“I’ll call you a liar if you’re proven wrong,” Fiona said. “Regardless of who the lizards are chasing, they’re on our land and need to learn it.” The riders let out a whoop with this, and Fiona led them on a charge across the desert, kicking up their own cloud of dust, thundering hooves at a gallop on an intercept course.
Fiona rose up in the saddle, letting her legs absorb the shocks of the galloping, flatting her back to run parallel to Tyra’s. She was out ahead of the formation, tucking her head into the wash of her horse’s mane, keeping tilted enough for the air rushing past to go over her hat, rather than knocking it off. She was coming up on the two wagons quickly. They’d lost the road to charge wildly into the desert. Fiona spotted the Slark crawlers beyond the wagons, gaining ground quickly. She shot past the startled dozen or so people divvied up between the two wagons, riding close enough to get a good enough look at them; Claudia was telling the truth—they were all sporting the chipped up marble eyes of methanol drinkers.
Closing on the Slark, who hadn’t anticipated anything but easy pickings, Fiona pulled her pistol and gestured with it to split her formation, narrow it out, turn it into two waves that would pass on opposite sides of the two crawlers. She veered left, leading the first cluster of twelve in a line along one side of the Slark formation. Leveling her pistol at the driver of the lead crawler, she fired. The pistol bucked in her hand and the shot landed, albeit a glancing blow that took a chunk out of the lizard man’s right side. A few shots from carbines, submachine guns, pistols, and rifles rippled in from behind her, finishing off the driver and the obvious gunners along the sides.
The second crawler, in a much better position to defend itself, took a few shots at Fiona’s riders. They missed her, and she got a couple more shots off, taking one more Slark before clearing the formation, but she heard the thumping of a rider going down behind her and knew they’d made at least one solid hit. Their focus on Fiona’s wave left the second crawler vulnerable to Claudia’s charge up the other side with the remaining twelve. She slowed in the attack, taking full advantage of their exposed backs, to all but wipe out the Slark on the second crawler.
Fiona led the remains of her charge in a sharp turn, allowing Claudia’s loop to swing around the outside. Turned back on the Slark formation, the remaining dozen or so of the lizard men had abandoned the shot-up crawlers and were scattering to the desert, dropping to run on all six limbs when they fled. Fiona led her group up the same side Claudia had cleared, but in the opposite direction, fanning her formation out with a chopping gesture of her shiny Colt Anaconda. The lone Slark who had made it the furthest reared up when she barreled down on him, raising his strange looking rifle to fire. Fiona never gave him the chance. She leaned in low along Tyra’s side to present a smaller target, focused down her arm, and fired, blowing the top part of the Slark’s head clean off.
Her riders on both sides of the formation finished cleaning up the last of the Slark, even sending a few of the fastest to chase down the stragglers who had fled at the first sight of the dust cloud on the horizon. Fiona turned her attention back to the wagons, which had fully come to a stop to see about the outcome of the battle; this was damn peculiar behavior, as far as Fiona was concerned.
“See about the wounded,” Fiona barked to Claudia as she rode past, heading in the direction of the wagons. In all the excitement of battle, with her heart still racing and her hands still tingling, Fiona couldn’t remember how many shots she’d fired. Her gun may be empty or it might be down to a couple more shots; she couldn’t be sure and neither would be good news if the cultists on the wagons turned out to be unfriendly toward their rescuers.
As she neared, she noticed the wagons had taken some fire from the Slark, and hadn’t faired too well in the exchange. The survivors looked frightened of Fiona and her approaching handful of riders. A quick count of those left alive in the wagons revealed ten: four women, four children, and two teenage boys. Three men were dead or dying in various defensive positions on the wagon, and Fiona suspected a fourth had been thrown at one point or other.
“Why aren’t the Slark afraid of you anymore?” Fiona demanded, unsure if the cultists even had an answer to that question. “What are you doing out here in a couple of rickety wagons?” she continued before hearing an answer to her first query.
A matronly woman, the one who had been driving the lead wagon until the team of two very old horses had nearly dropped, stood from the bench seat, and turned her sightless eyes in the direction of the voice addressing her.
“The demons haven’t feared our holy sacrifice since the battle outside Tombstone,” the woman said. “Their fright subsided quickly when battle was upon them and we would have been overcome were it not for the Prophet’s brother. Some escaped and no doubt told the rest that they had nothing to fear of the sightless. We have been hiding and fleeing from them ever since.”
“Slick tricks can only get you so far, it would seem,” Fiona said, but immediately regretted it. People did far more foolish things for a slim chance at survival in the early days of the Slark invasion and she couldn’t fault the efforts that had apparently served these cultists well for six years just because it finally stopped working. “If they’re giving you so much trouble, why roam around in the open during the day?”
“We are fleeing the Prophet’s care,” the woman said. She had a worn, tired look about her. Fiona might have guessed forty or fifty, but the oddly smooth quality of the skin on her neck said she was young turned prematurely old by a hard life; her real age was probably a lot closer to thirty. “He can no longer protect us. The apocalypse he promised has come and gone, but the Lord did not send for us. We are hungry and need shelter. We had hoped to find the Prophet’s brother victorious and once again offering protection in Tombstone. Did he return to his post?”
