Cultwick: The Sweeper Bot Plague (10 page)

He steadied the long barrel before firing
four shots, landing a sleep dart in the dancer, the rat, and the doctor in addition to a shock dart in the automaton. All four targets fell flat to the ground leaving the chromesmith bewildered.

“Erynn Clover!” he shouted, riding Polly toward her. “I’ve come for your bounty.” Vincent got off the horse
and placed his rifle back in the horse’s saddle. He then gave a sharp whistle that the creature apparently understood, as it quickly wandered away from him.

“Who are you?” the girl asked, her hand hovering over her pistol. “What did you do to my friends?”

“Me?” he began, giving a slight cough. “I’m just your friendly everyday bounty hunter. Vincent Rourke is the name. And your friends will be just fine -- till I hand you over to the empire, of course.”

“I’m not going to be such an easy target,” she said her fingers fluttering over the butt of the gun.

“That’s why I didn’t already give you a sleep dart, darling. No reason to take the fun out of it,” he said, the cough worsening. He threw back the side of his duster, revealing his pistol.

“So you want to see who’s faster?” she asked.

“Oh, I know who’s faster,” he said, coughing up a bit of blood. “I just want you to know it too.”

Before Vincent could pull, however, his head began to spin, and he dropped to his knees vomiting up a substantial amount of blood. Before passing out he managed to say, “That damn woman will be the death of me...”

Chapter 10. Fiona the Cannibal

Her feet blistered and burned from the scorched earth below. The bright sun looming above her was sweltering, causing sweat to drench through her bloodstained dress. Her hands were still caked in the dried blood of the Cultwick Corps guards and Dr. Norton that she had slain in her escape.

A kettle of vultures circled above her, smelling the death and putrefaction permeating from her. Occasionally they would swoop down toward her to test whether she was still alive. One, in particular, made the mistake of coming too close and paid the price for it. She swatted violently at it, killing the bird in one brutal blow.
Its bones shattered, and its body contorted as it landed on the dusty earth. A rattlesnake near where the dead bird landed recoiled, exposing its fangs and shaking its tail.

Fiona
ignored the snake and trudged forward in silence, playing with the emerald necklace at her chest for some time before seeing two men on horseback in the distance. She smiled widely, as they approached her. Both were dressed in an assortment of dirty brown leathers and wore Stetsons on their heads.

Each of the men also had a gunslinger
’s belt along their waists armed with revolvers. She reached into the depths of her mind, where she found that she knew the types of weapons they held. A ‘Colby Revolving Pistol PK-19’ and a ‘Colby Standard Pistol BU-12.’ She didn’t know anything of weaponry, and she realized that the source of this information was stored in Erynn’s mind.

One of the men
licked his lips and asked, “What do we have here?”

“Can’t imagine she’s got anything worth stealing, Festus,” the other answered looking at her dismissively.

The man called Festus got off the horse and walked close to Fiona. “She’s got at least one thing worth taking,” he said.

Fiona cocked her head to the side, but said nothing. The other man got off his horse as well, but
maintained a distance away from her.

“It’s pretty much anything that walks with you, isn’t it?”
he asked.

“Shut your mouth, Lyle,” the other responded. “I don’t think she’s right in the head anyway. Who’s it hurting?”

“You want to play?” Fiona asked smiling.

“See?” Festus said
looking back to Lyle. “Yeah, that’s right, honey. We’re going to play a little game.”

“Okay,” she began, “but some people
think I play too rough.”

“That’s okay, darling
. I know exactly what you mean,” he said reaching out to grab Fiona’s wrist.

When his
dirty fingers touched her skin, she grimaced and lunged forward. Her teeth sunk into the skin of his neck, causing blood to freely gush out and cover her lips. The man screamed and pushed her backward, but Fiona bit down even harder. Though he did manage to pull himself away from her, she took a large chunk of his neck with her.

He held both hands over the gushing wound, as he dropped to the ground, still screaming in agony. The other man, Lyle, pulled
the Colby Revolving Pistol from his belt and began firing at Fiona. She jumped to the side and positioned herself behind one of the startled horses, while the other fled. Cackling madly to herself, she snapped the creature’s neck and pushed it with enough strength that it landed on top of Lyle’s legs.

