Lawless Lands: Tales from the Weird Frontier

by Emily Lavin Leverett

  The tumbleweed turned back to Liza. "See?" it said, and rolled on its way and out of sight.

  She gathered her breath and looked out of the alleyway and across the main street of Diago where another row of hut-cacti, these ones blossoming sagging purple flowers upon their roofs, stood.

  Come out, Groden, she thought to herself. Come out and one of us can leave this hell.

  A bullet answered her thoughts. She heard the crumble of the cactus above her head before the report of the rifle echoed to her ear. She ducked to the ground, her pistol raised, but with so many windows pocketing the cacti, she could not see where it had come from.

  Dust exploded an inch from her chin. The sound of the rifle chased after it. She scurried away, back toward the wall, trying to find cover before—

  A bullet bit the back of her thigh.

  She screamed, but quickly bit down on her lip to quiet herself, remembering the savages still roamed the streets. She clawed herself to safety.

  "What did I say?" she heard Groden's voice follow her down the alleyway. "That ass is mine."

  She wiped the wound, and her hand came back sticky with blood. She dried it on her chaps, brought her gun before her, and tried to think away the pain.

  Focus, Liza. It's only a bullet. You've a dozen scars on your hide from such a bite. It ain't fatal. You'll live.

  And somehow those thoughts allowed her to put the pain of the bullet aside and concentrate on giving one back to Groden.

  But the return of the hoof-beats in the main street made that task much more difficult. She could hear them stirring up dust on the other side of the hut-cactus, interested by the sudden commotion on the northern part of town.

  Liza inched her way around the hut-cactus and the tangle-tak until it stopped altogether. She had gone as far north as she could go by that route. There was nowhere else to hide. She peered around the other side of the cactus and saw the tumult of savages inspecting the area, turning over dry troughs, dragging furniture out into the streets, cutting down dead cacti, anything that could be used as a hiding spot. Yet even with such a presence in the main street, Groden's rifle still crackled. A bullet grazed Liza's cheek, where once more she howled from the touch of it.

  "I'll nibble away at you until there ain't nothing left but that chain of mine lying in the dirt," cried Groden. Liza took cover once more. She hadn't even seen a muzzle flash. Where was he shooting from? It seemed not even the centaurs could find him. She could still hear their agitated yipping as they tore away the town of Diago in search of their prey. Their rancorous hunt was coming closer by the second. It wouldn't be long before it turned up Liza, which meant it wouldn't be long before she was a footless trophy upon their backs.

  But just as the calamity grew to its pinnacle and it seemed the savages were cutting down the very hut-cactus she hid behind, it stopped.

  Gon Gah Yin, she heard one of the centaurs say. There was a slow parade of hooves and then only one set clopping weakly against the packed dirt of the street.

  "What luck," she heard Groden cry. "That blind bitch of a horse of yours decided to come out of hiding."

  Liza scrambled back round the other side of the hut-cactus and peered out through the alleyway. The centaurs had lined either side of the main street with their heads bowed and their weapons lowered as one of their gods limped down its center.

  It was Wink.

  The horse's rear was crusted with red. A pink froth bubbled out from the corner of her snout. Her one good eye scanned the street wildly.

  Liza knew the horse well enough to know that she wouldn't disobey her orders without a good reason, and the only reason that ever seemed to be was when Liza was in danger.

  Damn my screams.

  The centaurs whispered prayers to the mare as she passed them, quiet asks of one of the deities that they idolized, the creatures they had watched humans wrangle away from the plains and harness. But Liza hadn't broken Wink like a stubborn stallion wrestled from the wilderness. She had embraced her as a friend, as family, when her mother first took her to the stables and she picked out the half-blind foal with so much spirit. Since then, she had never even brought a spur into the horse's hindquarters, let alone cause any harm to her other than the fruits of the hazards of their trade. She wasn't about to let anything happen to her now.

  "Think I can hit her other eye?" cried Groden. The rifle thundered, and a pop of dust exploded beside the horse's hoof. Wink flinched, but still she hobbled onward. "I ain't gonna miss again!"

