Meryl tore her eyes from Vash and the departing shuttle, turning to face the creatures descending on her. They sped across the sand in small packs and the hiss of their movement swelled to a roar in her ears as they came nearer.
She was going to die.
At least the shuttle got away.
Milly was safe. Vash was safe. It wouldn't be a pointless death, at least, small comfort though it was.
Morbidly, Meryl wondered how she might die; would those strange creatures just trample her? Claw, bite, and eat her? Would she at least be dead before they ate her?
She swallowed the rising fear and set her jaw, because by god, Meryl Stryfe wasn't going down without a fight. She drew her first pair of derringers just as something yanked her backwards by the cloak.
Meryl screamed—she hadn't been expecting an attack from behind!—but the clasp at her throat choked off the sound as she was hauled completely off her feet. Panicking, she thrashed arms and legs wildly until one fist struck something with a meaty thunk, followed immediately by an unexpected, "Ow!"
She was startled enough to pause in her frenzied struggling and whatever had grabbed her cloak now took hold of her arm. Meryl took in a grateful breath as the clasp hung loose around her neck and she momentarily lost her equilibrium while the world flipped sky and sand and back again, leaving her dizzy and disoriented until she blinked Vash's face into focus and found herself cradled in his arms.
For a moment she was too stunned to react. Then surprise flowed effortlessly into anger.
"What the hell are you doing?" she demanded. Vash shifted her in his grasp, throwing her halfway over his shoulder and holding her tightly in place with one arm, freeing the other to balance himself as he ran, sprinting for all he was worth, his stupidly long legs eating up the ground beneath them at mind-boggling speed. Meryl braced herself as best she could with derringers in hand and screamed, "You Idiot! What's the point of us both dying?"
"Just shut up and shoot!" shouted Vash. "If we get far enough, they won't follow!"
"What?"
"Just shoot!" Vash emphasized this order by giving Meryl a shake that nearly dislodged her from his shoulder and she held on tight, trying to get settled more securely in his grasp.
It was a surprisingly stable position, for all it was awkward and a bit handsy. She was pressed up against Vash's side with her leg hiked up across his chest, held in place with an arm around her waist and a hand tucked firmly into the crook of her knee. Her free leg dangled, uncomfortable and in the way, and Meryl hooked the heel of her boot into the back of Vash's belt.
Now her cloak trailed behind them, buffeted in Vash's wake, and it twisted around her neck to block her vision. She had to tuck it under one arm to keep it out of her face so she could finally get a proper look at the creatures chasing after them.
Small heads were perched on long necks and Meryl counted four legs, each segmented like some gigantic insect's. But they moved all wrong. The legs seemed to be static and locked into place, gliding across the sand instead of scuttling, still with that strange hissing sound. Meryl unloaded her first derringer into the bulky body of the nearest creature, but she either missed altogether or the bullets just didn't do enough damage to visibly affect it.
Meryl took aim at the creature's legs instead and her second shot managed to sever a limb entirely. The creature collapsed, crippled, and two of its fellows tripped over the body, sending up a plume of sand as they tumbled down the dune's steep slope. The two fallen creatures didn't get up again and Meryl carefully holstered her empty pistols before drawing the next pair.
Stowing empty pistols took time, time she normally used to keep up a raid-fire barrage, but dropping a spent derringer right now meant losing it forever. Barely a minute ago Meryl was prepared to die, to lose everything, but now that there was some small glimmer of hope for survival, she wasn't going to give up the only possessions she owned that actually meant something.
It was a costly sentiment; there were too many of the creatures and they were gaining ground, even as Meryl continued to disable them as quickly as she could, targeting those who were most likely to take down others when they collapsed. Urgency led to less careful handling, rushing to exchange spent pistols for fresh ones. After emptying the fourth pair, one hand fumbled in her cloak and Meryl missed the holster.
Her heart lurched as the derringer fell away, tumbling from her fingers and onto the sand, lost out of sight behind them in an instant. Gone.
