Dead Land
Capt. Thorne: A Whole New World
By Richard Cunningham III
Copyright ©2011 Richard Cunningham III
Smashwords Edition
- Capt. Thorne -
A Whole New World
A sulfur smell accompanied the bay of moaning docks in the overcrowded trading-town of Genoa. Her citizens barely recognized it, but foreign merchants, drifters and the like went to great lengths in order to avoid the rotten-egg odor so potent on her breath. The illustrious harbor docks, constructed of strengthened synthetic and manufactured wood, created a boastful forum, a hub of commerce amid the general despair of the modern world. Off the coast, clouds like pillars stood in the sky and stretched out to a far horizon. The sea was again brewing up a tempest to wreak havoc on the souls of men in her misbegotten trust. Directly overhead the sky shook and stirred, already a violet haze shifting in the air and a great yellow disk above that, piercing through the layers of flimsy ozone to overwhelm man and nature alike in its once-sweet sunlight. A few skyscrapers of old-Boston jutted out of the ocean’s surface, rusty jagged reef threatening the vessels that navigated the popular harbor day and night. The seas encroached on this ancient metropolis at some point in the late nineties and entombed it by the year 2150. That was the lore of the times anyway. No one in the Dead Land knew much about its history. An education in the “Bomb Parades”, or the “Great Fire of old-Los Angeles” had become irrelevant next to surviving the abundantly hostile world they now tread. Still, there was no denying the impact of its absence, a chip borne on the shoulder of an entire species of bastards, left to a bizarre and unwelcoming land.
Standing on the dock, Captain Thorne was a giant among common men, but in the high noon even more obvious of the Captain was his prosthetic arms: reflective metal-alloy limbs, constructed by a scientist who had a proficient understanding of bionic technology, common once in the old-world, but now a rarity among a number of mechanical debacles pedaled by two-bit quacks.
Under messy strands of hair, Thorne’s cold blue eyes squinted out toward the outpost, unsure for a moment about leaving the wilderness for the noise and the stench of civilization. Powered Zinc coated his cheeks and forehead, offering some protection against sun disease out on the wide revealing sea. He wiped a flood of sweat from his brown, staining the arm of his coat white, and then went back to checking out near-by vessels and their owners, for the discovery of either friend or foe. His crew went up and down the boat, carrying crates and barrels, yelling and spitting and tossing ropes around as they tethered the boat to the posts lining the platform. The men had spent much of the past year afloat and now they were finally unloading their profiteering boat to make trade with the land settlements that dotted the largely barren landscape of the east. The ship, after all, was a wreck, torn apart by recent blood battles waged at sea. These skirmishes were fortunate, ultimately, for the captain and his crew, who were already hopelessly stranded and conceding to die of thirst on the open waters. The victories were also fortunate personally for Thorne, who barely avoided outright mutiny and had, through good fortune or sheer chance, acquired a stolen relic cross in the violence, owned prior by the New Salvation Army.
The relic was no doubt of high value and the NSA would be after it, so Thorne was eager to cash in on the score; but it was far too risky to try pawning off hot NSA goods in Genoa, the trail too obvious, when it was only off the port town’s coast where Captain Thorne encountered the transport ship; the same that he ultimately sank to the depths of the ocean. Thorne had approached the ship under the pretense of trade for fresh water and directions—though he had in fact secretly desired a contest with the other ship’s captain. The ensuing conflict produced Thorne this hidden treasure, and guaranteed an inflated price on the Captain’s head.
The artifact itself was quite large, almost three feet in length, with ascending cross-pieces made of stone. Thorne had disguised the shape in a cloth and tucked it under his tattered leather trench coat. He had already resorted to hiding the relic even before reaching shore, as some of his crew was convinced the chunk of rock had actually saved them from imminent death. Thorne didn’t see himself as a very superstitious man, nor was he religious. He did, however, consider himself an entrepreneur, trying to get by in an ugly cut-throat business, and this rare find was the closest thing he might get to a meal ticket.
Cooke, the only to rival the Captain’s size on-board, or likewise the immediate vicinity, approached his long-time friend. Cooke was a grizzly piece of work, gnarly patches of hair covering his slightly misshapen head and face; missing a right eye and his left hand, which he had happily replaced with a crude meat hook.
“How much ya say we could make off that thing?” Cooke asked.
