VI. On The Rocks
Hell Patrol's Toughest Meet the B.F.D. to End Them All...
“Crack-rock-cocaine. But it’s green, it turns you into a ghoul, and it gives you the kind of adrenaline rush we get for free by being on stage. To the power of pi.”
I wasn’t exactly police commissioner material, but briefing a bunch of drug-busters-to-be wasn’t that tough a gig. We had a ton of Hell Patrolman on one side of the room, a bunch of civvies on the other, and I was there giving the seminar on our wonderful new Wasteland resource: radium. It was an all-regions affair, and fortunately, I wasn’t the only one, as none other than old Hound in Black’s princess May was there to help give pointers. Apparently the shit had found its way into the Eastern region, but the Force’s outer third sector was a bulwark against it going any further…setting aside the fact there weren’t too many folks living on the backside of the Ambiorixians.
I let May take the stand after my jaw got sore from gabbing, and she came on with that classic Godred family charm.
“I’d say General for the sake of professionalism, but to hell with that, let’s keep speaking plain: Pop had the boys in the Lab do chemical tests, and what we got are some weird results. Radium the drug, the way it is NATURALLY formed, has an encrusted shell that contains the radiation, only broken when smoked, cooked, or split apart. The key word is NATURALLY. You can cook it, hop it up, tune her like a Ferrari, but she’s appearing like this au naturel in the wild. That means we’ve got to deal with the cats who mine this stuff. We got teams scoping out the Ivory Coast, but we can’t rule out any of the old mines, or any of the regional military bases from the Old World.”
She whipped out a big ol’ map and the yard stick to match, and slapped it all over that sucker, laying out every single possible location. When she finished, and was sure that everyone had taken their notes, she let me wrap up the spiel.
“Thanks Queen Bee” (she hated her call sign, but we had to use ‘em on duty) “Now, we only got all y’all regular folks for three days, and we don’t want to waste any of your time in that span. Once you guys hit the areas, everyone clocks out at 5 PM on the button and we start all over again bright and early at 5 AM like we are here-n-now. After the three days, y’all can go home and the resta Hell Patrol will take over. Since everyone’s already teamed up, all I got left to say is good luck, Godspeed, and if you find any of the crackheads, catch ‘em and quiz ‘em. And if they get mean, get as mean as you have to, even if it means a slug between the eyes. If it comes down to the dregs or your life, always choose your life. Let’s get out there.”
Now, while we were a three-piece on stage and in the field, I had lobbied to get us at least one civilian to work with. Most of the folks were lone wolves or duos, so everyone wound up a trio. Mick Maelstrom was yucking it up with a cute cowgirl and a MedHub hound on their off-day, May (lotta fucking Ms around here, huh?) was hanging with her field partner Jock “Wichita” Campbell and a retired Hell Patrolman who was running his mouth about all of the drug busts he had been on. And they were many.
Many.
Including that one time he got a contact high ‘cause the guy was burning his meth stash and forgot the shit could explode.
Anyhow, I really gunned for us having a civvy because chatting it up with fresh blood while doing “Trash Picking: Drug Edition” was always a blast when you had the right person. And while he didn’t seem it at first, we found the goddamn diamond of the pack.
His name was Buck Sterling. Gray father of three, drove a beach-sun yellow Jeep Cherokee, dressed like a day at Bette Garret’s swimhole from his sandals to his muscle shirt, and had been a road-paver for Old Man Grant back in the day. All that mundane bullshit, but he had an action-hero name, and was built like a tank. When you talked with him at first, he was just a cool, calm, and collected dude. Rory gave him the “mission” code name of BFD: Big Fucking Dad, though the boys took to calling him Pops.
“So, we’re up on that canyon ridge between Matheson and Beaumont, right?” he asked.
“Yessir.” I smiled.
Buck nodded. “Wanna go up separate or should we carpool? I cleaned my ride so there ain’t no trace of the kids, not that they’re too messy.”
I turned to Rory and he gave me a look that said “I couldn’t care less if I had to walk there.” Fair enough.
“Y’know,” I added, “There’s also four seats in Richter’s rat rod.”
I knew exactly the look I was going to get before I turned around. I looked to my brown-furred compatriot and the first line that came to mind was “Nobody’s gonna take my car,” with thunderous organs and guitars screaming the big N.O. He wasn’t gonna play nice today.
“Guess we’ll pool with you Buck.”
