Chapter 3
Clark trudged along the path, one of the late bandits' duffels under his arm. His posture loose and casual, one of the bandit's coats replacing his camouflaged one, which was in the bag. He decided to whistle a cheerful tune to help with the illusion. He settled on Come on Eileen, if only for its swing.
Well that and that a song about convincing a young woman to make the beast with two backs seemed a good fit for a man his apparent age. As he walked along, he began to recognize some landmarks from his earlier conversation with Slim.
He passed an old, abandoned logging vehicle, which looked to be mostly rust at this point. After that he noticed the oncoming bend in the road. He increased his volume.
He kept along the path, around a turn that took him a full ninety degrees, from here the road continued for roughly 150 yards before flipping back 90 degrees, making a rough "C" shape. Apparently there was a massive boulder that this helped avoid. A massive boulder this "Scrounging team" had set up camp under.
As Clark came to the end of the straight, they stepped out from the brush in front of him. Two men with handguns and one with an axe. The one with an axe was dressed almost entirely in green. They all were wearing shit-eating grins though, that seemed to be these thugs' unofficial uniform. Thugs reveling in their cleverness and presumptive victory over some dumb schmuck thinking he could actually use the roads his taxes paid for.
Sliding into the same practiced smile he tended to use when meeting law enforcement, Clark spoke first.
"Afternoon, gentlemen. Pleasure seeming a friendly face around here." The bandits looked at each other briefly. Their confidence lost in their confusion. Eventually the green one spoke up.
"It sure is. Me and the boys here do a lot of work to keep these roads safe, its always nice to see a fresh young face walking down it. Just about brings a tear to my eye." He feigned wiping a tear from his cheek. Confidence restored, his buddies' smiles returned.
Clark's had never even faltered.
"Well, I'm sure glad to hear that. I'm Terrence Kelly, what's your name?" The green-clad man had clearly made up his mind, striding forward.
"The name's Ruben Auoros. So, big man… how exactly are we going to make this work." Perfect.
Clark kept up the act.
"Don't catch your meaning." Greenie lifted his axe, giving it an experimental swing, almost like a golfer's in form. The gesture was wide and slow, intended to draw the eye. But Greenie's eyes never dropped from his.
"You didn't think we did all of this for free did ya? Me and the boys here gotta make end's meet." It was like watching a shark bite into a pipeline. A creature that was just millimeters away from its own grizzly death but was still utterly sublime in its ignorance. Its delusion of invincibility. So utterly secure in its status as an apex predator that it had no conception of a natural enemy.
Greenie advanced on Clark, his buddies held back with their pistols.
Fortunately Clark's contempt kept him from feeling overly sorry for what came next. He tried his best to restrain a giggle, these morons made it a struggle.
"Well why didn't you say so? I've got something here I think you boys will really take a shine to. He set down his duffle and unzipped it. Kneeling over and making a show of rooting through the contents.
He could feel Greenie approaching him.
"Now that's mighty kind of you. But I think we'll just go ahead and find it ourselves, okay."
Clark pretended not to hear him.
"Now I swear I slipped it right in here, but I think it got knocked around while I was walking..." Fingers that could bend sheet metal clasped their way around Clark's shoulder.
Ah.
Greenie had aura.
This could be an issue. He wasn't dealing with a man here, he was dealing with a gorilla in a human suit. His strength was restrained, but still very clearly overwhelming. Clark knew that he would either make this happen quick or his little crusade would be coming to an end right here.
Fortunately, he had snaked a hand up and under his coat, while Greenie and his "boys" had been focused on the duffle. He withdrew the revolver. This was going to need some lateral thinking.
Clark shot his empty hand up and out of the way, Greenie's eyes followed it. Clark was able to see his face shift from that of confusion to shock and anguish when the .45 long colt smashed its way into his crotch. It didn't penetrate of course, but a good portion of the force went through and likely turned Greenie's reproductive organs into a newton's cradle. The fight was on.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Clark stepped forward. To his credit, Greenie's voice had hardly jumped an octave, even as his mouth hung open and his eyes lost focus.
They regained it real quick when he felt the barrel of the revolver shoved into his throat. It was the last time they ever saw anything ever again.
Clark pulled the trigger.
