Chugir was forty years old, weary, and damaged by bad booze.
The booze problem he blamed on the Drinkards. For months, he had been stalking a Drinkard and extracting almost pure alcohol from its body.
“Almost” pure. People were saying it was Chugir’s own fault, that he pushed the Drinkard too hard, until the booze it produced came out polluted. “Bad metabolism,” they were saying. Chugir wasn’t greedy. Each day, he’d been sharing with others the clear drink which he pressed out through the Drinkard’s metal tubes.
But this particular morning, the booze made him sick and he threw up blood. The others carried him to a Fixard, the common type spotted on the grass plains, and shouted for help until one of the Fixards heard them.
PULP METAL MAGAZINE 