Shanghai was small when he was snatched, and that was the point: children’s hands were more adept at sorting plastic. She needed to save to buy her son’s freedom. Summer made clothes, Foxglove danced for men, they all relied on plastic as currency and so Coral spent her days plucking recyclable plastic from the brackish water of a nearby river. Fall held school for children who might show up. Her partner, Trillium, did tattooing for the girls who worked at Trashlands, the garishly-lit club that lent its name to the junkyard where everyone lived. Plucking, in fact, was the only way she had to make money. She supposed that in The Els, where damage from floods was minimal, people had clean water and heat but as a plucker in Scrappalachia, the only thing Coral knew for sure about was plastic. Fall her entire life, and she knew he wouldn’t make things like that up. Fall was the only one in Trashlands who was old enough to remember those things, and so most people were skeptical. Do what you gotta do in the new novel, “Trashlands” by Alison Stine… or die.įresh, clean water from a pipe and heat from the floor. Anything to have a roof over your head and food in your belly, a few bucks for the basics, maybe an unnecessary gewgaw for comfort. Hunt, scrounge, gather, you’d do it if that was required. Whatever it takes to survive, nothing’s off the table in a crisis.
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