What follows is an alternative to that scene. I wish someone would tell which one they like better. Maybe I will rewrite and blend them together into a new scene/chapter
A country
road out in eastern California running along the slopes of the Sierra Nevada’s,
the land stretching away from the mountains moderately flat to the naked eye.
The road is gravel and dirt, dust is on everything that stands above it. Waist
high grasses and loose scrub grow all along the road. There are clumps of trees
in the distance, squat and gnarled brown and ugly. A old speed limit signs
whistles in the wind coming down from the mountains, its post leaning a little
to the left. Its shadow falls across the dusty white Ford Impala that is parked
on the side of the road. Another car sits beyond it, a beige Toyota compact off the shoulder in among the
high grasses. Smoke coming out from its dented hood rising into the cloudless
sky, a bird wheeled around and flew eastward.
Maggie held
her left arm as she observed all this. The Ford was her car, her dad having
given it to her in ‘75. The wind whipped her hair about her head as she stood
committing her surroundings to memory. The silence on the road after the wind
had passed became ominous. The silence of the other two with her pulled her
attention back to them instead of the vast vista of the desolate land.
The man she
knew as Mars stood a few feet from where she stood across the road from the two
vehicles. He was tall and thin, his muscles compact and tight, showing through
the white v-neck tee her wore over his chest coming down to the faded denims
lent to him by her brother Sam. Sam’s boots were on his feet. Mars stood facing
the other man, his arm up and out holding the Eagle Scout pistol, Sam had
picked up in Halleyville last summer at the gun show. Maggie looked from the
gunmetal gray barrel to the man who stood still looking at them in his blue
business suit, light blue shirt and bright blue jacket and slacks, his black
loafers hidden by the grass.
The other
man, name unknown glared at Mars as his wide flat face dripped blood from where
he must have hit his head in the crash. It seemed like only minutes had passed
since their two cars had clashed some way up the road. The struggle had ended
when the Toyota
had overheated and careened off the road and hit a ditch, out of sight behind
where he now stood. The man and the Toyota
had hunted them now for two days. Now he stood there silent and still, his gun-
that looked like a zap gun from a toy store- pointing at the ground. As if
remembering that he still had it, he let it drop to the ground.
The man’s
features would not hold in her mind, the moment she made up her mind he was
Italian she would glance back at him and he would look Chinese. He had black
hair like Mars, but she could not determine much about it save that it covered
his head. It was crazy, but the moment she decided it was straight, she would
glance back and it would look curly. His dull black eyes held constant as he
focused on the gun pointed at his chest. They stayed the same.
Then Mars spoke up for the first time since he had yelled
something unintelligible at the man stopping him in his tracks leading them to
this “Mexican” standoff.
“Why did you come here?”
Mars’
accent is thick, foreign, his English spoken like he had just learned it and
was using it for the first time. Maggie looked from the man back to him looking
into his gray eyes and noticing the tight lines on his smooth face. He looked
like he was new to his skin, it was too clean and white no blemishes or
wrinkles. She idly tried again to place his age as the man stood silent to his
question.
“Why did
you try to kill me?”
The other man says nothing. Maggie
looks over her should at him. He looked back at her then at Mars. He smiles,
his teeth are razor sharp like fangs or sharklike. Maggie gasped, the shudder
running through her entire body. She struggled against the urge to be violently
ill. He shrugged and spoke at last.
“Walker . You have a death sentence back home.”
“I chose exile- which is worse than
death.”
“To some, Walker , not to all.”
“And the some- who would they be?”
“It is not for me or you too know.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
The man shrugs again and raises his
arms wide. Mars shoots him. The man falls backward into the grass as the impact
blows him off his feet. The explosion of blood the hollow point ejects out of
his back as it exits spreads out over the grass as his body drops in slow
motion. Maggie stares in horror at what has just happened.
“No! What are you doing?”
Maggie runs into the grass, drops
down next the man’s body. The man’s blood is now flowing from the hole in his
chest, his body convulsing as he dies.
“You shot him!” She yells.
“Yes.”
“You shot
him, you sonnava-bitch!”
“Yes.”
Maggie tries to stop the blood, but it is obvious it is
futile as his blood flow slows then ebbs and his body stops shaking. There is
so much blood, She stares for several seconds as the intelligence fades from
the man’s eyes. She looks down at her shirt covered with the man’s blood.
“Aren’t you
going to help me? He’s dying.” Knowing it was a dumb thing to say.
“I wouldn’t
have shot him if I wanted to help him.”
“He’s dead.
He’s dead. You killed him. You sonnava-bitch.” Her face is wet, she wipes at
her eyes with back of her bloody hands.
“Yes, that
was my purpose.”
“Why?”