So there we are, a buncha tough SOBs with bullet belts and guns galore, climbing into the sleek, sporty equivalent of a school bus, chauffeured by a brick-shithouse in Tevas, shorts and a tank-top. The only wolf I’ve ever seen drive safe in these deserts, swear to God, like he was taking his kids to daycare. If all we had was our mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet, I woulda leapt out of the car and ran screaming back to the truck out of sheer boredom.
But it didn’t take long for Superman to hit the scene.
First off, the dude was fun to chat with. Loved his kids, loved his babe, but he had other shit he dug too. He painted, he was a gym rat on the days when could get out of the house, and he was a metalhead with a sizeable array of eight-track awesomeness. And most importantly, when he realized we weren’t Fabergé eggs, boy could that hound race!
When Buck dropped the hammer, man, that Jeep went tearing off like a bat outta hell. And it was just then that started to lay on the war stories. Not about battles and shit, but about racing the wrong kinda cats. Scaling canyon walls, leaping broken bridges in a single bound, that kind of cool shit.
He punched the brakes and swung his rod around when we finally reached our Ground Zero for the day. When I saw Rory and Harry hop out the back, they were stumbling over themselves, just barely surviving the sudden shift in G-forces.
“Yo Pops, can we do that again?” teased a winded Rory. I woulda smacked him for it, but Buck was cool. “When we’re finished, sport.” With dad answers like those, one thing was on my mind: I’d need an insulin shot before the day was up.
I handed out the pocket Geigers and we all started scanning every inch of sand for traces of radium. It was slim pickings at first, but one by one, we all found ourselves congealed over this one little patch of land. I marked it, made a note, and woulda said “bring on the shovels” if Buck hadn’t started already hucking ‘em out from the back of the Jeep.
We each took our spade, got to digging, and lo and behold, there was our Loc-Nar deposit. All sat nice and pretty, encrusted just as May had said.
“Yo Pops,” Harry asked, “We got the trunk too?”
Buck nodded and walked back to the Jeep. I cocked my head to get the guys to help him. After all, the thing was four-foot long, made of lead and concrete with steel hinges and locks, and was our lone repository for all things radioactive. Last thing I needed was the civvy dropping it on his paws like a slapstick routine gone wrong.
But out comes the BFD, fireman-carrying this motherfucker like it’s one of his tots. He swings it out, drops it down, and then we all get to loading it up. Bastard even had a pair of leather gloves on him. “I know it’s safe to handle, but you can’t ever be too sure.”
Sure enough, all of us whip out our driving gloves, and we get to loading the thing up. We get halfway full, and surely, he is not gonna be able to carry an industrial grade box of rocks. “Hey, BFD, need a hand?” I ask.
Shakes his head. “Nah, Speed. I got this.” And sure enough, he does! This beast loads that up in the back, no sweat at all. And when we pile back into the car, he turns the key, revs ‘er up, and the time was 8:30.
We had arrived at 8, and we still had at least three-and-a-half ‘til high noon. Dude kept us moving like that all morning. We wound up having to go back to the base of operations just to empty the sucker every two stops.
Now, y’know how most of the time, shit goes wrong right about now? Somewhere along the way some crazy crack-addled asshole comes careening outta nowhere? Not for Buck they didn’t.
I swear to Christ, this hound was God’s golden boy. I didn’t see a stray crook, a doped-up fiend, or even one of them weird Wasteland critters roll up. Hell, no little miseries either. Not a bug on the windshield, he didn’t pop a sandal strap, nothing. He was just taking us all over our route, hitting the jackpot, was such a sickly sweet son-of-a-bitch just by being himself. By the end of it, we were not sure if we were the assholes or if he was some kinda bot. I’m pretty sure Harry or Rory were willing to find out, if the dude’s luck hadn’t run out.
Out on the horizon, screaming from outta nowhere, was a red wolf dressed in his Dachau best. Like this fucker was thin, his fur haggard, and his voice raspy with rage. “YOU SONOFAFUCK! I KNEW I’D FIND YOU OUT HERE YOU BITCH! IMMA KILL YOUR ASS” et cetera, et cetera, blah blah blah.
Now, we all had enough enemies by this point that we couldn’t tell who this dude was. One of our doped-up wolves, a killer, rapist, a JGZ. No one knew.