Forever.
She could have wept, but tears now would only hinder her aim. Meryl gritted her teeth and drew the next pair, praying they were close to whatever distance was Vash's promised "far enough" not to be pursued.
A handful of the remaining creatures suddenly put on a burst of speed and pulled away from the rest of the pack. There was a flash of red light near one creature's head and something streaked past Meryl's ear with an electric sizzle and a momentary surge of heat.
"They're shooting back!" she yelped, recognizing even as she said it just how absurd it sounded. But red lights flashed again in a rapid strobe and another three sizzling shots flew toward them. Two went wide on either side and the third hit the sand right where Vash's foot had been, just moments earlier. Meryl suddenly recalled the injured passenger's wound and had no doubt that this, whatever it was, had been the cause.
She returned fire, trying to aim for the source of the lights, though the narrow faces made for difficult targets and she instinctively flinched away any time that brief, searing heat flew past too close for comfort. Frustrated, Meryl returned to her strategy of picking off limbs instead and after losing another three pistols to more hurried fumbling in her cloak all but one of their attackers plowed head-first into the sand and disappeared from view.
The rest abruptly fell back and slowed to a halt, standing in a straight line across the sand as though they had reached some impassable boundary. Only one creature still trailed after them, more tenacious than the others, and this one was gaining, even against Vash's incredible speed. It got close enough that Meryl could put two bullets in its neck, nearly severing the head, and she saw one final flash of red before the creature collapsed. She didn't see where the shot had landed, but she felt Vash stiffen for an instant and Meryl had a horrible vision of more scorched and blackened flesh.
"Are you hit?" asked Meryl. She carefully holstered the pistol she had just emptied as she twisted around in Vash's grasp. She was trying to face him, but the best she could manage was to address the back of his head. "You can stop running, they're not chasing us anymore!"
Vash ignored her (he certainly couldn't have missed the comment, she was practically shouting it), and Meryl tugged at the side of his collar.
"Vash, stop," she ordered. "Put me down!"
Meryl gave a startled yelp as Vash yanked her down from his shoulder, but he was still running. He nearly stumbled, trying to compensate for her shifting weight, and Meryl willed herself to go—well, pliable, if not limp, to let Vash manipulate her body however it would allow him to keep his balance. She finally looked around to see where Vash was running to, and gasped in shock.
They had caught up to the moving shuttle. Two young men stood at the rear window, gesturing and shouting for Vash to hand Meryl through. She reached out in an attempt to catch their hands, but Vash just launched her forward into a flying tackle that knocked both men to the floor (which at least ensured her a soft landing). Meryl scrambled up to her feet, pushing aside more helping hands as she practically kicked at the two men who had broken her fall.
"Out of the way, move!" she ordered, lunging toward the window to pull Vash through after her.
He had already grasped the shuttle frame and climbed onto the rear bumper by the time Meryl could reach for him. Vash ignored her hand and hauled himself up and in through the window, bent over at the waist. He seemed to be stuck at this halfway point, so Meryl grabbed him by the belt and heaved. Vash tumbled forward on top of her and Meryl collapsed under the weight, falling back to land in the aisle with Vash sitting more or less in her lap.
The impact with the floor jarred her tailbone and Meryl gave an undignified squawk as Vash's remarkably bony ass landed squarely on her left knee. Vash hurriedly shifted his weight to the floor of the shuttle, though his long legs still lay heavy over her thighs. Vash seemed dizzy and out of breath and Meryl looked him over anxiously.
"Are you alright?" Meryl reached out with both hands and Vash leaned forward to meet her with open arms, looking relieved. Her fingers met his jacket and fumbled open a few buttons, pushing the heavy fabric aside until she could touch the leather half-armor beneath. She actually felt Vash's breath hitch as he froze, sitting tense and utterly still under her fingers while she moved both hands carefully down over his chest and around his sides, searching for any injury. "Are you hit? I thought—"
Vash's breath let out again in a hiss of pain when she reached his waist and he pushed her hands away. Meryl's right palm came back bloody, and she looked up at him in alarm.
