Down and Out: A Young Adult Dystopian Adventure (The Undercity Series Book 1) (5 page)

She stood. “Good, good. Well, that puts us back to where we were. How about it? Why not, at least, check out my brute and decide if he will do or not?”

“What grade is he?” Ma asked.

“Hmm?”

“If he is not grade A, what is he? B? C?”

Georges fidgeted with her papers. “The whole grading thing is ugly and unnecessary.”

“Show him to us.”

The woman pursed her lips and gave a curt nod.

––––––––

``````````

––––––––

W
hen they got back to their home, Teddy went right into his room and wrote in his journal. ‘It was dark and stormy, and I don’t think life will get any better. In fact, I predict things will get ugly from here on.’ He put his pencil down and thumped his forehead on his desk.

“You keep putting dents in your head, and people will stop thinking you’re handsome.”

He glared at Caden as she dropped into his overstuffed chair, her chin-length mass of coal black curls and twists caught under a periwinkle scarf and her body wrapped in a speckled green comforter. “Ha, ha. Have you seen him?”

She scratched her head. “Kinda fits this family, I guess. Not much of a brute, though. I mean, he’s thick and brawny enough, but not scary. Sorta similar to the oversized fluffy bear we found for Deb’s last birthday. I think I can take him in a fight. I think Deb can too, but she fights dirty.”

Jolon scrambled in the room, looking back over his shoulder as he went. “Is that it? Is that him? Does he hide secret weapons? I heard they carry secret weapons and such.” He tumbled into Caden who pushed him onto the bed.

“If they’re secret or hidden, how would we tell?  Who is he going to intimidate with a silly expression?”

“Pa says the gentle ones often are meaner than they appear,” Teddy said, wishing his father had made another choice.

“It’s bad enough we can’t afford a brute, but now we’ve gone beyond scraping the underside of the pit to picking up the slug hiding underneath.”

“According to the master of the brutes, he defeated three of the worst Underling gangsters in South Side, but I have my doubts about her honesty.”

Caden laughed low. “Yeah, somehow I got a few doubts too.”

“Come on. Maybe he’s not so bad,” Jolon said, his voice cracking with enthusiasm. “I bet he’s got those skills, you know, the ones you read to us about in the book, the ningi skills.”

“Ninja skills,” Teddy corrected his mind elsewhere. “Come on, let’s get some supper.”

They filed into the kitchen and stared at their new guest. He was massive with shoulders wider than most doorways though only a few inches taller than Pa. He appeared to be in his twenties, which said something for his survival skills since many Underlings only lived to their early teens if left on their own. His dusky brown hair hung down his back while his mold green eyes twinkled with happiness, and his freckled white cheeks flushed. This cast doubts on his bruiting expertise, as did his open, honest face, which seemed ready to laugh at anything.

Ma set the food before them. “All right, no staring.” They grabbed sandwiches made with fresh potato bread from the market. “And I mean every one of you,” she admonished the brute as he kept his eyes stuck on the others. “Children, this is Henri. Henri, this is our eldest daughter, Caden, our boy, Jolon, and you already met our eldest boy, Teddy.” She singled each one out in turn.

The brute gave a half toothy grin and a half bow with a shy wave.

“We keep another little troublemaker around here, but she is asleep. Someone decided to play scout with her among the furniture isles.” She shook her head at Caden, who studied her sandwich.

Her mouth twisted with mischief. “She had fun.”

“Poor thing is all worn out. Now, let’s eat and after we’ll work on the sleeping arrangements. Your father is securing the warehouse.” She brushed Henri’s forearm; he froze, blushing. “We’ll walk you through everything tomorrow.”

Teddy swallowed hard. There was only one place for their brute to stay... with him... in his room... in his sanctuary. His sandwich lost its flavour. Caden shifted her gaze over to him and snickered. He couldn’t say anything; she had to share with Deb, and Jolon’s room was little more than a closet. Perhaps Henri could use the closet, and he could bunk with Jolon. He eyed his brother as he slurped his way through a sandwich and belch and decided to give the brute a try. Besides, Jolon tended to snore like a dying rat.

He finished his food and gulped down his water. Motioning to Henri, he stood. “Come on. You can share my room,” he said with a meaningful glance at his mother.