Thorne looked at him with suspicion, deserved suspicion. Cooke was a good blunt weapon in a pinch, but he was all brute and no brains, easily manipulated, often by his own runt-brother, Goose, who had tried to kill Thorne before and was probably the orchestrator of the most recent mutiny attempt.
“You just worry about selling off those crates for a good price.”
“Booze, whores, and killing’s on my agenda, Captain.”
“That’s well and good, just make sure you get around to business. They got some hospitals around here that’d pay decent money for those Menthols, probably would take those PMS packs off our hands, too.”
“Hell, I ain’t gonna do any of that stuff,” Cooke said, lighting up a Menthol. “That’s what I got Goose for. He’s the one with the brains.”
“Not if he disappears with the ship’s score, he won’t be. I’m making you responsible for him. Remember that.”
“Don’t worry. He’ll fetch you a decent price.”
“Sure I will, Captain,” said Goose, a skinny bookworm in round spectacles and an old wool suit, appearing from behind his massive brother, like it was a parlor trick. “Anyway, we all know the real money is with that relic there that come off the boat. So where are you going, Captain, with that prize of yours?”
“Like I’d answer to you, you wet little rat. You’ll have plenty of killers hunting you down should you get greedy with those crates. Just think about that kind of violence coming down on you, if you’re looking for restraint.”
“Captain, Captain, don’t you worry. I know a guy who’ll pay good money to get his hands on bona-fide Salvation Army PMS meals.”
Thorne grunted and passed by them both, climbing back up the ramp and into the boat he had inherited years back. So much time on the sea had transformed it into yet another home, perhaps the only one he understood not by name alone. Arriving in Genoa, his realities were finally clashing, however.
No one was aware he had spent a chapter of his childhood there; moreover, no one knew Thorne had himself a wife and child waiting for him in Drum City. To him, trust only introduced risk, and with his family, Thorne took no risk. Also, the duality was easier on his mind. He took a different form all-together out on sea. It was a bloody way to make a living, a lifestyle capable of whittling a man’s soul down to the primordial core, that primitive beast exposed to the light of day. Maybe that’s just what I’ve become on my own, he thought. He still had splinters embedded in his face from a water battle not a week past. There was gore and filth in his hair and mixed into his rusted beard, and a sour smell about him commonly associated with animals or hobos.
Below deck, in his cramped quarters, Thorne took up a shiny cutlass in his hand and fit a broad-rimmed fedora over his greasy head, throwing shadows over his eyes. He collected an empty flask from a shelf, then this and that of his belongings, and finally an old photograph of his wife and kid. Not thirty minutes on land and he was already soft, with ancient memories of joy now haunting the brutal calculating leader that the hard world had formed.
Thorne climbed out of the wooden belly and up to the ship’s deck to an overwhelming blinding light and that foul smell that clogged the senses, but to which he had already acclimated. Three of his crew saw him and they threw themselves on the floor before his feet.
“Please, Captain, please let us get a look at that there relic one more time! We trust you taking it with you, we just wanna ask it for some stuff is all.”
“I’m asking it fer a goat. I’ve always wanted to be able to make my own milk, maybe even learn me to make goat cheese. You ever eat some real goat cheese, Captain?” another crew-member said.
“You bring a goat on this boat and I’m making a stew out of it,” Mr. Crumbs said. He was the ship’s cook and another of the relic worshipers.
“What do you think: this chunk of rock caused that boat-robot to explode out there?” Thorne said. “It was a fluke. Just a fluke. You better wise up before you go hitting the poker tables and prostitutes tonight. They’re always looking for fools, you know.”
“We saw what we saw, Captain,” Mr. Crumbs said, with teeth mostly absent from his white sun-chapped grin.
“Right, that’s some kind of Doomsday cross, I tell ya,” another offered.
“I don’t like any of you enough to entertain this. And don’t let anyone on my ship while I’m gone, or there’ll be hell to pay, I promise,” Thorne said, returning to the swaying docks, that immediate illusion of solid ground that he was finding hard to shake.
He crossed over into his old stomping grounds, familiar sites and faces returning. Warrington was the dock’s keep and an old friend to Thorne. The two had served together as teens in the same unit of the local militia. He had the type of job now that was good at getting gifted men ruddy and fat from excess. Everyone was willing to throw the dock keep a little extra for safe harbor, and Warrington was very good at securing ships when properly motivated, often hinting to his partiality of pricey booze and cheap whores.
“Hey, Thorne! How the hell’s it been?”
“Bleak at best. You?”
