<\/p>\n
Mason Selano was a driver.\u00a0 It\u2019s what he used to do, back when the world was crumbling.\u00a0 Now he moved supplies down from the mountain outpost and kept the whining maggots in the city alive.\u00a0 That was the worst part about the apocalypse \u2013 all the soft-bellied, spineless wage slaves grouping together, never learning a thing.\u00a0 Mason would have preferred to be alone, but that just wasn\u2019t an option.\u00a0 They were a people under siege.\u00a0 It would have been better if everyone had died, leaving him to wander the Earth.\u00a0 That was a recurring dream he was having before things got ugly.\u00a0 But no such luck in this new world.\u00a0 Once in the community, these maggots wouldn\u2019t stand a loner.\u00a0 They\u2019d think he was turning into a Walker, or cooking up some other nefarious plan like those kids back in 14 who blew up the water tower.\u00a0 They were hung from the smoking ruins.\u00a0 Amazing what maggots could do when they freaked out.\u00a0 He hung at the bar most nights, keeping to himself but at least he was in the public eye.\u00a0 Let them know your eyes aren\u2019t clouded and you aren\u2019t building bombs in your sink and they\u2019ll leave a man pretty much alone.\u00a0 Pretty much.<\/p>\n
His heart sank when he saw two of the black suited Council guards outside the door of his four bedroom house.\u00a0 He walked past them without an acknowledgement.\u00a0 What the fuck, right?\u00a0 Let them shoot him in the back.<\/p>\n
Inside, sitting in his favorite chair, was the grey haired Councilor Anderson.\u00a0 He smiled and nodded at the Republic\u2019s glorious leader.<\/p>\n
\u201cNice place Mr. Selano.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI put the original owner in a bag, carted her away to the fire pit.\u201d Mason replied grimly, crossing to the glass bar on wheels that he had found in the upstairs bedroom.\u00a0 It was stocked with all the top shelf stuff, probably a few grand worth of booze sitting on the three frail shelves.\u00a0 That was one good thing about the apocalypse \u2013 every man was a king.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d Anderson said, \u201cThose were difficult days.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGot a house out of it.\u201d Mason said, pouring himself three fingers of scotch.\u00a0 \u201cBefore the migration, I was living in an apartment half as big as this living room.\u00a0 I could piss, make toast and answer the door without getting out of bed.\u201d<\/p>\n
He sat down in a chair facing Anderson.\u00a0 \u201cI didn\u2019t vote for you, Councilor, so I can\u2019t imagine why you\u2019d be in my house.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anderson nodded, smiled, then raised his stupid, bushy eyebrows, \u201cWe need you, Selano.\u00a0 We need you to make a run to the Pacific Union.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mason shrugged, \u201cYou have your boys, why do you need me?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEighteen months ago, our doctors developed a cure for lorimiasis.\u00a0 We\u2019ve been producing it since and, now, we have sufficient quantity to distribute amongst our own people and the people of the Pacific Union.\u00a0 We intend to launch a coordinated offensive with the Union to cure the Walkers in the wilderness.\u00a0 We\u2019ve already taken out a healthy chunk of the Northern camp.\u00a0 We\u2019ve reclaimed nearly 300 people and they are currently being brought back to health, both physically and mentally, in a forward position outside Cheyenne.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mason took a drink of the scotch.\u00a0 That\u2019s about all he could think of doing at that moment.\u00a0 Anderson\u2019s words rattled breathlessly in his head.\u00a0 \u201cReclaimed?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re alive.\u00a0 They\u2019re Human again.\u00a0 After years of running around out there, they\u2019re in pretty bad shape\u2026and, thankfully, they have no memory since they were first infected.\u00a0 But they\u2019re alive.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy God,\u201d<\/p>\n
Anderson nodded, \u201cIt\u2019s the new world, Selano.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mason felt like shouting out.\u00a0 Jesus, he hated these people.\u00a0 He hated the old world\u2026 Now a cure could bring it all back and he felt like dancing and singing.\u00a0 No more Walkers, no more fascist pockets of paranoia, no more running scared.\u00a0 Still, though, there was a catch, right?\u00a0 Oh, yes, there always was.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still don\u2019t see why you need me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anderson\u2019s smile faded, his bushy brows knitted down around his little piggy eyes, \u201cThe Walkers are tightening their grip.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes\u2026?\u201d\u00a0 That wasn\u2019t news.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re gearing up to destroy us.\u00a0 Their first job is to cut off communication between the Pacific Union and ourselves.\u00a0 Last month, they took the\u00a0 junction down at Albuquerque.\u00a0 Wiped out everyone in the community down there. They surprised us on the monthly run three weeks ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYour men.