Runner-up: Boomtown
Sean Rima
Published November 14, 2008 at 7:29 a.m.
Sean Rima is a talk show host at 850 KOA and castlerockradio.com. “Writing has been my singular passion since I received my first typewriter at the age of 7,” he says. Rima has published poems as well as two chapbooks and is working on his third novel, a Christmas story based on a fictional town in the mountains of Colorado.
Contact: seanrima@yahoo.com
The rider had traveled along the old railroad tracks for weeks, figuring it was safer than following the smashed interstate. The mountains lay over his shoulder to the west, their creases barren and gray, save for the odd patch of surviving aspen. From the mountains he had ridden, and to the mountains he would return … once his assignment had been completed. It would be his last, and he was glad for it. The militia boys could handle the rest. The militia and the Utah bureaucrats. He was amazed at how easily they had found him. He’d have to take down the cabin upon his return and move deeper into the canyon. They wouldn’t be so lucky again. This time, he’d vanish for good. As if he had never been born.
“The situation in the marketplace is delicate,” the director’s secretary had nervously explained, as he adjusted his plastic spectacles. “We cannot afford a connection being made between the new administration and … what needs to happen. The Republic is barely holding together. Surely you understand the need for deniability on the government’s part?”
He understood, all right. Which is why he didn’t mind asking for as many sacks of gold as he did, despite the floundering treasury. With the money, he’d have the materials for the new cabin and enough genetics to grow food and animals for the rest of his days. After that, to hell with the Republic. He’d seen enough of their bloody damned wars.
His black mare whinnied, her haunches stiff with the long journey. Though he’d cloned her specifically for prolonged travel, he knew he’d pushed her sturdy biomechanics to the limit. She’d last maybe another day or so, and then her muscles would begin to shred from the ligaments, starting at the knees. Of course, he’d stunted her nervous system, so she wouldn’t feel the pain of it. Didn’t make him feel any better about riding a perfectly good horse to death, but it couldn’t be helped. The hydrobike would’ve attracted too many bandits, and he couldn’t afford to waste his pulse cartridges on radiation cases looking to sell his bike for food.
The tracks bent slightly toward the northeast, and he could see the spires of the city rising against a lazy red sky. Wouldn’t be long now. Once he’d found the crumbling stadium where the squatters held their market, he’d know to turn due east. Then he’d hide out on Larimer Street for a few days and watch the comings and goings at the old hotel from a safe distance down 17th. He’d have to freshen up on the layout of the streets if he was going to slip in to see Mangold. The slaver’s thugs were everywhere, and it had been at least 20 years since he’d last been to Denver.
~~~
The huge cowboy with the scar down his left cheek stood alert at the right side of the door, and the slave girl with the long, tangled hair awaited her next command to the left, her wide eyes bluer than the Colorado sky had been since before the war. From his massive oak desk, Mangold eyed the girl over his daily ledger, dated September 13, 2158, a guess that was as best as anyone could reckon. Something about that girl’s stare bothered him, with her grotesque blond hair stiff as straw. Something damning.
“How old are you, Sweetness?” he asked politely.
“Fourteen, Boss.”
“And how long have you been in my possession?”
“It was two years ago this month that my daddy signed his contract with you, Boss. As best as anyone can reckon.”
Mangold thoughtfully licked the end of his hand-rolled cigar and then asked, genuinely curious, “And what is your name, Sweetness? Tell me your name.”
Not a muscle twitched in the young girl’s drawn face as she answered, without emotion, “My name is Forty-Seven, Boss.”
“That’s right, Sweetness, your name is Forty-Seven. And do you know why your name is Forty-Seven, instead of Molly, or Mary, or Beatrice? Your name is a damn number because I am a man who owns over 50 slaves, and, in this new market economy of ours, inelegant as it may be, a man who owns over 50 slaves is a man to be respected. And feared. Wouldn’t you agree, Forty-Seven?”
“Yes, Boss. I would agree.”
“Then I would strongly suggest, Sweetness, that you remove that rather vengeful glare from your eye, or I might have to consider taking you back to the shop for a refund. And that would not bode well for your poor, suffering daddy.” He studied her with a serpent’s yellow gaze before adding, almost as an afterthought, “Now, hustle yourself downstairs and bring me back an elk steak. Rare. With some damn beans and a hunk of bread. Go on! Move!”
