“Pinche maleficiadores,” the cowboy necromancer whispered to himself as he watched Don Gasper dramatically call for another whipping. He knew what he had just said was ironic; Sterling had traveled all the way from Truth or Consequences to get advice from the dangerous enchanter on the stage; the only fool in the audience was the one standing in a bulletproof vest, a black cowboy hat, and a black duster hoping that the shaman would make some sense of things.
There were loads of people about, more than Sterling had seen in ages. The parking lot of what used to be a Sam’s Club was certainly big enough to hold all of them. It made a nice backdrop too, what was left of the gray and blue building adding just a spark of color to the yellow haze that hung over Las Cruces. But he couldn’t shake the sense of uneasiness. There were too many people, and Sterling didn’t like it one bit.
“¡Alavado sean los dulces nombres de Jesús, María, y José!” a woman behind him cried out.
The crowd parted and the woman stepped forward, shouting those words again. She was completely nude, her body also covered in bloody lacerations. There was white paint smeared across her face and her breasts, made vibrant because of her brown skin, flecks of the white paint also in her dark hair, which was frizzy and matted to her head. She screamed the old prayer again and pointed at Don Gasper. “¡Venga Bruja!”
Sterling didn’t know if this was part of the show; he never knew if Don Gasper was actually putting on a show or not. He’d been around him when he called spirits and performed other rituals, but he’d never seen the old shaman drenched in blood before a crowd and speaking to snakes, nor had he seen a nude woman ever show up calling Gasper a witch and yelling for him to come at her. Yet Sterling knew Don Gasper enough to know that he would pretty much take on any challenge, which was one of the reasons the man was both trusted and mistrusted across this particular corner of the Southwest.
Don Gasper’s attendants came to him and he shooed them away. The one with the whip tried to stop him from pursuing the woman; Don Gasper tossed the man aside and reached the corner of the stage where he stopped. He turned back to the rattlesnake, which the other attendant struggled to hold. Gasper spewed a litany of curses at the snake, rapid-fire Spanish flying out of his mouth. With that, Don Gasper hopped down from the stage and the crowd parted even more.
“¡Venga Bruja!” the woman yelled again and again. “¡Venga Bruja!”
The two circled each other, the woman lifting her arms and arching her wrists forward, so her hands dangled as she spat and hissed at Don Gasper.
“¡Venga Bruja! ¡Venga Bruja!”
Don Gasper pointed at her, the older man baring a set of yellow teeth streaked with blood. His eyes were an odd shade of brownish blue, and they twitched as he focused on the woman. She took a step closer to him and slowly began to lower her arms until they stood chest to chest, the woman’s painted nipples rubbing against the front of Don Gasper’s rail-thin body. She began swaying, her breasts smudging the blood on Don Gasper’s chest and adding white paint to his chest hairs as she chanted in a language Sterling didn’t recognize. The crowd began to cheer and beat drums, shake cans with rocks inside, stomp their feet and whistle.
Don Gasper sent both his hands forward and cupped the woman’s head. He bent over; she seemed to shrink in front of him as he placed his mouth on hers, blowing air into the woman. She collapsed in his arms, the woman now moaning in ecstasy.
Goddammit, Sterling thought as he watched the whole charade. What have I gotten myself into? His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of gunfire, screaming, the crowd swelling forward.
Brrrrt! Brrrrt!
Springing into action, Sterling unholstered his revolver and fired several shots at the sound of the initial disturbance, which just so happened to be the White Sands Militia. A group of them, no more than six or so, descended upon the crowd, guns a-blazing. There were also Killbillies coming in from the other side now, a few already taking to the air. The two warring parties were easy to distinguish, the militiamen in their military garb with white accents, the vandals tatted up with yellow bandannas around their necks, their bellies full of fury as they screamed and shouted.
Bam!
Sterling’s next shot cut into the shoulder of one of the militiamen. Return fire from the militiamen mowed down a good portion of the crowd, desperate people spilling forward, Sterling instinctively getting low. A man lunged for Sterling and grabbed onto his arm, only for a bullet to pass through his head, the man quickly letting go. Gunfire from the Killbilly side told him that the bandit group also had firearms here in Las Cruces, which would only make things dicier.
