Take the All-Mart! (3 page)

“You can’t put a price on good debauchery. How much is left?”

Rudy finished stuffing the pipe, sealed the can up and put it away. He lit up, cradling the bowl thoughtfully. “Last of it bribed Sunshine and the Mustache Band to go away.”

“Okay. Not a problem. Wasteland’s full of piss-ant city states.”

“How’s that supposed to help us?”

Trip reached across Rudy to pop open the glove compartment. The dog bowl and a handful of gruel pouches showered out onto Rudy’s lap while Trip grabbed the Rand-McNally and sat back. He opened it to the two-page Pennsylvania spread. The map, like the
Wound
and their implants, had been passed down through the family tree for generations, each generation adding their own hand-written notes and updates. Trip guesstimated their position, putting his finger dead center on the map. “They’re always going to war with each other, right?”

“Part of what makes the Wasteland so fun, yeah.” Rudy brushed the spill from the glove compartment off his lap.

“Well... that must mean they have something to go to war over. It’s certainly not for a bigger slice of the Wasteland. So we’re talking resources. Hoarded resources. Cash. And if not cash, maybe something portable we can fence. Trick is picking the right city-state. One where they’re not too big on guards and security systems.”

“And where they don’t know us.”

“Or at least don’t remember us, yeah.” Trip began tracing a spiral out from their guesstimated position. “Let’s see,” he said, his fingertip hitting the first city-state, “how about Billtown?”

“Nah, it’s a shithole, remember? Plus, they don’t have statutes of limitation. They’ll string us up before we get through the front gate.”

“Yeah, okay.” More spiral. “How about Scranton?”

Rudy shook his head. “Ain’t there anymore. Got itself nuked into a crater picking a fight with Wilkes-Barre over water rights.”

“If you knew that, why didn’t you update the map?” Trip asked, grabbing a tiny nub of a pencil remnant from the crack between the seats and slashing an “X” through the city’s name, writing “Gone Boom” below it. He tossed the pencil nub into the back seat. “All right, how about Wilkes-Barre then?”

“Did you not catch they have nukes?”

“We could fence a nuke.”

“And they’re willing to use them.”

“Right. We’ll keep that in the back pocket, then.”

“Why not Rehoboth?”

Trip looked up from the map and smirked. “What is it with you and Rehoboth?”

“I like the beach. And the taffy.”

“It’s too far,” Trip said, shaking his head. “We need to turn this around quick — a couple days, at most. That and the Neo-Mormon Confed has a lock on the place lately.”

“So, that means hookers, and lots of ‘em.”

“Sure. But they never take their holy long-johns off. Yes, it’s kinky, but really not worth the fabric burns. Besides, they forced all the pizza joints and arcades to close up shop.”

“The bastards.”

“They should all rot in hell, yeah.” Trip turned back to the map and frowned. Most of the town names were crossed out or labeled with warnings like “Rad Zone”, “No Man’s Land”, and “Hookers Have Mutant, Sentient Crabs”. Trip sneered. “We’re running out of options, here. Vishnu’s leather ankles. I hate the Wasteland. They should just pave over the whole thing and be done with it. There’s nothing out here. It’s like a... a...”

“A giant wasteland?” Rudy suggested, leaning in to look at the map himself.

“Maybe we can risk making it to Jersey.” Trip started to flip the page. “There’s always some action to get in on in Jersey.”

Rudy stopped him, stabbing the stem of his calabash at one of the few towns that wasn’t crossed off. “What about this one, then? We’ve never been there, I don’t think, and it’s pretty close.”

“Seriously? Shunk?” Trip read the hand-written label dubiously: “‘The beer capital of the Wasteland’?”

“That’s probably not saying much, mind ya — Wasteland’s known more for its fortified wines — but it might be worth checking out.”

Trip eyed Rudy suspiciously. “You just want to go on a bender.”

“So?” Rudy smiled. “Anyway, where there’s booze, there’s money.”

“Fine,” Trip rolled the Rand-McNally up and slapped it against Rudy’s chest. “At least it’s on the way. If it turns out to be a no-go, we can still maybe make Jersey.”

“Think we’ll be there by lunch?” Rudy jammed the Rand-McNally back into the glove compartment. “I’m starving.”

“Should. Unless we see a flea market.”

“Oh, well, yeah, of course. Some boiled peanuts would be awesome.”

“This far North?” Trip twitched, taking the
Wound
off autopilot. Lacing his fingers behind his head and closing his eyes, seeing through her telemetry, he had her speed up, slaloming around a crater and passing a slow-moving steam-powered VW van. “You’re dreaming. Best you’ll get are those roasted almonds in paper cones.”

