“Asher?” she said. Only other person alive who called me by my full name.
“Hi, Mrs. Johnson,” I replied. What else could I say?
“My, I haven’t seen you in… well… it has been some time.”
“Yes ma’am. Hope you have a lovely day.” I held up my hand indicating that she should proceed to do her business, but she didn’t seem to take the hint.
“What have you been up to, Asher? Working on the ranch, from last I heard?”
I looked over at Pace, who was giving me a “what the eff” look. Old Pearl was almost done with her business. It was time.
“I’m a ranch hand, yes ma’am. And a damned good one too. So I guess things turned out well for me after all. So if you’ll excuse me…”
“I am so pleased, Asher. I was concerned, given your background, that you’d have some struggles adjusting to any chosen vocation. So I am so very pleased.”
I heard Old Pearl’s faint voice say “thank you Frank” from across the room. She’d finished her business and had turned toward the door. I saw Frank get a good look at Pace. It was past time.
“P-Pace,” Frank stammered. “Suspect you’re here to make a withdrawal?”
Old Pearl made it over to the door and Mrs. Johnson stepped out of her way. “Thank you dears,” she said. And then Old Pearl was gone. But not Mrs. Johnson.
Pace didn’t have much of a choice. He started moving forward with our plan.
“Yes Frank,” he said with his usual swagger. “I do want to make a withdrawal.”
I saw Pace pull back his long brown coat. It was time to roll with it.
“It is so very important,” Mrs. Johnson said to me, “that we all do our very best. I’m so pleased that you amounted to something.”
"Mrs. Johnson, it’s funny you should say that…”
I pulled my revolver out from beneath my black coat. She wasn’t looking at me anymore. Just the barrel of my shiny gun. In one swift move, I flipped the OPEN sign, sidled Mrs. Johnson out of the way and locked the door. I glanced over at Pace. The barrel of his gun was directly against Frank’s temple. I’m sure Frank pissed his pants.
I didn’t want Mrs. Johnson to feel fear, though. Especially given my family’s history with guns. I wanted to reassure her. So I leaned in and whispered in her ear. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Johnson. I’ll keep you safe. You were my favorite teacher.”
She looked me in the eye and I’m pretty sure she believed me.
“W-what do you want me to do?” she asked with a slight quaver to her voice.
“Just stand close to me,” I instructed. And she did. Her body was stiff at first. And then, maybe, she got a little too close. That was interesting. Her body was softer than I used to imagine.
Yeah, that’s right. I used to think about it. So what. I was twelve.
“I’m not here to do you in, Frank,” Pace said. “I’m happy for you actually. You got a promotion. Good for you, you deserved it. I wasn’t very good at banking anyway.”
“W-what do you want?” Frank asked. He was stiff with fear.
“Just step aside and let me open the vault.”
“They changed the combination! A-and I’m n-not telling you what it is!”
Pace smiled and tapped Frank on the side of the head with the nose of his revolver. Frank got out of the way.
“You know they did no such thing. Bank regulations. When there’s a change in personnel, headquarters must send a representative to change the combination on the safe. And that hasn’t happened yet, has it?” Frank nodded his head yes, but that slowly gave way to no. “So how many people alive know the combination? You? And… me?” Frank nodded his head yes. “Down on the floor Frank,” Pace instructed. “Face down. I’m not going to shoot you, but my partner would. He wants to, actually. Doesn’t like your face much.” Frank took a look at me and believed Pace. He leapt down to the floor and covered his face in his hands. Pace took a moment to lean down next to him and pried a hand away from his face. “But I like your face Frank. It’s a good face.”
“Pace,” I interrupted, “want to get going on this?”
Pace nodded, hopped up and headed to the safe. He turned the dial effortlessly, as if he’d opened the safe a hundred times. Which, of course, he had.
As he turned the crank and pulled the door open, I was a little surprised by what I saw. I dunno, I guess I expected the safe to be much bigger. Instead it was maybe two feet deep, with a couple dozen shelves filled with containers of gold coins. I guess our settlement was poorer than I thought.
