Prompt: The streets weren't safe after dawn.

The streets weren't safe after dawn.

Cam knew it, but she was hungry, like after Mrs. Hammond fed her stone-cold soup and insisted it was filling but just made her all open on the inside. Mrs. Hammond liked to pretend she was a Missus, but Cam knew that no Daddy in his right mind would marry her if she fed him open-up soup for dinner, so she just called herself a Missus and got Cam instead.

It was so cold outside that she almost couldn't feel her nightgown swishing about her ankles, but she didn't mind. Cold was good, said Mrs. Hammond. Cold meant goblins and ghosties wouldn't eat her up like open-up soup, when she was the most hungry. Cam didn't care about goblins or ghosties – or maybe she did a little bit. She called out for them before walking into the alley, but no one called back, and she checked extra careful behind the bins before diving into them.

The bins always had food, better than open-up soup, crescent moons of bread and strips of tough meat and sometimes a little candy in its wrapper, and it smelled like what Cam thought heaven might smell like, all light and breathy and sweet. Mrs. Hammond liked the other kinds of things in the trash cans, especially the bottles, which she drank up and then sniffed and sniffed until her big long nose got tired and she threw the bottles out the windows. She told Cam that was what heaven smelled like to her, but Cam thought heaven wasn't bitter and sour and it didn't make your eyes sting. Heaven was a little pink-and-blue wrapper. But Mrs. Hammond didn't care what Cam thought, and she kept sniffing the bottles like a big ol' hound dog and told Cam to go away whenever she got too close and hiccoughed a lot.

But Cam didn't care about the steadily rising sun, or the slightest change in warmth in the temperature, because her grimy nightgown pockets were full of dented fruit and tips of meat and wilted vegetables to make the open-up soup a little better, and she didn't care until someone stepped into the alleyway.

She was only four, but she knew what scared was and she could feel it when she heard the steps in the alleyway. The only people who came to the bins were the people who filled them right at the start of the nighttime, when it was safe to go out again, and once a big stripey old cat who had sat on top of the bins and purred when Cam got real close. She had pet his long fur with her dirty hands and he didn't even mind, but whenever she touched Mrs. Hammond's things she would swoop down and snatch up her hand and huff and puff like a broken locomotive. But this person was too big to be a cat, and didn't have any hair at all except for three wispy wavy lines that stuck out from the top of his head like grass. It was so silly it almost made Cam laugh, and she wasn't scared anymore.

"Are you a goblin or ghostie? I didn't think Mrs. Hammond was being 'onest about them..." She had learned a lot about 'onesty over the years, and Mrs. Hammond said she was always 'onest. Cam didn't believe her, though.

"I think you're a ghostie. Because your hair floats up, all like that." Her hands were full of scraps, otherwise she would have stuck her hair up to show the ghostie how funny he looked.

The person at the end of the alleyway was still, though. Cam took a step closer, her foot splashing in a puddle that made her toes feel frozen.

"Mrs. Hammond says ghosties are bad, but you don't seem so mean, Mister. Where do you live? Do you like the sunlight too? Mrs. Hammond says I shouldn't. She says we was born for the dark. But I don't think Mrs. Hammond is being too 'onest. What do you think, Mister?"
The person looked like they were about to speak back to Cam, but then the door to Cam's house was busted open and Mrs. Hammond came out, still wearing her fluffy tiger robe and snatched her up in one arm, then slammed the door again with such force that the entire house rattled.

Cam bumped and bounced in her arms all the way up three flights of stairs until Mrs. Hammond dumped her on the rug in the room they shared, and all of her carefully collected bits of food scattered across the floor. She scooted on her hands and knees, shoveling them back, until Mrs. Hammond stepped on her dress hem and she looked up, clutching the food to her small chest.

"What were you doing outside at dawn?" Mrs. Hammond asked, with a big smile on her face. Cam knew it wasn't an 'onest smile, it was a lying smile, but Mrs. Hammond liked to do lying smiles a lot.

