by Andy Remic
The music stopped.
“And although I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will not fear evil...”
“What?” snapped General Bronson, gun in hand and rising fast.
“‘Cause you are a weevil,” rhymed Svool, as he drew and fired.
A single bullet slammed across the space and took General Bronson between the eyes.
There was a hushed, shocked silence as Bronson stood, swaying, staring with disbelief at Svool and his smoking pistol.
“You goddamn killed me there, son,” he said, sitting back down on his rump with a thump. Dust rose around him. Svool stared at the end of his pistol as if he was holding a tarantula.
With the other gunslingers distracted by the sight of their illustrious leader being gunned down by the Sheriff - not something they had expected in a million years and, truth be told, not the outcome Lumar had expected in her wildest dreams - Lumar knelt up and carefully slid a long knife from the boot of the gunslinger charged with keeping her down on the boards. By the time General Bronson hit the dust, Lumar had a knife in her hands and had cut the bonds which held her. By the time the gunslinger realised she had a knife in her hands, he had a knife through his heart and was coughing up blood as he collapsed to the boards.
What followed was a cinematic chaos.
Herbert reared up, neighing wildly, and charged at the other gunslingers, who leapt to their feet, drawing pistols, and Svool fired with maniac abandon, his arms like wild pistons, his mouth opening in a silent scream of prayer and insanity. Unfortunately, his one-in-a-million headshot on Bronson was not replicated, Svool’s usual uselessness kicking in with a savage ferocity.
It took a few moments for Bronson’s men to realise that Svool was charging towards them, firing his gun but without the actual ability to aim. They snarled and growled, showing yellow teeth and ugly faces, but by then Lumar had found her feet, and was in the middle of the group, with a knife and a serious axe to grind.
Lumar stabbed left, then right, ducked a pistol shot which filled the porch with gunsmoke, drove the knife through one throat and then back-handed it across another. Men screamed around her, suddenly scrambling to get away, their pistols firing wildly. Two gunslingers shot two of their friends. And in the middle was a cool, calm, collected Lumar, her tongue flickering, her knife cutting and gouging. There was no compassion there, no kindness, no empathy. Just hate and vengeance. They had abused her and promised further violence to come. Well, she’d show them. And she did.
Within a minute it was all over, and bodies lay strewn about the wooden boards, either dead or wishing they were. Herbert galloped to a halt, legs flying in all sorts of directions, and there was a click as the steel brackets released Svool. He leapt from the metal horse, scowling and rubbing at his cramping legs. His pistol was empty; he threw it on the ground in disgust.
Lumar strode from the wreckage of corpses and stopped, hands on hips.
“Well,” she said.
“I came back for you!” beamed Svool.
Lumar stared at him, then at the horse, then off down the street. “So you did,” she said. “Eventually.” She considered her words, then sighed, and recognised that without Svool’s help she would, in fact, be having a worse time that she currently was. “Okay, I concede, you did indeed come back for me. It was... a brave thing to do.”
“I had some help,” said Svool, sheepishly.
“Neigh!” said Herbert, Svool’s Special Friend. “But you’ve got to admit, old Svool boy, that was one incredible piece of shooting! Never have I seen somebody so brazenly take down an evil gunslinger like General Bronson before. You know, I myself saw him stand in over two hundred gunfights and walk away without a scratch. It’s almost like it was destiny!”
“Destiny,” said Lumar, looking sideways at Svool. “You hear that?”
Svool was staring at Bronson’s body. He sighed, and held out both hands, palms outwards. “I confess, it was an absolute fluke. If you notice I fired off all the other shots and hit nothing. It was a one-in-a-million lucky shot.”
“Yes,” said Lumar, “but it was the one that counted.” She coughed, forced the words through tight, compressed lips. “Well done, Svoolzard Koolimax XXIV, Third Earl of Apobos.”
Svool went bright red, which was ironic, for only a few short days before he would have accepted oral sex from five strangers without breaking stride. He was used to praise and adoration in his position as poet, musician, sexual athlete and academic. Not so much in the world of rugged adventuring gunslinger hero.
“We better get moving,” said Herbert.
“Oh, yeah?” swaggered Svool, putting on his best tough-guy voice. “Well, we did indeed kill them all dead, we did indeed.”
Herbert flapped his metal lips. “Yee-es, but Bronson’s brother might be here real soon. They probably heard all the gunshots. And he won’t be happy.”
Svool paled. “Bronson’s brother?”
“Yeah. Black Jake, they calls him. He’s even meaner than General Bronson. Known to stake out men, women and children and let rattlesnakes eat their eyes.”
“I’m sure we can handle one more unwashed cowboy,” smiled Lumar, twirling the bloodstained knife.
“It’s more his forty or fifty desperate wanted men I was worried about,” said Herbert, grinning with his curiously intelligent metal horse lips. He flapped them theatrically, showering Svool with a shower of oily spittle.
“How do we get into this shit?” frowned Svool, staring at Lumar and opening his hands in confusion. “How did our lives go from a comfortable wealthy ease of constant drugs and sex to one of such incredible madness and pain in such a short time frame?”
