The light of the speckled moon shines bright on a rare cloudless night. He had heard once that men made their homes in those dark spots when the world fell. Its a suggestion that leaves him wondering if those men are staring back down at him.
His name is Jack Growler. He’s a quietly intense man. The moon is a blessing this night, it's light bright enough to reveal the charcoal etchings upon the crumpled bits of paper in his hands. Three pages. Three smudged, crumbling pages that this night will set his life on a course of terrible consequence.
There are words on them, but words are useless things that nobody bothered to teach him. On the first he recognizes the stylized insignia of the Vulture; and a map leading to what could only be the black mouth of the Stained Jaunt. He feels something wet begin pooling in his eyebrows and wipes it away, leaving a red smear across his forehead and hand.
His fucking head hurts.
Bloody finger prints stain the page as he flips it over to find a smudged image of the Rotted Grindt pointing toward him. She’s got a snarl for a mouth, and meat on her bones. Vulture feathers for clothes. The smudging of the charcoal and the angular armor she’s wearing lend her an ethereal feel. As if she rode back from the hungry place on her own condor wings.
Its a recruitment paper.
A breeze kicks up and he lets the page blow away on it.
There are no images on this one. The text is all extremely even and uniform. Too much, so, for it be done by a human hand. He folds that one up and tucks it into his pocket.
Blood runs down the slope of his nose, accumulates at the tip and falls glinting through the night. The dark liquid splatters across the last page, staining the image of an all too familiar face. Its a wanted poster. He tears it into tiny squares and lets them fall to the ground.
“Where’d you get these?” The breeze kicks back up and carries them toward the man Jack obtained them from. The man doesn’t respond. He’s motionless, his face the mashed result of twelve-too-many fists. More unsettling than the silent evidence of a recent moment of violence is the lanky man crouched beside the corpse. He’s poking his fingers into the dead man’s pockets, lifting his lips. Hunting for anything of value.
Jack’s hand is immediately around his gun, but the click of a cocked hammer sounds behind him and he pauses.
“Big one weren’t he?” The scavenger asks. His beard is thick, full of beads and braids and bones. The sides of his head are shaved, but the hair remaining is a thick mane of similar fashion. Deer skin breeches, and lengths of leather and rabbit furs that wrap around his feet, calves, hands and wrists are the only the clothes he’s wearing. Black paint smears across his eyes, his shoulders, and his finger tips.
“Yeah he was!” It’s a woman pointing the gun at Jack. He eases his grip and turns slowly to face her. She’s buried beneath the folds of a thin hooded cloak. “Hey stranger,” she says when they finally make eye contact across the distance of the shotgun. She’s got a big smile, and gap in her front two teeth.
“Hi.”
“Leave ‘im be, Moon.” The scavenger says coolly. He’s sticking a large knife into the dead man’s mouth, digging out gold and silver teeth. The glinting bits of bone disappear into a pouch on the lanky man’s belt.
“I let the last one be, remember?”
“So?”
“You took a week to get all of that glass out of my back.”
“Oh yeah. . .” he’s tugging on his beard thoughtfully.
“Oh yeah,” she mimics in a condescending voice.
“This guy’s okay though.” He nods, “not like that last one.”
“He just brutally murdered that guy you’re picking over.”
“He started it,” Jack says matter of factly.
The lanky guy is suddenly right next to him, he’s wrapping his blackened fingers around the barrel of the shotgun and pulling it toward the ground.
“Now then, there’s no need for us to give ourselves to the coyotes and beetles tonight. Wouldn’t you say. We can be friends. That’s Moon Child. I’m Altra. They call me the chicken born.”
“Chicken born?” These two are odd. It’d probably be easier to test who was a quicker draw; but there’s something about them that stays Jack’s hand.
“He’s a good cook,” Moon Child explains.
“What’s your name stranger,” Altra asks.
“Terrence Muls-”
“Jack Growler.”
His gun is out, he stares warily down it at Moon Child again. “How could you know that?”
“Saw that wanted poster you were just reading a day or two ago. The Commission doesn’t seem to care for you much.”
“I don’t care for them.”
“Yeah, me neither.” Altra says, relaxed. He reaches behind his back and unclips something. When the hand reappears its dangling two massive, dead squirrels by their tails. “How ‘bout I cook us some dinner and we compare notes?” He walks toward a thicket.
“Dammit. I caught those for us!” Moon Child walks after him, completely ignoring the gun.
He could squeeze the trigger, take their stuff, sell it somewhere. It’d keep them from telling people about his location.
His stomach growls.
The gun finds its way back to its holster where it clicks against his hip as he walks after them.
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