The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head (15 page)

Standing opposite each other in the street,
twenty yards apart or so, even the cultists gave them room,
although they couldn’t even see the spectacle born of the old west
and revived by the hunter code. Gieo figured out what Fiona was
planning far too late to even voice her concerns, never mind trying
to talk Fiona out of it.

Steve’s adrenaline response to the situation
was clearly flight, rather than Fiona’s fight, and he tried one
more time to talk down the redheaded huntress who could claim his
head for a public slight against her ownership of the pilot. “You
can walk away,” Steve hollered. A quake in his voice all but put
the final nail in his coffin.

“You can’t.”

They drew with nothing more than a visual cue
between them to the start. Fiona pulled first by a country mile,
pivoted in her draw of the weapon to put her entire body in
profile, presenting a sliver a of a target, partially obscured by
the enormous gun at the end of her entirely extended arm. Steve’s
gun made it to his hip, far behind Fiona’s draw, and he had to
fire, knowing she had him sighted in with a much stronger position.
His gun went off first, and Gieo’s heart leapt into her throat at
seeing the powder blast come from his side an instant before she
heard the increasingly familiar thunder of Fiona’s Colt
Anaconda.

Fiona was nearly six feet tall and couldn’t
even break 130 while carrying her gun. Hitting her turned sideways
was like trying to shoot a loose thread from a coat, and Steve
wasn’t a good enough shot to do either even without the duress of
the duel and Fiona getting the drop on him. His shot sailed wide,
well wide, nearly hitting a collection of cultists behind and to
Fiona’s left. Her shot struck home though, and planted a finger
width hole in his upper chest and a grapefruit sized exit wound at
the base of his neck on the back. Everything in his face said he
was gone on to whatever comes next long before his slack body hit
the ground.

The high that followed, the endorphin rush of
killing, and the satisfying secondary jolt of adrenaline that came
with being shot at combined in a delicious hormonal cocktail in
Fiona’s head. She hadn’t had time enough to enjoy the rush when
she’d killed Jackson, as she was still half-blind with rage.
Steve’s death she would savor along with the applause and respect
granted by the collected peers and townspeople.

“What’s mine can’t be offered to the likes of
them…” Fiona pointed to the cultists on ‘them’ before continuing.
“…by the likes of him.” She finished by leveling her gun once again
at the downed form of Steve Olsen. She could see many of the other
hunters nodding in the crowd, although nobody else seemed to share
in the agreement.

“The man had it coming,” Danny O’Brien spoke
up from the assembled crowd. “We all heard him demand that we
barter with what wasn’t his to offer. Got a preference on what we
do with his goods, Red?”

Fiona holstered her gun, and turned to scan
the crowd, finally landing her gaze on Gieo. “Gift it all to my
pet—just like Jackson’s rig,” Fiona said. “If the fools in this
town keep it up at this pace, she’ll be a rich woman before summer
is out.” Fiona walked to the stunned pilot, who looked less likely
to vomit than she had after the Jackson incident, grasped her by
the collar and pulled her in for a fierce kiss. Part of Fiona, a
very large and growing part, rather liked shooting men for the
favor of the purple-haired pilot.

“Rawlins!” Zeke bellowed from his perch,
finally making himself known in the conflict. “See to another
transfer for Red.”

The bike, which was burning through Gieo’s
supplies quickly, both in items used to repair or build it, but
also in barter for the things she needed but didn’t yet have, came
together slowly, far slower than she might have liked. She had lost
yet another morning of work and didn’t have much of an appetite, as
she’d had to watch the woman she was quickly falling in love with
challenge and gun down some random person on her behalf for
completely unexplained reasons.

Her hand had shaken so much while they tried
to eat breakfast, that she eventually excused herself to go work on
the bike. Predictably, her hand was shaking too much to work a
jackhammer, let alone the delicate wiring needing to be done on the
fuel injection system. She finally abandoned the project to sit in
the front seat of the old Wagoneer, staring blankly ahead at the
crack pattern in the windshield.

By her final tally and conclusion, Tombstone
was a thoroughly fucked up place.

Ramen fluttered down from the roof to keep
her company and help her on the bike, but stopped short when he
noticed she wasn’t doing much working and didn’t seem in the mood
for company. He skittered around to the passenger side of the
Wagoneer where Gieo was sitting, and poked his upside-down Wok head
around the open door.

“You okay in there, Boss?”

“Fiona shot another man.”

“I saw,” he replied. “She’s fast.”

“I don’t even know why she shot this
one.”

“Have you asked her?”

“No, but the answer isn’t going to make much
sense anyway.”

“She did tell you Tombstone was rough.”

“Of the two dozen words she’s spoken to me,
it’s funny that those were the ones I chose to ignore,” Gieo said
with a little sniffle. “Are we making a mistake by being here?”

Ramen clattered a little further out around
the door to look Gieo dead on. “You were lonely, Boss. I think you
needed a return to what passes for civilization regardless of the
crash.”

“Maybe,” Gieo murmured, “but I hardly think
Tombstone was the smartest choice.”

“If you think Vegas would be better, the
train is supposed to arrive today.”

Gieo perked up at the mention of the train.
“It is, and it’s going to have the Lazy Ravens on it. Let’s go
check it out.” She hopped out of the truck, nearly knocking Ramen
over. She untied her leather apron, and did a quick check of her
lace-lined corset and matching bowler hat.

“Shouldn’t we wait and see if Fiona wants to
come, Boss?”

