Weary Traveler
Chapter 4

Mitch pushed against the bullet-dented, steel door at the back of Jefe’s office and emerged onto a deserted street. Broken lights flickered at front gates of permanent squatter settlements. Lonely light posts flashed and reflected off of the wet shine gleaming off of the pulverized road.

There was a rusted, red pickup truck with an empty flatbed parked against the curb. Silver duct tape held the tailgate door to the warped frame. Its metal twisted like it had been dipped in scalding flames and then welded together. The two side doors were missing and the front window panel was knocked out, leaving the driver and passengers vulnerable to the elements.

Mitch cycled through a deep breath, shuffled up to the driver-side, and slid onto the cracked, vinyl seat. Chunks of discolored, yellow-green foam erupted from the chair like a pack of mechanical coyotes tore through the gas-guzzling vehicle. A relic of the past, teleported through the halls of time, trapped like a fossil in the present. An extinct combustion beast chugging through the city, forced to fend for itself among packs of synthetic hyenas roaming the streets of Rosenfell in autonomous, electric cars.

He placed the tommy gun on the passenger seat, held up the mangled car key, and then searched around the truck’s center console and dashboard for the keyhole. Discovered a thin slit encircled within a black circle just to the right of the steering wheel. He ran his fingers over the hole, stuck the key into the slot, twisted. The gas engine ignited, revved. The exhaust choked and spit gray plumes of toxic fumes into the air to join its polluted family above.

“Let’s roll!” Mitch shouted, driving his right foot through the pedal. The engine revved, revved like it was about to explode, but the truck didn’t budge.

He poked his head out of the side door, looked left, right, searched for one of those metal boots on the tires. Nothing appeared through the thick exhaust fumes shooting out from the tailpipe, enveloping the dark street within a smoke screen.

He leaned back in his chair, scratched his head.

“Shit…” he grumbled.

He stared out of the windowless front panel. Then closed his eyelids and searched the garbage bin of his mind for any memory of driving a car. He uncovered faint recollections of the few times he tried to hot-wire abandoned junkers or boost ones with the keys in the ignition, only to crash into buildings in a drunken stupor.

“Ah ha!” he shouted. He pressed buttons on the dashboard, turned knobs, and flicked switches. The truck’s headlights illuminated the shadows of the alley, reflected off of the mud that covered the disintegrated street and burned through the fog swirling through the air.

“Wait, wait…” he said, peering downwards, “I remember…”

His eyes settled on a snapped pole coming out of the truck’s floor bed. He grabbed the top of it, tried to pull it towards him. It didn’t budge. Then he brought his left hand across his body, leaned back, and pulled. Nothing.

A primal yell exploded into the sky as Mitch rattled the stick with his right hand, shook the steering wheel with his left, and stomped his right foot into the gas pedal, jolting the engine to life.

“Whoa!” he screamed, wide eyes bulging from the sockets of his pale face. They continued to expand as the truck shot across the road and grated up a soot-painted brick wall, filling the street with a clattering clash of crunched metal.

Mitch looked over his right shoulder, then his left. No sign of Jefe or the mercenaries. He stared at the stick, made a motion to put the truck in reverse.

“Fuck it.”

He turned the wheel all the way to the left and stomped on the gas. The front bumper scraped against the brick as the front right tire lifted off of the ground and rolled across the wall, turning the truck sideways so that Mitch leaned out of the door frame. His cheeks puffed with heavy breaths. Beating heart pumped fiery blood through his veins, igniting his limbs.

A dense thud and squeaking gears interrupted the crunching metal once all four wheels touched solid ground, launching the truck forward. Mitch swung the wheel left, then right, whipping the truck’s tail, tires screeching and spewing plumes of burnt rubber. He eased up on the gas and allowed the vehicle’s momentum to steady itself along a straight path down the middle of the street.

“Too easy,” he said, flinging his hands against the wheel, turning the truck right. Prodding the conspicuous gas-burner through the dreary, residential plot of the Pearl District.

The truck’s yellow beams reflected off of rundown shops and lifeless homes sprayed with fluorescent graffiti like a nomad’s neon, street museum. Rubber tires rolling beneath the lustrous glow of the augmented, tele-projectors and hologram advertisements broadcasting the latest and greatest tech, bonzos, and weapons straight from Rotech and CorpoMax.

Booze brains and tweaked-out bonzo freaks bumbled around the depressing streets. Products of systemic inequality spanning eras. Dozens of generations conditioned to accept the inevitable disease and destruction of society for the benefit of the wealthy few, to the detriment of the poverty-stricken many. Forever lost and meandering aimlessly. No purpose… No life… Their hungry hands grabbing handfuls of the meaningless emptiness.

