Cowboy Necromancer 4: Trona Pinnacles Novella
Author: Harmon Cooper
Date: 2022-11-11 05:00:00+00:00
Description: Sterling and the Sunflower Kid are back in this Cowboy Necromancer novella! While the alien monoliths known as Godwalkers may be gone for now, there are still plenty issues in the post-apocalyptic southwest. Heading west, aimed at the coast of California, Sterling and the Sunflower Kid encounter new foes and wild, mystical beings as they push further into the desert toward Flagstaff, Arizona. Sterling's initial saga may be over, but the adventure has just begun... About the Immerse yourself in a one-of-a-kind LitRPG western set in the post-apocalyptic Southwest. Expect classes, leveling, and s
Publisher: Boycott Books, LLC

Trona

Pinnacles

Novella

(Cowboy Necromancer Book Four)

By Harmon Cooper

Copyright © 2022 Harmon Cooper

Copyright © 2022 Boycott Books

Edited by Andi Marlowe

Art by Sekhar Falnama

Font by Shawn King

www.harmoncooper.com
writer.harmoncooper@gmail.com

Twitter: @_HarmonCooper
Harmon Cooper’s Patreon

All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Cowboy Necromancer Recap

.Chapter One.

.Chapter Two.

.Chapter Three.

.Chapter Four.

.Chapter Five.

.Chapter Six.

.Chapter Seven.

.Chapter Eight.

.Chapter Nine.

.Chapter Ten.

.Chapter Eleven.

.Chapter Twelve.

.Chapter Thirteen.

.Chapter Fourteen.

.Chapter Fifteen.

Author’s Note

Cowboy Necromancer Recap

**Contains spoilers**

Book One

Five years ago, an event known as The Reset killed ninety percent of the world’s population, wiping the memory of anyone left alive. Alien monoliths known as Godwalkers appeared and took humankind off the electric grid. The people left were given video game-like stats, and are able to level up through combat. A select few were given enhanced mancer classes, allowing them to perform incredible feats.

Three years ago, Sterling Monedero and a band of superpowered mancers tried to do something about the Godwalkers.

They failed, ending in the death of a pyromancer named Liam and a hydromancer named Karina. Those still alive, including Sterling, went their separate ways. Zephyr, an aeromancer, and the Sunflower Kid, a biomancer, headed to Albuquerque. Rowayton the Indestructible, also known as Roxie, headed to whereabouts unknown, and Sterling, the necromancer, moved to the outskirts of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, to retire and start a pepper farm.

Three years pass in relative peace until a group of bandits known as Killbillies show up to collect a chili tax from Sterling, at the same time that a Godwalker appears in the sky and destroys his pepper farm. Deciding it’s time to get the old team together to deal with the alien monoliths once and for all, Sterling seeks out the mystical wisdom of a shaman named Don Gasper, which sends him to Las Cruces into the middle of a turf war between the Killbillies and the White Sands Militia.

It isn’t an easy trip south, and along the way he ends up being taken prisoner by the Killbillies, and later crucified while their leader, a man named Commodore Bones, taunts him. Sterling escapes and reaches Las Cruces. Through the shaman Don Gasper and a coyote, he learns that the Sunflower Kid is north. He also discovers that his former teammate Roxie is being held by the militia, and is encouraged by Don Gasper to look for the Sunflower Kid first.

Setting off toward Madrid, New Mexico, Sterling encounters a group of Hopi natives who are protected by a solimancer named Paco. Paco points Sterling in the right direction of the Sunflower Kid, and Sterling discovers that the Kid is being held captive by a cult known as the Culto Demente Sagrado. Due to a powerful telemancer, Sterling is unable to get close to the cult.

He heads even further north to find a man named Raylan, who is a flectomancer able to craft incredible items such as Sterling’s magical revolver and his sickle sword. Sterling learns that a bounty hunter named Ram is hunting him, but ignores the man as he makes it to Madrid. In Madrid, Sterling meets a female pyromancer named Sierra, and Raylan promises to craft some technology for him that will prevent the telemancer from affecting Sterling so he can rescue the Sunflower Kid.

Disaster strikes the following morning in the form of Ram, the bounty hunter using his control over ice to cut Sterling’s arm off. Raylan and Sierra are able to run Ram out of town. After using his mancer power to graft a skeletal arm to his own, Sterling leaves as well. He rescues the Sunflower Kid, and in doing so ends up finding an enormous amalgamation, which is the word locals use to describe the strange creatures with skeletal heads that have appeared after the Reset. Sterling is once again assisted by Paco the solimancer, whom he promises to meet again in the future, perhaps letting him join their group.

Now heading south to meet Don Gasper, Sterling reconnects with the Sunflower Kid, and learns that Zephyr, one of his original teammates, is in Albuquerque. As much as he doesn’t want to go to the city, mostly because it is the site of gang warfare, he knows he needs to at some point.

Throughout his trip, Sterling has been uncovering information about his family, and while he doesn’t know if his wife and his child are still alive, he does have a lead in Albuquerque in the records at an old insurance company.

Reaching Alamogordo, Sterling reunites with Don Gasper, who has fallen under the spell of a female witch named Magdalena. Don Gasper and Magdalena, alongside the Sunflower Kid, convince Sterling to join forces with Commodore Bones to take on the White Sands Militia, so he can free Roxie from imprisonment. He has also heard that the militia is holding a technomancer, which he’ll need on his team if he ever wants to take down one of the Godwalkers.

As they assault the military base, freeing Roxie and a technomancer named Maron, a Godwalker suddenly appears in the sky. Deciding not to run this time, Sterling gets over his fear of heights as he flies into an opening on the Godwalker provided by Maron, where he is able to bring the towering alien monolith to the ground.

Upon waking after a series of explosions, Sterling finds Don Gasper in front of him, impaled on a spike and begging for forgiveness. Magdalena, Gasper’s lover, has betrayed him and is secretly a telemancer. She has escaped with Commodore Bones to Las Cruces alongside the technomancer.

Now that he has the start of his team back together, Sterling decides to ride to Las Cruces first, to be followed by Albuquerque, and then later Utah, where the Godwalkers are rumored to have a Terminal that is key to bringing them down once and for all.

Book  Two

Sterling appears in Deseret, an unknown location which later turns out to be post-apocalyptic Utah. He is saved by a miniature Godwalker, whom he names Beep, and meets a pair of boys riding in the Bonneville Salt Flats in their dune buggy. They take him back to their leader, the Elder of Nauvoo, who tells Sterling he will point him in the right direction if he rescues a child that has been kidnapped from their tribe. The Elder is part of the Serpents of Paradise, which is led by someone named the Oracle who lives in a place called Saltair.

In rescuing the child, Sterling is reunited with Roxie, where he pieces together that his entire crew has been inexplicably transported to Deseret. They also learn that the Elder of Nauvoo plans to kill the baby he’s been tasked with rescuing. They return to the Elder’s compound with the child, and along the way they notice a faint glow on a nearby hilltop. After dealing with the Elder, which leads to a brutal fight and a mass suicide, Sterling, Roxie, a survivor named Lily Gray, and the child he’s rescued seek refuge in a summerhouse. They reunite with the solimancer Paco the next day, which explains the glow on the hilltop. From there, it is straight to Saltair.

Along the way, they encounter a group of bandits known as the Angels of Woe. After the fight, they reach Saltair and stay with one of Lily’s acquaintances. They meet the Oracle, a telemancer, and Sterling’s enhanced cowboy hat prevents the telemancer from disrupting his thoughts. After a talk, they agree that he will investigate the appearance of a biomancer on Antelope Island, and she’ll let him level up at the Gauntlet. The Oracle also wants him to meet a researcher named Dusty Hill, known as the Chronicler.

Levels gained, Sterling, Beep, and Roxie join the Chronicler, who tells them about the ancient native peoples of the state of Utah and how they first fought the Godwalkers. The Chronicler is still trying to understand the Anasazi’s petroglyphs, but he thinks that there is something there. They reunite with the Sunflower Kid at Antelope Island, and from there head toward Nomadland and Monument Valley, where the Godwalker’s Terminal is located. They are also still searching for Don Gasper, the aeromancer named Zephyr, and the technomancer named Maron.

An ambush leads them to Zephyr, who readily joins the group. The Chronicler finds the ancient answer he is looking for in a petroglyph outside of Morgon, Utah, and he now believes that he understands how the Utah natives fought off the Godwalkers so many years ago.

On the outskirts of Midway, they meet a group of people that live in treehouses high above the woods, who tell them about two enemy necromancers that have taken over the nearby town. Sterling promises to investigate, and that same night, a zombie sent by the enemy necromancers comes for Sterling. He promises to meet with the enemy necromancers as long as Roxie can come along. Roxie and Sterling travel to Midway, Utah, and actually end up fighting Remuda and Matilda, killing the two enemy necromancers.

Sterling’s full group continues their journey into southeastern Utah, where they plan to go to Moab to meet the Elder of Icaria, who may have information on Maron. The Chronicler has already heard of a shaman at the Hole N’ the Rock outside of Moab, which will be their next stop after Moab.

In Moab, Sterling and Roxie have a night where they almost feel normal, which only makes him want to finish off the Godwalkers even more. The next day, after doing another Gauntlet for additional levels, they head to the Hole N’ the Rock and are greeted by Don Gasper, who promises that he can help them find Maron, but it can only be through a hallucinatory ritual.

Sterling consumes the hallucinatory cebil seed and is told that technomancer Maron is on Mount Tukuhnikivatz. The next day, he heads to the mountain with the group sans Don Gasper and the Chronicler, where they find Maron.

At first they think Maron is dead, but then they realize once they turn on a nearby radio that the technomancer has transferred what he refers to as his electric soul to the radio. Maron communicates with Beep, now named Strawberry by the Sunflower Kid, but the revelations of what he has learned are saved for later.

Sterling’s group heads back to the Hole N’ the Rock to find that it has been attacked by the post-apocalyptic Comanche. Sterling first learned of the modern-day Comanche from Paco, and later learned more about the territory they were expanding known as Comancheria, their ancestral lands, which was already pushing into Utah. This was why they were at the Hole N’ the Rock, and after a battle, Sterling finds that Don Gasper died protecting the Chronicler. Three of the Comanche have escaped, and they fear that they may return with larger numbers so they leave the Rock after burying Gasper.

That night, Sterling learns from Maron that Beep is inhabited by the soul of his wife, which correlates with information he has already learned about Beep, that the small alien craft brought all of them to Deseret to accomplish some task. Sterling doesn’t know how to process this, and ends up not being able to fall asleep.

Later that night he wakes up and hears motorcycles, and Roxie and Sterling head away from the campsite to deal with a trio of Comanche. They don’t end up having to fight them as an amalgamation kills two of the men, Roxie sniping the other. They learn through using Sterling’s Death Whisper power that the Comanche are two hundred strong in the nearby town of Monticello. They make a plan to disrupt their operations, but not go to all-out war with them, which Sterling cross-checks with Don Gasper’s blood to see if he agrees. After a day of rest and relaying this information back to Moab, Sterling and his team, sans the Chronicler, rescue thirty hostages from the Comanche in Monticello. They also disrupt their operations by causing a few explosions and ruining some of their motorcycles.

The former hostages are sent back to Moab, while Sterling and the others head south to meet the Chronicler at a rest stop. It is here that Maron delivers the second revelation that Sterling’s wife in the body of the Godwalker has relayed to him. The Sunflower Kid is Sterling’s child, but Beep doesn’t want him to say anything to her before the operation in Monument Valley. This troubles Sterling even more, but he reluctantly agrees.

The group heads toward Monument Valley the next morning and find it filled with Godwalkers, large and small. The plan they have devised is to disrupt the Terminal, which is beneath the ground and used as a charging station. Sterling still isn’t certain of how the Godwalkers are powered, but he is aware that it has something to do with human energy through souls.

While Sterling and the others lay down distractions, Zephyr and Paco create a heat vortex that burrows into the ground, destroying the Terminal. In the process, Sterling almost thinks that he has lost the Sunflower Kid, but he miraculously finds her in the fight and rescues the teenage biomancer. Isabelle’s soul, however, has left the miniature Godwalker.

They head back to the meeting point, Sterling and his group victorious. The plan now is to head south to Arizona, and loop back around New Mexico, to Chaco Canyon, where there is another important site for the Godwalkers. They will also need more information about this location, which the Chronicler and Paco will seek out once they reach what is left of Navajo country. Sterling also has a few things he would like to deal with back home, including Commodore Bones and the Killbillies, and a cryomancer bounty hunter named Ram.

Book Three

With one Terminal destroyed, Sterling and company plan to route back through New Mexico by way of Arizona. Along the way, they pass through Kayenta, Arizona, where they learn the locals are being terrorized by the Comanche. An agreement is made with the town sheriff to fight the Comanche in exchange for an introduction with the Navajo Nation, who may know more about the origin of the Godwalkers. While protecting the town, Sterling and his group are joined by a Comanche who has decided to switch sides, a telemancer named Harjo. Before setting out the next morning, tragedy strikes when a Godwalker appears and kills Roxie, whose soul is transferred to Beep’s body. Roxie can no longer communicate easily with Sterling and his team without the use of technomancer Maron as a medium.

After regrouping, they head toward the Navajo Nation, where they meet with two elders. The elders don’t have any new information for them, but they do tell them of the Acoma Pueblo’s leader, who has retained her memory of the past. Along the way to the Acoma Pueblo, they encounter a group of Comanche and discover that their new leader, Quanah, is in the area. Upon a visit to the border city of Gallup, New Mexico, plans are made to spy on the Comanche once they reach the Acoma Pueblo the next day. Once they reach the pueblo, the leader of the Acoma tells them of the ancient charging grounds for the Godwalkers, one being in Chaco Canyon, which they’ve already heard about, and the other being in Bryce Canyon.

Now disguised as Comanche themselves, Zephyr takes a shot at Quanah, which leaves them scrambling to escape the Comanche camp. They attempt to spy on the Comanche with the hopes of perhaps meeting their leader, Quanah, or simply learning more about their forces. They manage to flee, and as they do Harjo the telemancer plants an idea in the Comanches’ minds that it was the Killbillies that have attacked the Comanche, not Sterling and company in a botched trip to uncover information.

They arrive in Madrid the next day and surprise Raylan the flectomancer and Sierra, the pyromancer that Sterling has almost had relations with in the past. A plan is hatched for Sterling to go to Moab to get levels, then for a couple of them to head to Albuquerque to try to find Ram the bounty hunter.

Sterling gets ten levels the next day by farming XP, and reaches a point where he feels he can’t really grow stronger without taking on incredible enemies or figuring out a new way to farm XP. Now leveled up, Sterling, the Sunflower Kid, Zephyr, Harjo, and Roxie as the Godwalker head to Albuquerque. They learn that the Killbillies have infiltrated the southern part of the city and taken territory from the Barelas Glyphs.

Zephyr decides to pay her ex a visit, a woman named Nazarena who happens to be the leader of the Old Town Toros. This leads Sterling and his companions to get ambushed by the Kirtland Airmen, another gang of the city. Upon revisiting Nazarena, they are ambushed by the Killbillies, but the fight turns out to be relatively easy for them.

Sterling and his companions return to Madrid with plans to intercept Ram, whom they’ve learned is on his way to parlay with the Comanche. They move to intercept Ram and the Airmen that have joined him, but in the process, Harjo gets killed by sniper fire.

After talking to Harjo’s spirit through Sterling’s blood magic, they decide to try to have a conversation with Quanah and see if they can’t reach an agreement with the Comanche. The idea would be for the Comanche to ambush the Killbillies in western Albuquerque and seriously put a dent in Commodore Bones’ forces. After a tense standoff, their meeting with Quanah is a success, the new leader of the Comanche not the man Sterling had originally imagined him to be.

To solidify their strategy in Albuquerque, Sterling and the Sunflower Kid then meet with a member of the Alta Monte Homecidos, the fourth gang that runs the former capital of New Mexico. The Homecidos agree to squeeze the Toros in the west, at the same time the Killbillies attack, which will add confusion to the fight. Satisfied, Sterling and the Kid return to Madrid to call it a night.

After some modifications, Roxie is now able to communicate as a Godwalker, which will make things easier going forward. Raylan and Maron have also worked up an idea for Sterling to use his new ability, known as Soul Absorption, to deliver a soul-charged bomb to the underground terminals in Chaco and Bryce Canyons.

Before they get to the Godwalkers, and now in new armor crafted by Raylan, Sterling and his team go after Commodore Bones. They are easily able to kill Magdalena, the telemancer working with Commodore Bones. They take the Killbilly leader hostage. Upon portaling to the western part of Albuquerque, Sterling makes sure that the Commodore sees Comanche bring the heat. The Commodore assures Sterling that he is trading one warlord for the next, but Sterling doesn’t care. Roxie kills the Commodore as Godwalkers appear, Sterling and his team portaling away.

Sterling learns that the Sunflower Kid has known she was his daughter all along, and while he is happy about this, happy for them to both finally know, he senses something is still wrong. The Kid, whose real name is Angel Monedero, confesses to Sterling that she didn’t tell him because the man he once was wouldn’t have accepted her for who she is now. Sterling apologizes for this, and he hopes to learn more about the past through the teenage biomancer, who never lost her memory.

The next day, they test Raylan’s new device, a canister that Sterling is able to charge with soul energy. It creates a massive underground explosion that they plan to use in Chaco and Bryce Canyons, to stop the Godwalkers at their charging point. Before they can do that, they need to visit the canyons so they can portal there quickly. They also need to make sure that Quanah doesn’t think it was them who brought the Godwalkers to Albuquerque. They meet with Quanah again and learn that he doesn’t blame them. The Comanche leader offers to help after revealing to Sterling that a Navajo man he once worked alongside traced his origins to Chaco Canyon, and that Quanah would like to build a Comancherian city there. He also agrees to create a distraction in Chaco Canyon, and let Sterling absorb power from some of his people.

The assault begins the following day, first Chaco Canyon and then Bryce Canyon in Utah. The Chronicler is able to pinpoint the direct location of the Terminal due to documents they uncovered at a gift shop in Chaco Canyon.

The first drop goes as planned, even if Sterling loses power afterward and has to be rescued by Quanah. Upon reaching Bryce Canyon, Zephyr, Paco, and Sierra start the hole and the distraction while Sterling charges the weapon in the sky above. They succeed here as well, but just barely, Sterling saved at the last moment by Roxie, who teleports him away from the blast zone. While it hasn’t been easy, Sterling and his team have managed to destroy three Terminals in the Southwest which have been powering the Godwalkers, a feat that will hopefully lead others to do the same.

A few months later, Sterling is back in Truth or Consequences with a newly built ranch house. His group has disbanded. Maron, Raylan, and Sierra have stayed in Madrid. The Chronicler has gone back to Moab to join the Elder of Icaria, and Paco has returned to his people. Zephyr has gone to work as an advisor for Quanah in Albuquerque, joined by the Sunflower Kid and Roxie. Sterling doesn’t know when or if he’ll see them again.

One day, on his way home, Roxie appears with the Sunflower Kid. After showing his daughter the room he’s built her in his new home, the Sunflower Kid agrees to stay as long as he promises to travel with her. She wants to go to the botanical gardens in Washington, DC, and mentions Sterling wanted to see the Pacific Ocean. He agrees, and also gives her some watermelon seeds, an item she had sought for some time now, which Sterling’s friend Kip was able to find in Las Cruces.

“A poor man’s strength in a strange place is worth more than wealth.”

-A selection from the Eddic poem of Hávamál or The High Song, handwritten in the latter part of the 13th century.

.Chapter One.

Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

Not too distant future.

A nest of crumbled boulders and wind-sculpted stones defined the outer reaches of Chaco Canyon, a location peppered in a light glaze of snow that did little to hide the terraced shale of the region. There were the remains of numerous Godwalkers here, their reflective forms jutting out of the land, breaking up the view of snow-topped mountains in the distance.

According to what Sterling Monedero had read in a brochure at the gift shop, temperatures in the canyon could swell to over 115 degrees in the summer, and plummet to below freezing during winter. It was a tough place to call home, yet Quanah, telemancer leader of the Comanche, was making good on his promise to make it the capital of Comancheria.

Sterling ashed his cigarette, the cowboy necromancer still in awe of the progress that had taken place in the canyon over just a few short months.

He stood beyond the growing settlement, one sculpted by gaiamancers with tech made by a team of regular people overseen by Maron, pieces made from repurposed Godwalkers. There were still trailers along the outer rim of the hybrid pueblo-style buildings, reminiscent of the post-apocalyptic scatter that Sterling had grown used to seeing over the years, but that was changing. It was clear that there would be organization here, streets and good stone housing, a comfortable life for the time being.

This was the future of the post-apocalyptic.

“Ain’t nothing wrong with living in an alien pueblo,” Sterling told the Sunflower Kid, who stood next to him wearing a puffy white jacket that she had plucked from her inventory list. The Kid had a white scarf wrapped around her neck that matched her white hair, which was slicked back behind her ears. In lieu of white pants she wore a pair of lightly camouflaged tights tucked into oversized work boots that looked a size too large.

Sterling had teased her about the clothing already, the Kid only commenting that it was better than wearing all black like the Grim Reaper.

Like Skeleton Man…

From the blistering summers to the varicolored falls, from the bitter winters to short yet hopeful springs, Sterling could be found in pretty much the same thing—black boots, black jeans, a black pearl-snap button up, a black overcoat, and a black cowboy hat. He also wore some of the body armor beneath that Raylan had made for him. He wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone at the time, but it was warm, and they never could be too careful, especially with where they were going.

Just because they had brought down the terminals, and the Godwalkers hadn’t interfered in Sterling’s stomping grounds of New Mexico over the last several months, didn’t mean that there weren’t other enemies. Disgruntled ex-Killbillies, the Angels of Woe out of Utah, good-for-nothings, not to mention what was left of the various gangs of Albuquerque. It wasn’t like Sterling had a target on his head, but he knew that if he ran into the wrong people, his situation could change on a dime.

“I’ll be honest,” he said as he licked his lips and looked at Roxie, whose soul was trapped in the body of a miniature Godwalker. “I don’t see why we need to come all the way out here and look at how well they’re doing, not that I’m jealous or nothing. If we’re going to California, let’s just go. Ain’t no reason to announce our exit like we’re looking for a parade.”

<We promised we would.>

“I know that; I’m just being stubborn for, welp, no damn reason,” Sterling said as the wind twisted around them. Zephyr landed, the Asian aeromancer decked out in leathers and fur. Her hair was braided back and she looked happy, maybe even a pound or two heavier than she had been the last time Sterling had seen her. Perhaps she was finally over her breakup with the tatted up leader of the Old Town Toros.

“You could come into town, you know,” she said.

“Shee-it, I figured if we just stood out here maddoggin’ that eventually one of y’all would come to us. Heh. Turns out I was right, Zee.” Sterling tipped his hat at her. “It is damn good to see you, chica.”

Zephyr exploded forward with a hug, one that tackled Sterling and would have hurt him if they weren’t immediately standing up again, her extreme control over the wind on constant display.

“Watch yourself, dammit!” he said.

Zephyr stepped away from Sterling and gave the Sunflower Kid a lighter hug. She stopped in front of Roxie and knocked her fist against the top of the Godwalker.

<Is that your version of petting me?>

“Sure, let’s call it that.” Zephyr waved them forward. “Let me show you around before you head out. Going west, right?”

“West, and then east,” Sterling said as they started up. “A little sightseeing, you could call it.”

“And how do you plan to go about doing that?”

“We got us a teleporting Godwalker; you damn well know that, Zee.”

“So, you aren’t riding the entire way to California?”

“We’ll be doing plenty of riding. Furthest ol’ Rox can take us is Kayenta, I reckon. Unless we want to head up into Deseret and come on down through the other side toward the Golden State. May need to go through Nevada too if that’s the case. Shee-it, that has me thinking about Vegas. I can’t even imagine what that would be like now. Y’all seen pictures of what it used to look like back then, right?”

“I sure have. All those lights.” Zephyr nodded to one of the adobe buildings, one with smoke puffing out of one end. “Anyone hungry?”

“Had me a little something before I left, a bit of yesterday’s green chili,” Sterling told her.

<What kind of answer is that?>

“I’m just saying that I’ve had food, not that I ain’t hungry. What y’all cooking around here anyway, Zee?”

“Mostly fry bread and stews. Indian tacos. Other stuff. Sorry, no caviar.”

Sterling winked at her. “I wouldn’t even know what caviar tasted like.”

“I would,” the Sunflower Kid said as they turned toward the canteen. “Someone had a can of it in Albuquerque.”

“And it wasn’t expired?” asked Zephyr.

“It was. But we still ate it. We wanted to try it.”

I know how that goes, Sterling thought.

There had been times that he had done pretty stupid things in order to better understand the lives of the before people. Questionable foods and expired drinks, objects that he didn’t quite know how to use, vehicles that he probably shouldn’t have tried to drive—it all went hand-in-hand with being someone like Sterling, someone who had survived the Reset and was curious about the past.

As they had their meal of fry bread and stew, Sterling grew quiet, Zephyr and Roxie doing most of the talking.

This drew stares from some of the Comanche that were eating considering they couldn’t hear Roxie, who only spoke inside the heads of the people she knew. There was certainly suspicion about the miniature Godwalker, but it was clear that Zephyr had some power in Chaco. This made Sterling happy. She deserved it. She had been through a hell of a lot.

The Reset had been cruel to everyone who survived, but had been especially cruel to Zephyr, who had been playing with her child at a playground when it happened. Sterling had only heard her tell the story once—a mother covered in blood and brain residue, her child headless, everyone else at the playground dead around her, limbs twitching—once was plenty.

Thinking about that now, Sterling knew not to let this rile him up. They had dealt the Godwalkers, at least for now. Ain’t no sense in stirring up old ghosts, he thought as a smile came to him. And if you want to stir up old ghosts, you can always talk to Gasper.