Until Buck piped up. “Heya, you guys remember that call a few months ago? The one about the scavengers and the attempted, watcha call it? S.V.G? That’s the guy who got away.”
We all turned in perfect sync to look at him. “You got beef with these kindsa cats?” I blurted out.
Buck shrugged. “Not really, but he was part the reason I had to drive up that canyon. I woulda downed him, but Junior figured we’d scared him good. Guess not.”
The time was 11:45. “Mind if I finish this up?” he asked. I looked to the boys, and the boys looked back. And from out of nowhere, Harry gets this vicious gleam in his eye. “I got a favor to ask Pops.”
Buck turned his head to the back seat. “What’s up Richter?”
“Have fun with it.”
The gray tipped his shades. His gaze was blank at first, until the kinda smile I never thought I’d see on this hound’s face came on from out of nowhere. One paw down on the brake, the other on the throttle, and that Jeep began to rock and roar like an XKE at Make-Out Point. He rips ‘er into Drive, drops that hammer, and the Cherokee leaps onto her back wheels and starts charging.
“Speed, Richter, Mads?” Buck asked, polite as could be. “Mind shooting at him for me? Don’t kill ‘im, just keep him from shooting my baby’s underside.”
We couldn’t argue with such a lovely proposition and we whipped out all five guns for the old man to make this bastard dance. Only problem was: he was a crack shot too. Sure enough, my dual-wielding cohorts had to keep it to a one-gun salute. When Buck saw this, he tapped the brakes, dropped us down, and kept plowing towards him. That needle hit the little 85, but I heard the engine going harder than that.
My guess is that we hit that hound at 100 even, but somehow, he didn’t combust on impact. No, he twirled right over us, too fast for any of us to hit him with a slug at point-blank range (though it was probably best we didn’t for Buck’s sake), and just like that, Buck whips his girl around and keeps hightailing it for this guy.
“HOW MUCH LONGER?” Rory shouts.
Buck looks back to him, winks, and just keeps his lead foot on the floor. Sure enough, that red scavenger starts losing. They get closer and closer and closer until the red trips on a rock and Buck picks this guy up by his scruff mid-fall. Now this hound’s just screaming incoherently and tries to aim his gun, only to get it slapped out of his hand!
This mofo’s stone-cold was the only thought in my mind as I’m watching all this play out. In the pandemonium, the red doing his whole “oh please SPARE ME!” trip, something catches Buck’s eye. I see the shades tip down his snout as he dug into the scavenger’s pocket. Cat wasn’t bad at driving with his left knee too. What he pulls out is paper; a note.
He opens it, and slams the brakes. Both paws, flat-down, drops the scavenger right onto a rock. He is D.O.A., caved right the fuck in. And when he hands me the note, I get why.
“if you want to see your bitch and kid, we got them at [insert never-ending coordinates here] bring cash and ride”
I pulled out my hand-radio. “Commissioner, this is Speedfreak. Request to break detail. We got a hostage situation. Hostage taker dead after pursuit, and we got coordinates for the hostages.”
Of course Chief wouldn’t say no, so I had Richter run the numbers and we make it to this shack, middle of butt-fuck-nowhere. We case the joint, kick the door in and find the gal and her daughter. Two white wolves, mother’s passed out and that poor kid. Jesus. She was bawling, absolutely out of it. When we undo the gags, she gave us the biggest heads up. “HE’S GONNA BLOW US UP!”
We see a big, square brick of radium, with plugs going into a unit, wired to a ticking time-bomb. 10 minutes. We don’t even try to diffuse it because we didn’t want to be anywhere near it with our own box of atomic TNT. We asked for a bomb squad from the nearest H.P. junction, but that was all. Buck tore right off with everyone in tow. We were well outta range when the shack went up, mushroom cloud and all. Thank Christ we were upwind of the sucker too, because even if the levels weren’t up there, shit still looked like Trinity to me.
When we came to a stop to get our bearings, I hopped out to stretch my legs, and the boys joined me. They had the mother propped up between them, gave her some water, and were just waiting on her. The pup was up with Buck and I and was still inconsolable.
Until she wasn’t.
Buck took that girl in his arms and held her tight. “She ain’t gone sweetheart. Everyone’s gonna be alright.” Now, none of us were great with kids. In fact, we all kinda just suck with ‘em. Pups in the crowd are cool, but none of us were up for any adventures in babysitting or bullshit. But Buck man...cat was a natural.
