Days of the Skye's Past - Part I - Carbon Sickness

Life in the sprawl wasn’t easy. Everyone lived on the edge. One bad day away from something worse. The young Skyes were no different. Mathias and Cyd were no different. Living in a cramped apartment in some forgotten place of the sprawl was where they made their home.

Their mother was hardly home, gone for long periods of the day as soon as she deemed them old enough to take care of themselves, not completely out of neglect but more of the ridiculous hours she spent working, she would be gone for days. As they got older that time stretched out longer and longer. Even after bringing home Issac one day, his care had been a balancing act between Mathias and Cyd. Both had missed a lot of school days trying to make sure he was cared for.

Money was tight. It was always tight and it never would not be but there were many days Cyd and Mathias would go without. Where they begged and stole to just get to the next day. Their mother’s presence became more infrequent. Money got tighter. Soon they were choosing which bill to pay and skipping days without anything to eat. Getting a job at sixteen was a lot harder then it looked.

The only outlet the Skyes had was the gritty underground raves. The times their kindly neighbor would watch him Cyd and Mathias would put aside the weight of responsibility and vent their stress with drugs, alcohol, and music so loud you could feel the bass in your chest. It was the only time they got to act their age.

Life was good, till it wasn’t.

Mathias sat at the edge of a dilapidated pier looking over the river to the sparking glowing city on the other side. Behind him, the abandoned industrial building glowed with cheap lights, loud music, and rowdy teens.

His legs dangled over the edge of the crooked pier, draining the last of the bottle of beer he had swiped. She was out there. Somewhere far. It was a sharp ache in his chest.

Nike was the girl from the other side of the tracks. It was a hilarious trope they had joked about but they clicked. Really, clicked and while he wanted to be mad that she was gone. All he could think was she got out of this shitty city. He was a little envious.

That didn’t make it easier. No matter how he wanted to slice it his heart ached feeling the acute cold hole in his life. All the nights they talked about forever. Blow away like smoke. He threw the bottle into the water. Right now he just wanted to forget, dull it, anything. The days were hard enough, he didn’t want his blow his night wallowing. Yet here he was, looking in the distance wondering how far Cali was. Her memory and dark cloud over him reminded him how much it sucked without her.

The rave was hot, Cyd noted. Not hot like a good time, but hot with stale air and the kind of oppressive heat that comes from a big crowd and a small area. Summers were the worst. She didn’t miss school for academic reasons but they were at least guaranteed one hot meal a day if they went, which most of the time, they didn’t. Shame, because Mathias - if he wanted to admit it or not was smart, go to college smart. He easily could be a doctor or some sort of scientist. He was also the first of them to get sick.

Mathias wandered back to the pounding music to distract him from his sour mood. He rubbed the back of his hand across his itchy nose pausing to look at the stain that was left. At first, he thought it was a nosebleed but the stuff was black. His hand shook a bit touching his nose his fingertips stain back. He was a little too buzzed and high his mind stumbling trying to … he mind tried to reason it out. It was dark. A trick of the light. Bad weed. Really bad weed. Obviously. He eye darted around the crowd looking for his sister. She would set him straight. Slap him upside the head and tell him he was being stupid. She would make it better.

The best part of any rave was the music, Cyd decided. A good DJ was the key to a good rave. Too many times a DJ misread the vibe, played trance while everyone was still energetic enough to shuffle, or dropped a hot beat just as everyone was zoning out in the early hours of the morning. Reading the crowd, that’s what she’d do, if she ever got a shot to DJ, which didn’t look promising.

The amount of time between when their mom would come home and when she wouldn’t grew longer and longer until one day she just vanished altogether. All of her things were gone, her drawers, her closet, all empty. It didn’t take a genius to realize what that meant. Just one more thing they didn’t have to go along with the food they didn’t have, the lights they didn’t have, the only thing they did have was each other.

She grinned when Mathias approached, her smile fading when she saw the ashen look of his face, the black ‘gunk’ in the corner of each eye. Not him, she thought, not Mathias! “Come on,” she told him, grabbing his hand to lead him away from the crowd, before anyone else saw.

Mathias stumbled as Cyd pulled him away. “It’s … it’s nothing … just …” He slurred a bit deep in denial. “ … it’s fine … Cyd? Cyd! It’s fine!”

Cyd looked at him, trying to hide the fear that was gnawing at her stomach, making her chest feel tight and her throat ache. “I know,” she said, trying to sound confident. “You’ll be okay. It’s okay,” she assured him, even though she knew it wouldn’t.

“It’s nothing. Alright?’ Mathias his voice a little shaky trying to wipe away the evidence as if that would make it suddenly better. All he did was make it worse. “It’s just …” He looked at the smudges left on his hands. “... it’ll be fine.” He said his voice small and less sure. “Should I go home? Or … not?” He asked numbly.

“Let’s get you home,” she told him, sliding an arm around his waist. “It’ll be fine. Like you said. You’ll be okay. I’ll make sure of it.”

The carbon plague. It was spreading through the Sprawl like cockroaches, despite the fact that the CDC flyers said it wasn’t communicable. No reason to panic, they said, even though chances of recovery were slim. It was resistant to antibiotics, to all medications. The best thing, according to the flyer, stay home. Drink fluids. Contact them if there was a body to collect.

Things did not get better. In a pathetic attempt to quarantine, he relegated himself to the couch. Funds dwindled, there would be no doctor visit, no medication, and no even to ease the symptoms. Mathias shivered under the blankets, the small waste bin overflowing with tissues stained black. His body ached but his hands and feet they hands were pure agony. He couldn’t sleep, he could barely move. The pain alone made his belly flip.

Cyd did everything she could to make Mathias more comfortable, at one point venturing into the city to a few pharmacies, pocketing whatever she could. Aspirin. Antivirals, antibiotics, hell even tissues. She kept cold compresses for his head, but nothing helped. Nothing broke his fever. She hid her fear from him and would cry silently into her pillow, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Mathias got sicker like so many others and getting better was a crapshoot. When the ache finally started to ebb things seemed like it might get better. The aching in his hands was dull but his fingers … he couldn’t feel them, the tips of his fingers, the nails, had turned carbon black. Fine vein-like tendrils coiling down to his palms down to his wrists. In a panic, he stumbled to the sink viciously scrubbing his hand in hot water, desperate to clean it off.

The carbon was consuming him, and there was nothing Cyd could do to stop it. She wasn’t even sure the CDC was trying to stop it. If it was limited to the sprawl? What was the point?