Bounty Hunter

Chapter 41

It was hotter than hell in the Shiprock desert, but Joe's leg was even hotter. His wounds were infected and only going to get worse until he found medicine. He'd taken his last painkiller an hour earlier, and could already feel the effects wearing off. Terry helped him walk—Joe could scarcely put weight on his left leg now—and the pair were soaked in sweat.

They'd reached Sandville, but Joe was already wondering if they shouldn't have gone toward Templeton instead. The murc posse would know by now that fugitives had been on the train, and would be scouring every town along the tracks until they tracked them down. Sandville was an eight-building town. It would take all of ten minutes for a posse to find Joe and Terry there.

"Water," Terry said, and Joe didn't know if the man was begging for a drink or telling him he'd found some. It wasn't until Terry led them to a covered dome a few feet off the track that Joe realized it'd been the latter.

Terry practically pushed away from Joe before he took the last couple of steps to the underground tank. Joe couldn't stand. He fell onto his butt, then dragged himself to the well cover. Terry located a spigot and turned it on. He was down on all fours, drinking from the spigot like a thirsty dog.

Joe crawled up next to him. As he waited, he scanned the area for signs of trouble, but the only building nearby—a train depot—seemed vacant, which was good news for them. No one to tell the murcs about the fugitives who'd passed through their town. Vandals had painted the side of the building facing the tracks, reinforcing his opinion of the situation. Joe's gaze panned over the various shapes and colors, and settled on a haiku painted in bold letters:

Shiprock's end came when

Indecisive governments

Became divisive

Joe nodded lightly at the logic; he reckoned it summed up the days before the Shiprock War as clearly as anything he'd ever read. Each land zone managed itself after the Revolution, which the MRC's wealthy, corrupt administrators proved soon enough was a fiction. Shiprock had been the first zone to fight back. On the tenth anniversary of Black Night, the Shiprock War began, with the Ravens assassinating the local MRC administrators. Joe remembered all too clearly each person he'd killed on that bloody night in hopes of bringing control back to the people. Shiprock had the numbers, but murcs had the power, and they'd quashed the ill-fated rebellion in fourteen months.

Joe had traveled to Cavil after the war to fulfill a promise he'd made to his closest friend and brother-in-arms, Nick Swinton. Of all the battles and of all the killing Joe had been involved in, the hardest thing he'd ever done was to give the news to Nick Swinton's wife—that her husband had been killed before getting the chance to see his infant son. Joe hadn't stayed long—he should've stayed longer—but the next war was already brewing in the Wilds, and he went to make things right after the defeat in Shiprock.

The rebel army in the Wilds had learned hard lessons from Shiprock, and in twenty-eight days they'd killed every murc and murc-sympathizer without mercy. The Wilds Rising was so short, yet the death toll so much higher than its predecessor. The murcs had left the Wilds to govern themselves, and the zone closed itself off from the rest of the wastelands. Joe knew he'd crossed lines in the Wilds, and tried not to think back for fear of getting lost in those suffocating, dark corners of his memories.

Terry leaned back from the spigot. "Best water I've ever drank."

Joe hurriedly looked away from the haiku, leaned in, and began lapping up the water pouring from the spigot. Since the water was stored underground, he trusted it to not be polluted with radiation like most aboveground tanks were. He drank until his stomach was full, then leaned back for Terry to drink more.