The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head (31 page)

Gieo’s trembling hands set aside the rifle,
leaning it against the post of the awning. She sat down hard on the
edge of the cement, gripped her knees to her chest, and cried. A
strange feeling, something long forgotten and buried, came rushing
back. It contained guilt, which made sense, and of course shame,
which was appropriate, but also something else, something she’d
thought she would never feel again after feeling it her first time.
She was fifteen when she’d experienced it, with a boy, the only boy
she’d ever been with, at aerospace camp, when she was still trying
desperately to prove to herself and everyone else that she wasn’t
gay—she’d lost her virginity to him. His name was Daniel Bae, and
he too had been trying to prove he wasn’t gay. In the embarrassing,
painful, and humiliating act between them, they both managed to
verify to themselves and each other, unequivocally, that they were
both indeed homosexual. The loss of her virginity and its
accompanying innocence was a horrible, aching loss for a
fifteen-year-old girl, and she’d only consoled herself in her
purity’s passing with the firm understanding that she would never
have to experience it again.

Staring at the lifeless body of the man she’d
shot, the loss of an innocence she didn’t even know she had crushed
her anew.

The foolish, impetuous, and scientifically
motivated part of her brain demanded that she inspect the man’s
weapon to prove to herself that it was either him or her, that
necessity, like in that dormitory room with Daniel Bae, had forced
her actions. She pried the weapon from the man’s limp hand only to
find the gun was all but fused together from time, grit, and
neglect. She couldn’t force the slide back or even pull the rusted
clip out, never mind the fact that the trigger had broken off at
some point. He could have no more shot her with his extended finger
than that gun. Like before, when she felt forced into unbidden
action, she’d made a mistake and lost her innocence to yet another
man, but this one wouldn’t be better off for the discovery.

Part of her wanted to know who he was. Part
of her wanted to give him a proper burial. Part of her wanted to
shrug it off as an aspect of survival in the new world as so many
others around her seemed able to do. But these parts were not to be
listened to. She dropped the pistol next to the body. She slipped
her rifle into its holster along her back; it wasn’t Danny’s
anymore—he was dead and she’d killed with it. That rifle belonged
to her as much as she belonged to it. With the refilled tanks
refitted to the bike, she left the reservoir in her rearview
mirror, knowing she left a part of herself there when she did.

Chapter 20:
Yahweh sightings and things
to come.

Fiona didn’t
need to be told what she was looking at. At the edge of Drexel
Heights, in what used to be the collection of single-story
buildings and mobile homes of Mission Valley at the southern end of
Tucson, the methanol drinking cult of the Hawkins House had made
its new home. Through the scope of the high-powered hunting rifle
borrowed from one of her riders, she estimated their numbers to
still be close to a hundred. It was difficult to make out from the
distance, but she suspected she saw Yahweh walking among them.

“What do you want to do?” Claudia asked.

Fiona handed back her Marlin 270. Claudia was
petite, roughly the size and dimensions of Gieo, but
French-Canadian to the very core with big, round, blue eyes, pale
skin, and naturally curly black hair held back in a ponytail. As
adorable as she was singing French love ballads on stage during
burlesque shows, Fiona knew her to be a crack shot with the
black-stock Marlin and a talented tracker of the open desert. As a
number two for her patrols, Fiona felt fortunate to have
Claudia.

“I can’t justify the losses we might take or
the bullets we’d burn wiping them out,” Fiona said.

“They’re in our way, no?” Claudia shouldered
the rifle and looked down the low bluff across the sage and Joshua
trees as though she were plotting attack patterns and cover.

“They are, but they’re not dangerous this far
from Tombstone and they’re not going anywhere.” Fiona slid back
down the other side of the bluff to where the rest of her riders
waited in a holding pattern. Claudia reluctantly followed. “Carolyn
is bringing in two thousand army regulars. If these cultists need
to be moved, the Red Queen will move them. It’s enough right now to
know where and how many there are.”

“Your patience surprises me, Commander,”
Claudia said with a coquettish smirk. She adjusted her black, CSOR
beret with the maple leaf and dagger insignia. “From what I had
heard of you, restraint was not your forte.”

