The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head (44 page)

She glanced up to Stephanie just in time to
see a hurled harpoon strike her dead center. The motorcycle with
the wire tether still attached shot past the truck, ripping the
diminutive dancer from the gun platform, bouncing her off the wall
of the building on the far side of the truck. Before the bike could
drag her further, Fiona raised her gun hand and blew the driver out
of the saddle with a well-placed shot. The harpooner on the back of
the bike kicked over the handlebars when the bike turned sideways,
bouncing hard across his neck, bending his head back at an
unnatural angle before he came to rest in a tangled mess a dozen
feet farther down the road from the bike. Fiona jogged as best she
could around the truck to find Stephanie’s lifeless eyes staring up
at nothing in particular. The steel spike jutting from her chest
had likely killed her on impact; a small miracle Fiona could hope
for.

The Ravens were making their push out from
the stronghold, bolstered by Fiona could only guess what.
Explosions rocked the city, fires spread, and soon the motorcycles
were in full retreat. Bodies, both men and women, littered the
street as Fiona stumbled toward the sounds of rifle fire and
explosions. So engrossed were the attackers in attempting to defend
themselves against the Raven push that Fiona nearly stumbled into
the back of one of their hastily constructed defensive positions
behind a scuttled SUV.

A handful of Juarez marauders were being
directed in the construction of a barricade by none other than
Cork. Before they noticed her, before they even had a chance to
glance back over their shoulders at the sound of her scuffling
boots, Fiona had put the five Juarez men down with near point-blank
shots. She swung the gun on Cork and clicked on an empty
cylinder.

“This wasn’t how I wanted it,” Cork said,
raising his sub machinegun. “I couldn’t take the abuse from…” was
all he managed before a sniper’s bullet cleaved his forehead from
his body.

Fiona snapped her head around in time to see
the outline of a diminutive sniper in a beret scampering across the
rooftops away from the sweeping fires chasing her through the city.
She couldn’t say for sure why, but she felt it would be the last
she would ever see or hear of Claudia. Something about the French
Canadian woman spoke of an urge to be free of her situation and
nothing would provide cover for her escape like a city-ending
catastrophe.

Fiona ran the arduous process of reloading
her gun with shaky hands and redoubled her efforts to find the
Raven line. A second wave of engines was roaring toward the city
and she suspected the counterassault would likely be rolled
back—she had to be on the right side of it before that
happened.

She rounded two more corners without incident
before she found the street blocked by an overturned bus set
ablaze. The sounds of battle were moving away from her again to the
southeast. She glanced around to find the closest, tallest building
that wasn’t already on fire. She kicked in the front door and
bolted up the stairs. A ladder and hatch granted her access to the
roof of the two-story office complex. One street over, the Ravens
assault was collected around the tip of the spear; at that
sharpened point was Veronica with an assault rifle mounted grenade
launcher. She was the source of the explosions and her entourage
the source of the gunfire.

Fiona recognized the El Camino barreling down
on the cluster of women, knew the spikes of the blue and white
hunter’s car, and didn’t need more than one try to guess the
driver. Veronica clearly recognized it as well. Her grenade missed
by just enough to spare the car but not let it keep its wheels.
Zeke’s ride tumbled through the right side of the Raven formation,
crushing and mangling bodies as it came to rest against a wall.
Fiona didn’t wait to see the rest of the fight; she had to be in
it.

Back down the ladder, down the stairs, onto
the open street, she raced to reach Veronica in time. The hollow
thunder of shotgun fire echoed through the night in two quick
bursts and then nothing. Fiona sprinted onto the street she’d seen
Veronica knock out Zeke’s car. The accompanying Ravens were either
dead or injured, littering the streets with the charred victims
they’d already gunned down. Among the fallen, Fiona found
Veronica’s familiar form.

