Part One’s easy. Dizzy’s sleeping in the front of Rusty Bus, on duty in case any of the littlies wake in the night. She opens her eyes as I sneak down the steps.
‘I gotta piddle,’ I whisper.
‘Urrr,’ she groans, and goes back to sleep. Me not being a little kid, it’s jus’ annoying for her to be waking up to make sure I’m okay. I’m almost too big to live in Rusty Bus. My feet is already hanging off the end of the bus seats we kids use as beds. If me and Jag weren’t so useful keeping an eye on the littlies I reckon we’d already be living in shacks with our parents.
The moon is full, outlining our whole village in shadows I know like I know my ma’s face. First I go to the stoves and put on the two big pot-mitts that live there. I been real hard on my hands lately and I don’t wanna burn them on top of my blisters and rope burn. Then I head up the hill, picking a toe-stubbing way over the debris the siblings left when they wrecked the trees on our hilltop, easy to see in the flashes of red light. The night is warm and muggy. One of those after-storm nights when you wake up five times and move to a cooler bit in your bed anyway, so I figure I ain’t losing sleep. Halfway through shimmying up the pole to the red-light-flashing machine I wish I’d thought to put pot-mitts on my feet too, them still sore from rope burn and bruised from chunk-glass.
I grab the wire feeding from that scalp-burning energy source and yank it hard out of the machine, and drop it to the ground. The world goes from a strong red-flashing light to a weak red-flashing light that only lights as far as the poles. I shimmy around to the other side and yank down the other wire from the other power source, and that makes no difference at all to the weak red-flashing light.
I dunno how it still goes with no power source, but maybe it dies slow like a fish outta water when no one is kind enough to put a knife through its brain and stop its hurting.
I stumble down the hill, drop the pot-mitts next to the stove and hurry back to my bed in Rusty Bus.
