Crystal Apocalypse

by leeroy_gIBZ

8: and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“So, where’re we headed? Las Pegasus, right?”

“Not immediately; the journey’s too long to do in one trip. Especially since we don’t have much fuel left. We’ll go through Appleloosa.”

“That’s that hillbilly town right, you think they’ll have rodeos?”

“Cows are extinct.”

“Yeah, I meant like a mechanical bull.”

“Why? Do you want to go bull riding?”

“Not really, but I just thought it’d be cool if cowboys are still, you know, cowboys in the apocalypse.”

“Well, there’s only one way to find out. Let’s go.” Sugarcoat said, and the pair set out after breakfast the next day. Her arm was mostly alright, stitched up again, and numbed the night before by the canteen of bourbon. The bike’s gauge read to the fuel level to be almost empty, but Sugarcoat decided that using it and dumbing it would be far more practical than dragging it halfway across the desert in case she and Lemon wound up being pursued. She didn’t think that to be particularly likely; few wandered the ashen sands and cracked tar roads, and most bandits preferred to hunt near towns and cities, closer to their more plentiful prey.

They rode on for almost an hour, before the bike ran out of gas, spitting and spluttering to a halt beside the dry husk of a cactus, long since tapped for water, long since burnt to charcoal.

“Well, I guess we’re walking now.” Sugarcoat said, dismounting, untying the various bags from the dirt bike.

“Better than running.”

“Definitely. You need less food to walk. We’ll do that for a few hours, and stop once it starts getting cold again.”

“I’m cold already.”

“If you’re warm enough to walk, you’re not cold. Come on, we have to do at least a few miles before setting camp or else we’ll starve before we reach the next town.” Sugarcoat said, handing Lemon the length of frayed rope, guiding her down the road.

“And what if there’s no food in Appleloosa? What then? Do we just starve?”

“You’ve survived for three years, as long as I have. What do you normally do when supplies are scarce?”

“I found an old air raid shelter actually, some kind of bunker left behind after the Cold War. I hid there for, like, two years with some band mates until the food ran out.”

“Lucky you. Some of us had to learn how to scavenge.”

“Doesn’t matter if I learned any of that now. Not like I can use any of it, since I can’t see.”

“Yeah... I’m still sorry about that. That’s really awful.”

“I know. Served me right for trusting a stranger.” Lemon sighed.

“Don’t say that – it’s never your fault when somebody hurts you. It’s theirs. It’s always theirs because they had the choice to do it. You didn’t have any choice in the matter.”

“I did. I was stupid and some asshole blinded me because of it. I could have just said no! I could have just told him that I had nothing to share. But I let him sit by our fire, and played his fucking game.”

“And that’s how it happened? You lost a game and he gouged your eyes out over it?”

Lemon Zest stopped walking, and started biting back tears. “What was I supposed to do? He had a gun. I’m not smart like you, I couldn’t fight my way out of it.”

“You’re the third smartest person I know, after Twilight and myself. You can’t blame yourself over what happened. It won’t help, trust me.”

“Thanks, but-but I mean not practical smart. I can spout facts about respiration works, or what amps do, or who Starswirl was but that’s because I used to spend all my free time studying. You saw how my grades tanked after I joined Vinyl’s band. But you, Su, you learn faster than everybody else. Maybe that’s why you’re so good at this sort of thing?”

“Maybe. But let’s keep walking.” Sugarcoat said.

So, the girls kept walking, Sugarcoat using the spear as a hiking stick, Lemon following behind, holding onto the rope, tripping every so often over a stray chunk of debris her friend had forgotten to warn her about. Eventually, the sun had reached its zenith in the sky, staring down from directly above, warming nothing, cooking everything slowly. Sugarcoat caught side of a crashed car, paint all but scraped away by the caustic winds, leaving a gleaming iron chunk of scrap lying beside the road. She led Lemon over to its shade, and they ate the leftovers of their breakfast – a tin’s worth of spam and potatoes, grilled as kebabs over a fire.