Her former lover was already gone. Fiona
cradled Veronica’s lifeless form, lovingly stroking the well-known
features of her angelic face, kissing the blond hair, now streaked
with blood, that she’d so often ran her fingers through. She
couldn’t have said to that point what she might have wanted from
her manipulative ex, but seeing her dead, knowing she would never
again hear her sing or speak, Fiona simply wished Veronica had the
chance at some peace in her life before she met the violent end she
seemed to know was waiting for her all along.

“The head’s severed, Red,” she heard Zeke
shout from down the street. He was staggered, injured, leaning
heavily against the wreckage of his car with a ghastly shotgun
wound to his right leg. “They’ll crumble without her, and we both
know it. All you have to do is sit it out, and you can take your
rightful place by my side as the rule of this town.”

Fiona gently laid Veronica to rest on the
pavement. She rose, sliding her gun back into its holster. “Is that
what this is about? Setting me at your side?”

“You’re like the daughter I never had,” Zeke
said. “You’re like me more than you’re like them! Can’t you see
that?”

“I don’t hate them,” Fiona spat back. “I just
wanted to be free.”

“Join me and you can carve freedom from the
world however you like,” Zeke said. “I’ll carve it in blood right
along with you. What are you going to do otherwise? You’re not fast
enough to kill me and you know it.”

“You’ve told us both that for so long—I’m
itching to prove you a liar.” Fiona stepped into the middle of the
street. Zeke hobbled to mirror her stance, holding only his shotgun
at his side.

Fiona’s heart thundered in her ears, the
world of fire and smoke swirled around her as though she weren’t
even a part of the destruction, the eye of her own fiery storm. She
pulled first. Zeke was faster; his gun was up, pumped and ready
before she could aim. He pulled the trigger as if he knew the
result, knew what was about to happen with grim certainty. The
shotgun clicked on empty.

“Now you know,” Zeke whispered.

“Now we both do.”

Fiona fired. The bullet burst through Zeke’s
neck, severing a handful of major blood vessels on its way through.
He spun to the ground, spraying his car with a fresh coat of
red.

Fiona felt a sense of completion wash over
her when she saw him fall; they’d misread her, they’d all misread
her, not just Zeke and Cork, but Veronica too. The only person who
hadn’t misread her was flying a possible suicide mission at that
moment and Fiona was dead set on making sure she had a landing zone
to come back to. If she was lucky enough, clever enough, and good
enough, she might have time enough to process what had happened; if
she couldn’t muster enough of those three things, it wouldn’t
matter anyway—the three of them would just be another three corpses
in the streets.

The remaining Ravens rallied around her. They
made a push to eradicate the invaders, breaking into strike teams,
coming back together when they met large resistance, fighting in
the effective fashion that had won them Las Vegas. Reduced to
scavenging ammunition and weapons from the fallen, the Ravens
finally lost their edge in street-to-street fighting. The Juarez
marauders were too much, finally pushing the exhausted and injured
women from the heart of the city to put them on the run.

In the wee hours of the night, Fiona led the
two dozen or so Ravens that remained to the replica street formerly
meant for tourism. The marauders outnumbered them by a thousand or
more by that point and little remained of the town to even fight
over anymore. Capturing Ravens alive, which was no doubt what the
Juarez men had been promised by Zeke, proved to be nearly
impossible. The hardened women, fighters of Las Vegas all, had no
fear of death and took to the grave anyone attempting to set chains
on them. More than a few had already blown themselves and their
captors to smithereens with a hidden grenade when capture seemed
imminent. In Vegas they’d called the suicidal grenade a trump
card—Fiona had hoped to never see another trump card played again,
but even still, she knew she would throw her own trump card if the
time came and knew this to be true as well about the remaining
women who stood with her; it might be too late for them, but it
would send a clear message to Juarez in a final act of bloody
defiance—don’t fuck with the Ravens.

