Video

[theweakhavepurpose]

[The video turns on to show the outskirts of town, nearby is a fence of sorts made of junk Pratt collected from the Colosseum and some baling wire. It's encircling a fancy new shooting range complete with training dummies and targets and some other items that aren't immediately identifiable.

Okay fancy isn't the right word, everything is made of remnants he found and some of the targets are empty soup cans on sticks but it looks serviceable.]

This is Deputy Pratt. I know we're all busy freezing to death, but if you'd like to take your mind off that, I've finally got this all together. Range is up and running!

It's set up by the orchard, or well.. where the orchard should be anyway.

[He pans the camera towards the orchard to show where it is and then starts walking towards the range. The camera is surprisingly steady, this is someone who has filmed hundreds of Vine videos of him and other deputies doing stupid stuff on slow days. He's a pro at this shit.]

I've got training dummies up front for anyone who wants to get their melee fighting on. But uh.. try not to completely destroy them because I don't have a ton of wood to fix them up.

For the range itself I've got targets at 10 meters, 25 meters, 50 and 100. It's not perfect because I'm measuring this with my feet, but it's close enough. Spinner targets are for guns, and the bigger baled ones are dirt and wood so they shouldn't chew up your arrows too bad.

This thing is a work in progress.

[He sets a can onto a contraption off to the side of the range, stomping his foot on a pedal and sending it shooting down the lane and a little to the left. The camera gets unsteady here as he launches a knife that's far too big for this at the can and it tumbles to the ground.]

Keeps shooting them off to the side, but it's better than throwing something and then trying to hit it.

As for weapons... [He walks over to a large but very battered chest and opens the lid.]

I've got some throwing knives that aren't stupid like the hunting knife I have. A few bows. And some arrows in here. Keep them in this crate because the weather is not kind to bowstrings and you don't want these things snapping when you're shooting.

It's on the honor system because I'm not going to freeze my ass off monitoring this twenty-four seven. So try not to burn it down in the next two days.

[Please guys. He worked hard on this. Don't set it on fire.]

Comments

[theweakhavepurpose]

Guns are cheap. Ammo is expensive. A basic 12-gauge is less than two hundred dollars. I got an M1911 for free once for being one of the first 500 people at the opening of a camping store.

Guns are incredibly cheap.

[It's like shaving razors, but you know.. far more deadly.]

Yeah. Hope County, Montana.

[coyoteking]

Well shit, that explains it. Either you're from before the War, or you're from one of those places where it didn't even happen.

[Before, you know, all the gun factories exploded.]

Montana was, what, out West? If it was far enough from Nevada, it's probably still there.

[theweakhavepurpose]

The .. Collapse?

[He has no idea what he's talking about.]

Yeah, on the other side of Idaho from Washington. There's.. a lot of nothing between us and Nevada. Why? What happened to Nevada?

[coyoteking]

Never heard anybody call it that before, but some people make up crazy-ass names for it, so sure. I'm talking about the Third World War, but it's kind of the only one that matters anymore, so we usually don't make the distinction.

[Who cares about some guys in trenches and shit when half the world died?]

It's mostly not there anymore. Guess there were some important military facilities out that way, so it was a prime target.

[theweakhavepurpose]

I'm not really surprised we had a Third World War. That's what we're best at, fighting and tearing down whatever we built up.

No one is shedding any tears over the complete destruction of Elko.

[Famous for being that one town that's halfway between Montana and everywhere else and boasting enough methheads to start their own football league.]

[coyoteking]

Yeah, for all the other shit humans are bad at, we're good at war, I'll give us that.

[There's a kind of a shrug in his tone.]

Dunno what Elko was, but people seem pretty sore about Las Vegas. I'm not old enough to remember it, but some idiots have been out there a few years, tryin' to bring it back. They're probably all irradiated mutants or something now.

[Not that irradiated mutants are... a thing, but you know.]

[theweakhavepurpose]

It's really not as great as everyone claims. It's super hot, it smells rank, everyone is drunk or high so if you walk down the strip there'll be someone puking about every twenty feet.

The shows are alright.

I will say the hotels give you free boxes of condoms and lube cuz they know what you're there for. So that's nice at least.

[Or what he was there for anyway.]

[coyoteking]

Yeah, can't say I'm sold. There's plenty of places for people to fuck in hotels, we don't need an even grosser one.

[And now it's time for an abrupt subject change.]

Hey. I didn't really break your nose, did I?

[theweakhavepurpose]

I think the idea is you have a lot more options for fuckable partners.

[C'mon man, he's probably gone thru every available mildly attractive person for 50 miles at this point.]

No, but you did fuck up my eye socket. It hadn't finished healing yet.

[He has a very punchable face apparently.]

[coyoteking]

Right, you did say you lived in a small town, didn't you?

[If he felt like it and wasn't in a precarious position, Charles would have a pretty large sea of fish to choose from, even with his world's population decimated. But since he thinks of small towns as, like, ten people, he assumes Pratt has some difficulty.]

Anyway, it wasn't on purpose. Didn't know someone else hit you before I did. If it's any consolation, you split my lip open.

[theweakhavepurpose]

Very small.