“What are you grinning about?” Zephyr asked. “Is the food that good?”

Sterling looked down at the black bean stew in front of them. He sniffed it, took a bite, and slowly shook his head. “I need more peppers. Luckily, I got a solution for that. Y’all ready to take a trip to Scoville or what?”

“I’ll have some peppers,” the Sunflower Kid said.

“I knew you would. Zee?”

“I’ll pass.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Sterling told Zephyr as he summoned one of his jalamundo peppers. He wiped his knife with a cloth napkin and cut it up with plans to distribute half to the Sunflower Kid. “Where’s old Quanah, anyway? I figured he would be here. Well, not at this pequeña cantina y’all got going, but somewhere in Chaco. He here?”

“He’s in Albuquerque.”

The Sunflower Kid produced a watermelon that she had stored in her inventory list, drawing more looks from the people that had gathered in the canteen to eat. She cut into it with a spare knife and distributed the slices as Sterling and Zephyr continued.

“—And has there been any more talk about making some kind of treaty with the Serpents of Paradise? The Oracle, and hell, Dusty, will be glad to see that we’re moving forward on that,” Sterling said, referring to the man that most of them called the Chronicler.

“Quanah hasn’t made a decision yet. His focus right now is on clamping down on what’s left of the gangs in Albuquerque and building Chaco. I wonder if it’s unique in our world.”

“What do you mean?”

“This city,” Zephyr told Sterling. “I wonder if anyone else has attempted to build something new like this.”

“Like Chaco here?” He considered this for a moment as he stirred the peppers into his stew. Sterling tore off a piece of fried bread and ate it. “Saltair has similarities, but that structure was already there. Well, I guess you could say this structure was already there considering Chaco Canyon was inhabited a thousand years ago by the Anasazi. That’s how we always do it, right on top of one another. Anyway, I’ll have plenty of time to think about these things on our journey out West. You can come, you know.”

“With y’all to California?”

“You’re always welcome, Zee.”

“Do I have to hear you ramble on about the past for the entire trip?”

Sterling laughed. “Probably.”

“I think I’ll sit this one out then. But maybe when you go east. That’s where my family was from, you know. The East Coast.”

“Whereabouts?” Sterling asked as he used the fry bread to scoop some soup into his mouth.

“Baltimore, Maryland. When it happened, I had my ID on me, so I was able to check things at my home. I still have some of the papers and my inventory list. College transcripts, that sort of thing. There are addresses on there.”

“Baltimore, huh? Ain’t that near the Capitol?”

The Sunflower Kid nodded. “It’s in the same area.”

“Well, that is sort of where we are planning to go,” Sterling told Zephyr. “Them Botanical Gardens there in the District of Columbia.”

“You can just call it D.C.,” the Sunflower Kid told him.

“I know, but it sounds cooler to spell it out, and since we are the survivors here, we should be the ones that are able to name things. Like Deseret. Anyway, Zee, that’s where we’ll be after we hit up California. And you’re more than welcome to come.”

“What about the others, Raylan and Sierra?” asked the aeromancer.

“Maybe when we come back through, we’ll stop in Madrid and have ourselves a little fiesta. Maron is with them, ain’t he?”

“Off and on, yes.”

“Good to know.” Sterling ate more of the fry bread. “All of this is good to know. Anyhow, we’ll finish up here, get ourselves a little tour, and then head on out to Arizona. We’re going to have to rough it from that point forward, and I want to get as far as we can while it’s still daytime. Amalgamations, bandits, hell, just about anything can come out at night.”

Zephyr smirked at the cowboy necromancer. “I’m sure if they do, the two of you will be well equipped to handle them.”

“We shall see, amiga. We shall see.”

.Chapter Two.

Things never stayed the same in the post-apocalyptic Southwest.

The change was generally sudden, a building gone, bodies out front with evidence of mancers, perhaps a message either scrawled across a surface in dried blood or inherent in the scene itself.

Scorched earth tactics.

Things like the stones rearranged by a gaiamancer as if to replicate a statue; signs of a biomancer; huge burn spots; fissures telling a story about a cryomancer—the clues were there for anyone that poked around, but most didn’t have the same power as Sterling, the cowboy necromancer able to communicate with the deceased through his Death Whisper power.

“Shee-it,” he mumbled as he took in the scene of what was once Kayenta, Arizona.

Sterling recalled the settlement that had grown up around a grocery store, one overseen by a mancer sheriff. All of that was gone now. The entire town was leveled, defined by craters that had stopped smoldering what could have been months ago. Had the Comanche gotten here before Sterling and his group had had a chance to befriend them? Was it someone else?

<I didn’t expect this.>

“Ain’t no one expected this, Rox.” Sterling started to remove his cowboy hat so he could run his hand through his long hair. He stopped himself just in time. If this was some kind of trap, and it involved a telemancer, he would be in trouble if he removed his only protection. Then again, they had Roxie with them, and the telemancer’s powers wouldn’t work on the miniature Godwalker.

The Sunflower Kid spoke: “What do we do now?”

Sterling turned to the teenager, who had both her hands stuffed in the front of her puffy white jacket. The look on her face was indiscernible, as it often was.

“Welp, I know we got places to go and people to see, but you know how I am about things like this. If there’s vengeance that needs managing, we’re the people to do it.”

<You love sticking your head into other people’s business, don’t you?>

“Now, I wouldn’t say that,” Sterling told Roxie. “I’m just not one for gross injustices, and this one’s gross. These people here, they were just like any of us, trying to survive. They already had the damn Comanche breathing down their necks. Now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t have said something to Quanah one of them earlier times when we first met, maybe suggested he leave these here people alone.”

The Sunflower Kid turned to a dislodged hunk of curb. A vine began to grow beneath the piece. It lifted it into her hands so she could examine it. “There are burn marks.”

“A pyromancer can certainly do this, but this looks more like explosions.”

“It could have been Godwalkers.”

“You ain’t wrong.” Sterling took a cigarette he had already rolled from his front pocket. He lit it, the blue smoke curling in the air as he smoked. “And we don’t know if the ‘Walkers are officially gone or not. Just because we took down their charging stations, don’t mean shit in the scheme of things. But this right here, I owe it to the good people that took us in that night to make sure whoever did this pays. And hell, maybe we’ll get lucky, maybe wherever they headed next will be on our way. Highway is right there.” Sterling pointed his cigarette at the road that led out of Kayenta. “Could be a ‘two birds with one stone’ sort of situation. Only one way to find out.”

<Are we going to do this all the way to California?>

“Do what?”

<Get into shit that we shouldn’t be getting into.>

“Looks like we got ourselves a Godwalker with a potty mouth.” Sterling laughed as Roxie’s front surface shifted open, like she was going to shoot him. “Whoa there, little lady. Ain’t no reason to get all riled up. I’m just a naturally curious fellow. And as long as y’all don’t mind, I think it’s best if we help out along the way if we can. Let’s see if we can find out. Kid, sniff around a little, see if you can’t find something. I don’t expect there to be no blood, but there may be bone, something I can use to figure out what happened here.”

Damn shame, Sterling thought as he continued toward the grocery store where they had once spent the night.

He thought about using his Death Sense power and went ahead and conjured it, which gave him a thirty-foot radius to find bodies. There was something nearby, toward the back end of the grocery store.

A vulture overhead caught his attention.

Sterling paused to watch the bird circle for a moment. Was there still something to eat? Or was it eyeing a fresh target? Sterling had the notion to draw his mana-powered revolver and shoot at the buzzard, but if there was anyone around, this would draw attention.

He stepped over charred building materials, blackened brick, melted plastic from the sign that once hung over the entrance of the grocery store.

Even if it was a shell of its former self, memories came to Sterling as he sifted through the rubble. It was here in Kayenta that he had lost Roxie. It was also here that he had first met Harjo, the Comanche telemancer who had gone on to help them until he was killed by sniper fire.

Sterling still felt guilt for that; after all, it had been his idea to try to find the bounty hunter named Ram, even if it was in the direction they were heading anyway. Ram was now dead. Same with Commodore Bones, and the Godwalkers themselves. For all Sterling knew, he had pretty much run out of enemies. Not that he was complaining.

That was one of the things that was supposed to make the trips that they were planning easier. As far as he could tell, they wouldn’t be chased, the revenge that boiled his blood for so long quelled.

“Anything?” he called to the Sunflower Kid, who used her plants constructs to move large slabs of concrete.

She shook her head. Sterling was just turning in Roxie’s direction when he noticed the severed arm he had picked up on already with his power. The flesh had all been eaten away, but there was clearly bone, which would give them a glimpse of what had happened.

“Let’s see here,” Sterling said as he crouched before the bone.

He placed his hand on it and was nearly tossed backward by the images that poured into his mind’s eye. What he saw wasn’t a Godwalker. It was something else, something that floated like the alien monoliths yet resembled a cross, some sort of advanced alien technology. The Kayenta people had called it the Inquisitor.

<What did you see?>

Sterling massaged his temples for a moment with his hand. He turned to Roxie, who was next to him now, the cowboy necromancer met with his own reflection. “Ain’t never seen…”

There was a sudden electricity in the air; Sterling looked right to see the Sunflower Kid’s hair lift from her head. He drew his revolver, ready for anything, ready for the damn sky to open up if that was what was about to happen.

He got behind the nearest object, which just so happened to be an overturned butcher’s table, one that had been seared in half. Sterling gritted his teeth, expecting anything at that moment.

Something on the periphery caught his attention.

The floating cross, which was made of the same metal as the Godwalkers, had materialized out of thin air. About the height of a single-story home, the alien cross had tapered ends, and markings across its surface that glowed bright green. Roxie’s next attack, a blazing laser from her inner cannon, did little to faze the strange entity.

This was what the locals had called the Inquisitor.

As she prepared to fire at it again, Roxie was flung to the side, her rectangular form leaving a small crater in the side wall.

Sterling raised his revolver.

Bang! Bang!

He couldn’t land the third shot, Sterling tractor-beamed into the air, alongside the Sunflower Kid, who was trying desperately to bring the alien craft down with a series of spiked vines.

Sterling opened his mouth to shout, either a curse word or a last goodbye to the Sunflower Kid, yet was unable to do so as everything flashed all around him.

He fell to the ground, the Kid next to him.

The alien craft was gone.

Sterling crawled over to her and lifted his daughter into his arms, her face smudged, her white hair a mess. “Kid,” he started to say. “Angel!”

She blinked her eyes open and gasped.

The Sunflower Kid screamed in Sterling’s face. For a moment, he thought she was yelling because she had been injured, but then he saw her sticking her hands out as if she were trying to use her power.

“My powers,” she said, her breath short and staccato, eyes twitching.

“Your powers?” Sterling looked down at his own hand. As he did, Roxie righted herself and quickly met them.

<What was that!?>

“An Inquisitor. That’s what they called it around here. Some new kind of Godwalker—”

“My powers.” More panic came to the Sunflower Kid’s face, her eyes with that glazed over look as if she were scrolling through her stat sheet. “Check your powers!”

Sterling tried to summon the bottle of Don Gasper’s blood. It appeared in his hand, as it always did. “Inventory list works.”

He then summoned his Death Sense power, the one that he just used. Normally, when using it, there was a hazy understanding of his surroundings and the location of a dead body. Now, there was nothing.

Placing his hand on stone, Sterling tried to draw mold to it. This also didn’t work.

He reached his hand out to the Sunflower Kid, going for his Soul Absorption power.

Nothing.

Sterling brought up his stat sheet and shook his head, a single word able to escape his lips. “Shee-it…” he mumbled as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

.Chapter Three.

Sterling’s stats were still there, but there had clearly been some changes, ones he didn’t expect.

Class Ranking: Death Artist

Level: 90

Fortitude: 142

Strength: 117

Resolve: 229

Mana: 215/215

Current Armor Rating: 50

XP: -

XP to Next Level: -

Stat Points Available: -

Technique Points Available: -

Everything below his current armor rating, which was enhanced by the piece Raylan had made, was gone. In shifting his focus to his Necromancer Class Skills, he saw that he only had one available now.

“Nope, this ain’t good,” he mumbled to himself as he scanned through the skills yet again. “Ain’t good at all.”

Necromancer Class Skills

Death Whisper: Class Proficiency Level 4

Casting Cost: 6 Mana Points

Description: Can communicate with the deceased; blood needed to do so.

——

Resurrection: Null

Casting Cost: Null

Description: Can summon at will, but doing so takes a cut of MP until the animate is relinquished.

——

Enhanced Durability: Null

Grafting casting cost: Null

Description: Enhanced durability and grafting.

——

Death Sense: Null

Description: Able to sense the bodies of the dead around you. Higher levels allow for wider ranges, including remote animating.

——

Mold Manipulation: Null

Casting Cost: Null

Able to manipulate and conjure mold. Higher levels allow for stronger and further reaching creations.

——

Osteomancy: Null

Casting Cost: Null

Description: Able to get an exploratory vision when coming into contact with bones.

——

Soul Absorption: Null

Casting Cost: Null

Description: Temporarily absorbs the soul energy of living things.

He only had one ability now. While it was a good one to investigate a crime scene or connecting with old friends, his Death Whisper power could only be so useful. From his Necromancer Class Skills, Sterling examined his Techniques.

Combat:

Sword Expert Level 8 - 56 Technique Points to Level 9

Marksmanship Level 9 - 73 Technique Points to Level 10

Melee Expert Level 5 - 34 Technique Points to Level 6

Stealth:

Sneak Proficiency Level 4 - 26 Technique Points to Level 5

Assassination Level 3 - 17 Technique Points to Level 4

Cover of Night Level 3 - 12 Technique Points to Level 4

Disguise Level 1 - 4 Technique Points to Level 2

Perception:

Persuasion Level 7 - 52 Technique Points to Level 8

Awareness Level 8 - 59 Technique Points to Level 9

Nothing had changed here, which was a good thing.

A wry grin stretched across his grizzled, unshaven face. Sterling’s lack of reliance on his actual blood magic powers could prove to be to his advantage. Other mancers, even his own flesh and blood like the Sunflower Kid, relied heavily on these mana-based skills. It was no wonder she was freaking out.

“Let’s…” Sterling turned to her, his arms naturally opening to his daughter. Surprising him, the Sunflower Kid came forward and hugged him, burying her head in his chest.

“I only have one power left,” she said, her voice hoarse as if she had been sobbing. “What’s happened?”

“Same here, and don’t get yourself too worked up.” His eyes dropped to the jug of Don Gasper’s blood, which he had summoned just a few moments back.

He didn’t know why, but it made sense.

If anyone knew what to do, if anyone could make sense of what had just happened to them, it was going to be the shaman. Was this a logical thought? No. Yet Sterling was convinced this was the case, and he was the kind of man that went with his gut.

Maybe you done lost your mind…

“What about the others?” she asked.

“The others? What do you mean?”

“Zephyr, Paco…”

“Them? Well for one, they ain’t here,” he told the Kid as he patted her on the back. “I don’t imagine that the Inquisitor Godwalker paid them a visit, but what do I know? We can start with Chaco, teleport there and find out. Rox?”

<It’s not working.>

“What’s not working?”

<My ability to teleport.>

The front half of the Godwalker shifted as she produced her laser cannon.

<That part works.>

Sterling let go of the Sunflower Kid and turned to the east. He removed his hat and ran his hand through his long black hair. “Powers stripped, including Roxie’s here. Not good, real bad, actually. We are a long way from home, and without teleporting, well, I guess you and me are going to be doing some riding,” he told the Kid as he summoned Manchester’s bones. Sterling raised his hand over them. The bones remained in a pile on the ground. “Dios mío…”

“This is the only power I have now.” To illustrate what she meant, the Sunflower Kid took a step back. Watermelon appeared, the white buffalo as large and as vibrant as ever. For a moment, Sterling thought that the gigantic creature was going to charge at them, but the buffalo merely stood there as the Sunflower Kid approached Watermelon and placed her hand on its snout.

“I mean, if we’re being honest, that’s better than what I have,” Sterling told her. “All we’re going to be able do with my power is shoot the shit with Don Gasper, not that he ain’t good to talk to. I suppose we could talk to Harjo too. Let me check something else.”

Sterling drew his revolver and fired a shot at an overturned trash can.

Bang!

Sterling then checked his mana to see that it had gone down by a single point.

“Welp, at least that part works. I guess I can cut myself to see if the healing works, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t.” He sent the revolver back into his holster. Just to be sure, Sterling summoned his sickle sword, flourished it once, and noticed that it had the turquoise rim of energy along its blade as always. “Looks like I can shoot and stab.”

Sterling brought the blade across his palm and drew a small cut. He watched as the blood dripped for a moment. Soon, the wound stitched itself back up. “Yup. We can heal,” he said as he sent his sickle sword away. “Or at least I can. I’m assuming you can as well. So we can shoot, and we can heal. That’s more than most folks got, at least before the Reset.”

“I don’t have a weapon.”

“We’ll figure something out. You said you had control over biological things. Why can’t you grow your plants? Your vines and fruit and whatnot.”

The Kid puffed her cheeks out, clearly distraught. “It’s a different aspect of my mana skillset.”

“Yeah, I figured that was the case.” he looked down at the ground, feeling sorry for her. “I need to smoke me a cigarette and think about how much I wasted my powers before I didn’t have them. Then, we will talk to Don Gasper, see if he has any advice. After that? We head back to New Mexico and lick our wounds, or we continue on to California and see if we can’t get this here problem fixed along the way. My gut says that we can, and that we should. And it’s not like we have anything else on our to-do list. So cheer up.”

“We keep going?”

“If you want.”

The Sunflower Kid shrugged. “Let’s keep going.”

<I agree.>

Sterling winked at Roxie. “I was hoping the two of you would say that. You want a shot of tequila or something?” he asked his daughter. “Kip gave me a couple bottles before we left Truth or Consequences. Pretty sure he stole them from some ratched woman he’s been sleeping with. But, hey. Tequila is tequila.”

“Normally, no, but I think…” The Sunflower Kid blew a strand of hair out of her face. “Just one shot.”

“Yup,” he mumbled as he summoned his bottle of tequila. “Just one is all it takes. We’ll get this here figured out, don’t you worry. You know, we shouldn’t be drinking here.”

“Why’s that?”

“Before the Reset, it was illegal for alcohol to be served in the Navajo Nation. Dusty told me that at some point.” Sterling jiggled the bottle of tequila and shrugged. “I guess there ain’t no one here to write us a ticket. Might as well break the law.”

Sterling knew better than to stick around Kayenta. The Inquisitor Godwalker had leveled the place, and there was nothing left to really pick through. With the ridges and mountains that surrounded the former Navajo city, it was totally possible for someone to spy on them. It was best that they moved on.

Sterling now rode the white buffalo known as Watermelon, Roxie following at the side. The Sunflower Kid, who had taken more than one shot of tequila, was mounted behind him, her arms around his waist, head sideways against his back. It wasn’t easy riding a buffalo, the muscled beast hard to manage, a bit smelly compared to Manchester. But he made it work. To give him better control, Sterling had used rope from his inventory list to create the semblance of reins.

“We’ll just have to see what Don Gasper has to say,” Sterling mumbled as they continued along the median of a highway heading toward the southwest.

Everything around them was barren, skeletal shrubs visible across parched hills. Sterling got that feeling yet again that he was traveling across some alien moonscape, a land of leathery lizards and tumbling tumbleweeds. Seeing the vast expanse of nothing on both sides of the cracked road and the occasional burned-out vehicle stirred something within the cowboy necromancer.

He wanted to write some poetry, specifically, a desert haiku.

Had he been traveling alone, Sterling may have stopped, rolled a cigarette, and sat there and smoked for a while as he thought of what he wanted to say, his truth, evidence of a life lived. But he had a mission now, to find somewhere to talk to Don Gasper and make sure that the Sunflower Kid didn’t fall off their mount.

“Could be worse,” he said as he saw a sign hanging from one of its hinges, one filled with bullet holes, yet with the text still legible. Wagon Wheel Rest Area.

“Good as any.”

<You think?>

“Where else we got to go, Rox? Less you want me to call Ol’ Gasper from the roadside.”

<Carry on, I suppose.>

The rest stop had two restroom facilities, one with the roof caved in. There was a covered picnic bench where some of the wooden planks had been stripped from the metal hardware for firewood, and all the vending machines had been looted long ago.

As Sterling drew closer to the rest stop, he pulled on the reins, which did little to stop Watermelon from advancing. “Easy, big fella,” he said as he tapped the buffalo on the side of the neck. Watermelon came to a stop, and once Sterling helped the Sunflower Kid off, he approached the restrooms. “It’ll only be a second,” he said as he drew his revolver. “Rox, keep an eye on the Kid.”

<Shouldn’t I be the one looking around?>

“Yeah, maybe you should,” he told the miniature Godwalker. “But I’m already halfway there. Y’all just sit tight.”

The women’s restroom facility had a caved-in roof that made it no longer accessible. With all the mysterious stains across the walls, the men’s side looked like it would stink, but it didn’t. People didn’t use it as a restroom anymore and there wasn’t really any reason for an animal to go inside unless they were trying to find a place to nest. This was what Sterling expected as he stepped through the doorway, his weapon at the ready. He expected to see some bad graffiti, maybe something phallic, or some critter laying claim to the territory.

What he found instead was a nest of enormous eggs, yellow in color. He’d seen these kinds of eggs before.

Sterling quickly left the restroom facility and approached the Sunflower Kid. “We got ourselves a problem.”

Roxie turned to the restroom and shifted forward, as if she were scanning the place. <Amalgamations.>

“You bet your ass, Rox.”

“What do you mean?” asked the Sunflower Kid.

Sterling equipped a bottle of tequila that they had started on earlier. He also summoned a rag that he carried with him. After shaking his head in shame at what he was about to do, he took a long drag from the tequila bottle. “That there is a nest; we’re going to need to burn it and then skedaddle.”

“A nest of what?”

“Snake amalgamations. Seen them eggs before outside of T or C, on the way to Hatch in a runoff ditch. I don’t know where mama is, and I don’t want to find out. We burn it, and then we get back to the road.”

<I could destroy it.>

“Yeah, you could, but that may draw attention, and I want you to save that laser for whatever comes at us next. We don’t know what your power levels are going to be like now that everything has been tweaked, Rox. And I’m not saying you won’t be able to level a MacDonalds. I’m just saying it’s best to stay safe. Now, get on Watermelon,” he told the Sunflower Kid, “and I’ll start us a little bonfire before we go.”

Sterling tossed the Molotov cocktail he had fashioned into the nest of amalgamation eggs.

Whoosh!

Fire had kicked up by the time he reached the Sunflower Kid, a great plume rising into the air. “You steering? Or do you want me in front?”

“You can,” she said as she shifted back. Sterling mounted up, and once they were ready he guided the white buffalo toward the road. “Good, Watermelon, good.”

<That fire will certainly draw attention.>

“Always with the negativity, huh?”

<I’m just saying.>

“You ain’t wrong, and I’d be hauling ass if it wasn’t for ol’ Watermelon here.” Sterling patted the buffalo’s neck. “Yeah, I’m talking about you, and no, it ain’t nice, but I still appreciate the ride. Damn, I sure do wish… ah, nevermind. Wishing ain’t worth shit these days. We will just head on down the road a few miles and find some place to pull off. Talk to Don Gasper there.”

<Just like that, huh?>

“Just like that,” Sterling said as he suppressed the urge to smoke a cigarette.

Once they were several miles away, Sterling guided Watermelon off the highway toward a ridgeline, one with fallen telephone poles near it. A small mesa nearby would give them a little protection from the highway just in case someone decided to go for a joy ride.

“We’ll just get comfortable, and then the show begins,” he told the Sunflower Kid as he got off the buffalo. He offered his hand to her, and she took it. “He’ll probably want me to blow some smoke in his face. I ain’t trying to get high though.”

Roxie floated near Sterling and the Sunflower Kid, her monolithic form slightly tilted.

<How would he know?>

“He’ll know. But you know what? We don’t got time for marijuana at the moment. We need to figure out what the hell happened back there in Kayenta. And if we can’t figure it out, we at least need some options. My gut tells me that Gasper has an option or two. He always does. Funny that. If you think about it, even from the dead, the pinche peyotero loco is still affecting this here journey of ours. But I suppose that’s just the way things go when you invite shamanic influences into your life. Maybe the lesson there is to never invite a shaman into your life.”

After Sterling had rolled up a few cigarettes, he got down on his knees in front of the bottle of Don Gasper’s blood. The Sunflower Kid sat next to him, her legs crossed under her body, Roxie hovering nearby.

“All right, let’s see what the old son-of-a-bitch has to say.” Sterling curled his finger, and as he did, blood rose to the top of the bottle. It pressed its way out of the opening and formed into Don Gasper’s visage, the form glossy and otherworldly.

“Look what the coyote coughed up,” Gasper said with a grin that caused blood to drip from his top to his bottom lip. “Do they cough up hairballs like a gato? Never seen a coyote that had been domesticated.”

“Nice to see you too, Gasper. How goes it?”

“How goes it? Estoy vivo y pateando. Heh! What about you? Melancholy in your voice, no? I can sense it.”

“I ain’t got much melancholy at the moment, but others around me may, and for good reason. Gasper, we got ourselves a little issue here.”

“I’ll tell you something, amigo, any issue you have in that world is nothing like the issue we have here. Nothing. So dark. And everyone is so desperate. If we all just stayed together, our natural light would push us all toward a new dawn. But we’re slaves to the darkness, striving to be something that we can never be anymore. It’s terrible. But there’s nothing I can do about it now. What happened? What little issue do you have?”

“We were on our way to California, like I told you.”

“A vision quest.”

“Nope, nothing like that and you know it,” Sterling said as he lit a cigarette.

“For me?”

“Sure.” He blew a cloud of smoke in Don Gasper’s face and waited to see if he could tell the difference.

“You would smoke for me? I’m flattered.”

“The least I could do,” Sterling assured him. “Now, here’s the thing. We were heading west, and we started off in Kayenta.”

