by Shiloh Hunt
His back struck something solid, tearing Fifi away from him. Lucy scrabbled for purchase, limbs flailing. His fingers found a ridge. Almost jerked free when the rest of his weight arrived. Lucy swung, one hand waving in blind search of a new grip.
The tip of his boot kicked into the cliff face, wedging into a crevice. There was a scream, growing fainter every second. But it wasn’t important. Making sure the three fingers of his right hand remained where they were was important.
Slowly, breath caught somewhere in his body as if the air was helium and exhaling it would lose him a percentage of buoyancy, Lucy fumbled his left hand into a handhold.
Below, the faint scream cut off.
Above, a vulture called out.
Lucy clung to the side of Devil’s Peak, eyes squeezed shut as he waited. From above, the wind slicing their sentences into slivers, came the voices of the lawmen.
“He gone and done it,” a lawman bemoaned. “He really gone and done it.”
“She never done nothing to no one, our Belinda,” another lawman agreed.
“Quiet.” The sheriff’s voice was rough. “What’s done is done.”
Lucy knew the cut scene. He’d sat through it more than once before. The minute-long reel that played was a fleeting, melodramatic movie: all a player could do was sit back and watch. Or, if they were lucky, they could take a bathroom break.
“But every action has a consequence, son.”
Had he still been standing on the horizontal side of Devil’s Peak, then Lucy would be facing a furious sheriff right now.
“And you’ll be paying this consequence all the years of what’s left of your wretched life.”
Lucy sagged, a sigh escaping him. He pushed away from the cliff face. The wind dragged at his skin, narrowing his eyes. A vulture passed him by. Its feathery wings allowed it a graceful descent toward the broken body of Belinda.
With eager anticipation, Helical opened a wide expanse of canyon. A final, deadly embrace of hard-packed sand reached for Lucy.
9
Lucy’s eyes flashed open. His heart raced, the blood in his veins laced with adrenaline from his near-death experience. For a moment, in the darkness, he’d panicked. He blinked a few times, forcing his eyes to focus on the interior of the jail cell he sat in.
Surging forward, Lucy gripped the bars, pressing his cheek against the cool metal as he strained to peer into the room beyond.
“Kitty!” he whispered. “You here?”
There was a sharp intake of breath, and a dishevelled Kitty tumbled into view, one hand pressed to her face. She scrambled to her feet, mouth opening.
The sheriff appeared, his ruddy face mottled with patches of white fury.
“So, you’re in cahoots with this gunslinging fiend.” The sheriff produced a ring of keys from his belt and unlocked Lucy’s cell. “Don’t seem right, you having your partner in crime to keep company with.”
The sheriff threw Kitty into the cell, slamming the cell door behind her.
“Won’t be ‘fore much longer. Hope you’re not the jealous kind, woman. ‘Cos your boyfriend here’s got a date with the hangman on the morrow.”
The sheriff of Tumbleweed spat into the corner of the jail, his face twitching in disgust.
“He has it down to an art, our hangman.” The sheriff leaned toward the cell, lips turning up in a humourless smile. “Those convicts be dancing on the end of his rope for minutes on end. Don’t know how he does it.”
The lawman sauntered away after giving them a last, lingering sneer. There was a creak as he sat down and rocked back on his chair, ankles propped on the desk. When Lucy glanced at Kitty, she was glaring sullenly at the sheriff’s boots.
“So I’m assuming you haven’t found your boy yet?” Lucy lay back on the narrow cot, grimacing at the moth eaten cloth draped over it.
Kitty whipped around, her eyes narrowing more for him than they had for the sheriff.
“This damned stuff is useless,” Kitty jerked at her skirts. “Took me forever to get here, and then I kept knocking things over with this ludicrous contraption.” She swivelled to provide Lucy with an uninterrupted view of the dress’s enormous bustle.
“So that’s a no, then,” Lucy murmured.
Kitty paced the length of the bars, eyes scanning the corners of the room.
“Ridiculous dress,” Kitty was saying under her breath. “Stupid, sexist, game developers. Even that pathetic Belinda had a damned knife. Would a dagger be asking too much? A set of lock picks, mayhap?”
