Empty Hands; A Vignette following Collection Day

Two days after the Takheeta Incident

Calling it a town was being generous.  It had people who lived there, a Post Office, and not much else.  Meager crops were grown on the outskirts, and a shack barely standing served liquid that could be mistaken for hooch. Even its name, Temp, was a joke.  But the visitor who came that night wasn’t laughing.

His appearance was confusing for those who lived in the backwater settlement.  They knew who and what he was, and what his arrival usually meant.  But it was no longer Collection Day.  The people of Temp had paid all their Taxes.  So when the Reckoner walked through the middle of town that night, the citizens hid inside.  Bullets were loaded into rifles, but no one dared fire a shot lest he take it personally. 

Lanterns flickered, their dim light reflecting off of the scattergun on the Reckoner’s back.  A dark hood covered his head, but those who stared long enough could catch glimpse of bleached bone and sunken eyes.  His name was Solomon, and he had been walking for two days straight.  His path led him directly through Temp, past the sleeping and peering citizens, to what he sought.

Temp’s Morgue was a sad affair.  An Oldcestor building, with a heavy metal door that raised and lowered as the fallen returned.  Up until two days ago, no living thing would approach without a very real and urgent cause.  Those who gathered outside the Morgue to wait on their family made sure to stay far away.  But no longer.  Now, it was too quiet.  There was nothing here at all.

Solomon strode up to the heavy metal door and stopped, standing still.  The voices, the feel of the Morgue, were both gone.  They were replaced, not by nothing, but by their absence.  Solomon lowered his hood and rested his boney skull against the cold metal, silently begging to feel something.  But he was met with only silence.  It was maddening.  But more than that.  

He was alone.

“Fuck.”

Four Days After The Takheeta Incident

Solomon knew what he should have done.  He should have reported to Rampart, currently on his way to Essex to “assess the situation.”  He should find the Groundskeepers and assist in their efforts.  He should contact those contracted to the Council, research the problem and find a solution.  He knew he should do all these things.

Instead, Solomon had started to dig.

When the sun went down, Solomon had started to dig in the hard ground outside of Bravado.  He was seen, and whispered about, and reported on, but no one approached or questioned him.  The Reckoner had fought with the people of Bravado on that fateful night, but that didn’t mean he was trusted.  At best, he was tolerated.  At worst, he was watched.

But those watching just saw the Full Dead dig.

Slowly, some of the townsfolk began to follow Solomon into the soggy mud of the Morgue’s interior.  A shock of braided white hair.  Muted red glowing.  Tired faces and leather vests.  Fangs and small bats, slung rifles and newly grown ears.  Tunnel dwellers and hearty drinkers.  No one questioned Solomon, and after observing, they began to help too.  They dug through the night, taking breaks and talking amongst each other quietly. Through the muck and the blood they dug, trying to exhume the dead from their graves, and failing each time.

Finally, as the horizon began to brighten, a Graverobber approached the Reckoner as they gazed out at the sky.

“I don’t think we’re getting anywhere, Solomon.”

A quiet moment passed, as a tall Hellhound approached on the other side.

“We’ve got a real big fucking problem, Brother.”

Solomon remained quiet, his shoulders rising and falling.  With a grunt, he thrust his shovel into the dirt.

“Fuck.”
“What are we going to do?”

Solomon had no answer.  But worse than that, he feared there wasn’t one.

FIN

---

Don’t forget to Register for the DR:TX Season 3 Finale [THE CICATRIX]

Queens Grave, Queen's Grace

At Bravado’s Perimeter, During the Final Battle Against the Archon Threat

Holy Mother Queen Jasper, Bearer of the Antlered Crown, advances on the oncoming horde of undead with all the gravity of a small star, and the killer density of a subway bombing.

Her arms are two, thick cords of sinew and meat that heft twin blades; too thick to be daggers and too ugly to cut cleanly through the slimy, forgiving skull of yet another aggressing corpse. This one, like a thousand others, discorporates into chunky biomass around her cudgel-knives. She blinks the bleak viscera out of her eyes and spits. 

Queen Jasper has rarely felt so alive. 

The pressing mob of wailing zombies, innumerable and immutable in their path, do not ram into the line of her soldiers so much as seep into the cracks between them. Like horrible estuaries the shamblers make space in the shoreline of her vanguard and expand, like winter’s first freeze, isolating her soldiers and suffocating them under cracked tooth and filthy nails. 