“Where? That sounds familiar.”

“Arizona, Navajo Nation. We found the place bombed out; whole dang town done for. I tried to figure out what was going on there, and a new kind of Godwalker attacked us.”

“Que horrible. A new kind?”

“Locals were calling it an Inquisitor Godwalker. Shaped like a big ol’ cross. I thought it was going to attack us. It attacked the town, but it didn’t do nothing to us. Except for—”

“It took our powers,” the Sunflower Kid said. “Almost all of them.”

“Que? A Godwalker took your powers?” Don Gasper smacked his lips together. Before his form could fade, Sterling strengthened it. “They probably aren’t happy with what you did to the terminal. But you had no other choice. Ojo por ojo y diente por diente, like it says in the Bible. They came at you, you retaliated. Now, they want to watch you suffer. It would be easy to simply kill you, send you over to this side. No, they want something else. No, no, amigo. They want you to know how much they can control your life.”

<Tell him my powers were taken as well.>

“Rox had her powers stripped too,” Sterling told the shaman.

“Eh, I see. She is no different than the others, even if you have a new shell. But I have a solution. Well, at least it is a way forward.”

“We’re all ears by this point,” Sterling said as he took a drag off the cigarette. He ashed it.

“You know how we shaman are. We’re everyone’s best friend until we are everyone’s worst enemy. We all know each other as well. What I’m saying here, vaquero nigromante, is that we get around. As lovers and otherwise. You’re in Arizona, no? I know someone in Flagstaff named Lisa. You find her, and she’ll help you with your powers.”

“Just like that?” asked Sterling.

“Sí, just like that. Tell her Don Gasper recommended her services. But don’t tell her you can talk to me. It’s okay to tell her I’m dead, but don’t summon me or nothing.”

“Why not?” asked the Sunflower Kid.

“Heh. It’s a long story. But she’ll help you if you tell her I sent you. Lisa is her name.”

Sterling glanced between Roxie and the Sunflower Kid and shrugged. “A shaman in Flagstaff named Lisa that you apparently pissed off at some point, huh?”

Gasper laughed. “Más o menos…”

“I guess it’s worth a shot, Gasper. I hope you’re right.”

The bloody apparition laughed. “I hope I’m right too. My reputation is on the line, no?”

.Chapter Four.

All of it was curious, and maybe even a little insane. How the hell is a random shaman out of Flagstaff supposed to help us get our powers back? Sterling thought as they continued in a southwesterly direction on US-163. He’d seen yet another fully intact highway sign along their ride, which meant one of two things. Either people were more respectful of signs here, or there just weren’t any people out here.

The second part of that made sense to Sterling.

Navajo Nation had always been a hard place to live. Maybe this was one reason the Navajo and other tribes, such as the Hopi, had been moved to this location. At least on the surface, to the people shifting them around in the 1800s, it didn’t seem like there was anything out here. Looking across the landscape, one of mystical mesas and horizontal strata, miles upon miles of broken badlands and crumbled sandstone, it was probably hard for many to see the appeal of the place.

But it looked just fine to Sterling.

Even if he didn’t remember his past, Sterling felt as if this particular landscape had birthed him. It ran deep in his veins, a desire for epic spaces and desert solitude. But all of that was going to change soon. He didn’t know exactly what they would encounter in California, but if they made it all the way to Washington, D. C., things were certainly going to be different.

The biggest city Sterling had been to since the Reset was Albuquerque. He could only imagine what it was going to look like on the west coast, not to mention the east.

“What do you reckon?” he asked the Sunflower Kid about an hour after they had left the torched-out rest area.

She was behind him again, her arms around his waist, her voice soft. “What do you mean?”

“What do you reckon we will find in Flagstaff?”

“I couldn’t tell you. But it’s a good thing that I have a map of Arizona.”

Roxie chimed in:

<We got it from Raylan.>

“Heh. And here I was hoping we’d find a local that could point us in the right direction. Kidding. I’ve got maps too, you know, from Kip. That crusty old son-of-a-bitch is practically my guardian angel,” Sterling told the Godwalker.

<The horror.>

They had already consulted the Kid’s map, which was why they were heading down US-163. According to Sterling’s calculations, using his finger as a measuring tool, they were over one hundred miles away from Flagstaff. If he had Manchester, he was fairly certain they would be able to reach the city that night, but the buffalo didn’t move as quickly, so they would likely arrive sometime tomorrow.

With the sun just at the point that it was deciding it was time to visit the other side of the world, this meant Sterling and his small group would need to make camp somewhere for the night. And the best place to do that was off the highway.

As they continued onward, Sterling kept looking for signs of civilization, indications that there might be a safer place for them to rest their heads. That didn’t seem to be the case. They really were in the middle of nowhere, Sterling getting that same feeling he’d felt at the salt flats in Deseret.

Once again, he tried to make conversation with the Sunflower Kid. “This was your idea, you know,” he teased her.

“What was?”

He smiled; she had taken the bait. “It was your idea to leave Truth or Consequences, you and Rox here. We could have been enjoying our brand-new house, getting ready to plant some peppers.”

“With the powers I used to have, we wouldn’t have needed to plant them.”

Sterling shrugged this comment off. “That wouldn’t have stopped me, you damn well know that. I can see it now, the start of a nice little pepper business, the scovilles popping come summer. Sometimes, I would get a little too rowdy in town and you’d have to come get me. Maybe send Roxie over. Just have Kip toss my ass over the top and have her float me back to the homestead.”

<Please.>

“Real good time. If we got bored, we could go down to Las Cruces, and if we got real bored, we could do a little exploring close to the border. I haven’t been down there to Mexico. Could be interesting.”

“You want to add Mexico to our trip?”

Sterling laughed at the suggestion. “At the moment, our focus should be Flagstaff. In all seriousness, I’m concerned about you. I want you to have your powers back. But for selfish reasons. I could really use me a nice juicy watermelon at this point, maybe some strawberries.” Sterling licked his lips. He was just talking to talk, yet mentioning the fruit had him wanting something sweet.

“I still have a few things in my inventory list. Actually, I have a lot of things. I’ve been storing fruit and vegetables for some time.”

“In that case, we’ll have ourselves a feast later tonight. Maybe get a little campfire going. If we can find some chocolate, some marshmallows, and some graham crackers—”

<You’ve never had a s’more.>

“You don’t know that,” Sterling told Roxie as he scanned the flat-top hills in the distance, looking for a good place to call it a night. Along the way he had already seen some of the abandoned cliff dwellings left by the Anasazi and other ancient groups. If he found something like that, it would make a nice place to stay for the night and it would be warm. “Maybe we start heading off the highway, rough it a little.”

“You’re the one steering,” the Sunflower Kid reminded him.

“In that case…” Sterling led Watermelon toward the side of the road. After they had trampled through a runoff ditch, they came to a flat enough stretch of land that led toward a cluster of hills. “We’ll find ourselves a little nook and call it a night. It’s been a day, that’s for damn sure.”

Sterling and the Sunflower Kid found a place to settle in. He started a fire using some dry pieces of wood from an old telephone pole and dried newspaper from his list for kindling. As the Kid sat before the fire, Sterling equipped a cast iron pan and a can of beans from the supplies he had gathered up back in T or C. He got the beans sizzling and added some pepper, some slices of steak as well.

That was the nice thing about his inventory list—it kept things fresh. He even had a couple six packs of local T or C beer in the list. He cracked one of the beers open, glad to find that it was still cold. Sterling alternated between sipping from the bottle and stirring the beans and peppers.

“It’s going to be alright,” he assured his daughter. “Just think of this as an opportunity.”

“An opportunity?”

<Are you still thinking about your powers?>

“Maybe we were too reliant on our powers before,” Sterling told the two of them. “Well, maybe you more than me, Kid, but that’s just me talking out of my ass over here. What I’m trying to say is that we still got some abilities, not to mention our skills. They should be enough until we can figure out what the hell happened to our abilities. That damn Godwalker. No offense, Rox.”

<I should shoot you.>

“You keep threatening to,” he said as he tipped the neck of his beer bottle to her. He also got a glimpse of himself, black cowboy hat over his head, his tan cheeks visible under a beard that was getting thicker than it should, eyes with a glow to them.

“It’s not going to be easy for us.”

“No one said it would be easy. Hell, no one said any of this would be easy. But we have each other, and I know that somewhere up there.” He pointed at the smattering of stars in the sky. “Isabelle is watching over us. I can feel it. Speaking of which. Tell me more about her, tell me about my wife,” he told the Kid.

“She was soft spoken, I remember that. Even when you got angry, she always forgave you. Mom was very forgiving. She liked to go to church. She went on Wednesdays and Sundays. Sometimes she forced me to go. She liked fresh flowers, especially sunflowers.”

“Did I go to church?”

“You only went on important occasions. But it wasn’t because you didn’t enjoy going. You were always busy. There were always jobs to do, and you seem to pick up extra work quite often.”

“Doing construction.”

The Kid continued: “You worked for several contractors and you were starting a little side business yourself. I remember you showing me the business cards you wanted.”

“I had business cards?”

“No, you had only designed them online.”

Sterling stirred the beans. Smoke coiled in the air, the meat just about done. He equipped two plastic bowls and filled them up. “I can’t even imagine myself using a computer. I ain’t going to lie there. I’ve played around with keyboards I’ve found since. They make good target practice. Explode real nice.”

“You never were great with computers. But Mom was. I was as well.”

“I bet the two of y’all were.”

<I wish I could remember what my life was like then.>

“You don’t have anything?” the Sunflower Kid asked Roxie. “No idea?”

<Nothing.>

Sterling and the Kid both waited for Roxie to elaborate. She never did.

Soon, they were enjoying a plate of beans, peppers, and cubed bits of steak. It was a good meal. Once they finished, Sterling got out the wool blankets and pillows. He prepared a bed for the Sunflower Kid even though he didn’t have to. She didn’t seem to mind him doing this.

After his own bed was prepared, Sterling lay on his back, his cowboy hat now on his chest. His sickle sword was in his inventory list, but he kept his revolver near, just in case. He was on the verge of sleep when Roxie suddenly woke both of them.

<We have to move!>

Sterling heard the noises coming their direction, the sound akin to a fault line taking shape. He rolled awake, and was just placing his hand on his head when he spotted something in the darkness.

It was a snake amalgamation, and it was heading their way.

“Kid!”

Bang! Bang!

Sterling started firing indiscriminately as he tried to protect his daughter.

The Sunflower Kid awoke with a gasp and immediately got behind him.

“Can’t you control it!?” he shouted to her as she sent the bedding to her list.

“It’s too large!” she said as she summoned Watermelon. For a moment, Roxie was nowhere to be seen, but then he caught sight of her on the other side of the snake, preparing to fire at the amalgamation.

Nothing happened, but she did manage to distract it for a moment, allowing Sterling and the Kid to mount up.

<My laser cannon isn’t working either!>

“Goddammit!” Sterling shouted as they took off, the Sunflower Kid steering so he could shoot at the amalgamation. Watermelon was fast, but it wasn’t as fast as the snake amalgamation, which tore after them, striking the hardtop all around it with its bone skull.

Sterling continued to fire at the serpent amalgamation until they reached a natural ridgeline, which caused the buffalo to buckle forward. While correcting himself, he saw a flash of light west of their current location.

“Did you see that?” he yelled to the Kid.

“I saw it!”

“Let’s head that way!” Sterling told the Kid as he continued to shoot at the amalgamation, his magical bullets pinging off the snake’s bony skull.

Bang! Bang!

It was a miracle that the amalgamation didn’t get them on its next strike. The creature came so close that Sterling was certain they were doomed. Yet Watermelon continued to charge ahead with his full might, kicking up dust as the buffalo veered toward the light, which seemed to be leading them into a slot canyon.

It was only when they got closer that Sterling noticed some kind of contraption on the opposite side of the slot canyon they were heading into. They crossed the threshold. Enormous spikes made of metal and shaped like logs dropped from either side.

The spikes speared the amalgamation, trapping it in place. The beast lurched forward and came to a stop.

Standing before them was a group of people, all wearing post-apocalyptic body armor, which consisted of athletic gear that had been modified with metal plates by a flectomancer.

The amalgamation continued to struggle, and as it did, a heavyset man with a thick beard and a sweatband around his head approached them. “Howdy, stranger.”

Roxie produced her laser cannon even though she couldn’t fire it. Sterling pointed his revolver at the man. “I hope y’all ain’t cannibals.”

.Chapter Five.

Sterling took another look at the people surrounding him. He quickly counted ten. From what he could tell, none were mancers. If they were, they hadn’t revealed their powers yet. He did, however, notice a pair of them with what looked like flectomancer-crafted crossbows with glowing bolts. They were certainly twins.

The bearded man before him wore a pair of lensless neon Oakley sunglasses on his face and a long-sleeved Under Armor shirt over jeans with additional pockets sewn into them. He had yet to draw a weapon on them, but it was clear that the pair with the crossbows behind him would be able to take Sterling and the Sunflower Kid out fairly easily. Not only that, but they didn’t seem too fazed by Roxie.

“Why the hell, on God’s scorched Earth, are you traveling with one of them?” the man asked.

“She’s one of us,” Sterling said, his gun still pointed at the man.

“You going to put that magic pistol away or what, amigo? If we’d wanted you dead, we would have already shot you by now.”

Seeing that they were outnumbered, Sterling lowered his revolver. He kept it at his side, however, just in case he needed to start shooting.

“There, that’s better,” the man said. “Que pedo? What’s your name?”

“You can call her Roxie. This here’s the Sunflower Kid, and I go by the name of Sterling. What about you?”

“Yo soy Guillermo.”

“Well, we ain’t trying to stick around, Guillermo, if that’s what you was wondering. Nice crossbows though.” Sterling pointed his chin at the twins who still were pointing their weapons at him. “I’m not aiming at you anymore.”

Guillermo motioned for them to lower their crossbows, and they did.

“Mighty kind of you,” said Sterling as he tipped his hat at the group. “Welp, unless there’s something else, we’ll be on our way. Y’all have fun with that snake back there. And thanks for killing it. Hate them damn things.”

“Where were you going?” Guillermo asked.

“We were going to Flagstaff. Got a shaman we’re looking for there, one recommended by a friend of mine.” A couple of people in Guillermo’s party murmured to themselves. Guillermo turned to them, discussed something quickly, and then looked back at Sterling, Roxie, and the Sunflower Kid.

“Y’all got something you want to tell me about Flagstaff? Maybe about a shaman named Lisa?”

Guillermo grunted. “The Angels of Woe, they have a blockade around the city right now. New territory for them. But we are planning to take it back. Lisa is there. Last we heard, she’s alive.”

“Y’all are guerrillas then.”

The bearded man laughed. “Sí, Guillermo’s guerrillas. That’s right. Or something like that. We got family there, some of us, anyway. We were out doing patrols when the city was attacked, taken over. It’s not that big of a city, Flagstaff, but the Angels of Woe have the whole downtown blocked off from what we could tell. Has to be close to sixty of them there. Normally, that wouldn’t be any problem with some of the stuff we have, but—”

“They are mostly mancers,” Sterling said. “We’re familiar with the sons of bitches; they have been terrorizing the hell out of Deseret in the north. Guillermo’s guerrillas, huh? Is that what y’all are calling yourselves now, or are you part of some bigger organization? In New Mexico, we’ve got Comancheria holding court; and in the north, the Serpents of Paradise. Y’all part of some group down here?”

Guillermo nodded. “Comancheria, huh? We ran them out of Flagstaff months ago. As for us, we are affiliated with the Hashknife Outfit. They have territory in the northwest and pressing up what once was Californ-I-Ay.”

“Californ-I-Ay, huh?” Sterling asked, getting the gist of what the man was saying in what sounded like a local vernacular. “And you say there are over fifty of them woeing-ass sons-of-bitches in Flagstaff now?”

“That’s right.”

“Where are your boys, where is back up?”

“Hashknives haven’t sent any reinforcements yet, so we’re looking to meet up with one of ours on the outskirts of town and take the city back ourselves.”

Sterling bobbed his head left and right. Yet again, he glanced at Roxie and the Sunflower Kid. “Well? We the kind of folks to do something about this?”

<I don’t know how useful I’ll be without my laser, but I’m nearly indestructible, and I can certainly cause distractions and raise hell.>

Sterling nodded at Roxie’s statement, aware that only he and the Sunflower Kid could hear her. “But you do like raising hell, don’t you, Rox?”

<Within reason. If this is where we need to head to confer with Gasper’s shaman, then so be it.>

“Can I talk to you privately?” the Sunflower Kid asked Sterling.

“By all means. Give us a moment, Guillermo.”

Sterling followed the Kid closer to the rock-face, where the bolt that got the amalgamation had fired from. Looking at it now, Sterling saw it was quite the contraption, one that a flectomancer could have only created. Beyond them, the snake amalgamation still struggled, but it was losing whatever fight it had left.

“Our powers.”

“That’s what you made me come over here to say?” Sterling asked her. “Shee-it. We’ll get our powers back, and we have some still. Don’t you forget that.”

“You think we are ready for this?”

“To fight off bandits in Flagstaff?” Sterling shrugged. “I know it seems a bit risky, but compared to taking down Godwalkers and blowing up their terminals, this here side quest seems downright easy. Plus, if it puts us into contact with Lisa the shaman, that will only help us.”

“And you think this shaman will actually be able to do something?”

“I don’t know, but every time I begrudgingly trust Don Gasper, he turns out to be right, at least in some regards. So we might as well give it a shot. We can do right by these people here.” Sterling looked back at the dying snake amalgamation. “Ain’t these things supposed to be spitting venom?”

“Not all of them can do that.”

“Well, that’s a damn good thing considering how close we are to it. Look, Kid, we’re headed out to California, Californ-I-Ay, just like we said we were. I figured we’d be getting into things along the way. You must have known that too. This seems like one of them things we need to get involved with. They did just save our asses, mind you.”

Her brow furrowed to some degree. Sterling placed a hand on her shoulder. “We good?”

“I…”

“You know I ain’t going to let you die. Besides, I want to see the ocean, and hell, why not see D.C. out in the east? So, what if we have to stay alive until we get to that point? We’ve been doing that for five years now. Now, let’s get over there and make an agreement with these here folks.”

“Yeah,” she finally said.

“So, we’re good?”

The Sunflower Kid nodded.

Sterling approached Guillermo once again. “We can take Flagstaff.”

“Together?” he asked.

“Sure can. But I’m thinking we’re going to need a few more of them there crossbows. Is that a possibility? We will try to keep things quiet as long as we can, but eventually, shit will hit the fan. It always does. So you better be ready for that.”

Guillermo puffed his cheeks out and slowly nodded. “Works for us. Rest tonight, get to Granny’s tomorrow, and take the city after that.” He circled his finger above his head. “Let’s move out.”

“Granny?”

“You’ll see.”

“Shee-it, okay then. What about this here snake?” Sterling asked.

“We’ll let it die and come back for it.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, what did you want it for, anyway?”

Guillermo looked at him as if he were dumb. “It’s skin. Makes some mighty fine gear, especially in the hands of a good flectomancer.”

****

Guillermo’s guerrilla camp was nestled in a pocket of hills, one hidden away by velvet mesquite and thickets of cat claw acacia. It was a good hiding place, a place that not only provided a view of the road, but also captured a pretty view of the hills beyond.

Guillermo led them to a space at the back of the barracks, walled off by a partition that looked to have once been used for a field hospital. “It’s clean,” he assured them as he pointed to the two cots. “Linens are as well. I try to run a tight ship. It ain’t easy, but what else is there to do? You might be wondering what this place is.”

“I sure was,” Sterling told him.

“The Hashknife Outfit set it up. They got dozens of little spots like this tucked away across Arizona. If you ever find one, check it for supplies.”

“Should you be telling us that?”

“That’s what these places are for, cowboy,” he assured Sterling. “Well, and for little situations like this. Now, as you know, these former cities that the people from before—”

“Is that what you call them here?” Sterling asked. “We call them before people.”

“I called them a lot of things, the lucky bastards. Anyway, as I was saying, Flagstaff is like the former cities that you have probably been to. Sprawling. Suburbs on the outside mostly looted, concentrated core around some of the bigger buildings. They had a nice little downtown there, and that’s the area that the Angels of Woe have taken, where most people live. It might even look like there’s no one barricading the place upon our approach, but you’ll see.”

“You got a map of the town? All we got is a larger map of the entire Southwest.”

“It’s all here.” Guillermo tapped the side of his head. “But we’re going with you, and we will be able to guide you some. Now, it’s clear that y’all are mancers. Care to tell me which type?”

“What gave it away?”

Guillermo gave Sterling a funny look. “Y’all came in riding a white buffalo; at least one of you is a biomancer. Ain’t no buffalo I’ve ever seen lets someone ride it. And I just figured you were one too based on, well, I don’t know what I based it on. Just something different about you, no offense.”

“None taken. I’m a necromancer; she’s a biomancer. And she’s a Godwalker,” Sterling said as he gestured toward Roxie.

“Life and death with an alien craft.” Guillermo whistled. “Sounds like either a fairytale or a horror story, depending on who is telling it. Well, if you need some dead bodies, there are plenty not too far from here. I was hoping you would say you were a necromancer. You got those Gothic vibes about you, heh, showing up in all black looking like the grim reaper’s southwestern brother-from-another-mother.”

Sterling pinched the front of his shirt and lifted it, as if he were airing his chest out. “There is something wrong with our powers at the moment.”

“And you just volunteered to go into Flagstaff and start kicking ass and taking names without them?”

“We still have weapons, damn good ones too.”

“I don’t,” said the Sunflower Kid.

“I’ll give you the shotguns that Raylan made me, don’t you worry. Is there a place we can test fire?” Sterling asked Guillermo.

“There is, but do it in the morning.”

“You’ll give me your shotgun?” asked the Kid.

“Damn right I will. You’re my daughter.”

This took Guillermo by surprise. “Wait a dang minute, you two are related?”

“We sure are,” Sterling said with pride.

“How did you know?”

Sterling pointed his thumb at the Kid. “She knew. Her memory wasn’t wiped like the rest of ours. Well, it was, but she repaired herself, or her power did.”

Guillermo whistled again. “Biomancer powers, huh? Just wow. I sure do wish that I could’ve known more about what my life was like back then. But you know what? Screw it. That’s where I’m at these days. What’s the point in kicking my feet and grumbling about the past and how much better it may have been? I don’t know that. I don’t know shit all about what my life was really like aside from the information on my driver’s license.” It appeared as if he were going to get worked up, yet a few quick breaths calmed him down. “Anyhow, I’ll let you two get some rest. You find that you can’t sleep, we got a little elixir that’s good for that.”

“Something like tequila?”

“Nope. Some NyQuil. Ever heard of NyQuil?”

Sterling shook his head.

“Well, if you didn’t know much about Arizona, you should know that it was once a destination for retirees. Believe it or not, people from before actually wanted to live in weather like this when they got older. Don’t ask me why. Well, I suppose the wintertime ain’t so bad, and with all the conveniences the people before had, like air conditioning, summer was probably not too terrible. Anyway, what was I telling you?”

The Sunflower Kid shrugged.

Sterling spoke: “No idea, amigo.”

“That’s right, well, with all these old people living here in Arizona came a load of pharmacies. That’s how the Hashknife Outfit originally took control. They managed the pharmacies and their medications. Now, as you can all guess, everything had a limited supply, but there sure was a lot of it, and the Hashknives seem to know how to handle it. So we get rations sometimes, airdropped, believe it or not.”

“An airplane?” Sterling asked, thinking back to the vision he had once had of the Comanche chasing them.

“Yup. Not only that, they got all sorts of flectomancer-crafted helicopter thingamajiggies. Choppers. Or something similar. Whenever you hear that propeller—pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah—you know you’re in for something good.”

“And this NyQuil helps you sleep?”

“It makes you drowsy, sort of like alcohol but there is a mintiness to it. Look-ee here.” Guillermo summoned a bottle of NyQuil and poured up a capful of the dark green medicine, which he handed to Sterling.

After Sterling threw it back, he licked his lips and nodded. “Not bad. Tastes like… like medicine. Although I have never had medicine that tasted like this. Not that I can recall. We’ll see how it does.”

“How about you?” Guillermo asked the Sunflower Kid who was now seated on her cot, her legs crossed beneath her body. Sterling had seen her sit like this dozens of times before, usually surrounded by vines with fruit hanging from them. It was odd seeing the Kid without her plants.

“One more thing,” Sterling said to Guillermo just as he was turning away.

“Yeah?”

“Them crossbows. If we help you take Flagstaff back, I want a pair. I’m guessing that the bolts magically form, right, through mana?”

“They drain MP, that’s right.”

Sterling yawned. “Figured. I have two guns, a nice little sword, and the shotgun. Where we’re going, especially with our power issues, it would be helpful to have something like that. It’s the only payment we want. I guarantee you, Guillermo, we will run the Angels of Woe out of Flagstaff. Believe you me. I already done killed about a dozen of them sons of bitches up in Deseret.”

“You want a pair, huh?” Guillermo approached Sterling and extended his hand. “It’s a deal. We’ve got enough for all of us, and once we get back to Flagstaff, we can get more. That’s where our flectomancer is. Her name is Granny.”

“Good. Then it looks like we’re in business.”

“Looks like so.” Guillermo approached again and the two men shook hands.

“I would say that it’s a pleasure, but you already know that. Is there a place where I can smoke?”

Guillermo nodded to the exit. “Outside, near the wall of sandbags. That’s where everyone else smokes, anyway.”

Sterling was up before the Sunflower Kid the next morning. The teenage biomancer resting on her side, her hair now black with twists of blue running through it. He spotted Roxie floating near the entrance to their cordoned off area of the bunker. Once he was ready, he approached her.

He motioned for her to follow him. “Come along then.”

<I’m not a pet, you know.>

“I know, I know.”

Sterling stepped outside, where he had smoked yesterday.

