The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head (10 page)

“A leash and a collar, especially in
public.”

“Is this another sexual control thing?”

“No,” Gieo lied. She knew it was a lie, but
it was one she wanted to tell herself as well, at least, for the
moment. The thought of being collared and led about on a leash by
Fiona disgusted and thrilled her in confusing ways she wasn’t
remotely ready to discuss. “It’ll show you’ve taken control of your
property. Once the Hawkins House has their inevitable freak out and
blames Zeke, it’ll look like this was your plan all along.”

Fiona had to admit, if people thought Gieo
could do whatever she wanted, it would make them both vulnerable;
it was a clever ruse, and one that would solve a lot of problems,
but certainly not a serious suggestion Fiona could have put forth.
“What did you do tonight? Ramen only told me you had a clever crab
plan.”

Gieo laughed. “I think I was still a little
high when I told him. Anyway, I left Yahweh Hawkins with sore
testicles and a distinct impression Zeke was summoning cat demons
to fuck with him.”

“But what about the poison?”

“Come up to the roof tomorrow and you can
watch.”

“Are you going to come to bed tonight?” Fiona
asked in a small, nervous voice, so unlike the steely gunfighter
tone she used in public.

“I still have some things I need to finish,”
Gieo replied. “I’ll see you in the morning though.” She leaned
across the center console and kissed Fiona gently on the lips.
“Thank you, yet again, for the timely rescue.”

“Just my luck,” Fiona whispered into the
kiss. “The first woman I meet that I’m afraid to lose and she’s
reckless and crazy. This isn’t doing my fear of abandonment issues
any favors.”

Gieo found her fingers playing with the
collar of Fiona’s denim jacket of their own volition. “I’m not
going anywhere,” Gieo said, although she wasn’t entirely sure she
meant it. “Plus, soon you’ll be able to find me at the end of a
leash.” She’d intended it as a joke, but it passed her lips
sounding earnest; moreover, her body reacted lustily to both the
words she spoke and the mental picture they created. Gieo
practically leapt from the car and ran for the front of the saloon,
hoping Fiona didn’t notice her nipples suddenly jumping to
attention through the black, spandex cat suit.

The tent, sleeping bag, and hammock, along
with the lack of peyote in her system, made sleeping on the roof
almost a fun little excursion. Ramen, who had found his own way
home after the debacle, awoke with the sunrise and decided to wake
Gieo at the same time. She owed him for the heroic part he’d played
in her rescue, and so didn’t hold a grudge for waking her before
her usual 9 AM start time.

“That was quite the night, eh, boss?” Ramen
added a few excited clicks from his rotors to punctuate the
comment.

“Exciting to say the least, but it’s a shame
Fiona had to shoot a few cultists in the process; it would have
gone over a whole lot more smoothly without a body count for them
to parade around.” Gieo rifled half-heartedly through the crates of
her acquired goods with her left hand while sipping her morning tea
with her right. Things were organized for usefulness, which didn’t
have a filing for leash and collar.

“Oh, she didn’t shoot them,” Ramen corrected
her. “She fired above them. They screamed because they couldn’t see
her. And then they dove onto the ground and covered their heads. I
knew she was going to do it and the gun still scared me; I can’t
imagine what the mostly-blind weirdos must have thought.”

Gieo abandoned her search for the moment,
took a long drink of her tea, and gazed out over the town’s
rooftops to the Hawkins compound on the outskirts. She’d seen Fiona
hit smaller targets from much farther away; if the gunfighter had
meant to hit the cultists, she would have. Gieo couldn’t make heads
or tails of it. Fiona would shoot a man she knew for trying to
steal from her, but wouldn’t shoot cultists who hated her in the
process of saving her girlfriend…friend…property…whatever. Gieo
thoughtfully scratched the midline of her forehead with the back of
her thumb—figuring out Fiona was going to be an ever evolving
headache.

“Are you sure she didn’t hit them?” she
finally asked, knowing full well Ramen saw better at night than
most people did during the day.

“Not a one, boss,” Ramen said. “They all got
up and ran, bumping into each other on the way, of course.”

“Interesting…” Gieo polished off her tea and
set aside her tin cup. She abandoned her sifting through the crates
operation and decided she might make herself presentable for Fiona.
“I’m going to get dressed. See if you can find a dog collar and a
leash, will you?”

“You got it, boss.” Ramen immediately
fluttered down from his perch and headed for a group of crates that
Gieo hadn’t searched yet. “Are we getting a puppy?”

Gieo dressed quickly in her ruffled white
skirt, matching high heel, knee high boots with tan spats, and her
tan, leather matador jacket over a white, lace blouse. The outfit
was demure in a way most of her clothing wasn’t, but not without a
hint of burlesque. She emerged from the tent, planted a foot on the
edge of the roof, and quickly finished tying her boots.

“What’s the word on the leash and collar?”
she asked.

“Puppy?” Ramen asked hopefully, dropping a
leather leash and spiked dog collar in Gieo’s hand. His robotic
little face dropped when Gieo promptly latched the collar around
her own neck.

It was slightly uncomfortable and a little on
the wide side for Gieo’s taste, but it would serve the purpose, and
miraculously, it sort of matched a lot of what she usually wore.
She flipped over a metal pie tin with a shiny bottom to admire her
reflection and how the collar complimented her slender neck.

“What? Oh, puppy, um, I’ll think about it, I
guess,” Gieo said. Once she was certain the collar would work, she
unbuckled it and wound it up with the leash. It was for show, a
display to set the town at ease about Fiona’s position of
authority…so why did Gieo want Fiona to be the one to buckle it
onto her so badly?

