Cowboys and Aliens

by Joan D. Vinge

  Maybe it would only protect itself. But maybe that didn’t really matter: To protect itself, it had to protect him. And here in the middle of Hell on Earth, he didn’t much care what the weapon really wanted if it would just kill the demons that were destroying this town and slaughtering its people for no good reason. Just because they could. Like the man whose face he’d seen on the wanted poster.

  He wasn’t that man, wasn’t a demon wearing human skin. He was a demon hunter. And even if he had to make himself into a human target, damn him if he didn’t have the grit it took to take on these demons—

  Blue lights and explosions were coming his way again; they didn’t look to be moving quite as fast this time. The cones of light zigzagged from spot to spot, still hunting more victims; the demons harvested them like the Grim Reaper, cutting them off from their futile attempts to fight or run away, swallowing them up into unseen maws.

  Jake walked out into the middle of the street, barely registering the screams and gunfire, the dust and smoke. Come on, he thought, show yourselves. Come and get me . . . kill me if you can. He held the demon gun up high.

  As if his death wish had suddenly been granted, he saw his target at last: One of the flying monsters swerved, its shadow-form making an impossible turn in midair. As it came back it fired down at anyone on horseback or on foot who was still firing a gun, blasting them apart with bolts of lightning.

  And still it came on, straight down the middle of the street toward Jake, as if it had been searching for him alone. He could see lights covering its body—demon eyes glowing in the dark.

  Come on, he thought, not even sure if he meant the demon or the demon gun now. He stood his ground, holding his arm steady. People fled around and past him, clearing his line of fire. Suddenly the targeting arc shone above his wrist; he took aim, helping it find its mark.

  The weapon fired with almost no recoil this time: The blue beam hit the flying monster like a bullet’s trajectory made visible, before he even had time to blink. It struck the demon almost head-on; the explosion stunned his senses.

  The demon tilted, wavered, and lost control, falling from the air even as it roared toward him, like it meant to take him down with it.

  Jake ducked as the thing passed just over his head. He spun in his tracks and saw it hit the ground with a grinding crash, plowing a furrow into the packed dirt of the street, trailing fire and debris.

  The other demons circling over the town suddenly vanished into the night, faster than they’d come. As they disappeared, a sound like the air exploding shattered windows along the street.

  And then there was quiet, as deafening as the pandemonium of moments before.

  Jake stood motionless in the wake of the downed demon, stunned by what he’d just seen and done. The weapon was still . . . alive, cocked, armed, loaded—? What the hell did you call it, when a gun fired lightning? The downed demon’s eyes still glowed; the weapon seemed to be keeping watch to make sure its victim was really helpless.

  Slowly he again became aware of the world beyond the demon and his gun—voices murmuring, people venturing back out into the street. He realized abruptly that Woodrow Dolarhyde had come to be standing beside him—no longer on horseback, not saying anything. Just . . . staring, like he was; at the downed demon, at the weapon on his wrist. At him. Dolarhyde still had a pistol in his hand, but he made no move to raise it.

  Jake took a deep breath as he realized that a grudging truce held between them, for now; that for the moment, he was safe, at least from his own kind. An entire crowd had gathered around the two of them. Everyone there was staring at him and Dolarhyde as if they were huddled together around a fire on a freezing night.

  He got the feeling all of them—even Dolarhyde—were expecting him to say something. He had no idea what. Finally, Dolarhyde asked,“What . . . are those things?”

  Jake looked at him blankly. “Why’re you asking me?”

  7

  Dolarhyde ventured a step toward Jake, pointing at the weapon on Jake’s wrist. He bent his head at the monstrous thing lying in the street. “You shot it . . . with that iron. Where’d you get it? It was shooting the same kinda lights they were.”

  Jake was saved from having to answer by Doc Sorenson, who stumbled up to him, eyes still dazed. His expression told Jake that Doc was in worse shape, as far as understanding what had happened, than even he was. He remembered seeing Doc’s wife pulled screaming into the sky.

  “What the . . . hell was that?” Doc asked. His voice shook. “They got . . . Maria . . . they took my wife. . . .”

  Emmett came up beside Doc, his eyes red, tears still running down his face. “They got my grandpa.”

