“Family?” Sierra asked.
“It’s a long story, and I don’t know if it’s true or not,” Sterling told her. “But maybe there is some information for me in Albuquerque. Either way, that’s a story for another day. Before I head on out of here, I need to visit the cemetery. You don’t mind, do you?”
“What do you plan to do there?” Sierra asked.
Sterling looked at his severed arm, the end covered in crimson, the bone visible. He had seen similar wounds. Eventually the flesh would heal over the bone, and he would be left with the stub if he didn’t do something soon. “There’s something I need to handle. The Sunflower Kid will be able to fix up the rest, but I ain’t about to try to bust the Kid out of the grips of a cult with just one arm. Besides, that was my shooting hand.”
“Speaking of which, your gun is ready, as is the device I created to stop the telemancer’s influence.” Raylan tapped on the side of his head. “I learned long ago not to put my workshop anywhere near my house, just in case one or the other was destroyed. Do what you need to do at the cemetery, and meet me at my workshop.”
“Sierra?” Sterling asked.
“Let me get some clothes, and… I guess I’ll lead you to the cemetery.”
Several of the people that lived in Madrid came out of their homes and started picking through the damage in the time it took Sierra to get clothing. Raylan stuck around as well, helping Sterling get dressed in the spare clothing that Sterling kept in his inventory list.
“I’ve got another hat for you,” Raylan told him. “One that I modified last night. Don’t worry, same exact style as the one you were wearing.”
“Good. I don’t have any more hats. I got more clothes, but only one hat. I’ll need my sword too,” Sterling said as he looked back to the flaming rubble that once was the flectomancer’s home.
“We got a couple people around here that should be able to fish your khopesh sword out. Just meet me back in my workshop once you are done at the cemetery.”
“Will do,” Sterling said. While they waited, Raylan introduced him to some of the locals, including the couple with the technomancer child. There was nothing remarkable about the baby, and it looked like any other toddler Sterling had seen, albeit a little better fed.
Sierra returned with a shovel over her shoulder. She went to pick up Maria’s head, frozen in its block of ice, but Sterling insisted on doing it instead, even though it took him a second to get it off the ground considering he only had one viable arm, the other still a bloodied mess.
“She was a sweet girl, Maria was,” he said as Sierra led him away from the center of Madrid and toward the cemetery, Raylan also heading back to his airplane hangar workshop.
“Did something happen between you two?”
“It didn’t, no,” Sterling said, “not that that would matter.”
“I didn’t mean it like that; I just thought it would make it worse.”
“You ain’t wrong there, it would have.” Sterling exhaled miserably, still feeling the pain in his arm. “I could really use a cigarette. You think you could roll me one up?”
“Once we get to the cemetery, sure. But it won’t be as good as yours.”
“That’s fine. Appreciate it.”
They walked up a small incline, and came to a gravesite that had been built on the mesa, red mountains in the distance with their tops cleaved off, their shadows arranged in triangular patterns due to the position of the sun, buzzards flying around, not a cloud in the sky, the air fresh and crisp. It would have been a pretty day had it not been for what happened.
Sierra placed a shovel on the ground and used her foot to drive it in.
“Shit, let me set her down so I can get out the supplies. I got some mota too, if you’re interested. Something to take the edge off.”
“I don’t smoke,” she told him, “except for after sex.”
“You finished my cigarette this morning,” he reminded her.
“Maybe I had been wishing for something.”
Sterling looked down at the shovel. “Next time I come through.” He carefully placed the block of ice on the ground, equipped his rolling papers and his bag of tobacco, and handed them to her.
“I’m not the best at this,” she told him as she started up. In the end, the cigarette Sierra rolled up was about twice as fat as one he would normally roll himself.
“It’s fine,” he told her. “I’ll treat it like a cigar.”
Keeping the big cigarette in place with his lips, Sterling leaned forward, Sierra’s finger catching fire. Once he had a cigarette going, he stepped aside and began looking at the graves. “Which one of these here are from before the Reset? I’m talking about ones that ain’t so fresh.”
