Infinite Dusk

(Cowboy Necromancer Book One)

By Harmon Cooper

Copyright © 2021 Harmon Cooper

Copyright © 2021 Boycott Books

Edited by Adam Luopa

Proofed by Andi Marlowe

Art by Daniel Kamarudin

Font by Shawn King

Interior art by Sor

Print Design by Joshua Mason

Audiobook produced by Podium Audio and narrated by Macleod Andrews

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

Map of Sterling’s Journey

Part One

.Chapter One.

.Chapter Two.

.Chapter Three.

.Chapter Four.

.Chapter Five.

.Chapter Six.

.Chapter Seven.

.Chapter Eight.

.Chapter Nine.

.Chapter Ten.

.Chapter Eleven.

.Chapter Twelve.

Part Two

.Chapter One.

.Chapter Two.

.Chapter Three.

.Chapter Four.

.Chapter Five.

.Chapter Six.

.Chapter Seven.

.Chapter Eight.

.Chapter Nine.

.Chapter Ten.

Part Three

.Chapter One.

.Chapter Two.

.Chapter Three.

.Chapter Four.

.Chapter Five.

.Chapter Six.

.Chapter Seven.

.Chapter Eight.

.Back of the Book.

.About the Author.

Map of Sterling’s Journey

“Now this is the way I am living here. I am living here in poverty. I have not anything; this is the way I am living here. Now if you are willing to live here that way too, with me and share this life, why come, you are welcome.”

-Masau’u, Hopi God of Death

Part One

Killbillies; Godwalkers; Amalgamations; Crucified in Radium Springs; Pyromancer; Blood Magic; Don Gasper; the Coyote’s Riddle

.Chapter One.

Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

Not too distant future.

Sterling knew when the Godwalker showed up that his life as a post-apocalyptic pepper farmer was over. The floating alien monolith blotted out an already hazy orange sun as it triggered a cloud of dust, which quickly engulfed his property. Leaping into action, Sterling kicked out of his front door and whistled for Manchester just as a gust of wind swept through his home, shattering all his windows as he made it to his porch.

“Come on, boy!”

His bone horse came charging right up to the front porch and Sterling hopped on. After righting himself on the saddle of his skeletal steed, Sterling tore off toward just about the only crop that he cared about: his chili peppers.

As if things weren’t already bad enough, a horde of Killbillies appeared on the ridge overlooking Sterling’s ranch house, the bandits as welcome as an outhouse breeze, all of them snarling, tatted up, and ready to brawl. Sterling knew what the Killbillies wanted—his peppers, in the form of a local tax they were imposing—and he figured that they had likely followed the Godwalker to his home, using the floating monolith for cover like a bunch of chickenshit cowards.

One thing was for certain: Sterling most certainly wasn’t going to be able to do anything about the Godwalker, not alone, anyway, the blasted thing akin to a floating skyscraper casting all sorts of omnipotent shadows over the landscape. He could sort its appearance out later, after he dealt with the Killbillies.

“Ain’t going to pay no damn chili tax,” he mumbled, his black cowboy hat dropping down onto his forehead, a shadow covering his eyes. Sterling clicked his tongue and his bone horse moved even faster.

Hooting and hollering, the Killbillies started down the ridge, all of the bandits with enhanced powers, two already flying in the air toward him.

Sterling whistled and Manchester skidded to a halt, kicking up a cloud of golden-brown dirt. He launched himself off his skeletal steed and nearly cracked a knee on the landing, the ends of his black duster whipping around his body.

One of the flying Killbilly bandits landed in front of Sterling, the man all sorts of deformed, his face covered in scars and faded tattoos, the yellow bandanna-clad brute looking like his mother had run a cheese grater across his face for good measure. He spat, psyching himself up to fight.

“Out of the way, pendejo!” Sterling shouted, going for his sickle-sword with the turquoise hue radiating off its blade. He cut into the flying Killbilly, the bandit crying out in pain as Sterling pulled the half-moon blade up, quickly killing the man.

The other flying Killbilly landed just as a grin took shape on Sterling’s face.

“Y’all shouldn’t have come here,” Sterling said as he went for his revolver, which he flourished once before squeezing the trigger.

Bam!

His magic bullet passed right through the Killbilly’s eye socket, exploding out of the back of the man’s head, air misting with brains and blood.

Of the dozen or so Killbilly bandits currently charging at him, none of them were mancers like Sterling; had they been mancers, he definitely would have known about it by this point. Be it a pillar of flame, or a gust of wind strong enough to tear through a barn, the Adapted—people like Sterling—were pretty easy to distinguish from regular folk.

He ignored the floating Godwalker as he pointed his revolver at the horde of bandits, who were running toward him with clubs and other weapons; no guns though. The bandits this far out rarely had guns, bullets hard to come by these days unless they drew upon a person’s Mana, like Sterling’s did.

Deciding on another avenue of attack, Sterling dropped his sickle-sword into the custom breakaway sheath hanging from his belt, the piece clicking into place. He curled his fingers and the ground began to tremble. A couple of the Killbillies staggered backward once they saw the soil shift, seven corpses slowly tearing their way out of the soil. “Yup,” Sterling said as he motioned his curled fingers toward the line of Killbillies.

Once again, Sterling caught the towering Godwalker out of the corner of his eye, the alien craft hovering over his property, its glassy black surface omnipotent and otherworldly.

It only took you three years, Sterling thought as his animates—which was what he liked to call anything he raised from the dead, rather than ‘zombies’—tore off toward the Killbillies.

His undead animates weren’t smart, but they were brutal.

Truth be told, there wasn’t much he needed to do now, Sterling getting the urge to roll up a cigarette as he watched the Killbillies engage his animates. It was going to be a bloodbath, and for a moment, Sterling almost felt sympathy for the damn fools. Then again, the bandits had come to collect tax in the form of his chili peppers by any means necessary, and there was no way in hell he was going to pay any of their taxes.

A loud creaking sound caught his attention. The bottom of the floating monolith started to swivel, the Godwalker’s shadow now spreading over his ranch house.

“Goddammit,” Sterling mumbled. He lifted his Mana-powered revolver and started walking toward the Killbillies that were still engaging his animates. His creations were as brainless as they were savage, able to quickly overpower most of the bandits, even if the corpses he had pulled from the ground were missing a limb or two.

The idea of burying a few potential animates in shallow graves had come to him about a year and half ago, Sterling figuring that someone or something would catch up to him at some point, and he would need backup. After the Reset, there was always an enemy, always someone lurking in the shadows ready to stab you in the back. No rule, no real law, what was left of New Mexico’s larger cities marred by warring factions, militias, and vandals, rife with violence and corruption.

It was a hell of a time to be alive, and having a boobytrap on one’s property was the least a person could do.

Sterling’s first shot tore into the arm of one of the larger Killbillies, a man less afraid of his animates than his bucktoothed compadres. The mulleted, acne-faced bandit took the magical bullet in stride, fury in his face as he tried to run Sterling down. Three more shots and he was a goner.

Sterling stepped over the man and returned his revolver to its holster, going for his sickle-sword. He knew he needed to hurry.

As much as he wanted to have a good old-fashioned brawl, that Godwalker hovering over his property looked like it was mere minutes away from destroying his ranch house, and Sterling had a few things he needed to get out of there before it did.

He spun into action, the blackened ends of his duster whipping along as he cleaved his blade into a muscular Killbilly, a man with more ink than a set of encyclopedias.

Of the fourteen that had shown up to fight, only five of the Killbillies were still alive, Sterling’s animates growling and snarling like the undead that they were as they honed in on the few that were left. It wasn’t long before two of the Killbillies retreated, tails tucked between their proverbial legs. Sterling took a couple potshots at them, but they managed to get away in the end.

The dust settled, leaving him with a dozen freshly dead bodies, a looming, alien craft hovering over his property looking like it was about to destroy his home, and seven animates all turning to him at once for instruction.

“Shee-it,” he mumbled as slick black compartments began opening on the bottom of the floating monolith, the air suddenly electric, the Godwalker preparing to fire.

He knew what would happen next; he’d seen it play out plenty of times before. Sterling pointed at two of his animates, the other five falling to the ground, back to the world of the dead. The cowboy necromancer felt a surge of energy as twenty-five Mana Points were returned to him.

He motioned for the two animates still standing to follow him, Sterling easily able to reach his ranch house before they did. There was only one thing he was really interested in getting, aside from the chili peppers he had drying in his home. As trivial as it was, Sterling had been making sketches and writing what he called ‘desert haiku’ in a leatherbound book since a year or two after the Reset. These writings meant something to him. Like everyone else still alive, all of his memories from before the Reset were lost. These desert haiku now served as his memories, a testament to the time that had passed.

Sterling found the leatherbound book near his bed and sent it straight to his inventory list, the item disappearing before his very eyes. “Get the damn chilis!” he instructed his undead animates as soon as they came inside his home. Sterling charged outside, leaving the mindless summonings to gather what they could.

He spotted one more Killbilly waiting for him, probably the leader of the bunch who had initially hung back. This final Killbilly looked hopped up on something, the bandit in a mask crafted from a steel plate over his face, two little slits for his eyes, tribal tattoos tracing the contours of his scarred muscles, his body gleaming with sweat.

He was either really brave, or really stupid.

Normally, Sterling would stop whatever he was doing to brawl with a tough guy like this. He would have taken pleasure in stomping the bastard to the ground for showing up on his property uninvited. But he knew what the Godwalkers were capable of, and what happened when one of the alien craft sounded off.

“You’d best run!” Sterling told the man.

He ran right past the brute, aimed at the ridgeline, almost catching his foot on a bit of bramble as he quickened his pace. Sterling whistled, and Manchester charged toward him. He hopped onto his bone horse and took off.

“¡Vamos!” he shouted, Manchester moving even faster, Sterling hunkering down, one hand on his hat and the other on the saddle horn, dust kicking up all around him.

The explosion that followed sent a ripple of energy across the barren desert expanse, tearing everything from the ground, Sterling feeling the blast in his chest, his ears ringing, his world trembling. It wasn’t long before the mushroom cloud of dust and debris started to dissipate, the Godwalker gone in a flash.

Sterling slowly turned Manchester around to take in the damage.

He felt the urge to take off his hat and throw it on the ground, stomp around for a moment, and let his frustration out. It had been three years of relative peace here on the outskirts of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, three years of quiet. Yet here he was, looking at the destruction of his ranch house, his livelihood, his way of life, all because a Godwalker had finally found him.

“Looks like we best hit the road again,” he said, patting his bone horse on the side of his skeletal neck. “I know, I know, and trust me, I ain’t in the least bit interested in riding all around what’s left of this godforsaken state looking for them either. But that’s the only way we’re going to deal with these Godwalkers once and for all. Ain’t nobody going to attack me at home and not face the consequences—human, alien, or amalgamation. Ain’t nobody.”

It went without saying what Sterling planned to do next. The Reset had taken place five years ago, and three years ago, he had tried to do something about it, but ultimately failed. Now it was time to give it another shot. But before he took off toward town, before he started his search, he needed to get his house in order.

Sterling first released the animates he still held power over, the two zombies burnt ends by this point, covered in chili pepper ashes. Upon doing so, he felt a small swell of energy in his chest, his Mana returning to him. Still seated on his bone horse, Sterling mentally summoned his stats.

You have received 935 XP!

Name: Sterling Monedero

Race: Human

Mancer Class: Necromancer

Class Ranking: Blood Mage

Level: 58

Fortitude: 117

Strength: 35

Resolve: 151

Mana: 113/132

Current Armor Rating: 23

XP: 291,839

XP to Next Level: 479

Stat Points Available: 0

Technique Points Available: 21

It had been a while since Sterling had gained XP, which solely came from killing.

As much as he liked to fight, he tried to keep to himself these days. It was better that way. Even so, it looked like he would gain a level soon. The Killbillies had brought the fight to him, and Sterling would certainly encounter more of these bandits in the near future.

Damn chickenshit cowards, he thought. Using a Godwalker as cover…

The Godwalker would have to wait. He wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, or the other Godwalkers for that matter, until he found his people. It could be Roswell, Duke City, Taos, all the way up to Pueblo, maybe even pressing over the Rockies and into Utah, Nevada or Arizona beyond—the people he needed to find could be anywhere in the Southwest corner of what used to be the United States of America. There was no telling where they were, but he knew where he needed to start.

Sterling needed to find Don Gasper.

.Chapter Two.

Keeping his bone horse animated was a constant draw on Sterling’s Mana. Any animate, be it human or animal, took five Mana Points to keep alive, and Manchester was no different. Sterling had lost two points per bullet he fired back at his ranch house, but those would be recovered by the next morning. As it stood, he still had over a hundred Mana Points, which was plenty to head into town with, even if there was the potential for a shootout.

Sterling knew he hadn’t leveled up in any of his class skills, but he took a look at them anyway, as he had done almost daily over the last five years since the Reset.

“No hurt in doing it,” he mumbled as words appeared before him.

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 3

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: Class Proficiency Level 2

Description: Enhanced durability, plus grafting at higher levels.

——

Death Sense: Class Proficiency Level 2

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

Unlike the Killbillies that had attacked him, Sterling was one of the Adapted, a term used for a person who had been gifted a mancer class after the Reset. From what he had learned over the last five years, there were about twelve other mancer classes, the Adapted few and far between.

He’d heard various estimates as to how many people got one of these unique mancer powers—something like one in every five to ten thousand people—but that didn’t mean regular folk weren’t enhanced as well. Regular people could do things like fly, similar to the two Killbillies that had flown at him earlier. These normal people could also exhibit superhuman strength or endurance, like the Killbilly he’d shot up who had taken several bullets in stride. They also had Resolve, just like Sterling, which meant they could heal to some degree. Regular folks were granted the same kind of game system that Sterling was privy to, and they were able to increase their XP, level up, and assign Stat or Technique Points once they were rewarded—the whole nine yards, as it were.

The only thing that made Sterling different from them was his ability to do what he was doing now, riding a bone horse that he had summoned toward the rambunctious, and often deviant, town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

It was too bad he didn’t remember what this place looked like before the Reset.

Everyone’s memories had been wiped after the Reset, and unless they could figure things out like some of the pueblo natives had, people were pretty much on their own. Sterling had been in Las Cruces when the life-altering event happened, at a dirty dive bar somewhere off the interstate. That much he knew.

One minute, he was whoever he used to be; the next minute he was a necromancer who’d had his memory wiped, most of the people in the bar dead, their heads exploded, covered in viscera and never able to piece together where he’d come from or who he was. While he was able to see his full name on a stat sheet, he had no idea how old he was, guessing he was somewhere between the ages of thirty and forty-five based on other men he’d encountered.

There really was no telling.

Everyone that was still alive had a story about what they were doing when the Reset took place, Godwalkers appearing in the skies over the world’s largest cities, ninety percent of the world’s population gone in a flash. The Godwalkers had pretty much put an end to anything electric, so unless someone had a generator, or for those gifted the extremely rare electromancer class, blackouts followed, which caused even more death.

But Sterling was used to all the doom and gloom by now; after all, that was five years ago. And it was three years ago that he had tried and eventually failed to do something about it. He was nearly certain that this was why the Godwalker had shown up at his property: the alien monolith was looking for revenge, and now, on his way to town to see if he could find Don Gasper, Sterling was too.

“Yup,” Sterling told Manchester, the bone horse trotting along a pockmarked road, a vulture soaring overhead. “You and me are about to go on an adventure, boy. You’re the one that has been wanting to go out for long rides, not me,” he said, his horse unable to respond, considering he didn’t have a windpipe. By now, Sterling used to having long conversations with his skeletal steed. “I hope you’re ready for a shitshow.”

After another ten minutes, he spotted the overturned school bus that had been on NM-181 for years now. Someone had even put in the effort to plant a few cacti under its hood, which had since made their way inside the vehicle, a few prickly arms jutting out through the open windows. The bus used to be yellow. Now it was somewhere between brown and mustard with tinges of orange rust splashed across its steel exterior, the results of a relentless sun and often unbearable elements.

Extreme weather.

There used to be little mom-and-pop shops along this particular road, everything from a sand and gravel store to a restaurant called La Cocina. All that was gone now, ramshackled, boarded up, or crumbling like some of the old mission churches southwest of Albuquerque, practically the same color as the landscape, crumbling and equally foreboding. How could things have changed so much in five years?

Sterling turned his palm around, his bag of tobacco appearing, papers inside too. He had Manchester pause for a moment while he quickly rolled up a cigarette, which he parked in the corner of his mouth, his lighter appearing once his bag of tobacco and his rolling papers disappeared.

“Goddamn, I need a bath,” he said after his first drag off the cigarette, his free hand once again on the reins.

He sent his lighter back to his inventory list. It was almost instinctual, first the lighter was there, and then it was gone. He was fairly certain that the before people, the term used locally for those who had lived and prospered before the Reset, didn’t have the usage of an inventory list. Sterling didn’t know why.

But then again, he also didn’t know why he had stats, or class abilities, techniques, or any nonsense like that. None of it made any goddamn sense, but like anyone forced to survive, he had simply adapted and figured things out as he went. It was a Darwinian response if there ever was one, Sterling’s survival instincts mixed with a unique brand of Southern stubbornness and a warped sense of cowboy chivalry that seem to have placed people in New Mexico in the first place.

Should have put more in my list, he thought as he recalled the precious peppers he lost because of the Godwalker. Goddamn, that would have been a good batch.

One of the things Sterling had discovered moments after the Reset five years ago was a pill bottle full of pepper seeds in his pocket, a couple tiny plastic bags stuffed in the pill bottle as well. He found seeds for NuMex Heritage Big Jims, NuMex Española Improved, Chimayó, and NuMex Barker’s Hot Peppers. He’d never forget that detail. Sterling didn’t know if he had been a pepper farmer or something, but the vest he had been wearing at the time, a neon one with reflective strips on it, certainly didn’t look like something a pepper farmer would wear. Still, it was a sign of something. A life once lived, however good or bad, some sort of employment, some story that had been scrubbed from his memory.

One of the most helpful yet maddening things about the Reset was the abundance of reading material available. While they took out all forms of electricity, the Godwalkers weren’t able to get rid of books and magazines. So people like Sterling, and others who had survived, were able to get strange and often confusing glimpses of the past. Sterling had read up as much as he could on where he lived, about the once great state of New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment, along with whatever he could get his hands on regarding pepper farming. He’d gotten pretty good at farming over the years, especially after semi-retiring to Truth or Consequences.

But all that was about to change.

Sterling’s eyes darted across an eroded billboard advertising a hot spring in Truth or Consequences. There was a spray-painted sign hammered into the bottom right-hand corner of the billboard that read STILL OPEN, the paint fresh.

“To Riverbend Hot Springs it is,” Sterling told his skeletal steed. “Vamos.”

Manchester picked up his pace, Sterling just about to buckle down when he saw a man and woman walking along the road, their shadows extending beside them.

“I wouldn’t go that way,” he said as he approached the pair, recognizing the two immediately as Ava and her dimwitted son, Hector.

One of the ways that people put their lives back together after the Reset was with family photos. This was how Ava had pieced her former life back together, the elderly woman coming to understand she was the caretaker of Hector, her son a few cards short of a full deck, with a bit of a twitching problem to boot, and a penchant for drooling to the point Ava sometimes made him wear a bib.

Even after all this time, all the woman had done for him, Sterling couldn’t tell if Hector believed Ava was his mother or not.

“¿Que pasó?” Ava asked, squinting up at him. While short in stature, and older than dirt, Ava was rumored to be a powerful bruja, a witch who could turn into a coyote.

Sterling didn’t quite buy into this, but there had been a few times where he saw a coyote circling his property, the hairs on the back of his neck standing to attention. He didn’t know if it was her or not, but he knew better than to test the aged woman, and Don Gasper had seemed wary of her as well.

“A damn Godwalker destroyed my ranch, that’s what’s up. It disappeared, but it could come back. Killbillies, too, but I killed most of them fellas.” Sterling pointed a thumb toward what used to be his ranch house. “It’s all gone now, my ranch.”

“Pinche Killbillies,” Ava growled. To solidify her point, she snorted and spat a load of phlegm onto the parched soil.

“My thoughts exactly, ma’am,” said Sterling.

“¿Dónde vas ahora?”

“Yeah, where you go now?” Hector asked, his fat finger currently in his nose and digging for something. He wore a stained shirt and tattered jeans that were tucked into a pair of worn cowboy boots two sizes too large for him, his boots scruffy, a bit of shit on one of the heels.

“Heading into town,” Sterling replied. “I’m going to hit the hot spring, and then figure out where the hell Don Gasper ran off to.”

“Pinche Don Gasper,” Ava said with disgust.

Sterling chuckled. “Shit, I don’t disagree with you there—he can be quite the fella to deal with. But he’s good at what he does, and he will know where to find them.”

“Who you find?” Hector asked in his broken English.

“That doesn’t concern you, Hector.” Sterling flicked his cigarette to the ground and grabbed the reins again. “Come on,” he told Manchester. “You two take care now.”

While Sterling more or less trusted Ava, he had little faith in her son, and he knew that if the Killbillies came around asking questions, Hector would be the first to talk.

Probably shouldn’t have mentioned Don Gasper neither, Sterling thought as he reached a fork in the road, Interstate 25 somewhere off to his right, downtown Truth or Consequences straight ahead.

As he had several times before, Sterling wondered what T or C must have been like before the Reset. They sure seemed to have plenty of cars in the small city, the abandoned vehicles sprawled across Cemetery Road where it merged into North Date Street. There were the shells of cars everywhere, parked in every which way, all of them beaten to hell by the sun and dust, looted long ago for everything from their seats to the gasoline in their tanks. A pair of youths rode rickety bikes through spaces between the vehicles, their brakes squealing as they turned into an old gas station, neither of them making eye contact with Sterling.

There was something called Walmart up on the hill that overlooked the road, a store that must have been a grand market in its heyday. It was now another place for squatters, critters, and hungry ghosts. There had been a Pizza Hut near the gas station, and a place where people ate in their vehicles called Sonic, as well as the church—always a church—and another gas station. Sometimes it seemed like the before people worshipped God, petrol, and food equally.

Sterling had stopped in the Pizza Hut one time just to take a look inside, where he found a splattering of sexual graffiti and pictures of what he recognized as a pizza. He was pretty sure a couple of the local restaurants could make pizza if he asked, but most of the people here stuck to food with a bit of kick to it, like chiles relleno, green chili stew, tacos, burritos, chips and salsa, and tamales or huevos rancheros for breakfast.

Thinking of food made his stomach rumble.

Sterling figured he would get washed up, have a meal, and then start his search. He knew who to talk to about Don Gasper; there was a local named Kip who was usually pretty good at finding people. Over the years, Kip had become a friend of his, even though he was sort of the town drunk. The surly man was a regular at the only tavern downtown, and he was liked by the Killbillies that now ran the town and the locals, no small feat.

Continuing toward the small downtown of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, Sterling’s eyes jumped from building to building, from an old school to the United States Postal Service building, where he’d once beaten a man to death after the guy tried to rob him on the way back to his ranch house. More gas stations, more churches, more abandoned cars and minivans and trucks in the road, looted buildings, bricks scattered about, shattered glass, tattered bits of metal, rubbish, fallen street signs—everything glazed with a thin layer of reddish sand, a testament to the time that had passed since the Reset.

Sterling wiped a bit of sweat from his brow. The fact that he wore all black only made the heat of the day worse, but he was used to it by now, the cowboy necromancer comfortable in his own skin, in what had become his adopted hometown, and his clothing. Folks weren’t very friendly here in T or C, but a few people tipped their hats to him as he came to Riverbend Hot Springs. One of them even offered a friendly wave.

Parked right along the Rio Grande River, Riverbend had been quite the tourist destination before the Reset, and it had remained so ever since. There were other hot springs in Truth or Consequences, but Sterling had an affinity for this particular establishment, mostly because it was still maintained, but also because each hot spring provided a stunning view of the Rio Grande River.

That, and it was a great place to write what he liked to call a desert haiku.

Sterling hopped down from Manchester and led his bone horse off to the side of the entrance, to a small space between the outer wall of the establishment and the bramble. He lowered his hand, and as he did so, Manchester crumpled to the ground, now just a collapsed skeleton of a horse with a saddle off to the side. Sterling touched the saddle, sending it to his inventory list. He could also send Manchester’s bones to his inventory list, but he figured he would just leave the horse outside for the time being.

Everybody knew who he was anyway.

After making sure his clothing was in order with a quick pat down, Sterling cleared his throat and stepped into the lobby, noticing that it was dust free, the walls made of adobe, candles strategically placed around the room, and crosses crafted from corn husks hanging over the arched entryways.

“Here for a soak?” a woman at the front asked. She wore a dress made of pieces of leather that had been patched together with fringe along its sleeves, a turquoise hair clip keeping her black hair off her face. “Oh, it’s you. How’s it going, Sterling?”

“Shee-it, it’s going, Veronica,” he said as he turned his palm around, a few small bits of turquoise appearing. “We good?”

“Sí,” said Veronica, “we good. You got any of them peppers?”

“Just my own stash right now, and not a lot of it,” he told her. “Most unfortunate.”

“Really? What happened to your crop?”

“Don’t want to talk about it,” Sterling grumbled.

“In that case, follow me. Your business is your business, no?” Veronica led him through an arched entryway to a room at the back that was cordoned off from some of the others. She opened the door, and let Sterling step in front of her. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Plenty of time,” he told her as she shut the door.

“One hour,” she reminded him from the other side.

“My hour has already started; get out of here,” he joked, Veronica laughing on the other side as she left the hallway.

Sterling took a deep, satisfying breath in once he saw the steam boiling off the hot spring bath, which was fenced off from the other baths, and open to provide a completely natural view of the river behind the establishment. Even though he’d come to this place more times than he could count, Sterling was always inspired by the view of the Rio Grande River, the shrubs dotting the landscape, Turtleback Mountain on the outside of town casting just enough shadow to make it look big and imposing.

He undressed, Sterling returning his black cowboy hat to his head as he lowered himself into the almost boiling water.

“Whoo, boy,” he said as his body grew used to the temperature, Sterling sweating profusely for a moment. He wiped his forehead a few times and eventually got comfortable, sinking as deep as he could into the tub.

He didn’t know what the night held for him, but he knew with Kip, it was probably going to be an uphill battle in some way or another. Hopefully, Kip would know where to find Don Gasper. If anyone in town knew where Gasper was, it was him.

“Let’s hope,” Sterling whispered as he relaxed even further into the hot water.

Twisted like barbed wire

Don’t trust what you cannot kill

Desert fox keep on

Sterling reread the desert haiku he had composed on fatal friendships, which would certainly describe his relationship with Don Gasper—and Kip too, for that matter, especially if Kip had decided to be an ornery drunk that night.

He heard a knock at the door indicating that time was up.

“I’m coming.” Sterling slowly got dressed, starting with one of his two charms, a leather bracelet that gave him an additional Technique Point per level gained. He had another charm, a rattlesnake tail hooked on a keychain which he kept on a belt loop, the tail giving him an additional Stat Point per five levels gained. There were all sorts of charms scattered across the state, the pieces mostly sold at trading posts across sun-drenched New Mexico. He was probably going to collect a good many on the trip he was planning, but he’d had these two for a while, and they had done him well.

Another knock on the door came just as Sterling was putting on his boots.

“Hold your horses, Veronica,” he told her, a grin taken shape on his face. Since she was being persistent, and he knew the lady, he figured he would take his sweet time by rolling up a cigarette.

Once again, he equipped the bag of tobacco he had in his inventory list, as well as his rolling papers. He didn’t have much in his list at the moment, just a couple bundles of peppers, the first batch from his ill-fated crop; a leather satchel of turquoise and silver, which would be useful for trading; a metal lighter; Manchester’s saddle; a couple sets of spare clothing; his leatherbound book of sketches and desert haiku and a few loose pens; his prized New Mexico travel guide; a wool blanket that he’d picked up in Albuquerque at the Old Town Plaza; and a few other odds and ends.

He was sure the list would grow as his journey got underway.

Sterling lit the cigarette and placed his cowboy hat on his head, making sure his black shirt was tucked into the front of his black jeans, no folds in his black duster.

“Alright, alright, alright,” he told Veronica as he stepped out of the sauna, cigarette perched on the corner of his lip.

“What’s this? You know you’re not supposed to smoke in here,” she said, but there was a hint of joviality to her voice, the woman clearly teasing him.

“Sorry, ma’am. I just couldn’t help myself.”

Veronica walked him to the front door. “How was your soak?”

“My soak was a success. I’m feeling limber, that’s for damn sure.”

“Muy bueno. Where to now? Back to your ranch house?”

Sterling simply shook his head. “Something tells me I’m going to be gone for a little while, maybe a long while. We will have to see.”

“I’m sure you’ll be back,” Veronica said in an almost flirty way. “Are you heading north or south?”

“That, young lady, is the question. Where am I heading?” Sterling shook his head. “Only time will tell.” He summoned his skeletal steed by simply lifting his hand, the horse taking shape, Manchester’s bones clinking together as they arranged themselves.

“People would kill for a power like that,” Veronica said in awe as she watched it happen before her very eyes.

“Ain’t the first time I’ve heard that,” he said after he arranged the saddle and mounted up. “Come on,” he told Manchester, now heading toward the center of town.

It was September, approaching the end of chili season. The days were still hot, but the nights and mornings were cool, frigid even, and Sterling knew that there would be flashes of snow sometime in the near future. The weather was already starting to cool down, a breeze coming in from the Rio Grande River.

“Desert snow,” Sterling mumbled, mentally reminding himself to write a haiku about the beautiful phenomenon later on.

It didn’t take him long to reach the center of Truth or Consequences, and as they always were, most of the establishments were boarded up. At least Ingo’s Café was open, which had a great chile relleno dish that Sterling planned to enjoy before he headed to the tavern down the street where he’d likely find Kip.

The sun was just starting to set on the horizon, the sky somewhere between peach and tangerine, a dusty haze. Sterling spotted the old water tower on the hill that overlooked the small city. He knew it wouldn’t be long before the sun set behind it, the streets suddenly dark, the town shut down for the night, aside from the tavern, which never seemed to close. He squinted at the hill on the outskirts of downtown, the one with the water tower on it. Sure enough, Sterling made out the forms of a few masked men—Killbillies—just hanging out, which meant he was going to have to be extra careful. He also saw that there was new graffiti on the water tower that read FUCK GODWALKERS.

Poetic, Sterling thought.

From what he had been told, the Killbillies’ reach extended across the southwestern corner of what used to be the state of New Mexico. Sterling didn’t know how long it would take the two vandals who had escaped the incident at his ranch to get the word out that he had slaughtered a dozen of them. It really depended on which direction they were heading. All he knew was that word would get out eventually, and when it did, Sterling would be up for a challenge.

His dark hair whipping around his face as a breeze picked up, cowboy hat casting a shadow over his eyes, Sterling stepped into Ingo’s Café and ordered the chile relleno special, which was the name for a popular New Mexican dish that featured two battered and fried chilis smothered in cheese and salsa.

As he ate his meal, Ingo came to the table and sat, the man in an apron, a dirty towel tucked into the front pocket.

“Sterling,” Ingo said, a weary look on his face as he wiped his hands on a cloth sticking out the front pocket. Ingo was from a country known as Germany, at least that was what it had been called before the Reset. Ingo knew this because after the Reset, he had found a German passport in his back pocket. Sterling hadn’t been so lucky. He never was able to find any identification on his person after the Reset.

Maybe Ingo could have made his way back to his home country, or what was left of it. But he never did, deciding to run the restaurant, which turned out to be the same thing he was doing in Truth or Consequences before the Reset.

“Ingo,” Sterling said as he cut into the second fried chili pepper. He had opted for red chili salsa this time, and he was glad he had, Sterling still stinging from losing his crop. “How are things holding up, amigo?”

“Yah, the Killbillies have been stopping by so much. I don’t know what to do anymore, you know? Typical bully assholes,” Ingo said in his unique accent. “First they want tax, then they want free meals, and after that, they want more free meals and higher tax. They have also done some things to a few of the women in town. At least rumors I heard. I am at my… how do you say?” Ingo asked, gesturing toward his hair. The man had short gray hair and baby blue eyes, a softness to them that made him instantly likable.

“You looking for the phrase ‘wits’ end’?”

“Yes, wits’ end. I am at that location.”

“Just don’t start killing them,” Sterling said, not able to stifle the grin on his face. He certainly didn’t take his own advice. “Not yet, anyway.”

“I’m fairly sure I could take at least three of them by myself,” Ingo muttered.

“I’ll bet you could, and believe me, I’d like to see you whoop some Killbilly ass as well. But they always seem to travel in packs of six or more, so you’d be a few ‘Billies short, if you get my drift. Look, I’m going to level with you, Ingo,” Sterling said as he leaned over his plate, his eyes locked on the displaced German. “And not in a bragging way, mind you. Fourteen of them boys showed up at my place earlier today. Now there are only two left. In case you’re bad at math, I killed me a dozen Killbillies earlier today, Ingo. Now, I know I shouldn’t be telling you this, but some people in this town, myself included, are ready to take our little slice of heaven back. Just be ready when I give the signal. I got things I need to handle first, most notably finding a man named Don Gasper, but just be ready to run these bastards out of town.”

“Did you say you killed twelve of them? A dozen? Zwölf Männer?”

“Next topic.” Sterling was starting to feel the spice, a robust flavor that started well after he swallowed a bite of chili. “Say, where’d you get these here chilis anyway?”

“Ah, those. Some boy was selling them. I think he lives out near Cuchillo, yah? Have you been out that way?”

“Can’t say that I have; I don’t normally head west unless I’m forced to at gunpoint.”

“Ah, yes, it is quite a ways. You said you were looking for a man named Don Gasper. I am afraid I have yet to hear of this man. Is he a local I’ve yet to meet?”

“Don Gasper? Not exactly. Let’s just say he’s local to everywhere, a bit of a global denizen, at least he seems to think he is. I need to start with him, though.”

“Is there something in particular that you would like from this Herr Gasper?”

Sterling bent forward once again. “Don Gasper is what Mexicans would call a hechicero.”

“That is a Spanish word, yah? I’m unfamiliar with this word.”

“A sorcerer, shaman, brujo, a witch—that’s Don Gasper in a nutshell. I don’t know the word in German.”

“Zauberer.”

“Yup, he’s that,” Sterling said, pointing his fork at Ingo. “And to find him, I need to talk to Kip. As crazy as that drunk son of a bitch usually is, Kip’s got a knack for knowing where people are.”

“Yah, I can see that. So you find Herr Gasper. Then what?”

“After I find Don Gasper, well, let’s just say I got a few plans.” Sterling pointed up at the sky and swirled his finger around, offering a little whistle. He licked his teeth as he slowly nodded his head. “You seen that graffiti on the water tower out there?”

“The one about the Godwalkers?” Ingo asked. “Fuck Godwalkers. Ha! Made me laugh the first time I saw it.”

“That’s the plan.”

Confusion set in on Ingo’s face. “You plan to fuck the Godwalkers? But they are so large…”

“Not literally, shit. What’s with you Germans always taking everything so literally? You know what I mean.”

“You… intend to do something else about the Godwalkers?”

“Bingo. Or, at the very least, die trying. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself, I need to find Kip.” Sterling pressed away from the table. “I got peppers, turquoise, and silver for this here meal. Take your pick.”

“Well, let’s see. I have plenty of peppers, turquoise is always valuable, but I’m a bit low on silver. I will take silver.”

Sterling’s satchel of turquoise and silver jewelry appeared in his hand. He placed the clasp of a silver earring on the table and Ingo nodded.

“Yah, that will do. Good luck wherever you are going, and extra good luck in fucking those Godwalkers,” Ingo said, a grin taking shape on his face.

Sterling snorted. “Yup. Keep your head up, Ingo. And mark my words: we are going to deal with these Killbillies sooner rather than later. We’ll run the bastards out of T or C. Just wait for the signal.”

He tipped his hat and stepped out of the café and into the streets of downtown Truth or Consequences, the sound of shattering glass catching his attention. Sterling looked in the opposite direction, toward the tavern at the end of the street. Sure enough, there were two men out front just about to fight, one with his fists at the ready, the other gripping a broken beer bottle in his paw. Kip.

“Just the man I’ve been looking for,” Sterling said, a crooked smile forming on his face.

His smile quickly faded when the earth began to shake.

Kip was a tall man, a bit lanky even though he had a beer gut. He wasn’t one of the Adapted, meaning he wasn’t a mancer like Sterling. While Kip didn’t have a power, the man was certainly strong, Kip putting as many Stat and Technique Points as he could into his Strength, Fortitude, and the various combat arts. Kip should have been able to beat the living hell out of the man who stood in front of him. Instead, he was writhing in agony, in more pain than Sterling wanted to imagine as two spikes made of asphalt tore out of the tops of his thighs, pinning Kip in place.

A gaiamancer, Sterling thought as he went for his revolver.

But the gaiamancer wasn’t done. Before Sterling could fire a shot, the man swept his arm to the side, the ground shifting as more stones ripped from the earth, uprooting what was left of the sewer lines below, sludge and antediluvian muck bubbling up. The ground beneath Kip’s feet shifted once again as the two spikes of asphalt pinning him began to grow, lifting the poor man higher into the air.

“You motherfucker! You goddamn cocksucker!” Kip bellowed, spit flying out of his mouth. He lost his cowboy hat, revealing a bald dome peppered by age spots and barely covered by a few stray hairs. There was snot and spittle in his thick beard now, Kip sucking in breaths like he was going into labor, cursing and shouting, wincing as he tried to remove one of his legs from one of the gaiamancer’s asphalt spikes.

Bam!

Sterling fired a shot in the air just to get everyone’s attention.

The gaiamancer turned to him. He was of Hispanic descent, slick dark hair and bloodshot eyes, clearly drunk, a tattered red scarf tied around his neck. A few of the people who had stepped outside of the bar to watch the fight began to murmur, Sterling recognizing a handful of them.

“Now, before I put this next bullet right between your eyes,” Sterling said, his weapon aimed at the gaiamancer, “I want to know what the hell is going on here.”

“Shoot his goddamn ass, Sterling! He ain’t going to talk to ya! The damn fool!”

“All in due time, Kip.”

He knew that Kip was in excruciating pain, but like Sterling, the man had put enough Stat Points into his Resolve to be able to heal from the puncture wounds. Every ten points put in Resolve nearly doubled the recovery speed of a normal person. This didn’t include fatal wounds, like Sterling had given the Killbillies earlier, nor did it apply to a limb being completely severed, but even something debilitating like what Kip was going through was healable over time.

“I’m going to ask you one more time,” Sterling said as the gaiamancer started to curl his fists. “You move a goddamn muscle, or try any of your little rocky road tricks with me, son, and I’ll give you a wound that you won’t be able to heal from.”

“Sterling, you kill that motherfucker dead!”

“I’ll kill him when I’m good and ready,” Sterling said. He didn’t know what their dispute was about just yet, but he would have bet what was left in his satchel of silver and turquoise that Kip had likely started the fight. “You ready to tell me what’s going on here, amigo?” Sterling asked. “¿Que pasó?”

A tentacle made from asphalt rose from the ground.

Schwap!

It struck Sterling as if it were a bullwhip, his revolver flying out of his hand.

“Hey!” he shouted, the sting catching him off guard. Sterling jumped just in time to avoid another enormous spike, the Hispanic gaiamancer now with his dark hair in his face as he conjured more of his stony creations.

Cursing to himself for not just shooting the man to begin with, Sterling tried to circle around the man so he could cleave him down with his sickle-sword.

“Damn good-for-nothing mancers,” he mumbled as he ran past a crumbled brick building, his boots clicking on the pavement as the concrete was torn away behind him. The ground shifted; a crack ran along the asphalt on the side of the street headed straight toward Ingo’s Café.

“Don’t you dare!” Sterling skidded to a stop and changed his trajectory. More crags lifted from the pavement, destroying what was left of some of the buildings, street lamps falling like lumber.

Sterling needed his gun and he needed it badly.

He just so happened to catch a glimpse of the blackened revolver out of the corner of his eye, a strange turquoise color radiating off its barrel, the piece slowly sliding into the sewer beneath the town.

No…

Sterling whistled as loudly as he could and Manchester came running, his skeletal steed catching the gaiamancer off guard. Manchester collided with the man, giving Sterling a chance to grab his revolver before it slipped into the earth. Manchester reared up onto his two hind legs, and the gaiamancer was so distracted by the horse that he chose the wrong target. Rather than try to use one of his earth spikes to put an end to Sterling’s incoming assault, he focused on the horse instead, whipping Manchester away.

Sterling tackled the man. They rolled around for a second, Sterling quickly getting the upper hand. He swatted the side of his revolver across the gaiamancer’s face twice, streaks of blood appearing.

“That’s right, Sterling… Whoop his ass!” Kip shouted from his pinned position. “Shoot him dead!” One of the men watching the fight cheered for Sterling as well, the big man clapping his hands together and whooping.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t,” Sterling said, seething as he finally got the muzzle of his revolver under the gaiamancer’s chin. “Tell me, son. Use your words, goddammit.”

The gaiamancer bared his bloodied teeth and spat in Sterling’s eye. Sterling fired a shot, but not before a giant hand made of concrete and asphalt wrapped around his body, Sterling firing several more shots as he was lifted into the sky.

“Shee-it… shee-it…” Sterling said when he was about twenty feet up. He fired a few more shots. There wasn’t much that Sterling was afraid of, not an amalgamation, definitely not a Killbilly, and not even a Godwalker even though they could disintegrate him as quickly as he could light a match.

But Sterling was deathly afraid of heights.

“Let me down!” he shouted, already panicking as he tried to break free from the stone hand suspending him in the air. He reached forty-five feet, everything growing smaller beneath him as he caught a glimpse of the Killbillies over on the hill outside of town. He needed to get out of T or C, pronto.

“Come on, Kip, do something,” Sterling said as he tried not to look down. He caught a quick glimpse of the tips of his cowboy boots, the ground moving further and further away. He started to feel queasy, his limbs tingling, Sterling’s breaths short and exaggerated now.

The column of stone stopped advancing once Sterling reached about sixty feet up. He didn’t know how he was going to get down, and unless Kip or someone else could fly…

The stone hand holding him high in the sky quaked.

Sterling prepared for a drop that would probably take a day to recover from, if he survived at all. The rock began to crumble, gravity yanking Sterling down, the ground rushing toward him. He was saved at the last moment by one of the men who’d been watching the fight, the local springing into action and jumping high enough that he was able to catch Sterling in his arms.

Sterling didn’t even know the man’s name, only that he had gotten drunk with him before, just a random face in the small crowd of booze hounds that called Truth or Consequences home.

“You all right?” the man asked, his voice low and syrupy. He set Sterling down. The cowboy necromancer immediately set to dusting himself off, not at all embarrassed to be saved from a drop like that.

“I ain’t a fan of heights,” Sterling mumbled, “and I ain’t afraid to admit that.” He glanced over to see that the gaiamancer was on his knees, still breathing, but out of Mana.

“I’m taking this one,” Sterling called over to Kip, who now lay on his side, the thighs of his jeans drenched in blood. “I’ll make it quick,” he told the gaiamancer as he lifted his revolver and put an end to the man’s life with a single shot.

Bam!

Sterling holstered his weapon and turned to the local who had saved him from having to spend the next twenty-four hours or so healing from broken legs. Sterling extended his hand to the man. “Appreciate that save there. What’s your name, anyway?”

“Noah,” he said.

“Noah, huh? It’s nice to officially meet you. You can call me Sterling. I would stick around and buy you a bottle of tequila, but I got a hunch that the Killbillies ain’t gonna be too happy to see me here.” Sterling equipped his bag of turquoise and silver. He rummaged around in it for a moment and got enough out to buy Noah a bottle. “Get yourself a bottle on me, share it with whomever you’d like, and pour a shot out for this poor fella here,” he said, gesturing toward the dead gaiamancer, now lying on the ground, a halo of blood forming around his head.

“Mighty kind of you,” Noah said.

Sterling tipped his hat to Noah and turned to Kip. “I’ve got to get moving,” he told his old drinking buddy, who carried a bitter look on his face as he looked down at his bloodied legs. The stone spikes that had been pinning him to the ground were long gone; Kip lay on his side. With a whistle, Sterling summoned his bone horse to his side. The gaiamancer had tried, but he had been unable to do any damage to Manchester’s skeletal form in the end.

“Sterling, man, you won’t believe the day I’ve had,” Kip said, offering him a crooked smile, his voice indicating to Sterling that he was half drunk. “You just wouldn’t believe.”

“You ain’t the only one who’s had themself a day, but we can shoot the shit later. Look, I need to figure out where the hell Don Gasper is. You got any idea?”

Kip frowned, a dark look coming over his eyes, his nostrils flaring as he spoke. “Screw Don Gasper. You know my opinion of the man. I don’t know why you give that crazy old shaman the time of day. I got something better than Gasper, and you’re going to like it.”

“Kip, not now.”

“I heard about something over on the south side of town, on the other side of the Rio Grande, over yonder,” Kip said, gesturing with his chin in the direction of Riverbend Hot Springs, near Turtleback. “Word is there’s some treasure out there. Killbillies buried a bunch of turquoise and silver in a beached yacht, and now it’s protected by an amalgamation, believe it or not. One of them armadillo ones.”

“Beached yacht? A treasure?” Sterling asked, hiding his skepticism. Kip was always scheming up something. “As much as I would like to go get that money with you—Lord knows I could use some—I’m going to have to take a raincheck. Don Gasper. Where is he, and what have you heard?”

“Give me a cigarette and I’ll tell you everything I know,” Kip said, faux desperation in his eyes.

“I’ll give you one, but then I’ve got to scoot. Killbillies will be here any minute now. Shit, they should have already come by now.”

“Don’t you worry about them boys; I’ll smooth things out. Just you watch.”

“You ain’t understanding me, Kip,” Sterling said as he helped Kip sit up by offering him a hand. “I killed a dozen of them boys earlier. And that’s not to mention the Godwalker that destroyed my ranch. You said you’ve had a day, well let me tell you…”

“Did you say a Godwalker destroyed your ranch? Here in T or C?” Kip asked, looking up at Sterling. “What about your crop?”

“Bona fide Godwalker. Goodbye pepper farm.”

“Fucking hell, man. Rest in peace, crop. I can’t believe they got your peppers.”

“They sure did. You can ride your happy ass out there and check for yourself when your legs are healed up. But all that’s in the past, unfortunately, and to get to the future I need to find someone. I’m going to ask you one more time: do you know where Don Gasper is?” Sterling equipped his bag of tobacco and a rolling paper.

“Yeah, yeah. Last I heard, Don Gasper was cooped up in Las Cruces. He came through here about two weeks ago, the old kook, on his way down there for some shamanic festival or something. At least that’s what he was muttering about. Speaking Spanglish as always. You know I don’t speak Spanish, Spanglish barely. Just know how to order food and a couple cervezas.”

“Las Cruces? You sure?” Sterling gave a freshly rolled cigarette to Kip. He crouched in front of his old friend and his lighter formed in his hand, Kip taking a long drag off the cancer stick as soon as Sterling lit it.

“Damn, you roll a tight cigarette.” Kip exhaled a cloud of blue-gray smoke and looked back down at his bloodied legs. “Son of a bitch gaiamancer. Anyway, Don Gasper. Las Cruces, that’s what he said anyway. Who knows if he’s still there or not, but you’d be best to start there.”

“Then that’s where I’m going. I’ll hit you up next time I come back through.” Sterling mounted his skeletal steed. “Try to stay out of trouble until then, you hear? And before I get on out of here, I’ve got to ask: what the hell did you say to that gaiamancer to piss him off anyway?”

“Ha! I told him I fucked his sister while his momma watched,” Kip said, grinning, the man clenching the cigarette between his yellowed teeth.

Sterling snorted. “Now why in the hell would you go and tell him something like that?”

Kip started laughing. “Because I did, and I’m a man of my word, you goddamn know that. Them two gals came onto me, though. And you best believe I tried to tell him that to smooth things over, but it didn’t work. Plus, he was looking at me funny. Actually, on second thought, I think that’s why I told. I don’t like it when people look at me funny.”

“You’re a drunk, Kip. And a liar. Ain’t no woman this side of the equator that wants anything to do with your drunk ass, before or after the Reset. Damn liar.”

Kip snorted, and nearly lost his cigarette. “Takes one to know one, Sterling.”

“Look here, if anyone comes asking for me, anyone, don’t tell them I went to Las Cruces. I don’t care if my long-lost grandmother from Cheyenne shows up with a wool sweater and a chocolate birthday cake. Send them somewhere else.”

Kip exhaled a cloud of smoke and took another drag off the cigarette, practically extinguishing it. “Anyone comes asking for you, and I’ll tell them that I sent your necrotic ass to Texas, tell them you’re in Marfa getting all artsy fartsy or some shit. I’m pretty sure they are still an art commune out there. Lots of beautiful women too, least that’s what someone told me.”

“Don’t you bring Texas into this.”

Kip and Sterling both laughed until they heard the roar of the Killbillies’ ATVs. “Well, that’s my cue to exit.” Sterling turned south, and was just about to trot off when Kip called out to him again.

“Say, what the hell do you want from Don Gasper’s crazy ass anyway?”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Sterling called over his shoulder.

Kip paused for a moment before asking, “Does this have something to do with what happened three years ago?”

“Good guess. When I return, we’ll go after that treasure.” Sterling tipped his hat to his old friend and took off.

.Chapter Three.

Sterling rode south out of town, past a few scattered trailer homes with caved-in roofs, an old Mexican restaurant with letters missing from its sign, and a police station, which had been painted in abstract graffiti that had a native touch to it. The area on the outskirts of Truth or Consequences used to be called Williamsburg, which Sterling knew due to the map in his New Mexico travel guide. Of all of his possessions, the travel guide was certainly one of the more useful items he’d acquired.

As he rode, Sterling quickly accessed his stats to see that he had gained a level for killing the gaiamancer, his first one this year:

You have received 1,500 XP!

You have gained a level!

You have received six Stat Points!

You have received one Technique Point!

You have received one bonus Technique Point!

Name: Sterling Monedero

Race: Human

Mancer Class: Necromancer

Class Ranking: Blood Mage

Level: 59

Fortitude: 117

Strength: 35

Resolve: 151

Mana: 91/132

Current Armor Rating: 23

XP: 293,339

XP to Next Level: 8,750

Stat Points Available: 6

Technique Points Available: 23

Do you want to assign your Stat and Technique Points now?

“Might as well,” Sterling said as he neared the highway. The Adapted were worth more points than regular folk, which was why Sterling had received 1,500 XP for killing a single gaiamancer versus the dozen or so Killbillies he’d slaughtered earlier on his property.

Figuring he was going to need the Mana with what he planned to do once he rendezvoused with Don Gasper, Sterling dumped all six Stat Points into his Mana, which brought his base total up to 138. He was down close to fifty points with all the magic bullets he’d fired, but they would reset tomorrow.

You are currently a Level 59 Blood Mage.

Once you gain another level, you will be a Level 60 Bone Sculptor. Reaching this achievement will come with a class proficiency bonus.

It will also come with a new class skill!

“About goddamn time.”

Every ten levels came with a new classification title. Before Sterling was a Blood Mage, he was a Reverse Undertaker. He didn’t know what he would be classified as once he reached Level 70—if he made it to that level. He’d have to reach the achievement to find out, not that the title even mattered.

One thing was for certain: between now and then, he would surely get plenty of Stat Points. Sterling had four options to dump his Stat Points into. His Fortitude was his strength of mind, his guts, of which he had plenty. Sterling had heard once from the flectomancer named Raylan Mossberg that every five Stat Points of Strength was double the strength of a normal person before the Reset. As it stood, Sterling’s strength was seven times that of a normal person. His Resolve was his ability to heal, every ten points doubling a normal person’s ability to mend their wounds. Sterling had put a lot of focus into this early on, when he gave a shit about the game-like system forced onto him after the Reset.

Fortitude, Strength, Resolve, Mana—these were the things he could improve with Stat Points.

There wasn’t much he could do with the two Technique Points he had received from the level up, one of the points coming as a bonus due to the leather bracelet that he wore, which was known as a charm. He could always search for a new technique to learn on the Buy Store, which was what the locals called the digital store available to every person who had survived the Reset.

The Buy Store was accessible in the same way Sterling could navigate to his stats, the store simply appearing in front of him in a glowing box, and allowing him to purchase various techniques. Sterling had really only focused on two techniques over the last five years—his sword skills and his marksmanship—but he didn’t have enough points to level up any of those ones.

Sword Expert Level 4 - 30 Technique Points to Level 5

Marksmanship Level 6 - 36 Technique Points to Level 7

What he really needed was to find a flectomancer who could craft a charm that really gave him some bonuses when it came to Technique Points. That, or a quality trading post where he could just purchase the charm outright. Trading posts were generally in abundance, but flectomancers were harder to come by.

A flectomancer was one of the Adapted, just like Sterling. These people had a unique gift to create charms and improve items, flectomancers specializing in crafting. Sterling’s weapons, his sickle-sword and revolver, had been created by Raylan Mossberg, a flectomancer he had partnered with several years ago. Raylan had told him at the time his weapon was of Egyptian design, and it had a name that Sterling could never get right. At some point, he would need to find Raylan as well. Last he heard, the flectomancer had set up shop on the Turquoise Trail, in an old mining village called Madrid, somewhere between Santa Fe and Albuquerque, the latter a city Sterling would go out of his way to avoid, due to gang warfare.

Manchester kept to the side of I-25, the skeletal steed tracing the Rio Grande River as it headed south, its waters growing choppier. Sterling knew better than to ride on the interstate itself; there could be ambushes, checkpoints, and generally that was where anyone with a vehicle would be waiting to take advantage of someone else, even if fuel was harder and harder to come by as the years dragged on. From his previous trips around what used to be the state of New Mexico, Sterling had developed a policy of riding a half mile off the highway. He could still use the stretch of road as a point of reference, but he was less visible this way. If someone did happen to see him, he had a head start in trying to get away or planning an assault.

There were green road markers along the interstate, and Sterling saw that the small village of Hatch was a little over thirty miles away, Las Cruces about seventy miles from his current location. Sterling could certainly reach Las Cruces by midnight, but that would put him in the city that he knew was currently a war zone between the Killbillies and the White Sands Militia, and Sterling was unsure of what the night hours looked like there. It would be best for him to find a place to squat along the highway, maybe the rooftop of an old convenience store, or an abandoned rest stop. Something like that.

The sun was almost over the ridge line now, the glowing beacon sinking fast. “Come on,” Sterling told Manchester, and his skeletal steed picked up speed. The ground seemed thirsty, Manchester’s hooves kicking up plenty of dust. But there were signs of life in the desert, little shrubs with yellow flowers blooming everywhere, a variety of cacti as well, which Manchester was able to easily ride through considering he no longer had flesh.

Manchester had been with Sterling about four years now. He had been there three years ago, when Sterling had tried the unthinkable and had lived to regret it. Manchester was a fine horse, strong and intimidating. In T or C, the locals had grown accustomed to seeing Sterling ride into town on his skeletal steed. But he knew the rest of the state would be different, and he would have to hide Manchester by sending his pile of bones to his inventory list.

Sterling hadn’t the faintest regarding the number of necromancers in the world, but it certainly was one of the rarer types of mancer. Raylan claimed there were twelve kinds of mancers in total, but he had only encountered a handful of them, each encounter unique.

A small herd of gazelle caught his attention, Sterling watching as they took off toward the west, their white tails flipped up. He was getting closer and closer to the start of a mountain range, which was going to make it harder to follow the interstate. Having been in this position plenty of times before, Sterling decided to stick to the highway rather than attempt to climb the side of the mountain. He guided Manchester closer to the interstate, where he saw an overturned eighteen-wheeler, a warning spray-painted on its side telling people to repent.

Sterling rode on.

He wasn’t opposed to sleeping out in the open, but it could get cold at night in the desert. It would be much more comfortable if he could find some shelter. He figured he would find something around the small village of Hatch, and he could always call on a friend named Judge to put them up for the night. But he had to be careful approaching the place at night. It could be covered in Killbillies.

Mountains began to rise out of the earth on his left as if they had been summoned by a lazy god. Sterling saw a sign affixed by two of its bolts that read Caballo Reservoir. Since it was off the highway, Sterling guided Manchester toward the reservoir. Movement to his left caught his attention, and Sterling placed his hand on his revolver until he saw a coyote run off.

He wasn’t a superstitious man, but Don Gasper had warned him about coyotes enough times for Sterling to wonder if the coyote could have been a witch. There was also the rumor that Ava, his former neighbor, was a witch who could turn into a coyote. This wasn’t logical, but nothing about what had happened since the Reset was logical, none of it.

One day everything was hunky-dory, the next day most of the world’s population was gone, their heads exploded, and Sterling could animate the dead. There were floating Godwalkers in the sky destroying any and everything having to do with electricity, and the people left standing were either given a unique mancer class, or had enhanced speed, strength, unique skills, and the ability to heal. That, and everyone had their memories wiped.

That was the part that Sterling hated the most.

He had grown used to living in a Southwestern dystopian wasteland, but the fact that he couldn’t remember who he was, or why he had been in Las Cruces to begin with when the Reset happened, irked him to no end. Had Sterling had a family? Who had he been in his former life? The only thing on his person once he woke up after the Reset was the pill bottle full of pepper seeds. No wallet, no way for him to identify himself.

There was no telling who he used to be.

Sterling watched what was left of the setting sun ripple pink and blue arcs across the murky reservoir. He finished his cigarette and rolled another, smoking the second one slowly, enjoying it, the brim of his hat low over his eyes. He felt the urge to write a desert haiku. He knew he didn’t have much natural light left, so he decided to write one that was part of a series of haiku on New Mexico he had been working on, ones that shared the same finishing line.

Sterling took a look around, let his environment come over him, his cigarette still hanging out of the side of his mouth as he jotted down his thoughts.

Hazy purple mountains

What kind of cactus is this?

Nuevo México

He read it again, checked that the syllables were right and, once he was satisfied, continued on his way. Rather than try to ride along the interstate, he took Highway 187, which passed by an abandoned town known as Oasis, the place mostly quiet aside from a bar in front of an old RV Park. It was too dark for Sterling to completely read the signs in front of the RV Park warning off trespassers, but he had been to these kinds of places before, and knew that they could be well guarded.

Definitely not looking for trouble, Sterling thought as he pressed on, aware that Highway 187 would eventually connect back with I-25. Sterling could see the highway marker ahead, the moon reflecting off what was left of its numbers and letters.

He had to hand it to the people that had thrived before the Reset. They were organized, and the things they had left behind were monstrously helpful. The people after the Reset were different. They were territorial, often animalistic, and aside from some of the pueblos and a few enclaves he’d heard about up in the high desert around Taos, the people weren’t able to put together the same government structures that existed before, their world defined by constant chaos.

It was a crying shame too.

Sterling had leafed through plenty of magazines and books detailing what the world used to be like. It was frustrating seeing those pictures, New York City, London, Tokyo, Seattle—big places, places that required a lot of behind-the-scenes work to operate. The list went on and on, organized society built in stacks, most people following the rules to varying degrees.

He couldn’t imagine what those big old cities looked like now.

There’d been a couple times over the last several years when he had thought about packing his things up and riding to the east or west, just seeing how far the destruction went. But he’d always come to the same conclusion: What good would there be in that? Everyone was suffering everywhere. Best to just keep to himself.

Sterling spotted a building along the highway that looked like it would be a good place to camp out. He wasn’t that far from Hatch, where a friend of his lived, and he could cover most of the distance in the morning between here and Las Cruces.

“Molly B’s Dry Dock,” he read as he approached the parking lot, his revolver in hand. Sterling cleared his throat. “Hey! Anyone in there? I’m just looking for a place to relax for the night. I’ll keep moving on if you’re in there, so say something now. I’m armed. Fair warning.”

He waited, and he thought about firing a shot to the sky just to let any squatters know he was serious. But he also got the sense that the place was empty. Just to be sure, he made another announcement, this one a little more urgent.

Sterling got off his horse. He kept his revolver at the ready as he went to the first open doorway he could find, which was an office.

Bam!

A rat caused him to waste a bullet. It scurried behind a toppled watercooler, Sterling on edge for a moment as he waited for any other disturbances. “Damn things,” he said as he moved to another room, this one clear of all of its furniture, and with a partially boarded up window that looked out toward the highway.

Sterling walked to the window and noticed something in the distance, a bonfire fueled by someone with a little more juice than your average local.

“Killbillies,” Sterling said, as if he was having a conversation with himself. He could sit here and watch them all night, or he could use the cover of night and his unique power to attack the bandits, rid the world of a few more Killbillies, and collect some loot and XP in the process.

Sterling stepped outside and whistled for Manchester.

“Might as well end the day right,” he said to his bone horse as he mounted up.

Sterling reached the highway and took a quick look around, checking to see if there were any highway grave markings. From his experience, people buried their dead wherever it was convenient, and they usually marked the graves with either crosses, or other found objects that looters wouldn’t take.

He spotted a couple abandoned vehicles between his current location and the large bonfire on the other side of the highway. After hopping off Manchester, Sterling started to check the abandoned vehicles, looking for a little help.

“Let me help you there, ma’am,” he said as he opened the door of a rusted SUV. The smell was nearly overwhelming, but Sterling powered through it, breathing out of his mouth as he animated the rotting woman sitting in the passenger seat. He didn’t know how long she had been there, but being stuck inside the car had somewhat preserved her.

Even if she looked gruesome, Sterling no longer experienced shock at what he could do. He didn’t have any remorse for his animates—they were all dead anyway—but he knew their effects on the living, how terrifying they could be. His animates were by no means smart, but they understood simple commands, and there seemed to be an almost telepathic link between him and them. Maybe they would get smarter once he could finally level up his Resurrection ability.

As his animate stood there awaiting orders, Sterling checked the other vehicles, relying on his Death Sense ability to let him know if there were any other bodies around. Unfortunately, there weren’t.

“Looks like you’re all I got, ma’am,” he told his animate as he motioned for her to follow him across the highway. It was quiet out, and aside from the bonfire blazing on the hill about a quarter of a mile away from them, the only available light came from the moon and the stars.

Sterling felt a nicotine craving coming on, but he knew he was close enough now that if one of them went off to take a piss or something, they might be able to smell the cigarette. Nope, the only way he was going to handle this was through shock and awe, something Sterling excelled in.

He clicked his tongue and Manchester trotted across the highway, joining Sterling and his grisly animate. Sterling placed his hand on the side of Manchester’s skull.

“Are you ready to help me out, Pingo?” he asked as he ran his hand down the bone horse’s face, lightly grazing his fingers across the top of Manchester’s cold teeth. Manchester could no longer make sounds, considering he didn’t have any vital organs, but the horse did nod his head up and down, stomping his feet lightly against the gravel.

“Good. Here’s how this is going to play out: You’re going to ride right into that camp and freak them the hell out.” Sterling turned to his other animate, the zombie woman. “And you’re going to come in after, from the west. Surprise and conquer.”

The woman hunched over, and made a sound that almost resembled a snort. She took off, moving at an almost superhuman speed, running like an ape.

“You’re up,” he told Manchester as he slapped him on the hip bone. The horse trotted ahead, Sterling following close behind him.

His all-black clothing helped in scenarios like this, and as he followed Manchester, Sterling kept low to the ground, his revolver at the ready. He had plenty of Mana, and he didn’t expect there to be more than ten Killbillies or so. If they weren’t Killbillies, they were likely another bandit group, or perhaps a patrol from the White Sands Militia, even though this was pretty far out of their territory. Either way, Sterling wasn’t about to ask any questions—it wasn’t that kind of world anymore.

Manchester was the first to reach the bonfire, Sterling’s skeletal steed doing exactly what he wanted him to do. Without stopping, Manchester galloped right through the middle of the enemy camp, the sounds of screams and people scrambling reaching Sterling’s ears as he continued to creep through the darkness.

The female animate arrived, and Sterling heard an actual firearm, its report telling Sterling that it was a shotgun.

Click-click, boom!

While this would certainly stop his animate, she would still be able to give them hell and cause the distraction that Sterling needed.

Pausing behind a shrub, Sterling waited until a man charged off in his direction, seemingly planning to do a sweep of the area. Sterling confirmed he was a Killbilly—pretty easy to tell with the yellow bandanna around his neck and his body armor with the letters KB spray-painted across the chest. In his mad dash, the Killbilly ran right past Sterling, only to find the cowboy necromancer suddenly standing behind him, the muzzle of his revolver pointed at the back of his head.

“How many are there?” Sterling asked as his single animate continued to cause chaos. He imagined that by now the shotgun wound had torn her body in half, that she was crawling toward one of the Killbillies, a horrifying sight. “Don’t turn around, boy, or I’ll blow your head off. I’ll ask one last time: how many?”

“I’m not telling you shit,” the man growled.

Sterling knew at that point he should have pulled the trigger, but a moment’s hesitation was enough for the bandit to flip high into the air and land behind Sterling. He wasn’t one of the Adapted, but the beefy Killbilly had put plenty of Stat Points in his Strength, and there was no telling what he had done with the Technique Points he had received.

Sterling swiveled, hoping to shoot the bandit. He lost his revolver as he was tackled to the ground, the man stinking of sweat and tequila, a rage in his eyes illuminated by the bonfire, an urge to survive. Calling upon his own unique strength, and secretly cursing himself for being rusty in a situation like this, Sterling sent a fist up that connected with the man’s jaw. He managed to roll on top of the Killbilly, his cowboy hat flying off his head in the process. Using his leverage to his advantage, Sterling lifted the man by his shoulders and headbutted him twice. He was just about to reach for his sickle-sword when a foot connected with the top of his back, sending Sterling tumbling away.

He rolled down the hill and landed in a cactus patch that added insult to injury, tiny spikes of pain radiating. He looked up to see another Killbilly charging in his direction, his silhouette growing in size. The man jumped, and landed right next to Sterling, preparing to stomp him out.

But Sterling was a scrappy fighter, and he wasn’t one to forgo an advantage for something akin to honor. He struck the man in the groin, making the brute yelp. Back to his feet, Sterling unsheathed his sickle-sword, turquoise energy radiating off its tip as he took a precision swipe at his assailant, a trail of blood following the end of his weapon as it cut through the man’s throat.

Knowing that these Killbillies could heal just as well as he could, Sterling stepped behind the man as he began to fall, and used the inner curve of his blade to cleave the man’s head clean off.

Ain’t no healing from that.

The Killbilly he’d engaged earlier was just starting to press himself to his feet when Sterling descended upon him. Rather than say anything, he quickly killed the bandit by slitting his throat, the man’s body rolling down the hill.

Sterling still heard some struggle up at the campfire.

He located his black cowboy hat as well as his revolver and approached the campfire with his weapon drawn, cursing himself under his breath for losing his weapon twice in one day. You’ve got to get your shit together.

Just as he had predicted, Sterling found his animate cut in half by the shotgun blast. She had also managed to overpower the man with the weapon, and was currently ripping him apart as another bandit tried to fight her off. Sterling shot the Killbilly that was still standing, the man instantly falling over from the fatal wound, the magic bullet passing right through his skull and bursting out the back of his head. He walked over to the man that was still struggling and shot him as well. Another bullet between the eyes, another wound he wouldn’t be able to heal from.

Something wasn’t right.

There were only four of them, and Sterling knew that any patrol worthy enough to have an actual firearm usually traveled with more bandits. “That accounts for one…” he said as he saw a female Killbilly who had been trampled by Manchester.

Sterling was just turning around when a flying female Killbilly collided with him. She grabbed hold of him and spun Sterling high into the air. She was a muscular woman, shaved head, corn fed and raised on a steady diet of milk and meat like most of the Killbillies. Sterling tried to elbow the tops of her shoulders and the side of her head as she carried him higher into the sky. After a few heartbeats of struggle, he managed to swivel around, Sterling now with his arm wrapped around her neck. “This ain’t going to end well for you,” he told her as he pressed his revolver into the side of her head, trying to ignore the fear of heights he was experiencing.

“It won’t end well for you either,” she hissed, the two of them about seventy feet up now. “Do it, asshole.”

“Shee-it…” Sterling mumbled as his fear overcame him. He hadn’t been anywhere near this high for years, and to have it happen twice in the same day. Later, he would look back on this moment and smirk. It had been a hell of a day.

“Take me down and I’ll let you live,” he suddenly told her through gritted teeth, the air starting to grow cooler. “I’m serious, damn you, take me down!”

When the woman kept climbing, Sterling did the only thing he knew would stop the lady from going any higher.

Bam!

He blew out the side of her head, and the woman went limp in his arms.

Gravity soon took over. The two of them spiraled back toward the arid landscape below. Sterling tried to maneuver the woman so she would be the one to take most of the impact, but the ground came faster than he could react.

And it hurt.

Everything flashed black as soon as he hit the ground, and for a moment Sterling experienced memories he didn’t recognize. A child, a woman, the world around him vibrant, no longer the start of a hellscape, no longer the beginning of the end. Then heads exploding all around him, then chaos.

A surge of oxygen came to Sterling, filling his lungs. He didn’t know how many bones were broken in his body, but he knew they were several, perhaps some internal injuries as well. The Killbilly woman had taken the brunt of the fall and protected him to some degree, but that didn’t stop Sterling’s entire body from aching with pain.

“Goddammit…” he muttered as he stared up at the stars above, feeling as if they were mocking him. He chuckled, ignoring the twinge of pain along his ribcage. “You goddamn amateur,” he mumbled as Manchester slowly approached. His bone horse looked down at Sterling, and nudged him with the front of his face.

“I ain’t dead yet,” Sterling said with a groan. “But it’s going to be a minute.”

.Chapter Four.

The pain from his fall put Sterling in a delirium, the cowboy necromancer not able to tell if he was awake or dreaming. As usual, or as had been usual for him over the last three years or so, at some point in the delirium that followed, Sterling found himself thinking about peppers. He had written a few desert haiku about peppers, his favorite still being the first one he’d ever penned, one that he had memorized and could recite readily.

Chili pepper fall

Christmas comes in September

Peppers unite us

Sterling knew that Christmas was a holiday that the before people had celebrated. Considering his age, he assumed that he had probably celebrated the holiday as well. But that wasn’t why he had included the word in his haiku. In New Mexico, at least according to numerous travel guides he’d skimmed through and how the locals spoke, ‘Christmas’ meant the combination of green and red chili peppers on whatever dish you were eating. Even now, after the Reset, someone serving food would generally ask: “Red, green, or Christmas?”

Sometimes Sterling was feeling red, especially if they were talking about some Chimayó peppers, maybe some NuMex Sweet Paprika, which tasted like sun-dried tomato cherries, and featured a tantalizing flavor, not as much of a kick. Sterling could eat those things whole, just munching on them all day if he had to. But he also liked green peppers as well, a different mild flavor with a hint of robust bitterness.

As he wavered somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, sprawled out somewhere between Truth or Consequences and what was once the US-Mexico border, more pepper facts danced around his head.

He’d read that the chili pepper was a fruit that had originated in Central America. Borders, cities, counties, other countries, big pockets of civilization on either coast—as far as Sterling knew, all these things were long gone. Yet the chili pepper remained, thriving in a post-apocalyptic world. Sterling had found the book on peppers in the abandoned bookstore in T or C, which turned into an epic fight with another man over ownership of the book. In the end, the two agreed to share the book. And as it turned out, they later became fast friends and drinking buddies, Sterling and Kip never coming to blows again. Red, green, orange, yellow, even dark purple. Various shades of peppers, good enough to enjoy at every meal, had united the two men.

Sterling knew that it was birds that had helped bring the peppers up from Central America to Mexico, thousands of years before Christopher Columbus ever set sail. According to the book, Columbus was more or less responsible for the spread of the chili seed all around the world, which was quite the claim. Starting with Europe, then Africa, and Asia, the seed spread quickly. And just like that, people had a spice they could sink their teeth into. Soon, chili peppers had become an ideal mediator between Europeans and Native Americans, one of the first things shared in the Southwest alongside disease, the history of the spicy fruit still being written.

Hours passed as his body mended itself back together amidst bouts of sleep, Sterling salivating about peppers as he dipped in and out of consciousness, sounds coming to him and leaving as quickly as they appeared. It was early morning when the cowboy necromancer finally came to his senses, confusion immediately setting in. For a moment, Sterling didn’t know where he was, and he certainly wasn’t prepared to find himself lying next to a dead female Killbilly, everything coming back to him in a flash.

“Best turn back,” he growled to a gray-necked vulture circling overhead, glaring at the bird. The sun was just coming up on the horizon and the temperature had dropped; his lips were chapped, his mouth dry, and his skin cold. He wasn’t surprised to find that he no longer felt any pain from his fall. He did, however, feel a crick in his neck from sleeping funny, something that was remedied once he sat up.

After rummaging around for a moment, Sterling found his cowboy hat, and placed it on his head. He saw a pile of bones with a saddle near it and raised his hand, his skeletal steed coming to life.

“Morning, boy,” he said to his horse as he fixed the saddle over the bone horse’s body. “Good, Pingo, real good. And before you ask, you’re goddamn right I’m going to do better today. The next time I fly, it better be on an airplane,” he joked, recalling the pictures of airplanes he’d seen in magazines, and the few crashed planes he’d encountered in the desert. “It ain’t my fault anyway. I’m a bit rusty when it comes to dealing with these kinds of situations. You’ll see, today is going to be better than yesterday.”

Before stepping away from the woman who had flown him high into the air, Sterling checked her pockets for any loot. There wasn’t always loot because most people kept things in their inventory list. But sometimes Sterling found things like charms, or armor that he could equip. Other folks continued to store things in their pockets even though they didn’t need to, which was always a plus for Sterling when he found himself on a looting mission.

The woman didn’t have anything on her, but she was wearing a necklace, which Sterling quickly removed. The necklace had a bright blue stone on it, and as Sterling examined the piece, information materialized in front of him.

Item: Topaz Necklace

Item Type: Common

Description: Grants one additional Resolve Point

“Might as well,” Sterling said as he took off his hat and put the necklace on.

Bonus: You have been granted an additional Resolve Point!

The necklace was listed as Common, which meant that it wasn’t worth that much. The other item types he had encountered were Uncommon, Rare, and Legendary. In any event, charms like this were always good to have, and he was pretty sure he would be collecting plenty over the course of the journey he was about to take. Besides, Sterling could always trade it later on, once he got something better.

He recalled there being six Killbillies last night, and saving the camp itself for last, Sterling quickly made a wide circle around the place to collect loot. He didn’t find anything worth taking until he came to what was left of the campfire, where he discovered a dead man clutching the shotgun. He also found what was left of his gruesome animate, Sterling glad he hadn’t been dropped near the corpse.

The man with the shotgun wore a bulletproof vest, which told Sterling that he was the leader of this little band of Killbillies. Bulletproof vests weren’t easy to come by, and considering where Sterling was going, he knew he would need one. He also saw that the bandits had some provisions near the campfire, which had a few red embers going strong. There was a bit of mesquite nearby, and soon, after poking around in the ashes, Sterling had himself a fire.

“A proper English breakfast,” he mumbled as Manchester approached, which was something he recalled reading in a book. He had no idea what a proper English breakfast consisted of, but if it didn’t have peppers involved, Sterling wanted nothing to do with it.

He located a metal tin of coffee, which he added to an empty pot. He then found a big water jug. After filling the pot, and subsequently taking a long sip of the cool water, Sterling sent the jug to his inventory list. He always had water available through his inventory list, but it was smart to have extra. There was a pan, which Sterling figured would be useful in cooking up a few chili peppers. Of the provisions that the bandits had left out, he had found some dried goat meat and cabbage. He used the curved edge of his sickle-sword to chop this stuff up on a rock, and then took three Big Jim green peppers from his inventory list, chopping them as well. He put it all in the pan, just as the coffee was done boiling. Adding a little water to the pan, Sterling cooked the ingredients together, wishing he had an egg to crack over it.

But it would still be good enough.

There was a metal cup sitting on the ground, which Sterling used for the coffee. It was bitter and grainy, but the coffee wasn’t half bad, and he still had a couple of ounces of ground coffee in the tin for later, which he sent to his inventory list. Once his breakfast was ready, Sterling ate the food right from the piping hot frying pan, glad that the peppers had provided some flavoring. After a second cup of coffee, he turned his attention back to the Killbilly with the bulletproof vest.

Sterling set his cup down and grabbed the man by the legs, dragging him away from the campfire. He took off the camouflage vest the man was wearing, and removed the handkerchief around his neck, whistling some song he didn’t quite know as he did so. It took a little finagling, but he was finally able to get the bulletproof vest off the man’s body.

Sterling had worn one before, several years ago. They were a bit uncomfortable, but it would certainly be helpful in Las Cruces. Sterling removed his cowboy hat, his black duster, and his black pearl-snap button-up shirt. He wore an undershirt, which he kept on as he slipped into the bulletproof vest. He could smell the man’s musk on the vest, but it wasn’t too overpowering, and he knew that it would eventually fade. Once the vest was on, he checked his arm movement, and then got dressed again.

There was one last thing he needed to do before he left the campsite.

Sterling unsheathed his sickle-sword from its breakaway scabbard and cut the Killbilly leader’s wrist. After wiping his blade on the man’s body, he returned the weapon to its sheath and angled the man’s wrist so his blood collected into a small puddle on the ground. He watched as the puddle of blood grew in size, focusing his gaze on the surface of the blood.

It took six Mana Points to use his Death Whisper ability, but it was one of the best investigative techniques Sterling had at his disposal. The outline of a face began to appear on the surface of the blood. Glassy eyes blinked open, everything crimson, and the face gasped.

“Where…?” the face whispered, the voice causing small bubbles to appear on the surface of the blood. “Where am I?”

“I need some information,” Sterling said, a chill running down his spine. It was a strange power, and even though he’d used it plenty of times before, it always spooked him to some degree. “I’ll make this quick. What do I need to know about the Killbillies’ operations here in Southwestern New Mexico?”

“Are… Are you God?” the face whispered, which was a query Sterling had heard plenty of times before.

“Sure. Now, what do I need to know?”

“Am… am I in heaven? It’s… dark here…”

“Can’t tell you that part, amigo. Best advice I can give is to go toward the light, if there is a light.”

“There’s… there’s no light.”

“Well, best guess is to keep looking, and in the meantime, tell me what I need to know about the Killbillies around Hatch.”

“There’s… there’s a supply camp in Radium Springs, not far from Hatch,” the voice whispered. “Commodore Bones is there.”

“Commodore Bones? And who might that be?”

“One… One of the three founders of the Killbillies. Commodore Bones.”

“So he’s some kind of big shot, huh?”

“He’s one of the three leaders…”

“Hold on a moment.”

Sterling didn’t quite know where Radium Springs was, so he equipped his New Mexico travel guide and located it on the stained map in the dog-eared part of the travel guide that detailed Southwestern New Mexico. Sure enough, Radium Springs was along Interstate 25, just outside of Las Cruces. He must have missed the sign on his last trip south. He sent his travel guide back to his inventory list.

The way Sterling saw it, he had two options at this point: either try to avoid the supply camp completely by riding around it, or force his way through. The problem with riding around was there was a chance he would encounter an amalgamation out there in the wild, which was what the locals called the enormous monstrosities that now roamed the open deserts of New Mexico.

But maybe it would be worth taking a chance if he didn’t have to deal with a horde of murdering Killbillies, plus it’d be easier to keep under the radar that way.

Feeling the strain now from using his Death Whisper ability, Sterling slowly lowered his hand, the face he’d conjured melting back into the puddle of blood. “Thanks,” Sterling told the man as he stood. “And good luck finding that light.”

He whistled for Manchester. His skeletal steed came trotting over to him, and once Sterling mounted up, he rolled himself a cigarette and went through the rigmarole of a morning stat check:

You have received 481 XP!

You have received an additional Resolve Point!

You have received five additional Armor Points!

“Ain’t nothing much, but it’ll do,” Sterling mumbled as he took a look at his stats.

Name: Sterling Monedero

Race: Human

Mancer Class: Necromancer

Class Ranking: Blood Mage

Level: 59

Fortitude: 117

Strength: 35

Resolve: 152

Mana: 127/138

Current Armor Rating: 28

XP: 293,820

XP to Next Level: 8,296

Stat Points Available: 0

Technique Points Available: 23

Everything appeared to be in order.

Sterling turned back to the highway, figuring he would branch off somewhere outside of the city of Hatch and try to head around the Killbilly supply camp. As much as he wanted to get revenge for what they had attempted to do to his ranch, he needed to get on with his journey. He knew Don Gasper well enough to know that the old shaman wouldn’t be sticking around in Las Cruces for long.

A yellow sign outside the city of Hatch proclaimed that it was the chili capital of the world. Red chili wreaths, known locally as ristas, hung from the bottom of the sign. Sterling rode to Hatch about once a year to sell some of his crop. He knew one of the men that lived in the town, a fellow that went by the name Judge Toadvine, who had become one of those friends that you see every year or so. Sterling didn’t know if Judge had ever been a judge, and it didn’t really matter to him. The man had good peppers, and he kept good company.

The interstate was about a mile away from the center of Hatch, and since he didn’t want anyone to see him riding in on a bone horse, he hopped off his horse long before he got to the center of the city. With a wave of his hand, Manchester crumpled to the ground, Sterling sending both his bone horse and his saddle back to his inventory list, which was a trick he would need to do from now on.

As he went the rest of the way on foot, Sterling rolled a cigarette, noting that he would need to get more tobacco soon. He was definitely going to be spending some turquoise and silver in Hatch, and he only hoped that his friend Judge would have happened upon a chili he hadn’t tried before. Walking along Franklin Street, which Sterling only identified because of a sign that was still standing, the letter N peeled off, Sterling eventually found himself surrounded by a series of abandoned churches.

The before people were real religious; the people that survived the Reset not so much. It wasn’t just Sterling’s memory that had been wiped after the Reset, and nowadays, anyone could believe any book they read as the truth, not just the Bible. Religions were aplenty, and kooks in the form of snake oil salesmen were easy to come by in the post-apocalyptic Southwest.

Sterling recalled a man stopping by Truth or Consequences a year back, preaching from a collection of books about a boy wizard. A couple showed up a few months after, preaching from a self-help book about some great secret, some way to conjure everything a person wanted into their reality.

It never stopped. There seemed to always be someone trying to convert someone to something, Sterling never much buying into it. But he didn’t judge them. To each his own was something Sterling both practiced and believed in, and as long as the religious folk weren’t threatening violence or giving him lip, he simply ignored them. Besides, he understood the importance of having something to believe in. It made everything easier.

While most of Hatch’s churches had been abandoned, others had been repurposed into something that served the current community, like the Spanish Church of God Filadelfia. The outer walls of the church were made of adobe and painted white, giving a bleak and minimalist appearance to the church, the building anchored on either side by elm trees. The large door out front had since been removed, and there were a few bullet holes in the exterior mudbrick, any and all metal railing stripped away.

It was more or less intact.

Sterling stepped inside the church, colorful light coming through a sheet of stained glass depicting a man being crucified, images of people praying all around him. Morning, Jesus, Sterling thought as he tipped his hat toward the stained glass. The wooden pews of the church had been taken long ago, likely used for firewood, and other than the stained glass, any and all icons and other religious paraphernalia had been stripped away and either sold or repurposed.

Booths were set against the walls, a few sellers seated on burnt orange stools negotiating prices with some locals, only one of the sellers spotting the lone man wearing all black now standing under the doorway. Sterling went straight to the first booth that had chilis for sale. “I’m looking for Judge,” he told the woman seated on the stool. She was at least a decade younger than Sterling, the caramel-skinned woman breastfeeding a baby wrapped to her chest in an old quilt. “Pardon me, ma’am,” Sterling started to say.

“No, it’s fine,” she said, looking up at him, not at all embarrassed. She had almost blue-black hair, her eyes hazel and far apart from one another. “Did you say Judge?”

“Judge Toadvine. He’s the one usually selling chilis around here. In fact, I’m pretty sure this used to be his booth. Did he move to a different church or something?”

She swallowed hard. “Judge was killed, but his legacy lives on.”

Sterling looked at the baby, who was still nuzzling at his mother’s nipple. “That Judge’s kid?”

She nodded.

“Ain’t that something,” Sterling said after a long pause. “I mean, my condolences.” He put out what was left of his cigarette into his palm, ignoring the sting as he went for his hat, which he held over his chest. He was happy that his friend had a child, especially with a young beautiful woman, but at the same time, he wasn’t expecting to hear that Judge had been killed. Judge was a tough old bastard, with big bear paws and a way of getting into things he shouldn’t be getting into, not unlike Kip. From what Sterling had experienced, Judge was the type that went looking for trouble, same as Kip, and when he was drunk enough, same as Sterling.

“I’m truly sorry to hear about that,” he told the young woman. “You running the pepper farm now?”

“Trying to, me and my brother.”

“Well, I don’t know if Judge ever mentioned me, but I’m a farmer from T or C. We traded before. He never said he had…” Sterling cleared his throat. “My condolences,” he said again. Considering Sterling had seen Judge just about a year ago, everything added up, including the baby.

“I was new in his life, and he was new in mine,” she said in a nonchalant way.

“Well, I won’t bother you much longer, then, ma’am,” Sterling said, not quite able to navigate how he should be conversing with the young woman. While she seemed sad about Judge’s death, she also seemed a bit disinterested, which was likely a wall she’d put up to protect herself. Sterling couldn’t blame her for that—most everyone he’d met had erected a wall to shield themselves from grief. “If you’re looking to sell, I’d love to take some peppers off your hands.”

The woman stood, nearly hitting her head on a rista that hung above her. Still holding the baby to her chest, she motioned for Sterling to follow her to the back of her booth, where there were a wide variety of peppers laid out on old yellow newspaper, wicker baskets beneath the table.

“These here look like my Big Jims,” Sterling said as he examined some of the larger green peppers. “Damn good spice on these ones too. Nearly ten thousand on the Scoville scale.”

“Have you tried the NuMex Jalmundo Jalapeños?” she asked, motioning toward a couple green peppers.

“Interesting name, but no. I’m guessing whoever made it combined mundo, the Spanish word for ‘world,’ and jalapeño. So, jalmundo.”

The woman shrugged. Her baby pressed away from her nipple and started coughing. She turned, her child recovering a few seconds later. “I don’t know nothing about their names, mister, I just know that they are hotter than a witch’s titty in a brass bra, as Judge used to say.”

Sterling snorted. “He did say that from time to time, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” she said with a grim smile, “he did. About seventeen thousand Scoville, at least that’s what he claimed. He was bragging about these ones a bunch. We got some of the normal things you’ll see around these parts, some mild Parkers, Chimayó, nothing like this though. If you know, sometimes this one guy comes around with a string of NuMex Orange Spice, but he hasn’t been around in a week. Heard of that one?”

“Hold on,” Sterling said as he equipped his travel guide, which also had a few magazine clippings regarding peppers that he’d stuffed in the back. He located a double page spread with a listing of peppers on it, and found a picture of an orange pepper about three or four inches long. “There it is, I’ll be damned. NuMex Orange Spice. That was one of the newest ones before the Reset,” he said. “I thought I’d heard that name before.”

“It was new?”

Sterling nodded. “Developed by New Mexico State University, real hot. Almost eighty thousand Scoville.”

“Dang… eighty?” she asked, her baby starting to cry. “Shhh, shhh, momma’s here. Shhh, quiet.”

Sterling cleared his throat. “Anyhow, I won’t bother you any longer, but I’d love to get me some of them Jalmundos. How much are you looking to part with?”

“You can have them all if you got the silver.”

“Shee-it, I believe I do,” Sterling said as he retrieved his bag of silver and turquoise from his inventory list. He located a few rings made of silver and set them on the table one by one until the woman was satisfied.

“Thank you, mister,” she said.

“No, thank you. I’ve got quite the journey ahead of me, and having a few peppers for either trading or eating will go a long way. Once again, I’m sorry to hear about your husband, about Judge. If he has a grave somewhere, let me know where it’s at and I’ll pay my respects.”

She cast her eyes down to his boots. “Judge don’t have no grave.”

“Well, if I come back again and he does have one by that point, you be sure to let me know.”

“Will do, mister.”

“Now, which one of these folks in here sells the best tobacco?”

The young woman nodded her chin to a shop across from her. “This is the best.”

“Thanks.” Sterling turned back to her. “One other thing, whatever happened to Judge? How did he die anyway? Don’t tell me it was Killbillies.”

“I told him…” she said, biting her lip. “I told him not to go out there.”

“Out where?”

“Between here and Rincon, about two miles off the highway, there’s an amalgamation that has claimed that area as its territory. A big scorpion one. I heard it was fifteen feet long.”

“And this amalgamation killed Judge?” Sterling asked.

“It sure did, at least as far as I know. Judge went out with a couple of locals to hunt it; only one of the men came back. He died two days later from his wounds.”

“Sounds like someone needs to do something about that amalgamation.”

“You can’t be serious.”

Sterling shrugged. “It’s either go that way, or head straight into the Killbilly supply camp down in Radium Springs. I think I’ll take my chances with the scorpion. I’ve handled an amalgamation or two before, and I’ll gladly do so again, especially in honor of my old friend Judge Toadvine.”

She shook her head.

“Don’t you worry, Judge and I ain’t exactly alike when it comes to killing things. I’m not saying he wasn’t a tough old bastard, I’m just saying we ain’t exactly alike.”

Her eyes dropped to the revolver at his waist and his sickle-sword. “If you say so.”

“Yup, I say so. What’s your baby’s name anyway?” Sterling asked, nodding to the child. “Sure is a cute little fella.”

“His name is Sterling,” she said as she showed him the baby’s face. “Judge said he was named after a friend of his.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me…”

“Do you know Sterling?”

“Know him?” He gestured toward himself with both thumbs. “I am him.”

The woman looked from her child up to the man wearing all black, a cowboy hat on his head and his dark hair long tucked behind his ears.