She messed his hair as he left. “This is only for a day or two until we sort out some other arrangement.”

He sighed and escorted him to his room. The double mattress was large enough for Caden, Deb, and himself on story nights, but wasn’t a bed built for sharing with anyone as big as a brute. The guy reeked too. Georges called it garlic, which Henri had a fondness for; plus, he was way too massive. One roll over and Teddy would be done for.

“I sleep on box.” He waved a pasty hand at a row of boxes, which made a sort of ledge behind his desk. “I sleep worse.” He flushed under Teddy’s gaze as though he didn’t like to talk.

“Yeah, I guess we could put some blankets and cushions on it.”

“’K.”

Teddy shook his head, annoyed. He was a brute. He should get angry and demand the bed not slink off to the corner. “That’s it? There is no way we can make them comfortable. You’re so big the boxes will mush under you. How did you ever become a brute?”

He seemed offended. “What you mean?”

“Well, you’re not... it’s not like you’re... well, you’re not intimidating.”

Henri blushed again, shifting his bulk with nervous twitching. “Dunno, everyone always thought I nasty ‘cause I big, muscle-wise, but,” he wiped his nose on his sleeve, “but I like things... ’n people, ‘n kittens... especially kittens. Not to eat, though, to pet. Dunno.”

Teddy frowned and thought about this, picturing his fellow Underlings trying to get him to fight when he wanted to pet kittens. It was a pathetic image.

“Just a sec’,” he said, going out into the hall to the back storage room.

He dug up a sturdy length of yellow rope and a couple of large hooks his father said people used to store bicycles on their walls and went back. A bicycle sounded amazing, and he so wanted to find one. He placed it first on his wish list he took with him every time they went scrounging.

“Help me screw this into the wall.” He dropped a hook in Henri’s hand and pointed to where the paint peeled away, revealing the nails and joints underneath. “Right there, into the stud.”

Henri gave him a blank expression. “’K”

Teddy suspected shrugs and ‘k’ took up the vast majority of his vocabulary. He took a cover from his bed and secured a length of cordage to each corner. Then he passed over another anchor and gestured toward the opposite wall. After double- checking his knots, he looped one rope over the hook and tied it, so two corners of the blanket hung suspended from the floor. He did the same to the other end when the brute finished his part.

“Cool,” he said, looking quite pleased and yet puzzled.  “What’s that?”

“It’s a bed,” Teddy said, hoping the ropes would hold.  “You lay on it.”

His face crumpled with concerned. He stared at the blanket swinging free above the ground and scanned his bulk. “Don’t think will stay up.”

He laughed. “Not you. Me. You can take the bed.”

The massive brute gawked at the lumpy old mattress. The springs were worn and stuck through the fabric, making sleep a complicated game of where to lie without skewering yourself. It wasn’t much of a bed, but it kept a person off the floor.

Henri snuffled, and Teddy realized he was crying. The brute wiped his face with his sleeve. “Your bed, not mine.”

He put a hand on Henri’s arm. “I don’t mind. I’m kinda excited at getting to sleep in my airbed. My Pa says they’re called hammocks, but that’s a strange word. I think it’ll be like sleeping on a cloud.”

“What’s a cloud?”

“Things floating in the sky and rain pours out of them.”

“Are you back to the weather?” Jolon asked, limping into the room. He took up his usual spot in his chair. “You got a real thing for stormy nights, don’t you?”

“What’s that?” asked Deb as she came in with Caden in tow.

“It’s an airbed,” Teddy told them with pride while hoping the knots and hooks held his weight.

“How’s that a bed?” Caden inched in behind Jolon’s chair and kept an eye in Henri’s directions as though he were a danger waiting to burst into violence at any moment.

“Hi, I’m Deb.” She stuck out her hand at the brute.

Jolon plucked a magazine from the floor and flipped through, perusing the pictures. “She’s the house nuisance.”

Henri waved at her, and she hugged him. “You’re like my bear.”

He stroked her head as if petting a spider’s web and he didn’t want to break even a strand.

“So, how do you get in?” asked Caden as she ignored Henri’s presence.

Good question. Teddy ran a hand down the blanket’s edge, pushing on it. The ropes held.  He leaned harder, hopeful; his airbed stayed. With a deep breath, he eased into his bed, hoping the blanket wouldn’t flip and throw him on the ground.  The bed wiggled under him, making him freeze and Caden laughed.

“You should see your face. Your eyes are so wide.”

