Chapter One-Hundred-Two: Cleanup

"Name?" asked the clerk sitting behind one of the registration tables.

The first Dersite in line replied, "Nyle."

Scribbling the name into his ledger, the clerk then asked, "Service?"

"Cultivation," said Nyle.

"Address?"

"4822 Somnium Street, Apartment 504. Long Night District."

The clerk copied down the information. "Report to the green tables for further assignment. Next!"

Cass watched Nyle accept a slip of paper from the clerk, heading off towards a nearby table adorned with a green tablecloth. Meanwhile, the next Dersite in line stepped forward.

"Name?" asked the clerk.

"Effell," answered the next Dersite.

"Service?"

"Engineering," Effell replied.

"Address?"

"612 Graynight Street, 3rd Floor. Eastvale District."

After writing the new information in his ledger, the clerk handed Effell a slip of paper. "Report to the blue tables for further assignment. Next!"

Cass glanced around for Gwen, but did not see her.

The clerk looked up at the next Dersite who stepped forward to the registration table. "Name?"

"Olfie."

Writing down the name, the clerk followed up with, "Service?"

"Cleanup and Restoration."

"Address?"

"51 Greenflame Plaza, fourth floor. Duskfall District."

Cass stepped away from the registration table, massaging her scalp and forehead. Registering the volunteers was vital work, but after listening to several hundred repetitions of the same series of questions, Cass was ready to take a break. She did not envy the clerk's job, but she did not feel bad for the clerk, because he was also a volunteer.

More than a dozen identical registration stations had been set up throughout the rest of Greenflame Plaza, while Elunes and Atrex oversaw the inner tier of assignment tables, where newly registered volunteers were placed into teams and given specific work assignments. Each assignment table was color-coded to correspond with a specific category of labor.

Cass watched Elunes and Atrex pass from table to table, doing what they could to help the registration process without crossing paths or acknowledging each other. It was not a perfect system, but it was a decent first step.

"Hey, Cass! How's it going over there?"

Hearing Gwen's voice, Cass turned and spotted Gwen near the Engineering assignment tables. "Not as many people with farming experience as I'd like, but we work with what we have," she hollered back, slowly making her way through the bustling crowds towards Gwen. "What are our numbers for Engineering?"

"Nearly five hundred volunteers so far," replied Gwen. "Twenty-two have computer engineering experience, over a hundred have worked with power infrastructure and electronics, and the rest will probably be leading Cleanup and Restoration teams. Not too shabby."

Cass reached Gwen's table, glancing at the ledger for herself. "Seems decent, for a crowd of ten thousand. Any problems with Elunes and Atrex?"

"They've behaved themselves," said Gwen. "For now, at least."

"Sylph!"

Cass turned around, just in time to see another familiar Dersite approach her from the crowd. "Ido? Back so soon? Why don't you have Iris with you?"

"She would not come," reported Ido. "I knocked on her door, but she would not answer. She would not speak to me at all."

"Did you tell her I'm here?" asked Cass. "Did you tell her I sent you?"

"I did, but still she would not come out." Ido gave a hapless shrug. "You may need to go yourself."

"Okay, thanks. Gwen, we have an errand to run. Come with me." Cass waved to get Elunes's attention, shouting, "We'll be right back! Can you keep things going here?"

"So long as you don't vanish for another six years!" Elunes hollered back.

"Who's this Iris person you keep talking about?" Gwen followed Cass through the crowd, heading towards one of the avenues out of Greenflame Plaza. "What's her deal?"

"She's a friend of mine. And she is very good with plants. You'll like her."

Past Anna knelt on the tiled bathroom floor, ravaging the toilet with projectile vomit.

"You're doing great," encouraged Anna, kneeling behind her past self. "That's it, just let it all out."

Past Anna heaved a fresh barrage of runny puke into the toilet, splattering the walls and part of the toilet seat. "Ohh fuck," she gasped between breaths, spitting the remaining vomit out of her mouth. "Fuck and shit."

"Uh-huh." Anna held Past Anna's hair back, away from the splatter. "Like I said, you're doing great. You're a rock star."

"Please kill me." Clutching her stomach, Past Anna leaned once more over the toilet, unleashing a new torrent of foul-smelling bile.

"Why should I?" Anna gently rubbed Past Anna's back. "You're already killing yourself. All I would have to do is sit back and watch you combust."

"Urrghg," replied Past Anna, spitting out the vestiges. "Fuuck yourself."

