From my reputation as Goodsprings's most notable almost-murder victim, Sunny buys me a drink, and we sit at a booth near the pool table. She lays four Sunset Sarsaparilla bottle caps on the edge of the table, to signal to the two guys playing that she's got the next round.

"Doc told me you were a courier," she says, "so you must have some kind of basic survival skills, I assume. After all, you wouldn't get too far on raw broc flower and cactus fruit."

"Actually, I usually just live off canned stuff when I'm on the road."

"Huh," she says, then leans to the side to look me up and down. "You don't look too bad for it. Shit makes me sick."

She takes her drink down in a long swallow. Not knowing how to respond to her backhanded compliment, I finish mine at the same pace. She doesn't choke or sputter-but I do.

"How secure d'you think your Mojave Express gig is?" she asks.

"Not very," I say. "That was a pretty expensive package I lost. Mrs. Nash might bake me a pie for a severance package, though."

I don't think a surname has ever fit a person less, but at that Sunny actually does smile. "Well," she says, until you get that pie, it looks like you're gonna need to get used to campfires. You ever hunt gecko?"

I shake my head.

"Think you can be ready to go-" she looks up at the clock over the doorway to the other side of the bar "-how about now?"

"Uh, sure," I answer.

She stands up. "I'll get the rifles. Meet me out back in five."

I meet Sunny near a makeshift firing range, with perforated cans of pork and beans scattered all around. Her dog, Cheyenne, noses about the detritus. We load the repeaters and set off on the road out of town. Up in the hills near the town's water source, Sunny signals me to halt and points to a group of three bright blue geckos.

Sunny lines up a shot and pops the head off of one. They wouldn't be so unsettling if they didn't look so damn happy when they're running at you. My first shot tears through a gecko's fin, which doesn't slow it down. In my haste, I aim the second shot too low, and it disappears in a puff of sand right in front of it.

"I know they're ugly," Sunny says, firing a shot that takes the second surviving gecko down, "but you've got to look at 'em to aim at 'em!"

The gecko covers the distance between us with terrifying speed. Luckily, Cheyenne leaps in front of it and leads it on a chase, a chase that I cut short with a clean shot.

Sunny doesn't give me time to be too proud of my kill. She makes sure that there are no more geckos around. She asks me to give her a hand lifting the gecko corpses onto a nearby pallet. One of the geckos, however, she drags onto a tarp and starts skinning.

"Can't exactly clean the whole thing out here," she says, wiping the sweat off her brow with her forearm, "but I can show you how to get some choice cuts for the road. Gecko jerky'll fix most anything."