The Walker

Walker rubbed the life back in to his arms; they were numb from the veteran’s over-exuberant knot tying. Thankfully, the auto injectors in his boots had kept his feet alive and well during his captivity. He stretched.

The girl was still worrying; she had flicked her visor down and was rubbing the purpling bruise at her throat.

He turned to the desk and examined his book satchel. They hadn’t managed to open it, which was good; the new lock mechanism was paying for itself. He brushed some grime from the bag before shouldering it. The hydraulic plate on his back took the strain and he reached for his cloak, fastening it about his neck, under the connector on the front of his chest plate. He turned back towards the girl and motioned with his hand.

“Gun.”

The girl simply looked at him, “No ‘thank you’? No ‘well done’? Just ‘gun’?”

Walker chuckled again, “Nope, just gun.”

He noticed how her fists clenched and unclenched and he scratched his chin. She stooped to pick his gun, still in its holster, from the ground, when the door from the bar banged open.

The drug addict appeared, framed by the weak light from the bar. Walker noted, with some admiration, that the girl had managed to un-holster his gun and had it trained on the man in the doorway, who shrank back.

“I heard noises, woke me up.” He looked around the room, his mouth gaping. “What... what have you done?”

Walker went to speak, but the girl beat him to it.

“We haven’t got time for this, Len! Have you got the gun?”

Len didn’t answer; he simply stood there, gaping. Walker sighed and snatched his gun and holster from the girl and began moving the kegs to examine the bodies underneath. The veteran was dead, no doubt about that. A barrel had landed squarely on his head; all that remained was a crushed mess of red and black and a single, milky eye staring upwards, accusingly.

He stripped the greasy corpse of any valuables; nothing much, some coins, an old knife from the back pocket and a rusted hipflask. Walker sniffed its contents, got a foul whiff of turpentine, and threw it away. He turned to the body of the woman, there were no obvious wounds aside from a gash to her temple; she was breathing.

Walker clucked disapprovingly and pulled the knife back out. As he bent down to finish the body on the floor, the girl suddenly pushed him aside.

“Don’t!” she cried. Walker could see tears running from under her visor, dark as blood in the dull light. “We’ve done enough, we should just leave.” She checked the crumpled body at their feet.

Walker shook his head, “She knows us; we have to finish her or she will follow.”

“They’ll follow us if we kill her!”

The girl looked up at him; he saw himself mirrored in her visor, gun drawn, his own blood trickling from under his visor. He grunted and pocketed the knife again.

“Fine,” He growled. “But we leave. Now.” He stepped over the pool of blood soaking into the dusty concrete, stalked past the girl and pushed beanpole out of the way.

He heard the girl ask her brother about their gun again, as Walker surveyed the bar. It was blessedly empty; the patrons must have known that the couple were ‘busy’ out back; this probably meant that most of them were in on it. This meant they had to leave. A posse would come after them.

The other two had come in to the bar; she had retrieved her pistol and pouch from the bar, whilst he stood gaping stupidly.

“We have to go out the front, like nothing happened,” Walker said, pulling his cloak around him to better disguise himself. “If anyone else knew these people were robbing folk, then they’ll be back to find out what loot they got.”

The girl sniffed agreement, “People will be back to check, probably in about...” She trailed off, eyeing her feet as Walker gazed at her and he chuckled. He had thought there was more to her than all that noble ‘real Philosophers’ talk. He continued to look at her, until she scowled up at him from under her visor, “I did what I had to. To look after us”

Walker laughed again, shortly, and pulled some tobacco from his pouch, “And then you killed them. Cold.”

He lit his cigarette and pointed to her brother, “Tell him to stop gawping like a moron and move.”

Len looked around at Walker, and then ashamedly at the ground, “I never—“

His sister interrupted him, “That’s enough, let’s just leave already!”

She stormed past Walker and through the front door, her brother trailing after her. Walker went to follow, but paused and looked back towards the bar.

He leapt nimbly over the low counter and, after a moment’s rummage, found his books that the locals had swindled out of him earlier. He sanctimoniously blew the dirt from their covers and replaced them one by one back into his satchel. He double checked the leather straps and the lock, habit guiding his hands through the ritual, and went to clamber back over the bar.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the bottle the old hag had poured from; the good one. No reason to leave such quality booze to these rubes, he reasoned. He reached up and claimed it and, after taking a deep swig, slung it into his hip pouch. He clambered back over the bar, following the siblings out into the night.