Argentinean Steakhouse

The protagonist of this story is a recovering junkie who has a scar on their face. On the way to the story's conclusion the protagonist encounters a Canadian. This person has an armored draisine. Plot elements include learning to use new weapons and rivals seeking someone's favor, and at least one character is motivated because they've always wanted to open a really good restaurant.

It had all gone wrong. I must have been halfway up through Minnesota by the time I ran out of gas. Every pump and station that I’d passed on those final hundred miles or so had already been drained dry by previous pilgrims. One by one I’d discarded my reserve oil canisters, pouring them into the engine of my car, till finally the gas needle has sunk below red and my engine had coughed, sputtered, and rolled to a halt on the empty shoulder of I95.

I’d known this moment would have come, thought it was going to back in Ohio when I’d hit that lonely stretch of highway and had to hightail it on foot for two days before reaching a gas station with reserves. Still, it was hard to give up the car. The progress was going to be mighty slow from here on out, even on the bike, and I’d have to ditch most of my stuff.

Getting out of the car, I surveyed the gray, ashen skies. It was daytime, or so I reckoned, evinced by a lightening of the permanent cloud cover. A wind scoured the rusted hulks that lined the lanes of the highways, and I shrugged deeper into my jacket. Maybe another couple of hundred miles till the border, and then up further beyond the fall out zone. Safety. Maybe.

I unstrapped the bike and got out my hiking backpack. It was going to be exhausting work pedaling with all that gear on my back, but there was nothing for it. I was already weak from going cold turkey on the Warren Cocktails. Shaky. But there'd been no way to take them with me, given their shelf life. I balled my hands into fists, and walked to the back of the car.

I opened the trunk and surveyed my collection of stainless steel pans, my wide array of butcher knives, the Bain Marie’s and strainers, ladles and basting pots, frying pans and can openers. Things I’d gathered along the way for when I finally made it to my destination. Looked like I was going to have to scavenge a whole new set of items when I arrived.

I began cycling north. At first the bike weaved and wavered as if I was drunk, but I soon found my style, and the miles began to unroll beneath my wheels. The highway headed north, always north, leaving the disaster area that was the everything within hundreds of miles of Washington DC and pretty much the whole of continental North America behind. I’d heard stories of people living out beyond the Rockies, sheltered and safe along the California coastline. Heard that much of Mexico was doing fine, though the islands had all turned into blights amidst the silty ocean. Not for me, though. I wanted north, up to Canada, maybe as far as the Arctic Circle if I had to. Pure air. Fresh and cold. That’s what I wanted.

About evening, as the shadows grew, if not longer, than more pervasively dark, I slowed down. Sweat was dripping from my nose and chin, and I felt weak, fain about to pass out. I near fell off the bike when I stopped, and unhitched my pack and let it crash to the ground. Nothing to see for miles but bare, dead trees, abandoned cars and drifts of ash. Maybe I had the radiation sickness. Maybe Doc Haddow had been wrong, and not enough years had gone by. I hunkered down and pressed my thumbs into my eyes and tried to not think about home.

The Warren, we’d taken to calling it. Twelve layers of subterranean bomb shelter just south of DC, right where the blast hit. Twelve layers so deep in the ground it had been safe for those who’d entered and locked the pressurized doors and taken the elevators down, down, down into the darkness. Bedrooms and recreational areas, a few biodomes and plenty of communications equipment. Built to house over 8,000 people by President Clinton back in 2020, but only some 2,500 had managed to get in before the bomb went off.

The wind was picking up, and I was beginning to shiver, the sweat turning to ice down my spine. I should be setting up the tent, getting my sleeping bag out, preparing for the plunge in temperature that always accompanied nightfall. But instead I simply hugged my knees and thought of what people would be doing back home on Level 4 in the Warren. The traditions that had set up these past fifteen years. The routines that made life bearable.

