The Worldshift Chronicles: Monday

Chapter 3

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Chapter 3

The main barroom was packed, many outlanders sidled up to the long bar counter in the center of the tavern. They caroused and carried on, crowded around wagon wheel tables, playing cards and throwing dice, drinking cactus whiskey, smoking sage tobacco from copper-plated hookahs, eating cornbread biscuits. A few men kept their ventilators on, perhaps suspicious of Bard’s filtration systems. Bronze lanterns hung from thick chains mounted in the ceiling, casting patrons in an orange haze.

The tavern doubled as a museum of sorts, sporting a collection of oddities discovered about the outlands. Over in one corner stood an archaic contraption Bard picked up from a junker, a pay-to-play gimmick cabinet with a primitive, clockwork puppet inside, itself modeled after a member of the Indigenous tribes of the continent in the first and second ages. Bard called it a ‘mechanical genie.’ The functions within activated by dropping a copper chit in a slot, upon which it would orate a hoary platitude of some sort about humans and their follies, and then dispense paper scripts of fortune. Whether they ever bore fruit to their recipients, I did not know.

Above that antique, an oversized head of a strange humanoid was mounted on the wall. Its mottled skin was the color of a sunless sky. It had huge, almond-shaped eyes, black as coal. The outlands were full of muties, but I had yet to come across a live specimen of its kind.

Displays of exotic weaponry were arrayed about the bar, gun barrels filled with lead and blade edges blunted per Bard’s mandate. His personal sword hung above a selection of bottled elixirs behind the counter, a curved scimitar forged in Damascus steel. It was the one house weapon still in razor-sharp condition. Bard liked to say it was his backup. Not that many folks sought out confrontation with him. He had a way of diffusing situations.

A single VIP table sat to the right of the main floor on an elevated dais. A swarthy, olive-skinned, mustachioed man sat there alone. He had a wild shock of black hair and dark, beady eyes. He was dressed in the crisp, black uniform of a House Gammon commissioned officer. He sipped from a carafe of whiskey and smoked a skinny, brown cigar. He likely paid Custer, Bard’s resident bouncer, a hefty tip to keep the table private, and clear it was, as Custer himself stood guard nearby, sword and rifle slung on his back.

Custer was a giant man at seven feet tall, with a scruffy, auburn beard and one fried arm charred long ago by a dud bomb, confiscated from its anticlimactic landing. A local casino owner who’d employed Custer at the time thought it’d be a kick to put on display. It had detonated years later, its malfunction finally reaching omega point, decimating the former gambling city of Las Vegas, which had survived, albeit temporarily, the more stringent effects of worldshift. Through dumb luck, Custer had headed down into underground parking levels to retrieve a patron’s vehicle, and was protected by bunker caliber concrete at the moment of the blast, though not quite enough to avoid the flash burn which torched his arm.

The lovable giant relished recanting his ensuing adventures in the aftermath of the bomb, offering alternate versions, depending on his mood or audience, including saving a buxom starlet from the ravages of a scree horde, or escorting the vice president of the former United States through cannibal territories, or guiding the entire Illuminati council to the safety of the Citadel.

Whoever the Illuminati were in the old world, Custer seemed to think they were very important.

Once upon a time.

A lot of things were important, ‘once upon a time.’

I heard that a lot from the oldies.

Behind the bar, Bard mixed drinks, pouring assorted flights of liquor from long-necked, green glass bottles. His head was crowned in a thin, curly tangle of gray-blonde hair. He had deep brown eyes the color of cured leather. His chin was framed within a neat and trimmed, white goatee. He wore his customary black sarape with red tassels, a collared black shirt, denim trousers, and worn trek boots. A single obsidian hoop earring dangled from his left ear. He was the kind of man that looked twenty and sixty at the same time. He liked to say he was not confined to one lifetime.

“Hey, Bard,” I said, as I walked up to the counter.

He grinned. “Returned from the wilds. How are you, Monday?”

“Still above ground.”

“And the world is better for it. How fares the House of Gammon?”

“Same as always. Clustered in their fish bowl, holding chits close to the chest.”

“Now, now,” Bard said, as he pushed out a mug of hot joe over to me. “Judge not and all that cool smooth jazz, yeah?” I took the steaming coffee, grateful. “I trust your charges were delivered safe?”

“No thanks to them. The guy’s wife almost bought it at the western border above the badlands. She had to take a rest stop, barked at me to pull over, didn’t care a lick about the scree nests in the area.”

“Did you warn her of the locals?”