Once that was finished, washed down with the mineral water stolen from Neon’s hotel, Sugarcoat went to investigate the car itself. It was a muscle car, too dinged and dented and destroyed to recognize past that. There were a pair of corpses, mummified in the front seats, one male, one female, still contorted over each-other, embraced for all eternity. Sugarcoat took the man’s baseball cap, putting it on under her tattered hoodie. Then she searched the car’s seats, boot and glovebox. There was little she could find of any use; some cigarettes and a battered lighter engraved with a thunderbolt, the girl’s sneaker’s fit would fit decently, and there was an acoustic guitar lying in surprisingly good condition under an old football uniform. All those Sugarcoat took, giving the shoes and the guitar to Lemon.

“Holy shit! You found a guitar!” The girl said, immediately giving it a strum. “Man, have I missed this! I totally got to play you a song now.”

“Are you taking requests?”

“I guess. I can’t sing for shit but strings? That stuff’s like learning a bicycle.”

“You mess up your first try and break your arm?”

“No, I mean you never forget them. How about That's Amore? That’s a good song.”

Sugarcoat shrugged, “Go ahead.”

Lemon was right, her talents lay more with strumming than they did with singing. She forgot the lyrics halfway through, and her replacements weren’t much better. The clumsy rendition left both girls in a far better mood though, reliving past passions and old hobbies. Once Lemon was finished, and the two were ready to set out again, Sugarcoat took the dead man’s belt, looping it around the guitar, giving it to her friend to wear on her back.

The rest of the day played out simply, walking down a deserted highway, step after tiresome step, mile after endless mile. In the distance, half-hidden behind a mountain, surrounded by charred and skeletal trees, lay their destination, the town still days away. During a break for water, the last in the evening before finding shelter for the night, Sugarcoat had a closer look, using the binoculars, and saw no people, none that were alive.

Dead bodies, apelike ants from seen from so far away, hung off dead branches, impaled and mutilated, contorted and harvested like bloated apples in their graveyard orchard. The buildings were crumbled, broken-down husks of a once-proud frontier settlement. The windows of the less harrowed homes glowed faintly; it suggested some or other habitation, and thus food. Thus, an ensuing fight.

“This doesn’t look good. You were right, we have cowboys.”

“How’s that bad? Cowboys are awesome.”

“Until they’re not on your side, and try to impale you to a tree. Then, I’d rather not have to deal with them.”

“Ouch. Like, why is everyone in this place so fucked up? Couldn’t we just be nice to each-other or something?”

“Didn’t you yourself say that doing that got you into this mess in the first place?”

“Yeah.” Lemon sighed, “But only because he wasn’t nice back.”

”Then, let’s keep going. Appleloosa’s still a few days away and I’d rather not sleep out in the open.”

Shelter that night was a rock outcrop; enough of a shield from the wind, and warm enough after a few adjacent cacti were chopped down, and made into a campfire within it. Dinner was another mix of ham and tomato, this time substituting beer for water, as what little Sugarcoat had left she didn’t want to spend unnecessarily. Afterward, she rebound the bandages on her arm, noticing worriedly that the normally blue-grey skin had taken on a sickly green and yellow hue. She hoped, but she doubted, that it was just bruising.

Little could be done for Lemon either, Sugarcoat realized. Although she was in far better shape than before, having eaten as properly as one could for another week, and being protected somewhat better against the elements, her mental state still seemed off. Forgetting words, and paranoia, and night terrors could all be understood, considering what happened to her – Sugarcoat just wished that she knew how to help it. She knew that she was never the person anybody really talked to about anything emotional – her unsympathetic bluntness ensured that, and Crystal Prep’s isolating tendencies enforced it. If anything, she’d rather be talking to Lemon, about her own problems, rather than listening helplessly, to her strumming chords listlessly. She missed Sunny. She was good, far better than both of them, at dealing with that.

Author's Note:

Here's the next chapter. I'll be taking a quick break from writing this while I'm at the beach. Expect regular updates again in a week's time.