“Is he one of the Adapted?” Sterling asked once she didn’t say anything.

“Don’t know. He hasn’t exhibited any powers yet, except a mean bite,” she said as she brought her hand to her nipple.

“Sounds about right.”

“Welp, I guess, um, Sterling meet Sterling.” The woman lifted the baby to him, so the child could lay his soft black eyes on the cowboy necromancer.

“Don’t you worry, little dude,” Sterling said as he placed a finger under the baby’s chin. “I’m going to avenge your daddy’s death, just you wait.”

“Please be careful,” she said as she brought the baby back to her chest.

“I’ll try to stop by again,” Sterling said, tipping his hat to her. “Have a nice rest of your day.” He was just about to turn away again when he stopped. “One last thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Sort of a strange question, but is there a cemetery around here?”

“Sure is, why?”

“No reason. Just want to pay my respects to the dead.”

“I already done told you, Judge ain’t buried there,” she said as her child started to act up again.

“I’ll pay my respects anyway,” Sterling told her, not elaborating what he planned to do at the cemetery.

It was time to summon some fresh recruits.

.Chapter Five.

Sterling rode south, keeping a mile or so off of the interstate, heading west of the Rio Grande River. He wasn’t excited about trying to sniff out the amalgamation that had killed Judge, but he knew that he could use the XP. Sterling was close to Level 60, and once he hit it, he would be granted a new title and a class proficiency bonus, which he could use to improve one of his abilities. With what he was about to go up against, considering he planned to take on the Godwalkers, he could use all the boosts he could get.

As he traveled, Sterling took a quick look at what locals referred to as the Buy Store. In the same way that his stats floated before him when he wanted to see them, appearing as if he had pressed the button in his mind, the Buy Store took shape as well. It was here that he could spend his Technique Points, which was something Sterling hadn’t done since the incident three years ago. Three years of saving up points, and he only had a measly twenty-three Technique Points, which was something he hoped to address in the future by acquiring a charm.

The two techniques he had spent some time on appeared before him.

Sword Expert Level 4 - 30 Technique Points to Level 5

Marksmanship Level 6 - 36 Technique Points to Level 7

He wasn’t too far from leveling up his sword skills, and he certainly could continue to save points until he had thirty so he could bump himself up to Level 5, but he was in a spending mood. Sterling knew from the last time he had browsed the Buy Store, which admittedly had been a while ago, that there were plenty of other techniques available to him, classified by three main categories:

Stealth

Combat

Perception

Sterling figured, even if he was able to get around the Killbilly supply camp in Radium Springs, that stealth would be the best way forward. So he went for it, mentally selecting this option as a skill tree appeared.

Sterling hadn’t put any thought into stealth before. He’d always figured the best way forward was for him to strong-arm his way in any situation. But that hadn’t worked before, and over the last three years in Truth or Consequences, he’d had plenty of time to think about the mistakes he made on his last go-around.

Sterling saw that there were three new options available to him, each accompanied by a description.

Sneak Proficiency: Improve your ability to use your surroundings to stalk and perform other clandestine tasks. Higher levels allow for better understanding of the physical aspects of stealth.

Cover of Night: Better understand the usage of shadow and light, as well as enhanced stamina when moving discreetly at night. Higher levels allow for night vision.

Assassination: Discreetly kill enemies that are within your level range. Higher levels allow for stealthier kills.

Sterling mentally selected Sneak Proficiency.

Spend two Technique Points to learn Sneak Proficiency?

Sterling agreed to this, and he also went ahead and learned the next two levels as well, so that he was now at Level Three, and down nine Technique Points overall. He still had fourteen points left, and he figured gaining a level in Cover of Night, and two levels in Assassination would come in handy. The prompt flashed again, asking him if he wanted to spend Technique Points to learn Assassination. He did so, and then doubled down, moving up to Level Two. He then moved to Cover of Night.

Spend two Technique Points to learn Cover of Night?

“Here we go,” Sterling said, which left him with seven Technique Points to use another time. A prompt told him that he had unlocked a new ability.

You have unlocked Disguise. Spend three Technique Points to activate it?

“Disguise, huh?” Sterling asked as he read the description.

Disguise: Learn to better disguise yourself so you can fit in anywhere. Higher levels allow for greater perception of what will work, as well as voice modification.

“Maybe not just yet,” Sterling said as he took a quick look at all of the techniques he now had. He really needed to get a charm that would give him a boost every time he gained a level.

Combat:

Sword Expert Level 4 - 30 Technique Points to Level 5

Marksmanship Level 6 - 36 Technique Points to Level 7

Stealth:

Sneak Proficiency Level 3 - 14 Technique Points to Level 4

Assassination Level 2 - 9 Technique Points to Level 3

Cover of Night Level 1 - 3 Technique Points to Level 2

Sterling started to pick up his pace, only to remember that he was being trailed by fifteen animates that he had picked up in the graveyard outside of Hatch. Some of the zombies were a bit more mangled than others, but they would serve as an army to take on the amalgamation. All fifteen of them shuffled behind him, mindless as always, Sterling leading his small army of the undead toward the location that the young woman had told him about.

It was a bit of a side quest, but Sterling wasn’t the type to let anyone, or in this case, anything, kill his friend. Not only that, Judge had named his child after Sterling, which only made him thirstier for revenge. That young girl is going to have to raise a child on her own, and in a world like this, Sterling thought as he shook his head. Shit ain’t right.

He knew from past experience that it wouldn’t be too hard to spot the amalgamation, especially around a place like this. While there were mountains in the distance, and a mesa on the other side of the highway, the land surrounding Hatch was pretty flat. That’s what made it such a great place to grow peppers, and the Rio Grande River wasn’t too far off either, another boon with its runoffs and tributaries.

It was warm now, Sterling glad that the brim of his cowboy hat was casting a shadow over his face. As he took a look around, he noticed a change, something modified about his perception. There was nothing unusual in his surroundings, but something about his perception had changed. He saw the colors in a different way, slightly more vibrant; he also naturally found himself looking for good places he could duck behind if some Killbillies rolled up on ATVs.

“Just a little detour,” he told his bone horse. “Don’t you fret, Pingo. We do this, and then we head to Las Cruces and find us a crazy old shaman named Don Gasper.”

And Don Gasper was just the start. Sterling knew that there were others that he needed to find—three people in particular—especially if he wanted to try to deal with the Godwalkers once and for all. As much as he didn’t want to, and as much as he tried to stay away from superstitions, Sterling actually believed in Don Gasper’s unique shamanic powers. He’d seen them work firsthand, and if anyone knew where to start the search for the others, it would be Gasper.

Some vultures caught his attention, and Sterling followed them to a carcass. It wasn’t human, but he could tell that something big had killed the gazelle, and whatever it was had snapped the creature in half. “Yup, should be around here,” Sterling told Manchester as he drew his revolver.

The plan was to get his animates to flip the amalgamation over, exposing its soft belly, which worked best on both the scorpion and the armadillo amalgamations. Sterling hoped to make it a quick kill. The longer it took, the higher his chances of being injured were.

Sterling came across more corpses, some of them human. He didn’t see anyone that looked like Judge Toadvine, but they were in pretty bad shape, parts of their bodies bulbous and swollen, the coyotes and other critters picking them apart. If any of them were still viable, he would have animated them, but they were all too far gone, too mangled and rotten.

“Easy there,” Sterling told his horse once he noticed some tracks on the ground that looked like something had been dragged. He hopped off Manchester and began to creep toward an escarpment, his fifteen animates staying behind him. Once he reached the top of the ridge, Sterling tilted his head down to find exactly what he was looking for.

The scorpion amalgamation was parked just outside a large hole in the ground. Sure enough, just like the young woman had said, it was about fifteen feet long, its body that of a scorpion, its head the skull of a cow. The amalgamation was dark brown bordering on black, not unlike certain kinds of peppers after they dried out. Its pincers were red, and there were sinister markings on its thorax.

“Ugly bastard,” Sterling whispered. He licked his lips. It was going to be hell taking on the amalgamation, and he knew it.

He slowly backed away from the ridge, his animates doing the same. He gestured for them to wait. Sterling equipped the tobacco and the papers he picked up at the old church in Hatch. He rolled up a cigarette and lit it. The man who had sold him the tobacco kept telling Sterling he had mota, which was Mexican slang for marijuana. Sterling had grabbed a quarter ounce of that as well, to be smoked later in celebration or traded. But first, he needed something to celebrate.

Sterling puffed on the cigarette for a moment, working up a little courage to take on the amalgamation. He remembered the first amalgamation that he had seen, easily the length of several school buses. It was a serpent, its head that of a bird. The Godwalkers had a thing for making these kinds of creatures, these abominations. They had appeared right after the Reset, terrorizing an already terrorized populace. There weren’t that many of them, but the ones that were around were hard to kill, and worth a fair amount of XP.

“Let’s roll,” Sterling told his animates as he tossed what was left of his cigarette to the ground. Before leading his animates forward, he equipped his water jug and took a swig. He took another swig, wiped his mouth, and went for his revolver again.

Sterling waved his fifteen zombies forward and they took off down the ridge, heading straight toward the amalgamation. The shuffling undead kicked up a fair amount of dust, two of them falling over one another and quickly picking themselves back up. As predicted, their sudden appearance took the amalgamation by surprise. The giant scorpion with a cow skull for a head first retreated into its hole. It soon shot back out to engage them, using its pincers to snap through the legs of the first animate.

The amalgamation’s enormous stinger came around and dug into the head of one of Sterling’s animates. Rather than scream or squirm, the living corpse shot its hands out and wrapped them around the monster’s long post-abdomen. The gigantic scorpion tried to whip the animate away, which only had the effect of ripping the man’s head off and sending his body flying the opposite direction. But the animate didn’t need his head to engage the scorpion. Back in the fight, the headless corpse leaped onto the amalgamation’s body and simply held on while the others tried to ram into it.

His creations weren’t that smart, but they could perform simple tasks that were miraculously linked to Sterling in a telepathic way. He couldn’t even remember now if he had told them to try to knock the thing over or not, they just knew.

His nerves coming to him all at once, Sterling took off down the ridge and began firing his revolver. One of the bullets smashed into the amalgamation’s skull, sending up bits of bone. There was no brain in there, so it didn’t neutralize so much as annoy the monster. An animate was tossed backward; Sterling stepped aside just in time to avoid the flying corpse. He fired another shot into the side of the amalgamation’s body. It actually broke through its armor, the creature scuttling a few steps back.

“Come on!” Sterling called to his animates as he threw his arm forward, mentally encouraging them to tilt the beast over. “Knock that son of a bitch over!”

They managed to almost tip it over as Sterling fired more shots. Two of his animates latched onto the scorpion’s tail and began holding it down, while the rest overpowered the giant scorpion and flipped it onto its back. They held the tail down, three others hopping onto one of the pincers. The amalgamation tried to flip itself back onto its feet, a high-pitched sound meeting Sterling’s ears as it struggled. He fired nine more shots. Before he fired his last and final shot, he lowered his head to his revolver and dedicated the bullet to his recently deceased friend. “This one’s for you, Judge. May you rest in peace, amigo.”

Bam!

The amalgamation stopped struggling.

You have received 2,431 EXP!

“Goddamn right,” Sterling said, the prompt slowly fading away. He dropped his hand, his animates all falling at once, Sterling feeling a surge of energy as the seventy-five Mana Points he had tapped to summon the zombies were returned to him.

He let out a deep breath, holstered his revolver, and placed his hands on his hips, the adrenaline still racing through his system. Sterling was just about to take a few steps closer to the dead amalgamation when something struck him in the back of the head, everything going black.

He came awake a few minutes later, his hands cuffed behind his back, a brown cotton bag over his head, making it impossible to see. He tried to struggle, but was kicked in the back, and landed on his knees.

He whistled as loud as he could.

“Shut the hell up!” a voice growled at him.

He whistled two more times and paused, followed by a final long whistle. Manchester would know what to do. Sterling was struck once again in the back of the head by the butt of a rifle.

Lala land.

“Would you look at that…” a man said, his voice raspy and low. “I can’t believe it’s really him. Who would have thought? I’m sorry we don’t have a crown of thorns for you, Mr. Monedero, but I might have a flectomancer who can craft one out of barbed wire if you’d like.”

Sterling’s vision blurred into existence. He was strung up on a wooden crucifix, just like the stained-glass images he’d seen back in the Spanish Church of God Filadelfia. There was a stinging pain from the stakes that had been hammered through his hands, his body tied to the wooden crucifix by rope, his legs roped off as well.

He could feel the sun beating down on him, his throat parched, pain screaming through him. Sterling didn’t know what they had done to knock him out, but somehow, the Killbillies had kept him down long enough to crucify him. Judging by the faint smell at the tip of his nostrils, he wondered if they’d used some type of chemical to keep him down. Because of the sun’s current location, Sterling couldn’t see too far past the men standing in front of him, but what he could see was certainly a supply camp.

“I’m going to kill you dead,” he growled.

“So those are going to be the first words out of your mouth, huh?” the man asked as he peered up at Sterling. “They did say you were a tough son of a bitch, but tough sons of bitches aren’t that hard to come by these days.”

Sterling wasn’t far off the ground, maybe a foot or so, and as he glared down at the man, he saw that he was an older fellow, with a stubbly white beard and reflective orange wraparound sunglasses, Sterling’s black cowboy hat in his hands. Heavyset, the man wore body armor and had a pistol with a silver grip holstered at his thigh. He had the same bandanna as the other Killbillies, but his clothing was nicer, the man decked out in desert camouflage without stains. No visible tattoos either.

Sterling groaned. His hands and his arms throbbed with pain; he could feel the strain of the torn muscle all the way past the shoulder and into his chest. Even worse, his revolver was gone, as was his sickle-sword. The two pieces were crafted for him by the flectomancer named Raylan Mossberg, one-of-a-kind works of art, something worth fighting his way through the Killbilly supply camp to find. Whatever happened, he was going to need to recover his gear.

“I don’t believe I’ve introduced myself to you,” the man said. “I’m Robert Bones, one of the three living founders of the Killbillies. People call me Commodore Bones around here. You should do the same.”

“I don’t give a damn who you are, puto, you’d better get my ass down from here,” Sterling spat, “or I’ll kill every goddamn bandit in this camp and then some.”

“Heh. They also said you had a temper,” Commodore Bones told him as he licked his lips. There were two Killbillies with him, both men wearing nicer gear. Sterling got the notion that these ones weren’t like the bandits that they had out in Truth or Consequences. “Truth be told, I should just leave you out here to die, Mr. Monedero.”

Sterling blinked a few times. “How did you know my last name?”

“Vultures will stop by soon,” the Commodore continued, “and after they pick you apart, maybe some coyotes will come up and get themselves a piece, bite off a toe or three. Hell, even the snakes will eat at you, lizards too. But I got a proposition for you, something you may find a little better than hanging here ‘til you die.”

Even though he didn’t have much spit left, Sterling spat again, this time trying to hit Commodore Bones, who stepped back to avoid his saliva.

“You missed. Like I was saying, there are plenty of tough sons of bitches here in the desert, and I can recruit any and all of them whenever I’d like. What I don’t have is a mancer, specifically one that deals in the necrotic arts, if you get my drift. Not to say that we Killbillies don’t have some mancers in our employ—a handful of pyromancers, some solimancers, gaiamancers, a hydromancer and a cryomancer—and anyone smarter than a cow patty has a flectomancer working for them. But no necromancers. The way I see it, Mr. Monedero, there are a lot of dead bodies between here and White Sands, where the White Sands Militia is holed up. And if you are on our side, we have ourselves a few fresh recruits in the form of dead bodies to overrun Las Cruces. Once we take our city back, we head to White Sands. You help us push that militia back to the east, to the godforsaken Texas border, where those dumbfucks belong, you become a hero. Who doesn’t like a hero?”

“Ain’t interested,” Sterling said with a snort. “Fuck you, fuck the White Sands Militia, fuck heroes, and for that matter, fuck the Texas border. I don’t give a shit about your delusions of grandeur, spare me your mission statement if you have one. I’ve already done heard enough.”

“You sure got a mouth on you, don’t you?” Commodore Bones asked as he clicked his tongue. “I figured you’d say as much, that you would have some swagger. Before I leave you out here to bake in the sun, and freeze your ass off in the cold night, I want you to think about what you really want out of this life.”

“I definitely don’t want this,” Sterling said, nodding his chin toward the supply camp. “But I ain’t nobody’s bitch.”

“That’s what most men say until you name their price. But before you start acting ornery, perhaps I should tell you how I see things.”

“Like I said, I ain’t interested. Tell someone else.”

Commodore Bones shrugged. “You may get interested when you start feeling thirsty or hungry. And sure, you can try to equip something right from your inventory list, but it’ll just fall onto the ground, adding insult to injury. I guess if you got enough items stored away, you could keep dropping things and maybe form a stack to reach your hand, but my guards here will see to it that you never get that far. Let me ask you: where were you when the Reset happened?”

“It don’t matter.”

“Did you happen to be in Las Cruces? Because I got this itching feeling you were, and I may have something that interests you, another incentive to join our cause. But I’ll get to that in a moment.” Commodore Bones shook his head. “It’s always the question people ask, right? Where were you before it happened? Everybody was something before the Reset, myself included. Before the Reset, I kept a journal, not one on the Internet either, a real one, on paper. I kept a journal for years and years. And can you believe this? After the Reset, I was able to figure out exactly who I was, who I had been.” He paused to take a look around. “Sometimes I wonder how many people did that, how many of the before people kept track of who they were. You ever wonder how many people did that?”

“You can stick that journal up your ass and twist it. We ain’t friends, I don’t care about your past, and the only thing I see in your future is imminent death if you don’t let me down from here.”

“You’re right, not many people were keeping real journals before the Reset,” Commodore Bones said, ignoring Sterling’s remark. “As I was saying, I found out some things about myself in those journals, who I was, and what that world before was all about. It was quite fascinating, enlightening even. One of the things I found out were my own thoughts on the power of controlling my own life, my destiny. Now, I’ll admit, there’s probably a self-help book out there about controlling one’s destiny. Heh, you may have one in your inventory list that you’d like to throw at me, but these were my words, from my perspective, and that became important to what I later accomplished.” Commodore Bones swept his arm behind him at the supply camp. “Del Caydito and Nina Otero? They got it, and together, look what the three of us have created. Magnificent, isn’t it?”

“A group of tatted up assholes that roll around intimidating people, kidnapping women, and collecting bullshit taxes? Something to be real proud of, ‘Beto. Real magnificent.”

“Commodore Bones. You will call me Commodore Bones. I may speak Spanish, but I don’t go by my first name, or any abbreviation of it. Now, as I was saying, there are some other groups in what remains of the great state of New Mexico that we Killbillies will eventually topple—most notably some of the gangs out in Albuquerque, the Barelas Glyphs and the Alta Monte Homecidos just to name a few—but we need to take care of the White Sands Militia first. We do that, and we control the southern part of the state. We’ve started to push toward Silver City and into Arizona, even if the damn pueblo Indians there fight real dirty against invaders, justifiably so if you ever opened a history book.”

“I have, and Christ, I can’t believe I have to say this again, but I don’t give two shits about your little power fantasy. Let me down from here, ‘Beto, or I swear to whatever God is left you are going to regret stringing me up.”

“Commodore Bones, and as I was saying, we first retake Las Cruces, then we destroy the White Sands Militia. Once we’ve done that, we start heading north, expanding. All we need to do between here and Albuquerque is deal with the Culto Demente Sagrado, and if we push west of White Sands, we’ll have to either make a treaty, or make an enemy of the Texas Rangers. But all in due time. We’ll bring order to this place, just like it used to have before those Godwalkers showed up.”

“You are either deaf, dumb, or some combination of both,” Sterling hissed. “I ain’t interested. To hell with you and anything you’re planning to do.”

“You keep saying that, but from where I stand, looking up at a man who has been crucified in the desert, I’ve got all the time in the world, and you don’t. Maybe in that time you will figure out that what I’m offering you is life after death.” Commodore Bones placed his hand on his vest pocket. “Let’s put it like this: you either live to eat another pepper—heard you were a fan—or you die here on the stake like just about the worst form of a Savior the Southwest could shit out. The world is a cruel place, Mr. Monedero, similar to how it was before the Reset, only worse. It is a world overrun by a panicked people that has lost ninety percent of its population; those who have ascended and gained incredible powers, the Adapted like yourself; Godwalkers still exist, as you very well may know, and destroy things whenever they see fit; plus there are the amalgamations out there like the one you killed earlier. Good job, by the way, hope you enjoy that XP.”

“How the hell do you know so much about me?” Sterling asked, starting to feel bewildered.

“You mean the surly cowboy necromancer who has a pepper farm outside of Truth or Consequences? Seems pretty notable, don’t you think? Rides into town on a bone horse, occasionally raises hell. Speaking of which, where is your horse?”

“It’s a pile of bones back near the amalgamation that I killed. Whichever one of your goons sucker punched me from behind probably heard it fall,” Sterling lied.

“You sure it isn’t in your inventory list?”

“Nope.”

“I can’t say I have ridden a bone horse before. How’s that feel after a few hours?”

“Depends on the saddle and how fat you are,” Sterling told him. “Are we done yet? I’d rather die in peace than hear your bullshit any longer. You can spare me the ‘why this world needs law and order’ story. I’ve heard it before, and I ain’t interested, and even if I were, you ain’t the one to bring order to this disorder. This is a chaos you aren’t going to be able to tame with your band of broke ass bandits. If it wasn’t for your boys, and hell, if I’m being honest, a Godwalker, I’d be minding my own goddamn business and harvesting my crop right about now. I was just waiting for them to turn red when everyone showed up at once… What I’m trying to say here is this: everything I do after this is on you. Remember I said that. It’s on the Godwalkers too—don’t think I forgot about them—but it’s on you as well.”

“Who’s the one telling the story now?” Commodore Bones asked as he peered up at Sterling. The older man cleared his throat and started to turn away, still holding Sterling’s cowboy hat in his hand. “Well, I’ll leave you to it then, Mr. Monedero. You might not believe it, but I’ve broken plenty of men on that same crucifix. Regular folks and the Adapted alike. It’s a little bit harder with certain types of mancers, but eventually people either see it my way, or they don’t. And when they don’t see it my way, I’m usually the last person they see.”

“So you’re going to kill me yourself? Because if that’s the case, how about you just do it now and spare us both the drama.”

“They said you were a churlish bastard, and they weren’t wrong. Remember my question earlier about your origins? About Las Cruces?” Commodore Bones turned back to Sterling. He reached into his vest pocket and retrieved an old leather wallet. “Look familiar?”

“If it ain’t made of turquoise or silver, it ain’t worth nothing.”

“I agree, but there wasn’t much money here to begin with.” He slowly turned the wallet over in his hand. “This wallet belonged to you.”

“Bullshit.”

The Commodore placed Sterling’s cowboy hat on his head and opened the wallet and looked at the identification. “Ahem, Sterling Monedero. It says so right here. It even looks like you, a bit pudgier and with short hair, but I’m certain it’s you.” He lifted the wallet to check the picture on the ID against Sterling’s face. “Certain of it.”

“Where did you get that?” Sterling asked, taking the bait.

“Las Cruces. I did some poking around—you will find I am a man that likes to dig deeper into the details—and it turns out that you left your wallet at a bar the night of the Reset. Stumbled out of there like a madman and somehow forgot all about it. Well, here it is.” Commodore Bones folded the wallet and placed it back in his vest pocket. “There is a folded picture in there you’ll probably want to see for yourself, one that may connect some dots for you. Agree to work with me, you get your wallet back with your information inside. You’ll also get your cowboy hat back, which I’m sure you would like right about now,” he said, tilting his head up to the sun. “After we take an army of the undead to Las Cruces, and then to White Sands to deal with the militia, you’ll be free to pursue the contents of this wallet, to find your family. Think about it.”

Family? Sterling thought, alternating between glaring at the man and looking at him incredulously.

“Up to you.” Commodore Bones offered him a two-finger salute. With that, the man slowly shambled away, quickly joined by his bodyguards.

It was a long time to be out in the sun. Sterling struggled through the first hour, hoping that he would be able to undo the bindings around his legs. Yet another problem slowly started taking shape. His healing factor, which was tied to his Resolve, kept starting up, the wounds in his palms healing only to be opened again and again. The iron stakes pinning him to the crucifix were long and thick, and they weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. He had hoped that his healing factor would reject them; it never turned out that way.

Calling upon his Death Sense ability, he also tried summoning the dead around him, but the Killbillies had been smart enough to crucify him in an area that didn’t have any bodies buried in the vicinity. Without his hat, the sun blinded him and constantly beat down on his face, his black clothes only making the heat he was experiencing that much worse.

“Y’all trying to cook me out here?” he asked one of the guards who stood with his back to Sterling. “Because if that’s the case, now would be the time to add whatever marinade you plan on using.” Neither of Killbillies standing guard paid any attention to him, Sterling cursing them under his breath.

“Y’all want to see a magic trick?” he asked an hour later. He’d been going over this phrase again and again, the sun making him feel unhinged. One of the men guarding him finally turned to Sterling, but as he approached the crucifix, the Killbilly began unzipping the front of his camouflage pants.

“You put your pecker up,” Sterling warned him.

The man did no such thing. He took a piss at the bottom of Sterling’s crucifix, the air filling with the sour stench of urine.

“You’ll be the first one I kill when I get down from here,” he growled as the man stepped away. “The first one.”

The day grew hotter, the supply camp blurring like a mirage. The men guarding him switched out at some point, and the ones that took their place ignored his comments just like the first pair had. As Sterling hung there, his body began to droop forward, pain once again surging through his arms. His muscles pulsed, and every now and then he would let off a string of furious curses in English and Spanish, anger blooming in his chest.

Another hour and Sterling found that he was full on talking to himself inside his head, his eyes closed now as the sun continued to bear down on him.

You’ve got to figure a way out of this, amigo. You could just join up, and once you get your gear back, fight your way outta here. Yeah, that could work. Why didn’t you think of that in the first place? All you had to say was yes. Commodore Bones would have had you taken down from the crucifix, you’d be healed up in no time, and then you could summon an army of the dead indeed… Kill every goddamn Killbilly in the supply camp… Get that picture from Commodore Bones, your wallet. Kill every one of them…

Sterling didn’t know if the man really possessed his wallet; it could have been just another lie designed to convince him to join up. Commodore Bones hadn’t actually shown Sterling the picture of himself, so he couldn’t verify that it was indeed him.

He’s lying to you, amigo. You’ve got to figure a way down from here. I already told you, next time he comes around, say you’re going to join up. Hell, tell the two dumbasses standing guard that you’re ready to throw in the towel. Get your gear back, summon the dead… there’s got to be some dead around here, fight your way out of here, and burn this place to the ground. They’re going to leave you to die if you don’t. Don’t you want to learn more about your family? What if the son of a bitch really does have your wallet? You gave up on trying to find out about your previous life, remember? Now’s your chance; now you can take that identification and figure out who you used to be.

“Yeah,” Sterling said, agreeing with himself. His throat was parched, his lips beyond chapped. His dark clothing, which was once wet with his own sweat, had since dried. His bones screamed with pain. “I’m… I’m ready to talk,” he told the two men standing in front of him. “You boys hear me?” he asked, his voice feeling as if he were raking it over coals. “I’m ready.”

“What’s that?” one of the men asked without turning to him.

“You heard me. I’m ready to talk. Go… go get your boss.”

“Commodore Bones will be around when he comes around,” said the other man, with a heavy accent. “Until then, cállete la pinche boca.”

“What’s that, pendejo?”

“Ya te lo dije: cállete la pinche boca, puto.”

“Chinga tu madre, güey…” Sterling shot back.

This didn’t seem to get the rise out of the man that Sterling had hoped it would. As he remained crucified outside the Killbilly supply camp, Sterling couldn’t help but think back to the images he’d seen dozens of times in abandoned and repurposed churches across the state, the Mother Mary and Jesus Christ with superstar status across the Southwest. Sterling knew their names, and he knew a little bit about their lives, but he had never been one to read the Bible, at least not after the Reset. He had no idea how religious he had been before, but he was damn certain the Bible didn’t say anything about floating black monoliths appearing in the sky and destroying cities across the world, killing ninety percent of the population by exploding their heads, taking humanity off electricity, scattering everyone, creating desert monsters, and giving people superpowers.

He was certain it didn’t say nothing about that.

Sterling still had an ace up his sleeve, however. He knew that his skeletal steed was not too far off. Instinctively, Sterling had whistled for him right before he passed out for good. He knew his horse would follow behind him at a safe distance; Manchester was the smartest creature in all of the Southwest, at least according to Sterling.

He tried to whistle for him from his pinned position, but it came out as a wisp. Even if he were able to call Manchester, the two men guarding him carried large clubs that looked like they were once used for building supplies, their weapons wrapped in leather and crafted from a steel frame. Sure, Manchester would spook them, but in the subsequent fight they would alert the rest of the camp.

Just to give him something else to focus on aside from his anguish, Sterling brought his stats up, which appeared before him in the afternoon haze.

Name: Sterling Monedero

Race: Human

Mancer Class: Necromancer

Class Ranking: Blood Mage

Level: 59

Fortitude: 117

Strength: 35

Resolve: 152

Mana: 88/138

Current Armor Rating: 28

XP: 296,251

XP to Next Level:5,865

Stat Points Available: 0

Technique Points Available: 7

He still had plenty of Mana, but that would only help him if he could get his revolver or find himself some corpses. There was always the Buy Store, where he could still spend the Technique Points…

Might as well, Sterling thought as he mentally selected the Perception technique. Two sub-options appeared.

Persuasion: enhance your ability to persuade someone. Higher levels allow for greater manipulations.

Awareness: become the master of your surroundings.

“Can’t believe it took me this long,” Sterling grumbled as he saw that both would cost three points to level up. It was either Level One for both techniques, or dump all of the points into a single technique to bring it up to Level Two.

Spend three Technique Points to learn Persuasion?

Considering he was crucified outside of a Killbilly supply camp, Sterling chose to spend three points to unlock his Persuasion technique. He then spent four additional points to bring it up to Level Two. He smiled as he looked at the two men who stood with their backs to him, hoping to sweet talk them. Here goes nothing…

He cleared his throat. “Say, fellas, you wouldn’t mind giving me a cigarette, would you?”

“We already told you to shut the fuck up, man,” the bruiser on the right said.

“I know, I know, but you know what would shut me up? A cigarette. I don’t know about you boys, but a little nicotine goes a long way on a hot afternoon. So what do you say? How about a cigarette? We may be working together soon. I’ll roll you up one as soon as I get down from here.”

“Maybe the Commodore will give you one when he comes back around.”

“In that case, maybe one of you boys could fetch him,” Sterling suggested. “I’m ready to confess my sins, or whatever he wants,” he said in a playful way, hoping this angle would work. “Shee-it, you would be too after being strung up here in the desert.”

“He’ll come when he comes, now shut up,” said the other man.

Sterling shook his head. It appeared that his Persuasion technique wasn’t quite at the level he would need it to be to convince one of the two guards to leave their post, or to give him a cigarette for that matter.

It became a waiting game at that point. Sterling occasionally glared in the direction of the sun, wishing that the big orange beacon of oppression would hurry up and sink to the other side of the mountains. As he hung there broiling, Sterling recalled one of the desert haiku he had written about the relentless New Mexico heat.

One of them hot days

Not enough sweat in the world

Keep low to the ground

He repeated the haiku in his head again and again, trance-like, wishing he could keep it low to the ground.

Sterling had learned about the art of writing haiku from a book that was left behind at an abandoned bookstore in T or C. Haiku came from someplace called Japan, another country. He never thought much about Japan, but he did wonder from time to time when he started writing desert haiku what had happened to the country, and how it had survived the Reset.

A haiku consisted of three lines, the first and last line having five syllables, the middle line having seven. Simple enough, and writing them helped Sterling develop perspective, keep his memories to some degree. What if another Reset happened? Well, he would have this book of desert haiku he’d written, and hopefully his writings would trigger memories that would help him get his life back together. Whatever that meant. Still, it was better than being left empty-handed like he had been during the first Reset.

Any breadcrumbs were better than none.

The sun was finally starting to set, the sky layered in shades of yellowish red, when Commodore Bones headed in Sterling’s direction. The Commodore carried a metal bowl in his hand, the pudgy man still in his body armor with a gun at his thigh, Sterling’s black cowboy hat on his head.

“They made green chili stew,” Commodore Bones said instead of hello. He ate a spoonful of it. “I thought you may be hungry.”

“You thought right,” Sterling told him, trying to swallow the swell of anger he experienced at seeing the man in his hat. He could smell the food; even though he was parched, his mouth started to water. What he wouldn’t do for a bowl of green chili stew. “Need me a cigarette too.”

“Those are bad for you.”

“So is… crucifixion.”

Commodore Bones squinted at Sterling. “How you doing up there?”

“How the hell do you think I’m doing?” Sterling asked, before quickly changing his tone: “Look, I’ve… I’ve been thinking about what you said, your offer. I might have been too forthright earlier.”

“That right? Then you are ready to whip the great state of New Mexico back into shape, and the rest of this country too, for that matter? The Killbillies are all patriots; we believe in the power of organization, the rule of law, and freedom for anyone who accepts our rule.”

Sterling knew this was bullshit. The Killbillies were a glorified group of bandits, a bunch of good-for-nothings who harassed local communities by collecting taxes, raping women, slaying locals they didn’t like, and causing general turmoil. There was nothing patriotic about what they were doing; the only rule they really believed in was the rule of terror.

“I’m ready,” Sterling said after a long pause. “Soon as you get me down from here, let me heal these wounds, we can get that army of the undead you were looking for.”

“Is that so?” Commodore Bones asked as he took another bite of the chili. “You would like the chili they make here. The chef that I hired uses the recipes from his grandmother’s cookbook, and I’m sure you’re aware that we get the best peppers from the region. Home-cooked meals for everyone, that’s what I say. Keep the troops fed and they’ll be happy.”

“Can’t… disagree there.”

“No you can’t. No you can’t,” said the Commodore as he smacked his lips. He took another bite of the chili. “Mmm, this really is some good chili. They really went all out for this one. Look, Mr. Monedero, I’m going to be brutally honest with you here: I’d love to give you some, and I’d love even more to get you down, but I’m not convinced you are ready to join up. Do you believe you are ready?”

“I told you… I was. What else do I need to do?”

Commodore Bones smacked his lips again. “How do I know you aren’t just trying to trick me?”

“How do I know you ain’t trying to trick me?” Sterling asked.

“Fair point. That’s all men seem to want to do to their fellow men these days, to trick then into something, be it a product or a belief system. But we have a vision, and we’re going to accomplish what we set out to do.”

“I… believe in your vision.”

“Do you, now?”

“I told you I did.”

Commodore Bones took a step closer to Sterling, and he was just about to bring another spoonful of the chili to his mouth when he stopped. Instead, he tapped the spoon on the edge of the bowl. “How about we let you think about it overnight?”

“Overnight?”

Commodore Bones turned the bowl of chili upside down and emptied the contents at Sterling’s feet, where the man had pissed earlier. “Dinner is served, Mr. Monedero. See you in the morning.” He turned away, and as he did so, the Commodore removed Sterling’s cowboy hat, and tossed it to the ground. “Try to stay warm tonight.”

.Chapter Six.

Sterling didn’t know how long he’d been crucified outside of the Killbilly supply camp in Radium Springs. It was certainly past midnight by the time he was able to doze off, the relentless flies buzzing around his head never letting up. The bastards. It was by no means a peaceful sleep, Sterling exhausted from his day in the sun, from the strain of his muscles being stretched, his chest on fire, arms numb, the stakes still in his palms.

“Ain’t nobody going to string me up like this,” he mumbled a couple times that night, the desert temperature dropping, his teeth chattering as he fell into a troubled sleep.

Sterling awoke with the moon beaming down on him like a Klieg light. His Resolve allowed him to heal much faster than a normal person, but it didn’t have the effect that he had hoped it would have, and it certainly didn’t warm him, nor did it quench his thirst.

“Motherfuckers,” he whispered over a scratchy throat as he glanced up at the supply camp, generators running, a few watchfires adding the smell of burning mesquite to the air, embers spiraling toward the heavens. They were bold, the Killbillies. If a Godwalker saw the light they were putting off, it would certainly put an end to their little bandit operation.

Sterling focused on the pair of guards standing before him, wishing in that moment that he was a telemancer. He’d dealt with this mancer class before, one that was able to control people’s minds. He’d even encountered one a couple years back, which had turned out to be quite the experience.

Come on, you damn fools, Sterling thought as a new group came to replace the two men. The changing of the guard happened, and the new pair turned away, Sterling once again wondering if he should try out his newfound Persuasion technique. Let them get settled in, he thought as he watched the previous guards walk back toward the camp.

It was another ten or fifteen minutes or so, Sterling starting to drift off again, before one of the guards turned to the other. The first guard produced a dagger, and two stabs later, the second guard was suddenly bent over, his assailant quickly moving around him and slitting his throat. The attacker approached Sterling before he could respond, his dagger dripping with blood, his face obscured by darkness.

“You ready to get down from there, partner?”

The tone of the man’s voice hit him like a sack of bricks. “J-Judge?”

“The one and only. I heard they had captured the cowboy necromancer out of T or C, and I knew there was only one of them crazy assholes in the Southwest.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Sterling asked as he peered down at the man.

“What am I doing? What are you doing here?” Judge went to Sterling’s left hand. He equipped a hammer from his inventory list and began the painful process of removing the stake pinning Sterling to the wooden board, immediately at a disadvantage considering Sterling was a foot off the ground.

“Judge,” Sterling said, wincing through the pain as the iron stake left his palm, “you got a wife and a kid in Hatch. You know that, right?”

“Wife? Ain’t nobody named Judge got a wife ‘round these parts,” he grunted. He went to work on Sterling’s other hand.

“You got a kid named after me… you… Argh! Damn, that hurts. Judge, you are a son of a bitch for leaving your family behind.”

“Leaving my family behind? What the hell do you think I’m doing here?” Judge asked as he finished pulling the second stake out of Sterling’s other hand. “There. Got them stakes out.”

It hurt like hell, but Sterling let the pain wash away, happy to finally have use of his arms again. They were still numb and his palms were sore, but he could already feel himself growing stronger, a sense of elation filling him. Judge helped him down after undoing the rope tied around his waist and his feet.

“Get my hat,” Sterling told Judge. “It’s right there. A future dead man threw it to the ground.”

“Yep, I see it right there.” Judge picked up his hat and dusted it off.

“Just going to need a moment,” Sterling said with a groan. “Maybe need to walk it off…” Sterling leaned with his back against the crucifix, quietly cursing in Spanish under his breath. Judge placed the cowboy hat on his head and offered the man support, Sterling’s numb arm going over his shoulder. His knees buckled, but Judge helped keep him from falling.

“You good? We need to move away from here.”

“Been better…” Sterling mumbled.

Judge led him away from the crucifix, continuing to support his weight. They walked for a couple minutes, Sterling silent as his body slowly repaired itself, as his arms regained their feeling.

“They strung you up real good,” Judge said once they were about six hundred feet away from the supply camp. “Seen them do this before, to another mancer a week or so ago. Shit wasn’t pretty. The fuckers left that woman up for three or four days. Three or four days, can you believe that? Unconscionable.”

“I’m going to burn that supply camp to the ground and kill every one of them sorry sons of bitches. Pinche puta pendejos…” Sterling let off a string of curses before circling back around to what Judge had just told him. “You said another mancer? Who? Did you get a name? I might or might not be in a recruiting mood.”

“You bet your ass I got a name. The damn lady was hotter than hell, too. Named Roxy. Let me get you some water.”

“Roxy? You mean… Rowayton?” Sterling asked as Judge equipped a plastic milk jug filled with water.

“Rowayton? They hammer some of those stakes into your ears too, boy? I said her name was Roxy, as in the word ‘rocks’ but with a ‘y’ at the end of it. Roxy.”

“Roxy is her nickname,” Sterling said, after a big sip of water. “And she ain’t no mancer.”

“No kidding, huh? Some of the fellows were saying that. That girl sure was strong, though. She was able to escape in the end. It was savage, like some shit an amalgamation would do. That woman tore through several of the men in the process. I saw one fella after, whew boy, she’d ripped his arms off, I shit you not. Tore another one’s leg off and beat him with it, real savagery.”

“You don’t know which way Roxy headed, do you?”

Judge shrugged. “My guess would be Las Cruces. Someone else suggested she went off the other direction, towards Arizona, but I think that fellow was drunk off some local moonshine they brew at the cantina on the other side of the camp.”

“Shee-it…” Sterling grumbled.

“Hey, if you’re friendly with this lady, tell her to stop by Hatch and look me up,” Judge said with a chuckle. “I like being tamed.”

Sterling glared up at his friend. “You’re lucky I haven’t whooped your ass already for abandoning your child.”

Judge glanced down at his feet. His beard was much thicker than it had been the last time Sterling had seen him. A dark cloud blocking the moon slipped away as Sterling eyed the man, the moonlight accenting Judge’s features. He was in his mid to late forties, scars crisscrossing the tops of his cheeks as if he’d used a string of barbed wire to shave, untamed eyebrows, and a nose that had been broken one too many times. Judge was a roughneck who looked like some kind of outlaw, even though he was just a simple pepper farmer.

“Why the hell did you do it?” Sterling asked. “I’ve got to know, Judge. Why did you leave your family?”

He could already feel the skin stitching across his palms, the numbness he had experienced completely gone now. Soon Sterling would be ready to get on with it, but before that, he needed to eat and drink. He summoned a jug of water, and Judge helped him drink it. Sterling then equipped a piece of green chili jerky and ate it while the man spoke.

“I did this for my kid,” Judge told him. “I signed a contract, and they’re going to give me plenty of turquoise and silver once we get the White Sands Militia out of Las Cruces. I was planning to go back to Hatch once we finished, come back a hero, impress Luna. Such a pretty young girl, that Luna. You met her, you saw her.”

“Yeah, I saw her.”

“I know it sounds like bullshit, but that ain’t exactly the case. Besides, Luna is entirely capable of taking care of that baby.”

“She’s just a girl, like you said, and she thinks you’re dead.”

“Dead?”

“She thinks an amalgamation killed you.”

“Luna is nineteen years old and she’s wild, let me tell you, even though she may not look it. Maybe a bit naïve, but she’s got a kind heart, and I know she’ll be a good mother. Hell, I was sick last winter and she nursed me back to health like a pro. I ain’t lying to you here, Sterling, it’s in her genes. Her parents are still alive, still together, believe it or not. I’ve seen it in them too.”

“Even after the Reset?”

“That’s right. They woke up next to one another and put one and two together after they saw the pictures in their home. They stuck it out.”

“And where are they at?”

“Closer to Albuquerque. I kept telling her to go up there, and I’m hoping she’ll listen to me. I’m hoping I’ll go back to Hatch, find out she went toward Albuquerque, and then like I said, show up as a hero.”

“You’re a goddamn idiot,” Sterling said. “Especially for trying to send a woman and a child to Albuquerque.”

Judge laughed. “I’m a romantic.”

“I swear to hell, Judge, if you don’t take your sorry ass back to Hatch when we are through here and make good on Luna and the child you named after me, I’ll kill you my damn self. Don’t think I won’t do it. That kid deserves his daddy.”

“Now—”

“—All’s I’m saying is that I wouldn’t mind adding your body to my kill count by the end of the night, if you get my drift. Because it’s going to be a bloodbath. Them Killbillies got me riled up, and I ain’t a fan of absentee fathers. Plus, I know you well enough to know that as soon as you get that money the bandits have promised you, you’ll blow it on something.”

“First of all, we can talk about your confidence in me and my skills at handling money later. More importantly, have you lost your damn mind?” Judge asked. “There are hundreds of Killbillies over yonder. Close to five hundred last I heard. How are you going to kill all of them with a couple of zombies?”

Sterling equipped his paper and his bag of tobacco. He began rolling up a cigarette as he spoke again. “You’re right. I’m just pissed. Truth be told, I ain’t much interested in any of them fools, except for Commodore Bones, ‘Beto as I like to call him. He’s got something I want.”

Even though the Commodore may have been lying, if he actually had evidence of Sterling’s past life, Sterling wanted it. That was one of the things that bothered him to no end over the last five years. He had no idea who he was before the Reset, no earthly idea. But a lead, something to point him in the right direction, would be monstrously helpful. If Commodore Bones truly had information on Sterling’s past, where would it lead him? All he could tell in that moment was that a decision was coming, and he would need to decide which avenue to pursue once he verified the evidence. And then there was the fact that Roxy was alive and well, and possibly in Las Cruces, which would only complicate things. They had a history.

“Here’s what I want you to do, and I ain’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer,” Sterling said as he lit his cigarette. “I want you to take your sorry ass back to Hatch and look after Luna.”

“I already told you my plan,” Judge mumbled.

“Screw your damn plan. You got turquoise or silver?”

“Not enough.”

“Then take some of mine.” Sterling ashed his cigarette and equipped his satchel full of turquoise and silver. “I can’t give it all to you, because I’m going to need something to trade later on. But I’ll give you what I can.”

“You serious?”

Rather than answer his question, Sterling emptied most of the contents of his bag of silver and turquoise into Judge’s waiting hands, a few of the pieces scattering on the ground, which Judge promptly retrieved. “Now git. And before you do, I got two questions for you,” Sterling said as he focused his gaze on the supply camp. “Where’s the cemetery? And which tent is Commodore Bones staying in? Actually, we can handle those details in a moment. Do you think you can swipe me my sword and my gun? I mean, if it ain’t too hard to get. I’m definitely going to need them two.”

“Your weapons?”

“That’s right. I’m hoping they haven’t paid much attention to them, especially because the gun won’t fire for shit without my hand on the trigger, and people generally disregard my sword, considering its shape.”

Judge ran his hand through his beard. “As far as I know, they just give stuff like that to the flectomancer, who will toss it into the pile of things she’ll modify later. Yeah, I think I can get that, no one will be the wiser. I know what they look like.”

“Good, I appreciate it.”

“You wait right here, smoke yourself another cigarette, maybe drink a little more water, recover. I’ll get your stuff, but it may take me a minute. Just hold tight.”

“Will do,” Sterling said as he extended his arm to Judge so they could shake hands. “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but why did you name your kid after me anyway?”

Judge smirked. “Because you are the toughest bastard I know, and I was hoping that the kid will turn out to be a mancer like you. We shall see.”

“Yep, we shall see.”

Sterling was glad to have put some of his Technique Points into Stealth. His new Sneak Proficiency technique, and his Assassination and Cover of Night techniques, were going to aid him and what he planned to do. He still wasn’t at full Mana, but he had eighty-eight points, and he could always take power from Manchester if he needed to. His plan now was to do anything and everything he could to avoid having to do something like that. Sterling wasn’t stupid. Even if he wanted to, he wasn’t going to try to take on the entire supply camp, his mind set on just one thing: the wallet in Commodore Bones’ possession.

Anyone that got in the way between Sterling and his goal would be collateral damage.

He ate, drank, and smoked another cigarette in the time it took Judge to head back to the camp, get a horse, and miraculously retrieve Sterling’s weapons. He rolled up a cigarette for Judge upon his return, the two men smoking as Judge explained the layout of the camp.

Once he was done, Sterling spoke. “I’ll stop by Hatch at some point. You’d better have your shit together by then. I gave you almost everything I have there in silver and turquoise. Do your family right.”

“I’ll do my best,” Judge said.

“No, you’ll do better than that,” Sterling said, and both men laughed. “Now keep on the lookout for amalgamations. Stick to the highway. Get as far away from here as you can, just in case they send out search parties for me.”

“You got it.”

Once he saw his buddy turn north toward Hatch, Sterling whistled. He whistled again, and it took a couple of minutes, but eventually Manchester appeared, the moon reflecting off his bony exterior. “Glad to see you,” he told his skeletal steed as the horse galloped up to him.

There was a time not so long ago when Sterling would have just barged right into the camp and figured it out from there. But he felt differently now, more cautious. He needed a strategy. According to Judge, the gravesite was on the northern side of the camp, which meant it wasn’t very far from where he currently stood. That would be one distraction that would aid him.

Predictably, Commodore Bones’ tent was in the middle of the supply camp, which would be the hard part. Once Sterling had his wallet, he’d simply get out of there as quickly as possible, hop on his horse and ride off into the night toward Las Cruces. He also knew the alarm would be sounded if someone discovered the dead Killbilly near his crucifix, who Sterling probably should have animated when he had the chance. Too late now, he thought. The stables Judge had mentioned could be an avenue as well, a way to cause yet another distraction. Maybe two distractions: his animates, and some horses let out of their pens, whipped up into a frenzy. A plan was hatched. It was time to put his new techniques to the test.

Keeping to the shadows, Sterling noticed now that there was a pattern to the darkness as he approached where they were burying bodies. “Yup,” he said as he began summoning the dead. The ones in the fresh graves were the easiest targets, the gravel still loose. He heard the sound of the gravel falling away, the dead coming alive. He was in luck. The graves were shallow enough that it wouldn’t be hard for them to get out. It wasn’t long before Sterling had ten animates, and plenty of Mana for him to shoot a few magic bullets. He needed to be careful though. He definitely didn’t want to find himself without ammo.

Once he was psyched up and ready to go, Sterling approached the supply camp, his animates behind him. A Killbilly stepped away from one of the tents, looking like he was about to take a piss. Sterling watched him from the dark, and motioned for his animates not to move forward. He knew from the Sword and Marksmanship techniques he had picked up from the Buy Store that once he spent the point, it was as if he understood the technique all along. Even though there wasn’t much practice involved or needed, he still wanted to make sure he had it down. It was time to try out his new Assassination technique.

The bandit hummed some old country song as he finished up, peppering his tinkle with an occasional belch. He didn’t see Sterling creep around him, the cowboy necromancer now crouched in the shadow provided by one of the tents. The man was just about to turn when Sterling struck. He slipped his hand around the man’s mouth and pulled his neck back, cleaving his sickle-sword across his throat, the Killbilly gasping, throat hissing as hot blood sprayed into the air. Sterling brought him down and kept his hand over the man’s mouth, waiting for him to die.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw his animates all standing there.

“Not yet,” he whispered to them.

He didn’t know what had happened to the poor souls, and he was glad it was dark enough that he didn’t have to see their faces. It was clear that some of the zombies had once been tortured by the Killbillies, and others were simply Killbillies who had died, the bandit group not separating friend from foe when it came to burying their dead.

Sterling dragged the dead man away and thought again about letting the horses out. He wished that he was able to instruct one of his animates to do the task so he could make his way to the center of the camp, but they weren’t smart enough for something like that.

He got the notion to climb the tops of the large canvas tents, but after examining it, he worried it wouldn’t support his weight, even if it gave him a vantage point. He felt like his mind was truly searching for all avenues of attack, something he hadn’t quite experienced before. This only made him wish he had more Technique Points to utilize at his disposal. What would higher levels of Stealth bring him?

Sterling crept toward the stables, which were on the eastern side of the supply camp. He paused at one point, spotting another Killbilly on patrol. Close enough to the man to smell his rank body odor, Sterling held his breath as he passed. He tilted his head down, relying on his black clothing and his dark cowboy hat to disguise him. Once the man started to turn back, Sterling surged forward and brought him to the ground. His sickle-sword went straight to the man’s stomach. He pulled up, placing a hand over the Killbilly’s mouth as he gutted him. Sterling dragged him away from the camp, a trail of blood and entrails in his wake.

He continued on.

The stables were guarded by several men and women, all with firearms. They had their ATVs parked in this area of the camp and a fueling station, likely another reason for the increased presence of armed bandits. Sterling had to be extra careful over here. If he spooked one of the horses, they would give him away, and the lights were even brighter here, providing less shadow for him to hide in. Crouching again, he listened in on the conversation that two of the Killbillies were having, one male, the other female.

“You see the man they crucified on the other side of the camp?” the woman asked in a twangy country accent.

“Heard he’s a mancer.”

“Ain’t seen proof of it yet.”

“Pfft. The man in black thinks he’s some kind of badass, and Commodore Bones seems to agree.”

“What do you think, Gary?” the female Killbilly asked.

“I think we need to stop looking for mancers; we have plenty in our ranks. Besides, we can’t trust the Adapted, if you ask me. They ain’t going to be loyal for long.”

“And Las Cruces?”

“The sooner we rush in there and kill us some militia members, the better. We won the last two fights, you know.”

“Not that one, though,” said the female Killbilly.

“That was a draw, sure, I’ll give you that, Dawn. Right now is the time to strike. I don’t know why Bones, I mean Commodore Bones, ain’t moving in right now. Man seems to be out of touch.”

Sterling waited for their conversation to finish, which ended abruptly when the woman began talking about her boyfriend in Silver City, the man clearly not interested in that particular conversation.

Once he felt that he was in the clear, Sterling slowly crept around their makeshift stable, which was nothing more than a hastily erected pen holding about thirty horses, at least from what he was able to count in the darkness. The gate was held tight by a rope, which Sterling slowly unfastened, the cowboy necromancer just about thirty feet away from the two guards. He finally got the gate opened and crept off to the side.

Now it was time to spook the horses.

The easiest way would have been to fire a shot to the air, but that would draw attention to him, which meant he’d need to manually stir them up. Once he reached the back of the makeshift stable, he located one of the horses standing near the fence. Sterling approached and the horse snorted, immediately noticing him. “I’m going to call you Jumpy,” Sterling whispered as he drew closer to the creature.

Sterling threw his arms out and made as if he were going to jump at the horse, which caused it to rear up onto its hindlegs, spooking some of the others. Moving quickly now, he ran to the other side of the pen and did so again, scaring some of the horses there. When he heard the Killbillies cursing, he knew he had succeeded. The horses were out. They were a wild bunch too. Sterling was just coming around to the far right of the stables when he saw that the horses had already taken down one of the tents, the Killbillies frantically trying to stop a mini stampede.

Got to go, Sterling thought as he once again kept to the shadows, moving toward the center of the camp. He came close to being spotted once as a pair of bandits raced past him, the commotion caused by the horses slowly starting to awaken the Killbillies. But they were too distracted by what was happening to see the man hidden in the shadows.

His revolver out now, Sterling carefully made his way toward the center, hoping that Commodore Bones’ tent was clearly marked. He came to a pole with a speaker on top that had been slathered in red paint, an alarm system of sorts. If he’d had more time, Sterling would have found the generators and disconnected some of them, but this was going to be an in and out mission.

He just wanted the wallet.

Here we go, Sterling thought as he came to the largest tent he’d seen so far. It looked like they had stitched several tents together to craft it, high ceilings too, practically something that belonged in a circus. There were guards out front, which were going to create an issue, unless…

He confirmed that there was a generator powering the lights around Commodore Bones’ tent, another unit next to it, Sterling surprised to see a portable air conditioning system. Really living like a king here, ain’t you, ‘Beto? he thought as he crept over to the generator.

While the tent had been staked to the ground in an almost seamless way, there was a large plastic tube necessary to cycle air, the tube entering the tent through a slit. “Yup,” Sterling whispered once he found that he’d be able to creep into the tent through the slit by crawling on his belly.

He did just that, prepared for anything on the other side.

As soon as he made it in, he drew his weapon again, glad to see that he still had cover within the tent. Commodore Bones was a collector of sorts, and the space was large enough for him to have furniture and wall partitions. Everything had an Asian feel to it, the space lit by a bit of light coming in from outside, watchfires adding a splash of orange. The antiquities either belonged to Commodore Bones before the Reset, or they had raided a rich man’s home who had an Asian fetish. Either way, they provided some cover.

Crouching now behind a chest, Sterling held his breath until he could confirm that the Commodore was sleeping. He crept over to his bedside and finally stood, his shadow extending over the man.

“Nice and quiet,” he said. “Morning, ‘Beto.”

The man came awake to find the muzzle of a revolver aimed at his face. Sterling lifted a finger to his lips.

“You going to be quiet? Because if you ain’t, I’ll put a bullet right between your eyes, one you won’t be able to recover from. Imagine that, everything you worked so hard to build over the last five years gone to shit because you pissed off the wrong hombre. Sort of poetic, if you ask me. In case you were wondering, I already killed your men outside,” Sterling lied, “and the rest of the camp is dealing with some other disturbances. You going to keep quiet for me?”

“Yes,” Commodore Bones finally said with a deep breath out. “How did you get down?”

“Ain’t none of your concern, ‘Beto. Where’s my wallet?”

Commodore Bones glanced at the dresser near his bed.

“Get it. Nice and slow. I’ll be honest with you: it’s taking every ounce of willpower I can muster not to shoot you for crucifying me out there, believe you me, but you may be more useful to me alive. What do you say to that? Get the wallet first, then we’ll talk. One word, and I’ll paint your pillow with your brains.”

The man slowly reached toward his dresser.

“And if there’s a weapon in there, I’ll shoot you in the pecker just for the hell of it. Nice and slow, ‘Beto.”

“No weapon, not in the dresser. On top of the dresser, under the silk,” Commodore Bones said, his voice firm. Sterling was actually surprised at how calm he was; it was clear that the man had been held at gunpoint before.

“Let’s just move that out of the way.” Sterling touched the handgun with its custom silver grip, the firearm under a silk cloth with dragons and clouds stitched across, just like Commodore Bones had said. He quickly sent the weapon to his inventory list.

“That’s mine.”

“Yours?” Sterling almost laughed. “Shut your goddamn mouth and give me my wallet. Ain’t nothing in this world yours, even if it is bolted down. Remember that.”

Commodore Bones slowly opened the drawer and got the wallet out. Sterling sent this to his inventory list as well. He could check it out later.

“Good, now I’m going to need your help, ‘Beto. Consider it a gift from you to me for sparing your useless life. It’s real simple, too. I don’t want your Killbillies fucking with me anymore. I ain’t ever going to join your side, and just so we’re clear, I don’t care about your wars, your politics, the little journal you kept before the Reset, your shitty little life for that matter, or your bullshit plans of expansion. A word to the wise: You ain’t going to unite nobody by terrorizing folks, so until you fix that little part of your operation—which ain’t going to be anytime soon considering the idiots and inbreds you continue to employ—you might as well put a damper on your hopes and dreams there, ‘Beto.”

“Call me Commodore Bones,” the man said, gritting his teeth.

“Heh, listen to you. Thinking you’re some kind of tough guy, like you have power, when all it would take is very little effort on my part to make sure you never live to shit another day. Maybe if I keep telling you this, you’ll hear me: you are one lucky son of a bitch, ‘Beto, but you are only going to be lucky if you do exactly as I tell you. You said you were at the top of your little desert mafia, right? You and two other dimwits. Then make good what I’m telling you here. Otherwise, I’ll come back for you, and when I come back, it won’t be pretty. I’ll keep you staked up for days like you failed to do to me, zombies slowly eating at your flesh; I’ll string you up and drag you off into the desert, leave you nice and ripe for an amalgamation after I’ve cut off your legs. You don’t want to die in the numerous ways that I could kill you, ‘Beto. Nobody in their right mind does. Do you understand me? Nod if you understand what I’m telling you here.”

Commodore Bones nodded, the hint of fear in his eyes shifting to glee once an alarm sounded, multiple alarms triggering across the supply camp.

“You’re the one who’s dead now,” Commodore Bones said. He kicked at Sterling, causing the cowboy necromancer to fire a shot to the far side of his tent. “Guards!”

Flames rushed into the front of the tent, Sterling immediately firing his revolver at the fire. It was instinctual, and after two shots, he quickly realized his weapon wasn’t going to be able to do anything, especially once he came to understand that the flames were coming from a pyromancer. Getting a grip on the situation, Sterling went for his sickle-sword and cut into the canvas near Commodore Bones’ bed.

He had a notion to draw his revolver again and shoot the man, and perhaps he should have, but another burst of flame came searing in his direction. Sterling had to move. Once outside, smoke already billowing out of the canvas, he looked to the front of the tent to see a pyromancer floating into the air. The woman’s entire body was cast in brilliant red, orange, and blue hues, everything shining bright around her. A fireball struck him in the back just as he started to run. Sterling dropped and rolled. In his panic to put out the fire, a Killbilly guard jumped toward him. The brute landed on top of Sterling, and he struggled with the man until he could bring his hooked sword around into the bandit’s side, a nasty wound to follow.

The fireball that had hit him was out now, but it had singed some of Sterling’s hair, which he could smell as he ran toward the outer perimeter of the camp. There was too much commotion here for him to whistle for Manchester at this point, and Sterling figured it was high time to add a little terror to the equation.

He couldn’t see them or hear them, but he knew his animates were coming.

They would attack from the north side, and he would let them cause commotion while he got away. But he would still need to get to the outer rim of the supply camp while being pursued by a relentless pyromancer. Another fireball nearly hit him, Sterling jumping to the side just in time, the flame igniting a wooden crate of supplies. He sheathed his blade and went for his revolver. Sterling turned and began firing at the glowing red woman racing toward him. But she was fast, and his shots missed, the pyromancer reaching Sterling in a matter of seconds.

“I ain’t here to fight you,” he said as he aimed his revolver at her, flames licking off her skull, her eyes nonexistent, the smell of fuel overpowering around her. He could feel her heat, sweat already on his brow. It was never fun to encounter a mancer looking for a fight, but a pyromancer was something else entirely.

“Lower your weapon and come with me,” she said, small plumes of fire escaping from the corners of her mouth as she spoke.

“Like hell.” Sterling squeezed the trigger, his magic bullet going right through her chest. He thought this would be the end of it, but it was as if he had shot a literal flame. His bullet simply passed through to the other side.

“You shouldn’t have done that.” The pyromancer threw her arms out and a blistering ball of fire leveled everything within a ten-foot radius around her, including Sterling, the flames charring his hands, his sleeves catching fire. He lost his revolver, his flesh screaming as fire blazed all around him, as he tried to beat the flames out. Sterling found himself on the ground once again, everything coming to him at once, his skin tight, the smell of burning flesh violating his nostrils. He saw his revolver and slowly began to reach out for it. He still wasn’t able to properly use his hands. They had been burnt too badly by this point, Sterling only able to scoop the revolver in his direction and tuck it under his arm.

Using the smoke as his cover, Sterling started to crawl away. He glanced back to find the pyromancer was down on one knee, charging up again, her eyes focused on him. The mushroom cloud fireball she’d let loose just moments ago was some sort of special attack, some technique she had developed, and Sterling knew, without a shadow of a doubt, if she struck him, he’d be barbecue, or at the very least, toast.

Something caught his eye; Sterling had never been so happy to see a corpse in his life. There happened to be a cart of fresh animal carcasses near them that had been recently slaughtered. Sterling’s eyes fell on a couple pigs. He couldn’t help but smirk. “Y’all are about to be bacon.”

Two of the dead pigs came to life with a twitch of Sterling’s finger. They toppled the cart and took off toward the pyromancer, their squeals startling her. They were easily a pair of fifty-pounders, large enough to take down the woman.

His Resolve already kicking into high gear, Sterling ignored the pain in his hands as he holstered his firearm. He had been burned badly before by a pyromancer; it would heal, and it was better than being staked up to a crucifix. What mattered now was getting the hell out of the Killbilly supply camp. He started whistling like a madman, Sterling just about twenty feet or so away from the edge of the camp.

He cleaved through a pair of Killbillies coming in his direction, Sterling now in a mad dash to get away from the calamity, especially now that his animates had entered the equation, screams and gunfire peppering the air. It took both hands to wield his sickle-sword because of how badly they’d been burned, but he had managed, and it wouldn’t be long before they would be ready to go again.

Sterling kept running.

His assailants were close, and as they neared him, his heart started pounding in his chest. Even with all the commotion behind them, and the sound of his own heart roaring in his ears, Sterling heard Manchester galloping in his direction.

“Come on, come on,” he told himself, his voice scratchy now.

“Get him!” one of the Killbillies shouted, just as Manchester neared Sterling. Rather than try to mount up, Sterling simply launched himself at his skeletal steed, bullets flying over his head, one of them grazing against the side of Manchester’s skull. The bone horse took off running, Sterling flung over his body like a burlap sack. He knew it wouldn’t be long before they sent ATVs and a platoon of men after him. But at least he could get a little distance between now and then, and hopefully lose them.

“I’ve never been happier to see you, Pingo,” Sterling told his skeletal steed as they rode toward the east, back to the highway. Eventually, the bone horse slowed, and Sterling was able to mount up properly. He could check himself out later, but from what he could tell, his clothing was still intact, and the skin on his hands had already started to reveal a fresh layer of pink flesh. While the skin still stung to some degree, he didn’t feel as much pain as he thought he would have. It wasn’t like a sunburn, and he wondered if it had something to do with the fire getting to his nerve endings, or something like that.

It didn’t matter. He would be healed up by morning if not sooner, good to go.

His hands were still too raw to properly hold the reins, so Sterling kept his palms on Manchester’s bony neck instead. He needed to find somewhere to camp out, to heal and rest. A flourish of energy came to Sterling once he released his hold on the animates back at the supply camp. He felt a burst of power, the elation in his chest dampened once he heard the roar of ATVs.

Sterling assumed that they would know he rode toward the highway, so rather than continue along his current trajectory, he began to make a wide V, Manchester aimed back in the direction of the supply camp to the east. Something told him that hiding in plain sight was better than trying to run away, Sterling chalking the thought up to his recent investment in stealth techniques.

There were some trailers on a road jutting off the highway, a small mesa beyond that, and Sterling located what looked to be an abandoned home. The moon lighting his way, he made his way around the trailers and up the mesa, guessing he was about a mile or so away from the Killbilly camp now. Maybe more.

“Anyone in there?” he called out, his eyes tracing over the abandoned home he’d discovered for any movement. “I’m armed. Just looking for a place to crash for the night.”

He waited. No response.

“I’m coming in. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya…”

The home was made out of clay and wood. It was missing its roof, and there was nothing inside aside from shattered pottery, the place severely looted. Sterling got down from Manchester and stepped inside, confirming it was empty of people, varmints too. He used his leg to sweep some of the pottery bits aside. Manchester stepped over a crumpled section of the wall and came into the home after Sterling whispered for him. He lowered his hand, and Manchester collapsed.

Accessing his inventory list, Sterling returned with a wool blanket he’d gotten in northern New Mexico a few years back. He also summoned a bottle of tequila he’d been saving. He was going to need it for tonight, especially if he wanted to stay warm, ignore his wounds, and pass out quickly. Once he was situated and finally able to catch his breath, Sterling found a bit of moonlight and went for the wallet he had taken from the Commodore.

He stopped on the photo ID, squinting at it in the darkness. He would need to get a flashlight or something the next time he passed a trading post. He’d had something like it in his ranch house, but hadn’t had a chance to grab it on his way out.

“Hey,” he said to the picture as he shook his head.

The photo ID was slightly reflective, and Sterling was able to confirm that it really was him. He was about twenty or thirty pounds heavier in the picture, his hair short, a little mustache over his upper lip as well. He noticed that he had those same dark eyes and the same dark hair, although it was definitely shorter. His name was there—Sterling Monedero—just above an address. The piece of plastic was pretty marked up, the license number and his date of birth scratched out. Yet the picture was intact, as was the address in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

“Shee-it,” Sterling said as he set the ID down and went for his bottle of tequila. He took a swig, and then sent it back to his inventory list, the liquor igniting inside his stomach, the skin on his hands still stinging. He returned the ID to its plastic sleeve and then opened the billfold to find a photo of a woman and a child that had been folded, crease lines across the center. He still didn’t recognize either of them, and the photo had been ripped in half, indicating that another person was in the picture. He tried to examine the picture more deeply, but his vision slowly blurred.

Was the Commodore right? Did he have a wife and kid? Sterling stuffed the photo back in the wallet and sent it to his inventory list. It seemed to be the case, but the leader of the Killbillies could have been manipulating him in some way, and it wouldn’t have been hard for him to stuff any old photo in his wallet. He could check the address out in Las Cruces, that would be a start.

“What a damn day.” Sterling removed his hat and sat with his back against the wall, the blanket over his body. He positioned his revolver so it was loosely in his hand and then leaned back, staring up at the stars for a moment. “Let’s get you some sleep,” he told himself with a yawn. “Las Cruces, mañana.”

.Chapter Seven.

A rattling woke Sterling up. His first thought was that there was an amalgamation nearby. He lifted his revolver and fired toward the sound, killing a large rattlesnake that was coiled in the opposite corner of the abandoned home.

“Good morning to you too, motherfucker,” he said as he lowered his firearm.

Sterling focused on his stats for a moment, seeing where he stood when it came to XP. It was clear that he should have at least attempted to kill more bandits back at the supply camp, and taking out the pyromancer would have been to his advantage. But that was easier said than done.

You have received 600 XP!

Name: Sterling Monedero

Race: Human

Mancer Class: Necromancer

Class Ranking: Blood Mage

Level: 59

Fortitude: 117

Strength: 35

Resolve: 152

Mana: 136/138

Current Armor Rating: 28

XP: 296,851

XP to Next Level:5,265

Stat Points Available: 0

Technique Points Available: 0

Figuring it would work well enough to warm him up, he ate one of his peppers, a green Big Jim, which had just the right amount of kick. He ate some of the jerky he had left as well, and drank from one of his jugs of water.

Sterling retrieved the New Mexico travel guide he kept in his inventory list and checked out the map. After tracing his finger along the roads for a moment, he found Radium Springs, and he estimated it was between fifteen and twenty miles to Las Cruces from his current position. As he often did when he looked through the well-worn travel guide, Sterling got lost in some of the text. Counties in the Southwest part of the state included Catron, Socorro, Grant, Sierra, Hidalgo, Luna, and Doña Ana. The highest elevation was the Oregon mountains at 9,000 feet, and Aguila National Forest was over three million acres, but that was further to the west, out past Silver City. There was a little place named Pie Town that got its name from a 1920s era bakery known for dried apple pies prepared at an annual pie festival, where they even crowned a tiara-wearing Pie Queen.

“Hell,” he said with a chuckle, imagining what that pie festival would have been like. “Wouldn’t mind one of them pies right about now.” Reading about the pies made him hungry, and Sterling hoped he would be able to find a trading post along the way to Las Cruces where he could get a proper breakfast. He’d kill for some tamales. After rolling up a cigarette, he kept reading about Pie Town and a restaurant called Pie-O-Neer, which, according to the travel guide, was worth its weight in apples, chili, piñons, and chocolate.

“Fifty-five miles past Magdalena on US 60, huh? Free wi-fi?” Sterling exhaled a cloud of smoke. “There ain’t no more goddamn Internet,” he told the pile of bones that would later become Manchester.

Now that he had proper light, Sterling sent his travel guide back to his inventory and went for his wallet again. The more he stared at the photo of himself, the less he recognized who he had once been. Hell, he thought, if someone had shown me this photo three days back, I probably wouldn’t even have known it was me.

The last five years had hardened Sterling, which was pretty much the same for anyone who had survived the Reset. With ninety percent of the world’s population gone, and a small number of those remaining given mancer skills, life was radically different than it had been before. Cue the cults, militias, bandit groups, and general crazy ass denizens clinging to existence, and add to that wild bunch a slew of amalgamations. Talk about a recipe for extreme survival. And that wasn’t to mention the Godwalkers, whenever they decided to show up, cause havoc, and instill fear.

He then took another look at the torn photo that had been in the billfold. The woman had dark hair with blonde highlights, her eyes large, a paleness to her skin that didn’t match the child, who was darker, closer to Sterling’s complexion, a bit chubby too, a boy. Was this really Sterling’s family? They looked like any picture he’d seen anywhere in the last five years, yet the thought that they could be somehow related conjured numerous questions. Where had they been when the Reset happened? Were they dead? Were they really his family?

“Ain’t going to solve this right now,” Sterling mumbled as he sent his wallet back to his inventory list. “Let’s go find Don Gasper.” He brought Manchester back to life, the horse’s bones clinking in place. The skeletal steed immediately turned his head in the direction of the rattlesnake Sterling had killed.

“You ain’t wrong,” Sterling said as he went over to the snake and placed his hand on it, sending it to his inventory list. “Certainly worth trading.”

Once he got Manchester’s custom saddle in place, Sterling hopped on. “Hold up,” he said as he rolled himself another cigarette. He lit it, now realizing that he could have used his lighter to look at his photo last night.

But he couldn’t blame himself. He had been exhausted.

A cigarette perched on the corner of his lip, his black hat casting a brown shadow over his face, Sterling started down the mesa. He was keenly aware of the location of the highway, and stopped occasionally to make sure there weren’t any ATVs, dirt bikes, or horses in the distance. He came to a patch of cactus that had grown up around a bathtub seemingly in the middle of nowhere. “How the hell did this thing get out here?” he asked Manchester, Sterling continuing to puff on his cigarette as he examined the tub.

He continued onward, the highway to his left, the terrain parched and rough, purple mountains in the distance, dark clouds gathering over one of them, the air dry. “You think it’ll rain?” he asked his skeletal steed. Once the horse didn’t respond—mostly because he couldn’t—Sterling nodded. “Nope, I didn’t neither.”

Manchester trotted along at a leisurely pace until Sterling saw an access road jutting off the highway. He squinted once again and confirmed the location. “Come on,” he told his skeletal steed.

Sterling stopped about fifty feet or so away from what was clearly a roadside trading post. There were other horses out front, a dirt bike as well, rags wrapped around the seat. The trading post was set in an abandoned gas station, the covering that extended over the now useless pumps providing shade for the two horses. There was a phrase spray-painted in black on the sides of the gas station: If you try to rob us, we’ll kill you. It was also written in Spanish: Si intentas robarnos te mataremos. He also saw and noted a few gravesites out back, one freshly dug.

“Let’s see what they got,” Sterling said as he hopped off his bone horse. He lowered his hand and Manchester crumbled, Sterling sending both the horse and his saddle to his inventory list. After another quick look around, he wiped his hands down his black duster, adjusted his hat, and approached the trading post.

The windows of the gas station had all been boarded up, and a large man stood out front, either Hispanic or native, Sterling couldn’t tell. All he knew was that the man had about seventy pounds of sheer muscle on him, and that he had jet black hair, a handlebar mustache, and a pair of eyes that could have drilled a hole through a sheet of steel.

“Just here to trade,” Sterling said.

The man nodded. “You’re good, amigo.”

Sterling tipped his hat toward the man and stepped inside the trading post. His nose had picked up the smell outside, Sterling confirming that they served food here. He saw a man and a woman seated at a booth in the corner enjoying a plate of tamales, the two keeping to themselves. There was another booth, and Sterling immediately went to it. He sat, and as he did, a man standing behind a glass display case filled with charms moseyed over to the table.

“Tamales or green chili stew?” he asked Sterling, the seller looking like he could be related to the brute who stood out front, even down to the handlebar mustache. He wore a plaid pearl-snap shirt, a few extra buttons undone, a white tank top visible beneath it.

“Tamales or green chili stew, huh? How’s about a little bit of both.”

“Red, green, or Christmas?”

“Christmas,” said Sterling. “I’m looking for some charms too, but I will take care of that after. Shit, I’m going to need a flashlight as well. Can’t forget that.”

“Store is open,” was all the man said as he left the table.

The inside of the trading post was much cleaner than its exterior. As Sterling took it in, he noticed that there were provisions in the back, road signs and other paraphernalia hanging from the walls, the place clearly dedicated to selling charms. Aside from food, charms were one of the more popular things in what was once the great state of New Mexico.

From what Sterling had gathered, including through some of his own beliefs, New Mexicans had always been a little superstitious. He didn’t need Don Gasper to tell him that, or to interpret what seeing a coyote meant, or what it could possibly mean to wake up with a rattlesnake not more than fifteen feet away from you. The disgruntled denizens of the Land of Enchantment were a superstitious bunch, and charms were a sought-after item. The bonuses they brought with them only made them even more appealing.

Sterling’s eyes shifted from the store to some of the decorations on the walls. There was a faded New Mexican flag, yellow with its red emblem, as well as a Mexican flag, calendars with pictures of pretty women displayed, and a couple photos of Albuquerque and its yearly balloon festival, the balloons shades of cayenne and marigold. A line of ristas hung at the back of the restaurant, Sterling assuming the hanging red peppers were simply for decoration.

While he waited for his meal, he went for his book of sketches and desert haiku and flipped to one of the pages where he had been working on poems dedicated to peppers. Sterling read one that he had penned a month or so ago, checking the syllable count yet again.

Green and red Christmas

Keep the red, I’ll take the green

Spicy chili life

He shifted to another desert haiku about peppers, one of the earlier ones he had written back in January when he had been stretching out what was left of his crop:

Robust spice each year

Come August or September

Got to make it last

This desert haiku brought a sense of sadness to him. When the Killbillies and the Godwalker attacked his home, Sterling had already harvested the green chilis, and the ones left to harvest were almost the perfect color red before they were destroyed. He would have had quite a collection in the end had it not been for the sudden assault.

“Damn bastards,” he whispered. “Damn good-for-nothing bastards.” Thinking about what happened to Sterling back in T or C had a way of deflating his inspiration, and once he couldn’t come up with a new desert haiku, he sent the leather-bound book back to his inventory list and went for his tobacco and rolling papers. He quickly rolled a cigarette and lit it, as the man that ran the place returned with a plate of salsa and chips.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Sterling said as he reached for a chip.

“We don’t have water, but we’ve got some moonshine if you’d like that. Water is coming later today.”

“No problemo. I got my own jug.”

Sterling equipped one of his plastic milk jugs of water and set it on the table. He finished his cigarette and took a big swig, his thirst instantly quenched. He ate a few more chips, the salsa with a bit of a kick, just the way he liked it. It wasn’t much longer before his meal came, the tamales piping hot, steam rising off their corn husks. The bowl of green chili stew looked as if it had been boiling for the past twenty-four hours, just a thick mass of peppery sludge, but it was good, hearty, and with a bite that inspired Sterling to drink more water.

The last time he had eaten a proper meal was back in Truth or Consequences. It seemed so long ago.

Sterling finished his breakfast and joined the man who had served him over at one of the display cases, charms upon charms carefully catalogued and protected by glass tucked away inside.

“Yup, going to add a few more things to my tab,” Sterling said as he looked down at the charms. There were stirrups, turquoise belt buckles, horseshoes, small swaths of wool shaped into miniature carpets, shot glasses, key chains, necklaces, rings, bird talons, rattlesnake heads, gold earrings, and Land of Enchantment souvenirs. There were dolls made by natives and wrapped in wool robes, feather earrings, pipes made of bone, engraved shell casings, red and yellow prayer beads on strings with black tassels, a comical pepper magnet, Zuni silver jewelry with turquoise embellishments, polished sandstone bracelets—just about everything under the hazy New Mexican sun.

“I’ll make it simple,” Sterling told the mustached seller. “I could use some more Mana, but what I could really use, what I’m really looking for, is something that gives me more Technique Points.”

“Heh, you and everyone else, amigo,” said the man. Once again, Sterling wondered if he was related to the larger guy who stood outside. They had similar skin tones, their eyes set close together, matching mustaches to boot. The only difference between the two seemed to be their size, the seller short and pudgy, the man out front solid muscle and tall, practically a saguaro cactus.

Sterling grunted. “Did I come to the right place or not?”

“You came to the right place, amigo, but I’m going to be honest with you upfront: things I sell here don’t come cheap. I mean, we do have some cheap things,” he said as he waved his hand over the charms in the display case. “A lot of this stuff is for simple stat boosts, you know, for us regular folk. But I got this feeling you ain’t regular folk, is you?”

“What’s it to you?” Sterling asked.

“It ain’t mean nothing to me, amigo, who you are or what you’ve done as long as you’re a paying customer. Just an observation. Saw you ride up on a bone horse.” He nodded toward a window Sterling had seen, one partially covered by calendars, the light shining through. “Mi hermano saw you ride up too,” he said, gesturing to the door. “Neither of us have ever seen something like that, a bone horse, no sir. But, it’s after the Reset, and shit ain’t right.”

“I was wondering if he was your brother,” Sterling mumbled. “In that case, I guess the cat is out of the bag. You got me, I’m one of the Adapted. Now let’s get on with this here transaction. I need to get to Las Cruces.”

“Las Cruces?” The seller tsk-tsked. “You don’t want to go there, amigo. If nobody’s told you that yet, let me be the first: they got a war going on right now between the Killbillies and the White Sands Militia.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Then what the hell do you want to go there for anyway?”

Sterling smirked. “How do you know I ain’t trying to join the war?”

This statement caused the seller to laugh. “You don’t look like no Killbilly, and you damn sure don’t look like someone who would be part of a militia.”

“If you must know—and it ain’t really your business, but I’ll tell you anyway because I enjoyed my breakfast, thank-you-very-much—I got someone that needs finding, a shaman who goes by the name Don Gasper.”

“Don Gasper?” the man asked, raising his eyebrows. He shook his head, disgust pinching up the corners of his mustache. “Yeah, I know who Don Gasper is. I saw that son of a bitch last year at the Piro Pueblo. Talk about muy loco, man.”

“I’m aware that some people think he’s crazy, and I can’t say that I’m not one of them. But he’s the best in the business, and there ain’t no reward without no risk.”

“I mean, I suppose it makes sense that he’s there. They got some kind of shamanic meeting going on right now in Las Cruces. A few of them stopped by yesterday.” He nodded to the front door again. “Julian wanted to go to the festival, but I told him no. We don’t need to get involved with none of that shaman business.”

Sterling nodded. He knew exactly what the man was referring to. What was left of New Mexico was crazy enough without lumping a bunch of esoteric shamans together and seeing what they could conjure up after an afternoon of hallucinogens, spells, and homebrewed tequilas.

“Either way, that’s where I’m off to next,” he finally said.

“Good luck, I guess.” The man looked down at his display case. “So Mana and Technique Points, eh?”

“And a flashlight, small and large, battery-powered if you got it. Needed one of them last night.”

“Got them. Batteries too, believe it or not. Don’t know what we’re going to do when we finally run out of batteries.”

“I’m sure we will figure it out. We always seem to.”

“You ain’t wrong there.” The man turned around and rummaged through a box. He returned with a large flashlight, plus a smaller one, which Sterling would be able to keep in his mouth if he needed to look at something quickly at night.

“Speaking of which, you don’t happen to have a headlamp or anything like that, do you?”

“I did two weeks back.”

“That don’t help me now,” Sterling said.

The man snorted. “No, it don’t. Now, as for Mana and Technique Points, I got a few things that might tickle your fancy. Depends on how much dinero you have, though.”

Sterling went ahead and equipped everything he had in the form of his satchel of silver and turquoise. He emptied it onto the counter.

“Hate to say it, but this is the extent of my wealth.”

“I can see that,” the seller told him with a frown. “You got anything else to trade?”

Sterling nodded. “I’ve got a decent-sized rattlesnake, killed fresh this morning, a shotgun without any shells, and a loaded pistol with a silver grip I’m looking to get rid of. The pistol belonged to Commodore Bones, believe it or not. I’ve got peppers, too. Green Big Jims and Jalmundos, but I am partial to them. You can make some mighty good chile relleno with the Big Jims I got, though. I have seeds too, if you need something like that. NuMex Heritage Big Jim, NuMex Española Improved, Chimayó, and NuMex Barker’s Hot Peppers. I only planted the Big Jims this year. Seems to be the easiest to trade.”

“We got plenty of chilis,” the seller said. “But the rattlesnake will do; we got some Indians who can turn them into charms. I’ll take that shotgun off your hands as well. We got a guy who can make shells. You can keep the handgun, sounds like Commodore Bones may come looking for that one. I ain’t trying to get on his radar.”

“You know the guy?”

“Everyone around here knows Commodore Bones. Between you and me,” he said, bending forward a little, “the Killbillies can burn in hell for all I care.”

“You and I share that opinion. You mind if I smoke?”

“By all means, amigo.”

Sterling retrieved the dead rattlesnake and shotgun, which he placed on the countertop. He then equipped his bag of tobacco and rolling papers. “You want one too?”

“I stick to cigars and mota, but thanks.”

“Got me some mota too,” Sterling said, as he started rolling a cigarette. “Haven’t tried it yet.”

“I’m good for now.”

“I might come to regret this later, but I gave most of my funds to my friend, a pepper farmer out of Hatch. But I do got a proposition for you,” Sterling said. “A way to sweeten the pot.” He didn’t often use his blood magic as a bartering tool, but sometimes it worked.

“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

“Well, you pinned me as a mancer, and you are correct in doing so,” Sterling said as he lit his cigarette, “but in case it wasn’t clear, I’m a necromancer. If you got anything you need doing around here that may require the necrotic arts, let’s just say I could help out… in exchange for a hefty discount, of course.”

“Go on,” the seller said, growing quiet.

“You need some things moved? I can summon some bodies to do it for you. You got someone recently deceased? I can summon their soul through their blood, so you can say goodbye, or tell them whatever it is you needed to tell them. Just an offer. I saw a few graves out back. One of them looked freshly dug. I notice things like that.”

“Sí, mi hermano, Diego.”

“You have another brother?”

“We just call ourselves that,” he said, something different about the man’s face now, a bit of anger taking shape. “Diego died about two days ago. I guess we’re supposed to be in mourning, but we kind of knew it was coming…”

“It’s up to you, but if you want me to summon Mr. Diego, I can. I’m looking for a discount here and good charms, rare ones. I got to up my game.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’m not going to say that I plan to leave a trail of bodies across the state, but when I get done with the Godwalkers, and any Killbillies that try to come after me, it ain’t going to be pretty. Let’s keep it at that.”

“You trying to take on Godwalkers?”

Sterling nodded, a dead serious expression on his face. “They destroyed my ranch house, revenge for something that happened three years ago. And before you ask, I don’t want to talk about it right now, and I’ve already said too much like an idiot. But I’m still salty about it. I’ll shut up. You let me know if I can trade some of my skills for a discount. Think about it.”

The seller looked down at the countertop, the glass starting to yellow where he casually kept his hands on it. “Okay, thought about it.”

“That quick, huh?”

“That quick. I got a few words I’d like to say to Diego. Look, here’s the best I have…” It took a moment of rummaging in the display case, but the man soon returned with a small dream catcher affixed to a keychain. He also had a necklace with an arrowhead fastened out of rattlesnake skin on it.

“Now you said you needed Mana, and this here dream catcher will help you in that regard,” the seller explained. “Ten percent Mana boost. Rounds up too.”

“Yeah?” Sterling asked as he looked at the piece. He already wore a small rattlesnake tail that hung from his belt loop which granted him an additional Stat Point per five levels gained. It really wasn’t that great compared to something like this, but it didn’t take up much space, and it didn’t look like the dream catcher would either. To confirm that what the seller said was true, Sterling placed a finger on the dream catcher keychain.

Item: Dream Catcher

Item Type: Uncommon

Description: Ten percent Mana boost

“This necklace,” the seller said, turning to the next object, “is one of the best charms we have in the store.”

“Oh, yeah?” Sterling asked as he took a long drag off the cigarette. He exhaled over his shoulder, a blue cloud of smoke exiting his lungs and rising to the ceiling.

“Ain’t nothing like it, nothing I’ve ever seen anyway. It grants eight Technique Points per level you gain. Eight. Got it from an Apache Indian who came by here a few months back.”

“Damn.”

“Damn is right.”

Usually, charms only gave small boosts. And now that Sterling thought about it, the dream catcher giving a ten percent Mana boost wasn’t half bad either. Maybe I’m coming out on top here, he thought as he placed a hand on the necklace to verify what the seller told him.

Item: Rattlesnake Necklace

Item Type: Ultra Rare

Description: Additional Eight Technique Points per level gained

“Try them both out, you’ll see,” the seller said, offering him a toothless grin. “We got a deal?”

“I believe we do.” Sterling shook the man’s hand. He then attached the dream catcher to one of his belt loops and placed the necklace over his head, right next to the topaz necklace he had looted from the female bandit that granted an additional Resolve point.

New Bonus: You have received an additional 14 Mana Points!

New Bonus: Eight additional Technique Points granted per level gained!

Sterling took a quick look at his Mana to see that he now had a hundred and fifty-two points. “Yup,” he told the seller as he looked for a place to ash his cigarette. The man produced an ashtray made from an aluminum can, and Sterling put his cancer stick out.

“Welp, I’ve got to get to Las Cruces, so let’s see about this brother of yours,” Sterling said as he also sent the two flashlights to his inventory list.

“Yes, just give me a moment.”

The seller led Sterling around to the front of the trading post, where he spoke to the front door guy. The big Hispanic man walked over to the two still seated in the eating area and let them know it was time to go. They didn’t question him. Once they were gone, the two brothers locked up, and guided Sterling around to the gravesite out back.

“How deep is he?” Sterling asked, not that it mattered. As long as the soil was fresh, he’d be able to summon Diego’s corpse.

The two Hispanic men stood a few feet back, both a bit hesitant. “Three or four feet,” said the seller.

“I’m going to warn you now, this is going to seem kind of strange, but it ain’t too scary, and you won’t see his face or anything. First, I’m going to have to raise him from the dead, and then I’m going to need to extract a little blood to do what I need to do. One of y’all got a saucer or something in your invo lists? I also need a pocket knife. A saucer and a pocket knife.”

“I got one.” The seller produced a small saucer made of ceramic, colorful and clearly native, as well as a sharp knife with a deer antler handle and a leather cord hanging from its grip.

“Y’all hold tight.”

Sterling raised his hand and curled his fingers. The soil began to move. A hand eventually pressed out, just the fingertips and a portion of the palm. “You might want to turn away,” Sterling told them. “Just need to get a little blood.”

The zombie hand was already starting to turn colors, Sterling mentally telling the corpse to stop for a moment. Perhaps he’d be able to get enough blood from the hand, considering how the body had been placed. If the corpse had been kept upright, all the blood would have been in the feet by now, but since Diego had been flat, it would be a little easier to do what needed to be done. Sterling drew the blade across the man’s wrist. The blood was thick, almost coagulated, but there was enough to fill the saucer.