The marauders would find them soon enough.
They would fight. They would lose. They would take as many with
them as they could. But they likely wouldn’t see the entire
sunrise. With their defensive line set, Fiona waited for the
inevitable attack. From across the ruined city, the marauders
charged, escorted by motorcycles and pickups, armed, dirty,
screaming, and bent on ruin. Before they could reach the effective
firing range of the Ravens, three whirring engines roared overhead.
Machinegun fire tore through the approaching marauders as a trio of
biplanes dove down the length of their formation.

Fiona’s gaze shot skyward just in time to see
the
Big Daddy
,
Little Monster
, and a hobbled
Hard
Paw
along with their accompanying fighters setting up for a
weary attack run on a defenseless enemy. As the bombs, shells, and
Slark weapons rained down on the fleeing Juarez men, Fiona pulled
her hat from her head and waved it at the largest of the three
dirigibles, hoping Gieo could see her among the survivors.

The airships and the escort fighters skimmed
through the smoke of the fires that had consumed Fiona’s birthplace
and former home. Fiona couldn’t remember having left the town
during childhood, but a distinct part of her was glad to finally be
rid of the place, even at the extreme personal cost exacted for its
demise.

Chapter 29:
A new old life.

When the ruins
of Tombstone were swept clean by Gieo and her air force, Fiona
followed the dirigibles to the last landing zone available to them:
the old high school football field. The gunfighter and gear-head
met and embraced, simply holding each other in shaking arms. There
would be time for more, a lifetime if both had their way, but in
that glorious moment all either of them needed was to be held.

With what little remained of the town in
shambles, and what few survivors long since fled, the handful of
Ravens and returning pilots set to the work of sifting through the
remains. They buried their dead as best they could, sought out what
little food and water stores might remain, and began what would
likely be a fruitless search for horses. The casualty rate amongst
the townsfolk was surprisingly light; Fiona guessed Cork had warned
them away when she was drinking.

Fiona found small combat boot footprints near
where Gieo had stored her modified Indian motorcycle—the bike was
gone. Any number of Ravens could have taken the motorcycle, but
Fiona suspected Claudia was the only one who knew precisely where
it was. The little sniper had earned the chance at something else,
and Fiona hoped she would find it.

Burying Veronica was an ordeal for all the
Ravens present, but struck Fiona with an emotional cataclysm that
she hadn’t even felt when her mother died. The regret of sparing
Zeke all those months ago after the Slark attack sat heavy in the
center of Fiona’s chest; she knew it would likely be a permanent
wound and welcomed the reminder of what she’d lost.

Before the sun could set, when the direness
of the situation began to settle over the fifty or so remaining
Ravens and pilots, talk turned to Las Vegas. Without Veronica,
without means to sustain themselves, there was no reason to squat
amidst the ruins of Tombstone or toil in the rebuilding of what had
already been relegated to a pointless listening post. In addition
to Fiona and Gieo, who had absolutely no interest in Las Vegas,
there were several others among the survivors who expressed desire
for another option.

This phantom alternative, to which nobody
could brainstorm even a remotely reasonable notion of, came in the
form of a vehicle column out of the northeast. The dust cloud on
the horizon spoke initially of alarm, but that quickly faded when
binoculars provided confirmation that the vehicles were marked as
Raven. Veronica’s gift from beyond the grave extended in the form
of Alondra’s soldiers, rushing to Tombstone’s aid, perhaps a night
too late, but in time to preserve those who survived. The rider,
Fiona recognized her as the one she’d given Veronica’s missive to,
stood at the front of the column like a conquering hero returning
home.

The orders for the Marine Captain in charge
of the expeditionary force were to assist if possible in any way
the White Rook Gieo saw fit. Gieo instructed everyone to scavenge
whatever they could from the ruins, refuel the airships with every
last drop of Slark fuel they could find, and then the whole of them
would return to Albuquerque. The Captain, who had initially seemed
a little glum about missing out on the obviously exciting combat of
the night before, took the orders as an opportunity to complete his
mission without taking losses—an acceptable substitute considering
Alondra’s dislike of casualties among her men.