Chapter 5.

Rowland

20 years ago, Camelback Mountain had towered over a wealthy suburb of Phoenix, Arizona.

Then had come the Civil War.

Power, food, and water shortages made the city's 130-degree summers insufferable for all but the hardiest or most chromed.

Millions fled for less vicious climates,

or simply died from exposure and starvation. Now Phoenix was a looted crumbling ghost,

but Camelback Mountain still hosted a version of human civilization. Cameltoe was a city of roughly

5,000. The name had started because the settlement's founders, homeless teens, thought it was funny.

A few hundred orphaned or abandoned kids had settled in the McMansions clustered around the

mountain's western edge and foothills.

They'd scrounged growlamps and engines and weaponry, and today, the denizens of the Toe

had the strongest city-state between California and the

Kingdom of Albuquerque. Roland was their guardian. Mind you, they'd never asked him to guard them.

The polis had been doing quite well, thank you very much, when he'd shown up and built his shack in

the middle of their only park. A delegation of armed toans had showed up to politely evict Roland,

and he'd been forced to carve off their foreskins as a show of dominance.

They'd sent a single negotiator next, and worked out a thoroughly beneficial arrangement.

Roland would aid in the city's defense in exchange for his now-departed shack, and, twice a year, all the narcotics he could carry home from their harvest.

It was an arrangement Roland had enjoyed. He was frustrated that Jim's men had forced him to destroy his beloved

hovel. But it was hard for him to be angry all the same. The sun was out now, and it was early

enough that the day's heat had yet to set in. The great red desert and the carcass of Phoenix

...