Pace grabbed a couple of shoulder bags that were resting on a chair behind a nearby desk. He filled one of them with coins until it was full, and then stepped over Frank’s stiff body to hand the bag to me. I placed it on my shoulder. It was not quite as heavy as I’d expected, but I liked it.
I felt Mrs. Johnson squirming a bit. Wasn’t sure if it was fear, or something else. Some things are best not considered.
Pace filled the other bag to the brim with coins. He hoisted the bag on his shoulder as he took the few remaining coins and placed some of them in his pockets. Then he leaned down and placed a few in Frank’s pocket. “A little something extra in your paycheck this month,” he whispered in Frank’s ear. “A bonus for being Employee of the Month.” Then Pace stepped over Frank, but Frank somehow had the balls to grab Pace by the boot. He wasn’t trying to stop him though. He just wanted to be heard.
“You sure you want do to this, Pace?” Frank asked.
Pace didn’t hesitate. “Oh yes I do.” With his foot released, Pace crossed to Mrs. Johnson, took her hand and placed a bunch of coins in her palm. “Mrs. Johnson, I was once your star pupil, wasn’t I?” She nodded with agreement. “How’d I turn out?”
Pace flipped the sign back to OPEN, unlocked the door and stepped outside.
I moved away from Mrs. Johnson with my back toward the entrance. “I’ll be waiting until Pace brings up the horses,” I announced. Don’t move until you hear our hoofbeats run off. Remember, I’m standing outside with my gun.” I lied. I was to do no such thing. I tipped my hat to Mrs. Johnson. “Mrs. Johnson, don’t feel badly about how things turned out. I appreciate your efforts.”
And with that, I exited and closed the door behind me. I concealed my revolver and saw that Pace had this shit-eating grin. We untied our horses at the hitching post.
“That was easy,” I said.
“Like I said. It was a good plan.”
“Can you believe – Mrs. Johnson. Of all people.”
“We’re going to give that poor lady a complex.”
“How much do you think is in there? Two, three hundred?”
“Does it matter?”
Before we mounted our horses we both heard something. An alarm bell started ringing. We glanced at each other.
“That shit Frank pulled the alarm!”
“What do we do now?” I asked. I knew that alarm would trigger Boze and his Nuggets going to the armory and breaking out the rifles. And there was no telling which townsfolk might want to try to stop us beforehand, even unarmed.
We mounted quickly. “Which direction? North or south?” I asked.
“I’m not sure, we didn’t get this far into planning… north? Back into town. No one knows it’s us yet. Just keep smiling.”
We rode calmly up the street. Some townsfolk started heading toward the bank. They were looking at us funny. Maybe it looked funny that we were the only ones walking away from the alarm. I remember smiling and nodding to the townsfolk as we passed. That’s expected from Pace, but from me – they must have thought I was up to something. And, of course, I was.
“Let’s ride up past the General Store, then we can break for the river.”
Maybe that was a good plan, I dunno, won’t ever know because it got interrupted.
Hoofbeats.
“Boze!” I shouted. I tugged at the reins to have Charon start running, but in what direction? It sounded like the hoofbeats were coming from every dir
ection. Cause they were. Boze came down Main Street from the north. Other Nuggets came up from the east and west. Pace and I turned our horses south, the only available direction, but one of the Nuggets rode up quickly to block that path. We were surrounded.
Pace remained smiling, cool as could be. “What seems to be the problem, Boze?”
Boze pointed his shotgun at us as the other Nuggets did the same.
“The bank alarm rings, and here are you two, conveniently riding up Main Street,” Boze said. “Saddlebags looking mighty heavy. Mind if we take a look?”
I’d never been in a shootout before. Never seen one either. My dad did of course. Didn’t work out well for him. Probably wouldn’t work out good for me either. Hah. And as much as Pace might like to think, there’s no plan for this sorta thing. I reached under my coat and put my hand on my revolver.
“Hands where I can see ‘em Ash,” Boze said.
Didn’t like that much.