  Liza could tell in the man's voice he wasn't bluffing. In a moment, her best friend would be put down for good. She'd be damned if she let her die alone, surrounded by savages, bleeding out on the dust of a foreign, deserted place like Diago. Liza hurried forward, each step aggravating her wound, and pushed aside a pair of centaurs blocking the alleyway. They were in such a deep state of prayer that they startled as she scurried past, not even raising their weapons to cut her down. She lunged in front of Wink, gathering the mare's head in her arms just as Groden fired again.

  She felt the bullet enter her shoulder and dropped. Wink fell to the ground with her in a heap of horse and rider. A fire like she had never felt before rose from where it had connected. Her eyes swam with tears, yet even still, she spread out her arms to cover as much of Wink as she could, waiting for another burst of the rifle. But it never came, and when her eyes cleared, she realized she was in the darkness of shadows.

  The centaurs stood over them, looking down. The greatest of the creatures, and what must have been their chief as symbolized by the necklace of severed feet it wore around its neck, pointed at her and said, Ga Goa La. The pocked stones of the creatures' tremendous cleavers hung at their sides like gravestones under which she would soon be buried. Like the shot of the rifle, those weapons never came. Instead, the savages were content just to stare at her.

  Wink whinnied beneath her and began to lick at Liza's wound. Liza blinked, and with the centaurs providing a broad-chested barrier against the overhead sun and the glisten of the hut-cacti's roofs, she could only see through the fence of their legs. It was with that narrowed view that she finally saw Groden.

  The man had burrowed beneath the floor a hut-cactus and propped himself up between the shadowy tangle of the giant plant's exposed roots. In that darkness his protruding gun only looked like another barb. A perfect place to pick her apart unless she happened to be on the ground at a certain angle just like she was.

  Lucky indeed.

  Though she knew the centaurs could butcher her at any moment, she'd be damned if she let the sunnova bitch that served her up to them go on living without her. She lunged through the legs of the savages, brought up her revolver, and with a clear shot, pulled the trigger.

  Her gun laughed so loudly that it even startled the centaurs. A red spark flew from where the bullet connected with Groden's rifle, shattering the weapon into a hundred tiny pieces, the shrapnel raking the man's face in the process. Groden scurried out of his hole yelling, holding the flaps of his face. He ran for it, exiting the town, and retreating for the open plain.

  Though he no longer posed a threat and it was her last bullet, Liza thought that he had earned the gift of such a valuable thing.

  The demon's gold laughed once more, and Groden dropped. A tendril of red smoke rose up from the back of his head, but his brains were still intact. They were just now in the hands of whatever purgatory the gun had taken him to.

  Liza rolled onto her back, exhausted. All of her hurt. Above her the twilight-filled sky was as orange as embers, and the clouds that lay strewn upon it as gray as rotten bodies thrown into its fire to burn to ashes. It was a beautiful thing to die beneath.

  The shaggy, dark faces of the savages appeared beneath it. She waited for the fall of their cleavers once more and wished they'd just hurry up and get on with it. Somewhere by her feet she felt Wink scuttle to be beside her. The horse laid her head down upon Liza's legs. It felt good to know that she wouldn't die alone.


  In the distance, she heard the voices of men. The rest of Groden's crew was fleeing just as she expected. To her surprise, all the centaurs picked up their heads and suddenly left her vision. She heard their hooves trot away. She dared to sit up. Heading in the direction of south, the savages pursued three fleeing figures into the open plain, only the chief remained behind.

  The great centaur reached into the quiver at its side and pulled out five blossoms of prairie pinch, the rare purple flower used to stop bleeding and numb pain. The chief knelt before Wink and placed three petals on the horse's wounds. The other two, he placed at Liza's feet.

  Then, before Liza could even react, the great centaur rose and galloped away to join its tribe, the dismembered body upon its back bobbing like some strange gesture of farewell.

  "You saved one of their gods," came a voice at her back. The tumbleweed rolled into view. "Lucky for you, they take kindly to creatures who treat their deities with respect."

  "It ain't luck," said Liza as she picked up the flowers and put them over her wounds. Already she could feel their touch cooling the fire of the bullets. "I've done run outta that."

