Lone Gunfighter of the Wastelands

by Rachel Aukes

  “Water,” Terry said, and Joe didn’t know if the man was begging for a drink or telling him he’d found some. It wasn’t until Terry led them to a covered dome a few feet off the track that Joe realized it’d been the latter.

  Terry practically pushed away from Joe before he took the last couple of steps to the underground tank. Joe couldn’t stand. He fell onto his butt, then dragged himself to the well cover. Terry located a spigot and turned it on. He was down on all fours, drinking from the spigot like a thirsty dog.

  Joe crawled up next to him. As he waited, he scanned the area for signs of trouble, but the only building nearby—a train depot—seemed vacant, which was good news for them. No one to tell the murcs about the fugitives who’d passed through their town. Vandals had painted the side of the building facing the tracks, reinforcing his opinion of the situation. Joe’s gaze panned over the various shapes and colors, and settled on a haiku painted in bold letters:

  Shiprock’s end came when

  Indecisive governments

  Became divisive

  Joe nodded lightly at the logic; he reckoned it summed up the days before the Shiprock War as clearly as anything he’d ever read. Each land zone managed itself after the Revolution, which the MRC’s wealthy, corrupt administrators proved soon enough was a fiction. Shiprock had been the first zone to fight back. On the tenth anniversary of Black Night, the Shiprock War began, with the Ravens assassinating the local MRC administrators. Joe remembered all too clearly each person he’d killed on that bloody night in hopes of bringing control back to the people. Shiprock had the numbers, but murcs had the power, and they’d quashed the ill-fated rebellion in fourteen months.

  Joe had traveled to Cavil after the war to fulfill a promise he’d made to his closest friend and brother-in-arms, Nick Swinton. Of all the battles and of all the killing Joe had been involved in, the hardest thing he’d ever done was to give the news to Nick Swinton’s wife—that her husband had been killed before getting the chance to see his infant son. Joe hadn’t stayed long—he should’ve stayed longer—but the next war was already brewing in the Wilds, and he went to make things right after the defeat in Shiprock.

  The rebel army in the Wilds had learned hard lessons from Shiprock, and in twenty-eight days they’d killed every murc and murc-sympathizer without mercy. The Wilds Rising was so short, yet the death toll so much higher than its predecessor. The murcs had left the Wilds to govern themselves, and the zone closed itself off from the rest of the wastelands. Joe knew he’d crossed lines in the Wilds, and tried not to think back for fear of getting lost in those suffocating, dark corners of his memories.

  Terry leaned back from the spigot. “Best water I’ve ever drank.”

  Joe hurriedly looked away from the haiku, leaned in, and began lapping up the water pouring from the spigot. Since the water was stored underground, he trusted it to not be polluted with radiation like most aboveground tanks were. He drank until his stomach was full, then leaned back for Terry to drink more.

  “Water’s not free, fellas, and you’re wasting it, letting it pour on the ground like that.”

  Joe unslung his rifle and swung it around to find an old man, tall and lanky, with leathery skin that looked like he’d spent a hefty chunk of his life in the desert.

  “We don’t have credits on us, but I can send money as soon as I get back to where I need to be,” Joe stated, not lowering the rifle.

  The man scowled. “Credits aren’t worth much around here. Bartering is a lot more useful.” He nodded to the rifle Joe carried.

  “The blaster’s not for sale,” Joe said.

  “Then you pair will have to work off what you owe,” the stranger replied as a matter of fact.

  Joe shook his head. “Afraid we have to keep moving. We have trouble on our trail, and it’s the kind of trouble I doubt you want around here.”

  “The only kind of trouble that follows strangers around here tend to be either the murc kind or the hunter kind. You have one of those kinds of trouble?”

  Joe gave a single nod.

  “Please, mister. We don’t mean you any trouble,” Terry said as he slowly turned off the spigot.

  “Just because you don’t mean to bring trouble, doesn’t mean it doesn’t ride along with you.” The man’s eyes then narrowed. “Pointing that blaster at me makes me think you do mean to bring trouble with you, though.”

