Take the All-Mart!

by J. I. Greco

  “There’s money here.” Rudy sniffed his thumb and shrugged. “I can smell it.”

  “What you’re smelling ain’t money.” Trip pointed his cigarette out at the shacks lining the drag. They were built out of whatever could be salvaged after the decades of chaos that had made the wasteland the Wasteland: Irregular chunks of salvaged plasterboard and sheetrock, rusted, dinged-up corrugated iron sheets, and banged-up car trunks and hoods, with cell phone cases used as decorative mosaic roof tiles. Nothing new, nothing fitting together correctly. “Look at this place. It’s like it isn’t even in the same country as Cali. Or even Jersey. It’s a mess. A good nuking would improve it. It looks like a bunch of drunken idiots built it.”

  Rudy shrugged, smiling. “They probably did.”

  “They’re not gonna have anything worth the trouble. We should cut our losses — we leave now, go full tilt, don’t run into any more trouble on the road, we can still make Jersey by nightfall.”

  “We’re here. We might as well scope out the place. And at the very least... sample the local wares.”

  “So, what do you think is gonna kill you first? Your liver crapping out or an OD?”

  “OD, if I have anything to say about it...” Rudy’s voice trailed off as the main drag emptied out into the city-state’s central square. His eyes lit up. “Thank you, karma.”

  The square was alive with activity, focused around a junk-sculpture fountain, dry and overgrown with weeds, and the dozen vendor stalls surrounding it. Beer vendors. Crowds milled around the stalls, most of them double-fisting jugs and mugs of beer, and lined up for more.

  Trip eased the Wound to the side of the square and twitched her into park. “Just great. I’m never gonna be able to drag you out of this town, am I?”

  “No,” Rudy said, reaching for the door latch, “no you are not.”

  Trip watched Rudy get out of the car, then shook his head, reaching up behind his ear to yank the patch cord from its socket with a SNICK. He let it go and it retracted back into the dash then leaned forward, groping under his seat to grab his .85 caliber three-shot elephant revolver in its fast-draw holder before getting out of the Wound himself.

  Strapping the holster on over his narrow hips, Trip walked around the front of the Wound to join Rudy, staring through the milling, rowdy crowd at the stalls and already salivating.

  “Want me to make a hole for you?” Trip slapped the holster’s massive, polished-to-gleaming “Big Rig” belt buckle shut. “Haven’t shot anything since dinner last night. I’m getting itchy.”

  “No need,” Rudy said. “This is obviously paradise.”

  “Huh?”

  “In paradise, they bring the beer to you.” Rudy nodded towards a smiling 13 year old redhead in Lederhosen adroitly skipping their way through the crowd, an overflowing mug of beer in each hand.

  “Welcome to Shunk, strangers,” she said with a broad, welcoming smile, holding the mugs out at them. “I’m Brenda. May I offer you a complimentary beer, courtesy of Stan’s Beer Stand, home of the best double-fried cockroach sandwiches you’ll ever bite in to?”

  “Why yes, yes you may,” Rudy said, taking a mug with both hands.

  Trip shook his head. “No thanks. Never drink the stuff.” He thumbed at Rudy. “Softens the mind. But the cooling system could use a top-off. How about we throw it in the radiator?”

  “Okey dokey, then, sir!”

  “Philistine!” Rudy yelped, grabbing the second mug from out of the girl’s hand before she had a chance to pull it away. He gulped the first one down, then started in on the second, his eyes darting back and forth, worried someone was going to steal it from him while he drank.

  Trip sighed, embarrassed for Rudy. “So, kid... Where’s the outhouse that passes for a bank around here? We’ve got some valuables we’d like to keep safe while we’re here.”

  Brenda stared up at him with bright blue eyes. “Bank? I don’t think we have a bank...”

  “Of course you don’t.” Trip scowled at Rudy. “Last time I let your addictions pick a target. Finish that — we’re going to Jersey.”

  Brenda continued, “...we just keep all the money and stuff in the warehouse.”

  “Warehouse?” Trip and Rudy asked simultaneously.

  Brenda pointed past the fountain in the direction of the brewery and its smoke-billowing stacks. “Yep. The beer warehouse.”