Clark had to admit he hadn't been certain this would work. He'd been hoping to either read up more later or experiment in a controlled environment. Aura was some scary stuff, frankly he was thankful Greenie had opened his mouth, there was no way the heavy .45 caliber barrel was going to fit into one of his narrow nostrils.
The crude hollow-point yanked off a skullcap-sized hunk of scalp, Greenie got one involuntary step backwards before he collapsed. Clark threw himself prone on top of him as his buddies recovered from the shock of their prey rearing up and biting their leaders head off.
They raised their weapons, yet more revolvers from the looks of them. Before they could level them at him, Clark heard the telltale crack of rifle-fire from behind him. Two shots whizzed past him, striking the man on the left in the sternum and head. The upper half of which dissipated. The second man seemed to forget Clark entirely, emptying his cylinder into the treeline over his head.
Clark withdrew his barrel from between Greenie's teeth, but before he could make the final thug regret his lack of focus, another bullet snapped past him and into the thug's forehead.
There was no pink mist, instead, a large, sharp crystal of ice spread from the impact site, roughly a foot out of the front of his head and who knows how far inside of it. The man collapsed and began to convulse. Clark heard a distant voice call out from behind him.
"You good John?" He made to stand up, noting that "Ruben's" fingers were still clutching the shoulder of his jacket. He made to pry them off, which, luckily didn't require much work.
He realized he still hadn't answered Slim only when he heard footsteps crunching behind him.
"I'm fine, the green one just had aura. Needed an extra shot." He turned to face Slim, who was looking at his handiwork.
Slim yelled out "Think he was from Mistral! They got a lotta bandits 'round there!"
Slim finally got beside him. The kid was clearly shocked by his own handiwork. Clark decided that some praise was in order.
"You did some clean work there, would have been hard-pressed to do better myself." Slim just nodded, his eyes looked over to the writhing body on the ground, and the mess where the other bandit's head had been. He muttered.
"Don't look all that clean to me..." Clark shook his head.
"Nah, you did fine for a first-timer. Don't worry about him. Brain's dead, rest of his body is just trying to figure it out. He didn't feel a thing." Clark had given this speech himself more than a few times. Frankly, so long as they went down quickly he didn't really care.
They all had known what they were getting into.
Slim still couldn't pull his eyes off of the body though, eyes wide.
"If you want, you can pop him again." Slim looked at him shocked.
"That's murder!" Clark shook his head.
"No, its mercy. In reality he's already been killed-" Clark saw the movement cease out of the corner of his eye.
"-guess it doesn't matter now. Twitching's stopped." Slim looked at the body. Clark noticed he was trembling.
"So, you shot somebody, they shot back. You walked away, they didn't. All told there's not much more to it than that. You saw the elephant today kid, and you're still kicking." Slim looked at him. Clark patted his shoulder.
"I'll admit I was worried, but you handled yourself well. Very well. With these assholes done, that's all but the main camp finished. Lets get these guys off the trail. No use having decent people trip over them."
They dragged the bodies off of the road, about twenty paces down the slope on the outside of the "C", they left them for the scavengers. Clark pulled a belt of bullets off of one of them, these ones weren't nerts. They were all dust rounds and looked like somebody had poured hard-candy into their tips. The campsite was a disappointment. No papers, no clues, no notes of any description. There was a Faunus-themed porn mag, but a quick shake and shuffle revealed nothing inside its pages other than some rather tasteless pictures and lurid text.
Surrrre… all of those girls just dream about men groping their ears. That all checks right out...
Disappointed, Clark tossed it into the fire, alongside the other trash they wouldn't be taking with them. He doubted this was the National Park's standard of "leave no trace" but he didn't want some other jackasses to come by later and get the same idea, and frankly he wanted to tear this whole group out by its roots and pour salt in the hole.
The people of Remnant frankly had enough on their plate as it was.
They made it to the main camp by sunset. Slim gave him an exhaustive briefing on the history of the place while they lie prone, observing from afar and waiting for the sun to set behind them.
The complex had started it's life as a logging outpost with a small mill. This particular mill had made a name for itself for the use of primitive water-gel explosives to knock down a lage number of trees at the same time. Allowing the crews to drag them back to camp with minimal Grimm exposure. Escalating Grimm attacks against the compounds themselves, and gradual shifts towards metal and concrete construction had rendered it's economic niche unviable.
