Disclaimer: Trigun owned by Nightow, not me... maybe he'd give me Vash if I begged him really hard.... I DO own (a) Kuroneko, though! I got a new kitten that's all black. I named him Vash, too, so I guess I do own Vash! Ha!
A thank you goes out to the readers of this fic, especially those who've been reading it from the start and have waited patiently for a WHOLE YEAR for me to start updating again!
JOURNEY OF REMEMBRANCE
Part VI
The gunshot echoed against the cliffs, shattering the silence of the still, hot, desert air. The green Generic Whiskey bottle wobbled a bit. Its brothers sat on the large, flat-topped rock, intact and sparkling in the harsh suns-light. Two clear glass Corona beer bottles sat beside it, as well as one aqua-tinged container that once held Coca-Cola and a large, brown Dim Deam bottle. The shattered remnants of one Coca-Cola bottle and one Corona bottle sparkled upon the rock like jagged jewels.
"Drat it!" Rem grumbled. "Missed again!" No matter how much she practiced, she never seemed to get any better at this. The bottles she'd hit, she'd decided she'd hit purely by chance. She couldn't seem to repeat that performance. She leveled her pistol again and took another shot. The bullet cut the air and shattered the top of the Dim Deam bottle. Rem stared. "Wow... I did it again!" she said.
Another shot missed. The sun was hot and she peeled her gray bangs back from her brow, stuck there by sweat. She sat down in the shade of her lean-to, next to her thomas. A cat cornered up in the corner of the shelter mewled. She watched the clouds on the horizon – great thunderheads approaching like slow-moving flagships from the more mountainous regions of the continent. The air was a mass, hot and semi-moist. The storms would probably arrive the evening of the next day. This was the kind of day in the deep desert that sapped one's strength. This was the kind of heat that eroded one's ability and will to breathe.
Rem was out in the middle of nowhere, camping on the sand. She was on her way to May City, and had to cross a great expanse of barren land – rumored to be crawling with sandworms, to get there. She hadn't encountered any of the giant, carnivorous insects yet, and hoped she wouldn't encounter any. She doubted that she could defend herself against such a creature with only a small revolver. She'd heard that they generally avoided humans, anyway.
She put her gun away. It was a standard Colt six-shooter, and she only carried it for protection – mostly, for intimidation. When in a city or town, she wore it conspicuously on her hip, its silver gleaming brightly from the holster. People saw it and generally left her alone, believing that anyone who carried such a weapon knew how to use it. She had learned the basics of aiming, firing, loading, cleaning, and all the other stuff that comes with the use and keeping of a gun – but she was never very good at using it. Rem was determined to learn a decent aim. She needed to.
Several months ago, she had caught a man trying to steal her thomas. Rem was upset at what he was trying to do, and he was upset at being caught. An argument ensued and the man pulled a gun on her. She had managed to draw her pistol first, and shot him in self-defense. She had aimed for a flesh wound, specifically, his left shoulder. Her bullet had entered his left lung. The man had almost died.
She had almost killed someone. If she hadn't fired her weapon at all, the man surely would have killed her. It seemed that the entire world was like this – living in fear and by survival of the fittest. Those who lived and prospered were those that had the best guns and knew how to use them to full advantage. There were peaceful, sleepy little towns scattered over the surface of the planet, but the streets of the largest cities were fierce. The border-towns and outlands were the most dangerous places. No one who entered those places unarmed ever expected to leave them.
Rem sighed and gently petted the cat. She dared not move again from the shade of the lean-to until nightfall. She was near heat stroke as it was. She wondered, for a moment, as she often had, if she really had died so long ago in the Fall – and was now a resident of Hell. She gently petted the head of the kitten that sat beside her.
"I don't know, little guy," she said, softly. "I don't think we were really meant to live in this land. It is so harsh here. Things could have been different."
She paused for a moment. "I suppose we didn't completely fail," she sighed. "We are alive. There are towns scattered all over the planet... we run the Plants to capacity – and sometimes beyond... we haven't terraformed... not like we could have had the fleet survived... but we are alive."
Rem gazed out at the clouds again. Theft and murder were ways of life in many of the outland towns, and even in some of the cities. Whenever anyone discovered an offshoot Geoplant vein or an underground spring in the desert, a war would break out. Family groups and political factions fought with one another in fierce land-wars over rights to such things. Sometimes, the very resource that was disputed would be destroyed in the fighting. This world was certainly not the world she had dreamed about when she joined Project SEEDS. The seasons passed in murder and in fear. Rare, now, would people even give a traveler a cup of water. Distrust ruled the lands.
Rem had left Inepril City three days ago. She had arrived there on a report that Vash the Stampede was there. She learned that, the day she arrived in town, he had left on the visiting sandsteamer to May. The town lauded the man as a hero. There was no way she could catch up to the sandsteamer at that point, so she stayed in the town and listened to people's stories. She found herself particularly captivated by a charming little boy named Tonis.
Far from the city-destroying menace most of the rumors bespoke and shelves of dime-novels had been written about, the Vash that these people knew was a kind, charming, and courageous man that had saved them from the infamous Nebraska father and son criminals. Furthermore, he had saved their Plant from exploding – all after they had destroyed half the town trying to kill him for his bounty.
Rem was shown instant-camera photographs from the citywide celebration that had occurred the night before she came into town. Instant cameras were rare, but the bartender at the town bar had one. She smiled as she looked them over. The blonde man in the photos was definitely the boy she remembered. She had decided to take a night's rest in the city, restock her supplies, and head for May in the morning.
Now, she only hoped that "The Stampede" would still be in May City when she arrived there. May was still two day's ride away. The people of Inepril had called her crazy for heading out thomas-back. Tonis was sure she would die in the desert. He had begged her to stay.
