The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head

by Cassandra Duffy

  “Oorah, ma’am,” the two soldiers said in unison.

  “Most of the men here are army regulars from one place or other, but my personal guard is Marine Corps. My father was a leatherneck, my husband was a leatherneck, and my son was a leatherneck,” Alondra said with a noble sadness. “There’s something powerfully special about the Marines.”

  Gieo didn’t need to ask, she could infer from Alondra’s tone and use of the past tense that the three men mentioned were no longer living. Next to Alondra, Gieo felt small, with small problems, small emotional burdens, and small goals; greatness, she surmised, had the ability to do that. “Why the defensive walls?” Gieo asked, eager to be away from the topic of dead Marines.

  “After the fracture, Albuquerque had some problems with raiders from the aforementioned warlord. The walls were built out of necessity, and when I arrived, I reinforced and manned them,” Alondra said. “The raids have stopped. I don’t know where General Mackenzie went, but he’s long since abandoned his attacks on the west now that the Ravens have moved in. For the time being, I sit, build, and wait to hear when we move. I had hoped that’s why you were here, but you’re no messenger.”

  “I’m on my way to Colorado in search of pilots,” Gieo said. “We’re building an air force in Tombstone.”

  Alondra laughed loud, long, and hard, so much so that her Marine entourage laughed with her. Gieo waited out the laughter, but felt a little insulted by its boisterousness and length.

  “Veronica is a madwoman,” Alondra said, “but I guess that’s the type of thinking the Ravens have always taken a shine to.”

  They strolled up the walkway of a large, two-story, stucco home with a riverside view. A lovely cactus garden lined what used to be the front lawn. The Marine escort left their company at the front door. The interior was dimly-lit and a good ten degrees cooler than outside. The American southwest décor continued throughout, mixing native and Spanish influences both in architecture and decoration. Alondra led Gieo to a side guest room down a seldom used hallway. The room had an honest to goodness bed, a bookshelf filled with old Louis L’Amour books, and a bathroom opposite the walk-in closet.

  “Get showered, cooled, off, and come find me on the back patio when you’re ready to eat,” Alondra said.

  “Showered?” Gieo asked with unabashed hope.

  “Of course,” Alondra said. “This is civilization, after all.”

  Gieo barely waited for the door to close before running for the bathroom, stripping off her clothes with every step.

  Chapter 21: It’s all uphill from here.

  It had been close to six years since Gieo’s last shower. Sponge baths, tub baths, and bathing in lakes and streams were all effective enough to get the job done, but there was something delightfully decadent about a shower that she just didn’t appreciate until after it was gone. She ran the water cold first to wash away the grit and sweat of the day. Once her skin was cooled and cleaned in a way it hadn’t been in six years, she turned the water knob for hot, finding the simple pleasure she’d almost forgotten existed—hot water from a shower head. For the first time in ages, she stepped from a shower clean and refreshed. If civilization had any argument for its existence, a shower was it.

  Indoor plumbing really seemed like a fanciful world of a past that included movies, the internet, and cable TV. Standing in the tiny bathroom, wrapped in a towel, still dripping wet, Gieo tested the handle on the toilet. It flushed. She nearly burst into tears of joy right then and there. All the nervous energy of the day combined with the things she’d long since forgotten about missing, and she found herself on the edge of hysterics at something as simple as a shower and flushing toilet being in existence somewhere. Part of her, a very loud, vocal part of her screamed that she should live in Albuquerque; she would be infinitely more helpful to the Ravens if she could take a shower and use an indoor bathroom. Something Alondra had said to her snapped her from her delusional thoughts.

  She burst from the bathroom and quickly got dressed in repeatedly-patched and leather-reinforced blue jeans and a white pleasant blouse. In bare feet, her purple hair with increasingly long black roots still wet, she padded through the house to the back patio. The smell of a summer barbeque greeted her long before she could find her way onto the Spanish-style veranda. The patio’s plank trellis held tomato plants and an entire herb garden in hanging pottery. The sky was painted in vibrant pinks and oranges traditional of sunsets in the desert. To the east, down the hill, a handful of men in waders were standing in the river, fly fishing to add their bait to the whirring insects brought out by the coolness of dusk. Alondra stood at the edge of the lowest tier of the tile patio. Smoke from the massive black grill scented the air with cooking meat, vegetables, and hickory. Gieo’s focus melted into the beauty of the scene and the familiar smell from suburbia of a backyard barbeque. She nearly broke into tears again.

  Alondra came walking up toward the house with a tray of grilled food, steaming even in the warmth of the New Mexico evening. She pointed with her grill tongs to a mosaic-top metal patio set. Gieo made her way down to the circular table surrounded by four chairs and took her seat at one of two place settings. Alondra set down the tray, resting the tongs across the barbequed chicken breasts, tomatoes, and corn on the cob. She took her seat across from Gieo and smiled with those brilliant, white teeth.