  "Well then, maybe it's not that," said the tumbleweed. "Maybe it's another thing that I heard once upon a time during my wandering."

  "What's that?" said Liza, too tired to tell the thing to brush off. She ran her hand through Wink's mane. The horse snorted and struggled to her feet, helping Liza up with her.

  "That there is no such thing as luck, only good things that happen to people with good hearts."

  Liza forced a laugh at that. "You sound like someone I know."

  "Then maybe that person is smarter than you think."

  "That person is set to dangle from the gallows. She's the reason I got into this mess in first place. I ain't got no good heart."

  "You risked your own neck to save someone. Don't sound like you got a bad heart to me," said the weed.

  Liza went to respond, but kept her mouth closed. Beside her, Wink trotted a bit as if to show her she could ride, the prairie pinch already taking effect. She climbed aboard and looked out into the open plain, feeling the weight of commander's chain in her pocket. There were miles to go before they reached Fort Fiasco. Though bullets were still buried beneath their skins and other wounds had marked their hides for good, their bleeding had stopped and their pain was numbed... for now. They would make it there as they always had, somehow eking a way forward through the treacheries the Spindlelands put down before them. Together. Not by luck.

  Liza turned Wink westward, and the horse trotted forward. The tumbleweed called at their backs.

  "This will be quite the story to tell my posse when I finally catch up."

  "I hope they enjoy it," called back Liza.

  "Tell me, what's your name?"

  "Liza," she said. "Liza Reynolds."

  "That it?" said the tumbleweed.

  "That's it."

  Together they left Diago.

  20

  Rollin’ Death

  Jake Bible

  "We should really go back, Clay."

  Clay MacAulay didn't reply. He sat there in his mech pilot's chair and chewed on his fourth hunk of jerky. It was making him unbearably thirsty, but he wasn't going to say so. Not to Gibbons. The AI could kiss his unwashed butt.

  "Clay?" Gibbons said, the AI co-pilot's voice tinny over the ancient speaker system set into the mech cockpit's ceiling. "Clay, I know you can hear me. Stop ignoring me."

  "Start saying something worthwhile, and maybe I'll start responding," Clay replied.

  He kicked his legs up over the pilot's seat's armrest and stared out into the unforgiving landscape they were clomping across. Scrub brush. Deep, dry ravines. Mesas carved by winds that could strip a combat roller of its outer armor. Not a cloud in sight. Hadn't been for days.

  "So, we just let them die?" Gibbons asked.

  Clay adjusted his wide-brimmed hat, struggling against the sweat-soaked band that stuck to his forehead. He pushed the hat back and stared straight into one of the vid cams Gibbons used to see Clay. The stare became a glare; the glare became an eye roll.

  "We aren't letting anyone die, Gibbons," Clay said. "Those folks made their choice. We told them that the Cabenero Pass was not safe. We told them that even with fifteen rollers training along, they didn't stand a chance against the scavengers that live in those mountains. We told them all of this. They didn't listen."

  "They didn't listen because they assumed we'd help them get through the pass," Gibbons said.

  "That was stupid of them," Clay replied. "One more stupid move on their part."

  "Clay, what good is having a fifty-foot battle mech if we aren't going to help people?" Gibbons asked, his voice filled with frustration.

  "To keep us alive until we get to where we're going," Clay said. "That's always been the point."

  "Not anymore and you know it," Gibbons replied. "I'm sorry, but you are a great disappointment, Clay. If you want to waste this mech, then you start piloting it."

  The mech slowed its walk across the landscape then stopped as it powered down.

  Clay waited. And waited. But the mech didn't come back online.

  "You suck, Gibbons," Clay snapped. "You really suck. What could we do? Honestly, explain it to me."

  "We could have escorted them through the pass," Gibbons said. "It would have only added three days, maybe four, to our journey."

  "Four days when we're low on gray?" Clay asked. "When was the last time we came across any gray? Geothermal only fills the power cells so much, Gibbons. Heading over that pass is the wrong move. There's gray this way. Map shows it. Old reactor about, what? A hundred kilometers north? That's why we aren't helping those folks and their foolhardy dreams of freedom out West."

