The Saffron Malformation

by Walker, Bryan

  Quey remembered his first day of classes after going to that place. Some bullies took his lunch in the cafeteria and when he tried to stop them they busted his face. There were four of them, standing over him and kicking while he turtled and struggled to get away.

  It took ten minutes for word to reach the older kids. Hoz was seventeen and divided his time between working out, girls, and peddling drugs. He was already set for when the facility kicked him out on his birthday. He was going to join a raiding gang, driving along the open road pillaging whatever happened in their path. Angels of the Brood or The Savage Slayers, either one was fine with him. He was a piece of shit but he was also a camp kid since the age of nine and had the code passed down and instilled in him.

  Hoz and a dozen from his crew found Quey in the bathroom cleaning up. He grabbed Quey by the chin and looked him over. “Show me who,” Hoz told him. Quey didn’t want to be a rat but he knew it was more dangerous to disobey Hoz and his boys so when he spotted the group gathered around a tree outside the building he pointed.

  The gang approached the quartet and surrounded them. Quey could see the fear slowly seeping into their eyes as they realized this cluster of thugs was coming closer and had eyes on them. “You beat up a kid and take his lunch today?” Hoz asked. Hoz didn’t indicate Quey but since he was standing right there the bullies looked at him. “He didn’t rat,” Hoz said. “I made him tell me who did that too his face, said I’d do the same to his balls if he didn’t.”

  The leader, a tall athletic blonde boy, swallowed hard and wished someone else would speak for once. “I uh,” he stammered off into sounds.

  Hoz stepped forward, grabbed the boy by his throat and slammed him back against the tree. He looked at the bully’s crew but not a one of them moved to stop him. They were pussies and Hoz hated pussies, especially ones who swarmed and beat and robbed a camp kid just because he was easy prey. That’s when he told them the code he’d learned from the older boys when he was little, the one that had saved his ass many times before and would save Quey for years after. “You mess with one of us, you piss off all of us.”

  The blonde boy was trembling as he was pressed hard against the tree. He tried to apologize but Hoz and his boys had no mind for it. They beat the four boys bloody, breaking noses and swelling eyes and splitting lips and cracking ribs until security showed up and pulled them off.

  Hoz never spoke to him again and Quey knew somehow if he tried to talk to the older boy, even to thank him, he’d be met with hostility. Quey wasn’t his concern as a person but as part of a group. They weren’t friends, they were camp kids and that was as far as it went.

  He told Dusty the story one night, while they huddled together in a tunnel and Dusty told him some of his own.

  “That’s when I found there’s an entire society underground,” he said. “Well not necessarily underground, sometimes they use old abandoned buildings that haven’t been demolished yet but it’s there. A counterculture or whatever. People who don’t have shit to do with Blue Moon. They make their own goods and pave their own way through the world and they never look back.”

  “Bandits?” Quey asked ignorantly.

  Dusty laughed, “No man. Tradesmen and the like. Some of them are called roaders, because they spend their lives on the open road selling what they have for what they can and pickin’ up just enough to keep rolling. Others are dwellers, they stay in cities and close to civilization. They like to attach to a place and skim what they can unnoticed.”

  “Is that what you plan to do?”

  “I don’t plan shit,” Dusty told him. “I just know its better than grinding your life away an hour at a time so some executive can get a bonus based on your productivity and buy another fucking vacation home.”

  Quey nodded. That was what he and Dusty had in common, their hatred for the bottom line and the men that worship it.

  Nostalgia had a way of passing time in a hurry. Fen Quada was going to be creeping up on him in about twenty minutes or so.

  There were two Fen Quadas really. The first was above the cliffs, a decent sized settlement of about thirty square kilometers, and the second was down on the cliffs a distance over and back from the beach. Quey was headed for the latter, more specifically Railens’s Rusty Nails and Fluffy Tails. It was a bar and it was right on the edge. There was a patio out back where you could sit and look out at the crashing waves of the beautiful ocean you’d be crazy to swim in.

  Quey used his sheet, folded to fit in his palm, to call the bar and let them know he was about to roll up.

