Jeffrey Ramses
Jeffrey sat himself in the cab of a battered old truck, his hands still shaking and a cigarette dangling loosely from his mouth and the smell of the battlefield still filling his nostrils.
He idly wondered how much money it would take to make him do it all over again. If he could go back two months, and meet with one of the recruiters in The MIZ and they laid everything out honestly - all the deaths and the gunfire and the bodies and the sight of men throwing themselves against the walls of a Pale Regiment base - would Jeffrey have signed up? How much money would have had to be dangled in front of him to convince him to go through all that?
The answer should have been simple. It should have been a truly ridiculous amount of money that no recruiter could have paid. He told himself that he would have turned down the job and stayed in The MIZ and worked for one of the smaller gangs and kept his head down. But would he have? The truth was there wasn’t a whole lot of work for someone like him.
He lit the cigarette and took a long drag and let the smoke hover around him. It covered up the smells hanging over the battlefield and that was the best thing he got from it.
His eyes drifted to the walls of the Pale Regiment base before he quickly pulled them away, not wanting to look at all the bodies still scattered in front of the place. Some of them were people he’d met only a few days ago and some belonged to people he’d spent weeks working alongside. He didn’t want to think about either group.
The battle was over. Sort of. No one had come to tell him and the other mercs that the fighting was finished. No one had cheered for victory or celebrated or wandered about the mercs and told them they could all relax. Jeffrey and the others had just retreated and gathered around each other, and the gunfire had faded away until it was replaced by silence.
Smoke drifted lazily across the Deadlands from the front gates of the Pale Regiment base. It hung over the battlefield like a dirty gray blanket, and rolled through the wrecked vehicles and over the dead bodies and mixed with the dust churned up by boots and tires until everything took on a hazy unreal quality.
Jeffrey glanced down at the rifle resting across his lap. The thing was a piece of shit. Someone back in The MIZ had cobbled it together from scrap metal and wood. It fired well enough. Most of the time. But every shot it let out was joined with a cloud of chalky smoke that lingered in the air. The ammo that Jeffrey and the others had was not the best.
That chalky smoke was what clung to the battlefield. It coated the dirt and settled into his clothes and mixed with the dust until every breath he took tasted like ash and dirt. When the wind shifted and carried that disgusting mixture to the mercs, it brought with it the smell of the battlefield and Jeffrey had to fight the urge to vomit.
That was something that none of the oldheads ever talked about: the smell of battle.
Growing up in The MIZ, he’d had plenty of time to listen to the old mercs in the neighborhood tell stories. They’d gathered in bars and on street corners and they shared their tales. For a young kid with no money or parents and with nothing better to do, the stories from the mercs was free entertainment.
Those old bastards talked about everything. They talked about the monsters they killed, the jobs they pulled, the firefights and ambushes, the betrayals and impossible victories. They talked about treasure and danger and women and glory. But none of them ever talked about the smell of a battle and how it clung to you. Looking back, Jeffrey wondered if they were all full of shit?
How could you not mention the smell? It was the smell of blood and burnt rubber and spilled fuel and vomit and sweat and feces and a bunch of other things all mixed together and left out to bake in the heat of the Deadlands until it became something truly awful. It settled in the back of your throat and burned your nostrils and just stayed there.
A scream pulled Jeffrey out of his thoughts. A dozen yards away there were a pair of medics working on one of the wounded mercs. The poor bastard was missing most of his left arm and every now and then he tried to push himself upright, forcing one of the medics to shove him back down again.
Jeffrey watched for a few seconds before turning away. There wasn’t anything he could do for the man, and he had no interest in watching him slowly realize how bad he’d been messed up. So, he allowed his eyes to drift and they eventually turned back to the front gate of the Pale Regiment base.
The base was still standing. From where he was seated he could see the black scorch marks around the gate and the damage along sections of the wall. The attack had left scars but…that was all it had done.
“That’s it?” Jeffrey mumbled quietly around his cigarette. “That was all we could do?”
One of the nearby mercs picked his head up and asked if Jeffrey was talking to him, but Jeffrey ignored the question.
