Free Doomsday Warrior 14 - American Death Orbit by Ryder Stacy

there was a whole load of hungry mouths coming in.
    “How the hell do you power this place?” Rock asked, as power sources of any kind in this day and age outside of mule power were rare and far between—unless controlled by the Reds.
    “Well, see, this was a real diner,” the blond waitress said, putting her hands on both Rock’s and Chen’s shoulder and leading them over to one of the formica tables that sat along the wall, just below the bank of windows. “When the bombs came they—they didn’t get us. The way those hills are shaped kinda led the poison away. Our ancestors stayed on, what the hell. Had a huge supply of propane tanks, as they’d gotten their own equipment years before and stocked up huge amounts of stuff in shacks all around the area. Over one hundred tanks of the stuff. Anyway, us valley girls have been keeping this place running for the last century,” she said proudly. “Cooking eggs, turning pancakes. I tell you, the people that come in here with scowls—they leaves with smiles on their faces.”
    “A primitive paradise,” Chen said, eyeing the Boston cream pie.
    “This is about as close as it’s going to get to paradise this side of the pearly gates!” She smiled. “Now, what would you boys like? We got a full menu tonight. Just bagged us some fresh mountain goat; Got bison—the non-mutant kind. So just let me know. And remember we cook to suit your taste—spicey, mild, or no taste at all.” She laughed again and Rock decided he liked her. With her huge breasts pushing out tightly against her waitress outfit, he liked her quite a bit in fact. And Rona was far away . . .
    Rock and Chen studied the menu carefully then placed their orders. “A sirloin and garnishes for me,” Rock asked.
    “Two hornburgers with slugs,” she screamed out in time-honored diner slang of all the hash joints throughout history. “Double Q-B’s triple Frenchie smasher . . .”
    It sounded horrible, but it sure as hell tasted good when it began arriving at their table, carried by two smiling waitresses, each one more curvy and uniform-busting than the next.
    By the time the rest of the team got their ’brids and all-terrain bikes parked out front and marched noisily in, Rock and Chen were already deep into the main course of their respective meals—Buffalo burger rare, with onions on the side, home fries—real potatoes, not dried spuds or hydroponically grown like C.C.’s, which always left a certain chemical residue in the mouth, no matter how much the eater pretended they were the real thing.
    The food was excellent and within minutes the whole place was nothing but chewing and slurping sounds, forks and knives clattering against bowls and plates as the whole crew ate and talked loudly. It was a dream. A taste of mom’s home cooking from the days when there had been thousands of such railroad-car-shaped diners that filled the land. It almost brought tears to some of their eyes, even as it brought orgasms of taste to their tongues.
    It was Bernstein who felt a little funny first. Just a queasy feeling in his stomach. But then he had always had a bad stomach, an ornery digestive system going back to his teens. And working with explosives for the last twenty years hadn’t helped to cool a nascent ulcer down any. He excused himself and asked one of the waitresses where the men’s room was. She pointed down to the right side of the diner, where he saw a set of wooden doors. He pushed through, found the men’s room and walked in. He had seen pictures of such in the Century City library, where they had preserved everything they could about the past, every picture, every scrap of writing found in the ruins of old America. For whatever they gathered on their search missions could well be all that would be preserved of Twentieth Century America.
    The men’s room, with its porcelain urinal and sink and tile floor sure as hell would have made the archeology boys back in C.C. happy, Bernstein thought