It was hot, and so were the red dyed dogs sizzling on the grill. It was magma powered and sat in the shade of ghostly buildings. This entire town may have been deserted, but the ice crystals in the diner's walk-in coolers had kept some stuff cool. Jed held a plastic spatula he found, and cooked in an apron labeled “Merry Sous Chef." The hotdogs flipped revealing cracks forming in the natural casings and he moved to buttering the frozen buns.
The flat and windless air kept the smoke going up straight and out of his face. The landscape barren sunbaked and dry as the soda he recently found behind the expired fountain in the community center. It was the unfortunate case that most of the sealed liquid in town had disappeared through evaporation. This had Jed worried about the buried jungle juice, but fortunately the big rig truck seemed to have plenty enough remaining in storage to last a few weeks at least. Its highly intoxicating properties also helped numb the roaring pain of his injuries. The question was how long it would last in the open heat until he could get it dug out. Or how long would his body keep going?
At least he had already found some fresh bandages, and peroxide in the gift shop. The problem was he hadn't removed the bullet lodged in his thigh, but somehow he could still get around alright for now. It really was a ticking time bomb that needed the attention of a medical professional. To get out of here in one piece he was going to have to become a pro at assembling junk into working parts to fix the truck. The big rig needed a ton of them to ever get on the road again including some serious jacking that probably wasn't doable by a single man.
The sandstorm had buried much more than the truck. He had to dig to get into there. What wasn’t torn off yet by tornado was covered in fresh debris stuck in the top of many layers that covered the old. Jed had dug up bones, coins, pots, pans, and a carpet leaving them in the growing pile. To both remedy the payload evaporating, and keep him cool while working he had a couple of solutions. The first was the chunks of ice he had tried to drag over her and place over the container, but it proved backbreaking work for something that quickly melted. His next plan was going to have to rig something up for shade. When lunch was finished he needed to get back to looking for some kind of canopy tent to cover the operation.
“I really wish Mule was still around, sigh… I suppose nothing is invincible even the most shifty of shape-shifters,” he said, packing hot dogs in the toasted buns one by one.
A dozen were circling the plate. Jed slammed the grill shut as his stomach rumbled ready for action. He grabbed the serving tray in one hand, and his refillable Maxxx-gulp mug in the other heading to the rear of his truck. The vehicle was looking rough at this point. A few of the rims that had been revealed were going to need to be replaced. Jed grabbed the hose sticking from the tanker, and filled his insulated cup full of ice crystals to the brim. The only way he was getting out of here was if he could convert the big rig permanently to a train.
The only man isolated in this location walked towards the barn on the edge of town. A big building towering above him painted bright red just like the hotdogs he had found pallets of in the market's freezer. Jed walked through a dead garden that sprawled behind the deserted hotel and houses. The path became well worn and flanked by rock walls. He soon climbed stairs of stone through an area of windmills that stood still. An ancient tractor had turned to such a sheet of rust next to the weathered bones of a horse.
Jed let himself inside the building much cooler than the jail he first tried to make base. Sure the loft was still unbearable here in the barn but the ground floor was as nice as it was gonna get around here especially with the doors shut. It was all due to the power of the ice crystals in the basement. They had been stored there slowly expiring into a giant pool of slush slowly melting. For now there was still enough cooling power to keep the barn's 1st floor nice and comfy.
Jed groaned while lowering himself onto a seat and table constructed of hay bales. His back wasn’t getting any younger. The hay wasn’t soft until it was strewn about loosely and itchy material so dry he didn’t dare bring any magma in the building. It was too much work to empty out the premises, but if a fiery attack happened it was game over.
At this point Jed was out of farcs if he ever possessed any. He was only getting over the finish line with some calculated gambles. He also didn’t have much ammo remaining and surprisingly there weren't any more rounds he could find anywhere in town.
“MMMMMM that’s tasty!” he exclaimed, gobbling up a wiener and bun in two bites.
Next he grabbed one in each hand this time, and ate the first in one go. He was like a dog who had discovered chicken shit.
“BUUUURP.”
He washed the greasy meat down with the jungle juice that was so good, even warm. If you had to be stranded this wasn’t bad at all.
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“If it wasn’t so fucking dry out here I would start a farm, well that and the only girls available out here to marry is the dead,” he groaned.
Jed knew he had been changed significantly over his journey. He could guess that he wouldn’t be living in society if he ever returned to it. With the reward money for delivering what remained of the jungle juice he would buy some nice green rural farmland. His only hope was that he hadn’t been damaged or gone mad enough to never be able to be married, but that was a hard thing to self evaluate.
“MMM this is some killer spicy mustard I looted,” he said to himself, going in for thirds.
As Jed ate and the dopamine from the food jogged his mind.
