Utterly Mad

     The scorpion had lived long in the hills north of Prescott, fighting rivals and winning mates. Defending it’s territory and siring generation after generation of little scorpionlings. It knew itself to be larger than it’s usual ilk, which made it the most formidable of it’s kind. Predator or prey, not a single creature could bring it down or evade it for long. It was the apex of this land.

     It’s downfall was not some rival or foe, but little more than an errant spore drifting on the wind. Perhaps the spore simply landed on the scorpion, or maybe it was in something the beast had eaten. Either way, the result was the same: A rapidly growing fungal colony taking up residence in it’s fantastic carapace. The fungus spread from it’s point of entry, finding it’s way into every available space, subverting the flesh, springing forth from it’s body in loose tendrils, converting the toxins in it’s tail to its own purposes, and now… Now it was spreading its tendrils into the scorpions simple brain. Soon, the scorpion would be dead and all that would remain was the fungus puppeted corpse spreading its payload of deadly spores across the desert. The huge scorpion sensed movement and voices. The time of day was all wrong, even the fungal bloom exploding inside it’s body told it the time was wrong, but the scorpion didn’t listen. For the last time, the beast left it’s den and made it’s way towards the building that sat at the western edge of it’s territory.

---

     The thing Worrying the vehicle Kyle had retreated into was the largest scorpion Catnip had ever seen. It was also, the first. It raised it’s back end, preparatory to striking, then lowered it again weakly. “Don’t go near it Catnip, it’s infested!” L hissed. Catnip didn’t know what that meant, but she could guess. The scorpion looked unhealthy, with several flexible tendrils poking straight out from creases in its carapace, and the whole creatures coloration had taken on a grey caste. The claws pushed at the truck again, trying to find something it could grip onto so it could wrench the door off and get the ugly morsel inside.

They all sat inside the office waiting for the clouds of Mycus to dissipate. “It’s just the airborne stuff you gotta watch out for, so long as you don’t touch the immature fungal bed and that stuff we gave you will keep you safe from the spores stuck in your fur for awhile.” Kyle said, looking out in the back field at the exploded scorpion. Catnip had eyes for the truck he’d hidden in instead. A large, old fashioned, diesel powered, International Harvester pickup truck with a towing rig. Catnip had fallen in love with it. “We could use that.” She said, pointing at it. She could almost see how it had once looked before time and slight modification had taken their toll. Cherry red paint, company logo, even a tow truck driver sitting in the cab and waving. The vision was beautiful. “The tires look fine, I bet they are uh… aftermarket?”

“I doubt it runs Nip, it’s way too old.” L said, “If you wanna go check it out, fine, but I’m not going back there near that… that.” L was referring to the fresh bed of soft looking grey moss that had sprung up around the punished corpse of the giant bug. Kyle pulled out a small carbon fiber tube with a pair of lenses like a telescope and looked at the truck. “Yeah, plasticore. Aftermarket as hell. That’s a good sign. If she wants to take a look, I’ll go with her L.” he said. L was already drifting off with her own thoughts, and didn’t hear.

The truck roared to life and Catnip jumped, slamming down the hood and yipping her success to the sky. If the truck suddenly and noisily coming to life didn't pull L from her dire recollection, Catnip sprinting to the window and pounding on it with the palms of her hands most certainly did. "It runs L! It runs!" The truck behind her lurched forward with Kyle behind the wheel. He waved to L, showing a smile that almost glowed with delight. The small patch seemed to lean in the direction of the truck, perhaps sensing it's vibrations but unable to reach whatever it was disrupting the air. Once the truck was out of the back yard and Catnip back inside talking L's ear off, Kyle went back with a jar of diesel set the dangerous patch aflame.

"Can you imagine what we could get done with a tow truck like that? The kind of stuff we could haul?" Catnip asked. L grimaced, the mechanic had grand ideas and grand plans. L had seriously grown to like her like a long time friend in only a couple days. She could tell that Kyle felt something too. Catnip wanted to earn her keep, earn her way home. She would certainly earn, but not her keep and not in the way she seemed to think.

Kyle came back around, tossing both their tools and some scavenged parts and supplies into the tow truck. "Kyle," L called, "Kyle can I talk to you? In private?" She glanced at Catnip playing with the crane and making adjustments.

"Yeah, sure, what do you need L?" Kyle asked. He didn't like the conflict he saw in the set of her body, but how could he when he felt it too?

"Kyle, are we really going to do this? I mean... Can we really just let Mark..." She couldn't finish, but she didn't have to.

"Put a collar on her? I don't know. I don't want to, and I can see you don't either."

