Chapter 7
The first light of dawn found them down at the gravesite. Milly shone a torch across the stone.
"Tessla, you are loved. Wars were fought in your name. Life is lived in your name. Be at Peace, you are avenged."
"Are you sure Mister Vash wrote that?"
"You saw the same as I."
"Miss Meryl, who was Tessla? I've only heard Mister Vash mention Rem."
"If I knew I wouldn't have spent the night tossing and turning and dreaming about possibilities." Meryl said exhaustedly.
"But it's so angry!" Milly said, upset. "Mister Vash isn't like that."
"He buries his heart deep. How are we to know what he does not want us to see?"
They stood in silence.
"Miss Meryl."
"Mmh?"
"We've been with Vash for years, why do we know him so little?"
Meryl laughed.
"We've been alive for a seventh of his life, and known him for a fifteenth; we can't expect to know everything."
"Miss Meryl?"
"Yeah?"
"What happened to Tessla?"
"I have no idea." She murmured, but she would not stop until she had found out. "But the name is oddly familiar. The old Bernadelli vaults might have something. When we pass through December, we'll do some snooping."
A week had passed since they had found the poster of the rogue plant Willa Velasques. Meryl heartily wished that Vash had never seen it. He took it out every time they stopped to stare at the picture. On top of that, the only respite they had had from bounty hunters had been in the tiny farming village. Having been chased across the desert for three days by some particularly persistent bounty hunters, they decided to avoid towns for a while, sending Milly in if they needed supplies. Being Vash's recognised associate had severe disadvantages, but that was outweighed, she felt, by being allowed to spend time with him. Meryl spent her night watches shivering in the cold air and worrying about Knives. It was all an extrapolation anyway, and Vash had not seen fit to share it with them so should she tell Milly? She peered around at the quiet empty night, the shadows becoming monsters at the corners of her eyes. If anything, it helped keep her awake during the watches.
Ashland Town
It was at the end of that long week, that they arrived at the next town. They were all travel worn, dirty and in need of a bath, a drink and some sleep, not necessarily in that order. They checked the wall of the post office. Meryl was relieved not to see their posters, but heartily disgruntled to find Willa Vilasques's face reminding Vash she existed.
It was Vash who noticed the difference first. Meryl was smiling at how peaceful the town was, when Vash darted off across the street. She watched as Milly hoisted the camera onto her shoulder and began filming. Meryl dutifully provided the commentary as they trotted after Vash, who darted from building to building, knocking on doors and peering into houses. He turned back to them with an expression of horror.
"There is no one here." He breathed his eyes wide, his expression filled with a panic she had seen once before. Knives had emptied cities like this. Their eyes locked and she knew that he was thinking the same thing.
Suddenly the crack of a gun went off and Vash dove to the side.
"Get out of here!" He bellowed at them and sprinted back the way they had come, though he swerved off and took a side alley.
Milly turned her tomas with her knees, and went after him. Meryl could only marvel at her mastery of riding and clung to the pommel of her saddle as her tomas followed her friends. They eventually slowed as they wandered through the maze of empty streets. They had lost Vash. She had been right; he had allowed them to film him.
Milly lowered the camera.
"What do we do Meryl?" She murmured. "This place reminds me of the old days, when those bad men were after Mister Vash."
Meryl told Milly about the article, hoping against hope her theory was wrong.
"You think it might be Mister Knives?" Milly worried.
"I don't know." Meryl shrugged, disheartened. "And I don't know how to ask him."
"If we ever see him again." Milly whispered, frightened.
Meryl did not know how to comfort her friend; Wolfwood had simply gone off to fight and had never returned, who was to say Vash would not one day have the same fate? That idea crushed her heart; she blinked rapidly to get rid of tears.
"Well, we can do better than being scared girls crying!" She declared. "We've got to help Vash somehow."
Vash sprinted through the streets, circling around, the shot had come from a building a block away from the main street and he hoped to reach it before the sniper changed his location. When he stopped to check at a corner, he realized that he had lost the girls. He breathed out a sigh, perhaps it was for the best. He glanced around the corner and found a group of citizens crouched with their backs to him, watching the main road.
Time to test if it was his bounty, or just an odd paranoia of strangers.
