GRUBSTAKE: A Post Apocalyptic Pawn Shop

People come to your counter with what they scavenged that week: a rifle with no rounds, four cans without labels, a watch that somehow still runs. They tell you what they need, and what they think is a fair number of it. Nothing here has a price, so that number is the only one you get, and plenty of them are lying about it.

THE COUNTER

A man sets his loot on the counter, desperate for clean water. There is good scrap in the pile. A scope, a handful of rounds, something with copper still in it. Four bottles at least, by any honest count.

He asks for two.

So why give him four? Nobody in this town checks your work. The clean water behind you is all the clean water there is, and he is not going to argue, and he is not going to know. Hand him the two he asked for and he thanks you for them. Hand him four and you are four bottles poorer over a scope that may sit in your shop until the day you die.

Nothing on the screen will tell you which of those you did.

THE SHELVES

Everything you own is on the shelves behind the counter, where you put it. There is no list. No search, no tab, no number telling you what is left. You turn around and you look at it.

You put the shelves there too. Where they stand, what goes on which one, how far each is from the counter, all of it is yours, and you will be living with it.

A farmer needs a spark plug for his generator.

You had one. You are almost certain you had one, down on the low shelf with the engine parts, off something a scavenger stripped in the spring. That was a lot of trades ago and the shelf does not look the way it did. So you walk down it and check, and he is at the counter watching you check.

There is no way to look it up. You either know what you have, or you find out in front of him.

THE BENCH

Nobody is making anything new. If somebody needs a part, it comes out of something that is already broken, and the bench in the back is where you get it out.

Nobody has asked for a radio in a month.

There is copper in it though, and a magnet, and two screws the right size for the scope you have had sitting there since spring. Take it apart and you have four things people ask for instead of one thing nobody does. Take it apart and you do not have a radio anymore, and there is nowhere to get another one.

Every part you gain is a whole thing you no longer have.

THE TERMINAL

Sometimes what somebody puts on the counter is a key. A place they could not get into, or could not get out of, and they are selling you what is left of the trip. You are not going out there yourself. You put the job out on the terminal and wait for somebody who will.

Whoever answers says it is four days on foot and there will be things to kill.

That means food for four days and enough rounds to matter, and all of it comes off your shelves before he leaves, whether he comes back or not. Send him short and he comes back empty. Send him heavy and whatever he brings home cost more than it was worth. He may also be padding the list, and the only way to learn that is to have sent him before.

Nobody gives you the odds. You pack what he asked for, or you do not, and he walks out the door.

Everybody who comes through that door is on their way somewhere. Somebody is walking to a place four days out. Somebody is going home to a generator that will not start. You are the place they stop on the way, and you will still be here when the next one comes in.