The overworked wheels on his shopping cart whined and rattled as he forced it across the dirty ice coating the ruined streets. He still had room for one more battery, and wanted to bring back a big boy, something with serious cranking power. Even if it had to be harvested from a redneck ride. Tonight was the start of his week to sleep with Lira, and it was important for the success of his new life plan that he make a statement bold enough to get some respect. Or at least some attention. Not that she ever seemed impressed by anything he did. But before The Shit Hit The Fan he’d devoted his long working hours trying to score points on retail floors from sea to shining sea, and found the habit hard to break.

The Jimmy might have been green or it might have been red. Like everything else outside it was sealed in a drab veneer of frozen rain and gritty pumice. Even if there were some practical way to hose off this beast it would still look filthy. Out here in the demi-light of mid-morning it seemed as if the colors of the weary old world, trapped under its endless wrapper of heavy dark clouds, had been stripped away, sucked into space and replaced by so many grainy shades of gray, like the picture on the ancient tee-vee his parents once owned.

Ten miles to the north, at the vanishing point where the petrified land disappeared into the frigid sky, rose two spires of smoke that looked like pencil lines drawn against the sliver of jaundiced horizon. The line on the left rose from the smoldering rubble that had once been midtown Minneapolis. The one on the right was from St. Paul. For lack of anything else to celebrate Lyndon Augustus Zackheim enjoyed congratulating himself for his good luck in being down here instead of up there when The Shit Hit The Fan.

With a pulse of anxiety he spun around. He scanned the broken windows of the townhouses behind him, but saw no sign of life. To the left of him there was nothing but the wreckage of office buildings that had burned to the ground after one of the quakes ruptured a gas main. And to his right was an iced-over pocket park, with its lonely withered oak, the bit of open space around it deserted long ago. Although none of the patrols had reported the enemy poking around this sector in the last year, he tried to pick up the telltale smell of charcoal that would indicate the presence of those motherfucking weasels.

He fished in the pocket of his parka for his talkie. “Yo, Mutton, it’s Augie. How about some cover, dawg?”

There was a cackle of static on the other end. “Don’t call me Mutton.”

“Whatever,” Augie said, over-and-outing. Gomer. He tried the passenger door, but it wouldn’t budge. He fetched his crow bar from the cart and applied it to the task. The door sprang open at last. The dome light flickered on, then off. When he got a look inside he jumped back. “Barf,” he said. “It’s a Stinker.”

Mutton appeared, yanked a Game Getter from his quiver, nocked it against the string of his Intruder, and pointed it at the Stinker’s noggin. Just in case. They peered in at the freeze-dried flesh pulled away from the pitted teeth in a jocular, mile-wide rictus. It was a former cowboy type, sort of old, wearing a Minnesota Twins baseball cap and a hooded sweatshirt that said I’m a roper not a doper.