“’Course I did. Told her to use my spare latrine bottle. She refused. Her hubs didn’t seem much interested neither. So, she’s squatting in the bush and sure enough, a couple of hot mutes come calling, and I had to waste a couple of shells scaring them off.  Spoiled domers,” I looked around the room, marveling at the commotion. “Special occasion?”

“It seems a convergence, yes. The real buzz is who the chit-heavy in house is, where he stems from, and why he’s slumming here.”

“And?”

“And while Custer has poked and prodded, not much has been revealed. He’s spreading around a fair amount of coin. He says he’s looking for our preferred in-house courier. Of course, that’d be you, but we told him we had no way of knowing when you might return.”

“He’s looking for scouts here? What’s here, besides nothing and next to nothing?”

“You of all folks ought not to be surprised about what can be found in the glass lands.”

“Speaking of which, I came across a rando just a few beats ago. Several clicks out. On foot. No bug, no weapons, no rad gear, no escort, nada.”

Bard raised an eyebrow. “You don’t say.”

“I do. Weirdest thing ever. Well, not ever, but it’s up there. The guy was walking through the wastes like it was a day in the park. Biggest pack I’d ever seen doubling him over like a two-ton rock. I figured he’d come from here.”

“Nobody like that in the bar today. He was alone?”

“Near as I could tell. We palavered over water. He told me a doozy about a trip he took over the mountains, seaside. Crazy hermit. Then he somehow pegged my juice factor.”

“Did he now?” Bard asked, amused.

I sighed, reality setting in. “You know him.”

“It’s possible I know of him,” he responded. “But that’s neither here nor there. Your possible employ awaits.” He pointed at the thin man over at the VIP table.

“Casino toad?”

“Custer’s about to fire up a match out back, per his request. Then we shall see what we shall see.” Someone called for rounds and Bard hurried away.

I wandered over to Custer. He greeted me with a gap-toothed smile.

“As I live and breathe, the pistoliera comes home to roost, with no clients in tow, so I presume you’re enjoying some well-deserved leisure time.”

“Ain’t got time for leisure, Cuss. Still making coin. So it goes.”

“So it does. And how does coin flow of late?”

“Domers gave me a good tip. But I’m schlepping all the way back to Maddy’s, couldn’t find anybody who needed rides or deliveries back here.”

“Yon fellow behind me, he’s looking for a guide.”

“I heard. Who is he? How’d he roll in?”

“Of his own accord. The ritzy war coach outside. Drove himself, it appears. Big purse. Loud mouth. Name of Jack Crackers.”

“How Oh-Gee. A heavy purse, then?”

“He has tipped well. He asked about dueling games. I have one interested candidate willing to facilitate a spread of wagers out back. However, I do not think that is his primary interest.”

“And what is?”

“Of that, I have failed to grasp.”

“Where does he want to go?”

“He has not specified.”

It’d been a long drive back from the dome. It’d be another two days of travel to the ‘Del and no guarantee of turnaround wages.

“Okay, I’ll rap,” I said.

Custer beckoned me to step into the alcove. I fiddled with my gloves, taking them off and stuffing them in a back pocket. I hopped up the stairs and looked my potential gig in the eyes.

And there it was.

He was a trickster, as easy to read as the glowing neon marquees in Tiwan’s red-light district. I was confused as to why Bard or Custer hadn’t copped the grift straight away.

“Heard you might be looking for an escort,” I said.

Jack Crackers took a swig of whiskey and considered me.

“I am looking for a number of things,” he said. “And you are?”

“Monday,” I replied.

“How provincial. Were you in fact, ‘born on a Monday’?”

If I had a chit for every time the old-world children’s rhyme came up in conversation, I’d have been sitting pretty.

“I haven’t a clue when I was born, Mister Crackers.”

“Call me Jack, please. I suppose that means…”

“Can we skip to the part where we’re useful to each other?” I interrupted.

Jack roared in delight, slamming down his drink and splashing whiskey across the table. “Custer! You failed to mention you had practiced hagglers in the house! Wonderful!”

“Monday’s an exceptional courier, good sir.” Custer said, shrugging at me.

“Tell me, why is she a better guide than any other New Gen vagabonds hereabouts?”

“Well, sir, to be frank, she’s the best gunfighter in the outlands,” Custer said.

I wouldn’t have gone that far. I wished Cuss wouldn’t have hawked that. Better not to own it. Too many freelancers looked to topple the creams of the crops, so they could flux their hire rates. I didn’t have the time nor motive to defend a title. I’d been challenged on occasion. I always tried to walk away. Unless they didn’t let me. Then I walked away under different circumstances.