"Vash—"
"It's the old wound, from the steamer," he said quickly, oddly red in the face as he refastened the front of his jacket. He shook his head, not meeting her eye. "It's reopened, that's all."
"That's all?" Meryl said, incredulous. She heard her own voice pitched half an octave higher than normal in her panic. "You Idiot! What the hell were you thinking?"
Vash was still trying to catch his breath and he looked up again in obvious bafflement at her sudden anger. "What?"
"That was stupid!" shouted Meryl. She was so angry she actually drew back one fist to strike him, but at the last second she remembered Vash's injury and aborted the gesture into a knuckle-bruising punch to the metal frame of the nearest seats. Vash caught her hand before she could punch anything else and Meryl winced, but she kept shouting. "You could have been killed! Why did you do that? You got away safe!"
Vash's fingers abruptly tightened on hers and he stared at her in disbelief, as though she had just sucker-punched him in the gut. His next words came out quiet and tight, and whatever else Meryl might have yelled at him died on her lips at the palpable hurt in his voice.
"You think I'd just leave you to die?"
That same hurt flashed in his eyes and Meryl could hardly draw breath, pinned in place by a gaze touched with something akin to betrayal. Her lips parted but no fitting reply made itself available, until maybe I'm sorry, came to mind, but she was denied its speaking when Wolfwood called for their attention:
"Broom-head, Short-stuff, get over here!"
Meryl gave a start, abruptly freed from the strange captivity of Vash's gaze as he looked away.
"Broom-head?" Vash demanded, suddenly indignant. He scrambled up to his feet and Meryl ducked as he stepped right over her head, stomping down the aisle toward Wolfwood with another affronted, "Broom-head?"
Meryl let out a shaky sigh, relieved to hear the familiar Idiot in Vash's voice, far from whatever strange emotion that had strained his words just moments earlier. She slumped forward, elbows on knees, and reached up to rub a familiar ache out of her forehead. The blood on her palm made her reconsider the gesture, and she closed her fingers over it instead.
You think I'd just leave you to die?
The words echoed in her head, but the more Meryl thought about it, the less guilty she felt.
Yes, dammit, he should have left her behind. It was the smart move; there were two dozen other people on that shuttle to think of. What if something else had turned up in their way?
The shuttle lurched under her, slowing in fits as gears downshifted poorly; someone must have convinced the driver it was finally safe to stop.
It took a few struggling moments for Meryl to stand, trying not to touch anything with the tacky smear of blood across her right hand. She was tempted to just wipe it on her leggings (it would hardly show against the deep indigo color), but that would only end in sticky leggings and a fuzzy palm, so Meryl followed after Vash and tugged on his elbow to get his attention.
"Can I borrow your canteen?" she asked. Vash just frowned at her suspiciously.
"Why?" he demanded. "So you can throw it in my face again?"
"I didn't throw it in your face!" argued Meryl. "It just slipped out of—look, it doesn't matter, can I just borrow it? Please?" She held out her bloodied hand and when Vash glanced down at it, his eyes widened in alarm and he caught her wrist.
"What happened?"
"It's your blood, Idiot," said Meryl. She scowled at him and yanked her hand out of his grasp.
"Oh," said Vash, frowning again. "Right."
When he produced the canteen and unscrewed the cap Meryl reached out to take it from him, but Vash caught her wrist again and this time he cradled her hand in his before pouring a trickle of water into her upturned palm. She cupped her fingers automatically, dumbstruck by how tiny her hand looked, set against Vash's like this. He tucked the canteen under his arm and tugged at the end of his right sleeve with his teeth, pulling it down over the heel of his palm so he could use the fabric to gently scrub away the blood.
"But, your jacket," Meryl protested, trying to pull her hand away.
Vash held tight and grinned at her, shrugging. "It's already red."
