The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head (3 page)

“I should find a way to thank you for the
ride,” Gieo said.

Fiona rolled her eyes and stepped from the
car. She’d barely closed the door when she heard a slow, sarcastic,
clichéd clapping from across the street on the balcony of the town
hall.

“Only four heads,” the one man audience said
through a chuckle. “Did you at least get a balloon ride, Red?” The
man wore authority with a distinctive largeness. He wasn’t
specifically muscular or particularly fat, but a mix of both that
gave a brawny, powerful quality to him. He wore Slark-skin overalls
without a shirt underneath. The gray, scales of Slark pelts were
hardly the toughest looking leather on him as his weathered skin
had long since turned into elephant hide from a lifetime in the
desert. With a gray, handlebar moustache and eyes narrowed to slits
from squinting into the Arizona sun his entire life, he had the
look of a cunning land walrus, which was precisely how Fiona always
pictured him, although she would never dare say so.

“Zeke, I can’t help but notice your bumper is
empty, clean even.” Fiona nodded in the direction of the modified
El Camino parked across the street and the empty spikes on the
front.

“Mathematically speaking, four is infinity
percent larger than zero,” Gieo said.

“Technically, so is one,” Zeke said, the
smile never leaving his face, “but fact remains, the quota to get
fuel is six.”

“Then I guess you better get hunting.” Fiona
passed around the back of the car, taking Gieo by the arm to lead
her into the saloon.

“I’m surprised he knew enough math to
understand that,” Gieo whispered.

“He only looks dumb,” Fiona replied.

The interior of the saloon reeked of unwashed
human flesh, tobacco spit, cheap tequila, and burned food. A haze
of dust and cigar smoke hung in the air of the vaulted ceilings,
almost obscuring the walkway around the second floor in the dimly
lit bar. Fiona’s boots thumped across the wooden floor, casting
silence in their wake through the dozen or so dirty denizens
occupying the handful of gaming tables turned into a restaurant
dining area.

“Who’s your friend there?” The bartender
didn’t look up from the ancient newspaper he was reading.

Gieo stepped right up to the bar, hopped onto
an unoccupied stool, and stuck out her hand to be shaken.
“Gieo—airship pilot, steam compression scientist, and mathematician
extraordinaire, pleased to meet you.”

“Scientist, huh?” The bartender let out a
low, sarcastic whistle. “We don’t get many of those in here, what
with them all getting wiped out by their own EMP pulses. Got any
tech to trade?”

“She had a device that let you know when you
were done having sex,” Fiona said, “but it broke in the crash.”

“Shit, Fiona, you’d need to start getting
laid before you would need to know when to stop.” The bartender set
down his paper and smiled to Fiona. A short, stocky man with a
receding hairline of greased back black hair and matching, whisper
thin moustache, he struck a far more jovial figure than might be
expected of such a position in such a town.

“Why would she have a hard time getting
laid?” Gieo asked.

“You aren’t from around here, are you?” the
bartender asked. “Aside from the wagon train of prostitutes out of
Juarez that rolls through once a week, she’s it for women in this
town, and she’s made it abundantly clear to all the men that she’s
only interested in the ladies. Female gunfighters tend to be rare
and short-lived in the free cities.” The bartender pulled a bottle
from below the bar and poured two shots, placing one in front of
each woman. “What makes a good gunfighter is a lack of hesitation.
Fast hands are important, but there’s always a hesitation in taking
a life that can slow even the quickest draw when it comes to
pulling the trigger. The less conscience a gunfighter has about
killing, the faster they’ll be. Fiona here is the only one, male or
female, I’ve ever met without even a fraction of a second’s worth
of hesitation. Most women have too much to be any good at the
killing trade.”

“That’s sexist,” Gieo said.

“I’ll be dipped, you’re right! I’ll make sure
to turn myself in to the ACLU when they get back on their feet.”
The bartender went back to reading his old newspaper.

“Got a room for her?” Fiona asked.

