Thick Black Theory: A Symbiont Wars Book (Symbiont Wars Universe)

by Chogan Swan

  Kaitlin slid off Belle’s rump and landed lightly, remembering to be stoic despite her butt cheeks feeling like a ferocious cook had applied a meat-tenderizing hammer to them.

  Jordan walked to the large bell hung by the porch. “It’s near dinner time anyhow,” he said and grabbed the rope on the clapper. The raucous sound of the bell tumbled out across the fields of green Bermuda grass and clover. A few minutes after the sound dwindled, a drumming of hooves grew closer and louder. A dozen riders appeared from the ground—as if by magic—when they climbed from what must have been a sloping swale bordered on the near side by a rise.

  “It’s why I call my spread Hidden Creek Ranch,” Jordan said.

  Behind Kaitlin, the screen door of the ranch house creaked and slammed as two Hispanic boys ran out the door behind them. “Buenos dias, Señor Tate,” they chorused then ran across the yard towards the approaching riders. They climbed the fence to perch on the topmost rail to watch the race as it rolled toward them like a tsunami of horseflesh with a foam of cowhand.

  Kaitlin grinned at the show before she remembered.

  Badass hat.

  She fought not to grin again as the words transposed in her head to...

  Bad asshat—not the same thing at all.

  It was one of the side effects of writing that you became hyper-aware of words.

  The wave broke as it passed some arbitrary marker—evidently known to all the riders and, quite possibly, the horses—and the tsunami became a sedate gallop then a trot then a parade.

  At the fence, the twelve riders dismounted, some with showy acrobatics.

  The two boys hopped off the fence and gathered up the reins of the first four finishers. The next four handed their reins to the final four who then led the rest of the horses in a cooling-off walk headed toward a paddock near the barn.

  Kaitlin glanced at Jordan. He was grinning as if he’d just won the race himself.

  As the eight riders came stumping through the gate to the yard, Jordan put two fingers to his lips and made a shrill, ululating whistle. “Step up, gents and ladies,” he hollered. “Come see who I brung to dinner.” He pointed to Kaitlin like a master-of-ceremonies in a circus ring. “It’s Sheriff Kaitlin, the calamity of Wet Gulch. She slices evil-doers into steaks and hangs their charred skeletons for wind chimes on her front porch. Her eyes are so keen they make the hawks hang their beaks in shame, and she plants the corpses of any who might lay an acquisitive grasp on her boots in the curse’d dust of Boot Hill.”

  “How long did that take you to put together?” Kaitlin whispered.

  “Hush now,” Jordan said from the side of his mouth. “I’m just getting started.”

  Kaitlin crossed her arms and sighed, settling into her character of Sheriff Kaitlin Sannhetsdottir—a role that seemed to be particularly subject to the whims of embellishment.

  Though she had to admit, Jordan made an engaging yarn of how—to feed an entire county of starving people—Kailin had used her bare hands to snatch a monster fish from Lake Bistineau. So large was this fish that the outflow pipe on the lake stop draining for three days.

  With scarcely a breath, Jordan continued, wrapping it up at last with the cautionary tale of the time Sheriff Kaitlin slice-and-diced the outlaw Bad Bart when he’d tried to hold-up the starving children’s food supply.

  When Jordan finished, Kaitlin nodded to the audience. “Howdy,” she said.

  One of them, a big guy who’d come up near the end of the monologue, swaggered up and looked her up and down. “She don’t look that tough to me,” he said as he moved into her personal space and poked her shoulder with a large finger.

  Maybe he was still smarting from losing the race.

  Kaitlin excused his rudeness, but didn’t let it stop her from using her favorite Krav Maga takedown.

  With a twisting finger-lock and a trip, she dropped him on his face, keeping his nose pushed into the dusty ground with the joint pressure from his locked arm and wrist.

  “Didn’t your momma teach you to keep your hands to yourself and not play Space Invaders with the girls?” she said. “I suppose, on account of how you were neglected as a child, I’ll let you apologize instead of breaking your arm. Does that seem fair to you, my friend?”

