GunBarrel Gauntlet: The Last Bronze II

05. Back in Black.

                Resting an empty fuel canister on his shoulder as he walked for endless miles back across the salt-pans, the Nomad searched the horizon for any trace of the road that had delivered him into the storm days before. Heaven and earth shone back from his aviator sunglasses, pastel and blue wherever he turned his head to look.

So he walked onward, the only living being that trod the crocodile skin cracks of the drought ravaged plains. There was no respite for the mind or the body, a numbing featureless world that refocused one's thoughts deeper into the cranium, a lunatic dialogue rocking back and forth, the critics of soul crushing doubt.

Images began to form, edited memories taped together in a dream play of the past.

"Whoah there!" A Gaelic voice spoke, a man raising his arms as he walked across the broken glass on the floor of an abandoned gas station. "Me and Brucey here just wannta be on our way, reel quiet like!"

In the memory, the Irishman's silent friend had nodded his head in agreement with the previous statement, raising both hands.

A large shard of glass in the riotous mess reflected the image of an MFP officer aiming a revolver.

"Bitches! Bullets! Or gas!... Bitches! Bullets! Or gas!..." A megaphone called out from country highway beyond the gas station.

The Nomad recalled himself searching the Irishman's face for any clue that he was a psychopath like the owner of that voice buzzing through the megaphone, the volume of its proclamation getting louder and louder.

The gang had found them.

Watching a red pickup truck cramped with spotlights and aerials rolling to a standstill outside the empty frames of the shopfront, he kept his aim on the two strangers as the danger mounted, vacillating between shooting the Irishman and his cool companion, or the gang members stepping out from the pickup truck.

He squeezed the trigger, and the memory ended.

Returning to the world of the damned, the gaunt shadow of his frame kept pace before him as he staggered eastward. An hour later the earth began to feel different through the soles of his boots, the hard ground giving way to the fine silt blanket that had been left by the storm.

The nomad's salt crusted boots came to a stop beside a gnarled hand reaching out of the ground, buried up to the forearm. The abrasive dust storm had stripped the epidermal layers of the hand away, leaving it as mummified muscle.

Squatting down to inspect it, a cockroach shifted to hide, antennae twitching nervously as it sheltered from the man whom had discovered its bountiful meal.

Tapping the hand to startle it again, the Nomad pounced as it scurried away, catching it in a palm full of sand. Releasing the grit through his fingers, he brought the palm to his mouth in a quick motion, chewing briefly before swallowing.

Then he began to dig, flinging up the dust into a pile around the emerging body of the raider he had encountered before the storm. The brute had survived kissing the asphalt, crawling off the road shortly after to try and escape the fury of the statically charged turbulence until he had succumbed. There was nothing of use to be found on the raider's corpse except an empty canteen, so he moved on to try and uncover the road itself.

Sweeping the point of his toes to test the sand every few metres, he encountered an obstruction, foot catching on the edge of some hidden object. Scraping away more loose earth, the discovery of a motorcycle tire encouraged the Nomad to fall to his knees and rapidly paddle away enough grit to expose some of the frame and a fuel tank.

Unwinding a short hose to begin syphoning what was left, he sucked on the tube's free end to begin drawing up the gasoline, quickly feeding it into the open lid of the fuel can he had carried from the wild dog hills.

The drone of an engine threatened the peace of the barren plains, creeping out of the distant heatwaves. Remaining crouched as the last fuel droplets clung to the lip of the hose, he looked toward the sky as the wings of an aircraft glided into view, heading in his direction.

Easing the long barrel of a revolver from the fold of his armoured jacket, the Nomad depressed the hammer with a click as it settled in his grip. The craft appeared to have originally been a military plane from the wide shape of the cockpit fuselage, made into a biplane with four prop engines stacked over the sets of wings.

The deafening growl of the war machine passed its shadow over the land as an angel of death, temporarily catching the Nomad in its wake. On the underside of a wing was the insignia of a skull with lightning eyes.

Without further threat the plane continued along its journey as it diminished into the pale blue horizon, travelling north-west.

The Nomad watched it fade from view. Someone on that distant compass point had enough gasoline to raise such a heavy aircraft, and that meant they had food and water also.

* * *

Dayslater, the black Enforcer was tearing through the dust of a plateau shelf abovethe canyons, eating up the miles of expanse in an arrow straight course underthe setting sun. Reaching the limits of the cliffs by twilight, he stood nearthe precipice with a half binocular to his eye, focusing on the distant view.Winking at him through the lens were pinpricks of light, evidence of a communitywith resources. Licking his lips at the thought of food, he retired from thelookout to wait for the dawn.