  There was so much about Alondra that spoke of an eternal youth. Her body easily could have belonged to a nineteen-year-old athlete, as could her skin, but her eyes, hands, and voice spoke of an age and experience well beyond a possible number. Gieo found herself far more in awe of Alondra than attracted to her, although her undeniable substance and wisdom were beautiful but imposing qualities.

  “You have indoor plumbing,” Gieo said, unfurling one of the cloth napkins to drape it over her lap.

  “Most Raven cities do,” Alondra said. “The basic components of our oldest technologies survived the cataclysm and people who knew how to put them together and make them work aren’t difficult to find if you exchange protection and food for their expertise. Las Vegas’s very existence is owed to human arrogance and technological triumphs. This is even truer now as the Raven capitol.”

  “Then why doesn’t Veronica bring these things to Tombstone?” Gieo asked. Even at her workshop her water had been drawn from the earth by a hand-pumped well; her bathroom had been a spade and an old camping toilet as she didn’t really know how to create an outhouse. The fact that Tombstone could easily be another Albuquerque but wasn’t really irritated her.

  “Veronica is a colonizer,” Alondra said with a little chuckle. “Her mentality is conquest and control. According to her, hot showers, flushing toilets, and a reliable electrical grid only serve to make people soft. To be honest, she would be far better served in the Red set, but Carolyn isn’t about to relent her position as queen, and so Veronica took over the Whites.”

  “Why aren’t you the White Queen?” Gieo asked. “You’re clearly better suited to creating civilization than she is.”

  “I appreciate the compliment,” Alondra said, “but creature comforts and stability are only part of the job. Albuquerque was quite literally dying for aid when I arrived with my soldiers. Being raided by McKenzie and the Mexicans for several years will make any protection look appealing. Not all surviving cities are so eager to rejoin a centralized government. Veronica is a master at knowing what each city needs and how to accomplish it. I’m more of a city planner for a populace that will readily welcome me.”

  “If Tombstone knew what you did here, they’d fall all over themselves to welcome you,” Gieo said with a smirk. She scooped food onto her plate, offering to do the same for Alondra who nodded her acceptance of being served. “Why didn’t you read my letter of introduction?”

  “I’d rather get to know you in a more natural way,” Alondra said. “The bike you rode in on is a marvel, and one I assume you built yourself or you wouldn’t have driven it across the desert alone. Tell me, why hav
e I never heard of you?” Alondra leaned forward on the table, tenting her fingers under her chin and looking at Gieo as though she were the only woman in the world.

  “I’m kind of new to the Ravens,” Gieo said. “Before that, I was alone in a workshop and fortress of my own creation. I’m just now realizing exactly how big the world still is.”

  “What made you rejoin society?”

  “Someone special picked me up after my last airship was shot down.” Gieo had wanted a more grandiose motivation to share, but the simple fact was she’d wanted Fiona.

  “What’s his name?” Alondra asked, an intrigued sparkle rising in her onyx eyes.

  “Her name is Fiona,” Gieo said.

  The little sparkle rose into a genuine flash of an epiphany. “Her last name wouldn’t happen to be Bishop, would it?”

  Gieo nodded.

  “That explains a lot,” Alondra said. “There are two lesbian Queens in the Ravens. One is Carolyn and the other is Veronica; Fiona was a swirling, destructive force in Las Vegas who came close to spoiling our unified front by pitting Carolyn and Veronica against each other for her affections.” Alondra took a bite of chicken, chewing it thoroughly before continuing. “Maybe you can explain to me what is so spectacular about her, because you gay girls can’t seem to keep your hands off that daffy redhead.”

  As angry as Alondra’s glib description of Fiona made Gieo, she had to admit it was probably one of the kinder she’d heard. She had an inkling to Fiona’s turbulent past with the Ravens, but had never really been in a position to hear more of it from someone who wasn’t directly involved.

  “What exactly happened between Veronica and Fiona?” Gieo asked, trying desperately to keep her voice even and calm.

  “I think it’d be best if you directed that question to any of the three involved,” Alondra said. “Suffice it to say, you’ve walked directly into the middle of a complex love triangle half a decade old. I will tell you this: you’re not the first girl to get pulled into the tangled mess between them.”

  They finished dinner with a scant discussion of things to come, their plans for the future, and a promise for Gieo to return through Albuquerque on her way home. The topic of Fiona and Veronica didn’t arise again as Gieo couldn’t imagine Alondra would speak more on a topic she’d already put to bed.

  Gieo slept fitfully despite the relative opulence of the guest room. Her mind wouldn’t let go of the new enigma of Fiona and Veronica’s relationship including a tangled mess and another woman whose name Gieo had heard, but of whom she knew little else—Carolyn. She didn’t trust Veronica and she was beginning to wonder if her trust for Fiona might be misplaced. Exhaustion pushed back against her whirring mind, knocking the complex thoughts aside long enough to put her into a deep sleep where she found harsh nightmares of the man she killed. His face kept coming back to her, the bubbling frothy blood of his sucking chest wound boiling out of the bullet hole in endless streams while his conversation with himself continued unabated. She felt the unwarranted weight of something left undone crushing her chest and only realized before waking that she’d wanted to know the man’s name for a reason she could neither describe nor understand.

