Monsters of Pixels and Sand

Chapter I

I balance for a second, arms thrashing frantically, and then gravity kicks in, and I know in an instant. I'm going down.
I tumble, a crazy tangle of limbs, down this mountain of junk; sun-warmed metal, rotted wood, brittle plastic. Sharp edges jab, vicious, and I curl up tight as a spring. Eyes- a dull mud-dark brown- clenched tightly shut. You should have known, I berate myself, still rolling uncontrollably through the rubbish with all the grace of a rampaging boulder. That crate you were standing on? Obviously about to collapse.

I'd been scavenging all day, sifting through piles of Old Tech junk for something useful, when I'd spotted it. One of those motor-hovers. A two-wheeled one, from what I could see of it. Buried in the middle of one of those precarious scrap towers, the ones that topple eventually, crushing whoever happens to be standing nearby.
I'd been looking for something like it for months- not necessarily a hoverbike, but a way to escape. Those trucks that pull up outside the Scrapyard, engines growling their death-rattle, were increasing in number. I saw two before I left the shelter early this morning, on the western edge of the Scrapyard, only half-mile or so away. Too close, really. We all know what cargo fills up the bellies of those trucks. Under-sixteens. Kids like me, and all the other inhabitants of the Scrapyard. The adults live a few miles down, hooked to the Game, glued to their screens as the Game leeches the resistance from them.

There were protests, once. I remember watching, back when I had parents, upturned faces glowing under the light of the mega-screen in the town square. Riots, placards, demonstrations. Against the power used to fuel the Game, mostly. Terms like 'child labour' and 'kidnap' were launched at the creators of the Game. Terms like 'no crime' and 'world peace' smothered these. Me, I don't want to fall into the Game's rabbit-hole reality. And the whispers of a better world far from here have given me hope, an escape. A better escape than one consisting of pixels and pseudo-perfection.
The biggest problem is the desert, surrounding the Scrapyard, the cities, the Power Site. Encircling my entire world. No one survives the desert. If the heat didn't kill you, it'd be dehydration, starvation, the snakes, the beasts... the list goes on. Thing is, no one's ever tried it... with a hoverbike.

The scrap-tower in which the hover was buried was on the edge of a mountain of Old Tech junk, balancing precariously, maybe twenty metres high. I could only see the hoverbike's handlebar, battered black, and the edge of the front hoverengine, too high up in the scrap-tower for me to reach. I'd dragged over a crate (which was obviously about to collapse) and clambered onto it, callused fingertips stretching up for the handlebar. I'd cursed my height- another few inches, just a few more, and I'd have got it! Sighing, I'd leapt off the crate, grabbed some planks, and piled them on the crate, which had creaked slightly under the pressure. I'd glared at the crate, hissed 'Don't you break on me now,' and scaled my makeshift stepping stool, slicing my shin on a sharp edge.

My fingers had latched onto the handlebar, and I'd sighed in relief. My plan had been to yank the hoverbike some way out from under the scrap-tower, leap to the side, off the crate, and watch as the tower collapsed, desperately hoping that the hoverbike wouldn't be crushed in the deluge of scrap. It was a foolhardy plan, with thousands of possible problems and a higher-than-usual chance of death. In other words... it was an excellent plan. Sadly, I never got the chance to carry it out.
I'd breathed in deeply, readying myself to yank the hoverbike a little way out of the pile of scrap and then run for it. My dark brown fingers had curled tight around the handlebars. I'd stepped back, shifting my weight slightly. Apparently, this was the last straw for the battered crate I was standing on. It creaked mournfully, and then collapsed on one side. Unluckily, this happened to be the side facing the bottom of the angled slope I was on.

People say time slows when you are on the brink of falling. Well. I'm not so sure about that- it all seemed to happen pretty quickly- but just before I started to fall, I felt the shift, from balancing to falling, and there was a second in between where I seemed to hang, as if in a freeze-frame. Like the moment after inhaling, before exhaling. Paused.

And then time recommenced, and I was in freefall.

