Cowboy Necromancer: Infinite Dusk

by Harmon Cooper

  “I just don’t know what to do.”

  Sterling crouched. He noticed that there were vines coming out of the Sunflower Kid’s moccasins, that they had wrapped around her legs. He looked up at her, the brim of his cowboy hat casting a shadow on his face.

  “They may try to do something to us, but we won’t let them,” she assured him.

  “You see? That’s the problem. If we know that they are going to fuck us, why don’t we just finish them boys now? Once we cut the proverbial tail off the possum, there won’t be much left for the rest of the bandits to fight for. Maybe they would go join the others, or get the hell out, count their blessings. Hell, loot the place for all I care.”

  “You said it yourself earlier, you’ve trusted Gasper up until now, why would you suddenly stop?”

  “Because he ain’t in his right mind. I can’t base my life on his visions, even if they have proven to be accurate in the past.”

  “You trusted his vision to find me, and it worked.”

  “But did it? What if I had just headed north asking around for a biomancer? I would have stopped in the same place likely,” he said, recalling Paco’s power, how its glow had beckoned him from the highway.

  “What about what happened three years ago?” she asked. “You said yourself that Gasper had a vision, that you trusted him.”

  Sterling started to mumble.

  “You’re going to have to come to grips with this once we rescue Roxy,” she told him. “You know that, right? She’s going to want to know what happened three years ago.”

  “What about you? Do you want to know what happened?”

  “Sure, I think it’s time.”

  After taking in the Sunflower Kid for a moment and her long dark hair, Sterling nodded. “Maybe you’re right.”

  He turned back to the camp, and led her to a row of parked dirt bikes and ATVs, where there was a set of crates with foodstuffs inside. He leaned against one and equipped his tobacco and his rolling paper, Sterling quickly crafting a cigarette. Once the cancer stick was in his mouth, he lit it, and returned his focus to the Sunflower Kid, who stood before him, her arms crossed over her chest.

  “So, if you recall, three years ago, we were all set to try to take on one of them big Godwalkers,” Sterling began. “We had taken out the smaller one near Santa Fe; we knew one would be gunning for us. They are able to teleport, so it could appear at any time, which was why I was on watch that night.” He paused, a frown forming on his face. “And what can I say other than it took me. One moment, I was sitting there rolling up a cigarette, the next moment I was in this futuristic compartment. It looked like something out of one of them comic books—sleek surfaces, glowing screens, walls made of some type of strange metal. And for a split second, I had all my memories, I remember that much. Everything made sense—my past, my present, all of it. Then nothing made sense. Then I saw something else.” Sterling looked off into the distance as he took a drag off a cigarette. “But that doesn’t pertain to what happened next.”

  The Sunflower Kid was quiet, allowing him to continue on his own terms.

  “It deposited me miles and miles away from your location, the Godwalker hovering there before vanishing. I don’t know how far away I was. I didn’t have Manchester with me; he was still with y’all.” Sterling waited for her to comment, but she never did. “I got a sense of where I was and I started running in your direction, to you and Roxy, Zephyr, Liam, and Karina. As far as I know, I’ve never run so fast in my life, damn near coughed up a lung in the process. I ran for hours. I was in the middle of nowhere, nothing around for me to ride, no vehicles, of course, and no animals. But I had the sense of where y’all were. And I got there seconds after it happened. If you recall, the Godwalker attacked on that mesa y’all were camped out on. I saw it all happen, how Zephyr managed to save the two of you while the Godwalker took aim at Karina and Liam. I saw it fry them. And then the damn monolith just disappeared.” Sterling extinguished his cigarette with the next drag and flicked it to the ground, holding the smoke in for a moment before finally exhaling it. “I couldn’t face the three of you, not after what happened. I hid there until Roxy stormed off, and you and Zephyr headed in the opposite direction together. That’s it. That’s my story.”

  “It all makes sense now.”