  "Dreams are not foolhardy," Gibbons replied, his voice low and mournful. "We have dreams."

  "I have dreams," Clay said and laughed. "You're an AI. Artificial intelligence. You don't dream."

  "You are being particularly nasty right now," Gibbons snapped. "So, you know what I'm going to do about it? Do you, Clay?"

  Clay didn't respond.

  "I'm going to go help some fine folks who have dreams," Gibbons continued. "If I can't have dreams of my own, then the least I can do is assist those who do."

  Clay sat bolt upright. He planted his boots on the floor and grabbed the controls.

  "Don't even think about it, Gibbons!" Clay snarled. "I'm the pilot!"

  "You're the asshole is what you are," Gibbons said as the mech powered up and began to turn around. "I'm taking us back there, and we're going to help that roller train get through the pass. And there ain't a damn thing you can do about it."

  "Oh, is that right?" Clay said. "Pilot override. Lock out AI. Full security protocols."

  The mech continued to turn around until it was facing the opposite direction and a horizon lined with a far-off mountain range.

  "I said pilot override!" Clay shouted. "Lock out AI! Full security protocols!"

  The mech began to walk. Gibbons began to hum.

  Clay jumped to his feet and hurried to a small panel off to his right.

  "I'll cut you," Clay warned.

  "Yeah, Clay, you do that," Gibbons said, then went on humming.

  Clay reached for the panel then paused. He pulled his hand back and turned to the vid cam.

  "It's electrified, isn't it? You were gonna stun me and knock my ass out," he said. "I touch that and I sleep through most of the journey. Nice try."

  "Huh? Don't know what you're jabbering about, Clay," Gibbons replied, the faux innocence mockingly thick. "You can touch that panel all you want. Go ahead. Touch it. Put both hands on it and yank it open. Then pull the six wires inside and take the mech back over. Go for it, Clay."

  "I hate you," Clay said as he backed away from the panel and returned to his seat. "You know that?"

  "All relationships go through rough patches," Gibbons said. "You'll get over it. You always do."

  Gibbon
s was silent for a moment then added, "You grumpy asshole."

  Clay grabbed another hunk of jerky and chewed it like he was gnawing on pure hate.

  The mech stomped along, covering several kilometers before the sun began to set. Neither Clay nor Gibbons said another word that night.

  Clay stretched and yawned before willing himself out of the uncomfortable seat so he could stumble to the latrine chute and relieve himself.

  "Good morning, Clay," Gibbons said. "I would like to apologize for my part in our little fight yesterday."

  Clay replied with a grunt.

  "That's it? A grunt while you pee?" Gibbons asked. "I certainly hit the lottery with my choice of pilots."

  "You didn't have to save me down in the Brazilian Empire, you know," Clay said as he zipped up and gave his hands a quick douse in sanitizer. "You could have left me down there. I was doing just fine."

  "You were a dent destined to be… Never mind," Gibbons said. "We've been over this."

  Clay opened a panel and pulled out a bottle of water and two bars of dehydrated fruit mush. The last two bars of dehydrated fruit mush.

  "No wonder she wouldn't come with me," Clay muttered as he closed the panel and sat back down. "What do I have to offer? Over-salted jerky and a life where sand and dust fill your cracks and crevices. I wouldn't have gone with me neither."

  "Is that what this is about?" Gibbons asked. "The woman? You're acting like a pissy little boy because that woman wouldn't come with us?"

  Gibbons laughed long and hard. Clay glared out the cockpit's windshield at the slowly lightening landscape. They were approaching the mountains' foothills.

  "You done?" Clay asked as Gibbons continued to laugh. "Really, you about got that out of your system?"

  The laughter petered out, and Gibbons made noises like he was trying to catch his breath, which was impossible for an AI to do.

  "Clay, she would have come with, but you didn't ask her," Gibbons said. "Humans are idiots."

  "What the hell do you mean I didn't ask her?" Clay said around a mouthful of fruit mush. He swallowed hard, almost choking on the gooey chunk, then took a drink of water before continuing. "I asked her. She said no."