Heading North
Chapter 1
Heading North
"John Nash! Get your ass out here so I can cut your fucking head off!" The man's voice echoed through the dusty streets of the little scavenger settlement, and slipped through the the whores window.
Nell twitched at the man's proclamation, but John barely stirred as he buried his head deeper between her bare breasts. His powerful arms tightened around her waist, and he let out a little groan. At this, the softness of the mattress seemed to pull them further into it magnetically.
"John!" Nell said and nudged the man, "Hey, wake up!"
The man's chest rose as he inhaled deeply before he said, "I'm awake." He let the breath out in a hefty sigh and reluctantly pulled his head from Nell's bosom. His grey eyes looked at her pretty little face before he let out another louder groan, and he pushed himself up to sit on the edge of the bed. As the soft and light sheets slid from his bare body, the hot wind of the wasteland beyond the window embraced him, and he rubbed his face in his calloused hands. 'Fuckin figures,' he thought, 'Can't even get a morning.'
John heard Nell shift over to him, and he could feel the light touch of her fingers tracing one of his numerous scars across his back. The touch was enticing, and it caused an electric tingle to flow through his muscles. He sat there a moment, relishing the sensation before it was replaced with the cruelty of the Colony,
"Nash! Come out, come out wherever you are!" The man’s voice filtered in through the window, again.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm coming," John bellowed in response, "Give me a damn minute."
'Back to it, I guess,' Nash thought as he reached down to the floor of the room and scooped up his clothes, causing her fingers to lose contact. His lips thinned as he stood to dress. Nell sat on the bed watching him, her slender form half covered by sheets, her eyes searched him up and down.
Cargo pants, a sleeveless, tight-fitting tee shirt, a pair of ratcheting calf-high boots, fingerless gloves, a belt with some survival equipment, a blue sash tied to his belt, and a hooded cloak made up his garb. 'Damn,' he mused, 'They smell good for a change.' Nell had been the one to wash the wasteland and death from his garments the night previous, before she washed him, and spent the night with him. She had insisted that it had been free of charge on account of his helping the settlement with a mutant rodent problem.
Once he was finished dressing, he turned his attention to Nell and leaned over the edge of the bed. He took her hand in his and slipped her night's wage regardless of what she had said. Nell glanced at the credit slips, and as she went to protest, John leaned in and kissed her. Their lips ground together for a few breaths, and as they separated, he said, "Shhh. You deserve it." He didn't let the fact that the currency he handed her may have ruined everything he had been working toward over the past several months of his life. She didn't need to know that anyway.
She curled her fingers around the credits. John could feel her watching as he grabbed up his traveling pack and slung one strap over his shoulder. Then he turned his attention to the notched great blade beside the bed. Many people he had known had complained about his preferred style of blade, grumbling about its size and weight being too much to wield. Why did they give a shit? They didn't have to wield it. The pommel came up to his chin, and the blade was wider than his hand. One of his old companions from the Red Handed raiders had called its design the 'Great Bowie' on account of its shape. He took up the worn leather-wrapped handle, hefting the blade with ease, and leaned it on his shoulder before making for the door.
"Goodbye, John," Nell said softly.
"Goodbye, Nell," John replied, and then stepped out into the hallway. He turned right and headed for the iron grate staircase that led into the bar beneath the rentable rooms. His boots clanked as he made his way down. The entire room glanced at him. Wasters, serving girls and men, the bartender, and members of a traveling merchant caravan. All stared at him, knowing full well that the man outside was calling for him. All knew that the Colony was going to claim another life, if not two, very soon.
John gave them a cursory once-over as he continued his path across the bar. Scanning them to see if any others would chime in like the man outside. None moved to join nor interfere with the proceedings. 'Good,' John thought, as his hand grasped the handle to the front door and he gave it a turn.