  After a moment of staring each other down, Joe lowered the weapon. “My partner’s right. We’re not here to cause trouble.” He paused before continuing. “I’ll give you the rifle for water, a meal, a bio-wrap, and a ride out of here for both my friend and me.”

  “I don’t have any antibiotics, let alone a fancy bio-wrap, and you don’t look so good,” the guy replied sharply. “You carrying the plague?”

  Joe motioned to his leg. “No, just an infected wound.” Then he added, “How about the rifle for the other three things: water, food, and a ride?”

  The stranger eyed Joe for a length. “You have yourself a deal. Follow me.” He turned and stepped onto a wooden platform built alongside the train track.

  Terry helped Joe to his feet, and the pair made their way across the track, up and onto the platform, and through a door into sweltering, stale air. Inside was the crumbling remains of a general store. A few dry goods remained on the shelves, covered in thick dust.

  “Wait here,” the man said.

  Joe leaned on the counter, and Terry released him to walk down the aisles. The man picked up a small box, wiped away the dust to read the label, then put it back, careful to line it up with the other boxes on the shelf. “This place looks abandoned.”

  “It’s a ghost town,” Joe said as he looked behind the counter for anything that could be of use. He found nothing but dust and broken glass. “The train probably doesn’t even stop through here anymore.”

  The water had given Joe strength, but his head throbbed, and he knew without feeling his forehead that a fever was building. He needed to get back to Cavil soon, or else he wouldn’t be of any help to the Swintons.

  “Where are we headed to next?” Terry asked.

  Joe looked up. “I need to get back to Cavil. There are some folks depending on me. How about you?”

  Terry shrugged. “Wherever you go. I’m from Garrington, but I can’t ever go back there.”

  “What happened in Garrington?”

  Terry swallowed before answering. “I worked a catfish farm there, and the farmer’s daughter is the most beautiful woman you’d ever lay eyes on. Her name’s Luna.”

  Joe kept himself from smirking. He’d heard a story like this a hundred times before, and despite the details, they all ended the same. The doomed tale of star-crossed lovers.

  “I fell in love with Luna, and she loves me, too,” Terry continued. “Her father had other plans for her. He wouldn’t even consider the idea of her hooking up with one of his workers, and he forbade her from seeing me ever again. Well, we made plans to elope, but he found out and called up his buddy, the MRC administrator, and I ended up in the Devil’s Playground with a life sentence.”

  “You’re not going back to Garrington to get your girl?” Joe asked.

  Terry’s face grew sadder. “Before the murcs took me away, Luna’s father told me he’d rather see her dead than see her with the likes of me, and that if I ever showed my face in Garrington again, he’d kill her and then kill me.”

  “That’s a rough deal, friend,” Joe said, the smirk falling. A sound outside the front window soon drew his attention, however. He trudged over to see the old man drive up in a beat-up two-wheeled bike. He grimaced. The bike didn’t even have a cabin, though at least it had two seats and two sets of controls. He turned to Terry. “Our ride’s here.”

  Terry met Joe at the door. The pair headed outside and down the steps.

  The old man stepped off the bike. “She’s fully charged, so she’ll get you where you need to go.” He handed Joe a bag. “There are two ration bars and a canteen of
water in there.”

  “It’ll do.” Joe took the rifle, set the safety switch on, and handed it to the old man.

  The man took the weapon and checked it over with hands familiar to handling weapons. He slung it over his shoulder. “You know, you could’ve just shot me and taken what you wanted.”

  “I could’ve, but you were gutsy enough to barter with a rifle pointed at you, so I figure you need a gun more than I do right now.”

  The man gave a small nod. “The murcs drop off the mutants they can’t use in the desert. Most are harmless. Some aren’t.”

  “I came across one before, and I’d be happy to never come across another one again in my life,” Joe agreed.

  The man looked out across the dull brown land, made no more vibrant by the harsh sunlight. He pointed. “Driving alongside the tracks is the nearest thing you’ll find to a road around here.”

  “We’re not going to follow the tracks.”