Once he was finished, Sterling turned to the two brothers and sat with his legs crossed beneath him, the hand slowly sinking back into the grave behind him. He took power away from Diego and motioned for the brothers to sit. He placed the saucer and the knife in front of him, the blood settling.

“He won’t be around for long, just a couple of minutes or so, and he’ll be confused, but you can ask him questions and talk if you need to. Don’t mind me,” Sterling said as he lowered his hat over his eyes. “Pretend I ain’t even here.”

He cast his Death Whisper ability and the blood started to boil, a small, glossy face slowly taking shape.

“Where… Where am I?”

“Diego?” the seller asked, shock coming across his face. “It’s me, Carlos. Carlos and Julian.”

“Carlos? Julian? Mis hermanos!”

“You stupid motherfucker,” Carlos began, his tone taking Sterling off guard, “you got your ass killed, and you never told us what you did with all the turquoise! That was our turquoise too, you, me, and Julian. Where the hell did you leave it?”

“Wha…?”

“I ain’t kidding with you, Diego, where is the turquoise?”

“Where… where am I?”

“I don’t give a goddamn where you are!” Carlos threw his hands up in the air. “I’m going to ask you again: where is the turquoise? Answer me, Diego. Where is it?”

“Look, Carlos, you have to understand, they had this donkey show in Las Cruces… ain’t never seen nothing like that before. I mean, I knew they had—”

“You… spent it at a donkey show?”

“What? No, I didn’t spend it on no donkey show, I ain’t a perv. It was a ping pong show, the opening act for the donkey show,” Diego said in a whispery voice. “And I didn’t spend it, to be clear. I was robbed. There was this girl that worked there. I was trying to help her, rescue her, you know how I am, Carlos. But it turned out she tricked me, and stole all of our turquoise, her and some militiamen.”

Carlos exchanged glances with Julian. “Where at? Where is this fucking place?”

“In the red light neighborhood. Just ask about it. Before you get all riled up, I was drunk, Carlos, it wasn’t my fault,” Diego pleaded with him. “A friend suggested the place. I was only going to stay for the opening act, but then I saw her, and I knew she was the one for me,” he said, something melodious about his voice now. “Such a sweet woman… until she betrayed me.”

“The one for you?” Carlos asked, trying to calm his nerves. “I need to get this timeline straight,” he said as his counterpart mumbled a litany of Spanish curses that almost impressed Sterling. “You went to a donkey show—”

“—Ping pong show.”

—And you got robbed by one of the putas who works there, and then you got your ass killed by the militia?”

“They ambushed me, it was a trap…” Diego said, his bloody form starting to constrict. Sterling started to feel a dip in his power, and he knew it wouldn’t be very long until he lost his hold on Diego, nor was he interested to see where this conversation would go. “Where am I? How are you talking to me?” Diego asked.

“Never mind that part. You are lucky I’m not there on the other side, wherever the hell you are. I would have whooped your ass for this. Julian too. That was our turquoise, Diego. Our turquoise. We earned it selling these damn trinkets. You stole it from us, and then you head off to Las Cruces…”

“I was drunk, and she… she looked like our sister; I had to help her.”

“Diego, I swear, if you bring Josefina into this…” Carlos glared at the face made of blood as it started to drop back into the saucer. “She wasn’t even our real sister! Hey, I ain’t done…”

“I can’t hold it for that long,” Sterling said. “Sorry, boys, make your peace. It takes a lot of my Mana to cast it,” he lied. “Drains me.”

Carlos pointed at the saucer of blood. “Don’t you leave without telling us that woman’s name!”

“Who? Which woman? Where am I?”

“The woman who stole our turquoise, who tricked you, the one working with the militia. What was her name?” Carlos demanded. “Don’t you do it, don’t you leave without telling us, Diego.”

“I didn’t get her name. Maybe Cristina? I… I…” And with that, the face splashed back into the saucer of blood.

Carlos got to his feet and kicked a rock. Julian quickly joined him and tried to soothe the furious seller. Eventually, Carlos stopped stomping, his arms now crossed over his chest as he loaded up a pipe with marijuana and puffed it in an angry silence. Figuring it was best to get going before they asked him to conjure Diego again, Sterling stood, dusted off his black jeans, and wished the two men well. He was just stepping away when Carlos called out to him.

“Hey, necromancer, if you meet a woman named Cristina who works in the red light district, bring her back here, dead or alive. There will be money in it for you, amigo. Charms, too. We got other stuff in the store…”

“Nope, sorry fellas, I ain’t getting involved in none of that.” Sterling tipped his hat at the two men. “Y’all have a good rest of your day.”

Next stop, Las Cruces.

.Chapter Eight.

There was a reason Sterling tried to keep his powers secret from the general public. There was never any telling how your average person would react to a man able to summon the dead, a mancer who could bring forth a loved one from just a small amount of blood. It could work as a bartering tool, which he had just seen back at the trading outpost, but it also forced Sterling to sit through whatever grievances needed to be aired, which had happened a couple times now.

He couldn’t help but smirk.

“I wish you had heard them,” he told Manchester as they neared Las Cruces. “Talking about all sorts of crazy shit.” There were more cars on the highway now, all abandoned, the occasional ATV or bicycle heading north or south. If there were Killbillies out looking for him, which he assumed they were, it would be much harder to find the cowboy necromancer once he hit the big city. Sterling had read up on Las Cruces before, which was once the second largest city in the state of New Mexico. There had been a bunch of universities in the city before the Reset, governmental agencies focused on things like nuclear testing and trips to outer space through an agency known as NASA.

“Crazy to think that people used to want to go up there,” Sterling said to his bone horse. “Bad enough down here.” As he continued alongside the highway, a cigarette perched on his lip, Sterling squinted up at the sky, a hazy blue with cirrus clouds holding court around an apricot sun. It was hard for Sterling to imagine that before people had gone to outer space. “Crazy.”

It wasn’t the most comfortable, but Sterling had grown used to what it felt like to ride his skeletal steed. He could always get a living horse, but that would cost him a good bit of silver and turquoise, and Manchester was portable. Sterling didn’t quite know the limitations of his inventory list, but it was definitely big enough to fit Manchester when he was in his deanimated form.

He would have to send him to the list sooner rather than later. Either the Killbillies or the White Sands Militia would be controlling the entry into Las Cruces, he was sure of that. Sterling could always skirt around it, heading through some outer borough or disheveled subdivision, but he preferred to make his way straight toward the city center, where he assumed the shaman festival would be held.

It really would depend on who was manning the gates.

Leave it to Don Gasper to attend a shamanic festival in the middle of a war zone, Sterling thought with a shake of his head. The old kook…

Whatever was about to happen, one thing was for certain: it was going to be wild. There was never a dull moment with the old sorcerer and his unique form of brujería, of witchcraft.

Sterling passed a green highway sign barely hanging from its bolts, the sign announcing that he had reached the Las Cruces city limits. What was left of the suburbs, most of it burned out, had slowly crept toward the highway in the form of debris and scattered objects, more collateral, more roadblocks, the remains of a once thriving society. He saw a group of people moving about half a mile ahead at a roadside trading post. Figuring it would be best to go on foot from here, Sterling got down from his horse and sent Manchester’s saddle to his inventory list. He lowered his hand and the bone horse collapsed, Sterling sending the bones away as well. With a flick of a finger, he sent his cigarette to the gray asphalt that used to be an interstate highway.

“Here goes nothing,” he said as he headed toward yet another trading post, which just so happened to be along his way. As he walked, Sterling straightened his black jeans, his shirt, his bulletproof vest beneath, his duster, and finally his hat. Once he reached the trading post, he found a woman using a chipped plastic bowl of dirty water to clean machine parts. The woman, whose eyebrows had grown together, had wispy black hair with strands of gray in it, her skin brown and cheeks pink from scrubbing. She paid no attention to Sterling.

“Ma’am,” he said after clearing his throat didn’t work.

“Él no está aquí,” the woman mumbled without looking up at him.

“Who?”

“Mi esposo.”

“You got me all wrong, ma’am. I ain’t looking for your husband, lady. Just got a quick question for ya: who’s running the entrance to the city up there? We talking ‘billies or the militia?”

“Milicia.”

“Muchas gracias.”

“De nada,” she said before launching back into whatever she was cleaning.

Sterling tipped his hat at the woman and headed on. He thought about rolling up a cigarette as he walked, but decided against it, just in case the militiamen at the gate wanted a smoke. Since he hadn’t had any interactions with the militia yet, Sterling hoped to keep things low-key so he wouldn’t end up on their radar like he had the Killbillies’. The more forgettable he was, the better. It really depended on how thoroughly they had militarized the city. Sterling needed to reach Level 60 as soon as possible. If that level came from killing militiamen and Killbillies indiscriminately, then so be it.

Sterling didn’t quite subscribe to a ‘kill them all, let God sort them out’ policy, but his personal philosophy, one slowly stitched together over the last five years of survival, wasn’t far off from the famous phrase. The post-apocalyptic southwest corner of what used to be the United States was a lizard eat lizard kind of world, where all the cacti were prickly, all the corners dark, a place where the scorpions stung you twice out of spite, and the boot kicked you on the way in and on the way out.

It became clear as he walked that some of the overturned and abandoned vehicles on the highway had been arranged to prevent ATVs rolling up on the checkpoint en masse. Once he saw guard towers hastily constructed from building supplies stripped from the suburbs, Sterling began second-guessing going through the main entry point. He caught the start of what looked like it would eventually be a fence, as well as a line of people waiting to get into the city.

Surprisingly, the line seemed to be moving pretty fast.

His first glimpse of one of the White Sands Militia told him that they were much better supplied than the Killbillies. They all wore desert camo with hints of white in it, their pants tucked into their thick, camel brown boots, something organized about their looks. They were decked out in bulletproof vests and tan gloves that matched their boots, all of the guards with helmets as well, guns on their hips, their faces clean-shaven, no beards.

Sterling got in line behind a small family, the father carrying one of the children in his arms, the mother with a baby strapped onto her back. It wasn’t long before he reached the front of the checkpoint only to realize the fatal error he’d made. Sterling still had his revolver out in the open. “You, come over here,” a dark-skinned militiaman said before Sterling could send his sidearm to his inventory list.

“It ain’t loaded,” he said coolly. “Doesn’t work worth a damn either. It’s just, you know, just a piece to make me look tough. Got to look tough nowadays.”

He started to lift his hands in the air as the militiaman came toward him. The man drew Sterling’s revolver and checked it, finding that there were no bullets in it, and there was no barrel for that matter either.

“A flectomancer made this?”

“Nah,” Sterling lied. “I just found it in a museum out in Truth or Consequences. They got a Native American museum there, cowboys and Indians, you know the drill, most of the stuff is looted, and I figured I would take a little keepsake for myself.”

“What about your sword?” the militiaman asked.

“Sword? I’d hardly call that a sword,” Sterling said with a big grin, relying on his Persuasion technique. “Look at the curve. I got a pepper farm out past T or C. This here is to fight off any amalgamations. They are known to come around from time to time, especially the armadillo ones.”

“What kind of peppers?” the militiaman asked.

“Mostly Big Jims, but my farm was attacked by a swarm of Killbillies,” Sterling said, finding an angle. “And they ruined my second crop of reds. I’m here to attend the shaman festival, see if I can get some advice on what to do next year to prevent them boys from rolling up on my farm like that. Mighty unkind of them.”

Another militiaman approached, having heard pieces of his story. He was taller than the fellow currently interrogating Sterling, the side of his face covered in pink scars from a fire or an explosion, possibly both.

“One easy way to stop the Killbillies is to support the White Sands Militia,” the man said as he took Sterling’s revolver from his counterpart and examined it. “We won’t raid your pepper farm, that’s for sure.”

But you will take a tax, Sterling thought as he smiled at the man. “Hey, anyone not trying to raid my farm has my support.”

The second militiaman handed Sterling his revolver. “Keep moving on through. The shaman festival is being held at an old Sam’s Club parking lot. You won’t miss it. Straight down along the interstate—I’d keep to the left, if I were you—easier to travel that way, and the Killbillies have set up shop to the right. You’ll come to a big overpass. Just make your way through that, and it’ll be on your left,” he said, motioning toward the interstate.

“One more thing, if you don’t mind,” Sterling said as his wallet appeared in his hands. “So I recently found out that, well, before the Reset, turns out I lived in Las Cruces. Imagine that. You don’t know anything about this location, do you?”

He gave the second soldier his ID.

The man examined it for a moment, and nodded. “I know the area. That’s on the other side of the interstate, an old subdivision. Like I was saying, that’s Killbilly territory, so if you’re going to go in there, you’d best go in with a gun that actually fires. Killbillies have the territory south of I-25, we’re holding the area north. The highway can be the battle zone at times, so once you veer off here, I’d stay about a quarter mile or so off it on your way to the festival.”

“Thank you kindly,” Sterling said once he had his ID back. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”

Sterling recognized Don Gasper as soon as he laid eyes on him.

The shaman stood on a stage, people gathered around him, the size and stink of the crowd making Sterling instantly claustrophobic. Gasper was covered in blood, a wild look in his eyes, spit dangling from his beard as he spoke to a large rattlesnake. Two attendants held the rattlesnake, both wearing all white smeared with ichor, one of them with a black leather whip in his hand.

Don Gasper spoke some garbled tongue and nodded to the whip. The man stepped around the old shaman and lashed against his back, and Gasper cried out in what was either ecstasy or pain, it was hard for Sterling to tell.

“Pinche maleficiadores,” the cowboy necromancer whispered to himself as he watched Don Gasper dramatically call for another whipping. He knew what he had just said was ironic; Sterling had traveled all the way from Truth or Consequences to get advice from the dangerous enchanter on the stage; the only fool in the audience was the one standing in a bulletproof vest, a black cowboy hat, and a black duster hoping that the shaman would make some sense of things.

There were loads of people about, more than Sterling had seen in ages. The parking lot of what used to be a Sam’s Club was certainly big enough to hold all of them. It made a nice backdrop too, what was left of the gray and blue building adding just a spark of color to the yellow haze that hung over Las Cruces. But he couldn’t shake the sense of uneasiness. There were too many people, and Sterling didn’t like it one bit.

“¡Alavado sean los dulces nombres de Jesús, María, y José!” a woman behind him cried out.

The crowd parted and the woman stepped forward, shouting those words again. She was completely nude, her body also covered in bloody lacerations. There was white paint smeared across her face and her breasts, made vibrant because of her brown skin, flecks of the white paint also in her dark hair, which was frizzy and matted to her head. She screamed the old prayer again and pointed at Don Gasper. “¡Venga Bruja!”

Sterling didn’t know if this was part of the show; he never knew if Don Gasper was actually putting on a show or not. He’d been around him when he called spirits and performed other rituals, but he’d never seen the old shaman drenched in blood before a crowd and speaking to snakes, nor had he seen a nude woman ever show up calling Gasper a witch and yelling for him to come at her. Yet Sterling knew Don Gasper enough to know that he would pretty much take on any challenge, which was one of the reasons the man was both trusted and mistrusted across this particular corner of the Southwest.

Don Gasper’s attendants came to him and he shooed them away. The one with the whip tried to stop him from pursuing the woman; Don Gasper tossed the man aside and reached the corner of the stage where he stopped. He turned back to the rattlesnake, which the other attendant struggled to hold. Gasper spewed a litany of curses at the snake, rapid-fire Spanish flying out of his mouth. With that, Don Gasper hopped down from the stage and the crowd parted even more.

“¡Venga Bruja!” the woman yelled again and again. “¡Venga Bruja!”

The two circled each other, the woman lifting her arms and arching her wrists forward, so her hands dangled as she spat and hissed at Don Gasper.

“¡Venga Bruja! ¡Venga Bruja!”

Don Gasper pointed at her, the older man baring a set of yellow teeth streaked with blood. His eyes were an odd shade of brownish blue, and they twitched as he focused on the woman. She took a step closer to him and slowly began to lower her arms until they stood chest to chest, the woman’s painted nipples rubbing against the front of Don Gasper’s rail-thin body. She began swaying, her breasts smudging the blood on Don Gasper’s chest and adding white paint to his chest hairs as she chanted in a language Sterling didn’t recognize. The crowd began to cheer and beat drums, shake cans with rocks inside, stomp their feet and whistle.

Don Gasper sent both his hands forward and cupped the woman’s head. He bent over; she seemed to shrink in front of him as he placed his mouth on hers, blowing air into the woman. She collapsed in his arms, the woman now moaning in ecstasy.

Goddammit, Sterling thought as he watched the whole charade. What have I gotten myself into? His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of gunfire, screaming, the crowd swelling forward.

Brrrrt! Brrrrt!

Springing into action, Sterling unholstered his revolver and fired several shots at the sound of the initial disturbance, which just so happened to be the White Sands Militia. A group of them, no more than six or so, descended upon the crowd, guns a-blazing. There were also Killbillies coming in from the other side now, a few already taking to the air. The two warring parties were easy to distinguish, the militiamen in their military garb with white accents, the vandals tatted up with yellow bandannas around their necks, their bellies full of fury as they screamed and shouted.

Bam!

Sterling’s next shot cut into the shoulder of one of the militiamen. Return fire from the militiamen mowed down a good portion of the crowd, desperate people spilling forward, Sterling instinctively getting low. A man lunged for Sterling and grabbed onto his arm, only for a bullet to pass through his head, the man quickly letting go. Gunfire from the Killbilly side told him that the bandit group also had firearms here in Las Cruces, which would only make things dicier.

Bodies falling all around him, Sterling began looking for an older man covered in blood and speaking in tongues. He had to get Don Gasper to safety, especially with how whacked out of his mind the old shaman was. But Sterling didn’t want to miss an opportunity to level up. Two birds with one stone, he thought as he located Don Gasper in the madness, the shaman now on his knees, his arms extended wide as he looked up to the sky, screaming.

Sterling dropped in front of him. “Gasper, what the hell are you on? Gasper!”

“Sterling? Sterling!” the old man cried. “¿Qué tipo de hechizo es este?”

“I don’t know what kind of spell it is… shit. This ain’t no spell. It’s real life. ¡Vamos!” He grabbed Don Gasper, the elderly shaman struggling to push Sterling away. “Stop fighting me, goddammit, we’re in the middle of a war zone.”

“Where did she go!?” Don Gasper asked, looking around frantically, his eyes bloodshot, his pupils dilated, big as grapes.

“What the hell are you on? What did you take?”

“Where is she!? We need her. I need her!” he cried over the roar of gunfire not twenty feet away.

Sterling took a look around for the woman he had seen just moments ago. He all but expected to see a naked lady covered in blood and white paint cartwheeling through the crowd, but there was no sign of her, just the surge of people trying to leave the area, the bandits and the militiamen going at it full throttle.

“We got a lot to talk about,” Sterling told Don Gasper as he grabbed him by his bloodied arm and started dragging him away.

“No, Sterling, no!”

“Shut your ass up, Gasper, or I’m going to send you out of here on Manchester’s back.”

Pushing through what was left of the crowd, trying to shake off the bewilderment himself, Sterling reached the stage that Gasper had been on moments ago. He saw the rattlesnake the shaman had been communicating with and shot it.

“What did you do that for!?” Don Gasper asked, coming alive.

“Dammit, Gasper, I need you to stay put. I’m going to go handle those bandits and militiamen myself. But I need you to sit tight, and what I don’t want is to come back here and find you in the body of a damn python.”

“It’s a rattlesnake!”

“I don’t care what it is. It’s dead now.”

“¡Serpiente de cascabel, idiota!”

“Stop yelling at me in Spanish, dammit, Gasper, I’m trying to save your ass here!” Sterling jerked the old man forward. They were at the side of the stage now, and Sterling hated to do what he knew he had to do next. “You’re going to thank me later, trust me,” he said as he spotted a rope that was supposed to be suspending a banner.

Don Gasper tried to break free, but he was too intoxicated to really do anything, Sterling simply holding onto him with one hand as he grabbed the rope. He pushed the man toward one of the pillars that was supporting the platform, one facing away from the turf war, and held him there. “Dang it, Gasper. I need you to stay still. You hear me? I’ve got to take care of those men, and then get us the hell out of here. Stop struggling!”

“¡Me deleitaré con tus intestinos!”

“What the hell did you just say about feasting on my intestines?” Sterling slapped Don Gasper, hard enough to jolt him a little, but not hard enough to actually injure the man. This shocked the old shaman. For a moment it seemed like he had snapped out of it, Don Gasper finally holding still so Sterling could tie him to the platform.

But then he started bucking again, and Sterling raised his hand again. “I don’t want to do it, Gasper. You’re my friend. You need to breathe, amigo. You’re covered in blood.”

“¡Me deleitaré con tus intestinos!”

“Shut the hell up… I’m trying to help you here,” Sterling said as he finished tying off the rope. “I don’t want you going anywhere. I’m serious. Don’t make me shoot you in the legs a couple times, Gasper.”

To show he meant business, Sterling went for his revolver, and showed it to the old shaman. He fired a shot in the air, and Don Gasper’s eyes went even wider.

“You don’t want to get shot with this thing, trust me on that. Stay here, keep your head down, and keep your trap shut,” Sterling said as he turned back to the mayhem. “I’m going to try to get me a level.”

Sterling wasn’t an idiot. He liked to fight as much as the next guy, but he knew better than to go running into a turf war between two armed parties amidst a flurry of bullets. This notion was further enhanced by his recently acquired Stealth technique. Sterling kept to the side as he made his way toward the melee. There were a lot of dead bodies, and as he crept along, he slowly began to animate them. About seven or eight of them slowly shambled to their feet, the freshly killed still looking human with a ghastly touch. He sent them into the battle first, using his animates as runners to cause distractions.

Ain’t nothing like seeing a dead man run at you, Sterling thought as he took in the lay of the land.

Most of the fighting was taking place about seventy feet away. The militia had taken cover behind barriers that had been erected long ago, just left to spoil in the parking lot. The Killbillies had stacked a couple bodies to use as cover, a few of the people still moving, which told Sterling that their Resolve was kicking in, that they would have a chance to heal up. Regardless, it was an ugly, depraved scene, a gory war zone.

“Here goes nothing,” Sterling said under his breath as his animates ran forward, straight into the gunfire. This had the effect he wanted, startling some of the people on both sides. He made a split-second decision to begin his attack with the White Sands Militia. They seemed to be better shots, and the barriers they were hiding behind would give him some cover.

Sterling ran toward the militiamen, his hand out at his side as he pulled forth any corpse ready to serve in his ragtag army. He made a wide loop around the blast barriers as his animates surged forward, the cowboy necromancer able to successfully come up behind the militiamen. He cut into the first one with his sickle-sword, and fired at a second, his magic bullet passing straight through the man’s skull, viscera and brain matter adding a splash of Valentine’s Day colors to the grim scene. There didn’t seem to be any mancers, which gave Sterling an advantage that he intended to use.

The first man he had cut down wasn’t dead yet, and as he moved forward, he took care of this with another magical bullet straight to the dome. The other militiamen started to turn to him with their weapons up. Sterling would never know what they thought when confronted with a man dressed in all black wielding a gun and an oddly shaped sword with licks of turquoise magic radiating off it, but he was certainly going to take advantage of the split-second confusion running across their faces.

Sterling shot one of the militiamen and dropped to the ground as a barrage of bullets flew in his direction. He fired once again, his bullet going through another man’s kneecap. A bullet grazed the side of Sterling’s neck, that familiar pain blooming within him. He had been shot multiple times over the years, and each time felt like a brand-new experience.

Gritting his teeth, he fired his revolver again, and managed to strike the man’s automatic weapon, which sent up a piece of metal into the militia goon’s eyes. His opponent made the fatal error of going for his face instead of another weapon, Sterling already back to his feet by this point. He approached the militiaman and shot him twice in the face.

Another spray of bullets caught Sterling’s attention, this time coming from the Killbillies, who were still engaging some of his animates. He dropped again, Sterling reaching the final living member of the militia, whom he had shot in the knee. The man held his knee with both hands now, cursing at the sky. Sterling almost felt bad for him, but he knew if he left the man alive, the White Sands Militia would be looking for him.

He could see it now, a call for all members to look for a mancer-hombre in all-black with a curved sword and a magical revolver. Eventually, word would get to the entry point of the city, and the guards there would verify his arrival with the other militiamen, It would be discovered who Sterling was, and the questions he had asked upon entry, which would give them his location. Things would get dicey. Sterling didn’t need that.

Bam!

As it often did after the Reset, another bullet solved the equation, Sterling putting one directly between the man’s eyes.

“Sorry about that,” Sterling said as he sidled up next to the blast barrier, his back to it now. The man was slumped forward. The way Sterling had delivered the bullet had caused it to pass through his head, ricochet off the inside of his helmet and spray back out the front of his face. Never seen that before, he thought, crouched amidst the pile of bodies, five of which he had killed himself, all decked out in desert camouflage, more marks on Sterling’s soul that he would someday have to answer for if he believed in anything like that.

But he didn’t.

He had long since given up any hope of a higher power watching over him, unless that higher power involved alien crafts known as Godwalkers that were able to level entire cities in the blink of an eye. Nope, this was it, this was his helter-skelter existence, and somehow he had found himself in what many would deem as hell, what Sterling would one day chalk up to a typical visit to Las Cruces.

He wanted a cigarette, that’s what he wanted. He could smell death all around him, hear the fight on the other side of the blast barrier, his animates producing their unique mixture of lurid havoc and hell. But there were still some Killbillies to take care of, and then he needed to get to Don Gasper.

Sterling only hoped the old shaman hadn’t chewed his way out of his restraints by this point.

“Yup,” he mumbled as he peeked around the blast barrier and counted seven Killbillies, male and female, all of which were engaged with his animates. Sterling was just about to creep along when a Killbilly flew over the blast barrier and landed in front of him. He sent a bullet straight into her stomach.

“It’s… it’s you,” she managed to say as she looked up at him.

“Bingo,” Sterling told her as he finished the job, his magical bullet ripping out of the back of her skull.

Sterling’s glowing reputation had preceded him, and it looked like the Killbillies had put out an APB on him. With this in mind, he crept around the barrier, crouch-stepping over bodies as he nursed his shoulder. It had already started to heal, and it wouldn’t be long before his wound was freshly covered by scar tissue.

One of the Killbillies happened to be several heads taller than anyone else around, the man clearly sending all his Stat Points into Fortitude and Strength. He was the type of brute that made Sterling want to have a fistfight just to challenge himself, and a not insignificant part of him wished he could save this particular slab of muscled bandit for last, so they could do things mano y mano. But machismo and battle strategies were poor bedfellows, so Sterling shot him in the back several times rather than challenge him. He holstered his revolver as he approached the man and used his good arm to cleave his sickle-sword into the side of his neck, lopping the bandit’s head off his body, blood spritzing from his neck hole, which got the other Killbillies’ attentions.

Sterling had his sword back in its breakaway sheath in a matter of seconds as he shot one of the smaller bandits, the one still carrying a firearm. The other four had all run out of ammunition and had switched to blunt objects, which they used to fend off Sterling’s snarling animates. To make it easier for them, Sterling lowered his hand, all of his creations collapsing at once.

“Y’all hear about me?” Sterling asked.

Two of the Killbillies nodded, all of them wide-eyed as they took in the man in black with his magical revolver and his sickle-sword coated in blood.

“If you run, I’ll try not to shoot you in the back of the head,” Sterling lied. He’d tried this bluff before and it had worked, but it didn’t seem like the cluster of bandits in front of him was going to take the bait.

“If we bring him in, Commodore Bones will reward us,” one of the men said, the woman next to him nodding in agreement. “We’ll be heroes.”

“There’s four of us, one of him,” she added. “Kroll is right.”

“I should have killed ‘Beto when I had the chance,” Sterling said. “How’s about this? I’ll put my revolver away, and we make this interesting.”

The female Killbilly grunted, and Sterling took this as an affirmation. Once his revolver was back in its holster, he brought his sickle-sword to the ready, his four opponents clearly seeing the energy radiating from its tip.

“Last chance to run,” Sterling said. “If you’re fast enough, and you can fly, which most of you can, you may even make it out of here alive. You’ll be a hero for simply surviving.”

“Fuck off!” Psyched by his own words, a man with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire charged forward. He swung, Sterling waiting until the absolute last moment to pivot and deliver an upward arcing slice that split the man’s throat. The bandit fell, and used what lifeforce he had left to try to crawl away.

Sterling stomped his foot on the man’s back, bringing him to the ground. “You ain’t going anywhere anytime soon, son.”

The female bandit advanced at the same time as a male counterpart, both of them with neck tattoos and yellow bandannas, armor crafted to fit their forms. The woman had a Bowie knife, and the man had a pair of custom-made brass knuckles that a flectomancer had likely created.

“Careful, Jessica!” he said as the woman reached Sterling. She had skill, Sterling would give her that. The knife-wielding Killbilly expertly sent her blade forward, slicing it through the air, and nearly nicking him a few times. But eventually, Sterling came to understand her rhythm, and the next time she leapt forward with her blade, he cut her wrist off, her hand and weapon flipping into the air and cracking against the bloodstained asphalt as she fell.

This inspired her companion to launch forward with a flurry of fists. Anger clouding his vision, the Killbilly tripped on his own footwork. Sterling crouched quickly, pulled the man’s head back, and slit his throat. The female bandit, who had just had her hand cut off, tried in desperation to scoot away from him. Sterling would deal with her in a moment.

The final Killbilly still standing was a young man pushing seven feet tall. He had a big chain, which he was slowly twirling at his side, an indecipherable look on his face due to his pair of reflective wraparound sunglasses, his bandanna just below his bottom lip. It was clear in the way that he held himself that the bandit had balls, that he wasn’t going to let what happened around him stop him from engaging the cowboy necromancer.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Sterling told him as he motioned for the man to approach him.

Thrusting into action, the Killbilly launched his chain forward, Sterling not able to get out of the way in time. The chain struck him across the chin, Sterling feeling as if it had shattered one of his teeth. He stumbled backward and the woman whose hand he had cut off lunged for him. She brought him down and tried to get on top of Sterling, rage now in her eyes. He cut her away with the broad end of his sickle-sword, his blade lodging itself somewhere beneath her chin as he dragged her to the side.

Goddammit, Sterling thought as the man with the chain struck him again.

The next time the bandit tried to attack, Sterling dropped his sword and grabbed onto his chain, pulling the man in close and bringing him to the ground as well. The two rolled around for a moment, occasionally colliding with dead bodies and shards of broken glass, bullet casings, and the filth and scattered debris of the street war.

Sterling managed to finally overpower the Killbilly and used the man’s own chain to choke him out. Once he was sure that the bandit was dead, Sterling slowly got to his feet and sheathed his sickle-sword. He retrieved his revolver once again and took a few painful steps toward the Killbilly with the barbed wire bat, the man barely breathing through the slit in his throat. With a single shot he made sure that the bandit was dead. Sterling turned his focus to the woman, who was still alive. He crouched in front of her, the woman’s face streaked in blood and grime.

“I told you to run,” Sterling said.

She spat blood at him.

“You’re a fiery one, ain’t you?”

“Kill me already,” she said, the wound under her chin making her voice raspy. “This world… fuck this world.”

“That’s something I can agree with, lady,” he said. “Anything you’d like to say before I finish the job?”

“Just… fucking… do it; I’m no pussy.”

“Your gender says otherwise, but you’ve got bigger cajones than these puto cabrones, I’ll give you that. I’ll try to make it quick.” Sterling pressed the muzzle of his firearm to her forehead, and the woman closed her eyes.

“Gracias,” she said, a smile taking shape on her face.

“De nada.”

Sterling pulled the trigger and finished the job.

.Chapter Nine.

Sterling took a look at his stats. He still hadn’t gained a level, but he was getting closer to where he needed to be.

You have received 2,133 XP!

Name: Sterling Monedero

Race: Human

Mancer Class: Necromancer

Class Ranking: Blood Mage

Level: 59

Fortitude: 117

Strength: 35

Resolve: 152

Mana: 92/152

Current Armor Rating: 28

XP: 298,984

XP to Next Level:3,132

Stat Points Available: 0

Technique Points Available: 0

“Ain’t too bad. Could be better, but ain’t too bad,” Sterling mumbled as he made his way through the parking lot of carnage. As he walked, he made sure no one was still alive, more than ready to put a person out of their misery. This triggered the memory of how the woman had just thanked him for ending her life. He hated to see that, but it wasn’t the first time someone showed appreciation for removing them from this realm. A part of him wondered if he would one day thank someone for doing the same.

Sterling spotted Don Gasper right where he had left him, the shaman tied up to one of the legs of the makeshift stage, his head bent forward, drool dripping from his lips. Rather than immediately go over to the man, Sterling equipped his bag of tobacco. He rolled himself up a cigarette, and then rolled a joint with some of the mota he’d picked up in Hatch for Don Gasper. Sterling lit his cigarette and approached Don Gasper. The man’s muscles were pulsing, his nearly naked body covered in scrapes and self-inflicted wounds.

“Gasper,” Sterling said. “Afternoon.”

The old shaman didn’t look up at him.

“I know you can damn well hear me. I got you a joint. Figured you’d want to take the edge off.”

Don Gasper tilted his head up, his eyes going wide as he took in Sterling’s appearance. “Sterling.”

“That’s the name my mama gave me. But you already knew that. What did you take exactly to get you all crazed like this? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this bad.”

“Colorado River toad. Bufo… bufo alvarius. I know this peyotera. Mixed them both.”

“Wait, did you just say a frog?”

“Let me down from here,” Don Gasper said, his voice wavering. “I’m not meant to be crucified.”

“Ha! You and me both, and believe you me, you ain’t crucified at the moment,” Sterling said as he took a drag off the cigarette. “But that’s a story for a little bit later. You promise not to try to run away?”

The old shaman snorted in response.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’” Sterling began unroping the man, his cigarette perched on the edge of his lip. As soon as Don Gasper was free, he swung at Sterling, the cowboy necromancer easily sidestepping his punch. The old shaman fell forward and hit the pavement, scraping his knee in the process.

“Goddamn son of a bitch,” Sterling mumbled. “Don’t make me hogtie you, Gasper. I’ll do it. I don’t want to, but I’ll do it.”

Don Gasper pushed himself to his feet, and brought his fists up, the shaman slowly surveying the battle that had taken place in the parking lot. He started to weep. “The poor people, they were just here to transcend. Why would they attack us? Why would they choose a day like this?” He turned to Sterling, the tears streaming down his face mixing with the blood and dirt streaked across his cheeks. “¿Por que alguien haria esto? Why would someone do this? Why!?”

“Because there are bad people in this world, there always have been, and the bad far outweighs the good. That’s why shit like this happens. You need to settle down.” Sterling offered Don Gasper the joint he had rolled. The shaman readily took it, and waited for Sterling to light it for him.

“And to be clear, next time you throw a punch at me like that, I may throw one back.”

Don Gasper took a long puff off the joint, his cheeks going gaunt as he did so. He exhaled a cloud of gray smoke, that familiar smell of marijuana reaching Sterling’s nostrils. “I thought you would be here yesterday,” Gasper said. “Had a vision.”

“Yesterday? What can I say? I was busy.”

After another drag from the joint, Don Gasper nodded. “I had a vision, Sterling… You were coming to Las Cruces for me, for my assistance.”

“Well, I guess you turned out to be right, how about that?”

“Why did you not come yesterday? Why show today?”

“It’s a long story, and it involves a lot of shit I don’t want to get into right now. Look, I got to get to this neighborhood on the other side of the highway. Turns out, I used to live in Las Cruces.”

“You lived here?” Don Gasper asked, as if he were judging Sterling.

“What do you mean by that? There ain’t nothing wrong with Las Cruces, and it’s where we met first, remember?”

“I remember.”

“I’ll explain everything in a bit, but we need to get going before more bandits and militiamen show up.”

The shaman took another puff off the joint and pointed it at the parking lot. “First, we must… we must find her.”

“Find who?”

“La bruja,” Don Gasper said, his eyes flaring with anger.

“There ain’t no witches here, Gasper. Everyone’s dead. Take a look around,” said Sterling as he swept his hand toward the parking lot. “Like pigs to slaughter, all of them.”

“You were the slaughterer,” Don Gasper said defiantly. “El carnicero. El pinche carnicero.”

“Dammit, Gasper, don’t you go around calling me a butcher. I did what I had to do to survive. And what about you? What about the man covered in blood talking to the damn rattlesnake? You’ve already tried to swing at me, and you told me earlier you wanted to feast on my intestines. Who’s the butcher now? I didn’t bring my ass all the way down here to get berated by you. You’re my friend, remember?”

“Sí, I remember.” He didn’t have much hair on his head, but he ran his hand through the hair that he did have, most of Don Gasper’s long white hair extending from the sides of the skull, strands of it braided and reaching past his scapulae. “Other side of the highway, yes?”

Sterling nodded.

“Let’s do it.” Don Gasper—barefoot and looking beat to hell, a joint pinched between his thumb and his pointer finger—started walking toward the west. Sterling quickly caught up with him, surprised at how spry the hallucinating man could be when he wanted to be.

“That’s the spirit, a little pep to your step.”

“That witch,” Don Gasper murmured after taking a drag off the joint that nearly finished it. “She’s trying to kill me, you know. La bruja.”

“Trying to kill you? It looked to me like she was trying to fuck you.”

“No, no, we’ve already done that.” Don Gasper offered Sterling a big grin that lifted the ends of his beard, his teeth yellow and brittle. “And now she’s trying to kill me. My Magdalena. What’s the old saying? Lovers in the morning, murderers by night? You ever heard that?”

“I don’t think that’s a saying, Gasper, at least not one that anyone sane has ever used before,” Sterling told him as they started down an embankment that would eventually lead to an access road. Sterling could now see what was left of the interstate ahead of them. From their current vantage point, there were pockets of black smoke on the horizon, people gathering at another department store across the interstate.

“Come on,” he told the shaman as he led him over a thirsty stretch of land dotted with brown shrubs and sharp rocks. They reached the interstate proper and crossed it, Sterling looking at the bridge that passed over the highway and how it had fallen long ago.

“Pinche la bruja,” Don Gasper muttered under his breath. “Sterling, I need you to find her for me, mi Magdalena. Yes, I need you to find…”

“Gasper, I didn’t come here to find a witch for you.”

“Not just one witch, several. They’re out past White Sands, at Alamogordo. You know Alamogordo?”

“I do, and from what I recall, she seemed to be here,” Sterling said. “Saw her with my own two eyes.”

“No, Magdalena’s not here anymore. She flies there or teleports. I don’t know how she does it. She can turn into something, into a coyote maybe. La bruja puede convertirse en coyote. It’s true, Sterling, saw it with my own eyes. Brujería malvada.”

A question came to Sterling as he ambled alongside the barefoot shaman. “Let me ask you this: what did you do to piss off these sorcerers, as you call them, anyway?”

Don Gasper stopped and Sterling turned back to him. The man smiled and shrugged, his eyes filling with delight. “Me?”

“Stop fucking around, Gasper. I know you ain’t the angel in this story.”

“Angels are often devils in disguise, but in this case, I actually was the angel. All I wanted to do was cleanse their souls. One of them made a pact with the Devil. And as you very well know, un pacto con el Diablo es muy malo. It’s so bad, and I was just trying to help. I mean, what can I say? I accidentally took one of their hearts, but it wasn’t anything serious. Not so serious.”

Sterling sighed. He knew what he was getting into when he came looking for Don Gasper, but even this seemed like a pretty far out statement.

“It’s true, you know,” Gasper said as he stepped closer to Sterling, almost eye to eye with him now. “It’s a spell that I learned maybe two years ago. You capture someone’s heart in a rosary.”

“How the hell do you go about doing that?”

“I told you, it’s a spell. Take the rosary and one of the… cómo se dice en Inglés? Beads? Yes, beads. Sorry, been speaking mostly Spanish lately. Remove one or two beads on the rosary. Heart goes there. Then you own the heart. It belongs to you. It’s your heart.”

“So you trapped one of these witches’ hearts in a stone and put it on a rosary. Then what?”

“Then I burned it with fire,” Don Gasper said as he started up again, Sterling once again at his side. The old shaman walked casually, as if they weren’t crossing a pretty expansive interstate in the middle of a city entirely engulfed in a turf war. The mystic’s leathery feet took care of the sharp rocks and broken glass on the ground, the old shaman almost bouncing with each step.

“But to put it bluntly: you killed one of their sorcerers, and now they are trying to kill you. Am I following this correctly?”

“Something like this, yes, but that one, Magdalena, she tried to kill me, and now she loves me, but I think she wants to kill me again. Mi amor, Magdalena mi amor.”

“This has to be some sort of joke,” Sterling said under his breath. “Let me go ahead and take a wild guess here, Gasper: you’re in love with her too?”

“How could I not be in love with her? Never have I seen a woman make sex like that,” Gasper said as he thrust his thighs forward. “I want to die fucking her, Sterling, reach nirvana through the tip of mi verga.”

“Thanks for the visual. Need I remind you that, at least according to you, she’s trying to kill you.”

The shaman tilted his head to the side a little and smirked. “Lovers’ quarrel, nothing more. Magdalena will come around.”

“Welp, that’s your business, and before you ask, I don’t want to get involved. I’m not trying to head to White Sands anyway.”

“You are here for Roxy, no?”

Sterling stopped, remembering what Judge had told him at the supply camp, that Roxy had once been imprisoned there and that she had escaped. An image of the woman flashed in his mind in that moment, of how they had parted three years ago.

“Actually, yes,” Sterling said, suddenly feeling deflated. “She is someone I’m looking for, one of several people.”

“Then it sounds like you are trying to head to White Sands, which means you could head to Alamogordo just as easily. Who else do you want to find?” Don Gasper asked.

“Let’s start with Roxy because you mentioned her; what were you saying about Roxy and White Sands?”

“The militia took her,” Don Gasper told him as they started over yet another patch of parched earth, one separating the highway from yet another access road. They were almost in the neighborhood that the Killbillies had taken. Sterling knew that they would have to stop soon and regroup if he was going to find the house that he used to live in, at least according to his old driver’s license.

“The militia has Roxy? I find that hard to believe. She could have taken a whole platoon of those camoed bastards. She already broke out of a Killbilly supply camp in Radium Springs.”

“The militia has mancers; Roxy isn’t one of the Adapted like you, mi vaquero nigromante.”

“I don’t like it when you call me that. I’m not a cowboy.”

“Pfft! But you are a necromancer, no? You dress like a cowboy, yes?”

“I was a pepper farmer until…” Sterling pinched the bridge of his nose, realizing he had a lot to explain to Don Gasper. The only problem was, they were still out in the open, and it seemed like Gasper was still slightly hallucinating, the shaman occasionally whispering to himself in Spanish while Sterling spoke.

“We’ll get to that. I’ll explain everything in just a moment. Let’s…” Sterling looked across the access road to the nearest abandoned neighborhood. At least from where he stood, he didn’t see anything that signified that particular part of the neighborhood was under Killbilly control. “I got it. Let’s look for shelter in one of them houses. You can smoke some more mota, and we can eat something. I got a little jerky, and some peppers. I’ll tell you everything, and I’ll need to know about Roxy.”

“And who else do you need to know about? You said you’re looking for some people, right? Is it the people I think you are looking for?” Gasper asked, a sudden twinkle in his eye. “You came all this way for me to help you find some people, no?”

“I did.”

“Yet you don’t believe that there are sorcerers out of Alamogordo trying to kill me…”

“Dammit, I never said I didn’t believe you, Gasper, I just said I didn’t want to get involved.”

The old man chewed on his lip for a moment. “I see, I see. So you only trust my power when it’s helping you, yes?”

“Stop playing around with me, Gasper. I came to you because of all the people I have encountered in the last five years, you’re the person that’s going to know what I’m looking for, and what I need to do about it. Whatever you’ve gotten yourself into with these sorcerers—including your little love affair—ain’t none of my business.”

“Why should I help you if you won’t help me?”

“For one, you owe me. You owe me for all those times I covered for your ass in T or C.” Sterling stopped and placed his hands on his waist, his black duster picking up in a warm breeze as it pressed past. “You also owe me for getting you out of that mess back there.”

“The shaman festival?”

“No, the bloodbath. I don’t know why you even agreed to be part of that festival, and in the middle of a war zone.”

“I just need to make a little money.” Gasper made the universal sign for money, rubbing his fingers together. “A little dinero goes a long way, no?”

“I can’t argue with that logic. Gasper…” Sterling took off his hat for a moment and looked up at the sky. He ran his tongue across his teeth and spat. Finally, he turned to the man, and made sure to hold his gaze as he spoke. “In case you’re wondering, I’m going to make another run at it, and you know exactly what I’m talking about. But before I do that, I need to find some people, the right people.”

“Sí, sí… I thought this was why you came,” Gasper told him, a sudden lucidity to the way he was looking at Sterling. “Let’s get into the shade somewhere. We can talk.”

Sterling and Don Gasper located an abandoned home not far off the highway and chose to hunker down in an empty shed in what was once the backyard. Upon searching the property, Sterling found that there were some sleeping bags stuffed into a dresser in a back room of the house, which he subsequently brought out to the shed. It wasn’t an ideal location, but it would do. Once they were settled in, Sterling planned to take a peek around the neighborhood, and see if he couldn’t find his old home.

“You need to eat,” he told Don Gasper, the old shaman puffing on another joint that Sterling had rolled for him.

“This is my food. Food of the gods, mi ambrosía.”

“You crazy old bastard.” Sterling plopped down across from the shaman. He felt like taking his boots off and did so, airing out his feet.

“You brought a change of clothes, right?” Gasper asked, his nostrils curling.

Sterling nodded. “I got a couple spare sets in my invo list. I’ll get a bath at some point.”

“Yes, inventory lists. So convenient, yet so artificial,” said the old shaman. Oddly enough, the marijuana was starting to make him speak more clearly, the bilingual muttering under his breath he’d been doing earlier all but gone by now.

“I think they’re handy.” Sterling took some green chili jerky from his list and ate it. He had plenty of jerky, maybe about a pound or two, and it was fairly easy to come by. Although one always had to double-check the source of the meat; people would eat anything these days.

As Don Gasper finished his joint, Sterling caught him up on everything that had happened, from the Godwalker attacking his property to the amalgamation he had taken out, and how he had been captured by Commodore Bones on his way to Las Cruces, placed on a crucifix, and subsequently escaped with his life and what he assumed was his wallet.

Don Gasper whistled. “Commodore Bones, eh? You got yourself in a heap of trouble.”

“What do you mean?” Sterling asked.

“There are three leaders of the Killbillies: Robert Bones, Del Cayedito, and Nina Otero.”

“Aware; ‘Beto told me that much. But how did you know?”

“Everyone around here knows,” he said with a shrug. “They’ve been in Las Cruces for a long time, pretty much started here. You kicked at the wrong ant hill, amigo.”

“I didn’t do shit. Them ants came after me, and if they ain’t careful, I’m going to fill their hill with gasoline and light the son of a bitch on fire,” Sterling said as he washed the jerky down with a swig of water, bits of meat still stuck in his teeth.

“No seas Ícaro,” Don Gasper said as he finally put out his joint.

“Ícaro?”

“Icarus. Flew too close to the sun. That’s what you’re close to doing.”

“I don’t know who Icarus is.”

“He flew too close to the sun, like I said, old legend, maybe from Greece. He burned to death.”

“Greece?” Sterling asked. He’d heard of the place, but it took him a moment to remember that it was somewhere in Europe.

“I found a book on Greek mythology once and read it while chewing on coca leaves,” Gasper explained. “I was looking for some spells. No spells in the book, but interesting stories. Let me see that picture of you. You said you had an ID, no?”

Sterling retrieved his wallet and handed it to Don Gasper. The old shaman, who was now crouched with his back against the wall, sucked on his lip for a moment as he looked at the driver’s license photo.

“Gordito, no?”

“Yeah, I was a little fat back then,” Sterling said. “What of it?”

Don Gasper laughed. “I think we all were. Not many are fat anymore; food ain’t hard to come by, but it can be a pain in the ass to get, if you know what I mean.”

“So… it’s hard to come by?”

“Maybe. My brain is still a little fried,” Gasper admitted.

“What were you saying earlier about some frog?”

The old shaman looked up at Sterling, his eyes twitching. “Bufo Alvarius. It’s a toad, and I was speaking about its venom. You squeeze the venom from the toad, let it dry, and smoke it. I smoked it, some of the other shamans too. Took a few cactus buttons from this peyotera as well, the one I mentioned. I was close, Sterling, mi vaquero nigromante, muy cerca…”

“I told you not to call me that. You sure want to rile me up today, don’t you?”

“It’s the best way to get to a person’s soul.” Don Gasper opened the wallet and found the picture in the billfold. He examined the photo of the woman and the child as he ran his hand through his beard.

“I think they may be my wife and my boy.” Sterling swallowed hard. “My son.”

“Yes, maybe could be,” Gasper agreed. “The boy looks muy familiar.”

“That’s because he’s related to me.”

“Sí, but something is different about this kid.”

“If I do find them, I have no idea what I will say. What would you say?”

“Me? I wouldn’t find them,” Don Gasper told him after a long pause. He tossed the wallet back to Sterling. “The past is the past because it has passed, no? Heh. I’m rhyming today.”

“You need to detox,” Sterling said, both of them laughing.

“Maybe. But maybe no. There’s more work to do, and detoxing would get in the way of mi trabajo.”

“What kind of work are you even talking about? Going around, getting high, and having visions?”

Don Gasper didn’t take this as an insult. “You came here for one of these visions, no?”

“Guilty as charged. Look, I’m going to get right down to it, Gasper, then I’ll leave you be for a bit while I go try to find the home listed on this ID.”

“Then get down to it.”

“Like I was saying, a Godwalker attacked my home, and I think you know why it came after me.”

The old shaman nodded. “Revenge, a dish best served spicy.”

“Exactly. It took three years, the damn thing, but it found me, and I ain’t one to let anyone or anything walk all over me—human, alien, mancer, or amalgamation—especially right at harvest season.”

“Your peppers.”

“Exactamente.”

“You are sure this is what you want to do?” Don Gasper asked after a long pause. “You think you’re ready?”

“Ready? You bet your ass I’m ready. But before I get deep into this shit, I need to find Roxy, Zephyr, and the Sunflower Kid. I’ll have to recruit a couple more along the way to make up for Liam and Karina, and I’ll probably start with Raylan.”

“Raylan? Remind me of who he is?”

“Flectomancer. He’s a damn good crafter, made me my revolver and my sword. Last I heard, he was up in Madrid.”

“You have to go toward Albuquerque…”

“I’m going to avoid Albuquerque like the plague. To meet Raylan in Madrid, my plan would be to follow the Turquoise Trail and bypass Duke City, keep a low profile. He’s the easiest to find, considering I heard from someone who saw him a few months back. It’s the others that will prove more challenging.”

“And you think he will join you?” Don Gasper ran his hand through his beard again, his pupils heavily dilated.

“Maybe. I’ll roll you another,” Sterling said.

“Thanks. It’s good mota. Sometimes they have some pretty nasty shwag around here, full of seeds and stems, a disgrace to the art of growing the plant. Una desgracia.”

“I haven’t tried it myself,” Sterling said as he equipped the bag of marijuana he’d purchased in Hatch. A pungent, skunk-like smell filled the air, and Don Gasper’s nostrils flared open.

“So fresh. Too bad you don’t partake.”

“It doesn’t quite sit well with me, and I don’t have nothing to celebrate,” Sterling said. “But I don’t mind if others smoke.”

“Sí, you are a very good man sometimes.”

“Yeah, you say that because I’m holding the bag of mota,” Sterling told Gasper. He rolled up two joints and handed them both to Gasper, figuring the shaman might want to smoke one while he was out. “We square?”

“Three-dimensional square, yes.”

Sterling shook his head. “As I was saying, I need to find the Sunflower Kid and Zephyr. According to you, Roxy is in White Sands. I’ll need to recruit a few more as well. So that’s everything in a nutshell, getting the team back together.”

A hint of sorrow came across Don Gasper’s eyes. He nodded in a solemn way and lit one of the joints. The old shaman took a drag off it and looked up at the ceiling, slowly exhaling the bluish gray smoke. “Sad what happened.”

Sterling nodded. It wasn’t a subject he liked to talk about. Three years ago had been quite traumatic for all of them, and he knew it was going to be difficult to find the others. But it was time. He was sick of the Godwalkers and what they had done. Even though he didn’t have any direct evidence of it, he was certain it was them who had caused the Reset. He didn’t know how much longer he had left to roam around the desert, smoke cigarettes, raise hell, and animate corpses, but he was going to dedicate that time to taking down as many Godwalkers as he could.

“Sí, Roxy… Roxy has been taken prisoner by the White Sands Militia.”

“You told me; I’m going to have to go get her at some point.”

“You and whose army?” Don Gasper asked. “You ain’t going to be able to get her out of there, not by yourself, no, and not with me, just in case you were thinking of extending an invitation. No, no. They have mancers. One or two men can’t do it.”

“Then I need to find one of the others first,” Sterling said.

“Maybe you and the Sunflower Kid, yes? A necromancer and a biomancer. It’s Yin and Yang. Do you know the Yin and Yang?”

“I believe I’m familiar,” Sterling said, having seen a description of it in the book he’d read on haiku.

“You could try to find Zephyr, but I think the Sunflower Kid will be more helpful. That’s what my gut is telling me.” Don Gasper took two rapid-fire puffs off his joint and held the smoke in as he stared up at the ceiling, his eyes a bit glazed over. “Yes, the Kid first.”

“The Sunflower Kid it is, and I’ll need your help to figure out where to find the Kid, and Zephyr for that matter.”

“Sí, I think I can help. But not tonight. Tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow. Let me think about it.” Don Gasper started to relax onto the ground. He put the joint out, and rested his head on the wooden floor of the shed, continuing to stare up at the ceiling.

“I guess that is my cue to exit. I’m going to step out and see if I can find where I used to live. I’ll be back, Gasper. Don’t you go nowhere, now.”

“I’ll stay here. No te preocupes por mi, por favor.”

“I’m not worried about you,” Sterling told him as he put his boots back on. “I just don’t want to have to go haul your ass away from whatever a shaman such as yourself would typically get into on a night such as tonight.”

The statement caused Don Gasper to laugh. He waved his bony hand at Sterling in an effort to send him away so he could enjoy his stoned stupor.

Once he was outside the storage shed, Sterling headed toward what was left of the fence that lined the property, the sinking sun a boiling orb which cast lines of magenta and dark turquoise across the yellow dust of Las Cruces. The fence that surrounded the home certainly had seen better days, most of the wood strips gone, aside from a few of the bottom backer rails.

Sterling stepped over it all, looked back at the disheveled place, mentally taking a picture of the place so he could find it again. He thought about taking Manchester’s bones out of his inventory list and going for a ride around the neighborhood to make things quicker, but that would bring attention to him, so he decided in the end it was best to keep things on foot.

He retrieved the wallet and took another look at the address on his ID. “1243 Oakridge Drive,” he said as he started heading to the northwest in search of a street sign.

Most of the houses were not much more than rubble, but some were partially intact, their roofs caved in from street lamps, the occasional dust storms ripping off their shingles, a rare rain or two sinking the foundations. He saw a pair of youths, both of them wearing black hoodies with the sleeves cut off, the hoods over their heads. They were teenagers, one nearly as tall as Sterling. Their first reaction was to turn to him, sizing the cowboy necromancer up. Sterling simply swept the ends of his duster aside so they could see his blade and the revolver on his belt.

They moved on.

“Best move y’all made all day,” Sterling said as he watched the two slip away.

As he walked, his thoughts drifted back to Don Gasper, and what he knew about the man. The old shaman had been one of the first people he met after the Reset. He was as crazy back then as he was now, but he had grown smarter, more cunning since then. There was something about the way he looked at Sterling that made him feel as if Gasper knew the end of the story, as if he’d already seen everything. Sure, he went off the deep end from time to time, but his vision three years ago had been correct and Sterling hadn’t heeded his warning. Fast forward to three years later, and here he was, coming back to him for another vision, hoping that the old shaman could point him in the right direction.

New Mexico had been a big state. According to his travel guide, the Land of Enchantment, as it had been known, was the fifth largest state in what used to be the United States. The state consisted of over one hundred and twenty-one thousand square miles, completely landlocked. The former capital, Santa Fe, used to be the oldest seat of government in the entire country, a place that had changed hands several times over the centuries that followed the Spaniards’ arrival. The state was rich in culture, but poor in almost everything else, the despair made worse by the Reset. New Mexico had everything from mountains to deserts, beautiful villas to extreme poverty. The state bird used to be the roadrunner; the animal, the black bear; the flower, yucca; the tree, piñon; the state tie, the bolo tie.

Sterling wished he knew as much about his previous life as he did the state he called home. As he walked, he brought his hand to his neck. Maybe he needed to find a bolo tie, something that doubled as a charm to honor his heritage, whatever that heritage may be. “Look at you, getting all fancy,” he mumbled as he came to a dead end, seeing a fence protecting a swath of desert soil, an old railroad track, movement in the distance catching his attention. Sterling crouched. There weren’t many places to hide, but he found an old trashcan and used it for cover as he saw a pair of ATVs pull into a large building that looked to be a former elementary school.

“Killbillies,” he whispered.

Keeping to whatever shadows he could find, Sterling followed the road back around, and came to another fork, one of the signs still standing. “Oakridge Drive,” he read as he started looking for the house number. “1243 Oakridge Drive…” He continued down the road, realizing now that he was in the heart of the beast considering the Killbillies’ proximity.

1239…

1241…

“Shee-it,” Sterling mumbled once he stopped in front of what used to be his home: 1243 Oakridge Drive. Nothing was left of the place aside from rubble and a white truck parked out front, the wheels missing, the paint corroded, the tinted windows and the headlights smashed out. He made his way up the driveway and proceeded to kick through the rubble. The house was made of white adobe, much of it blackened. He searched the rubble until it was dark out, leaving no stone unturned as he tried to find evidence of something, anything.

There has to be something here…

The roar of ATVs caught his attention and he ducked, only getting to his feet after the sound had dissipated. He went down the driveway, and stopped in front of the white truck for a moment, wondering if it used to belong to him. Sterling checked the glovebox and uncovered some cash that had been stuffed inside. He had no need for dollar bills, so he left the cash and searched the rest of the vehicle. He was just about to give up when he found a folded piece of paper tucked into one of the visors.

After confirming again that no one was around, Sterling crouched next to the truck and equipped the smaller flashlight he’d purchased earlier that day. He turned it on and held it in his mouth as he looked at the paper, which looked to be some type of car insurance document. There were two names:

Sterling Monedero

Isabella Monedero

It had to be his wife, he just knew it.

“Isabella, Isabella,” he said, as if saying her name would produce a memory. But it didn’t. Sterling looked at the picture in his wallet, his eyes tracing over the woman’s curly brown hair, her dark eyes, Sterling trying desperately to remember something about her.

“Isabella,” he said again, hoping to feel something, even a faint tug of his heart. Nothing.

He examined the rest of the document and didn’t find anything aside from their address, and a logo that said the insurance company was out of Albuquerque. But at least he had a name, at least his ID had been correct. This was where he used to live. Sterling sent the insurance card to his inventory list, the wallet and his flashlight alongside it. He made his way back to the shed, keeping to the shadows.

“It’s me,” he announced before stepping into the shed. He found Don Gasper still lying on his back, half-asleep.

“Sterling?” the old man asked, stirring a little as he turned to glance toward the doorway.

“Yup.”

“Any luck?”

“Sort of.”

“I know how to find the Sunflower Kid,” Don Gasper said after a long yawn.

“How’s that?” Sterling asked as he started to take off his boots.

“A Juan Circle. That’s what we’ll do.”

“A what?”

Don Gasper waved his question away. “Mañana. Buenas noches.”

Sterling summoned the bottle of tequila that he kept in his inventory list. With a deep sigh, he uncorked the bottle and took a swig from it. He sat, kicked off his boots, and removed his duster. He then proceeded to take off his bulletproof vest. Once he was in his undershirt, he took another melancholy pull from the bottle.

“That bad, huh?”

“Been a day,” Sterling told Gasper.

“Heh… Just wait until you see what happens tomorrow.”

.Chapter Ten.

It was sometime the next day when the roar of ATV engines woke Sterling. He went for his revolver, only to be told to relax by Don Gasper.

“We’re good,” the old shaman told him, strands of hair sticking out of the sides of his head at random. “They’re maybe a mile away, somewhere between here and there. They won’t find us here.” He nodded to the door, where several small black stones had been placed. “I put out a ward.”

“Gee, thanks, Gasper. Morning to you, too.” Sterling rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He felt like he’d been hit by a sack of adobe bricks, and for a moment, the backyard shed they were sleeping in wavered, Sterling not able to focus.

“It’s that tequila,” Don Gasper told him.

“Maybe I took a bigger shot than I thought,” Sterling said as he finally sat up, his back against the wall. He found his hat, and after taking a quick look inside it to make sure a scorpion hadn’t crawled in, he placed it on his head. From there, he began rolling a cigarette, some of the loose tobacco falling on the ground.

“You want some beans?” Don Gasper asked. “Not old beans either, recently canned. I got some. Good beans.”

“Maybe later,” Sterling told him. He lit his cigarette and took a drag off it. “So apparently, my wife’s name is Isabella.” Sterling looked down at the wooden floor, the grain of the wood blurring into focus. “Isabella.”

“So you found something, eh? That’s a pretty name… Means ‘God’s promise.’”

“Just found an insurance card, that’s all. Both of our names were on it.”

“It’s a start, no?”

“That it is. Hey, you said something about Juan last night,” Sterling said as he looked over to Don Gasper. “Care to elaborate?”

“Sí. It’s simple: I need you to find someone named Juan.”

“Juan, huh? A particular Juan or just any old Juan?”

Don Gasper patted down the sides of his stringy white hair. “Any old Juan. It’s for a ritual called a Juan Circle.”

Sterling took another long pull off the cigarette and shook his head. “What kind of wild goose chase are you about to send me on?”

“Heh. The geese have already left,” said the shaman as he looked up at the ceiling of the shed, a small hole in the corner revealing a bright day outside, a pillar of light entering the space. “Heard some this morning.”

“From the north, right?”

“You know better than I,” Don Gasper told him.

Sterling had seen the migratory geese several times now at the former state park near his pepper farm. Elephant Butte State Park had a reservoir about five miles away from T or C. It was peaceful there, the former state park named for a volcanic core formation on an island in the middle of the man-made reservoir. Sterling had sat near the lake more times than he could count, watching the sun come up, casting an array of Easter colors across the velvet smooth waves.

There would be huge flocks of geese in V-shaped patterns in the sky come September and October, a good many of them making their way down to bathe in the water or catch a fish. There was good fishing there too, something Sterling liked to do from time to time with Kip. Considering the sere landscape of thirsty hills and scattered mesas surrounding Truth or Consequences, the reservoir was practically an oasis.

“I’ll find you your Juan,” he told Gasper with a grunt.

“Good, because we’re going to need him. Tonight, we figure out where the Sunflower Kid is. We can try to get a little deeper if we need to, look for Zephyr, but I can’t guarantee that’ll be a possibility. Probably should just focus on one of them.”

When he wasn’t high or hallucinating off peyote buttons, Don Gasper carried himself in an almost frightening way, his blue-brown eyes piercing as ever, an aura about him that certainly showcased his unique character. While Sterling was sleeping, the shaman had cleaned up, washing the dried blood off his body. He was just finishing with his hair once the cowboy necromancer awoke. His wounds from yesterday’s festival were now healed, his skin darkened by the sun and covered in scars, his flesh offset by the whiteness of his beard. He was shirtless, in a pair of loose cotton shorts that tied off at the knees with a few charms around his ankles. He looked almost decent.

“So where to now?” Sterling asked after he removed his shirt and put his bulletproof vest on. He then started on his boots. “I’ll follow your lead.”

“We need to go to this peyotera’s home. It’s not so far from here. Toward San Ysidro, this side of the Rio Grande River.”

“And there’s a trading post, tavern, restaurant—some place for me to collect a Juan at—in that direction, right?”

“Sí, you should know by now that there’s always a place for someone to catch a drink. Siempre hay un changarro cerca. Always a store, no?”

“In that case…” Sterling got to his feet and shook his arms out. “Ain’t no time like the present.”

“Sí, vamanos.”

As he said he would, Sterling let Don Gasper lead the way, knowing that the older man knew Las Cruces like the back of his veiny old hand. Rather than go through the neighborhood, they went the long way and kept to a broken fence line, heading toward I-25 before looping back toward the Rio Grande River, the pair making a wide circle around the elementary school where the Killbillies had set up shop.

“Are you going to tell me the details of this Juan Circle?” Sterling asked as they walked.

“It’s a surprise,” Don Gasper said, his cheeks lifting, a grin forming.

“I don’t like the sound of that one bit.”

“You’ll love it. I’ve been thinking, you know.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“Heh. I think maybe I’ll meet you in Alamogordo.”

“You still want to deal with those enchanters, don’t you?”

“Maleficiadores,” Gasper said with a grunt. “These powers that we have.” The shaman stopped and turned to Sterling, growing serious. “They’re not to be used the way that they are using them.”

“So they are Adapted? Are they mancers?”

“No, no, nothing like that. Other kinds of powers, you know. Magic. Well, maybe Magdalena is a mancer. No telling. But no, we’re talking magic here. You know, magic stopped existing before the Reset, but after, when there was no one to be skeptical of it, magic magically became real again. Funny how that works, no?”

“It’s funny, alright.”

“Sí, muy divertido.”

Sterling nodded, even if he was a bit skeptical. He may not have believed in some of the things that Don Gasper did, but he believed in the old shaman enough to risk his neck coming all the way down to Las Cruces, hoping that Gasper would have a lead for him.

“I can sense it, you know,” the elderly man said as he peered up at Sterling, who was a full head taller than Don Gasper. “Maybe sometimes, you don’t believe me, no?”

“We’ve had this conversation so many damn times I’m not quite certain I believe myself. I came here for you, didn’t I? That should tell you something, Gasper. Let’s keep moving.”

The shaman laughed. “You always had a way with words, vaquero nigromante.”

“You should hear some of my desert haiku. For the record, I ain’t no cowboy. I was a pepper farmer, now just a man on a quest for vengeance who needs to find some old friends before I can roll up my sleeves and start taking on Godwalkers.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Maybe you can read me one or two of your desert haiku later, when I’m preparing. Never fancied you a poet, un poeta talentoso.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but I try…” Sterling didn’t normally share his desert haiku with anyone, and now he was going to have to figure out the best ones to read to Don Gasper. “Hey, this peyotera you know,” he said, circling back to something that the shaman had mentioned earlier, “is she going to join us tonight?”

“No, she’s in Silver City making a transaction, of sorts. Maybe she’ll stay there for the next few weeks while the Killbillies and militia battle it out here. I don’t know. I hope she doesn’t come back. But she has buttons for me back at her trailer, told me herself, wonderful peyote buttons,” he said, smacking his lips. “Dried out and ready to go. Just need to get them.”

Sterling nodded. He had never taken peyote before, but he knew that people referred to the way the dried cactus looked as buttons. They really weren’t his thing, hallucinatory drugs, and he certainly wasn’t going to be partaking tonight. He had to keep reminding himself that while it was crazy that he’d come to Las Cruces for Don Gasper’s advice, the man hobbling next to him had given Sterling quite a vision three years ago, and that vision had turned out to be true.

Don Gasper may be unorthodox, but the old shaman had some real power.

The two passed through an old mobile home park, a sign that read Holly Gardens catching Sterling’s eye. The homes weren’t very far apart, and only half of them stood, the others looted through and through, burnt out, stripped of their valuable parts. Seeing things like this no longer bothered Sterling; it was par for the course in a post-apocalyptic world, humans and varmints taking whatever it was they could find, mother nature finishing the job.

Since they experienced frequent droughts, mother nature used the power of erosion and constant sunlight to do the dirty work of breaking down what was left of society. Sometimes plants could grow into cracks, and there were cacti that were able to flourish, but most of the damage that plagued what was once the state of New Mexico came from the heat, the wind, the relentless sun, or some combination of the three. The only thing she seemed to have a hard time with were polymers.

A child’s toy caught Sterling’s eye in the mess of rubble, a yellow dump truck with its wheels missing. He could almost see a kid pushing the thing on the ground, placing things in the back. This made him wonder about the picture in his wallet, of his own son. What was his son’s name?

“Stop,” Don Gasper said, the shaman’s arms tensing.

“What?”

“Gato.”

Sure enough, there was a gray cat seated on the roof of one of the mobile homes, its yellow eyes locked onto them.

“This is no good,” Don Gasper said with an exaggerated sigh. “Shoot the cat.”

“I ain’t trying to shoot no cat, Gasper. I need to preserve my bullets.”

Don Gasper quickly searched around for something to throw at the feline. He found a stone about the size of a small fist and chucked it. The cat bolted before the rock could hit it.

“Those enchanters. They’re always watching me. They know, they know,” Gasper said, working himself up into a frenzy. “They know.” He started pacing, chanting something under his breath as he ran his hand through his beard. He then took off one of the prayer beads wrapped around his left wrist and spun his finger through it, muttering something in a language Sterling had never heard before.

“Relax, Gasper. If they come here, I’ll kill them all dead; don’t you worry about that. That was just a cat.”

“An animal is never just an animal if it’s watching you and blocking your path,” Don Gasper said as he tapped the side of his head with his finger. “Remember that.”

“I’ll… keep that in mind. Let’s just move on.”

The two came to another trailer park, this one seated on the top of a small hill, Sterling able to now see the Rio Grande River, the start of a mountain chain beyond that, which he knew eventually hooked up to the Robledo Mountains. Sterling read once that the range was named for Pedro Robledo, a casualty of an early Spanish expedition led by a Conquistador named Juan de Oñate y Salazar. This particular fact stuck with him for some reason, mostly because it reminded him just how long ago the region had been settled, Sterling somehow connected to these men who came over from Europe to spread their religion, and ended up pillaging and colonizing as a side quest. All the history that came after that existed in the blood that flowed through his veins, and through long forgotten tributaries of the Rio Grande.

“We’re here,” Gasper said, as he paused in front of a rusted trailer. “We are safe, for now.”

The peyotera lived in a two-bedroom mobile home, the door locked up tight. Don Gasper produced a key from his inventory list and motioned for Sterling to step inside. Once he had the door open, he let Sterling go in first. It was stuffy inside the trailer home, the smell of animal fat thick in the air. Dozens of dream catchers hung from the ceiling, and there were taxidermied critters on just about every surface.

“She’s a little out there,” Don Gasper told him as he moved to the kitchen.

“A little?”

The shaman opened a drawer and found the dried peyote buttons, which looked almost like sliced jalapeños. There were dozens, the old shaman licking his lips as he examined each of them.

“I reckon I’ll find us a Juan then,” Sterling said as he turned back to the door.

“I’ll be here.”

Before he exited the trailer, Sterling glanced back at Don Gasper. “Which way should I head, left or right?”

“Right,” Gasper said, now completely focused on the peyote. “There’s a place not far, an old tavern of sorts, attached to a trading post. Head that way and you won’t miss it. And be careful. Don’t bring back any unwanted guests.”

“This might take me awhile.”

Don Gasper shrugged. “We need him this evening; as long as you can show up here by then with a man named Juan, we’re good.”

“And food? You want me to grab you something?”

“No, I’m fasting from here on out. I need to for the ritual,” Gasper said, not looking away from the drawer full of peyote buttons.

“Got it.”

Sterling stepped outside the peyotera’s trailer and stood in the sun for a moment. After rolling a cigarette, he headed in the direction that Don Gasper had suggested, making the assumption that folks actually lived in a few of the other homes in the park. Some were clearly abandoned, but a handful had signs of life, like traps out, windows open to let in a cool breeze, even the smell of sizzling meat as he neared the exit of the trailer park.

Sterling knew he was being watched, but not by a cat. Anyone that lived in a place like this kept an eye on strangers, and a man showing up in all black alongside a bearded shirtless beatnik was certainly suspect. He kept on walking, doing his best to look like he was minding his own business, just enjoying a cigarette.

Some activity up ahead caught his attention, Sterling squinting as he looked down the dusty road. He saw a man getting off a horse near a small cluster of buildings. As casually as ever, mostly so he didn’t look like he was stalking the man, Sterling made his way over to the buildings to discover a trading post, a restaurant and a tavern, just as Gasper had said.

He entered the tavern and suddenly felt hungry once the scent of frying tortillas reached him. The place was a little rough around the edges, but it seemed clean enough, and the goateed bartender looked just about as friendly as anyone else Sterling had seen at a tavern. Sterling took a seat in front of him, a pair of men in the corner sharing a bottle of tequila the only other patrons in sight.

“What’ll it be?” the bartender asked, giving Sterling an eye that told him that he knew the cowboy necromancer wasn’t from around here.

“Food and tequila, beer if you got it.”

“We got it, bottled just a few days ago. Tequila too.”

“And the food?”

“From the restaurant next door; they’ll run it over.”

“In that case, green chili stew and some of them fresh tortillas,” Sterling said. “I can smell them.”

“Comes with chips and salsa too. Red, green, or Christmas?”

“Where do you get your peppers from?”

“Do I look like a chef to you?” the goateed bartender asked. He wore a polished sandstone bolo tie, likely a charm, over a brown button-up that was tucked into his wranglers. “Kidding, we get them from Hatch, where everyone in their right mind gets their peppers.”

“Let’s make it Christmas.”

“Beer, a shot of tequila, green chili stew, tortillas, chips and salsa, Christmas. Pay upfront.”

“I got peppers, turquoise, and silver. Take your pick.”

“I see you got a gun there too,” the bartender said, raising an eyebrow at his revolver.

“Ain’t for sale, don’t even work anyway,” Sterling lied as he retrieved his bag of silver and turquoise. He glanced up at the man. “Did you want peppers? I got Big Jims, Jalmundos, and seeds—NuMex Española Improved, Chimayó, Big Jims, and NuMex Barker’s Hot Peppers. Take your pick.”

“Turquoise and silver—I ain’t no chef, in case you couldn’t tell.”

“Fair enough.” Rather than empty his money bag on the counter, Sterling cautiously placed pieces of turquoise and silver one by one until the bartender nodded, letting him know that that was enough. He sent the leather satchel back to his inventory list and took a quick glance around, making sure no one was looking like they were going to rob him. The beer came first, followed by the shot of tequila, the bartender pouring a shot for himself as well.

“Salud,” Sterling said as he lifted his shot glass.

“You want some salt?”

“Sure.”

The bartender procured a salt shaker from the front of his apron. He licked the swath of skin between his thumb and his pointer finger and sprinkled some salt on it, Sterling doing the same. Both of them took the shot and licked the salt, Sterling wincing at the tequila’s strong bite.

“Whew,” he said, his throat on fire.

“Good shit though, right?”

“Hell yeah, it’s good.”

“Best in Las Cruces.”

“You ain’t lying.” Sterling took a swig from his warm beer and the bartender left to deal with the two other customers. The green chili stew came, as did the chips and salsa and piping hot tortillas in a pink plastic tortillero. Sterling feasted, and he was just finishing up his stew when the bartender came around again.

“I’m looking for somebody,” Sterling told him as he mopped up some of the salsa with his last tortilla.

“Oh, yeah? Who are you looking for?”

“Anyone named Juan. You know someone named Juan?”

“What kind of Juan?”

“Any Juan,” Sterling said, both of them laughing at the way it sounded.

The bartender poured up another shot. “So, let me get this straight, you want anyone named Juan, eh?”

“Yep, any Juan will do.”

Once they were salted up, the two men toasted their shot glasses together. “Salud,” the bartender said this time. “I’ve got to say, I admire your style, stranger. Come in here, pay well, cause no trouble, drink without making an ass of yourself. If you want a Juan, then… he’s a Juan.” The bartender tilted his shot glass toward a drunken man seated by himself in the corner, the big fellow half-asleep, drool dripping from his bottom lip onto a table full of empty beer bottles and shot glasses. Sterling didn’t remember seeing him show up, and he wondered if he had been there the entire time, the man remaining so still that he hadn’t noticed him.

“Anyone named Juan, yes?” the bartender asked.

“Any Juan will do, yup.”

The two were just about to share another round of tequila shots when the sound of ATV engines reached their ears.

“Killbillies?” Sterling asked, but by this point the bartender was already starting to back away.

“Are… Are they with you?”

“Hell no, they ain’t. Do I look like I’m wearing a yellow bandanna and a pair of wraparound sunglasses and waltzing around here like I own the place just to make up for the fact that I got a tiny pecker?”

The bartender snorted.

“Hell no, them idiotas ain’t with me. But if you want me to clear them out of here for good, I’d be glad to,” Sterling offered. “You just keep an eye on my Juan, and stay clear of any doors or windows. Can you do that?”

The bartender gulped. “Juan ain’t going nowhere.”

Sterling stood. After a short breath out, he tipped his hat toward the bartender. He turned to the door, and straightened his hands over his black duster. “Save a shot for me,” he told the man as he stepped out of the tavern. “I’ve got to get me a level up.”

Once he was outside, Sterling turned to the group of Killbillies, who were all huddled around their ATVs talking loudly about something devious they’d gotten into earlier.

Rather than announce himself, Sterling simply stepped up to the group and grabbed the first man he could get his hands on. He slammed his head down onto the hood of his vehicle and tossed the man aside. Sterling went for his revolver. Bam! He shot another Killbilly right between the eyes, the man falling, the others all startled by the gunslinger dressed in all black that had simply walked over to them and started fighting.

Sterling fired two more shots into the man whom he had slammed against the ATV. He holstered his revolver and went for his sickle-sword. He could sense the alcohol in his system, and it was making him feel barbaric, the heat of the day and his full belly reminding him to get this over with. One of the men swung an iron pipe at Sterling, his strike catching him in the arm. Sterling cursed under his breath as he used his other arm to swipe his blade forward. The Killbilly stepped back, but Sterling still managed to draw a little blood as the bandit tried to block another strike.

It was only when a gust of wind hit Sterling from behind and lifted him into the air that he knew that he might have bitten off more than he could chew. One of them was Adapted, an aeromancer, specifically, which was a class of mancer he was intimately familiar with considering his former teammate, Zephyr.

The twister sent him spiraling up into the air, Sterling’s fear of heights immediately coming to him. He didn’t have much time to experience his only phobia as he was slammed repeatedly onto the ground, to the point where he almost lost his half-moon blade. Looking for something to hold on to, Sterling launched himself forward and grabbed hold of the wheels of one of the ATVs, dirt and sharp rocks whipping all around him. The cowboy necromancer hugged the wheel, hoping that the aeromancer hadn’t leveled her skill enough to lift the vehicle as well. He was sadly mistaken as he took to the air alongside the vehicle, yet another tornado of energy bringing him up and down, Sterling letting go of the ATV.

“Dammit…” he mumbled as he lost his sickle-sword. He unholstered his revolver and started firing shots toward what was left of the Killbillies, only for one to tackle him midair. Sterling immediately tried to beat the female bandit down as she drove him toward the outer wall of the outpost, the aeromancer somewhere behind her. The two went straight through the adobe wall, colliding with a display case full of charms. Shattered glass all around him, a few pieces sticking out of his neck, Sterling fired several shots into the female bandit’s stomach, then used the butt of his revolver to beat her away.

Another gust of wind came tearing into the outpost, the people inside scattering, the owner yelling for them to stop ripping up his place of business. His whole body aching, Sterling made his way toward the exit, where he crouched with his back to it for a moment, waiting for someone to come running through the hole that he’d made alongside the female bandit. When no one came for him, he stepped out with his revolver at the ready and started firing toward the ATVs, charging forward with his firearm before him.

The aeromancer hovered in the air, her yellow bandanna fluttering around her as two cones of wind formed in her hands. The wind that struck Sterling next was akin to a harpoon, sharp enough to press through the space just above his hip bone and tear out his back. Once the wind finally let up, Sterling placed a hand on his hip, pain searing across his waistline as he was lifted again and flung back into the building.

“Goddammit…” he mumbled, his fingers now covered in crimson. Sterling’s vision started to blur. He’d lost his revolver in the process of being tossed back into the building, but he still had a backup in his inventory list. Sterling accessed the silver-gripped handgun he had stolen from Commodore Bones as the dust settled. He kept the weapon hidden as the final two Killbillies approached, one the aeromancer, the other a short man built like a backyard wrestler.

“They said to be on the lookout for a man in all black,” the aeromancer said, Sterling noticing a cone of wind spiraling around her fist.

“This has got to be him,” said his counterpart. The muscled Killbilly stepped forward like he was about to kick Sterling, only to be stopped by the aeromancer.

“Just hold on a second, Kev, I’m pissed about what he did too, but let’s—”

Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

Sterling emptied the magazine of Commodore Bones’ handgun, and was able to drop the two like a pair of filthy flies. His burst of gunfire killed the aeromancer, but the short Killbilly was still breathing, trying to understand what just happened.

Sterling sent the weapon back to his inventory list. His hands covered in blood, a gaping wound on his hip, he dragged himself toward the man with murderous intent. He got close to him, the bearded Killbilly’s eyes going wide as he grabbed him by the neck and strangled him to death, the two scooting further into the sun in the process.

“Shee-it,” Sterling said as he slowly rolled onto his back and clenched his eyes shut, his sickle-sword somewhere over near the ATVs, his revolver not far from him, hat near his feet. He wished he had the abdominal strength to retrieve his hat, so he could at least cover his face, but it was going to be a minute before he healed from the wound the aeromancer had given him. Blinded by the sun every time he opened his eyes, Sterling simply lay there, using the Killbilly’s body as a headrest for all of fifteen minutes.

No one came to him, no one checked on him. By the time Sterling was able to sit up, it looked like anyone that had been in the trading post had cleared out, and he assumed the same for the restaurant and the tavern. He only hoped that the bartender had kept his word and held on to the man named Juan.

Sterling went for his cowboy hat. He limped over to his revolver, cringing as he bent forward to retrieve it. He stuck it in its holster, the front of his shirt and the tops of his jeans still wet with blood. Sterling slowly lifted his shirt to examine the wound, and saw that it had almost healed up, the flesh beneath pink and new, the wound still covered in viscera, which he tried to wipe off as best he could.

“Goddammit.”

He glanced ahead toward the grouping of ATVs and saw his sickle-sword, turquoise energy radiating off its tip. He wasn’t quite in a walking mood, but he didn’t like his powerful weapon just lying out in the open, so he went ahead and made his way over to his custom blade. He placed one hand on the hood of an ATV and stood there for a moment, gathering his wits as he checked out his stats.

You have received 2,440 XP!

Name: Sterling Monedero

Race: Human

Mancer Class: Necromancer

Class Ranking: Blood Mage

Level: 59

Fortitude: 117

Strength: 35

Resolve: 152

Mana: 124/152

Current Armor Rating: 28

XP: 301,424

XP to Next Level:692

Stat Points Available: 0

Technique Points Available: 0

“Close, but no cigar,” Sterling said once he noticed he was less than seven hundred XP away from his next level. It would come soon, hopefully tomorrow, once he rode out of Las Cruces. There would always be something for him to pick off along the way, be it a militiaman or Killbilly, maybe even an amalgamation.

Sterling mumbled a series of bilingual curse words to himself as he looked to the door of the tavern. He suddenly felt the urge to vomit, and assumed it likely had to do with fighting with a full belly. It took him a couple of dry heaves before he caught himself, Sterling able to keep it down. With a shaky hand, he rolled up a cigarette and lit it, his lungs filling with smoke.

The cigarette helped suppress the urge to vomit, Sterling feeling more and more like himself as time passed. He placed his hand just beneath his bulletproof vest, where the aeromancer’s spear of wind had torn through the side of his body. The proximity of the attack to his groin made him cringe. About three more inches down and it would have been quite the recovery…

Damn mancer, he thought. Sterling had never had to regrow that part of his body before, and didn’t want to start today, not on the outskirts of Las Cruces in the middle of a turf war, not after he brazenly decided to challenge a group of Killbillies out in the open.

“You dumbass,” Sterling said as he puffed on his cigarette. It was the alcohol that had emboldened him earlier. He didn’t feel drunk, but he’d had a beer and several shots of tequila, which only made him bleed more. Had he been sober, he likely would have gone about things a little differently, found himself a dead body somewhere to utilize, either for shock or to aid him. Maybe he would have used a little finesse, or relied on the Stealth techniques he had recently enhanced. There were plenty of places where he could have hunkered down and just went with his gun, close enough that he would be within firing range.

No, he had been stupid, and for his stupidity he had almost had his dick blown off.

Sterling shook his head. He’d grown so used to being by himself that sometimes it felt like he was his own best friend, able to give himself hell, but not push the knife in deep enough that it actually wounded him. “Got to be more careful, pendejo,” he said as he flicked what was left of his cigarette at one of the dead Killbillies.

After dusting off his clothing, and once again ignoring a flash of pain he was still experiencing beneath his navel, Sterling made his way back into the tavern. He found the bartender already with a shot of tequila for him, the man in awe of what he had done out there.

“On the house,” he said, just in case this wasn’t clear.

“I think I’ve had enough tequila for today,” Sterling said with a chuckle, not at all questioning why the bartender didn’t try to help him out. Anyone in their right mind would have stayed as far as possible from the battle he had just had. Hell, I’m surprised he stuck around… Sterling thought as he eyed the shot glass.

“Nonsense. Have a shot, heal up a bit more, and then get your Juan, get the hell out of here,” said the bartender, offering Sterling a grin, the man’s teeth surprisingly white and shiny aside from a gold canine. Sure enough, Juan was still in the corner of the establishment, asleep with his back against the wall.

“Are you telling me he slept through all of that?” Sterling asked.

The bartender raised his shot glass and nodded. “That’s our Juan.”

“Shit, amigo, what kind of Juans y’all got around here?”

“Any Juan will do, right? You said it yourself.”

“Sí,” Sterling told the man as he lifted a shot glass with bloodied fingers. “Any Juan will do. Salud. And sorry about the mess out there.”

“It happens,” the bartender told him with a grin. “I’ll put it on your tab.”

The two men salted their hands, licked up the salt, and threw back the shots of tequila.

.Chapter Eleven.

Sterling deposited the large, incoherent man named Juan outside of the peyotera’s trailer home. He figured their best bet would be to keep him drunk until they could perform whatever ritual Don Gasper had in store for him. Rather than knock, he simply let himself in to find the old shaman seated on the ground in meditation, two lines of tiny pebbles spread out on the floor before him. Gasper slowly blinked his eyes open and looked up at Sterling. “Got in a fight?”

“Killbillies. Almost got my ass whooped by a damn aeromancer too. Been a little rusty lately, but I’m getting better.” Sterling cleared his throat. “If you couldn’t tell, I’m trying to level up over here.”

“Are you close?”

“Almost there,” Sterling said as he leaned against the countertop. “I got your Juan outside.”

“Good.”

“He’s drunk as a skunk. I hope that won’t be a problem.”

“No problemo.”

“Before we go any further here: you aren’t planning to kill him or anything like that, are you?” Sterling asked. “Because I didn’t sign up for that, just so we’re clear.”

“Kill him?” Don Gasper shook his head. “No, a Juan Circle won’t kill him.”

“I just had to make sure it wasn’t some kind of twisted sacrifice. What’s the point of the circle anyway?”

“The point is to find out where the Sunflower Kid is; I thought you knew this.”

“I know that part, I mean what is a Juan Circle exactly? Sorry, my brain is still a bit fried from the tequila they had back there.”

“Good stuff, no?”

“It’ll put hair on your chest, that’s for sure.”

“Then good, good stuff. We’re going to go up on the hill outside of the trailer soon, where we’ll wait for sunset. You’ll find out what a Juan Circle is then. We can’t perform the ritual until it’s night out.” Gasper nonchalantly took a peyote button from a gourd in his lap and started eating it. “I know what to do, trust me. We need to catch us a witch.”

“What about the one that you’re in love with?”

“Magdalena? No, no, a different kind of witch.”

“Whatever you say, boss,” Sterling told him as he started to roll up a cigarette. He also rolled up a joint at the shaman’s request.

“Once I finish this button, I will prepare the circle,” Gasper told Sterling as he ate another peyote button. He didn’t seem to enjoy the flavor, the shaman pausing every now and then to drink from a Fanta bottle with a murky liquid inside.

“What’s that you’re sipping on?”

“Water fused with cachana.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Also called witchroot en inglés.”

“Okay, that still doesn’t tell me what it is.”

“They use cachana in the pueblos,” Don Gasper explained. “It’s a secret herb, dangerous, said to have been given to the Indians by gente de chusma, flying demons, no?”

“Haven’t heard that term neither.”

“Lots of terms in my business, old and new, but mostly old,” Don Gasper said as he continued to munch on the peyote button.

“And what business is that?”

“Shaman business.” He took another swig from the old Fanta bottle and nodded to the door. “I should get out there.” Gasper pressed off the ground, keeping the gourd full of dried cacti with him. He was still shirtless, but he had changed into a pair of tattered jean shorts held to his thin frame by a brown rope twisted through the belt loops, charms hanging from each loop.

Gasper opened the door to find Juan lying on his side, mumbling something. “He’s big,” he told Sterling as he nodded to the Fanta bottle. “Grab my cachana.”

“Will do.” Before exiting the trailer, Sterling stuck his unlit cigarette in his mouth and took a look at the liquid inside the plastic three-liter bottle. He shook it, and unscrewed the top to see what it smelled like. There was something fermented about the scent, a hint of grain to it as well, and Sterling was not at all a fan. He stepped out of the trailer. “This is some rank shit, Gasper.”

“Eeeee, it’s not so strong.”

“Says you.” Sterling handed the old man the bottle, which Don Gasper quickly sent to his inventory list.

“And the joint?”

Sterling gave him the joint he’d rolled and lit it for the shaman. “And the Juan?”

“Si, Juan está bien; Juan está bien.” Gasper exhaled a cloud of gray smoke and turned to the hill outside of the semi abandoned trailer park.

“How am I going to get you up there?” Sterling asked Juan as he watched Don Gasper slowly make a zigzag pattern toward the top of the hill, his intoxication already showing.