“He lost and was sent packing into the east,” Fiona said. “Tombstone is under Raven control, so I doubt you’ll find much there to your liking.”
“We will accept Raven rule,” the woman said. One of the teenage boys stood from the wagon to protest, but the woman wheeled around and caught him with a harsh backhand across the cheek before he could utter a word. She reached out with the other hand, fumbling blindly for a moment, and caught him by the front of the shirt before the strike could send him tumbling out of the wagon. Fiona was more than a little impressed at the woman’s alacrity considering her blindness and awkward footing. “I’ll not see you and your sister starved or killed by demonic invaders,” the woman hissed at the boy, who was obviously her eldest son. “If we must sacrifice our faith for food and protection, then so be it.”
Claudia rode up in the midst of the exchange. She gave the cultists in the wagons a confused glance, but didn’t really seem interested in what drama was unfolding amongst the blind. “Karen had her horse shot out from underneath her,” Claudia said. “I think her leg is broken. Francisco was shot in the arm, but he says he is okay; I think he is lying and likely to die if he does not let someone help him.”
“Dump the bodies out of the wagons,” Fiona said, “and load Karen and Francisco into them. See about getting a splint on Karen’s leg and a tourniquet on Francisco’s arm—we just need them good enough to make it back to town.”
“These cultists, what would you like me to do with them?” Claudia asked.
“We’re taking them with us.” Fiona felt the creeping sensation of someone watching her, then another and another. The low rise she’d started her charge from held a new army, more than enough to cause a problem for her, with Yahweh at the head. “The world is an irritating place when old enemies just keep resurfacing to get in the way of more important work being done.”
Claudia noticed in much the same time Fiona did. She hefted her rifle to her shoulder and sighted in on Yahweh’s chest. “I can make sure he does not resurface again,” Claudia said.
“No, with wounded in tow, our horses lathered, the element of surprise long gone, and much of our ammunition spent, h
e wouldn’t be the only one not resurfacing,” Fiona said. “We move out; Francisco and Karen won’t survive a fight and we can’t leave them. If he follows, then you can put a round in him and we’ll all have a lovely Alamo moment.”
Claudia reluctantly lowered her rifle. “Mark my words, Commander, I will be the one to kill that man for you.”
“Let’s hope you don’t have to do it today.” Fiona kept her eyes on the rise as they departed slowly, keeping riders at a walk to guard the wagons’ front, rear, and sides. The cultists watched them leave, but did not pursue. As the sun began to set, and the column pulled well out of firing range, the silhouettes of the cultists retreated from the rise. For a brief moment, Fiona considered sending Claudia back to take out Yahweh in the last of the light, but it felt risky. As little as Fiona thought of Yahweh, she knew he wasn’t stupid; Claudia might have an easy time of it, or she might ride into a trap, and she was too valuable to risk on a solo mission with a fairly trivial goal. If what the cultist lady said was true, Yahweh was already losing his chips and had a lousy hand of cards.
Albuquerque had taken the hardest hit in the state. Gieo knew this, knew they’d had an air force base that the Slark no doubted wanted gone in the early days of their invasion, but couldn’t imagine a way a city could rebound from that level of destruction to rise again as a free city state. As far as she knew, the city had gone from being the largest metropolitan area in New Mexico to a graveyard for half a million people. As she drew nearer to where she should have been able to see the skyline, all she saw was the ruins and craters left by the invasion. The entire south, where she assumed the air force base was, had been reduced to the obliterated dark side of the moon. Makeshift signs guided her to the west to use the detour around the ruins as all freeways through the city were long since destroyed with little hope of ever being rebuilt.
The eerie feeling she had driving through Deming was compounded a thousandfold through what remained of Albuquerque. The handmade signs along the detour became thicker, clearer, and the buildings they surrounded became sparser. Strangely, the sparseness was orderly, not the destruction of invasion, but of organized scavenging. Someone had done a fantastic job of dismantling everything in the area for building materials. The closer she got to the city state, the more stripped the world around her became. Her long, winding loop through the ruins of South Valley finally deposited her on Interstate 40 to head northeast. As she neared the Rio Grande River, she spotted the Albuquerque free city state, rising like a walled fortress of old, around Grande Heights and Villa De Paza.
Gieo was exhausted and numb both emotionally and physically. She was eager for rest and a chance to process the day. Her motorcycle was again coughing steam and nearly at the redline for temperature from the slow detour, and she had to practically will it up to the city’s massive gates. She’d expected Ravens to be manning the checkpoint and defensive walls, but instead found what looked like normal United States Army. Two men, clean shaven, in full desert camouflage, armed with M-16s stopped her at the gate. She hand cranked down the pod to brace the bike and waved away the steam fogging up her goggles. They flanked her on either side, although didn’t seem all that suspicious or threatened by her.
“What business do you have in Albuquerque?” one of the soldiers asked.
