Day 6939

Bridger’s History Book

We could see the yard from a long way off, no signs of activity or guards along the perimeter so we continued. Our truck, ‘THUNDERHEAD’ as it was known, is not quiet, so if there was anyone home, they’d hear us approaching. The muffler and tailpipe had been gone for ages, the noise meant to inspire fear and awe in our enemies.

There was another truck out front near the entrance to the yard, its frame was in an advanced state of decay, eaten alive by rust. We stopped and everyone piled out, weapons at the ready, eyes on. I placed my bare hand on the hood of the rusted junker to feel for warmth, but it was cool to the touch. Three Finger checked the cab for weapons, empty.

Everyone knew their jobs, and I had the disperse.

Three Finger was to looks for stray tools, guzzoline and supplies in the shambling vehicles in the yard. She had keen eyes and was naturally good at spotting things of value mashed in the dirt.

Otto the Younger and Enkidu were the keep eyes on the horizon to ensure that no one interrupted us. Otto took to the roof of the truck and Enkidu climbed onto the top of a little shed near the entrance of the yard.

Adept and I were to look for trucks like our ‘Thunderhead’, similar make and model, so we could scavenge spare parts. We were on the lookout for a Chevy C-10, manufactured around ‘77. Adept carried her bow and I carried the tool box.

Winter was approaching rapidly and the blower motor on the old truck’s heater was about crapped out. It made the most horrible noise and barely blew anymore. If we could find a replacement it would ease the cold months for all of us.

Day 1095

The tell from the Original History Book

With resources scarce, the world continues to try to exist as if nothing has happened, attempting to maintain the status quo. Essential services and utilities break down, the great machines grind to a halt. Bridger joins a group of refugees driven from the city by violent gangs struggling for dominance. The city’s power grid finally gives out for good. Communication breaks down. The refugees are forced into the outskirts of the area known as the Wasteland. The refugees take up residence in the hills and scrape by on the dregs of the old world. Natural leaders begin to rise to power over the various refugee clans. Supplies and food run preciously low, starvation and illness run rampant through the refugee camps. One clan of hill refugees comes to be lead by an older man known as the Silver Man.

The Silver Man and Bridger are part of a desperate supply run back toward the destroyed city to get food for the starving hill camps. They discover that the remains of the city have been walled off and is patrolled by the gangs that now control it. Bridger recalls that their were trucks full of Dinki-Di canned pet food left at the old cannery docks. Their group makes a raid of the abandoned plant and takes three large trucks full of Dinki-Di products.

They return to find the hill camps empty and evidence of violence everywhere. Tire tracks, empty ammunition shells. The survivors gather what they can and stash two of the larger trucks of food in some nearby caves for safe keeping. They take the remaining truck full of food and vehicles and drive along the outskirts and hills of the Wasteland in search of any sort of refuge or civilization.

The Silver Man clan (which has come to be known as the ‘Farlanders’) begins to barter and trade their stock of Dinki-Di with those they encounter in their travels for valuable goods and services. Weapons, armor, vehicle upgrades, guzzoline. The Farlanders become well known traders in the canned food that seems to never go bad. The Farlanders begin to paint their fingertips with silver paint to make them easily recognizable to those in search of trade.

Day 6680

-Adept Remembers

Always look for the smoke.  Eyes made sure that was deeply ground into my mind during my growing years.  Where there was smoke, usually there was something to find.  Sometimes it was danger, but we were clever and avoided that.  When it was wreckage, we knew we were in business.  If you knew how to make, or change, you could find a pile of success. 

When I was on my own, all but once it saved my life and kept me going, following the smoke. I guess that one time, if you look at it another ways, it still saved my life.  In some way everything has such a roundabout way in this world, if it ent direct like living and death. 

The hardest part was clothes. I never hoarded anything so much in my life as clothes. When the Farlanders ended up with me, they found I could cut and sew, make new out of old.  Maybe that's why they kept me. I was so used to it, it never seemed like anything special. I knew it since as far back as I can remember.  All I can remember from my first life. 

But always I look for smoke.  Bridger knows it too, anyone who survives out here for long has figured that out.  