It was quiet out, just a few birds chirping in the frigid air. He sat down on an overturned cooler and kicked his legs out. After slowly rolling up a pair of cigarettes, he equipped his leather-bound journal and sat there smoking, just staring out at the distance as he read through his desert haiku.

<You look comfortable.>

Sterling glanced up at her, yet again glimpsing his own reflection in her mirror-like surface. “Sometimes, the muse comes on her own. Sometimes, you have got to call her out and promise to buy her something purty.” He closed the journal and kissed it. “Come on out of there, darling. I’m trying to get me a little inspiration. Heh.”

Sterling thought about the Sunflower Kid, the distress that she was feeling at losing her powers. This led him down a rabbit hole of wishful thinking, how people always took things for granted, the way people got comfortable with the way things were and upset whenever they changed.

Sterling had seen this when studying books and magazines about the politics of before people. The best or the worst of them, few of the Before People could imagine what it would be like once everything was actually taken away. Sterling was sure of it. Retirement accounts, money locked up in other assets, real estate, family wealth, job security, social media notoriety—none of that mattered anymore.

Tail of the rabbit

Mirages of our lifetime

Footprints from beyond

After reading the desert haiku aloud to Roxie, Sterling walked around to the front of the camp to find Guillermo drinking coffee. There were two crossbows with camouflage hardware sitting on a blanket that had been laid out on a wooden table.

“Have a cup,” Guillermo told Sterling.

He obliged, the coffee bitter until it was sweetened with some honey. “Day-um, not bad at all,” Sterling said after his next sip. “You are making some good stuff here, amigo.”

Guillermo toasted Sterling. “What can I say? Soon, we are going to do something that takes balls the size of pinche melons. Might as well enjoy ourselves and tap into our honey reserves.”

“Might as well.”

Guillermo gestured to the crossbows. “As you requested. Not very hard to use.”

“If it’s anything like a real crossbow, I’ve actually used one before. Had a friend who had one back in Truth or Consequences.”

“Is that where you’re from?” Guillermo asked.

“Originally? No. I’m from south of there, a city called Las Cruces. But that’s where I am now, T or C, and that’s where I’ll be whenever I reach retirement age.”

“No one retires anymore,” Guillermo said, “not by choice.”

“You ain’t wrong, amigo. But I’m going to give it a shot.” After finishing his cup, Sterling stood. “I should probably wake up the Kid. Point me in the direction of a little target practice, and I’ll be on my way. Just want to make sure my daughter knows how to use the shotgun, and hell, I’ll give this here crossbow a test run too.” Sterling lifted the crossbow. Turquoise energy radiated off the bolt. He could recognize its solid craftsmanship almost immediately. “Is it loud?”

“Quiet as a whisper. You’ll see. There ain’t really nothing like these crossbows that Granny makes. She’s gotten real good at it too. You ever met someone that just does one thing, one specialty? That’s her. She makes them, and suppressors, all of which she trades with the Hashknife Outfit. Makes other things too, but she’s the real deal with these little puppies.”

“What else do y’all trade out here? Currency, I mean. In New Mexico, we mostly trade turquoise and silver, jewelry too. Of course gold has value, but silver and turquoise are the true currencies of the Land of Enchantment.”

“You’ll get by just fine with those things. A lot of people trade in favors, and of course the Hashknives provide certain things in exchange for what little we can grow and build. It works. There’s always someone starving somewhere, but most people you come across here ain’t too bad off. Further south you go, it can get a little rough. Conditions are harsher. And that’s saying something considering, well, you take a look around.” Guillermo used his coffee cup to gesture toward the surrounding hills. “Grand Canyon ain’t that far from here, and the terrain is rough, which means we have to keep to the highways if we want things to be easy. Well, you know what that can be like. Prime pickings for bandits.”

“A tale as old as time,” Sterling said.

“Yup.” Guillermo pretended to check his watch. “I’m guessing it’s about time to make sure the troops are up and ready begin the trip to Flagstaff.”

“I reckon. And I think I’ll go rouse mine as well. Just point me in a direction where we can shoot in peace.”

“Just over yonder,” Guillermo said, yet again gesturing with his coffee cup.

The Sunflower Kid was up by the time Sterling and Roxie approached. He handed her the crossbow, which she sent to her list. Sterling followed this up with the shotgun that Raylan had made.

“You have plenty of mana with all your charms,” he told her as he gave her the shotgun. “You should never run out of bullets. I’ll show you how to fire the thing in a second, but just a basic gun safety lesson—”

“I’ve actually used a gun before. Back at the cult that I was with for a spell. I know how. I know how, Dad.”

“Dad?” Sterling asked, his heart skipping a beat. She had never called him this before, not to his recollection.

The Sunflower Kid smiled, a bit of mischief behind her eyes. “Would you prefer I call you Sterling? Skeleton Man? Cowboy Necromancer?”

“What? Hell no, especially not that last one. I’m not a goddamn cowboy, and you know it. No, you should call me Dad. Is that what you called me back then?”

“I did, but only because grandfather was Papa.”

<Isn’t this a sweet moment?> Roxie asked after Sterling grew silent.

“Don’t you go bustin’ my balls,” he told the miniature Godwalker. He motioned for the Kid to follow him. “Even if you’ve been shooting before, it’s best to get your practice up. Besides, I want to see what these here crossbows do, and if they’re as silent as Guillermo said they would be.”

Roxie and the Sunflower Kid followed Sterling out, the two looping around the encampment and onto a steep dirt path that led down to a stretch of flat land on the cusp of a rock basin. Sterling found a few targets set up, ones that had been strung across repurposed telephone wire. Shooting them would cause the pieces of metal to flip around, which should be loud, but Guillermo had assured him they were fine.

“Let’s see…” Sterling raised the crossbow. He got into position and fired a bolt.

Plink!

The bolt hit the metal target and fell to the ground. Sterling checked his MP to see that it had dropped by two points. “Costs two. My guns cost one. Didn’t really pay attention to the shotty,” he said as he aimed the crossbow again. Sterling let out a short breath and fired it again, noticing this time just how quiet it was. “You could hunt pretty good with this thing.”

“You would split it in half,” the Sunflower Kid said as she summoned his shotgun.

“Yeah, if it were a rabbit.”

Click-click, boom!

The Sunflower Kid sprayed several of the targets with pellets. Sterling felt a rush of pride to see his daughter handle the shotgun with complete familiarity. She switched hands, and fired another shot, this time doing it with her arm extended.

“Careful there.”

<The girl can shoot.>

“I know she can, Rox. Be careful anyway,” he reminded the Kid.

The Sunflower Kid fired another shot. “As for mana, it takes three points.”

“You’ve got plenty though, right? I’m sitting nice and cozy at two-fifteen points.”

“I have over seven hundred.”

“Shee-it, figured as much.” Sterling fired another shot from the crossbow.

Plink!

He could see himself now, sneaking up on someone, pulling them into the darkness and slitting their throat. He would then spot another person coming around and get them with a bolt right through the center of the forehead.

“We should talk to Harjo,” the Sunflower Kid said after shooting the shotgun a few more times. She sent it to her inventory list; the crossbow appeared in her hands.

“Harjo, huh? Been a minute since I spoke to him. I’ll reckon he has some information about Arizona, or at the very least, the Hashknife Outfit. He was, after all, in this region when we met him. Sure, you know what? Sure, we’ll touch base with him at some point during the day.”

The Sunflower Kid fired her crossbow.

Plink!

“Bull’s-eye,” Sterling said. “Looks like you got a little of your daddy’s shooting in you.”

Roxie laughed.

“What? She does. How else is she hitting targets so good with such little practice? Look here.” Sterling equipped both of his magical revolvers. He did a few tricks with them that he had been working on, like spinning the guns on his finger and shooting them crossbody. He even turned and shot one over his shoulder.

<You’re going to hurt yourself doing stunts like that.>

“I can’t hear you, Rox,” Sterling said as he shot both of his weapons at the same time. “I’m too busy looking good over here.”

The Sunflower Kid smiled. “You really think we are going to be able to do this without our powers?”

“A pair of real Wild West badasses against a bunch of no-good, bottom-feeding, flat-footed bandits? Why do I feel like I’m going to regret phrasing it like that?”

<Famous last words.>

“Heh. you ain’t wrong, Rox. Best I not get ahead of myself. I love to talk trash but you’re right, we need to be strategic going in there. I’ll behave my damn self, I promise. We’ll get through this, get us some shamanic insight from ol’ Lisa, and get our asses to the west coast in time for a nice sunset. California is calling. Can’t you hear it?”

The Sunflower Kid peered up at the sky and slowly shook her head. “I can’t hear anything at the moment.”

.Chapter Six.

There was an old saying that Sterling had heard, one about the best way in being right through the front door. Sneaking around wasn’t always necessary. Even better if the door was left open. It was a philosophy that Sterling applied to much of his life after the Reset, yet with the Techniques he now possessed, and his sudden lack of extended powers, he knew there would be better ways into Flagstaff.

His Disguise Technique was only at Level One, but his Cover of Night, Assassination, and Sneak Proficiency were all past Level Three. He assumed that these would come in handy when coupled with his Perception powers, most notably his Awareness Technique, which was at Level Eight. Maybe they could do something like paint their faces black, similar to what the Comanche did, and sneak into Flagstaff killing along the way. If they moved at the right time, and if Guillermo’s forces were halfway competent, they would likely be able to take most of the downtown before the Angels of Woe knew any better.

All that would be decided soon.

Sterling now stood at what was once a United States National Monument, overlooking a canyon with a long loop trail that descended past dozens of cliff dwellings, several of them with activity that showed that they were once occupied. “Walnut Canyon National Monument,” he said as he flipped through a brochure that was still left in the gift shop.

The place hadn’t been ransacked. He’d come across this more than once in his travels. It was like looters had some weird, pseudo-religious respect for these gift shops. It made little sense to Sterling—looting was as good here as it was anywhere, especially for charm material—yet that was the way it seemed to play out.

He scanned the brochure again, reading a quick passage about how the dwellings beyond were constructed by the Sinagua, a pre-Columbian cultural group that had passed through Arizona well over a thousand years ago. They didn’t have an official name, the group christened Sinagua, or without water, because of the extremities of their chosen locations. Divided into two groups, the Northern Sinagua lived in what later became Walnut Creek National Monument, Wupakti National Monument, and Elden Pueblo. The Southern Sinagua preferred the lower elevations of Montezuma Castle National Monument and the V Bar V Heritage Site.

Much like the Hohokam culture that had once called Phoenix home, both the Northern and Southern Sinaguans were masters at surviving in conditions that would have turned most people back. Droughts and floods, extreme heat, winters that brought subzero temperatures—it was an insane environment to call home, which only made the translation of the word ‘Hohokam’ even more fascinating.

According to the brochure, the word meant all used up, exhausted.

“Ain’t that something,” Sterling mumbled as he turned his focus to the cliff dwellings beyond. They themselves were built under ledges deep within the canyon, the spaces seemingly large enough to rest and prepare a meal. The layers of rock contained Kaibab Limestone, Toroweap Formation and cross-bedded Coconino Sandstone, the north facing walls painted in ponderosa pines and fir that Sterling knew he would be able to smell if it were spring.

The Sinaguans had lived in the area in various capacities for seven hundred years before finally throwing in the towel in the 1200s, which coincided, according to the research that Dusty the Chronicler had uncovered in Deseret, with the appearance of the Godwalkers.

“Why are we here again?” Sterling asked Guillermo, mostly just to say something.

All he had been told was that there was a better way into Flagstaff. Upon seeing the National Monument, how it sat atop a cliff overlooking a canyon of cliff dwellings, the pieces weren’t adding up. Sterling needed more information.

Guillermo moved past him, toward a deck that overlooked the expanse below. The canyon was about six hundred feet deep, flowing east, where it joined with the Little Colorado River on its way to the Grand Canyon. “I thought you would like the National Monument.”

“We’re not really the tourist types.” Sterling took a bite from a dried biscuit that he had picked up back at the guerrilla camp. It was good, a bit too salty for his taste, yet with the coffee they had had earlier, it was just right. Someone had called it a scone, a word Sterling wasn’t familiar with.

“It’s a hike down to the bottom, but you’ll see why I brought you here. Let’s go.” Guillermo was joined by his entire group, none of them as chatty as their leader.

All of them wore fisherman vests that had been modified by a flectomancer. There was uniformity to it, something that almost reminded Sterling of the Killbillies, though with the yellow bandanas and buckshot of bad tribal tattoos. These other guerrillas weren’t standoffish, but they’d said little to Sterling and the Sunflower Kid.

Soon, Sterling and the Sunflower Kid were following Guillermo and his group down a steep stone stairwell, one built by the park services. From there, they transitioned onto a winding trail that wrapped around the cliff dwellings. Sterling passed a collection of bedrock mortars, the circular depressions used for grinding grain and other food products. These depressions gave way to flat stones that Sterling recognized as metate for making tortillas. Sterling followed Guillermo down to the creek, and from there to the western end of the canyon.

“Would you look at that,” he said as they came to a large opening seemingly carved out of the ground.

This wasn’t the first time that he had encountered something in the Southwest that was hidden in plain sight. As he stood admiring what was clearly the work of a crafty gaiamancer, Sterling smoked a cigarette.

He didn’t know exactly where the passageway led, but he was fairly certain they’d come up in Flagstaff. “Ready for some spelunking?” he asked Roxie, who hovered next to the Sunflower Kid.

The miniature Godwalker didn’t reply.

Venturing into the unknown was something that Sterling had grown accustomed to.

It didn’t bother him to walk down a dark tunnel, one with just a trickle of water on the ground, the smell of wet stone heavy in the air. After all, he could see well enough in the dark due to his enhanced powers, and it wasn’t like anything creeping in a tunnel would be any worse than things he had encountered above the surface.

That was his thinking, anyway.

“It rained recently,” Guillermo told Sterling as he gestured toward a stream of murky water, one with tadpoles racing through it. “Snowed up in the mountains too.”

“I reckon this here tunnel gets pretty flooded when that happens.”

“Sí. But we are safe for now. No bad weather today.”

“You sure of that?”

Guillermo, who led the group using a light on a headlamp he had procured, merely shrugged. “Weather can change quickly here.”

“Same in New Mexico.”

“I still need to get over there. Funny how that works. You’re hours away from a place yet you’ve never visited.”

“You’re more than welcome in T or C,” Sterling told him as they continued along the underground passageway.

“I heard they had good peppers there too.”

<Please don’t go on a pepper rant.>

Sterling laughed at Roxie’s statement.

Not sure of why he was laughing, Guillermo explained that the tunnel had been created by a gaiamancer who wanted to give the Hashknife Outfit easy access into Flagstaff. Apparently, they had other tunnels like this across what was once the state of Arizona, and according to Guillermo, people actually lived in them. “I’ve seen it myself, down in Phoenix. Piestewa Peak area, if that means anything to you. They have one there. Goes to the sewers that lead to Scottsdale.”

“Phoenix, huh?”

“Yeah, you think it’s hard up here?” Guillermo whistled. “Nah, not even. That’s hard living down there, but they’ve maintained a pretty good lifestyle, the Hashknives have. Kind of funny that they named the city after a bird that rises from the ashes.”

“Implying that it has to die to be reborn.”

“Something like that.”

“Guillermo, you ain’t half bad.”

“Is that where they have the giant cactus?” the Sunflower Kid asked the guerrilla leader.

“They do have some there. If you want to see more, Tucson would be a better option. But they’re in Phoenix as well.”

After traveling for what felt like an hour, they came to a metal pipe nearly seven feet high, the opening of which was covered in a patina of rust. Sterling heard something scamper away and assumed it was a mouse.

“We still got a ways to go, but this will take us up under some neighborhoods and golf clubs. So many pinche golf clubs here in Arizona. I swear the people of before were convinced that they were living in a botanical garden or some shit,” said Guillermo as he motioned above. “All the golf courses are now gone, of course, the dead grass gone and replaced by dirt. Only a few of them, the ones that had ponds, still exist. But that water can get pretty murky. Lots of varmint drinking from it. I have a golf club in my inventory list, you know.”

“Do you, now?” Sterling asked.

It was clear that Guillermo liked to talk, and Sterling didn’t mind listening to the man. They were what seemed like a mile under the surface, no real way to tell where they actually were, and it kept his mind off this fact.

The hairs on the back of his neck had stood on end several times now when thinking about how trapped they would be if the tunnel collapsed. At least now they were in the pipes put down by the before people, which provided a strange comfort even if it still had him itching to get out.

“Hell, we all have golf clubs, ain’t that right?” Guillermo asked the other guerrillas, most of whom grunted positive responses. “They make nice weapons, especially when they’re modified.”

“Modified?” A grin lifted the corners of Sterling’s cheeks.

“You’re damn right they’re modified.”

People always find a way to turn something into a weapon.

As they started deeper into the sewer system, Guillermo spoke again: “The clubs got spikes on them, bigger heads and they’re reinforced. Great for springing on someone and beating the hell out of them. Here. Check it out.” Guillermo turned to Sterling, his light momentarily blinding the cowboy necromancer. He shielded his eyes with a single arm as Guillermo handed him a beefed-up golf club. It felt lighter than a bat, yet seemed more solid, likely due to a flectomancer’s enhancements.

Sterling nodded, impressed. “Shee-it.”

“I tell you what,” Guillermo said once Sterling gave it back to him. “You can damn near knock someone’s head off with this if you put all your points in strength.”

“I’m sure you can.”

<Ask him how much further we have to go.>

“My little friend here—”

Roxie bumped into Sterling.

<Don’t call me that.>

“Easy there, Rox.” He cleared his throat. “Ahem. She wants to know how much longer we have.”

“Not too much longer. Pretty easy from here.” Guillermo shone his light on a white arrow painted on the inside of the tunnel. “Just need to follow these.”

“And where does it come out at?”

“Ever heard of a Cracker Barrel, cowboy?”

Sterling shook his head. “Rox, Kid?”

“I’ve seen that place in Albuquerque. It was a restaurant,” the Kid told Sterling.

<I’ve seen them too.>

“Cracker Barrel, huh? They selling crackers, barrels, or both?”

Guillermo laughed at Sterling’s terrible dad joke. “No idea. That’s just the name. It comes out there. And from that point, we’re just a couple miles away from downtown.”

“And how far is a couple to you?” Sterling asked.

“Maybe eight miles.”

Sterling was just about to playfully complain when he heard noise at the other end of the tunnel. It sounded like pinchers, bone scraping across the metal of the inner piping, the scurrying of feet.

The Sunflower Kid summoned her shotgun and pointed it toward the other end of the sewer tunnel. “This is going to be loud, isn’t it?”

Loud was an understatement.

As soon as she pulled the trigger, the mana-powered slug tore off down the tunnel, illuminating the space enough for Sterling to catch a better glimpse of what he had feared. The pellet struck a scorpion amalgamation, the kind that he had battled before using his animates.

All he had now was firepower.

“Give it everything you’ve got!” Guillermo shouted as he equipped a crossbow. “And dammit, make sure you don’t shoot any of us,” he told the other guerrillas.

Sterling drew both his revolvers and began firing them indiscriminately at the charging scorpion amalgamation. His bullet struck its skeletal skull, which was shaped like that of a longhorn bull. They did little against the scorpion’s thick chitin exoskeleton as the amalgamation grew closer to them.

The enormous beast sent its stinger forward and connected it with the back of the head of one of the guerrillas who was trying to run for cover. Venom sprayed out of the front of the man’s face as the scorpion whipped him backward, treating him like a doll.

“Dallas!” Guillermo cried as he fired another bolt from his crossbow into the scorpion.

Sterling sent one of his revolvers to his inventory list and summoned his sickle sword. He kept shooting at the scorpion—Bang! Bang!—beating back its enormous pincers at the same time. He also kept an eye on the Sunflower Kid, who kept pumping the shotgun and firing it. The sound of guns and crossbows was overwhelming, Sterling’s ears feeling as if they were on the verge of popping.

Gritting his teeth, Sterling continued to fire shots into the scorpion as he swung his sword. The confined nature of where they were battling the amalgamation only made it worse. There was only one way to go, and that was backward.

Even if they were fast, enhanced by their post-apocalyptic powers, the scorpion would be able to catch them. There had to be another solution; it was certainly not the small, flectomancer-made grenade launcher that Guillermo had equipped.

Sterling yelled for him to put that damn thing away as he scanned the tunnel, only then noticing that the rocks had started to break through the tunnel, just above the scorpion. He wouldn’t have noticed had it not been for a faint trace of color highlighting them, which he recognized as part of his Level 7 Perception power that he generally was aware of, but usually paid little attention to.

A mini-avalanche would do the trick.

Or at the very least, it would prevent the scorpion from pursuing them as they fled.

“Aim your fire up there!” he told the Kid as he pointed to the ceiling.

Since she couldn’t use her laser cannon, Roxie rushed forward to distract the scorpion, the female gunner intuiting what Sterling was trying to do. It tried to snap at the Godwalker with its pincers, yet her monolithic shape prevented it from fully latching on.

Trusting Sterling fully, the Sunflower Kid’s next shot was aimed at the rocks above. Sterling started firing on it again with both revolvers, his sword back in his inventory list. Sparks of light and bits of metal plinked off everything, making matters worse. Some of the crossfire even grazed across Sterling’s knuckles and his cheeks a few times as he continued to fire.

It wouldn’t be enough.

“Everyone shoot at the ceiling!” Sterling shouted, which brought more fire, the sound of metal on metal joining the terrifying boom of their guns.

“Go, go!” Guillermo shouted as he once again went for his grenade launcher. “I can do this.”

“You don’t have to, amigo,” Sterling said, but then Guillermo stepped in front of him, a determined look on his face.

“It won’t kill me. This isn’t how I die.”

“Rox!” Sterling called to the Godwalker as he backpedaled, the Sunflower Kid and the others doing the same. One of the female guerrillas was just turning to catch up with them when the scorpion caught her with one of its pincers, cutting her body in half.

Sterling caught sight of Guillermo aiming the grenade launcher at the ceiling, the guerrilla making the Sign of the Cross gesture as he prepared to fire, which must have been instinctual.

Ka-thunk!

His grenade connected; the explosion blew Guillermo back. It also brought the scorpion’s portion of the tunnel down, right on top of its body, pinning it.

Sterling glanced at the other guerrillas, all of whom were covering their faces due to the smoke and dust. It was hard to see, yet soon, the smoke began to clear. Guillermo dragged himself away from the collapsed ceiling. He was nursing a foot, and his face was a mask of blood, yet he was grinning, his teeth white, the look in his eyes that of someone who had kicked death where the sun don’t shine.

“Is it dead?” the Sunflower Kid asked the rebel leader.

“Even better, it’s pinned. We can take its pincers. Flectomancer I know, the same one making all this stuff, will be able to craft some armor out of it. I’ve heard it’s good eating as well.” He waved some of the smoke away. When that didn’t work Guillermo summoned a gas mask and placed it on his face, Sterling now noticing that the other guerrillas had done the same.

“Y’all got everything, don’t you?”

Guillermo nodded at Sterling. “And we still have our asses handed to us by a damn amalgamation. This is why it would have been helpful to get out of the city with a mancer or two.”

“How come none escaped?”

“The Angels of Woe, they don’t operate like any intruders we’ve ever had before. They sent people in early on, gathering information, using everything in the book to figure out who the mancers were. And I mean everything, from sex to alcohol. When it happened, when they invaded, their moles—I think that’s what they’re called—all went into action at the same time. The handful of mancers on our side were all taken prisoner. I don’t know if they were executed or not. But they are there somewhere in the city. Once we come out at the Cracker Barrel, we will head to Granny’s place.”

“Granny?” Sterling asked. He looked at Roxie, as if she knew the answer.

<None of this makes any sense to me.>

Guillermo summoned a big knife. “I mentioned her before. She’s the flectomancer, our liaison with the Hashknife Outfit. A tough old hag, that Granny, who has done some serious fighting. We were able to get a note to her a day ago, telling her that we were coming. She’s expecting us; she will have everything laid out. So once we get to the Cracker Barrel, we will meet with Granny and figure out what’s next. Flagstaff is pretty spread out. We’ll probably have to take a few places before we are able to fully get control of the city. But she’ll let us know. Now, let’s get these pincers.” He shook his head. “And we’ll say something for the dead later, outside of this damn tunnel. Too bad we can’t get to their bodies.”

.Chapter Seven.

Sterling kept to the back of the group with Roxie as another guerrilla ascended a metal ladder, a ring of light at the top. He had tried to stop the Sunflower Kid before she’d gone up, but as always, his biomancer daughter had a mind of her own and she didn’t pick up on his not-so-subtle cues for them to let the others pass first.

Sterling tipped his hat at the miniature Godwalker. “Rox? You having trust issues, or is it just me?”

<What makes you think that?>

Because I know you, Sterling thought. He spoke again: “Alls I’m saying here is that I didn’t expect you to be hanging back here. Actually, how are you going to get up there? Want me to toss you into my inventory list and bring you up with me?”

<I can make it. I just want us to have an exit strategy. As for your question: I trust these people about as much as I can in the little time I have gotten to know them. They seem fine, but with our lack of powers between the three of us, and the apparent ballsiness of their leader, I think we should be extra careful.>

“I figured you’d say something like that. At any rate, I’ll keep my head on a swivel, Rox, I promise. You know I ain’t going to let nothing happen to you or the Sunflower Kid, my Angel.”

<Our hero…>

“I don’t mean it like that, and you know it. Ain’t no heroes left in this day and age. You’ve saved my ass just about as many times as I’ve saved yours.”

<I’ve saved yours more.>

“Maybe,” Sterling said as he started up the ladder. “But who’s keeping count?”

The ring of light grew brighter.

Soon, Sterling was standing in what was once the kitchen of a restaurant known as a Cracker Barrel. It was clear that some thought had been put into the unique exit point. The modified manhole cover with a hinge on it could easily be hidden by a rolling table, one with a top made into a cutting board. It looked heavy, but in placing his hand on it, Sterling found it to be quite light, which meant that someone could open it from beneath and shift it to the side.