"I do. Regularly." Anna helped her past self sit up, edging away from the toilet. "You of all people should know."

"Whaat kinda," Past Anna hiccupped, "fucked up dream izzthis?"

"Don't worry about it."

"If thizziss a dream," Past Anna hiccupped again, her words slurring together, "why can't I fly?"

"Because you're wasted as fuck." Ripping off a length of toilet paper, Anna quickly wiped the puke off Past Anna's face and neck, tossing the sullied toilet paper into the bathroom trashcan. "C'mon, let's get you on your feet."

"Not pozzible."

"Okay, c'mon, up you go." Anna took hold of one of Past Anna's arms, gently but firmly helping her stand up. "See? Was that so bad?"

"Anna?" called Great Uncle Andrés from his bedroom on the other side of the bathroom wall. "Está bien?"

"Todos están bien!" Anna hollered back to Great Uncle Andrés. "Go back to sleep!"

Past Anna hiccupped, clasping her stomach as the hiccup muscles contracted. "Oooh…"

"Stop it." Anna supported her past self as she opened the bathroom door, walking Past Anna into the hallway. "No more vomiting. How can your stomach possibly have anything left?"

"I'd say fames lazz," Past Anna hiccupped yet again, "famous last words, if they didn't suck."

"Too bad you're too fucked up to come up with something better," Anna replied, helping Past Anna towards her bedroom.

"Anna?!" exclaimed the voice of Great Uncle Andrés from behind. "Quién es?"

"Jesus Christ." Anna turned to see her great uncle standing in the open doorway of his bedroom, supported by a walker. "You're supposed to be sleeping."

Great Uncle Andrés stared, frozen and openmouthed, at the two identical Anna Carreros standing in his hallway. He looked from one to the other in a state of profound confusion. "Qué…?" Taking a shaky step forward, he pointed at Anna, and then at Past Anna. "Estoy soñando…?"

"Sí, it's all just a dream," agreed Anna, "now will you please go back to bed? Gran tío? Gran tío, qué pasa?"

Clutching his chest, Great Uncle Andrés sank to the floor, unable to fully process his shock before passing out.

"Jesus fucking Christ. Jesus fucking Christ." Anna bundled Past Anna into her bedroom, gently laying her down in bed before hurrying back over to Great Uncle Andrés, inspecting his head for bruises, and then his arms and legs for fractured bones. "Okay." Anna worked her arms underneath Great Uncle Andrés, picking him up, momentarily surprised by how light he was. "At least you didn't break anything this time."

Laying Great Uncle Andrés back in bed, Anna closed both bedroom doors, taking a few seconds to catch her breath. Then she grabbed some paper towels and cleaning spray from downstairs, throwing herself into cleaning the vomit-splattered bathroom.

"Why even bother?" Anna asked herself, throwing away her latest handful of vomit-saturated paper towels, moving from the bathroom to the dripping puke puddles on the stairs. "The world is about to end. Who the fuck will care if there's barf everywhere?"

Anna breathed deeply, growing slightly nauseous from the smell of what was technically her own vomit. "C'mon. Keep going. Don't leave a barfy house behind you."

After cleaning the last of the throwup on the stairway, Anna checked on her past self, who had already fallen fast asleep. "Sweet dreams," Anna murmured, closing the bedroom door. "I need a fucking break."

Anna went downstairs and exited through the front door, ignoring the puke on the porch.

It was dark outside, and vigorously raining. Streetlamps, along with lights from neighboring houses, provided some meager illumination to the night, but Anna could not see any moon or stars. The storm clouds had obscured the entire sky.

Anna sprinted through the rain.

Lightning streaked across the sky as Anna crossed Marchwood Road, followed by thunder several seconds later. A gust of wind surged past Anna, driving rain into her eyes and nearly throwing her off balance. "Will you calm the fuck down?!" Anna shouted at the storm, hurrying through the Exton Diner's parking lot to the front entrance.

Anna stepped, dripping wet, into the Exton Diner, where she was greeted by the same waitress from before.

"Thought you'd take a free shower outside?" remarked the waitress, picking up a roll of silverware. "Wait here, I'll be right back."

While the waitress ducked into the kitchen, Anna stared at the dessert counter, gazing longingly at the German chocolate cake.

"Here." The waitress returned from the kitchen, handing Anna several small towels. "You'll be sitting in a puddle if you don't towel off."

