A Monument to Man's Arrogance: Arizona to Virgin Earth

[ScottishMongol]

I sit in a cozy house on the edge of Safford. There are warm woolen blankets draped over the couch and armchairs, waiting for the autumn chill. My host brings me a tray of cornbread biscuits and fresh milk. Shirley Evans is a housewife and mother of three who is renting out her guest room while I stay in the city.

There you go, made from scratch. And the milk came from the farmer's market this morning.

I eat appreciatively as she talks.

They're a little rough, but leagues better than what we had in the...the bad days.

[I think they're excellent.]

Thank you. Back then, we had breadlines, actual bread lines, handing out rough loaves made from whatever flour the government could confiscate, and later cornmeal. Goodness, we do eat a lot of corn these days, don't we? Later we got the potato farms bringing produce in, and the vegetable gardens.

Oh, and the soup. It was mostly broth, mutton or beef. A lot of ranchers were pretty mad about the meager compensation, but after El Presidente came to power, he broke up the big ranches. By that point we'd eaten all the steers and most of the dairy cows, and we were down to breeding stock. I had no idea how most farms worked in those days! Almost makes you glad to see them gone.

[Is there enough food to go around?]

Enough, but not as much variety. Our family eats mostly the same meals every day. We didn't starve, though I know things got pretty bad over in Globe, to say nothing of all those poor folks in Phoenix!

And you know, everything is local and "organic".

She snorts.

Never really cared for that sort of thing in the past, but now it's a struggle to keep up standards. There was an outbreak of cholera last year and it was traced back to one of the vegetable farms, and El Presidente started sending out "government inspectors" to make sure it didn't happen again.

[What do you do with your time these days?]

These days? I keep house. It's so much more work these days, because we have the chickens and the vegetable garden out back, and there's the youngest to take care of. The other two, bless them, get school or the youth group activities. Me, I've had to learn a lot of new skills. My husband works at the mill and gets us our ration cards, but that means he's not around to fix things when they go wrong, and these days it seems like everything has to be replaced. I churned that butter you're spreading right now.

There's music and things, community gatherings, the farmer's market. It's important to know your neighbors these days, help each other out, because sometimes there's something you can't handle yourself and you need neighbors you can count on. Oh, and of course I go to the Mormon temple on Sunday every week.

[Were you always Mormon?]

No, we were Baptists. But well, during the bad old days, the Mormons shared the food they all had...God bless them, I bet we all wish we'd been Mormons just for that. And well, they were part of the community, we all talked a lot more than we did before, on account of there being nobody else to talk to outside of town, and they started talking about the scriptures...

[And you were open to it?]

A lot of things seemed...uncertain in those days. What they said made sense. And Joseph Smith lived here in America. I know it's silly, but there's no Jerusalem, no Rome, so it's hard to have that...connection. I never visited any of those places of course, but they were more real back then.

As I learned more, they also started welcoming us to their community events. I told you how important that is now. There were a lot of new attendees in those days, I got to meet people for the first time that've shared a street with me for years!

And well, I'm incredibly grateful to everyone. I go to the Relief Society functions, that's the women's circle of sorts. It's a good way to keep in touch with everyone, and we host potluck dinners which are, just, always such a treat. And we have our Visiting Teaching, too.

[What's that?]

Just, every once in a while someone stops by and checks in, asks how we're doing, if anyone's sick, do you need anything. It makes the congregation feel like a family, really.

[Is everyone in these parts a Mormon?]

Everyone? No, not at all. More than in the old days, but there are a few Protestant congregations in Safford that I know of, and some others. There's a Muslim family in Globe who made it out of Phoenix, and a Japanese restaurant where you can get some really decent noodles. But, those are just one or two, and like I said there's always new faces at Sunday services.

[What do you think about the Safford Government?]

Well, we try not to think much, if I'm being honest. Things are hard enough, we just keep our heads down and that's enough. El Presidente, he's done some tyrannical things, but only when he decides to step in at all.

[But how does the congregation feel?]

We're just normal folks. We want to be safe and fed. We want Safford to be open to the rest of the world. We want democracy again.

[I see. Thank you for answering my questions.]

It's been a pleasure to have you, honey. Another biscuit?

 

[ScottishMongol]

In a well-furnished office of Safford's City Hall I meet with the man who rules one of the successor states to the dead government of Arizona. Juan Salazar; "El Presidente"; the Governor of the State of Arizona, Safford Government. He is a heavyset man in his thirties, wearing a sharp grey suit, with a scar across one eyebrow that causes it to be permanently raised in a roguish fashion.

Good afternoon, it's an honor to meet with a member of the press.

[Do you often give interviews?]

To the local papers? No, I let them write whatever they want. Besides, if you want the actual news these days, read the church bulletins.

[You don't care what the papers have to say?]

Not really. I've already shuttered one newspaper - Pour encourager les autres. I mean there's no "transparency", if that's something you worry about.

[Don't you think the people care what their government is doing?]

Look, I know these people. They break ranks when the people in charge rock the boat. They were always like that, even back in the Old World. No, what they need is someone who's there to plug the leaks and hammer down any loose nails.

[That sounds like minarchism.]

Does it? I don't think the folks in Bullhead would say so. Turns out a functioning government means more than just a night watchmen.

[Why do you think you're still in power?]

Aside from nobody around here deciding to give me the push yet? Flagstaff just left me be. I opened Safford up to their business interests - that's the salvage company office in Globe, plus a few others - and in return they let me run things while they focus on their core. They let a lot of places go out of the way, whether it's the fundies north of the Rim or those ranchers out west. They didn't have the resources to control everyone in their sphere of influence.

[Would you consider Safford a client state?]

You ask a lot of questions about terminology.

[Why did you take control of Safford?]

You've probably heard about how the old mayor wasn't the right man for the job, how we needed a hard man to make the hard decisions. Just between you and me, he wasn't the worst man for the job. He might've made the right decision, he could've pulled it off. But he hesitated. There was a chance of risk. And besides, he was the one making the decision and I wasn't.

[So it was ambition?]

Look, I asked myself: "So, he pulls it off, then what?" I had a good thing in the Old World, then I had the opportunity to get shot at, or to spend the rest of my life shoveling manure in a potato field.

And yeah, now I'm in charge, so what? I don't cheat anyone with the ration cards, I keep the peace, and every once in a while Flagstaff slips us enough money to do projects like opening the pass to Phoenix, or build a new mill.