"What are we going to do?"

"I don't know. I think I'll talk to Mark when we get back, maybe he'll-"

"He won't though! That's the real problem isn't it?!" L shouted, anger rising to the front of her mind. She knew as well as Kyle did that once his mind was made up, Mark wasn't going to change it. More, this whole scavenging trip had been one massive financial loss. Mark would take the easy way out and sell off what he could. It didn't matter if the debtors gave him time to pay them off or not, he wouldn't want the responsibility hanging over his head. It wasn't just Catnip either, Kyle saw. L was still technically a debt slave. He could just as easily slap a collar back around her neck as well as Catnip's if it crossed his mind to.

Catnip was watching them, grinning a sly ratty grin ear to ear at them. Pleased as punch to be helping out. Happy to be working, doing something she loved. Kyle and L looked back, smiling their troubled smiles. Were they really going to clap this young girl in irons and sell her to the highest bidder? This young, talented mechanic who wanted nothing more than to help as best she could and find a way home?

"Maybe..." Whispered L, "We should just... leave him behind?" Kyle didn't say anything. They couldn't do that. As much as they disliked it, they couldn't leave him. Not because they couldn't, but because Catnip most likely wouldn't.

"She has no idea." Kyle said ashamedly.

"Cozy as three devils ain't ya?" Mark said, fiddling with something like a chain of metal spheres. L knew all too well what that chain was, she'd worn one herself for a time. "Only been gone all day and you're all best fuckin' buds. I should have expected that shit from sally soft hearts like you two." Kyle ignored that, but L had to avert her eyes.

Kyle took out the pack of cigarettes he kept on hand. Not a smoker, these he mostly kept to offer around. "Let's talk Mark." He said, proffering the pack. Mark pushed the pack back and scowled at him. Kyle though took one out and put it in his mouth, but had trouble lighting it. The wind was too high.

"Can I have one of those?" Catnip said. She'd taken notice the moment the pack was out and had come over to bum a cigarette. Not a pack a day girl, not yet anyway, but she had begun to feel the need in times of excitement or stress. The wind died down long enough to light the cigarette, and Mark offered her the chain.

"Here," He said, painting the false friendliness back on, "A gift, I guess." Catnip puffed the cigarette and looked at it. Before Kyle or L could stop her, she'd already taken it and put it on.

"It's so pretty!" She said, "Thanks! L, how do I look?" But L wasn't looking at her, couldn't look at her. Something was wrong. Kyle looked furious and ashamed, he said, "That's cold Mark. Real cold."

"And? Easiest money I'll ever make." He pulled a second chain, a bit more battered perhaps, from his pocket along with an item that looked like a small remote. The chain he tossed at L. "Put it on L."

"B-but Mar-"

"No 'but Marks,' just put it the fuck on." He snapped, "And no shit from you. Throw that piece in the truck." The last was directed at Kyle. Mark held the remote, almost challenging the mutant to try something.

"Mark, c'mon, you aren't even going to-" Kyle started.

"Nope. I don't know what kind of arguments you fuckers got, but a plan is a plan and I've lost too much on this whole trip to turn back now."

"Mark, she can help us. She will help us, and the debt guys will give us an extension. They'll-"

"They'll what? Slap me down with a bunch of late fees and interest? What about the contractors that hired out you and the rest of the scavvers? Dead scavvers are more expensive than live ones. Plus the water, the food, the tools. Jesus, the fucking loss." Mark had started calmly enough, but now he was working into a good frothing rage. "While you were off fucking about with your 'friends,' I was back here doing the math. You know what we got? What I got? A twenty five thousand water mark debt, that's what. That ain't even including what I gotta pay you."

Kyle smirked at that, "We both know, you ain't gonna pay me." The idea that Mark would still pay Kyles fee after all that had happened was a joke, he'd worked for the man for three years and knew for a fact that the fist of the man was as tighter around his money than the vault at Kings court.

Mark grinned evilly. "Sure as shit sticks to a blanket. Why would I pay the guy who sabotaged the whole job?"

Kyles face fell. "What?" He said, flabbergasted. L was watching now in horror, clutching at Catnip who didn't understand what was going on at all.

"Sure, I can get a waiver for the scavvers fees. Just tell em you threw a wrench in the works, killed some people, and tried to make off with the take. I had to shoot you down Kyle, it's a tragedy to be sure and the shattered helm won't like it, but it saves them the time of investigation."

Kyle stared at him, "You can't be serious."

