“Why should I help you if you won’t help me?”
“For one, you owe me. You owe me for all those times I covered for your ass in T or C.” Sterling stopped and placed his hands on his waist, his black duster picking up in a warm breeze as it pressed past. “You also owe me for getting you out of that mess back there.”
“The shaman festival?”
“No, the bloodbath. I don’t know why you even agreed to be part of that festival, and in the middle of a war zone.”
“I just need to make a little money.” Gasper made the universal sign for money, rubbing his fingers together. “A little dinero goes a long way, no?”
“I can’t argue with that logic. Gasper…” Sterling took off his hat for a moment and looked up at the sky. He ran his tongue across his teeth and spat. Finally, he turned to the man, and made sure to hold his gaze as he spoke. “In case you’re wondering, I’m going to make another run at it, and you know exactly what I’m talking about. But before I do that, I need to find some people, the right people.”
“Sí, sí… I thought this was why you came,” Gasper told him, a sudden lucidity to the way he was looking at Sterling. “Let’s get into the shade somewhere. We can talk.”
Sterling and Don Gasper located an abandoned home not far off the highway and chose to hunker down in an empty shed in what was once the backyard. Upon searching the property, Sterling found that there were some sleeping bags stuffed into a dresser in a back room of the house, which he subsequently brought out to the shed. It wasn’t an ideal location, but it would do. Once they were settled in, Sterling planned to take a peek around the neighborhood, and see if he couldn’t find his old home.
“You need to eat,” he told Don Gasper, the old shaman puffing on another joint that Sterling had rolled for him.
“This is my food. Food of the gods, mi ambrosía.”
“You crazy old bastard.” Sterling plopped down across from the shaman. He felt like taking his boots off and did so, airing out his feet.
“You brought a change of clothes, right?” Gasper asked, his nostrils curling.
Sterling nodded. “I got a couple spare sets in my invo list. I’ll get a bath at some point.”
“Yes, inventory lists. So convenient, yet so artificial,” said the old shaman. Oddly enough, the marijuana was starting to make him speak more clearly, the bilingual muttering under his breath he’d been doing earlier all but gone by now.
“I think they’re handy.” Sterling took some green chili jerky from his list and ate it. He had plenty of jerky, maybe about a pound or two, and it was fairly easy to come by. Although one always had to double-check the source of the meat; people would eat anything these days.
As Don Gasper finished his joint, Sterling caught him up on everything that had happened, from the Godwalker attacking his property to the amalgamation he had taken out, and how he had been captured by Commodore Bones on his way to Las Cruces, placed on a crucifix, and subsequently escaped with his life and what he assumed was his wallet.
Don Gasper whistled. “Commodore Bones, eh? You got yourself in a heap of trouble.”
“What do you mean?” Sterling asked.
“There are three leaders of the Killbillies: Robert Bones, Del Cayedito, and Nina Otero.”
“Aware; ‘Beto told me that much. But how did you know?”
“Everyone around here knows,” he said with a shrug. “They’ve been in Las Cruces for a long time, pretty much started here. You kicked at the wrong ant hill, amigo.”
“I didn’t do shit. Them ants came after me, and if they ain’t careful, I’m going to fill their hill with gasoline and light the son of a bitch on fire,” Sterling said as he washed the jerky down with a swig of water, bits of meat still stuck in his teeth.
“No seas Ícaro,” Don Gasper said as he finally put out his joint.
“Ícaro?”
“Icarus. Flew too close to the sun. That’s what you’re close to doing.”
“I don’t know who Icarus is.”
“He flew too close to the sun, like I said, old legend, maybe from Greece. He burned to death.”
“Greece?” Sterling asked. He’d heard of the place, but it took him a moment to remember that it was somewhere in Europe.
“I found a book on Greek mythology once and read it while chewing on coca leaves,” Gasper explained. “I was looking for some spells. No spells in the book, but interesting stories. Let me see that picture of you. You said you had an ID, no?”
