The Collector 2

Hi. It’s me. JB. Still on the road. I’m in Paris at the moment, eating too much and refusing to read news from home. I have been playing with The Collector story, however. Usually while in transit.

I’ll post another section here today, following on immediately from where we left the story last time, with the Collector (that’s me, I’m the Collector, or you because It’s a first person revenge fantasy) arriving at the gates of a fallen New York looking for Rupert Murdoch.

let’s pick it up there. Next week I’ll do a little flashback piece, retelling the story of the Collector’s first trophy. The original ’Sooty’, Matt Canavan. If I do this project as a book that’s probably the structure I’ll use. A twin track narrative. One set in the ‘present’, hunting down Rupert. And one in the past, explaining how we got here. It’s a simple and conventional structure for this type of quest story.

So there you go. A little novel writing tutorial for you as well.

Let’s get on with it. A quick note first though. I’m writing this on my phone in the Substack app so be gentle with my typos etc. Also the app forced me to post this as a note, which limits my word length. There’s a few more pars at the end that I’ll try post as the first comment

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I beat the sand storm to the gates of New York by about five minutes. The world was dying in sepia, the air thickening with every breath. The horizon was gone, swallowed by a churning wall of sand, rapidly blotting out the last rays of a burnt-orange sun.

The main gates were closed, of course. The towering barricado stood defiantly, its metallic sheen dulled and pockmarked from thousands of storms. The wind moaned through the gate’s countless small breaches. It sounded hungry.

Even a big ass city state couldn’t afford to take chances. After all, that’s how Trump Town went back to being New York, after a whole regiment of Murdoch janissaries charged in through the main gates and across the five bridges under the cover of a dry storm about ten years ago. So the main gates were closed, but the tiny one-man postern doors cut into the giant rusted iron bulwarks remained open until the shrieking wind made it impossible to see more than a few metres.

They still had the heads up on poles, though. So there was that. Eric and Don Jr on this gate. Looking the worse for wear, to be honest.

Not the original heads either, of course. Nobody was quite sure where old Rupe got the minty fresh Trump melons he regularly spiked outside the city as a warning to all challengers, but then nobody was really sure how a 136 year old billionaire tyrant was still drawing breath and throwing his withered old legs over maidens comely and true and a significantly icky fraction of his advanced age.

I’m not saying it’s gene stuff. But come on, obviously it’s gene stuff. The old monster was spending elephant bucks on the research long before the seas literally boiled away. Or caught fire. Or sort of gelled into a thick, rancid soup of blue-green algal phlegm. (Depending on where you are, your sea mileage might vary.)

I patted Don Jr on the cheek as I shouldered by, hunched inside the protective cowl of my hooded duster.

“Never go against the family,” I croaked. It was an old joke between us and DJ was long past seeing the humour in it.

I’d like to be able to claim him as one of mine, even if Rupert keeps warming up new heads, regular as species collapse, and all just to spit on a sharpened length of hickory. But one of my colleagues from the Collectors Guild took care of the original Don Jr, many years ago. Not too long after the first bounties were crowdfunded, as best I recall. Snuck a cheeky little nerve toxin into his cocaine stash. Dude was bleeding out of the eyeballs and yammering in fluent shitgibbon for days before he succumbed. Not that anyone noticed of course.

Yeah, they were good times and wild days before the Guild formalised arrangements.

I ducked in through the postern door, and did as you do upon entering New York. I threw myself down and waited for a beating.

And the finale:

After a minute, I dared look up.

The small walled enclosure inside the gates where the City Watch normally shook down new arrivals was empty. The uproar of the storm was greatly muted in here by the thickness of the outer walls, but the air was still thick with dust, and dark from the sand and grit blocking out the sun. I chanced a quick look around. A weapons rack, full of clubs and staves, stood ready by the small guard house. The edged weapons would be inside, locked away where only authorised Watchmen could get to them. You were free to exercise your Second Amendment rights out in the Wastelands, but New York enforced a strict no weapons policy inside the walls.

Well, okay. Not that strict. Murdoch’s goons were armed like fucking cartoon pirates, but that was the point, wasn’t it.

It was also why my stash of Guilded Armaments were buried in oilcloth a couple of miles back.

Slowly, I got to my feet. I’d been pouring sweat, sprinting to get in ahead of the storm, and now I was caked with a rind of mud. I blinked to crack open the thin crust starting to form on my eyelids. I could still see the top of Truth Tower in the distance. The old Empire State, one of the few original towers to survive being harvested for concrete and steel, but not looking nearly as elegant as it did in the old post cards. What the storms hadn’t worn away, serial warlords and boss men had repurposed into sniper nests for archers and platforms for ballista. I dunno what you remember about the old city, but New York ain’t like that now. Central Park is a glass house and hunting reserve for the ruling family. The Subway? Drowned.

“Brother,” a voice whispered. “Come quickly. These zeroes aren’t gonna net themselves.”

I turned around to find a figure in a hooded duster.

Just like mine.

Brother Stuart.

“You’re late,” he said.

“No, you’re Layt,” I shot back.

An even older joke than my bit with DJ.

He shook his head and turned away.

I followed Brother Stuart Layt, High Finder of the Collectors Guild into the city. I didn’t bother looking for the city watch. I knew they were already dead.