The Last Mutant SFSD 6 Round IV

The last Mutant

According to the GPS device the Sheriff had given her, it was a half-day’s ride to the spaceport. She’d passed through the town of Bourbon Crow (where a crow had taken up residence in a fermentation silo), and Mad Dog Creek where any canine that drank the water turned rabid after a matter of days.  Everywhere else had been a ‘ville’ or a ‘burgh’ and weren’t nearly as interesting. Turning her attention to the other data held on the GPS, she examined the information she’d been given on her target who was living on Gamma Twelve.

From the satellite images the device showed her, the planet was a wreck.  The IPC had been heavily fined after the terraformation template they’d applied had corrupted and began mutating everything upon its surface.  The template had been reapplied, but the damage was already done. Most people had died because of their mutations, others committed suicide and it became a case of ‘every man for himself’.  The entire planet was scheduled for destruction, but law dictated that any mutated humanoid species still living there had to be humanely disposed of before the plan could go ahead.

Everyone who had been sent to despatch the last mutant so far was never seen or heard from again.

After showing her papers from Wesson to the guards at the spaceport, Annie settled her horses into their stalls and was escorted to a small council-owned craft which seated four including the pilot and navigator.  She gave her weapons a quick once over, ensuring they were all present and correct before boarding.  The journey was a relatively short one and Annie remained silent throughout, mentally preparing herself to revisit her old hometown and face the memories it evoked.

The pilot cloaked the craft before breaking Gamma Twelve’s atmosphere and landing a mile or so outside of the crumbling ghost town where she would find her target.  Annie moved silently between buildings which were slowly rotting away, every gust of wind making the timbers groan in protest.  It took her several hours to check each and every structure which meant there was only one place left to look.

She approached the ranch house from the rear.  There was a gaping hole in the building where the back stoop had collapsed, taking most of the wall with it and the curtains her ma was so proud to have made hung limply, blackened by mould.  Skirting around the side of the house Annie looked towards the barn which had been her own personal hell for four long years and was relieved to see that only dust remained.

A small plume of smoke drifted into the air from the front end of a one-man spacecraft in the old pasture, an unnaturally still and twisted body laying close by.  The previous bounty hunter.  Hands on her guns she walked towards the smoke and got her first proper look at the mutant.

“Yer come to try an’ kill me then?” it, he rasped.

Annie was certain the mutant was male.  He sat casually on the nose of the spacecraft in tattered green trousers belted at the waist, his grotesquely muscled torso was bare save for strips of leather he wore on each forearm.

“That I have,” she replied and he tilted his head at her.  Below his wide brimmed hat his ears drooped into points too big for his head and his nose was... gone.  Like a rotting skull there were two gaping holes where his nose should have been.

“Take off yer hat kid, I want to see yer face before I land a bullet in it.” He nodded towards his own gun.

“Likewise.”

The mutant stood and reached for his hat while Annie did the same.  As he moved, she noticed an ugly puckered scar in his shoulder and with his hat lowered, she found herself staring into the soulless eyes that still haunted her dreams.

“Howdy pa, it’s been a long time,” she said without emotion.

“Annabelle?”

“I don’t go by that name anymore.” Her words were more like a snarl.

“No?” he laughed, “What do they call yer? The gal who missed?”

“They call me Deadshot ‘cause I ain’t missed since.” Annie’s fingers curled around the bulldog pistol which had been under her hat when she took it off and squeezed.  He fell backwards, black blood oozing from the tiny hole in his forehead.

*

Wesson shuffled the considerable stack of papers which he’d had to sign individually in order to absolve all of Annie’s past crimes.  “It’s done.  You’re a free woman.  What’ll you do now?”

She shrugged in response.  “Well, I can’t rightly say I’m cut out fer bein’ domesticated an’ wearin’ them frilly things the ladies ‘round here seem to favour, but I did hear word of a gold rush over on the Delta frontier.  Sounds like it could be fun.”

Sheriff Wesson put his head in his hands and groaned as Annie stashed the papers in the palomino’s pack and vaulted onto the Mustang.  “Try to stay out of trouble Annie,” he pleaded.

“I ain’t promisin’ nothin’ Sheriff,” she said with a wry smile, tipping her hat and kicking the Mustang into a gallop.  Her laughter echoed off of the mountains long after the dust settled behind her.

FIN