Victor Gischler: Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse

The cowboy was already on his feet. He fanned the six-shooter’s hammer twice, and the Beast fell dead in front of Mortimer. Blood pooled in the Beast’s empty eye sockets.

The girl, Sheila, who’d been twenty paces behind the whole encounter, turned and screamed back up the road and out of sight.

The cowboy trotted to Mortimer and knelt next to him, began to untie his wrists. “Hold on, mister. We’ll get you free shortly.” He had a yellow handlebar moustache to go with the forked beard.

“Thanks,” Mortimer said. “Who are you?”

A smile across the young face, under thirty years old. “Who do I look like?”

“George Custer.”

The smile fell. “Damn. I was going for Buffalo Bill.”

After Bill had cut himloose, Mortimer lay in the road, groaning and rubbing the circulation back into his wrists. His finger stump throbbed. The cowboy squatted next to him muttering encouraging things like “You’ll be okay, partner” and “Live to fight another day” and so on.

Mortimer didn’t mind. He’d give Buffalo Bill a big wet kiss on the lips if that’s what he wanted. Mortimer Tate was alive. He’d escaped the Beast.

He stood, looked down into the Beast’s hollow and bloody eyes before taking back his parka and other belongings. He kicked the dead man into the shrubs on the side of the road, tossed the bear skin on top of him.

“This yours?” Bill held the police special toward Mortimer butt first.

Mortimer hesitated. If this insane cowboy had wanted Mortimer dead, then he’d already be dead. He took the pistol. “Thanks.”

They stood in the middle of the road among the frayed rope and the splotches of blood and the cold wind lifting the cowboy’s yellow hair.

“Now what?” asked Buffalo Bill.

“You tell me,” Mortimer said.

“I’m going to Spring City.”

“I was thinking Evansville,” Mortimer said.

Bill shook his head. “Red Stripes on that side of the mountain. Not too many. Enough to worry.”

Mortimer frowned, recalled the three men he’d killed up the mountain who wore red armbands. “Red Stripes?”

“Jesus, you don’t know about them? What? You been in a cave for nine years?”

“As a matter of fact…”

“It might snow soon.” Bill squinted at the dark clouds gathering overhead. “Maybe we should find a roof.”

“I need to get something first,” Mortimer said. “It’s not much farther.”

“Okay.”

Bill retrieved a battered backpack from behind a stump, and both men set off toward the entrance to the pocket wilderness. They walked in silence, and at last the snow began to fall gently, silently dusting their heads and shoulders.

Mortimer broke the silence first. “Why did you save me?”

“Can’t let an innocent man be dragged along like an animal. Ain’t right.”

“How do you know I’m innocent? Maybe I’m a criminal. Maybe I was being taken to trial. I could be a murderer.”

Bill’s head jerked around to look at Mortimer, eyes wide. This possibility clearly hadn’t occurred to him. “Hell.”

“Don’t worry.” Mortimer grinned. “You did the right thing.”

Bill exhaled, shook his head. “Damn. It’s a hard world to be good in.”

The snow was a footthick on the ground by the time they reached Mortimer’s stash. He cleared away the shrubs and accumulated snow, pulled the tarp off the sled.

Bill whistled appreciatively at the weapons, and Mortimer assumed Bill was looking at the formidable Uzi, but the cowboy reached for the lever-action rifle. Bill stopped mid-reach, raised an eyebrow at Mortimer.

“Go ahead.”

Bill picked up the rifle, ran his hand over the stock. He looked right holding it, like it completed his costume.

“Take it,” Mortimer said.

“What?”

“It’s yours. Least I can do after you saved my ass.”

Bill grinned big, worked the lever and sighted along the barrel. He held the gun in both hands, held it away from his body, looked at it like it was a sacred relic. “This is how the world was built, and how it was destroyed, and how it’ll be built again.” He cradled the rifle in one arm like a puppy. “You got shells for it?”

Mortimer handed him a box of ammunition, then showed him a bottle of Johnnie Walker. “Help me pull this sled, and I’ll buy you a drink.”

“Amen to that, brother.”

They found an abandoned house,all the windows broken out, but there was a large fireplace. They hauled in wood, started a fire. Soon it was dark, snow falling thick outside, wind blowing the ragged curtains in the windows like the wispy nightgowns of ghostly orphans.

Mortimer had cleaned and wrapped his finger stump with the extra first aid supplies from the sled.

They sat on a fake leather couch and passed the bottle between them; the whiskey lit up amber in the firelight. The house creaked in the moaning wind.

“Goddamn, that’s good,” Bill said. Another big slug and he held it in his mouth an extra moment before swallowing, smacked his lips.

“I miss Burger King.” Mortimer took the bottle, drank. It was so warm and good going down, Mortimer marveled he’d been able to leave the bottles unopened for nine years. “I like Whoppers.”

“SONIC,” Bill said. “I liked to pull up and eat in my car, listen to the radio and eat foot-long chili dogs. I could eat two and Tater Tots in the space of an Avril Lavigne song.”

“Do people still drive cars?”

Bill shook his head and took the bottle back, sipped. “Gasoline goes stale after a while and nobody’s refining anymore. Horses are coming back. Man, I’d love to get me a horse.”

“Coming back?”

“People ate them.”

“Jesus.”

“You really don’t know any of this?”

Mortimer shook his head, took the bottle and gulped.

Bill said, “Goats too. Dogs and cats. Rats. Meat is meat. I heard tell they turned cannibal in some places, but I don’t know if that’s true or not.”

I could turn around right now, thought Mortimer. I could go back to the cave. There’s no Burger King down the mountain, no world I remember.

“Why are you dressed like a cowboy?” Mortimer was curious as hell.

“Does it seem weird?”

Mortimer shrugged. “I don’t know the standard of weird anymore.”

“I’m always afraid people will think it’s weird.”

“Do they?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want.”

“I don’t know why I did it at first,” admitted Bill. “I always liked westerns, John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, you know? Think about what a cowboy is, what he represents. The new order rolling across the prairie, right? Even when he was slaughtering buffalo and red Indians, he still left civilization in his wake, towns and railroads and all that. I guess maybe I thought we needed cowboys again. Maybe not. Hell, I don’t know. Probably sounds stupid.”

“No it doesn’t.” Yes it did.

“Anyway,” Bill said. “Everyone else looked like a refugee, dressed in rags. Everyone looked lost, like they’ve got no place to go. If you’re a cowboy, you’re not a refugee. You don’t need anyplace to go. Cowboys are supposed to drift, ride off into the sunset. If you’re a cowboy then you ain’t lost.”

The man had found his purpose through costuming. Sure. Whatever helps a guy cope. Buffalo Bill was an un-lost non-refugee.

“I want to find my wife.” Mortimer belched. It tasted like barfy booze.

“You didn’t take your wife into hiding with you?”

“It’s complicated.”

“No it’s not,” Bill said. “Everything’s real simple now. She’s either alive or dead.”