It wasn't long ago, maybe 43 days back, Bridger and I followed some.  It was big, and black. It had been a very recent incident, was my guess. We followed the tracks, keeping to lower ground to not be seen.  The car was a complete mess - couldn’t tell what it even was.  It was torn to pieces.  Whoever it was who drove it we couldn’t tell either what they were.  The body was pinned to the front, like they had been dragged out and put there purposely. Eight crossbow bolts held the body, which was cut all over with symbols, the face mangled and burned mostly. 

“Do you know those markings?” Bridger asked me.  I didn’t know, so I said nothing.  I shrugged and in my way responded with “five gallons of guzzoline” as I pulled the crossbow bolts off of the car, wiping off the gore. I can use, and make new. We pulled everything of use we could carry. Especially anything we could fix, or change to work, and anything off the body we could make new. Whoever it was had a matching pair of gloves. Invaluable currency. They were mostly whole. 

When we finished we left it all as was, no use lingering.  Someone else was going to see the smoke and be along soon too.  No use getting wrapped up in an awkward situation.  We drove back in silence, I kept the gloves close to me, clutched in my pocket.  Best thing I had found in a while.  Haven’t found another since. 

Day 2212

- Adept Remembers

Her name was Margo. Everyone there called her Eyes, she had the best pair it was said. At 11 I swore she was older than the earth itself. I must have added ten years to that in the time I knew them by my many questions. She could tell me stories of the old world, when she was little and there was something to tell about. More than sand and dirt, and people made of stone, or metal.

I called her Na. I had one, I can pull the memories back on quiet nights if the air smells just right. She wasn’t as old as Eyes.

She said I was a clever thing. I never told her my real name. I told her I was called Adept. She asked if I knew what that meant - I told her what my mother told me. It means I was good at everything. Na laughed, ‘good enough’ she said. She put my youthful energy to use, and taught me the most important thing I could have ever learned. I learned how to shoot. Not a gun - everyone shot those, Na reminded me, and they ate resources that couldn’t be made or found easy. I learned how to shoot a bow.

I practiced for hours. I never lost a single one of the arrows. She showed me how to make them from old scraps found in the waste. She showed me how to do it from the motorbike. She showed me how to ride that too, even though I was too little yet to do much. I got good at it. I was able to help.  I wasn’t perfect. I’m still not perfect. But always good enough to do what I need to.

Old Eyes. She always made sure I had before she did. She always defended my position in the gang. She always reminded them that there was nothing out there in the waste for a little girl like me.

Na was the first to go when the bleeding sickness came. I buried her myself. I was 13, and my world already felt like it came to an end. She was just the first of a line of a family I can rightly remember that I buried. 

Day 5480

Bridger’s History Book

The old van still serves us, it offers us shelter in the rear cargo area and precious shade. We take turns on the roof with the binoculars, keeping watch for vehicles. Near midday, a sand cloud appeared in the distance, the tell-tale sign of an approaching vehicle, maybe more than one.

Everyone got low on the rocks so we could see and not be seen by whoever might approach.

We could hear the powerful engines before they were in range, motorcycles, five of them. From the armour and the markings, they were Legion members. They never knew we were there as they passed.

They disappeared into the distance in a dust cloud thrown up by their fast moving bikes.

“That was a patrol.” Three Finger said as she stood up from her place on the rocks.

“Acceptable.” Adept agreed, “Nightrider on the Highway.”

“They might be an advance party for another group,” I suggested, “maybe even a Legion convoy.”

Day 5478

Bridger’s History Book

We pulled the battered van off the road once it turned dark beneath our tires. Adept was the first to examine the dark sand, bow in hand.

“This is a convoy road.” she said, crouched there by the blackened path. Heavily travelled paths tended to turn black from wear, exhaust and the fluids of hundreds of leaky engines.

“Acceptable.” replied Three Finger, “But where to?”

I, atop the van with my binoculars, looked into the distance, unable to espy anything but sand on the horizon, “Unknown. But this is Legion turf, so it’s very likely theirs.”

Below, the Dutch is elbows deep in the poor old van’s smoking engine. We had been nursing her along for months, just making due.

When asked how the old engine was doing, the Dutch looked up at me and shook his head, “The chief, his eyes closed, face against the wheel.”

I rounded everyone up and we pushed the van farther off the road and behind an outcropping of rocks where she wouldn’t be spotted by passers by. We’d keep a lookout on the convoy road to see who passed and how often. If they were friends, maybe we could hitch a ride to the next settlement, if it were an enemy we would have to make other arrangements.

Day 5112

Bridger’s History Book

355 days of imprisonment.