Sterling retrieved his wallet and handed it to Don Gasper. The old shaman, who was now crouched with his back against the wall, sucked on his lip for a moment as he looked at the driver’s license photo.
“Gordito, no?”
“Yeah, I was a little fat back then,” Sterling said. “What of it?”
Don Gasper laughed. “I think we all were. Not many are fat anymore; food ain’t hard to come by, but it can be a pain in the ass to get, if you know what I mean.”
“So… it’s hard to come by?”
“Maybe. My brain is still a little fried,” Gasper admitted.
“What were you saying earlier about some frog?”
The old shaman looked up at Sterling, his eyes twitching. “Bufo Alvarius. It’s a toad, and I was speaking about its venom. You squeeze the venom from the toad, let it dry, and smoke it. I smoked it, some of the other shamans too. Took a few cactus buttons from this peyotera as well, the one I mentioned. I was close, Sterling, mi vaquero nigromante, muy cerca…”
“I told you not to call me that. You sure want to rile me up today, don’t you?”
“It’s the best way to get to a person’s soul.” Don Gasper opened the wallet and found the picture in the billfold. He examined the photo of the woman and the child as he ran his hand through his beard.
“I think they may be my wife and my boy.” Sterling swallowed hard. “My son.”
“Yes, maybe could be,” Gasper agreed. “The boy looks muy familiar.”
“That’s because he’s related to me.”
“Sí, but something is different about this kid.”
“If I do find them, I have no idea what I will say. What would you say?”
“Me? I wouldn’t find them,” Don Gasper told him after a long pause. He tossed the wallet back to Sterling. “The past is the past because it has passed, no? Heh. I’m rhyming today.”
“You need to detox,” Sterling said, both of them laughing.
“Maybe. But maybe no. There’s more work to do, and detoxing would get in the way of mi trabajo.”
“What kind of work are you even talking about? Going around, getting high, and having visions?”
Don Gasper didn’t take this as an insult. “You came here for one of these visions, no?”
“Guilty as charged. Look, I’m going to get right down to it, Gasper, then I’ll leave you be for a bit while I go try to find the home listed on this ID.”
“Then get down to it.”
“Like I was saying, a Godwalker attacked my home, and I think you know why it came after me.”
The old shaman nodded. “Revenge, a dish best served spicy.”
“Exactly. It took three years, the damn thing, but it found me, and I ain’t one to let anyone or anything walk all over me—human, alien, mancer, or amalgamation—especially right at harvest season.”
“Your peppers.”
“Exactamente.”
“You are sure this is what you want to do?” Don Gasper asked after a long pause. “You think you’re ready?”
“Ready? You bet your ass I’m ready. But before I get deep into this shit, I need to find Roxy, Zephyr, and the Sunflower Kid. I’ll have to recruit a couple more along the way to make up for Liam and Karina, and I’ll probably start with Raylan.”
“Raylan? Remind me of who he is?”
“Flectomancer. He’s a damn good crafter, made me my revolver and my sword. Last I heard, he was up in Madrid.”
“You have to go toward Albuquerqu
e…”
“I’m going to avoid Albuquerque like the plague. To meet Raylan in Madrid, my plan would be to follow the Turquoise Trail and bypass Duke City, keep a low profile. He’s the easiest to find, considering I heard from someone who saw him a few months back. It’s the others that will prove more challenging.”
“And you think he will join you?” Don Gasper ran his hand through his beard again, his pupils heavily dilated.
“Maybe. I’ll roll you another,” Sterling said.
“Thanks. It’s good mota. Sometimes they have some pretty nasty shwag around here, full of seeds and stems, a disgrace to the art of growing the plant. Una desgracia.”
“I haven’t tried it myself,” Sterling said as he equipped the bag of marijuana he’d purchased in Hatch. A pungent, skunk-like smell filled the air, and Don Gasper’s nostrils flared open.
“So fresh. Too bad you don’t partake.”
“It doesn’t quite sit well with me, and I don’t have nothing to celebrate,” Sterling said. “But I don’t mind if others smoke.”