The agony
is in her throat, she can’t breathe; she needs to get far away.
“It was him
or us.”
“You’re crazy.
Him or us- I’m stranded in the middle of nowhere with a raging psycho.”
Mars looks at her, then turns away
and walks to the other side of the road and squats down. She notices for the
first time that his tee shirt is inside out and maybe back to front.
She takes deep breaths, filling her straining lungs, the
sweet smell of blood filling her senses.
She hastily wiped her hands on the dead man’s clothes,
smearing the blue suit with the blood.
She stood up and look back at the shark-tooth man lying in the
bloody grass staring at the sun.
She got up
and crossed the road and sat down next to Mars squatting on his heels.
He looks trouble and is chewing at the grass the way her
brother Sam does when he thinking deeply. She wondered what he would say when she
told him about his new friend here shooting a man down in cold blood with his
gun.
“All right, I’m sorry, you’re not a
psycho, but you’re so… so completely merciless.”
“No, not
merciless just efficient.”
“What?”
“Efficient.”
“Efficient!”
she began to laugh.
“You call that efficient. You just
shot a man down in cold blood and you have the nerve to call it efficient!”
“Yes. If my father had had his way,
then that would have been merciless, but instead I was built to be different- a
soldier template, so it was efficient.
“Did you
just say built? Like designed, like a machine?”
“Yes, I was
built at birth to be the perfect soldier.”
“Built at birth?” She squinted
against the sun, the thought making her head hurt. “Oh like a clone!”
“No.” He
looked at her.
“No?”
“No, after conception my father
approached a- um a doctor, no that’s not a right. A scientist of genetics- but
is also a doctor. He regrouped, no maybe rematched or enhanced or recombines my
matrix within my mother’s womb and added and separated certain chains. All this
to make me the perfect commander and strategian. Our people call it templating
and it is forbidden to all save the elite.”
“Wait, your
father had you genetically altered to become a template? A Soldier? You just said commander not
soldier”
She leaned back and used her hands
to push her mousy brown hair from her eyes. She felt the grin tighten on her
face. Mars shrugged his shoulders, the shirt tag dragging against his throat- a
woman’s throat- no Adam’s apple- weird. He looked at her with a quizzical
expression.
“Yes- no. I mean he did have me
genetically altered, but he wanted me to be templated to become a general, not
a soldier. His political rivals apparently bribed the genetics doctor to make
me a genetic mistake.”
“So, you’re
just a screw up?”
She laughed
at the image the thought put in her mind, but it was erased as the man in the
bloody grass came back into it. She took a breath and looked back at Mars who
looked at her caught in surprise and it could be amusement. His eyes widened
then softened, a fire seemed to light up in his eyes.
“No. The genetics-doctor had his
own agenda. He templated me to become some kind of super soldier. So now I am
just efficient.”
“So, what
you’re saying that soldiers are efficient and generals are merciless?”
“Yes.”
“And, what you just did was because
you were born or templated or designed that way?”
Maggie held up her hands and accented the template remark to
emphasize her point. Mars held up the toy gun looking thing, inspecting it
carefully before repling.
“Yes.”
“That’s crazy. I mean that means
your whole life’s been crazy. You can’t just go around killing people
arbitrarily- like that. You just can’t.”
Mars checked the sights, then moved a knob and a switch,
then pulled a wire and plugged it back in a different slot. The Gun hummed to
life. He smiled in satisfaction.
“No? Why not?”
“Because
it’s inhuman. We don’t go around killing people we don’t like.”
She sat up suddenly and stood,
dusting her own jeans off and staring at her bood stained hands. She looked
down at him as him placed the gun down and pulled the scout out and racked the
slide. Then smiled at it like an old friend or good hound dog, he ran his hand
over it like he was petting it.
“I don’t
kill people just because I don’t like them”
“Well, what do you call that? You
obviously did not like him!”
She waved her arms wide, partly stretching in the warm
light. He looked up at her unperturbed by the glare of the sun.
“Efficient.”
“Oh no, you
aren’t going to start that again. No way Bud.” She paused and walked in a slow
circle before deciding to try a different tact.
“Did you like him?”
Mars was silent as he considered her question. He shoved the
pistol in the back of his jeans the way Sam had shown him. He picked up the
space gun and stood before replying.
“No.”
“So you killed him, because you
didn’t like him.” She stabbed him in the chest with her finger. He looked down
at it and then into her eyes.
“No. He
would have killed us given enough of a chance. Besides I haven’t killed you.”
The answer caught her off guard as it sunk in. She gulped,
the pit in her stomach churning against the sudden fear. Then she noticed his
smile.
“What? You don’t like me. ” She plucked at his
tee.
“That
depends.”
His free hand came up to push her mousy brown hair away from
her face.
