***
Both men burst from the sheriff’s office and joined Horse and the townsfolk staring up the street at an approaching dust cloud accompanied by the sound of thundering hooves.
“Who in Hell...?” Dawson dropped his mug in the dirt.
“From up at the fort,” Jed muttered.
“But the town’s cut off!”
The gunslinger wasn’t sticking around to debate Tarnation’s isolated status. He mounted Horse in an easy movement and then cast over his shoulder to the lawman, “Get these folks indoors. In cellars if possible. Ain’t nobody to come out until I say so.”
He rode at a steady pace towards the approaching troops. Behind him he heard the deputy address the onlookers.
“You heard the man. Clear the street. Everybody inside. Let’s move it, folks.”
No one showed signs of budging. Deputy Dawson’s implorations were falling on deaf ears. The coming spectacle was more interesting than personal safety.
Horse came to a stop in the dead centre of the street. Jed lifted his hat and waved it like a flag, not of surrender but of parlay or powwow.
The thundering hooves slowed to a dull roar. The blue uniforms of the soldiers became visible as the dust began to settle. At their head, decorated with gold braid, a general, a broad-shouldered man who could have been any age. His muscular form stretched his tunic - the brass buttons looked likely to pop at any second. He had been enhanced to the extreme.
“His eyes are different colours,” Horse observed, in Jed’s mind.
“General,” Jed nodded in greeting and put his hat back on. “I’d be obliged if you and your boys turned tail and left town.”
“Ain’t going to happen,” the general spat on the ground. The gobbet of spittle zinged into the dirt like a bullet. He raised a gloved hand. His men aimed their rifles at the gunslinger. “Not till we get what we come for.”
“And what might that be?” Jed continued to look the general in the eye - his green and gold eyes.
“Step aside, gunslinger,” the general made a shooing motion with his fingers. “Be a shame to get a scratch on that fine Horse of yours.”
“You can stop him, Jed!” cried young Billy from the crowd.
The general calmly wiped his glove on his thigh. The kid leather came up grey and brown. He rolled the dark dust on his palm into a ball and hurled it in the direction of the heckler. Young Billy ducked but an elderly man was not so quick. The dark dust hit him in the chest. It surged up his neck and over his face, down his legs and around his back. The townsfolk parted, horrified and disgusted, as the old man toppled forwards, already an unrecognisable shape. The dark dust engulfed him completely, multiplying as it fed. It rose in a mass, seeking a new meal.
Panic struck! It filled every denizen of Tarnation instantly, as though galvanised by a lightning bolt. Folk ran in all directions. The soldiers, copying their general’s trick, made bombs of the dark dust on their uniforms and Horses’ flanks. Townsfolk fell as the dark dust struck them. If they reached out and grabbed someone else, the dark dust used their arm like a bridge to cross over to another victim. Those that escaped the dust were picked off by rifle blasts.
Through this, Jed and Horse rose above street level. Jed fired off blasts, picking off the soldiers where he could. Their enhancements meant his shots had wounding rather than fatal effect. There were too many of them.
Some folk got away, heading for the cover they should have sought at once. The general directed his men to tackle buildings harbouring fugitives. Storefronts and roofs were blasted away. Within minutes, most of Tarnation was either on fire or crawling with the dark dust.
Deputy Dawson was holed up in the sheriff’s office, sheltering as many folk as he could fit in. They were sitting ducks, he realised. He peered through barred windows, sighting his rifle on the general. He just needed the man to look up so he could get a clear shot.
Horse swooped over the soldiers. They fired upwards, their blasts deflected by Horse’s superior force-field deflector. This action exposed the soldiers’ chests - a couple of them were crumpled and toppled by gunfire from nearby windows.
The general looked up, cussing the gunslinger and his excellent Horse - as though complaining it wasn’t a fair fight. This gave Dawson the chance he needed. He squeezed his trigger and put out the general’s golden eye. The general reeled in his saddle from the impact but he did not fall. He furrowed his brow and squeezed the bullet from his eye socket. Dawson watched in horror as the remaining green eye zeroed in on the sheriff’s office.