Rem thought about her "near-misses." It seemed like every time she entered a town where Vash the Stampede was reputed to be, he had either gone or she had encountered some two-bit bandit using the name – a young punk who only vaguely matched the descriptions and who rarely resembled the wanted posters. Only once did she ever get close to the "real" Vash, the man whom she sought.
She was staying in a little town on the border of Neo Colorado at the time, Hawkeye. She had awakened to the noise of chaos outside her hotel window. Someone was crying that Vash the Stampede had arrived in town. She had hurriedly dressed and rushed downstairs. When she got out to the street, all she saw was a mob of people, men on thomases in the center of them, and dust.
There were shouts and jeers. Children threw stones at the center of the chaos. She caught a glimpse of a man in red, tied with a rough rope, being dragged behind a thomas. She called out, demanding that the people stop what they were doing. Her cries went unheeded.
She had been wearing her hair short then, she remembered. It was in a short crop that reached the center of her neck. Rem did not know why she remembered this unimportant detail, of all things, but she remembered it nonetheless.
"Amazin' that we caught him unarmed!" some man had exclaimed. "Quite a fighter, but we got 'im! The sixty-billion double dollars is ours!"
Rem found the sheriff. She pleaded with him to bring order to the situation – for the man the vigilantes were dragging to death was getting far from a fair trail. The sheriff simply dismissed her and gave approval to the mob's activities. Rem was punched and hit with sticks when she edged her way into the mob. The man who was dragging "Vash" behind his thomas untied the rope from his saddle and tossed it to two strong young men, who pulled it over the branch of the tall mesquite tree that grew in the middle of town.
Rem watched with horror as the man was hung. She cried out to him. This was Vash, her Vash. This was the man on the wanted posters. This was the man in all the newspaper photographs she had saved – the protector of the innocent she had read so many articles about before the destruction of July. This was the boy she had known, now a man. And he was hanging by the neck from the branch of a tree.
He gasped and he struggled. He kicked and writhed. Rem screamed. She tried to run up to the tree, but was held back by people in the crowd. She thought that Vash caught her gaze – just for a moment. He kicked some more and gurgled. His eyes rolled back and closed. He stopped kicking.
The tree limb cracked and splintered. Vash came tumbling down. The noose loosened and he gasped for air. He freed his hands and neck. The crowd was soon upon him again, but he ran, and managed to duck down alleyways and side streets. Never had Rem seen so many people bring out guns and knives in the pursuit of one individual. The town was nearly destroyed before the townspeople gave up the chase, unable to find their man, who had apparently escaped into the desert.
Such was the justice of most of the towns on this planet – the justice of the rope and the gun, and rarely a fair trail for anyone accused of a crime. Rem shook herself out of old memories. She watched the sunset and made minor repairs to her prosthetic leg. She oiled parts that were beginning to show some rust and polished the casing. She pulled her jeans back on. She had gained a few more wounds over the years. She'd been shot twice from getting in the way of outlaws. She had often wondered if this world could become a better place. With every year and every season, it seemed as though everything spiraled from worse to worse.
Evening fell. Rem gathered up her supplies, loaded her thomas, and mounted. She set off, once again, for May. The cat climbed up on the saddle behind her. She rode and watched the moons rise. Several isles passed beneath the thomas' feet.
Rem had her steed at a trot when he moaned and fell. The cat meowed and jumped as the beast fell to its side and Rem was tossed to the dirt. She recovered herself and saw the thomas moaning and kicking, unable to right itself.
"Sssh..." she soothed. She cautiously approached the flailing animal. The toes of its right foot were bent unnaturally. It was bloody and pieces of bone had broken through the skin. The ankle was twisted. The creature calmed down when she gently ran her hand down its headplate. "Sssh...." she told it, "ssshhh."
Sadly, she reached for the pistol on her belt. When a thomas' foot was broken in such a severe manner, there was nothing that could be done for the animal but to end its suffering. The thomas bled profusely from its broken foot. Rem had seen this type of injury before. A thomas would bleed to death slowly if its owner did not shoot it.
"Easy, Betsy, easy..." she said as she placed the muzzle of her pistol to the soft flesh just behind the mare's headplate. Rem had prayed that she'd never have to do this. She had seen it several times with different thomases and different riders. She had hoped to Heaven that she'd never have to do it herself.
Betsy was a good mare and one of many thomases Rem had ridden and kept over the years. All of her steeds had aged and eventually perished – save one that had died young, a gelding thomas named Diego that had been shot out from under her.
"Sssh.. Betsy," she soothed, a tear streaming down her cheek. "It'll stop hurting in a little bit. Goodbye..."
Rem's pistol-hand shook. She tried to squeeze the trigger, but her hand felt numb. Her cat meowed. She put her pistol back in its holster. She stayed kneeling beside her thomas, stroking its headplate.
"I'm sorry," Rem whispered, shaking her head and crying. "I can't. I just... I just can't." The woman stayed there, beside her fallen steed, attempting to comfort it through the long night as it slowly died.
To be continued!! Turn to the next!!
-Shadsie, 2004
Notes: On the desert weather – deserts are really like that. I live in southern Arizona and it is summer. It is monsoon season currently. I was inspired by the hellish heat I've been suffering through while writing this chapter. I figure that Planet Gunsmoke must have a climate reasonably similar to that of Arizona. As for brand names – I mixed made up brands with actual brands. As far as the actual brands go and "will they exist so far in the future?" - well, in the Trigun manga, I've noticed little things like "Heinz Ketchup" and "Tabasco"-brand hot sauce. "Dim Deam" (a perversion of the name Jim Beam) is a brand name in the anime. (Look closely next time you watch)! I chose to keep actual brand names around to keep with the feel of Trigun – only those brands which I think will stand the test of time (face it, Coca-Cola's gonna be around forever).