The young woman was talking to the woman with the scar when the young man came in. He had a swaggering look about him, the kind that branded him as one of the younger street toughs who hadn't yet learned that swaggering brands you a bully-boy, but little more. He also had the look of a southerner, one of the people from the higher places of the jungle country, and not even of pure blood at that. The scarred woman's lip curled. She knew his kind. The young woman looked up in excited anticipation. She had been waiting for him.
"Hey there, chickadee," he said with an expansive grin. The scarred woman repressed a scowl. Even his voice swaggered. "I see you found company."
The scarred woman nodded, and the younger Marilee smiled happily and gestured for the other to make room for her lover. She sighed, and did so. "Now you're sure about this," she said quietly in a voice made gravelly and quiet from years in the border town.
The young man looked annoyed, that is until Marilee nodded enthusiastically. "Of course I'm sure… this is what we both want." She looked to the young man for confirmation, and he nodded. "We'll be happy."
"I've got everything taken care of," the boy said with boastful pride. The scarred woman rolled her eyes. She'd had a bellyful of boastful pride from similar boys.
"Make sure you have enough money," she advised. "And friends to help you move. And a place to go, and work waiting for you when you get there. You do not want to be on the streets in a new place, believe me…" her voice carried the bitterness of experience. But then, to Marilee, women like her literally had been everywhere and done everything, even when she didn't know what everything was.
The young man nodded solemnly. "I got everything taken care of, old mother," he said. Clearly he thought he was being respectful. She let it pass. He meant well. "I got friends waiting for us in the city, and I got work for us to do. Marilee' gonna find a job as a seamstress, or a maid or something." The young woman nodded again, less readily this time. "Don' you worry old mother, Chaco got it all covered."
The older woman tried not to smile. Now that it was actually come to it, it seemed that young Marilee was having second thoughts. The scarred woman understood; Marilee had probably had anticipations, dreams wherein she was discovered by some fascinating older man, made a star of the stage, or at the very least have a tavern named after her. Wherein she made heaps of money and provided for both of them, instead of being dependent on Chaco for her living and therefore subservient to his whim.
"And money?" the scarred woman said.
Chaco laughed. "Don't you worry about that, old mother," he boasted, pulling out a wad of 'scrip. "Chaco got plenty of money." He passed it over to her to show her, and she hissed and glanced around at the patrons of the tavern they were in.
"Don't do that here," she said, more sharply than she'd meant for the sake of keeping the idiot boy calm, "People will see."
She breathed a sigh of relief when the boy seemed to take no offense, and then rolled her eyes inwardly as she saw why. "Don' worry," the boy said yet again, leaning forward. "Chaco got that covered too."
He leaned forward slightly, and then the scarred woman saw why he wasn't worried and mentally snarled to herself. The boy was armed, and at least flashily too, if not well. He had a matte gray gun, a cuerte, tucked into the waistband at the back of his faded and carefully mended blue jeans. The scarred woman hoped devoutly for Marilee's sake that he hadn't used it.
"Whatever," she said, cultivating a bored tone. She knew her reputation for having been everywhere and done everything. "Be careful when you go. There are slavers and bounty hunters everywhere around the roads these days…" she trailed off as she realized they were rapidly becoming the center of attention for the entire bar.
Marilee looked around too. The barkeep was staring at the three of them as if to say 'Been nice knowing you.' There was a clear aisle-way from the door down to their table, something that hadn't happened since the place had opened for the day. No one was dangling their legs in the walk way, playing cards over it, anything. The scarred woman had a sinking feeling that their goose was cooked, and cooked well done.
About the time she thought this a crowd of rowdies wandered into the bar yoo-hoo-hoo-ing and waving arms. They didn't exactly upturn tables, but they did pull people out of chairs, and for the most part the people stumbled out of the chairs and out of the door easily enough. They propped themselves up on the chairs and stared at the doorway, waiting for someone. Beside her, Chaco had turned pale as ashes from a fire three days ago, and the young woman was staring around in confusion. The older, scarred woman merely stared at the door in resignation.
