A Winding Dirt Road Chapter 2: Business As Usual

“The hell?” Jayne asked, holding a huge crate in both of his hands as he got to the top of the hill, with Mal, Zoë and Wash behind him. “Our gorram business partners ain’t /here/, Mal,” he said angrily, turning his head to look as far behind himself as was possible.

“Oh, this is /not/ good,” the captain said as he made it up the hill, the couple behind him looking around in an unhappy way.

“Not here?” Wash repeated, looking a bit scared. “But we can’t miss this drop-off, right? We screw this one up and-“

“And we’re humped,” Mal said, finishing Wash’s sentence for him. He looked about the place with a worried look on his face.

They were on top of a hill not far from a smallish scrap yard, empty if you didn’t count all the scrap metal. There were fields as far as they eye could see in every other direction, and a small farming town could be seen off in the distance, men at work in the fields.

Serenity was parked next to the scrap yard, positioned so that it couldn’t be seen from the farming town in the distance. Its ramp was still down. The crew had judged that it was perfectly safe to leave it there, as there was nobody around but the crew itself. They knew the scrap yard was empty.

“Smiggins won’t just be wanting his cargo back, he’ll be less than pleased at us taking so long to do nothing,” Mal continued. “We come back to him with his drugs and none of the promised money, we won’t last long.”

“Couldn’t we just, you know, pay him off with our own money? It’d take a chunk out of our pay, sure, but we’d all be /alive/,” Wash suggested, looking between his fellow crewmates. They all gave him a frown when he said this, though.

“You /feng le/?” Jayne said angrily, swaying the crate around as he tried to find a position to hold it in that wasn’t entirely uncomfortable. “Don’t think we could even afford to pay him back the full ruttin’ price, /sah gwa/.”

“Jayne’s right, Wash,” Mal said with a sigh. “We just don’t got the money for it, whether or not we take it out of all our pay.”

“Well, let’s not jump to conclusions here,” Wash said hopefully. “Maybe they’re just late, we could just wa-“

“Captain!” Zoë said suddenly, making everyone turn to face her. She had turned away from them, looking over to Serenity. A small man was walking up the ramp, and it definitely wasn’t any member of the crew.

“And just what the hell do you think you’re doing down there?” Mal shouted out loudly, in an attempt to get the man’s attention. It worked.

The man spun about quickly and suddenly, facing the four of them with a look on his face that had to be fear.

“I’ll ask you one more time,” Mal called out, pulling his trusty pistol out of its holster and aiming it straight for the man. He wasn’t exactly close, but that was no problem to Mal. “What in the hell are you doin’ walkin’ up into my boat?”

“I was just- I… You folk are here for the job, right?”

“/Juh shi suh mo go donhg shee/?” Jayne muttered, bewildered. “That don’t look like the man ‘twas described, Mal.”

“Must’ve been a change of plans,” Mal replied, equally as confused, before looking back to the man and raising his voice again. “Right you are, we’re here for the job! You’d do best to stay away from my gorram ship, though! Want to keep this meeting strictly business-like, we aren’t needing for you to climb into my boat.”

The man hesitated for a moment before running all the way over to the four of them and up the hill. He stopped in front of Mal, pulled something out of his pocket and started to pant profusely.

“We don’t got all day,” Jayne said angrily. “An’ this box is awful heavy, so you speed up with your gorram breathing.”

“Jayne, who’s the boss here?” Mal asked, raising his eyebrows and facing the mercenary. “You shut your mouth and I’ll get things done here. Just stand there, hold the box and look pretty. You’ve done this before, it’s not that hard.” A beat. “Well, the pretty part might come to be a bit difficult for you, but…”

A stream of Chinese curse words spewed out of Jayne’s mouth as his captain grinned and turned back to face the panting man who was now, as it turned out, not panting anymore. He lifted what he was holding up, revealing it to be a folded piece of worn-out paper. He unfolded it and read it before directing his eyes back to the captain.