It had been abandoned soon after, alongside many other wood-mills throughout rural Vale. But it's sturdy log cabins had remained standing. Usually they were just a good place for the local kids to toss rocks through windows and feel eachother up. Eventually the smaller ones had decayed or succumbed to lumbering Grimm.
The two-story foreman's quarters, however; were a different story entirely. It had been sturdily built as a last-refuge for the workers, and had looked well-kept enough that it had deterred both looters and curious children until the site had faded from local memory.
Now it was a bandit camp. By all appearances a large and highly organized one. The sound of string music and laughter echoed across the shallow valley. Clark and Slim had set up just at the edge of a treeline. Peering down the obsolete rife-scopes.
They made note of the number of patrols and the various paths that they made their way down. They made note of the bandit's weapons. Clark noted the venerable AK had finally made an appearance. Cradled in the arms of at least three bandits.
Most importantly, the partners gauged the attitude and posture of their opposition.
These men were relaxed, moreover, these men were complacent. Until they suddenly weren't.
A Beowolf had slashed its way through the rusted chain-link that had been put up to keep away trespassers. It had presented no obstacle to the Grimm though.
The men didn't run away however, instead they all ran towards it like white-blood cells. Rifles blaring in automatic. Eventually enough rounds struck the beast to kill it. Clark had seen this behavior before, although it never failed to astonish him.
"They're all high as kites." Slim turned to him.
"Well, man's gotta do somethin' with all that free time they got." Perhaps.
"What's key here is that it looks like it's a stimulant. A powerful one. That makes them aggressive, but I think it also makes them vulnerable. And not just to ambushes, they tend to get… paranoid." Slim shook his head.
"Don't look all that paranoid now."
"Don't have a reason to be. Yet." He couldn't contain a slight grin there.
Nightfall came soon afterwards, Clark had spent a little time searching for some of the old water-gel explosives. He slowly closed another compartment in the half-sunken logging vehicle. It would have been a major windfall, but apparently not everybody in this region was complacent.
That or the stuff was expensive and what hadn't been taken by the company had been nabbed by the handful of scroungers and near-do-wells who knew what they were doing.
A shame, really. Clark had been looking forward to trying out some of the IRA's old tricks.
No use crying over lost gel. They were out of daylight, bombs or not.
It was time to light the fuse.
He and Slim lay flat on a forested hill, about a hundred yards from the Foreman's house. A patrol that had wandered too close also was laying down behind them.
They would not be getting back up.
Clark turned to Slim, struggling to find some good words of wisdom for whatever would happen next.
It was easy to see a lot of the seventeen-to-eighteen year old conscripts Clark had met in 'Nam in the kid.
Full to bursting with piss and vinegar mostly to fool themselves into thinking they weren't out of their depth. Clark briefly considered sending him home.
But this was his home, these bandits were only going to get more dangerous the longer they were left to do their thing. They were harassing travelers now, how long before they started hitting settlements?
Better now than later, and better with professional help and a plan than with a posse of amateurs rushing dick-first into danger.
He finally settled on the words.
"Shoot, then move right afterwards. One shot, two if you feel the need. Never three. Move backwards, you saw all the potential ambush spots when we walked it earlier. Use them. And make sure not to plug me. If you don't know for certain, don't pull the trigger. This is going to be a pain enough for two of us."
Slim didn't speak for a second. Eyes focused down his riflescope at the bandits milling around the house beneath them.
"I gotcha. Let's bury these assholes." With that understanding made, they applied pressure onto the triggers of their L85 expys. There was a momentary mechanical release.
Then a simultaneous bang as the each set death upon the unsuspecting camp.
Clark had opted to let Slim keep the scoped rifle that he'd gotten familiar with. Clark had gone with the irons. At this range it didn't really matter. Both members of the closest patrol fell and all eyes faced the treeline.
He was up and moving before the first shots began to snap-back. They were clearly unaimed, reaffirming his confidence in his earlier assessment of them being highly aggressive. When he turned back, he could clearly see the lights in the foreman's office turn off.
Somebody had their head glued on right in there.
Slim snapped a couple of shots off from his new position. Another bandit collapsed in the grass just before the treeline, then the bulk of the men made it into the woods, and things got interesting.
Clark had been hoping to emulate two successful prior engagements from his earlier life tonight.
The first being the siege of the drug-dealers in broad daylight back in his Invisible Man days. Frankly, for all of his psychopathy Henry had been a smart man.
