Faking and Entering

“What am I supposed to do?!” Daddy shouted at mommy at the dinner table, crushing a bunch of mail envelopes in his grip. All the yelling scared me into the next room. “There aren’t any jobs left. All the damn robots took them!”

The lights suddenly turned off on their own for some reason. Mommy was crying while trying to put old batteries into a flashlight so we could see in the dark.

“You can’t keep making that excuse,” Mommy argued, giving up and throwing the flashlight onto the ground. I shivered as all the springs and glass bounced across the floor.

“It’s broken…” I lamented, softly.

“Do you want me to just tell you what you want to hear?” Daddy slammed his fist on the table and fell back into his seat, then his head landed on his dinner plate. “We’re out of options.” his voice sounded calm again, too calm for all the fighting they just did. “I have to join them,” Daddy said. “I have to join the resistance. We can’t keep letting the government do this to us.”

“You can’t!” Mommy started slugging him with the morning paper. “You’ll die! Our children need you!”

Die? I didn’t want Daddy to die!

“What? You’re saying our children need a deadbeat veteran who can’t even provide for his daughter…” he grit his teeth as tears flowed out of his eyes, carefully rubbing Mommy’s belly, “...and son…?”

It got quiet again. A scary wind howled outside, breaking the silence.

“I don’t have a choice,” Daddy's head lowered just before he slammed his fist onto the plate and broke it. “Damn it!”

“Stop breaking everything!” Mommy hit him again with the newspaper. “We don’t have the money to replace it.”

“You’re one to talk, breaking that flash light.”

I couldn’t take their fighting anymore. It was too scary watching them get so mad, so I ran in, screaming at the top of my lungs, getting between them and attempting to make sure neither could touch the other.

“Stop!” I screamed. “Stop yelling at each other! Family doesn't do that!”

I couldn’t tell if my words got them to reconsider their actions, but now all their attention was on me and things got quiet.

If we needed emergency money, then there was only one option. Mommy’s cell phone was on the table, so I picked it up and dialed 911.

“What are you doing, sweetheart?” Daddy grabbed the phone and hung up before the ringer started. “Why did you just try to call the police?” Daddy’s face cringed as he glanced at Mommy. “We weren’t fighting that bad again, were we?”

“It’s an emergency,” I said. “I need to ask the police to find me a job now so we can make lots of money.”

Wait, why were they laughing at me? Did I say something funny? Maybe I should try and get a job as a comedian or something.

***

“Vanessa!” Yuri was rubbing my arm to wake me up. “We’re here, I think…”

“Hmm…?” I dozed off after Yuri took the wheel about halfway to our destination. The surroundings looked familiar, so he followed my directions properly. “How was the traffic?” I smirked.

“Non-existent,” he said with a dry chuckle.

At this point, it was better not to run into random people while traveling around. Less of a chance for them to jump you.

As we exited the highway, there was an old Saulmart that we stopped and parked our car in front of. We were a few miles from the actual city, so we needed to do a bit of walking.

Lake Geneva was currently known for being a traders outpost. When the war hit, a lot of people who lived here, including tourists who were visiting, fell back into the deeper parts of the city by the beach and built a pretty strong perimeter around it. Soon after a huge wall went up, it became pretty prosperous compared to other territories. It was most merchants' dreams to eventually end up here with a shop.

To the disappointment of all the rich people living across the shores of the lake, that wall couldn’t surround their massive summer mansions, so their homes became the target of thievery and small skirmishes. Eventually amateur warlords who stole them began referring to them as castles, and being neighborly was re-coined as a term for not shooting the faction living next to you for simply stepping outside… Or into view of your sniper in the window.

The city was always looking for people to come in and clean out warlords. The current progress was that about seventy percent of the lake had been cleared out of those factions, which left a lot of these homes pretty empty.

Empty wasn’t the right word, because there were plenty of things still left in them us scavengers were allowed to take, but only if we were willing to make a little progress pushing back the warlords.