Meryl couldn't think of anything else to say, and Vash seemed focused on his task, and in the resulting silence between them she just kept hearing his words:
You think I'd just leave you to die?
No, she admitted, at least to herself. He wouldn't leave her, or anyone, not if there was any chance he could save a life. But Meryl also knew that if he kept putting himself between her and danger, his blood would always be on her hands, because his luck couldn't last forever. Someday he'd be trading his life, not just a few scrapes or a flesh wound.
Eventually Vash's gloved fingers brushed lightly over her palm as he inspected her hand for any remaining blood, and Meryl could still feel a phantom trace of their path after he released her wrist and grinned, announcing, "All clean!"
Meryl rubbed away the tingling feeling (and any lingering damp) on her leggings and nodded toward the injured man lying in the aisle behind Vash, asking, "How is he?"
"Still unconscious," said Vash. He gestured at Milly and Wolfwood, heads bent together over the other man. "Those two have been looking after him, and they say he's stable."
"Good," said Meryl. Then she grimaced, pointing at the injury on Vash's left side. "Now Milly can look after you."
"I'm fine," Vash told her, smiling wanly. "Just pulled a few stitches."
"That was more blood than just a few stitches!" Meryl snapped, putting her hand out, palm-up; it was clean now, but the accusation was clear.
"I'm fine," Vash said again, reaching out to fold her fingers closed over her palm, holding her hand gently between his own. "A fresh bandage and I'll be good as new." When he added an earnest, "I promise," Meryl finally relented with a sigh.
"Alright, fine." She gestured toward the back of the shuttle and added, "I'm going to check on the mother and daughters. See if they're okay."
When she tried to move away, Vash didn't release her hand and Meryl looked at him curiously.
"Are you okay?" he asked quietly. Green eyes were clear and tinged with worry and Meryl took a deep breath, considering her answer.
Eventually she just sighed and said, "Yeah," because that was easier than trying to explain how bone-tired she was, and how much her heart ached for her lost derringers. How she was grateful he had saved her life, but that she was still angry at him for risking his. How she still didn't understand why it was so hard to breathe when he looked at her like this.
She gave Vash's hand a reassuring squeeze and mustered a tired smile and a nod, repeating, "Yeah, I'm okay." This time when she pulled away, he didn't stop her, and Meryl turned toward the rear of the shuttle.
After a few steps she realized there was some kind of commotion at the back window and Meryl frowned, puzzled, until a woman started screaming. Men's raised voices joined the noise and Meryl hurried down the aisle before too many people could get up to see what was going on.
"Hey, calm down lady!"
Two men were trying to wrestle a third figure away from the window and Meryl recognized the mother. Now the woman was screaming, clawing and kicking at the men impeding her progress as Meryl approached.
Meryl grabbed the woman's shoulders and shook her. She looked up, momentarily startled out of her panic, and her screams turned to racking sobs as she clutched at Meryl's arms.
"What's wrong?"
"My daughter!" wailed the woman, pointing out the rear window. "It took my daughter!"
Meryl looked where the other woman pointed and her heart sank to see another of those strange creatures racing away at full speed with a small figure hanging alarmingly limp in its jaws. When the woman started trying to climb out the window again, still sobbing, Meryl pulled her back and shoved her down into the arms of another passenger.
She knew she couldn't risk shooting at the creature, she might hit the girl. But it hadn't gotten very far yet... Maybe the effort of carrying the child would hinder its speed, and she could catch up to it?
Her lungs ached at the thought of another long sprint, but she had to try. Meryl climbed onto the rear seats and was halfway out the window before an arm snaked around her middle and yanked her back inside.
"What are you doing?" Vash demanded, setting Meryl back down on her feet.
"What are you doing?" Meryl countered. "One of those things took the girl, we have to go after her!"
"You can't just run off," said Vash, sounding almost frantic. "I just got you back!"
