James A. Hunter
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Wasteland Warlords Episode 4: Chapter 3 - Shieldwall
🕑 Added 2023-08-12 17:00:06 +0000 UTCThe whole time they were packing up camp, Joe kept looking over his shoulder and sighing things like “Wonder what kind of horses she’s got,” “I’d love to have fifteen minutes with her,” and “Bet she’s an eighteen-speed.”
Finally, Clay just came out and told his brother, “You ought to go ask the Warlord if he’ll let you ride with him.”
The big rust junkie’s eyes lit up, then his face fell. “No, I’m the Jaeger squad’s designated driver.” He shook his head somberly. “A responsible DD never skips out on his duties, and I am nothing if not responsible.”
Clay judiciously set aside pointing out the lack of evidence for that last claim.
“Most designated drivers don’t have a backup driver. You do.” Clay pointed to himself. “Seriously, when are you gonna get a chance like this again?”
“Do you really mean it?”
“Of course.”
“Oh, you!” Joe yanked Clay into a hug. “I told those haters! I don’t care what anybody says about you, bro, you really do have a heart.”
Then he sprinted off to find the Warlord, an excitedly chittering mechacoon hot on his heels, leaving Clay wondering who exactly Joe had been talking to about him.
A minute later, a high-pitched squeal of delight echoed across the Sooq. PwnrBwner must’ve given Joe the go-ahead to ride with them.
Across the remains of the campfire, Griff glanced up, then somberly went back to trying to wake the sleeping Bacon Bits long enough to coax her into the back of the dune buggy.
Clay squeezed the last bit of air out of the tent he was folding. The old weed had been quieter than usual since they’d accepted the quest. Something was definitely weighing on his mind. With Joe fawning over the Winch Witch and Alex restocking their food for the trip, now seemed like as good a time as any to talk to Griff straight out, man to man.
He stuffed the tent into its bag. “Something bothering you about this quest?”
Griff took a long breath, then blew it out.
“Ella’s been gone a year now,” he said, slow and careful like a barefoot man picking his way across a floor covered in broken glass. “You go that long without any hope, lad, and it’s damn near scary to get some back.”
That was something Clay could understand. When things had looked darkest with Alex’s cancer, he’d felt like he’d been beat up one side of St. Louis and down the other, but it wasn’t until he started thinking there might actually be a chance again that he’d been truly afraid. Because no matter how good the chance was, there was always that what if playing in his head. What if I do everything right and lose her anyway? What if I start thinking we’re in the clear, and that’s when she dies?
Griff sat back on his heels. “Worst part is, I’m partly responsible for Cassidy, Rhett, and Lynes. Way back in yesteryear, they were some of the first settlers to come out this way. I helped ’em become the Incants they are today. They were better men then—least, I thought so. But power has a funny way of changing folk.”
“You couldn’t have known back then what they would do,” Clay said.
“There musta been signs,” the old weed said. “Mayhap I coulda stopped ’em if I’d just seen what they were becoming a little sooner. Or if I’d said the right thing, made the right arguments, I coulda stopped El from hanging out with ’em.”
“Speaking as the only one of the Jaeger squad who’s been a teenage girl before,” Alex said, dropping the bags of resupplies by the dune buggy, “there’s nothing you could’ve said to stop her from doing what she wanted, Griff.” She put an arm around the old man’s shoulders and squeezed. “We’re pretty stubborn at that age, but we still love our dads, even when we don’t listen to them.”
Griff patted Alex’s hand awkwardly, a small smile forming on his craggy face.
“We’re going to do whatever we can.” Clay wished he could promise something more certain, but for now, it was the best he could do. “If there’s anything to find, we’ll find it.”
“I appreciate it,” Griff said, his voice rough with emotion. He sniffed and dragged a hand across his nose. “Though for now, I’d be mighty grateful if one of you gave me a hand with her.” He nodded down at the snoring Greater Blue Wyrm. “She weighs quite a bit more than she did as a teacup pig.”
“No problem,” Alex said. She squatted down and dug her hands under Bacon Bits’s scaly side, then without waiting for Clay or Griff, she deadlifted the passed-out Wyrm that was twice her size into the back of the buggy.
