Cowboys and Aliens

by Joan D. Vinge

  As he watched the flyer arc and soar away, he realized that it hadn’t pulled her up inside; she was pinned underneath its wing. The demons knew he had the weapon; they’d had proof he knew how to use it. Whether the flyer was using her for protection or just carrying her off, there was no way he could keep shooting at it.

  But the flyer wasn’t even out of range yet—at least he’d slowed it down. And he was damned if he was going to leave Ella to them, now, like he’d left Alice. . . .

  He dug in his spurs, desperate not to lose sight of the flyer. It was circling back toward the ragged cliffs they’d just escaped from, not speeding up, and steadily losing altitude as it headed for the entrance of a side canyon. Maybe the demon gun had done a better job than he’d thought.

  But he couldn’t follow it into the canyon; all its weapons seemed to be in its belly. The ropes would just trap him again, or the thing would fry him with a lightning bolt, like the demons had done to people in Absolution.

  If he could only get above it—

  He spotted a way up the slope to the top of the mesa and headed for it, hoping his horse was as sure-footed as it was fast.

  It was. As he reached the top he saw the flyer not that far ahead, and barely below the rim of the side canyon. He sent the horse after it at a dead run, gaining on it, but knowing even the best horse couldn’t keep this up for long; and if it stumbled. . . . Didn’t matter. Only Ella mattered, only that flyer. All or nothing.

  He was gaining ground faster—the flyer was still losing speed. As he began to close with it, he saw it waver and sink deeper into the canyon. It wasn’t leading him back where it came from—he was sure of that, although he didn’t know how. Whether its demon brain had figured to ambush him or only lead him away, Jake thought maybe it had just made a big miscalculation.

  But then he realized he couldn’t use the weapon to take it down from here, either; he had no idea even of how the flyers stayed in the air. If it went down like the other one, then Ella. . . .

  Shit, what if it crashed anyway?

  He was riding almost side by side with it, as if it was a moving train, when it dropped even lower: He was going to lose it no matter what. Unless. . . .

  He’d robbed trains; he must have, he’d done everything else. This was like catching a moving train: You didn’t think about it, you just did it. A leap of faith. You knew you wouldn’t fail, because failure meant you died. He wasn’t dead yet.

  He kicked one foot free of its stirrup, letting his reflexes take it from there as he slung his leg over the saddle and braced himself, hanging on. The flyer was big, just like a train. It was following the canyon wall like it was on rails, because the canyon was narrow here. It was several feet below him, and flying through the air. . . . Okay, not exactly like a train.

  He freed his other foot, his heart in his mouth. He must be crazy. He didn’t know what was real anymore. But if this wasn’t all a dream, he hated how his body was going to feel in the morning.

  He was pushing off, leaping out into open air, falling. . . . He landed halfway onto the flyer’s segmented body, and slid off onto the wings; barely caught a handhold and hung on before he slipped further, or fell through the space between two wings. The already damaged flyer shuddered and dropped even more with his added weight.

  The wing surface he was clinging to abruptly tilted downward. It was as slick as hot ice; he lost his grip. His legs and body slid until he was halfway off the wing, his feet dangling in the space between, before his hands found something more and he dug his fingers in for a better hold.

  His boots struck a stone and burned through a patch of gravel. The tilted flyer was dragging him now, at the speed of a running horse. Even knowing this had been his own damnfool choice this time didn’t change the fact that he couldn’t hold on much longer, couldn’t pull himself back onto the wing. He was nearing the end of his endurance, and this time it really would kill him.

  His raised his head, searching frantically for some way out, something he could reach for . . . saw a row of metal bands, along the front edge of the wing. He’d barely caught hold of two of them as he fell. He could see the ground rushing past in the space ahead of him; the sight made him sick. He looked away, saw the underbelly of the flyer . . . he could see Ella. His mouth opened, but he couldn’t force any sound out.

