Editing Campaign:End-World/Log

A log of things that happened in [[Campaign:End-World]].

Hot sun bakes the yellow and brown brickwork of the High Rest, a fancy bit of name for a dogged tavern and inn, the most this town on the edge of the poisoned wastes can offer. Beneath its splintered awning, decorated with only a single remaining Guardian of the Beam and flecked with graying paint, two rough-looking men in worn work shirts sit idly, baking in the heat and slowly chewing tobacco.
 As the new arrival in town draws her horse up to the board and ties its reins up, her features do not go unnoticed by the townies. "Hey, pretty thing. You come over here, be my gilly tonight, huh?" one of them croaks, grinning a gap-toothed smirk at her. 
  LaRoux sits atop her horse, dressed in dark brown, worn leather pants and boots, a filthy shirt that was once white and a black leather vest that made the sleeves seem wider. Her tan leather jacket seemed to be that of an officer's at one point, or more likely from a harrier who fancied himself one, baring a single breasted button line on one side. She poked up her hat, letting the sun reveal 
  LaRoux a few of the pale nicks against her face, staring two blue eyes at the man. Josef sweeps one side of the jacket from her side, revealing a worn iron that sits tight in a tan holster, placing her palm on its grip. "I reckon you mistake me for someone, sah. Am I right?"
 The man's grin falters at the sight of the shooting iron, and he turns to flick his eyes at his companion nervously before favoring her with another leering smile he cannot seem to suppress, though this one is more subdued. "Away, Malhablada," he mutters, turning his gaze away to the baking dirt street.
  LaRoux bites her lip to keep herself from smirking. Malhablada was fitting. She gives her horse a poke with her boots and trots down the street, letting her jacket fall to her side, seeking out the nearest tavern or similar establishment.
 After a quick stretch of her legs, some small relief after hours in the saddle, she realizes that the only tavern in Cherish serves as the nesting grounds for those two dullards.
 Inside the loose batwings, themselves flecked with the same graying paint, four men sit in the gloom brought by the single dirty window, three of them engaged in a hand of Watch Me and the fourth sitting near them, watching their game. The barkeep, a greasy and moustached man of fifty, looks up and grins his own wan smile, straightening upright.
  LaRoux looks around, drawing her small pipe and packing it with poor tobacco as she does. Josef bits it in her teeth as she watches the men for a moment before walking to the bar, lighting the pipe as she does. "What do you have for drink?"
 "Whiskey, if ye have the coin, miss. Less'n that, we got suds," he says, scratching his stubbled cheek with his free hand. As he speaks, her attention is drawn to a figure in the back of the bar, one she hadn't noticed before, sitting with his side to the others, his face turned toward the wall.
 "Are ye one of the riders, then? One of Blake Mackey's people?" he asks, polishing a glass with his yellowed rag.
 "You talk too much, Brissert," the man with his face turned says, loud enough for the bartender to hear.
  LaRoux checks her pockets and then sighs slightly. "Suds..." She looks over at the man, trying to notice anything odd about him, but is interrupted. "A rider? Oh no, sai, I'm uh... opportunist of a different sort. I ride alone."
  LaRoux peeks over her shoulder at the man who spoke, her attention back on him now that he's said something.
 "This piece of trim isn't with us. I would have remembered her," he says, looking up and meeting her gaze with his dark, glittering eyes. A long scar runs across his forehead, terminating in a burst of white like a comet. "You ain't from here, are ya, chickee?" he asks, slowly rotating a shot glass around in circles on the round wood table.
  LaRoux feels her blood boil when he uses the word 'trim'. She turns quickly, fingers curling strangely to keep them from grasping at her guns. "No, and I ain't no piece of trim." She's clearly frustrated.
 "Maybe she could be, though. You got yourself a piece of iron, do ya? Ken yourself a gunslinger, sai? We could use someone like you," he says, pushing the table back with one booted foot and leisurely rising to his feet, carelessly taking a step toward her. "I know I could use you," he grins. 
  LaRoux balls her hands into fists and grits her teeth. "I got pair of'em, enough for you and all your friends. I've killed a hundred men like you for less. You're testing my patience, you manto-fuck."
 He drops out a loud, long laugh, a ho-ho-ho that goes on for a moment before suddenly halting. "Got teeth! I like that. A reeeeaal fierce killer. Like John Farson's daughter, come to life before mine eyes!" He makes a twitching motion toward his own sidearm, grinning as a child bully would forcing another to flinch.
 "You want to earn some gold, pretty thing, you'd do well at my side. Mayhap we continue this upstairs?" He takes another step forward, putting himself six feet from her. The other men push themselves up against the wall quietly, finding the way out blocked by the two armed figures. "Or maybe I just put a bullet in you and have some fun before you get too frigid?"
  LaRoux exhales a little irritated growl. Her right hand grasps her good iron, pointing her left at him. "I'll turn you into fodder for the cattle, you shit!" Her mouth curls to a little smile. "'sides, even if I took your offer I'd have you begging for mercy before the night was through. Pathetic manto-lookin' tough guy like you could never handle me."
  LaRoux 's hand turns from a palm to a fist, gripping the finer of the two irons from her belt and drawing. She is 'slow', but steady in her movement as the barrel becomes level with the man's gut, finger tugging the taught trigger of her cocked pistol. 
 As she cocks it, she realizes the man's hand is already level with her eyes, gun in hand, a blur of motion she hadn't anticipated! As he clicks back the hammer of his own ancient gun, he smiles broadly. "Wrong choice, chickadee." He pulls the trigger.
  LaRoux 's eyes go wide and she dives, into the table that was once occupied, knocking a chair out of the way as she slides under the table, gun still trained on him.
  LaRoux fans the hammer for a single shot at the man while lying on the ground, still aiming at his body.
 The bullet explodes out of the gun with a deafening crack, blowing his silver belt buckle apart and knocking him back across the rough wooden floorboards where he collapses in a twitching heap. "Man Jesus!" he shrieks, kicking his boots into the leg of a chair and knocking it over. "My guts! You bitch! My guts!"
  LaRoux thumbs the hammer again, chambering a third round. She gets to her feet, gun still trained on him and stepping forward, placing her boot on the wound. "Told you you couldn't handle me."
 He coughs, sucking in air and wincing in pain, and looks up at her. "Who are you?"
  LaRoux decocks her gun and then opens the loading gate, dropping spent shells beside him as she reloads the two spent rounds. "I am LaRoux, the daughter of a Gunslinger, and the end of you." She shuts the loading gate with a snap. "If you survive, I best never see or hear of you or your men ever again. Because if I do, I swear to the Man-Jesus I'll send you straight to Char."
  LaRoux flips the gun once, making a small trail of soft smoke and holsters it.







"...An' when I pulled up 'er skirt, strike me down if it weren't a mutie-mark there too!" the old man cackles, sending the rest of the tavern into a riotous laughter. Some men have the natural talent to string others along with story, bringing even the most stoic to high emotion - this man mayhap be a twim to Arthur Eld's own jester, for how easily he spins jokes and ribald tales out of the mote-heavy air of Sellow Reach's tavern.
 "Tha's funny!" a blue-shirted workhand calls, knocking his glass off the table to crack against the floor. "Tell us annu'r!" he slurs. As he rises and braces himself against the back of a chair with one hand, he pulls his vest back, revealing a dirty, ill-kept pistol. "You-
 "You- you tell the one about the two gillies again," he mutters. As he does, someone mutters "Goddamn outlanders," and a man behind him slowly pulls a knife from his belt.
  Alan had been enjoying the old man's tales readily enough.  A little human wit was one of the better unpaid-for features of a new town.  Nursing a cheap drink, he felt his smile fade as a workhand showed iron - poor that it was, Alan could tell - in his drunken amusement.  Alan's eyes flicked to another man - a local, by the dress - looking none-too-happy and drawing a knife.
  Alan pats his coinpurse and winces - it isn't any fuller than when he rode into town.  Less, considering the drink and meal.  Normally here was the time a smart man got to going, but the next ride was bound to be long and hungry...
  Alan_Cohen sighs, and gets up from his chair, ambling over to the group of men that had, until recently, been enjoying themselves, intersecting himself physically between the out-of-towner and disgruntled worker.
 "Wha-?" the drunk asks innocently, noticing the voices around him fall silent. "Tell annu'r one!" he shouts, reeling. "Me an' my buddy here," he says, pointing limply at Alan. "We rode in t'gether. Dinnit we?"
  "You know, sai," he says, addressing the old man while clapping his physical neighbors on the back, "I wouldn't mind hearing that one again myself.  Begging your pardon."
  Alan_Cohen winces inwardly at the drunkard's comment.
  "It would figure he'd say that," Alan thinks, and by the looks from the other assorted men in the bar, it'll do no good to protest.
 Glaring eyes from below lowered brows stare back at him, and while the man with the knife is still holding it guardedly half-out of its sheath, the heavy mood still hangs like the promise of lightning.
  "Yes sai we did," he says, judging his words carefully, "And I'll tell you all what - I'll tell y'all what - ifn' you're feeling willing to give my friend and I another spin o' the yarn, I can buy y'all another round."
  "The cheap shit, mind you, I'm no rich man," he tries to make it a joke.
  (While wondering how he'll keep said promise.)
 "Yeah, tellid'gain," the man in the blue shirt says, pulling his pistol up and causing the old man to flinch backward! In the dim light Alan can see that the barrel is wrapped in some kind of metal band, a cheap attempt to keep a flawed barrel straight. "I'll make sure 'e tells it," the drunk winks at Alan.
  Alan_Cohen grabs the drunk's pistol barrel and pulls it down till it’s pointing at the surface of the splintered bar table.
  "Now sai, that t'ain't polite 
  "
  "Not 'tall."
  Alan_Cohen warily looks around - this seems to be escalating.
 "Hands off, say true!" the drunk gasps, jerking his arms back with a grip on the pistol! 
 With surprising strength, he begins to twist it away from Alan's grip!
  Now Cort used to say that Alan had a head too thick for the simplest lessons to penetrate, but even a thick skull has its uses; he headbutts the drunk in the nose, hoping to shock him into sense or out of further violence.
 The impact should have been enough to knock him down, but at the last instant the man in the blue shirt flinches back, almost expecting the blow! 
 As blood streams from his nose, he swings his free hand at Alan crudely!
  Alan_Cohen isn't half so drunk as the blue-shirt - at least, he hopes not, - and easily catches the clumsily-thrown punch.
  Stepping back, Alan kicks the drunk's chair over, spilling him on the floor, and goes to stamp on the man's gun-toting wrist, hoping to end his before a shot gets off.
 As he stamps his boot down, the heel crunches against the floor, as the drunk's hand darts out of the way and grabs his ankle!
  Alan_Cohen lets out a hardly-polite word as the drunk's speed and choice of ankle takes him by surprise. Not for the first time, he curses Cort's ironwood club as he drops, trying to turn his fall into an elbow drop on the feisty drunk.
 Quickly as a rattler, the man rolls out of the way and draws a long, thin knife out of his boot! "Yaaaaah!" he yells, slashing at Alan!
  "Oh to hell with this," Alan snarls, rolling out of the way as the drunk's crazed slash
  With the practice of years, he quickly goes from prone to one knee, his hand dropping down to reveal - and draw - his gun.  It's no gunslinger's piece, but it doesn't need to be.  He fires from the hip, aiming to take the guy's head off.
 Again the man ducks out of the way, leaving an explosion of splinters behind him as he kicks free just in time to save his skin!
 "Shoot me, willya?" he shouts, as you hear the hammer of his own junker click back!
  Alan_Cohen rolls to his feet as he hears the hammer of the drunk's pistol click back, diving to cover of the nearby bar. "Get out of here!" he extorts the other patrons, and snaps off another shot at the troublemaker.
 The shot echoes with a metallic clink as the junker pops into two pieces as it flies out of the man's hand!
 "Aaah!" he cries out, clutching his hand.
  Alan_Cohen stands deliberately, gun still extended.
  "Feeling a bit...calmer?"
  Alan_Cohen punctuates the last word by pulling back his revolver's hammer.
 The man pants, glaring up at him with raw hate behind the cloud of whiskey.
 "Hold on, son," a voice calls from the doorway across the room.
 "Enough bullets for today, I reckon," the old man says as he steps into the bar, uncoiling a length of thin hemp rope.
  Alan_Cohen holsters his pistol without flourish after decocking his gun.
  "I should hope so."


