Chapter 256: Service Charge at the End of the World

The sign welcoming us to the Drop Off promised opportunity, clean horizons and affordable land, while something beyond it chewed a road marker in half. I asked Bridget whether the estate agent had been eaten before finishing the part about schools, and she said the photograph online had looked greener.

We reached the eastern checkpoint before sunrise with Iona beside Lukas in the hired utility vehicle and Bridget beside me in the back. The night had offered food and a brief rest rather than any useful miracle, so our bruises had come with us at no extra charge.

Beyond the concrete barriers, the last city towers gave way to flat grey ground, scrap settlements and distant ruins with nothing friendly growing between them. Dust blew through the abandoned yards, and the water stains on the concrete looked older than most of the vehicles. Somebody had still called this place an investment opportunity.

[System: Welcome to affordable housing, mate, where the garden eats the postman and your nearest hospital is a woman with a stapler. Keep the fairy inside until we know whose gun that is.]

I was admiring the security arrangement, although pointing a cannon at the people leaving seems like a very honest tourism policy. A guard had directed the vehicle towards a booth while another checked the road behind us for anything following its lights.

The woman at the booth had black feathers along her jaw and a sergeant’s bars above a name strip reading Hollis. She asked where we were going, listened to Iona’s explanation and looked at the nine names on the medic’s list without pretending not to recognise the camp.

"Medical visitors can enter on the supply road, but nobody uses the closed northern lane until the beast sweep ends," she said. Lukas pointed to the transport permit, and Hollis took long enough reading it for the guard beside her to become uncomfortable.

He solved his discomfort by announcing a protection charge for every passenger, including me. I asked whether the charge covered being protected from him, and he said unregistered animals carried an additional handling fee, apparently hoping nobody had heard the question.

Bridget held up my flight permit while I gave him my name. "If you’re charging for handling, we’ll need to discuss which part you’re interested in and whether your sergeant approves public dating," I told him, causing Lukas to cough painfully into his sleeve.

Hollis told the guard to stop inventing categories and return to checking the vehicle. She couldn’t cancel the posted road charge, but she could apparently prevent him charging it twice because I looked like something a nervous person might put in a bucket.

My thermal sight showed his face warming beneath its ordinary colour, which I enjoyed without pretending it told me what he was thinking. The booth wall remained a wall, and I had to move past the window to see the second guard drinking something hot behind it.

[System: That’s heat, not a confession, champ; the bloke might be embarrassed, sunburnt or remembering a rash, and I’m not issuing an arrest warrant for itchy bollocks.]

I’ll accept embarrassment in payment, but charge him extra if he makes us discuss the rash at breakfast. Bridget paid the posted road charge from her own account and asked for the medical lane to be cleared while Iona checked the time against the camp’s departure window.

I wanted to lift the barrier myself and make the whole queue applaud, but Hollis caught me looking at its supports. She pointed beyond the fence, where a large shadow moved between abandoned cars and paused to test the concrete with its snout.

The gate wasn’t only there to annoy drivers, and breaking it would leave the booth staff explaining my joke to whatever came through next. I lowered my fins and asked why a unit providing real protection needed to steal workers’ wages to afford breakfast.

Hollis answered quietly enough that I had to stay near the window. Her checkpoint was paid to hold the city boundary, while Rusk’s company patrols took separate contracts beyond it, and the uniforms looked more alike than their orders usually did.

"You can hate the captain without pulling my fence down, and I’d appreciate you learning that before trying to help," she said. I disliked the lecture more because she was right, while Bridget’s quiet approval suggested my good behaviour had earned something better than another permit.

Lukas showed her the open supply route rather than making a speech about corrupt authority. She marked the turn beside an abandoned weigh station and told us to keep the vehicle inside the painted markers until the road split at the quarry entrance.

Bridget asked whether we could bring people back through after collecting them. Hollis said speaking passengers could request entry themselves, but an escort would need to keep the road clear and stop any following animals before they reached the gate.

[System: Keep that fence standing, mate; you can piss off one bent guard without serving the rest to the wildlife.] Iona copied the route while Hollis returned to traffic.

That sounded manageable until a rusty passenger van rolled into the booth beside us. The driver counted notes twice, then asked whether the road charge could wait until he’d delivered the people inside, and the guard who disliked my questions immediately became helpful again.

He pointed towards a dirt track outside the reinforced lane and explained that the free route remained available for travellers unable to pay. Iona recognised the track before the driver did, because it passed the abandoned pumps where the morning beasts gathered around spilled water.

"You just charged us for protection, and now you’re directing poor people towards the part you know needs it," I said. The guard told me to keep moving while the van’s passengers watched him with the careful silence of people who couldn’t afford an argument.

The barrier lifted for our vehicle, but the van’s driver was already turning towards the dirt. Beyond the pumps, the large shadow left the abandoned cars and began following the sound of his engine towards the unprotected lane.