Ain't Talkin'

The sun was past the midpoint in the sky when Roche reached the oil derricks. The ancient, rusted struts left a pattern of dark lines and triangles of light in varying sizes strewn across the dust. Here and there were the remnants of a shanty town that had sprung up along the bases of the towers sometime in the last century. Corrugated tin roofing and stretched canvas walls spattered here and there around the iron legs of the derricks, and beneath one someone had built a fire pit out of thick tractor tires. High above him the rigs were rusted horse heads many stories tall, and along one Roche was sure he saw the hanging remnants of a gibbet, it’s occupants bones turning slowly to powder in the sun and wind.

Roche stopped short and put his heels at shoulder width.

He wasn’t alone.

All it had been was a whiff of scent on the same breeze that swirled sand and dust around his boots. It had been there, just a nothing on the wind, but it was cigarette smoke, and the fag in the corner of Roche’s mouth wasn’t lit.

Roche tipped his hat back off of his head where it hung on a leather thong clipped to his jacket.

“Come on out, now.” The walker said calmly, one hand in his pocket on a revolver, the other slipping open the length of his coat to show the second revolver, to show he was armed.

“Well fuck me and call me a whore!” Corrugated metal rumbled over in that way that it has and the vagrant who had been hiding behind it stood up straight and tall, or as straight as his slouch would allow. They all had that same slouch, Roche thought, highwaymen and robbers all have that same stupid ‘come-at-me’ slouch.

“I’d rather not, given the smell of you.” Roche eyed in all directions at once. This one wasn’t alone. “Tell your friends they can come out too, if they like. No use all of you hiding from one damn man, is there?”

A scrappy looking highwayman in a sleeveless coat stepped from behind a girder-leg of a derrick. Another rose out of a shallow ranger grave at Roche’s 2 o’clock in a respirator, probably more for show than anything. A fourth sidled out to Roche’s left from behind a scrap heap of old rusted barrels, and that one had been hidden the worst.

How’d I miss that one? Maybe I’m getting rusty?

The all of them were dressed in highwaymen fashion. The respirator-fella being the exception wearing something flowery and old-world, probably for some fucking stab at humor. They were all oilskin jackets, leather and high boots, knives belted where they could be grabbed on the fly, and something cloth along their necks and scalps to keep the sun off, scarves or masks or something or other.

“Well, fella, whatcha carrying?” The first highwayman asked.

“Nothing and less, boys. Let’s just make this easier on everybody and y’all let me go?” Roche smirked and turned a little so that gasmask and the others could see he was armed.

“Cha got there? Peashooter?” Gasmask laughed and held up his own gun. Long barreled, clip, probably twelve shots.

Highwayman on the left drew a rifle, more like made it more apparent he was carrying it. Old world gun, Garand?

First highwayman had a similar weapon to Gasmask.

Fourth man, poorly hidden highwayman had a knife in one hand, big buck knife, and a six-shot revolver in the other.

“Told you boys, lemme go.” Roche fingered the trigger of his holstered revolver, a fraction of a second from his grip.

“Eh, eh, eh! Don’t do it, buddy boy. Just hand over whatcha got an you get to go.”

“And what’re you fellas eating out here that you’re just gonna let me go? I had jackrabbit last night but you aren’t surviving on that. Where’s the body drop? Where you keeping the bones of whoever came right before me?” Roche smirked wider. The ether was at his back, he could feel the white tickling at the nape of his neck.

“Eh? We ain’t cannib’s, fucker!”

“Yeah, no one likes being accused of it. But I bet y’all just get so damn hungry sometimes, yeah?”

“Fuck you!”

“Fuck me, eat me, have at me.” Roche grinned even wider, the smile like a Cheshire moon and his eyes wide.

There was a half of a half second pause and Gasmask looked at the first highwayman while the one on the left seemed to doubt his aim for just a hair’s breadth. The white seeped into Roche’s fingertips.

The walker had both revolvers drawn. Gaskmask’s gas mask split old, dry rubber down the middle and his form slumped when his brains sprayed out the back of his skull. First highwayman opened his eyes wide when a pair of bullets hit him in the nape of his neck and in the hollow of his chest. Knife and gun got a shot off, wide to Roche’s left, lad might have been the fastest of the four. Roche put him down with a shot to his gut, and a second one higher and through his breastplate. Last man standing had the foresight to start to turn for a run. Roche took a step in his direction and dropped him with a shot that put a bullet into the back of his neck where it just popped through the front of his throat. Enough red sprayed out as he fell forward that the poor bastard wound up face first in his own blood.

Roche whirled on the spot, checking his whole view for any highwaymen that might now have showed themselves just. None made a sound or stood or ran or shot.

The desert was a household of one again.

The cordite hung in the air for a second and then went the way of the wind.

Roche lit the cigarette that had never left the corner of his mouth.

Exhaling smoke, Roche found the loops on his belt and reloaded his revolvers as he walked on.

Sand seeped over the bodies with the passing of the day and Roche looked toward the hills the Emporium hid in.

One more stop and it was back to the task at hand. The epilogue of the world sighed and the walker kept on walking.