“Right, well you just follow this map and it’ll take you where it’s going to happen,” said the man eagerly. “Map’s as detailed as it needs to be. You’ll be wantin’ to be there at 10:00 PM sharp, starts at 10:15 or so. You know the rules, right?”

“Right, right,” Mal said, taking the map from the man’s hands. He was extremely confused, but he and Zoe were the only ones out of the four of them that /hid/ this fact. “10:00 PM, got it. Why with the change of plans, though?”

“Change of plans?” The man repeated, obviously confused. “Ain’t been no change of plans, /da yeh/.”

“The hell?” Mal muttered to himself. “Must’ve heard it wrong. Right, well, 10:00 PM. Not far from the ship… We look forward to doing business with you, sir.”

“Damn, you’re a ruttin’ /chai neow/,” the man said, but he bowed and walked off without another word. Once he was gone, Mal turned to address Jayne, Zoe and Wash.

“Somethin’s not right with this, Mal,” Jayne said. “We goin’ through with this anyways?”

“We always got our guns if this job turns south,” Mal replied, nodding. “We’re gonna be there 10:00 PM sharp. Change of plans or not, we cannot screw this one up. Like I said, we go back without the man’s money and he’ll show us his angry face.”

“Well,” Wash said with what might have resembled a sigh, “so much for frolicking in the sun. What’re we gonna do while we wait, it’s… What, 5:00 now?”

“5:30,” Zoe replied, looking down to the multiband that was strapped around her arm.

She’d had it since she was young, God knows she couldn’t afford it on the salary she was getting working on Serenity. Like all multibands worth their buck, it could tell time, point you towards north, do simple math, record sounds and receive radio transmission. She was the only one of the crew who had one, so she was the only one able to tell time when not on the ship.

“Well, what’re we gonna do until then?” Jayne asked, an upset tone invading his voice.

“Cards?”

* * *

There wasn’t anything new to do on the ship, of course. As they waited for the time to come around (they were going to leave at 9:30, in case the walk took longer than expected) they played cards with each other. Everyone else on the ship must’ve been asleep, except for River. River was still pacing about the place, occasionally mumbling to herself.

Like usual, she was being odd and unsettling.

Anyways, during the card game they looked over the map. It was real simple, with a little town drawn on it representing the nearby farming community, a little drawing of a scrap yard, a bunch of lines in some places to depict hills and at which points you’ll be below a hill, and… Well, something that symbolized the meeting place.

It was a big circle with a bending, winding line coming out of it that eventually led back into it. Didn’t make much sense, seeing as the man could’ve just drawn a spot or something. The map wasn’t really useful anyways, just told you which direction to go in, basically. They had no idea how far the spot actually was; they just planned on walking till they found it. There were some rocks on the map that must’ve been landmarks, though.

So, eventually it came time to leave. Mal, Jayne, Zoë and Wash set off towards the location on their map, Jayne carrying the crate like before. The little journey was very uneventful, consisting mostly of Jayne complaining and Mal trying his best to read the map correctly with no light to speak of. Sure, it was a simple map, but none of them could see a thing.

Finally they came to a rather large hill and climbed it slowly, all of them a bit tired from the trek. They were all eager to get the job over with so they’d have money in their hands, of course.

When Mal got to the top of the hill, having been leading the group, he just stopped moving. Wash and Zoë followed suit very quickly, but Jayne was a few feet behind them.

“Finally,” the gruff man said, “was wonderin’ how ruttin’ long it would take to climb this gorram hill… Could’ve just made the meetin’ point /closer/ as opposed to all the way the hell out he-“ He stopped in mid-sentence and stared.

It took Jayne a while to get his bearings and say, “/Wong ba duhn/.”

Author’s Note:

Hey, look! A chapter two! Once again, tell me if it’s any good. I might’ve messed it up seeing as I wrote the ending a while after starting it, but I think it came out okay.

Translations:

Feng le = Crazy.

Sah gwa = Fool.

Juh shi suh mo go donhg shee = What the hell is this crap?

Da yeh = Sir.

Chai neow = Weirdo.

Wong ba duhn = Son of a bitch.