Sean Beaudoin - Welcome Thieves

Snap!

“It’s beautiful,” Steve says.

It’s true. It really is.

I light two cigarettes and we exhale at the same time, twin plumes that fill the car with smoke.

We get nailed. Right outside the fence. Mainly because Young Nick Drake’s trench coat snags on the razor wire and he refuses to split without it, dangling like that Christmas ornament you leave in the box every year but never throw away.

I’m like, “Dude, time? In terms of it running out?”

And he’s like, “Just go without me.”

So I yank his ankles until the seam rips, which wakes Jeff and Pink Lady, who set off the mayo jar alarms and pretty soon all of Base Omega surrounds us with pointy sticks and accusatory eyes. Are we by any chance heading for the long-rumored New Lagos? Have we buried a secret hoard over the next dune filled with cocktail wieners and cans of savory V8?

“No way,” I say.

“Of course not,” Young Nick Drake says.

BULLSHIT, Dorsal Vent writes in the sand.

Mom sends Bob Her New Boyfriend Who Swears He Didn’t Kill Dad to go and wake Larry Our Leader, who comes out of his yurt wearing nothing but muscles and biker boots, looking very sleepy.

As well as grievously betrayed.

“Set up the wheel,” he says. “It’s spinning time.”

WE HAD A DOG N THOUGHT IT WOULD PROTECT US. WE HAD A GUN N THOUGHT IT WOULD PROTECT US. WE HAD A DAD AND (AT LEAST I) THOUGHT HE WAS GONNA PROTECT US.

— graffiti at base of Mandalay Bay fountain

STOP PRETENDING THIS IS A MOVIE AND YOU’RE TOUGH. YOU’RE NOT TOUGH AND THIS ISN’T A MOVIE.

— graffiti at base of MGM Grand pyramid

KRUA, I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT YOU. LET’S JUMP THE FENCE AND ESCAPE TOGETHER.

— graffiti on a rock just outside the fence

My name’s Krua, which is exactly the sort of dumbass handle your mom saddles you with postcollapse, hoping one day you become a “strong warrior woman” + rule the wasteland or whatever. I am not a woman. I’m twelve. Who rules the sun? Who rules the sand? I’m also not psychic or insanely smart or descended from an ancient royal bloodline. I’m just this way-too-tan girl robbed of shopping for her first bra by the apocalypse. So, no, I will not discover a lost city or learn to commune with friendly buzzards or battle other twelve-year-olds in a special televised battle arena to save my little sister or tribe. If only because, hey, little sister died of infected tooth/bored resignation months ago and our “tribe” is forty (possibly thirty-nine by the end of this sentence) exhausted people in Base Omega.

Which is really just a parking lot with a fence.

It’s like The Last of the Dehydrated Peas, Since There Sure Ain’t No Mohicans Left .

Base Omega features lots of arguments about tarps. Plus sunburn, expiring of ignoble diarrhea, and only minor cannibalism. Also, a big surge in rapish assault, always from behind (bad breath) followed by nervous pacing and a canine’s shifty regret. Sometimes an apology, sometimes not. Sometimes a revenge puncturing, sometimes not. Lucky Omegans live in old cars. Unlucky ones live in the shade of old cars. Almost no one wears fingerless leather gloves or empty bandoliers anymore. They barely remember why they’re so tired (ambient radiation) or why their family is gone (not enough rat sushi/only one chopstick) or why they can’t seem to rub two thoughts together (crankcase water=high benzene content).

Either way, Mom and Bob Her New Boyfriend Who Swears He Didn’t Kill Dad say we’re lucky to have found such a terrific home.

Lucky is relative. Most relatives are dead.

And no, I’m not hot. Random pervs and furtive yankers can stop reading right here because at no point will I take off my glasses, slip into a perfectly preserved wedding dress, and become Jennifer Lawrence.

Dudes, I haven’t brushed my teeth in years .

IN FEBRUARY I was promoted to Keeper of the Dictates. The dictates are written on skin that could conceivably be pig. In case you didn’t know, dictates are inviolable rules. In case you didn’t know, inviolable means sacrosanct. In case you didn’t know, sacrosanct comes from the Latin sac , which there’s a real shortage of dangling between Omega legs.

We have Tribal Caucus every Friday in the Grieving Yurt. It’s totally boring, except when I’m called on to recite dictates in support of motions. Motions are sometimes about More Food or Don’t Just Leave Poop or Who Remembers Knitting? But most often they’re about how Larry Wants That Thing You’ve Just Hidden. Like an earring. Or glasses with a single lens. Or a TAG Heuer inscribed “To my little hole-in-one” permanently frozen at 5:16. Complainers tend to get a spin of the wheel, so usually they just hand over the swag. Besides, Larry’s greed is vital. Without someone to unreasoningly hate and foment never-executed plots against, would Base Omega even bother to man the lookout posts anymore? Would we deign to boil sop water, bait lizard snares, or spend predawn hours searching the burning desert for the last few scraps left to burn?

Yeah, probably not.

The Twelve Dictates

(As told to Larry by God. Or in this case,

to Larry by Larry after huffing too much Freon.)

1. No worshiping graven images. No worship at all.

At first there was the whole bible thing, your various Korans and Upanishads. Liturgy. Verses. Knees on rocks beseeching, hands raised toward the sky. But results were minimal, so they got chucked. The subsequent Mother Earth/Gaia routine was a total nonstarter. Old gods and oracles were a big meh . Then things devolved a bit. Sacrifices. Robes and chants. Entrails and augurs and meaning to be found in random spatters of blood. “Not much meaning, too much mess” was the feeling in the end. Turns out there’s just no way to roast the family Doberman with a delicate sand marinade and still embrace the almighty. Small questions need small answers. The big lesson of apocalypse is that what we really used to worship was the idea that no matter how bad things got, some uniform would eventually drive up in a jeep and save us.

Politicians? Marines? The crucified son?

No one’s coming.

2. All decisions will be made by Larry. Got a beef, chief? You’re welcome to caucus a more equitable third-party solution on the other side of the fence.

Young Nick Drake says this is a foolish policy. He says partisan dickering is what started deep dystopia to begin with. Also, Ayn Rand. He says there are no solutions, but there is a better life out there.

I don’t believe him.

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true,” he says, his sad, gentle eyes sadder and gentler than usual.

Jeff and Pink Lady, who sit in a ’71 Torino all day, say I’m being a fool. Jeff makes theoretical origami swans while Pink Lady rakes his chest hair with a fork. They think Young Nick Drake is full of it. “We don’t need no consensus, we just need someone to be right for once,” they say. I’d like to study the question, but the selection in the Camry Lending Library is limited. And heavy on Augusten Burroughs. Even so, I’m pretty sure there was zero time for an airing of diverse perspectives the night a horde of kidney-gnawers stormed the fence with ear necklaces and femur torches.

Young Nick Drake thought we should let them in, negotiate.

Jeff and Pink Lady locked themselves in the Torino’s trunk.

Larry yelled, “Poke ’em through the links with sharp sticks!”

Which worked.

After that he was in charge.

3. To avoid abuses of power that will prove irresistible to even the most wizened leader, said leader can be overruled at any time by the checking balance of the Cabinet of Women. Base Omega formally recognizes that bigoted, entitled white men are responsible for the entirety of our plight and have always been the resource-sucking plunderers that certain websites once had the fortitude to point out. The early pagans were correct: matriarchy is the natural order of things. Chicks is smarter than dicks.