The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head

by Cassandra Duffy

  “Wait!” Gieo screamed and ran to intercept Fiona’s sword arm.

  Fiona stopped with her sword raised, clearly aimed at taking off Jackson’s wounded arm. Gieo hadn’t really expected Fiona to stop simply because she’d shouted it, and wasn’t really sure what else to say once she did.

  “Why are you chopping off his arm?” she asked.

  “Do you think I should take his head instead?” Fiona answered by way of question.

  “What!? No!” Gieo said. “Why did you shoot him in the first place?”

  “He was trying to steal my heads.” Before Gieo could protest further, Fiona’s sword fell, hacking off Jackson’s arm at the elbow. The tourniquet, which was apparently what Fiona had demanded Jackson tie off, stemmed much of the blood loss, but Gieo still nearly vomited from the sight. Fiona slid her gun back in its holster, picked up the hand, and swatted it down on one of the spikes along her grill, impaling it next to the four Slark heads. At that, Gieo did go ahead and throw up next to Fiona’s front wheel well.

  “Man’s dead anyway,” Zeke said from across the street, standing out on his balcony to watch the entire show. “You ought to take his head.”

  Fiona sheathed her Wakizashi and picked up Jackson’s discarded Mac-10. She slid the clip from the hand-held machine gun, and judged it to be about half-full by the weight. “You’ve got to the count of ten to get out of my sight before I cut you in half with your own gun,” Fiona said.

  Jackson tried to stand, stumbled, tried again, stumbled again, and finally made it up onto his one good leg before passing out, falling flat at Fiona’s feet. She dropped the gun on his back and flipped the bullets out of the clip like rain over his downed form.

  “Rawlins!” Zeke bellowed. Officer Rawlins blundered out of the front door of the old city hall beneath Zeke’s balcony, whipping his head around wildly to find the source of his boss’s voice. “Get that piece of shit out of Red’s way.” Rawlins jumped to the task and went about hauling what was left of Jackson back into the city hall. Zeke looked down at Fiona for a moment and nodded with something akin to grim respect. “I’ll have Rawlins deliver Jackson’s car by sundown tomorrow. I believe he has two heads on his grill; that’ll settle you up for the week.” Zeke disappeared back into the dark recesses of the city hall as the sun began to set.

  Gieo wiped her mouth with the back of her hand when she was quite certain she’d thrown up all she had in her. With a stabilizing hand on the fender of Fiona’s car, she looked up at the gunfighter as though seeing her for the first time. Fiona seemed contemplative, almost melancholy.

  “It’s been almost two years since someone tried to steal from me,” Fiona said, barely above a whisper. “I’ve gone soft because of you and people know it.”

  “That was soft?” Gieo asked.

  “If you weren’t here, I would have cut his head off and dragged his body through town behind my car as a message to the other hunters.” Fiona brushed past Gieo on her way back into the saloon, sending one final remark over her shoulder before stepping through the double doors. “Welcome to the real Tombstone, Stacy.”

  Chapter 6: Aggravated mischief.

  Gieo returned to her rooftop perch with a head full of concerns and a stomach full of butterflies. She’d had a serious lapse in judgment, an unpleasant mistake with potentially catastrophic consequences. How she saw Fiona made a drastic transformation after seeing her gun down a man, whose name they both knew, with the cannon she kept on her hip and then dismember him according to some draconian code of the fucked up post-apocalyptic, new Old West using a sword she kept on her back. Even for the new world order, this was bizarre. Fiona was absolutely right when she claimed Gieo didn’t know her. Whatever remained of the fashion model, traumatized girl, and probable cocaine addict had been completely burned out by the desert sun, replaced by a hardened gunfighter with psychotic tendencies.

  Gieo took failure well though; her parents had pretty much insisted on it. Failures and lapses in judgment were opportunities to learn, change, grow, and come back with a better plan. She needed data, information, and a removed perspective to formulate new thoughts and opinions.

  Firstly, she had to stop sleeping in Fiona’s bed. Whatever else was going on between them, the sexual teasing she was giving the gunfighter might have added to the volatility. Besides, when the fun of sexually topping Fiona wore off, the charade always left Gieo with a ridiculous case of the hornies that she hadn’t remotely started to deal with yet.

  Secondly, she would need to learn a lot more about the town, which would be easily accomplished with a telescope and time spent observing. She set up a low-power telescope she’d acquired in a trade with someone for something—she really couldn’t remember how she’d come by it as more and more stuff kept coming in and going out. It was easily fixed by repositioning the internal mirrors, but she hadn’t figured out what to do with it until that point. From her perch on the front edge of the hotel, using the telescope, she could see much of the town as no building was taller than a couple stories.

