The ground shook again and there was a tremendous bellowing cry following the clap of thunder—of giant footfalls, Meryl realized now. She cringed as though the jarring shudder under her feet had actually caused her pain. She thought she could feel her eye starting to twitch again.
"The—the Nebraskas?" Meryl demanded, once she was able to think anything other than, Oh, shit. "They're supposed to be in jail!"
"They broke out," explained the Chairman, helplessly. "I figured, we're so desperate for that money, we might as well... We could pay them pittance and let their love of destruction do the rest for Vash the Stampede."
"And that love of destruction will destroy your town!" Meryl snarled, so furious at the man and terrified at the situation that her voice had jumped into a full register higher than her normal pitch. "I have seen what they can do—do you know how hard it was to get them in prison in the first place?" Milly went suddenly white. "We helped put them there!" Meryl shrieked.
This was true. Two years ago, Bernadelli went after the Nebraskas; the scientist who had constructed his own family of mechanical giants had been ransacking most of the planet and the insurance company dispatched the whole of its resources and all the field agents available to bring the criminals to justice. It was the first time Meryl had worked with Milly; the younger woman had dragged Meryl free of some debris just before one of the giants could crush her underfoot.
Four of Bernadelli's other agents were not as lucky. Hundreds of injuries were added to the four deaths before the whole of the family could be rounded up. A new penitentiary had been built specifically for them, to accommodate the size of the prisoners, out in the middle of the great wastelands, thousands of iles from the nearest township.
Meryl's blood ran cold now as she wondered how many people had died in the Nebraskas' escape.
"And now you've brought them here," Milly whispered, faintly. Meryl glanced sideways, worried to see her partner so pale.
"You idiot!" hissed the Chairman's second-in-command, the man in glasses. He slammed both fists down on the table at the center of the tent, making the Chairman nearly fall out of his seat. "What have you done?"
"I didn't know," whispered the Chairman, his fingers twitching in nervous spasms as he yanked hard on his scraggly long hair. "Henry, I didn't know what else to do..."
"You've brought disaster down on us!" shouted Henry. He grabbed the Chairman by the collar and dragged him to his feet, hauling back one heavy fist to strike the smaller man.
"No!" Meryl said, hurriedly, seizing his elbow. "This won't help anything!" Henry gave her a look that clearly said the punch would at least make him feel better—and privately Meryl agreed—but he released the Chairman, who collapsed to the ground.
There was another loud bellow and a few more thunderous footfalls, nearer now, and Meryl could hear all the townsfolk in the square start to speak more worriedly to one another, voices growing louder. People started pressing in toward the tent nervously.
"What, then?" asked Henry, looking severely at Meryl through his horn-rimmed glasses. "You've dealt with them. What should we do?" Meryl glanced down, gave the Chairman up as a bad job, and addressed the other man.
"You're in charge now. Get everyone away from here as quickly as possible," Meryl ordered. "Tell them to leave everything behind, take nothing but their lives. Pack them onto sand-shuttles, Thomas, anything you've got, and just get them—"
"Vaaaaash!"
The high-pitched voice was thin and reedy, barely cutting through the noise of the crowd, and very different from the previous bellowing cries. Meryl froze, recognizing the voice as that of the scientist, of Dr. Nebraska, the man who called himself father of his engineered family.
"That's coming from east of here," Meryl whispered, not quite sure why she was suddenly keeping her voice down. "Take everyone west, and hurry!" Henry hesitated, looking uncertainly at her and Milly.
"What are you going to do?" he asked, his words also nearly a whisper.
Meryl licked suddenly dry lips.
"I don't know," she said, honestly. "I…" Meryl looked hopelessly at the man but was saved saying anything else as someone squealed loudly outside the tent, somewhere in the crowd.
"We've got him!"
Turning, Meryl watched a dark-haired girl in braided pigtails elbow her way through the mass of people, slamming her shoulders determinedly into the adults' knees as she passed, forcing them out of her way. She was red-faced and breathless and one of her braids was unraveling where the matching pink ribbon had come loose.
"Sandy?" said the Chairman in bewilderment, still sitting bemusedly on the ground. The girl spared him an exasperated glance before looking up to Henry.
