Five Years Running

The Hardlands - Mama Tex

Five miles from the last line of shacks marking the beginning of Vargos’ city limits marked the beginning of Mama Tex’s world. She’d lived in the city for almost three decades before she learned the hard way how hard it truly was to thrive in a city built to actively exploit those that called it home.

In pursuit of leaving the city behind for something greater, or maybe just for something different, she left the city one morning and drove her old car out into the surrounding Hardlands desert, a place once filled with smaller towns and suburbs now blighted by radioactive winds, acid rain, and abandoned buildings and highways stretching so far into the distance it was unclear where the Hardlands ended and the rest of the country began.

She’d left around age thirty, taking with her a shotgun, a water filter, some ragged clothes, and an item from her old job she couldn’t quite let go: a small old-model data chit. The data chit was outfitted to plug into the neural network of a house and handle various day-to-day tasks for a smart house such as controlling temperature, opening and closing blinds, activating appliances, and other homemaker tasks the rich found too tedious to deal with. At the time, she hadn’t been sure what she was going to do with it, since finding a working computer in the Glass Desert was a fool’s errand even if you knew where to look. But it gave her satisfaction holding on to a small piece of her old life in Vargos, a reminder of the digital neon-soaked hell she’d left behind.

Mama Tex woke up on a summer morning to the sound of engines roaring in the distance, roughly thirty miles up the road by her estimate. She lived far away from the other small settlements that littered the Hardlands, so the noise was an unwelcome sound. She hopped out of bed and exited the old bus she’d built up into the makeshift bedroom and bathroom that she called home now.

The old bus was surrounded on all sides by a thick wall of scrap metal and plywood junk she’d dragged to the spot over the years to keep mutated animals and other pests out of the living space, interrupted only by her old car she’d outfitted with an impressive computer network in the trunk. Although finding computer parts out in the desert was hard, it wasn’t impossible. Nothing was impossible for Mama tex. She may have left the city but Vargos was still in her, the resourcefulness never left those that called the city home.

She wandered through the sand over to the trunk and popped it open, activating the system and popping in the old chit she’d absconded with all those years ago. The screen sputtered for a moment, slowing down under the oppressive heat and sharp sandy winds before a cartoon cow appeared on the screen. She grinned with the few teeth she had left and typed in some prompts, trying her best to shake the dust out of the keyboard. The cow released a digital “moo” and disappeared, being replaced by a simple pixelated smiley face.

“Howdy Mama Tex! Welcome to your home network. How can I serve you today?” The computer spat out the words in a robotic voice with something approaching an old southwestern United States accent behind it.

“Scan for varmints, sheriff,” She said, quieting down as the computer processed her request and she listened for the engines in the distance. They were getting closer now, and sounded like a collection of motorcycles and trucks. No good. Anyone from one of the nearby towns wouldn’t be coming in force like that. She had outsiders closing in.

“Processing complete, yeehaw!” The computer spat out. It printed a sheet of information spread across dirty old receipt paper and beeped as it completed the task. Mama Tex ripped the paper free and nodded.

She liked the program retrofitted as a security protocol. Smart houses that did your chores were a waste of time. Why have a computer do something you could easily do yourself when you could make it do something hard like scan a fifty mile radius for every living thing?

She looked over the receipt paper, seeing markings for lizards, antelope, a couple of cougars, and thousands of plants, bugs, and rodents. Towards the end of the receipt, she got the confirmation she’d been waiting on: two pick up trucks, ten motorcycles, and twenty people connected to the vehicles. She crumpled the paper up and tossed it in the sand and walked back into the bus.

She grabbed her shotgun and a box of shells and made her way to the small tower affixed to the side of the junk wall, struggling to get up the steps as it creaked under her weight. She was spry in her youth but now, fifty years into living in the Hardlands, her joints ached with every step. She got up to the top in time to spot the approaching convoy of vehicles from her roost.

The trucks came first, pulling over to the side and making room for the bikes to park. The folks pulling up to her makeshift compound were all caked in dust, clearly having traveled through the sands for at least two days. She sized them up and took a close look at their gear as best she could from the roost, recognizing emblems from Violet corporation.

She sighed and started loading shells into the shotgun. She’d have eight shots before she’d need to reload again if this turned ugly, though with how heavy they were showing up she was fairly certain it would.

A corpo stepped out of one of the pickup trucks, his suit somehow unblemished by the sand that caked everything outside of the city. A Gilded Teeth enforcer hopped out behind him, her gold teeth nearly blinding Mama Tex as the sun reflected off of them.

The enforcer was holding a Fountainhead Pulverizer V.2, a grenade launcher strong enough to punch a hole through most military hardware and definitely through her junk wall. The corpo grabbed a small microphone from the truck and spoke into it, his sanitized city voice echoing against the red rocks and cacti that surrounded Mama Tex’s home.

