Post-Apocalypse Dead Letter Office (11 page)

Still none.

Moved to Geneva this spring. Things improved a bit last year – most folks are somehow or other getting enough food to scrape by – but once Papa died I couldn’t stand it anymore. He had a good connection to one of the wineries up here, so I’m upstate for the long haul. I’m a glorified fucking day laborer, but I do mostly supervising and at least there’s enough to eat and drink at the end of the day.

The whole thing is still eerie as shit, though. Like these guys I’m working for, they turn Rieslings by the boatload. I don’t go for it all that much, but again, beggars ain’t choosy. So, they have all this white, and with what doesn’t sell or isn’t the best they make brandy out of it. I’ve been there when they’re doing this. The brandy turns out OK, right, but they’ve tried making moonshine or some shit out of it. They tried it once. Once they get their still rolling and it was pumping out stuff that was 100 proof or above, the weird shit happened. The booze curdled into this gray sludgy shit. It backed up the still and almost blew up before we got it off the fire. That would’ve been the end of me, at least. But instead, it’s just the end of trying to make white lightning. Seriously, what the fuck is that stuff?

Still missing you, T. If you get this, come back to New York. I’ve got a little credit with these guys and can spring – in bottles of Riesling and Pinot Grigio – for your trip. When you get to town, just ask about Wilson Creek Vineyard and Farm. We make plenty of deliveries into town, and can pick you up there.

-Alvy

P.S. – Say hello to your aunt from me.

To: Tess Lorantz c/o Eileen Gold, Leavenworth, KS

From: Alvy Garraldo, West Babylon, NY

July 13, 20+1

Tess-

Where are you? Where are you? Haven’t heard a fucking thing, not a word out of you for over a year now. Things are shit here. Just shit. Are you seeing the date I’m writing this on? You swore to me, PROMISED ME IN FRONT OF GOD AND EVERYBODY you’d always be here for me. And WHERE ARE YOU NOW?!

You fucking liar.

-A.

[Keeping these together, just in case we get more. -Rand M.]

To: Geraldine Engle or RESIDENT,

From: Arlen “Itzamna’s Scribe” Morris, Manitou Springs, CO

May 14, 20+6

Dear Resident-

Through my own industry, the boons of the gods and the magic of ditto machinery, I am able to offer to you and 375 other inquisitive individuals of discriminating taste the first printing of the first edition of MORE NEW MAYAN MYSTERIES REVEALED!

Possibly you are familiar with my previous works, Mayan Mysteries Revealed! and New Mayan Mysteries Revealed! With its publication in 1995 and having accurately predicted Guatemala’s Fuego eruption of 2002 as a harbinger – specifically, the predictive text reads “... and soon the gods will return and bring fire to their constituents and herald the coming of the end” – Mayan Mysteries Revealed! has proven to be of seminal importance to the field of Cosmomayatology. If so, you almost certainly are aware that since publishing that volume’s successor, New Mayan Mysteries Revealed!, so many events predicted within its pages – too many to relate here! –have come to pass that have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that New Mayan Mysteries Revealed! was a stunningly prophetic revelation. However, since these events did not coincide with the December 2012 dates discovered and put forth in print by yours truly (and other pale imitators and plagiarists) a complete reassessment of the cosmological timeline was necessitated. This was not my own idea, for having miserably seen what I had prophesied come to pass I was contented to let my own minor errors pass into oblivion as a slight shadow next to the blazing golden truth that is New Mayan Mysteries Revealed! Rather, two years ago I was visited upon for four straight nights by the Becabs. Through their visits, speaking only in the complex spiritual geometry they themselves created, the Becabs fully revealed to me their larger plan. It has taken me over a year and a half to parse out, analyze and fully comprehend this plan, THIS GREAT WORK, and another half year to write it out and annotate it.

Other mysteries abound, entangled with, coinciding with and completely apart from the question of the Becabs’ visitations and revelations. Are there reptoids astride on our planet, and if so are they descendants of Quetzalcoatl (i.e., VENUSIANS) or mere cosmic interlocutors from a separate? Do the Lords of Xibalba have plans to interfere with the great work set forth by the Becabs? What did the government know about my prophecies and when did it know it and is the government even in existence now and can they see you? (Hint: YES, they can!) Surely you are interested in such mysteries. Surely you want to know the answer to these questions. They and many others are answered in MORE NEW MAYAN MYSTERIES REVEALED!!!

More Predictions! More REVELATIONS! Satisfaction guaranteed!

I am not publishing this volume to make a profit, only to further the cause of revealing the truth, so please DO NOT SEND CASH, only NON-PERISHABLE COMESTIBLES to Mayan Revelations, Manitou, CO. Namaste!

-Arlen “Itzamna’s Scribe” Morris

To: Arnold “Smitty” Schmidt, Lawrence, KS

From: Your eastern friends, St. Louis, MO

February 10th, 20+6

Smitty-

Hey, buddy. Been a while since we heard from you. Been laying low lately? Can’t say I blame you. Things blew up pretty good around there, huh?

