Nathan Poell - Post-Apocalypse Dead Letter Office

Post-Apocalypse Dead Letter Office

Copyright 2011

by Nathan Poell

ISBN 0-9786283-9-X

Library of Congress Card Number 2011921042

All rights are reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Published in the United States of America by the Oscura Press of New Mexico.

http://www.oscurapress.com

Acknowledgements

The following wonderful people are responsible for creating the handwritten versions of the letters herein and I thank them one and all:

Hiram Lucke, Aubrey Vaughn, Ray Barker, Mary Ann Hudson-Vadnais, Max Yoder, David Sofranko, Howard and Emily Lubliner, annaramma, Marc Epard, Mike Popovic, Jon Hamlow, James Billingsley, Matt Weatherford, Liosliath Manner, Dan Coonfield, Jason Gordon, Melissa Stucky, Nathan Hugh Girard, Jen Messier, Baudouin Van Humbeeck, Joe Yoder, Tabitha Grace Alterman, Willy Lee, Deathalicious, Colin Thacher, Dale Wheeler, Matt Lord, J.M. Picagli, Ellen Jensen, and of course Megan E. Phelps.

Cover design by Matthew Lord.

Post-Apocalypse Dead Letter Office

by Nathan Poell

To: The incoming postmaster

From: Randy McNally

June 7, 20+8

To whoever occupies this post next

I can teach you nothing. Let me tell you why.

West to Hays and east to Columbia. North to Omaha (whats left of it), southwest to Wichita and southeast to Springfield. And all the chainkilling, chalky gravel roads and bumfuck towns in between. Roughly. This is to be your range. Get to know it. The maps here are pretty good, but have been out of date for almost eight years now.

Mark the annotations and be sure to make new ones. Topography changes, roads wash out, bridges collapse, looters roam and settle, legs will drop routes and dead. Whatever happens in your range, make it explicit on your maps. Use grease pencil the maps are laminated for a reason.

Fuck every chance you get, because you wont get many while youre working this job. Tell your boys and girls to stay selective or celibate, though cause its probably their ass if they impregnate someone, get the clap or whatever and steer the hell clear of stopping in Junction City. Everything and everyone there is almost biblically unclean.

Holidays blow, particularly the winter ones. For some reason, people still want to celebrate Christmas and do so by sending stupidly heavy things to loved ones. They pay well for it, but its taxing. Youve got several months to get ready, though. Use that time to your best advantage.

Running dope can be an exceptionally profitable sideline. Dont do it. Almost any town over 500 people has a dedicated pot farmer, and if hes not the same person they probably have an opium farmer too. Medicines medicine, at least in this range. Their products are typically pretty good, and they are viciously protective of their local markets. Even given some of the recent events around here, the syndicates might try to lean on you a bit to get you to run the stuff. Dont budge. Dont do it. Theyll back off.

Keep the pecking order as out of whack as possible. Everyone rides, including you. You can certainly get away with doing only in-town deliveries, but getting out of town regularly once a month, at least is the best way to keep tabs on your legs and encourages them to play it straight.

Trust your people as best you can. Its really and obviously critical, but there are problems. Im sure you know something about this, but it is the most difficult part. Youll have chuckleheads and puzzlers by the dozens trying to get your ear, get you to assign them routes, then they take their first pack of parcels and disappear. Fat payoff for them, if they make it where theyre headed, but theyre scum, just scum. Theyre not all that hard to weed out. Youll also get a handful or two of tough-as-knots leggers from the far northeast, the southwest, the northern plains wherever everything utterly and truly went to shit. Heres the problem: those tough-as-knots leggers? They can be scum, just scum, too. Dont rely on looking folks in the eye. Ask your current legs word still gets around, and theyll know more than you expect. But, can you trust them? Maybe, probably, who knows. Like I said, this is the most difficult part.

Regardless, set some ground rules. Ive left things different than I found them. Maybe not better, probably not worse. Anyway, heres a few of the most important things I can recall putting into place.

First and foremost: there is no such thing as a free delivery. My legs are taking risks by simply riding, Im taking risks staying in one place more or less and not farming or ranching or chopping decrepit Hondas into buggies or whatever the hell it is everyone else does now. I never set a minimum charge, but everyone pays something. Food, grease, rubber, whatever. (Booze is especially nice. Theres still an outfit here in town, one in Springfield and one in Columbia that makes beer. Most everywhere else youll get decent cider or some shitty fruit wine. I try to make sure my legs dont drink too much of it at one time. Pot is nice, of course especially the shit they grow down near Carthage, MO but I do my best to keep my legs off smoking it chronically. Itll rot their lungs and theyll want to quit and move to wherever it was farmed.) Bartering for services was fine with me, too, especially for doctor visits. But not for sex. That can wipe out your workforce pretty damned quick. Trust me.

Related to the above: legs assume risk on their own. Ill help them out best Im able, but that often isnt a whole hell of a lot. Most of the roads are pretty safe, but there are still some bandits out there. Precious few of them might be decent bow shots, too, although Ive never had a leg of mine die in that manner. But, if a leg of mine knocks up some skank or gets knocked up by some hayseed, thats life. I can maybe keep the former idiot on, but pregnant women cant ride for shit and theyre freaky loco.

No equipment loans. Ever. Theres loads of beggars everywhere every single one of them with an excuse why they need a brake lever, a bottom bracket, even a whole damn ride. They even make their kids beg. Well OK, beggars might be harsh; most of them are just farmers and farmers kids. Regardless, you cant just give away components. Your legs rides will wear out faster than you can really believe, and you cant ever be without an ample supply of spare parts.

No parcel dumps. Ever. Legs deliver for me or they dont come back. (Unfortunately, they occasionally dont come back. See several places above.) For every trick some moronic bandit has up his sleeve, my leg has three and a spiked baseball bat should things get really ugly. Also, some of the larger syndicates out west and east (Denver and Cleveland, particularly) are not forgiving when it comes to non-delivery. They have eyes in places you wouldnt expect, and a long reach. Bandits havent been much of a problem around here, anyway, so theres really no reason for a leg to have to drop his parcels to effect a getaway.

OK, there is an exception to this last rule. Well, maybe a corollary or shit, Im not an Englishian, all right? That rule kind of goes with this one. If one of my legs cant deliver, meaning cant actually locate the person the letter/package/whatever is to be delivered to (no dead drops in my operation, by the way), theyre allowed to open the item, read it they still ought to be able to read to gather more information to complete the delivery, then try further. If they still cant deliver, they bring back the item to me and only me and I keep it here. (It just saves me a ton of trouble and anxiety when I can produce the letter immediately if a syndicate comes asking rather than sending my most rested up leg several hundred miles afield and waiting for days on end for he or she to retrieve it.) Then I kill the leg that failed to deliver it. Just kidding I only crush his or her kneecaps. Ha ha. Truth be told, I dont have this dead letter problem very often. It happens so rarely, in fact, that only a few have not been delivered to their intended recipients during my brief but still far too fucking long time here. They and the ones Biggs didnt get delivered are all sitting right under this note. Ive tried to keep them in order timewise, but they might be a bit shuffled.