  “That’s what I figured. You’ll need this, then.” He pulled out a compass and handed it to Joe. “Since you’re on the run, I recommend you go south to the Wilds. It’s the safest place if you’re on the run, but it can also be the most dangerous place for the same reason. Or, I’d tell you to go west, and you’ll find yourselves in the Tule Coast. The land’s good, but you’ll find too many refugees for your liking. Then again, there are enough refugees to get lost in, if you know what I mean.”

  “How far is it to Cavil from here?” Joe asked.

  The old man shook his head. “I’ve never heard of the place, so it’s nowhere nearby.”

  “It’s in the Midlands,” Joe said.

  “Ah, well, if you head east-northeast, you’ll reach the Midlands, but the edge is well over five hundred miles from here. Worse, if you don’t follow the compass carefully, you could find yourselves in the Tar Flats, and no one wants to end up in those swamps.”

  Joe thought for a moment. “What’s the nearest town outside of Shiprock from here?”

  “That’d by Copper Gulch, in the Salt Flats. It’s a decent town, but there’s a bounty hunting guild up there, which could be a bad thing if you’re on the run. It’s also all desert up that way, too, and some nasty beasts that prowl the nights, but there are oases if you look for them.”

  “Are there any good directions to go?” Terry asked.

  The old man chuckled. “Not in the wastelands.” He suddenly stiffened and cocked his head as though listening for something, but Joe heard nothing.

  The old man knelt and touched the ground. “We’re about to have company. It’s too soon for the next train, which means that it’s not likely to be welcome company. Our business is done here. You’d best be going.” He hustled across the road and disappeared through a doorway in a dilapidated saloon.

  Joe took the front seat of the bike. “Climb on, Terry.”

  “Which way are we headed?” Terry asked as he scrambled onto the seat behind Joe.

  Joe held up the compass and lined up the direction with a rock in the distance to drive toward. He snapped the compass closed and slid it into his pocket. “North.”

  “To Copper Gulch? But he said that there’s an entire guild of bounty hunters up there,” Terry protested.

  “The Iron Guild,” Joe said. “We definitely want to avoid them, but I know someone up there who’ll help us.”

  Joe took off. The bike was old, rough, loud, and probably hadn’t had a tune-up in over a decade. Nearly every system displayed on the screen had a red warning light. He was surprised the solar bike still ran. He noticed the dust cloud in the distance, and throttled the bike up to maximum speed. It protested with a grinding of gears and slowly gained speed.

  Behind them, the dust cloud grew too quickly, and Joe grew nervous. The bike wouldn’t go any faster, and there was nothing but flat land for a few miles. There was what looked like a gulley and larger rocks to the west, so Joe changed direction. He threw regular glances over his shoulder. He could now make out three murc cutters in the dust cloud barreling toward Sandville.

  If he could see the cutters, then the murcs could see him. He hoped they weren’t looking. A flash of blaster fire shooting out from the first vehicle and slamming into the ground to Joe’s left dashed the idea.

  “Hang on!” Joe yelled, and began weaving the bike to make a harder target.

  Shots erupted from the three cutters, which spread out in a line. He drove as quickly as he could toward the uneven landscape, but progress felt terminally slow. The vehicles were gaining. Joe made tighter swerves to move faster forward. Blaster fire continued to zoom past him on both sides.

  “They shot me!” Terry cried out.

  “Hang in there. I can’t stop until we lose them.” Joe pressed forward. They were nearly to the rocky terrain, and Joe could make out that what he’d thought was a small gulley was a deep and winding ravine, likely an old riverbed back when water ran through the area.

  “It hurts something awful, Joe,” Terry gritted out. “I think I’ve reached the end of my rope.”

  Joe yanked the bike around a boulder and found a narrow path into the ravine. He glanced over his shoulder before going off the ledge. “Tie a knot and hold on.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  “Hang in there, Terry,” Joe said for the umpteenth time that hour. He drove through the hardened riverbed. The area was narrow enough that the cutters could only follow one behind the other, and the smaller bike was putting distance between them and the murcs. The vehicles still fired, but it had become sporadic, as there was at least half a mile between them now.

