The boy laughed along and struck a sulfur match placing the flame to a cigar. Blue smoke shrouded the young lawman’s face, hiding its boyish features.
Chapter Five
“How far we going to ride today?” the boy asked.
“A few more rods maybe,” Bardwell said, watching the abandoned skeletons of the once thriving metropolis now coming into view.
Curtis pointed to thick black smoke boiling from the ground twenty rods across the valley. If the great valley beyond the range was desolate, this smaller valley to the south was a man-made hell itself.
“Oil,” Bardwell said, looking in that direction.
“Oil…?”
“It seeps to the surface in some places,” he said. “Craft keeps the flames going to keep the mutants to the south from getting any ideas.”
“How far south can we go before we hit the ocean?”
Bardwell studied the terrain. “The water’s just past that range of low mountains there,” he said, pointing south under the scorching sun.
“If things go bad,” Curtis added. “We ain’t got room to run.”
“You’re right,” Bardwell replied. “But they won’t.”
“And you somehow know this for sure?”
“I do,” Bardwell said, “Don’t ask me how I know, but I know.”
“You ever been shot?” the boy asked.
“Once or twice,” Bardwell said. “Look, I know what you’re thinking. I’m not invincible. As much as you’ve been told otherwise, Officer Dan Bardwell is not bulletproof.”
The boy laughed, “Maybe hundred-proof?”
“Maybe…?” Bardwell said, smiling, “But damned sure not bulletproof.”
The outline of a small village came into view just over a low range of hills the pair was descending.
Curtis pointed.
“We’ll hold up here for the night,” Bardwell said. “And get a fresh start before sunup?”
“You think these folk are going to welcome two lawmen from the north?” Curtis asked, biting his cracked lips.
“Folks welcome the law in these parts,” Bardwell said.
“Mutants…?”
“No,” Bardwell replied. “Good folk that’ve been run out of the city. They’re just like you and me.”
“I sure as fuck hope so?”
“Don’t worry.”
Three or four big men stood in the path armed with clubs and long shafts.
“We come in peace, gentlemen,” Bardwell said. “We mean you no harm and only seek refuge for the coming night as we travel into the city.”
“What business is it that you have in the city, Mister?” One of the bigger of the burly men asked.
Curtis had a hand on his pistol in the case that things went further south than they already were.
Bardwell raised his right arm exposing the five-pointed star of the law inked into his skin on his wrist. Curtis did the same.
“We are the law,” Bardwell said. “And we seek justice for three men that have run in this direction.”
The three talked quietly among themselves, glancing at the mounted lawmen from time to time.
“Welcome, gentlemen,” one of the three finally said, breaking the unwanted silence. “You will be our guests tonight and for as long as you wish.”
“Thank you, gentlemen,” Bardwell said, stepping to the ground. Curtis did as his superior and dismounted.
“Gunslingers, I see,” The man who seemed to lead the group said, looking over at the shooting irons the lawmen carried.
“We are,” Bardwell said. “We are a dying band from a time, long forgotten?”
“Names Jeb, Jeb Stewart,” that gentleman said. “These are my brothers Sam and Cliff. Like you,” he said. “We are descendants of the same tribe.”
“Bardwell,” Bardwell said as way of introduction. “This is my partner Officer Curtis.”
The lawmen led their mounts along a dirt and stone path leading to the community following Stewart and his brothers.
“What’s this about descendants of the same tribe?” Bardwell asked, tying the horses under the shade of a few trees between the adobe buildings.
“We were once the policemen and military in the city,” Stewart said, casting a thumb over his shoulder and pointing at the vacant concrete metropolis in the background. Stewart raised his right hand exposing the ink on his wrist along with his brothers.
“I see,” Bardwell said, removing his hat and hanging it on the wall.
“Honey,” Stewart said. “We’ve company for the night.”
“Gunslingers of the old, huh…?”
“Of old yes,” Stewart said. “Now, we are not so much. We were run out of town seven calendars before last.”
“But you still have them?” Curtis asked.
“Our shooting irons,” Stewart said smiling. “We do. That’s how we can coexist with the inhabitants of the city. They fear getting too close to us out here beyond the defenses of their walls.”
“I have something that I want you boys to look at, then,” Bardwell said, reaching into one of his leather saddlebags.
“Look at this, Zeke,” Stewart said, cradling the weapon in his hand as a curator would a rare artifact.
“That’s a Colt nineteen eleven you got there,” Stewart said, smiling and sliding the action back. “It’s been through a fire, but it looks real good, Mister.”
“You folks think we can make her work?”
“I’ll do you one better,” Stewart said. “We got bullets for a forty-five ACP.”
“Do you mind?” The other gentleman asked taking the piece. “I think that I can fashion a pair of grips if you’ll let me have it for a couple of hours?”
Stewart’s woman was soon back from the kitchen with a pitcher of ice-cold lemon water and a bottle of liquor. She smiled. Bardwell returned the gesture.
“Thank you, Ma’am,” he said.
The host poured drinks of the two compounds. “So you gentlemen have ridden across the borderlands?”
“We have,” Bardwell said.