"Hello!" He called to them with a disarming grin.
"Who are you?" They demanded, raising their guns, but not firing just yet.
"I'm just passing through." He said, holding his hands up. "This is a mighty odd way to greet people."
They lowered their guns.
"You'd also greet people like this if you'd had Terrans gun down innocent people in the streets."
"What?" He asked, genuinely interested and horrified.
"She was nothing to them, and they shot her in cold blood." Their spokesman said anguished.
One of the other men tilted his head and frowned at him.
"Hey, aren't you that guy with …"
"Later!" Vash called and sprinted away before the man could finish his sentence.
He leaned against another wall, watching a group of four women, staking out a stretch of road from the shelter of the house. He leaned in at the window, startling them. A bullet nearly trimmed his hair. He ducked.
"Hey!"
"Who was that?"
"Just me, I'm new in town, is that what you do to strangers?" He asked, in a hurt tone.
Three of the women peered down at him. A young girl looked over the ledge too, but was protectively pulled back.
"I was talking to some others," he said, polishing his hurt innocent expression, "but our conversation was interrupted. Some girl got shot?"
The women regarded him with suspicious stares. The fourth was still staking out the road.
"You picked a bad time to come here, stranger." One of the women spoke to him while the others went back to their posts. He stood up and leaned against the wall.
"Two nights ago a young woman, quiet a beauty she was, came into the town. She collapsed in the middle of the main street. Well, we took her in, but she recovered after a days rest, said she was on the run. She had this wanted poster with her, with her picture and everything."
Vash had a sudden premonition then and took out the poster from his pocket.
"Yes. That's the one." She said, and then gave him a sharp look. "You a marshal?"
"Me?" He laughed incredulously. "No, I've nothing to do with the law if I can help it." He gazed at the picture. "So she's dead." Spoken aloud, the words twisted at his heart.
"Yes." The woman said softly. "The Terrans drove in that afternoon, hauled her from the house and shot her in the street, execution style. No trial, nothing. Well that started a riot here, and those Terrans turned mean, started shooting innocent folk, saying that we didn't understand what they had saved us from. It just got worse from there."
The woman peered up at him.
"You a relative of hers? She had black hair like you."
He folded the poster.
"She was my sister." He said, claiming as close a kinship as he dared match to the pain in his heart. They had missed her by only a few days. If only they had moved faster, if he had been more urgent in his search. She would not have had to die.
"You're a plant."
He blinked as her words brought him back to the present. The way she said the word 'plant' made him feel uncomfortable in his own skin, like he was some kind of demon, or worse. He was a person, like she was, like Willa had been. He held her gaze, willing her to understand this, but she closed her eyes.
"I didn't see you here, mister. Please be gone when I open my eyes."
He left silently, his heart grieving.
He found her grave in the graveyard beyond the cairns that marked the boarder of the town. It was unmarked and just covered by a mound of rocks. He inspected the other gravestones, some were wooden markers, others were expensive stone markers with names and dates carved into them. He walked out into the desert. Two hours later he returned carrying the largest rock he could. He placed it at the head of her grave then took a deep breath and very carefully felt out for that power which he had only used in moments of great destruction. It resonated weirdly and he let it go. Since his fight with Knives the use of it seemed to be less certain and slippery and even more dangerous than ever. He also knew that his black hair was linked to his failing ability to control or use what Knives had called the 'gate' of his power. He took out his knife and holding it in both hands scratched out a headstone. He was dripping with sweat by the time he finished, and his knife would be useless until he sharpened it again. "Willa Alvarez. Rest well sister. Love and Peace." He had scratched that days date onto the stone and stood up.
He looked back at the number of hidden eyes he felt watching him from the town, then opened his bag and felt around in it until his hand closed over what he had been looking for. He selected one small black seed and closed the bag again. He scooped a hole in the ground at the headstone and planted it in the dirt. Then he placed his hand on the ground near it, and clenched his fist furiously and concentrated harder than he had ever done in his life. He felt a juddering trickle of power flow into the ground then released it, shaking. He felt drained, doing it that way, instead of easily opening himself to it. He didn't dare use any more, and besides, that was all that was needed.
A small tree was now rooted over the grave. It was only four eels high, but had perhaps enough strength to survive out here in the desert if the town's folk would water it. That would be up to them.
