Dead Land
Smashwords Edition Copyright 2011
Dead Land
Welcome To the Dead Land, David Sechrest
Man On the Moon, Kalju Lee
A Whole New World, Richard Cunningham III
The Fall of Drum City, Kalju Lee
A Boy and His Car, Clancy Smith
What Little Girls Are Made, Richard Cunningham III
Copyright © 2011. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products
of the author’s imagination or are used factitiously and are not to be construed
as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organization, or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
For information contact: deadland2250@gmail.com
-Hatch-
WELCOME TO THE DEADLAND
By David Sechrest
Hatch had been fairly apathetic regarding his prison sentence until the morning his cellmate died.
The man was not so old, but frail beyond his years, always wheezing; probably spaded right down to the core. Hatch did not know what this man had done to deserve being placed in a cell, how long he had been there, or how much longer the local enforcement had sentenced him to remain. In the week they had spent together imprisoned in the cold basement prison, they had not exchanged a single word, and they each seemed to prefer it that way. Hatch did not even know the man's name.
So what did he care?
Why was this stranger’s death the catalyst for Hatch's sudden need to escape?
Because ever since he had crawled over hand and foot out of the desert wastes of the east, the Dead Land, as the locals called it, he had emerged a new man. The trial had changed him for the better and the worse. Colors were more vivid. Even in the basement he could feel the dry sand outside that had guided him here. But sharper was a damp smell, the mildew and mold, that overpowered everything at all times, and now it was laced with human rot.
It had been weeks since Mick, Dusty and he had first left Shelter 303 in an attempt to break away from the Dead Land. That had been, of course, back when they still thought that was an option, only requiring fortitude and a certain amount of sacrifice.
“Dusty, you useless sack of lizard shit! Keep moving!”
Hatch knew he never should have let Dusty have the shotgun. He was not only constantly giving away their position to predators, but he was adamant about reloading it while they were in mid-flight.
“You’re just gonna drop the ammo!” Mick screamed, “You wanna be food?”
Hatch was technically in charge of the expedition, but Mick fancied screaming at Dusty, and, in this case, was right to do so.
Father Ish, the leader and one of the last of the old ones back in 303, had once explained that coyogres, like other creatures of the Dead Land, were the product of “genetic engineering”. This made little sense to Hatch or the other young men, until Ish soon elaborated that the mutated beasts were just another example of the many abominations from the past, when man had been obsessed with using Science. This made much more sense. Although Hatch was very fond of some man-science—flashlights and mealpaks—he knew it held the capacity for evil, as coyogres, screaming lizards… and the Dead Land itself proved. He was certain that God was too benevolent a being to have made such atrocities on His own: even though Ish insisted that man was only doing God’s will. Hatch had never been too confident in his talks with Father Ish, but on his own, he had resolved that God did not disapprove of him killing the MSC’s on sight.
Hatch and Mick had, in fact, just taken down one of the coyogres in complete silence amidst the shadows of twilight. An ambitious juvenile, at least three feet tall with a wiry black pelt and gnarly teeth, had been stalking them for miles. At that point in its development the animal still resembled its ancestor; though spotting an actual coyote in the unforgiving desert was much more rare. The group had entered into a valley, while the creature rushed in for the kill, sensing an advantage over the three men. But Hatch had climbed a large rock while the others hid behind the jutting formation, and then he leaped upon the loping wad of fur as it crept toward his companions. It was the one advantage the clan noticed they had over the predators: coyogres did not seem capable of steep climbing, or even very aware of the existence of a world above their heads. Hatch brought his axe down sharply on the crown of the MSC’s skull. The beast did not even have time to whelp as Mick ran out and drove a pair of knives into its gullet. It collapsed to one side, allowing Hatch to roll off its back and safely return to his feet. Hatch was certain, as their fearsome enemy gurgle-sighed out a dying breath, that their attack could not have been executed more flawlessly.
That was when Dusty chimed in and fired two shots into the coyogre's groin.
“What the hell are you doing?” Hatch struggled not to scream.
“I hate you, Dusty,” Mick said, matter-of-factly, “I just completely hate you.”
“He was still twitchin!” Dusty shot back defensively.
The blast traveled through the valley in a series of descending replays. The three men paused in cold silence until they could no longer hear the gunshot echoing out and beyond, and waited still a moment longer for any indication of approaching danger.
Then, all at once, somewhere out in the vast desert wasteland came the choral response of coyogre howls, a truly terrifying sound.
“Why did we give him the gun?” Mick asked, “Why did we do that?”
It was an answer that everyone knew: Dusty was entirely defenseless with anything else.
“How was I supposed to know you guys would get that MSC so damn fast?”
“Look, Dusty!” Mick pointed to the nearby corpse, “Look, before you shoot, God damn it! That’s how!”
Hatch moaned, “God help us...”
Then they were running again, maintaining a quick steady pace, narrowly dodging rocks and dry brush against the last rays of sunlight.
“You know what, Dusty,” Mick continued between breaths, “Go ahead. You’re just going to waste all the ammo anyway.”
“Screw you, Mick.”
“In fact, just drop the damn gun. Slow down a little. Take a nap.”
“Quiet!” said Hatch. “Look!”
The valley narrowed and a steep cliff emerged along the wall on their left. Hatch was known among the shelter for his excellent nocturnal vision, and he pointed at what looked to be a convenient hole in the cliff edge. Even before their response, he was deftly climbing up the slope until he had reached the small opening in the earth. In seconds, he was exploring the gap with his flashlight. Inside, a mist hovered over the cavern ground, cutting apart the beams of light.
“It goes in a ways,” Hatch whispered down, “I say we wait out the night in here. I don't think any of those abominations could fit through.”
“I don't think I could fit through there,” Mick said, indeed the most hefty of the three.
“Well... I'll go in first, then I'll pull while Dusty pushes you in.”