His focus was on the spot where Danner had died. Even now, Jeffrey could make out his body laying in the dirt. Danner had fallen awkwardly with one arm stretched out in front of himself, almost like he’d been trying to crawl somewhere before he finally died. Jeffrey imagined that he could see the flies gathering around the body and the blank look that was on Danner’s face.
No one had gone out to pick up his body. Maybe they were worried about getting shot, or they were trying to regroup after the fight, or there were simply way too many dead to worry about one more. Whatever the reason, Danner had been left exactly where he’d fallen.
Jeffrey rubbed a hand across his face and looked away and started wondering why that particular death had taken something from him. Over the last month of working for the Alderman, he’d seen plenty of people die. He’d been in raids and pulled security jobs and chased down caravans. Being a mercenary was dangerous and death wasn’t new to him. So why was this one different? It wasn’t like they’d been best buds.
They’d ridden in the same convoys and pulled the same jobs and been in the same firefights and sat around the same miserable campfires eating terrible food and complaining about the Deadlands. And that was it. That was the extent of their relationship.
Yet seeing Danner lying out there felt like…something. Jeffrey couldn’t quite put a finger on what it was. Maybe it was because Danner had felt like the kind of guy who survived, or maybe it was because, for as much danger as Jeffrey had been involved in, he always thought himself immortal. Death was what happened to other people, not those close to you. Or maybe it was because for the first time since taking the job, Jeffrey was forced to admit that none of them were getting paid enough for this.
The waiting was starting to get to him. Jeffrey knew that. During the attack there’d been something to do. You shot when people told you to shoot and you ran when people told you to run and you kept your head down and tried not to die. But now…they were just waiting.
All around him the mercenaries had settled into an uneasy silence broken only by the occasional screams of the wounded. Nobody seemed to know what was happening next.
Was the fight truly over? Whatever the Alderman had set out to do, obviously he had done it, right? The Pale Regiment had been bloodied and the Alderman had achieved…something. Right?
Jeffrey was still deep in his thoughts when he noticed the conversations around him suddenly dying off. The noise faded as more and more people grew quiet. Jeffrey looked up and spotted where movement in the camp was happening and his eyes met those of the Alderman.
He never liked the man. Most people didn’t. The strange thing was that nobody could ever quite explain why. He was…well, he was a prick. There was something unsettling about the man. He carried himself like the shortest guy in the room. That was the best way to describe it.
The Alderman wasn’t tiny. But he had the energy of a man trying to compensate for something. The way he carried himself, the way he spoke, the way he needed to control everything, it all screamed ‘small-man syndrome.’
Nobody ever said that out loud of course. You didn’t survive as a mercenary by being that stupid. But Jeffrey was sure everyone was thinking it.
The Alderman walked through the camp and men who had been quietly talking moments earlier suddenly found other things to do. A few looked away entirely, not wanting to attract attention. When he had finally stopped near the center of camp, conversations dwindled into silence.
“We’re moving to the next phase. I want that base taken. I want you to peel those rat bastards out of their hidey hole and stake them to the ground. And I get what I want.”
Jeffrey had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. He had to resist the urge to stand up and shout at the Alderman and ask where he’d been during the fighting. The man hadn’t screamed and shouted and berated the mercenaries for failing in the attack, but it felt like he had. It felt like he was trying to pull off that disappointed dad look. The look that said ‘I expected better.’ And that was pissing off Jeffrey to no end.
The Alderman kept speaking but Jeffrey tuned him out. He was saying something about preparations and movement but Jeffrey just went back to smoking his cigarette. He only looked up when he heard a bit of surprise coming from the edges of the camp.
He glanced up and noticed all the other mercs looking in the same direction, at a wall of sand approaching their way. At first, Jeffrey thought it was the Janus Storm. He’d heard about it. Everyone in The MIZ had heard about it. The storm that raced through the Deadlands and peeled the skin off those unfortunate enough to get caught up in it. But this mixture of sand traveling their way was surely too small to be the infamous storm.
“The Black Teeth,” said a nearby mercenary, quietly under his breath as if shocked and fearful all at once.
That perked Jeffrey up and he stared at the massive sand cloud approaching. It stretched across the Deadlands like a moving city. Dust clouds billowed and, after a few seconds, Jeffrey was able to make out the vehicles. Motorcycles darted ahead of larger transports while technicals raced between heavier trucks. Massive cargo haulers lumbered forward alongside armored vehicles that looked like they’d been assembled by lunatics with welding torches and access to scrap metal.
