by J. I. Greco
“If you’ve got any last words for your WOLFpack,” Trip said to the Higgins, “I’d think them now.”
“Wait!” the Higgins yelled. “What if we forgot we ever caught up with you?”
Trip twitched. Brakes engaged instantly, sending the Wound into a controlled fishtail on the loose scrubland dirt. When she finally stopped swinging around, her rear bumper ended up mere inches away from the churning expansion front, a tendril snapping out to snatch away her license plate before Trip hit the gas and had her lurch forward a few feet, out of reach.
The Higgins sagged, relieved. “Robin Masters be praised.”
“You the only team after us?” Trip asked.
“For now,” the Higgins said. “She’ll send someone else, eventually.”
“You’ll stall her.”
“As much as we can. But not for nothing.”
Trip gave a knowing sigh and reached for his wallet. “Cash? Or will Rudy’s left arm do?”
CHAPTER 2: WELCOME TO THE WASTELAND
“You know,” Trip said, flipping through the pages of a dog-eared copy of the January ‘80 issue of Playboy — the one with Steve Martin in diapers on the cover — propped up on the steering wheel while the Wound drove herself, “they’re really nice people those Magnums, once you get past the whole them wanting to eat you thing.”
The Higgins and his WOLFpack left behind and the sun fully up, the Wound was heading East down a battered and beaten I-80 on cautious auto-pilot. The landscape of the Wasteland outside was parched and burnt-out, only the occasional skeleton of a long collapsed farm house or barn breaking the monotony.
In the passenger seat, Rudy scooped yellow-green reconsti-gruel from a rusty dog bowl into his mouth with two fingers. “You said she wouldn’t send bounty hunters after us.”
“And you believed me?” Trip didn’t look up as he’d gotten to the part with boobs. “I left her at the altar and you stunned her three-legged, one-eyed calico, Mr. Charles Xavier Whimsy, Esquire, while we were making our escape.”
“Little lopsided-faced bastard had it coming for always shoving his ass in my face every time I sat down to eat.”
“You gave him a heart attack.”
“And then I gave him CPR.”
“Kicking is not CPR.”
“Got him breathing again, didn’t it?” Rudy licked the last of the gruel off his fingers. “I’m counting that one.”
“Yes, well, throw all of it into a blender and sure as Shatner of course she was gonna send hunters after us. Why you think I suggested we come out here, of all places?”
“Yeah, that did surprise me.” Rudy haphazardly stuffed the dog bowl into the glove compartment, packed with gruel pouches, crumpled paper bags of random ammo and spent shells waiting to be reloaded, an ancient rolled-up 2004 Rand-McNally Annual, and an assortment of game carts and rolls of duct tape. He had to use his knees to force the glove compartment door shut. “This is the last place I figure you’d want to go.”
“Was kinda hoping she’d think the same. Well, lesson learned.”
“That’s all you have to say for getting us into this mess?”
Trip looked up from the Playboy, his eyebrow cocked in almost sincere offense. “How did I get us into this mess?”
“Are you serious?” Rudy asked, glaring at him. “It was a simple scam. We pass ourselves off as arms merchants, gain the Warlord Hu’s trust with a few staged demonstrations, get her to fork over a huge deposit, and skip out before the crates of wooden sticks with buttons glued on them for triggers showed up at her warehouse. You were just supposed to gain her confidence.”
“Which I did,” Trip said, smiling. “By banging her.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t have to ask her to get married right after.”
“Took her completely off-guard, didn’t it?”
“And why wouldn’t it?”
Trip closed the Playboy, tossed it up on the dash. “Look, stealing a couple thousand scrollars of deposit money was nothing. There was a bigger opportunity. She had money. Power. Not just in Cali but in the Mainland. Plus: Frickin’ army. All waiting for a man to take off her oddly long-fingered hands as Mr. Warlord Hu. It was the perfect con.”
“Bullshit. There was no con. You got carried away by a pretty face and went all stupid. Like always.”
“She did have the most amazing eyes. And she could do this thing with her tonsils that...” Trip’s voice trailed off and he shook himself. “Well, trust me, it was special. She was special.”
