bunch of drunken idiots.”
“Why not?”
“There’s work to do.”
Rudy raised his empty mug at a passing beer cart. The kid pushing the cart got the hint and set two full beer jugs on the table in front of him before pushing on. Rudy picked up a jug, started to refill his mug, then shrugged to himself and took a swig directly from the jug. “They built a town, keep a brewery running, and manage to eke out a life in some of the harshest land on the planet. What more work is there for them to do?”
“Same work we’re doing out west.”
“Which is?”
“‘Which is?’“ Trip mocked. “We’re rebuilding civilization, making sacrifices, doing the hard work to get the planet back in fighting shape again. But what are they doing here? Instead of consolidating all the piss-ant city-states under a central umbrella, bringing back law and order and municipal bus systems, and reclaiming the wasteland by way of extreme bioengineering makeover, they’re drinking themselves stupider.”
“How are we rebuilding civilization?”
“Well... not you and me, ‘we’, directly. But ‘we’ in the Cali sense.”
“That’s really more the Chinese than anybody, though, ain’t it?”
“Government for the people, by the people, right? We do our part. We pay taxes.”
“‘We’ in the not us sense, again, of course?” Rudy asked, taking another swig. “Since we’ve never actually paid taxes.”
“What are we, suckers? Anyway, you and I provide moral support, in kind.” Trip lit a cigarette, cupping his hand over the Zippo to protect the flame from the breeze. “Plus, we play a valuable yet often underappreciated societal role — civilizations are largely defined by the caliber of their criminals. And judged solely by that measure, Cali is the most advanced and handsome civilization ever.”
Rudy’s eyebrows crunched together. “Why the sudden civilization kick? I figured you’d dig the vibe out here. The open, endless road. The anarchy. Everybody’s a potential source of profit. It’s like your perfect milieu.”
“Hardly. Lawlessness isn’t profitable. The margins just aren’t there — you end up spending more time and effort defending what you took than you do enjoying the ill-gotten fruits of your criminal labor.” Trip tapped ashes into an empty mug. “Anarchy’s bad for our business.”
“Don’t worry, the Chinese will get around to this coast soon enough. They’ve got that new Great Five Year Plan for taming the mid-west.”
“Don’t kid yourself — they’ll never get farther than Abilene. Texas will be their Afghanistan, just like it was for the Coloradan-Mexicano Liberation Front back in the ‘80s.”
“Well, then, why don’t you raise an army and take over the place yourself?” Rudy asked over the lip of the jug.
Trip smirked. “Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. Give me a half-decent militia and virtually unlimited resources and I’d have the Wasteland under my benevolent iron-fisted thumb inside a week.”
“If you weren’t shiftless, lazy, and mortally afraid of responsibility in any form.”
“I’m not saying there aren’t nearly insurmountable obstacles.” Trip took a deep drag off the cig and sneered out at the boisterous, drunken townspeople. “Anyway, it’s probably not even worth civilizing. Might as well give it a good nuclear scrubbing, leave it sit as a glassed-over reminder to future generations that some things deserve to be pulverized into the footnotes of history.”
“Dude, it’s been what, nine years? Let it go.”
Trip almost growled. “What was mom thinking moving us out here?”
Rudy shook his head. “She had a job — that contract for killing Swartz paid for the house in Encinitas, your braces, and the Wound’s armor. Anyway, it was only for two months.”
“Two months that left me scarred for life,” Trip said, holding his closed left fist up and squinting in the dim light at his ring finger. If he didn’t know where to look, he wouldn’t have seen it: a six-millimeter long discoloration just under the first knuckle. He shoved the knuckle into Rudy’s face.
Rudy rolled his eyes, batted Trip’s fist away. “That’s hardly a scar. You can barely see it.”
“I don’t need to see it. I feel it. Fucker hurts when it’s about to rain. Like a tiny little pinprick of white-hot tickle.”
“Which is why you should like the Wasteland.” Rudy took a slug of beer. “It barely rains out here.”
“Go ahead, mock my disfigurement,” Trip said, looking up. As he did, something across the square, past the fountain, caught his eye. His eyes narrowed and his back arched in intense animal focus.
Rudy knew that look. With growing dread, he followed Trip’s eye-line and sighed. “Oh, fuckin’ a... here we go again.”
She was long.