The general pressed his heels into his Horse and made a steady path towards the source of the gunshot, leaving his men to tackle the errant townsfolk and the flying gunslinger.
He would have strong words with ole Gramps when he got back to the fort. Why cain’t my Horse get off the ground, damn it? But for now, he would seek out the varmint who had put out his favourite eye.
He raised his hand and beckoned to his men to come with. Then he described a loop in the air with his finger. A band of soldiers circled the jailhouse. The general crossed his wrists in his lap and addressed the window in a casual tone.
“Send out the gunman,” he even smiled, “and nobody gets hurt. Nobody else, that is.”
He chuckled to himself, proud of his ability to keep calm and be goddamn funny at times like this.
Deputy Dawson was sweating. He considered taking another shot and blinding the general, but the surrounding troops would destroy the building and everyone in it as soon as the bullet hit the cornea.
The others with him, shoulder to shoulder in the confined space, were giving off a stench of fear. There were men, women and kids. Deputy Dawson couldn’t risk them getting hurt. He’d brought them in for safety in the first place. He passed his rifle to the blacksmith. A look passed between them. The blacksmith nodded very slightly.
“I’m coming out!” Dawson yelled through the window bars. Some folk whimpered and protested. Some tried to hold onto his shirt sleeves but he wrested himself free. He opened the jailhouse door and stepped out onto the porch.
The single green eye looked him up and down. The appraisal was a positive one.
“Fine-looking boy,” the general spat - zing! “Step closer so I can see the colour of your eyes.”
Dawson stepped off the porch. The general beckoned him forward. The deputy shuffled a couple of steps towards the general’s Horse, his face upturned.
“Baby blue,” the general seemed to approve. “Reckon they’ll do. You got a good pair of arms on you too, boy. You’ll come in mighty useful, I’m thinking.”
It was Dawson’s turn to spit.
“Ain’t no way I’m joining your band of hellions,” he snarled.
The general laughed.
“Oh, we don’t want all of you, son. Just the good bits.”
Dawson faltered. He kept his arms tightly by his sides and clenched his fists, hoping the blacksmith had understood all he had tried to communicate in that briefest of glances.
Don’t let them take me alive!
He closed his eyes, expecting the back of his head to be blasted away at any second. There was a shot but not from a rifle.
“What the Hell?”
Dawson opened one eye and then the other one, to see the general and his Horse lifted off the ground by invisible hands. Above them, Jed and his Horse were hovering, somehow pulling the general away from the street. Dawson took this as his cue to get away. He darted into the nearby general store - he wouldn’t go far from the folk in the jailhouse.
The general dug his heels into his Horse, sharper and sharper. He tugged at the reins, cussing and swearing.
“What’s the matter with you, crazy thing?”
But his Horse, a lesser model, could not reply. Gramps had not figured out voice boxes and language acqu
isition.
The general reached inside his tunic and pulled out a revolver that was not standard issue. He tried to aim it at the gunslinger but his own Horse was spinning in the air and he had to focus on trying to hold on.
“Can’t do this all day,” Horse muttered. Jed could hear the strain in its voice.
“Drop him,” said Jed.
“Waste of a perfectly good Horse,” Horse sniffed. It blinked and, no longer dragging the extra weight, rose several feet in the air. The general and his Horse plummeted to the ground. They landed in a crumpled heap of man and critter. The Horse was still but parts of the general twitched and quivered. Dawson kept his distance but Ike from the general store was not so cautious. He burst out into the street and emptied both barrels of his shotgun into the general’s head, blasting it beyond recognition.
The green eyeball flew out and rolled along the street. Ike stomped after it and crushed it beneath his boot.
