THE LEGACY OF MAD DOG

by Galen Hardesty

CHAPTER ONE

RIDERS OF THE REDDISH PURPLE SAGE

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The last scarlet sliver of the bloated solar orb sank below the horizon. Daria Morgendorffer flipped up the driver's side sun visor of her mother's SUV and the clip-on shades on her glasses. "Well, if you have to ride off into the sunset, this is a pretty good one to ride off into."

"Oh, yeah! I'd just kill to get that exact color in a lipstick! And that one there for eyeshadow- can you imagine?!" From the passenger seat, Quinn pointed as if confident that Daria could tell exactly which parts of the sunset she was pointing at.

"Oh, I KNOW! Sandi would just shrivel up and DIE from envy!" Daria waved a limp-wristed hand at her sister.

"All right... sheesh! Don't have a sarcasm-gasm! Or at least pull over first!"

Daria smirked. "I guess we'll each just have to appreciate the sunset in her own way. Speaking of appreciation, did Dad seem brighter and more interesting at dinner than he usually does? And if so, do you think that's because he's back there in Fremont working with clients, or because Mom wasn't there?"

"Hmmm, interesting question," mused Quinn. "I'd have to say some of both. And also partly because, compared to the Fremontites, he is brighter and more interesting."

Daria smirked again. "Good point. If Fremont were about three times as big, and smelled a little worse, and the people were nastier, it could almost be Highland." She and Quinn were returning to Lawndale following a courier mission. They had brought their father a stack of proposals and a CD-ROM containing the multimedia portion of the presentation that he would be making tomorrow.

Quinn gazed out her window at the passing scenery. The only living things were sage bushes, scraggly grayish-yellow grass, and few-and-far-between trees, all of which looked like they'd died of drought. "I just don't see how it's worth it to Dad to drive all the way out here to Fremont for the tiny consulting fees he's getting." She said.

"It's kind of marginal now, but Dad's got a lock on Fremont because no other consultant has made the effort. And there's a rumor that AMD is going to put a CPU fab out here."

"Whoa, nerd alert! Geekspeak, Daria, geekspeak!"

Daria sighed. "A fab is a factory that makes computer chips, and CPUs, or central processors, are the most valuable kind. They're the brains of a computer. A fab can turn a wheelbarrow full of sand into a million bucks worth of processor chips."

"And if Dad helps Fremont land a new industry like that, he'll have tons of goodwill with the business community!" Quinn was seeing it.

"Not to mention the bonuses he'll be getting. And the tiny businesses that have been paying him those tiny fees will suddenly become much bigger businesses."

"And pay him much bigger fees! I like it! Um, Daria, why are you stopping?"

Daria slowed, pulled off the road onto a stretch of smooth level shoulder, and stopped. "I just want to pick a little bit of this sagebrush before it gets too dark to see. It's cleaner out here than the stuff that grows closer to town." Daria pulled off to the side, got out, and walked about twenty yards away from the road. She broke off small branches from a couple of sage bushes and returned to the SUV.

Quinn examined a piece of the sagebrush as Daria set Helen's red behemoth in motion again. Its tiny curved twigs held many tiny grayish-green leaflets. She sniffed it. "Wow! Potent! What are you gonna do with it?"

"Use it for seasoning."

"But we already have some sage. It's in the drawer under the dish towels with the rest of the spices Mom never uses."

"It's not the same. I don't think it's even related. Remember that potato, onion, and sausage dish I fixed a month or so ago?"

"You fixed that? Yeah, it was pretty good."

"All I put in it was salt and a little bit of this. I'm going to try it in some bean soup next."

Quinn sniffed the sagebrush again. "Yeah, that would work. How come you're getting domestic all of a sudden?"

"Idle curiosity, mostly. I mean, we're surrounded by thousands of square miles of the stuff. But did you ever get the feeling that if Mom plopped one more slab of lasagna down in front of you, you'd scream?"

Quinn snorked daintily. "Yeah, a few dozen times." She sneaked a sidewise glance at her sister. "Are those the only reasons?"

"Well, it did occur to me how tragic it would be if some handsome, brilliant, charming, wealthy young man proposed to me and I had to turn him down because he couldn't cook."

Quinn giggled but wisely said nothing. A body dumped out here might not be found for years.

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It was full dark as Daria pulled into Mad Dawg's parking lot, parked the SUV and turned off the ignition. "Remember, we just get a can of soda and leave. This place gives me the creeps."

Quinn exited from shotgun position. "I don't know why. Everyone was real nice to us last time, remember? Anyway, I felt kind of... at home in there, for some reason. I'm starting to feel it again, right now."

"Well, they certainly rolled out the red carpet for you... oh, wait, that was their tongues."

There were about 20 motorcycles parked in front of the entrance. Daria and Quinn had to squeeze between them. From inside they heard laughter and jukebox music. They pushed open the little swinging doors. The regulars were on the floor, mostly against the walls and in corners. They had obviously just lost a fight, badly. Masters of all they surveyed were the owners of the cycles outside. Most of them wore denim jackets, many with arms cut, ripped, or gnawed off, bearing a very large embroidered patch on the back depicting a tarantula with, incongruously and incorrectly, an orb weaver-type spiderweb in the background. A scroll above the tarantula read 'TARANTULAS M. C.' Daria took in the scene and said "Wuh-oh."

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