Cowboy necromancer 4 nov.., p.7
Cowboy Necromancer 4: Novella Compendium: (A LitRPG Apocalypse), page 7
The miniature Godwalker didn’t reply.
Venturing into the unknown was something that Sterling had grown accustomed to.
It didn’t bother him to walk down a dark tunnel, one with just a trickle of water on the ground, the smell of wet stone heavy in the air. After all, he could see well enough in the dark due to his enhanced powers, and it wasn’t like anything creeping in a tunnel would be any worse than things he had encountered above the surface.
That was his thinking, anyway.
“It rained recently,” Guillermo told Sterling as he gestured toward a stream of murky water, one with tadpoles racing through it. “Snowed up in the mountains too.”
“I reckon this here tunnel gets pretty flooded when that happens.”
“Sí. But we are safe for now. No bad weather today.”
“You sure of that?”
Guillermo, who led the group using a light on a headlamp he had procured, merely shrugged. “Weather can change quickly here.”
“Same in New Mexico.”
“I still need to get over there. Funny how that works. You’re hours away from a place yet you’ve never visited.”
“You’re more than welcome in T or C,” Sterling told him as they continued along the underground passageway.
“I heard they had good peppers there too.”
Sterling laughed at Roxie’s statement.
Not sure of why he was laughing, Guillermo explained that the tunnel had been created by a gaiamancer who wanted to give the Hashknife Outfit easy access into Flagstaff. Apparently, they had other tunnels like this across what was once the state of Arizona, and according to Guillermo, people actually lived in them. “I’ve seen it myself, down in Phoenix. Piestewa Peak area, if that means anything to you. They have one there. Goes to the sewers that lead to Scottsdale.”
“Phoenix, huh?”
“Yeah, you think it’s hard up here?” Guillermo whistled. “Nah, not even. That’s hard living down there, but they’ve maintained a pretty good lifestyle, the Hashknives have. Kind of funny that they named the city after a bird that rises from the ashes.”
“Implying that it has to die to be reborn.”
“Something like that.”
“Guillermo, you ain’t half bad.”
“Is that where they have the giant cactus?” the Sunflower Kid asked the guerrilla leader.
“They do have some there. If you want to see more, Tucson would be a better option. But they’re in Phoenix as well.”
After traveling for what felt like an hour, they came to a metal pipe nearly seven feet high, the opening of which was covered in a patina of rust. Sterling heard something scamper away and assumed it was a mouse.
“We still got a ways to go, but this will take us up under some neighborhoods and golf clubs. So many pinche golf clubs here in Arizona. I swear the people of before were convinced that they were living in a botanical garden or some shit,” said Guillermo as he motioned above. “All the golf courses are now gone, of course, the dead grass gone and replaced by dirt. Only a few of them, the ones that had ponds, still exist. But that water can get pretty murky. Lots of varmint drinking from it. I have a golf club in my inventory list, you know.”
“Do you, now?” Sterling asked.
It was clear that Guillermo liked to talk, and Sterling didn’t mind listening to the man. They were what seemed like a mile under the surface, no real way to tell where they actually were, and it kept his mind off this fact.
The hairs on the back of his neck had stood on end several times now when thinking about how trapped they would be if the tunnel collapsed. At least now they were in the pipes put down by the before people, which provided a strange comfort even if it still had him itching to get out.
“Hell, we all have golf clubs, ain’t that right?” Guillermo asked the other guerrillas, most of whom grunted positive responses. “They make nice weapons, especially when they’re modified.”
“Modified?” A grin lifted the corners of Sterling’s cheeks.
“You’re damn right they’re modified.”
People always find a way to turn something into a weapon.
As they started deeper into the sewer system, Guillermo spoke again: “The clubs got spikes on them, bigger heads and they’re reinforced. Great for springing on someone and beating the hell out of them. Here. Check it out.” Guillermo turned to Sterling, his light momentarily blinding the cowboy necromancer. He shielded his eyes with a single arm as Guillermo handed him a beefed-up golf club. It felt lighter than a bat, yet seemed more solid, likely due to a flectomancer’s enhancements.
