Z Brewer - Into the Real

For Gracie King & Griffin Schumow

The Rippers were out again. I could tell because of a victims screams echoing through the air. The piercing cries turned into gurgling, followed by moist chewing sounds. Teeth ripping flesh away. Lips slurping skin and muscle and hair into their hungry mouths. All because somebody had left their shelter a little too early. Rippers were nocturnal. Everyone knew that. Stay indoors at night. Wait until day before stepping outside. They were simple rules to follow and key to survival in Brume.

The sounds were nothing new to me. In fact, theyd become an alarm clock of sorts. A chomping, chewing, swallowing alarm clock. But thats Brume for ya. If you couldnt run or didnt hide, it would chew you up and spwell, actually, it wouldnt spit you out at all. It would swallow you. Bite by bite. Chunk by chunk.

Good morning, Quinn. Try not to get eaten today.

I lay in place for a while, listening to the irrefutable symphony of mayhem outside, staring at a ceiling and walls that I couldnt remember, wondering where Id slept. After some time, I withdrew the map from my bag and scanned it, looking for any clue as to where I was. It was hard to keep track of where I found rest every night, because I had to keep moving, keep changing things up, if I didnt want something terrible to happen to me. I often ended up finding shelter just in time, ducking into a house and going straight for the best hiding place. The map helped me keep my bearings. It also helped me keep my sanity. It was jarring to wake in a new place almost every morning, and it always took me a moment to shake off the fog clouding my memory.

I traced my finger around the borders of Brume. The town hadnt always been such a living nightmare. There had once been family picnics in the park and neighbors waving hello to one another. But that was before. Now those things were all but a memory. Now things were shit.

Maybe I was shit too.

Stretching and shaking my thoughts away, I sat up, careful not to make much movement so I wouldnt attract anything lurking outside the window. The sky was a gray haze, but it was day once again. Still early, judging by the few rays of light pushing through the clouds. Id slept the whole night througha rarity. Despite the rotting roof and warped floorboards, the house had felt welcoming, even comforting. If I willed myself, even for a moment, I could almost imagine that it was my home. But my home was long goneburned to the ground. Not by monsters, either. No, some of the worst atrocities in Brume were committed by the other humans. Other survivors. Now home was anywhere I could find a moments rest. Now home was me.

I stood and strapped my leather pouch to my thigh, ready to begin my morning rounds.

If I was lucky, the roaming gangs wouldnt be out for hours. They tended to party pretty late, getting drunk on whatever was left in the old liquor store or the cabinets of the houses theyd raided that day. Some of them were even brewing their own booze now. That might explain the bodies Id found slumped out on the porch when I snuck in here last night. Theyd had no cuts or bite marks that I could see. They werent elderly and didnt look sick. They were rather young and simply... still. Forever still. Broken glass lay on the doormat, as if theyd dropped bottles on their way out. I hadnt thought much of it at the time. But the quiet of morning brought a clarity with it, and now I was pretty sure those two had accidentally poisoned themselves to death by drinking bathtub gin. I imagined so many of the gang members drank booze just to forget about the horrors of life in Brume, and these two wouldnt be the first to have died from it. Stupid. But then, my assumption of their stupidity was based mostly on the fact that they were members of a gangLloyds, considering the X-shaped scar on each of their left cheeks. Lloyd liked his followers well marked. He reveled in the glory of being the leader of a groupeven if that group was a bunch of mindless clones, intent on pleasing him enough to go on surviving. Maybe Id never thought the gang members were all that intelligent because they were followers, and I was anything but a follower.

If you swore allegiance to Lloyd or any of the other gang leaders, you didnt have to worry so much about food or clothing or even safety. But Id be damned before I sold my soul for an apple or a heavy jacket. The only thing that had ever tempted me was the promise of sage. It was the most valuable thing you could find or trade in Brume. The only thing known to mask human scent from the Rippers. Rumor had it that a couple of the gang leaders had bags of the stuff. But not even sage was worth selling my soul.

A womans scream filtered in from the distance, but it wasnt followed by any chewing sounds, so I was willing to bet it was a Screamer. Id never seen onethose who did generally didnt live to talk about the experience. But rumor had it they were large and birdlike, with bony, translucent wings. With their patchy gray coloring, they blended perfectly with the clouds as they flew above Brume. Their calls were the screams of their victims, mimicked perfectly, bait to draw other people to them. Nasty things. I hoped Id never run into one. So far, so good.

My stomach rumbled its argument that we should find something to eat, but I pushed down the hunger. There were more important things on my plate to be dealt with first. I grabbed my bat from the floor by the dusty mattress Id slept on. It was comforting, the sensation of that bat in my hand. The wood was worn where I gripped it. Id had it for a long time now, and it bore the bloodstains to prove it. This bat had saved my life on several occasions. If it were human, it might have been my friend. I didnt have many of those. If I was honest, I had just the one. Lia. But she was loyal, protective, kind, and generous, which made her much more valuable than the bat.

The floorboards creaked beneath my feet as I moved to the bedroom door, pausing to listen to whatever could be on the other side of it. Ready to swing at anything that might come at me, I threw the door open, but the hall was empty, the house still. The hammering of my heart in my ears quieted until it was once again the solid, familiar thumping in my chest that reminded me on the regular that Id survived another moment in Brume. Some days it seemed like Brume was too terrible to be real.

Moving through the house, I stayed alert but managed to keep any paranoia at bay. A steady hand and a clear head were key to staying alive in Brumesomething Id learned after facing down my first Ripper alone, when Id pretty much failed at both. My fingers had trembled. My thoughts had been a messy jumble. It was a wonder Id survived the encounter.

It was a wonder I was still surviving now.

Decaying floral wallpaper covered every room in the house, as if the owners had tried to bring inside the beauty of an outside world that no longer existed. Now Brume was what it was: ugly, dangerous, and primal. According to Lia, daydreaming about anything else was a waste of time and thought.

I wondered if having a worldview like that made her lonely.

The air around me carried a chill that raised goose bumps on my skin. The house creaked and groaned. My daily task stretched out before me like an endless desertthe promise-filled whisper of hope the only thing driving me forward. If I ever lost that spark of hope... well... I might as well pay the Rippers a visit and be done with it already.