He stood with his hands together, taking care of the prayers for the dead. His lips moved silently and tears slipped down his face. When all was complete, he slung his bag on his shoulder and walked away, headed towards the hills. He had seen smoke rising and wanted to investigate.
"Meryl! Meryl Stryfe!"
She jumped at hearing her name and looked around for who had called her. Was the town not as abandoned as she had thought? Milly pointed upwards, and they saw three woman peering over the edge of the roof.
"Is Vash the Stampede here?" One called down to her.
"Yes he is." Milly replied before Meryl could come up with a lie. "How did you guess?"
The woman conversed with each other then vanished off the roof top.
Meryl turned to Milly.
"They did not need to know that!"
"But he is here." Milly responded as the door further along the street opened.
"Come with us." The women were carrying shot guns slung over their shoulders, the youngest, a girl of perhaps fourteen carried a pistol in each hand.
They followed them through the town and then out into the desert, heading for the rocky hills.
The woman twitchily covered them as they crossed the open sand between the town and the hills then took them through a pass into a valley. It was a strange narrow crack in the ground, too small for any vehicle to ride in, and Meryl and Milly had to dismount from their tomas's to make it through.
They emerged in a sunken area of ground covered in makeshift tents, and market stalls.
"Welcome to tent town." The eldest woman said to them with a faint grimace. "This is all we have now that the Terran's have taken over the power plant."
"What happened?" Meryl asked, realizing that this was a refugee camp.
The woman led her down into the tents and showed her where she could rent a space for their tomas's, all the time explaining the events of the past few days.
"They just left her body in the sun, same like they left the bodies of our folk they gunned down. So we went at night, took the bodies and buried them. They would not even allow the priest to say the funerals by the graves, so we had to have them in memorial fashion, here."
She waved her hand bitterly at the camp.
"What was that about the terran's taking over the plant?"
"Hah!" The woman grimaced. "That was perhaps the worst, it emptied the town. We can live with fighting, but we can't live without water, and that was the first thing they cut. Fortunately they don't know about the gun runners camp here, and the cisterns that we keep full, but the water will run out by the end of the month, even with everyone on rations."
"So, by my understanding, some thugs have moved into town, requisitioned the plant and let everyone out into the desert to die."
"Yes."
Meryl turned to Milly with a particularly saintly smile.
"I think we have just discovered something the rest of the planet should know about."
Perched on his vantage point on a boulder above the canyon Vash watched as Milly and Meryl mingled with the town's folk, interviewing them. After watching several seconds of live feed, he realized they were angling to get the Terrans out of the plant by either shaming them, or inducing a riot against them. Meryl had some sparks of genius at times, but did not always take into account the potential for the loss of life.
He stashed his bag behind a rock and checked the extra ammunition in his pockets. He found the derringer and held it up. Ah Meryl. She was unarmed, he had seen that she did not carry her weapons, perhaps this was the last left of all her guns. He walked along the canyon and positioned himself above her tomas and dropped the gun. It fell perfectly among the folds of the baggage, right where she kept that microphone of hers, she would find it.
The plant housing was an elaborate set of tin sheds built over and against each other over the years. He walked right up to the door and knocked. A revolver muzzle greeted him.
"Go away you stupid natives." A man growled.
"W-why so hostile?" He asked, upset. He had yet to meet a Terran who did not want to blow his head off. Then again, most of the planet wanted to do that, so there was not much point in stereotyping.
Vash dove to the side as the gun went off.
There was silence.
"Did you hit him?"
"I don't know."
Vash slipped behind the door, it opened outwards, hiding him.
"There's no body."
"No blood either." They walked further out, looking anxiously around.
He sneaked in silently behind them.
"What was that?"
Vash ran. Bullets slammed into the wall where he had been.
He sat up in the upper gantry of the plant room. For a few seconds he smiled at the angel form of the plant within the globe. She knew he was here and he could hear her song. She was worried about the people on the dunes, concerned that the water had been cut off. Asking why. However, not in a way humans would understand it. She brought images of life and contrasted them with drought and death and intermingled water with it. He understood. He wondered if humans had realized in the creation of plants, that they had also included the desire to aid their survival. Sometimes that became twisted, as Knives had shown, to the survival of their own. But he had often pondered in his own heart the sheer depth of his desire to protect people, and wondered how much was personal conviction, and how much was an intrinsic part of his makeup. He was here, trying to help, so it did not matter either way, he could not change his heart and nor did he want to.