Before Dawson had time to inform the storekeeper of his error, the soldiers surrounding the sheriff’s office opened fire. Their barrage of blasts destroyed the walls, bringing the roof crashing down on the screaming townsfolk within. The screams were silenced all at once.
Jed watched in horror from on high. Cuss that storekeeper! Why does every dang fool with a gun think he’s qualified to use it? He clicked his tongue.
“Is that meant for me?” Horse rolled its eyes, but it began its descent just the same.
Jed dismounted and clapped Dawson on the shoulder.
“Best keep back,” he grunted. Dawson remained where he was, casting around for the nearest firearm.
Jed approached the sheriff’s office - or the rubble to which it had been reduced. The soldiers had also dismounted. They used their Horses to lift stones and chunks of debris from the bodies of the townsfolk. Jed’s Horse looked on. Its expression was unreadable but it seemed to be embarrassed for these lesser models.
The Horses lifted the rubble into the air and deposited it at the roadside while a couple of the men picked their way through the bodies they revealed.
“Couple arms...”one called out to the other. “A good ear over here...”
Jed fired his pistol into the sky.
“You can quit taking inventory,” he growled. “Ain’t no piece of nobody leaving this town.”
The soldiers ignored him. Another pair joined the searchers with a cart they’d commandeered from somewhere up the street.
“Gramps says to bring them back alive, wherever possible. Makes his job easier.”
“The old coot will take what he gets,” one of the searchers spat on the jailhouse floor.
A man - Dawson saw it was the blacksmith - was pulled from the jailhouse wreckage. He was unconscious and bore a few superficial cuts but seemed otherwise intact. It took four soldiers to get him onto the cart. They seemed pleased with their haul.
“I said,” Jed raised his voice, “There ain’t no piece of nobody leaving Tarnation.”
He put himself between the soldiers and the cart.
Thunder cracked overhead. The soldiers backed away. An unseasonal fall of rain dropped like silver dollars, darkening the scene in seconds. The dirt grew darker to match the sky. The dark dust rippled, coming together to coat the length and breadth of Tarnation’s only street. Those folk who still could, moved to the upper storeys.
“You better back off,” Jed growled.
“Um, Jed...”
Jed glowered at Horse but before he could scold the critter, he became aware of the reason for both the interruption and the sudden cowering of the men.
At the far end of the street, across the shimmering lake of dark dust, a tall figure in a full-length coat stood with his hands poised near his hips. A wide-brimmed hat masked his features but even from this distance, Jed could tell who it was. It could be nobody else.
Jed’s hands throbbed as a twinge ran through them like a hot iron plunged into butter.
He fumbled his pistol back into its holster, hoping no one saw his clumsiness; everyone was transfixed by the sight of the new arrival, who stood like a blackened tree, the sole survivor of a forest fire, emaciated and yet resilient.
Farkin Plisp!
Farkin Plisp!
Plisp strode towards Jed as if the dark dust wasn’t there. Suddenly the street was empty. If the townsfolk were watching, they were keeping themselves out of sight. Deputy Dawson, at the general store window, kept his weapon trained on the emaciated figure. If he could fire off a shot and give Jed the advantage, he would.
Plisp’s coattails flapped as he walked. A breeze rippled through the brim of his black hat. Jed fought to contain an involuntary gasp as he glimpsed Plisp’s face.
It was like looking at an ice sculpture of himself.
Plisp’s face was colourless, like water, but behind his eyes there was a glow of red, like fire trapped under glass.
Jed’s hands burned in sympathy with the pulse of that red glow. Jed found he couldn’t move them. It was all he could do to keep his arms clamped at his sides; they seemed liable to raise themselves in the air, surrendering to Plisp.
Damned if I’m going to stand here like a sitting duck, Jed thought wildly. He took steps towards Plisp. They met at the dead centre of the street about ten yards apart.
The two men held eye contact. Jed’s blue eyes looking into Plisp’s empty marbles. The red glow in Plisp’s head flickered like flames licking hungrily at kindling.
