Red Foot Girl - Chapter 1 'The Raveners'

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     Chapter 1 – The Rock and The Raveners

     Last Day of the First Month of Spring

     – 8pm: Southern Sector, Basalt Traps, Red Grass Valley –

     Mio didn’t know what hit him. Whatever it was, it hit his head so hard that the resulting ‘CRACK!’ didn’t even register as a sound. 

     As more stones crashed into him, Mio’s fight-or-flight system kicked into high gear and he started running so hard he almost came out of his boots. He could see his elbows and knees pumping and he could feel his feet hitting the ground but he didn’t move, not one finger length.

     Puzzled by his lack of progress, Mio shot a look down at his thudding feet and finally understood the problem—he was still firmly buckled to his hiking cart. Mio yanked at the strap, desperate to free himself, but it was too late. 

     It was close to sunset when the two filthy men exploded out of the wall of red grass and attacked him. Mio plucked out his belt knife, ready to fight, but they pinned him down and overwhelmed him with little effort.

     With their sun-scorched faces and matted hair, Mio could barely tell them apart except for the color of their eyes. The one who tied his hands had blue eyes… Bright blue. The other had brown eyes and was a bit more greasy. They were both thin, starvation thin, and their stomachs pooched out far past their hips.

     The blue-eyed man held Mio at knifepoint and the greasy one emptied his pockets and pouches. He threw everything except Mio’s chit sack into the verge, grinning at Mio’s outrage at the loss of his gear. When they tied his hands, they unbuckled the cart strap and mocked Mio for getting caught so easily. 

     They forced Mio to lie over the top of his cart and then tied him down like a pig for slaughter. The little surveyor tried to engage with them, admitting freely that he worked for the Plutarks and was on his way back to Sector City with soil samples.

     When Mio tried to explain again, that he didn’t have any valuables but he would be happy to share his small store of food, they slapped at his head until he stopped talking. 

     The blue-eyed man buckled on the cart strap, flipped the throttle to low and hauled Mio and his cart back down the narrow dirt trail. The two raveners walked side by side, chatting happily about this and that, exactly like a couple of farmers on their way to Seventh Day Market.

     As the cart jounced along the rutted path, and more and more blood pooled into Mio’s wounded head, the dizzying waves of sickness overwhelmed his senses. When Mio came to, stinking of vomit, he couldn’t make out their words. The men were laughing now, ecstatic at the weight of the haul. He could see their black-hole mouths snapping open and shut, but the sound was incomprehensible—as if his ears were stuffed full of cotton wool. 

     It was close to full dark by the time they arrived back at the hidden campsite. The men cut the ropes holding Mio to the cart and dumped him into the dirt, right next to a heavy block of basalt. It was about the height of a stool and prepared with a short rope already attached. The men tied Mio’s ankle to the rock and then turned around, focusing all their attention on the hiking cart. Mio took his chance to push himself out of the dirt, sit on the rock and take a quick look around. 

     The camp was disgusting. The men had clearly been there for some time. Mio judged six months at least—by the height of the garbage alone. The broken gear and stripped-down carts were stacked so high in some places that the piles obscured the shoulder-high grass. 

     The camp was deep in the center of the valley and Mio could see there would be no easy escape, even if he could manage to get himself untied. 

     Mio eyed his boots and when the men were busy cutting the cart tie-downs, he retied his bootlaces as tight as his swollen fingers would allow. 

     It was getting too dark to see so the greasy one lit their only light source, a sputtering lantern, filled with cloudy oil, with a string for a wick. He set it on the box-cart they were using as a table, where it billowed out rancid smoke and a tiny bit of light. 

     The greasy man grabbed out Mio’s carefully packed canvas carry sacks and said to his partner, “Hah, I tole you this ’un be worth stopping. See they all’re heavy…”

     The blue-eyed one poked towards Mio with a skinning knife and spit out, “Which ’un’s got the gold?”

     Mio was sitting very still, trying not to puke on his boots, when the man kicked some loose dirt at him to get his attention and roared out his question again. 

     Mio stared at the man, stunned by his stupidity. He flashed the lapel of his canvas jacket, an obvious identifier to anyone with eyes. The black-n-purple design clearly marked him as a Sector City contractor. 

     They stared back at him, their faces twinned with identical looks of incomprehension.

     Mio, clearly exasperated, spit out, “I-told-you-I-work-for-the-Plutarks! It’s not treasure, it’s just dirt!”

     The greasy one grabbed the first thing to hand, a blasted-out battery from a nearby trash pile, and hurled it at Mio. His aim was terrible and Mio watched it fly across the campsite and land about a length away. Mio’s barely concealed smirk was forestalled by a second throw which hit him square in the chest. 

     Mio flinched and the man roared, “The SHIT I care who you work for… Them Plutarks? Them Guilds? None o’ them is stupid enough to pay some scrawny little mano to go dig up DIRT!” 

     The blue-eyed man glared at Mio suspiciously and spat, “Da fuk’s wrong with you? Lying dirt digger… Which of these is got the gold?” 