  “Bout time,” Railen said. “Thought maybe savages got you.”

  Quey smiled, remembering how close that joke was to being true for a moment and replied, “No such luck. Just a bit of a delay.”

  “Well it’ll be good to see you.”

  “Back at cha,” he finished and turned off the device.

  Quey shifted the truck to manual drive and took the wheel. He hated navigating the narrow road down the cliffs and he was sure he was going off someday.

  “Not today,” he said with a sigh as he made it to the bottom and continued on down the road to Nails and Tails. As he pulled into the parking lot he could see a kid of about twenty, Arnie Quey thought he was called, waving him in. He wore a blue apron over a tropical shirt and tan board shorts.

  Quey hopped out of the truck and took a long breath of fresh sea air. It was amazing to him that people still loved the ocean. They traveled from all over to come to these costal towns and look out at the sand and surf. There were some towns that even had places down on the beach. Even now, feeling the warm breeze, Quey suspected there were people down on the sand, lying on blankets dangerously close to the ocean.

  Rail came out of his bar with a smile on his face and a hand extended. “What happened, get lost without the big man?” he asked. “Let me ask you, who wiped your ass and shook your dick this time around?”

  Quey laughed and shook the man’s hand. “No one,” Quey said grinning, “Just been wiping it on this here hand the whole way.”

  Rail pointed at him and laughed back. “Come on in you lazy bastard.”

  “Be right there,” Quey said. He went to the back of the truck, opened the door and looked at Geo. “Here we go,” he said as he used the app to activate it and watched it roll out of the truck and away down the road. “Hope you know what the fuck you’re doing,” he whispered before heading into Rusty Nails and Fluffy Tails.

  The inside was tropical, and a great deal of money had been spent to make it look thrown together. Fine wood had been crafted to make the bar look like a tiki and imitation palm fronds were strewn about the room aplenty. Parked at the bar, sipping a light beer from a mug, was Reggie ‘the Regulator’ Vann.

  Reggie was one of the people along his route Quey considered a friend. He was a big man, about six foot two and just over two hundred pounds of muscle, bald as a baby and dark as oil. He’d done military work for Blue Moon security until a few years back. He saw action in the conflict on south continent—that was the skirmish that led Blue Moon Authority to decide to ground all aircraft. Some people didn’t like that move and more than a few were willing to let the company know. Of course a month later the hyper-rail trains came online, almost like the whole thing had been planned for long before the conflict began, and for the most part people were appeased.

  Quey’d read about the conflict itself but you couldn’t trust the news when it came to stuff like that. They claimed anti-corps, the go to villain, had started the attacks. Sometimes Quey thought the corporations invented anti-corps so they’d have someone to blame. In any case, whatever the reason or the cause, Reggie didn’t talk about it.

  “Quey!” Reggie said, his voice deep but gentle, looking over at him and smiling. “Good to see you brother.”

  “You too,” Quey agreed and they shook hands. “Hey and I’ve got a little somethin’ for you in my truck, Regulator.”

  “Oh come on,” Reggie said, embarrassed, “You don�
�t have to do that. People ‘round here take good care of me.”

  “Yeah,” Quey added, “And I’m one of ‘em.”

  Reggie smiled and said, “Well alright.”

  “Wanna go over the order?” Rail asked stepping up on the other side of the bar.

  Quey unfolded and dropped his sheet on the light, glossy wood of the bar and said, “Naw, I trust you.”

  “Arnie?” Rail called and the boy ran in. Rail handed him the computer and said, “Pull this off the truck.” The boy hurried for the door and was almost out.

  “Oh, Arnie?” Quey called and the boy stopped, peeking his head back in from around the corner. “Near the front there’s an open crate of bottled shine. Bring a pair in.”

  “Sure thing,” Arnie said and then he was gone.

  Rail and Reggie looked over at him. “Figure we’d crack one now and you can save the other for later.”

  “Later tonight you mean,” Reggie joked and the three of them laughed.

  “Sticken round till tomorrow then?” Rail asked.

