The only thing that made Sterling different from them was his ability to do what he was doing now, riding a bone horse that he had summoned toward the rambunctious, and often deviant, town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.
It was too bad he didn’t remember what this place looked like before the Reset.
Everyone’s memories had been wiped after the Reset, and unless they could figure things out like some of the pueblo natives had, people were pretty much on their own. Sterling had been in Las Cruces when the life-altering event happened, at a dirty dive bar somewhere off the interstate. That much he knew.
One minute, he was whoever he used to be; the next minute he was a necromancer who’d had his memory wiped, most of the people in the bar dead, their heads exploded, covered in viscera and never able to piece together where he’d come from or who he was. While he was able to see his full name on a stat sheet, he had no idea how old he was, guessing he was somewhere between the ages of thirty and forty-five based on other men he’d encountered.
There really was no telling.
Everyone that was still alive had a story about what they were doing when the Reset took place, Godwalkers appearing in the skies over the world’s largest cities, ninety percent of the world’s population gone in a flash. The Godwalkers had pretty much put an end to anything electric, so unless someone had a generator, or for those gifted the extremely rare electromancer class, blackouts followed, which caused even more death.
But Sterling was used to all the doom and gloom by now; after all, that was five years ago. And it was three years ago that he had tried and eventually failed to do something about it. He was nearly certain that this was why the Godwalker had shown up at his property: the alien monolith was looking for revenge, and now, on his way to town to see if he could find Don Gasper, Sterling was too.
“Yup,” Sterling told Manchester, the bone horse trotting along a pockmarked road, a vulture soaring overhead. “You and me are about to go on an adventure, boy. You’re the one that has been wanting to go out for long rides, not me,” he said, his horse unable to respond, considering he didn’t have a windpipe. By now, Sterling used to having long conversations with his skeletal steed. “I hope you’re ready for a shitshow.”
After another ten minutes, he spotted the overturned school bus that had been on NM-181 for years now. Someone had even put in the effort to plant a few cacti under its hood, which had since made their way inside the vehicle, a few prickly arms jutting out through the open windows. The bus used to be yellow. Now it was somewhere between brown and mustard with tinges of orange rust splashed across its steel exterior, the results of a relentless sun and often unbearable elements.
Extreme weather.
There used to be little mom-and-pop shops along this particular road, everything from a sand and gravel store to a restaurant called La Cocina. All that was gone now, ramshackled, boarded up, or crumbling like some of the old mission churches southwest of Albuquerque, practically the same color as the landscape, crumbling and equally foreboding. How could things have changed so much in five years?
Sterling turned his palm around, his bag of tobacco appearing, papers inside too. He had Manchester pause for a moment while he quickly rolled up a cigarette, which he parked in the corner of his mouth, his lighter appearing once his bag of tobacco and his rolling papers disappeared.
“Goddamn, I need a bath,” he said after his first drag off the cigarette, his free hand once again on the reins.
He sent his lighter back to his inventory list. It was almost instinctual, first the lighter was there, and then it was gone. He was fairly certain that the before people, the term used locally for those who had lived and prospered before the Reset, didn’t have the usage of an inventory list. Sterling didn’t know why.
But then again, he also didn’t know why he had stats, or class abilities, techniques, or any nonsense like that. None of it made any goddamn sense, but like anyone forced to survive, he had simply adapted and figured things out as he went. It was a Darwinian response if there ever was one, Sterling’s survival instincts mixed with a unique brand of Southern stubbornness and a warped sense of cowboy chivalry that seem to have placed people in New Mexico in the first place.
Should have put more in my list, he thought as he recalled the precious peppers he lost because of the Godwalker. Goddamn, that would have been a good batch.
One of the things Sterling had discovered moments after the Reset five years ago was a pill bottle full of pepper seeds in his pocket, a couple tiny plastic bags stuffed in the pill bottle as well. He found seeds for NuMex Heritage Big Jims, NuMex Española Improved, Chimayó, and NuMex Barker’s Hot Peppers. He’d never forget that detail. Sterling didn’t know if he had been a pepper farmer or something, but the vest he had been wearing at the time, a neon one with reflective strips on it, certainly didn’t look like something a pepper farmer would wear. Still, it was a sign of something. A life once lived, however good or bad, some sort of employment, some story that had been scrubbed from his memory.
One of the most helpful yet maddening things about the Reset was the abundance of reading material available. While they took out all forms of electricity, the Godwalkers weren’t able to get rid of books and magazines. So people like Sterling, and others who had survived, were able to get strange and often confusing glimpses of the past. Sterling had read up as much as he could on where he lived, about the once great state of New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment, along with whatever he could get his hands on regarding pepper farming. He’d gotten pretty good at farming over the years, especially after semi-retiring to Truth or Consequences.
But all that was about to change.
Sterling’s eyes darted across an eroded billboard advertising a hot spring in Truth or Consequences. There was a spray-painted sign hammered into the bottom right-hand corner of the billboard that read STILL OPEN, the paint fresh.
“To Riverbend Hot Springs it is,” Sterling told his skeletal steed. “Vamos.”