  Rudy leaned closer to Trip, lowered his voice. “Sounds to me like we could pull another Reno here.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up.” Trip smiled down at Brenda. “So, they ever let people park in this warehouse?”

  “You see anything that could possibly be a vault?” Trip asked as a worker with a mohawk and tribal-tattoos, wearing grimy coveralls, guided the Wound to the empty center of the warehouse.

  “That could be it in the back there,” Rudy said, pointing with his nose over the lip of his new favorite thing in the world: Brenda had let him keep a beer mug. And given him a milk-gallon full of beer to go with it. Free.

  Trip squinted into the dark recesses, past a group of workers rolling kegs up onto a hand-truck. “Maybe. Looks small.”

  “The door looks small,” Rudy conceded, refilling the mug from the milk-jug. There were maybe two pints left. “But who knows how big it is inside? Could be huge.”

  Mohawk-and-tattoo held up both hands for them to stop. Trip twitched the Wound into park, then activated the Wound’s standby defense mode with a cock of his eyebrow as he un-jacked. “And probably empty except for a beer recipe and a jar of rusty nails.”

  “Rusty nails?” Rudy asked.

  “Secret ingredient,” Trip smirked, getting out of the Wound.

  Rudy snorted, finished off the mug, and got out himself — leaving the mug on the dash but taking the milk-jug with him. “I’m telling you, I’ve got a good feeling about this. We lucked out already — we saved days of casing the joint. The hard part’s done. We’re already in.”

  “Yeah, we’ll see.” Trip walked around to the back of the Wound, wrapping a knuckle on the trunk twice as he passed. “Oh-one-hundred,” he said to the trunk.

  “Affirm,” came back a muffled, synthesized voice from inside the trunk.

  Mohawk-and-tattoo walked up to them. According to the hand-drawn scrawl on the coverall’s left breast, his name was Shemp. “Well, there you go. Anytime you need your car back, just ring the loading bay buzzer — What was that?” he asked, staring curiously at the trunk.

  “What was what?” Trip took a hand-rolled cigarette out of the ancient Altoids tin he kept them in and lit it with his dented, lidless old Zippo.

  Shemp looked at him, then Rudy. “Sounded like you got someone in your trunk.”

  “That’s... just the fuel cell,” Rudy offered.

  Trip shot him an exasperated glare, mouthing W-T-F?

  “A talking fuel cell?” Shemp asked, incredulous.

  Rudy nodded weakly and took a slug from the jug, avoiding eye contact.

  Trip cleared his throat. “Yeah. It’s a... voice response system. So it can tell you how much charge it has, how much it’s leaching from the power plant, and all that. Way better than gauges. Who can read ‘em anyway?”

  “Seriously?” Shemp asked.

  “They’re all the rage up north.”

  “That where you guys are from?”

  “No.”

  “We don’t got nothing like that here. Can I see?” Shemp reached out to touch the trunk. His fingers got maybe two inches away from the armor-scale skin of the Wound before a forked bolt of static discharge leaped up and stabbed at his fingertips. He screeched, pulled his hand back.

  “Yeah,” Trip said, “she doesn’t like strangers touching her.”

  “You could’a warned me.” Shemp sucked his stinging fingertips.

  Trip shrugged a half-hearted apology, knocked on the trunk. “Say hello, fuel cell.”

  “Hello,” said the synthesized voice. “I am apparently a fuel cell now.”

  Trip
thumped the trunk with his palm. “Never mind it. It’s programmed to think it has a sense of humor.”

  “What’s your excuse?” the trunk asked.

  “Well, I’ll be.” Shemp leaned in and raised his voice. “Hello, there, uh, fuel cell. It’s very nice to meet you.”

  “Pleasure’s all mine.”

  Shemp chuckled. “Damn, that’s cool.”

  “Anyway,” Trip said, “I was just telling it when to power up the engine to recharge itself.”

  Shemp gave him a troubled look. “That’s not gonna fill this place with exhaust fumes, is it?”

  “What, you working then?” Trip asked, exhaling smoke at Shemp’s face.

  “No.” Shemp coughed and fanned the smoke away with his hand. “Nobody is.”

  Trip smirked. “Then I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “We don’t need fumes getting into the beer.”