The sight of it made his blood run cold. Everyone in the Deadlands knew about the Black Teeth. They were some of the stories that the older mercs told. Entire settlements had disappeared after crossing paths with a Black Teeth convoy, and looking at them now, Jeffrey could understand why.
The realization of what they were seeing spread through the mercenary camp in waves. Men who had been nervous before suddenly looked genuinely frightened. The attack on the Pale Regiment base had been one thing, but an encroaching Black Teeth convoy was something completely different.
“Those are our reinforcements,” shouted the Alderman. “They are here to help us pull that base apart.”
That set off the mercs. One of the older mercs that Jeffrey had worked with asked why the Black Teeth were getting involved. Another voice asked the Alderman why he would put himself in bed with those animals. The voices and questions and shouts jumbled together in a cacophony of noise.
Jeffrey got up off the back of the pickup truck and took another look at the Pale Regiment base. They would be attacking again, that much was sure. Whatever was causing the Alderman to want to war with the Pale Regiment hadn’t been solved by the battle that had just been fought.
Staring at the base, he noticed movement. He could make it out through the damage they had caused to the walls. There were vehicles there. A lot of them. Trucks were gathering near the gate. Smaller transports were forming up behind them while soldiers rushed back and forth through the compound. Even from this distance, the activity was obvious.
Jeffrey stared at it for a few moments before the pieces finally clicked together.
“They’re running,” he muttered.
One of the nearby mercenaries glanced over at him. “What?”
Jeffrey pointed at the base, drawing the attention of nearby mercs. “They’re leaving. At least…I think they are.”
Slowly, the other mercenaries followed Jeffrey’s finger to the Pale Regiment base and saw exactly what he did. The Pale Regiment were leaving. They were getting out before the Black Teeth convoy arrived, and Jeffrey couldn’t blame them. Nobody in their right mind would willingly sit inside the walls and wait for the convoy to hit.
The Alderman came to stand next to Jeffrey and all Jeffrey wanted to do was reach out and throttle the man for getting him involved in something so stupid as an attack on the Pale Regiment. But he held back as the Alderman turned his eyes to the base.
“Shit,” he cursed. “Mount up. Don’t let them get away!”
That was all it took to get the mercenaries racing towards their vehicles. Jeffrey idly wondered what would happen with the injured. Would they be stuck back in this camp? Would they be forced on vehicles that were racing headlong at the Pale Regiment?
That thought was pushed out of his mind as others started filtering in. The battle for the base was over but there was still going to be fighting. This time it wasn’t going to happen with walls and fortifications. It was going to happen out on the open roads of the Deadlands, with dozens of vehicles racing across the Deadlands while the Black Teeth chased them down.
***
Douglas ‘Soot’ Green
Soot stood on the side rail of a truck with one hand wrapped around a welded support bar while the convoy thundered across the Deadlands. He roared out a cry as the wind tore at his clothes and whipped dust into his face. He barely noticed the dust and grime anymore. Years of riding with the convoy had made the constant roar of the engines and the taste of the Deadlands become as familiar to him as breathing.
The convoy stretched impossibly far in every direction. Dust rose into the sky as hundreds of vehicles raced across the terrain and it formed a cloud large enough to be seen for miles. If anything could be seen as the calling card of the Black Teeth, it was the dust cloud. It announced their presence and struck fear into the hearts of the cowards the Black Teeth were about to run down.
The noise got into Soot’s chest and got his blood pumping. It was the rolling thunder of the engines and the rattling of the armor plates and the grinding transmissions and the screaming exhaust pipes. And whenever Soot heard it, he couldn’t help but think it was the most beautiful noise.
Most people looked at the Black Teeth and saw nothing but raiders and murderers and thieves. They were that, for sure. But when Soot looked at them, he also saw family. They weren’t a family in the traditional sense. There were plenty of raiders that Soot rode with who’d steal his boots if he died in his sleep. Hell, there were a few he knew who’d probably kill him if they thought they could get away with it. That’s what made the convoy so much fun.
