Boiling Point

Tonantzin went scavenging by the Long 15 in Salt Lake City, at the Surplus. She travelled with a small group of other Crazy Horn women. Ostensibly they were hunting. The loss of Crazy Horn hunting grounds (already stretched thin by the population boom) had caused a food shortage.

But there weren't any animals at the Surplus. No wasteland plants had yet managed to compensate for the poison land, the legacy of toxic industrial chemicals seeping into the ground for two centuries. There were ants at the Surplus but their meat was garbage. There was no food in the Surplus, but that wasn't what Tonantzin was looking for.

She was looking for weapons. The Crazy Horns were salvaging metal in order to fashion it into better weapons than their traditional granite clubs. Tonantzin and her companions were gathering metal pipes, good pieces of sheet metal, wrenches, hammers, anything that could be fashioned into a weapon.

Athena didn't know what Tonantzin was actually looking for. The elders didn't want Athena's expulsion to be violent, but they remembered well how she taught them to fear her laser pistol. The whole tribe had heard stories of other tribes who rejected the Daughters of Hecate being plagued by famine and disease, and set upon by other tribes cowed by the Goddess and her envoys. They wanted to be prepared.

Athena was being kept in the dark by the Crazy Horns but she knew something was coming. The tension in the tribe was slowly reaching a boiling point. When Athena came back from Ouroboros the Crazy Horns were no longer her tribe, and she could feel it every time she walked among them. They watched her while she watched them, she stalked through the tribe like a predator among prey.

The Crazy Horns weren't a warlike tribe, though, nor were they scavengers. Circumstances had pushed them out of their comfort zone and Tonantzin paid the price by getting a rusty nail stuck through her foot at the Surplus. She had to be supported all the way back to the village by her companions.

Athena was engaging in her now-daily dance of fear and intimidation with the Crazy Horns when the scavengers came back from the surplus. Immediately Athena snapped out of her posturing when she saw Tonantzin's foot.

"We didn't take the nail out, we didn't know what to do," one of the other scavengers was hysterical, near to the point of tears. Tonantzin's foot did look terrible.

"It's fine, you did the right thing, if you pulled this thing out she probably would've bled to death on the way back," Athena reassured her while Tonantzin went pale. Athena raised Tonantzin's foot while giving her a cloth bag, "Huff this."

Tonantzin held the bag to her mouth a breathed deep. She passed out. Athena removed the nail from her foot, applying pressure to stem the flow of blood. She wrapped the wound in thick poly-cotton bandages and gave Tonantzin a tetanus shot. She smiled unconsciously as she finished up, proud of her work. Then she looked up.

She was surrounded by a crowd of stone-faced Crazy Horns. Some were clutching metal weapons, clubs and spears crudely fashioned from scrap from the Surplus and other former industrial sights. There wasn't a single friendly tribes-person around her. She hadn't realized just how toxic her relations with the tribe had become. The tension had risen so gradually, and Athena was so immersed in it that only when she had temporarily stepped outside to tend to Tonantzin's wounds did she realize how intense it had gotten.

The tribe gripped their weapons tightly as Athena stood up, untied her laser pistol from her waist and dumped it unceremoniously into unconscious Tonantzin's lap. She began to walk, and the crowd parted to let her. She marched unmolested until she encountered the Canaanites, who had surrounded the village. They were dressed in puritanical clothing, immediately distinguishable from the Crazy Horns. The Canaanites all wore high collars and long sleeves, and none of the Canaanites who came to expel Athena were female. All of them carried guns, semi-automatic pistols and automatic rifles. In the middle of the Canaanites stood Jeremiah Rigdon, clutching a shotgun and sneering.

"Your lies are no longer welcome here, false prophet," he told Athena. He gripped his shotgun tighter as she approached, a woman unarmed and half his height. He did not move to let her pass like the Crazy Horns had. She stared at him, heavy-lidded and expecting no quarter.

"Whore of Babylon, you're time is at hand. You've poisoned this tribe against its allies and against God. You have woven a web of deceits and coerced the innocent into the worship of a demon and a blasphemer," he boomed in his great, echoing voice, a voice that had cowed generations of Canaanites and the elders of the Crazy Horns. It was a voice full of assurance and the authority of the christian god. The tribe cowered at Jeremiah's words. Athena simply stood before him. She was tired, and defeated. She expected no mercy nor did she desire it. She looked Jeremiah right in the eyes.

"Are you going to shoot me?" she asked, "Or will you step aside?"

Jeremiah seemed taken aback. He had not intended to use violence unless Athena had become violent, but he was expecting her to resist a little. He wanted her gone, but he hadn't expected her to leave. He withdrew in stunned silence.

Athena walked, leaving the Crazy Horns village behind her. She hadn't taken anything with her when she left, just her clothes and her collar. She left all her medication, she left all her personal belongings. She walked and she didn't look back.

"Athena! Wait!" a voice cried out after she was nearly half a mile from the village. It was Too Much, the young Crazy Horns warrior. He ran to her, clutching her laser pistol in his hands. He handed it to her, and it seemed as though he wanted to say something, but he withdrew without a single word. Athena was all alone.