Cultwick: The Sweeper Bot Plague (23 page)

“Must we continue with the pain, Ms. Clover?” she asked. “Know that I see pain as justice for the unfaithful and nothing more. I don’t enjoy hurting you, and I know you don’t enjoy being hurt. So, please, don’t let your sins become habits, Ms. Clover.”

Erynn closed her mouth, looking away into the distance. Alice placed her hands behind her back and nodded to Edwin. He picked up a syringe filled with a silver liquid.

“This is a genotoxin derived from the chromite you seem to revere so much,” Alice explained, indicating to the syringe Edwin held. “It won’t kill you immediately, but it will ensure you live the rest of your life in pain, being eaten away from the inside.”

Edwin approached Erynn and stuck her in the neck with the needle, plunging the
silver-colored liquid into her. She screamed as the poison began to course through her veins.

“I understand that when it is first injected, it feels like having
your insides crushed,” Alice said. “Is that an accurate statement?”

“Try it for yourself!” Erynn shouted at the operative.

“According to the number on your beacon, you aren’t carrying the companion device with you,” Alice began. “But it is in town. To my mind that would suggest you left it among your other things. Perhaps I’ll have company for you soon.”

The operative walked to the table where she had laid the tattooed skin and picked it up, eyeing it affectionately.
Alice began to walk up the stairs to leave the basement, but before she left, she turned and said, “Tomorrow we head back to Cultwick City. Until then, Edwin here is going to continue to request information from you. God works through me, Ms. Clover, and tonight he will use me to cure you of your sins.”

Chapter 24. Vincent the Husband

It was getting late in the evening, and he was growing quite tired. He wondered if Polly was being taken care of properly back in Chrome City. He had left her with the rebels at Hirim’s bar, but he had grown attached to the beast over the years. Vincent was just beginning to roll a cigarette to calm his mind, when Pearl came into his room.

“She
still ain’t back, Vincent,” she said.

Groaning, he replied, “Damnit. Maybe someone spotted her. Took her in for the bounty.” Vincent paused and tried to listen carefully to something
outside their room.

Pearl began to ask, “What is--”

Vincent held a single finger up in the air, silencing her. Dozens of footsteps were just outside their hotel window. The bounty hunter rushed to the adjoining door, quickly slamming it shut and locking it behind him.

Immediately afterward
, he heard the door to Erynn’s room busted down and the intruders enter the room. It sounded as though they searched through everything in the room - flipping the bed, knocking over cabinets, moving anything that wasn’t bolted to the floor.

Vincent approached
their window and risked a peek outside. He could see a fairly large group of Cultwick Corpsmen standing guard outside her room as well as a well-dressed woman in a red gown. He spotted an intricate tattoo on her hand, signifying her as an operative of the Reclamation Bureau.

“Your girl is in deep shit, Hicks,” Vincent said backing away from the window. “Those are corpsmen... and an operative.”

“What are we gonna do?” she asked quietly.

“It doesn’t look like they know we’re in this room,” he said. “T
hey’re only focused on hers, so for now we have to wait and see what they do.”

Pearl nodded and sat down on the bed, shaking. Vincent pulled a flask from inside his duster pocket and took a big gulp. He
then loaded his rifle quietly and took a seat in a chair that faced both the door leading outside as well as the door to the adjoining room.

He must
have fallen asleep sometime during the night, because he awoke to the sound of a door slamming shut. Vincent grabbed his rifle and looked around to realize that both their doors were still closed. Pearl was asleep on the bed, and no one else was in the room. He approached the window to see a corpsman with his mask off walking away from Erryn’s room and lighting a cigarette. The rest of the corpsmen and the operative seemed to have left sometime during the night.

He approached Pearl and shook her by the shoulder. She moaned softly and
then jolted awake.

“What happened?” she asked.

“They’re mostly gone now,” he explained. “I’m going to see what I can find out about Clover. Looks like it’s down to just one guard now. You stick here and keep an eye on what they do.”

Vincent picked up his hat, placing it firmly atop his head and
throwing on his duster. He ensured that his revolver was loaded, so he stuck it back inside the holster at his hip. Nodding to Pearl, he left the room and headed out to the streets of Willow Switch.