The second had been the massacre of the eco-terrorists by Rainbow in the forests of Brazil.
What had enabled the latter was the heartbeat sensor, an expensive and finicky technology that had allowed them find and kill the self-appointed saviors of Mother Earth with ease and near-impunity.
What he was relying on now was the fact that the Bandits worked in shifts, constantly cycling to either a fire-pit, or the well-lit house. Their night vision was nowhere near as well adapted as Clark's or Slim's, both of whom had been operating with only the faint light of the shattered moon for hours now.
It wasn't anywhere near the edge the heartbeat-sensor had been, but it combined quite nicely with another advantage. Their enemies were on hard stimulants, and though that made them aggressive, it also made them paranoid.
As Slim's shots moved further away, Clark lay stock-still in a hollow behind a tree. Bullets snapped harshly over him from both directions. Then he saw the first shapes of the bandits sprint up the hill, stumbling and cursing the thick vegetation. He let them pass.
He waited until he was right amoungst them, clambering up the tree slowly, doing his best to not present an outline. Then he began snapping off shots. He walked casually between the near-blind men. He would shoot when they did, nailing the men in front with shots to the back. Eventually somebody up front figured out somebody was shooting them in the back. Clark pulled out his knife.
He couldn't figure out who fired the first shot, but as he thew himself flat on the ground, Clark felt his confidence he would fire the last shots grow exponentially. The men were panicking, shooting eachother in the darkness in their frenzied state.
The muzzle-flashes made the battle look like a rave.
Screaming, calling for aid. Cursing their ambushers and friends in equal measure.
Nearby, Clark heard a man trying to speak up, to be the voice of reason. Some of the fire tapered off at his command.
This wasn't going to stand. He crept-up behind the man, knife at the ready.
He made short work of it, not clean work, but short work. The man impotently emptied his L85 expy into a nearby stump when Clark stuck him in the lung. The second blow to the heart seemed a little redundant, but an ounce of prevention was worth far more than a pound of cure in this case.
The disappearance of this voice of reason was apparently the final straw. The men turned tail and fled the woods. Making a beeline for the foreman's house.
Clark went prone behind a tree again, head facing uphill as he merged silhouettes with the undergrowth near its roots.
The men sprinted out of the clearing.
Machine-gun fire leapt from the windows, cutting down at least half of the bandits before they realized it was their buddies.
There was another shot from Slim, and a straggler running past him was struck in the pelvis. He howled, even as his comrades scrambled over him.
Clark froze, unmoving. The man looked back and forth, looking for somebody, anybody to help him. Somehow they made eye contact. The man whined.
"Oh Gods…"
Clark pulled out the revolver and smashed a .45 through his skull. His head jerked, and then was still. There was a rustling in the underbrush up on the hill, Clark held his revolver at a low-ready, the distinctive outline of an L85 poked through the brush and almost pointed at him.
It yanked itself away just as quickly.
"You good Clark? Got real hairy there for a sec." Clark nodded.
"I'm good. You?" Slim returned the gesture.
"Few got close. Not close 'nuff though."
"Pat yourself down for blood, check your limbs, armpits, crotch. You can totally miss it if your blood is up. If you find a hole, let me know." In the dark, it was hard to tell if Slim rolled his eyes, but he did it anyway.
"I'm good. What we do next again?" Clark pointed at the building.
"We put shots into those windows until they don't so much stick a pinky out."
He and Slim got into position, when he saw Slim kneel down, Clark began putting shots into the windows. He briefly considered going automatic, but reconsidered when he remembered the sheer panic the thought of a sniper sent through most people.
He saw a slight black outline against the dark. He probably imagined it, but he shot it anyway. He and Slim fell into a rhythm, taking their shots one after another. The sound of gunshots and shattering glass likely deafening. Clark got up to flank them. He saw a flash from one of the upper windows.
About six inches above his head the tree-trunk exploded into splinters. A jagged hole roughly the size of a baseball had been blown out of it. Clark rolled away from the tree. Slim dumped at least twelve shots into the place the fire had come from.
Good suppression, but they didn't have enough nerts left for these things to run them like that.
"Slow down Slim! I'm good!" Slim half-yelled back.
"You gonna rush'em or what?" Clark stood up again, removing the magazine from his rifle and extracting the chambered round. He placed them both next to Slim, and what few magazines he had left.
