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Stupid? Not really. Unlucky? Definitely.
Atticus is a short man wearing a very tall helmet. His face is jowly and sneering. It has been several years since I last saw him, but all the loathing I felt last time comes rushing back quickly. The plumed Imperium helmet makes a strong man more impressive, but it also serves to highlight the imperfections of a weak one. Atticus looks like a boy playing dress up in his father’s uniform.
“You’ve been causing some trouble,” he says.
“Good.”
He lets out a cackle devoid of humor. “I’ve hung three of your men already,” he says. “I have three more to send to the gallows, but I think, given you are here, I might try something more traditional…” he pauses for sick effect. “Crucifixion.”
I say nothing. He wants a reaction, and I don’t intend to give him one. I intend to put a bullet between his beady little eyes.
“A single one of your men comes toward me and I swear to any god you care to name, Atticus, I will shoot you dead.”
“Give yourself up,” he calls back. “Lay down your weapons and give yourselves over to the law.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then both of you prepare to die in a hail of bullets,” Atticus says. “No way I’m letting you walk out of this town alive. You got about a minute of breathing left, boy.”
The irony of being spoken to in such a way by a pissant like Atticus Bunch, a man who suckled at the Imperium’s teat to get a hint of power and now wields it like the coward he is, strikes me as funny.
“I reckon I can pull a trigger faster than any of your men. And I reckon you know it too. You ready to risk death just to kill us?”
I know the answer is no. He knows that the answer is no. He’s stalling. He wants to make me panic and run, or he wants us to stay here long enough to get caught by the reinforcements they’ve no doubt called for.
“Back up with me,” I whisper to Josie over my shoulder before I take a considered step back.
He sees me begin to retreat and raises his voice. “You can’t run, Orion. Not anymore! The Imperium knows where you are and it is coming for you.”
All these threats are words I’ve heard in my own thoughts a thousand times. The times of being able to commit crimes and leave without a trace are gone. Now, every time a sparrow farts, there’s a network activated to log the intensity and location of the gas. The old world is lost, and the new one is going to be hard to be a man in.
“I’ll do you a deal,” I say, stalling with more empty words. “Take me. You don’t care about the girl.”
“But you do,” he says with that irritating smirk. “And it’s easier if she’s dead. So I think I’ll have my men shoot her like a dog first. In the stomach. So she bleeds out nice and slow. No escaping a bullet the way she escaped that train.”
I hear a whimper, and feel soft female fingers clench at my arm. Josie is terrified. She should be. This man is deeply sick. She’s now cowering behind me, which is a good instinct. I still don’t see a way out of this that doesn’t involve a shoot out which we inevitably loose. Maybe it’d be enough to take Atticus down. If she weren’t here, I’d die happy knowing I’d done that. But she is here, and now I have everything to live for.
FWOMP!
That is the sound of the town’s granary going up in a single sudden flame.
BOOM!
Followed by the transformer on the other side of the town exploding.
CRASH!
I have no idea what that one is, but it smells like burning happiness.
I grab Josie, throw her over my shoulder, and bolt for my horse. There is no time to waste. Atticus’ men are going to give chase, and we could be overtaken in a matter of minutes.
Josie
“What is that? A god in a machine?”
“That is Paris in a hang glider with bombs strapped to his body,” Orion laughs. “So, sure, close enough.”
The devil is in Laststand, but it turns out that our own personal guardian angel is as well. I don’t know if he was following us, or if this is one big joke being played on us by chance, but I’m sure glad to see him swooping back and forth, grabbing grenades from two belts wrapped over his shoulders, unpinning them and letting them loose on the town below. He is only barely avoiding being shot, mostly because the Imperium’s aim is way off due to them being pissant cowards of the worst kind.
I hold my breath, thinking he is going to descend among the fray and be taken away, but at what seems like the last possible minute, he catches an updraft and is borne aloft again, leaving utter carnage in his wake, the dead, dying, and de-limbed crawling in the midst of his mad attack.