There were only a few hours left until the train with the medical supplies would arrive in town. If they were going to continue with the hijacking, they would need to find Erynn sooner
rather than later.

The papers would get them inside the train, but
they had the identification for three people, so they may as well have all the help they can get. If she got herself caught, he thought, she might have ruined the whole plan. She might have ruined his chance of curing himself of the plague.

He decided to first stop off at the shop where Erynn had been going to look for parts. There was no sign of any confrontation outside the building, so he walked inside. A man
sat behind the counter reading a newspaper.

Approaching the man, Vincent asked, “You have a redheaded woman in here yesterday, old man?”

Shifting his eyes up over his glasses but not moving his head the man said, “We have a lot of people in here, mister.”

Vincent pulled out a coin from his pocket and slid it across the counter. “I suspect you’d remember this one. Young, pretty, red hair, green eyes,
top hat with goggles on the brim.”

The man put down the paper and picked up the coin, placing it in his pocket. “That does sound familiar
now that you mention it,” he said. “Yeah, she was in here. Bought a couple things and then left. Another woman stuck her up just outside though. Sounded like they were taking her over to the sheriff’s.”

“Damnit,” Vincent said. “These women are going to be the death of me.”

He left the store frustrated and angry that he had to continue cleaning up other people’s messes. Nevertheless, that cure, he thought, just might be worth the hassle.

When he arrived at the sheriff’s
jailhouse, he scoped out the building before entering. He couldn’t see Erynn through any of the windows, but he didn’t have a clear line of sight to any of the jail cells either. Inside he saw a sheriff and at least two of his deputies.

He turned back towards the front of the building
, when he spotted a group of the Cultwick Corps walking through the street. He hid behind a building, as he took a closer look at the soldiers. The operative he had seen outside her hotel room the night prior led them through the streets.

In the middle of the group
, he could plainly see Erynn bound and covered in dried blood. He expected that they had likely been torturing her for some time. But why were they moving her? And where were they taking her? He decided to follow them to discern exactly that.

They were making their way toward the opposite side of town, which was where the hotel they were staying in was. Vincent wondered whether she had given up their location or their plan. Had she given him up as well?

The group walked right passed the hotel, however, and instead went inside the train station that was just a few buildings down. Vincent waited outside for a few minutes and then walked inside as well.

In
the train station, he found the soldiers still guarding her closely after seating her on a bench. They looked to be waiting for a train to come. The only one on the schedule for today was the same one they had been planning to rob for the medical supplies.

Vincent went back to the paired hotel rooms and found Pearl sitting with her shotgun in a chair pointing toward the door. She aimed it up when he came in, but lowered it as soon as she realized it was just him.

“Did ya find Ryn?” she asked with a tremble in her voice.

“
The Cultwick Corps has her down at the train station,” Vincent explained. “Looks like they’re planning to take her on the train with the meds. We can still get on board when it comes, but we’ll need help.”

“The rest of the resistance is either back in Chrome City or up in Pendulum Falls,” Pearl said. “How are we suppose
’ta find anyone else on such short notice?”

“I might be able to get a mercenary interested,” Vincent replied. “There’s at least some operating out of Willow Switch. Sounds like one nabbed that Clover of yours. We’re short on time though, so you need to get all our stuff together and be ready by the time I get back. I’ll deal with the rest.”

“What about the things in the other room?” Pearl asked.

“When I come back, we’ll deal with that too,” he said, leaving the room brusquely.

The bounty hunter made his way over to the Broken Branch Saloon. It was a fairly high-end place, but odds were good that he could find someone worth a damn willing to take a big risk to make some money. Mercenaries and bounty hunters tended not to have much loyalty to the empire, but they certainly knew enough to be careful about messing with them.

Vincent lit the cigarette he had rolled the previous night, as he walked into the establishment. The barkeep was wiping up the counter
, and he paid him no mind as the bounty hunter entered. The place was fairly empty except for a corner table full of men playing a game of dice.

Behind
him, he heard a woman’s voice, “Vincent goddamn Rourke. I heard you died down in Gulch Hollow.”

