"Yeah, kill all but her. The girl. We'll take her with us." Phage
The quarter of the city that the pack lives in is almost deserted. Due in no small part to thier presence.
A now empty building on a thoroughfare street that was once a department store. They broke in, stole some locks from the adjacent squat nests and reinforced the doors and windows up to the third storey. There's only five of them now since rayzeel got shived.
Inside they recline against walls on stiff brushy carpet and discuss the possibility of moving somewhere where the sun still shines.
"How likely do you think that is!?"
They swap clothes occasionally, though the odour of thier bodies is all secondary to the burnt-plastic smell everywhere.
"It's supposed to be worse the farther south that you go.
Some places it's like being underwater."
Logically, to go north would avoid more of the cloud. They don't quite know this. Others do and they're already on thier way. Others went south and died slowly from radiation poisoning. Not only is the air itself toxic, there's no protection from the background radiation and the radiation that now slinks down from space too.
They sit in a five angled circle and pass around several earthenware cups filled with pale colored pills. [Yellow - Dilaudid, Blue - Oxycontin, White - Vicodin] Three each, mixing colors to thier pleasure. They crush them in spoons and the concave bottoms to aluminum cans. Heat them, and use plastic syringes the inject them in the the thick cubital veins of the person sitting to their left.
Later Damiel sits in his cubicle alone with his two tall human tallow candles alight.
He's drawn seven orbits around the drywall enclosures with charcoal. Each with a symbol situated somewhere along the orbit as spaced in fifths. He's taken the symbols out of a textbook with a chapter on Quantum Mechanics in it. The others have asked him to explain the book to them, but they always got confused.
Once he adds the final symbol (after whom he has named the latest initiate, Lambda) he slouches back against his rough pallet of blankets and mats. To avoid the rough carpet the pack has set out intact and semi-intact carpets and rugs to soften the floor for sprawling and sparring.
Damiel was very pleased with what they'd accomplished. They were a well coordinated group, three paladins, a ductus and a priest, he thought. They needed more details, he'd taught them symbols for their names:
Digamma, "Deeg"
Qoppa, "Kopp"
Sampi, "Sam"
Lambda, "Lamb"
And himself, Damiel, for whom he'd chosen a simple circle, bisected with a line. He knew his real name, Christian. But he knew nobody else's except Digamma the Ductus. "Bartholemew".
Unity was a beautiful thing when it was dressed up so well. Slowly his candles burned dimmer and he nodded into the background hiss of morphine sleep.
"Kill all not her, The Girl, We'll take her." And thus, the dual pleading ones became neutral. Sampi and Qoppa Took them as victimi. One was stabbed in the lower chest to his right, pulsing blood- the richest color in this world, I swear. I barely remember the last one and I don't know if it was the same then. And Sampi took the other who was probably related to whoever Lambda was. They looked a little bit a same. Perhaps not.
Digamma and I stood aside for a little time to examine this girl while the others dragged the last two away. He looked at me and I reflected his look into my favourite book. "Lambda" I said.
She was an early teen. Those two had much to be envied, she deserved that name now after bringing us here for her initiation. What a sweet girl.
(Thier speech is often a little different from ours due to catastrophic cultural disruption)
A now empty building on a thoroughfare street that was once a department store. They broke in, stole some locks from the adjacent squat nests and reinforced the doors and windows up to the third storey. There's only five of them now since rayzeel got shived.
Inside they recline against walls on stiff brushy carpet and discuss the possibility of moving somewhere where the sun still shines.
"How likely do you think that is!?"
They swap clothes occasionally, though the odour of thier bodies is all secondary to the burnt-plastic smell everywhere.
"It's supposed to be worse the farther south that you go.
Some places it's like being underwater."
Logically, to go north would avoid more of the cloud. They don't quite know this. Others do and they're already on thier way. Others went south and died slowly from radiation poisoning. Not only is the air itself toxic, there's no protection from the background radiation and the radiation that now slinks down from space too.
They sit in a five angled circle and pass around several earthenware cups filled with pale colored pills. [Yellow - Dilaudid, Blue - Oxycontin, White - Vicodin] Three each, mixing colors to thier pleasure. They crush them in spoons and the concave bottoms to aluminum cans. Heat them, and use plastic syringes the inject them in the the thick cubital veins of the person sitting to their left.
Later Damiel sits in his cubicle alone with his two tall human tallow candles alight.
He's drawn seven orbits around the drywall enclosures with charcoal. Each with a symbol situated somewhere along the orbit as spaced in fifths. He's taken the symbols out of a textbook with a chapter on Quantum Mechanics in it. The others have asked him to explain the book to them, but they always got confused.
Once he adds the final symbol (after whom he has named the latest initiate, Lambda) he slouches back against his rough pallet of blankets and mats. To avoid the rough carpet the pack has set out intact and semi-intact carpets and rugs to soften the floor for sprawling and sparring.
Damiel was very pleased with what they'd accomplished. They were a well coordinated group, three paladins, a ductus and a priest, he thought. They needed more details, he'd taught them symbols for their names:
Digamma, "Deeg"
Qoppa, "Kopp"
Sampi, "Sam"
Lambda, "Lamb"
And himself, Damiel, for whom he'd chosen a simple circle, bisected with a line. He knew his real name, Christian. But he knew nobody else's except Digamma the Ductus. "Bartholemew".
Unity was a beautiful thing when it was dressed up so well. Slowly his candles burned dimmer and he nodded into the background hiss of morphine sleep.
"Kill all not her, The Girl, We'll take her." And thus, the dual pleading ones became neutral. Sampi and Qoppa Took them as victimi. One was stabbed in the lower chest to his right, pulsing blood- the richest color in this world, I swear. I barely remember the last one and I don't know if it was the same then. And Sampi took the other who was probably related to whoever Lambda was. They looked a little bit a same. Perhaps not.
Digamma and I stood aside for a little time to examine this girl while the others dragged the last two away. He looked at me and I reflected his look into my favourite book. "Lambda" I said.
She was an early teen. Those two had much to be envied, she deserved that name now after bringing us here for her initiation. What a sweet girl.
(Thier speech is often a little different from ours due to catastrophic cultural disruption)