Personhood Tales: The Hold

Around Town

• Jute's, a lounge on the edge of the hold, where skyblood-drinkers go for their fix; a neutral spot.
• Scrag's, a flophouse where Smith keeps a place on the roof
• Always' Compound: a few tarp-tents around a central area, the inner sanctum for doing what we need and where we shelter when the weather really turns. Nobody is pressed in too close, though Shazza's place and Amy's are in sight of the place and an easy walk as well.
• Lee's Workshop: it's got a small shed out front, the lobby, and that's as far as the clients go. Behind that is the main workroom, where my unfinished darling holds pride of place but there are tables and racks around the edges for tools and parts. Made that out of three big shipping containers welded together and the walls cut out in the middle, and armor plates added on. No one's coming through those walls without serious explosives or a hi-tech gun, what they used to call an anti-materiel weapon I think. In the back of that I have the big safe for the hi-tech stuff, and the pallet where I sleep, and some space for a surgery when I can get one put together. The radio shack is up on the roof with a ladder and a locked hatch; the greenhouse will go next to that. Behind the workshop are the generator shed and the jakes; gotta go the long way around to the jakes, out through the lobby first, but anything else would either breach the security of the walls, or stink up the place, or both.

What We Know

• It's the biggest hold nearby by a good stretch. Bigger than the next three closest holds combined (but they're shit-holes, so).
• There are some buildings from before still mostly standing; the rest is ramshackle. Tin shacks, old shipping containers, such like.
• Personhood can afford to be bigger because there's water underground you get from wells. Not so much to be wasteful with it, and it tastes like dirt, but you can drink it without getting messed up and use it on crops without half of 'em dying…unlike the stuff that rains down. Not that there's enough rain anyway.
• Mr. Final used to be in charge of Personhood, but Mr. Final's not around anymore.
• The hold's split between Maomao and Been. It hasn't turned violent yet, but everyone's waiting for the other shoe to drop. Right now, if anyone's liable to end up hurt 'cause of the split, it's neutrals.

• It ain't easy being in the middle in Personhood right now, but there's still some places that get recognized as neutral ground. Which places are those?

  Lee: Jute's shack on the edge of town is one of them. No one wants to get between a 'blood-drinker and their fix.

• The bad thing about the hold being so big is that when some sick hits, it hits hard, and it hits wide. What's the worst illness you've seen here?

  Always: Scabs. Everyone thought it was just red flakes at first. Itching, a bit of wheezing, and maybe a little feeling hot under the collar and needing some extra sleep. Then Joe's Girl lost her left arm because the skin turned to scab and the sloughed off, pulling meat with it. It was like people getting poked from the inside out, scabbing over beneath their skin until it pushed up and out and just tore them up. There are still scarred survivors around. Most probably wished they'd just drank rainwater till they went out delirious, and some did that even after they survived rather than wait for rot to set in on those ruined limbs.

• Those old buildings, the ones from before; what do you think they used to be?

  Always: They used to hold the plenty of the time before. That's why there's just dust and echoes inside them now.