Word got to us about Biggs’s fuckup. His own range, his own backyard and he can’t run good product past the local yokels without his operation getting found out, and by a bunch of Nebraskans of all people. I’d say it’s a shame, really, but I don’t think that. What little I heard about old Biggs through the grapevine matched up pretty well with the real life version. Only met him once in St. Louis, just before he took over in Lawrence. Seemed like such a clever guy. Obviously totally lazy, and a dick to boot, but clever nonetheless. Not surprising, that shit catches up with you. Heard it was Petey that sold him out. Ha! Always thought Petey was Biggs’s little bitch. Definitely wasn’t good for business anywhere, but good on him for getting out and taking down Biggs with him.

The muckity mucks in Cleveland are peeved about this development, of course, but don’t really want to start any shit down your way. They’ve had enough trouble lately fending off the long arm of the law. Some folks up in Cleveland and Columbus are starting to really and truly reconstitute the local governments, and they’ve got some serious muscle at their disposal. One of the extended operational bosses in Chicago actually got strung up last spring! So, the head honchos can’t afford to move any people into your range any time soon, if ever. They’ve actually been talking about reworking their game plan, shifting the “mission” of the entire organization. Swear to god I was there when one of them dumb bastards used the word “mission statement”. Who in the hell talks like that anymore? Of course, they think I’m just some jerkoff leg, but I bet half a Folgers can of dope (good stuff, not that ditch weed you grow out west) I went to a better business school than he did, and I can recognize MBA-speak when I fucking hear it. No idea how a twit like that made it so fucking far up the totem pole. Chances are he’s in someone’s extended family.

Speaking of families, there’s also been way way too much inter-syndicate violence the past couple of years. Our syndicate and the ranges therein are all run by Poles. Don’t know whether you were aware of the fact. Guess it doesn’t matter so much. But they’ve had several run-ins with the Chicago mob, the Italians. Our syndicate takes out a couple of their boys a year, at the very least, and vice versa. (Ours – yeah right. I’ll never be more than a hired hand. A couple of the real assholes have started calling me Tonto – one of the main fucking reasons I’m writing you.) It racks up, man. Add to those bodies the mistaken hits that get made – the information network ain’t what it used to be, obviously – and the poor dopes who have to get put out to pasture because they saw a beatdown or a deal or just about anything they weren’t supposed to see, and we’re talking serious body counts.

Don’t it make you wonder, sometimes – is there still a Poland or an Italy? Should we make a trip across the pond and start some shit with the locals there, just like old times but in reverse? We’d probably best start with the Portuguese. Heh.

Really, this whole government resurgence thing is our own fucking fault. Well, the bosses’ – yeah, you’d better believe I’m passing that buck up. (Ain’t one of them who’d think twice about blaming me for some fuckup.) With so many of the abovementioned sloppiness, all the outright violence and the general ill-will towards the syndicates – can you blame them, for the price we charge just to get letters from A to B?) – it’s no fucking surprise these sad sacks finally started saying enough is enough.

Anyway, it sounded like they’re pretty serious about changing things. First off, they’re talking about making deals with the new-forming governments. Shit like normalizing the ranges and running them under some kind of semi-official, semi-commercial arrangement. Taking almost all the”profit motive” – yeah, what little there is, right? – out of this gig. They fucking just don’t realize the kind of risks that we take day in and day out. I think it’s really a cover story the bosses are pushing. They might actually put some structure into this operation to get on the good side of the law, but they’ll keep the margins on their services as high as they can get away with. If the bosses are good at one thing, it’s obscuring their profits. Even I don’t know how much our syndicate clears per parcel delivered. I know roughly the average of how much it costs, but the profit remains a mystery, and I’ll bet that’s just how they want it.

There has also been talk of the more profitable side of things also falling under the government banner. Couldn’t begin to tell you how that might play out. I think it’s just talk to leak to the farmers, to try and get them against the side of law and order. Legitimizing the products farmed by syndicate operations would have a big negative effect on a lot of these farms, and I mean a lot. Hell, you should see half the countryside here in late spring. Looks like blankets of red draped over everything. I expect they grow opium not just in Nebraska but Kansas too, yeah? Ever get sleepy making a run on the yellow brick road? “Poppies!” Ha ha sorry – it was too obvious a shot to not take. You still remember that movie? Seems like it’s been forever since movies and all that other stuff. Well, anyway, I might be reading too much into how and why word of this is getting around so much.

This is all relevant to but not really what I’m writing to you about. What these wanks really don’t understand – and that, oddly enough, these redneck cornshuckers, hog callers, the settlers of old and other assorted rubes DO get – is that there really is no “legit” any more except for the promise and occasional deliverance of fatal violence that doesn’t gain anyone anything. Wait, scratch that last part about not gaining anyone anything. But listen: no gold standard, no ISO-based organizations, no fucking metric system (except for our bikes), no nothing but fists. Impossible to tell who we have to thank (or curse) for that, but the fact is that it’s the way things are. Maybe it still was the way when we had internet and the UN and all the other bullshit, just obscured enough that no one really thought about it much.