“We should be good to go,” Guillermo said as he came back into the kitchen.

Sterling looked around.

He saw nothing out of the ordinary aside from a rusted over washbasin that looked like some sort of prehistoric moth had eaten through it. He caught up with Guillermo in the dining room area, where all the tables had been stripped of their wood, just a few pieces left behind.

Rather than go out the front entrance, they slipped out a side exit door, the group keeping a low profile as they kept behind a few abandoned SUVs with their tires shot out, the vehicles strategically arranged for cover.

They reached what was once a low-income residential neighborhood, most of the homes single-story amidst sunken trailers overrun with buffelgrass and cacti. The group ended up waiting inside one of these ramshackle homes for an hour, giving the sun plenty of time to set.

While they hunkered down, Sterling sat near a window and smoked cigarettes. He looked through the map that Raylan had given him, and he also had a discussion with Guillermo about New Mexican peppers and why the guerrilla leader wouldn’t find anything like them in Arizona, even if they were next-door neighbors.

“It’s a lifestyle,” he ultimately concluded as he gave Guillermo one of his Big Jim peppers. “Take a bite of that and tell me it don’t light your ass on fire. That’s the kind they make chile relleno out of.”

Guillermo examined the big green pepper. “You want me to just eat it?”

“Why the hell not? Ain’t nothing to be afraid of.” Sterling summoned another pepper from his inventory list. He took a bite from the pepper and chewed it, the spice hot and filling. “Shit, if you can shoot a grenade at an oversized scorpion, you can eat a pepper.”

<You’re ridiculous.>

Sterling cupped his ear. “What was that? Couldn’t hear you there, Rox. Heh. My mouth is burning up, and it’s affecting my hearing.”

“I think I’ll save this for later,” Guillermo said as he sent the pepper away to his inventory list.

“Suit yourself, amigo. I’ve got hotter ones than that if you’re interested.”

Later, before they were planning to go, the Sunflower Kid joined Sterling and offered him an apple from her inventory list.

Yet again he saw the distraught look on her face and felt like there was more that he should be doing to comfort her. But even if she looked young, she was an adult now. Not only that, but they were technically working toward a solution regarding the loss of their power. Once they were able to run the Angels of Woe out of Flagstaff, they would be able to meet with the shaman that Don Gasper recommended. It was a longshot kind of solution, but just about every shot Sterling took after the Reset seemed impossible until he accomplished the task.

They moved on later, once it was dark.

Even if night was settling, Sterling heard the occasional chatter of finches. He heard a wind chime as well, and at one point smelled grilled meat in the vicinity, which made his mouth water. Soon, they reached the back door of a home that was on the edge of the neighborhood, one that looked just about as nondescript as any of the other abandoned places.

It was here that they found an older white woman sitting with a modified crossbow across her lap.

Granny was in a plaid button-up with the suede elbows patched and a pair of paint-stained overalls, one of the knees threadbare. She had turquoise studs in her droopy ears, and she wore a matching necklace that had a cross on it. On her face was a pair of oversized bifocal glasses that were scratched up.

The older woman pointed the end of her crossbow to the ground. She looked at him over the rim of her glasses. “Guillermo, it took you damn long enough. Thought you was coming the other day, but turned out just to be a coyote.”

Guillermo motioned to Sterling, the Sunflower Kid and the tiny Godwalker, Roxie just now coming into the older woman’s view. “I brought back-up, Granny. Ain’t you proud?”

Rather than point her weapon at Roxie, Granny merely spat. “Proud? What in the hell are you doing coming around here with one of them things?”

“Eh, don’t worry, Granny. She’s with us. They’re going to help us deal with the Angels of Woe once and for all.”

The older woman took a long, hard look at Sterling, the Sunflower Kid and Roxie, and finally offered the trio a firm nod. “Welp, any help is better than no help. One of y’all needs to go turn the generator on,” she said to one of Guillermo’s guerrillas. “I’ve got some chili I can warm up, and we have some plans to go over. Anything else I should know?”

“We’ll explain everything inside, ma’am.” Sterling went for a cigarette that he had perched on his ear and was just about to light it when she stopped him.

“Don’t smoke on the porch, cowboy, and don’t smoke in my house. There’s a spot out back and a nice plastic chair you can sit in. My husband died of lung cancer.”

“Before the Reset?”

“Far as I know, yup. Saw the medical papers.”

“Shee-it, I keep trying to die from it now, but it ain’t working,” Sterling said with a wink.

Granny laughed. “I like this one, Guillermo, he’s got himself a dark sense of humor.”

The chili was good, especially after Sterling added some diced up NuMex Española Improved to the mix. The chili peppers originally developed at New Mexico State University in the 1980s. Long, slim, and green, the NuMex Española Improved had a medium heat to them, somewhere between fifteen hundred and two thousand Scovilles, according to what Sterling had read.

“You know too damn much about peppers, cowboy,” Granny said as she spooned more of the chili into her mouth.

“What can I say? I’m a connoisseur of sorts,” Sterling told her with a chuckle. “Before coming out here, I was running a pepper farm in Truth or Consequences with my daughter.”

“You two are related?” Granny glanced from Sterling to the Sunflower Kid and squinted.

“Yep, father and daughter. I’m a necromancer.”

“And I’m a biomancer.”

“That would explain that punk rock appearance of yours, young lady,” the older woman said, referring to the Sunflower Kid’s hair, which was turquoise at the roots and black on the ends, currently pulled into a topknot. “Sort of funny, if you think about it, life and death related to one another. I guess that’s not as funny as it sounded in my head. Anyway, this one here, this little Godwalker, how does she fit into all this again?”

“She was my girlfriend.”

The Sunflower Kid laughed as Roxie swiveled toward Sterling. She went through the motions of summoning her laser cannon, even if it didn’t work.

“You sure know how to piss a lady off,” Guillermo said as a hunk of chili flew out of his mouth.

<Stop it.>

“Come on, Rox, you know I was just teasing you. And we dated once, not too long ago. What about the time we spent together in Moab? I swear that was one of the best dinners of my life, best date too.” Sterling grew quiet. As he did, everyone looked down into their bowls of chili, all with their own melancholic memories.

Granny came to Roxie’s defense a beat too late, once the strange moment had passed. “Don’t you go teasing that lil’ lady Godwalker. Last thing I need is a you-sized hole in the wall from when she blows you to smithereens.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll mind my Ps and Qs,” Sterling finally said as he returned his chili.

Once they were finished eating, Granny led the group into the garage, where she had lights set up, all pointing at a workman’s bench. She removed a pair of clasps, revealing a hidden map of Flagstaff, one that appeared to have been hand-drawn.

Granny already had targets marked on it.

“Here’s the thing, the bandits got downtown completely blocked off. Not only that, they have over a dozen mancers with them. Most Flagstaffers are living downtown now. As you probably have seen, after the Reset, people moved into tighter knit communities. It was too hard to live out on your own. So even my place here is considered the outskirts.”

“Do you know a shaman named Lisa?”

Granny’s disposition soured. “Yeah, I guess you could say I know her.”

“That’s who we are looking for.”

“Well, I guess it ain’t my place to tell you who you should and should not be looking for, but you ain’t gonna find much looking for that damn woman.” She tapped her finger on a point near Historic Route 66, which cut off in downtown Flagstaff and ran along the train tracks. “What we are going to want to do is take out their satellites before we get cracking on the center.”

“All in one night?” asked Sterling.

“You bet your ass. If we take too long, they’ll get word out, maybe to whatever outside forces they may have. Don’t know. They have radio relay abilities here. Technomancer set it up.”

“Drones?” asked the Sunflower Kid.

“Drones? Haven’t seen nothing like that since the Comanche last tried to take the city. Speaking of them, haven’t heard from that group in a while, thank Jesus.” She touched her cross. “We got enough on our plates dealing with the Angels of Woe.”

Sterling tried to catch Granny up as quickly as he could: “The Comanche are building a settlement in New Mexico. I think that they are changing their conquering ways now that they have solidified what they are calling Comancheria, a return to their old territorial grounds.”

“You think they want to parlay?”

“Shee-it, I can’t speak for them,” he told the older woman, “but that might-could be something they are looking to do. Don’t know. We got a real close friend working with their leader now.”

Granny puckered her lips and nodded. “Good to know. Seems like a subject we can circle back to at a later date.”

“Don’t hold me to nothing.”

“I won’t. So, here’s what we got. First, they have a little operation at a church off the highway. That’ll be the first satellite that we hit.” She tapped on the church, which was on the outskirts of a residential neighborhood. “Next, they are in an area south of there, mostly holed up in a former Whole Foods. Last I checked, they also had an outpost at the HuHot Mongolian Grill.”

“HuHot, huh?”

“Don’t go licking your lips,” Granny told Sterling with a chuckle, “you just had a bowl of my damn chili. If you want more, you should’ve said something.”

“I just have never heard that word before. HuHot.”

“I guess it’s whatever Mongolians used to eat. Maybe some kind of meat? Who flippin’ knows. Now, if we hit those two satellites, which are between us and downtown, that will leave us with the other side of the city. Their first outpost is south of downtown, at a former hotel called the Drury. What kind of word is that? Always wondered. Anyhow, that’s one of them, and the other is at a library, Flagstaff-City Coconino County Public Library. That one is a mouthful. So to recap here.” She tapped on the map again, indicating the four points. “We need to take out the backup forces first; then, we regroup, and we head downtown together and raise hell.”

“What are you thinking, Granny?” Guillermo asked.

“I’m thinking that I take the twins to the Whole Foods. I used to live around there, couple years back, and I know the area real well. You and a few others can go to the Drury Hotel. We will rendezvous with you as we make our way up to the library, which is a bit of a stronghold. That leaves the church to the three of you,” she told Sterling, Roxie, and the Sunflower Kid. “You would then head to the northwest and meet us at the library. Then, we hit downtown as a group. Best way to do that will be going in guns blazing.” She winked at them. “Of course, I’m kidding. Guns blazing is a last resort. We are going to need to stick to our crossbows, and if we do use guns, they will need to have suppressors. And no grenade launchers, Guillermo, not until things really kick off.”

“We have two revolvers, and a shotgun, flectomancer-made. No suppressors, though. Guillermo did give us some crossbows,” Sterling told the older woman.

“Well, you’re in luck. I just so happen to be a flectomancer.” Granny offered Sterling a grin, several of her yellow teeth missing, and one of them silver. “Who do you think made them crossbows? Let me look at your guns tonight, and I will get suppressors made. Good ones, too. But these things are last resorts, at least the shotgun, especially once we get closer to town. This is a bona fide ninja mission, if that makes any sense.”

“It does,” said Sterling, remembering the book he had read about Japan. He always found ninjas, or shinobi, as they were known, fascinating.

Granny grunted in a satisfied way. “So, that’s how it’s going to happen. And it’s going to start tomorrow night, and it will go all night. So, I suggest we get plenty of rest, take it easy tomorrow. Now, before we go about kicking our legs up and getting a little shut eye, we need to have a proper burial for our friends who were lost in the tunnels below. Guillermo, let’s prepare two graves outback for Dallas and Scott. Just small holes, that’s all. We’ll put rocks in them. I got some googly eyes we can glue to the rocks. Humanize them a little bit.”

Is she being serious? Sterling thought as he looked the woman over yet again. It was clear on her face that she meant what she was saying. He respectfully removed his hat and placed it over his chest.

“After that, unless one of y’all wants a nightcap—which I certainly do and have some hooch ready to make that happen—find a place to sleep and we’ll do some more planning in the morning over coffee. You brought some coffee, right, Guillermo?”

“We don’t have the good stuff, but we have something that’ll do.”

She smirked at the guerrilla leader. “Yeah, I guess you are right about that. We can use my stuff. Came up from Mexico just before our bandits arrived.”

“Y’all got coffee coming up from Mexico?” Sterling asked her.

“The Hashknife Outfit does; a couple of contacts along the border that get it from all them countries between Mexico and South America. It’s funny, you know.”

“What is?”

Granny shook her head. “Even with the threat of alien attack, people still need their damn coffee in the morning.”

Sterling slept on a mattress in one of the spare bedrooms that night. He offered one to the Sunflower Kid, but she preferred using her own bedding from her inventory list which consisted of a nice cot, a Hello Kitty sleeping bag, and a matching pillow set.

They stayed in the same room, and Sterling was up before the Kid that next morning.

The window was open, so he slipped out of it and crouched with his back to the home as he smoked a cigarette. Once he was finished, Sterling relaxed even further, his legs now sprawled out in front of him.

He began flipping through his notebook of desert haiku. He read through some of the old ones and ended up on three that he felt worked well next to one another. He rewrote them, focusing on his penmanship this time:

Godwalkers appeared

Yellow sun infinite dusk

Memories long gone

Amalgamations

Cold world shroud infinite dark

Lizard eat lizard

A new beginning

Humanity recycled

An infinite dawn

Sterling read them again in succession, images of the times that he had written them coming to his mind. He remembered what it was like to head south to Las Cruces in search of Don Gasper; to be portaled to Deseret and encounter the miniature Godwalker, not to mention the crazed necromancers he had fought alongside Roxie; to finally get the revenge that he was seeking, yet to lose the life of a trusted companion in the process, Harjo.

This reminded him he needed to talk to the telemancer, to ask him about the Hashknife Outfit. Since no one was around, Sterling summoned the vessel that he kept Harjo’s blood in. He opened the top and used his power to summon the telemancer, Harjo’s face squeezing out.

“Sterling?”

“Yup, it’s me, amigo, and I’m coming at you from Arizona, believe it or not.” Sterling briefed Harjo on what had happened since they had last spoken, including the Inquisitor Godwalker that had stripped them of much of their power.

“And why are you calling it that?” asked the Comanche telemancer.

“The name just came to me; it’s what the people of Kayenta were calling it. I don’t know why, but that’s what I’m calling them.”

“And you are where now?”

“Arizona, Flagstaff. I spoke to Don Gasper, and he knows a shaman here. Welp, as it turns out the city is currently under siege, so for us to get to said shaman, wherever she may be, we have to help deal with the siege first. So that’s what we’re doing now. And that’s one of the reasons I summoned you. Hashknife Outfit. What can you tell me about them?”

The bloody apparition began to fade. Once Sterling strengthened it, Harjo spoke: “They loosely control what was once Arizona, all aside from a big chunk cut out of the northeast. They are organized, much more organized than any of the groups that I encountered when part of the Comanche. They have an interesting system of branches that all are able to communicate with their leadership, which are concentrated around Kingman and the Phoenix area.”

“Further south of here.”

“Phoenix to the south, Kingman to the west. They have also structured themselves so those with certain abilities are tasked with doing jobs that will help them grow their skill. So a flectomancer will constantly be creating, or a telemancer using their power. They view mancer powers a little bit differently than the system that is in place. While everyone has come to understand the leveling up aspect of it, and the skills and other powers that come with leveling, they believe in truly mastering a technique. Over and over again. They believe in that discipline.”

“That’s good to know. And what do you believe about them? Should I trust them?”

“Should you trust them?” Harjo was quiet for a moment. “From what we could tell, they are no longer in the empire-building mode, they are really trying to maintain their territories. You were in Truth or Consequences. That’s near the border. Yet you never heard of them?”

“Can’t say that I did.”

“That is by design. They prefer to operate under the radar, at least their upper leadership. How did you hear about them now?”

Sterling told him about encountering guerrillas in the mountains, how they were planning to take the city back.

“I see. That would make sense then. If you just came into Flagstaff, the odds that you knew the Hashknife Outfit was even operating here would be slim. They keep that low a profile.”

“Good to know.”

“So, your plan is to help them stop the Angels of Woe and return the town to order, meet with the shaman, and continue west from there.”

“I reckon. It really depends on what Lisa the shaman has to say. Look, you know me, I’m about the worst necromancer ever in existence. On a good day, I barely use my powers. But the Kid, her powers are integral to who she is. Not only that, but both of our abilities also come in handy; I’m assuming they will be even handier for what we are trying to do. First the West Coast, then the East Coast. Crazy, right? I don’t mind doing all that traveling with just some guns and bad attitudes, but there’s no telling what we will encounter. That leads me to believe that we would be better off with our powers. So if the shaman can help us get them, then so be it. If not, well, I guess we will cross that bridge when we get there.”

“You seem optimistic.”

Sterling laughed. “It’s morning, and no one is trying to kill me yet. I’m feeling pretty good, I tell you what. So, you think that I should trust the Hashknife Outfit?”

“I think you should for now. But be on your toes. You never know when the tides may change.”

Sterling lit a cigarette that he had been rolling up and nodded at the Comanche telemancer. “You’re a good man, Harjo. I appreciate your company. I’ll remember what you said. I’ve lived too long to die in the next few weeks.” He laughed at the grin that spread across Harjo’s face. “What? It’s true.”

.Chapter Eight.

Sausage and gravy for breakfast had Sterling feeling pretty good, even if it was a bit heavy.

“Damn fine cookin’,” he said as he wiped his lips with a napkin that had been provided. “Damn fine.”

“I appreciate you saying that,” Granny told him with a big smile on her face.

Their modified weapons were on a different table in the other room, to be examined after breakfast, Granny’s rules. Even with the good food, Sterling was more impressed with what she had done overnight. How the older woman had been able to create suppressors for their weapons was a testament to her fine flectomancer skills.

After they had finished, Granny led Sterling, the Sunflower Kid, and Roxie into the other room. She proceeded to show them how to equip the suppressor, which had been designed to attach and be removed easily. “Go on, head out back and fire a shot. Both of y’all. You’ll love these here silencers, believe me.”

The Sunflower Kid looked from the shotgun to the older woman, and from there to Sterling. Her hair was braided now in cornrows, black, with beads at the tips. Sterling didn’t know where she learned to do that, but it looked good.

All her hairstyles looked good to him.

They followed Granny straight out the back door, where Sterling saw a wall with a bunch of bullet holes in it, ones he had noticed earlier.

“Yup, just over there,” Granny told them.

Sterling aimed at the wall and squeezed the trigger.

Psst!

The mana-powered bullet left a trail of turquoise smoke past the muzzle of his revolver. Even so, it was quiet, perfect for sneaking around and dealing with bandits.

The Sunflower Kid was up next. The shotgun had a much larger suppressor, one that was cut into a smooth black rectangular shape. She aimed her weapon at the wall and squeezed the trigger.

Fwwoot!

Her weapon was louder, but it would still do the trick.

After a few more test shots, Sterling unscrewed the suppressor and sent his revolver into its holster. He went for one of the cigarettes he had rolled up earlier.

Granny waved the smoke away as soon as he lit it up. “It’s not good for you, you know.”

“Yeah, neither is being alive in the post-apocalyptic Southwest.”

“I guess I can’t argue there.”

The two shared a laugh.

“Anyhow,” Sterling said as he ashed his cigarette, “let’s go over what you know again and lay low the rest of the day.”

“I’m the one that is supposed to be calling the shots,” she told him. “Don’t you forget that, cowboy.”

“Well in that case, ma’am, what would you have us do?”

“Lay low the rest of the day,” she told him, “and be thinking about success tonight. We are going up against mancers. The sooner we overrun their positions and move on to the library, the faster we can transition to downtown and take our city back.”

Sterling exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Is Lisa good? Is she as good as I’ve heard she is?”

“Lisa? You know I don’t go believing in none of that shaman nonsense.” Granny crossed her hands over her chest. “I’m a damn Christian. But everyone else that talks about her says good things, so if word-of-mouth is any indication, sure, she’s good. In the end, I believe in doing whatever is best for my people, so we can all help each other. If it’s shaman antics, and they work, then so be it. We were doing pretty well until these bandits showed up.”

Sterling watched the Sunflower Kid approach the wall. She ran her fingers across some of the bullet holes, Sterling keenly aware that she was wishing that she was able to use her power. He shook his head. “Doing well until bandits show up, huh? If that ain’t a story as old as time.”

“It is. Just about the moment you feel secure, like everything is going your way, someone comes up behind you, pops you on the back of the head, and pulls the rug out from beneath you. Well, usually, if you’re quick enough, you can spin around and put a bullet between their eyes.” Granny made a gesture to indicate what she meant. “Sometimes they’re faster, and you’re lucky to crawl away with whatever dignity you have left. That’s if you don’t die. The way I see it, these Angels of Woe bastards, they pulled the rug out from underneath us. But they didn’t think that we would come crawling back, ready to slit some throats. That was their mistake, not killing us when they had the chance.”

“Listen to you.”

“What? I may look like an old badger, but I’m ready to kick some ass or die trying. And you better be too, cowboy. There ain’t room for mistakes tonight.”

“No, ma’am,” Sterling told Granny, growing serious. “There ain’t.”

The time came for Sterling, Roxie and the Sunflower Kid to head toward their target. It was late night now, and they trod consciously, with the overarching goal being to rendezvous with Granny and Guillermo at the library, and move as a unit to the city center from there.

Sterling and the Sunflower Kid both wore the armor that Raylan had made them back when they targeted the Godwalkers’ energy sources in Chaco Canyon and Utah. For once, her flowing white attire had been replaced by a flectomancer-enhanced tactical vest. She even had a matching ballistics helmet, her cornrows tucked beneath it.

Looking like a real badass, Sterling thought.

He was going to be the lead considering his distribution of Technique Points, not to mention his two revolvers. The Sunflower Kid would be the element of both surprise and vengeance when the time came with her shotgun, and Roxie would provide the distraction. They still had the crossbows that Guillermo had given them, but using the suppressors was preferable, at least to Sterling.

<There is something else I will be able to do.>

“Yeah?” Sterling asked Roxie as they followed the loose directions that Granny had given them. He was aware that the Godwalker was unable to use her laser cannon, nor was she able to teleport. This didn’t mean Roxie was useless. She was practically indestructible, and she didn’t look like anything a human had made, meaning that they wouldn’t necessarily raise an alarm.

That was another thing that Granny had relayed to them.

A technomancer employed by the Angels of Woe had set up alarms at each of the four satellite sites. If any of the alarms were triggered, their only option would be a mad rush toward the center, abandoning their mission of taking the outposts first.

He couldn’t help but think that if he had his normal power set, all this would be doable, especially with the Sunflower Kid and Roxie with him. He would have maintained a low profile, but Sterling likely would have gone straight to the heart of the banditry, the center of Flagstaff, and worked his way out from there.

Now, they had to be strategic.

“What do you got, Rox?” Sterling asked.

<I will be able to tell you how many there are. This hasn’t really come up yet, but I can see through walls, and humans have a soul imprint that I can register and understand.>

“Are you serious?” Sterling asked as they exited what was once a subdivision. Lights on the Verizon indicated that they were growing closer to downtown. “This whole time, you have been able to simply scan places?”

<It happens naturally; I don’t really even think about it. I don’t even know if I think. You see what I am trapped in, right?>

The Godwalker turned to Sterling. Even though it was dark out, he caught a glimpse of his own chiseled silhouette.

“Welp, I guess in the end, any help is help we are going to need. We already have a plan, and if you can tell us who is in there, what to expect, maybe we can make this fast and skedaddle. We got places to go, and shamans to see. Don’t forget that.”

<How could I forget?>

Their banter died down as they came to a pair of overturned fuel transport trucks blocking one of the roads. Sterling slipped around the first, keeping to the shadows. Peering ahead, he saw another overturned vehicle, a pockmarked van with warning signs spray-painted across it. It was the same kind of graffiti that he had seen in Deseret from the Angels of Woe.

“Bunch of good-for-nothings kiddie fiddlers,” he mumbled as they continued on. Sterling didn’t have a solution for the chaos that followed the Reset, but he definitely didn’t think it was highwaymen and loosely organized thugs. It just wasn’t right. Considering the things he had done over the last five years, Sterling’s moral compass may have been skewed, but it still worked.

Once they reached the outskirts of the church, Sterling and the Sunflower Kid took cover behind a sandstone wall that had once been used for decoration.

With her back to the wall, the Sunflower Kid waited as Sterling peeked over the corner and began examining the structure, which had lights on inside, the stained glass depicting Mormon imagery. He didn’t know exactly what the golden tablets shown in the stained glass were about, and he really didn’t care. All Sterling was interested in was hitting the target and moving on.

“Your move, Rox.”

<This will only take a moment.>

Roxie zipped ahead, quiet as ever so she could get a better scan of the place. She returned just about as quickly as she had departed.

<They have two pyromancers, one aeromancer, and three regulars guarding outside. No hostages.>

“Regulars?”

<What else should I call them? They likely have suped up stats.>

“I reckon.” Sterling swallowed the urge to smoke a cigarette. He had one ready to go, in his inventory list, which he was saving for after. A reward of sorts. “Well, we know how it goes from here, Kid, you stay back and only come out guns a-blazing when you see your chance; Roxie, you know what to do. Draw them toward the Kid over here while I circle around front. Hopefully, we won’t get our asses burned to a crisp or swept up into a goddamn twister.”

As Roxie got in position, Sterling made a wide circle around the church.

He crept along the fence line, and soon came to a woman standing guard, her back to him.

After waiting a moment for the wind to pick up, he lunged for the bandit. Sterling’s hand went over her mouth as the muzzle of his weapon went to the small of her back. He fired three whisper-quick shots.

Psst! Psst! Psst!

He held her down for a moment as she died, feeling no remorse as she bled out onto him. It wasn’t ideal, but he could send his clothes to his inventory list later to clean them.

“One of the regulars is down,” Sterling said, wishing that they had Maron there with them to run the headpieces they had used in the past. This was something that he probably should have talked to Raylan and Maron about during his last visit to Madrid, but he had been distracted by Sierra, the pyromancer.

Thinking with your pecker will get you nowhere.

A smile crossed Sterling’s face, one that quickly disappeared as he moved forward, focusing yet again on the task. He reached a partition wall, crouching just in time to avoid being spotted by the two bandits standing in the front entrance, both with assault rifles.