There were no complaints at this suggestion, and soon all three men were exploring the cliff-side fissure, which proved to go back even further than Hatch had originally suspected. He led the way into the depths of the cave, where he took caution, sinking low to the ground to await the flurry of tiny blood-bats usually found in desert caves. Strangely, there were none. Instead, the smooth, egg-shaped enclosure revealed nothing more than a small pool of water, surrounded by rocks, with a steady drip that came from a crack directly in the center of the ceiling. There was plenty of space in this chamber for all three men, and so they removed their packs, set down their weapons, and relaxed around the pool.
“You think we can drink it?” Dusty asked, “I have an empty canteen.”
“I think you should drown in it.” Mick snapped.
“Mick! Enough. Dusty…,” Hatch sighed, shaking his head, “You… already finished your canteen?”
Dusty shrugged, and then leaned over the water.
“It’s probably okay,” he said, “It looks clean.”
“So do the rocks,” Mick muttered, “You should eat those while you’re at it.”
“Father Ish told us not to trust any water unless plants were growing near it,” Hatch noted, and then added, “Unless you're looking to get spaded.”
Ever curious, Dusty leaned over the puddle awkwardly and reached out for one of the velvety rocks surrounding the pool.
“… I don’t think these are rocks,” he noted.
He pulled at one, and it split from the cave floor with some effort, and a long rip.
“Hey! They’re plants!” Dusty said, “The water must be okay.”
Under its hard exterior, the strange object did seem to feature a stalk. In fact their general shape resembled the edible fungi cultivated back in the shelter, growing out around its center to form a dome, its underbelly resembling an air filter cartridge. He and Mick exchanged glances.
“It's some kind of 'shroom, right?” Mick asked.
“That is not a mushroom, not one I ever read about,” Hatch asserted, “Put it down.”
“Don’t you think we should keep a few?” Dusty countered.
Dusty sometimes fancied himself a scientist, if for nothing else, to frustrate the old ones back at 303.
“I mean, if we ran out of mealpaks, I’d try eating one,” he continued, “And they weigh hardly anything.”
This brought about much arguing for the next several minutes, but in the end, Dusty had a point. If it came down to the terrible choice between nothing and something, it certainly could not hurt to eat the strange plants. Most of the other desert vegetation they knew for certain was unsafe to eat, and the plants were indeed incredibly light and wouldn't add much to the load. Each man took a few, only enough to fill the empty space in their sacks. By the same logic, Dusty decided to go ahead and fill up his empty canteen.
“Don’t worry. If we find a better source, I’ll dump it out.”
“I have a bad feeling about all this,” Mick said.
The three men settled down for the night and turned off their flashlights, only to find that the pool of water itself gave off a faint glow, as if it was reflecting the moonlight. Every drip of water seemed to warp the rock around them with rippling luminescence. They stared at it for several minutes before speaking.
Mick scoffed, “This is the devil’s work.”
“Or the spring of life,” Dusty contended, wonder in his voice.
“Drink up, fool, drink up. We can use you as a lantern tomorrow night.”
Hatch sighed and shook his head.
He listened to the dripping water and the distant struggle of coyogres trying to get inside. The predators fought with each other, even in their shared effort. Hatch closed his eyes, settling.
He dreamed he saw the sea for the first time, dreamed he walked in its foaming waters.
They slept sound through the night and the unbearable midday sun, and left the shelter of the cave as soon as the sun had begun its gradual decline, at which point there was surprisingly little evidence of coyogre activity in the valley. The giant beasts appeared to have been satisfied in scavenging the corpse of the coy that the men had twice killed. Tracks read that the creatures had run off sometime during the night, attracted to greater prospects, no doubt. Hatch pulled out an old compass from his pack and opened its battered exterior, determining west for the group with his hand hoisted in the air.
Strangely, they noticed that they had less and less contact with coyogres as they continued westward. For a time this gave them hope, made them think they would soon reach Civilization. But on and on the landscape stretched, a vast, desolate expanse, remnants of past peoples submerged in an endless dry sea: the crumbling, sand-worn skeletons of buildings of wood or cinderblock, of furniture, of men. The only other thing that seemed to move was the great glowing disc in the sky, facing them in the morning, only to stab them in the back come evening. If not for the sun though, an entire day spent crossing the desert could pass just as easily in a brief second. Aside from thirst and fatigue, monotony plagued them. It did not take long for the days of stabbing monstrous MSCs to become something surprisingly sentimental. The valleys and hills and sandy dunes had disappeared entirely and given way to a rocky wilderness, endlessly flat in all directions. Hatch had no idea he would ever find cacti so comforting, but occasionally one would emerge, the only sign of life encountered in an entire day, and he would want to hug them despite the obvious consequences. He would, however, waste no time knocking down the lean plants and devouring their pulp. Running at the plant, axe swinging, his unnatural laughter mingling with the howls of his companions, the smiles and bleeding fingers… it occurred to him occasionally in these moments that life itself was a thing spaded down to the core.
Then, one day, while Hatch had been thinking about how much he missed the presence of life, any version of it, even the violent man-eating kind, he was suddenly overcome by a strong sense of unease. It was so fast, a brief shadow in the endless horizon of blinding white, that he had trouble believing it happened at all. But Hatch was suddenly staring down at a giant lump of fur that landed in his path. It took him several moments to distinguish the mound of flesh as a coyogre, because its face had, in fact, exploded, and what was left of it was riddled with shot. He turned around to look into the equally shocked face of Mick, his wide eyes locked on the same spot of mangled fur on the ground.
“What the hell was that?” he said.
Both men then turned back to find Dusty standing a little to their left, very much composed. He held out his still-smoking shotgun, then snapped it open and finished reloading it while he walked in front of them.
“You guys okay?” he asked.
“Are you kidding me?” Mick shouted, “What the- How-?”