  A sudden loud hissing from the fallen sky demon drove them all to abrupt silence again.

  Jake turned on his heel to face it. The fallen demon’s glowing eyes had all gone dark; it looked deader than before. But it was still a demon. . . .

  Abruptly the wrist weapon began to shut down. As Jake and Dolarhyde both watched, it retracted piece by piece into itself; Jake opened his hand reflexively as the metal band across his palm withdrew. The ring of slender tubes that fired light disappeared back into the patterned surface of an ornamental cuff. Within seconds, it was again only the damnedest shackle he’d ever seen.

  Slowly Jake lifted his head, until his eyes met Dolarhyde’s. He saw that whatever else Dolarhyde was feeling now—hatred or loss or shock or awe—there was a healthy dose of fear in his eyes, too, when he looked at Jake. Jake raised his head a little higher, his eyes cold.

  But there was also a trace of respect in Dolarhyde’s gaze now—an acknowledgement of Jake’s nerve in facing down the demon. And under it, a darker awareness that whether the weapon belonged to Jake, or Jake belonged to the weapon, he wanted them on his side. . . .

  Dolarhyde looked toward the demon, glanced back at Jake; his pistol was still in his hand. Jake nodded, and drew his own revolver. Slowly, warily, they made their way toward the thing.

  As they walked, Jake subconsciously took note of how the other man moved; realizing as he did that there was a lot more to Woodrow Dolarhyde than just a mean-tempered son of a bitch with too much gold for his own good.

  Dolarhyde was no coward, Jake had to give him that. In fact, Dolarhyde moved with the confidence of a man who’d spent a lifetime using weapons—all kinds of weapons—to kill all kinds of people. He just might be as dangerous as Jake himself had looked, reflected in Dolarhyde’s eyes, or in the sheriff’s.

  But Jake felt sure Dolarhyde meant to keep the silent truce that held between them—at least for as long as he was useful to him. And by the time he wasn’t, Jake figured to be long gone and far away from Woodrow Dolarhyde’s revenge. . . .

  They closed in on the flying demon where it lay, its nose half buried in the street, a wake of dirt and stones piled up around it. Even up close, there was nothing about it that resembled any creature Jake had ever seen, except maybe insects: a hornet’s body, a dragonfly’s wings . . . a dragonfly with a wingspan the length of a freight wagon, and five wings on each side. Dolarhyde glanced at the weapon on Jake’s wrist again; so did Jake. It was still nothing but a shackle.

  And the demon sure as hell looked dead; in fact it looked like its head had been nearly ripped off, as they approached its front end. In the flickering light of too many fires, they could see clear into its strange guts.

  Except there wasn’t really anything inside to see—nothing a human could recognize, at least. No blood, nothing torn . . . no human bodies . . . just an empty hole. The weapon on Jake’s wrist didn’t stir, as if whatever it really was meant to kill wasn’t there anymore.

  “You see anyone in there?” Doc called out. The rest of the crowd had stayed where it was. “Is—is my wife in there?”

  Neither of them answered, still peering into the mystery of the demon’s shell, spellbound by the sight of it . . . like a cicada’s husk, or an abandoned cocoon.

  “Hey—!” Doc shouted.

 
“No, she’s not here!” Dolarhyde answered irritably. Neither was his son. Looking at Jake, he asked, “Is it dead?”

  Jake kicked it with his boot, not too hard. Its surface resisted with an odd clunk. “It’s metal,” he murmured, surprised. A flying machine? An infernal killing machine . . . He glanced at the weapon on his wrist again and holstered his pistol. Turning away, he started back to the others. Dolarhyde followed, his face brooding.

  As they rejoined the small crowd of townsfolk and ranch hands, Emmett asked, “Is it demons?” as if he’d read Jake’s mind. But he was asking Preacher Meacham, not Jake.

  Apparently the preacher wasn’t in the habit of having demons come to call. He tried two or three times to speak, before he said, “I don’t know what it is . . . but it sure fits the description.”