  “Actually a bit longer. Maybe three days.”

  “Three,” Rail said, shocked. “Just what you got going on for three days.”

  “Errands,” Quey replied.

  Reggie pointed out the obvious when he said, “Quey, you’re only here a few times a year, how is it you racked up three days’ worth of errands?”

  “Just ran into some trouble on the road and said I’d help someone out in exchange for patchin me up.”

  Reggie and Rail exchanged a glance and a nod. They agreed—seemed like something Quey would do.

  “But I’ll tell you what,” Quey said to Rail. “You set me up till then—I’ll give you half off.”

  Rails eyes bulged and Reggie took a sip from his mug. “Half off,” Rail started, then stopped and thought. “Set you up how?”

  “Just a bed and an occasional raid on the kitchen.”

  “That all?” Rail said chuckling, “Shit I’da given you my daughters virginity for half off.”

  Reggie laughed heartily and Quey chuckled back, “I’ll remember that for next time.”

  “Sure,” Rail said, “Then I’ll have to shoot you.”

  “It’d be worth it just to see. I mean that’d be some trick, selling me her virginity, what with her having a kid and all.”

  Reggie burst out, laughing with his mouth open and Rail joined in. “You got me there,” he said.

  “She even in town these days?” Quey asked.

  Rail shook his head and his mood sunk as he replied, “Naw she got work as a teacher up near Northshire.”

  Quey nodded and he was about to ask more, maybe delve into the dip his expression took at the mention of her, but Arnie came back with the bottles he’d requested and set them on the bar.

  “These the ones?” he asked and Quey nodded.

  “Have one with us,” Quey offered the boy.

  Arnie looked at Rail, “Got the inventory to put up.”

  “He can have one,” Quey told Rail as he cracked a bottle.

  Rail thought for a moment, nodding. “Sure why not.” He placed two ounce glasses on the bar and Quey filled them half way. “That, my boy, is a perfect pour,” Rail said.

  Each of them lifted a glass and touched them together.

  “What to?” Reggie asked.

  “Quey’s sudden generosity?” Rail asked.

  Reggie grinned, “Better not bring it up, he might come to his senses.” The men laughed.

  “How about to good folk, worth spillin’ some shine with,” Quey offered.

  Everyone nodded agreement and said, “To folk,” before slamming the shine back. It was sweet on the tongue and burned in the throat, a perfect brew.

  “I tell you boy,” Rail said. “Sometimes I think you’re better than Cal.”

  Quey looked at him but didn’t laugh. “Not possible,” he said quietly and the matter departed untouched further.

  As afternoon drifted into evening the room began to fill with bartenders, wait staff, and customers. Rusty Nails and Fluffy Tails was quite popular, even with the locals, mostly because of the beach crowd. Everyone knew it was the place to go if you were looking to pick up some passing strange. The girls came in wearing their bikinis, some still wet from one of the many filtered pools down near the beach. They weren’t just run of the mill holes in the ground filled with water either; they were dug into the sand and sloped gently like the ocean and had wave machines out at the end.

  “Whoever started that,” Cal told him once as they sat on the porch behind Rail’s and looked down at the sunbathing women lying on the sand around the filtered pool, “Was a god-damn genius. Deserves some kinda reward.”

  Three women entered the bar wearing sheer robes they didn’t bother to tie over their bathing suits and Reggie took notice. “It’s good to see you brother,” he said to Quey, “But I do believe I see some ladies in need of regulatin’.”

  “Just don’t hurt yourself,” Quey told him with a smile.

  Reggie spent five minutes talking with the ladies, sitting at a table near the bar, and came back with a smile. “Told me they’d be down at the pool again tomorrow, if I’d like to join them.”

  Quey smiled, “And I’m sure you will.”

  “You know you could come too,” Reggie said, giving his shoulder a tap, “I don’t need but two of em,” he finished with a laugh.

  “That’s mighty generous of you,” Quey replied and finished his glass of shine.

