Take the All-Mart!

CHAPTER 3: THE CITY-STATE BOOZE BUILT





Throwing up twin trails of dust behind her, the Wound tore down a hard-packed dirt road winding through sickly barley fields toward the squat and ugly city-state of Shunk.

Ringed by a wall of junked cars filled with concrete and piled four high, Shunk was built around a decrepit, ancient brewery, smokestacks half falling over but still billowing thick, black smoke. The four-story tall twin rows of six grain silos — the tallest structures in the city-state — proudly proclaimed, in crudely painted lettering, the beer’s slogan:

MORTY’S FINEST: IT’LL GET YOU GOOD AND DRUNK!

Seeing this, Rudy giggled in anticipation. Trip just groaned.

The road ended at the city-state’s main gate, a rough gap in the wall of junked cars two cars wide. The gate itself was a flimsy two-by-four wood frame held together by sheets of chicken wire haphazardly stapled to it. At the side of the gate, a town guard sat on a rusty beer keg, chin on chest asleep, a Kalashnikov on his lap and a dozen empty plastic gallon milk jugs around his feet. A kid that couldn’t have been older than ten stood next to him. Unkempt and dirty, the kid looked bored out of his mind, even with the Uzi slung under his arm. Disinterested, the kid watched as the Wound slowed to a stop in front of the gate.

The kid elbowed the adult in the shoulder. “Time for work, Dad.”

The adult came awake with a startled growl, and before his eyes were fully open, his hands found the Kalashnikov, cocking it and aiming it at the kid. The kid rolled his eyes, gently pushed the barrel aside to point at the Wound instead. The adult guard’s eyes followed the barrel, looked down it at a smirking Trip.

“Howdy,” Trip said, tapping cigarette ash out the window.

The guard grunted, gave his kid a dirty look, and got to his feet. He unsteadily stepped up to the Wound, keeping the Kalashnikov aimed at the bridge of Trip’s nose. “Business?” he asked, his words slurred. His breath stank of hops and ethanol.

Trip gave him a practiced, charming half-mouth crooked smile. “Emptying your city vault in the dead of night,” he said, earning a jab from Rudy’s elbow.

The guard just stood there, body slowly wavering from side to side, squinting at Trip like he was trying to decide if he’d really heard what he thought he’d heard. While he pondered, he snapped his fingers back at the kid. The kid reached behind the keg and grabbed a milk jug half-filled with frothy amber beer. He took a long swig for himself, then handed the jug to the adult.

Keeping the Kalashnikov pointed at Trip, the guard slugged down a good portion of the beer, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and scowled. “Pretty stupid to tell me that, isn’t it?”

“I’ve got a good attorney.” Trip thumbed at Rudy.

Rudy leaned in and gave the guard a friendly two-fingered salute. “I mostly specialize in maritime law, but I have been known to do some pro-bono criminal defense work from time to time.”

The guard squinted and laughed, lowering the Kalashnikov. “Pair of jokers, eh?” He jogged his head back at the kid. “Open the gate, Kevin.”

The kid walked over to the gate and mounted a tire-less, rusted ten-speed, kept upright between blocks of concrete. The bike’s chain was connected to a complex pulley system. As the kid pedaled, the gate rose.

“All right,” the guard told Trip, waving at the gate with the beer jug, “go on with you. But no shooting kids or raping animals — we ain’t barbarians here.”

“We’ll try to remember that,” Trip said, twitching to have the Wound ease forward through the gap.





“You know, call me crazy, but I think that guard was drunk,” Trip said, the Wound making its slow way down Shunk’s mostly deserted cracked asphalt main drag.

“Lucky bastard.” Rudy idly picked fuzz out of his belly button with his thumb. “He probably gets paid in beer.”

Trip hit the brakes and laid on the horn as an old woman in a shawl and sequined halter top stumbled into the Wound’s path. She shot Trip a viscously dirty gap-toothed glare and the finger before walking on, taking another swig from the milk jug of beer grasped tight in her wizened, arthritic hand. “Towns that let their guards be drunk on duty don’t ever have anything worth guarding. I don’t know why I let you talk me into this.”