He unslung the lever-gun, and began his charge.
This was the iffy-est part of the whole plan. He was counting whole lot on the bandits being scared enough that they wouldn't poke their heads out and see him coming.
He made it across the field without incident, slowing down just before the old foreman's office. It was constructed of sturdy, interlocking logs. Not for the first time, Clark wished he had some explosives. If only to provide a distraction. Instead he had to improvise.
He used his thumb to cock-back the hammer on the rifle, and aimed at one of the top-story windows. He fired, the rifle kicking absurdly compared to the one he had just been using. The round smashed through the window and scattered fire-dust inside. He heard the men calling out in panic, and hit the deck right next to the house, right under the windows.
A series of rapid shots from Slim followed.
He began to high-crawl, taking advantage of the panic and confusion inside the building. Slim fired in groups of two, evenly-spaced shots, doing his best to maintain the illusion that there were still two of them out there. It was an idea they hadn't even discussed and frankly Clark was glad he'd thought of it.
He turned the last corner to the opposite side of the house. Frankly it was just as bare as the rest of the it, but had considerably less focus on it.
Clark passed a pile of boots, he tried to keep his fingernails from digging into the wood of his rifle.
He eyed the overlapping logs sticking out of the corner of the building. A more perfect ladder could not have been purpose-built. He slung the rifle aside and began to pull himself up. He made it to the second floor near-silently.
Slim sent out two more shots. Clark heard one of the rounds stop just on the other side of the wall next to him.
He stuck an arm past the building, waving and pointing repeatedly downwards.
The next pair of shots went into the bottom floor. There was a curse, and then a scream.
"Can somebody get Mauve to pop those fuckers already? We're sitting ducks in here!"
"-just wanted a new car man. I just wanted a new car."
All that and more filtered through the walls into his ears. Frankly he cared just as little now as he did when he hadn't understood the language.
There was a window about three feet to his left, Clark reached over and unlatched it. Placing one foot on the sill, and kicking himself into the room.
He rolled up with his revolver in-hand. It was a waste of time though. He had made his way into a comms room of some kind. Maps and papers scattered over the floor. The only other person in here was slumped over the desk, a dark pool spreading out from under his seat. A headset and microphone was strapped to his head.
Clark made a mental note to check the radio the corpse had been using, and then opened the door.
He stepped out into the hallway casually. Knowing full-well that he still had the element of surprise. There were three other doors on this floor, one more on his side of the hall and the other two on the opposite side.
He casually opened the door right across the hall and stepped inside, revolver at the ready.
"Oh good. You're finally awake. You mind taking a peek outta this window and getting a bead on these assholes?"
Clark took in the room, there was a scorch-mark on the ceiling from where his fire-dust had impacted, and at least three dead bodies, one of which was holding a fire-extinguisher. Slim had made good use of the firelight.
There were also two pudgy-looking men sitting behind a thick, upturned wooden table. Bowls and spoons were scattered around the floor. This looked to be the break room. The man spoke again.
"If you ain't gonna peak at least get down! Brother's sake their gonna put a round in here any-minute."
The man was right, for the wrong reasons of course.
Clark raised his revolver, putting his first shot into the talkative one's forehead, and the second one into his friend's neck. He turned around and stepped out of the room. Two more shots careened into the first floor. This time though, the men in the downstairs shot back.
They had clearly confused his shots for ones aimed at Slim, and had apparently rediscovered their testes as a result.
Clark opened up the door to the next room. Here he found no dead bodies at all, only a panicked looking man with an oversized bolt-action rifle.
"You guy's finally scrounge-up some more ammo? I swear there's only one of them-" Clark's gun blared once, and the man keeled over, thumping down onto the hardwood like a puppet with it's strings cut.
He took the opportunity to reload his revolver. While his hands were busy he noted that the men in the room below had fired another burst into the woods unprompted. Slim sent in only one shot in as a rebuttal, but it sent the whole room into a burst of curses.
Suddenly he heard a woman's voice, oddly hoarse but definitely female.
"What the fuck are you limp-dicks thinking shooting-off like that! If you can't see them, don't fucking shoot! Simple as that. Wait until you see muzzle-flashes… We know they ain't Faunus."
Guess that was Daisy. Clark made sure to load the ice-rounds he had scrounged from the bullet-belt earlier into his revolver.