It's a small nation, you don't got that much power to spread around in the first place. All the purges happened right away - the militia leaders, the big landowners, a few folks who looked like they had a case of ideology. I kept the bureaucrats, though, I'm not stupid.

...alright, so I disappeared a few officers since then, but only cause they wanted to pull the same stunt I did. I got an obligation to watch my own back.

[So you think you're secure?]

About as secure as a dictator can be. I don't expect to get old in this position, and there's no such thing as Swiss bank accounts anymore. But you know, I made it through the bad old days, I got my cut, and I kept things afloat while I was in charge. What's there to worry about? Maybe they'll be nice and give me life under house arrest.

[Is this a game to you?]

Look around, honey. Does anything that's happened in the last five years seem real to you?

[...I see. So, what are your relations like with other nations?]

Nonexistent. Bullhead City and Yuma are too far away, those legitimist fuckers might as well be on the Moon, and nobody but nobody recognizes the crazies in the wasteland, not even each other.

Oh right, I guess there's the Cochise Government. But wow, you thought we were hicks? Wait until you see them.

***

This has been the chapter on the Safford Government. Next is a rather short chapter on the Cochise Government, followed by the chapter on the Wasteland, which will be the conclusion of this TL!

 

[ScottishMongol]

Chapter 6: State of Arizona - Cochise Government
​

The sprawling camp outside of Bisbee is dirty, noisy, and chaotic. Men and women laugh, drink, and sing, brawls break out all over, people laugh and chatter over cooking fires, and one can hear the sound of gunshots, revving motorcycles, and the noise of dogs, cattle, and horses. My guide, Chuck Warren, leads me through the maze, often shouting to be heard above the ruckus.

Yes, ma'am, it's a riot of a good time! Ain't no place like a cattle fair to swap anything you want to swap. Horses, cattle, trucks, you name it!

[This is a cattle fair?]

Why, yes, ma'am! Bisbee is the place to hold the biggest cattle fair in the state, on account of the Senate bein' in session.

[Who's meeting in the Senate?]

All the big landowners, the cattle barons and the bosses of the military brigades, an' so on. All the bosses get their men to vote for them, so all the head honchos are the ones who meet to work out the nitty-gritty, the borders and the rates of exchange and our trade relations and that. Never seen a ranch hand in the Senate, come to think of it, but what would they know about anything other than staring up the south end of a north-bound steer?

[Why do you claim to be the state of Arizona?]

We're Arizona as it shoulda been! No big government to interfere in our lives, asking for taxes and getting their hands all over our property. That's the state the Founding Fathers intended, before the government started getting too big for its own good, thinking it could boss around its own people!

Above us flies one of the unofficial flags of the Cochise Government - the Gadsden Flag, a coiled rattlesnake above the phrase "Don't Tread on Me".

Well, we're really of the people now! The true people, who live and work the land, and not those liberals in the cities - look where they ended up! Either bones in the desert, or workin' farms and ranches for us!

[Would you say everyone here is equal?]

Shit, course we're equal. If you got a gun and horse, you can go anywhere, work for any man, even join one of the Brigades. If you're on foot you're free to walk, of course, and we got a few towns of our own, though nowhere near as big as in the Old World. You can get a job there if you're too soft to rope cattle.

Yeah you got the big bosses, but they're the ones who own the land and worked hard for it, and shit if you really want to be your own boss you'll set out to the frontier and homestead, get some workers of your own, and then maybe one day you'll be a Senator, too!

Shit, I know women who can rope cattle with the best of them, and draw a faster gun than any cowboy. Frontier gals ain't no weaker sex!

[How did things end up like this?]

Well, back after the Old World went up in smoke, you got loads and loads of refugees coming this way. Well, this corner of the state had its fair share of National Guardsmen, Army bases, and Border Guards, and they did the right thing and fended them off before they could swamp us. Sure a lotta people got shot or turned back, but we let through a few, if they could prove they were useful. You got the same thing all over the state, don't know why we should feel sorry for staying alive.

[What about the founding of your government?]

As it happened, the big landowners, the cattles bosses and so on, got together and started splitting up the refugees and folks from the cities, moving people around to where they were needed, on farms and ranches and so on, and eventually they decided to sign the Cochise Treaty, which established our new government, to coordinate everything. Ain't no big story there, it's just how it happened.

As for the military men, they turned into the Brigades, they keep the peace in their little corners of the territory and any man can join up so long as he can shoot straight, and they're tough bastards, you better believe it.

​

A pack of motorcycle racers speed by in a cloud of dust.

[ Where do you get your oil?]

Oh, trade with Flagstaff. It comes here by drips and drabs, but there's always some coming in from somewhere. We pay good for it, too, cattle and cotton and whatever we get from salvaging the Corpse City. Whew-ee, that's an adventure and a half, shootouts with wild raiders and scavengers. A lot of our boys used to go in to prove their grit - you know how they can be, thinking with their dicks. The real hard cases sign on with the salvage companies as hired guns.

Somewhere there are more gunshots, followed by a loud commotion of angry men which soon dies down.

[Things seem...exciting around here.]

Shit, life is like a good stew, no good without a little spice. Cattle raids, border disputes, hunting for outlaws, adventuring in the Corpse City, just carrying on feuds with the neighbors...

If you want excitement, yeah we got our fair share of it, if you can stomach it. Otherwise, and this is a saying out here, there's a desk waiting for you in Flagstaff.

Chuck stops and cracks open a metal container of some indescribable alcoholic beverage and takes a swig before raising it towards the eastern horizon in a toast.

As for me? Out there, where the Virgin Earth is, that's where I'm gonna build my plot of land one day. My own ranch with my own ranch hands and milk maids to boss around, maybe a wife and a litter of kids. There's a whole world out there, and we're the men who're gonna own it.​

 

[ScottishMongol]

Sergeant Andrew McMullin is a grizzled, balding veteran, marked with the scars of battle.

Fuck, I miss cigarettes. Alright, ask your questions.

[How did you react after the Emergency Government evacuated?]

Fucking pissed. I'd called up the National Guard like they wanted, we were dug in, keeping the roads open, then all of a sudden they're gone, leaving orders to continue to hold the countryside "in the name of the legitimate government".

[And why didn't you try and link up with anyone else?]

