it always is with heroes

He swaddled her in his long brown coat, and clad in his shirt, tie, and vest he bore the cold of the night. Picked up the injured bird and gathered up the parts he could see were of immediate necessity, shucking all of it into one saddle bag. Bade the horse kneel so he could place her upon its back, mounted up himself and the fake creature rose shakily. The beating of its hooves and the hazy glow of their breath in the campfire vanished into the night along with all of the other half-remembered dreams.

She leaned shivering against him, cheek resting on one of his shoulder blades and hands clasped about his belly, squeezing with what must have been every last bit of strength left in her. He felt her breath move sharp over her lips whenever they hit a bump. He held one of his leather-gloved hands over hers to keep them warm. In the dark, even with the moon, he could only get them up to thirty safely. They'd said something about a Shep, and it meant they were not the only ones. It meant others might come looking for them. The black pill would stave off death, but not in that case – with more of them and she an invalid and he without the rifle on the flatness of the plain.

He felt her shiver awake. Gramma. Don't leave her.

He grasped his hand over her thin, bony fingers just a little tighter. She's ahead of us.

---

At the first light of morning he stopped the horse. The canyon off in the distance, with the road slanting up to take them above it and back to the store. In daylight, he could make the ride much more quickly. He had the horse kneel again as he got off and lifted her. She had fallen into a comatose slumber that he knew to be the necessary side effect of the drug.

The clerk examined her wound and nodded. The bullet had gone straight through her, leaving a terrible exit wound. The exit wound had closed up into scabbed scar tissue that he found to be agreeably free of any signs of infection. The impact site at her belly was nearly gone but for the scar tissue. The internal damage was hard to gauge. Her previous infections had been utterly eradicated, he could see.

We'll have you set aright quite soon, Miss. First some fresh bandages.

---

The shadow that fell across the empty, flyblown corpse of Berg was comically thin in the stretched light of early morning. Straight as a rail and all sharp edges. No hat to protect from the sun. Belts and straps dangling down about the pants – which were themselves a nightmare of zippers and straps. The double-breasted leather jacket sucking all heat out of the chill air surrounding. He'd painted his face and neck with white makeup and darkened the pits surrounding his eyes with black, rubbed jagged lines of black perpendicular to his lips to make a sort of death-face. The eyes glowed a red so deep there was no distinguishing where iris ended and white began.

Little insects little insects. Not even God could love such little filthy cowards, could He? You watch them gorge now... watch them get fat. And then the sun comes out and they run and leave the rest to the buzzards and the pathogens.

Boss?

Nothing. Never mind. I apologize for using so many syllables at once. I'm assuming we have found tracks, Johnnyjohnnybobonny?

That way, Shep. Out toward that canyon, east.

We're dealing with somebody interesting, boys. He knew the old hag would slow him up, so he shot her. She could've been worth something to the city boys.

Mighta been Berg or Yancy, Boss. They both been knowed to shoot fer no good reason.

Quite true. But this was the same gun that killed the others... well, except Lige. And neither of these idiots would have left so immac— clean a body. Mount back up. We can't have somebody killing our own and thinking it's a small thing.

You really think it was one guy, Shep?

It always is with heroes, isn't it?

He got back onto the horse. Waved his hand over the controls and the horse's speakers regurgitated Aerosmith. He reached to the small of his back and pulled out the Ingram, let out a rallying spray into the air and the thirty of them hanging about at the outskirts of the camp drew into rank before him. He reared the horse about and shot forward at a full gallop, the horses actuators straining to keep up with his orders.

The horde thundered out across the flat wastes toward the burning sun just out of its cradle, in its entirety a small point of ferocity and hatred in the otherwise featureless and emotionless plain of the desert.

---

The clerk found Eli waiting out front of the store with the rifle at his approach. It was not quite noon, and still the girl slept. Eli shouldered the weapon and took the girl down, holding her in his arms.

What happened to the old woman?

The clerk dismounted.

It was too late. He went for the saddlebags and drew out the damaged falcon. Get her inside.

---

The bullet had clipped a pivot point in the left wing and bent it severely out of true, the clerk could see. He rumbled about in the toolbox to find the proper part as the man Eli looked over the comatose form of the girl. The harsh fluorescents of the pharmacy gave her skin a funereal hue. Her wounds were completely sealed – identifiable only by a horrendous blood blister at entry and exit, and the scar tissue.

She was shot?

Clean through, the clerk said as he slid the replacement part in and bolted it securely. Been laying there for hours by the time I arrived. She's made of tougher stuff than some other men I've known.

