The Starburst
It started out foggy the day Rockets came. The morning beamed cool and slow because no one wanted to get up after the reveling the night before, Rami’s birthday, but the fires had to be lit, the dough put into the oven; the eggs collected from the coop, animals and children fed, water hauled, supplies scavenged. We had no electricity or indoor plumbing. No one did this far out of town.
The first to see the stringy bastard was Jeb. He had been up in the crows and clocked the twin jets of exhaust coming our way, mixing with what was left of the mist. It was the pounding on the corrugated that woke us all finally. He said he’d come down from Salsaleet, where things were bad as hell. He only wanted to stay the one night before he continued inland, and that he would do work and give us all the news from the coast in exchange. Jeb said to let him in, but to put him in the guardhouse until we could talk about it. We agreed, and Rockets said he understood. They gave him some books, a bowl of mornin’ mush, and a tin cup of chicory. Apologies, them’s the rules.
The Starburst, as we called ourselves, had gone even further afield than most comms after the murderous rent riots. Twenty-eight souls, give or take, eight of them children, seven cats, five dogs, three goats and five chickens, living on a parcel of land paid for communally, where no one could evict us. Five years in, we had escaped homelessness, poverty, crime, and the waves of viruses that were rampant in the city.
Maiz joked that we’d all seen these kinds of dystopian encampments on TV twenty years ago. Who would have believed that we’d end up building one ourselves? We had known people who lived squashed together in houses in the city, but since the new housing laws, most people had left for good. Others joined the communities down in the dead metro tunnels, where those with money bought whole trains and rented out the cars to anyone who could pay. The problem was the same on the outskirts: open camping was forbidden and punishable by special roving units who would shoot to kill.
We had a truck, two pickups and a few motorcycles, one working and two for spare parts. The sedans were better used as sleeping quarters. We tore out the seats and filled the cavities with sacks of packing foam and cashews Dennis found in an abandoned factory. Most of the cars still had working engines, so we could configure them in a wide starburst pattern. Inside the circular space suggested by the cars was our living area, and there we arranged the ripped-out car seats around the drumstack fires. Maiz and Tilla made us an O-shaped awning out of recycled tarps that covered the whole thing and left ample space for the rising heat and smoke. Someone had thought of the idea of connecting the car roofs with interlocking platforms made of pallets, and that created a second-tier deck with tables, chairs and desks. The entire community had pitched in to build the ramparts and the tower.
Jeb said we should let the dude stay the night, but he would throw him out in the morning. Dennis and Tilla didn’t like his air—thought there was something ‘off’ about him.
“You frisked him, yeah?” asked Dennis.
Jeb stared at him hard, meaning: Are you fucking with me?
Maiz shook her head.
“We should hear what he has to say. We've had no news from anywhere west of the mountains in a long, long time. The rest of the those gathered were in a state of agitation.
“How do we know what he has to say is true?” said Piper, our resident solderer and philosopher.
“We don’t,” said Maiz, “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hear it.”
“Whatever he tells us will affect us, whether it’s true or not,” said Tilla.
“We put it to a vote,” said Jeb, "All in favor of taking him out, raise a hand.”
Hands shot up, and Maiz mouthed numbers.
“Sixteen to twelve, the Yeas have it. Take him out, Jeb.”
Everyone dispersed and got cracking because it was already nine o’clock and the terrible heat would start in two hours’ time.
Jeb went to the shed and unchained the door, pulling it open. Rockets blinked.
“Sorry, man,” said Jeb.
Then he flipped the safety off on his glock and put one through the man’s forehead. It was the second time this year, but he sighed anyway. Before burning the body, they found the suspected vial of pathogen Cx88 that had annihilated a nearby settlement that past winter. The stranger before, with the identical spiel about news from the coast, had had one as well.
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Trust is déclassé!