Earthbound (26 page)

“What now?” she asked. “So am I your
hostage?”

“Sure, you’re our hostage,” Pace said
smiling.

“Your hostage…” Becca kinda mulled over the
meaning of that word. “So aren’t you supposed to tie me up or
something?”

“Oh I’ll tie you up,” Pace replied, kinda
leaning in close to Becca. She shoved him away hard though. She
wasn’t amused.

“I’ll bet you would,” she said. “Look, your
fun is over. I’m going home.”

“You can’t go back home, Becca. The Nuggets
were dangerous before, now they’re angry.”

“Thanks to you. God, I hate you both!”

She looked around desperately, absorbing the
grim surroundings of the Old City. “So where do you take me
now?”

“To our hideout,” Pace replied. “Come on this
way…”

Yeah, we got what we wanted. But it sure
didn’t feel right, did it?

“Home sweet home,” Pace announced.

We stood at the entrance to our hideout, and
I gotta say Becca was speechless. Her jaw just kinda hung open.

“It’s safe,” I reassured her. “Mostly.” Becca
turned to me, looking at me like I was full of shit, and still not
sure what to say. “Come on inside, you’ll see.” I kinda dragged
Becca inside our hideout. That didn’t really help. It was dark so
it was hard to see. She almost stepped on broken glass but I moved
her out of the way. Then she sorta gagged. It did still kinda smell
like shit and piss in there. Horse piss, human piss, not really
sure which piss. Piss is piss I suppose.

Pace seemed kinda embarrassed. He turned
Becca around and rushed her outside. “We’ll clean up. It’ll be
fine. Really.”

Finally after Becca get her breath back, she
laid into us pretty good. “
This
is where you’ve been hiding
out? In this filth?”

“It’s not that bad,” I explained.

That explanation didn’t seem to help none.
Becca just kept on yelling at us. “The Old City is no place to be
hiding. These buildings could come down at any time! And the filth…
and the animals? Wolves?”

“We’ve had wolves,” I admitted.

“Don’t tell her about the wolves,” Pace
muttered. “You’ll only scare her talking about the wolves.”

“That’s why we put up a fence,” I explained.
“We’re pretty safe in here now.”

Becca didn’t agree. “Safe? Boze will surely
follow you here!”

Pace tried to be all reassuring. Not sure it
was working. “They’ll have to go the long way around, and it’s more
likely that Boze will assume we just passed right through the Old
City and hit route 15 going south. It’s more than likely they’ll
head down to Helena. It’s safest to lay low here for the
moment.”

“Boze isn’t comin’ here,” I said. “You know
he’s chicken shit.”

Becca nodded. It was hard to argue with that.
She kinda composed herself and took a deep breath of the sorta
fresh air outside and bravely walked back inside. Seemed like she
was gonna gag.

“We’ll start cleaning right away,” Pace
reassured her. “I promise.”

Then she noticed something. She picked it up
between two fingers like she was holding a dead rat. It was one of
the girly magazines. She just kinda looked at us like we were a
couple a pervs.

Pace quickly grabbed the girly magazine out
of her fingers and piled up the rest of them. “Sorry,” he
explained, “we weren’t expecting company.”

She nodded, appreciatively. Then she
shivered. “And what about the cold? There’s no heat in here.”

I lit a match and tossed it in the fire pit
which already had some kindling in it. As the fire started to
build, it got warmer. But that didn’t help none. Becca was still
cold and it was only daytime. I started to get worried how she’d
manage at night. She already had on a bison skin coat, but I took
off mine and draped it over her shoulders. I’m a lot bigger, that’d
help keep her warm.

“And what’s this?” she asked, walking over to
the Mankin arm we mounted up on the wall. “Part of one of those
things that attacked you?”

“It’s called a Mankin,” Pace explained.
“That’s one of its arms we managed to get a hold of.”

“Hmm…” she mused, tentatively touching the
Mankin arm. “Doesn’t look so scary now, does it?”

