“Rocks!” I shouted. “Lots of rocks! Are you effing crazy!”
“I’m sorry Ash!” he shouted back. “I couldn’t do it! I just couldn’t do it! I thought we’d get away with it!”
“It wasn’t worth the risk! You’re supposed to be the smart one!”
“Shut up and ride faster!” Becca yelled right in my ear. She was watching the Nuggets herself. “They’re mounting their horses. Chasing after us!” I didn’t need to turn around to confirm. I’d trust anything she’d say. Not sure she’d feel the same way after I pointed a gun at her head.
Once we put enough distance between ourselves and the roar of the falls, I could hear hoofbeats fast approaching from behind us.
“Hyah!” Pace yelled, pushing his horse faster and faster. I didn’t have to give Charon similar instructed. He got it all by himself.
We rode through a small outcropping of trees. Right about then I heard a rifle shot. I pulled out my revolver and reloaded, ready to return fire. I figured we weren’t close enough to hit each other though. I needed to save my ammunition and wait.
More rifle fire. Warning shots. They must’ve been warning shots. Unless some of the Nuggets had broken away from Boze. Then there was no telling what they would do.
Charon was a better horse than anything they rode, for sure. Flashbound too. I was sure those Nuggets couldn’t catch us straight away. But we couldn’t run forever. We’d already thought that through. Our contingency plan. I’d hoped it’d work.
We hit the bridge at Route 87. And when I say hit, I mean hit. I tugged Charon hard left onto the bridge and leapt on it hard, and Pace didn’t have time to follow gingerly. Our horses were full running across the bridge.
“Asher!” Becca shouted. “This bridge can’t handle this!”
“I know!” I replied. “That’s the point!”
That bridge that we had so carefully walked across – we were now testing it to its limit.
Buckshot hit the bridge somewhere behind us. I couldn’t tell where. I turned and saw the four of them riding their horses onto the bridge at full speed. This was gonna be interesting.
The road buckled behind Charon, and a huge chunk of the bridge gaped downward. Flashbound leapt across it just as that part of the bridge gave way and started to fall into the river.
“A little faster, Pace!” I called out. This was gonna be close.
Over the flurry of hoofbeats I heard the whining sound of metal breaking away from its moorings. The bridge was about to collapse. I turned around and saw another chunk of road detach itself right in front of Boze. He pulled back to stop his horse suddenly, not sure he could handle the leap across. Lister stopped short too. But not Birkin and Priestly. Their horses handily leapt across, and then leapt again over the first gap in the road that Charon had opened up. Birkin raised his shotgun to fire. Now he was too close. As fast as we were going, they were going a little faster. I took my shot – clipping Birkin in the hand. His shotgun went flying. Priestly didn’t seem like he was gonna let go either hand from his reins, so I felt confident there were no more bullets coming. I turned forward and saw we were nearing the end of the bridge. We were close.
Just then, the entire bridge buckled downward. Suddenly we were on a forty-five degree angle. The bridge had snapped in two. When I had turned to shoot, Pace had gotten a little ahead of me, he was almost to the other side. Looked like he was gonna make it. I gave Charon a little kick with my spurs. I needed just a little more out of him.
I turned over my shoulder and saw Priestly’s horse losing his footing. Poor horse, he toppled over to the right and fell off the bridge, taking his rider with him. Birkin kept fighting gravity, but by now the bridge was getting close to a ninety degree angle. We were all gonna fall into the river.
But no, Charon’s got too much fight in him. He leapt forward and make it to solid ground, just seconds after Flashbound did. I exhaled with relief, but we weren’t in the clear yet. I turned Charon around sharply to see if Birkin was close – but no, there was no sign of him. Becca and I dismounted and leaned over to what was left of our half of the bridge, dangling down directly into the Missouri. It was a helluva fall, but I suspected they’d both survive okay if their heads didn’t smash into falling concrete. We looked downriver and saw two horses struggling to get their footing. I spotted Priestly swimming mightily to try to get to the northern shore, back toward the settlement.