[Okay not ten people small, but definitely small enough that a cult took over and no one noticed.]

It seemed like a pretty purposeful punch to the face.

Makes me feel a little better I guess.

[coyoteking]

It should make you feel better. Not a lot of people can say that.

[Mostly because anyone who could is probably dead. And/or part of his family.]

And yeah, okay, the punch was on purpose, but not fucking up your eye. I wasn't tryin' to do permanent damage.

[Especially not to eyes. He understands that too well.]

[theweakhavepurpose]

[ A dubious honor. ]

That's fair. I really wasn't trying to poke around in your head or anything. It wasn't intentional.

[ He especially wasn't trying to show anyone the terrible shit in his past either.]

Truce?

[coyoteking]

Yeah, truce.

[He wasn't planning to hold a grudge anyway, but it's better to say it out loud.]

I reacted kinda strong, happens sometimes.

[That's vague.]

... What was up with all that shit, though? I won't get pissed again, and you don't have to tell me, but I gotta ask.

[theweakhavepurpose]

Which one? The .. cannibalism thing?

[ He's still not really sure what exactly Charles saw, just that there was something about him feeding someone else human meat. Unfortunately he's done that multiple times so that doesn't narrow down the memory, but like hell will he admit that. ]

We're all meat.

[ Jacob's waste not attitude is hard to explain without the man himself there insisting that it was true. Telling everyone of the plan and the way things would be in his calm, understated voice that brokered absolutely no argument. ]

It wasn't my idea. But I also.. didn't want Rook to starve. And die. Starving to death is terrible. I know. Happened to me.

[ Well happening to him currently back home. But he's so close to death it barely makes a difference. ]

[coyoteking]

[Charles has to remind himself that he said he wouldn't get mad. But "we're all meat"? Seriously? That sounds like something some crazy-ass nuclear wasteland hick would say. Yeah, sure, technically people are meat. But they're also fucking people.]

So it was cannibalism or death? Sounds like a pretty fuckin' bad choice.

[He also has to remind himself that it probably wasn't Pratt's fault. Putting together the rest of what he saw, there was a lot of torture involved. And cages.]

But I'll give you that, starving is fucking awful. Sorry about you, you know, bein' dead.

[theweakhavepurpose]

I'm better off dead at this point. Everyone is better off with me dead.

[That Sorrow event that hasn't happened yet didn't have much of an effect on him. People really ARE better off without him. He knew it.]

More like cannibalism or being tortured to death while starving. So yeah.. limited options.

Sorry about your eye. That seems... terrible too.

[coyoteking]

Oh come on, don't do that shit. What, are you Hitler? Nobody's that bad.

[If Pratt's that bad, then what does that make him? Charles is fairly certain he's got a higher body count, directly or indirectly. Maybe some people would be better off if he was dead, but fuck that. There are other people who'd be worse off, and he cares more about them.]

And you don't need to compare my eye to being tortured to death. Yeah, it sucks sometimes, but I'll live.

[He may or may not be trying to brush it off because he'd rather not think about what that means Pratt saw. He doesn't like the idea of people seeing that vulnerability, even if it's so far in the past. And he definitely doesn't want to admit how much it still affects him.]

[theweakhavepurpose]

[He snorts.]

Okay fine, no I'm not Hitler. But I'm probably dangerous.

[Certainly doesn't look it. But he sounds convinced.]

Let's go with our lives suck and this place is a shithole for showing it to other people.

[coyoteking]

Everybody's dangerous if you push 'em enough.

[Though some just, you know, take less of a push.]

But yeah, I'll take that one. I try to make the best of a bad situation, but this is bullshit.

[theweakhavepurpose]

Very, very true. Need the right circumstances and everyone can become a monster.

[He doesn't have a lot of faith in people. Not anymore. Not now that he's seen how little it can take to turn them into killers against their will. Make them believe they chose that life and have always been like that. Forget who they were completely.

It's so easy to do. So disturbingly easy.]

Maybe the next one will all be happy shit. We can go to an amusement part and eat cotton candy and nothing bad happens at all.

[He doesn't believe that for one second.]

[coyoteking]

[Monster, huh? There's a word worth wrestling with. Another time, maybe. Charles doesn't feel like thinking about whether or not he is one right now. And anyway, which ones deserve to be called that? The people who get molded by their circumstances, or the people who create those circumstances in the first place?]

Yeah, happy shit. You keep the hope alive, I guess. Don't know what the hell an amusement park is, but I guess it's kinda self explanatory, isn't it? I could definitely go for some sugar and nothing bad, though.

[theweakhavepurpose]

If Hope is relying on me he's starving to death.

[Serves the gods right for dragging them all here honestly.]

Oh it's uh.. like a big park but with roller coasters and rides and way too expensive food.

[coyoteking]

So like a Navy Pier kinda deal?

[Forgive him, his entire world is one city.]

Guess people need a distraction no matter what world you're in.

[theweakhavepurpose]

Is a pier like a boardwalk? There aren't beaches where I live. It's probably similar.

People gotta unwind stress somehow. Or they bottle it up and then explode.

[See Exhibit A: Deputy Pratt.]