Running with Wolves

1

My feet slowly trudge through the mud of the city. I keep my head down as to not antagonise anyone, flinching away whenever a particularly loud growl is heard from close by. My hands tightly clutch the small bag in my hand as I hurriedly make my way through the war zone of a city. City? Not really a city at this point. This is Outpost 5 after all.

The streets are a skeleton, stripped of its flesh long ago by the locust that swarmed. All that remains is the concrete structures themselves, no glass, no wood, nothing the scavengers could use. Even the street-lamps have been cut down and dragged away; metal is a premium, plus there's the gadgetry at the top that can be reused in incendiary devices. Though the air blows as fresh as any summer meadow, this is a graveyard with unburied dead. I can smell them in my mind all over again, just like the war is still raging and my hands are still red.

With a sigh, I continue my long tiring journey home, trying not to bump into anyone else who resides here. Outpost 5 is home of the humans, a weak and disposable race according to the wolves. After the Great War the wolf packs have ruled over every other race. The Great Alpha King being the most feared ruler over everyone else, appointing a different Gamma to watch over each of the Outposts.

There are 5 in total. Imagine a wheel. The centre of the wheel is the strongest and most vital part, it connects everything and holds it all together. That's the Capitol, Darkden. The home of the Royal Pack and their people.

Now, every wheel has its spokes. This one has 5. 5 spokes of thick, heavily guarded cement that keeps each Outpost separate. Anyone who has ever tried to escape has been caught, tortured and strung up as an example to the rest of the people in the regions.

Outpost 1, so I've been told, is full of the 'Brainy Bunch'. This is where, after The Great War, most of the rich and well educated members of society were relocated to to live.

Outpost 2 is known for being full of technology since that's where most of the Scavengers send their 'products'. This Outpost, like Outpost 1, has a naturally high standard of living that us Outpost 5 folk could only dream about.

Outpost 3 is full of the builders that aid in making products for the capitol and rebuilding what's left of our towns after an attack.

Outpost 4 is the industrial industry. They always have their factories running, large black clouds of smoke constantly spiralling high into the sky above them.

And finally Outpost 5, my home. We are outcasts and the lowest of low class, considered to be "The Rest". Humans with special skills such as doctor or scientists were lucky enough to be invited to other Outposts to aid in how they are run but for the rest of us, we're left to live here in complete poverty.

The wolves live rich and full lives in the Capitol, leaving the rest of us with next to nothing. As you go down the Outposts, your quality of life decreases. Outpost 1 having enough food and money to live full lives but by the time you reach Outpost 5 you'll discover that from the age of 12 you begin working 6 hour days for 50p an hour and when you turn 21, which is considered adult, you begin 12 hour days for £1.50 an hour. It's not much but it's just enough to get rations and pay bills.

I'm currently 19, working 6 hours a day every day and picking up any extra jobs I can, just so I can provide for Mia. During the week we are forced to attend a school system implemented by the wolves, learn their customs and our new place in this new order and society.

I eventually make it back to our tiny apartment complex and use my key to let myself in and up to the apartment I share with Mia. It's not much of an apartment, it's got one bedroom on the left with a single paper thin mattress pressed against the wall with a decent enough blanket that I leave for Mia to sleep in. There's what used to be a living room with a single window on the wall opposite the door but is now empty other than the old rug placed on the floor. I usually use the rug as my mattress and a shredded piece of fabric as my blanket.