Gunlaw

Gunlaw 43

Gnawing hunger pains drove Jenna in search of distraction. She squatted beside Mikeos and stared at him until he looked up. "What are you doing here?"

"Cooking."

"I mean here. In the middle of nowhere? Me, I'm chasing Eben Lostchild to change the world, to make a difference to humanity."

"A good difference?" Mikeos returned his gaze to the meat.

"We're pets here, Mikeos. We're fed enough of what we want to keep us from changing, moving on, getting better. That's what I'm doing. But you? You're chasing Eben Lostchild to find and kill one man and providence, or the Old Ones, have put him right here for you. You're waiting to eat his goddamn horse... All that effort for a father you weren't close to. How does that work? Did Bright murder him in his bed? Shoot him in the back?"

The smell of charring liver filled Jenna's mouth with saliva. The look Mikeos gave made her swallow.

"You don't understand people any better than the kin do. But at least they know it."

"And you're the expert?" Jenna's words came out sharper than she intended. "Putting so many bullets through so many brains has helped you figure out how they work?"

"Seeing a man face his last minutes helps, yes." Mikeos turned the meat. Fats sizzled, flames leapt up orange and hungry. "Facing your own helps too."

"What did you learn when Walker was choking the life from you?" A low blow that made her curse the well of pettiness it came from.

"That I could trust you." Mikeos managed a crooked smile. "And that I should trust a witch's choice of weapon, even when it's stupid."

"Answer the question." Jenna stuck to her course.

"There was a question? How about you answer it. You're not hunting Eben to save mankind from whatever it was you said. You don't even like mankind very much. This is about you, Jenna. If I've ever met anyone who isn't doing what they do for themselves at the bottom of it all – well I didn't recognise it. Hemar here maybe." Hemar looked up from his bone, eyes serious. "But even Hemar might just be trying to make up for some old guilt if you carve it back far enough. Is that pup who survived the sect still inside there pulling the strings? Still looking for a way to make it right – make up for not dying with his pack?"

The bone cracked under Hemar's ridged molars. He sucked the marrow and said nothing.

"The horse-meat's burning," Jenna said.

Mikeos lifted the chunk of liver on his knife, juices running. "We're all chasing answers to ourselves. Maybe Eben has them, maybe Bright." He divided the chunk on his tin plate and took half on the knife, offering the plate and remains to her. "This at least will answer hunger." A flashed grin, gone quicker than it came.

They sat then, chewing, burning their mouths, staring out across the Dry. Mikeos spoke only once more before they moved on. He held the meat out on his knife, a puzzled look on his face, his gaze fixed way off, perhaps way back across years. "An odd-shaped cow is all." He took only small bites, his appetite dwarfed by hers.

Hemar stood, tossing a bone aside. "We have to go."

Jenna and Mikeos found their feet, still chewing. The dust plains to either side looked clear. "Why?"

Hemar pointed up.

"No vultures," Mikeos said.

On the horizon in the direction of The Ruins a slight haze drew Jenna's eye. She pointed.

"Dust storm?" Mikeos asked.

It looked like a low and dirty cloud, trail dust from a herd perhaps, but with a yellow tinge.

"We should go." Hemar started off down the tracks, keeping his pace to something they could match, though Jenna could see the need to run twitching through him.

Ten miles on and the sun had fallen almost to the western hills. Mikeos moved without looking left or right, his skin grey, no word of complaint but Jenna knew the signs. The corpser's touch had tainted the spike that wounded Mikeos back at The Ruins. The poison was in his blood now, eating at him. And her hex lay dry upon her forehead. There would be no healing the gunslinger this time.

The first locust whirred past Jenna's head and landed without grace on the slope to their left. "What?" Jenna could find no other words. A second came down in a flutter of dry wings. Then three more. Then dozens. Some the size of a thumb, some the size of a hand. The sky behind them was dark with the things. "I don't understand."

Mikeos shrugged and pulled his bandana over his face. "They can't eat us. There's nothing for them to eat here. Just gonna improve the soil."

Hemar snatched one from the air and crammed it into his mouth crunching noisily. "What?" He returned Jenna's stare. "Catch your own!" He started to jog on again, head bowed to keep the things from his face. Jenna followed, flinching with revulsion when a locust careened into her cowl and she had to fish it out, broken legs scrabbling at her palm. She just snagged the thing before it disappeared down her neck and inside her robe.

Mikeos caught them up, hat low, bandana high. "Filthy things."

"It'll get worse," Hemar said. "This is just the leading edge. And the sect are coming behind them."

"What?" Jenna saved the rest of her breath for running. She didn't want to get too winded and start panting for fear of breathing in one of the smaller locusts.

"When the sect are on the move locusts swarm. Fire ants pour out of their towers, spiders of all kinds come together in rivers, hornets and scorpions give up hunting and come too. It's a reaction to their scent I think, there's messages in sect odours. I can almost sniff them out sometimes but it's too delicate for domen noses really."

"Was it like this when they came for your pack, Hemar?" Mikeos batted locusts from his face. The things crunched beneath Jenna's boots now every step she took. The pulped bodies drew still more, feeding on their dead.

"Only one came for the pack. One death-scarab. The locusts came a day before, a light rain of them, stripping bushes to bare thorns. We didn't know what it meant. I learned since – you hear a lot of stories when you're boozing. Cloud like this . . . it's going to mean scarabs, mantis, bugs, flickers . . ."

"How many?" Mikeos's fingers moved over the ammunition in his belt as he ran.

Hemar glanced back. The sky to the south of them was black, a black storm cloud with crimson highlights courtesy of the sinking sun. The domen started to run faster and Jenna strained to keep up, heedless now of the locusts crawling over her like a second skin. "How many?" Mikeos demanded again.

"All of them," Hemar barked.

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