“Colorado hunting party in town,” the
bartender said. “We’re booked to overflowing. I wouldn’t recommend
leaving her to her own devices with that bunch around. They’ve been
drinking hard and haven’t found enough Slark to vent on.”

“Fine, she can stay with me.” Fiona downed
her shot, took Gieo’s shot, and drank it too. “I need a nap before
I go back out.”

Fiona wandered away from the bar with little
more than a grunt of acknowledgement from the bartender. Gieo fell
in behind her, following her up the stairs, around the walkway,
until they reached one of the largest rooms in the far, back
corner. The room was once a slightly-modernized replica of old west
accommodations for tourists, but had since become genuine
accommodations of the post-apocalypse west when the tourist trap
section of the town turned into the most functional after the Great
Purge. Fiona flopped onto the bed, metal springs creaking in
protest. Her long legs stretched out to hook the heels of her boots
on the metal footboard. She slid her hat down until the brim rested
across her face, blocking out the bright, afternoon sun flowing in
through the two windows.

“The train to Vegas comes through every two
weeks,” Fiona said. “You can stay with me until then.”

“What if I don’t want to leave?” Gieo took
off her top hat, releasing the four braids of her purple hair to
bounce around her head. She unbuttoned her jacket the rest of the
way and tossed it aside as well.

Fiona raised the brim of her hat with two
fingers to expose one eye enough to watch what Gieo was doing. “Why
would you want to stay around here?”

“Shits and giggles.”

“Fine, but you’ll have to earn your keep
somehow.”

“I’ve got a few skills…”

“Good.” Fiona let the brim of her hat drop.
“Let’s hope shutting up for an hour is one of them.”

The two shots of tequila, combined with the
warmth of the sun made sleep an easy proposition despite the
presence of the flighty pilot, and soon Fiona was comfortably
snoozing.

Chapter 3:
Thanks a truckload.

Fiona awoke from
her nap to find her room alarmingly empty. A strange sense of
concern, odd in its very existence, settled over her at not seeing
the diminutive pilot. She leapt from the bed, and, on her way to
the door, checked her reflection in the dusty mirror above her
vanity, which typically served as her casing reloading and cleaning
station. She’d obviously looked in the mirror before, but this was
the first time in years she’d actually used it to check her
appearance. Her hand froze on the doorknob. She could hear Gieo’s
voice through the thin walls. The pilot was chattering away with
several people downstairs, talking tech, and seemingly having a
good time of it.

Fiona returned to the mirror. She’d slept in
her hat and sunglasses, leaving large dents on the sides of her
long, slender nose and a distinctive rim indentation in her hair.
The reflection, familiar in its former unimportance, suddenly
mocked her by showing the rust on the beauty she’d once prized.
Before she fully understood what she was doing, she’d poured water
in the basin from a pitcher, dipped a hand towel in it, and cleaned
the grit from her face and neck. The shine came back to her diamond
without a great deal of polish, and soon she was looking at the
angularly beautiful face that had once adorned magazine and
catalogue covers with her high cheek bones, delicately tapered jaw,
and pert chin with a tiny cleft. Why she should care what the pilot
thought of her, she couldn’t quite piece together, but she
rationalized it by telling herself she needed a good face washing
regardless.

Armed with a clean face, she replaced her
sunglasses over her eyes and headed downstairs. The bar was full,
far fuller than Fiona could remember it ever being. Two dozen men
were milling about in something of a loosely organized line. The
bartender trundled amidst the clientele, carrying a serving tray in
one hand and a sack in the other. The patrons took drinks from the
tray and dropped payment into the sack; when the tray was empty or
the sack full, the bartender headed back to the bar to reload one
and unpack the other. Fiona leaned over the railing to find where
the line ended. In the middle of three tables arranged around her,
Gieo was seeing customers in a slapdash repair shop. Included in
the pile of payments on one of the tables were two dusty Slark
heads.

Fiona made her way downstairs, catching the
bartender by the arm as he passed. “What’s going on here?”