Everything was up in the air, and well, I wasn't the only commanding officer. You had the Army, the Border Patrol, local police, the ranchers' militia groups...everyone had a different idea of where to go first. The local government was already coordinating everything on its own, the forerunner of what would become the "Cochise Government".

He forms air quotes with his fingers.

Some of the officers wanted to recognize Yuma, a few others wanted to recognize the new Northern Government. Two problems with that. The first is that Tucson was smack between us and Yuma, and there were crazed refugees spilling everywhere. We were ordered to hold the countryside, so we did. We could've dug in and waited for Yuma to link up with us, but we didn't expect that to happen, not when Yuma had their own starving hordes to deal with.

Second problem, Safford broke away under their little tinpot dictator, which cut us off from Flagstaff. Same problem there, too, we had all our men on the roadblocks, we couldn't spare any to topple him, and from the way the Northern Governmant's let him sit there, they probably didn't either.

So, yeah, we dug in and held the line. When you think about all the poor bastards we shot or turned back into the desert to die...

He stares off into space for a moment.

...doesn't bear thinking about.

[So what happened next?]

A couple of mayors and sheriffs and big landowners got together and signed the Cochise Treaty. And at that point we had two options: recognize them as our new commanders, or turn around and give them the push and set up something of our own.

He sighs.

Look, being a solider...it meant something, in the Old World. You swore an oath to defend and protect the Constitution. A lot of us...we were from out of state, and a lot more had family in Phoenix or Tucson. A lot made it out. Some didn't.

But there was no United States, and there wasn't even an Arizona. Yuma was claiming to be the state, the Northern Government, the legitimists on the Pacific, even fucking Safford. Morale was rock-bottom. We'd already lost a lot of men, either killed in the fighting or just...

He points at his head and mimes pulling a trigger.

Others...just kind of went AWOL, slipping off into the night. Some of them wound up as bandits, others melted into what few refugee camps we'd managed to set up, or joined up with one rancher or another.

So yeah, nobody felt like playing kingmaker. The remaining commanding officers got together and recognized the Cochise Government, there were flag-raising ceremonies and everything. And then we settled in to...our new home, I guess.

[How did the Cochise Government accommodate your men?]

The started splitting up our units, settling them here and there. Some in the cities, most in the country. Some of them got farms of their own - to rent from the landlords, because that was how they were dividing up the land in those days - others got hired on as ranch hands or guards.

A few stayed behind on the bases, those being the new ones, closer to the border. What we called the military frontier, the line between us and the wasteland. We were reorganized into the Brigades.

He points at a badge on his uniform and smiles sarcastically.

2nd Infantry Brigade, that's us.

So yeah, now if someone wants to work a gun and put in some time, they'll sign on for a year or two and that's about it. A lot of the ones who got settled around have come back to do some service, but we're just not as needed anymore, especially since the die-off in the Corpse City bottomed out. Now you get a handful of raiders a year, more than enough for our rump units to take care of. None of the Brigades numbers more than, say 500 men.

[Is that all the Brigades do?]

Aside from hunt bandits and watch the border? That's about it, just the normal stuff. Except...

He leans forward conspiratorially.

You're probably wondering who gives us our orders, and who pays us, if the Cochise Government is so against taxation, which...

He makes a jerking off motion.

I was never into that sort of thing, but shit. Anyway, because it's in their self interest, a lot of the landowners find it in their hearts to feed us fed and armed. That doesn't cover everything, but our code allows recruits to bring their own gear. Now I didn't like that, but this ain't the Old World, so sometimes you gotta work with what you have.

As for pay...well, sometimes some rancher will send his son to serve, and that's when we get a bit of extra gear, usually something we were worried about running out of. Last time it was five barrels of oil, come quite coincidentally after we promoted a Senator's son.

He rolls his eyes.

So, wow, you're thinking, we're right in their pockets, aren't we? What do they want from us?

I hope you'll forgive me for the local politics here, but about two years back, the Fairchild clan started muscling in on Perkins family land, grazing their cattle there and running off the shepherds. Mister Perkins sent the 3rd Brigade - they were always the most ragtag - twenty-five head of cattle and about a hundred feet of wool and cotton cloth. Then he asks - asks, mind you, no orders here - for the 3rd Brigade to march over and park themselves on Perkins land.

Well, lucky for all involved the Fairchilds backed off, but after that we've been getting...involved in more and more of these little land disputes, and twice now a Brigade has been in a firefight. 1st Infantry, both times, and they were allowed to run off with as many cattle as they could lay their hands on. That was just last month.

Bet they didn't tell you that at the fucking cattle fair.

He sits back, spreading his hand in a gesture of helplessness.

We've become mercenaries. The fucking ranchers pay our upkeep, and shuffle us around to intervene in their private little squabbles over where to graze their fucking cattle.

He shakes his head.

We used to be fucking soldiers, man. We swore an oath an everything, and that used to mean something. We defended people's rights. Now, since the whole...fucking world's ended, we're stuck playing hired gun to a bunch of fucking cowboys.

Sometimes...I wonder if defecting to the Northern Government would have been the smarter option. We all thought that, at the very least. we were defending a little corner of civilization, keeping a few thousand people alive in our piece the state. There was some honor in that, you know? But I didn't know at the time we would've ended up like...this.

 

[ScottishMongol]

Nova Cruces is a wretched town of about two hundred people. It is made of whitewashed adobe buildings and is surrounded by fields of irrigated crops. The largest buildings are the church and the "Sheriff's Office", a combination fort, barracks, and administrative center. Nova Cruces would be unremarkable compared to any other small town in the southern part of the state, save that it is located south of what was, in the Old World, the Mexican-American border. I find Father Thomas Gonzalez Gonzalez in the church's hospital wing, completing his checkup on a convalescent.

Our conversation is translated from the good Father's native Spanish.

In the Old World, as they say, I was just a lay priest. Then everything went very, very badly. For everyone, I mean, not only the Church.

The faith has barely survived, but the same cannot be said for the Catholic Church. There were no Cardinals in the state, and both the Bishops of Phoenix and Tucson chose to stay at their posts until the very end, God rest their souls. The Church hierarchy was shattered. There have been...many angry letters, I understand, regarding the new authority, sent between the surviving priests in the north and in the east.