John stepped out onto the front boardwalk outside the bar and scanned the scene before him. A wind stirred up a dust devil that cut through the town and caused his shoulder cloak to whipping. The few other shops and buildings that comprised the settlement had closed up at the man causing the ruckus in the center of the main street. Well, mostly. John could see a flap being lifted by a set of bony and worn fingers on the door to the moisture catchers' house. The old man who ran the joint wanted a show, it seemed. He was gonna get one. No other ambushers waited in the few alleys or side streets that John could see. 'Good,' John thought again.
"Bout time, Nash!" Shouted the man in the main street as he spun a glaive about his person in a tight grouping of orbits,
"Come on out so I can make myself famous!"
John sighed and stepped off the boardwalk onto the sandy thoroughfare. It crunched under his boots as he strode out to meet his would-be foe,
"This ain't what you think, buddy. Killing me ain’t gonna make you famous." As he drew closer, John could hear the whoosh of air the glaive was making as it carved the surrounding area to ribbons.
"Bullshit! See, I know about the bounty on your head, and when I take your skull to Kable, the whole Colony, and the outside will know the name Chuck the Razor Talon!" John rolled his eyes and stated under his breath, his voice delicately laced with sarcasm, "Oh wow, cool name."
The orbits faltered for the first time, "What was that!?" Chuck asked, his voice breaking slightly.
"Oh, I uh, said suns kinda lame," John stopped at about ten feet away, motioning with his chin toward the rising sun at Chuck's back. He squinted to give his next words more believability, "It's in my eyes and all."
"Of course it is, fool!" Chuck hollered, as he performed a spin around his back and stopped it with the rear of the weapon tucked behind him and the blade away from him, "My placement in this engagement is implacable."
'Ugh,' John thought, "Impeccable," he mumbled again.
"HUH?!" Chuck asked, confused. 'Stop it, Nash,' John thought as he raised his hand in hopefully a disarming manner.
"Look, that doesn't matter. What does matter is that this is not going to work out for you the way you think it is. It would be best for you to just walk away."
Chuck gave the glaive an artful flip and rested it over his shoulders, flexing the haft over his neck. His muscled frame puffed out with the action, and he smirked, "I ain't stupid, Nash. I know Kable is a man of his word. If the Red Handed Raiders promise something, they have to keep their word or die trying."
John chewed on the inside of his lip. Chuck was right; there was no doubt about that. To call Kable a stickler for the rules would be an understatement, even if it led to some of the most horrid shit. Rules were rules.
"Yeah, but-"
"OOOOh nice," Chuck interrupted John's counterpoint as he stared over his shoulder back to the bar John had exited, "That the little whore you was with when I came calling?" John turned to look back and saw Nell standing at her window, a thin slip draped over her form. She watched the proceedings silently, concern on her face. 'Shit,' John thought.
"Mmmm. Yeah, I can see that she liked you." Chuck licked his lips as his eyes flickered imaginatively, "After I am done killing you, I'll give her something to remember you by, like using your blood to lube up her tight little ass."
John's pack hit the dirt as he shrugged it free. A mirthless chuckle escaped his chest as his large blade swung off his shoulder. Why'd he have to go there? John shook his head as his grey eyes locked onto Chuck's.
"Eh fuck it." He mumbled. It was obvious Chuck could tell that he had hit a nerve, and he prodded further.
"I'll bet she'll love-"
"Do it!" John demanded his face hardened, his eyes narrowed.
Chuck flinched at the sudden demand, his glaive coming off his shoulders defensively, as if John's words were going to cut him. John could help but have his mouth twitch up into a smirk, a familiar excitement welling in him that he had come to resent. Well, mostly.
Realization flashed over Chuck's features.
"Oh yeah!" He shouted, veins bulging in his neck as he again orbited the glaive from left to right before ending the maneuver in a readied posture, "Hope you're ready to die!"
