Cowboy Necromancer 2: Infinite Dark: (A Post-Apocalyptic LitRPG Fantasy), page 24
They were just reaching a point where they could see the highway on the horizon when the ground began to rumble.
Roxie was the first off her bison, the woman bringing her weapon up and charging to the side just as a fault line traced across the ground in front of them, causing a huge fissure in the ground below.
An ambush took shape in a matter of seconds, as all ambushes do, men and women with assault rifles breaking from their cover, their beads trained on Sterling’s group.
A gaiamancer, a bunch of locals… Sterling gave the group a bold glare, practically daring them to open fire. “Let me guess,” he said, an edge to his voice, “this is one of them don’t cross this line sort of things, right?”
A few of the bandits seemed to bristle, but they kept their weapons pointed at Sterling and his group.
Sterling started to laugh, feeling stronger by the second. “I’m going to give all of y’all one chance to get the hell out of here before the killing starts. Ain’t no sense in dying today, amigos.”
The ground began to rumble again, spooking the buffalo.
“Tell your gaiamancer to come out, or I’ll have my friend back here equip her bazooka. That, or…” Sterling tilted his head to the Sunflower Kid, who was as collected as always, her head tilted ever-so-slightly as she looked at the group trying to hold them up. “Well, you’ll have to find out about this one.”
A small crater formed as a man pressed out of the cracked soil, just the top of his torso, almost as if he had lifted out of a body of water. The gaiamancer’s entire body was made of stone, a wicked look on his face, his teeth sharpened into points.
“Damn, son, you really took the whole gaiamancer thing to a demonic level, didn’t you?” Sterling asked. “Paco, are you familiar with what heat does to rock?”
“I am,” said the solimancer.
“Good. Go ahead and roast this one here alive, and the others, well, I guess Roxie could handle—”
Brrrrrrrat! Brrrrrrrat!
One of the more trigger-happy of the group fired his weapon so suddenly that the kickback disrupted his trajectory, bullets springing into the air just above Sterling’s head.
“Son of a bitch!”
Sterling drew his revolver and killed the guy in one shot as he threw himself off of Manchester.
A hail of bullets was matched by Roxie’s quick shots, their assailants falling like flies. Paco focused his heat on the ground, and as he did the bison began to take steps backward, smoke and steam boiling from the fault line.
The gaiamancer flew out of his hole in the ground, half on fire, his stone body red-hot. But he recovered quickly midair and dove back in, the ground shifting as a spike exploded from the earth, separating Sterling from the others.
“Kid, protect the Chronicler!” Sterling shouted at the top of his lungs. He bolted toward the local bandits that were still firing their weapons, the cowboy necromancer moving so quickly and so fueled by such a sudden surge in adrenaline that he failed to realize that he’d actually floated up into the air, to the ledge above them.
Bam!
He swiveled and fired a bullet into a man’s neck as soon as his boots reached the rock. Sterling turned in the opposite direction to cut a woman with a shotgun down using his sickle-sword, turquoise energy burning off the tip as he flourished his weapon and rammed his shoulder into another man, one that was trying to escape.
Sterling grabbed him by the back of his head and was just about to relieve the man of his throat using his sickle-sword when the brute cried out: “Someone tell Zee! Someone tell Zee!”
Hearing the name caused Sterling to pause.
Zee?
After two breaths, he went ahead and killed the man and tossed his body over the side, bits of gravel spraying into the air behind him as the gaiamancer continued his dolphin routine, the man lifting in and out of the ground, only to be heated up like a microwaved burrito every time he went under.
In the end, it was the Sunflower Kid who stopped him, the biomancer simply conjuring an enormous root that collided with the gaiamancer, the wooden plant construct swiftly wrapping around his body and squeezing him until he died.
After the ground stopped shaking, and as the dust cleared, Sterling did a quick head count.