It seems that we will each have to tend to our own flocks, doing what we can, for the time being. Perhaps one day a new Pope will be selected...or he will appoint himself. We can only pray. And in the meantime, we fret and worry as to how far we are straying from Catholic doctrine. I understand that in these dark times, many pray to Santa Muerte, and others insist that this is not to be done. What were once decried as mere "folk saints" are now worshiped openly in congregations. Who is to say which is the right way to ask for intercession? I only serve my flock in the way that is best for them.

[How do you serve your congregation?]

It seems that I must help them with both their spiritual and physical ailments. I take confession and give communion, and christen infants, and do all other things that a priest must, but in this town we have no village doctor, and as it happens I still know a little of medicine and such things. There are also midwives, and not so many of our newborns die as they would without them, so it seems that God blesses their work.

He fidgets.

And of course, we must work to eat, and labor under the eye of our Sheriff. It is...good, that he and his Deputies have elected to attend our services. He is...a good patron of my church.

[How did you come to be here?]


A pause.

After the Lord...well. After Phoenix and Tucson burned, many fled to this part of the state. There were...many people. In the border cities of Nogales and Douglas, there were many who...well, they were not from the state.

Not just the undocumented, you understand, but travelers, people here on work, that sort of thing. Many people crossed the border legally, every day, simply to do their jobs.

But...to many, the cities had too many mouths. And when it came time to decide who went to the farms...

He fidgets again.

It was a...difficult first year. We were not completely helpless, as we had been able to gather a number of supplies before we were forced out, some of them given to us by the authorities. We had some tools and seeds, goats and donkeys...and even a few weapons.

This land has never been tended by the hand of man, so it was lush with birds and beasts and edible plants. But our little shelters, which were all we could build between trying to dig and plant and water the fields, were not always enough to get all of through that first. And many were sick, from improper diets and other things. Some of them died. A band of men, perhaps they had been criminals, took over. They were...cruel.

Still, our town survived for a year, and then for two. We had a larger harvest that second year...and fewer mouths. There were other towns nearby, and we marked out paths, and a few craftsmen and other such men worked a circuit, and we tried to help each other.

Then...

He stops, fidgeting.

[It's alright, I won't tell anyone about this.]

The Sheriff and his Deputies came. They said this village was under his "jurisdiction". And that meant he was in charge, and the crops were his.

There was a fight. The boss of our village and his men, and some supporters, they tried to force the Sheriff out, but he had horses, and guns, and more men. By the end of that third year he was in charge, and now the part of the harvest that we did not eat were being sold, and there were cattle coming in, but to graze on the Sheriff's land.

Now, we hear the Sheriff has signed the Cochise Treaty, and there are laws and such things decided by the Senate. Other times, we have other ranchers come in, and talk to our Sheriff.

[Is the Sheriff as cruel as your first boss?]

...no. He tells his men to keep of the village girls, and we never have more food taken from us than we can bear. As I said, he is a patron of this church.

[But who gave him the authority to rule here?]


When he came to town he had a paper from the Senate placing this village and the land within ten miles of it under his "jurisdiction". I read it myself, when he nailed it to the door of the church. On its face, Cochise wanted to secure its borderlands. In practice, it soon came out that the Sheriff was the brother of a prominent rancher.

[Has this happened to the other villages?]

Oh, yes. There were some half a thousand of us scattered across this land - it's decently watered, most people decided to set up home here rather than go another step further. We are still only a short journey from the old border.

[What do you think the future holds?]

I cannot say. I hear there has been fighting in other parts of the state, between ranchers fighting over land and water. That hasn't happened here. Not yet. But maybe the fighting will not need to come here - I hear that our Sheriff's brother has fought a skirmish with his neighbor, and since he came here the Sheriff has been training some of our young men to be "guardsmen". One day he may need to march off to war.

He sighs and runs a hand through his thinning hair.

Who can say what the future holds? War, peace, freedom, servitude? Only God knows for sure.

***

This has been the chapter on the Cochise Treaty, tanks for reading! I hope to complete this TL very soon, perhaps by the end of the month - from here, we only have one place left to go.

The Wasteland, the Monument to Man's Arrogance itself, the Corpse City.

Phoenix.

 

[ScottishMongol]

Chapter 7: The Wasteland
​

Alternately called "Salvage-town" "New Scottsdale" and "Casa Aquino", this outpost's official name is Salvage Camp A. It is located on the west side of a freeway underpass and is mainly composed of a few repurposed strip malls and a retaining wall. Within the wall is a small open-air market, a cluster of tents, and rows of parked cars and tethered horses. I walk around the perimeter of the camp with the girl who only gave he name as Amanda. All around us, for miles, is uneven terrain, the remnants of a deconstructed neighborhood, spotted with clusters of scraggly grass and scrub.

Yeah it's not much of a home, but sometimes you just don't fit in anywhere. I'd imagine a few of the other permanent residents felt the same way. The folks on contract cycle in and out, but you get one or two folks come out here every year, looking to get away from...something, I dunno. The last guy came looking for his old house, I dunno what he found but he wasn't the same after.

[Why did you come out here?]

I uh...I'm bi, you know? You don't fit in much in a small town like that. Bullhead City seems like they wouldn't give a shit, but I'd rather work in a company town than be a debtor there. I hear there's a little gay neighborhood in Flagstaff these days, and they're doing alright, but that wasn't for me either. Who knows what kinda Don't Ask, Don't Tell shit they have in Yuma. I dunno.

She kicks a chunk of rubble awkwardly.

[So all this used to be a suburb?]

Yeah, more or less. Couple strip malls and office complexes, we're tearing up an industrial neighborhood about three blocks south of here. Lots of good machine parts and stuff. Deconstruction, you know. Hard work, feels a lot like grave digging some days. Sometimes includes grave digging. Then we knock down what's left of the buildings and turn the earth and just move on...

'Nother five years and this is gonna be open scrubland. Fucking surreal some days, let me tell you.

[It's reverting to wilderness that quickly?]

Shit, this place is its whole own ecosystem. From feral dogs and and cats down to rats and rabbits, that's before you get the deer and javelina and coyote populations bouncing back and spreading through the old suburbs, where grass and scrub are growing up where water can run again. Couple mountain lions, too. Lots of birds.

She smiles.

You know there are fucking lovebirds here? Those little peach-headed green parakeets. A whole feral population got out back in the 80s, in the Old World, and they just stuck around. Sure do liven up the scenery.

[Is any of the wildlife dangerous?]

Only if you're not smart. Well, most of the feral dogs got taste of human flesh and half of them are diseased. Makes 'em as dangerous and crazy as the scavengers. But their population will bottom out seeing as nearly all of them are spayed or neutered.

