The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head

by Cassandra Duffy

  Chapter 16: Trust in honor and a lack of options.

  Fiona roared away from the front of the saloon north through the heart of the city. If she could reach the Slark when they were still in the ruins of the Mountain Road suburbs, she might be able to turn them east toward the high school rather than let them hit the undefended, unsuspecting town while every armed person was away. The cataclysm on the east coast had destroyed anyone in the Slark community above blue collar status; their advanced military tactics were gone, as were humanity’s, leaving them with undisciplined troops led by the strongest, but seldom smartest, of their soldiers. Tricking them into calling off their attack to chase a car they might know well was a long shot, but a logically sound one.

  Fiona’s car, when pushed to the limit, was more than capable of getting ahead of the formation, lighting up the night sky with its flaming trail to make sure they’d know exactly which way to follow. The Slark were still picking their way cautiously toward the town through the sparse homes held in the northern hills when she pulled up to the ruined edge of Cactus Road. She slipped from the car, sitting on the top of her door, leaning across the roof with Danny’s rifle. In the flickering strobes of the Slark flares, she found a target and fired. The shot, a long one, missed the head of her prey, but clipped one of its legs. The resulting panic caused by the Slark’s wound spread through the line. She flicked the lever-action and fired again, this time finding center mass, plucking an uninjured Slark from its perch on the side of the centipede-like vehicle. This time, the Slark scanned the area and found the sniper in question. Fiona considered levering in another shell to take out one more, but didn’t see the need for it; they’d seen her and shifted their attack in her direction. She slid back into her car, gunned the engine, and launched into the expanse of open desert between Cactus Road and the high school.

  The dust, brush, and errant rocks would tear up her car, there was no avoiding that, but if she was lucky, if she picked her path right, she could make it to the high school before mechanical failure would stop her. She heard smaller rocks, the trunks of sage brush, and other unidentified objects of density ricocheting off her cattle-catcher, several making it through to bounce along the undercarriage. She hadn’t struck anything to flip the car yet, and was beginning to feel a little cocky about her chances when she spotted her first cultist. She veered to the right, heading a little further north to find the edge of the formation only to discover several more cultists. When the options became slow to the point of turning entirely north or try to weave between the blind men and women, she chose the latter, hit the gas, and left an easily tracked trail right through the middle of the cultist army. Though not really trying very hard to avoid clipping stragglers, as her only real concern was not plowing into a group large enough to stop her car, she ended up missing everyone entirely, finally emerging on the other side with the well-lit high school beckoning her in.

  The Raven defense line recognized her car, a small blessing considering the shit-storm the night had turned out to be, and a few of the women quickly rearranged the barricade to form an opening large enough for her to drive through. She hit the hole with her car on its last legs. She wasn’t sure what she’d sucked into her air intakes, but she could imagine it would take the grease monkeys a day’s work or more to get it all back out. When it didn’t look like her car was going to make it all the way into the compound, several of the women jogged over to give it a push, letting it come to rest in the faculty parking lot.

  Fiona slipped from the car with Danny’s rifle in one hand and his bandolier in the other. Before she could even fully shut the door, Gieo pounced her, knocking Fiona back against the car. The pilot was dressed differently, smelled faintly of a foreign perfume, and stood several inches taller than Fiona remembered her being, but none of that mattered. She squeezed Gieo tight with one arm and kissed her full on the lips. The pilot threw her arms over Fiona’s shoulders and returned the pleasure.

  “What are you wearing?” Fiona asked when their kiss fizzled in its own time.

  “The Ravens’ uniform, apparently,” Gieo replied, flush with excitement both sexual and cerebral.

  Before Fiona could respond, Veronica’s voice rang clear and loud out into the desert night, amplified by the loudspeaker system liberated from the top of the scoreboard.

  “Zeke, Yahweh, or whoever is in charge of this encroaching band of blind fuckers who are suddenly illuminated clear as day,” Veronica shouted. “You’ve got Slark behind you and light enough on you to make you easy targets for my sharpshooters. Turn back now, take your chances with the Slark, and I can promise my girls won’t paint bull’s-eyes on your backs. I doubt the aliens will give you the same courtesy if you keep heading in this direction.”

  “You would feed us to these bastards?” Zeke shouted back without aid of a bullhorn. “Where’s your honor and humanity?”

  “My honor’s the only thing that made me promise not to shoot you in the back,” Veronica replied. “As for my humanity, I left it in the same place you left yours when you came out here to kill us and murder our horses. Good luck, and don’t even think of retreating in this direction.”

  Unintelligible shouts came out of the cultist formation. They were still a hundred yards off, but would come no further. The makeshift army of a couple hundred blind men and women armed with machine guns turned back, walking toward the flashing strobe flares, with their useless, milky eyes illuminated in the light they couldn’t see.