“At the back,” Sierra said as she worked on the hole. “Why?”
“Just you wait.”
Sterling stepped away from her, figuring he would just do it rather than explain himself. The graves at the back were marked, and he read the etchings on their tombstones until he came to one that read ‘Padre.’
“Yup,” Sterling mumbled, his fat cigarette perched on the corner of his lip as he extended his good hand and sensed the skeleton below. The only thing was, the ground was too dry, and he would need the shovel to loosen up the soil.
He returned to Sierra, who had just finished digging a shallow grave for Maria’s frozen head.
“Do you want to say anything?”
“In a minute, but I need that shovel of yours. If you don’t want to do it, point me to the freshest grave here and I’ll get someone else to do it.”
This caused Sierra to pause. “You mean, animate the dead?”
“You’ve known what I was since yesterday,” Sterling told her without looking at the woman.
“A necromancer, I know. What are you trying to do anyway?” Sierra asked as she approached Sterling, shovel now thrown over her shoulder.
“I haven’t tried it out before, but I think it will work. If you don’t mind, I need you to loosen up the soil a bit. I can do the rest. They ain’t strong enough when they’re down that deep.”
Sierra worked tirelessly to loosen up the soil at the back of the graveyard in front of the grave marked ‘Padre.’ It took her a few minutes, but she worked fast.
“That should do it,” Sterling said once the soil was good and loose. “Now step back; let me work my magic.”
It wasn’t quite as dramatic as it could have been, but the first thing to press out of the grave was indeed a skeletal hand, Sierra gasping as more of the arm began to emerge.
“That’s enough,” Sterling said once it got to the elbow, the top of the skeleton’s skull now visible as well. “Recently, I got a new level and with it came a Class Proficiency bonus, giving me the power to graft. I haven’t used it yet, haven’t even really tried it out, but you know how these class skills work: one day you have no idea about it, the next and you just know it. Same with techniques.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Just let me take a look here…” Sterling glanced down at the stub of his right arm. He’d already had Raylan roll up the sleeves so he could see the exposed skin, which had almost healed over, the bone still a bit visible. “Should work.”
Sterling lightly placed his good hand on the skeletal hand sticking out of the grave, and brought it down to the elbow. He yanked it back, snapping the bone off at the joint. Sierra made a yelping sound.
“What are you going…?”
Sierra saw exactly what he was going to do once Sterling placed the bone against his flesh, a turquoise energy radiating off his left hand. The energy spiraled down the bone, stopping at the tips of the skeletal fingers. To Sterling, it felt as if he were simply regaining usage of his hand after he had fallen asleep on it in a strange way. To Sierra, it looked like he had just used magic to glue the skeletal arm onto his own.
“Should work,” he said as he lifted his skeletal arm up and turned it, flexing the fingers. “I do believe I’ve been grafted.” His digits fel
t tighter by the second, like they were truly his own, and he could even see that there was a bit of ligament forming to hold everything in place, this too marked by turquoise energy before it finally disappeared.
“You just took that man’s arm and made it your own…”
“It’s my new skill, like I told you, grafting,” Sterling said as he continued to examine the bone, moving his wrist back and forth. “It’ll do until I get the Sunflower Kid. The Kid can heal something like this,” Sterling said as he tapped the flesh of his right arm, the part closer to his shoulder. “Next time you see me, my hand will be as good as new. At least in theory. Maybe a bit bigger, but I think the Kid will be able to make it look good as new.”
“I’ve seen a lot of strange shit in the last five years, but I’ve never seen a man animate a skeleton and attach the skeleton’s bone to his own body. Sorry, I’m just processing all this.”
“Yeah, it ain’t pretty,” Sterling said as he undid the sleeve of his right arm and covered the bone down to his wrist. He then equipped a spare black duster, which he slipped into as well. He no longer had his bulletproof vest. It was somewhere in the debris, or what was left of it, but he was fine with that. That was something he could either pick up from Raylan, or find at a trading post along the way.
