Wasteland Warlords Episode 5: Chapter 1 - A Truly Terrible Plan

“I can’t believe I let you idiots talk me into this,” Alex said, shaking her head. “I look like a doofus.”

“You’re the only one of us who could fit into Rhett’s clothes.” Clay leaned over the back of the dune buggy seat to give his wife a nudge with his shoulder. Not obvious enough to ruin the illusion that he was a prisoner, but hopefully reassuring for her. “Besides, skater girl looks pretty cute on you.”

“This isn’t going to fool anybody. One, Rhett didn’t have to roll up his pants to keep from tripping over them, and two”—she pointed to her face—“clearly not a guy.”

Dressed head to toe in the late Madlad Incant’s designer skatewear, with her blonde hair shoved up under one of those dumb flat-billed caps, she looked less like an evil magic trafficker and more like a punk pop star glamping through the wasteland.

“That is kind of hard to miss up close,” Clay admitted. “That’s okay, though. Once we’re in close, it’s already too late for them.”

In Joe’s mastermind scenario, she and Joe were the Trojan horse, dressed up like Rhett and Lynes, and Clay and Griff were the Greeks. One full-blooded NPC and one rogue Incant, trussed up and ready for the handover like hogs being prepared for slaughter. Of course, the Greeks hadn’t had to worry if the Trojans already knew the horse was a fake. There was every chance Cassidy had found out his skater buddy was dead and alerted the people they were meeting today that this whole thing was a setup. Hell, Lynes had been dead long enough that word may have already trickled back through the Triple S and whatever other contractors the government had in the IZ.

There was just no way of knowing.

“Buck up, ya little sheila!” Joe yelled in the horrendous Australian accent he’d been talking in all morning. Getting in the right headspace for the Gearhead disguise, he’d claimed. “Croikey! There’s no bloody reason to feah! We’re as safe as vegemite on a crackah, mate!”

From the child’s five-point harness beside the mech-suited redneck, Chonk chittered in agreement.

Alex massaged her temples. “Joe, you have to stop. If you go in yelling at the top of your lungs, we’re not even going to get close.”

“Are you kidding me? This is flawless bloody Aussie!” Joe protested, not lowering his voice at all. “They yell all the time down undah! It’s the land of wundah, where men chundah!”

“It’s starting to grate, lad,” Griff growled, lifting his cuffed hands to scratch his stubbly jaw. “Can it.”

The uncharacteristic bark in the old weed’s voice got through to even Joe.

Griff had been working with a short fuse lately, deep lines of determination and anger never quite leaving his leathery face. But that was understandable. If Alex had disappeared without a single hint as to what had happened to her, Clay would have destroyed the world twice over by now.

They topped a low, scrubby hill, and Camp Liberty appeared in the distance. The walls, cobbled together out of salvaged corrugated steel from the nearby ruins of Bakersfield, glinted in the dying afternoon light. Stacks of rusty steel containers rose up behind it—the Cans, the closest thing the settlement had to an apartment complex. Clay could see the one they’d lived in for a month, a dented blue metal box whose top was just visible above the wall.

It was hard to believe that had been just a few short months ago. Things had been a lot simpler back then, but he wouldn’t go back for a million bucks. Simpler didn’t always mean easier, especially not when you were spending all your time scared your wife was going to die from cancer before you found her a Dungeon Lord to kill.

Griff had helped them out back then. Now was their chance to return the favor and help the old weed. Before they’d shown up, his daughter, Ella, had disappeared, last seen with Cassidy Morgan, the Hexblade Incant. Come to find out, the Malibu Incants had been enslaving an entire settlement to farm magical items for them to sell across the wall to the government. And not just items, but people—NPCs and humanoid creatures they’d captured from across the IZ, none of whom were ever seen again. What the federal government wanted with the missing wasteland inhabitants, Clay didn’t know, but he doubted it was on the up-and-up.

Trading in sentient life rarely was.

Once they had taken down the Malibu operation and found the wealth of information on Rhett Cameron’s phone, it had been a short jump to setting up this fake buy. Doing so was an enormous gamble, but it was also the only lead they had. If they were going to find Ella, this was the only game in town.

As Joe steered the dune buggy around an abandoned sedan, broken down, rusted out, and half sunk into the desert sand, Clay caught sight of a black jeep parked on the east side of the camp.

He nodded at it. “There’s our guys.”

“A black unmarked vehicle?” Alex scoffed. “Cliché.”

Joe whistled. “They must have a hell of a topcoat to keep that thing’s paint so shiny.” His love for all things metal thankfully made him forget about “speaking Australian.” “That or she’s brand new, right off the line. Oh! Or maybe they’ve got an arcane barrier on it, you know, to protect it from dust and sandstorms. Check it with the Monocle of True Seeing, bro.”