His family wasn’t held together by love. There was nothing weak like that in the convoy. It was held together through survival. His family had survived the Deadlands. The people he rode with survived raids, starvation, battles, breakdowns, and all the other countless ways that the Deadlands tried to kill people. The convoy protected its own, and in return, it demanded everything of the family.
A motorcycle tore past, nearly knocking Soot off the truck and he laughed wildly and with abandon. Seeing the motorcycle racing ahead made him want one of his own. Maybe some day he’d pick one up and become one of the outriders; one of the first to the battle.
The rider sped across a patch of uneven ground and deliberately launched himself into the air before slamming back down to earth hard enough to nearly throw himself from the seat. The site of it got the Black Teeth cheering and laughing and Soot felt the energy from the move leak into his bones.
Fools out in The MIZ and in the communities scattered about the Deadlands, if they’d seen someone do what the rider had just done, would have called him an idiot. But they were so wrong. It was beautiful and it was ballsy and it was exactly what had driven Soot to seek out the Black Teeth.
To the family, reputation mattered. Speed mattered. Violence mattered. No one cared about the old if they didn’t have a story to tell. The only way to build a reputation and earn respect and earn a name was to run headlong into the impossible and come back with a scar and a story.
Scars were the proof that you were alive. Every missing finger, every shattered bone, and every ugly burn mark was evidence that you stared death in the face and walked away. Soot had plenty of scars. The longest and largest ran across his left forearm and looked like melted wax that had been stretched over muscle and skin.
He’d earned it the same day he’d earned his memory, and Soot found himself smiling at the memory. It had happened years ago when a settlement had refused to pay for protection. They had stockpiled supplies and convinced themselves that they could hold out behind walls and watchtowers. They’d been wrong. Of course they had. And Soot still thought back to that day and smiled.
The family had swarmed the place. Soot could still recall how technicals had poured fire into the settlement and the trucks smashed through the walls and the motorcycles chased the foolish pissants who tried to flee.
He could remember riding through the smoke of the town while buildings collapsed around him. He’d set fire to a warehouse and burned down homes and killed the idiots who’d tried to stand up to the family. And when the settlement had finally collapsed, he looked around and noticed the whole town had been reduced to ash and soot had covered him from head to toe.
The older named members found him there and grinned and slapped him on the back. The name stuck and it was the happiest day of Soot’s life. Being named meant you’d done something worth remembering. Most of the family died before they ever managed that. But not Soot.
He looked to his left and right. Massive armored trucks were rolling through the dust cloud like steel beasts. Their sides were covered in welded plates, scavenged armor, and crude decorations that had been collected over the years. Some had mounted machine guns on their backs while others hauled heavier weapons.
Behind the trucks were the fuel carriers - the most important vehicles in the convoy. Everyone knew that fuel mattered more than even ammunition. Speed was life. Speed meant keeping the engines running. And fuel was important for that.
The buses followed behind that. The first time Soot had seen the buses he’d been a dumb kid and he wondered why anyone would ever want to ride in one of those. But then he’d been educated. The buses were war machines. Armor covered the windows and fire ports lined the sides. Storage racks at the top carried ammunition and supplies and spare parts. Some were packed with fighters and some acted as mobile workshops and some were treated as field hospitals and they all had purposes.
Soot thought of the convoy as a living creature. It prowled the Deadlands like one. Individual vehicles broke down all the time. People died. Equipment failed. Named were killed. But the convoy survived. It was a living, breathing thing, and it always survived.
More motorcycles raced forward and Soot tried to peer through the massive dust cloud. Somewhere up ahead there was a Pale Regiment base that was their target. The rumors had spread through the convoy for most of the morning. Soot had heard it all. He’d heard that the Black Teeth were chasing down the Pale Regiment to steal their shit. He’d heard that they were hunting a specific individual. He’d heard that this was the start of the Black Teeth reminding everyone in the Deadlands what they were dealing with.
But Soot didn’t care about any of that. One fight was just as good as another. They could be hunting the Pale Regiment or swarming over a settlement or trying to kill that random man that everyone seemed to be talking about. Who was it? Zeke?
He’d heard that story too. He was a slave who had escaped. He was a spy. He’d stolen something important. He was involved with cults. But again, Soot didn’t care. The details weren’t important. The why and who they were attacking didn’t matter.