Hatch and Mitch examined the coy again laying in the camouflage of dark rocky sand. It was a formative male, six or seven feet long, and it had just emerged from a gaping hole in the desert floor. Seeing the den opening, Hatch’s chest lightened some, because he knew that it meant they were returning to only mildly barren terrain, leaving behind the absolute barren of the recent past. But something was still suspicious about the situation. He turned back to Dusty, who was bouncing on his heels.
“Are you guys crazy?” he said, “We gotta keep moving. Let’s go!”
“Dusty,” Hatch coughed, clearing layers of dust from his parched throat, “How did you do that?”
“How? What do you mean how? I wasted his ass! That’s how.”
“But—I didn’t even see him. Mick…?”
Mick shook his head, and then returned his stare to the coyogre’s shot-ridden body.
“You didn’t see that thing? He was standing there for like five minutes!”
It did not take long for Hatch to learn that Dusty had finished his last mealpak earlier, and around midday had begun eating the strange plants they had discovered around the mysterious pool in the cave. His excuse for not saying so sooner was that he did not want the others to be upset with him for having finished off his rations so early. He continued to explain that even though the plant’s texture was strange, he actually found them to be quite delicious. Dusty furthered his endorsement, saying the rock plants were invigorating, as real food always was, relative to mealpaks, though different in this case in some way he could not explain. He claimed his mind was very focused, “like one of those laser-thingies old man Bolo talks about, says his granddad saw.” Judging from the condition of the coy, Hatch was certain something of that nature had to be the truth.
He sat Dusty down and looked him over. His friend seemed fine, save for the fact his eyes appeared darker, and he was unable to sit still. The plant had somehow changed him—for the better.
Before they continued, Mick wasted no time in eating some of his share of cave plant, which they had begun to call rock fruit, saying that he would rotate it into his remaining rations of mealpaks, in order to maintain a similar degree of focus. Dusty went on to claim that he did not even feel a need for food, that the rock fruit kept his stomach full. Hatch was still skeptical.
After a time, though, he had no choice. Mick and Dusty were clearly surpassing him, with their long, effortless strides, and when he called for breaks out of exhaustion, they were eager to press on the moment he sat down. The terrain was improving, but there was still no sign of edible vegetation; no cacti had been seen in miles, and even if another coyogre came along, their meat was notoriously poisonous, if untreated. Hatch sighed, defeated by their circumstances. He muttered a prayer under his breath, before he took some bites out of his rock fruit stores. After several minutes, his heart skipped a few beats and he was on his feet, moving.
“Now we’re talkin!” Dusty cheered, matching his stride.
This was when Hatch’s mind first began to blur. He no longer saw the world as clearly as he had before. The ground appeared to float beneath him in blinding shades of white, red, and brown, eventually darkening to blacks and pearly whites, and then back to piercing brightness again. They never stopped, taking to shoveling food into their mouths as they moved over desert wastes, passing the occasional skeleton of a building long abandoned to the harsh elements. The infrequent chatter among them was a mere faint white noise within a yawning hot expanse of silence. Then, as they reached the summit of a tall dune, it appeared before him, like a sign from God: Welcome to the City of Phoenix.
It felt like the plant itself had played some part in bringing them there; like all they ever had to do to reach this place was take a bite.
The old ones had explained Civilization to the young ones many times, and though what Hatch saw now paled in comparison to their descriptions, the standing collection of architecture still impressed him greatly. There were hundreds of them, rising up out of the ground, varying in size, littered all about the desert like strange rocks bathed in the red hues of the dying sun. Some had caved in, many had been knocked over, and others had clearly been set afire at some point. From the vantage point of the group atop the dune, it was apparent that a good portion of the city was missing. The harsh winds sweeping from the west, carrying dirt and debris even as they watched, made it clear that the city was slowly being buried alive. However, a few dozen of the nearest structures looked intact, and, more importantly, there were signs of habitation: well-kept boards over the windows, a line of twine on which smocks twisted in the desert wind, a hide—likely off a screaming lizard—set out to cure in the sun.
The three men said nothing, looking among themselves more in surprise than accomplishment. Blinking wide and covered in incredible new layers of dirt, they barely seemed to recognize each other, but pressed forward at Hatch’s lead.
They aimed for the nearest cluster of buildings, hot wind whipping in their faces as they half walked, half slid down the shifting sands. As they approached, it became apparent that the hill they were descending had once been a great landslide, one that had swallowed up part of the settlement. Sections of buildings poked out from the earth at odd angles along the slope, with larger pieces emerging the closer they came to level ground. As the three passed the rubble, they couldn’t help but reach their fingers out toward the smooth gray stones and dry cracked woods, the touch a manifestation of awe at the frameworks, the structures, the materials of the collapsed Old World monuments.
“This is real wood,” Dusty said, patting a splintered beam, “I can’t believe they used to have trees this big.”
“Don’t touch anything,” Hatch snapped.
They reached the bottom and were immediately forced to maneuver through layers of collected debris, from fractured slabs of concrete, to broken glass, to twisted piles of metal. At one point they paused in awe at the rusted rear half of an automobile, poking out from the wreckage of a building. It looked as if it had been dropped there.
“That’s a car,” Mick said.
Dusty tilted his head to one side, “No. It’s a plane.”
Mick shook his head, pointing to the axel and making a circle motion, “Look there. That’s where the wheels used to be.”
“Where are they then? And why is it standing on its front? That fell out of the sky.”
“Father Ish spoke of many strange events surrounding the Great Fires,” Hatch offered, “A car could have been thrown into the sky by the weapons of man.”
“A flying car is the same as a plane,” Dusty shrugged, “They both fly.”
Hatch and Mick exchanged glances. Hatch rolled his eyes.
“Let’s keep moving. It’s getting late.”
They soon made it to an area clear of ruins that looked to offer a pathway. It wound through the rubble, connecting the patches of buildings still habitable. Stepping on to the path, Hatch was immediately aware of an older man watching them from within the shade of an odd little cave, made from the surrounding debris, not fifty feet away. They had never seen a person who was not from their shelter. The stranger looked the three of them up and down many times. Hatch waved. He just seemed to snicker back, spitting out a glistening ball of phlegm on the ground between them.
