Crossing Deadland
Prologue
A tractor trailer, with the four Mandarin characters for BeiBen Trucking fixed to its dusty grill, idled just outside the border of Deadland. Gordon Androssus—personal assistant to the world famous action film star Lucky Soul—paced back and forth beside the truck in his off-white linen suit under skies that were finally clearing. Every few seconds he withdrew his phone from his pocket, willing it to ring. He constantly second guessed if there was really a satellite up in space that could deliver a signal to fucking Jabip. Once he crossed over into Deadland he wasn't going to be able to communicate with his boss and long-time friend until he reached the other side. Every time he tried to ask how long the trip would be the answer devolved into a philosophical discourse on the unpredictability of weather and the unique topography that he couldn’t comprehend. He wanted an answer in miles, or at least kilometers, if not time; and he desperately wanted to speak with Lucky. Not because there were any more arrangements to be made, or money that needed to be wired. It was mostly just to salvage what little was left of his sanity. Gordon was as far from home as he could be without traveling to the moon. The expressionless Asian men that surrounded him all seemed to understand his English, even though none of them uttered a word in response. His stomach was cramping and he needed to calm down.
A team used a series of rounded logs to move a shipping container from the back of the truck to a giant wooden cart using the same method that the Trojans used to move their infamous horse. The cart was to be driven by a dozen stout oxen who patiently snorted and scraped their hooves on the road, unintimidated by the size of the load, and having no idea where they were headed.
Gordon had flown into the closest major city, Ulanhot. Since then he was shuttled over land, through hills, and down roads so meandering and similar looking that he could no longer tell you in which direction Ulanhot was. He was lost in a remote section of Chinese-controlled Inner Mongolia.
Before making the trip, Gordon was briefed on what was known about the region and in particular the quarantined zone known unofficially as Deadland—which amounted to very little. Inside of the past five years something occurred in there, but it wasn't clear exactly what. It could have been a nuclear meltdown, massive landslide, an outbreak of disease, or a revolution. There were plenty of rumors but nothing was certain and the Chinese certainly weren’t being forthcoming with any information at all. The region was under strict lockdown. That much was known. The region was still supposedly populated but ingress and egress was almost never permitted. All sources agreed that there was no electricity at all inside of Deadland, and any communication between those who lived inside of it and the civilized world depended upon messages delivered by birds.
If the last quarter of the twentieth century had ended with a call toward environmental responsibility, the first quarter of the twenty-first century proceeded with the phone still ringing on the hook. Lucky Soul—a disproportionately consumptive and unashamed capitalist—still operated under the simple pretense that everything had a price; and so far the world had proven him to be correct. He had negotiated a deal and set up an elaborate plan to have an object that he badly desired to be purchased and transported out of Deadland, where it had supposedly been kept hidden and perfectly preserved. He still hadn’t seen a photograph of the object and details about what it looked liked and the condition that it was in sounded far-fetched to Gordon. Which only added to the movie star’s intrigue and fed his insatiable greed. It was a bed frame, and into its ironwood structure was carved the images of a hundred-thousand horses and their riders, fully clad in armor and charging into battle. Rumor had it that its initial construction was commissioned by the Mongolian warlord Genghis Khan.
The shipping container—still an empty box at that point—was successfully moved to the ox cart by the silent crew who had a certain deftness when it came to working with the seven simple tools. The tractor trailer was permitted no further down the road. Gordon was instructed in advance about what he would not be allowed to carry with him into Deadland. No food. There was plenty inside he was assured. He was going to have to relinquish his satellite phone, laptop, watch—anything that had conductive materials within it and that carried any type of electrical current. No magnets. Some books were okay if they were considered to be classics and censored government versions, but no periodicals, and certainly no newspapers. He was instructed not to engage with the locals, but he wasn’t told why. Gordon was about to be put through the entry protocols and he was sweating even though the temperature was mild. The sweat was related to extreme nervousness about the microscopic (almost) GPS tracker that he had concealed in the groove between his ass cheeks. The tracker was in the off position, smaller than a grain of rice, and was attached with a powerful medical adhesive that was oil soluble so that he could get it off when he needed to. The tracker was also wrapped in a high-density polymer that had so far kept the batteries undetectable by any known scanning equipment. But Chinese technology was purportedly good, and difficult to keep up with for an American who was not really accustomed to covert operations and had a very limited technical vocabulary.