  But Ella had already seen him. She was conscious, she was alive . . . she was looking right at him, her eyes as wide as if he was the last person in the world she’d expected to try to save her. He saw her eyes change, filling with wonder. And then there was something else in them—as if he was the only man she’d ever needed to see . . . the only man she’d ever really wanted.

  Ella . . . Alice. . . . Never again. Gritting his teeth, tightening his whole body, he pulled himself forward, reached up to grab a band nearer to the ship’s body. He caught it, and reached up with his other hand. His feet were no longer dragging; everything got easier. He hooked one foot up onto the wing behind him, and managed to straighten his leg, got his other foot partway back onto the wing. He straightened out his body, reaching for the metal bands closest to the flyer’s core.

  The flyer’s wings abruptly straightened to horizontal again, and the flyer veered to avoid a collision with the canyon’s wall.

  Jake lost his hold. He slid down across the wings, barely managing to catch himself before he fell off the back edge. The wings began to tilt again as he hung on near the ends, halfway to death all over again. What the hell? Was the demon trying to shake him off?

  No. Suddenly he understood: It was like a seesaw. He’d changed its position, just using his own weight.

  From the place he’d fallen to, he could see the fear on Ella’s face . . . he could see her bonds clearly, see where they were attached to the flyer’s wing and body. He had to reach the front wing; then maybe he could get her free.

  With fresh determination, he hauled himself back onto the wing, before his own weight had him eating dirt. He began to shift his body inward toward the flyer’s core one more time, moving carefully, aiming toward a real goal now.

  The wings and the core of the flyer were anything but plain pieces of metal, he realized. The whole thing looked like it was made from scrap metal, but whoever—whatever—had made it had cut the pieces like a gem cutter. And the flyer must have been forged in the fires of Hell itself, to make the welds so perfect. . . . He had no idea what it all meant, except that it reminded him of his demon gun—which was a hell of a lot more than it seemed on the surface.

  He studied the point where the wing was attached to the flyer’s body. Like a hinge. . . . That was something he knew, at least. And he could see now that the wing surface had plenty of handholds and footholds, as long as he didn’t panic.

  There were even gaps where he could see through to the underside . . . all the way to the ground. . . .

  He looked up again, focusing on the bonds that held Ella: Not just the bola rope, now, but a long metal belt wrapped around her from her shoulders to her knees. One end was attached to the underside of the front wing, and the other to the underside of the second.

  Damnation—how was he going to get her out of that? All he had that could take on a machine from Hell was the demon gun—and even if it obeyed him, he’d just end up killing them both. But if he died, then the damned parasite on his wrist died with him . . . and it knew that.

  Maybe this wasn’t impossible. Up ahead he saw the end of the canyon. He didn’t know what lay beyond it, yet; all he could do was hope it would make for a better landing than the bedrock of the canyon floor.

  He pulled himself forward, moving carefully, until he was halfway onto the front wing. There was a long gap in it, just wide enough for him to get an arm through . . . wide enough to see Ella’s face looking up at him.

  He looked into her eyes, willing her to see what lay behind his own: Trust me.

  She nodded, and Jake aimed the demon gun.

  They reached the canyon’s end. Beyond it lay the true
heart of the desert: a dune field, where windblown sand had piled up against the wall of the mesa. The flyer was dropping still lower . . . much too low for his liking, along a wash that must have been cut through the dunes by flash flooding from the rain. There was no water down there now, though; nothing but. . . .

  Looking ahead, he suddenly saw the impossible: At the far edge of the dunes, reflecting sky like a turquoise gem was a phantom lake: a pocket of runoff water, trapped behind a rock outcrop, not yet absorbed after yesterday’s unwelcome downpour.

  For the first time in his life Jake thanked God for something totally unexpected, and the inspiration that came with it.

  He pushed himself back, edging around until he could get the weapon into position next to the place where the back of the metal belt holding Ella was attached to the second wing. The belt was attached to the ship by what looked like wire, maybe some kind of winch.

