Naught and the Circle

Chapter 2 - The Englishman

A small beam of light penetrated the curtains and hit Oliver Cavanaugh's eyes. He squinted in return and turned his head away.

"Ugh.."

A new day had rudely crawled into his life.

The worn cot bed decorated the middle of the lodging. A modest room that had been his home for the last year.

Oliver was a ripe man of 20 years, and in the community viewed as "ready to settle down". He, on the other hand, had no interests in acquiring neither a house, nor a wife. His place was in the Shelby crew.

What better job was there? What was better than weeks on the road—sometimes at the drop of a hat—with the adventures it brought, not to mention the women?

Reasons like these were why Oliver enjoyed the luxury of a simple rented room that was regularly cleaned by the owner. As the quickest draw in the crew—and indeed the town—he received more than his fair share of the bounty from the jobs they did. He could step up to a leadership role, take care of others around him. If he had to...

But he very much did not.

The young gunslinger picked up the shirt he had thrown carelessly onto the floor the night before. Then he grabbed the revolver-belt. customising it had taken several days. He had sanded down the inside of the holsters until it was smooth and rounded. Curved to an angle at which he could easily slip the muzzles over the top and fire within a fraction of a second.

Freedom Arms .454 Casull revolvers—he had found a matching set back at a weapons dealer in Le Choix. They were expensive, but with some fine-tuning they were now supreme weapons—given, of course, the limitation of ten bullets.

The belt buckle was an Old-World motif. Shelby had once told him it was the insignia of the gang that ran this land before the Pocolypse. Before the Ghedes. He paid little attention to those stories. Shelby would always preach about this or that. All Oliver cared about was how awesome the metal bird spread its wings over the leather. Its body hidden behind a striped shield. It looked prideful, fearless against man. Just like him.

He slid the old shirt over his head and down his thin, yet muscular body. All while studying himself in the mirror hanging in the hallway—His blond hair was greasy and scruffy, his glacier blue eyes shining through his dirty, but handsome face. No matter what he wore or what he did, the girls of the outskirts would notice him. He smiled at his own reflection.

Then he stepped outside.

The 5th was the last outskirt founded and constructed under the Ghede family's vigilant watch. It bore an uncreative name, considered merely the next destination on a long list of towns—a dream that never fully came to fruition. Built ten years ago on the ruins of the past. Out of bricks rose wood housing. Most shacks had tin roofing, or the equally popular rawhide, and the houses were never particularly large. The lodgings, bars, and stores were a different matter. Those were built out of lumber, or in the ancient buildings that had survived intact.

Dirt roads ran through the town in straight, intersecting lines. The sun would rise in the west and shine on the border-houses first—all crammed together—then the station, where the train should have arrived yesterday with supplies from the coast. Then lastly, the light would hit the tents and caravans preparing for the trip east. A long and risky voyage only the East-Traders would undertake.

The 5th had a modest population of 6000 men and women. To most, it was nothing more than the last stop before the wasteland.

He strolled down the street that made up his adopted home. Behind him, a wooden sign read; SWAN'S HOTEL in crude, carved letters. The owner of the place was a large woman nicknamed Swan. Rumor was that she had been somebody in Second, before trouble found her in the form of a bigger somebody. The solution had been to escape south. Out of sight, out of mind.