"Thanks." Anna looked around the inside of the diner, but there was no one else sitting at any of the tables. She went ahead and used one of the towels to start drying her hair. "I appreciate it."

"Anything I can get you in the meantime?"

"Yeah, let's do the coffee and eggs benedict I didn't get to enjoy last time." Anna used another towel to dry off her arms and legs, wishing she'd taken an extra moment to find a rain jacket. "Then we'll see how we feel."

"Coming right up," said the waitress, filling Anna's water glass before returning to the kitchen to convey Anna's order.

Anna sat down at her booth and looked out the window into the stormy night, watching lonely pairs of headlights pass by along Route 100. Every now and then, the lightning returned, briefly revealing snapshots of the nearby trees, buildings, and road.

The waitress's voice pulled Anna's attention away from the window. "I have your coffee here," she said, placing a steaming cup of black coffee in front of Anna. "Your eggs will be a few minutes. Let me know if there's anything else you'd like."

"Thanks." Anna added some creamer, using a spoon to stir the coffee until it turned milky white.

Blowing across the surface of her coffee to cool it down, Anna accessed her sylladex and retrieved Slaughterhouse V, preparing herself for the long haul of an all-nighter. "Trust me," she assured the book. "You're better off with me than you were on Gino's bathroom floor."

Anna yawned, sipping her coffee as she opened to the beginning of Slaughterhouse V. "Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time," she murmured quietly to herself after several minutes of reading. "Oh, Billy. I get it. Really, I do."

"Iris?" Cass knocked on the door of Iris's rowhome. "We need to talk."

No response came from the other side of the door.

"You sure we have the right place?" asked Gwen, looking at the adjacent rowhomes. "How do you even know your way around here? Eastvale District is a maze."

"This is the right place." Cass pointed up to Iris's second-story bedroom window, where a vibrant orange chrysanthemum could be seen growing underneath a full-spectrum lamp. "See?"

"Nice," remarked Gwen.

"Iris, I know you're in there." Cass knocked again, louder than last time. "No one has seen you lately, and if you weren't here, your beautiful chrysanthemum would be wilting."

In a flash, the chrysanthemum vanished behind hastily drawn purple curtains.

"Well, now I definitely know you're home!" Cass stepped back from the front door, hollering directly up to Iris's bedroom window. "Iris, this is silly! Why are you avoiding me? Why did you refuse my invitation to attend Conclave?"

No response from beyond the purple curtains obscuring Iris's bedroom window.

"You're right." Gwen planted herself in front of the rowhome's entrance, performing a quick leg stretch. "This is silly."

Cass, sensing what Gwen was about to do, started to say, "Wait-"

Gwen kicked open the rowhome's front door, sending it slamming noisily into the inside wall.

"Why did you do that?" Cass winced, surveying the damage done to the front door's locking mechanism. "We aren't the Gestapo. Why open doors like the Gestapo?"

"You're right," agreed Gwen, stepping into the dark interior of Iris's home. "We're not breaking and entering to haul anyone off to a death camp. We're doing it to stop everyone from starving. Cass, you draw the best distinctions."

"Breaking into someone's home could really hurt our standing with the public." Exchanging an uncomfortable wave with several Dersites passing by on the opposite sidewalk, Cass glanced nervously at the windows of all the nearby rowhomes on Iris's block, hoping no one else was watching. "It could hurt us politically in Conclave. Try to understand how fragile this place really is. You and I singlehandedly averted a civil war, but we won't be so successful next time if our popular support is eroded."

"Well sure, that sounds reasonable," acquiesced Gwen, "but I can't exactly un-kick this door, so, we might as well take advantage of what's already done."

"Don't do it again." Grimacing, Cass followed Gwen inside, wrinkling her nose at the odor. "What's that smell?"

"Smells like a stale puddle of spilled Miller Lite." Gwen sniffed the air again. "Kinda smells like something's fermenting."

Iris was nowhere to be seen in the living room or kitchen, prompting Cass and Gwen to take the stairs to the upper floor. The cramped upstairs hallway had three doors, one of which was closed.

"Check that door." Cass pointed to one of the open doors while walking towards the other. She peeked into the room beyond her chosen doorway, taking in the sight of what appeared to be a walk-in storage closet. Makeshift metal shelves lined the otherwise empty room's walls, displaying a wide variety of gardening tools: shears, cultivators, trowels, gloves, kneeling pads, watering cans, and several tools Cass did not recognize.