Rudy looked up, pulled his t-shirt-shirt down. “It’s just that kind of town. A party town. At least they’ve got somebody at the front gate. That’s a good sign.”

Trip got the Wound moving again. “Bet their rifles weren’t even loaded.”

“There’s money here.” Rudy sniffed his thumb and shrugged. “I can smell it.”

“What you’re smelling ain’t money.” Trip pointed his cigarette out at the shacks lining the drag. They were built out of whatever could be salvaged after the decades of chaos that had made the wasteland the Wasteland: Irregular chunks of salvaged plasterboard and sheetrock, rusted, dinged-up corrugated iron sheets, and banged-up car trunks and hoods, with cell phone cases used as decorative mosaic roof tiles. Nothing new, nothing fitting together correctly. “Look at this place. It’s like it isn’t even in the same country as Cali. Or even Jersey. It’s a mess. A good nuking would improve it. It looks like a bunch of drunken idiots built it.”

Rudy shrugged, smiling. “They probably did.”

“They’re not gonna have anything worth the trouble. We should cut our losses — we leave now, go full tilt, don’t run into any more trouble on the road, we can still make Jersey by nightfall.”

“We’re here. We might as well scope out the place. And at the very least... sample the local wares.”

“So, what do you think is gonna kill you first? Your liver crapping out or an OD?”

“OD, if I have anything to say about it...” Rudy’s voice trailed off as the main drag emptied out into the city-state’s central square. His eyes lit up. “Thank you, karma.”

The square was alive with activity, focused around a junk-sculpture fountain, dry and overgrown with weeds, and the dozen vendor stalls surrounding it. Beer vendors. Crowds milled around the stalls, most of them double-fisting jugs and mugs of beer, and lined up for more.

Trip eased the Wound to the side of the square and twitched her into park. “Just great. I’m never gonna be able to drag you out of this town, am I?”

“No,” Rudy said, reaching for the door latch, “no you are not.”

Trip watched Rudy get out of the car, then shook his head, reaching up behind his ear to yank the patch cord from its socket with a SNICK. He let it go and it retracted back into the dash then leaned forward, groping under his seat to grab his .85 caliber three-shot elephant revolver in its fast-draw holder before getting out of the Wound himself.

Strapping the holster on over his narrow hips, Trip walked around the front of the Wound to join Rudy, staring through the milling, rowdy crowd at the stalls and already salivating.

“Want me to make a hole for you?” Trip slapped the holster’s massive, polished-to-gleaming “Big Rig” belt buckle shut. “Haven’t shot anything since dinner last night. I’m getting itchy.”

“No need,” Rudy said. “This is obviously paradise.”

“Huh?”

“In paradise, they bring the beer to you.” Rudy nodded towards a smiling 13 year old redhead in Lederhosen adroitly skipping their way through the crowd, an overflowing mug of beer in each hand.

“Welcome to Shunk, strangers,” she said with a broad, welcoming smile, holding the mugs out at them. “I’m Brenda. May I offer you a complimentary beer, courtesy of Stan’s Beer Stand, home of the best double-fried cockroach sandwiches you’ll ever bite in to?”

“Why yes, yes you may,” Rudy said, taking a mug with both hands.

Trip shook his head. “No thanks. Never drink the stuff.” He thumbed at Rudy. “Softens the mind. But the cooling system could use a top-off. How about we throw it in the radiator?”

“Okey dokey, then, sir!”

“Philistine!” Rudy yelped, grabbing the second mug from out of the girl’s hand before she had a chance to pull it away. He gulped the first one down, then started in on the second, his eyes darting back and forth, worried someone was going to steal it from him while he drank.

Trip sighed, embarrassed for Rudy. “So, kid... Where’s the outhouse that passes for a bank around here? We’ve got some valuables we’d like to keep safe while we’re here.”

Brenda stared up at him with bright blue eyes. “Bank? I don’t think we have a bank...”

“Of course you don’t.” Trip scowled at Rudy. “Last time I let your addictions pick a target. Finish that — we’re going to Jersey.”

Brenda continued, “...we just keep all the money and stuff in the warehouse.”

