Ain't Talkin'

By that evening Roche could smell civilization. Carson City would likely be over the next rise.

In the years immediately following the catastrophe the world had been alive with war.

Governments collapsed and sprang back up like weeds. On Terra 1, the United States and the Russian Government had gone into nuclear fisticuffs over the western edges of the North American continent. Seattle, Vancouver and Portland were the first to fall. When Canadian militia stood up to Russian soldiers crossing the Bering Strait there were quickly cut down. When the American military retaliated by launching nuclear strikes on their own soil the entire government collapsed under the weight of the people’s retaliation. Civil War erupted simultaneously with an international bomb exchange. America went by the wayside and all that was left were walled cities and border towns that still flew the Stars and Stripes or the Union Jack. They claimed to be American still, but all they were truly doing was surviving.

The less-than-major cities that fell to the post-catastrophe chaos fell to looting, to gang warfare, to rioting and to roving bands of territorial militias who stood for nothing but themselves. Carson City was one such.

Lucky crested a knoll of dust and debris, made almost entirely of heaped old cars that had rusted to a solid mass and been buried in the exhalations of the Mojave. Roche caught his first glimpse of Carson City in many years, and the damn husk hadn’t changed a lick.

The city had been composed of low brick buildings, the outskirts filled with factory outlets and commercial housing while the interior maintained an air of quiet dignity. All of that was gone now. Buildings that hadn’t at some point in the last two hundred years been put to the torch had glassless windows like hollow eyes and doors that were nothing short of dark holes that led nowhere. The businesses had all been picked clean a century ago and all that was left were brick hulls filled with filthy shelving and broken seating. The streets were graveyards populated by rusted cars and any bodies that accumulated were quickly swallowed up by the sun and sand and buzzards.

Roche tipped his hat back but stood his lapels up against his neck as he rode into the city, lighting a cigarette.

Somewhere off to the northern end of the city he’d seen a couple plumes of dark smoke from tire fires, the kind that burned for weeks and stank to high hell. He smelled shit, too. The city wasn’t empty, it just looked like something out of a bad dream.

Lucky’s hooves rocked on the pavement with an even gait that rang off of the empty bricks. Roche wove the mare through the cars that dotted the road and kept one hand on his revolver while the other neck reined the horse.

In a far away window Roche saw a figure move. It had been skinny and brown, and it had moved quickly. He woahed the horse.

The sun was approaching it’s peak in the sky and the clouds above were puffy and gray at the corners. There was plenty of light and Roche took a quiet look at his surroundings.

He’d made no point of entering the city carefully, deciding instead to ride in with his head on a swivel and let whoever came come.

At his left someone stepped on broken glass.

A coyote darted out of a storefront and broke across a gap in the street.

Roche puffed on his cigarette.

“Hey, mister.” Whispered something.

Roche turned to the sound of the voice. An old, no not old, just unwashed and haggard, woman bent out from behind a rusted truck up on old cinderblocks that had crack through with time. Her hair had become dreadlocked with time and oil and filth and fell across her face. Her hands were gloved and she’d wrapped a blanket about her shoulders despite the heat.

“Mister!” She said more insistently, and when she spoke Roche could count how many teeth she was missing by the few she had left.

Roche responded only by wheeling Lucky in her direction slightly, he kept wary eyes over his shoulders, watching for attackers.

“Mister!”

“Yeah. What?” Roche pulled on his smoke, gloved fingers on his revolver’s trigger in his pocket.

“Gotta smoke, mister?” The hag in a blanket smiled a brown-gummed grin as she asked, showing the whites of her eyes which were decidedly yellow.

“Nope.” Roche dragged again.

“You do, you sure do.” She pointed at the smoke in the corner of Roche’s mouth with a gnarled, knuckly finger.

“I do if you have something for me.” Roche held up his tobacco pouch and a loop of rolling papers.

“Ain’t got nothin’, mister. Nothin’.”

“You might. Seen any motorbikes come through here recently?” Roche held the tobacco and the papers a mote higher.

The hag’s eyes shifted left and right quickly, thinking. “Ain’t not, mister. No bikes or nothin’, mister.”

“Now I know you’re lying.” Roche went to store his tobacco back in his jacket.

“Wait!” The hag stepped out from behind the car completely and Roche could see that she was holding a snubnose revolver in one shaky hand.

Roche drew his gun faster than the woman could have reacted and had her dead to rites. “Don’t do it, bitch.”

The hag’s eyes went so wide they threatened to pop right out of her gaunt sockets, her hand shook the revolver noisily. “I-”

“Motorbikes. When? Where?” Roche clicked the hammer on his revolver for effect.

The snubnose pistol clattered to the ground when the hag dropped it and fell to her knees. “I dunno, mister. They came through.” She was sobbing openly, the tears streaking the muck off of her skinny cheeks. “Today or this morning, maybe yesterday. I been sleepin’, the pills, mister, they make me sleep somethin’ awful an’ I just wanted a smoke.” She wiped her face with the back of her sleeve and stuck a finger between her gums like a toddler.

“Fine then.” Roche kept the revolver’s barrel staring between her eyes and flicked a wisp of tobacco onto the pavement and let a single paper flutter off of the loop. He spun his mount up the street and walked on, hoping for a better answer further down.

“Mister!” She called after him. “I ain’t got a light!”

“Tire fire north of here, try not to burn yourself.” Roche spat over his shoulder, Lucky moved to a trot. More eyes in edged windows followed the walker on his bay mare as he pressed deeper into the corpse of Carson City.