The Gaming Outpost

Daily I bike along the collapsed levee top, taking the laid board bridges in their bouncy sauciness at full speed so I do not have to think about going off the edge, and splashing into the poisonously polluted water on the city side, or the heavy waves on the ocean side. A turn to the left to follow Makin’s Ridge up Pat Street between the vendors and morning walkers, cross the connecting alley, and out to the ramp which led up to the rusted masterpiece of a truss bridge over Kempler River.

Once the river had been well-behaved, confined within limits, but with the levees broken, the toxins from the Old City now swirled through the lake where the city used to be. Only a few places where the city was naturally high, or built up, were not useful. The city had become a collection of trails with occasional islands, an archipelago in a stinking sea.

Halfway over the flaking, rusted bridge, avoiding the holes that led forty feet down to the slightly less toxic main channel of the Kempler, I saw Montgomery walking my way. Instinctively, I braked a bit, but I could not just turn around and flee. Eventually, I would meet up with him again, and that time he would be really hurt.

“Wink.” He said sadly. “You don’t seem happy to see me.”
I felt bad about that, even as I felt angry at him for his guilt tripping. And I felt bad about feeling angry at him for what had Montgomery done to deserve that other than just being his naturally annoying self.

“Of course, I’m happy to see you.” I lied.

“Good. I have a plan.” I rolled my eyes. His plans usually ended with me in trouble.

“I’m on a mail run.” I pointed to my basket full of mail letters.

“It will just take a minute, Wink.” He put his hand on the basket to hold me there, and for a second I felt fury. No one touched The Bike. But Montgomery’s wide eyes seemed to ask me why I was so unreasonable.

“What?” I snapped.

“Linden Hotel is practically useless. Not even squatters want to live in a place that had the dead air conditioning unit plunging from the roof through the floor of seven floors before stopping on floor eight.”

“Yeah, I heard about that. Pretty scary.” We shared a commiserating look. A few squatters had been sitting by the fire on the tenth floor, and they saw the AC unit plunge past them but twenty feet away, ripping a new hole in the floor before dissappearing.

Life in the Island City as we now called it was brutal and hazardous, but no one wanted to go out squished by an AC unit. People would be making jokes for ten years afterwards.

“So, I got some dynamite from the Wungs.” The Wungs had been completely assimilated to the point that they added high explosives to their fireworks display. They were a bunch of good old boys who put on the best shows in town. “And with the dynamite, we can drop the Linden Hotel, and make a new causeway of its rubble from Holland Street to Tak Island.

I blinked. It was a surprisingly good idea. Most of Montgomery’s plans were horrible. This looked like a good idea.

Tak Island (so named for the Tak Restauraunt that had been its central hub) was growing, and at the same time, its only causeway was falling apart, and led off in a mile-long curve past several nests of dawgs …not dogs. A dawg had gone feral, and drank polluted water, and thought of humans as slow-moving prey. A dawg pack was a fearsome thing.

A shorter, more stable route would help them a lot.

“OK. Count me in.” I said just knowing I would regret it somehow.

“OK. Way cool, mailman.” Montgomery said with a brilliant smile that was almost worth the bother. “Here’s the dynamite sticks, and you can place…”

I was being volunteered to walk into an unstable hotel, and place dynamite sticks of uncertain stability inside the hotel to blow it down. Oh no, I shouted.

Which is why an hour later, I’m very cautiously fitting up the det cord to the sticks, and praying nothing blows ahead of time. But as Montgomery pointed out, I was a verser, and getting killed was no big deal.

Fuming, I put down another stick on the fourth floor of the hotel. It was a big deal to me. I liked this world, even if it stank. This is why I should have fled from Montgomery as soon as I saw him.

Next time I would, I vowed, ignoring that fact that I had made that vow many times befoel