“Have you ever heard of Van Horn?” I asked her.
“Oh sure, we used to play them in football all the time,” she said.
“No, I mean about what happened to them after the war?” Cara shook her head to indicate that she didn’t know about the town’s demise. “We saw that the town is totally empty of people and the buildings are being systematically torn down for construction material.”
“It makes sense. They’ve been building all sorts of barracks and they’re constantly adding to the wall. I always thought that they were going into Old El Paso for the stuff.”
“Well, they’re not,” I paused and reconsidered my statement. “At least they’re not only going into the Old El Paso. They’ve definitely destroyed Van Horn.”
“That’s too bad,” she muttered. “Are you sure that you don’t just want to turn around and go home? I don’t want you guys to get conscripted into the army or something.”
“Would they do that?” Alejandro asked.
“You bet your ass they would,” she said. “Jackson is at high risk. He’s the perfect age. He’s young, thinks he’s invincible, able to be trained for combat, probably a little naïve—sorry—and willing to do whatever he’s told by a strong male role model.”
I considered her words carefully. “Is there somewhere that the two of you could hide out while Alejandro and I talk to the ministry?”
“Hmm,” she mused. “Since we’re going north, I suppose we could go stay at the way station about a mile outside of town.”
“What about south?”
“I knew it! About six miles outside of town, there’s a road that goes east towards Verne’s Garage. The old man still owns the place and I’ve been there enough that he knows who I am so he won’t shoot me on sight. They’ve let him keep the place because he fixes all their vehicles with parts from the massive junkyard out back. We’ll hide there until you come and get us. Verne’s Garage, okay?”
“Alright,” I said as I reigned up my horse. I leaned over and wrapped Jackson in a huge bear hug. “Be safe and be smart. Listen to Cara for clues about what’s happening, we don’t know anything about this place and she does. I know that you get hot-headed sometimes, like up at the gate, but use your head. People may try to goad you into action because they have back-up that you can’t see—like that sniper on the wall.”
He nodded while I thought about what else to say. “If we’re not there three hours after you get to Verne’s, then go ahead and leave. You remember the way back, right?”
“Yes, sir,” he replied.
“If we don’t come back, warn the mayor and tell them that we may want to consider moving further off of the road.”
He nodded again and his lower lip quivered a little bit. “We’ll be fine, alright? They don’t want two used up old men like us for their army,” I said in an effort to comfort him. “Take care of my boy, you hear?”
“Don’t worry, Chuck. I’ll take us through the north gate and around the back way so they won’t even know where we went,” Cara said.
“Alright, you two get out of here.”
Jackson slowly backed his horse away from us and then turned it around and headed back towards the Main Street gate. We didn’t know Cara at all, but I didn’t have any alternative. She was our best hope at the moment to help us get back out of the town safely. She was right. Jackson was exactly the type of person that a conscript army would take. I kicked myself for not making him return to Balmorhea that first day.
* * *
The Ministry of Trade, as it was so loftily called, was little more than a small, square office space in a tiny storefront along Main Street. Alejandro and I hitched our horses to the wooden railing that must have been installed after the war. Even though the town clearly had running vehicles, it seemed like most people walked, rode a bicycle or used horses to get around instead of wasting the precious fuel.
We walked in and I was shocked to feel air conditioning against my skin. Real air conditioning! A young woman wearing makeup sat at a desk right in front of the doors and a small group of men sat over in the corner. I was reminded of Virden so long ago. It was actually a little unnerving at how similar the set-up was. What was it about our past that even in today’s world, this was what people thought was the best layout and format for a business?
“Hi, what can I help y’all with?” the receptionist said.
“We’re here from Carlsbad, New Mexico,” I lied. Alejandro and I had hastily conducted a map recon of the area and Carlsbad was about a hundred miles or so from New El Paso, straight down Highway 62. We’d already decided that there wasn’t anything that these people could provide for us, and even if there were, this wasn’t a society that we wanted to work with. If we wanted to get out of here, we needed to carry on just like we’d planned so as not to raise any suspicion. “We’d like to talk to the minister about a trade proposal.”
“You must be the fellas that we got word about from the front gate,” she said as she looked out towards the street. “I thought there were three of you and one of the refugees from the settlement outside the wall.”
“The heat got to my son,” I answered her unspoken question. “He’s not used to being on the road so much. He’s sitting in the shade of a house a few blocks back with the girl we bought. We really don’t need him to do our business, so I figured that it would be fine to let him rest.”
She nodded in understanding. “My son was the laziest little guy before the bomb. Now he works like crazy out on the wall. I hope your son feels better.”
“Thank you,” I replied. “I’m Chuck and this is Alejandro. We’ve been able to farm and produce some vegetable crops. We want to know if the residents would want fresh, non-contaminated vegetables.”
She was writing notes as fast as I talked. “Mmm hmm,” she mumbled. “What kinds of vegetables?”
“Mostly the green leafy stuff like lettuce and cabbage, plus some broccoli. We’ve had some success with potatoes and beans and peas, but our tomato crop has been an abysmal failure overall.” Except for our location, it would be easier to keep our lie alive if we gave truthful information.