  Thirdly, and lastly, she needed a stiff drink to get the image of Fiona cutting off Jackson’s arm out of her head. Unlike most survivors of the Slark invasion, Gieo hadn’t really seen or encountered much violence. Her parents had done a masterful job of shielding her, which she had to offer up a whispered prayer to whoever was listening to thank them. They’d died, just like most people’s parents, in one of the many gas attacks the Slark made on relocation colonies set too close to the frontlines. But even this was without violence as the gas simply put people into a sleep they didn’t wake up from. Gieo dipped into one of the jugs of cactus white-lightning with the goal in mind of taking the shake out of her hand. Drinking the clear liquid from a tin cup, she decided it tasted like a mixture of tequila, agave tea, and gasoline. In addition to the stomach churning taste, horrible burning sensation it made all the way down her throat, and mind-numbing properties, she also suspected it might be hallucinogenic.

  She sat at her telescope, observing the comings and goings of the night denizens of Tombstone to deduce their behaviors, rules, and purposes. After an hour or so, two occurrences confirmed her suspicions that there was peyote mixed into the alcohol. The first was an extreme nausea followed by glimmering lights appearing where no glimmering lights should be. Hallucinating was going to make any further observations she made completely worthless, so she abandoned the telescope and laid back out on the lawn chair to look up at the stars. Eventually, she couldn’t really tell how long, the nausea subsided and the hallucinations intensified.

  The desert night, alone on the roof as Ramen had long shut down to conserve battery power, was cold and uncomfortable. Aside from the companionship of sharing a bed with Fiona, there was the warmth of another body and a mattress beneath her. She had a hammock and a sleeping bag somewhere in the tangled mess of bartered items on the roof, but she doubted she could find or operate either while tripping and drunk.

  Fiona had seemed prickly and truculent, which Gieo simply thought made her more interesting, but somehow adding violent and dangerous to the mix didn’t do much to dampen Gieo’s desire for the gunfighter. It was an odd notion, which she attributed to the booze and drugs, that she would be able to get past Fiona shooting people and hacking off their limbs. Of course, her sexual frustration might have been partly to blame for the crazy thoughts. She didn’t have a specific timeline in her head for how long she would tease Fiona sexually before finally letting the gunfighter tear her clothes off and ravish her, but she’d suspected it was on the soon-ish side, at least, until Fiona went nuts.

  Gieo pulled her tailed tuxedo jacket over her like a blanket to hold out the chilly desert night. The bands of color and light that had danced across the sky shifted and started taking on shapes. Gieo watched with mild amusement, knowing they weren’t really there on an intellectual level, but enjoying their beauty in an animalistic aesthetic way. After shifting through a few zodiac patterns, which Gieo didn’t really care for as it
seemed rather pedestrian to look up the stars and literally hallucinate crabs, archers, twins, and fish, the patterns began taking on familiar, human shapes—specifically, the shape of Fiona. Gieo was altered enough, horny enough, and had already abandoned her sexual plans with Fiona enough to go ahead and do some self-gratification since she didn’t see anyone else satisfying her anytime soon. Her hands made their way down her stomach. Pulling up the leather pencil skirt wasn’t a reasonable plan, so she unzipped the side and pressed her hands into the top as best she could. The writhing sky image of Fiona matched her movements, swirling a little more than Gieo might like, but still discernable in her shape and intent.

  Gieo’s own fingers were like old friends who hadn’t been by nearly enough in the past few months. She teased the outside of her lips with soft fingers until she felt sufficiently warmed and relaxed. The sky image of Fiona winked to her. Gieo pressed down on her outer lips with both fingers, stroking up and down until she was able to add a light pinch around her clit between her knuckles. Using the middle finger of her other hand, she rubbed the length of it down over the tip of her clit, letting it curl into her at the end of each pass. She’d perfected the act in high school to the point where she could do it anywhere, at almost any state of dress or undress, and always achieve an orgasm. It had been so long since she’d even touched herself, or had any inspiration or desire to do so, that she was well past driving herself crazy after only a few passes of her middle finger. Moreover, the apparent teasing she’d been inflicting on Fiona had taken its toll on her as well. Being quiet in such a moment would have been difficult under the best of circumstances and was downright unfeasible while drunk and drugged. The sky version of Fiona told Gieo it was okay, nobody would mind, and so Gieo let her body make the noises it felt like making, which included unrestricted moans, whimpers, and gasps, all escaping her mouth in visible, colored letters.

  Her eyelids opened and closed of their own accord, guided solely by her building pleasure. When they drifted shut, the backs of her eyelids swirled distracting lights and sounds, while she tried to focus on how amazing and necessary it all felt. When her eyes fluttered open, she watched the sky Fiona mirroring her actions. Even though the hallucination of the gunfighter kept shifting and morphing, Gieo thought she was beautiful, sexy, and desirable even though she had multiple arms, stretched out shapes, and hair made of flaming snakes. Gieo climaxed once, a shallow little tease that only made her thirstier. She redoubled her efforts, sliding two fingers down to press deep inside her while moving her wet middle finger to focus entirely on her clit. The sky Fiona seemed pleased by this plan.