“Gieo’s fixing tech,” the bartender said.

“Yeah, I gathered that,” Fiona snarled. “Why
is she fixing tech?”

“Says she’s got a plan,” the bartender said
with a shrug. “What do I care why? She’s got the bar full of happy,
entertained, paying customers. Nobody breaking anything, everyone
getting along, it’s a goddamn dream come true.” The bartender
pulled away from Fiona to return to his customers.

Fiona strode over to Gieo’s station and
slapped her palms against the table making the first four customers
in line jump, but not drawing so much as a blink out of Gieo. “What
are you doing?”

“Making this pressure cooker pressurize and
cook,” Gieo said as she popped open the thermostat to replace the
spring.

“I said I was taking a nap,” Fiona said.

“Yep, did you sleep well?”

“I mean, why did you come down here when I
said I was taking a nap?”

Gieo finally pulled her attention from the
pressure cooker she was working on. At least, she pulled her eyes
away, but Fiona noticed with a twinge of impressed surprise that
the pilot’s hands were still working of their own accord. “That’s
kind of a silly question,” Gieo said.

“Why do you have Slark heads?” Fiona
asked.

“Eddie paid me to affix calculator solar
panels on his iPod to make it run without batteries.”

“Who the fuck is Eddie?” Fiona demanded, her
voice becoming a little shrill.

“You know, Eddie.” Gieo pointed to a
grizzled, bearded man near the front windows with ear buds in his
ears, listening to the newly solar-powered iPod. Eddie waved and
Gieo waved back. Fiona vaguely recognized the man as someone she’d
seen around town, but had never bothered asking his name. “He runs
the hothouse farms on the outskirts. He wanted to listen to Miles
Davis while he worked.”

“But how…?”

“Come on, we’re in Arizona,” Gieo said,
returning her full attention to the pressure cooker in front of
her. “Enough sun hits this state every day to run a fleet of
battleships. I’m sure there’s more than enough to let a tomato
farmer listen to some jazz during peak farming hours.”

“That’s not what I…”

“The Slark heads are for you, silly,” Gieo
said. “You needed six to get fuel, so I got you the two you were
short.”

“I appreciate it, but I can…”

“Don’t go thinking this makes us even.” Gieo
turned her screwdriver on Fiona with an accusatory poke before
immediately launching back into the work of repairing the cooker.
“I’m still going to think of a way to make that up to you. But, in
the mean time, since you don’t have to go out hunting again today,
I thought we could take a ride with Mitch to the crash site. He
said he has a truck and there’re a few things I could use off the
dirigible.”

“Who is Mitch?” Fiona asked, glad finally to
get a full expression out.

Gieo and the entire line of customers pointed
to the bartender.

“Seriously, you didn’t know his name? How
long have you lived here?” Gieo asked.

“A couple years, I guess.”

“Manners aren’t your thing,” Gieo said with a
low whistle.

“Manners don’t count for much in Tombstone,”
Fiona said defensively.

“Here you are, Cutter.” Gieo pushed the
finished pressure cooker to the mountain of a man covered in black
leather and knives at the front of the line. “You’ll be enjoying
your grandmother’s award winning goulash again in no time.”

“Thank you, Gieo,” Cutter said. “I’ll bring a
batch by tomorrow if you like.”

“I
would
like that, and you’re
welcome.” Gieo smiled to him. Cutter smiled back with a mouthful of
gleaming golden teeth.

“Can I borrow you for a minute?” Fiona
grabbed Gieo by the hand and dragged her out from behind her
tables. The line let out a collective groan as Fiona pulled the
pilot to a more secluded corner. When they had managed the iota of
privacy Fiona felt she needed, she leaned down far enough to
whisper, “Are you crazy?”

“Considering I’ve never stabbed a man in the
mouth for asking a question that’s a hell of a thing for you to ask
me,” Gieo said with a little giggle. “What color are your eyes
under those glasses?”

“These people are insane killers operating in
a largely lawless town.”