“I’ve never seen rounds like these,” he says rolling one of the bullets between is fingers.
“I’m not surprised,” I tell him.
I get him to help me roll the rest of the gang outside—each of them tied into place on heavy-duty dollies, which makes them easier to move than Mendez is in his wagon. You just have to be careful you don’t tip them.
“The sheriff makes the bullets,” I add. “He says they’re equal parts lightning, whiskey powder and despair.”
“What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know. You could ask him. The time I did, he started talking about alchemy and confined energy spheres and my head started to spin.”
The sheriff is standing in the middle of the yard, his scarred features turned to face the canyon where the lights are still playing over the ground below. It won’t be long now before they reach us.
Mason steps down from the porch carrying her granddad’s old buffalo rifle. She delivers it to the sheriff, then pulls a six-gun from the waist of her jeans.
Tommy turns from the sheriff and looks back at me. “I think I’ll pass,” he says.
Mason and I switch on each member of the Mech Gang and arrange them in the yard, three of them facing the canyon, two facing the rear. We came up with this arrangement after the last time, when the enemy split up and came at us from both sides.
“Eyes to the sky,” I say to them. “Make every shot count.”
The Mech Gang draw their weapons. Five metal faces tilt upward and glowing red eye sensors scan the sky.
The sheriff checks the buffalo rifle’s load even though he knows Mason would have done that before she brought it out to him. But that’s just the way he is. Careful. It’s why he’s survived as long as he has.
“Incoming,” Mason says.
We look up at the lights that are now heading our way. The sheriff settles the stock of the rifle against his shoulder and takes aim.
“Can you shoot?” I ask Tommy.
He nods. “But what am I shooting at? Lights in the sky?”
“Pretty much. We just need to keep them back—lay down a covering fire so the sheriff can do his thing. You won’t believe the range on that buffalo rifle.”
“There’s not much about today I do believe,” Tommy says.
But he takes the six-gun I pass him, checks its load.
“Where do you want me?” he asks.
“Stick close to Mason. And go easy on your ammo. These bullets take a while to make.”
“But—”
“All you need to remember is that we want to keep those damned creatures far enough back that their lasers can’t reach us, but close enough for the sheriff to make his shot.”
I don’t expect him to do much, but a man needs to be made to feel useful. We don’t really need him. By now we’ve got this down to a fine art. I fetch my rifle and take a stand beside the Linden Kid.
The Mech Gang starts to lay down fire, choosing their shots carefully.
“Come on,” the sheriff mutters, gaze fixed on the approaching aircraft.
The lead one’s almost close enough to fire on one of the outbuildings when the sheriff takes his shot. The buffalo rifle booms like a clap of thunder and the craft explodes in a flare of bright light. Then it winks out and there’s nothing left in its place except for a cloud of fine dust. The other two craft veer off, right and left, before they circle back for another run. Now they’re coming at us from both sides.
The sheriff doesn’t even check his shot. He breaks the rifle open and expels the spent shell. Reaching into his pocket, he gets another round, inserts it and snaps the rifle shut again. He’s so fast that it almost seems he has the stock back against his shoulder before the echo of his first shot dies away.
“East,” he says, indicating the target he’s chosen.
I turn west and fire at the incoming craft on my side. It’s too far away for me to do any damage, but it shoots straight up into the sky to escape all the same. Behind me I hear the boom of the buffalo rifle again, followed by another explosion as the second craft bites the dust.
You’d think they’d learn by now. You’d think the surviving ship would beat a retreat. But here it comes, dropping straight down from the starry sky directly above us. The buffalo rifle booms a third time and the last craft explodes. A fine dust drifts down from the sky.
“Don’t breathe that crap!” I warn Tommy. “Or let it get in your eyes.”
Mason and I are already pulling up bandanas to cover our noses and mouths. We shut our eyes. Both the Mech Gang and the sheriff are holding their fire. I feel the weird tingle as the dust settles upon us and brush it away. It’s only dangerous in the first few moments after the ship explodes. After that it might as well be corn flour.
I open my eyes and look around. The Mech Gang are still scanning the sky for danger, but the sheriff has lowered his buffalo rifle.
“We got all three!” Tommy says.
The sheriff nods.
“I counted four over the canyon,” Mason says.
I play back in my head the light show we saw above the canyon earlier and realize she’s right. We all study the sky, waiting for that last ship to appear.
The minutes tick by.
“So what exactly are we blowing up here?” Tommy asks.
“I’m not really sure,” the sheriff tells him. “Back where I’m from, all we know for sure is that they’re some kind of gas-based life form. They can’t hold a solid shape for long. Long enough to cause some damage—“ He gives me a glance. “—but then they just come apart. I don’t even think we’re killing them. We’re just returning them to another state. Sooner or later they reform and they come back.
“Used to be, I thought they were looking to use me for a more permanent vehicle, but now I think they’re just pissed off and want to finish me off.”
The rest of us keep scanning for that fourth ship, but Tommy can’t take his gaze from the sheriff.
“So you’re real,” he says. “I mean, you’re like a real person except you’re made of metal and clockwork, right?”