“Look,” Dusty said.
He pointed in the opposite direction, toward one of the first intact structures. It had many signs pinned up, around a large metal door. Most of the signs were printed, like the labels in their shelter. The men could read, but the texts on the old plates were half-scratched away, and meaningless where they still showed through, all or in part:
Speed Limit 35
Yield to Pedestrians
WARNING! BEAR (undecipherable)
But there were two signs on the door that were hand-written. One read, “TRADE…?” in big bold letters, and another smaller sign below it, “Whites ONLY”. Hatch was not certain what the smaller of the signs meant, but he figured that the people in this building would be willing to exchange for water and food, and they would perhaps be able to obtain some knowledge about Civilization. The three men nodded to each other and approached the structure, standing outside in confusion for some time before Hatch thought to try knocking on the door.
“What do you want?” a man’s voice came almost immediately.
“We have come west through the desert,” Hatch’s voice cracked, and he cleared his throat, “We would like to trade for supplies, and perhaps learn more about Civilization.”
The door opened, revealing a man with wildly bushy gray hair. It shot out from every part of his face, from his head to his chin and seemingly all points in between save for his eyes, nose, and mouth. The old man eyed over the group with callous indifference.
“That kind of knowledge is useless at best, and generally suspect. You say ya came from the east?” he hissed.
Hatch nodded.
“I don’t believe ya,” he said, “Ain’t nobody ever come from the east. Whatcha got?”
“Look,” Mick started, “We’ve been walking since—”
“We have metals and some objects of man-science,” Hatch interrupted, “Although could you perhaps first tell us if we’re going the right way? Do the wastes end further west?”
The man raised an eyebrow, and then snorted slightly, laughing.
“End?” he said, still chuckling, “Boys, the Dead Land is all there is.”
“But...”
“People come this way every month,” he continued, “Usually from the west, occasionally from the south, sometimes even from the bear country up north. They hope Phoenix’ll still be here, but it ain’t, not really. We got bombed and blasted and shook up, same as everywheres else. You understand? It’s all dead. East, West, North, South. Dead. And then folks either turn right back around or lie down and die themselves.”
He paused, then added, “Y’all might want to consider doing the same.”
Hatch felt his heart sink.
“Which one?” asked Mick, his eyes narrowing.
“You boys on somethin’?” the man asked. “Cause I ain’t dealin with no tweakers.”
“Excuse me?” Hatch asked.
The old man was looking carefully at Hatch’s face.
“Nuthin,” he then coughed, “We can trade, but I’ll only deal with him.”
The man pointed at Dusty.
“You other two gotta wait out here.”
Hatch and Mick looked between each other.
“I really don’t think—” Hatch started.
“If it ain’t the white boy, then y’all can just git,” the man said, more firmly.
“Don’t worry, guys,” Dusty said confidently, “I’ll take care of it.”
Hatch and Mick were speechless as Dusty strode past them and into the shop, the metal door clanging shut behind him. Even a hundred feet away, Hatch could hear the strange man snickering from his cave of debris.
Left to his own devices, Hatch sat and wondered how it was that Dusty’s pale complexion had granted him access, while Mick’s and his had not. Hatch speculated that the old ones of Phoenix, if there were such a group, might believe dark complexions a sign someone was sickly, perhaps even spaded. If this were indeed the case, he realized Mick would have great difficulty indeed in Civilization, even though he was clearly not ill in any form. Mick’s skin, after all, was very dark brown, and he had black hair that grew like a bush all along his head and face. Hatch’s own skin was coppery, and his hair dark and straight, though unlike others from Shelter 303 he was somehow unable to grow hair from his face. Dusty’s hair was red, and his skin light and pinkish, and in the peak of day he burned easily.
After a few minutes, their pale friend emerged from the building and asked for some more of their belongings; specifically, anything metal. Hatch asked what they would be traded for, with Mick harshly indicating punishment in the event of failure, but Dusty merely insisted it was all good, and that they had to be quick about it. Hatch parted with any extra metallic weapons and tools he had, save for his flashlight, axe, and the hatchet that was his namesake. Mick did the same, keeping only a select few of his favorite knives. Hatch then made Dusty promise not to trade the shotgun or its precious ammunition before he darted back inside.
Eventually, he returned looking very proud and carrying a large wooden box. The door crashed shut behind him. A series of locks shucked shut.
Hatch and Mick examined the contents of the box with great interest at first. There was a gallon of water and a little food, but the majority of the box contained an array of colored fluids or pills in transparent, labeled bottles. Mick began screaming at the very sight of it, while Dusty kept proudly insisting that the items in the box would save them just as the rock fruit had done. That was when Hatch noticed that the shotgun was no longer anywhere on Dusty’s person, and Dusty had to explain that he had, in fact, traded it. Then Hatch and Mick were both screaming, and Dusty began to doubt the extent of his bartering skills. Hatch could not remember exactly how things descended from there, but he was fairly certain that Mick started banging on the trader’s door just before a patch of sand exploded near Hatch’s feet.
“The next shot’ll be higher!” they then heard the old man shout from inside his building.
They all froze, and it took the group several seconds to realize that the wiry old man had just fired at the ground with the same shotgun that they had traded him. Having shot at many things, but never been shot at themselves, none of the men were immediately clear on what they should do.
“Git outta here!” the man shouted, and then fired at the ground near them again.
The situation was suddenly much more clear for everyone, and the three men took off running down the path, a harsh cackle directed at them as they passed the rubble cave.
Hatch discovered later that there were many more people in the City of Old Phoenix than he had first assumed, and that almost none of them cared for his existence—or for any outsiders, really. He would attempt to talk to people as the occupants moved about their daily business, which often entailed either scavenging or trading amongst each other; at night hunters returned from the plains with game, and, in places, agriculture happened, often in the partial shade of a half-gone building. At best, he would learn a little more about the world and its working. At worst, he would have rocks thrown at his head. He was very appreciative of the knowledge, however arcane or incomprehensible—or at least he was more so than the rocks.
