Tales from the Wasteland

The train rambled across the hot steely tracks. The dull grinding of the steel wheels on the tracks provided an unworthy background to the old radio mounted inside the private compartment. ? Maybe, you’ll think of me, when you’re all alone . . . ? the old speakers crackled, barely over the outside noise. The arid wasteland was all that lay outside the window, hot sun beating down on hot sand, nothing more. I sat in a musty train car on a musty old bench with a rusted spring digging into my side, but it was better than traveling out there. Outside there are no guarantees, no reasoning, only cruel, cold death in the heat. Funny how a death in the hot wasteland can seem cold and cruel to a man? At least it was safer than the City. It was the City because there were no other cities left standing and no one remembered the old name or cared to look. To many painful memories were etched into the rusted steel signs. Pimps, prostitutes, crime, and drugs, four words to describe the cesspool of a city ran by four families. Mordino, Valerio, Remorez, and Valentine. I had been in hasty retreat out of the Valentine bar, the Lucky Star Bar. It was more of a back alley in the sense that people bought more drugs than booze from the bar.

“Vic? We’re tryin’ to take your money here.” Across from me a cocky young man sat tapping his cards impatiently. His long greasy hair and greasy smile matched in the most sickening way.

Next to him sat his father, an old man with long white hair and a mustache. He constantly rubbed his arthritis-ridden hands, contrary to his affliction he is still feared by those that knew him, or even heard of him. Those old eyes could cut deeper than any bullet. And under the window sat a large, not fat but muscular, youth with bright red mutton chops and a face only a mother could love. His meaty fists, better to be called slabs of bruised meat, were packaged with dirty bandages.
I had met these three while running from the Lucky Star. The bartender kept trying to sell me their filthy drugs. It had been a long day and I didn’t want to *fly*, as they call it. Before I had even known it the hot, red rage bubbled over in my mind and my hand flew behind his head and brought it crashing down into the bar. I remember for an instant the wet, bloody pulp of his nose lying in the middle of the grimy stains that covered the bar. Those three were sharing a drink with me and had been drunk or nice enough to rush me out of the bar before the bouncers could beat the life out of me in some dark back alley.

There was one other man sharing the car with us, he sat quietly as we shuffled in, tired and stinking of sweat and booze. As we sat down he shifted quietly in his tattered grey business suit. Jack made the first move and introduced himself as well as the rest of us. He smiled politely, or at least turned the corners of his lips, and shook our hands in turn. Alan Pinkerton was his name. Then commenced the small talk which I despised so passionately. Stories were traded over sun-warmed beers as the tradition seems to be with these people. The father, son, and ugly monstrosity seem to hail from Redding, the father is a sheriff. My mind drifted into the cards as Alan talked in his low voice with absolutely no cadence. The sounds of the train on the tracks were preferable.
Outside the windows held nothing but heat, death, and radiation but all I could see was stories. My life began in the Fayette. A small little town best known for a slave trade ran by a violent boss. But underneath that seedy exterior is where I grew up. My father and I lived at the little junkyard. I really never had a mother, but Betsy from the diner always took care of dad and I, with her soft smile and sharp memory. I remember how the scrap metal and old cars were thrown haphazardly around but there was a large circle of dirt by the house. Inside the circle was an old beat-up Nova. The sun had stripped it of its color, I think it was orange and black at one time, now it is metallic gray. My father and I had once sat inside it and pretended to drive, but we never really went anywhere. The Nova was bought by some stranger who had found the part my dad had scavenged for his entire life in the junkyard. The day the Nova left our yard, I think that was the day my dad died. I think he always wished he could drive out of Fayette in that car, go up to the coast and see the ocean. But it wasn’t in the cards for him or me.
I wandered away and he withered away.
Such is the way of the wasteland.

The murky glass door swung open and a man walked in. A robe clung tightly to his wiry frame. Eyes too big for his skull peered out at us. Blank stares can still feel as if they are judging, sizing you up. I recognized what he was before he spoke, a member of some cult. They spouted strange prophecies and faith in the master. And, true to his religion, he spouted the “word”. Each of us received a pamphlet before he left. Three pamphlets were added to the dust and litter on the floor. The redhead, Patrick, had began rolling his with bits of tobacco, but Alan had tucked his away into the inner pocket of his jacket. I could still see the words “THE ONE” through a hole in his dusty gray jacket. Jack’s father remembered his cigarettes in his coat pocket and excused himself to the coatroom. Alan pulled out a strange clear object with pink liquid from his breast pocket and lifted it to his lips. He inhaled deeply and leaned back, his eyes closed and his legs knocked out an erratic rhythm on the floor. It reminded me of tribal death beats.