“Oh, fine, fine. Life’s all shit and roses. Can’t complain, don’t imagine people’d listen if I did,” Warrington said jovially, and then pointed at Thorne’s boat with his swollen bejeweled finger. “She looks pretty beat up. How long you keeping her docked?’
“A month for repairs and the like,” Thorne said and handed Warrington a satchel.
The dock keep’s face lit up like a bulb at the sight, and as Thorne handed over the coin, he caught the wonder of a child in the fat man’s big round eyes. The dock keep poured out the satchel and made a quick count of the money.
“Thorne, you’re a good friend.”
“Just look after her, alright?”
“Of course, Captain, of course, like a baby,” he said and patted Thorne on the shoulder.
“That old geezer still got a leather shop on Broadway?”
“Old man Dylan, yeah, why?”
“No reason.”
The door to the smith’s shop hit a cluster of bells over-head. They rang out as Thorne entered and rang another time as the door shut behind him. Soon a deformed old man scuttled out from a linen curtain that hanged from the ceiling, dividing the sales floor from the living space. The man’s gait was made awkward by the hump rising out of his back like a great mountain range. It made walking an obvious effort, but the cripple had the reputation of a skilled craftsman.
“Well now, you’re a big fella,” he said, sitting on a bench behind his workspace. He had pallid blue eyes and deep crow’s feet extending to edges of his white thinning hair. His nose was crooked, shifting left to right, before pointing down to an incriminating thin-lipped grin.
“Can you make something to carry this,” Thorne asked, holding out the covered relic.
“Oh sure, sure,” Old-Man Dylan said, looking him up and down with a hairy eye. In the same breath he started hacking violently. He muffled the horrible sound with a rag, which he pulled from his back pocket. His face was turning several shades of purple, before he finally settled down and returned the mouth rag to his pants.
“My coat’s got some tears in it too.”
“Put it on the counter then,” the old man said.
There was something off about the man that Thorne now noticed, something beyond the obvious deformity and emerging stutter. As Thorne took his coat off, the smith started clapping nervously; then he let out a wheezy little chuckle that only illuminated his peculiarity.
“Oh, how nice!” the smith exclaimed as he tapped a boney knuckle against Thorne’s bionic metal arm. “This is good work, this is very, very good work. I’ve never seen work like this before, so...sleek, just beautiful. It’s quite rare, it is...quite-quite-quit-quite-quite rare indeed! Who was the surgeon? I-I-I just need to know.”
“Carver was his name.”
This was an obvious lie.
“Haha! Hahaha! Yes, yes, Doctor Carver, very fitting. I don’t know him, but he sounds like a doctor for sure,” he said, picking up the leather trench coat, then setting it back down on the counter.
“He’s dead now—”
“But I do have a friend in the cybernetic business. Doesn’t do work like that, of course. But if you ever need anything done. You have one-hundred percent function? Does it use any of that nano-science stuff?”
“What’s it to you, old man?”
“Hm. Well, if you ever need any work done—”
“I’ll just be needing the case and the patches to my coat.”
The smith studied the cross. “Mighty interesting, ain’t it?”
“Don’t get any bad ideas, smith, you’re too old to live it down.”
“It’s hot, huh? No problem, no-no problem. You wanna leave it here?”
“What do you think?”
“Right-right-right, of course. Well I think I got a potato sack around here, if you’re looking to be discreet.”
“Appreciate it.”
“Lets just...”
The smith pulled out a piece of hide string from his apron pocket and turned his focus to the dimensions of the cross, taking detailed measurements, which he then scribbled in his notepad. Thorne had a couple of hours before the geezer would be done crafting the case, so he wrapped the relic up in a burlap sack and went off to kill some time in one of the busiest and most deadly port towns on the East Coast.
The center of Genoa was a swarming, stinking mess. Thorne couldn’t reach out without hitting someone, couldn’t walk a foot without stepping in something foul. Buildings in general stood no more than seven or so stories tall, but they were constructed so closely they were almost stacked on top of each other; the original town plan now busting out of its belt to accommodate a flourishing outpost of human society. A town mostly of killers, thieving whores and bottom scum. Gypsies in ragged cloth and raw-hide faces begged for change, dropping to their dusty knees for the slightest act of charity. A gang of local punks pushed people over as they moved through the crowd, looking for trouble. A dizzying spectacle of street venders rattled off prices in heated competition, announcing “one-time offers” to the multitudes of potential clients. Crime was common and committed openly on the streets, absent of shame or fear. That was what generally happened when port towns became too populated. Law and order got squeezed out.
