Burrowers - Draft - Expanded

UV rays force Nomadic society underground,but the Sun isn't the only thing to be afraid of

In the year 2070, greed, corruption, environmental degradation, and widespread poverty were so ingrained, that when the ozone layer finally collapsed, there was nobody left who could do anything about it. The rich had lived in domed cities even before that, but the domes became even more fortified after. Most days outside the domes were 60C at noon and almost all water sources dried up. Domes continued increasing their fortification in the decades which followed because they were no longer keeping out only the unwanted Nomadics, they also had to keep out the beasts which had adapted to the new brutal environment, as well as the lethal UV rays.

My father told me about this, as he had been told by his father. My ancestors were Nomadics, but we are Burrowers. All people outside of the domes - which is most of what's left of the population - are Burrowers. We can't survive being above ground in the day because if the UV rays don't kill us, the heat will. At night the Foragers creep out off our burrow to find food. The Foragers can't be called farmers or hunters, but they may once have been called warriors. We don't call them farmers, because we don't have crops, and we don't call them hunters, because most of the time they are the ones being hunted. Papa said the plants were the first to change after the Ozone collapse; they became tough, with thick waxy skin and very deep roots. Herbivores followed suite, growing larger teeth to eat the plants, having very thick skin to protect from the UV, and longer claws to dig for water - which is usually only found underground. You can imagine what happened to the predators - bigger, meaner, more aggressive, and much more clever. All beasts eventually became nocturnal.

This is the world I was born into: living in a small underground society, hiding from the Beasts and the UV, eating whatever we manage to get. Tonight is the first time I will join the Foragers and leave our burrow. I have been in training for this for the last five years. It is unusual for a female to be a Forager, but by the time I was fifteen it was clear that I was not able to Mother, so I needed to serve a different use for my burrow and was put into Forager training. I loved my days spent training! It was a break from the monotony of digging for water in the dark. I liked learning about tracking, different plants defenses, how to take down herbivores without getting killed, and even enjoyed learning which predators to attempt to fight, and which I could only hope to escape from. But my favourite lessons were about maps and alliances. Different Burrower clans had different ancestry and ways of running society - not all Burrower clans were friendly, and many were extremely hostile. This is the natural way of things when survival is a competition. The maps showed where our alliance Burrowers' burrows were located, but even more importantly, they pinpointed where over-day burrows were. Over-day burrows, known as OD burrows, were small burrows, with only two entrances, where Foragers of our burrow and alliance burrows could take refuge in the day. Originally, there were only a few OD burrows all of which were relatively near Home Burrow. They were originally used mostly in case of predators, but were becoming increasingly more important and further away as Foragers needed to search further and further to find food. Now, our furthest OD burrow was three nights' journey from Home Burrow.

My first trip out of the Home Burrow was going to be to our furthest OD burrow - a journey which even most of the seasoned Foragers had made only once or twice. But, our food situation was becoming desperate, as was that of our allies, and the decision had been made that we needed to scout for a new location for Home Burrow.

"We'll stop to see if we can siphon some cactus water from the clump 22km North West. That's the only stop we'll have before the OD" Captain Pan called gruffly.

There were five of us hurrying along the long inclining tunnel towards the entrance. Slowly, the familiar smell of dirt became infused with a new, totally unfamiliar smell. Then, I almost froze. I felt something I only knew to name because of my training: breeze. Luckily, I managed to keep pace with the others. I hoped they didn't notice that I was sniffing the air deeply, savouring the new smells. I was replacing their cartographer who had died in the last scout mission before they had reached the OD two nights' journey away, which had forced the group to return. I didn't want to call attention to my rookie status and have them lose any confidence in me which they had. A rush of heat, like I had never experienced before, hit me as the breeze became wind blowing down the tunnel. I forced my gait steady. It felt like I was approaching a fire bigger than any we had used for cooking. After a few minutes there was a faint light ahead of us. The light grew brighter. Finally we were out of the tunnel and I could not force my stride anymore. I stopped dead, mouth agape, eyes up. I had never seen a star. There were millions of them, stretching across the whole sky, shining cold light across the barren dirt.

Delta chuckled "Happens to literally everyone. Wait until you see the moon. That'll knock you right off your feet"

"Rain is what really got me." Agreed Marsh, also grinning.

"Heck, I almost didn't make it out of the tunnel when I felt the breeze." said Loch, following my gaze up to the stars. "It's so different than in training when they use the cactus fan simulator".

Even Captain Pan was smiling, but after a few moments he ordered us on: "Alright Creek, that's enough star gazing. Scouts, let's go."

After about two hours of jogging, I saw shadows looming darkly against the cold dim horizon. It looked like statues of deformed people holding their arms up at impossible angles with unnatural joints. It was the cactus clump. The huge succulents were the first living things I had seen outside of Home Burrow. They stood about 12 feet tall, with spike 2 inches long. There was no sign that they had been chewed on, but there were a few healing holes which were clearly from previous scouts' siphons. We filled our water sacks and rested for 15 minutes, then continued our uneventful journey to the first OD.

"i'm telling you, they weren't making any sense, Pan" grumbled Captain Gully. He was from an alliance burrow and the two captains were exchanging intel and scout stories. The disheveled look of Gully's beard and appearance juxtaposed that of my own trim captain, but there could be no denying the authority in his voice matched Pan's.

"A new type of predator perhaps? Where did you say they had come from?". Pan sounded focused.

"Maybe" responded Gully, but looking unconvinced. "They came from the North-West... From the direction you're headed. From what I gathered their dirty little Hostile burrow was taken over, and the two of them escaped by day using hides as UV shields! They wouldn't have made it if we hadn't come across them and let them stay in our OD." When Gully had said "we" he had rolled his eyes and jerked his thumb towards his Foraging companion, Arroyo. Gully had clearly not wanted to help the Hostiles.