Uta was born in Mid-World, which made her somewhat of a rarity among the residents of the Devar-Toi. Most of the other Breakers came from Earth of one shade or another, and she could count the number of people she knew who were born under the Beams on one hand. Despite that, she has seen enough movies at the Gem Theater to recognize the when and where that she finds herself in. It's the
Americaside that so many of the others talked about, the place she saw in shared communion, and while another girl from a backwater town on the edge of Lud might have been scared witless over the sight of all the speeding metal machines and clanging sirens, she knew this was no afterlife.
 Uta stands at the end of the tracks, her head panning upwards, viewing the clouded sky of the Americaside. Her feet have grown hard and calloused from the rail, her shoes fallen apart many spikes ago. Stepping forward, off the rail for the first time. The first civilization she has seen comes rushing towards her, passing within a foot of her nose and passing by with a flat tone blaring.
This is no safe place to stand, she realizes. And tries to find sanctuary among the buildings.
 Uta watches as the steel monstrosity continues on, like a great worm, until the end of the train, an engine much the same as the front passes by. She is finally given the view of Americaside.
As she moves farther inward, she realizes that her outfit, a comfortable thing called a tea-shirt and a pair of jeans (and by the Beam, did she ever think she would wear a pair of pants like a man? No, say true!) is out of place here, where the men are dressed in suits even in the hot summer sun, and the women are in long, unadorned dresses. An era of poverty, then.
Many of the words on the signs around her are unreadable as scribbles.
 Uta walks through the area, her eyes feasting upon the many new sights and smells. Even the very earth under her feet feels different, heavy with the emotions of the people who tread upon the ground. Her steps lead her forward in no particular direction, hoping to find something, anything that seems familiar.
She passes under a dangling light-switch suspended from a cable above her head, one similar to the one that still hung above the High Street of River Crossing, and enters a more quiet region of the town. Here, statues clothed in dresses and suits stand behind tall glass windows, and a few men in suits and hats rush forward, out into the street and the hot sun quickly and reluctantly. A horseless carriage passes by, and as she begins to turn and look at it a shine in her mind screams danger, and as the driver comes into view past the High Rest Hotel she ducks behind it, letting him pass by. It was them. The can-toi, in their human faces.
"Hey, you, miss!" someone calls to her; a man in a blue suit with a star on it like a sheriff. "What's with the costume? Is this some kind of gag?"
 Uta breathes heavily behind her cover, her instincts yelling to flee.... until the lawman bellows out to her, making her lose all sense of staying here, replacing her thoughts only with a desire to flee, she bolts, going anywhere but here.
 Uta lets herself indulge in her desire, her feet pushing off the baked concrete as she runs away from the Can-Toi and their human agent.
"Hey! Come back here!" he shouts, and the tweeting of a whistle soon follows!
The sound of the whistle echoes through the alley behind the High Rest Hotel as Uta runs, nearing a chained fence, without the barbs of the gates guarding Thunderclap.
 Uta pushes against the fence, her fingers and toes finding grip between the holes in the barricade as she scurries up, lifting herself over the top and dropping into a roll. She picks herself off the ground and continues running.
On the far side, past a boarded-up building with the mystery word TYPEWRITERS painted on one visible window, she spies a familiar sign ringed with flashing spark-lights, one she's seen plenty of times before: CINEMA.
As she nears the building, she sees a garish red carriage, edged with yellow trim idle by a block down and slow as it passes out of sight.
 Uta stops in her tracks at seeing the carriage, years of torment from the Great Wolf freezing her limbs in place in residual fear.
Another tweet of a whistle sounding from behind Uta brings her tremoring mind back to the situation at hand, her eyes see only one place to hide from this Americaplace. The Cinema, a favorite place of Cutter, who told her of the moving pictures many times as they talked into the night. Her feet lead on.
The engine swells in volume as the carriage backs up and turns toward her, revving and roaring with a fury that she cannot believe those around her don't quake in fear of! The engine's howl cuts through the center of her mind, hissing and bellowing, nearly casting her off her feet as she runs for the doorway!
 Uta feels as her head is impacted by the sound of the engine, her own subconscious taking control of the situation in her momentary lapse in judgement, her mind actively attempting to resist against the riders of the carriage.
Something seems to snap, like a circuit popping somewhere inside her skull, and though her mind is locked the alien thoughts of the can-toi still swarm about her like mosquitoes!
 Uta continues to flee into the cinema, her only thoughts lay on freedom, knowing what pain the Can-Toi would bring, her mind untethers, fighting against the influence of the Can-Toi.
As she enters the dim building she hears the sound of carriage doors slamming just before the cinema's own door swings shut with a clap. Around her, a crowd of picture-goers mill around, oblivious to her for the moment...
 Uta looks up at the screen, her eyes locked upon the animated short of a coyote riding a rocket as it chases after a roadrunner. Her mind, still teeming with the Can-Toi influences, takes a darker turn as she feels the shadow closing in on her, attempting to grasp her in his hands... but the roadrunner escapes, just in time!
Her own mind reinforced by the Coyotes stupidity and the roadrunners success, she regains control of her mind, pushing against the slithering wedge of her pursuers.
Behind her, the door of the theater proper bangs open, and a shapes are briefly silhouetted against the glare of the outside for a moment before the room is cast back into darkness. "Look out, asshole," you hear one of them bark to someone in the rows behind you.
 Uta lets out a chuckle as the Coyote runs into a large cliff, her eyes glisten with memories of Cutter. She remembers him as he talked for hours about the silver screen, and the drawn cartoons that were always his favorite.
 Uta hears as the doors burst open, and quickly squeezes her way past a large obese man into the seat beside him, hoping that she wasn't seen by the men.
"Come on out, kid," one of them calls, prompting someone in the row ahead of you to turn around and call back "Hey, do you mind?"
"Shut your trap," another of the can-toi growls, before muttering to the others, "Check the other theater."
She feels their gaze drift over her...
and like a hawk cruising the thermals, their shadow cuts out the light of the projector for one long moment...
before passing by. A moment later the door bangs open and closed again, just as the first cartoon ends with a closing ring of red.
 Uta takes a large, deep breath, her freedom is assured for the time being as she feels the last of the foreign tendrils leave her mind.


"Let's go, Tucker," the screw says as he raps on Raymond's bars with his club. "Time to get acquainted with the Mile. I heard they're not even gonna bother setting out spare shirts for you, that's how fast you're gonna be in the chair. I hope you burn a long time, you goddamned carnie asshole. My brother's kid died because of you."
 Behind Walton two other screws stand ready, each holding a set of irons. "No funny business or you get my club, hear me?" Walton asks, readying himself as the other men step into the room with their irons.
 Raymond sits on the edge of his cot, head down. You might have thought he was in prayer, but Raymond had never asked for services, nor even a bible to while away the time. When the two guards step in with the irons, he simply stands: a huge slab of a man, no giant, but thickly corded from a lifetime of labor. He doesn't spare Walton a glance. Instead, he raises his arms out in front of him, wrists together, and offers them to be  chained. "Them people didn't die 'cause of me," he murmurs.
 "Give 'em hell, Tucker!" one of the other cons yells as the guards escort you slowly down the cellblock floor and out into the yard. The dark, rainy afternoon takes a turn for the worse as they're loading him into the boxy truck, when the wind picks up and spatters thick wet raindrops that seem too cold for the summer season.
 As they fasten him onto the metal bench of the truck and slam the doors, the crack of thunder echoes the clang of metal, reverberating through the enclosed space and making the hair on Raymond's neck stand on end.
 A hand slaps the side of the truck twice and he hears someone shout, but the sound is muffled, indistinct. A second later he is jarred sideways as the truck starts forward, rolling over the bumpy, mud-forming ground and out the gates, the first time he's been outside the walls of the Shank since the trial.
 Ten minutes into the ride, the brakes squeal loudly enough for him to hear as he feels the truck slow and dip to one side, and from inside the cab the voices of the driver and the other guard resound as the passenger shouts "Watch out, watch out!"
 Another significant jolt of pain runs up Raymond's tailbone as the truck bounces and rights itself fully, and the engine guns as it speeds up again. "You still back there, pal?" one of the screws laughs as he calls back.
 As he laughs, the tiny window in the back door of the truck lights up with a blinding flash that is followed instantly by thunder, brightening up the hollow space of the truck and making Raymond's chains seem to glow for a moment. 
 The truck slows and speeds up again, as the tires bounce over a rutted road, when suddenly the window flashes with lightning again and he hears one of the screws shout "Holy God!" before momentum pulls him cruelly up and forward against his bonds as the truck pitches sideways and rolls over!
  Raymond grits his teeth, crying out through them as the chains cut into his arms as legs, his whole world lurching to the side with a thunderous slam! For a moment, all he can do is cough. Pain lances through his limbs and he shivers at the cold water spattering his face. The doors have been thrown open!
  Raymond throws himself at the opening. The thick chains are slack between his wrists and ankles; the simple hooks that bound him to the bench broke in the wreck, allowing him to stumble into the heavy mud on the side of the road. Lightning flashes again, bringing back memories of that night...
  Raymond can still see the crooked teeth of that old peddler, Gaunt, his lips past over them in a feral smile. 'I do not know how you survived,' Gaunt had shouted over the roar of the conflagration and the wail of police sirens, 'But mark my words, you will ride the lightning. And I will collect what I am due.'"
  Raymond flinches from the flash of lightning and the crack of thunder, then starts to stumble off towards the woods.
 As he does, he sees what happened: the hood of the truck fairly glows with residual heat, and underneath the metal is blackened from a lightning strike that set the engine ablaze. Beside it, the police car that marked the tail of his procession sits aimed sideways, and the two men inside climb out just in time to see him splash across the field toward the treeline!
 In his mind he can only picture what the bodies of the driver and the other screw look like.
 As he stumbles toward the tall pines illuminated in stark relief by another flash of lightning, one of the men behind him fires off a shot and shouts something, but whatever it is is quickly blotted out by the driving wind! As Raymond slips and rights himself again, he hears another crack of a pistol!
  Raymond pretends not to see the tree splintered by the bullet somewhere off to his right. He zig-zags through the clawing branches, hoping desperately that nothing will tangle on his leg chains.
Raymond pounds the ground as fast as his chained legs will take him, plunging deeper into the rain-soaked woods. With the storm growing in intensity, all he can hope to do is lose them amongst the trees. Find a muddy ditch to hide in and wait for them to call off the chase until they can bring more men and dogs. By then, hopefully, he can be long gone.
  "Come on out, Tucker!" one of the screws calls, shining a flashlight dangerously close to where Raymond's muddy footprints still sit in the stark relief of another lightning blast! It strikes the tree just off to his right, sending him reflexively hurling away as a plume of tremendous heat bubbles out! "Jesus God!" comes a call from behind him!
  Raymond shields his eyes against the blast of lightning. Like some heathen god out of antiquity is out to cook him alive there in the woods. But in that flash, he sees his opportunity! The screw goes stumbling off to one side and Raymond leaps out, striking at the dazed man with a fist made heavy from the prison chains!
  Raymond feels the solid thump of fist on flesh, and in a trice he loops the chains around the screw's neck and pulls him back against his chest. "I've got your man!" he shouts. "Don't come no closer, or I swear I'll bust his neck!"
  As the hard rain spatters like bombs in the mud around him, he squints through the river washing down his face and sees the other screw's flashlight bob, cutting up the shadows of the trees but keeping its distance. "Don't be a dummy, Tucker!" he yells, half-heard over the pounding of thunder. "They're waiting for us at the bridge not five miles from here! When we don't show this place will be swarming with men!"
  Lightning crashes again, and the man in Raymond's grip struggles and begins to slip free of the chain!
  Raymond tightens his grip, choking off the guard he's got against him. He doesn't want the man to make a peep if he can. "I don't plan on being anywhere near here nor that bridge, and if I got to take this here man with me to make sure you don't follow, then so be it!" he shouts, over the roar of wind and rain.
  Raymond starts to drag the man backwards, away from the road, the bridge not five miles from here, and the other guard.
  "Huh- huh-" At first he thinks the man is choking to death, but Raymond quickly recognizes the hoarse expulsion as laughter! "You ain't goin' nowhere, boy," the man croaks out, gasping as he pulls the chain away from his neck far enough to take another wracking breath. Clancy! Over here!" he manages to cry out, just as the wind drops! The flashlight jigs and moves, but in the lightning flash Raymond's eyes can barely track it!
  Raymond tightens the chain once more, pulling it taut against the screw's neck. "No. Ain't gonna go back. Ain't gonna die on the Mile. I got to atone for what I did, but not in no electric chair. If I can't save my soul, maybe I can save theirs," he hisses in the guard's ear. But he's speaking to a deaf audience. The man has gone slack in his grip.
  Raymond leaves the unconscious guard on the ground for Clancy to find. Maybe that will be enough of a distraction for him to get away. Another crack of lightning...and then he's gone, vanishing into the dark of the forest. Though where he'll end up, he can't be sure.
  Two hours later, as the storm finally blows itself out and the black clouds are replaced by a scrim of cover over a huge, low moon, Raymond emerges from the trees into a bowl-shaped valley. Moonlight reflects its yellow-red haze off of a lilypad-studded pond, and as the mist clears around him he sees a road that cuts through the pond, five feet above the water. And on the road, a car sits idling, fuming, rumbling... a bright, garish yellow, with darker trim.

 ============

  Wagon wheels creak, horses snort nervously, and the muttered curses of the teamsters sitting on the bucka boards above Alan's head drift down to his ears, uneasy talk of things in the woods here. Unclean spirits, strange beasts, mayhap even harriers. Tall Francis, the paymaster of this expedition, whistles to Alan, getting his attention. "Ride up the draw and scout ahead. These woods have an ill look to them, and ye can carry yourself better than the wagons."
  Alan doesn't bother to answer, though he'd really rather not do as told - scouts, in his experience, have a way of getting shot. Then again, broken men have a way of starving. So...
  Alan spurs his horse forward, hand resting on his gun underneath his poncho, ready to draw down at the first sight of trouble.
  "I tell you," he says, speaking to his horse, "I need to find a safer line of work."
  "One that mostly involves fucking and drinking."
  The horse does not laugh at this piece of wit.
  The horse, threaded true and without so much as a blemish of mutation, lopes easily past the three weighed-down wagons and carries him up the draw around the trees, out of sight of the caravan and into a chill, damp washout formed by earth collapsing in on itself in a distant age. As he slows the horse, a piece of one of the Old People's strange horseless vehicles laying rusting on its side  catches his eye. As he looks, a single bumbler pokes its head out from behind the dirty glass of the bucka's cab and looks at him inquisitively.
  Alan pulls up his horse briefly - you don't see billy-bumblers out west like you do in the barony proper. Alan stares at the curiosity and it stares back, nonplussed.
  "What, looking for food?"
  "I don't have anything, 'fraid."
  Alan wonders briefly why he's talking to a billy-bumbler when he should be scouting, but then, billy-bumblers don't carry guns. Leastwise that he's ever seen.
  The bumbler stares at him impassively, then chuffs out a low, barking "Fraid!" and ducks down below the door of the metal bucka. A second later, Alan hears it scrambling out some hole on the far side, and a quiet rustling as it disappears into the clinging brambly bushes at the side of the path.
  Alan snorts. Not a bad analysis, if he's honest with himself. Giving a brief stare to the rusted-out hulk - it doesn't look interesting or valuable - he spurs his horse on, more slowly than before. While he'd much rather deal with billy-bumblers than whatever makes this stretch of woods feel so fell, that's not, after all, what he's being paid for.
  The branches seem to reach a little closer into the washout's trail, until they're picking and scraping across his sleeves and pants like hungry, blind beggars. The path bends again, a sharp turn left, when suddenly his horse rears up and whinnies! As he fights to get it back on all fours before it shies him off, he turns and sees what spooked it-
  Some creatures withered and died in the wreckage of the Great Poisoning that scoured Mid-World nearly clean of life, but not this one. It grew, as its kind did, as the great hydraxes of Garlan were said to do throughout their thousand-year lives. But unlike the serpents that ate the stars in that tale, the great snake grew fat on deerflesh, on bumblers it could catch unaware, and occasionally,  the things that walked and spoke and brought the delicious horses that reeked of panic.
  As Alan watches, it slithers into the washout behind him and raises its head up, eight feet off the ground, a skull larger than his horse's.

