Of Sabers & Sand

We meet on the long road from Gilead. He’s a lone figure marching eastward, to match my lone figure marching west. The sun is high and fearsome bright, threatening to scorch the sight from my eyes should I remove the double-lensed goggles strapped tight to my head.

Ruddy and bloody, his face is the facade of a building just bombed-out. Tall, blockish, criss-crossed with scars old and new. Close-cropped hair, wide beaming grimace, several dark holes where teeth should be, and one tarnished gold incisor.

He has straight razor blades affixed to each finger of his left hand. Where his right hand should be there is instead a spigot pointed at a perpetual flame flickering on a small hook attached to his wrist. Fire-slinger to beat Meddlers back into the jaws of the night.

“Caterwail.” He names himself, stepping forward and extending a braced elbow, in the fashion of the old Covid shake.

“Nil.” I bring the elbow of my free arm to his. My other arm hangs heavy at my side, shoulder loaded with bullet belts, big six gun lashed to my shooting hand, trigger finger at the ready-set. Before you could holler go I’d have him halved, two to three big blasts to sever torso from hips.

Anticipating this threat, he swings the fire-slinger arm around my shoulder, tugs me into a tight embrace. I raise the six gun to his prick instinctually.

He chuckles. “Well met, lass.”

“Lad.” I seethe.

“Stand corrected.” He steps back from me, raises the fire-slinger in salute. “From where do you come? To where do you go?”

“Gilead.” I answer his first question and leave the second untended. “And you?”

“I come from Backwater, originally. Inferneaux, most recently. And I suppose I’m headed to Gilead, if you say that’s where this road leads?”

“Three days or so, if the winds permit,” I nod my head back. “What’s left of it at least.”

“Well how much is that?”

“Not much. The Meddlers have had their way. Made off with anything not bolted to the ground. Sprayed acid on everything else.”

“Bastards.” He turns sideways and spits a tar-colored stream.

“Meddlers meddle,” I shrug. “Can’t expect much else.”

He sighs, looks skyward, then, quickly overwhelmed by the sun, meets my eye again.

“Well where are you off to, then?” He thumbs over his shoulder. “Ain’t much that way but glass.”

Glass. Sand-turned-obsidian by solar flares. A serrated landscape of jagged hills and mutant-things.

“From which way did you come?”

“From the northwest, if this thing can be trusted.” He shows me a chunky compass strapped to his left wrist, its little red arrow wobbling underneath a face of scratched and scorched glass.

“Well, maybe I’ll try the northeast. But that thing doesn’t look terribly trustworthy.”

He grins sideways, framing the gold incisor with burnt lips and blackened gums. “It’s like religion. Works as well as you believe.”

“Huh. How’s your faith these days?"

He frowns. “Nothin like it used to be.”

We hold a steady silence and study one another a while longer, wondering what else the other might have that we could use–information, rations, ammunition.

“Well, then, Caterwail,” I shatter the silence, finding nothing more to gain without killing, and finding that I like him just enough not to kill him. “Unless you’re going to try to cut my throat and strip me for parts, I’d better keep moving.”

Another gold-toothed, half-grin. “Got all the parts I need, thanks.” He spits a second stream of jet black into the sand. “Could use a bit of company, though.” He stares down where the tar liquid pools on the ground, looking nervous. In another life I might’ve blushed.

“Can’t help you there. I’m not much for company. You know what Nil means, don’t you?”

“Nothin.” He holds my eye again and bites his lip, weighing his words carefully. “It’s a beautiful name.”

“Hm. You’re the first to say so.”

“Really? Course it’s a beautiful name.” He raises his weaponized hands above his head, sermonic. “Timelessness before the chaos of creation. Peace in the absolute. I’d give anything for a bit of nothing, after all the things I’ve done and seen. Maybe you could be the one to help me forget.” He points at me with the fire slinger. I see the perpetual flame reflected in the lenses of my goggles, reflected back from the lenses of his.

“Well, you’ve disabused me of my stereotypes,” I say, gently batting his arm back down. “I’d never have pegged you for a poet-soul. Though I suppose the long road makes philosophers of us all. But I’m afraid I can’t save you from the burdens of consciousness. Unless you’d like me to shoot you, that is.” I raise the six gun to his temple and smile.

“Tempting. Awful tempting.” He lets the barrel rest where it lies. “But you’d better save your bullets, lad. Trouble’s comin.”

Like lightning he draws a rifle from a sheath on his back, and balances the barrel on my shoulder. “Cover your ears.”

Unthinking, I obey the command. He breathes in deep, aims, and fires.

The sound of the rifle’s report ripples across the desert emptiness. I heelturn quick to find his targets, holding the six gun aloft and drawing my own rifle from a holster on my left hip.

Along a shimmering, sun-bleached horizon, several riders billowing dust. One near the middle stumbles then disappears.

I lower my guns. The riders are barely more than specks, hundreds of meters away.

“Jesus, man. How the hell’d you make that shot?”

“Praise be to Nil!” He hollers. “You’ve restored my faith. Now get your ass on the ground, I’ve got a pocket bunker on me.” Gripping my shoulder, Caterwail tosses me gently to the sand.