"What kind of predator could overrun a burrow? Even a Hostile burrow. They might be backwards, but they are fierce... Heck, I'd rather fight a predator than a Hostile." Loch mused, eyes reflecting the small fire flickering warm dim light around the cramped OD.

"Maybe it has to do with the rumours" Arroyo spoke for the first time. He spoke quietly, as if telling us a secret. Gully groaned exaggeratedly and rolled his eyes again. But Pan ignored his fellow captain's reaction and leaned forward.

"What rumours?" Pan asked Arroyo, looking him in the eye, without a trace of a smile.

"Have you heard about the Domers?" Arroyo also wasn't smiling. He was giving a report now, not exchanging chit-chat to pass the day.

"Living in their vast cities in the concrete domes. Use...." Marsh paused, trying to remember the word "electricity for light, cooking, umm, other things. They farm vegetables. They don't have burrows, they have... Buildings." Marsh stopped, obviously having just recited all he had learned in historical training.

Arroyo nodded in acknowledgment, but not in agreement. "Their electricity ran on solar power - a never-ending resource. But their solar panels started breaking and stopped converting UV into electricity so their lights and power became scarce around the city. Some of the Domers from the "poor" areas started escaping the domes soon after we went from Nomadics to Burrowers, and joined the Hostiles. That's how we heard about the situation in the domes - but only as myth. Nobody has come from the domes in the last couple generations, and Hostiles believe those left have... changed. They couldn't grow crops anymore and had only one source of food left - each other."

My foraging team exchanged nervous looks. The story was preposterous, but Arroyo was calm and serious, making it difficult to imagine that there wasn't truth in his story."

He continued. "This is the first time we have come encountered anyone claiming to have be attacked by Domers, but it has become increasingly common to meet alliance Foragers with similar stories of meeting Hostiles who are running from what they claim to be Domers."

After thoughtful silence from the group, Delta spoke. "But the Hostiles could easily fight Domers. City-people couldn't even survive day-time without a burrow."

Arroyo shook his head. "The Hostiles are on the move, 'escaping'. The Domers are not 'people' anymore."

Both Captains put an end to storytelling. It was almost noon, and they ordered us to rest before journeying at dusk.

We had said goodbye to Gully and Arroyo when leaving the OD and been jogging North-West for three hours, when Pan slowed to a walk and ordered I hand him the binoculars. I stared ahead and could make out the faint glows of three fires in the distance. The glows were moving erratically. They were torches, and whoever was holding them was running.

"Stop." said Pan urgently. "Get down. Put the torch out."

We all lay on our stomachs in darkness, trying to raise our heads to see where the fires were.

"Hostiles. Six of them. 500 meters west." Pan said quietly, looking through the binoculars. He inhaled sharply. "Heads down!"

One of the fires went out. There was a long scream. My face was in the dirt and I was trying not to sneeze. There was a shrill screech. I help my breath. That was not a Hostile. There were more screeches in response. A second fire went out, followed by a scream, and then the last fire went out accompanied by several screams. More of those terrible screeches.

The five of us lay there in silence, listening. After about three hours, we heard a screech. It was south-east of us.

Slowly, we crawled to where the Hostiles had been. We dared not relight our torch. Faint starlight lit the scene as we approached. Limbs were lying away from torsos, the flesh removed to the bone.

Delta's voice quivered. "What kind of weapon could have done this?"

Marsh was holding an arm up to his eyes, squinting at the bone and few tendons still attached. "This was done with teeth..." he paused to recall an unfamiliar word. "Shark teeth.".

"What did you see, Captain?" I looked to Pan.

"I don't know..." He was still holding the binoculars. I could see a slight shake in his hand. "The things were pale as the moon. They were tall... Thin... Fast." He looked towards the south-east. "They'll reach Home Burrow tomorrow night.".

"We need to go help!" I wasn't keeping lowering my now.

"You want to share an OD with six Domers?" yelled Loch.

"We can't get back to the OD before sunrise" said Delta softly. "We have no choice but to continue and then turn around tomorrow night. Home Burrow can handle six"

"Not without casualties." I thought of my Father.

"We have no choice." repeated Delta.

He was right, so we continued on. We ran without speaking.

Dawn was already breaking. We were less than a kilometer from the OD. We ran as hard as we could. I could already feel the UV burning my skin through the layers of hide, while sweat poured into my eyes.
We finally approached the entrance to our refuge. Pan raised his hand. We halted.

In the darkness of the burrow tunnel I could just make out a pale figure. I could see long limbs, a smooth hairless head, and sharp teeth which reflected the light from the low Sun.

The teeth parted and out of the entrance echoed an ear-splitting screech.

A second pale figure joined the first. A third. Then a fourth.

The tunnel was filled with screeches. It sounded like an unholy choir of bats filled the OD.

"Fight?" Delta breathed raspily.

We were looking back and forth between the hungry figures just behind the line of sun in the tunnels, and the dry expanse of scorched Earth stretching to the horizon.

"Run." responded Pan, already panting from the heat.

We are making our way to a cactus cluster 3km away. Marsh says the shade from the huge plants is our only hope to survive the day. I honestly don't think I'll make it there. And so what? Even if we do make it, there will be no hiding from the UVs at noon. I'm holding back tears. I can't waste a single drop of precious water. I'm thinking of my father, and everyone I've ever know who is currently sleeping peacefully in Home Burrow. They don't know that the Domers are coming, and they are hungry.