I detested spilling blood, but I knew how to do it.

My vocation gave me little choice otherwise.

“A vote of confidence from Bard’s best is no small thing, I’m sure,” said Jack. “From where do you hail, girl?”

“Grew up here and there.”

“But in which hub? I’d know you if you squandered a childhood in New Angeles.”

I ignored his fishing. “Sir, if your destination lies between the Citadel and San Francisco, New Angeles or Tiwan, I’ll get you there. Half-Moon and the north gates at the Ditch cost extra for the tolls, if they’re up and running. If you’re going outland, to the far southeastern Sierra, prices raise considerable.”

“I assume you’re driving a personal transport?”

“A bug. I presume you’d like us to run that souped-up princess ride outside.”

“Can you steward it, should we reach an accord?”

“I can drive anything on mag-plates or wheels.”

Jack gazed wistful at the gun on my side.

“Coach gun. A classic weapon, not usually in the hands of someone so young. You don’t carry auto as your primary?”

“Jams too much,” I mumbled.

“That they do. But a two trigger reload can be a rough task if surrounded by un-savories.”

“I manage. It’s not the only option at hand.”

“I can see that,” said Jack, noting the pistols on my back. “No plasma or pulse?”

I shrugged. “Sometimes. Energy beams and sonics are sloppy. I prefer more precision, if I have to draw at all.”

“As any good gunfighter should. Tell me, Miss Monday. Have you any schooling in the mechanics of gunnery?”

“Enough to get by,” I grunted.

“Then you’ll have no trouble telling me how plasma weapons came into being after the world fell into ruin,” he said, a smirk creeping across his chin under his handlebar mustache.

This guy.

I stared at him, irritated, wondering if the gig was worth his ‘tude.

“Boy, I hope your offer is worth this tit-for-tat, Lieutenant. I’m known to be cranky when people waste my time.”

“She’s not kidding about that, good sir,” Custer offered.

“We’re dickering,” Jack insisted.

I sighed. “It’s common knowledge House Li science rats perfected energy-based projectiles, maybe forty or fifty years back. Plasma weapons were created after they refined magnetic confinement chambers and tungsten inverters to stabilize fusion reactions. Pulse arsenal is based in ultraviolet, electromagnetic containment. Anything else? Maybe you’d like me to talk about the origins of gunpowder and saltpeter, while we’re at it. I’ve been to school, lieutenant. I don’t appreciate jumping through hoops. My job record is flawless. Shall we go over our ABC’s and 123’s next?”

“Ha! You’re ticking off most of my boxes, Miss Monday. A brawler and a brainer, no doubt key factors in how you’ve maximized your New Gen commodity. Hmm. I don’t think you were born in Tiwan. Your Asian genetics might imply an origin in Frisco, but you don’t carry yourself like an offspring of the paladin order, nor the mole rats of the Subterraneana. I have it! You were born in the slums outside the Citadel, lost your parents to some awful thing, and in the tradition of many high desert orphans, you’ve been working for Madison Cabot since you were old enough to put feet on pedals, an aspiring supplicant to the higher castes of House Cheyenne.”

“Nope,” I said. I wasn’t about to admit he’d gauged some of my background fair enough.

“Curse my star-crossed curiosity! Well, I can’t always be right. A good mystery is a fine traveling companion. Still, there’s mettle to be measured. Tell me, Custer, have you finalized the entertainment yet?”

Custer nodded. “I have found one willing taker, though I’ll need to see your coin up front, as will the contestants, if Monday here agrees to your terms. You understand we don’t allow fights to the death here.”

“Oh yes, of course, of course. A rousing victory and championed defeat will be more than enough to pass the time…if Miss Monday here is willing.”

“You really need me to fight? Is this absolutely necessary?”

“Call it a road test. So to speak.” he said, tittering.

Greaseball.

I frowned. I liked Viz. I didn’t want to rumble with him. I’d fought in the pit before for coin. It wasn’t something I enjoyed.

But I’d lost not once.

I was quick.

“What’s the offer?”

“I will pay you the same amount I offered the young man, twenty credits at any of the four cities’ commissary hubs, or a quarter-chit of gold in hand, your choice. If things go your way and I like what I see, I’ll add two ounces of gold to your contract for the completed journey, up the Sierra to an abandoned establishment north of the Lake in the Sky. Once I’ve conducted my business, we’ll head over to the Citadel, and you can catch a return ride back here to pick up your bug.”

Two ounces of gold coin was good money for one job.

“The lake is closed to outsiders,” I said.

