Carnage! Love & Lust in the Wasteland
Chapter III: Glory Days
“Well don’t leave me hanging, Doc,” Otis said. Dr. Wong stood his back to him, examining the chest x-rays.
“It’s not good, Otis,” Wong sighed, leaning in closer and tapping on the black and white image. “Your heart’s not seeing any improvement, even with the pills. The angina will only increase in frequency, and in pain.”
“So give me a higher dose.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Wong said, turning and fixing Otis with that infuriating look of concern. He felt like he was being fussed over by his mother, God rest her wretched soul. “Your liver can’t take anymore of the medicine, the whites of your eyes are already starting to yellow. The time for preventative measures is in the rear view, Otis. If you don’t slow down, your heart’s going to give out sooner rather than later. I’m not talking years man, I’m talking months.”
“So what are my options, Doc?”
Wong chewed the inside of his cheek, glancing back over his shoulder at the x-rays again for a long moment before speaking again.
“No liquor, no cigarettes, no hard drugs. Eat better. Retire from the damn Peacekeepers. If you don’t exert yourself too much we can put you on a gentle exercise regime. Might give you a few more years. Time enough to push through an application with NexGen for a new heart.”
Otis grimaced. A few years of boredom just for some NexGen desk jockey to glance at his computer screen, read some numbers and notes, and tell me my life ain’t worth living… Ringing in his ears stole him away from the room as he blinked at the polished sterile tiles of the floor. At his last assessment, only four months ago, Dr. Wong had seemed hopeful that the pills would help his condition. Of course, that had been with the same conditions. Diet, exercise, rest. No smokes, no booze, and no action. No kind of life. Otis absently took the pack from his pocket, shaking out a cigarette and lighting it in a fluid motion.
“Because that’s a smart idea,” Wong scoffed.
“Don’t seem to matter either way at this point, Doc.”
“Listen,” Wong sighed. “I know a few people at NexGen Bio-Labs and with your, erm, legacy… I might be able to push a transplant through. But those cloned hearts are expensive, Otis. They’re not going to waste time and credits on a man who comes to his doctor’s appointments reeking of smoke, blood, and beer. But if you clean yourself up over the next few years—”
“If I clean myself up, it’s still a solid maybe,” Otis snorted, exhaling a long stream of smoke. Wong batted it away from his face.
“Just think about it,” Wong sighed again, shaking his head.
“Oh I’ll be thinking alright. Long and hard, Doc. Long and hard.”
“I’m sorry, Otis. I know this wasn’t the news you wanted.”
“Don’t be sorry. You didn’t put me here, Doc. I did that my own self.” He took the last pull on his smoke, tossing the butt down and grinding under his boot. Wong frowned down at the soot now staining his painfully clean room but said nothing. “Can’t say I love the idea of putting my fate into the hands of NexGen. Can’t say I love the idea of slowing down. After all I’ve been through, Doc. Growing up with the gangs in the waste, driving on six Carnage circuits, Peacekeeping through the uprisings and the constantly struggle with the Scavengers…” He laughed bitterly. “Always lived fast, figured I’d die that way too. Never was keen on the idea of sitting around and waiting for it.”
Wong reached across the exam table, laying a hand on Otis’ shoulder and squeezing. “Can’t say I approve,” Wong said, “but I understand.” Otis looked away, suddenly unable to meet his eye.
“If it’s, uh, only going to be a few months, you got anything that’ll help ease the bumps along the road?”
“Sure,” Wong said, taking out his script pad. He scribbled one, then a second, then a third script and pushed them toward Otis. “A double dose of the heart meds, something that might slow the damage to your liver, and a low dose of ketamine for the pain.”
“You’re a gem, Wong,” Otis chuckled. He held out his hand.
“Good luck, Otis,” Wong said, clasping his hand.
The sun was lethal when he stepped outside after filling the scripts, beads of sweat pooling before he reached his car. He climbed into the cruiser, firing it up and grinding it into gear. He puttered off the road, kicking up a cloud of dust as he cut across the wastes toward the Scavenger junkyard, knuckles white on the wheel.
A thousand ways I could’ve died, Otis thought, not really needing to watch his way as he crawled over the dusty earth. He bumped out another cigarette and jammed the lighter on his dash. Hundreds of tons of twisted metal and hot lead through the years, twenty-eight bullet wounds and about a million stitches, more concussions than I’m able to count, and every damn bone in my body broken twice over… His heart thumped a little harder, recalling all the scrapes with death he’d had. He could feel the adrenaline begging to be let off leash and pressed the gas pedal a little harder to take the cruiser off one of the low dunes, relishing in the feeling of a hook jerking him upward behind his navel as he caught some air.