“Oh I got it,” he said between a full mouth and teeth that kept eating.
He had remembered that the saw had been stored somewhere in the truck. If only it was still there he could find it. A cutter like that would greatly help with survival, and construction.
The time had passed towards dark. The high noon light was beginning to reduce through the cracks in the building, and its entrances. Jed held his face in his hands continuing to wallow in indigestion. He had consumed 9 hotdogs, and the plate below him was empty. He slurped up the rest of his juice through the straw and fell back into a bed of straw. This stuff was a heavy brew, and a nap was in order. His eyes shut and the darkness took over.
*********************************
The prisoner aboard the elevator opened his eyes faced with massive grinding gears on the open sides of a slowly lowering platform. The surrounding cave walls went by a blur that all looked similar. There were seven guards surrounding him with weapons.
Edward tried to say something, but he had been muzzled and a straitjacket had also been fastened. His chest burned with pain so severe it was disorienting him. The new heart he had been given pounded in his chest haphazardly. His vision faded in and out falling towards the edge.
“ZAP!” said a guard's shocky stick.
He was jolted to his senses, then picked up by two, and smacked around back into place. The funny thing was the electricity made him feel a lot better. Edward chuckled as best he could under the mask locked to his head.
“ZAAAAAP!”
“I say he lasts no more than one week,”
“I say under a day and I will give you… 1 Electrostone,”
“I’m out to find another sucker,”
“Let's make it 1 Electro, and a Farc,”
"Deal."
The two guards finalized the wager between them with a firm handshake. There were four mercenaries employed by Killin Company in total sat stationed in the grimy booth surrounded by barbed wire and lit by torches. A table full of cards, a sofa, a water-cooler, and a cabinet full of guns to keep them occupied. The surveillance feed was supposed to be strictly for monitoring, but they where watching the game for now.
A man with a face full of dirt lay across the dirtier coach opening a book filled with pages with filthy materials. The four on duty had moved to different areas to get space away from each other. The warning buzzing sound of the incoming elevator immediately snapped everyone to attention. They had a buffer of five minutes before it would actually arrive, but there was 30 minutes of work that had been put off forever. They threw trash into bags, scrubbed grease off dishes, stuffed sour laundry into closets, and attempted to tidy beds. With that mostly completed a panic ensued as they fought over brooms, and mops. The final touch was cleaning the windows with ammonia and a toothbrush.
The elevator loudly clicked into the dock. Edward was escorted off into a loading zone of supplies, and spare parts. A crane on a rail moved slowly around the overhead remote control. The sign greeting him said: “Welcome to the Killin Mines. Miner check-in, and human relations department.”
“Simon it’s good to see you, how's the surface?” asked a guard behind the bulletproof see-through crystal of the booth.
The warden holding the prisoner grunted in acknowledgement, but mostly spoke with his eyes. Simon was a shirtless man of so much muscle it slowed him down significantly and gave him health issues from overgrown organs. His height was big enough to also cause him more problems, but he was really good at his job.
“I'll let you through, but you know I gotta see some ID as company protocol,” said the guard in the booth.
The same guard jerked and involuntary response, jumping out of his office chair that spun empty. A fist had cracked the glass, and the guy behind it had run away in a flash. A buzzer signaled to a large section of the cave wall began to open up past the station with the light turned green.
“Just this way you common man who used to be royalty hehehe,” laughed a shrill voiced woman.
Her voice was familiar to Edward, but things had turned so fuzzy his brain wasn’t connecting the dots too much. His legs moved automatically underneath him following their commands. The cavern went in and out of focus until they traveled into the secret entrance.
They went through a small cramped tunnel to a large cave filled with lights, wires, equipment, and the loud sounds heavy metal working. It wasn’t a natural formation but something drilled or blasted. A layer of smog that smelled of chemicals intensified with every step forward. As they rounded a corner he heard the distant clink of what had to be hundreds of pick axes.
“Now surely a former King can appreciate our ambitions,” the lady called, stepping in front of him.
She wore a clean white lab coat that looked brand new, held a clipboard, and had a patch pocket full of pens partially hidden under wild long red hair. She was wearing heels so high they put her on equal footing to Simon. Her long nails descended towards Edward’s eyes, and he closed them scared.
“Common look at this, don't be shy,” she cooed, unlocking the face mask constricting his vision.
“Zaaap!”
They stood on the edge of a cliff lined with red tape that wasn’t protecting anything from failing. Simon held Edward over the edge by the ropes on the back of his straitjacket. The cavern here was ginormous, and fell several hundred feet to the little lights below. Edward squinted and realized there might be a million humans working just like ants at a bigger scale.
“This is where our common prisoners toil, and guess what you ain’t nobody anymore,” she cackled.