by J. I. Greco
“Oh, no. He totally hunted. He’s a real man.”
“Lovely.”
“Hey, guys, you wanna shush? Looks like we’re starting.” That from Yolanda, standing next to Bernice. She jogged her head in Mother Superior’s direction. Mother Su was lowering her arms, her eyes closed, and drawing in a deep breath. Yolanda then gestured at Bernice’s joint. “Can I get a hit of that, Bernie? Smoked all mine on the trip out.”
Bernice handed it over. “Sure, but you owe me.”
“Pay ya back at the orgy first thing,” Yolanda said with a leer deep into Bernice’s cleavage as she took a drag.
“Hey,” said Lindsay-Joe, standing on the other side of Yolanda, putting her hands on her ample hips. “I thought I was first on your dancecard, Bernie.”
Yolanda handed the joint and holder back to Bernice, and Bernice smiled at them, saying: “You can’t both be first?”
Down the line, Mother Superior cleared her throat, grabbed her double-penis-helix medallion, and raised it high. “Oh great anomaly of the Wasteland, we greet you!”
The coven snapped to attention, raising their hands up, their palms flat to the sky.
“Here we go.” Bernice stuck the holder between her teeth and raised her hands.
Roxanne slowly raised her hands. “All this just to have an excuse for an orgy...”
Mother Superior’s voice boomed over the white-noise of the expansion front’s ceaseless churning. “Behold we bring you gifts to feed your mighty hunger!”
“Oww,” Roxanne exclaimed, her hand snapping down to clamp against her ear.
“What?” Bernice asked in a whisper around the cigarette holder.
“Nothing.” Roxanne cricked her neck, tapped on the antenna. “It’s just this RATpack thing. Forgot to take it out. Gave me a twinge. Feels fine now.”
Bernice looked at it. “It’s blinking all funny.”
“Funny? Funny how?
“Before it just blinked yellow, all slow.”
“Yeah, that’s standby.”
“But now... it’s all red. And fast.”
“Red? Shouldn’t be red... the other unit’s way too far out of range to re-establish contact.”
“Sure Mr. Hunter McRealMan didn’t follow you?” Bernice twisted to look back up the hill.
“I would have noticed the protocol chatter. Nah, must be fritzing out on me.” Roxanne eased it out of her ear, slipping it away in her satchel purse. She shrugged, lifted her arms to the sky again. “Surprised it worked this long.”
“Please, guys...” Yolanda glared over at them, but with a hint of a smile. “You’ll get us in trouble.”
“Oh, I’ll get you in trouble.” Bernice pinched Yolanda’s ass, making her burst out in an involuntary giggle as she slapped Bernice’s hand away.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Roxanne whispered at Bernice. “If you could just work up the courage to do that to a guy, you’d bag one, for sure.”
Bernice blushed and gulped, then turned towards the expansion front.
Down the line and out of earshot, Mother Superior continued the ritual, “Hear us, insignificant as we are, as we beseech thee —”
A rumble from somewhere deep inside the All-Mart stopped Mother Superior cold.
It was a sound they’d never heard before. A deep growling lion-bear-Gojira roar reverberating out from the expansion front through the valley, echoing off the distant mountains.
The coven immediately broke into a din of confused and worried voices, sisters asking each other what was going on.
Roxanne shot Bernice a playful grin. “I’m late one time.”
Bernice gave her back a worried look.
“Calm down, everyone,” Mother Superior ordered. “Just because something’s never happened before doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a bad thing. For all we know, this is perfectly natural, if unprecedented.” She turned back to Brenda. “Acolyte, fetch the Tome of Speculation!”
Brenda jammed Vampire Hunter D Vol. 3 under her armpit and leapt to her feet. “I’m on it, Mother Su!”
“That’s Mother Superior, acolyte!” Mother Superior called after Brenda, darting up the hill, then turned to address the rest of the coven, smiling reassuringly at the worried faces staring at her. “We’ll see what wisdom the Hallowed Ancestors have for us, all right?”
That calmed the coven. Or at least brought their frantic murmuring down to whispers. For about two seconds, until the All-Mart growled again, bone-shakingly loud this time. A moment later a tendril of dust and debris as thick as a tree-trunk shot out from the expansion front and wrapped itself around Mother Superior’s waist.