These black pills...

No idea what they are or how they work – I just hope that machine in the corner there keeps making it when I ask it to, or that Aesclepius drops by to jerk another load into it, as, lacking a rational explanation, we can only assume such a powerful plot device would be powered by god-seed.

The clerk could see the shotgun impact had embedded itself in the bird's cooling system and the battery, and he did not have anything to replace either. Sighing, he brought out the epoxy and sealed the acid leak, then dug the shrapnel out of the freon reservoir and patched that with the adhesive as well, muttering to himself all the while. Bunch of savages in this town.

---

The machine in the corner of the pharmacy had not excreted any more of the black pills by midday, and the clerk felt anxious. That it could run out now, after all the other times he'd used it, seemed to him a sad sort of joke, even compared to the general state of things.

He brought the falcon outside and considered starting it up again, but knew that any flight it made could be its last. The man Eli stayed with the girl as the clerk scanned the horizon, the fingers of his right hand drumming across the grip of the rifle as he held it. Others. There were others, and they'd come looking. Any crew with characters that rowdy – that split them into teams to work the area like that – had a confident leader. One who could command from afar.

It was an hour later that he saw the first telltale speck in the distance – another few minutes and he realized it would expand into a cloud of dust and from it would emerge a large group. He sighed.

This all seems to be leading inexorably toward exactly the sort of tiresome confrontation I came out here to avoid.

---

Behind the freezer – the air harsh and rotten-smelling in their nostrils. Eli held the girl in his arms, still wrapped in the coat of the clerk. The clerk moved aside a rolling shelving unit full of empty milk crates to reveal a stairway leading down to the basement. He nodded at it.

Earthquake shifted stuff something fierce, I can only guess. There's a tunnel that leads down to the canyon floor. I'd have brought us up, but you see, there are a few first steps that are a doozy, if you see what it is that I'm saying to you. Meaning, you know, that it's a one-way path of transit. I'm going to hold off those guys off for as long as I can. I strung a wire that'll show up nice and bright orange when you shine this little flashlight on it. That wire leads to a button near the entrance that when you press it will let me know you've got out to the other end – so I'd be much obliged if you'd do that, old sport. Then what you do is run west until your sides feel like busting, at which point you run until you feel like dying, at which point you run some more.

Eli shook his head. I should stay here and fight with you. I shouldn't leave after what all you did for me.

Believe me, there's no thought more comforting than you getting your face shot off after all I did to try to get you back up on your feet, but you don't need to hang out here just because I want you to. Really, you can get going any time, and see that the girl is out of the way of any bullets.

You promise me that you'll meet back up with us.

That would be at best overly optimistic and at worst downright disingenuous.

You pretend to be hard and crazy and not to care, but it isn't so. Promise, and I'll do as you say.

The clerk sighed. I'll do everything I can to meet up with you. Now get going, and give the girl a pill at sundown tonight and tomorrow night. Her wound may be closed but it takes at least three days to completely heal.

I'm going to pray for you. I know you don't appreciate that.

I'll take it. Git.

He watched them disappear into the dark and wandered back to the pharmacy where he donned the heavy left-hand glove and activated the falcon. The bird's claws scratched against the countertop as it bumbled up onto the glove.

Sallah ad din.

The mechanical eyes snapped to his.

At the risk of sounding like an unenlightened, disrespectful jingoistic fuckhead, I happen to know some virgins who are dying to meet you.

---

At their thundering approach, the store seeped out of the horizon like rot on wood. Shep knew immediately that this lonely place was the one, even before he saw the man standing out in front of it. In the high sun of noon, the figure stood tall and shadowless a few feet before the store, the legs evenly apart, the vest and shirt and tie sharp and unmoving.

The pistol hung motionless from its strap, the rifle pointing downward parallel to his leg but not touching the ground, the ragged falcon perched on the glove eying them with its alien and unfeeling gaze, the only pair of eyes visible between those two. Beneath the fedora, his face hid in the one point of darkness amid the silent rage of noon.

He did not move, even after Shep's entire crowd of marauders stopped before him and their dust drifted over. When it had settled, there seemed not to be a mote of it upon him, and still he stood motionless.

Shep called out to him.

Well, you couldn't have made it more obvious, standing there like that. I appreciate you saving me the trouble of having to tear all over this country finding you. You're pretty brave for someone who shoots little old ladies.

Silence for a moment, and then, without the slightest motion of anything else, his thumb cocking the rifle.

Well, that's a funny coincidence. You're pretty eloquent for someone who's about to be dead.