Several men in blue burlap coats threw manila ropes over the container and cinched it down to the ox cart by making miniature pulleys out of slipknots. It wouldn’t be much longer before they were ready to go. Gordon’s limited experience with the Chinese and the Mongols had taught him that neither was a particularly patient or easy going breed. He tried to imagine transporting one of them to Seattle just to see how they would fare. They’d probably be more confounded than he was. The thought made him feel better, but not as good as he felt when he looked at his phone one more time and the screen lit up with a familiar 206 number.
“Lucky.”
“Gordo, how’s it going?”
“It’s going. We are at the border. The container is just about loaded onto the ox cart and ready to be moved.” “You sound nervous, Gordo. What’s the matter?”
“It's a little hard not to be nervous, Lucky. I’m going into this Deadland blind. I don't even know what language these people are speaking. It sounds nothing like the Mandarin I was picking up in Beijing. Now I have to somehow come out the other side of this fucking haunted terrain with a large precious heirloom that belonged to the only household name that this country up here has ever produced.”
“I know, I know. A man so feared that the Chinese took on one of the greatest architectural feats in all of history just to get a false sense of protection from him.”
“Lucky, I know this sounds like some cool artifact to get your hands on but I’ve been out her drinking yak tea with the locals in their yurts for two weeks and there’s a drawing of him hanging inside of every structure in Mongolia. It’s like he’s still here. This stunt of yours might really piss him off.”
“So much that he comes back from the grave to conquer America?”
“I’m not joking, Lucky.”
“But, you are funny, Gordo. Tell me about Deadland.”
“I haven't entered yet.”
“I know but you are right there, describe it to me.”
“Well, the fucking road to this place is basically a collection of potholes. Which didn’t seem to deter the driver, Mr. Poo, from taking every curve at the maximum possible speed. The weather’s been pretty much crap since I got here. There’s not really even a sky, just a layer of smog. In the daytime it’s hot as hell, unless it’s raining. And when the invisible sun goes down it gets suddenly freezing. Right now I’m standing outside the border. There’s a maze of chainlink fencing to pass through with armed sentries posted all over the fucking place. Honestly though, it’s a nice temperature at the moment. The hillsides that I can see inside the barrier are all bright green. The sky over Deadland doesn't look as bad as everywhere else. I can see what appear to be actual white, puffy clouds; rather than ones that were coughed out of a smokestack. Plus the closer we get, the more birds there seem to be.”
“Doesn’t sound dead.”
“Doesn’t appear dead. Or maybe it’s just that it appears less dead than the places I’ve been so far.”
“Are there trees?”
“Looks like some big pines or something on the other side of the fence, and a cluster of dead birches I think, but not much to the north or in any other direction but some kind of scrub weed.”
“Sounds nice.”
“I doubt you’d like it.”
“You might be surprised, Gordo. I have a soft spot for incongruous pulchritude.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“Is the tracker in a safe place?”
“To the extent that the inside of my ass crack can be considered a safe place, yes.”
The Chinese had a list of conditions that had to be met before anyone could enter Deadland and no amount of money that Lucky tried to spend was enough to get Gordon in there with a phone or a camera. And each of the layers of chain link fencing had a door to pass through that was clearly a metal detector of some kind. On the other side of the metal detectors the guards waited with wands equipped with an unknown technological capacity. Gordon and Lucky didn’t have many options besides trusting that the incredible amounts of Yuan that they were stuffing into pockets would be enough to pull the thing off. But just in case, Lucky insisted that Gordon smuggle a minute GPS tracking device into the zone so that he could attach it to the bed frame once he found it. The device that Lucky had fashioned for him to carry was straight out of a James Bond film.
