by Katie French
A gun in his hand always feels like coming home.
The rabbit spooks and tears off, a brown blur skittering through the scrub.
“Ah, shit,” Bear says. “There he goes.”
Clay smiles, locks the rabbit in his sights, and squeezes the trigger. The boom echoes through the quiet canyon. The rabbit’s body jumps and falls into the dirt.
“God in heaven,” Bear whispers. “You did it.”
Clay’s smile widens. “Yeah, and he’ll taste damn good.”
Clay pockets Bear’s gun and jogs to get the rabbit. It was a clean shot to the head, leaving all the meat. No bullets or birdshot to dig out.
Bear whistles. “Yer as good as yer pa.”
Clay hoists the rabbit by the hind legs like a trophy. “Who needs jerky now?”
When they come down the ridge, the other men are running up. Clay holds the rabbit high. “Looky, what I—”
“Who fired?” Johnson barks.
“I killed us a rabbit,” Clay mumbles.
Johnson rips the rabbit from Clay’s hands and chucks it into the dirt. He leans into Clay’s face, an angry sneer widening. “Do you know we’re in enemy territory? That shot was heard for miles. You’ve just invited every two-bit harrier right to us. Congratulations.” He snaps his thin fingers with a brittle crack like a dry twig. “Pack it up. We ride.”
Grumbling, the men stalk away. Even Bear. None of them look at Clay. He kicks dirt on the dead rabbit. He wants to burn it to ash.
Now he’ll have to ride in the back of the van for sure.
A gunshot booms loud in the silence, startling a crow perched on a sagging cactus. Clay’s head snaps up. Someone’s firing. Firing on them.
Clay sprints to the top of the ridge and drops to his belly. Darby, Vance, Johnson, and Bear are crouched down behind the van, guns out, eyes wide. Vance holds one shoulder as blood oozes through his fingers. He’s been shot through. A beat-up truck sits parked down the road, and two men hunker behind it. They have guns. Big, semi-automatics that shoot blasts of bullets, spraying death in every direction. Pa hates those kind of guns. He says it’s like doing surgery with a chainsaw.
One of the attackers pops up and sprays a line of bullets across the Armadillo’s paneled side. Lead pings and whizzes in all directions. One of the tires blows and the van sinks like a wounded animal. Darby, Johnson, Vance, and Bear wait. There’s no way these attackers have enough bullets to keep this going. Pa’s men will hide until these bastards run dry, and then come out shooting. Smart.
Clay spots a man creeping up the ridge. The classic ambush. The attackers plan to keep their target trained on what’s in front of them while another sneaks around behind. It’ll be four quick bullets and four dead men. Clay’s crew won’t see it coming.
What can Clay do? He watches the attacker creeping around a cactus. Soon, he’ll be close enough to fire. Should Clay shout out? Warn the men? But then the shooter can take that moment of confusion and send a few of Pa’s men straight to hell. Clay pounds his fist in the dirt and feels something hard in his pocket.
Bear’s gun.
His heart hammering, he reaches down and draws out the Beretta. Five bullets. The distance from him to the sniper seems impossibly far. And if he fires, the men with the semi-automatics will turn their bursts of bullets his way.
The sniper crouches on one knee, raises his gun, and aims at Bear.
Clay fires. The blast seems impossibly loud. He watches, not breathing, as the sniper catches the bullet in the chest, cries out, and falls to the ground.
He killed him. He killed a man. Clay’s ears ring. Bile rises up his throat.
A spray of bullets pings off the boulders around him, pelting him with bits of rock and sand. He falls to the ground, hiding behind the ridge. His heart is flying out of his chest. The men will run up here and shoot his guts out. He’ll watch his intestines uncoil like that rancher he saw Pa kill.
More shooting, this time from his crew. He can tell from the sound of gunfire even though he’s hunkered in the dirt like a coward.
Get up, he yells at himself. Get your ass up and help. You are that pansy Pa thinks you to be.
Someone hollers in pain from down below. Someone’s been shot.
Taking deep breaths, Clay grabs his gun, leans his head out, and aims.
