No Juice Chapter 3: the Dirty Rogue Rules of Existence

I found Frenchie outside a small tent, not too far away from the Warpig. Just far enough he’d probably say. “Some light show, uh?” he asked me. “Worl’ comin’ to and end or what?” I shrugged. What the hell did I know?

I’d instantly liked the fellow, in spite of having been somewhat of a prisoner when I’d first met him and in spite of him having openly taken advantage of the fact. He’d have taken anything he had a use for. This was the way, these days and I’d lost more than a pack of smokes and a battery in the days behind me. Would lose a lot more in the days ahead of me. Or maybe that was all over since I’d become a Dirty Rogue.

A Dirty Rogue. Did things just get better or worse? Am I more likely to survive or die? I’d found the T-Rex and realized the quest had only now, after all these many years, just begun. Frenchie jumped up, gave me a thorough inspection.

“Two arms, two legs and a head?!? Well done, bro!” Frenchie gave a mock roar, his fingers splayed to mimic claws, “T-Rex didn’t want to eat you?”

“Nope.”

“Recruited you, huh?”

“Yup.”

“Stealin’ juice?”

“Looks like. T-Rex says I’m useless as bugger-all til I do.”

“Truer words never spoke,” he pointed at me, serious for probably the first time. “Welcome to my world, Media.” He pulled an honest-to-god actual cigarette and to my amazed eyes, lit it.

“I haven’t seen a cigarette in…” I tried to figure it but couldn’t, “well, a long fuckin’ time!”

He took a deep draw. When was the last time I’d seen a cigarette? “I know,” the cat winked, “I mus’ be the las’ smoker in the worl,’ uh Media?” He probably was. “Da filters I foun’ somewhere in Germany. Leaves ain’t real tobacco but it reminds me of it.”

It’s a deeply ingrained habit, the smokes, making my mouth water just looking at it. Amazing, to have outlasted nearly all our other addictions, all neatly trumped by the biggest, most wide-ranging addiction of all: Juice, or lack thereof, priced all other addictions right out of existence. Like your booze, need your smokes or dig your crack? We’re out. Forever. What are you going to do now?

“Dirty Rogues is a big operation,” he began, jarring me from thoughts, I mean, is he going to let me have a drag off that thing or what? “you wanna know what any big operation is all about?” he quizzed me before answering his own question. “Juice. You know ‘dis, right?” I nodded. It made sense.

“We get it where we can find it. Barter for it when we can, take it when we got to,” he shrugged like what’re you gonna do, y’know? Around us the campsite was coming to life, Rogues shaking sleep out of their eyes, grumbling against the Fates and cursing the T-Rex. Quietly.

“Any military has an infantry, since da dawn of time,” Frenchie continued. “T-Rex sees us as his infantry. Cuz he knows the essential fact ‘a da Oil Wars: putting bullets into somebody is a peripheral task. Done only when you absolutely must so as not to waste any of dat which should not be wasted. On a battlefield full of assholes that are trying to steal from you every bit as much as you are of him? It’s shit like this, make him a great man. I don’t like him, not one bit, but…” he trailed off, maybe enjoying his smoke or maybe just not wanting to talk anymore about the T-Rex. Great man or no, they called him the Thunder Lizard for a reason.

“Anyway, da T-Rex,” Frenchie got himself back into lecture mode, “da war trumpets blasted and everybody else was hyped to fight Eurasia and the Russkies, everybody all full of blood-lust piss and vinegar, comprend?” I understood it. So did any citizen of a Nation at war, which at that phase was a pretty all-encompassing category. “All da udder squadrons and battalions and platoons and everybody couldn’t get out der fas’ enough to kill an’ be killed, belly full of anger an’ a heart full of fear.”

I remembered it well. There was an awful lot of fear going around and who could blame anybody? It turned out that it was a situation where the other guys did something awful to us and they were coming to get us so we had to go over there and fight them kind of deal. And I distinctly remember charges that this faction or other of them ate the children of their enemies. So, there was that. You just have to fight that stuff right?