He then unslung his lever gun and got ready to move into the last room on this floor. From here on out, they would know he was coming. Sadly it couldn't be avoided. He had not intention of leaving hostiles at his back while clearing rooms.
The forest had been bad enough, but room-clearing was gambling under the best circumstances.
Clark opened the door, he found two men elbow-deep in a storage chest, bullets of all shapes and sizes were scattered around the otherwise well-organized room.
"Yeah-yeah, we're grabbing you some more boutique bullets for your fancy fucking rifle, give us a minute. It was .338 Argus, righ-" He saw the barrel of the lever-action pointed at him. He didn't even have time to move as the gravity-dust round struck him in his side.
Both he and the trunk of ammo he had been sorting through went sailing to the opposite wall. For his part Clark's shoulder took a hammering too. The next man was more to the point.
"Hey! What the fuck! The ice-dust round hit him in the upper-chest, and his next words froze in his throat. The man at the back of the room began to pick himself up. Stumbling towards his AK. The nert Clark had loaded didn't knock him over, but it did send him tumbling back to the floor.
Clark let the rifle hang by its sling, drawing his revolver and rushing the staircase.
The entire bottom floor had become one mass of confused screaming. Daisy's voice piercing through by virtue of the highest decibel level.
"They're in the house! Everybody up! Everybody up!" Clark's boots hit the hardwood of the first floor. He saw a bank of light-switches and flicked them all on. He threw himself to the floor as Slim began to poke holes into the exposed bandits. Sadly, bandits weren't the only fatality of this little stunt.
The harsh yellow lights killed his night-vison too. Clark stood up and sent a gravity-dust round into the first door, knocking it wide open. He rolled in, the bandit behind a desk putting a whole load of rounds into the floor above him.
Not like anybody up there would notice.
The man took only one ice-round to the face, the rest of the room was occupied by a pair of corpses in plain view of the window. Clark unlatched the shattered-glass-filled frame and hopped back outside. Circling around to other room Slim had been plugging into. Clark checked the corner next to the window and then swept-off the glass, stepping right over the sill. A man hopped out from another table, but two shots to the chest sent him back behind it.
Clark kicked the table, a man with a wounded arm stumbled up, good-hand held high and empty.
Clark honestly hadn't expected that. But there was a simple solution.
"You! Keep your hands up and step out the window. No talking. No funny business." The man nodded his ascent and stepped forward. Clark stood aside to give him a clear path to the window.
One room remaining.
Clark took firm hold of his rifle. Grabbing some of the dust cartridges from his jacket, he shoved them into the loading-gate on the receiver. He stepped out into the hallway.
"Daisy" stepped out as well.
Under normal circumstances she could have been considered pretty, almost a perfect match for her sketch on the wanted poster. Now however, her face had contorted into a mask of madness and cruelty.
Some sick part of Clark's mind finally put a label on it. It was an expression that seemed to scream. " And your little dog too!". Her black cowboy hat and dress did little to help matters.
In one hand she held what Clark could generously describe as an axe, although it had clearly started its life as a blade from a circular saw. If she were a normal person this would have been stupid, the teeth constantly getting caught in whatever was being cut.
He doubted much was able to get in the way of her aura-enhanced strength though.
They made eye contact, neither quite believing the other was real. Another man stepped out of her doorway, dressed in a similar outfit to Greenie. Clark slammed a gravity round into his head. The man seemed to topple over, but he didn't see if he got back up.
Daisy had knocked him through a window.
Clark crunched himself into a ball, his rifle in a death-grip. He ignored the cut the glass had made on his ear and the side of his head. Sending blood seeping down the side of his face.
Daisy followed him out casually. Slim fired a couple of shots at her but she let them bounce harmlessly off her aura. Clark got on one knee and readied a shot from his rifle. The ice-dust round smashed into her shoulder-blade, but was shaken off before it's crystal could grow to full effect.
She sprinted the last few feet to Clark, raising her axe and screaming like a banshee. Clark made to block with his rifle instinctively. Then he thought better of it and ducked.
The sawblade careened through the hardened metal, getting stuck halfway and tugging the rifle out of Clark's hands. Daisy discarded the now-useless weapon and smacked him with her other hand.
Clark rolled with the blow, although frankly he could tell he rolled a great deal further than he should have. The outline of her palm on his face was likely going to bruise-up nicely. She kicked him as he got up, he felt ribs crack as he rolled backwards again.
