Participants:
| Scene Title | Life of the Party |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Richard swings by Tom's Derrick for a drink before heading out on his own. |
| Date | July 8, 2021 |
Workers have been pouring in and out of Tom’s Derrick since the end of shift whistles blew. Few stay long, having little to exchange for more than one or two drinks from the bar’s few options. Some seem to have better budgets, or at least better credit, and have lined the polished steel bar top for hours. Some drink in silence, either hostile or companionable. Others turn what passes for rye whiskey into progressively louder words. Only one fight has broken out, half-hearted and short lived. There will be more sincere brawls before the owner finally pushes everyone out the door.
Glassware lines a shelf along the wall behind the bar, a random collection of clear, largely unchipped old world relics and recycled beer bottles with the tops long since cut free. The latter run a spectrum of shapes and colors, the owner not being picky when it comes to serving his customers. White and brown liquors, the latter likely an adulterated version of the former, fill taller bottles scattered amongst the cups.
Tom's Derrick
New Chicago
The bartender gives Richard an appraising glance, taking a moment to remember him from the previous morning. “You came in with that ranger, yeah?” he asks through a squint that may be permanent. A cup is procured from the shelf along with a bottle, and a finger of rye is poured on credit without being asked.
“Mm? Yeah,” Richard brings a hand up to scratch through the scruff of his beard, offering a tired and lopsided smile to the bartender, “Just gettin’ a drink for the road, really. Never know when you’re going to find another bottle out there.”
The cup’s taken and raised in an easy sort of salute to the bartender, before he tosses back a swallow, eyes closed as he lets it burn its way down his throat. Just taking a breath in the liminal moment between decision and action in a bar.
It isn’t a strip club, and Mohinder (probably) isn’t being hidden in a back room somewhere, but it’ll do for his purposes.
“Can sell you a bottle for the road, if you're paying,” the bartender says, indicating with a tip of his chin toward the supply. His eyes, moving toward the door, squint further than usual. “Assuming there's any left at the end of the night.”
A tall figure, shrouded under a black hood and a red fur coat pushes through the opening and several men obstructing it, apologizing to none of them. All of them, even a shorter man clearly offended, become silent and make space for her. The bartender pours a few fingers of something clear into a proper tumbler, leaving the glass, the bottle, and the area.
“Nice to fucking see you too, Toby,” the woman says, unceremoniously upending and emptying the glass.
Her voice is familiar enough, though the Wright Tracy that collapsed on the scaffolding while Richard plummeted into another world is in far better shape. The woman standing next to Richard, ignoring him studiously, is of a significantly slighter build. Her hair is longer, her gaze less friendly, and her hands faintly shake as she sets down the tumbler to refill it herself.
“You still serving food or do I need to harass someone else?” she calls at the absent bartender’s back.
“Ha. Tell you what, if there’re any left by the end of the night I’ll buy one off your hands,” Richard replies with a raise of his chin to the bartender, smile tugging briefly up at the corner of his lips before fading. Then he’s bringing his glass up again, watching the figure passing through the room from the corner of his eye.
Since she’s engaged with the bartender and is standing near him, he finally turns his head to look at her directly; one eyebrow raising over the edge of his shades. “Bad day, or just a long one?”
Wright doesn't answer, busy refilling her glass and taking a more measured sip of it. She looks down at Richard with a cocked eyebrow, then away to where a seat suddenly makes itself available to her. Settling in, she pulls the glass and bottle closer to herself.
“Take your pick,” she answers finally, seeming to relax in stages as the familiar warmth of alcohol makes its way into her system.
“Don't think I've seen you around here before,” she estimates, “though I've been out of town for a while so what the fuck do I know? Everybody gets forgettable after a while.”
“I'm Wright,” she adds for a polite introduction, “and my gun is named I'm Not Going Home With You.” Somebody turns a laugh into a more appropriate cough before finding more space between her and himself.
“I’m just– “ Richard lifts a hand, fingers vaguely waving through the air, “— passing through. Just got here, just leaving. A ship passing in the night.”
The last bit earns her a grin. “Cardinal. And–”, he shifts his hand to tap his wedding band against his glass. “— this is ‘I’m married so you’re safe’. It’s a bit long-winded, made the wedding really complicated honestly, ‘You may exchange the I’m married so you’re safes’ was very awkward coming out of the priest’s mouth but y’know, I’m not the one that named them.”
He winks, and then downs the rest of his drink.