“Hardlands citizen, we have traced an AI signal to this location from an obsolete chip. Violet corporation has sent several Hotlung couriers to retrieve the item and none have returned with the aforementioned hardware. Given the number of messengers that were sent to get it, we can only assume they met their end here at this…’wall,’ you’ve built.” He grimaced at Mama Tex’s makeshift structure then turned off the microphone, walking up closer to the shooter’s roost with his Gilded Teeth goon in toe.

The enforcer was a young woman, Mama Tex felt sorry for her having to do corporate dirty work so early in her life, didn’t she realize there was so much more for her outside of the city? Poor girl had no idea what she was getting into for the likely shitty pay she was getting from Violet.

“Well that’s unfortunate mister, but it isn’t called the Hardlands because it’s easy to survive here. Maybe they got lost.” Mama Tex shouted down at them. The corpo man stared hard at her, before letting out a flood of giggles. The other corporate soldiers he’d arrived with all started laughing as well before he gently let his hand drift upward, silencing them in unison.

“Yes, that's certainly a possibility. But something tells me that’s likely not the case. You do know keeping your personal chit on you means you can be tracked as well, right?” He shouted up to her.

“Still gotta pay for things out here, and unfortunately that’s how folks in town like to get paid.”

“Your name is Serina Dalton, correct? The personal chit for a former Violet researcher with that name was traced to this location, and funny enough, the signal for that missing hardware was traced here too. Quite a coincidence to have both of those things traced to the same spot, wouldn’t you say?”

“Not sure what you’re getting at, but as you can see this isn’t exactly a place for high end technology in these parts.” Mama Tex wiped her brow and placed her wide brimmed hat on to keep the sun out of her eyes.

“Well, if that’s the case how about you let us take a look around inside your…’home?’”

“Afraid I can’t do that, mister. Guessing you all don’t know since you’re from the city, but around here we don’t let strangers in our homes unless they’re invited. That means the law too.”

“We’re simply a retrieval team from a company miss-”

“Mama Tex,” she said, cutting the man off.

“Mama Tex?”

“That’s what they call me out here. Tex is a slang term in these parts for someone who can shoot clean. I’ve won the sharpshooting contest in the town up the road five years running.”

“Well, ‘Mama Tex,’ we are asking you to invite us in. We aren’t the law, just a company looking to get back some property and be on our way.” He glanced over at the enforcer beside him, prompting her to move the grenade launcher from her shoulder and into both hands, ready to be aimed.

“Well my apologies, but I’m afraid I can’t let you in. From the sound of it you know my name so I’ll just tell you, when I left the city I also left any obligation to it. And that includes any obligation to let white glove pieces of shit make demands of me. Hope I don’t offend ya.” The man coughed as some wind kicked up a cloud of dust before continuing.

“Please understand miss, sorry, ‘Mama Tex,’ this hardware is useless to you out here. It’s an advanced AI for household applications. As nice as your home here is, it won’t do much to help you out here.” He said, looking back at the enforcer again. She looked like she had an itchy trigger finger.

“Well mister, you know who I used to be, so I’m guessing you know in my hands that piece of technology might have more uses than you think. Old as it is, and old as I am, I still know my way around some hardwiring.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“How’s about I show you?” Mama Tex leaned over to the back side of the shooter’s roost and shouted.

“Sheriff! We got trouble!” The soldiers looked around as they heard a quiet hum begin nearby, then as quickly as it came, it stopped and gave way to the deafening boom of explosives. The road lit up in a series of explosions, ending in a grand eruption of mines underneath the trucks and motorcycles.

The soldiers and their gear went flying in all directions as the corpo man ducked and placed his hands over his head. The enforcer raised her grenade launcher, unfazed by the explosion, but Mama Tex put her down with a blast from her shotgun before moving on to some struggling soldiers trying to regain their composure and get a hold on their weapons.

One dove for cover behind a rock, his foot sticking out just enough for her to send a shot right into it, turning it into pulp in a spray of red mist before she took aim at another one bringing his rifle up to draw a pin on her. She let loose two shots on the soldier then moved on to one more she saw diving toward the grenade launcher, letting two more shots fly to put him down just a foot shy from the weapon. She kept her shotgun up and aimed at the smoldering wreckage, looking for any movement. To her satisfaction, other than some weeping soldiers on death’s door, the entire convoy seemed to be shredded to bits.

Mama Tex climbed her way down to the ground floor of her fortress and opened the junk gate, walking over to the cowering corpo man crouching beside his Gilded Teeth enforcer, her eyes staring blankly forward devoid of life. She kicked the grenade launcher away and pressed the barrel of the shotgun against the corpo’s head.

“Told ya mister. Sharpshooting winner five years running.”