"I was getting some food for supper tonight. For the soup." She held up a broken celery stalk for Mrs. Hammond to examine, but her red-smeared lips curled when she saw the vegetable. Cam knew she was about to start shouting again when the house door opened and Jenkins opened the door.

"Is there a problem?" He asked. Cam liked Jenkins, even though he was 'just a pesky kid,' like Mrs. Hammond always said. Jenkins lived on the floor below them, so he could probably hear whenever Mrs. Hammond stomped around in her big clunky heels. But Jenkins didn't mind, Jenkins was nice like that.

"Is there a problem?" Jenkins repeated, pushing the door open even more, and Cam scampered from her perch on the floor to his side, clutching fistfuls of his dirty trousers in her hands.

"Cam decided to go scavenge for some food." Mrs. Hammond leered at Jenkins, arching her fingers like a church steeple.

"So? We're all scavengers now." Jenkins shrugged, putting his hands in his deep pockets. Cam didn't know how big Jenkins' pockets were, but he said they went on forever. His hands went right in up to the wrists.

"At dawn."

"Did you tell her why she can't go out after dawn?"

Mrs. Hammond turned red as a tomato and began to splutter. "W-why, I never... Of course I haven't told her about them..."

"They were people, Mrs. Hammond, not things. Come on, Cam." Jenkins took his hands out of his deep pockets and took Cam's hand. "I'll tell you everything below."

Another thing Cam liked about Jenkins was that Mrs. Hammond couldn't tell him what to do, and she couldn't stop him when he did things.

Once they were safe one floor down Cam sat on Jenkins' rug, which was nice and puffy and not hard like Mrs. Hammond's and snuggled a pillow to her chest. Jenkins' room was much nicer than Mrs. Hammond's, even if it didn't have a bathtub or a big bed or paintings on the walls. Jenkins' room was full of books and yellowing, curling newspapers and pages taped and stuck to the walls. He had a fort in one corner with binoculars pointing to the street, and he had a box of food safely hidden under a floorboard that was much better than open-up soup that he had all to himself, and Cam when she asked nicely. Jenkins was only twelve – he had told her once when they were watching the stars through his binoculars, because being old was very important – but he was smarter than Mrs. Hammond with her bathtub and her big bed and paintings, and he had books. Cam couldn't read yet, but Jenkins always said he would teach her when she was older. She loved when he would talk about books, the way his face would go all clear and happy and he looked like what Cam thought an angel would look like, all sweet and kind.

"They can take you places, Cam. Happier places, back when you could go outside in the sunlight and stare up at the open sky with fluffy clouds soaring across the firmament, and butterflies doing loopy twists over the flowerbeds, and the flowers tilting up and drinking up the sweet nectar of light, that's what I want. Books take you to dungeons and castles and meadows and forests with moonlight slanting between the trees. You can go there, too. Just in a little while, okay?"

And now Jenkins was going to talk again. Cam even liked it when he talked, because when he talked he talked with everything inside him, and his hands moved and his face moved and he pulled at his hair when he was mad, and it was enchanting.

"Do you know why you can't go outside, Cam?"

"Because the goblins and ghosties will get to you. That's what Mrs. Hammond said."

"The people outside aren't goblins or ghosts."

"So Mrs. Hammond wasn't being 'onest." Cam pouted, and Jenkins shook his head, making his hair twist on his head.

"No, she wasn't. Do you want to know what they are, Cam?"

"Yes, please." Mrs. Hammond always liked 'please.' Jenkins liked it too, but not as much as Mrs. Hammond did.

"They're called the Lowlife."

"What's a lowlife, Jenkins?"

"Well, they're just like you and me. They're people, for the most part."

"What does for the most part mean?"

Jenkins walked across the room and over to his talking box, with its dials and lights. His other talking box stopped working, his talking picture box, so he only had the talking box now. He called it a radio and said that he could hear other people talking to him from far away, and they gave him news. Cam didn't know what news was, but it sounded important. Jenkins was an important person.