Wright just shrugs. “Met plenty of married men willing to make bad decisions. Not even just these sad fucks who can't dig up the credit to roll through the back lawn of a whore house.”
“Fuck off,” the man who moved away says half-heartedly.
“Like Dutch here,” she continues, nodding her head back toward the man. “Makes just enough dough to have to still have to be faithful to the missus. How is Florence?” She sends over her shoulder to no response. Neither of the two seem worried about having to fight the other.
“All sorts of married men, making all sorts of bad decisions,” she waves around them at the various types. “I'll take your word on it, though. Never exchanged any ‘I'm married so you're safes,’ myself. Never saw myself as particularly marriageable, then the world ended, thank fuck. Don't have to really think about it now.”
“I'm guessing if you're married it means you have a living spouse,” she rambles. “That's cool too, wasn't trying to give the impression that I'm anti-marriage.”
“You’re not wrong,” Richard admits with a laugh, glancing after Dutch for a moment before shaking his head and turning back, one hand lifting before falling back down onto his thigh, “Well, up front then, if I try and take you home, tell me no, even if you really want to. Not interested, thanks, nothing against you just– not looking.”
He sets the glass down, admitting, “I do, though she’s– far away right now. But we’ll see each other again. And nothin’ wrong with not settling down, either. Never even considered it, though? No tragic romance for the ages?” Not married. No Marthe? Seems likely at this juncture. Not married to Hitchins either, then.
An enthusiastically unimpressed expression shows what Wright thinks of Richard's supposition she might suddenly find herself trying to climb him.
“Nope,” she says simply at first, adjusting her barstool. “Never met the right guy I guess. Plus high school straight to work and then the Totally Not Nazis vaporized an ice shelf. Honestly there's a whole lot more of the post-apocalypse than there was adult life so it's kinda moot at this point.”
Her drink is finished and refilled. “Toby are you out of the soup du jour, or what?” she asks the bartender, who doesn't correct her on the availability of soup, but does get even further away by entering what must be the kitchen.
“You just passing through on your way home, or passing away from home?” she asks, setting her bottle between them the way Elliot did the day before in offering. “Not like, passing away passing away, obviously.”
“Every trip away from home’s a trip back to it, technically, eh? Except the last one, I guess,” Richard muses, cradling the glass in his hand and considering it, “I’m on the first leg, though. Headed up–” He motions vaguely with his hand, “Northwest. Ever been up that way, or you a Chi-town gal?”
He glances back to her, an eyebrow lifted, and then reaches over to pick up the bottle and refill his own glass.
“Not local,” she says. “Just coming back west from a job on the coast.” She does a mostly good job of hiding a deep displeasure about some aspect of that admission.
“So if you need to be regaled with stories of absurd people living in ocean-locked skyscrapers, I can help. Haven't been too far northwest, unfortunately,” she pivots back to the earlier question. “Just know there's remnant government out that way, apparently. We do stop here now and then, but mostly we're outside the barricade. Makes it easier to avoid long-term employment ‘opportunities’. That's how you get stale.” Or in somebody's pocket.
Richard nods, nods again as he starts to lift the glass, and then pauses. “Remnant government?” An eyebrow arches high, a tilt of his head and his whole body finally shifts to turn a bit closer to her.
“Plenty’ve ocean-locked skyscraper living stories over on the east coast, so I don’t need any more of those– but you mean to tell me that there’s still, like, part’ve the good ol’ U S of A kicking out there, or at least waving badges around? Pull the other one,” he says, more dubiously than he actually feels.”They got a President or something, too?”
Wright looks confused about something for a minute, ignoring the important question in favor of her own curiosity. “You're from the Pelago, then? That's what I meant by coming back west. Like, from the east. I couldn't get a good answer to the question of why the fuck people on the coast can't use whole words for places. Like did part of the name get shot off when the Sentinel attacked or something? People got touchy so I stopped asking. My partner ran into the same phenomenon in Philadelphia, which they also called the wrong thing. I get that both have a lot of syllables but five isn't that many.”
“Near there,” Richard allows with a shrug, not quite lumping himself in as being from there, “I’ve been, though. Nice people. Bit weird, but nice.” His shoulders shake a bit in silent chuckling at the observation, then, his hands spreading, “Fuck if I know. I mean, archipelago is a mouthful I guess. What’re they calling Phillie these days? ‘Delphia’ or something? Should just get it over with, call it ‘Cheesesteak City’.”