“I don’t understand the question.”
“Well, no offense, but I just took you for something somebody made.”
“Somebody did make me.”
Tommy nods. “Well, yeah. But you still think and feel like a human being. You have independent thought.”
“I can think for myself, yes,” the sheriff says.
“So why do you let Dan turn you off?
“I don’t let him. I ask him to.”
“I don’t get it,” Tommy says. “So you just go from battle to battle? What kind of life is that?”
The sheriff shrugs. “It’s what I do. It’s why I am. I’ve had too much of the time in between where I don’t fit in. A warrior’s not made for peacetime—just ask the old Indian chiefs. Geronimo, Cochise. They understood. But so long as the enemy keeps coming for me, I can’t go away. At least here we’ve got a good defense set up.”
“Earlier,” Tommy says, “you said something about ‘where you come from.’ Can I ask where that is?”
The sheriff scratches at his burnt cheek—a gesture I’ve noticed he does when he’s thinking. It always makes me feel a little disconcerted since it makes him seem more human, less the clockwork man.
“I don’t know that I can tell you,” he says finally. “It’s not from here and it wasn’t in this clockwork body. When Nate Cutler—Dan’s great-grandfather—was putting the finishing touches on this body and turned it on, I found myself inside and I’ve been here ever since. But I can recall some other place and something pushing me out of my own body.”
“Was it something Nate did?”
The sheriff shakes his head. “No, I think it was one of the enemy taking me over and so I fled and ended up in the next available container that would hold whatever it is that makes us what we are. Nate made this body to protect his family, so that’s what I do.”
Tommy looks from me back to the
sheriff.
“Seems to me,” Tommy says, “that your being here is what’s putting the Cutlers in danger.”
“Now you hold on there!” I tell him. “The sheriff’s done a lot for my family. He’s fought off Indians, Civil War deserters, rustlers and outlaws. If you think I’m turning my back on him now, you’ve got another thing coming. Jack Poole’s family, and that means something around here.”
Tommy puts up a hand in a peaceful gesture, palm out.
“I’m not suggesting anything,” he says. “I’m just thinking aloud, is all. You can’t tell me it’s never crossed your mind.”
Mason and I have talked about this before and I tell him the same thing I tell her when she suggests that maybe the sheriff should hole up somewhere in the Hierro Maderas.
“I’ll stand by his side for a long as I’m alive.”
“And I appreciate it,” the sheriff says.
“Listen,” Mason says.
We all turn to her.
“What is it?” I ask her.
She touches her ear. “Listen.”
“I don’t hear anything,” I say.
But then I get it. The desert night’s always full of sounds. Rustles and stirrings in the dry brush. An owl hooting from the top of some distant cactus. Javalinas rooting around down by the dry wash, looking for prickly pear.
Right now there’s dead silence except for the wind banging a shutter up in the barn.
“Look sharp,” the sheriff says.
We scan the skies on all sides. I can’t see anything.
“Over there,” Tommy says, pointing above the house.
I start to tell him there’s nothing there, except then I realize it’s like the absence of sound in the desert around us. The sky is always thick with stars—this far away from pretty much anybody, there’s no light pollution and you can see the galaxies in all their glories. Except above the house there’s an empty spot. No stars. Nothing.
Because the last of the enemy ships is there and it’s using something new: some kind of stealth tech. Instead of a glowing oval that’s a little like a dirigible, there’s just the shape of it blocking out the stars.
“Sheriff!” I call over.
The sheriff brings the stock of the buffalo rifle up to his shoulder. It’s an easy shot, but he doesn’t take it. He just stands there, staring up at that absence of stars.
I lift my rifle. The range is iffy but I think I can make the shot. But before I can squeeze the trigger a laser flashes out of the enemy ship. It burns the dirt at the sheriff’s feet then rises up to cut him in two. He falls to the ground in a jumble of metal and little clockwork bits that spill across the yard. His head bounces once, then rolls up against the wheel of the wagon holding the Linden Kid.
I start firing at the ship, but it’s already in retreat.
And then it’s gone.
For a long time I stare at the mess of scorched parts that used to be the sheriff. Buddy approaches it and sniffs at the metal, whining. Mason touches my arm in sympathy but I shake her hand off and turn to Tommy.
“Goddamn,” I say. “Why’d you have to fill his head with all that crap you were spouting?”
“It was his choice,” Tommy says.
“Is that right? And what are we going to do the next time those bastards show up? Nobody could shoot like him.”
“Maybe they won’t come anymore since they got what they were looking for.”
I’ve got nothing left to say. I start to take a swing at him but Mason grabs my arm and hangs on.
“You better make dust,” she tells Tommy.
A year later I’m steering down a dusty side road in my old pickup. Mason’s got the shotgun seat, Buddy’s riding in between us. We’re towing a new-to-us old Airstream trailer as I follow the directions Mason reads from the GPS app on her phone.
“That’s it,” she says, pointing ahead to where a dirt lane leaves the side road and heads out to some buildings we can see out in the brush.