  There was more than one way to use a weapon. . . .

  He braced himself against the vibration of the ship, and concentrating on what he needed to do, he felt more than saw the demon gun open and fire. The juncture snapped, the belt uncoiled. He heard Ella’s cry of surprise as the metal belt came loose and slithered off her. All that was left holding her under the wings was the bola cord, latched in two places. One more shot and she’d be free . . . or fall to her death.

  He moved forward again until he could see her face. “Can you swim?” he shouted.

  She looked up like he’d yelled total nonsense at her, but she nodded.

  Jake braced his feet against the edge of a wing behind him and reached out for the hinge-joint at the top of the wing by Ella’s head. He jammed his arm as far as it would go into the space between the wing and the body of the flyer, caught a solid protrusion with his hand, and pulled with all his strength, letting his weight shift outward toward the end of the wings.

  The flyer veered toward the lake, its altitude dropping more.

  “What are you doing?” Ella shouted, with more disbelief than fear in her voice, as the flyer screamed downward, the lake surface rising to meet them like the face of a mirror.

  “Hold on!” Jake shouted back. He looked up again, trying to gauge the flyer’s height above the water. When he guessed they were maybe twenty feet above the water’s surface, he pushed his arm and the weapon through the opening on the forward wing, until he could line up the weapon and the latch that held the bola cord.

  “Turn your head away!” he yelled. Taking aim, he focused his deadly control and every shred of his will on hitting a single, very small target. The demon gun fired again, severing the cord . . .

  They fell free, plunging into the lake as the flyer hit the water’s surface just beyond them and sank like a stone, sending up a fountain of spray.

  Jake and Ella broke the water’s surface, spitting and coughing, dazed and battered, but alive.

  They swam, and then waded, to the shore and stumbled up the bank, holding onto each other for support. Jake was sure he had never felt this glad before just to still be breathing. He looked at Ella, found her looking back at him. He smiled, and so did she.

  Her smile was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen . . . and it was genuine. He’d never seen her show her real smile to anyone before, especially him—as if it was something she’d held back for too long, keeping it locked away inside her, until she finally found a reason to use it.

  She’d saved it for him.

  He thought of the way Alice had smiled, in the picture, in his memories from the cabin. But Alice was gone . . . because of something he’d done.

  He looked down; looked up again. Ella was here, right in front of him, safe and alive and smiling like that at him. . . . because of something he’d done.

  Suddenly he even believed what he’d seen in her eyes, only last night, in the abandoned riverboat: That together, they could do the impossible. He looked out across the lake, where the flyer and its demon had gone down for the last time. The surface was as smooth as glass again.

  He covered his aching right elbow with his left hand, touching the spot where he’d flayed most of the skin off it as he bent the hinge on the flyer’s wing. Now that they were safe on the ground, he could let himself feel the rest of it . . . feel giddy with vertigo, as he remembered the most impossible thing of all: “We . . . were . . . flying. . . .” His stomach lurched.

  “Yeah,” Ella murmured, so matter-of-factly that she might’ve done it before.

  “I don’t ever wanna do that again,” he said, with utter conviction looking up at the sky.

  He looked down at her again. As she looked back at him, she was still wearing the smile that made her glow. Her wet clothes clung to her body in a way he couldn’t ignore. No matter if she carried a gun and lived for revenge, or talked like the nerviest man he’d ever met, she was a hell of a woman, and a beautiful one.

  Her face was so close to his now, her lips close enough for a kiss. Her eyes filled with strange depths, with emotions he couldn’t read . . . but he recognized the longing on her face; he could feel her whole body asking him to go ahead. . . .

  He leaned in, more than willing, longing to take her up on it—

  The shrill sound of his weapon’s alarm jerked him up short. He turned to the lake as something broke its surface—something huge.

  The demon rose from the water, towering over them, blocking the sun, more unbelievable and far more terrifying than his blurred impression from last night on the boat.