  ==================================

  Somewhere else...
  "And don't come back, you goddamn bread-stealing bitch! There's no charity here! Tell those other goddamn sumbitch street rats there's no truck for them around here!" the man shouts, flinging a broken chunk of brick at the young woman as she flees empty-handed. The brick impacts against the sidewalk next to her feet with a sharp crack, sending a splinter of rock bouncing off her ankle and
  spurring her to put a little more distance between herself and the next throw.
  Clothing might have been easy to procure in this when/where, but with no coin to her name the locals want nothing to do with her hungry belly.
  Uta has been wandering the streets of this seemingly endless city for the past two moons, trying to understand the way of the people here. Her stomach grumbles at her, demanding to be fed. Unlike the meat that came into the hall of Devar-Toi, or the animals that strayed in front of her on the rails, there is little here to eat that isn't behind transparent barriers.
  The rats are good eating, but cunning beyond their size. Used to a hard life among the city. Uta has more than a few cuts from scurrying after a particularly large rat that evaded her. She slows down, out of range of the woman and her aggression, trying to find where her next meal may be.
  As she looks at a row of cakes behind a glass window with the strange word CONFECTIONS on it, the glass reflects s figure across the street - one of the men in the uniforms that tried to capture her before she fled to the cinema!
  Uta walks by the protected pastries, a shock of fear stopping her in place as the distorted blue uniform becomes apparent. She tries to keep calm, knowing that these men prey on fear as the guards of Devar-Toi did.
  As she watches his warped reflection in the glass loom into view, she feels the rise of panic in her throat, and stuffs it back down into the cold depths below... and when she looks again, the man has already passed her and walks down the sidewalk, unconcerned. When she looks back, the cake-store's proprietor steps out of his shop into the street and waves at a man in a delivery-bucka, then  crosses the street to talk with him, leaving the store unattended...
  Uta only has to watch the man for a moment to realize the mistake the man made. She goes through the doorway of the store, helping herself to the man’s unprotected goods. If he was truly trying to protect his bread, he wouldn't have left it unattended.
  As she grabs hold of a soft, delicious-smelling pastry, she hears a noise from the back of the store! Glancing through the window, she sees the proprietor speaking with the posse-officer, and as she dips behind the counter as they both look inside, a burly man in an apron knocks the back door of the front area, looking just over Uta's head!
  Uta feels an overwhelming desire to flee well up through her body from her legs. Indulging in the fear, she lets her instincts take over, attempting to flee from this trapped situation before she gets caught in the mouth of the cat.
  Uta clutches on her ill-gotten spoils, trying to sneak her way past the counter and through the door she came in.
  As she slips low to the ground, the man's flour-caked shoes turn as he steps forward, blocking her behind the counter - as long as he keeps the door to the back room open there's no way she can slip past!
  As if he heard the thought in her mind, his feet slide on the tiled floor and he turns, looking right where she is-
  Uta holds her breath, grasping at the ground for some sort of rock to throw to distract the guard, her hand finally grasping one as she tosses it past the door, hoping to get the man to look the other way.
  Her fingers close around a weighty, smooth stone that from the scuffs on it and the bottom edge of the door she imagines is used to prop it open on warm summer days like this one. Just as he looks she tosses it across the floor and ducks behind the door. An instant later he lets the door close and runs toward the sound shouting "Goddamn rats! I hear you! I hear-"
  Uta doesn't let the moment she created pass her by. Using the sound of the door to cover her movement, she makes her way around the counter, only stopping momentarily to quickly swipe a large rounded pastry, covered in a multitude of colors, before continuing on with her escape.
  Meanwhile...
  From above, to the crows wheeling in the clouded sky above, the figure riding hard on the saddle, driving the horse through a rapidly narrowing canyon of gray stone fringed with a lunatic beard of brambles and thin, scratching branches could be anyone. It's only when we dip down, below the brim, that we notice the fine features, the clear eye and smooth chin, that mark this as something else. A remnant of the court-ladies of Arthur Eld's day, perhaps, flows through her veins, carried down over the centuries and unwittingly spilled by her harrowed father two decades ago. She rides with a purpose, spurring the horse under her on... but when she rounds the corner and emerges into the narrow clearing to witness a thirty-foot snake leer downward and strike at the man on the horse...
  Alan controls his horse's terror even as he tries to get a grasp on his own. Falling back on his instincts, he manages this feat - mostly. His right hand blurs out from under his poncho, clutching and cocking his well-worn revolver even as his left hand blurs down to his waist, drawing his machete-like knife in a defensive swipe and the abomination rearing to strike. His face a grimace of fear, Alan points his revolver and hastily fires.
  The gun is in his hand and firing before he even has time to think about what the hand is doing - but the snake recoils as if slapped as the bullet rips into it, drawing a gout of steaming brownish blood as it hisses and drops to the earth, slithering toward him quickly with its maw engorged, racing for the horse and the painful thing on it!
  Alan 's arm glides down as if on well-oiled bearings, pulling back the hammer on his revolver and firing again even as he spurs his horse to kick out at the snake. A horse can be replaced. His leg…
  ... might be the least of his worries, for as the second bullet slides off the sharp ridge of bone along the monster's skull it slices forward, knocking his horse to the ground and pinning him against it with its jaws! Alan can feel its thick dagger teeth poking into his thigh as the saddle begins to bend more, letting the jaws close further...
  Alan swears in agony as he falls from the horse, the monstrous snake drawing a sizable chunk of meat from his right thigh as he tumbles to a position of vulnerability. The snake looms overhead, but Alan's instincts haven't abandoned him yet - he swipes out with his knife, forcing the beast back, and fires another shot from his prone position.
  The creature seems to have at least a dim understanding that this prey is dangerous - as he slashes it darts backward, hissing, as its mouth wages wide again, but just as he fires the thing's huge coiled tail suddenly unfurls, knocking into the horse and sending his shot wild!
  As he scrambles backward into a better-defended position, it slithers around the side of the dying horse and looks into his eyes with its cold, unflinching gaze!
  Alan can't scramble back fast enough - what armor against fear his instincts had provided had failed against the rolling mass of muscle and death before him, and his attempts to gather his half-forgotten gunslinger's lessons simply filtered through his mind's fingers. Stumble-sliding back, trying to keep out of range, Alan fires again; once, twice.
  LaRoux slows down as she approaches the scene, rearing back on the reins to get her horse to stop, causing it to rear up slightly. "Turn and face me you son a bitch!" She cries out as she draws her right iron, flicking the hammer back with the thumb in a hasty one handed shot at the massive serpent.
  The giant snake looms up over him as he realizes his gun is almost out of bullets, and as it opens its fanged mouth he sees a small shape impaled on one fang, wedged up near its gum, and is that part of a bumbler? Yes it was, say true. Eaten by a snake with a bumbler on its tooth, cry pard- but as the woman shoots a round into its fleshy back, it turns its head only for a second to slap its tail at her!
  Alan doesn't bother to try to take in the new arrival - he's not that far-gone yet - instead using the brief lull in the loathsome monster's attention to lurch to his feet, crossing his firing arm over his knife-hand and shooting once again, preparing to lash out with his coiled arm should the beast strike.
  The bullet rips through its flesh, but there's just so much meat and so little of it seems vital to the horrid thing's survival! Its disgusting watery brownish blood splatters against the trees, and yet it darts forward again, hesitantly but confidently!
  With only one round left in the chamber and death knocking with increasing volume, Alan tries a trick he's used before - a desperate trick, but better than nothing.  Clutching the edge of his poncho in his knife-hand, he awkwardly whips it out, trying to obstruct the beast's view as he fires the last round, tosses his knife to stick blade-down in the mud, and pops open the cylinder.
  LaRoux thumbs back the hammer on her gun as she draws her other, thumbing it to ready as well. She fires both into the covered face of the snake simultaneously , gritting her teeth as she lets the lead fly.
  Two sharp cracks ring out through the misty air, and as they FWIP FWIP into the back of the beast's skull it surges sideways as if it had been electrocuted, knocking a tree over and flapping its midsection against the ground hard enough to shake you both!
  After a long minute it finally lies still.
  Alan is already halfway through reloading when the battle haze raises...and finds the snake dead. Snapping his revolver closed, Alan stoops to draw his knife from the dirt and raises a hand to the mysterious young woman.
  "Hile."
  LaRoux spins her right iron once and holsters both gun, suppressing a smile. She nods her hat. "Hile."
  LaRoux swings a leg over and slides off her horse, approaching the massive snake, kicking it with her boot. She looks the beast over. "Hm."
  Alan watches the woman warily, stooping to pick up his poncho and swirl it back over his shoulders.
  "That was some impressive gunwork.  I suppose I should thank you."
  "I'm called Alan."
  Alan extends a gloved hand; fair enough to show gratitude where it's due.
  The poncho, for what it's worth, is only a little stained with the thing's diarrhea-like blood.
  LaRoux pulls the fancier iron from her holster as she turns away from the snake, flipping open the loading gate and dropping two spent shells. "I am La Roux." She extends a hand, gripping his tightly and returning to reloading. "You are welcome, though I 'ought ask why you were out here battling such a creature on your own."
  Rubbing his bleeding thigh, Alan gives a shrug, "Such is the trouble with being a scout."
  "Though I didn't expect a monster out of the past.  Maybe a harrier or two."
  "A scout?" She perks up suddenly as she holsters her iron. "What of?"
  "I'm working with a merchant convoy at the moment.  I've got iron and they pay, so it's mutually beneficial for us to travel together."
  "Though I'm thinking I just earned a pay raise..."

  ================

  Surviving in this world isn't so tough after all, it seems. Despite what these people seem to think about privation and hardships, most of them wouldn't last a week toiling in River Crossing, and despite her years of soft treatment and easy living in the Devar-Toi, Uta's not doing too badly for herself. Sitting in the shade, with the last of the sweet-cakes resting happily in her stomach, watching some children play a game with a stout wooden stick and a white ball...
  CRACK! One of them hits it, and the ball sails into the air and bounces on the grass near Uta's feet. One of them, a hundred feet away, calls to her, and she understands enough of it to know what he wants.
  Uta looks down towards the white sphere, then up to the yelling boy, making the connection that he wants her to throw it at him. She gets up from relaxing, picking up the ball and gives it a good throw.
  As she steps out into the sun, it warms her, a feeling so unlike the artificial light that hung above the Devar-Toi, but as she turns back a chill turns her arms into gooseflesh - on the wooden fence next to the park bench are several signs, among them a lost pet poster, half-covered in wandering spirals and strange glyphs.
  HELLO, MY NAME IS UTA, AND I AM A SMART CAT
  SOMETIMES I RUN AWAY
  IF YOU SEE ME, CALL MORRIS 5-813
  Uta feebly throws the ball towards the child, her eyes plastered to the poster that shares her name.
  The poster hangs crookedly on the fence, surrounded by a corona of others. Most of them she can't read, printed as they are in the strange language of this place, but one of them has a picture, like a frozen image of a movie, with a man in a striped outfit.
  Uta approaches the poster carefully, her eyes darting along the area as she gets a tingle up her back that she is being watched, even now.
  As she scans the gravel lot leading to this tame grassy field, she hears footsteps running toward her...
  Uta turns to face the footsteps, her senses already running on overdrive from the fear of the poster.
  As she turns, perhaps more quickly than she'd have liked to show, a young boy of 12 stops short a few feet from her, seemingly taken back by her aura of panic. "Whoa! Hey lady, you OK?" he asks, the words coming out in the thick accent that makes talking to these people so difficult.
  Uta relaxes as she realizes it’s just the boy she passed the ball to. Thinking for a moment before speaking, she tries to use the words of this world as best she can, trying to explain that she is fine.
  Uta crouches down, speaking to the boy on his level, "Can you help me?"
  The boy takes a step backward as Uta sinks to the ground, and looks around, at the field, at the posters.
  "How come those posters have that stuff on them?" 
  Uta glances at the red scrawls across the poster for a moment, "It’s a message to the bad men, telling them to try and catch the good kitty."
  Uta tries to pull the conversation away from the posters, knowing the allure of the red is strong, "Do you always play with the ball here? You must know all the good hiding places, right?"
  He nods his head without speaking, confused at what's going on, the whirls of ka around him tugging uncomfortably at the back of his mind. "Did you break out of jail?" he whispers.
  "I had to get away from the great wolf. He was mean to me and others. In his hunger, he even ate my friends."
  "You have to help me hide. The bad men work for the Wolf, and they want to take me to him so he can eat me."
  At the mention of the Wolf, his eyes widen, and his hand drifts to the object at his side. What Uta first took for some kind of strange bag is really a wide leather glove, no doubt part of the game they were playing. As he weakly knocks one fist into it, he says "My dad might be able to help you. He works for the Park Service. One time he shot a wolf."
  Uta shakes her head, "No no no, he won't be able to help. The wolf is too big and bad to fight. I have to hide from him."
  He nods again, and as the other children call out from across the field, perhaps at him, perhaps not, he says "I know a place where you can hide."
  Uta nods, standing up and holding out her hand.
  He takes it, the first friendly hand she's been offered in this world.