I put my heart into all of it, Otis thought. The lighter clicked and Otis took the hot coil to light his smoke. And the damn thing starts to fail me for it…
It was pathetic, really.
The Scavenger junkyard loomed, heat waves bending the wall of wrecked cars surrounding it, an old crane still against the soft blue sky. Otis ground the cruiser down and parked it at the archway of twisted frames that led into the labyrinth of tetanus, flicking his cigarette into the dirt before passing under it. The dirt was hard-packed and grimy, saturated in all the toxic fluids leaking from their treasured wrecks. Trailers, shacks, and tents began to poke out at strange odds and angles of the paths, their resident Scavs leering at Otis as he went by. He passed a man whose torso was sprawled out from inside his tent, head half-submerged in a rainbow puddle of oily muck, bubbles popping from his gentle breaths. He saw a few other legs dangling from vehicles up in the pile, people who had carved out little caves in the wreckage. Otis loved the grimier parts of life but the Scavs could take it too far. Their abode was repulsive, dangerous, and unsanitary.
How many cars in this heap were put here because of me? The Scavs picked through the wreckage of the Carnage matches as surely as they picked through any they found in the wastes. It had only been a handful of years since he had retired from the circuit so there was bound to be a few of his triumphs amongst the pile. He glanced around, as though expecting to recognize one, before a lurch in his chest sent him to knees suddenly, doubled over in a coughing fit. It took only a few moments for it to subside but it left Otis hauling in air as he leaned up against an old bus.
Come see the Menace now, he thought, tasting blood in the mucous he’d hacked up. He spat, seeing flecks of red in it. Feast on your fear, Carnage fans, as the withered old fart coughs out his busted heart and dies alone in the junkyard surrounded by naught but the fading memories of his glory days…
Pathetic.
He started to straighten out, wiping the bloody spit from his mouth.
The night before had reminded Otis of the old times, the bad times, the all-or-nothing times. Staring down the barrel of a Dynasty tank with nothing but a sidearm and a hoard for blood-frenzied idiots roaring behind him? For a moment, it had been as though he was a Carnage driver again, waving to the crowd before taking point and—
His cough renewed, spraying bloody spittle against the flaking paint of the bus. He tried to catch himself before falling but his reflexes weren’t what they used to be. His face struck the gritty, bloodied paint as his arm buckled.
Pathetic.
He tried to push through the racking coughs, struggling to straighten, but his limbs shook and he collapsed into a patch of oily mud on all fours as he began to retch.
Pathetic.
The retching ended with a splatter of acidic, bloody bile flopping out of his mouth, long strands of mucus hanging from his nose and lips, breath rattling into him as he crawled in the mud like a mewling alley cat.
Fucking. Pathetic.
His breath began to steady and he managed to maneuver himself into a seated position. He took the pills out of his coat and rattled a few loose, tossing them down his burning throat. Then he took out his handkerchief, wiping the sweat from his brow and resting against the charred tire of the bus. The pills began to take effect, his breath and heart gradually returning to normal.
And this is how it ends, Menace, he thought. Not a gunshot, not a twisted wreck, not a ball of fire.
But also not today.
He grunted, forcing some strength back into his legs, and kept on.
He rounded a bend around a jackknifed semi and stopped short. What he recalled to have been Hawk’s trailer was just a burnt out husk now, a few Scavs still loitering by the smoking remains and rounding on him like a pack of rabid hyenas when he approached.
“Stand down!” roared a voice behind him, Elvis coming through them, soot-stained and reeking of caustic smoke. The older man was far less cordial than he’d appeared the night prior, a deep frown carved into the lines of his face as he looked at Otis. “Menace. What brings you ‘round?”
“Just wanted to check on Hawk… Err, Sid.”
“Hate that he started calling himself that,” Elvis grunted. “Name a kid after the greatest punk rock icon of the age and he opts for some shitty nickname he gave himself.” Elvis spat. “Good riddance to him.”
“Riddance?”
“You didn’t hear?” Elvis chuckled. “Sid got his little worm mixed up in the wrong patch of muck. Found him this morning about to fuck my bride in his trailer. My bride, Menace. That was more than enough, especially since his little display last night. I cut him loose. Fuck ‘im. Best of luck to whoever goes after the hundred large on his head.”
A hundred thousand credits? Fuck, I’d be surprised if he isn’t dead already.
“Glad you’re here, Menace,” Elvis went on. “Was going to bring this down to the Peacekeeper’s office but Rosa wasn’t wearing much the last I saw her and…” He bobbed his eyebrows, reaching inside his faded leather coat and producing a handwritten sheet that Otis unfolded.
“I can take this in for you,” Otis agreed, tucking it into his coat pocket. Must be serious if Elvis was putting the bounty through official channels.
“Thanks, brother,” Elvis said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Now if you’d excuse me.”