Vance lies sprawled beside the Armadillo. His blood is muddying the ground. Johnson leans against the van, panting. His long hair is a tangled mess, and there’s blood, probably Vance’s, smeared all over his clean clothes. He can’t see Darby. Bear has ditched his gun and holds a large rock in one hand. Johnson’s pistols are in their holsters.
They’re out of bullets. They’re dead.
The two gunmen behind the truck seem to realize this at the same time as Clay. They prairie-dog their heads out. When no shots are fired, they motion to each other. They’re going to run around the van and take Darby, Bear, and Johnson out. When they’re finished killing Pa’s men, they’ll come for him.
Clay watches, feeling sick. He’s the only one with bullets. He kept Bear’s gun, for God’s sake. He leans up, ready to shoot, but the men have scampered behind a rock. He has no shot. If he wants to save Pa’s men, he’ll have to go down there.
He thinks of Pa. He thinks of the men laughing at him. Then he sees the fear in Bear’s face. He thinks of how kind Bear has been. Even when he didn’t have to be.
Clay takes two deep breaths, forces himself up, and runs down the hill.
He can’t see the men or their giant, body-shredding guns. His gun’s out, but there’s no way he can use it as he skids down the hill, rocks and dirt pelting his legs. He turns his head and sees Bear and Johnson watching him with wide eyes. A surge of pride swells in his chest. They’re surprised to see him. Surprised by his courage.
Then one of the attackers pops out from behind the rock and aims.
At the last second, Clay jukes left. The gun goes off.
He feels the bullets wing past his earlobe as he crashes into the ground and rolls into a ball. Landing on his back, he’s stunned, panting and sucking in dust. Through the scrim of sand he’s kicked up, he sees the attacker adjust his angle and aim again.
Another gunshot. Clay’s frozen. He waits for pain. He waits to die. Instead, a fountain of blood opens up on his attacker’s neck. Blood shoots five feet in the air as the gunman claps his hand over his artery and sinks to his knees.
Across the stretch of dirt, Johnson stands, holding Vance’s gun. Johnson saved his life.
Movement catches Clay’s eye. The last attacker runs and jumps on Bear. The man is impossibly big and uses his advantage to press Bear to the ground. Thick fingers wrap around his throat and begin to squeeze.
Clay digs for his gun, but he can’t find it. The six-shooter fell away somewhere in the dirt. He scrambles around until he finds it. This time, it’s much easier to pull the trigger.
The man on top of Bear jerks. He falls over as blood pumps out of his chest.
Clay has killed two men. It doesn’t seem real. He lies in the dirt, his head pounding. There’s a metallic taste in his mouth. Something sour.
A shadow falls over him. Johnson offers a hand. “You need a lift up, son?” he asks, stone-faced.
Clay takes his hand. Bear, dirty and spitting blood, is making sure all the dead men are staying that way. Darby, uninjured, but green in the face, helps him. Clay looks away as they roll over the man he shot. Clay’s stomach is still roiling, and the smell of blood is too much. He can’t watch as they inspect Vance, crumpled in a heap of arms and legs. The ground reeks of blood.
Johnson leans down and presses his long fingers into Vance’s neck. “Dead,” he pronounces, wiping the blood from his fingers onto Vance’s drab, olive T-shirt. Clay looks down at his body and tries not to be sick.
A hand on his shoulder startles him. It’s Johnson. His face is full of sympathy, something Clay’s never seen. It makes the man look like he’s made of flesh and blood instead of stone.
“Your first kill?” His tone is fatherly. It nearly unhinges Clay’s knees.
Clay nods.
“You’ll have nightmares for a while. They’ll go away.” Johnson nods. “It’s okay to be upset. It ain’t okay to stop.” He hands Clay Vance’s gun. Then he stoops down and unbuckles Vance’s gun belt. He holds the bloody leather up to Clay. “You can clean it later. For now, we gotta go.”
Clay accepts the belt even though the blood makes him sick. He watches numbly as Johnson, Darby, and Bear turn out everyone’s pockets, collecting guns, spare bullets—anything of value. They change the tire and swap it with one from the truck. They work as sweat pours down their faces and necks, as Vance’s body goes stiff and cold in the dirt.
Clay numbly walks to the van’s open back door. As he’s about to climb in, Johnson stops him and shakes his head.