“Sí, you are a very good man sometimes.”
“Yeah, you say that because I’m holding the bag of mota,” Sterling told Gasper. He rolled up two joints and handed them both to Gasper, figuring the shaman might want to smoke one while he was out. “We square?”
“Three-dimensional square, yes.”
Sterling shook his head. “As I was saying, I need to find the Sunflower Kid and Zephyr. According to you, Roxy is in White Sands. I’ll need to recruit a few more as well. So that’s everything in a nutshell, getting the team back together.”
A hint of sorrow came across Don Gasper’s eyes. He nodded in a solemn way and lit one of the joints. The old shaman took a drag off it and looked up at the ceiling, slowly exhaling the bluish gray smoke. “Sad what happened.”
Sterling nodded. It wasn’t a subject he liked to talk about. Three years ago had been quite traumatic for all of them, and he knew it was going to be difficult to find the others. But it was time. He was sick of the Godwalkers and what they had done. Even though he didn’t have any direct evidence of it, he was certain it was them who had caused the Reset. He didn’t know how much longer he had left to roam around the desert, smoke cigarettes, raise hell, and animate corpses, but he was going to dedicate that time to taking down as many Godwalkers as he could.
“Sí, Roxy… Roxy has been taken prisoner by the White Sands Militia.”
“You told me; I’m going to have to go get her at some point.”
“You and whose army?” Don Gasper asked. “You ain’t going to be able to get her out of there, not by yourself, no, and not with me, just in case you were thinking of extending an invitation. No, no. They have mancers. One or two men can’t do it.”
“Then I need to find one of the others first,” Sterling said.
“Maybe you and the Sunflower Kid, yes? A necromancer and a biomancer. It’s Yin and Yang. Do you know the Yin and Yang?”
“I believe I’m familiar,” Sterling said, having seen a description of it in the book he’d read on haiku.
“You could try to find Zephyr, but I think the Sunflower Kid will be more helpful. That’s what my gut is telling me.” Don Gasper took two rapid-fire puffs off his joint and held the smoke in as he stared up at the ceiling, his eyes a bit glazed over. “Yes, the Kid first.”
“The Sunflower Kid it is, and I’ll need your help to figure out where to find the Kid, and Zephyr for that matter.”
“Sí, I think I can help. But not tonight. Tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow. Let me think about it.” Don Gasper started to relax onto the ground. He put the joint out, and rested his head on the wooden floor of the shed, continuing to stare up at the ceiling.
“I guess that is my cue to exit. I’m going to step out and see if I can find where I used to live. I’ll be back, Gasper. Don’t you go nowhere, now.”
“I’ll stay here. No te preocupes por mi, por favor.”
“I’m not worried about you,” Sterling told him as he put his boots back on. “I just don’t want to have to go haul your ass away from whatever a shaman such as yourself would typically get into on a night such as tonight.”
The statement caused Don Gasper to laugh. He waved his bony hand at Sterling in an effort to send him away so he could enjoy his stoned stupor.
Once he was outside the storage shed, Sterling headed toward what was left of the fence that lined the property, the sinking sun a boiling orb which cast lines of magenta and dark turquoise across the yellow dust of Las Cruces. The fence that surrounded the home certainly had seen better days, most of the wood strips gone, aside from a few of the bottom backer rails.
Sterling stepped over it all, looked back at the disheveled place, mentally taking a picture of the place so he could find it again. He thought about taking Manchester’s bones out of his inventory list and going for a ride around the neighborhood to make things quicker, but that would bring attention to him, so he decided in the end it was best to keep things on foot.
He retrieved the wallet and took another look at the address on his ID. “1243 Oakridge Drive,” he said as he started heading to the northwest in search of a street sign.