“Bummer, they’re always stale.” Rudy reached under his t-shirt to twist his nipple, backing off the flow of THC-analog to simple buzz-sustenance level, and stared out his window at the gray and brown landscape flashing by, chewing the bit of his pipe. “So, All-Mart looks... bigger.”

“Shut up.”

CHAPTER 3: THE CITY-STATE BOOZE BUILT

Throwing up twin trails of dust behind her, the
Wound
tore down a hard-packed dirt road winding through sickly barley fields toward the squat and ugly city-state of Shunk.

Ringed by a wall of junked cars filled with concrete and piled four high, Shunk was built around a decrepit, ancient brewery, smokestacks half falling over but still billowing thick, black smoke. The four-story tall twin rows of six grain silos — the tallest structures in the city-state — proudly proclaimed, in crudely painted lettering, the beer’s slogan:

MORTY’S FINEST: IT’LL GET YOU GOOD AND DRUNK!

Seeing this, Rudy giggled in anticipation. Trip just groaned.

The road ended at the city-state’s main gate, a rough gap in the wall of junked cars two cars wide. The gate itself was a flimsy two-by-four wood frame held together by sheets of chicken wire haphazardly stapled to it. At the side of the gate, a town guard sat on a rusty beer keg, chin on chest asleep, a Kalashnikov on his lap and a dozen empty plastic gallon milk jugs around his feet. A kid that couldn’t have been older than ten stood next to him. Unkempt and dirty, the kid looked bored out of his mind, even with the Uzi slung under his arm. Disinterested, the kid watched as the
Wound
slowed to a stop in front of the gate.

The kid elbowed the adult in the shoulder. “Time for work, Dad.”

The adult came awake with a startled growl, and before his eyes were fully open, his hands found the Kalashnikov, cocking it and aiming it at the kid. The kid rolled his eyes, gently pushed the barrel aside to point at the
Wound
instead. The adult guard’s eyes followed the barrel, looked down it at a smirking Trip.

“Howdy,” Trip said, tapping cigarette ash out the window.

The guard grunted, gave his kid a dirty look, and got to his feet. He unsteadily stepped up to the
Wound
, keeping the Kalashnikov aimed at the bridge of Trip’s nose. “Business?” he asked, his words slurred. His breath stank of hops and ethanol.

Trip gave him a practiced, charming half-mouth crooked smile. “Emptying your city vault in the dead of night,” he said, earning a jab from Rudy’s elbow.

The guard just stood there, body slowly wavering from side to side, squinting at Trip like he was trying to decide if he’d really heard what he thought he’d heard. While he pondered, he snapped his fingers back at the kid. The kid reached behind the keg and grabbed a milk jug half-filled with frothy amber beer. He took a long swig for himself, then handed the jug to the adult.

Keeping the Kalashnikov pointed at Trip, the guard slugged down a good portion of the beer, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and scowled. “Pretty stupid to tell me that, isn’t it?”

“I’ve got a good attorney.” Trip thumbed at Rudy.

Rudy leaned in and gave the guard a friendly two-fingered salute. “I mostly specialize in maritime law, but I have been known to do some pro-bono criminal defense work from time to time.”

The guard squinted and laughed, lowering the Kalashnikov. “Pair of jokers, eh?” He jogged his head back at the kid. “Open the gate, Kevin.”

The kid walked over to the gate and mounted a tire-less, rusted ten-speed, kept upright between blocks of concrete. The bike’s chain was connected to a complex pulley system. As the kid pedaled, the gate rose.

“All right,” the guard told Trip, waving at the gate with the beer jug, “go on with you. But no shooting kids or raping animals — we ain’t barbarians here.”

“We’ll try to remember that,” Trip said, twitching to have the
Wound
ease forward through the gap.

“You know, call me crazy, but I think that guard was drunk,” Trip said, the
Wound
making its slow way down Shunk’s mostly deserted cracked asphalt main drag.

“Lucky bastard.” Rudy idly picked fuzz out of his belly button with his thumb. “He probably gets paid in beer.”

Trip hit the brakes and laid on the horn as an old woman in a shawl and sequined halter top stumbled into the
Wound
’s path. She shot Trip a viscously dirty gap-toothed glare and the finger before walking on, taking another swig from the milk jug of beer grasped tight in her wizened, arthritic hand. “Towns that let their guards be drunk on duty don’t ever have anything worth guarding. I don’t know why I let you talk me into this.”

Rudy looked up, pulled his t-shirt-shirt down. “It’s just that kind of town. A party town. At least they’ve got somebody at the front gate. That’s a good sign.”

Trip got the
Wound
moving again. “Bet their rifles weren’t even loaded.”

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

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

Rudy shrugged, smiling. “They probably did.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Huh?”

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

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

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