Checkpoint

[rix_scaedu]

This was originally posted at http://unorthodoxcreativity.com/15minfic.php in response to a visual prompt.

The animal snuffled around his shoulders. They’d stopped using dogs for this, dogs just whined when they found one, whined and tried to run away. Hyenas attacked and tried feed. Trubor wasn’t sure which animal was smarter but he knew which animal it was smarter for humans to use. Hyenas had a much better reputation these days.

He needed to get into Anosk, the little walled town around a well, that had grown up where there had been nothing before. No unknown tunnels that the creatures that had been human could find a way in through. Everything to be built from scratch and contained inside the walls from sewerage disposal to electricity generation. It was a pain, but that was the price of safety, and life, these days. Anosk, he understood, had a fine photovoltaic set up on its collective roofs.

It did mean though that there was security to go through to get in. Guards had to be set while the fields were worked, not to stop the workers leaving but to keep them safe. The creatures that had been men might be mostly dead, their bodies decaying before what was left of their minds stopped working, but they weren’t stupid. Everyone had to be checked, even the people the guards knew, especially the people the guards knew.

The handler gave the all clear and he was allowed in. That was one hurdle over, now he just had to find Hamid, Jones, Morenson and Jacobs. He needed to talk to them, needed their co-operation to complete this deal. Anosk was the last place on the route for the grand idea. The pipeline that could bring in the fuel to restart heavy industry, get the mines up north working again.

Not make things the way they were before, nothing could do that, but it would help kick start the world again.