The Gunslinger

First of all (the Gunslinger said) I always finish the job. Whatever it is, whatever I’m paid to do, I either do it or I don’t take the money. Call it a code if you like.

(The Kid nodded to himself, feeling a swell of admiration. Of course there was a code.)

Happened one day I was hired for a job. There’s a gang taken over a town called Underbone, taking what they want and spoiling the rest, and the townspeople need someone to take care of them before the town dies. Fair enough. They had the money. I’d do it. Even though the two that came to hire me were some of the most cowardly, sniveling specimens I’d ever met. Cringing, groveling, flinching. There’s something disgusting about people like that. You know that they’ll switch sides the moment the balance shifts.

Still, it was a job. I traveled to Underbone.

Turns out that Underbone really is under a bone. Or under a fossil, I guess. Giant ribcage of some sort of creature, arching over the entire town. Little glints of opal as the sun strikes the fossil, from bits that fossilized strangely.

Rest of the town, about how you’d expect. Dusty, rocky. Red rock mountains rising on the side the bone comes from. Little bit of grass for the sheep up in the mountains, before you get to the Desert. The wood that the houses are made from is bleached by years of sun. At the far end of town, they’ve got some sort of mechanical pump bringing water up from deep beneath. It runs on gasoline and smells horrible. Half the water goes towards a mushroom farm, and that’s what helps keep the people fed, with not much rain. They trade in wool and silver, they eat mushrooms.

They gave me real food. Well, mutton, at least.

Next part of the job was to find out about the gang.

Leader was a man named Clyton. Took care of his men well, Clyton did. Seemed like the sort of man who says he’s going to pay you fifty, and then actually pays you fifty. Some ways I didn’t want to kill him. I was going to, of course. That was the job. But it wasn’t personal.

Caught my first target out near the water pump. Shot him through the head and then told the townsfolk to drag him to the Desert and throw him into it. Happens that people get more afraid when the body disappears, and they also don’t know as much about you.

Found out more about the gang as I went on. They’d left a town where you couldn’t go out while it was dark, and their sun was guttering and going out. Red and flickering by the time they got out. Clyton figured there were better things than being a refugee somewhere in the Network, sitting out with a begging bowl and hoping you don’t get fed to whatever’s got people spooked. So he and his men took some guns and found themselves a town to milk dry. Makes a lot of sense, you’ve got to admit.

Not everyone in the town hated them, either. Few of the women got downright friendly with Clyton’s people—of course, women always go for the strongest bull in the fight. Woman named Eleris snagged Clyton personally. I guess I saw the appeal of her—long black hair, night-dark eyes—but I didn’t get close enough to see much. Besides, I’ve never been the kind to lose my head over a woman. Certainly wasn’t stupid enough to start thinking I could rescue her. She knew her own business. She’d made her bet.

Caught my second target up the hill where the sheep were. He was a coward and I had to shoot him in the back as he ran. Always hate doing that. I told my two contacts to throw him over into the Desert and went back to the hut they had set aside for me. More like a hovel. None of the gang knew I was there yet, and I wanted to keep it that way as long as I could.

There are no lights on after dark in Underbone, and you can see millions of stars shining down through the fossil ribs. More than any other town I’ve seen. Some of them were bright enough to make it seem like moonlight. Every now and then a shooting star streaked across the expanse, and sometimes I tried to see if I could draw my gun before it disappeared. Good practice, although maybe a little silly, trying to outdraw the sky.. I wondered if Underbone ever got a moon, and looked up at the dark bones across the sky like the bars of a jail, and then finally went in to sleep.

The next day was more or less the same. The two snivelers woke me up, found me some breakfast I could eat, left me alone. I went out and killed two men. I came back to the hovel after dark and ate by candlelight.

By this time, the gang was getting desperate, and they were searching house to house, so I had to leave the hovel and creep into the underground mushroom farm. I was thinking about where to confront them. Main street’ll just get you killed, doesn’t matter what the stories say. And they’d made the inn as hard to assault as they could, boarding up windows and leaving slits for guns.

I was thinking about this when one of Clyton’s men stirred around the mushroom patch with his gun, and then started yelling, “It’s Evered, it’s Evered!” and panicking like he’d never seen a dead body before. Happens the two snivelers hadn’t done what they were told.

Decided I’d worry about that later. I shot the two searchers, and left the mushroom farm right quick—didn’t want to get caught in that hole. Back down into the town, shooting gangsters left and right, ducking behind porches and into buildings as they all came after me with more ammo than any sane person needs. One of them had a big rifle. I began to hate the sound of that thing, a big, deep, bass note, louder than the chatter of the smaller guns.

Finally I got down to the inn. Looked at it for a minute. Like I thought, trying to get into it head-on would get me killed. So I took a bottle from the house right next to it, and made myself a fuse, and threw a lit bottle-bomb onto the the upper balcony.

Wasn’t long before people were boiling out, and I shot them as they came. Most of them came out ready to shoot, but I had a good place, and I could just pick them off—bang bang bang—like taking the heads off daisies.