And so, she makes space too. Wherever she can Jasper shucks zed like corn and reduces them to their constituent halves with all the efficacy of a rabid farmhand. The Eastern front is hers; all of that flat, tilled acreage, recently evacuated and nearly impossible to hold for its geography and size. 

She has left the more cursory cardinals to the RRC and the Reckoners. 

Someone else, she thinks, would have gotten this part wrong.

Behind her, and behind the six-man-deep wall of Antler Soldiers that flank her on either side, the terrible Monolith looms just over the horizon. A hellstone of osseum and calcified biomass that, the blind and horrible typhoon of death that is thinning out here, relentlessly seeks to destroy. 

She knows, as she bends another nameless undead over her knee and shatters whatever turgid structure serves it for a spine, that her pace here is unsustainable. The Holy Mother can feel the edges to her illness behind the bright and brilliant wall of amphetamines and her own cocktail of adrenaline and dopamine. Beyond that bright halo of wellness, she foresees unconsciousness. 

But the flank must hold, she reflects, even as she crushes the meaty neck of a butcher-dead and a wave of nausea seizes her by the brain and renders the world a runny watercolor of pain and confusion. 

“Not now.” She pleads to the nameless thing that turns the seasons, and doubles over. “A bit longer.”  For a jittering, horrible instant black creeps into the edges of her vision and she loses a few seconds of time. A soldier dies to her left in a mess of incisors and gutstrings, and the Holy Mother pulls herself back from the brink of unknowing by sheer force of will. The vessels behind her eyes burst with the effort and red blooms in her vision. 

She kills a hundred more undead in less than ten minutes. By the end, she is shaking like a leaf in late autumn and the distant sound of the Monolith’s horrible, Archon-ending claxon is indistinguishable from her own pounding heartbeat. 

And then, all at once, it stops. The noise stops, the zed stop - and for a brief and terrifying instant, Queen Jasper believes she feels her heart stop too. 

But it doesn’t, it shudders again, and blackness rolls over her all at once. 

Distantly she hears someone yell her name. And the ground rushes up to meet her. 

---

Two Weeks Later, In the San Saba Boardroom, at the Flying City of Waking PrimE

Jasper’s eyes flutter open to reveal the bright and vaulted boardroom at the top of Eureka Tower. The familiar, flat drone of the Chairman’s voice has lulled her to sleep, again. 

“The situation of the San Saba is one of reclamation…” She hears the Chairman continue, before she loses the thread of his point. He is, she thinks, a terminally boring young man. 

It is becoming harder and harder to stay awake, the Holy Mother reflects, peering down into her lap and at the rich layers of her skirts. Fringe and taffeta swaddle thin legs, inches smaller than they were at the fall of the Monolith. Thick, green varicose veins spider out from the backs of her thighs and calves; morbid renditions of the late life characteristics her mother had lived long enough to achieve naturally. 

“The Penitentiary prefers a well-kept State and, in the interest of Order and Justice, vote ‘Nay’.” Warden Tabitha St. Mercy intones, her expression hidden by her mask but implied by the way she crossed her arms when she said it.

Queen Jasper does not expect she will be able to do the same in her lifetime. 

“The Grave Council cannot, at this time and during this period of reclamation and upheaval, provide the necessary personnel to staff a new Morgue. We must, in good conscience, vote Na-”

“That’s why I’m proposing it,” another, rougher voice cuts in - interrupting Takheeta Firstborn and drawing Jasper’s attention back to the present. 

The rawboned figure of Sinker Swim, the Junkerpunk’s Grand Admiral and temporary board representative, leans onto the marble tabletop with both hands. “I agree that the San Saba is undergoing a facelift right now.” They continue, shark-sharp teeth cutting off the ends of their words as if they are eating them, “I. Get That. I want my people to participate, too. Drywater would be a tradehub for my folks on land. I want the Board to approve a relief and settlement package for the Junkerpunks. We have more than earned the right to our own town, and we will continue to impress. But you must give us the tools to succeed here…”

Somewhere, in the echoing annuls of her memory, Queen Jasper can remember making the same argument for her own people at the zenith of the Hiway War. After their homeland was firebombed into carbon dust and after her father was killed to weaken their leadership, she remembered the demoralizing, exhausting, lonely years that would follow after. Without aid, they never found their homeland - and only with the events of Essex did the Tribes Disparate stumble into one. Holy Mother Queen Jasper raps her tiny silver gavel on the marble tabletop and opens her mouth to speak. 

