Robert Jenkins cowered in the corner of
the disheveled building, sweat pouring from every pore. His grungy clothes were
even dirtier than normal as he desperately tried to catch his breath. The
patrol had almost caught him, and he knew what would happen. If he was lucky, a
life in a Rocky Mountain States of America prison, but if the patrol had been
too busy, or didn’t feel like following the “rules,” he’d be just another dead
kid from the Wastelands left on the side of a street in Campo, Colorado.
The Rocky Mountain States were supposed to
be so great, at least that’s what he’d heard, but what he had seen so far in
Campo, abandoned buildings, dust, and high winds, reminded him a lot of Boise
City in what used to be Oklahoma, but that had been long before Robert had been
born. Now Boise City was just a series of ruins run by various gangs. His, the
Rose Clan, had sent him to Colorado. He was supposed to make his way to
Springfield, where he was supposed to steal some resources. That had been the
plan, anyway. That had been when there were four of them. Jackson got fried in
an electric fence while crossing the border. Evans was shot dead by some random
hunter who thought he was a dear, or some shit like that. And Billings got hit
by a truck just outside of Campo. They hadn’t seen any traffic since they’d
entered Colorado, so Billings had thought it would be safe to walk down the
middle of what had been Highway 287…maybe it was still called that in Colorado.
In what used to be Oklahoma, it was just called The Road, a place where the
gangs could try to take out the occasional truck going between the Rocky
Mountain States and Texas, and those were few and far between.
Billings had been walking down the middle
of the Highway when the truck came out of nowhere and took him out at 200 miles
per hour. Now Robert was left alone to complete a mission that would probably
require at least two of them, but if he returned to the Rose Clan empty handed,
Jim Bob, the head of his clan would probably have him killed.
“Talk about lose-lose,” he mumbled to
himself, and then quickly put his hand over his mouth as he heard a noise
outside the “door.” The boarded over relic of a door had offered no resistance
to his entering, and he’d hoped that he’d put everything back into place so that
no one would notice that there might be someone inside.
But now the movement had stopped right
outside of the door. Robert thought he could hear breathing, but maybe it was
just his own.
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