Somewhere Else's Sky

“Damn it” the woman muttered to herself. She dare not squawk and carry on about it, that would be foolish, possibly fatal. The whole point of this place was to not draw attention to it - keep it secret.

So much for that though. Somebody had found it, and could still be in the area. What perplexed Deanna more than how they had discovered her hideout was, why would they burn it? She knew there were wild-men living in the forests, outcasts from one or another of the colonies. She didn’t believe the wild ones would have just burned it though. It was too valuable a resource, especially way out here, deep in the sticks.

“Crack Shack” had been a fantastic little shelter. Squat, built into a rock crevice in the hillside, well off the trail, and comfortable. At ten paces you could hardly tell it was there, at twenty not at all. Deanna would have gone so far as to say it was perfect, but standing there in the slow, steady drizzle pitter pattering off the leaves of the otherwise silent forest, staring at the burned out shell of her winter den, she realized it was not. Nothing ever was.

She set down her bow against the trunk of a young oak tree, and quietly placed her tattered army-green backpack beside it, being careful not to rattle the arrows in the quiver attached to its side. It felt good to lose the weight of the overloaded pack, she was feeling every one of her twenty-three years, plus another twenty. It was not an easy journey to get out here, and carrying the last load of what she would need to survive the coming winter made it all the more difficult.

Next she pulled her revolver from its resting place low on her right hip. Deanna stood there another moment, gun in hand, breath coming out in faint white puffs. She stretched, willing the blood to flow back into her shoulders, and allowing the strained muscles in her neck to ease some. Surveying the area for signs of life one last time, she cocked the hammer on her pistol and silently crept toward the charred entrance to her one-time abode.

Nothing moved inside or out, no signs of recent activity, and from the look and unpleasant, acrid odor of wet campfire, she could tell it had rained fairly heavily at least once since the place had been put to the torch. As she approached she caught another scent in the air, this one was more faint, sweeter, rancid… Death.

Squatting down at the entrance, she decided to let the barrel of her gun lead the rest of the way. Really, it was more of a false sense of security than a deadly, reliable instrument of death. Ammo was getting harder to find, everything was either old and unreliable, or homemade and unreliable. Deanna didn’t much like betting her life on Wallace’s handmade reloads but what choice did she have?

As she entered, the odor of decaying flesh overwhelmed that of the fire. And as she squat-waddled her way forward as quietly as she could, she saw it. Deanna could just make out the charred body lying on the ground. The smell was noxious and almost drove her out, but she had to see if anything salvageable remained.

Holstering her weapon, she exchanged it for a small flashlight from inside her vest, she clicked it on and took in the scene. The walls were black with soot. It appeared everything of use had been looted or taken by the fire. All that remained were a few burnt cans and the unfortunate fellow on the floor. She could tell the corpse was male, he was lying face up and the shriveled, blackened remains of his manhood were on full display. The scorched handle of the knife sticking out his chest however, stood erect.

Deanna stared at the corpse, trying to determine from the degree of rot just how long he had been there, but the fire had made that impossible. Satisfied that further investigation would turn up nothing useful she knelt next to the corpse, grabbed the handle of the knife, and with one sharp, quick motion yanked it free from the man’s rib cage. Black blood came away with the blade and a slight sigh escaped from the wound. She examined the knife, found nothing familiar or unusual. She wiped the blade clean of blood in the dirt and ash, then secured it on her belt, and with that she removed herself from the dead man’s tomb. For that is what it would be. She did not have the time nor the inclination to bury the body. The scavengers would take care of him. If she decided to return to this place in the future she would find only bones, maybe not even those.

Fortunately for Deanna she did not keep all her eggs in one basket. After retrieving her pack and bow she made her way through the birch trees and underbrush, several hundred yards later she came to a huge, ancient oak tree. It was hollow at its base, the hole just large enough for Deanna to get her head and shoulders into without getting stuck. She wasn’t a large woman by any measure. She measured just over five feet tall and was lean and fit, though she was a little broad of shoulder and hip. “Sturdy” her father had called it. Strong was what it amounted to. And she was thankful for it.

