She was sitting on the porch of the hotel, trying and failing to digest the breakfast cooked up by Zeb’s wife, who if anything was even more repulsive than her husband, when three of them came stalking across the square. Her mirrorshades protected her eyes from the harsh glare of the sun on the baked earth of the town square. The wind blew in a different direction today, otherwise the oily smoke from the power station would have left the neighborhood in day-long twilight. She didn’t move her head as she studied each of the men in turn.

  She recognized the center one as the machine gunner from the Jeep. The other two were new. The two new guys had side arms, safeties off. Mr. Machine Gunner styled himself as a k-slinger but his AK wasn’t hanging from his shoulder quite right.

  Still, three versus one …

  She remained seated, but eased her AK into a better position.

  “Shit,” came a muffled cry from inside the hotel. That was Zeb spotting trouble and hiding himself. If she had been a betting woman, she would have bet his front counter was bulletproof like her room. Zeb was no fool. Repulsive and greedy, but no fool.

  Neither was the sniper on the roof of the mayor’s building. Sunlight flashed off his scope. The two men posted at the front door didn’t do a damn thing, though.

  That told her a lot.

  She smiled at Crazy Joe’s men as they approached.

  “How can I help you gentlemen today?”

  They stopped twenty meters from the porch. The dang fools didn’t even spread out much.

  Mr. Machine Gunner did all the talking.

  “We found a couple of our men dead at the pass.”

  “Well, ain’t that a crying shame.”

  “You know anything about that?”

  “Why should I?”

  Mr. Machine Gunner glanced at his friends and snorted, then looked back at her. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out two crumpled bullets. He tossed them on the ground between them. Both had black stains that picked up grit as they rolled in the dirt.

  “These are AK rounds.”

  The k-slinger nodded. “You mean 7.62×39mm rounds? They do appear to be.”

  “Two men killed by an AK the same day you show up?” Mr. Machine Gunner scoffed. “You think we don’t know what’s going on?”

  The k-slinger eased forward in her seat. The man on the right took a step back, looking to Mr. Machine Gunner for reassurance.

  “Now wait just a minute,” she said, the words coming out slow and quiet. “Are you implying something?”

  Mr. Machine Gunner’s eyes narrowed. His two friends didn’t look so confident. Neither ran, though.

  “You know what I’m implying. Hell, I ain’t implying nothing. You killed them boys!”

  “And if I did, what are you going to do about it?”

  Mr. Machine Gunner licked his lips.

  She waited.

  And waited.

  “Well?” she said.

  “You did it, didn’t you?” Mr. Machine Gunner said.

  “If I did, then you need to draw.”

  His hands eased a little toward the correct position. She let out a slow breath, preparing herself.

  “Or …” she began.

  Mr. Machine Gunner froze.

  “… maybe you figure I didn’t do it. In that case, you can walk away and no one will call you a coward.”

  His eyes went wide at the word. His hands shook a bit, whether from fear, indecision, or rage she didn’t know. Maybe all three.

  “Could have been someone else,” the man on the right muttered.

  Mr. Machine Gunner sucked in air through his teeth, then went for it.

  He got a bullet through the forehead before he got his AK halfway leveled. The man on the left got his gun out before her second shot took him full in the chest. He had ducked as he drew, and forcing her to aim for the bigger body area. Now he flew backwards, his finger pulling off a round that embedded itself in the post next to her.

  The guy on the right barely got his revolver to clear the holster before he spun, her third round taking him in the throat and making him pirouette, sending out a spinning arc of blood before he slumped twist-legged to the ground.

  The k-slinger stood. Across the street, one of the guards hurried inside. The other had his AK at Ready but not pointed at anyone. She looked up at the sniper and gave a little nod, just enough for him to see through his scope but not so much that any of the passersby now hiding in doorways and behind corners would notice.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  A heavy thumping behind her made her turn.

  “Holy crap!” Zeb said as he wheezed his way to the door. She’d never seen him leave his post before. He wore shorts, revealing thick legs with pale skin lined by florid, bulging veins. His stomach, shaggy with thick greasy hair, sagged down beneath his t-shirt.

  “Get back behind your counter,” the k-slinger said. “You’re even uglier when I can see all of you.”

  Zeb didn’t listen. He just stared at the three bodies, shaking his head.

  “You’re in for a world of hurt, girl.”

  The k-slinger’s mouth formed a grim line. “Yeah.”

  Behan and several of his men emerged from across the street. The sniper called down to him, saying something she couldn’t catch. After a moment, they crossed the town square, spreading out. Zeb thudded away, seeking cover. The k-slinger stood her ground.

  “My man on the roof says Preston drew first.”

  “That he did.”

  “Then it was a fair fight. I won’t arrest you.”

  “That’s mighty kind.”

  “Crazy Joe won’t be so understanding.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll just have to rely on the law to protect me.”

  The guards shifted, looking at one another. Behan’s eyes narrowed.

  “You could be part of that. The offer is still valid.”

  “I’m not looking for work.”

  Behan looked at the three dead men and the crowd peeking out of doorways and windows. He turned to his men and gestured at the bodies.

  “Get rid of these. Impound their weapons and possessions.”

  One of the men did a doubletake. “But Crazy Joe—”

  “Crazy Joe’s gotta realize that if his men break the law, their property gets confiscated,” the mayor said, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  The k-slinger cocked her head. Guns were pricey. Taking three good ones, and whatever else they might have, was no small thing.

  The men started to pull the bodies away. Behan raised a hand to stop them.