  She awoke feeling sick and harried as though her sleep was spent running. To add to this strange sensation, her body rebelled against the exercise and long ride of the day before. Muscles and joints that had never ached before were making up for lost time. Getting out of the comfortable bed was difficult and getting dressed a painful proposition. She found she’d slept far later than she’d intended. Midmorning had come and gone with the heat of the day already pushing toward its apex. Gieo packed, found something to eat, and left Alondra’s home.

  On the quick walk back to her bike, she grew accustomed to the pain in her joints and muscles. Word had apparently spread about her rank within the Ravens as the soldiers she passed saluted her crisply. She saluted in response, taking a shine to the novelty of it all. Back at her bike, she found a water spigot on a nearby building, and wonder of wonders, it functioned. She filled the brass water tanks on her bike and set off. The guards at the gate waved her through without fanfare.

  The road north was an easier ride than anything thus far. The temperature dropped as the elevation rose toward the mountains, allowing the bike to run cooler once Gieo adjusted the manual choke to accommodate the rarified air. The ride up into Colorado ran smoothly with Interstate 25 passing over most of the ruins of small towns without fully dipping into any of them. As Gieo suspected, when she got closer to Fort Carson and Colorado Springs, the landscape changed. War clearly had taken its toll on the infrastructure, but to Gieo’s surprise, there were handmade signs along alternate routes guiding her to the northwest and Woodland Park. The damage Albuquerque suffered paled in comparison to the obliteration the Air Force Academy and Fort Carson undertook during the war. The landscape went alien, glassed, with nature’s recovery slowed by the toxic weapons the Slark used. Gieo followed the signs, often having to drive over the glazed ground blown clean from the heat of explosions.

  Towering trees, sylvan wilderness, and the natural splendor she’d hoped Colorado would hold began to take over as she pulled onto the winding road up toward what the signs called “Space Mountain.” Cars along the sides of the roads were pulled off by a wrecker and stripped of valuables. The signs of life were not necessarily good signs as Gieo saw it; Alondra’s warnings about barbarians, separatists, and marauders hadn’t fallen on deaf ears and Gieo couldn’t even be certain what the Colorado hunting party had truly wanted with her. Options being what they were though, she had to try.

  The signs guided her in straight and true, and soon she found herself pulling up to a five-star resort hunting lodge. Log cabin bungalows and a beautiful three-story A-frame main lodge with windows running from top to bottom rose almost perfectly from the great lodge pole pines and Douglas fir trees. The hunting party, many of which she vaguely recognized, were about their business, working on general maintenance or domestic duties. Surprisingly, a handful of women and a few children were even mixed into the group. Gieo slowed her bike, coming to a stop well out of the edge of the roundabout driveway for the main lodge, and pulled off her helmet and scarf. A few of the burly, bearded mountain men came strolling down the way. The lead man, who wore his sandy blond hair and beard long but kempt, waved to her.

  “As I live and breathe,” the man said, “if it isn’t the tech expert of Tombstone.”

  Gieo waved back and slowly lowered the pod on her bike to hold it in place. They seemed friendly enough and the presence of women and children gave the entire lodge a look of domesticity as though it were a sociable camping trip and not an attempt to rebuild society after an alien invasion. As the men got closer, Gieo slipped from the saddle, stretched her back and tried to force a smile, although she was tired, sore, and not in a particularly good mood.

  As the four mountain men neared, Gieo could see they were unarmed, smiling, and looking as affable as could be. Of course, they were all over six feet tall and brawny so it wasn’t as though any of them would have to be armed to do her harm. They smelled gamy and odd, not necessarily a bad smell, but something peculiar and ancient, harkening back to the days when men ate only the wild animals they could kill and wore the pelts of the hunt.

  “I’m McAdams, if you don’t remember,” the blond man said. “Come on up to the lodge and I’ll introduce you around.”

  Gieo glanced to the undercoat the man wore beneath a bear pelt, recognizing the insignia. “That would be Major McAdams, wouldn’t it?” Gieo asked.

  “Once upon a time, I suppose, but that part of my life is over now.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” Gieo said, this time with a genuine smile.

  After making it back to town without incident, Fiona handed over the wounded to the town’s rebuilding hospital and the cultist defectors to the Military Police division of the Ravens. They would likely be questioned about information that wouldn’t be valid or important in short
order. Yahweh wouldn’t stay put knowing the Ravens had his address, but there was likely other, subtler bits of information the cultists could give in exchange for amnesty and a place in the new society. The MPs would know how to ask and know what was and wasn’t valuable; Fiona hadn’t the temperament, training, or inclination to even try a cursory investigation on the ride back despite the chattiness of the women in the wagon.