“You ride up front now. You ride with us.”
Chapter 3
The next few hours pass by in a blur. The rocking of the van and the void of adrenaline lull Clay into sleep. He fights to stay awake, but his body won’t allow it. Sleep is a python, squeezing him down into darkness. He wakes to twilight and a full moon rising over the windshield. A harvest moon, Pa always said.
Bear pulls the Armadillo behind a butte.
Johnson pulls out a hand-drawn map. “Time to regroup and get ready.”
Clay doesn’t know what this means, but he’s happy not to be bumping down half-paved roads. Following Johnson out of the truck, he helps dig out dinner from the storage bins. There was some jerky after all. He holds the lantern as Johnson studies the crudely drawn map.
“This here,” Johnson says, tapping the paper with a rounded fingernail, “is where the compound’s supposed to be. One of our traders did business with them last week. If he’s telling the truth, there are two men and two women.”
Bear, sitting in the dirt, holding his knees, leans toward Clay. “Two men are holding the women hostage. Using ’em, if you get my meaning.”
Clay nods. He knows what bad men do to captured women.
Bear pats Clay’s leg. “We’re here to liberate ’em. Halleluiah and praise Christman Jesus!” He holds his hand in the air like a preacher and begins a chorus of “Halleluiah” in his jolly bear voice.
“Will you sell them to the Breeders?” Clay asks, fingering Vance’s revolvers. They’re not big and shiny like Pa’s. In fact, one looks like it’ll barely fire, and, if it does, it might take Clay’s hand off, but he doesn’t care. Feeling the holster strapped around his waist is more of a confidence booster than any pat on the back.
Bear leans back and gazes up at the desert stars. “They take good care of ’em. Keep ’em healthy. Keep ’em fed. Safe.”
“I hear they’re forced to have babies. Ten, twenty babies until their bodies fall apart.” Clay tentatively looks up. He heard this from a brothel girl, and he’s never been able to ask about it. He’s not sure he wants to know the answer.
Bear clears his throat. “Sure, they have to pop out a few kiddies, but it’s the only way us humans can keep on. It’s that or give our whole miserable planet over to the coyotes and horseflies.”
Clay frowns.
Bear leans forward, stroking the beads in his beard. One bead is red as a tiny apple. “There’s not much a woman can do, ya see,” Bear says, falling into his easy way of speaking. “They can’t shoot. They can’t fight. They get captured easy. So when they see what a great life they can have, well, goddamn!” He slaps his knee, smiling with all his teeth. “They can’t wait to join up!”
Darby and Johnson go back to looking at the map. Apparently, Bear’s answer has them satisfied.
Clay leans against a rock, looks up at the sky thick with stars, and rolls this over in his mind. Mary, the lady from the brothel, had been drunk when she’d shown him a brand on her wrist. She’d started crying, big, wet tears that scared Clay. But when Lulu walked in, Mary had brightened up, and everything seemed fine.
Women are puzzles. Clay doesn’t understand them. And Bear’s story makes sense. It would be awful to be a woman out in the world. If he were a girl, he’d want the Breeders to protect him, even if it meant making a few babies. That would be a cakewalk compared to being out here.
With the map studied and dinner eaten, the men settle in to wait until the dead of night. Clay shivers. His mind won’t quiet. His chest feels tight like something’s squeezing it. Beside him, Johnson, Bear, and Darby are still as dead men. Wrapped in tattered blankets or holey jackets, the three men barely breathe.
Finally, when Clay finally starts to drift off, Johnson stands and nods to them. Cold and stiff, Clay gets up and follows quietly behind.
They follow a path around the back of an old subdivision, weaving through lawns lost to weeds, houses eaten by time. A two-story home with no roof or front door goes by on the right. Clay looks in and sees a couch rotted to the frame, a scraggly tree growing up in the middle.
They slip around a wooden play structure, the canvas top fluttering in the wind like a flag of surrender. It’s creepy being in between the houses in the dark like this, especially knowing someone is here, hiding.