  “Something like that. I’ve never been so goddamn ashamed in my life. But I got there just as it happened, and if I had run faster, the Godwalker maybe would have come for me instead of Karina and Liam. I could have done something; I should have done something. That Godwalker knew how to disrupt us, and I don’t know why it took me into its craft, if that was actually where I was, but I knew we were finished after that,” he said, finally making eye contact with the Sunflower Kid. “I honestly can’t believe you agreed to join me after what happened. I’m a coward, a chickenshit coward, no better than some of these ‘Billies.”

  “A coward? How? There was nothing you could have done aside from let us know what had happened.”

  “I wanted to come to y’all, I really did, but I just couldn’t face Roxy. You know how she gets. A bit hotheaded, short temper and whatnot. She would have figured out a way to pin it on me, even if I had no power over the Godwalker. It was my fault Liam and Karina died. Had I been there…” Sterling frowned. “Well, I don’t know what would have happened if I’d been there. But I damn sure wouldn’t have let them die.”

  And he was serious. Sterling didn’t have the kind of ability that made him an essential team member when it came to taking on floating alien monoliths. He made up for that with his fortitude, his willingness to put his life on the line. Had he been on watch rather than running through the desert, Sterling would have done anything in his power to help his companions. He would have tried to get the Godwalker to chase him, perhaps kill him, so the others could get away. He operated as a fearless ringleader in that way, or at least that’s what he thought his role had been in the group he had originally formed alongside the Sunflower Kid and Don Gasper.

  “I’ve got to say, Kid,” he told her after a long, introspective pause during which she remained silent, “I still can’t believe you agreed to join me, to come down here to Alamogordo without knowing exactly what happened. Are you really that loyal to me? Because it’s a question of loyalty, you know I’m that loyal to you. I didn’t know you had been taken by the cult when I was down in T or C, but if someone had told me about it, you bet your bottom dollar I would have gone up there to bust you out. I’m honestly surprised Zephyr didn’t come for you.”

  “She’s gotten quite carried away in Albuquerque.”

  “Like the wind, that woman,” Sterling said with a chuckle.

  “And I am that loyal to you, and your vision. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t. I wouldn’t be stopping you from leaving if I didn’t think that this would be advantageous to us. We can deal with this small group of bandits later,” she said casually, her voice that of a stone-cold killer. Sterling took another look at the camp, at the Killbillies that were watching them.

  “You ain’t wrong.”

  “They think that they are using us, but we are actually using them,” she said quietly as a flower bloomed next to her temple, a vine tracing its way down her body and merging with the thicker plant construct wrapped around one of her legs. “Think about it.”

  “They think they are using us, but we’re actually using them, huh?” Sterling ran his hand along his chin. “I guess when you put it like that, it makes sense.”

  “You were right when you said that we have to do the heavy lifting at first,” she said, “but as soon as that point passes, we are free to do as we please while they distract the militia. They will still be fighting when we leave, with or without Don Gasper.”

  “That’s going to be up to him. I can tell you one thing, though, we’re not going to be traveling across New Mexico with two shamans. That’s where I draw the damn line. I don’t know if Gasper is planning to come with us afterward anyway, maybe that’s som
ething we can ask him. He’d do good to get himself to a secure location like Madrid, but not with Magdalena. I just know it, I can feel it in my bones—she’s up to something, and the further away from her we are, the better. But that’s all beside the point. And you’re right. We are using them, not the other way around.”

  “So you understand now?”

  Sterling took a long hard look at the Sunflower Kid and nodded. “I get it. I may not like it, but I’ll behave myself for the time being. Just be ready for anything. I don’t trust these ‘Billies.”

  “You aren’t the only one.”

  Sterling kept his distance from the Killbillies, but he didn’t try to storm off again. As the day pressed into late night, the sun long gone, the cold slowly moving across the desert, he accepted his fate, prepared for the inevitable. Eventually, Commodore Bones came around, joined by Gasper and Magdalena, both of whom were now wearing their tie-dyed shaman robes, hoods over their heads.