“Of course, we’re not going direct to Washoe, but a point north of there. I am a special envoy contracted to rendezvous with a privatized group of merchants, and that’s where they chose to meet. I’m hauling an animal, a particular thread of livestock, and some minor ordnance.”

“I’ll need to see the receipts,” I said.

He reached into a satchel beneath the table and produced a voucher from Tiwan’s stable master. I skimmed it. The animal in question was registered in House Arroyo’s agricultural archive of genetic true-breeding, though the bill of sale failed to identify the exact species.

“If it’s mutie, I’m not driving it,” I said.

“As I said, it is threaded stock.”

“You can’t make the trek yourself? It’s a nice rig with lots of bells and whistles. If you know the way, why bother with a driver?”

“I can drive it. I need extra eyes and an able body, should anything occur unanticipated, preferably a gunfighter such as yourself, most especially while braving the hostile barrens of the old capitol. What say you?”

“Who do you work for?” I asked.

“That is not something I can discuss out of pocket and it’s uncommon for couriers to ask, is it not?”

“I’m an uncommon courier,” I said.

“My usual duties involve administrating the penal colony of New Angeles. Lieutenant Commander Jack Crackers, at your service,” he said.

Lieutenant Crackers, if he wasn’t exaggerating, was basically the warden of the Ditch. I knew little about the command structure at the New Angeles prison facility. ‘Facility’ was one way to put it. Another was ‘gulag of no return.’ Still another might be ‘cataclysmic remains of the former Los Angeles basin, teeming with feral scree herds and gravitational anomalies, not to mention thousands of exiles and insane outlanders waiting to die from any number of excruciating deaths.’

The Darkheart was bad, but the Ditch was doom itself, a hundred square clicks of cratered expanse, stretching from the southern tip of the Sierra to the badlands above Tiwan. House Gammon decreed the massive area a dumping ground for their biosphere’s waste disposal, as well as what they deemed to be impure or criminal aspects of humanity. They walled off the entire region with guard towers, thirty-foot-high electrified fences fortified with motion sensors, auto-pulse artillery, and razor wire. Roving, weaponized automatons patrolled the expanse, randomly dispensing indiscriminate, frontier justice.

‘Screes’ were what folks in the four cities called the packs of devolved humans, scions of the original peoples most directly affected by worldshift. They were near-mindless, mutated or mutilated, consuming anything and everything. The arcana of worldshift had, in an instant, transformed their ancestors some hundred years prior. I never felt too bad about having to put screes down during my travels. I figured if they were able to abstract their condition, they would be only too happy to receive the mercy. I knew I would. Theirs was a miserable, revolting existence.

Worldshift had done a number on the human race. Bard estimated the remaining corners of humanity in our part of the world, which hadn’t devolved or perished outright, numbered just over a million, most inhabiting one of the four cities, a small number in Washoe and Half Moon, and scattered fringe sects among eastern Sierra settlements. To his estimates, San Francisco’s iron city in the northwest, the geosphere of New Angeles in the Red Desert, and House Arroyo’s anarchic port in the coastal southwest each had residencies of around two hundred thousand, give or take. In the northeast, the Citadel’s gated suburb around the central tower hosted about fifty thousand, but its outer commons hosted four to five times that many, all of them dwelling in shanty towns and squatter camps.

One million left, from a fallen nation-state’s supposed high of 400 million, and perhaps two or three times that number wandering the greater continent, descended from those mutated by the necromantic holocaust.

It was too much to comprehend.

I mostly didn’t.

I played the cards I was dealt. In my time. In my space. Like I had a choice.

“I guess that makes you head janitor of the landfill, yeah?” I said.

“Much more than that, Miss Monday.”

“Side-gigging shocktrooper?”

“Hardly. I execute deserters on sight. My professional expertise is occasionally required outside the walls. I’m, well…a jack of many trades,” he said, chortling.

I didn’t like to work with hustlers if I could avoid it. Still, coin called. I was headed past the lake anyway. It would be a minor dust-up with Viz. He was capable, but slow. I found most opponents, on the whole, slower than myself. I had no idea whether it was natural prowess, arcane augmentation, or if it was because I wasn’t easily distracted. Probably a combination of the three. As a courier, it paid to be fast. I was a slick draw. Some few might have said among the quickest. I didn’t care about rankings. I was still standing. I pulled my twin-barreled coach gun faster than most could a pistol.

It was all in my opponent’s eyes.

Always the eyes.

