Shattered Ladder 1-1

Chapter 1: A Rocky Start

Thok!

Rocks weren’t good for much. 

Starting fires, grinding plants, maybe smashing things, sure. If you even went to all the trouble of sharpening it, you could tie it to a stick and then you had a good spear.

But other than that, there wasn’t much you could do with just a rock.

Still, that didn’t really matter much to some people.

Thok!

Not when they didn’t want to do much with them anyway.

Thok!

The next one caught him hard right in the chest, hitting his meat through cloth, the sound blunt and heavy. The breath in his lungs hitched as he coughed with it, the sound rough and dry, air getting shoved back down his throat where it didn’t want to go. His patched shirt might as well have been paper because it didn’t help not a bit; the rock found skin underneath just fine.

Another one, this time between his shoulders. Thok!

That one hit harder and he felt it, back arching as a whimper left him. N-no… He hated when he made noise. 

It only made them keep going. 

His body folded up on instinct, knees wanting to give up under him but his feet were already sinking into the not-soil that crunched like old bones under him. Years and years of garbage ground down to dust, Gram told him. Still garbage, though.

He knew he was gonna bruise, his back definitely. He could already feel it too, that deep ache that wouldn’t leave him till at least the next day. Prolly the day after, too. He knew that feeling better than he knew most people’s names.

Another whimper slipped out before he could catch it, his head down, but he didn’t mind that one. As loud as they were, it got swallowed up by all that gray nothing stretching in every direction, like the valley didn’t even care enough to echo it back.

Another rock bounced near his feet, rust-dust puffing up in a little cloud of red that made his nose itch. His whole body jerked back, arms coming up over his head even though that never helped much. Just made him look smaller. Weaker.

The laughter was still going, loud and wild, and that was always worse than the rocks. Rocks just hurt. Laughter made you keep the hurt.

“Lookit ‘im,” one of them said, cackling like a hunger-dog. “Shakes like scared rat.”

Four of them today. Must be new trainin’.

Joric usually had at least five or six with him, his own men to grow up with, fight with, lead.

Ken’s eyes stayed on the blotroot he’d been digging, its gnarled red-brown surface still half-buried in the waste-dirt. Grandmother taught him which ones were good for the breath, back when she was still around to teach him anything.

“Oi, freaky.” He didn’t look up but he knew a different voice when he heard it, deeper than the hunger-dog boy. This one was familiar too — Tam — the chief’s second nephew, built thick like all of them were when they got first pick of everything. “Whatcha doin’ out here? Stealin’ good roots?”

Ken’s hands twitched more and more the longer they clutched the small digging stick, the little plastic thing cutting into his palm. Keeping his hands from shaking was always the easiest and the hardest part at the same time but it was all he could do right now. Still, he wasn’t doing a good job and he knew it; the shakes always came when people got too close, when voices got too loud.

“I’m just—” The words came out quiet, careful, trying to see how much air they’d cost before he spent it. “I’m just picking herbs f—”

“He talkin’?” Hunger-dog laughed again, a laugh spilling out with the words “We ain’t ask you to talk.”

But you did. The thought sat there in his head, small and confused. They asked him the question. He answered. That was how talking worked, wasn’t it?

It never made sense. None of this ever made sense, but the why of it all never managed to stick in his brain long enough to figure out.

The group shifted apart, boots crunching in the dust, and their leader stepped through. He knew the sound of good boots, of heavy feet, and the way he walked.

Joric.

A year older than him and no more, but the older boy was still built like the mountain of car husks in the distance; all heavy angles and rusty strength. It made sense, though. Chief’s son got fed first and got fed most, the thick muscle over his shoulders and his arms making it clear where the food went.

Ken’s chest got tighter, but that was just the usual thing. Nothing to do with fear. Much.

Joric spat near the blotroot, spit hitting the waste-dirt with a tiny splat. “Shut up, freak.” 

He always said it like that. 

Not like an insult, but like it was just a fact. The same way the sky was gray or garbage was sharp, he was freak. Village law, written in the way people looked at him. “You eat our food. Take up space. Can’t even scrap right wit’ those shaky hands.”

The shakes got worse now, running up Ken’s arms to his elbows as his breathing went rougher, not enough air getting where it needed to go.

“You’re bad meat,” Joric said, and stepped closer.