Bodies falling all around him, Sterling began looking for an older man covered in blood and speaking in tongues. He had to get Don Gasper to safety, especially with how whacked out of his mind the old shaman was. But Sterling didn’t want to miss an opportunity to level up. Two birds with one stone, he thought as he located Don Gasper in the madness, the shaman now on his knees, his arms extended wide as he looked up to the sky, screaming.
Sterling dropped in front of him. “Gasper, what the hell are you on? Gasper!”
“Sterling? Sterling!” the old man cried. “¿Qué tipo de hechizo es este?”
“I don’t know what kind of spell it is… shit. This ain’t no spell. It’s real life. ¡Vamos!” He grabbed Don Gasper, the elderly shaman struggling to push Sterling away. “Stop fighting me, goddammit, we’re in the middle of a war zone.”
“Where did she go!?” Don Gasper asked, looking around frantically, his eyes bloodshot, his pupils dilated, big as grapes.
“What the hell are you on? What did you take?”
“Where is she!? We need her. I need her!” he cried over the roar of gunfire not twenty feet away.
Sterling took a look around for the woman he had seen just moments ago. He all but expected to see a naked lady covered in blood and white paint cartwheeling through the crowd, but there was no sign of her, just the surge of people trying to leave the area, the bandits and the militiamen going at it full throttle.
“We got a lot to talk about,” Sterling told Don Gasper as he grabbed him by his bloodied arm and started dragging him away.
“No, Sterling, no!”
“Shut your ass up, Gasper, or I’m going to send you out of here on Manchester’s back.”
Pushing through what was left of the crowd, trying to shake off the bewilderment himself, Sterling reached the stage that Gasper had been on moments ago. He saw the rattlesnake the shaman had been communicating with and shot it.
“What did you do that for!?” Don Gasper asked, coming alive.
“Dammit, Gasper, I need you to stay put. I’m going to go handle those bandits and militiamen myself. But I need you to sit tight, and what I don’t want is to come back here and find you in the body of a damn python.”
“It’s a rattlesnake!”
“I don’t care what it is. It’s dead now.”
“¡Serpiente de cascabel, idiota!”
“Stop yelling at me in Spanish, dammit, Gasper, I’m trying to save your ass here!” Sterling jerked the old man forward. They were at the side of the stage now, and Sterling hated to do what he knew he had to do next. “You’re going to thank me later, trust me,” he said as he spotted a rope that was supposed to be suspending a banner.
Don Gasper tried to break free, but he was too intoxicated to really do anything, Sterling simply holding onto him with one hand as he grabbed the rope. He pushed the man toward one of the pillars that was supporting the platform, one facing away from the turf war, and held him there. “Dang it, Gasper. I need you to stay still. You hear me? I’ve got to take care of those men, and then get us the hell out of here. Stop struggling!”
“¡Me deleitaré con tus intestinos!”
“What the hell did you just say about feasting on my intestines?” Sterling slapped Don Gasper, hard enough to jolt him a little, but not hard enough to actually injure the man. This shocked the old shaman. For a moment it see
med like he had snapped out of it, Don Gasper finally holding still so Sterling could tie him to the platform.
But then he started bucking again, and Sterling raised his hand again. “I don’t want to do it, Gasper. You’re my friend. You need to breathe, amigo. You’re covered in blood.”
“¡Me deleitaré con tus intestinos!”
“Shut the hell up… I’m trying to help you here,” Sterling said as he finished tying off the rope. “I don’t want you going anywhere. I’m serious. Don’t make me shoot you in the legs a couple times, Gasper.”
To show he meant business, Sterling went for his revolver, and showed it to the old shaman. He fired a shot in the air, and Don Gasper’s eyes went even wider.
“You don’t want to get shot with this thing, trust me on that. Stay here, keep your head down, and keep your trap shut,” Sterling said as he turned back to the mayhem. “I’m going to try to get me a level.”