Last came Clyton himself, holding his gun to that woman Eleris’s head and shouting that he’d put an end to her if I didn’t come out. So I drilled a bullet through both of them, and it was finished.

Well, not quite. There were still the snivelers.

I walked down the street, out in the open. People peeking out of their houses, shaking like leaves from all the gunplay. The two snivelers came out to meet me.

“You didn’t take them out to the desert,” I said.

They wrung their hands and whined, predictably. That it was against their faith. That they thought people who died in the Desert don’t rest, and even though these gangsters had tortured their people, they hadn’t deserved that. That there were things in the Desert, things that had crossed the line from time to time, and giving them corpses made them stronger.

I said, “You talk too much,” and put a bullet through each of their heads. Just plain justice, right? They betrayed me, they paid for it.

I went to the best house in town, ordered up a meal, took off my shoes, and went to bed. Long day.

Happens the townspeople were planning to betray me all along.

I woke up groggy, and I never wake up groggy. Woke up tied, and there’s no way I can wake up tied; I’d go for my gun the moment someone came in the room with me, and probably drill a bullet through them before they had time to speak. Someone had put something in my food.

They dragged me to the middle of the street and made some farce of holding “court.” Had some woman stand up for me, and point out facts that were supposed to be in my favor. A lot of people jawed on about Eleris, as if she hadn’t betrayed all of them by taking up with Clyton, and even more people talked about the two snivelers, whose names I don’t intend to remember.

I spoke for myself a bit, but nobody listened. Pointed out that I had the right to do the job the way I saw fit. Pointed out that the snivelers had deliberately disobeyed me. Pointed out that none of them were a loss to the community, as cowardly as they were.

The court was very silent after I said that, and then the “prosecution” made up some story about Eleris giving the townspeople information about the gang, and the two snivelers “braving the trains” and the Network in order to get help. That was when I truly realized that they were going to kill me. They were all as weak and cowardly as each other. Nobody with a bit of grit among them.

Then there was the question of my sentence. They were going to kill me, that was clear, but how? I hadn’t spotted a gibbet. I thought maybe they would shoot me, and I thought, that makes a lot of sense for my life even if I don’t like it. My life’s always been bound up with guns. Smoke and steel. From the beginning, almost, it was smoke and steel.

Then the prosecutor, who was an evil old woman with a dodgy eye, said something about me wanting to put the bodies in the Desert. “I say we push him over the line, and if the abhumans take him, let them.”

“What’s an abhuman?” I asked.

She sniffed at me, and I thought probably she was the local schoolmarm. Women like that always think they’re better than you. “‘Ab’ is a prefix meaning, ‘moving away from,’” she said. “Your kind of people, I should think.”

So they got me up on a cart and started to wheel me to the Desert.

Got to admit, I wasn’t too easy in my mind about going into the Desert. I thought that I’d rather be shot, and I thought maybe I should say that. And then I realized, what good would saying that do? They would have even more fun throwing me into the Desert if they thought I was afraid. I wasn’t about to let this bunch of cowards think I was anything like them. So I didn’t say anything.

We got to the marker. There was no difference between one side and the other, except that some Surveyor had carved a warning into a standing stone. It looked like a grave.

Beside me was a fossil poking out of the ground. It looked like the last joint of the Underbone beast’s tail. I wondered what it had been, and whether the town was there because of it, or it was there because of the town.

They had a Rebirth preacher. Offered me his stock in trade, namely Rebirth. I didn’t want to spend my last moments like that, so I just stared at him until he went away again.

Then they took my gun—that was the first and last time I shouted at them—and untied the ropes on me, and pushed me beyond the marker.

Wasn’t much different on the other side.

I turned around. “If I had my gun,” I said, “you would all be dead. Every last cowardly one of you.” But they were already moving away, going back to the town.

I decided that as long as I wasn’t dead, I would sneak back into the town and board the train in the middle of the night. I just had to find somewhere to hole up until then. So I walked a little further into the Desert, stepping carefully in case there were holes, and then started to work my way around the edge, marker by marker.

It was sunset by the time I got into the mountains, which I thought were the best way to sneak back in.

It was sunset, and there was something flying out of the sun.

I wished I had my gun. But I wasn’t going to be a coward, so I stood there as they came down, and they landed, and that was how I met the abhumans.

Happens the abhumans are a better class of people than those townsfolk, any day. Happens the abhumans know a lot more about what goes on in towns than anyone thinks. Happens there was a rumor come out of Smoke, that a special package was on its way, and the abhumans were very interested, very interested indeed. Seems that the package was the key to controlling a train, and if they controlled a train—well, they wouldn’t be scavenging for scraps anymore, right? Just roll up to the station, let the people step on, and maybe some of them wouldn’t step off.

Happens the abhumans needed someone who looks a bit more human for part of their plan.

So if none of you people mind, I’ll be taking all your guns now.