“Warehouse?” Trip and Rudy asked simultaneously.

Brenda pointed past the fountain in the direction of the brewery and its smoke-billowing stacks. “Yep. The beer warehouse.”

Rudy leaned closer to Trip, lowered his voice. “Sounds to me like we could pull another Reno here.”

“Don’t get your hopes up.” Trip smiled down at Brenda. “So, they ever let people park in this warehouse?”





“You see anything that could possibly be a vault?” Trip asked as a worker with a mohawk and tribal-tattoos, wearing grimy coveralls, guided the Wound to the empty center of the warehouse.

“That could be it in the back there,” Rudy said, pointing with his nose over the lip of his new favorite thing in the world: Brenda had let him keep a beer mug. And given him a milk-gallon full of beer to go with it. Free.

Trip squinted into the dark recesses, past a group of workers rolling kegs up onto a hand-truck. “Maybe. Looks small.”

“The door looks small,” Rudy conceded, refilling the mug from the milk-jug. There were maybe two pints left. “But who knows how big it is inside? Could be huge.”

Mohawk-and-tattoo held up both hands for them to stop. Trip twitched the Wound into park, then activated the Wound’s standby defense mode with a cock of his eyebrow as he un-jacked. “And probably empty except for a beer recipe and a jar of rusty nails.”

“Rusty nails?” Rudy asked.

“Secret ingredient,” Trip smirked, getting out of the Wound.

Rudy snorted, finished off the mug, and got out himself — leaving the mug on the dash but taking the milk-jug with him. “I’m telling you, I’ve got a good feeling about this. We lucked out already — we saved days of casing the joint. The hard part’s done. We’re already in.”

“Yeah, we’ll see.” Trip walked around to the back of the Wound, wrapping a knuckle on the trunk twice as he passed. “Oh-one-hundred,” he said to the trunk.

“Affirm,” came back a muffled, synthesized voice from inside the trunk.

Mohawk-and-tattoo walked up to them. According to the hand-drawn scrawl on the coverall’s left breast, his name was Shemp. “Well, there you go. Anytime you need your car back, just ring the loading bay buzzer — What was that?” he asked, staring curiously at the trunk.

“What was what?” Trip took a hand-rolled cigarette out of the ancient Altoids tin he kept them in and lit it with his dented, lidless old Zippo.

Shemp looked at him, then Rudy. “Sounded like you got someone in your trunk.”

“That’s... just the fuel cell,” Rudy offered.

Trip shot him an exasperated glare, mouthing W-T-F?

“A talking fuel cell?” Shemp asked, incredulous.

Rudy nodded weakly and took a slug from the jug, avoiding eye contact.

Trip cleared his throat. “Yeah. It’s a... voice response system. So it can tell you how much charge it has, how much it’s leaching from the power plant, and all that. Way better than gauges. Who can read ‘em anyway?”

“Seriously?” Shemp asked.

“They’re all the rage up north.”

“That where you guys are from?”

“No.”

“We don’t got nothing like that here. Can I see?” Shemp reached out to touch the trunk. His fingers got maybe two inches away from the armor-scale skin of the Wound before a forked bolt of static discharge leaped up and stabbed at his fingertips. He screeched, pulled his hand back.

“Yeah,” Trip said, “she doesn’t like strangers touching her.”

“You could’a warned me.” Shemp sucked his stinging fingertips.

Trip shrugged a half-hearted apology, knocked on the trunk. “Say hello, fuel cell.”

“Hello,” said the synthesized voice. “I am apparently a fuel cell now.”

Trip thumped the trunk with his palm. “Never mind it. It’s programmed to think it has a sense of humor.”

“What’s your excuse?” the trunk asked.

“Well, I’ll be.” Shemp leaned in and raised his voice. “Hello, there, uh, fuel cell. It’s very nice to meet you.”

“Pleasure’s all mine.”

Shemp chuckled. “Damn, that’s cool.”

“Anyway,” Trip said, “I was just telling it when to power up the engine to recharge itself.”

Shemp gave him a troubled look. “That’s not gonna fill this place with exhaust fumes, is it?”