  ================

  LaRoux pulls a hatchet from her belt and turns back to the beast, getting to her knees. "I was riding from Squires Leap. I heard a few men, I suppose they're of John Farson's posse." She says as she rears the blade back, forcing the creatures jaws open with her boot. She brings it down on the snake's gums, next to one of the fangs, hacking away at the flesh.
  "Can't say I've seen any of the sort.  You hear rumors, but they're usually just that."
  "These days, any harrier is claiming to speak for Farson."
  Alan wanders over to examine his horse.
  "Ay. Well I reckon this is not just empty boasting." She wiggles the fang free, tearing it from the creature. She hacks off the excess gum and wipes it and her hands clean on any grass nearby. "They say they're awaiting a shipment of some sort. Weapons." Josef hefts the fang in one hand as she puts the hatchet back on her belt.
  The fang is pearled, smooth, encased in a thin layer of transparent enamel that makes it shine like glass in the wan light of the clouded clearing.
  "Sounds believable."
  "You want my advice, though, steer clear of the Good Man's business."
  "Nothing good comes of working for or against him."
  "Oh I know that much, sai. In fact, I plan to stop this shipment should I have enough men to help me." She places the tooth in her saddle bag, looking back. "I reckon you need a ride; that horse doesn't look like it'll be doing much now."
  Alan stares at the corpse of his horse.
  "No, I figure not."
  "As to your offer - I plan to see my contract out, first.  We're actually headed for Squire's Leap.  Funnily enough."
  Alan shrugs
  "I figure I owe you at least something after today.  I'd rather not contemplate being snake food."
  LaRoux nods smiling. "Ay, well, helping me investigate it will be enough, I'm not one to milk favors, sai." She mounts her horse.
  LaRoux scoots forward some. "We ought make our way back to your party, lest we want to draw the attention of another snake."
  Alan scratches his goatee thoughtfully, "Yes. First things first."
  Meanwhile, back in the land of opportunity
  "Well?" the boy asks, as the two of them stand at the edge of the huge drainage tunnel. The circular cave-like entrance rounds up five feet above their heads, and stretches off into the dark like the bore of a gun, carved perfectly straight by the machinework of these Old People. A thin stream of water runs through the very base of the tunnel, but the stonework (or whatever the strange gray material it's made of might be) on either side of the trail is dry. "What do you think?"
  "It's perfect! No one else knows it’s here, right?"
  "Yeah, we're not supposed to come down here because of Tommy Ostermann who drowned last year, but you can swim, right?" he asks, swatting a mosquito on his arm.
  " 'Sides, it takes a lot of rain to make this place flood."
  "I can swim. I just don't like to get wet." Uta looks around the tunnel, trying to spot the best area to set up camp.
  "So, um... is the Wolf a..." and he says a word that she doesn't know. Where-wolf.
  "Where-wolf?" She ponders for a few moments, "The wolf looks like a big man, but he has the head of a wolf. But he also has a man face too."
  "The only person who was as big as the Wolf was Hamil, and even Hamil was scared of the Wolf."
  "Where were these people?" the boy asks, sitting down on a big rock in the sunshine across the open draw from the tunnel. 
  "Where did you come from?"
  "I came from River's Crossing. But I don't remember it. I left the Wolves cave. It is called Devar-Toi. The wolf got people like me from all over. We worked and worked for the Wolf. It was hard work, and many of my friends died. I left there, and followed the tracks where the meat came from. That led me here."
  "I've lived here almost my whole life. We moved here from Farmington when I was two, but I don't remember that."
  "Say!" he says as his face brightens. "You should come to my house for dinner! I bet my mom would like you."
  Uta thinks for a few moments, assessing the danger of the situation and finding it to be low risk. "She would?"
  "Uh-huh!" he affirms. "Hey, uh... what's your name, anyway?"
  Uta realizes that she never introduced herself to the boy, "They call me Uta!"
  "Oo-tah? Is that a Russian name?" he asks. "It's not, is it."
  "My name's Mark." His name, at least is familiar to her. She knew a man named Mark once, in the Devar Toi. He was from Mid-World like she. He died on the fence, slumped over as the electricity convulsed through him, taheen closing in on three sides.
  "It's not Russian. It’s my name!"
  Uta gets lost in recollection over the name Mark for a few moments, snapping back to reality as the scene of Marks death stops replaying inside of her head.
  As she does, she realizes the boy said something to her.
  "You said something?"
  "I said, whatever, Ooo-ta. You coming or not?" Mark asks as he rises from the rock slab. A tiny glimmer of mineral on the rock under him catches the light and shines as he slides off of it.
  Uta follows after Mark, curious to meet this "Mom" of his.

  =====================

  LaRoux reins in her horse to allow Alan to keep up with the beast's footfalls as they press back toward the caravan and the safety of numbers, unwilling to spend more time isolated in this forest than they must.
  "What happened, boy?" Tall Francis calls to him as he sees Alan come into the path on foot, with a woman on horse at his heels.
  "We heard gunshots."
  "Snake. Biggun."
  "Dead now.  Cost me my horse."
  Alan doesn't mention that the insult also included an injury - his thigh.
  "I'm not keen on sitting here and jawing about it, Francis.  Let's get this gods-damned trip over with."
  "This, by the way, is LaRoux."
  Alan nods at the young horse-bound woman.
  LaRoux lights the small pipe she has clenched in her teeth, taking a deep puff of rolling tobacco and exhaling. She nods to Francis. "A pleasure. I have something to ask of you, sai."
  "Snake?" he asks, as some of the others cast their own eyes over LaRoux. "Speak, woman." the wagonmaster says to her.
  LaRoux fishes the fang from her bag and displays it. "Snake. Anyhow, I was riding from Squires Leap. I heard men speaking of Farson, and of a shipment of weapons."
  "Say true, senora," a voice from behind the two says. As LaRoux turns, she sees three men, two of whom were the pair she spied at the cantina in Squire's Leap, the third... the third she knows already.
  "Callow bitch!" the man says, grinning. "Thought you'd ridden out of my life, had you, beautiful?" he asks. "I should hope not. Not before I return what pleasure you gave me," he says, raising his pistol. "Your guns, sai," he says to her.
  LaRoux grins at the voice. "Ah, so you've kept at it, eh manto? Have you shared the story of how you were gunned down by a woman to your trailmates? Or should I bring them up to speed."
  Alan 's hand has slipped inside his poncho, as if to scratch an itch; the look of dumb curiosity on his face is feigned. Even a failed gunslinger can smell blood in the air.
  LaRoux removes her hat and hangs it on part of the saddle, keeping her hands away from her irons.
  "Of course, dear lady!" he says, smiling like a rabid animal. "Long have the nights been when I've regaled my boys with tales of the blonde bitch who wishes she had been counted among Arthur Eld's jilly-wives!" he laughs.
  LaRoux smirks and leans forward. "Oh sure, and you the bastard who couldn't bed her. I believe I left you face up and bleeding on the floor of that bar, right after I struck you down with but a single shot. You may have lived but your honor is long gone, any man you command now is either a fool or in the dark..."
  "I think you're deluding yourself, angel. I'm just a middling-man in this business. Not a one of us questions whom we serve."
  "You, with the poncho," he calls to Alan. "Get some rope for our friend."
  "I think not, yon shit," Alan says, in a reasonable facsimile of confidence, "You see, your good man has no pull here.  It's just you.  I suggest you run along back to whatever rat-warren you came from." 
  Alan rests his free hand on his knife - mostly as a distraction.
  LaRoux nods. "Fair and true. I suggest you and anyone else loyal to the 'good' man turn around and ride off, lest you want me to finish what I started."
  At Alan's words the man smiles and nods slightly. "Say true, sai, it's just me out here. The two men at my side are but a figment of my overtaxed imagination. And that fella on the bucka, with the longarm there... he must not know which side his bread is buttered on, eh?" he asks as the other two raise their own harrier guns. Alan's attention flickers for an instant to the man of fifty atop the second wagon, bearing a long, low-bored rifle and watching the exchange nervously.
  LaRoux leans forward and cuts her eyes between the three. "You reckon Ka's on your side, Alan?"
  "No," he says wryly, "But why not find out?"
  LaRoux shrugs. "Such is how the wheel turns, I'm told." She reaches back and grabs her large iron, drawing it and fanning a shot at the man in the center.
  As her gun comes up, the man reacts like a ... well, like a snake- wrenching his horse back, and as Josef fires off a round aimed at his head, it spangs into a dark gray treebranch next to his head, sending a shower of chips fluttering into the air. "Hyaaa! What'd I tell you, boys?" he shouts.
  With that, the three men raise their guns and fire back!
  Alan 's hand emerges from behind the poncho, cocked revolver in hand - his aim moves mechanically from one harrier to the next, snapping off shots in an eyeblink. He hadn't been spending the last two minutes standing around, after all.
  LaRoux fans off the rest of her revolver into the men, taking care to avoid the man with the large gun.
  Between Alan's gun and Josef's, the two men at either side of Farson's middling-man fall, as one wearing a metal helmet with a spike on the dome collapsing like a sack of rotten potatoes off the saddle into the bushes, and the other slumped over sideways as his horse spooks and bolts around in a circle before galloping up the washout away from the scene.
  The middling-man, however, spurs his horse forward and fires at the two on their feet, screaming "HYAAAAA!"
  "And there's Ned's Ice Cream Shack. We should go there tomorrow!" Mark says, before pausing on the street corner. "Hey, what's wrong?" he asks, worried, as his new friend's face suddenly goes blank.
  LaRoux quickly switches to her other gun, holstering the first. She fires a few rounds into the center man, screaming with hot spit and fire.
  He flips off of his horse with the impact, landing on the ground in a twitching pile, clutching the air in front of him with one hand. He coughs, and a gout of blood slaps out like a wave against a pier. For a moment he pounds his boots against the earth, then kicks once, and is still.
  And then they hear it.
  A low, reedy, hissing sound.
  "Hhhhhhhhhhhhhh-"
  Uta stops suddenly, holding her head as the pain of a bullet strikes through her mind-flesh. Her mind strikes out, causing her to shriek in phantom pain.
  LaRoux raises her spent revolver, smoke slowly rising from it. She watches the man die for a moment but is broken from it by the sound. "What is that?"
  "Hhhch-" the man coughs, and twitches again. "You little shits. I see you, you cunt! Get back in your cage, kitty! Bad kitty!" the man on the ground shouts.
  He starts to rise.
  No, that's not quite right.
  He starts to... to move to standing, without moving his body. He simply is standing before them.
  "You little shits. Little ka-blasted shits," the voice inside the man says.
  Alan stands impassively.
  "You don't know when to shut up, do you?"
  "Let me help you with that."
  Alan takes aim with his revolver, firing to blow the abomination's jaw off.
  LaRoux nods "Right...". She fires the last of her rounds into him with a rapid fanning.
  "I'll see you driven before the engines of Gan-befucking-End-World, you little-"
  Uta feels as the voice thunders through her skull, her mind flashes of the rising corpse of a man, dressed in the clothes of a harrier of mid-world. Her mind reinforces itself against the psychic attack, lashing back against the influence.
  Somewhere the Beam slips just a little.
  Alan can't bring himself to call on gunslinger's ceremony - mere words would not avail him - but Cort's lessons were another matter. Taking careful aim, Alan felt the world drain of everything but him and his target - a cloak of cold. He prepared to fire.
  Uta lets the feeling washing over her, the power that rends objects asunder, forming it into a lash and striking out at the fleeting grinning faces that dance about her in the field of black.
  Alan and Josef can feel it, the rising power of psychic energy, a rip in the world as terrible as any thinny, that surrounds them, and the man laughs, as Uta's lash is discarded without a care! "Bad kitty!" he shouts.
  Alan wavers for a brief moment as the dead-thing croons, the very world around him running thin; there are monsters beyond. Then the would-have-been gunslinger's resolve hardens, and he feels the shot - he fires.
  Uta feels around the area, finally noticing other forms appearing among the darkness. Two towers, carrying the steel of the Man Jesus, and another form, but distant, rattling the chains of thunder. She reaches one of the towers, reinforcing its crumbling foundation.
  His aim is true, say thankee, the bullet flies like a home-bound pigeon straight for the thing's forehead, and plunges into it, completing the visage that Uta holds in her mind for the source of all her worldly troubles. The figure staggers backward, driven back by the force of the impact, then slaps a hand to his brow as if to say "Is it that time already?"
  Blood streaming from between his fingers, he peeks out at them and raises his other hand, the one holding the middling-man's gun. "You are not the only ones who kill with your hearts, sais."
  Uta feels the words deadening upon her heart, threatening to crush ka under its immense weight. Mustering up the spirit of fallen breakers, she pushes aside the force. It shatters  the black floor of her mind with the weight of a train.
  A wave of malevolence pours out of him in waves, making their eyes, water, their ears ring...
  Uta looks at the grinning faces about her, manifesting a weapon to rend asunder the grinning smile. A wicked looking blade appears in her hand, raising it above her head, she brings it down upon the nearest smile, shattering the blade and breaking the smile in half, its teeth clattering against the black ground.
  Alan staggers, eyes pulsing and leg in fiery agony; about to collapse, he feels LaRoux steady him, and he prepares to fire again.
  "Bad kitty!" he snorts again, as a fresh wash of blood spurts out of the hole in his head, sending the first shot past Alan wild!
  LaRoux feels panic come over her as she watches the scene before her, eyes watering and teeth gritting in the wake of his outburst. She closes her eyes for a moment, remembering those days after her father’s lessons, sitting in the loft with Barton. The cloak of coldness drapes over her, steeling her reserve, her hands moving on their own and loading her inherited iron. "I do not aim with 
  LaRoux my heart..." she says aloud, confidently, going through the litany until her loading is done, raising the hand again and thumbing the hammer as she finishes. "I kill with my heart."
  The figure spins around and says "No!" as the bullet explodes out of the chamber, driving through the thing's eye and sending it pirouetting around once before it collapses into the wet earth and lies still.
  Uta feels her khef, pulled taut across the border between worlds, suddenly snap back to her like a rubber band to the forehead.
  LaRoux spins the revolver back to her side with a trail of smoke and whispers "Thanks, Bart." under her breath. She draws her poorer iron and opens the chamber, the ejector sending spent shells into the air as she silently reloads. "You okay, Alan, Francis?"
  Alan slumps against the wagon, slowly holstering his revolver.
  "Well, all things considered, I could be worse."
  "She's coming around. Give her some air, people!"
  Uta hears a voice as she swims up from the choking black sea of todash space...
  LaRoux swings a leg over and slides off the horse, walking to the body and taking the iron off his corpse. She looks up at Francis. "...I don't blame you for it, but you ought make better company next time..."
  Uta retches, her gut rebelling against all of the sweets that sat precariously in her stomach no longer. Her vision swells in and out of focus, finally becoming clear enough to see.
  A crowd of people, two ladies in dresses, a man in a suit, two boys of eight or so, and a pair of teenagers, as well as a dog, all circle around her like gravestones, and she sees Mark next to her.
  "Gross!" he cries as she wipes her mouth.
  "Here, young lady," the man in the suit says, handing her a white kerchief.
  Uta sits up, her strength returning slightly as she takes the white kerchief, "I.. I don't feel well at all."
  "Have you been out in the sun?" he asks. "You might have sunstroke. Do you feel well enough to stand?"
  Uta makes her way to her feet, wiping her mouth with the cloth, "Sunstroke?" She is still wavy, but regaining sense.
  "I'm Doctor Caspar," he tells you, taking one hand and helping you up. "Mark here says you were going to his house. Is it far?"
  Uta holds her head, "I don't think so." Uta is steadied by the doctor, regaining her composure, she begins to realize what sort of position is in, surrounded by the people of this Americaplace. Her instincts rise to flee.
   "That's an interesting accent, miss," the man says. "Where are you from?"
 Panic starts to well in Uta's throat, "The river." She looks around, finally spotting Mark, "Let's go visit your mom now, Mark."
  "And rest. I am tired."
  The two of them force a hole through the circle around them, and as Uta fairly leads Mark down the sidewalk away from the others he asks her "What happened? Who's the Walking Man?"