Otis waved off Elvis, then hurried back toward his cruiser, feeling some minor guilt about his hand in sending Hawk off the rails last night. The note in his jacket weighed heavier on him than any other life on his conscience, even his own.
He fired up his car, tires spinning in the dirt as he gunned it back to the office.
“Next!”
Hawk jostled forward to the front of the line, jaw clenched and hands sweaty as he unrolled the registration form in his hand, sliding it under the glass to the man working the counter. He felt like shit, probably looked it too, his mouth unbelievably dry, head pounding. Compared to the beatings he’d taken that morning, standing in a stuffy line and only shuffling forward a few steps at a time was torture. But he was at the front, finally. The man took the form and Hawk glanced over his shoulder at the orderly line of people waiting for this and that, though he was likely the only one registering a Carnage team at the last minute. He looked past the crowd to the NexGen androids standing head and shoulders taller than everyone else, white casings spotless, their sleek faces unsettling with speakers where a mouth should be and a black visor covering what would’ve been eyes, blinking lights working behind it.
“You need to fill this out in full,” the clerk sighed, drawing Hawk’s attention back. Hawk blinked down at the form the man was pushing back under the glass. Granted, he was no great shakes at reading and writing but he was pretty sure he got all of it. “Next!”
“What’d I miss?”
“You don’t have a sponsor, and your team can’t just be two people.”
“Yeah, but I thought the Peacekeepers threw in a few of their own to sure up the numbers.”
“That program is voluntary and you need the Peacekeeper to be approved by your sponsor, in writing. Then your requisition and sponsorship need to be approved by the Carnage Liaison on the fifth floor before you can register your team. Next!”
“Get out of the way, Scav!” someone called from the line.
“How about you fuck off?” Hawk shouted back, then to the clerk, “Come on, man. I don’t have all the time for that. Couldn’t you just throw me and my buddy on a Peacekeeper team?”
“There are no Peacekeeper teams on which to throw you and your buddy,” the stiff said, his tone grating against the inside of Hawk’s skull like nails on a chalkboard. “If you would please step aside, sir. I have other customers to serve.”
“Fuck that, you’re helping me,” Hawk growled.
“Look, kid—” was all that came from the agitated man who put his hand on Hawk’s shoulder, the rest cut off by Hawk’s fist as he whirled and crashed a wild haymaker into the side of his head. The man spat blood as he hit the floor, the room quieting and Hawk turning back to the white faced clerk.
“Now about that form.”
An alarm began to ring, startling Hawk, who looked around for the source of the commotion, then down at the man he’d laid out, blood leaking out of his mouth onto the polished tile.
“Ah shit,” he said as the androids whirred into action and began pressing through the crowd toward him. The clerk was out of his seat and backing away from the glass, they all were, and an open space had grown around Hawk, singling him out. Trapping him. “Fuck it,” he muttered.
Stinging cuts sang on his arms as Hawk smashed the glass out and leapt behind the clerk’s desk, the office workers gasping and falling over one another to get away from him.
One of the tin voices of the androids called out behind him, “Halt, citizen!”
“Nah, I’m good!” Hawk replied, shoving through the workers and into a hallway. This was a stupid idea, he thought. Worry later, run now. Doors smashed open behind him, heavy footfalls on his heels as he shoved a fat woman in a pantsuit out of his path, dashing past countless doors with fogged glass windows. He reached a cross and paused, his heart leaping as he saw the red exit sign down the right. He flew toward it.
The android slipped out of a service corridor at the end of the hall, raising a metal arm and clothes-lining Hawk off his feet. The air burst from his lungs as he fell onto the flat of his back, the small stirring of hydraulics and gears whirring as the android flipped him on his belly. His arms were jerked behind his back painfully and cuffed.
“Ho there, android!” Hawk managed to crane his neck enough to see Otis pushing through the harassed office workers, dusty and rumpled from the long night before. He was breathing hard as he came up to them, brandishing a crumpled piece of paper. He paused while the android clicked on its scanner, a beam of red light passing over the Peacekeeper’s face.
“Officer Grange,” the android said. “Stand down. This criminal is bound for detention.”
“I have here a signed bounty notice from Elvis Hawkins, Chief of the Scavengers, naming this criminal as a bounty worth one-hundred thousand credits.” Hawk’s heart sank as Otis unfolded the note and showed it to the android. The robot scanned it, then maneuvered Hawk to scan him, then whirred back to Otis.
“I release this bounty into your charge, Officer Grange.” Hawk was passed from robot to man and the android stomped off without another word. Otis grabbed Hawk’s upper arm.
“You fucking simpleton. Let’s go.”