He spotted Roxie, who had moved to higher ground to successfully snipe anyone trying to run away. The Sunflower Kid was still on her white buffalo, dealing with the barrier she had raised around the Chronicler to protect him from any shrapnel, the construct slowly lowering back to the ground. Paco stood next to his bison, a wild look on his face, his fists clenched at his sides.
“We have a problem,” Sterling told the group after he’d floated down from his ledge.
“What’s that?” The Chronicler was still a bit breathless, but otherwise showing no signs of bewilderment from the sudden attack. This clearly wasn’t his first rodeo.
Sterling came to a stop in front of his bone horse. “I heard one of them saying something of importance. Good, Pingo,” he told his skeletal steed, patting its bony neck. “Anyone make it out alive?” he called over to Roxie, who was just now rejoining the group.
She looked at him as if this question were an insult.
“Didn’t think so. Anyway, like I was saying, the man up there was trying to get the word out for one of them to ‘tell Zee.’ Only one Zee I’ve ever known.”
“Zephyr,” said the Sunflower Kid, Roxie nodding in agreement.
“Yup, and we all know how she is. I wouldn’t be surprised if she showed up here and joined the Angels of Woe. Say, that’s what they were, right?” he asked the Chronicler.
“Yes, you can tell by the armor they have. All of it has been modified by a flectomancer but resembles athletic gear. It’s a style around these parts.”
“I’ve noticed that. Looks kind of dumb, but I guess it gets the job done.” Sterling swept his hand toward the dead bodies. “Or it doesn’t. But we can have a conversation on practical post-apocalyptic fashion later. I reckon that Zephyr is somewhere in these parts, and that means we need to get her.”
“How do we even begin to…?”
Rather than answer the Chronicler’s question, Sterling headed back over to the man whose throat he had just slit. He crouched in front of the blood pooling around his head and lifted his hand.
The surface of the blood began to boil as the man’s face took shape, gasping awake.
“Where…?”
“I need to deliver a message to Zee,” Sterling said. “Where’s she at?”
“Zee…”
“That’s right, amigo.”
“It’s… it’s so dark here,” said the face, lips dipping into a frown. “Am I dead?”
“As a doorknob, but consider yourself lucky. There are worse ways to die, or you could be forced to live post Reset, which also has its drawbacks. I’ll make this quick, then I’ll let you get back to your eternal suffering. Where’s Zee?”
“Zee?”
“Zee. I didn’t stutter.”
“Zee is in Morgan.”
“The name Morgan ring a bell?” Sterling called over to the Chronicler.
“It’s a town past Peterson. I was planning for us to circle around it, but…”
“Thank you kindly,” Sterling told the blood apparition. “Rest in peace, amigo.”
The blood settled back into its puddle and Sterling returned to his group. “Just tell us which way to go, Dusty, and we’ll head that way. Zephyr is a friend of ours, an aeromancer, and sort of like the wind, she goes with the breeze. I guess that don’t make much sense until you meet her, but you get my drift. Damn, listen to me making puns over here.”
“If…” The Chronicler swallowed hard. “If they were calling for someone to tell her that we were strong, it means that she must have a force there. And since this group doesn’t normally ride horses, it would mean that there are dune buggies around here. Perhaps an easier way to travel?”
“You don’t like riding buffalo?” the Sunflower Kid asked.
“All I’m saying is that there are more comfortable modes of transportation. We can at least check. They may have dune buggies or ATVs; and there’s a small chance that they traded for motorcycles from the Comanche.”
“In that case, let’s take a look around and see what kind of vehicles we can procure then,” Sterling said with a shrug. “Not that I mind traveling on horseback, but if there’s a quicker way, I’ll take it.”
“The Angels of Woe generally have heavily guarded headquarters, at least from what I have experienced in the past. There will be more mancers.”
“Let me ask you,” Sterling said as he started rolling up a cigarette. “Did you happen to see what we did back there? How my team here works?”
The Chronicler nodded.