“It must have been some journey?” Stewart said. “We haven’t seen anyone from the States in some time now? Maybe three calendars?”
“Don’t get many folks coming over the pass?” Bardwell asked.
“No, Sir,” Stewart said. “How far have you traveled, in getting to this, Godforsaken place?”
“Better than a hundred rods,” Bardwell said. “We hail from Sacramento in what was California in the better time.”
“I see,” Stewart said. “You say that you trail three men? The city will not be so kind as to give them up. You do realize that, don’t you, Mister?”
“I do.”
The clansman unfurled a large map of the local topography. “I might have something for you?
Bardwell sipped the cool drink. Curtis leaned in close for an inspection of the hand drawn map now spread across the table.
“The city is fortified heavily to the north and south,” Stewart said. “Up this way, we can’t figure why they would make the effort? The south makes more sense?”
“Mexico?” Bardwell asked.
“Yes, Mexican pirates are poking at the city without end.”
“How far is Mexico, Sir?” Curtis asked
Stewart looked up to the thatch ceiling. “Less than a hundred rods, I’m sure.”
“So Craft and his men have their hands full with the Mexicans?” Bardwell asked.
“Yes,” Stewart replied. “That’s why I think that the two of you can gain entrance if you will travel south along the fire line and come in from the western flank of the city?”
“Undefended?”
“Yes.”
There was a knock at the door.
“Enter,” Stewart said.
Some of the community men stood out front in the shade. “We hear that there are lawmen here, Jeb?”
“You hear right,” Stewart said.
Bardwell and his partner stood, not knowing what to expect fro
m the gathering.
“We’d like to join,” the spokesman of the group announced. “That is if they will have us along?”
The lawman pulled on his black hat stepping out from the doorway. “My partner and I would welcome your help, but will only allow you as far as the perimeter of the city. After that, we will proceed on our own.”
The gathered crowd spoke among themselves in low voices.
“Do you men have arms of the old?” Bardwell asked.
“Aye,” the gathered men shouted. One man stepped forward. “To the teeth,” he said raising a long gun high above his head.
“Then we ride at first light, gentlemen,” Bardwell said. “Get your affairs in order and meet us at the path before the daystar makes an appearance in the northern sky come the morrow.”
Chapter Six
By first light, Bardwell and Curtis stood next to their saddled mounts in the path that would lead into the city. The sky to the north and east awakened in gold and crimson over the distant range. Clouds were seen on the horizon threatening rain. It hadn’t rained in this country in some time. Any form of precipitation would be welcomed, even if in the saddle.
Here and there one of the clansmen from the tiny mountain community led a horse and carried a gun or two or three.
“Good morning, Officer,” Stewart said, looking back at the men congregating behind. “Are you ready for Los Angeles?”
“The question is, Sir,” Curtis asked. “Is Los Angeles ready for us?”
All three laughed.
Ten mounted men started in the direction of the southern coastline and the fires burning there. A light rain came up bringing with it the acids of the violent atmosphere, stinging eyes and irritating airways. Both men and animal struggled during the journey.
Abandoned concrete towered hundreds of feet into the sky. Discarded items were stacked ten feet high in places to barricade what there was of a community beyond.
Stewart held up a hand signaling the men to stop. No one had spoken over the last rod traveled. The men dismounted leading their mounts forward.
“Here,” Stewart said. “This is where you gentlemen will make your way into the city. We’ll loiter in these parts to cover your escape. If you do not return when the daystar begins its journey into the sea, we will return to the protection of our little community.”
“Thank you, Jeb,” Bardwell said, shaking the big man’s hand. “For all that you and your men have done for us.”
“You can thank me when we get back home during the night,” Stewart said, smiling.
Bardwell reached up taking the saddle gun belt and slinging it over his shoulder. Curtis did the same, removing his scabbard gun.
“Sir,” one of Stewart’s men said walking closer. “I think this is yours?”
A polished Colt 1911 was presented to the lawman with a box labeled .45 ACP. The relic had been fitted with grips of the manzanita that grew here along the western range.
“Thank you, my friend,” Bardwell said, taking the ancient weapon and stuffing it into the back of his trousers. “I will see you again.”
The pair of lawmen started forward with the others looking on. Clouds of black oil smoke choked out the forgotten city skyline.
Mutant dogs slithered close to the junk wall guarding the city, yipping cautiously, but keeping their distance.
Bardwell dared a look back. Stewart and his men had dissolved away. Maybe they were no more than cheap talk, Stewart and his clan?
Noise, steam whistles, and bells drew closer from the south and west. The lawmen closed the gap to a towering wall of graffiti and concrete. They were inside now. No one had seemed to notice two cowboys from the north carrying the weapons of old and walking among them.
Curtis tapped his superior on the shoulder. Bardwell turned, looking to where it was the boy pointed.
“A locomotive…?”
“Yes,” Bardwell said. “It’s one of Craft’s contraptions.”
An explosion of some sort tore across the open macadam. Earsplitting squeals of twisting steel and iron penetrated to the core. Mongrel dogs ran for cover along with some of the mutant population of the city.
“You think that’s Stewart and his men?” Curtis asked.
“I do.”
