Scotch took off his cowboy hat showing the yellow-blonde hair he sawed short every few weeks with his knife and smacked me hard with it. “Seven, if you do not stop speaking that way, I will end you. I’ve told you a thousand times it makes me question my own sanity.” Our horses bumped shoulders without complaint with the motion.
I grinned. “That’s why I do it.” We weren’t from around here, far from it, but we went where the work took us and this past year that had been Arizona, Nevada, Mexico—up and down, round and round. Those bastards could hide like nobody’s business. They were getting smarter and tracking them was getting harder. If I could entertain myself by talking like a genuine cowboy and drive my partner nuts in the bargain, well, hell, that’s what I was going to do.
He grumbled, but put his hat back on. It wasn’t to soak up the sweat. It wasn’t hot. It was never hot anymore. Never warm. It was always winter now, but the rays of the sun, small and bloody as it had become, would sear flesh the same as that cook-fire and rabbit I’d been thinking of earlier, especially if you were fair-skinned. I wasn’t. My skin was dark enough that the sun didn’t bother me much. My hair was darker still and I kept it twisted strands tied back in a long tail. It was easier than combing it every day or cutting it once a month. There wasn’t a lot of time for personal hygiene on the hunt, whether it was here on the western trail or up north hunting in the cities. If you had water and soap, you were lucky. If you wanted to feel warm water again, you’d have to heat it yourself.
When the Earth had stopped, nearly everything had stopped with it. I didn’t know how or what they did. Some hideous last magic, the kind of magic that if you had seen would’ve no doubt burned the eyes from your face, peeled the skin from your flesh and driven you to a gibbering madness that would infect everyone you then cast your blind screaming gaze on.
I shook my head. That was the best part of pretending to be a cowboy. Not having to think thoughts like those. No matter how it had happened, what grisly magic was unleashed, nothing worked. Cars didn’t run. Houses didn’t heat. Lights stayed dark and forever would. I didn’t much care about the cars, although they would’ve made the chases shorter. But a warm bath—to soak away months of dust and the ache of the trail, I’d have given Scotch’s right arm for that. His left too, if that’s what it took.
I patted my horse’s neck and wiped a damp hand on my pants. At least the guns still worked. I’d cut one of the son of a bitches’s throats if I had to—and I had, but just the touch of them made your flesh revolt. Unnatural. Unclean. Murderers of the world. We passed what had once been a cactus. It should’ve died in ten years of cold but it hadn’t. It had twisted and warped, turned black and wept a slime that slowly ate through the ground around it with a sizzling stench.
I looked away. We were in Hell. I’d never believed in Hell, but that’s where we were. Clearing my throat, I asked my partner, “You remember your first dance? With a girl?” I grinned lazily as the horses plodded on. “Maybe I’m jumping the gun. Maybe it was a right purty sheep, flowers in her wool?”
Scotch scowled. His face wasn’t made for it. It didn’t stop him from trying, but with a straight nose, clean jaw-line, eyes the same color the sky had once been, a scowl just didn’t take. It made him look noble and probably prettier than the girl he’d danced with. Which I promptly told him. It was a better insult than the sheep one.
The scowl disappeared and he laughed. I didn’t hear him do that much. I didn’t do it much myself, not and mean it. These days who did? “I will never know why I didn’t kill you ages ago,” he snorted.
“Because you’re not good enough,” I said smugly. “You were never able to take me down.” It wasn’t as if we hadn’t gone at it over the long years. Boys will be boys and all that crap. “Not even in racing. Your nag never saw anything but the ass-end of Pie.” Pie, hearing his name, lifted his head and rolled an eye back at me. I gave his dark neck another pat. Despite the grime of the trail, his coat gleamed as black as a ripe blackberry. Not that there were blackberries now, only the memory of the sweetness of a sun-warmed one bursting on your tongue.
“Nag? Shall we see about that?” Scotch caught me off guard as his mount took off like…how’d they say it? Oh, yeah, like his head was on fire and his tail was catchin’.
Or more like the unreal slide of ice and snow in the beauty of a frozen waterfall falling down a mountain. His coat was as white as Pie’s was black. Or it had been. He hadn’t fared as well against the dirt and grime as Pie had, but I remembered what he’d looked like before we pulled this assignment and ended up in this nightmare mess of a desert. He’d been winter incarnate. But now he was a dirty bat-out-of-hell that I sent Pie after with one loud yee-haw.