He too began screaming just as Festus had become silent
. Fiona turned her attention to Festus, who lay flat, with his hands idle and no longer blocking any blood flow.

Fiona knelt at his side and picked up his arm, holding it near to her face. “I am so hungry,” she said to herself. Wildly she bit into his arm, pulling the flesh off the bone and squirting more blood out.

“What are you doing to him?” Lyle yelled, still pinned underneath the horse.

Her mouth half full, she answered, “Don’t worry, mister. I won’t eat him all.
I’m not that hungry.”

The man struggled to get the horse off him, but it weighed too heavy for him to move alone. His gun landed some
distance behind him and was just out of his reach. Contorting himself, so that he might get closer, he scraped his fingers impotently at the dust near the butt of the weapon.

He looked around for something to help him, while Fiona continued loudly chomping away at Festus’ arm.
Lyle found lying nearby a short and slender twig. Picking it up he attempted to drag the revolver closer toward him. The effort proved to be slowly working, and it was almost within his reach.

Fiona, however, had finished her short meal, and stood over the trapped man. She watched as he pawed for the weapon just outside his fingertips’ range.

“Let me help,” she said to him. She stepped on top of the horse, causing him a considerable amount of pain, and continued past him to the gun. Fiona picked it up carelessly and inspected it closely.

Before she could do anything else with it, though, a rush of emotions, thoughts, and
a various assortment of information rushed through her head. She knew the man she had just eaten was Festus Fitzgerald. He was born in Red River thirty-three years ago to Bedford and Lizzie Fitzgerald. He had two brothers and a sister, all of which had died from the Sweeper Bot Plague many years back.

He began his criminal life as a cattle rustler, stealing from the big ranchers that operated near Red River. From there he moved on to bank and train robberies, but in recent
years, he had a falling out with many of his prior criminal accomplices. He and the other man, Lyle, roamed between the various small settlements in the west, stealing what they could from whomever they could. They had spent much of their time gambling in saloons or with the whores that would have them.

Fiona knew a
ll this, because she and Festus were in a way one in the same. She occupied him, and he her. Standing over the body of Lyle, she was also Festus, dead and with blood oozing from the gaping wounds in his neck and arm. Her thoughts became his thoughts.

She willed his corpse to stand and walk toward her and the pinned man at her feet. He did
exactly as she instructed, groaning as he stumbled forward.

Lyle looked up to see him and shouted, “Get her Festus!”

Festus, however, only continued to groan and shuffle toward Fiona. His dead eyes were transfixed on nothing in particular but were unmoving all the same.

“He’s my pet now,” she told Lyle, leaning down over him. “Do you want to be my pet too?”

“What are you talking about, you crazy bitch?” he screamed. “What did you do to him?”

“I think you’ll make a fun pet,” she continued. “Hopefully you’ll be able to walk, but I suppose you could crawl if nothing else. That could still be fun.
You’ll be unique!”

Fiona leaned down, opening her bloody maw and prepared to sink her teeth into the man’s flesh. An intense pain suddenly entered her head, causing her to lurch to the side, incidentally tossing the gun aside
. She grabbed her skull in agony, putting pressure against the throbbing ache.

“Now?” she screamed. “You come now?”

The mind of Fiona was fading, replaced instead by the pain-addled consciousness of Newton. Her eyes had changed from the dark, black voids to a beautiful, vibrant blue. Despite her aching head, she looked around at her surroundings - a man being slowly crushed by a dead horse, a ghoulish man with severe injuries simply standing there emotionlessly, and all taking place in the middle of what appeared to be the wasteland of the western deserts.

Newton noted the blood dripping from her mouth, so she wiped some off with the sleeve of the lab coat she found herself wearing. She looked down to see the name; ‘Dr. Blake Norton’ embroidered on the chest of the garment.

“She really did it,” she said to herself. “My visions are coming true.”

She dropped her head, as several teardrops descended from her eyes. The stream of liquid left a clean area streaking down her cheeks as they fell.

The pinned man watched her in horror from beneath the horse, while Festus continued standing there aimlessly. She looked back up and thought that she should help this man. She thought that perhaps she could still save him from Fiona. She crawled over to him and began to lift the horse off the crushed man.

