Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse, стр. 7
IX
“You okay?” There seemed to be genuine concern in Bill’s voice.
Mortimer leaned into the rope, trudged in the shin-deep snow, one foot in front of the other, every step an effort of titanic proportions. His head throbbed. His stomach rebelled. He had not been this hungover in…how long?
A decade.
Abruptly, Mortimer dropped the rope, dashed to the side of the road and went to his knees. Heaved. The puke was acidic, made his eyes water. He hurled three times in quick succession, splattering the snow. Steam rose. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
“I’m a little fuzzy myself this morning,” Bill said.
“Get bent,” Mortimer muttered, then spit.
“What?”
“I said I’m fine. Let’s go.”
They made their way down the mountain. Landmarks began to look familiar. A flood of memories. Mortimer found himself hurrying. He wanted to see his town, his old office, his old house.
His old life.
The gas station and convenience store at the bottom of the hill was a charred husk, blackened and hollow. He’d bought beer and newspapers there. Toilet paper, Slim Jims, ice cream, unleaded. In an odd way, Mortimer was relieved. He would have felt like a grade-A jackass if he’d hidden in a cave for nine years and then come down the mountain only to find the convenience store selling cigarettes and lotto tickets like nothing had happened.
“I want to find my old house,” Mortimer said.
“Wait!” Bill grabbed Mortimer’s sleeve and tugged, pointed at the side of a brick building across the street. “It’s true. They have one here. Thank God. I didn’t know if it was true or not.”
Mortimer looked at the wall. Spray-painted in three-foot, neon-pink letters were the words JOEY ARMAGEDDON’S SASSY A-GO-GO. An arrow painted underneath pointed toward downtown.
Mortimer squinted at the sign. “What the hell’s that?”
“Paradise, partner, paradise. Come on.” Bill began to pull the sled in the direction indicated by the sign.
“Wait.” Mortimer pulled back on the other rope. “I told you I want to find my house.”
“Just for an hour.” Bill dug into his pockets, came out with a handful of silver coins. “I’ll buy you a drink. I have six Armageddon dollars.”
Mortimer’s stomach pinched. “I don’t want a drink.”
“Just for an hour.”
“No.”
“Thirty minutes.”
“I said no.”
Bill dropped the rope, turned on Mortimer, pointed at him. “Listen, pal. The only people who don’t want to go to Joey Armageddon’s are those who’ve never been to one. Ten minutes. You won’t be sorry.”
Mortimer admitted to himself he’d like to see downtown, the little Norman Rockwell Main Street, the storefront where he’d sold insurance. He wondered if he’d recognize the town he’d lived in. His old house had waited nine years. It could wait a little longer.
“Okay,” Mortimer said. “Lead the way.”
“You’ll love it.”
“Just pull the sled.”
Spring City was the kind of sleepy small town high school kids vowed to leave for the big city. Before the Fall there had been a bank and a post office, various stores. A blinking stoplight. Old men had stood in front of the greasy diner, thumbs hooked in denim overalls as they discussed the Volunteers’ football season and the doings at the First Baptist Church. A Laundromat. Feed store. Hardee’s.
Now, as Mortimer and Buffalo Bill pulled the sled toward the old armory, vague faces watched them from dirty windows. There was an eerie caution in their expressions. Mortimer asked Bill if they should be worried.
“Not in town,” Bill said. “We’re safe enough. I think they have a militia here.”
A militia. The idea made Mortimer feel nervous instead of safer.
The armory had been transformed. A sign above the double doors in bright pink, professionally stenciled, not the rough spray-paint job they’d seen on their way in, declared the place JOEY ARMAGEDDON’S.
Mortimer raised an eyebrow. This had been a place for high school dances, city league basketball and town hall meetings. What was it now?
They walked inside, Bill leading the way, excited like a little kid going to a birthday party. Mortimer did not recognize the interior of the armory. Tables and chairs were scattered throughout it, a hodgepodge mismatch of booths and other furniture clearly looted from various restaurants and pubs. At the far end of the auditorium, a long pine bar; behind the bar and slightly elevated, a stage. What looked like two enormous birdcages flanked the stage on either side. Strings of unlit Christmas tree lights crisscrossed the ceiling, hanging low.
“Will the sled be okay outside?”
“Nobody pulls shit within five hundred yards of a Joey Armageddon’s.” Bill beelined for the bar.
Mortimer followed.
As he approached the bar, Mortimer noticed a dozen men at a pair of picnic tables along the far wall. They wore dirty clothes and spooned a thick, brown stew into their scruffy faces. Next to the picnic tables was a line of stationary bicycles, a cumbersome wad of wires and cables leading from the bicycles to a metal box.
He caught up with Bill at the bar, where the cowboy had caught the bartender’s attention.
“Is the beer cold?” Bill asked.
“Sure,” said the bartender. He was fat and bald, a large tattoo of a black spider in the middle of his forehead. “The kegs are outside in the snow. Cold beer in summer, that’s the real trick.”
“Great. You have the house special microbrew? Chattanooga Brown?”
The bartender shook his head. “Ran out three nights ago, and the Red Stripes are fucking up the supply wagons coming north. We got Freddy’s Piss Yellow.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Remember Pabst Blue Ribbon?”
“Yeah.”
“Not that good.”
“Two mugs,” Bill said.
Spider-face leaned on the bar. “Let’s see the color of your money, friend.”
Bill put the silver coins on the bar. Spider-face took one and pushed the rest back. He pulled the tap and filled two mugs with foamy, bright yellow liquid and set the mugs in front of Bill and Mortimer.
“You got any rooms?” Bill asked.
“Five coins a night.”
Bill frowned. “That’s pretty steep. It’ll clean me out.”
“That’s with electricity and plumbing. You’ll think you’re at the fucking Marriott.”
“Let me think about it.”
Spider-face shrugged and went about his business.
Bill lifted his mug. “Cheers.”
Mortimer tasted the Freddy’s Piss Yellow. It tasted more or less like beer. Beer somebody had used to wash his balls. But after his third sip, Mortimer felt his headache ease a little. Hair of the dog.
“Can I see one of those coins?”
“Sure.”
Mortimer turned one of the coins over in his hands; it was heavy, maybe lead or nickel with a shiny silver coating, smaller than a silver dollar but bigger than a fifty-cent piece. Primitive stamping. It had ONE ARMAGEDDON DOLLAR on one side, a picture of a mushroom cloud on the other.
“What the hell is this?”
“Armageddon dollar,” Bill said.
“Yes, the words Armageddon Dollar printed on one side tipped me off.”
“They’re used as currency at all Joey Armageddon locations.”
“The place has its own money? How many locations are there?”
Bill shrugged. “If I were you, I’d exchange that sled of trade goods for Armageddon dollars right away.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“For one thing, carrying a bag of coins is easier than pulling that damn sled everyplace. Which, by the way, is getting kind of old.”
“What if I want to shop somewhere other than Joey Armageddon’s?”
Bill chuckled, sipped beer. “There isn’t anyplace else.”
Mortimer asked Spider-face where he could trade his goods for money. The bartender pointed through a door.
“Be right back,” Mortimer told Bill.
Mortimer went to the sled, made sure no one was looking, then took one of the Johnnie Walker bottles from beneath the tarp and carried it back inside, went through the door the barman had indicated.