The convoy crested another ridge and the mood changed almost immediately. One moment everyone was laughing and shouting over the engines, and the next they were standing up in truck beds and pointing towards the horizon.
Soot could barely see what they were motioning towards. The Deadlands were notorious for playing tricks on the eyes, and more than one Black Teeth raider had sworn they saw a settlement that turned out to be nothing but shimmering air. But this one wasn’t a mirage.
A watchtower and a warehouse rose from the Deadlands, surrounded by walls. It was the Pale Regiment base. A cheer erupted from somewhere behind him and a moment later more and more shouts answered it until the sound rolled through the convoy like a wave.
People climbed onto vehicle roofs to get a better look and others banged on armored plates and screamed out battle cries. Soot could feel the excitement spreading. Around him, the convoy was starting to transform. The atmosphere shifted from travel mode to combat mode. Weapons appeared. Rifles that had been resting beside seats were picked up and inspected. Ammunition boxes were opened and passed around between vehicles.
A motorcycle rider raced alongside the truck and held up two belts of machine-gun ammunition like trophies. The gunner riding in the technical behind him responded with a raised fist and a grin filled with missing teeth.
Soot checked his own shotgun. It was ugly and scratched and older than he was. Parts of it had been replaced so many times that it barely resembled the original design. But it still worked and that was all that mattered.
The convoy kept racing forward. Hundreds of vehicles churned up an ocean of dust. Technicals bounced violently across the rough terrain while their gunners held onto mounted weapons with white-knuckled grips.
A man standing in the bed of a nearby truck shouted and pointed at the base. “They’re running. The fucking cowards are running!”
Soot looked at the base and the movement there. His eyes narrowed at the collection of vehicles. There were trucks and jeeps and cars and the realization of what was happening hit Soot immediately. The Pale Regiment were leaving. They were abandoning their base and going to take their chances with the Deadlands.
The driver of Soot’s truck laughed at this and he was joined by everyone else. It was a mad cackle that got Soot even more excited.
“Ha. The shits are afraid. Good.”
Soot agreed with the driver. It was good that the Pale Regiment were leaving their base. There was nothing fun about smashing into walls. Soot preferred the pursuit. He loved it when his prey panicked and ran. It made the kill so much better.
Word passed throughout the convoy. The Pale Regiment were trying to escape. They were headed for the roads. Soot could feel the excitement surging through everyone. Men and women were looking more and more eager. Gunners climbed fully into their weapon mounts while drivers leaned over their steering wheels. The prospect of a chase energized everyone.
Soot could already picture what was about to happen. A long line of Pale Regiment trucks would be rushing through the Deadlands. The motorcycles would harass their flanks while the technicals probed for weaknesses. The faster vehicles would try to break apart the Pale Regiment convoy while the heavier trucks moved in for the kill.
That was Black Teeth warfare. That was what they were built for. Soot would still get his fight, and it was going to happen on the road.
***
Jess
The ‘potential’ was being dragged through the desert with his wrists tied behind his back. He was stumbling across the shifting sand with every step he took and Jess could see that his guards were starting to get impatient with him. Whenever he fell to the ground he was yanked upright again, and all Jess could think was why doesn’t he understand the gift that he’s about to be given?
She’d fallen in step with the procession and kept her eyes on the ‘potential,’ wondering whether he would survive the gift and be welcomed into the family. As she let her thoughts wander, wind scraped across the desert and carried sand to her that stung the skin. When she felt the bite of the sand, she smiled and thanked the storm for its favor.
The ‘potential’ was crying and begging in broken bursts, but no one in the procession was listening to him. Jess had been the same way, back when she’d been a potential. She’d cried and begged and called out for her parents. Everyone had. It was the role of
‘potentials’ to fear the gift. Every ‘potential’ reacted the same way when they finally understood where they were being taken.
Ahead of them, the site had already been prepared with deliberate care. It was marked with a circle of stakes driven into the sand. Robed members of the congregation stood waiting with disciplined silence and Jess smiled at the sight of it.
The Shard Choir had gathered in full observance, their devotion visible in the way they faced the wind without flinching and in the way their chants were already forming even before the gift had been given.