The invisible potion of suffering melted away by the bonzos dropped down their throats, shot through their veins, injected into their minds for an angry fix to tame their pain… soothe their aching sorrow. That instant pleasure of dopamine exploding within their brains. Distracting their consciousness while corpos imprisoned their minds in a cage of technological filth.

A penitentiary of people. Free to drain the life force from their souls as long as they do not attempt to interfere with the class structure. That wicked, culturally ascribed system of control intended to enslave the masses and convince them of their powerless power. Degrade and demoralize them. Rob their life as unique individuals. Slice them open and fill them with buckets of endless dread and hopelessness. Sealing them up with a frail bandaid of advanced tech. Fooling them with emotionless feelings of freedom.

Freedom… freedom…

Freedom by way of constant surveillance.

Freedom beneath the steel fist and iron boot of the corpo state. Lurking. Waiting. Masked by the shadows of Rosenfell. Veiled by the smoke and ceaseless streams of smog spewing from grates and pipes growing from the ground like sacrificial totems for the spirits. Rotech spitting their poison to choke the throats and fill the lungs of the nomads. Distracted by a technology not their own. By the hidden hands and watchful eyes of the evil few. Bums… too high and drunk and lost to notice.

Mitch eased up on the gas and stepped on the brake to slow the truck’s roll, keeping it from wandering onto Synapse Circle, the main road that encircled the perimeter of Rosenfell. A boundary sequestering it from the badlands.

Autonomous, electric cars hummed along a fixed path, mixed with a rare, combustion engine, gas burner, rattling down the highway according to the driver’s own will.

He leaned forward and peeked out of the windowless front panel. Floating phosphorescent towers and holographic billboards lined the entire highway, stretching from the dirty, grimy, grunge of the lower levels up to the clouds wafting overhead. Each one plastered with moving images of every nomads’ favorite bottle of booze or bonzo. The newest, high-grade piece of technology to distract their simple minds for another day and prevent them from rebellion against their secret rulers beneath the surface of the city or locked in their compound across the river.

Mitch studied the traffic zipping by in a blur like missiles on wheels, squeezing the steering wheel so tight that his dirty knuckles turned white. He rocked back and forth in his chair, sending a series of croaks and groans, creaks and snaps through the truck’s rusted frame. His mind waited for an opening in the endless stream of white headlights on the left heading eastbound. Holding… hesitating…

And then, he stomped on the gas. The truck launched onto the highway, almost clipping an electric cruiser constructed from carbon and fiberglass.

Mitch’s waterless eyes widened, revealing the wide, outer rim of bulging whites cracked with blood vessels. A grime-traced smile spread within his gaping mouth as the cabin of the truck filled with a hysterical laugh. It exploded from his lungs and burst out of the windowless front frame, puncturing the sound barrier like an evil genius conducting a wicked experiment on the effects of adrenaline on the mind of a bonzo beast.

The veins on the back of his hands were like synthetic vines wrapped around the steering wheel. Perspiration squeezed out from the sides of his strangling grip, coated the wheel with a film of cold sweat.

He reached the center of the highway, eased up on the acceleration enough to examine the traffic on the right flowing westbound. His focused mind filled with the raucous roar of traffic from every direction. A persistent whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of passing cars bounced around his skull. Bashed his brain.

He stomped on the gas, foot pressed all the way to the floorboard. The engine rattled the truck, shook its metallic frame, transferring vibrating jolts rippling through his frail bones.

He peeked out of the corner of his right eye. A hundred headlights closed in, joined together to create a single bulb of burning luminescence like an electric circus raced across the earth.

The highway offramp approached. A slight downgrade that rolled onto a vast patch of baked dirt into the scorched fury of the badlands.

Mitch roared, leaned over the steering wheel in a feeble effort to nudge the clunker forward faster.

A symphony of horns attacked him.

He winced, tensed his body for impact as his front tires touched the traffic safety line, back tires still dangled on the black and yellow paint of the highway’s danger zone.

A warped horn punched him, followed by the impact of crunching aluminum and shattered glass.

The truck whipped in a tight spiral, tires skidding across the dirt, painting streaks of black and energizing puffs of brown dust, bouncing to a stop facing the desolate road that led to the CorpoMax bonzo warehouse. Plumes of burnt rubber wafted up from the ground, climbed to join the rest of the noxious fumes whipping through the radioactive wasteland.

Mitch hyperventilated, sucking in the throat-swelling stench of hot tires. His bulging eyes, bone white like snappers stimulated his optical nerve.

“Haha! Fuck yeah!” he shouted, smashing the wheel and belting the horn.

He leaned across the passenger seat and looked over his right shoulder. The back, right side of the truck curved inwards. Bent, rusted metal looked like it had been dropped into a corpo industrial shredder.

Mitch faced forward and took his foot off of the brake, rolled. The back tire scraped against the crumpled fender, forcing the entire truck to hiccup.

