Eamon strained on the rope, pulling the cache high into the tree, above the reach of grizzlies. He needed that meat. Without it, he'd starve in the coming frigid months. He lashed the rope to a broken limb and wiped his brow. Hopefully, he'd reap the reward of his hard work.
Bushed, he sat at the base of the tree and carefully considered packing a pipe of his precious tobacco. He wouldn't die without it, but he'd sure miss it after it was gone. He pulled out his poke and stuffed a bit of the aromatic weed into a battered Irish Second briar. He'd live day by day, and when there was no tobacco, he'd live with that. Now, he'd enjoy it.
As he puffed the pipe into life, he savored the flavor. He liked that it kept the mosquitos at bay damn near as much as he liked the practically narcotic effect of the nicotine and the ritual of smoking a pipe combined. Maybe kinnickinnick would meet that need, when he had no more tobacco.
Relaxed and pensive, his body flooded with the endorphins that comes of hard work and the boost of nicotine, he considered his situation and how he got in it.
He'd been just another ordinary guy, with an ordinary job; ordinary dreams and ordinary vices, like the pipe. When the crash hit in '22 he scrambled for work like everybody else, but no one had any money to pay with, so he didn't get very far.
In less than two months he'd been homeless, living in his car. The cops would roust you if you were stupid and lazy and slept where it was convenient on public streets. But when you parked out of town, you spent a lot of gas getting back into the city to deal with food banks and the like.
Pretty soon he'd run out of gas. Unable to keep the car moving, he'd lost it when it got towed. Left with the clothes on his back, he ended up in the Baker St. gang, who commandeered an overpass as their fiefdom, protecting each other's stuff from the incessant and dangerous thieves that stole anything they could.
He'd been as pissed as anyone, and when the riots started he'd taken to the streets with the rest. Looting was a good way to get some necessary gear at first, but it didn't take long for the powers that be to crush the mobs decisively.
Then the President announced the Amero, a cryptocurrency like the Bitcoin, and he'd cheered like mad, because he thought the hard times were over. He hadn't liked Trump at all, but a blowhard with solutions was a better friend than a saint with nothing to get you off the street.
Eamon laughed at his naivete. He'd thought the new money would indeed get the nation working again, and solve his problems.
His real trouble started then. Hell, living under the overpass guarded by the Baker St. boys was the good old days!
The invasive biometric keys to the currency seemed appropriate, even necessary, given how hackers pretty much infested phone software at will, even if he hadn't liked his phone being able to scan his retina. You gotta do what you gotta do, and if that's what he had to do to get a paying job, then so be it.
He'd found work, and got paid in Amero, and it seemed like things were turning around, both for him and the country. It was menial and degrading, but it looked like he'd be able to afford a room before too long, and get out from under the bridge.
When the link to the President's American Ambassadors popped up on Fakebook, he'd signed on right away, grateful and wanting to add his little voice to the people that had been helped by the new currency.
That was where things had gone really wrong. At first, there were meetings online, 'chats' where people were sounded out on their support for the President. He'd been particularly enthusiastic, hoping for a better job.
Once he was in, the jobs had become pretty damn awful, even if the pay was good. Weird political skullduggery, posting lies about people, popping tires of the cars of those on the 'shitlist'.
Then he was told to kill some guy's dog. He didn't know why they'd told him to kill the dog, but when he went to do it, he couldn't. He told them to get somebody else to do it, but then he felt bad about that too, and actually stopped the bastard they sent from doing it.
That's when he was blacklisted. His phone was bricked. When he tried to borrow a phone to contact the Ambassadors, that phone bricked, and he almost got in a fight. He went to their offices to fix the problem, and found out there was a warrant for his arrest, when the clerk gloated that 'criminals like him' were fit only for prison.
Without his phone, he had no money, so couldn't buy any food, clothes, nothing. The Baker St. boys wanted him gone. The cops said he'd raped and killed a kid and had been asking where he was.
He realized the Ambassadors were going to take him out. This wasn’t a mistake. He was being set up because he’d not done their dirty work. They could use the Amero to control every aspect of his life, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.
So, he fled the city and hit north, thinking Canada might be the place for him. It was the closest border to Bremeton, anyway. Once he got into the woods things were tough, but at least the problems were honest problems instead of lying evil people.
He'd walked for weeks, living on what he could scrounge and the odd bit of thievery from camps and isolated houses when folks were gone. He'd needed some things, and took what he needed, nothing more, but felt bad about it just the same.
When he found he'd made it past the border, Canada was no better. There was a different currency on the phones, different people running things, but it was the same program, and he was still locked out. His retina scan still bricked phones, and the Canadian cops were more prompt coming after him. Either they had less to do and more time to do it, or they were better at hunting down misfits.
He'd stayed out of towns and cities, and kept going until there weren't any roads, and no air traffic. When he found a good spot, he made a dugout camp lined with moss to protect him from the chilly nights and weather. He managed to trap a deer with a pitfall, and after laboriously dressing it out with a sharp piece of broken glass, had hung it in the tree.
He hoped it would get him through the winter. Seemed like there was no way to get out of the trouble with the Ambassadors. They could do anything they wanted, because everybody depended on them for money. No one would care what the truth was, least of all the Ambassadors. He was out here for good, looked like.
The pipe had been puffed into ash, so he tapped it on a heel to clean it out, and went to tuck into the warm, soft moss in the dugout to ward off the chill.
As he rose a sharp blow spun him around and smashed him into the tree trunk. Dazed, he saw his shoulder was almost torn off, and gushing blood. He couldn't see how he could bandage it, and stunned, just lay there watching the bright red blood soak into the mossy ground.
Odd, it didn’t hurt.
'I got the terrorist!' He heard an excited voice say and he turned to look. A group of civilians with hunting rifles had emerged from hiding in the brush, and were approaching incautiously.
'Woo Hoo! That bounty's gonna really...'
'Oh shit. He's still alive. Look! He's moving.'
They all stopped and pointed their guns at him...