  Fiona made her way toward Veronica who was already on her way over to the car. The roaring engines of several of Zeke’s hunter vehicles, formerly coming closer along old Gun Club Road, turned away, fleeing for the desert. Fiona assumed whatever hunters Zeke had retained at his side had no interest in seeing what would come of Tombstone when Slark were added to the turmoil. They would run, hope their cars had enough fuel to reach another free city state, and wait to hear if Tombstone fell. Fiona wasn’t certain of the reception she would receive from Veronica, and so tensed before the blond commander of the Ravens reached her. Veronica pulled Fiona into a warm embrace, holding her with relieved affection.

  “You are a wonder, my love,” Veronica whispered into Fiona’s neck.

  The compliment and the title felt strange as if the words were ill at ease with each other considering the source. Fiona returned the hug, but not the words.

  “You’ve taken Gieo from me?” Fiona pulled away from Veronica’s embrace, briefly gesturing to Gieo’s outfit, borrowed from Stephanie.

  “She came to us willingly,” Veronica protested. “She wants to be one of us.”

  “Didn’t you see the collar?” Fiona asked. “It’s not up to her.”

  Veronica folded her arms over her chest and scoffed. “Did I miss something, or didn’t you just drive your car into our protection? As far as I’m concerned, you never stopped being one of us.”

  Fiona clenched her teeth so tightly the muscles in her jaw began to twitch. Veronica, for her part, seemed aware of the gunfighter’s anger, but not remotely fazed by it. “It isn’t up to you,” she finally said.

  “Don’t you get it?” Veronica snapped, taking a step to get right into Fiona’s face. “We win. Women survived, and now we get to make the world right. Our leaders, our scientists, our generals who sacrificed themselves to even the playing field with the Slark were 90% men. The smart, capable, women survived because those idiots didn’t trust us with that kind of power. Now we’re the only ones left with intelligence enough to claim it. We’d be no better than the moronic, bi-gendered Slark if we ignored that advantage. Not all women have the strength and willingness to kill that you have, and I won’t let them become human property of regressed men simply because you don’t like my methods.”

  “Even if that means making slaves of anyone who doesn’t like our rules?”

  “What the fuck do you want from me?” Veronica said, her voice rising to a shout. “I didn’t come up with the idea, I didn’t own slaves, hell, I never even to
ok a pet, unlike you. More importantly, we don’t even do that anymore. We’re new to running shit and we had to be ruthless in taking control or we would have ended up property again.”

  Fiona suspected, but didn’t know for certain, if the feeling of being property or less-than men was universal to all women, but she knew she’d felt it and she knew Veronica had too. Ruthless was a good word for what the Ravens were, but ruthless also made sense for the things they’d had to accomplish without protection of law or society. At one point, Fiona had understood and agreed with what they were doing. Ideological differences over slavery were kind of foolish to cling to when it was already abolished and was also part of American and human history as well, and she couldn’t very well walk away from those things on principle.

  “They tore it down…” Fiona muttered.

  “…so we could built it back right,” Veronica finished for her. It was the mantra of the Ravens, used to identify one another in the dark during the firefights that would forge New Vegas; it was truth, as the Black Queen had explained, but also came to embody safety and the knowledge friends were near. Veronica leaned forward, her lips nearly reaching Fiona’s before Gieo’s hand could interject between them.

  “Whoa, lips off my woman,” Gieo said, holding her hand firmly as a wall in the middle of the kiss. Energy of a strange, nervous quality filtered through the crowd. Some of the Ravens giggled, some looked away, some took a step forward as if to back their commander’s play should she lash out at the pilot, and other simply stood, mouths agape, unable to believe Gieo’s temerity.

  For a strange, confused moment, Fiona didn’t know who Gieo was talking about. Part of her immediately responded in jealousy, assuming Gieo was calling Veronica her woman and warning Fiona away. She didn’t fully realize what was meant until Gieo wrapped her palm around Fiona’s face and pulled her attention to look down at the pilot.

  “Don’t…don’t kiss her,” Gieo said, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. “Don’t be with her…be with me.”

  Fiona traced her fingers along the edge of the spiked collar around Gieo’s neck. When Gieo pulled her hand away from Fiona’s mouth, she found her smiling. “I am with you,” Fiona said.

  They held each other close and walked away under the scrutiny of dozens of stunned eyes.

  Fiona leaned against the side of her dusty car, watching Veronica sitting on the steps of the main entrance with her shotgun draped across her lap. She had the same look that mixed sorrow and rage in equal parts that she’d had the night Fiona had betrayed her. The train Fiona had attacked all those years ago was Veronica’s even if the cargo wasn’t. Fiona could lie to herself, claim she didn’t know for sure if the slaves were Veronica’s or not, but it wouldn’t do any good; she found out the truth during the planning phase and it hadn’t changed her actions one bit.

  The sound of gunfire from the cultists and zaps from Slark weapons held solid much of the night, only pushing into the east, away from the high school, at the approach of dawn. Maybe Zeke was better at organizing blind people to fire in the same direction than Rawlins was, or maybe the Slark really were frightened of blind people. Regardless, when the clatter of machinegun fire finally dissipated just before daylight, the last few pops of rifle reports sounded to be a quarter-mile farther away than when the battle had started.

