Rustkiller - A Science Fiction Western Adventure (The Coilhunter Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  “Well, well, well.”

  As Nox came to, his head spinning and his vision blurred, the voice sounded like the Devil. Maybe it was.

  “The Sandsweeper himself,” the voice boomed. That was just one of the names they had for him. It seemed every gang Nox took on came up with something new.

  Nox felt the ground beneath his knees, and rough fingers holding his arms behind his back. Someone had taken off his hat and was holding his head up by his hair. He could feel the air against the scarred patch above his left ear, where the hair refused to grow. They say the barren land got everywhere. Sometimes you became it too.

  Then his eyes adjusted, and he saw who was talking. Moonlit Jones, a silver-haired man with bushy eyebrows and dark skin. No, not the Devil. Probably a little worse. Some thought the Coilhunter was like a ghost, but in all his long years policing the Wild North, he'd only ever heard of Jones. They said you could only see him in moonlight. But then they said stuff like that about the Coilhunter too.

  “Sweepin' all the scum-filled sand out o' the Wild North,” Jones said with a chuckle. “That's the thing about sand. The wind tends to blow it back up here. And the scum with it.”

  “Yeah,” Nox said. “I can see that.”

  Then he saw something else. Behind where Moonlit Jones sat, someone stood in the darkness. You couldn't see their face. They seemed to be wearing a black mask. He had an idea who that was. People called him—or maybe it was her—the Shadow. That was it. No other names like Nox. He was fairly confident it was the Shadow that knocked him out.

  He also noticed someone else to the side: Coilcountin' Lawson. He was a little bruised, but he had a smug smile on that fat lip of his. It was payback time. He’d even recovered his notepad so he could record all the gory details.

  “There are a lotta people out there who'd pay good money for you,” Jones said. “You've made a lotta enemies over the years. Why, you're more wanted than the rest of us.”

  The crowd erupted in laughter. Funny, that. Usually when they met the Coilhunter, no one laughed.

  “The question is,” Jones continued. “Are you worth more dead or alive?”

  Nox could already feel the cold steel of the gun barrels against his neck and the back of his head. But he also knew the answer to Moonlit Jones' question. He'd already be dead otherwise. There was nothing like the prospects of more money—and the chance to make a few valuable friends—in the criminal underworld. It was something Nox could count on. Their greed. It'd be their downfall, even if he wasn't necessarily the one who'd see it.

  They stared him down. If they couldn't kill him with guns, they'd try to kill his soul with their eyes. In their minds, they spat at him. He was a dog, a mangy runt that had caused a hell of a lot of trouble. There were mud stains on the floor. Soon, there'd be blood stains too.

  But while they were staring and laughing, and talking amongst themselves about how the fabled Coilhunter didn't look so threatening after all, Nox adjusted his arms behind his back, tapping a few buttons on his wristpad. No one saw him do it. The same speed he used to draw a gun helped him with everything.

  But Nox didn't have the time or opportunity to be smug. He knew they didn't just want to kill him. They wanted to break him, and they'd use anyone they thought he was close to.

  So they used the boy.

  It was a sorry sight to see four grown men drag a child into the room. That kid didn't come willingly. He struggled against their massive hands, but he struggled in vain. Nox was surprised that they hadn't already killed him. A slave like that was too much trouble. But then there were some mines that only children could fit into. That made them valuable. Maybe they thought that they could break the boy too.

  “So, who's this, huh?” Jones asked, pointing to the kid. “I thought your boy was dead.”

  Nox bit his lip. He felt his chest heaving. He had to take a few slow, deep breaths, the kind that brought more of that mixture of chemicals into his lungs. He had to bury that part of him that still hurt, the part that was still on fire. He had to bury it like he swore he’d bury Moonlit Jones.

  “Not as dead as you're gonna be,” he croaked.

  Jones scoffed. “You're in no position to be brave, Nox. You're in the Valley of Darkness now.”

  Nox didn't say a word. He waited, counting the seconds in his mind. Sometimes you counted bullets and sometimes you counted time. Either one could kill you.