It’s a crappy track, full of potholes, and I take my time pulling the trailer along its half-mile length. By the time we reach the ranch house a woman is standing on the porch, shading her eyes. She’s got a couple of lean, reddish-brown dogs beside her on the porch. The dogs are obviously interested in us—gazes steady, ears twitching—but trained enough to stay with her and not bark.
I pull in under the shade of a tall mesquite, roll down the window, and get out of the cab. Mason follows suit, but we leave Buddy inside.
“Ma’am,” I say and touch the brim of my baseball cap with a finger. “Is Tommy around?”
“He’s out by the barn,” she says, “but I wouldn’t get your hopes up. He’s pretty particular about what he buys.”
I guess she thinks we’re here to try to make a deal on the Airstream.
“We’re not selling,” I tell her.
She smiles. “Well, then you’re most welcome. The last thing we need around here is more junk—no offense. That trailer actually looks to be in pretty good shape.”
“It better be. We paid enough for it. Is it okay if I go talk to Tommy?”
“Sure. If he’s not in the barn then he’s in the workshop behind it.”
I touch the brim of my cap again. “Thanks.”
“You go on ahead,” Mason says when I turn to her.
I nod. She knows this is something I have to do on my own.
“I’ve got iced tea,” I hear Tommy’s wife say as I’m leaving. “If you’d care for a glass.”
“That would be lovely,” Mason tells her.
Then I’m out of earshot.
I follow the sound of a hammer on metal around back of the barn. When I turn the corner I see Tommy banging out the dents on the side panel of what looks to be an old bumper car.
“Hey,” I say.
He lifts his head. It takes him a moment to recognize me and then a wary look comes into his eyes.
“Should I be wishing I had my shotgun in my hand,” he says, “instead of this mallet?”
I shake my head. “I’m not here to make trouble. I came by to apologize.”
He sets the mallet down on the hood of the car.
“There’s no need for that,” he tells me. “Things were pretty messed up that night and I should have kept my mouth shut. You were doing just fine before I came along.”
“There hasn’t been an attack since then,” I tell him. “Not one. We’ve never had so long a stretch.”
He waves me over to where a couple of plastic lawn chairs are set in the shade.
“Nothing?” he says as we settle into our seats.
“Nothing. So you were right. It was him they were after all along. Once they took him out…well, we haven’t seen hide or hair of them since.”
“I’ve thought a lot about that night,” Tommy says but he doesn’t go on.
“And?”
He shrugs. “And nothing. It all seems like a bad dream. Like I ate a lot of pizza and ice cream while watching one of those big blockbuster movies where things blow up every couple of minutes or so. Then I fell asleep and found myself in the middle of that alien shootout.”
“Except it wasn’t a dream.”
“I know that.” He leans back in his chair. “Do you ever wonder where he came from—the sheriff, I mean—and where he’s gone now?”
“All the time.”
And I do think about where he is but it’s nothing I feel like talking about. I feel guilty enough for keeping the sheriff around as long as I did. Mason’s even starting to sleep through the night now.
“I’ve got something for you,” I say as I get to my feet. “It’s back in the truck.”
He stands up and we head back to the house.
“Nice Airstream,” he says.
“Yeah, it’s a ’66, but it’s in crazy-good shape. Mason and I are going to do a little travelling. Visit her sister in New Mexico first, then see where we feel like going after that. We’ve never been able to travel before.”
We’ve re
ached the truck. I lean into the bed and pull off the tarp that’s covering Johnny Scales, the leader of the Mech Gang.
“You’re giving me him?”
I nod. “I thought maybe you could talk to that friend of yours—see if he can get him walking again.”
“I could do that. What about the rest of them?”
“I’ve got them in storage. If your friend figures something out, maybe you could email me and let me know?”
“So you can try to fix the others?”
I nod.
“What about the sheriff?” he asks. “What’d you do with what was left of him?”
“We buried the parts up in the Hierro Maderas where no one’s going to find them.”
Tommy turns to look at where the mountains rear up in the distance. They’re not as close from this vantage point as they are to the ranch, but they still seem to go up into the sky forever.
“God rest his soul,” Tommy says. “If he has one.”
I nod.
Tommy returns his attention to the still form of the clockwork outlaw weighing down the bed of my truck.
“I’ve got a little front loader back in the barn,” he tells me. “We should be able to lift him out with its bucket.”
“Did you tell him?” Mason asks as we’re driving away from the house.
I shake my head. “Why give him something to worry about?”
“Maybe because there is something to worry about?”
“The enemy’s not coming back. They cut the sheriff in two—that’s all they were after.”
“We don’t know that for a fact.”
“It’s been a year,” I say.
A year since we buried the body—like I told Tommy we did. But we kept the head. It’s in the Airstream now in a padded box to keep it from getting banged around. Evenings we take it out and set it on a cushion. I don’t know how or why, but the sheriff’s still in there. Some nights he just tells us stories about what it was like back when the state was a territory. Some nights we try to figure how to get him another body because I’ve got to tell you, it’s damn weird talking to just a head.