“The Tribes Disparate cast their vote in support of the Drywater Settlement Package.” The Holy Mother declares in a voice too sure and too stately to match her emaciated countenance. She continues with all the authority of her experience and station; “The search for one’s homeland should be a short journey, not a crusade waged against your neighbors.” 

Felicity Redfield, the RRC snake with hair like red-hot copper filament, raises her own hand in, stunningly, support. Her lapdog, the Semper-Scientist, raises his fist an instant after hers. 

“The RRC'' Felicity begins archly, “Sees the benefit of a sister-settlement and offers the land to the West of New Bravado but East of Barogue, in terms to be discussed upon the resolution of this meeting, to this Settlement project.” Her eyes flicker towards the Chairman, then back to Sinker Swim whose mouth is open in a small, surprised ‘O’. 

The Boardroom is quiet for a moment before the Chairman speaks. His voice is resigned, almost wistful. “Then the formal state of the vote is 4/6, in favor of the Drywater Settlement Package. Motion Approved.”

Jasper smiles inwardly. Sinker Swim appears stunned that they got this far. Felicity maintains the look of a satisfied cat while her pet scientist shuffles his notes around, again.  

“Congratulations.” Takheeta Firstborn, Mystagogue of the Grave Council offers from Sinker’s left side. And for once, Jasper thinks she might mean it. 

“Concerning the Baroguean Exhumation…” The Chairman continues, as though something of monument had not just occurred.  

Jasper sighs, and peers out the wraparound windows at a clear, clean sky. 

---

Later, in Jasper’s Quarters at Eureka Tower

Someone knocks. Jasper can smell the thick and saline scent of a Saltwise on the other side of the metal door. She invites the Admiral in after the Antler soldier stationed at her door dutifully frisks them.

“Grand Admiral Swim.” Queen Jasper greets them, spinning in the leather chair which surely cost an unfathomable amount, to meet Sinker Swim’s suspicious stare. “I would stand, but - I won’t today. My bones grow old quickly, and they ache when I am in the high altitudes of Waking Prime.” 

Sinker waves a scaly, dismissive hand and takes a seat on another unreasonably expensive chair. “What are you trying to get out of supporting me in there? What do I owe you?” They asked, their tone abrupt and frank. 

“To remember that I was the first to support you, when it gained me nothing.” Queen Jasper replied, suddenly very tired. “I have been giving some thought to my legacy, recently. You have probably noticed I am…” 

“Falling apart at the joints?” Sinker supplied helpfully, “Greenveined so hard you’ll be sprouting roots soon?” 

“Dying.” Jasper agreed with a solemn smile that did not betray the grief in her chest.  “And I would like to be remembered as a leader who made homes, not war. As my final year concludes, in the winter of my life, I would be known as a peacemaker.” 

The Grand Admiral’s expression softens and their posture eases. “Well that’s… great then. Though, we really don’t need your pity.” 

“Good, because I’m not giving it to you.” Jasper rasps, then coughs up a meaty wad of phlegm and blood. “I’m giving you resources, which is what I wished I had when I was you.”

She coughs again, and feels the edges of another episode. “Now get out. I’ve got letters to write.” 

It is maybe 10 seconds after Sinker vacated her apartments that the Holy Mother Queen Jasper vomits up nearly eight ounces of black bile, studded with bits of coagulated psion crystal, onto her desktop and various correspondences. 

“Again?” a familiar voice asks from the shadow of her bedroom doorway.  

Felicity’s pet scientist steps back into the room. Janus Stewart jots something down on the clipboard he holds in the crook of his elbow. 

Jasper croaks pathetically as The Scientist removes a thick, ugly syringe from the pocket of his lab coat. 

“Just a few more months.” He promises. 

And plunges the needle into her solar plexus. 

Uncharted Waters

The wind was a ghost’s whisper across the water. It fluttered along the boards of the hull and streamed backwards, a swallowtail behind the thirty foot copper-clad sloop. The fishhook moon smiled up at Kel from the black water flowing past to starboard. He gave a tremulous smile back at its reflection and twisted to look forward. 

“Down to twelve feet, captain,” Arnie hoarsely whispered from the bow. Kel could see the glint of her silver rings in the moonlight as she hauled up the depth line and prepared for the next toss. He tensed his fingers around his oar and readied for what he knew was coming.

