Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Eight - River Heights

“Charity has proven to be nothing but a mistake. You give and give, and while it might help some, most of those you pull out of the pits of poverty merely drop back in as soon as you stop helping them.

No, if a person in need of charity doesn’t want to need it, then all they need to do is work harder.”

--Hope Rutherford, Professional Philanthropist, 2026

***

“Hey, you,” I said while gesturing to Miss Baker. She jumped, probably not expecting me to call her out. She was with a small group of well-dressed folk, mostly they looked like more corporate stooges, the type of failed human whose entire identity is tied to a single company.

“Miss Stray Cat,” she said with a nod. “Can I help you? We were about to return to River Heights with the good news.”

“Really? That’s perfect. I’m bumming a ride,” I said.

She blinked, then turned to her groupies and pointed one out. “Jacob, stay here, please. Check on our offices and maybe press Mister Daniels to get the accounting done fast. If he complains, refer him to me.”

“There, now there’s plenty of space for you,” she said with a saccharin smile. “Are you going to stay at River Heights for long?”

“Not planning on it,” I said. “Just want to check the defences there, get an idea of what needs to be shored up and where. How do you travel to and from River Heights to here?”

“We fly over,” she explained. “The roads between Downtown and the better part of the city are patrolled lightly, especially as we have convoys that travel back and forth, but the area is still relatively dangerous.”

I nodded along. “How’s the state of the wider city?”

“The wider city?” she asked. “You mean the sections we’ve had to abandon?”

“Yeah. Sounds to me like this divide between Downtown and River Heights would be a lot easier to handle if the defences circled the entire city, not just two sections of it. We’re going to need to take the rest of it back anyway.”

Miss Baker nodded, enthused by the idea. “Quite a few members of the River Heights council believe the same thing. Though I’ll admit it’s a somewhat divisive issue. Some would rather wait for assistance to arrive to clear out the city, but others do wish we could scour the antithesis away. When the global incursion began, there was a vote on whether or not River Height’s defences would be used to protect the wider city, but in the end we chose to protect what’s most important first.”

My flesh eye twitched a bit. “Yeah, I totally understand,” I said.

I don’t think she caught on to the sarcasm, which was probably for the best.

She led me, and consequently her gaggle of aides, out of the mall and into the parking lot just above it. The room was nearly empty, which was a bit off-putting. I hadn’t seen many empty parking lots in my time.

Baker and friends had a trio of cars waiting for them. Two larger, armoured trucks with some of those militia-PMCs hanging around them, and a car that looked like it cost more than most people made in a lifetime. It was one of those fat, sleek Bently-like cars, with all of the bells and whistles a rich dipshit needed on their car, like bulletproof-glass and anti-riot measures. The kind of stuff they needed to stop angry folk from just blowing them up.

“Did you want to ride with me?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Sure,” I said. Then I ignored her spiel about the car’s seats being made of real leather sewn together by peruvian orphans or whatever.

It wasn’t nearly as comfortable as Gomorrah’s ride. Then again, this car wasn’t made for someone wearing even basic body armour. If I was wearing my bigger power armour I’d have to horrify Miss Baker by riding on the roof.

We took off, the bigger hovercars flanking the nicer one. They had proper gun emplacements on the bottoms and tops, probably to dissuade chasers and such, but I imagined they worked well enough on antithesis.

“Slow down on the edge of Downtown,” I said.

“Pardon?” she asked. I’d just interrupted her talking about the historical value of the architecture near central Burlington.

“The edge, slow down once you get there. I want to see what the defences are like with my own eyes.”

“Oh, yes, we can accommodate that,” she said before relaying instructions to the driver. When we reached the edge of Downtown’s skyscrapers (which really didn’t take long) we lost some altitude and slowed way down until we were barely moving at a crawl.

I pressed my head close to the window and looked down. The roads out of the Downtown area were blocked by stacked cars and furniture. Whatever people could drag out. There were also a number of trees and bushes, of all things.

“Are the plants Sprout’s doing?” I asked.

“Yes! He has been providing us with different plants that we can use as defensive measures. Mostly these tough bushes that are covered in nasty barbs. They’re difficult to handle, but from what I understood the antithesis tend to get caught in them quite well. They’re an acceptable replacement for barbed wire fencing.”

I nodded along. That might actually have some potential, as long as the antithesis didn’t discover a way to subvert them. And if they did, that would just mean that we were dealing with barb-wire aliens too, which was actually kind of messed up.

We shot past the barricade, and I noticed a number of civilians looking up. Most had green bands around their arms. A lot of them gave us the finger.

My impression that the normal people were getting fucked over grew just a little.

Then we were flying over the no-man’s-land between Downtown and River Heights. That entire area was filled with hollowed-out apartment buildings, burnt-down shops, and abandoned buildings of unknown purposes. The city, for all that it was a rather small place, had a number of parks and larger buildings with some land around them. Those had probably served to slow down the spread of any fires.

“The entire area’s been evacuated?” I asked as I noticed something weird.

There were people on the roof of a larger building. A hospital, I think. The roof had a fence all around it, and they’d put up boards and sheets of crap in the way to roof it up completely, but it was clear that there were at least a dozen people on there. Scavengers, maybe? But then, why build defences if they were just grabbing things?

“More or less, yes. There are several shelters across the city that are networked together. A number of those are reading as having people within them, but we can’t yet spare the people to go and retrieve them. I believe Miss Manic has been instrumental in escorting people from the shelters nearest Downtown.”

“So, some people have been locked together in a single large room for... what, four, five days?” I asked.

“Standard shelters should have supplies for up to a week,” she said.

I didn’t like that, not one bit. “What are we doing about that?” I asked.

She blinked. “Well, that seems more like a concern for the residents of Downtown. The River Heights shelters are all empty. We did run a few rescue missions for persons of interest who were in locations nearby. The sons and daughters of River Heights residents.”

“Of course,” I said.

We flew over the edge of River Heights. The chunk of the city was a quarter the size of downtown but couldn’t fit a hundredth as many people. It was all McMansions with little lots around them. I spotted the clear blue water of pools hidden under glass domes and manicured gardens and lawns.

The entire area was walled off. Two-metre tall cement barriers set around the compound, with pre-built towers sprouting up every twenty or so metres apart that were equipped with automated guns.

I noticed a patrol making their way around on the safe side of the wall, five guys in body armour with submachine guns. The place was guarded better than a pharmacy that sold opiates.

We came for a landing on the main street cutting through the centre of the area, where a few large vans and PMC trucks were parked on the sidewalks and where tents were set up. The area was dominated by an AA emplacement that was unfolded out of the back of a trailer.

I pushed the car’s door open and stretched up to my full height. “Right, I’m going to find the samurai that’s supposed to be stationed here. Don’t go too far, I might need you.”

“Um, okay? Are you certain you don’t need an escort, I would be glad to show you aro--” she froze up as I activated my stealth equipment and faded from view.

Now all I had to do was find that still-unnamed samurai and see what he thought about all of this, because at the moment I wasn’t feeling all that charitable.

At least I had that much in common with the locals, it seemed.

***

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