Manchester picked up his pace, Sterling just about to buckle down when he saw a man and woman walking along the road, their shadows extending beside them.
“I wouldn’t go that way,” he said as he approached the pair, recognizing the two immediately as Ava and her dimwitted son, Hector.
One of the ways that people put their lives back together after the Reset was with family photos. This was how Ava had pieced her former life back together, the elderly woman coming to understand she was the caretaker of Hector, her son a few cards short of a full deck, with a bit of a twitching problem to boot, and a penchant for drooling to the point Ava sometimes made him wear a bib.
Even after all this time, all the woman had done for him, Sterling couldn’t tell if Hector believed Ava was his mother or not.
“¿Que pasó?” Ava asked, squinting up at him. While short in stature, and older than dirt, Ava was rumored to be a powerful bruja, a witch who could turn into a coyote.
Sterling didn’t quite buy into this, but there had been a few times where he saw a coyote circling his property, the hairs on the back of his neck standing to attention. He didn’t know if it was her or not, but he knew better than to test the aged woman, and Don Gasper had seemed wary of her as well.
“A damn Godwalker destroyed my ranch, that’s what’s up. It disappeared, but it could come back. Killbillies, too, but I killed most of them fellas.” Sterling pointed a thumb toward what used to be his ranch house. “It’s all gone now, my ranch.”
“Pinche Killbillies,” Ava growled. To solidify her point, she snorted and spat a load of phlegm onto the parched soil.
“My thoughts exactly, ma’am,” said Sterling.
“¿Dónde vas ahora?”
“Yeah, where you go now?” Hector asked, his fat finger currently in his nose and digging for something. He wore a stained shirt and tattered jeans that were tucked into a pair of worn cowboy boots two sizes too large for him, his boots scruffy, a bit of shit on one of the heels.
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“Heading into town,” Sterling replied. “I’m going to hit the hot spring, and then figure out where the hell Don Gasper ran off to.”
“Pinche Don Gasper,” Ava said with disgust.
Sterling chuckled. “Shit, I don’t disagree with you there—he can be quite the fella to deal with. But he’s good at what he does, and he will know where to find them.”
“Who you find?” Hector asked in his broken English.
“That doesn’t concern you, Hector.” Sterling flicked his cigarette to the ground and grabbed the reins again. “Come on,” he told Manchester. “You two take care now.”
While Sterling more or less trusted Ava, he had little faith in her son, and he knew that if the Killbillies came around asking questions, Hector would be the first to talk.
Probably shouldn’t have mentioned Don Gasper neither, Sterling thought as he reached a fork in the road, Interstate 25 somewhere off to his right, downtown Truth or Consequences straight ahead.
As he had several times before, Sterling wondered what T or C must have been like before the Reset. They sure seemed to have plenty of cars in the small city, the abandoned vehicles sprawled across Cemetery Road where it merged into North Date Street. There were the shells of cars everywhere, parked in every which way, all of them beaten to hell by the sun and dust, looted long ago for everything from their seats to the gasoline in their tanks. A pair of youths rode rickety bikes through spaces between the vehicles, their brakes squealing as they turned into an old gas station, neither of them making eye contact with Sterling.
There was something called Walmart up on the hill that overlooked the road, a store that must have been a grand market in its heyday. It was now another place for squatters, critters, and hungry ghosts. There had been a Pizza Hut near the gas station, and a place where people ate in their vehicles called Sonic, as well as the church—always a church—and another gas station. Sometimes it seemed like the before people worshipped God, petrol, and food equally.
Sterling had stopped in the Pizza Hut one time just to take a look inside, where he found a splattering of sexual graffiti and pictures of what he recognized as a pizza. He was pretty sure a couple of the local restaurants could make pizza if he asked, but most of the people here stuck to food with a bit of kick to it, like chiles relleno, green chili stew, tacos, burritos, chips and salsa, and tamales or huevos rancheros for breakfast.
Thinking of food made his stomach rumble.
Sterling figured he would get washed up, have a meal, and then start his search. He knew who to talk to about Don Gasper; there was a local named Kip who was usually pretty good at finding people. Over the years, Kip had become a friend of his, even though he was sort of the town drunk. The surly man was a regular at the only tavern downtown, and he was liked by the Killbillies that now ran the town and the locals, no small feat.
Continuing toward the small downtown of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, Sterling’s eyes jumped from building to building, from an old school to the United States Postal Service building, where he’d once beaten a man to death after the guy tried to rob him on the way back to his ranch house. More gas stations, more churches, more abandoned cars and minivans and trucks in the road, looted buildings, bricks scattered about, shattered glass, tattered bits of metal, rubbish, fallen street signs—everything glazed with a thin layer of reddish sand, a testament to the time that had passed since the Reset.
Sterling wiped a bit of sweat from his brow. The fact that he wore all black only made the heat of the day worse, but he was used to it by now, the cowboy necromancer comfortable in his own skin, in what had become his adopted hometown, and his clothing. Folks weren’t very friendly here in T or C, but a few people tipped their hats to him as he came to Riverbend Hot Springs. One of them even offered a friendly wave.