The girl quickly disappeared through the office door as the cowboy shut it behind her and fixed the various locks and deadbolts, resuming his post with a faint grin.
Mangold leaned back in his chair and fired up the cigar. Amidst the twisting, gray clouds, he reached into his desk drawer and withdrew an unmarked bottle of clear liquid, along with a shot glass. He poured himself a healthy measure and then tossed it back. Grimacing in the deep burn of it, he stammered, with a cough. “Plastic booze, fermented from a damn contrived plastic dandelion! I’ll never get used to it, I swear! As long as I live! Do you know that my grandpappy used to brew genuine shine-liquor from something called a ‘potato’? Do you even know what the hell that is, a ‘potato’?” He glowered at the cowboy, not expecting an answer. “Naw! Neither do I, brother!” he snickered, replying to his own question as he poured himself another shot. “But the old man used to give me sips of it when I was 10 years old, as best as anyone can reckon. And let me tell you, that poisonous crud made me feel a hell of a lot better than this stuff does, no doubt!”
At this, Mangold the Slaver laughed out loud. He continued to chuckle as he glanced over his ledger, recording silently in his mind the number of gold sacks he had accumulated that day through the boisterous slave auctions at the old stadium. With every gold sack came the hiring of new men — thick, stupid grunts, the lot of them. But with each hired gun, his control over the neighborhood intensified, and it wouldn’t be long before those self-serving yuppies in Utah would have no choice but to recognize him as an influence, as something more than just another squatter lord. And then he’d make his move, when the timing was just right, when those condescending wimps least expected it…
The slaver’s thoughts were interrupted by a brief shuffling outside the door.
The cowboy looked concerned.
It wasn’t much, but it was out of the ordinary.
Mangold nodded, and the brute unlocked the door, his knobby fingers massaging the butt of the pulse revolver holstered to his thigh. He slipped his awkward bulk through the door, pulling it shut behind him. From his desk, Mangold operated a remote device, which tossed the locks back into place on the door. And then he took another shot of the dandelion booze, belching a bit when he had finished.
Silence.
A lot of it.
And then a sizzling needle of red light poked through the crack between the door and the wall and started to make its way down toward the deadbolts. As the blade of it cut through the bolts, Mangold sighed wearily and poured himself another drink.
As he sipped his shot, the door swung open with a cloud of gunmetal smoke and a man stepped in, an older man with a deeply etched face and a sprinkle of gray at his temples, his stare penetrating like a laser beam from beneath the shadows of a wide-brimmed hat. But it was the homemade pulse revolver in the stranger’s hand that Mangold took notice of, mostly. Drawing from his cigar, the slaver asked his guest, resigned but with a bitter hint of recognition, “What did they offer you, old friend, to take me out? To assassinate me? Must be quite a prize, given your rather outdated sensibilities.”
“Seven sacks of gold, Jacob,” the man replied, without hesitation, utilizing the slaver’s rarely uttered first name. “That’s all.”
“Seven sacks of gold, my, my. I am so deeply offended! And for a man of your considerable talents! Am I to assume that you have dutifully retired my night detail?”
“Yeah,” the man hissed without flinching, “you can assume that.”
“All of them?”
“They’re not dead. I made sure of that.”
“Well, aren’t you a saint.”
“Whatever. Can we get on with this? I’m sick of your fat mouth.”
“By all means.” Mangold smiled, with a single bead of sweat rolling down his forehead. “Pull the trigger, at your convenience. I assume you’ve been paid.”
“Half before,” the man answered dispassionately, “and half when it’s done.”
“Yes, yes, a simple matter of business. I know something of that. Let me tell you, in this desolate world we’ve created for ourselves, the only law that anyone respects anymore is business, simple business. The pure and proper exchange of goods and services. Need for need. I satisfy a need, old friend. And in the satisfaction that I provide, I also bring order into chaos. You weren’t around when the bombs went off, were you? The silent bombs that killed all the damn computers? Naw. You were in some other town, doing some other thing. Not me. I was here. In Denver.”
