Jeurridam Ch. 09: Primm Road

"June won't give a damn. He'll be like Oh, okay and forget within ten minutes..." I said, shaking my head.

"I don't know..." He said, still unsure.

"Just do it when you're comfortable." I laughed, leaning back in the seat, propping my feet on the dash.

"I'm just worried about what people will think, what people will say..."

"Shoot'em in the head..." I quickly said. He looked at me surprised, "I'm serious... Fuck'em all! Fuck what other people think! You're living your life and not anyone else's and I'm sick and tired of people having concerns for the way other people carry their lives especially when it has no adverse affect on anyone. It just makes me wanna cap some idiots..."

"Interesting..." Julio nodded, lapping this shit up.

"I promise you I'm not violent... I just hate other people... a lot." I smiled.

"So bright and cheerful little Heaven has a dark side? I never would have guessed..." He shrugged as we past a sign written 'WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA'.

We stopped at a massive desert outpost, the only one for hundreds of miles around. We sat down at a restaurant in the rear, ordering some cabra burgers and salads. Both of us were quite hungry, not having eaten since noon yesterday.

"So what about Zanir... Like, what's with him?" Julio asked.

"He's a special case. I didn't know it until it was brought up but he sympathizes with machines in a very similar way he sympathizes with humans. In his mind, machines are just as much alive as we people are so he has to balance out what he feels and prioritize... So far so good..." I responded.

"Wow, so he feels machines are alive?" Julio asked, amazed.

"Not exactly. Like mechs and stuff, the mechs that can think for themselves. Like, he feels for their stories and what they've been through. He's actually shed new light into how we all view mechs. They simply aren't pre-programmed murdering machines. I mean most are but break them free of that chain and they're kind of amazing." I clarified.

"I've never really dealt with mechs until Zanir. He's just astounding... I always viewed him as human until Beth plugged that thing into the back of his head. And when you all couldn't get it out, oh my God that was just horrible..."

"YES!! He looked like he was in so much pain!" I said, haunted by the thoughts.

"You weren't there that day when we surrounded him in the desert after shooting his mechs down. He was like a beast! Zanir almost killed Gaveston, killed two other dudes, severed someone's hand off and was shot like three times before he finally stopped. All of this in like a five foot, seven package... And that didn't even look painful to him... But that prong in the back of his head?" Julio said, shaking his head.

"Who shot him?" I asked.

"June..." Julio smiled, leaving me floored.

"JUNE?" I asked shocked, "Wait, why am I surprised...?"

"Yeah, it was the same day Alistair and the other Merchant Clan members went after you and Beth but you both managed to escape back to A99." Julio said.

"There's actually so much I don't know about Zanir... Like, where the hell did he learn to fight cooped up in that shack for all those years. Like, with hand to hand combat, the boy is in a league of his own... He beat my ass before... easily and I'm not bad in a fight. I've had to fight off four older brothers and a demonic older sister!" I said, truly baffled.

"Is Beth really that bad?" Julio asked.

"No, but she's one tough bitch! When Zanir left A99, she knocked the shit out of Zeek... I mean, knocked his mouth dry!" I said.

"Not even gonna lie. She does scare me... " Julio admitted.

"She scares everyone." I laughed.

"Speaking of being scared," He began, "Why not try it with Basil to see where it leads?"

"I don't know. I just feel like he's too perfect... like, he's too picturesque. Something wouldn't be right in paradise. Maybe I just think he's too good for me... I don't know." I shrugged.

"Sounds like you're not so sold on the way you look..." He said grabbing my hand, "Come with me."

"Where are we going?" I asked. We entered the bathroom. He forced me to stare at the mirror, grabbing my face in those god awful rough hands... They were so scratchy!

"This is not the face of someone who's just okay looking! You look good, bruh!" He said.

"I mean compared to Zeek, I don't. Compared to Zanir, I reaaaaallllly don't. And Next to Basil, I look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame!" I said, leaving Julio lost.

"What?" He asked, never hearing of such a thing.

"Nevermind, just... I don't think I look all of that good." I shrugged.

"My friend, you need a confidence booster! You're nowhere near as middle of the road as you claim!" He said, looking at me eye to eye.

"Then prove it..." I said, not bought at all. Julio looked at me intently, slacking up his grip before pulling me in close. He kissed me hard, his teeth digging into my lip. Hell, his arm wrapped around my waist felt like it was going to snap me in half. This though...this felt right! This felt like we were meant for each other and this was how I knew it... Though I wasn't expecting this kiss, it was filled with so much intensity and magnetism, I didn't want it to end... despite it being quite painful.

When Swish kissed me, God bless him, it didn't have nowhere near the same amount of magic or gravitation. Hell yesterday, when Basil got me alone, he kissed me and it felt... meh. But this... this right here was some other world type of shit and it made me have to figure some things out! It began to put some things into perspective, such as why Julio felt the need to hide who he was. It wasn't simply because he was ashamed of being gay. He was uncertain how I'd feel about him. I bet the return bite to his lip sent the right message!