“Nice Horse.” Plisp didn’t speak. The words appeared in Jed’s mind - and, given the snicker that arose from Horse, in its mind too.
Jed’s hands twitched, ready to draw. He wondered if he’d be able to shoot, if his hands would cooperate. The pain in them was worsening. Hot spikes of agony from fingertip to wrist. He tried to give no outward sign of his suffering; Plisp was watching him, his head tilted with a kind of vacant curiosity.
“How’s the hands?” The question arrived in Jed’s mind like a punch to the brain.
“Fine,” Jed said aloud.
Plisp’s glassy lips curled in a sneer of amusement.
The gunslinger lies! The red glow burned brighter. It gained tinges of orange and gold, fuelled by Jed’s pain.
“Leave these people alone, Plisp,” Jed growled, struggling to speak. “Let’s settle this between us. Just you and me.”
Plisp’s clear marble eyes rolled. Slowly, he raised his hands. He removed one of his black leather gloves. Jed’s eyes grew wider as a metal claw was revealed, gleaming silver digits articulated by cogs and cables. Plisp clicked his middle finger against his thumb. A cymbal crash filled the air.
And Jed and Plisp were gone.
***
A desert landscape, flat and featureless beneath a starless night sky. Jed and Plisp were face to face. There was nothing else.
There is no need for us to fight.
The voice of Farkin Plisp entered Jed’s mind and strolled around as if it owned the place.
We are the same, you and I. We should be working together.
Jed spat in the dirt.
Don’t be like that! Plisp chuckled in Jed’s head. Let me show you something - let me show you everything! Then you can make an informed decision. I guarantee you will no longer oppose me.
Jed remained silent.
There’s no point thinking about drawing your guns. They won’t work here. And don’t tell me you weren’t getting around to it. I know how your fingers itch. After all -
Plisp’s glassy face split in a grin, a treacherous crack on an icy pond.
-they are my fingers too.
Jed tried not to react but a sudden tingle surged from his fingertips and up his arms. He watched, his eyes growing wide as Plisp shrugged off his long coat. His metal claw rolled up his sleeves and pulled off his remaining glove
. The other hand was a crude tool, a pincer, battered and rusty.
An early attempt, Plisp turned the thing over, the second was more successful as you can see.
Jed couldn’t help staring. The pain in his hands became more insistent. He looked at his hands, what he’d thought of for a long time as his hands. In fact, he couldn’t remember the hands he’d had before them.
Correct! Plisp declared although the realisation was still dawning in Jed’s mind.
“Yours!” Jed stared at his hands, backs and palms, over and over.
Once upon a time. You really have no recollection, do you? Oh, Jed; we have shared many things, you and I, and I’m not just talking about body parts. Cast your mind back - go on - as far as you can. What about your childhood? No... nothing there. How did you come to be who you are today? How did you get your start as a gunslinger? Who taught you to shoot?
You really have no idea, do you, Jed?
You don’t know who you are.
The gunslinger looked into those strange glass beads. The glow behind them was cooler, a deep purple rather than the blazing red of earlier. The glow was the colour of the empty sky. Jed found it difficult to tear his gaze away. He looked around at the vacant landscape. There really was nothing as far as the eye could see in all directions. He looked back to those marbles.
“Show me,” he said.
The glow in Plisp’s head seemed to move, to grow, until it was larger than the head that surrounded it, and larger than the two of them, surrounding them, engulfing them, an intangible blanket. Jed swooned. He felt the hard grasp of Plisp’s claw and pincer, steadying him, holding him upright.
Even with his eyes closed, Jed could see a light approaching, pale at first but gaining in intensity. Despite the pain, he opened his eyes. The column of light he saw before him was strange and familiar.
“Where are we?”
Where it all started, Plisp replied at Jed’s side. The hub of the wheel.
***
And so it was! The very centre of the city of Wheelhub but as it had been at one point, before the ship landed, before Vultures’ Moon.
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