The wide road on this side of the highway was bare, empty, lifeless, nearly soundless except for the blaring siren and flashing red and blue lights reflecting off of the dirt-smudged, rearview mirror.

“Shit!” Mitch shouted, fighting the wheel.

He glanced at the open road, placed his foot over the gas. Then peeked at the rearview mirror, hovered over the brake. Switched back to the gas, pressed down. The truck jolted forward, slowed by its dented frame.

“Fuck it,” he said. He eased up on the accelerator and rolled to a stop on the right side of the road, managed to put the truck into park and turn off the engine.

The officer parked his car close enough to Mitch’s truck that the headlights burned through the metal and seeped into his skin. Beads of filthy, bonzo-saturated sweat dripped down his face. Sore hands gripped the steering wheel. Heavy legs braced against the floor to keep his body from shaking.

The police car’s door swung open. Out stepped a burly creature wearing a skintight, black jumpsuit with a tactical helmet, an augmented face shield, and excessive knee and elbow pads. He stomped across the crunchy gravel and stopped at the driver-side door, leaned down, glared at Mitch.

“Ahem, what seems to be the problem, officer?” Mitch asked in the tone of a bum aristocrat. He peeked at the cop from the side of his eye.

“Where in the hell are you headed in such a damn hurry?”

Mitch gulped.

“Just taking Big Bertha here on a nice stroll through the city,” he said, patting the dashboard.

The officer’s eyes scanned the vehicle’s interior, homed in on the floor bed beneath the passenger seat. His thick, black brows lifted towards the lip of his helmet, eyes glared deep into Mitch’s, then flicked back to the floorboard.

“Yours?”

Mitch followed the officer’s stare, discovered the tommy gun. A jolt of adrenaline fired through his central nervous system, making it difficult to enunciate, so he chuckled until he found the right words.

“Yes, sir,” Mitch mumbled, rubbing the beads of sweat on his forehead. “Keep it for protection when I travel out into the badlands.”

“Do that often?”

“Usually keep it in my safe. The one at my house. For protection from-”

“Stop,” the officer said. “I don’t give a shit. I asked if you travel to the badlands often.”

“Oh,” Mitch said, facing forward, adjusting his position on the seat. “I guess you could say not that often.”

“And what do you say?”

Mitch turned his head to the left, stared into the officer’s dirt-brown eyes.

“Not that often.”

The officer clamped his lips into a straight line, nodded.

“Protection, huh?” he said. “Haven’t seen an antique like that in a long time. Probably worth a good amount of credits in the market these days.”

“Maybe, officer. I wouldn’t know. Don’t mess with that stuff.”

“Don’t mess with it, huh?” the officer said, clucking his tongue and shaking his head from side to side. “So you wouldn’t mind if I took it off your hands, then?”

Mitch chuckled, glanced at the officer’s expressionless face.

“Well, you see, officer, that there weapon keeps me safe when I drive out here. Lotsa crazies looking to cause harm, as you probably know.”

The officer’s mouth clenched, lower jaw jabbed outwards. He nodded.

“Very well. We will just have to leave Big Bertha here so you can ride with me down to the station. Fill out an accident report. Wouldn’t want you fleeing the scene of a crime now, would we?”

“That won’t be necessary, officer.”

The cop howled exaggerated laughter.

“Well, well, would you look at this. The criminal is giving me orders.”

“It’s not like that, sir.”

“So, what’s it gonna be?” the officer asked, placing his right hand over a bundle of electric ZipString on his hip.

Mitch swallowed the sticky spit stuck in his swollen throat, tilted his eyes downwards. Then he reached across the truck and snatched the tommy gun from off of the floor, stared at it, handed it to the officer.

“Yeah, I thought so,” the officer said. “Hold on. I think I got something for your troubles.”

He about-faced and marched away with Jefe’s gun. Mitch watched through the rearview mirror as the officer placed the vintage weapon in the trunk and returned with something in his hands.

“For your, protection,” he said, handing Mitch a baggie of silver pellets and a slingshot.

“What the fuck is this?”

“What did you just say?” the officer asked, leaning through the door frame so that his face shield touched Mitch’s forehead. Fiery heat emanated off of his body like an overworked furnace.

“I mean, thanks for this valuable weapon, officer,” Mitch said.

“Thought so,” the officer said. He turned and marched back to his car. “You know,” he yelled over his shoulder, “you could have waited for the traffic signal. Would have saved you a lot of trouble.”

Mitch turned over his left shoulder and leaned out of the driver-side door, looked up. There, hanging above the highway, was a long pole with a set of lights attached to its end. The green one at the top shined bright and traffic on both sides of the highway had stopped, leaving an empty road all the way into downtown.

“Goddammit…”