“Not right now.” Thanks to his magically enhanced sight, Clay could see two figures sitting in the front seat of the jeep in spite of the fact that they were still almost a mile away. The flash of lenses gave away the binocs in the driver’s hands. “They’ve got eyes on us. You guys ready?”

Griff gave a grim nod.

“Lumberjack Joe was born ready,” Joe said.

Alex pulled out Rhett’s phone.

“Texting them that we’re coming in now,” she said, thumbing the screen.

“Chonkie, take the wheel.” Joe let go and started fiddling with a panel in the arm of his suit. “Beginning secret livestream in three, two… Dammit, why didn’t it save my password? I checked the ‘remember me’ box.”

The mechacoon screamed, and the buggy swerved and kicked up dust as the little furball tried to see over the steering wheel.

“Joe!” Alex leaned across the seat and snatched the wheel away from Chonk. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I’m trying to do something, Alexandra,” Joe said, as if that should’ve been obvious.

They’d spent the day before heading back to Camp Liberty at a long-abandoned Bits N Bytes Tech Superstore in Glendale, which had been occupied by a juvenile techno-drake who hoarded computer components instead of gold. The place had been a treasure trove, and Joe had managed to scrape together enough material components to build a long-range transmitter/receiver capable of getting a signal outside the containment zone. Naturally, his first act of business had been to hook it up to an ancient Go Pro, saying he had to livestream their adventures via seedFeed so the world would know the truth.

Just as soon as they found out what the truth was.

“Try to focus, Joe,” Clay said.

“Focus is my middle name. Hey, we’re rolling!” Joe’s face fell. “Wait, no… Another setup screen? What the hell do I need keywords for, anyway?”

Clay exchanged a glance with Griff. The old weed’s grim expression said, Yep, we’re dead.

But it was too late to back out. They rolled to a stop alongside the unmarked jeep as the two men in Triple S logo body armor climbed out.

Clay took a deep breath to steel himself. Go time.

***

Alex kept her head down as she climbed out of the dune buggy, trying to obscure most of her face with the bill of Rhett’s cap. They just had to keep up the pretext a little bit longer. Like her old sensei used to say, strength and speed were great if you had them, but cunning was deadly.

Miraculously, Joe didn’t immediately break out in Aussie greetings and salutations and give away the game. Before he got out, that sometimes-genius flipped up his mech-suit helmet, the reflective surface shutting out the Triple S’s prying eyes. Alex could’ve hugged him.

Instead she went to the back of the buggy and grabbed Griff by the arm, roughly hauling the wiry old man out. An easy task with the strength she’d inherited from Katotes. She didn’t want to hurt him—even after all the ass she’d seen Griff kick, part of her still associated the wrinkles and leathery skin and craggy voice with her memaw—but she didn’t want it to look fake, either.

Luckily, like Memaw, Griff was as tough as old boot leather. She gave him a shove. He stumbled a couple steps to catch his balance, then turned back to her and spat at her designer skate shoes. Nice touch.

On the opposite side of the buggy, Joe had already yanked Clay out and was busy dragging him toward the jeep. Alex wished she were the one holding onto Clay’s arm, but they’d agreed ahead of time that Joe—almost six and a half feet tall without the mech suit—would look less suspicious than somebody five feet tall dragging around a guy Clay’s size. After all, the Madlad Incant hadn’t been known for his inhuman strength, just his wicked business sense. Alex snuck a look at her gold kicks with dollar signs all over them. That and his atrocious idea of skate fashion.

As they got closer, the Triple S agents puffed up a little. Was it an unconscious reaction to somebody getting within attack distance, or were they about to spring because they’d been tipped off? Alex breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth. Calm, cool. Relaxed but ready. It was counterintuitive to most martial arts beginners, but a fighter could strike faster from a relaxed position than from a tense one.

“These the packages out for delivery?” the bigger of the Triple S agents asked, jerking a cleft chin at the obviously cuffed Clay and Griff.

No duh, dipshit, she thought. She gave a silent nod, not trusting her ability to believably lower her voice.

Unfortunately, hoping for a nonverbal response to a direct question was asking too much of Joe’s discretion.

“Aye, mates, these ah the budgie-smugglers we told ya about! But don’t try and go all billabong-sided on us. Let’s see those Yankee dollah bills.”

Good Lord, he sounded like a pirate who’d taken one too many cannonballs to the head.

But the Triple S guys didn’t immediately yell, “Hey, wait a minute!”

That set warning bells ringing inside her head. There was no way Joe’s bad accent would fool anyone, much less a couple of pro mercenaries with Triple S. They were playing it cool, just the same as Alex was, but her gut screamed at her that they’d been informed ahead of time that Lynes and Rhett were dead.

“Load ’em up,” Chin Cleft said, clearly unable to give an order without an accompanying wag of his head.