“Any fruit?” she asked expectantly.
“I’m sorry. We weren’t able to get any oranges or anything like that. We do have apple trees planted, but they’re so new that I can’t honestly say whether they’re going to produce anything in a few years or not. We tried watermelons too, but we just don’t have enough water for them to really do well.”
“Hey, we also planted some fig and date trees,” Alejandro said in an effort to get into the conversation instead of just standing there.
“I’m sorry sir, but I’ll talk to Chuck,” she said with a slight sneer. “Most of the Changed are outside our walls and work in the fields there. You’re not from around here, so I’ll let it slide, but we don’t usually allow your kind inside our buildings and the Ministry of Trade certainly doesn’t conduct business with your kind.”
“You don’t find that discriminatory and racist?” I asked the secretary whom I’d previously thought of as pretty.
“Don’t get testy with me. I’m the gatekeeper to the minister and I can damn sure make it so you don’t see him,” she said in an escalated voice. I glanced up and saw two of the men from the table drifting our way with their hands resting on the handle of their pistols.
I held up my hands in a placating gesture. “You’re right. We don’t know the customs around here. The Changed are treated just like every other survivor where we’re from, that’s all.”
“Well, around here, they’re considered dirty and diseased, little more than the mutants that ran around killing everything before they died out,” she replied and tried to compose herself. “While you’re in New El Paso, you should know your place and where you belong. The minister will not meet with any of the Changed present, I can tell you that. So, your pet will have to wait outside.”
“Are you serious, lady?” Alejandro said as his hand drifted down to
wards his own weapon.
“Hold it right there, freak!” one of the men said as he drew his pistol and aimed it at Alejandro’s head.
“Whoa! Whoa! Jesus, just everyone calm the fuck down!” I shouted. “It was a misunderstanding. We don’t know the customs here. My buddy is going to go wait outside with our horses while I talk about a trade proposal.” I implored Alejandro to go outside with my eyes and a slight jerk of my head towards the door.
He looked at the receptionist and back at the man with the drawn pistol. “Whatever, man. I don’t need this shit and our town doesn’t need these people.” He turned around on his heel and shoved the glass door as hard as he could to open it.
The guard reholstered his pistol and said, “You know we’ll be right over here if you need us, sugar.” Such a southern gentleman, I thought.
“Okay, now that that ugliness is over, we can get back to business. Chuck—is that a first or last name?”
“It’s my name. I don’t really use my last name anymore, there’s no point.” I’d also decided to not use my last name with the ministry in case Jason or anyone in his caravan had passed the information about their dealings with new communities to these people. That was just one more link to where we were really from that I didn’t want the ministry to know.
“Hmm, that’s peculiar. Okay, Chuck, the minister is available to see you,” she said with this ridiculous little smirk. God, I wanted to slap that racist bitch across the face!
I walked around the counter and started towards the minister’s office but was interrupted by the guards who said, “Use the hand sanitizer, man. You have to wash those mutie germs off of you and that disgusting nose is probably festering with bacteria.”
Again, I exercised incredible self-restraint by not saying anything. I looked around and mounted on the wall was a pre-war anti-bacterial lotion dispenser. I walked over and liberally squirted a mound of the foam into the palm of my hand and rubbed it in. “Is that good enough or is there something else that I need to do?”
“Drop the fucking attitude before I drop your ass in a six-foot hole,” the guard answered. “Other than that, you may proceed.”
This place got worse by the minute and every second I stayed inside I could feel my skin crawling in revulsion. I knocked lightly on the mahogany door and a soft voice drifted through the wood telling me to enter.
I’m not sure what I’d been expecting when I entered the trade minister’s office, but what I found sure as hell wasn’t it. A man sat slumped in his chair behind a large desk while a mop of blonde hair bobbed up and down in his lap. “Oh shit, I’m sorry,” I said as I turned around.
“Nonsense my boy, come on in,” he laughed. “Monique can be trusted to keep her ears shut and her mouth open while we chat. Have a seat.”
I was really getting skeeved out by this place. I closed the door behind me and noticed a completely nude woman on the leather couch behind the door. She winked at me and licked her lips. I edged past her to the seat that the minister had indicated and sat down.
“Candy, come over here and give our guest a proper New El Paso welcome,” the minister ordered.
The naked girl stood up and came over to me. I held up my hands and said, “I’m married, Mr. Minister.”
He laughed at me. “So am I, but I sure do love fucking these two broads!”
Candy knelt before me with a smile and placed her hand on my crotch. I squirmed away and squeaked, “I’m really okay. I would prefer to just go ahead with our meeting. I don’t need anything else.”
The minister slapped his hand on the desk and the girl sucking his dick gave out a squeal of shock. “I knew I liked you. A man of business after my own heart,” he said loudly. “What can I help you with?”
I noticed that his “purely business mind” didn’t mean that Monique was going to cease her duties, so I moved ahead with my pitch. “I’m Chuck from Carlsbad, New Mexico. We’re interested in opening up trade with New El Paso.”