“So special you grabbed me ten minutes before the ceremony and initiated Operation I’ve-Made-a-Huge-Mistake?”
“Well... she wasn’t exactly the perfect woman, you know. She sang Chinese opera in her sleep. And did I mention the extra phalanges in her fingers and toes? And would you believe she actually wanted to honeymoon alone? Without servants? Not even the cute little redhead with the freckles and knockers.”
“The one you were banging on the side.”
“Yeah. What’s her name.” Trip smirked, lit a cigarette. “Anyway, if I’d gotten hitched, where would that have left you? I’d be busy war-lording it up all day and night, wouldn’t have had any time to hit the road with you anymore.”
“I think I could have coped. Thrived, even.”
“What, you were gonna go out adventuring on your own? Come on... we both know I pull most of the weight in this partnership. You’d be lost without me. I couldn’t do that to my own brother.”
Rudy growled out a sigh. “Just once I’d like to pull a job without your dick complicating things, is all I’m saying.”
“You’re just jealous it’s never your dick doing the complicating.”
“Touché. But still... someday the universe is gonna hit you up-side the head with a Karmic two-by-four. I just hope I’m there to see it when it does. I’m gonna sell tickets.”
“As long as I get half the gate.” Trip sat back, let out a good lungful of smoke at the steering wheel. On the other side of the interstate, a forty-man-drawn flatbed stacked high with corn and its horse-mounted and shotgun-toting Amish escort made its four-mile-per-hour way West. “You know, if Delores was already pissed enough to send cannibals after us, once she’s figured out the Magnums double-crossed her, she’s probably gonna finally be angry enough to pay his exorbitant fees and send the Slash.”
Rudy gave an involuntary yelp. “The Slash? She wouldn’t.”
“Surprised she didn’t send him first after what you did to her cat. And him we won’t be able to buy off.”
“I’m not fighting the Slash,” Rudy said, his eyes wide with dread and shaking his head.
“You think I want to fight him? He bit a chunk out of my calf last time we ran into him, and it wasn’t even us he was hunting.”
“So, what we gonna do?”
“So... we take unprecedented action, as it were.”
“Like find the nearest cthulist outpost and convert, spend the rest of our days as genetically-altered tentacle hippy tree-huggers waiting for the ancient aliens who built the pyramids and the Hollywood Bowl to come back?”
“Unprecedented, not stupid,” Trip said. “We’ll pay Delores back, is all.”
Rudy snorted. “I don’t think it’s just the money she’s pissed about.”
“Okay, we pay her back, and I send some flowers. Flowers excuse everything, right?”
“If they come in a vase with your balls wrapped around it in a bow, maybe.”
“Man, you are just obsessing on my unit today, aren’t you?”
Rudy took his calabash from the bandolier and grabbed the oil can full of loose tobacco from under his seat. The can was sealed with a sheet of newspaper held on by a rubber-band. Rudy snapped the rubber-band onto his wrist, set the paper aside, and started filling the pipe. “How are we supposed to pay her back? Thanks to you, we never actually got a deposit to make off with. And we only got six scrent on the scrollar fencing the wedding gifts — which we’ve been spending through fairly recklessly.”
“You can’t put a price on good debauchery. How much is left?”
Rudy finished stuffing the pipe, sealed the can up and put it away. He lit up, cradling the bowl thoughtfully. “Last of it bribed Sunshine and the Mustache Band to go away.”
“Okay. Not a problem. Wasteland’s full of piss-ant city states.”
“How’s that supposed to help us?”
Trip reached across Rudy to pop open the glove compartment. The dog bowl and a handful of gruel pouches showered out onto Rudy’s lap while Trip grabbed the Rand-McNally and sat back. He opened it to the two-page Pennsylvania spread. The map, like the Wound and their implants, had been passed down through the family tree for generations, each generation adding their own hand-written notes and updates. Trip guesstimated their position, putting his finger dead center on the map. “They’re always going to war with each other, right?”
“Part of what makes the Wasteland so fun, yeah.” Rudy brushed the spill from the glove compartment off his lap.