A poverty-stricken old man wrapped in a tarp, followed Thorne, pulling closer whenever the streets became congested. Thorne finally grabbed him by the arm and the geezer quickly shrank to the ground in pain and awful fright.
“What did you take from me?” Thorne demanded.
“Please don’t kill me,” the elderly crook pleaded, dropping Thorne’s silver watch-piece.
The thief had a bulbous sun-baked nose and two sunken beady eyes shrouded under a tan veil. He was more or less a skeleton already, splattered in dark splotches and bleeding scabs, signs that he was likely dying of the sun cancer.
“Don’t let me see you again.”
Thorne released him and the geezer crawled off like vermin down the sidewalk. The noon sun made for hot tempers on the streets, but Thorne saw no point in breaking a desperate old pickpocket already near the end of his days.
I need a drink, he thought.
He walked past a butcher shop selling mostly mangy carcasses of MSCs. As the predatory abominations were quick to overwhelm indigenous species and thrive in their place, they were a common butcher staple. A fresh coyogre was splayed open and draped over a pole to let bleed out, flies swarming around its powder-covered insides. The beast was easily the length of a man, some much larger, its fur like the coat of the rare porcupine, with great gnarled teeth crowding its unhinged mouth. Thorne had killed this breed of MSC once before in his travels and it wasn’t easy, so he was impressed by the butcher’s feat. He couldn’t, however, imagine coyogre meat tasting any good; even it was treated and heavily flavored. Thorne crossed over a pitted street and headed toward a sprawling saloon. The sign outside proclaimed it to be The Shrieking Clam.
The place was packed full of blood money and drunken hotheads. But the bike outside was enough motivation for Thorne to walk straight into a room full of trouble. Inside it was the typical dive scene: whores bent over the second-floor railings, calling out the names of regular patrons, tempting them to venture upstairs and into their lumpy cold beds. One of the prostitutes at the banister already had herself a customer and skipped the formalities, her skirt dancing overhead and a grubby pirate grinning and clutching her waist from behind. The floor was a more sober scene in contrast, where gamblers took to the tables and threw away good money or trade for a chance to win it big. Differences were settled with crashes of glass and fists and teeth. Every winner was a cheat and every loser was left sore in such a place. From above, a high-pitched scream came from a man who was on his way down from a fourth-story push. He crash-landed, shattering a table and interrupting a game of knives-out poker. The place hadn’t changed. Thorne went up to the counter and called over the bartender.
“Whiskey.”
“Comin’ up.”
The bartender wiped a tin cup clean with his grungy cloth and poured out hootch until it hit the very rim of the container. Thorne grabbed it with his two shiny metal fingers and opened the hatch, spilling out harsh booze that spiraled down into his gut. Not yet quenched, he knocked the tin shot against the counter again to get the bartender’s attention.
“Who owns the dust-kicker outside?”
“Why do you wanna know?”
“Just serve me another splash of that snake juice and answer the question.”
“That’d be Dax. Center table. The big guy. Don’t be starting any trouble,” the bar-keep said, refilling Thorne’s cup before walking off.
Dax was indeed a big guy. Like Thorne, he stood nearly seven feet tall, but Dax had a heftier frame. His skin was pitch black, which gave the white of his eyes a striking contrast, and his head was bald and polished with great care. He broke out with a loud attention-getting laugh.
Thorne downed his double-shot of whiskey and walked over to the card table. With no empty chairs, he grabbed one of the players by the shoulder and threw him aside without warning. He eyed the other players as he joined the roundtable. They looked up at Thorne, but apparently they had to no attachment to the recently ejected member and made no action to defend him. Picking up the hand of cards dealt already, he glanced them over and tossed two away. Dax offered some money to the pot and the others followed suit. An hour and a half later, the game was right where Thorne wanted it: between Dax and himself.
“You ready to make a real wager?”
“What do you got in mind?” asked the biker.
“How good’s your bike run?”
Dax bellowed out a laugh. “You crazy? And what do you got?”
Thorne held the relic out and set it on the table.
“What is it,” Dax asked in between laughs. “What could it be in your potato sack?”
“Worth more than your dust-kicker, for sure.”
Dax stopped laughing. “What is it is what I asked.”