  Rudy stepped in. “What he means is, the car’s got an outgas reclamation recycler. It feeds the fumes back into the cooling system. It’s a closed system. No leaks.”

  “Oh, okay,” Shemp said, mollified.

  “You said nobody’s here at night?” Trip asked. “Nice they give you guys a break. How long that break happen to last?”

  “Second shift starts at three, ends at ten. First shift doesn’t come on ‘till eight in the morning. Sometimes later. Depends on how much they drank the night before. Most times, it’s later,” Shemp added with a chuckle.

  “No third shift?”

  “Hell no. Nobody would work it if there was. Ten’s about the time the serious drinking starts.”

  “And you wouldn’t want to miss that.”

  “Who would?” Shemp asked.

  “I know I wouldn’t.” Rudy held up his nearly empty milk jug and pointed it at a nearby tapped keg. “Think I can get a refill on this?”

  “Yeah, no problem.” Shemp headed towards the keg, gesturing for them to follow. “Getting thirsty myself.”

  Behind his back, Trip and Rudy exchanged glances, Trip encouraging Rudy to keep the questions going with an exaggerated flick of his eyebrows.

  Rudy handed Shemp the milk-jug. “So, it’s just the guards in here at night, then?”

  “No guards,” Shemp said, holding the jug under the spout and turning on the tap.

  “No guards at all?” Rudy asked.

  “Guards need to drink, too.” Shemp spilled more beer over his hand and the outside of the jug than he was getting in it. He didn’t seem to care. “Anyway, the locks on the doors all work.”

  Rudy scratched his soul-patch. “All this beer, our car, that vault in the back — that’s the town’s vault, right? What’s watching it all? Making sure it’s safe?”

  “Nobody in town would steal the beer — we all get it for free. The vault, it’s got a lock, a real nice one too. Morty had it ordered in special all the way from New South Maryland. And your car — well, hell, it doesn’t seem like it needs guarding, does it?”

  “Still,” Trip said, “we worry.”

  Shemp grinned. “Don’t. There’s ol’ Willie.”

  “Willie?” Trip asked. “Thought you said no one was here at night...”

  Shemp turned off the tap, pointed with the half-filled milk jug at the ceiling and the double-barreled machine gun turret hanging right above the parked Wound. Rudy let out an appreciative whistle and took the jug.

  Trip smirked. “That’s Willie?”

  “Yep,” Shemp said with pride. “I helped build him. ‘Lectronics is sort of a hobby. Ain’t he a beauty?”

  “Yeah, he’s quite the looker.” Trip walked back towards the Wound, sizing up the gun. “Automated?”

  “Totally.” Shemp dried his hands on a rag hanging out of his back pocket and stepped up next to Trip. “End of shift, we lock up the warehouse, switch Willie on with this —” he touched a small brown plastic box with a single button on it hanging from his belt “— from outside, and we go off to get good and wasted while he keeps an eye on things. He’ll shoot anything that moves — well, anything rat-sized or bigger.”

  “So, it actually works, then?”

  “The guys on morning shift are always finding rats Willie shot up, the lucky bastards.”

  Rudy stepped up between them, gulping down beer from the jug. “Free breakfast.”

  Shemp smiled. “You said it.”

  Trip casually eased over to the trunk. “You hear that, fuel cell? You’ll have someone to keep you company tonight. A nice, friendly, motion-sensing robo-gun.”

  “I would look forward to making its acquaintance if only I had a...” the voice in the trunk prompted.

  Trip sized up the box on Shemp’s belt. “Radio command interface. Non-mil civilian. Looks homemade.”

  Shemp smiled and nodded. “It’s just an old garage door opener I found and jiggered.”

  “A garage door opener?” Rudy asked. “How’d you lay the signal encryption in? Cell-phone chip?”

  “Encryption?” Shemp asked. “It’s a toggle. On. Off. I just wired in a battery. I don’t know that fancy stuff.”

  Trip gave Shemp a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Never mind. Security’s over-rated, anyway.”

  CHAPTER 4: ROXANNE

  “These people gonna stop drinking and go to bed already?”