“Wanna tell me where y’all live?” he asked sweetly. “That way I can get ya home safe-n-sound.”
“102 Clayton” she sniffled. “Up north.”
“We neighbors then, huh?” Buck smiled. “I’m just down the road.”
The kid perked up a little, and Pops ran with it. “Once we get y’all home and rested, maybe you can come over sometime. I betcha Junior and Laci’d love playing with you. And we can go out for a nice drive through the hill’s in the family Bug.”
“You gotta Bug?” she asked, all wide-eyed.
“She’s a real cutie.” he chuckled, nuzzling her a little and—Christ, who the hell’s cutting onions in here? Get the fans on Doc, that shit can blind a guy!
Point is, dude talked all about this cute-as-a-button VW the family owns, and just like magic, the lady came through with a delirious, hushed mumbling of “Devlin.” Buck reached out and held her hand. “No ma’am, but we’re gonna get y’all home to see him.”
We stopped by Base to get rid of our crack-stash, where at least a half-dozen other war-chests of the shit were waiting. and seeing as the boys were fixing to eat anything in sight, I let them stay for lunch. I joined Buck in sending the family home. The hubby, Devlin was there at the house, everyone falling over themselves, hugging, crying, kissing. Buck hopped out, shook hands, and knelt down to the kiddo’s eye-level.
“Alright Lili, don’t forget Mr. Sterling’s right over the hill when you need me—” GODDAMNIT DOC, WHO’S CUTTING THOSE FUCKING ONIONS!? I’M TRYING TO TELL A GODDAMN STORY OVER HERE, JESUS!
No shit, I’m allergic to the suckers! Cut enough of ‘em and it’s like a pack of stinger missiles to the eyes.
Anyhow, point is the kid gave her hero neighbor a big old bear-hug, he offered the family a chance to come over and hangout with his old lady and their kids, they couldn’t say no, yada-yada. I give the family a quick salute, and wait on Buck to get back behind the wheel. “Ready for Round 2?” I ask.
“Mind if I check on my folks, first?” he asks in kind.
“You ain’t the Big Fucking Dad for nothing chief.” I chuckled. He got a kick outta that one, and we hightailed it up to his place. A cute one-story joint with a little Super Beetle in the driveway. He walks in, gives all the kids a big squeeze, practically makes love to his lady on the spot (really put the F in there on that one), and tells ‘em “I’ll be home for dinner.” Hops out, gets back behind the wheel, and we book it for Base to get another chest.
Rest of the day went to plan, with another crate or two of the stuff exorcised from the earth, and then Buck asks the big question on everyone’s minds. “Whaddya plan on doing with this stuff?”
I remember May sitting us all down and showing us these giant multi-layered barrel drums. “This is how they used to take care of the waste. We’re gonna do the same, but with an all-purpose compound lining the barrels.”
“Any chance this goes WMD-mode?” someone asked.
Actually, wasn’t that you Harry?
Thought so.
Anyway, May shook her head. “Dad don’t play that way. Neither does Haven. Ace glassed the Marshalls, but not with nukes. Let’s all count ourselves lucky everyone made that mistake once a good long time ago. We ain’t doing it again.”
With those sobering words of wisdom, the day was over, one of three. I met Buck by his Jeep to gab for a bit.
“On the end of the third day,” I says, “We got a special gig at Doc’s, free everything on the house for the folks involved here. Needless to say, you and the Sterling crew are more than welcome.”
“Thanks a million Speed.” he grinned.
“Nah, it’s after hours Buck, call me Nic.” We shook on that, just in time for him to pass me another note. “What’s this, my next impossible mission?”
“No,” he said frankly. “List of everyone I got on my back.” It was longer than I anticipated, and he could tell. “I do a lot to keep my family safe. I don’t let any crooks screw with ‘em. But I don’t always get ‘em, and begging pardon, the North division ain’t as cracking as you folks down here in Central.”
I tipped my hat. “Buck, you do what you gotta do. I’ll catch ya around.”
He nodded and rolled out. And just as he was rolling. A certain lick hit me in my head. A nice, six-note hook on bass. I whipped a pad out, jotted it down, and spent all night jamming it out. The next night I got Harry and Rory working with me, and by night three, when we hit the stage, we had a little something to embarrass our new friend with. A special tune on the set-list: “Sterling’s Siege.”
Boy did we get the big guy blushing.