But nah, feral dogs and mountain lions you can scare off, or at least watch your back for. Rattlesnakes...hate those fuckers, we get a snakebite incident every couple months. They're everywhere, eating the hordes of feral rats living in these abandoned houses, and the biggest can get something like feet long.

She shudders.

[You seem knowledgeable.]

Eh, I just pay attention to the ecologists who come into town. They wanna know if like, the water system is reestablishing itself, how many animals we see. Apparently water did a lot of work, flushing all the chemicals and sewage out of it system.

[What about people?]

You mean outside the camp? Haven't met any. There was some action here a year ago, but by the time I moved out here they'd all been shot or scampered. I hear they're mad crazy bastards, though. Mostly they're eating deer and rabbits these days, but if you believe the campfire stories they won't turn up people either. Probably how they lived in the first place.

Some of them, further south, have some gardening, around the Salt River, and might be halfway civilized.

[What's life like out here?]

Well, most of the time you work, you know? Pile into a truck, drive out to the site, crowbar open a door...air out the house. You gotta wear an air filter and goggles and a body suit, cause there's all this crap floating around...dust, and rotted food and...bodies, and if the rats have been in there then you don't want disease.

Then you do a sweep of the house. That's the hardest part, cause you find most of the bodies and...sad stuff. Personal items. Pets. They left...notes, and things like that. You learn not to read them, eventually.

She looks distant for a moment.

Lotta the time, you just gotta keep that stuff with you. Inside, I mean. No use talking about it when everyone's got a hundreds stories about the same thing.


She blinks.

Anyway, uh.

That's when deconstruction work starts. Windows, wiring, piping, anything that can be cleaned. Lotta smashing down walls. Sometimes the building is too damaged, or there's too much useless shit inside it. You get a lot of houses like that these days, cause of the rain and sandstorms blowing out windows and letting the outside world in. But you find a lot of useful stuff, load it on the wagon. Then the big equipment comes in to turn the earth. There are short burials for the human remains. That were intact, I mean. And then we go home. An experienced team of five can knock out...one house a day. There's fifty workers at the camp. That's a street, more or less.

She stops in the middle of what used to be a residential street. Sand, blown in by dust storms, has almost covered it. There are seedlings growing from the cracks, forming new soil.

One street at a time, adds up to one block at a time. Most of these houses are cheap, cookie-cutter McMansions, and almost all of them are starting to fall apart cause of environmental damage. You start to get sick of them. Makes me wish I was one of the auto specialists, but they've gotta go deeper into the city, where the raiders sometimes go. That's dangerous work.

Eventually...maybe...we'll bury the big Corpse City. Where it belongs, resting in the earth. It's doing nobody any good, sitting out here and...rotting. Reminding everyone of what we lost. Even if we weren't making money, that'd be enough for me.

[What about outside of work?]

Right, the camp. I dunno, things are...close-knit. There are a couple folks who don't work for the salvage company, they do things like provide the supplies and brew booze and stuff. Keep us entertained. That's what most of us do, off-hours, drink and talk shit and watch a show.

[What kind of shows?]

You know, live music, plays. Sometimes we can hook up a projector and play some Old World movies. Yeah, we're close-knit. A real frontier town.

She chuckles and looks at the wasteland. On the horizon are clusters of buildings, slated for salvage and deconstruction under Aquino Associated Salvage's contact.

It feels sort of crazy sometimes. I mean, look, I was a teenager in the Old World, it wasn't completely before my time. But I didn't really think about how the world worked, and now...

She gestures demonstratively.

Who the fuck invented suburbs? It's so spread out, you need a car by necessity. We don't build cities like that these days, knowing how much gas costs. Where's all the food? You could live something like three miles from a grocery store, in Flagstaff or even Globe you're never more than a block from a restaurant or market.



I can't imagine what that was like, everyone in the city having a car. I remember... helping clear a freeway overpass, on my first job out here. Choked with cars. And bodies. And I thought, these people didn't have to die. This city didn't have to be as unbelievably wasteful as it was.

And why were four million people living in the fucking desert anyway? Didn't they know how much work it was to pump water out here? It wasn't even for drinking and bathing, every house has a fucking pool, and the golf courses...man, what the fuck were they thinking with golf courses. Maybe the preachers are right for once, and we were arrogant. What the hell were we thinking, putting four million people in the middle of the desert?


Shit...there aren't four million people in the whole world these days. The Old World, man, I tell you. Feels fucking crazy some days.
​

 

[ScottishMongol]

Peter Danvers, one of the most famous independent salvagers in the state, is dressed in a blue jean jacket and a cowboy hat adorned with silver medallions. His rig, "Daisy Mae", is a heavily modified eighteen wheeler. From the steel slats along the bed to the pointed cow-catcher on the front, the truck seems more like it's designed for war than for salvage excursions.

Peter tips his hat to me and opens the driver's side door.

Hop in, miss, you picked a good day to ride with ol' Pete and his crew.

Bolted to the inside of the passenger's side door is a holster with a shotgun in it.

Don't worry about that, miss, I don't expect you to shoot or nothin'.

[Where are we going?]

Private contract! Some folks up in Flagstaff signed on for a big old haul of jewelry. Wanna open a shop or somethin'. We're gonna hit a couple places, they sometimes get looted, but there's more 'n enough rings for every finger on every raider, so sometimes they don't even bother with 'em. We'll give our partner enough rings for every bride in Arizona from here to Kingdom Come.

After Peter's crew climbs into the bed, Daisy Mae rumbles to life and takes off down the street.

People think salvagin' is just have daring shootouts with raiders and gettin' rich, but I'd say that's about 10% of it. Half of it is drivin', and 40% of it is moving heavy shit around. We cleared this street of cars a long time back, and about half the freeways in this part of town. Shit, those on-ramps were the worst, trucks stacked bumper to bumper ten deep.

Anyway, I've fought scavengers and shit, only had one battle with raiders. Last year we were hauling back some car parts, and we stumble on this pack of them.

They love car dealerships, there are just miles and miles of the things, all the replacement parts you could want and enough scrap metal to make anything else you might happen to need. The big salvage companies picked them over on our end of town a while back, so if you want any on the west side, you better go to an independent salvager like me, on account of you don't wanna risk bumping into some raiders.