So here I am now, still tumbling down the slope, stuck in a spiral of heat and pain, human-turned-boulder, and I'm wondering how big this junk pile can really be, and I'm worrying that Kit is worrying where I am, and I'm imagining the hoverbike, gleaming with unfulfilled promise, and I'm wincing at the edges of scrap that scrape my dark skin, and I'm-

'OW!' I shout, as I thud against hard metal, abruptly stopping. Something tears a gash in my hoprabbit hide, self-made jacket and, more importantly, my shoulder. 'POISONOUS SNAKES IN A CHASM OF FLAMES!' I add. (Don't ask.) I curl into the foetal position, clutching my shoulder and occasionally screeching 'SNAKES!' when my shoulder throbs. After a while, I realize that the dying-ember sun, swathed in thick grey clouds, is dipping below the horizon. Oh, snakes. Kit must have been waiting for hours. And who knows how long it will take to get back home!
I push myself up, abruptly. Too soon. The world dips and spins crazily, a blur of grey sky, dark as iron, and the faded garish colours of scrap. I sit hurriedly, before the ground decides to rush up to meet me, gripping the gash in my shoulder like it's a lifeline. Like it's the handlebar of that hoverbike, maybe. I lean my head against the warm metal sheet. Breathe in. As usual, the air of the Scrapyard is damp, dusty, and smells as metallic as freshly spilt blood. I sigh, and attempt to stand again. Though my head throbs like it's being squeezed in an iron vice, this time I stay upright.
I stare one last time up at the mountain of scrap. My hoverbike is up there somewhere, my only way out. 'I'm coming back for you,' I yell up the mountain. Kit is more important, though. My brother. Or, at least, adoptive brother. I'd found him when I was... maybe eight, and he was just a toddler, abandoned at the scrapyard like most of the kids. I'd already realized that you don't survive long on your own.
Now, however many years later, he provides the food, and I fix things. But even Kit, with his uncanny ability to hunt, is unable to find much food these days. I don't even know the last time I had anything edible that wasn't a grubworm. Roasted grubworm, boiled grubworm, grubworm soup, grubworm mush... I'd sell my soul for a nice, juicy hoprabbit. And none of us kids are hungry enough to venture into the Snake Pits to hunt the stripy serpents that live there. Yet. I guess that's the only upside of the trucks- they thin the numbers. Which is all very well to say, until you're the one being taken.

By the time I get back to the shelter, aching and miserable, the sun has given up altogether, slumped under a scrap mountain in the distance. I want to mimic it, sink down right outside the shelter- a lean-to of crates and planks and tarpaulins- and slide into unconsciousness.
However, my stomach groans as if to remind me, I'm starving. 'Kit!' I yell, pushing back the musty green tarpaulin that serves as our front door. 'There better be something other than grubworm tonight, or else...' My voice trails away. The silence looms, merging with the dusk half-light to become something near-corporeal. Clambering inside the shelter, I fumble around on my hands and knees. After a moment that stretches for too long, my fingers curl around the torch. I flick the torch on. Nothing happens. Sighing, I bash it against the crate to my left, again and again with increasing force. Irrational panic rises up my throat like a living thing. Finally, the torch flickers on, casting a pathetic beam of grey-white light into the shelter. It illuminates my bed, Kit's bed, the flimsy shelves I constructed, my pile of tools and maybe-possibly-semi-useful Old Tech, Kit's hunting gear... Wait. No. No, no, no. My brain whirls, spiraling and spiraling and coming up with the same answer. Kit never goes out without the gear- his worn old slingshot and metal darts I made and the knife I found him clutching when I discovered him as a toddler.

The trucks I saw this morning, too close to the shelter. The eerie, too-quiet landscape. Kit's tools, neatly arranged, the way he left them last night.

The realisation hits, an iron fist, impossible to ignore. The truck-drivers have done a sweep of the area, capturing all the kids they could find. Kit is gone, probably halfway to the Power Site by now. The Power Site- where they hook children up to machines that rumble and beep and take and take and take. Their lives for the Game. The pain of loss, brutally final, punches me in the gut, and I sink to my knees. No. I can't- I won't lose anybody again.

'Snakes,' I whisper weakly, burying my face in my hands. 'I have to rescue him.' And to do that... I need that hoverbike.

So I wrote this for a competition, but if anyone wants me to keep going, then say. I can't promise anything... but I'll try.