“Wh-what?” Juan asked, coming alive, his eyes bloodshot, snot dripping from the tip of his nose. Sterling retrieved his bottle of tequila and stepped back inside the trailer to find a glass. He found one rimmed with grime, and used the end of his duster to clean it out. He then filled the glass with tequila, easily four ounces’ worth.

He returned to Juan.

“Drink this.”

“¿Qué?” the man asked again, confusion painting across his face.

“Amigo, you need to drink this. It’ll be better for both of us if you do.”

“Okay, I drink…” Juan took the glass from Sterling and finished it. “Wheeee…” he said, his eyes softening as the alcohol hit his bloodstream.

Sterling pointed at Don Gasper, Juan barely able to focus on him. “We’ve got to get you up that hill.”

“¿Qué?”

Rather than say anything, Sterling went to the man’s side and helped him stand. Keeping his arm under his shoulder, Sterling slowly began to lead Juan toward the hill.

“¿A… a dónde vamos?”

“Up the hill. I need your help with something. And don’t worry, ain’t nobody going to hurt you, or try to do something fucked up to you. Nothing like that, at least not that I know of. You’re going to see a shaman up there. His name is Don Gasper, in case you were curious.”

“Don… Gasper?” he asked, his English heavily accented.

“I’ve known him for several years now, a bit of an old kook, and a pain in the ass when he’s high, but he’ll know what to do,” Sterling told Juan, as if he were an old friend. The man’s weight on his shoulder became increasingly heavy and he stank of sweat, liquor, and swamp ass, a hint of body odor as well, Sterling wishing he didn’t have to keep his head so close to Juan’s armpit. The big man started to drag his feet halfway up the hill, and Sterling had to do all the work, the cowboy necromancer cursing with each step he took.

He finally reached the top of the hill, Sterling sweating profusely by this point. He tried to set Juan down easily, but the man didn’t let him do that, and fell face first into the dirt instead. “Son of a bitch,” Sterling said as he finally lit the cigarette that had been hanging out on the corner of his mouth this entire time. He finished his smoke, drank some water from his inventory list, and watched as Don Gasper went about making a circle of small stones, all of them black. The circle was nine feet in diameter, and once he was almost finished making it, he motioned for Sterling to bring Juan to the center of the circle.

“Yeah, yeah, just give me a damn minute,” Sterling said as he took another swig of water. He turned to look out over the trailer park, and Las Cruces beyond that. Everything was bathed in yellow dust, the late afternoon sun creating a murky desert haze over the city, no oases in sight. He couldn’t quite see the interstate from here, considering their current elevation, but he got a sense of where he was in relation to the quickest way out of here.

Boy, am I ready to get this show on the road, Sterling thought as he ashed his cigarette.

Once he was ready, he dragged Juan over to Don Gasper and deposited him in the middle of the circle. He then helped Don Gasper arrange the stones around the drunken man, searching around for dark stones and placing them until the circle was complete.

“You still haven’t told me exactly how this is going to work.”

“You need to turn his… his… shirt inside out,” Don Gasper said, the effects of the peyote, the marijuana, and the witchroot he’d been drinking starting to become evident through the size of his pupils and the shakiness of his voice.

“You’re serious?”

“Of course.”

Sterling approached Juan, and after some mumbled conversation, he was able to get the man’s shirt off and turn it inside out. He then placed the shirt back on his body, feeling as if he were trying to dress a pig. Juan lay down again.

“He’s going to… need to sit up,” Don Gasper said.

“He’s drunk as hell; I don’t think he’s going to be able to sit up.”

“Get that big stone… Prop him up. He needs to be sitting.”

Sterling followed Don Gasper’s gaze to a relatively large stone, big enough that it could certainly smash someone’s head in. He went to retrieve it, and brought it into the circle. “Get your ass up,” he told Juan.

“¿Qué?”

He kicked Juan lightly, and was finally able to set the stone at the small of his back to prevent him from lying down.

“Better?”

“Better,” Don Gasper said.

“What now?”

“We sit, we wait. Once… the sun is down… that’s when.”

The two did just that, Don Gasper continuing to eat peyote buttons as they sat outside of the circle of stones, Sterling keeping an eye on Juan. While he might have been a drunk, he was a well-behaved drunk, the big man rarely moving or making any gestures to indicate that he was uncomfortable.

Eventually, and after several cigarettes, a couple Big Jim peppers, more water, a piss, more tequila, another piss, and another joint or two for Don Gasper, the sun set and the ritual was set to begin. Don Gasper, now hunched over as he approached Juan, nearly stumbled backward.

“Are you okay?” Sterling asked as he came to Gasper’s side.

“No problemo… no problemo,” the shaman mumbled. He withdrew a hand broom made of peacock feathers from his inventory list and began slapping Juan across the face as he chanted: “Bagabi laca bachabe; Lamac cahi achababe; Karrelyos.”

Sterling shook his head as he watched the ritual. “That definitely ain’t Spanish,” he mumbled as Don Gasper muttered the incantation again, Juan oblivious to his actions.

The shaman began moving in circles around Juan. Sterling stepped back as Don Gasper rushed to the outer rim of the stones and bent forward, vomiting. He wiped his mouth, looked up at Sterling with wild eyes, and continued the ritual, Juan starting to shake, his eyes clenched shut.

What the hell are you doing here? Sterling thought, but then something caught his attention—movement on the horizon. He focused on it, realizing that it had all the qualities of a mirage. Something was standing there, a figure cloaked in black, silhouetted by the stars above. Goosebumps rose on Sterling’s arms, his hand naturally finding its place on the grip of his sickle-sword.

“Shee-it…” he mumbled as the figure started to float toward the Juan Circle.

The pace of Don Gasper’s chanting picked up: “Bagabi laca bachabe; Lamac cahi achababe; Karrelyos. Bagabi laca bachabe; Lamac cahi achababe; Karrelyos.”

Sterling tensed as the cloaked figure neared the circle. The figure began to shrink in size until it was now in the form of a coyote.

Am I drunk? Sterling wondered. He didn’t feel drunk, but he had been drinking tequila, trying to match Don Gasper’s narcotic intake with his own. Paralyzed with something akin to fear, Sterling watched as the coyote approached the circle. Don Gasper stopped chanting. He lowered the broom of peacock feathers and whistled at Sterling.

“There she is,” Don Gasper said, just about as tense as Sterling had ever seen him.

The coyote sat, just a few feet away from Juan’s back.

“She’s here,” Don Gasper said, his voice thin and whispery. “Ask her. Ask her, Sterling, I need to send her away before she sticks around,” said the old shaman, clearly spooked. “Hurry!”

“Where…” Sterling swallowed. “Where do I find the Sunflower Kid?”

The coyote licked her lips.

“I’m looking for the Sunflower Kid. I’m looking to do some damage to these goddamn Godwalkers, and I need… I need the Kid. Where do I find the Sunflower Kid?” he asked, his voice trembling.

Once again, the coyote licked her lips.

Sterling was about to ask one more time when the coyote spoke in a feminine voice: “Sunflowers grow on the airy side of the mountain. Head north.”

The coyote turned away and Don Gasper let out a jubilant cry, which woke Juan.

“What the…?” he started to ask, but by this point Sterling had already tuned Juan out, his focus now on the coyote as it began to morph back into a cloaked human, the witch’s back to him as she floated away.

“Callate pinche la boca,” Don Gasper mumbled to Juan as he hit him in the face a few times with his peacock broom.

“Hey!”

“You remember what she said?” Gasper asked Sterling, wide-eyed, twitchy. “I can’t remember.”

“That was an actual witch?”

“Never mind that, do you remember?” Don Gasper asked, the shaman clearly battling intoxication. “Do you… remember what she said?”

“Something about sunflowers growing on the airy side of a mountain, to head north.”

“That’s what you need to do, mi vaquero nigromante, head north… sunflowers on the airy side of a mountain. Write it!”

“But what does that even mean?”

“Who are you people?” Juan asked as he started to press himself to his feet. “¿Dónde diablos estoy?”

When neither Sterling nor Don Gasper responded, the big man took a look around, got a sense of where he was, and took off toward the trailer park. Juan ended up slipping on his way down the hill, cursing as he slid through a couple of small bushes and a cactus on his way down.

“You are supposed to head north… not to the east, not to Roxy, no, no. If you head north… figure it out. You need to write… must write… the message. Before we forget. Write,” Gasper said.

Sterling got out his book of desert haiku and a pen. He equipped his flashlight as well and turned it on, holding it between his teeth as he hastily scrawled the phrase on a clean sheet of paper.

“Let’s rest.” Don Gasper nodded to the trailer. “Must rest…”

“That trailer is stuffy; I’d rather sleep outside.”

The old shaman turned back to Sterling, a solemn expression taking shape on his face. “No. The witches are out… Better to be inside.”

.Chapter Twelve.

It took a couple more shots of tequila for Sterling to actually fall asleep. He always found himself behaving like this around Don Gasper, trying to match the man tit for tat, drink for narcotic. Yet he secretly knew there was no matching Gasper’s unique ability to consume drugs and conjure witches. As Sterling fell asleep, he recalled the cloaked figure and the coyote that she had morphed into.

If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed it.

The trailer was warm enough that he needed to crack a window in the middle of the night, Sterling on the musty couch, Don Gasper on a thick sleeping bag he carried in his inventory list. The shaman slept like a dead man, on his back, peaceful, his arms crossed over his chest. Sterling heard dozens of coyotes that night, much closer to the window than they should have been. The sounds of their cries amidst the terrible wind blowing outside woke him several times, the cowboy necromancer strangely comforted by the fact that Don Gasper had put out a ward by placing a ring of salt around the trailer.

Sterling awoke the next morning to the smell of a strange earthy substance, something rooty and robust. He found Don Gasper standing at the gas-powered stove boiling water and sprinkling yucca into it, a clear look to his eyes.

“I can’t remember what happened last night,” Don Gasper mumbled. Sterling located his cowboy hat and placed it on his head. He cracked the window even more and rolled up a cigarette as he looked out to the hill they’d been on the previous night.

“Do you mind?” he asked Don Gasper, showing him the cigarette.

“Smoke your heart out.”

“Trying to. And just in case you were wondering, your Juan Circle worked.”

“I don’t remember exactly what happened after I started chanting. Something came, right?” he asked, the sad look in his eyes telling Sterling that Don Gasper meant it, that Gasper truly was troubled by the fact he couldn’t remember anything from the ritual.

“Yup, something came. A cloaked figure; I’m guessing it was a woman based on her shape and the fact you called her a ‘she.’ Then the figure turned into a coyote. She spoke to me.”

“And what did she say?”

Sterling accessed his desert haiku book and read the message aloud: “Sunflowers grow on the airy side of the mountain. Head north.”

“A riddle, no?”

“Seems like one. Does it mean anything to you?”

Gasper poured the tea into two cups and handed one to Sterling. “It’s not quite coffee, but it has little bit of a kick to it. Yucca, ginger, a bit of cachana, but not enough to make you hallucinate.”

“I ain’t trying to hallucinate.”

“Nor am I, I got plans as well,” Gasper said. “Drink. It’ll give you energy.”

“I got some jerky and peppers if you want some.”

“I have some tortillas, fresh made yesterday morning.”

“Shit yeah, let’s warm them sons of bitches up,” Sterling said as he took a puff off the cigarette.

“To answer your question,” Gasper said as he cleared his throat, “if that’s what the coyote told you, that riddle, then that’s where you have to go. North.”

“Hell, I needed to head north anyway to find Raylan,” Sterling said as he took a sip of strong brew. “I figured I would try to recruit him.”

“Who’s that again?” Don Gasper asked as he started warming one of the tortillas.

“Flectomancer, you know him. He’s in Madrid; I’ll avoid Albuquerque and take the Turquoise Trail instead. Either way, it’s north, and maybe I’ll be able to sniff out the meaning of this message about the Sunflower Kid along the way. What about you? What plans do you got?”

“First, read me one of your desert haiku like you promised.”

“Sort of put me on the spot over here,” Sterling said as he took another sip of the strong brew. “They’re personal.”

“You told me that last time. Let’s hear one, then I’ll tell you my plans, because I think that you and I can link up again. In fact,” Gasper turned to him and smiled, baring his yellow teeth, “I foresee it.”

“Shoot me now,” Sterling said with a grin. “Not going to lie: every time I link up with you, I find myself doing weirder and weirder shit.”

Don Gasper laughed. He handed Sterling one of the hot tortillas, and Sterling readily ate it.

“Ain’t bad. You make this?”

“Me? No, no. One of my lovers.”

Sterling snorted. “One of your lovers? What about that shaman woman, what was her name?”

Don Gasper grew serious. “Magdalena. First your desert haiku, then I will tell you my plan,” he said as he went back to cooking another tortilla. “We can speak of my lovers at another time, but not Magdalena, she’s special.”

“Fine, fine,” Sterling said as he flipped through his book. He found one that he had written on the heat of the desert and went for it: “Light my skin aflame. Flowers, shrubs, and trees look parched. Find me some damn shade.”

“Heh,” Don Gasper said as he took the tortilla off the burner and stuffed it in his mouth. “Find me some damn shade. I had to do that this summer, was in Mexico at one point, just wandering through the desert like Jesucristo as I searched for poisonous toads. Had a vision…” He trailed off for a moment as he thought of something. Gasper swallowed what he was eating and continued. “Thanks for reading that to me.”

“My pleasure.”

“Mi poeta nigromante.”

“Please, no.”

“Now, as for my plans—”

“—Don’t tell me it’s another shaman festival?” Sterling joked. “Because that ended poorly last time, and I ain’t saving your ass again. Also, to be clear: I still don’t know what all the blood and the snake was about.”

“A shaman is like a magician, he never reveals his tricks. No, no festival this time. Maybe next time I visit Las Cruces. As for my plans… my plans are very simple, yet will probably turn out to be complex in the end: I’m going to meet you in Alamogordo. Surprise.”

“Alamogordo, huh?”

“Si, the closest city to the White Sands desert, where the militia is. I assume that’s where you’ll head after you get the Sunflower Kid and meet your flectomancer.”

“Actually, yeah, that does make sense. I still need to look for Zephyr, but maybe it’s best to get Roxy before I do.”

“Yes, get Roxy. You need her.”

“Try telling her that,” Sterling said under his breath.

“And someone has to do something about these pinche maleficiadores. I can’t have these evil sorcerers trying to attack me again, Magdalena included. I’m going to head in that direction later today, to Alamogordo. That’s where we will meet. Hopefully, we won’t have to get any closer to Texas in our pursuit of these enchanters.”

“Hopefully.” Most of the people that still lived in New Mexico had heard rumors about how tough things were in Texas, especially with the Texas Rangers, who had become a vigilante group easily as vile as the Killbillies, if not more so. Many actively avoided heading in that direction, and there was a saying that went around: Head to Texas, find certain death.

“I’ll lay low in Alamogordo until you get there,” said Gasper. “If you think about it, you’re basically doing a triangle if you come back in this direction after we finish in White Sands. First Madrid, then hopefully the Sunflower Kid, who is in the north, then back down to Alamogordo, White Sands, and maybe back here after. Who knows?”

“The only way I’m coming back to Las Cruces is if someone drags me here kicking and screaming. But I could see myself going back to T or C for a day or so just to gather my wits. I promised them folks that I would run the Killbillies out of town.”

“Sí. And there’s another reason you need to go there, to the White Sands Militia’s compound in the desert, something I failed to mention. As you know, sometimes I have visions, but I also hear things.”

“Oh, yeah? What did you hear?” Sterling asked Gasper as he handed him another tortilla.

“The White Sands Militia has a technomancer at the military base they now run.”

“Why do I care about that?”

“Don’t you get it? The reason you failed three years ago is because you didn’t have a technomancer.”

“That isn’t the only reason…”

“Think about it, mi poeta. Godwalkers have stripped the world of its means to produce electricity, at least on a large scale. They are powered by electricity, those monoliths are. I’ve seen one in action, and if anyone can bring one of the big ones down, it would be either an electromancer or a technomancer, and technomancers have different capabilities than electromancers. I know you destroyed a smaller one three years ago, but I’m talking about the big mamacitas. You get Roxy, you get this technomancer, and you and the Kid can help me out with these sorcerers that keep trying to kill me. One, two, three. It’s simple, math for a baby.”

“Why do I get the feeling that this isn’t going to be as simple as you make it sound?”

Don Gasper grinned. “You can do it; we can do it.”

Sterling finished his tortilla and looked down at his hands, at the lines across his knuckles from the many wounds he’d received in fights. He had come to Las Cruces in search of Don Gasper for a reason, and now that reason was starting to present itself. Not only did he need to find those who were still alive, the three that had helped him years ago, but he would need new recruits, and they would likely all need to be mancers, aside from Roxy.

“Looks like I’ll see your crazy ass in Alamogordo, Gasper,” Sterling finally said.

The old shaman continued to smile, whiskers lifting off his lips as they parted. “Then it’s settled. I’ll be there waiting for you. I’m looking to go after these hechiceros alone, these goddamn witches. I’ll even kill Magdalena if I have to. I swear, Sterling. I don’t want to, but I will. No telling with this woman.”

“Sounds like you got yourself a—”

Brrrrt! Brrrrt!

Bullets sprayed into the trailer, glass shattering, Sterling dropping immediately and pulling Don Gasper down with him. Another round tore through the metal and brought down all of the peyotera’s charms in the process.

“They found us,” Don Gasper said. Sterling’s first thought was the gas stove, which was still on.

“Shee-it…” He went for his revolver and shouldered out the door of the trailer, shooting indiscriminately at a group of Killbillies. He pushed over a picnic table and ducked behind it. “Gasper, get the hell out of there!”

Sterling quickly accessed his inventory list and summoned Manchester’s bones, which all appeared in a pile in front of him. Sterling brought his skeletal steed to life, and fired his revolver once again as he helped Don Gasper out of the trailer. The Killbillies were now using the discarded remains of some of the other trailers as cover.

“Get on the horse; I’ll catch up!”

“Like hell I will,” Don Gasper said as he turned to the Killbillies. The old shaman began to hover in the air, practically daring them to try to shoot him.

“You… sticking around?” Sterling asked, not at all surprised to see that Don Gasper could fly.

“I sure as hell am,” he said, anger boiling across his face. “No one tries to kill me while I’m having my breakfast!”

“Well, in that case…” Sterling slapped Manchester on his thigh bone, and his horse took off. A few of the Killbillies tried to fire at the skeletal steed, but Manchester was uncommonly fast, able to provide a distraction and get out of range so Sterling could get a better look at their assailants.

I needed to level up anyway, he thought as he started shooting once again in the direction of the Killbillies.

Whoosh!

A fireball the size of a meteor struck the trailer, engulfing it in flames.

Sterling knew it would explode at any moment, so he charged off to the left, Don Gasper zipping away as well. The shaman wasn’t a mancer, he wasn’t one of the Adapted. But like everyone else left alive after the Reset, he had stats and the ability to learn techniques, and Gasper had clearly spent some points to learn the technique that allowed him to fly. He floated well above the fight now, and as the trailer exploded the only thing that reached the old shaman was the smoke that followed.

Sterling wasn’t so lucky.

He felt the blast force and was barely able to get to the ground before debris flew over his shoulders. Sterling looked up, the dust clearing as he spotted the same pyromancer who had attacked him back at the supply camp. I should have killed her then, he thought. The pyromancer and the Killbillies had long-range capabilities, which he had as well, but if he really wanted to cut their numbers down and get the XP he needed, Sterling would need to get in close. It would need to be a direct shot when it came to the pyromancer, Sterling recalling that his bullets had passed right through her flame form.

The Killbillies started firing on Don Gasper, who still hovered in the air above them, the pyromancer taking a moment to recharge. Sterling remembered her doing this back at the supply camp, her power seeming to take a lot out of her. Perhaps she was at a lower level than he had originally thought she was. That, or command over fire was an exhausting ability to wield.

Either way, it didn’t matter.

Sterling bolted toward the line of trailers and started to loop around the group of Killbillies in a similar fashion to what he had done back at Sam’s Club. But he wasn’t planning on flanking them this time; Sterling was looking for something. He figured that there would be a few graves around some of the trailer homes, and he wasn’t wrong. An abandoned trailer that had once been painted red caught his eye, Sterling noticing that there was a small grave marker out front.

“You will do,” he said as he ran toward the grave. He called on his power, but rather than a human, a small lap dog began to claw its way out of the grave, the earth shifting.

“Dang,” Sterling said as he frantically started looking around for more graves. He pulsed his arms, once again summoning his Death Sense power, hoping that he would be able to pick something up as he moved.

The pyromancer lifted over the trailers separating Sterling from the Killbillies, flames spiraling around out of the bottom of her feet, her upper body tangible for once. He pointed his revolver at her just as she slammed into him with a force that sent the two of them flying through the walls of the nearest trailer home, the pyromancer holding on tight, her flame starting to lick up again by the time he was able to kick her away.

“That was stupid,” he said as he pointed his gun at her tangible form and fired a shot that passed straight through her skull. The woman fell, the inferno raging around her feet slowly starting to dissipate, igniting the inside of the trailer.

Got one, Sterling thought to himself as he pressed out of the debris. He grabbed the woman and dragged her out of the trailer, Sterling having to step through her flames to do so. Still standing over her, he fired yet another shot into the side of the pyromancer’s head to make sure she was dead.

He looked up to see Don Gasper still in the air, occasionally coming down to give the Killbillies hell. He didn’t know how many bandits there were, but the quick glance he got earlier told him there were at least a dozen.

The tiny dog he had animated came over to him and sat, awaiting orders. Sterling would have kept the animal alive had it been larger, something like a pit or even a sheepdog. But it was a lap dog, a small one at that, not really something that could take a grown man down, especially one who had put a lot of Stat Points into Strength.

“Sorry, fella,” Sterling said as he retrieved his power from the tiny dog. He then looked back at the pyromancer, an idea coming to him. He had animated a mancer before and knew that their powers didn’t carry over. Still, it would have a psychological effect on the other bandits. The woman slowly stood, her shoulders hunched over for a moment, blood now covering her face from the two bullet wounds.

“Give them hell,” Sterling told her, pointing in the direction of the gunfire.

She took off running. Sterling was almost certain that it would shock the Killbillies. Rather than immediately join her, Sterling quickly retrieved his bag of tobacco and his rolling papers. He rolled up a quick cigarette and lit it.

“Welp, here goes nothing,” he said, cigarette hanging for dear life on the end of his lip as Sterling went for his sickle-sword.

It was time to solidify that level up.

Sterling crept up on the Killbillies, the group already startled by the appearance of the dead pyromancer. He climbed up onto a trailer and crouched, Sterling doing a quick headcount of his opponents. Don Gasper had killed two of them—Sterling didn’t know how—but there were still a good ten Killbillies left.

Cigarette still in his mouth, Sterling hopped down behind them and rushed forward with his sickle-sword. He struck the first bandit down, pulled back on his head and slit his throat, blood spritzing as he moved on to the next, Sterling ready to get this over with. The next Killbilly tried to hit Sterling with the butt of his gun, but he was faster than the man, able to send his sword in from the side through an opening in the man’s poorly fitting body armor and pierce his guts. He yanked his blade out, and used the man as cover while another Killbilly started firing on him, shell casings flying in the air.

“You got shitty friends,” Sterling said as he tossed the man aside. He retrieved his revolver and shot the Killbilly that had just attempted to fill his body with bullet holes. Bam! Sterling then fired a shot into the Killbilly he had used as a shield, one in the back of the head to make sure he was dead.

His revolver back in its holster, Sterling bolted forward, turquoise energy radiating off the tip of his sickle-sword as he brought it into the shoulder of another bandit. Sterling could only imagine what the pain felt like as he cleaved his sword out and spun, his momentum and added strength taking the man’s head off, followed by a trail of blood, a shocked look on the man’s face as it smacked against an old tire.

By this point there were six bandits left, Don Gasper continuing to distract the Killbillies by coming down from the sky to deliver punches. The pyromancer’s corpse was also active in the battle, the dead woman latching onto a man’s leg and simply biting into his thigh, a female Killbilly trying to pull her off.

The largest of the bandits towered over the others, the man’s shoulder width easily twice that of Sterling’s, several heads taller, too. He wielded a metal baseball bat that looked custom-made for his size.

“I think I’ll call you Goliath,” Sterling said as he flicked his cigarette at the brute.

The big man turned to him, grunted, and charged, preparing to hit a homerun. Sterling fired a shot that broke through the bridge of the Killbilly’s nose, tearing out the back of his oversized skull. The Southwest Neanderthal hit the ground and slid, stopping just a few feet away from the tip of Sterling’s boots.

“Dumbass,” Sterling said as he turned his focus to the four still standing. Don Gasper landed, and Sterling waved him away. “They’re mine.”

Gasper nodded and stepped back, seemingly an old shaman again, as if he hadn’t been zipping around in the air just moments ago, delivering death punches from the sky. Sterling cleaved his way through a couple of the Killbillies. The next, a stocky male with a yellow bandanna splattered with blood, came forward with a crowbar. Sterling slugged him once in the face, feeling bones crack beneath the force of his fist. He quickly circled around him, pulled his head back and slit his throat, letting him fall to the ground.

The final Killbilly, a skinny man with long arms, surveyed the carnage, yelped, and took off running.

“That’ll do,” Sterling said as he sheathed his sickle-sword and once again retrieved his revolver. He fired a shot into the back of the man’s head, killing him dead. “Gasper?”

“I’m here,” the shaman told him, breathing heavily now. “I wasn’t expecting to see one of your zombies. It’s always jarring.”

“Yup.” Sterling looked toward the far end of the trailer park and saw his skeletal steed. He whistled, and Manchester came running. While he waited for his horse to arrive, he took the power back from the pyromancer, Sterling feeling a tiny flourish of energy in his chest as she fell to the ground, her legs splayed out.

“Always gruesome,” Gasper commented.

“It is what it is.”

The shaman nodded as Manchester approached. “Well, it’s been a pleasure, and as much as I’d like to finish my breakfast, I think it’s best that we both get the hell out of Las Cruces before word gets out.”

“Damn straight,” Sterling said as he caught his breath, his fist pressed against his side. “You want a ride?”

“No, I’m going in the opposite direction. But I do got something for you.” Gasper produced a piece of paper with a wax seal on it in the shape of a skull. “I made this for you while you were gone yesterday. This will get you into any pueblo across the state. I wouldn’t say I’m famous in these parts, but I’m definitely infamous. It’ll help you, trust me.”

“Yeah?” Sterling asked as he took the piece of paper and examined it. It had Don Gasper’s signature on it, and the wax seal. That was it. Sterling extended his hand to the shaman, the seal going to his inventory list. “Then I guess I’ll see you in Alamogordo,” he said as the two shook hands.

“Get the Sunflower Kid, and meet me there. Maybe a week? That’s plenty of time for you, no?”

“A week? I don’t know how long it’s going to take me,” Sterling said, “but I’ll help you with those evil sorcerers, you just got to wait for me.”

“Pinche maleficiadores…”

“Yup, just wait for me if you want my help. We’ll get them, Gasper; we’ll get Roxy and this technomancer too.” Sterling equipped his saddle and placed it on Manchester’s back, the bone horse calm as always.

“In that case, I guess this is goodbye. Buena suerte.”

“Good luck to you too, Gasper. Until we meet again.” Sterling mounted up and tipped his hat to the old shaman. He clicked his tongue and trotted away, once again aimed at the interstate, looking to get as far away from the scene of the battle as he could.

There was one last thing Sterling needed to do before he headed north. His stats appeared in front of him.

You have received 3,400 XP!

You have gained a level!

You have received six Stat Points!

You have received one bonus Stat Point!

You have received one Technique Point!

You have received nine bonus Technique Points!

You have received one Class Proficiency Bonus!

You have learned a new class skill called Mold Manipulation!

You are now a Bone Sculptor!

“Shee-it yeah, feels good,” Sterling said as he quickly assigned the seven Stat Points. Once again, he wanted to be sure he had plenty of Mana, so he dumped all seven points there, figuring he would distribute things differently once he got his next level. The charm he had picked up at the trading post worked like, well, a charm. He had received eight additional Technique Points from his arrowhead-shaped rattlesnake necklace, along with an additional point from the leather bracelet he wore. The bonus stat point had come from the rattlesnake tail he wore on one of his belt loops, plus he had the ten percent Mana boost from the dream catcher, and that wasn’t to mention his new classification and class skill.

Name: Sterling Monedero

Race: Human

Mancer Class: Necromancer

Class Ranking: Bone Sculptor

Level: 60

Fortitude: 117

Strength: 35

Resolve: 152

Mana: 99/159

Current Armor Rating: 28

XP: 304,824

XP to Next Level: 9,100

Stat Points Available: 0

Technique Points Available: 10

He could figure out the Technique Points and what his new class skill was on his way north. For now, Sterling just wanted to ride. He heard Don Gasper call out to him and Sterling simply lifted a hand over his head, throwing the old shaman the peace sign.

The week had started out poorly, but things were starting to look up. And they would look even better once he got the hell out of Las Cruces. Sterling rolled himself a quick cigarette and lit it, the sun bearing down on him.

“¡Vamos!” he told Manchester, and the bone horse galloped even faster.

Part Two

Crescit Eundo; Culto Demente Sagrado; Skeleton Man on the Turquoise Trail to Madrid; Ram; and Staying the Hell Out of Albuquerque No Matter What

.Chapter One.

Interstate 25, somewhere near Hatch, New Mexico.

Not too distant future.

Sterling Monedero felt an obligation to stop and see if Judge Toadvine had taken responsibility for the family he had started. After all, Sterling had promised the man he would give him a whooping if he tried to run out on his family again. Aside from that, Judge’s child was named after Sterling, which made him feel like he was a godfather of sorts, even if that had never been officially established.

Along the way to Hatch, with the ultimate goal of reaching Truth or Consequences before nightfall, Sterling had considered what he should do with the Class Proficiency bonus point he had received after the level up. It really was a tough choice. He also had Technique Points to distribute, something he figured he would do before bed, when he could really dig into his options. One thing was for certain, the charms that he had picked up from the trading post had helped, and he needed more turquoise and silver to buy more charms as he headed north.

As he had done several times over the last few hours, a cigarette at the corner of his mouth, Sterling took another look at his class skills, including his newest ability, Mold Manipulation.

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 3

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: Class Proficiency Level 2

Description: Enhanced durability, plus grafting at higher levels.

——

Death Sense: Class Proficiency Level 2

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

——

Mold Manipulation: Class Proficiency Level 1

Casting Cost: 6 Mana Points

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

His Death Sense, Enhanced Durability, and new Mold Manipulation abilities were at the lowest levels. By focusing on them, he was able to see what the single level up available to him as a Class Proficiency bonus would bring. If he leveled up his Death Sense ability, Sterling would be able to sense possible animates in a thirty-foot radius. He knew this would prove useful, especially if he was sneaking up on someone or needed a quick surprise.

If he leveled up his Enhanced Durability, Sterling would unlock grafting, which according to the description would allow him to merge dead bodies and body parts together to create something new if he so wanted. It would also allow him to merge something dead with something living, which he hadn’t yet figured out a use for, but sounded potentially helpful. Or at least odd.

Sterling had long ago come to grips with what he was, but reading descriptions in his class skills, and also seeing other people’s reactions, was a constant reminder of his bizarre existence and what it meant to the wider world.

There was also the option of putting the single Class Proficiency bonus into Mold Manipulation, but this wouldn’t come coupled with any boost for doing so, not yet anyway. He would have to wait until the third level to unlock something new.

As he pulled off the highway—Sterling having already passed Commodore Bones’ supply camp a ways back by making a wide circle around the place—he went ahead and made the split second decision to level up his Enhanced Durability class skill, unlocking a grafting ability. He could focus on improving his Death Sense ability next. Sterling wondered if there was a charm that would grant him more Class Proficiency bonuses. Information flashed in front of him once he distributed the bonus:

Enhanced Durability: Class Proficiency Level 3

Grafting Casting Cost: 15 Mana Points

Description: Enhanced durability and grafting.

“Grafting, huh? Always something, ain’t that right, Manchester?” he asked as he patted his bone horse on its exposed vertebrae. As he had before, Sterling headed toward a subdivision outside of town, where he deanimated Manchester and sent the horse to his inventory list. The streets of Hatch were dusty as always, cracked, full of empty lots checkered with thirsty shrubs that would kill for a drop of water if they could. Not many people were out, but there was a mangy old mutt rummaging through an old trash can, its brindle coat marred by fresh gash wounds.

“Poor fella,” Sterling said as he rounded the corner of Hatch’s Spanish Church of God Filadelfia, which was now a trading outpost. Once again, he took in the striking old church, made of adobe and painted white, almost alien in the way it stood out among the ramshackle homes in what used to be the self-proclaimed Chili Capital of the World.

Sterling slipped into the church, and felt relief roll down his shoulders as he saw Judge seated with Luna, the heavyset man bouncing his baby on his knee. Judge locked eyes with Sterling and nodded, a big smile forming on his face. “¡A la maquina! If it ain’t the man of the hour.”

“Glad to see you made it,” Sterling said as he approached the big man, offering him a firm handshake.

“I could say the same for you, amigo. Get what you wanted in Las Cruces?”

“Shee-it, more or less…”

“I heard about what happened at that supply camp,” Judge said in a low voice. He whistled. “You sure gave them hell, didn’t you? I knew you would.”

“Someone had to.”

“They’re going to come after you.”

“They already are. Killed me at least a baker’s dozen back in Las Cruces.”

“Damn, man.”

“Hi, Mister Sterling,” said Luna, beaming a smile up at him. The young woman was in a pair of her man’s overalls judging by the size, the pant legs rolled up to her knees. She was seated on a stool in front of several rows of peppers, and Sterling’s mouth watered just looking at the chilis.

“Looks like you’ve been riding a while,” Judge said.

Sterling ran his hand down the arm of his duster and brushed some of the dirt away. “I guess you could surmise that.”

“You hungry?”

“Does a bear shit in the woods?”

“You’d have to ask someone that lives further north. Ain’t no bears around these parts, far as I know. Luna, baby, go get the man something from Manuel.”

“Sure thing.”

“What do you want, pal? Green chili stew or chili relleno. He gots tamales as well,” Judge told Sterling.

“Man, if life ain’t filled with tough choices. Make it tamales, green.”

“Oh, for sure, a little hot out there for stew anyway,” Luna said as she left to fetch the food.

Judge watched her walk away and licked his lips. “Such a good girl. You were right in telling me to come back. She thinks I’m some kind of hero, believe it or not.”

“Ha! I’ll bet she does.”

“Best tamales in town, by the way, let me be the first to tell you that. You’re going to be full, you might walk out of here looking pregnant,” Judge said. The baby cooed. “Ain’t that right, little Sterling, he’s going to be ready to roll over and take a nap? Yes? Yes, you are a handsome boy. Did you say hello to your godfather?”

“I was wondering if I was the kid’s godfather,” Sterling said as he removed his hat and held it over his chest for a moment out of respect.

“Put your hat back on. Of course you’re the kid’s godfather. Do you think I trust any of these crazy Hatch motherfuckers to look after Little Sterling if something kills me?” Judge started laughing. “I’m just kidding you. Luna can look after him if something happens to me, she’s already shown you that. But you’re on the hook if something happens to both of us, got that?”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Little Sterling had a cowlick of brown hair, the baby well-fed. There was a string of snot hanging from his nose, but other than that he looked presentable, the child wearing a handmade blue onesie.

“What’s up next? T or C?”

“That’s the plan,” Sterling said.

“And from there?”

“North,” Sterling told him. “Taking the Turquoise Trail to Madrid. Looking for someone along the way.”

“Dang, that’s some pretty country out there near Madrid, as long as you avoid Albuquerque. Duke City is a hellhole.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Avoid it like the plague. Lots of people still left there, turf warfare, all that nonsense. The damn Barelas Glyphs. From what Luna tells me, them or the Alta Monte Homecidos make the Killbillies look like benevolent benefactors. Her parents live around there, you know.”

“So I’ve heard. And believe you me, I’ve had enough of turf wars; just got a dose of that ridiculousness in Las Cruces,” Sterling told Judge, referring to the power struggle between the Killbillies and White Sands Militia.

“Hell, I wouldn’t go to Las Cruces either. You are a braver man than I.”

“Yet you were going to serve in the Killbillies…”

Judge shrugged off this comment. “I told you why. There’s not a damn thing a man won’t do for money, before the Reset or after. And if he won’t do it, you’ll just find someone that will.”

“Can’t argue with that logic,” Sterling admitted.

While Luna was away, Sterling used a little of the turquoise and silver he had left to purchase more tobacco. He was in the process of rolling up a couple cigarettes when the nineteen-year-old returned with a metal plate piled high with tamales next to a scoop of green chilis, diced to perfection.

“You’re going to give me one of them tamales, right?” Judge asked.

“I’ll think about it,” Sterling told him with a grin on his face. He tucked a cigarette behind his ear and put the other two that he had rolled in his front pocket. Once he had the plate, Sterling dug in, removing the corn husks from the tamales and dipping them into the salsa.

“These your chilis?” Sterling asked after his first bite.

“Sure are,” Judge said.

“Damn, that’s how Big Jims are supposed to taste.”

“I live in the Chili Capital of the World,” Judge reminded him as he handed young Sterling off to Luna, “and I’ve got to live up to that reputation. You’re welcome to stay the night, if you’d like.”

Sterling offered Judge a tamale. “Nope, I’ve got to keep on keeping on.”

Satiated, and with enough cigarettes to get him to Truth or Consequences, Sterling continued on his way, following Interstate 25 north. He saw a few travelers ahead, men on horses. He clicked his tongue and Manchester moved away from the road, Sterling hoping to get far enough away from them that they wouldn’t pay any attention to him. He was able to do so, the heat of the day affecting the landscape that lay before him, a buttery smear to everything.

As he trotted along, he made out a string of purple mountains in the distance, Sterling wondering how long it would take him to actually ride out to them. It seemed like everywhere he went in southwestern New Mexico featured a chain of mountains on the horizon, yet he never could quite reach them.

There’s a metaphor for life in there somewhere, he thought as he continued on his way, seeing a sign for a small town called Salem all but abandoned. He wondered where that name came from. Salem. Nothing else like that around. He had ridden through Salem before, on a different trip down to Hatch. The only thing left standing after the Reset was a church on a hill, its cross barely intact. Yet another religious institute in the Land of Enchantment, a trend started by the Spaniards.

Sterling had seen some of the ruins that were scattered across the state, many made from mud, some with placards in front explaining just how old they were. As he rode, he thought about the Spaniards coming up from Mexico, and what they must have thought when they encountered various natives who lived in their fortified pueblos.

What was the point of all of it anyway? After all that effort to go from the old world to the new only to encounter hostile natives—hostile for good reason, considering what the Spaniards were hawking and how they planned to hawk it—and that was without mentioning the disease they carried on their backs. What was the point? What was the point of it all when alien crafts known as Godwalkers could simply show up and ruin the party with a snap of a finger, most of the world’s population deader than dead?

“I should write a desert haiku about that,” he mumbled. “You hear that, Manchester?”

Silent as ever, Manchester rode on. The landscape seemed to split as they passed over a gorge not far from the town of Oasis, the scenery reminding him of discarded tamale husks, nearly the same golden-brown color as well, gritty and grainy where some of the meat of the tamale was left behind, a feast for the eyes.

There were times when Sterling wondered why anyone would want to settle in a place like the Land of Entrapment, as he heard some locals refer to the state. But looking out over the horizon, New Mexico’s vastness and its stark glory, answered that question in the time it took for a vulture to drop from the sky and pick at some carrion.

You either got it or you didn’t.

Passing by the town of Oasis reminded Sterling of another reason he needed to visit T or C. It was time to clean himself up, and he knew that the hot springs near the Rio Grande River was the first place he should visit. There was one problem, though. Sterling was certain he didn’t have enough turquoise and silver to pay for a relaxing bath. He had chili peppers, but he didn’t know if they were something that the owners of the place would take, even if he could sweet talk Veronica at the door.

An idea came to him, a way for Sterling to hopefully get some money. Worth a shot, he thought as he carried on, Manchester at a gallop now, a cigarette in Sterling’s mouth as he tried to make haste. And haste he made. Sterling took the exit off the highway, the cowboy necromancer reaching the outskirts of Truth or Consequences and heading straight to North Broadway Street, downtown to Ingo’s Café.

He was extra careful as he rode into Truth or Consequences, his eye on the hill that overlooked the city center, where he had seen Killbillies before. It was suspiciously empty, and Sterling was not able to shake the tension he was feeling as he passed an old grocery store. One thing was for certain—the little city seemed locked up tight. Not even kids on bikes were out, as he had grown accustomed to seeing. Just a few stray dogs, a cat huddling in the shade, and someone closing a window. That was about it.

Sterling came to North Broadway Street and led Manchester behind a building, where he collapsed the horse’s skeleton. Rather than leave the bones there, he sent them to his inventory list yet again. From there, and after checking to make sure everything was in order, he headed on down the street, past what was once a library, a rock shop, a florist, and even a bank. Ingo’s Café was closed for the day, and Sterling was suddenly glad that he had eaten back in Hatch, but sad to not be able to have a conversation with the German man who ran the place.

Since the café was closed, Sterling logically headed to the tavern down the street, Kip’s usual haunt. He let out a deep breath before stepping into the place with his hand on his revolver, all but expecting the place to be packed with Killbillies. What he found instead was a single female bartender he didn’t recognize, just about as stocky as one of the Killbillies’ bigger bandits, as well as a group of men seated at the bar all hunched over their brews, cowboy hats obscuring their faces.

Any one of them could have been Kip; Sterling decided to make it easy. “Kip? I’m back.”

One of the men looked up, and sure enough, it was Kip, the Truth or Consequences regular and popular town drunk wearing a corduroy vest over an old button up shirt, a black bandanna tied around his neck, his hat tattered and torn as if a bobcat had gotten hold of it, cheeks cherry-red.

“Sterling? Goddamn is it good to see you,” Kip said as he motioned Sterling forward. He said something harsh to the man seated on the stool next him and the old cowboy got up, making room for Sterling.

“Shot of tequila and a beer,” Sterling told the bartender, the woman grunting in response. “And put it on his tab.”

The bartender started laughing. “Kip don’t have no more credit here. He’s putting all his drinks on his tab,” she said, pointing to the man that Kip had just sent to a stool at the end of the bar.

“I told you, darlin’, I’ve got money, and I’m going to get some of it to pay my tab,” Kip said to the bartender, something flashing across his eyes as a thought came to him. “In fact, this was the man I’ve been waiting for.”

“Careful with what you’re about to say,” Sterling warned Kip.

“Don’t you remember? I already told you about this treasure I knew about before you left for Las Cruces. Now that you’re back—and I knew you were coming back at some point, mind you—we can get that treasure and split it fifty-fifty. What do you say? I’ll pay my tab here, and you can do whatever the hell you want to do with your funds.”

“Is that so?” Sterling asked, even though this was precisely the reason he came looking for Kip in the first place. Sterling really needed the money. Almost to prove this point to himself, he withdrew what was left from his satchel of silver and turquoise from his inventory list, and emptied it onto the counter, just a fleck of turquoise and a piece of a silver ring settling on the stained wood. “Whatever this will get me,” he told the bartender.

“Two shots and two beers. I’m feeling generous.”

“Mighty kind of you,” Sterling said as she began pouring up the shots of tequila.

“Gee, you shouldn’t have,” Kip told him. “My knight in shining black armor.”

“Who said any of this is for you?” Sterling joked. “I’m just pulling your tail. Listen here, I remember what you said about that treasure, and if you think it’s really there, well, let’s get that son of a bitch tonight.”

“You mean it?” Kip asked as the bartender topped off their beers and set them next to their shots of tequila.

“I sure do. I got places to go and people to see, and I need me some damn money.”

Kip reached for his warm beer and lifted it to Sterling, the two of them clanking the mugs together. “I knew you would come through at some point. And sure, we’ll get it tonight. And it’s real, Sterling, I swear it’s out there. This ain’t no mystical treasure. I know it’s there because I spoke directly to the person that left the treasure there right before he died. Mysteriously, I might add.”

“Is that right? And you said, if I recall, that it’s guarded by an amalgamation, right?”

“Yeah, there’s one of them armadillo ones that likes to hang out in that area, about a mile and a half from here, not far from the Rio Grande. There’s this old yacht, you see, and the treasure is hidden in the hull. If we’re careful, we may be able to get in and get out of the area without having to deal with the amalgamation.”

“Not likely,” Sterling said as he took a sip of beer. There was a hint of spice to it, and Sterling glanced up at the bartender who was eagerly awaiting his thoughts on the brew.

“We tried something new,” she explained. “Added a bit of pepper to it to give it a kick.”

“I’m going to be brutally honest: if it was colder, I would like it, but it’s a little off-putting, and this is coming from a man who worships peppers,” Sterling told her.

She frowned. “That’s all we got.”

“Shee-it,” Sterling said as he put the beer down and went for the shot of tequila instead. He threw the shot back and tapped the shot glass on the bar.

“You can have the other shot too,” Kip told him. “I’ve had enough that I can’t taste the pepper in the beer anymore.”

Sterling nodded and took another shot of tequila, his throat burning as it spiraled down his gullet. “That’s better.”

“So, are you going to tell me what happened or what?” Kip asked. “Did you find Don Gasper’s crazy ass?”

Sterling snorted.

“Ha! I’ll bet you did.”

“Yup, and that crazy old kook was up to just about what you would expect him to be up to, covered in blood and leading a shaman ritual, fighting with some witches from White Sands. You know, the usual.”

“So you’re telling me it was a shitshow?”

“A shitshow the likes of which Don Gasper excels at putting on. I got what I needed though, which is why I am heading north.”

“And you believe whatever vision he had?”

“He didn’t have no vision,” Sterling said, not wanting to get into what it was like to have a coyote speak to him. “But I got the message, we’ll leave it at that. I know he may be a pain in the ass, but Gasper really is the best in the business. Let’s just say it was quite the trip, and that’s not to mention getting captured by the Killbillies, crucified, having to fight my way out of their camp, and getting ambushed by a pyromancer later on.”

“Damn bastards.”

“Speaking of the Killbillies, where the hell are they? Why aren’t they sitting up there on their hill like kings of the castle?”

“They done left,” Kip said. “Things looked like they were heating up down there in Las Cruces, so them boys all rolled on outta here. Not a moment too soon either. They were starting to stink up the place, harassing women and whatnot, raising taxes. Good goddamn riddance, if you ask me.” Kip looked Sterling over and nodded. “So tonight, you and me, this treasure?”

“I already told you yes.”

“Just making sure you hadn’t changed your mind. We’ll get the treasure, split it, and you can be on your way.”

“Got to hit the Hot Spring first, I mean in the morning,” Sterling said. “But I think I may need more fundage to do that.”

“Not a bad idea; ain’t nothing like a soak.” Kip whistled and the bartender came back over to them. “Two more shots, darlin’, and don’t ask me about no tabs, dammit. Put it on someone else’s tab, or open mine up for one more night. I promise I’ll have the money in the morning. You’ve got my word.”

By the time they left the brewery, Sterling and Kip were half-drunk, having worked up quite the bar tab. They headed in the direction of Caballo Cone, which towered nearly two thousand feet above the city of Truth or Consequences, and which the locals called Turtleback Mountain. Sterling had read about the mountain in his travel guide. There wasn’t a lot of information about Truth or Consequences in the guide, aside from information about the hot springs there and Elephant Butte State Park, but it did mention the name of the mountain, and what the locals had rechristened it because of its resemblance to a turtle. At least some people thought it looked like a turtle. Sterling couldn’t see the turtleback part of the mountain’s features himself, no matter what angle he tried to view it from.

He rolled a cigarette and handed it to Kip, and proceeded to roll one for himself as well, hoping that the nicotine would help sober him up. “How much treasure are we talking about here?” Sterling asked as he lit his friend’s cigarette. It was a question he had probably asked Kip over the last two hours at some point, but couldn’t recall now, his recollection blurred.

“I already told you it’s a lot. Like I said, the treasure is in the hull of an old yacht somewhere out there toward Turtleback, right along the Rio Grande.”

“Hold up, did you say a yacht?” Sterling ashed his cigarette, its tip glowing red. “Why would a yacht be all the way the hell out here? Ain’t no ocean around here.”

“Beats the hell out of me,” Kip said. “All I know is that there’s a big ol’ boat stranded somewhere near the Rio Grande, its hull full of treasure. I’m talking enough turquoise and silver to get you to Las Vegas.”

“Which Las Vegas?” Sterling asked with a snort.

“Damn sure not the one in New Mexico, I can guarantee you that.”

“I’ve been through Las Vegas, New Mexico, before,” Sterling said. “They got some good green chili burgers there, real damn good…”

“Sounds to me like someone wrote a recipe down before the Reset.”

“Sounds like.”

“About this here mission: stop worrying about my intel on this treasure. I wouldn’t lead you all the way out here for nothing,” Kip said as he turned to Sterling, the moon above adding just enough light to the man’s face that Sterling could make out some of his wrinkles, which were intermixed with splattering of scars. Kip had an ugly mug, one that had been punched, kicked, and stabbed at far too many times. His face had the telltale signs of an alcoholic, his nose big and covered in tiny craters, dark lines beneath his eyes, his skin a little leathered.

“I know you wouldn’t,” Sterling said as both men took long drags off their cigarettes.

“The treasure is out there, amigo, and we’re going to get it. Split it. I just need you to handle the amalgamation.”

“Oh, yeah? What are you fixing to handle?”

“I’m the one with the treasure map,” Kip said as he tapped his finger on his temple. “The brains of the operation.” He too wore a cowboy hat, but the brim of his was much smaller than Sterling’s, Kip’s hat barely able to cast a shadow over his eyes when the sun was out. There was a feather sticking out of the side of the hat, one with splashes of black and brown across it, just about as dapper as the man got.

“Brains? Alright then, boss,” Sterling said as he motioned Kip forward. “Lead the way.”

“Of all the things the Godwalkers had to bequeath to us, why did they make amalgamations?” Kip asked. “This one in particular is a damn tank, from what I’ve heard.”

“Shee-it,” Sterling mumbled. He knew that the only way to kill one of these particular amalgamations—a bison-sized armadillo with a lizard skull for a head—was to get it on its back, not unlike the way he’d dealt with the scorpion amalgamation. The fact that it was sticking to this area more or less explained why no one else had gotten the treasure in this supposed yacht, so that part of Kip’s story checked out. Still, something felt off. Could there really be a yacht out here in the desert? Sterling eyed his friend for a moment, wondering if it was all hyperbole.

“What’s that look mean?”

“I swear, before I left for Las Cruces, you were saying it was a ship that had the treasure in it, and now it’s a yacht? Or maybe it was earlier tonight. At some point, you said it was a ship.”

“I never said it was no ship. I said it was a yacht. Or maybe I said it was a ship, who knows? Maybe it’s like how some people spell ‘chile’ differently. You know what I’m talking about. Locals using an ‘e’ at the end, some books and whatnot using an ‘i’ to spell ‘chili.’ Same with yacht and ship.”

“A chile and a chili just have a spelling difference, and it don’t make no difference which one you use. A ship and a yacht have a size difference. There’s a difference between a regular scorpion, and an amalgamation, right?” Sterling asked rhetorically. “All I’m saying is this: I’m still not convinced there’s a yacht in the middle of nowhere outside of T or C—”

“—Not far from the Rio Grande and in the afternoon shade of Turtleback Mountain, yep, a yacht,” Kip said. “Look, I ain’t Don Gasper here; I didn’t have no vision. I heard this from the man who put that treasure in the hull of that ship his damn self, straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were.”

“You didn’t let me finish. What I’m trying to say is that I’m coming out here because you told me it’s out here, and I trust you, even if I may later come to regret that statement. I got plenty on my plate, Kip, so don’t be sending me on some bootless errand.”

Kip laughed. “Bootless errand? Ain’t heard that one before. Where did you pick that one up?”

“I guess it was something people said before the Reset,” Sterling told him with a shrug.

Mention of the Reset made Sterling think of the other thing he had learned in Las Cruces, the part he hadn’t revealed to Judge nor Kip. Not only did Sterling have a family, as evinced by the picture in his wallet, but he now knew his former wife’s name, Isabella. What was his son’s name? What really happened that day that the entire world changed, the day that Sterling had lost his family and all his memories?

“We’re getting closer,” Kip whispered, interrupting his drunken thoughts.

“Before you run off and try to get yourself a treasure, I’m going to need your help,” Sterling told him.

“I thought you said you’d dealt with one before.”

“You already know I did,” Sterling told him. “About a year and a half ago, one of these armadillo amalgamations came a bit too close to my property. I could see the damn thing from a mile away, and as it approached, I could have sworn it was a mountain moving toward me the way it blotted out the sun.”

“That’s poetic.”

“I digress,” Sterling said. “The only way to kill one of these things is to flip the son of a bitch over and get to its soft side, just like the scorpion ones, but without the pincers and stinger. It’ll put up a fight, and as soon as you flip it it’s going to try to roll back up. Sharp teeth too.”

“But you did it yourself, right? When it attacked your farm?”

“Hell, I had to,” Sterling said.

“None of your skeletons helped you?”

“Okay, few of them helped me.”

“Why don’t we get some of them?” Kip asked.

“Well, unless you got some skeletons in your inventory list—which is different from having skeletons in your closet, heh—it’s going to be just you and me. Then again, I suppose I could use Manchester as a distraction. Them armadillos can be fast.”

“Maybe we can find some skeletons around here,” Kip said as he took a quick look at their current location, the two standing out in the darkness, the air cool, the moon now partially covered by a cloud.

“Well, maybe we could, but we don’t know what we’ll turn up. And my power to find these things, these dead things buried in the ground, only has a limited circumference. If that makes any sense to you. Plus, if they’re too deep, I can’t really get to them. The soil needs to be loose, or they need to be near the top layer.”

“So what you’re saying is we should have searched on the way over here, and possibly stopped by the cemetery.”

“Damn straight, and if we’re getting into a conversation on hindsight, we probably shouldn’t have had so much tequila,” Sterling said, a wry grin taking shape on his face.

“Can’t argue there. Hey, before we do this, you don’t happen to have something for me to drink in your list, do you?”

“Water or something else?”

“I’ll fight any man from a simple asshole to the most powerful Adapted this side of the Texas border, but I ain’t never taken on an amalgamation before.”

“Little late to get cold feet if you want that treasure. And you never answered my question.”

“Something else.”

“I figured you’d say that,” Sterling said as he grabbed his bottle of tequila from his inventory list. It was about half full, and after taking a swig from it, he handed it off to Kip. “Now leave some for later,” he said as he watched Kip start to chug from the bottle.

Kip nearly finished the bottle, but stopped at the last pull. He handed the tequila bottle back to Sterling and wiped his lips with his sleeve. “We’re about to be in the money,” Kip said on the tail end of a belch. “You’ll be able to get yourself a new bottle.”

“I ain’t eyeing a bottle,” Sterling said. What he wanted was money for food and charms. He needed to get more Technique Points with each level up, and if he found something that could give him more Class Proficiency bonuses, he’d really be in luck.

Kip rubbed his hands together, psyching himself up. “Well, whatever it is you want, you’re about to have it. Just need to kill us an amalgamation first.”

Darkness enveloped the two men as they crept deeper into the night, Sterling holding his sickle-sword, Kip with a pair of work gloves on his hands. Manchester walked alongside Sterling. It was cold out, so any of the insects that would be out making noises had decided to keep to their burrows that night. The moon provided enough light for Sterling to see where they were heading without equipping his flashlight, the landscape partially illuminated in swaths of silvery blue.

Sterling sensed movement, big movement. He swatted Manchester on his bony ass. The horse took off running, and as soon as it did, a large bulb of blackness moved in his direction.

“Here we go,” Kip said, his teeth chattering. “You don’t mind if I take another swig of that tequila you got there, do you?”

“Kip, it’s showtime. You tip that goddamn armadillo over and let me do the rest. Just as planned. Really throw your shoulder into it, like he’s the toughest son of a bitch that has ever come through T or C and he’s just insulted your woman.”

“Heh, which one?”

“Ain’t nobody need to die tonight aside from that amalgamation. You’ve got this, amigo.”

“Shit, alright,” Kip said, steeling himself with a deep breath in. He took off running toward the monster, Sterling following close behind him.

The armadillo amalgamations were territorial, unlike their smaller brothers back before the Reset. They were strong, armored, their lizard skulls filled with sharp teeth, and had grown long tails with a spiked club on the end of it. Sterling had seen firsthand what happened when someone got hit by the armadillo’s tail. It was instant death, the wound making Sterling have to look away for once, which was unusual for a man who had seen so many fatal wounds.

Ain’t nobody going to die tonight, he reminded himself as he followed closely behind Kip.

They drew nearer to the giant armadillo. It was about eight feet long from head to tail, the bottom of its belly to the top of its shell about seven feet high. The only reason Kip was going to be able to knock it over was because of the Strength given to him through the Stat Points he had pumped up since the Reset. The creature would have crushed a normal man.

The armadillo was wicked fast, and it had nearly reached Manchester when Kip slammed into its side. Kip was able to push the armadillo off its feet, but he didn’t do what Sterling had told him, which was to lock onto its legs and try to lift the amalgamation. He was too scared by the sheer size of the creature, and he paid for this as the amalgamation whipped around, narrowly missing Kip with the spiked end on the tip of its tail. The enormous armadillo prepared to cut Kip down, the tough town drunk practically frozen in his tracks.

“Kip, watch out!”

Sterling surged forward and slammed his body into the side of the armadillo, this time doing as he had instructed Kip, his hands coming beneath its body, Sterling calling every ounce of strength he had to flip it over. The only thing was, to do so he had to lose his sickle-sword, Sterling dropping it rather than sending it back to its sheath. That would have been the smart move, but Sterling was drunk, and he wasn’t thinking straight, especially after the adrenaline hit his system.

He managed to get the armadillo onto its back, but he didn’t have his weapon around when he did. This left Sterling scrambling to retrieve his sword, which was easy enough to find because of the turquoise glow it put off after he touched it. He retrieved his blade, and turned back to the armadillo, only to find that the enormous beast was already righting itself.

“Dammit, Kip!” Sterling shouted as the ground shook, the amalgamation back on its feet. “I told you to pick it up, not just run your damn shoulder into it!”

“I got it!” Kip said, charging at the armadillo again. “I got the son of a bitch!”

Sterling took this as a sign that he should be the one that distracted the armadillo. He started whistling and waving his arms around, spewing forth a litany of curse words in Spanglish to get the amalgamation’s attention. The thing was practically snorting smoke by the time it reached him, only to be broadsided by Kip, the man completely flipping the enormous beast onto its back with a roar that echoed across the desert.

Sterling took this as a sign to get to cleaving.

He hopped on top of the armadillo and immediately drove his blade in, Sterling cutting into its underside again and again as the creature screeched, his muscles burning as he continued to slaughter it. It tried to hit him with its tail, but Kip took care of that by holding it down now with all of his weight, his boots and the armadillo’s scaly body kicking up dust while Sterling pummeled the beast.

By the time Sterling finished, he was covered in blood, out of breath, his arm muscles pulsing, practically begging for mercy. The amalgamation was dead, and Sterling knew he had likely received a fair chunk of XP for killing it, which was something he could handle later. For now, they needed to get to the treasure, if it even existed, and call it a night.

“You got it, you got the son of a bitch,” Kip said, still holding onto its tail, prepared for it to come alive again. “Man!”

“You’re getting mighty friendly with it back there,” Sterling quipped.

Kip let go of the tail and shook out his arms. “The damn thing.” As soon as Sterling hopped off down from its body, Kip charged the armadillo and kicked its dead body.

“It’s already dead,” Sterling said as he whistled for Manchester. “If you want to kill it again, I can animate it for you…”

“Nah,” he said, laughing nervously. “Ain’t nobody in their right mind would want that.”

Sterling’s skeletal steed came trotting up to him, and he placed a hand on his bony muzzle. “You did good, Pingo, real good,” he said as he let out a deep breath, one that sent a chill down his spine.

“Now about that treasure,” Kip said, clearly in the same mood as Sterling: ready to be done with it.

“About that treasure.”

Kip took a quick look around to figure out where he was, and headed toward the northwest.

“You think we’re close?” Sterling asked.

“Think has nothing to do with it. I know we’re close. I can practically smell that turquoise and that silver,” Kip told him.

“What’s it smell like?”

“It smells like tequila.”

The two came upon the Rio Grande River, which was a pitiful sight at the moment, as New Mexico was suffering from one of its yearly droughts. Sterling could hear the trickle of water, just a bit of wind drifting over it, he could smell it too. It made him thirsty. He equipped his jug of water, and as he took a swig from it, he reminded himself to fill up before he left T or C tomorrow.

“Found it!” Kip shouted.

As if it had been dropped from the sky, the ship sat before them, the water vessel much bigger than Sterling had expected it would be. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said as he took a look at it, noticing how it sat on its trailer, the vehicle that once carried it nowhere in sight. It wasn’t quite a yacht, but it was certainly larger than any of the boats that Sterling had seen floating aimlessly on Elephant Butte Lake, their owners long gone.

“You just stay here,” Kip said. “I’ll get in there and I’ll get the treasure.”

“I got a flashlight.”

“I got one too,” Kip said as he equipped it and flicked it on, the light a subtle shade of orange. While Kip rummaged around in the boat, Sterling smoked a cigarette. He then remembered that he was covered in armadillo blood and decided it would be best to clean it off.

After announcing to Kip where he was going, Sterling headed back down to the Rio Grande and washed his face and hair. He would need to change clothing, but that was a possibility—he had a couple of extra sets in his list. Manchester was just joining him when Sterling heard some commotion above.

“Got it!” Kip called from the boat. “Whooo-ee!”

“Let’s go see what this crazy bastard found,” he told his skeletal steed as he turned back toward the ship. Sterling clicked his tongue, and Manchester followed.

“I can’t believe it,” Sterling said once Kip hopped down from the boat with a beer cooler in his arms. Kip set it on the ground and kicked the cooler open.

“Goddamn,” Kip said as they saw the sparkle of silver, bits of turquoise as well. He started rummaging around through the treasure, the beer cooler half-full of jewelry from God knows where, some of it native, some of it professionally crafted.

“Goddamn is right.”

“What do you say we climb up that ledge right there,” Kip said, nodding about three hundred feet ahead, “and camp out. I got all the supplies. We have a little fire, sleeping bags, dish out the treasure, sleep under the stars. We can hit Ingo’s Café tomorrow for breakfast, followed by a trip to the hot springs, like you said.”

“That sounds like the perfect way to start my journey,” Sterling told him.

“Hell yeah, it does. Didn’t I tell you?”

“About the treasure?”

Kip nodded. “I told you, didn’t I?”

“And you were right. I never doubted you for a minute.”

Kip started to laugh. “Like hell you didn’t.”

.Chapter Two.

The Sunflower Kid was a biomancer, the exact opposite of Sterling. Where Sterling could animate the dead, the Sunflower Kid could conjure life in an instant, and was able to heal others and form plant constructs. Sterling thought about this the next morning as he took a piss on a cactus patch, a cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth. The Kid’s power was a sight to behold, the earth parting, a plant growing, a person recovering from a wound; the sky was the limit.

“Sunflowers grow on the airy side of the mountain. Head north,” Sterling said as he finished up. He still had to figure out the riddle, but in the meantime, he figured he’d hit the Turquoise Trail in search of Raylan the flectomancer, that they would be able to figure out the riddle together. Either way, he was going to find the Sunflower Kid. It was just a matter of time.

He had assigned the Technique Points he had received from his last level up, using six of them to up his Persuasion technique, and three to improve his Cover of Night technique. He never quite had the gift of the gab, unless it came to cussing, and he thought it would come in handy at some point.

While staying low at night came naturally to him because of his black clothing and his general demeanor, he figured it was worth three points to level the technique up as well. Arranged into three categories—Stealth, Combat, and Perception—techniques would be one of the things he focused on with the charms he picked up along the way, especially now that he had money.

Sterling had also received a new class skill yesterday, one called Mold Manipulation, which was something he’d yet to test out. It was weird how these skills came to him. He suddenly just knew them, and could easily summon the power as long as he had the Mana. He also had a sense of how the power was used, almost as if it had been ingrained within him all along.

Crouching, Sterling extended his hand to a cactus set along the outer rim of the patch. A white mold, which quickly turned to a dark green, began to spread across the plant. It metastasized quickly, nearly making its way to the other side of the patch when it began to slow. Mold Manipulation ain’t too shabby, he thought as he examined his handiwork. He got the sense that he could keep juicing it and that it would spread even further, Sterling wondering how he would make use of this new power.

He stood, and took a quick look at his stats:

You have received 1880 XP!

Name: Sterling Monedero

Race: Human

Mancer Class: Necromancer

Class Ranking: Bone Sculptor

Level: 60

Fortitude: 117

Strength: 35

Resolve: 152

Mana: 148/159

Current Armor Rating: 28

XP: 306,704

XP to Next Level:7,220

Stat Points Available: 0

Technique Points Available: 1

He then shifted to his techniques.

Combat:

Sword Expert Level 4 - 30 Technique Points to Level 5

Marksmanship Level 6 - 36 Technique Points to Level 7

Stealth:

Sneak Proficiency Level 3 - 14 Technique Points to Level 4

Assassination Level 2 - 9 Technique Points to Level 3

Cover of Night Level 2 - 7 Technique Points to Level 3

Perception:

Persuasion Level 3 - 9 Technique Points to Level 4

And from there 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 3

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: Class Proficiency Level 3

Grafting Casting Cost: 15 Mana Points

Description: Enhanced durability and grafting.

——

Death Sense: Class Proficiency Level 2

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

——

Mold Manipulation: Class Proficiency Level 1

Casting Cost: 6 Mana Points

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

“Better than you were a few days ago, I’ll give you that,” he said as he walked back over to Kip. Manchester stood nearby, looking like he was grazing. Since the horse couldn’t eat, the skeletal steed simply nibbled away a desert shrub, the food destined to never reach his belly.

“We going to Ingo’s or are we eating out here?” Kip asked as Sterling kicked at some of the ashes of the fire he had made the previous night. “I got me a can of beans I’ve been meaning to fire up, and some bacon. A bearded loco out of Hillsboro brought it through town a couple days back.”

“I told you Ingo’s, my treat.”

“Suit yourself. You got another bone horse for Yours Truly?”

“Just the one, unfortunately. We can walk.” Sterling collapsed Manchester and sent the bones to his inventory list, his saddle too.

Kip had been up early skinning the armadillo, and even though he had washed up in the river, there were still specks of blood on his hairy arms and his legs. The armadillo’s hide was now in the man’s inventory list. Sterling was well aware that it was worth a small fortune. But he had plenty of turquoise and silver now, and he’d got what he wanted from the amalgamation anyway in the form of XP.

All in all, a good deal.

After they packed up camp, Kip simply sending everything back to his inventory list, the two headed to town and straight to Ingo’s Café. They each had huevos rancheros, Christmas for Sterling, green chilis for Kip, the German owner of the restaurant providing light conversation peppered with the occasional ‘Jah’ as they ate and sipped coffee. From there it was straight to Riverbend Hot Springs, Sterling grinning from cheek to cheek when the short Hispanic woman named Veronica led him to his personal oasis. He had enough money to pay for a stay in the hot spring for a couple days if he so wished, but he decided to only hang for a little while, Kip in the room next to him, occasionally talking to him through the wall.

“How’s the water over there?” he asked for a second time.

“We’re bathing in the same hot springs,” Sterling called back to him.

“You got a cigarette I can borrow?”

“Hell no, I don’t,” he said as he lit one up.

He settled deeper into the water, nude now aside from his cowboy hat. He finished his cigarette, removed his hat, and dipped his head under the water as well. He stayed there for a moment, enjoying the temperature and what it felt like to be submerged. Once his hands were dry, he rolled up yet another cigarette, lit it, and went for his desert haiku book.

As he looked out at the Rio Grande River, which ran in front of the establishment, a few birds moving along its shorelines, Sterling thought about change. He thought about the Sunflower Kid, and Zephyr, two of the three living members of his former team. He also thought about Don Gasper and Raylan the flectomancer, his thoughts eventually settling on Roxy. It was something he tried not to dwell on, the relationship he’d had with the woman falling apart three years ago. But he needed her, and if she really was imprisoned by the White Sands Militia, maybe he could get in good with Roxy by rescuing her. Then again, it was Roxy; the woman was tough as bones and generally itching to fight. Sweet when she wanted to be, but her bite definitely matched her bark. It would be an uphill battle.

Sterling began writing his desert haiku. It took him a while, and he was interrupted by Kip a couple times, but he eventually got the poem to where he liked it:

A cactus flower

Rocks on the edge of a bluff

Tumbleweeds tumbling

After looking at one of the sketches he’d made of a Godwalker, he put the book of haiku away and relaxed even further into the tub. Sterling used a finger to bring the rim of his cowboy hat down over his face so it cast shade across his eyes and his nose. He could smell his own sweat on the inner rim of the hat, but it didn’t bother him.

This was the good life.

Sterling knew he was in for an all-day ride. With this in mind, he bid farewell to Kip, took a raincheck on a round of tequila shots, and headed north on I-25, keeping to the side of the highway as he always did, watching out for things like vandals on dirt bikes or ATVs, roaming groups of people, supply trucks, or any other signs of possible enemies or amalgamations. Constant vigilance. He definitely wanted to get more levels, but he also wasn’t the type to go looking for a fight, not right now anyway, not while he was a man on a mission.

As he rode, Sterling went over the riddle the coyote had given him. As thoughts often did, one connected to another, and soon he was wondering about Ava and her demented son Hector, the Truth or Consequences locals who lived near his now-demolished ranch house. He recalled all the rumors he’d heard around town that Ava could turn into a coyote; he had never really believed it, yet now, Sterling had seen something similar with his very own eyes. While part of him wanted to just accept what he’d seen, another part wanted to figure it out, to dissect it. Was there a mancer that could shapeshift? What if Don Gasper was in on it the whole time? And what did the riddle mean anyway?

“Sunflowers grow on the airy side of the mountain. Head north,” Sterling said, his cigarette slowly burning, balanced on the corner of his lip. The sunflower line was clearly in reference to the Kid, but for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what the second part was in reference to.

“Damn riddles,” he told Manchester. “We’ll figure it out, won’t we, Pingo?”

The landscape remained the same, long stretches of beautiful monotony, wheat-colored shrubs, shadowed mountains in the distance acting as silent observers. There were pockets of crimson lining parts of the highway, the caliche adding red swells to the flatness around him, as if he were riding directly into the belly of the beast, which in a way Sterling was, considering he was heading in the direction of Albuquerque. Duke City had enough gang warfare to make Las Cruces look peaceful.

The heat was a haze on the horizon, the crumbled road seeming to stretch into infinity. When he saw hints of activity, Sterling would move away from the highway, riding through dried up riverbeds, sometimes scattering gazelles, an occasional pronghorn heading in the opposite direction. At one point, he rode over a patch of blackened lava rock, which contrasted with the burnt orange sandstone and the white-blue expansive sky above, his eyes eventually settling on a mesa about twenty miles out that looked as alien as the Godwalkers themselves.

Those damn Godwalkers, Sterling thought as he chewed on a bit of jerky. It irked him to no end that they had finally come after him after three years. If they had just let him be, Sterling would have continued to do what he did: run a pepper farm outside of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. That would have been it. That would have been his life. But they had provoked him, and sooner or later they would incur his wrath for doing so.

“Maybe you’re right,” he told Manchester, as if his skeletal steed was part of the running dialogue in his head. “The Killbillies would have continued giving me hell, especially if I killed a couple of them. But what can I say? You know me. I wasn’t fixing to pay no goddamn chili tax. And why should I? What tax did I owe them fools anyway? Damn sons of bitches…”

A bird circling overhead caught Sterling’s eye. There was a flock higher up in the sky, migrating south, the glint of something in the distance leading Sterling to once again move away from the highway. He didn’t want any trouble, not today, not at the start of his journey north.

At some point he hopped off Manchester to stretch his feet, a couple peaks to the west sitting majestic over the landscape, Sterling wondering if any natives lived up there. He had Don Gasper’s seal, which would help him with some of the pueblo tribes he might encounter. Many of them could be hostile toward a stranger like himself, with good reason. They’d had their land taken away long ago, some receiving worse treatment than others, all suffering from European diseases and the side effects of Manifest Destiny.

Nowadays, the natives didn’t play games when it came to outsiders, and because they were such a tight-knit group before, many of the pueblos had miraculously flourished after the Reset. Sterling had seen this firsthand in places like the Acoma Pueblo, which sat on a mesa about sixty miles west of Albuquerque. It was an intimidating structure, and the Acoma had maintained it for hundreds of years. The Reset was no different. They banded together, they kept outsiders away, and they prospered in a limited capacity.

Even if the natives had done relatively well since that tragic day five years ago, they still had suffered. Everyone had, those who had survived joined by never-ending string of shared horror stories all revolving around that fateful day.

Every now and then, Sterling had a flashback to the bar he’d been in when it happened. He was someone else, and then he was a necromancer, everyone in the bar was dead, their heads exploded, viscera and brain matter splattered across the neon vest Sterling wore at the time. He’d stumbled out, thinking it was some kind of dream, only to find cars crashed in the parking lot, horns and lights going off, headless bodies staining the pavement, those left alive with bewilderment in their eyes. He tried to get into a random car and drive away, only to realize he didn’t have a key, and subsequently knocked himself out when he tried to exit the vehicle.

Gruesome and confusing.

Later on, Sterling rolled a couple of cigarettes during a quick rest break and drank some more water. He didn’t know exactly where he was heading, but his plan was to ride until it became dark. There weren’t a lot of places to stop along the way, but if he saw a trading post, he would check it out, hoping for a charm or two, and perhaps a hot meal and some lodging. After all, he was flush with silver and turquoise, the money practically burning a hole in his inventory list.

“Sunflowers grow on the airy side of the mountain. Head north,” Sterling mumbled as he mounted up and turned back to the highway. “We’ll figure all this damn riddle out,” he told his skeletal steed. “Just you wait, boy.”

Sterling rode for hours, took another quick break to relieve himself, and continued on his way, Manchester always able to gallop at his top speed without experiencing fatigue. They passed plenty of signs, some better off than others, pointing to cities that used to exist yet were likely ghost towns by now. Most of the towns had Spanish names—Socorro, Bosquecito, Escondida—but there were a few other names thrown in there that didn’t seem to fit the landscape, a red vein in the turquoise, as it were, names like Tiffany, Bingham, Adobe Ranch, all abandoned aside from a few dirt bikes swirling around a trailer in Socorro that Sterling planned to avoid.

This particular area of south-central New Mexico was as historically famous as it was desolate, the area once home to the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, which Sterling had read about a year ago in a book he borrowed from Ingo. You never knew what a pig would do until you poked it, and the Spaniards found this out the hard way after over a hundred years of soldiers, missionaries, settlers, and disease had riled up the Puebloans.

The 1680 Revolt was over security, the Spaniards not able to protect the Puebloans from the nomadic Apache, which led the tribes to turn to other means, namely sorcery. Any thoughts of magic not related to Jesucristo didn’t sit well with the Spanish governor at the time, who arrested all of the medicine men, the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

Sterling remembered thinking which side he would have been on after reading the history of the revolt. It wasn’t that hard to pin Sterling down when it came to the invasion of his property, be it from a group of dimwitted bandits or an unknown alien force. He would have been there front and center with Popé, the Tiwa man who had planned and orchestrated the 1680 Revolt. Sterling wouldn’t have bought what Popé used to incite fervor amongst the natives—that driving out the Spanish would please their ancient gods—but he would have fought tooth and nail anyway, Sterling always down for a good scuffle if it was the right thing to do.

Like all revolts, the 1680 Pueblo Revolt eventually ended, driving people out of the Socorro area for well over a hundred years due to the Spaniards’ inability to protect against the constant raids of the Apache. Spain’s rule over New Mexico ended, making way for the country of Mexico to take ownership of the territory, which brought in new tools and provisions to the central region, settlers looking for farmland.

Why they chose Socorro was beyond Sterling. The area was desolate, flat, and surrounded by mesas and a couple of rocky mountains, by no means a fertile valley, simply a place in the middle of nowhere. But there was something peaceful about it, something otherworldly. Maybe that was the appeal.

Sterling smirked at this thought as he passed a sign pointing to a small village known as Polvadera. The homes seemed mostly abandoned, but Sterling had a feeling that there would be squatters there, perhaps a trading post a little bit closer to the Rio Grande River, which could have been christened the Nile of New Mexico for all intents and purposes. Anywhere the river went, there was life.

Another few hours and the sun started to set, the landscape painted in colors of amethyst and marmalade that would be breathtaking to someone who didn’t see it every day. More birds continued south, the highway empty aside from abandoned vehicles or the occasional critter crossing to the other side. Anyone who knew what was good for them was settling in for the night, Sterling just about to do the same when he noticed something bright on the horizon near what used to be the village of Alamillo. It flared up again like a firefly.

He stopped for a moment, licking his dry lips as he examined it. “Well, what do you think?” he asked his skeletal steed. “How stupid would it be for me to go to see what all that light is all about? You’re right, I’d be a dumbass to go and poke my head where it don’t belong. Heh. Maybe it’s aliens. Last I checked, we’re a ways away from Roswell.” He examined the light for another minute or so. “Fuck it, let’s go.”

Sterling headed toward the glow, which he estimated was about five miles away. The wind whipped through his hair as he rode, the cowboy necromancer already sensing the drop in temperature as that desert night cool painted across the landscape. Manchester slowed his gallop as they grew closer to the light. It was coming from a mile or so off the highway, Sterling instantly recognizing the structure as a pueblo. Did it have electricity? How was it producing so much light?

Sterling approached the adobe structure and hopped off his horse. He was just about to send Manchester’s bones to his inventory list when a scrawny young fellow stepped out of the pueblo. Sterling looked to the top of the structure to see that there were several men, all with rifles aimed at him.

“I ain’t here for trouble,” Sterling said, keeping his hands where they could see them. “Y’all natives? I’m assuming so, considering how you’re living in this here pueblo. I got me a seal here from—”

The young man’s eyes started to glow, which triggered a sudden flash of warmth through Sterling’s body. It felt like his insides were boiling, and it wasn’t seconds later that he had fallen to one knee, his heart racing, his temperature rising, his skin on fire from the inside. Sterling wanted to get his weapon but he no longer had control over his own muscles. It felt like his body was melting, the feeling finally leaving after he heard someone tell the young man to stop.

“I got a seal…” Sterling managed to say, and rather than go for his weapon, he simply equipped the piece of paper with the wax seal on it, and dropped it onto the dirt in front of him. He’d never felt his heart beat so quickly. “I… don’t mean no harm,” he said to the young man, who was clearly a mancer.

“Skeleton Man, why have you come here?” asked an older woman who stood beside the young man.

“Hold on a moment… ma’am… just let me catch my breath here,” Sterling said, his eyes clenched shut. “I come in peace, I’ll tell you that. Look at the seal.”

“Paco, don’t harm him. Not yet,” said the older woman.

Sterling heard the men atop the pueblo slowly lower their rifles.

“What the hell did you do to me, son?” Sterling looked up at the mancer whom he assumed was named Paco. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-three, clearly of native descent, his hair long and dark, bangs nearly hanging over his eyes. He was skinny and sinewy, the young man in a pair of overalls, no shirt underneath, his muscles tight, the light from inside the pueblo reflecting off his tanned skin.

“You got the bone horse?” the elderly woman asked.

“Him? He just follows me around,” Sterling said, trying to make light of the situation. This didn’t seem to work, the old woman still with a hint of coldness to her voice.

“You are the Skeleton Man, no?”

“I’ll be honest with you, ma’am, I don’t know who that is. Never heard of no Skeleton Man. Look, I got Don Gasper’s seal. Did you see it?” Sterling pointed toward the piece of paper with the wax seal on it.

Paco took a step forward and retrieved the piece of paper, which he brought back to the elderly woman.

“Don Gasper, eh?” she asked after she examined the seal.

“Don’t tell me you hate him too…”

“He’s the brujo from Las Cruces.”

“Shit, the one and only,” Sterling told her. “Pardon my language, I’m not used to having my insides heated up like a tortilla.”

“Skeleton Man, this is my grandson, Paco. He’s a solimancer.”

Solimancer? Everything made sense now. Sterling had never encountered a solimancer before, but he knew that they wielded power over heat and light. It explained how the pueblo was lit up, and it also explained what Paco had done to Sterling.

“Like I said, I don’t know who Skeleton Man is, but I assume you’re calling me that because I have a bone horse. I have an actual name; it’s Sterling. And in case you’re wondering, the horse’s name is Manchester.”

“Vaquero nigromante, that’s what Don Gasper called you,” the old woman said.

“Sounds about right. He likes to call me that, but I don’t like the name. For one, I ain’t no cowboy, although I guess I sort of look the part. Anyway, Sterling will do just fine. What about you? What should I call you?”

“We are from the Hopi tribe,” the woman said, gesturing toward the pueblo. “This is where we live. You may call me Abuela. Everyone here calls me this.”

“Nice to meet you, Abuela,” Sterling said as he took a look up at the pueblo. He tipped his hat to the men that still stood along its roof. “Pardon me for asking, but did you say Hopi? Y’all are a long way from Arizona, ain’t you?”

“Our medicine men in Arizona had a vision for our group to honor my grandfather,” Paco said. “My grandfather, Don Talayesva, was the Sun Chief. After the Reset, this is where we came to start over.”

“His grandfather, my late husband, was Sun Chief. Que su alma descanse en paz,” she said under her breath, which Sterling recognized as a prayer for her deceased husband’s soul. “And now, our Paco is the sun. Give him his seal back, Paco.”

“Yes, Abuela.” Paco approached Sterling, still a bit hesitant to interact with him.

“Don’t worry,” Sterling said, “I don’t bite.”

“You have the power of a god, yet you joke?” Paco asked, genuinely confused.

“Shee-it, any god not laughing at a time like this ain’t no god to me.”

This statement forced a smile on Paco’s grandmother’s face. “You seem to share Don Gasper’s dark sense of humor, Skeleton Man.”

“To be frank with you, ma’am, I never found the old bastard to be that funny,” Sterling said. “I don’t know what that says about myself.” Once again, he glanced at the men that were standing atop the pueblo, still clutching rifles. “Are them boys going to lighten up anytime soon?”

“Over time, but they won’t bother us for now,” said the elderly woman. “Come inside. You can rest here for tonight. There’s much to discuss.”

“About what?” Sterling asked.

“We can talk about why I call you Skeleton Man, for one. Something else too.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Maybe someone is looking for you,” Paco said. “And he damn sure wasn’t as friendly. Didn’t joke neither.”

“Someone is looking for me?”

“We’ll explain inside,” Abuela said, ushering him in.

“In that case, let me just take care of my horse here.” Sterling approached Manchester. He placed his hand on the horse and the bones collapsed to the ground, his saddle resting atop the pile. He sent it all to his inventory list, adjusted his jeans, smoothed his hands over his duster, and finally fixed his cowboy hat. “Lead the way, amigo,” he told Paco.

The Hopi pueblo was made of sandstone blocks, the clay mortar binding the blocks together and giving off an earthy scent. Sterling could hear the shuffle of moccasined feet above him, and as they came into the next quarter, he got a whiff of juniper smoke coming from an inner courtyard.

Sterling had been invited into a pueblo three years ago, during his last journey across the state of New Mexico in the hopes of bringing down the Godwalkers. But he had never been invited into one of their kivas, an underground ceremonial chamber used by various Pueblo tribes. He was both surprised and humbled as the elderly woman led him deeper into the complex, where they eventually came to a set of stairs carved into the ground. She used Paco for support as she went down, the space instantly illuminated by the solimancer.

Paco and his grandmother sat on the ground, Sterling trying not to gawk at the various kachinas painted on the walls. He wanted to make it seem as if he had been in a place like this before, even if he hadn’t, so he ignored the intricate paintings made from black, white, and red ink, Sterling’s sole focus being the two seated before him. Once he was settled on the ground, his boots crossed under his body, he placed his hand on his knee and waited for Abuela to speak.

“Yes, yes,” she said, nodding as she took him in. “You are the Skeleton Man. Aren’t you?”

“I ain’t nobody, and regarding my power, it’s just something I can do. Just like your grandson here, how he can control heat, how he’s a solimancer. Same thing.”

“He’s the grandson of the Sun Chief,” she said, looking up at the ceiling, her eyes a bit glassy, “that explains his power. Do you know Masau’u?”

“One of your kachina?” Sterling asked, going with a logical guess as he gestured toward the inner walls of the kiva, to the painted figures. He noticed how the room was illuminated. The light wasn’t coming from Paco; rather, it was coming from rocks placed in the four corners of the room that seemed to have been charged in a way. Sterling recognized them as crystals upon further examination. The youthful solimancer had control over his skill which gave him a fairly large radius of influence. It was impressive, to say the least.

“We Hopi don’t say kachina,” Paco told him, “we say katsina. But that is okay. How did you know that word?”

“I’ve spent a lot of time over the last five years leafing through, looking at travel guides about New Mexico, and I’ve also stumbled upon a few that dug a bit deeper into our native roots. You can’t find a travel guide that doesn’t mention the pueblo natives, mostly for tourist reasons, to entice the before people to visit the Land of Enchantment. I haven’t been able to find too many books on the state’s history, however, aside from a couple that include it as part of the history of the entire Southwest. That, and a middle school textbook with more pictures than text. It kind of feels like we are overshadowed when it comes to history by our neighbor Texas, and I don’t quite know why. Lot more magical here.”

“Pinche Texas,” said Abuela.

“I don’t disagree with you there, ma’am. I only had a run in with some Texas boys once, years ago. To be honest, I’m surprised to see the Rangers haven’t moved up into the White Sands desert and beyond, but maybe they have their own bandits and militias to contend with around El Paso. Hell, maybe they are the bandits. I don’t know. You want my personal opinion? What was once New Mexico might as well just be an island. Every place around us, it’s like it don’t exist. I hope that makes sense.”

“So you are the Skeleton Man,” Abuela said, once again smiling at him. Sterling noticed in the light that she had few whiskers on her face, the elderly woman in a long flowing dress and a puffy blue jacket over it that had been patched up. “Masau’u set the boundaries long ago, Paco,” she said to her grandson, “and it’s like he does so again.”

“I’m guessing this Masau’u you keep referring to is the same person as Skeleton Man, right? Which one of these here fellas are we talking about?” Sterling asked as he once again gestured to the walls. He made sure not to point directly at any of them, just in case that would offend the two in some way.

“That one.” Paco motioned toward a painting of a man in tribal clothing, his face hidden by a mask that resembled a skull for the Día de los Muertos celebration. The man wore black moccasins and multicolored leggings covered by a skirt made of yucca. Draped around his shoulders was a cloak interspersed with patterns and stripes, something about it reminding Sterling of the mesas that dotted the Southwestern landscape, albeit upside down. The areas around his eyes and mouth were accentuated, and there were dots along his darkened skull, yellow, evergreen, red, and sticks jutting out of the back of his head.

“I guess we do look alike,” Sterling said, which caused Paco’s grandmother to laugh. He removed his cowboy hat. “Aside from the fact that I got more hair than he does.”

Seeing that his grandmother was loosened up around Sterling caused Paco to do the same, the young man also chuckling quietly to himself. “And he don’t have no cowboy boots.”

“He sure don’t. So this is who you think I am? Skeleton Man? Is it because I’m a necromancer?”

“Masau’u is the Hopi god of death,” Abuela explained. “He is the one who led the Hopi people to this region of the world. You see, long ago, the Hopi people lived underground, where it was dark and cold, no sunshine. The people began to look for fire and wood, but they could find little in the underworld, so they were forced to live in the cold. They sent messengers out to find a new place to live, and one of these messengers was a bird named Motsi. Motsi found Masau’u surrounded by fire, the world bright and yellow, corn and beans and watermelon growing in fields all around him. Motsi told Masau’u that he had come in search of a new home for his people, and Masau’u, the Skeleton Man, invited the Hopi to join him, as long as they were willing to live in poverty, and share a life of both beauty and strife here in the desert. His direct quote went something like this: ‘Now this is the way I am living here. I am living here in poverty. I have not anything; this is the way I am living here. Now if you are willing to live here that way too, with me and share this life, why come, you are welcome.’ That’s what he told the bird, Motsi, and that’s what Motsi told the Hopi people to convince them to leave the underworld.”

“That simple, huh? And you think that’s me?” Sterling asked, trying not to sound skeptical.

“Yes.”

Sterling was quiet for a moment. He wasn’t about to argue with the elderly woman out of respect, but he definitely had some doubts about what she was saying. He knew who he was. He’d even seen the photo, his old driver’s license picture of the man he used to be, and he remembered waking up after the Reset in a neon vest, likely some type of road worker. “That’s all well and good,” he finally said, ready to move the conversation along, “and we can get deeper into that later.”

“Perhaps,” she told him.

Sterling remembered what they had said to him outside. “Say, who was that fella mentioned earlier? Someone looking for me…”

“You know the Killbillies?” Paco asked.

“I’m acquainted.”

“The man said he was with them, that he was looking for a necromancer dressed in all black. Do you think that he means you?” Abuela asked.

“I ain’t the only one around here that wears all black, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Do you know any other necromancers that wear black?” Paco asked. “Because that’s who he said he was looking for.”

“Yeah,” Sterling admitted with a smirk, “it sounds like he was looking for me. Guilty as charged.”

“There was something cold about him,” Abuela said. “I don’t know how to describe it other than that, something about his eyes. Some kind of animal behind there. Some kind of diablo.”

“Good to know. Was he one of the Adapted?”

Paco and his grandmother exchanged glances. Paco answered. “He didn’t say if he’s a mancer or not, if that’s what you’re asking. He didn’t show any power neither, but there was something about him, like she said.”