Now I wasn't being paid to fight raiders, just get the parts, so we piled into Daisy Mae and ran, and they gave us a real running fight. Eventually we swerved down a side-street, but they tracked us by our dust cloud for a good couple hours. That's the key to being a salvager, you gotta know the streets.

Behind us, a plum of dust rises into the air. The crew in the truck bed are wearing goggles and filtration masks.

[What did you do in the Old World?]

I was a truck driver, miss! I was driving Daisy Mae here from Albuquerque to Los Angeles when I got stranded in Safford. Salvagers come and go, but my girl's been with me all along.

[What kind of people live out here?]

Crazy ones, miss. Absolute crazies.

He flicks his turn signal and merges onto the freeway.

You've got the raiders, who come in from the desert west of here, where their camps are. They're salvaging same as us. But they all went off the deep end, a lot of them are former military, and they all did some fucked-up shit to survive. Who knows what they're eating, probably deer and people same as the scavengers.

The scavengers, now, they're the folks who stayed in hiding or were just tough-as-nails enough to stay in Phoenix, and I'd say there's no more than a thousand of them in the whole damn city. Half of them are organized into clans or tribes or whatever the fuck you want to call them. The rest are just loners, and they probably like it that way. Mostly the only way you'll deal with them is at the end of a gun.

Hey, look at that.

He points at a column of smoke.

Happens all the time. Sun hits a window just right, boom. It started right after the lights went out. With no fire department, you can lose a whole city block. These days, with more and more brush growing from the cracks, it can really get going.

People expect fire to gut this city, but if you ask me it's the storms that'll really do it in. Monsoon season brings the dust storms, and little by little those'll bury this place, and the storms themselves...the storm drains don't work any more, most of 'em are blocked, so the floods just keep growing. The canals and rivers burst their banks sometimes. I've seen cars carried away by flash floods...

Little by little, this city is gonna go. By our hand, or the Hand of God.

He flicks his turn signal again and pulls off the freeway.

[Why did you use your turn signal?]

He's quiet for a moment.

It gets to you. It's still a city, you know? Normal houses, most of the time, just no people. Lots of parked cars. Some days you'd almost think it was just a quiet afternoon.

Sometimes, you go into a house and it's...normal. No fire or storm damage, no sign of violence, nothing's wrong. It's like someone went out for lunch and just never came back.

That's probably what happened.

You can't go around a place like that and tear it up without a little hesitation. Sometimes you gotta...remind yourself this used to be a city. It wasn't always a hellscape prowled by cannibals and scavengers. There were rules. You have to remember that, or you'll end up like them.

[Are they all cannibals?]

Well...there's cannibalism and cannibalism, miss. Sure, you've got the folks who'll eat anyone they see, who keep the skulls hanging up outside their hideouts, those are the real crazy ones who do it cause they went off the deep end a long time ago and they can't come back without breaking a little. Maybe they were broken before, I dunno.

Then you've got the folks who just...ran out of food, and they wanted to live.

They won't admit it, of course. Not in broad daylight, not when they're sober. They probably didn't eat any of their own, though. Everyone's got a line.

He shrugs.

Most people didn't starve to death, you know that? Most of them was done in by dehydration in the first few months, once the last water really ran out and any open bodies were contaminated - lots of people died of disease before that - and at that point you just get a fever, you get hotter and hotter, and then you go to sleep, and you never wake up...


So yeah, after the first monsoon season happened and started flushing out all the raw sewage and ash and chemical runoff, that's when people started worrying about food. That's when things got really messy.
People died in every way imaginable out here. Mass suicide, or in fights over supplies, or being eaten by other people. But most of them, almost all of them, died of thirst. I don't think anybody alive today takes water for granted anymore, and there's a reason for that.

There are three halfway decent scavenger bands that I know of. One of 'em is holed up downtown, living up in the skyscrapers and eating...I dunno, fucking pigeons and veggies grown in window boxes. Then there's a band over in the foothills of the Camelback Mountains. I guess they fortified some rich fuck's mansion that was halfway up the side of the mountain. I guess they collected rainwater and kept some gardens going.

Then there's the group down by Tempe Town Lake. Nearby to the college campus. They've got some actual farms, and they're armed to the teeth and paranoid as all fuck, but they like, still pretend like they're a little town. With a government and everything. Crazy, but you can't help but admit that if anyone's still trying to be civilized it's them.

He suddenly grins and looks at me.

Say, want to meet 'em?

 

[ScottishMongol]

I am blindfolded before being led into the Free People's Commune of Greater Phoenix. Ostensibly it is for security – they spin me around three times before leading me down the labyrinthine streets and hallways of what used to be downtown Tempe. When I'm pushed into a chair and the blindfold is removed, I'm sitting across from a large Latino man holding an assault rifle. He has a black bandanna across his face, a bandoleer across his chest. He is sitting on top of a large crate surrounded by guns, ammunition, and a variety of flags displaying far-left iconography.

I'm Will Ortega, Speaker of the Popular Assembly of the Free People's Commune of Great Phoenix. What the fuck do you wanna know?

I pause and take in the surroundings.

[Why all the theater, Will?]

I don't know what you mean.

I point at all the guns and ammunition.

We're not to be fucked with, sweetie. There're more guns and bullets in the Corpse City than we know what to do with, and we're not looking for an excuse to find something to do with them, understand?

I nod, then check my notes.

[How much do you interact with the outside world?]

They didn't tell you?

[I want to know your side of the story.]

First contact was at the end of a gun, yeah. They were the first people we'd seen since the Emergency Government pulled out that didn't want to kill us and/or eat us. Still, we didn't know that. Nobody died, though, so the next time they came back, we yelled at each other over the fucking wall.

He is referring to the wall of rubble, salvaged concrete, and cinder blocks that surrounds the "Free City".

Well, they had some stuff they wanted to offload, so we talked about trade. They left some stuff outside the gate, we took a look. Decided we liked what we saw, so we left some stuff in exchange and ducked back inside. They came back, took the trade, and once they left, we took anything they left back inside.

He laughs.

I bet we both thought we were fleecing the other guys. That went on for a while, occasionally we'll take longer to trade, both sides going back and forth until we're all satisfied, but it's worth it as long as we can avoid letting in any outsiders. We've had a couple folks come in like you did – your salvager friend Danvers, for one – but we don't let them get too good a look around. Don't want them getting too good an idea of what we're capable of.