Joric bent down, eyes still locked on Ken’s face with a smile. That smile he knew, he hated that smile. It sat in a face twisted up wrong, the look showing off where Joric cracked his two front teeth running into a wire-tree years back. Gram said the hit to his head had made Joric mean. 

Ken knew better.

The other boy was born mean.

Joric’s hand reached down, thick fingers gripping something new. Another rock.

This one was different from the others, bigger too. One side of it was jagged where it’d probably broken off something else. A metal fragment was still stuck to that same side, probably from old junker parts but it shone dully all the same.

Good throwing weight, though, he could tell. Balanced.

Ken’s hands twitched around the digging stick. Useless. His teeth grit as he just watched as the bigger boy hefted the stone, testing it. Runnin’ not gonna do anything. It only made it worse. If anything, it made them try harder, made them do it out of anger instead of fun.

And they hated having to work for their fun.

That sick smile twisted itself wider across Joric’s face. The same smile as his chief got after a warband; when they came back with new women and new weapons.

The rock left Joric’s hand and everything moved like tree-sap; the flex of muscle in Joric’s thick arm, the grunt of effort as he put his whole weight behind it. The stone spinning, a dark speck against the metal-lid sky that never showed blue, never showed anything but gray like the inside of old cans.

Move. Move.

The thought was there, screaming in his head, but his body didn’t want to listen. 

Bad meat, they always said that. He didn’t want to believe it, but it was all he knew. Good meat could run. Good meat could fight. Only bad meat was stuck in fog half the time. Something had to be wrong with meat for it to shake like he did.

Crack.

It hit hard, right above his right eye.

A sharp sting like broken glass, and the ground disappeared under him. Waste-dirt rushed up to meet his back and his head shuddered, teeth clicking together as his skull bounced off hard-packed dirt.

Pain came in layers.

First the bright white flash behind his eyes, so sharp it felt clean. Especially clean up against the messy dull ache that spread through his head.

Something hot trickled down the side of his head, blood standing out next to cool air. Vision in that eye went blurry too, the world smeared into a mess, like looking through dirty water.

There they are.

Like always, the hardest shakes started in his fingertips, deep in the bone and working their way up and out, same as always. It spread up his arms, fast and quick, muscles betraying him again, making it impossible to hide his weakness. 

He knew he was small but they made him look smaller, made him look broken.

Joric and his boys weren’t just laughing now. They were howling, pointing at his hands like they’d never seen anything so funny.

“There he goes!” 

“Lookit the ghost-shakes!” 

Always the damn shakes when things got bad. Stupid. Useless. Broken.

Why couldn’t his body just work right? Other kids didn’t fall apart when someone looked at them wrong. Other kids could run, could fight back, could breathe without thinking about it every damn minute.

Why me?

The cut stung sharper, Ken blinking past the blood as something shifted in his head, something bubbling its way back up where he had shoved it down.

You’re a good boy, Kenshi.

An old face, wrinkled and warm, a thick head of stringy silver hair, and knobby hands covering his small ones when the shakes got too bad to hide. Ain’t nothin’ wrong witchu.

She was gone.

All gone. 

His hand jerked, fingers skittering across the waste-dirt like broken spider legs before they found it. The same rock that opened his head. His hand closed around it, sharp edges biting deep into his palm. He could feel his blood on it, a little bit at least, the rock a little slippery but he didn’t mind.

The rock felt real.

Real weight. Real hurt. Different from the other hurt, though. This one he could control.

Thunk. Thunk.

More rocks bouncing off his back, shoulders. Not meant to hurt now, just for the fun of watching something that wouldn’t run anymore.

Air. Need air.

A shuddering gasp filled his chest, Ken holding the breath till his chest hurt even more. When he couldn’t hold it a second longer, he let it hiss out slow between his teeth. In. In. Out. Out. 

The exercises. 

Feed the hunger, Kenny. Gram’s voice in his head, soft and scratchy like old cloth. Don’t let it feed on you. He’d been doing them like she said, for as long as he could remember. The hunger only shrunk back, but it never left. 

No matter how many times he tried to focus on his breath.

Ken pulled his arms over his head, doing what he always did. Turtle time. The world shrank to the dark space between his elbows, cramped and safe and small. Made himself the smallest target possible, knees to chest, everything tucked in tight.

Sounds got muffled now, distant, the other boys still talking.

Thud. Another rock against his ribs.

Still throwing, too.