“We’re at the neck now, friends,” the skipper’s call was barely audible above the soft splash of the depthline’s charge slipping back into the channel. “I don’t need to remind you what happens if we don’t do this fast, quiet, and smart.” A jabbing finger, sharp nailed and glittering stabbed at the night-cloaked shoreline. Here the trees loomed in towards the river like hulking bodyguards ready to shoulder them out of an Essex bar. The dark obscured what Kel knew lay under their scraggly branches - long low bunkers and a prodigious amount of men with guns and arrows who would not be pleased to see them slipping by in the dead of night without paying the levy.

“Arnica, report.” 

“Nine feet.” 

A low rumbling started along the rowing benches. It was the end of the burning season and the waterways were shrinking. Much lower and The Alligator would be in danger of wallowing in the mud like its namesake. Kel’s pulse hammered in his temples, half dehydration, half adrenaline. This was his first run into the Punkerport and the marshy stink of the polluted water made him yearn for the briny tang of the open sea once more. He narrowed his eyes as a sudden flash lit the darkness.

BANG

“We’re spotted!” he yelped as a projectile whistled overhead and continued into the water beyond with a splash.

“All hands pull!” the skipper growled, and The Alligator surged forward as the oar crew stretched their backs into the thrust. Arnie’s readings at the bow came as fast as she could throw the weight now.

“By the mark, Eight and a half. Eight now,” her voice was punctuated by the whistle-shriek of bullets, and the flashes on the shore were close enough in the narrowing channel that Kel could see the faces of the shooters in the flare of the discharge. He felt a trickle of sweat tracing its way between his heaving shoulder blades but he didn’t dare pause. 

“Five degrees to port!” Arnie shouted. The captain nodded, twitching the rudder to the right - his jaw stony, eyes staring down into the dark water, trying to keep the craft in the deepest part of the channel. The shore seemed to inch by in slow motion and the range was closing. An arrow skimmed over the gunwale and buried itself in the bare mast, missing Kel’s shoulder by a hair. 

“Heave to!” a cry from the shore came crisply across the water. “Surrender your cargo and we’ll let you live.”

“Think I’d trust the word of a Long Berth?” The skipper shot back, and the crackling of firearms increased, punctuated with a few choice insults from the fighters on the shore.

“By the mark, seven!” Arnie hollered and the rowers doubled their intensity. The keel wouldn’t clear much past six feet in depth. 

And then it happened - an awful grinding sound beneath their feet and their speed slowed. They were scraping the bottom now, and in this narrowest part of the waterway, the treeline was only a few yards away on each side.

A shout, and Kel looked up to see the skipper doubling over, a dark stain spreading across his sleeve which now hung limply at his side. A body pushed past him - Arnie diving to seize the rudder and shoving the skipper down into the cockpit. 

“Kel! We need you in the water! You too, Cleat!” 

He dropped his oar into the locks and turned towards the bow. The Baywalker next to him did the same, JP tattoo dark beneath the hollows of his eyes. The grinding on the hull was louder now, reverberating through their feet and throwing him off balance as he lunged towards the prow. Arnie was muttering to herself as they went, “Told him we was too heavy with this metal. Should have taken the plastics instead I said. Not been enough rain.”

The wood of the railing was silky beneath his feet, ground smooth by years of scraping and sanding and bare feet. Kel snagged a sheet as he went, wrapping the end of the rope twice around his hand and hoping the other end was tied to something solid. He didn’t have time to check before he jumped.

The water was warmer than he expected with the sun down for hours, and the force of his jump carried him down beneath the surface, his ankles sank into the soft mud at the bottom of the channel. Kel tugged at the rope above his head and heaved himself upwards, breaking into the warm night air as Cleat slammed into the water next to him. Immediately they both began to swim, pulling the rope taut and tugging the boat through the water. It was scraping less now, with their weight offloaded, but still dragged sluggishly behind. Kel’s free hand splayed wide, the translucent webbing between his fingers and toes scooping hard into the water. He kicked with all his might, feeling the resistance of the boat pulling him backwards with the current. The shouting on the shore intensified and arrows pierced the water near them, bobbing back to the surface harmlessly.

The sky above was suddenly illuminated. The Long Berthers had lit their arrows on fire, content to haul the scrap out of the bottom of the channel after they had all burned and died. His legs were starting to cramp up from the constant kicking. 

And then miraculously the boat was surging past them. They had cleared the bar. The rowers cheered as The Alligator once more sprang into crisp motion. The swimmers drifted back along the side, hauled along by the very rope they’d been tugging. A fire arrow thudded into the hull next to Kel’s head and he splashed water on it before it could light up the tarred wood above the copper cladding. Something beneath the water brushed against his legs and he shuddered.