     Mio’s head was pounding, his hands were throbbing and suddenly he couldn’t keep anything straight. He felt a bit snockled, as if he were two cups past his limit of that gut-rot mescalito they served in the Sector City slums. He could feel his left eye was closing a beat slower than his right and his vision was starting to blur. 

     He opened his mouth to try and answer, but the words wouldn’t come. Finally, he just shrugged at their terrifyingly expectant faces… 

     He honestly couldn’t think of anything else to say. 

     They both went crazy and started dumping out everything else, including his small store of food and his carefully packed crate of camping gear. 

     Mio watched in disbelief as nine solid months of effort and everything he’d been working towards, for the last five years lay in scattered heaps across the campsite.

     When they couldn’t find any gold, they began throwing things at him so Mio hunched over, trying desperately to stay small and figure a way out of this insanity. Unfortunately, the sight of the growing pile of carefully labeled soil samples sent him into overload—his months, NO, years of unending, exhaustive effort, dumped out like garbage—it was just too much. 

     The words burst out of him unbidden, “Please, please don’t, I’m begging you.”

     As one, the furious men kicked the little vials every which way. In the dim lamplight, as they jerked and spun around the campsite, Mio thought they looked like two shit-specked puppets, dancing out their rage on invisible strings. 

     As he watched them dance, his hearing went out again and the unintelligible roar of their anger faded away to a murmuring buzz. Mio pulled on his earlobe. It didn’t help.

     Mio’s focus shifted to the last unopened canvas sack and suddenly he was furious. With himself for getting waylaid in the first place. With the foolishness of these starving men, throwing out food while they hunted for gold. But more than anything, he was furious at losing the vials because losing the vials meant he would go back empty-handed. And that would break all of his promises. 

     His voice rang with ill-disguised contempt and he asked, “What are you gonna buy out here? How’s gold gonna help you… OUT HERE?”

     The greasy one scowled at Mio, his face screwed up so tight his eyes completely disappeared. He stomped on the vials, trying to break them apart. When that didn’t work, he grabbed the last unopened sack, and stalked towards Mio, waving a knife.

     Mio blinked. It was his knife, his favorite knife and a ridiculous item to have on a cross-country trek. It was a falcata shape, with a long narrow blade, a deep curve and a dramatically pointed tip. The knife was one of his only vanities. Beautifully smithed with a folded steel pattern, it was as sharp as sunlight, heavy for its size and difficult to handle.

     The greasy man stepped closer, his face gone black with fury. Mio shied back—and tried to block his nose, but it did no good. The broke-tooth man smelled like death, literally.

     The man brandished the knife at Mio and with a look of pure evil, he tried to cut open the last carry sack. He got the knife halfway through the tough canvas, and almost sliced his own arm off in the process. 

     Mio didn’t want to antagonize these men and he understood they were dangerous… Maybe it was the head wound? He didn’t know exactly why but he couldn’t seem to help himself.

     Mio smirked. Right in the man’s face. 

     With a growl of rage the man hurled the knife away, bent over and hissed, his voice dark with menace, “You know what, little mano…”

     He raised his head to look across the blacked-out fire. When he caught the eye of his blue-eyed friend, they both went completely silent. 

     And then they turned and stared at him with their eyes… their crazy hungry eyes. 

     Mio flinched. 

     He didn’t understand exactly what was going on, but his instincts sure did. He tried to run, rope-tied ankle and all, but the greasy man had grabbed ahold of his jacket. 

     The blue-eyed one came closer, rubbing his thumb along the edge of the skinning knife, testing for sharpness, “No gold, huh? Well that does change things… Um hummm…” 

     With that ‘Um hummm’, the man’s voice transformed from rage to someone imagining DINNER and Mio’s face blanked in shock. He frantically twisted his bound hands, trying to break the rope, but it did no good and the rope just bit in deeper.

     The skeletal men circled Mio, slapping at his head and prodding him with the tips of their knife-sharp fingers, making even more sickening comments, “Oh yessss, you are a juicy one, arerentyou?”

     “Ooo, a little small, oh yes, but still, fresh and sweet for the pot.”

     “Whatchoo think? I’m thinking ribs for dinner, is what I’m thinking…”

     As they gabbled and poked at him, Mio hunched down and tried to shield his head. He shut his eyes to block out the sight of their eager faces as the dead-eyed men circled and tested him for fat content.

     The blue-eyed one grabbed Mio’s shirt front and pulled hard enough to pop the top two buttons. The effort dislodged Mio’s new-tech cool pads and the heat-crazed men immediately started fighting over the lifesaving gear.

     First they ripped Mio’s pads off, screeching at each other about who deserved to have them. It ended with them rolling around the dirty campsite trying to strangle each other with their bare hands. They were both weak with hunger but their fear at losing out on the tech seemed to give them extra incentive. 

     As the starving men snatched and scratched and fought, Mio was distracted by a high-pitched sound, piercing like a whistle. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a bright flash of orange. Before he could turn his head to look, his eyes caught the shape of something small and shiny arcing across the campsite. He followed the glittery spinning ‘something’ as it flashed in the lantern light. It landed, right next to his boot, with a little ‘PLOP!’