“Now Boze,” Pace interjected, pouring on the charm. “Whatever makes you think we have anything to do with the bank robbery?”
Boze just started back and nodded his head in a direction behind us. There was good old Frank, standing on the front stoop of the bank, pointing his bony finger at us. Thanks Frank, thought we were pals.
Pace and I exchanged a look.
“Jail’s not an option, right?” Pace asked.
“Nope,” I said. So we both simultaneously drew our revolvers. I hoped our target practice was enough. It was time to find out. See how many we could shoot before they could shoot us.
This was the moment I’d been waiting for, right? A weapon in my hand. Ready to be like my father, just the way everyone expected me to be. A part of me wanted it too. Wanted to feel what it would be like to take a human life. All I had to do was squeeze the trigger.
But that didn’t happen. I almost wished it had. It would have been easier to handle than what happened next.
We heard a new sound. Kind of a low rumble at first, hard to hear over the high-pitched ring of the alarm bell. As it got louder, it was clear it wasn’t the sort of sound we were used to hearing. It was coming up from the south. I looked down and saw that some of the townsfolk had stopped cold and were staring out behind us. Others were walking – no, running – in the other direction.
Pace and I glanced at each other.
“What is that?” I asked.
“No idea,” he replied.
I saw the Nugget to the south looking behind him, Lister his name is, dumb as dirt. Lister started squealing like a pig and then right quick he rode off to the west. What the eff scared him off? By that point, pretty much everyone was running anyway. And then that’s when it hit me. Or nearly hit me. A scorch of heat that grazed my arm. I’d been shot at. But not by a gun. It wasn’t a bullet. It was something else. And the sound that accompanied it. Like a high-pitched wheeze. There was another. Then another. I felt blasts of heat getting closer and closer to my body. I looked at Pace, who was as confused as me, and then we both turned around.
We saw a sight I had a hard time understanding. On the horizon was metal. Lots of metal. Dulled metal to be sure. And it was moving toward us, at kind of a low speed but it was steady. And whatever it was sent blasts of heat toward us. One blast connected with the ground at my feet. The earth sizzled. And that metal kept getting closer.
“What the eff is that?”
As I would soon learn, they’re called Mankins.
I would come to understand them, but in that moment I just feared them.
4.
Keep in mind, I’d lived my entire life in that settlement, and never had I seen anything remotely like that. No one had. There were so many questions – what were they, were did they come from, why were they there. But I couldn’t think about any of that. Cause I was about to get fried by laser fire.
One by one the Nuggets hightailed it away. Our pathway to freedom was clear if we weren’t sandwiched between Boze and whatever was coming towards us.
“W-what is that?” Boze stammered. What a lawman. He’s an embarrassment, that’s what he is.
Another volley of laser fire came our way. Pace and I instinctively rode our horses out of the way of the blasts – me to the left and Pace to the right. We both hid behind the sides of buildings, for what good that would do us. The building I was behind took a few hits – I wasn’t sure it could handle many more.
And dumb Boze just sat on his horse there, in the middle of the street. I think the expression is paralyzed with fear. In that moment I learned what that looked like. And it’s effing stupid unless you wanna die.
“Get the eff out of the street!” I yelled to Boze.
“Y-yeah!” Boze feebly responded before he managed to turn his horse around and escape to the north. Dumb effer. At least our path to freedom was clearer. Sorta.
“Pace!” I shouted. “I’m supposing you weren’t expecting this!”
“Nope!”
Footsteps caught my ear. I saw Frank running toward us. Or to be more precise, he was running away from those approaching robots. Mrs. Johnson was hustling along right behind him, holding her dress up to try not to trip over it. They were just trying to get away, fearing that those metal things would destroy anything in their path. And I think that’s just exactly what those robots were going to do.
“Frank!” Pace shouted. “Where did those things come from?”
“Oh my God!” Frank whined. “Don’t let them kill me-”
Then Frank hit the dirt road face first. One of those lasers had nicked him in the heel. He’d be all right I suppose. Or at least until those robots trampled over him. Mrs. Johnson screamed. She wasn’t a fast enough runner. She was in some danger. I promised her I’d keep her safe.
