Chapter 1: Treasures from a world abandoned

  Snow covered the old metal train tracks. They were getting rusty, or maybe they already were rusty to begin with. They didn’t know. They’ve never been on this stretch of track before.

  ‘’I don’t much like it here neither, I hope that damn freight depot isn’t too far.’’

  ‘’Usually I don’t go this far north. Don’t know what’s beyond it. Could be cannibals, or worse, polar bears. Those bears is real nasty. You don’t see them coming those bears, oh no. Big and white and real nasty. They’ll see you long before you see them. The cannibals are just hungry people from over the mountains. I ain’t never seen one in person, but I’ve heard stories. At least they have the courtesy to shoot a man before eating them, don’t see no bear doing that.’’

  ‘’Have you ever even seen a bear, Doc?’’

  ‘’No white bears, just the black and brown ones. Brown ones is nasty too, but they’s got a more diverse diet so they ain’t hunt humans alone. Black ones is no match for guns, ‘sides, if you just look big they ain’t gunna do you nothing.’’

  ‘’You sure about that?’’

  ‘’Yeah I done it before. Stood there like a real man, and that bear ran right off.’’

  ‘’Bullshit’’

  ‘’Believe whatever you want to believe kid, it ain’t gonna change nothing.’’

  They walked across a big trestle bridge, trying not to slide off the sides. It looked unstable, the creaking of the wood didn’t make them feel much safer.

  ‘’Are we almost there? This bridge don’t feel safe’’

  ‘’Come on kid, surely you’re used to something? How long you been in the north, a couple of months now? Next you’re gonna tell me there’s no bridges where you come from.’’

  ‘’You talk too much.’’

  ‘’Well you talk too little. Now shut up, we’re almost at the depot, and I don’t know if there’s unkind people in that building.’’

  The kid whispered to Doc ‘’Folk never go out here, there are no trade lines on this part of the tracks. And that’s not too crazy with that raggedy ass bridge.’’

  Suddenly a small poof sound landed next to his foot in the snow and a hole appeared. He had little time to react before Doc grabbed his arm and dragged him behind some crates.

  ‘’Pay attention son, that was a gunshot.’’ Doc cycled a round in the chamber of his old enfield rifle. ‘’You got iron right?’’

  ‘’Yeah, yeah I do, I do’’ He said, muttering between heavy breaths. ‘’Damn that was close, bastard almost shot my foot off!’’ The kid grabbed his model 3 and returned 2 shots into the distant wooden building.

  ‘’You ain’t gonna hit a barn door from that distance, we oughta get closer’’

  ‘’You shoot then, you got a rifle that’s better suited for this kinda fight. I’ll run over to them steel beams there, that oughta be better cover. You shoot, I run, got it?’’

  ‘’Sure kid, start sprintin’. I’ll shoot some splinters into their eyes.’’ He shot a right shot into one of the windows and the kid took one big sprint out to the beams.

  A man’s voice came from the building. ‘’Abandonner! Vous n’atteindrez pas ce batiment!’’

  ‘’What the hell are you saying!?’’ The kid yelled back. The firing stopped.

  ‘’Quoi?’’

  Another shot rang out, a faint thud echoed from the building.

  ‘’Nice talking kid, we sure ambushed that fucker’’ Doc walked from his cover.

  ‘’I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Some kinda foreign speak.’’

  ‘’Well, would you believe that? You sure you wasn’t hallucinating? Fear can do some funny things to your noggin.’’

  ‘’Sure, but I ain’t never heard a language like that before.’’

  ‘’Maybe he was disabled? Lack of nutrients or whatever, I ain’t got a clue. He’s dead now anyways.’’

  ‘’Lets just see what was on the body, and then get into the depot alright?

  ‘’How in tarnation do you want to get up there? That’s a coal tower. We gotst to go into the depot, then find the maintenance hatch, then climb all up those dirty coal belts just to get to some strange outlander?’’

  ‘’He got a gun tho’’

  ‘’So do we, ain’t no use getting black lungs over some shoddy scoped rifle.’’

  ‘’I guess that’s true, we got plenty of ammo anyways. Can we just take what we need from that depot and leave, I reckon there ain’t much light left today, and I prefer not to find out if that fella had friends.’’

  ‘’True that, true that.’’

  Doc and the kid entered the depot and a dusty light shone through the roof windows. It looked like Jacob’s Ladders came down from the ceiling. Cargo crates with numerous destinations littered the floor of the storage hall.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  ‘’Doc I can’t read, can you help me with these labels?’’

  ‘’Try to read them, you oughta practice it, it’ll help you survive. If you cain’t read warning signs in these here old buildings, you’re gonna be ending up like that fella up in the coal tower. And you don’t want to that do ye’’

  ‘’Got it, got it. I’ll try, but you’ll correct yes?’’

  ‘’Yes.’’

  ‘’Good’’

  ‘’S… a… n… F… r… a… n… c… i… s… c… o… San Fransisso? Where the hell is that?’’

  ‘’Well you can read fine enough, but your pronunciation is off. You say it like this. San fransisko. The second c is said as an s.’’

  The kid tried to read the rest of the label. ‘’It lies in Salifornia?’’

  ‘’No, that one is with said with a k, so you read it as California, but it’s said as Kalifornia.’’

  ‘’That is hella confusing’’

  ‘’I can see why you think that. That’s why I’m helping ye with reading, kid. You can be a bit more confident in your reading, you can do it just fine. Now read the rest of the label. Alright?’’

  The kid read the rest of the label. ‘’Export of rice’’

  ‘’See, you said that word right.’’ Doc realised something. ‘’Did you say export?’’

