Gas Mask Girls Issue #3

Doze cursed softly under her mask, so low not even Gamble would hear. Not another stray puppy, Gamble could never say no to such a pathetic plea. It’s not that Doze had no heart, she felt for these refugees. It was sad…but then it was a sad world they lived in and helping every person down on their luck wasn’t going to help her track down Akuto or find her sister. There were a lot of people down on their luck these days. Their own luck reserves were running on empty last time Doze had checked.

“What kind of help?” Gamble asked. “Where are you from? We really don’t have any food to spare, barely enough to get us to where we’re going.” Doze slammed her pistols back into their shoulder holsters with a bit more force than strictly needed. Her irritation now clear to everyone. She knew where this was going.

“Not food!” The man answered Gamble. “Monsters, monsters threatening our refuge! We have a small group about fourteen miles to the west,” he explained, gesturing vaguely to their left. “We found an old mining site we were able to convert into a safe place. There’s about eighty of us, but we need help defending against the monsters? They…”

“Dancers?” Doze interrupted the man.

He began to nod in agreement when the woman stepped forward. “Jay! Don’t lie to them. They aren’t dancers. They are humans, raiders.” 

The man looked back at the female with an angry reply on his lips, but he sighed and turned back to Gamble and Doze. “Yes, yes, human raiders. I’m sorry. We’re desperate and I thought maybe you’d be more likely to help if you thought it was just some of the Captain’s Crew we needed help with.”

“Captain’s Crew? Hadn’t heard that one before,” Doze mused. “But I like it. Alliteration is always so fun.” 

Gambled glanced at Doze in irritation. “And your settlement sent you out with your children to find help? That doesn’t seem wise.”

“No,” the woman replied. “It was just supposed to be Jay and I, but…”

“We worried we wouldn’t find anyone,” the man named Jay continued. “We thought, well, we figured if we failed to find help we’d just keep going. Take our chances out here.”

“Not very good chances,” Doze said, gesturing to their clear lack of weapons and supplies.

“I wasn’t going to take the weapons from the community!” Jay responded defensively, glancing at the woman beside him. Clearly this had been a point of contention between them. “I’m not going to doom them further. We took a few days' food, just like the other parties that went out. Obviously it didn’t last as long with the children. I thought maybe we could hunt. I have a sling…” he trailed off with a shrug.

“Okay,” Gamble said. “How many raiders are we talking about? What are your defenses? How many weapons do you have?”

The man slumped, looking defeated, but the woman stepped in. “I’m Samantha,” she began by way of introduction. “This is Rich, Brynn, and Jenny, our children.”

“Don’t tell her their names,” Doze complained just loud enough for Gamble to hear. Now they were truly sunk. Gamble would never say no to them knowing their names.

Gambled ignored Doze behind her, “That doesn’t answer my questions, Samantha. What are we up against? I want to help, but I’m not going to walk into a death trap.”

“We have adequate defenses against the dancers,” Jay offered, recovering from his previous despondency. “But you know defenses against dancers don’t work as well against normal humans. We have 5 rifles, but only about thirty rounds of ammo left. We were preparing for a trade caravan to Sacramento when the raiders found us.”

“There’s about forty or so of them. Most seemed to have guns…but ammo?” he shrugged. “You never really know. There are about twenty of us that are healthy enough to defend the place. We were sent out in a desperate attempt to find people to help us. Four teams of two left three days ago and we’re supposed to come back by tomorrow evening.”

“Why tomorrow evening?” Doze asked. “And these raiders just let you leave? Why didn’t they just attack and kill you?” Gamble raised her hand to stop Doze’s torrent of questions. Well someone had to ask the right questions, Doze thought to herself.

“They told us we had one week to decide to “join” them and pay “tribute” or they would return and kill us all. Well they were more descriptive of it then that, but..” Samantha looked at the children and shrugged in explanation for her edited version of events.

Gamble nodded in response. It was actually a common story these days. Raiders were desperate to conserve supplies and lives like everyone else. Better to threaten a settlement and get them to give you a periodic tithe then risk losing ammo and warriors for a one time payout. 

“And you won’t pay?” Gamble asked.

“We barely have enough as is, “Jay answered. “And once you pay these people, well.. they only want more and more!” 

“That’s the problem with tribute,” Gamble quipped. “Once you have paid him the Dane-geld, You never get rid of the Dane.”

“What?” Doze, Samamtha, and Jay asked in chorus.

“Never mind…it’s from an old poem by Kipling.” Gamble explained. Doze rolled her eyes.

“Kip..” Samantha began to ask.

“Wait, isn't that the guy who wrote The Jungle Book?” Jay interjected.

Gamble nodded in excitement and was about to expound when Doze stopped her. “Okay, I don’t think that’s really pertinent right now. We’re talking about their settlement and rather WE are going to help them. Stay on track, Gamble.”

“Of course we’re going to help them!” Gamble responded as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “We’ll help defend them against the raiders, then we’ll accompany them to Sacramento. We wanted a caravan to travel with. Now one just dropped in our laps! We need protection from the dancers around Sacramento”

“Yeah, and such a cheap price,” Doze complained. “We just gotta risk our lives to raiders first.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Gamble answered Doze’s sarcasm. “Maybe they really don’t have ammo and their bark is worse than their bite.”

“When are we ever that lucky?” Doze replied, thinking back to that proverbial empty tank.

“Never, so far,” answered Gamble. “But there’s always a first.”

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