Myths and Legends, pt 2.

He's in the back, utterly destroyed by some brew or another. I glare down at him, splayed carelessly across a backroom couch. This is the smith I have pinned my livelihood on. A drunkard Mechanic in oil-stained clothes half comatose in the dirty Hive. Fucking outstanding. I lean down and slap him awake.

"Hey! Asshole!" Neither shouts nor slaps rouse the Mechanic fully, but his eyes at least open groggily. His skills are too rare to be burnt out by Hivebrewed grog. I grab him by the collar and drag him bodily through the press of bodies once more. Maybe it's the rage in my eyes, maybe it's just my imagination, but the undulating crowd seems to part in front of me. He begins to protest near the yawning entrance of the club but by then we're far away from anything drinkable. I throw him through and follow him out to grab his collar and start dragging again.

"This is really too much, man," I say, upbeach and out of the noise- next to the sparse woods I have my gear stashed in. Scavengers stay out of the wild parts of the world. The Mechanic stares unseeing and tries to wipe sleep from his eyes. "The one time I need you and you're like this? Arankay, Don!" Names taken in vain mean nothing to someone only half in reality. A few more slaps. "Wake the hell up!"

Don finally lets out a pained groan as his brain lights back up, albeit too slow for my purposes. Burning perfectly good seconds on this idiot.

"Hey, man," Don says with a goofy smile. "Sup?" He tries to stand and fails. In no condition for what he's needed for.

"Sup is me getting to eat this month. You too, if you've got any smarts in you." I step into the forest to unhitch my gear from halfway up a tree. They're taller this time. The trees. I haven't been up this way in almost half a year, but they're taller. Greener, too. It had been a cold summer, by comparison. I drag my things out into the moonlight. "Think you can fix it?"

"Are you kidding me man?" Don laughs so hard he falls back on his ass. This is not what I need. "I fix.. man, you know. Doors and shit. 'Mobiles, occasionally. Rarely. What the hell even is this?" He kicks one of my tires. Asshole.

"It's a bike, man. How have you never seen one of these? Where've you been?" I move the frame out of reach of questing feet. Kick my damn tires, will he. "Any decent courier uses one. They're reliable." Don manages to stifle his snickers. Barely. I resolve to beat the hell out of him if he can't fix it. "Look, can you fix it or not? What kind of mechanic are you?"

"Maybe," he says. "Maybe. We'll see."

Myths and Legends

They say the Hive was carved out of the bulk of an old great Whale, beached just after the days ended. They say it was covered in dirt from some catastrophe, to be excavated, nearly a century later, by some punks barely old enough to remember the end of the end, when the battles were wars and the weapons blazed whole towns.

They say a lot of things. Looking at this Hive, in this place- the thick steel bones re-purposed, if only technically, to support pockmarked skin serving as a roof. This Hive is a well-hidden and open secret among the freeholders of this stretch of the west. A densely populated cave torn from the hammers of what came before. A writhing tumor of metal and drugs and sweat, too far deep for the ocean to reach, if it still came this way.

I weave through the press of flesh while shielding my eyes against the glare of cobbled together lights and glowing vials. The music is oppressive, the dancers are drugged and wild with arms flailing. Everyone is armed.

Somewhere in the savage pulse of flesh and scavenged woofers is the man I need to find.