“No ma’am,” Pace replied.

Becca turned away from the Mankin arm. I
noticed that her body was kinda shaking. Then she started crying
and collapsed in a heap on the ground. Pace and I both tried to
help her but she shoved us away. Guessed she just needed to let it
all out. And all this was kinda a shock. Soon after she kinda dozed
off. We’d all been up all night, made sense. After I was sure she
was sleeping I covered her with a blanket. Maybe after a little
rest she’d see things more clearly.

Turned out we all slept the day away. I
didn’t even remember falling asleep. When I woke up, Pace was
stirring and Becca was sitting up, wrapped in that blanket, same
place we left her. She seemed a little better, I dunno. I made some
coffee and cracked open a can of beans so we could eat something.
Becca took her portion reluctantly and we all sat by the fire.

“So this is how you’ve been living,” she
said. “If you can even call it living. I’d call it
‘surviving.’”

“It’s temporary,” Pace explained. “Right,
Ash?”

I grunted reluctantly. After all the work we
put into that hideout, I hated to think about leaving it.

“So how long before you’re planning on
leaving the Great Plains forever?” Becca asked. She seemed
genuinely interested. Maybe that was a good sign. “Barbed wire
isn’t going to keep the outside world out forever.”

“We figure we need to let things cool off a
bit,” Pace explained. “Lots of people looking for us. Boze and his
Nuggets of course. Pretty much all the lawmen across the Great
Plains.”

“Oh is that all,” Becca said with
sarcasm.

That wasn’t all. Pace continued. “The company
that owns the banks, the Great Plains Holding Company, they’ll be
gunning for us soon enough. They hired some sort of bounty hunter
to hunt us down. His name’s Shādo Shay.”

“Pace, shut the eff up,” I said. “You’re
effing things up.”

“Sorry,” Pace muttered.

“Watch your language,” Becca scolded.

“Sorry ma’am,” I said humbly. Why the eff did
I call her ma’am? I was effing up too.

“So we’ll hide out as long as we can before
we need to resupply,” Pace explained. “Then we were thinking we had
in us one more good robbery in these parts, and then we’ll move
on.”

“Well, you always wanted to go far away,”
Becca added. “To the stars, right? I suppose that’s going to be a
tall order.”

“We were thinking Canada,” I said.

“Canada,” she repeated. Then she got all
teary. What the eff is wrong with Canada?

“Canada or wherever we go will be fine,” Pace
explained. “We’re rich! That’s going to take care of things.”

Becca stared into Pace’s eyes, looking kinda
disappointed. “You boys… you are rich. So you think you have enough
stolen gold to get you where you need to go?”

Pace and I kinda look at each other. Hadn’t
really thought that part through.

“Sure,” I said.

“I don’t think so,” Pace contradicted. “But
if we hit some banks wherever we’re going we should do all
right.”

“Ah ha!” Becca responded. “Leave a trail of
lawmen looking for you. Very subtle. And where exactly do I fit
into these plans?”

“You’ll need to come with us,” Pace said.
“For your own protection.”

“For my own protection,” she repeated.
“Taking me with you into gun battles with robots. What did you call
them? Mankins?”

“That’s not a very good idea,” I said.

Becca pointed a finger at me like she knew
something I didn’t. Which of course was always the truth. “So what
do you propose to do with me while you’re off robbing banks? Tie me
up somewhere? Leave me in this hideout, or another one equally
safe? Or maybe you should give me a gun. That’s the solution. Give
me a gun right now so at least I can defend myself!”

I always find myself doing what she says, so
I pulled out a revolver and started to hand it over to Becca, pearl
handle first. Pace stopped me though. “I don’t think it’s a good
idea to give a gun to someone who has technically been kidnapped.”
I nod. He’s right I suppose. I put my revolver back in the
holster.

“Maybe later?” I offered.

