The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head (36 page)

“Of all the people to come looking for my
husband, I’m glad it was you,” Charlotte said. “Come inside and
I’ll feed you before you head back.”

Gieo stepped back into the room with her feet
freezing and her hands shaking. She had her pilots, had the
blessing of the matron of their little society, and could return to
Tombstone with her promises fulfilled. Still, all she could think
of, all she could want, was to return to Fiona and be forgiven and
loved again.

Chapter 23:
Homecomings are a mixed
bag.

For a brief,
hopeful moment Claudia’s frantic knocking on Fiona’s door made her
think Gieo had returned home. The second straight day of sleeping
in probably didn’t help her muddled state. She pulled herself from
the relatively comfortable embrace of the bed and stumbled to the
door. Halfway across the room slumber fell away enough for her to
realize she would have heard Gieo’s motorcycle if it was really her
even though the energetic knocking was at the right height and with
the right vigor to be Gieo. Claudia stood on the saloon’s upper
landing flushed with excitement when Fiona threw open the door.

“I have found him for you,
Captain-my-Captain,” she said. “The cultists were located by my
morning patrol.”

It took Fiona a moment to remember why
Claudia should be so excited about the find. The little sniper had
promised to be the one to kill Hawkins for her. Fiona couldn’t
bring herself to disappoint the girl by letting her know she didn’t
care one way or the other if Hawkins died. It was a Raven objective
though and one worth pursuing.

“Does Carolyn know?” Fiona asked, rubbing the
sleep from her right eye with the heel of her palm.

“I brought it straight to you,” Claudia said.
“Should you want to handle this without her knowing this is a
triumph she can learn of after the fact, no?”

“Yes, we’ll go on our own for now,” Fiona
said. “Pull Cork and his boys off the afternoon ride. The five of
us can take care of things just fine.”

Claudia might have been concerned by the
peculiar request if she was more of a company woman, but Fiona knew
a kindred spirit when she saw one; the French-Canadian sniper and
singer was one distasteful event from jumping the Raven ship
entirely, just as Fiona had been. The small number of riders must
have spoken to Claudia’s ego as well, indicating an assassination
job and not one of wholesale slaughter. Watching Claudia jog away
after a crisp salute, Fiona wondered if maybe it wouldn’t be easier
to let her take the shot and cleave the cult’s head. Some questions
still remained in Fiona’s mind and Hawkins was one of two living
people who might have the answers.

Fiona dressed quickly to find Claudia, Cork,
and two former Texas Rangers waiting on horseback outside the
saloon. Claudia handed her Tyra’s reins and Fiona mounted. The five
rode south, guided by Claudia along a winding trail cut by twenty
or so riders earlier that morning. They spoke little. Cork didn’t
need to be told where they were going and the two men who had once
formed a Slark hunting trio with him knew to follow his lead with
the dogged loyalty of the best Labrador. They broke away from the
well-patrolled areas around Bisbee and Lowell heading southwest
into the open desert. The midday sun beat down on them with brutal
strength and resolve. The creak of leather, clank of tack, and
clomping of horse hooves beat out the music of the hunt as the
riders strung out to a staggered line. They crested a rocky rise
with Claudia and her ebony pony leading the charge.

Across a shale flat, likely on the side of
the border that once was old Mexico, one of the Slark’s giant
walkers had gone down, likely broken from the cascade wave that
destroyed the vast majority of technology on the planet. The
six-legged walking weapon platform had tilted face-first into the
desert near a small, natural spring lake creating an enormous
expanse of shade beneath the tail end jutting at a near 45 degree
angle. Living in the shade and likely inside the ruins of the old
Slark monstrosity were the remaining cultists. It looked as though
the handful of families who had fled on the wagon, only to be saved
by Fiona’s riders, weren’t the last to abandon the cause. Their
numbers appeared to be cut again in half by desertion.

Fiona drew up alongside Claudia with Cork
flanking her on the other side. The afternoon sun struck at their
backs, likely making them difficult to discern amid the rocky bluff
they’d approached from.

“From here, I can get off a shot worth
writing home about,” Claudia said. “Should they give chase, we can
keep out of their visible range and make short work of them.”