“Delphi,” Wright says, splaying her fingers dramatically. “Fucking odd. Anyway, to answer your actual question, apparently around Fort Greeley, Alaska. It's supposed to be shielded against EMPs, a continuity of government bunker. Missile defense system or something. Been whispers of Fed boogiemen out that way forever, though someone who's likely to actually know about it passed through recently and talked about it. Can't confirm for myself since he appears to have bolted before I could find him. Might be headed out that way myself to see if the rumors are true either way.” With any luck, she'll find her father on the road.
“You handy on the road?” she asks, pausing to throw back another drink and refill her cup. “You might be able to catch up with the convoy that's headed that way. Strength in numbers and whatnot. I usually just stick with the partner and we make out alright but we have a lot of practice. Is he fabricating the meat in a fucking lab back there or what? Jesus, I'm hungry.”
“Maybe they’re going for some kinda Grecian theme up there, you know, the Oracle of Delphi and all that…? No idea,” Richard admits, one hand coming up to rub through his beard again thoughtfully, “Nah, I prefer to travel solo. Groups draw attention. I can move a lot faster overland by myself than a bunch of vehicles can anyway– chances are if we end up in the same place I’ll be there before them. At least I can warn them if it turns out the spooks are spooky.”
He chuckles, then, reaching for his drink, “So you travel, you’ve got a partner– what is it you do, anyway?”
“This and that,” Wright responds. “Bounty hunting, resource recovery, scouting, staying alive. Turns out tracking and apprehending Specials for the government was a pretty transferable skill set. They never appreciated my style though, so it's probably for the best that the world ended before they could fire me.”
“You must be light on your feet to beat a convoy with a day's headstart to their destination,” she notices.
“A convoy’s got to follow the roads most of the way– which don’t exactly lead straight there– they can’t go under bridges that’re too low, they have to backtrack if they find a place they can’t drive through,” Richard shakes his head slightly, “They have to unpack and let everyone out when they stop, or need to refuel, and then gather everyone back up and get everyone ready to go again– there’re a lot of delays with a convoy. I take routes a big-ass truck could never get through.”
Reaching for the bottle again, he pauses, “Apprehending– shit, were you Evolved Affairs?” He chuckles as he refills his glass, “Small fuckin’ world.”
The bartender returns from the back with a cracked plastic plate covered in meat skewers. Before he can set it down on the counter, Wright has produced a small parcel of waxed cloth tied with butcher's twine. She slides it beneath the plate to the opposite end of the bar, then unceremoniously grabs the plate. “Fucking finally, man,” she says, taking a skewer of browned meat. “Was about to send in a search party.”
The bartender, unamused, takes the offered mystery packet and tosses it up to test the weight. “Salted venison,” Wright explains. The bartender actually looks happy about that, and takes the payment into the kitchen to inspect it.
Wright gestures toward the food in offering, finding herself to be enjoying this opportunity to do most of the talking. “Briefly,” she explains. “Straight out of Oak Ridge Military Academy, thanks to the old man already being an employee. Classic fucking nepotism. I say briefly but it was a few years. Turns out they were all kind of the worst, who would have guessed? Small world makes me think you were in the department too?” She digs into the skewer in her hand, then washes it down with another sip of vodka.
“Yeah. I was with the Commonwealth Institute, we were a shell company for Affairs,” Richard replies with an easy shrug of one shoulder, fingers curling around the glass as he looks down at it, “R&D facility. I mean, I didn’t do any of the R&D, that was the eggheads’ jobs.”
He watches her out of the edge of his sunglasses for reactions to any of this. Or maybe he’s eying the venison. Good meat’s hard to come across.
“Think if I run into any of this remnant out west and they give me any shit I can pull the government employee card?” He grins a bit, clearly joking.
“I doubt their records on shell company employees are very robust,” Wright guesses, “but you can always give it the ol’ college try. Worst case scenario, they shoot you in the street.” As a field agent, there's plenty she never learned about the reach of the department.
She gnaws on the food that certainly isn't beef teriyaki even if it's presented as such. “You come out of that Atlantis bunker, then?” she asks. “Heard it was some kind of despotic Bioshock shit show but a sub made it out?”
“Everything went great until it didn’t,” Richard exhales a snort of dark humor, “All the best laid plans in the world fail the second there’s a fucking mutiny and the inmates start running the asylum. Yeah, some of us got out– rest’ve the place is gone now, just another crypt fathoms under the sea.”