  ======================

  The oiled canvas over the wagon snaps back, and under it lie neat rows of flour sacks. Below them, however, are wooden boxes with faded stenciled marks on them. Words writ in the High Speech like EXPLOSIVE and MORTAR ROUND.
  LaRoux moves one of the sacks and taps a crate. "What's this?"
  Alan furrows his brow, remembering his history lessons. The great old ones, more than any folk, used firecraft as a weapon. Some said that they could destroy cities with a single bomb, but Alan didn't know anything about that.
  "A weapon.  Explosives, do you know of them?"
  Alan taps on the mortar box
  "These were meant to be fired from a sort of gun, called a mortar."
  Alan pries open the explosives box with his knife and peers inside.
  LaRoux nods. "So, this was the shipment then..."
  The nails squeak in protest, finally slipping free as the remaining waggoneers (those not tending to poor Zeke who took a bullet in the leg from one of Farson's men) hover nervously around the two pistoleros.
  Under the board is a rack of dark green shapes, glinting in the light like metal, and their ridges remind LaRoux of pine cones, but Alan has a sinking feeling that he knows exactly what they are.
  Alan 's face clouds over.
  "These are called 'grenades.'  They're a sort of tiny bomb, designed for throwing.  Indoors, in close quarters, they can kill or maim many men at once."
  "They look like pine cones..." She takes one out and looks at it, feeling the weight in her hand. "Hm."
  Alan snatches the thing from LaRoux and sets it gently back in the box
  "If this thing was made by the old ones, it's just as likely to blow your hand off as not."
  LaRoux recoils her hand and glares at him for a second but relaxes, sighing. "Well, this is the shipment then, so what do we do with it?"
  Alan turns to look from LaRoux to the interested waggoneers
  "It's not yer property, boy," Tall Francis says, at last.
  "We're paid to see it through to Squire's Leap, and we will, grenados or not."
  Alan draws iron on Francis, hammer smoothly clicking back.
  "If you're fixing to stick to that plan, the last think you'll EVER see is a bullet burrowing through your eye, sai."
  Alan gestures to the ordinance
  LaRoux places her hand on her own.
  "What you have here could - will - maim countless innocent men and women if they get into the hands of the good man."
  LaRoux nods. "I can't in good faith allow that to happen, not with what I heard."
  "Were you paying attention to the monstrosity we just killed, or did the shit you have for brains drop down into your eyes?"
  Alan pauses
  "We need to destroy this.  All of it."
  "He speaks plain, Francis," the man with the longiron says, looking up from his watch over Zeke.
  "If you deliver this shipment, innocents will be slain. That much I know..."
  "Though..." Josef mutters, getting an idea.
  "If Farson's men are waiting ahead for this, it might be smart to save one. If there's too many it could be worth it...."

=============================

Raymond slowly approaches the automobile at an angle from behind. Painted up like that, no way it's a local. Maybe someone from the cities further south, or a tourist on their way through the countryside. Either way, they won't know of him. Just maybe they'll be the kind of folks that wouldn't mind giving an obvious fugitive a lift; in times like these, even the best of men can be hard on their luck.

Raymond could always, if need be, take the car by force. Anything to put a few miles more between himself and the chair waiting for him.

Raymond creeps closer, trying to see into the dark windows, get a handle on who's driving...

As he approaches, the deep putt-putt-putt of the engine seems to slack off, quieting, and what comes to mind is a cat quieting down as it sees something interesting. 

The passenger-side window creaks as it opens, and the thick haze of cigarette smoke that chokes the cab begins to drift out, as a hand flicks a glowing butt out in a long end-over-end arc that terminates with it splishing into the lake. "I smell a hume. You smell that?" a voice says from... somewhere. "I smell bacon. Burnt bacon," someone else laughs, in a rough-sounding voice. 

"You looking for a ride, guy?" someone calls.

Raymond fights a sudden, thrilling urge to turn and bolt like a deer. Not that he'd get very far or fast hobbled like he is. Most certainly he'd end up face-down in the pond while the driver of the garish auto laughed at him. Besides, he'd never run scared in his life (save from Gaunt, perhaps, would he run from that crooked-teeth grin?) and didn't intend to start now.

"That would be kind, mighty kind of you," he says, shuffling closer to the auto. It almost seems to purr, he realizes, like a beast. A sleeping dog or a tiger that shouldn't be woken. "I don't need to get far, 'less you were already plannin' on it."

The rear door on his side clicks open softly, and the engine's putt-putt-putt increases in tempo, almost panting. 

Raymond remembers something that Hiram Wilson, the 'lifer' in the cell adjacent to his said. "No one does you any favors. Even if it looks like they're doing something out of the goodness of their own hearts, it's 'cause they're thinking about eating yours."

Raymond recalls it only a bit too late. He's already opening the door, easing into the car as best as he can with legs and arms chained.

As the door swings open, the smoke roils out, sliding over the top of the mist that clings to the grass at his feet. Everything seems magnified, unreal. As he passes under the frame and into the back seat (the long bench seat feels like leather, but not quite) the sound outside him seems to drop away. The frogs, the crickets, the herons, it all disappears, leaving him with nothing but the accelerating rumble of the engine under him.

Across from him a man in a squat top hat and a pair of dingy whit-framed sunglasses grins at him and sucks on his cigarette, exhaling a cloud directly into Raymond's face. And that's when he realizes that the door is already closed behind him.

"Lucky we found you, right, pal?" the driver grins widely, turning around in his seat. His teeth are like Gaunt's.

"Nice day for a drive," he says as the car begins to roll forward. A moment later he turns back around and grips the wheel, finally taking his gaze off you.

Raymond worked in the hot sun with dirt and shit and animals and sweating men that smelled worse than animals. It's safe to say he can put up with a lot of offensive things. But the cigarette smoke makes him cough, hacking hard enough to make his lungs hurt. The flight through the woods must have taken more out of him that he thought. "Right, lucky," he manages to say...

Raymond catches sight of the man's teeth and freezes, like a rat caught in a trap. No...no, it couldn't be. Not already. This isn't what was supposed to happen. "It's just good to be...free," he says, trying to betray his sudden terror. He feels about on the door for the handle.

The engine revs a little harder, and the trees caught in the headlamps begin racing past, faster and faster. The driver turns around again, grinning his wide, square face. His teeth are long, like horse teeth. "Careful, pal!" he chirps cheerfully. "You could lose a leg that way!" The unbroken wall of the door slides under Raymond's fingers. They don't find a handle.

 "Maybe we made a mistake picking him up," the other figure in the front seat says, finally. At first he doesn't turn around, keeping his gaze on the twisting road ahead that the driver somehow navigates turned around with one hand resting casually on the shuddering wheel. All Raymond can see is the collar of his baby-blue suit and the fedora of the same color. A vein on his thin neck runs up to where the roughly-cropped hair at the nape of his neck starts. Curly, wiry hair.

"Maybe we made a mistake. Ain't that right, mister?" he asks, turning around, and Raymond can see the sunken, jaundiced eyes. "Maybe you ain't hardcase enough. That right?"

Raymond gets that feeling that he might have stumbled onto more than he bargained for. Only three of them, though, and the automobile has to come to a stop some time. There's half a dozen little towns in the surrounding area; just got to wait for a stop sign or an intersection and force the door open. Until then, stall. "Would I be in stripes if I weren't...hardcase?" he asks, trying to play to what...

Raymond ...they seem to want.

"Any man pushes me, I'll push back."

"That's what I said, pal!" the driver whines, keeping his eyes off the road and squarely on Raymond as he flashes another insincere smile. "I told them what the stripes meant, but they didn't see any truck in it!" As he pleads sympathy, the headlamps of another car swell into brightness out of the night road, and he faintly hears the driver honk as the car swerves out of its path at the last instant - and Raymond is sure that both the driver's hands were off the wheel when it happened.

"Maybe we oughta give him a push and see how he goes," the one in the top hat says, flicking out a jackknife that he cleans one long nail with.

Raymond watches the knife glint like it was polished...or already wet with blood. He's seen men like these before on the road, in the work-gangs...in prison. Brutal men. Stupid men. Low men. He promised himself he'd never be like them, but they only understand one thing.

Raymond leans back, as if he's recoiling from the knife, then shifts and settles his back against the smooth wall of the door behind him. Both legs lift, chains rattling as his knees draw to his chest, and then he hammers them outward, planting the cheap rubber soles of his prison-issue boots straight in to Top Hat's sunglasses. Raymond once saw a mule kick a man in the back. Left the poor son of a bitch unable to walk. The sound is much the same.

The sunglasses crunch and shatter, as the men in the front cry out in surprise and - laughter. "Didja see that?" the driver hollers at the one in the blue fedora. "Oh, bird and bear, pal, that's what I was talking about!" he laughs, that horse-faced laugh, as the lips peel up and slide over those long, long teeth. Not horse teeth, no. 

"Ehech-" the one in the top hat says, sounding German. "My goddamn glasses." He reaches up and pulls a sliver of glass out of his cheek, and another. Where he tugs the shards loose, wiry sprouts of hair push themselves out of his skin, like watching a movie of a man shaving in reverse. Except the only person Raymond ever saw with hair around his eye socket was a wolf-man from Mexico who toured with them one summer.

"God in Heaven," he whispers, and Raymond is not usually a religious man. Somehow he's able to tear his gaze away from the ruined glasses and sprouting hair around Top Hat's eyes, and instead turns to the men in the front seat. "So am I hardcase enough for...whatever you need?" 

A stop sign flashes by as the car races through the dark streets of a small country town, houses, stores rush past in a blur, and the trees resume. "You've got fire, pal," the driver agrees, glancing ahead at the dark country road for a moment before looking back at you. "Fire enough for me. Whole buckets of it," he nods, smiling that awful wide grin. Not horse teeth, no.

Rat teeth.

"We need a guy with a strong back. A guy who knows how to do things that need to be done."

"You ever kill someone before, pal?"

"Yes." That's all he says, but there's no bravado in it. No excitement. Just a quiet admission. When the question, much the same, was posed to him at the trial, he answered the same way and condemned himself. "I'd rather be the strong back, if I need to pay my way for this little ride. I'm not afraid of work and I won't ask no questions."

"Good to hear, pal," he nods, as the one in the fedora lights another cigarette.

"Take a peek, friend," Mr. Ex-Sunglasses says, pulling something small and white and square out of his bomber jacket. He hands it across the seat to Raymond, glowering at him from behind those tufts of hair, and as Raymond takes it in one hand he sees that it's a strange color photograph of some kind. The photograph itself is set in the center, with a thin border of white card around the edges, wider on the bottom.

In the picture is a girl of maybe nineteen, sitting on a bench outside of a drug store. Next to her is a man covering his face as she laughs. There's something about the place that looks unreal, though, aside from the strange, muted colors.

"See that bird, friend?" Ex-Sunglasses asks. "She flew the coop. The King wants her back."

Raymond holds the strange, glossy photograph up so he can see it a bit better. Even the picture itself seems alien, out of place, never mind the young girl in it. "The King? Some sort of royalty?" he asks, handing the photograph back. Maybe they are from Germany.

"I can't be caught again. Can't go back to prison. If...if I help you find this girl, can you help me get out of here?"

"Oh, we can take you places, pal," the driver agrees. "We go just about everywhere, my friends and me. And he isn't just any king," he says, leaning in toward you, completely discarding the pretense of operating this thing that looks like a car, that pulses under the floorboards and ducks around corners like a fox. "Ram Abbalah, pal" he hisses. "Remember that name. Ram Abbalah. Think of it often."

Raymond bows his head, eyes shut for a moment. "I won't kill her, though. Don't ask that of me," he murmurs. And then he lifts his head and nods, repeating the man's strange words. "Ram Abbalah."

The car slows as a streetlight wavers into view like the windshield is surfacing out of the ocean, and as the car-thing glides to a stop, the door clicks open. "Killing her's the last thing we want, pal," the driver says as Raymond steps out onto solid ground. "She dies, we'll be after you, dig?"

With that the car door slams shut and it peels away, vanishing into the fog and leaving Raymond alone under the streetlight.

  =========================

Alan stares at LaRoux following her statement on what to do with the ordinance, incredulous.  Finally, he speaks, "There's a few problems with that plan of yours.  First," he holds up one finger, "As I told ye, these bombs are a danger at any point to us.  They can't even be relied on to explode, let alone at the same time.  Second," another finger ticks up, "We just killed Farson's escort for these weapons, they'll be missed."
  "Third," he continues, "Whatever gods-blinded monster just possessed that THING could probably warn off the Good Man's intended recipients.  Fourth, we could be caught with them and be mistaken for harriers.  Fifth, we should just blow them up!"
  Alan punctuates this last statement by thumping his pistol-butt on the wagon.
  "And what of us, then, boy?" Tall Francis asks.
  Alan looks to Francis
  "We were paid in part to deliver this, and not a one of us knew what it had inside."
  "My contract, sai, was for transporting dry goods.  What of those you have, you may keep, and I will honor my agreement on that."
  "However, if you think you're going to march a cartload of bombs, into a town of innocents, sai, you're more mercenary than I am."
  "Very kind words, sai, he says, bowing as he spits out the honorific. "I'm sure they'll be of great comfort when said men put a bullet in my belly for losing them."
  LaRoux nods. "I say we keep one." She excetuates the point by holding up her finger. "The rest we destroy. Should there be no trouble, we'll dispose of it later..."
  Alan considers LaRoux's words, then nods, "If'n you're planning to carry said bomb, that's fine by me. I wouldn't want to touch one for any longer than I'd have to, but if you insist..."
  Alan turns back to Francis
  LaRoux stands and motions to the two crates. "Take out two, one to destroy these and the other for myself. I'll use it for practice."
  "What makes you think they won't do that anyway?  Let me tell you, Francis, there's nothing 'good' about the Good Man, and I'd frankly be surprised if they intended to pay you at all."
  "Even if they did, they'll certainly cry foul when they see their men missing."
  "And," Alan gestures with his gun, "I could just put a bullet in you, too."
  "I wouldn't relish it, sai, but fair's fair and a warning's a warning."
  "Then what would ye have me do?" Francis cries angrily, unconcerne with Alan's threat.
  "Crawl off inta the waste?"
  "Shut up and follow our lead for one..."
  "In your position, I'd die," he says dryly, then seeing the man's face, explains
  "We could easily pretend to kill you - mutilate and burn these bodies, et cetera - you head to a new town and start a new, quiet life.  No, 'tain't fair or easy, but it's a sight better than dying."
  "And, frankly, I'd rather crawl into the wastes than be in the clutches of the Good Man when he's angry, do ya ken."
  Tall Francis glowers and swats at a huge mosquito in front of his face. "Cry pardon, sai," he says, turning away to where the others are raising Zeke to his feet. The rag wrapped around the man's leg spreads a red stain from the center, just above his knee.
  LaRoux watches the men help Zeke to his feet. She leans to the grenade crate and takes out a pair, examining them, turning to Alan. "You said you knew of these, do you know how to work them?"
  As Alan and Josef watch, the waggoners talk heatedly in low, hissing voices, casting glances back at the pair.
  LaRoux holds the two out far, poising her hands on the levers "I reckon these are like triggers, right?"
  "You pull that loop of metal and throw it, and they explode after a short while.  You don't want to hold onto one, don't try to be clever - the old ones' craft is old and usually cruel."
  "You don't want one to explode while still in your hand, brief as your misery would no doubt be."
  LaRoux stops her confident post, arms falling lax, mildly embarassed. "Ah..."
  "Ye don't want to be playing around with those, girl.  Handle them as little as possible.  Do not jostle them, do not try to ken their workings - they don't give a warning before they go off."
  Alan keeps his good eye deliberately on the waggoneers
  Meanwhile...

