Watching The World Burn

The 'Todd Bush' in front of the boy had an accent from New York, shook with his right hand, quoted cheesy action flicks, and wore his silver wedding ring on his left hand. All of the identifying markers and idiosyncrasies were there, just not in the correct style, place, or fashion. This identity thief would have fooled anyone that didn't know Todd Bush, but the boy had done his research. The kid had dealt with many identity thieves in his short time alive, be it other Couriers trying to make a profit off his name, or frauds trying to procure his services with stolen names and silver tongues. The man before him was the latter of the two.

"So you accept?"

This question was just one of the nearly twenty different times his prospective 'customer' had asked whether or not he was taking the job. Around the booth in which the gentlemen were seated, the saloon was just as lively as when they began their bargaining. The old, faded leather seats, barely comfortable, couldn't do much to dampen the mood of the somewhat questionable business men who made deals here. The saloon was loud, loud enough that the man across from him had to yell to even hear himself speak.

"Again, Yankee, since you can't take a damn hint, I'll repeat myself."

The kid across from the 'Yankee' spoke clearly, his voice cutting through the overflowing noises of the saloon. His eyes, dark golden pools of honey, glanced up from his book disinterestedly. The boy's form was strangely disrupted and warped, almost as if he was fading into the back of the chair. The muscles in the man's jaw tensed as he tried to repress a frown. The faux-friendly smile locked back into place. Everybody like this smug rat from New York just pissed the boy off.

"I'm not running myself through the middle of the Shade Lands just to get some stupid rock that looks pretty. If it were delivering something to a lover I'd understand, but you don't look like you're in love."

Couriers, like the boy himself, were best described as overly glorified mailmen with guns. Their job, in simplest terms without the over complicated bullshit of businessmen, was to get any cargo they were given from point A to point B. This cargo ranged from the smallest, most useless trinkets to valuables worth millions of dollars that those looking to become rich could sell for profit. If you wanted to get anywhere on the North American continent, your first order of business was getting a good Courier to guide you.

Many times, however, when someone wanted to find something to sell for profit, the boy would make an agreement to transport the person there to collect it. The thing they failed to realize every time was that he never negotiated the terms of getting them back.

He would have pulled the same trick here had this idiot not come wearing Todd Bush's name. The boy was a Courier by trade and a survivor at heart, but he couldn't stand these stupid people trying to make a living off of someone else's hard work.

The Yankee took another, annoyingly posh and regal, sip of his drink. Alcohol was expensive this far outside the Safe Zone. Microbreweries tended not to sell their product out beyond the wall unless they were completely assured their product would make it to market. Dallas was the only city outside the Safe Zone that had the distinction of having a completely secure line of supplies from the eastern seaboard, usually due in no small part to the combat operations conducted by the military to secure Galveston from the Shades.

The Yankee set his drink down, threading his fingers in front of his nose. "I'm hoping to make a statement by hiring you to retrieve this gemsto-"

"Save your breath, Yankee, I've heard this same reason before. You're just using me to make a quick buck off this thing, aren't ya?"

The Yankee glared over his fingers, causing the boy to smile. "Of course I'm right."

Silence fell over the two as the conversation lulled, allowing the sounds of the bar to permeate their booth. Client negotiations were always a strange and dangerous matter to the boy. This one was no different.

The 'customer' before him was not the client that had contacted him for his services in Orlando, after he had delivered his latest cargo - a very pretty wedding ring decked to the nines with gold and diamonds - to the engaged serviceman stationed there. His original client, a man by the name of Todd Bush, native to Boston, shook with his left hand, loved quoting books as much as the boy himself did, and wore his gold wedding ring on his right hand.

A change in the Yankee's posture snapped the boy out of his thoughts. "Do you know what that was?"

The Yankee smiled at him, unconsciously adding some malice in his kind faux-smile. The boy couldn't hear the sharp click of the hammer on the Yankee's pistol pull back, and it had nothing to do with how loud the bar was.

The boy didn't react, only raising a disinterested eyebrow. "No. What was it?"

"That was the sound of my pistol being cocked."

The boy smiled smugly, causing the other man to frown. "Funny."

Click.

"Because I've had mine aimed at you since you sat down, Yankee."

The two men sat at an impasse as the businessmen around them continued on unaware of the dangerous situation boiling in one of the booths. Drinking glasses clinked together, customers continued telling jokes, music blasted through the speakers, everything around both men was casual and relaxed. Had all the people in the bar known what was happening right here they would have either paid for their drinks and run, or pulled their own weapons out of their holsters.

Reactions usually varied by profession.

This bar specifically had the distinct honor of serving as an impromptu meeting place for Couriers and their clients.