“Ha, ha,” Teddy lay back and stretched out. The blanket held him in a cocoon, and the swinging was quite soothing as he relaxed.

“It stayed!” Jolon cheered with surprise.

“Soon you’ll rival Pa with your inventive contraptions.”

His little sister gave the hammock a push. “Can I take a turn?”

“Maybe tomorrow; don’t do that.”

“Yeah, Deb, it might collapse in the night, and we’ll find a Teddy blob on the floor in the morning,” Caden said and held out her hand. “Come on, let’s put us both to bed.”

“But I want a story.”

“Not tonight, kid.” She ushered Deb out the door with a wary eye on their new addition.

“Don’t warp yourself, Henri, she’ll warm up to you,” Jolon said.

He stared after them, confusion on his face again.  “She’s purdy.”  They exchanged a worried glance.

“Roll it in, buddy, she’s seven,” Jolon said in an authoritative voice Teddy never heard before.

“No, the other, the tall one, she’s so nice.”

“Caden?” he asked.

“Yeah, Caden.” The brute sighed and flopped on the bed, and stared up at the grey tiling with a dopy, spacey expression.

“Well, that’s... uhh....”

“Unexpected,” Jolon finished for him.

They traded a worried glance.

“You tell her,” his brother whispered with a side-glance at Henri, but he was oblivious to everything. “Are you kidding? I don’t need the bruises.”

“Hey, she might be pleased.”

Teddy lay in his cocoon, swaying and sleepy. “Doubt it.” Jolon slapped his hands on the arms of the chair and stood.

“I think I’ll go to bed now too. I don’t think my brain can handle any more revelations. It’s going to take a whole night of sleep to put my head back together as it is. Night, strange people.”

Henri grunted something and Teddy closed his eyes.

––––––––

T
eddy sat on a plastic bin, munching a couple of stale crackers and surveying the land of clutter, which made up their livelihood.

So, what was a mall? From the descriptions in the magazines he collected, it was a place where lots of people went and bought things. Didn’t sound much different than the market. Well, what else was there to do? The city was only about ten miles in circumference. It was not as though he could strike out on his own and conquer the world. This was the world; piles and piles of scrounged merchandise, leftovers from a time long gone. He spit out his last cracker. Sometimes stale was too much to take.

“Ma would kill you for wasting food,” Caden said as she and Jolon joined him.

“Pa ready to go yet?” he asked.

His brother snatched the box from him and nibbled on a wafer. “Na, Mr. Mitchum is coming to talk to him about some furniture his wife wants.”

“Mitchum? Isn’t he the one who owns the greenhouse on Northside?”

“Nah.” He stuffed his mouth with food. “That’s Norton. Mitchum owns the hen house.” His last few words came with a shower of crumbs and Teddy brushed them away.

“Yegh, gross.” Caden took a scrap piece of paper from the end table by the bed and started scribbling pictures. “You keep eating every moment, and you’ll get too big to fit through the tunnels.”

He made a face at her but put the box away. “I’m nervous, makes me hungry.”

“Hey, you ever wonder what they feed those chickens?” asked Teddy.

“What’d ya mean?” said Caden.

“Well, there is little food for people let alone chicken, and we’re not even mentioning water levels.  Do chickens drink water?” asked he and her expression turned mocking.

“No, they absorb moisture from the air through their feathers. Doesn’t everything living drink, oh educated one?”

A rush of heat covered Teddy’s cheeks. “Must be tired. Get all kinds of nonsense question rolling through my brain when I’m sleepy.”

“I don’t ask those questions. Don’t want to know the answer.”

Whether she was right or not didn’t stop him from wondering about everything around him.

“Why are you nervous?” he asked Jolon to alter the conversation.

His brother waved to Henri standing by their father at the front desk. The brute was petting the dogs with Deb. He tripped over a bag of nails and fell; Critter jumped on him and slobbered on his face.

“He’s terrifying, he is.” He shook his head.

“We are in so much trouble,” said Caden.

“Come on, Cad, let’s give him a chance,” Teddy said.

“Yeah, you do that.” She started to work her way down from their perch. “I’m gonna bring Deb back to Ma before our ‘visitors’ show.”

Sighing, he decided he didn’t want to stick around either. Instead, he and his brother made their way to the curving staircase behind them. It was half gone, but if they grabbed hold of the railing, they could climb to the platform above. He scrambled up easily, but Jolon found the journey more difficult, and he huffed and puffed while Teddy helped him up.