Sterling peaked over the top of the partition and ducked back down, and contemplated what he was going to attempt next. He was close enough that a well-aimed shot would take both of them out at the same time, the bullet passing through one’s skull into the next. He also had the points in Marksmanship to pull it off.

His next thought was the entrance to the church itself. Would the mancers inside hear? Where was Roxie?

She probably is preparing to distract the mancers inside the church, leaving the small fries to me, he thought. But how would she get in?

Sterling looked around again and noticed a space at the back of the church that had been tented off. Maybe that was Roxie’s plan, and it would lead her back to the Sunflower Kid, who could handle things.

His thoughts were interrupted when the two men started speaking. He glanced over again to see that they were facing one another, providing him the chance that he needed.

Sterling lined up a shot and took it—psst!

The bullet passed out of the first man’s skull and into the next, one falling forward, the other backward.

Once his gun was holstered, he rushed over to them and dragged the two behind the partition wall he had just been crouched behind. He heard scrambling inside the church, indicating that Roxie had made her move.

Most important was dealing with the pyromancers. If they unleashed their power, it wouldn’t matter if the alarm was triggered.

Their flames would be seen from all over Flagstaff.

Sterling rushed into the church. Upon reaching the nave, he saw someone heading out the back. He could have taken his shot, but he wanted it to be right. He knew, as the wind started to whip around him, that there was an aeromancer somewhere and they were likely pursuing Roxie.

Quietly racing after the mancer he’d just seen—a feat considering he was a tall man wearing a duster and cowboy boots—Sterling whisked into the corridor leading to the back door. He saw the man and pulled the trigger several times.

Psst! Psst! Psst!

The first pyromancer went down. Flames lifting around the man swelled back into his form, as if he were sucking them up. By this point, Sterling was standing directly over him. The final went into the back of his head.

The sound of a violent wind reached Sterling, one followed by the plumes of fire. He raced toward it to find an aeromancer and the second pyromancer outside of the church, just about to create a fire tornado.

Psst!

With a single shot Sterling took the aeromancer out of the air.

Roxie slammed into a female pyromancer. She shifted upward, her sharp edge cutting into the woman’s throat as flames grew around the two. Roxie changed her trajectory toward the ground and slammed the woman onto the pavement. The pyromancer fell off to the side, choking on her own blood, burps of fire leaving her lips as she tried to crawl away.

The Sunflower Kid saw this one and raised her shotgun, her shot destroying what was left of the woman’s face and throat.

“Yup.” Sterling sent his revolvers away and summoned a cigarette. Their attack had been gruesome, just as he thought it would be, but it had to be done. “Yup. Just let me smoke this, and we can be on our way.”

<I will do one final check.>

You don’t have to, he thought as he watched Roxie zip away. But he knew this was in her nature, and her blood even.

Sterling lit his cigarette, hoping it would calm his nerves. After exhaling a blue cloud of smoke, he turned to the Sunflower Kid and nodded. “You alright over there?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever killed someone that way. It was always just plants, but that aspect of my power seems to be gone.” She looked down at the shotgun in her hand and sent it away. “I suppose I’ll get used to it.”

“Shooting someone? Nah, you never do. You just accept that it is the way things are.”

Once he finished his cigarette, and Roxie returned, they headed in the library's direction.

They skirted around downtown Flagstaff, the three of them moving in complete silence.

Roxie scanned every place they passed to make sure that there weren’t any hidden enemies or traps. They never found anything, but they did occasionally come across signs of civilization, the kind that Sterling had grown used to seeing. Everything from burnt out homes to all the knickknacks that the before people collected, from toys to Kokopelli yard sculptures, vehicles to empty backyard pools and lawn furniture overgrown with succulents.

Theirs was a world of the forgotten, one picked through by post-apocalyptic scavengers who only made the work of future archaeologists more difficult, if archaeology would ever be a thing again.

If the world was able to run the Godwalkers out, what then? What happened once their alien oppressors were gone, the humans that remained forced to restructure society? What would they keep? What would they throw away? What would they refurbish?

It was something that Sterling could contemplate later as he glimpsed what he assumed was the library now. A sudden flash of light told him that either Granny or Guillermo had already arrived.

“Did you see that?” Sterling asked Roxie and the Sunflower Kid, referring to the light.

<I did.>

The Sunflower Kid didn’t say anything.

“Looks like we’re just in time. Let’s git.”

.Chapter Nine.

Sterling found Guillermo with his team, all of them holding flectomancer-enhanced crossbows, their faces painted black. The bearded man in his lensless sunglasses gave Sterling a funny look as he approached. “Where are your crossbows, amigo?”

“We got suppressors. No offense, but we ain’t taking crossbows to a gunfight, not if we can help it.”

“That’s right,” Guillermo told him. “How did it go?”

Sterling motioned to the Sunflower Kid and to Roxie. “You’re looking at us, ain’t you? And just like We Three Kings of Orient Are,” he said, pretty sure this reference made sense, “we come bearing gifts. With Roxie, we can get a scan of the library, see how many peckerheads are inside. Want us to do that while we wait for Granny?”

Guillermo nodded. “Good idea. I know she’s coming. Probably just taking her time torturing someone or something. Heh. I guess torture ain’t no laughing matter, but Granny is going to do what she’s going to do.”

“It happens.” Sterling positioned himself to get a good view of the library, which was about a block away. Roxie floated up next to him. “You ready to get over there and tell us what we’re up against?”

<I am. It’s a lot bigger than the last building.>

“It don’t matter none. We’re going to have a bigger team this time.”

<It matters some.>

“I guess you’re right,” Sterling said under his breath. “You got me hopped up from that last little battle. Sorry, Rox. We’ll do it your way, cautious as ever.”

She shifted toward the library. Once she was gone, Sterling turned to the Sunflower Kid and shrugged.

The Kid started to laugh.

“What?”

“You two are something else.”

“I’ll admit it’s a complicated history,” he said with a grin. “And you of all people know that. Also, I should add, it was your idea to come out here. We could be in Truth or Consequences getting into all sorts of trouble and selling us some peppers in the meantime. You know, we never really discussed how our little operation would have worked with your biomancer powers. It don’t matter what season it is at that point. We could get more peppers than we ever wanted, hell, maybe create our own hybrids. We could start a small industry down there. No one would be able to compete with us. Have ourselves a little monopoly.”

“Some biomancers have done things like that before,” said Guillermo, who had been listening to their conversation. “In Phoenix, there is one who sells all sorts of fruits and vegetables year-round.”

“See?” Sterling told the Sunflower Kid. “That could be us. Father-and-daughter pepper operation. We would think of a better name for it than that, obviously.”

She was quick with her next suggestion: “Skeleton Man and the Sunflower Kid Peppers.”

Sterling laughed so hard he had to turn away. They were supposed to keep a low profile, yet his daughter had hit him with a joke that wasn’t funny to anyone listening, but to him was just about the funniest thing he’d heard in a while. “I love it. Love that name.”

By the time he got control of himself, someone in Guillermo’s group had spotted a flash of light indicating that Granny was near. It wasn’t long after that Roxie returned.

“What you got, Rox?” Sterling asked the miniature Godwalker.

<There are twelve of them, and seven are regulars. There is one pyromancer, one aeromancer, a gaiamancer, an electromancer, and… a necromancer. No hostages.>

“Shee-it…” Sterling ran his hand over his beard stubble. “Did you see any dead bodies lying about?”

<No, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have them in their inventory list, and I don’t think I’d be able to see them anyway if they were simply lying about. Does anyone have a pen and paper?>

Sterling asked around and someone produced a notebook and a marker. Granny approached with her group. Rather than say anything she focused on what Sterling was doing as he took directions from Roxie, sketching the layout of the library. Once he was finished, they had a fairly good map of what they should expect, as well as general locations.

Granny looked at the map, the elderly woman licking her lips as she decided how they were going to approach. “And there are five mancers, huh?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sterling told her. “All of them are nasty in their own way, but that necromancer, that one might have some tricks up their sleeves. And by tricks I mean dead bodies. So while there are twelve of them now, if we don’t get to that necromancer first, there may be more. Not only that, there’s an electromancer, which—I don’t know if one of y’all has been struck by a bolt from one of them fools—but it ain’t pretty. Damn shit-asses. Actually, now that I say it out loud, just about every one of them mancers is going to cause a problem for us. We should focus on the ones that could get the attention of the folks downtown. That would be the pyromancer and the aeromancer, who could simply fly there. Them two, and the necromancer, are the ones that we should really worry about.”

“And what do you say, cowboy?” asked Granny. “You want to head into that library solo and take them out first? Your girl here done marked their locations on the map. Shouldn’t be rocket science.”

“Yeah, she did.” Sterling glanced over at Roxie, and saw his own murky reflection. “I say we do a bigger version of what we did back at the church, with some modifications. I’ll go in, and maybe the Sunflower Kid here can come with me. Roxie’s out front for distraction when the time is right, and the rest of y’all are there to be the cavalry.”

The older woman removed her glasses and polished them with the end of her button up. “How do we know when you have killed the three mancers?”

<Tell Granny that I will know. I can remain with them until you have done it, and then I could nudge one of them.>

Sterling explained what Roxie had said.

“Then you better nudge me,” Granny said. “I’m itching to get this show on the road.”

Sterling looked at each of the members of the group and nodded. “Same here. Now, all we got to do is get in there. And if you see us scramblin’,” he told Roxie, “everyone move into action. No chance for mistakes here.”

Sterling crept toward the library, where he paused with the Sunflower Kid behind a dumpster that had been walled off.

“Did you get any prompts back there?” he whispered to her, referring to their actions back at the church.

She shook her head. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t get any prompts or anything about XP.” Sterling quickly accessed his stat sheet to confirm his suspicions.

Class Ranking: Death Artist

Level: 90

Fortitude: 142

Strength: 117

Resolve: 229

Mana: 215/215

Current Armor Rating: 50

XP: -

XP to Next Level: -

Stat Points Available: -

Technique Points Available: -

“I didn’t either,” she said.

“Yup, figures. Anyway, I guess that part don’t matter at the moment, it’s just something that came to me.”

“Let’s just focus on taking out these mancers.”

Sterling nodded. “That was supposed to be my line.”

The two of them waited in the dark, Sterling occasionally peeking around the corner to observe the library. Roxie had already relayed to them that the back door was busted open, but it had been blocked off by the gaiamancer. Luckily, there was an open window on the second floor, one that they would be able to float up to. He could see it now, and as she had reported, the window was open.

“Look, once we get in there, things could get real hairy,” he told the Kid. “Ain’t no telling what we’ll be up against.”

The Sunflower Kid produced the sketch that he had made earlier and showed it to him. “Roxie already pointed them out to us.”

“Them mancers might have moved since then. Hopefully, the odds are in our favor, but if not, start shooting. And don’t worry about me. I damn sure won’t let nothing happen to you.”

Sterling was about to push forward when a dog came into view, a wild one by the looks of it.

He saw the two of them and growled. The dog stopped immediately once the Sunflower Kid extended her hand to him. He approached, the mangy mutt wagging his tail as her power took hold.

“We ain’t supposed to get us a pet—” Sterling said, but then the dog started to sniff him. Sterling extended his hand to the mutt and the dog licked his fingers. “Shee-it, now ain’t the damn time.”

“Can we keep him?”

The way the Sunflower Kid said this had Sterling wishing he could roll over laughing. They were too close to the library for that to happen, and he knew better than to draw attention to themselves. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this…” he said as he placed his hand on the stray dog’s head.

“He can help us.”

“As long as you don’t go getting him shot, sure, we can keep him. Look at me. Now I have two of y’all to take care of, and Roxie.”

“Roxie can take care of herself. Here’s what I’m thinking.” The Sunflower Kid pointed ahead. “We get the dog barking out front, loud and crazy. He keeps running around the place barking, which will cover up any sound we may make.”

“But that could draw someone to the window.”

“After we are inside.”

“They may attack the dog.”

“They better not.”

Sterling looked from the mutt to the Sunflower Kid and back. The dog had specks of white and black in his coat, most of his body gray. As the Sunflower Kid reached her hand out to him, his coat began to smooth out, the dog looking better and better by the moment. He grew excited like a puppy, the dog beating his tail wildly. “What do you want to name him?”

“We can think of a name later,” she said. “Let’s take care of the library first.”

“I can’t believe we just adopted a damn pet,” Sterling said as he pressed forward.

The dog followed them, up to the point when they were crouched in front of the library, the open window on the second floor above them.

Yet again the Sunflower Kid placed her hand on the side of the dog’s head. Something flickered in the dog’s eyes. “He is ready.”

“Then let’s make this happen,” Sterling whispered.

Sterling summoned his silenced revolver from his inventory list and held it at the ready, just in case someone spotted them. Upon reaching the window ledge above, he stopped, his heart fluttering in his chest from the height. Sterling licked his lips and moved up just a little further. He caught the eyes of a man sitting in the conference room, one illuminated by a lantern.

Psst!

Sterling fired his first shot through the open window and directly into the man’s head. He touched down in the room just as the man fell to the floor.

“You alright in there, Mike?” someone called from another room.

“Alright!” Sterling said, affecting an accent. He had no idea what the guy he had just killed sounded like, but there was one thing that he was certain of—the man had been the necromancer. Seated in the room with the dead mancer were three corpses, all of which had just slumped forward. “Damn necro-fools,” Sterling said as the Sunflower Kid floated into the room and lightly touched down.

“Oh.”

“Oh, is right. I swear, everyone that gets necrotic power turns out to be a goddamn shit-for-brains weirdo. Sure, it’s strange, being able to summon the dead and whatnot, but that don’t mean you gotta sit in a room with them. Damn good-for-nothing.” He pointed to the wall on his right. “Someone’s there. They already called out for Mike the necromancer here. Shhh!”

They heard footsteps. Sterling motioned the Sunflower Kid to the end of the conference room table as he took a spot right next to the door.

The door opened. Sterling grabbed a woman from behind, his hand instantly igniting as fire poured from her mouth. He fired a shot at point blank range into her skull, and held her there, his hand burning as she quickly died.

After setting her down, Sterling quietly slipped over to the window. He held his hand out the window for a moment to let it cool off, the smell of burnt skin forcing him to breathe out of his mouth.

“How bad is it?” the Sunflower Kid asked. The stray dog began to bark outside, his barks growing increasingly loud as he raced around the building.

“It’s tolerable,” Sterling said, still gritting his teeth. “I’ll survive. According to Roxie, the aeromancer is on this floor as well. If they don’t smell that, then they have one warped sense of smell. Be ready.” Stern brought his gun up, ignoring the pain in his hand, which now throbbed. He watched his skin turn pink as it healed. After taking one more look around at all the dead bodies in the room, he turned to the door. “Let’s find us a Zephyr wannabe.”

Sterling entered the hallway and turned left. He reached the door at the back of the hallway and placed his back against the wall. With a quiet whistle, he gestured for the Sunflower Kid to get into position.

The blast of wind that followed tore through the wall and slammed Sterling into the ceiling. As he landed, Sterling turned immediately and began firing into the open space. A gust of air struck him again and threw him back onto the ground.

The aeromancer’s form partially appeared in the gust of wind, the appearance followed by the sound of the Sunflower Kid’s suppressed shotgun.

Fwoot!

The aeromancer had been seconds away from doing something like sending his speared wind fist into Sterling’s face when he was blown into the side wall.

Along with the barking, Sterling now heard commotion below.

As much as he wanted to nurse the fact that he had just been tossed around like a beanbag, it was time to deal with the other two mancers before it got too loud. He prepared to race down the stairs, both his guns drawn, when the noises below stopped.

It was as if someone had triggered a switch.

For a moment, he thought something had happened, that they had somehow been defeated, but then he saw Roxie arrive at the bottom of the stairs.

<We got them.>

“Damn, Rox. That fast, huh?”

<Granny isn’t playing around. Also, what’s with the dog?>

Sterling grinned from Roxie to the Sunflower Kid as the gray dog approached. “That’s our new pet. Don’t have a name yet, but he’s a good boy. A real good boy.”

.Chapter Ten.

Any post-apocalyptic version of the world could be unpredictable, the American Southwest especially so. While it took him off guard, Sterling wasn’t at all surprised to see explosions kick off at just about the time everyone had gathered in front of the library.

“Would you look at that?” Sterling asked as he watched more explosions in downtown Flagstaff take shape. He would have probably made some quip about the fiesta starting before he could get there, but Granny cut him off.

“We’ve got to get there, now. They are rebelling, and they are outnumbered!” Two dune buggies appeared, both summoned from Granny’s inventory list. They’d clearly been worked on, with standing bars along the side for those who didn’t fit in the limited space of the cabin.

Granny practically flung herself into one of the dune buggies, Guillermo doing the same with the other. “Let’s go,” he said as his people piled in. “You too, cowboy!” Sterling gripped the handlebar, his boots firmly on the thick pipe that ran along the side of Guillermo’s dune buggy.

After sending the stray dog to her inventory list, the Sunflower Kid got on the runner bar across from him. “We will name the dog later,” she said.

Guillermo hit the gas in an attempt to catch up with Granny, who was already speeding away from the library. The vehicle fishtailed and soon caught up with the older woman.

As Sterling held on with one hand, he prepared his revolver, figuring he would take the suppressor off once they had stopped driving. Granny skidded onto a side street, one that ran directly in front of a former liquor store. A mancer landed, ripples of ice tracing across the pavement toward the dune buggy.

Psst! Psst!

Sterling got the cryomancer before she did too much damage. The dune buggy tore off again. Once it came to a final stop, the guerrillas dispersed. As everyone prepped for the assault, Sterling removed the suppressor from his revolver and sent the piece to his holster. He did the same for his other revolver.

With the shotgun still in her hands, the Sunflower Kid kept up with Sterling as they began moving through the streets towards the center of town. Granny and Guillermo kept near them, assuring Sterling that the townspeople would know that they weren’t part of the bandits.

<I don’t like this.>

“I don’t either,” Sterling told Roxie as he took a quick gander at downtown Flagstaff.

<Too easy for friendly fire.>

“I know, Rox, I know.”

The group split. Granny and her team shifted to the western quadrant of the city, while Guillermo went east. This left Sterling, Roxie and the Kid, who headed in the direction of the explosion that had just taken place.

“Be ready for anything,” he told the Kid as they neared the point of no return.

It was amazing what coming around the corner could do, one quadrant of the city quiet, the next the sight of intense machine gun fire, mancer powers, and everything from shifting concrete to volts of electricity flying across the night’s sky.

Sterling saw a man and woman behind a piece of concrete that a gaiamancer had lifted like the crest of a wave.

He rushed over to them, startling the pair at first. “I’m here with Granny,” he said before they could point their weapons at him.

“They’re here too?” asked the man. “She was right!”

“They sure are, y’all picked a good night to rebel.”

Sterling watched someone charge across a rooftop, a gust of wind whipping around her feet. It was second nature by this point, his gun already aimed as the woman speared toward them.

Bang!

The cowboy necromancer struck the aeromancer in the chest. She went down fast and hard, over the corner of a building and directly into an air conditioner unit.

“Damn, where did you learn to shoot like that?” the man asked. He started laughing nervously. “I’ve always wanted to ask someone that. Shit. We should probably be—”

“What are we looking at?” Sterling asked. “What was y’all’s plan? I need details, amigo. We can chit chat later.”

“Plan? We have no plan. She said tonight was the night.”

“Who said?”

“Lisa.”

It took Sterling a second to register that name. “Now wait a goddamn minute. You mean the shaman?”

“You know Lisa?” the man asked.

The woman interrupted their conversation as she fired her gun around the barrier. A wall of concrete came in their direction; the Sunflower Kid let loose her shotgun just as a face appeared in the concrete.

“That’s how you kill a gaiamancer,” Sterling said, surprised at how quickly everything around them began to crumble.

<We need better cover!>

“You ain’t wrong. Lead the way, Rox.”

Along with the couple they had encountered, they moved to the cover that Roxie pointed out, which would give them a moment to gauge the proceedings.

“What about Lisa?” Sterling asked the man they had fled with.

“It was her vision,” he told Sterling, wide-eyed now, the man charged with adrenaline and grit. “We had to do it tonight. She said it was our best chance for survival, even if the Hashknives are coming tomorrow. And it looks like she was right.”

Even if it wasn’t to Sterling’s liking, they decided to use the rooftops to their advantage.

The Sunflower Kid led the way, leaping from rooftop to rooftop like some sort of superhero, the kind that Sterling had seen in random comic books he had found back in Truth or Consequences.

The before people and their comics…

Sterling understood their desire for that kind of escape. Yet he lived in a time where people actually had superpowers, and it wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. It was the stuff that only comics and movies could make real, people flying around and shooting fire out of the palms of their hands, controlling the elements. Fiction.

Now, he would give anything not to have to duck under a bolt of fire from a stray pyromancer, the kind that might have burned the beard stubble off his chin had Sterling not been quick on the draw.

Bang!

Sterling and the Sunflower Kid landed on the roof nearest to the building where the Angels of Woe were clearly making their last stand. A gaiamancer had erected barriers around it, and everything from bolts of lightning to pillars of fire and spiked shards of ice added to the pandemonium below.

The cowboy necromancer took one look at it all and shook his head. “Damn mess, if you ask me.”

He was so focused on figuring out how they would assault the main complex that he didn’t notice someone land behind him.

Sterling was nearly crushed when he was struck in the back by a stray limb, one controlled by an enemy biomancer. The Sunflower Kid swiveled and tried to aim her shotgun at the man, yet he used roots growing from his own body to sweep her feet out from beneath her.

Seeing the Kid in distress had a triggering effect. Sterling yelled for the Kid at the same time he was using all of his might to prevent himself from being crushed by the biomancer’s thick plant constructs. His daughter’s white buffalo appeared out of thin air and tore off toward the enemy mancer. The collision sent the two over the roof together.

The roots holding Sterling loosened; once he was sure that the Sunflower Kid was okay, he charged the other side of the rooftop to see that the buffalo and the biomancer had gone through another window, both presumably dead.

“Watermelon,” he said as he turned back to his daughter. “We’ll get you another one,” he assured his daughter. “I promise. I swear, Kid.”

She looked up at him, and for a moment he truly felt like her father, like they had that sort of connection. “We’ll have to go back to Utah…”

Sterling started to laugh. “Shee-it, Deseret? We’ll just have to see about that. First things first, let’s end this here so we can call it a night. That was too damn close.”

Together, they approached the rooftop, where they saw Granny and Guillermo’s forces descending upon the bank building that the Angels of Woe continued to hold, guns firing, bullets pinging off any and all surfaces. Since Roxie couldn’t fire on anyone, she used both the power of surprise and the battering ram system she had perfected at the church to level her enemies. It was brutal, but she got the job done.

Sterling equipped his new mana-powered crossbow, aware that it had some range. Licking the front of his teeth, he tracked an aeromancer just about to take off from a rooftop. Once he lined up his shot, Sterling squeezed the trigger and put the bolt right through her chest, throwing the woman backward. She hit a wall and dropped to the street below.

“Didn’t expect that,” he said as he examined the crossbow, where a new bolt was already forming.

Sterling tracked other enemies moving below to the streets, mostly regulars who had souped up their stats.

“Like shooting fish in a barrel,” he said, not quite aware of where he had even gotten that statement to begin with. He killed several more from his sniper position on the rooftop, and checked again to see that he hadn’t received any XP points for doing so.

“Should we get down there?” he asked as the rebels rallied. A series of explosions took down some of the enemy gaiamancer’s walls as they pushed into the main compound.

“You go ahead,” the Sunflower Kid said. “I’m not as useful at the moment.”

“What? You’re plenty useful.”

She sat down on the rooftop and brought her knees to her chest. “I’ll be here. Promise. Besides,” she told her father, a subtle smile lifting her cheeks. “This is sort of your thing.”

“Sort of my thing?” he asked, only then realizing he was standing with his crossbow pointed in the air, the ends of his duster beating in the wind, seconds away from summoning his sickle sword. He started to laugh at himself. “Can’t argue with you there. In that case, see you on the other side, and I don’t mean ‘other side’ as in one of us is dying tonight. I just mean on the other side of this here fight. Hold tight.”

Sterling went over the side of the rooftop, ignoring the shift in his core as he dropped to the ground below. He charged toward the compound with the others. Once he reached the outer wall, he used his sword to hack at an Angels of Woe bandit who was still alive, the man just at the about to squeeze the trigger of a shotgun.

Sterling fired a bolt of his crossbow into the back of a pyromancer who had just landed and engulfed a car in flames. A jolt of electricity struck one of the guerrillas; Sterling traced his eyes across the sky to find an electromancer hovering above, more electricity pooling in the air around the man, his hair standing at attention.

Another bolt from his crossbow did the trick, the arrow piercing through the bottom of the electromancer’s chin and out the back of his head.

Soon, Sterling joined Guillermo and Granny, who were on the front lines, ducking behind a natural barrier that had been created by the gaiamancer earlier. He sent his crossbow away and summoned one of his revolvers.

Bang! Bang!

“Hell yeah! I’ve been waiting to do this all night, amigo!” Guillermo shouted as he equipped his grenade launcher and fired a shot.

Ka-thunk!

The explosion that followed had Guillermo laughing like a madman, the guerrilla leader in his element.

The doors of the bank kicked open. A woman walked out, her eyes blazing with whiteness, the woman oblivious to the flying debris and smoke all around her.

The rebels began to stand, all bringing their guns to their heads.

Bang!

All it took was one shot from Sterling, whose enhanced cowboy hat prevented the woman’s telepathy. The telemancer fell and the guerrillas swelled toward the open entrance, butchering anyone in their way. To make sure no one could escape, Sterling flew to the bank’s rooftop.

A door burst off its hinges and a final gaiamancer came charging out. Sterling cut him down with his sickle sword and fired a shot into the side of the gaiamancer’s head for good measure.

And just like that, Flagstaff was officially free of the Angels of Woe.