The Yankee's pistol was old, an M1911 that had seen plenty of better days two centuries ago. The slide and firing pin were in desperate need of a refitting and the paint was starting to peel off the sides. To the Yankee's credit, he wasn't an idiot. The Yankee knew of his gun's disrepair and actively avoided using the weapon at all, let alone drawing it. The only way the Yankee was going to hit anything with his pistol was at point blank range, much like he was now with the boy.

Two loud shots silenced the bar, bleeding tension into the enclosed space.

One more, noticeably quiet and familiar, shot made the bar relax.

The Yankee slumped forward, the gun clattering to the floor as limp fingers lost their grip. A hole barely larger than a thumb was all that was left where a single tungsten dart had cleaved through the Yankee's cranium. Said tungsten dart was also clearly visible in the ceiling of the bar.

The boy folded the corner of the page to bookmark it as he slid out from the booth, holstering his revolver as he did. He could feel the eyes of the bar owner without needing to turn around, instinctively preparing for what was going to a very one-sided negotiation.

The boy turned and walked toward the counter, feeling the eyes of the bar slowly lose interest in him. The boy didn't need to read lips to know what the bartender was saying. The woman clearly wasn't happy with him. Her eyes were squinted too, almost to the point you would think they were closed. Fifty years of age hadn't taken any edge off her glare.

"That's eight, Allen." She said, putting the glass she was cleaning on the bar counter with a little more force than necessary. "When you hit nine you're cleaning the mess up yourself."

The boy raised a brow as he sat down. "That was what you threatened the fifth time."

The woman paused a moment. "It was?"

Allen nodded. "I think your age is starting to catch up to you, Mama Forester."

Mama Forester gave a disapproving look to Allan. "You want to test that theory? Or do you want to pay your tab and leave?"

Allen's brow furrowed. "I don't have a tab."

Mama Forester, like any good barkeep, kept a list of everyone who owed her money for drinks or services that they couldn't pay for immediately. The list was organized by the amount of money the person in question owed Mama Forester. Allen currently held the record of half a million dollars, a feat made all the more impressive by the fact that the second highest debt was only one thousand dollars. The total of the cleaning costs, body disposal, medical costs for injured bystanders, and repair costs for every one of Allen's unfortunate business ventures was something Mama Forester had paid for out of pocket.

Mama Forester slapped a long receipt onto the counter. "Now you do."

"I'm going to have to debate some of these costs." Allen said, looking at the price to go with each of the corpses. While he wouldn't debate most of the costs, since they were costs he should have paid himself, he was not paying them all. "It wasn't my fault the third one shot some other patrons, he should have aimed better."

Allen's third bad deal, a disgraced prosthetics designer, had tried to pay for the trip with new prosthetic limbs. Allen had tried to kindly show him out the door of the bar since they wouldn't pay a normal way, but the disgraced doctor wouldn't have it. It was at this point that the doctor pulled a gun, an HE-132 fully automatic assault rifle he had no idea how to wield to be exact, and opened fire. Allen hadn't been hurt, but several other patrons had to be taken to the hospital afterwards for bullet wounds. Two hundred thousand dollars drained from Mama Forester's bank account that day.

Mama Forester wasn't having any of Allen's excuses. "Yet you were the one he was shooting at. So technically, you have to pay for it."

Allen scanned the list some more before straightening up and pointing at a charge. "You can't charge me for the seventh! Their bounties should have covered it!"

The seventh and most recent bad deal that Allen had been a part of was with a group of four brothers that had tried to get out of town. The offer had seemed good, but Allen had noticed a trend in the group's deals. Couriers had been disappearing over the weeks prior, going out on a jobs and never returning to the city. The only consistent thing between the disappearances was that each Courier had walked out with four men tagging along.

As it turned out, the four men were actually known as the Hillsburrow Brothers. Sadistic murderers wanted in the Safe Zone for the murder of twenty Couriers, five between each brother. Allen had been very disinclined to help them, but they wanted another victim to play with. When they weren't getting anywhere with Allen, they tried holding hostages to extort his cooperation. Mama Forester had promptly stepped in at that point. Allen never knew where Mama Forester hid the A-12 shotgun, but he'd been reluctant to press her buttons since.

The Hillsburrow Brothers' bounty had been set at eighty thousand. The total cost to clean up was nearly twice that amount.

"Yes I can." Mama Forester said smoothly, ignoring Allen's tone.

"I call bullshit!" Allen yelled, gesturing at Mama Forester. "You shot them because they were getting violent toward other customers!"

"Because you antagonized them, Allen." Mama Forester pointed out.

Allen scoffed. "Wasn't my fault they couldn't handle verbal abuse. The Hillsburrow Brothers should have chosen a better wardrobe too if they wanted to be inconspicuous."