They drove on through the night. Catnip and L sitting in the plain white truck being towed by Mark in the brick red tow truck. At around midnight, the wind picked up and the sound of it passing through the lifeless cab of the white truck was almost like the moans of a dying man. Catnip sat, stunned, hardly able to believe the turn the day had taken and not understanding what would happen next. She wanted to be home, she wanted her Kathrine. Instead, all she had was the sparse clothing she'd been given and a necklace that made her feel horribly sick at the press of a button. For the first time in a long time, Catnip began to cry. Hearing it, L too began to do the same and still they continued on in the dark.

---

Catnip awoke with a start from a dream in which she returned home from a trip to the refugee center and found the farm ages abandoned. "How long have I been gone?" She had asked the still air, but there had been no answer. She had awoken early to the cold blue desert dawn, an hour before the sun was set to rise. The place to which they were headed stuck out like a mole in the desert. To Catnip, it was the largest settlement she'd ever seen. Winding streets, buildings, towers, farms, smoke lazily drifting from chimneys and smoke stacks, and lights. So many lights. Yet, not a single vehicle moving except on the outskirts. The entire valley had a sense of life about it, the sounds of early morning people getting ready for another day of hard work or play. Ahead and below, lay Pricetown. In Pricetown, lay Catnips future and all the trials of the next year.

In that city in the desert, she would find the beginning of her long road home.

Pricetown is a medium sized post-cataclysm city in Arizona near the north-west corner of the state, an hour from the borders of both Utah and Nevada. In the pre-cataclysm world, Pricetown had been the site of a copper strike in the early 1900s. From that strike sprung Pricetown, the very picture of a an old west boom town. Like any boom town though, the crash  inevitably occurred seven years later when the mines suddenly and inexplicably dried up. Efforts were made to find a new vein, and when the search failed the town, like the mine, dried up. The years passed and the number of residents dwindled down to less than one hundred, a farcry from the ten thousand it had housed in it's hay day. Then, in early 2027, the government had purchased the small town lock, stock, and barrel for an undisclosed sum from the family who had owned it for the last thirty years. At first, it was simply kept for housing the soldiers from the base constructed soon after the town's purchase. Later, as tensions with China began to heat up, a refugee center and amenities we're constructed. In secret, a government lab had also been constructed beneath the new center.

When everything kicked off, the little town of Pricetown, which had gone from ten thousand, to less than one hundred, then up to one thousand, was suddenly home to nearly ten thousand people again. Over the next year, that number would plummet. The undead, the outsiders, and especially the screamers took almost 2/3 of Pricetownss residents.

It was decided that the only way to keep Pricetown alive, was to build a wall and in the second year the people began construction of fortifications and the training of a militia. Soon after, the Misling came out of the mountains to the east, bringing with them their large families and a new threat close on their heels; the mycus. Pricetowns population once again fluctuated wildly up and down as the fast breeding mouse like mislings added their number to the normal human residents, the mycus took it's toll, and Pricetown burned.

---

When the smoke cleared, both literally and metaphorically, the searing spear and the shattered helm emerged from the ashes. The first, brave men and women willing to take the fight to the mycus, using the technology and mutagens from the lab under Pricetown. Thermic lances and swords wreathed in green fire, flame throwers with high pressure tanks, plasma flingers to rain death on the fungal menace, fire which could be produced at the snap of a finger, skins to shed the heat, and masks to filter out the smoke, the ash, and the spores. The second, the shattered helm, were to become Pricetowns regular militia, armed with more conventional weaponry from the military instillation armory and shields. Shields to take the brunt of the blow from the furious undead or to move in formation against a wall of such, shotguns to scatter the packs of glistening screaming sand creatures, assault rifles to spill righteous thunder into other worldly beasts, and rigorous training to hold strong against the enclosing abomination the world around them had become.

---

Currently, Pricetowns residents include human, misling, cor, and a mix of other mutants and cyborgs. Misling adult residents outnumber all others three to one, misling children outnumbering adults of all kinds in roughly the same amount.

Poverty is high with roughly one third of it's inhabitants being below the poverty line. A majority of Pricetowns poor are, unsurprisingly, Misling.

Agriculture is primarily in basic crops (corn, tomatoes, beans) grown in one of Pricetowns growing number of aeroponics facilities.

Pricetowns closest neighbor is Prescott to the South. To the west and northwest are Algol, Lodi, and Mead. All of which are small towns. To the north is Prescott's rival city Chaseville. There are only smaller towns and settlements in the west, less and less the closer one gets to the Rocky mountains.