“Get us up!”

Hands reached over the side and hauled them upwards, depositing them as soggy lumps in the center of the boat as something smooth and scaled broke the surface of the water they’d just left. The shore was retreating once more, the crack of firearms fading into the distance. Kel dashed back to his spot and picked up his oar, resuming his rowing until Arnie shouted “Rest!” long minutes later. Panting, he collapsed forward and chugged on the waterskin beneath his seat. When he finally had a chance to look around, he realized how far they’d come. A broad lake stretched into the darkness on either side, its surface choppy with a stiffening breeze. Beneath the dark waves faint glowing shapes moved and far, far ahead there were torchlights sparkling and distant across the water. He thought he could hear off-key singing. 

“The Punkerport.” Arnie affirmed, looking up from bandaging the skipper’s arm. 

“Is it always like this?” he asked incredulously. “Getting here, I mean.”

“Not always.” Arnie shook her head with a sharp, toothy grin. “Sometimes it’s worse.”

 “Welcome to Bravado, Kel.”

---

A Junkerpunks Vignette by A. Garcia

Thumb On The Scales

Things were easier when I was a ranger. thought Nettie Jack Russel in the cattails and reeds that peppered a riverbed, dry and dead this far into the burning season. Her nose itched but she dared not scratch it. 

The sun was low in the sky, just a few rosy fingers caressing the horizon while the rest was so deeply blue it might’ve been purple. A few scattered clouds rolled lazily eastwards and the way the sun lit them up from underneath reminded Nettie of the brushfires she’d needed to circumvent this far into the Blastlands - only much much prettier. 

Her knees ached. She’d hidden in these reeds since the sun was so high in the sky it threatened to bake her scalp raw, shaved as it was. But what skin she did have was thick and leathery - where it wasn’t peeled back to expose muscle and bone. Nettie surreptitiously wiped her brow on a handkerchief and a few chunks came with it. 

You’d think, she monologued in the way the terribly bored tend to, that contracts would make it easier to determine who the bad guy is. It doesn’t. It makes it easier to figure who broke a deal; which is good enough for most folk these days. 

Someone laughed. Nettie froze. Her eyes, red and watery after nine hours of silent observation, flickered to the tallest man in the group whose mouth was wide and grinning. Hers pitched downward in a tight frown. 

Some forty feet from the Law Dog were a band of nerdowells she’d been tracking for the better part of a month. Bandits, these days. But when they’d worked for the Railroad Commission they’d been caught smuggling goods off of the Ox. Now the word to describe them was “breachers” and it was a Law Dog’s job to bring them in. 

This was the Viper Gang. They’d picked up the name recently after their leader survived a nasty snake bite by manifesting psionic powers and purging the stuff right out of his blood. Nettie thought it was a little stupid. No vipers in the Lonestar. 

The leader in question was one Jeremy Scales, a burly remnant fellow who looked like he might’ve been Saltwise if the dice rolled different. But life hits you hard and so the tough green plates across his face and shoulders looked more like ugly callouses gone septic. He was generally understood to be a charming psychopath - Nettie could see that in the way his crewmates followed his laughter with their own. He knew how to coach a room. 

The sun had all but disappeared behind the horizon and velvety darkness descended. The Viper Gang sat comfortably around a campfire and as the evening progressed they grew drunker. Wild and ugly tales poured out of their mouths as quickly as they filled them up again with booze. Nettie listened, diligently taking notes in the little brown journal that had lead her to this hiding place to begin with. 

Fetters make men of us, she wrote absently, without them we descend into base animalism. So cyclic is the wickedness of man that I knew these to be monsters before I preyed upon them for a night and a day. Contracts might be useless if we’re figuring some higher morality - but folks that break them generally turn out to be shitheels.

“Alright, girl.” A voice called cheerily from the camp. “Come on out now.”

At first Nettie did not register what Jeremy Scales had said. Or that he had said it to her. Until a rough hand clamped around the back of her throat and a powerful blow to the head dimmed her vision and turned her limbs to jelly. Ahh Hell. She dropped the book. 

That rough grip dragged her from her uncomfortable place among the reeds and into the firelight. She saw a few flecks of blood hit the dirt where it dripped from her scalp. She felt a sharp pain in her shoulder when the thug who hit her tossed her dangerously close to the coals. They disarmed her handily and broke her arms.

