Post-Apocalypse Dead Letter Office

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 (what’s 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 The maps here are pretty good, but have been out of date for almost eight years now.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 won’t get many while you’re working this job. Tell your boys and girls to stay selective or celibate, though – ‘cause it’s 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 it’s taxing. You’ve got several months to get ready, though. Use that time to your best advantage.

Running dope can be an exceptionally profitable sideline. Don’t do it. Almost any town over 500 people has a dedicated pot farmer, and if he’s not the same person they probably have an opium farmer too. Medicine’s 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. Don’t budge. Don’t do it. They’ll 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. It’s really and obviously critical, but there are problems. I’m sure you know something about this, but it is the most difficult part. You’ll 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 they’re headed, but they’re scum, just scum. They’re not all that hard to weed out. You’ll 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. Here’s the problem: those tough-as-knots leggers? They can be scum, just scum, too. Don’t rely on looking folks in the eye. Ask your current legs – word still gets around, and they’ll 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. I’ve left things different than I found them. Maybe not better, probably not worse. Anyway, here’s 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, I’m 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. There’s still an outfit here in town, one in Springfield and one in Columbia that makes beer. Most everywhere else you’ll get decent cider or some shitty fruit wine. I try to make sure my legs don’t 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. It’ll rot their lungs and they’ll 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. I’ll help them out best I’m able, but that often isn’t 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 I’ve 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, that’s life. I can maybe keep the former idiot on, but pregnant women can’t ride for shit and they’re freaky loco.

No equipment loans. Ever. There’s 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 can’t just give away components. Your legs’ rides will wear out faster than you can really believe, and you can’t ever be without an ample supply of spare parts.

No parcel dumps. Ever. Legs deliver for me or they don’t come back. (Unfortunately, they occasionally don’t 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 wouldn’t expect, and a long reach. Bandits haven’t been much of a problem around here, anyway, so there’s 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, I’m not an Englishian, all right? That rule kind of goes with this one. If one of my legs can’t deliver, meaning “can’t actually locate the person the letter/package/whatever is to be delivered to” (no dead drops in my operation, by the way), they’re 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 can’t 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 don’t 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 didn’t get delivered – are all sitting right under this note. I’ve tried to keep them in order timewise, but they might be a bit shuffled.

This should be enough information to get you hip deep in shit. You’re in charge now – HA! For how long, who knows. They ain’t making components anymore, and the horse trade out of central Kentucky is so much now that they might be phasing us out in the next few years. Have a backup plan if and when your gig here goes to shit.

Speaking of which, I’m heading out to bumble-humperton to work on a pot commune. If you ever want to ask me a question or drop by, don’t. Unless this is Beebee; if so, quit and come join me. You know the way.

Keep your wheels trued and your chain greased.

Randy “Rand” McNally

P.S. - Learn the maps already!