Gieo reached into the front pocket of her cargo pants and pulled out a letter of introduction from Veronica intended for the White Bishop in charge of Albuquerque. She handed it to the soldier who read it over quickly before handing it back.
“Wait here,” the soldier said. He left his partner to watch over Gieo while he went to the guard booth, hand cranked an old World War II radio to life and spoke briefly into it, doing more listening than talking. He returned in short order, motioning to the men walking posts along the top of the forty-foot defensive wall, which was actually quite marvelous close up. The huge, steel gates slowly wound open, apparently pulled by engines on the opposite side. The soldiers waved Gieo through without another word.
The interior of the free city looked like a combination of the formerly upscale neighborhood, American southwest pueblos, and a medieval city of Europe. Gieo’s bike argued with her all the way through the gate, and only made it a few blocks in before finally cutting out and quitting on her. She’d run dry or too hot for too long and the bike wouldn’t be moved short of time to cool or a good dousing with cold water. She lowered the pod legs again, removed her helmet and scarf, and fell forward against the handlebars to cry. She didn’t care that the people walking the streets around her stopped to stare, that the very professional looking soldiers patrolling the street might think she was weak or simpering; she had an upset stomach full of agitated nerves and crying seemed like a fine release, at least for some of them. She was tired, hot, dirty, and painfully alone with thoughts she hoped she would never have to deal with. Her crying might have continued indefinitely were it not for a gentle hand on her shoulder. She snapped her head up from the handlebars. Crying into her goggles had the obvious consequence of filling them with water. She yanked them free of her head and wiped at her eyes with the gritty back of her gloved hand, which only served to further irritate the already enflamed skin around her eyes.
The woman who had touched her shoulder was a towering Amazon, black as the ace of spades, with an impressive head of dreadlocks, and a powerful set of musculature on her sturdy frame. She was dressed in khaki shorts, hiking boots, and a tank-top looking a little like a nature show host. She was flanked by two U.S. soldiers who actually stood several inches shorter than her. Her skin, which was the most beautiful shade of shiny ebony, was lined in dozens of places with white scars, which she apparently wore clothing to accentuate, rather than conceal. Something about her face was kind and a little wild.
“You’re the rider from Tombstone the gate mentioned?” the woman asked, knowing full well who Gieo was. Her voice was rich and smooth with a worn edge that put her age at likely over forty.
Gieo sniffled and offered the woman the letter from Veronica. She took it but handed it off to one of her guards without even glancing at it.
“Do you have a name, girl?” the woman asked.
“I’m Gieo,” she replied. Getting out of the saddle the second time was harder than the first, and Gieo actually nearly toppled over, requiring a little steadying from the Amazonian woman.
“Take your time,” the woman said. “A bike like that must rattle every drop of blood out of your legs on a long enough ride.” She smiled showing off the whitest, straightest teeth Gieo had ever seen. By standing next to her on the sidewalk, Gieo guessed the khaki-clad woman to be almost six and a half feet tall.
“It’s been a really long day,” Gieo said weakly.
“I can imagine,” the woman replied. “I’m Alondra McMichael, White Bishop of Albuquerque.”
Gieo returned the smile, feeling the warmth of the woman’s protection stretching over her. There was something powerful and confident about Alondra that spoke of a cunning yet caring natural leader. Gieo was infinitely pleased to see this side of the Ravens.
As they walked the streets, Alondra insisted Gieo take her arm for support as needed. Gieo gratefully accepted gaining more than physical support from the gesture. The city she saw on their brief walk toward Alondra’s home spoke of a size and scope Gieo didn’t think existed anymore with an order that almost felt like old times.
“How many people live here?” Gieo asked.
“Our last census estimates put it at around seven thousand,” Alondra said. “Not counting the fifteen-hundred soldiers.”
“Yeah, about them…” Gieo nodded in the direction of the one of the soldiers flanking them.
“You’ve no doubt heard about the fracturing that took place on the plains in the late days of the war with the Slark,” Alondra said. Gieo shook her head. After Orange County fell, she and her family had fled east without thought to anything beyond survival; the only thing she knew about the war with the Slark was the U.S. and her a
llies had lost, but made sure the Slark went down with them. “Ah, well, the military rallied nearly everything they had left on the great planes, outside of Cedar Rapids, to make a final push against the Slark’s great crawler battalions. You remember those certainly, the walking cities of firepower that they had before the cataclysm?” Gieo remembered, could still hear their great clanking legs, as long and tall as city streets, swinging overhead while the bombs and fire rained down from the platform hundreds of yards above. It was months into the war before anyone even knew what a Slark looked like as they had used the great crawlers almost exclusively. It wasn’t until three missile frigates off the coast of Alaska actually brought one down that humanity learned what they were fighting was lizard men from space. “The army fractured. Many of the men abandoned their post, followed Brigadier General Mackenzie who would become a warlord, and fled south toward Texas and Mexico to begin a guerilla war. Those who remained fought the Slark valiantly and lost. The Ravens have been picking up the pieces ever since. Finding soldiers still interested in fighting is surprisingly simple. Once a soldier, always a soldier, eh, boys?”
The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head Page 24