"Just a bathroom over here," Gwen observed, looking through the other open door. "Anything on your end?"

"This room's basically a garden shed." Cass reunited with Gwen at the opposite end of the hallway, knocking on the final door, which remained closed. "Iris?" She tried opening the door, but it was locked.

"If I kick this one down, no one would see," Gwen pointed out, pressing on Iris's bedroom door to feel how sturdy it was. "Just sayin'."

"No," maintained Cass.

"Please go away," sighed a quiet, dejected voice from the other side of the door.

"Words! Finally." Cass knocked again on Iris's bedroom door. "Will you please open the door and talk to us? It's me. Do you not trust me?"

"I am tired," Iris replied. "I can be of no use to you. Please leave me alone."

Cass frowned, taking a step back from the door. "No use? Where is this coming from?"

"Every time I try to help, it backfires and everything gets worse." Iris took a deep breath. "No one wants me anymore. What's the point?"

"You decide what the point is," replied Cass. "Meaning is self-created. Your skills are vital to our survival. Why would you ever think no one wants you around?"

"They kicked me out of Conclave," Iris murmured glumly. "They betrayed me, blamed me, ostracized me. They killed my roses."

"Fuck that," declared Gwen. "That's not how we operate."

"Who speaks?" asked Iris. "Cassandra? You are not alone?"

"Gwen is with me." Realizing that Iris had never learned Gwen's real name, Cass added for clarification, "The Witch of Light."

"Truly?" Unlocked from within, the bedroom door swung slowly open. A weary, bedraggled Iris stood in the open doorway, wearing stained clothing, staring at Gwen like she'd just come back from the dead, which was not inaccurate. "Is this a dream?"

"If it was a dream," Gwen replied, "you would be able to fly."

Iris blinked. "We saw you die. On TV. It was horrible."

"You saw her die, too." Gwen looked at Cass. "She's died three times already, and yet she never seems to stay down for long. Why should I?"

Iris invited Gwen and Cass into the bedroom, stumbling slightly as she sat upon her bed. "What is it like on the other side of death?"

Gwen crossed to Iris's windowsill, sniffing the orange chrysanthemum. "No worse than your worst memories." She breathed gently in through her nose, filling herself with the chrysanthemum's herby scent. "And the sunsets are still beautiful."

Iris gave a quiet burp while pondering the validity of her post-mortal existence. "That doesn't sound so bad."

"Are you tipsy?" Gwen looked up from the chrysanthemum, recognizing a familiar smell on Iris's breath. "Do you have any on you?"

"I have three stills in the basement," said Iris. "My next full batch will be ready in two days."

"Fermentation." Gwen snapped her fingers, pointing at the stairs out in the hall. "The funky downstairs smell. I knew it. What kind of booze are you making?"

"I have no name for it," answered Iris. "It does not taste good. But it makes me happier."

"We'll talk," Gwen assured Iris.

"May I ask another question about your post-mortal experiences?" Iris asked.

Cass nodded. "Absolutely."

"The exact moment of death. What does that feel like?"

After thinking about it for a moment, Cass replied, "I don't remember. No more than I can remember the exact moment I fall asleep."

"Me neither." Gwen shrugged. "One moment I was dying, the next I was back in my old life, still very much alive. No idea how I got there, but it felt like I'd been there the entire time. I might as well have lived a lifetime in that bubble. Maybe several lifetimes."

"Did you meet any of my people on the other side?" asked Iris.

"Technically, yes," replied Gwen. "But I don't know if they were actually there. Maybe on some level they were? The Veteran was present, for example, but presumably he's still alive, so, it's hard to say for sure. I left the afterlife before I could do any experimenting."

"Even calling it 'afterlife' seems like a misnomer," added Cass. "It's really just more life. What difference does it make whether a person is alive physically or non-physically? We're equally alive either way."

"I have outlived all my flowers." Iris looked at her chrysanthemum. "Most of my flowers. I wonder where they go in between lifetimes."

"You think your flowers reincarnate?" asked Gwen.

"Don't they?" Iris smiled faintly at her chrysanthemum. "They pass from generation to generation, and yet they remain with me through the ages. They are my dear friends."

"We can help you bring your roses back," offered Cass. "Once we get the food supply stabilized, how would you feel about designing a new garden?"