Sterling nodded, impressed. “Shee-it.”
“I tell you what,” Guillermo said once Sterling gave it back to him. “You can damn near knock someone’s head off with this if you put all your points in strength.”
“I’m sure you can.”
“My little friend here—”
Roxie bumped into Sterling.
“Easy there, Rox.” He cleared his throat. “Ahem. She wants to know how much longer we have.”
“Not too much longer. Pretty easy from here.” Guillermo shone his light on a white arrow painted on the inside of the tunnel. “Just need to follow these.”
“And where does it come out at?”
“Ever heard of a Cracker Barrel, cowboy?”
Sterling shook his head. “Rox, Kid?”
“I’ve seen that place in Albuquerque. It was a restaurant,” the Kid told Sterling.
“Cracker Barrel, huh? They selling crackers, barrels, or both?”
Guillermo laughed at Sterling’s terrible dad joke. “No idea. That’s just the name. It comes out there. And from that point, we’re just a couple miles away from downtown.”
“And how far is a couple to you?” Sterling asked.
“Maybe eight miles.”
Sterling was just about to playfully complain when he heard noise at the other end of the tunnel. It sounded like pinchers, bone scraping across the metal of the inner piping, the scurrying of feet.
The Sunflower Kid summoned her shotgun and pointed it toward the other end of the sewer tunnel. “This is going to be loud, isn’t it?”
Loud was an understatement.
As soon as she pulled the trigger, the mana-powered slug tore off down the tunnel, illuminating the space enough for Sterling to catch a better glimpse of what he had feared. The pellet struck a scorpion amalgamation, the kind that he had battled before using his animates.
All he had now was firepower.
“Give it everything you’ve got!” Guillermo shouted as he equipped a crossbow. “And dammit, make sure you don’t shoot any of us,” he told the other guerrillas.
Sterling drew both his revolvers and began firing them indiscriminately at the charging scorpion amalgamation. His bullet struck its skeletal skull, which was shaped like that of a longhorn bull. They did little against the scorpion’s thick chitin exoskeleton as the amalgamation grew closer to them.
The enormous beast sent its stinger forward and connected it with the back of the head of one of the guerrillas who was trying to run for cover. Venom sprayed out of the front of the man’s face as the scorpion whipped him backward, treating him like a doll.
“Dallas!” Guillermo cried as he fired another bolt from his crossbow into the scorpion.
Sterling sent one of his revolvers to his inventory list and summoned his sickle sword. He kept shooting at the scorpion—Bang! Bang!—beating back its enormous pincers at the same time. He also kept an eye on the Sunflower Kid, who kept pumping the shotgun and firing it. The sound of guns and crossbows was overwhelming, Sterling’s ears feeling as if they were on the verge of popping.
Gritting his teeth, Sterling continued to fire shots into the scorpion as he swung his sword. The confined nature of where they were battling the amalgamation only made it worse. There was only one way to go, and that was backward.
Even if they were fast, enhanced by their post-apocalyptic powers, the scorpion would be able to catch them. There had to be another solution; it was certainly not the small, flectomancer-made grenade launcher that Guillermo had equipped.
Sterling yelled for him to put that damn thing away as he scanned the tunnel, only then noticing that the rocks had started break through the tunnel, just above the scorpion. He wouldn’t have noticed had it not been for a faint trace of color highlighting them, which he recognized as part of his Level 7 Perception power that he generally was aware of, but usually paid little attention to.
A mini-avalanche would do the trick.
Or at the very least, it would prevent the scorpion from pursuing them as they fled.
“Aim your fire up there!” he told the Kid as he pointed to the ceiling.