“What did he look like?”

“Believe it or not, he was dressed in all white,” said Abuela, the elderly woman biting her lip as she remembered him, the wrinkles sinking into the center of her face as if it were a black hole. “Three-piece suit, white boots, shaved head, tattoos on his hands, and bright blue eyes.”

“He was wearing a three-piece suit out here?” Sterling asked rhetorically. Then again, who was he to judge? His outfit of choice was black jeans, a black pearl-snap button-up shirt with a bulletproof vest beneath it, a black duster, and dark snakeskin boots.

Paco nodded. “All white. Said he was looking for you, and if you came by, to let you know that he was looking.”

“So he’s that kind of babosa, is he? Trying to intimidate me through you people? Theatrics, if you ask me. But I’m glad he’s simple to pick out in a crowd. Ain’t nothing like an easy target.”

The smell of fried meat reached Sterling’s nostrils, something mixed with peppers. His mouth started to water.

“Why did you come up this way?” Abuela asked.

“I got two things that need doing before I head back south,” said Sterling. “I need to hit up the Turquoise Trail and see if I can’t make it to Madrid, where I got a flectomancer buddy named Raylan. I also need to figure out where the Sunflower Kid is. Now if you don’t know who the Sunflower Kid is, I can’t blame you. In fact, even though Don Gasper has apparently mentioned my name to you, or at least the little pet name he has for me, maybe it’s best I tell you who I am. Why I’m here. And after that, we can enjoy some of that food them boys are cooking up top, and I can get on with it tomorrow. So let’s start there, who I am.”

“Please, tell us.”

“A little over three years ago, I put together a group of real ornery folk, and we tried to take on the Godwalkers. Crazy, right? It was me, a necromancer; the Sunflower Kid, a biomancer; Roxy, a regular old gal who had killed enough people to be stronger than all of us; Zephyr, an aeromancer. Them three are still alive, and I’m trying to find them. There were two others in our little ragtag band of vigilantes, both dead now. Karina, a pyromancer, and Liam, a hydromancer. They were husband and wife, fire and water that had come together after the Reset against all odds.”

“Muy interesante,” Abuela said.

“I ain’t going to go into great detail here, but the six of us, with assistance from Raylan—the same guy I’m trying to meet up in Madrid—were able to take a single Godwalker down outside of Santa Fe, a smaller one, sort of a baby one compared to some of them craft that folks are used to seeing. Let’s just say that didn’t sit well with them Godwalkers, and they came back at us hard. We gave up in the end, and went our separate ways,” Sterling said, feeling a tinge of guilt in his heart. “So long story short: I’m trying to get them all back together, the ones that are still alive, and hopefully find me some new folk interested in risking their lives to combat these aliens. Roxy is in the White Sands desert, not far from Alamogordo, held by militias there at what I’m assuming is an old military base. I don’t know where Zephyr is, but I’m going to find her if she’s still alive. As for the Sunflower Kid, I got a riddle I’m trying to decipher that will lead me to the biomancer.”

“What kind of riddle?” Abuela asked.

“I went to Las Cruces to find Don Gasper, which, as you can imagine, came with everything that normally comes with seeking out an old shaman—dead bodies and fist fights, wacky spiritualism, generally pissing people off, a sinful amount of narcotics, and trying to decipher what the hell it is he’s always going on about. You know the drill. But Gasper is good at what he does…”

Abuela nodded at the statement.

“Then you know. And so my general rule of thumb with Gasper is to just trust him, even if I think he’s crazy half the time. Anyhow, I asked him where the Sunflower Kid was, Zephyr too, and he performed a ritual to find them.” Sterling shook his head, remembering the woman who had appeared out of the darkness and turned into a coyote. “I don’t know how to say it other than this: a coyote spoke to me, and gave me the riddle.”

“Coyotes are tricksters,” Abuela said in a harsh tone.

“I don’t disagree with you, ma’am, and maybe the riddle she gave me is a trick of some sort, but after today’s ride, I committed it to memory. It’s all I got. If I get down to the bottom of this riddle, I’m pretty sure I will find the Sunflower Kid.”

“What’s the riddle?” asked Paco. “Maybe we can help you figure it out.”

“Sure, I guess what I’m saying would make more sense if I told you the riddle.” Sterling cleared his throat. “Here it is: ‘Sunflowers grow on the airy side of the mountain. Head north.’ Like I said, I memorized it.”

“On the airy side of the mountain?” Abuela asked. “¿Qué podría significar esto?” she mumbled under her breath as she brought her hand to her chin and looked up at the ceiling once again, the smell of food even stronger in the air now, Sterling realizing just how hungry he was once his stomach grumbled.

“Airy side of the mountain…” Paco said, mulling over the words. “Airy side of the mountain… Mountainair?”

“Mountainair? That’s a town, ain’t it? Due east?” Sterling asked, remembering that he had seen the name of the town on one of the maps in his travel guide, and wondered why the words ‘mountain’ and ‘air’ weren’t separated in the town name.

“Sí, I think Paco’s right,” Abuela said.

“I mean, it works with the riddle…”

“The Culto Demente Sagrado is out that way,” Paco said, “in a big compound. Real crazy.”

Abuela nodded in agreement.

“And that’s not all,” Paco said, light flashing across his dark eyes as he looked at Sterling. “The entire compound is surrounded by an enormous cactus, the biggest cactus anyone around here has ever seen. It’s like the outer wall of a castle or something, easily forty feet high, thick too, as long across as our kiva,” he said, gesturing between walls excitedly. “You said the Sunflower Kid was a biomancer, right?”

“I sure did, and only a biomancer could make an enormous cactus like that. Shit, Paco, I think you done cracked my riddle. It’s got to be the Kid.” An appreciative grin took shape on Sterling’s face. “Boy, did you save me a hell of a lot of headache trying to get to the bottom of this. Now what about this Culto Demente Sagrado? Never heard of them. Who the hell are they?”

“They are a cult that worships a woman who they believe is Jesus.”

“But Jesus was a man,” Sterling said. “I mean, last I looked up his skirt.”

Abuela clucked her tongue. “The woman is a telemancer. If you go within about half a mile of their compound, she’ll speak to your mind and lure you in. That’s how they got all the people that are there now. She controls their thoughts, and she will control yours if you go anywhere near there.”

“A telemancer, huh?” Sterling asked. “Well, if that’s where the Sunflower Kid is, that’s where I plan to go, come hell or high water. You point me in the right direction, and I will ride out that way tomorrow.”

“It’s too dangerous—”

“—I can show you a shortcut,” Paco said, interrupting his grandmother. “But I won’t be able to go the entire way with you. We Hopi know better than to go anywhere near them; anyone who doesn’t want to be forced into their cult knows better.”

“I’ll take my chances, and I would greatly appreciate that,” Sterling said. “Unless it’s another biomancer, which ain’t likely, that’s the Sunflower Kid. Hell, I’ve seen the Kid do something similar before. You can see it for miles, can’t you?”

Paco and his grandmother nodded.

Sterling licked his lips. “That’s the Kid, all right. It’s got to be. Thanks again, and I really appreciate you taking me in here tonight. I don’t mind sleeping outside, but I ain’t one to turn down lodging and a warm meal.”

“You are always welcome here, Skeleton Man,” Abuela told him. “Always.”

.Chapter Three.

Sterling took one more look at the desert haiku he had penned, nodding as he read it in his head. The piece related to change, something that even the desert experienced from time to time, something that Sterling was currently living through. It was morning now, a cold bite to the air, coyotes howling on the plateau, ice in the seams of some of the crags that twisted up toward a foreboding sky holding court over the proceedings of man.

Birds migrating south

Frigid mornings and hot days

A desert snow falls

Sterling was seated on a stool situated on the wall walk at the top of the pueblo, his feet kicked up on the adobe parapet, bits of wood jutting from it. He didn’t know what he was going to do about the telemancer that was parading around as Jesus with her brainwashed Culto Demente Sagrado, but if the Sunflower Kid was there, and it sounded like the Kid was, it was Sterling’s duty to burn that place to the ground.

The Sunflower Kid could thank him later.

“Nukwang Talöngva.”

Sterling looked to his right to see Paco standing there in his overalls and moccasins, his long dark hair pulled into a long dark ponytail.

“I’m guessing that means ‘good morning’ in Hopi, right?”

“It does.”

“In that case, ‘morning. You want a cigarette?” Sterling closed his book of desert haiku, and sent it back to his list.

“No, I’m good. Breakfast is almost ready. After that, we can ride out.”

“And you’re sure you want to come with me?” Sterling asked.

“I know a shortcut, like I said. As long as we don’t get too close. I promised Abuela.”

“Well, in that case, is there anything I can do to help out?”

“No, we can handle things.”

It was a mighty fine breakfast, one that Sterling wasn’t expecting. He was given a ceramic plate with thick chunks of yellow cornbread on it, beans, a rabbit leg from the stew they’d had last night, which was even better the second go-around. There was a dish called piki made from blue cornmeal, apparently a staple of their diet. The cornmeal was mixed with the burnt ashes of a juniper tree, smeared onto a large baking stone heated through Paco’s power, then folded loosely into what reminded Sterling of a scroll. It was good, and he enjoyed the breakfast alongside the small tribe of Hopi men and women, about twenty people in total, including two children, all of whom were a long way from their reservation in Arizona. Once they were done, Paco said his goodbyes to his grandmother and the rest of the tribe.

Sterling was just animating Manchester when Abuela approached him, a stern look in her eyes. “Don’t let Paco get close to the compound,” she said in a tone that told Sterling it was best not to cross her. “He’s not ready for something like that.”

“Don’t you worry none, ma’am,” Sterling said as he tipped his hat to the woman. “He’ll be back before nightfall, I can guarantee that. Me? I might be sticking around, I’ll have to play it by ear. Like I said last night, I’ve dealt with a telemancer before, years ago, so we’ll see how strong this one is.”

“Jesus is very strong.”

“I’m sure she is, but she ain’t Jesus, she’s an imposter, and I can tell you one thing she can’t control,” Sterling said as he placed his saddle along the upper part of Manchester’s back. “Skeletons don’t have brains.”

“But the Skeleton Man does,” Abuela tapped on the side of her shawl, which was draped over her head to keep warm, “and he should be careful.”

Sterling nodded once again, and soon, Paco and the cowboy necromancer were riding to the east, staying a few miles off Highway 60. Sterling noticed a change in the country here, a geographic wrinkle starting to separate the desert of the south from the high desert of northern New Mexico. Plants seemed a tad greener, the altitude slightly higher, the mountains cast in deep shades of brown rather than reds and yellows, something bucolic about the whole affair. But there were similarities with the south—abandoned vehicles, the occasional touch of what was once civilization and was now bleak nothingness, billboards spoiled by the elements, fences long since trampled over, a society in ruins, ready for excavation.

The two rode in silence until Paco had a few questions. “So, you tried to take on the Godwalkers three years ago, but what happened before that?” he asked. “The Reset was five years ago.”

“I could ask you the same question.”

“If you want to know what happened with me, I’ll tell you,” Paco said as they trotted next to one another. “We were in Arizona when it happened. At the Rez. Maybe you don’t know, maybe you do, but we tribespeople have maybe done a little better than others since the Reset.”

“So I’ve seen.”

“We already lived closely together, and those of us whose heads didn’t explode banded together. We remembered our languages and our traditions, even if we didn’t know each other.”

“Is Abuela really your abuela?”

“No,” Paco admitted. “But that doesn’t matter, simply being alive is thicker than blood these days. She was the wife of the leader of our group, the medicine man had a vision, and here we are.”

“I suppose you traded one desert for another then, didn’t you?”

“It’s hotter there in Arizona, cooler here. The journey to get here wasn’t easy, and it is where I got most of my levels.”

“What level are you anyway? I’m Level 60,” Sterling told him. He had been meaning to check out his stats that morning, but had gotten lost in a desert haiku and a sketch he was working on instead.

“Me? I’m at Level 19.”

“Shit, son, you might as well try to get to twenty. I’m guessing you’ll get some type of Class Proficiency bonus if you do. I think I did at that level. It’s unpredictable, this damn system.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Paco said, “but to do so, I have to kill people. I have no one to kill.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t a fucked up system,” Sterling said as he dropped the reins for a moment. He equipped his rolling paper and some tobacco, and started rolling a cigarette after using the saddle horn to reposition himself. “But killing is the only way to move on up. I don’t quite know what we’re moving toward, but I know I’m going to need all the strength I can get. And I’m also not saying I’m looking to start murdering anyone I see. That ain’t my style.”

“It doesn’t seem like your style.”

“Hell no, it ain’t,” Sterling said. “But I’m going to need all the strength I can get, Technique Points mostly, and hopefully, I’ll figure out a way to level up my class skills a bit faster too. I just got a new one. New skill, that is.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Mold manipulation,” Sterling said as he stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. “Haven’t quite figured out the usefulness of that one yet, but I’m sure if I was choking someone, it would be a right fine thing to try out.”

“You can control mold?”

“Apparently I can. So, that’s your backstory?” Sterling asked, switching back to the conversation they were just having. “It happened in Arizona, and you and your tribe headed west, and had to fight your way here. Did I miss any pieces?”

“That’s about it. What about you? What happened in those two years after the Reset, before you tried to take on the Godwalkers?”

“Well, as I’m sure you have experienced, there was a whole lot of adjusting to do. It ain’t often that someone wakes up in a bar with the ability to animate the dead. Lot of soul-searching on my part, trying to figure out why I was even alive to begin with, and testing the limits of my power, things I don’t like to talk about. As you can imagine, I can animate more than just skeletons,” Sterling told Paco, nodding the tip of his cigarette to Manchester. “There’s a gruesome aspect to my work that don’t quite sit right with me, or at least it didn’t at the time. Now it’s just who I am. You can’t change who you are. You can try, but you’re always there, if that makes sense. Maybe I’m just some crazy fool out here rambling somewhere between Albuquerque and Las Cruces, waxing poetic, but that’s my philosophy. So like I said, that time was, well, that time. Just figuring it out, and then falling in love.”

“In love?”

“Have you ever been in love, Paco?” Sterling asked the young man.

“No, but I’ve seen a few girls that are pretty.”

“Luckily, the damn Godwalkers have left a few of them around, but not many, unless you go to one of the bigger cities.”

“Like Albuquerque?”

“Yup, which I avoid like the plague.”

“It’s crazy there; no way would I go to Duke City if I didn’t have to.”

“You’re damn right it is, especially with all the gangs and vigilantes,” Sterling said, thinking of the Barelas Glyphs, the Old Town Toros, the Kirtland Airmen, and the Alta Monte Homecidos. Albuquerque was a war zone. “You remember that female I mentioned last night, Roxy?”

“You said she was incredibly strong, part of your team.”

“That’s my Roxy, and that’s who I fell in love with. There were six of us banded together—Roxy, Zephyr, the Sunflower Kid, Liam, Karina, and Yours Truly. But it didn’t matter in the end. We failed.”

“And now you’re going to try again?”

“To be honest with you, I would have been happy as a clam minding my own business for the rest of whatever godforsaken life I was cursed to live here in the great state of what was once New Mexico,” Sterling said, winking at the young man. “But them Godwalkers fucked with my property. They destroyed my pepper farm, a capital sin in my book, and if they could find my ass on the outskirts of Truth or Consequences, I knew they’d come looking for me even if I simply started over again. I’m done starting over, I’m done being trampled on, and I’m damn sure not going to let no aliens, bandits, militias, telemancers, or any other dubious grifters dictate how I am going to live my life. So we’re going to see what we can do about it this time around.”

“And you think the Sunflower Kid will join you?”

“The Kid? Sure, the Kid will join. It’s Roxy I’m worried about. We had a falling out,” Sterling said in a tone meant to tell Paco that he wasn’t going to be entertaining questions about what happened between the two of them. “Liam and Karina are dead, and then there’s Zephyr. God knows what she’s up to. Aeromancers, man, they’re just like the wind, and a breeze can be a good or a bad thing, if you get my drift. Hopefully, Don Gasper will be able to figure out where she is.”

“But that only leaves four of you: you, the Sunflower Kid, Zephyr, and Roxy,” Paco said as they started up a rocky hill, Sterling’s eyes darting to a couple lizards that were basking in the morning sun. The sky was clear aside from a single white cloud on the horizon, which cast an epic shadow on the landscape. Sterling always liked the way this looked—it reminded him of the vastness of where he lived.

“Yup, that particular part may be a problem. I’m going to need to recruit a few others. Maybe I need to go with lucky number seven rather than six like we had last time. I’ll need a technomancer, plus there is Raylan, the flectomancer, who I’m going to ask to join our cause. Either way, it ain’t going to be easy to find mancers willing to risk everything to try to bring down them Godwalkers. But they’re out there. “

“I will join you,” Paco said, no hesitation whatsoever in his voice.

Sterling slowed, Paco right next to him on a white horse with blips of red freckled across its coat. “You’re serious?”

“If you are trying to stop these things, I would join you. They killed my parents right in front of me,” Paco said, his eyes twitching as he relived the memory. “I haven’t forgotten what it’s like to awake from a good dream covered in my parents’ blood. I would join you.”

“What about your tribe? What about Abuela?”

“It’s my choice. I’m going to be the Sun Chief, and if this is what I want to do, they won’t get in my way. Besides, one of the children you saw this morning is a mancer.”

“Really?” Sterling asked. He had paid little to no attention to the two children that had joined them for breakfast, both looking to be under the age of five.

“Yes, the boy is like me, a solimancer. So they have another.”

“Damn,” Sterling said. “What are the odds of that? Two solimancers in one tribe?”

“We are special people, us Hopi.”

“That you are. I may take you up on your offer, but I still think you need to talk to Abuela first.”

“I will talk to her.”

“Good.” Sterling finished his cigarette and flicked it to the ground. “Let’s keep moving.”

They came to the top of the mesa, the state highway somewhere off to their right now, the brown stone around them cascading down hillocks peppered in yellow shrubs, the occasional tree brave enough to grow out of a crack in a rock. Paco had told Sterling more about the cult during their trip, including that they had set up at the Abó ruins, a place that Sterling was instantly familiar with.

The Abó ruins were part of what once was called the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument, something he had read about extensively in his travel guide. The ruins dated back to the fourteenth century, when they operated as a major trading post. The Conquistadores eventually rode north from Mexico and turned Abó into a mission to convert the native Tiwa and Tompiro people, later doing the same at the Quarai and Gran Quivira pueblos, building on top of the stones of the historic sites. Kind of ironic, really, that what was once dust became the building blocks for something else, in this case the Culto Demente Sagrado and the female telemancer claiming she was Jesus.

The cult’s structure was formidable, Sterling would give them that.

They were about three miles away from it now and it loomed in the distance, completely enveloped in an enormous bright green cactus. Definitely the Sunflower Kid, Sterling thought as he rode toward the former ruins. He chewed on his lip for a moment, considering how he would get into the place. The odds were high that there were dead bodies between here and there, and he could use his Death Sense ability to find them. This would give him foot soldiers at his command. And obviously, at dusk or later would probably be the best time to approach the place, especially now that he had increased his sneaking skills.

“Yup,” Sterling said to the running monologue in his head, one that Paco wasn’t privy to.

“Is it the person you are looking for?”

“I am pretty damn sure it is. Like I said, I’ve seen the Kid do something like this before. Never this large, but it has been several years, and the Sunflower Kid must have leveled up in that time.” Sterling took another look at the enormous cactus that wrapped around the Abó ruins. “Damn certain.”

“Okay, then what? What will you do now?”

“For one, it’s time for you to get on back to your pueblo. This here is a solo mission, Paco. I appreciate you taking me all the way out here, but I promised Abuela that I wouldn’t let you go any further.”

“I can help.”

“I’m sure you can, son, and I’m sure you would be mighty helpful in an endeavor like this. But I keep my promises. How about this? Once I deal with the Sunflower Kid and ride up the Turquoise Trail, I’ll loop back down this way if I can. I got to go south anyhow to get to White Sands. You can talk to your people, and if they agree, you can come join us. But only if they agree. Because the kind of things I’m planning to do… some would consider them suicide missions. Now, I don’t quite consider them that, I consider them necessary evils, things that must be done. But you should know going in that it ain’t going to be easy, there’s a good chance you’ll die. A great chance, actually. I’ll give you some time to think about that, and talk to your people.”

“Fine…” Paco said after a long pause.

“Now, get going.” Sterling motioned the rim of his cowboy hat toward the west.

“What about the man in white? What if he comes around again?”

“If the man in white comes around again…” Sterling looked up at the sky, the sun high overhead, a hawk circling above them. “How about this? You tell that sorry son of a bitch that I’m looking for him, and if he wants to make it easy for me, meet me in Alamogordo, down near the White Sands desert. I ain’t about to have no bounty hunter trying to snuff me out. Al diablo con él. Tell him I said that,” Sterling huffed. He didn’t like the fact that there was a bounty hunter looking for him, and he also didn’t like the fact that this man in white was going around showcasing the fact, trying to intimidate folk. The sooner he got the bounty hunter off his back, the better.

“Okay, I guess then… good luck,” Paco said.

“I’ll be seeing you,” Sterling told the young man as he started to trot away.

He waited a good five minutes to make sure Paco was actually gone. Figuring it couldn’t hurt, Sterling drank some water from a jug in his inventory list, rolled up a cigarette, and lit it as he started off toward the cultists’ compound. It was about ten minutes later that a feminine voice appeared in his head. At first the voice was faint, Sterling thinking it was the wind or something. But as he neared the compound, it grew increasingly louder:

This is the story of the heavens and the earth when they were made, and the day the Lord God made the earth and heavens. Now no shrub of the field was yet on the earth. No plant of the field had started to grow. For Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth. And there was no man to work the ground…

“Shee-it,” Sterling mumbled, realizing instantly that it was the telemancer. What sounded like a Bible quote quickly morphed into something else.

Come, my child, to the river flowing out of Eden. Come to have your garden watered. Wake up as if you were asleep, call to the birds of the sky and every animal of the field. Give me your ear, my child, and come to the land of Havilah, where there is gold, food, shelter, a land without sin, the snake vanquished. Come to me, my child, come to your Lord Jesus…

Sterling stopped riding.

Why have you stopped, my child? It is not good for man to be alone. Come, join us, we will become one flesh, together we will rebuild. Together, we will birth a new Eden, we will replant the tree of life in the heart of this desert.

He started to turn Manchester around.

An urge within him beckoned the cowboy necromancer forward, one that he could barely control. “Git!” he shouted to his skeletal steed, and the horse galloped faster away from the voice. He knew if he moved any closer to the outer walls of the compound that he would give in to the telemancer. It was instinctual at this point. The telemancer was much stronger than the last one he had encountered.

Do you not trust me, my child? Do you not realize what will happen if you leave? the feminine voice asked in his head, growing in agitation. Your eyes have been opened and now they must be closed. You are the snake! You will spend the rest of your days on your stomach eating dust and suffering!

“Fuck off, lady,” Sterling mumbled as he veered north, the woman’s voice growing dimmer with each passing moment. He wasn’t going to be able to get near the compound if it had a telepathic shield around it, that much was for sure. But he knew who to talk to about it, someone who could perhaps conjure up a device that would help him break the telemancer’s hold.

At least he hoped this was the case.

.Chapter Four.

Sterling continued on, Interstate 25 a few miles off to his left, riding in what would later be the shade of a long string of mountains with hazy tops, shrubs and cacti crowning their bases. It was still a clear day, the air crisp, the elevations slowly ticking upward as he grew closer to what was once Colorado. He had no idea how the Centennial State had fared after the Reset, and he wasn’t looking to find out. He just needed to find Raylan, and circle back down to the cult to rescue the Sunflower Kid from the telemancer claiming to be Jesus.

“It always is something. Ain’t that right, Pingo?” Sterling asked his skeletal steed. Manchester trotted along at a good pace, not quite at top speed, steady enough that Sterling could eat a dried pepper and smoke a cigarette, which was a strange combination indeed. His eyes were as much on the horizon as they were on the interstate, Sterling hoping to come across a trading post before exiting onto the Turquoise Trail, staying as clear as he could of Albuquerque.

“No point sticking my head where it don’t belong,” he mumbled, Sterling’s running dialogue with himself keeping him entertained during the ride north. He was fairly certain he wouldn’t hit Madrid until tomorrow, which meant he was going to need to camp out somewhere for the night.

Oftentimes, the trading posts set in the abandoned buildings along the highway had lodging. Some of them had even morphed into small pockets of civilization with taverns, restaurants, even a local militia group to keep the riffraff out. Sterling didn’t know exactly what he would find, it had been years since he rode north, but he knew as long as he followed the Rio Grande River, the lifeblood of civilization in New Mexico times past and times current, that he’d find something.

Cigarette in his mouth, a cloud of smoke trailing behind him as he exhaled deeply, Sterling turned Manchester toward the river which ran along the interstate, the two practically parallel at points. Civilization was a wound on the desolate landscape, some of it now a scab, other parts still festering, a patina of what once was. Things that weren’t abandoned were looted, knocked over, or exploded, shells of what they used to be. If there was still hope, it was in the form of plant life, which had taken over some of the structures, old trailers, shipping vehicles with deflated tires, scattered detritus hidden by clumps of cactus, rodents and insects and snakes and jackrabbits all watching as a man in all black rode on by, perched atop a bone horse.

This was the way, this was the world that Sterling knew, beyond a far cry from the world from whence he came as indicated in his driver’s license photo, the home once shared with a wife and a child in Las Cruces. Even though his mind was still focused on what he planned to do, he couldn’t help but wonder if there was a family out there waiting for him somewhere, even though he knew this was a futile thought. Were they even alive? And if they were, how would they know who he was? Sterling had certainly changed over the last five years, as had anyone who had survived the Reset. Was there really a point in digging up an old grave?

Sterling smirked. That’s what I do best, he thought as he grew nearer to the Rio Grande River.

He rode until he saw a teenage boy dragging a cart with a jug of water on it. He approached the youth, and whistled at him to get his attention.

“You know we got inventory lists, right?” Sterling asked in a friendly voice.

The teenager looked up at him, his face covered in scars, the scars black with soot. He wore a jean jacket that had been patched up with an American flag, his hair the color of dirt, his knees like baseballs, legs like broom handles. He didn’t look quite malnourished, but he definitely wasn’t far off. If the youth thought anything about Sterling’s bone horse, he didn’t say anything.

“Well? Can you hear me, son? You mute or something?”

“I can hear you, mister,” the youth said.

“Anything I should know about this area? A trading post? Hostiles to avoid?”

“Bosque is that way,” the kid said, pointing to the south. “And Los Chavez that way.”

“I got a map, what I’m asking here’s if there’s anything I should be aware of.”

“You mean like Killbillies?”

“Now we’re talking. And since you know who they are, you seen any of them boys?”

“I saw some, mister. Heading north.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know. A group on ATVs.”

“Fair enough. They bother you?”

The teenager nodded.

“They kill any of your kin?”

“No, but they hurt my friend.”

“Well, don’t you worry none. I’ll find them, and when I do, our world will have a few less Killbillies. Say, you ain’t happen to see a man in all white, have you?”

“I saw him.”

“Was he with the Killbillies?”

“Nope.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

The youth shook his head.

“Ain’t much for words, are you, son?” Sterling asked, once again trying to go light with his tone.

“Why talk?”

“I guess you’re right about that. What about a trading post—is there one with lodging somewhere? I ain’t trying to go to Albuquerque, and I’ll probably cut through the countryside to get back onto the Turquoise Trail.”

“Los Lunas has a trading post, real big, run by people from the Isleta Pueblo.”

“Isleta Pueblo…” Sterling got out his travel guide and located a map of central New Mexico. He found Los Chavez along the highway, Los Lunas not too far from it and right next to the pueblo. “Who’s living at that pueblo?”

“Tiwas.”

“Good enough for me. Well, anyway, I owe you one.” Sterling sent his travel guide back to his inventory list and retrieved his satchel of silver and turquoise. He selected a piece of silver that used to be part of a bracelet, a small hunk of turquoise lodged in it. “This is for you,” he told the youth. “And if anyone comes around asking if you’ve seen a man in all black riding a bone horse, what are you going to tell them?”

The boy spat. “I ain’t seen shit.”

“Good. It’s a pleasure doing business with you. Before I go, let me ask you, why are you dragging that cart anyway when you could just put the water in your inventory list?”

“To become stronger,” the youth said without skipping a beat. “Cousin said it’ll make me stronger.”

“I like your style, son. Keep it up, maybe we’ll all survive this together. But probably not.”

The boy smirked.

Sterling tipped his hat to the youth, and rode on.

The trading post in Los Lunas was hard to miss. Set in what was once a grand gas station, the complex had grown to include a tavern, horse stables, a restaurant, and even a flectomancer shop, where Sterling saw a couple of natives tinkering with an ATV with the ominous letters KB spray-painted on its side paneling.

He collapsed his bone horse, sending Manchester to his inventory list along with his saddle. No one had seen him yet, Sterling slightly hidden by scree that they had dynamited from a bluff long ago to create the highway. He approached on foot from there, the wind blowing through the ends of his black duster, a cigarette in his mouth, the shadow of his hat covering his eyes.

He didn’t see any other signs of Killbillies around. No surly loiterers standing out front maddogging locals; nothing to indicate that they’d already been through, aside from the ATV that was being worked on. Before he got to the bottom of where the bandits had run off to, Sterling figured he would peruse the goods at the trading post, and maybe even enjoy a hot meal. He’d earned it.

Sterling entered the trading post to find a Tiwa woman seated on the ground behind a wool blanket, charms laid out before her. Next to her was an adobe stove that they had installed into the former gas station, the natives smoothing over the walls with the material and making it look like the inside of a pueblo. Sterling appreciated this; there was no sense in bringing down a perfectly good structure if they could just paint over it.

“Ma’am,” Sterling said, tipping his hat to her.

The woman wore an olive-green dress with embroidery stitched across it, a long-sleeved shirt tucked into the dress perforated with elaborate patterns along the sleeves, a necklace with teeth hanging from it with a lump of red-veined turquoise as its centerpiece, the necklace matching her earrings, also of silver and turquoise, and a cloth draped over the crown of her head disguising the length of her hair.

“Please sit, señor.”

“Señor was my father,” he said, offering the woman a grin. She didn’t return it, but she gave him a pleasant enough look, and Sterling did as instructed.

“¿Qué necesitas?”

“Well, for one, I need a hot bath and a place to lay my head tonight. You got that here?”

She nodded.

“I also need a nice warm meal to match the scorcher of a day out there. You been out yet?”

The charm seller shook her head.

“Don’t blame you one bit, ma’am. Much nicer in here, and I’m guessing the rooms y’all have will be equally cool.”

She nodded. “The rooms are new. Very big. Nice rooms. Almost new.”

“Well, I’ll definitely take one of them almost new rooms. Now, on to these charms…” Both of them looked at the various tchotchkes she had spread out before her. There was everything from silver rings to beaded anklets, some of the objects clearly designed for women, gaudy, to be worn as an accent piece like her necklace. “I’m looking for something that could give me a boost to my Class Proficiency bonus, if that means anything to you.”

“Si.”

“Something like that would be nice, I’m aware that it would be pricey. Another thing: I’m trying to level up my powers real quick like. So if you got something like that, show me. Otherwise, I’m game for something that gives me a boost to my Stat or Technique Points. That’ll do too.”

“This one has a Class Proficiency bonus,” she said, pointing to a ring with a piece of amber on the end of it. “There’s a scorpion tail inside.”

Sterling picked up the ring and held it up to the light coming in from outside. Sure enough, he located the scorpion stinger in the center of the piece.

“My cousin tested it. Every three levels, one level up for your Class Proficiencies.”

“Every three levels, huh?” Sterling asked. It wasn’t quite rocket science—nothing was when it came to dealing with the game system that has been forced onto his life—but currently, he got a class proficiency bonus every five to seven levels, something like that. Now at Level 60, Sterling assumed he wouldn’t get one until he at least reached Level 66, give or take a level.

“Si, three levels, señor.”

“What happens when I get my normal Class Proficiency bonus, does it just double up?”

“You get a twofer.”

“Twofer, huh? Ain’t bad,” Sterling said as he placed the ring on his pinky finger, feeling a swell of power for just a moment. A prompt flashed before him.

Item: Scorpion Tail Ring

Item Type: Ultra Rare

Description: An additional class proficiency bonus per three levels gained.

“A little feminine, and it would get in the way of me punching someone…”

“You got a necklace?”

“Two, actually,” Sterling said as he produced the topaz necklace he’d lifted from a female Killbilly, which granted an additional resolve point per level, and his arrowhead rattlesnake necklace, which granted eight additional Technique Points per level.

“You can put it on there.”

“I’m about to be broke, ain’t I?” Sterling asked as he retrieved his bag of turquoise and silver. This comment made the woman laugh, the seller burying her face in the corner of the cloth that was draped over her shoulder as she eyed Sterling’s money.

“Here’s what I want,” he told her. “This here ring; room for the night and a place to take a bath; dinner and a big ol’ breakfast tomorrow before I head out. But I am in dire need of funds, because I’m heading north, and only God knows what I’m going to encounter that way. Anything need doing around here? Let’s talk.”

“We are talking,” she said, growing dead serious.

“No need to change the temperature of the room,” Sterling assured her. “I saw your boys working on an ATV out there. Belongs to the Killbillies, right?”

“Pinche puto Killbillies,” she muttered.

“I’m right there with you, bunch of good-for-nothing pinche puto idiotas.” Sterling smiled once again at the woman, hoping that the points he had put into his Persuasion technique would aid him with what he planned to ask next. “So how’s about this: you point me in the direction of them Killbillies, and I’ll clear them out like a bunch of cucarachas. You’ll never see them again. Cut me a discount on this here ring, as well as room and board for the night, plus them meals, and we’ll call it even. What do you say?”

“You’ll kill them?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’ll kill them. Unless you don’t want me to, then I’ll kill them and I won’t tell you I killed them. How’s that?”

“No, you can kill them…” A bitter look came across the woman’s face. “They took one of ours, my niece. They said they will bring her back when we fix their vehicle. They have weapons…”

“Is that so? Then I’ll get her back too. We got ourselves a deal or what?” Sterling asked as he took the ring off his finger and set it back down on the wool blanket. He extended his hand to the woman and she reached forward to shake it.

“Sí, we have a deal.”

“Like I said, point me in the right direction of them ‘Billies, and I will rid you of your little roach problem. I’ll bring you back their bandannas, and hell, your niece, as proof. One more thing. There ain’t been a man dressed in all white come around here, has there?”

She looked at him curiously for a moment, as if he were putting her on. “A man in all white?”

“I don’t know much about him other than he was probably wearing a three-piece white suit like some type of ecclesiastic jackass, probably acting real tough too.”

“Maybe no,” she said, before hesitating. “But I’m not always here. I will ask about this man in white, and let you know what the others say when you return.”

“One more thing I want to show you,” Sterling said, accessing his inventory list. He got the seal that Don Gasper had given them. “Just in case this means anything to you. It sure did to the Hopi up the way.”

The woman examined the wax seal, raising an eyebrow as she did so. “This is from Don Gasper?”

“Sure is, the way you’re looking at it tells me that’s a bad thing.”

“Hombre sinverguenza…” she said with disgust.

“Heh, I don’t disagree with you there, ma’am. He is a bit of a scoundrel. Anyway, I thought you might want to see it,” Sterling said as he promptly sent the seal back to his inventory list. “Now, it’ll be dark soon, and I’d like to get this little situation of yours wrapped up before supper, if you don’t mind. Where are them Killbillies, and how many did you see?”

.Chapter Five.

Sterling crossed Interstate 25 heading west from the Tiwa outpost. What was once a good-sized village, Los Lunas was now in disarray, defined by its rubble and sparse parking lots, the asphalt cracked, most of the road signs removed. He passed a Walmart Supercenter, Sterling recognizing it as the same warehouse-like store they once had in Truth or Consequences. He could only imagine what it would have looked like then, and what they could have held inside.

The before people sure liked to buy a bunch of bullshit, Sterling thought as he rode in the direction that the Tiwa woman had pointed him. Sometimes, it felt like buying useless things was all the before people used to do. Sterling had searched through enough debris to wonder how they could afford so much pointless junk, especially without an inventory list. It was yet another mystery, one that he would likely never know the answer to unless he got his memory back.

Sterling aimed his skeletal steed toward the reserve that sat in the southwest corner of the village, the cluster of mountains partially surrounded by abandoned subdivisions, just a few of the homes still standing, vehicles in their driveway stripped of their wheels and surrounded by halos of broken glass from their windshields. The sound of an ATV engine caught his attention. Sterling quickly galloped to the shade of an adobe wall, some of its inner brick exposed.

Sure enough, a Killbilly sped by, the man boldly standing on his ATV, bandanna whipping in the wind, his face covered in smudges and tattoos.

Once he was gone, Sterling dismounted, and sent Manchester and his saddle to his inventory list. He followed the tracks of the ATV, veering off toward the hills after he realized that the Killbillies had set up shop beneath a ridge. He ventured even further into the preserve until he found the trail, which looped him back around to the bandits’ campsite, creeping now, Sterling well-aware that it was still daylight out and that he could easily be spotted.

He kept to the rockface, listening for any sounds of activity ahead of him, Sterling not quite able to see what happened once the path veered to the west. He moved even slower as he got to the apex of the turn, where he finally heard some movement on the other side. He paused once he heard laughter. Sterling turned the corner to see a Killbilly standing guard above a small gully, the man’s focus now on the campsite below, and what the group of bandits were laughing at.

He hopped down and moved on the Killbilly quickly, his hand coming around his mouth, his sickle-sword slitting his throat. Sterling brought the man to the ground and finished what he was doing, using his knee for support as he cut the man’s head off. “Yup,” Sterling said once he finished the grisly task and wiped his sword. He sheathed his weapon, retrieved the Killbilly’s bloodied bandanna, and sent it to his inventory list as evidence.

Sterling crept on, now holding the man’s severed head by the hair.

The ridgeline overlooked the camp below, Sterling spotting two large tents connected in the middle, similar to the one that Commodore Bones had stayed in back in Radium Springs. There was a pair of ATVs, and by the size of the camp, Sterling assumed that there were only five or six more Killbillies left.

Still holding the severed head in one hand, he gauged the distance between his current location and the fire that most of the Killbillies were huddled around about ten feet below. He could make it if he jumped, and since he would have something to collapse into, his fear of heights wasn’t holding him back from what he planned to do. There was also the option of continuing his stealth mission, trying to see how many he could pick off before the others were alerted. But Sterling was itching for a fight, and he could try sneaky tactics at another time, preferably at night.

“You ready to take a little trip?” he asked the severed head as he gave life to it, the man’s eyes blinking open.

Sterling tossed the head toward the campfire below and scooted back so he wouldn’t be immediately visible to the person tasked with checking out the commotion. The snarling, animated head certainly caused some commotion, one of the Killbillies quickly making his way over to investigate it, a female.

“What the fuck? Evan!?”

Sterling leapt from the ridgeline and tackled the Killbilly. He rolled to his feet, his revolver ready to go. Bam! Bam! Two shots took down the female bandit, both magic bullets exploding out of the back of her skull. He swiveled and shot another dead.

The next Killbilly flew toward him. Sterling holstered his weapon as he jumped forward to address his assailant. He slammed into the man and grabbed him by the throat, Sterling summoning his Mold Manipulation power.

“Been meaning to test this,” he said through gritted teeth, a fuzzy green mold spreading up the Killbilly’s throat and into his mouth and later his nostrils and eyes, the man yelping in pain. Sterling held him until he was sure he was dead.

Everything flashed black for a moment as he was hit over the shoulders by what felt like a sledgehammer. Tumbling forward, Sterling was able to right himself just in time to hear a cry from one of the tents, which he assumed was the Tiwa woman that had been taken prisoner.

“Come on,” he managed to call out as he got back to his feet, Sterling turning to the man who had struck him. The brute was easily over seven feet tall, muscled like a bull, practically snorting smoke. No tattoos, but he had the trademark Killbilly bandanna tied around his neck, and the trademark inbred Killbilly scowl plastered across his face.

He looked at Sterling’s weapons and lifted his fists.

“That’s how you want to do this, dipshit?” Sterling asked, his tongue pressing against the inside of his cheek. “Alright by me.”

Sterling brought his fists to the ready and approached the muscular Killbilly, the two circling each other for a moment. He threw the first punch; the Killbilly blocked it and struck him with a fist that felt like it had shattered Sterling’s jaw. The punch sent him into a crate, Big Jim peppers spilling out.

“I’m going to take these peppers after I finish you off,” Sterling said, his jaw aching, blood dripping down his chin. “You done fucked up now, big boy.”

Sterling bolted forward again, this time avoiding the Killbilly’s strike and coming back with an uppercut that sent the man up and over. The brute landed on his back and hopped to his feet, grunting as he brought his fists back up.

“You got a name, son?”

The Killbilly spat blood, and Sterling did the same. “You really think you’re tough, don’t you?”

“No, but I’m tougher than your pansy-ass,” Sterling said. “I just wanted a name so I know what words to spell out when I take a piss on your corpse.”

The Killbilly charged him. “Fuck you!”

The two traded blows, the Killbilly’s connecting, Sterling’s next jab doing the same. They did it again and again, everything flashing as the big man’s fists met Sterling’s face. The cowboy necromancer spat a tooth on the ground, knowing that if he survived this it would regrow.

“Now you’ve gone and pissed me off,” Sterling said. He was only able to see out of one eye now, his face black and blue, his flesh feeling as if it had been softened up by a meat tenderizer. His next strike took the Killbilly off his feet, and for a moment, Sterling thought the man was down for the count. But he managed to get up again, the brute’s face crisscrossed in blood and foamy spit.

Sterling could always use his firearm and be done with this, but that wasn’t his style. Even if he knew the Killbillies had little in terms of scruples, Sterling had enough cowboy chivalry to go around, just about as close to a man of honor as someone came in the post-apocalyptic Southwest.

He barely managed to sidestep the Killbilly’s next fist, Sterling following up with a gut punch. The brute clapped him against the side of the head with his big hand, his hearing off for a moment, his brain all shook up.

The powerful fist that the Killbilly delivered next seemed strong enough to punch a hole through steel, Sterling surprised that his skull didn’t crater. The strike left him on the ground, Sterling ready to draw his revolver if the Killbilly did something like try to kick at him. But he didn’t; the man let him get up, just as Sterling had let him get up just a few moments back.

“We need to finish this,” Sterling said, his words a bit slurred together now, his tongue numb, mouth full of blood and tasting of iron.

The thought of the hot bath he would have later and a nice place to rest his head for the night once he finished up here inspired Sterling to get on with it. He exploded forward, two quick jabs to the Killbilly’s face, followed by a big fist to the gut, and a final uppercut that sent the Killbilly to the ground, where he stayed.

Sterling gave him a minute or so to get up, but the man never did, down for the count. “You put up a good fight,” Sterling said as he drew his revolver, “I’ll give you that.” He walked past the Killbilly, and as he did, he blew out the back of his head.

Bam!

Sterling heard more muffled yelps from the tents. Rather than go directly to the hostage, he took a moment to catch his breath. After examining the peppers, he collected the loose silver and turquoise that was on an overturned crate, individual playing cards scattered across the ground.

He was just turning to the tent when an idea came to him. Sterling looked back toward the scattered Killbilly bodies. He settled on the female Killbilly whom he had shot in the head, blood pooling in the dirt. He shifted the woman aside and crouched before the blood.

Sterling extended his hand, summoning his Death Whisper ability.

A feminine face began to form along the surface of the blood. The woman gasped, her eyes blinking open, everything glistening crimson. “Where… Where am I?”

“It don’t matter,” Sterling said as he looked down at the face he had conjured. “I’ll make this quick. Who’s the man in all white?”

“Who? Who are you?” she whispered, afraid.

“I’m the devil. The Killbillies—that’s your people—sent a man clad all in white after the cowboy necromancer. A bounty hunter of sorts. What’s his name?”

“You mean… Ram?”

“That his name?”

“His name is Ram.”

“Is he a mancer?”

“I don’t know. Someone just mentioned that we may… encounter a bounty hunter named Ram… and if we do, stay out of his way.”

“Is that all you know?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think any of your compadres know anything about this Ram fella?”

“No… Where am I?” she asked again. “Everything’s dark…” She began to sob.

“Rest in peace, ma’am,” Sterling said as he deanimated the female bandit.

He stood, wishing he had a little more detail to go on. Somewhere out there, a bounty hunter named Ram was searching for him in the high desert, and there wasn’t much he could do to prepare for their eventual collision aside from stay on his toes. Because he knew that time would come. Even though he hadn’t met this man, if Ram was looking for Sterling, he had a feeling they’d eventually run into each other. Star-crossed killers, as it were.

“I’m coming,” he told the female hostage after he collected the peppers that had spilled out of the crate. They were decent, but not as good as he could do. Sterling rolled up a cigarette. He brought it to his lips and found that he was barely able to use the muscles in his jaw to keep the cigarette in place. He ended up having to clamp down on it with his teeth, a haze of smoke following him into the tent as he stepped inside.

“I’m sorry for leaving you waiting,” Sterling said once he found the woman hogtied and bruised. He retrieved his sword and quickly cut her loose, the woman trying to cower away from him. “Don’t be afraid of my ugly mug,” he said, his cigarette falling out of his mouth. Sterling reached down to pick it up, ashing it in the process. To keep it in place, he stuck it in the gap between his teeth, the new tooth already starting to regrow. “Your people sent me to get you.”

The woman, who had a soiled yellow bandanna tied around her mouth, tried to speak, but her voice was muffled.

“Let me get it,” Sterling said as he removed the bandanna.

“Th-thank you,” she said as she turned to him, allowing Sterling to cut the rope that still bound her hands. She was a square-jawed woman, in a similar shawl to the one that her aunt wore back at the trading post. Her skin was the same brown color as the rocks outside Mountainair, and she had a big mole on her neck.

“They do anything to you?” Sterling asked cautiously.

She started to sob. “Just beat me. But maybe later…”

“There ain’t no later for them fellas now,” Sterling said. “I saw to that.”

The woman rushed forward and hugged him. Sterling threw his arms up and noticed just how sore his fists were, his knuckles bloody pulps.

“Not too tight,” he said as she squeezed him even harder. “We’ve got to get you back to your people. And before we do, I need to collect me some bandannas. The name is Sterling, by the way.”

“Maria.”

“Mighty fine to meet you, Maria.”

Sterling led her outside, and once he collected the bandannas of the Killbillies he’d slaughtered, he returned his focus to the Tiwa woman. “You know how to drive one of them things?” he asked, nodding toward the two ATVs.

The woman nodded.

“Well in that case, let’s ride out of here in style.”

Sterling laughed as he tore through the desert on the ATV, Maria on the vehicle behind him now wearing his black cowboy hat. It had flown off as soon as he’d picked up speed and she had managed to catch it. The two raced toward the trading post, Sterling’s hair whipping in the wind, his face still bruised up but slowly healing, his tooth nearly regrown, his broken nose and the cuts on his cheek stitching right up.

His stats flashed before him and he waved them away.

You have received 770 XP!

Name: Sterling Monedero

Race: Human

Mancer Class: Necromancer

Class Ranking: Bone Sculptor

Level: 60

Fortitude: 117

Strength: 35

Resolve: 152

Mana: 137/159

Current Armor Rating: 28

XP: 307,474

XP to Next Level:6,450

Stat Points Available: 0

Technique Points Available: 1

He revved the engine of his ATV, the wheels spinning even faster. Maria sped around him, Sterling now trying to catch up with the native woman. She took off, a cloud of dust obscuring her form for a moment as she zipped ahead.

Sterling veered left, avoiding most of the dust as he tried to pull a wide circle around the woman to catch up with her again. They were approaching a subdivision along the highway, and he knew he needed to slow down at some point. The pair cautiously made their way through the neighborhood, and then weaved their ATVs around burned-out vehicles on the interstate. They came to the trading post, the flectomancer and his two mechanic assistants coming out of their garage once they heard the roar of the engines.

Maria greeted her tribe, and explained in their language what had happened, Sterling standing back and enjoying a cigarette. The Tiwa seller that he had made a deal with earlier approached.

“Thank you,” she said, procuring the ring that gave him a Class Proficiency bonus per three levels gained.

“I believe these are yours.” Sterling equipped all the Killbilly bandannas and dropped them onto the ground.

“Muchas gracias,” she said as Sterling removed his necklace with the topaz piece on and added the ring to it.

“Pleasure was all mine.”

He got out his bag of turquoise and silver and paid the woman, as promised. Once he was squared up, Sterling was led to the compound’s restaurant, the seller explaining that they were preparing his room and his bath.

“Fine by me,” he said as he was seated at a wooden table, kachina masks hanging from the walls around him. The woman brought him a bucket of warm water and a clean cloth so he could wipe his face down, which Sterling did, paying little attention to the amount of blood in the water once he finished. A candle was lit on his table, and it wasn’t long before an appetizer was brought to him by a short man in a dark green apron, chili peppers stitched across the front pocket.

As he drank his beer, Sterling enjoyed fried breadsticks served with a side of honey. This was followed by a plate of tender buffalo meat sautéed with squash and corn, a scoop of white rice, and a cube of blue cornbread. Eventually, Maria, the woman he had rescued, joined him at the table. “Is it good?” she asked, a big smile on her face. She still wore his cowboy hat, which she placed on the table, Sterling nodding to it.

“Been meaning to ask for this back,” he said as he returned the hat to his head. “Sentimental value. As for the food, it’s amazing. Give my regards to the chef.”

“My aunt told me to tell you that she asked about this man you are looking for, the man in all white…”

“I ain’t looking for him so much as he’s looking for me,” Sterling said. “His name is Ram. Just learned that.”

“He stopped by a day ago. My father and my uncle saw him. He had a meal and left. That’s all they know. My uncle said that there was something off about him, something real cold about his personality. He felt the chill around him.”

“A chill, huh?” Sterling asked as he took the last bite of his cornbread. “Killers can have that about them, that’s for damn sure. I’ve experienced it myself.”

“You don’t have the chill,” she said, a twinkle in her dark eyes.

“Heh. You don’t know me that well,” Sterling told her.

“You saved me.”

“I did what had to be done,” Sterling told her, sensing what the young woman was suggesting. Not that he was opposed to it, but he didn’t rescue her for something like that. It wasn’t uncommon for sex to be on the table when it came to bartering across the Land of Enchantment, but Sterling didn’t normally partake. It just wasn’t his style.

“You would have done the same for me, right?” he asked as he leaned back in his chair and placed both hands behind his head. He was stuffed.

“Maybe,” she said with a cute shrug. Maria had cleaned up as well, and now wore the swath of fabric draped over her head, just like her aunt. “Your bath is ready, your room too. That’s what I came here to tell you.”

“That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day,” Sterling told her. He reached forward and finished what was left of his beer.

“Another cerveza?”

“Maybe I’ll enjoy one in my room over a hot bath.”

“I’ll take you there,” she told him as she stood. She called to the man in the kitchen and he returned with a cold enough beer. There was no refrigeration after the Reset, and people had gone to great extremes to keep the beers cool, Sterling noticing that the natives preferred to bury them in shaded areas, which seemed to help.

Maria led him out of the restaurant and to the lodgings behind the trading post, all of them set into large pueblo with wooden ladders leading to the rooms. Sterling climbed one of the ladders, surprised by the spaciousness of his room. Sure enough, there was a tub carved out of stone and filled with boiling water, the smell of lemon and herbs filling the space. The ceiling was too low for Sterling to stand, forcing him to lean forward a little, Maria short enough that her head barely grazed the ceiling.

“I could stay,” Maria said. “Give you a massage.”

“I think I got it,” he finally told her. “You get yourself some rest and heal up. I’m sorry you had to go through what you went through. I’ll be out in the morning. Maybe we can have breakfast.”

“I’d like that.” She set his fresh beer on a table near the door and stepped toward the arched entryway. “Where are you going next?”

“I got a friend that needs visiting in Madrid. You heard about the Culto Demente Sagrado down in Mountainair?”

“Just a little. We trade with the Hopi, and they told us about them.”

“I got a buddy there in Madrid, like I was saying, a flectomancer. If anyone knows how to deal with the cult’s telemancer calling herself Jesus, it’s him.”

“You want to stop the cult?” She chuckled to herself. “You trying to be some kind of superhero or something?”

“Me? Superhero?” Sterling placed his hat on the bed and removed his duster. “Ain’t no superheroes left, Maria, and don’t you forget that. I’m just a man on a mission, and I got a friend holed up with the cult that needs rescuing, a friend crucial to my mission.”

“So you stopped by our trading post just to rest before going to Madrid, and then decided to come find me just for the hell of it? And the whole reason you’re going to Madrid is that you need to meet this crafter friend of yours to figure out a way for you to break into the cult’s compound so you can rescue a friend. Sound right?”

“You writing my biography or something?”

Maria smiled. “Just curious about you, that’s all.”

“Yup, that’s the plan. Then I’m heading down…” Sterling shook his head. He was telling the woman too much. “It don’t matter where I’m heading, just know that I’ll get there eventually.”

“I like that,” she said. “I feel the same way.”

“Maybe we all do,” Sterling said as he sat down on the bed and started taking off his boots. “You have yourself a nice night, Maria, we’ll have breakfast in the morning. You like haiku?”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll explain tomorrow.”

.Chapter Six.

Sterling read the desert haiku he wrote for Maria once again, counting the syllables out as he did so. It was morning now, his room nice and cold. He was seated on a chair near the open doorway with a quilt draped over his shoulders, enjoying a morning cigarette. The sun was starting to come up, the deep red hues and soft pinks and blues invigorating, inspiring. He took one more look at the desert haiku he’d written for Maria:

Don’t you worry none

Ain’t no more superheroes

Stay strong, Maria

“You old dog,” Sterling said as he carefully ripped the page out of his book and folded it. He stuffed it in the front pocket of his shirt and sent his book back to his inventory list. Just before bed, Sterling had spent some time with the map in his travel guide, and figured out that he was about a hundred miles away from Madrid.

Even though Manchester’s stamina was unlimited, he would be pushing it to reach Madrid by nightfall, especially with the fact that Sterling was going to have to make a wide loop around Albuquerque, which might put him in direct contact with roadside robbers or an amalgamation. There was no telling, so he wanted to give himself a little wiggle room. He would certainly reach Madrid by noon tomorrow, and perhaps even earlier than that, as Sterling was not opposed to sleeping on Manchester as the horse trotted along. He’d done it before.

Another cigarette or two, and he was ready to start his day, Sterling putting on his bulletproof vest, his boots, and slipping into his black duster, all his charms on his body, his cowboy hat on his head, hair combed back and tucked behind his ears. It was about this time that Maria appeared outside of his room, the native woman in the same green dress she’d worn last night but with a different colored cloth draped over her head this time, one that had a light shade of blue to it, reminiscent of the sky the day after a long rain.

Down the wooden ladder Sterling went, where he joined Maria and tipped his hat to her. “Ma’am. I don’t know what y’all got in the way of coffee, but I do have a tin if you’re interested,” he told her.

“We have some, not the canned stuff neither.”

“Really?” Sterling asked as they headed toward the restaurant, which was next to the repair shop.

“The tribes trade frequently, and we were able to get roasted coffee beans from Central America.”

“Did you now?” Sterling asked, impressed. “Any word on what’s going down in Central America? Mexico? I never really think about other parts of the world.”

“They don’t know,” she said, referring to the natives her tribe had traded with. “Questions like that don’t come up. And we’re getting things after they’ve been traded several other times.”

“I know how that goes,” Sterling said as he got the door for her, holding it open long enough for Maria to step inside the onsite restaurant. The two had coffee, which turned out to be one of the best cups he’d had in the last five years. For breakfast, they were served a plate of fried quail eggs and blue cornbread, and Sterling asked the chef if he would chop up the jalmundo peppers he’d been saving for a special occasion, the ones he’d gotten from Luna back in Hatch.

While they ate, Sterling explained what a desert haiku was, Maria not too interested in his unique form of poetry until he produced the piece of paper he’d scribbled on earlier. “This one is for you,” he said as he slid the piece of paper across the table. “I normally don’t share with people what I write, but I figured… Well, just read.”

She opened it and read the poem. “You wrote this for me?” Maria asked, a fondness coming over her face as she looked up at him.

“I sure did. I don’t know if I’ll ever be back by here, but if I do stop by, I expect another cup of this coffee and a good meal.”

Maria pressed the folded piece of paper against her chest, and then slipped it into a pocket hidden in her dress. “It’ll cost you,” she said with a smirk.

“Shee-it, I don’t mind paying,” said Sterling.

“You are an odd man,” she said as she took a sip of coffee. There was a bit left over on her lip, which she wiped away with a hand-stitched napkin. “You’re a necromancer who was once a pepper farmer who likes to write haiku. Never heard of nothing like that. Where did you get this idea of a haiku anyway? Where did you say it was from?”

“Japan. I ain’t never been, unless I somehow visited before the Reset, but that’s where I got the idea from, from a book about their culture. I got this feeling that if I did go there, I wouldn’t like what I found anyway.”

“Why’s that?”

“They got peppers there?”

Maria shrugged. “I don’t know anything about Japan.”

“What about deserts?” He shook his head. “No, ma’am, from the picture books I’ve seen, Japan doesn’t have any deserts. And as much as I’m tired of the desert monotony, I’m also accustomed to it. I like it. It suits me.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know how to get into it without saying something that would make me feel foolish later, something about how I may be hard on the outside like a desert, but I’m still soft on the inside, somewhere deep, in a place that’s hard to reach. Something stupid like that. It’s almost better not to say nothing.” Sterling pressed away from the table.

She smirked. “You just said a lot.”

“Yeah? I can be a little garrulous,” he said as he finished his cup of coffee. “I blame this here caffeine. It’s got me saying all sorts of stupid shit.”

“So I’ll never see you again?” she asked, the smile on her face fading.

“I wouldn’t say that, Maria, but the odds are high this is the last time you’ll ever lay eyes on me. Like I told you last night, I’m a man on a mission, and I plan to see that mission to its natural completion, even if that completion is my ass six feet under. Who knows where it’s going to take me.”

“But you have to come back by here, when you head south to White Sands…”

“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. It sort of depends on where my little mission here takes me. Read that desert haiku I wrote you whenever you think about me. Try to find the space between the words, and be extra careful if any Killbillies stop by. I won’t be around next time to fetch you. Hell, maybe it’s best if you head up to the pueblo itself, where it’s safer.”

Maria’s eyes started to water; Sterling knew it was time to leave. He thanked her once again for the meal and stood, the woman joining him as he reached the door.

“Want to see something neat?” he asked her, a gust of wind picking up as he stepped outside, blowing the ends of his duster in the same way it blew through the ends of her dark hair.

Maria nodded.

“Watch this.” Sterling equipped Manchester’s bones. He lifted his hand and his skeletal steed took shape, the bones clicking into place. Sterling then equipped his saddle, putting a wool blanket on before he placed it over Manchester’s back.

“This is your horse?” Maria asked as she took a step back, the color draining from her face.

“Don’t be afraid,” Sterling said as he placed his hand on Manchester’s bony muzzle. “He’s a good boy, ain’t you, Pingo?”

“His name is Pingo?”

“No, his name is Manchester. Pingo is a word I picked up from someone passing by Truth or Consequences. It means ‘favored horse.’ From what I can tell, people don’t use the word around here, but it sort of fits, at least to me. So it’s Manchester or Pingo. Hell, since he’s my only horse, by default he has to be my favorite.”

Sterling mounted up, ignoring a few of Maria’s relatives, who had stepped out of their various buildings to gawk at the cowboy necromancer and his skeletal steed.

“Yup,” Sterling said, and with that single word, he rode off, not wanting to see the look in Maria’s eyes as he left. He had met plenty of nice young ladies like her over the last five years, specifically in his more adventurous days, and he couldn’t blame her. Everyone was looking for a hero, and if they weren’t looking for that, someone who could take care of them would do. Man or woman, your chance for survival was much better in the desert if you had a companion by your side.

For a while, Sterling had Roxy, but that had fizzled out after what happened three years ago. And he was fairly certain it wouldn’t spark up again if and when he did rescue her. No way, no how. Whatever they once were wasn’t the reason he wanted to break her out of the militia’s jail in White Sands anyway. If there was one person dedicated to the mission that Sterling had set out on three years ago, one person who would see it to its end no matter how shitty things got, it was Roxy.

She was a badass then, and he could only imagine the sheer number of men it would take to bring her down now. This got him wondering, aside from the technomancer that Gasper claimed they had, what did the White Sands Militia have protecting their base? Would Sterling be able to bring down whatever it was, or was it something like sheer numbers that gave them their added strength?

By himself, this was debatable, but with the Sunflower Kid at his side, everything changed. Their powers worked well together, and there were points where Sterling wished he’d had the Kid’s ability rather than the power to animate the dead. Nothing like seeing the Kid lift a vine from the ground and kill someone long-distance, he thought. Plus, the Kid could create enormous plant constructs, similar to the one outside of the cultists’ compound.

Manchester picked up his pace, galloping at full speed toward the interstate.

“Hopefully, we’ll be riding with company in a few days,” Sterling told his bone horse as he made it to I-25, shifting north. He equipped his bag of tobacco and a paper and started working on a cigarette, Manchester instinctively slowing. Once the cigarette was squarely in Sterling’s mouth, he lit it, grabbed the reins, and hunkered down. “Vamos!” he shouted to his skeletal steed.

There came a point where Sterling knew he was going to have to branch off the highway. From the rumors he’d heard in T or C, there were several groups either partnered together or warring with one another in Albuquerque. “A real shitshow,” according to Kip, who had spoken to people that had passed through the city. These included the Barelas Glyphs, the Old Town Toros, the Kirtland Airmen, and the Alta Monte Homecidos.

This was why he, and anyone in their right mind, avoided Duke City, a nickname given to Albuquerque because the metropolis was named after the Duke of Albuquerque, a 17th-century Spanish nobleman. Leaving the highway would push Sterling into rough terrain, and it would possibly put him in direct contact with an amalgamation, but it would be easier than navigating Albuquerque. He would eventually come to Interstate 40, which he could follow until he got to Tijeras, and from there onto a road less trafficked, the Turquoise Trail to Madrid.

Anything to avoid Duke City.

He was an hour or so outside the Isleta Pueblo, and just starting to steer Manchester off the highway, when something in the road caught his attention. Sterling paused, not certain if he should investigate the enormous block of ice sitting in the middle of the highway, the block easily eight feet tall and eight feet deep. His instinct told him to leave it alone, but there was a person frozen into the surface of the ice, something in the person’s mouth, and it piqued his curiosity.

“Why do I get the feeling I’m going to regret this?” he mumbled to Manchester as he turned toward the giant block of ice. Sterling approached it cautiously, and once he was about thirty feet away, he hopped off his skeletal steed and cautiously made his way up to the structure, clearly conjured by a mancer. Frozen inside the block—his hands, and the tips of his face pressing out of the surface of the ice—was a man with a shocked look on his face, a piece of paper rolled up and sticking out of his mouth.

“Here we go,” Sterling said as he reached up to the man’s face and removed the piece of paper. He unrolled it to find a note written in scratchy handwriting that looked as if it had been penned by a madman.

Cowboy Nekromancur,

U R proberly wunderang why I left U this message. No cents in draweeng this out. Meet me in Duke City, Old Town. U and me got things we need to diskus.

-Ram

“You damn illiterate son of a bitch,” Sterling said as he turned the message around, seeing if there was anything written on the back. Once again, he looked up at the man frozen in ice, everything making sense now, even the bounty hunter’s white clothing in a way. Ram was a cryomancer, one of the Adapted, able to manipulate ice. It all made sense now, especially how he made the natives who had met him feel cold in some way. Sterling looked down at the block, noticing a puddle of water evaporating on the asphalt, the tips of his boot wet. He didn’t know how long the man had been frozen there on the highway, but the ice was thick enough that it could have been several hours, maybe even longer.

Sterling hated being taunted.

He knew that was what Ram was trying to do—the cryomancer was trying to psych Sterling out, to rile him up. But it wasn’t going to work this time. Sterling was just about to turn away and figure out what he should do next when the roar of engines met his ears. He had attracted attention, or more likely, the giant ice block had, which was the last thing Sterling wanted this close to Albuquerque.

After sending the message he received to his inventory list, Sterling went ahead and equipped his rolling papers and his dwindling supply of tobacco. As the engines grew louder, he rolled himself a cigarette and lit it. Sterling was soon greeted by a group of men on dirt bikes, all of them in body armor and tank tops, loose cargo pants and combat boots, several with the letters ‘B-G’ tattooed in Old English on their faces and skulls.

The Barelas Glyphs.

“Howdy, boys,” Sterling said, cigarette parked in the corner of his mouth as he casually looked them over. There were seven gang members, their heads shaved, some with little mustaches and goatees.

“See?” one of them said to a small man on the best-looking dirt bike. “He wasn’t lying. The man in white wasn’t lying!”

“It’s José!” one of the men said as he stopped his dirt bike. The kickstand in place, he rushed over to the block of ice, the man’s arms tensing as he saw his frozen comrade.

“Did you say a man in white?” Sterling asked the group. “Because if you want to know who did this, I hate to tell you, but you already met him back in Albuquerque. I ain’t had nothing to do with this. And I don’t want nothing to do with you fellas.”

“No, you did this,” the leader of the gang said as he also turned off his bike. He used his heel to pop the kickstand out and stood, stone-like ridges starting to press out of his skin and rippling up his arms. A gaiamancer. “Fuck you, ese.”

“Now, I know y’all can’t be as dumb as you look,” Sterling said as he ashed his cigarette calmly. “You boys see my bone horse back there. Does that look like something a cryomancer could conjure up? And to add to that, do I look like the type of motherfucker going around freezing gangbangers in blocks of ice? If you’re thinking ‘hell no, you don’t; you look like a necromancer,’ you’d be right. I want you to think back to the man that told you about this here block of ice, the one wearing all white. If you controlled ice, and considered yourself some sort of renowned bounty hunter that loves to leave a favorable impression on folks, wouldn’t you be wearing all white? Sort of matches his demeanor, don’t it? I’m just thinking outside the box a bit here, fellas, using some of my detective skills, but it’s pretty clear to me what’s going on here.” Sterling motioned toward the block of ice, hoping that his Persuasion technique would help to some degree, even if he was being snarky. “And to add to that, if I could control ice, wouldn’t I have turned you boys into gangbanger popsicles by this point and been done with it?”

“We’re going to kill you,” said another gang member as he got off his bike, requisite B-G sprawled across the left side of his skull.

“Y’all want to see something cool?” Sterling asked as he glanced at the frozen corpse. “How’s about this? I’ll animate your buddy José here, and he can tell you himself that it was the man in white who did this to him, not me. Then you boys can get back on your little bikes and take your sorry asses back to Duke City and let me be on my way. Leave here with your lives. Imagine that, I’m actually giving you a chance. I don’t do it very often; you should take it.” Sterling placed his hand on his revolver. “Or, we do this the hard way.”

The ground shifted beneath him and he drew his weapon, firing it into the skull of the first gang member, viscera blowing out the back of his head. His cigarette still in his mouth, Sterling jumped to avoid a crag lifting out of the ground. Bam! He fired his weapon again, his bullet passing through another one of the men’s heads.

One of the gang members, a brute who had clearly put Stat Points galore into Fortitude and Strength, exploded toward Sterling, the cowboy necromancer inches away from being tackled. While he might have started the week out rusty, Sterling had his swagger back, and as the man passed, he lifted his revolver and fired a shot into the back of his head, taking another one down. Sterling whistled, and Manchester rushed forward, colliding with their parked dirt bikes and providing a much-needed distraction.

The lone mancer of the group continued forming stone armor along with a matching face enclosure, which was going to make him a lot harder to kill with a bullet. Since he’d already taken down three of them, Sterling figured he would save this one for last, his next focus being on one of the scrawnier of the gangbangers, who came at him with a chain wrapped around his muscled arm.

The man swung his chain and Sterling caught it, the tip of it whipping against his arm. He ignored the flash of pain as he yanked the man toward him, Sterling firing several shots through his body and a final one through the base of his skull.

He turned to the two men Manchester was distracting and took a quick puff from his cigarette to finish it. Sterling flicked the cigarette butt away and tackled one of the men, subsequently executing him with a single shot. Adrenaline rippling through him, he holstered his firearm and retrieved his sickle-sword through the breakaway scabbard that Raylan had designed. One power swipe later and the second-to-last gang member was seeing things from a different perspective, his head flying through the air in the opposite direction of his body as Sterling turned to the man with stone armor, his final opponent.

“I warned you boys,” Sterling said, blood dripping off the blade of his sword. “Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

His opponent said something to him, but his voice was now muffled by the stone mass covering his face. Even with all his weight, the gaiamancer moved relatively quickly. His assailant’s punches were easy to calculate and avoid, but the few attempts that Sterling made to bring him down, once with his sword and then with his own fists and feet, proved futile.

Sterling recalled his last fight with a gaiamancer, and how he had simply tired him out. It was clear that usage of a gaiamancer’s power drew on their Mana, and if he simply continued avoiding the man’s attacks, the thug would eventually lose juice. But Sterling didn’t know how much juice his opponent had, nor did he know if stone armor drew on Mana the same way as calling forth constructs.

An idea came to Sterling, one that he had recently tried for the first time.

Even though he knew it would hurt to do so, Sterling collided with the man, the two of them pressing back, the armored thug able to hold his ground as Sterling failed to bring him to the ground. He summoned his Mold Manipulation power, black and green mold creeping into the crevices of the man’s stone armor. The gangbanger slammed his fists down onto Sterling’s back, the pain blooming across his shoulders, Sterling losing his cowboy hat. He held on, suffering through two more heavy fists before the man started to gasp. His knees buckled and the two of them came down together.

His hands now on his chest, Sterling continued to press mold into the crevices of the stone armor, the mancer letting out a final gasp as he died.

“Goddamn, you’re a hard man to kill,” Sterling said once he was sure the man was dead.

He slowly got to his feet and retrieved his cowboy hat, the urge to ride to Albuquerque to deal with Ram flourishing within him, causing his fists to tense. But Sterling knew better. Ram was clearly trying to set a trap, trying to lure him out by provoking him, and subsequently putting him on a turf that he controlled.

Not only that, Sterling had more important things to deal with, such as reaching Madrid, meeting with Raylan, and getting help to stop the telemancer’s influence so he could rescue the Sunflower Kid. That, and he still needed to get down to White Sands to meet up with Don Gasper and rescue Roxy and the rumored technomancer.

“Nah,” Sterling said as he looked up at the block of ice. “You can wait for me in Albuquerque for all I care,” he told the frozen man as if he were Ram. “If anyone is going to be calling the shots here, pendejo, it’s going to be me. I’ve got plenty of time left to kill you dead.”

Sterling equipped one of his jugs of water and took a big swig from it. He also ate a few peppers, which would tide him over for the time being. After rolling up a cigarette and lighting it, Sterling approached Manchester and mounted up.

He headed to the east, back on the path he had already planned out for himself. He was fairly certain he wouldn’t be able to make it to Madrid by nightfall, but he’d be there first thing in the morning and that was good enough for the time being. As he rode away from the highway, he took a quick look at his stats:

You have received 2,890 XP!

Name: Sterling Monedero

Race: Human

Mancer Class: Necromancer

Class Ranking: Bone Sculptor

Level: 60

Fortitude: 117

Strength: 35

Resolve: 152

Mana: 134/159

Current Armor Rating: 28

XP: 310,364

XP to Next Level:3,560

Stat Points Available: 0

Technique Points Available: 1

It wouldn’t be much longer until he got his next level.

“Not too bad,” he mumbled. “Raylan, here I come.”

.Chapter Seven.

Sterling rode the rest of the day, still salty about the message that Ram had left him. It took every iota of self-control for him not to turn Manchester around and head to Albuquerque. Ram was looking for a fight, and if Sterling hadn’t set out on this journey with a mission in mind, a task that was already hard enough to see to its completion, he would have gone to give him that fight, even if he knew it was likely a trap.

Any invitation like that has got to be some sort of ambush, Sterling thought, ignoring the heat of the setting sun, the aches he was feeling in his lower back from riding all day, the desolate terrain—all of it. He wasn’t far from Tijeras, where he would likely set up camp for the night before finishing the final leg of his journey to Madrid.

Another thirty minutes of riding and he saw a sign that read Route 66, Sterling noticing that it ran parallel to the highway, separated by russet swaths of dry earth peppered with various shrubs, none of it edible. The sun had fully set by this point, the sky a shade of mulberry with an orange rim tracing over the mountains on the horizon. He was glad that he usually kept jerky and peppers in his list, but wished he had picked up something more solid to eat back at the Tiwa trading post. But he had been so distracted by Maria earlier…

Sterling shook his head.

That wasn’t what he was out here for, and it certainly wasn’t why he had left his pepper farm in Truth or Consequences. Maria was a nice young lady though, one that was part of a community a lot closer-knit than the locals and drunks that made up the city of T or C. It would be good for Sterling to become part of something like that, but he knew in the end that it wasn’t for him. It may have looked appealing from the outside, but there would come a point where he wanted to go off on his own, do his own thing, be his own bad self.

And he didn’t want to put Maria through that; aside from the fact that he didn’t want their relationship to be defined by how he had saved her, he didn’t want to put anyone through that. Cowboy chivalry was alive and well; even though it should have died with the rest of the population on that fateful day five years ago when Godwalkers appeared in the sky, most of the world’s population killed in a bloody instant, he still had scruples.

It wasn’t the first time Sterling had tried to relive what had happened moments after the Reset. He’d gone through his recollection of the event multiple times in various states of mind. All he could remember was that he had been sitting at a bar in Las Cruces, everyone around him suddenly dead. The bartender, who had just finished pouring up a beer for him, was slumped over, viscera floating in Sterling’s beer. Gruesome. Frightened, he stumbled out of the bar, tried to get in the nearest vehicle he could find that had the door open, failed to start it, and in his delirious rush to figure out what was happening, Sterling ended up falling out of the car and somehow hitting his head in the process.

He woke up the next morning as a cowboy necromancer.

“Just need to find me a place,” Sterling said to Manchester as he began looking around the abandoned village of Tijeras. It was small, and there didn’t seem to be a single soul that lived there. What buildings were left were ramshackle, and aside from the sign he’d seen earlier, there was only one other sign in the town, which pointed toward the Tijeras Pueblo Archaeological Site.

Figuring there would be something there for him to crash in for the night, Sterling headed toward the archaeological site, wondering as he trotted along why they had named the place Tijeras in the first place, which was the Spanish word for ‘scissors.’ From what he could tell by the setting sun, he was in a canyon, something he was able to confirm once he found a solitary building near the archaeological site for him to crash in for the night.

Now seated in a corner of an empty storage shed, the space clear of any environment, Sterling equipped his flashlight and his New Mexico travel guide. Flashlight in his mouth, his cowboy hat resting on the ground next to him, Sterling located the section of the travel guide that detailed central New Mexico. He found Tijeras, and read that it was located in a canyon that separated the Sandia and Manzano Mountains, briefly recalling seeing the mountains in the distance as he veered toward the highway. The village used to exist in a natural corridor that operated as an invisible line separating the Great Plains Indians and the influx of Spanish settlements. He imagined that the place used to be a war zone of sorts, that or a meeting ground, possibly both.

Flipping the page, Sterling read about Route 66, the road he had just traveled along for a bit, but didn’t understand why the guide kept referring to it as historic. The text claimed that the canyon drained to the west into an expansive dry wash known as Tijeras Arroyo, Kirtland Air Force Base not far off, a name that Sterling recognized. The Air Force Base was home to the Kirtland Airmen, who had been trying to clean up Albuquerque for years, to the point they had become just as bad as some of the gangs that fought for turf in what was once New Mexico’s biggest city.

Funny how that works…

A noise outside the storage shed caught his attention and he quickly stood, Sterling sending his flashlight back to his inventory list as he retrieved his revolver. He stepped out to find Manchester near the entrance to the shed, just where he had left him. He was just turning back when he noticed something.

Sitting on a small ridge not far from him was a lone coyote, Sterling experiencing a chill as the hairs on his neck stood to attention. He kept waiting for the coyote to morph into a woman, like he had seen back in Las Cruces, but it never happened. Eventually, the coyote moved on, Sterling never able to see the face of the canine due to the location of the moon.

“Damn thing spooked me,” he mumbled as he came back into the shed. He removed his duster and his shirt to get to his bulletproof vest. Once that was off, he put his shirt back on and equipped the bottle of tequila he had in his inventory. He finished it with one quick pull. He then ate more of the green chili jerky he had in his list, and smoked a couple of cigarettes before winding down, Sterling perusing his book of sketches and desert haiku as he felt the effects of the alcohol.

He found one he had written on tequila after a night of drinking with Kip, a smile coming across his face as he relived the experience:

Take my tequila

Throw it back and ask for more

The answer is yes

“We were damn fools that night,” Sterling said as he remembered some of the trouble Kip had gotten in over the years, usually involving women, but just as often involving the men that surrounded them. It was always something with that man, but Kip kept things interesting, and Sterling appreciated that.

Eventually, he equipped his wool blanket and brought it up to his shoulders, keeping it tucked under his chin as he slept with his back against the wall, revolver in hand, cowboy hat over his eyes.

Sterling awoke the next morning feeling refreshed. He dressed and had a cigarette for breakfast as he made his way around the archaeological site of the Tijeras Pueblo. According to a placard that was still standing, the pueblo was built in the 1300s, and at the time it had upwards of two hundred rooms, the terraced buildings arranged around a kiva.

Mention of the kiva reminded Sterling of what Abuela had said about him being the Skeleton Man, the Hopi god of death, and how he had welcomed the natives to the barren landscape with what was essentially a shrug and a stark statement: I have not anything; this is the way I am living here. Now if you are willing to live here that way too, with me and share this life, why come, you are welcome.

“Skeleton Man,” Sterling mumbled as he made his way over to Manchester, forgetting the actual Hopi name for the god of death. “Certainly is a nickname, ain’t that right?”

It was a cool morning, mist hanging over the canyon, lizards and snakes and scorpions in their dens, the only birds overhead migrating south, winter slowly creeping across the high desert. There were trees in this area of New Mexico, their leaves the color of piss, amber ale, watered-down lemonade, the occasional breeze whipping some of them up into a frenzy. There were some trees in T or C, sure, but nothing like what he saw here, the Sandia Mountains slathered with foliage, hiding their peaks, the tops of the trees golden like sunlight cutting through a late morning haze.

While Sterling needed to get to Madrid, he also got the urge to pen a desert haiku, to sketch what he was witnessing, the landscape awe-inspiring. He guided Manchester to a bluff overlooking the road and had his horse stand there for a moment while Sterling equipped his book and wrote what came to mind.

Amber gold yellow

Mountains painted by the gods

Metamorphosis

He thought about ending the desert haiku with ‘Nuevo México,’ making it part of the series on what was once the state, but liked his final version better. Metamorphosis. It was better than his first option, ‘the color of death,’ because the trees weren’t dying, they were simply shutting down for the winter to bloom again in the spring.

Sterling didn’t know where some of these words came from in his head when he created his poetry, and they certainly didn’t match the words that came out of his mouth, his unique Southern patois riddled with Spanglish. But something about his pen on the paper, the rough texture as he moved the ink across it, the connection between himself and what was unleashed from his soul in that moment of respite, produced words locked deep in his psyche. The cobwebs clear for a moment, his twang nonexistent unless needed for syllabic purposes.

If only that worked on his memory; if only he understood the picture he had found in his old wallet. Aside from the obvious—that she was his wife—who was the woman named Isabella? Who was the boy in the photo? Who had Sterling once been?

“Questions for another day,” he mumbled as he sent his book of desert haiku back to his inventory list, and he continued on, eventually coming to a patch of rocks that looked almost anthropomorphic, the stones stacked atop one another, Sterling not able to tell if natives or the weather had sculpted the formations. He felt an energy from the place and paused there to smoke a cigarette before moving on.

The road to Madrid was relatively clear of debris, and aside from an occasional rock or an abandoned vehicle, Manchester was able to move quickly. Once again, he felt and suppressed an urge to turn the horse around and head toward Albuquerque where he would confront the bounty hunter named Ram. He thought about the Sunflower Kid and what he would tell the Kid after he broke through the barrier protecting the Culto Demente Sagrado. He thought about Don Gasper, and wondered if the crazy old shaman had made it to Alamogordo by now. He also thought about Roxy, what had gone wrong between them three years ago, and what he was going to tell her once he freed her from the White Sands Militia.

He needed to tell her the truth.

“You got a lot on your plate,” he said as the cracked asphalt started to turn, Sterling finally reaching his destination.

Madrid had once been an old mining colony revitalized by artists and hippies before the Reset, many of the buildings built right up to the rock that surrounded the village, a rustic feel to the place, Madrid about half a mile long from start to finish. There were a few people out, and Sterling wished he had walked into town rather than riding on his bone horse once a child screamed and pointed at him. Sterling hopped off Manchester, collapsed his skeletal steed, and sent the bones and the saddle to his inventory list. He was dusting off his hands, trying to make sure he looked presentable, when a woman approached.

“What do you want, mister?” she asked as she eyed him suspiciously. The dark-haired woman was in a pair of overalls, one of the straps unfastened. She wore a red shirt beneath this, her arms exposed, her skin browned by the sun. She carried a defiant look on her face, but she was pretty, her black hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, the woman in a pair of turquoise earrings the same color as her eyes.

“For one, I ain’t here to cause no trouble, so let’s just get that out of the way. I wouldn’t mind some breakfast, though. Which one of these here houses is Raylan Mossberg living in?”

That same pair of turquoise eyes darted from the revolver holstered at Sterling’s waist to the scabbard of his breakaway sickle-sword. “Raylan made your weapons?”

“Can’t you tell?” Sterling asked the woman as he used his hands to sweep the sides of his duster away, giving her a better look at his customized accoutrements.

“What are you? Some kind of mancer?”

“I could ask you the same question,” Sterling told the woman as he took a step closer to her. “You the town inquisitor?”

Her turquoise eyes started to turn red as plumes of fire scaled up her arms and quickly dissipated, the smell of burning fuel reaching Sterling’s nostrils. “Does that answer your question?”

“Let me guess, yet another fiery pyromancer,” he said as he licked the front of his teeth. “I don’t know what them Godwalkers were thinking when they gave us these powers, but for some reason, pyromancers always seem more fiery than other folk, in abundance too. Shit, maybe it has something to do with astrology. Are you a Leo? Sagittarius? What’s that other one?”

“I’m an Aries.”

“Bingo. I’m pretty sure that I’m a Scorpio,” Sterling told her. “Sort of makes sense, if you think about my personality.”

“I don’t believe in astrological signs. Just more bullshit from the before people.”

“Yeah,” Sterling said as he glanced up at the sky. “Maybe it is stupid to base our personalities on where the sun and the moon were when we were shat into this godforsaken world.”

“Is that what you call childbirth?”

“No, that’s what I call a joke,” he said, still trying to get a read on the woman. Sterling would be lying if he said he didn’t feel some type of spark between them, but that could have been her desire for violence if he got out of line, Sterling possibly misinterpreting what the pyromancer was putting off.

“So you are here for Raylan? Would he remember you?”

Sterling laughed at the question. “I don’t think he would forget someone like me.”

“He makes a lot of stuff for a lot of people. You’d be surprised.”

“Did he ever tell you about a necromancer who tried to bring down a Godwalker three years ago, and partially succeeded?”

The woman shrugged. “Maybe. But I don’t know if I would believe a dumb story like that. It sounds like this necromancer would be incredibly stupid to try to take on one of them things. Not that Raylan lies or anything. Just sounds a bit… hyperbolic.”

“Is Raylan known for tall tales? Because from what I remember, he was always a straight shooter.”

“That he is.”

An elderly woman stepped out of one of the buildings and said something to the pyromancer, Sterling not able to understand her on account of the elderly woman’s thick accent.

“Well, it sounds like mawmaw over here needs you for something,” he said, interpreting that she was being summoned. “If you’ll just point me in the direction of Mr. Raylan Mossberg, that would be mighty kind of you. Or I could just walk around until I hear some tinkering, which is also a good way to find yourself a flectomancer. Like I said earlier, I’m also in the mood for some breakfast, and while I’m not opposed to eating alone, it would be nice to have some company. My treat. Hell, I’ll even throw in some special peppers I got called jalmundos. Damn things are spicy; if you know anything about the Scoville Scale, I can get into that while we—”

“—Do you want company over breakfast? Or do you want Raylan?” she said, smirking at Sterling. The pyromancer placed an arm behind her waist, which accentuated her breasts as her shoulders pressed back.

“I want both, but the question is, what do you want, ma’am?”

“I’ll take you to Raylan, and the name ain’t ma’am. It’s Sierra.”

“Sierra, huh?” he asked as he mulled the name over. “Just like the mountains, huh?”

“Just like. Now come on.” Sierra turned, motioning for Sterling to follow her.

Sterling didn’t know why there was a small airplane hangar in Madrid, but it served as a perfect space for Raylan’s workshop, the flectomancer obsessed with order. Everything was stacked and labeled, no clutter on his workbench. The mustachioed man himself was barely over five feet tall, with a pair of repurposed goggles over his eyes. He wore a plaid shirt that had seen better days, the elbows with corduroy patches on them, his jeans clearly repaired multiple times, and shiny steeltoed boots to complete his outfit.

“Raylan,” Sterling said as he approached. The flectomancer hopped off his stool and looked up as Sterling extended his hand to him. The two shook, Sterling nodding as they did so.

“How are my weapons holding up?” Raylan asked, the grin on his face lifting the corners of his mustache.

“Good, although the Mana drain from the revolver may cause me trouble down the line. Hasn’t yet, though.”

“I see, I’ll take a look at it,” Raylan said as he looked to Sierra. “Sierra, this is Sterling.”

“Oh, we’ve met; he came parading into town like he owned the place.”

“Says you,” Sterling told her. “And I tried to discard Manchester outside the town, although some of the locals probably saw him. My mistake there.”

“Your bone horse?” Raylan asked.

“You have a bone horse?”

“Sierra,” Raylan said as he turned to her, “Sterling and I have much to discuss. Would you run along to the restaurant and order breakfast for both of us? You are hungry, right?”

“Shee-it, I’m famished.”

“Run along to the restaurant?” Sierra frowned at the flectomancer. “I’ll walk over there with the two of you, but, no offense, Raylan, I’m not like some of the kids around here, nor am I like some of the regular folk. You can’t just order me around.” Sierra winked at him once Raylan started to apologize. “I’m just messing with you. I got some chores I need to take care of at the restaurant anyway. See you later,” she told Sterling, her eyes locking onto his just a second longer than they should have as she left.

Sterling snorted once she was gone. “Damn pyromancers, I swear.”

“Yes, she can be a bit…”

“Fiery?”

“That’s one word to describe her, yes. She’s one of the newest in Madrid, showed up earlier this year. Sierra is good to have around, however, and she has been useful a couple times when unscrupulous groups have come to town looking for easy targets. I like her.”

“You ain’t the only one,” Sterling said.

This made Raylan smile. He pushed his goggles to the top of his head, his silver hair pressing back, and nodded once again as he looked at Sterling. “As much as I want to think you rode all the way up here just to have breakfast with me, I have a feeling that’s not the case.”

“I’ve got a lot to talk about,” Sterling said. “And maybe some questions too.”

“Well, in that case, let’s start from the beginning. What happened?”

As they made their way out of his workshop, and back down to the main road that ran through Madrid, Sterling told Raylan everything, from the Godwalkers and the Killbillies attacking his ranch, to his crucifixion and how Don Gasper—a man whom Raylan was acquainted with—made his prediction, thought Sterling left out the part where he had heard a coyote speak to him. He also left out his little side quest in Truth or Consequences with Kip to get some fundage. He briefed the flectomancer on what he had learned from the Hopi natives, how a solimancer named Paco had led him to the Sunflower Kid. By that point, they had arrived at the restaurant, the two seated by a friendly fifteen-year-old waitress at a table outside on the patio, another couple enjoying a meal as well.

“So the Sunflower Kid is with the Culto Demente Sagrado?” Raylan asked when Sterling got to that part of his journey. “And you need the Kid to get the team back together, because you plan to ride down to the White Sands desert to free Roxy. Am I following?”

“Yup. There’s someone else I want to add to my team, now that we’re talking about it,” Sterling said as the waitress approached again. “I’ll have a beer, and don’t give me any hell about beer for breakfast.”

“No qualms with me,” Raylan said, showing Sterling his palms. “Coffee, Jennifer,” he told the young waitress.

“And for breakfast?” she asked in a southern twang.

“Y’all got green chili stew?” Sterling asked her.

“We have some from yesterday we can warm up. Might take a minute.”

“Yesterday’s stew? Consider it a done deal. I’ll have the biggest bowl you got of that, a side of tortillas if you got it. Go ahead and mix some of these peppers in with mine,” he said as he equipped a few of the jalmundo peppers. The waitress took the peppers from him and glanced at Raylan.

“Sure, I’ll have the same. We’ll get something proper tonight for dinner,” the flectomancer said.

Once she was gone, Sterling jumped right back into the conversation. “Like I was saying, there’s someone else I want to add to my team.”

“The team that consists of only one person at the moment, right?” Raylan asked.

Sterling laughed. “You ain’t wrong there. But I got plans, and I’m pretty sure that native I told you about, Paco, will probably join up if his granny lets him. So I got a solimancer in the wings, and I’m going to have a biomancer, then there’s Roxy, and once I figure out where Zephyr is, I’ll try to get her to join as well.”

“Zephyr? I may have some information on that particular young lady…”

“Good, I want to hear it. But before we do that, I want you to know, man-to-man, Raylan Mossberg, that I need you on my team. We need you. We will need you. I need you.”

The flectomancer raised an eyebrow of doubt.