“Well... that must mean they have something to go to war over. It’s certainly not for a bigger slice of the Wasteland. So we’re talking resources. Hoarded resources. Cash. And if not cash, maybe something portable we can fence. Trick is picking the right city-state. One where they’re not too big on guards and security systems.”
“And where they don’t know us.”
“Or at least don’t remember us, yeah.” Trip began tracing a spiral out from their guesstimated position. “Let’s see,” he said, his fingertip hitting the first city-state, “how about Billtown?”
“Nah, it’s a shithole, remember? Plus, they don’t have statutes of limitation. They’ll string us up before we get through the front gate.”
“Yeah, okay.” More spiral. “How about Scranton?”
Rudy shook his head. “Ain’t there anymore. Got itself nuked into a crater picking a fight with Wilkes-Barre over water rights.”
“If you knew that, why didn’t you update the map?” Trip asked, grabbing a tiny nub of a pencil remnant from the crack between the seats and slashing an “X” through the city’s name, writing “Gone Boom” below it. He tossed the pencil nub into the back seat. “All right, how about Wilkes-Barre then?”
“Did you not catch they have nukes?”
“We could fence a nuke.”
“And they’re willing to use them.”
“Right. We’ll keep that in the back pocket, then.”
“Why not Rehoboth?”
Trip looked up from the map and smirked. “What is it with you and Rehoboth?”
“I like the beach. And the taffy.”
“It’s too far,” Trip said, shaking his head. “We need to turn this around quick — a couple days, at most. That and the Neo-Mormon Confed has a lock on the place lately.”
“So, that means hookers, and lots of ‘em.”
“Sure. But they never take their holy long-johns off. Yes, it’s kinky, but really not worth the fabric burns. Besides, they forced all the pizza joints and arcades to close up shop.”
“The bastards.”
“They should all rot in hell, yeah.” Trip turned back to the map and frowned. Most of the town names were crossed out or labeled with warnings like “Rad Zone”, “No Man’s Land”, and “Hookers Have Mutant, Sentient Crabs”. Trip sneered. “We’re running out of options, here. Vishnu’s leather ankles. I hate the Wasteland. They should just pave over the whole thing and be done with it. There’s nothing out here. It’s like a... a...”
“A giant wasteland?” Rudy suggested, leaning in to look at the map himself.
“Maybe we can risk making it to Jersey.” Trip started to flip the page. “There’s always some action to get in on in Jersey.”
Rudy stopped him, stabbing the stem of his calabash at one of the few towns that wasn’t crossed off. “What about this one, then? We’ve never been there, I don’t think, and it’s pretty close.”
“Seriously? Shunk?” Trip read the hand-written label dubiously: “‘The beer capital of the Wasteland’?”
“That’s probably not saying much, mind ya — Wasteland’s known more for its fortified wines — but it might be worth checking out.”
Trip eyed Rudy suspiciously. “You just want to go on a bender.”
“So?” Rudy smiled. “Anyway, where there’s booze, there’s money.”
“Fine,” Trip rolled the Rand-McNally up and slapped it against Rudy’s chest. “At least it’s on the way. If it turns out to be a no-go, we can still maybe make Jersey.”
“Think we’ll be there by lunch?” Rudy jammed the Rand-McNally back into the glove compartment. “I’m starving.”
“Should. Unless we see a flea market.”
“Oh, well, yeah, of course. Some boiled peanuts would be awesome.”
“This far North?” Trip twitched, taking the Wound off autopilot. Lacing his fingers behind his head and closing his eyes, seeing through her telemetry, he had her speed up, slaloming around a crater and passing a slow-moving steam-powered VW van. “You’re dreaming. Best you’ll get are those roasted almonds in paper cones.”
“Bummer, they’re always stale.” Rudy reached under his t-shirt to twist his nipple, backing off the flow of THC-analog to simple buzz-sustenance level, and stared out his window at the gray and brown landscape flashing by, chewing the bit of his pipe. “So, All-Mart looks... bigger.”
“Shut up.”
CHAPTER 3: THE CITY-STATE BOOZE BUILT
Throwing up twin trails of dust behind her, the Wound tore down a hard-packed dirt road winding through sickly barley fields toward the squat and ugly city-state of Shunk.