He was becoming far too familiar with the taste of this grass.
Daisy was interrupted by a burst of automatic fire from Slim, who had finally resorted to their limited stock of dust rounds. Most of them splashed off of her aura or just struck her clothes. One gravity-dust round knocked off her hat. She growled, reaching for the damaged rifle at her feet.
Clark drew his revolver, and smacked two ice-dust rounds into her head. The first one finally cracked the shield. The second smacked into her temple and bloomed.
The monster stilled, then finally collapsed.
He tried to stand up. It took a couple tries. He wondered if she had just given his new body its first concussion.
He chuckled audibly at that. The adrenaline working its way out of his system. He made his way back to the cabin. This time walking in the front door.
The man he had hit in the head with the gravity dust round was snoozing idly. With no means of keeping aura-enhanced prisoners, and frankly out of patience, Clark simply shot him and moved into the last room.
It was a simple, large bedroom. A queen bed draped in thick furs sat against the far wall adjacent to a simple woodstove. There was nobody else home.
They were done.
Hours later Clark and Slim sat by a fire just in front of the house. The scent of the morning mist thick in their nostrils. Besides them, a hogtied bandit lay belly-down. They had spoon-fed him earlier. Clark turned to Slim.
"Suppose I'd better call Amarillo. Get you your bounty." Slim looked at him askance.
"My bounty?" Clark nodded.
"I've got something to do in Vale, I kind of did this along the way." Slim still looked outraged.
"You're really just going to up and leave all that money?" Clark smiled.
"Technically, I should be the one asking that, considering I'm letting you have it." Slim's eyes widened further. Clark stood up and left the boy to digest that; alongside his breakfast.
Clark made his way upstairs. Frankly at this point most of the house smelled like roadkill, perhaps a little worse when one mixed in the scent of excrement.
Fortunately the bandits had stripped and buried their victims in a clearing about a six-hundred yards behind the building, so the stink was limited to only the recently deceased.
Clark made his way to the former radio operator and removed his headset. That done, Clark shoved the corpse to the side and turned on the radio. As he suspected he was met with the sound of Police Chatter.
The Bandit's themselves had possessed no radios, so then they had to have been spying on somebody who did.
He turned on the mocrophone.
"Break. Break. Break. This is John Clark to Amarillo. Over." The speakers went silent for a few seconds.
"Just what the hell is it this time boy? What are you even doing on our frequency!" Clark continued with his best professional tone.
"They had one of your radios in the bandit camp, over." Clark allowed a small style to grace his lips.
"Wait. Bandit camp? Had? As in you stole it? Did they take you somewhere Clark? Is anybody else with you?" Clark shook his head.
"No, as in me and a friend killed all but one of them. "The Daisy Chain" are finished. Prisoner is wounded and restrained, but is otherwise in good condition. Over."
The speakers were silent for nearly thirty seconds this time. Clark tapped the desk to the rhythm of Shambala.
"And where is this?"
"By the old logging camp just up north, over."
"Enough of that 'over' shit Clark. Stay put. We'll be their in a half hour."
They were there in fifteen.
The Sheriff didn't even wait for the aircraft to hit the ground. He hopped out nearly thirty feet above it, rolling to a stop. One of his guns griped by the handle, the other in a reverse grip that allowed it to be used as an axe. His stance was low, simply waiting to pounce on the first man to point something at him.
He looked up to see Clark and Slim sitting by a fire. Clark was just finishing up his bacon.
Daisy's body lay cross-legged on the path to the building. Amarillo looked at the rapidly defrosting corpse, and decided to holster his weapons.
He strode towards the pair. Stopping just across the fire-pit from them. He pointed at the hog-tied man.
"First order of business. you sir, are under arrest. As such I would like to remind you that you have a right to remain silent. I recommend you use it, else I might just drop you from the bullhead on my way back to the lock-up. Enough headaches this mornin' as-is." Said bullhead landed in front of the house, several deputies with rifles and shotguns stormed out.
Amarillo took a look at the pair of men crouched by the fire. Clark swiped a thin paper napkin he had scrounged from the break room across his lips. Amarillo gestured for them to get up.
"I s'pose we need to talk." He took a closer look at Slim. "You the Brown boy? Your auntie was expecting you in Verte, just filed a report. She'll be glad to know you're safe." His gaze turned to Clark.
