The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head (30 page)

Gieo had spare Slark fuel, plenty of water
both for drinking and steam powering her motorcycle, MREs, and
Danny’s old Winchester. She was as ready as she could make herself
for the 800 mile trek to find pilots. Sitting on her bike behind
the saloon, scarf pulled up over her nose and mouth, goggles fitted
over her eyes, and helmet strapped securely over her braids, she
couldn’t bring herself to kick the engine over and take off for the
mountains.

She wanted Fiona to come say goodbye.

Before the sun could even rise high enough
for Gieo to consider it a late start, she spotted Fiona on her roan
mare, riding out with her patrol of twenty-five, heading northwest
toward the ruins of Tucson. Gieo silently wished Fiona good luck
and cranked over her bike’s engine. The heavily modified Indian
motorcycle whirred to life like an alien abomination that combined
a steam locomotive and a fighter jet, making Gieo exceptionally
happy she’d decided to wear ear plugs.

Getting used to the bike’s speed was a risky
proposition. She wanted to take it slow, get a feel for the
experimental technology, but the bike wanted to find its upper
limits and then possibly push right through them. As Gieo shot out
of Tombstone, she realized the bike was going to win that argument
and possibly many others. The oversized, solid-form rubber ties,
which each weighed nearly as much as she did, created weight enough
to hold the bike to the ground, crushing rocks and debris without
the slightest hesitation, but in no way strained the engine’s
remarkable power output. The bike’s gyroscopes with counterbalances
made controlling the motorcycle almost effortless, which was a feat
in itself as the bike probably had a curb weight of nearly a ton.
Gieo dipped and leaned into the corners, and the bike responded
like a receptive lover.

She blew through the rubble that was once St.
David and clipped the edge of Benson on her way to the remains of
Interstate 10. Benson, which had been reclaimed by a handful of
Cochise Indians, required a sharp turn through drastically decayed
streets. Gieo pulled off the maneuver with grace and ease, much to
the surprise of the collection of women on the side of the road,
pressing corn tortillas beneath the shade of an old gas station
awning. She waved briefly to them and gunned the motorcycle, flying
up the ramp onto Interstate 10.

Even with the massive shocks she’d fitted to
the bike’s frame, the constant vibrations of the engine and the
road combined with the motorcycle’s impressive girth to set an ache
to her hips and thighs, along with a numb behind. The crumbled
remains of Deming, already washed away by the desert and neglect,
left little hint of how to get to New Mexico 26. Gieo slowed the
bike, against its protests, and wound her way through the ghostly
streets until she finally found the general direction of northeast.
The empty buildings, abandoned houses, and sandblasted remains of
cars were chilling up close, and made her nervous wondering if one
of the countless broken windows might hold a sniper waiting for
just such an opportunity. Piloting across the desert was easier,
and less lonely with Ramen in accompaniment; driving across the
barren landscape was unnerving and far scarier than the prospect of
having her airship shot out from underneath her.

Deming passed without incident though and she
found what she believed, by compass navigation, to be NM 26. The
road itself was difficult to discern from the surrounding desert,
which had crept across the asphalt to reclaim the land. In more
than a few stretches the only hint she had that she was even on the
right track was the narrow corridor where sagebrush wasn’t growing
and the occasional milepost marker. On the open road, she found the
motorcycle’s engine, almost entirely air cooled, required a fairly
high speed to keep from overheating. Her slowed search through
Deming had apparently come dangerously close to swamping the bike.
She had another change of highway to do at Hatch, and she wasn’t
eager to find out if her motorcycle was going to heat spike if she
couldn’t find her way to Interstate 25 in a timely fashion.

Hatch, which should have held the same
nothingness of Deming, not only wasn’t in ruins it was actually
thriving to some degree. Plants flourished, trees provided shade,
the roads were maintained, and people gawked at Gieo as she slowed
her bike to pass through. A few of the Hatchians even waved. Aside
from her motorcycle, the rest of the town appeared to be
functioning just fine with horse traffic, even forcing her to dodge
around a few buggies in the road. She desperately wanted to stop
and see how they had managed to exist in the desert, but couldn’t
risk overheating her bike only to find out they weren’t as friendly
as the town made appearances to be.