"You weren't even born yet when the Lowlife were released. People didn't like androids anymore, they were too robotic, too metal."

"What're ann-droids, Jenkins?"

"Robots, Cam. Big human robots."

"Oh. Okay."

Jenkins walked over to his big stacks of books and picked up a few little paper packets. "These are manuals for androids. Each one tried to be a little more lifelike, a little more human."

"But robots aren't human, Jenkins. They're metal."

Jenkins laughed, not like Mrs. Hammond's laugh, which was loud and horsey, but quiet and clear like water. "Exactly, Cam. And people wanted human robots."

"But that's imposs'ble." Mrs. Hammond said imposs'ble a lot, and Cam beamed when she said the big word.

Jenkins mussed up her hair and smiled back. "That's right, too. So one company figured out a way to make the most human-like robots possible. They genetically spawned human brains and tissue, and the only metal part in their bodies were the chips placed on their spinal cords, to interfere with the impulses from the brain. They were human, but just barely."

"What does that mean, Jenkins?" Jenkins was nice, but he spoke big a lot. Cam knew it was from all of the big things in his head and sometimes they came out of his mouth, too. Mrs. Hammond spoke small, so Cam could understand her fine.

"Sorry, Cam. It means they made the people robots, not the robots into people. And everybody loved them. They were called the Lowlife – not quite robots, but not quite people. Everyone had one, everyone, except the people who were against them. Said they were inhuman. And the more people bought the more Lowlife that had to be spawned, and more lives artificially made. That means they were made by people, not nature."

"Why didn't people like 'em, Jenkins?"

"They were fine just to look at, but they were people. And they would just stand there, waiting for their next orders, perfectly still, and it gave you chills up and down your back just wondering if that would be you standing there, only responding to your name and commands. They were too human, Cam."

"And then what?"

"Lowlife Company went bankrupt. I don't remember how it happened, they might have been sued for illegal cloning or indecency to human life, or maybe they just ran out of customers. But the Lowlife had no master anymore. There were containment facilities set up to collect them, but when their chips were deactivated they went mad, fighting anyone who tried to confront them, mercilessly. Something about the chips in their heads kept out some of the good stuff along with the bad. The Lowlife wanted revenge, and there were so many, at least one for every person on the planet. With their chips they had access to all mobile devices, and shut down everything electronic. There was no civilization anymore, just scared survivors hiding in their houses, because you couldn't tell who was a Lowlife and who wasn't until they came at you with a knife. There was so much fighting that day, and it all went dark. Cell phones were scrap metal. Phone lines were about as useful as ropes. That's why I keep my books safe, because there's so few of them left.

"And then at night the Lowlife... Stopped. It may have been some program of theirs, but they retreated, hid away where they couldn't be seen. We thought that was it, that we were saved, and the sun rose the next day and a new slaughtering began. That was six years ago."

"Where are all the people, Jenkins? Did they fight back?"

"They couldn't. The Lowlife were too strong. Again, their chips were encoded, and we think they were genetically enhanced to withstand injury while working. And even if we could fight, there are seven billion of them. No one knows how many people are left in the world now – a fraction of that. You ever wonder why, in a twenty-story apartment building, we're the only three people who live in it? The Lowlife got the rest of them."

"So that's who I saw in the alleyway?"
"That's right."

"But he didn't get me." Cam held out her arms to show Jenkins. "He just looked."

"I dunno, Cam. Maybe he was just watching. The Lowlife are hard to understand without actually being one, which makes them hard to fight. There are people on the radio who call out for survivors to rally up and fight, but I think it's still too soon."

"Too soon for what, Jenkins?"

"Too soon to fight back. You see those rich people across the street, all the food they waste? They're still living their lives as if nothing is wrong. We have to wait until everyone is desperate, and everyone feels the need for change. Then we can try to fight back."

"Sometimes you talk real big, Jenkins."

Jenkins laughed again, as loud and clear as water, and Cam smiled too just watching him.

"Don't worry, Cam. Just stick to the darkness. We'll get out of here – you just wait. You and me both."