“It’s an artifact is all I can say. But I’ll tell you what; you find it ain’t worth that dust-kicker outside, bet’s off. That’s plenty fair, ain’t it?” Thorne said.
Dax tried to cut down Thorne with his eyes, his fingers rapping at the table in a tense rhythm, a growing suspense that was felt in the space between the two men.
“Alright, deal then,” Dax said, shaking his head and slamming his keys on the table.
The gang at the table watched on as unblinking witnesses to the event. For them, whoever won, chances were, the game was ending in bloodshed. Dax ran a hand over his sweaty head, tarnishing its surface. He lifted his tin mug and slowly brought it up to his mouth, taking a couple of quick swigs while he eyed the back of Thorne’s hand, then he went back to rapping his meaty fingers against the table.
“You gonna show us what’s under your skirt,” asked Thorne.
“Straight flush,” Dax grinned, laying out his cards on the table.
“Royal flush,” Thorne said immediately, cutting short Dax and his moment of glory.
“What? That ain’t right. You’re a goddamn cheat is what that is!”
“It’s just how the game goes. We had a deal now, don’t go getting sour on me.”
“I don’t deal with cheats, you cyborg freak.”
Thorne laughed at him. “Of course you do, if you’re living in this world. You gonna give me those keys or what now?”
“I ain’t giving you shit.”
The response was more or less a cue and Thorne took it, standing up and slamming his fists on the edge of the round table, snapping it loose from its center post and hoisting the opposite end into the air. The see-saw connected just under Dax’s chin, knocking him backwards off his seat. The keys to the dust-kicker went flying as well. Thorne followed them with his eyes and plucked the opportunity right out of the air. He stopped and eyed the other card-players again, but none of them was looking to get involved in the dispute.
Thorne turned and started for the door when suddenly Dax lunged all of his mass forward and the two giants went crashing into a far wall. Thorne responded by burying his metal fist into his opponet’s side, breaking two ribs and taking out the brute’s supply of air. It sent the bald-headed biker stammering back, but he regained himself and rushed forward again, this time with a knife, keeping Thorne cornered by a frenzied onslaught.
The two had gained the attention of the entire dive. A killing, after-all, was free crowd-pleasing entertainment, and seeing these two Goliaths battle was a main event at this lousy dive turned stadium. Bets were already being collected.
Thorne knocked the blade out of Dax’s hand, meanwhile exposing himself to a series of jarring body-shots, until finding an opening in the fury of bloody fists to connect for a solid head-shot. Dax staggered back, pulling yet another knife and making a blind swipe that clinked against Thorne’s artificial arm. The biker’s cheek was visibly broken; his left eye swelled up and became immediately useless. Dax waved the blade around furiously, nearly cutting a few of his surrounding friends. Thorne finally took Dax’s bladed hand up, pulling him forward towards himself. He seized the back of the biker’s head, ramming it directly into the wall, transforming Dax’s face into a bloody wheezing bubbly mess. The brute lurched in circles some, and then fell over a stranded table. He was down for the count. Thorne picked up the relic, still leaning against his chair, and he walked out of the Shrieking Clam, cracking his neck side-to-side and spitting on the ground.
As he went down the stairs of The Shrieking Clam’s porch, he dug two playing cards out of his pocket and tossed them on the ground, a grin creeping up on his face. The bike was a knockout: cherry-red and chrome work all over. He admired her from a myriad of angles, then he climbed on, turning the engine over until it whirled, boosting the bike off the ground. Aside from the ignition, the controls were arranged on the handlebars of the bike. He studied them a moment, then he leaned forth and turned the accelerator forward sharply and the hover-bike kicked forward, spitting dust and its passenger down the road.
By the time he showed up at the smith’s shop, the old cripple was just completing his order. Thorne collected his leather coat, pieced delicately back together, and slung it over his wide shoulders. The smith gave his work one final satisfied look and handed the case for the relic cross over to Thorne. It was a reinforced leather triangular sleeve, with a sturdy harness for carrying. Thorne fit the relic cross inside and tightened the clasp, positioning it on his back. He nodded to the smith, who smiled gleefully and offered an excited applause to himself. Thorne paid for the work and left the craftsman to his odd perversions.
Dark shades piled in the skies. East winds were picking up, signaling an approaching hurricane or tornado, as they were both common in those parts.
“Hell, here we go.”
He sat down and took a breath, before he started up the dust-kicker again and sped along a lonely dirt road that brought him out of the sea’s reach and into the embrace of the Dead Land.