Ultimately, the most important thing Hatch learned about Civilization from the people of Old Phoenix was that nothing that was both tangible and useful was ever given away for free.
They were hungry, and rapidly running out of water and supplies. Eventually, as rations dwindled toward nothing, they were forced into eating more and more of the rock fruit, and even though Dusty insisted that his acquired “supplies” would get them far, there was simply not enough real food to support that plan. The group settled into some unclaimed ruins, within the crook of two buildings that had once collapsed against each other, and attempted to plan their next move and gather resources for the journey. Sadly, no matter how much they picked up through observation and conversation, they were simply not as adept at the scavenging lifestyle as the locals. The surrounding desert itself had been picked clean of anything remotely valuable. The only water came from a shallow bed, which the locals had not only the audacity to call a river, but which they also charged a steep price to draw from.
Soon Hatch forgot about an excursion westward entirely, and after he had exhausted his real-food rations his mind become enveloped in a dense fog, but he could vaguely visualize the night that things fell apart, when the notorious box came back into discussion.
Dusty had tried to trade the non-food contents of the box back to the city inhabitants many times to no avail, and as the rations dwindled he began to experiment with them. Mick had never lost a sense of rage over the whole affair, and, that evening, in his ranting, had tried to get Dusty to experiment with the substances that appeared the most harmful. Hatch still regretted not intervening in this exchange, but the rock fruit had been keeping him awake for the last three days and the whole of his consciousness was fading in and out of the scene. He fell asleep, again dreaming of the ocean, and woke to the sounds of a violent struggle.
By the time he was on his feet, it was already over. Mick, knives in his hands with an empty glare, turned and ran as Hatch rose. Dusty lay on the ground—lifeless. Blood flowed from wounds everywhere.
Hatch was too dumbfounded to even think of giving pursuit; he simply stood over Dusty for a time, and then turned to the box. Many of the contents were missing, especially the pills, consumed by one of the other men, but well over half the items had been left untouched. Looking at them, he had a sudden desire, a deep need to end his hapless existence; he took some of the vials of liquid in his hands and delicately consumed them. When he had waited a moment and found that they had no effect, he downed some more. When that did not seem to work, he swallowed a whole container of pills, labeled Body Boosters, and chased them down with more of the mysterious liquids. It felt like he had sat there at least an hour, though in retrospect, Hatch realized he may have devoured the remaining contents of the box in as little as a few minutes.
Then, as if that were not enough, he went for the rock fruit. He ate Dusty's ration, the rations that Mick left behind, and then his own.
All of it.
The more Hatch ate the more empty he became, his soul drifting on a tether somewhere over his body. If he was arriving finally at his chosen fate, it was a cold greeting.
…….
-Malachi and Sebastian-
MAN ON THE MOON
By Kalju Lee
Sebastian sat on the hood of his car, looking up into the black sky at a pristine Earth, a ball of blue and white and green and violet, filling the sky, whorling slowly through the darkness. He sighed and lay back against his car's windshield. It was peaceful. From where he sat atop the small crater rim, he could see the dim lights of Turbine City West, and the dark strips of the abandoned airfield beyond that. Scattered ruins of buildings formed in lunar cement told of early Moon history: A proud moment still for Moonlings. Sometimes I wonder why we want to leave all this, he thought to himself.
One of the more immediate reasons, though, had just parked behind him. “Hey!” The greeting came loud and angry over the speaker in his helmet. “Hey, motherfucker! Where’s my money?”
Sebastian turned in EVA suit and saw someone getting out of an open-top buggy: Frank, his bookie; a solid man with broad shoulders, an emerging paunch and a jet-black receding hairline, so high it was nearly cut out of his helmet’s face panel. Like Sebastian (and a majority of Moonlings), Frank was mostly of Chinese descent, though several generations on the moon had already muddied his cultural ancestry and, in turn, his old earth-bound identity.
“Hi! Frank! You must be looking for my brother, Sebastian. I bet he owes you money again, eh?” Sebastian slid off the car hood to the far side, placing an obstacle between himself and the angry man. He wasn’t good with confrontation; in fact, aside from lies and jackassery, Sebastian didn’t have a knack for much else than getting himself into gambling debts with the wrong kind of people.
“Let me guess, you’re not Sebastian?”
“Heh, nope. I understand how you might get us mixed up. Happens as much as you might think.”
“Funny how half the time I run into you, you don’t remember the other half.”
“Well, you know, I’ve got a lot going on, and I am the weaker-minded of the two of us. They tell me I ate a lot of moon dust as a kid.”
“Or maybe you think I can’t tell you apart, and you can keep giving me the run-around, pretending to be someone else!”
They started a delicate dance, as Sebastian tried to keep his distance without incriminating himself, and Frank tried to get close without over-exerting and popping a suit-hose.
“I’m offended that you would say such a thing! I’m an upstanding citizen, I’ll have you know, and would never mix myself up in this business. Now if you want me to take a message to Sebastian, I’d be glad to.”
“How about you come with me and we go see him together?”
“Ah, I don’t know about that. He’s got some bad mine-lung going on, and I wouldn’t want you to get infected. See? Would Sebastian care about your health like that?”
Sebastian had maneuvered over to the driver’s side door of his car, and could clearly see Frank’s angry visage glaring at him through the passenger side.
“I don’t care which one you are, I’m taking you both and I’m getting this sorted out and I’m getting my money.”
“Maybe I’ve got some money in here,” Sebastian replied as he unlatched the car door.
“Unless you’ve got six thousand in there, I don’t want to hear it.”
“Six? What happened to five and a half? I mean, what my brother said was—”
“That’s it! Get over here!”
Sebastian’s car was a black-market ‘74 Chevy Nova Redux series, converted to moon-use with an electric engine and solar panel, and it had no chance of outrunning a moon buggy, at least not under normal circumstances. Sebastian reached inside and fetched the crossbow out of the back seat and quickly shot out a front tire on Frank’s buggy.
