Cowboy Necromancer 2: Infinite Dark: (A Post-Apocalyptic LitRPG Fantasy), page 44
“Okay, Roxie.”
“What about me?” Zephyr asked. “I’m getting bored over here, Rox, bored…”
“We’re going to need you for the hostage escape,” Sterling reminded her. “Stay put, and if you’re bored, well… don’t be. We get these hostages and we skedaddle, go out with a bang, if you get me. Maron?”
“Yeah?”
“Any way you can get a little bit closer and see what them drones are capable of? Don’t want to throw off the other technomancers, however many there may be, but it could be a good distraction as well once the prisoners are out.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Wish me luck, y’all.”
Still crouched over, Sterling approached the hatch and went for the handle. He had already put his sword away, but he kept his magical revolver at the ready as he slowly opened it.
Got lucky there, he thought after he peeked inside and saw that it opened out onto the end of a long hallway, one that was currently dark. There was enough moonlight coming through the barred windows to illuminate the space to some degree, the hatch opening up onto either the third or second floor, he couldn’t quite tell at the moment. But he did see that there was the outline of an exit at the other end of the hall.
Sterling lowered down, and once he was ready, he approached the exit just as the door began to open. A man peeked into the room. Sterling lunged forward with a fist, missing his punch but managing to strike the man in the throat as he pulled the guard into the darkened space.
Sterling began beating him with the grip of his revolver as the man tried to push him off.
It only took a couple hits, his opponent giving up the fight with a gasp.
Sterling once again holstered his weapon and equipped his sickle-sword, twisting into a crouched position behind the man so he could slit his throat.
“Update us,” Roxie said over the earpiece.
“Got me another. Sure could use some light.”
“Did you disrupt the generator that powers that building?”
“No telling. I took down two of the generators; I don’t know what kind of grid they are on.”
“I can turn everything on again,” Maron suggested. “Well, anything still plugged in. It might cause an electrical fire, depending on how you all dealt with those generators.”
“A fire could be nice. Do it, amigo. I need to see what’s about to happen here.”
A light came on above about thirty seconds later, Sterling seeing the results of what he had done to the guard, a puddle of blood on the ground. He was just about to press forward when he decided to get some information. Still crouched, and now raising his hand over the blood, Sterling used his Death Whisper ability to summon the guard.
The man’s face took shape in the blood, Sterling telling those on the comms what he was doing so they wouldn’t wonder why they were hearing his voice. Maron had shown him how to turn his earpiece off and on, but he had forgotten, so he just kept it on as he watched the bloodied face stitch together.
“Ain’t no reason to worry,” he told the man before the guard could speak. “I am a telemancer, and right now, I’m seconds away from doing some nasty shit to your brain. You know what that means? Tell me, son, do you understand me?”
“Yes…”
“Here’s what I need to know. Y’all got prisoners down there, and I want to know how many there are, and how many guards we’re going to have to deal with. I also want to know if there are any mancers.”
“Dawn is there.”
“That don’t mean nothing to me. Is she a mancer?”
“A cryomancer.”
“You don’t say?” asked Sterling, a slow grin taking shape on his face. “I’ve been needing me a little practice with one of them fools. How many hostages?”
“Thirty.”
“They just had thirty people in this town?”
“Thirty… still alive.”
“Y’all are cruel for that, and you know it. But I ain’t here to judge you. Someone else will do that soon enough. How many other guards?”
“Two.”
“So three in total?”
The blood apparition nodded as best it could.
“Rest in peace, amigo.” Sterling quickly relayed what he had heard to the others. “I’m going to make this real quick, and then we are all going to fly out that back door. Y’all get ready to set up a diversion for me.”
“Hurry already,” said Zephyr.
“Ready to support you when you do,” came Roxie’s voice.
The Sunflower Kid was next: “We are all meeting on the same side now. I’m bringing Maron.”
“Y’all stay safe.”
Sterling moved to the next room, which happened to be the top of the stairwell.
“Dallas, is that you?” a voice called out from below, Sterling now understanding the setup of the interior. From what he could tell at the moment, they had made the hostages stay on the bottom floor, at the base of the stairwell, likely to make them easier to manage.
Sterling tried to recall the man’s voice he had just slain. Had it been low? Had it been a bit higher pitched? He couldn’t recall now, so he simply went for it.
“Um, yep,” he said in the most generic voice possible. He even cupped his hand on one side of his face, just to give himself a different tone.
“Then get your ass down here. The lights came back on.”
No, they aren’t on the bottom floor; they are in the basement, Sterling thought, which was something he’d surmised after peeking over the railing and spotting sleeping bags, but no bodies. If there were thirty people, he would have seen someone by now.
Three of them, he reminded himself, and one is a cryomancer.
He wasn’t too worried about the ones that weren’t mancers, not that unpowered people couldn’t put up a fight. Sterling had severely leveled up in Deseret, and was much stronger than he had been just a few weeks ago. But the cryomancer would be a problem, especially until he figured out just how powerful the man or woman was. He assumed that they were pretty strong to be put in charge of guarding thirty hostages.
