GunBarrel Gauntlet: The Last Bronze II

Prologue: Word-keeper of the Waygo Tribe.

An ancient, withered grandmother of brown skin and bones lies on a bed of patchwork, breath whistling between pauses as she addresses a crowd of grubby children and their parents, a tribal people of mixed ancestry, dark with pale eyes, some with red or dirty blonde hair beaded and rubbed with clay.

Beside her, a blind youth holds open a photo album, scorched at the edges from its long history. The boy turns the pages on cue to her story, having memorized the saga in his apprenticeship as word-keeper for the Waygo tribe. The first few pages reveal faded images and mementos, before they continue as drawings that eventually become crude pictographs.

They are in a cave, illuminated by open flames near an alcove. Resting on the alcove shelf are a pile of skulls, ancestor totems taken from significant people in their collective past. Resting on the apex of bones is a larger cranium, scribed with lightning bolts above each brow ridge. Above the pile is a banner made from a dusty leather jacket with reinforced shoulder plates. The red symbol of a lion resting its paw over a globe faces the audience, ripped and punctured with bullet holes from the back of the weathered vestment.

Wide eyed and waiting for the word song to begin the crowd is silent as the old woman shudders with coughs until a breathing mask is placed over her lower face, pumped manually by leather bellows, regaining her strength to tell the legend.

"In the faded past, in the deep dreamtime, our ancestors trekked out from the Syd-city & Melborn-towns to hunt the clean animals and guzzle freshwater. It was a time of great trekking, many people were on the hunt, eaten anything that moved, eaten each other before they first laid eyes on the Never-Never and tried to cross it, that death-dealing emptiness that drinks a man's sweat till he be nuthin' but dog bones.

"They were the chaos times, before White Night lit up the sky and shook them all. Then the rain god Jurra Jurra wept her poisoned tears on her children to punish them for bein' greedy with the black cola, the sweet-sweet liquor the engines craved and guzzled to stay alive. She made them radio, made everything radio, even the air made the giger needles bend. Mr Death was busy.

"It all went mad, the world was upside down and couldn't remember its ABC's and 2+2's... There was no time for counting, just for taking if you'd been strong enough. Tough times made the tough get goin, riding the highways in their war chariots to fight for their place under the sun..."