"What?" Meryl asked, baffled. Vash pressed his lips in a thin line and the man in red took over his features.
"You're not going anywhere," he said, the tone of his voice matching that familiar intensity of his eyes. "You're running on fumes, you wouldn't make it ten yarz."
"At least I'm not bleeding," Meryl shot back, annoyed.
"Uh, Ma'am?"
Milly had followed them to the rear of the shuttle, sitting with the mother to try and calm and console the other woman. Now she tugged on Meryl's sleeve.
"I told you, I'm fine," said Vash. "You're staying here. I'll bring back the girl."
"You can't tell me what to do," said Meryl, bristling at this order. Vash seized her by the shoulders, pulling her forward.
"We don't have time to argue about this!"
"Ma'am!"
"What?" Vash and Meryl had snapped it in unison, glaring sideways at Milly. The younger woman just gave them an exasperated look and pointed out the window. Wolfwood had jumped out the front of the shuttle and was now sprinting away toward the escaping creature and its captive.
"Son of a bitch," hissed Meryl, along with Vash's muttered, "Goddamn it."
Vash squeezed her shoulders, recapturing her attention.
"I'm going," he said, definitively. "Stay here, and I'll bring them both back."
Meryl opened her mouth to argue but stopped short as Vash's hands moved to her face and he all but begged, "Please."
The man-in-red mask had slipped and he was looking down at her in a mix of desperate frustration and anxiety. "You can't just stubborn yourself all better! You'll break yourself trying, and I—"
Vash stopped abruptly, gritting his teeth, and the man in red slammed back into place.
"Stay here," he ordered. Meryl nodded into his hands, wide-eyed and breathless and not quite sure what had just happened. After another tense moment his gaze gentled into just Vash, and Meryl sucked in a startled breath as he bent closer.
"Just go!" shrieked Milly.
Vash and Meryl both jumped, and stood apart. Meryl glanced guiltily toward Milly and by the time she looked back at Vash, he was gone.
Milly returned her attention to the sobbing mother and Meryl let out a long breath. After a moment she realized the woman's other daughter was watching her carefully. The girl wasn't crying; Meryl figured she was all out of tears, or in shock, or maybe she was just made of sterner stuff than her mother.
"Can he really save her?" she asked Meryl, quietly. "Can he get my sister back?"
Meryl nodded, trying to give the girl an encouraging smile.
"He can," Meryl told her. "He will."
"Promise?"
Meryl hesitated. She rarely made promises on her own behalf, much less on anyone else's... But the girl was looking for comfort and reassurances, and if ever Meryl could make a promise it would be that Vash would do everything in his power to rescue the other child.
"I promise," she said. "He'll find your sister and bring her back, safe and sound."
Meryl tried very hard not to think, Or die trying.
The girl nodded and turned back to her mother, who was still sobbing into Milly's shoulder. She managed to squeeze her fingers into the hand her mother had clutched at the back of Milly's cloak, and winced as the woman's grip tightened even further.
"It'll be okay, Mama," murmured the girl. Her other hand stroked her mother's back, as far as she could reach. "That man saved us once already, he'll save Helen again, too."
Milly met Meryl's eye and gave her a small smile and a nod, which Meryl took to mean she had done the right thing by promising. Milly was usually better at this sort of thing, so she left the younger woman to care for mother and daughter and tried to figure out what she should be doing.
Meryl hated to admit it, but Vash had been right; she was running on fumes. All she wanted was to sit down, and maybe fall asleep again, but it was too noisy and too many people were demanding answers of her. Maybe it was her responsibility to answer, to explain all that had happened since the creatures first attacked, but she just couldn't handle it in her current state. Instead she made a break for the shuttle doors and escape.
She just shook her head at anyone trying to talk to her, and nearly dislocated two fingers of the first man who tried to demand her attention by grabbing her arm. No one else made the same mistake, and when she reached the front of the shuttle with no further harassment, Meryl signaled the driver to open the doors.
