The younger Murphy sighed, hung his head, stood up from the counter, and went back behind one of the shelves to awkwardly shuffle around ammunition and firearms. Murphy walked straight back behind the counter and took his usual place, returning the comforting air of familiarity that had been missing from the store since I’d entered it.

Arriving with Bill, now Murphy, was Rose, the mayor of Jasper. She looked me up and down. “Well, if it isn’t tall, dark and deadly. We’ve missed you around here, thought your ass may’ve kicked the bucket.”

“Almost,” I replied, earning me a crooked smile from the woman.

Rose moved over to counter and gave Bill a full faced kiss, which he returned with enthusiasm.

I felt my brows raise involuntarily.

“See you tomorrow Bill.”

Bill grunted and pointed at the sign.

“I’ll call you whatever I like, I’m fucking you after all.”

Bill shrugged.

Rose turned to leave and noticed my expression, and gave me a wink. “I like a man that don’t talk much, what can I say,” she said, then walked out the door whistling the tune to an old waster limerick as she left.

I managed to recover my composure and walk up to the counter. “Murphy.”

He nodded at me. “Donovan.”

“I have a lot of points I need to unload, and wanted to see if you found anything from my list.”

Murphy nodded. “Let me find it.” He walked away, off into a side passage of the store that opened into what looked like a small closet. Unlike the now clean and organized main portion of the store, the closet was cluttered, messy, and impossible to parse visually. It appeared that Murphy had preserved at least some of his former store. He filled a crate with objects from all over the closet, seemingly without any system of organization beyond his own mind, then he returned to the counter and placed the crate in front of me. He looked around the rest of his shop, and I saw, for the first time in our long cooperation, embarrassment creep onto his face, recognizable even behind his thick mirrored shades.

“Sorry about the shop,” he said. “Sister needed to move her kid out of a border town near Medina. Gave him a job here. Tried to teach him how I sort things. He’s a bit helpless though.”

I looked at the perfectly clean and organized shop with everything labeled and categorized and frowned. “It’s alright Murphy. You won’t lose my business.”

He nodded, his embarrassment fading, but no smile as usual. He started to pull things out of the crate. There was the usual ammo restock, a pile of paperback books, a scope, an extended magazine for a 9mm pistol, a fresh whetstone, and some replacement clothes I’d had the foreknowledge to request before I left for my trip.

I looked over everything, counting the ammo, checking the quality of the scope and magazine, and fingering the fabric quality of the clothes. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Murphy, I did, but it was a matter of habit, and he may be insulted if I didn’t. After all, what half-decent trader in the wastes doesn’t take advantage of a dumb customer when he gets the chance?

I finally came to the pile of books. There were two I didn’t recognize, one called ‘Uptown Priest’, about a Cleric who channeled the gifts of their god in order to impress and ingratiate himself with the nobility of his city, The other was called, ‘Masque’ and seemed to be about a magical mask that had the ability to possess others to do it’s bidding. I quickly placed those two in my to-buy pile and sorted through the rest. There were a few romance novels, a couple fantasy romps I already owned, a science fiction that seemed to be a ripoff of another I’d read before, but at the bottom, below all of the other books was something I never expected to see.

The cover showed a Lizardman on a throne of bones, a half-naked elf draped on one side of it, and a similarly under-dressed dwarven woman on the other, he was wearing a crown of gold and holding an hourglass in one hand, watching the sand trickle down it. I’d never seen this cover, but I knew of it. It was “Gavain and the Immortal Empire”, the final Gavain book. It had been a limited printing, that hadn’t yet had a full release when the bombs fell, I thought it would be impossible to find.

I found myself doing something I rarely did in the company of others who weren’t Nico, Deux, or people I was in the midst of killing. I was smiling.

“Thought you’d like that,” said Murphy with a nod. “Seeing as it’s been at the top of your book list since I first met you.”

I wiped the smile from my face, and placed the book carefully on top of my to-buy pile. There had been a time when my only ambition had been to create a comfortable enough existence in my deadzone and avoid dying. This book was a cornerstone of that plan. My ambitions have expanded dramatically since then, but damn did I want that book anyway. Still, appearing eager about it was no way to haggle.

I coughed, finished sorting everything, and looked up at Murphy. “This is what I’ll be getting.”

He nodded. “Trade or Points? You’ve got some credit from some scrap Nico turned in for you, but it won’t cover everything.”

I sighed. “Points.”

He nodded and let out a whistle. “This’ll be mighty expensive then.”

Points were always worth less than goods, that’s why barter still made up most of the economy in the wasteland. I sighed, considering what I had to do to earn the points I was about to spend. I’d ended lives for less value than I was about to spend on the book. Hell, I’d done it for free. “What’s the damage?”

Murphy gave me a rare smile.

…

I swung back to my boat to drop off the excess goods I’d gotten from Murphy before I started on the road toward the Black Woods. My points total had been notably depleted, but in spite of that I was happy with what I’d gotten in exchange. I felt a brief temptation to sit and read for some time before leaving, but I had more important work to do. I’d actually left the book in my boat as I knew I’d be moving non-stop until I could get back to the fight. There’d be time to read when the war was done and the Remnant’s squashed out. I even felt some guilt for the brief hour I’d spent in Jasper, but knew that heading in the Black Woods, underequipped would be foolish, and could potentially waste far more than time.

The roads in this area were well worn and I recognized tracks that told me that Horde patrols had been there far more frequently in the past. Normally, riding a motorcycle alone was a death sentence. The noise attracted raiders on the best of days, and the attention of radded out beasts on the worst of them. I no longer had concern about either of those groups, so I rode alone, but I was still very used to encountering them. This time though, the trip was quiet. I heard no stray gunshots or bestial roars, and I didn’t feel vibrations in the ground indicating anything monstrous beneath it waiting to swallow me up.

At one point I did come onto the remains of an old raider hideout. It was riddled with bullets from all sides. Corpses were on the ground in front of it, riddled with bullet holes, chunks of flesh missing where scavengers had picked the bodies clean. The Khan, when I’d last seen him, had seemed keen on cleaning house of any threats to his dominion within Horde territory. It seems he’d been very thorough in doing so. At this rate the roads would be safe even for the average waster.

From my perspective, it made the trip dull, if fast. I had grown used to interruptions and attacks in my travels and so my awareness was cranked up during the entire trip, not allowing myself to daydream or move without paying active attention. It took more than a day of riding, which included stops to refuel using the gas cans I had attached to the bike, before I reached the edge of the Black Woods. The only thing that broke the monotony was the system message I received while pouring gasoline.

Advanced Rebuild America System has Reached 100,000 Citizens!

The Presidential Election can now begin!

Any citizen can be made a candidate with 1,000 nominations!

5,000 nominations to qualify for the first debate!

10,000 Nominations to qualify for the second debate!

Voting will take place the week after the second debate!

Thank you Citizen, for participating in this great democracy!

I finished fueling, and re-packed my gas can. It looked like between the Undertakers that had gotten the advanced system from me, and the Remnants the Advanced R.A.S. had spread quickly. I hadn’t heard any more specifics from the Honored Dead regarding what their plan was for it, but I had confidence that they had one.

When I finally reached the entrance to the Black Woods, I turned off my bike for a moment and stood looking at it. Where once there was dense forest, uninviting and dangerous, now I saw a cleared road leading deeper inside. In some ways that was scarier, as if some dark force was now inviting me into the danger rather than me needing to seek it out myself. I shook my head and turned my bike back on. The thought of my new book was clearly causing me to think too fantastically.