She didn’t even have time to scream before the tendril yanked her into the air and drew her away into the dark, churning depths of the expansion front.
The rest of the coven, though, they had time to scream, and they did, watching helpless as Mother Superior, arms flailing, disappeared behind the roiling clouds of debris.
Bernice just stood there, staring at the expansion front. Roxanne grabbed her hand and yanked her along with her as she made for the hill, yelling “Run!”
Roxanne’s command was loud enough and forceful enough the rest of the coven snapped into action, spinning around and heading for the hill themselves, but it was too late. Other tendrils were already shooting out from the expansion front — and these tendrils were faster than Sisters in stilettos. One by one the Sisters were snatched up, drawn screaming into the All-Mart.
Roxanne didn’t look back, just kept pounding for the hill, Bernice in tow. And then suddenly Bernice wasn’t slowing her down anymore.
Roxanne glanced behind her to see Bernice being reeled through the air into the expansion front, clawing futilely at the nearly insubstantial tendril wrapped around her waist. Roxanne stopped, stunned, as Bernice vanished into the roiling wall, a pleading, desperate look on her freckled face.
Knowing there was nothing she could do but start running again, Roxanne swore under her breath and got moving.
She was inches from the base of the hill when her feet were yanked out from under her. She went down hard, barely managing to break her fall with her forearms. Laying there, half-dazed, she twisted to look up the hill. Brenda was just reaching the top.
“Brenda!” Roxanne yelled at the acolyte. “Fuck the Tome — go get help!”
Then Roxanne was in the air, lifted high by her ankles, drawn quickly back into the expansion front and surrounded by occluding clouds of swirling dust and debris, not sure if Brenda had heard her — or if the acolyte would even be able to get away herself.
CHAPTER 7: WASTELAND JUSTICE
Rudy threw the pair of ten-siders. The white one came up “3”, the black “8”. He cringed at Hunt-R. “That wasn’t good enough, was it?”
They were sitting cross-legged on the warehouse concrete, the cloth Pocket Dungeon Invader maze-board spread out between them. “You needed at least a seventy to avoid my cyber-Tiamat’s mega-radiation breath.” Hunt-R reached over his own bulbous knee for the pile of six-siders. “That means, of course, the cyber-Tiamat will do full damage, plus a bonus five dice for you waking and angering him with your failed attempt to tip-toe past him, making for a total of twenty-seven dice. We should have brought more. I’ll have to roll in parts.”
Rudy sliced a hand down as a protective shield between the miniature axe-wielding, three-legged plastic centaur named Stanley and the upturned beer mug they were using to represent the cyber-Tiamat. “Wait! I’ve got a card.”
Hunt-R’s hand stopped short of the dice and he turned his glowing oval eye dubiously at Rudy. “Action or interrupt?”
Rudy checked the card, lifting only its edge from the floor. “Umm... action.”
Hunt-R shook his head. “Action cards can only be played at the beginning of a round.”
“Since when?”
“Since time immemorial.” Hunt-R scooped up a handful of dice. “Would it help if I recited the relevant section of the rule manual to you again?
I took the precaution of loading it into primary memory just in case it was needed.”
Rudy crossed his arms over his chest. “Yeah, and while you’re at it read me the part that says you can conjure a cyber-Tiamat without a Heartstone of Kalax.”
“You know very well I have the Soul of the Opaytitorin, which has all the same functionality of a Heartstone but isn’t cursed. Now, given the fact he only has two hit points left, I suggest you have Stanley mentally prepare for the afterlife, in which he will be incessantly taunted by the stronger, more handsome, less burnt to a crisp ancestors that preceded him.”
“Knew I should have turned left at the blood pit.” Unable to bring himself to watch, Rudy turned away as Hunt-R cupped his handful of dice and shook them. Rudy tweaked his nipple to give himself a shot of THC-analog and sighed up at the shafts of light starting to stream through the skylights. “Dude, sun’s up — can’t we just blow it open already?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Trip sat on a beer keg in front of the vault, still jacked in, still blind, turning electronic tumblers with his mind. “The locals seem like the type to sleep in. Anyway, I’m close. Just needs a little more finesse.”