  She had to hold on to him a few seconds and put her boot on his back as he tried to get up, but after a little more pressure on the joint, he wised up.

  “Sorry, Sheriff Kaitlin,” he muttered.

  Kaitlin could hear the others gathered in the yard whispering and exclaiming.

  ... did you even see how she did that?

  Jordan snorted. “Speak up so everyone can hear, Milo. Apologies are a public matter.”

  “Sorry for bein’ rude, Sheriff Kaitlin,” Milo said. “It weren’t my momma’s fault though. I’ve always been hard-headed.”

  “He’s not a bad sort, Sheriff,” Jordan agreed.

  Kaitlin released Milo’s arm and stepped back to let him up.

  With a grunt, he hauled himself to his feet.

  Jordan slapped him on the shoulder as though an apology was a great accomplishment—though Kaitlin noted that he picked the arm she’d just twisted.

  “Do we need to yank it back into the socket?” Jordan said.

  “Nah. It’s okay.” Milo stepped back, rubbing his shoulder and glancing at Kaitlin from the side of his eye.

  “I accept your apology, Milo. Pleased to meet you.”

  Milo ducked his head in acknowledgement.

  Jordan chuckled. “Now that the two of you have had a chance to shake hands, why don’t we see if the food is ready?” Jordan raised his voice a bit more. “I don’t know about you fellas, but we just got here from a long ride on a bony horse. I’d rather eat than spend the day wrasslin’ in the dirt, but if you all want to do that, the sheriff and I can join you later.” He stuck out his arm for Kaitlin to take and together they walked up the steps and into the house. The sound of boots following them up the steps didn’t take long.

  “That went well,” said Jordan, laughter dancing around the edge of his soft remark in her ear.

  Chapter 17 — Slap cock

  Kaitlin stood on the porch of the sprawling ranch house at Hidden Creek sipping honest-to-god coffee and watching the sun step from a bath of rose clouds to kiss the horizon while swallows darted over the pasture sweeping up insects.

  After the midday meal of steak, beans, biscuits and gravy—that Kaitlin had applied herself to with the diligence that was ever her habit—Jordan introduced her to everyone, from the two kids who worked the stables to his farm manager. Then, he’d taken her on a tour of the outfit. Throughout the day, everyone treated her like royalty . . . dangerous royalty, after seeing Milo’s close encounter with the dirt of the front yard.

  They’d get over it when they realized she didn’t bite without cause. . . . If she was around much longer that is.

  Her thoughts wandered to speculation on where the long-awaited Daniels might be. It was easy to imagine delays or outright failure. The times they were a changin’ for the worse out on the road. Which was another reason she wanted to move the people of Wet Gulch to a safer location than the spot they occupied by the highway. She knew the only reasons the ten people remaining had stayed were a lack of options and because they looked to her hoping her own knack for survival would provide them with safety.

  She frowned. It created a dangerous frame of mind she did everything she could to discourage, but that didn’t kill the notion. At the moment, they all needed those illusions to hang on to sanity..., if being blissfully delusional could qualify as sanity.

  In a way, she hoped her overnight stay at the ranch would cause her people to ponder the situation. But, the two men Jordan had loaned the town to help with guard duty, both decorated combat veterans, had at least helped set Kaitlin’s mind at ease about taking this vacation.

  Kaitlin had been upfront about her plans to leave as soon as the ticket to her destination—wherever that was—arrived. But, as ti
me went by, she could tell that her warnings to that effect had less impact. Even though she had resolved herself to haunting Wet Gulch like a spirit in a ghost town once she’d moved everyone out, she still noticed herself starting to contemplate contingency plans as the weeks passed.

  Footsteps coming down the hall to the front door sounded with Jordan’s confident stride. Kaitlin turned her head as he came through the door. “Can we talk about some long-range ideas?” she said.

  “Sure. But can it wait until later tonight? I have one more thing I’d like to show you while we still have some daylight.”