People cheered, they shot their weapons into the air, they grabbed bottles of liquor from their inventory lists. It was a cause for celebration, but all Sterling could think about was his daughter, who was seated on the opposite rooftop alone. He wanted to comfort her, but he didn’t know how. All he could do was follow up on the lead given to them by Don Gasper.

He needed to find Lisa the shaman.

.Chapter Eleven.

Someone lit fireworks, which sizzled off into the sky, adding bursts of red, white, and blue to the scene. A Fourth of July stash.

Now on the same rooftop as Roxie and the Sunflower Kid, Sterling watched all of this take place as he smoked a cigarette. In his other hand was a half-finished bottle of tequila, from which he took occasional swigs.

“I would offer you some if I could,” he told Roxie on the tail end of a belch. “But I guess I’ll just have to drink it for you.”

<Funny.>

“I wasn’t trying to be funny. I mean it. None of us got killed, and aside from a little issue we had up here with a rogue biomancer, everything seems to be in working order. We just need to find this here shaman woman.” Sterling looked over the rooftop again at the people celebrating below. “I wonder which one she is.”

“Probably that one.” The Sunflower Kid pointed down to a woman with a southwestern shawl draped over her shoulders, who floated as she spoke to Granny and Guillermo. The three huddled around a burnt-out Dodge pickup truck, Guillermo leaning on one of his modified golf clubs.

“Yeah, probably,” Sterling said with a chuckle. He was getting to the point that he could recognize a shaman when he saw one, and the woman, who was sinewy thin with faded tattoos on her forearms and a shawl draped over her head, certainly fit the bill.

She looked up at Sterling and the Sunflower Kid, like she knew they were looking down at her. After bidding farewell to Granny and Guillermo, the woman rose into the sky.

Sterling tipped his hat to her as she touched down on the rooftop. As dramatically as ever, she pushed the shawl off her head to announce her arrival. “I’m Lisa. I heard you were looking to meet with me.” She offered them a little bow, Sterling noticing the faded tattoos that trailed up her arms, everything from Om symbols to sailor motifs. The woman had brown hair that had been bleached by something, her dark roots showing.

“Your reputation precedes you,” Sterling told her as he put his cigarette out. “This here is the Sunflower Kid, Roxie, and you can call me Sterling.”

“Good. Skeleton Man, the Flower Child, and the Godwalker have arrived,” she said, her voice with a hum to it.

Sterling gave the woman an uneasy look. “Let me guess, you knew I was coming.”

“We wouldn’t be out here tonight if you weren’t.” Lisa turned to the edge of the rooftop and looked down at the people celebrating below. “I’ve worked hard to gain their trust, and my prophecies, the things I see, I only act on them if I am certain they will happen.”

<Here we go…>

“Where did you learn all this anyway?” Sterling asked, ignoring Roxie.

“After the Reset,” Lisa told him. “I awoke on a reservation near the border of Deseret. It was fate from there.”

“You call it Deseret too?”

“That’s what the people call it, even if it had a prior name. The power came to me, and a woman I met helped me embrace it.”

“You native?”

“I come from mixed ancestry, but the spirit does not care about that, Skeleton Man. The Great Spirit speaks through whoever will listen.” She lowered her hand from her chest, revealing a rosary, a few of the beads hanging past her fingers. “What brings you to Flagstaff?”

“Don Gasper.”

Lisa spat.

Sterling exchanged glances with the Sunflower Kid and smirked. “Heh. He usually gets that kind of response. What did ol’ Gasper do to you?”

“Don Gasper is one of the strongest, most powerful shamans I have ever encountered. His visions are unlike any other I have encountered. But he is also a womanizer, a charlatan, a drug addict, a madman, a con artist, and a babbling fool.” She spat again.

<That all checks out.>

“Yup. He may be all of those things, but he’s the one that sent us to you, and he did so from the dead, believe it or not.”

Lisa’s eyes narrowed on Sterling. “You’re a necromancer.”

“That’s right.”

“And Don Gasper is dead?”

“He died in Deseret, outside of Moab. He was killed by the Comanche, but we have since formed an alliance with them. It’s a long story.”

“And his body is with you?”

“Hell no, it ain’t. Buried it in Deseret, in a place where he could get a real good view of the landscape, right there outside of Moab. He might have been all those things you said earlier, but Gasper wasn’t a bad man in the end. And you were right about something else, his visions. I have to agree with you there. His visions always held true, even if they were a bit unorthodox. He told us to meet you, and here we are. Now, we have ourselves a little problem.”

Lisa looked from Sterling to Roxie and finally settled on the Sunflower Kid. “What kind of little problem?”

“Our powers were stripped away from us by a Godwalker I’m calling an Inquisitor. Never seen one like that, sort of shaped like a cross. It could have killed us, but it took most of our powers instead. Now, we would like to get our powers back. I don’t exactly know how you are going to be able to help us, but Don Gasper seemed to think that meeting you was the best way forward, and we already happened to be in Arizona.”

Lisa approached Sterling and the Sunflower Kid, close enough now that she could reach out and take either of their arms. “The Great Spirit is strong in both of you. The Great Spirit told me that you were coming, and it would be an insult to send you on your way without any help. I’ve learned a lot over the last several years. I studied all over the Southwest. How do you think I knew Don Gasper?”

<The Great Spirit?>

“I honestly have no idea, ma’am,” Sterling told her.

“He was my mentor, one of many. I appreciate his confidence in me, but I don’t know if I will be able to help you in the end. It is complicated, restoring one’s power, especially with the system that we can hardly understand. Yet all of this is connected in some way, even if we have our stat screens and individual abilities, we are all part of the Great Spirit. I don’t know if I can help you, but I can try. I have a few resources I can tap into, starting with Don Gasper. You will let me talk to him?”

Yet again, Sterling glanced at the Sunflower Kid. Don Gasper had specifically told him that he didn’t want to speak to Lisa, but if she was his former student…

“Sure, you can talk to him all you want.”

Lisa’s smile twitched. “Would you let me do so alone?”

“I don’t know how exactly I would do that considering I have to be there to use my blood magic.”

“I have shooting earmuffs you can put on, ones that we use out on the test range. You can sit in the other room. What do you say, Skeleton Man?”

Sterling shrugged. “If it helps you and your process, I’ll do whatever you ask. Now, it’s been a long night for us. While I don’t mind celebrating with the locals, I think it would be best if we got us a little rest. We could always fly back to Granny’s, but I don’t like flying, and she lives on the outskirts of town. Got any suggestions?”

Lisa rose back into the air and hovered over the edge of the rooftop. She adjusted her shawl and motioned for them to follow her. “You can stay in my place. Come.”

Lisa’s place turned out to be a rooftop bungalow on the other side of downtown Flagstaff. Beyond it was a pocket of small homes that had once been a nice neighborhood, one with a few abandoned restaurants, a laundromat, and a brewery that seemed to be in working order.

“Home sweet home,” she said as she lowered to the rooftop. Lisa produced a set of keys from her inventory list and opened a door that led to a rather spacious place.

There was a foldout bed that faced the door, and a room at the end of the hallway, which contained two smaller beds pressed up against the wall. “For when I have guests,” Lisa said as she motioned them into the spare room. “Like the two of you.”

Plants lined the windowsill, which the Sunflower Kid immediately went to. Dissatisfaction traced across her face as she waved her hand over the plants.

Rather than mope with her, Sterling returned his focus to Lisa, who was in the process of lighting a gas-powered stove. “I have some tea that usually helps me go to sleep. I figured you might want some.”

“No tea necessary.” Sterling grabbed the bottle of tequila from his inventory list. “I have my own elixir.”

“Suit yourself. In the morning, I’ll do some yoga on the rooftop. You two are welcome to join me.”

Sterling smirked over at the Sunflower Kid.

<Tell her I will join her.>

Roxie’s comment caused him to laugh. “You always did have a wicked sense of humor,” he said under his breath as he smiled at the Godwalker, who floated near a sofa with a patchwork quilt draped over it. “I can’t say if I’ll join you for yoga or not,” he finally told Lisa, “but I’ll try not to disturb you.”

She turned back to the rooftop. “Suit yourself.”

“You’re going to go back then?” Sterling asked the shaman.

“It is good that I celebrate with my fellow Flagstaffians. They put their trust in my vision and I honor them for it. In the morning, after I’ve done yoga, I will speak with Don Gasper and decide what happens from there. I can tell that you are feeling inadequate without your powers, Skeleton Man.”

“Inadequate? I’m feeling just—”

“I want to confirm a few things with him, something I may be able to try. But you have to be willing to trust me. Where were you heading before you came here?”

“Toward California,” said Sterling. “Or Californ-I-Ay, like y’all people seem to call it.”

“Toward Californ-I-Ay, yes? Then you are in luck.”

“How so?”

Lisa brought her hands together in front of her chest into a prayer position. She looked up at the sky and offered a satisfied nod. “We had a backup plan. If tonight’s counteroffensive didn’t work, the Hashknife Outfit was set to provide backup. They should be arriving tomorrow. You can meet them. Perhaps they can—”

“We weren’t here to broker any kinda peace deal, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Lisa gave Sterling a strange look. “Why would I be thinking that?”

“I guess you didn’t talk enough to Guillermo and Granny down there. Long story short, we have connections with the Comanche, and connections with the Serpents of Paradise up in Deseret. Good connections. That’s not why we’re here, but it is something that I guess should be discussed at some point.”

“You mean that’s not why you are in Arizona? In Flagstaff?”

“Not particularly. We came here because I’ve never seen the ocean, and it’s something I would like to do. Now before you correct me, I know the ocean isn’t anywhere in the vicinity of Central Arizona. But to get from point A to point B, we have to pass to Flagstaff. The Kid here wants to go to the nation’s former capital, the District of Columbia, as I like to call it. So we’re going west, and then we’re going east.”

“That’s admirable,” Lisa said as she adjusted her shawl over her shoulders. “And that’s the reason you were going to Californ-I-Ay, right?”

“It is indeedy.”

“Some kind of vision quest?”

“No, as cliché as it sounds, I just sort of want to see the ocean,” Sterling told her. “I really don’t know why.”

“Who knows? Maybe all these seemingly divergent paths will align. That is usually how it goes, especially when you’re open to interpretations from the world beyond.”

“The spirit world?” the Sunflower Kid asked.

“Yes, Flower Child, where the Great Spirit calls home. Sometimes I feel like we are all spirits, and we just don’t know it.” Lisa headed out the door, and was just about to close it behind her when she stopped. “Don’t forget to join me for yoga in the morning.”

“Shee-it…” Sterling said after the shaman was gone. “Why do I always find myself getting into some goddamn shaman business.”

<I’ve wondered that before.>

Sterling snorted. “Guess someone has to do it. Anyhow, Kid? Let’s try to get some rest. And as for yoga, you can go ahead and count me the hell out. Although I might try to write myself a little desert haiku in the morning if there’s time.”

.Chapter Twelve.

Sterling hadn’t been here before, yet he recognized the otherworldly nature of the landscape that stretched before him. It was rimmed in stones that reminded him of church spires, only there was something different about them. Crumbled in nature, the numerous stone spires almost looked like the bodies of Sycamore trees, an image that bordered on grotesque.

It was a light purple night, the stars bright to the point that they seemed overwhelming. Even so, it was what Sterling saw before the stone pinnacles that truly caught his eyes. There was no crack in the earth below, yet a spiral of energy, turquoise in nature, seeped from the dry hardtop as if hell had opened up.

The coil of power beckoned him forward.

Even if he got the sense that it could rip him in half, Sterling took a staggering step toward the vortex. He noticed two moons in the sky now, both casting their gaze on him as if they were judging the cowboy necromancer.

Two moons?

With a cigarette held tightly between two fingers, Sterling continued toward the helical source of power. He threw his arms out wide and was carried into the air. He began spinning, wisps of turquoise energy tracing all around him, cutting through his clothing and dipping deep into his flesh.

Sterling threw his head back and laughed as more moons appeared.

The sound of a dog barking woke Sterling the next morning. He rolled over to find the Sunflower Kid playing with the dog that she had recruited back at the library, the one that she had sent to her inventory list the previous night.

The dog ran over to him and began licking his hands. “I kind of forgot about this little feller. You figured out a name for this one yet?”

“I thought you would want to help me.”

“Let’s see, a name for a cute pooch, but something also tough, because we ain’t naming this dog something like Sugar Muffin. Hell nah.” Sterling scratched the gray dog behind its ears. “You definitely ain’t no Sugar Muffin.”

<Sugar Muffin. That’s a cute name.>

“Don’t you go giving her ideas, Rox,” Sterling told the Godwalker, who floated in the doorway.

“I was thinking something a little rougher too. Back in Albuquerque, I knew this person who had a cat named Buster. What about Buster?” the Kid asked Sterling.

“Buster?”

The dog barked.

“Quiet now,” he said as he continued to pet the dog. “Yup. Buster it is. Now, y’all seen Lisa around here?”

<The shaman lady just finished yoga. She said she is ready to talk to Don Gasper. She was chanting for thirty minutes and it was annoying. >

Sterling watched Buster take off toward the Sunflower Kid. “Hell’s bells, I’m just waking up over here and we already got people chanting.”

<I don’t think she ever went to sleep.>

“Damn shamans.” Sterling went for his cowboy hat. He placed it on his head and stood. Buster approached again, but stayed down like a good dog. Sterling was really starting to appreciate his company. Even better, the dog seemed to cheer his daughter up. “I should be asking for coffee or something, but I’m guessing she’s going to be offering tea.”

“I already had some.”

“And?”

The Sunflower Kid shrugged. “It was good enough. Lisa has hard biscuits too. They weren’t bad. Scones? I think she called them scones.”

“Scones?” Sterling coughed into a closed fist. “Look at us living that first-class-five-star life, I tell you what. And what’s with Arizona and scones, anyway? Seems like people like them here. We’d make a killing if we figured out a way to combine their love for scones with peppers. But that’s just me thinking outside the box.”

<Maybe you should do more thinking inside the box.>

After a bit of playful banter with Roxie, Sterling found Lisa in the living room of her rooftop flat. Now wearing a flowing set of robes over athletic leotards, the woman was seated on an ottoman with her legs crossed beneath her body. “There’s tea and scones, Skeleton Man.”

“I heard. But no coffee, right?”

“No. I don’t drink coffee. It is bad for the spirits.”

“Shee-it, which spirits? Nope, don’t answer that. I’ll just take your word for it,” he told her, itching for a cigarette.

Lisa gestured to a pair of shooting earmuffs, which were olive green and a bit scratched up. “Those are for you.”

“For me?”

“Like I told you last night, I need to have a private conversation with Don Gasper. The less you hear, the better. So I’ll ask you to wear these.”

“You realize that my power don’t last very long, right? You ever worked with someone like me before?”

“I realize that, and yes, I have.”

Sterling pursed his lips. “Were they a good necromancer? It seems like most got a screw loose.”

“No, they were not. But that’s neither here nor there. I have a pole I can poke you with when I need you to strengthen Gasper’s face. Don’t worry about that part.”

“A what now?” Sterling saw the pole, which looked like it used to be part of a mop, leaning against the wall. He shook his head at Lisa.

“When I need you to use the power again, I’ll poke you with it.”

“Let me get this straight: you expect me to sit over here away from you while you are having a top-secret conversation with Don Gasper, one in which you plan to poke me every time his form starts to fade?”

Lisa nodded, no indication on her face that this request was out of the ordinary. “I knew you wouldn’t mind. I am trying to help you, after all. And we need to do this soon. The Hashknife Outfit will arrive any moment now, I’m sure of it.”

Still grumbling, Sterling summoned the bottle of Don Gasper’s blood. He poured a little in a teacup and set it on the ground in front of her. “That should be enough.”

As he got into position, the Sunflower Kid stepped out of the bedroom, wearing all white as usual along with her puffy white jacket. Her pink hair was now cut short, into a crew cut with a line shaved down the side, one shaped into a lightning bolt.

“These are for you,” he told her.

Rather than put the second pair of shooting earmuffs on, the Sunflower Kid simply left, Roxie and Buster following after her onto the rooftop.

“Guess that makes this easier. Welp, you ready to do this, or what?”

“I’ve been waiting on you, Skeleton Man,” Lisa said, a hint of annoyance in her voice. “The Great Spirit has as well.”

Let’s just get this over with, Sterling thought as he removed his cowboy hat and placed the earmuffs over his head. He got comfortable in his seat against the wall, within poking distance of Lisa’s pole.

Sterling summoned Don Gasper’s bloody visage. While the earmuffs he was wearing blocked out some of the conversation that followed, he got the hint that there was some agitation on Lisa’s part. She poked Sterling with the stick at some point. He turned and summoned Don Gasper again, who now wore a fraught look on his bloody face.

Their muffled conversation continued until Lisa stood and began screaming, the woman pointing her finger in Don Gasper’s face.

Sterling removed his earmuffs. “Hey! Let’s keep things—”

Lisa used her foot to sweep the cup of Don Gasper’s blood aside, shattering it. This sent the blood across the floor of her living room, which only made her angrier at Don Gasper. “You asshole! You fu—”

“Hey! You need to cool your damn horses,” Sterling told the shaman. “That there is precious blood, and you’re lucky that I have—”

“Get… get out of my home. Out! Now! I’m not…” Lisa screamed, veins in her neck appearing as she bared her teeth. “I’m not going to help you do shit! Not after what he did! Out! I said get out!”

Lisa charged at Sterling and made like she was going to punch him. She stopped just a few inches away from him, eye to eye with the cowboy necromancer.

“Don’t do it,” he said coolly, secretly wishing she would. Movement near the entrance to her flat caught his attention. Sterling spotted the Sunflower Kid standing there, Buster at her side, Roxie and Granny behind her.

Seeing Lisa threaten Sterling riled Granny to the point that she was now having to be held back by the Sunflower Kid. “Don’t you go threatening nobody, Lisa, you goddamn tramp! That man there helped us!”

More yelling ensued, the two women screaming at one another until Sterling had had enough. He summoned his revolver and pointed it at the ceiling.

Bang!

He kept his weapon in the air as he spoke: “Now, you already done disrespected me by knocking my friend’s blood to the side there. Gasper said you was going to help us, and if you ain’t going to help, then we’ll just be on our way.”

“I’m not helping shit!”

“Yeah, I can see that,” he told the woman. “No need for hootin’ and hollerin’. And Granny, thank you for coming to our defenses, but let’s dial it back a notch.”

Lisa stormed away. She slammed the door at the back of the space, which Sterling assumed was either a restroom or a closet. Either way, he didn’t care.

Once it was clear she wasn’t going to come back out, Sterling sent his gun to his inventory list. He squinted up at the hole in the ceiling that he had just caused. “She can get it fixed.”

Granny bowed her head to some degree, and grabbed the cross around her neck. “Satan, don’t you start now,” she mumbled to herself. She looked up at Sterling. “I was coming here to say that the Hashknives will be here soon. You said you was trying to go to Californ-I-Ay, right?”

“That’s right. The coast.”

“Maybe there’s a way to help speed you along,” Granny said. “It’s the least we could do. After all, you saved us, and not in the way that you’re thinking. You made us look strong. The Hashknives may be bringing the cavalry, but they will see that we cleaned it up ourselves, and they will likely reward us for doing so. That’s partially because of you, and, well, her,” she said as she gestured to the hallway where Lisa had last been. “But screw her. Anyway, I got a guy who works with them. He owes me a favor.”

Sterling, Roxie, and the Sunflower Kid joined Granny near the railroad tracks outside of downtown Flagstaff. Guillermo and some of his guerrillas were there, the bearded man in the lensless Oakley glasses happy to see Sterling. He approached and shook his hand. “Que pedo, guey. Didn’t get to thank you last night.”

“Thank me? Thank you,” said Sterling. “Y’all cleaned up shop too.”

“Yeah, I guess we did. Got you a little going away package. A couple things, actually.” Guillermo turned his palm around and produced a bottle of NyQuil, the color somewhere between dark green and midnight blue.

Sterling chuckled. “Shucks, you shouldn’t have.”

“And that’s not the only one. I got some heartburn medication for all them peppers that you eat.” Guillermo proceeded to give Sterling various medications, from aspirin to Pepto-Bismol. He gave him another bottle of NyQuil, muscle relaxers, and some condoms just to be funny.

“I’ll send it all to my list, but that don’t mean I’ll use it,” Sterling said. For some reason he glanced over to Roxie, who slowly turned away from them, as if she were judging him. “Don’t you go judging me, Rox.”

Guillermo rubbed his hands together. “Now for the good stuff.” He summoned two flectomancer-modified golf clubs. “From Granny and me. Well, she made them, but I asked her to.”

“Damn right I made them,” said the older woman.

Sterling took one of the golf clubs from Guillermo. The piece was similar to the one that he had seen a couple days back, the clubhead thick with spikes on it. He stepped back and acted as if he were going to tee up. “Not bad at all.”

“I call that one the skullcrusher. Hell,” Guillermo said as he handed the Sunflower Kid the other golf club. “This one is a skullcrusher as well.”

“Skullcrusher, huh?” Sterling smiled at the guerrilla leader. “Thank you kindly.”

“And one last thing. Now, this here is mine, but Granny says she’ll make me another. Ain’t that right?” he called over the older woman.

“Yeah, yeah. Just give it to them already.”

Guillermo’s mana-powered grenade launcher pixelated into existence. “All you need to do is point and squeeze. Well, that and try not to blow yourself up.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Sterling told him as he examined the weapon. It was shaped like a revolver yet it was much larger, almost reminding Sterling of an oversized flare gun, the piece jet black and well-crafted. “Point and squeeze, huh?”

“I mean, there’s some trajectory stuff you should toy around with, but that’s pretty much it.” Guillermo started to explain before he was cut off by the sound of a distant propeller.

“Shoot, here they come!” Granny announced. “Omar is the name of the pilot. Real good guy, and he owes me a favor. He owes me a lot of favors considering all the things I’ve made for him. He’ll take you to the border, I’m sure of it.”

“Yeah?” Sterling asked as he looked up to the sky, where he saw something approaching.

They were certainly unlike any helicopters that Sterling had ever seen before. Made of the flectomancer-enhanced metal and with hardly any glass aside from the front window, the helicopters were a product of post-apocalyptic ingenuity, and looked like they’d been pieced together with whatever was lying around at the time. They didn’t seem to run on fuel, Sterling recognizing the same turquoise energy that he’d seen rimming his sickle sword and the revolver that Raylan made.

They were joined by mancers, who flew toward the ground wearing helmets and goggles.

“That’s him right there.” Granny pointed to one of the choppers with the landing skids painted red, a shark-like face on the front. The mancers were first to come forward, where they began discussing things with Granny and a few of the other locals while the helicopters touched down on the periphery. As a wind kicked up, Sterling was reminded of aeromancers, which made him think of Zephyr.

He wasn’t the only one. “It reminds me of Zee,” said the Sunflower Kid.

“Damn right it does.”

<I hope the others haven’t lost their powers.>

“Only way to find that out is to get back to the Land of Enchantment.”

There was some concern about the miniature Godwalker, but Guillermo and Granny smoothed that out relatively quickly. Soon, the older woman was leading Sterling and a small group over to the helicopter in question. They found a man named Omar helping unload crates, which locals were disappearing to their inventory lists.

“Granny!” Omar came forward and gave her a big side hug. While he was thin, Omar was exceptionally tall, with just about the longest pair of legs Sterling had ever seen on a man. Omar had curly dark hair and light brown skin, a few moles on his neck beneath his Hashknife Outfit flight suit, which had a popped collar.

Granting motioned to Sterling and his companions. “They’re the ones that helped us. It’s a longer story than that, but they came here with Guillermo and his group. Anyway, I promised them something.”

“What’s that?” asked Omar.

“Well, I’ll let them explain it better if they want, but they are heading to Californ-I-Ay. Lisa was supposed to help them with something, something about their powers, but she had a hissy fit.” Granny gestured toward the building that Lisa lived in. She curled her hand into a middle finger and gave the shaman the bird. “Damn shaman.”

“A power issue? Y’all are mancers then?” Omar asked Sterling and the Sunflower Kid.

“We sure are,” said Sterling. The Sunflower Kid, who was holding Buster in her arms, simply nodded.

“Well, you might just be in luck then. We discovered something just across the border. Normally, it wouldn’t be something I would share with an outsider, but considering what you have done here, I figure it’s okay to tell you.”

“Discovered something?” Sterling asked Omar. He lit a cigarette that he had been saving and took a drag from it. “I’m all ears, amigo.”

“It is out past the Mojave Desert. There is an energy point, a big pillar of it. I don’t know what it is exactly, but anyone that gets near it can certainly feel its power. Could be worth exploring. It’s not so far from the border. I could drop you off there.”

Sterling felt his heart skip a beat as he recalled the dream he had had that very morning. There had been a vortex of some kind of power, one that was coming out of the Earth itself. He remembered approaching it now, his arms outstretched.

No way…

He exchanged glances with the Sunflower Kid. “What do you think?” he asked, even though he already knew that this was where they needed to go. He could sense it.

“It is better than relying on a shaman,” she told him.

<I agree with the Kid.>

“Yeah,” Sterling said as he ashed his cigarette. “If you wouldn’t mind taking us out that way, we would love to join you.”

Omar nodded. “And don’t worry, it has oxygen. We got that part fixed.”

“Come again?”

“The helicopter.” Omar pointed his thumb at his modified craft. “If we fly high enough, you’re going to want oxygen. It’s all rigged up. I don’t mind taking you out there to this energy point, especially because, well, it’s a beautiful sight.”

Sterling took another look at the helicopter and felt a shiver run down his spine. It only dawned on him at that moment how they would be traveling.

“I think we should do it,” the Sunflower Kid said. “I’ll send Buster to the inventory list, maybe Roxie as well.”

Sterling shook his head. “And we would… what? Just drop out of it once we get there?”

Omar didn’t quite answer his question. “I got extra helmets and goggles. And then we’re square,” he told Granny. “You can’t keep calling in favors like that.” He smiled at the older woman. “Even if I owe you big.”