  If the Devil had taken all the things humans feared or hated most, and squeezed them like a ball of clay into something that walked upright—a mockery of a human form—this was what would have come of it: roaches and maggots, snakes from the desert, sharks from the sea, covered in the thick, armored hide of a gator smeared with swamp slime.

  Jesus, it was all—

  The thing lunged forward with a speed his eyes couldn’t believe, even as his mind flashed back to Meacham’s death—

  —nightmare—

  The demon’s limb shot toward him like a spear, its fingers ending in talons that could tear a man open like—

  His demon gun opened and fired, point-blank. The beam of blue light blasted the demon back into the water; pieces of armored limb and body, entrails, blood as green as Jake’s own was red, roiled the lake surface, transforming the serenity of blue into a pool of ghastly wreckage.

  Jake stood staring at the water. His heartbeat felt like it was trying to crack his ribs, as the weapon on his wrist calmly retracted into silence.

  And then he heard the sound behind him, a different sound entirely, too human, all too familiar—the liquid gasping of someone who’d just taken a fatal wound.

  He spun around and saw Ella, lying in the sand with a gash on her forehead . . . and her chest covered in blood where the alien had run her through.

  “—No—” Jake fell to his knees beside her. This couldn’t be happening to them, not now. He put his arms around her, cradling her, carefully raising her head to help her breathe.

  She looked up at him, her expression bewildered and filled with pain, as if some part of her mind could no more grasp what had just happened to her than his own could believe it.

  He rocked her gently in his arms, smoothed a strand of dark hair back from her forehead . . . silently cursing the fickle God who had let Meacham die . . . the same God he had just thanked, for the first time in his life. The only god who’d staked a claim on this wasteland was the one Apaches called Coyote, the Trickster. . . .

  “Ella,” he said, his voice ragged with a kind of pain he’d never felt before. “Ella—C’mon, talk to me—”

  Her eyelids fluttered as she struggled to focus on him. “. . . Don’t worry . . .” she whispered. “. . . I’m gonna be okay.”

  Jake’s memory showed him Meacham’s wound, the same kind of wound. . . . He pushed the thought out of his mind, furious at himself. He caught the hem of her skirt, ripped a wide strip from it and bound up the wound. “We’re gonna find
Doc—”

  “I’ll be . . . all right—” Ella murmured, moving her head from side to side, “—just go—” But she didn’t understand. . . .

  Jake picked her up in his arms and staggered to his feet. Without the demon gun feeding him energy, or even his own adrenaline numbing his pain, giving him strength, he was still able to stand.

  All he had left was the relentless perversity of his own will to survive. It had never saved anybody before but him; because he’d never cared about anybody but himself, until now. . . .

  He was just like the demon gun on his wrist: That bloodsucking piece of crap; no wonder it had gone with him. His own life didn’t mean anything, anymore . . . but it was all he had left that could save Ella.

  He turned where he stood, his eyes searching the blinding surface of the dunes for any sign of the dry wash left by the floodwater, a path that would lead him back to the canyon they had come out of. Finally he made out the distant ridge, shimmering in the heat, that had to mark where they’d entered the dunes.

  How far off was it? How fast had the demon’s flyer been moving? No man could last long in this heat; and the floor of Hell must be paved with hot sand—it was hell to walk through.

  Didn’t matter. He couldn’t afford to think about anything but Ella . . . saving Ella was all that mattered. He carried her along the shore until he found a low spot between the dunes where a few stunted shrubs and grasses struggled to survive, that at least looked like a path carved by water, not wind. He started walking.

  Jake walked for a long time; although time had no real meaning here in the endless mirage of his existence. The ridge in the distance was getting closer—it had to be, he told himself, although it was impossible to tell how much closer, or even if it was true, through the shimmering scarves of heat that rose off the dunes.

  He looked down at Ella, lying still in his arms, her face chalk white in spite of the burning sun. “Hey” he said, giving her a gentle shake. “Stay with me.”