A majority of Pricetowns buildings older buildings are concrete while newer construction is composed of adobe, scrap metal/wood, or rough quarried sandstone. The last is especially susceptible to mycus infestation and so has to be scorched four times a year. As such, it is reserved for the poorer neighborhoods. Wood is reserved for Pricetowns richer inhabitants.

Pricetowns currency is two. The first, is ammunition. A great deal of ammo was used in the coming of the mycus. Soon after, it became apparent that bullets had become scarce in town and parties of scavengers were sent out to find more. A majority of Pricetowns bullet wealth comes from Prescott, a close ally, to the south. The other currency is the "water mark." Each "mark is valued at roughly one hundred bullets, or one gallon of clean water. In Pricetown, there are seven wells which pump and purify water up from aquifers in the region. Watermarks may be exchanged at these wells to obtain that water, and so it is no surprise that these simple scrips of paper became a good medium for trade.

Slavery is uncommon, accepted, but also contested in Pricetown. A majority of these slaves are "debt" slaves. When a person accumulates enough unpaid debt, usually by in one of Pricetowns casinos, they are found and fitted with a specially made collar. They then work off their debt by working for no pay, or pay that is directed towards their "owners." Another kind of slave is the "raid" slave. Such slaves are people unfortunate enough to be found by slavers or less scrupulous wanderers/travelers and collared. A "raid" slave is more valuable than a "debt" slave in that there is no limit on their usability. They have no financial responsibility to pay off and they are not covered by "debt slave" protection laws. Another difference is, A "debt" slave may be traded or sold for pennies on the dollar so long as they still have at least half of their obligation to fulfill, in which case the slave is still free at the end of their obligation. "Raid" slaves on the other hand tend to be vary wildly in price. A pittance for old or sick slaves, a fortune for young slaves, a kings ransom for slaves both youthful and unique. In Pricetown, a group known as "the misling delegation" operates to keep mislings out of "Raid" slavery, and to abolish slavery as a whole.

In this, her first month in King's Court, Catnip had been sent to the "dungeon" seven times and had spent twice that number in days in the dark of that basement room. Shortly a security officer, likely a failed applicant for the shattered helm, would come and collect her and bring her to either the main room or to her own small room. Likely, it would be the main room and she hoped it would be. The buildings layout was familiar to her, and why not? King's Court had been a refugee center once. It had some key differences, namely a second floor added after the fact accessed via a wooden grand staircase in the foyer. In the main room, Catnip would be released to sit and mingle with the other men and women, boys and girls, of King's harem. In her usual way, Catnip had endeared herself to those around her, and they to her. Particularly, she had made a friend in King's favorite girl, Pinky. Pinky, like Catnip, was considered a unique Misling for obvious reasons. Pinky, was an albino. Abnormally tall for a Misling, and bearing the white fur, red eyes, and full sexy figure that had captured King's attention. In a past life, or so she said, Pinky had been the head mistress of a Reno whore house. "It had been a good life," She told Catnip, "Until the pigs shut me down and turned me out on the street darling."

Time in the dungeon gave Catnip time to think on all these things and more. She supposed that was what the dungeon, one of many dark storage rooms in the basement of King's Court, was all about. Sitting in the dark and thinking about what you did wrong. As far as Catnip was concerned, she didn't do anything wrong. At least Mr. Swingin-dick-security-shit as her other new friend Minx called him, hadn't come down to try and take what he wanted while she couldn't run. She supposed he could use the controller for her collar though, but Minx said that King wouldn't allow that. "He doesn't like rape." The usually boisterous, talkative girl told her. The way she said it suggested some kind of sick joke, but if it was a joke, Catnip didn't get it.

Today, she stared at what she was doing in the grey scale of her night vision. The contraption was her attempt at being useful without having to do something she didn't want to. She was constructing it from the CBMs in the boxes discovered in the dungeon. A collection of cardboard cartons labeled "faulty" and "return to Reno." Catnip's face had felt hot and she was taken by the secret shame of a child finding a much revered relatives collection of dirty magazines when she first looked at the pictures on the packages, and leafed through the manuals. It seemed wrong to be looking at stuff like that when you had a steady girlfriend. She just couldn't shake the idea that she was somehow being mean to Kathrine by looking at them. That thought had faded quickly though, almost as soon as she saw what lay inside. Not dirty "toys," but parts. Her mechanics mind saw them as little packages of bits and bobs. Parts ready to be dismantled and arranged into new, more useful shapes. On these she worked with improvised tools and hummed a little nothing song. Before long though, there came a knock from the guard outside. Friendlier that most of the others. Short and sharp and she knew what it meant.

Her jailers we're coming.