“What are you doing?” Frank screamed. While he dashed back to his vehicle, Sebastian got into his own car, started it up and started moving.
“Sorry, don’t know what happened, I’ll go get help!”
Sebastian sped away. Frank’s profanity-riddled threats came steadily over the comm. for a minute or so, before slowly fading into constant static.
It was a quick fifteen-minute drive back to the city. Sebastian felt a certain sense of relief when he entered under the shadow of the huge metal half-pipe that dominated the urban skyline. Turbine City West, and her sister city, Turbine City East, were the result of short-sighted planning by the reigning lunar warlord, General Maynard Kong, who took control during the brief Lunar War that followed the initial catastrophes that came to be known as the End Of The World back on Earth. These unfortunate events had been enough to instill a strong sense of paranoia concerning the Earthlings and there was little resistance when General Kong installed himself as their interim President: so long as he kept the Moon protected.
The cornerstone of his Lunar Defense Program had been Operation Rotary. Operation Rotary involved building twin giant engines on the Moon’s surface, that, when activated, would rotate the massive natural satellite, bringing about giant artillery guns built on the far side (the result of another, earlier era of paranoia) to face planet Earth. During the planning stages, some of Kong’s cabinet expressed concern over whether such a wild feat was conceivable even in theory. His dissenting advisers were consequently discovered dead, all under mysterious circumstances, and Operation Rotary was begun in earnest.
While the project had been a total failure, and resulted only in two city-sized turbine-engine substructures, before it effectively bankrupted the Moon of both money and materials, contemporary Moonlings generally agreed that, while it was doubtful Operation Rotary would have been successful, it was for the best that the project ran out of money before it was completed, just in case it had. Without resupply from or regular trade with Earth, however, Operation Rotary had sounded the death knell for general lunar quality-of-life.
Fortunately, what was truly horrible martial planning turned out to be only mildly substandard civic planning. Dome 6, the main residential construct on the Moon, was fast becoming an overpopulated slum, and the engine substructures were easily converted into modest, if rural (as the Moonlings understood the term), housing. The residents of Turbine Cities East and West were formally considered squatters, as Operation Rotary was supposedly ongoing. Officially the People’s Democratic Lunar Republic was still at work on Operation Rotary, still at war with Earth, still under martial law, and still recounting the ballots of its first free election.
When Sebastian arrived home and stepped through the inner door of their improvised airlock, he took off his helmet and flipped the light switch. The hovel remained dark. Sebastian frowned in confusion. A low arrhythmic thumping sounded from the next room over.
“Home already?”
Sebastian squinted and saw his brother, Malachi, sitting on the couch, casually holding a section of lead pipe. After a brief assessment, Sebastian judged there was no immediate danger the weapon would be used on him, and, as his eyes adjusted, he began to take in the room in more detail. The place had been trashed.
Sebastian and Malachi were identical twins, moon miners from a family of moon miners. They had moved to TCW after their house in Dome 6 was commandeered by PDLR National Guard, and now lived in a broken-down compressor. The compressor itself afforded decent living space, divided into four different rooms by broad ply-board planks cutting—more or less—evenly across the steel-alloy cavity. The place was completely underground, accessible through a single porthole, facing the sky, the brothers’ lone modification to the superstructure. The setup saved on insulation from solar radiation and made burglary less likely; or at least it was believed to do these things.
“What happened?” Sebastian asked, as he started picking up the living room.
“One of your friend Frank’s buddies came over demanding money. I tried to explain to him that I wasn’t you, but apparently they get that a lot.”
“Really? Well, it can be confusing for people, I imagine.”
“He did a good job turning the place upside down.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t take anything.”
“He tried. I stunned him with this,” Malachi held up the pipe.
“Where is he now?”
“In your foot locker.”
“Ah. So that’s what that noise is.”
“He’s your problem now. I’m going into town.”
“Why?”
“To get drunk. And a new light bulb. I expect you to have this place cleaned up by the time I get back.”
“Maybe.”
Malachi gave him what—in the gloom—appeared to be a hard look, got up off the couch, and went over to grab his EVA suit off the hook. He pulled it on and sealed up his helmet. Sebastian rearranged the junk on the floor into neater piles. The knocking from Sebastian’s room became briefly louder, and then stopped at once. Malachi cocked his head to one side, as though unsure over his choice of the old footlocker, but soon shook it off. He tossed the lead pipe down on the couch for Sebastian’s use, stepped into the airlock, and out in the cold vacuum of space.
…….
-Capt. Thorne-
A WHOLE NEW WORLD
By Richard Cunningham III
A sulfur smell accompanied the bay of moaning docks in the overcrowded trading-town of Genoa. Her citizens barely recognized it, but foreign merchants, drifters and the like went to great lengths in order to avoid the rotten-egg odor so potent on her breath. The illustrious harbor docks, constructed of strengthened synthetic and manufactured wood, created a boastful forum, a hub of commerce amid the general despair of the modern world. Off the coast, clouds like pillars stood in the sky and stretched out to a far horizon. The sea was again brewing up a tempest to wreak havoc on the souls of men in her misbegotten trust. Directly overhead the sky shook and stirred, already a violet haze shifting in the air and a great yellow disk above that, piercing through the layers of flimsy ozone to overwhelm man and nature alike in its once-sweet sunlight. A few skyscrapers of old-Boston jutted out of the ocean’s surface, rusty jagged reef threatening the vessels that navigated the popular harbor day and night. The seas encroached on this ancient metropolis at some point in the late nineties and entombed it by the year 2150. That was the lore of the times anyway. No one in the Dead Land knew much about its history. An education in the “Bomb Parades”, or the “Great Fire of old-Los Angeles” had become irrelevant next to surviving the abundantly hostile world they now tread. Still, there was no denying the impact of its absence, a chip borne on the shoulder of an entire species of bastards, left to a bizarre and unwelcoming land.
