Beware the Well Fed Man

By Chris Capps

Carved from the remnants of a long dead world, Ebon has only two things on his mind from one day to the next. The first is the safety of his brother Crassus. The second is the search for home. And when he and his brother find a massive thirty-story tall technological wonderland, he wonders if fate has given them both. But what they find inside is so much more than just a house. They find a connection to the past, a family they thought impossible.

But there are other things in the wasteland intent on taking it from them. Like the masters of the great walking cities. As the terrifying armies descend on the tribe's stronghold, they are given a choice. Give up your home and return to the waste, or watch your tribe ripped to shreds with terrifying cruelty.

Ebon is faced with a choice that cuts to the very core of his tribe's identity. How many compromises are you willing to make to secure your safety? What monster might you call friend if it meant survival?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Capps
• Release date: May 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311902849

Book preview

Beware the Well Fed Man

Chris Capps

Part One

It's true I've never been baptized, but I did see the Plexis Shopping Center the morning after it landed in a field of burned wheat. High as I was on a rocky cliff, I could feel the purity as if it was radiation. It was pouring from the ivory building even through the trembling scope of my hunting rifle. I didn't understand what it was then, but I remember watching the pumpkin red flames beating at its walls to no effect - and I knew the roads that would be beaten under heel to its doors.

Crassus started running first. He pushed me over onto my side playfully and skimmed with his patchwork shoes down the rolling dust hill into the burning fields. He was laughing like he had when we were children. I cursed at him and then resolved to give him a good knuckle to the back of his head when we reached the wall. And in seconds it was forgotten. We were both laughing now, ready to crack this marvelous treasure chest that had landed less than a mile from our campsite. Of course we wouldn't be the only ones to see it. There would soon be others closing in on the enigma. We didn't know what to expect as we closed in.

Is this how we will find Death? Or is it something new?

Spend three nightmares cowering beneath burned sheet metal to the tune of ripper dog howls and you'll understand our madness. Crassus and I had been wandering too long without a home.

The building was like a white pill resting on its side with windows stacked on top of one another - leading up thirty stories. And as impossibly tall as it was from bottom to dizzying top, it was at least double that in width. During the long run down into the valley, even Crassus had to stop twice to gain his breath.

Two years prior, we had discovered a walking city lying on its side filled with skeletons and ashes and very little in the way of food. Yet we saw no legs on the Plexis. Surely it must have either sprouted up from the ground like an elephant skull, or fallen from the heavens like so many regional gods of legend.

When we reached the front, we found a glass entrance. There were two doors, which parted and spoke,

Please enjoy your stay at the Plexis Shopping Center.

At the entrance hall, there was already a group of twenty men sitting at a long table. They were laughing and quickly devouring a display of food that rivaled my most ludicrous dreams. Foods I could identify mingled with those I could not on metal trays adorned with paperwood utensils. We entered to a tremendous cheer from our new tribe. Yes, they had arrived just as we had. Like Crassus and me, these were scouts without a tribe prospecting an unforgiving landscape looking for a home. Now in this citadel of wonders they had found it, and each other.

There was gentle music piping from the ceiling, and laughter, and hard even floors that squeaked underneath our muddy dew-clad shoes. Brilliant lights buzzed down hallways, bouncing off rows of tan doors that held the promise of still further wonder.

Being able to read was a significant advantage for me. As the day wore on, I was able to decipher hints of the various functions the rooms held even as I took those timid first steps into our new home. There were symbols here, too. Symbols I recognized from corporate houses long since destroyed. Only they weren't covered in rust. They were new, glowing. Aside from the food, there was a map of further thrills deeper within the belly of the Plexis. And there would be time to explore it all later. For now, we sat and ate. And we told stories of who we were.

Even now I can't imagine anyone having a better day than that. We had been raptured from the ripper dogs, the meltstock, and the constant threat of blighted storms. We sat intoxicated by sugary drinks and the fastest of food. Our revelry went long into the night, and we slept in the food court telling stories from under long fur blankets. Soon enough we would begin unlocking where our home had come from, and how it arrived. Soon enough. That night our only concern was how to sleep without the constant threat of death.

Who I was before doesn’t matter. In truth, I was as close to nothing a breathing human can be. In the primordial days I was Ebon the Waste - a man without rank, and without a tribe save for my brother Crassus. And then the Plexis changed me. I found myself adept at drawing plans for furniture in chalk on the ground. I read signs, and guided my companions into the massive labyrinth. Words without meaning contextualized themselves with time. Before the Plexus I could never have dreamed of actually reading new things every day. Short of a cannibal I was the lowliest sort of man. A vagrant scavenger.

After the Plexis I was a ranking builder, and one of the highly respected discoverers of the new world.

My brother too quickly made a name for himself. Crassus, a boy who used to cry whenever the sun went down on an empty stomach was selected in those early days to unlock the secrets of the Plexis. He had so many questions. The only real source of information we could find were terminals located throughout the massive building's hallways. Each night I would go out and find him standing at the information kiosks reading quietly. Each morning I heard him recite what he had learned. It was quiet, solemn, almost like prayer,

Where is the light coming from? It comes from the metal egg. From where did the Plexis come? It came from the sky. What is our mission? To learn from the Plexis.

The metal egg was what he referred to in those days when he was talking about the mysterious nuclear core of the facility. By February, when the pulping drones started producing heart shaped papers to put on display in windows, it was Crassus who first consulted with the information terminals, who learned of the holiday cycle. It was very similar to our own calendar. I came home that evening to him sitting in his room, calmly speaking to himself,

Where does the light come from? It comes from the FNF style Radioisotope Generator located within the nuclear core. This generator was assembled largely in space. It is due for delivery of a replacement in an estimated 211 years via satellite drop. Where did the Plexis come from? It came from the drone legion constructed in space from the asteroid belt located between the planets Mars and Jupiter. In 2091 the first drone was released to harvest materials, and construct the next. Two and a half centuries later the drones completed the first Plexis model shopping center. They sent it back to Earth. The drones are automatically scheduled to cycle through and construct decorations annually to coincide with commercial holidays. The cost of the project was an estimated nine-hundred and seven million dollars in adjusted currency. By 2391 the total yield of the project in pre-collapse currency would have outpaced inflation estimates and yielded a net of sixty-five billion dollars. In two more centuries that number was projected to supplant all other primary commercial - and several industrial outlets.

The talk of dollars and dates wasn’t new. The year, for instance, was still widely referred to as 2387, the year of forgiving rains, by farmers and prophets alike. The Gregorian Calendar, while inconvenient, was still the reliable standard for counting time. As for the dollar, its descendant was still used in certain tribes with economies that didn‘t engage in inter-regional trade. Of course it had no inherent value.

After he had completed his ritual, he looked up at me standing in the doorway and smiled,

"This place started with one