Digger 1.0 (15 page)

Straight up lighter fluid.

No color.

All burn.

Tequila Blanco. Then he’d get real
crazy.

Everyone knew Reyes Badfinger had a bottle.
Had taken it off some now-dead farmer a few days back before the
attack on the armored busus. A few days before the Stranger in
Black had told them where they, along with some other gangs that
were so inclined to work together for the moment, might wait for a
convoy coming out of the west.

Now, if he could get his hands on that guy,
the Stranger in Black, why he’d wring the man’s fat neck.

Vargas stood and brushed the dust and dead
grass from his chaps.

The bikes were parked along the crumbling
remains of an old place from before the collapse. Casperville. Out
in a residential section of the small town where the roofs of old
ranchero houses sagged and the corners all seemed to lean into the
east. The mere shapes of dry lawns and the forgotten memory of worn
out sidewalks were the resting places of tents for the bikers who’d
come here after midnight. After the attack on the convoy.

They’d lost almost half their number in that
attack.

They’d taken three women.

Gear. Guns. And Groupies.

That’s what they called their slaves.
Groupies.

For a fleeting moment Vargas thought about
one of them, but his sudden burning lust morphed into thoughts of
cheap tequila and visions of slaking his thirst while wringing the
Stranger in Black’s fat neck. Vargas saw the man’s eyes bulging as
he choked him. His purple tongue lolling out of his thick, cracked,
red lips.

Across the dusty street Reyes Badfinger
popped up from the flap of his tent, pulling at faded and torn
jeans. Hammering one of the groupies no doubt, thought Vargas, who
was tired. Tired of not having what he wanted… when he wanted it.
Reyes,
El
Rey
as some of the other bikers called him, had led them
into the scrap against the convoy. And what had they gotten? Some
women and some guns. The other gangs had made off with more, Vargas
was sure of that.

His fingers traced the tip of the grip of
the knife strapped to his leg. Yes, Vargas was indeed very tired of
not getting everything he wanted. And more than just being tired,
he was thirsty. Very thirsty.

He crossed the old broken sidewalk where
once little white girls had played hopscotch. Or so he imagined.
Little white girls like ghosts playing hopscotch in their dresses.
He crossed into the street, heading straight for Reyes Badfinger.
El Rey. The leader of the gang and their king and that nice bottle
of tequila he’d been holding back since the farmers they’d raped
and murdered.

Rape and murder?

Vargas didn’t think of it that way.

No, not at all.

Re-distribution
. Just like he’d been
taught by La Raza back in school before the collapse. If you
weren’t part of
the race
, well, then you were just something
less. A nobody to take from.

He looked at Reyes with trouble in his
heart.

It’
s
just
redistribution
, he told himself.

In that moment as Vargas let his hand fall
to the grip of the knife…

In that moment before he’d flick it
underhand right into Reyes Badfinger’s heavily tattooed chest and
then go in and find that tequila and drink it all down and then
have the groupie Reyes had just finished with…

In that moment before all the bad things
that he wanted to come to him…

Vargas’ deep, dark brown eyes met the
similar eyes of Reyes Badfinger.

Once you start redistributing, where does it
stop?

Reyes Badfinger knew that look. You don’t
get to be the leader of a sociopathic post-apocalyptic biker gang
without knowing the look. The “I want what you got” look of the
unrestrained sociopath, or psychopath.

That
look.

Reyes, in one surprisingly effortless
motion, reached down inside his tent and drew out the 12 gauge
shotgun.

Double Barreled.

He had a sheath, a patchwork canvas holster
right inside the flap of his tent. Only the groupies knew about
that.

When it was drawn out and pointing right at
Vargas, dead center, Reyes Badfinger smiled.

Vargas hadn’t even fully gripped the knife
strapped to his leg and he knew he was dead.

So did Reyes.