Ringed by a wall of junked cars filled with concrete and piled four high, Shunk was built around a decrepit, ancient brewery, smokestacks half falling over but still billowing thick, black smoke. The four-story tall twin rows of six grain silos — the tallest structures in the city-state — proudly proclaimed, in crudely painted lettering, the beer’s slogan:
MORTY’S FINEST: IT’LL GET YOU GOOD AND DRUNK!
Seeing this, Rudy giggled in anticipation. Trip just groaned.
The road ended at the city-state’s main gate, a rough gap in the wall of junked cars two cars wide. The gate itself was a flimsy two-by-four wood frame held together by sheets of chicken wire haphazardly stapled to it. At the side of the gate, a town guard sat on a rusty beer keg, chin on chest asleep, a Kalashnikov on his lap and a dozen empty plastic gallon milk jugs around his feet. A kid that couldn’t have been older than ten stood next to him. Unkempt and dirty, the kid looked bored out of his mind, even with the Uzi slung under his arm. Disinterested, the kid watched as the Wound slowed to a stop in front of the gate.
The kid elbowed the adult in the shoulder. “Time for work, Dad.”
The adult came awake with a startled growl, and before his eyes were fully open, his hands found the Kalashnikov, cocking it and aiming it at the kid. The kid rolled his eyes, gently pushed the barrel aside to point at the Wound instead. The adult guard’s eyes followed the barrel, looked down it at a smirking Trip.
“Howdy,” Trip said, tapping cigarette ash out the window.
The guard grunted, gave his kid a dirty look, and got to his feet. He unsteadily stepped up to the Wound, keeping the Kalashnikov aimed at the bridge of Trip’s nose. “Business?” he asked, his words slurred. His breath stank of hops and ethanol.
Trip gave him a practiced, charming half-mouth crooked smile. “Emptying your city vault in the dead of night,” he said, earning a jab from Rudy’s elbow.
The guard just stood there, body slowly wavering from side to side, squinting at Trip like he was trying to decide if he’d really heard what he thought he’d heard. While he pondered, he snapped his fingers back at the kid. The kid reached behind the keg and grabbed a milk jug half-filled with frothy amber beer. He took a long swig for himself, then handed the jug to the adult.
Keeping the Kalashnikov pointed at Trip, the guard slugged down a good portion of the beer,
wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and scowled. “Pretty stupid to tell me that, isn’t it?”
“I’ve got a good attorney.” Trip thumbed at Rudy.
Rudy leaned in and gave the guard a friendly two-fingered salute. “I mostly specialize in maritime law, but I have been known to do some pro-bono criminal defense work from time to time.”
The guard squinted and laughed, lowering the Kalashnikov. “Pair of jokers, eh?” He jogged his head back at the kid. “Open the gate, Kevin.”
The kid walked over to the gate and mounted a tire-less, rusted ten-speed, kept upright between blocks of concrete. The bike’s chain was connected to a complex pulley system. As the kid pedaled, the gate rose.
“All right,” the guard told Trip, waving at the gate with the beer jug, “go on with you. But no shooting kids or raping animals — we ain’t barbarians here.”
“We’ll try to remember that,” Trip said, twitching to have the Wound ease forward through the gap.
“You know, call me crazy, but I think that guard was drunk,” Trip said, the Wound making its slow way down Shunk’s mostly deserted cracked asphalt main drag.
“Lucky bastard.” Rudy idly picked fuzz out of his belly button with his thumb. “He probably gets paid in beer.”
Trip hit the brakes and laid on the horn as an old woman in a shawl and sequined halter top stumbled into the Wound’s path. She shot Trip a viscously dirty gap-toothed glare and the finger before walking on, taking another swig from the milk jug of beer grasped tight in her wizened, arthritic hand. “Towns that let their guards be drunk on duty don’t ever have anything worth guarding. I don’t know why I let you talk me into this.”
Rudy looked up, pulled his t-shirt-shirt down. “It’s just that kind of town. A party town. At least they’ve got somebody at the front gate. That’s a good sign.”
Trip got the Wound moving again. “Bet their rifles weren’t even loaded.”
