Story Engine Prompt: A vindictive avenger wants to commit a crime involving a book but they must face what they’ve been running from.

Set in the Forgotten Wasteland, in city forged out of a dump by outcasts and now the subject of territorial fighting, complicated by the presence of a massive bird colony.

Raf eased his hover bike into the shadows of a rusted out bulldozer and cut the engine. Grabbing his pack, he activated the magnetic locks on the side of the bike nearest the dozer. His rickety-looking craft slammed into the side of the old machine with a thunk far too solid for its appearance. If anyone wanted to steal the damn thing, they’d have to take half a bulldozer with them. Some might still try, but the bike had other little warnings built in.

This was a quiet part of town though, inasmuch as anywhere in this trash-heap-turned-city was quiet. So, with luck, all he’d have to deal with when he got back would be a fresh coat of seagull droppings from the horde of demon-souled birds currently glaring at him from every high perch in the area.

He gave them a mock bow. “Watch over my treasure until I return, O Guardians of the Refuse, and I’ll reward you with the finest food I can procure.”

He would too, the greasiest, saltiest chips he could get his hands on, provided a chip vendor lay in his path back here, and he wasn’t running for his life. These birds were uncanny, and he’d found them amenable to trade in the past.

A glance at his watch – set to tracking mode – sent him down an alleyway lined on both sides by the homes of the pitiful and desperate. You had to be both to be living in Forgotten. The luckier families had full walls of corrugated iron, most made do with a teetering mass of junk, metal, wood, plastic, with sections of broken bottles approximating windows.

Raf wondered if the refuge he’d gone to ground here still stood. It had been ten years since the Duke had murdered his parents’ household, ten years since he’d hidden under the bodies of two kitchen maids as the tyrant’s guards laughed their way through the slaughter.

He’d paid two of them back that same night, slitting their throats as they stood watch at the gates of the home that bastard planned on using as a lovers’ retreat.

He’d left them in their blood, same as they’d done for his mother, father, brother and two sisters; and hitched a ride in a rubbish truck, belching black smoke as it growled its way out of Glasslight City and over the scrub-covered dunes to Forgotten.

His watch juddered against his wrist, next turn on the right. He faded into the shadows as voices echoed out of his planned route. It sounded like a couple of groups of gang beaters facing off against each other. Great, another skirmish in Forgotten’s never-ending territory wars. He didn’t have time for this.

There was movement above him. A large seagull, looked down on him, rather like an emperor would stare at a snail.

Raf jerked his head towards the noise. “Why do they bother? Anyone with half a brain know you lot rule the whole place regardless of what they do.”

The gull squawked, and took off, heading for the sound, several more large white birds joining it in the air.

The shouting turned to yelps of dismay and invective.

Forgotten’s gulls had learned many years ago that a well-placed guano-bomb was infinitely more effective against humans than beaks and wings. Things might be different if anyone here carried guns, but the street scum of Forgotten fought with broken-glass knives, and makeshift slingshots. Both of which the demon birds were experts at evading.

As silence settled, Raf slid forward and around the corner. One thug remained. He looked Raf over then carefully turned to face the wall of a battered shipping container. He spoke to the air. “Nothing to be seeing around here, just a quiet corner to take a leak before keeping on my way.”

Raf grunted and slipped past the man, stepping hard enough to mark his passage. He was well past when he glanced back. The man was still in place, heaving in deep breaths.

It was strange to be seen as dangerous, especially on these streets. He’d come here as piss-weak, terrified boy, his voice wavering between the high pipes of a child and the deeper tones he had now. He’d found refuge here, and training in how to maim and kill. This was a place for the dispossessed and discontent after all.

He’d used that training five years later to burn down his old family home, with the ruler’s indolent, arrogant mistress and two of his most trusted aides inside.

He walked out of the alleyway and onto one of Forgotten’s main thoroughfares. Loud and bustling under a low, grey sky, this was the place to buy or sell near anything, so long as you had the means to pay.

He slowed to an amble, weaving between the gossipers and merchants and the occasional group of wide-eyed thrill-seekers from Glasslight City. They’d be fleeced of every coin they held during their visit, yet many returned. Some people were idiots.

Raf nodded to a couple of the stallholders as he passed then, at a judder from his watch, veered across the flow of pedestrians to lean on an old, cracked door, serving as the counter of Mik’s fish and chip stall. “Business still worth your time?”

The older man grinned. “Always, my boy.”

Which business they were referring to remained undefined.

Mik reached under the counter, then handed Raf a plump, ripe orange. “Present for you, for old times’ sake. Just picked this morning.”

The Orange Garden then, Raf grinned and pushed his thumb through the rind at the top of the fruit. “You making deals with the nobles’ suppliers again?”

“They’re making deals with me. Off you go, I have oranges to sell.”

He did, the tart citrus scent Raf released when he’d started to peel the orange had drawn curious noses, connected to eyes now staring greedily at the fruit. He left the peel on Mik’s counter and sauntered off, breaking off the segments and eating them one by one. He was in a hurry but couldn’t afford to look like he was.

Near the end of the market street, he took a casual turn into another alleyway, then two more turns in quick succession, then ducked under a loose corner in a wall of plastic sheeting and into a building with more exits than it seemed.

Onto another road, and through two more houses, Raf finally slipped through a gap between two shipping containers that should have been too narrow for him and walked into a botanist’s paradise. Provided the botanist was obsessed with fruit, vegetables, and herbs.

Hemmed in by a solid wall of rubbish on all sides, and shielded from passing drones (and seagulls) by military-grade adaptive micro-mesh, the Orange Garden and its sisters, the Lemon Garden, the Apple Garden and the Peach Garden, were one of the vital secrets to Forgotten’s survival. Raf smirked as he scanned the espaliered orange trees clinging to the walls, and the neat rows of potatoes, carrots, peas, and other harvest plants. The dregs of Forgotten ate fresher, better produce than the nobles of Glasslight.

Related post