“Can you see Birkin?” I asked. I spotted his hat bobbing atop the water, swept along by the current. “Maybe he didn’t make it.”
“There he is.” Pace pointed him out, floating lifelessly downriver. He was on his back, not his front, so that was a likely sign he wasn’t gonna drown. But who knows what he hit on the way down. Didn’t feel too badly for him. He was the one who wanted to shoot us down, after all. I did feel badly for those horses though. I hoped they’d be all right.
Pace joined me and Becca as we stood looking back toward the northern shore. There stood Boze and Lister alongside their horses. It was a little too far to read the expressions on their faces, but I’m sure they were pissed off.
Pace took of his hat and waved it in the air gleefully. “Come on Boze! Jump across!” Then he busted out laughing at his own joke. I chuckled too. Really I was just laughing cause I was still alive. Boze shouted back at us but we could barely hear him. But Pace shouted back anyway. “Eff off, Boze! We’re going to miss you!”
He waved his hat again, and then took his horse by the reins and headed south.
I turned back for one last look at that bridge. The half of the bridge still standing had big chunks of concrete jutted up from the ground, and the foundation looked unsettled like it might fall too. No one would be crossing it again for the rest of human history. And that was to our advantage. It would take Boze or anyone else a bunch of hours to ride around to the east or west to rejoin our trail. And they’d never dare try to find us in the Old City, even if they knew we were fool enough to hide there. Never before did the Old City feel so safe.
Boze still stood on the other side of the shore watching us go. But I was more interested in one more glance toward Great Falls. The settlement was a part of my past now. Little did I know that I’d probably grow to miss it.
Becca and I walked Charon up alongside Pace. As soon as we were out of sight from the Nuggets, I stopped walking and tapped Pace on the shoulder. He turned around and definitely did not expect what was coming. I clocked him right in the jaw. Didn’t pull my punch either. He crumpled to the ground clutching his jaw.
“Ow! Jesus, Ash!”
“You coulda gotten us all killed!” I was fired up. Becca had to hold me back.
“I just couldn’t do it, Ash. It’s our gold! We earned it!”
“We didn’t exactly earn it!” I yelled.
“Oh I think we earned it!”
“That gold is for us to buy our freedom. Isn’t that what we were doing?”
I backed away from Pace so as I wouldn’t beat the shit out of him.
Then Becca called to me. “Asher?” I turned to her and she cracked me good in the jaw. Not a bad punch, but I think it hurt her hand. “You used me? To draw out Boze to pay them off? You used me?”
“Don’t forget,” Pace interjected with a mouth full of blood, “he put a gun up to your head too.”
“Becca, it wasn’t like that,” I pleaded. “We wanted you to run away with us is all.”
“Well I’m with you aren’t I?” she yelled. “And I don’t effing want to be here!”
She stormed off, probably not sure where she was storming off to. She must’ve been pissed. Becca never swears.
Pace got back up on his feet. “I had that coming,” he admitted. “Sorry, I should have warned you.”
“Damn right.”
After about a minute of watching Becca storm off, she stopped cold. She turned to face us, hands on her hips. It was time to catch up with her, so we did.
“What now?” she asked. “So am I your hostag
e?”
“Sure, you’re our hostage,” Pace said smiling.
“Your hostage…” Becca kinda mulled over the meaning of that word. “So aren’t you supposed to tie me up or something?”
“Oh I’ll tie you up,” Pace replied, kinda leaning in close to Becca. She shoved him away hard though. She wasn’t amused.
“I’ll bet you would,” she said. “Look, your fun is over. I’m going home.”
“You can’t go back home, Becca. The Nuggets were dangerous before, now they’re angry.”
“Thanks to you. God, I hate you both!”
She looked around desperately, absorbing the grim surroundings of the Old City. “So where do you take me now?”
“To our hideout,” Pace replied. “Come on this way…”
Yeah, we got what we wanted. But it sure didn’t feel right, did it?
9.
“Home sweet home,” Pace announced.