Pace and I caught each other’s glance. We both knew what we had to do.
We both dismounted in unison. Pace rolled to the dirt, avoiding laser fire as best he could, until he reached Frank. As he tried to grab hold of Frank’s wiggling arms, Frank couldn’t stop squealing. “You did this! You brought them here!”
Pace protested. “I did no such thing!” Then Pace wrangled Frank against his will, like a loose hog, and dragged him to the relative safety of the nearby front steps of the blacksmith’s shop. At least there was a wrought iron fence around the porch to hide behind.
As for me, I’m not really nimble enough to roll to the ground. So I did what I do. I just ran into the firing range, hoisted Mrs. Johnson up over my shoulder and ran her over to blacksmith’s porch where Pace and Frank were jockeying for cover. As I dropped her to the wood floorboards as gently as the situation would allow, Mrs. Johnson caught my eye. She seemed almost soulful. I swear I thought she was gonna kiss me. But there wasn’t time for that, regardless of how I felt about it. I grabbed Pace by the shirt collar.
“Those things want us,” I yelled. “Let’s pull their fire away from these people!”
Pace nodded. We drew our revolvers and pulled back the hammers. We exhaled deeply and ran back out into the street, firing freely.
Those metal creatures were getting close enough to take shape in my eyes. They weren’t that tall, maybe four feet. And they were fairly lean, with cylindrical torsos maybe I dunno a foot and a half wide. Their weapons, some kind of gun turrets I’d never seen before, were mounted on either side of their shell. And when they fired, it looked like their whole upper torso seemed to swing left or right for aim, like it was rotating its axis on a ball bearing or something. It had what resembled a head, which I figured probably housed the robot’s brain or something like that. And they just kept rolling forward on multiple wheels spinning around on metal tracks.
Despite all that fancy technology, the one thing that was keeping us alive was their targeting system. It was weak, almost haphazard. If they didn’t improve their aim, we’d have a chance to beat them.
I picked out one lucky robot for some target practice. My first couple of shots connected in its torso. That did seem to momentarily slow it down bu
t not stop it. Then I aimed for one of its weapons and my bullet was able to bend it and make it blow out smoke. I guessed that worked, but it still kept coming. So I took aim at its brain. Blam. It shot backwards, its wheels spinning off of its tracks.
“The heads,” I shouted. “Shoot for their heads!”
I had to reload, so I had a second to see how Pace was handling himself. He was putting too much of his arm into his shots, but not bad really. I’m not sure he was good enough to actually aim for their heads but he did manage to fell a few, either by chance or on purpose.
One thing I noticed – the robots were grouped very close to each other. Maybe I could use that to my advantage. I shot one in the side of its brain. It fell to the right, crashing into the robot next to it and knocking that one over too. Kind of like dominos. This was the kind of game I could grow to like.
Another thing I noticed – we were killing a few of ‘em, but that just made the rest of ‘em propel themselves even faster forward. That wasn’t good. They’d be on us in moments.
Pace and I instinctively pressed our backs up against each other and kept firing. It allowed us to each focus on half of the line of sight, and put us close enough to hear each other over the gunfire.
“Time to run?” I asked.
“Uh-huh.”
We both emptied our chambers, turned, and ran as fast as we could. Our horses could outrun them, I suppose, if we could mount them in time. It all happened too quickly for me to think about it so I just kept running, reloading as best I could. I heard Pace cry out. I looked over and he had been winged in his left arm. I didn’t see any blood.
“I’m okay,” he reassured me.
We reached our horses and leapt up.
“Which way?” I asked, firing ten shots at the robots. I was ten-for-ten that round. I noticed Pace was holding his arm. I didn’t have time to be concerned, but I was. He pulled back on his reins to ride deeper into town and away from those robots. I followed and was pleased to see the townsfolk had the good sense to get the eff out of the vicinity. All except one.
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