  “I knew that dirty rig looked familiar,” a friendly voice said from behind them. Quey and Reggie turned and looked back at Dusty and Rachel, approaching from the dining room.

  Quey grinned and extended his hand with an emphatic, “Hey! Dusty boy!”

  Dusty shook it and added, “Told you you’d make it around to peddle your poison to these vagrants, so where’s my large stack?”

  “Fraid I had to spend that grand,” Quey said solemn.

  “Tell me she was worth it at least.”

  Quey laughed and said, “Best I’ve had.” He thought, momentarily of Rain.

  “Well at least pour me some of that swill you treacherous bastard.”

  “You love it the most,” he said to his old friend as he grabbed the bottle and looked to Rachel, standing to the side and slightly behind him. “Rachel,” he said, “Looking lovely as always.”

  She smiled, “Best get your flirting out of the way now, I’m about to be an honest woman.”

  Quey’s eyes bulged and he looked from her to Dusty and back again.

  “Darlin’, I was supposed to tell him,” Dusty said, giving her hand a squeeze.

  “Wait,” Quey said, shocked. “You two…”

  Rachel held up her left hand and showed him the modest ring she wore on her fourth finger.

  “You can’t be that shocked I’m leaving the noble bachelor ranks.”

  “Apparently I can,” Quey said with a touch of irony.

  Dusty looked at Rachel, her large brown eyes bright and watching him, and then spoke. “Sometimes something’s too special to just let pass by,” he said and her gentle face smiled brilliantly and she pushed a loose strand of light brown hair back behind her ear.

  “Hell, that’s no shock Dusty, I knew Rachel here was special the minute she let you near her, the shock is you managed to figure it out your own self before she came to her senses and pressed on.”

  Reggie and Dusty laughed.

  “This is, however, a very special night, deserving of the finest moonshine whiskey this sad little rock has to offer. Come on, let’s get a table.”

  Dusty shook his head, “One drink but then we have to be going. Got wedding stuff.”

  “Oh now Dusty,” Quey started as he reached behind the bar and snatched a pair of fresh glasses. “You can’t just drop this on us and take off.”

  “I already knew,” Reggie said.

  Quey looked at him, “Not helping Regg.”

  Reggie smiled. “Sorry boss.”

&nbs
p; “Anywho, can’t drop this on us and bolt,” he finished as he finished the pouring of the shine and lifted the glasses. He held them out to Dusty and Rachel and waited for them to figure out they were staying, at least for a while.

  Dusty looked at Rachel who smiled and shrugged, “Not every day Quey comes to town.” She took the glass from Quey. Dusty smiled and did the same.

  “Just a few,” Dusty said, pointing a finger from around his glass.

  Quey nodded dismissively and said, “To Dusty, for finally getting his shit together in a way lesser men,” he coughed as he said, “Me,” then continued, “never seem able. And to Rachel, for lowering her standards.”

  They laughed and drank and took a seat at one of the round tables near the bar, two bottles of shine slowly dwindling before them.

  Later, when the dinner rush was over and the night was winding slowly on toward close Rail joined them at their table, pulling a chair from another. An hour or so later they invited Arnie back as they poured a fresh round. He had some catching up to do so they made his a double. Standing with the group, drinking the finest shine he’d ever tasted, he felt accepted.

  “Watch it now that’s expensive stuff,” Quey said amidst the groups snickering, “and I’d appreciate it if you’d regulate more of it into the glasses than onto the table.”

  “Oh hush now, mouth runnin’ like that it’s no wonder I can’t pour,” Reggie joked.

  “Mouth got nothing to do with it,” Quey said. “It’s the quart of shine in your belly.”

  “There,” Reggie said and slid the glasses back to their owners.

  “I think Quey got mine,” Rail said, sarcastically.

  “Hey Regg?” Arnie asked. Everyone stopped and looked at him, he hadn’t spoken much the whole night. “Why do they call you Regulator?”

  “I’ve been wondering that myself, for about a year now,” Rachel added, smiling.

  The men laughed, Reggie hard and with his mouth open. “Cause,” he began with a shrug, “It’s how I do it.”