“No, I meant, is the collar for a puppy?”
Ramen corrected her.

“Oh, no, the collar is for…something else.
Where did we even pick this up? It doesn’t smell like dog.”

“I don’t think it was ever worn by a dog.
Remember the two guys who came in with the portable DVD player…?”
Ramen was interrupted by the door to the roof creaking open in an
almost apologetic way. They both looked over to see Fiona poking
her head out of the slightly ajar door.

“Is everything okay up here?” Fiona
asked.

“Sure, come on up,” Gieo said. “The show
should be starting soon.”

Gieo noted, with more than passing interest,
that Fiona was cleaner and more softly adorned than usual. Instead
of her alternating three pairs of leather pants, she was wearing
faded blue jeans with tan chaps, a white baby-tee, a leather vest
buttoned halfway, and the gun belt with the Colt Anaconda strapped
low on her right hip. Gieo pointed to the telescope by the lawn
chair at the edge of the roof. She fell in a half-step behind Fiona
on the walk over. She tilted her head just enough to get a good
look at Fiona’s backside; the jeans, which were practically painted
onto the gunfighter’s lanky form, hugged the contours of her pert
little ass, aided by the buckles and lines of the chaps just below
each cheek. Gieo hadn’t even known something could look so
appealing, and she had to fight an overwhelming urge to bite
Fiona’s behind.

Gieo repositioned the telescope, and motioned
for Fiona to sit in the lawn chair. When she’d found the exact
center of the Hawkins House compound, she stepped aside to let
Fiona lean in closer to take a look. “I’ve been watching them,”
Gieo said. “The priesthood, for lack of a better word, drinks from
a different well than the general population. You can spot them by
the traffic cones they wear like miters.”

Fiona leaned in, close enough for Gieo to
catch a faint whiff of the soft, lavender soap she had used with an
undertone of sweat and gun oil. Fiona looked through the telescope,
watching the compound as she spoke, “Are they siphoning gas out of
that truck or something?”

“That’s where they keep their private stash
of…who the fuck knows,” Gieo said. “But they’re not drinking their
usual methanol concoction this morning. I changed the hose to a jug
of agave white lightning with peyote in the mix.”

“Why?” Fiona pulled away from the telescope,
surprised, but not unhappily so, to find Gieo leaned in very
close.

“Ethanol, alcohol that normal people drink in
beer and whiskey, helps the body metabolize methanol to counteract
methanol poisoning,” Gieo said. “And the peyote…you know.”

Fiona’s beautiful blue eyes opened a hair
wider. “So they’re going to get very lucid and then trip
balls?”

“Exactly!” Gieo said. “Hopefully, they’ll
mistake it for a religious experience, put that together with
Zeke’s demon-based attack on them, and
want
to leave
Tombstone to follow whatever direction their trip guides them. If
it doesn’t work, no harm done; they’ll just have some new material
to write a Braille bible with.”

Fiona returned her attention the telescope to
watch with mounting morbid curiosity. The handful of men sneaking
over to the Dodge pickup drank greedily and departed on wobbly
legs. It became something of an exciting waiting game to see which
cone-head would lose their shit first. Fiona reached over and
grasped Gieo’s knee in nervous anticipation, watching the priests
stumble drunkenly for a short time before suddenly, Yahweh himself,
had a colossal freak out.

She couldn’t tell exactly what he said, due
to the great distance, but it looked as though he were suddenly
assaulted by something flying. Fiona couldn’t tell precisely,
because of his crazy beard, but she could have sworn she saw his
mouth form the words ‘teddy bears’ as he swatted at the empty air
around him. The followers seemed perplexed by his new behavior, but
soon picked up on the sufficiently direness of the situation when
the rest of the priests joined in on the hallucination and began to
have trips of their own.

“I was kind of concerned it wouldn’t work as
well on blind people,” Gieo said.

“You can stop worrying,” Fiona replied with a
little giggle. “Apparently they don’t need functioning eyes to see
things that aren’t there.” She pulled away from the telescope and
leaned back in the lawn chair, obviously satisfied by the outcome.
“So, what now?”

“Now we wait and see if they have a
sufficiently moving religious experience,” Gieo said. “Oh, I also
found these…” She produced the collar and leash, holding them out
for Fiona, displayed across her open palms.

Fiona leaned forward a little to look them
over and nodded noncommittally. “That should work.” She began to
lean back again.

“Can you put the collar on me?” Gieo blurted
out. “I mean, it’s like a necklace, but harder to get on, you know?
I could use the help.”

Fiona shrugged and took the offered collar.
She started to reach up to put it on Gieo, who was sitting a little
higher than her on the edge of the roof, but Gieo apparently had
other ideas. The pilot knelt between Fiona’s boots and tilted her
head back to display her neck to Fiona.

“Um…okay.” Fiona gently slipped the collar
around Gieo’s neck and buckled it into place.

Gieo’s stomach did tiny somersaults through
the entire collaring process and refused to calm down even after it
was comfortably buckled. There wasn’t any rationale to how good it
made her feel, but she quickly listed it as one of the more
important moments in their burgeoning relationship. When she opened
her eyes to look up at Fiona, she found the gunfighter staring at
her, confusion clearly painted across her face.

“There’s a leash too.” Gieo offered the wound
leather strap to Fiona, who took it, a little begrudgingly.

She clipped the end to the loop on the collar
and held the unfurled strap as though she weren’t quite sure what
to do with the five-feet of leather dangling from the front of
Gieo’s throat. “Um…what do I do with it?”

“You lead me over to Zeke’s to collect your
payment,” Gieo said. “The other hunters should be just about ready
to head out. They’ll all see us and
know
.”