  “Who's the kid?” Jones asked again, staring at the boy. He let his hand dangle over the armrest of his chair, that hand with all its many gem-encrusted bands. Maybe you didn’t really see Moonlit Jones at all. Maybe in moonlight you’d only see his rings.

  “He's nobody,” Nox said, trying not to even glance at the kid, trying to forget the name he’d read in Lawson’s notebook. Property of Luke Mayfield. He couldn’t help but wonder if the boy would be branded soon: Property of Moonlit Jones.

  “Didn't seem like nobody when you were tryin' to bust 'im out.”

  “Just a kid,” Nox insisted. “Don't even know his name.”

  Nox wasn't entirely lying. That journal could’ve belonged to anyone. The thing about the Wild North was that your property often didn’t remain yours for long. So, not quite a lie and not quite the truth. And it looked like Jones realised it too, realised that Nox’s connection to this kid was passing. That crime boss furrowed his brow in confusion. No doubt he was thinking: Then why risk your life for him?

  “You don't get it,” the Coilhunter explained, buying himself the time he needed. “I'm not like you, Jones. I care what happens to good people. I care what happens to innocent people.”

  He glanced at the boy, and the child looked as surprised as Jones was. In the Wild North, a lot of children had to grow up feeling like no one cared about them. For many, it wasn't even just a feeling. If you didn’t grow up feeling like that, then you were probably dead.

  “But here's the thing,” Nox continued, settling his eyes like crosshairs on Moonlit Jones. “I don't care what happens to you.”

  Then, like clockwork, the cavalry arrived. The monowheel crashed through the wooden wall, sending splinters in all directions like missiles. It had no driver, though the girl was still sitting in the box at the back, holding on for dear life. She had to hold on tight.

  People ran and jumped out of the way, and others reached for their guns.

  “Duck!” one of the guards shouted.

  Many of the people covered their heads with their hands, dropping to the floor. They expected a hail of bullets. After all, that's how they would've done it.

  But they weren’t Nox.

  Most of them hadn't noticed a little hatch open in the side of the monowheel. They hadn't spotted the little toy duck that waddled down a small ramp. When they did, their jaws dropped, their eyes widened, and they tried to run.

  The duck turned its head. Its little beady eyes surveyed the room.

  Quack.

  The explosion made dynamite seem like a faint clap in comparison. But this wasn't fire and gunpowder. This was what the Night Slavers hated the most. This was light.

  11 – BLINDSIDED

  Everyone was seeing white. Not just the normal colour either. A blinding, burning white, a bit like staring straight up at the sun. Nox didn't know how much long-term damage his device did to people's retinas, but he knew the short-term effects real well. It worked.

  People dropped their weapons and crawled across the floor. Some clawed at their eyeballs, screaming and rolling about. Others knocked themselves out by running into walls or doors. It was chaos. It was just how Nox needed it to be.

  He used his wristpad to send the monowheel back outside, and the girl with it. Then he struck the guard to his right, and tried the same to the left, but that one was already fleeing. They'd taken his guns, but he heard some of them drop their own. He felt along the ground, feeling other hands, then a face here and there, and someone's empty shoe. It was funny what people abandoned, like their conscience.

  He
was waiting for the adjustment, for the light to dim just a little, for when he'd start seeing pale glimmers of silhouettes. But it was taking a long time. He just had to hope that everyone else was as blind as he was.

  Then the tip of his finger touched something metal, moving the object a little across the floor. The sound stood out more now, and he heard someone else crawling towards it too. He threw himself forward. Both his hand and someone else's grabbed the gun.

  Nox swiped with his other hand, but struck thin air. Then he felt a fist against his forearm. Then he heard a cry as the man punched the ground. Nox yanked the gun from his grasp and pushed the barrel against the man's torso, to make sure he wasn't killing anyone else. He fired, and the shot sounded like thunder to everyone's sensitive ears.

  There were several answering shots. It was largely panic. Nox heard them ping off the walls in all directions. No one cared who they hit, so long as it wasn't them. That made it way more dangerous for the rest of them.