Fiona considered the reasonably domestic
scene below. At the great distance, it was impossible to tell
whether the Slark vehicle was convenient shade or served some other
purpose. Fiona took binoculars when Cork offered them and scanned
the target area. Few families remained and the staggering men of
the cult were doing far more than simply existing beneath the
shade. Slark weapons, fuel, and technology were already pulled from
the wreckage, organized across the open desert floor. Regardless of
what Fiona might have liked to do, the find was too good to leave
in the hands of the cult, with or without Hawkins.

“Spread out around the ridge,” Fiona said.
“Keep the sun at your back and wait for my signal.” Fiona
dismounted her horse, handing off the reins to Claudia.

“What is the signal?” Claudia asked. “Better
still, what is the plan?”

Fiona cryptically patted the Colt Anaconda on
her hip and began her walk down the craggy slope to the shale flats
below. Her heart was thundering in her ears and the heat off the
bleached desert floor threatened to boil up through the soles of
her boots with every step. She held her hands up in the universal
sign of surrender when she thought she was close enough for one of
the cultists to divine who she was. Her estimation of their vision
was off by a few dozen yards as they didn’t really seem to spot her
until she was almost completely upon them. Passing within the halo
of scavenged parts, Fiona began cataloguing their salvage. Out of
the corner of her eye, she spotted a blast shield used by a gunner
port on the Slark vehicle, likely removed for its possible use
later as firing position cover. She stopped close enough to the
blast shield for comfort and waited for the cultists to come out
the rest of the way, which they did in short order, armed to the
teeth and rightfully antsy about her sudden appearance.

Hawkins could have ordered her shot on sight,
could have made things an easy choice for all involved, but to
Fiona’s relief, he held back the firing line of the forty or so
remaining cultists to parlay with the seemingly vulnerable
gunfighter.

“The lord works in mysterious ways, and so it
would seem does the devil,” Hawkins said, emerging from the center
of his milky-eyed defenders. “Yet again, you have found me, and yet
again, you do not finish what you started.” His Texas twang fit
oddly well with his bombastic way of speaking.

“You can skip the proselytizing, Bill,” Fiona
said. “I know who you really are and know your brother.”

“Half-brother,” Hawkins corrected her. “This
is about Zeke then?”

Fiona shrugged and offered a little grin.
“Isn’t everything?”

This actually brought an equal smile to
Hawkins’ weather-beaten face. “You, more than anyone else,
understand the conundrum that has been my life since the end of
days. Very well, gunfighter, tell me what you would know of our
mutual friend and enemy?”

“He shielded me, likely shielded us both when
we arrived in Tombstone,” Fiona said. “Being family, I can
understand why he protected you, but I can’t piece together why he
would help me.”

“You give blood too much weight with my
brother, but you are not far off. The reasons are one in the same,”
Hawkins said. “I was of use to him, a foil to play off of, and a
private source of power to draw from when the time was right. So
too were you. We were both hammers to use against the people Zeke
feared.”

It sounded reasonable, precisely like
something Zeke would do, but it didn’t make any sense when held up
to the facts. Hawkins and his cultists were an excellent implement
against the people of Tombstone to keep them unified and under
Zeke’s control, but it didn’t follow who Fiona would be a weapon
against.

“Who would I be a hammer…?” Fiona knew the
answer as she was speaking the words. Veronica would have come down
on Tombstone with the wrath of a thousand Arizona suns if anything
had befallen Fiona in exile. She was leverage with the Ravens to
keep Tombstone a free city. If the Slark fuel supplies hadn’t begun
to dwindle, their arrangement might never have altered.

“I see from your face that you have pieced it
together,” Hawkins said. “You were the cherished gem of the Ravens’
most feared queen and Zeke convinced the city only he could keep
them at bay by keeping you alive. But he did not count on the
treachery of women.”