Rudy frowned. “Any more finesse and it’ll be lunch —”
“No thanks, I’m not hungry.” Trip squinted unseeing at the lock. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “It’s like this thing doesn’t want to be picked. Stubborn little bastard, but I’ll break it...”
“If it’s all the same to you, we’d rather you don’t.”
That wasn’t Rudy’s voice. Or Hunt-R’s. Instinct kicked in and Trip’s hand darted for the elephant pistol in its low-slung thigh holster.
His hand didn’t get half-way there before something hard whacked him against the ear, knocking him off the beer keg and snapping the patch cord free from the jack behind his ear.
Laid out on the concrete and free from the connection with the lock, his eyesight returned immediately.
“Oh... Hi.” Trip said, blinking. “Shemp, isn’t it?”
“Security’s over-rated, is it?” Shemp scowled down at him. The warehouse worker held a rusted P-90 in his hands. There was blood on the butt of the rifle. Trip’s own blood, Trip presumed. “Man, just how stupid you Canadians think we are?”
Trip shrugged. “You’re in kinda early, eh?”
“We were gonna catch you red-handed when you left the warehouse, but you weren’t coming out and morning shift is getting anxious to start the day. There’s a wagon coming in from Pittsburgh that’s gonna want filled, and those steel-heads don’t like waiting on beer.”
“Sorry for the inconvenience.” Trip let his head roll to the side to see Rudy’s head was being pressed against the floor by another worker’s boot. Rudy’s eyes were wide with discomfort and panic, and his hand was desperately tweaking his nipple.
Another pair of workers were pointing Uzis at Hunt-R’s head from a safe distance. Hunt-R saw Trip looking and shrugged, then swiveled his head around 180-degrees towards one of the workers holding a gun on him. “Just so we’re clear,” Hunt-R said, raising his arms in surrender, “I’m absolutely willing to turn State’s evidence. Looking forward to it, even.”
“I told you we should have blown the vault.” Trip’s knees bounced nervously as he sat cross-legged on the concrete floor in a corner of the warehouse used as a break room. His arms were bound tightly behind his back with bailing twine and electrical tape. He glanced sideways at Rudy, sitting next to him, his arms just as tightly bound. “That’s the last time I listen to you.”
“Yeah, all my fault,” Rudy said with a lazy smile, staring off into the depths of the warehouse where morning shift was prepping stacks of kegs for the day’s deliveries.
“Easy for you to say. You’re stoned.”
“Well, duh.”
“Seriously... I was close this time.”
“I know.”
“Couple more minutes — hell, a couple more seconds — and we would have been golden.”
“You know, we probably shouldn’t be talking about this right now.” Rudy tilted his head, gesturing behind them with his eyes.
“What? You worried about the rube?” Trip twisted his body around to smirk at Shemp, sitting on a tattered couch a few feet behind them, smoking a cigarette and keeping his P90 trained casually but squarely on the back of their heads. “Shemp’s cool, right?”
Shemp smiled back at him. “I told you, I’m not giving you a smoke.”
Trip grunted. “You sir are an utter bastard. Look, what are we waiting for, anyway?”
Shemp smiled. “For you to shut up.”
“That might be a very long wait,” Hunt-R said. The robot was sitting on the floor on the other side of Rudy. He hadn’t lowered his arms since they’d been caught.
“Stuff it, traitor,” Trip told the robot, then turned to Rudy. “You’re my attorney. Do something attorney-ish.”
Rudy twisted around to grin at Shemp. “Can I trouble you to reach under my shirt and give my nipple a twist? My buzz is wearing off.”
Trip sighed. “That’s it, I’m representing myself from here on in.”
Rudy nodded. “That’s probably a wise decision.”
Trip swung his legs around to sit facing Shemp. “Seriously... either give me a smoke, shoot us, or let us go.”
Rudy interjected. “For the record, he doesn’t speak for me — I’m open to many other options. For instance, I’m up for Ping-Pong.”
Trip shot Rudy a glance to shut up, then turned back to Shemp. “You’re gonna kill us, right?”
Shemp shrugged. “That’s up to Morty.”
