Take the All-Mart! - By J. I. Greco Page 0,5
involuntary yelp. “The Slash? She wouldn’t.”
“Surprised she didn’t send him first after what you did to her cat. And him we won’t be able to buy off.”
“I’m not fighting the Slash,” Rudy said, his eyes wide with dread and shaking his head.
“You think I want to fight him? He bit a chunk out of my calf last time we ran into him, and it wasn’t even us he was hunting.”
“So, what we gonna do?”
“So... we take unprecedented action, as it were.”
“Like find the nearest cthulist outpost and convert, spend the rest of our days as genetically-altered tentacle hippy tree-huggers waiting for the ancient aliens who built the pyramids and the Hollywood Bowl to come back?”
“Unprecedented, not stupid,” Trip said. “We’ll pay Delores back, is all.”
Rudy snorted. “I don’t think it’s just the money she’s pissed about.”
“Okay, we pay her back, and I send some flowers. Flowers excuse everything, right?”
“If they come in a vase with your balls wrapped around it in a bow, maybe.”
“Man, you are just obsessing on my unit today, aren’t you?”
Rudy took his calabash from the bandolier and grabbed the oil can full of loose tobacco from under his seat. The can was sealed with a sheet of newspaper held on by a rubber-band. Rudy snapped the rubber-band onto his wrist, set the paper aside, and started filling the pipe. “How are we supposed to pay her back? Thanks to you, we never actually got a deposit to make off with. And we only got six scrent on the scrollar fencing the wedding gifts — which we’ve been spending through fairly recklessly.”
“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