Ain't Talkin'
Chapter 22 - ng an

The city burled on around Roche the further he rode. Avenues of burnt out buildings stretched away on either side and became more open the closer Roche and Lucky drew to the center of town. An old government building with a columned facade stood out behind a wrought iron fence that had been shored up with hubcaps, old sandbags and rusted doors ripped from surrounding cars. The building’s peak was a bulbous little dome the shape of an onion and topped with a flagpole that flew a piece of black cloth. where the gate in the fence ought to have been someone had pushed a car, completing the low wall around the building.

A half dozen wastelanders, all men, sat on the stoop of the building or leaned against the columns which Roche could only guess had once been white, but were now a burned brown with disrepair and ichor.

Roche halted his horse in front of the car-gate and waited to be seen.

It didn’t take the men on the steps long, three seconds at most before one of them whooped and hollered and four came down to the low wall with guns drawn while the others bolted inside.

They were dressed in various states of wastelander garb, the kind of clothing one found in a ditch because it was no good as a piece of clothing anymore or you took off another you’d cut to death in a similar ditch. The biggest one, a wastelander with dark glasses and a sickly smelling cigarette in his teeth put a rifle on Roche. Single shot and then a re-load. Not that this one could get a good enough shot off in time.

Roche had his revolvers aimed through the leather and denim of his coat when he spoke.

“Sorry to bother y’all. Got some questions. I can pay.” He added.

“Wha’choo want, cowboy?” The big one asked through his bottom lip.

“Just need to know about some folks passing through. Probably on motorbikes.” Roche took note that those who had rushed inside at the sight of him had just returned with reinforcements, making the total wastelanders by the fence number four and five more on the stoop some forty yards back.

“Fuck off, cowboy. We don’t know nothin’.”

“Yeah. I can see that. But maybe you can count. Hold up, I’m gonna reach into my jacket.” Roche took his left hand from his revolver and held it flat up, wiggled his fingers and reached in his coat for the bank notes he’d taken as down payment on Alex Markus. He flipped off the top few bills and held them high folded into his palm. “See this? Cash for info. Sound good to you fellas?”

The wastelanders exchanged looks. Roche thought that thinking wasn’t their strong suit but kept quiet.

The big one, who was at this point clearly in charge, at least for now, answered. “How much’choo got there?”

“Enough. Can you count?”

“Fuck can I count. I can count.”

Roche flipped off the top three bills and folded them in quarter with his left hand and flipped them at the car-gate where they flopped against the pavement. “That’s twenty. Twenty, got it. I’m looking for motorbikes, they been through here?”

“Maybe they have and maybe they ain’t, cowboy. Twenty more.”

Roche smiled under his hat brim. “And how many does that make, fella?”

“Fuck you!” The big one stuffed his rifle back into his shoulder and pointed it at Roche’s breast.

“Right. Look, I’ll do forty. That’s twenty and twenty. You tell me where they went and how long ago they were here.” Roche flipped forty more in bank notes to the pavement in front of the car-gate. “Or I can keep my money and kill you all and ask the next wastelander I come across and he’ll be forty richer.”

“Forty buy us a lotta-” The wastelander to the big one’s left started.

“Shut up, Finley!” The big one cursed at his buddy. Turning back to Roche he said. “You can’t kill us all, cowboy. We got guns on the roof too.”

“No you don’t, fella or I’d have seen them by now. I been doing this longer than you been alive, now just tell me.” Roche slipped his left to his thigh and unholstered Jex’s .45. “Twelve rounds in this clip and I bet I take out those nine with the first ten shots and put the next two in your balls and let you bleed it out. I’m done fucking around.”

The big one saw something in Roche he hadn’t noticed before. Some folks caught the sense of him right off the bat, some it took a minute or two and some never saw it at all. This wastelander saw it now though. There was a bending of things around a walker who’d done his time in the white. A sense that things weren’t just right and that this was a man who had seen the other side of things, a man who’d been inside what makes the universe up and come out the other side with a shit-eating grin and a hard on.

Sometimes there were men out there you just didn’t fuck with, and the big wastelander was getting that sense that Roche was one of ’em.

The big one smacked his lips like his mouth had gone dry and realized then that his smoke had gone out and dropped from his lips. He put up the barrel of his gun and said plainly.

“Two bikes came by yesterday mid-morning. Four guys on ’em. Three in black all official like. One tied up. We didn’t cross ‘em and they didn’t cross us. Jus’ like that.”

“I have your word on that?” Roche cocked his head.

“Yeah. . .yeah, man. West, I think they went west.”

“What’s the quickest way to Sacramento and New San Fran from here?”

“Ain’t never been out there, cowboy. Most folks take the main road through the mountains I guess. Some folks go that way always. Nobody comes back this way much. Must be nicer out there.”

“So why haven’t you gone?” Roche asked.

“Me?”

“Nevermind.” Roche reached for his envelope and flicked another ten note to the pavement before he turned Lucky west.

“Hey!”

Roche wheeled back the big wastelander. “Yeah?”

“Thanks. You need anything you call us. We got reach. . .an’ communication.”

“Us who?”

The big wastelander pointed to the top of the government building where the black cloth flew. “Blackbirds, cowboy. We got reach all around here, if you can pay, man.”

“Thanks for the tip. I may do that.” Roche spurred Lucky west and left the Blackbirds behind him where they pushed the rusted car-gate aside and retrieved the bank notes he’d tossed to the sidewalk.

He was never one to deal with mercs. Especially ones that didn’t run themselves out of somewhere more organized than a burnt out border city. But, that was as close to friends as a man like Roche ever came. Even if that kind of friend only hand your back at a daily rate.

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