“Don’t look at me like that. You’re the best there is in the entire state. Hell, all of America, as far as I’m concerned. I’m going to need someone like you if we’re going to take out them Godwalkers.”

“You know I despise the Godwalkers as much as you do, Sterling,” Raylan said after a long pause, “but you can’t just take them out. If you destroy one, there will be another. You should already be aware of this, considering your past. You’re playing with fire.”

“You’re confusing me with Sierra,” Sterling joked. “And honestly, that’s another reason I’ve come to you. You know more about practically everything going on in the state. People come from all across the Southwest for tech. You hear things, you know things. That’s well and good. Now if I was a betting man, and I am at times, I would bet that you knew what to do to take down more than one Godwalker. At the very least, I’d bet that you had a theory or two.”

“Are you referring to the terminal?”

“See?” Sterling said as he threw up his arms, nearly hitting the beer out of the waitress’s hand as she reapproached the table. “I don’t even know what a terminal is, so you’ve already told me more than I knew before I rode my happy ass all the way up here.”

The waitress heard his statement, giggled quietly to herself, and stepped away after placing a cup of oily-looking coffee on the table for Raylan.

“You do realize why you failed last time, right?” Raylan asked. “There’s a key piece to the puzzle that you are missing.”

“You mean a technomancer?”

“Actually, yes, that was the piece I was referring to. How did you know?”

“Say what you want about Don Gasper, but he ain’t nobody’s fool. He already told me that I needed one of them folks. And regarding the technomancer? Problem solved. There is also one being held with Roxy. I probably should have mentioned that as well.”

“You never were clear to me about what happened last time. I know that you and the others took down a smaller one, but what about the larger one?”

“That’s a story for another day, and it doesn’t pertain to what I’m asking right now. It’s not as crazy of a story as you would think, but there’s a reason that… There’s a reason that things happened the way they did.” Sterling took a sip from his beer, his eyebrows lifting in surprise. “Hot damn, you have something to do with this?” he asked, impressed that the beer was actually cold.

“What do you think?”

“I swear to something, amigo, you really are a genius.”

“I try. As I’m sure you’re aware, if you are going to put a team together, you need the right people. I’m not opposed to anyone you’ve already listed, but you’re missing a key mancer, one that could change everything, and possibly for the better. Who knows if this technomancer is really there in the White Sands desert? But trust me when I say that you’re going to need one, especially if you plan to do anything to these Godwalkers.”

Sterling ran his hand along his beard stubble. “Like I told you, that’s in the works. I just need to get the Sunflower Kid first, then everything else will fall into place.”

Raylan looked down at his coffee, staring at the surface of the liquid for a moment. Finally, he nodded. “I need to think about all this, so don’t get your hopes up. I like where I’m at in my life, and no offense to you, I just don’t know if this is something you can pull off. We’re talking about Godwalkers here, floating alien monoliths that are the size of skyscrapers. I don’t know if any man or woman could pull it off. But if you did attempt it, you would need a technomancer, and you would need to start with a terminal, the nearest one being in Utah, last I heard.”

“Where at in Utah?”

“I’ve heard the Moab Desert, and Monument Valley.”

Sterling smirked. “Why do I got the feeling I’m not going to like it in Utah?”

“You said whatever it takes.”

“You ain’t wrong,” Sterling said as he took another sip of his cold beer, savoring it. “Need to get me a travel guide. And I might need to get me some warmer clothing, too. But I got to start with the Kid. I’m sure you already deduced this, but I need you to invent me something that can stop a telemancer. My plan is to break into that little cultist den of iniquity, grab the Kid, then head south to Alamogordo, which as you know, ain’t far from the White Sands desert, where the militia is holding Roxy. Once we have her and this technomancer, if they are indeed there, I’ll come back this way. You said you knew something about Zephyr, what’s that?”

“She’s in Albuquerque.”

“Goddammit,” Sterling said. “I was hoping to avoid that hellhole.”

Raylan laughed. “You aren’t the only person I’ve heard say that.”

“In that case, I’m going to put her on the back burner, after I take care of the obligations I already have. There’s something else related to ol’ Duke City,” Sterling said, his eyebrows starting to narrow as he thought of the letter that Ram had left him. “Have you ever heard of a cryomancer named Ram? Goes around wearing all white, trying to intimidate people?”

“Ram the bounty hunter?”

“Unless there is someone else that fits that description, then yeah, the bounty hunter.”

He slowly nodded. “I’m well aware of the man. I made weapons for a group that was trying to kill him. Unfortunately, they all failed. I have been waiting for Ram to come to Madrid to see about the guy who would make weapons for his would-be killers, but he hasn’t shown up yet. From what they told me, Ram was in Albuquerque when the Reset happened, in a federal prison for manslaughter charges. His first reaction once it happened was to kill everyone who was still alive in the jail. But he didn’t leave after that.”

“What do you mean he didn’t leave?”

“He stayed in the jail and searched through all the archives until he found the papers on his past, his charges and appeals. Ram knows who he is, and knows what he once was, is what I’m trying to say here. He has left a trail of bodies across northern New Mexico, and the men who were planning to take him down claimed that he was approaching Level 90.”

“Hot damn.”

“He’s also lost his mind and believes he’s a god, that each bounty he takes is a stepping stone to the power that he will eventually wield. Ram is dangerous, and I wouldn’t recommend trying to recruit him, if that’s what you’re planning.”

“Recruit him?” Sterling asked. “You got me all wrong here. I ain’t trying to recruit him, I’m trying to kill the son of a bitch before he kills me.”

Raylan took a long sip from his coffee, his eyes suddenly wide. “That… makes more sense.”

“And I ain’t scared of him neither,” Sterling told the flectomancer. “Just in case you thought I was worried.”

“It’s not that, it’s just that Ram is relentless in his pursuit to become a god. He’s not an enemy anyone would want to have.”

“And that’s why I need him dead. The Killbillies hired him. He had a message for me out there on I-25, left a man in a block of ice with the piece of paper in his mouth that told me to meet him in the Old Town neighborhood of Albuquerque.”

“And I’m guessing you didn’t…”

“No, I came here instead. Here’s how I see it: if Ram is going to try to kill me just for the glory of it, I ain’t going to make it easy for him. Hell, one could argue I may have a death wish, but I ain’t going to ride on up to Old Town and say, ‘Here I am, fella, hand-delivered on a silver platter.’ I wasn’t born yesterday. In fact, I know exactly when I was born now.”

“You do?”

“Well, not exactly. But at least I got a lead.” Sterling equipped his wallet and placed it on the table. “There’s a bit more to my crucifixion story I was telling you earlier. Basically, I was captured by the Killbillies and their glorious leader, Commodore Bones, had this wallet. Tried to hold it over me, carried on a stick style.”

Raylan opened the wallet and took a look at Sterling’s old driver’s license. He then looked in one of the folds to find the picture. “And you believe this is your family?” the mustached man asked as he turned the picture over.

“Well like I said, I was in Las Cruces, so I stopped by that address and found an old insurance card in the vehicle out front. Had my name on it, and the name of, well, you’ll see.” Sterling equipped the insurance card and showed it to Raylan. He had been meaning to fold it and put it in the wallet to keep both pieces together, which he planned to do after Raylan gave them both back to him.

“You had a wife named Isabella,” he said as he examined the document.

“Apparently so. But that’s all I got. No more leads.”

“Well, this may be a bit of a stretch, but this insurance company is out of Albuquerque,” Raylan said as he tapped on the insignia at the bottom of the page.

“How do you know that?” Sterling asked as he looked at the insurance card again. Sure enough, there was a small address printed beneath the insignia. “Well, I’ll be damned. See, that’s why I need you, right?”

“To figure out things you should have already uncovered? I haven’t agreed to join you yet,” Raylan reminded him.

“I’m just saying, you see it, right?”

Their food came, and Sterling sent his items back to his list. He rubbed his hands together. “That was faster than I thought it would be,” he said as he smiled up at the young waitress.

“Sierra helped out.”

“That pyromancer…” he mumbled once the waitress left, Sterling returning his focus to Raylan. “Well, you and I have plenty of time to catch up on all the little details, but the most important thing, right now anyway, is getting the Sunflower Kid. I can follow up on this address when I go to Albuquerque looking to recruit Zephyr in the future. I suppose I’ll have to add looking for Ram to that little trip as well. The last thing I need is another enemy trying to hunt me down.”

“Agreed, especially one like Ram,” Raylan said. “And don’t forget the technomancer. In fact, maybe I’ll add that as an official requirement for me joining. Get a technomancer, and you can consider me part of the team.”

“A requirement, huh?” Sterling asked as he took the first bite of his chili, which was piping hot. “Another thing to add to the to-do list, I suppose.”

“It’s always something,” Raylan said.

Sterling laughed. “Ain’t that the truth.”

One cold beer became two, and two became four, and four became six, Sterling eventually setting up shop on the porch of Madrid’s only restaurant while Raylan tinkered away at his workshop. It had been so long since he’d had an actual cold beer, and Sterling planned to enjoy each and every drop.

Lunch came around, the young waitress named Jennifer bringing him tamales and beans, rice with bits of blue corn in it, Sterling going for Christmas when it came to peppers. After yet another beer, Sterling summoned his New Mexico travel guide and flipped through the dogeared pages to the loose sheets at the back with his clippings of pepper facts. He found a particular page talking about the words chosen for the New Mexico territory seal—Crescit Eundo—Latin for “it grows as it goes.”

While munching on his tamales, and as the afternoon pressed on, he read about the man tasked with creating the seal, William Ritch. Ritch had lifted the two words from an ancient Roman text called de Rerum Natura, which meant On the Nature of Things, a book penned in the first century by a Roman philosopher named Lucretius. The book had apparently taken the Roman world by storm because of the way it described natural phenomena like weather patterns and disease as being caused by nature, not the Gods.

“Bucking the system, weren’t you, Lucretius?” Sterling mumbled to himself as the waitress came back around. He tapped on his beer; he could tell for a moment that she was going to tell him that he’d had too much. Sterling would hear none of it. “Keep them coming,” he told her as he returned to his text, to another paragraph about this Roman philosopher named Lucretius.

Lucretius believed that all human beings were comprised of indivisible particles, that these atoms reacted to each other, and things happened because of their interactions. The Latin phrase itself—Crescit Eundo—came from one of his explanations on lightning. The philosopher told his readers that they no longer needed to be worried about Gods like Zeus, that lightning came from the clouds and that their creation could be described by the interaction of atoms. A bolt of lightning grows as it goes, in his words, or Crescit Eundo, and as it turned out, the two words would later become the New Mexico state motto.

Another thought came to Sterling.

The two Latin words on the New Mexico state seal weren’t all that different from what the Skeleton Man, the Hopi god of death, had told the people after they came up from the underworld in search of a new place to live: Now if you are willing to live here that way too, with me and share this life, why come, you are welcome.

Did a landscape contain a motto, and was it something baked into a creation myth? Even if their conceptions were centuries apart, even further if you tried to work it out into miles, the two phrases still carried with them a description of the landscape itself, without mentioning a single grain of sand. Could they really be related across space and time like that?

Sterling finished his meal and shifted his chair so he could kick his legs up on the railing. Respectfully, of course. He made sure that it was fine before he did so, the cowboy necromancer once again buried in his travel guide, his book of sketchings and desert haiku also on the table, a spark of inspiration coming on. The day had warmed up, and while Madrid was quiet, a few people moved about, one or two of the men tipping their hats at him as they passed. He liked the town. It was peaceful, quiet aside from the sounds from Raylan’s workshop, the occasional gust of wind whistling through the tightly packed street.

He was feeling good, happy to enjoy the day off while Raylan tinkered. If anyone had earned a day off, it was Sterling, especially after what he had been through since he made that fateful decision to leave Truth or Consequences and head south to find Don Gasper.

“Look at you, sitting there like you own the place with your journal and your travel guide, acting like you’re some kind of scholar,” Sierra the pyromancer said as she stepped out of the restaurant. The dark-haired woman wore an apron, a few stains splattered across the front.

“Food wasn’t half bad,” Sterling told her as he kept his feet up on the railing and sent his travel guide and book of desert haiku back to his inventory list. He equipped his papers and his tobacco, and began rolling up a cigarette. “We could talk about your usage of peppers, though, if you’re so obliged.”

“I’m not the chef.” Sierra crossed her arms over her chest and gazed out over the town, to the tawny hills beyond. “I’m just here to warm it up quickly and help out with other tasks. Now that the fires are going, and they got everything they need, I’m pretty much done for the day.”

“Well, in that case, pull yourself up a seat, and grab a beer. You can refill mine, too,” he told her.

“You are working up quite the tab there.”

“If I don’t got the turquoise and silver to cover it, I’m sure Raylan does,” Sterling told her with a grin. He ashed his cigarette in a clay ashtray that had clearly been crafted by the natives.

“You think you’re real smart, don’t you?” Sierra asked, not looking at him.

“Not particularly; I think you got me confused with the other necromancer that comes through here.”

“What other necromancer?”

“The one you’re confusing me with,” he told her, the alcohol slurring his words just a hair. It had been a while since he’d drunk like this, but it wasn’t something he was completely opposed to doing, especially if Kip came calling back in T or C.

“What were you reading about anyway?”

“Crescit Eundo,” Sterling said with a wave of his hand. “Heard of it?”

“No.”

“It translates to: it goes as it grows; shit, I mean it grows as it goes. That’s it.”

“Doesn’t sound exactly like Spanish.”

“That’s because it ain’t,” Sterling told her. “It’s Latin. It’s on the New Mexico state seal.”

“There ain’t no more New Mexico. It’s just people in what used to be a state trying to survive another day.”

“I can’t argue with that logic,” Sterling told her as he nodded toward the chair on the other side of the table. “How about you try to survive another day by sitting up here with me, drinking, telling me your story, and seeing if we can’t live ‘til tomorrow?”

“That’s it? You’re just going to come to town and drink all day while Raylan works on whatever you want him to make?”

“Ain’t that what most people do when they come here?”

Sierra slowly nodded, a strand of her black hair falling into her face now. She swept it behind her ear, and when she wasn’t satisfied with that, she let her hair down and retied the ponytail. “I guess I could join you,” she said as she removed her apron.

“Grab yourself a beer, and get me a refill while you’re at it. Jennifer seems to think it’s high time to cut me off, and I ain’t having none of that.”

Sierra smirked. “You really are calling the shots, aren’t you?”

“Not normally, to be honest with you, but I feel like drinking the day away and enjoying myself for once, plus I’d like to talk to you a little more. So oblige me.”

“Would you now?”

Sterling ashed his cigarette as a response to her question and nodded. It wasn’t long before Sierra had joined him on the front porch of the restaurant, the pyromancer now with a beer as well. Sterling removed his legs from the railing and turned to her.

“Let’s hear it,” he said after they toasted their mugs together. “How did you end up in Madrid?”

“I was in Denver during the Reset,” she began. “Driving home from work.”

“Damn, you were in your car?”

“That’s right. Suddenly, the cars started to swerve, and I couldn’t see out my windshield because of the blood.”

“The blood?”

“I was taking a coworker home. We lived in the same neighborhood. One minute, I’m just driving along, and the next, the inner windshield is covered in blood and brains, vehicles are swerving and an eighteen-wheeler hits the back of my little car. It was bad. I wonder how many people died during the Reset from car accidents, you know, people who would have normally lived but happened to be in a car when it happened.”

“That’s a damn good point,” Sterling said. He had wondered similar things before. He’d come across plane crashes in the desert, but there were myriad other jobs that a person could have been doing when the Reset happened that would have resulted in their death. “It’s amazing we’re alive.”

“I wasn’t so happy about it at first,” Sierra told him. “And just like that, I can conjure fire, I can fly, do all sorts of wild things. And then there’s the system that the Godwalkers put into place, and the only way we are able to level up is by killing people. That’s one of the parts that bothers me the most. The only way to actually improve is to kill people and things. And not just normal things, like a bunny rabbit, it has to be an amalgamation.”

“I stopped trying to give too much thought to it myself. Ain’t no sense in analyzing something that defies our sense of reality as much as this place, and as a byproduct, our existence.”

“You say that, but I’d put good silver on the fact that you’ve thought long and hard about these things. I’d be right, wouldn’t I?”

Sterling grinned. “Maybe.”

And so it went, the two drinking beers late into the afternoon, talking about everything under the sun aside from a few choice details of Sterling’s past, Sierra loosening up, and Sterling riding the tidal wave of an epic buzz that he assumed would see him into the night.

For once, Sterling couldn’t shake this notion that it was good to be alive, that maybe he was even blessed, even if he continually existed within the heart of a sandstorm with Killbillies, cultists, Godwalkers, amalgamations, Albuquerque gangbangers, and now bounty hunters swirling around him.

At least it was calm for the time being; at least he had good company.

.Chapter Eight.

Maybe things could have heated up between Sterling and Sierra the pyromancer, and he certainly would have let them, but the cowboy necromancer had made the same mistake many men had made both before and after the Reset: he had drunk too much.

The rest of the day was a blur, a flash of vignettes that Sterling had to piece together the next morning once he woke up in a guestroom of what he assumed was Raylan’s home. He recalled animating the skeleton of a dog and entertaining some locals by making the pooch do a few tricks. He also remembered doing some target practice with a guy who had a charm shop next to the restaurant, and he was pretty sure he got into an actual pissing match with a farmer from Taos who was just stopping through. Then there was a kiss on the cheek from Sierra. Sterling was almost certain that had happened, plus additional rounds of beer with Raylan, the flectomancer going over the details of what he was creating for Sterling.

All he knew on that fateful morning upon waking was that Raylan was almost finished. Sterling had seen these sorts of mancers work before. He knew that they worked in a very unique way, first building or splicing together an object and then imbuing it with their own Mana to give it power. He was pretty sure that Raylan had said he would be able to reduce the Mana drain from Sterling’s revolver, and as he finally rolled over in bed, he found that his weapon was missing.

Did I give it to him last night? Sterling thought as he sat up, his head pounding, a soft pink light pressing through the paisley drapes of a two-story home made of wood, the bedroom spacious and tidy. Sterling shook his head. “You drunk fool.”

The world shook as he placed his feet on the ground, Sterling’s mouth painfully dry, his head feeling like someone had taken his brain out of his head, rolled it down the hill into a cactus patch, and then dunked it back in. “Shee-it…” Sterling slowly went through the process of getting dressed. He didn’t remember removing his clothes last night, but they were all on a chair, Sterling’s eyes falling to an unfamiliar red shirt and a pair of patched women’s jeans.

It was then that he sensed a presence behind him.

Sterling looked over his shoulder, startled to see Sierra lying in his bed, the dark-haired woman topless and in a pair of black panties. “Goddammit,” Sterling whispered, not quite sure if they had hooked up or not. He clenched his eyes shut for a moment and pinched the bridge of his nose, once again going through the slivers of images in his head. He remembered that she had kissed him, but he didn’t remember much after that. Damn. Now seated on the edge of the bed, Sterling equipped his rolling papers and some tobacco, quickly rolling himself a thin cigarette. He lit it, the smell waking Sierra.

“Morning, handsome,” she said as she sat up, not at all embarrassed to be topless. Sterling looked away. The dark-haired pyromancer got out of bed and went to the chair in front of him, sitting on his clothes, crossing one leg over the other, almost daring him to look. She had several tattoos on her body, and one between her breasts, something that resembled a fleur-de-lis.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” he said, just in case he needed to start this conversation with an apology.

“What’s there to be sorry about?” Sierra looked down at her breasts and then back up at him. “This? Nothing happened. Both of us were…” She smirked at him. “Has anyone ever warned you about drinking all day?”

“Yeah, it ain’t the best idea,” he said as he offered her a puff of his cigarette. “But someone had to do it.” His head still spinning, Sterling squinted toward the wooden floorboards, willing his hangover to go away. He knew that with his healing ability it should have been taken care of overnight, that was, unless he drank enough to almost kill a man, which he couldn’t rule out considering how he currently felt.

“You’ll be okay,” she said as she exhaled a cloud of gray smoke.

“Did I drink any tequila?”

“Just a bottle or two.”

“Two bottles? For Pete’s sake…” Sterling equipped one of his jugs of water. He took a long pull off it and sighed again. “You seen my revolver?”

“You gave that to Raylan.”

“Figures. My sword?”

“Other side of the bed.”

“Okay, that explains that,” Sterling said, gesturing his water jug to Sierra, who declined. “Are you going to put a top on?”

“My breasts bothering you?”

Sterling traced his eyes around them for a moment, and once again took a look at her tattoos. He shook his head. “It ain’t that, I’m just…” He worked on the cigarette she returned to him. “Damn.”

Sierra started laughing. “You’re a strange man, you know that?”

“I’ve been called worse.”

“Oh, yeah? What have you been called?”

“Recently?”

She nodded.

“Well, someone said I was Skeleton Man, which is the Hopi god of death. I’m sure a couple other people in New Mexico are cursing my name right about now, including Commodore Bones, leader of the Killbillies.”

“You told me about him yesterday.”

“Yup, and whatever I said I meant. They, and especially he, can fuck right the fuck off.”

“You said something to that effect.”

“And then there’s the bounty hunter that’s after me, Ram, the cryomancer. He probably has a few choice words for me. I’m sure there are a few others. I’ll tell you one person who is going to be cursing my name sooner rather than later—the telemancer that runs the Culto Demente Sagrado…” Sterling shook his head. “But I probably rambled about her enough last night. Welp, I guess I got to get back to it. Get me the hell out of here, grab the Sunflower Kid, then get on down to the desert. Time’s a ticking.”

Sierra took the cigarette from him and finished it. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Where should I start?”

“You wake up with a rare catch like me, and your first reaction is to start rambling, as you put it, about people that don’t like you, and what you need to do today?” Sierra laughed. “Like I said, you’re a strange man, but somewhat typical.”

“Ain’t nothing about me typical,” Sterling said as he reached a hand out to her face.

The ground shook.

The room split in two, a twenty-foot-high blade of ice slicing through the space and separating the two of them, a sharpness spreading up his arm. The pain that followed was like nothing he had never experienced before, Sterling’s right arm completely cut off at the elbow. Blood gushed from the wound, another enormous blade of ice moving through the space.

“My arm!” Sterling managed to shout once the house began to crumble. He gasped as a huge fireball flared in front of him, igniting everything as Sierra burst through the roof. The home collapsed as another blade of ice cut into the room, this one coming inches away from Sterling’s face he tried to press himself out of the rubble, his severed arm bleeding profusely.

He only caught a glimpse before a whirlwind of snow struck him, yet Sterling saw the bounty hunter known as Ram standing across from the house, on a platform of ice, the man in all white and carrying an almost blank expression on his face.

Then everything came tumbling down.

Jagged spikes of ice tore from the ground just as a bewildered Sterling finally got out of the rubble, only to be greeted by an anthropomorphic animate made of ice, sharp protrusions jutting off its back. It swung at Sterling and he managed to avoid its first strike by ducking right, the shock surging through Sterling finally morphing into fury. Calling upon his incredible strength, he sent his left fist into the anthropomorphic man’s chest, exploding it, another whirlwind of snow bringing Sterling off his feet.

The snow had already started to mix with the gravel, which was peppered with the blood dripping from Sterling’s severed arm as his healing factor, his Resolve, kicked into high gear. The only thing was, Sterling knew that he wouldn’t be able to grow the limb back. This was one thing he had learned over the last five years, and why he always kept his limbs in mind while he fought—while he could heal, he wasn’t able to grow something like an arm, at least not at his current level.

Even angrier at Ram, and with a flash of an idea in mind as to how he could fix his severed arm, Sterling charged through the blizzard toward the cryomancer, fueled by adrenaline and rage. A blast of fire to his left barely caught his attention, Sterling laser focused now on getting his revenge on the bounty hunter.

As if it had been turned off by a switch, the blizzard suddenly ceased, blocks of ice crumbling into dust. Sterling was presented with several anthropomorphic ice men, all of them with their arms crossed over their chests. They spoke in unison.

“Sterling, I was hoping you would be here. Maria gives her regards.”

One of the animates produced a block of ice with a woman’s head inside, Sterling gasping as he caught the face of the woman from the Isleta Pueblo’s trading post, the woman he had rescued from the Killbillies.

“H-how?” he asked, cursing himself for not holding onto his revolver overnight.

“When you didn’t show up in Albuquerque, I took a quick trip to see what became of the message I had left for you,” all of the ice men said, once again speaking in unison. “Not knowing which direction you traveled, I headed back toward the trading post, figuring they may have seen you. Don’t worry. I made sure that they suffered horribly, especially this one.”

Sterling looked at the head suspended in the block of ice. Maria’s eyes were open, her lips slightly parted, whiteness spread across her skin.

“I’ll kill you!” Sterling charged forward, only to be struck by an enormous ice block, the impact akin to running headfirst into a linebacker made of cement. He hit the ground, practically seeing stars as a burst of fire exploded like a comet above him. What followed was a terrible wrench as the ground shifted, steam hissed, and cries of anger erupted from Sierra.

Panicking, hoping that Ram hadn’t done something to Sierra, Sterling pushed himself up. Raylan came to his side. The short flectomancer had his goggles on, an enormous weapon in his arms. He fired it repeatedly, the weapon’s report creating a boom that Sterling could feel in his chest.

And then it was over.

No more anthropomorphic ice constructs, no razor saw glaciers, the mist had cleared, and the battle had finished. Bewildered, Sterling took a look around to see dozens upon dozens of wet spots scattered across the asphalt. Some of the buildings were destroyed, and an icy peak had ripped through the front porch of the restaurant he’d been at yesterday, steam billowing off its jagged edges.

“Sierra?” Sterling asked, ignoring the pain in what remained of his right arm, how it pulsed.

The pyromancer landed, flames rising off her body, the woman’s nudity obscured by the fire. Worry came over her face as she looked from Sterling’s arm to something behind him. He slowly turned his head to see that Raylan’s home was engulfed in flames, plumes of fire lifting off the scattered debris.

“I’m sorry…”

“You tried your best to defend the town; I can’t hold it against you. Don’t worry, we’ll get it repaired. And as for you,” he told Sterling as he helped him up. “Your sword will survive the fire. But your arm.” He started to shake his head. “How did Ram know you were here? Did he follow you?”

Sterling glared down at the ground. He was no longer able to look at his arm, and suddenly felt ashamed for losing it. He cursed himself for getting wasted yesterday, even if that wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the morning. It would have at least made him faster, perhaps he would have been out of the bedroom by the time Ram struck, his sword in his hand.

“He didn’t follow me,” Sterling finally said, answering Raylan’s question. “Not initially. He went back to the pueblo I stayed at the previous night, and killed them.” He nodded his chin toward Maria’s frozen skull. “It’s pretty clear to me that he interrogated her and found out that I was coming here. This is all my fault.”

“You said yesterday that it was the Killbillies who put the bounty out on you. This is on them.”

“No, if I had…” Sterling lowered his head once again. “I just need to keep my mouth shut around strangers. I was too goddamn chatty. Too friendly. If I hadn’t said anything…”

“By the looks of it, he would have killed them anyway,” Sierra said.

“Where is his body? I want to… I need to ask his blood something.”

“Ram’s body?” Sierra asked.

Sterling tried to ignore the pain he was experiencing, the numbness at his elbow, where his arm used to be. “You killed him, right?”

“No, he… he got away.”

“Got away?” Sterling looked up at Sierra in shock. “How does he get away when you’re shooting him full of fireballs, and Raylan has a gun here that sounded like a damn cannon going off?”

“The ice animates that he can apparently create have some form of consciousness,” Raylan explained. “We weren’t able to figure out which one was actually him. We were able to overwhelm them, but he escaped.”

“Dammit,” Sterling growled. “He doesn’t seem like the type that will stay away for long.”

“No, I’m afraid he doesn’t.”

“I can’t bring you two into this.”

“You’ve already brought us into this,” Raylan said. “The whole town.”

“I’m sorry. I just appeared, going on about how I plan to take on the Godwalkers, asking you to join me, asking for—”

Raylan lifted a hand to stop Sterling. “I’m going to join you, I told you that last night. Relax. It looks bad, the town does, but not as bad as your arm. I told you my precondition over breakfast yesterday, if you recall: find a technomancer, and I’ll join up as well. You know, we do have a technomancer here,” Raylan said, nodding to a house at the end of the street. “But she’s just a baby right now. We need one that is older, one that has gained some levels. You bring me that, and we will do this.”

“I… I don’t deserve your kindness,” Sterling said as he looked at the flectomancer with fondness.

“I know you would do the same for me, even if I did have a harebrained idea like trying to take on the Godwalkers.”

Sterling finally grinned.

“I’ll be joining as well,” Sierra said, brilliant blue, orange, and yellow plumes still licking off her body. “But I have to stay here for now to protect Madrid, just in case Ram comes back.”

“Oh, I ain’t done with him,” Sterling said, glaring at a pile of ice. “Soon as I get the Sunflower Kid and Roxy, we’ll head to Albuquerque and try to find Zephyr. We’ll deal with Ram as well, and…”

Raylan nodded. “Your family. The insurance company in Albuquerque. You can go to that address and see if the archives are still intact. You never know.”

“Family?” Sierra asked.

“It’s a long story, and I don’t know if it’s true or not,” Sterling told her. “But maybe there is some information for me in Albuquerque. Either way, that’s a story for another day. Before I head on out of here, I need to visit the cemetery. You don’t mind, do you?”

“What do you plan to do there?” Sierra asked.

Sterling looked at his severed arm, the end covered in crimson, the bone visible. He had seen similar wounds. Eventually the flesh would heal over the bone, and he would be left with the stub if he didn’t do something soon. “There’s something I need to handle. The Sunflower Kid will be able to fix up the rest, but I ain’t about to try to bust the Kid out of the grips of a cult with just one arm. Besides, that was my shooting hand.”

“Speaking of which, your gun is ready, as is the device I created to stop the telemancer’s influence.” Raylan tapped on the side of his head. “I learned long ago not to put my workshop anywhere near my house, just in case one or the other was destroyed. Do what you need to do at the cemetery, and meet me at my workshop.”

“Sierra?” Sterling asked.

“Let me get some clothes, and… I guess I’ll lead you to the cemetery.”

Several of the people that lived in Madrid came out of their homes and started picking through the damage in the time it took Sierra to get clothing. Raylan stuck around as well, helping Sterling get dressed in the spare clothing that Sterling kept in his inventory list.

“I’ve got another hat for you,” Raylan told him. “One that I modified last night. Don’t worry, same exact style as the one you were wearing.”

“Good. I don’t have any more hats. I got more clothes, but only one hat. I’ll need my sword too,” Sterling said as he looked back to the flaming rubble that once was the flectomancer’s home.

“We got a couple people around here that should be able to fish your khopesh sword out. Just meet me back in my workshop once you are done at the cemetery.”

“Will do,” Sterling said. While they waited, Raylan introduced him to some of the locals, including the couple with the technomancer child. There was nothing remarkable about the baby, and it looked like any other toddler Sterling had seen, albeit a little better fed.

Sierra returned with a shovel over her shoulder. She went to pick up Maria’s head, frozen in its block of ice, but Sterling insisted on doing it instead, even though it took him a second to get it off the ground considering he only had one viable arm, the other still a bloodied mess.

“She was a sweet girl, Maria was,” he said as Sierra led him away from the center of Madrid and toward the cemetery, Raylan also heading back to his airplane hangar workshop.

“Did something happen between you two?”

“It didn’t, no,” Sterling said, “not that that would matter.”

“I didn’t mean it like that; I just thought it would make it worse.”

“You ain’t wrong there, it would have.” Sterling exhaled miserably, still feeling the pain in his arm. “I could really use a cigarette. You think you could roll me one up?”

“Once we get to the cemetery, sure. But it won’t be as good as yours.”

“That’s fine. Appreciate it.”

They walked up a small incline, and came to a gravesite that had been built on the mesa, red mountains in the distance with their tops cleaved off, their shadows arranged in triangular patterns due to the position of the sun, buzzards flying around, not a cloud in the sky, the air fresh and crisp. It would have been a pretty day had it not been for what happened.

Sierra placed a shovel on the ground and used her foot to drive it in.

“Shit, let me set her down so I can get out the supplies. I got some mota too, if you’re interested. Something to take the edge off.”

“I don’t smoke,” she told him, “except for after sex.”

“You finished my cigarette this morning,” he reminded her.

“Maybe I had been wishing for something.”

Sterling looked down at the shovel. “Next time I come through.” He carefully placed the block of ice on the ground, equipped his rolling papers and his bag of tobacco, and handed them to her.

“I’m not the best at this,” she told him as she started up. In the end, the cigarette Sierra rolled up was about twice as fat as one he would normally roll himself.

“It’s fine,” he told her. “I’ll treat it like a cigar.”

Keeping the big cigarette in place with his lips, Sterling leaned forward, Sierra’s finger catching fire. Once he had a cigarette going, he stepped aside and began looking at the graves. “Which one of these here are from before the Reset? I’m talking about ones that ain’t so fresh.”

“At the back,” Sierra said as she worked on the hole. “Why?”

“Just you wait.”

Sterling stepped away from her, figuring he would just do it rather than explain himself. The graves at the back were marked, and he read the etchings on their tombstones until he came to one that read ‘Padre.’

“Yup,” Sterling mumbled, his fat cigarette perched on the corner of his lip as he extended his good hand and sensed the skeleton below. The only thing was, the ground was too dry, and he would need the shovel to loosen up the soil.

He returned to Sierra, who had just finished digging a shallow grave for Maria’s frozen head.

“Do you want to say anything?”

“In a minute, but I need that shovel of yours. If you don’t want to do it, point me to the freshest grave here and I’ll get someone else to do it.”

This caused Sierra to pause. “You mean, animate the dead?”

“You’ve known what I was since yesterday,” Sterling told her without looking at the woman.

“A necromancer, I know. What are you trying to do anyway?” Sierra asked as she approached Sterling, shovel now thrown over her shoulder.

“I haven’t tried it out before, but I think it will work. If you don’t mind, I need you to loosen up the soil a bit. I can do the rest. They ain’t strong enough when they’re down that deep.”

Sierra worked tirelessly to loosen up the soil at the back of the graveyard in front of the grave marked ‘Padre.’ It took her a few minutes, but she worked fast.

“That should do it,” Sterling said once the soil was good and loose. “Now step back; let me work my magic.”

It wasn’t quite as dramatic as it could have been, but the first thing to press out of the grave was indeed a skeletal hand, Sierra gasping as more of the arm began to emerge.

“That’s enough,” Sterling said once it got to the elbow, the top of the skeleton’s skull now visible as well. “Recently, I got a new level and with it came a Class Proficiency bonus, giving me the power to graft. I haven’t used it yet, haven’t even really tried it out, but you know how these class skills work: one day you have no idea about it, the next and you just know it. Same with techniques.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Just let me take a look here…” Sterling glanced down at the stub of his right arm. He’d already had Raylan roll up the sleeves so he could see the exposed skin, which had almost healed over, the bone still a bit visible. “Should work.”

Sterling lightly placed his good hand on the skeletal hand sticking out of the grave, and brought it down to the elbow. He yanked it back, snapping the bone off at the joint. Sierra made a yelping sound.

“What are you going…?”

Sierra saw exactly what he was going to do once Sterling placed the bone against his flesh, a turquoise energy radiating off his left hand. The energy spiraled down the bone, stopping at the tips of the skeletal fingers. To Sterling, it felt as if he were simply regaining usage of his hand after he had fallen asleep on it in a strange way. To Sierra, it looked like he had just used magic to glue the skeletal arm onto his own.

“Should work,” he said as he lifted his skeletal arm up and turned it, flexing the fingers. “I do believe I’ve been grafted.” His digits felt tighter by the second, like they were truly his own, and he could even see that there was a bit of ligament forming to hold everything in place, this too marked by turquoise energy before it finally disappeared.

“You just took that man’s arm and made it your own…”

“It’s my new skill, like I told you, grafting,” Sterling said as he continued to examine the bone, moving his wrist back and forth. “It’ll do until I get the Sunflower Kid. The Kid can heal something like this,” Sterling said as he tapped the flesh of his right arm, the part closer to his shoulder. “Next time you see me, my hand will be as good as new. At least in theory. Maybe a bit bigger, but I think the Kid will be able to make it look good as new.”

“I’ve seen a lot of strange shit in the last five years, but I’ve never seen a man animate a skeleton and attach the skeleton’s bone to his own body. Sorry, I’m just processing all this.”

“Yeah, it ain’t pretty,” Sterling said as he undid the sleeve of his right arm and covered the bone down to his wrist. He then equipped a spare black duster, which he slipped into as well. He no longer had his bulletproof vest. It was somewhere in the debris, or what was left of it, but he was fine with that. That was something he could either pick up from Raylan, or find at a trading post along the way.

“It’s fascinating and scary at the same time.”

“Heh, I suppose they really could call me the Skeleton Man now,” he said as he waved his five skeletal fingers at her. “Speaking of which…” Sterling turned back to the grave, what was left of the skeleton’s arm slowly sinking into the dirt. He took the shovel from Sierra and tried to pack the soil down, noticing that it felt different to hold the shovel in his right hand. “I’ll probably need to get a glove too, at least for now, something made of leather.”

He covered the grave and made his way back to the block of ice with Sierra. He placed Maria’s frozen head in the shallow grave and covered it, trying not to focus on the rage he felt toward the bounty hunter for doing something so vile. I ain’t done with you yet, Ram, he thought. Not by a long shot.

“I’ll let you say whatever you need to say,” Sierra told him as she stepped back. “I can hang out over there; we’ll go to Raylan’s after.”

“Thank you kindly.” Once the pyromancer was about fifty feet away, Sterling turned back to the freshly dug grave and spoke to Maria. “I’m sorry you got wrapped up in this. I’m sorry I stayed there, and that I didn’t… that I wasn’t able to protect you. I told you there were no more superheroes, but I didn’t mean to make you a victim of one of the villains. I’ll tell you this, though. I will kill that man in your honor, and to honor the family members of yours he killed as well. I know that sounds petty, that his death won’t suddenly give you your life, but maybe I can prevent something like this from happening again to some other folks. You didn’t deserve this, Maria, and wherever you are, I hope it’s a hell of a lot better than this good-for-nothing place.”

Sterling bowed his head, lamenting the fact that he didn’t have his cowboy hat to bring over his chest. Instead, he brought his skeletal hand up, wishing there was a prayer he could say for the woman, perhaps one in her native tongue, words that actually meant something to her.

But there wasn’t, and even if there was, it wouldn’t mean anything.

Maria’s was yet another senseless death, like many of the deaths Sterling had been a part of over the last five years. It was a death toll that showed no signs of abating, one he had learned to live with.

.Chapter Nine.

Sterling left Madrid, heading back the way he’d come, black leather glove on his skeletal hand, bulletproof vest across his chest, his body covered by his duster, a brand-new black cowboy hat parked on his head, Raylan’s tech to prevent telemancers stitched inside the hatband. His revolver was holstered at his side, and it now only took one Mana Point to fire a shot, and his sickle-sword was back in his possession and sheathed in its breakaway scabbard. He had a fair supply of food given to him by Sierra, jerky, a couple of cans of beans, a fresh bottle of tequila, even a fresh sack of tobacco and rolling papers, plus she’d refilled his water jugs.

Sierra was a good woman.

“Yup,” Sterling told Manchester as he glanced down at his gloved hand, a freshly lit cigarette hanging from his lip. “I’ve got friends in low places,” he said, not knowing where he had lifted the phrase from. It wasn’t uncommon for sentences to come to him, lyrics of songs and whatnot, signs of a past he couldn’t quite remember.

As he rode south through an abandoned village known as Golden, about ten miles away from Madrid, Sterling once again thought of the family he might have out there. Was Isabella alive? And if he ever did find her, if the insurance company’s archive in Albuquerque was able to give him just a bit more information as to her whereabouts, what would she say after he showed up? A cowboy necromancer dressed in all black, tanned rough by the world, tough as nails and chain-smoking like he had a death wish, which he sort of did considering what he hoped to do with the Godwalkers, would be a sight to see, or so he assumed. What would she think? And if his boy was alive, if the picture inside his wallet was truly his kid, what would this child think?

Sterling shook his head as he trotted past a dead armadillo, the varmint on its back, legs curled, vultures lifting from the ground at the sound of his skeletal steed, red ants on the march. “Lizard eat lizard kind of world, ain’t it?” he mumbled to Manchester as he once again glanced down at his leather glove, his skeletal fingers inside.

It was better to focus on the ultimate mystery of his life, what he had been before everything changed, than it was to stew about the bounty hunter’s attack. Thinking of what Ram had done, and how the man had destroyed half of the village with his glaciers of sharp ice, caused Sterling to grind his teeth. He knew that if he dwelled on it too much he would turn Manchester around and head straight to Albuquerque, ride on up to Duke City man on a mission style, and finish what Raylan and Sierra had started.

“No one comes at me like that,” he said, as he flicked his cigarette to the ground, aiming for a cactus and missing. “No one.”

The day for revenge was coming, and Sterling would make sure that it was a sweet day, one where he not only avenged Maria’s death at the hands of the bounty hunter, but also avenged the loss of his own arm, even if he was fairly certain that the Sunflower Kid would be able to fix it.

“Damn good-for-nothing son of a bitch,” he mumbled as he pulled the reins tighter, Manchester picking up speed. It was late afternoon now, and Sterling no longer felt the effects of the alcohol he’d bathed himself in the previous day. He had a good lunch with Raylan and Sierra back in Madrid, Raylan once again letting Sterling know that he would join as soon as he was able to recruit a technomancer, hopefully the one imprisoned with Roxy, and Sierra indicating yet again that she would join as well.

“We could use a pyromancer, couldn’t we, Pingo?” Sterling asked Manchester as he galloped along the side of the highway. “Especially a purty one.” He soon came to a fork in the road, and rather than head toward Tijeras, Sterling went in the opposite direction, taking Interstate 40 to a local road that would bring him all the way down to Mountainair, the Abó Pueblo ruins, which were protected by the Sunflower Kid’s giant cactus construct on the outskirts of the town.

His plan was simple. Rest once he got to his location, wake up sometime in the middle of the night, break his way into the compound and hogtie the Sunflower Kid if he had to, anything to get the Kid away from the cult. From there, it was south to Alamogordo, to the White Sands desert. Finally.

When Sterling had left Truth or Consequences to head to Las Cruces in search of Don Gasper, he hadn’t really given too much thought to how hard it would be to build his team again, especially from scratch. And maybe this was a good thing. If he had known that he’d be crisscrossing the Land of Entrapment, would he have left T or C or would he have simply taken his licks? Truth be told, Sterling knew the answer to this question, one that was tethered to his stubbornness. “You bet your ass I would have left,” he mumbled to the running dialogue in his head. “I ain’t paying no taxes to no bandits, and I should have dealt with them Godwalkers years ago…”

It was still a sore subject, what happened three years ago, Sterling’s utter failure weighing heavy on his soul. He was glad that Raylan hadn’t brought it up, and wasn’t sure how the Sunflower Kid would bring it up, but Roxy surely would. It would probably be the first thing she mentioned once Sterling busted her out of wherever the White Sands Militia was keeping her. He knew he had a black eye coming, that once he explained what had happened to Roxy she wouldn’t accept it, and even if she did accept it, she’d be sure to give him hell.

“That’s my Roxy,” Sterling said in a bittersweet way as he reached the interstate.

I-40 was much less trafficked than I-25, which ran all the way to Denver, Colorado, and Cheyenne, Wyoming, from there. It was literally the interstate less traveled, which meant it had fewer abandoned vehicles on it, no transport trucks, less chance for a trap, for bandits to run up on Sterling as he continued along his journey.

It turned out to be a peaceful ride, the Manzano mountain range to his right, the otherworldly New Mexican landscape spreading to his left, pushing into the high desert with its crumbled mesas, oddly chiseled hoodoos extending from drainage basins and lifting like stalagmites as they crossed miles upon miles of off-color Martian badlands. South of Sterling’s current position was defined by its trees, many with leaves turning yellow; north was defined by its unique mixture of sedimentary and volcanic rock formations peppered with pockets of red caliche. The Southwest encapsulated, on constant display.

Beautiful, ain’t it? Sterling thought as he took in the rustic landscape carved out over time, a testament to geology as much as it was a place forgotten, a place to be forgotten.

The environment calmed his nerves, and Sterling puffed on a cigarette as they came to the intersection at a town called Moriarty, a trading post not far off the highway. Normally, he would have stopped, but he was anxious to get to his destination and get some rest before his early-morning assault. With this in mind, Sterling continued onward, eventually reaching an abandoned village known as Macintosh, then a small community that was once the town of Estancia. From there it was desert plains and abandoned farmhouses, the blue sky towering overhead as the landscape flattened out, Sterling feeling like he was riding on the moon once the soil turned off-white, dust swirling off jagged rock formations.

There was nothing much between his current position and Mountainair, just the barren earth and a few shrubs that decided to try to make it in the desert. But it was mighty fine riding, the air nice and clean, Sterling feeling the heat but not paying any mind to it. Clouds appeared overhead, cooling the ground and the asphalt of the highway for a moment, an easterly wind kicking up grains of sand, enough that Sterling had to duck his head.

He pushed on, eventually coming to Mountainair, ignoring a few locals who tried to wave him down and warn him about the Culto Demente Sagrado up ahead. There was still a pretty good ride between the town and the ruins, yellow rock all around him as the landscape began to lift from the parched soil of what would later be flatlands and reform into mountains dotted with trees and shrubs brave enough to go weeks upon weeks without water.

Sterling felt akin to the flora of the region, how tough it was, how it attempted to survive no matter what. It goes as it grows, grows as it goes, he thought.

He knew he was nearing the cultists’ compound when he saw the towering cactus formation on the horizon. Heading into the mountains, Sterling eventually found a bluff that would give him a view of the cult’s domain. He was still about a mile away from it, Sterling not wanting to be spotted if they had any kind of patrols.

He got down from Manchester, his legs a bit wobbly at first. This quickly went away and Sterling soon sat on the edge of the bluff, his feet dangling off as he rolled another cigarette. “Yup,” he said as he lit the cancer stick, keeping it between his teeth for a moment as he equipped his book of desert haiku. He smoked and read some of his past haiku, shaded in one of his sketches, then went back to the desert haiku and stopped at one about the Reset he’d written two years ago.

Godwalkers appeared

Yellow sun infinite dusk

Memories long gone

There wasn’t a day that went by that he didn’t wish he could have his past memories, but at least Sterling had new ones, and the view he was currently presented with—mauve mountains on a patchy horizon, an enormous cactus structure in the distance, a carrot sandstone landscape crossed by sedimentary veins—was one worth memorializing.

Soon, he’d be joined by the Sunflower Kid, he was sure of it. And then they would finally make it to White Sands.

Sleep came easy for the cowboy necromancer. After flipping through his travel guide, and looking at some of the pages he had torn out of a book on peppers, the sun started to set. Sterling ate a bit of the food that Sierra had given him, smoked another couple cigarettes, took a shot of tequila, and laid his head to rest.

He had no problem sleeping out in the wild, his wool blanket over his body, his upper back and shoulders pressed against a large rock that he was using as a pillow, chin tucked forward, cowboy hat covering his eyes and protecting Sterling from the telemancer, even if he was out of range.

“Mister… Skeleton Man…”

He stirred, not sure where the voice had come from. He had been dreaming of the Albuquerque International Balloon Festival, of walking through the fairgrounds near Petroglyph National Monument, balloons swelling all around him as fires ignited, beautiful colors coming to life.

“Mister… Skeleton Man…”

“Wha—?” Sterling blinked his eyes open to find someone crouching before him, his immediate reaction being to go for his revolver.

“Don’t shoot!” the voice said, the man’s features obscured by the moon behind him.

“P-Paco?” Sterling asked, recognizing the native youth’s voice and putting his weapon away. “Damn, son, you are going to get yourself killed sneaking up on me like that. I almost shot your ass.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Paco said as he extended his hand to Sterling, helping him sit up fully. Paco pulled his hand away as he noticed a strange sensation in grabbing Sterling’s gloved hand.

“What can I say? Abuela was right.” Sterling removed the leather glove and showed Paco his skeletal fingers, accented by the moonlight. “Yup, it ain’t that great considering it’s my dominant hand, but it’s what I got at the moment.”

“What happened to your arm?”

“The man in all white cut it off. So I had to get me a new one. But don’t you worry none—I’m going to get it fixed once I get the Sunflower Kid. At least that’s the plan, anyway.”

“Is it your dominant arm?”

“I just said it was. Anyhow, feels normal enough by this point,” Sterling said as he curled his skeletal digits into a fist. “But I’m guessing there are a number of things I ain’t going to like doing with a hand like this.”

“Like what?”

Sterling settled his gaze on Paco. “I’ll let you think about that on your own time. Now, what the hell are you doing all the way out here?”

“Waiting for you,” Paco said stoically. “Been out here for two days now.”

“I would say I was flattered if I didn’t think you were going against Abuela’s wishes by being here. Did she tell you it was okay to leave your tribe? And don’t try lying to me, unless you want to get slapped by a skeletal hand,” Sterling said, offering Paco a grin.

He hesitated.

“Go on, be honest. Did she say it was okay to come all the way out here?”

“No,” Paco finally admitted. “I wanted to help you.”

“You got your own people to look after; you don’t need to look after me. Hell, I can barely look after myself,” he said, once again showing Paco his skeletal hand. Sterling equipped his bag of tobacco and his rolling papers, and proceeded to roll up a cigarette.

“You seem to have full usage of it.”

“Begrudgingly,” Sterling said as he placed the cigarette on the corner of his lip. He slipped his skeletal hand back into his black glove, and went for his lighter. “But I’m serious about you being out here. What I’m about to do…” Sterling shook his head. He knew there would be blood once he got into the cult’s compound. Judging by the way the sky looked, he assumed it was around four in the morning. Sterling quickly checked his stats to see that they had reset for the day:

Name: Sterling Monedero

Race: Human

Mancer Class: Necromancer

Class Ranking: Bone Sculptor

Level: 60

Fortitude: 117

Strength: 35

Resolve: 152

Mana: 154/159

Current Armor Rating: 28

XP: 310,364

XP to Next Level:3,560

Stat Points Available: 0

Technique Points Available: 1

One of the things that he planned to do once he made his way back up to Madrid, likely before going after Ram in Albuquerque, was to see if Raylan couldn’t upgrade his armor rating. He had a feeling the flectomancer would have a few tricks up his sleeve to give Sterling a little more defense. If he was going to Duke City, he would certainly need it. And that wasn’t taking into account that he would also be trying to find his former teammate, Zephyr, while he was in a city practically razed to the ground by gang warfare.

“I want to help,” Paco said again.

“You already told me that. If you want to help, go back to your pueblo,” Sterling said. “You saw what happened to my arm; the people I play around with take shit seriously. I’m talking life or death here. Down there is a telemancer,” he said, nodding to the cactus-clad fortress in the distance. “You can’t get much closer than this anyway. How would you go about helping?”

“You’re going to rescue the Sunflower Kid, and eventually you’ll be coming back in some direction, right? If you come in this direction, I can help once you are out of the telemancer’s range, you know, if someone is chasing you.”

“If someone is chasing me… You know, you may be onto something.” Sterling was a man of his word, and he didn’t like that he was going against the promise he’d made to Abuela. But maybe there was some flexibility here. “How’s this? I’ll go to the compound solo and head back this way because I need to go south anyhow, but you ain’t coming with me on that trip down to Alamogordo. You still need to get permission from your people. But that doesn’t mean you can’t help out in some way. Here’s how we play this: you help me ward off any enemies that may try to chase me out of there. It’ll be good practice for you, and maybe you’ll even get a level. Then you hide out and make it back to your tribe, get permission, see if you can’t level up even more, and I will swing by on my way back up toward Albuquerque. Promise.”

“You’re going to go to Albuquerque?”

“After I head south, sure, that’s the plan. There are several things I need to take care of there, including killing the pinche hijo de puta who did this to me,” Sterling said, tilting his cigarette toward his skeletal arm. “What do you say? That a good enough deal for you? Hell, who knows, you may even see some action tonight. If I do things right, maybe not, but it’s probably better that way. Whatever is cooped up in that compound over there is all sorts of crazy, or else they wouldn’t be named the Culto Demente Sagrado. But like they often say about crazy: it takes one to know one.” Sterling winked at Paco. “You ready to get your feet wet, or what?”

.Chapter Ten.

Sterling made Paco promise several times to stay behind, to not come after him no matter what happened, no matter what he heard or saw. He even ended up threatening the Hopi native, telling him he would shoot him in the legs and conjure whatever he could find around the area to hold him back. He said all this with a smile on his face, Sterling not quite meaning the words coming out of his mouth. He liked Paco; the kid’s determination and the grit he exhibited in waiting for two days for Sterling to show up impressed him. But he had promised Abuela that he wouldn’t let Paco get involved, and until he had her approval, he was going to make good on that promise.

Sterling’s Cover of Night technique was currently at Level 2; he was going to rely on this, his Sneak Proficiency and Assassination technique, as well as his Mold Manipulation ability, to break himself into the compound. From there, his focus would shift to locating the Sunflower Kid and getting the hell out of Dodge, Sterling assuming he was going to have to put down a few cultists along the way.

Good riddance, he thought as he rode Manchester toward the compound. I need me a level anyway.

He didn’t know if he was going to be able to squeeze out nearly four thousand XP at the compound, but if he could pull it off, he would certainly try, and if there were other mancers holed up in there alongside the telemancer running the place, the woman who called herself Jesus, it would make it much easier for Sterling to move up to Level 61.

What you need is a charm that increases XP, Sterling thought. Something that is like the dream catcher you have, with its ten percent Mana boost.

As he grew closer to the compound, he thought of the six charms he currently wore. There was the rattlesnake tail that hung from his belt loop that granted him an additional Stat Point per five levels gained. He would get that once he reached Level 65, conveniently enough. Then there was the leather bracelet that granted him an additional Technique Point per level gained, the topaz necklace that he lifted off the female Killbilly that gave him a bonus Resolve point; the arrowhead made out of rattlesnake skin necklace, ultra rare, which gave him eight Technique Points per level gained; and his newest piece, his amber ring with the scorpion tail inside which he wore on his necklace, which gave him a Class Proficiency bonus per three levels gained. This wouldn’t kick in until he hit Level 63, which couldn’t come soon enough.

Sterling chuckled. If he kept this up, collecting charms like he was as of late, he was going to have a lot of flair by the time he rolled into Albuquerque, and apparently Utah from there, where the Godwalkers’ terminal was located, at least according to what Raylan had heard. But he had more pertinent things to do before he started his journey north, one of those things being the wall of cactus he was slowly approaching. And he still didn’t know what a terminal was.

“Things to be determined…” he said under his breath.

There was no telemancer in his head regurgitating Bible quotes, rattling on about Eden. His hat now prevented that, courtesy of Raylan’s clever crafting. It was pretty clear as he approached the compound that there was an actual main entrance, several guards out front, the men wearing robes and holding shotguns. But Sterling had a different idea for how he would get inside, and with this in mind, he kept to the dark pockets of the terrain which were provided by trees that surrounded the Abó ruins, where he eventually abandoned Manchester.

“I whistle for you, you come running, Pingo,” he told his skeletal steed.

Sterling had been looking in his travel guide at a picture of the ruins before dozing off earlier. The place looked like an abandoned castle, at least according to the picture, the adobe walls the color of tortillas that had been cooked just a bit too long. Hard to imagine that sixteen hundred people lived in the compound back in the seventeenth century, the puebloans mostly agriculturalists, clear in the flat stretch of land surrounding the structure. But that was history for you. It was generally more impressive than it looked upon first glance.

Sterling was glad that there was cloud cover above. As he made his way across what was once farmland, he paid close attention to the moonlight breaking through the clouds, which illuminated strips of the terrain. This saw Sterling moving in a zigzag pattern, the wind picking up, his black duster lifting off his legs, the temperature dropping a few degrees. He pressed on, eventually coming to the wall made out of cactus.

Sterling looked up at it, in awe of what the Sunflower Kid had created. The Kid has leveled up over the last three years, he thought, that’s for dang sure.

In a scenario like this, Sterling would normally look for dead bodies to animate, but he hadn’t sensed anything on his way over from the place he had left Paco, which led him to believe that they buried people inside the compound, or perhaps on the other side. It would be helpful to call upon a few animates to bring their unique form of terror and chaos to the equation, but he could always improvise with a fresh kill.

Sterling placed his left hand against the surface of the cactus, ignoring its thorns. Mold began to spread out from the palm of his hand. Sterling figured it was going to take more Mana than normal to cut himself a big enough hole to get into the cultists’ compound. He kept at it, his head bent forward now as the mold began to spread rhizomatically away from his fingertips, the putrid smell reaching his nostrils.

Sterling unsheathed his sickle-sword and pressed it into the flesh of the cactus, easily cleaving away the mold he had created. He kept at it, alternating between conjuring mold and using the sword until he had a tunnel going, one about four feet high. It was another ten minutes before he was finally able to break through to the other side, Sterling estimating the cactus wall was easily six feet deep.

A warm gust of muggy air hit his face, and Sterling took a moment to register that there was something different about this air, something that he wasn’t used to. Humidity? he thought as he sheathed his weapon and pressed his hand on his cowboy hat, pushing fully through to the other side of the cactus wall. Water dripped from the leaves above, birdsong met his ears, and the temperature was at least thirty degrees hotter than it had been outside the compound.

Sterling was in the middle of a jungle.

Getting weirder, he thought as he slowly crept forward, his black duster already in his inventory list. Feeling the heat, sweat on his brow, Sterling rolled up his sleeves and pressed on. Movement to his left caught his attention, Sterling stepping back just in time to avoid colliding with a pack of gazelle much larger than any gazelle he’d ever seen before, not quite the size of horses, but definitely the size of donkeys. The opening they made in the foliage allowed Sterling to see ahead for just a moment. He was only twenty feet or so away from a building, a lantern shining near it affixed to a pole and casting a butterscotch glow over the area.

Sterling crept forward through the jungle, his revolver at the ready. The cowboy necromancer focused on the sounds around him, listening for footsteps. He finally heard one, but it didn’t have the crunch he would have expected from the jungle; no, it was a foot on a wooden plank, a deck of sorts. He moved just a bit closer to the light and spotted a man, a rifle slung over his shoulder.

Sterling sent his revolver back into its holster and retrieved his sickle-sword. He moved on the cultist immediately, his hand going around his mouth as he brought his blade across his throat, blood spritzing from the wound as he lowered him. Like a savage animal, Sterling dragged the cultist back into the foliage. Once he was sure the man was dead, he animated him, instructing the zombie to stay behind. Sterling crept back toward the spot where he had slain the man and placed his hand on the cultist’s rifle, sending it to his inventory list.

He was impressed by the structure he saw next. The compound was built using the ancient ruins as a template, some of the walls made of stone that had been joined up with adobe brickwork from hundreds of years ago. As Sterling took in the structure, he couldn’t help but wonder where the Sunflower Kid was. The main building was several stories high, and he had a notion to head toward the top, but something told him that was where Jesus the telemancer was, a hunch of sorts. As much as he would have liked a fight, Sterling hoped to avoid her. If he could get out of the Culto Demente Sagrado’s sizable compound without drawing attention to himself, it would be much better in the long run.

He already had enough enemies.

Sterling stepped off the wooden deck and saw that there was a green vein in the earth, one which led to a building on the other side of the complex, the compound lit by lanterns with insects buzzing around them. He began following the green vein in the soil, Sterling noticing that it had been freshly swept, that the cultists took good care of it. He paused once he came to a series of cages, naked people chained inside, all of them half-starved. A child looked to Sterling and called out to him, his mother quickly grabbing the boy.

And that was all it took.

The telemancer picked up on the fact Sterling was in the compound; he was sure of this once people in cages began biting and scratching at one another. The doors of the compound kicked open and cultists began pouring out, all of them in brown robes and carrying firearms. Sterling’s single animate tore out of the jungle, catching the attention of a group of cultists that had just come out of the largest building. The perfect distraction.

Following the bright green vein, Sterling was ambushed by two cultists with shotguns, barely able to bring one down with a direct shot, the other firing and missing, Sterling’s ears ringing. And it wasn’t his own flesh he was worried about; he was worried about losing his cowboy hat and his protection against the telemancer. His free hand going onto the top of his hat, Sterling fired several shots into the man’s body which blew him backward, the cultist wearing a bulletproof vest. Sterling reached him in a flash and buried one in the center of his forehead.

Back to tracing the green vein, Sterling ran at his top speed, not able to shake the feeling that he was being followed by something. He noticed movement to his left once again, the foliage of the jungle shifting. Whatever it was, it was large. Sterling was just turning the corner to circle back toward the compound when a cultist sprang out at him.

The man wielded a large sword, and as he spun forward, Sterling recognized instantly that the cultist had put some serious Technique Points into his sword skills. It had been a while since he’d been challenged this way, and as much as Sterling wanted to have a sword fight, in the jungle, in a demented cultists’ compound in the middle of the high desert, he knew that now wasn’t the time.

Bam!

The cultist fell, and Sterling continued on, reminded of an old phrase about bringing a knife to a gunfight. The green vein crisscrossing the compound stopped in front of a wooden door. A tributary of it continued onward to another, but Sterling figured he would take his chances, especially because the wooden door was part of the larger compound, and he didn’t think that they would be keeping someone as powerful as the Sunflower Kid in the adjacent building.

He shouldered his way through the wooden door, tearing it off its hinges.

A musty smell came to Sterling as he stepped into the space, one of incense and juniper. The inner walls of the place were bare, the only furniture in the room being a chest on the opposite side of the room. A cultist kicked open another door and burst in with her shotgun drawn. She was close enough for Sterling to swipe at her, which he did with the grip of his revolver, Sterling finishing the job once she went down.

Bam!

He moved into the next room, which had a twin bed in the corner, the quilt disturbed. This led Sterling to believe that the woman he had just killed had been resting when she received the telepathic alarm. There was a door on the right, but something told Sterling to continue straight, to the door directly in front of him. Positioning himself beside it, he twisted the handle open and moved in with his weapon drawn.

“Whew…”

Sterling found the Sunflower Kid seated in the center of the room, vines and flowers alive all around her. She was exactly as Sterling remembered, the biomancer with the youthful appearance of a sixteen-year-old. She wore an oversized collarless shirt made of a thick off-white cotton, her legs bare beneath, moccasins on her feet. Bracelets hung from her thin wrists, and her long brown hair was piled on top of her head, loosely held in place by hairclips and shredded bits of bandanna.

She opened her eyes and saw Sterling, her expression blank for just a moment. Then her eyebrows narrowed at him.

“Sorry I have to do this,” Sterling told her as he aimed his revolver at the teenage girl. He shot her in the shoulder, and the Sunflower Kid twisted backward, vines starting to lift off her form. Sterling quickly grabbed her and pistol whipped the young woman, hating to do so. He struck her again and she passed out, the vines and flowers all around him instantly starting to wilt.

“You’ll thank me later,” he told her as he threw the Sunflower Kid over his shoulder. “Trust me.”

The last thing he wanted was a combative biomancer.

Sterling expected an entire army to be on the other side of the door once he emerged, he even thought he might run into the telemancer herself, especially with the fact he was stealing the Adapted woman’s prized possession. What he didn’t expect was for the ground to rumble and the wall to give way as an enormous serpent amalgamation tore into the space, its body easily eight feet in diameter, its skull that of a vulture.

Sterling was thrown backward, the Sunflower Kid still flung over his shoulder. He began firing indiscriminately at the absolutely enormous serpent amalgamation as it withdrew from the hole it had burrowed into the adobe wall. Sterling still didn’t like his odds, but he knew he was going to need to make it out before the ceilings came tumbling down.

Summoning every bit of guts he could muster, Sterling shot forward, just clearing the hole the amalgamation had made before it tried to do the same thing again. He almost dropped the Sunflower Kid in his mad dash, but he managed to hold on to her. Sterling quickly turned his focus to the jungle. It didn’t matter how dense it was. He knew if he could make it to the wall of cactus that he could burst his way out of the cultists’ compound.

Ignoring the gunfire, and the serpent amalgamation for that matter as it withdrew its sharp beak from the main structure, Sterling narrowed his focus on one thing and one thing only—getting as far away from this madness as humanly possible.

As he tore through the jungle, he stumbled into a stream, colorful frogs hopping in the opposite direction, their bodies glowing neon. He got slapped a few times in the face by stray limbs, one almost taking off his hat, which would have made things a lot more complicated. But he pressed on, Sterling making it to the wall of cactus just as he sensed movement behind him.

He had formulated the idea in his exodus through the jungle, a way to bust out without having to utilize his mold manipulation power. Sterling turned toward the sound behind him and began firing his revolver indiscriminately, drawing the amalgamation toward him.

He leapt out of the way just in time for it to strike, the snake’s hardened beak ripping through the wall of cactus as it passed to the other side, to the desert beyond.

The amalgamation had made Sterling’s exit.

Its forward momentum propelled it in such a way that Sterling had time to holster his weapon and actually climb through the hole it created before the snake could whip around, Sterling with one hand on his cowboy hat, and the other keeping the Sunflower Kid on his shoulder.

He had never been so happy to see the desert, but he also knew that the amalgamation, the giant serpent easily the length of a tour bus, would be hot on his tail. Sterling whistled and Manchester came running, the horse startled once he noticed the serpent heading directly for him, the ground parting around the monster.

“Git!” Sterling ran in the direction of a glowing orb on the horizon, wishing Paco hadn’t given his location away yet thankful that it gave him a target, a beacon, an area to escape to. It wasn’t going to be easy, but as Manchester caught up with Sterling, he launched himself into the air and managed to get a leg over the bone horse, one hand still holding onto the Sunflower Kid. He nearly tipped over, but secured himself with his hand on his saddle horn. Once he was in place, he began firing shot after shot at the pursuing serpent amalgamation.

Sterling held the Kid tightly, armed cultists riding horses and dirt bikes out of the front gate of the compound. Moving even faster now, the serpent gaining on him, Sterling cleared the distance between the compound and where Paco was waiting, the solimancer at a pass with a small overlook nearby, glowing orb overhead. Sterling slowed his horse for just a moment to lower the Sunflower Kid into Paco’s arms.

“The Sunflower Kid is a girl?” he asked.

“What did you expect? I need to finish up here, at least the amalgamation. You and the Kid need to get away, head that way, and put that light out,” he said hurriedly, nodding toward the cliff side they had been on earlier. “This won’t take me long. Go!”

Before Paco could answer, Sterling turned back toward the serpent amalgamation, which was just starting to rear up to strike him with its vulture beak. An idea came to him, one that he knew would challenge his fear of heights. Sterling turned his skeletal steed toward the crest separating him from the amalgamation below. Now holding the reins with one hand, he balanced himself on the saddle and hit the air just as Manchester reached the edge of the ridge.

Sterling collided with the serpent amalgamation midair just as it tried to strike his bone horse.

Manchester jumped and avoided the attack as Sterling latched onto a bone protrusion that was part of the amalgamation’s skull. He drew his sickle-sword from its breakaway scabbard and began stabbing the enormous serpent repeatedly in the fleshy part of its neck, again and again as the amalgamation tried to buck him off.

Sterling ignored the cultists coming up around him as he held on tight, each jab from his sickle-sword filling the air with darkened ichor that carried the smell of sulfur and iron. The serpent amalgamation slammed its upper body against the ground. Sterling dug his sword in even deeper.

He expected the cultists to start shooting at him, and was surprised to see that the few that had reached him on their dirt bikes had all stopped, watching in absolute shock as Sterling did his best to slay the amalgamation. It took a half dozen more jabs, but he eventually brought the amalgamation to the ground, the cowboy necromancer hopping off its neck at the very last moment.

His chest heaving up and down, he stood before the beast, wishing he had a cigarette as more cultists appeared. They gathered together, a few of them lifting their weapons, others not quite certain of what they should do as they tried to understand how a single man could take down an amalgamation of that size, the same man now standing before them, his strangely shaped sword charged with turquoise energy and dripping with blood, his form illuminated by the pale moonlight. Sterling wiped his face with his good arm and pointed his sword at the cultists. “Last chance,” he said as he sucked in a deep breath. He brought his hand to the small of his back and curled his fingers.

The serpent amalgamation came to life.

It was the largest thing he had ever animated, but it worked just like a human or animal, Sterling mentally sending the colossal snake at the cultists. They tried to fire their weapons at it, but mere bullets weren’t going to bring down Sterling’s animate with its sheer size and sharp vulture beak. The serpent collided with the group, their horses rearing up, their dirt bikes flung into the air as the amalgamation crushed cultists left and right.

Sterling snuck away. The cries of terror and the sounds of the serpent’s body slithering across the parched soil as it killed indiscriminately were behind Sterling now, yet another troubled chapter in the story of his post-Reset life. He reached Manchester, mounted up, and turned toward the cliff, where he saw a flash of light, as if there were a firefly waiting for him, a lighthouse in the desert.

“What did you do?” Paco asked as Sterling came upon him, the native youth wide-eyed now.

Sterling hopped down from his horse and paused for a moment with his hand on Manchester’s saddle. Rather than answer Paco’s question, he equipped his bag of tobacco and his rolling papers. He rolled up a pair of cigarettes with shaky hands. Once he was finished, he placed one cigarette behind his ear and the other in his mouth and lit it, finally turning to the young man. “I did what had to be done. Look,” he told Paco, who had one knee on the ground so he could support the Sunflower Kid, the teenage girl still passed out, the wound on her shoulder already healing. “I need to get going before the cultists fan out. That is, if any of them are left. Got a place to hide around here?”

“My horse is a mile away.”

“Why didn’t you bring your horse here?”

“I didn’t want to leave any tracks, and I didn’t want her to get killed. They won’t find me. I know this area well.”

“Fair enough. Get to your horse, and then get back to your people,” Sterling said as he ashed his cigarette. “I’ll be coming for you. I don’t know when, but my guess is it will be within a week or so. I will have to speak to Abuela first and get her approval. You will need to talk to her as well. Finally, you need to get stronger,” he said, nodding toward the commotion below, his zombie amalgamation still wreaking havoc. “That’s the kind of stuff I’m going to be doing from here on out, but with more dangerous targets. There’s no shame in saying you ain’t interested. Hell, if I were your age, I don’t think I’d be interested. I prefer to be chasing skirts than dealing with the kind of shit I’m about to attempt.”

“No,” Paco told him doggedly. “I’m in.”

“That stubbornness will get you killed, but hasn’t gotten me killed, so there’s hope for you yet. Good luck, and keep a low profile.” Sterling mounted up once again, cigarette clenched between his teeth. “Let me have her.”

Paco lifted the Sunflower Kid and Sterling took her into his arms.

“Do you know when she will wake up?”

“No, and she ain’t going to be too happy when she does. Best I get going. You take care of yourself, Paco.” Sterling tipped his hat toward the young man. “I’ll be seeing you.”

Part Three

Carrizozo Fiesta; White Sands Fiasco; Lizard Eat Lizard; Roxy and the Technomancer

.Chapter One.

Somewhere between Mountainair and Alamogordo, not too far from Carrizozo, New Mexico.

Not too distant future.

Riding all night with a teenage girl slung over his shoulder was by no means something Sterling was looking forward to, but the Sunflower Kid was light, and she couldn’t have weighed more than eighty pounds wet. He grew used to the additional weight as the morning sun began to peek over the horizon, the Kid still out, Sterling on the verge himself. At some point during the night, he had dozed off as well, cigarette in his mouth, which he’d somehow kept there as Manchester started down a rocky path, waking the cowboy necromancer.

Much to his surprise, Sterling had gained a level in his fight against the Culto Demente Sagrado and the enormous, vulture-skulled serpent amalgamation. He yawned as he accessed his stats yet again, just to help him stay awake:

You have received 4,159 XP!

You have gained a level!

You have received eight Stat Points!

You have received two Technique Points!

You have received nine bonus Technique Points!

Name: Sterling Monedero

Race: Human

Mancer Class: Necromancer

Class Ranking: Bone Sculptor

Level: 61

Fortitude: 117

Strength: 40

Resolve: 155

Mana: 123/159

Current Armor Rating: 28

XP: 314,523

XP to Next Level:10,437

Stat Points Available: 0

Technique Points Available: 12

His gut response had been to sink all of the Stat Points into his Strength, but he ended up putting five there, and the rest in his Resolve, figuring he would need to be able to heal up as much as he needed to punch. He still hadn’t assigned Technique Points, but he would do that once he finally was able to take a break and peruse the Buy Store.

He was in no rush.

They were just coming to the junction between two state roads when the Sunflower Kid trembled, the morning sun casting playful colors across the desert. Sterling had been preparing for this moment over the last several hours, going over what he would say, how he would broach things. The Sunflower Kid had always had an eerily calm personality, but he had never seen her in this position before, plucked from the grips of a cult spearheaded by a telemancer.

“Easy,” Sterling said as she jerked awake. She was just bringing her fist against his back when he clicked his tongue. Manchester stopped; Sterling hopped off his horse and set the Kid down in front of him. He noticed the absence of her weight now, the Sunflower Kid taking a few steps back as plants began to rip from the soil, something he’d seen her do multiple times before, the Kid preparing to fight.

“Sterling?” she asked as she looked up at him, strands of her dark hair battering across her face, a smattering of dried blood on her shoulder. She lowered her shoulders, and tilted her head to the left as she took him in, plant constructs settling around her.

“In the flesh. Morning, don’t kill me, and more importantly, are you hungry? Also, this goes without saying, sorry I shot you.”

The teenage girl placed her hand on her shoulder. She took a look around, more confusion setting in. “Where… where are we exactly?”

“Exactly? There ain’t no exactly when it comes to where we are. I’d say somewhere in the middle of nowhere, on our way to Alamogordo, and the White Sands desert from there.”

“White Sands?”

“I’ve got a lot to explain to you, so let’s hash it out, and then we can get on our way if you so choose. Shit, I need to find something around here to animate for you to ride. I suppose you could just hang on to me for a little while, but…” Sterling took off his hat and held it over his chest as he offered the Sunflower Kid a smile. “Sorry, I probably should have started with saying hello. I’m tired, been riding all night.”

“How?” she finally asked as she brought her hand to her head, the Sunflower Kid massaging her temples. “The last thing I remember was Albuquerque.”

“You were in Albuquerque?”

“With Zephyr. And then…”

“Zephyr, huh? Let’s circle back to her, I need to tell you what we got planned.”

“We?”

Sterling looked the teenager up and down, starting from her moccasins to the off-white tunic that she wore, dozens of bracelets on her arms, strands of her dark hair now beating in the wind. “I’ll get to that part. I’ll tell you everything.”

“Everything?” she asked, Sterling knowing exactly what she was insinuating.

“As much as I can.” He turned away from her for a moment, and when he turned back, he had a rolling paper and some tobacco in his hand. Sterling quickly rolled up a cigarette and lit it.

“You’re still smoking?” She was crouched now, examining a crack in the soil. With a wave of her hand she summoned a small sunflower, which quickly grew in size until it was as tall as her, the yellow petals vibrant against the beige landscape, the green of the stem and its sepals almost alien.

“What level are you now?” Sterling asked.

“Level 50. You?”

“Damn. Last I remember you were somewhere in the 30s.”

“It has been three years.”

“It sure has. Three long years. I’m at Level 61. Just leveled up, actually.”

Even though she looked like a sixteen-year-old girl, maybe even younger, Sterling knew she was older than that. The Sunflower Kid didn’t age, a result of her biomancer power.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

“I have some fruit.”

Strawberries began to press out of the enormous sunflower she had created. “I forgot you could do that.”

“Do you want some strawberries?”

“Strawberries, huh? It has been years since I had one of them.” Sterling let her pick most of the strawberries while he smoked a cigarette. Once he finished, he picked one as well and squeezed it, noticing how plump the strawberry was.

“No wonder they wanted you so badly back there.”

“Who wanted me?” she asked.

“Yeah, I guess we should start there. Sorry, like I said, it’s been a night. If you want to know why you woke up on my shoulder, it was because a cult took you, specifically the Culto Demente Sagrado, and they were holding you hostage outside of Mountainair. I heard that you had been captured, and from what I could tell, they forced you to use your powers to really fortify their fortress. You even grew a jungle in there.”

“I can’t grow a jungle,” she said, “not without a hydromancer.”

“Do you know a hydromancer?”

“I don’t remember anything aside from the hydromancer that Zephyr and I knew in Albuquerque. His name was Cristobal.”

“Shee-it, sounds like he might have sold you out. I don’t know, but there was definitely a jungle. I ain’t never seen nothing like that before. It was a completely self-contained jungle, like, what’s that word?”

“A botanical garden?”

“There’s the word.”

“I read about a botanic garden in the nation’s capital, the United States Botanic Garden. Are you familiar with it?”

“All I know is that the capitol was in Washington, D.C. There’s no telling what’s there now, hell, the whole East Coast for that matter. I’m imagining a dense, urban environment like that really didn’t do so well after the Reset.”

The Sunflower Kid continued. “The Botanic Garden was established in 1820 by the U.S. Congress. The oldest botanic garden in all of North America. The facilities there included a garden court, a rare and endangered plants conservatory, an orchid house, medicinal plants, desert plants, plants from Hawaii, jungle specimens, and a children’s garden…”

Sterling popped the strawberry in his mouth, the burst of tart and sweet flavor making his senses tingle for a moment. This reminded him of his skeletal arm, which was still exposed because his duster was in his inventory list, the Kid either not noticing it or not saying anything about his bone arm if she had.

“…the Vessel Fern was held there, and it was believed to be the direct progeny of a plant brought back during the United States Exploring Expedition of the Pacific Ocean and the West Coast.”

“Is that so?” Sterling asked her. When not quiet and keeping to herself, the Sunflower Kid could rattle off facts like the best of them. She was a heavy reader, and she had been known before to drone on and on about a variety of subjects, the teenager with a photographic memory when it came to things she’d read. This was at odds with her overall personality, which was easy-going to the point that she seemed lackadaisical at times, simply floating by on the wind.

“Let me stop you right there, because believe me, I’m interested in this botanical garden, but we’ve got other things to discuss,” Sterling told her. “So, you either made that jungle in there, or you didn’t. Either way, it was impressive.”

“As I said, I can’t make something like that without a hydromancer.” The Sunflower Kid ate another berry, Sterling on his fifth or sixth strawberry by this point. “I’m able to do certain things, but I’m not able to sustain something that large. You said it was a compound, correct? How come I don’t remember any of that?”

“That I can explain. A telemancer, a nasty one at that. I saw people in cages in there too, plus they were clearly using your power to run that place. Come anywhere within half a mile or so of the fortress and,” Sterling snapped his fingers, “a telemancer takes over. That’s how they get their recruits.”

“So the telemancer was running the cult, and exploited my powers. Which would make sense, because I don’t remember anything about a jungle. My last memories are of being in Albuquerque,” she said, slowly putting the pieces together.

“A telemancer will do that to you. And the reason your shirt is bloody is I had to shoot you, and then knock you out, to get you out of there. Sorry about that; my hands were tied.”

The Sunflower Kid popped another strawberry in her mouth, her lips red. She tossed the green part to the ground. “Why did you rescue me exactly?”

“Aside from the fact that I would have come for you anyway had I heard you’d been captured, that wasn’t exactly the case in the beginning. My story starts a little over a week ago, at least I think it’s been a little over a week. The days have sort of all collided together. Anyhow, I was minding my own business at my pepper farm outside of Truth or Consequences when a Godwalker shows up and destroys my farm. Some bandits known as the Killbillies, obviously no relation to the Godwalkers, also showed up at the exact same time to fuck with me. We’ll be dealing with them Killbillies at some point, but more on them later. After seeing my farm destroyed, I realized pretty quickly that it was time to set out to do what I, what we, tried to do a couple years back.”

“Tried and failed,” the Sunflower Kid said, her tone indifferent.

“Yup, aware.” Sterling shook his head. And after a short breath out he continued. “I rode on down to Las Cruces in search of Don Gasper, hoping the old shaman would point me in your direction, Roxy and Zephyr as well.”

“Zephyr is in Albuquerque.”

“You ain’t the first to tell me, and we’ll get to that part in a moment. Anyway, as you can imagine, any time spent with Don Gasper is unpredictable and ripe for the depravity. Las Cruces itself is war-torn at the moment due to a battle between the White Sands Militia and the Killbillies, the two dipshit groups vying for power in southern New Mexico. I managed to get out of Las Cruces with my hat on my head and a riddle about your location that a coyote gave to me. I suppose that sounds crazy. Anyhow, I was left with a choice: either go after you, or go see if I couldn’t break Roxy out, who just so happens to be imprisoned by the militia I mentioned. Gasper seemed to think I should go for you first, and here we are, on our way down south to get Roxy.”

The Sunflower Kid simply nodded, no judgment.

“To get back to the riddle this coyote told me: all I knew about your location was that it was north. I couldn’t figure out the damn riddle. Along my way north, I came to a Hopi pueblo, a new one, not far off the interstate. Made a few friends there, including a solimancer. They helped me solve the riddle, they also told me about a guy trying to kill me, a cryomancer bounty hunter named Ram. The Hopi knew about the cultists’ compound, and I verified it was you by the wall of cactus you erected around the structure. I couldn’t go any closer on account of the telemancer. So I continued to head north via the Turquoise Trail to get tech from Raylan. Remember him?”

She nodded.

“After some bullshit I don’t want to get into, I eventually reached Madrid, where Raylan lives. He fashioned this here hat for me,” Sterling said as he took off his cowboy hat. “Which has something in the hatband here that prevents telepathy. That was good and well, but the next morning, Ram the bounty hunter showed up, and ended up cutting off my arm in the fight that followed.”

“You want me to fix your arm?”

“Actually, yes, I just thought I needed to explain why it was missing in the first place. A little context never hurt nobody.”

“I can do it now while you tell me the rest,” the Sunflower Kid said as she approached Sterling and reached for the flesh still left on his right arm. As he spoke, his skin began to slowly stitch together, the sensation akin to getting a light massage.

“As I was saying, once I had the hat, and the borrowed skeletal arm that you are now fixing, thank-you-very-much, I left Madrid and went to the cult to see about freeing you. A little luck, a fight with the serpent amalgamation—I apologize again for how I had to assault you so you wouldn’t attack me—and here we are.”

“Some story.”

“Like I said, you were under her spell, the telemancer, she’s all sorts of batshit insane, calling herself Jesus and whatnot. I had to do something.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“I do.”

The Sunflower Kid continued to focus on healing Sterling’s arm. He would always have the bones of another man beneath his flesh, but at least he had flesh now.

“I’m glad to hear that. Shee-it, listen to me ramble on like a lingering fart with nothing better to do. If it wasn’t clear in the beginning, let me say it again: I’m putting the team together to take on these Godwalkers yet again, and I want your help. I need your help. We all do. Thus far, Raylan has agreed to join up once we get a technomancer, which I have a lead on; getting Zephyr is on my to-do list after we deal with Roxy in White Sands; there’s a Hopi man named Paco, a solimancer, who is itching to get into the fight; and there’s also a pyromancer named Sierra, who’s in Madrid with Raylan. The way I see it, you, me, Roxy, Raylan, Sierra, Paco, Zephyr, and this technomancer we eventually find, is the team. Together, we are going to do what we weren’t able to do three years ago.”

“I see.”

Sterling was quiet for a moment, waiting for the Sunflower Kid to say more. “So…” He cleared this throat. “Does that mean you are willing to join up again? To work with us? I guess I am being a bit forthright here. You make your own choice, and don’t let none of what I just told you, or what happened back at the compound, weigh in on your decision. But I have to be honest, I hope you are willing to join us. We need you… I need you.”

“There is only you at the moment,” she said, her tone still indifferent as she continued repairing his arm, a vein pulsing on her head. “Everyone else that you have mentioned seems conditional in some way.”

“That’s not exactly true, Paco tried to help back at the cultists’ compound and I damn near had to beat him off so he wouldn’t ride south with us. Sierra is only staying in Madrid to protect the place if Ram comes back.”

“Ram is still alive?”

“I ain’t proud about that part. He’s going to be one tough son of a bitch to take down considering he’s a Level 90 cryomancer, but he’s in Albuquerque, and I plan to deal with him when I go for Zephyr. One step at a time, or at least, combine some of the steps that make sense to corral together.”

“And you think Zephyr would join you again?”

Sterling shrugged. “You would know better than I. You tell me, you were the last to see her.”

“I honestly don’t know what she would do if you approached her.”

“I’ll do my best to convince her. What about you? Sorry to put you on the spot like this, but are you in?”

“Okay,” the Sunflower Kid said, no hesitation in her voice.

Sterling looked at her incredulously for a moment. “Wait, you’re agreeing?”

“I’ll join.”

“Hot damn! And I was about to get down on my knees and beg you.”

“You can still do that if you’d like,” she told him.

“In that case, I guess… Well, damn, I thought you’d put up more fight. I mean, it’s your choice, but I was going to do my best to convince you. I need to stop talking while I’m ahead.”

“Why would I put up a fight?”

“No reason.” Sterling looked away from her, ignoring the shame that he was feeling for what happened last time they’d tried to take down a Godwalker. She was nearly done healing up his arm, his new skin down to his wrist now. Blood vessels lifted out of the outer edge of the flesh as it grew, reaching over the bones of his hand. She seemed to be going slower than normal; he knew she could heal faster than this. “I guess we should keep going then. Maybe it’s best if we rest tonight so we can start fresh in Alamogordo tomorrow. That’s where we’re supposed to meet Don Gasper.”

“We’re meeting Don Gasper?”

“Yup, I guess I should have mentioned that little part. He’s there dealing with some evil sorcerers or something. Hopefully, he has figured all that out by the time we show up, but I doubt it. Most likely, he’s gotten back into ‘shaman business,’ as he calls it.” Sterling sighed as he took a quick look around. “Unless you feel like sharing Manchester, we need to find you something to ride, and you should probably change shirts. Figured you’d have another couple in your invo list.”

Of all the things to stumble upon, a half-dead pronghorn surrounded by vultures, while appropriate for the desert, came as a surprise to Sterling.

The Sunflower Kid, who now wore a new cotton tunic, immediately went about healing the female creature, which quickly morphed into a male as horns and testicles took shape. I did not know she could do that, Sterling thought. The creature had a tan coat, a white pattern on its forehead, black on its nose and reflective eyes.

“It will work for now,” the Sunflower Kid said, the pronghorn instinctively trusting her. He had seen this play out before; the Kid had a way with animals that came as part of her biomancer powers. Sterling was not certain if it was a technique she had enhanced or related to a Class Proficiency.

“Whatever it is, that’s the biggest pronghorn I’ve ever seen,” he said on the tail end of a yawn. He was looking forward to finding a place to rest, especially after what he had been through back in Mountainair.

“Adult males are generally four to five feet long, and stand up to forty-one inches high at the shoulder,” she said. “I believe this one is six feet long, and it’s as tall as me at about sixty inches.” The Sunflower Kid started at the bottom of the front hooves and used her hand to slowly take a measurement all the way to the pronghorn’s shoulder, the creature entirely at ease with her presence.

“Good to know. You’re going to need a saddle. I got an extra blanket you could use.”

The Sunflower Kid turned to a single cactus growing between a pair of gray rocks. It shifted backward as the succulent began to balloon in size, the surface now smooth as the excess flesh of the cactus flopped over to the side, hardening as if it were leather. She picked it up and brought it to the pronghorn. As she placed the inflated cactus ear on the pronghorn’s body, it began to morph around the creature until it resembled a saddle, portions of the succulent connecting beneath the pronghorn’s body, a saddle horn forming.

“You are something else,” Sterling said as he watched her work, a cigarette in his mouth. His hand was healed up now, the skin tight and pink, something that he hoped would darken over time. It was good to be himself again, even if he had bones that belonged to another man. “I guess anything’s possible after the Reset, heh.”

“It will do for now,” she said as climbed onto the saddle. The pronghorn’s horns started to grow backward so they would operate almost as handlebars for the Sunflower Kid, allowing her to stabilize herself. She bent forward, and pet the pronghorn’s neck. “Are you ready?” she asked, looking back at Sterling.

“I don’t know what I am anymore, but it sure is good to have you back around.”

Once he was mounted up, the two continued on their journey, keeping close to the road. Sterling equipped his travel guide and traced his finger along the map until he could estimate their location. They weren’t far from a small town called Carrizozo, and Sterling was hoping that there were some kind natives or locals running a trading post there, preferably someplace with lodging, maybe even a tavern so he could have himself a beer or three. He needed to rest before their inevitable encounter with Don Gasper in Alamogordo; something told him that things were going to get wild again, just about as soon as he met the old shaman.

He shook his head as he recalled how he had encountered him in Las Cruces, Don Gasper on the stage covered in blood, the shaman high off toad venom and peyote when he spotted a woman in the crowd, white paint spread across her nude body, at odds with the darkness of her skin. What was her name? Magdalena, Sterling thought, and according to Don Gasper, she was his lover, or had been at some point. He couldn’t help but grumble as he recalled what Gasper had said about lovers by morning, murderers by dinnertime, or something to that effect. It was all hogwash, yet Sterling couldn’t shake this feeling that Don Gasper was going to be part of this narrative whether he liked it or not.

“Let’s see how fast that pronghorn can go,” Sterling suggested after they had paralleled the highway for about thirty minutes. He re-situated himself on Manchester’s saddle and lifted the reins. “¡Vamos!”

Manchester picked up speed, moving to a full gallop. At first, the Sunflower Kid didn’t take the bait. But she soon appeared at Sterling’s side, a smug smile on her face as she reached him.

“That the fastest you can go?” he asked. “I’m traveling about half speed here. Let’s go, Pingo!”

Sterling was just hunkering down, ready to really push his skeletal steed to the limit, when something caught his attention on the horizon. A cloud of smoke tied to a moving point. Sterling recognized almost immediately that it was a group of dirt bikes.