“Not da T-Rex,” he smiled and nodded like he’d thought of the idea himself, “an’ not da Dirty Rogues neither. Fuck ‘dat. He jus’ kep sendin’ us back and forth to the supply depot, a different Rogue each time, claiming to be from a different division. Said da same thing to each Rogue before he sent ‘em, da same thing I’m gonna tell you when I’m done yammerin’ away at the moonlight.” He took another deep haul. He’s gonna smoke the whole goddamned thing, I remember thinking, right in front of me. Fuck’s sakes.

“First supply clerk dat caught wise to me got smoked wit a can of Campbells Chunky Style, I ‘tink it was, eh?” He laughed as if it were just yesterday he’d brained some poor bastard with a can of soup. “An when T-Rex heard I didn’t pick up dat dented can and put it in my loot-bag with res’ of da loot he kicked my ass all over the campground.” He laughed, “an’ whose to say at this late date dat I didn’t deserve it. Not me, not you and an’ not nobody. I’d murder for a can of Chunky-style.”

“Me too,” I agreed. Why not?

“A few of us caught on right quick to da T-Rex’s thinking. I think me, it’s because I’m French,” he smiled and shrugged -as if to say is it not dat way?- “but da T-Rex had his one good eye on da prize, the only prize der can ever be in dis War. Who can keep da pieces on da board and, more importly dan dat?” He held his finger in the air and waited for me to finish it…

“More importantly than that is who can keep the pieces moving. The longest.” I paused. “Til the end.”

“C’est ca!” he beamed, approving of the answer and giving my head a knock as if to test it’s ripeness, “To the end! You gonna be just fine stealin’ juice, Media.”

“My name’s-” I held out a hand.

“Forget it, whatever it is,” he advised/ordered. Ordered?? “ You Media now," he laughed as if I had no say in that matter. Which I guess I didn’t. “Fuck it. A good name nick-name is not to be wasted!”

Frenchie had packed everything up neatly and I helped him load everything into the back of a pick-up truck with some fairly extensive armor modifications. Others were also loading and a boy of about ten was already in the back, placing each item with maximum efficiency. Turned out making yourself useful was the only way you’d last in this outfit. Not just the T-rex’s orders but the way of life for a Dirty Rogue, a code which every last Rogue held sacred.

“Anyways, you wanna know what he told dem Rogue troopers on their pantry missions, you ready for da rules of your bran’ new existence as one a’da Dirty Rogues?”

“Lay it on me.”

“Make you a deal”

“Fuck! What?”

“Deal is I teach you to steal juice and you make me famous, uh?” We both laughed. It was ridiculous. Famous amongst whom? “You tell da worl’ ‘bout Frenchie and his band of thieves in da tyrannical T-rex’s Dirty Rogues,” he howled aloud like a werewolf, for no reason I could discern. “So when Frenchie he go back to la belle provence all da ladies know his name and abilities, oui?” Werewolvian howl now explained.

“Deal, what’s the goddamned rules?”

“Scrapper!” he bellowed, and the ten year old boy looked up from his task. “What’s the first rule of Resource Acquisition?” Kid frowned like it was below him to be quizzed on something so deeply ingrained. He dropped a rolled-up sleeping bag in a pile and held up a single finger,

“Juice first, Frenchie!”

"And?"

Kid sighed like he had no time for something so obvious: “…food and water second.” “Medicine third. Weaponry fourth.” He held out the required number of fingers for each task. It made perfect sense to me as soon as I heard it and it would rule my days every waking second I was to be a Dirty Rogue.

We rounded the corner and came upon Acquisitions. They looked no different form the rest of the Dirty Rogues: racially and gender mixed, filthy and cold. The only difference from any other squadron in the Dirty Rogues was there were more children in Acquisitions than anywhere else. Frenchie would explain it to me later, that kids were essential in getting into small places, and quietly when they want to. When they were fit to be soldiers they’d fight the good fight like anybody else.

Some of the kids you’d see amongst the platoon were biological children of the Rogues themselves, others kids had been absorbed by the platoon where necessary. Kids made good soldiers, as horrific as that would have sounded Pre Peak. They were naturally adept at it, saw life as a game, didn’t take up much space and didn’t eat as much food. Maybe we’d all burn in hell for exposing them to a life of war, but I had a good idea we were all up shit creek on that front anyway.

