The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head (32 page)

“Dump the bodies out of the wagons,” Fiona
said, “and load Karen and Francisco into them. See about getting a
splint on Karen’s leg and a tourniquet on Francisco’s arm—we just
need them good enough to make it back to town.”

“These cultists, what would you like me to do
with them?” Claudia asked.

“We’re taking them with us.” Fiona felt the
creeping sensation of someone watching her, then another and
another. The low rise she’d started her charge from held a new
army, more than enough to cause a problem for her, with Yahweh at
the head. “The world is an irritating place when old enemies just
keep resurfacing to get in the way of more important work being
done.”

Claudia noticed in much the same time Fiona
did. She hefted her rifle to her shoulder and sighted in on
Yahweh’s chest. “I can make sure he does not resurface again,”
Claudia said.

“No, with wounded in tow, our horses
lathered, the element of surprise long gone, and much of our
ammunition spent, he wouldn’t be the only one not resurfacing,”
Fiona said. “We move out; Francisco and Karen won’t survive a fight
and we can’t leave them. If he follows, then you can put a round in
him and we’ll all have a lovely Alamo moment.”

Claudia reluctantly lowered her rifle. “Mark
my words, Commander, I will be the one to kill that man for
you.”

“Let’s hope you don’t have to do it today.”
Fiona kept her eyes on the rise as they departed slowly, keeping
riders at a walk to guard the wagons’ front, rear, and sides. The
cultists watched them leave, but did not pursue. As the sun began
to set, and the column pulled well out of firing range, the
silhouettes of the cultists retreated from the rise. For a brief
moment, Fiona considered sending Claudia back to take out Yahweh in
the last of the light, but it felt risky. As little as Fiona
thought of Yahweh, she knew he wasn’t stupid; Claudia might have an
easy time of it, or she might ride into a trap, and she was too
valuable to risk on a solo mission with a fairly trivial goal. If
what the cultist lady said was true, Yahweh was already losing his
chips and had a lousy hand of cards.

Albuquerque had taken the hardest hit in the
state. Gieo knew this, knew they’d had an air force base that the
Slark no doubted wanted gone in the early days of their invasion,
but couldn’t imagine a way a city could rebound from that level of
destruction to rise again as a free city state. As far as she knew,
the city had gone from being the largest metropolitan area in New
Mexico to a graveyard for half a million people. As she drew nearer
to where she should have been able to see the skyline, all she saw
was the ruins and craters left by the invasion. The entire south,
where she assumed the air force base was, had been reduced to the
obliterated dark side of the moon. Makeshift signs guided her to
the west to use the detour around the ruins as all freeways through
the city were long since destroyed with little hope of ever being
rebuilt.

The eerie feeling she had driving through
Deming was compounded a thousandfold through what remained of
Albuquerque. The handmade signs along the detour became thicker,
clearer, and the buildings they surrounded became sparser.
Strangely, the sparseness was orderly, not the destruction of
invasion, but of organized scavenging. Someone had done a fantastic
job of dismantling everything in the area for building materials.
The closer she got to the city state, the more stripped the world
around her became. Her long, winding loop through the ruins of
South Valley finally deposited her on Interstate 40 to head
northeast. As she neared the Rio Grande River, she spotted the
Albuquerque free city state, rising like a walled fortress of old,
around Grande Heights and Villa De Paza.

Gieo was exhausted and numb both emotionally
and physically. She was eager for rest and a chance to process the
day. Her motorcycle was again coughing steam and nearly at the
redline for temperature from the slow detour, and she had to
practically will it up to the city’s massive gates. She’d expected
Ravens to be manning the checkpoint and defensive walls, but
instead found what looked like normal United States Army. Two men,
clean shaven, in full desert camouflage, armed with M-16s stopped
her at the gate. She hand cranked down the pod to brace the bike
and waved away the steam fogging up her goggles. They flanked her
on either side, although didn’t seem all that suspicious or
threatened by her.

“What business do you have in Albuquerque?”
one of the soldiers asked.

Gieo reached into the front pocket of her
cargo pants and pulled out a letter of introduction from Veronica
intended for the White Bishop in charge of Albuquerque. She handed
it to the soldier who read it over quickly before handing it
back.

“Wait here,” the soldier said. He left his
partner to watch over Gieo while he went to the guard booth, hand
cranked an old World War II radio to life and spoke briefly into
it, doing more listening than talking. He returned in short order,
motioning to the men walking posts along the top of the forty-foot
defensive wall, which was actually quite marvelous close up. The
huge, steel gates slowly wound open, apparently pulled by engines
on the opposite side. The soldiers waved Gieo through without
another word.

The interior of the free city looked like a
combination of the formerly upscale neighborhood, American
southwest pueblos, and a medieval city of Europe. Gieo’s bike
argued with her all the way through the gate, and only made it a
few blocks in before finally cutting out and quitting on her. She’d
run dry or too hot for too long and the bike wouldn’t be moved
short of time to cool or a good dousing with cold water. She
lowered the pod legs again, removed her helmet and scarf, and fell
forward against the handlebars to cry. She didn’t care that the
people walking the streets around her stopped to stare, that the
very professional looking soldiers patrolling the street might
think she was weak or simpering; she had an upset stomach full of
agitated nerves and crying seemed like a fine release, at least for
some of them. She was tired, hot, dirty, and painfully alone with
thoughts she hoped she would never have to deal with. Her crying
might have continued indefinitely were it not for a gentle hand on
her shoulder. She snapped her head up from the handlebars. Crying
into her goggles had the obvious consequence of filling them with
water. She yanked them free of her head and wiped at her eyes with
the gritty back of her gloved hand, which only served to further
irritate the already enflamed skin around her eyes.

