True Gallows dug graves. It was their way of paying respect to the dead bodies they robbed, and it helped to relieve the overall rotting-ness of the ruined prairie cities they scavenged in. They enjoyed the labour, as much as a person could enjoy that kind of labour. Robbing bodies, digging graves. It was honest work. Sort of. Kept them fit, kept them fed. They had gotten good at it.

Plus, people left them alone. Scavengers travelled on their own, or in the smallest of polycules. Pickings were too slim, trust was too low, and infighting got lethal fast. Civilians kept their distance from scavengers for the most part. And whenever a warm body slinked up to True in the waning hours of the After Market, they made sure to pull down their tattered blue bandana and let everyone get a good eyeful of the canyon scar splitting their face from tooth to eye.

They patted the final clods of dirt onto a mound. Second of the day. Straightening, they stretched sore muscles and squinted at the blushing evening sky. They'd had a late start. One more grave would push them into dark hours. On the other hand, the first two corpses hadn't yielded a satisfactory harvest. With a reluctant frown, they clipped their shovel to their pack. They could picture every bit of loot nestled deep inside it: A handful of cheap costume jewelry, sure to turn some travelling performer's neck green; surprisingly unrotted teeth pulled from the slack mandible of a blue corpse; and even dentures from the decrepit old lady they'd just buried. The dentures were a real prize. Almost sufficient to make up for how terrible the rest of the scavenge had gone.

They sniffled, and a foul expression crumpled their face. It was bad enough they had a crater for a nose, it had to be leaky, too. Fucking allergies.

They turned their back on the graves and stomped off towards the street. Best not risk losing daylight to a third grave, or drawing the shadow dwellers out with a late evening pyre. They could stand a couple leans nights. That was nothing new.

Shadows unfurled over the mid-summer prairie heat. When the sun set, the cities became hunting grounds for the night creatures and the dwellers, and only the incredibly stupid set foot on the crumbled asphalt with them. Nothing made True's skin crawl quite like those creepy denizens of the dark. Sure, True stole from dead people, but they never ate anyone.

They clomped down the road. Couldn't sneak half as well as the shadow dwellers, puffing up all loud and scary was the next best option.

The sky deepened from rust orange to bruise purple. Stars began to twinkle warnings above the decomposing city. True vaguely remembered a time when streetlights blotted out the stars. A lifetime ago, before all the people operating and paying for the lights died or went nuts.

"You're out late."

Speaking of nuts.

"You're out early," True said back, watching the shadow dweller out of the corner of their eye. They swept the surrounding debris, keyed up and ready to bolt at the first sign of motion. A single dweller wasn't unmanageable, but dwellers tended to travel in packs.

Nothing yet. Back to the shadow dweller trailing after them. Pale, wiry, small. Eyes gleaming with malice and hunger. It wasn't dressed that different from True; an oversized coat with more pockets than empty space, long pants, heavy boots. True wore a dark blue wool sash cinched around their waist, and the bandana over their face, of course, but they thought the bigger difference was the way the dweller held itself. Hunched over, so its knobby spine poked up beneath its coat.

They wondered if it was doing that on purpose, or if its body was halfway through a slow and morbid death. A bug curling up on itself. Harrowing sorts of diseases thrived in the shadow communities. Brutal things that ate their victims from the inside, scraping at their brains the way the shadow dwellers scraped at the brains of the people they cannibalized. Some called it retribution. True called it creepy. And dangerous, the sick ones were a hell of a lot wilder.

Hints of sickness clung to the dweller. It was a deep-cave-creature shade of pale compared to True's sun-cooked brown. Its hair tangled with the rot that stuck to the bottom of ditches, where True's, while slick with grease, was at least finger-combed and sort of cut. As much cut as a rusty pair of garden shears could get it. They'd given their ears a wide berth, wary of the clumsy blades, but they'd been determined to do it. Shorter hair was easier to deal with. Harder to grab fistfuls of, didn't flop in the way as much.

"Dangerous, wandering all alone at night," the dweller said. It had to leap every few steps to keep up with True's quick gait. Snot trickled down the dweller's chin. True had heard tales of one sickness that dissolved the brain until it sloughed out the nose, but they found a more accurate tell was the way the dweller's eyes juddered, dizzying and uncontrollable.

"Dangerous," True repeated, their lisp clinging to the end of the word. The shadow dweller snickered.

"Can't even talk proper."

The carabiner clicked as True unclipped the shovel from their pack. Step—pivot—crunch. They swung the shovel straight into the dweller's face. It crumpled like a marionette with snipped strings and True turned back to the road.

That was enough of that.

Flp. They froze, midstep. Murderous annoyance clouded their fragmented features as they took another testy step.

Sk-flp. Thin rubber slapped the bottom of their foot. Glaring down at their boot, they lifted it. The sole flopped down towards the dirt, that pivot had been the last straw for the twine they'd tied the offending footwear together with. Now the sad rubber clung on by a heel. Scrunching up their face, they flipped their useless shoe the bird. Perfect, those couple of lean nights had just stretched into a week, at least.

The moon climbed higher in the evening sky, and they set off again, sk-flping down the highway.