Fiona had her doubts about Claudia actually
being a former Canadian Special Operations Regiment commando, but
there was little doubt she knew enough about explosives and small
arms to fake it. The beret fit her perfectly too, which lent some
credibility to the story. She was right about Fiona’s restraint
though—it wasn’t something she’d shown in the past.

“From what I heard, Canada didn’t allow women
in combat,” Fiona replied, bringing a light chuckle from the riders
near enough to overhear the jibe.

“Perhaps not, but this has been remedied
since, no?” Claudia slung her rifle over her shoulder and vaulted
into the saddle of her horse like a sprightly pixie sniper. “If you
must know, I am the daughter of a commando.”

“Your father is still alive then?”

“This I cannot say, but I would be surprised
to find he is not. What of your own father? Did he die in the
invasion of Los Angeles as so many did?”

“I sure hope so,” Fiona said, bringing
another, more nervous chuckle from her gathered riders.

“Then for your sake, I hope he did,” Claudia
said with a little smile and a wink. “It would seem we have other
patrol concerns more pressing at the moment, Commander.” She nodded
to a dust trail across the open desert to the south.

Fiona led her column out in that direction,
over a second rise, close enough for Claudia to get a good look at
what was kicking up the desert floor. Sighted in through her scope,
Claudia let out a low whistle. “You will call me a liar when I tell
you what I see,” Claudia said. “A Slark patrol is chasing two
wagons driven by methanol drinkers.”

“I’ll call you a liar if you’re proven
wrong,” Fiona said. “Regardless of who the lizards are chasing,
they’re on our land and need to learn it.” The riders let out a
whoop with this, and Fiona led them on a charge across the desert,
kicking up their own cloud of dust, thundering hooves at a gallop
on an intercept course.

Fiona rose up in the saddle, letting her legs
absorb the shocks of the galloping, flatting her back to run
parallel to Tyra’s. She was out ahead of the formation, tucking her
head into the wash of her horse’s mane, keeping tilted enough for
the air rushing past to go over her hat, rather than knocking it
off. She was coming up on the two wagons quickly. They’d lost the
road to charge wildly into the desert. Fiona spotted the Slark
crawlers beyond the wagons, gaining ground quickly. She shot past
the startled dozen or so people divvied up between the two wagons,
riding close enough to get a good enough look at them; Claudia was
telling the truth—they were all sporting the chipped up marble eyes
of methanol drinkers.

Closing on the Slark, who hadn’t anticipated
anything but easy pickings, Fiona pulled her pistol and gestured
with it to split her formation, narrow it out, turn it into two
waves that would pass on opposite sides of the two crawlers. She
veered left, leading the first cluster of twelve in a line along
one side of the Slark formation. Leveling her pistol at the driver
of the lead crawler, she fired. The pistol bucked in her hand and
the shot landed, albeit a glancing blow that took a chunk out of
the lizard man’s right side. A few shots from carbines, submachine
guns, pistols, and rifles rippled in from behind her, finishing off
the driver and the obvious gunners along the sides.

The second crawler, in a much better position
to defend itself, took a few shots at Fiona’s riders. They missed
her, and she got a couple more shots off, taking one more Slark
before clearing the formation, but she heard the thumping of a
rider going down behind her and knew they’d made at least one solid
hit. Their focus on Fiona’s wave left the second crawler vulnerable
to Claudia’s charge up the other side with the remaining twelve.
She slowed in the attack, taking full advantage of their exposed
backs, to all but wipe out the Slark on the second crawler.

Fiona led the remains of her charge in a
sharp turn, allowing Claudia’s loop to swing around the outside.
Turned back on the Slark formation, the remaining dozen or so of
the lizard men had abandoned the shot-up crawlers and were
scattering to the desert, dropping to run on all six limbs when
they fled. Fiona led her group up the same side Claudia had
cleared, but in the opposite direction, fanning her formation out
with a chopping gesture of her shiny Colt Anaconda. The lone Slark
who had made it the furthest reared up when she barreled down on
him, raising his strange looking rifle to fire. Fiona never gave
him the chance. She leaned in low along Tyra’s side to present a
smaller target, focused down her arm, and fired, blowing the top
part of the Slark’s head clean off.