Reaching into one of the many cargo pockets bulging off the sides of his pants, he fishes out a metal capsule the size of a coffee thermos. He presses a button on the side of the capsule, tosses it out in front of him, and, mid-air, the capsule blossoms into a curved shield.

Once the front of the bunker is constructed, the metal layers extend out from its sides and curve further round, encircling us on all sides in the shape of a massive tire. The whole process takes a matter of seconds, finishing with a gritty hiss as the entire bunker digs in to secure itself to the desert sands. Caterwail and I crouch low behind the structure’s inward sloping walls, which stand two meters high.

There are several little metallic clicks as the barricade takes its first hail of bullets. Caterwail laughs. “Peashooters! Child’s play!”

And then a wooshing sound, followed by a grand thump that rattles the shield violently. Smoke and fire lick over the lip of the wall above.

“Fuck, then! There’s the heavy artillery. Let’s hope they haven’t got much more of—” THUMP. Another big shell strike puts a healthy dent in the metal right in front of our noses.

“No, no, no. That won’t do.” Irate, Caterwail fishes again in one of his cargo pockets, producing a monocular. He then presses a button that opens a small, sliding door in the upper right corner of the bunker’s front wall, and peeks the monocular through. “There we are.” He hands me the monocular, takes his rifle up from the sand, and jabs it through the narrow opening. “Ready, setty…” Crack! Crack! “Ha!” He motions for me to hand the lens back.

Tired of following orders, I push him aside and look for myself. In a field of lime green I see the shifting, technicolor heat signatures of thirteen riders, one slumped forward on their mount, losing color quick. “Deadshot. Damn man. You got him."

“Keep the faith, Nil. Just keep the faith.” Caterwail pats my shoulder brother-like, careful not to clip me with his razors.

Still peering through the monocular, I’m trying to figure out what the attackers are riding on. They are living things–big, hot, technicolor blurs four times the size of their masters. “The mounts? What are they?”

Caterwail eyes me quizzical, steals the lens back. He peers out his porthole, and his face slackens grim. “Christ on the cross. Sun Sabers.”

“Sun Sabers?”

“Kings of the glass lands. Ice age predators resurrected, mutated and adapted to a time of interminable heat.”

“Plain english, man.”

“Kitties. Big kitties. Big mean kitties. Incisors the size of chainsaws.” He positions two of his bladed fingers on either side of his mouth. “Claws like wrecking balls. Fire-made, so this thing’ll only make em purr.” He gestures at me with his fireslinger.

Before I can ask what he means by 'fire-made', the barricade rattles with another, much heavier hail of bullets.

We each hit the ground instinctually, then Caterwail creeps back up to peer out the porthole. “Mercy, those things are quick. They’re closing fast. We’ve got a fighter's chance against the Meddlers, although they’re sure to be tough bastards if they got those monsters tamed. As for the cats, you best keep turning miracles lad.”

“Why’s that?”

“I ain’t never seen one die. Not even sure it’s a thing they do.”

Avoiding my wide-eyed stare, Caterwail rises up on one knee, takes his rifle in hand, and points it through the porthole, balancing the barrel on his other arm. With his forward foot, he kicks a button at the base of the shield, and another small slot opens in front of me. “Best get to shootin.”

Swallowing fear whole, I shrug a bullet belt off my shoulder, and load it into the side of my semi-automatic, which is lying on the sand at my feet. Taking up the gun and balancing it on my opposite forearm, I jab the barrel out the porthole.

The riding Meddlers are now well within range. I fire steady bursts, in counterpoint to the slow, single-shot blasts coming out of Caterwail’s gun. In just a few seconds, we’ve got them cut down from thirteen to five. The fallen slump and slide off their mounts. The Sun Sabers barrel forward unperturbed.

We each stop to reload, and when we look back out the front of the bunker, we see they’re on us, twenty meters away and closing fast, fanning out to circle our position. I fire a fast shot into one of the meddlers knees, then about face, just in time to see Caterwail rise up and sling a smoke grenade out the back of the bunker.

Smoke plumes all around us, and shadowed riders pass through the unfurling grey-black. Caterwail follows the shadows with his fireslinger, casting flame at the nearest rider to us. The blaze engulfs their entire body. They fall writhing out of view.

Hearing a bullet whistle past my ear, I tuck and roll over to the inner edge of one wall, where metal meets sand. Raising the six gun high, I search for the perfect angle, trying to draw a bead on one of the swerving riders.

For a fraction of a second, a bobbing head lands in the sights of my gun. I seize the moment, squeeze the trigger, and the head disappears in a ruby splash.

“Helluva blast!” Caterwail cackles. He’s buried himself at the opposite edge of the bunker. Swiping gore off his goggles, he raises the fireslinger aloft and offers me cover. “One left! Finish em off!”

Bending beneath the heat of the soaring flame, I slide over to Caterwail’s side of the bunker, jump up, and raise the six gun at the last rider, peering from astride their big cat over the bunker’s edge. One shot knocks them clean off their mount. I race back across the bunker, jump up and drape my body over the curved wall, and deliver a death kiss to the Meddler as they writhe flaming in the sand.