The woman who had touched her shoulder was a
towering Amazon, black as the ace of spades, with an impressive
head of dreadlocks, and a powerful set of musculature on her sturdy
frame. She was dressed in khaki shorts, hiking boots, and a
tank-top looking a little like a nature show host. She was flanked
by two U.S. soldiers who actually stood several inches shorter than
her. Her skin, which was the most beautiful shade of shiny ebony,
was lined in dozens of places with white scars, which she
apparently wore clothing to accentuate, rather than conceal.
Something about her face was kind and a little wild.

“You’re the rider from Tombstone the gate
mentioned?” the woman asked, knowing full well who Gieo was. Her
voice was rich and smooth with a worn edge that put her age at
likely over forty.

Gieo sniffled and offered the woman the
letter from Veronica. She took it but handed it off to one of her
guards without even glancing at it.

“Do you have a name, girl?” the woman
asked.

“I’m Gieo,” she replied. Getting out of the
saddle the second time was harder than the first, and Gieo actually
nearly toppled over, requiring a little steadying from the
Amazonian woman.

“Take your time,” the woman said. “A bike
like that must rattle every drop of blood out of your legs on a
long enough ride.” She smiled showing off the whitest, straightest
teeth Gieo had ever seen. By standing next to her on the sidewalk,
Gieo guessed the khaki-clad woman to be almost six and a half feet
tall.

“It’s been a really long day,” Gieo said
weakly.

“I can imagine,” the woman replied. “I’m
Alondra McMichael, White Bishop of Albuquerque.”

Gieo returned the smile, feeling the warmth
of the woman’s protection stretching over her. There was something
powerful and confident about Alondra that spoke of a cunning yet
caring natural leader. Gieo was infinitely pleased to see this side
of the Ravens.

As they walked the streets, Alondra insisted
Gieo take her arm for support as needed. Gieo gratefully accepted
gaining more than physical support from the gesture. The city she
saw on their brief walk toward Alondra’s home spoke of a size and
scope Gieo didn’t think existed anymore with an order that almost
felt like old times.

“How many people live here?” Gieo asked.

“Our last census estimates put it at around
seven thousand,” Alondra said. “Not counting the fifteen-hundred
soldiers.”

“Yeah, about them…” Gieo nodded in the
direction of the one of the soldiers flanking them.

“You’ve no doubt heard about the fracturing
that took place on the plains in the late days of the war with the
Slark,” Alondra said. Gieo shook her head. After Orange County
fell, she and her family had fled east without thought to anything
beyond survival; the only thing she knew about the war with the
Slark was the U.S. and her allies had lost, but made sure the Slark
went down with them. “Ah, well, the military rallied nearly
everything they had left on the great planes, outside of Cedar
Rapids, to make a final push against the Slark’s great crawler
battalions. You remember those certainly, the walking cities of
firepower that they had before the cataclysm?” Gieo remembered,
could still hear their great clanking legs, as long and tall as
city streets, swinging overhead while the bombs and fire rained
down from the platform hundreds of yards above. It was months into
the war before anyone even knew what a Slark looked like as they
had used the great crawlers almost exclusively. It wasn’t until
three missile frigates off the coast of Alaska actually brought one
down that humanity learned what they were fighting was lizard men
from space. “The army fractured. Many of the men abandoned their
post, followed Brigadier General Mackenzie who would become a
warlord, and fled south toward Texas and Mexico to begin a guerilla
war. Those who remained fought the Slark valiantly and lost. The
Ravens have been picking up the pieces ever since. Finding soldiers
still interested in fighting is surprisingly simple. Once a
soldier, always a soldier, eh, boys?”

“Oorah, ma’am,” the two soldiers said in
unison.

“Most of the men here are army regulars from
one place or other, but my personal guard is Marine Corps. My
father was a leatherneck, my husband was a leatherneck, and my son
was a leatherneck,” Alondra said with a noble sadness. “There’s
something powerfully special about the Marines.”

Gieo didn’t need to ask, she could infer from
Alondra’s tone and use of the past tense that the three men
mentioned were no longer living. Next to Alondra, Gieo felt small,
with small problems, small emotional burdens, and small goals;
greatness, she surmised, had the ability to do that. “Why the
defensive walls?” Gieo asked, eager to be away from the topic of
dead Marines.

“After the fracture, Albuquerque had some
problems with raiders from the aforementioned warlord. The walls
were built out of necessity, and when I arrived, I reinforced and
manned them,” Alondra said. “The raids have stopped. I don’t know
where General Mackenzie went, but he’s long since abandoned his
attacks on the west now that the Ravens have moved in. For the time
being, I sit, build, and wait to hear when we move. I had hoped
that’s why you were here, but you’re no messenger.”

“I’m on my way to Colorado in search of
pilots,” Gieo said. “We’re building an air force in Tombstone.”

Alondra laughed loud, long, and hard, so much
so that her Marine entourage laughed with her. Gieo waited out the
laughter, but felt a little insulted by its boisterousness and
length.

“Veronica is a madwoman,” Alondra said, “but
I guess that’s the type of thinking the Ravens have always taken a
shine to.”

They strolled up the walkway of a large,
two-story, stucco home with a riverside view. A lovely cactus
garden lined what used to be the front lawn. The Marine escort left
their company at the front door. The interior was dimly-lit and a
good ten degrees cooler than outside. The American southwest décor
continued throughout, mixing native and Spanish influences both in
architecture and decoration. Alondra led Gieo to a side guest room
down a seldom used hallway. The room had an honest to goodness bed,
a bookshelf filled with old Louis L’Amour books, and a bathroom
opposite the walk-in closet.