“What, you working then?” Trip asked, exhaling smoke at Shemp’s face.

“No.” Shemp coughed and fanned the smoke away with his hand. “Nobody is.”

Trip smirked. “Then I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“We don’t need fumes getting into the beer.”

Rudy stepped in. “What he means is, the car’s got an outgas reclamation recycler. It feeds the fumes back into the cooling system. It’s a closed system. No leaks.”

“Oh, okay,” Shemp said, mollified.

“You said nobody’s here at night?” Trip asked. “Nice they give you guys a break. How long that break happen to last?”

“Second shift starts at three, ends at ten. First shift doesn’t come on ‘till eight in the morning. Sometimes later. Depends on how much they drank the night before. Most times, it’s later,” Shemp added with a chuckle.

“No third shift?”

“Hell no. Nobody would work it if there was. Ten’s about the time the serious drinking starts.”

“And you wouldn’t want to miss that.”

“Who would?” Shemp asked.

“I know I wouldn’t.” Rudy held up his nearly empty milk jug and pointed it at a nearby tapped keg. “Think I can get a refill on this?”

“Yeah, no problem.” Shemp headed towards the keg, gesturing for them to follow. “Getting thirsty myself.”

Behind his back, Trip and Rudy exchanged glances, Trip encouraging Rudy to keep the questions going with an exaggerated flick of his eyebrows.

Rudy handed Shemp the milk-jug. “So, it’s just the guards in here at night, then?”

“No guards,” Shemp said, holding the jug under the spout and turning on the tap.

“No guards at all?” Rudy asked.

“Guards need to drink, too.” Shemp spilled more beer over his hand and the outside of the jug than he was getting in it. He didn’t seem to care. “Anyway, the locks on the doors all work.”

Rudy scratched his soul-patch. “All this beer, our car, that vault in the back — that’s the town’s vault, right? What’s watching it all? Making sure it’s safe?”

“Nobody in town would steal the beer — we all get it for free. The vault, it’s got a lock, a real nice one too. Morty had it ordered in special all the way from New South Maryland. And your car — well, hell, it doesn’t seem like it needs guarding, does it?”

“Still,” Trip said, “we worry.”

Shemp grinned. “Don’t. There’s ol’ Willie.”

“Willie?” Trip asked. “Thought you said no one was here at night...”

Shemp turned off the tap, pointed with the half-filled milk jug at the ceiling and the double-barreled machine gun turret hanging right above the parked Wound. Rudy let out an appreciative whistle and took the jug.

Trip smirked. “That’s Willie?”

“Yep,” Shemp said with pride. “I helped build him. ‘Lectronics is sort of a hobby. Ain’t he a beauty?”

“Yeah, he’s quite the looker.” Trip walked back towards the Wound, sizing up the gun. “Automated?”

“Totally.” Shemp dried his hands on a rag hanging out of his back pocket and stepped up next to Trip. “End of shift, we lock up the warehouse, switch Willie on with this —” he touched a small brown plastic box with a single button on it hanging from his belt “— from outside, and we go off to get good and wasted while he keeps an eye on things. He’ll shoot anything that moves — well, anything rat-sized or bigger.”

“So, it actually works, then?”

“The guys on morning shift are always finding rats Willie shot up, the lucky bastards.”

Rudy stepped up between them, gulping down beer from the jug. “Free breakfast.”

Shemp smiled. “You said it.”

Trip casually eased over to the trunk. “You hear that, fuel cell? You’ll have someone to keep you company tonight. A nice, friendly, motion-sensing robo-gun.”

“I would look forward to making its acquaintance if only I had a...” the voice in the trunk prompted.

Trip sized up the box on Shemp’s belt. “Radio command interface. Non-mil civilian. Looks homemade.”

Shemp smiled and nodded. “It’s just an old garage door opener I found and jiggered.”

“A garage door opener?” Rudy asked. “How’d you lay the signal encryption in? Cell-phone chip?”

“Encryption?” Shemp asked. “It’s a toggle. On. Off. I just wired in a battery. I don’t know that fancy stuff.”

Trip gave Shemp a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Never mind. Security’s over-rated, anyway.”