We stood at the entrance to our hideout, and I gotta say Becca was speechless. Her jaw just kinda hung open.
“It’s safe,” I reassured her. “Mostly.” Becca turned to me, looking at me like I was full of shit, and still not sure what to say. “Come on inside, you’ll see.” I kinda dragged Becca inside our hideout. That didn’t really help. It was dark so it was hard to see. She almost stepped on broken glass but I moved her out of the way. Then she sorta gagged. It did still kinda smell like shit and piss in there. Horse piss, human piss, not really sure which piss. Piss is piss I suppose.
Pace seemed kinda embarrassed. He turned Becca around and rushed her outside. “We’ll clean up. It’ll be fine. Really.”
Finally after Becca get her breath back, she laid into us pretty good. “This is where you’ve been hiding out? In this filth?”
“It’s not that bad,” I explained.
That explanation didn’t seem to help none. Becca just kept on yelling at us. “The Old City is no place to be hiding. These buildings could come down at any time! And the filth… and the animals? Wolves?”
“We’ve had wolves,” I admitted.
“Don’t tell her about the wolves,” Pace muttered. “You’ll only scare her talking about the wolves.”
“That’s why we put up a fence,” I explained. “We’re pretty safe in here now.”
Becca didn’t agree. “Safe? Boze will surely follow you here!”
Pace tried to be all reassuring. Not sure it was working. “They’ll have to go the long way around, and it’s more likely that Boze will assume we just passed right through the Old City and hit route 15 going south. It’s more than likely they’ll head down to Helena. It’s safest to lay low here for the moment.”
“Boze isn’t comin’ here,” I said. “You know he’s chicken shit.”
Becca nodded. It was hard to argue with that. She kinda composed herself and took a deep breath of the sorta fresh air outside and bravely walked back inside. Seemed like she was gonna gag.
“We’ll start cleaning right away,” Pace reassured her. “I promise.”
Then she noticed something. She picked it up between two fingers like she was holding a dead rat. It was one of the girly magazines. She just kinda looked at us like we were a couple a pervs.
Pace quickly grabbed the girly magazine out of her fingers and piled up the rest of them. “Sorry,” he explained, “we weren’t expecting company.”
She nodded, appreciatively. Then she shivered. “And what about the cold? There’s no heat in here.”
I lit a match and tossed it in the fire pit which already had some kindling in it. As the fire started to build, it got warmer. But that didn’t help none. Becca was still cold and it was only daytime. I started to get worried how she’d manage at night. She already had on a bison skin coat, but I took off mine and draped it over her shoulders. I’m a lot bigger, that’d help keep her warm.
“And what’s this?” she asked, walking over to the Mankin arm we mounted up on the wall. “Part of one of those things that attacked you?”
“It’s called a Mankin,” Pace explained. “That’s one of its arms we managed to get a hold of.”
“Hmm…” she mused, tentatively touching the Mankin arm. “Doesn’t look so scary now, does it?”
“No ma’am,” Pace replied.
Becca turned away from the Mankin arm. I noticed that her body was kinda shaking. Then she started crying and collapsed in a heap on the ground. Pace and I both tried to help her but she shoved us away. Guessed she just needed to let it all out. And all this was kinda a shock. Soon after she kinda dozed off. We’d all been up all night, made sense. After I was sure she was sleeping I covered her with a blanket. Maybe after a little rest she’d see things more clearly.
Turned out we all slept the day away. I didn’t even remember falling asleep. When I woke up, Pace was stirring and Becca was sitting up, wrapped in that blanket, same place we left her. She seemed a little better, I dunno. I made some coffee and cracked open a can of beans so we could eat something. Becca took her portion reluctantly and we all sat by the fire.
“So this is how you’ve been living,” she said. “If you can even call it living. I’d call it ‘surviving.’”
“It’s temporary,” Pace explained. “Right, Ash?”
I grunted reluctantly. After all the work we put into that hideout, I hated to think about leaving it.