"Ma'am? Where are you going?" Milly demanded, her voice carrying from the back even over the general noise of the rest of the shuttle.
"I'm just getting some air," Meryl called back.
"You promised Mr. Vash you would stay here," said Milly, sternly.
"I will!" Meryl had snapped at the younger woman, though she hadn't meant to. "Sorry, Milly, I'm just... I won't go far."
Milly still didn't look happy about it, but she nodded. Meryl stepped out onto the sand and stretched her aching back, grateful for finally having enough space to do so.
She made her way to the water tank and turned the spigot, using only her hand to catch the water as it fell, and bent down to bring a few handfuls to her mouth before closing the spigot again.
The water and the fresh air had done a lot to clear her head and Meryl felt better. Still tired, but better. She walked to the shaded side of the shuttle and sat in the sand, leaning back against the front tire and closing her eyes with a sigh.
The familiar press of derringers at her spine felt wrong, and Meryl's eyes flew open as her heart lurched. Her derringers. She pulled the cloak from around her shoulders and lay it open across her lap.
Four empty holsters glared up at her in silent accusation. Lost, they said. All that's left of him, lost.
Meryl's hands balled into fists, her fingers curling tightly into the heavy white fabric as she tried hard not to cry. Her eyes began to water despite her efforts as they traveled along each of the Thomas-hide strips, skating quickly over the missing pistols as if she could pretend they were still there, as long as she didn't focus on their absence.
Her breath hitched and her eyes widened as she caught sight of a small hole near the bottom edge of her cloak. Her fingers flew out to touch it in a gentle caress, tracing its burnt outline.
Vash.
The place where he had shot her own pistol right through her cloak, back when she didn't even know he was him.
Meryl hadn't bothered to patch it (or rather, she kept putting it off), and now she realized she never would. The hole, and its maker, were as much a part of her now as those derringers had been.
Something moved in her peripheral vision and Meryl glanced up sharply, sitting straighter as she spotted something on the horizon. It was formless and dark and too far away to make out clearly in the heat-haze rising from the sand.
Meryl stood and drew two derringers, unsure what to do. She hoped it was Vash and Wolfwood bringing the girl back, but if it was more of those creatures she should tell the shuttle to drive on.
In the end Meryl's hesitation decided the matter as she realized that what she saw was not a large figure in the distance, but a very small figure much closer than she had initially guessed.
Relieved, she holstered both pistols and hurried out to meet the girl, managing a miserable sort of jog; there was no run left in her. After about a minute the girl seemed to recognize Meryl and she sprinted forward, flinging her arms around Meryl as soon as she could reach her.
"Hey, it's okay," Meryl said, soothingly. She untangled the skinny arms from around her waist and knelt in the sand. There was enough time to do a cursory check—no blood, no broken bones—before the girl wrapped her arms around Meryl's neck and began sobbing into her collar.
"What's wrong?" asked Meryl, alarmed. "Are you hurt?" The girl shook her head against Meryl's shoulder but seemed to be crying too hard to give any further explanation.
Meryl comforted the girl as best she could, shushing her softly and stroking her hair as she watched the horizon, suddenly uneasy.
Vash and Wolfwood should have come back with the girl. Meryl was certain neither of them would leave her to fend for herself, unless something else had gone wrong.
She wished she could remember the girl's name; she was sure she had heard it, at least once—Hannah?—but she didn't want to guess and be wrong.
Meryl went with, "Hey, sweetie?" and waited for the girl to calm enough to draw back and meet her eyes. "Two men went looking for you," Meryl told her. "Did you see them?"
The girl's face immediately crumpled and she burst into tears again, leaning heavily into Meryl's shoulder as she wailed, "They're dead!"
For a moment the words didn't even register. Air and sound vanished from the world and Meryl's head swam, leaving her dizzy and disoriented in this silent, breathless place.
She expected it all to come rushing back at once, like a sledgehammer to the chest, but when she could inhale again it was in small, shallow breaths that sucked at her empty lungs.