That restroom door opened and we suddenly broke away like it never even happened. An oblivious man came in to piss, Julio and I laughing nervously wondering how did we not get caught. We paid and left, heading further south down Prim Road.

Things definitely felt different between us. I wasn't upset with him for hiding who he was anymore, not after knowing a big part of it was because he was hiding his feelings for me. But still though, the hard lesson was learned. I couldn't just fall heart first then let my head hit the ground second. We were going to have to take this slow because I wasn't going to lose someone else. Falling fast meant that when you hit the ground, it hurt worse. I wasn't having that at all.

We reached San Diego, the city still virtually intact from the war. It was a major Ravager/Revivalist outpost so propaganda was thick. It had Julio worried. We veered off the highway, riding through the desert instead.

"We're gotta go off roading... Don't want to box us into some place we can't get out of." He said.

"Please don't tell me we're going to have to go up against Ravagers..." I said, deeply concerned.

"We may, but it's nothing this buggy can't handle. No other machine can go two hundred miles an hour over this type of terrain. We simply have to do the drop and get the hell out of dodge." He said, reassuringly.

"How do you all get paid?" I asked.

"We get paid wirelessly when the client gets their merchandise." He responded, looking at the monitor, "But our client just had a change of plans... He wants us to meet up in a warehouse en Sudoeste de Tijuana."

"I don't like the sound of that..." I said.

"Me either." Julio said, "I'm gonna call June..."

"Wait... I thought you couldn't read..." I responded, confused.

"I can't read English. Spanish and Mojave, just fine. Hell, my parents don't even know English!" He smiled.

"Wow..." I smiled as the boy dialed up June's digits.

"Yo..." June said.

"Hey, the client changed plans last minute. He wants us to meet up at a warehouse. We're approaching the original drop point now. What should we do?" Julio asked.

"I know, I just got the contact call. Tell them we don't do en un locaciones de ciudad drops. If we can't drop the merch off at the drop point, we'll return the merch back to the original seller..." June said.

"Alright," Julio responded, bringing the buggy to a halt, "Cielo, you take over..." It threw me for a loop but I eventually got it. He already was coming with the nicknames. I couldn't help but smile.

"Okay." I said, climbing over him while he climbed over me. I felt a firm hand grab my ass before sitting in the driver seat.

Analog buggies were not driven like normal buggies. They had yolks for precise control as well as gear pedals. It may sound complicated but these machines were quite easy to control as long as you kept them revving below seven thousand RPM.

"June, he said do not go to the old drop point, what ever we do!" Julio said, translating roughly.

"Something's up. This is a new client so I don't buy it. I think it's a set up. You're already thick within Ravager territory. Get out of there..." June advised.

"FUCK..." Julio said, kicking the dash, "I told him the deals off..."

"That's good now bring it back home. We'll sort it out when we get here." June responded.

"Julio..." I said filling with fear.

"I think we should try to reach a deal though..." Julio persisted, "Like find a new drop point."

"If we had already established something prior to this meeting with these clients then I'd happily let you meet in the middle but something isn't right and I can smell it!" June said.

"JULIO!!" I screamed, reversing the buggy. The boy was thrown forward just as the round of a mortar narrowly missed us.

"Shit!" He said, looking back as I whipped the vehicle around to travel forward, "Man, gooo, gooo, GOOO!!"

Shell after shell fell around us as we fled the area.

"Julio, what's going on?" June asked.

"Bro..." June said, as he climbed into the turret, pulling the lever to switch to the turret rifle. He looked down the scope, seeing a massive six legged mech with a massive cannon on its back. The only thing was, this mech had a cockpit, "You wouldn't believe it if I told you. I see now why the client said don't go to the old extraction point."

A shell exploded beside us.

"What the hell was that?" June asked.

"We're being chased, by a giant six legged tank and it's shooting one hundred ten millimeter cannon rounds at us... This is sooooooooooooooo Revivalist BULLSHIT!!" Julio screamed, quite upset. He looked down the sights of the turret rifle, the suspension on the buggy acting as a stabilizer. He took aim at the cockpit and fired a single shot. The tank dropped.

"We got company closing in fast." I said.

"Just keep driving! Head for the most unforgiving terrain!" Julio said, reverting the turret back to cannon mode.

Smaller greyhound-like mechs began to close in at speeds even this insane buggy wasn't capable of. The racers snaked in and out firing thirty millimeter cannon rounds at the buggy. The rounds just bounced off like nothing. Despite the mechs insane agility, Julio still dropped them with fifty millimeter cannon fodder. He then noticed something as one went up in explosions. A man was flung out of it.

"Unreal..." He said, truly amazed.

"AHEAD OF US!! BLOCKADE!!" I screamed.

"On it!" Julio said, turning the turret towards the numerous tanks and hounds, lining the narrow stretch of canyon. He switched back to the sniper rifle, firing six shots. Each and every tank was disabled just as I jammed the yolks hard to the left, turning to the right. We were now driving up a near vertical face with the dog-like racers in hot pursuit. Julio blasted them all with the cannon.

"Zanir will love to hear this..." He said as we made our brisk escape back to Jeurridam.