Ain't Talkin'

The town of Colfax was right where Thomas said it would be. A train town amidst a sea of dead and dying conifer trees that choked the low mountainsides like a pox.

At Miner’s order, the Caravan stopped for only a half-hour, so that men could relieve themselves, smoke, take a quick bite to eat and refuel the trucks.

The town was a couple of remaining small streets lined with old businesses. The passing of the caravan was perhaps the only thing of note that had happened in some time. The hundred or so people who made their lives in Colfax exited their homes inside the old shops and hovels and tin-roofed lean-to’s to take a good long look at the military brigade that was moving on by.

Soldiers of the Resistance kept their guns up and their eyes winking in every direction. No one approached the caravan too closely except one naked little boy of about ten whose mother scooped him right up before he got too close to the soldiers in their fatigues and their ranks.

They took meals and refueled the trucks, soldiers standing watch over the caravan. Roche lit a cigarette and tied Lucky with some room to a truck. The horse went about scrounging for grasses and keeping to herself.

Colfax wasn’t much. Another blasted border town in the wasteland. Still there was a saloon, and Roche wasn’t sure if he had enough whiskey to tide him over until they reached New San Fran. Was always better to be safe than sorry.

To the left of a brick building that vaguely read ‘Colfax Pharmacy’ was an old liquor store with a neon sign that hadn’t worked in probably near a century. The storefront had been converted to a bar, appropriate to it’s sign. A pair of tables sat in the front windows with a couple of chairs clustered around each, seated with grizzled men of the wasteland and a single mother who chain smoked cigarettes the entire time Roche was in the store, a child clinging to her hemp skirt.

The proprietor was a stunted little man with a neanderthal brow and a hairy neck. He sold Roche a glass bottle of thin whiskey with a handle. The exchange was nothing of note, and within ten minutes Roche was seated on the boardwalk with a cigarette in his lips and the whiskey between his knees.

A little girl in a sack-dress watched him from behind a lamp pole, two fingers stuffed in her mouth, covered in dirt with hair in oily dreadlocks.

Roche stared at the waif from under his hat, smiled and held out the bottle to her. “Want a sip?”

The little girl took a tentative step forward, looked left and right and grabbed at the bottle. Roche snatched the bottle away before she could touch it.

“Kiddin’ me? How old are you girl? Six? Seven?”

She shrugged.

“Fuckin’ kiddin’ me.” Roche swigged off the bottle.

Briggs appeared from the mob surrounding the caravan, men loading up and checking their gear for dist before they got back on the road, oiling their guns and shrouding them with cloth to keep the dirt spray from jamming the mechanisms. He shouted; “Roche! We’re heading out, let’s get to it!”

Roche didn’t answer. Just took another swig and stood from the boardwalk.

He didn’t look back at the liquor store or the girl. He didn’t notice the waif enter the liquor store and steal a bottle with grubby fingertips anyway. One just little enough to fit in her tiny hands. Roche mounted up and drove off with the caravan out of Colfax and down the 80 West into the California basin.