Meryl knew the girl was still crying, but she could barely hear the sobs, soft sounds echoing from iles away.
She couldn't feel. Something was cold and numb and wrong inside.
Vash was gone. Vash, the Idiot, Vash, the man in red, Vash, who was her...
She still didn't know what, exactly, but hers. She thought she should feel something at this kind of loss.
It's shock.
The thought came unexpectedly, but it made sense. That, Meryl could understand. That, she could work with.
Tears would come later. For now, there was work to do.
Meryl gathered the weeping girl into her arms and stood, murmuring, "Let's get you back to your mother." She turned toward the shuttle and her first few steps were stiff, as through there was a disconnect somewhere between her brain and her feet. She tried to focus on something else.
They would have to go back for the bodies. Wolfwood was a preacher, he'd have wanted a proper burial, and Meryl tried to figure the logistics of getting him back to his church in December. Vash...
She refused to think about Vash.
For a few more steps Meryl managed to keep her mind blank, but inevitably she realized she needed to know. She knew she shouldn't ask it, that the poor girl was already traumatized (and hell, it wasn't hard to guess the answer), but she couldn't not know.
"What happened to them?" Meryl asked, softly. The girl had quieted, but her face was still buried in Meryl's collar.
"They came and found me," she said, voice muffled by the heavy fabric of Meryl's cloak. "And they saved me, they killed all those monsters."
The girl sniffled at new tears and Meryl tried to prepare herself for what she already knew was coming.
"And then they got eaten by a sandworm."
Again, that moment of silent, breathless stillness.
But this time, coming back from that place did hit her like a sledgehammer, and Meryl's brain and body both went off-kilter in the same moment, spasming hands dumping the girl in the sand, mouth shrieking, "They what?"
The girl looked up from the ground, taken aback.
Adrenaline and anger—sweet, familiar, predictable anger—bubbled up in Meryl's chest to fill the sucking void that had settled there before.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" she howled, glaring down at the girl, who stared back up with wide eyes.
"You said a bad word," she whispered.
"They didn't get eaten by a sandworm," hissed Meryl. "Sandworms don't exist!"
"They do so," said the girl, scowling as she scrambled back up to her feet.
It took every ounce of effort for Meryl not to shout, They do not! She didn't have time to get caught up in a stupid, childish argument about fairy tales when Vash and Wolfwood might still be alive out there, somewhere.
Her heart raced, blood pounding in her ears, the adrenaline urging her to run, to take some kind of action.
"What really happened?" Meryl demanded, nerves jangling as she forced herself to stay put.
"I already told you!" shouted the girl. "They came and found me, and killed all the monsters, and then—"
"And then what?" interrupted Meryl. "What, exactly."
"The sand just opened up and swallowed them!"
"Did you actually see a sandworm?"
The girl hesitated, her vehement certainty faltering. She finally admitted, "No."
"That's because there's no such thing as sandworms!" shrieked Meryl, shaking with fury and the barely restrained frenetic energy that set her blood to screaming, go, now! Find him!
The girl scowled again, taking in a breath, ready to shout back an argument, but Meryl cut her off.
"Go back to the shuttle!" she ordered, one trembling finger pointing the way. "Follow my footprints, just go!"
Meryl waited just long enough to see the girl trot away toward the shuttle before she turned and sprinted in the opposite direction. Her legs ached and her lungs burned in her chest, but adrenaline—and hope—pushed her on.
Her mind worked frantically, trying to come up with some other explanation for what the girl had seen, something that might have happened so quickly that even Vash couldn't avoid it.
A sinkhole needed water, she knew, but if there was an aquifer out here somewhere it would have been found ages ago. Maybe a series of underground caves or tunnels, with stone fragile enough to crumble and collapse in on itself, flooding its passages with sand, and Vash and Wolfwood along with it.