No time for celebration. Now only the cats are left, and not so easily dispensed. One lunges at me and I scarcely dodge its reaching claws as I slam my body back down into the sand. Looking up, I see the creature's long, flame-flecked underside sailing above.

Caterwail rolls back over to the frontside of the bunker, smashes the spigot tip of his fireslinger into a square-shaped button. There’s a whispered “whoosh” as a clear cover seals over the bunker’s top opening, just in time to catch another lunging Sun Saber as the cat descends upon us.

The creature lands on our new roof with a mighty thud. Its abdomen alone is longer and wider than the entire bunker. Its belly is pitch-black, seething with red-orange veins like magma surging through volcanic rock. The metal structure bends and groans as the cat slides off.

Within seconds, several big claws are hammering down like battering rams on our see-through ceiling, cracking big spiderwebs in the glass. The ceiling shatters, and thousands of glimmering shards rain down. Caterwail rolls back to the front of the bunker, punches the square button twice.

Our makeshift fortress instantly deconstructs. Countless layers of metal fold origami-like upon themselves, reforming as the little capsule thing.

We leap up from the sand, and run from the cats. Lying on the ground ahead is the Meddler I’d kneecapped earlier on. They raise a little pistol weakly, and I blast their hand off with my six gun. As we sprint by, Caterwail grabs the Meddler by the scruff of their neck, turns toward the approaching pack of Sun Sabers, and throws them a treat. One cat leaps forward hungry, snatching the Meddler out of the air, snapping them halfwise with one easy clench of its mighty jaws. The poor bastard doesn’t have a chance to scream.

With a few meters between us and the Sabers, Caterwail and I stop, turn, kneel, and start licking off shots point blank and dead center between their glaring eyes. Their molten hides simply absorb the gunfire. They scarcely flinch as the bullets hit.

Distraught, we throw our guns to the ground. Crouching low, we foolishly raise our hands in surrender, as if the gesture will mean a goddamned thing.

There are over a dozen Sabers in the pack, none smaller than three meters long, some much longer than that. Their heads are like big boulders set with those massive incisors and more jutting-out teeth, and dark eyes that glow infernal with volcanic color.

The mind goes to strange places when confronted with death. As I look upon the stalking cats, I’m visited by a vision of a father and daughter on a hunting trip. The daughter is not me and the father is not my own, although the scene still rings somehow familiar. If this is not my memory, it seems to at least run parallel.

I am in the mind’s eye of the little girl as she remembers advice her father had shared by the fireside on a previous trip to the woods. “If you see a bear, make yourself big and holler. If you see a cougar, and the cougar sees you, all you can do is pray.”

Now shielded behind her father’s legs, the little girl reaches an anointing hand out in front of herself, toward a big, glowing-eyed cat crouched on the trail ahead.

“Whoever you are, wherever you are,” the daughter whispers, “please protect me and father, and the cougar, too. Let us walk a little longer in the woods, so we can breathe the mountain air and be among the other wild things. And shine your light on mother, and baby sis, and all–”

“Nil.” Caterwail grips my arm brusquely, stopping the vision short. “I’d let ya shoot me now.” His eyes are cold and hollow. His gold tooth hides beneath the droop of his frowning lips.

I look down at the six gun still lashed to my hand, and then back at my short-lived companion. “No.” I shake my head, not knowing why, and take Caterwail’s hand in mine. I thread one of his razored fingers through the binds on my opposite wrist, and use the blade to cut the gun from my grip.

Looking back towards the cats, still stalking slow, I take one halting step forward, and then another, each step more sure than the last.

One Sun Saber, the largest, moves slightly ahead of the rest. I stare down this apparent leader as I walk, somehow mesmerized by the whirling reds, oranges and yellows in its eyes.

Before I know it, we are centimeters apart. The cat stands twice as tall as me, but is crouched low, so our noses meet.

I lay my handle gently on one of the creature’s imposing incisors. Rising up on tiptoe, I bring the crest of my head to rest on its snout, and close my eyes to keep from studying the layered rows of razor sharp teeth inside its gaping maw.

The beast’s breath is sweatlodge hot and wet, smelling slightly of sulfur. Its flesh sizzles against my own, but the burn is not as bad as I had expected. More catharsis than excruciation.

The vision returns. I witness the father and daughter’s fate. Dismembered limbs scattered across the forest floor, the cougar gnashing hungrily at what remains of the father’s chest.

Recognizing their mistake, I do not pray. Instead, I empty my mind. Fear begins to disappear, and hope along with it. I reject joy and sorrow. I avoid feelings of guilt for the past, resentment about the present, or trepidation concerning what might come next.

Synchronizing my steady exhales with the cat’s slow-heaving breaths, I push thought further and further to the edge of consciousness. Unthinking, I bring both of my hands to the creature’s hulking neck, and begin to scratch gently behind each of its thick, leathery ears.

The Sun Saber groans, as if in contemplation. The desert floor trembles beneath my feet. And then–softly, slowly–the groan becomes a purr.