The same bravery wasn’t forthcoming from her horse. Horse couldn’t have cared less but the kid’s mare trotted nervously beneath her, shook its head from side to side. The beast had been trained by the Solution but not to face this many Paints. No-one at the Solution was; Dust could see what Jacky had meant about the Badlands getting worse. As men and goats and combination creatures that most artists would vomit at the sight of crawled or ran or trotted at them, the mare looked more and more like a lit fuse.
Dust emptied his gun into the pack and shouted “Dismount!”
Unfortunately the kid stopped firing, looked at him. “What?”
The cylinder rolled under his fingers. They were only a dozen yards away now. He fired into the pack again. “Dismount! Get off your horse! It’ll buck you if you don’t!”
For some reason, she just kept staring at him.
“Do it, you dumb bitch!” he roared, feeling a warning flare from his tattoo.
That raised her ire. She snarled and leapt from the saddle, landing neatly. Then she raised her rifle and started firing, more accurate and more deadly than before.
Paints like bulls bred with squid or an uncaring creator had thrown together a handful of leftover parts together fell beneath their attentions. Shining shots and piercing bullets took them down. Dust allowed himself a brief moment to wonder whether their deaths would warn whatever kept taking down that telegraph line, then continued firing. More died, each peculiar and horrible in its own unique way. A dozen remained. Then half a dozen.
But they were getting close, nearly six feet away; soon they’d be able to grab at them, which would be bad news for the kid. And she needed to reload, couldn’t defend herself. The Paints were so close.
He couldn’t let her become a target…
Without hesitation, he leapt from Horse and charged the Paints, roaring and rolling the cylinder of the other gun. Thankfully the swirling masses of ever-shifting colour reached for him with hands that became claws or tentacles or mouths; he had their attention. One wrapped a scorpion’s leg round his ankle like it were a rattler’s tail. Dust halted and brought his gun down on the Paint and it withdrew, faded, died; the other gun didn’t need to be shot to be lethal to these things.
It was much more efficient when fired, though.
Free of this attention, Dust dove into the centre of the pack to get them to turn in on themselves. He looked around him, head moving at a blur and mind racing like a bullet. Five Paints remained, each within touching distance and eager to consume him. They were all surging at him. The kid was safe.
Now he could kill them.
He span the other gun in his hand, took the trigger with his index finger and let off five quick shots before they could get within a foot of him, his hand moving with inhuman speed.
There was a beat and then the Paints disintegrated.
Dust holstered the other gun and nodded, satisfied at a job-
The kid fired a shot right at him. He dove to the side and it missed, went just beyond his shoulder; he felt it whistle past.
Just as he was about to go off like dynamite, there was a hiss behind him. He turned and saw a half-snake thing bleeding to death. It must’ve burrowed from beneath the ground to get a shot at Dust’s neck. And the kid had shot it true, ripping that eight foot long, slender body in half and saving him an annoying few hours of pain.
Dust watched it die. Then he turned back to the kid, who had a broad smile on her face. Her chest rose and fell quickly. She was glistening with sweat.
“That was… amazing!” she shouted.
“You weren’t so bad yourself,” he said.
“Thank you.”
He looked at the snake thing again and then stood, started towards Horse. The kid’s beast had taken to its hooves during the last of the firefight and had made a good hundred feet on them. They’d be able to catch it if they moved quickly.
The kid was looking at him expectantly. Damn it but he owed her a kind word. “Thank you too. That might’ve stung quite badly.”
She frowned. “You mean… I didn’t save your life?”
Dust shook his head. “Nope.”
That seemed to take the steam from her engine a little. Dust didn’t feel bad because he’d just been honest. He climbed back onto Horse and then offered her a hand up.
“C’mon, let’s collect your ride.”
The kid looked around. She hadn’t noticed it had gone. He couldn’t blame her; that must’ve been her first battle. “Alright. Phew. That was… I still can’t get over how great that was.”
When she took his hand and climbed behind him, he decided he might be able to tolerate having her with him after all. Even if she were a stuck-up, spoilt heifer.