She wrestled what looked like a giant beige cocoon out of the tree-hollow, carried it several yards and dropped it between two birch saplings, beside her pack and bow. Deanna unbound her oilcloth cocoon, tying the rope from it between the two birches, then took up the bundle, spilling its contents between the two trees, and quickly shook out the tarp and draped it over the cord. She employed a few stakes and it became the most meager of tents, but she didn’t need much, it was just for the night.

In near darkness Deanna went through the gear from the bundle. It contained the usual items that were in almost all of her stashes; an axe, saw, and various other tools, as well as wire, lots of batteries, a solar charging kit, a spare knife or two, and several changes of clothing. All of those items would stay except for some of the clothes.

Each item that was small enough to be, was sealed in a clear plastic bag. She was losing the light, but Deanna quickly found what she was looking for, it was a gallon sized zipper-bag and it was nearly full of scavenged electrical components. It was heavy and worth its weight in credits.

The Colonies had numerous forms of currency, but the ones most widely accepted were; credits - sometimes called coin depending on where you were, food, favors, and flesh. Deanna preferred to conduct her business in the first two methods and only dealt in favors when absolutely necessary, flesh - not at all. But if you knew where to look, and you knew what to look for, and you were brave enough to risk the wilds and venture into the abandoned places that were left behind, there was another form of currency - salvage.

Just about anything had value to the right person. That was Deanna’s major advantage. Being a scavenger, she lived like a stray between the colonies and visited all the places between, she had a larger network than most and could find a buyer for almost anything. Her niche was in the electronics department, though she would scavenge and trade anything of value.

She sometimes found work as a courier between one colony or another, carrying this message or that item from one location to the next, but the real money was in electronics; rechargeable battery packs and l.e.d. lights of any kind could be spent like cash, and if you knew who to talk to, other electrical components could have high value.

Deanna could have sold them piece by piece as she found them, and at first she had done just that, living hand to mouth in those days. She was smarter than most, and over time she came to understand that value was about supply and demand, and these components were only going to become more and more scarce over time. Like a squirrel, she had stored them away. This was her largest treasure trove by far, everything else she had in her various stashes added up to maybe half of what she now held in her hands. Deanna had no intentions of cashing it in just yet, but she knew she couldn’t leave it out here.

After sorting out what was staying and what was going with her, Deanna laid out a change of clothes, and packed up what she could. Though her camp was compromised she saw no reason not to maintain her stash - she would travel this way again. Once everything was organized she stripped off her layers down to her underwear, socks, and a tee shirt. A set of dog tags swung from around her neck, and another item on the chain glinted in the fading light; a small, gold, heart-shaped locket hung there beside the tags. This was the only piece of jewelry she owned, and she never took it off for fear of losing it. It was all she had left of both her mother and her father.

Placing the shed items next to her bedroll, she then forced herself outside and on her feet. It was chilly out, her brown skin prickling with gooseflesh in what was now no longer a light drizzle, but a slow steady rain. She stripped off the rest of her clothing, teeth chattering. Using her shirt she scoured a week's worth of filth from her body. Once finished, Deanna gathered up her undergarments , balled them up, and pitched them into the forest. She would have burned them, but there would be no fire tonight, not with a killer possibly lurking in the woods. She then crawled back into her shelter, dried herself with a rag, got herself dressed in her underclothes, and slithered into her sleeping bag. She decided she was too tired to eat.

Deanna knew she had to go back to the Newport colony, it was the closest to her current location, and she would need some supplies from Wallace’s shop. She could decide where to go from there when the time came. Best not to make a firm plan, lest she get stubborn or stupid and stick to it while passing up better options. With that she rolled on her side facing the entrance to her shelter, she could see a patch of sky through a gap in the material.

The storm had blown out and the clouds were beginning to scatter revealing an occasional patch of stars and a sliver of moon. She thought of her father then. He haunted her daily, ever the watchful protector. While she lay there trying to hear his voice inside her mind, her hand inevitably drifted up to touch the tags and locket laying against her chest. She could almost hear his voice, see his face. She missed both her parents but her mother had died when she was only 6 years old, so her father had been her world. He had been a kind, gentle, patient man. A leader of men, a builder, a warrior and a poet. What was it he used to say to her when they would watch the stars together when she was little? It was a line from his favorite poem.

Deanna was almost asleep but the words came to her and she muttered them like a prayer before she drifted off. In a voice barely audible she spoke: “We are, all of us, but a distant star in somewhere else’s sky.”