Davis Aurini - As I Walk These Broken Roads

Eventually Raxx disengaged from the children who went back to their ball game, and the two women who’d been watching moved over to speak to him. Wentworth turned away, towards the market stalls.

Idly he browsed the booths, not really interested in produce or knick-knacks. He was slowly going around when something caught his eye at a florist’s cart.

“Hello sir,” said the fifteen year old almond-eyed girl working the cart, “Would you like to buy some of our pretty flowers?”

“This one right here… what do you call it?”

“That’s a twice-kissed rose,” the flower he was pointing at was clearly related to the standard rose, deep red in colour and symmetrical, but where the stamen and pistils should be was another stem leading up to a second, slightly smaller, flower. “They’re Hope’s official flower — you won’t find them anywhere else! They’re for when you feel a very deep love of somebody!…would you like a bouquet sir?”

“Just the one, if that’s all right. Mind if I ask how it germinates? The top flower doesn’t look to be fully mature.”

The girl shook her head from side to side, “No, these flowers can’t germinate, they’re very special,” she began to package a single rose for him, “My family, we grow these flowers from cuttings. Maybe you’ll see other flowers like this growing wild, but they’re not as perfect all around and beautiful as this one, see?” She demonstrated the petals. “Here you go! Enjoy!”

A short time later Raxx found Wentworth sitting on the same bench they’d been at the day before, examining the flower he’d bought, and wondering at the hidden dampness in the girl’s eyes.

“Hey man.”

“Hey. Got some admirers?”

“What? Oh, heh, I guess so. Their names are Sherry and Michelle. What’s with the flower?”

He handed it over, “Check this out; instead of sex organs another rose is growing out of it. Apparently they grow it from cuttings of the original plant, since it can’t reproduce. I’m not sure if it’s horrible or beautiful. Both, maybe.”

“Huh. Neat.” He sat down, idly examining the flower. Its mutation didn’t seem to interest him.

“So I had an interesting offer today that I need to tell you about.” Wentworth explained to Raxx his encounter with the Mayor and the Captain, and the details surrounding the bandits. “I told them that I need to talk to you before I could give them an answer. So? What do you think?”

“Hmm,” he rubbed his goatee, “Why don’t you tell me what you think first?”

“Well, first of all I won’t do it if you’re not up for it. Having backup doesn’t double your chances, it squares them. On my own it would be a no-go, but with you I think we might make out alright, after we got more details, of course. You did well at Blackstock. You took to it naturally.”

He shrugged, “It’s all pretty basic stuff, really.”

“Theory and practice are two different things. That wasn’t empty praise. Second, I think the price they’re willing to pay is pretty damned good. Someone’s gonna get paid to take out the trash; it might as well be us. We should at least scout it out, assess the situation, and then we can decide if we still want to deal with it. With the last operation you know I didn’t take any chances — well, I did, but there wasn’t much choice. This time there wouldn’t be any pressure. I’m not going to get either of us shot. So, yeah — I think it’d be a good go.”

Raxx nodded to this, “You’re one ballsy motherfucker aren’t you? Well, tell you what, count me in. I’m up for it. Hey, the ladies love a hero, right?”

Wentworth shook his head, and a grin broke across his features, “Some do it for the money… I thought you’d say something like that. Let’s go tell the Mayor that we’re in.”

Raxx piloted his pickup down the empty road. He kept it under firm control, making slight adjustments to the steering column as the potholes sped by. He kept his neck straight, staring intently as his ride ate up the ground, clutching an unlit cigarillo in his left hand. Wind blew in through his open window, whistling in his ears and rattling his piercings, as the truck churned up a cloud of dust behind it. The afternoon sun was behind them, and the grasses and telephone poles cast long shadows, flashing by on either side.

Wentworth sat next to him, leaning back in the passenger seat. His right foot was up on the dashboard, his elbow on the door frame, and his hand tapped out a drumbeat on the vehicle’s roof. Looking over at Raxx he saw the reflection racing across his sunglasses. The deep yellow light from the sun accented the reds and browns of the dry land. He turned back to the road, still tapping his fingers to the music in his head, going over the briefing Captain O’Neil had given them before they left town.

“Highwaymen are only to be expected,” she’d said, sitting in her office and tapping her fingers on the desk, “They don’t really concern us; we leave them to the caravan guards. It isn’t usually a problem. But this…” she chewed her lip, “This is something different. I’ve heard of raiders getting organized before, and becoming a problem for the cities, but that’s only happened in the south, along the Steeltown-Niagara corridor, or sometimes on the Oil Route — and, of course, the Badlands. But up here we don’t have enough trade going through for that — and the Mennites have even less… here, look this;”

She carefully took a yellowed sheet of paper out of her desk and slid it across to them. “We think this is their leader.” It was a crude wanted poster; the man it depicted could have been anybody. Nonplussed, Wentworth read through the list of crimes at the bottom, trying to ignore the spelling errors. “The picture’s useless, I know — what do you expect from Ingersoll? All you can really tell is that he’s a big guy. But I’m not showing you this so that you can recognize him; I’m showing it to you so that you can get a sense of what kind of person we’re dealing with. Look — you two can read, right? — they call him Slayer. From that list at the bottom there, you can probably guess why. Ingersoll wanted him bad — for them that’s a large bounty.”

She gave them a moment to go over it, leaning back in her chair. Wanted , she’d said, in the past tense. Wentworth nodded and she went on. “Now, this poster’s four years old. Our contact in Ingersoll, the town’s Miller, hasn’t heard anything about him since. As far as we know nobody had until last year, when the raids on the Mennite settlements started. The name Slayer kept popping up and the descriptions said he was a giant, just like the man in the poster there. But how some derelict goes from being a lone psycho to a gang leader, I’ve got no idea. If it’s the same guy, and it seems to be, then something’s going on — and if something’s going on, then it’s just one more reason I want him dead.”

She cleared her throat, and threw back her shoulders. “Constable Stewart? Have you got that map ready?”

“Yes, Captain.” Stewart came in. He was the man who’d been sitting at a desk outside her office when they’d arrived; her aide, probably. He wore the same uniform as her, minus the gold braids, and moved with an air of competence. Moving to the left of her desk, he strung the map up on a couple of clips hanging from the wall.

“Excellent. Why don’t you explain to these two what you’ve done?”

“Captain; alright, this is a map of Hope and the surrounding area. To the southwest here,” he made a sweeping gesture, “is where the Mennites farmstead. It is also where all the raids have taken place. Um, except for — well, except for the raid on Sergeant Dupont’s petroleum shipment, which is this dot up here.