  Terry had gone quiet, but Joe couldn’t take his eyes off the rough terrain to check on him. The sun was setting, which brought both benefit and danger since he could lose the murcs in the dark…if he didn’t run into a boulder or off a cliff and kill himself first.

  The painkiller had long since worn off, and Joe felt every bump and turn in his throbbing wounds. His leg felt like it was on fire. His shoulder hurt as well, but it didn’t burn like his thigh, which meant that, hopefully, he had only a single infection site to deal with. His head pounded from the fever, and every couple of minutes he had to blink multiple times to bring his double line of vision back into a single line.

  “Hang in there, Terry,” he murmured as he blinked.

  The sun set behind the horizon, and an orange twilight set over the desert before being overtaken by the dark. The bike’s lights automatically turned on, and Joe scrambled to turn them off. The cutters’ bright beams caused shadows to dance around Joe, and he struggled to separate them from the rocks. Then he noticed a massive boulder that had rolled into the riverbed.

  “Hang in there, Terry,” Joe said, louder this time. “Our lucky break is coming up.”

  He had to slow the bike to squeeze around the boulder. They fitted, barely, and as soon as they were around, Joe sped up. But with the vehicle lights blocked by the boulder, Joe was soon forced to slow down, unable to see more than a few feet ahead of him. After several more seconds, he heard the sound of engines grinding, and brought the bike to a stop to look behind. He could see the glow from the cutters’ lights behind the boulder. From the sounds of the mechanical strain, they were trying to push the rock out of the way, which meant they had no cannons. Three cutters pushing a boulder that size was like an eagle trying to carry off a whale.

  Joe laughed. “We did it, Terry.” He turned back to Terry, and his grin fell.

  Terry had slumped in his seat, his side blackened by the blaster shot. His eyes stared out into the night, void of humor or life.

  A cool breeze made Joe shiver, and he clenched his fists. “I told you to hang in there, Terry,” he said, though he knew the youth didn’t stand a chance from a rifle shot to the stomach.

  Joe turned in his seat and started driving. Going slowly to avoid crashing, the numbness in his chest did little to pacify his wounds. He drove for several miles farther before finding a way up the ravine and onto flatter land. He didn’t turn on the lights in case t
he murcs had drones. Instead, he drove under the moonlight, careful to never look back, not to avoid searching for their pursuers, but because he couldn’t bear to look at his fallen friend.

  The bike’s solar battery drained sometime before dawn. Joe, shivering, pulled Terry’s body to a nearby overhang, and he did his best to bury the young man under rocks. Still, he expected beasts would find the body soon enough. When he’d finished, he stood over the makeshift grave.

  Joe wasn’t a religious man. He’d seen enough in his life that would make a person either turn to religion or turn away from it altogether, and he was one of the latter. He took a seat, eyed the rough pile of stones, and said quietly, “I’m sorry, Terry.”

  He closed his eyes to push the day out of his mind, and when he opened them again, the sun was shining brightly.

  He’d meant to stay awake and he jerked to his feet. His body moved sluggishly, and his left thigh had swollen, causing his pants to tighten. He stumbled from dizziness, and struggled back to the bike. Settling onto the seat, he frowned at how even his fingers seemed to be filled with cotton. He pulled the water and a ration bar out of the bag, and forced down the contents, even though his stomach fought him at every bite.

  Joe took a long breath to settle his stomach before checking the bike’s battery. It had charged enough to start, though the battery was old enough that Joe suspected it’d not make it through a second night. He looked at the compass, though he knew he was miles off course after the chase the day before. Still, he established his path to the north and went through the bike’s cracked operator screen to set the autopilot. He initiated the program, the bike’s wheels spun as it entered autopilot, and Joe left Terry’s grave behind.

  Joe rode non-stop through the day. His stomach refused to eat the second ration bar, but he was able to drink the rest of the water. The sun beat down, and Joe’s lips cracked like the ground he rode on.