You could feel it in the air, the guards were more tense than usual, more eager to punish the slower workers, something was happening. I kept a watchful eye to the frontier of our quarry prison and to the High Nocturne’s throne room that overlooked it.

At midday, the number of guards in the quarry had doubled. Those that weren’t directly supervising us stood in small groups making conversation and looking about expectantly. Their weapons cradled in their arms or resting over shoulders.

“The Driver, his windscreen filled with sand.” Three Finger exclaimed in Wasteland speak as she pointed with one of those fingers to herself.

The High Nocturne was a very persuasive and charismatic leader and would regularly step out onto his balcony to address the members of the cult over a jury-rigged public address system. Looking up again, the Nocturne was nowhere to be seen.

Before sunset, there was a great noise of engines as the quarry frontier was opened and two large trucks with cages on the rear that were used for the transport of slaves backed in. They were immediately followed by the Nocturne’s own personal armored war-rod. It was a custom, high riding hot-rod built for battle and bred to intimidate. It was flanked on either side by armed cult members. 

The matte black war-rod stopped and the engines were shut off. When the dust cleared, the High Nocturne was seen atop his vehicle in his full ceremonial garb as the cult’s high priest.

The slaves stopped working and turned toward this new sight, and the guards didn’t discourage it. The Nocturne had never descended into the quarry before, and the fact that nearly every Spider cult member was present, had to mean something grave was about to happen.

The Nocturne raised his hands to the sky in a religious gesture and spoke, “Today you will serve the cult of the Spider in a capacity that will bring you honor in your afterlife. I have come among you to select those that will be sacrificed to the gods in order to secure our victory in the coming war against those that would attempt to defile the sanctity of our domain!” 

Panic began to set in among the slaves. The rumors of the cult’s practice of human sacrifice were rampant and imaginative. 

“Those four there!” the Nocturne’s leather clad finger stabbed the air in the direction of four slaves who had been captured from the Legion gang.

“We begin with the defilers themselves! No army, no legion can stand against the might of the Cult of the Spider!”

The four Legion members were too weak to fight the guards as they were dragged toward the cage trucks. Were we to assume that the Cult of the Spider was about to go to war against the Legion? If that were the case, things were about to get ugly fast. Legion had a reputation as one of the biggest, baddest motorized armies in the Wasteland.

“The Driver, his windscreen clear.” I whispered to Three Finger.

“Officer Four-Oh-Seven-Three.” she gasped in reply.

“The tanks, full of sand.” Zag muttered in defeat, his eyes downcast.

The Nocturne continued, “Their blood alone will not be enough to ensure our victory, we must offer a STRONG sacrifice to the gods in order to secure a victory against the defilers, for they are many.”

He looked over the slaves and began to point out those he intended to use for sacrifice, and they all shared a singular trait, they were the strongest slaves in the quarry. The guards began to move forward to gather up those who had been selected, their weapons at the ready.

In the confusion, I had failed to notice that four of the guards were headed right for me their pikes drawn. Three Finger’s eyes grew wild when she spotted them on their approach.

They were on me before I could even brace for it. Those selected by the Nocturne were being moved into a line in the sand and were shown off to the remaining slaves. We were a sorry display, thin, ragged, tired, half-starved.

“Let these stand as an example of our commitment to the gods and our commitment to carrying out their work in the Wasteland. Their innards will be spread on the altar of the temple as an offering and their flesh consumed to make our armies strong for the coming conflagration. Those that would defile our ways will know the wrath of the…”

The Nocturne paused unexpectedly and all eyes turned in anticipation of his next words. But it was one of the nearby guards that gave the first hint that something was wrong, his eyes widened in disbelief.

We all turned, and there atop his war-rod, the High Nocturne stood frozen in shock, an arrow had pierced his neck. The blood bubbled at this throat as he attempted to speak. Before the guards could react, another arrow pierced the Nocturne’s side. He pivoted on his heel and clawed upward toward the balcony of his throne room and that was when we spotted her.

Standing on the rail of the balcony was the nearly naked concubine called Adept, a long bow in her hand. She strung another arrow while the guards gathered their wits and let it fly, lancing the Nocturne in the torso again. That final arrow was the death blow and the High Nocturne fell onto the roof of his war-rod.

Adept vanished off of the balcony as the slaves took the opportunity to rise up against the guards in their confusion.