“Are you coming or what?” a voice called up to him.
Sterling removed his sickle-sword from its breakaway sheath. He glanced over the railing and didn’t see anyone looking up at him, which told him that whoever was calling up wasn’t all that focused on his movement. He thought about taking the stairs down, but figured the element of surprise would be to his advantage. Sterling threw himself over the railing and dropped three floors to the ground, hovering just before he landed and spotting a man with an assault rifle standing in front of one of the doors.
“What the—!?”
Sterling shot forward and cupped his hand around the man’s mouth as he dug his sickle-sword into his stomach. He pulled up, glaring into the guard’s eyes. “Shhhh…”
He watched him die. Sterling didn’t like doing it, and it wasn’t the first time he’d seen life leave someone’s eyes, yet it still felt like a new experience. The man, who wore leather and had a thick scarf, slowly lowered his head and relaxed his shoulders.
“Almost there,” Sterling said into his earpiece. “Any updates?”
“The electromancer I saw on the other side of the town is now investigating the generators that didn’t come back on,” came Roxie’s voice. “The alarm should sound—”
She never was able to finish her sentence, the alarm loud enough that it took Sterling off guard. He stepped back, away from the man whom he had just been holding up against the wall.
The guard’s body sagged forward, blood dripping from the tip of Sterling’s sickle-sword as the basement door popped open.
The cryomancer burst out, the air crackling with ice as she spotted Sterling.
“Shit!” Sterling hopped backward to avoid an icy projectile, one which cut into the wall behind him. The cryomancer was fast, and as she spun, razor-sharp protrusions grew from her forearms, smaller bits of sharpened ice flying from her hands, one managing to tear straight through the side of Sterling’s bicep.
Bam! Bam!
He fired two shots at her, his trajectory thrown off by her sudden ice attack.
Sterling’s eyes darted to the door, expecting the final Comanche guard to burst out; when no one arrived, he put all of his weight onto one foot and came forward with his blade, the cryomancer ducking beneath it. She tried to counter with a spiked uppercut, one that passed mere inches from the tip of his chin.
He thought he had her. Sterling really thought he had her as he squeezed the trigger of his revolver, but she managed to block his magical bullet with the protrusions on her arms, more ice growing around her body, the air cooling to the point that his inhales were starting to hurt.
“What’s happening down there!?”
Sterling ignored Roxie’s voice as he jumped backward yet again, the female cryomancer sending forth a flurry of sharpened ice bullets. Another one struck Sterling, grazing his bicep, but the one that really hurt was the bit of ice that grazed against the side of his cheek, Sterling feeling as if someone had slashed at him with a blade.
He kept firing his gun, the temperature dropping to the point that he was finding it harder and harder to squeeze the trigger, an icy mist in the air now obscuring the cryomancer’s form.
I ain’t going down this easy, Sterling thought as he summoned the Comanche guard he’d just killed. “Stop her!”
This had the effect that Sterling had intended, his animate barreling toward the woman and scaring the living hell out of her based on the way she screamed at his sudden appearance. The former Comanche guard slammed into her and brought her down to the ground, where he began bashing her head and shoulders against the floor even as she sent spikes of ice into his body.
It was enough commotion for Sterling to pinpoint where they were, and as he pressed through the mist, he fired at the ground, not really caring where his bullets landed, be it his animate or the woman. The temperature stopped plummeting and the mist settled. He found the female cryomancer dead, and his animate pretty badly injured yet still moving.
Using his foot, Sterling kicked away some of the ice spikes that had pressed through his body and helped the guard off of the cryomancer.
“There’s still a guard down there,” Sterling said quietly as he pointed at the door, which he knew led down to the basement. “See if you can’t get down there first and get him. He won’t see it coming. When he comes to help you, kill the son of a bitch.”
The animate crawled toward the doorway, its body dragging behind it, leaving a trail of blood.
Sterling heard a voice call below.
“Dave… that you? What the hell’s going on down there?”
His animate responded, “Help… Help me…”
The struggle that came next was rapid fire, Sterling’s animate overpowering the man, followed by the sound of a gun going off, followed by a scream.
It was gruesome, but Sterling was used to this sort of thing by now and he needed to hurry, his eyes on the two entrances that led into the government building, gun drawn, sickle-sword at the ready.
“Now it’s your turn.” He raised the female cryomancer from the dead, the woman sitting up suddenly, the bullet wound on her forehead oozing blood onto her face. “Go down there and get them folks to come up here.”
His animate shuffled forward with a grunt, and soon, some of the captives began to come up the stairs.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Sterling told the first man and woman to step out of the door, all wearing masks of shock. “I know this shit looks real crazy. I’ve been sent here by…” He grimaced. It made sense, and it would make this easier, even though it wasn’t quite the reason he had come here. “I’ve been sent here by the Oracle and the good people of Moab, the Elder of Icaria, to rescue anyone who’s alive. Y’all need to follow me. Thirty, right?”
“Yes… yes,” said one of the men, his face badly bruised, eyes bloodshot as he cast his gaze down at the bodies Sterling had left in his wake. “What… What did you do to them?”