  “Strip them here.” He turned to the k-slinger. “Come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “You and I are going for a stroll.”

  They walked around the hotel and onto a back street. Nobody followed them but everybody watched.

  As they got further away from the square, they came to streets that still had people. The thudding of the power plant had kept the sound of the gunshots from carrying far, and news had not yet rippled through town. The k-slinger knew Crazy Joe would be one of the first to hear. Good chance he had heard already. Behan was taking a mighty big risk walking with her like this while wearing only a sidearm.

  “So what’s the point you want to prove?” she asked.

  “I want to show you a thing or two.”

  “If you want to convince me that you’re the man to run this town, I’ve already heard about you opening a school.”

  Behan chuckled and shook his head. “Oh, I’m not going to risk taking you to the school. You’re a lightning rod. I’ve got a couple more projects I’d like to show off.”

  “Public works, eh? That’s better than the last mayor. Just the school alone is a damn good thing, I’ll give you that. But you need more than good intentions to run a town in this world.”

  “Did you hear about the water treatment plant?”

  That got her attention.

  “You’re treating the water now? I thought it tasted better than last time, but I figured I’d been out in the wildlands too long.”

  “Here it is,” Behan gestured proudly. They had turned a corner and at the end of the street stood a small building of new brick with a steel door.

  “Doesn’t look like much,” the k-slinger said.

  “Come see.”

  Behan took a keyring out of his pocket and unlocked two different locks. The door creaked open. He flicked on a light and the k-slinger looked inside. All she saw was a confusing array of pipes and dials.

  “The engineers tell me this tangle of stuff pumps the groundwater up through a series of filters that takes out all the contaminants. Bacteria live in the water, plus a lot of the chemicals that have seeped into the water supply over the years. Luckily there’s no radiation in these parts, so we don’t have to deal with that. The water was good before and now it’s better.”

  “Where did you get the people who knew how to do this?”

  “Archer lent me a couple of his best to study the problem.”

  “Yeah, but where did they learn?”

  “That’s what I want to show you next.”

  He locked up and took her down another street, past a row of tumbledown shacks and a two-story whorehouse to a small square. A clinic stood to one side that the k-slinger remembered from her last visit. They had to extract a bullet from her shoulder. Did a decent job too. Cost her a lot in trade but it had been worth it.

  Behan didn’t lead her there. Instead he led her across the way to a small wooden building that she remembered being a saloon last time. But instead of drunken laughter and singing, she heard only silence.

  They entered and the k-slinger stopped in surprise. The long bar with its bottles and dirty pictures behind it were gone, replaced with bookshelves. There were actually bookshelves around all four walls. Little signs tacked on top of them said “History” or “Science” or “Novels”. The round tables that once saw poker games or circles of drunken friends now had silent readers.

  “Welcome to Tire Town City Library,” Behan said with obvious pride.

  “Shh.” A stern-looking woman sitting at a small desk by the door put her finger to her lips.

  “Fran, our librarian,” Behan explained. “Talk too loud and she’ll kick you out. Try and steal a book and she’ll shoot you.”

  The k-slinger had already noticed the 9mm strapped to her belt.

  “Where did you get all these?” The k-slinger asked, thumbing through an old book on geology.

  “A lifetime of collection. In my wanderings I’ve had much occasion to trade for books. Or steal them. I’d even take them as protection money if my belly was full. You can imagine a farming family’s surprise when we descended on them and instead of eating all their livestock, I’d accept their books in exchange for leaving them in peace.”

  “Your men stood for that?”

  Behan grinned. “Well, we didn’t always do that.”

  “There must be a thousand books here.”

  “Eight hundred and ninety-one. I have a standing offer to any scavenger to trade for books. I bet we have the biggest collection anywhere, certainly in these parts. There’s actually a city ordinance against using books in the privy, so be careful about that.”

  “Shhh!”

  Behan glanced at the librarian.

  “Time to retreat. I know when I’m beat.” They walked back out into the sooty sunlight. “The kids at the school—a free school, mind you, open to anyone under sixteen—the kids get to come to the library after school hours. They’re in class now.”

  “You got some mighty fine ideas,” the k-slinger said.

  Behan turned to her. “I didn’t take over Tire Town just to step up in the world, I did it to step out of my old world. I ain’t as young as I used to be, and tearing around the wildlands looking for people to hold up gets tiresome. I want to build something. Heck, I already have. And I want to make it bigger. Now that the water plant is up, I’m having some of Archer’s men study the pollution problem. During the Old Times they had a way to reduce the smoke coming out of factory chimneys. Scrubbers, they called them. Well, now they’re looking into that.”

  “That would be nice. Maybe I wouldn’t have to take three showers a day.”

  “Wouldn’t that be fine? You know what,” Behan said, gesturing at the library. “I never was much of a reader. Just can’t get my head into it. Of those 891 books in there I’ve probably only read nine or ten. I didn’t collect them because I wanted to read them, I collected them to build a future with. And with all those little guys and gals going to school and growing up reading, they’ll be the ones to really build this place up. You can be a part of that.”

  The k-slinger stared at him. Behan waited for her response.

  “I got my own things to do,” she said, and turned away.

  She walked down the street. He called after her.

  “You wanna be a scavenger the rest of your life? A k-slinger? You might be the best but you won’t be the best forever. And what then? A woman like you could write her own ticket, and you want to live in the wildlands?”

  She turned back to him. He looked like he was about to say more but then whipped out his pistol.