So, we trade, but only for what we don't have ourselves – and we have a lot. We've got water from the lake. Once the pollution was flushed out after a couple years and we could properly set up purification, it was the single biggest source of freshwater in the Metro Area.

We have gardens. Window gardens, rooftops, in the former parks, all watered from the lake, and we have stockpiles from a dozen defeated tribes. We even have our own uh, chemistry setup. Good for most medicines, at least some of the basics. You want weed? We got it.

I politely decline.

So, we don't need bullets or beans, what we need is machinery and the more advanced stuff we can't manufacture. In exchange…well, like I said, we've got quite a bit ourselves. We're not afraid to do business, but we're not here to be another outpost for the vultures, north or south.

[You mentioned "defeated tribes". You've gone to war before?]

Only against the batshit crazy ones who didn't know when to stop trying to raid us.

I almost ask what he considers "crazy".

[You mentioned vultures to the south. Is that Yuma?]

Yep. They mostly salvage the Tucson area, or contest the towns south of Phoenix with the raiders, but they've sent a couple expeditions here into the city, looking for anything really useful and getting the lay of the land. We're not any friendlier with them than we are with the northerners.

Flagstaff pushing in from the north, Yuma from the south, and us right in the middle…and I hear that Flagstaff is starting to claim parts of the city. When the two of them bump into each other and start fighting over the Corpse City…

He hefts an assault rifle.

Damn, but if that isn't gonna be a bad time.

[Are you really a democracy?]

He gives me a crooked grin.

Sweetie, we're the freest fuckin' place in the world. We're not goose-stepping for a fucking military dictatorship, and we're not lining up to do slave labor for some company boss like they do up north.

Really, I feel bad. The people up in Flagstaff and down in Yuma, they haven't changed a bit since the Old World. Little tougher, little meaner, but they're the same bougie fucks, and they still wanna be on top. They think they're hot stuff because they've got more bombs and trucks and soldiers.

[If this is such a great place to live, why all the secrecy?]

Hey, we gotta keep some stuff close to our chest. I could be the reincarnation of Saint Marx and we could read from the Little Red Book every day…or we could be your average survivalists with an unusual taste in flags. The trick is to give them just enough info to keep them guessing, so that all they can say for sure is that we're somewhere in between - just crazy enough to not be worth it, but not crazy enough to be a threat.

He leans back and raises his hands.

Now I know, that's giving up the game! But here's the thing. Even knowing that we're trying to keep you in the dark…that still doesn't answer your question, does it?

 

[ScottishMongol]

The stretch of land southwest of the Corpse City was nearly-uninhabited desert even in the Old World. Now, amid the scrub and blowing dust, one can see the rusted, sometimes burned-out hulks of cars, and scattered sun-bleached bones peek out from dunes amid bits of scattered garbage. I follow Paulo Manuel, a member of the Tohono O'odham nation, as he leads our mules through the barren waste.

A lot of people came out here and died. I don't know what they were looking for. This is the actual Sonoran Desert, there's nothing here. Nothing. And none of these people knew how to survive out here. They didn't know the hidden water sources, they didn't know what plants to eat, they didn't know how to track animals in the desert. So...I don't know what they thought would happen. Maybe they just came out here looking for a place to die.

As for us, there were only a dozen towns on the reservation, and we had our own problems. Those were dark days for everyone. But as a people, we lived. There were just enough cattle to keep us alive, and we knew how to live in the desert. A few towns got chewed up by refugees, but most were so isolated, there was nothing there. A few more got abandoned, just because they were in the wrong place.

I can't tell you how many of us there are now. Ten thousand? A little less?

He shakes his head.

We were just...too out of the way for anyone to put enough effort into trying to take over. And since then we've only gotten more isolated. The Corpse City is between us and Cochise and Safford, Flagstaff is way up north, and there's the Sonoran Desert between us and Yuma. Even the raiders...well, like I said. We're just too out of the way even for them.

[Surely you've fought them before?]

Oh, for sure, just not frequently. There have been couple raids, maybe one a year. They usually hit us pretty hard, but it helps that we're on the move a lot more these days. The cattle need more grazing, so we move them around, between the better bits of grazing land out here.

[What do the raiders want from you?]

They mainly just want whatever they can take off our corpses. And our cattle. They love to butcher our cattle, I don't know what they fucking eat normally. People or whatever. There can't be that much SPAM and bottled water in the Corpse City, can there? Maybe they're hunting, maybe they're growing their own food...somewhere.

As for what they're like? Fucking nutters, all of them. They tear in on their trucks, screaming like hell, blaring music from their speakers to hype themselves up. They don't...they don't fight like normal people, they don't care. They just want to kill and...die, I guess.

Whatever happened to them out there in the desert...they're not the same.

[Do you ever encounter anyone else?]

Occasionally we bump into some scavengers or something out of Tucson, especially when we try and graze closer to the river. That's good land, and us and the Cochise boys both have our eyes on it in the long term...they'll probably get it first, though. There's more of them, and they're hungrier for land than we are.

And we do have friends, of course. Your salvager friend, the one who paid me to take you back to Yuma, back where you came from.

He scoffs.

We talk with them a bit, too. They claim all this land, out to Tucson and up into the Corpse City. You folks always have eyes bigger than your stomachs. They can't even beat the raiders on their border, do they think they can roll into the Corpse City?

Honestly, it's hard, but that's living in the desert for you. We've been doing it for a long, long time.

[Do you like it this way?]

So I like it? Can't rightly say. Life is what it is, ma'am. You live with it, and you do the best for yourself. If you're asking if we prefer it to the Old World...like I said, there were dark days for everyone. There's folks we'll miss, but no less than if they'd died in the Old World. If you're asking if we like not being bothered, then yeah, I can say we like it that way. That might change some day - Yuma might actually try and roll in, and well, that's life too. We'll deal with that when we can.

As we ride past a crooked sign labelled "Ventana Pass", I hear a sound on the desert wind. Revving engines, the roar of churned-up gravel, and the blaring of music.



Ah, shit. You better pray that isn't what I think.

Paulo stands in the saddle, and in the same moment we note the plums of dust cresting a nearby hill from our north and northeast, converging on us. The shrieks and war cries of raiders rise from war rigs as they spot us.

Yep. Shit.

