Tatterdemalion:
Tatterdemalion frowned. The wheelbarrow was really quite hopeless. Oh, she could paint it with colorful patterns, and perhaps drill holes around its edge to hang feathers and fetishes from, but it would never be a thing of beauty or charm to pass on to progeny. If it would even last that long. Like nearly everything else created by the lost civilization she was looting, it possessed not one iota of the romance that came with the words "lost civilization." Starkly, brutishly utilitarian. Meant to be used while it lasted, thrown away, and replaced with another, its loss never mourned. Not worth repairing or keeping around. So it was for everything in every corner of the garden supply store she was in, and everything around it. Every house, every street, every building, every vehicle and artifact, every sign and billboard and all the things they'd once hawked: all of it, created to be garbage. Not one thing that would say to future generations, "a great and mighty people once walked here."
It was not as if the people of that world had truly possessed no capacity for grandeur. Tatterdemalion could remember as if it were yesterday, seeing close-up pictures of Pluto as an active, dynamic world. The creation of those pictures had been an act of utterly staggering competence. Even the tiniest error at any point in an incredibly complicated process of design, manufacturing, launch and execution, iterated over incredible speeds and distances the human mind literally could not comprehend except as mathematical abstractions would have resulted in pictures of empty space, or no pictures at all. There weren't even any metaphors that could serve to describe such a feat. Even now that machine, and others like it sown throughout the Solar System--throughout the Solar System--waited loyally for further instructions from departed masters.
So many great deeds, accomplished on budgets amounting to a rounding error of the money spent on military force, or advertising ugly disposable things like this wheelbarrow. Deeds that couldn't live on, even in legend and myth! How could she look into the eyes of her grandchildren and tell them about 'pictures of Pluto' or 'the discovery of the Higgs boson' or 'planets in other solar systems' in a way that would make any sense at all? It was not as if she'd be able to give them this wheelbarrow as an example of the heights their ancestors had once reached. By their time, its pneumatic tire would have fallen flat long ago, the relatively complex devices required to pump it back up themselves broken. It would look like exactly what it would be: salvaged and re-purposed garbage, and so would everything else remaining from this fallen world.
It was not as if it was impossible to make mundane objects beautiful and worth keeping. One could look at a Victorian-era steam engine, a medieval sword, or a spoon from King Tutankhamun's tomb and be disabused of that notion. A wave of sadness swept over her, and she wiped a tear. What wonders might they have accomplished, if they had but tried, as a civilization, to accomplish wonders? What beauty might they have created, if they had cared at all about beauty?
Tatterdemalion pushed those thoughts aside and resumed her task of filling the wheelbarrow. Leather work aprons that could be turned into leather armor and other useful goods once the pernicious brand names printed on them could be removed or painted over, sets of work gloves, a shovel, hoe, and rake, a pruning hook that just might be reworked into a spear or najinata, and most precious of all, seeds for tomatoes, cabbage, lettuce, carrots, and--
Engine sounds, getting closer. She froze, and listened. A motorcycle...one motorcycle, not a gang. No cars or trucks following along. One or two people then. The machine stopped, probably a block or two away. A motorcycle rider wouldn't want garden supplies; no place to stow them. They'd be planning to hit the grocery store and restaurants for canned food, checking the abandoned cars for gasoline, and probably rooting around for whatever guns and bullets might yet remain to be found. Not a competitor for her current haul then, but still a potential threat. Best to find out what she was up against before trying to get the wheelbarrow out of town.
Silently, Tatterdemalion headed for the door, stepping gingerly over the corpses of ghouls she'd slain on her way in. She slipped out of the store, checked both ways, then scurried to snug herself up against the building on the other side of the street, crouching a little so she wouldn't be seen through the windows of the hulking SUV's parked next to the sidewalk. Thwack-squish! Probably a ghoul being killed, by a bow or crossbow most likely. Tatterdemalion slipped her own bow from her shoulder, quietly drew an arrow and nocked it to the string.
Area check: one ghoul, drawn toward the sound of the bike, shuffling down the middle of the street. Keeping low and quiet, Tatterdemalion followed it. It would serve as a meat shield and distraction; if necessary she could shoot it before it harmed the rider.
"Hands where I can see them," a male voice said. "Place your weapon on the ground. No sudden movements or I light you up." Tatterdemalion clenched her teeth, feeling anger rise. Our whole species on the brink of extinction, and they still can't fucking cooperate?! But that's why they died, isn't it? The same scientific community that gave them pictures of Pluto had also given them repeated warnings over decades, about what they were doing to the climate, to biodiversity, to the oceans, to topsoil, to the fresh water aquifers. They had treated everything around them as things to be used up and thrown away, just like their own creations, without any real thought to the future of their world or their civilization. They never even thought of themselves as members of a civilization did they, much less as members of a biosphere...just Rugged Individuals competing in a free market for money and status. 'The one that dies with the most toys wins!' Well, they got their wish, didn't they? Consumers...being consumed.
The ghoul ahead of her shambled around the corner. Tatterdemalion sneaked up and peered around the corner with one eye, crouched low; a peeking head at head height was more likely to be noticed than one peering from a lower, unexpected height. The male had some kind of assault rifle, a physical manifestation of the concept of industrialized death. Tatterdemalion would almost have been less disgusted if he'd been holding a loop of intestine. "Leigh!" the young woman with him hissed, noticing the ghoul. No accounting for tasted, I guess, Tatterdemalion thought.
On the other hand, Motorcycle Woman was calmly trying to talk some sense into him, offering negotiation and cooperation. Then, with an impressive quick-draw, she whipped out a silenced pistol and downed the ghoul, a precise head-shot. She was dangerous, and like the man, a wielder of industrialized death. Even so, it wasn't hard at all for Tatterdemalion to know which side she was on. Area check: no ghouls ready to sneak up on her while her attention was on the man. She drew her bow back, then aimed it around the corner right between the man's shoulder blades. She kept half her body behind cover, confident that she could loose her arrow and duck behind the building before his companion could take aim. Motorcycle Woman could take care of the girl, if it came down to it.
"I suggest ye put your shootin' iron on th' ground, boyo," she said, "before I put ye down like a mad dog. Oh, an' 'put yer hands where I can see 'em. No sudden moves or I light ye up.'" Her Irish lilt dripped with mockery as she quoted the man's words back at him.