  Kaitlin shrugged. “Lead on then.” She took the last mouthful of coffee, savoring it for a moment before swallowing and sighing with satisfaction. “I find myself amenable after being plied with steak and coffee.” She grinned.

  Jordan chuckled. “It’s nice to know you don’t lose your sense of humor while you’re wearing that badass hat.”

  “Heh! Have to peek out sometimes. It chafes a bit.”

  “Really? Because I suspect that underneath that badass outer shell lurks another badass.”

  Kaitlin shrugged. “To do is to be. Thinking of myself as something apart from the way I act seems an unhealthy way of looking at things.”

  She rolled her shoulders, shrugging a knot out of her back. “So where are we going?”

  “Right this way, ma’am,” Jordan said, grinning and offering her his arm.

  Kaitlin rested her hand on his bicep, noting again the muscles concealed beneath his shirtsleeves, and let him lead her across the yard to the barn.

  The interior of the barn was lighter than she’d expected. The west wall held large doors on the ground floor as well as an oversized opening above that flooded light down through the post and beam structure to the concrete slab floor. No doubt, the opening had been used as a haymow back when Jordan’s father had run the place. Now Jordan rotated the pasture, leaving grass on the ground for his cattle to forage through the winter.

  Against the north wall, a sheet of heavy plywood with a metal plate and a two-inch plastic circle in the middle stood in a shaft of light.

  Some sort of target?

  About twenty feet away from the target, stood a rolling worktable, bearing small containers, odd tools and materials. Jordan headed towards it. When they reached it, he placed his revolver on the table and unloaded it, placing the .45 caliber Long Colt bullets in his front pocket.

  “This,” he said, pulling an identical gun from a table drawer. “... does not have the name Colt on it, but it is a well-made weapon. Yours, on the other hand, may say ‘Colt’ right on the plastic pistol grips under the duct tape, but Colt jobbed it out to firms overseas. It was supposed to be an improved, updated model of the original, and though it does have a modern safety bar, it has quality problems too. I want you to have this one; I have twelve of them anyway and you need a reliable gun that will perform well and last for years.” He checked to make sure the pistol was unloaded and held it out to her. Kaitlin took note that he did it the safe way, grips facing him and barrel down.

  Instead of taking it right away, Kaitlin put her hand on his wrist and looked into his eyes. “Tell me more about why you are doing this, Jordan. Are you expecting something from me?”

  Jordan shook his head. “No and yes. I am expecting you to survive. Whatever happens, you will keep on protecting good people, and I’d like to have a part in that. If you end up leaving—the way you plan—your people will have a place here. If you don’t leave, you can have a place here too... if you want.”

  He took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his shirtsleeve. “Kaitlin, you are the only person I’ve met in a long time that I would want in charge of this community, considering what I think is coming down the road at us.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t get me wrong; some of my people are combat vets and hard as nails. If you had tried to take Greg down, for instance, instead of Milo-”

  Kaitlin shook her head. “You knew Greg would never have put you in that position. The two you left at Wet Gulch were clearly the strongest fighters you have, except maybe for Greg. I think Milo was the only one too thick not to understand what you were doing.”

  “Which is why he walked right into it,” Jordan said and grinned.

  Kaitlin nodded. “And of course that was just what you expected.”

  “See, that’s what I mean. You see the big picture and the way to make things happen. That’s why your folks follow you, even when every last one of them has at least ten years of life experience on you.”

  Kaitlin said nothing. She suspected the reasons were more complicated than that. None of her people had any years surviving in tough situations—except Bernard during his tour of duty in the Vietnam War—and he’d spent most of his time designing and working with planes. Only people who made a point of learning to survive with no one else to look out for them knew the kind of mindset that took.

  She looked at Jordan. “So what were you? A commando? Deep-cover operative?”

  Jordan shrugged. “Something like that. It’s a story for another day though. We are running out of daylight. Now are you going to take this perfectly good gun to help you survive or not?”