She gripped the bars and pressed her face against them, trying to earn a clear view of the sheriff.
“Where’s our grub?” she yelled. “We need food.”
“Nope,” came the sheriff’s reply.
“We have rights, you know!”
“Nope.”.
“Kitty, sit down.”
“You can’t just leave us in here—”
“Sit down!”
Kitty gave Lucy a foul stare, but she sat on the cot opposite him with a sigh that went on for at least thirty seconds.
“What?” she asked.
Lucy sat up and rested his elbows on his knees, clutching his hands together and fixing her with an intense stare.
“We’re getting out of here,” he said.
Kitty rolled her eyes. “You know, I’m all for optimism at a time like this, but—”
“There’s a sayin’ where I come from,” Lucy said.
Kitty sat back in the cot and crossed her arms over her chest.
“You’ll know it’s the end,” Lucy said, “‘cos there’ll be angels with harps and shit. Until then, it’s not the end.”
“Angels…” Kitty repeated slowly, face impassive.
“With harps,” Lucy added. “Them harps are crucial.”
Kitty closed her eyes and gave her head a shake. “My cellmate’s a bloody loon.”
“But a loon with a plan,” Lucy said, grinning at her when she opened an eye.
“This plan of yours involve me doing something I can’t do, like sneaking into a jail dragging a yard of satin and whale bone around with me?”
Lucy shook his head.
“Then what?”
Lucy shrugged and turned his head to the cell bars.
“It involves him,” he said, and pointed.
There was a resounding crash. Sunlight filled the room with a golden glare. Silhouetted against the glow, a broad-shouldered figure came to a rest. It held a pistol in each hand, raised to head height, and wore a wide-brimmed hat on its head.
“Where’s he at?” the thing bellowed.
“Here, you can’t just—” the sheriff exclaimed, his chair clattering to the floor in his haste to stand.
A pistol crack sounded, deafening in the narrow confines of the jail. The sheriff flew into the bars, rattling them, and slid to the floor where a pool of his own blood waited.
Kitty shot to her feet, hands touching the spray of red painting her cheek.
“I thought you killed him,” she whispered, pressing her back to the nearest wall as if trying to force herself through it. “We’re fish in a damned barrel here, Lucy.”
“You’re forgetting something, sweetheart.” Lucy unfolded from the cot and faced the bars. “That fisherman over there has a penchant for drama. Which means, after he scoops us out of said barrel, we’ll be killing him long before he get a chance to gut us.”
The sunlight faded to reveal Nick the Dick. The man strode into the jail, wild eyes set squarely on Lucy.
“Sorry sheriff,” Nick said in a low, rough voice. “But since you lawmen ain’t doing nothing about this scumbag, I thought it best to take the law into my own hands, style of thing.”
Nick fumbled around the sheriff for a few seconds. Then a pair of handcuffs appeared at Lucy’s feet.
“Hope you like jewellery,” Nick said.
Lucy snapped the handcuffs around his wrists.
“Nice and tight now, you hear?”
“There’s n
ot exactly an option to fit them loose,” Lucy lifted his bound wrists for Nick to see. “Just get on with it.”
Nick ripped the ring of keys from the sheriff’s belt and unlocked the cell.
“No funny business, Luce. You and your girl come out nice and slow.”
Lucy waited until Kitty had edged reluctantly from the cell before following her out. He left bloodied footprints in his wake as Nick led them from the jail, walking backwards with a pistol pointed at each of them.
Outside, a handful of mounted riders awaited them. Kitty’s body went stiff and she threw a furious glance over her shoulder at Lucy.
“Who’re these then?” Lucy asked. “Never thought you had enough charm to form a posse.”
Nick’s grin was unpleasant. “Turns out, I’m not the only one you’ve wronged in these parts, Lucy Fur. Turns out,” Nick went on, sidling up to the wide-eyed Kitty, “There’s a whole damned horde of players who’d pay to see you dead.” He shrugged. “Metaphorically speaking, of course. You know, since the game’s glitched, so all this rift’s in-game currency’s gone and stopped working.”
