Confessions of a Bounty Hunter

The space into which she stepped reeked of cigars, unwashed bodies and stale beer. Standing in the door, she paused, peering through the layer of smoke and allowing her eyes to adjust to the subterranean room which held far more people than it should so early in the day. The only light in the place emanated from a series of low power luminaries suspended over each of the fifteen or twenty rickety tables shoehorned within the unadorned and unwashed walls. No one seemed to take much notice of her as she stepped down the three steps and began to cross to the ragged excuse of a bar that stood opposite the door; the sound of her boot heels on the rough hewn floor boards echoing in her ears.

Behind the bar, a decidedly unkempt man watched her approach with poorly disguised interest. His eyes traced a quick path up and down her body, resting upon her face, partially hidden beneath the wide brim of her hat. Resting her hands on the bar and looking up at the barkeep, he was immediately taken by this woman. Her eyes, which stared into his with unabashed intent were the deepest blue he and ever seen, at least in a ‘natural’. Her skin was bronze but showed no sign of age or the effect of exposure to the unremitting glare of the sun. The only defect that he could detect on this statuesque beauty in black leather snaked across her skin from the crest of her right cheek bone just short of the corner of her mouth. It struck him as odd that such a beautiful woman would tolerate a scar like that when it would be so easy to have it repaired.

Tausley Robon cleared his throat and tried, unsuccessfully, to push his thinning hair back into place over his bald spot. “What can I provide for you today, Milady?”

She did not answer right away, but pointedly took the time to look in both directions down the dilapidated bar. What she saw neither impressed nor interested her. Most of the patrons of Robon’s establishment belonged to that unfortunate caste of humanity whose lives were already forfeit. Dressed in heavy, padded clothing and smelling of sweat and industrial strength UV blocker, most of the men in the place had already absorbed more than their lifetime allotted dose of radiation, reducing them to a state of near uselessness as far as the majority of society was concerned. She abhorred this stinking planet.

Focusing her attention on a table of fairly healthy looking men in the corner, she answered Robon in a clear and steady voice, “I am not Elite. Bring me a bottle of whatever swill you pass off as whiskey and three glasses.” The right side of her mouth curled upwards in a satisfied smile that caused the scar on her cheek to wrinkle slightly. Robon stared at her for longer than he should, he knew that, but he could not tear his eyes away from her smile. If a tiger could smile, this was the kind of look she would have on her face as she played with her dinner, right before she ate it.

She turned her attention back to the barkeep, and with deliberate slowness the smile melted off her face. He once again found himself staring into her painfully blue eyes and realized how deep and how cold they really were. One word escaped her lips, “Whiskey.”

The spell broken, Robon scurried to a cabinet on the wall behind him and returned with an unmarked bottle and three mostly clean glasses. Trying to sound confident, he handed them over, “I hope these meet with your approval.”

“I’m sure that they won’t.” Her full lips again curled in that cat-like smile giving him a brief glimpse of her fangs, and that was quite enough for him.

“Please…..I try to run a decent place. I don’t want any trouble.”

She cocked her head to one side, and pursed her lips slightly, “Why do you think I bring trouble into your….little corner of paradise.” She made a grand gesture, sweeping her left arm up and around to indicate the dingy surroundings and the feeble people who populated it. In doing so, her black leather, floor length duster opened enough to give Robon a glimpse of her well proportioned body clad in leather and natural fabrics, a rarity on many levels in this day and age. More notable and more troubling to Robon, however, was the glimpse of the .40 caliber, semi-automatic held firmly in a holster snug against her left side. He looked up to find her gazing at him intently; no smile upon her face.

“I’m sorry, did I offend you?”

“N-n-n-no….not at….all.”

“Good. You seem to be relatively…..normal. I promise that whatever happens in here in the next five minutes will in no way be your fault.” With that, she placed a Golden Eagle Sovereign on the bar and slide it across to Robon. “I’m sure that this will cover the whiskey, and most of the clean-up as well.”

“Oh, God…..,” Robon started to say, but she cut him off with a wave of her finger.

“Shhhh, He’s busy right now. Let’s not disturb Him, shall we?”

She grabbed the bottle and the glasses and began to stalk the four men sitting at the table in the corner. The flotsam and jetsam that inhabited the tables between her and her objective knew enough to be nervous, but none of them were sure what, if anything, they could do to escape the hunt that was now underway.

One of the four men at the table watched her as she moved around the intervening tables full of sad and weakened humanity. He had in fact been acutely aware of her presence since she first set foot in the bar. It made sense to him that she was here; yet, given his choice, he would prefer that she was someplace very far away. His options were limited. His back was to a wall, and there were three weakling, dirt wranglers blocking any hope of his escape. But, he confessed to himself, any hope of easy escape faded away the moment she opened the door.

Their eyes locked as she approached the table, and her smile broadened even more. “You remember me?”

“How could I forget.”

She looked at the other three men, sizing up each of them in turn and even more rapidly dismissing them without a further serious thought. “Gentlemen,” she said placing the bottle and the three glasses on the table, “I am going to need you to vacate this table so I can have a private conversation with Mr. Frye. As compensation, please accept this bottle as my gift.”

The three looked at each other, failing to comprehend the depth of this grand gesture. She rolled her eyes and spoke in a low, controlled voice, “Get the Hell out of here…now!”

And then there was just the two of them.

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Less than 15 minutes had passed since she emerged into the harsh sunlight and began walking South beside the deserted track that cut this speck of a town neatly in half. Now she stood in front of the crumbling façade of a familiar building; the front door, formerly a brilliant and cheery red, hung askew and broken. She buried her hands deep into the pockets of her coat and balled them into tight fists, her fingernails digging into the soft flesh of her palms, in a futile attempt to keep them from shaking.

Looking both ways and seeing no one or moving in the heat of the day, she slowly mounted the steps and pushed her way into the narthex of what used to be a fine, old church. The sign to the right of the door still welcomed the faithful to “St. ary’ A g can Chur , a
Con ituent Par s of the W rld Wi e Anglic n C m unio .”

Inside the doors, the space was dark and cool, and, even though the font had been dry for years, she absent mindedly dragged her fingers through non-existent holy water before crossing herself. She entered the nave, a vast space with walls of plaster and falling into heaps beneath shattered stained glass windows through which came the harsh light of day.

She made her way up the center aisle, her boots crunching through the debris and dirt. She only paused for a moment in the transcept to remove the hat from her head and the .40 from its holster, and she looked up into the sunshine spilling into the building through a large hole in the roof. The sanctuary ahead was hidden in shadows.

She moved slowly up the chancel steps and through the choir to what remained of the Communion rail. Standing in the gloom, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, the wood and marble altar came into focus. Behind the altar, mounted on the wall high above her, Christ hung off the Cross by only one hand. She let her hat and her pistol drop to the floor and she sagged forward, falling to her knees with her head bowed, hands hanging limply by her sides. The silence engulfed her, and she wept.

A lifetime passed by before she lifted her glistening eyes to the ruined crucifix, and a single tear traced a lonely path along the scar on her cheek. Her voice, heavy with fear and regret, cracked through the silence, “Forgive me, for I have sinned……”
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