“That’s just the tip of the iceberg. In case it ain’t clear yet, we’ve been dealing with assholes of all shapes and sizes for a number of years now, both as a group and alone. Don’t you worry about us. And I’m not trying to be overly confident over here, neither. I’m just saying, when I’m with my people, the people I trust, those who have fought alongside me before, I ain’t afraid of nothing. Just lead us to Morgan, we’ll do a little scouting, and we’ll get Zephyr back.”
“Are you certain she will want to come with you?”
“The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind,” Sterling told him, not certain where he picked up this quote. “We will find out soon enough, but I’m pretty sure Zee will be happy as hell to see us. Anyone got anything else to add? No? Then let’s git.”
.Chapter Four.
The highway was rough, the snowy, jagged mountains that surrounded it proof that the state of Utah had been known as a destination for skiing. There had been evidence of the sport already, and more of it was visible from the road, signs that hadn’t been shot through with bullet holes, even an abandoned ski lift in the middle of the highway at one point.
How had it gotten there?
It was questions like this that Sterling often pondered, as simple as they were. And how did it get moved? Why would someone go out of their way to move it so far from its original location?
Their group now traveled in a single dune buggy, Sterling taking the wheel this time so Roxie could sit shotgun with, well, a shotgun, the Sunflower Kid, Paco, and the Chronicler in the back. Once again, Beep was in his inventory list, even if it would have been somewhat of an added patrol element to have the miniature Godwalker zipping next to them.
Better to stay undercover for the time being; better to blend in.
Anyone watching from afar would assume they were part of the Angels of Woe, which carried some weight in these parts, the Chronicler announcing that they were officially in Nomadland at one point, giving Sterling a laugh.
“You mean we weren’t already?” Sterling called over the roar of their engine. He was hunched over a bit, the brim of his cowboy hat keeping the sun out of his eyes as he held his foot steady on the pedal.
“No, and things could get more complicated from here on out. At least in terms of who we may encounter on our way to Moab. Ironically, it’s a good thing we are going to Morgan.”
“Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”
“When I travel through this region, I generally take different paths on the way up and down. It makes me feel as if I’m less trackable, plus I’m able to see other locations and discover new things. Anyhow, there are mountains south of Morgan that have a series of cliff dwellings that are blocked off. I’d like to check along the way to see if there is anything in those dwellings that may help us. I have a hunch…”
“Sounds good to me, Dusty.”
Not so long ago, Sterling had traveled from what was left of his home in Truth or Consequences to Las Cruces in search of Don Gasper, who he knew could perform a shamanic ritual that would help him figure out where his people were. It had worked. And if he was going to trust a hallucinatory medicine man, he was damn sure going to trust the hunch of an archeoastrologist whose obsession just happened to be a group of people that had once beat the Godwalkers back.
Leaps of faith. This had been one of Sterling’s keys to survival thus far, going with his gut, not afraid to think outside the pueblo when it came to accomplishing a task.
And he had no intention of changing that.
As he tightened his grip on the steering wheel, swerving around potholes, the dune buggy scooting along somewhere in the desert, Sterling thanked his lucky stars that he had made it this far.
There were numerous times where he should have met his fate, yet here he was, still alive, and on the verge of attempting something that seemed damn near impossible. As his eyes traced over the horizon, the sky crisp and cast in strips of vaporous clouds, he wondered if there were others like him in the world in other countries, those who had banded together and decided to fight back, to sacrifice themselves no matter what it took to stop the Godwalkers.
He hoped there were.
The others had left their buffalo behind, all aside from the Sunflower Kid, who had miraculously sent the newest version of Watermelon to her inventory list. From here on out, they would likely take various modes of transport, and would seek out more vehicles in Morgan and beyond. If a bone horse or a muscled biomancer could fit in an inventory list, a dune buggy or an ATV could as well, something Roxie had readily proven.