A swig of liquor, and then he lowers it with a motion to her, “So what do you know about these government-claimants anyway?”
“Not much more than I've said,” Wright admits. “There've been whispers for ages about it just because the place exists and it's likely that if anybody survived, it'd be there. Haven't found a need to go somewhere even more inhospitable than this region. Especially not if there's a chance I'd find myself expected to pay ten years of back taxes.”
“Apparently my father recently passed through here on a supply mission to try to find them,” she adds. “Bastard always needed orders to follow, never had the constitution for independent thought.”
“I’d ask his name in case I run into him up that way, but– “ Richard arches a single brow high on his face, “— the phrasing there makes me feel like you wouldn’t be a great character reference, and vice-a vers-a.”
“Shit. It would be the IRS that would survive, wouldn’t it? Fuck.” He mock-shudders, lifting the collar of his jacket, “You’ve got a goddamn gift for scary stories, I’ll give you that.”
“I mean,” Wright says with a shrug, “I did technically come here to kill him, so. Probably don't rely on me for an introduction. He's aware we've been looking for him for sure, which has made him surprisingly difficult to pin down. One would think his brittle old bones would have failed him by now.” She jokes about this offhandedly, though something in her eyes betrays unsurety in her conviction.
“I'd be more worried about anybody who was in the line of succession for the presidency than the IRS,” she adds. “The job attracts exactly the kind of person you never really want having it.” She takes another gulp of liquor, which seems to go down with the same ease and effect of water.
“You ain’t wrong there,” Richard snorts, “Never been one for politics. Anyone calling themselves a career politician usually deserves a punch in the nose.”
He brings the glass up again, pausing just before his lips, “You want me to keep an eye out for him when I head out that way? I mean, courtesy to an ex-member of the same department, and all.”
“I mean, it's a small world,” she says, then drinks even more vodka. It's impossible to imagine where she keeps it all. “Just maybe don't bring me up in conversation, he's likely to get shooty real quick. Also don't tell the government you know me, we parted on less-than-cordial terms.”
“What's waiting up that way for you?” she asks. “Seems like a place one generally doesn't hoof it through the woods toward without a good reason. Snow and whatnot. You solo travel a lot of untracked wasteland?”
“Ah, before things went to shit I travelled a hell of a lot of untracked wasteland and worse,” Richard shrugs one shoulder upwards, “Alaska, Antarctica, Argentin– fuck, did everywhere start with an ‘A’?” A momentary digression, perhaps due to the liquor he’s been drinking, staring off into the distance as if trying to puzzle out some cosmic meaning to that coincidence. Then he shakes his head to clear it, shrugging one shoulder, “I have a certain set of skills, so to speak, and someone sent me to acquire something that should have still been up that way. If there’re some people playing government up there, that’ll actually make things more complicated.”
One shoulder lifts in a shrug, “Ah well. Complicated is how my life goes.”
“Antarctica?” Wright laughs, pouring Richard another drink, “Fuck. Before or after they nuked it?”
“Oh- before,” Richard’s fingers tighten around his glass, gazing down into the liquor. The black mushroom cloud he sees reflected there for a moment isn’t real, he knows, so he slams the drink back to scatter the image and thumps the glass down, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, coughing, “Fuck, I don’t even know how much of it is left these days. Not like we can access the satellite networks.”
“Lucky you,” Wright admits. “I imagine it would have been difficult to survive the during. And you can always grab one of the satellites when the orbit decays enough; might be a touch hot though.”
“You need help with your recovery job?” she asks around an impolite mouthful of skewer meat. “The partner and I specialize. Odds and ends mostly, but getting into ruins and pilfering them rotten puts most of our bread on the table. Not familiar with the landscape up there, but we are very proficient at staying alive.”
“Appreciate the offer, but it’s easier for me if I keep solo,” Richard chuckles, dropping his hand down to the bar and then raising it up in a vague gesture, “Besides, if you’re after your old man that’d add some complications, and complications never end well. No offense.”
“None taken,” Wright says, tapping a meat skewer against the plate as she gauges her food-to-drink ratio. She commits to the food, chewing thoughtfully. While she eats, she splashes a bit more liquor into both of their cups, and raises hers.
“Well, good luck then,” she says in a way that suggests he'll need extra.
“May the Post-Apocalyptic IRS not catch either of us,” Richard banters easily, raising his cup in a return toast, “And may you find the asshole you’re hunting.”
They might both need the luck.