Down and Out: A Young Adult Dystopian Adventure (The Undercity Series Book 1) by Kris Moger

feel a little better.”
    “How’s she doing this morning?” he asked, swinging himself out of his hammock.
    “Stronger, I think. The coughing isn’t so bad, and she is less pale. You can sit with her for a while and tell her a story. She’d like that.”
    He nodded and plucked a fresh shirt from his pile. She tossed him a towel as she left.
    “Don’t use all the soap. We are almost out.”
    Teddy stubbed his toe on the bed and yelped, but Henri only snored and rolled over. He put his towel around his neck and headed to the little room off the main space.
    It was a bathroom from days gone by, but the water did not come from a tap to fill the tub. Instead, it dribbled in from a hose protruding through a hole in the wall, which led to a large metal container, which sat over a fire barrel in the kitchen. It functioned well except the system connected to an offshoot from a main pipe supplied by the Uppers. The valve was at their end, which meant they regulated when Underlings would get their water and how much. Pa rigged the bathtub, so the drain went to a filter system he had devised to make the water usable for longer. Still, he was restricted to a hand’s span of steamy water to bathe in.
    To go first was a treat because the water was clean, but as each person washed up, they added a couple of inches to reheat the tub, so the last one got a full soak. It was a good system, a luxury most people did not possess. Most Underlings owned a drifting, pungent scent similar to rotting rats in a pile of crap, which arrived well before they appeared.
    After he had washed, he dried off with a ratty towel decorated with shells and got dressed, wrapping his privates in a cloth he secured around his waist to make his pants more comfortable. Once, he managed to scrounge a wearable pair of briefs, but they wore out a while ago. Still, he never enjoyed the feeling of coarse trousers against the more sensitive parts of his skin. Rubbing his head, he bumped into Deb as he left the room. She grinned at him and held up a fragment of blobby yellow plastic with painted on eyes.
    “Ducky and I are going swimming,” she said, slipping on the strange goggles Teddy had found her on one of his scrounges. They seemed to be a useless item in their world, but she loved to wear them under water.
    “Wait for Ma before you go in,” he told her. “She needs to warm up the water first.”
    She saluted him. “Yes, sir, I shall secure the area before the general gets here.” She started to sing, as loud as her lungs would let her, an odd tune their father had learned from his father. “I got the music in me, I got the music in me, I got the muuuusic in meeeee.”
    Teddy laughed and thought of all those discs of ‘music’ he discovered, wondering if her song was on one of them and how a person got to listen. Somehow he doubted she was singing it right.
    “Lovely, sweetheart,” his mother said as she passed him. “Breakfast is ready. Be sweet and bring some to Caden.” 
    Yawning, he cleared the sleep from his eyes. The bath refreshed him a little, but he was still so exhausted. He snagged a plate, put several pancakes with jam on it, and proceeded to Caden’s room as he munched his food.
    She sat up in her bed, which took up most of the room. Deb decorated it with everything bright and colourful despite her objections. Bits of cloth of every colour stuck to the wall with pins and streamers dangled from the ceiling.
    “Well, you’re missing all the fun,” Teddy told her as he put the plate on her blanket. “Fuel up. Ma will torture me if you don’t. This new?” he asked, glancing at the portrait of Pa displayed with all the other sketches on the wall.
    Caden made a face but plucked a potatocake roll.  “Yeah.  Did it yesterday. What fun?”
    “Oh, nothing much. We’re just working on a plan; that’s all.” She licked jam off her lip and arched her eyebrows.
    “Who?”
    He swallowed and snatched another cake. “Me, Jol, and Henri.