“Speak for yourself,” muttered Lumar, and rubbed her eyes. “Okay, let’s round up some weapons and ammunition, find another metal horse and get the hell away from here. Herbert, we really need to make contact with the rulers of this planet - this is a disastrous diplomatic incident just waiting to happen. Svoolzard here, well” - she coughed, and clenched her teeth as she said it, eyes narrowing, tongue flickering -”he’s a very important poet and film star. Very famous. We need to get to the capital city. Dare I say it? Take us to your leaders.”
“You need Bacillus Port. No. No, wait! Even better, we could head for the Greenstar Factory Hub. That’s where all the top dogs and nobby nobs and politicians and lawyers and bureaucrats hang out. All the important folk on Amaranth. You know. The buggers who poison it.”
“What’s the quickest route?”
“From here, buster, I’d say north, then northeast. But there are a thousand obstacles to overcome, from packs of radioactive hunting dogs to strange diseased creatures that have evolved from the mud. You think Bronson and his boys were bad? There’s much more bad than that out in the Wild Wastes! Oh, yes!”
Lumar sighed. “What about the nearest city? Maybe renting some kind of high speed air vehicle?”
“All banned,” said Herbert smugly. “At least within a thousand miles of where you’re standing. Would you want someone like Bronson getting his hands on a military chopper?”
“So we’re out in the shit, and we’ll have to walk to safety?” snapped Svool.
“Yes. No. Well, there are the Mines of Mercury...” He allowed the words to hang in the air like an embarrassing metal horse fart.
“That doesn’t sound safe,” said Lumar, narrowing her eyes.
“Well, they’re a massive old network of tunnels that run under the Mercury Peaks. That’s a big wide mountain range that cuts this half of the land in two. If we go through the Mines of Mercury, we’ll miss the Lungpuke Forest, the Faeces Teeth, the Strychnine Plains, the Anthrax Forest... oooh, it’d be my top vote for crossing this mad, bad country without getting a spear through the ear.” His horse tongue lolled out and touched the ground, and with a mechanical clicking sound, he wound it back in again.
“You’re sure these mines are safe?” said Lumar, eyes narrowing again.
“Oh, yes!” brayed He
rbert. “They were cleared out by Greenstar years ago. There’s nothing more dangerous than a luminescent mushroom. Trust me, I know whereof I speak.”
“What do you think?” said Lumar.
Svool nodded. “Sounds like a plan. I seriously need to get off this shithole. It’s ruining my karma, my clothing, my ego, my vanity, and my street cred. Let’s get going!” He gestured to one of the hitched metal horses that stood, with heads lowered, looking forlornly at the ground now that their masters were all dead.
Lumar strode towards the metal beasts, and Svool rubbed his hands together, cackling inwardly. Aha! Now you, too, can get your own Special DumbMutt Special Friend with a nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine-year lease and the ability to lock your ankles to its body whenever it sees fit! Try it on for size! See! I’m not the only dumb smack idiot around here, y’know?
Lumar leapt nimbly into the saddle. The metal horse lifted its head and seemed to perk up considerably. Its head turned around. “Hello,” said the metal horse. “My name is Angelina. Welcome aboard.”
Svool capered forward. “Go on! Go on! Say it!” He flapped his hands frantically. “The special friend dumb mutt stuff! Say it!”
“Oh, no, no, no,” said Herbert, coming up behind Svool and nuzzling him. “Angelina is a freehold model. Anybody can ride her without ownership protection clauses and deed of ownership. It’s only you, buddy, that has that special relationship with your special friend round here! It’s only you with that special honour and special friend trust.”
“Hmm,” said Svool, scowling. “I can’t say that I asked for it.”
Herbert’s head rotated and fixed him with a beady stare. “A Special Horse Friend is for life, not just for [Insert Applicable Religious Festival Here], buster.”
Svool frowned even deeper.
At that moment, Zoot the PopBot came zipping down the street and stopped, hovering equidistant between Svool and Lumar. He spun, slowly, lights flickering on his matt-black shell.
“Hi guys! Is everything okay?”
“No thanks to you, fuckwit!”
“Hey, I was zapped! A PopBot can’t help it when he’s zapped!”
“I thought you were supposed to be my bodyguard?” snapped Svool. “What use is a bodyguard that’s taken down in the first three seconds of a fight, leaving me - me! - to fight my own battle and face certain death? Eh?”
Zoot grew haughty at this accusation. “Hey, how was I supposed to know he’d be carrying an anti-PB actualising necroliser? Eh? I might be your bodyguard-slash-PR-slash-management unit, but I can’t read the mind of every psycho we come across!”
“Well, you’re a useless shit,” said Svool, and turned to Lumar. “ Shall we get going, before Black Jake and his gang come looking for the man who killed his brother? I’m pretty sure he won’t want to shake my hand and spank my bottom and buy me a pint of Japachinese lager!”
