gurgling in his final death throes as the plant’s tendril tightened to the point of dismembering its victim.

Kit and Miri turned and walked quickly towards the checkpoint, no longer holding hands or swinging them.

“We need to get the fire team down here and burn it out before it creeps much further up the tunnels,” said Miri. “An infestation might be impossible to eradicate.”

Kit nodded and marched on. Falling in love would have to wait.

~1600 words, ~110 minutes to write

For those curious about how this story started in its previous iteration and why I threw my keyboard across the room, here is the first fragment of the original iteration:

The monsoons had arrived in November, as they had every year that Kit could recall. Some years, the downpours lasted only until the new year was marked. Some years, the monsoons ran until well after and far into the spring months. Her grandfather could recall a time when it was not so but he was one of the last people still alive who could make that claim. He had been sixteen the year of The Fall.

“Folks had done gone broke the world,” he would say when he told told stories around the campfire. “They’d done gone and broke it. Then came the ash and the snows. Then, sommat happened to them scientist and politicals and we stopped hearing them no more.”

After the snows, the rains came. Kit figured they might have succeeded in doing something after all, they way it seemed. But no one could say what it might have been.

YUCK. UGH! BLECH! And it went downhill from there.

This new version could probably use some TLC and I might even give it that in the coming days to clean up typos and clunky sentences — but I am much happier with the result. It’s tighter and culls out all of the unnecessary history lessons.

And, in this version, nobody worth crying over dies.