“Who’s Morty?” Rudy asked.
“He’s sorta our king.”
“And he’s almost certainly gonna have us shot, right?” Trip asked.
“I wouldn’t bet against it,” Shemp said.
“Then,” Trip said, “for the love of Shatner can you at least give me a last smoke?”
“Too gods-damn early in the morning for this shit,” a new voice said, echoing through the warehouse. Gruff, with a hint of Louisiana Bayou accent under the half-drunk, half-hung over slur. Trip looked back over his shoulder to see the owner of the voice making his slow way across the warehouse floor, flanked by the two warehouse workers Shemp had sent to go fetch him. He was this little bald Korean guy with a scraggly beard and a milk jug of beer that looked like it was a permanent extension of his hand. He was wrapped inside a dingy, oversized bath robe.
“These the idiots?” the man in the robe asked as he stepped unsteadily up in front of Rudy. Wavering there, he squinted down at Rudy with one clouded eye, while the other, crystal clear but uncontrolled, stared at the wall. “Don’t look like they could steal their own piss if they had a bottle.”
“Oh, hey...” Trip leapt to his feet and put on his friendliest half-smile smirk. “Howdy. I’m Trip. That’s Rudy. The shiny one’s Hunt-R, but he’s a stinkin’ traitor who can be safely ignored for our purposes. And you must be?”
“Morty,” the man growled. “I’m sorta the king here.”
“So I’ve been hearing. And exactly the man I wanted to see.”
“I’ll bet.” Morty brought the milk jug to his face, and in a practiced maneuver, chugged down half of it, then thrust the jug menacingly at Trip. “Your kind makes me sick. You come here and mistake our generosity for naivety. The wasteland breeds a hearty people — just because we like our drink doesn’t mean we’re stupid. We watch what’s ours. Protect it. Share it, yes, but only with our friends.”
“We’re your friends,” Rudy said feebly.
“You took advantage of our hospitality. There’s no greater crime.”
“Crime? What crime?” Trip asked. “Oh! Did I forget to mention we’re freelance security consultants, specializing in surprise testing of security systems to show just how most are extremely vulnerable when targeted by bad people?”
“You expect me to believe that?” Sorta-King Morty asked, that cloud
y eye staring up at Trip.
Trip smiled encouragingly. “I’d be extremely grateful if you did.”
“Okay,” Sorta-King Morty said, slugging down the rest of the beer in the jug. He handed the empty jug to one of the workers standing next to him then spun unsteadily around. “I’m going back to bed. String ‘em up on a grain silo as an example.”
“What?” Trip blurted.
Rudy leapt to his feet. “Wait a minute — don’t we even get a trial?”
Sorta-King Morty stopped, almost falling over. One of the workers helped him steady himself. “Trial? You were caught in the act.”
“So?” Trip asked. “We’re still in what used to be America. You have to have a trial.”
Morty shook his head. “Shemp, who’s King here?”
“You sorta are, Morty,” Shemp said. “Ever since you came to town and taught us how to make beer.”
“There you go,” Morty said, smiling at Trip. “No trial needed. We can proceed directly to the fun part.”
Trip smirked. “Fun for you maybe —”
Movement at the other end of the warehouse got his — and everyone else’s — attention. The workers had suddenly stopped stacking kegs and were gathering around the loading bay doors, their conversational din gone dead silent as someone outside banged hard to be let in.
“The wagon from Pittsburgh must be here,” Shemp said.
One of the day-shift workers hit the button and the door slowly rattled open. But it wasn’t a wagon waiting. It was a girl wearing a brimless baseball cap, corset and knee-length leather skirt covered in road dust, straddling a Vincent Black Shadow that was about a foot too tall for her. She was up on tiptoes, struggling to keep it upright. The second the door was open far enough, a couple day-shift workers ducked under it to hold the bike for her. Another helped her off the bike — and to keep standing once she was. The other workers gathered around her as she coughed out a few words, then collectively pointed at Morty.
“Isn’t that?” Rudy asked, squinting.
Trip nodded. “That beer-slinging jailbait, yeah. It’d be wrong to say the whole tattered dust bunny thing is totally doing it for me, wouldn’t it?”