Although things were looking alright there, there was one particular building that nobody had ever managed to crack open and spill out the yolk of degeneracy from. Iron Manor.

It was a big fortress-like house that sat on a hill at one end of the lake, originally owned by the head of an iron works plant in Chicago. He made bank selling metal to the Feds for bots. We could see the top of the building from the highway.

“What is that?” Yuri asked.

“It’s every scavenger’s wet dream,” I replied. “Nobodies ever been able to scavenge it, but they say there’s unimaginable treasure hidden in the basement.”

I usually didn’t fall for urban legends like that, but we all had to wonder what was in that place, since it was the biggest rumor of the state.

The problem was, most people who went in never came out, so we had no idea what was going on inside. It was uncharted territory few were willing to explore.

Enter Ben… The all American dude was an ex-spec ops sniper. He was tactical and resourceful, and probably had the best chance of getting deep into Iron Manor alongside the spritely little Sadie.

Sadie wasn’t a killer like he was when she got to work. She was able to use her small size to get a good stealth bonus when exploring places without being seen.

In essence, he shoots, she loots.

They’d come here apparently hoping to take on the biggest challenge in this part of the state. By extension this challenge was now ours too, since we were tailing them.

While I gave Yuri the rundown of things, we both did some scouting to see how tight security was at the front gate. It was light compared to most places, still a pain though.

“You seem awfully suspicious here…” Yuri noticed. “Are you welcomed here or not?” asked Yuri.

“If we were, do you think I’d have us park so far away from the city?”

As well received as I was back home, merchants in other areas like this hated my guts. It wasn’t just for my deals, it was because somebody had been tainting my name. Now that I was thinking about it, Rick was probably the culprit for that one too. Dumb weasel of a man.

So since I couldn’t get an official license to sell here, I had no chance of legally walking in. But that’s never stopped me before.

Getting forged papers was easy. I paid a guy a lot of money to get me some fake IDs that could sneak us right inside without any issues. Otherwise my half blue dyed hair and the clear “WALKER” name tag on my army jacket, nobody here knew what I looked like.

Still, this ID had a slight chance of failing the security test. It was a copy of last year's papers. So if anything changed in the meantime, I was boned.

“Come on, Yuri,” I said, pulling a hood up from the hoodie under my jacket to hide my hair.

We both walked up to the gate with another group of people, hoping the crowd would add a little confusion to the moment. Once it came time for them to check our papers, I felt a tense feeling squeeze my heart. With all my focus, I kept a straight face, smiling when they looked at me.

“You’re a merchant from up north?” the security guy asked me.

“Yep,” I faked a perky tone. “Figured it was time to make a trip down here and scout out the competition.”

That got a laugh out of him, which was a good sign.

“Alright, you and your boyfriend are clear,” he handed the paper back to me. “Just make sure to update this ID. It’s expiring soon.”

I wanted to strangle this guy for calling Yuri my boyfriend. I mean, Yuri wasn’t ugly or anything, I just hated him saying that.

Once we were free to walk past, I started venting.

“Boyfriend… Yeah right. I’ll kill the next person who thinks we're a couple.”

“Being around you works wonders for my self esteem, you know that?” Yuri sighed. “So, what’s your plan here?”

Getting right to work should have been my first objective, but once I saw the streets filled with clean, pre-war cars, several people walking in and out of colorful shops and restaurants, and the cool misty air coming off the lake, I felt a little nostalgic for the world before the war and had to sit a moment to take it all in.

My parents used to find every excuse to make a trip here. We were poor as dirt, so birthday boat trips with ice cream made us feel high class for a few hours.

It didn’t happen often, but this actually bummed me out. One of the few places I would have loved to spend a little time in and I wasn’t even welcome here without faking my identity.

“You alright?” Yuri asked, nudging my arm.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Come on… Ben and Sadie are probably already at Iron manor. So let’s rent a boat and head over ourselves.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for them to come out?” Yuri asked, pretty optimistic that they would be coming out at all.

“What, and wait for them to take all the good stuff?” I snickered. “No chance. Let’s hurry up.”