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anderson nodded sadly.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo with your drivers gone, you\u2019ve come to me.\u00a0 Why?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause you\u2019re a sociopath, Mr. Selano.\u00a0 You have serious issues, and a fierce determination to stand by them.\u00a0 You\u2019re also a racer, and a criminal.\u00a0 You know how to shoot, kick, scratch and speed your way out of any situation.\u00a0 You were an outlaw on the highways a decade ago.\u00a0 Can you name anyone else in the Republic better suited to evade the Walkers and get the shipment through?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone here is a spineless egghead, Anderson.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s right, Selano.\u00a0 We\u2019re lacking the criminal element.\u00a0 The deviant minds.\u00a0 In these times, that\u2019s a disadvantage.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re asking me to go on a suicide mission to California\u2026to save the world?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTell me, Selano, how long do you think we can last?\u00a0 They cut off I-70 to Utah, they\u2019ve closed in from Wyoming and Kansas and now they hold Albuquerque.\u00a0 How long until they\u2019re outside your door?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSoon enough, I suppose.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Walkers don\u2019t care if they take down a former wage slave or a low grade rebel like yourself.\u00a0 You and I are equal in their eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mason finished his scotch.\u00a0 He stared at the bottom of the glass for a few, long minutes.\u00a0 There was nothing particularly on his mind, except for the thoughts of adventure.\u00a0 Finally, something to break up the day.\u00a0 Get him off of the mountain supply run.\u00a0 Hell, get him away from paranoid central.\u00a0 And, of course, the bastard was right.\u00a0 There really wasn\u2019t much of a future.<\/p>\n
He looked up at Anderson, \u201cDo you want a drink, old man?\u201d<\/p>\n
* * * *<\/p>\n
Selano sat in the truck and glared at the hanger doors.\u00a0 In this old airport hanger, it still felt like the old world.\u00a0 A bottle of rum was under the seat, the world inside was musty and hot.\u00a0 Out there, it was spring paradise.\u00a0 You wouldn\u2019t think that Humanity was under siege by hordes of mindless cannibals.\u00a0 As a quaint homage of the past world and, perhaps, the world to come, the truck was equipped with satellite guidance and a fancy computer that had about 20 hours worth of music packed up into it.\u00a0 Selano had told Anderson to stack it up with music from the 90\u2019s and the first few years of the 21st C.\u00a0 Just like he\u2019d do on a cross country haul.\u00a0 Just like normal.\u00a0 Of course, you didn\u2019t have to go far to lose track of the real world.\u00a0 The quarters behind him were packed full of supplies and weaponry.\u00a0 He\u2019d be using those guns, too.\u00a0 The Walkers weren\u2019t mindless zombies like in those goddamned movies, they meant business.<\/p>\n
He turned on the GPS and watched the display as it told him to hang tight.\u00a0 All those satellites were still up there.\u00a0 There were people still up there, too.\u00a0 A space shuttle and whoever was on the space station, orbiting forever.\u00a0 Or maybe they had tried to come down and were out there somewhere, running their own little colonies.\u00a0 Or their bones were decorating a Walker warlord\u2019s cave.\u00a0 He found himself lost in the thoughts of those spacemen.\u00a0 He\u2019d like to go up and see them.\u00a0 See what they wrote and said right before they died.<\/p>\n
Or maybe there was a cure up there, as well.\u00a0 They were working on it when things went into the spiral.<\/p>\n
But the Republic would have heard from other people if they were out there.\u00a0 Like DC and LA.\u00a0 And now DC had been quiet and nobody had returned from the cross country run to let them know what was going on.\u00a0 Anderson even sent a plane out there.\u00a0 They lost contact while flying over Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
The passenger door opened and the Indian Isaac Tallhorse climbed into the cab.\u00a0 Selano was chewing on the nail of his small finger and he glanced sideways at the big Indian.\u00a0 The other man grunted hello and closed the door.<\/p>\n
Anderson had assigned him a partner.\u00a0 That\u2019s what he was waiting on.\u00a0 This was too much, though.\u00a0 \u201cWhat, you\u2019re riding with me?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYep,\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re a Councilor.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a suicide mission.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one else has survived.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen you need the best you can get.\u201d<\/p>\n