  Trip sat on a table-top at the periphery of Shunk’s town square, watching the drunken, boisterous crowd with a mixture of abject disdain and predatory alertness. His feet on a chair, his elbow was propped up on his knee. He held his head in his hand, fingers drumming impatiently against his cheek.

  The crowd wasn’t getting thinner as the night dragged on. Instead, it seemed to have been slowly growing until the entire population of the city-state was sitting at the tables that had been brought in for the night’s festivities and arranged around the beer stalls and junk-sculpture fountain, now lit up with dirty brown water sputtering out of its top. Pre-teen kids pushed rickety wheeled carts piled high with mugs and gallon milk jugs of beer on a regular circuit through the tight aisles between tables, people grabbing whatever they wanted as the carts passed. The crowd was getting drunker and more song-happy every minute — at that moment there were at least three different but equally out of tune drinking songs going on above the din of conversation and laughter.

  “It’s only midnight.” Rudy was planted in a rusted metal folding chair next to and behind Trip, a dozen empty mugs and half that many empty beer jugs spread out before him on the table. His eyes were glassed over, but no more so than usual. “But I wouldn’t be surprised this goes on pretty much all night. Every night. These guys are hardcore, bless ‘em.”

  “The idea is to break into the vault when everybody’s asleep.” Trip reached into his tux jacket for his Pez dispenser. He popped two caff pills into his mouth, shook away a yawn as they dissolved on his tongue and quickly hit his system. “How we supposed to do that if the whole fuckin’ town’s still awake come two AM?”

  “Awake, yes. Sober and in a shape to notice us working? Doubt it.” Rudy lifted up his latest mug, dangerously nearing empty. “This is pretty strong stuff — if my factory wasn’t partially filtering it I’d be under the table by now. No, hardcore or not, this town’s gonna be mostly shit-faced by two. We’ve got nothing to worry about — as long as you don’t get distracted.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know what it means.” Rudy gestured with his mug and a raised eyebrow at Trip’s crotch.

  Trip snorted. “Yeah, I wouldn’t worry about that. Have you seen a pretty face since that jailbait enabler who brought you booze this morning?”

  “I thought we were supposed to be keeping an eye out for the town guard.”

  Trip snorted dismissively than scanned the crowd again. “All I’ve seen is drunk, inbred hicks shy of the right number of teeth. Which would be okay, but none of them were otherwise hot. So if they do have any hot chicks, they aren’t partying. Which is a bad sign in itself. So, yeah, Grand Master ‘P’ is
staying home and reading a book tonight — and we’re getting out of here the minute we empty the vault.”

  “Shame about that. Wouldn’t mind staying for a little while.”

  “What a shocker.”

  “It’s not just the free beer. They may be hicks but they’re friendly enough. Way friendlier than people out west. They don’t have an agenda. They’re just nice, simple, beer-loving people. My kind of people. I almost feel guilty stealing from them.”

  “I don’t. We’re doing them a favor.”

  “How’s that?”

  “We’re giving them a much needed wake-up call. You can’t just go through the post-apocalypse pre-singularity being a bunch of drunken idiots.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s work to do.”

  Rudy raised his empty mug at a passing beer cart. The kid pushing the cart got the hint and set two full beer jugs on the table in front of him before pushing on. Rudy picked up a jug, started to refill his mug, then shrugged to himself and took a swig directly from the jug. “They built a town, keep a brewery running, and manage to eke out a life in some of the harshest land on the planet. What more work is there for them to do?”

  “Same work we’re doing out west.”

  “Which is?”

  “‘Which is?’“ Trip mocked. “We’re rebuilding civilization, making sacrifices, doing the hard work to get the planet back in fighting shape again. But what are they doing here? Instead of consolidating all the piss-ant city-states under a central umbrella, bringing back law and order and municipal bus systems, and reclaiming the wasteland by way of extreme bioengineering makeover, they’re drinking themselves stupider.”

  “How are we rebuilding civilization?”

  “Well... not you and me, ‘we’, directly. But ‘we’ in the Cali sense.”

  “That’s really more the Chinese than anybody, though, ain’t it?”

  “Government for the people, by the people, right? We do our part. We pay taxes.”

  “‘We’ in the not us sense, again, of course?” Rudy asked, taking another swig. “Since we’ve never actually paid taxes.”