After a moment of atavistic silence, a very big man filled the doorway. His face and chest were tattooed, and his tattoos were very familiar to the scarred woman who stared at him with slowly narrowing eyes. The man surveyed the room as if it were his own personal fiefdom, and no one stared at him back with disagreeing eyes. Even the scarred woman had to acknowledge his superiority, if only the superiority of numbers. The tattooed man walked forward, grabbing a chair as he did so and scraping the legs of it along the floor in such a way that it left a death-wail in the air. He set it down next to the young woman with a loud thump that caused her to cringe and straddled it, leaning his arms on the back. Chaco stared at him with the nervousness of a naughty puppy looking at his somewhat sadistic owner. The scarred woman stared at him with resigned annoyance and familiarity.
"So, Chaco," the man said, in the deep and harsh voice of desert warlords everywhere. "I hear you're planning on leaving our little family."
"No dis'respect, Mr. Victor, sir…" he said slowly, "But Marilee… this isn't her kind of place. Just wanted to take her somewhere where she'd feel more at home… y'know…"
"But this is her home," the man said expansively. "It's your home too, you know. I mean, I go to all this trouble…" the scarred woman tuned him out. It was the usual sort of speech that could only end in Chaco's brains being splattered all over the wall next to her. Well, he had been nice enough while he'd lasted. Marilee would be traumatized, but she could help that. And then she realized, in slow motion, that Victor's attention was turning to her. This was bad.
"Hello Kitten. Didn't expect to find you still here."
She'd always hated that name. "Didn't expect to still be here," she replied calmly. Beside her she could see Chaco almost comically staring at her and mouthing 'Kitten?!'
"You're coming back with us, you know," he said almost conversationally.
"No."
The man laughed. It was a great, big belly laugh. Almost humorous, except for the situation. He found her genuinely amusing. "You don't have much choice, Kitten," he said. "I've got all my boys here. You've got no one."
He was wrong about that, though he didn't know it at the time. But not very wrong. Still, the scarred woman nodded to the bartender, who nodded back and began resignedly boarding up his wares. It would help, a little. The wait-staff had already disappeared at the first sign of his entrance. "You think that's ever stopped me before?" she asked quietly. Then she kicked over the table.
Marilee let out a squeak, but to her credit she managed to dive out of the way and crawl behind the bar in time. Chaco let out a startled curse and leaped backwards, slamming into the wall he'd forgotten was there. Victor leaped back as well, almost as though he'd expected the move. The scarred woman came up, guns blazing.
The six shooters emptied quickly. Unfortunately, she hadn't wanted to be so obvious that she wore ammo bandoliers, so she was reduced to hitting people with them. The novelty soon waned. Chaco and the desert warlord had quickly retreated to opposite sides of the room, so she didn't have to worry about either of them. The only one she needed to watch out for was herself; everyone else in the room was fair game. She smiled, a dead and predatory smile. Just the way she liked it.
The first man who came after her following the dropping of the white-hilted guns had to do so over a pile of bodies. This gave her enough time to drop into a defensive stance, and when he finally arrived she was able to grab him easily by the wrist, spin him till she pinned his arm up between his shoulder blades and systematically break his arm and pop his knee out of the socket, he fell to the ground, screaming. The second man met with a similar fate, and the third, and then they wised up and developed a new strategy.
A man howled and tackled her in a bull rush from the side, from one of her sides not covered in bodies. She fell, the wind knocked out of her, and scrabbled with one hand behind her for a bottle as the man proceeded to choke the life out of her. It was a bar. She found a bottle. And then she smashed it into his head in the tradition of good barfights everywhere.
Finally she had a moment to breathe. Her dust-jacket came off, leaving her in form-fitting dusty black jeans and what remained of a tank top. She also now had access to all of her weaponry, specifically the knives that had been sheathed behind her, and a full range of movement. The next man who came at her got a slit throat for his pains. And the next was hamstrung, and fell to the ground shrieking. The third was stabbed in the gut, and wandered off clutching his side and moaning. And then she knew.