"Guard the plant room!"
He ducked away into a dark corner. He hastily made his way down the gantry stairs, as people thundered along the gantries themselves, then stood and pointed guns down at them. For once, it seemed, they were not looking for him. They were escorting Meryl and Milly. The girls did not look up; in fact they were gazing in some awe at the plant in the orb.
"This is the only plant we have here, girls." The man giving them the tour was saying. "None the likes of your chaotic Vash the Stampede."
Meryl turned to him with that smile on her face. Vash winced in sympathy. The man was going to get it, he did not know enough to yell 'scary' and leg it.
As much as he would have enjoyed listening to Meryl berating someone else for a change, he had something else he needed to check. He slipped out of the plant room and sneaked down the passage to the engineer's room. There were several people there, but their attention was taken by the tongue-lashing Meryl was delivering. By the smiles and incredulous expressions, they were enjoying it. He slipped over to a consol at the back of the room and checked through the system. Plant power was being diverted from the usual town maintenance productions to, to something else. Something that required almost all of its capacity.
"Who are you?"
He looked up to find three engineers staring at him.
"What are you doing? Are you with them?"
Ah, so these fellows were No Man's Land plant engineers, not Terrans.
"No." He said, them was a rather ambiguous word, after all. "But where is all this going?"
They inspected the screen.
"How did you get that up?" One sounded astonished. "You an engineer?"
Vash shrugged.
"Where is the output room?"
"Two floors down."
The three plant engineers looked up at the man standing by the window, his badge said 'chief engineer'. Vash thought he vaguely recognized him. Ah yes, he had been a small boy the last time he'd come through the town, he'd taught him to wrestle.
"I'm letting you go because I know you're our only chance at this. And if the rumors are true, and you're also a plant, then out of respect for your own race, you won't destroy this place."
Vash stood up and smiled at him, this division that they made in their minds was becoming a problem.
"It's out of love for people." He explained. "I've never considered myself not a person. We've all got to spread the love and peace."
He walked out of the room.
He found the output room guarded by ten blaster-wielding heavies. What was the fun of a blaster, he mused. It was indiscriminate in its projection and while not necessarily killing at the first detonation of force, maimed dreadfully. No, he would take a gun any time. It remained that they blocked his passage. Okay, diversion time.
"So it's through here is it?"
He froze. Meryl was striding along the passage followed by her panicked and beleaguered guide and Milly and her camera bringing up the rear with an escort of Terran marksmen. Not quite the diversion he wanted, but it would do.
There was enough milling confusion and conflicting orders, for him to slip in behind the guards as the doors were opened. Meryl had marched right in, and they had poured in after her to stop her. They seemed reluctant somehow; he then realized that the camera was filming this live. Oh man. Now he had to be careful.
He darted across to the mass of pipes that were the output tubes, then ducked under them as Meryl drew the people to the far side where the control consoles were. He wanted a terminal, and there should be one back here, there. He found another engineer hunched there. He tapped him on the shoulder.
"Not with the Terran's." He whispered.
The man's eyes lit up, and then his eyebrows shot up in recognition.
"You?" He hissed, and peered around. "It's that bad?"
"W-what's that supposed to mean?" Vash asked, hurt.
"You only pitch up with the heavies move in! So what's going on?"
"I don't know." He said honestly.
The engineer blinked at him.
Vash took the lapse in attention to scroll through the readings on the terminal.
"I didn't know you could read."
"I can't." Vash lied and grinned at the confusion on his face. "Why do they need all the stored energy?" He asked, leaning on the back of the man's chair. "It's like they're creating a battery with the power of a fusion bomb."
There was a slight flicker and the terminal's readings went back to zero, before slowly building up again.
"Whatever it is, they have finished it." The engineer said. "These are the usual maintenance figures."
Vash looked around the room. Meryl was standing there ordering the Terrans to reinstate the water and the energy supplies to the town. He would leave that to her. He had more urgent business.