  Nox pulled his guitar out and held it before him as he crawled along. It was just as well he did, because he heard one shot strike the reinforced metal frame.

  He heard the boy cry out across the room. He scrambled over, ducking behind the guitar, trying not to strike the strings. Any time it hit the floor, the vibration sent out a little tune. It was better than the music of gunfire.

  Nox patted the ground as he went, grabbing someone's ankle. He didn't know whose it was, but by the size he could guess it was an adult, and by the hairs he could guess it was a man's. He reached out until he felt a coat tail, then aimed his gun and fired. It could've been anyone, but where Nox was, the odds were that it was a criminal.

  He scrambled along further, towards the whimpers of the child. He could hear the flurry of fabric, so he knew there was a struggle. That kid had some fight in him. The question was: how long would he have some life in him too?

  Nox tapped at his wristpad, firing up the monowheel again. He heard the girl shriek as it jolted forward, and then heard another cry from someone else as the wheel rolled over their arm. He halted the vehicle. He couldn't operate like this. The criminals mightn't have cared who died, but he did. If he got his way, it'd only be them.

  He grabbed the boy's arm, pulling him behind the guitar. Bullets stuttered off the other side, pinging off in all directions, taking down more shapeless figures. Nox could hear the boy's heavy pants. They were lucky there was gunfire or everyone else would've heard them too.

  “Find your sister,” the Coilhunter told the child, giving him the guitar for cover. There wasn't room enough behind it for the both of them. If the kid had been a little bit older, he might've given him a gun as well. He thought there might still be time for that.

  The boy was clearly dazed. Nox didn't need his sight to know that. The kid didn’t murmur a response, didn’t make any of the usual protests. He just clutched that guitar tightly, letting the cuff of his shirt pluck the strings. It almost played the Coilhunter’s usual tune, that little lullaby Nox used before he put the criminals to sleep.

  “Stay down,” Nox told the boy, pushing him on towards where he could hear the thrum of the monowheel’s engine, to where he could get the waft of the diesel fumes. He just hoped the kid’s sister would stay there too.

  The spotless white dimmed a little, enough for him to see the beginnings of shapes, dark blotches that might have been people. Some said it was in this state that you could see the real person, if they were man or monster. The Resistance had tried to rope him into their war against the Iron Empire for years, hoping he'd offer up his toys—hoping he'd help reveal just how demonic their enemy really was. But the real monsters operated up here in the Wild North, in the lands untouched by the war, in the wilds untouched by the law—except for the Coilhunter.

  The silhouettes were something frightening. Nox now knew what the criminals felt when their vision adjusted and they saw him towering over them, the black mark of justice in their strained vision. He'd let a few of them go, as a warning to the others. He knew he'd be back for them in their dreams.

  But what Nox feared more than anything was letting the criminals and conmen win. Nothing else mattered. So, he stood up, and glanced around, searching for the shapes he knew quite well, the shapes of men in cowboy hats that far too often made their way onto Wanted posters. Nox's sight started to return to normal, and all those dark shapes became more concrete. They were people all right, and most of them were dead. Except for one.

  Nox strolled over to Coilcountin' Lawson, who was pressing his hands against his wounded knee. It wasn't Nox's bullet that did that, but he'd do the rest. Lawson looked up at him with teary eyes and a trembling lip. He might've pleaded for his life if he thought it'd do him any good.

  “Where are the others?” Nox asked, pointing his pistol at him.

  “They're g-g-gone.”

  “I know they're gone. I can see that … now. But where? Where do the Night Slavers go when somethin' like this happens?”

  Lawson furrowed his brow. “Somethin' like this? Nothin' like this happens!”

  “Well, you should've known. You should've been expectin' me.”

  “They'll kill you for this!” Lawson growled. “You can count on it!”

  “Well, you're good at countin', aren't ya? So, tell me,” Nox said, pulling the hammer back on his pistol. “How many more bullets have I got in this gun?”