“Whoa,” he told his bone horse as he slowed to a trot, Sterling pressing his tongue against the inside of his lip as he gauged what was coming in their direction. “It’s either natives, locals, or bandits,” he surmised.

“It could just be some people passing through,” the Sunflower Kid suggested.

“You’re right. You stay optimistic; I’ll stay suspicious until they keep moving.”

But the dirt bikes didn’t keep on moving; instead, they turned toward Sterling and the Sunflower Kid.

Brrrrrt! Brrrrrt!

Sterling ducked, his hand instinctively coming to his cowboy hat as one of the cyclists fired two quick bursts in the air. He pulled his revolver, but by this point they were already nearing Sterling, two of the riders with assault rifles trained on the cowboy necromancer and the Sunflower Kid. They weren’t Killbillies, but there were bandannas covering their faces and oval sunglasses on the bridge of their nose, the two men with poorly shaved mohawks, the third rider in a motorcycle helmet that had been painted in a tribal way, the female of the group.

Sterling almost wanted to laugh. “Y’all are making a big mistake,” he said, his revolver now pointed at the trio. “The biggest goddamn mistake you’ve made in your lives.”

“Everything you got,” said the helmeted woman. “Silver and turquoise, charms, all of it. Drop it onto the ground and back away. What’s in your inventory list?” She hopped off her bike and approached them.

“Are you stupid or something?” Sterling asked as he stared the woman down, seeing his own dark reflection in the visor of her motorcycle helmet. “You really can’t tell we’re mancers? A man rolls up on skeletal horse and the other one is riding a goddamn pronghorn, and you decide to stick us up? Are you out of your godforsaken minds?”

Brrrrrt!

One of the men fired a few more bullets into the air and re-aimed his weapon at Sterling.

“I wish you would, I wish you fucking would,” Sterling said as he turned his attention to the gunman. “In fact, I fucking dare you. You ain’t never met someone who had more of a death wish than me,” Sterling said, noticing the man hesitate for a moment as he exchanged glances with his companion, who had his weapon trained on the Sunflower Kid. “Last chance, assholes. Why don’t you three hop back onto your little bikes and head back to wherever you came from. You won’t like how this is going to end.”

“Don’t listen to them,” said the female rider, defiance in her voice. “He’s just trying to sound tough. All he has is a revolver. She’s not even armed.”

“Welp, I warned you.” The three bandits had been so focused on Sterling that they hadn’t noticed plant tendrils rising from cracks in the asphalt, moving up the sides of their bodies, less than an inch away from their clothing.

The woman unholstered her firearm and pointed it at Sterling. “Give us everything you have, now. Don’t make me say it ag—”

Seeing someone’s skin tear away from their flesh was something that caused even Sterling to look away. The sounds, the flash of sudden shock in their eyes, and the viscera spray was something he had witnessed before. The Sunflower Kid was fast with her powers when she wanted to be, and those same vines that had been creeping up the bodies of the bandits had razor-sharp tips. As soon as her tendrils entered flesh, they expanded, able to reach the appendages in a heartbeat, the plant constructs multiplying in size and killing someone instantly. The three bloody bodies fell to the asphalt.

“I’ll collect the weapons,” Sterling said as he wiped away a bit of blood that had splashed onto his face. “You don’t want to ride a dirt bike, do you?”

“No, I like my pronghorn,” the Sunflower Kid said as if she hadn’t just killed three people in cold blood.

“You’re going to need to name it.”

“I’m still thinking about it.”

Sterling dismounted and gathered the two automatic weapons, the handgun as well, sending them all to his inventory list. I’m starting to get quite a collection, he thought, recalling that he also had Commodore Bones’ silver-gripped pistol. They would be items he could exchange in what he hoped was a trading post in Carrizozo.

“Lizard eat lizard world,” he mumbled as he stepped around a hunk of flesh, a vulture already taking notice, its shadow bearing down on them as it circled above. “You sure are ruthless, you know that?” he told the Sunflower Kid once they started up again, the two continuing south.

“I didn’t want them to shoot you.”

He smiled. “I know you didn’t. And now you see why I went to all that trouble to get you, right?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, a calmness to her posture that belied how quickly she could slay, what she had just done.

“There ain’t nobody like you, Kid. As far as I know, you’re the only biomancer in the Southwest.”

The two were quiet for a few minutes, riding alongside one another, cloud cover above giving them a break from the sun. Finally, she spoke again. “And you’re the only necromancer in the Southwest. That makes us sort of a Yin and Yang, doesn’t it?”

“Yin and Yang,” Sterling said with a groan. “Now you’re sounding like Don Gasper. He says a lot of crazy shit. Calls me vaquero nigromante, cowboy necromancer. And I’m sure after I tell him what the Hopi told me, he’ll christen me Skeleton Man.”

“He should be calling you nigromante vaquero, although it is debatable which actually serves as the adjective and which serves as the noun. Would you prefer something like nigromante agricultor de pimienta?”

“Pepper farmer necromancer?” Sterling snorted at her suggestion. “I guess I see your point, but don’t you go around giving Gasper any ideas once you see the old bastard. And another thing—he may ask you to conjure up a few peyote buttons or toxic toads, don’t be doing none of that shit. We need Gasper as sober as we can get him. Sure, he’ll want to be high on something—and I have some schwag for him—but the last thing we need is a hallucinatory shaman. Believe you me. Let’s try to keep the shaman level-headed for the time being.”

.Chapter Two.

Carrizozo was more or less a one street town, better preserved than most. Brick buildings lined Central Avenue, which doubled as Route 54, ristas hanging on some of the porches. The townsfolk had chosen earthy colors for the buildings that lined the main thoroughfare, and the road was clear of any rubble or abandoned vehicles. Sterling and the Sunflower Kid had left their mounts outside of town, and as they walked, they were greeted by a pair of men with shotguns standing guard on the street, both in sombreros and wearing tan bulletproof vests, one with a bandolier across his chest.

“What brings you to town, strangers?” the man with the bandolier asked, his mustache bushy to the point that it completely covered his mouth.

“Looking for lodging,” Sterling told him as he carefully tipped his hat toward the town guard. “Don’t want no trouble, and ain’t planning to cause none.”

“Where did you walk from?”

“Mountainair,” the Sunflower Kid answered.

He looked at her skeptically. “You walked all the way from Mountainair wearing a pair of moccasins?”

“They are well-made moccasins,” Sterling told him. “Look, fellas, just point us in the direction of whatever accommodations you got in this here town, and the trading post while you’re at it. We could also use a meal. We got money, and we intend to spend it.”

“Be warned: we don’t got no peppers,” the bandoliered man admitted, a pained expression coming across his face. “Bandits saw to that.”

“I reckon that’s something we can help with,” Sterling said, happy to finally be able to unload some of his Big Jims. Another idea came to him in that moment, the cowboy necromancer looking to the Sunflower Kid and nodding. “Actually, we could really help you with that.”

“In that case, you’re welcome in Carrizozo, but don’t be prowling around after dark. We got patrols.”

“These bandits that been causing you trouble, they don’t happen to be a trio of young bucks on dirt bikes led by a woman, do they?”

“You’d be surprised how much damage them three can do. They seem to have an endless supply of ammunition, and I don’t know where they’re getting fuel for them dirt bikes.”

“Tell you what,” Sterling told the two of them, “if you head on up this road for about an hour, you’ll find them dirt bikes. You’ll find the bodies of the three highway robbers too.”

“You killed them?” the bandoliered man asked, not able to mask his surprise.

“Someone had to. We weren’t about to be robbed, I can tell you that.”

The two men standing before Sterling and the Sunflower Kid offered them nods of appreciation. “That really makes things easier around here. Them three have been terrorizing us for months. Pinche bandidos.”

“Pinche bandidos, indeed. Y’all don’t got any Killbillies ‘round these parts, do you?”

“Who?”

“Good to know,” Sterling said. “Anyway, I guess we should start with a meal, and then do some trading after, probably should get a room first. It’s been a long journey, fellas.”

“I’ll lead you around,” the bandoliered man told them after speaking quickly with his counterpart. “The name is Jimmy, by the way, but people around here call me Big Jim. You can call me either.”

“You a pepper farmer?” Sterling asked as he joined Jimmy, who quickly sent his firearm to his inventory list.

“I’ve been many things over the last five years, and a pepper farmer is one of them. But like I said, we don’t got none at the moment. Damn tragedy.”

“Sounds like it.” Sterling looked across the street to see a couple of heads pop out of some windows to see what all the commotion was about. He waved at them, trying to be cordial enough.

“Here we are,” Jimmy said as they reached a burgundy building with life-sized plastic donkeys lining the parapet and a bright turquoise door. Rather than going through the front entrance, they stepped into a courtyard with wrought iron tables and chairs, the smell of sizzling onions meeting Sterling’s nostrils.

“Fajitas?” he asked.

“Like I said, we don’t have peppers, but we got plenty of meat and onions.”

“Look no further—I’ve got your pepper problem solved.” Sterling turned to a grouping of potted succulents. Behind it was an empty pot filled with dry soil. “I’ve been waiting for a couple years to do this,” Sterling said as he accessed his inventory list and produced some Chimayó seeds. He stuck them in the soil and handed the pot to the Sunflower Kid. She held the pot with both hands and looked down at the soil. A plant began to emerge, red Chimayó peppers appearing. “Say hello to one of New Mexico’s finest peppers, the Chimayó.”

Sterling didn’t launch into details about the pepper, how it grew exclusively in Chimayó, a town not too far away from Santa Fe, or that the pepper was so highly regarded by the before people that the powdered version could go for upwards of fifty dollars per pound. The Chimayó pepper was smoky and sweet, perfect for carne adovada and posole. It was a goddamn work of art in Sterling’s book.

Jimmy took off his sombrero and held it over his chest for a moment as he stared in awe at what she had done. “You’re Adapted?”

“Keep it secret,” Sterling said, even though he knew that probably wouldn’t happen. They didn’t plan to stick around town long enough to make it a problem. “I got some Big Jims as well, more than I can handle. I’d be happy to donate them to the fine chefs of Carrizozo.”

Jimmy chuckled. “There’s only one fine chef, and that’s my wife.”

Sterling produced some of the Big Jims he had grown and placed them on the table. “Normally, I’d use these for trading. These are my own, grew them myself in Truth or Consequences. These ones here…” he equipped more peppers, ones that were clearly smaller, “came from some bandits I had to deal with near the Isleta Pueblo.”

“Let me get my wife,” Jimmy said as he eyed the peppers, the big man trying not to lick his mustached upper lip. “She’s in business with the owner of the trading post. Everybody’s in business together here in Carrizozo.”

He stepped away, and as soon as he did Sterling began clipping the Chimayó peppers that the Sunflower Kid had produced. He sent the first batch to his inventory list and gently asked her to do it again. “I hope you don’t consider this an abuse of your powers.”

“I prefer making people happy than sad,” she said. The teenage girl was now seated in one of the chairs, her legs crossed beneath her. As she stared at the pot, red peppers once again started to form.

“You must have a lot of Mana,” Sterling told her as he walked over to a rista hanging from the underside of a roof. It was plastic, but it looked nice, the hanging red peppers adding a touch of color to the whitewashed walls that surrounded the courtyard. An image of the Virgin Mary was arranged out of tile in the far corner. Sterling was impressed with how well they’d kept up the town.

Jimmy returned with two women, both short, one with a few extra pounds and an apron on, who Sterling assumed was his wife. “This is Penelope,” he said, his hand going around his wife’s waist. “And this is the owner of the trading post, Gouyen.”

Sterling tipped his hat to the two ladies. “Well, I got peppers to trade, ladies. I heard your town could use a few; got turquoise and silver too. I’m looking for room and board for tonight for the two of us, as well as the best charms you can conjure up. As you can see,” he said as he motioned toward the table, where more Chimayó peppers were growing out of the pot, “we got ourselves a mancer here. And she ain’t the only one.”

“You killed the bandits?” Gouyen asked, something flashing across her eyes. Sterling couldn’t tell if it was appreciation or sadness.

“Yes, ma’am, we sure did; I should clarify, she did.”

The Sunflower Kid turned to the woman and offered her a soft smile.

“You are just a teenager… A child…”

“Don’t be fooled by the way she looks, ma’am. She may look like a teenager, but she’s seen just about as much action as any soldier still alive.”

“And you are a mancer as well?” she asked Sterling.

“Sure am, of the necrotic arts, if you get my drift. If you don’t, the Hopi call me Skeleton Man.”

“There are no Hopi here,” Gouyen said. “Just a few Mescalero Apache, such as myself, and others who survived the Reset, like Big Jim and Penelope here. But I understand what you’re saying, I’m familiar with the pueblo tribes. We will work something out; I have something that may be exactly what you need charm-wise.” The woman tilted her head as she looked up at Sterling. He couldn’t help but notice the hint of defiance in her eyes, the sagging wrinkles on her face making her jowls heavy. “Something tells me that you’re going to need all the help you can get.”

This caused the cowboy necromancer to smirk. “You ain’t the first woman to tell me that, ma’am.”

“I reckon.”

Jimmy’s wife, Penelope, stepped forward. “You two should eat first. I was just starting some fajitas.”

“Our peppers are at your disposal. Make whatever you’d like, invite the town, someone get a bottle of tequila or two, let’s turn this into a little fiesta,” Sterling said. “Lord knows I could use me one of them.”

It turned out to be quite the celebration, about fifteen people or so gathering to share fajitas, chili relleno, and carne adovada served in corn tortillas, the festivities continuing on with a surprisingly hearty pozole that Penelope had whipped up while people were drinking, a few of the townsfolk later showing up on the dirt bikes that the bandits had used.

Sterling and the Sunflower Kid had been given a pair of rooms which overlooked the courtyard. A generator running in the corner powered a string of Christmas lights overhead, people merrily celebrating the death of the three bandits and their hold on the town. There hadn’t been much talk with Gouyen, the Mescalero Apache woman who ran the trading post about the charm she had in store for Sterling, but that was mostly because she had headed out early. Sterling was certain he would be able to talk with her before they headed out tomorrow.

The Sunflower Kid retired to her room early, just about the time that Sterling got out his bag of marijuana and rolled up a few joints for the people still gathered in the courtyard. The air soon filled with the smell of skunk, and while Sterling didn’t partake, he did end up getting a bit of a secondhand high. The chatter turned to local matters, peppered with a pair of men singing a song they had made up, the lyrics a mixture of English and Spanish.

“What do you say to the ol’ coyote? No tengo comida, no tengo nada, fuera de aquí, no tengo nada. What do you say to the pinche bandito? I’ll shoot you bandito, no tengo nada, fuera de aquí, no tengo nada…”

And so it went, Sterling nodding his head along to the tune, his belly feeling like it was going to burst out of the front of his shirt. He had already removed his bulletproof vest earlier to make more room for food, but that didn’t seem to help as much as he would have liked. Eventually, the cowboy necromancer stepped away from the crowd and onto the main road of the town, where he rolled a cigarette. He could see his room from his current vantage point, light flickering inside from a candle. He looked to the Sunflower Kid’s room and saw the same, indicating that she was still awake.

The temperature had dropped considerably, the sky overhead a mixture of midnight blue and deep hues of purple, a sprinkle of stars, the moon a fingernail sliver, everything otherworldly. One of the stars flashed and Sterling wondered if it was another planet. This got him thinking about the Godwalkers, and where they could have possibly come from. In the end he settled on the fact that this tidbit didn’t really matter: Sterling would dedicate his life to bringing as many down as possible.

Taking on one Godwalker was no small feat, but bringing down the terminal, the kind that Raylan had mentioned existed somewhere in Utah, sounded like a way to really drive the dagger in. And that’s what Sterling planned to do. The alien monoliths had shown up and killed most of the world’s population, leaving behind the hyenas, whose last laugh had gone on for five years now. Sterling had no idea what things would look like if he was able to accomplish his lofty goal, but it would be a start, a way to use what was left of his life to make a difference.

Hopefully, he would be able to find out what happened to his family along the way, Isabella and his son.

Sterling finished his cigarette and flicked it to the curb. He walked past people still in the courtyard, Jimmy calling for him to join them again. Sterling waved him away as he headed under an arched doorway and from there up a stairwell crafted from blue and yellow tiles lined in white. He stopped in front of his door, his equilibrium off balance for a moment as he took a deep breath in, trying to regain his composure.

He turned to the Sunflower Kid’s door instead and knocked.

“It’s me.”

She indicated for him to come in and he did, Sterling finding the teenage girl seated on the bed, her legs crossed beneath her body. More flowers than he’d ever seen in his entire life filled the pots in the room, growing around the cactus, producing splashes of color and an incredible scent. They surrounded the Sunflower Kid’s bed as if it were a pedestal growing out of a meadow.

“Dang.” Sterling found a chair in the corner and moved some of the flowers off it. Careful not to sit down on any of her flower petals, Sterling relaxed onto the chair and let out a deep sigh.

“You should bathe,” the Sunflower Kid said.

He sniffed his armpit. “Yeah, you ain’t wrong there. Sorry, I probably smell like tequila, cigarettes, and body odor.”

She nodded.

“I’ll bathe. You want me to…” Sterling took off his hat. He looked to the door and glanced back at the teenage girl. “I can go and do it right now, if you want. I’d love to talk, if you’re willing to wait a minute.”

“No, do it before you go to bed.”

“I feel like we got a lot of catching up to do,” Sterling admitted. “A little hard to do while we were racing each other on horseback, or pronghorn-back in your case.” Sterling felt drunk, and he sensed that he was rambling. He cleared his throat. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m holding up just fine.”

“Got it,” Sterling said after an awkward pause. “And where I shot you, no scar?”

“No scar.”

“Good. Again, sorry about that.”

There was an aura that seemed to radiate off the Sunflower Kid, one that made Sterling feel uneasy. She was entirely calm, her thoughts seemingly collected, a true flower child as her name suggested. But she was also a ruthless killer, perhaps the most powerful mancer in the Southwest. Sterling had long since discarded any remorse he felt for the people he inevitably had to slay.

Aside from the memory loss, one of the things he always disliked about the Reset was the fact that one had to kill to grow stronger. It really was a lizard eat lizard world: either you kill and become desensitized to it so you can level up and get stronger, or someone will snuff you out. And the teenager before him could extinguish life as quickly as she could create it.

“Lizard eat lizard,” Sterling mumbled. He didn’t know how long he had been sitting in front of the Sunflower Kid. It could have been less than a minute, it also could have been pushing an hour. Time with her was often like that, unquantifiable.

“Did you want to say something?”

“You know, I found out more about my life,” Sterling said, looking back up at her, his cowboy hat still in his lap. He moved some of his hair off his forehead and patted it down, trying to make himself presentable. “I got hold of my old wallet, with my driver’s license in it and a picture of what I think may be my family.”

He equipped it and tossed it onto the bed. Rather than reach for it, one of her plants lifted the wallet over to the Sunflower Kid. She opened it and examined the picture first, then the ID.

“Did you go to this address in Las Cruces?”

“I did, and that’s the other piece of paper in there. It’s an insurance card.”

The Sunflower Kid took out the piece of paper and looked at it. “Your wife’s name was Isabella?”

“That seems to be the case. I don’t know what the boy’s name is.”

She took a look at the photo inside the wallet as well. “Is that all you have uncovered?”

“Aside from an address in Albuquerque which I plan to check out, that’s about it. Speaking of ol’ Duke City, you said you were there with Zephyr. What the hell is she up to? What’s she doing in Albuquerque? I meant to ask that.”

“Being Zephyr,” the Sunflower Kid said. “For a while, she was playing both sides, the Kirtland Airmen and the Barelas Glyphs, by exploiting the Glyphs’ partnership with the Old Town Toros, all of whom are at war with the Alta Monte Homecidos. I think now she’s just working for one side.”

“She can be like that, can’t she? Just like the wind.”

“An aeromancer through and through. There is one thing that she has been focused on lately, or at least she was at the old Air Force base. She’s interested in wind power, which makes sense for an aeromancer, and before I was taken, she was working with a flectomancer there to set up wind turbines.”

“So she has chosen a side?”

“Sort of, she also oversaw the attack of one of the turbines when she had a disagreement with the flectomancer. She does things her own way.”

“That she does. Do you think we should…?” Sterling swallowed a burp. “Dang, I sure ate a lot out there. Pardon me. Do you think we should try to recruit her again?”

“I don’t see why not. We get along pretty well.”

“Yet she let you be captured by the cult; who was the guy again, the hydromancer?”

“Cristobal.”

“You’re saying that this hydromancer helped you with that jungle you put together, right?”

“He must have. It’s the only way I could create something like that. Did you hear any waterfalls, anything like that?”

“Not that I can recall,” Sterling said, thinking back to the compound. “I was mostly just trying to find you. Glad I did.”

“You know it’s going to come up, right?” she asked, shifting to a topic that had weighed heavily on Sterling’s soul for the last three years.

“You mean when we get Roxy?”

The Sunflower Kid nodded. There was something radiant about her skin, not a blemish on her face, no sign of age. He often wondered how old she actually was, and he often found himself staring at her for longer than he should.

“Maybe she will just be happy to see us.”

“You’re optimistic.”

Sterling snorted. “I’m a realist.”

“A real optimist.”

“A real something. We will have to figure that out as we go. But I’m ready to talk about it, if you are. I know that I’m going to have to talk about it with her.”

“Then we can save that conversation for later. I’m not concerned by what happened. It is the past, and I know you meant well.”

“It still kills me, what happened to Liam and Karina. They really were good folks,” Sterling said, recalling what it had been like to see the skin burnt off their bones, their skeletons still embracing even in death. They were a married couple, a pair who had pieced everything back together after the Reset, both blessed to be mancers. Their children hadn’t been so lucky at the start of the Reset, all five of them dead in their bedrooms, ceilings, walls, bed sheets, and pillows painted red with their blood. Sterling remembered what Liam had told him about finding his children dead, a stranger in his own house with a woman he didn’t know. But they had made it work, they had figured everything out, and they had been good teammates.

There wasn’t much that weighed heavily on Sterling’s soul. It was better that way, and with the kind of world he lived in, the less guilt someone carried the further they could crawl. But Liam and Karina’s deaths, that was something that he couldn’t help but blame himself for. He had recruited them, they had trusted him, and in the end…

“What do you really think of me?” he asked the Sunflower Kid. A plant brought his wallet back to him, a pair of leaves clasping it delicately. Sterling returned the wallet to his inventory list.

“What would you like me to think of you?”

“That ain’t what I’m asking. I’m asking what you think of me. You must think something, you know me, I mean, we haven’t seen each other for several years now, but not much has changed about me.”

“I feel like something has changed.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

“You seem more focused, determined. The Sterling I knew before, at least the one after the incident, might have just accepted that his farm had been attacked and started over again. Why not just start over again? The Godwalker probably wouldn’t attack you twice, and these bandits, what’d they want exactly?”

“They wanted me to pay a tax, and I ain’t paying no goddamn chili tax to a bunch of inbred Killbillies.”

“That part of you sounds about right,” she said, offering him a soft smile. “But at least from when I left you, the Sterling you were then, I feel like you would have just accepted it and figured things out, especially after what happened three years ago and how downtrodden you must have been. But that’s not what you did. Your first instincts were to figure out where all of us were, those of us that were still alive. And now here we are.”

“In Carrizozo.”

“In Carrizozo. So that is changed about you. Anyone in their right mind wouldn’t try to do what you are trying to do, not after what happened.”

“So you’re saying I’ve done lost my mind. Is that it?”

“I don’t think anyone alive can consider themselves sane after what happened five years ago.”

“It sure is strange how we met in Las Cruces, have you ever thought about that?”

“We just ran into each other a week after the Reset, both of us wandering in the streets. You were still in your construction clothing.”

“I didn’t know what else to wear,” Sterling admitted. “There were a bunch of clothes around; it wasn’t hard to find something to change into, but I didn’t want someone else’s blood on me, and I didn’t know about taking another man’s pants off. The clothing stores had been looted early on, and I was still getting used to the whole inventory list thingamajig.”

“But you understood your power. There were several dead bodies following you, if I recall.”

Sterling nodded. “And there was a trail of flowers following you. Heck, there we were, just walking through some abandoned subdivision looking for God knows what, and we found each other.”

“We found each other.”

“Except you were naked, which threw me off.”

“I didn’t care about clothing at that point,” the Sunflower Kid said. “I’m a bit more modest now.”

“Probably a good thing, considering you look like a sixteen-year-old girl. In fact, maybe a bit younger now.”

“It’s a good age to maintain.”

“I can’t knock you there. If I could make myself look younger and wash away a bit of this haggardness, I would surely do so.”

“But that’s part of your charm, your haggardness, as you call it.”

“I wouldn’t say I had any charm,” he said, “I’m just doing what I need to do to keep alive. I still can’t shake that image in my head, though, of when I first saw you, me with zombies creeping up behind me, you with flowers, vines, maybe a few prickly cacti. Talk about polar opposites. Remember what happened next?”

“We just started laughing at each other.”

“Damn right, we did. Here we were, two lost souls both gifted incredible powers, one of life, the other of death, and the first time we see each other we just start laughing like there’s no tomorrow. Because maybe at that time, it really did feel like that, like there was no tomorrow.”

“But then tomorrow came, and here we are.”

“Crazy, ain’t it? Here we are. Look, Kid, I could talk your ear off, you know that. So I’m going to stop bothering you and head on back to my room, take myself a nice bath, smoke a cigarette, maybe write me a desert haiku. Hell, maybe I’ll do that in the morning. Maybe I’ll take a bath then as well, two baths, then we will get to Alamogordo clean as a whistle and finish off this leg of our epic adventure.”

“You think it will be epic?”

Sterling pressed himself off his chair and turned to the door. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. See you in the morning. We’ll get on out of here before most of the town is awake. Just need to stop by Gouyen’s to see what kind of charm she has for me. I see you got a lot of charms,” he said, nodding his chin toward the dozens of bracelets that lined her arms. He placed his hat back on his head. “Lots.”

“They are all for Mana,” she told him. “I don’t like having to keep track of how much I use, so I made it a point to get enough charms that I would never have to worry about running out of power.”

“What kind of Mana are you working with these days? Me, I’m at 159, got me a dream catcher on my belt loop that gives me a ten percent bonus.”

“Over two thousand five hundred points.”

“Shee-it,” Sterling said. “You ain’t playing around, are you?”

“What else is there to do besides trying to grow stronger?”

“Well, for one, there’s taking down these Godwalkers. That’s one thing that needs doing. The other thing is stopping any and all bandit groups, militias, cultists, and ne’er-do-wellers from fucking up the place any more than it has already been fucked up, at least if they get in our way. Not trying to go on a crusade here, just saying. Sorry I can’t put that more eloquently. My brain is fuzzy after being slathered in alcohol over the last few hours, but you get what I’m saying. See you in the morning,” Sterling said as he tipped his hat to her. “Glad to have you back.”

“Good night, mi nigromante agricultor de pimienta.”

“Heh, don’t you start up with that.”

.Chapter Three.

Sterling ended up taking a bath early the next morning, walking the buckets of hot water up himself. Penelope, the owner of the restaurant and apparently the inn, was up before Sterling to get the fire going. It wasn’t going to be as good as the hot springs in Truth or Consequences, but the water was nice, and the turquoise clawfoot tub was the perfect size for Sterling to stretch out in.

Once he was done bathing, he opened the window and had a cigarette, his towel still wrapped around his waist. He took a seat at the edge of the bed and summoned his book of sketches and desert haiku. For some reason, Sterling was thinking about fear, and what it did to someone. For him, fear mostly involved heights and what could potentially happen to a loved one, but he had seen it enough times to recognize it on the faces of his opponents, those ready to die, those anything but.

Fear.

It was easy to be afraid after the Reset. If you were unlucky enough to have survived that fateful day, you may or may not have been given a power. If you hadn’t been given a power, you could still grow stronger and do things that only a superhuman could do, like fly. But you could still die instantly, be tortured, be kidnapped, face off against an amalgamation, face off against a mancer, or simply a surly son of a bitch who saw an advantage—Sterling was certain that the before people had lived with fear as well. He had perused enough of their magazines and books to see what they were afraid of—diseases, certain factions of society, old age, the list continued. And perhaps people now were still fearful of those things, but there were more pressing concerns, a world of disenchantment, of sketchy motherfuckers, broken bones, aliens, and monsters.

It was a simple desert haiku that he penned next, one that encapsulated this, from innocence to the desire to hide, how quickly a wound took shape, how easy it was to snuff out life, but also how life, even extinguished, eventually begat more life.

Rabbit in a hole

The sting of a scorpion

Flesh still on the bone

“Pinche poeta,” Sterling said as he put away his diary. He didn’t want to get too full of himself. Once he dressed, the cowboy necromancer made his way down to the courtyard, where he found that all the plants and cacti were twice their normal size, and the Sunflower Kid was seated on a wrought iron chair with her legs crossed beneath her. Before her was a spread of breakfast items—fried eggs drenched in green chili salsa, tortillas, chorizo, grilled peppers, and chips.

“For you,” she said as she motioned to the food. The Sunflower Kid had a different hairstyle now, her hair platinum blonde and combed over to the side. This was something she was able to do with her biomancer power, one that she readily exploited. Sterling didn’t say anything about it; he’d seen her with multiple hairstyles by this point.

“You ain’t hungry?”

An apple grew from the ground and she plucked it from its stem. “I’ve been eating all morning,” she said as she took a bite of the apple.

“In that case, don’t mind if I do.”

Sterling feasted, and once he was done, he went into the kitchen to pay his respects to Penelope, who told him that Gouyen had just stopped by and that she was waiting for him across the street.

“And Jimmy?” he asked, referring to Penelope’s husband.

“Asleep, thanks to your weed.”

“Heh, well, we’re going to get going then. Thanks again for letting us stay; we had a good time. I’ve got to tell you, I’ve been up and down this state, and it’s rare to encounter the kind hospitality y’all got going around in Carrizozo. Give my regards to everyone else.”

“I’ll be sure to do that,” Penelope said. “Good luck in your journeys. And fill up your water before you leave. Room is just by the stairwell, fresh water.”

Sterling thanked her again and stepped back into the courtyard, where he motioned for the Sunflower Kid to follow him. They filled up the water jugs they had in their inventory lists. From there, Sterling pressed out of the small gate that shielded the courtyard from the main thoroughfare and made his way across the street to the trading post, clear in how the windows were barred up to prevent looting. He knocked and let himself in. Sterling and the Sunflower Kid found Gouyen behind a display case.

“A blonde now, huh?” the Apache woman said to the Sunflower Kid, who simply nodded in response.

There were all sorts of items in the shop, the space much more confining than it should have been with its vaulted ceilings. Gouyen had collected a lot over the last five years, everything from portraits of western settings to furniture, taxidermy, household items from appliances to bedroom pieces, even a few scalps by the looks of it. It was a lot to take in, the musty smell of the space infiltrating his senses.

“Dang,” Sterling said as he turned to the woman. “You weren’t playing around when you put this place together.”

“It’s a bit cluttered,” she said, “but I’ll get it cleaned up one day.”

“I could help you,” the Sunflower Kid offered.

“No, I like everything where it is. You said you were looking for something unique, something ultra rare.”

“Ultra rare or epic would be nice,” Sterling said, referring to the charm classification system.

“In that case, this is the best I got, maybe even the best this side of Texas.” Gouyen procured a small bracelet strung up on a string of leather, the beads made of bone and carved into tiny skulls.

Sterling approached it and looked down at the piece. “Do you mind?” he asked, indicating that he would like to touch it to see what it did.

“By all means.”

He placed his finger on the bracelet.

Item: Carved Bone Bracelet

Item Type: Epic

Description: Thirty percent XP boost per kill.

“Thirty percent…” Sterling mumbled.

“Ever seen anything like it?”

“No, ma’am, but I don’t think a couple peppers and running some bandits out of town is a fair exchange for something like this. If I’m being honest with you, and maybe I shouldn’t be,” Sterling said with a chuckle, “I think this is worth a hell of a lot more than that.”

“Them three weren’t just any bandits. One of them was my son.”

“Pardon?” Sterling asked, his eyes darting left and right as he made sure he wasn’t about to be ambushed. The Sunflower Kid approached again, her hands behind her back as she turned to Gouyen.

“I’m the one that killed them,” the Kid admitted.

“I really don’t care which one of you killed them, you did us all a favor,” the woman said. “My son has been terrorizing this town for the last couple years. He has killed at least six people, not to mention the dozen or so that have died at the hands of his two accomplices. What I’m trying to say here is you did everyone a favor, not just me. I would have killed him myself if he had come around. The Reset changed him.”

“Did that to a lot of folks,” Sterling said.

Gouyen nodded. “So no hard feelings. You did the town a favor, and the town is my family now.”

“Either way, I’m sorry to hear that. Sorry for your loss, and…” He shook his head. “It’s just that kind of world, ain’t it?”

“Sadly, yes. But things will smooth out for a while until the next group comes around. I want you to take this bracelet…”

“No, ma’am, I can’t do that,” Sterling started to tell her. “Not in good conscience. I believe we can work something out, though.” He equipped his satchel of turquoise and silver. He then retrieved the two automatic weapons and the pistol he had picked up off the highway bandits. He did so one at a time, making sure there weren’t any rounds in the chamber, Sterling popping out their magazines as he placed them on the counter. “How does this look?”

“Take the silver and turquoise back; I got plenty. Weapons will be useful.”

“You know what, I got me another weapon too,” Sterling said as he equipped the handgun with the silver grip that he had taken off Commodore Bones. He showed it to the Apache woman. “Been meaning to get rid of this one.”

Gouyen examined the handgun and ran her finger along something that had been etched into the silver. “This one belongs to somebody important, doesn’t it?”

“Everything in this little store you have here once belonged to someone important,” Sterling said as he motioned toward the room with his thumb.

“I’ll take these guns, but I can’t take this one,” she said. “This is plenty.”

“Suit yourself,” Sterling said as he sent the Commodore’s handgun back to his inventory list. I can’t seem to get rid of this goddamn thing, he thought. Once they agreed upon a fair amount of silver and turquoise, Sterling insisting she take some, he placed the bracelet on his left wrist.

Bonus: Thirty Percent XP Boost Per Kill!

“I thank you kindly,” Sterling said to Gouyen. “And…”

“No need for another apology. Like I said, you did the town a favor. Good luck out there, and keep your head down.”

“We’re going to try, ain’t that right?” he asked the Sunflower Kid.

“We’ll see,” she said as she stepped toward the door.

Sterling and the Sunflower Kid stood outside of Carrizozo next to their mounts, Sterling looking at the map that detailed the southeast corner of the state. He estimated they were about fifty-five miles away from Alamogordo, with just a few towns between here and there, including Oscuro, Three Rivers, Tularosa, Alamorosa, and La Luz. It was strange to think there was a forest less than thirty or forty miles away from the White Sands desert, but that was New Mexico, especially the Tularosa Basin, an unpredictable landscape if there ever was one.

“You need a name for it, your pronghorn,” Sterling told the Sunflower Kid as he returned his travel guide to his inventory list and equipped his bag of tobacco and his rolling papers.

“His name is Watermelon,” she said without skipping a beat.

“Watermelon, huh?” Sterling lit his cigarette. “Surely by now you’ve come across a watermelon seed in the last three years.”

“Still trying,” she said as they started south.

“I suppose we all have that side quest that we will one day complete, sort of like trying to figure out some information about my family.”

“I will find watermelon seeds one day.”

While it seemed that she could conjure any fruit or vegetable she wanted, the Sunflower Kid had to have had physical access to it at least once in the past. From that point forward, she could simply grow it out of the ground, or out of any plant she conjured. If she hadn’t had access to it, she wasn’t able to replicate the plant. It was one of the only limitations of her power, albeit a very minor one.

The Sunflower Kid had a proper donkey saddle now, something she had picked up in Gouyen’s shop, rather than the makeshift one she had made out of dried cactus. As they traveled along the highway, she kept her hands on the saddle horn, occasionally transferring them to the pronghorn’s horns which had grown back just a bit further so she could hold them like the handlebars of a classic motorcycle. Most people rode dirt bikes due to their all-terrain capabilities, but Sterling had heard a real motorcycle or two putter through Truth or Consequences from time to time, someone looking to show off and subsequently getting robbed.

Best to keep a low profile, thought the man riding a bone horse next to a biomancer on a pronghorn named Watermelon.

Route 54 heading south cut through a mountain range that would have connected the Apache Mescalero Rez with the White Sands desert, which was once a national park. Sterling assumed from points on his map that the White Sands Militia was holed up at the Holloman Air Force Base, which was probably one reason they had milspec gear and how they were able to expand through the region. He wondered how far they had made it. Considering there weren’t many large cities between Alamogordo and the Texas border, there was a chance that their influence stretched all the way down to El Paso, east to Carlsbad and possibly beyond. This meant they likely had outposts as well, and taking out their headquarters in search of Roxy and the technomancer, and perhaps razing it to the ground, would either produce a power grab or a mad scramble to find out who had carved the heart from the beast.

But Sterling and his companions would be out of the area by the time that happened.

As they rode on, he thought of what he had learned back in Las Cruces from Don Gasper, that the militia had a technomancer, and how Raylan had agreed to join Sterling’s cause if he could bring him this particular member of the Adapted. He didn’t know how long the militia had held onto the mancer; Sterling was banking on the fact that the person had been held hostage for long enough that they would join any cause. He really didn’t want to have to convince someone, and it wasn’t within his nature to force someone to join him, especially with what he hoped to do.

“The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind,” he said, not sure where the quote came from.

Sterling and the Sunflower Kid would reach Alamogordo well before noon, and then he would proceed to find out where the old shaman was shacked up. It usually wasn’t difficult to find Don Gasper, but if there really were evil enchanters after him, it had a chance of throwing a wrench in their plans. Sterling remembered the woman named Magdalena and how she had behaved at the shaman festival, how he had claimed that she was his lover, and how he had done something to one of her fellow enchanters to incite her anger.

“Sort of a weird question here, but have you heard about stealing someone’s heart, turning it into a bead, and putting it on a rosary?” he asked the Sunflower Kid.

“That doesn’t sound possible. Is this something Don Gasper suggested that he did?”

“Bingo. Like I told you, he’s meeting us in Alamogordo, and he has his own business going on there. He claims he’s being attacked by these enchanters, maleficiadores, as he calls them. One of them is also his lover, but they’re having a bit of a quarrel. I saw her in Las Cruces, live and in the nude, if you must ask.”

“I don’t know what to make of Don Gasper or what you just told me,” the Sunflower Kid said.

“I know, I know, but he was there with us back in Las Cruces; you know him just as well as I do.”

The group that Sterling had later put together to take on the Godwalkers had actually started with the Sunflower Kid and Don Gasper. Sterling and the Sunflower Kid first encountered each other in the abandoned suburb, and after joining up, they met Don Gasper, who always operated on the fringes of what Sterling was hoping to do.

If a necromancer and a biomancer walking down the street was a strange sight to behold, the added company of a shirtless and shoeless shaman hyped up on peyote buttons and whatever other hallucinogens he could get his hands on really brought them some attention when they first hooked up in Las Cruces. They always could have gone another route; rather than start traveling around, Don Gasper eventually branching off once he got caught up in a wave of hallucinogens, they could have instilled some order in the city early on and taken over. They could have owned Las Cruces by now, but that was never in the cards for Sterling, who had a general distaste for crowds and the people that wanted to control them.

“Well?” Sterling asked after he waited for the Sunflower Kid to respond.

“That was a long time ago. Lately, or at least until I was taken by the cult, I was more focused on learning about the before people, how they lived, their systems of government. Zephyr and I were able to get some pretty decent books in Albuquerque. I still have some in my inventory list, the best ones. Science and nature, philosophy, biographies.”

“Have you ever played around with how much you can actually put in an inventory list?”

“The space available is tied to a person’s Mana. Even regular folks have Mana, and they can improve it if they level up. That’s how they learn to fly, although it takes a good amount of Mana to do so.”

“Is that how?” Sterling asked. “I thought it was a technique, that they used Technique Points to learn to fly, you know, something like that. Speaking of which, shit, I’ve got to assign the Technique Points I received yesterday on our way out of Mountainair. Damn near forgot, I’ve been so distracted with distracting myself. Guess I’ll see to that later tonight.”

The Sunflower Kid nodded. “The ability to fly is based on a person’s Mana, a way to exploit it. You could do it yourself, if you wanted. Have you ever tried jumping and just staying in the air?”

“Hell no,” Sterling told her. “I ain’t no hummingbird.”

“You mean in the last five years you’ve never tried to fly?” she asked, not able to hide the skepticism in her voice.

“No, ma’am, I sure have not. But I’ve fallen plenty of times,” Sterling said, recalling the recent incident with the gaiamancer in T or C, and later the Killbilly woman who dropped him from about seventy feet up. “To be honest with you, I don’t think that’s common knowledge that people can just fly. If it were, we’d be seeing more people in the air. That, or you’ve got to be at a higher level to be able to do so, and have plenty of Mana. Maybe that’s why normal folk don’t really do it. Most of them ain’t out killing people and leveling up like bandits, or like Don Gasper for that matter, who can fly. Seen it myself.”

“You would never have to fall again if you learned how to fly.”

“Point taken.”

“The best way I can describe it is jumping, and then just staying in the air. It does drain your Mana rather rapidly, though. And I think you’re right about higher levels being necessary.”

“I mean, I ain’t doubting you over here,” Sterling told her as they neared a billboard with the advertising removed, a phrase painted across it that read NDN CUNTRY. “Would you look at that?” Sterling asked as he tipped his chin to the billboard.

“Indian country.”

“Sure, that’s what it says,” he told her. “Anyhow, I swear I learn something new about the system that has been forced upon us every couple days or so. You’d think by now I would have figured it out, but I wasn’t much of a gamer in my previous life, at least from what I can tell. I mean, I know enough about it to know that it’s like a game, some kind of sick game if you ask me, but that don’t mean I like playing it.”

“I’m fascinated by the system myself,” she said. “With the powers that we have been given, the better we understand them, the stronger we can become.”

“Shee-it, I don’t disagree. But I really wish someone would figure it out, put it down in a manual or something, you know, get the nuts and bolts of it. Maybe a flectomancer. Make it real easy to read so I could mull it over next time I’m offered a hot bath. Hell, maybe I’d write a desert haiku about it. I’ve already written some about the Reset, but I’m talking about the system itself.”

“The better we understand the world we have been forced to live in, the better we can exploit it,” the Sunflower Kid said, a dark look coming across her face.

“I’ve got to be honest, Kid, that don’t really sound like you, not the Sunflower Kid I knew five years ago.”

“A lot has changed; you said it yourself.”

“You ain’t wrong, but be careful with philosophies like that. That’s the kind of thinking that gets us assholes like the Killbillies, or any of the gangs in Duke City. Hell, I’m sure the leader of the White Sands Militia probably feels the same way. Me? I most want to be left the hell alone; I don’t want to pay no taxes to a bunch of criminals; and I don’t want to be poked, prodded, and shot at by goddamn alien monoliths, that’s for sure. I guess that makes me a simple man, but I’ll take a simple man over a Machiavellian son of a bitch any day.”

A smirk crossed the Sunflower Kid’s face. “Point taken.”

Their journey to Alamogordo was uneventful, no sudden bandit encounters along the road, the small towns they ended up passing through either abandoned or appearing so. The day was starting to warm up, the skies cerulean blue, wispy lace clouds stretching across the Aether. The first indication that they had reached Alamogordo was a large sign near the city limits, the letters bolted down to the ground, each painted yellow and in various states of erosion, a couple of cacti poking out between the letters.

Alamogordo seemed to exist for the sole purpose of hosting tourists that once visited White Sands National Park, which was about twenty miles away. The town was built along both sides of Route 54, the hotels and restaurants deserted now, Sterling not able to tell if any outside force had taken command of Alamogordo. He didn’t see the telltale asshattery of the Killbillies, their ATVs, disgruntled hombres standing around in yellow bandannas, many with wraparound sunglasses looking like professional wrestling rejects. He also didn’t see a sign of the White Sands Militia, no barrier erected along the road, no helmeted soldier boys outfitted in fatigues and carrying firearms. Had the turf war not reached the town? Was that even possible considering its proximity to White Sands and the Air Force Base where Sterling assumed the militia was located?

“Something is off,” he said as he ashed his cigarette. “You feeling that?”

“It’s quiet,” was all the Sunflower Kid said.

Before heading deeper into town, Sterling sent his skeletal steed to his inventory list; the Sunflower Kid remained on Watermelon.

“I guess you ain’t as obvious as I am, even if it is a pronghorn you’re riding. People may think you just tamed it.”

“I did tame him,” she said as she ran her hand along Watermelon’s neck, a few of her bracelets falling down to her elbow.

Sterling took a big whiff of the air, as if he would be able to sniff the shaman out. “Don Gasper is here somewhere, and I don’t think it will be hard to find him. Let’s just see what the locals are saying.”

They continued along the highway, around the occasional abandoned vehicle, and past a pink minivan with a giant golden phallus scrawled across its hood. One of the brick buildings had an image of white sand dunes painted on it, the mural weathered, which added to its character as it exposed the cayenne red of the brick. Sterling saw some familiar abandoned restaurants—a Pizza Hut, a Sonic, a McDonald’s—just as there had been in Truth or Consequences. The before people liked to eat, and they liked their food fast, carb heavy and full of meat. Sterling couldn’t really blame them for that. If he could eat meat more often, he probably would.

As long as there were peppers.

They had reached the center of Alamogordo without seeing a single soul. A boy stepped out of one of the buildings, the door creaking and slamming shut behind him. He couldn’t be older than ten or eleven, his long black hair all the way to the small of his back, his arm wrapped in gauze, the face of someone who had seen incredible hardship beyond his years.

“Hey,” Sterling called out to him as he flicked his cigarette to the cracked asphalt. “Son, can you hear me?”

The boy pressed on.

“Son,” Sterling tried again, a bit louder.

The kid kept walking to the other side of the street, where he was stopped in his tracks by a cactus with beautiful pink flowers on it that continued to grow in size.

“We’re trying not to show people we have powers,” Sterling reminded the Sunflower Kid, but her gesture had worked, the boy finally turning to them.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Good. Hey,” Sterling said as he stepped up to the youth. “I’m looking for a shaman that goes by the name Don Gasper. Can’t miss him. Shirtless, with or without shoes, white beard, crazy look in his eye. You know him?”

The kid nodded.

“Well, where is he then? And what’s wrong with your arm?”

The kid showed Sterling his injured arm, black blood visible beneath the bandages.

“Damn, son, what the hell did you get yourself into?”

Sterling watched as a vine lifted from the body of the Sunflower Kid’s cactus. The tip of the vine became razor-sharp, and it hovered before the youth for a moment, Sterling understanding what was about to happen. “You don’t mind if she takes a look at it, do you?” he asked.

The boy glanced down at his infected arm, and then up to the cowboy necromancer, and from there to the Sunflower Kid, who was still seated comfortably on her pronghorn.

“Don’t go telling no one, but she can heal it,” Sterling said, assuming that the boy hadn’t really had much of a chance to put points into his Resolve.

The youth nodded. The Sunflower Kid’s razor-tipped vine carefully cut the gauze away, revealing a festering wound that spread from the boy’s bicep almost to his wrist. A leaf formed on the vine and it slowly began to smooth down the boy’s arm, the wound slowly fading away, his flesh turning pink. He looked up at the Sunflower Kid and smiled. With that, the boy stepped away, motioning for them to follow him.

He led Sterling and the Sunflower Kid through what was once a parking lot, the lines that delineated the parking spaces barely visible now, bleached by the ever-present desert sun. They turned another corner and Sterling saw a line of people wrapping down a stairwell to the second floor of a ramshackle motel. The boy pointed at the motel.

“I think we found our shaman,” Sterling said as the youth left, continuing on his way.

The Sunflower Kid gracefully floated down from her pronghorn and joined Sterling, as if to remind him that he too could fly. Sterling grunted in response. They headed toward the line outside of the motel, the two having to pass a rusty blue dumpster that reeked of garbage, trash spilling out of it. They came to the back of the line, and were just about to make their way up the stairs when a one-eyed Mexican with teeth sharpened into points stopped them. “In line, like the rest.”

“I don’t think you understand,” Sterling told the man. “There’s a shaman in there named Don Gasper. He’s a friend of ours, and we traveled a long way to meet him here. He knows we’re coming.”

“All these people traveled to meet him, ese.”

Sterling was shaking his head when the Sunflower Kid approached, a plant tendril lifting from the ground beside her. People cleared out of the stairwell as the vine began wrapping around the railing, on its way toward Don Gasper’s room.

“You can’t intimidate us, mancer,” the man said as he went for the big knife on his belt.

Sterling swept his duster aside and placed his hand on his sickle-sword, its blade immediately glowing with turquoise energy. “I do believe we got ourselves a size difference here, amigo. Gasper knows who I am; he’s expecting me. You’re getting in the way—”

A woman exited the hotel room and came to the banister, crouching as she observed the vine. She stood, and for a moment Sterling didn’t recognize her, not with her clothes on. Then it struck him. He was looking at Magdalena, the woman who had rubbed her painted body against Don Gasper back at the shaman festival.

“Shee-it,” Sterling mouthed as Magdalena locked eyes with him. “Things just got complicated,” he said quickly to the Sunflower Kid.

“Who’s she?”

“Gasper’s lover and enemy, the one I told you about.”

“You know about her too?” the man wielding the knife asked. “She’s fucking crazy, ese. Muy loco en la cabeza. But Gasper is okay.”

“I figured as much. Put your knife away, and I’ll pretend you weren’t just pointing it at me. And clear these damn people out of here while you’re at it. The shaman shop is closed for the day. Trust me on this one. I’ve been dealing with one of them fools up in that room for the last five years. You’re doing yourself a goddamn favor by clearing the hell out of here. The less people around, the better.”

Magdalena’s long sun-bleached brown hair was like a lion’s mane. She tilted her head as she looked at Sterling and the Sunflower Kid, and eventually motioned for them to join her in the bedroom. The Sunflower Kid took a step forward, and Sterling stopped her. “Let me roll a cigarette first. I should probably roll a joint too for Gasper.”

The locals started to shuffle past, a few of them grumbling under their breaths, one of the children pausing as he looked at the pronghorn that had joined them.

“That woman up there is certifiably insane. The whole reason for Gasper to even come to Alamogordo was to kill her. So if she’s in the hotel room with him, it can mean one of a couple of things. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess the damn fool is lovestruck again. Probably higher than a kite too.”

Sterling looked up at Magdalena again, the woman gesturing for him to join her. He lifted a hand, letting her know that it was going to be a minute.

“I should have known,” he said under his breath. “I should have fucking known.”

.Chapter Four.

Don Gasper’s room reeked of incense, patchouli, and some other herb that Sterling didn’t recognize. It was hazy inside, the space consisting of a king-sized bed that had been stripped of its frame, the sheets purple, the carpet emerald shag, a half-shattered mirror propped up against one of the walls. There was a milk crate of peyote buttons on the bed, and a series of cauldrons on the dresser filled with plants and liquids in mason jars. Gasper was seated in the center of the bed and draped in tie-dyed robes, a hood over his head, his beard sticking out.

“You have visitors, my love,” Magdalena cooed. She was in a similar outfit to Gasper’s, which appeared to be clothing that had been collected from various sources. Stitched together and tie-dyed, her sleeves hung well past her arms, dozens upon dozens of necklaces draped around her neck.

Gasper slowly looked up at Sterling and pressed his hood off of his head. “I was wondering when you would arrive,” he said, his voice indicating that he was less intoxicated than Sterling figured he would be. Magdalena got on the bed and found a position in Gasper’s arms, her head in his lap as she too looked over at Sterling.

Nope, I don’t like this one bit, Sterling thought as he tipped his hat to the old shaman.

“Sunflower Kid, it is so wonderful to see you,” Gasper told Sterling’s counterpart. “I’ve been having dreams of you, you know, of sunflowers lifting from the desert. I told you this was a good sign,” he said to Magdalena as he ran his hand through her thick mane of hair.

“You’re always right, my love.”

Sterling grumbled as the two stared up at him like a pair of raccoons caught in the act.

“I got a joint for you,” he finally said. “How’s about you step outside here and smoke with me? Hope you don’t mind, but I ran your groupies off.”

“I’m quite comfortable where I am. You don’t mind if I smoke here, do you, dear?”

“By all means,” said Magdalena. “As long as you share some with me.”

“Gasper, I need to speak to you privately. No offense, ma’am,” he told the enchantress.

Sterling didn’t know if Gasper had completed his quest to deal with the sorcerers that he claimed were trying to kill him. Perhaps Magdalena had helped him double-cross them, or perhaps they were still alive and she was about to double-cross him. He really didn’t know, but if he was going to get to the bottom of what he was witnessing, he was going to need a bit of privacy to do so.

“I would like to show you something,” the Sunflower Kid said as she focused on Magdalena. “We can let them talk while I show you.”

“Show me something?”

The vine that the Sunflower Kid had grown from the asphalt below twisted into the motel room. Flowers began to form on it, various fruits as well.

“Oh my,” Magdalena said, clearly never having seen a biomancer at work before. She scooted over to the fruit and plucked an apple from the plant, examined it, and finally took a bite, her eyes filling with satisfaction. Sterling nodded for Gasper to follow him and the old shaman obliged. He shuffled off the bed, and met Sterling at the door, the two making their way to the railing.

“As promised,” Sterling said as he handed Gasper the joint he had rolled up. He lit it for him, and then he lit his own cigarette. “Blink twice if you’re being held hostage by the witch,” he said, joking, but with a hint of seriousness to his voice.

“Magdalena is my lover, no? Do you remember me telling you this?”

“From what I remember, you said she was trying to kill you.”

“Then I guess she’s no longer trying to kill me,” Don Gasper said as he exhaled a cloud of gray smoke. He pushed his hood off his head. “Thanks for the mota.”

“What happened to all those maleficiadores you said were partnered up with her?”

Don Gasper turned, now leaning his back against the railing as he took a long drag off the joint. “What do you think happened? They’re dead now.”

“So let me get this straight: you and Magdalena killed them all, and now you two are united, like a pair of star-crossed lovers or something. Am I reading the situation right?”

“You aren’t reading it wrong, mi vaquero nigromante.”

“Dammit, Gasper, I ain’t trying to get into any future bullshit.”

“All you do is get into future bullshit, no? And what’s wrong with me taking a lover? You are going after your lover, are you not?”

“Roxy and I ain’t like that, not after what happened three years ago.”

“And what happened? You still have never been very clear about that day.”

“I’m not the one on trial here, Gasper, you are.”

“Trial? No one is on trial; life goes on and sometimes souls align. Surely you must understand this. Often, we have no control over our fate no matter how much force we hope to exert.”

For some reason, this made Sterling think of Sierra, the pyromancer in Madrid who had already said she was interested in joining his cause. He hadn’t really thought what would happen once Roxy entered into the equation, how the two of them would get along. That remained to be seen. Sterling shook his head, focusing in on the conversation at hand. Leave it to Don Gasper to get me all twisted up, he thought as he ashed his cigarette over the railing.

“So you trust her?”

“¿Mi corazón? Of course, I trust her. El que con lobos anda, a aullar se enseña.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Sterling said, having heard the phrase before. It was a proverb that translated to: he who runs with wolves will learn to howl.

Don Gasper tapped the side of his head. “Más sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo.”

“Yeah, heard that one too,” Sterling said. Gasper’s quote referred to the devil being wise because he was old, not because he was the devil, which was a saying on wisdom. “But you ain’t the devil, and you ain’t that much older than me.”

“At least twenty years, no?”

“I can’t believe I rode all the way down to Alamogordo to deal with your crazy shamanic ass,” Sterling said, a grin cracking across his face. Don Gasper started laughing, which turned into a wheezing cough. “Maybe you should let up on that joint.”

“I just need some rest. I had a wild night last night, and the night before, and…” Gasper looked up at the sky and nodded. “Yes, the night before that. Many people died.”

“You mean your enemies?”

“So many enemies, so many bodies. You would have enjoyed it,” he said, pointing his joint at Sterling. “Lots of dead for you to animate, mi vaquero nigromante.”

“Well, if your enemies are dead now, that’s one less thing we’re going to have to worry about. Although, if I’m being honest with you here,” Sterling said, lowering his voice, “I don’t know about that one in there.”

“¿Por qué? The Sunflower Kid seems fine to me.”

“What? No, I ain’t talking about her. I’m talking about Magdalena.”

“Magdalena? Pfft. Don’t worry, we can trust her. In fact, it is because of her that I have some good news,” Gasper said, the smile on his face showing Sterling a set of yellow teeth. “She was the one that arranged the meeting, you know.”

“Which meeting?”

“With the people that are going to help us break into the Air Force Base, where the White Sands Militia is living. Where Roxy is.”

“The former Air Force Base, huh? I figured that’s where the militia would be at. But who are these people you’re talking about?”

“Don’t worry,” Gasper said, waving his concern away. “You aren’t the only one that considers the militia to be their enemies. Many of the locals hate them as well. They ran them out of town, you know.”

“They ran them out of Alamogordo?” Sterling asked skeptically. “I find that hard to believe. It seems damn near impossible, considering the militia’s strength.”

“Impossible? No, no, it’s possible. They did. You don’t see any of them here, not like Las Cruces.”

“There ain’t nobody in this town, not enough to take on a militia.”

“There is if they diverted most of their resources to Las Cruces,” Gasper said, once again pointing his joint at Sterling. “Don’t worry, we will make this happen. I told you I would help you.”

“Did you? I thought it was me telling you that I would help you.”

“I helped myself,” Don Gasper said with a shrug. “So now I have room in my life to help a dear old friend.”

“Is that what we are?”

“You, me, the Sunflower Kid, we were the first to meet, in Las Cruces.”

“I remember.”

“So you trust me then, no? For the rest of the day, you should relax. There are some empty rooms on that side of the motel,” he said, nodding toward a pair of doors in front of an empty pool half filled with sand. “There’s a restaurant not far from here, and a tavern. It’s nice. You can have some food, some libations, no? And tomorrow, we meet with the people we need to meet with, and make a plan.”

“Why can’t we meet with them tonight?”

“Magdalena has to set it up,” Gasper said. “She’ll need to leave town to do so. And return. Tomorrow is best.”

“Why don’t we just go with her then? Save her the trip back.”

“No,” Don Gasper said after a subtle nod. “I think it would be best to make sure everything is in order before we press on.” He clapped a hand against Sterling’s shoulder. “You should be excited. Soon, you will have your Roxy.”

“She ain’t mine.”

“But she was, and she will be happy to see you.”

“You’ve met Roxy before,” Sterling told him. “You know that ain’t the case. She’s liable to try to punch my head off.”

“No, I don’t see that happening. It was just a lovers’ quarrel, and while I am not an expert about these sorts of things, I have been in several myself. El pasado es el pasado, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, the past is the past.” Sterling flicked his cigarette to the ground below, and licked his teeth. “But that don’t mean it can’t haunt you.”

“Nope, I don’t like it one bit,” Sterling said once he arrived at the room he would be staying in, which, among its stained walls and questionable droppings on the ground, featured a door that had been torn off its hinges connecting to the space where the Sunflower Kid would sleep.

“The accommodations, or something else?” she asked. Watermelon was with her again, the pronghorn eating some brown grass jutting out of the curb.

Sterling looked up to the second floor, where he saw Don Gasper passionately kissing Magdalena, the two of them floating a foot or so in the air.

“Something ain’t right.”

“It may be the bedding.” The Sunflower Kid sent one of her vines in to investigate the room, an uncomfortable look coming across her face. “We should probably try to find someplace else.”

“I don’t disagree, but part of me wants to keep an eye on Don Gasper, to make sure he knows what he’s getting into. Tell you what: you take whatever room is better, and have your plants spruce it up a bit. Whatever you need to do. I can sleep out here,” he said, motioning toward a plastic chair that sat against the outer wall of the motel. “It could be good to keep guard anyway.”

“If you insist.”

“You’re welcome to try to talk me out of it,” he said, still watching Don Gasper and Magdalena make out, “but it’s probably best that we keep our eye on them two. I will say this, though. If whatever they have cooked up for tomorrow don’t smell right, you and me will deal with that militia on our own. Sure, it would be better with a few more recruits. But between us, I think we can do it. Me with my animates, you with, well, I don’t need to give you direction when it comes to whipping ass and taking names.”

The Sunflower Kid hesitated for a moment.

“Well? What are you thinking?”

“Perhaps we should just leave now for the military base and camp near there. I could send some of my plants forward to investigate.”

“That ain’t a bad idea, but we should at least hear them out. I owe that to Gasper.” Sterling nodded once again to the shaman. “But I can’t shake this feeling, Kid. These shamans, witches, enchanters, sorcerers, you-name-it, whatever they call themselves in English or Spanish or some native language—all of them got a couple screws loose. If things get too crazy tomorrow, like they almost did back in Las Cruces, you and me can bail. We can get Roxy and this technomancer on our own, then head north again, pick up Paco, if his people will let him go, then either head to Madrid or Albuquerque, likely Madrid first to regroup and check on Raylan.”

“It sounds like we have a full plate.”

“It sure does, but I always got room for seconds.” Sterling plopped down into the plastic chair, surprised it didn’t give way. “Go ahead and pick out which room you’d like. Try to get comfortable, and get some rest. If this ends up going for more than a day, maybe tomorrow night we can find someplace better to lay our purty little heads. I sure would like a real bed, and Lord only knows what’s been sleeping in that one in there.”

“What if we go find a better place to stay, and bring Gasper with us? Then he’ll know where to meet us in the morning, and if he doesn’t show, we go on our own. I know you wanted to watch him, but this puts some of the responsibility on him.”

Sterling watched Magdalena float away and start moving faster in a westerly direction.

“Yeah, that could work.” Sterling whistled for Gasper to come down to join them. While he waited for the shaman to head down the stairs, he rolled up a cigarette, which he was just sliding into his mouth when Gasper reached the pair.

“Hungry already?” Gasper asked. He now was shirtless, in a pair of tight jeans shorts with beads hanging from their threads and moccasins. The shaman had on more jewelry than he normally did, necklaces, bracelets, and it looked like he had even trimmed the white hairs that normally jutted off the sides of his head.

“Gasper, no offense, but there ain’t no way in hell we’re staying in this motel for the night. There’s gotta be a better place. Show us what Alamogordo has to offer, and then you can meet us at this better place tomorrow morning with Magdalena.”

“You would stay somewhere like this if you were alone, no?”

“I ain’t alone, and I intend to treat the Sunflower Kid here like the lady that she is.”

“She can just use her plants to cover the room and make it comfortable.”

“Gasper…” Sterling said in a stern voice.

“Ah, you win. You’re in luck; there is a better place not too far from here.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“You haven’t seen me in several days, I thought that we would be hanging out, just like old times, like in Las Cruces.” Gasper motioned for the two of them to follow him.

“Hang out? Just in case you forgot, when I showed up in Las Cruces, you were on a stage covered in blood and speaking tongues to a damn rattler. We slept in a goddamn shed that night, and the next day I had to find someone named Juan, which almost proved to be fatal for Yours Truly. That night, we crashed in a musty trailer, only to be attacked by Killbillies the next day. To be honest, I never quite figured out how they found us.”

“Could have been Juan,” Gasper suggested as they made their way down an alley headed toward the east.

“Could have. My point remains, we have hung out plenty, believe you me. Now, if there is a tavern of sorts around whatever lodging you’re leading us to, I’d be happy to drink some tequila with you.”

“Do you have money?”

“I got a fair amount on my way up from T or C, but you know how money goes when you’re traveling.”

“Maybe you could offer your services.”

“I’d like to avoid that as much as possible. Last time I tried to offer my services, I ended up reigniting a feud between friends and learning about all sorts of debauchery that takes place in Las Cruces.”

“Heh, that sounds about right. What about you?” he asked the Sunflower Kid. “Would you be willing to barter your services for room, board, and drink?”

“Something tells me we should keep a low profile here.”

“Is that why she is riding a pronghorn?” Gasper asked Sterling.

“His name is Watermelon,” the Sunflower Kid informed him.

“An excellent name. I had me a watermelon just a couple months ago, down in Mexico. It was muy delicioso.”

“You didn’t keep any of the seeds, did you?” she asked the shaman, suddenly interested.

“Any of the seeds? No, they have passed through me by now.”

Sterling shook his head. “That’s not what she meant.”

“Next time I go down there, or anywhere that has an exotic fruit, I’ll keep some seeds, I promise you,” he told her as they moved through the parking lot of an old grocery store, a few shopping carts out front missing their wheels, the place apparently looted long ago. Gasper turned toward the entrance of the grocery store.

“It’s here.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Appearances can be deceiving, Sterling. Leave your pronghorn behind,” he told the Sunflower Kid as he motioned toward the abandoned grocery store. “Maybe tie it off over there.”

Once she dismounted, Don Gasper led them over the broken glass and to a door that had been painted black, the walls dark gray.

“Are you ready for this?” Gasper asked as he reached for the door handle.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Sterling huffed.

Sterling was greeted by a hotel that had been built inside the grocery store, the abandoned building essentially operating as cover. It was clandestine, and the hotel, which extended from the floor to the ceiling, was set in adobe brick, seating up front with lights and a large series of generators far enough away from the open front that it wouldn’t appear suspicious. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it from outside, nor heard the chatter of a few people at a restaurant inside the establishment, Sterling also seeing a trading post where the pharmacy used to be, the design of the place oozing post-apocalyptic ingenuity.

“The Albertson’s Hotel, huh?” Sterling asked, reading the repurposed sign. “This ain’t bad at all. Hell, you should be staying here, rather than that roach motel.”

“Magdalena likes the roach motel,” Gasper said, a twinkle in his eye at the mention of her name. “It’s a way to be closer to the people, not the burguesía that stay in this place.”

“If there’s a place for me to take a bath, relax, enjoy my damn self, I’ll be part of your burguesía, as you put it. At least for a night or two. Now, let’s figure out how we’re going to pay for this place and hopefully save me a bit of turquoise and silver.” Both Sterling and Don Gasper looked to the Sunflower Kid.

“Let’s,” she said. She stepped around the two men and headed into the hotel.

The clandestine Albertson’s Hotel was now filled with beautiful plants, full-grown cacti, and fruit—fruit!—pretty much assuring that Sterling and the Sunflower Kid would have their lodging covered for the night. The rooms were down a clean hallway, the walls done up in dried mud brick that had been painted white, giving the place a Tuscan feel, this further accentuated by the beautiful ocean a local artist had painted on one of the walls. It really was something.

After settling into their rooms, Sterling joined Don Gasper at the bar, a bottle of tequila set out before the shaman. They had invited the Sunflower Kid to eat and drink with them as well, but she seemed content in adding her unique touch to the hotel and leaving the two to their vices.

“Tell me everything that happened,” Don Gasper said, his eyes wavering a bit as he looked at Sterling. He was high on something other than marijuana, likely peyote, but seemed sober enough to have a conversation.

“We have chips and salsa, tamales, and tacos. What would you like?” the bartender asked, a stocky man with the jowls of a pig.

“Tacos for me,” Sterling said. “Christmas.”

“And you?”

“I’m fasting,” Don Gasper told him. “But you’re welcome to have a shot with us.” The shaman tilted his bearded chin to the bottle of tequila.

“It’s okay. I had too much last night.”

“Chips and salsa, while you’re at it,” Sterling said just as the bartender was about to step away. He turned his focus back to Don Gasper. “Everything that happened, huh?”

“While the women are away, sure.”

“Everything went well enough.” He poured up two shots of tequila and handed one of the glasses to Don Gasper. They toasted and threw back their shots, Sterling wincing before he continued. “Headed north, after stopping by T or C to see about some treasure. You know Kip. Well, he turned out to be right, and we found some silver and turquoise buried in the hull of an old ship. Had to kill an amalgamation to get it, but them’s the ropes. Then it was north, nothing to write home about until I reached Alamillo, where some Hopis set up a pueblo.”

“Long way from the rez in Arizona…”

“That’s what I told them, but they said it was ancestral land, and I wasn’t one to question them. They knew about you.”

“Ah,” Gasper said, something sparking behind his eyes. “I know the group you’re talking about now. They have a solimancer.”

“Paco. He wants to join up.”

“Join you?”

“I told him to get permission from Abuela first.”

“She won’t let him.”

“We’ll see. They seemed to like me, or at least she did. That was the vibe I got. Kept calling me Skeleton Man.”

“Masau’u?”

“You’re familiar?”

“I’m in the shaman business. Of course I’m familiar,” Gasper said as he poured up another pair of shots. Before Sterling could roll a cigarette, the bartender returned with an ashtray and several pre-rolled cigarettes on a plate.

“This place continues to impress me.”

“If you look hard enough, you’ll find more places like this across the Southwest. I found plenty in Mexico,” Gasper told him. “You just gotta keep your eyes open. People have adapted, you know, to our environment. But they still have to maintain the outside appearance because of things like vandals and militias.” They clinked their shot glasses together and threw back their tequila. “It’s good stuff, no?”

“It is. And I will be on the lookout. Shee-it, it beats sleeping in abandoned houses, especially now that I got the Kid with me. Although, I do like the pueblos and the natives. Always a good time and a hearty meal there. Anyway, as I was saying, Skeleton Man. She called me that and wouldn’t stop.”

“She thinks you’re their god of death?”

“Seems to me that she thinks anyone with a mancer power is some kind of god or goddess. I kept telling her there ain’t nothing special about me, aside from my good looks.”

Don Gasper laughed at this comment. “And your modesty.”

“But anyway, they helped me solve the riddle, and I discovered that the Sunflower Kid had been taken by a cult run by a telemancer claiming she was Jesus. Called themselves the Culto Demente Sagrado.”

“Heh.”

Sterling proceeded to tell Don Gasper how he had continued north. He then circled back around to the bounty hunter that was after him, the cryomancer known as Ram, the man in all white, who seemed to be stalking Sterling. He told him how he had discovered a gang member from Albuquerque frozen on the road, a challenge of sorts. He explained that he had decided to ride to Madrid instead, where he’d met Raylan and the pyromancer who would likely join their group named Sierra, that he had learned Zephyr was in Albuquerque. And inevitably, after another round of shots and more chips and salsa, this led to a discussion on how Ram had attacked him in Madrid.

“Would you like me to put a hex on him?” Don Gasper asked after a long pause, a serious look taking shape on his face. “I know many curses. Perhaps I could take his heart.”

“I can’t say that wouldn’t help, but I think I want to see this one to its natural conclusion myself.”

“When you go to Albuquerque for Zephyr, right?” Don Gasper asked.

“That’s not the only reason I need to go to Albuquerque,” Sterling said as his food came. “There may be some more information there on my wife and my son.”

“Isabella, I remember. But how would there be more information there?”

Sterling took a bite of his taco, chewed, and swallowed before continuing. “There was a logo of sorts with an address beneath it on the insurance card I found. I didn’t pay any attention to it. Raylan spotted it, and told me that the place was in Duke City. So I got me a little side quest is what I’m trying to say here.”

This caused Don Gasper to laugh. “Don’t we all?”

Sterling finished his meal, and wrapped up the conversation by explaining how he had rescued the Sunflower Kid after battling a serpent amalgamation, and how she had transformed the ruins outside of Mountainair.

“It sounds like the Garden of Eden,” Gasper commented.

“I’m pretty sure that’s what the telemancer was calling it; she was putting out psychic waves of Bible quotes that she had tailored to her own needs. I didn’t like her one bit, but I never actually saw her. Did see a bunch of her minions though. And apparently there’s a hydromancer who helped the Sunflower Kid; didn’t see him neither.”

“You have made enemies,” Gasper said as he started to pour another round of tequila shots, his hand was a little shaky now.

“You should eat something.”

“No, I’m fasting. And besides…” He threw a shot back without clinking it against Sterling’s glass. “Magdalena is waiting for me.”

Gasper stood, winked at Sterling, let him know that he would return in the morning, and departed. For a few minutes, Sterling sat in silence at the bar, still with some tequila left in the bottle, plenty of chips and salsa, just minding his own business.

A woman approached wearing a red dress, a shawl draped over her shoulders. She had sparkling high heels on her feet, and her makeup had been done up, her lips the same color as her dress, a small mole just above her lip. Sterling couldn’t remember the last time he had seen a woman dressed in such an alluring way. He immediately took his hat off and greeted her. “Ma’am.”

“Hi,” she started to say only to be interrupted by the Sunflower Kid, who was suddenly standing there eating an orange.

“I didn’t get your name,” Sterling told the woman.

“I didn’t give it to you.”

“I have something to show you,” the Sunflower Kid said, interrupting the two of them. Sterling finally looked from the woman to the biomancer, who had changed her hairstyle. It was now pink, cut so it hung just below her chin. She had a flower stuck behind her ear, something devious about the look on her face.

“Well, looks like I’m being summoned, ma’am.” Sterling quickly returned to the tequila and poured up the two final shots. He handed one to the woman, and they toasted and threw the shots back. From there, Sterling followed the Sunflower Kid to the front of the establishment, past the entrance to the parking lot.

“This better be good,” he said once they were outside. Everything was dark, not a single light lighting the parking lot or the streets surrounding it. There was a hint of blue to the sky, mostly from the stars above, and Sterling noticed now that his motor skills were a bit off. How much tequila had he drunk?

“She’s a prostitute,” the Sunflower Kid said.

“That don’t make her any more or less than anyone else around here, or anyone in this world, for that matter.”

“I just thought you would like to know.”

“I don’t need my mother around here telling me who’s who and what’s what,” he said, feeling the effects of the alcohol and all the chips and salsa he had consumed, not to mention the tacos, which were sitting heavy in his stomach.

“I thought you would want to fly.”

“Fly?” Sterling reached in his front pocket for a cigarette, glad that he had nicked one of them from the bar during his conversation with Don Gasper. The cigarette in his mouth, he lit it and enjoyed it for a moment as he sized up the Sunflower Kid.

“Something wrong?”

“Pardon me. I ain’t used to traveling with womenfolk.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

“That’s for damn sure, especially after Roxy comes around. Won’t be none of that,” he said, nodding toward the bar inside the hotel. “Ain’t going to lie, neither. I haven’t seen someone dolled up like that in ages. It just took me by surprise. Talk about power, but I guess that sort of comes with her job, flirting, being confident, shit, you probably just saved me whatever turquoise and silver I have left. I still don’t know if I should thank you, though. Might have been turquoise well spent.”

“You’re drunk?”

“I just finished a bottle of tequila with Gasper, I definitely ain’t sober.”

“Then this is the perfect time to fly. You should know how to do it. You probably have enough Mana.”

Sterling quickly checked his stats just to be sure. “I’ve got close to one-sixty.”

“That’s plenty, you should try. It could come in handy…”

“I am afraid of heights,” Sterling admitted, which was something he was pretty sure he had told the Sunflower Kid before.

“You don’t have to float very high,” she told him, “and you may have already done so before and you don’t even know it.”

“What do you mean?”

“In the heat of a battle, something like that.” The Sunflower Kid tilted her head as she looked at him. Sterling still wasn’t used to seeing her with a short pink bob. A disturbance caused Sterling to place his hand on his revolver. But it was only a street dog dragging something into an alley, another dog running out to meet it.

“I don’t remember ever flying.”

“Have you ever moved so quickly that you were surprised later on that it was you?”

Sterling thought back to a few of his skirmishes. It wasn’t uncommon for him to move at speeds that were incomprehensible to his normal day-to-day operations. But could he really fly? Had he really gone five years without knowing about this ability?

“Like me,” the Sunflower Kid said as she floated into the air. “You can do it.”

Sterling wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and glanced down at his cowboy boots. He wanted more tequila, and to have a conversation with the pretty lady at the bar. His focus was off because of the alcohol, and he recognized that. He also recognized that he was feeling a little combative. But there was something genuine about the way the Sunflower Kid was looking at him, as if she saw through what he was experiencing, a prescience to her gaze.

“How?” Sterling asked.

“How do you do anything that you do? You just do it. Just jump, and keep jumping.”

“Look, if you think I’m about to start flitting around Alamogordo like the goddamn tooth fairy, you got another thing coming.”

“Do you see anyone else flying around?”

“I don’t see much of anything,” he said. “It’s dark out, and like I told you, I may have had a little too much tequila.”

“You can do it,” she said as she lowered herself to the ground in front of him. “I would offer you assistance, but then you would think that it was me doing it for you.”

“Why are you so gung-ho about me floating around?”

“It’s your fear, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I’ve already told you that.”

“Maybe this will help you get over your fear.”

“What if I don’t want to get over my fear?” he asked, just being ornery.

The Sunflower Kid smiled as vines began to press out of the asphalt of the parking lot. They latched onto Sterling’s legs, and it was only a few seconds later that they were wrapped all the way up to his knees, more tendrils appearing.

“Hey,” he said as he tried to kick them away, and was unable to do so. “What the hell are you trying to do here?”

“I’m going to kill you with my vines unless you float off the ground.”

“You’re what?” Sterling went for his sickle-sword. He hacked at the vines, only to see that the pieces he cut off started to grow as well, more coming toward him, the tendrils now past his knees and nearly to his waist, some of the vines as thick as anacondas they started to squeeze him. “Get this shit off me or… I swear I’ll shoot you!” He sheathed his blade and drew his revolver. His weapon was instantly capped by one of the vines which began wrapping around his arm. “I’m serious, Kid, I ain’t playing with you…” Another vine wrapped around his free arm, several now making their way up to his shoulders. “This ain’t no way to teach someone something!”

When the Sunflower Kid didn’t respond, Sterling tried to use his enhanced strength to tear away from the ground, but this didn’t work, the vines continuing to grow in size. He kept at it, his gun held in the air, a strain on his face, all his muscles tensed as he pressed away from the ground. Sterling was so focused on batting away the vines and preventing them from reaching his head that he didn’t realize that he was now floating a foot or two off the ground. It was only when the vines suddenly snapped back that he realized what was happening.

Sterling looked down and saw the ground below him. He fell instantly, his knees buckling as his boots hit the pavement.

“You were floating,” the Sunflower Kid said excitedly. “Did you see?”

Sterling holstered his firearm. “That ain’t no way…”

“Try again. This time without vines.”

“If I try again, will you leave me the hell alone and let me go clean up for the night? You’re getting under my skin, Kid, and I could still shoot you if I wanted to.”

“You won’t shoot me,” she said as she came forward. Sterling drew his revolver and slowly started to bring it to the ready. Once it was at her waist level, he grunted and put it away again.

“See?”

“You are really pressing your luck tonight, you know that? What happened to the quiet Sunflower Kid who didn’t give me hell after I’d been drinking? What has gotten into you?”

“Come on, float. It may come in handy.”

“Fine, I’ll do it, but only if you promise to leave me alone for the rest of the night.”

“I promise.”

“I got things to do.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t need to tell you what I got to do,” Sterling said as he looked down at his feet. A smile started to take shape on his face. He knew he was being cranky. His first attempt at floating was simply a jump. But he tried it again, and imagined himself staying in the air this time.

It didn’t work.

“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do it voluntarily,” Sterling told her after several more attempts. “I’ll keep trying, but I don’t think it’s something I’m just going to learn here in one night. Especially in my, ahem, current condition. But I get it, I see what you mean now.”

“At least you tried,” she said, her plant tendrils hovering around her and returning to the soil. “Hopefully you won’t need the ability anytime soon. Call it a night?”

“Call it something.”

.Chapter Five.

Sterling fell asleep annoyed at the Sunflower Kid’s last statement to him, how ominous it was. He didn’t end up taking a bath that night, but he did so the next morning, a man who worked at the hotel bringing several buckets of hot water to fill a tub in the corner of the room. Sterling wished there was a window for him to gaze out of while he bathed, but at least the space was well-lit, the generator outside of his room providing plenty of light.

Rather than focus on his desert haiku as he normally would have, Sterling accessed the Buy Store, the menu appearing directly in front of him. It was time to spend the twelve Technique Points he had received in his last level up. The Buy Store presented three main categories for him to choose from:

Stealth

Combat

Perception

He first selected the Perception tab and then the Awareness technique.

Awareness: become the master of your surroundings.

Spend three Technique Points to learn Awareness?

“Might as well,” Sterling said as he indicated that he’d like to spend the points. This brought his Awareness technique to Level 1, Sterling figuring he’d spend five more points to bring it to Level 2. He then cycled back to the Stealth tab, Sterling recalling that he had unlocked an ability called Disguise.

Disguise: Learn to better disguise yourself so you can fit in anywhere. Higher levels allow for greater perception of what will work, as well as voice modification.

Spend three Technique Points to activate Disguise?

Since Sterling only had four points left, he figured it would be worth a shot, leaving him with one point left to add to his next level up. He also hoped that unlocking it would grant him an additional technique later on. Hopefully, he’d also have a charm by then that gave him even more Technique Points with each level. With a deep breath out, Sterling settled further into the tub, his cowboy hat over his head as he took an overall look at his Techniques:

Combat:

Sword Expert Level 4 - 30 Technique Points to Level 5

Marksmanship Level 6 - 36 Technique Points to Level 7

Stealth:

Sneak Proficiency Level 3 - 14 Technique Points to Level 4

Assassination Level 2 - 9 Technique Points to Level 3

Cover of Night Level 2 - 7 Technique Points to Level 3

Disguise Level 1 - 4 Technique Points to Level 2

Perception:

Persuasion Level 3 - 9 Technique Points to Level 4

Awareness Level 2 - 10 Technique Points to Level 3

He then took a quick gander at his base stats and Class Proficiencies:

Name: Sterling Monedero

Race: Human

Mancer Class: Necromancer

Class Ranking: Bone Sculptor

Level: 61

Fortitude: 117

Strength: 40

Resolve: 155

Mana: 159/159

Current Armor Rating: 28

XP: 314,523

XP to Next Level:10,437

Stat Points Available: 0

Technique Points Available: 1

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 3

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: Class Proficiency Level 3

Grafting Casting Cost: 15 Mana Points

Description: Enhanced durability and grafting.

——

Death Sense: Class Proficiency Level 2

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

——

Mold Manipulation: Class Proficiency Level 1

Casting Cost: 6 Mana Points

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

Sterling retrieved the cigarette he had tucked behind his ear and lit it, exhaling a cloud of smoke above his head. A light knock at the door signaled it was time to finish his bath.

“It’s going to be a minute,” he called out as a vine slipped into the room and unlocked the door.

“Gasper is here,” the Sunflower Kid said as the door squeaked open. As usual, she was dressed in an oversized white button-up shirt without a collar, moccasins on her feet, bracelets hanging from her arms. Her hair was different this morning, long and black and pulled into a lengthy braid, reminding Sterling of pictures he’d seen of natives from other parts of the States.

“I’m busy,” he said, looking up from the tub with a grin on his face. “Is Magdalena with him?”

The Sunflower Kid nodded.

“Shee-it. Just be ready for anything.” The Sunflower Kid was turning away when Sterling called out to her. “Say, you got any fruit I can eat?”

“Apples, oranges, grapes, cantaloupe, peaches…”

“I’d love me a peach, an orange too. Hell, might as well throw in an apple.”

A vine stretched across the floor, growing in size as it twisted toward Sterling. It scaled up the bathtub, and once it did, the fruit he requested began to grow and ripen.

“Appreciate it,” he told the Sunflower Kid. “I’ll be out there when I’m out there.”

Don Gasper and Magdalena stood outside of the grocery store that had been converted into a post-apocalyptic three-star hotel. As usual, Gasper was shirtless, his shorts held to his body by a rope. He wore a pair of yellow snakeskin boots, the toes just a bit more curled than they should have been. Sterling handed him a joint he’d already rolled for the old shaman.

“You’re almost looking dapper,” Sterling told him, more or less ignoring Magdalena, who was in the same tie-dyed robes that she’d worn yesterday, a big smile on her face that made Sterling feel uneasy. Without making eye contact, he tipped his hat toward the enchantress.

“Rest well?” Gasper asked.

“Well enough.”

Sterling didn’t elaborate on what happened after Gasper had left, the woman at the bar, the Sunflower Kid’s insistence that he learn to fly. He did, however, look over to where they had been standing last night, confirming that the asphalt was now mostly rubble from her vines. As casually as ever, Watermelon came from around the side of the building and the Sunflower Kid mounted up, the pronghorn sneezing in a cute way.

“We’re not going so far,” Don Gasper said, “but if you prefer to ride your berrendo, you’re more than welcome.”

“I’ll walk,” Sterling told him as he lit his cigarette. He also lit Gasper’s joint for him.

“Follow me, sirs.” Magdalena turned around in a playful way, both arms out wide. She started off, her lion’s mane bouncing as her hips swayed back and forth. Gasper joined her, Sterling staying just a few steps back, not able to shake the sense of uneasiness he was feeling.

Something ain’t right, he thought again and again, the three words practically becoming a mantra spinning around his noggin. He glanced over at the Sunflower Kid, unable to read the look on her face. Typical. Expressionless, she kept both hands on Watermelon’s horns as the pronghorn trotted along, her long dark braid of hair beating softly against her back. I’ll never figure her out, will I? Sterling looked from the Sunflower Kid back to Gasper and Magdalena, who were speaking in Spanish as they shared the joint. Where were they leading him? What had they devised?

Sterling wished at that moment that he was a telemancer, that he could relay this message to the Sunflower Kid, but he knew she was ready. If anyone was prepared to kill on a dime, it was her.

They headed out of town, the streets quiet aside from a man selling tamales from a repurposed ice cream cart. They passed yet another Walmart Supercenter, Sterling wondering how many had been in the state before the Reset. Like the others, this one was completely abandoned, looted, and it looked to have been ground zero for a couple battles, the walls left standing showing signs of explosions, bullet holes, and dried blood stains. The land shifted outside of the Walmart, umber hills forming, Sterling aware that the White Sands desert was on the other side. He didn’t know their proximity to the military base where the militia was holed up, but he got the sense that they weren’t very far off.

Two ATVs appeared on the horizon heading in their direction, and Sterling went for his revolver.

“Put your weapon away,” Don Gasper said as he turned back to Sterling.

“Are these the people you want us to meet?” he asked, the sun at a point that it was making it hard to make out the features of the two riders heading in his direction.

“Just stay calm. It’s not what it seems,” Gasper told him.

As the two grew closer, Sterling saw yellow bandannas around their necks. He drew his revolver.

“Cálmese,” Gasper said, Magdalena echoing him.

Sterling pointed his weapon at Magdalena. “Is this a fucking setup? Because if it is…”

Gasper stepped in front of Magdalena, glaring at Sterling for having the audacity to draw his weapon. “Put your gun away. I would never set you up.”

“Those are Killbillies,” Sterling said, nodding to the two approaching ATVs. “Get ready,” he told the Sunflower Kid. “Enemies inbound.”

“Weapons down,” Gasper said, his voice unwavering. He took a step closer to Sterling, then another step, to the point that the muzzle of Sterling’s weapon was now inches away from his forehead. “Do you intend to kill me?”

“Gasper, get the hell out of my way.” Sterling shifted the position of his arm, pointing it again at Magdalena.

Gasper got between the weapon and the enchantress for a second time. “This isn’t what it looks like, mi vaquero nigromante. You must hear me out.”

With a grunt, Sterling lowered his weapon, but he kept it in his hand as the two Killbillies approached, both of them in full bandit regalia—bandannas, wraparound sunglasses, crappy prison tattoos around their muscled arms, and bulletproof vests over stained cargo pants. Magdalena approached the two and spoke to them quietly, Sterling grinding his teeth as she did so.

“Let’s go,” she said as the two fired up their ATVs again and turned in the opposite direction, their wheels kicking up dust.

“I don’t think you understand,” Sterling told her. “Not only have I been crucified by the Killbillies, but they’ve also murdered people I care about, and they have a bounty hunter after me. Why in the hell would I follow you to a meeting with them? Do you know how many Killbillies I’ve killed? Do you know what they want to do with me?”

“You must see beyond that,” Magdalena said, a tight smile on her face. “Think of your… What’s her name?” she asked Don Gasper.

“Roxy.”

“Think of your Roxy,” she said, rolling her ‘r.’

Sterling felt his right eye twitch. “Lady, I don’t want you using her name. You don’t know shit about me or Roxy, nor the Sunflower Kid, for that matter. Whatever you are, it ain’t right, and I know when I’m being led into a trap.”

“Sterling, please,” Gasper said. “Put your weapon away, let’s go and hear them out. Consider it a temporary truce, no?”

“A temporary truce? If you’re leading me to a Killbilly camp, rest assured I’m going to kill every one of them bottom-feeders before the day is over. I don’t need a truce with the Killbillies. I’ll do this on my own. And for the record, this is a setup.”

Sterling turned away, but the Sunflower Kid didn’t follow him.

“You too?” He begrudgingly put his revolver away and returned his focus to Don Gasper. “Whatever this is,” he said, gesturing toward Magdalena and back to the shaman, “it’s going to get your crazy ass killed. Mark my words. And as for you,” he told the Sunflower Kid, “I don’t know what the hell you’re thinking. These people have tried to kill me multiple times. They tried to kill Raylan and Sierra, and…” He didn’t mention Maria by name, the native who Ram had delivered to them, her head in a block of ice. “I can’t in good conscience be part of whatever this is about to be.”

“Just hear them out,” Don Gasper said, exasperation in his voice. “Sterling, that’s all I’m asking. You’ve trusted me up to this point, no? I led you to the Sunflower Kid, and now you’re here. We have a solution, a way to get Roxy and the technomancer. Think about that; think about what you need from the White Sands Militia. You can war with the Killbillies later. They will never be strong enough to take you on, not without an army of mancers.”

“Shee-it,” Sterling said as he kicked a rock. He equipped his supplies and rolled up a cigarette. The two Killbillies on ATVs were stopped about a hundred feet away from them, waiting for the group to follow them. Once again, Sterling looked to the Sunflower Kid, the teenager expressionless. For some reason, he found comfort in how calm she was, and even though this went against his nature, Don Gasper had been right in the past. He had also been right three years ago when he warned Sterling against what he was trying to do; and he had been right in the ritual he performed that gave Sterling the location of the Sunflower Kid. Sterling placed the cigarette in his mouth and lit it. “I can’t believe I’m fucking doing this.”