My thoughts were halted as I heard the whirring of a pesky insect outside the cabin. I looked to my companions as Alan grabbed Jack and pulled him under the table. Strange I thought as golden lances punched through the tin wall behind us. I no longer thought when a lance struck me, or more accurately a bullet. It caught my left arm as Jack pulled me to the floor. My woozy eyes turned to the fresh window punched in the side of the train. Bits of jagged tin splintered off and fell into the train, hot sharp ash on my back. Time sped up as I saw a real moving truck running parallel with us. I would have been amazed if two monsters hadn’t been piloting the thing, one with his dark green hands on the smoking barrel of a minigun. Noise came back seconds after time. “I’ll get the super-mutants, you just take Vic to safety and find my dad!” shouted Jack as he struggled for his six-shooters under the table. Alan deftly moved into a standing position. A shotgun leapt from the holster on his back to his hands. One eye closed lightly and he squeezed off two shots. The two wheels of the truck spewed out air and the truck pulled into the side of the train, ripping out the back half of this car and the front of the one behind us. “I got the truck, Jack.” Alan smiled, well maybe it was just the hint of a smile.

Jack seemed to fume on the inside. It was at this time I remembered the handgun I had in a shoulder holster. Alan lifted his pack from the bench and strapped it on his back. We rushed into the cramped hallway, at the farthest end was a super-mutant, a large metal tube on his shoulder. I turned the opposite direction, in front of the other two, and ran. We leapt across the divide between two cars and barreled through a door.

In front of me a behemoth stood. Ripped black shirt and pants covered the muscular, dark green, nine foot tall body. His broad chin held up the pock marked, distorted face that grinned through the metal bits strapped to his face. I rolled to the side as a loud crack rang out and a leg was ripped away from the mutant. Jack had dropped low with his six-shooter firing past Alan. In mid-run a shotgun hit the floor and Alan had lifted a crowbar that was strapped to his leg high into the air. The mutants smile was long gone as it was on a bloody knee. The crowbar came down and replaced the once smiling face with a wet and bloody pulp on the floor. From the far end the mutant had began walking towards us, sliding a metal rocket into the metal tube, somehow I could hear the grating of metal on metal and it made me shiver. The glass door to his left shattered as a massive man leapt through and tackled him through the next door. Jack shouted something, I think the man was his friend, and ran towards them.
I heard the insect again and looked out the window, another truck. Alan motioned to a ladder to the top of the train. I nodded and we were soon at the top of the metal train, on a flimsy tin roof. We began a slow crawl across the roof that painted our bellies the color of rust. After leaping across the gap we stopped on top of the middle section of the car we rode in on. I lay down with my pistol out and tried to sight in the gunner of the truck. “I’m going for the sheriff.” Roared Alan over the noise of the wind whipping all around us.

Somehow I heard this and nodded. I fired two shots, both missed, before the truck noticed me. I pulled off a lucky shot that thumped directly into the gunner’s haphazard face, rearranging it even more. Unfortunately the driver fired his shotgun at me. I felt the warm shrapnel go through part of the roof and into my side. My gun fell from roof of the train, into the wasteland that claims all. The blood loss began to get to me as my eyes clouded over. As I slumped to my belly I noticed a gray form from the corner of my eye. Alan was all out running across the top of the roof and dove into a slide next to me. He was out of breath but managed to rip the pack from around him and place it next to me. Bandages came from his pack as he applied them to my wounded arm and side. The blood stopped flowing from my body, but I still felt sleepy, and Alan could see it. I barely felt the sharp sting when he slapped my face. Spittle came from his mouth as he roared above the wind and cut through my daze, “You do jet?”
I couldn’t speak but I shook my head no.
His hand offered something and I shook my head no again.
“This is my best stuff. It’ll keep you awake until I can help you. If you fall asleep you die. This is the best, made by the Mordino’s. The Mordinos have the best shit.” He yelled again forcing the jet into my hands. A gun shot rang out below us and he sprinted down a hole he had punched through the roof.

I lifted the canister to my lips and pushed down, prepared to inhale the vileness. Time froze as I saw a red light flash on the jet and heard the pack beep.
My memory roved back to the train, before anything had happened when we were still making small talk. Jack had asked what Alan did for a living and the answer was, “I do small jobs for the families in New Reno.”
My mind flashed forward to six seconds ago, “Mordinos have the best shit.”
I was back in the Desperado, smashing the bartender’s face against the bar.
And the last thought in my mind was still fresh from seconds ago, or was it hours? the wasteland claims all.

Alan did not smile as he heard the explosion rip through the metal ceiling, he took no pride in his newest murder. The sound did not have any sentimental meaning to him, nor did the death, all it meant was money in his pocket and jet in his veins.