Hadriel Inbox

[theweakhavepurpose]

INBOX This is... this is Deputy Pratt of the Hope County sheriff's department... art credit code credit

Comments

[nonscriptum]

i hate to rip you from your soup hoard but getting fresh air might do you good

nah, we won't need the howitzer. i'll bring my rifle just in case.

[theweakhavepurpose]

if youre implying im going insane from boredom youre right.

good. thing weighs way too much. where should i meet you?

[nonscriptum]

i can smell your cabin fever from here

[And it smells like Campbell's bean with bacon soup.]

library ruins?

text > action

[theweakhavepurpose]

ill see if i can get hope to special order me some axe body spray.

sounds good. give me 20. ill meet you there.

[ He'll have showered and put on clean clothes so the cabin fever scent doesn't follow along with him. There's something weirdly fitting about meeting a guy who steals ancient artifacts in the ruins of a library but he can't quite work out a good joke about it yet. ]

I didn't realize this used to be a library. That would have been nice.

action

[nonscriptum]

please don't

[Nate strolls up to Pratt addressing him, and shrugs with both hands in his jacket pockets. The landscape around the old ruins of the library is as blighted and empty as anything else in this tundra, though they both know better than to think it keeps them safe. The rifle he mentioned is slung over his shoulder, the Beretta snug against his side beneath the coat.

He doesn't go anywhere these days unarmed.]

You wouldn't have been able to read anything in it, anyway. [Nate kicks a small rock, watching it skitter across scraped marble.] All the books were in a language even I don't know.

Re: action

[theweakhavepurpose]

[ What have you got against Axe? He'd smell amazing. He has his hunting knife in his pocket but it's not immediately visible. It's a change for him because he's raised enough eyebrows walking around with the sledgehammer that he's finally started leaving it at home. ]

Of course. Sounds about right for this place. We probably had an ice cream shop that only sold ice cream flavored like toxic waste too.

So what'd you find out there? Anything interesting?

[nonscriptum]

Nah, they sold frozen yogurt.

[He quips, because the only thing worse than garbage-flavored ice cream is frozen yogurt. Nate nods toward the expanse that stretches past the ruins, where the permafrost hardens the earth and the vegetation looks sad, at best.]

There's a few bunkers out there, some big robots that don't work anymore, some existential dread. Take your pick.

[theweakhavepurpose]

Wow, as appealing as more existential dread is, I'm gonna have to go with the robots.

I've seen enough bunkers to last a fucking lifetime. Though if you're having trouble opening them I might be able to help. At least if they're anything like the ones back home.

[nonscriptum]

Doomsday preppers?

[Nate asks with an understanding look. Louisiana doesn't have the wilderness of Montana, but it has just as many weirdos whose trucks are packed to the gills with guns, who have invested in the certainty that uncertainty will dismantle everything. They're ready for something, all right.

He hefts his rifle, starting their walk away from the library.]

Figured we'd just take a stroll and see what we see.

[theweakhavepurpose]

We're infested with them.

[ He's pretty sure Montana has more private bunkers than anywhere else in the country. Filled to the brim with MREs and guns because apparently everyone was going to shoot their neighbors at the barest hint of things going wrong in the world.]

Sounds good to me. Anything that isn't the inside of my house or the exact view from the range. I think I could navigate that area blindfolded now.

Having been in a bunker, I don't know how anyone could survive years in there without going batshit insane from boredom.

[nonscriptum]

[The part that always confused Nate about preppers is how logistically impractical isolationism is. Historically, great catastrophes tend to prove that the opposite is more effective, that people band together to work toward a common good.

But hey, what does he know? He hates MREs.]

I don't blame you. Spent a couple hours in an underground Nazi facility once and that was long enough for me.

[He may have also disliked the experience because of the slippery naked people climbing out of the walls at him in the dark, but that's an unnecessary detail.]

[theweakhavepurpose]

Nazi facility? That's not just underground and boring, that's creepy and unsettling too.

[ He shudders thinking about it. Not that Jacob's brainwashing slaughterhouse is that much better, but it's a much much smaller scale. ]

Also having to eat stuff that needs to be reconstituted with water for the rest of your life doesn't sound like much of a life at all.