“For what it’s worth, I’ve never felt safer than when I was in your ass crack.” An apparent reference to something that had happened only once and remained a source of great confusion for Gordon. He didn’t respond. “Gordon,” Lucky snapped. “It’s going to be fine. I’ll see you in Seattle in just a few weeks. We’ll set up the bed.”
“And then what?”
“We’ll take a nap.”
A team used a series of rounded logs to move a shipping container from the back of the truck to a giant wooden cart using the same method that the Trojans used to move their infamous horse. The cart was to be driven by a dozen stout oxen who patiently snorted and scraped their hooves on the road, unintimidated by the size of the load, and having no idea where they were headed.
Gordon had flown into the closest major city, Ulanhot. Since then he was shuttled over land, through hills, and down roads so meandering and similar looking that he could no longer tell you in which direction Ulanhot was. He was lost in a remote section of Chinese-controlled Inner Mongolia.
Before making the trip, Gordon was briefed on what was known about the region and in particular the quarantined zone known unofficially as Deadland—which amounted to very little. Inside of the past five years something occurred in there, but it wasn't clear exactly what. It could have been a nuclear meltdown, massive landslide, an outbreak of disease, or a revolution. There were plenty of rumors but nothing was certain and the Chinese certainly weren’t being forthcoming with any information at all. The region was under strict lockdown. That much was known. The region was still supposedly populated but ingress and egress was almost never permitted. All sources agreed that there was no electricity at all inside of Deadland, and any communication between those who lived inside of it and the civilized world depended upon messages delivered by birds.
If the last quarter of the twentieth century had ended with a call toward environmental responsibility, the first quarter of the twenty-first century proceeded with the phone still ringing on the hook. Lucky Soul—a disproportionately consumptive and unashamed capitalist—still operated under the simple pretense that everything had a price; and so far the world had proven him to be correct. He had negotiated a deal and set up an elaborate plan to have an object that he badly desired to be purchased and transported out of Deadland, where it had supposedly been kept hidden and perfectly preserved. He still hadn’t seen a photograph of the object and details about what it looked liked and the condition that it was in sounded far-fetched to Gordon. Which only added to the movie star’s intrigue and fed his insatiable greed. It was a bed frame, and into its ironwood structure was carved the images of a hundred-thousand horses and their riders, fully clad in armor and charging into battle. Rumor had it that its initial construction was commissioned by the Mongolian warlord Genghis Khan.
The shipping container—still an empty box at that point—was successfully moved to the ox cart by the silent crew who had a certain deftness when it came to working with the seven simple tools. The tractor trailer was permitted no further down the road. Gordon was instructed in advance about what he would not be allowed to carry with him into Deadland. No food. There was plenty inside he was assured. He was going to have to relinquish his satellite phone, laptop, watch—anything that had conductive materials within it and that carried any type of electrical current. No magnets. Some books were okay if they were considered to be classics and censored government versions, but no periodicals, and certainly no newspapers. He was instructed not to engage with the locals, but he wasn’t told why. Gordon was about to be put through the entry protocols and he was sweating even though the temperature was mild. The sweat was related to extreme nervousness about the microscopic (almost) GPS tracker that he had concealed in the groove between his ass cheeks. The tracker was in the off position, smaller than a grain of rice, and was attached with a powerful medical adhesive that was oil soluble so that he could get it off when he needed to. The tracker was also wrapped in a high-density polymer that had so far kept the batteries undetectable by any known scanning equipment. But Chinese technology was purportedly good, and difficult to keep up with for an American who was not really accustomed to covert operations and had a very limited technical vocabulary.