“Borin’ now,” Tam’s voice, already moving away. “Don’t even squirm no more.”

“Freak’s broke,” Joric grumbled. “…I’m hungry.”

“‘m hungry too!”

Their footsteps crunched away through the waste-dirt, boots heavy but Ken stayed curled up, listening. 

He listened as wind moved through the junk-hills with that lonely whistle it always made, air trying to find its way home through a maze of broken things. Soon enough, there were no more voices. No more boots. 

Just wind and the far-off sound of the village doing village things.

…hm.

Eventually, he opened an eye, his body uncurling, every muscle tight and sore. The narrow pass between junk-hills was empty now, just rust-colored dust and scattered pebbles. They’re gone.

Pressing his back against a hill of compacted something (old clothes, maybe, or plastic bags, all pressed together till they turned into fake stone), Ken touched the cut above his eye. Blood had stopped weeping but the dried patch still felt tight, the cut pulling at his eyebrow every time he blinked. Gonna scar.

Another one for the collection.

His gaze drifted past the ramshackle cluster of shacks that counted as home, past the cooking fires and clotheslines made of wire, out to the real view.

Ocean of garbage. Miles and miles of it.

Towering hills of twisted steel reached up like skeletal fingers. Plains of shredded tires stretched black and shimmering under the weak gray light, all of them rippling like water when the wind hit them right. It stood tall next to the forest of dead trees growing straight out of compressed waste-soil, branches hung with plastic bags like flags of a dead world.

He didn’t understand it, this place.

Not after twelve years.

He was beginning to think he never would, had gotten used to that idea.

Honestly, it made his brain hurt to think about it.

Glass-grass caught the light in one direction, catching his eye as he stared at the million broken bottles turned into a field that sparkled and cut. Ken knew that field, knew which paths were safe, which ones would slice your feet to ribbons if you stepped wrong.

Being chased into it by Joric’s boys once had taught him that lesson.

That knowledge almost cost him two toes and a lot of blood, but he knew it now.

Good meat learns faster.

His eyes kept moving, traveling across the impossible landscape till they hit the thing that stopped everything.

The Wall.

Not a mountain. 

Mountains were jagged, imperfect, real. 

This was none of those things. Ken stared up, up, up at a perfect vertical line of absolute black, smooth as water but solid as stone. It rose straight up past the clouds, and disappeared into gray nothing above. On both sides, it stretched sideways from edge to edge of everything he could see, cutting the world off.

It was so big it almost ate the sky; a giant’s chalkboard, so black it pulled the light in. The junk piles at its feet looked like sleeping, rusty animals, and the wind made them whisper. 

More than scary, more than anything else, it was just… big. Bigger than any house, bigger than any story Gram ever told.

He couldn’t imagine what made it, where it came from, or what it was for. All he knew was that it wasn’t natural. No joints. No wear. No texture. 

All he could see was smooth black nothing that seemed to suck in the light instead of reflecting it.

This ain’t right.

The part of him that remembered different skies, blue instead of gray, trees that grew in real dirt instead of garbage-soil (that part he tried not to think about too much), that part screamed at the Wall’s existence. 

Nothing was that big. Nothing was that perfect.

Can’t be real.

But there it was, every day, same as always. The edge of his cage.

The edge of the world.

Villagers called it the Great Wall.

He’d almost laughed when he heard it, but he knew better. It wasn’t original, sure, but what else would they call it, other than that? It’s great… it’s a wall…

The chief and the other old men in the village loved their little story. They always said it cradled the whole world, kept the people safe from the demons and monsters and evil gods on the other side. Apparently, the demons wanted their souls and the gods wanted their bodies and the monsters wanted them for dinner, or maybe they all wanted the same thing. 

Half the time, they mixed up what they were even saying anyway. It was just weird bedtime stories as far as he could tell. A thousand years of monsters, eat-you-up bedtime stuff, all up until a “Divine Hand” slammed the door. All the same stuff, from old mouths full of half-missing teeth and too sure about stories their grandparents probably made up.

Ken didn’t know any better, didn’t know any more than they did, but he knew that just didn’t make any sense. Nothing makes any sense.

He sat there for a long moment, small and bruised in a world made of garbage, staring at the impossible line that marked where everything ended. Blood and rust coated his tongue, chest tight with more than just the usual breathing troubles.

Words slipped out before he could stop them, quiet as prayer, bitter as medicine.

“…I hate this place.”