After crossing a couple bridges over a few
dirty canals, which explained the town’s ability to flourish, Gieo
noticed her motorcycle was beginning to struggle with overheating.
A slow drain of water on the system exited via steam runoff valves
into cooling coils which would eventually require time to let the
steam condense back into water, which could take hours in the
desert heat, or she could refill from the water supply she carried
with her. If she was being honest with herself, the bike wasn’t the
only thing getting too hot and needing a drink.

Once on Interstate 25, the bike calmed a bit,
slowly dropping off its temperature as the constant flow of air let
the massive engine breathe easier. There was a reservoir nearby,
although Gieo hadn’t the faintest notion of how she might get down
to it, or if it indeed had any water left. The other option was to
continue on to Truth or Consequences and see if they had water and
a shady place to rest. As far as symbolic destinations went, she
thought Truth or Consequences was about as perfect of a location as
there could be. She’d told the truth to Fiona and had no idea how
dire the consequences were going to be, but, like the town, she
decided she may as well roll the dice and see.

By the time she reached Truth or Consequences
she was starving, boiling in the saddle, and fairly certain her
legs, hips, and ass would never again know full sensation. The city
itself, which stood somewhere between Deming and Hatch in
condition, contained a few scarecrows of people far more afraid of
the sound of the Slark engine in her bike than she was of them. She
was clearly human, but none of the people in the decrepit buildings
seemed to want to know anything else about her. She slowed briefly,
enough to get her bearings, and then pushed the bike, which by that
point was bellowing steam and making awful noises, toward the
Elephant Butte reservoir. The weather-beaten signs guided her in
reasonably short order to the state park landing. Water was harder
to find with the dam effectively reduced to rubble by who knows
what. Gieo brought the bike to a stop beneath a massive picnic
table enclosure that had somehow survived the years. The water
would be a short walk over open enough ground for her to see back
up to her bike if necessary.

Lowering the bike’s pod legs to hold it in
place required manual cranking as not enough water remained in the
system to even run the hydraulics. Out of the saddle, everything in
her body screamed at the change of position. Her lower back ached,
her legs felt like jelly, and her butt was numb beyond anything she
could have imagined. She unhooked the two brass reservoirs on the
sides of the bike and began her slow trek down to the water.
Without a functional dam to hold the reservoir, much of the lake
had leaked out, leaving her to walk a fair distance over sun-baked
lakebed before finally reaching the water. Along the way she passed
the bleached remains of trees, rocks, and even giant skeletons of
great catfish two or three feet in length, picked clean by
scavengers and left to turn to dust in the desert sun. Gieo peeled
off her helmet, scarf, goggles, and boots to stand with her feet in
the cool water, leaning down occasionally to splash handfuls of the
lake over her head, face, and neck. The afternoon sun caught on the
water’s surface, creating shimmering patterns over the bluer than
blue lake.

When she’d brought her internal temperature
down enough for comfort, she shielded her eyes from the sun to gaze
out over the beauty of the lake, not natural specifically
considering it was a man-made reservoir, but natural enough. She
felt like a pioneer or explorer, two feelings she’d never
considered the value of but suddenly really enjoyed. If she had one
wish, it would be that Fiona could share the feelings with her. Of
course, she would need two wishes to transport Fiona there and also
grant her forgiveness.

Gieo settled her goggles back over her eyes,
slung her helmet and scarf over one shoulder and set to refilling
the bike’s water tanks. The great brass canisters were ludicrously
heavy when filled, and Gieo found the hike back up the hill a good
deal harder than the one down. To add to the difficulty, the
numbness that had gripped her lower body retreated like the waters
of the lake, only to leave her with profoundly inflamed muscles not
used to the type or vigor of the exercise of riding such a massive
motorcycle over such long distances. Nearly to the bike, with most
of her cooling-off work entirely undone by the hike back out of the
lakebed, she spotted movement under the awning. She dropped the
canisters beneath a hickory tree without a second thought and slid
the Winchester from her back.

