The Last Scavenger: Phoenix of the Broken Sun

POV: Phoenix Kade

The setting sun bleeds across the Shatterlands like an open wound. I wake to the familiar gnaw of hunger, that old companion who's been with me since I drew my first breath in this godforsaken place.

The pain twists through my gut, sharp and insistent, reminding me that if I don't find something to eat tonight, I won't see tomorrow's dawn.

Tomorrow. What a strange word that is out here. The other scavengers don't think about tomorrow. Tomorrow is a luxury we can't afford, a dream for men with full bellies and safe walls around them.

I crawl out of my burrow, and the scorched ground burns through the rags wrapped around my feet. The ruins stretch out before me, ancient and broken.

Crumbling walls jut up from the sand like broken teeth, and everywhere there are bones. Some human, some not.

The buildings that once stood proud here are nothing but rubble now, buried under sand and time and the weight of all that's been forgotten.

The wind howls through my tangled black hair, and I'm so thin, so damned thin, that I feel like it might just pick me up and carry me away.

My skin is rough and scarred, marked by fourteen or fifteen years of surviving in a place that wants me dead. But my eyes are sharp. I've kept them that way because the moment they go dull is the moment I become like all the others, and then I'm as good as dead already.

I think of the old man as I stumble through the ruins. He was the one who taught me to read the script of the First World, who told me stories about the time before everything turned to ash and blood.

He collected things nobody else wanted: books with faded pages, paintings where you could barely make out the colors anymore, tools whose purposes had been forgotten.

I was the only one who cared to listen to him, and he was the only one who cared whether I lived or died.

This morning, he didn't crawl out of his hole. I buried him myself, which makes him luckier than most. At least he won't end up on some meat merchant's hook, his flesh cured and smoked and sold to the desperate and starving.

Out here in the Shatterlands, people will do anything to survive. They'll eat anything. I've seen it, and I understand it, even if the old man tried to teach me different.

He said that when mankind throws away its last shred of decency, that's when we're truly damned. Maybe he was right. Maybe we're damned already.

The hunger makes my legs shake as I walk. I'm fourteen, maybe fifteen years old, and I feel like I'm a hundred.

The scavengers picked this place clean long ago. Finding food is like finding water in a sandstorm: possible, but not likely.

I sit down hard, my strength gone. The sun is sinking below the horizon, painting everything red. A hawk circles overhead, riding the wind currents, free and wild.

That's why I chose the name Phoenix. I wanted to be like those birds, soaring above all this misery. But that was just a child's dream, wasn't it? Just another stupid hope in a world that crushes hope like boots crush beetles.

Then I hear footsteps. Fast ones.

I'm on my feet in an instant, my sharpened metal shard in my hand. Every nerve in my body screams danger. This is how children die out here.

Someone bigger, stronger, more desperate decides you look like an easy meal, and then you're meat on a hook.

Three scavengers come running around a pile of rubble. They're not looking at me like predators, though. They're looking behind them like prey, their faces twisted with terror.

Something's chasing them.

The black shapes pour over the rubble like a flood of shadows. Ten of them, maybe more. They're the size of wild dogs, but their eyes glow red in the fading light, and I know what they are even before my mind catches up.

Mutabeasts. The things that hunt us, that feed on us, that remind us every day that we're at the bottom of the food chain out here.

I run.

The woman falls first. She's too slow, too tired, and the beasts are on her before she can scream more than twice. The sound of teeth tearing through flesh follows me as I sprint through the ruins.

Then the second scavenger goes down. Then the third. Their screams chase me like ghosts, and I know I'm next.

I round a corner and my heart drops. The path ahead is blocked by rubble. It's a dead end.

Three of the beasts leap over the last body and come for me. I can hear their claws scraping against stone, can smell the blood on their muzzles.

There's an opening in the rubble, narrow and deep. Too small for an adult, barely big enough for someone as starved as me.

I dive into it without thinking. Behind me, one of the beasts squeezes in after me, snarling. Its breath is hot and foul, and I can see its red eyes gleaming in the darkness.

I scramble deeper, but there's nowhere left to go. The beast is right behind me, close enough to kill.

It lunges.

I twist and stab upward with my metal shard. Pure luck drives the point into its eye. The beast screams and crashes into me, its claws opening up my chest and arms, but the opening is so narrow it can't pull back.

I grab its head and hold it down, stabbing again and again. Blood sprays everywhere, hot and stinking, covering my face and hands.

"Die," I growl.

"Die, die, die!"

It takes ten stabs before the thing stops moving. The other beasts circle outside for a moment, then leave when they hear their packmate's death cries.

I lie there in the dark, gasping for air, my muscles screaming. I can't move. I've pushed my body past its limits, and now it demands payment.

But I'm alive. And I have meat.

The beast weighs at least five kilograms. That's days of food, maybe a week if I'm careful. I use my shard to cut into its tough hide, then tear off a chunk of fatty meat and shove it in my mouth.

It's sour and foul, but to me it tastes like the finest feast in the First World. I haven't eaten meat in months. Maybe longer.

I eat until my stomach hurts from being full. Then I drag the carcass out of the opening and start back to my burrow.

A voice stops me cold.

"Put the meat down."

Five scavengers block my path. The one in front has a face full of scars and arms thick with muscle. They've been watching, waiting to steal from whoever survived. Now they've found a child with a prize.

The scarred man takes a step forward.

"Put it down, boy."

I stare at him, and something wild and fierce rises up in my chest. I nearly died for this meat. I'm not giving it up.

I throw myself at him, landing one good punch before they beat me down.