"We caught him!" she said again, gasping for breath and gripping the worn shoulder straps of an orange backpack. "We've got Vash the Stampede! At the saloon!"
"What?" said Meryl, flabbergasted.
"Mama says you have to hurry, c'mon!" The girl spun on her heel and ran without another backwards glance. For a moment Meryl and Henry stood staring at each other, dumbfounded, as Sandy disappeared into the crowd again, the orange bag bouncing on her back with each step.
"Make a hole!" Meryl shouted, starting to plow her way through the crowd after the girl. Most of the townsfolk were just startled by Meryl's order and didn't do much to move out of her way.
"You heard her! Move!"
From just behind Meryl, Henry's angry bellow commanded significantly more authority and people hurried to clear out of their way. The crowd parted as she ran and it was only about five seconds before Meryl could see Sandy's braided pigtails flying every which way as she pushed her way through the throng a few yarz ahead.
As Meryl reached the outskirts of the crowd and emerged into the empty street, a ragged-looking stuffed rabbit fell from Sandy's backpack and Meryl's next stride lengthened awkwardly in an automatic attempt to avoid stepping on it. Milly disappeared briefly from Meryl's peripheral vision and Meryl knew the younger woman had stooped to retrieve the stuffed animal. Meryl felt a moment's twinge of irritation—why bother?—but Milly was at Meryl's side again just a moment later.
The ground under Meryl's feet rumbled and shook and there was a collective gasp of surprise and shouts of alarm from the crowd she had left behind in the square. A plume of dust and smoke was rising high enough against the brilliantly blue sky for Meryl to see it over the roofs of the low buildings lining the street.
"What the hell—?" began Henry, between panting breaths. He followed close on Meryl's heels as she hastily changed course to dart down the nearest side-street that would take her more directly toward the explosion. Her lungs were burning as she sprinted, her heart pounding away so rapidly it actually hurt. She hardly dared to draw breath as her mind reeled in a veritable roulette of emotion: anxiety, excitement, terror, delight, panic...
It's Vash—they found Vash—
But would he still be alive when she found him?
Meryl rounded the corner at the end of a narrow street and found herself at the edge of another open town square bordered by shops. She skidded to a halt in the dirt, shocked at what stood waiting there, and Milly nearly bowled her over from behind.
"Oh my god," Meryl whispered, feeling her eyes stretch wide to fully take in the sight of the giant mechanical man crouched down on one knee at the side of the square. His huge, domed forehead protruded oddly over disproportionately-small eyes hidden behind purple-tinted goggles. A smokestack stuck out the back of his bald head and Meryl jumped a little as a cloud of steam burst from it with the great reverberating sound of a foghorn.
A triumphant cry of, "Ha!" came, not from the giant, but from a smaller man riding in a compartment attached to a harness strapped across the giant's chest. Even from a distance, Meryl recognized the man as Dr. Nebraska. He seemed to be doing a sort of victory-jig that made the puffs of white hair at the sides of his head quiver ridiculously. "Sunk after one shot?" shouted the scientist, apparently speaking to the rubble that Meryl guessed was previously the town saloon.
With a loud, mechanical whirring noise, the huge winch strapped to the giant's back sprang into life and Meryl finally noticed that the giant was missing half his right arm. A thick cord was attached to the metal stump at his elbow and as the winch retracted it dragged a massive forearm and fist from the debris, pulling the arm back to the giant until it slammed into place again at his elbow. Meryl realized the detachable fist had been used as a projectile weapon powerful enough to destroy the whole building.
"Mama!"
The shrill cry came from somewhere behind Meryl and she turned around to look for the source. Sandy had caught up to the three adults (they'd taken a shortcut, it seemed) and was staring in horror at the ruins of the saloon. She screamed, "Mama!" again and started sprinting across the open space.
Meryl leapt forward and seized Sandy around the waist before she could get more than a few yarz' distance, pulling the girl almost off her feet to stop her running right in front of the giant and into his line of fire. At the sudden movement below, the mechanical giant turned quickly to face them. Nebraska, standing high in the sling across his son's chest, frowned down at woman and girl. Meryl shoved Sandy behind her and the girl screamed to see the huge fist pointing directly at them. She clutched at Meryl from behind and Meryl threw her hands up, palms-out.
