Sheriff Poole & The Mech Gang Read Free

sheriff immediately
sits up, the movement smooth as my own. Smoother. He closes his own
chest door, his gaze ranging throughout the barn until they finally
settle on me.
    “They’re back?” he asks.
    His voice has a slight mechanical tone, but
otherwise it’s indistinguishable from a human’s.
    I nod in response to his question.
    “How many?” he asks.
    “I don’t know. But there are a lot of lights.
Three? Maybe four?”
    He nods. “We’ve got our work cut out for
us.”
    “How’s it going with the Mech Gang?” I call
out to Tommy.
    I turn when there’s no response to see him
standing by the open door of the first stall, slack-jawed, his eyes
big.
    “Get the boys ready,” the sheriff says. “I’ll
go stand guard.”
    I walk over to Tommy and pluck the box of
shells from his hand while he stands there dumbfounded watching the
sheriff walk outside.
    I’ve got the tarps off the gang and I’m
loading guns when Tommy finally gets himself together enough to
help me. I’ve finished with Johnny Scales and the Linden Kid and
I’ve moved on to the Myers Brothers, Chris and Pike. Chris is
missing his legs, Pike one of his arms. But not his shooting
arm.
    I grab a handful of shells and hand the box
to Tommy.
    “Get their guns loaded,” I tell him.
    He nods and gets to work without any more
questions, though I can see them written all over his face. I cross
the stall to the last of the gang, Paco Mendez. All that’s left of
him is a torso jammed into a small wagon and held in place with
ropes. I load up his guns then pull the wagon out into the main
part of the barn, heading for the door. By the time I get back to
the stalls, Tommy’s finished loading the Myers Brothers’s guns.
    “I’ve never seen rounds like these,” he says
rolling one of the bullets between is fingers.
    “I’m not surprised,” I tell him.
    I get him to help me roll the rest of the
gang outside—each of them tied into place on heavy-duty dollies,
which makes them easier to move than Mendez is in his wagon. You
just have to be careful you don’t tip them.
    “The sheriff makes the bullets,” I add. “He
says they’re equal parts lightning, whiskey powder and
despair.”
    “What does that even mean?”
    “I don’t know. You could ask him. The time I
did, he started talking about alchemy and confined energy spheres
and my head started to spin.”
    The sheriff is standing in the middle of the
yard, his scarred features turned to face the canyon where the
lights are still playing over the ground below. It won’t be long
now before they reach us.
    Mason steps down from the porch carrying her
granddad’s old buffalo rifle. She delivers it to the sheriff, then
pulls a six-gun from the waist of her jeans.
    Tommy turns from the sheriff and looks back
at me. “I think I’ll pass,” he says.
    Mason and I switch on each member of the Mech
Gang and arrange them in the yard, three of them facing the canyon,
two facing the rear. We came up with this arrangement after the
last time, when the enemy split up and came at us from both
sides.
    “Eyes to the sky,” I say to them. “Make every
shot count.”
    The Mech Gang draw their weapons. Five metal
faces tilt upward and glowing red eye sensors scan the sky.
    The sheriff checks the buffalo rifle’s load
even though he knows Mason would have done that before she brought
it out to him. But that’s just the way he is. Careful. It’s why
he’s survived as long as he has.
    “Incoming,” Mason says.
    We look up at the lights that are now heading
our way. The sheriff settles the stock of the rifle against his
shoulder and takes aim.
    “Can you shoot?” I ask Tommy.
    He nods. “But what am I shooting at? Lights
in the sky?”
    “Pretty much. We just need to keep them
back—lay down a covering fire so the sheriff can do his thing. You
won’t believe the range on that buffalo rifle.”
    “There’s not much about today I do believe,”
Tommy says.
    But he takes the six-gun I pass him,