The gun barrel rose and rose and then there was a hairy hand holding the grip, then a greasy bit of muscle, then the flat-nosed face of The Magpie, boss of the Churnguard Junkheap. “Ugly, then! Let me see your ugly piggy face, Maggie!” She turned up her nose and oink-oink-oinked, laughing as she hopped off the rat rod and scrambled up a junk pile for a higher vantage point. The first shell exploded out of the barrel in a white heat that passed an inch from her eyes and left her ears ringing. “Come out Magpie! Don’t you want to fight? Do I have to call you ugly?” She banged them onto the metal, making sparks and noise.

Out came her machetes, one for each fist. Rona jumped to her feet, heavy boots slamming dents into the body of the rat rod, and clipped the dolly head to her belt. The door opposite opened downward into the tunnels under the junkheap, and a big gun barrel poked up into her face. “BAAAH!” came the war scream from inside the rat rod.

“Well!” she giggled, “what a lovely day this is.” It was a pretty-faced dolly, just the head now, the body lost to history, the hair shorn nearly off. “Maggie? Heeeere Maggie-Maggie-Maggie.” Reaching into the dark, feeling around for the gear shift, she grabbed something prickly and pulled it into the light. She climbed up on a rat rod rolled on its side and laid flat to squint into the dark driver’s seat. “Mags,” she called again, this time sweet. Tools you could trade for infused crystal, there being no way to make them. Railroad spikes were always useful but this heap was near to the old Churnguard Industries, so sometimes you could find a Halcyon core with a drop of juice still in it, or pre-war M.A.C. She moved on, plucking stuff up for keeps. “Maggie!” she called into it, “you in there?” but only a few brown blattamites scuttled away from the light. She flicked the book away and toed open an upended wooden cabinet. Pictures were nice, but nobody knew the words anymore. “I know you’re here, Maggie,” she crooned, plucking up a wrinkled old comic book that had been through a gullet. Infection was a concern, what with all the scrap metal that had been gobbled up and retched out rusted by mutants during the churn times. Rona picked through the junkheap of wormy old furniture and ripped up tires one careful step at a time. Those who survive The Churn will gather resources from a forgotten time to survive.

For mac download Super Leo World