  Kaitlin felt the corner of her mouth twitch in spite of her effort to control her expression. “Well, when you put it that way, I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

  She took the gun from his hand to run her fingers over it, drinking in the dark, blued-metal finish and the custom, rosewood grips. “But you didn’t bring me out here just to give me a gun, did you?” She waved at the table then nodded at the target. “What’s all this for?”

  “These, young grasshopper, are the tools for training in the ancient art of the fast draw: wax bullets, a timing target and single-action revolvers.”

  “Wax bullets?”

  “Yes, it’s cheaper than lead, you can refill the cartridges with them yourself easily. Also, they cut down on fatal accidents and don’t destroy the target.”

  “I’ve just been using dry fire and a pellet gun.”

  Jordan nodded. “It’s good that you’ve been practicing. Maybe we can improve on what you know.”

  Jordan reached in one of the containers on the table then handed her five cartridges with wax plugs at the nose instead of lead.

  “If this gun has a working safety, why not six bullets?”

  “With the hammer on an empty chamber—the way you do with the Colt—you can leave the safety off while the gun is in your holster. It gives you five shots with the first one available right away. It’s a tradeoff.”

  Kaitlin opened the gun and slid the cartridges into the cylinder. The sense of solid quality in the weapon came through her fingers from every movement of the action as she loaded it. She pulled the gun she’d taken from Ricky out of her holster and put it on the table. The new gun slid into the holster and settled there with a satisfying whisper, promising a swift return to action when needed. To check, Kaitlin pulled it free, pointing it at the target and checking the sight picture. The gun came out clean and smooth.

  Kaitlin smiled. Instead of Peacekeeper, maybe this one should be named Promisekeeper. “It feels... reliable,” she said.

  “I can see you’ve done what you can to keep the one you have in good shape. If you do the same with this one, it will be. Are you ready to shoot?”

  Kaitlin pulled earplugs from the handkerchief she kept them wrapped in, put them in her ears and nodded.

  Jordan turned to a box on the table. “I have the target hooked up to a car battery. When the light behind the lens comes on, draw and shoot at the light. The wax hitting the lens will close the timer and you’ll know your speed.”

  Kaitlin slid Promisekeeper back into her holster and stood ready. In a few moments, the light came on. Her thumb cocked the hammer as she brought the pistol up in a smooth arc and squeezed the trigger when the sight picture lined up with the light. The light recoil brought the barrel up a few inches. But, Kaitlin cocked and brought the sights
back on target out of habit before lowering the gun and pushing the cylinder back to an empty chamber before lowering the hammer.

  Jordan whistled. “Bullseye on the target and speed wasn’t bad either, especially considering your hand was six inches away from your weapon when the light came on and you came all the way up before firing.”

  “My hands have always been fast to learn. Show me how you would do it,” Kaitlin said, stepping out of the way.

  Jordan smiled. “Okay, press this button for me when I get to the line.”

  He tapped his finger next to a red button. “It will start the random sequence it uses to turn on the light. I’m setting it to add five seconds so you can get back to my right side and watch my gun hand,” he said as he took his place at the line.

  He nodded to her. Kaitlin pushed the button and walked around to watch.

  Jordan, arching his back, placed his right leg ahead of his left and settled his hand lightly on the grip. Kaitlin kept her eyes on his hands, but made herself maintain an awareness of where the target was so she would register the light in her peripheral vision. When the light came, on both of Jordan’s hands almost blurred, the pistol appeared in his hand right above the holster, firing in the same instant she registered it.

  Kaitlin glanced at the target to see another glob of wax right next to the one she had put there.

  “You cocked the gun with your left hand almost at the same time you fired it,” she said. “It was hardly out of your holster when you shot. How did you hit the target without aiming?”

  “Thousands of rounds of practice. And it’s not that I didn’t aim. It’s just that you reach the point where the motion includes the aim... like when you throw a stone at something. You aim, but there aren’t any sights to line up. Of course, it isn’t the most accurate way to shoot, but sometimes you don’t see a threat until it’s too close, and using the sights will take too long.”