Iris took a deep breath, dangling her feet over the edge of her bed. "My rose bushes in Royal House Square were centuries old. They had names. Centuries of care, wiped away by angry people in a matter of weeks. I do not believe new roses will fare any better."

"You say you love roses." Cass offered a hand to Iris, inviting her to stand up. "Why not let the new generation of roses decide for themselves if they fared better than their ancestors?"

After a moment's hesitation, Iris accepted Cass's hand, rising from bed. "I suppose."

"But first, why don't we take a walk?" suggested Cass, leading the way out of the bedroom. "Let's get some fresh air. I'd like to see one of your farms."

"Why?" Iris followed Cass and Gwen downstairs. "They are failures. It is a depressing sight."

"Show us anyway, and tell us what went wrong."

Iris reached the bottom of the stairs, eyes widening at the sight of her damaged front door.

"Yeah, sorry about that. My bad." Gwen touched the front door's exposed lock mechanism, assessing the damage. "Once I set up my workshop, I'll fix it."

"You could have just opened it." Iris took the lead, walking outside onto the street. "The front door was unlocked."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Gwen looked at Cass. "You never bothered to try the doorknob?"

"You certainly didn't, either," Cass retorted.

"Poo-tee-weet?" Anna reached the end of Slaughterhouse V and yawned, closing the book. "Thanks for playing, Kurt Vonnegut. What a ride."

Dim daylight illuminated the outdoors. The storm clouds ruined any chance for Anna to see one last sunrise, allowing only for a gradual, diffuse brightening of the sky. Soothed by the rhythm of raindrops striking the glass, Anna gazed through her diner booth's rain-soaked window, watching the morning traffic pass along Route 100.

Across the street, a handful of teenagers stood in the rain at the side of Marchwood Road, wearing rain jackets or huddling underneath umbrellas, waiting for the school bus to arrive.

A pair of elderly women entered the Exton Diner and were promptly greeted by Anna's waitress, who showed them to a table and passed out menus. After taking the newcomers' drink orders, the waitress passed Anna's table on her way to the kitchen. "Would you like more coffee?"

"I'm good, thanks."

"You've been up an awful long time," observed the waitress, lingering for a moment. "Are you sure everything is okay? If you need help, I can't do anything unless you tell me what's wrong."

"Everything is fine. Thanks for asking, though. I appreciate you." Anna smiled, looking away from the window, making eye contact with the waitress. "What's your name?"

"Haley."

"What are you still doing here, Haley?" asked Anna. "You were here yesterday, you were here overnight, and now you're working a morning shift? Do you ever go home?"

"On occasion," replied the waitress, refilling Anna's water glass. "We're understaffed. And it's been a long week."

"Take a break," suggested Anna. "Trust me. Go make yourself vomit, and say you're sick. Take the day off. Go dance in the rain. Be with someone you love."

The waitress chuckled. "That's a nice idea."

"I'm serious. If you don't treat yourself right now, you won't get another chance. Do you want to die in the Exton Diner?"

"Okay." The waitress frowned, unsettled. "Crossing the line a bit, don't you think?"

"Sorry." Anna took a breath, knowing she'd gone too far. It was no use. No one would ever believe her, and perhaps it was best to leave people to their own devices. "Can I get the check?"

"Sure thing." The waitress walked away, heading to the cash register to print Anna's receipt.

Anna looked out the window again. The storm showed no signs of relenting. It was now bright enough to see the moving windshield wipers on passing cars. Biking to school would be a chilly, wet, miserable affair in this sort of weather. It would be better to take the bus.

The Route 100 traffic light turned red. Traffic began to accumulate on the highway, and included within that traffic was a familiar school bus. Although the rain made the window too blurry for Anna to make out the bus's number, she could see the bus's blinking turn signal, indicating an intention to turn onto Marchwood Road.

"That's our ride," Anna muttered, glancing impatiently at the waitress, who seemed to be having trouble with the receipt printer. "C'mon, Haley, dear sweet Haley, please hurry up."

The traffic light changed again, and the school bus began to move.

With a pen, Anna wrote, "THANK YOU KEEP THE CHANGE" on a napkin, leaving all her remaining cash on the table. She stood and left the Exton Diner without a word, bracing herself against the powerful wind as she stepped outside.

The school bus pulled to a stop in front of the waiting group of teenagers. Its doors opened, allowing the high-schoolers to board one at a time.