She caught Clay smirking at her.
“If you say ‘Easy, Katotes,’ you’re next,” she said.
***
Half an hour later, packed up and resupplied, the Jaeger squad settled into the buggy, Clay in the driver’s seat, Alex riding shotgun where Chonk usually sat, and Griff in what was most often Clay’s gunner position.
Ahead of them, the Winch Witch’s brakes released with a hiss and screech, and their two-vehicle convoy pulled away from the Sooq. The Warlord’s abomination truck led the way through the destroyed streets of Santa Clarita, pushing abandoned vehicles and debris aside when the way was blocked and generally making an easy path for the dune buggy to follow.
The only places the Witch had trouble was where sinkholes had opened up, but for the most part the Dragonkin scouts the Warlord kept ahead of them were able to steer them around the affected streets.
Once, they hit a soft spot, and the crumbling asphalt tried to swallow the tow truck. Clay reversed the dune buggy far enough that it wouldn’t go down with the multi-ton monster, then he, Griff, and Alex hopped out to help the swarming Dragonkin. By then, however, Joe had already flown out of the cab in his mech suit and was busy attaching her winch to the sturdy steel frame of a nearby earthquake-proof building.
“Give her some juice,” he hollered to the driver as he jabbed a thumbs-up at the sky.
The winch squealed and started rolling, lifting her back side out of the quickly widening sinkhole.
“Now punch it!”
The driver, a scared-looking Dragonkin, whipped his head around nervously, trying to see in all directions at once.
The Witch started to slide.
“Ah man, we’re gonna lose her!” Joe shot back to the cab and pushed the driver over. “Scootch! Let a pro have a shot at this.”
The Witch’s gears ground and she rumbled out a protest, but Joe got the monster’s front wheels rolling. While the winch held her back end up over the widening underground maw, the tow truck inched forward on the little asphalt that remained.
Joe stuck his head out the window and hollered, “Clay, get ready to cut her loose!”
Not wasting a second, Clay broke into a run, his speed boosted by the Hatchling Naga’s Band of Quickstrike, and clambered up the steel frame to the hook point.
The Witch’s speed stepped up a notch, and suddenly her second axle was on solid ground.
“Now, Clay!” Joe yelled.
Clay released the cable.
In the cab, Joe gunned the engine. With a screech, the beast lunged forward, pulling the last of her weight out of the sinkhole and down the street, smashing cars and trucks out of her way.
Alex guided the dune buggy around the sinkhole on the sidewalk, and Clay hopped in. They made a second stop a little farther down the line to pick up Griff, then pulled up alongside the Witch.
“You shoulda seen the time I had to get my camper out of this mud pit on my buddy’s back forty,” Joe was telling PwnrBwner. “Now that was a big to-do. Two-by-fours, tractors, tow straps—the whole nine yards.” He patted the Witch’s fender fondly. “This little lady already has all the equipment she needs. She practically saved herself.”
“Yeah, well, you kept your cool better than Tanner did.” The Warlord shot an annoyed glance at his scaly driver. “The guy who usually drives for me is back across the wall visiting his stupid parents or this wouldn’t even have been an issue. If Kevin would’ve just shown me how to drive stick instead of Tanner, I could’ve taken care of it.” PwnrBwner pointed at Joe. “But you seem like you handled the Witch pretty well. Want to take the wheel for the rest of this drive?”
Joe’s eyes shone. “You would let me drive this… this work of towing art? This perfect melding of heavy rescue beauty and wastelandic function?”
“Whatever.” The Warlord shrugged. Obviously he was less than enraptured with his war machine. “Just keep the piece of crap from getting stuck and you won’t be a waste of my time.”
“Aye, aye, Warlord, sir!” Joe saluted, shivering all over like an excited puppy. He shot Clay an excited grin and a thumbs-up before climbing up into the driver’s seat. “All right, let’s move out!” he yelled, giving two short blasts on the horn.