It didn't take long for Meryl's panic-induced second wind (or third, or fourth, by now) to run out, and she was left gasping for breath, forcing herself onward on increasingly noodle-y legs. How far could they possibly have gone? How far had Vash carried her?
She crested the next dune and bit back a cry of alarm, dropping flat to the sand and scrambling back out of sight from a whole herd of the strange creatures resting just a few yarz away. Blood pounded in her ears as her heart raced again, not even daring to breathe, praying they hadn't seen her.
When there was no hiss of movement, or any other noticeable reaction, Meryl waited for a silent count of 100 before crawling forward to peek over the top of the sand dune again.
They were all dead. The bodies of more than twenty creatures were strewn around the area and Meryl drew a pair of pistols as she approached, just to be safe.
As soon as she got close enough to take a good look, Meryl stared down in shock.
They were machines. The legs were hinged girders bolted to a body encased in a heavy shell of dark, unreflective metal. A five-segment articulated neck supported the head, which looked like a comically large version of BDN's laser pistol (which explained the weapons that had fired at her earlier).
Meryl explored the area, looking the creatures over more carefully. Each of them had been shot in the "head", squarely through the center of the narrow faceplate, and she knew it had to be Vash's handiwork. She didn't see much other damage and made a mental note of what seemed to be the creatures' main weakness.
Sand was disturbed everywhere and it took Meryl a few minutes to find the pair of footprints leading away from the scene, where Vash and Wolfwood must have gone next. She followed the footprints up the next dune and nearly lost her balance at the steep slope that awaited her on the other side. Instead of a normal valley between two dunes, there was a vast, circular pit that sloped sharply down to a point at the center.
Despite herself, Meryl leapt back from the edge. She didn't believe in sandworms—no, she knew there was no such thing as sandworms—but like every child of Gunsmoke she had grown up hearing the stories, and every story started with a burrowed sandworm's hungry jaws lying in wait at the bottom of a giant, perfectly conical welling in the sand.
Meryl berated herself for such a ridiculous reaction and climbed to the top again. Treading carefully around the pit's edge, she found no more footprints. This was where her search ended, one way or another.
She turned in a slow circle, checking every ich of the horizon, hoping for a glimpse of a figure or two in the distance. She didn't want to bring more of the creatures down on herself, but Meryl started shouting for Vash anyway, and for Wolfwood, and received no reply.
Eventually Meryl returned to the group of dead creatures—no, broken machines—and managed to sever a damaged leg and drag it back to the top of the pit. She flung the leg out as far as she could, but it was too heavy for her to make any good distance and it struck the side of the pit and slid to a halt before reaching the bottom.
Cursing, Meryl went back to search for a smaller piece of debris. She was disturbed to find a bowie knife buried in the head casing of one creature, but she managed to pull it out mostly intact. Half the blade was missing or still stuck inside the machine, but the handle and crossguard alone were the right weight for her purposes.
She returned to the edge of the pit and lobbed the broken knife in, where it struck dead-center in the bottom of the pit with a hollow, metallic clang.
"Whatever's down there, it isn't a goddamn sandworm," Meryl grumbled.
She raced down the sharp slope, half-sliding, barely managing to keep her feet under her. Her boots met a solid surface at the bottom, just hidden under a fine layer of sand. She knelt and brushed the sand aside, revealing a smooth expanse of dark metal that could have been indistinguishable from a steamer's hull.
Tracing a large seam in the metal with her fingers (noting absently that there were no obvious bolts or rivets to hold it together), Meryl followed its path until it disappeared under more sand.
She tried to dig it out further with one hand and after a moment she did find an oversized bolt of some kind. It shifted unexpectedly under her fingers and the long seam split beneath her like a huge mouth opening wide. It happened too quickly for Meryl to do anything but gasp and she dropped into the gaping maw below.
Moments later she landed jarringly on hands and knees, and the rough surface of the floor shuddered and swayed under her palms. Two yarz above her head the metal mouth clamped shut again, leaving Meryl in total darkness.