  ======================

  "This is called a cherry bomb. Because it looks like a cherry," Mark says, explaining the nature of the small, spherical object he fished out of his pocket. As the two of them walk down the sidewalk under the hot afternon sun, Uta can still taste the faint burn of vomit, and the world reels again, a translucent skin that she can almost pass through...
  Explosions, bodies, bleeding
  "Hey, are you OK?" Mark says, grabbing her arm.
  Her vision clears. Her head pounds with exertion and the bright sun.
  The boy looks at her.
  Uta at the vision with a blank stare, her mind trying to comprehend the random flashes of violence and pain. She holds her head in her hands, reeling from the image as it clears from her mind, her already taxed mind showing signs of stress. She talks, slowly, "Uta will be fine."
  "OK," Mark agrees, after a moment, slowly nodding his head. "Um, this is it."
  Uta looks up at the residence in question.
  In front of her is a plain-looking wooden house, faded yellow paint with peeling white trim, but a solidly built house nevertheless. The sight of it stirs up a deep-sunk longing in Uta - the houses in River Crossing were of a similar make. Across the dry, brown-grass yard, a dog tied to a stake begins barking in perfect 2/4 time at them.
  "Good house, yes?"
  As she speaks, the door clicks open and a woman in a plain dress that might have once been red but now has faded to a dusty pink steps out onto the porch. "Mark?"
  Uta feels him squeeze her hand, once.

  =============================

  Uta emerges from the bathroom, one thankfully equipped with the plumbing she came to depend on in the Devar Toi, and while her commandeered dress may never truly be clean, at least the patch of dampness on it is drying quickly. As she steps out, Mark's mother looks at her from the hallway and asks "Ready?"
  "So," she asks, as the four of you sit down around the table. "What do you do, Uta?"
  Uta sits down at the table, looking a fair bit ackward at the whole situation. She swallows her fear, looking over at Mark, "I cook for the camp!"
  Uta watches Mark as he picks up his fork and knife, cutting at the small, bloody slab of meat on his plate. Uta follows suit, picking up the silverware and cutting at the meat.
  Uta holds up a cut of the roast with her fork, "I cooked the meat for the camp." She bites down into the piece of meat, then reverses the question, "What do Moms do?"
  "One of the WPA camps, you mean?" the boy's father asks, cutting a slice off his own tough portion and chewing it. "Moms?" the woman asks, momentarily confused. "What kind of a question is that? What do you suppose mothers do?" she chuffs, looking at Uta as if she just realized her son was sitting next to a dog that may bite.
  Uta feels the barrage of questions and the ackwardness of the Dinner interrogation well up a ball of fear inside her, "Yes, WPA camp." She however, has no idea how to respond to the "Mom", her anger as a mother cow to its child.
  Uta notices that the meat is well prepared, and well spiced. Her body responds in kind to the norishment, herself having little food even while on the road and tries to compliment the Mom, "Your cooking is good!"
  Suddenly, someone knocks at the door, making Uta start.
  Mark's father looks up, and as his mother begins to rise he says "No, no, I'll get it," and stands up. A moment later Uta can hear the front door open, and a man's voice say "Good afternoon, sir, I'm with the Church of Plano. May I step inside for a moment?"
  As Uta turns back from listening, the curtains catch a slight breeze and flutter back, and she sees the automobile parked on the street outside.
  Yellow, with red trim.
  ==================================
  "All right, sais," Tall Francis says, crossing the grass back to the waggons and LaRoux and Alan.
  "We'll take five horses, one for each of us. That leaves you with one from the waggon, and that of yon hardcase," he says, gesturing to where the speckled brown-and-white mare stands tethered to a warped mutie tree.  "The waggons are yours to do with as you like. Say fair?"
  "Thankee-sai, I do say fair."
  Ten minutes later, by Alan's count, the five ride off, the hooves of their horses thrumping on the drying ground, kicking up a small cloud of dirt in their wake. As it settles in the still air, Alan and LaRoux are left alone with the waggons. The harrier's horse snorts and shivers, casting the blanket of mosquitoes into the air for a brief moment.
  "As for this mess, LaRoux, we'll take a handful of grenados, and use yon horses to drag the wagon over to a ditch.  Unhook 'em, then tip it.  The leftover grenades are for setting off the whole lot and messing up the corpses."
"And I suggest we let your dead friend's horse run free - his comrades may recognize it."
  Alan approaches the dead harrier's horse to lead it to the wagon.
  LaRoux nods, assisting him with the work.
  The caravan horse is a big draft animal, covered in speckled clumps of hair and reeking of animal-sweat. As the lean harrier's mare approaches, the waggon-horse snorts and flicks his tail, and the speckled horse Alan holds by the reins digs her hooves in for a moment before allowing herself to be yoked. 
  LaRoux takes a seat in the wagon, riding shotgun to Alan, not having used a wagon before.
  As the two of them slowly guide the animals to the edge of the sunken washout, the grenados rock loosely in their crate, and the two are reminded once again of Alan's caution - eggs they might seem, but eggs with coiled snakes inside, ready to strike. From this close, he has no doubt they would both be maimed or killed if one exploded. In his mind's eye he sees the flash of white, the deadly pop. The waggon's wheel goes over a stone and one knocks against another, making a hollow clang.
  Alan slows the wagon's progress, holding up a cautious hand to LaRoux. He's worked as a wagon drover before in his myriad of odd jobs up until now, and the cobwebbed instincts from that experience tell him that caution is advised.
She looks over her shoulder just in time to see a grenade bounce up and begin to roll out of the cart. She quickly steps over the divider and into the bed of the wagon, chasing after it. She's forced to dive out, landing beneath the tumbling grenade and catching it, but landing on a pair of jutting rocks, leting out a cry of agony as she rolls to the side.
  Alan stops the cart entirely, letting out a string of curses half in high speech, the rest in whatever else comes to his tongue, before helping LaRoux to her feet and carefully replacing the deadly explosive.
"Nice catch," he says, openly appreciative.
  Alan takes the moment to poke at the wagon, resecuring the woefully loose crates as best he can.
  The grenados seem resigned to their fate, muttering to themselves with more muted clanks but remaining in their seats as the waggon approaches the edge of the washout. The big draft horse snorts again in protest at being made to walk backward.
  LaRoux groans and gets to her feet, stumbling for a moment before dusting herself off. "Barton always did say I was, though I don't 'spect he'd ever think I was doin' this... well, not exactly this." She says, getting back in with a little limp and placing the grenade carefully.
  As she sets the green egg back in its nest, the pile settles, and she has time to register a hihg-pitched 'klink' sound from under the pile before the back of the waggon explodes.
  LaRoux turns but suddenly dives forward as the explosion echos out, cowering in a ball for a moment before scrambling up over the divide. "Shit! Cut the horses! Cut'em off, let it tumble we need to get off it!"
  Alan 's bad eye gets him off to a late start, but his trained reflexes save his hide - he tucks and rolls off to the side, away from the road, feeling the hot sting of shrapnel - probably wood, thankee Man-Jesus for any feeling at all - and hears LaRoux calling out. Ignoring the pain, he puzzles out what she's saying and shouts back. "No use!  Get to cover 'fore the whole wagon goes!"
  LaRoux draws her hatchet anway and swings, cleaving off some of the wagon as she cuts the horses free hastily before hoping down. "Come on!"
  Alan wastes no time, getting to his feet and sprinting for safe distance - he trusts LaRoux to do similar.   As he bolts upright and hurls himself free of the ground, he hears a high-pitched hissing noise behind him, that rapidly raises to a FWEEEE-
  LaRoux hears it as well, before she is blown off her feet by the swell of heat that blooms up as the world disappears into white.
  Alan 's practiced eye spots out the safest terrain like a sixth sense - swells in the land that will carry away rolling grenados, rocks likely to shield against white-hot shrapnel, trees that might yet catch a mortar shell - but merely running won't be enough.
  Alan spins, drawing his revolver and snapping off two shots, detonating a pair of tumbling mortar shells mid-air
  LaRoux lies unconcious for a moment before a mortar shell detonates against a tree a few hundred feet away from her. She shrieks in pair, rolling to her side as a red hot piece of sharpnel buries itself in her upper right back, the leather of her vest and jacket smoldering for a moment before it stops burning. She stays on the ground but draws out her left iron, her right arm clutching hard to her chest to try and relieve some of the pain.
  For a moment neither one of them can hear. Josef's scream shakes her throat, and Alan looks up at the silent world. A moment later he hears something, her voice at last. A moment after that he can hear the crackling of the tree as it slowly smolders from the mortar's impact.
  Alan considers keeping his distance, for a moment - the better part of his common sense tells him to stay away until the grenades have cooked off, but there's still LaRoux, and...well...she went to bat for him.
  Alan starts moving for the downed pistolero, limping at first but evening out his stride as he moves.

  ================================


Uta stands up from the table, knocking over her chair and runs through the house, attempting to find a way out of the entire situation. She can't afford to have a conflict with the low men, not while she isn't at full strength.
  As the chair bangs against the floorboards Mark's father looks back, and so does the man in the door, as she sprints past them down the hall. "Hey!" she hears the can-toi bark.
  Uta doesn't even hear the Can-toi as she blazes through the living room, making a shamble of the placement of the rug as she finds a rear door, she struggles to disengage the lock for a few moments before hearing it click. She runs.
  The screen door bangs closed as she races out across the lawn behind the house, toward the cornfield across the open lot and the waiting trees beyond it. The door squeaks open and slams against the wall of the house as the can-toi barges out. "Uta!" he shouts at her fleeing back. "Get back here, you Gan-beshitted bitch!" As the food sways uncomfortably in her stomach she can hear his curses keeping pace with her.
  Uta continues to flee, entering into large clearing as she suddenly drops, her foot trapped in a gopher hole. She looks behind in panic, yanking her now shoeless foot from the hole, she continues running, even with the pain of a sprained ankle.
  "I can smell you, by God!" he raves, coming over the ridge behind her. "All things serve the King, Uta! You know that!"
  Uta struggles to regain her distance advantage against her leg that doesn't want to behave. But she finally reaches the edge of the cornfield, pushing the stalks to the side as she makes her way through, hoping the cover of the field will hide her.
  Uta pushes through the corn till she comes to an area where the corn has been already trampled, running through the cleared path, she realises that its been made into a shape. That of an eye. She makes it to the other side of the eye, slowing down due to exhaustion and injury.
  "Uta!" the Low Man shouts, and it's all she can do not to scream, for how close his voice is to her. "Come out, come out, kitty kitty kitty!" he calls in a singsong voice. "Can you feel it, Uta? We're on the Beam right now!"
  Uta feels her emotions wall up, her feet have grown to tired to flee. She turns around, striking out against the low man among the backdrop of the eye.
  "I got you, you b-" he shouts in triumph, a second before Uta suddenly lands hard, digs her feet in and throws all her weight into a perfect punch aimed straight at his nose. She hits, and as her knuckles dig in and slide off she feels the awful touch of his hume face, not skin, it was never skin, and it's alive. He flails sideways and tumbles into the corn.
  "You bith!" he shouts. "You broke my nothe you bith!"
  A hand shoots out like lightning and grabs her ankle, and he pulls her across the dirt, closer to him. "You bith! You'll pay! You'll pay, by God!"
  Uta wasn't ready for him to grab her leg, falling down to his level and turning this into a grapple, she hisses, striking down on his arm and head with her other leg.
  The can-toi howls in pain as Uta's foot stomps down on his arm, and she hears the sharp wet crack of a bone breaking.
  Uta tries to pull her other leg away from the low mans grip, her blood rushing to her head and causing her to see red as she feels the blood flow. A desperate and pained look in her face as she strikes.
  "I'll kill you!" he shouts, swiping a hand at her.
  Uta finally pulls her leg free of the Can-tois grip, barely avoiding his swiping grip as she scurries up. She hobbles off in a direction, any direction, trying to escape from this place.
  She looks back once, seeing a blur of a baby-blue suit rise in the dirt through watery eyes, before she disappears back into the corn.

================================

Warm summer wind blows through the trees, drying the last of the dew that clings to Raymond's black-and-white striped pants, now muddied and torn above the clanking irons binding his feet. He doesn't know exactly how he lost track of the time, though he suspects last night's ride may have had something to do with the jarring sensation of being a man out of place. 

  He escaped the bulls as the sun died, found the car and its hideous inhuman inhabitants somewhere around midnight, but less than an hour after they finally released him back into the world the sun had risen, and even without a watch there's no way he was in there for five hours.

  The sound of a train whistle blowing carries through the air along with whisps of cotton fluff as he emerges from the trees. Spread out before him, across a weedy field, is a train-track, and beyond it a town. High, billowy clouds float by overhead. A picturesque scene, if he weren't wearing stripes and irons.

  Raymond heads into the weedy field and towards the train tracks, waiting for the train to come before crossing.

  The whistle blows again, a high, shrill cry, and Raymond sees the smoke pouring from its stack as it rounds the edge of the treeline and comes into view. His vision bobs as he hurries across the field, a church spire looms back beyond the outlying houses, as he hurries, stark naked now without the cover of shade for anyone who might spot a man in prison stripes. Luck (or fate, or ka, do ya ken) is with him, at least for now, and he reaches the tracks just after the engine passes, dragging its open-faced boxcars behind.

  Raymond keeps low in the field, among the weeds and waits for the train to pass. Boxcar after boxcar. Briefly, he entertains the idea of trying to hop a ride, but where would he go? There's no Big Rock Candy Mountain at the end of the line for him. Besides, he needs out of the chain and out of the stripes. Surely a small town like this there would be some laundry he could pilfer and some tools he could use.