In that last moment Vargas tried a quick,
almost sheepish smile that said “my bad”. Whatever that meant. Then
Reyes pulled the trigger on both barrels because he couldn’t take a
chance on a bad shell and a misfire.

~~~

Later, after going at the groupie again, and
after Vargas was nearly finished crying and dying in the middle of
the street where Reyes Badfinger had put him down with two blasts
from the old shotgun, El Rey stepped out of his tent again. He held
his bottle of tequila right in front of Vargas’ wet, red and now
staring eyes. Held it there like he knew Vargas was still somewhere
inside that body. Vargas was down to seconds and he smiled when he
saw Reyes hold out the bottle of cheap Tequila.

Just like he’d wanted.

One of the dying man’s last thoughts was,
“
Reyes isn
’t such a bad
guy after all.” He’d get his drink before going wherever it was he
was going, he’d never really considered where that would be, though
he’d been headed toward it all along.

But Reyes pulled the bottle back to his own
lips and drank. Deep, slurping, pulls. His eyes squinted the way
Vargas knew tequila that was so bad it was good made your eyes
squint.

If he’d waited, and by waited I mean
not
died
, why, Vargas would have seen the Stranger in Black arrive
shortly with a cartload of all the bad tequila one could ever want
to blind themselves with. All of it gurgling and sloshing inside
old laundry detergent bottles and other such random containers.

If he’d just waited.

But death, death is impatient that way.

The Baron’s real name was Mark Barrone.
Before everything went south, he’d been a long haul trucker and
smuggler. He’d only been at it for a couple of years after getting
out of the Navy as an electrician’s mate.
Dishonorably
discharged
for illegal activities involving the
misappropriation of government goods. But after everything went
downhill for the world as people knew it then, and by downhill just
read: fell off a steep cliff, which is a sort of an extreme version
of downhill, then Mark Barrone became the Baron. It took a while to
become a man known by such an imposing and almost regal sounding
nickname, but in the end, as his little band of metal scavengers
bested, clawed and occasionally murdered the local competition, he
became known as
the Baron
.

The ruler, for the moment, of the
Scraps.

A note on that “murder” thing. It wasn’t
like his band of metal pirates had just gone out and murdered
people for their stuff the way outlaw biker gangs did. No, the
murder referred to here specifically involved a certain man known
as Rhino who’d had it in his greedy heart, and on his ambitious
to-do list, to make sure that the Baron got murdered first. Word
got back to the Baron’s crew when they were operating out of the
scraps along with a bunch of other crews, that such dastardly
intentions were the active pursuit of the aptly named, and now
deceased, Rhino. Soon enough, one thing led to another and poor old
Rhino got it before he could do it.

Still, it
was
murder.

Or at least that’s what the world that once
was would have thought.

But not now. Now, preemptive elimination was
considered a character trait to be admired, and of course,
imitated. Such is the way of all bad behaviors gone unchecked.

But what can be wrong when nothing is really
wrong? That’s the way the old world was headed anyway. Going off
the cliff had just codified the eventual reality.

The Scraps were firmly, for the moment, and
as much as such tenuous hold in a post-apocalyptic life can be
called “firmly”, the Scraps were firmly under the influence of the
Baron, who for a time, seemed to be running the show there in the
little ad hoc fortress everyone had cobbled together.

One Saturday morning… someone must have once
known that such a day would be a Saturday. A Saturday morning on a
calendar kept by someone or some electronic thing when the keeping
of times and days and even dates was important. Even though now no
one really cared if it was a Saturday morning or not. The Baron
announced that Saturday morning that he had another expedition in
mind. After breaking practically every bone in Scrounge McGee’s
body the night before and then leaving him chained to a guard rail
out where the county roads intersected, they’d all returned to the
Scraps to drink an eye-watering potato vodka someone had been
ginning up lately. That was when the Baron announced that he wanted
to quote unquote “
make a
foray
” out into Casperville and see what they might pick
over.

Some few of his men needed the word
“
foray
” explained, and
others, like Hutch Hutchins, knew exactly what it meant and offered
their thoughts thusly on the matter.

“Casperville been picked over hunnerts o’