Her question more or less satisfied, Fiona
felt the conversation had gone on too long for her peculiar mental
affliction. “You’re more like your brother than you know,” Fiona
said coolly. She jerked her Colt, thumbing back the hammer as she
brought the enormous gun to bear on the surprised crowd. She’d
blasted the two men flanking Hawkins before they could even raise
the AK-47s in their dusty hands. With a short half-spin step to the
right, she knelt in behind the shield, glancing over her shoulder
in the process just in time to see Hawkins’ head explode from a
well-place sniper shot.

The remaining entourage of cultists opened
fire. Their bullets ricocheted off the shield like hail off a
stone. More rifle-fire poured down from the ridge, collapsing the
line of cultists as they tried to flee. Fiona looked to the left of
the shield, and then to the right. One cultist made to flank her on
the right, but caught two slugs from her revolver the moment he
came into view. Another rushed the left side of the shield, hoping
to catch her off-guard. She swatted aside the muzzle of his rifle,
stepping inside the weapon’s unwieldy reach, and buried the
enormous barrel of her pistol in his chest. She fired, setting his
shirt ablaze, and hurling him backward onto the desert floor.

With the retreating of footsteps fleeing her,
Fiona took that moment to slide back down the shield’s scalding
face to reload. Careful, deft fingers removed the casings of the
five shots she’d used. She tucked the spent brass in her side
satchel before reloading from her bandolier. By the time she’d
finished the chore of reloading, the rifle fire from the ridge had
tapered off to lone shots, picking at the now fortified cultists.
Fiona pulled herself away from the edge of the shield directly back
and waxed her vision around the outside to the right to see where
the defensive line began and ended. As she’d suspected, they rushed
to the right, leaving her left entirely free.

Taking a deep, calming breath, she rushed out
to her left, finding the next cover on the run. She slid in behind
a large crate of what looked to be metal bric-a-brac. Again,
bullets pelted the salvaged Slark technology harmlessly. A few
shots from the ridge found their mark on the freshly exposed
targets. The cultists, aggravated to stupidity by the snipers on
the ridge, foolishly turned their attention to firing wildly into
the waning sun. Fiona spun out from the left side of her new cover,
walked with her gun-hand extended, sighting down the length of her
arm as each shot presented itself. From the perfect flanking
position, she was able to roll up their line, felling five more
before her gun clicked empty and the cultists swung their attention
back to her. She ducked around the edge of the crawler’s leading
leg as the bullets whirred past her on either side.

Reloading the second time was far more
difficult than the first as the gun was heating up under constant
use and her fingers were growing tingly from the adrenaline of
combat. She completed the task in what felt like an eternity, but
was likely less than thirty seconds. Fire from the ridge hadn’t
remotely run out of targets when she resumed her onslaught. Two
cultists burst from around the leading edge of the crawler in the
vein hope of catching her off guard. She shot both down mid-stride
with the second in line gripping the trigger of his assault rifle
to spray bullets across the ground as he stumbled through his final
few steps.

If what they were doing could be called a
plan, it relied entirely on the cultists remaining on the
defensive. Fiona readied herself to make another rush, but emerged
from her cover into the teeth of a counterattack from the cultists.
She fired instinctively, killing the first two in line. The third
of a dozen or more making a charge on her position had a pistol.
She heard the pops, felt the agonizingly sharp stabs of bullets
biting into the flesh of her right thigh. A shot from the ridge cut
her attacker down, but the damage had been done. She stumbled,
bouncing off the side of the Slark crawler. She tried to cover her
own retreat, but the pain and shock of being shot staggered her aim
and her remaining two shots sailed off into the open desert to land
miles from their intended targets. She was clicking on empty
chambers when she managed to drag herself into the alcove created
by the crawler leg’s mechanisms.

She dropped her steaming gun into the
collected silt to clutch at her wounded leg with both hands. When
the clutching failed and she pulled back only bloody palms from the
free-flowing wounds, she changed her tactic to a tourniquet hastily
constructed from the leather strap of her satchel. Tightening the
strap carried with it an agonizing ache almost on par with the
original gunshot wounds, but stemmed the flow. She retrieved her
gun from where she’d carelessly tossed it, blowing the silt out of
the barrel with quaking lips. Reloading this time was a colossal
task with trembling fingers made slick from the blood smeared
across them.