Turning to face the woman, he said, “I suspect it was more than something you heard, Lucy.”

“Come now,” she began. “You’re not honestly suggesting that little ol’ me had something to do with that job going south, are you?”

“Someone spiked me with the plague. Don’t suppose you know anything about that?” he asked.

Lucy smiled at him and said, “You’re fucking paranoid, honey. Besides the way I heard it, you couldn’t even take in a simple cattle thief.”

Vincent took a long drag from his cigarette before continuing, “It seems someone tipped him off that I was coming and right after our little spat no less.”

“That just sounds like a bit of fucking bad luck right there, honey,” she responded.

“Mmhmm,” he said taking another drag. He sat down at a stool at the bar and waved a finger to the bartender, who soon came over to him.

“What can I get you, mister?” he asked.

“Whatever whiskey you got,” Vincent said throwing a couple coins on the bar. “Just bring the bottle.”

The bartender took the coins happily and grabbed a tall bottle from below the counter. “Here you are,” he said and went back to the other end of the bar.

Vincent pried the cork out of the bottle and took a considerable gulp from the whiskey. “Where are your goons?” he eventually asked Lucy.

“Kirk and Gaston?” she asked. “I suspect they’re off celebrating inside a whore or two somewhere. We just came into some money.”

Vincent took another drink from the bottle and said,
“Well anyway, putting our bad blood behind us for the moment, I’ve got a job I need help with if you’re interested.”

“You sure you can trust me?” she asked coyly.

Ignoring her question, Vincent took another swig before continuing, “You’ve probably heard about the woman the empire’s been looking for, Erynn Clover. Seems she got herself up and caught.”

“I may have heard something about that,” Lucy said leaning an arm onto the tavern bar.

“Well, they got her down at the train station right now,” he continued. “My guess is that they’re going to put her on the train that’ll be coming through shortly.”

“What is she to you?” Lucy asked, tilting her head.

“Nothing like that, I assure you,” he said. “We’ve got a business deal going. We’d planned to hijack that train anyway, but since she’s been caught, we could use another person. I’ve got one woman waiting for me, but Clover was the third.”

“You’
ve already moved on from the pet names and started calling her by her last name, huh?” she inquired smiling. “So you’re getting pretty familiar with this one.”

“You want in on the job or what?” he asked irritated.

“What’s on board that’s worth this risk?” she asked.

“Medical supplies mostly, but we took down the bank in Ash Cloud a week back. You can pretty much name your price,” he explained.

“Alright,” she said. “What’s the plan?”

“We’ve got the papers to get on board,
” he began, “but that’ll limit us to the passenger car. I’ll need an extra gun hand to get through the security.”

“You need me, hmm?” Lucy asked placing her hand gently on his cheek. “That is so
goddamn adorable.”

Pushing her hand away, Vincent asked, “Do you think you can handle that?”

“Of course I can fucking handle it,” she answered. “What are we waiting on?”

Vincent stood up from his seat at the bar and walked outside with Lucy close behind him. Vincent took her back to the hotel room
, where the corpsman was still posted outside Erryn’s room smoking. He eyed them warily, as they entered the adjoining room but let them pass unmolested.

Pearl stood up
when they entered and asked, “This the mercenary ya were after?”

Vincent closed the door behind them, sighing and answered, “Lucy, this is Pearl. Pearl, this is Lucy...
my wife.”

Pearl
couldn’t help but let out a quick laugh. “Ya have a wife?” she asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Did anymore guards show up, while I was gone?”

“Just the one sittin’ out there now,” she explained.

“Lucy, I need you to go distract that corpsman out there,” he began. “I’ll sneak in from behind and take him out.”

“Mmm,” she said smiling. “I do so love when you order me around.”

Lucy walked out of the room, leaving Pearl staring at Vincent with a horrified expression.

“We’re separated...” he said.

Pearl raised
her hands and looked away. “Didn’t say a thing,” she noted.

Frustrated, Vincent approached the door and carefully undid the lock and twisted the knob. He pushed the door open a crack and could hear Lucy chatting up the guard. Pushing it open a bit more, he looked around the room to ensure the guard outside was the only one
still posted.