  Gieo slept soundly in the passenger seat of Fiona’s car, wrapped in a borrowed military blanket and the security of knowing Fiona had stood in front of the entire assembly of Ravens and chose her. Fiona glanced over her shoulder, through the windshield to make sure Gieo was still asleep before making her way across the quiet grounds of the high school to Veronica.

  “I thought you would have forgiven me by now,” Veronica said softly. “I forgave you a long time ago.”

  “This isn’t about being angry with you,” Fiona said. “I knew you weren’t a slaver…” The next words stuck in her mouth, not wanting to be spoken for fear it’d open up an old wound long since healed. “…I was afraid of you. That’s why I threatened you not to follow; that’s why I left.”

  “Afraid of me…why?”

  “I was losing myself in you to the point where I couldn’t even tell anymore where you started and I began,” Fiona said with an icy edge to her voice. “You have a way of colonizing more than just cities. You colonize people until they think and act the way you want them to.” The look that flashed across Veronica’s face told Fiona she’d never even considered this side of herself. The vulnerable, lonely part of Veronica, left over from before surfaced for a moment. Fiona knew Veronica was like Gieo in so many ways, including the taking of a new name. In that vulnerable moment, Veronica became Tanner Delacroix again, the Baton Rouge tom-boy, named after her grandfather and raised as a son by a single father and four older brothers who didn’t have the time or inclination to understand the female gender. Fiona was the only one Veronica had ever told about her past; she carried the weight of the secret as a precious treasure.

  “I never wanted to colonize you, or own you, or…” Veronica trailed off, fighting back tears, visibly angry at herself for their very existence. “I thought there would be time for us to come back together. I didn’t think you’d find someone else—didn’t think there was anyone in Tombstone you’d want.”

  “I picked her up from an airship crash a couple months ago,” Fiona explained. “Up until then, you would have been right.”

  “I guess I waited two months too long to come back for you.” Veronica stood from the steps, slid two fresh shells into the breach of her over-under shotgun, and snapped the barrels back into place. In the rising sun of the earliest of dawns, she returned to the Amazon goddess Fiona knew her to be. “If you wanted me to, if it would have made a difference, I would have crawled for you, from Vegas to Tombstone on my hands and knees for your forgiveness.”

  Fiona smirked and shook her head. “I never liked you on your hands and knees.”

  “Best for both of us then that I didn’t try.” Veronica brushed past Fiona, rallying the Ravens around her to begin the stretched-skirmisher formation into the desert to see who had won the night and who was going to be cut down as the victor.

  Fiona woke Gieo with a kiss and a light tickle of her ribs. The pilot came out of sleep with a faint smile and bleary eyes meant only for Fiona. “The Ravens are heading out to survey the field,” Fiona told her.

  “I’ll come with you.” Gieo slipped from the car, wrapping herself in Fiona’s denim jacket to keep out the early morning chill.

  Fiona held out Danny’s old rifle and the bandolier of shells. “Take this,” she said. “You’ll need to be armed.”

  Gieo slipped the ammo belt over one shoulder to settle it across her chest and took the offered rifle with great reverence. “This is…”

  “Danny’s.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Still dead, I would imagine.”

  Fiona walked away to end the conversation, forcing Gieo to jog a little to catch up. They fell in with the Ravens’ formation near the officer cluster at the center of the line, walking a few paces off from Veronica. As much as Fiona had hated the idea of returning to the fold, she found the familiar warmth of walking a battlefield with her sisters-in-arms compelling and wonderful. She smiled to Gieo, who smiled back as if she understood how special such camaraderie was.

  They came upon the Slark bodies first. Slowly, corpses of cultists and a few hunters found their way into the mix, although the numbers were decidedly skewed toward more Slark dead than human. More often than not, the Slark were shot in the back, which lent some credence to the theory that they were afraid of blind people. Fiona scanned the ground, hoping she would be the one to find Zeke or Yahweh’s body, but neither appeared to be among the dead.

  The crawlers, three of the twenty-yard long centipedes with gun platforms, had broken down in the midst of the retreat. A few smoke trails rose off the vehicles indicating they likely had suffered serious damage when the humans overtook them. Ther
e were no living cultists in sight.

  Zeke, splattered green and red with the blood of his owns multiple wounds mixing with the shed blood of his enemy, was busy about mopping up the last of the Slark with his bare hands. He grabbed one of the few Slark left alive by the neck and hurled it over one of the front legs of the nearest crawler.

  “You see this rock, you ugly bastard?” Zeke shouted in the Slark’s face, spraying the lizard-man with angry spittle. “You traveled a thousand light years just to get beat to death with this rock!” Zeke smashed the rock into the Slark’s head again and again, long after the twitching, scaly form had gone slack. He dropped the rock and his most recent prey and began searching the ground for another wounded Slark to finish off with hands-on violence.