The Glass Desert

The Hardlands - Domino

The Hardlands outside of Vargos, where suburbs sat abandoned and half-buried in irradiated sand, where cracked highways crisscrossed the landscape like dry veins, and the only water to drink came from bubbling toxic marshes scattered across the plains.

The Hardlands outside of Vargos, a place you could run to if the law was on your tail, but only so long as you could keep yourself alive. A place where people and machines died together beneath a wide, unforgiving sky.

Domino had ridden his motorcycle from The Sprawl deep into the hard, cracked earth of the Hardlands three weeks before he arrived at Chacha’s Hole, what passed for a “town” in the desert, but was nothing more than a few buildings slapped together from old cars and the remains of machines from a county fair. The place clung to life like a parasite refusing to die, feeding off what remained of a long dead host. Most of the folks living there, particularly those whose cybernetics hadn’t already shut down from lack of upkeep, scraped by hunting the radioactive game in the area or selling whatever junk cybernetics they could get their hands on, robbing transports coming in and out of Vargos down the Hot Highway, the only road not completely destroyed in the Hardlands.

Domino parked the bike outside a saloon someone had made out of a hollowed-out Gravitron, an amusement park ride shaped like a flying saucer. Like everything out there, it was caked in dust and rusted to shit from the acid rain that hit like clockwork in the Hardlands every few hours. The winds made the thing groan like it was begging to be put to rest, but somehow it withstood the gusts even as scraps of its frame flew loose in the breeze.

The place had a bad odor as soon as he walked in, like gasoline and vomit, but it was cool inside—a welcome relief for anyone passing through the area. Domino made himself comfortable on a barstool and hailed the bartender, an old man missing teeth but equipped with some surprisingly high-grade cyberware, though it was just as dusty as the outside of the buildings. His fingers whined as he grabbed another cup to wipe off with a dirty rag, a task hardly seeming worthwhile to Domino’s eye.

“Yeah?” he croaked, seemingly uninterested in Domino’s presence as a whole. Domino had grown up in The Sprawl, the son of a high-ranked Coilboys shot-caller, so he wasn’t used to being treated so dismissively. But he was running so no good was going to come from harassing a random bartender while he was trying to lay low. Besides, if the guy was living in this wasteland, he probably wasn’t someone who was easy to harass.

“Whiskey, neat. Two fingers,” he said, looking around the bar, impressed by how nice the inside was despite the mismatched furniture, though “nice” was a low bar to hit in an area this hostile.

“Only shine here,” came a voice from next to Domino, a hunched-over man in a long coat and dark low-rimmed hat. The coat looked like it had been black once, but between caked on dust and what Domino guess was dried blood it had a sun bleached faded brown color now. Funny, Domino hadn’t even noticed the guy when he walked in.

“Yeah, shine then. That’ll be fine,” he said, to a chorus of low grunts from the bartender. The old man poured the cloudy white liquid into a hard plastic cup and set it down in front of Domino. He took a sip and nearly vomited as it singed his throat on the way down, but the warmth from it smashed into him like a train. He felt relaxed for the first time since leaving Vargos city limits. He turned to the man next to him and took another swig before speaking.

“You passing through too?” he asked.

The man didn’t respond right away, sipping his drink, then lighting a small cigar before finally speaking up.

“Yeah, but I’m from here. Mama had me right in the back of an old van somewhere out here. Like to come back and visit every now and again.”

“You from Vargos?”

“Nope. Grew up in Ciudad de México. Folks didn’t want me growing up in the city or out here in the glass desert.”

They called the Hardlands that sometimes, the Glass Desert, since on a hot day the sun could burn so bright on the dirt it blinded those who weren’t careful to cover their eyes.

“Long way from home, then. I just left Vargos, looking to take a trip.” Domino sipped his drink again. He was finding it easier to open up to the stranger now that the booze was running through his bloodstream. He knew it wasn’t smart to say too much to strangers while on the run, but part of the mystique of the Hardlands was random connections with folks you might see one day, then never again.

“So you took a vacation out here? Not much in the way of sights,” the man said, taking a deep puff of his cigar before finishing his glass and sticking a finger up to the bartender for a refill.

“Call it a trip to find myself. Just had to get away for a while.”

That much was true. Domino had left Vargos in a hurry. He’d hurt the wrong person one drunken night. He thought it’d blow over, but the girl’s father wasn’t the type to let harming his little girl go unanswered. Domino figured some time away from the city would be enough to let things settle down before he came back.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” the man grumbled as the bartender refilled his cup and wandered into the back room—what was really just an area of the structure cut off by some hanging curtains.

The man sipped his drink and turned to Domino for the first time, his scarred face and high-grade cybereye now fully visible.

“Just remember what the corpos say about the Hardlands: good place to run, bad place to hide.”

Domino raised an eyebrow. It was an odd thing to say, and he was nervous enough, having only left the city three weeks ago. He finished his drink and tossed some crumpled bills onto the counter. He didn’t like this. He needed to hustle.

“Yeah, well, see you around, stranger,” he said, hopping off the barstool and walking toward the entrance.

The man shouted after him.

“Careful out there, Domino.”

A chill ran down Domino’s spine.

He’d never said his name.

He reacted quickly, seizing the handle of the gun at his belt and pulling it out while twisting to aim at the man in one fluid motion.

He wasn’t fast enough.

The man blew a hole into his hand the size of a golf ball, sending Domino’s gun flying as he hit the ground hard. The shot had cracked like a whip, the white-hot pain of the shot blinding Domino in unison with the sound of the gun going off. He moaned and winced, holding his wrist, trying not to bleed out from his mangled hand. His boots scraped against the dusty ground as he struggled to control the involuntary spasms brought on by the pain.

The man stepped off his barstool and wandered over, standing above Domino and looking at him without a shred of feeling behind his eyes.

“Hit the wrong girl this time, kid. Shouldn’t have run,” he mumbled before aiming the big iron between Domino’s eyes.

“Wait, wait, hang on—”

Domino never got to finish.

Another hole was put right into his chest, stopping his heartbeat instantly.

The man tucked the gun back into his holster and kneeled over Domino’s body. The kid’s eyes stared wide at the ceiling with no thoughts behind them.

He stuck a card between Domino’s fingers—a small white business card with red letters printed on it and nothing else.

The card had only three words emblazoned on its front, the ink bleeding at the edges as if stamped by something warm. It read:

“The Tall Man.”