The glaive slashed horizontally at John's neck, whistling as it did. Without blinking, John took a half step back and leaned his throat just out of reach of the weapon's edge. With his weight now shifted to his back foot, John lunged forward and brought his own sword into action. Its hefty blade lightly grazed Chuck's, parting his shirt along his ribs as John's opponent side-stepped away from the edge. The lunge put John past Chuck, and as the latter shuffled to regain his balance, the first simply stepped past, keeping his back to him.
John's heart pounded in his chest as his breath quickened. Somewhere, deep down inside of him, he felt the regret lingering like a light morning mist. A mist that was quickly getting burned away by the elation of combat. For years, this feeling had been everything to him. It had carried him through so many fights that he had lost count, and after a while, he had started feeling like a druggie chasing a high. But this feeling was deeper than simple addiction, wasn't it? Even a druggie got momentary satisfaction from getting a fix. John didn't, though.
Foot falls behind John alerted him to Chuck's next move. They were heavy and driving forward with his full weight in the sand, which told John his opponent was centered and direct with his next attack. It was also fast, which indicated the man hadn't armed a swing. 'Thrust,' John thought, and spun, stepping off to his right as he again brought his sword into action. The shoulder cloak he wore helped to direct Chuck's thrust where he had been as he leveled his sword with his opponent's head.
This was the end of the fight, or it would have been if he hadn't turned the flat of the blade to slap the back of Chuck's skull. 'You should have finished it there, John,' he berated himself, 'Quit toying with him.' John watched as Chuck leaned forward with the blow, heard him grunt in pain, and tried to catch himself in order to turn and lurch back into the fight. John saw his face, his eyes hungry for glory. John thought of the words that Chuck had said. No, this guy didn't deserve a quick death.
John didn't blink as his opponent's glaive found the Great knife's edge in a loud, resounding clang. Chuck shifted his weapon and chopped from the opposite direction, only to again be thwarted by John's parry. He tried to force John's sword aside, but couldn't as the blade locked in place.
John stalked forward.
Giving ground, Chuck shifted his weight, and with a pivot of his glaive, threw a cut at John's knee just above the joint. John dropped the point of his sword to block low, and stepped forward quick and delivered a headbutt to Chuck's nose. With a grunt, Chuck stumbled back as blood spewed from his nostrils.
Nose shots were bitch, and had a tendency to blur vision with tears, and dizziness. Leveling the point of the great knife with Chuck's chest, John waited for his opponent's sight to clear.
Chucks watering eyes blinked a few times as his face contorted with pain. His teeth were clenched tightly together, causing the muscles of his jawline to bulge behind his black, well-kempt beard. Then, as his gaze focused on the point of the great knife, his countenance shifted from the confidence of before to one of concern. 'Good,' John grinned, 'Next comes fear.'
Chuck growled as he swatted at the blade to clear the space between them, and followed up with a savage overhead chop meant to part John's torso to the solar plexus. The blow was a good one; John had to give him that much, and had it made contact, it would have caused the intended injury. But it didn't make contact as John had slipped the strike with a step to his side and a turn of his body.
Sand splashed out from the edge of the glaive at the force of the blow, and Chuck was quick to try and turn the blade and swing from the ground. The angle was perfect for John to check the blow with the sole of his boot against the haft of the weapon, and even as he did this, he swung his own edge in a decapitating strike.
Panic fueled Chuck's lean back into a roll away from the attack, and he ended the maneuver by scampering to his feet. He blinked rapidly at John as he again stalked forward, and in response, he whipped his glaive before him in a set of orbits to cover his retreat.
An amateur may have been stymied by the flashy set of spins, but John wasn't an amateur. He had known violence his whole life, had fought in wars and battles across the Colony, he had waded through the dead like wheat in a field, and soon Chuck would be a weed in that field. His great knife flashed in an upward arc, severing the head of the glaive.
Shock flashed across Chuck's features as his display with his weapon came to a screeching halt. His retreat from John did not, however, and he continued to backpedal, his eyes searching for the next attack that would come.