“Don’t matter none. Paco, you ready, son?” Sterling asked aloud.
“In position. Zephyr is sending another windstorm through; we are all together now.”
“Kid? You ready as well?”
“Forming it as we speak.”
This is going to be crazy, Sterling thought as more ragged people joined him in the hallway.
“If any of y’all can shoot a gun, which I’m sure you can, grab that one right there and equip whatever you have from your inventory list. We are going to need to guard the women and children. It’s about to be a bum rush to get the hell out of Monticello. No one else needs to die here tonight, folks. But we all have to stick together, we all have to work to make this happen.”
Several of the men began equipping weapons, grunting to psych themselves up. A few of them couldn’t, their hands frozen solid, entrapped in blocks of ice. It wasn’t going to be pretty, nor did he think they would be able to recover from it, but at least they were alive.
It made sense now why a guard had stayed down in the basement. This was to prevent anyone from pulling something out of their inventory list that they hadn’t already emptied. Sterling didn’t think that the Comanche were dumb enough to not have them empty their inventory lists, but without a telemancer, it would have been impossible to know if they had actually obeyed the order or not.
“Almost ready.”
Sterling nodded at the Sunflower Kid’s voice.
“Triggering the explosives now,” said Roxie.
“Windstorm’s on the way.”
“Cut the lights again?” Maron asked.
“Nah, we need them.”
Keeping to the outer edge along with two of the men, Sterling guided the group of hostages toward the back door, prepared for the front door to pop open at any moment. It did just that as the group started to spill outside, Sterling firing his weapon immediately toward the front of the building, the men around him responding as well.
“Head into the tunnel!” he called to the group that was funneling out of the back entrance, the Sunflower Kid’s creation set to protect them as they made their escape.
Sterling kept firing at the Comanche coming in through the front, a spark of electricity catching his eye and telling them that the electromancer was about to make things real bad if they didn’t hurry.
The explosion that followed could be felt all around him, as if it happened directly outside the building. Sterling’s guts twisted into a knot as dust fell from the ceiling, but he continued shooting his weapon. He took cover behind a walnut desk, his eyes going from the people just making it out the back door to a bolt of electricity that sprung forward, an apparition taking shape in form of an electromancer.
Energy crackled around his eyes, the man with slick black hair grinning at Sterling, and making the fatal mistake of gloating rather than killing him.
Sterling’s bullet passed just beneath his cheekbone, and tore out the back of the electromancer’s head.
It was that fast.
It always was.
The electromancer fell and Sterling took off toward the exit, firing behind him as he did so, ignoring some of the guttural shouts from those who had seen what he had done to the electromancer. He ripped out the back door to find that the last few men with weapons were entering the tunnel that the Sunflower Kid had grown within an enormous vine, one that Sterling could almost make his way through without having to duck.
“Seal it up!” Sterling told her as soon as he entered, running to catch up with the men in front of him, pushing the group forward as the tunnel began to seal from behind.
The tunnel the Sunflower Kid had concocted let out about half a mile away from Monticello, chaos engulfing the city as the Comanche tried to figure out what had happened.
Boom!
Roxie triggered another explosion, the night sky lighting up with a fiery show, the distillery destroyed as planned, the alcohol within adding deep blue hues to the flames.
“Everyone here?” Sterling asked the closest survivor he could find, the cowboy necromancer breathless. Still shocked, the man offered him a quick nod. “Good. Do… do a headcount, and then y’all have to move. Ain’t no sense in sticking around here.”
.Chapter Eight.
Zephyr wouldn’t be able to transport all thirty of the people back to Moab, but she was able to lead them, Paco joining her and occasionally glowing like a firefly as they floated through the night sky, Sterling, Roxie, Maron, Beep, and the Sunflower Kid heading in the opposite direction.
They had chosen an abandoned rest stop between Monticello and Monument Valley as a meeting place, which was where they found the Chronicler, the bucket-hatted man seated in the dune buggy with a gun in his lap when Sterling and the other three approached.
“I’m guessing it went well?” he asked, gesturing toward them with his pipe.
“Sure did,” Sterling told the older man as he finally stopped to light the cigarette he had tucked away in his front pocket. He had been meaning to do so along the way, the cowboy necromancer now mounted on his bone horse. The Sunflower Kid was on her mount as well, her white buffalo beside him. While Sterling had hoped that Roxie would ride his bone horse with him, she had declined, preferring to float alongside the technomancer instead.
“We gave them a scare, killed a few, and the rest is up to the Elder of Icaria. It ain’t going to be easy now. We were able to disrupt some of their operations to some degree, blow a few things up, kill a handful, mess with their bikes, that sort of thing. They are going to be angry, livid. Believe that. Like kicking over an anthill.” Sterling went ahead and explained in detail what had happened, how they had kept a low profile.
“And you didn’t end up using the Godwalker?” the Chronicler asked, careful now what he called Beep.
“Nope, that was supposed to be a backup plan, one that was never necessary.”
“I suppose it’s a good thing. And it goes without saying, I am glad to see you all. It was making me nervous to be positioned here along the highway.”
