Post-Apocalyptic Pirates: Chapter One

Bunker Dispatch

Welcome to a new year, I suppose. First, I just want to thank M. Cody for replying to the last newsletter with his comfort game suggestion (Alpha Centauri)! I am eager to play it!

Within today’s newsletter is the first chapter of the third book in my Happy Bureaucracy book series, Post-Apocalyptic Pirates. It is, ultimately, what I’d like to adapt to the third season for the audiobook/podcast version of my series. As promised, I’ll be sending you another chapter next week, and another the week after that (maybe more?). Happy reading!

-M.P.

P.S.

Paid subscribers: You should have gotten last year’s short stories compiled into an eBook. Let me know if you did not get it. I’ve also received a printed proof copy of it, as I’d like to send you a physical copy pro bono once it is ready, so let me know if that is something you’d like to have.

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Author's note: Land Pirates. LAND. PIRATES. Strewn between drug use, groin malice, bureaucratic shenanigans, and cursing on a level tantamount to sacrilege, are Land Pirates. Oh lord, what have I done?

Dictated, not read -M.P. Fitzgerald

CHAPTER ONE:

The car didn’t catch fire until they were at a full stop. This was clearly the Witch’s doing. Arthur should have known.

His military escorts were afraid, paranoid even. Superstition had spread through their minds with anxious tendrils. The Witch had done her job well, but she could be reeled in just a tad. The fire was now a furious blaze.

Arthur had heard of the Witch of the Wasteland. He was surprised how quickly the myth had spread, how deep the urban legend had dug in such a short amount of time. Word of her had started to spread after the first raid, but they were only whispers then. After the third, her malice was the talk of the bunker… and now Arthur’s delivery was at her mercy, if mercy was such a thing the Witch was capable of.

This was the fourth delivery. After months of "processing" the slaves that the IRS had "freed" from Slaver City, official delivery of federal funds to the US Army had begun. On paper, this meant that the IRS was simply sending another government agency the taxes that had been collected and allocated for their end of the federal budget. The human element of this, however, was far more heartbreaking.

The “taxes” in question were human slaves, a commodity now recognized under “the new economy” of the United Wastes of America. These people were now officially a part of the federal budget, and now that the IRS had just made contact with the remnants of the US Army, these “funds” were being transferred to them, as per law. Half of this was Arthur’s fault.

When deliveries were not showing up, when reports of a cruel waste witch had returned to the IRS bunker, the US Army got impatient. If raiders or land pirates were stealing their goods, then the Army could do what it did best: kill them all. The IRS had failed to protect its convoy, but there were no salty feelings. They were bureaucrats, after all, the Army was happy to take over security, and the IRS was happy to let them.

The previous deliveries were shipped by an unarmed Auditor and a single Enforcer, the muscle of the IRS. Arthur’s IRS van heading to General Oswald's base was escorted by a Humvee with two men. During the drive out, dread was the only thing Arthur could feel besides his thunderous heart. He had no idea where the Witch would strike, and the anticipation of the conflict was acidic.

The blanket of night had settled on the road. They did not stop. Oswald’s men had either never learned that driving at night in the wasteland was taboo, or they didn’t care because no one messed with the Army. Either way, they trucked on, and despite the ulcer that was building inside of Arthur, he followed.

When they spotted the car blocking the road, the Humvee ahead of Arthur came to a crawl. Arthur parked his government van just behind them. That’s when the car caught fire.

This was the Witch's doing to the letter. The acrid fumes of smoke snaked upward as flames licked the car. The soldiers were out and in defensive positions in seconds, two of them to the front while one ran to the side of Arthur's van. The slaves behind Arthur, bound by zip ties and fear, murmured their woes. The sudden brightness from the blaze ahead of them was enough to cause Arthur's sight to suffer from sunspots.

The soldier nearest Arthur pulled the van’s passenger door open. “Is it the Witch?” Arthur asked before the soldier could say anything, “is she here?”

