The crowd surged forward, scrambling over each other, clawing and fighting their way toward the water that gushed down toward them. A little girl fought to stay upright as their legs hit her, knees colliding with her face and feet narrowly missing her own as everyone clamored past, climbing over each other and ignoring the child that was tangled up in everyone's legs. She didn't want to be there, not at all—but it wasn't her choice. Her father was sick, her mother was weak, and the baby couldn't even cry at night anymore. So each week her mother sent her with a water pouch while she herself also fought for the most precious resource in the citadel, often abandoning her daughter to get closer while the child was left to fend for herself. If the girl didn't come back with water, she was beaten until she understood why it was so important that she didn't let her family down. She had bruises and scars and a bad hip from the time her mother kicked her so hard she lost feeling in her right leg for a day, and even though she walked with a limp, she was still sent to collect the water or face the wrath that awaited her at home if she failed.
A knee to the back sent the girl flying forward and she landed with a thud against the back of a large man. He stumbled but otherwise ignored her, choosing instead to continue throwing the people in front of him out of the way. The child followed in his wake until she reached the water, where she began dodging the punches the adults threw at each other and raised her water pouch to collect as much as she could before she was inevitably tossed out of the way.
As the water poured down, she couldn't help but smile. Nothing felt better than cool water on her hot skin, and it washed away the dirt and sand and blood and grime that usually coated her. For those few seconds, she finally felt…clean. New. Shiny.
She heard the shing of a blade being pulled out and her head snapped around, searching for it. She knew that sound; she had been knicked more than a few times already today. There were no rules amongst the people of the citadel when it came to harming each other. Only the strong survived, and if that meant harming a child for food, nobody gave it a second thought. A child was just a small adult, right? Little blighters that took up space and cried for too much food and water. Crude, rusty knives were often used to ward them off, just like they were used against other adults when the rush for water began.
Usually, it was a stranger that she watched being attacked, just another dirty face in the crowd. People blended together down in the dirt, always moving in mobs like giant inhuman masses. She was never troubled when people died. She saw a lot of death, and never thought too much about it. It was what happened, and it awaited everybody eventually, right? Life was short in the citadel, especially for people like her, who had to fight for the most basic resources. But this time, as she looked up, she found that the blade was being pointed toward her own face. She wanted to scream, but suddenly her throat felt very dry despite being surrounded by so much water. Her eyes widened as her heart began thudding.
She saw a lot of death, but she didn't want to die.
"Gimme that water carrier, ya little mite!" the knife man snarled.
She whimpered and dropped the pouch, backing up and immediately being stopped as she ran into someone. There were people all around her, a tightly knit sea of bodies that prevented any escape. She wasn't ready for Valhalla yet. She was just a child! She had to live somehow, there had to be a way, any way, anything…. She tried to turn around, to find some way out, but the man only pressed the knife up against her throat as he bent down to snatch up the water pouch.
The woman blocking her escape was suddenly pushed to the ground by another person desperately trying to get water, and the girl could finally see a way out. In the second the man's eyes were trained on the pouch on the ground, she grabbed the knife, the rusty metal cutting into her palm as she pushed it away from her and ran, weaving between legs and ignoring the pain that erupted in her face as someone's knee collided with her nose. Another knife flashed before her, this one being held at someone's hip as they planned to stab anyone in their way. She closed her eyes and tried to duck, still running and pushing her way through the crowd, but the blade lightly slashed her forehead and suddenly she could feel blood running down in front of her eyes.
Everything was painful and she just wanted it to end, but as her heart thudded in her chest, she knew that she couldn't stop running. She didn't even have the pouch to bring back to her dying father, and she knew that when she showed up without it, her mother would do something even worse than what happened to her hip last time. What was she supposed to do? Where could she go?
She got her answer when she finally made it to the edge of the crowd and stopped to breathe, doubling over toward the dirt. Her hip felt like it was on fire, there was blood in her eyes, and her entire face was throbbing, but she finally felt like she could breathe again. As she started to stand up again, she suddenly felt a new pain in her ribs as a boot collided with them, sending her up and flying away.
"Outta my way!" was all she heard from the man who was foolishly late for collecting water and was now forcing his way up through the crowd to fight for the last drops. With a groan, she curled onto her side, hugging her painful abdomen, silent sobs wracking her body. The pain was too much. Everything hurt all over, and as it continued to surge through her, she felt herself begin to tremble. She couldn't breathe again. She couldn't do anything, it felt like. She didn't even know where she was, only that the ground underneath her was…not dirt?
"The hell's this?" a boot nudged her and she curled up smaller. Please, no, go away….
The floor began to move up. "Should we throw her back down? Seems dead."
"Not dead, idiot! It moved." The boot nudged her again and she found the energy to kick out, searching for the person who was making her already hurt ribs hurt more. Her bare foot collided with a shin and she heard swearing followed by a chorus of bellowing laughter.
"Fuckin'…my leg! Throw her off!"
"Naw, we're keepin' her! Call her another prize from today's scavenging!"
The girl finally uncurled slightly, just enough to peek up at the voices. She was surrounded by pale faces, some covered in scars, some bumpy, and some bloody. War boys. The elevator guardians. She had never seen them this close, only from a distance when everybody else tried to reach them when they came down or back up on the platform…was she there now? She couldn't tell. Her vision was getting fuzzy.
"Take her to Organic Mechanic," one of them said, kneeling down. He reached out and lifted one of her quickly closing eyelids. "Hey, you awake?"
That was the last thing she heard.
The war boy glanced at the elevator guardians, who narrowed their eyes before one of them nodded. "Never had a girl pup. Looks tough if she made it all the way here. Or maybe Joe'll like her, eh?" They roared with laughed.
"We had a good day. Might as well. If she dies, she dies. If she lives, she either brings life or dies anyway. No harm in that." The other said gruffly as he ceased laughing.
The war boy scooped her up and the others all leaned in curiously. The only women they ever saw up close were the milk mothers, and this girl was very far from them. She was tiny, and as one boy picked up her arm, they could see how thin she was. That wasn't right, was it? Girls weren't supposed to look like that. Did Immortan Joe's wives look like that? Probably not, though none of them were allowed to see the wives. The milk mothers certainly didn't have that many bones sticking out of them. Her hair was matted, her clothes were tattered, and they could see that she was in need of a blood bag or two. There were cuts on her face and scars all over her arms and she reminded them of themselves sometimes. They always took care of each other, so is that why they wanted to take care of her in some way?
"Take her to mechanic," one of the boys said as they reached the top. The others muttered in agreement before leaving, suddenly much more interested in their cars than the speck of dirt they had picked up. The war boy holding her was left to look at her a little more. She was leaking a lot of blood. If she were his lancer, he'd be concerned…but she wasn't. She was just another pup now, coming from where they all came from. Just another lucky commoner who probably wouldn't survive the week.