Most of the houses were not much more than rubble, but some were partially intact, their roofs caved in from street lamps, the occasional dust storms ripping off their shingles, a rare rain or two sinking the foundations. He saw a pair of youths, both of them wearing black hoodies with the sleeves cut off, the hoods over their heads. They were teenagers, one nearly as tall as Sterling. Their first reaction was to turn to him, sizing the cowboy necromancer up. Sterling simply swept the ends of his duster aside so they could see his blade and the revolver on his belt.
They moved on.
“Best move y’all made all day,” Sterling said as he watched the two slip away.
As he walked, his thoughts drifted back to Don Gasper, and what he knew about the man. The old shaman had been one of the first people he met after the Reset. He was as crazy back then as he was now, but he had grown smarter, more cunning since then. There was something about the way he looked at Sterling that made him feel as if Gasper knew the end of the story, as if he’d already seen everything. Sure, he went off the deep end from time to time, but his vision three years ago had been correct and Sterling hadn’t heeded his warning. Fast forward to three years later, and here he was, coming back to him for another vision, hoping that the old shaman could point him in the right direction.
New Mexico had been a big state. According to his travel guide, the Land of Enchantment, as it had been known, was the fifth largest state in what used to be the United States. The state consisted of over one hundred and twenty-one thousand square miles, completely landlocked. The former capital, Santa Fe, used to be the oldest seat of government in the entire country, a place that had changed hands several times over the centuries that followed the Spaniards’ arrival. The state was rich in culture, but poor in almost everything else, the despair made worse by the Reset. New Mexico had everything from mountains to deserts, beautiful villas to extreme poverty. The state bird used to be the roadrunner; the animal, the black bear; the flower, yucca; the tree, piñon; the state tie, the bolo tie.
Sterling wished he knew as much about his previous life as he did the state he called home. As he walked, he brought his hand to his neck. Maybe he needed to find a bolo tie, something that doubled as a charm to honor his heritage, whatever that heritage may be. “Look at you, getting all fancy,” he mumbled as he came to a dead end, seeing a fence protecting a swath of desert soil, an old railroad track, movement in the distance catching his attention. Sterling crouched. There weren’t many places to hide, but he found an old trashcan and used it for cover as he saw a pair of ATVs pull into a large building that looked to be a former elementary school.
“Killbillies,” he whispered.
Keeping to whatever shadows he could find, Sterling followed the road back around, and came to another fork, one of the signs still stand
ing. “Oakridge Drive,” he read as he started looking for the house number. “1243 Oakridge Drive…” He continued down the road, realizing now that he was in the heart of the beast considering the Killbillies’ proximity.
1239…
1241…
“Shee-it,” Sterling mumbled once he stopped in front of what used to be his home: 1243 Oakridge Drive. Nothing was left of the place aside from rubble and a white truck parked out front, the wheels missing, the paint corroded, the tinted windows and the headlights smashed out. He made his way up the driveway and proceeded to kick through the rubble. The house was made of white adobe, much of it blackened. He searched the rubble until it was dark out, leaving no stone unturned as he tried to find evidence of something, anything.
There has to be something here…
The roar of ATVs caught his attention and he ducked, only getting to his feet after the sound had dissipated. He went down the driveway, and stopped in front of the white truck for a moment, wondering if it used to belong to him. Sterling checked the glovebox and uncovered some cash that had been stuffed inside. He had no need for dollar bills, so he left the cash and searched the rest of the vehicle. He was just about to give up when he found a folded piece of paper tucked into one of the visors.
After confirming again that no one was around, Sterling crouched next to the truck and equipped the smaller flashlight he’d purchased earlier that day. He turned it on and held it in his mouth as he looked at the paper, which looked to be some type of car insurance document. There were two names:
Sterling Monedero
Isabella Monedero
It had to be his wife, he just knew it.
“Isabella, Isabella,” he said, as if saying her name would produce a memory. But it didn’t. Sterling looked at the picture in his wallet, his eyes tracing over the woman’s curly brown hair, her dark eyes, Sterling trying desperately to remember something about her.
“Isabella,” he said again, hoping to feel something, even a faint tug of his heart. Nothing.
Cowboy Necromancer: Infinite Dusk Page 16