They shifted off the highway, moving to higher ground so they could figure out what they were about to get into. While most of the land surrounding the highway had been cultivated, the farms in the region were no longer in existence, their fields were far from fallow.
Sterling saw what was left of granaries and barns, old turquoise and maroon pickup trucks rusted over, their wheels deflated and their windows smashed. He spotted trailers and other signs of human dwellings, most looking abandoned. Someone had gone out of their way to make sculptures out of hunks of metal, one that looked like the makings of a dinosaur, another that resembled a Godwalker.
Sterling felt like taking a shot at the Godwalker statue but refrained from doing so as he stepped out of the dune buggy, which Roxie swiftly sent to her inventory list. She was at a higher level than all of them, the female gunner with no need for the mana she had accumulated aside from flying and to increase the size of her inventory list, which was something that Sterling had yet to understand.
Sterling wasn’t great at the gaming mechanics that had been placed over his day-to-day affairs, which was one of the reasons he’d been so impressed with how they had started to farm XP back in Saltair. If there were ways to customize it, Sterling hadn’t paid much attention to it aside from increasing his Class Proficiencies, and strengthening his techniques. He had grown used to the system, sure, but he would likely never be the type to actually master it, or learn the intricacies of it, like Roxie or the Sunflower Kid had.
In the end, he was but a simple man, a pepper farmer who would prefer to have been left alone. But they had come for him, and not just the Godwalkers, Killbilly bandits too, which was something Sterling planned to see about once he got back to New Mexico…
“Don’t think I forgot,” he grumbled, remembering how Commodore Bones had once strung him up on a cross, and how he had betrayed him alongside Don Gasper’s crazed telemancing lover, Magdalena.
Damn peckerhead…
“Is something the matter?” the Sunflower Kid asked Sterling.
He had been standing there smoking and glaring at the ground, a darkness coming over his face that he was unaware of. Hearing her voice snapped him out of it. Sterling glanced over to the teenage girl, who was dressed in all white, a hippie child if there ever was one, with charmed bracelets on her wrists, jangling every time she lifted her hand.
“Just thinking about New Mexico,” he finally admitted. “I got some people I need to deal with there.”
“When we get back,” she assured him.
“You planning to tag along?”
The Sunflower Kid nodded.
“Roxie is too, and y’all don’t need to.”
“I want to help.”
“That’s mighty kind of you.”
“As long as Watermelon and Strawberry can come.”
Sterling shook his head, a smirk forming on his face. “Watermelon for sure; I don’t know about Strawberry. We’re going to see what happens here in Deseret. Strawberry may be in a heap of trouble once we reach the Terminal, considering it is technically selling its people out. Well, aliens, not people. But you know what I’m saying. What’s the plan?” he called over to the Chronicler. Sterling was enjoying his moment with the Sunflower Kid, but knew that they needed to move on, that Zephyr awaited them.
She was a unique woman, Zephyr, one that was well-versed in playing both sides. This was likely why she had headed to Albuquerque after their group had disbanded three years ago; Sterling wouldn’t put it past the aeromancer to have gotten involved in a number of things that were as shifty as a coyote once she had established herself in Duke City. It was her style, who she was, and as long as they kept an eye on her, having her around was useful. And not just for a good breeze once the day got hot.
Sterling had seen Zephyr send an opponent flying six or seven hundred feet up into the air. Her cyclone powers could whip a tree out of the ground, and he wondered if there were more ways that she could work with not only the Sunflower Kid, but Paco, some kind of heat tornado of sorts, an idea he had gathered from the fight with the aeromancer outside of Saltair.
But getting to her was going to be an issue.
Sterling had a feeling that they weren’t going to be able to just waltz right into Morgan and demand to see her. Likely, she was in some kind of compound living it up, probably with servants considering the way that she was able to manipulate people. While not quite like the Oracle—she wasn’t able to read anyone’s mind or control their thoughts—Zephyr did have a way about her, the aeromancer with a bubbly personality that hid her cunning nature.