"Which way to the dispatch and delivery room?"
"Through those doors." The engineer pointed. As Vash headed towards them at a run, he saw the engineer reach up and tug the fire alarm. Ah, a soul after his own heart.
The fire alarm bleared through the rooms. Meryl turned as she caught a red streak pelting across the output room as if all hells demons were after him. She ducked away from the careful herding of the engineers, and Milly followed. They were chased by the guards and guides who had taken them on a round tour of the plant. Vash shot the doors open and vanished through them. She and Milly dove straight in after him. As they did so, a terrific explosion rocked the place. She helped Milly to her feet, as debris fell from the room. The dispatch and delivery room was a warehouse, and now had several yarz of wall missing.
Outside were a mob of towns folk, all armed, all yelling and Vash was somewhere in there. The mob had breached the other doors into the plant as she could hear yelling and gunshots behind her. She and Milly watched as the uniformed Terran's sprinted out of the plant behind them, and dove for their vehicles in the warehouse and started them up and almost took out swathes of people when they drove them at full speed out into the desert.
"Oh Meryl, look!"
She had to leap up onto the railing to peer over the chaos to see Vash firing after the retreating trucks. One skidded to the side then fell on its side as it came to a halt. The others swerved around it, and tore off into the desert. He lowered his weapon. The town's folk crowded around him and he vanished among them.
When Meryl finally caught up to him, Vash was pleading and cajoling and the sheriff and his deputy were arguing with him.
"You cannot hang them!"
"You know what they did!" The deputy pointed out at the graveyard to the east of the town.
"Death for death is never the answer!" Vash protested.
Milly set up the camera and caught the entire argument on film. It was a good half an hour begging and pleading with the town's folk not to have an impromptu hanging for the captured Terrans.
The town had settled for allowing them three days water and food and instructions to walk to the next town, encouragement provided by bullets biting the dust behind their ankles.
Milly was busy filming this while Meryl caught a quiet conversation behind her, and turned to watch it out of the corner of her eye. It was an older woman whom Vash seemed to know. How did he know everyone wherever he went?
"You know, you are just like Willa."
"I am?" Vash sounded surprised, then wistful. "I wish I had met her."
"Those Terrans told us something about plants." The woman said, her voice going quiet. "They said that plants go crazy after their hair goes black."
There was silence as the woman looked up at his hair. Then Vash laughed.
"The hair doesn't change much. I've always been crazy." He declared unabashed.
The cringes and shrinking embarrassment that the town's folk felt on his behalf was amusing.
"We know." Someone muttered to titters of awkward laughter.
Meryl turned away as Vash launched into an exaggerated explanation of his zanier exploits, effectively distracting the towns folk.
The party in the Saloon that evening spread out into the streets as the whole town returned to their homes. Meryl celebrated with everyone, then dragged Milly across to the house they had rented a few streets away when she passed out with a happy smile. She put her friend to bed and went back to the saloon to look for Vash. This would be the time he would give them the slip and she was not going to allow that to happen. His drinking buddies were all still semi conscious and singing raucously.
"Where is he?" She asked, causing several to struggle to process her request.
"Vash?" One managed, perplexed.
"He was looking rather green." A waitress informed her as she walked past, rescuing beer glasses from the tables. She pointed at the back door.
Meryl rolled her eyes and went out to look. She winced, from the smell of it; this was a regular dumping ground for fluids of all kinds, but Vash was not there puking his guts out. Several others were though.
She went back through the Saloon and slowly walked back to their house. It was then that she spotted him, it could be no other, his profile was that distinctive. He was standing in the main street staring out east, the way the Terran's had gone.
She walked over to him.
"Are you leaving?"
He turned to her; he had his glasses on, and that odd serious expression on his face.
Oh no. Something very big was happening. What had she missed?
"Me, leave?" He grinned broadly. "I've got to star in my show!"
She laughed and he gave her an odd peaceful smile. As if he saw something in her that made him happy, it certainly made her feel very self-conscious.
"Thank you for my derringer." She said, turning back to town. "It smoothed negotiations."
He did not reply.
She looked about for him and found him tottering over to the side of the street to be sick. She rolled her eyes and walked off home. Why drink so much when you could not handle the drink?