Since she couldn’t use her laser cannon, Roxie rushed forward to distract the scorpion, the female gunner intuiting what Sterling was trying to do. It tried to snap at the Godwalker with its pincers, yet her monolithic shape prevented it from fully latching on.
Trusting Sterling fully, the Sunflower Kid’s next shot was aimed at the rocks above. Sterling started firing on it again with both revolvers, his sword back in his inventory list. Sparks of light and bits of metal plinked off everything, making matters worse. Some of the crossfire even grazed across Sterling’s knuckles and his cheeks a few times as he continued to fire.
It wouldn’t be enough.
“Everyone shoot at the ceiling!” Sterling shouted, which brought more fire, the sound of metal on metal joining the terrifying boom of their guns.
“Go, go!” Guillermo shouted as he once again went for his grenade launcher. “I can do this.”
“You don’t have to, amigo,” Sterling said, but then Guillermo stepped in front of him, a determined look on his face.
“It won’t kill me. This isn’t how I die.”
“Rox!” Sterling called to the Godwalker as he backpedaled, the Sunflower Kid and the others doing the same. One of the female guerrillas was just turning to catch up with them when the scorpion caught her with one of its pincers, cutting her body in half.
Sterling caught sight of Guillermo aiming the grenade launcher at the ceiling, the guerrilla making the Sign of the Cross gesture as he prepared to fire, which must have been instinctual.
Ka-thunk!
His grenade connected; the explosion blew Guillermo back. It also brought the scorpion’s portion of the tunnel down, right on top of its body, pinning it.
Sterling glanced at the other guerrillas, all of whom were covering their faces due to the smoke and dust. It was hard to see, yet soon, the smoke began to clear. Guillermo dragged himself away from the collapsed ceiling. He was nursing a foot, and his face was a mask of blood, yet he was grinning, his teeth white, the look in his eyes that of someone who had kicked death where the sun don’t shine.
“Is it dead?” the Sunflower Kid asked the rebel leader.
“Even better, it’s pinned. We can take its pincers. Flectomancer I know, the same one making all this stuff, will be able to craft some armor out of it. I’ve heard it’s good eating as well.” He waved some of the smoke away. When that didn’t work Guillermo summoned a gas mask and placed it on his face, Sterling now noticing that the other guerrillas had done the same.
“Y’all got everything, don’t you?”
Guillermo nodded at Sterling. “And we still have our asses handed to us by a damn amalgamation. This is why it would have been helpful to get out of the city with a mancer or two.”
“How come none escaped?”
“The Angels of Woe, they don’t operate like any intruders we’ve ever had before. They sent people in early on, gathering information, using everything in the book to figure out who the mancers were. And I mean everything, from sex to alcohol. When it happened, when they invaded, their moles—I think that’s what they’re called—all went into action at the same time. The handful of mancers on our side were all taken prisoner. I don’t know if they were executed or not. But they are there somewhere in the city. Once we come out at the Cracker Barrel, we will head to Granny’s place.”
“Granny?” Sterling asked. He looked at Roxie, as if she knew the answer.
Guillermo summoned a big knife. “I mentioned her before. She’s the flectomancer, our liaison with the Hashknife Outfit. A tough old hag, that Granny, who has done some serious fighting. We were able to get a note to her a day ago, telling her that we were coming. She’s expecting us; she will have everything laid out. So once we get to the Cracker Barrel, we will meet with Granny and figure out what’s next. Flagstaff is pretty spread out. We’ll probably have to take a few places before we are able to fully get control of the city. But she’ll let us know. Now, let’s get these pincers.” He shook his head. “And we’ll say something for the dead later, outside of this damn tunnel. Too bad we can’t get to their bodies.”
.Chapter Seven.
Sterling kept to the back of the group with Roxie as another guerrilla ascended a metal ladder, a ring of light at the top. He had tried to stop the Sunflower Kid before she’d gone up, but as always, his biomancer daughter had a mind of her own and she didn’t pick up on his not-so-subtle cues for them to let the others pass first.