Sterling wasn’t an idiot. He liked to fight as much as the next guy, but he knew better than to go running into a turf war between two armed parties amidst a flurry of bullets. This notion was further enhanced by his recently acquired Stealth technique. Sterling kept to the side as he made his way toward the melee. There were a lot of dead bodies, and as he crept along, he slowly began to animate them. About seven or eight of them slowly shambled to their feet, the freshly killed still looking human with a ghastly touch. He sent them into the battle first, using his animates as runners to cause distractions.
Ain’t nothing like seeing a dead man run at you, Sterling thought as he took in the lay of the land.
Most of the fighting was taking place about seventy feet away. The militia had taken cover behind barriers that had been erected long ago, just left to spoil in the parking lot. The Killbillies had stacked a couple bodies to use as cover, a few of the people still moving, which told Sterling that their Resolve was kicking in, that they would have a chance to heal up. Regardless, it was an ugly, depraved scene, a gory war zone.
“Here goes nothing,” Sterling said under his breath as his animates ran forward, straight into the gunfire. This had the effect he wanted, startling some of the people on both sides. He made a split-second decision to begin his attack with the White Sands Militia. They seemed to be better shots, and the barriers they were hiding behind would give him some cover.
Sterling ran toward the militiamen, his hand out at his side as he pulled forth any corpse ready to serve in his ragtag army. He made a wide loop around the blast barriers as his animates surged forward, the cowboy necromancer able to successfully come up behind the militiamen. He cut into the first one with his sickle-sword, and fired at a second, his magic bullet passing straight through the man’s skull, viscera and brain matter adding a splash of Valentine’s Day colors to the grim scene. There didn’t seem to be any mancers, which gave Sterling an advantage that he intended to use.
The first man he had cut down wasn’t dead yet, and as he moved forward, he took care of this with another magical bullet straight to the dome. The other militiamen started to turn to him with their weapons up. Sterling would never know what they thought when confronted with a man dressed in all black wielding a gun and an oddly shaped sword with licks of turquoise magic radiating off it, but he was certainly going to take advantage of the split-second confusion running across their faces.
Sterling shot one of the militiamen and dropped to the ground as a barrage of bullets flew in his direction. He fired once again, his bullet going through another man’s kneecap. A bullet grazed the side of Sterling’s neck, that familiar pain blooming within him. He had been shot multiple times over the years, and each time felt like a brand-new experience.
Gritting his teeth, he fired his revolver again, and managed to strike the man’s automatic weapon, which sent up a piece of metal into the militia goon’s eyes. His opponent made the fatal error of going for his face instead of another weapon, Sterling already back to his feet by this point. He approached the militiaman and shot him twice in the face.
Another spray of bullets caught Sterling’s attention, this time coming from the Killbillies, who were still engaging some of his animates. He dropped again, Sterling reaching the final living member of the militia, whom he had shot in the knee. The man held his knee with both hands now, cursing at the sky. Sterling almost felt bad for him, but he knew if he left the man alive, the White Sands Militia would be looking for him.
He could see it now, a call for all members to look for a mancer-hombre in all-black with a curved sword and a magical revolver. Eventually, word would get to the entry point of the city, and the guards there would verify his arrival with the other militiamen, It would be discovered who Sterling was, and the questions he had asked upon entry, which would give them his location. Things would get dicey. Sterling didn’t need that.
Bam!
As it often did after the Reset, another bullet solved the equation, Sterling putting one directly between the man’s eyes.
“Sorry about that,” Sterling said as he sidled up next to the blast barrier, his back to it now. The man was slumped forward. The way Sterling had delivered the bullet had caused it to pass through his head, ricochet off the inside of his helmet and spray back out the front of his face. Never seen that before, he thought, crouched amidst the pile of bodies, five of which he had killed himself, all decked out in desert camouflage, more marks on Sterling’s soul that he would someday have to answer for if he believed in anything like that.
But he didn’t.