Using the upward momentum of the slash to prime an overhead chop, John took a brief moment to allow his opponent to see it coming. As Chuck raised the remaining haft of his weapon horizontally above him defensively, John launched the attack. The haft became a pair of batons as the great knife hissed a mere inch away from Chuck's nose. At this moment, Chuck stumbled backward and his back slammed into one of the waster abodes that comprised the settlement.
John halted his downward chop with the tip of his great knife leveled with Chuck's gut.
Chuck saw the positioning of the tip. His eyes flashed with fear.
John smiled, then plunged his blade forward with intent.
At first, flesh and cloth alike rolled up against the thickness of the great knife as it forced both aside in its path. Next came a spurting fan of red from either side of its width that spackled John's chest and face. Chuck gave a groan at this as air was forced up and out of his lungs. Pain seasoned the fear that adorned his features. A dull clang resounded as John's weapon rent the scrap metal behind him, pinning the man in place.
John released the handle of his blade and watched for a moment as Chuck dropped the remnants of his glaive and tried futilely to dislodge the weapon in his stomach. He nodded in appreciation and stepped up next to the dying man.
"Now, what did you say you were going to do?" John asked.
Veins bulged on Chuck's paling features as he winced away from John's voice. He looked at him through the wince, and his voice was a ragged, strained whisper as he responded,
"Wh- what?"
John laced his hand through the man's hair on the top of his head and slammed his skull against the wall behind him with a clang. John asked again through gritted teeth,
"You heard me. Now answer the question." Consciousness fluttered away from Chuck for a brief second after the hit to the head, but he struggled a breath through his mouth, and he glanced toward the bar and then back to John.
"I-I didn't mean-"
John stared, his mouth a hard line across his face, his eyes sparkling with a mingling of intrigue and fury. His hand, laced in Chuck's hair, tightened.
"Yeah," John said, his voice carrying a cruel edge like his blade, "Yeah, you fucking did."
With that, John hurled his balled-up right fist into Chuck's jaw line with all the force his years of hard living could muster. It collapsed inward, shattering under the strike. Teeth rocketed across the back of John's hand, one clinking against the great knife's hilt. Another blow shoved Chuck's cheekbone around with a crunch and dislodged his eye from its socket. The third blow crumpled Chuck's nasal bone further from the prior head butt. Blow after blow followed, causing strings of red to cling to John's knuckles.
A sudden and sharp shout, followed by loud weeping, drew John from his pistoning, and he halted the next punch to search for the source of the noise. Had he missed an ally of Chuck's? No, they would have made their move in the fight. Maybe Chuck was just a diversion- John saw the source of the noise.
A child stood in the doorway of a nearby house, his face a rictus of terror at the sight before him. John's gut sank to his feet, and he glanced at his gore-soaked hand and then to Chuck. A bloody and jagged ruin hung at odd, conflicting angles from the man's torso. Amidst the crimson, stark streaks of fractured white shone in the sun. John turned back to the child as their parent emerged from the door behind them, and with a shocked expression, grabbed up the child to disappear back into the abode.
John's breath hitched in his throat as he turned to Nell's window. She held a hand over her mouth, eyes wide. As they locked gazes, she started and slipped from view into the room. Her shutter slid closed a moment later.
'Told you to finish it quick,' John berated himself again as he laid his hand on the hilt of his sword and solemnly yanked it free. Chuck crumpled to the boardwalk like a bundle of sticks. 'Fucking idiot. Now you're the monster again.'
John knelt by the body and absently searched through the man's pockets. He came up with a few meaningless baubles, a comm radio, and credits valued at a few hundred. He left half the credits next to the body and slipped the other half into a belt pouch, making up for what he had given Nell.