  That was met with another long silence. At last Doc turned to the preacher, exasperated. “Well, what the hell does that mean? Jesus Christ, Preacher, what the hell does that mean: ‘Demons’? Bible stuff? Talkin’ about the Good Book? Hellfire, and all that—?” His voice rose, angry and resentful and grief-stricken.

  “Calm down, Doc . . .” Meacham said, somehow keeping his own voice calm. “You’re scarin’ the boy.”

  “‘Calm down’?” Doc half shouted. “You telling me a bunch of demons came and took my wife—took our people—and you want me to calm down?”

  Jake glanced up, as behind Doc something blurred past on the rooftop, too fast for him to see it clearly. The demon gun on his wrist lit up, and everyone around him turned, their faces stricken, as he raised his arm. But the weapon didn’t transform, even though Jake could hear heavy footsteps thudding as the demon bounded from rooftop to rooftop. It disappeared again before Jake could track it far enough even to get a clear look at it.

  “. . . What is it?” “Where’d it go?” “There!” “—No, there—” The crowd began to panic again, some of them drawing guns, firing at any place they thought it had been, or might be, while others pointed and shouted, seeing monsters everywhere.

  A window shattered and wood splintered as the demon crashed through the side of a building. They all heard a woman’s scream, and then a shotgun, fired twice; Jake saw the muzzle flashes through a window. Then a man screamed, as if something had ripped his gun away, and his arm with it. The sounds that came next were too hideous to be human, sounds only a demon could have made. Somebody’s entrails splattered across the window glass.

  People in the crowd cried out, or else turned away, sickened.

  The unseen thing crashed out through another wall on the far side of the building, landing heavily in the alley behind it. Jake caught fleeting glimpses of a shadowy figure beyond the slats of a fence, but the darkness and the milling crowd kept him from seeing any real details. All he could tell was that it was huge, and it hadn’t looked human. . . .

  The demon’s hulking, misshapen form disappeared from sight completely as it fled the town. Everyone had turned to watch it go, trying to see which way it was headed. Their muttered voices debated whether it was likely to come back.

  The alarm signals on Jake’s weapon shut down. The real demon, the thing that had shed the skin of the flying monster, had killed two more people and gotten clean away, and the weapon hadn’t even let him try for a shot. Why—? Jake’s hands made fists at his sides.

  But as silence began to fall again, he realized that at least the thing’s failure to act had reassured everyone else that they were finally safe. Jake watched them pull themselves back together, until at last he felt as relieved as they were. He only hoped the demon gun was right.

  Deputy Lyle moved his head like he was shaking off a daze, and went to where Emmett was standing. “C’mon,” he said quietly, “let’s get you back inside.” He led Emmett away, without glancing twice at Jake.

  “How’d you do that?” Dolarhyde demanded finally, gesturing at the weapon on Jake’s wrist.

  Jake just stared at him, without even the words to explain how much he didn’t know. “I got no idea,” he said at last.

  “Do it again.” An order, not a request.

  Jake went on looking at him, as frustrated by Dolarhyde’s failure to get the point as by his own failure to understand anything at all. “I can’t.”

  “Where the hell did you get it?” Dolarhyde said, as if his brain couldn’t absorb anything Jake told him . . . or, more likely, thought it was all lies.

  Jake took a deep breath. “For the last goddamn time: I. Don’t. Remember”

  “What do you mean, ‘You don’t remember’?” Dolarhyde’s glare would’ve flayed him alive, if it could have.

  Jake would have hit him then, except that Nat Colorado’s voice called out from a distance, “I found tracks!”

  They followed his voice to a spot near where Jake had caught his last glimpse of the demon. Dolarhyde was carrying a shotgun now.

  Nat Colorado was kneeling by a deep footprint—the print left by something big, massive, with talons on its inhumanly shaped foot.

  Dolarhyde’s men and the townspeople who were still following them gathered around the footprint, murmuring in subdued voices as the sight of it brought back their fear.

  “What the hell is that?” Doc asked.

  “Not like any tracks I’ve ever seen,” Nat muttered. Jake figured that had to be an understatement. He remembered the final sounds he’d heard; the sight of entrails splattered on a window. . . .

  “Whatever the hell they are, they’re headed west with our kin,” Dolarhyde said. He turned toward the handful of his men who’d survived. Raising his voice, he called out, “Find the horses! We’re going after it before we lose the trail.”