The subdivision must’ve really been something. Now, there’s barely anything left except broken concrete, driveways chock full of desert plants, and cement slabs where houses once stood. The men barely look as they slink through dead backyards and fallen swing sets, the metal chains on the ground like dead snakes. But Clay looks. He stares at the child’s plastic rain boot, faded and cracked from the sun, imagining chubby fingers grabbing those loops and yanking the boots on just before a rain. He stares at a bicycle, too damaged to be worth anything to scavengers under a toppled cement wall, and looks into the empty skulls of houses, home now to insects and rodents. He always imagined families just like the March family in Little Women having barbeques and birthday parties, eating on the terraces just like these, that are nothing more than piles of faded brick now.
Bear nudges him, a reminder to keep his head in the game. Clay drags his eyes away from the rot and ruin. He needs to focus.
They stop at the last lot in a ruined cul-de-sac. There’s nothing where this house once stood but a cinder-block frame and some pipes. Johnson walks around sniffing the air and touching the piping. Clay doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he can’t ask. They’re not supposed to speak or make any noise. Johnson touches a pipe and then yanks his hand back, shaking it.
Clay walks up and feels it for himself. The thin, metal pipe snaking into the ground is hot, much hotter than a pipe should be this far from sunset.
Someone’s been cooking.
It’s smart, really. To anyone driving by, this was just another destroyed subdivision.
The men tiptoe around, looking for clues, and they find them—a pile of apple cores, empty cans, and the shells of prickly pears hidden behind a toppled storage shed. Careless footprints lead off into the scrubland.
Taking care to make no noise, Johnson brushes away sand near the footprints until he finds the trapdoor.
They’ve broken Gunslinger Rule Number Five—Get lazy and get dead.
Clay’s heart begins to patter. They’ll be at a disadvantage. They’ll have to shoot or be shot. His hands linger over the guns at his waist, and he wishes to God he’d never volunteered to go on this mission. Pa sent him to his death. If he lives long enough to make it home, he’ll punch Pa in his carved-up old face.
The three men and Clay hunker down two houses from their target. Johnson lays out the plan.
“We go in single file. Quiet. We got no idea the layout or what kind of firepower we’re up against, so we do this real careful. No shooting until you’re sure what you’re shooting at. If you hit one of the women…” Johnson shakes his head.
“Then the Breeders will put one of their babies into you,” Darby says, jamming a finger into Clay’s chest.
Clay’s eyes narrow. He hates Darby. Hates his yellow teeth and awful breath. Hates the slurpy way he eats and t
he fact that he pretends to read the Bible when half the time, he has a bottle of booze stuck in a hole he’s carved in it.
Bear gives him a pat on the back. “These men, don’t none of ’em know how to shoot like us. Like you.” Bear winks. It warms Clay’s insides. He remembers how easy it was to find his target earlier, like his hands were magnetized.
“All that training shooting cans and coyotes is paying off,” Clay says.
“These men ain’t cans. They’ve got booty to protect.” Darby points a finger at Clay.
Johnson nods. “They’ve kept these women to theirselves for a long time. Only decent shots can do that. If they hear us coming, we’re dead.” Johnson looks at each man in turn. All nod. Clay nods, too, though he would do just about anything to avoid going down into that trapdoor.
But there’s nothing else he can do. Vance is dead, and they need him.
The men unholster their guns. The air snaps with electricity as they slink back to the trapdoor. Johnson points for Darby to go first, but he hesitates. Johnson scowls and motions for Bear to go. In the moonlight, the men argue soundlessly, gestures, scowls, and finger-pointing. Clay can’t take the waiting anymore; it’s driving him crazy. His body humming, he pushes past the men, finds the latch, and pulls up with one hand while keeping his gun in front of him with the other. He descends down the dark stairs.
He creeps down each wooden stair into a quicksand of darkness. It’s swallowing him. Last to go is his head, sucked into the black. He doesn’t make a sound. He doesn’t breathe. Breathing will give him away. He aims his gun and wills his eyes to see. But they don’t adjust. There is no light. The darkness is a thick blanket, covering him. His heart thumps in his ears.
Focus, he tells himself. Listen.
The solid whooshing in his ears is his heart. After a moment, he can hear his movements, no matter how quiet he tries to be, filling up the silent space—the small creak of the wooden step he’s on, the scratch of denim. Each sound is impossibly loud. It’s a wonder the men down here don’t come running and take a shot at him.