"How'd you two meet up?" Slim interrupted before Clark could talk.
"Got nabbed by bandits while heading up to Verte. Clark helped me out. He asked me to help get rid of 'em… The bandits I mean." The Sheriff's eyes swiveled back to Clark.
"I'll admit Clark. I was expecting you to be telling me 'bout another dead deputy when you got on the line. Not this. I 'spect you'll be looking for a reward for all… this?" He slowly waved his arm over the corpse-strewn field.
"Actually, I was hoping that Slim could take it, and the credit. I have work to do in the city, and I think it'd be best if I kept my name out of any papers." The Sheriff raised an eyebrow.
"That works. Frankly cuts down on my workload a bit. But I think you and I need to have a little talk in private. Lets go inside." Slim spoke up.
"Smells like a slaughterhouse in there. You sure you need the privacy that bad?" The Sheriff looked at Clark. Clark spoke.
"It's fine Slim. Sheriff is just curious. Can't say I blame him." He turned around and opened the front door, Amarillo followed him in.
He wasted no time.
"There is no town called Spectre, is there John?"
"Never was. Outside of fiction."
"Don't suppose you mind telling me where you do come from then?"
"Wouldn't believe me if I did. Just understand I'm not running from anything or anybody. I was told I was needed, and I came." Amarillo looked at him for a long moment.
"Wilhelm never mentioned picking up or arresting anybody, the door-logs showed that nobody had as much as touched the handles in months. Yet the glass was broken from the inside. How'd you end up in that squad car?" Clark shrugged.
"Can't answer that either."
"What can you tell me?"
"What I've been telling you. I have business in Vale."
"Like the business you've done here."
"Likely worse. More dangerous people. Evil, to be blunt." The Sheriff looked at him with fresh eyes.
"A helluva thing you did here John, you sure you don't want the bounty? That money could do a lot of good."
"If you let me, I'll take what the bandits had, cash, guns, ammo. I don't want a paper-trail." The Sheriff hesitated, then nodded. Then held up a finger. The mischief had returned to his eyes.
"If you're serious about this, and you can keep your mouths shut, go grab the Brown boy. There's something else I can do for ya."
Clark sauntered out, tapping Jim on the shoulder. He stuck his thumb out behind him, towards the front door. Slim followed wordlessly, although his nose definitely was upturned.
They stood before the Sheriff again. He laid a hand on each of their shoulders.
He began to whisper, almost as in prayer, then there was a pulse, and Clark suddenly felt more alive than ever. His bruises vanished, even his ribs felt better.
"What did you say?" Asked Slim. The Sheriff rolled his eyes.
"John here ain't the only one who has secrets." Clark cringed, he hadn't told Slim his first name. Amarillo spoke-up again.
"Now grab-up that fancy rifle of yours and pile onto the Bullhead. We'll talk Lien on the way back." Slim stood still for a moment, before finally turning tail and walking off.
"I take it that was technically illegal?"
"Yes and no. Technically I'm supposed to call it in, but its not illegal to have aura. Just illegal to give it out willy-nilly. 'Course it's impossible to tell who gives it out, hell sometimes it just happens under stress. Dumb law, written to appease dumb people who have no idea how the world outside of an air-conditioned office-building works." Amarillo began to walk out, as he did so he turned to Clark.
"Grab a bag and fill her up. There's only so many bodies I can find at once without calling for investigators from Vale proper, you're about four over the limit even without counting that mass-grave out back. You need to be long gone by the time they get here." As punctuation, the door slammed shut behind him.
Clark hadn't brought his duffle in, but it was right by the campfire, which was close enough to jog to and jog back.
His first visit was to the sniper, whose bolt-action was speedily collapsed and inserted into the bag. The room across the hall was next. The bullets were a lot easier to find in this light, and he greedily shoved ammunition in. That satisfied, he went downstairs and checked under the bed. Sure enough there was a briefcase, packed with Lien in a wide variety of denominations.
He shoved stacks of cards into a large zip-lock in the duffle. Slipping a couple more into his various pockets. He opened a wardrobe, he found what he was looking for almost immediately. The small, darkly colored backpack was extracted and opened.
The rest of the Lien went in, followed by some food from a cupboard. Clark zipped up the bags and shouldered them.
Then he left out the front door, and began to make his way back to the path.
From there, to the city of Vale.