Chapter 14: Dear Hearts And Gentle People

By the standards of the old world, the breakfast that lay before the travelers wasn't much of a meal- a large pot of oatmeal, with an empty soup bowl, a metal ramekin of dried fruit, and a mug of chicory coffee at each diner's spot. To the average denizen of the wasteland, however, it was quite literally a meal to kill for.


"You do know you don't have to, like, wolf it down?" Shaggy asked as he saw Ace practically inhale her portion.

"Cut her some slack. I mean, this is probably the first proper meal she's had in ages-" Fred began.

"I'll handle this." Jonah piped up.

And with that, the old cowboy turned his gaze towards the little girl.

"Kid, you can slow down- ain't nobody going to take your food away. 'sides, if you keep eating like that, you'll give yourself a bellyache. Comprehende?"

Ace vigorously nodded and promptly slowed down her pace.

"How'd you-" Velma began.

"It's all in the voice, pardner." came the reply.

Sibella cracked a smile.

"You sure you aren't a vampire?" she playfully asked.

"Last I checked, I wasn't. Now, those Hex Girls on the other hand…"

"We're eco-goths, not vampires!" Dusk indignantly replied.

"Then why is it that the old billboard outside Mockingbird with your faces on it had you with each of you ladies sporting a pair of fangs?"

"They were prosthetic dentures back then!"

"Then how come you've still got them now?"

A chuckle escaped Thorn's lips.

"We ended up wandering into someplace that was more irradiated than we initially thought and got mutated. Somehow, all three of us picked up the same mutation and nothing else."

"Guess we're just lucky- that or Thorn's on real good terms with her patron upstairs." Dusk added.

Jonah nodded.

"So, what is exactly is an 'eco-goth'?" he asked.

"We're kinda like Wiccans." Luna replied.

"What on God's green Earth is a Wiccan?"

The table grew quiet enough to hear a pin drop.

"We'll explain it later. For now, let's finish breakfast and get back on the road." Dusk finally said.

Just then, something crossed Fred's mind.

"What exactly are we going to use to pay for the fuel and whatever else we pick up in Tulsa?" he asked.


Fargo's Motor Services, Tulsa- several hours later

"What've you got in there?" Tanis asked as she saw Thorn handing out some orange pill bottles to the assembled group.

"Homemade herbal antibiotic made from a mixture of powdered garlic and purple coneflower. Trust me when I say it's worth a king's ransom in this day and age." came the reply.

"Well, I'm going to see if we can't find some better clothes for Ace than one of Velma's old t-shirts." Daphne piped up.

The other travelers soon left one-by-one, eventually leaving only Thorn, Dusk, Fred, and Velma behind with the vehicles.

"So, Thorn- where'd you learn how to make antibiotics?" the orange-clad member of Mystery Inc. asked.

"Dad was a pharmacist and Mom was an herbalist who taught me the trade. Hell, before the bombs dropped, I'd actually been planning to study at Ivy University as a Pharmacy major. Guess time makes fools of us all."

Her expression soured.

"Now, which one of you jokers wants to help me empty the black water tank?"


AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Regarding the composition of Thorn's homemade antibiotics, both garlic and purple coneflower apparently do have antimicrobial properties in the real world. As for why they'd be, in Thorn's words, "worth a king's ransom in this day and age", there's one simple reason for that- in a post-apocalyptic world, more conventional antibiotics such as penicillin would become increasingly scarce as time went on, thus creating a demand for a more readily available substitute- for a similar example in real life, see the developments of celluloid and synthetic rubber.