Of the twelve gathered before me, five were under the age of thirteen I would have guessed, three boys, two girls. The rest were adults in various stages of preparedness. My first thought upon seeing the assembled group was not the battle-hardened soldiers I knew them to be, but rather a couple of close-kit families on a campsite. One fellow leaned up against his fast-track, playing his guitar for the assembled children who watched him play as if it was magic. Gone were the distractions of the past, the videogames and television. Post Peak, the guitar was making a huge comeback.

“One foot on the brake and one on the gas, hey!” the song was slower than the original I had heard so long ago in Paris, he played it a little moodier. American driving tunes was the hottest nostalgia around, the last big trend to hit the internet before the whole thing just fizzled out. “Post my face wanted dead or alive, take my license and all that jive because I can't drive 55.” He had a strong voice and played the guitar pretty well.

“Frenchie!” exclaimed the youngest of the group, a girl of probably about eight years.

“Ah, bonjour ma petit,” he smiled at her as he swooped her up into his arms. “Comment cava, uh?”

“Bien,” she responded shyly, fearful of me. I was a stranger here, and in this wartorn world a stranger was something to watch carefully.

“I teach dem all French,” Frenchie told me in a prideful aside, putting the girl back to the ground. “Dey say when dey are young is best for people to learn da new language, eh? All the children in Resource Acquisition speak French. Can save your life if you’re ripping off Eurasians.”

“I saw a big, big star last night Frenchie!” the little girl informed him, “the biggest I’ve seen in my whole life! Did you see the big star?” A troubled look washed across his face before he turned back to her.

“Oui, Aurora” he responded to the girl simply, “I saw the big star also.” The star was one thing, the shimmering globule was another.

“Where did it come from,” Aurora persisted in the way that only a child can.

“Je ne c’est pas,” he shrugged at her, “but do you know who might have an idea is our brand new friend Media.”

“Do you know where the big star came from, Mr Media?” Aurora asked me, more comfortable around me after being introduced by Frenchie. The Quebeccer turned and waited for an answer the same as Aurora did. The team around me had started loading their stuff on the back of another modified pick-up.

“Have to be a supernova,” was my guess. I’d taken astronomy in university, the one science credit I needed before moving on with my real passion, journalism. I had enjoyed the course though, marvelling at what we know and don’t know about Life, the Universe and Everything. I was the last generation of Oil-Age students, and I often wondered what the world would look like when and if we could some day return to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake rather than simple survival. The libraries had been sacked and pillaged for heat in the last several winters and the Internet, maybe the last vestige of man’s intellectual accumulation, was lying dormant for the foreseeable nonce, waiting to be switched back on by whoever had the juice to do it. Maybe aliens. Maybe God. Maybe the T-Rex. Maybe nobody.

“What’s a supernova?” Aurora asked me, as Frenchie picked her up and settled her into the back of the pick-up beside the guitar player and a woman who may have been her mother. I hopped in across from her as Frenchie got into the front and gunned the engine.

“A supernova is when a star explodes and dies,” I informed Aurora who had waited patiently for my response. She looked troubled at this, and no wonder.

“That’s sad,” she said. The motherly figure beside her looked a little troubled at me. Though young, Aurora was probably no stranger to death and I think I could have phrased it in a more indelicate manner. I’d been on my own and fighting for my life for so long that social exchanges were still a trifle difficult, especially with kids.

“It’s not really sad, Aurora,” I began explaining, “that star does it all it can then blows apart in a beautiful explosion of light and fury which goes on to make other stars. So that star becomes a bunch of baby stars.” I thought it was something like that, but it had been a long time ago since my uni days, and only since the big black-outs had I been thinking as much about astronomy. I think we all were. You had to.

“Emmett!” Frenchie bellowed from the front, “give us some tunes, for chrissakes!”

The fellow with the guitar, Emmett, started strumming another rocking tune and the children all clapped their hands appreciatively. A few of the adults, myself included, smiled as well, as he sang:

“Here they come! The boys in the bright white sports car! Waving their arms in the air! Who do they think they are? And where did they get that car?”

I’d never heard it before but I liked it.