“I get it,” Lucy said through a clenched jaw. “Could you hurry this up, then? We got places to be.”
“Yeah, like purgatory!” a man, face hidden behind a scrap of cloth, yelled out.
“Nah, Lucy here’s going straight to hell,” Nick replied. “Don’t stop. Don’t collect your three hundred Gameoleans.”
Nick’s posse chortled dutifully.
“Your brother wouldn’t have wanted this,” Lucy said.
“Greg knew this thing stank of a three-day-dead skunk. Knew you were trouble from the moment he laid eyes on you, too. And then it turned out, true as Bob, the infamous Lucy Fur was a bigger dick than me. Who’d have thought,” Nick said, lowering his pistols and taking a step toward Lucy. “Should’ve listened to Greg. Should’ve taken to heart what he gone and said, instead of just standing by watching you put hot lead in his belly.”
There was something to Nick’s tone of voice. Lucy twisted his head, staring at Nick from the corner of his eye. The man drew back his shoulders, chin lifting.
“He hasn’t spawned again,” Lucy said.
“What?” Kitty faced him, fan fluttering beside her face. “What you saying, Lucy?”
Nick’s chin lifted another inch. “He sayin’ my brother’s gone for good. Kicked the metaphorical bit-bucket. It was his last life he was on, when Lucy killed ‘im.”
“I didn’t know, Nick,” Lucy said quietly. “How could I?”
“Does it matter? Didn’t matter that I wanted out, did it? I ended up doing what I came here to do, regardless of what I wanted. Regardless of what Greg wanted.”
Lucy straightened. He blinked at Nick as, back in the real world, his heart began a slow drumming inside his rib cage.
“But you’re still here,” Lucy said. “You’re still in the game.”
Nick’s shoulders drew in, his chin dropping again. The player’s eyes flickered from Lucy to Kitty, his mouth growing tight.
“Why hasn’t your brother disconnected you from the game yet?”
“I don’t know,” Nick mumbled.
“He’s out, right? So he would’ve disconnected you.”
“Don’t know.”
“Greg wouldn’t leave you here. You yellow-bellied lizards couldn’t wait to get out.” Lucy shook his head. “So why—”
“I don’t know!” Nick bellowed. He lifted a hand and knocked his hat off his head, running his palm over his avatar’s wavy blond hair. “You think I know why? Bloody tarnation, Lucy. Anything could have happened. I don’t have a clue why I’m still here. I even thought—” Nick cut off, his hand running over his mouth as his gaze moved away from Lucy’s face. His eyes lost focus. “I was so happy when you killed him. I mean, I knew it hurt him, to die like that, but I was ecstatic because I knew we were getting out. After eleven hours. Eleven bloody hours. Finally, I knew we were getting out of this hell hole and I could eat something and take a crap again—”
Nick gave his head a violent shake. He replaced his hat with utter ceremony, ignoring the murmur of voices from his posse. The players were shifting on their mounts, glancing at each other, their faces painted with a mixture of confusion and fear.
“Don’t matter anyhow, does it?” Nick said. “It is what it is. No more, no less. You did what you thought you had to do. I did what you forced me to do.”
Lucy’s heart’s slow canter had switched into a gallop: pressure welled inside his chest, as if his heart had broken free of its restraints and was careening around in its cavity, pulverising whatever tissue it came into contact with.
“Listen, Nick—” Lucy began, taking a quick step back before Nick’s hand could close around his arm. “We have to figure this out. I mean, where did he go—”
Lucy staggered. White hot pain flashed through his chest. He felt a distant thump go through his body as he fell to a knee, bound hands clutching at his chest. He heard a girlish scream. Hands grasped at his shirt’s collar, tugging at him, but Lucy swung back and landed silently in the dust. His eyes latched onto a trio of vultures as they circled the twin glows from Helical’s suns.
One of the scavengers cawed; its feathered wing twitching as it began to descend.
10
“Lucy!” Kitty’s face swarmed into view, hazel eyes glittering. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”
Abruptly, Lucy’s pain flickered out. He took a deep breath, wincing in anticipation, but the pain didn’t return.