  When the caboose passes, he catches sight of the man in it - the rider, however, is facing away from him. As it slides into his peripheral view a wooden sign looms above him: 

HAVEN  

  Raymond takes that as a good sign, Haven. Never you mind that he's not the sort of man to believe in signs and portents, no matter how much Gaunt's dire prophecy fills him with icy dread. He makes his way towards the first house, keeping to the sides, and looks out for a full clothesline.

  Lady Luck, callow bitch that she is, departs just as he steps around the corner of the house toward the clothes flapping in the warm wind, where he catches sight of a middle-aged woman. She catches sight of him as well, and lets out a surprised "AWK!" that sounds more like a bird than a person, just as he ducks back behind the wall. "Who's there?" she shouts. "Turney, if that's you I'm getting Martin's shotgun! He told you never come back here-"

  "Ain't no need to get any sort of gun, ma'am. I'm not Turney, just passing through." Raymond calls out, without coming out from the side of the house.

  "Not Turney?" she asks, confusion in her voice. "Then- well, no matter who y'are, git! Got no rooms for tramps here!" the woman's voice says, and Raymond hears the creak of metal on wood from out of view.

  Raymond knows he's not going to get anything from this lady. Not a lick of help and not a scrap of kindness. But he's got to get out of the prison clothes and the chains; the sooner, the better. "Of course not, ma'am, fine place like this wouldn't put up tramps. Do you know anywhere in town where a passing man might be able to stay and work for a few days?"

  "'Passing man', he says! Hmph! Like I don't know what that means!" Raymond strains to hear anything else, but a barking dog several blocks away seems determined to keep him from gauging whether or not said shotgun is in anyone's hands at the moment.

  Raymond doesn't respond. No since in antagonizing the old biddy further. Even if she doesn't have a gun, she could probably bring the whole town down on him. He makes the decision to slink off the way he came.

  Meanwhile, several hours later but not too far away (for don't they say time's funny nowadays?) a young woman limps around the outskirts of the town she's been holed up in, muddy, sweaty, covered in a cloud of midges.

  Uta hobbles along in an attempt to find her way back to the underground cavern that seemed to be a safe spot. Ever since she was running, her leg hasn't worked well. Tired, exhausted, hungry, and sore, she continues her march.

  The ground around her feet squishes, pulling at her shoes like hungry zombis desperate for their pound of flesh, and her mind takes a darker turn. Thoughts of children, an endless procession of them, shoeless and trodding upon a great belt where the sky never lightens. The skin between worlds peels back, and for a brief second she sees the Great Furnace of End-World, and one of the lost little souls looks back at her with the face of Mark.

  When she regains her vision she finds herself standing in front of the great cement cave, and from somewhere deep into the black interior the sound of skittering trails out.

  Uta tries to push the image of Mark out of her mind. Too many have been lost for her to expend her energy on reliving their memories now. She drags herself into the cave, crossing the stream of brown water to the flatest area in the entrance. Pushing her back against the curve of the cave, she slides down to the ground, finally feeling safe enough to take a look at her legs.

  In the wan early-evening light she gently tugs one pant-leg up and examines the ankle underneath. It doesn't look broken, but aside from a few unpleasant visits from Dr. Gangli in the Devar-Toi she knows very little of medicine and the healing arts. Still... the stinging pain that she felt a half-hour ago has subsided to a dull throbbing.

  Wincing a little, she pulls the pant leg back down over her leg. She decides that more than anything, she needs to rest. A dull headache still drilling into her skull. She curls up, hoping to get a bit of rest before going and solving other problems, such as a meal.

  Sleep overtakes her, and if we could sit a spell next to the weary young traveler, we could see the curl of a frown mar her face a moment after her eyes close... Visions of bumblers, and snakes, and exploding things worse than cherry bombs dance across her brow.

  And as she crosses through a stream, ankle aflame, dragging thick iron chains behind her, a wolf howls.
  "Uuuuuuuta," it calls.

  "Little lost lamb, come back to me," a voice whispers just beyond her ear. As she whips her head around, pushing it through the molassas the air has become, the shape ducks just out of sight.
  Uta looks all around her, trying to spot the elusive shadow of the wolf. Her hair stands on end as she feels her back brush up against a corner. Panic rises into her throat. Trapped. Nowhere to run.

  "And, frankly, I'd rather crawl into the wastes than be in the clutches of the Good Man when he's angry, do ya ken." The words echo out from the sky, a black haze streaked with lightning.

  "Uta, where are yooouuuuuuuuuuu..." the Wolf howls again. "Your friends are dead and gone, girl! Gone to Gan, say true. Come out, come out, wherever you are. Come out and cry pardon for the trouble you've made."

  Uta rises against the corner of the wall. When there is no other place to run, you have to rise up and push. She swallows, it having little effect on the large apple that has lodged itself in her chest, and yells. "I'll never say sorry to you, Wolf!" Her voice strikes a clean, high note, dispite her fear.

  Something swells inside of her, pushing itself out and lifting her sneakers (sneakers, then, here in this place, not the hard-soled shoes her sleeping form wears) off the ground an inch. The White fills her, explodes out like a gunshot, and the Wolf howls in rebuffed rage.

  Uta takes the unbridled power of the white, feeling it moving along the lines of power drawn into her flesh and binds it into her and releases the energy. She strikes out with her own energy, the fear unclenching inside of her, "My friends still live in my memory, all of them! Rhodes, Mark, Cutter. They aren't dead as long as I remember them!" Feeling a previous fissure in her head come together, a connection is complete. Steadfasting her resolve, she yells, "You won't ever get me either, Wolf! I'm too smart for you!"

  The Wolf howls again, in pain this time, as the White stabs at him. "You bitch! Stinking cur! I'll see you driven before the Furnace, Uta! Mark my words, girl!" the voice says as it fades. "You will bow low once more, 'fore the King, you will..."

  Her eyes snap open and she sees the silhouette standing at the entrance of the cavern, wreathed in the dim blue light of early dark.

  "Uta?" Mark asks her.

  Uta groans, unable to get comfortable... as the voice of Mark from outside the dream world calls at her. Her eyes open to the sight of the concerned boy from Americaland. "mmmm. Mark?"

  "You... you were floating."

  "How did you do that?"

  Uta finally pushes the last of the sleep from her head, "Floating? I guess I did it by being Uta."

  The boy looks at her, and Uta can just make out the look of confusion playing across his face. 

  Outside the cavern, in the cover of the brushes, unseen eyes watch the two.

  Ka turns, the Beams groan. Somewhere else...

  LaRoux lay face up, iron in her hand, her wounded arm clutched to her chest.

  Alan comes to a stop over the downed pistolero, wincing as his knees pop with his stoop. A quick glance tells Alan she's conscious and not in imminent danger of death - there's a certain look to the eyes of someone about to move on - but that doesn't make this any child's scratch.

  "You're alive," he states matter-of-factly, "Now move your hand and let me see what you've got there," he says, referring to LaRoux's injury.

  LaRoux uncocks the pistol and drops it. She rolls over and whimpers in pain, displaying the wound.
  Alan takes his hat off, sighing as he sees the wound - nasty and bloody, with the hint of a piece of shrapnel sticking out. No knick on the knee.

  Smoke stings their eyes as the hot breeze picks up, carrying the odorous fumes from the Old People's deadly weapons as an unexploded grenado finally gives up the ghost and explodes with a dull muffled THUMP, sending fragments of metal into the air to rain down onto the pile.

  Alan reaches for his travel sack - amazingly, it's mostly intact - and retrieves a bottle of whiskey.
  "I-...is it bad?"

  Alan pulls the cork out with his teeth, spits it, then responds. "Well, you won't bleed out.  S'long as we leave that bit of metal in. Y'see, with bits and bobs like this, if I take yon metal out, you're liable to bleed to death. S'why I hold no truck with the weapons of the old folk."

  Alan pauses for a second, then continues. "Now, what I'm about to do's gonna hurt, do ya ken?  Prob'ly worse than that bit going in.  Need to do it, though.  I'm going to pin you, and I want you to try not to squirm.  Okay?"

  LaRoux nods slightly. "Just get it out."

  "Hold your horses, girl, we've got a ways to go before that," his piece said, Alan pins the younger pistolero with one leg, not gently - he's personal experience with what he's about to do.  Tipping the whiskey bottle up, he pours it directly in the wound, trying to flush dirt and debris as he does so.

  LaRoux shrieks and squirms at this, sliding about in the dust beneath him. "Fuck!"

  "Hold still, girl, bottle's not half gone yet," Alan grouses sympathetically, trying to keep her from slipping away or embedding the deadly bit of metal further with her reactions. When the bottle's gone, Alan slowly lets up pressure on his companion.  Tossing it back into his bag - a sad, empty clink rings out - he tears off a reasonably clean piece of shirt and presses it over the wound, "Sit up," he says, "and if you can, try to hold this on for a minute."

  LaRoux sits up, holding it on silently, only panting in pain while she sits there.

  As Alan stands and hears his knees pop, he sees they have company. A bumbler sits on a fallen log, watching the two of them with bright, keen eyes.

  Alan inclines his head to the bumbler.

  LaRoux looks aside to see the bumbler, still sitting in pain. "That's... good luck... right?"

  "Yon bumbler seems to be luckier than us, anyway.  Avoided that snake and the grenados. T'say nothing of those low men."

  "Luckier!" the bumbler agrees.

  LaRoux can't help but smile, despite the pain.

  "Agreeable, isn't he," Alan remarks dryly, removing his poncho and beginning to cut it into a ragged, long strip. "Lift your arms for a second, I'm going to tie this on to keep the bandage on," Alan works as LaRoux complies, soon concluding the makeshift bandage.  He offers a hand to the pistolero, "Any other bad ones?"

  "Other bad ones," comes a voice from the log, but when they look the billy-bumbler is gone.

  LaRoux lifts her arms with a groan of pain. "No. And if there are this one hurts too much to care about'em."

  "That'll do, then.  For now.  We're going to need to make for Squire's Leap at good pace.  That bandage'll hold you - but not for long.  That piece of metal needs to come out, and the wound needs to be closed.  Hopefully, yon town has a horse-doctor, or, failing that, a midwife. I'll boost you onto your horse so you don't tear it further."

  LaRoux gets to her feet shakily, holstering her left iron.

  "Thankee." She says before looking for her horse. Josef pauses for a moment beside the cart, inspecting it and then looking back at where the bumbler had watched them before moving on.

  "Keep me appraised of your state, LaRoux," he adds, "Once fever sets in, we won't have long.  We may have to try and make do with what I know and what we've got."

  LaRoux nods.

  The two of them ride out, leaving the waggons and the smoking pile of metal to rest in the quiet of the afternoon forest.

  The wheel turns, ka spins its web.

  "And Williams gets the pitch, it's a deep one to left center... Dodgers fill the base," the radio announcer's voice lulls soothingly, as Raymond ducks down behind a barrel in the alley just as a car rolls past. The radio in the open window above his head calls out the next play, and he hears a young man's voice inside yell "I'm going out!" just before the door slams, leaving him with the Dodgers game and that incessantly barking dog (the mutt has yet to show its muzzle, though he's been hearing it for an hour or more).

  Raymond rises up slowly and carefully behind the barrel, and peers in the open window. Just a peek, mind you. Inside he sees a stairway, the front door, and a bookcase through the doorway from the kitchen where the radio sits. As far as he can tell the house is empty.

  Raymond quickly...at least, as quickly as he can for a man his size...clambers into the open window.
  As he eases his bulk over the windowsill he rests one hand on the ledge... and the nail gives way, sending the radio slipping off the edge.

  Raymond reaches out and catches the radio at the last moment, grabbing by the cord near the base of the heavy thing. Thank God it doesn't give way. He lowers the whole thing slowly to the floor and climbs completely in.

  Both feet on the floor, nothing else threatens to collapse, at least for the moment. Inside the kitchen he sees a stove, a pantry, the doorway out to the rest of the house... and a wainscotting door set into the far wall.

  Raymond peers from door to door, frozen like an animal in the house. There's nothing he needs more than to get out of the chains and stripes, but he remembers what his "neighbor" in the next cell over had said. 'Sonny, you don't look like a hardened criminal.' Suppose not. He can't even muster up the courage to continue further into the house and instead backs out the window, the way he came. Raymond is starting to feel that Haven is no such place for him. Perhaps the next town. But somehow he feels he's just no criminal. Or perhaps he's simply fate's fool.

  His sour luck turns even more bitter a moment later, as he manages to get out of the window just as a police car pulls to a stop at the head of the alley. The bull inside shuts off the engine and lights a cigarette before shaking a newspaper open, and for the next two hours Raymond squats on aching calves behind the barrel, wishing the back of the alley wasn't boarded up with a twelve-foot fence.

  It's nearly dusk by the time the bull's radio goes off and he pulls away, leaving a pile of cigarette butts next to the car as it rolls off. As the fugitive slinks out of the alley and hurries around the building in plain view, he realizes that he hasn't heard that dog in a while. Thank heavens for small favors.

  In his search for a suitable change of clothes (or at least a pair of boltcutters) he's found himself on the far side of town from the railroad tracks, and while this area is deserted, he narrowly manages to avoid being seen by a young boy crossing the distance between him and the side of a tall hill. "Uta?" the boy calls, and for a moment Raymond thinks he's been spotted behind the tree, but the boy moves on, coming up to a drainage tunnel set into the side of the hill. "Uta, are you there?" he calls again, and Raymond's eyes can just make out the form of a woman rising on stiff limbs.

  The girl from the photograph.

  Raymond watches the boy and the girl from the photograph from his spot behin the tree. No, this was no good. He's in no shape to taking along anyone with him. He's already too conspicuous, as it is, and with aching legs to boot. How could he subdue the girl...not to mention the boy...and somehow drag her back to men whose location he doesn't even know? Raymond could continue to dog them and hope for a better moment. Or...perhaps...

  Raymond comes out from behind the tree in full view of both the girl and the young boy. He holds his hands up, making sure they can see how he's hobbled by chains, how he's no threat at all. "Pardon...pardon for interrupting, but d'you think a man could get some help, here?"

  The boy turns around at the sound of Raymond's voice but says nothing.

  Uta looks behind Mark, spotting the stranger who approaches with his hands out. She tenses, expecting a conflict with the chained man. She stands up, facing the stranger.... A strange chain tugs at her khef, "You. Chained one. Are you one of the Wolf or rat men?"

