>>6057389However, the most interesting information you gather from your day of scavenging and people-watching comes from the latter. You're not particularly good at speaking, but you are good at listening, and putting two and two together.
One, pretty much everyone here resents Karl and his five or six goons (one may be ill or wounded).
Two, like damn near everything else, this place is dying, but it's dying a lot slower than elsewhere you've been: dealing with the water situation might generate a surplus, even.
Three, Karl was kicked out by, or left, a bigger gang. Big gangs largely stopped being a thing during the drought -- you do know that between Frosttime and Rusttime AridZone was almost unified by a roving tribe of horse riders, and for a few years after Poisontime a particularly aggressive group of mutants adapted to cave darkness made the entire south impossible for a caravan to safely cross.
There being a bigger gang at all nowadays would be news enough that everyone would know it, but you collected contradicting rumors. Maybe it's a story Karl spread for his own purposes.
Dogshit City has a sawbones, Jones; he's not very good and has little to work with, in your not-so-humble opinion. Karl is riding his ass about getting his sixth henchman back on his feet.
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Axle returns after a couple of days in which you tightly ration your own consumption, look around, and listen, carrying Miria on his back.
"The fuck am I doing with a mutant? It's got seven fingers and no toes. Deal's off."
"You, nothing. Me, I help her get down the well and do her work. Deal's still on?"
"Fine. Get the two and a half of you busy."
Miria is clearly scared shitless, and makes some nonverbal noise, but appreciates you being between Karl and her. You get a good look at her; for most intents and purposes her lower half just isn't there. Scarring shows that even that much, someone had to do -- you wonder if it was a stroke of luck or if there is, or was, someone really good at stitching people together in Left End.
To Karl's credit, you see him collect food and water bottles for you to take away. To his discredit, he's done absolutely no planning on it -- his goons are simply walking into people's shacks and collecting whatever reserves they might have. At least you're not getting blamed for it.
Miria is used to being harnessed to fix wells, it was her job in Left End after all. You got maybe three words out of her... until everyone is out of earshot and you and your henchmen, such as they are, are left alone in the pumphouse.
She sounds like a dog toy. "All right! I came. Big leap of faith. Here's my rules: I want half rations on the trail, since I can't walk, but I want full rations in town. If you don't have 'em, we mark it down, and you give me the extra when we get to a market."
> That's fair.> No, half rations, period. You get two big guys protecting your non-ass, it's enough.> I'm planning to sell you to Karl, tell me why I shouldn't. 
