Parker's First Note to the MC

To the Skygod:

Here's the deal, you fucking psycho. You'd better remember this message, 'cause we both know I won't.

I'm Parker. I'd say it's nice to meet you, but I'll save the bullshitting for the actual story, what's say? How's about I tell you why I'm gonna kill that Hocus bitch?

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Well, there I was, in Doc's medshack, breathing in (against tender ribs) the pleasure of coming to in a spittle bed, yet again. It smelled just like hope: a frenetic mix of confusion, relief, and the inevitablity of a healthy paycheck. It's always good to be alive when you wake up.

So, yeah. Doc. Good guy, maybe even great. Lent me many a towel in times of need. This time, it might have even saved my life. That's two I owe him, now.

Anyway, he finished up whatever Angel voodoo he was working. I told him all that really mattered about what happened. Whore castle, jackass, capture... wasn't much. That fella don't ask too many questions.

I value that in a body.


What's more, he's clever. Said he'd pretty much figured it was something like that. Turns out the jackass in question had already been by, cock all aswoll and dripping. (Doc rammed a hot coat hanger up it, then charged him for it. Always liked his style.) After all that, that mad fucker, Proust came along, half-dragging my useless ass. And here it had sat, since. (Why the hell did I think I could pull this one off alone?)

Well, anyway, I figure that was the best news I'd had all day. Wouldn't even have to hunt him down to demand the goods. Excellent. Doc sends him in, and, loanby hold, there's Marshall with him. I must have been in a pretty bad way, when they found me.

Proust and I settle out, then Marshall ambles over, and I tell you, I can see I'm not gonna like what he has to say. Starts out like it's another gig, you know? Another cult pressing in on Beacon... crazed leader, the need to infiltrate and destroy. Even had half a mind to pass it up, bein' on the mend as I was. I might be a sucker, but I'm hardly a fool. But then he came out with it.

They been killing folk.

Foster's gone.

It ain't so much of a choice, now, is it?

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I don't figure I coulda been very old when the hold fell. Old enough that any passing dickhead could have had his way without some vigilante beating the shit out of him, but young enough still that none of them ever did. Never found out who did it, who put an end to the hold called Gateway. But I could guess, even then.

Clearly, it was someone with a heady supply of guns and ambition.

I swore then that I'd never be found without either.

By whatever luck I managed to scrounge from the maelstrom or Inri or whoever, I escaped into the desert with what I was wearing. Even managed to lift a piece off someone less lucky, that is, less alive, on the way out. Not that I knew how to use it at all. If I had, I'd have realized immediately that it was as empty as the husk of a body what'd been packing it. But, then again, even an empty gun can intimidate nearby assholes.

Dunno how long I'd been out there when they found me. Long enough that I don't remember which of them it was that brought me in. Long enough that my tongue felt like a wad of gauze. Part of me hoped they were slavers. At least then they'd have a vested interest in keeping me alive.

As it turns out, they weren't slavers. Not in the traditional sense. But they kept me alive at their compound long enough for me to meet him. After allowing me water, and stuffing my mouth with some sort of warm oat-slurry, they hoisted me up by my arms and led me past heavy curtains into a dark, smoke-filled den. In the far corner, a slight, bearded man sat, nursing a pipe full of herbs surely worth more than I was.

“Have a seat, Parker. I just might be about to save your life.”

I didn't know who the hell Parker was, but you'd better believe I sat.

I came to suspect, in the years after, that Foster never really would have turned me away. Regardless, that conversation clinched it. I didn't tell him where I came from, or why I left. Only what I wanted, and how I planned to get it. He insisted on calling me Parker, and I never corrected him. I assume that I'm the only one alive who knows what I was called before. I mean to keep it that way.

At any rate, the following weeks proved to be the most interesting of my life to that point, and the least interesting of my life since. Foster kept a murderously tight ship. The others taught me how to use my gun (an art I, admittedly, never quite mastered), how to steal, how to fight. But it was Foster himself who taught me how to survive. How to connive and plan. How to fuck. How to kill.

And I came to respect him. He never fucked anyone who said no, and never killed anyone who didn't need killing. When arbiting disputes amongst us, he was impartial to a fault. Now, don't let me convince you he was soft. Mor'n once I saw him turn a kid away, leave them to die in the dust, when he knew they wouldn't make it. Or when it'd be a drag to feed them. He stuck his neck out on a regular basis, but never far enough that the rest of us were at risk along with him.

Every week or so, we'd go out on the gigs he'd set up for us. It was how we paid up. Rations for us to stay alive, training for us to learn. And learn, we did. When we got on enough to make it on our own, he's send us out to join crews, usually operated by folks he'd kept in years before. The crews paid tribute to him, yeah, but most made enough for a semi-comfortable living besides.

It was a couple years from the time I left to the time I saw him again. In that time, all my crew got dead but me and Steed. Lost our operator, our camp, and nearly our lives, so we went running back to Foster. He hooked us up with enough knack bars to last the month, a couple firearms, and a new crew member. And that was how I came to be in charge of Steed and that old jackass, Nero.

Now, lemme tell you a bit about ol' Nero. Smarmy little cunt, ne is. Came into the fold about a year before I left, and I'll admit I took a shine to ner. Clever, enterprising, and dumber than a box of hair. And ne didn't adjust very well to living at the compound, at first. I get the idea Foster would have let ner go, but he saw what I saw: Nero had potential to really be someone. Not an operator, maybe, but certainly an asset to one. And ne sure as hell became one to me, as time went on. When we met up with Ebbs and her little hideaway, it was Nero what figured we could dig a well. Ebbs built our solar oven, but Nero designed it.

Steed, on the other hand, ain't a fuck-up like Nero (as often as not) is. I'd call him Old Reliable, iffen it had fewer syllables. As it is, Steed works just fine. I know him, he knows me, and we don't care a whit what the other's up to, so long as it ain't getting dead. He knows when to help, and when to piss off. And I know he knows. Trust, some call it. I call it History.

Ebbs is our resident come-lately, not anyone of Foster's. She followed us. Wanted to join up with us, on account of we always stay fed. I told her to fuck off. She kept showing up. Over, and over, and over, always asking to join us. Got to the point I swore I'd shoot her if she ever came back around asking stupid questions again. Two days later, here she comes again, dragging some big lump of a thing across the desert. A stripped-out van frame, covered in sheet plactic. Don't know how she made it as far as she did. “How's about a trade: my van house for a livelihood?” As well you know, everyone needs a place to live, and we were hard up. So she got in on account of one non-stupid question. I'm rather glad I didn't have to shoot her. The vancamp became our home, and Ebbs became one of us.

And so it was until now. We never lived like kingly folk, but we made good. Gigs whenever we wanted. After all, who deosn't need a body offed, nowadays? Who doesn't need something stolen? Who doesn't need to get their rocks off? We were content, at least. Happy, even.

I swear, that cult leader's gonna find hell a relief, after I'm done with her.

-Parker