The soldier was a young man with pimples spread across his face, marking his early vintage. He wore green fatigues that were older than he was, and likely worn by at least two other soldiers before him. They were big and ill-fitting; the sleeves hid his hands. Arthur noticed his frame was skinny and his body language tense. He seemed to cling on to his rifle as if it was the last bit of rope holding him from a cliff face. He was not entirely wrong about that. The Witch was out there and he knew it.

“There’s no such thing,” he said to Arthur. Was he trying to convince himself or the bureaucrat? Arthur watched as his hands tensed around his rifle, and his head swiveled to his side quickly from nerves. “It’s probably just raiders, sir, I need you to stay inside this van.”

“You’ve heard the stories though?” Arthur asked, “The IRS can handle raiders, you’ve seen our operations on the field. Do you think we would need your help for simple raiders?”

The boy shook his head. “There’s no such thing,” he said with little confidence.

The fire ahead of them leapt up into the air with heat and hunger. The car’s tires popped as the heat melted their rubber. Ahead of them was an inferno blocking the way, behind them a wall of night as dark as the abyss.

“What have you heard?” Arthur asked.

The boy left Arthur’s eye contact, he looked over his shoulder, possibly to check that his commanding officer could not hear them. But the commanding officer was too busy searching for the witch himself to pay them any mind. “I heard that she breathes smoke like a dragon, that she litters the road with the skulls of her victims. I heard that she eats her prey.” Saying it out loud made him seem more shaken.

Arthur pulled out a clipboard. He clicked the top of his pen.

“…Eats the living, breathes smoke…” he said as he transcribed it down.

“What are you doing?” the soldier asked.

“I’m being efficient. It's best to get your paperwork done ahead of time. This is a Violent Incident in the Workplace form, the IRS uses it to chronicle things like death. How did you spell your name?”

“Everything will be fine,” the boy stated after swallowing his spit. “We’re professionals, there is no witch.”

The crack of gunfire reverberated the air.

The other soldier fell to the ground, spraying crimson.

“I suppose I should have got his name instead,” Arthur said.

The boy raised his rifle to his shoulder and fired blindly into the night. Sweat dripped from his head as he swung wildly in random directions. When his clip emptied silence reigned the night.

“It’s the witch!” Arthur said as the boy climbed into the van.

The boy slammed the door behind him and locked it. “There-there is no such thing,” he said with his eyes closed. Both men ducked down behind the dash.

“Get us out of here,” the boy begged.

“I can’t do that,” Arthur replied.

“What? Why not? Did something happen to the van?”

“No,” said Arthur, “we were ordered to deliver these people—” Arthur cleared his throat, “these funds to your base. I’m a federal employee and you’re a soldier, we have a duty to perform.”

“Shit!” the boy cursed, “shit shit shit! She’s going to get us, the witch is going to get us!”

The back of the van shook with movement. The slaves had to be restless with fear. “We have people— funds, we have U.S. funds to protect,” said Arthur.

The boy reloaded his rifle. “Right,” he said, “there’s two of us and one of her. How are you with a gun?”

“I mostly just drop them,” Arthur replied with candid honesty.

“Shit!” the boy cursed once more, “shit shit shit!”

The blaze of the fire had died down but was still far from being extinguished. Night would eventually win out over the light of the fire. Darkness would be complete. The Witch was somewhere out there. The Witch was patient.

Arthur looked down at his clipboard. “Made to watch the others be eaten,” he said as he filled out the form, “before being eaten alive himself.”

“Will you stop that?!” the boy asked.

“What? Stop doing my job?” Arthur said incredulously. “I’ll have you know that I very much pride myself in my duty, something that you could learn about. Aren’t you supposed to be protecting us?”

They heard footsteps. The ruckus from the slaves in the back died down. Both Arthur and the boy forgot to breathe. She was out there.

The boy gripped his rifle, then slowly unlocked the door. It was now or never. He opened the door and slowly stepped outside, checking his left, then his right. When he turned once more, she was right behind him, her pistol pressed against his temple…

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M.P. Fitzgerald is the author of A Happy Bureaucracy, a post-apocalyptic parody novel. He writes darkly humorous sci-fi and is far away enough that you cannot hurt him.