Moonlit Retribution

Chapter Twenty-Seven

You know how after the world’s most insane party where you’ve just spent the entire evening getting hopelessly trashed and/or stoned, you wake up and have absolutely no recollection of your nightly misfortunes and fuck ups? When little so-and-so has to inform you that you spent two hours rambling about Freddy Krueger in your sleep, and a warrant’s out for your arrest after you stole two police cars, spray painted a couple obscenities on the elementary school playground, and stripped in front of the local Denny’s?

Yeah, you know what I’m talking about.

For whatever reason, I don’t get that reprieve. When Mella shakes me awake with a half-hearted threat of bodily harm, everything I said to Ríjez last night slams into my prefrontal cortex. I feel like curling into a ball and bawling my eyes out. But, of course, we’re on a very tight schedule (new moon coming in less than 25 days, companions most likely becoming cannibalistic zombies on that night, etc.), so I reluctantly peel myself off the unforgiving metal floor. I wince when I initially apply pressure to my sliced ankle, but it eventually fades away to a dull throb that is easily ignored.

After a quick session of joint-popping that fills the chamber with sounds reminiscent of those white popper things that you throw at the ground around the Fourth of July, the three of us feel around the vault for our weapons, packs, and whatever clothing we may have stupidly taken off during the night. We head out in silence.

The town doesn’t seem very different in the milky daytime light. Still empty, still eerily quiet, and still appearing as if raided by a bunch of psychotic Vikings. As per usual, I have no idea what to do next.

Luckily, I don’t have to. Ríjez, shouldering his gun, marches toward what could have been a pharmacy or a butcher‘s shop. Yeah, those seem like total opposites. I can’t tell what the hell it is because the windows are blackened by what seems to be soot and the sign is nowhere to be seen.

Mella looks at me questioningly, eyebrow cocked. I shrug; whatever Ríjez’s agenda is, I’m not privy to it. I play with the idea of going in with him, but I know that Mella won’t follow me and will leave herself completely open to attack. Flicking the safety off on my gun, I stand my ground and patiently wait for my Mexican comrade.

Unfortunately, it appears the Mexican comrade doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. He exits the first building, not even sparing Mella and me a glance, and heads down the small row of other businesses.

“Uh, dude,” I call out tentatively, still feeling a bit awkward with addressing him. “You looking for something in particular?”

He halts in his tracks, as if just realizing that there was another person in the vicinity. From my vantage point, his eyes seem glazed and unfocused, and I guess that my actions last night made it difficult for him to sleep. He scowls lightly and says, “A map.”

This baffles me for about a millisecond until it dawns on me that we may need to know where to find a desert that may have one of those curing space rocks. Ríjez doesn’t necessarily know about that particular agenda, but it still makes me realize that a map would be helpful.

So, we spend much of the day scouring the many buildings of what we come to call Town. Yes, just Town. Then there’s Diner, Whore House/Motel, Bars One through Four, Residences One though Twenty-Seven, and a myriad of other blandly named buildings. Obviously we aren’t wasting precious brain cells on creativity--we’re saving them for more important things, like remembering to mark the places that we already searched.

The afternoon rolls by and turns up nothing useful but a few blankets and some books that we could use as fire starters. Nothing good, really. No food, no bottled water, no first aid kits or stocked medicine cabinets. Nada. Okay, so it’s not like I was planning on finding an entire pantry filled with perfectly preserved canned goods or anything, but that’s what my stomach had been counting on. I had to let it down gently with some sort of stale bread product that Mella fished out of her gigantic pack.