After confirming that the coast was indeed clear, Ambitan lit one of his precious matches, a valuable commodity that wasn't easy to obtain within the dumps. Sure there were old used tanks of gasoline, but matches? Surprisingly, not that many. What matches that had been there before had long been snatched up.
The government in the Upper Sectors employed all sorts of policies and regulations in regards to waste disposal and matches were deemed to be a fire hazard and as such was sent to special facilities rather than dumped straight down.
However, such logic is nonsensical. Why would a government deny the disposal of matches but then dump electronics, metals, and such without recycling them?
The answer is simple, the people were in the Upper Sectors don't wish to witness the tainted facsimile that the Earth had become, and due to the rampant wars that had ravaged the planet space development as a whole was rapidly developed but never completed on the scale of that of colonies.
Oh sure, there was probably some old fogey living it up in some asteroid belt now with his children and wife after dining on some potato quiche but that matters little.
Furthermore, the Upper Sectors themselves had their own issues. Primarily dealing with real estate. There's only a limited amount of land up there after all, and the recycling facilities would occupy too much space.
Therefore they decided to just dump it below, out of sight out of mind. But if the ground below were to be set ablaze, then that most definitely actually effect them. The smoke would become choking and the fires would spread throughout the Earth.
But still, even then the special materials treatment facility was still having their budget slashed nearly everyday as the land they controlled gradually shrunk. As such slippages in the net, like the matches that Ambitan has, came into existence.
After striking the match, Ambitan hurriedly cupped his hands around the fragile flame before placing it inside his little trash heap lest a stray wind blow it out. He continued to cup his hands around his small little fire, blowing on it gently to further stoke the flames.
The flickers cast small orange flecks through the hovel and as such Ambitan hurriedly tried to obscure it with his body.
If he were to be ratted out then he would be made an example of. A show of force would be made to further discourage those with similar thoughts. To be specific, a particularly violent show of force.
The smoke wisped upwards and in his brief lull of concentration Ambitan inhaled it deep within his nose.
Startled, he gagged slightly, but he tried his utmost to keep the noise down, so the coughs welled up within his throat. Unable to be let out but also unable to be choked back down.
And so this cough festered and his cheeks puffed outward to try to contain them but to no avail, as they forcibly pushed their way on out.
Ambitan gagged and hacked as the air came rushing out and sticking his head out he spit out the foul taste before turning back to his work.
Cooking the rat was a torrid affair, at least from Ambitan's perspective it was sustenance. Food was nutrition. Simple as that. No need to overcomplicate things. Taste was just a bonus.
The rat was still slightly pinkish but the meat was soft. Not having a knife, Ambitan picked at the fur to peel it off the flesh.
The singed fur left a foul smell in the air but luckily the odor of the surrounding trash masked the smell to a certain extent.
To eat a rat is a rather simple process, you just sort of pick the meat off the bones. The rudimentary form of just scorching the corpse over the fire sort of made the meat a bit less compliant and tougher to actually strip off the bone.
Nonetheless, Ambitan devoured with gusto, the lacking taste doing nothing to dissuade his appetite. Even the pink worm-like tail wasn't tossed aside.
The tail itself was crunchy and didn't taste like the rat itself; some of the fallen Upper Sector members had offhandedly said before that rat sort of tasted like chicken. But the tail didn't taste like what they had described. Didn't have flavor at all. It was pretty much all texture.
His jaws snapped up and down, mangling the tail into bite-sized pieces before Ambitan swallowed them.
While he did indeed feed himself, the gnawing hunger didn't leave. Instead it stubbornly clung on and it seemed that by consuming some food the pit in his stomach only grew wider.
There was an annoying sensation between his teeth though, so Ambitan rooted around his mouth with his tongue to try to find the culprit.
Eventually, he found the target nestled in between the molars on the bottom left-hand side of his mouth. After the location had been identified, he opened his mouth and rooted around with his fingers but he just couldn't seem to fish it out.
Every time he felt the offending piece it would slip out between his fingers to nestle itself back between his teeth.
After a couple of swears though, Ambitan eventually rooted the piece of rat fur out from the apparently unclean skinning job he had completed.
Unfortunately though, now his mouth tasted of nothing but singed fur, but he powered through the slight discomfort. Rinsing out one's mouth was not a luxury that could be afforded.
Now that the matter with the fur had been settled it was time to cover up any evidence that Ambitan had indeed created an illegal fire of sorts. Best not to leave anything that could get him driven out after all.
First, he tore apart the charred trash that he had used, shredding it up into hundreds of pieces. As a side effect though, his hands were also painted black in a sense as the trash rubbed off on his skin.
Quickly he tried rubbed it off onto his rags, it wouldn't be out of place for his clothes to be dirtied after all. But given that his rags were already dirty enough as is, it didn't actually accomplish much, only removing the brunt of the damage but still leaving traces of ash and soot.
Then for the rat's skeleton, this too he snapped in pieces before stashing it in his rags. On his next expedition into the dumps, he would make sure to dispose of it then.
With the evidence mostly cleaned up, he tentatively opened a crack, letting some light shine in and the air circulate a little.
With a little bit of luck, no one would notice anything wrong with the smoke in the air. Hopefully, the smoky scent would be blamed on the Firekeepers.
Heading out Ambitan took what he had looted previously, keeping it on him before making his way to the trading hub. The wires and battery he had collected would hopefully sustain him for a bit longer.
If he were lucky and Manny was at the counter then a chance existed for him to obtain a bottle of water.
He could get a battered bucket or some broken down water collector, but Ambitan knew better than to purchase one of those. The last time he did that it was immediately stolen as he was backed into a corner and then it was repurposed to be a 'communal bucket'.
Of course, that was a load of horseshit and Ambitan never got a drop of water from that bucket.