With Joe at the wheel, they didn’t run into any more mechanical issues that his rust-bucket background couldn’t get them out of quickly and surprisingly efficiently. Several pairs of eyes watched them roll by from inside the shadowy ruins of old pawnshops and payday loan places, but no monsters were brave or stupid enough to attack them in that beast of a tow truck. It probably also helped that the Warlord’s battle flag flew above the truck, fluttering and snapping in the wind.
The flag was a washed-out crimson with a large black fist in the center, middle finger extended straight up in salute. Above were the words, PwnrBwner’s Poser Owners, and below was their motto: Get fucked.
The flag was almost as tacky as the man himself, but Clay had to admit that the second a creature saw it, they quickly turned tail and scuttered back into the safety of the shadows.
The stretch of highway between Santa Clarita and LA had already been cleared by the Winch Witch on its way to the Sooq, so their little convoy was able to really open up. The miles sped by, and soon they were driving into the most dangerous place on US soil—maybe the most dangerous place on Earth—the epicenter of where the Merge had taken place twenty years before.
Clay tensed up, keeping his head on a swivel as they drove through the deadliest outskirts in the IZ. They had been through LA not that long ago trying to find Diebolt Neiderdorf—the magical collector whom they still owed a rare collectible Squishie. That trip had been a seemingly endless grind in spite of the fact that they were using the Camera Obscura to conceal their presence. Every twenty minutes, when they’d had to stop to renew their Obscurement, they’d been swarmed on all sides by the locals.
They rolled up to a sickeningly familiar barricade of fallen trees, obviously meant to stop passersby long enough for an ambush. Clay switched to driving one-handed and drew the Ace of Spades, his magical revolver. In the seat next to him, Alex got ready to launch herself into action, and up in the gunner’s spot, Griff conjured a crackling ball of cobalt energy.
A handful of Feral Sasquatches appeared, but instead of going invisible and attacking, they saluted the Warlord. PwnrBwner jerked his head at them in acknowledgement, and the Squatches got to work moving downed trees out of the way so the convoy could pass.
Swallowing, Clay slipped the revolver back into its holster and followed the Winch Witch through. It put an eerie feeling into his gut to get the wave-through from a hairy monster they’d probably been fighting just last week. Apparently, the Warlord of the West was even more respected out here than the stories let on.
By nightfall, they rolled up to Shieldwall, PwnrBwner’s seat of power. The place was surrounded by a massive stone curtain wall made up of sharp angles that would be a nightmare to lay siege to, and studded with machicolations, ballistae, and sniper holes just in case somebody tried to do it anyway. Dragonkin, clad in silver scale mail, patrolled the wide ramparts, on constant alert for interlopers.
PwnrBwner leaned out the window and hollered, “Hey, numbnuts, it’s me! What’s taking so long?”
“I couldn’t see you through the slit in the windshield, dipshit,” replied a sarcastic feminine voice. “Does this mean we’re not doing that stupid password you insisted on making everybody memorize?”
“Scottie underscore O.G. sixty-nine,” Pwnr yelled. “Will you open the fucking doors now?”
“Say please,” the voice deadpanned.
Clay shot a bemused look at Alex. She shrugged.
“Two of a kind,” Griff said, shaking his head. “I always figured the only person who could put up with PwnrBwner long term would be himself. Never did think he’d run into a gal exactly like him.”
Chains clanked inside the walls, and the massive reinforced gates groaned open.
They followed the Winch Witch into the bailey and parked alongside the tow truck so the gates could swing shut behind them.
A plump woman with dark brown skin and graying hair, all dressed in skulls and goth tones, came down from the wall to meet them. In spite of her hostility toward PwnrBwner, she greeted them with what seemed like genuine kindness.
“Wow, it’s been a while since we’ve had human visitors,” she said, shaking their hands. “Welcome to Shieldwall. What brings you guys this far into the IZ?”
“Don’t get attached, Nessa,” PwnrBwner said, scowling over his shoulder at Clay and Alex. “They’re probably gonna get murdered to death by those Malibu Incants tomorrow.”
“Ignore Scott,” she told them. “He’s a professional asshole. Come on inside, guys. Are you hungry? We’ve got a chef personally trained by Kaz on staff. If you’re taking on those jackoffs over in Malibu, then the least we can do is get you all some decent food. Offers some unbelievable buffs, too.”
