Ain't Talkin'

The Emporium was a good ways west, just in the direction the walker had to go. Two days saw him that far, shifting in and out of the white as he went, passing through the nothing between worlds and walking along it’s edge the way one might tread through the surf along the coast.

Midway between the town of Parmiskus and the Emporium, the walker, Roche, stopped for the evening. He’d shot a jackrabbit not an hour past, and he made a small fire. The rodent skinned easily, and he skewered it on a stick and held the body over the flames listening to the timid pockets of fat crackle and hiss over the flames.

Roche thought while the jackrabbit cooked, and poked through the Corporation soldiers address book.

Terra 2, western passage, via New San, December 13th, bring him in alive, constructs.

Roche was sure of at least those messages scrawled in the little book, even through the soldiers atrocious handwriting.

Terra 2.

That was a notion. When the brightest minds in the world before the catastrophe had fucked everything up and opened the world to the white between planes they’d managed at least to chart the worlds they’d opened to. This world, the one Roche cooked his supper in, the world that had fucked it all up, was christened Terra 1, the first earth, the world where the catastrophe originated. Ground zero.

Terra 2 meant that the soldiers who’d captured Alex Markus were making for a passage into the white that would take them from Terra 1 to the second world the white opened up to. A whole ’nother earth, a whole ’nother wasted planet.

Nearest and only passage to Terra 2 was west, straight west to New San Fran. Roche had been there dozens of times over the years. The years and the years and the years.

Going that far and going through the white that deeply meant he’d have to outfit himself better, as a hunter and as a walker.

Fortunately, Jex and his Emporium were right on the way.

The jackrabbit’s thigh popped and blistered, the muscle curled just a little tighter and had gone black at the edges. It dripped. Roche pulled the critter from the fire and peeled off a length of sinew with gloved fingertips.

Gamey, but alright.

The walker couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten.

Bourbon and cigarettes were one thing, but they just held his mind together at the seams. After as long as he’d spent in the space between worlds, the hunter found that his body needed less and less food. The world and it’s rules just didn’t apply in the white, in the ether, and it was just so.

Same reason he’d forgotten how old he was, because after so long, when your face don’t crease with lines anymore and your bones never start aching and going arthritic and even the hair on your head and face seems to never get any longer a walker just stops caring. What was age anyway?

When the world swung on by in leaps and bounds further and further into disrepair and your body didn’t move along with it well. . .

Wasn’t the point, though was it.

Roche took another sprig of meat from the jackrabbit and chewed it.

Gamey, but alright.

In the west a series of old oil rigs silhouetted themselves in shades of rust and somewhere a coyote yipped and hollered.

The fire wasn’t much but it was warm against the closing chill of the night.

Roche shut his eyes and let the white creep into the corners of his vision in pin spots and fireworks of eyestrain.

Terra 2 and a trip to New San Fran to bring back a boy who’d gone awry of the Ethercorp. Not a bad way to pass the time.