I was razzed a fair amount about my primary. Most people used pulse or plasma weaponry across the outlands. Those who still used ballistics usually preferred auto. My coach gun was a simple, two-trigger job. One night, Bard took it to a forge out back in his saloon’s barn, where he plated its barrels and inner mechanisms of alum-steel in a molten mix of his own design, giving their dark metal a reddish, coppery sheen. That was when he tagged the silly nickname for my gun, citing an old-world, sugary snack as inspiration, though he claimed the sweet in question was yellow rather than red.

I didn’t understand nostalgia. Bard said it was because I hadn’t lived long enough yet to garner any. I found the idea of pining for yesterday a waste of energy. The past held too much power over people. Its repercussions were easily found in the Darkheart, or the Ditch, or within the refugee camps of the Citadel.

If the twinkie didn’t cut the mustard, and it almost always did, I usually carried ballistic backups. If those didn’t suffice, my vehicle’s countermeasures also drove off threats. On the handful of rare occasions where my firepower failed to avert pending danger? Arcana offered a final deterrent. I learned much of what I knew at an early age, before I met Bard. Eventually, he taught me how to refine my control, and I accepted it as a last resort, better than none at all.

Bard often regaled me in how the return of magicks was so important, that it wasn’t as much a homecoming as it was an overdue evolutionary step forward, one the second age of humans had somehow bypassed. According to him, the manipulation of energy and matter through the exertion of thought was a regular practice in the earlier eras of humankind, and with the rise of the industrial revolution, the species had skipped a needed step up the ladder.

The catastrophe which destroyed the world had imbued a scarce selection of materials and parts of the natural world with magicks. It had also kick-started certain genetic acuity in Bard and myself. Bard thought the worldshift event had torn open a dimensional rift, resulting in what he called a spatial convergence, where the planet itself had become a meta-way point, certain regions of the earth no longer confined to linear time, some few areas a strange amalgam of eras past, present, and future. He believed that was how items and weapons of arcana, books and scrolls and literature on the nature and methodology of arcana, had manifested from elsewhere about the outlands, presumably the entire world…whatever was left of it. He became a collector of such apocrypha, and paid handsome to junkers and salvage merchants who hunted down magical bric-a-brac.

He also said, with what I thought was undue certainty, there were others in the outlands who were capable of spell craft.

I had yet to come across anyone else possessing arcana.

I was sixteen years old, give or take. My exact birth day and year were unknown to me. My arcane disposition became apparent around age seven, when I started unwittingly shaping little dirt gremlins out of mud, via only my thoughts, in the ‘Del’s slum alleyways. Only my trio of mentors knew of my special talents, other than a limited contingent of unfortunates who’d been on their receiving ends. Rare as it was, having the ability to wield arcana wouldn’t buy much at House Cheyenne’s mercantile, or the holo emporiums in Tiwan, and it meant less than nothing in both New Angeles and San Francisco, where practicing sorcery of any kind was forbidden. Magic didn’t put food on my plate. Across the outlands, my New Gen resistance to radiation was a far more useful trait than magicks.

“I’m sure you are,” I muttered to Jack.

“How about it? I’m beginning to think my stop here was fortuitous.” Jack said.

“Let’s cut the jimmy jam. I’d like to hit the road tonight, if it’s the same to you.”

“You mean, if you win,” Jack teased, his beady eyes twinkling.

I stared at him, sardonic. “I’ll win.”

“Excellent. We will depart as soon as I determine your, ahem, viability. Master Custer, shall we proceed?”

“Let us retire to the stables. I shall retrieve young Viz, then.” Custer replied, and hurried off to find him.  

I made my way to the bar, where Bard cleaned glasses behind the counter.

“You agreed to fight. I’d hoped he’d hire you straightaway.”

“He wants a tryout. S’ok, it’s a dry season. And I’m on my way back to the ‘Del anyway. No biggie. He’s a con. He’s got an angle. You’re losing your touch.”

I looked above him at my reflection, shimmering across the surface of Bard’s sword. My duster cloak was tattered and frayed at its caped ends. It had seen better days. My long, black hair was natty. Its thick, golden streak glowed orange under lantern light.

Sometimes folks who didn’t know me called me skunky.

I usually let it slide.

Usually.  

 “Am I? Perhaps I wanted to test your skills in marking beasts for what they are, rather than what they want you to see.” Bard said.

“Ugh. No schooling today, please. I’m tired.”

“School is always in session, whether I’m instructor of the day or not. There are a number of people already gathering alms for the wagering. I must stay and tend bar, so I wish you a fair contest.”

“Copy that,” I replied.

© 2024 Frank Bard. All rights reserved.