 

[ScottishMongol]

I sit in the back of a war rig - a heavily converted APC. On the crate in front of me sits my recorder. My firearm has been confiscated. Outside I hear music, laughter and the roar of a fire, and the clank of machinery. After a while the hatch opens and my captor climbs inside to sit on the bench across from me. He presses the record button on my recorder.

Your friend got away.

He is tall, with a bald and black goggles covering his eyes. His clothing is a patchwork of military fatigues and other scraps, with bits of metal and far too many holstered knives. He is the leader of what I can only assume are the Sons of the Phoenix.

You seem confused. You gonna ask me a question?

[Why am I alive?]

He laughs.

Well, don't sound ungrateful or anything! Right, let's get that out of the way. We're not gonna cook and eat you, not when we've got the mule.

[Is that what you usually do with captives?]

Sometimes. Sometimes we make 'em slaves, if they're useful for something.

A pause.

I looked through your notes. You really did talk to everyone except us, huh? Didn't think we had anything important to say? Or did you just think we didn't want to talk?

[Do you want to...talk?]

Yeah...I think I do.

[How did you wind up out here?]

He stops and stares into space.

Our National Guard unit had mutinied. Phoenix was turning into a charnel house, we wanted nothing to do with it. We shot our commanding officers and tore out into the countryside west of the city. There were still some cattle and farmsteads out there, ones that had absorbed the first spray of refugees. We started taking over, requisitioning supplies. It was all bullshit of course, I think everyone was getting conflicting reports anyway so really all that mattered was that we had a lot of guns and trucks and we were telling people to do something, even if it was to cooperate or die.

Well, we moved from one place to another. That was where it started. We didn't want to completely strip a place bare, sometimes we even tried to leave them with enough to keep themselves alive, so they could have something left when we came around again.

Anyway, that might've worked if we'd been the only ones out there. There were other units who'd mutinied, and of course you were getting the hordes of refugees. All the roads out of Phoenix were getting pileups, it just looked like Hell - the whole eastern horizon was smoke in the day and the glow of fires by night. And of course, there weren't that many farms, so it fell to fighting over what was left.

You wouldn't believe what it was like if you weren't in it, just every day a new fight, no sides, just lots of people trying to kill each other for whatever was left. We killed and killed until taking a life was easy as breathing. We were...we were straight-up devils. We murdered, raped, stole, did what the fuck ever. We ate people, when there was nothing else to eat. Nothing mattered except trying to stay alive one day to the next.

We couldn't go to Flagstaff or Yuma, so we just stayed there and toughed it out. We already knew that all the passes were close, that Yuma was shooting "deserters" and throwing penal battalions against the refugees, and like...shit, once you do that stuff, you don't come back. You can't hang up your gun and go back to having a fucking day job. It's obscene!



He stops and takes a deep breath.

Do you wanna know something scary? Very few of us - probably none of us, the ones left alive at least - are insane. At least not like, gibbering mad, or going comatose or whatever. If you actually crack out here, you die pretty quick. I've seen it happen in all sorts of ways, just being suicidal in a fight or...whatever.

No. No, we're all...perfectly sane. We're not psychos, and that's the scariest thing about it. We aren't broken people, never were. We're just...people. Who plumbed the depths of what people can do when there's nothing to lose.

[How are you still alive?]

...we just kept doing what we were doing. If we couldn't go anywhere else, we'd make the best of the Wasteland. I don't gotta tell you that there's more gear than a thousand raiders could ever need. No, the real challenge was food. We hunt and scavenge in the ruins. We raid, of course. There used to actually be a lot more survivors out here, little farmsteads here and there. Not as many of those as there used to be of course. We've been going father afield, the outskirts of Yuma, the Indians, the ranchers up north.

[What inspired the raider aesthetic?]

I dunno, man, the spikes and shit seemed cool. We get a lot of down time, between driving around, might as well customize the war rigs a little bit. As for the music, well, even twisted motherfuckers like us listen to music. It gets you hyped up for a fight, and it drowns out...everything else.


As for the gas...shit, you don't wanna know what refining that stuff in open pits does to a person. That'll probably kill us before some bullet from Yuma or Flagstaff does us in. Those wells are about the only thing worth really fighting for out here, and they change hands between raider bands about once a year. Sooner or later someone's gonna send one up in flames and then who fucking knows where we'll be.

No, that's not gonna last forever. We're going to end up sun-bleached bones like everyone else, and if we only managed to buy ourselves a few extra years, then fuck, at least we bought them one day at a time.


Honestly, we're not here to build anything. We're not starting a new civilization, we're just staying alive one day at a time, and even then I don't think half of us care if we make it through tomorrow. If we die fighting Yuma or another band of raiders...whatever. The suicidal ones checked out a long time ago, but sometimes I think we were the real cowards, cause we couldn't go through with it.

[So why the name?]

Hmm? Oh, right, Children of the Phoenix. I dunno what crazy stories you heard, about how a big mythical firebird destroyed the Old World, so that a new one could rise from the ashes. I dunno, it's as good a fucking explanation for what happened as anything. You think God did this? You think it was some fucking aliens? Who fucking knows man, whatever did this wanted all this shit to happen. They wanted the world to burn. Well I hope we've started a hell of a bonfire for them.

[You're not serious?]

Course not. It's a fucking joke. It's all a fucking joke!

He shakes his head.

Man, if there is a God then there must be a Hell, and if there's a Hell I bet they've got something real special set aside for me down there.

[Are you going to let me go?]

A pause.


Realistically, I can do whatever I want.

He claps his hands together and stands up.

But right now roast mule sounds like the best fucking thing I've had all month, so I think I'm gonna go eat, and then afterwards we'll dump you, so you can turn in your little report.

[Wait. Is there anything you'd like to say to the rest of the world?]

He pauses, and seems to be genuinely at a loss.

Tell them...I dunno. Tell them that any one of them could have ended up like us.

And, hey. Thanks for the chat, you know?

A few hours later, I'm dumped unceremoniously out of the back of the war rig. I stagger to my feet among scattered ashes, fragments of charred bones, and other bits of refuse. The war rig roars to life, as do the others, and music blares as they take off, leaving me standing in the middle of a dust cloud, alone in the Wasteland.

***

Well...there you go. I'm fairly sure this is the ending, though I may write an epilogue at some point. At any rate, this has been a Monument to Man's Arrogance. Thank you all so much for reading and commenting, it's honestly kind of incredible that I managed to finish something lmao. I had fun writing this and I hope you had fun reading it!

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