Her riders on both sides of the formation
finished cleaning up the last of the Slark, even sending a few of
the fastest to chase down the stragglers who had fled at the first
sight of the dust cloud on the horizon. Fiona turned her attention
back to the wagons, which had fully come to a stop to see about the
outcome of the battle; this was damn peculiar behavior, as far as
Fiona was concerned.

“See about the wounded,” Fiona barked to
Claudia as she rode past, heading in the direction of the wagons.
In all the excitement of battle, with her heart still racing and
her hands still tingling, Fiona couldn’t remember how many shots
she’d fired. Her gun may be empty or it might be down to a couple
more shots; she couldn’t be sure and neither would be good news if
the cultists on the wagons turned out to be unfriendly toward their
rescuers.

As she neared, she noticed the wagons had
taken some fire from the Slark, and hadn’t faired too well in the
exchange. The survivors looked frightened of Fiona and her
approaching handful of riders. A quick count of those left alive in
the wagons revealed ten: four women, four children, and two teenage
boys. Three men were dead or dying in various defensive positions
on the wagon, and Fiona suspected a fourth had been thrown at one
point or other.

“Why aren’t the Slark afraid of you anymore?”
Fiona demanded, unsure if the cultists even had an answer to that
question. “What are you doing out here in a couple of rickety
wagons?” she continued before hearing an answer to her first
query.

A matronly woman, the one who had been
driving the lead wagon until the team of two very old horses had
nearly dropped, stood from the bench seat, and turned her sightless
eyes in the direction of the voice addressing her.

“The demons haven’t feared our holy sacrifice
since the battle outside Tombstone,” the woman said. “Their fright
subsided quickly when battle was upon them and we would have been
overcome were it not for the Prophet’s brother. Some escaped and no
doubt told the rest that they had nothing to fear of the sightless.
We have been hiding and fleeing from them ever since.”

“Slick tricks can only get you so far, it
would seem,” Fiona said, but immediately regretted it. People did
far more foolish things for a slim chance at survival in the early
days of the Slark invasion and she couldn’t fault the efforts that
had apparently served these cultists well for six years just
because it finally stopped working. “If they’re giving you so much
trouble, why roam around in the open during the day?”

“We are fleeing the Prophet’s care,” the
woman said. She had a worn, tired look about her. Fiona might have
guessed forty or fifty, but the oddly smooth quality of the skin on
her neck said she was young turned prematurely old by a hard life;
her real age was probably a lot closer to thirty. “He can no longer
protect us. The apocalypse he promised has come and gone, but the
Lord did not send for us. We are hungry and need shelter. We had
hoped to find the Prophet’s brother victorious and once again
offering protection in Tombstone. Did he return to his post?”

“He lost and was sent packing into the east,”
Fiona said. “Tombstone is under Raven control, so I doubt you’ll
find much there to your liking.”

“We will accept Raven rule,” the woman said.
One of the teenage boys stood from the wagon to protest, but the
woman wheeled around and caught him with a harsh backhand across
the cheek before he could utter a word. She reached out with the
other hand, fumbling blindly for a moment, and caught him by the
front of the shirt before the strike could send him tumbling out of
the wagon. Fiona was more than a little impressed at the woman’s
alacrity considering her blindness and awkward footing. “I’ll not
see you and your sister starved or killed by demonic invaders,” the
woman hissed at the boy, who was obviously her eldest son. “If we
must sacrifice our faith for food and protection, then so be
it.”

Claudia rode up in the midst of the exchange.
She gave the cultists in the wagons a confused glance, but didn’t
really seem interested in what drama was unfolding amongst the
blind. “Karen had her horse shot out from underneath her,” Claudia
said. “I think her leg is broken. Francisco was shot in the arm,
but he says he is okay; I think he is lying and likely to die if he
does not let someone help him.”