  The men behind him traded dubious looks and reluctant glances. “I said move!” the Colonel snarled, and they did. Only Nat remained behind, a protective shadow to his boss, the way he’d been to his boss’s son.

  “Wait a minute,” Doc protested. “What do you mean, you’re goin’ after them? What are you goin’ after, pal? What the hell you plannin’ to do?”

  The man had a point, Jake decided. Now that he had time to think about it, taking on a whole hive full of demons, even with the weapon on his wrist, didn’t appeal to him. He’d just survived Hell on Earth . . . and he hadn’t lost anybody to the monsters. Instead, he’d gotten back his freedom.

  Absolution was just a place, and he’d done all he could for its people—all he wanted to do, and most likely more than they deserved from him. He turned away quietly and began to walk toward the street.

  “Hey!” Dolarhyde said.

  Jake stopped and turned around as Dolarhyde started after him, because he didn’t want to end up shot in the back now.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said?” Dolarhyde asked, as if Jake was as thick-headed as he was.

  “I heard what you said.” Jake met Dolarhyde’s stare, his face expressionless. “I don’t work for you.”

  “Did you hear what I said?” Doc protested, because as usual nobody was listening to him. “What exactly you got in mind!”

  Dolarhyde went on ignoring him, all his attention on Jake like a burning-glass. He pointed at the metal bracelet. “I need that thing. It’s the only weapon that counts. And you owe me.”

  For something he didn’t remember doing. Jake’s face got more stubborn. “I don’t see it that way.”

  Dolarhyde swung at him. Jake barely had time to react before Dolarhyde hit him in the jaw, making him stagger.

  Jake couldn’t believe Dolarhyde had moved that fast; he’d barely missed the full force of the blow. Any other man would’ve had a broken jaw.

  Dirty bastard . . . Jake lunged at Dolarhyde and punched him with all his strength, returning the favor. Dolarhyde reeled backward, but stayed on his feet somehow. Nat started forward, his hand on his revolver, but Dolarhyde’s sharp gesture stopped him in his tracks.

  Everything stopped then, and everyone. They watched as Jake began to back away, his gun drawn, his eyes never leaving Dolarhyde.

  Glaring b
ack at him, Dolarhyde finally muttered, “Let him go.”

  He was officially useless again. Their brief truce was over. Jake kept on moving away into the shadows, keeping to them until he could round a corner; until Dolarhyde and all the rest of Absolution’s survivors were gone from his sight.

  ELLA WATCHED JAKE go, standing unnoticed in the crowd. Her eyes clung to the spot where she’d last seen him, her face haunted by shadows of her own. As she glanced back at Woodrow Dolarhyde, her gaze filled with frustration and anger. Thanks to him she had lost the man she needed more than any of them did, again, to a fate as harsh as the land it ruled with a cruel, amoral fist.

  Dolarhyde rejoined the others, his face set, his eyes still burning with hate. He searched out Nat, waiting at the edge of the crowd. “Start packin’ the horses. We leave at dawn.”

  Nat nodded, and headed toward the street to pass along Dolarhyde’s orders.

  BY THE TIME Nat had reached the main street, Jake was no longer in sight—he was already headed out of town, on the first riderless horse he’d found. He rode east, toward the dawn, a free man.

  A running man, fleeing demons . . . or a wanted man, riding straight toward them. Cottonwood Grove lay east of Absolution . . . Cottonwood Grove, where the sheriff had claimed Jake Lonergan killed a woman named Alice Wills.

  “RECALL THE BOOK of Numbers: God commanded Moses into the promised land of Canaan . . .”

  A new day began to fill the streets of Absolution with light, driving out the darkness, rekindling the spirits of its frightened, weary, grief-stricken people.

  A crowd had gathered at the crossroads in the middle of town, where Preacher Meacham stood, wearing his official Sunday coat and hat. He offered his impromptu sermon to all who cared to listen—people who had come out just to hear him, drawn by need, and those working all around them, searching for more survivors, or just for what remained of their own belongings. His familiar voice comforted them and renewed the faith of most who heard him.