“With no tools?” the bounty hunter scoffed. “We don’t. Toldja we—”
“If you tell me we should have taken the other bike one more time, I’m dragging your ass the rest of the way to Armada.”
The Preacher grinned, finished the water.
“There’s a settlement a little ways southwest of here. Paradise Falls. Old Gnosis outpost, I do believe. Under new management. They got gear, greasers, grub and girls. Everything a growin’ boy needs. They could fix the bike.”
“Yeah, I know the Falls. But what good is it to us? We’ve got no creds.”
The Preacher reached inside his tattered coat, flashed a couple of stiks.
“Speak for yourself, Snowflake. Some of us work for a livin’.”
Ezekiel looked at their bike, hands on hips. He’d spent two years wandering the wastes, and he’d heard of Paradise Falls. It was a dustneck scavver pit, situated on the edge of Plastic Alley—seven shades of trouble, and all of them ugly. But they weren’t exactly flush with choices.
“What guarantees do I have these Falls folks aren’t friends of yours?”
“Not a one.” The Preacher smiled. “But what else you gonna do? Ride this bike till it dies, then skip the rest of the way to Armada? You seemed in an awful hurry to find that girlie of yours yesterday. Lil’ Miss Carpenter somehow not a priority anymore?”
Ezekiel remained silent. The Preacher still had no idea that Lemon had the power to fry electrics—that she, not Eve, was the deviate Daedalus should really have been hunting. As long as the Preacher thought they were chasing Eve, Lemon was safe and Ezekiel had an advantage. Teaming up with a man this dangerous, the lifelike knew he needed every one he could get.
Ezekiel knelt by the bounty hunter, looked him in his one good eye.
“All right,” he said softly. “Paradise Falls it is. But just remember, you try anything fancy, I got an insurance policy.”
The lifelike held up his good hand, wiggled his middle finger. A steel ring gleamed in the sunlight, entwined with a long piece of wire, which was in turn connected to a bandolier strapped to the Preacher’s back. One good tug, the pins would come free, and the dozen grenades inside would just…
“Boom,” Ezekiel said.
The Preacher flashed his shark-tooth smile.
“You know what, Snowflake? I think I’m startin’ to like you.”
* * *
________
The bike broke down thirty klicks out of town.
Ezekiel had to push it the rest of the way, sweating and cursing, the Preacher on his back all the while. The ground grew progressively rougher, the black silicon of the Glass giving way to rocky badlands, tired scrub and red soil. Away through the heat haze, Ezekiel spied the beginnings of Plastic Alley.
It must’ve been a wonder back in the days before the Fall. A huge canyon carved kilometers into the earth, layers of sedimentary rock forming beautiful patterns in the alley walls. A river had wound through its belly once, but now the alley was filled with the junk it was named for. Polyethylene and polypropylene. Polyvinyl and polystyrene. Rotting mountains of it. Tepid swamps of it. Bags and wrappers and bottles piled hundreds of meters deep.
Plastic.
They followed the edge of the canyon until finally Ezekiel saw a settlement in the distance—squalid, dirty, built on the edge of the drop. A few tall buildings rose above a rotten shantytown, broken windows gleaming in the sunlight. The logos had been torn off the walls, painted over with scrawl. But Ezekiel knew this had been a GnosisLabs settlement until a few years ago—a research outpost for the great CorpState before its fall. Nicholas Monrova had been experimenting with a process that turned discarded polys into a combustible fuel. A way to turn humanity’s nondegradable garbage into a power source for its industry.
Father…
Monrova’s dream was dead now, along with the man himself. But the outpost still stood, now overrun with scavvers, travelers and fortune hunters. A last stop-off point before braving the perils of the Glass.
Ezekiel stopped for a breather beside a rusted sign.
WELCOME TO PARADISE FALLS
it read.
DAYS SINCE OUR LAST FATALITY:
The sign was studded with a row of severed heads from a bunch of children’s toys. A nail had been pounded beside the word “fatality,” but there was no actual number hanging from it. Just nine bullet holes forming a crude, familiar pattern.
“That supposed to be a smiley face?” Ezekiel asked.
“Mmf.” The Preacher spat on the ground. “Folk round here can’t shoot for shit.”
“You spent a lot of time here?”
The Preacher shrugged. “My line of work, you spend time all over. It’s a rough place. But not quite as rough as they’d like you to think it is. Town’s run by a roadgang called the KillKillDolls. They took over after Gnosis collapsed.”
Ezekiel blinked. “The KillKillDolls?”
“Yeah. They put an extra kill in there to let you know they really mean it.”
Ezekiel pushed the bike onward, finally reaching the city gates. The roughnecks guarding it wore gas masks and road leathers. The severed heads of plastic dolls and children’s toys were strung round their necks, sawn-off shotguns in their hands. It was a testament to how rough the town was that neither guard raised an eyebrow as Ezekiel trundled past, pushing a broken motorcycle with his one good arm, a mutilated cyborg strapped to his back.
The Preacher tipped his hat, smiled. “Howdy, boys.”
The streets were crowded, littered with trash and the occasional unconscious/dead body. The buildings were ethyl dives and skinbars, trader lounges and even an old sim joint. Zeke and the Preacher got a few curious looks from the motley crowd, but nobody fussed.
They found a grubby garage at the end of the first block, hung with a sign that read MUZZA’S REPAIRS. Zeke wheeled the bike into the work pit, saw a pair of men with more grease on their skin than skin, working on an old 4x4. After a short conversation, he learned that neither was called Muzza, but yes, they could get his bike up and running within a couple of hours.
“That long?” Ezekiel asked.
“Yeah,” the skinnier one said, looking over the bike. “Big job, this.”
“Yeah, big job,” the grubbier one nodded, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
“Youse can wait over the street at Rosie’s if you like,” said Skinny.
“Yeah, Rosie’s,” Grubby agreed.
Rosie’s was a two-story ethyl dive, situated right across the way. Every scavver, roughrider and scenekiller in the place looked up as the lifelike entered, and most just kept on staring as Ezekiel bellied up to the bar. The elderly woman behind the counter was covered in tattoos, head to foot. A floral scroll inked across her collarbones declared she was the owner, Rosie.