Mama Forester was a woman of many things. Aside from being a now retired Courier and self-proclaimed professor of liqueurs, Mama Forester could give one hell of a glare if she wanted to. It was something that even the most battle hardened Couriers of the Midwest spoke about only in rumor. A look so powerful that a single glance could kill a Shade the moment it entered line of sight.

Mama Forester placed both hands on the counter and leaned over Allen, looking him dead in the eye. "You will pay for the damages. Am I clear?"

Allen didn't - quite - flinch as he looked away. "Crystal."

"Good." Mama Forester nodded. "Now let's discuss the payment plan."

--(::)--

Allen walked out of the door to the saloon, taking a right and walking away from the bar. The street was unusually packed for a mid-afternoon in September, bars and pubs filled to bursting with patrons. The military checkpoints, the few that were there, were swarmed with people trying to get through to other destinations. The smell of alcohol and cigarettes clung to the gutters and drains. Above all of the multi-story buildings the artificial light of chandeliers designed like huge lanterns threw down a comfortably dim light, mimicking the dying light of the sun above.

The city planners of Dallas had been hard pressed to find a way to rebuild and expand in the face of the Shades all around them. Dallas itself had nearly been leveled in the fighting against the Shades, nothing more than ruined skyscrapers and parking garages left of it. It could have been called a literal concrete jungle. The solution they came to was building a new city underground.

Two miles deep and a radius of ten miles, it was the largest hole ever created by mankind. From there they began placing infrastructure, high speed elevators, huge ventilation tunnels that blew air from the surface into the lowest parts of the city, a self sufficient waste disposal system that wasted nothing and kept the city from swimming in it's own sewage. Currently, city planners were getting together to discuss the possibility of restoring the aboveground Dallas to it's former glory.

Officially the district Allen was in was labeled as part of the Entertainment Third, a small chunk of the city at the intersection of the industrial, business, and residential sections. This was where humanity outside the Safe Zone gathered and partied without a care in the world, letting their desires run rampant and passions go wild. Endless raves blasted music at all times as one party ended and another began the instant afterword, drugs were used openly to enhance the experience, and alcohol was consumed like water in a desert.

The upper levels of the Entertainment Third housed the much more tame and calm establishments. Private clubs that had lines stretched around their buildings vibrated and shook in time with their bass. Many could expect a decent drink in the upper levels, but just as many can be stolen from easily by pickpockets that preyed on intoxicated patrons.

His head down and eyes up, Allen started walking his way back home while taking stalk of everything around him. Men, women, and a technicolor rainbow in between walked in small herds to their destinations. Some were sober, some buzzed, others completely wasted and vomiting out their entrails.

Allen looked at all those people, talking without a care in the world, and he envied them. They didn't have to look at whoever they were conversing with. They didn't have to read their friend's lips to understand what was being said. They didn't have to experience the inability to hear and understand. They didn't need to worry one iota about it.

Allen turned into an empty alleyway, slumping against a concrete wall and sliding down to the floor. Another thing the people out there didn't need to worry about was getting shot, much to Allen's annoyance. Two slugs dropped into Allen's hand from where he had been shot in the stomach by the conman.

At the beginning of the Visitation in the twenty-first century the nations of the world had always been used to the idea that nothing besides themselves could kill off humanity to the point of near extinction. When the Shades appeared on almost every continent on earth and began an extinction level event unseen in humanity's history, the nations had been quickly proven wrong. It took another century before humanity gave up on pushing the hordes of Shades back to whatever place they came from, but their efforts didn't go to waste.

Materials science before the Visitation had been lacking, Shade claws were naturally serrated and sharpened in order to tear through flesh and bone. Kevlar, at the time the strongest fabric humanity had to make body armor, failed to even slow down a Shade's claw. The fabric was quickly deemed useless by the active military community, but the scientific community had other ideas. Ten years of research and development under the increasing threat of cut funding turned out a brand new fabric, Titan Weave.

Titan Weave used a combination of Kevlar, a titanium string mesh, and spider silk of all things to create a new fabric capable of withstanding a Shade's claw. The original patented Titan Weave weighed more than any fabric reasonably should have, but with more than a century of refining and experimenting the weight and durability of the Titan Weave improved. Titan Weave was now the go-to material when making body armor of any kind, even civilian clothes manufacturers used threads of Titan Weave to hold clothes together.

Allen's entire wardrobe practically was Titan Weave. From his cargo pants to the cowboy hat on his head, there was nothing in his wardrobe that didn't have Titan Weave made into it. It was something of a necessity for a Courier as a last line of defense.

That didn't make getting shot any more fun.

--(::)--