Parked right along the Rio Grande River, Riverbend had been quite the tourist destination before the Reset, and it had remained so ever since. There were other hot springs in Truth or Consequences, but Sterling had an affinity for this particular establishment, mostly because it was still maintained, but also because each hot spring provided a stunning view of the Rio Grande River.
That, and it was a great place to write what he liked to call a desert haiku.
Sterling hopped down from Manchester and led his bone horse off to the side of the entrance, to a small space between the outer wall of the establishment and the bramble. He lowered his hand, and as he did so, Manchester crumpled to the ground, now just a collapsed skeleton of a horse with a saddle off to the side. Sterling touched the saddle, sending it to his inventory list. He could also send Manchester’s bones to his inventory list, but he figured he would just leave the horse outside for the time being.
Everybody knew who he was anyway.
After making sure his clothing was in order with a quick pat down, Sterling cleared his throat and stepped into the lobby, noticing that it was dust free, the walls made of adobe, candles strategically placed around the room, and crosses crafted from corn husks hanging over the arched entryways.
“Here for a soak?” a woman at the front asked. She wore a dress made of pieces of leather that had been patched together with fringe along its sleeves, a turquoise hair clip keeping her black hair off her face. “Oh, it’s you. How’s it going, Sterling?”
“Shee-it, it’s going, Veronica,” he said as he turned his palm around, a few small bits of turquoise appearing. “We good?”
“Sí,” said Veronica, “we good. You got any of them peppers?”
“Just my own stash right now, and not a lot of it,” he told her. “Most unfortunate.”
“Really? What happened to your crop?”
“Don’t want to talk about it,” Sterling grumbled.
“In that case, follow me. Your business is your business, no?” Veronica led him through an arched entryway to a room at the back that was cordoned off from some of the others. She opened the door, and let Sterling step in front of her. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
“Plenty of time,” he told her as she shut the door.
“One hour,” she reminded him from the other side.
“My hour has already started; get out of here,” he joked, Veronica laughing on the other side as she left the hallway.
Sterling took a deep, satisfying breath in once he saw the steam boiling off the hot spring bath, which was fenced off from the other baths, and open to provide a completely natural view of the river behind the establishment. Even though he’d come to this place more times than he could count, Sterling was always inspired by the view of the Rio Grande River, the shrubs dotting the landscape, Turtleback Mountain on the outside of town casting just enough shadow to make it look big and imposing.
He undressed, Sterling returning his black cowboy hat to his head as he lowered himself into the almost boiling water.
“Whoo, boy,” he said as his body grew used to the temperature, Sterling sweating profusely for a moment. He wiped his forehead a few times and eventually got comfortable, sinking as deep as he could into the tub.
He didn’t know what the night held for him, but he knew with Kip, it was probably going to be an uphill battle in some way or another. Hopefully, Kip would know where to find Don Gasper. If anyone in town knew where Gasper was, it was him.
“Let’s hope,” Sterling whispered as he relaxed even further into the hot water.
Twisted like barbed wire
Don’t trust what you cannot kill
Desert fox keep on
Sterling reread the desert haiku he had composed on fatal friendships, which would certainly describe his relationship with Don Gasper—and Kip too, for that matter, especially if Kip had decided to be an ornery drunk that night.
He heard a knock at the door indicating that time was up.
“I’m coming.” Sterling slowly got dressed, starting with one of his two charms, a leather bracelet that gave him an additional Technique Point per level gained. He had another charm, a rattlesnake tail ho
oked on a keychain which he kept on a belt loop, the tail giving him an additional Stat Point per five levels gained. There were all sorts of charms scattered across the state, the pieces mostly sold at trading posts across sun-drenched New Mexico. He was probably going to collect a good many on the trip he was planning, but he’d had these two for a while, and they had done him well.
Another knock on the door came just as Sterling was putting on his boots.
“Hold your horses, Veronica,” he told her, a grin taken shape on his face. Since she was being persistent, and he knew the lady, he figured he would take his sweet time by rolling up a cigarette.
Once again, he equipped the bag of tobacco he had in his inventory list, as well as his rolling papers. He didn’t have much in his list at the moment, just a couple bundles of peppers, the first batch from his ill-fated crop; a leather satchel of turquoise and silver, which would be useful for trading; a metal lighter; Manchester’s saddle; a couple sets of spare clothing; his leatherbound book of sketches and desert haiku and a few loose pens; his prized New Mexico travel guide; a wool blanket that he’d picked up in Albuquerque at the Old Town Plaza; and a few other odds and ends.
He was sure the list would grow as his journey got underway.
Sterling lit the cigarette and placed his cowboy hat on his head, making sure his black shirt was tucked into the front of his black jeans, no folds in his black duster.
“Alright, alright, alright,” he told Veronica as he stepped out of the sauna, cigarette perched on the corner of his lip.
“What’s this? You know you’re not supposed to smoke in here,” she said, but there was a hint of joviality to her voice, the woman clearly teasing him.
“Sorry, ma’am. I just couldn’t help myself.”
Veronica walked him to the front door. “How was your soak?”
“My soak was a success. I’m feeling limber, that’s for damn sure.”
Cowboy Necromancer: Infinite Dusk Page 2