Saturday 16 January 2016

Chapter 2 - Hole Town

She called me Phoenix, 'cause that was where she pushed me out, deep in the middle of the Sands, in a field hospital by the side of the road. When it was done, they wrapped me in a military blanket, handed me over and gave my mom the standard issue bottle of ionised water. 'For his eyes.'

In the early days, it was just the two of us. Me, crying infant, snot everywhere, her, leather-booted bounty hunter with legs so long that she straddled the sky. She would ride from place to place as the work demanded, cruising the crumbled desert roads atop her Goldwing. That old thing was a pure beast of burden, but you can bet it'd beat a midday desert walk every damn time.

She could talk, my mom, and she could walk like a pro, and they tell me she could fight. But one day she dropped me off with the local preacher and went a hundred miles north of Hole Town into the desert to go chasing a bad. Sun went down, sun came up, she never came home. That's just how it happens.

So I stayed there with Preacher Man at Catholic Compound Twelve. I know what you're thinking, but where's a kid gonna go? I was ten years old, skinny as Death hisself. I had no wheels, no money, but I did get something. Old Preacher must have been a honest man, because the day I left the compound, he brought me a bundle of wax and cloth and said, 'This is yours. She asked me to give it to you.'

It was my mom's gun, the one I still carry. A beautiful, hand-crafted silver-green automatic that sits in the palm like it was born there. We're the same size, the same build, me and her. I point it, sight it, and right away, I'm home.

'It's a genuine antique,' Preacher Man said. 'But in beautiful condition. She said that to fire it, you squeeze that plastic grid behind the guard. Nothing so crude as mechanics for the old worlders.'

'No bullets?' I said.

'No need,' he replied. 'It's a laser. Hang on now. She gave me a piece of paper, wrote it all down. No-one trusts me to remember anything.'

So Preacher Man spent five minutes looking through his breeches for the paper, and that was a sight that no-one'll ever need to see twice, believe me. After a lot of cussing and wasting, he found it, unfolded it and began throwing around words like DNA and solar and charging and efficiency. Now me, I'd already seen enough and heard enough. Point and click, it's that easy. No-one else can fire it but me, 'cause the gun is linked to me through the blood. Want to make sure there's always a round in the chamber? Stay in the light, my son.

Some people'll tell you that every answer leads to another question, and this one leads quicker than most. I'd seen my mom go on jobs a hundred times and she'd never once left her gun behind. She had other weapons, I know. She kept a shotgun strapped to the muffler and a blade in her jacket, but why would you leave behind your main weapon – the one that gave you the biggest advantage? That's something I never understood, and ten years later, I'm none the wiser.

Preacher Man taught me to read and write, and he told me lots of stories about the old world while I was in Twelve. The old worlders had better tech than us. A laser weapon never needed to be retooled, never got sand in the mechanism. These days, though, the parts are impossible to come by. Heck, these days, it's hard enough to pay for juice to power a production line. We're back in the days of the whores and the artisans, when every job is done by hand, with love.

Preacher Man once told me there was a time when every man had his own car, had his own fence. They'd sit on their porches from dawn to dusk, spraying water in their yard so they could grow their own stretch of grass. Grass may seem like a strange thing to want, but when all you see is sand all the time, I reckon maybe it does funny things to your head.

Water; now there's a problem, a problem for most. We may be luckier than some, 'cause the mountains round here used to be topped by sheets of ice. People lived up on the peaks in summer and travelled down the mountains with the coming of winter. All of that water is long gone from the mountaintops and now lies in a basin beneath the earth. They guard it pretty damn close – you best believe it only comes up for those that pay their way.

'Course, a man's gotta drink, whether he has money or not. Many men, they got families, and all of them gotta drink too. Most things have value, so barter's always an option, but sometimes a man's fingers are quicker than his brain. They used to have a thing called petty theft, but these days there ain't no such thing as petty. Military doesn't want to waste resources chasing down every man's disputes, so that's where the bounty hunters come in. The quartermasters log all the complaints, all of the crazy, and then hand over to us to bring 'em in.

As well as theft, you can have a bounty on your head for a whole pile of things: Fighting, looting, burning, siphoning, smirking at the wrong man's woman. Hosting a demonic audience, whatever in hell that means. Artful deceit. Chicanery. Abusive language. Malicious lingering. Improper use of medicine. Possession of body parts - that's those belonging to other people. Then there's worshipping the wrong God. The last one used to be a real issue for Preacher Man. In his quietest voice, he'd say, 'They're all the same God. We just can't prove it yet.'

In fact, the only misservice you can do a man that can't result in a bounty is the greatest misservice of all – being rich when he's not.

Don't get me wrong, I can't complain. Without people arguing and getting into petty fights, I'd have no job to do and I'd be an army brat, chasing bombs somewhere abroad, or perhaps working down a copper mine, counting away my youth in hours in the darkness. No, that's not the place for me. Give me the warm winds, give me the Sands. Give me Hole Town, beneath the Fallen Cross, where my heart lives. You go there, and you tell 'em - daddy's coming home, princess. Daddy's coming home.

---

'Name.'

'Waylon Boggs.'

'Criminal activity.'

'Non-payment of loans, rustling chickens, obstructing a hunter in performance of his duties and ruining a factory wall by smacking it repeatedly with his face.'

Waylon himself was slumped over the counter, too out of it to really add much to the conversation. The quartermaster, Sergeant Carter, looked at him and then at me with disinterested eyes. The pips on her shoulder hinted at active service, but she must have done someone a right ol' favour to get a posting here at home rather than overseas, fighting whichever war we'd got involved in this year.

The bounty system worked well for Carter. She'd long since figured that she got paid the same whether she spent the day chasing bads all over the desert or sitting around in fatigues drinking beer. So she got to be the Sheriff while the rest of us played cautious Deputy. I kowtowed a little, because that was the way to keep her onside, and having her onside meant I got first pick of the jobs and subtle warnings that helped to keep me alive.

'Nice job, Phoenix,' Carter said. 'Fourth one this month. You're raking it in just now.'

'Well, you know me, ma'am. Gotta pay for my Playboy lifestyle somehow.'

'You just keep it legit, now.'

'What's he looking at?' I said.

'Waylon? Well, it's a two-year for the birds, plus Old Man Winters is hopping mad about his daughter. But it's an open secret that she's got a soft spot for this jackass. I reckon he'll end up getting bailed out within a few weeks. Unless you got anything you want to add in?'


My balls were still throbbing, but slamming Waylon's head on the factory wall had been quite therapeutic. 'I got nothin',' I said.

'Excellent.' Carter motioned in the back for a corporal to cuff Waylon and take him through to the cells. I'd already turned to go when Carter called after me. 'Wait up. You looking for something new right now?'

'Oh, soon,' I said. 'But first I gotta go see a man about a gun.'

(GO TO CHAPTER 3) >>> 

No comments:

Post a Comment