Selano wasn\u2019t going to push it.\u00a0 What did it matter anyway if a Councilor bit the big one on the way west?\u00a0 Hell, this was Mankind\u2019s twilight.\u00a0 Selano could see the big Indian wanting to die like a man instead of with a huddling group of politicians.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Maybe the big Indian was the only other person around who wasn\u2019t a cowering sapsucker pining for their old office cubical.\u00a0 He\u2019d buy that answer.\u00a0 What a waste, though.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight,\u201d Isaac said, \u201cLet\u2019s role.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHi-ho, Chief.\u201d\u00a0 He pulled the horn and the guards standing around the hanger doors rolled them open.\u00a0 Selano took the truck out onto the tarmac, with a full cargo of drugs rattling behind him, and weaved around town, picking up I-25 south.<\/p>\n
The GPS found its mother satellite and the route was displayed on a cheery map.\u00a0 Selano cranked up the stereo and really leaned into it.\u00a0 With all the supply runs to the Pacific Union, the interstates had long ago been cleared.\u00a0 The hulks of cars, five years dead, lay rotting along the shoulder all the way to LA.\u00a0 Everyone fled the cities in the end, so the Interstates were a mess.\u00a0 But while the Walkers pulled together into tribes, the human survivors spent their time being industrious.\u00a0 Back then, when the bodies were fresh and the roads were blocked, there were many more survivors.\u00a0 There was a community in Louisiana, another up in Cheyenne that, eventually, became part of the Republic.\u00a0 The East Coast was strong as hell, too.\u00a0 They had people from Albany to Atlanta and really did a job cleaning up the Walkers and linking everybody back up.\u00a0 But, one by one, they fell to pieces.\u00a0 Mostly due to their own stupidity.\u00a0 Insane farmers wanting to be president, fighting each other and, as groups broke off from the main society, they were encircled and devoured.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t rest lightly in Selano\u2019s mind that his mission could bring together the Pacific Union and the embattled Republic and, finally, after three years of falling back, put the Walkers on the run.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou gonna be able to handle this, Selano?\u201d the Indian asked after about an hour of silence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u00a0 The drive?\u00a0 Yeah.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a new world in the back of this truck, Selano.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201dWe\u2019re saving spineless conformists everywhere,\u201d Selano said out of the corner of his mouth, \u201cMake the world safe to be filled up again.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want to make sure this hating people nonsense won\u2019t get in the way of the mission.\u201d<\/p>\n
Selano shrugged, \u201cHey, chief, I\u2019m glad for the distraction.\u00a0 I hate these people, but you can be sure I hate the Walkers even more.\u00a0 Anyway, spending the rest of my life exterminating Walkers might be fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cExterminating?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah.\u00a0 If we can\u2019t dose them, we\u2019re blowing them up, right?\u00a0 Push them back, reclaim the world, et cetera et cetera.\u201d<\/p>\n
Isaac glared at him, \u201cThey\u2019re people, Selano.\u00a0 We\u2019re going to cure them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Selano laughed and patted the wheel, \u201cThat\u2019s wishful thinking, chief.\u00a0 Do you really think you can save them if a full tribe is bearing down on you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou ever see a person turn, Selano?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSee, me with the Walkers, I got this thing.\u00a0 Anytime a Walker or a potential Walker is around, I go away.\u00a0 I climb a tree.\u00a0 I hide under a rock.\u00a0 I climb a tree and hide under a rock.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen plenty change.\u00a0 I was with the cleanup in New York, 09.\u00a0 That was a mess, Selano.\u00a0 But now we can turn them back.\u00a0 Now we can give them their lives back.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou kids been doing this for a couple years, right?\u00a0 Bringing them back?\u201d<\/p>\n
Isaac shrugged.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow come I haven\u2019t seen any of the\u2026what does Anderson call them?\u00a0 \u2018Reclaimed Souls\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re in Cheyenne, recovering.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRecovering?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA few are fine\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the rest?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the rest have been dead for years, Selano.\u00a0 We\u2019re raising them.\u00a0 It takes some adjustment when the last thing you remember is from a year ago or, damn, there\u2019s a few who turned in 08.\u00a0 Their bodies are in terrible shape, too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[137,76],"class_list":["post-364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sunday-archive","tag-archives","tag-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":904,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions\/904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}