“So how long before you’re planning on leaving the Great Plains forever?” Becca asked. She seemed genuinely interested. Maybe that was a good sign. “Barbed wire isn’t going to keep the outside world out forever.”
“We figure we need to let things cool off a bit,” Pace explained. “Lots of people looking for us. Boze and his Nuggets of course. Pretty much all the lawmen across the Great Plains.”
“Oh is that all,” Becca said with sarcasm.
That wasn’t all. Pace continued. “The company that owns the banks, the Great Plains Holding Company, they’ll be gunning for us soon enough. They hired some sort of bounty hunter to hunt us down. His name’s Shādo Shay.”
“Pace, shut the eff up,” I said. “You’re effing things up.”
“Sorry,” Pace muttered.
“Watch your language,” Becca scolded.
“Sorry ma’am,” I said humbly. Why the eff did I call her ma’am? I was effing up too.
“So we’ll hide out as long as we can before we need to resupply,” Pace explained. “Then we were thinking we had in us one more good robbery in these parts, and then we’ll move on.”
“Well, you always wanted to go far away,” Becca added. “To the stars, right? I suppose that’s going to be a tall order.”
“We were thinking Canada,” I said.
“Canada,” she repeated. Then she got all teary. What the eff is wrong with Canada?
“Canada or wherever we go will be fine,” Pace explained. “We’re rich! That’s going to take care of things.”
Becca stared into Pace’s eyes, looking kinda disappointed. “You boys… you are rich. So you think you have enough stolen gold to get you where you need to go?”
Pace and I kinda look at each other. Hadn’t really thought that part through.
“Sure,” I said.
“I don’t think so,” Pace contradicted. “But if we hit some banks wherever we’re going we should do all right.”
“Ah ha!” Becca responded. “Leave a trail of lawmen looking for you. Very subtle. And where exactly do I fit into these plans?”
“You’ll need to come with us,” Pace said. “For your own protection.”
“For my own protection,” she repeated. “Taking me with you into gun battles with robots. What did you call them? Mankins?”
“That’s not a very good idea,” I said.
Becca pointed a finger at me like she knew something I didn’t. Which of course was always the truth. “So what do you propose to do with me while you’re off robbing banks? Tie me up somewhere? Leave me in this hideout, or another one equally safe? Or maybe you should give me a gun. Tha
t’s the solution. Give me a gun right now so at least I can defend myself!”
I always find myself doing what she says, so I pulled out a revolver and started to hand it over to Becca, pearl handle first. Pace stopped me though. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to give a gun to someone who has technically been kidnapped.” I nod. He’s right I suppose. I put my revolver back in the holster.
“Maybe later?” I offered.
Becca’s eyes darted back and forth between me and Pace. Then her mood kinda changed. She stopped being all curt and took a deep breath like she was finally relaxing. “This coffee’s fine,” she said, “but don’t you have anything stronger? Whiskey? I could use a drink.”
And that was something I could do. I pulled out a bottle of pretty good whiskey that we’d bought back in Conrad and cracked it open. A few shots each seemed to liven things up. Sorta felt like we were back in Great Falls before all this started.
“Must’ve been pretty exciting,” Becca said, “robbing all those banks.”
“It’s all right,” I said.
“Ash is understating as always,” Pace interjected. “It’s more than all right. It’s a thrill. It’s better than anything. Better than sex.”
Becca ignored the sex comment but seemed to find all of this very interesting. “I could see how a thrill like that could become very addicting. Especially for someone like you, Pace, who easily becomes addicted to things. Whiskey, women.”
“I’ve always liked to have a good time,” he responded.
“So where else have you been?”
“Augusta, Fort Benton, Havre, Lewistown and Conrad,” Pace said, filling out our list of settlements we visited.
“That’s amazing,” Becca said. “I wish I’d seen all those myself.”
“Augusta’s probably the nicest,” I added. “I could see living there, except all the bank robbing thing.”
This seemed to interest Becca a lot. “Augusta. How did you ever get there? Did you use the bridge across Route 87 before, well, we destroyed it?”
Earthbound Page 18