Sprinting through the rain as quickly as she could, Anna hurried across Marchwood Road, barely managing to reach the bus stop before the school bus closed its doors. She clambered aboard, sitting in the empty seat two rows behind the bus driver, avoiding eye contact with any of her classmates.

The driver closed the doors, nudging the gas to get the bus moving.

Anna slouched back in her seat, knees propped up against the seat in front of her, watching through her new window as the Exton Diner grew further and further away.

Cass ran her fingers through the soil. She picked up a handful of dirt, allowing it to fall between her fingers.

The dirt felt very dry.

"Is this supposed to be a garden?" Gwen looked across the barren land occupying half a cleared-out city block, trying to imagine what it had looked like before the crops died. "This is just sad."

"It is sad," agreed Iris. "Until last year, this was my most productive grain field, and the field itself seems to have died. I know gardens and I know flowers, but cultivating food staples on a massive scale is well beyond the scope of my experience."

"You've probably overworked the soil," surmised Gwen, crouching to inspect the dirt more closely. "The land loses its nutrients if it's not allowed to rest between harvests."

"I am aware," said Iris. "But what could I do? Partitioning the fields into sections and rotating the harvest across the different sections would decrease the overall yield, and we can't afford a reduction in output like that. We need our food output to increase. Drastically. Now."

"Would having more fields solve the problem?" asked Cass.

"We live in a massive city," replied Iris, nudging a clump of soil with her toes. "We have already used almost all of our remaining open space. Creating new fields means converting properties into viable ground. Buildings must be demolished to clear room, and yet, any building we choose for demolition is also someone's home. Whose homes must we destroy in order to survive? No one has volunteered. What would you do?"

After thinking for a moment, Cass asked, "Before you tried to confiscate peoples' homes, did you ask their permission first? How did you decide which properties to seize?"

"Lies." Iris scowled, kicking the ground softly, scattering the dirt around her foot. "Where did you hear that? Elunes, I expect? That version of the story serves her well, but it is untrue."

Cass frowned. "No one tried to confiscate anyone's home without permission?"

"I was in the process of using the census to determine which buildings would be ideal for removal," explained Iris. "That is all. Securing permission from anyone living in those buildings would have been its own process, and it would have included devising alternate housing, but Elunes intervened and blew it all up. She ignored my research and convinced a hair-thin Conclave majority to approve confiscating specific properties associated with Atrex and his closest supporters. Without seeking permission. When Atrex incited the public to riot, Elunes ensured I took the blame. Since then, no progress has been made. Those two will be the death of us all."

"Wow." Cass knew the truth when she heard it. "I didn't know things had gone so backwards. I'm sorry you had to deal with that, and we will do something about it, but right now we need to focus on feeding everyone. You said we've already cultivated almost all the available open space. Does that mean there is still some left?"

"There is one place with large tracts of open ground, although it is not viable at the moment," said Iris. "No one goes there. The lights failed in that area years ago, and no one is eager to fix them."

"We saw a big dark patch in the city's lighting grid when we were arriving," Gwen reminded Cass. "Remember that?"

Cass asked Iris, "Is that what you're talking about?"

Iris nodded. "Most likely, yes. It is not far from here. Barely a twenty-minute walk. Would you like to see for yourself?"

"Show us."

Cass and Gwen silently followed Iris down a nearby road, leaving behind the fallow field. As they continued down the road, Cass and Gwen noticed more craters marring the cobblestones, many more damaged and destroyed buildings, and countless piles of rubble.

"What is that fucking stench?" Gwen wrinkled her nose, noticing an unpleasant odor lingering in the air; an odor which intensified gradually as Iris led Gwen and Cass deeper into Eastvale. "Smells like shit. Rotting shit."

"We still have a lot of cleanup to do," remarked Cass, stepping around a pile of pulverized masonry. "Many of these buildings are clearly abandoned. Why not knock them down and utilize the space for cultivation?"

"Volunteers are needed to clear the rubble," replied Iris, turning down a different street, gesturing for Cass and Gwen to follow. Several blocks ahead, the road, and the city itself, seemed to disappear into a shadowy void. "Finding volunteers has been a consistent problem."

"We have the volunteers." Gwen gazed at the darkness waiting further down the street. "Thousands of folks are registering in Greenflame Plaza as we speak."

"Really?" Iris stepped over a small crater. "How did you manage that?"