Standing on the dock, Captain Thorne was a giant among common men, but in the high noon even more obvious of the Captain was his prosthetic arms: reflective metal-alloy limbs, constructed by a scientist who had a proficient understanding of bionic technology, common once in the old-world, but now a rarity among a number of mechanical debacles pedaled by two-bit quacks.
Under messy strands of hair, Thorne’s cold blue eyes squinted out toward the outpost, unsure for a moment about leaving the wilderness for the noise and the stench of civilization. Powered Zinc coated his cheeks and forehead, offering some protection against sun disease out on the wide revealing sea. He wiped a flood of sweat from his brown, staining the arm of his coat white, and then went back to checking out near-by vessels and their owners, for the discovery of either friend or foe. His crew went up and down the boat, carrying crates and barrels, yelling and spitting and tossing ropes around as they tethered the boat to the posts lining the platform. The men had spent much of the past year afloat and now they were finally unloading their profiteering boat to make trade with the land settlements that dotted the largely barren landscape of the east. The ship, after all, was a wreck, torn apart by recent blood battles waged at sea. These skirmishes were fortunate, ultimately, for the captain and his crew, who were already hopelessly stranded and conceding to die of thirst on the open waters. The victories were also fortunate personally for Thorne, who barely avoided outright mutiny and had, through good fortune or sheer chance, acquired a stolen relic cross in the violence, owned prior by the New Salvation Army.
The relic was no doubt of high value and the NSA would be after it, so Thorne was eager to cash in on the score; but it was far too risky to try pawning off hot NSA goods in Genoa, the trail too obvious, when it was only off the port town’s coast where Captain Thorne encountered the transport ship; the same that he ultimately sank to the depths of the ocean. Thorne had approached the ship under the pretense of trade for fresh water and directions—though he had in fact secretly desired a contest with the other ship’s captain. The ensuing conflict produced Thorne this hidden treasure, and guaranteed an inflated price on the Captain’s head.
The artifact itself was quite large, almost three feet in length, with ascending cross-pieces made of stone. Thorne had disguised the shape in a cloth and tucked it under his tattered leather trench coat. He had already resorted to hiding the relic even before reaching shore, as some of his crew was convinced the chunk of rock had actually saved them from imminent death. Thorne didn’t see himself as a very superstitious man, nor was he religious. He did, however, consider himself an entrepreneur, trying to get by in an ugly cut-throat business, and this rare find was the closest thing he might get to a meal ticket.
Cooke, the only to rival the Captain’s size on-board, or likewise the immediate vicinity, approached his long-time friend. Cooke was a grizzly piece of work, gnarly patches of hair covering his slightly misshapen head and face; missing a right eye and his left hand, which he had happily replaced with a crude meat hook.
“How much ya say we could make off that thing?” Cooke asked.
Thorne looked at him with suspicion, deserved suspicion. Cooke was a good blunt weapon in a pinch, but he was all brute and no brains, easily manipulated, often by his own runt-brother, Goose, who had tried to kill Thorne before and was probably the orchestrator of the most recent mutiny attempt.
“You just worry about selling off those crates for a good price.”
“Booze, whores, and killing’s on my agenda, Captain.”
“That’s well and good, just make sure you get around to business. They got some hospitals around here that’d pay decent money for those Menthols, probably would take those PMS packs off our hands, too.”
“Hell, I ain’t gonna do any of that stuff,” Cooke said, lighting up a Menthol. “That’s what I got Goose for. He’s the one with the brains.”
“Not if he disappears with the ship’s score, he won’t be. I’m making you responsible for him. Remember that.”
“Don’t worry. He’ll fetch you a decent price.”
“Sure I will, Captain,” said Goose, a skinny bookworm in round spectacles and an old wool suit, appearing from behind his massive brother, like it was a parlor trick. “Anyway, we all know the real money is with that relic there that come off the boat. So where are you going, Captain, with that prize of yours?”
“Like I’d answer to you, you wet little rat. You’ll have plenty of killers hunting you down should you get greedy with those crates. Just think about that kind of violence coming down on you, if you’re looking for restraint.”
“Captain, Captain, don’t you worry. I know a guy who’ll pay good money to get his hands on bona-fide Salvation Army PMS meals.”
Thorne grunted and passed by them both, climbing back up the ramp and into the boat he had inherited years back. So much time on the sea had transformed it into yet another home, perhaps the only one he understood not by name alone. Arriving in Genoa, his realities were finally clashing, however.
No one was aware he had spent a chapter of his childhood there; moreover, no one knew Thorne had himself a wife and child waiting for him in Drum City. To him, trust only introduced risk, and with his family, Thorne took no risk. Also, the duality was easier on his mind. He took a different form all-together out on sea. It was a bloody way to make a living, a lifestyle capable of whittling a man’s soul down to the primordial core, that primitive beast exposed to the light of day. Maybe that’s just what I’ve become on my own, he thought. He still had splinters embedded in his face from a water battle not a week past. There was gore and filth in his hair and mixed into his rusted beard, and a sour smell about him commonly associated with animals or hobos.
Below deck, in his cramped quarters, Thorne took up a shiny cutlass in his hand and fit a broad-rimmed fedora over his greasy head, throwing shadows over his eyes. He collected an empty flask from a shelf, then this and that of his belongings, and finally an old photograph of his wife and kid. Not thirty minutes on land and he was already soft, with ancient memories of joy now haunting the brutal calculating leader that the hard world had formed.
Thorne climbed out of the wooden belly and up to the ship’s deck to an overwhelming blinding light and that foul smell that clogged the senses, but to which he had already acclimated. Three of his crew saw him and they threw themselves on the floor before his feet.
“Please, Captain, please let us get a look at that there relic one more time! We trust you taking it with you, we just wanna ask it for some stuff is all.”