“I’ll get you something nice next time I see you,” Granny assured the helicopter pilot. “Maybe a grenade launcher. I’ve got another to make anyway.”

.Chapter Thirteen.

No matter how much he tried to accept them as a fact of life, Sterling would never like heights. And as he quickly learned, he would especially hate flying. The sudden shifts in the helicopter, the wind, the fact that he was now taking deep gulps of oxygen through a mouthpiece made from the same strange metal that flectomancers produced out of thin air, the feeling in his gut—all of it.

It was by far one of the worst experiences for Sterling, and that was without actually blinking his eyes open and looking out the window, seeing just how high up they were. He had been told before takeoff that they would cruise above ten thousand feet. According to Omar, they could go higher, but since the cabin of the helicopter wasn’t pressurized, it would only make things dicier.

What I wouldn’t do for a cigarette right now, Sterling thought as he continued to suck in deep breaths.

He wore a helmet now and goggles, but this didn’t prevent him from pressing the goggles against his palms and keeping his eyes shut. Not seeing what was happening helped to some degree, but he could still feel the slight trembles of the craft, the ups and downs as they glided over random pockets of rough air.

A bit of turbulence caused Sterling to open his eyes and curse under his breath, a string of words that blended English and Spanish.

It amazed him how easily the Sunflower Kid sat up front with Omar, helmet on her head, her excitement visible in the way that she was perched on the edge of her seat. He wanted to say something to her about wearing her seatbelt, but he didn’t. The fact they were flying so high above the ground didn’t seem to bother anyone but him.

After another deep breath, Sterling forced himself to look out the window, cringing as he did so. Everything was so far away now, the scattered hills and arid landscape insignificant at this height. It seemed like one could simply skip over it all and find something greener on the other side.

Like grass, Sterling thought, remembering the old adage. Then he wondered where he had first heard the phrase, how it had stuck with him after the Reset.

Sterling wanted to ask how much longer it would be, but he had already been told that it would take a few hours.

Sterling once again covered his goggles with his palms. Just going to need to sit tight and keep my trap shut.

An idea came to him. With his eyes shut, Sterling pressed his head back and tried to doze off. He’d read that people often fell asleep on airplanes. Why would this be any different? But he soon found out that a helicopter just wasn’t the same, not that he remembered what it would have been like to fly on a plane. For that matter, had he ever flown in his previous life? There was no way of knowing unless he asked the Sunflower Kid.

Sterling tried to sleep. He tried to trick himself into thinking he was riding in the backseat of a dune buggy with his eyes closed, someone competent at the wheel. That helped to some degree, but every time light came through in a certain way, or he felt powerful jolts, his remembered exactly where he was.

Time passed, yet Sterling never grew comfortable with the feeling of flying in the helicopter. From tingling limbs to a thrumming heart, Sterling experienced all the telltale signs of fear. At some point, he summoned one of his bottles of tequila and took a swig from it, the alcohol burning on the way down. He thought about drinking some NyQuil as well, but didn’t know how it would sit with the tequila. The last thing he wanted to do was throw up.

Another hour passed.

Sterling opened his eyes, and was just about to call out to the Sunflower Kid when she pointed out the window. He followed her finger toward the ground. He saw what looked like a twister of energy, one in a wide open space surrounded by crumbled sandstone pinnacles.

It was the same location as the one from his dream. It had to be.

He felt a sudden lightness in his chest, a tingling that could have been because of his fear of heights, or the fact that things were playing out the way he had envisioned them.

The Sunflower Kid turned and gave Sterling the thumbs up.

“That’s it, I’m going to lower us down,” Omar announced, his voice barely audible. “Hold on tight!”

They lowered about half a mile away from the spiral of energy. The wind whipped around the helicopter as it settled on a stretch of hardtop, dust twisting into the air. There were scattered rocks to the left, ones that seemed to grow in size until they became the sandstone pinnacles beyond the cylindrical vortex of power.

Sterling unbuckled his seatbelt after the helicopter’s propellers fully stopped and he’d been able to sit there for a moment to get his bearings. By this point, the Sunflower Kid was already standing outside along with Omar, both still in their helmets, the pair gazing out at the spiral of power rising unnaturally from the land.

“Beautiful, ain’t it?” Omar asked as Sterling approached.

“Yeah,” Sterling told the pilot. “That’s something, alright.” He knew what was supposed to happen next. But the wind zipping around the vortex, bolts of turquoise electricity traveling up its center, had him second-guessing his vision.

Was he really supposed to just walk right into it?

Omar motioned to it again. “This was what you wanted to see, yeah? I’ve got a polaroid camera if you want to take a picture.”

“No pics; maybe that’s something we can do later.” Sterling took a step closer to the source of power, then he went ahead and summoned Roxie, who immediately floated back upon seeing the stationary tornado of mana beyond.

<It’s a natural energy point.>

“Is that what your system is telling you?” Sterling asked the Godwalker.

<I don’t really have a system in the way that you may think I do, but yes. Let’s call it that. What do we do now?>

“Well, I’m going to go ahead and make a confession to y’all, you included, Mr. Omar.” Sterling cleared his throat and sniffed. “I had a vision last night, and in that vision, I was supposed to walk right to the middle of that there vortex. So that’s what I’m going to do. Now, it seems risky and stupid, and hell, it probably is. So y’all don’t have to join me. I just want you to understand why I’m about to do what I’m about to do.”

“I have no reason to walk into the middle of that thing,” Omar said, showing the three of them his palms, “but you are more than welcome to.”

“If we survive, I guess we will just continue heading west, to the ocean.”

“Is that where you were heading originally?” Omar asked Sterling. “I thought you just said Californ-I-Ay. Didn’t specify where.”

“I promised myself that I would get a glimpse of the ocean one day, and that’s why we are out here. Next, we will make our way to the East Coast. That’s our plan, anyway, until we were sidetracked by the loss of our power. Say, I’ve got a question for you: has anybody in the Hashknife Outfit ever encountered, or maybe talked about, a Godwalker that was shaped like a cross?”

“I haven’t heard anything about something like that, but upper leadership may have.”

“And where are they?”

“Upper leadership?” Omar licked his lips. “Phoenix, mostly. I fly there frequently from Kingman. Half the leadership is in Kingman, the other half is in the Phoenix area. Talk about a big city, that whole area down there, Phoenix-Tempe-Scottsdale. I don’t know what else is out there. I’m assuming that whatever is left of Los Angeles is larger, but boy if it ain’t quite the sight down there in the Valley of the Sun.”

“I reckon. So no Inquisitor Godwalker then?”

Omar shook his head. “Not to my knowledge.”

“And is that where we will head to now, Kingman?”

“That was the plan, cowboy, but if you are trying to go to the ocean, that might be a trip I’m interested in making as well.”

“Do you have enough fuel?” asked the Sunflower Kid.

Omar gestured toward his helicopter. “Bessie here? You’d be surprised what a technomancer and a flectomancer can do when working together. It has what is essentially a limitless fuel supply through mana. It uses regenerative propulsion. The only true power it takes to start is to get the propeller spinning, but then at that point it is completely regenerating itself. It’s fascinating, this tech. But I won’t get into a mechanical breakdown. Most people don’t like those kind of things. How’s this? If you are going to the west coast, I would happily take you. Never been myself.”

“You haven’t?” Sterling asked Omar. “If I had something like your chopper and I wasn’t afraid of heights, I’d be traveling everywhere. Globetrotter style.”

“It’s not technically mine, but because I have flown for the Hashknives for a while, I am given some freedom as to what I’m able to do with it, well, as long as I make my supply runs. I don’t have another supply run for two days. So as long as I’m back in Kingman by then, no one will bat an eye.”

Sterling shook his head. He appreciated the invite, but he wasn’t so interested in hopping in the back of the helicopter again. Still, it would make the trip easier, and until Roxie could teleport…

“Welp, let me smoke here, take another shot of tequila, maybe eat a pepper, and then let’s see what this here energy center can do. We may die. Omar, if that’s the case. You know what? I’ll write down something for you.” After Sterling smoked a cigarette, he took a page out of his journal and wrote down some information about Raylan in Madrid. He folded it up and handed it to the helicopter pilot. “Just get word to this man here what happened to us, flectomancer named Raylan. He can tell the others.”

Omar hesitated at first, but ultimately obliged as he took the paper from Sterling. “Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that. What now?”

“I’m going to walk right into the middle of that thing. Kid? You can go ahead and hang on back, you too, Rox.”

<We are coming with you.>

“Now—”

The Sunflower Kid stepped up to him. “We’re coming with you, Dad.”

Sterling nodded, only then realizing once the sun hit his eyes that the helmet was still on his head, not to mention the goggles from his earlier flight. He thought about summoning his cowboy hat instead, but figured the helmet and goggles would be more appropriate considering the wind that flitted through the air around the vortex.

After smoking a cigarette, taking a shot of tequila, and eating a pepper, he offered his hand to the Sunflower Kid. “Well?”

She took it, and together, with Roxie hovering alongside them, the three started toward the vortex.

Once they were about halfway there, Sterling felt the power begin to push him away. He was glad he was still wearing protective gear as bits of sand and dust were kicked into the air, stinging as they flew past them.

He kept his head down as they grew closer to the helical column of power, Sterling still holding his daughter’s hand. His next step came with a new sensation, one of floating. Sterling continued forward, ignoring it, his eyes now fixed on a point far beyond the spiral of turquoise energy.

He would survive this.

As everything fizzled all around him, granulated to the point that it was hard to make out, Sterling did the same thing he’d do so many times before.

The cowboy necromancer accepted his fate, and pushed on.

He would survive this.

.Chapter Fourteen.

Sterling didn’t know how long he had been bathed in powerful turquoise energy. He only knew when it was time to step out of it.

There was another thing that came with leaving the spiral of mana. He got this notion that there were other points like this, and each would do something for him. The only way he could reason it out in his head was to consider this notion some kind of sixth sense. After all, he had seen in his vision that this would work, that he would survive. And he had. It was instinctual in that way. They had to find more of them.

Sterling turned to look at the Sunflower Kid, and from there to Roxie.

“Welp, that was interesting,” he said as he continued toward Omar’s helicopter. Sterling accessed his stats as he walked. While he felt a hint of disappointment in seeing that nothing had changed about his initial stats, the vortex had certainly done something.

Class Ranking: Death Artist

Level: 90

Fortitude: 142

Strength: 117

Resolve: 229

Mana: 215/215

Current Armor Rating: 50

XP: -

XP to Next Level: -

Stat Points Available: -

Technique Points Available: -

The change came when he transitioned to his class skills.

Necromancer Class Skills

Death Whisper: Class Proficiency Level 4

Casting Cost: 6 Mana Points

Description: Can communicate with the deceased; blood needed to do so.

——

Resurrection: Class Proficiency Level 8

Casting Cost: 5 Mana Points

Description: Can summon at will, but doing so takes a cut of MP until the animate is relinquished.

——

Enhanced Durability: Null

Grafting casting cost: Null

Description: Enhanced durability and grafting.

——

Death Sense: Null

Description: Able to sense the bodies of the dead around you. Higher levels allow for wider ranges, including remote animating.

——

Mold Manipulation: Null

Casting Cost: Null

Able to manipulate and conjure mold. Higher levels allow for stronger and further reaching creations.

——

Osteomancy: Null

Casting Cost: Null

Description: Able to get an exploratory vision when coming into contact with bones.

——

Soul Absorption: Null

Casting Cost: Null

Description: Temporarily absorbs the soul energy of living things.

Sterling could raise the dead again; just as he was going to announce this to Roxie and the Sunflower Kid, he saw a pair of vines cut through the soil and lift into the air. They bloomed into beautiful sunflowers that formed a trail in front of them, one fit for royalty.

“Looks like you got your control over plant life back,” he said to the Sunflower Kid. The teenage biomancer smiled.

The front of Roxie’s form shifted as she produced her laser cannon. She fired it, the beam of power causing Omar to jump to his feet.

<I can’t teleport, but it looks like I can use my cannon again.>

“Shee-it, looks like it,” Sterling said. “All of this means…”

He summoned Manchester’s bones. They formed into the body of a horse, clicking into place. Sterling placed a saddle on his skeletal steed and mounted up. “That’s a good boy, that’s a real good boy, Pingo,” he told the horse. “Y’all let Omar know everything is fine. I’m going to take a long ride around. I’ll be back in a bit.”

Sterling took off. After he settled into a steady pace he placed his hand on his helmet and sent the piece to his inventory list, along with his goggles. Once his cowboy hat was on, he buckled down and rode even faster. He came to the other side of the valley, where he found a sign from the National Park Service that listed the location as the Trona Pinnacles.

“Trona Pinnacles, huh?” he whispered.

He took another look at the pinnacles, and recognized the rock formations as tufa spires, ones made of porous rock. There had to be hundreds of them here, some well over a hundred feet high.

Eventually, he hopped off Manchester and sat on the ground for a moment as he rolled a couple cigarettes. The sun was almost set now, the night shifting purple, a blanket of stars above. Scanning his surroundings, he saw an abandoned Bureau of Land Management truck. The BLM truck sat on four flat tires, its bumper rusted over, most of the windows still intact.

Sterling approached it with a cigarette in his mouth and noticed the exit point of a bullet on the driver side. Sure enough, there was a dead body inside the cab, one that had been picked apart by various critters that had come in through the sliding back window, which was open.

He waved his hand at it and the skeleton came alive. It turned to Sterling, tilted its head, and gave him the peace sign. He released his power.

Sterling turned back to Manchester. “That’s a good Pingo,” he told the horse as he knocked his knuckles against the side of his bone snout. Manchester bobbed his head up and down. “You know you’re good. And just wait until you meet Buster. He’s our newest member. Heh. I guess we shouldn’t call him a member. Member of what? You know what I mean, Pingo, you know. Don’t worry about your bones. He’s a good dog. He won’t want a nibble.”

After he finished his cigarette, Sterling flicked it to the ground, put it out with the heel of his boot, and mounted his bone horse. He started back toward the helicopter.

He arrived to find Omar and the Sunflower Kid seated around a campfire, Buster resting next to Sterling’s daughter. Roxie floated nearby as well, just a bit further off, as if she were standing guard.

“A skeleton horse, huh?” asked Omar.

“His name is Manchester,” Sterling told the pilot. Once he dismounted, Manchester’s form crumbled into a pile of bones, which Sterling sent to his inventory list.

“We were wondering when you would come back, cowboy. We cooked up some beans, some corn tortillas, and some meat. Grab yourself a seat. Or hell, pull one out of your inventory list if you got one.”

Sterling tipped his hat at Omar. “A little campfire taco sesh, huh? Need any peppers?”

“I already gave him some,” the Sunflower Kid said. “Chimayó, I believe.”

“Nice. That’ll give it a nice little punch.”

A seat twisted together, one made of roots and other local fauna. “For you, Dad.”

.Chapter Fifteen.

Sterling slept well that night, even if the California desert was chilly. He enjoyed the cold wind, the way it pushed him deeper beneath his sleeping bag to the point that his head was covered up. It was a good rest. It was a much-deserved rest.

And the morning was even better.

The smell of eggs and sizzling bacon pulled Sterling out of his deep slumber. He sat up to find Omar perched on a rock, the pilot with two cast-iron frying pans going at the same time. The Sunflower Kid stood beside him watching the food cook.

Her hair was completely white now, arranged into a fashionable mullet. Aside from her white puffy jacket, pants, and her sandals, she also had gone for white eyes and eyebrows. She looked otherworldly, as did Buster, who now had a completely white coat and white eyes as well.

“I see you changed up our pup,” Sterling said as the dog approached. He began scratching Buster behind his ears. The stray barked once, but then quieted down as he licked Sterling’s fingers.

“I hope you’re ready for a big breakfast,” Omar called to Sterling. “I don’t know if I told you yesterday, but I’m from Phoenix, and they used to have this breakfast restaurant there called Snooze, the people from before did. Anyway, in picking through the rubble I got a few ideas. And I wasn’t the only one. There are others from the area that make the same kind of stuff. I got pancakes, bacon, eggs, even some home fries. Real good stuff.”

Sterling’s mouth watered as he approached. He saw how Omar had arranged the food in the two cast-iron skillets, the yolk of the eggs just starting to quiver. “Y’all ain’t eating too bad down there, are you?”

“No, the Hashknives got it pretty much figured out. Glad I got the job flying for them.”

“In that case, let me have a little morning smoke first.” Sterling looked to where the helicopter had been last night. It was gone now, in Omar’s inventory list. He was surprised it fit, but agreed that it made sense not to have it sitting out in the open.

Sterling turned away from the fire and rolled a cigarette. As he did, Roxie approached.

<Did you sleep well?>

“Like a newborn baby. That’s a saying, right?”

<I think it depends on the baby.>

“How about you, Rox? Anything to report?”

<Other than this area is peaceful and I can feel the power here? No, nothing to report.>

“Don’t know about you, but I get the sense that we shouldn’t go back into the energy center.” Sterling used the cigarette in his mouth to point to the cyclone of mana twisting in the distance. “At least that is the idea I got.”

<I got the same. But we could find others?>

“That’s exactly what I was thinking. We still got powers that need getting. We’ll head out to the coast, spend ourselves a day on the beach, and then keep on keeping on. Back toward civilization. Well, I’m guessing there is civilization out there. Got to be. Always is. Maybe we should head up to Deseret.”

<Why?>

“Something tells me we ain’t done with that place yet, Rox. And besides, maybe we do have something else that we are needing to do in these parts. And by these parts I mean the entire Southwest. We got the Hashknife Outfit, we got the Serpents of Paradise, and we got the Comanche. Only God knows what they have in Californ-I-Ay, but it’s probably some organization too. What I’m saying is, it’s best people start getting together and figuring this shit out.”

<And we would be the ones brokering this peace?>

“No, well, maybe. In certain ways, yes. Maybe we just stick to the three groups we know. Alls I’m saying here is who better than us? I think Dusty might want to get involved, Zephyr too. There is potential for us to do something, which hopefully stops some of the needless banditry. Now, will there be kerfuffles and other things that need straightening out? Of course. Will it look like the America we understand from the picture books? Nah, I doubt that. But I think it’s worth a shot. What do you think?”

<Skeleton Man, Flower Child, and a Godwalker uniting the Southwest?>

“Well, when you put it like that…” Sterling lit his cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Actually, it does have a ring to it, don’t it? And stranger things have happened.”

<I think it’s a great idea.>

He turned to her. “Wait, you do?”

<I do, and I’m happy to be part of it. I’m also interested in what we’ll discover once we head east.>

“Shee-it, you ain’t the only one.”

<I hope Zephyr comes along for that leg of the journey.>

“Zee? Yeah, I hope so too. Any one of our old friends would be nice to travel with. Hell, maybe Paco wants to come.”

<Probably not. He seems happy with his people.>

“And Raylan is happy in Madrid. Dusty might be interested. He’s good to travel with. Plus he knows a lot. There’s Maron, but he might like his role in Madrid and Comancheria. Then there’s Sierra…”

<The pyromancer?>

“No, the other Sierra, the one that lives near the mountains. Yeah, her. I don’t know if she’ll be interested or not.” Sterling exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Probably best not to travel with her. Got enough women bickering at me. Heh.”

The Godwalker turned to Sterling and tilted toward him. <Bickering at you? You mean putting up with you, right? If you want to pursue a relationship with her, you should.>

“What? Me? Nothing like that.” Sterling ashed his cigarette. “I’m happy just being with the love of my life, and my sweet, sweet daughter.” He glanced over to the Sunflower Kid to see that she had summoned some oranges for them to eat with breakfast. The teenage biomancer cut them into slices on a metal plate.

Roxie laughed.

“What?”

<The love of your life? I’m flattered, but I’m pretty sure that was Isabelle.>

“What I don’t know won’t hurt me? Ever heard that saying?”

<You are ridiculous sometimes, you know that?>

“Heh. I know it.”

Omar whistled to them. “Breakfast is ready, y’all. And then we need to hit the road, and by road I mean the sky. It’s a beautiful day to fly. Hope y’all are excited to see the ocean. I sure as hell am.”

“We’re coming, Mr. Omar,” Sterling called back. “Just let me finish this here cigarette.”

Yet again Sterling found himself sitting in a helicopter with a helmet over his head, modified goggles covering his eyes. He had the oxygen ready to go as the craft rose into the air, the cowboy necromancer bracing for yet another bumpy flight. At the point he started to feel his stomach drop, he took one more look at the Trona Pinnacles, remembering the ride he had taken around the vortex of power.

But then it became too much, the movement, his fear of heights.

Sterling placed the oxygen over his mouth even though he didn’t need it yet. He sat back, inhaled deeply in an attempt to cancel out his negative thoughts. Every slight tremble put him on edge, his palms sweaty, his toes tapping against the ground.

He was glad that Roxie was in his inventory list. She certainly would have said something about his erratic behavior.

As he had the last time he had taken to the air, Sterling ended up closing his eyes and simply listening to the sound of the wind outside the helicopter. Occasionally light would trace across his eyelids, yet Sterling kept them clenched tightly for what felt like hours, never able to rest.

“We’re close!” Omar announced much later on that morning. It was only then that Sterling blinked his eyes open. He saw a great expanse of blue beyond indicating they had reached the Pacific Ocean. He gasped, and as he did a flash of energy at the front of the helicopter forced Omar to steer the craft to the side.

Sterling only caught a glimpse of it, but he knew what it was.

The Inquisitor Godwalker.

The alien’s sudden appearance coupled with Omar’s jerky movement to avoid it forced the helicopter into the side of the Godwalker.

Sterling’s hands found the straps across his chest as he yelled at the top of his lungs. He had already lost the oxygen hookup. All the blinking lights ahead of him and the billowing smoke pointed to something that Sterling had yet to fully process.

The helicopter was going down.

Sterling could see Omar’s mouth moving as the pilot unclipped his belt, the Sunflower Kid doing the same. The craft lurched to the right; Omar shot out the cabin’s side opening. Still frozen with horror, Sterling watched as the Sunflower Kid held on for dear life, her legs kicked out behind her.

This was what inspired him to finally unbuckle his seatbelt.

Sterling reached his arms out to his daughter, and ended up sailing out the cabin opening instead. As he passed his daughter, the Kid let go as well, the two flying out together.

“Angel!” he shouted. “Angel!”

The beach below seemed so far away, yet Sterling knew it was coming faster than ever.

He spun, not able to get control of himself, the wind whipping around him.

A glint of something above was followed by the smoking helicopter, which started to dip toward the shore below. His arms out wide, Sterling continued to scream as he plummeted toward the beach below. It was only when he saw the Sunflower Kid zip in front of him that he got a notion of what needed to happen next, what he needed to do.

Sterling needed to fly, yet he couldn’t.

He watched the Kid stabilize, and tried once again to use his own power. But everything was coming at him too quickly now, his fear of heights preventing him from activating his powers.

“Fly!” the Sunflower Kid called to him. “You can do it!”

Fly?

Sterling tried again, yet he couldn’t do what he had done countless times in the past. It just wasn’t working.

He fell even faster now, the wind roaring in his ears.

Zooming over to him, the Sunflower Kid grabbed his hand and held it tightly. It was a few seconds before they both leveled off, which gave Sterling enough time to glance to where he had last seen the Inquisitor Godwalker. The alien craft was no longer there. He then spotted Omar sailing toward the beach below like an expert in skydiving.

“I can do this,” Sterling said as he gritted his teeth and relaxed a little. “I can do this…”

“I’ve got you, Dad. Don’t worry about it.”

The Sunflower Kid continued to hold his hand tightly. But with those words, her encouragement, Sterling found the power he needed. The cowboy necromancer finally was able to use his power to float alongside his daughter.

It wasn’t too long after that they touched down on the beach below.

His heart still pounding in his chest, Sterling immediately lay down on his back, the world spinning around him.

He reached his hands down and curled his fingers into the sand as a few murres and cormorants glided in the air above him. Sterling heard the Sunflower Kid conversing with Omar, likely hashing out what had just happened. Normally, Sterling would be part of that, he would be cursing up a storm and acting like a tough guy. But for now, he simply wanted to catch his breath.

He peered up at the sky overhead, the seabirds departing. Try as he might, Sterling couldn’t quite discern how high up he had just been. It seemed impossible, all of it. Not a few moments ago, he had been sitting in a helicopter, which was already out of the ordinary for him.

Now, he was lying on the beach.

Sterling finally pressed himself up and looked out at the water, the sun reflecting off the waves, foam frothing at the shore. He summoned his bag of tobacco and his rolling papers with a shaky hand. Soon, he had a cigarette, and soon, Buster had approached wagging his tail. The dog licked Sterling’s free hand.

Sterling petted Buster until the dog came close enough that he could hug him. He hugged the dog, and then summoned Roxie.

<What’s gotten into you?>

“It’s a long story, Rox, or it’s a short one with a relatively happy but dramatic ending. Guess that don’t matter now. I present to you, the beach.” Sterling gestured toward the rolling waves.

The Godwalker shifted toward the waves. <We really made it, huh?>

“Somehow.”

<What happened?>

Sterling let Buster go. He ashed his cigarette and slowly shook his head. “Just give me a minute. Let me enjoy this here moment before we figure out what needs to happen next.”

The end.

Author’s Note

The Cowboy Necromancer series is kept alive by your reviews.

Yes, this one was shorter, but I did this so I could continue the series between some of the other stuff I’m tasked to write. I didn’t want it to simply die at three books. I have more novellas planned, and the next one is up for pre-order. The plan is to get four novellas out total and then see where we can go from there.

I’d personally love to take Sterling all across America (and the world?) battling Godwalkers. We’ll see how that plays out, but I couldn’t do this without your support, your reads and ratings. Thanks for continuing the series and get ready for the next one. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve! – Harmon Cooper

The next Cowboy Necromancer Novella is up for pre-order and will be released in February 2023!

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