Jess could feel a tear streak down her face as she took it all in. She, like all the other choir members around her, believed wholly in what they were doing. The Storm was not merely a weather phenomenon. It was a divine force that had shaped the Deadlands. And every offering made to it was an act of alignment with something greater than any of them could understand.
It took a few more minutes for the guards to eventually pull the ‘potential’ up to ritual site. Jess had to fight the urge to sigh when the man had tried a last ditch effort to escape. She thought back to her own ritual and she hadn’t fought as much. Maybe something inside her knew the truth, even back then. Maybe there was some part of her who knew the gift she would receive and the family she would find and that’s why she hadn’t fought to the last.
The potential was forced into the center of the ritual circle and pressed into the sand while prayers rose around him in growing intensity. Jess added her voice to everyone else’s and they layered themselves in a rhythmic dance that carried through the Deadlands. She felt the same familiar steadiness that always came before completion of the rite, and she offered a quick prayer to the Storm to find this ‘potential’ deserving.
Then everything collapsed. One moment she had been listening to the chants of the elders and keeping her eye on the massive Storm in the distance. And the next, everything had changed. The wall of sand that had been held up by the Storm had collapsed. The mountain of it fell from the sky and crashed into the ground and her God had disappeared.
The reactions were panic. Obviously. How could you not panic when you just saw your God disappear. Jess heard shouts that something was wrong. Two of the elders by the circle dropped to their knees. The chanting dissolved into chaos.
A member of the choir, Jess knew him by his chosen name of Daniel, called out that “he’s dead. He’s dead!” He scratched at his face with his fingers and drew blood. One of the other elders spun to face Daniel with rage on his face and he withdrew a knife and before Jess knew it, the elder had slashed at Daniel and cut his throat. Daniel dropped to the ground with blood pooling out on the sand and the Elder’s eyes went wide and he looked at the rest of the congregation.
“Our God is NOT DEAD!” he screamed. “If I hear any of you speaking such blasphemy, I will cut your tongues from your head.”
What followed was the elders trying to restore order to the chaos. The ‘potential’ was abandoned without ceremony and the elders called for every available tracker, seer, and gifted among the Choir to prepare for immediate departure.
Jess was selected without question because her abilities made her essential for following traces left behind by powerful events. The gift had been granted to her during her exposure to the Storm years ago, when she had been a ‘potential’ and had been staked into the desert and remade by the Storm's winds. The gift allowed her to see visions of the past and the future. It was something that Jess had thanked the Storm for every day of her life. But now, she felt nervous about using her gift.
What would she see? What could have stopped the Storm? What could have…what would have made her God disappear? He wasn’t dead. Obviously the elder was right. But, he also wasn’t around. The Storm she had prayed to over the past couple of years had decided to abandon them. Had they done something wrong? Had they angered it somehow? The last few ‘potentials’ never woke up any gifts, so was the Storm punishing them for not giving adequate offerings?
It took a day for Jess and the rest of the gifted to reach the place where the Storm had disappeared. The desert felt unnaturally still and that stillness gripped at Jess until she was breathing in short jerky breaths. An elder saw her panicking and put a hand on her shoulder and whispered a prayer in her ear and that helped to calm her a bit.
There was no presence in this part of the Deadlands. There was no residual pressure in the air, and the absence of that threatened to tip Jess back into panic. She touched the desert and opened herself up to her gift and the visions came violently and without clarity, flooding her mind with fragmented impressions.
She saw movement and music. She saw roads and conflict. There was a shape in the vision that slowly resolved into a man who stood at the center of the disturbance. There was a name there. It was clear and bright when Jess looked at it.
Zeke.
The other gifted all saw the same thing. They told the elders what they saw. They spoke of the man and the music and the…disappearance of God. There wasn’t any debate among the Choir because the implications of the vision were already absolute in their minds. Every single interpretation led to the same conclusion.
The man responsible for the disappearance of their God, the man who had angered their God to such a degree that it disappeared from the Deadlands, was named Zeke. He had traveled south. And he would be dealt with. Not negotiated with or understood. Killed.
Jess joined the others of the Choir. Vehicles were gathered. Weapons were passed out. Hunters were given orders. This Zeke had become the center of the grief and rage and purpose of the Shard Choir, and there was only one possible ending to that blasphemer.