“Don’t give ‘im hope, woman,” Nick said from somewhere behind Kitty. “And move out the way so’s I can end this.”
Lucy propped himself up on his elbow and gently pushed Kitty aside, until Nick’s broad frame came into view. The man’s pistol was pointed straight at his chest — the man wasn’t taking any chances by going for a head shot.
“I’m on my last life,” Lucy said.
For a moment, even the vultures circling above were silent. Nick shrugged a shoulder, the pistol’s barrel dipping slightly with the gesture.
“Happy days for you, then,” Nick said.
Lucy shook his head. “How can you be so sure?”
Nick frowned at him. “’Cos you’re getting out, that’s why.” He gave Lucy a wide smile. “In fact, I’m pretty much doing you a favour. You should be thanking me.”
Then the man’s face changed. His gaze slid away from Lucy, fixing on a distant point somewhere before losing focus.
“I should kill all of you…” Nick murmured. He swung around, and several of the players behind him ducked. “Then you’d all go home. I could send all of you home!”
“You don’t know that!” Kitty yelled. “You can’t go around killing everyone if you don’t know where they’ll end up.”
Nick swung back to her, shoulders stiff, lips curling up into a sneer.
“You shut your mouth, wench. Ain’t no one ask you nothing.”
Kitty sprang up before Lucy could close his hand around her arm or her leg to try and keep her down.
“Kitty, no!” Lucy said.
“I’m not shutting up, and you’re not killing no one,” Kitty said. She stormed up to Nick, stabbing her fan into the man’s chest. “And I know this goes ‘gainst your very nature, but you’re going to listen to me, and you’re going to listen good.”
In the silence that followed Kitty’s proclamation, Lucy imagined he could hear the sound of grains of sand as they scraped over the road, driven by the gentle breeze.
“What did you say?” Nick asked, speaking slowly and deliberately. His face was red. “Did you just—”
“Where’s your brother?” Kitty lifted herself on tip-toes. “Huh? Where’s he at?”
Nick shook his head, blinking at her as if wondering if she was an apparition brought on from heat stroke.
“You don’t know, do ya?” Her voice rose in triumph. “You ain’t got no idea.”
She sank back on her heels and crossed her arms tigh
tly over her chest.
“So why’d you want to go and send innocent players after him? He could be trapped—” she flicked her fingers “—I don’t know, between here and the real deal. He could be trapped, and all you’re going to do is send more players after him and trap them too?”
Nick remained utterly silent. Only his chest moved, lifting and subsiding as he drew breath after heaving breath.
“Are you listening to me?” Kitty prompted, with a stab of her fan for emphasis.
Nick’s backhanded blow threw her to the road in a plume of dust.
“Yeah, I’s listening,” Nick said softly. He worked his fingers: squeezing them into a fist, pressing them into a flat hand again. “And I heard you real good. Now you listen to me, wench.”
The man strode past Lucy and slammed his boot onto Kitty’s stomach. She gasped, curling up around the man’s foot, and began slapping at his leg.
“You ever, ever speak about my brother like that again, I’ll—”
The crack of a pistol drowned out Nick’s voice. His lips moved silently for a few seconds. He glanced down. Frowning, he touched two fingers to his chest.
“Percival?” Nick staggered, releasing Kitty, and swung to face his posse.
One of the men tugged down his bandanna, revealing a face etched with sudden contrition.
“I’m real sorry, Nick,” the man said, the hand holding his pistol dropping to his side. Beneath him, his mount danced a few steps. The man didn’t seem to notice. “But you can’t… you can’t kill ‘em if you don’t know where they’re headed. It’s not right.”
“You bastard…” Nick breathed. His health bar was just under half way, but it began recovering as Lucy’s edged back to full. “You lying, backstabbing—”
There was another crack of a gun. Nick’s body twisted under the force of the impact.
“You should have let us go, Nick,” someone called out. “Shouldn’t have made us stay here. We all said your brother wasn’t coming back. You should have let us leave.”
Nick grimaced, rendered immobile by his injuries. He sagged, his eyes moving feverishly between the gathered men as if trying to find a sympathetic face. More pistols snapped into existence. On the far left, a man in a battered hat took aim.