"That isn't going to make a lick of difference, is it?" she asked, looking up at Victor. He shook his head slightly, smiling. "Shit."
From behind her she heard Chaco screeching, almost hysterically. "What the hell does that mean?" She almost had to laugh. And then she had to spin the man who was rushing at her and throw him through the front window.
"It means he's hired on zombies. Or raised them himself, I'm not sure which." She glanced inquisitively at Victor, who simply folded his arms over his chest and smiled smugly. The woman swore. The bar was now mostly clear, so she began to battle her way towards the doorway.
"Oh shit…" Chaco said, and sunk further behind the table. The scarred woman smiled grimly as the man she had stabbed in the gut started stumbling back towards her. She kicked the door down. Less protection, but also less obstruction, a trade she was willing to make. She stared at the zombie, and focused her will.
"Chac," she said hoarsely, making a shoving gesture with both palms out, the heels of her hand perpendicular to each other. A small green fire sprang from the palms of her hands and hit the zombie in the chest. It kept walking, but now it was on fire, and the stench of burning rotten flesh began to fill the air. The woman grabbed the zombie by the arm and slammed it against the pillar a couple of times till the head fell off. "See? Easy," she said sardonically.
Behind her some of the men she had shot were starting to stagger to their feet again. The ones she had hamstrung would never walk again, living or dead. She was just starting to take note of which were zombies and which were down for the rest of the fight when a woman tackled her from behind, screaming, trying to slash her throat. She grabbed the knife as it came for her. "Goddammit."
"Damn you!" The woman was screaming semi-coherently. "Damn you! Damn you! Damn you!"
The scarred woman frowned and grabbed the woman's other hand, bringing that wrist up and grabbing the woman's knife hand. "You're insane," she muttered as she brought up the woman's hand and forced her to slit her own wrist. "You're completely bug-fucking insane."
As she dropped the now-dying woman and turned she caught a glimpse out of the corner of her eye of Victor's second standing, slowly. Victor himself was staring at her expectantly. None of the other lackeys, even the dead ones, were moving anymore. And suddenly she realized what was going on, what he was giving her the chance to do. She flipped the knife she had taken from the dead woman in her hand. The hilt smacked into her palm. She threw it neatly, cleanly, hitting the man in the shoulder where her scar stood. Leaping over the dead bodies faster than thought, she skidded to a halt in front of the man, grabbed it, and yanked downwards. Blood gushed all over her front.
"Wergelt is paid," Victor said quietly. His second fell to the ground, very, very dead. Chaco stood shakily, in front of her. He turned to where he thought Marilee would be and extended a hand.
"C'mon, chica, we're getting out of here."
Behind the bar Marilee stood up slowly, next to a young man no one had seen previous to the fight and the bartender. She shook her head slowly. "I'm staying, Chaco."
"What?" he stared incredulously. "You can't…"
"And wergelt is paid to me," the young man said quietly. The scarred woman hid a smile at Chaco's confused expression and Victor's slight nod of acceptance. The scarred woman sighed, and turned to walk out of the decimated tavern.
"And mine," Victor said suddenly. Outside, standing by the remains of the burning zombie, the scarred woman turned.
"Yours?"
Victor took off his own dust-coat. He walked forward, stepping meticulously over the pile of bodies. "Mine. My wergelt, for what you took from me."
Realization swept over her face, followed by other emotions too quick and raw for anyone to follow. She nodded slowly, flipping her own knife around in her hand and wiping the other clean on the clothes of the dead woman as she backed up to a clear patch of street. The scarred woman sheathed that knife and began flipping the other neatly in her palm. "All right, then…"
Victor's easy walk turned into a slow lope, which turned into a leap at her with a wicked looking knife that seemed to appear in his hand out of nowhere. She dodged to one side easily, catching him in the ribs with a low, long stroke of her own blade. He landed, rolled, came up in a crouch, his eyes never leaving her face. They circled each other, occasionally closing in and grappling. Locked in combat and impaled on each other's knives.