What seemed some sort of militant corps ran by at the double-quick in the direction of the explosion armed mostly with sticks and stones, some with modern weapons?
“What the fuck is that?” Curtis asked, crouching behind a pile of broken concrete rubble that was more than two ages old.
“History books would call that a horseless carriage, Son,” Bardwell said, smiling.
“Where the fuck do they get gasoline to run them on?”
“Distillation,” Bardwell said. “It ain’t no different from making whiskey, is it?”
“How the fuck, am I supposed to know?”
“You’re the school boy, Franklin.”
Looking around at the dingy city and the mutants that inhabited it, the boy added, “I’ll be damned.”
“They have been,” Bardwell said pointing at a nearby wall, the next stop along the way.
Curtis agreed as he ran low along the pockmarked concrete behind the lawman.
“Is this all due to the radiation?” Curtis asked. “It can’t be, can it?”
“Some,” Bardwell said. “Some are the mutants left behind through reproduction, the others are zombies.”
“Those motherfuckers look dead if you ask me,” Curtis said.
“They are,” Bardwell said, scanning the street for the next hiding place. “As far as the good Lord is concerned.”
“Craft…?”
“Yep,” Bardwell answered, crouching low behind what must have been the topmost floors of the building they stood under. The lawman dared a glance to the heavens. “They come here for the dope, his kind pedal. Once they get a snort of Craft’s pharmaceuticals they can’t stop. It eats at their minds and their soul. Before long, they stay on just to get another hit and another?”
“I told you that Craft was evil, Sir,” Curtis said, looking over a wall.
Behind a pile of forgotten automobiles and buses and assorted twisted steel, was something that resembled a watering hole. The young officer pointed, shrugging his shoulders.
Bardwell nodded his agreement. The pair started off in that direction.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” A tall soulless mutant asked. The mutant seemed to be a doorman in an odd way.
Bardwell smiled quickly removing the long blade from its sheath and taking the man by the hair. The man’s lifeblood ran in rivers to the dirty concrete at his feet. The lawman wiped the blood on its shirt and slid the blade home.
The boy nodded his approval of what Bardwell had done to dispatch the man quietly. He pulled back on the rusting steel door exposing the watering hole inside where men and mutants sat drinking rotgut booze and smoking the toxic long grasses that folk down this way enjoyed.
Bardwell started inside walking in the direction of the bar. His spur rowels sang cutting through the gathered crowd. Curtis couldn’t believe the balls it took to pull this off.
“I’m looking for Wyman Maddox, Marion Holderman, and Parle Deville,” Bardwell shouted, stepping onto the bar.
The crowd silenced, looking in his direction. “Who the fuck, are you?” Someone yelled from the crowd.
“I’m the law,” Bardwell replied, kicking a bottle of booze to the floor. Glass shattered nearby.
The sudden silence that had fallen over the place erupted bordering on an all-out brawl. The dank, smoky air inside watering hole smelled of piss and booze and sex. What could be called atmosphere was electric. Literally, as Craft was known to use a functioning biomass generator, thus adding to the noxious fumes the—once great—city emitted.
Laughter was heard from every corner of the room. Sparks arched from exposed copper wire as old as time.
“Go on,” a loud voice yelled from the back of the house. “We ain’t no fuck
ing use for the law around here.”
“Yeah, get the fuck off our bar,” another said.
Outside in the distance—closer to the fortress wall, from the sound of it—another of Stewart’s explosions rocked what was left of the city. Dust filtered down from the rough concrete overhead.
A mutant at the bar reached into a dirty sleeveless camouflage shirt, Bardwell drew the long knife, pulling it across the gentleman’s throat before he could produce his piece and get off the first shot.
Steel flashed from the far corner. A burst of fire shattered glass behind where the lawman stood. Curtis cycled the action several times plowing the gathered crowd like a sickle.
“So what’s it going to be?” Bardwell asked, in a dark, low voice that everyone had to strain to hear. “Are you going to tell me where I can find these men that I trail?”
“Fuck y…” a gentleman seated nearby, started to yell back when the lawman pulled one of his converted Colts, fired and holstered the piece, silencing the man for eternity.
The door swung open spilling in a nuclear gray light from the outside. Bardwell fired each of his pistols hitting the uninvited guests to the party. The door slammed shut.
“My partner and I can do this all day if you wish?” the lawman said. “Ain’t nothing that I’d rather do.”
Every cataract-clouded eye in the house turned to look at the young black man standing by the only escape still left to the room’s occupants.
Curtis gracefully tipped his hat smiling.
Another blast rocked the very foundation of the once bombed-out concrete bunker that doubled as a city saloon,
“Where are they?” Bardwell asked firing again. “Do you know?” he asked thumbing back the hammer. “Can you tell me where I can find these gentlemen?” he asked firing again as the bodies of the dead began to pile up.
A mute sat shaking in his chair as the lawman pointed the barrel of his Navy Colt in his direction.
“Where can they be found, Mister,” Bardwell asked, spitting tobacco juice on the dirty floor. “So help me God, I’d just as soon pull the trigger than wait for an answer.”
The mute pointed to the east but said nothing in answer to the question.
Ain't No Law in California Page 4