"Unarmed!" she shouted, as loudly as she could. Meryl was thankful that Sandy's terrified death-grip on her waist kept the derringer-laden cloak from opening and revealing the falseness of this claim.
Both Nebraska and his giant-son gave dismissive hmph! noises in unison and turned back to face what was left of the saloon. Meryl let out a breath she hadn't noticed holding, but the sigh of relief was premature. Nebraska did an abrupt double-take and stared down at her again and, after a moment, Meryl saw recognition in the scientist's expression. She felt suddenly as if the temperature in the street had dropped far below freezing.
"I know you, girl," Nebraska said slowly, his eyes narrowing. The scientist stared unnervingly down at Meryl from his high perch, all three of his yellowing teeth bared in a snaggletoothed grin. "Remember this?" he asked, pulling off the green monocle he wore over his left eye. He tapped an ugly, jagged scar that ran across his temple and bisected the severe arch of his thinning, white-haired eyebrow. "I remember," said Nebraska, his jovial tone gone icy cold.
Meryl remembered, too. The bullet had only just missed him, during that incident two years ago. Unwilling to shoot to kill, Meryl had hesitated too long and Nebraska had escaped the encounter with just a graze over his left eye. She had no idea that he'd even seen her in all the chaos of that day, much less that he would remember her years later. The thought was unsettling.
"I never thought I'd have the opportunity to pay you back!" cackled Nebraska, and he pulled an absurdly long-barreled pistol from somewhere else in the harness. He held it out in both hands and squinted his monocled eye to aim the gun down at Meryl.
Before Meryl could do so much as gasp, there was a loud scraping noise from across the square and something stirred in the rubble of the saloon. She and Nebraska both reflexively turned to look and Milly took advantage of the distraction and grabbed Meryl's elbow, dragging her and Sandy back into the anonymity of the crowd; the townspeople had followed the sounds of and gathered again at the edge of the square to watch as events unfolded.
Meryl hardly noticed Milly's actions and certainly didn't hear the other woman's concerned query as to Meryl's well-being. The fear that had momentarily gripped her when she stood staring up the barrel of Nebraska's gun was all but forgotten as Meryl stared across the square at the wreckage of the saloon. A large slab of the building's stone wall shifted and fell, kicking up more dust, and Meryl watched a vague silhouette form in the cloud, growing more definite as the dirt settled again.
She had stopped breathing entirely now, waiting, hearing only the blood pounding in her ears. The figure slowly took shape and Meryl's heart sunk like a stone as a painfully familiar outline appeared.
"No," she whispered, all her breath rushing out in that single syllable, emptying her lungs until she felt they were an empty void, somehow solid and dense in her chest, weighing her down. "It can't be," she murmured, her lips moving almost soundlessly. "Not here, not now. Not him..."
But there was no mistaking that bristly blond hair, nor the long jacket that now rustled in the slight breeze that swept away the last of the obscuring dust.
The man in red stood knee-deep in debris, holding the limp form of a woman under one arm.
Meryl just stared at him in disbelief. She wanted to scream, to jump up and down and shout, What are you doing here?! What about Vash? Where was the man Meryl had been pursuing for months, where was the legendary Humanoid Typhoon?
The man in red carried the woman several yarz from the remains of the saloon and lay her down carefully on the ground. Vaguely, through the deafening noise of her own screaming thoughts, Meryl could hear Nebraska taunting the man in red from across the square. The man just returned to the rubble and wordlessly began shifting through the mess. A moment later the man in red stood again, cradling a second woman in his arms. Again he carried her away and lay her next to the first woman before returning once more to the saloon's ruins.
Meryl watched, numbly, as the man in red retrieved another three women from the debris. She was trying desperately to reconcile her anxiety for the situation with the bitter, aching disappointment she felt in knowing this was just another false report, another failure to find what she'd been chasing for so long.
This can't be happening...
A noise like booming cannon fire knocked Meryl loose from her reverie and she watched the giant's massive fist fly in a blur toward the man in red and the last slender woman he'd just pulled from the rubble. Glancing up sharply, the man in red finally faced his attacker and Meryl saw his green eyes flash suddenly the color of cold steel.