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?'
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