Otis dragged him down the back halls and through a few sets of doors, ignoring Hawk’s protests as they wove into what could only be the Peacekeeping offices. Otis kicked open a partially closed door, shoving Hawk into an interrogation room, a metal table and chairs illuminated in the shadowy room by a single lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. He collapsed into a chair, his cuffed hands crushed painfully, and Otis slammed the door, rounding on him.
“Otis, I—” The Peacekeeper held up a hand and silenced Hawk.
“Here you sit,” Otis said. “A hundred thousand credits that I could go and scoop up with little more than a bullet through your thick skull.”
Hawk dry swallowed, his mouth a wasteland of its own. This was Otis. Surely he wouldn’t.
But the Menace might…
“Otis,” Hawk began, but the Peacekeeper held up a hand again.
“I’ve always liked you, Hawk,” Otis went on. “You’re a little shit, but an honest shit. That’s a nut that fell very far from the tree in my opinion. What the hell possessed you to come here of all places, kid?”
“Elvis put a—”
“A bounty on you, yeah.” Otis brandished the note again. “What are you doing here, Hawk? Not exactly the best hiding spot.” Hawk muttered something under his breath, looking down and away from the older man. “Didn’t catch that.”
“I was trying to join Carnage!” Silence hung between them and Hawk felt heat rising in his cheeks as the shock faded off Otis’ face, replaced by a peculiar expression. Hawk flinched as Otis grabbed him by the scruff and pulled him forward, uncuffing him before leaning against the table, leering down at him. It struck Hawk in the moment just how big of a man Otis was.
“The credits and protection, I take it?” Otis asked after a long moment. Hawk nodded. “But you have no idea which forms go where and how to register a team so you… what? Got mad and smashed up the clerk's desk?”
“Knocked out the pushy asshole behind me,” Hawk shrugged. “Then I had to smash the glass to escape. The androids were… Well, you saw what happened. It, uhhh, didn’t quite go over as planned.”
“No shit, kid.” Otis sighed, rubbing his hand along the length of his face, dark circles under his eyes pronounced as he slid into thought. He shook his head, lips moving soundlessly, then pursed them and nodded. “Where’d you park?”
“I ain’t leaving until—”
“Stop!” Otis barked. “You don’t seem to realize that you have no cards left to play, Hawk. So if you want my fucking help, tell me where you parked.”
“Out back,” Hawk grumbled, crossing his arms and throwing himself into an epic pout.
“Come on.”
Otis had reached the door before Hawk scurried to follow. They receded from the bowels of the office and into a set of service corridors where the only one working was an old security guard who half rose before Otis waved him to sit again. They wove into the dank hallways, the scent of disinfectant and old refuse strong.
“I’ll get you on a team, kid,” Otis said after a few minutes in silence.
“Holy shit, really?”
“I have a few favours owed to me from the right people. Might be tough, mind you. Adding another team puts the roster at an odd number and the suits will hate that. Carnage doesn’t love to give any byes, especially in PTQs...” Otis pushed open a door and sunlight flooded over them, the clinging heat of the day as welcome as any free air in Hawk’s opinion. His dirt bike was parked right where he had left it at the corner of the building. He turned back to Otis, who looked admittedly grim.
“Thanks Otis,” Hawk said. “Really, it’s… Just… Thanks, man.”
“Get going,” Otis said. Hawk nodded.
“I’ll be at Mass’ shop, you know it? He’s the second on the team.”
“Got it,” Otis nodded impatiently. “Go!” He stepped back in and pulled the door shut behind him.
Hawk fired the bike up and rumbled around the front of the building, grinning. It had gone horribly, an absolute clusterfuck, but he’d got it done. He was going to be a Carnage driver. He laughed aloud. A Scav! A Carnage driver. Never thought I’d see the day—
The bullet ricocheted off the brick of the office building before Hawk could react to the shot, the hair flopped over his ear rustling by how close it had come.
“Shit!” Hawk said, revving up and gunning the bike into the sands as the hoots and hollers of a Scav hunting party roared over a dune, Sammy in the lead with a machine gun leveled over the bars of her dirt bike.
Hawk bobbed to dodge a few more bullets, the sand erupting all around him with thunking plumes as they struck. He caught air off a slope and took a steep downhill, running free into the desert, laughing like a maniac.
If anything else, he thought, flinching as another bullet whizzed close, it’s good practice for the circuits.
Otis leaned against the wall, taking deep breaths. Being around Hawk was like being around a younger version of himself: brash, impulsive, volatile. The kid had a death wish – several, actually – but he was just so damned… Otis sighed, unable to find the right word for it. It was a feeling, a life or death rush, like driving in Carnage.
These are your glory days, Hawk, he thought, and I’ll get you on a team… His gut shifted at the notion of what he’d come up with and he felt like he might puke.
A couple months, he thought. There are worse ways to spend them.