Just Another Day
September 30, 2000 in Articles
Just another day in this Hell on Earth.
I rode towards Junkyard, the fuel gauge skimming the bottom o’ E. No
sign of bandits, but if the monsters don’t getcha, the human ones do.
Before the war, you could get from Sacramento all the way to Ol’ Salt
Lake City – that’s Junkyard now for all o’ you who haven’t been paying
attention for the past thirteen years, in a couple o’ hours. Not
anymore. Go any faster than twenty and you’re askin’ to fall into a
pothole the size o’ Missouri.
Ridin’ along, mindin’ my business, when I saw the birds. Now, I know,
they’re just birds, but NOTHIN’S “just birds” in this world no more.
It’s a sign o’ trouble, those little black birds circlin’ around. Birds
don’t just circle for no reason. They only circle when there’s
somethin’ to circle around, usually a buncha people that got shot up.
This time, it was Doomsayers.
How come I can never just go from one place to another and have nothin’
go wrong on the trip? Is it too much to ask for a nice, leisurely trip,
when I don’t have to shoot nobody or worry ’bout how many people I have
to kill to get from one freakin’ city to another? ‘Cause the world’s
gone straight to hell, that’s why.
Could see the smoke risin’ up from the city not long after I first
noticed the birds. I pulled out my trusty binocs – the right lens is
broken, but the left one works fine. Maybe when I get to Junkyard I can
get someone to fix it – and chewed on a Jerky Treat while I looked the
place over.
Big skull, hangin’ over the town, looked like a nuke fer sure. Now,
there’s nothin’ I hate more than indescriminant nuking. I mean, it
totally destroys the scavengin’ possibilities, and we’ve gotta make do
with what we can find. So if there’s any Doomsayers out there readin’
this, relax that nukin’ finger and kill people like a civilized person.
I mean, we’ve gotta rebuild the world, right? And if ya keep blowin’ it
all to hell it’s gonna be damn tough to do.
There might still be people there though, so I had to check it out.
It’s gonna kill me someday, but I feel I’ve gotta make the world a
better place or somethin’. There’s enough people tryin’ to take over,
or just blow everythin’ up, someone’s gotta work the other way.
I was hopin’ to stay the night in that town, “New Hope” they called it.
Well, don’t look much like there’s any hope there any more, so I checked
my shotgun. Both barrels loaded, plus five spare shells I traded for at
the last town. SA Sidearm – check. And a crowbar in case things got
messy. I ditched the bike off the road a bit, and snuck towards town -
it was gettin’ dark, so I figured I could crawl up ’til I could see the
whites o’ their eyes, or whatever color the muties had. I ducked behind
a wooden fence and looked around.
The Doomies were stayin’ in town, looked like. Three greenrobes, with
what looked like a pair o’ three year olds – if you grow your three year
olds ten feet tall. Grundies. One o’ Silas’ crew was a girl, looked
pretty normal. One was a guy around seven feet tall that looked like a
duck. He had these flaps o’ skin runnin’ down his side. Weird. The
other was wrapped all up in bandages. He looked like their leader.
With luck, the greenrobes spent most of their juice “pacifying” the
town. They were probably hangin’ out tryin’ to regain their mojo before
finishin’ off the townspeople an’ returning home to do whatever it is
bad guys do when they’re not doin’ bad guy stuff. Three doomsayers,
and two grundies. If I did this right, I could pull it off, if luck’s
on my side…
I double-tapped at the mummified one, and he spun and went down,
bleedin’ and squealin’. That’s when everythin’ started happenin’ at
once. The girl pulled out an SMG and sprayed the wall I was hidin’
behind, taggin’ me in the left arm, as the duck came waddlin’ my way.
The two grundies looked around, startled by the noise, lookin’ to the
girl for directions.
She was pointin’ my way, so I started sneakin’ down along the fence,
holdin’ the blood in. Three gunshots rang out behind me. I froze a
second, but I wasn’t dead, so they must’ve missed. Lookin’ back, I saw
the ugliest thing I ever seen. A six foot tall cockroach in a bad
suit. Dunno where the Reckoners thought that one up from, but it musta
been a SERIOUSLY bad dream. There was another girl, maybe fifteen, with
messy blonde hair and an SA Sidearm. She cut it down from behind as it
was sneakin’ up. Remind me to thank her later…
I don’t rightly remember exactly how it happened next, but I took the
duck down with both barrels from my shotgun as he started glowin’. I
knew that was bad news, and it had to end right quick. I ducked back
’round the fence and almost ran right into the other greenrobe. Now, I
couldn’t rightly shoot a lady, so with my good arm I whacked her one
across the noggin with the crowbar, and said goodnight. One of the
grundies sat down an’ started cryin’, an’ the other ran an’ hid.
Everythin’ went dark as I passed out, I guess I took a worse hit than I
thought. The grundies ran off after a while, and I woke up bein’ cared
for by a couple o’ the townsfolk. They gave a gallon o’ spook juice and
three days o’ canned dog food in thanks for savin’ their skins. In the
mornin’ it was off to Junkyard…
Just another day tryin’ to survive in this little place we call Hell on
Earth…