Alex’s heart stepped up a couple bpm as she shoved Griff toward the open back door of the jeep. If these guys weren’t calling out their fraud, then that meant the Triple S had their own reasons for going through with this farce. Like maybe whoever had snitched on the Jaeger squad also mentioned that the ones posing as Rhett and Lynes were Incants, too. From everything they’d learned since seizing the Madlad’s meticulous files, every person with magical abilities was worth a mountain of gold. Maybe the Triple S had been told that the Jaeger squad wasn’t there to play evil human trafficking ball with them, and they figured shit tons of gold was a decent trade-off.

Or maybe they were just going to put a bullet in her and Joe’s heads when their backs were turned. She reached into the baggy hoodie, through the hole she’d sliced in the pocket, and wrapped her hand around the Mossberg’s new pistol grip. Thank God Clay had thought to modify the weapon before this idiotic mission, sawing the barrel down and refitting it with a pistol grip using his newly gained Weaponsmith ability. It was the perfect size now to fit discreetly down the leg of these baggy-ass jeans.

So that was one point in favor of Rhett’s fashion sense.

She also had Clay’s magical Wyrd West revolver tucked into one voluminous jeans pocket for safekeeping, but she didn’t feel right using it. The Mossberg had been hers before they came out to the wasteland, and she preferred its familiar little peculiarities to the six-shooter.

Griff grunted and groaned as he climbed up into the back of the jeep. Looking over his shoulder, Alex caught Clay’s eye as he stepped in the other side. He blinked a little harder than necessary. Weird way to say I love you, be careful, but beggars couldn’t be choosers in these situations.

Alex blinked back, a painful lump forming in her throat. Don’t die without me.

Griff dropped into the seat, obscuring their line of sight, and she slammed the door behind him.

Tactical fabric rustled, and matte gunmetal shifted in the corner of her vision.

“Alex, look out!” Joe yelled, rocket boosters roaring as he blasted into the sky. Rifle fire rattled on his side of the jeep as the smaller Triple S agent tried to shoot him down.

Alex dropped low and pulled the Mossberg. Chin Cleft had his pretty new M4 pointed right at her face, his finger already on the trigger. She was faster. Although he was a highly trained mercenary, he was still only human. She might not look like much, but as an Incant her physical abilities were superhuman in every regard. She sidestepped left—just a blur of movement—hefted the shotgun in one clean motion, and pulled the trigger before he could even get his first shot off.

Instead of unloading into his guts, she pulled the shot at the last second, sending the slug into the ground with a spray of dirt.

She was an excellent marksman—she’d learned from Clay, after all—and it was next to impossible to miss a target at this range, but she couldn’t kill this guy, much as she wanted to. They needed him alive to pull off the rest of this cockamamie plan. But they also needed it to looklike they’d tried to resist.

The mercenary stumbled back and squeezed the trigger of his M4 in a panic, letting loose a concentrated blast of rifle fire.

A blue shield popped to life in front of her face as Chin Cleft’s rifle barked. The bullets ricocheted harmlessly off, whining into the distance. To anyone watching, it would look like she had cast the ward, but it was Clay’s parting gift. The first one, anyway.

An eruption of blue smoke signaled the arrival of his second present.

“Havooooooc!” the Greater Blue Wyrm cried, flying at Chin Cleft.

With her long, undulating body, thick blue beard, and fangs glistening in the last of the day’s sunlight, Bacon Bits was a wasteland nightmare come to life. She dive-bombed the Triple S with a gout of brilliant blue flame that blistered the jeep’s paint job.

Chin Cleft wisely decided he didn’t want none of that.

“Screw it, abort phase two!” He yanked open the driver’s door and dove in.

The jeep squalled as he jammed the gears and gunned it in reverse. Alex had to dive-roll out of the way.

The jeep screamed again as Chin Cleft threw it into first and mashed down the gas pedal with a heavy boot. Obviously he was more of an automatic kind of guy than a manual. His Triple S buddy let out a yell and jumped onto the running board as they sped away.

Still spitting flame, Bacon Bits chased them a few hundred yards. When she was certain they wouldn’t stop and come back for more, she flew back to Alex.

The former teacup pig was very pleased with her performance. “I was quite fearsome, wasn’t I? And I did not even damage their vehicle beyond escape.”

“You did a great job,” Alex said, absently scratching Bacon Bits’s thick blue beard as the jeep disappeared into the California heat waves with her heart in the backseat. “Those guys were scared sick.”

A whirlwind of sand kicked up as Joe landed beside Alex.

“They must’ve seen your nail polish or something,” he said. “It’s okay, though, it all worked out.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it was me and not your flawless Australian accent.” She wiped a hand down her face. “Tell me you’ve got them.”

Joe flipped open the panel on the forearm of his mech suit.

“Not only do I have them,” he said, tilting the screen so she could see the blinking tracker racing across the map, “but I even got the livestream up and going. Just you wait, kid. Lumberjack Joe’s gonna make the Jaeger squad go viral.”