Life In The Fast Lane: Part One

"You can't have just one mate." my momma used to say this to me all the time. "After the wars, everything changed, you have to help repopulate." she would go on to say. She used to tell us such wonderful stories about how everything was before the wars happened. Like, how you didn't have to deal with all this heat all of the time. You could just go into your slum and be cool in an instant. It wouldn't be a hundred degrees in there. Momma has always called slums "homes". It's a rummy word, she says that's what a slum was called before the wars. I think it sounds kind of nasty, who would want to live in a "home"?

I haven't ever been cool inside a slum, unless it was the cold season. Momma told me once that it was called "winter". I really don't think it was called winter. Winter sounds kind of inviting, but when it's "Winter" here, it isn't inviting. It's cold, and it's rainy, and ice falls from the sky, chilling us all to the bone. I think she has her names confused.

Great grandma heard all of the stories from her grandmother, and she passed them on throughout the generations. That ancient old woman was there when the nukies went off. She was even there before the war turned bad. Once, I was even told that there were more of us. A million more, whatever that means. It sounded like a big number by the way my momma would always say it. It doesn't really matter what happened back in the rummy days. It is interesting to hear about it and all, but it doesn't really matter. The only thing that mattered in this world right now was mates, unfortunately.

"If you have only one mate, you can be offed," my momma was saying. "As women, our job is to make children. We must all do our part to help repopulate the world. If you don't, you can be offed." Offed, I hated that word. It's what adults used to scare the children. I was 16 now, an adult, she couldn't scare me with those empty words. "Don't have that look on your face, if you don't have a baby soon, then a council meeting will be called, and they'll view you as less than useless. 'What kind of woman doesn't want to have a child?' They would say." She kept on about it until I told her that I would do as she says and have a baby as soon as possible. She had been at it for three years now. "When are you going to give me another grandchild?" Why did she have to have another already? She already had ten with three on the way. My sisters had made momma proud of them, and ashamed of me.

Honestly, I didn't want to share my body with any man, not yet. I kept trying to make her understand me, but she kept on nagging about it. I should be happy though, momma was more understanding than other mothers. I was just glad she didn't set me up with a random pub man to teach me the hard way. Some mothers did that. It was how we lived, how we survived, how I met Katlyn.

* * *

It was the rainy season, or Spring, as momma told me. The sky was darkened by the clouds, and I couldn't see all that well. Momma would also say that before the wars, the sky didn't get this dark when the water fell. She said it only got a little dark, not like this. She said that night wouldn't fall when a storm came, she said you could still see everything.

I had finished working my shift at the Hansom. It was a dreadful place where men came after work before going to their slum. It resided in the metal carcass of some old rummy building. (The whole town had gotten hit by one of the nukies.) Since I didn't feel the need to mate yet, I served the men their drinks, instead of going on the stage, or finding a man in the crowd.

I was walking to my slum quickly, trying to beat the water fall. There was an alley to my right about a few steps away from me. I heard a clatter, like the junk lid falling off the can. As I approached it, I looked down the alley and saw a girl and a man down it. The man had bulging muscles, so I figured that he was a labor worker. He was holding her down, and he was trying to take her top off. She had a gag in her mouth, and was struggling against him. He finally succeeded in getting off her shirt, and started to play with her. Her eyes widened, and she screamed from behind the cloth shoved in her mouth. He slid her pants off, stood up and said "This'll teach ya to be a little snob." He sneered at her, and took off his pants.