“It’s fascinating and scary at the same time.”
“Heh, I suppose they really could call me the Skeleton Man now,” he said as he waved his five skeletal fingers at her. “Speaking of which…” Sterling turned back to the grave, what was left of the skeleton’s arm slowly sinking into the dirt. He took the shovel from Sierra and tried to pack the soil down, noticing that it felt different to hold the shovel in his right hand. “I’ll probably need to get a glove too, at least for now, something made of leather.”
He covered the grave and made his way back to the block of ice with Sierra. He placed Maria’s frozen head in the shallow grave and covered it, trying not to focus on the rage he felt toward the bounty hunter for doing something so vile. I ain’t done with you yet, Ram, he thought. Not by a long shot.
“I’ll let you say whatever you need to say,” Sierra told him as she stepped back. “I can hang out over there; we’ll go to Raylan’s after.”
“Thank you kindly.” Once the pyromancer was about fifty feet away, Sterling turned back to the freshly dug grave and spoke to Maria. “I’m sorry you got wrapped up in this. I’m sorry I stayed there, and that I didn’t… that I wasn’t able to protect you. I told you there were no more superheroes, but I didn’t mean to make you a victim of one of the villains. I’ll tell you this, though. I will kill that man in your honor, and to honor the family members of yours he killed as well. I know that sounds petty, that his death won’t suddenly give you your life, but maybe I can prevent something like this from happening again to some other folks. You didn’t deserve this, Maria, and wherever you are, I hope it’s a hell of a lot better than this good-for-nothing place.”
Sterling bowed his head, lamenting the fact that he didn’t have his cowboy hat to bring over his chest. Instead, he brought his skeletal hand up, wishing there was a prayer he could say for the woman, perhaps one in her native tongue, words that actually meant something to her.
But there wasn’t, and even if there was, it wouldn’t mean anything.
Maria’s was yet another senseless death, like many of the deaths Sterling had been a part of over the last five years. It was a death toll that showed no signs of abating, one he had learned to live with.
.Chapter Nine.
Sterling left Madrid, heading back the way he’d come, black leather glove on his skeletal hand, bulletproof vest across his chest, his body covered by his duster, a brand-new black cowboy hat parked on his head, Raylan’s tech to prevent telemancers stitched inside the hatband. His revolver was holstered at his side, and it now only took one Mana Point to fire a shot, and his sickle-sword was back in his possession and sheathed in its breakaway scabbard. He had a fair supply of food given to him by Sierra, jerky, a couple of cans of beans, a fresh bottle of tequila, even a fresh sack of tobacco and rolling papers, plus she’d refilled his water jugs.
Sierra was a good woman.
“Yup,” Sterling told Manchester as he glanced down at his gloved hand, a freshly lit cigarette hanging from his lip. “I’ve got friends in low places,” he said, not knowing where he had lifted the phrase from. It wasn’t uncommon for sentences to come to him, lyrics of songs and whatnot, signs of a past he couldn’t quite remember.
As he rode south through an abandoned village known as Golden, about ten miles away from Madrid, Sterling once again thought of the family he might have out there. Was Isabella alive? And if he ever did find her, if the insurance company’s archive in Albuquerque was able to give him just a bit more information as to her whereabouts, what would she say after he showed up? A cowboy necromancer dressed in all black, tanned rough by the world, tough as nails and chain-smoking like he had a death wish, which he sort of did considering what he hoped to do with the Godwalkers, would be a sight to see, or so he assumed. What would she think? And if his boy was alive, if the picture inside his wallet was truly his kid, what would this child think?
Sterling shook his head as he trotted past a dead armadillo, the varmint on its back, legs curled, vultures lifting from the ground at the sound of his skeletal steed, red ants on the march. “Lizard eat lizard kind of world, ain’t it?” he mumbled to Manchester as he once again glanced down at his leather glove, his skeletal fingers inside.