“I’m not in the mood to listen to this bull—“
“Oh, we were hardly in the mood, either, old friend. You don’t know. You didn’t see it,” the slaver mused, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands behind his head. “It didn’t take long to realize that not only was the government not coming back, but the blasted government had ceased to exist at all. After that, men started feeding on each other. In every way imaginable. It was one mean and ugly thing to witness, old friend. The damn end of civilization. And it required one to do mean and ugly things to bring a measure of sanity to that … bloody mess.”
The man with the gun sneered. “Well, aren’t you a saint.”
“Yeah, ain’t I, though?” Mangold chuckled, rocking gently. “Look at me, the savior of the human race! And despite all the abundance that I have brought my fellow man in his time of inequity, I still gotta throw down against the Holy Reaper, in his big black hat, with an accounting of my sins rolled up in the barrel of his big black gun. My, my. It is a funny world.”
“No, it’s not,” the man whispered, “and neither are you. You can talk all the poetry you want, but you’re nothin’ but a worthless parasite. A leech. Slaver scum.”
“I’m a survivor,” Mangold corrected, “and this is not your lucky day.”
In a flash of movement, he drew a small pulse gun from the back of his chair and leveled it at the tall assassin. He pulled the trigger. Click, click, click.
The man didn’t move. He didn’t flinch. He smiled.
Mangold sighed heavily and dropped his empty gun to the floor. “I see. Apparently, this is not your first visit to my humble residence.”
“I stopped by earlier. You weren’t in.”
“I should have figured. Well, it was worth a damn try, at least.”
“I suppose.” And then the man with the craggy face tightened his grip on his own pistol, the muzzle of it lifting toward the slaver’s chest across the room. “Ready yourself, Jacob. It’s time. I got a long ride home.”
Mangold’s chin began to quiver and his hands shook uncontrollably as he desperately poured himself one last shot of plastic dandelion whiskey. Tossing it back, he began to cry. “Go ahead, you wandering piece of garbage!” he blubbered, the hot tears burning into his eyes like an acid. “Pull your damn trigger! Do it! But as you’re riding your robot horse back to that lonely ramshackle of yours way up on the mountain, don’t you ever think there’s a shadow of difference between us! We both feed! Everybody feeds! On each other! Every damn one of us!”
The assassin’s smile faded. He charged his weapon.
Silence.
~~~
After waking up in several locations around the hotel, Mangold’s beaten-up men found themselves collected outside the closed door of his office, wondering what the hell had happened. Eventually, one of them got brave enough to try the door. It swung open, and the confused cowboys beheld a most unusual sight.
Their boss, Jacob Mangold, was strapped to a chair by several layers of duct tape, which wound all the way up his neck and across his mouth. Standing next to him was the young slave girl with the tangled blond hair, holding a small pulse revolver to the boss’ temple. The vengeful glare had returned to her deep, blue, soulful eyes. And at the boss’ desk sat a lean stranger with an etched face and a black hat tipped back on his head. He was cutting into a steaming elk steak with a dollop of beans and a hunk of bread. The steak was rare. Bloody rare.
“My name is Holliday,” he announced, leaning back in the slaver’s chair until the lights in the room caught a glint off the silver badge hanging from his shirt, “and I am a duly appointed federal marshal of the United States government. This man,” he said, pointing to Mangold with his steak knife, “is my prisoner. I will hold him here, in this room, with the assistance of my deputy, uh—?”
The slave girl glanced over at him and smiled. “Emily.”
“—With my deputy, Emily, until several detachments of the Utah militia arrive in this city in exactly two days. Upon their arrival, Mr. Mangold will be remanded to a jail cell where he will await trial. Until then, gentlemen, I am the law in Denver.”
As the cowboys glanced at each other, their nervous fingers twitching for the butts of pulse revolvers, the marshal sat forward in his chair, his weathered face curling into a snarl. “Now, if any of you boys feels you’re more deserving of this hunk of metal pinned to my shirt, then you are more than welcome to try and take it from me,” he hissed. “But I will warn you now, I’ll kill every stinking scum buzzard who tries, and I’ll kill ’em real good! Now, close that damned door, and let me finish my steak.”
They did, but he knew they’d be back. It would be a long night.
Might be awhile before he sees his cabin in the mountains again.
As best as anyone can reckon.
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