  ‘’Yeah, that’s what it says on the label, why’s that notable?’’

  ‘’Well, back in the day, San Francisco used to export some things up north that could be useful to us. And since that dead man seems not to have broken open too many crates, this could be worth our while. Try to read the rest of the labels.’’

  Crates of rice, rotten fruits, canned goods, electronic parts, spark plugs, clothing, textile. All Crates destined for the diamond mines. Doc broke open a crate of spark plugs.

  ‘’Jackpot. See this kid? These are spark plugs, they’re used in combustion engines. We can sell these pretty easily in town. They’re worth quite a bit and we can use them to buy some supplies for the next trip here.’’

  ‘’We’re gonna make another trip here?’’

  ‘’We are, there is a lot of good stuff here, so it’s probably going to be multiple trips. We just need to put some spark plugs in our packs and then sell them. With that money we can buy some big saddlebags and maybe a bigger mule. And we might also buy some rope and a hook, so we can see about that dead fella. How’s that sound?’’

  ‘’Yeah that sounds good. But I don’t like the idea of crossing that bridge with the horses.’’

  ‘’I know, that’s why we’ll lead them instead of ride them across the bridge.’’

  Doc and the kid stuffed their backpacks and coatpockets with spark plugs and then they went on and walked out of that depot with a great and gleeful smile, the both of them. They walked past the place where the altercation with the foreigner happened not too long ago, and they still were a bit cautious. After a while they came across the old wooden bridge again and they treaded carefully across the beams and track. When they arrived at their encampment, the sun was already set, and they used a lantern burning with petroleum to find their beds.

  Once settled down, Doc stuffed a pipe with some dried and cured virginia tobacco and lit it. He puffed till the leaves were burning well and then he opened his mouth again, but this time to talk.

  ‘’This stuff is far from perfect, but it tastes damn good. It burns real hot and it's hard on the throat, but it works. I cut this stuff up myself ye know. In them days afore you could just buy this in the store. Unfortunately that time’s long passed. It ain’t too bad tho, you know. That stuff was getting real expensive anyhow. I traded some virginia leaves back in… damn… what was that town again?’’

  ‘’Firwood?’’

  ‘’No, it was in the south, you ain’t never been theres. Saint Isodore. Yeah, Saint Isodore, that’s the town. Fine town that was. Not as wild as the towns here. Nice and slow it were. The climate was good too… warm. Sure is a long time travelling from here. That place was known for farming, especially tobacco was grown a lot there. Many electric world fellers come down there looking for a smoke. Like myself.’’

  Doc lit his pipe again, and puffed on it some more looking very content. He put his hand in his pocket and grabbed some spark plugs and let them fall out of his hand one by one.

  ‘’It’s almost as good as looking at gold.’’

  ‘’Doc?’’

  ‘’Yeah?’’

  ‘’That pipe is made from wood ain’t it?’’

  ‘’Yeah’’

  ‘’So how come it ain’t burning away?’’

  ‘’Well, this pipe is made from briarwood. A lot of pipes are made of briarwood. Briarwood don’t burn, that’s why they made pipes out of it.’’

  ‘’Does briarwood grow here?’’

  ‘’Not that I know of. But I ain’t no arborist.’’

  ‘’I’m tired.’’

  ‘’Yeah me too, goodnight.’’

  They crawled into their sleeping bags and stared at the sky. Then the sun rose again. It was cold. When the kid woke up a warm fire was already crackling. He yawned and sat cross-legged in his sleeping bag, facing the fire. A metal container lay about a meter away from him and he reached for it, and grabbed it. In it were some army rations. He read the label. It said C-M. He opened the can but did not dare to smell it. Instead he dumped the contents in a saucepan and put the saucepan next to the fire.

  ‘’I need a spoon’’ He muttered to himself. ‘’A spoon, now where did I leave it.’’ He got out of his sleeping bag and looked around for his spoon but he could not find it.

  A man with a black peacoat and mismatched green army pants walked to the fire carrying a great lot of spruce wood. He put the wood into the fire while whistling some old civil war tune. The kid looked at him with a questioning gaze.

  ‘’What?’’ Said Doc.

  ‘’Where’s my spoon?’’

  ‘’It’s on your damn belt stupid.’’

  The kid looked at his belt, and there was his spoon hanging. He took it off and sat down and started eating his rations from the saucepan. ‘’I’m still tired’’ he said.

  ‘’That’s fine. I just need you to be awake in case there’s a firefight.’’ Doc sat down next to the kid. ‘’You alright? You look a bit white.’’

  ‘’I feel real warm, Doc. In a bad way.’’

  ‘’Fever?’’

  ‘’I think so.’’

  ‘’That’s… not very good.’’

  ‘’I guessed that much.’’

  ‘’It's a day’s walk to town. But I think I know what we can do.’’ Doc thought for a while by the fire. ‘’I will build a travois out of my blanket, and you’re gonna lay down on it and then I’ll drag you to town. Can’t stop here, not with fever.’’

  Doc set himself to collecting large sticks, checking for any dryness or brittleness in the wood. The kid watched him from his place at the fire. After some time, Doc had found 3 large sticks that worked as the outer frame and bound them together with paracord. Then he used some long thin sticks, that were still flexible, for the inside. He put his own blanket in the construction and secured it to the outer frame. ‘’That should work for now’’ He said.

  He hoisted the kid into the travois, and covered him with his blanket. Then he secured the travois to his belt, making sure it wouldn't snap under pressure. They left the campsite.

  Doc slowly trod across the snowy landscape. At one point he got so warm from the towing, that he took off his coat and put it over the kid. Then he went on. After a while they could see a town in the distance.