I’ve bought three things today. A Remington 870 shotgun, a John Elway rocky card, and a ‘72 Chevelle.
I spent $7,634 on these things. It has taken me seven year to illegally save this amount of money. Seven tortured years, breaking my back, bleeding and crying, testing the outer limits of my sanity. Looking back is incredible, seeing all of that horror spilt onto the canvas of my life. Here I am though, leaving the city for the first time in since the crash, heading to the Capital with a pocket full of shells.
Most people stopped caring long ago, and indeed some even get married and have families, try to act like everything is normal. Their children will die in front of their eyes, or become mangled from malnutrition, and even if they cobble together enough of these freaks to make another generation of sufferers, the future ahead will be darker still, as existence moves further into this stifling cloud.
Not me though, oh no. I made my plan seven years ago, and have march toward it like a disciplined soldier. I have not once loved, are even cared about, another human that entire time. Can you imagine this! I am from the old time too, so this should have been impossible. Even those who have only known this most of pain can not go without at least pretending to have human emotions. I was a vessel though, shot out into space, and for seven year I was motionless, hurtling through the mighty void, and today I have slammed back into earth. I am a vengeful horseman, so I suppose there should be two more of us.
It is John, Remington, and I!
To get he car I went downtown with forged papers. After that I went to the Mexicans for the gun, some shells, and five jugs of gas. The card was next. The idea of attaining it was how I made it seven year in the desert, alone. It became my God. I knew they would open the gates for a car, so I just drove right up, and they let me in. I almost blacked out, I mean I don’t know what I told them, but I was going real slow, and speaking slow, and just plain acting strange, and that’s how I got the John Elway rookie card. They no doubt thought I was some kind of councilman or something—I didn’t even have to buy it, they just bowed and handed it over the moment they knew I wanted it. I bet the murderous look in my eyes helped. Who knows. What a place!
Anyway, I’m right outside the Capital now, and it is shimmering green, like a gem tucked neatly in the crook of those merging rivers. My anger grew at once when I saw the lights. For the whole drive I prayed that I would crest the summit and look down on a worn out wasteland, like the one I had just left. I would have been writing a different note if that were the case. There it is though, just how I knew it must be deep down in my gut...beautiful.
The plan is to blow the head off of the first smiling face I see, as a way of announcing my arrival, and then I’ll plan on driving to the Capitol. I bet some robot drone takes me out before I get there, but who cares. If by some miracle they let me in, and sit down and talk with me, I plan on asking them why. In those old sci-fi novels there is always that scene where the ruler tells the dissident why things have to be the way they are, and usually it makes quite a bit of sense, even if the hero is in no mood at all to hear sensible things. I just can’t for the life of my imagine an excuse for this though. What would a ruler say? After all, I was alive before the suffering, so I know it is not essential for life.
Like I said though, some fucking robot is going to swallow me whole, probably even before I get to blow that head off.
