Kevin Anderson - Ill Wind

She had unbuttoned her plaid flannel shirt and yanked it open, untucking it from the waistband of her pants and exposing her large breasts. Her nipples stood out like strawberries on her pale skin. Todd stared dumbstruck.

Silvery reflective blankets and wadded padding covered the solar satellites in the back of the wagon. Connor Brooks poked around, catching a glimpse of the metal-clad smallsats. They didn’t look like much, but the lady doctor had been babbling all day about how fucking valuable they were, how they would bring back high-tech civilization.

When he thought no one else was looking, he snooped around, wondering what he could do with the sats. Maybe he could hold them for ransom or sell them off to somebody. The cowboy and that slut Heather had gone off fishing together, and they were probably banging away in the bushes at this very moment. Connor didn’t give a damn. She had grown boring enough in the last week.

He could smell the food the old lady doctor was heating at a small campfire, and it made his mouth water. The dark Quasimodo guy who drove the horses had been skulking around the campsite, but Connor couldn’t see him now. The man had some real problems, didn’t speak a word to anybody. He looked like a chocolate cue ball when he took off the turban on his head. Weird shit.

Ten satellites lay in the wagon bed. The horses were unhitched, and he figured it would take him maybe five minutes to hook them up again. After everyone bedded down, he could sneak back here and do it quietly, then ride off before anybody woke up fast enough to stop him.

He heard a soft footstep behind him and turned just in time to see the stocky black man lunge toward him, smashing his ribs against the side of the wagon. Connor let out a startled cry and gasped as the breath was halfway knocked out of him. The big creep grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back.

“Good to see you again, Brooks! Asshole.” The man’s voice sounded like a nail file dragged over a jagged edge of glass.

“Hey!” Connor gasped, struggling. “What the hell are you doing?” The man tried to twist him around, but Connor squirmed out of his grip. Dancing back and on his guard, Connor whirled. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

The dark bald man glared at him. His skin had a strange mottled coloration, and his face was wide and flattened in some sort of weird halfbreed mixup. “Come on, Brooks!” the man taunted. “You’ve been in my nightmares for months. You don’t recognize your captain?”

Suddenly the pieces snapped into place, and Connor’s eyes widened. Impossible! But the eyes, the slash of a lip, the flat nose and high cheekbones were indeed familiar. The last he remembered of the Butthead had been of Uma running from the bridge of the Oilstar Zoroaster to answer the false fire alarm Connor himself had set. The man had been a regular ape, full of black bristly hair from his knuckles to his eyebrows. But, the same man was somehow here in the middle of the desert, months after the petroplague—and their paths had collided again.

“You… you fuck! ” Connor shouted.

He ducked his head and launched himself like a bullet to charge into Uma, but the burly captain was prepared. In fact, he seemed eager for the fight.

Uma took the attack in his rock-hard stomach; he pounded down with his fist on the back of Connor’s head. Then he wrapped a huge forearm around Connor’s neck.

Connor hammered upward into Uma’s crotch, making the dark man gasp with pain and release his hold just enough for Connor to struggle free. But Uma didn’t appear weakened. He stood with his fists bunched, ready to come pounding again.

“I am going to beat the living shit out of you, Brooks, and then maybe I’ll stake you out on the desert and let the ants finish you off!”

Connor took a step back toward the wagon. He couldn’t run. No way would he get far enough to escape, not that he really wished to. Right now more than anything Connor wanted to put Captain Butthead’s head up on a stake for the vultures to eat.

“What are you two doing?” Henrietta Soo came up from the campfire holding a big wooden spoon in her hand like a mother about to chastise two brawling children.

“This man caused the Zoroaster spill,” Uma said in his low, broken-glass voice.

Connor used the distraction to scramble around the back of the wagon, where he snatched up the shotgun he had carried across two states, the gun he had used to shoot the Mormon lady’s dog.

He took one more step toward Uma and raised the barrel. He had shells in both chambers; he cocked back the hammer. “You were the captain of the tanker, Butthead. You were responsible. Don’t go dumping that crap on me!”

Henrietta Soo looked from one to the other as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Uma didn’t seem the least bit afraid of Connor’s shotgun, and he stepped toward him.

“We’re not in front of an inquiry board here, Brooks. You can’t get away on technicalities. I may be responsible, since I should have had you confined to your quarters, but you caused the wreck. It’s your fault, and you’ll burn in hell for it.”

Connor held the shotgun steady as Uma continued to stride closer. He had no second thoughts about pulling the trigger. He had almost forgotten how much he hated this man. “My fault? None of it’s my fault, Butthead!” He laughed and raised the shotgun.

Heather stared back at Todd, trying to be alluring but somehow looking just as frightened as he felt. She unsnapped her jeans and pulled the zipper slowly open. “I don’t need you to come along with me, Todd. I can handle this by myself—but I want you there. I made a major bad choice with Connor, but I think you’re different. Let’s go make our own lives. Let’s get out of here!”

Todd’s heart hammered in his chest, and his throat became drier than the desert hardpan. “Heather, I….”

He kept seeing flashes of Iris. There were plenty of other men at the Altamont commune, and Iris was a person with a short temper and quick passions. She had wanted to move much faster in their relationship than Todd ever would have. He doubted that she would ever wait for him, and he had never promised to wait for her… just to come back someday.

But he shook his head, knowing that as difficult as it was, that his true feelings lay with Iris. He averted his eyes and started to speak, but before any words could form themselves, the cracking echo of a gunshot split the dusk.

“What the heck?” Todd said.

“The shotgun!” Heather said. “It’s Connor!” She scrambled to button her shirt again and fasten her jeans. The two of them climbed up the embankment and raced desperately toward the camp.

Connor squeezed the shotgun’s triggers, firing both barrels. The bang nearly deafened them.

—but instead of turning Uma’s chest into a pulp, the shotgun itself blew up in a backfire. Shards of the gun barrel and the stock flew in all directions. Black smoke burst out in a cloud. Connor fell backward, screaming as the hot explosion shredded the left side of his face.

With an animal howl Uma was upon him, ripping the twisted remains of the shotgun out of his hand and bringing it down like a club. Connor managed to roll and took the full force of the blow on his shoulder.

Trying to think clearly through the pain in his head and the rage pulsing though him, Connor yanked out his hunting knife. He couldn’t see anything out of his eye, and blood blazed like fire across his cheeks and temple. He slashed blindly, hoping to slice Uma’s jugular or put out his eye. Instead, the tip of the knife ripped across the dark man’s shirt. Uma stumbled back just long enough for Connor to scramble to his knees and grip the knife handle with both hands.