“Yes,” Gasper said with a big smile. “You are seeing reason.”

“Gasper, if this shit turns sour, I’m shooting you first. Then you,” he said, pointing his cigarette at Magdalena.

Magdalena swept some of her hair out of her face, her eyes flaring with indignation. “There’s no need for grandstanding. They have agreed to meet with you. Let’s see what they have to say.”

Sterling finished his cigarette by the time they reached an escarpment, where he noticed a rocky trail that led down into a camp full of tents, about half the size of the supply camp back in Radium Springs. There were plenty of Killbillies out, maybe fifty or sixty in total, all armed and standing near the center of the camp. Sterling recognized the largest tent of the pack, one with an air conditioning unit.

“Motherfucker,” he whispered as Don Gasper approached him, the shaman placing his hand on Sterling’s arm.

“Be calm. You have to get Roxy and this technomancer. Magdalena set this up, and there will be no violence here today.”

“No violence…” he grumbled in disgust. “If anyone thinks that I’m giving these pinche banditos my weapons…” Sterling pointed toward the middle of the camp. “That tent there belongs to Commodore Bones, or ‘Beto, as I like to call him. Do you actually realize what you have done here? You’ve set up a meeting between someone I want to kill, and someone who wants me dead. How is this going to end in anything but a shootout?” Sterling took a quick look around to find Magdalena standing a few steps away, the Sunflower Kid with her. He kicked at a stone. “I need me some animates. I ain’t going down there without some recruits.”

“You need to be more nuanced,” Gasper told him. “Not every situation calls for you to bust down the door and start shooting people. The enemy of your enemy is your friend, no? You can go back to being at each other’s throats after, but—”

“Stop all your bullshit, Gasper. I don’t think you’re hearing me correctly. I don’t care if the Killbillies and the White Sands Militia are enemies. I hope them suckers kill each other. I just want to get Roxy and this technomancer out of there. That’s it.”

“Do you care about New Mexico?”

“What’s there to care about? It’s no longer a state. It’s a landscape, part of a region.”

“But you care, no?”

“Dammit, Gasper, don’t be using my affinity for the state of New Mexico against me.”

“And what about Texas?”

“Texas? Texas can go to hell.”

“Ah, then you should know that the White Sands Militia is now working with the Texas Rangers. They’re planning to push further into the state, and the military base, where Roxy and the technomancer are being held, is going to be their… como se dice? Principal punto de entrada… main entry, the main point of entry into New Mexico.”

“You better be right about this.”

“Trust me, Sterling. I’ve been thinking for the last several days of a solution to this problem, and this is the best I have. The one who searches finds. ¿El que busca encuentra, no?”

Sterling took another look at the Killbilly camp, watching as their leader emerged from the central tent. He spotted Commodore Bones’ smug grin and spat again. “Goddammit, Gasper.”

Commodore Bones gestured for them to join him. The heavyset man was in better clothing than his followers, his reflective orange shades on his forehead, his white beard nicely trimmed, a holstered firearm at his side.

The Sunflower Kid hopped down from her pronghorn and stepped up to Sterling. “You can do this,” she said so only he could hear.

“You don’t know what you’re asking me to do.”

“At least hear them out.”

Sterling snorted as Don Gasper took the lead, followed by Magdalena, the two of them heading down a pathway that was lined with armed Killbillies, all eyes on Sterling. “We’re making a big mistake,” he said under his breath as he took a step forward, the Sunflower Kid joining him.

“Mr. Monedero,” Commodore Bones said as Sterling reached him. “Always a pleasure. I would extend my hand, but then both of our hands would be dirty.”

“Cut the bull crap. The way I see it, this state ain’t big enough for the two of us, ‘Beto, and after what you have attempted to do to me, you should be thanking your lucky stars I haven’t shot you in the pecker just for the hell of it. I ain’t done,” Sterling said, stopping Commodore Bones before he could comment, “and I want all your little bitch ass foot soldiers to hear it too—”

“—Come, I have something to show you,” Commodore Bones said, motioning toward his tent.

“But I ain’t done yet.”

“Yes, you are.”

Sterling spat. “I told you back in Radium Springs, and I’m telling you now, I ain’t never going to join you…”

“That’s not what I remember you saying,” said the Commodore, still grinning at Sterling in a way that was really starting to get under his skin. “I remember you telling me that you’d thought things over, that you would help me. And here you are. It appears as if I’ve won.”

“Won? Like hell you’ve won. I’m here because of my friends,” he said, barely able to get the words out. This was a trap, Sterling knew it. He didn’t know how yet, but Magdalena was involved, she had duped Don Gasper. The Sunflower Kid was too naïve to understand what was going on, she hadn’t seen the way these vandals behaved, nor had she seen the bounty hunter they sent after him. But what was the Commodore’s angle? What was he actually planning?

“Please, join me in my tent. I believe you will come around once you see what we are working on.”

“I should string every one of you up,” Sterling said as he gritted his teeth.

“Before you do anything, you should probably hear what I have to say. Then you can make your own decision. We’re not going to force you to stay,” Commodore Bones said, once again gesturing toward his tent.

A few of the Killbillies behind him seemed to step closer; Sterling whipped around, his revolver already in his hand. “Y’all trying to come up behind me?”

“No one will do anything,” the Sunflower Kid said quietly. It was then that Sterling saw that there were a series of plant tendrils lifting just behind the Killbillies. He slowly lowered his weapon.

“Say what you need to say, ‘Beto,” he told the leader of the Killbillies. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Calm yourself,” Gasper told Sterling as he passed him.

“Gasper, don’t you start in with me.”

Upon entering the tent, Sterling found that several whiteboards had been erected with detailed schematics of the former Air Force Base sketched onto them.

“The White Sands Militia is now working with the Texas Rangers,” the Commodore began to say.

“Already heard that.”

“Good, then you know what kind of threat this creates for all of us. I am a patriot, as you are well aware, one who wants to rebuild the state of New Mexico into something it has never been before, stronger than it was before the Reset, less impoverished, a proverbial powerhouse in the region. But if we are host to an invasion, especially one coming from Texas, it won’t be long before my vision, one of a Southwest union, is squashed.”

Sterling stared at the bearded man incredulously. “Is this what déjà vu feels like? I swear to Christ I’ve already heard this bullshit before. You already told me your little life story, ‘Beto, and I wasn’t interested then, and I damn sure ain’t interested now. Get to your point.”

The Commodore’s eyes narrowed on Sterling. “I don’t think you understand what would happen if the Texas Rangers moved into New Mexico. From the intelligence that we’ve gathered, they have reintroduced the slave trade to West Texas, and have spread east to San Antonio. And these aren’t the Rangers you may be thinking of from a history book; no, these are a new breed, made up of miscreants and prisoners, deplorables.”

“So, they’re basically Killbillies,” Sterling said, pointing out the obvious. “You didn’t say anything about rapists, you could add that in there, kidnappers, too. Probably a few other words you could use. Extortionists?”

“Killbillies—”

“How about people too cowardly to pull the trigger themselves? The kind of assholes that would do something like, I don’t know, hire a sociopathic bounty hunter? You’re pretty book smart, is there a word for someone that would do something like that? Me, I’d use the word ‘chickenshit,’ but that’s just me.”

“What are you insinuating?” Commodore Bones asked.

“Do not make me spell it out for you in front of these good people, or good enough,” Sterling said, returning Magdalena’s icy glare. “We all know what you did. I already told them, and I’ve already seen the repercussions of your actions. Ram. Does that name ring a bell? If not, that’s the bounty hunter you sent after me.”

“I didn’t send a bounty hunter,” the Commodore said smoothly. “It must have been one of the others who sent him, Del or Nina.”

“I don’t care if it was your long-lost grandmother who lives in Tulsa and raises blind ferrets for a living. It relates directly to you, and the way that your people do business. So what I’m trying to say here is—and really try to think about the words that are coming out of my mouth this time—there ain’t no difference between you, the Texas Rangers, or the White Sands Militia in my book. You’re all a bunch of good-for-nothing opportunists that excel in terrorizing folks, and I couldn’t give a rat’s ass if the Rangers are coming here. So if you think that that is going to persuade me into taking part in your little military operation, then you thought wrong.”

“You want Roxy. She is here,” Commodore Bones said as he pointed at one of the whiteboards, his voice starting to thin. Sterling had finally struck a nerve. “This is where they are holding prisoners, at an old middle school. That’s why you came here, right?”

“I came here…” Sterling grunted. “Yes, and to help an old friend, who apparently doesn’t need help,” he said, gesturing toward Don Gasper. The shaman held Sterling’s gaze for a moment and then looked away, back to Magdalena.

“That’s where she is. That’s where they are keeping all their prisoners, including some of ours. Before you storm out of here accusing my fine organization of terrorism, or puff your chest out in an attempt to intimidate me, you should understand something: we are ready to go. Del’s forces are here,” Commodore Bones said, tapping on a red X scrawled on the map. “Nina’s forces are here. Ours are here. You see what’s happening? We’re going to flank them, but what we don’t want is a siege. They have enough supplies in there to keep them nice and happy for a good while. We need someone who can help us get through their initial line of defense, especially their automatic weapons. Last I heard, you can animate the dead, and she can spawn plants for them to shoot at,” he said, gesturing toward the Sunflower Kid. “Think about what I’m saying here. We send in a wave of your plants and animates to piss away some of their bullets. As soon as they’re shot through, we send in another. We keep doing this until they are almost out. Then we move.”

“Don’t you have mancers?”

“We do, but they have them as well, and ours will likely be engaging theirs. That’s all we’re asking here. You send in waves of zombies to cut through their ammunition, then we do the heavy lifting.”

“It sounds like we’re the ones doing the heavy lifting in this scenario.”

“No, not at all. After a few rounds, you are good to go. Fight your way into the prison and rescue Roxy, and leave for all I care. We will handle everything from there.”

“And then let me guess, the Killbillies are now in charge of the base, meaning you have a hold over this region as well, which means, for all intents and purposes, you would pretty much run the southern part of New Mexico. East to west. Sound about right?”

“Well, that is—”

“—Why on God’s barren wasteland would I want to see your group of armed hoodlums and limp-dicked mouth-breathers with that much power? If anything, I want the Killbillies to have less power. I would love to see you splintered off because of your losses here; I’d love to never see a yellow bandana again.”

“And let Texas move in?”

“To hell with Texas, you already know my opinion on the Rangers. Same-same but different.”

“It would destabilize everything, including your beloved peppers. You realize that, right?” the Commodore asked, his eyes angry black beads, his nose crinkled as he tried not to snarl.

“In case you couldn’t tell, I ain’t in the pepper business no longer. So if you think you’re going to be able to hold peppers over me, well, sorry, pendejo.”

Gasper came to Sterling’s side. “I think we should consider this. I have…” The old shaman nodded. “Yes, I’ve had a vision, and you need Roxy, and we need their help. Even with you and the Sunflower Kid, there may be too many militiamen and enemy mancers to rescue her. There are only two of you, and as strong as you are, we’re talking well over a thousand soldiers. Isn’t that right?” he asked Commodore Bones.

“Somewhere between a thousand and fifteen hundred is our estimate, that’s right, Mr. Gasper.”

Sterling shook his head. To imagine such a small group was able to hold court over such a large area was pathetic.

“With backup a real possibility,” the Commodore added. “None of our scouts have seen them yet, but there are rumors that the Rangers are heading this way. If we can take the base, we will be able to hold them off.”

“Gasper…” Sterling said, now ignoring Commodore Bones.

The shaman stepped over to him. “This is the only way, Sterling.”

Sterling spat, even though he was inside Commodore Bones’ tent, his spit landing on the carpet.

“Think about Roxy. The militia must be powerful if they are able to keep her from escaping,” Don Gasper said in a low voice.

“Yeah…” Sterling shook his head. “I just don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit.”

“You don’t have to like it. Get Roxy, and then continue on toward Albuquerque. Focus on your mission.”

“My mission?”

“The Godwalkers.”

Sterling clenched his fists together. “Shee-it…”

.Chapter Six.

Sterling spent most of the day pacing back and forth, smoking, sitting in the shade, and glaring at the camp, the cowboy necromancer putting on quite the show. Aside from the occasional thought of vengeance, Sterling was mostly mad at himself for having let things get to this point. There were a couple times that he started walking back toward Alamogordo only to be stopped by the Sunflower Kid, who had been tasked with watching him.

“You’ve already agreed to go along with this,” she reminded him the third time she caught up with him.

“I know, and I know I’m making a damn fool of myself right now, but I’ve seen first-hand what these people are capable of. And now we’re teaming up with them? I can’t…” Sterling took off his hat and looked up at the sky for a moment, squinting at the sun. It was late afternoon now, and it would be night soon, their plan arranged to take place in the early morning.

“Look at it differently,” the Sunflower Kid suggested. “There are over a thousand militiamen there. There’s a chance we could handle an amount like that, but one small error, or if one of us went down, and it would be all over.”

“But…” Sterling knew she was right. He also knew that he had put his most recent Technique Points in his sneak abilities, that were more ways to skin a cat. He’d explained this to the Sunflower Kid the last time she’d stopped him.

“We need them.”

“Need them? Like hell we need the Killbillies. As much as I like Don Gasper, he’s wrong here. We’re going to get screwed. Mark my words, Kid.”

“You have been saying that, and I haven’t disagreed with you yet. That’s why we get Roxy and the technomancer, and we leave. We don’t have to stick around.”

Sterling looked back over to the Killbilly camp. There were still a few of the bandits watching him, but most were trying to get some rest before the night’s events, and Commodore Bones was in his tent entertaining Magdalena and Don Gasper. Gasper wasn’t normally a negotiator; usually, the old shaman was the one that needed to be negotiated with, which was throwing Sterling off guard. In the last twenty-four hours, everything had been turned on its head, it was all wrong.

“I just don’t know what to do.”

Sterling crouched. He noticed that there were vines coming out of the Sunflower Kid’s moccasins, that they had wrapped around her legs. He looked up at her, the brim of his cowboy hat casting a shadow on his face.

“They may try to do something to us, but we won’t let them,” she assured him.

“You see? That’s the problem. If we know that they are going to fuck us, why don’t we just finish them boys now? Once we cut the proverbial tail off the possum, there won’t be much left for the rest of the bandits to fight for. Maybe they would go join the others, or get the hell out, count their blessings. Hell, loot the place for all I care.”

“You said it yourself earlier, you’ve trusted Gasper up until now, why would you suddenly stop?”

“Because he ain’t in his right mind. I can’t base my life on his visions, even if they have proven to be accurate in the past.”

“You trusted his vision to find me, and it worked.”

“But did it? What if I had just headed north asking around for a biomancer? I would have stopped in the same place likely,” he said, recalling Paco’s power, how its glow had beckoned him from the highway.

“What about what happened three years ago?” she asked. “You said yourself that Gasper had a vision, that you trusted him.”

Sterling started to mumble.

“You’re going to have to come to grips with this once we rescue Roxy,” she told him. “You know that, right? She’s going to want to know what happened three years ago.”

“What about you? Do you want to know what happened?”

“Sure, I think it’s time.”

After taking in the Sunflower Kid for a moment and her long dark hair, Sterling nodded. “Maybe you’re right.”

He turned back to the camp, and led her to a row of parked dirt bikes and ATVs, where there was a set of crates with foodstuffs inside. He leaned against one and equipped his tobacco and his rolling paper, Sterling quickly crafting a cigarette. Once the cancer stick was in his mouth, he lit it, and returned his focus to the Sunflower Kid, who stood before him, her arms crossed over her chest.

“So, if you recall, three years ago, we were all set to try to take on one of them big Godwalkers,” Sterling began. “We had taken out the smaller one near Santa Fe; we knew one would be gunning for us. They are able to teleport, so it could appear at any time, which was why I was on watch that night.” He paused, a frown forming on his face. “And what can I say other than it took me. One moment, I was sitting there rolling up a cigarette, the next moment I was in this futuristic compartment. It looked like something out of one of them comic books—sleek surfaces, glowing screens, walls made of some type of strange metal. And for a split second, I had all my memories, I remember that much. Everything made sense—my past, my present, all of it. Then nothing made sense. Then I saw something else.” Sterling looked off into the distance as he took a drag off a cigarette. “But that doesn’t pertain to what happened next.”

The Sunflower Kid was quiet, allowing him to continue on his own terms.

“It deposited me miles and miles away from your location, the Godwalker hovering there before vanishing. I don’t know how far away I was. I didn’t have Manchester with me; he was still with y’all.” Sterling waited for her to comment, but she never did. “I got a sense of where I was and I started running in your direction, to you and Roxy, Zephyr, Liam, and Karina. As far as I know, I’ve never run so fast in my life, damn near coughed up a lung in the process. I ran for hours. I was in the middle of nowhere, nothing around for me to ride, no vehicles, of course, and no animals. But I had the sense of where y’all were. And I got there seconds after it happened. If you recall, the Godwalker attacked on that mesa y’all were camped out on. I saw it all happen, how Zephyr managed to save the two of you while the Godwalker took aim at Karina and Liam. I saw it fry them. And then the damn monolith just disappeared.” Sterling extinguished his cigarette with the next drag and flicked it to the ground, holding the smoke in for a moment before finally exhaling it. “I couldn’t face the three of you, not after what happened. I hid there until Roxy stormed off, and you and Zephyr headed in the opposite direction together. That’s it. That’s my story.”

“It all makes sense now.”

“Something like that. I’ve never been so goddamn ashamed in my life. But I got there just as it happened, and if I had run faster, the Godwalker maybe would have come for me instead of Karina and Liam. I could have done something; I should have done something. That Godwalker knew how to disrupt us, and I don’t know why it took me into its craft, if that was actually where I was, but I knew we were finished after that,” he said, finally making eye contact with the Sunflower Kid. “I honestly can’t believe you agreed to join me after what happened. I’m a coward, a chickenshit coward, no better than some of these ‘Billies.”

“A coward? How? There was nothing you could have done aside from let us know what had happened.”

“I wanted to come to y’all, I really did, but I just couldn’t face Roxy. You know how she gets. A bit hotheaded, short temper and whatnot. She would have figured out a way to pin it on me, even if I had no power over the Godwalker. It was my fault Liam and Karina died. Had I been there…” Sterling frowned. “Well, I don’t know what would have happened if I’d been there. But I damn sure wouldn’t have let them die.”

And he was serious. Sterling didn’t have the kind of ability that made him an essential team member when it came to taking on floating alien monoliths. He made up for that with his fortitude, his willingness to put his life on the line. Had he been on watch rather than running through the desert, Sterling would have done anything in his power to help his companions. He would have tried to get the Godwalker to chase him, perhaps kill him, so the others could get away. He operated as a fearless ringleader in that way, or at least that’s what he thought his role had been in the group he had originally formed alongside the Sunflower Kid and Don Gasper.

“I’ve got to say, Kid,” he told her after a long, introspective pause during which she remained silent, “I still can’t believe you agreed to join me, to come down here to Alamogordo without knowing exactly what happened. Are you really that loyal to me? Because it’s a question of loyalty, you know I’m that loyal to you. I didn’t know you had been taken by the cult when I was down in T or C, but if someone had told me about it, you bet your bottom dollar I would have gone up there to bust you out. I’m honestly surprised Zephyr didn’t come for you.”

“She’s gotten quite carried away in Albuquerque.”

“Like the wind, that woman,” Sterling said with a chuckle.

“And I am that loyal to you, and your vision. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t. I wouldn’t be stopping you from leaving if I didn’t think that this would be advantageous to us. We can deal with this small group of bandits later,” she said casually, her voice that of a stone-cold killer. Sterling took another look at the camp, at the Killbillies that were watching them.

“You ain’t wrong.”

“They think that they are using us, but we are actually using them,” she said quietly as a flower bloomed next to her temple, a vine tracing its way down her body and merging with the thicker plant construct wrapped around one of her legs. “Think about it.”

“They think they are using us, but we’re actually using them, huh?” Sterling ran his hand along his chin. “I guess when you put it like that, it makes sense.”

“You were right when you said that we have to do the heavy lifting at first,” she said, “but as soon as that point passes, we are free to do as we please while they distract the militia. They will still be fighting when we leave, with or without Don Gasper.”

“That’s going to be up to him. I can tell you one thing, though, we’re not going to be traveling across New Mexico with two shamans. That’s where I draw the damn line. I don’t know if Gasper is planning to come with us afterward anyway, maybe that’s something we can ask him. He’d do good to get himself to a secure location like Madrid, but not with Magdalena. I just know it, I can feel it in my bones—she’s up to something, and the further away from her we are, the better. But that’s all beside the point. And you’re right. We are using them, not the other way around.”

“So you understand now?”

Sterling took a long hard look at the Sunflower Kid and nodded. “I get it. I may not like it, but I’ll behave myself for the time being. Just be ready for anything. I don’t trust these ‘Billies.”

“You aren’t the only one.”

Sterling kept his distance from the Killbillies, but he didn’t try to storm off again. As the day pressed into late night, the sun long gone, the cold slowly moving across the desert, he accepted his fate, prepared for the inevitable. Eventually, Commodore Bones came around, joined by Gasper and Magdalena, both of whom were now wearing their tie-dyed shaman robes, hoods over their heads.

“I have a bit of a surprise for you,” Commodore Bones said, a grin lifting his cheeks. He wore a beanie now and the requisite Killbilly bandanna around his neck.

Sterling spat in the direction of the Commodore. “I don’t like surprises.”

“You’ll like this surprise. One more thing, though, before we head off.” The Commodore cleared his throat. “I believe you have something of mine.”

Sterling shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, ‘Beto.”

“My gun, the one with the silver grip you took from me back in Radium Springs. Do you have my weapon?”

“Your gun?” Sterling pretended to think about it for a moment. “Nope,” he lied. “I traded it back at an outpost somewhere between here and the Canadian border. You think Canada is still operating up there? Been wondering about that.”

Sterling could tell that this answer was not what Commodore Bones was looking for. The man, who also had a few of his bandits with him, tried to calm his nerves with a deep breath. “That weapon has special meaning to me; it was given to me by someone.”

“I tell you what, after everything is said and done here, why don’t you rent you a little donkey and ride your fat ass toward Wyoming. Stop at every trading post between here and there, you’re bound to find it. Hell, send some of your boys to do it for you. On second thought, I don’t want them raping and pillaging, so don’t send them. You should go yourself. It’s nice to have a… what the hell do the French call it? Something about a reason for existence? Something like that.”

“Raison d’être?”

“Shit, look at you, ‘Beto is practically trilingual over here.” Sterling brushed off his duster. “Well? Are we going to stand around here and talk about your long-lost gun, or are we going to get on our way? Ain’t you the one with a schedule?”

Commodore Bones turned away from Sterling, his goons joining him. This left Don Gasper, the Sunflower Kid, and Magdalena behind, the shaman coming up to Sterling.

“You’re going to have to try to get along with him.”

“Gasper, you’ve already done enough damage here, so shut your trap. Don’t push me any further. I’ll get along with him up until the point we get Roxy out. After that…” Sterling adjusted his cowboy hat on his head, his eyes fixed on the back of Commodore Bones’ head as the man moved to join his troops. “All bets are off.”

“That’s not what we agreed on,” said Magdalena.

“We didn’t agree on shit. I don’t owe you nothing, and I certainly don’t owe that man right there anything. We’ll see what happens after we get Roxy out. And the technomancer. We’ll let them boys fight it out while we ride off into the sunset. But if ‘Beto tries anything, I swear to all the gods, coyotes, shamans, hell, even the Godwalkers, that there will be hell to pay. I know you think that this is the best way forward,” Sterling told Gasper, “and heck, maybe you really did have a vision. But that man right there hammered me up to a cross. As much as I’ve tried to kill his people, he’s tried to kill me. This is beyond bad blood; this is a pending bloodbath. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I got shit to do.” Sterling removed Manchester’s bones from his inventory list, summoned his skeletal steed, placed the saddle, and mounted up. “¡Vámonos!”

To reduce the chances of White Sands Militia scouts seeing them, the group headed out in waves, no one allowed to ride their vehicles yet, which left them to push their ATVs and dirt bikes as best they could. The Killbillies had horses too, which was what Commodore Bones was mounted upon, Don Gasper and Magdalena on a borrowed steed as well. Sterling kept toward the back of the group, not at all excited to be part of what was about to happen. He also wanted to keep his eye on the Commodore, just in case he needed to shoot him in the back.

He knew that the Commodore’s other two associates, Del Cayedito and Nina Otero, were out there somewhere, and there was always the possibility that it could be an ambush. It was a slim possibility now, considering how easy it would be to snuff Commodore Bones out, but still he had to keep this as a consideration, especially with the Killbillies surrounding them, all on horseback.

The hardpacked soil slowly morphed into sand, a proper desert. Like everything else in the once great state of New Mexico, Sterling had read about the White Sands desert in his travel guide. There was proof in the desert of how far back the before people went, even into the last Ice Age. A fossil trackway showed that Paleo-Indians had hunted ground sloth there, using stone from the surrounding mountains to create projectile weapons. These archaic people kept small villages, eventually giving way to Apache who followed herds of bison and lived in temporary housing. The Spaniards more or less avoided the area because it lacked a reliable water source. And later, Americans became interested in it once they discovered precious minerals, oil, coal, silver, and gold all around the Tularosa basin, and the US military eventually set up the White Sands Missile Range, where the first atomic bomb was tested.

The place had a lot of history, something that was on Sterling’s mind as Manchester trotted through the sand, his skeletal steed having to exert more force with each step. What would those first people who settled here so many years ago think of the desert now? Back when it was all ice, the damn cavemen hunting sloths… Sterling thought. What would they have thought about what became of this sacred place, this beautiful land?

It was early in the morning now, or late at night, depending on who you asked. Sterling estimated they had about two hours before sunrise. It wasn’t hard to make out the landscape. What was left of the moon in the sky alongside a wash of glittery stars reflected off the bleach white sand, an exquisite visual created by gypsum that shallow seas from long ago left behind, the white sand lifted from the seabed by tectonic activity. Parabolic dunes resembled wavelengths stretched across the desert, the image reminding Sterling of a picture of a Zen garden that he’d seen in the book he flipped through on Japanese culture, the one that first inspired his interest in haiku.

“Ain’t that something?” he asked, temporarily forgetting the troubled thoughts on his mind as he took in the landscape, the environment unlike anything he’d seen yet. It was the first time that Sterling had seen the White Sands desert, up close and personal. He had been near it, over on the other side of the desert, southeast of Socorro, and it always wasn’t too far off considering his location in Truth or Consequences, but to be in the place was akin to a spiritual experience.

He had pre-rolled several cigarettes earlier, and Sterling went for one and lit it as he caught up to the Sunflower Kid. “Ever seen something like this before?”

“I haven’t been here yet,” she said, Sterling noticing that something had changed about what she was wearing. It was as if a hardened wood had grown from within her, forming an armor with a high collar, her head now shaved, the armor with plates that looked chunky on her arms.

“Is this your new thing?”

“I wanted to get used to wearing it,” she said. “But to answer your question, yes, it’s something I was playing around with back in Albuquerque. There are going to be lots of bullets flying around, even if your animates and some of my creations take the brunt of them.”

“And you can move around in this armor you created?”

“I sure can,” she said, exhibiting her arm movement.

“Dang,” Sterling said as he exhaled a cloud of smoke over her shoulder. “You never cease to amaze me, you know that?”

“I could say the same.”

“Nonsense. I’m still the same old fool you knew five years ago, the one that ran into you in a suburb in Las Cruces. Boy, am I glad that we didn’t kill each other back then. We could have, you know. You seeing me with a bunch of zombies following behind, me seeing you naked and controlling plant life. We dodged a bullet there.”

The Sunflower Kid was about to respond when Commodore Bones eased up on his horse and waited for Sterling to join him. “Before you get cranky with me, I want to tell you a little more about the defenses of the base, seeing how you may be one of the first to breach it. It was an Air Force base, as you already know.”

Sterling exhaled a cloud of smoke in Commodore Bones’ face. “Sorry about that.”

“The jet fuel that they had, and any of the aircraft, things like that, were either used up, stripped of their parts, or blown up years ago. However, they still have most of the aircraft there, and they have started to use them as defense barriers. Imagine a cargo plane, its interior facing outward, creating a scoop. They have lots of barriers like that, they also have some that they have buried. There is a potential for IEDs. But we believe that most of them have been detonated in our last attempt.”

“Your last attempt?”

“Del and Nina tried while I was in Las Cruces dealing with the militia there.”

“Did you ever beat them in Las Cruces?”

The Commodore shook his head and grunted. “No, but we have kept them thoroughly distracted. The mission wasn’t to beat them, not yet. The mission was to draw more of their forces away from their base, because every few days, they have more Texas Rangers showing up. Our idea was to thin their numbers by sending some of those Rangers to Las Cruces as well.”

“So there will be Texas Rangers there?”

“They do have a small cavalry, yes. But I don’t think that’s something you should be concerned with. Del is in charge of our cavalry, and he will be handling most of the Rangers. Do you have to blow your smoke in my face?”

“Ain’t my fault you’re downwind,” Sterling said as he flicked his cigarette to the ground. “Continue.”

“The barriers, and the weapons they have, are going to make it difficult to breach the perimeter of the base. As you already know, that’s for your animates to handle.”

“How did you know I called them that?”

“Your shaman friend told me.”

“Oh yeah? What else did he tell you?”

“Mr. Gasper is trying to help. He knows what would happen if the Rangers moved into New Mexico, and the White Sands Militia continues to overtake the south.”

“I find it hard to believe that Mr. Gasper up there doesn’t see a problem with you bandits taking over either.”

“We’re not bandits.”

“Let me guess, y’all are calling yourselves something like freedom fighters, some bullshit name like that?”

“Commodore,” one of the Killbillies riding alongside the man said. He pointed toward a dune rising out of the sand, which had a rock jutting out of it, a cross on top.

“Ah, yes, we’re almost there,” said Commodore Bones. “Are you ready for your surprise?”

Their group came around the sand dune, Sterling biting his lip at what he saw.

“You think you can animate something like that?” Commodore Bones asked.

Sterling nodded slowly. “I reckon I don’t got a choice.”

.Chapter Seven.

The New Mexico state motto came to Sterling as he watched his animates move out, twenty-five in total with more available. Crescit Eundo—it grows as it goes. It felt like the Latin phrase was fitting for not only Sterling’s life in general, but how things had escalated since his pepper farm was attacked by Killbillies and the Godwalker. Custom designed, even.

Sterling stood outside of what was left of the Holloman Air Force Base, far enough away that he wouldn’t be spotted. He could see the lights of the base, the early morning sun just about ready to lift into the sky. The desert was cold, his breath visible as he exhaled, Sterling feeling the tug of the twenty-five animates he’d sent forward, which had nearly obliterated his 159 Mana Points. The skeletal steed was now in his inventory list, Sterling planning to rely fully on the Sunflower Kid to lead the way.

The Sunflower Kid’s ability allowed her to do numerous things with plant constructs, the cellulose material stitching together in any way that she wanted. Her current creation resembled a kiddie pool, which was directly behind them and filled with bodies that Commodore Bones’ Killbilly gofers had placed inside. In the time it took them to perform the gruesome task, Sterling had rolled up even more cigarettes. It was going to be a long fight, and even though he didn’t trust the Killbillies, there was little he could do about that at this point.

“Here we go,” the Sunflower Kid said as the ground started to tear away, a rugged, fibrous platform taking shape, parts of which began to morph into wood. Sterling knew exactly what this was. He’d seen the Sunflower Kid do something similar before, her creation so powerful and large that it was like a wave cutting through the ground, even easier considering they were now moving through a desert. He stepped onto the platform as it began to grow. The Sunflower Kid joined him after sending Watermelon to her inventory list.

“You can do that?” Sterling asked.

“With the Mana I have, yes. A normal person? No.”

“Like I keep saying, you never cease to amaze me.” Sterling looked back to see Don Gasper and Magdalena on their horse, but he wasn’t able to decipher the look on the shaman’s face, aside from an eerie reflection coming off his eyes. He had to hand it to Gasper. He didn’t need to be part of what was about to happen, but he had insisted, almost as if he wanted to prove to Sterling that he trusted his own vision enough to be part of it.

The platform shifted forward, carrying with it the shallow bowl of bodies behind it. Sterling could see his animates increase their speed, the base growing closer by the minute.

Commodore Bones’ surprise had certainly taken Sterling off guard. Joining his animates were three of the armadillo amalgamations at the front of the pack, whose thick shells would absorb round after round of ammunition. There were also three scorpion amalgamations, each at various levels of decay, but still able to do the job. Surrounding them were the animated bodies of nineteen dead bandits, with plenty more for Sterling to animate once they were no longer of use. Commodore Bones had said that the dead bodies were doing their cause a patriotic service, and he’d even delivered a little speech, which Sterling had ignored.

While the Commodore had stroked his own ego, Sterling had stepped aside to eat some of the food that Sierra the pyromancer had given him, drink some water, and smoke a cigarette. He returned to hear the Commodore speaking zealously about how they would unveil the Killbilly flag once they took the Air Force Base. That this was their glory moment, that people in the area, and later the entire state, would celebrate this event for years to come.

For once, Sterling had let him have his little moment. He knew it was bullshit, and he was fairly certain that once the Rangers heard what happened, they would be heading in the direction of White Sands with vengeance on their minds.

Commodore Bones claimed to have telepathic communication with the other two leaders of the bandit group, a telemancer being a key part of Nina’s force. He also claimed that, while he didn’t have any mancers in his battalion, his counterpart, Del, had several pyromancers and gaiamancers. Sterling didn’t care. As soon as he finished the opening act, he would grab Roxy and the technomancer and be done with this. It was a lizard eat lizard world, and he had other things he needed to handle.

The wind moved through his hair as they traveled, the Sunflower Kid showing no signs whatsoever of overexertion. As they grew nearer to the compound, Sterling turned away from the wind hitting him in the face and cupped his hand around his mouth so he could light a cigarette. He blew the smoke behind him just as the first flash of gunfire appeared on the horizon.

His animates had reached their target.

“I’ve been thinking about our exit strategy,” he told the Sunflower Kid. “It would be easier to get to solid land, and there should be less activity on the eastern side of the state, toward I-40, than the west. I say we head that way. Hell, maybe we go back through Carrizozo and have ourselves another little fiesta. That’s if Roxy doesn’t try to punch my head off.”

The statement sparked a smirk on the Sunflower Kid’s face. Her armor was even thicker now, and as the smile on her face faded, roots and vines pressed out of the armor and formed a mask, a slit for her eyes and nose.

“Rowayton the Indestructible. Remember how we used to call Roxy that?” he asked as he enjoyed his cigarette.

The Sunflower Kid nodded.

“I can’t help but think they’ve done something nasty to her in there. There’s no way they were able to contain her without something deviant. I haven’t noticed a telemancer around, but then again…” Sterling tapped his cowboy hat.

The Sunflower Kid nodded again.

“You can talk out of that mask, right?”

“I can.”

“If you sense anything telemancer-wise, you let me know. We’ll get you out of here, and I’ll take over from there. Here we go,” Sterling said, looking back to the former military base, where he heard more gunfire, a siren, lights coming on, two pyromancers lifting out of the compound to address his animates.

“You ready to try and get a level?” Sterling asked.

“We’ll see.”

They were practically sailing through the desert now, Sterling forced to keep his hand on his cowboy hat as they grew closer to the outer rim of the fight. They stopped, close enough now that Sterling could see through the moonlight and the soon to be early morning sun that the amalgamations had reached some of the blast barriers, two pyromancers torching them. Gunfire lit up the watchtowers, Sterling’s animates taking the bullets in stride.

He waited until the human animates were no longer able to walk and then revoked their power. He sent a new wave forward, but not before an enormous tree trunk grew from the earth and slammed into the wall of the compound, breaking through it as it twisted around and brought down more of the structure. Sterling shook his head, watching as the Sunflower Kid orchestrated another attack, his animates growing close enough that they would be in range to absorb more bullets. One of his scorpion amalgamations moved past the point of usage, and Sterling revoked its power, the cigarette in his mouth practically all ash as he kept his focus on the battle.

A quick glance over his shoulder told him that Commodore Bones was in position, the man lifting his fist into the air, which was a signal that the other Killbillies were ready to move in as well. A surge of gunfire was coupled with a group of militiamen pouring out of the military base like fire ants, where they met his animates head on, amalgamation and human alike. Yet one more wave to go; Sterling waited for the Sunflower Kid to send another submarine-sized tree trunk forward before he summoned the final wave of undead. As they reached the fight, horses charged around from the other side, signaling that the Texas Rangers had joined the clash. The Killbillies came in force from the west, all of their vehicles’ lights flickering on at the same time, the headlamps accentuating their size.

A crag cut through one of the tree trunks, Sterling assuming it was a gaiamancer. He began scanning the fight for anyone who looked like they were conjuring stone, but couldn’t find the person. More Killbilly forces circled around the base, another wave coming in from the west and the south, Commodore Bones’ final flank preparing to move in from the north.

Sterling revoked the power from all of his animates aside from the armadillo amalgamations, which still had some fight and armor left in them. He felt a flash of energy in his chest as his Mana returned to him. “In and out,” he told the Sunflower Kid as steps formed, the wooden railing of the platform melting away.

“In and out,” she repeated.

Once he was on the ground, Sterling charged toward the hole in the outer perimeter of the military base, the Sunflower Kid close behind him.

This was the moment he had been waiting for.

It felt good to surge forward, to address the adrenaline pumping through his system, to finally join the fight. Sterling met one of the militiamen with his blade, his slice precise, blood spurting from the man’s neck as he drew his revolver and fired at another assailant. The man’s bulletproof vest helped protect him from a fatal wound yet it tossed him into another militiaman, the two spilling over as Sterling and the Sunflower Kid charged past them.

Sterling had a target in mind, a mission, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have a little fun along the way.

He saw a vine twist forward, lift a man into the air, and slam him back to the ground. Even with all the fighting, he could hear his bones cracking in his body as the Sunflower Kid finished the militiaman off. Everything around them was calamity, a budding battle the likes of which he had never been part of before. The incidents back in Las Cruces paled in comparison to what was happening now, the base being overrun by Killbillies, militiamen slicing and shooting in defense, pyromancers in the air, the ground shifting as a gaiamancer sculpted sand and rock.

For a moment, Sterling thought he had lost the Sunflower Kid, only to swivel around and see that she had connected herself to him through a very thin vine. He nodded at the masked woman protected by plant armor and continued onward.

Holstering his revolver, he relied on his sickle-sword as they advanced, Sterling doing as much killing as he was simply fending off the militiamen that spilled out of the base. A man on a horse came riding by; Sterling recognized him as a Texas Ranger. He passed right by them only for Sterling to hook his blade into the Ranger’s side and whip him to the ground, quickly drawing his firearm.

Bam!

Sterling couldn’t help himself.

A stone tore out of the sand. It would have landed on him had it not been for one of the Sunflower Kid’s plant constructs, which appeared in an instant. The wooden column burst out of the ground just as Sterling and the Kid ducked, her creation stopping the rock from falling on top of them.

“That was too damn close,” he said as he slipped around the stone, the Sunflower Kid doing the same, albeit from the other side. The report of guns had dimmed, the Commodore’s plan working. The White Sands Militia had burned through a lot of their ammo in Sterling’s three waves of animates, and they were using even more on the armadillo amalgamations, which were a couple hundred feet or so to Sterling’s right, nearly at the outer wall of the former military base. Another rock lifted from the ground, tearing through a blast barrier made from the side of a huge cargo plane, sending gravel and bits of metal into the air. The debris rained down on some of the fighters, Sterling and the Sunflower Kid managing to clear past it.

Whoosh!

A male pyromancer landed in front of them, his body clad in military fatigues, head on fire. Fireballs erupted from his palms, and Sterling jumped to the right, taking the Sunflower Kid with him. They hit the ground and rolled, the fire causing piping hot rivulets of glass to appear in the sand. The Sunflower Kid lifted a vine from the ground and the pyromancer brought it down with a fiery tendril. Just to stun him, Sterling fired a few shots into his chest, the man’s bulletproof vest absorbing them yet still throwing him backward, which was what Sterling had hoped for.

A tentacle of cactus tore out of the sand and wrapped around the man’s arms, prongs digging into his flesh. Sunflowers began to grow from the man’s body as he died, his fiery head quickly extinguished.

“That was certainly creative.” Sterling got to his feet and offered his hand to the Sunflower Kid, who took it.

“I thought you would like that.”

Sterling drew his weapon and fired it before she could blink, his bullet passing through the face of a militiaman that was charging at them with a bat wrapped in barbed wire that he had stripped from a dead Killbilly.

Sterling could tell that the Sunflower Kid was wincing at the sound of the shot and he apologized. “Had to be done,” he said as they turned back to the base. Before the two could continue, he took a look around just to get a sense of the fight happening all around him, and Sterling saw that now the northern flank of the Killbillies had reached the compound.

Sterling shook his head and moved on.

Thus far, the Killbillies hadn’t betrayed them, yet he didn’t feel bad about being obstinate earlier, nor would he ever. Just because they were cordial now didn’t mean that the Killbillies wouldn’t be coming for him tomorrow. Even if they called off the bounty hunter named Ram, Sterling knew that the man wouldn’t stop gunning for him. Enemy of my enemy, my ass, he thought as he used some of the same stone that had been lifted from the ground by the gaiamancer to climb over a barrier of barbed wire, and eventually through the hole that the Sunflower Kid had created in the wall surrounding the base.

Sterling’s instincts took over. He grabbed the Kid’s arm and pulled her back into the shadows provided by the wall, militiamen filing out of the area that served as a front gate. It became clear that the wall wasn’t of original design, that it had been made later, not only its size, but also its quality separating it from the style that the before people used. It took him a moment to situate himself, but Sterling soon realized that they were in the area of the base that once been used for lodging.

Just where we needed to be.

If the Commodore’s map held true, the middle school that had been converted into a prison was nearby. If his intelligence had been wrong, Sterling was unsure how long it would take them to get around the base. Once he heard the roar of ATVs and dirt bikes coming down the flight line, he knew that the battle was only going to get bloodier.

“We need some perspective,” Sterling said. “We need to find this middle school.” Even though he had a sense of the direction he should head, he still wanted to check the rough sketch he had made of the Commodore’s map. Equipping his book of desert haiku, Sterling turned to where he had made the sketch and took a look at it, the Sunflower Kid guarding him while he did so.

“We just got to get there,” he finally told her, pointing at the map. “I know this thing ain’t to scale, but it shouldn’t be far from here.”

“We’ll get there.”

The two moved on, trying to make a wide berth around the main entry point for the Killbillies to join the fight. Not all the houses had been destroyed, and several were clearly being lived in, Sterling extra cautious as he came around those particular homes. The militia likely had families living on base, and Sterling didn’t know what would happen to them after the Killbillies moved in. He wondered if the bandit group would just absorb the White Sands Militia. That would be the smart thing to do, but it also was a great way to fuel a future coup.

They were just about to turn the corner around a small home when the door popped open and a child stepped out, the boy clutching a raggedy teddy bear. He spotted them, Sterling’s initial reaction being to raise his weapon. He swiftly lowered it.

The child took a step closer to them, the early morning light reflecting off his big doughy eyes. He had short black hair and he was shirtless, in a pair of sleep pants, barefoot, no taller than three feet or so.

“Run along, son,” Sterling told him. He watched a couple of vines start to lift from the ground behind the child. “No,” he told the Sunflower Kid. “Not like that.”

“What are you doing?” the child asked.

“Boy, it don’t matter none what we’re doing. What’s important is for you to get inside and get somewhere safe. Who’s in there with you? Your mama?”

There was no way that his family members could have been sleeping. Air sirens were sounding off around the military base, a constant ringing in the air.

The boy shook his head.

“So you’re in there all alone?”

“My brother and my sister.”

“Where are your folks?”

“Dad is fighting; Mama is at the hospital, helping.”

Sterling lowered his gaze on the boy. He knew they were in a war zone, and he knew what he was getting into, but the odds of the kid losing his father were high, and there was no telling what would happen to his mother once the bandits got hold of whatever infirmary the White Sands Militia had set up.

This got Sterling thinking, a notion coming to him that he hadn’t quite turned over before, not yet, anyway. The White Sands Militia weren’t his enemy. They had fought him in Las Cruces, but he had ambushed them. The Killbillies were his enemy, yet here he was, fighting on their side. He couldn’t help but feel like he was in the wrong here as he looked into the boy’s eyes, those big ovals taking in the man wearing all black next to a teenage girl clad in full body armor, the kid witnessing the state of the world to come.

Carnage incarnate, the only chance of unity like honey dripping from the muzzle of a gun, vultures circling overhead searching for carrion, bits of crushed clay pottery in a drought-ridden ravine—this was the world that the boy before him had already been introduced to, and the one he would have to face down yet again over the next few hours. Sterling was just as much to blame for that world as the men around him, even if he had a mission, as far-fetched as it was, and even if he more or less meant well.

“Find some place to hide, you hear me?”

The boy nodded.

He was glad when the kid turned away, Sterling wondering moments after he’d left if the boy hadn’t been a figment of imagination. Was there something else trying to communicate with him in some way, to show him the futility of what he planned to do? He couldn’t think like that, not now, not when he was this close to rescuing Roxy. He could hash it out later, with either himself or those that agreed to join him.

Back in the moment, Sterling continued toward the next house, the Sunflower Kid sending vines forward as she walked, not at all concerned if she was seen or not. This went against the stealth techniques Sterling had developed since he left Truth or Consequences, but her power warranted it, and if someone did happen to step out, their odds of survival were thin.

Two dirt bikes tore off and Sterling aimed his weapon at them, lowering his revolver once they were out of range. He could hear the fighting all around him, but the deeper they moved into the base, the less he was able to pick out distinct sounds aside from certain wails, pockets of gunfire staccato enough to cut a hole in the close-to-pale morning sky above.

Sterling spotted a playground with a couple rusty swings and a picnic table, equipment beyond it covered in purple tarps. Trust your instincts, he thought as he turned toward the equipment. Follow your nose.

He whistled quickly to get the Sunflower Kid’s attention. She turned to Sterling and followed closely behind him as he made his way toward the crates. A militiaman stepped forward, seemingly out of nowhere, one Sterling hadn’t sensed. The Sunflower Kid lopped his head off, using a plant construct as if it were a scythe.

They moved on, Sterling ducking once again once a few of the militiamen took to the sky. He turned to the Sunflower Kid and she gave him a look.

“I know what you’re thinking: if they can do it, I can do it.”

She nodded.

“I don’t got no need to fly.”

They weren’t the only ones in the air now. Glancing back toward the main theater of the fight, Sterling saw there was plenty of activity in the sky. The Killbillies had just breached the compound, but because of the watchtowers that had been erected, militia snipers took out anyone who dared hit the airwaves. Sterling saw this firsthand as a vandal in a yellow bandanna nearly breached the wall, only to die by execution.

The two moved on, keeping to the shadows of the crates. They paused when a pair of trucks drove by, Sterling surprised to see actual vehicles. This told him that the White Sands Militia had fuel, enough that they could waste on a gas guzzler like a truck. The two trucks had troops in the back, and the second one was just passing by when a root tore from the ground and slammed onto the hood of the truck, crushing the driver and the passengers. Those at the back scrambled to get out, a few of them seeing Sterling.

It was on.

He swirled into action, the end of his duster lifting as he drew his blade and cut down one of the militiamen. A sudden pain and blood exploding out of the back of his shoulder told Sterling that he had been shot. He crouched and returned fire, the Sunflower Kid seeing to the man who had managed to shoot him.

“Damn,” Sterling said once the militiamen were all dead. He placed his hand on his shoulder, the pain burning within him, as if they had coated the bullet with cayenne pepper. The other truck had been far enough ahead of the second one that it had just started to turn back. It met the same fate as the first truck, a roadblock lifted from the earth courtesy of the Sunflower Kid that flipped it over. She finished off the rest in the time it took for Sterling’s arm to heal.

“Let’s bring some with us,” he said as he raised five of the militiamen. They stayed behind Sterling and the Sunflower Kid as they came around another hangar, where he spotted the middle school, which still had its sign up. There were certainly guards out front, nothing that Sterling and the Kid couldn’t handle.

She was just about to advance on the guards when Sterling stopped her. “Let’s let these boys do the dirty work,” he said, motioning toward his animates. She nodded and his zombies took off.

Brrrrrt! Brrrrrt!

Automatic weapons were helpful against zombies, but they didn’t reduce the fear factor much, and if the zombies were fast enough and in a pack, which these young bucks were, they could usually make it to the shooter before they could finish their magazine. That was exactly what happened, two of Sterling’s animates mowed down, the other three reaching the men with the weapons and terrorizing them.

Sterling and the Sunflower Kid came up and finished the rest off relatively quickly, the guards outside of the prison all dead now. He looked up at the middle school, the glass out front surprisingly still intact.

“After you,” he told the teenage biomancer.

They entered the middle school to find that it was all steel cages and metal corridors, the inside clearly revamped by a flectomancer.

A mustached militiaman was just charging around a corner with his weapon drawn when he came face to face with Sterling and the Sunflower Kid. Vines wrapped around his body, causing him to drop his weapon. Sterling pressed the tip of his revolver against the man’s head.

“I’ll only ask you once. Where’s Rowayton, Roxy, the super strong woman. And where’s the technomancer? Nope, don’t even think of lying. Before a single word leaves your lips, ask yourself if you value your life. If you do, you’ll tell us where they are, and how they are being held.”

The militiaman swallowed hard.

“What’s it going to be, amigo? You either walk out of here—and I’d suggest finding a damn good hiding place if you do—or you don’t.”

The guard made the right decision, and true to his word, Sterling let him leave without killing him. Even if he sounded an alarm, it would do little to bring any more heat to them than they already felt in busting into the militia’s compound and freeing two of the prisoners. There were other prisoners, many of them Killbillies, Sterling ignoring them as he made his way to the back.

What was once an auditorium of the middle school had been converted into jail cells no larger than closets, an echo due to the high ceilings. While most of them were cordoned off from the rest of the hallway by iron bars, the cells at the back were destined for the Adapted. And even though Roxy wasn’t one of them, this happened to be one of the cells that she had been placed in.

Sterling was surprised at how lucky he was to find that Roxy and the technomancer were across the hallway from one another. It was certainly going to make things easier. The doors at the front of the Adapted cells were large and equally thick. Sterling placed his hand on it and knocked, judging just how dense it was.

He looked to the Kid, who simply ripped it from its hinges with plant tendrils, Sterling barely able to get out of the way in time. The commotion caused the rest of the prisoners to start shouting, pleading for the two mancers to release them as well. Sterling tuned them all out as he peered into the next room, his eyes falling on the woman who had brought him an equal amount of love and anguish over the years.

A modified gas mask was strapped to Roxy’s face, pumping her full of whatever chemical was sedating her. She was chained by some of the thickest cuffs Sterling had ever seen, Roxy in a hospital gown, a thin blanket over her body, tubes coming out of her going in various directions.

“Roxy?” Sterling asked, oblivious now to the commotion outside the door and, for that matter, the battle taking place throughout the military base.

“I’m disconnecting everything,” the Sunflower Kid said as flowering vines twisted forward and began gently removing some of Roxy’s tubes. They were able to break the chain that held her to the bed, but not the two thick cuffs around her wrists. Leaving her gas mask for last, the vines slowly began to disconnect the tube at the front and pull it away. Roxy’s eyes, which were shielded by thick glass, flickered open.

Confusion set in, but not for long. It was only about thirty seconds later that she removed the gas mask herself, the dark-skinned brunette blinking a few times, trying to make sense of what she saw before her.

The Sunflower Kid’s mask melted away. “We’ve come for you.”

Roxy looked from the Sunflower Kid to Sterling, her nostrils flaring open.

“What she said,” Sterling told her, trying to make light of the situation.

Roxy sat up with a contentious look on her face, her blanket shifting down her body to reveal more of her off-blue hospital gown.

“Hey…” Sterling said, feeling a lump in his throat. “I guess we have a lot of explaining to do…”

Roxy shifted to the edge of the bed.

She looked down at one of the cuffs on her arms and placed her fingers on it, crushing it, the metal falling to the ground. She did the same with the other cuff, her muscles bulging ever so slightly as she did so. Roxy stood. She was as tall as Sterling, lean yet muscular, her form disguising how truly strong she was. It had been advantageous to her more often than not, people assuming that she was simply fit, not the type of woman who could easily hoist a car over her shoulders.

She took a staggering step toward Sterling.

“Hey,” he said again, slowly lifting his hands. “I know this is a bit unorthodox, but you need to hear us out.”

Sterling was tossed backward before he could put together what happened, his jaw instantly broken, blood filling his mouth.

“Goddammit, Roxy,” he mumbled as he got to his feet, holding his broken jaw in place. Sterling tilted his head back, feeling the pain deep in his molars.

“That’s for leaving us three years ago,” she said with a shaky voice, whatever the militia was pumping into Roxy still in her system. Her Resolve would flush it out sooner rather than later. She stepped toward Sterling to punch him again, but was stopped by the Sunflower Kid, who got between the two of them.

“Not now.”

“You were there too,” Roxy said, oblivious to the plant tendrils lifting behind her, ready to control the woman if she got out of hand. “You know what he did.”

“It wasn’t his fault. It was the Godwalker.”

“The what?” Roxy asked.

Sterling knew it was his story to tell, so he lifted his hand, letting Roxy know that he would explain later.

“It’s not what it seems,” said the Sunflower Kid, also seeing his gesture.

“Then why the fuck didn’t you say something at the time?”

“I didn’t…” Sterling winced, his jaw still sore.

“What’s all this about?” Roxy asked, gesturing between Sterling and the Sunflower Kid.

“We’re back together again. We’re going to do the same thing we tried to do three years ago,” the Kid explained. “We thought you would join us. Next, we’re going to get Zephyr in Albuquerque. Sterling’s also met a few others who are interested, a solimancer, a pyromancer, and Raylan. Hopefully, a technomancer. That pretty much sums it up.”

She turned to Sterling. “You had to do it, didn’t you? You knew I wouldn’t be able to say no. You knew I would owe you for rescuing me,” she said, seething by this point.

Sterling spat blood onto the ground. “You don’t owe us shit. Your choice.”

“My choice?” Roxy curled her lips, which offset the delight in her eyes. She was hyper competitive, the type who was always up for a challenge. “You know me too well.”

“You’re in?”

Roxy hesitated. “You still owe me an explanation.”

“Fair enough. I’ll explain everything, but for now, we need to skedaddle.” Sterling pointed his thumb to the other side of the hallway. “We also need that technomancer. Raylan’s requirement.”

“There’s a technomancer here?” Roxy asked.

Sterling nodded, felt more blood pooling in his mouth, and spat again. “Thanks for going light on me.” He meant it. If Roxy had wanted, she could have shattered every bone in his face and punched him into the next century.

“I ain’t done with you yet,” Roxy told him as she shouldered out to the hallway, the Sunflower Kid joining her.

Thunk!

Sterling heard the metal door hit the ground. He waited a moment and then joined the two of them in the opposite cell, where a male technomancer was seated on his bed, legs crossed beneath him. He sported a thick golden beard and a pair of piercing blue eyes, rail-thin, the gaunt man in the same hospital gown that Roxy wore.

He pressed away from them. “What…? Who…?”

“We’re here to bust you out,” Roxy told him nonchalantly. “Surely you’ve heard the commotion in the hallway, and whatever the hell is going on outside.” She turned back to Sterling and the Sunflower Kid. “How did you bring a war to the militia anyway?”

“That would be the Killbillies.”

“You’ve partnered with the Killbillies?” Roxy asked, her lip curling again.

“Not by choice, although it might look like that once we get out of here. I hate them fools. Funny enough, they crucified me outside Radium Springs, same as they did you. Heard you busted your way out of there on your own accord. A buddy of mine from Hatch helped me escape. I got a lot to say about the Killbillies, including the bounty hunter they have now sent after me. We’ll hash it out later. Now ain’t the time.”

Roxy raised an eyebrow at him. “So you’ve joined them.”

“No, I mean, it was a temporary thing because of Don Gasper…”

“Don Gasper?” She shook her head. “What in the hell are you doing with Don Gasper?”

“Shee-it, I ask myself the same question every time I end up with the kooky old shaman,” he said, smiling at her as he rubbed his jaw.

“Who… Who are you people?” the technomancer asked, his voice trembling.

“We’re your best chance for survival,” the Sunflower Kid told him as her mask began to slowly form over her face.

“You’re a biomancer?”

“And I’m a necromancer. The name is Sterling.”

“People call me Rowayton the Indestructible, but you can call me Roxy. I’m not Adapted.”

“We’re really doing introductions?” the Kid asked, a rare flash of glee in her eyes. “In that case, I’m the Sunflower Kid.”

The technomancer took in the three of them incredulously, settling back on the Sunflower Kid. “That’s your real name?”

“Does it matter? Who are you?” Roxy asked.

“Me? My name is Maron.”

“There are a lot more details, as you can imagine, to what I’m about to tell you,” Sterling began, “but I’ll make it real quick. Three years ago, we were part of a team that tried and failed to bring down the Godwalkers. Well, we brought down a small one, but I’m talking about one of them big ol’ boys. Now, we’re back together,” he said, sensing hesitation from Roxy. “We want to do it again, and we want you to join us.”

“Bring down the Godwalkers?” Maron chewed his lip nervously. “That’s… That’s suicide.”

“Says the man trapped in a jail cell in the middle of a desert. What I’m trying to say here, Maron, is this: what the hell else do you have to do? Can’t be much going on in your life, at least by the looks of it.”

“How about this? You escape with us, and you can make your decision later,” Roxy said, her style of reasoning similar to Sterling’s. “There’s no point in debating the merits of what we plan to do right now, not here, anyway. You aren’t the only one with apprehensions.”

Sterling cleared his throat, his jaw fully repaired now. It took a moment, but finally Maron looked up at the three of them and nodded. “I… I guess. Yeah, sure. I can go with you.”

“That’s the spirit,” Sterling told him. “Now, all we have to do is bust out of here, and get just about as far away from this here war zone as we can. And before you ask what the hell is going on out there, it’s a battle between the Killbillies and the militia, and we ain’t on either side.” He turned his attention to the Sunflower Kid. “Maybe we should circle back around to where Don Gasper was. What do you think?”

“And Magdalena?”

“Dammit.”

“Magdalena?” Roxy asked.

“Don Gasper’s sorceress girlfriend, lover and sometimes enemy. It’s complicated, and I don’t want to talk about it because it pisses me off.”

“Fucking Don Gasper…” Roxy said under her breath.

“Please,” the technomancer said as he lifted his shackled wrists toward them.

Sterling looked to the shackles. “Kid?”

A vine quickly removed the shackles, including the cuffs, which were much thinner than the ones that they’d used on Roxy. Sterling was just about to step into the hallway when he felt something, a tremor that not only shook the ground, but seemed to echo within his chest.

Sterling’s face went white.

He turned to the Sunflower Kid, registering the shocked look on her face, and from there to Roxy, who knew exactly what the tremor had come from. Only the technomancer didn’t seem to know, Maron eager to escape.

“It can’t be…” Sterling said.

He felt the sensation again, almost as if a subwoofer had gone off deep inside his gut. Rather than say anything, the Sunflower Kid stepped past Sterling and turned to the outer wall, which she quickly brought down from the ground up, thick roots spreading and forming a walkway for them to pass beneath. They stepped out of the middle school, Sterling confirming what he had felt inside the makeshift jail.

A towering Godwalker hovered in the sky above the military base, the black monolith blotting out the early morning sun, a mirage-like wave of light radiating all around it.

Sterling casually lifted his hand and retrieved one of the cigarettes from his front pocket. He placed it in his mouth, summoned his lighter, and lit it. He took a long drag off the cancer stick as he looked up at the Godwalker, which was about a quarter-mile away from their current position.

“Well?” Roxy asked, tensing with excitement, the air suddenly electric. “Are we going to do this?”

Sterling exhaled a cloud of gray smoke. “Looks like it. Y’all ready to give this a shot?”

.Chapter Eight.

The swath of military base between Sterling and the Godwalker was wrought with battle, the Killbillies having breached the walls, the White Sands Militia fighting on several fronts. Looming over them was the alien monolith, the Godwalker, casting an ominous shadow over the combat. A few of the smarter bandits and militiamen had already started to retreat, but the majority continued to fight, dirt bikes and ATVs charging at one another amidst gunfire, people swinging blunt objects, a few mancers bringing down flames and shifting the earth. A terrible gust of wind blew past, telling Sterling that one of the sides had an aeromancer. That wasn’t to mention the Killbillies now in the sky like angry hornets, seemingly oblivious to the Godwalker.

Still in her hospital gown, Roxy charged ahead. Sterling was aware that she was not running at her full pace; otherwise, they wouldn’t have been able to keep up with her. Several steps ahead now, the powerful woman collided with two militiamen aiming their weapons at some of the airborne Killbillies. She grabbed one of the men, who quickly dropped his firearm as she launched him into the air, the man flying at least a hundred feet away before smacking into a building. She punched the other one so hard in the face that her fist broke through his skull, Roxy pulling it back rapidly, blood and viscera following.

She retrieved one of their automatic weapons just as Sterling reached her.

“Glad to see you are your same old self,” he said as she quickly checked the automatic weapon. She slung the weapon over her shoulder and took the other man’s assault rifle as well, going through the same quick check. Dropping quickly, she found another magazine of ammunition on the guy she’d punched to death and sent it to her inventory list.

“Ready when you are,” Roxy said, a look of utter excitement in her eyes, one that Sterling recognized intimately.

“You got any spare clothing?”

“My hospital gown isn’t sexy enough?” she asked.

“It may be easier considering you’re barefoot.”

“Turn around.”

“I’ve seen you naked before,” Sterling said as the Sunflower Kid reached them, Maron the technomancer not far behind. He had a bewildered look on his face, especially as he stared up at the Godwalker, the technomancer’s hands trembling.

“Everyone turn around.” Sterling shifted his focus to the technomancer. “I hope you are ready to do this.”

“Do what?” Maron asked as he ran his hand through his hair. To shield them, the biomancer brought up a wall made of thick plant construct, which also gave Roxy a little privacy as she swapped out her clothing.

Sterling tipped his cigarette toward the sky. “We’re going to bring that thing down.”

“I don’t think I can get much closer to it,” Maron said, one eye clenched shut.

“Why’s that?”

“My power; it allows me to communicate with electronic objects and there usually aren’t any. Have you ever had a fly buzzing in your ear? Imagine that amplified by a million. That’s what that Godwalker is like to me. The closer I get, the louder it gets.”

“But you can control it, right?”

“Control… that thing? I can control most electronics, yes, but not…” Maron shook his head. “It doesn’t speak the same language as human electronics, if that makes sense. It’s an alien language. I sort of understand the language, but I don’t speak it.”

“Can you or can’t you?” Sterling asked, getting annoyed with the technomancer. “We ain’t here to pussyfoot around.”

Maron glanced from Sterling to the Godwalker. “I… I might be able to do something,” he finally said. “At least I can try. Sure, I can try. But not too much closer.”

The fight had intensified around them. One of the Killbillies stumbled toward Sterling with a pipe that had spikes grafted onto it. He made eye contact with the cowboy necromancer.

Bam!

The Killbilly hit the ground and dropped his weapon.

A militiaman on a dirt bike came roaring past, and was quickly tossed off his bike by one of the Sunflower Kid’s plant tendrils, which then lopped the man’s head off.

“Geez,” Maron said, witnessing how effortlessly Sterling and the Sunflower Kid killed.

“You’ll get used to it,” Sterling told him as he finished his cigarette. “Besides, that ain’t going to be your role in our little operation.” He looked up at the Godwalker one more time and spat, an idea solidifying in his mind. “You need to get us inside that thing.”

Maron looked at Sterling as if he were crazy. “Inside it?”

Roxy stepped over to them. The woman was now in fatigues and combat boots, a tank top under her bulletproof vest. Her clothing looked custom, and Sterling assumed that a flectomancer had crafted it for her.

“Let’s do this,” Sterling told the Sunflower Kid. “Get us closer to the Godwalker.” She quickly began creating the same plant-based platform that she had made for them earlier, when they had sailed to the outer wall of the former military base. Roxy stepped on, and once Maron took a look around, not exactly sure of what he should do, she grabbed him by the arm.

“You really want to get inside that thing?”

“It’s the only way,” Sterling told him as he hunkered down. Their perspective began to shift as the four were lifted higher into the sky by the Kid’s plant platform, bullets whizzing all around them. Sterling felt that tingle that he often felt with heights, but he ignored it. This was a chance to prove something to both himself and those he cared about. Everything else was just minor details.

As they started to shift forward, Sterling kept his revolver at the ready just in case they were greeted by a flying combatant. There was too much chaos for him to really make out what was happening below, the Sunflower Kid’s construct now resembling the hull of a ship as it tore through the dirt and pavement, growing in size on its way toward the Godwalker. He kept an eye out for Don Gasper, expecting to see the bearded shaman zipping around, or perhaps raiding the base for some supplies, but never spotted him.

No such luck, and soon, Sterling was distracted by a mancer flying in their direction, one clearly on the side of the White Sands Militia by the looks of his get-up. A spiraling gust of wind struck the side of the Sunflower Kid’s creation, but it held strong, and Sterling steadied his revolver on the incoming aeromancer. He was just about to fire when Roxy unleashed a burst of gunfire from her assault rifle, three quick shots striking the aeromancer in the forehead and the chest.

“One mancer down,” she said with a hint of pleasure. Sterling was well aware that Roxy was a crack shot. She could shoot the wings off a butterfly at fifty yards away, and that was three years ago. There was no telling how much she had improved by this point.

“It’s getting too loud,” Maron said, his hands over his ears. “Too loud! Please, stop this thing!” He was crouching now, his cheeks red, teeth grinding as he pressed his hands even harder against the sides of his head.

Sterling glanced up to the Godwalker, which continued to hold court over the battle as if it were daring someone to do something. They were closer to it now, and once Maron started to scream, blood trickling down his cheeks from his ears, Sterling told the Sunflower Kid to stop.

“This is as close as we can get,” he said, her creation now several stories tall and covered by the Godwalker’s shadow, a silent yet menacing observer. Sterling helped Maron to his feet. “You’ve got to get us inside,” he told the technomancer as he shook him by the shoulders. “Are you hearing me? This is you, this is your part. Maron!”

“I don’t know if I can do it!” the technomancer cried.

Sterling grabbed him by the front of his hospital robes. “You can do it! You can goddamn do it! Get us inside that son of a bitch!”

“I’ll try… I’ll try!”

Maron’s eyes came alive. Sterling was shocked to see that he no longer had pupils, trails of illuminated code tracing across his sclerae. He slowly backed away as the technomancer started to float, Maron’s arms hanging at his sides, fingers curled. Something about his face reminded Sterling of Don Gasper when he took a trance, the man no longer with them, his mind on another plane of existence. His jaw moved up and down, and as it did Sterling heard a scraping sound, metal on metal.

The bottom portion of the Godwalker started to fold open. Sterling’s immediate thoughts were that the alien monolith was preparing to fire on the battle below, but there was something off about the way its panels were moving, something that told Sterling that this was happening against its will.

“Are you ready to fly?” the Sunflower Kid asked suddenly, her armored hand coming around his bicep.

Now it was Sterling’s turn to doubt himself. “Fly?”

“Jump, and keep jumping.” she said as she lowered her hand to his. “I’ll help you.”

“Are we doing this or what?” Roxy cried, her weapons in her arms, biceps bulging, hair beating in the wind. “I’m fucking ready!”

Sterling spotted an opening at the base of the Godwalker, a bay door of sorts forced open by the technomancer.

“That’s its power source,” Maron said, still in his trance-like state, his eyes still painted in code.

“What about him?” Sterling asked the Sunflower Kid. “We can’t just leave him out here!”

“He will be lowered to the ground and protected once we get in.”

“Hurry… Hurry!” Maron shouted, his entire body writhing, hovering just a few inches off the platform.

The Sunflower Kid stepped to the edge of her creation, the parapet she’d constructed melting away. “We have to go.”

Roxy pressed off the platform, and shot forward, flying faster than Sterling had seen a person fly before. The Sunflower Kid stepped off next, Sterling gripping her hand tightly. He expected the ground to rush to him, he expected to plummet to the battle below and die instantly, but he never fell.

Instead, he did exactly what she had told him to do when they practiced the night before. Sterling imagined himself jumping, moving on an invisible path through the sky, his stomach twisting in knots, limbs tingling. He actually was moving forward through the air; he was actually doing it! To someone watching below it would have looked like she was flying and Sterling was struggling to ride an invisible stationary bike, but it worked, and ten heartbeats later, they reached Roxy. Sterling let go of the Sunflower Kid’s hand at the last moment, experiencing what it was like to fly on his own as he landed, his nerves firing in every direction.

The bay door began to shut behind them.

“I can’t believe…”

“You did it!” the Sunflower Kid said.

Roxy cracked a smile as well. “I forgot you were afraid of heights.”

Sterling blinked a few times, orienting himself. “Maron said the power source is here…” He recognized the inside of the alien craft from his experience three years ago, one of a blackened metal that had a stone-like appeal to it, something akin to marble yet sharper. There was a hallway, and it was empty, a glow coming from another corridor.

“That has to be it.” Roxy took off, Sterling’s legs still wobbly as he took his first step forward. Wishing he had time to smoke a cigarette, he steeled himself and moved on, the Sunflower Kid right behind him as they moved toward the glow.

“Has to be the power supply,” he said, psyching himself up. “Let’s blow it to smithereens and get the hell out of here.”

They came to the end of the hallway and turned toward a gleaming yellow energy. A shrill noise reached him, an alarm of sorts that sounded like an insect crawling through his ear canal. They entered into a room filled with what Sterling assumed were fuel cells, each suspended in vats of bubbly liquid, the cylinders four feet tall and three feet in diameter.

“We need an exit,” Roxy said as she turned to one of the exterior walls. “Kid, get us an exit.”

“There’s no organic life here,” she said. “Nothing for me to pull from. I guess I could use one of us, or my armor.”

“There has to be something,” Sterling said, his thoughts racing ahead. “Don’t you have a fruit or something in your inventory list? I have some peppers…”

“Peppers would work.”

Part of Sterling wanted to laugh. Of course he would end up saving the day with his peppers, of course. But there was no time for musing over the fact. He equipped the rest of the Big Jims that he had taken off the Killbillies and set the crate on the ground. “Have at it.”

“I only need one.”

“In that case…” Sterling selected the biggest pepper of the bunch and handed it to the Sunflower Kid, returning the crate to his inventory list.

“Peppers?” Roxy asked skeptically.

“Don’t you worry about that. Let’s just figure out how to bring this goddamn thing down.”

The whirring sound grew louder.

Sterling knew they had been spotted; there was no way they hadn’t ended up on the Godwalker’s radar by this point. The Sunflower Kid took the pepper over to one of the walls and placed it on the ground, crouching before it. She stepped back and it began to enlarge, flattening like a red pancake as it painted up the wall. Her creation started burrowing, the sound akin to amplified sandpaper rubbing together.

“Do we shoot it? Or do we just break the glass?” Roxy asked as she examined one the glowing yellow fuel cells.

“I don’t know,” Sterling said. “I don’t want it to explode while we’re in here.”

“We need to make a decision unless…” Roxy sent her two assault rifles to her inventory list. She approached one of the fuel cells, examined it, and wrapped her arms around it. She ripped it free from its dock and hoisted the alien technology over her shoulder, some of the yellow liquid inside the clear canister dripping onto the ground. “Make the hole larger than that,” she told the Sunflower Kid, Roxy sure not to get any of the liquid on her body. “And hurry. As fast as you can.”

A dark look came over the Sunflower Kid’s face as she lowered her head, the hole expanding until it was ten feet in diameter. There was a hint of blue sky on the other end of it now, which began to grow as her creation broke free of the Godwalker’s exterior wall.

“Go,” Roxy told the biomancer. “Run out of that hole and fly as far away from here as you can. I’m going to blow this goddamn thing out of the sky, even if it kills me.”

“Like hell you will. I’m staying with you,” Sterling said.

Roxy simply nodded. The Sunflower Kid reached the end of the tunnel she had made just as the Godwalker lurched backward, sending the three in the opposite direction.

Roxy exploded forward, and as she reached Sterling, she dropped the fuel cell, her arm going around his waist as he went for his revolver.

He began firing at the yellow cylinder, everything warping all around him as Roxy grabbed the Sunflower Kid as well. The three of them catapulted out of the Godwalker just as a plume of silver fire burst through the space, the pewter flames igniting the air all around them as they rushed toward the ground.

Sterling didn’t know where he was. Everything around him had a soft yellow glaze to it, and for a moment, he thought he was safe, that it had all been a harrowing dream. But then his eyes focused on the sky, where clumps of silver fire burned at odds with physics, the military base more or less a crater, smoldering bodies all around, the occasional explosion causing the earth to tremble. Sterling let out a deep breath and sat up, noticing then that his body was sticky, his epic fall cushioned by an enormous plant with skin soft like aloe. The plant hadn’t prevented him from being knocked out, and he was pretty sure he’d dislocated his shoulder in the process.

With a grunt, Sterling popped his shoulder back into place, wincing at the pain. He then wiped some of the plant goop out of his eyes with his arm, his hand going to his waist to see if he still had his weapons. He located his sword, and he was just starting to look around for his revolver when he heard a voice.

“I failed you…”

Sterling looked left to see Don Gasper crouched before him, impaled on a spike that appeared as if it had been lifted from one of the blast barriers outside of the base.

“G-Gasper?” Sterling asked, his head spinning. Movement to his right caught his attention; Roxy was slowly starting to pick herself out of the plant that the Sunflower Kid had used to cushion her fall. This left the Kid, Sterling’s heart thumping in his chest when he couldn’t find her.

“Sterling…”

“Gasper… what the hell are you going on about now?”

The shaman’s face was covered in blood, crimson spittle dripping from his beard, and while his wound looked painful, Sterling knew that he was able to press himself off the spike, that he could recover from it. But he wasn’t. Gasper refused to budge.

Groaning again at the pain, Sterling waved Gasper away and turned his focus back to Roxy, who was on her feet now, a dazed look on her face.

Roxy dropped to help the Sunflower Kid out of the protective plant formation she had created. The Kid gasped, her armor missing now, her eyes wide with surprise as she sat up. Sterling ignored Gasper as he looked back up at the sky, marveling at the silver flames. He lowered his head and saw huge chunks of the Godwalker impaling various areas of the military base, fires raging all around them.

This inspired him to get to his feet. “We did it,” Sterling said as he hobbled toward Roxy. “We fucking did it.”

“Did it?” Roxy squinted at the sky, and then at the troubled landscape before her, her eyes lifting in surprise. “We destroyed the Godwalker?”

“Looks like it,” Sterling said as he located his cowboy hat. He limped over to it, grabbed it, and placed it on his head. There was a lot to unpack in that moment, but he ignored it all as he equipped his tobacco and his rolling papers. Sterling rolled up a sticky cigarette, his hand still covered in plant viscera. He put the cigarette in his mouth and went for his lighter. After a long exhale, he turned his focus back to Roxy and the Sunflower Kid, both of whom were starting to look a little more presentable, their Resolve kicking in.

“We did it,” Roxy said, her eyes suddenly wet. “We did it!” She came forward as if she were about to hug Sterling, stopping just inches away from him. The smile on Roxy’s face faded. She pressed some of her hair off of her forehead, and flicked some of the plant viscera to the ground.

“I’m sorry, goddammit, I’m sorry!” Gasper howled.

“Is he high or something?”

“Does a cactus grow in the desert?” Sterling asked Roxy as he took another puff of his cigarette.

“You’re still smoking, aren’t you?”

“Like a chimney. You alright, Kid?”

“I’ve been better.” The Sunflower Kid approached, and as she did, plant tendrils lifted from the earth and quickly went about cleaning her off. Her hair began to grow and turn blonde, forming a short bob. Another plant handed Sterling his revolver, which he quickly began to wipe off with the inside of his duster.

“Lo siento. Fui un tonto…” Gasper said, lowering his head in shame.

“We better figure out what the hell he’s going on about,” Sterling told Roxy and the Sunflower Kid as he turned to the shaman. He holstered his weapon for now, knowing it would need to be cleaned better once he got a chance.

“Sterling, mi vaquero nigromante…” Gasper looked up at him, his brown-blue eyes pleading for forgiveness. “I have failed you, and… and my heart is broken. I didn’t know… I knew… But I didn’t know.”

“Goddammit, Gasper.”

“Get the hell off of that spike,” Roxy said as she came over to the shaman. Rather than let him do it himself, she simply placed her hand under his arm and yanked him up, Gasper wailing in pain as she dropped him on the ground in front of them.

“Careful, I’m an old man!”

“Hold this for a second, if you will.” Sterling handed his cigarette to Roxy, who begrudgingly took it from him. Sterling used the last of his marijuana and a bit of his tobacco to roll Don Gasper a spliff. He crouched in front of the shaman and placed the spliff in his mouth, Gasper practically weeping with remorse. Sterling lit the spliff, and then took his cigarette back from Roxy. “Thanks,” he told her under his breath, a thought coming to Sterling. “Where’s Maron? Where’s the technomancer?”

“I’m sorry… lo siento…” Gasper sucked in deep breaths, the festering wound beneath his rib cage glistening in the sunlight. He took a deep drag off his spliff, his lips trembling as he spoke. “They took the technomancer, Magdalena and Commodore Bones. We were tricked!”

“We?” Sterling asked.

“You have to understand, I was blinded by love. Estuve enamorado. You’ve been there before,” Gasper said, gesturing his joint toward Roxy. “Ask her.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she asked, her fists tensing.

Gasper buried his head in his hand, waving the joint around as he spoke. “Magdalena is a telemancer. But she doesn’t focus on warping people’s minds, at least, not other people. Maybe…” He sniffed and took another hit off his joint. “She played with mine, yes, maybe. Certainly. Yes, she did. Yes. But that’s love, no? But she’s more than a telepath. Magdalena can move things with her mind, objects and people. Remember I told you,” he said, peering up at Sterling. “I told you about how they flew from White Sands to Las Cruces, her and the other pinche maleficiadores. It was through her power that they did this, there’s a name for her power…”

“Telekinesis?” the Sunflower Kid asked.

“Sí, telequinesia. Magdalena protected all of us from the blast.” Gasper pointed his spliff to where the Godwalker once floated, silver fire still burning in the sky. “Dios mio, you three did it. You destroyed the Godwalker! You—”

“—Gasper, get back to the technomancer,” Sterling said. “We can deal with the damn Godwalker later.”

“Sí, sí. Magdalena, Commodore Bones, me, and the technomancer. All of us were united for just a moment once your plant formation came to the ground,” he told the Sunflower Kid.
“Then it was boom, an explosion, el estruendo the likes of which… Magdalena protected us, she did—she meant well! But then impaled me on this spike. They left with the technomancer. I failed you… Magdalena and the Killbillies have the technomancer!”

“You’ve got to be kidding me, Gasper.”

“I am not kidding you!”

Sterling took a quick drag off his cigarette. “Well, which way did they head, then? Did you happen to see?”

Gasper pointed toward the west. “That direction.”

“Back toward Las Cruces?” Sterling asked, making an educated guess.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Figures. Well, you and Raylan were right about one thing,” he told the humiliated shaman. “We need Maron, or a technomancer like him, to bring them Godwalkers down. And while he was a little jumpy, I personally liked Maron.” Sterling squinted up at the sky. A prompt told him that he had leveled up, but he ignored it for the time being. He had more than enough time to assign his Stat and Technique Points.

He knew that the Godwalkers would come back at them in force. They’d done it three years ago, and there was no reason why they wouldn’t do it now. It could happen anytime, which meant constant vigilance from here on out. But at least he had a direction, and at least he had a fledgling team to fall back on.

“You know what this means, right?” Sterling stepped over to Don Gasper. He helped the old shaman to his feet, figuring he would give him hell later for falling for Magdalena’s trap. For now, it looked like Gasper had suffered enough.

“Las Cruces, then?” Roxy asked.

Sterling slowly started to nod. “Unfortunately, yes. We’ll get Maron back, head north again and pick up Paco along the way—I’ll tell you about him later—then it’s the Turquoise Trail to Madrid, and Duke City from there after we’ve checked on Raylan.”

“You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?”

“Just thinking as we go. Kid?” he asked, turning to the teenager. “What do you think?”

“Las Cruces it is,” she said, composed once again. The Sunflower Kid was the only one of the three that didn’t look like she’d just been through the middle of a warzone.

“Yep, Las Cruces. Heh. Not bad for our first day back on the job.” Sterling looked from Don Gasper to Roxy and finally back to the Sunflower Kid. He accessed his inventory list and summoned Manchester, the skeletal steed coming alive in an instant, his bones clicking into place. “Hell, if we leave now, maybe we can make it to Las Cruces by nightfall.”

“And… and you still trust me?” Don Gasper asked.

“Hell no, I don’t trust you. But I consider you family, and everyone makes mistakes,” Sterling told the shaman. “Anyhow, someone can ride with me. And one of y’all can ride with the Sunflower Kid, or we can figure something else out. There has to be a working dirt bike or an ATV around here, maybe a dead horse or two. Point is: we need to get on out of here before the ‘Billies or militiamen show back up. It’s bound to happen.”

Roxy crossed her arms over her chest. She was framed by the silver plumes of fire in the sky, much of the sun-drenched horizon charred, the haze clearing. Somehow, they had done it. Somehow, they had survived the encounter. And regardless of what the next few days brought, they’d proven to themselves it was possible to bring down one of the larger Godwalkers.

A crucial first step.

“Just like that, huh?” Roxy finally asked, a hint of mischief flashing across her eyes.

“Just like that.” Sterling flicked his cigarette to the ground and smiled at her. “Let’s ride.”

The end.

Cowboy Necromancer 2: Infinite Dark

Cowboy Necromancer 2: Infinite Dark is out!

Expect an insane journey as Sterling is whisked away to an unknown location. More action, bleak scenery, Sterling antics, memorable characters and superpowers.

Get it here!

.Back of the Book.

Hi, I’m Harmon Cooper. I am an independent author of over sixty science fantasy books, and my works live and die by their reviews. If you enjoyed this book, please take a moment to let people know.

I’m planning for Cowboy Necromancer to be a trilogy, and the second book is out now. If you’re reading this after May 2022, the third book is out as well!. The next two books will be set in post-apocalyptic New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. Expect for the second installment to really kick off. I plan for it to move at a different pace than the first, especially after what happens next… (hint, hint, hint). So expect more blazing action, fun, adventure—you get the picture.

Before you continue, please review Cowboy Necromancer, and thank you for doing so! I can’t stress enough how much your reviews help promote my book, including getting on Amazon’s radar and other fantasy readers. It takes a village, you are that village and thank you!

Behind the Scenes

The idea for Cowboy Necromancer was first pitched jokingly to my writer-amigo, Luke Chmilenko, in one of our lengthy, meme-heavy message threads in the summer of 2019. I was fucking around at the time, telling him stories that I should one day write if I started writing under a pen name (which I did - Gideon Caldwell now writes books). I mentioned “Cowboy Necromancer” we lol’d and moved on.

I keep track of ideas when they come, so I put a folder in my google docs tab for ‘Cowboy Necromancer’. About a year later, I showed my Facebook readers’ group some of the ideas I had via a screenshot of folders, including one labeled, you guessed it, Cowboy Necromancer. The response was not what I expected. Those in the group wanted to know more about it, and through the thread, they even ended up naming our main character’s bone horse Manchester, a tongue-in-cheek reference to my Cherry Blossom Girls series.

The grounds were set, and I began conceptualizing the book and its game system while listening to Tao Wong’s System Apocalypse, L.M Kerr’s Reborn Apocalypse, and Dakota Krout’s Completionist Chronicles. I also drew from my own life in Texas, and the time I spent in the piney woods of Bastrop with my sometimes tough-talking father and his local friends, several of whom were actual cowboys (or the closest thing to a cowboy that the late 20th/early 21st century can produce).

The research I’ve done for this book is the most extensive of any of my works yet. I’ve been fascinated with New Mexico, the setting for Cowboy Necromancer, since my first visit in the summer of 2009 when I accompanied my brother on his trip to Idaho, where he had been stationed as an Airman. We only spent a day in the state, and it was mostly just passing through on our way to Colorado, but I was immediately inspired by the landscape and the people. I used the setting for my first book, Star-Spangled Apocalypse, and I used it multiple times in the Cherry Blossom Girls series.

Cowboy Necromancer’s usage of New Mexico is nothing like my earlier works. For this series, I’ve dug deeper than I ever have into the culture of a place, encapsulating everything from its geography to the various groups that have lived in and ruled over the Land of Enchantment, weaving their histories into this post-apocalyptic narrative. I went on a research trip to the state, spending time in the locations, from Truth or Consequences to Madrid, to get a better understanding of what it was like to be in these places, what it looked like, smelled like, and what the chilis tasted like. (Spoiler alert: hot!)

Aside from location-based details, something I was looking for on my trip was primary documents, or at least secondary documents that weren’t as easy to find online. These documents turned out to be clippings from magazines, a book on witchcraft in New Mexico called Witchcraft in the Southwest that I picked up at a gift shop at the Bandelier National Monument, Hampton Sides’ Blood and Thunder (my absolute favorite history book), an old library book on Puebloan mythology published in the 1960s, and, as Sterling uses in Cowboy Necromancer, a heavily dog-eared travel guide which serves as a way to flesh out the world.

While it will seem that I have made shit up for this book — such as the “Juan Circle,” a ritual in which you find someone named Juan and perform a divination with him after having the man turn his shirt inside out; or the usage of toad venom as a hallucinogen; or some of the otherworldly names and locations that seem too good to be actual places like “The Turquoise Road” or “Truth or Consequences, New Mexico”— all of this was, alas, not my imagination. To shed a little light on my background —I have a degree in history—the usage and study of history is very important to me, and since I wasn’t making up histories for this book as I normally do for my series, I wanted them to be accurate. Any of the historical facts or dates listed are accurate, and should shed some light on the amazing history of the state of New Mexico, from its indigenous peoples to the Spaniards who arrived in the 1600s and changed the face of the landscape.

But none of that matters. What matters is an insanely cool story, and that’s what I hope I’ve written for you here.

The LitRPG game system is the most complex I’ve developed yet, with stats, class proficiencies and a technique system. The novel’s imagery spans the gap from the graphic novel series East of West to videogames Red Dead Redemption as well as Ghost of Tsushima (the haiku writing!), The Teachings of Don Jaun: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, and Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. While writing Cowboy Necromancer, I used Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian as an inspirational text, listening to the audio to capture some of the bleak descriptions and savagery of his imagined Southwest. Music-wise, I went with things like ZZ Top (La Grange!) and Ennio Morricone, whose soundtracks for spaghetti westerns have shaped this book to an insane degree, as have pretty much anything by Gustavo Santaolalla or Roberto Lara (a late, but great discovery). Austin, Texas metal band The Sword’s High Country is an album that really pairs well with this story. I was certainly inspired by the Old Man Logan comic series (where I got the idea for Killbillies), and was even inspired by more contemporary westerns like Longmire, Hostiles, and, for that matter, God’s Country. The comic series Scalped was hugely influential toward the end, although the book doesn’t deal with ‘rez life’ or operate as a Southwestern noir. Also inspiring this one, at least in terms of scenery, were the controversial video game, The Last of Us 2, and the book The World Without Us.

So a lot has gone into this book, to craft a post-apocalyptic Southwest that just keeps on giving as our main character Sterling traverses the desert in search of his companions, battling amalgamations, bandits, militias, his own damn self at points, and the ominous alien Godwalkers. My wife, who has done some art in my books before, really stepped up her game for this one in a preview of what I plan to do in the future with some of my works. I look forward to what she’ll do for the second installment…

Please don’t forget to review Cowboy Necromancer, and be sure to check out my other books.

Yours in sanity,

Harmon Cooper

Writer.harmoncooper@gmail.com

Here are some Facebook pages you should join:

My Facebook Group

(join the above group to get exclusive content, see cover reveals, get updated release schedules, connect with other Harmon Cooper readers, check out dope memes, and so much more!)

LitRPG Books

GameLit Society

LitRPG Forum

Here are some other ways to support my books:

1. Join the Proxima Galaxy on Facebook where I look for ARC (advanced Review Copy) readers and give away audiobooks and other cool stuff.

2. Review my books, which generates more interest from other readers, which makes me write faster because (carrot dangling from the stick!) – I want to please you all!

3. Join the Harmon Cooper mailing list.

4. Join my Patreon where you can read exclusive content (from cover design to future release ideas and chapters)

To learn more about LitRPG, talk to authors including myself, and just have an awesome time, please join the LitRPG Group.

Other Books by Harmon Cooper

I have written over fifty books (whew). Here are some of the highlights!

Witcher meets John Wick meets Inuyasha in this bestselling cultivations series.

https://geni.us/PILGRIM

Introducing War Priest: Mask of the Fallen

Check out my newest and expect a much deeper cultivation system, some of the best combat I’ve written after a year of research into samurai and ninja (shinobi) techniques, yokai, and a coming-of-age dark fantasy story about a healer who is forced to become a warrior.

Check out War Priest!

A man becomes the grim reaper and introduces game mechanics to the role. DO NOT miss this book.

https://geni.us/DeathsMantle

What if Ready Player One was a multi-part epic? Gritty LitRPG action, gamer humor, fantastic fantasy worlds, and a killer MC.

https://geni.us/TheLoop

.About the Author.

Harmon Cooper is the author of over sixty science fantasy books. Originally from Austin, Texas, he spent five years honing his writing skills in Asia before ultimately relocating to New England with his Mongolian wife. More information can be found on his website www.harmoncooper.com