“I’ll get you out of there,” she said to him.

As she did, the other man, whom she realized she somehow knew was named Festus, began to help her. Surprised and confused by his aid, she stopped lifting. The ghoul stopped as well and the horse crashed back down on Lyle. Though she didn’t understand how, she knew that she could access this man’s thoughts, and make him do what she wished.

Together with Festus’ help, she managed to lift the dead animal off Lyle. He scurried backward as soon as he was freed, and he even attempted to stand but screamed at the pain before falling back down.

“You must get out of here,” she said. “I won’t be able to stop her when she returns.”

Lyle
didn’t respond to her, but instead chose to crawl toward the gun that had been tossed. Newton was too busy struggling with the pain in her head to notice him. He was soon able to reach the gun, and when he did, he pointed it directly at her and fired.

Festus
shambled his broken body between the gunshots and Fiona, taking the bullets into himself.

“Festus!” the shooter cried out. “Move!”

Newton watched, as Festus staggered toward the other man and swung wildly at the pistol, knocking it from his grasp. She had not intentionally meant for him to do anything, but perhaps he acted out of an instinct of her preservation. Whatever the reason, she knew she needed to get the injured man away from her.

She mentally instructed Festus to carry Lyle away from her in order to protect him from Fiona
when she would inevitably return. Her ghoul followed the order and picked the wounded man up, throwing the man’s arm over his shoulder and helping him walk away from her.

That was when she noticed the pain in her head beginning to subside, so she turned away from her ghoul pet and the other man and started
running. With each step away, her head throbbed less and less. Before long, the throbbing pain was completely gone. Accompanying the absence of pain was a final vision of a new plague spreading across the Cultwick Empire - one of her creation.

Fiona regained control of their shared body, her eyes blackening with her arrival, to find herself aimlessly walking away from her pet. Festus was carrying Lyle away from her, so she had him stop moving and toss the injured man to the ground.

“What are you doing, Festus?” he cried in pain, after he landed.

Croaking from his mouth was the response, “The
… master…. wills… it.”

“That’d be me, Lyle, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal,” Fiona said approaching him.

“Get away from me!” he shouted, crawling away on the ground.

“We’re going to be best friends, Lyle,” she told him. Then looking to Festus continued, “Hold him down. We must begin the conversion process!”
She stared upward, cackling, and pointing a finger to the heavens.

Festus walked to Lyle and
, kneeling down, placed his hands on the man’s shoulders. Fiona approached him, straddling her legs over his broken body. She slowly dropped to her knees, sitting on his lap and placing her hands gently on his chest.

“Get off me!” he yelled futilely.

She traced a finger from his neck down across his chest, stopping at his navel. “Shh. We’ll be together forever, Lyle,” she whispered.

Fiona violently dug her finger into the man’s stomach, and once it had been punctured, jammed her whole hand inside him. He screamed in agony, as she plunged both hands into his belly and pulled out various organs.

Before he passed out from the pain, Lyle witnessed Fiona sink her teeth into the bloody pieces she had pulled from him. Festus stared on with blank eyes, while Fiona tore through chunks of organ, swallowing bites whole. She proceeded to dig into his belly with her mouth, eating whatever her teeth could grasp. Fiona thought Lyle was a bit too bitter for her tastes, but overall, he was better than Festus.

A few minutes passed before she was hit with a flash of his life. Lyle Harris too was from Red River, though he was several years Festus’ junior. Lyle had a similar upbringing, losing family and friends to the plague forcing him into a life of crime. He
wouldn’t be alone anymore though, she thought.

Fiona stood up, getting off the corpse. Her hands dripped with blood and gore, so she wiped them on her coat and dress and moved to Lyle’s side. ‘Stand,’ she thought, and Lyle and Festus both stood, waiting for further instructions.

“My very own playthings,” she said aloud. “I wonder what I could do with you...”

Above
them, the vultures continued their spiral pattern in anticipation of a meal. The corpses of two dead men had attracted more attention from the scavengers.

Fiona dismissed her ghoulish pets from her presence with a wave of her hand, so they wandered off into the distance with some
specific intentions permeating their rotting minds. Having rid herself of her new pets, she continued on her previously selected path, as though they had not ever interrupted her.