Ain't Talkin'

The saloon was packed to the brim with wastelanders. If packed to the brim meant that every third seat was occupied, but this was as crowded as things ever got in Parmiskus. Men and women with gunbelts and scarves over their heads sipped at morning drinks, cigarettes and foul-smelling cigars hung from their mouths. A few folks had cards out and were toying at gambling, but there were no open tables with real dealers.

Roche let Markus walk a half-step in front of him.

“Go straight to the bar.” Markus did as ordered. Roche noticed the .45 was still tucked in the waistband of his pants. the trigger just over the edge of his belt. The kid even walked with a hint of swagger. Or maybe it was the bullet gouge in his leg.

The barkeep was a smaller man. His head was a stubbly brown fruit. He cleaned a mug and when he spoke only his lower lip moved.

“What’ll you ’ave?”

“Three fingers of bourbon, times two.” Markus ordered with all the panache of two kids in an overcoat buying their first glass of liquor.

“Leave the bottle.” Roche turned his back to the barkeep and rested his elbows on the bar.

“Cash, then.” The barkeep grumbled. Roche took out the billfold, noticeably thinner than when he’d started this job, and slipped twenty off the top. Grubby, barkeep fingers snatched the cash from the bar and left the bourbon bottle behind.

Roche swallowed his three fingers in a single drink and handed his glass to Markus to pour him another. He watched the saloon. What sunlight spilled through the swinging doors and the pair of front-facing windows only made the shadows of the bar seem deeper. There wasn’t enough overhead lighting, and the corners of the room disappeared into pitch, They seemed for the time being to be empty, and Roche couldn’t feel anyone there the way he always could, that was good enough for him.

“See anyone you recognize?” Roche asked Markus, still eyeing the room.

Markus sipped at his bourbon timidly and looked left and right across the bar.

“Not so far. But I didn’t live here long. Corporation brought me out here to be closer to the workspace, but I left them before I ever got that far. Made contacts with the Res-”

“You talk too damn much and you talk too damn loud, kid. I asked you one thing.”

“The answer is no, then. I don’t recognize anyone.”

Roche lit a cigarette and drowned a second glass of bourbon down the other side of his mouth.

“What if they don’t find us?”

“There’s a Corp troop transport parked out front and no troops to be had. They’ll figure it all out in a few minutes. Ain’t exactly a subtle hint.”

“And when they find us?”

“I turn you over and that ratfink ‘father’ of yours pays my other two-thirds.”

“Wasn’t ever my father. They tried to play on the sympathies of a man who clearly has none.” Markus took the bottle from Roche’s hand and drank straight out of the neck like a pissed off teenager.

“And you can knock off the angry little-girl routine. Stompin’ your feet like a bitch.” Roche stuffed a hand in one pocket and fingered the trigger of his Ruger. Three men had just walked into the bar abreast in long coats, hats pulled low, fidgeting their hands around their belts edgily. “Because they’re here.”

“What?” Markus turned around all too fast and obviously. The three men in coats spotted him immediately. Their faces were hidden with bundled scarves, one wore goggles against the late-morning sun. “Oh. That was fast.”

“Told you.” Roche stepped out from the bar, downed another glass and set it down on a table. He stuffed his hands into the holes in his duster-coat pockets around the handles of his Ruger revolver’s. Home-rolled smoke dangling over the whiskers of his chin he said; “Alright, boys. Far enough.”

Like parodies of spaghetti gunslingers the three coated men fluffed open their jackets revealing holstered guns, palming them and cocking stances.

“We’re here for Markus, hunter. We’ll be taking it from here.”

“Yeah?” Roche’s eyes got all wide and smiley. “That so? And where’s my money?”

“You’ll be paid in kind soon enough. Hand over Alex Markus.” The main soldier in the middle kept talking at him. It was the man to his left in the goggles that became quickly of interest. He whispered something in the middle-man’s ear.

Main-speaker shrugged left-hand off and put his hand firmly down to his gun, inching it from it’s holster.

“Don’t do it, friend.” Roche said, breathing smoke.

Left-hand surprised just about everyone in the bar, who’d all set their drinks down hoping for a gun-show. Didn’t much happen in Parmiskus after all. Left-hand shouldered forward and stood right between main-speaker and Roche.

“Stop it, both of you.” He shrugged off his hat and took his goggled down, revealed his mouth from under the scarf. “Look, Pauly you can’t win this, and this man probably don’t wanna kill us three before he even had breakfast. Nice to see you again though, walker.”

When main-speaker made a move to throw left-hand out of the way the soldier to his right held him back, convinced by left-hand’s words. Roche cocked his head and looked left-hand up and down. Wasn’t to say he didn’t look familiar but where the hell from? Was hard to angle it when you’d been alive that long. Maybe he knew his daddy somewhere along the line. Maybe he shot his daddy?

“Where I know you from?”

“Don’t recognize me? Carson City? Blackbird’s. You came through asking after bikes that come through. I kept my boys from shooting you back there and I thought I’d just do it one more time. Not killin’ you worked out for us before.”

Roche recognized the man. Big guy that ran the Blackbird’s mercenary company out of the Carson City capital building. So they’d opted in with the Resistance, eh. No foolin’.

“Right, I remember you. Shootin’ me wouldn’t have worked out for you either time.”

“Right. You’d have us all dead before a working man could cash his pay.”

“Yep.”

“Right on. So, here’s the bit. The Resistance hired my Blackbird’s to join in the fight. You know, mercenaries and all. Miner just sent us out this way to collect the Markus fella, hearin’ he was back in town.”

“Kendall Miner, right?”

“That’s the one. Had I known you were the boyo that was out for him I’d have either brought more men or less, can’t quite decide on that. But there it is. So you’ll get your pay, I’m sure, but we gotta take the kid.”

Roche smiled down at the toes of his boots and clicked the hammers of his revolvers through the pockets of his coat. “Not without me you ain’t.”

“Oh, I figured that. I ain’t slow. So you come on ahead, then. We’ll show you where we’re headed.”

“Alright, kid, s’go.” Roche turned to Markus behind him, took him by the collar like an indolent and threw him at the three Resistance men. They took him, already reasonably intoxicated from a couple bourbons, and helped him to the front door. Roche followed behind after throwing another five bank note at the barkeep ‘for the trouble’, and heading back into the sunlight along the main drag of Parmiskus.