times, Baron.”

Everyone gathered their tools regardless.
Orders were orders, for now. Pliers to strip wire. Crowbars to
dislodge pipes and panels. Rendered fat to free up rusted bolts.
All the thing metal salvagers need to salvage.

In response to this true statement of fact
from the wisdom of Hutch Hutchins, the Baron merely continued to
groom his horse and pat the hindquarters, whispering as he did
so.

“Some folks lived out that way year ‘fore
last.” This was a contribution from Tom whose real name was Tim but
everyone took great delight in calling him Tom anyway. One more bad
winter or flu, or even an encounter with some biker gang and all
who could remember his name as actually being “Tim” might soon be
gone. History, whatever that meant in these record-less days, would
put him down as “Tom” on some wooden marker out in the sand and
sage along the old highways where the pirates did their business
and often buried their dead.

“Naw,” replied Hutch Hutchins. “
All a
‘em died o’ the flu thang last
winter. Ah rode out there ‘bout the enda the storms and they had
the signs up telling everyone to stay away. They’s all dead when I
went in to have a look anyways.”

Hutch had taken some nice things back to the
Scraps that no one knew about and even now some of those things
were buried out near a rusting car off a road the map once marked
as Paradise Highway.

“Naw, sure enough they’s all dead,”
pronounced Hutch again.

The Pirates were beginning to form up into
the two long columns they always walked in, their gear and sacks
and goggles and makeshift armor secured. Weapons consisting of
improvised shovels and picks and the occasional machete were ready.
Everyone with their crowbar. That was standard Precious Metal
Pirate gear. In fact, that was pretty much how you could tell
someone had gone pirate. The crowbar was like a badge of honor to
them.

“Well then, shall we ride out to Casperville
and have a look around?” asked the Baron, as he swung easily into
the saddle that’d been occupied just a few days prior by that McGee
character. The rapist they’d tried to use as bait to gain intel on
the high valley.

In fact, it wasn’t really rape. McGee’d just
had no intention of paying Molly Cut for his time with one of her
girls. He’d thought to play beggar and “Whoops, my money got stole
by yer whore”.

Well, that just didn’t play out in the
Scraps.

Even if it might have possibly been
true.

So they called it rape, and Molly Cut got
the rest of his take.

“Take” was the word pirates used for
personal possessions.

As
in,
“That feller Trig’s take is a bit too nice.”

Which was akin to saying, “Be a shame if
anything happened to him one night after too much of Molly Cut’s
tater vodka.”

They rode out to Casperville, “
rode out
” meaning the two columns
of Pirates followed along after the Baron’s horse. Sometime after
the sun had fallen into the western part of the sky, they made it
out there and down into the town proper. The old historic
district.

They’d passed the “FLU” and “Stay Away!”
warnings in slop-paint someone had taken the consideration to mark
last winter when a viral sickness they were overrun with must have
seemed like a plague of judgment had taken a hold of the little
survivor community that claimed Casperville. They passed graves and
falling markers in the lawns of once sprawling McMansions. Near a
fast food restaurant that had burned down long ago they’d passed a
deep pit. Tightly wrapped body-shaped blankets still lay in the
sandy bottom of the gash.

Near the historic district of old west
origin they halted, and for a long minute the Baron had remained
frozen in the saddle, hand raised. Smelling the wind. Listening and
hearing nothing but the soft hiss of a wind that soon came up into
a good blow.

Then, “Smells like… engines.”

No one said anything. Instead the pirates
cast wary eyes into the shadow and ruin.

Engines meant biker gangs.

But of them there was no sign. Bikers were
marauders. Lawless. Here today, gone tomorrow. They had no code or
system of order.

“WELCOME, FRIENDS!” came a booming roar from
within the darkness of an old wooden building that seemed to lean
so far out into the street that it might’ve fallen over at any
moment. A man wearing dusty black pants, square-toed biker boots, a
black dress shirt, and a long dark grey blanket he’d cut holes in
for his arms, had stepped out from the swinging doors of the old
building, removing a black wide brimmed hat, shielding his large
head from the sun low on the horizon. His eyes rose expectantly as
though he’d just performed some impressive trick or saved a child’s
life and wanted all the adulation that must come with such a
feat.