Becca’s eyes darted back and forth between me
and Pace. Then her mood kinda changed. She stopped being all curt
and took a deep breath like she was finally relaxing. “This
coffee’s fine,” she said, “but don’t you have anything stronger?
Whiskey? I could use a drink.”

And that was something I could do. I pulled
out a bottle of pretty good whiskey that we’d bought back in Conrad
and cracked it open. A few shots each seemed to liven things up.
Sorta felt like we were back in Great Falls before all this
started.

“Must’ve been pretty exciting,” Becca said,
“robbing all those banks.”

“It’s all right,” I said.

“Ash is understating as always,” Pace
interjected. “It’s more than all right. It’s a thrill. It’s better
than anything. Better than sex.”

Becca ignored the sex comment but seemed to
find all of this very interesting. “I could see how a thrill like
that could become very addicting. Especially for someone like you,
Pace, who easily becomes addicted to things. Whiskey, women.”

“I’ve always liked to have a good time,” he
responded.

“So where else have you been?”

“Augusta, Fort Benton, Havre, Lewistown and
Conrad,” Pace said, filling out our list of settlements we
visited.

“That’s amazing,” Becca said. “I wish I’d
seen all those myself.”

“Augusta’s probably the nicest,” I added. “I
could see living there, except all the bank robbing thing.”

This seemed to interest Becca a lot.
“Augusta. How did you ever get there? Did you use the bridge across
Route 87 before, well, we destroyed it?”

“No,” Pace explained. “That would have been
way too dangerous. Figured one of the Nuggets might have been
posted there. No, we had to find another route across the Missouri.
The old maps said there was a bridge across 1
^st
Avenue,
but that’s gone. Same as one down off route 15. But we got lucky.
There’s a railway bridge that’s still in decent shape, off of River
Drive. Then off we went west.”

“Go northeast instead and that’s how we got
to Great Falls to find you,” I added. “Figured that was the safest
route.”

“You two certainly are explorers,” Becca
commented.

“We’re regular Lewis and Clarks,” I said,
proud that I kinda knew what I was talking about.

“You two have really figured this all out,”
Becca said. She grabbed the bottle and poured us all another shot.
I was starting to get drunk. Probably for the best. We’d been up
for such a long time, I could use some solid sleep.

“So,” Pace said to Becca, “what do you think
of your first day as an outlaw?” He was slurring his words. On his
way to being drunk too.

“I’m not an outlaw,” she replied with a
laugh. “I’m your hostage, remember?”

Pace laughed too. “Oh come on, we don’t have
to think of it that way, do we? You’re sort of like an honorary
member of our gang.”

“Maybe I’ll feel that way after you give me a
gun,” she responded. Again with the gun. She poured us each another
shot.

“No more for you?” I asked.

“I’m good. Ready for some sleep actually.”
She looked around our hideout. “So where exactly do I sleep?”

I could tell Pace was about to give some
smart-ass answer. I shot him a look. Not the time.

“You can use my sleeping bag,” Pace offered,
“and no, I’m not going to ask that you share it with me.” I nodded
to Pace, appreciatively. “We’ll make this as homey as we can, I
promise.”

“You paint a beautiful picture,” she
responded with I think it’s called sarcasm. Pace rolled his
sleeping bag out near the fire. “I think I still might be cold,”
she said. So we both chipped in from our gear offering items to
keep her warm. Gloves, hats, blankets. I thought about giving her
my long johns but that just wouldn’t be right. She picked and chose
what she wanted, fairly appreciatively. I was getting’ concerned
she was gonna overheat in that sleeping bag. She had enough to keep
her warm enough for zero degree weather. But whatever she needed to
be comfortable I guess. Before she got in the sleeping bag she
glanced at us with concern. “You’ll both be okay?” she asked. “I
didn’t take so much that you won’t be warm?”

“We’ll be fine,” Pace said. “We’ve been doing
this for a while.”

She nodded and moved for the sleeping bag.
But then she froze. “Um, I don’t suppose you have an outhouse.”

Shit. She needed to effing pee.

“We do,” Pace said.