  “I have a bit of a surprise for you,” Commodore Bones said, a grin lifting his cheeks. He wore a beanie now and the requisite Killbilly bandanna around his neck.

  Sterling spat in the direction of the Commodore. “I don’t like surprises.”

  “You’ll like this surprise. One more thing, though, before we head off.” The Commodore cleared his throat. “I believe you have something of mine.”

  Sterling shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, ‘Beto.”

  “My gun, the one with the silver grip you took from me back in Radium Springs. Do you have my weapon?”

  “Your gun?” Sterling pretended to think about it for a moment. “Nope,” he lied. “I traded it back at an outpost somewhere between here and the Canadian border. You think Canada is still operating up there? Been wondering about that.”

  Sterling could tell that this answer was not what Commodore Bones was looking for. The man, who also had a few of his bandits with him, tried to calm his nerves with a deep breath. “That weapon has special meaning to me; it was given to me by someone.”

  “I tell you what, after everything is said and done here, why don’t you rent you a little donkey and ride your fat ass toward Wyoming. Stop at every trading post between here and there, you’re bound to find it. Hell, send some of your boys to do it for you. On second thought, I don’t want them raping and pillaging, so don’t send them. You should go yourself. It’s nice to have a… what the hell do the French call it? Something about a reason for existence? Something like that.”

  “Raison d’être?”

  “Shit, look at you, ‘Beto is practically trilingual over here.” Sterling brushed off his duster. “Well? Are we going to stand around here and talk about your long-lost gun, or are we going to get on our way? Ain’t you the one with a schedule?”

  Commodore Bones turned away from Sterling, his goons joining him. This left Don Gasper, the Sunflower Kid, and Magdalena behind, the shaman coming up to Sterling.

  “You’re going to have to try to get along with him.”

  “Gasper, you’ve already done enough damage here, so shut your trap. Don’t push me any further. I’ll get along with him up until the point we get Roxy out. After that…” Sterling adjusted his cowboy hat on his head, his eyes fixed on the back of Commodore Bones’ head as the man moved to join his troops. “All bets are off.”

  “That’s not what we agreed on,” said Magdalena.

  “We didn’t agree on shit. I don’t owe you nothing, and I certainly don’t owe that man right there anything. We’ll see what happens after we get Roxy out. And the technomancer. We’ll let them boys fight it out while we ride off into the sunset. But if ‘Beto tries anything, I swear to all the gods, coyotes, shamans, hell, even the Godwalkers, that there will be hell to pay. I know you think that this is the best way forward,” Sterling told Gasper, “and heck, maybe you really did have a vision. But that man right there hammered me up to a cross. As much as I’ve tried to kill his people, he’s tried to kill me. This is beyond bad blood; this is a pending bloodbath. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I got shit to do.” Sterling removed Manchester’s bones from his inventory list, summoned his skeletal steed, placed the saddle, and mounted up. “¡Vámonos!”

  To reduce the chances of White Sands Militia scouts seeing them, the group headed out in waves, no one allowed to ride their vehicles yet, which left them to push their ATVs and dirt bikes as best they could. The Killbillies had horses too, which was what Commodore Bones was mounted upon, Don Gasper and Magdalena on a borrowed steed as well. Sterling kept toward the back of the group, not at all excited to be part of what was about to happen. He also wanted to keep his eye on the Commodore, just in case he needed to shoot him in the back.

  He knew that the Commodore’s other two associates, Del Cayedito and Nina Otero, were out there somewhere, and there was always the possibility that it could be an ambush. It was a slim possibility now, considering how easy it would be to snuff Commodore Bones out, but still he had to keep this as a consideration, especially with the Killbillies surrounding them, all on horseback.