  Lawson took a breath, as if to speak. It was his last. The little clap of thunder from Nox's gun masked the criminal's sigh.

  “None now,” Nox said, flicking open the empty barrel.

  He took some new bullets from a pouch on his belt and loaded it up. The Night Slavers might have disappeared into their favoured darkness, but a new day would dawn soon enough, and that'd mean plenty more criminals waking up from their far too comfortable beds. Nox'd find them new ones, six feet down in the sand below.

  12 – FREE

  They say there's no rest for the wicked, but there didn't seem to be any for the good either. When Nox found the kids outside, the girl was leaning over the boy on the ground. The boy was convulsing, his arms flaying about in the sand.

  Nox raced over, kneeling down beside them.

  “What happened?”

  “It's his seizures,” the girl said. “He has them from time to time.”

  “There any medicine?”

  The girl shook her head. “I don't know. We don't have any.”

  “What do you normally do?”

  She sighed and held the boy's hand tighter. “Just wait it out.”

  Nox looked at the boy. His body shook violently, his eyes rolling in all directions, his tongue lolling in his mouth. He wanted to help the poor kid, but for once he felt like he didn't know how. He had no gadgets or weapons for something like this.

  “Maybe it's the stress,” Nox suggested, placing his hand on the boy's shuddering shoulder. “Probably all that gunfire.”

  “Or your bomb,” the girl said curtly. She glanced suspiciously at the duck, which stood guard beside the monowheel.

  “It ain't a bomb.”

  “It sure seemed like one.”

  “If it was a bomb, we'd all be dead.”

  “You almost killed us all anyway.”

  “I saved you,” Nox replied. “I saved your brother.”

  The girl was about to respond when the boy's tremors suddenly subsided.

  “Ugh,” the boy said.

  “You're back,” his sister replied, her eyes tearing up.

  “Where'd I go?”

  She pursed her lips. “It happened again.”

  “Is it gettin' worse?”

  She didn't respond.

  The boy turned his head towards Nox, his eyes wide. That was the usual look most gave him.

  “Who're you?” the boy asked.

  “Just a drifter.”

  “Are you one of … them?” The child's eyes indicated the building they'd just come out of.

  “No.”

  “He saved you,
” his sister said, handing him back his satchel.

  The boy struggled to sit up, resting his elbows on the ground. He looked around, giving a double take when he saw the little toy duck staring at him.

  “Mr. Quacky!” he cried, smiling. He turned back to Nox. “That must make you, um, Mr. Wacky.” He grinned, and his sister slapped him on the arm. “But he is,” the boy insisted.

  Nox grumbled and stood up. “Right, well … I guess this is where we part ways.”

  The girl nodded solemnly. She knew better than to hope for more. She'd already gotten more than she expected. She was old enough to know that the desert didn't owe you a thing—though it'd give you a six-foot hole if you waited long enough.

  “Where'll we go?” the boy asked, pushing himself up.

  “Go find your family, boy.”

  The boy's eyes lit up with a kind of terror Nox did not expect. He gave a slight shake of his head, as if he didn't want the Coilhunter saying that around his sister.

  “We're trying to find 'em,” the girl said. “That's why we came out here.”

  “Out here?” Nox asked. “There ain't nothin' out here.”

  “They came this way.”

  “They're dead,” the boy said, frowning.

  “They're not dead,” his sister replied. “We don't know that. They can't be. It hasn't been long enough. We'll find 'em, Luke.”

  Luke. So the name was right. That journal wasn’t stolen. Nox almost wished it was. That way, he still wouldn’t know the kid’s name. It’d be easier then, easier to move on, to not get attached. He couldn’t help but see a row of graves in his mind, getting steadily smaller, each of them etched with a name he knew too well.

  The boy didn't seem convinced by his sister’s comments. He looked at Nox with almost pleading eyes, those eyes that the Coilhunter now associated with a name. Luke’s breathing started to get heavy again. Nox was a little concerned he might have another seizure.

  “How long's it been?” Nox asked.

  “Two months,” the girl replied.

  Luke pouted. “It's three. It might even be four!”