The Wasting

8- The Invisible King

Several days had passed since Izzy last saw her stately grandfather. Since the military coup Alfred had become one of the dozens of homeless who lived under a deserted highway overpass. Few people noticed or cared about him with the exception of a startled rat or two.

Like a shadow Izzy would slink through the deserted city streets and alleyways moving silently through the greasy night air. Greasy air, greasy rats, greasy people... How did everything get so greasy when there was so little food to eat? However it was this very murkiness which allowed her to blend in with the surroundings and to live out of sight of the authorities. The night air smelled like a stew of cooked cabbage and dirty socks but she barely noticed. She was focused on seeing his face the joy of bringing him small packages of food. He too found more nutrition in the glimmer of her smile than in the sustenance. Still he was grateful . After she was gone he would always share the treasures with the Rat Children. He would speak of a time when everyone had plenty and people shared even less. "Abundance makes people selfish," he would recite.

Izzy's heart began to melt like M & M's in the hand of a toddler as she encountered children in filthy rags, shivering as the wind blew yellowy rain into their crude shelters. She begged Ella to allow some of the weaker ones into their apartment but her mother always said, "No," and added, "We have our own sick child to contend with. Would you like it if Bell caught the flu and died even sooner?" Of course, Izzy didn't but seeing the dying children day after day only made her more compassionate. Soon portions of her own food went to the starving babies as well until she was practically as thin as her sister.

For days she searched everywhere for Alfred. In desperation and as a last resort she opted to search the prohibited subway tunnels. When the subway trains stopped running, the derelicts, the mutated and the desperately poor moved underground. This was not merely for shelter but for their own protection. Every so often military policy in ancient tanks would do a C.S. (Clean Sweep) of the city blocks. Any vagrants found lying around were picked up and if no one claimed them within thirty days (and paid the exorbitant fine) they were "recycled".

The threat of diseases protected the mutants from an UCS (Underground Clean Sweep.) From time to time, the new regime would throw down tear gas grenades to keep gangs of people from thriving below. It never stopped the homeless for long. Mobs of people would ascend the stairs wheezing, drooling, and spitting. As soon as lungs their lungs cleared and their eyes stopped burning back down into the deep they would descend.

As Izzy descended the stairs the smell of urine, feces and vomit nearly made her turn back. (Envisioning she was crawling inside a giant bedpan didn't help matters.) Before she snuck out she had rummaged through her secret junk drawer and managed to find a small working lighter. She was terrified to use it though. Tommy Thompson told her, 'Lights are targets for the Flesh Eaters.' No one knew for certain if the people hiding out in the tunnels actually ate human flesh but these rumors were enough to keep most safe and sane people away.

As Izzy shuffled her way along a darkened passageway she could barely she her hand in front of her face. The lack of sight made her other senses only stronger--especially the sense of smell. She heard a low growl and muffled cries.

After stumbling two or three times over garbage and a decaying rat Izzy decided, "I could just as easily die falling off a platform as by flesh eating monster," so she flicked her bic. What she saw was not hoards of "flesh eaters" but a community of people far worse off then Alfred's companions under the bridge. It was a society of poor unlike the world had ever known. What astonished Izzy most was the dozens of babies and toddlers.

Hollow eyes stared at her while empty, dirty hands and stubby limbs stretched towards her. One filthy child with missing legs crawled on his belly and clung to her leg. Izzy couldn't move. The fear of becoming like them paralyzed her. She looked away in horror only to see a little girl with only a half of a face holding out a hand without fingers.