  The hardpacked soil slowly morphed into sand, a proper desert. Like everything else in the once great state of New Mexico, Sterling had read about the White Sands desert in his travel guide. There was proof in the desert of how far back the before people went, even into the last Ice Age. A fossil trackway showed that Paleo-Indians had hunted ground sloth there, using stone from the surrounding mountains to create projectile weapons. These archaic people kept small villages, eventually giving way to Apache who followed herds of bison and lived in temporary housing. The Spaniards more or less avoided the area because it lacked a reliable water source. And later, Americans became interested in it once they discovered precious minerals, oil, coal, silver, and gold all around the Tularosa basin, and the US military eventually set up the White Sands Missile Range, where the first atomic bomb was tested.

  The place had a lot of history, something that was on Sterling’s mind as Manchester trotted through the sand, his skeletal steed having to exert more force with each step. What would those first people who settled here so many years ago think of the desert now? Back when it was all ice, the damn cavemen hunting sloths… Sterling thought. What would they have thought about what became of this sacred place, this beautiful land?

  It was early in the morning now, or late at night, depending on who you asked. Sterling estimated they had about two hours before sunrise. It wasn’t hard to make out the landscape. What was left of the moon in the sky alongside a wash of glittery stars reflected off the bleach white sand, an exquisite visual created by gypsum that shallow seas from long ago left behind, the white sand lifted from the seabed by tectonic activity. Parabolic dunes resembled wavelengths stretched across the desert, the image reminding Sterling of a picture of a Zen garden that he’d seen in the book he flipped through on Japanese culture, the one that first inspired his interest in haiku.

  “Ain’t that something?” he asked, temporarily forgetting the troubled thoughts on his mind as he took in the landscape, the environment unlike anything he’d seen yet. It was the first time that Sterling had seen the White Sands desert, up close and personal. He had been near it, over on the other side of the desert, southeast of Socorro, and it always wasn’t too far off considering his location in Truth or Consequences, but to be in the place was akin to a spiritual experience.

  He had pre-rolled several cigarettes earlier, and Sterling went for one and lit it as he caught up to the Sunflower Kid. “Ever seen something like this before?”

  “I haven’t been here yet,” she said, Sterling noticing that something had changed about what she was wearing. It was as if a hardened wood had grown from within her, forming an armor with a high collar, her head now shaved, the armor with plates that looked chunky on her arms.

  “Is this your new thing?”

  “I wanted to get used to wearing it,” she said. “But to answer your question, yes, it’s something I was playing around with back in Albuquerque. There
are going to be lots of bullets flying around, even if your animates and some of my creations take the brunt of them.”

  “And you can move around in this armor you created?”

  “I sure can,” she said, exhibiting her arm movement.

  “Dang,” Sterling said as he exhaled a cloud of smoke over her shoulder. “You never cease to amaze me, you know that?”

  “I could say the same.”

  “Nonsense. I’m still the same old fool you knew five years ago, the one that ran into you in a suburb in Las Cruces. Boy, am I glad that we didn’t kill each other back then. We could have, you know. You seeing me with a bunch of zombies following behind, me seeing you naked and controlling plant life. We dodged a bullet there.”

  The Sunflower Kid was about to respond when Commodore Bones eased up on his horse and waited for Sterling to join him. “Before you get cranky with me, I want to tell you a little more about the defenses of the base, seeing how you may be one of the first to breach it. It was an Air Force base, as you already know.”

  Sterling exhaled a cloud of smoke in Commodore Bones’ face. “Sorry about that.”

  “The jet fuel that they had, and any of the aircraft, things like that, were either used up, stripped of their parts, or blown up years ago. However, they still have most of the aircraft there, and they have started to use them as defense barriers. Imagine a cargo plane, its interior facing outward, creating a scoop. They have lots of barriers like that, they also have some that they have buried. There is a potential for IEDs. But we believe that most of them have been detonated in our last attempt.”

  “Your last attempt?”

  “Del and Nina tried while I was in Las Cruces dealing with the militia there.”

  “Did you ever beat them in Las Cruces?”