Slowly, he stood with a deep breath and headed over to his pack that he had dropped in the street. Sword over one shoulder and pack on the other, John walked out of the settlement heading North. His mind was a torrent of thoughts, of who he was, of who he had been, of the love he had lost, and brotherhoods shattered. He was a marked man, trailed by bounty hunters and ghosts of his past. Things hadn't always been this way for John Nash...
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And now channel 452 News covering John Nash.
Anchor William Taylor- "Well, Jim, I have to say this John Nash fella is causing quite a stir right now inside and outside the Colony."
Colony analytics Tech Jim Dawson- "You're right, Bill. He came seemingly out of nowhere and is really shaking things up."
Anchor William Taylor- "So you have researched him, correct? You got the nitty gritty on him?"
Colony analytics Tech Jim Dawson- "I sure have, Bill, and let me tell you, it's amazing he has gone under the radar for this long."
Anchor William Taylor- "I was gonna say that myself. The power this guy has is, in a word, phenomenal. Now, did he get that way through any sort of package provided by the outside? Maybe Genetico or perhaps Cyberware armories?"
Colony analytics Tech Jim Dawson- "Not this time, Bill."
Anchor William Taylor-"Really? You don't say?"
Colony analytics Tech Jim Dawson-"I know! I was as shocked as you are to find out this guy is all natural. I mean, you saw what he did to poor Chuck's face. That takes a lot of hate and determination to do something like that,"
Anchor William Taylor-"Boy, I'd say so. Though, you know how those Natives to the Colony can be..."
Colony analytics Tech Jim Dawson- "..."
Anchor William Taylor-"You're kidding me."
Colony analytics Tech Jim Dawson-"I know, I know. Another surprise. He is not a native. His file says he is an immigrant from New Pittsburgh."
Anchor William Taylor-"Well then, how long has he been in the Colony for? It says on my sheet here that he is 22 years old."
Colony analytics Tech Jim Dawson-"Correct Bill. John Nash, aged 22, immigrated to the Colony at the age of 9."
Anchor William Taylor-"Oh, ouch! That is young to be an immigrant. Man. He had to have been taken to pay off a debt, eh? Medical bills, or maybe the child repo program?"
Colony analytics Tech Jim Dawson-"Nope, according to his file, it was a murder charge during an act of lower city level gang violence, and considering that he was working at the time due to being unable to pay the state education fee, he was tried as an adult."
Anchor William Taylor-"Ooo. When will people learn to pay those bills? It's not that hard, and when it's your kid's future on the line. Ugh! Sickens me, Jim, it really does."
Colony analytics Tech Jim Dawson-"Me too, Bill, and here's the proof of its importance. John Nash, another story of wasted youth falling into depravity and getting mixed up with a lower city gang. A real shame, and worse yet, he took someone's life. I think I can speak for everyone on the outside, let's leave that to those in the Colony, not the ones out here."
Anchor William Taylor-"Fully agree, Jim. Now I am receiving that he is heading North through a portion of the Red to... Well, does it seem like... Man, that would be crazy, wouldn't it?"
Colony Analytics Tech Jim Dawson-"If he was heading to the City of Salt? Yes, that would be crazy. But who knows? Maybe he has a plan other than suicide. It would seem, though, that he is heading in that direction."
Anchor William Taylor-"I see. Well, what does he have to worry about in the near future? Anything that might interest the viewers at home?"
Colony Analytics Tech Jim Dawson- "Quite a bit, actually. As many viewers know, the territory known as the Red is filled with dangers from a number of mutated flora, to raider groups, hell, nature in general is your enemy out there. That's not even mentioning the other bounty hunting groups that are converging on his location as we speak, one of which already seems to have a trap set and ready for him."
Anchor William Taylor- "You heard it, folks. Stay tuned to John's feed for a while, ‘cause it might just be getting interesting. And that does it for us for now. Let's get John's stats up on the holo for everyone at home, and then we will be back later for more news from the Colony."
(Insert gaming sheet for John Nash with Colonyesque flares)