It was better to focus on the ultimate mystery of his life, what he had been before everything changed, than it was to stew about the bounty hunter’s attack. Thinking of what Ram had done, and how the man had destroyed half of the village with his glaciers of sharp ice, caused Sterling to grind his teeth. He knew that if he dwelled on it too much he would turn Manchester around and head straight to Albuquerque, ride on up to Duke City man on a mission style, and finish what Raylan and Sierra had started.
“No one comes at me like that,” he said, as he flicked his cigarette to the ground, aiming for a cactus and missing. “No one.”
The day for revenge was coming, and Sterling would make sure that it was a sweet day, one where he not only avenged Maria’s death at the hands of the bounty hunter, but also avenged the loss of his own arm, even if he was fairly certain that the Sunflower Kid would be able to fix it.
“Damn good-for-nothing son of a bitch,” he mumbled as he pulled the reins tighter, Manchester picking up speed. It was late afternoon now, and Sterling no longer felt the effects of the alcohol he’d bathed himself in the previous day. He had a good lunch with Raylan and Sierra back in Madrid, Raylan once again letting Sterling know that he would join as soon as he was able to recruit a technomancer, hopefully the one imprisoned with Roxy, and Sierra indicating yet again that she would join as well.
“We could use a pyromancer, couldn’t we, Pingo?” Sterling asked Manchester as he galloped along the side of the highway. “Especially a purty one.” He soon came to a fork in the road, and rather than head toward Tijeras, Sterling went in the opposite direction, taking Interstate 40 to a local road that would bring him all the way down to Mountainair, the Abó Pueblo ruins, which were protected by the Sunflower Kid’s giant cactus construct on the outskirts of the town.
His plan was simple. Rest once he got to his location, wake up sometime in the middle of the night, break his way into the compound and hogtie the Sunflower Kid if he had to, anything to get the Kid away from the cult. From there, it was south to Alamogordo, to the White Sands desert. Finally.
When Sterling had left Truth or Consequences to head to Las Cruces in search of Don Gasper, he hadn’t really given too much thought to how hard it would be to build his team again, especially from scratch. And maybe this was a good thing. If he had known that he’d be crisscrossing the Land of Entrapment, would he have left T or C or would he have simply taken his licks? Truth be told, Sterling knew the answer to this question, one that wa
s tethered to his stubbornness. “You bet your ass I would have left,” he mumbled to the running dialogue in his head. “I ain’t paying no taxes to no bandits, and I should have dealt with them Godwalkers years ago…”
It was still a sore subject, what happened three years ago, Sterling’s utter failure weighing heavy on his soul. He was glad that Raylan hadn’t brought it up, and wasn’t sure how the Sunflower Kid would bring it up, but Roxy surely would. It would probably be the first thing she mentioned once Sterling busted her out of wherever the White Sands Militia was keeping her. He knew he had a black eye coming, that once he explained what had happened to Roxy she wouldn’t accept it, and even if she did accept it, she’d be sure to give him hell.
“That’s my Roxy,” Sterling said in a bittersweet way as he reached the interstate.
I-40 was much less trafficked than I-25, which ran all the way to Denver, Colorado, and Cheyenne, Wyoming, from there. It was literally the interstate less traveled, which meant it had fewer abandoned vehicles on it, no transport trucks, less chance for a trap, for bandits to run up on Sterling as he continued along his journey.
It turned out to be a peaceful ride, the Manzano mountain range to his right, the otherworldly New Mexican landscape spreading to his left, pushing into the high desert with its crumbled mesas, oddly chiseled hoodoos extending from drainage basins and lifting like stalagmites as they crossed miles upon miles of off-color Martian badlands. South of Sterling’s current position was defined by its trees, many with leaves turning yellow; north was defined by its unique mixture of sedimentary and volcanic rock formations peppered with pockets of red caliche. The Southwest encapsulated, on constant display.
Beautiful, ain’t it? Sterling thought as he took in the rustic landscape carved out over time, a testament to geology as much as it was a place forgotten, a place to be forgotten.
Cowboy Necromancer: Infinite Dusk Page 33