“I’m asking it fer a goat. I’ve always wanted to be able to make my own milk, maybe even learn me to make goat cheese. You ever eat some real goat cheese, Captain?” another crew-member said.
“You bring a goat on this boat and I’m making a stew out of it,” Mr. Crumbs said. He was the ship’s cook and another of the relic worshipers.
“What do you think: this chunk of rock caused that boat-robot to explode out there?” Thorne said. “It was a fluke. Just a fluke. You better wise up before you go hitting the poker tables and prostitutes tonight. They’re always looking for fools, you know.”
“We saw what we saw, Captain,” Mr. Crumbs said, with teeth mostly absent from his white sun-chapped grin.
“Right, that’s some kind of Doomsday cross, I tell ya,” another offered.
“I don’t like any of you enough to entertain this. And don’t let anyone on my ship while I’m gone, or there’ll be hell to pay, I promise,” Thorne said, returning to the swaying docks, that immediate illusion of solid ground that he was finding hard to shake.
He crossed over into his old stomping grounds, familiar sites and faces returning. Warrington was the dock’s keep and an old friend to Thorne. The two had served together as teens in the same unit of the local militia. He had the type of job now that was good at getting gifted men ruddy and fat from excess. Everyone was willing to throw the dock keep a little extra for safe harbor, and Warrington was very good at securing ships when properly motivated, often hinting to his partiality of pricey booze and cheap whores.
“Hey, Thorne! How the hell’s it been?”
“Bleak at best. You?”
“Oh, fine, fine. Life’s all shit and roses. Can’t complain, don’t imagine people’d listen if I did,” Warrington said jovially, and then pointed at Thorne’s boat with his swollen bejeweled finger. “She looks pretty beat up. How long you keeping her docked?’
“A month for repairs and the like,” Thorne said and handed Warrington a satchel.
The dock keep’s face lit up like a bulb at the sight, and as Thorne handed over the coin, he caught the wonder of a child in the fat man’s big round eyes. The dock keep poured out the satchel and made a quick count of the money.
“Thorne, you’re a good friend.”
“Just look after her, alright?”
“Of course, Captain, of course, like a baby,” he said and patted Thorne on the shoulder.
“That old geezer still got a leather shop on Broadway?”
“Old man Dylan, yeah, why?”
“No reason.”
The door to the smith’s shop hit a cluster of bells over-head. They rang out as Thorne entered and rang another time as the door shut behind him. Soon a deformed old man scuttled out from a linen curtain that hanged from the ceiling, dividing the sales floor from the living space. The man’s gait was made awkward by the hump rising out of his back like a great mountain range. It made walking an obvious effort, but the cripple had the reputation of a skilled craftsman.
“Well now, you’re a big fella,” he said, sitting on a bench behind his workspace. He had pallid blue eyes and deep crow’s feet extending to edges of his white thinning hair. His nose was crooked, shifting left to right, before pointing down to an incriminating thin-lipped grin.
“Can you make something to carry this,” Thorne asked, holding out the covered relic.
“Oh sure, sure,” Old-Man Dylan said, looking him up and down with a hairy eye. In the same breath he started hacking violently. He muffled the horrible sound with a rag, which he pulled from his back pocket. His face was turning several shades of purple, before he finally settled down and returned the mouth rag to his pants.
“My coat’s got some tears in it too.”
“Put it on the counter then,” the old man said.
There was something off about the man that Thorne now noticed, something beyond the obvious deformity and emerging stutter. As Thorne took his coat off, the smith started clapping nervously; then he let out a wheezy little chuckle that only illuminated his peculiarity.
“Oh, how nice!” the smith exclaimed as he tapped a boney knuckle against Thorne’s bionic metal arm. “This is good work, this is very, very good work. I’ve never seen work like this before, so...sleek, just beautiful. It’s quite rare, it is...quite-quite-quit-quite-quite rare indeed! Who was the surgeon? I-I-I just need to know.”
“Carver was his name.”
This was an obvious lie.
“Haha! Hahaha! Yes, yes, Doctor Carver, very fitting. I don’t know him, but he sounds like a doctor for sure,” he said, picking up the leather trench coat, then setting it back down on the counter.
“He’s dead now—”
“But I do have a friend in the cybernetic business. Doesn’t do work like that, of course. But if you ever need anything done. You have one-hundred percent function? Does it use any of that nano-science stuff?”
“What’s it to you, old man?”
“Hm. Well, if you ever need any work done—”
“I’ll just be needing the case and the patches to my coat.”
The smith studied the cross. “Mighty interesting, ain’t it?”
“Don’t get any bad ideas, smith, you’re too old to live it down.”
“It’s hot, huh? No problem, no-no problem. You wanna leave it here?”
“What do you think?”
“Right-right-right, of course. Well I think I got a potato sack around here, if you’re looking to be discreet.”
“Appreciate it.”
“Lets just...”
The smith pulled out a piece of hide string from his apron pocket and turned his focus to the dimensions of the cross, taking detailed measurements, which he then scribbled in his notepad. Thorne had a couple of hours before the geezer would be done crafting the case, so he wrapped the relic up in a burlap sack and went off to kill some time in one of the busiest and most deadly port towns on the East Coast.
The center of Genoa was a swarming, stinking mess. Thorne couldn’t reach out without hitting someone, couldn’t walk a foot without stepping in something foul. Buildings in general stood no more than seven or so stories tall, but they were constructed so closely they were almost stacked on top of each other; the original town plan now busting out of its belt to accommodate a flourishing outpost of human society. A town mostly of killers, thieving whores and bottom scum. Gypsies in ragged cloth and raw-hide faces begged for change, dropping to their dusty knees for the slightest act of charity. A gang of local punks pushed people over as they moved through the crowd, looking for trouble. A dizzying spectacle of street venders rattled off prices in heated competition, announcing “one-time offers” to the multitudes of potential clients. Crime was common and committed openly on the streets, absent of shame or fear. That was what generally happened when port towns became too populated. Law and order got squeezed out.
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