He had long since given up any hope of a higher power watching over him, unless that higher power involved alien crafts known as Godwalkers that were able to level entire cities in the blink of an eye. Nope, this was it, this was his helter-skelter existence, and somehow he had found himself in what many would deem as hell, what Sterling would one day chalk up to a typical visit to Las Cruces.
He wanted a cigarette, that’s what he wanted. He could smell death all around him, hear the fight on the other side of the blast barrier, his animates producing their unique mixture of lurid havoc and hell. But there were still some Killbillies to take care of, and then he needed to get to Don Gasper.
Sterling only hoped the old shaman hadn’t chewed his way out of his restraints by this point.
“Yup,” he mumbled as he peeked around the blast barrier and counted seven Killbillies, male and female, all of which were engaged with his animates. Sterling was just about to creep along when a Killbilly flew over the blast barrier and landed in front of him. He sent a bullet straight into her stomach.
“It’s… it’s you,” she managed to say as she looked up at him.
“Bingo,” Sterling told her as he finished the job, his magical bullet ripping out of the back of her skull.
Sterling’s glowing reputation had preceded him, and it looked like the Killbillies had put out an APB on him. With this in mind, he crept around the barrier, crouch-stepping over bodies as he nursed his shoulder. It had already started to heal, and it wouldn’t be long before his wound was freshly covered by scar tissue.
One of the Killbillies happened to be several heads taller than anyone else around, the man clearly sending all his Stat Points into Fortitude and Strength. He was the type of brute that made Sterling want to have a fistfight just to challenge himself, and a not insignificant part of him wished he could save this particular slab of muscled bandit for last, so they could do things mano y mano. But machismo and battle strategies were poor bedfellows, so Sterling shot him in the back several times rather than challenge him. He holstered his revolver as he approached the man and used his good arm to cleave his sickle-sword into the side of his neck, lopping the bandit’s head off his body, blood spritzing from his neck hole, which got the other Killbillies’ attentions.
Sterling had his sword back in its breakaway sheath in a matter of seconds as he shot one of the smaller bandits, the one still carrying a firearm. The other four had all run out of ammunition and had switched to blunt objects, which t
hey used to fend off Sterling’s snarling animates. To make it easier for them, Sterling lowered his hand, all of his creations collapsing at once.
“Y’all hear about me?” Sterling asked.
Two of the Killbillies nodded, all of them wide-eyed as they took in the man in black with his magical revolver and his sickle-sword coated in blood.
“If you run, I’ll try not to shoot you in the back of the head,” Sterling lied. He’d tried this bluff before and it had worked, but it didn’t seem like the cluster of bandits in front of him was going to take the bait.
“If we bring him in, Commodore Bones will reward us,” one of the men said, the woman next to him nodding in agreement. “We’ll be heroes.”
“There’s four of us, one of him,” she added. “Kroll is right.”
“I should have killed ‘Beto when I had the chance,” Sterling said. “How’s about this? I’ll put my revolver away, and we make this interesting.”
The female Killbilly grunted, and Sterling took this as an affirmation. Once his revolver was back in its holster, he brought his sickle-sword to the ready, his four opponents clearly seeing the energy radiating from its tip.
“Last chance to run,” Sterling said. “If you’re fast enough, and you can fly, which most of you can, you may even make it out of here alive. You’ll be a hero for simply surviving.”
“Fuck off!” Psyched by his own words, a man with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire charged forward. He swung, Sterling waiting until the absolute last moment to pivot and deliver an upward arcing slice that split the man’s throat. The bandit fell, and used what lifeforce he had left to try to crawl away.
Sterling stomped his foot on the man’s back, bringing him to the ground. “You ain’t going anywhere anytime soon, son.”
The female bandit advanced at the same time as a male counterpart, both of them with neck tattoos and yellow bandannas, armor crafted to fit their forms. The woman had a Bowie knife, and the man had a pair of custom-made brass knuckles that a flectomancer had likely created.
Cowboy Necromancer: Infinite Dusk Page 14