  "Do I look like a wolf or a rat?" he asks. A stupid question, but then...doesn't he know a few wolf and rat men himself? In a gaudy auto in garish clothing...

  Uta tries to stand up to face the chained man, "They never look like wolves, or rats. Unless you see their true eyes. You don't have the eyes of them." Uta stares at the man, sniffing the air around him as she tries to determine if he is friend or foe.

  The boy looks at Uta like she's gone mad, and a low moan travels out from his throat.

  Raymond takes a step closer, keeping those chains up. "I'm just a...a wronged man, trying to set things right," he says, glancing from the girl to the boy. "An innocent man."

  Uta snaps out an order, "Stay back!" She ponders for a moment, "I have seen you before. And your clothes.... Mark, do you know this man?"

  "Nuhhhh-" he cries, taking two halting steps away from both Uta and the man in the striped clothing.

  "Don't go nowhere, boy. I'm not goin' to hurt you. I know what it looks like, but I'm not a bad man."

  Uta looks resolved, "Do you have any food?" She is unsure of why Mark seems to react so badly to this man. He doesn't seem to be like the guards at all.

  "Why aren't you in jail?" Mark whispers breathlessly, and though several paces lie between them Raymond hears it clearly.

  "No, I ain't had a bite to eat since..." It's been more than a day since he's had any real food, or more than a quick sneak of water from the pond. Last time he ate was just before the transfer. "But I could get food, if you could help me out of these chains and get me some clothes." Once more, he turns to the boy, Mark. "Because I wasn't supposed to be there and I aim to prove it."

  Uta looks at the man as he tries to appear defenceless. He reminds her of Rhodes a bit. "You want help from me for food?"

  "My grandpa used to say that the only people who get caught are the ones that don't deserve it."

  "Hell, I wouldn't mind some food myself," he says, and puts on a big smile, before he nods to Mark. "That's right. And the real bad men go free. I'm sure you've seen bad men out before that should be in jail. I wanna put the worst one there is away."
  "My dad says Grandpa lied like a fox," Mark says, sending an icy glare up at Raymond.

  "Jail... Jail." She says the word a few times, as if trying to comprehend the word. "Did you run away on the tracks from this.. jail?"

  Raymond crouches down, bringing his immense height closer to Mark's level. "Don't want to ever hear you disrespectin' your grandfather, boy, and if your father does...well, then he's forgotten what he was taught." He nods at Uta. "Yeah. They tried to keep me pinned up, but I ran away. There's someone out there that has to pay for what he done. An evil...man." He glances to Mark again. "And you can help, if y'can get me some bolt cutters, and a change of clothes."

  Mark nods dully, suddenly unsure of himself in the presence of the bigger man and his uncharacteristically (at least from the boy's perspective) words.

  "Mark hasn't forgotten the face of his Father. His father shoots wolves! The evil man, is he a wolf?"

  "My dad keeps some in his work truck, I think," Mark says off-handedly. "For cutting fencelines."

  Uta looks at the prisoner, feeling a few bonds between the two of them, they are faint, but present. "So we help you, and you will get food?"

  Raymond remembers his good old friend Hiram, that master of breaking and entering, and nods to Mark. "Fence cutters should work fine. And clothes too." Then to Uta. "A wolf? No...the evil man. I think he might be demon," he says, quietly. "But if you help me, yes. I'll help you."

  Demon is a word Uta knows well.

  -------------------

  Josef's horse winnies and shakes her head, and the jarring motion travels up her saddle and reverberates around the wound in her back. Another ten strides puts them out of the last scrim of mutie trees and into a depressed country full of pits and strange stunted bushes, frond-like branches waving in the light breeze. 

  From her hard ride that morning, she can put the distance to Squire's Leap at twenty miles from this point.

  Alan drums his fingers against the well-worn butt of his pistol, scanning the blighted lands for trouble. Not that he intends to fight if he can avoid it, but it provides some measure of comfort and clarity.

  LaRoux grips the edge of her saddle in pain, gritting her teeth as they ride in. "S-shit."

  Directly ahead of them down the trail a hundred feet or so stands a young woman, only a few years older than herself, by the look of it, dressed in a billowing white gown and habit that streams out beside her.

  LaRoux puts a hand up at the woman, trying to see if she'll come help.

  "Careful, girl," Alan cautions, "This is bad country.  Strange to see someone like that out here." Despite his caution, Alan sees no use in avoiding or ignoring the woman - not after so obviously being spotted - and so calls out to her.

  The woman in white takes a hesitant step forward, then another, and hurries her pace to a quick jog, stopping once to unhook her gown from one of the thorn-bushes that dot the edge of the trail. A brief moment later she draws up close to the two, and Alan can see that she is as beauteous from five paces as fifty.

  "You are travelers?" she asks, looking up at them. "Are you bound for Squire's Leap?"

  Alan shifts uncomfortably in his saddle for more reasons than one, eyes flicking across the woman's form, looking for danger signs - mutie-marks, weapons, an odd look in her eyes; her appearance is strange enough as it is. "Indeed, we two were told that it wasn't far from here.  Do ye know of it?"

  "Keep some modesty, sai," she says, drawing her gown around her as Alan casts his gaze over her. "I'll not be looked at so."

  "I know of it," she says then, and nods down the trail behind her. "I travel there myself, but the path is rough and I have no horse."

  Alan gives a thin smile, "Begging your pardon," he says, "I've simply come to ill-trust strangers in strange lands."

  LaRoux cuts her eyes a bit at Alan and whimpers in pain. "M'am would you have somethin' to keep this from hurtin' so much..."
 
 Alan gestures to LaRoux, "Yon girl is my master on this journey, I'm her man-for-hire. We were ambushed by harriers." It's not too far from the truth, and Alan tells the lie with the practice of years of spouting half-truths.

  "You are hurt?" she asks, concern in her voice as Josef's voice catches her attention. "Can you dismount?"

  "Alan, help me down. Yes, I'm hurt bad."

  Alan gets down from his own horse, helping LaRoux as he does.

  LaRoux dismounts with his assistance and lets out a little yelp of pain.

  "Careful," the woman in white says as LaRoux's boots touch the ground.

  "I cleaned and dressed the wound, but there's a fragment in it that I don't dare remove afield," Alan says, neglecting to explain what the fragment is, "I haven't the expertise nor the tools."

  LaRoux stands up straight as she can, but is clearly in pain.

  "Let me see it, please," the woman asks. "I may yet help."

  Alan cocks his head, looking warily at the woman with his one good eye, "What know ye of medicine, fellow-traveller?"

  "I have a poultice that may ease her suffering a trifle," she says to Alan. "'Tis not much, I'm afraid." The woman unfurls her gown from around her hips, and under a worn leather traveling-belt she draws forth a folded cloth.

  Alan puts little truck in potions and pastes, but it's not his wound to decide - he looks to LaRoux silently.

  LaRoux looks at Alan. "Take it off then, I'll take what I can get..."

  Alan complies, inexpertly unwinding the bandage and removing the compress to reveal the wound.

  "Not gun-shot, then," the woman remarks as she sees the wound. "Inflammed, though. Here, dear, this may help," she says, unfolding the cloth and revealing a shiny substance inside. "It may sting for a moment." She spreads the cloth across LaRoux's back gently, wiping the cloth around the edge of the wound, leaving a sticky-looking trail behind it.

  "Here, let me," she asks Alan, holding out a hand for the wrapping bandage. True to her word, Josef feels a shade of the mortar-shell's initial puncture that thankfully fades to a dull ache, duller than it's felt the entire ride.

  Alan hands over the bandage and compress readily enough, somewhat less guarded now.

  The woman's cloth disappears back under her gown, and she takes the wrap, tying it tightly around in a way that Alan can't help notice is somewhat better than his own job. "There. How do you feel, dear?" she asks, looking Josef in the eye.

  LaRoux makes a little hiss when it's dragged across but she relaxes as the dullness sets in. "Thankee, thankee, I feel wonders better."

  "The least I can do, dear heart," she says. "Will ye press on then?" the woman asks, looking to Alan. "Yon horses looks winded and trail-worn, sai," she notes. "There is a creek near here. Will you stay and rest a moment?"

  LaRoux looks to Alan and then to the woman. "Do you think it would be fine? With my shoulder in this way?"

  Alan weighs his options, looking to the horses; they do indeed look worn and he does not know this one he's taken. Briefly, he considers the nightmare of walking through this blasted landscape to Squire's Leap, horseless, if they should perish.

  "A brief rest may save us our horses," he says, addressing LaRoux, "She speaks true."

  "There's no flesh-rot, if that's what worries you," the woman responds.

  "There will be," Alan says dryly. "All the same, a brief rest may be the smarter way in terrain like this."

  LaRoux nods in agreement.

  Even as he says this, he weighs the situation - aid is not freely given in this world, least of all in the west.  Still, this woman does not seem particularly threatening, and the terrain ill-affords a baited harrier ambush.

  "Wonderful! I will show you to the creek," she says, holding out a slim hand for Alan. "You must rest, dear. Riding is hard on a body, harder still in your shape."

  Alan regards the woman's hand, then takes it. For now, he will go along. And watch. "I'm more concerned for the horses, say true," he replies. "I know my limits."

  The woman leads him down a rocky scree, picking her way down carefully, and Alan's ears pick up the babbling of water below the ledge. Sure enough, the dazzling glare of a clean-running stream shines in his eyes a moment later, blotting out the world outside his good eye until he tilts his head. "There it is. Do you have a bucket or bottle, sai?" she asks.

  "I have a canteen," he says, somewhat guardedly - such veins of seeming health in blighted lands were rare.  It put him ill at ease to see that their fellow-traveller hadn't been exaggerating. Retrieving it, Alan speaks up, "Tell me, what brings one such as you in lands such as these alone? These were dangerous lands in safer times.  Now..."

  "Your woman would welcome it, I think," she says, kneeling carefully at the bank of the stream. "I am traveling, as I said, sai. To Squire's Leap, to join with the rest of my order."

  LaRoux sits down and takes her pipe out, loads it and has a smoke while she waits for Alan.

  As she cups her hands and draws up water, Alan can see her profile in the bright afternoon light. Though Josef is comely, even a one-eyed man can see that this woman is beautiful, moreso than even his fellow rider.

  "She's not my woman," Alan replies, looking at the woman surreptitiously, "That sort of thing is...ah, bad for business as a man-for-hire," that, at least, Alan knew from personal experience was no exaggeration.  Stooping to fill the canteen, he sniffs the water cautiously before taking a test-sip; he's not about to give strange water blindly to an injured companion. "I know you're a traveller, but to travel lands like these alone invites death," Alan says.  It rings somewhat hollow in the health of this small oasis.

  The water runs into his mouth sweet as a wellspring of Gilead, expanding the cracked interior of his parched mouth.

  "It is a penance, sai," she says, drawing another cupped handful of water to her lips.

  "Are you a woman of the Man-Jesus?" Alan asks.  There isn't much faith in the west, not these days.  

  "I serve the White, sai. Do ye kennit?" she asks, rising to her feet again, gown trailing out over the stream in the afternoon's soft breeze.

  "I do," he says, though he rarely heard the term outside of Gilead. "The White has precious few friends in these lands," he opines.

  "Say true," she agrees. "We should get back. Your employer might be cross if we dally."

  "Indeed," Alan stands with a grunt and caps his canteen, "And this water does at least seem clean."

  Suddenly, LaRoux hears a cry from the slope they went down.

  LaRoux looks up suddenly and struggles to her feet. "Alan!?"

  The woman in white stands motionless as a snake slides out of the rock and curls itself in a meandering arc around the rocks near her.

  LaRoux draws her left iron and moves quickly as she can towards the sound.

  Alan puts an arm in front of the woman, holding her back. "It's just a waste-snake," he says calmly, "Keep away and don't provoke it and prob'ly it'll leave us be." Even so, Alan has drawn steel on the thing; his nerves are shot to shit just seeing the snake after that horrific mutie from before. He at least sounds reasonably calm to himself, but he rather expects that won't last.
  
LaRoux exhales as she comes over the ridge. "Alan, is the snake all?!"

  "If that be, why are ye trembling," the woman asks softly as LaRoux peers over the ledge.

  "I don't like snakes," Alan replies laconically, briefly turning his head to reply to LaRoux, "Aye, just surprised our friend and I here, that's all. Perhaps looking to sun itself." Alan finds himself imagining a much larger snake sunning itself with a human-shaped bulge somewhere in its body and represses a shudder.

  The snake flicks its tongue out, as if to rebuff Alan's proclamation, and glides back into the shadows beneath the tumble of rocks that make up the ledge.

  "Help me up, would ye, sai?" the woman asks Alan, stepping up onto the first stone.

  Alan obliges grudgingly, unwilling to get too close to the now-sinister crevices in the stone.

  LaRoux nods a bit and holsters her pistol.

  "Watch ye don't startle if more be about," he says, as much to himself as her.

  The woman watches the shadows beneath the rocks as well, gently picking her way back up with Alan's grip on her hand. "Will ye go on now, then?" she asks, once they're back atop the ridge and Josef's had her fill of the clear sweet water.

  Alan looks askance to LaRoux to get an idea of her disposition; himself, he's willing to go. Hadn't been too comfortable to stop to begin with.

  LaRoux wipes her chin with her sleeve and nods at Alan.

  "Best we do.  That bit has to come out.  Soon," me pauses for a beat, "You're welcome to ride with us, if it suits you.  To leave someone out in badlands like these without a defense, well...it may as well be that I shot you myself."

  The woman waves her hand over Alan's appropriated horse, shooing a cloud of gnats that swarm around his head. "It would be a kindness, sai," she tells him. "I was not to carry anything with me, but my superior said nothing of taking aid."

  LaRoux grins slightly but hides it. She turns to her horse. "Then it's settled..."

  After helping LaRoux onto her horse, Alan climbs in his own saddle and holds out a hand to the woman, "Let's exploit that loophole, then. And beg pardon, but I don't believe you've given us a name?"

  "Thankee sai," she says, hoisting herself up. "I am Sister Althea, sai. Your name is Alan, but I have not heard your name," she says, turning in the saddle to look back at LaRoux.

  "Uh... La Roux will do." She says, not wanting to use her first name.

  "We are well-met then, La Roux and Alan, Beam or no Beam," Sister Althea replies.

  Alan inclines his head in agreement, "Indeed.  And let's press on - there's distance to cover yet."  Alan inclines his head in agreement, "Indeed.  And let's press on - there's distance to cover yet."