“Carlsbad, huh?” he murmured while he stared past the blonde’s nude backside to a map on the wall. “How far away is that from here?”
“It’s about a hundred miles to the northeast,” I answered. “We made it here in a little over three days.”
The minister looked from me to the door. “Are there others with you?”
“It’s just me and my traveling companion, Alejandro. He’s a Changed and we were told that you won’t meet with them.”
“Damn right,” he replied. “Seeing those nasty freaks makes my dick go limp and the girls wouldn’t like that at all. Would you, girls?” They both responded in the negative.
“So, what is it that you have that we want and what is it that we have that you need?” he asked me. I thought his choice of words were interesting. He asked about items that they wanted and the items that we needed. Clearly he was used to being the one who held all the cards in trade negotiations.
“We have green leafy vegetables and some root vegetables,” I replied. “We need medical supplies, baby formula and personal use items.”
“We have all of those things that you just mentioned. You came from the northeast, did you—ah, yes, Monique. Here it comes. You ready to swallow it all, baby? I don’t want to get anything on my clothes.”
I averted my eyes as the disgusting pervert came into his slave’s mouth. She continued to work it for a little while longer and then assisted him in tucking himself away and pulling up his pants. She gave me a sticky grin that told me she was just as strange as he was.
“So relaxing,” he said in a dreamy voice. “You really should try one of them, they’re both great at what they do.”
“No, thank you. Yes, we came from the northeast. Actually, we came down Highway 62 and then up 1437 to New El Paso.”
“Hmm? Oh yes, so you came up the main route. Then you noticed our substantial farming system with irrigation from the underground aquifer and powered by our power generation equipment?”
“Yeah, I saw all of that.”
“Okay, so you’ve seen that we have no need of your vegetables.”
My heart sank. I’d at least hoped to get one trade for medical supplies completed using the Carlsbad, New Mexico location as a ruse. “Alright then, I guess we’re done,” I said dejectedly.
“Not so fast, Chuck! We don’t need your vegetables, but what we do need is manpower. You see, New El Paso is looking to be the regional supplier of the foodstuffs that we produce in those fields and eventually the provider of power for everyone. We need more workers in both of those areas if we are going to be the prominent community in the southwest.”
I knew that they were really making a push for a larger army, but I wisely kept my mouth shut. “How many people live in Carlsbad these days?” the minister asked.
Shit. I wasn’t prepared to answer the question. “I don’t know, probably—” A knock on the door saved me from answering.
“Come in,” the minister called towards the door.
Two men came in carrying trays. One was laden with a large tray of potatoes and some type of meat while the other had two plates and two glasses of water. They set it all down on the desk and bowed before walking out of the door.
“Ahh, lunch is served. Please, Chuck, eat your fill, we have plenty of vegetables here in New El Paso.” He speared a piece of meat and savored the flavor. “We’re also the lead producer in the region of goat meat. It sounds disgusting at first, but with varying the spices, our chefs have become very adept at cooking them. They breed like rabbits and as an added bonus they help dispose of trash and the damned cactus that seems to pop up everywhere.”
I’d never had goat and it had been months since I had real meat so I gladly piled it onto my plate and ate everything that I saw. The girls periodically pulled a piece of meat from one of our plates and Candy made sure that her tits rubbed against my face every time that she leaned in for another bite. The two of them made a show of licking any spilled sauce off of each other’s naked bodies. The m
inister watched it with amusement.
After our lunch was complete, the minister sat back and rested his hands across his full belly. “Ahh,” he sighed, “I am full. So, before our bountiful feast arrived you were going to tell me the population of Carlsbad.”
“We have around eight thousand people,” I guessed.
“Eight thousand! How have that many people survived together in one location? What else are you eating? Do you have an army to protect you from the wasteland creatures that are attracted to that large of a population?”
“Uh, maybe a little less?” I amended. “We don’t really keep a list of who comes and goes. We have a large force of police that help keep the uh, wasteland things away.”
“Hmmm, well this police force must be pretty good then.”
“Yeah, they keep everything away and keep our population safe.”
“Then they’re not really an army?” he asked pretending to not be interested.
“No, I guess not. They’re very good at what they do though.”
“Well, we have supplies to trade, enough for your entire population, but it seems that the only thing that you have to offer us is manpower to help work in our fields and power generation platforms.”
“I don’t know if people would be willing to leave their homes. We have a pretty nice life there,” I replied.
“We have a lot to offer for your people and we provide…entertainment for all of our permanent residents. I’d be willing to give you a few first aid kits as a gesture of goodwill if you go back to your community and tell them of all the positive things we have here in New El Paso.
“It’s clear by the way that you devoured that goat that you don’t have a steady source of meat,” he continued. “We have a freely elected government, a very brisk bartering economy, electricity, running vehicles, an almost never-ending list of supplies that we recover from Old El Paso, fresh food, security, hell, we even have sporting events and a bustling night life. Most of these things are absent in wasteland communities.”
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