“Another cocker spaniel come to chew at my heels, eeh?” Scales mocked, kneeling in front of her. Nettie’s eyes wept from pain; bewildered. “Guess the RRC didn’t tell you, yeah? That you’re the fifth pup they’ve sent after me in half a year.” Nettie’s stomach dropped. They most certainly had not.

“Poor kid.” Scales commiserated and stood again. She noticed her book in his hand - when had it gotten there? Nettie blinked, in shock. “Good notes.” he said, flipping through it.  “But it’s too bad you called me a shitheel here at the end. I’ve got a real prideful streak in me. S’from my mother’s side.” 

Nettie gritted her teeth. She could already feel the infection reknitting the bones and muscle. If she could keep him talking long enough-

Jeremy Scales flipped his duster back, exposing a snub barreled silver shotgun. He unholstered it, took casual aim, and shot Nettie Jack Russel right in the teeth. Her body hit the ground with an unceremonious thud. 

The grim faced bandit  handed the book off to one of the thugs in his gang. This one was named ‘Handsome’. Jeremy understood this to be ironic. “Keep that.” He ordered, “And move the body. She smells like my sister.”

The last of the sun disappeared below the horizon. Scales looked up and away from the fire. His expression was mild. 

Another dead dog, he mused. How long ‘till they’re tired of this game and sic the ‘hounds? 

He’d need to finish his work before then.

A Law Dog Vignette by S. Lindley

Quota

Huckleberry leaned with arms crossed against the tree that tried and failed to provide shade to the cut that the work detail was mired in. The track they laid for the Ox was heavy; even the Irons strained under the weight of the rails and ties as they laid them down along the muddy ditch dug out by their peerage. The Law Dog’s eyes were locked on a particular digger, smaller than the rest, whose slower pace had held the work crew’s progress back from making quota for the last two weeks. Huckleberry had been told the shiftless drudge’s name, but he hadn’t cared enough to commit it to memory. Once he’d seen the dude, the burly Iron had known which way this would go. 

The waifish Remnant handled his shovel clumsily. He was too small to leverage it properly, and anyone with sense could see he didn’t belong on this detail. The Commission had been clear that the work would be demanding. The contracts had specified the length of track that would need to be laid daily. Even the conditions The Commision expected had been researched and included in the formal agreement that every one of these miserable fucks had signed or made a mark for. Some of them couldn’t read. Like as not the Breacher was among those. But Huckleberry didn’t care. His pity for them as weren’t capable of looking out for themselves was nonexistent. Their eyes had all been full of currency, and this part, the negligence for their own ability, was a consideration that hadn’t occurred to the idiots.

At some point, the Breacher felt the Blood Hound’s eyes on him. He began to look up from his work periodically , his already abysmal pace lagged even more. The piss-reek of fear wafted in the air and Huckleberry curled his lip into a snarl at the stink of it. When the Breacher saw this, he flinched, as though the expression had reached out to strike him physically. Those toiling around him didn’t seem to take notice, but neither were it they that Huckleberry had his eyes on. In fact, to all but the Breacher, Huckleberry may as well not have existed. The Law Dog let his hand slide down onto the pommel the rifle holstered on his hip and down the length of his leg, and he let the Breacher see him do it. 

A few things happened next. The Breacher’s shovel hit at the wrong angle, and the distribution of his weight caused him to slip and stumble into his neighbor; a Retrograde digging at a much more acceptable pace than the Breacher. They both tumbled to the ground, and the second man fell against a third, an Iron who had been struggling in the rear of a line of lifters carrying rail up the cut. He lost his balance and the rest of the dominoes fell, along with the rail. All because of this useless little moron. It was the moment Huckleberry had been waiting for. The one he’d known would come. The moment when the cost in time that the Breacher represented overcame the meager contribution to the project. 

Huckleberry’s rifle had cleared the holster before the rail hit the ground, and the deafening crack of the shot split the air. The Breacher’s brains splattered against the mud and the diggers and lifters in the vicinity scrambled to make distance from the fresh corpse. Their eyes turned to Huckleberry as he slid the gun back home, waiting for an explanation, or instruction. Huckleberry let that linger long enough that the cost in time for their gawking wouldn’t outweigh the value of the intended message before he spoke. 

“Y’all’s all signed your contracts. Y’all’s all had quota. And y’all’s all had termination agreed to for missin’ it. Get the fuck back to work.”

And so they did.

A Law Dog Vignette by J. Newman