“She won’t, and it won’t matter,” Gieo said.
“After today, I could walk the streets naked, spitting in people’s
faces, and nobody would do anything but smile and wish me a good
afternoon for fear she would come after them next. Now, let’s go
meet some pimps and hoes.”

The train was late, as it tended to be by all
accounts. The schedule on the station wall indicated it had a
window of several days, which was only narrowed down for this
specific arrival based on the exciting nature of the cargo. Gieo
found an honest-to-goodness shoe shine station, manned and stocked
with everything, to get her black, leather riding boots polished
for the occasion. The strange little man, with enormously thick
glass goggles intended to correct a vision imbalance of epic
proportions and only two little tufts of white above his ears for
hair, asked only for a sock or stocking in payment. Gieo said she
didn’t have a sock or stocking to spare. He countered with the
offer to do both boots for free if she would step barefoot on his
head and call him scum. As strange as the request was, Gieo didn’t
really see the harm in it. She pulled off one of her riding boots,
the little man laid down on the train platform, and she stepped on
his head gently, and called him scum. He was giddy with excitement
right up until she removed her foot, and then he immediately
returned to a perfectly professional demeanor. He’d nearly finished
shining her boots when the train finally rolled into the station
with a billow of steam, smoke, and a strange undercurrent of dozens
of mingled perfumes.

Gieo stood from the shoe shine station,
accidentally stepping on one of the bootblack’s hands in the
process. He let out the same little trill of excitement he had when
she’d tendered payment, and thanked her for the tip she hadn’t
realized she was bestowing.

In something of a haze, she walked toward the
train, along with others who had come out to greet the Ravens, and
waited at the front of the assembled dozen or so people, standing
out starkly as both the only clean person in the bunch, but also
because she was female and dressed entirely in form-fitted black
clothing, which, she thought glumly, Fiona hadn’t even commented
on.

The Ravens departed the train more like
peacocks, flamingos, or birds of paradise than something as
provincial as a raven. They were all dressed like proper saloon
girls of the true old west with some strange elements of modern
trappings in the mix like an occasional hula hoop, Rainbow Bright
backpack, or Mickey Mouse ears. In a surprising twist that Gieo
hadn’t remotely expected from Fiona’s description of them, she was
shocked to find they were beautiful, refined, and not at all what
one might expect from Las Vegas prostitutes of the new Old West.
They also seemed to be coordinated in how they disembarked the
train, walking out in a pattern that indicated some grander point
of focus was still yet to come.

Gieo watched with building anticipation and
delight as each woman made some motion of greeting or some
signature flirty gesture before taking their spot in a slowly
curving arch around the impromptu Tombstone welcoming committee.
Finally, with more than thirty of the women off the train, the
Madame was introduced. Gieo’s jaw nearly hit the floor; the
entertainers, enforcers, prostitutes, and even the boss were all
women!

Madame Veronica Vegas, or VV as the pink
embroidery on her parasol identified her, was young, remarkably
young for her position. Gieo thought, without the pageantry,
makeup, and outlandishly feathered costume, Veronica might actually
have even been a little plain. She commanded attention through
sheer presence though, and with the added theatrical spectacle of
costumes and makeup, she held an undeniable allure. Her blond hair
was a carefully planned puff of large spiral curls in a top-knot
ponytail, her thin lips were perfectly pearled in pink gloss, and
her hazel eyes sparkled with a feisty glimmer that came from far
more than just the glitter-laden blue eye shadow she wore. When her
multiple curtsies of welcome were concluded, which was a show in
itself as the hem of her Can-Can skirt was lined in bright pink
feathers, she thanked the dozen or so townies for the welcome, and
then zeroed in entirely on Gieo.

“You have the look of someone important about
you,” Veronica purred. “Are you our official attaché from the mayor
to guide us to our future lodgings?”

“Oh, no, I’m…” Gieo stuttered and stammered,
searching for an explanation for what she was doing there. She’d
never had a problem coming up with a witty title or list of
accomplishments for herself. In fact, she’d actually enjoyed
meeting new people in Tombstone for the sole purpose of being able
to use all the titles she would like associated with her that
couldn’t be listed in a single introduction to just one person.

“I’m your attaché, Danny O’Brien,” Danny
said, stepping forth from the crowd like the soothing surfer he
was. From a distance, he might seem as rugged an unkempt as all
hunters, but up close, Danny wasn’t just good-looking, but
downright handsome. His mop of sandy blond hair jutted from around
the edges of his baseball cap. His sky-blue eyes twinkled like the
open ocean on a sunny day. And his close-cropped beard let show
just enough of his strong jaw and proud chin to let anyone know he
had a pretty enough face that it wouldn’t matter if he covered more
than half of it with beard. Gieo was immediately jealous that he
not only had the looks to command Veronica’s attention, but also
the penis she probably preferred.

“Quite charmed, Mr. O’Brien.” Veronica took
his hand, curtsied again, very deferentially, rising a step closer
to him so he might catch a stronger whiff of her perfume and
perhaps see a bit more cleavage. “But then who is this alluring
creature?” Veronica pointed the handle of her parasol in Gieo’s
direction.

“She’s actually a pet of one of our more
prominent hunters,” Danny explained in somewhat polite terms that
seemed to make him a little uncomfortable. “I don’t know her
name.”

“A hunter’s pet, you say?” Veronica played
all atwitter at the possibility. She walked to Gieo, cocked her hip
to one side dramatically, and gave Gieo a thorough looking over.
“She looks as fresh and lovely as a spring morning. How is she the
possession of a rough and tumble hunter?”