Sterling tipped his hat at the miniature Godwalker. “Rox? You having trust issues, or is it just me?”
Because I know you, Sterling thought. He spoke again: “Alls I’m saying here is that I didn’t expect you to be hanging back here. Actually, how are you going to get up there? Want me to toss you into my inventory list and bring you up with me?”
“I figured you’d say something like that. At any rate, I’ll keep my head on a swivel, Rox, I promise. You know I ain’t going to let nothing happen to you or the Sunflower Kid, my Angel.”
“I don’t mean it like that, and you know it. Ain’t no heroes left in this day and age. You’ve saved my ass just about as many times as I’ve saved yours.”
“Maybe,” Sterling said as he started up the ladder. “But who’s keeping count?”
The ring of light grew brighter.
Soon, Sterling was standing in what was once the kitchen of a restaurant known as a Cracker Barrel. It was clear that some thought had been put into the unique exit point. The modified manhole cover with a hinge on it could easily be hidden by a rolling table, one with a top made into a cutting board. It looked heavy, but in placing his hand on it, Sterling found it to be quite light, which meant that someone could open it from beneath and shift it to the side.
“We should be good to go,” Guillermo said as he came back into the kitchen.
Sterling looked around.
He saw nothing out of the ordinary aside from a rusted over washbasin that looked like some sort of prehistoric moth had eaten through it. He caught up with Guillermo in the dining room area, where all the tables had been stripped of their wood, just a few pieces left behind.
Rather than go out the front entrance, they slipped out a side exit door, the group keeping a low profile as they kept behind a few abandoned SUVs with their tires shot out, the vehicles strategically arranged for cover.
They reached what was once a low-income residential neighborhood, most of the homes single-story amidst sunken trailers overrun with buffelgrass and cacti. The group ended up waiting inside one of these ramshackle homes for an hour, giving the sun plenty of time to set.
While they hunkered down, Sterling sat near a window and smoked cigarettes. He looked through the map that Raylan had given him, and he also had a discussion with Guillermo about New Mexican peppers and why the guerrilla leader wouldn’t find anything like them in Arizona, even if they were next-door neighbors.
“It’s a lifestyle,” he ultimately concluded as he gave Guillermo one of his Big Jim peppers. “Take a bite of that and tell me it don’t light your ass on fire. That’s the kind they make chile relleno out of.”
Guillermo examined the big green pepper. “You want me to just eat it?”
“Why the hell not? Ain’t nothing to be afraid of.” Sterling summoned another pepper from his inventory list. He took a bite from the pepper and chewed it, the spice hot and filling. “Shit, if you can shoot a grenade at an oversized scorpion, you can eat a pepper.”
Sterling cupped his ear. “What was that? Couldn’t hear you there, Rox. Heh. My mouth is burning up, and it’s affecting my hearing.”
“I think I’ll save this for later,” Guillermo said as he sent the pepper away to his inventory list.
“Suit yourself, amigo. I’ve got hotter ones than that if you’re interested.”
Later, before they were planning to go, the Sunflower Kid joined Sterling and offered him an apple from her inventory list.
Yet again he saw the distraught look on her face and felt like there was more that he should be doing to comfort her. But even if she looked young, she was an adult now. Not only that, but they were technically working toward a solution regarding the loss of their power. Once they were able to run the Angels of Woe out of Flagstaff, they would be able to meet with the shaman that Don Gasper recommended. It was a longshot kind of solution, but just about every shot Sterling took after the Reset seemed impossible until he accomplished the task.
They moved on later, once it was dark.
Even if night was settling, Sterling heard the occasional chatter of finches. He heard a wind chime as well, and at one point smelled grilled meat in the vicinity, which made his mouth water. Soon, they reached the back door of a home that was on the edge of the neighborhood, one that looked just about as nondescript as any of the other abandoned places.
