Metrodome Tyran

VIII. The Hunter Becomes the Hunted

'So how were things with you and Bellonya the other night?' Goadas asked. 'She looked pretty livid after that meeting.'

Milo shook his head with a coy smile. 'Nah. Was a damn good night.'

Goadas eyed him with mock-disgust. 'You bastard. How do you do it?'

'It's not my doing,' he said defensively, 'it's hers. When she gets mad, she vents her anger into sexual frustration. Sometimes, I jab her with a stick just to see how good the sex'll be.'

Goadas laughed, shaking his head.

Milo stepped onto a rock that wobbled, steadying himself on a piece of wreckage. 'Man, look at all this stuff.'

'Yeah. The Seekers would have a party if they could get to it. Too bad you gotta get through the wardens first.'

Milo nodded. 'Considering they dump it here cause they don't want it, that's pretty fuckin' selfish if you ask me.'

'Too right. Still, gotta say, smells like nappies baked for a week.'

'Smells like your mum.'

'Fuck you, Milo.'

They'd been walking across TAN 4 for some time, having snuck through a gap in the Rim 4 defences. Despite appearing formidable, they had proved to be actually rather patchy on closer inspection, as though designed to keep out a different scale of invader. Once through, they started to see why TAN 4's defence was lacklustre.

Half swamp, half refuse dump; TAN 4 was a desolate flat expanse, with streams of sewage winding between the bulky wreckage and remains of pretty much everything imaginable. Vehicle parts, screens, stasis-fridges, vending machines, furniture, an infinite multitude of small electronic gadgets, old food containers and far more used condoms than one would ever want to see in a lifetime.

'Did I ever mention I have an aversion to garbage?' Goadas said.

Milo frowned in mock-awe. 'Really? I always knew there was something unique about you, dude.'

'I'm serious, man. This stuff makes me feel sick.'

'Relax, try not to think about it,' Milo said.

A rising roar in the distance preceded a flying craft, approaching from the north. The pair hid inside the shattered husk of a large wooden wardrobe, watching the vehicle slide across the sky. Then it stopped, some hundred or so metres from them. Its lower doors swung open and spewed a torrent of junk onto the wasteland; like some colossal metal beast that had eaten and drank too much. The two Scouters continued to watch as the craft turned and flew back in the direction it'd come.

'Garbage hopper,' Goadas put in. 'Delivering the latest shipment of refuse.'

'Well, at least we won't lose our sense of which way the city is,' Milo noted.

'I hadn't anyway,' Goadas replied. 'It's still that way.' He pointed off at an angle from where the garbage craft had flown.

'Alright, wise-guy. How long does this go on for, anyway?'

''Bout a hundred kays.'

'A hundred kays!' Milo looked alarmed. 'You got a plan? At the rate we're scrabbling through this stuff, that'll take days.'

'Not a plan, as such. Word has it that these wastes are... not entirely uninhabited.'

Milo's movements slowed and he narrowed his eyes at the landscape. 'Right,' he said, eventually. 'Reliable Word, I presume?'

'Yeah. Old man Ekenos told me.'

Milo glanced at Goadas but said nothing further on that. So, the wiley old git had spoken to Goadas. Perhaps there were facets of the operation Goadas took in secrecy, much as the pendant was his own. But Milo decided that he trusted Goadas enough to let him decide for himself whether to keep it and didn't press the matter.