Several men in blue burlap coats threw manila ropes over the container and cinched it down to the ox cart by making miniature pulleys out of slipknots. It wouldn’t be much longer before they were ready to go. Gordon’s limited experience with the Chinese and the Mongols had taught him that neither was a particularly patient or easy going breed. He tried to imagine transporting one of them to Seattle just to see how they would fare. They’d probably be more confounded than he was. The thought made him feel better, but not as good as he felt when he looked at his phone one more time and the screen lit up with a familiar 206 number.
“Lucky.”
“Gordo, how’s it going?”
“It’s going. We are at the border. The container is just about loaded onto the ox cart and ready to be moved.” “You sound nervous, Gordo. What’s the matter?”
“It's a little hard not to be nervous, Lucky. I’m going into this Deadland blind. I don't even know what language these people are speaking. It sounds nothing like the Mandarin I was picking up in Beijing. Now I have to somehow come out the other side of this fucking haunted terrain with a large precious heirloom that belonged to the only household name that this country up here has ever produced.”
“I know, I know. A man so feared that the Chinese took on one of the greatest architectural feats in all of history just to get a false sense of protection from him.”
“Lucky, I know this sounds like some cool artifact to get your hands on but I’ve been out her drinking yak tea with the locals in their yurts for two weeks and there’s a drawing of him hanging inside of every structure in Mongolia. It’s like he’s still here. This stunt of yours might really piss him off.”
“So much that he comes back from the grave to conquer America?”
“I’m not joking, Lucky.”
“But, you are funny, Gordo. Tell me about Deadland.”
“I haven't entered yet.”
“I know but you are right there, describe it to me.”
“Well, the fucking road to this place is basically a collection of potholes. Which didn’t seem to deter the driver, Mr. Poo, from taking every curve at the maximum possible speed. The weather’s been pretty much crap since I got here. There’s not really even a sky, just a layer of smog. In the daytime it’s hot as hell, unless it’s raining. And when the invisible sun goes down it gets suddenly freezing. Right now I’m standing outside the border. There’s a maze of chainlink fencing to pass through with armed sentries posted all over the fucking place. Honestly though, it’s a nice temperature at the moment. The hillsides that I can see inside the barrier are all bright green. The sky over Deadland doesn't look as bad as everywhere else. I can see what appear to be actual white, puffy clouds; rather than ones that were coughed out of a smokestack. Plus the closer we get, the more birds there seem to be.”
“Doesn’t sound dead.”
“Doesn’t appear dead. Or maybe it’s just that it appears less dead than the places I’ve been so far.”
“Are there trees?”
“Looks like some big pines or something on the other side of the fence, and a cluster of dead birches I think, but not much to the north or in any other direction but some kind of scrub weed.”
“Sounds nice.”
“I doubt you’d like it.”
“You might be surprised, Gordo. I have a soft spot for incongruous pulchritude.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“Is the tracker in a safe place?”
“To the extent that the inside of my ass crack can be considered a safe place, yes.”
The Chinese had a list of conditions that had to be met before anyone could enter Deadland and no amount of money that Lucky tried to spend was enough to get Gordon in there with a phone or a camera. And each of the layers of chain link fencing had a door to pass through that was clearly a metal detector of some kind. On the other side of the metal detectors the guards waited with wands equipped with an unknown technological capacity. Gordon and Lucky didn’t have many options besides trusting that the incredible amounts of Yuan that they were stuffing into pockets would be enough to pull the thing off. But just in case, Lucky insisted that Gordon smuggle a minute GPS tracking device into the zone so that he could attach it to the bed frame once he found it. The device that Lucky had fashioned for him to carry was straight out of a James Bond film.
“For what it’s worth, I’ve never felt safer than when I was in your ass crack.” An apparent reference to something that had happened only once and remained a source of great confusion for Gordon. He didn’t respond. “Gordon,” Lucky snapped. “It’s going to be fine. I’ll see you in Seattle in just a few weeks. We’ll set up the bed.”
“And then what?”
“We’ll take a nap.”
you've got my attention Doug. Already ordered the novel. Big time congrats. Uncle Ed
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