I was only six when I’d gone below. I’d not seen the sky nor sun now earth now the horizon except in movies and simulations. Maybe that’s what had caused me to buck and run. That and the desire to find fresh food. Fresh produce to cook with. Something beside the algae and carefully managed farm meat that was cultivated so assiduously on Level 7. God, watching those movies where people sat down and ate and ate and ate. Enough to drive a man mad.

A rhythmic creaking caught my attention. I ignored, thinking it the wind at first, but it kept growing louder. I was so cold by then, so stiff from the biking that I didn’t rise, just listened, mesmerized, until the creaking began to die away. Suddenly, not wishing to be left alone in the dark, I rose to my feet, grabbed my back and went crashing off the shoulder of the highway into the brittle bushes that snapped and broke before me, chasing the sound down.

Down a ditch and up the other side, through sparse undergrowth and then I hit railroad tracks, nearly tripped on the rubble and the bright lines of metal. Looking up and down the line, I saw something dark moving away from me, heading north along the rails, and with a cry I gave it chase, feet pounding on the rocks, each step jarring my bones and causing my head to pound.

It was a machine of some kind, a platform stuck right on the rails, a massive and ornate bicycle set in its center on which a fellow was pedaling with methodical intensity. He didn’t even look over his shoulder as I came close, running alongside. I unhitched my bag and swung it onto the platform, but a bright flare of electric blue light sizzled into place when my bag flew through the air, and sent it bouncing back into the darkness.

Blind panic seized me, a fierce desire to not be alone. I’d not been alone these past fifteen years, not ever, and these last few months of traveling by myself had near unmanned me, more than I knew. This was the first person I’d seen in weeks, and I wasn’t about to let them get away.

“Back off,” they yelled at me, as I kept pace alongside the platform, “You’ll fry and you’ll die if you jump on board.”

“Let me on!” I yelled.

“Hell no,” called the man, “You think I’m crazy?”

“I’m going to jump!”

“Don’t you do it,” he yelled, sounding angry now, “Don’t you be a fool.”

I began to swerve in, trying to build up speed for the leap. I didn’t care if it fried me. I wasn’t going to be able to make it far enough up north on that bike anyways. I didn’t have the strength.

The man yelled something as I jumped, and I landed on the platform, legs dragging behind me on the rocks. I began to slip off, but hands seized me by the back of the jacket and hauled me on board.

“What kind of idiot tries to commit suicide on my draisine?” he demanded, sounding furious. I blinked and rolled onto my back, looked up at the darkened face above me.

“I’m sorry,” I gasped, “I just didn’t want—I couldn’t—“

“Alright, easy there, catch your breath,” he said gruffly. The platform was losing speed now that he was no longer pedaling. Rough hands patted me down, and took the knife blade from my hip. It was my prized butcher’s knife, honed to a paper thin edge, and never before used.

“What are you doing out here in the dark by yourself, anyways?” asked the man, putting the knife in his pocket and moving over to sit on the seat of his bicycle.

“I’m heading north,” I said, pushing myself up into a seated position. “Heading for Canada, or further, if I have to.”

“Canada, hey? Why you going there?”

I felt delirious. The sweat was burning on my skin, drawn from me by the run. What I wouldn't do for a Warren Cocktail, all spice and fizz and full of life. I lay back and stared up the at the dark clouds, the seared sky. I’d only ever seen moon and stars in films, read about them in books. I took them on faith. “Restaurant,” I said. “Want to open a restaurant. Argentinean Steakhouse. Angus beef. Filet Mignon.” I said the words which were like talismans to me. “Prime cut. Tenderloin.”

“You’re one crazy man, hey?” said the stranger. “Hang on, then. Let’s see if we can’t get you a little closer to your goal.”

I heard him get back on the bicycle. Begin to pedal, and with a groan the platform began to shift forward. I thought of Susie and Martin 1 and Martin 2 below the earth, back in the Warren. Thought of all the rock above their heads, and thought of the clouds above mine. I couldn’t see the moon or skies, but I knew, on some basic, primal level, that I was just a little bit closer to them now than I’d ever been.