Silver and Salt(8)

Mom was right. Christmas was in your heart. And Santa was everywhere.

If you only knew where to look.





When the world ended, the very first thought I had was of my first dance. I didn’t even like dancing—damn, how embarrassing would that be? Yet there it was. That was the memory I flashed back to. That’s where some part of me considered my life starting. A dance. Or maybe it wasn’t the dance. Maybe it was the girl. I’d loved her, not that I remembered her name now. But at the time I thought I loved her. I knew I lusted after her. But isn’t that how love goes? Her skin was dusky and warm, her eyes fields of lavender, her black hair pulled up and then falling, a solemn black sea around her bare shoulders.

Okay, yeah, it was definitely the girl.

The world ended and I was still thinking with the brain between my legs instead of the one in my head. The cock ruled the roost, and I was as much a rooster in a rickety hen house and a clutch of squawking chickens. At least I admitted it. I doubt my partner would. He was all about the manners and shit that hadn’t mattered before and damn sure didn’t matter now. I cut him some slack though, because he could shoot straight, ride for hours on end without bitching too much, could cook over a camp-fire without turning a rabbit into charcoal, and, bottom line, at the end of the world, you made do with what you had.

It had been ten years ago—when it had happened. The sky had turned gray, the sun a sullen distant red and the entire world shook. I looked back now and saw that shaking for what it was: death throes. The world had died that day and since then we were nothing more than scavengers on a corpse.

They had done it…destroyed it all as if it was a toy they’d tired of, didn’t much care about anymore. Broken and tossed under the bed to not be thought of again—the same as a child. If monsters could be children.

Maybe it was partly our fault. We’d forgotten they existed more or less. We weren’t watching for them, weren’t prepared. They were nothing more than stories, legends, nonsense tales to tell little ones to put them to sleep. Long ago when we knew they actually existed, saw them, made trades that never turned out quite right, I think we learned their bite was worse than their bark, no matter how innocent they could make themselves seem. We’d learned playing games with them was the quickest way to get into trouble. So we forgot about them—the reality of them, we made ourselves forget and I think even the stories themselves would’ve disappeared in time.

But we didn’t have time. Without us anymore, they played with themselves, and not in that good way you’re thinking. Well, in the good way I was thinking. While we forgot them, they continued to play their lethal games: one side against another, alliances constantly shifting, greed for power growing, greed for gold, jewels, fruits of the earth, greed for the air itself. For the stark differences they claimed, good versus evil, righteous versus unholy, in the end they were all the same. Vicious, feral creatures who finally turned Paradise into Hell. There were only two good things about that. The first was that they managed to kill nearly all of themselves in the process. The second was we got to kill the ones that were left. Revenge wouldn’t bring back the world, but it was better than nothing. It was a damn sight better than sitting around waiting to die. We spent the final days wiping out the last of those freaks one by one.

It was a hobby. Everyone needed one. Even now. Especially now.

“At the last outpost, the guy slinging the brew said two more riders went crazy and killed themselves. Third crew to eat their guns this month.” I shrugged. “Can’t figure why they’re in such a hurry to get where we’re going anyway. Gutless maggots. Yellow-bellied chicken shits through and through.”

Scotch took off his cowboy hat showing the yellow-blonde hair he sawed short every few weeks with his knife and smacked me hard with it. “Seven, if you do not stop speaking that way, I will end you. I’ve told you a thousand times it makes me question my own sanity.” Our horses bumped shoulders without complaint with the motion.

I grinned. “That’s why I do it.” We weren’t from around here, far from it, but we went where the work took us and this past year that had been Arizona, Nevada, Mexico—up and down, round and round. Those bastards could hide like nobody’s business. They were getting smarter and tracking them was getting harder. If I could entertain myself by talking like a genuine cowboy and drive my partner nuts in the bargain, well, hell, that’s what I was going to do.

He grumbled, but put his hat back on. It wasn’t to soak up the sweat. It wasn’t hot. It was never hot anymore. Never warm. It was always winter now, but the rays of the sun, small and bloody as it had become, would sear flesh the same as that cook-fire and rabbit I’d been thinking of earlier, especially if you were fair-skinned. I wasn’t. My skin was dark enough that the sun didn’t bother me much. My hair was darker still and I kept it twisted strands tied back in a long tail. It was easier than combing it every day or cutting it once a month. There wasn’t a lot of time for personal hygiene on the hunt, whether it was here on the western trail or up north hunting in the cities. If you had water and soap, you were lucky. If you wanted to feel warm water again, you’d have to heat it yourself.

When the Earth had stopped, nearly everything had stopped with it. I didn’t know how or what they did. Some hideous last magic, the kind of magic that if you had seen would’ve no doubt burned the eyes from your face, peeled the skin from your flesh and driven you to a gibbering madness that would infect everyone you then cast your blind screaming gaze on.