RAILROAD MARK: FEELLIN’ FROGGY

Date: 10.10.2224
Location: Frogtown

We circled back to the church first. The rain had eased, left mud and silence in its wake. St. Joseph’s still smelled like incense buried beneath mildew, a holy ruin. We washed what grime we could, laid Timothy’s memory to rest in prayer, then turned to the machine waiting in the corner.

T-60 power armor. Old world frame. Fusion core slotted in like a heart beating again.

I asked plain: “Who wears it?”

Larry was quick, maybe too quick. He’s no fighter, and he knows it. Armor like this looks like salvation to him, but I know it also paints a target. Still, the wasteland don’t deal in fairness. Whoever wears the weight, carries the consequence.

We loaded up, stepped out into Frogtown.

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FEELLIN’ FROGGY

Walking in this armor—it's like history crawled out the grave and strapped itself to me. Heavy, loud, righteous. Feels less like protection, more like penance.

But the road is littered with frog corpses, split open like ruptured drums. Further on, the battlefield opens—a swamp churned by bloodworms tunneling beneath, frogs leaping in grotesque arcs, jaws wide, bodies swollen from radiation. A war, if you can call it that.

Lt. Clancy broke the silence.

“What world are you from, Chief? ’Cause it ain’t this one.”

I looked him dead, voice steady:

“I’m from the world before collapse. A place where men built towers taller than trees, where water ran clean, and food came without war. A world that thought itself invincible, but forgot consequence. That’s the world I carry—buried, but not gone.”

He shook his head like it was myth. Head of the Big Easy, yet he never understood what made it easy. For him, life has only ever been scavenged and hard.

I told him:

“New Orleans before ’76 was more than survival. It was jazz in the streets, gumbo on the table, and families walking free on levees at sundown. The Big Easy wasn’t easy because it lacked struggle. it was easy because life was shared, not hoarded. You call yourself its head, but you’ve never tasted it.”

He stared quiet at that, not sure if he believed or envied.

Meanwhile, Larry—the Swindler—kept grumbling, eyes fixed on the armor.

“That suit’s cursed, Chief. Gonna drag us down. Or maybe… maybe I should wear it. Wouldn’t weigh me down like it does you.”

He’s begging now, even more after the sight of the hoppers—giant frogs watching from the treeline, pulsing throats glowing faint green. His paranoia’s growing, feeding on the unknown. Maybe fear, maybe envy. Maybe both.

Pinball spun up a track to cut the tension—Fats Waller’s “Cash for Your Trash.” The irony hit me clean. We walk in the ruins, scavenging the bones of a dead world, selling it back to ourselves like salvation.

I laughed, but not long. The armor’s heavy. The past heavier. To Lafayette we go.