  Gieo couldn’t be sure where sleep, hallucinations, dreams, and waking thought delineated anymore. She was fairly sure she was awake, fairly sure she was enjoying every second with herself, and knew, at least in small part, that what she saw in the sky wasn’t real. The hands manipulating her clit and plunging fingers inside her became not hers; they were attached to her arms, which were anchored on her shoulders, but the hands themselves must have belonged to someone else. It made her feel a little naughty, dirty, slutty even to have someone else’s hands doing these things to her—no, not that they were doing them, but that Gieo was enjoying it so much. Darkness swirled through the images painted across the sky, spoiling the shifting pornographic pictures. Gieo wished them back, but her will couldn’t repaint the sky. In a flash of light, like morning coming on all at once, she exploded in an orgasm of surprising strength coming up on her as a creeping wave. With the sky white with light, she threw her head back and screamed in primal delight. For a second, the peyote fled from her mind. The small, quiet part that had known it all wasn’t real, caught on an ingenious plan, rolled it around like a crab exploring a mussel shell, and found it liked what was inside.

  Waking up the next morning was a brutal proposition. Gieo managed to muddle her way through the hunters’ cars starting and departing, returning to full sleep shortly after, but when the sun climbed toward its apex, the heat and light became almost unbearable, driving her from beneath her tuxedo coat, which had shifted from blanket to veil at some point in the night or early morning. She pulled her goggles over her eyes to block out some of the light before peering out from beneath the cover of her jacket. Ramen was busying himself in the junk piles again, seemingly unaware she’d been sleeping on the roof.

  Gieo stumbled from her lawn chair, finally drawing Ramen’s attention.

  “Hey, Boss,” Ramen chirped. “Had a hard night?”

  “Something like that.” Gieo fumbled through the nearest pile of bottles until she found the jug of water she was looking for. She spun off the cap and tilted it back, drinking greedily until the warm, dusty-tasting water glugged entirely down her throat. “Give me a hand setting up the hammock and a tent around it.”

  Ramen gave her a quizzical look, cocking his saucer head to one side. “That doesn’t sound comfortable.”

  “I don’t expect it will be,” Gieo said, “but it’s necessary.”

  The headache and stomach-churning vertigo that accompanied Gieo’s hangover made sure she was helping Ramen more than vice-versa. It was well into the afternoon, with evening fast approaching, when they finally completed setting up Gieo’s new bedroom. The canvas, military surplus supply tent around the hammock actually felt homier than Gieo had expected. Her self-satisfied inspection of her temporary quarters was cut short by the sound of a tow-truck clanking up behind the saloon.

  Rawlins stepped from the cab, and set to work lowering the faded yellow and black 1970s Jeep Wagoneer. Gieo placed two fingers in her mouth and let out a sharp whistle. She waved when Rawlins looked up to find the source of the sound; he didn’t wave back. She pulled her top hat on tight, and headed downstairs to question him about the vehicle. She caught him just as he was about to get back into his truck, door open, one foot on the side-step.

  “Hey, what’s with the Jeep?” she asked.

  “It’s Jackson’s old rig,” Rawlins explained, freezing in his half in, half out position on the side of the tow truck. “By hunter law, it’s rightfully Fiona’s after she took his hand.”

  “Oh…how is Jackson?”

  “He died in the night,” Rawlins said dispassionately. “The man was half-starved to begin with and two .44 magnum slugs didn’t do him any good. Lopping off his hand was overkill if you ask me.”

  “Will my reward for the methanol spiking job work in this thing?” Gieo nodded in the direction of the Jeep.

  “Sure, but it ain’t your reward.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re property of a hunter, which doesn’t give you a hunter’s rights.” Rawlins finally stepped fully down from the tow truck and closed the door behind him. “When you finish the job, Fiona will have to collect for you.”

  “Zeke didn’t mention anything about that.”

  “Why would he?” Rawlins spat on the dusty ground. The spit quickly congealed into a dusty scab on the earth. Gieo watched the spittle for a time, fuming mad. “She’s the one he wanted to do the job in the first place and the one he wanted to reward. Now that her property has signed up for the deal, she’s the one who’ll default if it doesn’t get done.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Gieo snarled. “I’m not anyone’s property.”

  Rawlins snorted and shook his head, folding his brawny arms over his chest to complete the pose of disbelief. “You belong to whoever claims you and is strong enough to keep you. Laws around here only benefit hunters—everyone else is just paying their way to keep from becoming property. If Fiona hadn’t laid claim to you, someone else would’ve.”

  “Fine, how do I stop being property?”

  “Become a hunter,” Rawlins said with a mocking chuckle, “but even then, you’ve still got to be able to defend yourself from being claimed, and you don’t have it in you, kid.” He turned her back on her, threw open the tow truck door, and hauled his bulk into the cab. Before he closed the door, as a parting shot, he said, “If
you don’t like our laws, I’d get the hell out of town before someone gets the drop on Fiona. You’d be quite the prize for most around here—a fuck doll that can fix tech.”

  Gieo glared at him the entire slow drive away, which didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest. She hadn’t really ever thought herself capable of killing someone, but she definitely thought she could maim Rawlins if push came to shove, and might just be mentally capable of crippling Zeke for tricking her into making Fiona beholden for a job she didn’t want to do and Gieo wasn’t really planning on taking seriously. Of course she knew she wasn’t actually a physical match for either man, but she thought it was an important step to get used to the idea of violence.