"I actually got myself killed trying." Cass surveyed the sorry state of the streetlamps. Many no longer functioned, and the ambient lighting in this part of the city was very dim. "The only reason civil war did not break out is thanks to Gwen's quick thinking. If you had accepted my invitation to Conclave, you would have seen for yourself. You will have many teams of volunteers to work with."

"If that is true, we should prioritize this place, but first we need to fix the lights." Iris brought Cass and Gwen to the edge of the light generated by the current city block's handful of barely functioning streetlamps. "We need to see what we are cleaning."

The next city block was completely dark, as were the neighboring blocks beyond. None of the streetlamps or building lights had any power, making it impossible to see very far ahead, and the dark area was so massive that neither Gwen nor Cass could see any faint lights in the distance marking the void's other side.

Cass and Gwen both pulled out their phones and switched on the phone lights, proceeding cautiously into the darkness, with Iris following hesitantly behind.

The road could hardly be considered a road, anymore. Cass, Gwen, and Iris had to constantly circumnavigate gaping wide craters left over from artillery blasts and the Red Miles. Two blocks into the dark zone, Cass and Gwen began to encounter burnt-out husks of wrecked cars and ruined military tanks.

"Jesus Christ, that fucking smell!" Gwen stopped breathing through her nose, overwhelmed by the sickly sweet and rotten smell of decay. "I might throw up."

"Oh." Cass froze as her phone light revealed, sprawled across her path, still wearing a helmet and body armor, the half-rotted corpse of a Dersite commando. If Cass had not been looking down, she would have stepped on it. "God."

"Jesus fucking shit." Grimacing, Gwen walked past the corpse, sweeping her phone light across the surrounding area, revealing no fewer than a dozen additional corpses strewn about the cobblestones and mounds of rubble nearby. "What the actual fuck?"

The wounds which had killed these Dersites remained evident on their bodies. Most of the corpses were still whole, but several were not. Some wore the remnants of military body armor, while other bodies were wrapped in much more tattered clothing.

"I don't understand." Fighting to keep the contents of her stomach in place, Cass looked away from the dead commando's exposed grinning skull, taking a deep breath. "How could six years pass without anyone even bothering to bury or burn the bodies?"

"Some of the dead were taken care of." Iris deliberately avoided looking directly at any of the bodies, but she could not fully ignore her peripheral vision. "But when the lights failed and food grew scarce, the work stopped, and I could not convince anyone to help me finish. Now no one ever comes here. Most would prefer to forget."

"Six years!" exclaimed Cass. "It's been six years! There is no excuse."

"Six years is not so long to a people whose lives span millennia," Iris reminded Cass.

Despite her best efforts, Cass clutched her stomach and staggered a few steps away, painting the cobblestones with vomit. Spitting out the vestiges, she walked away from the corpses, heading back towards the light, declaring, "This is the worst thing I have ever seen. This is a catastrophe."

Gwen followed Cass, eager to get away from the smell before she, too, lost control of her stomach. "What the fuck was that?"

"This is where the battle was fought after you died." Cass found a final elusive glob of vomit behind one of her teeth, promptly spitting it out. "This is the Bloody Road."

"Cleaning up will take forever," asserted Gwen. "It could take years. How does that help your food supply concerns?"

"It doesn't," answered Iris. "That is why I said this area, while unoccupied, is not viable at the moment."

"Understatement of the motherfucking century," remarked Gwen, careful to avoid breathing through her nose.

"So that leaves us back at square one." Cass led the way across a final dark street before stepping once again into the light, putting away her phone.

"There's something else worth considering," interjected Gwen, turning off her phone and stowing it in her sylladex. "I'll need to set up my workshop first, but I think we can devise a way to quickly grow food without having to knock down any buildings or clear any rubble."

"I'm all ears," said Cass.

"Where's a good place for me to set up my workshop?" Gwen could feel the beginnings of a headache, and she gently rubbed her temples. "And also sleep? And live?"

"You can move in with me, if you'd like," Cass replied. "I share a house in Greenflame Plaza with a veteran of the Bloody Road, but I have a spare bedroom on my floor. The downstairs used to be a bakery, but now it's abandoned. You could set up shop there."

"Okay, great." Gwen turned to Iris. "How much do you know about hydroponics?"

Iris frowned. "Hydro what?"

"Yep, that's what I thought." Gwen stopped massaging her forehead, surrendering to the inevitability of the approaching headache. "You have some learning to do, but don't worry. If you're savvy enough to make your own alcohol stills, hydroponics will be a breeze for you."