Her heart thundered in her ears with every
step as she crept up toward the awning. She levered a shell into
the chamber with slow, deliberate movements as not to be heard, and
made a wide arc around the shaded area to flank whatever was
investigating her bike. Deer, she prayed for it to be deer, or
maybe a coyote, or even a feral dog. Or if it had to be humanoid,
let it be a Slark, she could shoot a Slark. Her heart sank when she
stepped onto the cement area holding the two dozen picnic tables.
It was a human. A man to be specific or, at least, what was left of
one. His tattered rags and jumbled collection of worn containers
like fanny-packs and makeshift satchels, spoke of a scavenger’s
life on the edge of ruin. Gieo stepped from the cover of the picnic
tables and held the rifle out not in a threatening manner, but
sideways to show she didn’t have intention of shooting him.

“Hello there,” Gieo said.

The man leapt nearly out of his skin, and
more than clear of the bike. The sharp, wild look to his eyes told
her he wasn’t a methanol drinker, but nor was he in possession of a
complete deck of mental cards. He backed off, mumbling under his
breath, words meant only for himself, at a pace Gieo couldn’t have
kept up with even if he spoke loud enough and directly to her.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Gieo said, “but I
can’t let you strip my bike either.” She dropped her voice to the
most soothing tone she could manage. Noting, with some surprise,
that she sounded a little like a TV anchor when she tried to be
calming.

The man showed no outward understanding of
what she was saying; his conversation with himself completely
engrossed him. He was backing away as she slowly walked forward,
and his posture didn’t seem particularly threatening. He walked
with something of a limp in his right leg, and repeatedly brought
withered, leathery hands up to his scraggly beard to pick at
something she couldn’t quite make out. As she got a better look at
him, she realized he was a hair above a skeleton in girth, possibly
thirty or seventy years old from how sun-beaten and hard time had
been on him. More than anything she just wanted to help him, feed
him, give him water, or something reasonable to wear. She’d never
seen anyone so downtrodden and frayed; it all cut right to her
nurturing, altruistic instincts and triggered them all.

“What’s your name?” Gieo asked. “Do you have
a name? Mine’s Gieo.”

The slow walking and talking act brought her
to within reach of her bike and put him off the edge of the picnic
table area, standing just inside the shadow cast by the awning in
the late afternoon sun. His conversation with himself continued,
unabated by anything she said, without the slightest sign of
becoming intelligible.

“Are you hungry? Thirsty? I have some food
with me if you’d like,” Gieo said.

The man’s conversation with himself came to
an abrupt end, and his hands, the gnarled, skeletal claws that they
were, shot down to one of his many belts, and quickly drew a
battered old 9 mm pistol. She swung the rifle out of the
non-threatening pose and brought it to her shoulder. Every tendon
in the man’s gun arm, visible beneath his overly tanned skin,
tensed to pull the trigger. The world slowed, Gieo fired first, the
rifle bucked in her arms, and a modest wound opened on the right
side of the man’s chest with a spray of blood and gore blasting out
the back across the hardscrabble ground behind. He crumpled like so
much old newspaper, never dropping his gun, but never firing it
either.

Gieo was practically panting in the brief
aftermath. A few birds, flushed by the sound of rifle fire,
scattered from the tree she’d dropped the canisters under. She
flicked the lever action and slowly crept between the remains of
picnic tables to find the downed man. His feet came into view
first, still and dirty, then his skinny legs clothed only in rags,
then his stomach and chest, working furiously at shallow, agonizing
breaths. He was talking to himself again, although much slower now,
but still unintelligible, struggling to form the words amidst his
strained breathing. Before she could even reach him, his shallow,
labored breathing came to a slow, whimpering end with a frothy
bubbling of blood exiting the hole in his chest.