“I think that would be a good idea,” said Lumar, softly. She nudged Angelina, turning the robot horse, and leading the way, trotted north out of the town. Svool followed on Herbert, who seemed to be watching Angelina’s rump with a curious tilt to his rusty metal head.
A disgruntled and shame-filled Zoot brought up the rear, using his short-range scanners to check for any signs of pursuit.
~ * ~
THE LANDSCAPE CHANGED in sudden leaps and bounds and folds of rock and hills; first, from jungle to rolling grasslands: bang! they crossed a ridgeline and the whole world seemed to change in an instant, without the graduated change normally associated with real-world geographical topography. Lumar sat her horse atop a grassy hill and stared back at the distant jungle, then up at the sky with its streaks of black and violet and green, then ahead, past the grasslands and rolling hills to where mountains speared the horizon.
“This place is weird,” she said.
“I’m not an expert on geography,” said Svool, steadying Herbert with a twitch of the reins, “but I’d have to agree. I confess I’m not the sort of trendy cool dude who has travelled many a hill on the back of a metal horse, but I’d concur that I have never seen anything quite like this, not from the decks of a Pleasure Hover Cruiser, nor on the screen of my favourite filmy.”
Lumar stared at him. Then looked back to the mountains. “Ho! Herbert. So those are the Mercury Peaks?” She pointed yonder, where titanic mountains of silver and white touched the clouds.
“That would be them, buster,” said Herbert, pulling a face that should never belong on a horse. There were tiny sliding sounds as metal plates grated together. A few flakes of rust tumbled down to merge with the swaying grass on the hill.
“Er, guys,” said Zoot, whizzing up to them.
“Yes, Zoot, trusty useless non-protection pile of shit PopBot?”
“I think we have company.”
They all turned, and they all looked. Against the distant horizon behind them was a dust cloud. It was rather a large dust cloud, presumably spat up by the stampeding hooves of fifty or so metal horses galloping at full speed across the plain.
Lumar and Svool exchanged a quick, worried glance.
“They could be friendly,” suggested Zoot, voice weak yet hopeful.
“Wanna bet, buster?” Herbert grinned.
“I’m assuming they can keep up that gallop all day, what with them being metal horses?”
“Oh, yes,” said Herbert.
“But then, so can we,” pointed out Svool.
“No, no,” said Herbert, “I’m a Special Model. I have an inhibitor. That sort of behaviour can burn out circuit boards!” He made a huh sound, and tossed his head, as if to say those people who ran their metal horses all day should be ashamed of themselves.
“So they can, in fact, catch us, then,” growled Svool.
“Er. Yes.” Herbert looked suddenly sheepish.
“Let’s get moving,” snapped Lumar, kicking Angelina into a trot, then a gallop. Herbert followed, legs flying all over the place but by some miracle managing to lumber up to a gallop.
For Svool, this was a new nightmare to rival all the other nightmares of his recent existence. He tried to imagine what it would be like travelling on a high speed tractor with square wheels and no tyres and five legs attached to each wheel - that pretty much summed up how he was now being bounced around. His bottom went up and down, slammed and bashed and battered, each slam transferring a painful jar to the base of his spine, which elicited a pained yelp from his chattering chipping teeth. Svool was tossed about like a marble in a washing machine during a spin cycle, and he looked over longingly at Lumar, who seemed to be suffering no such problems. Her Angelina seemed to purr along on plush suspension as she sat upright, spine straight, face serene, enjoying a comfortable, cushioned ride.
They galloped down a range of long grassy hills. Green sunlight glowered overhead.
“Oy!” shouted Svool.
“Yes?”
“Is it comfy?”
“The horse?”
“YES!”
“Yes, she is. Why?”
Svool’s answer was lost as they came to a ditch, and bunching his metal muscles, Herbert leapt the small ravine. He landed, legs thumping and churning, and started the long gallop up the sweep of a fresh hill.
Svool spat out a mouthful of blood. “There’s something wrong with this heap of junk!”
“Hey buster, I can hear you, you know?” said Herbert, his head turning with a sound of metal ratchets. “It’s the suspension, guv’nor. Sorry about that. It’s all shot to shit. It’s all the humidity from the jungle, like. You know how it is.”
“I am sure that I do not,” said Svool, frowning, then biting his tongue as they leapt and hit the ground once more. His mouth filled with blood. He scowled, and realised Herbert had trapped his ankles again. Svool pictured a prone Herbert tied to a workbench, and him holding a hacksaw.
Across rolling grass plains they galloped, Zoot scooting along behind them. Slowly, they wound towards the Mercury Peaks, which became ever larger, ever more massive a
s they came to the end of the foothills. There, the rolling grassland hills ended suddenly, as if some mad terraformer had just turned off his machine and wandered off for a long holiday.
They drew rein on their mechanical mounts, and Herbert cocked his leg and urinated black engine oil against a rock.
“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry!”
Svool looked across their back trail, but could not see their pursuers. He was just about to open his mouth, when they galloped into view. They were closer. Much closer. They were gaining fast.