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Got great hand-eye coordination? Here's the place to show it off. You can also upload your work (images, audio, and video) and view our fan art gallery (currently defunct, bug forum management to fix it).
This is also the forum for all of you blossoming Camus' to exercise your brain power by writing and posting fan fiction.
The man in black flees across the desert and the gunslinger follows.
The wind uhhms and ahhs indecisively as if it had forgotten what it were about to say, and the gunslinger walks a keen, steady pace, accompanied only by the sound of his boots scrunching and scuffling upon the wasted land. Were he not too pre-occupied to turn his head, nothing but plain, featureless desert-pan stretches out around him, as far as his eyes could have seen.
How long he has been out here, so far from the tiny, radiation bleached pockets of humanity that still manage to bleed an existance from the sterile landscape, he does not know, nor would he care had there been a soul to tell him. Time seems to be an irrelevant commodity in the endless emptiness, nothing more than a silly man's hobby.
Time. The gunslinger squints up into the parched, blue sky to gauge the position of the sun. If there is one thing he dare not forget, it is the deadly radiation that invisibly poisons the world after the Great War. To forget to take precautions against this malicious, background killer would be like forgetting to eat, drink or piss. He reaches inside his leather trench-coat into a pouch at his waist and finds a plastic packet. He fishes inside, finds and produces a fat red-and-white capsule and without slowing his pace, he wipes the dust from his cracked lips and takes it. He would like to swallow the capsule dry to avoid having the bitter, artificial taste foul his mouth for hours after, but he bites down upon the pill's fragile outer shell anyway, knowing full well that this is the best way - the survivor's way - of making sure his body will make the most of the drug.
The Rad-X tastes like shit, but the gunslinger still has his hair, his own teeth and his balls still work, so the pills are as valuable to him as the battered canteen of water which hangs at his left side. In idle moments, the gunslinger sometimes wonders what the canteen's origins could be, even though he's carried it for the best part of his life. It's something of an ancient relic and could even be pre-war, for all he knows. Certainly, the '13' embossed in large, cheerful numbering upon it's chipped and dented side isn't much of a hint. It is heavy with the clean, carefully filtered water that gently gurgles and bloops inside, but it's weight is counter-balanced by the gunslinger's .44 revolver that hangs at his right; it's dark, wooden grip protruding from it's holster at an easy, low angle. His gun is the only possession the man carries that links him to his past.
He had grown up alongside his mother, whom he had dearly loved. They lived amongst a nomadic gang of raiders, although his mother had preferred to think of their group as 'scavengers'. She had called him Joey, but he had hated that name and instead he answered to any of the many nick-names the grizzled, furrow-browed men who had come and gone from the group invented for him.
The gang was barely the same one day to the next. The dangerous but adventurous life-style appealed to a certain breed of wastelander and any time the raiders stopped for supplies in the seedier, more lawless settlements, there was no shortage of excitable, young types who wanted to try their luck out in the wasteland. These would-be raiders would go to great lengths in order to impress the gang into inviting them along and for the group, the displays of thievery, gun- and knife-play and outdoorsmanship provided welcome entertainment after months in the desert. For a good part of those who joined, though, it was a gamble too far, and they died living out their impetuous dream.
Any of the gang-members could have been the gunslinger's father. As far as he knew, his mother had been a part of the gang a long time before he was born. The gunslinger neither knew which of the gang-members had sired him and if he was honest with himself, he didn't care. Chances were his father had either died scavenging or had left the group when he decided that line of work no longer suited him. Instead, as a boy, the gunslinger had looked up to all of the members of the gang. In their own way, each of them had their own story or skills to pass on. They, in turn looked upon him as sort of good-luck charm or mascot. He had been brought up to be a working part of the group, trained to use guns and survive in the harshest reaches of the wasteland at an early age.
The gunslinger's earliest memories were of spending hours a day working at the raiders' temporary camps whilst the men were away 'gathering' as his mother had called it. As a child, he had been a fast and eager learner and he quickly became a valuable part of the raiders' operation. He would tend the fire; maintain the raiders' spare guns; forge crude, but effective bullets from spent shell-casings; prepare and check meat for the tell-tale signs of dangerous radiation poisoning; filter water and cook. As he got older, he would venture out from the camp and set snares for the various animals that roamed the raiders' territory. On occasions, some of the men would return from their various gathering sorties wounded by animal attacks or even knife and gunshot wounds. The boyhood gunslinger had learned how to tend these injuries and readily listened to the stricken men tell their adventurous tales as he nursed them back to fighting-fitness.
One clear night, whilst his mother lay asleep within the small cave outside which the raiders had set their camp, the members of the gang returned from a raid flushed with success and in a light-hearted, back-slapping mood. The leader of the group at the time was a large, bald-headed man named Ketsbaia. Usually a sullen, gruff character, even he smiled as two of the raiders proudly brought forth and dumped a small, but heavy looking wooden crate in front of the fire. The gunslinger remembers how he had looked from the shadowy edges of the camp and noticed the strange red-cross symbol on the box. An iron bar was duly produced, which the gang called a 'crow-bar' although none had known what a crow was, and this was used to lever the nailed-shut lid from the box. As the lid was thrown dismissively onto the fire, the men began to advance eagerly upon the box and there was some pushing and shoving as hands began to reach for it's contents.
"Enough!" Ketsbaia barked and he swaggered aggressively towards the box. Although the gang was usually held together by a loose sense of co-opertaion and comradeship, Ketsbaia would not hesitate to exploit his greater size and ruthlessness if he felt it necessary. The other raiders fell back into the shadows as their leader reached into the box and produced a small, colourful, plastic packet. The boy who would become the gunslinger started in surprise as Ketsbaia turned to him, smiling his unusually white and even teeth. Even now the gunslinger could remember the way Ketsbaia held the strange plastic pouch, as if it were the most precious thing on earth.
"Catch, boy!" Ketsbaia always called him 'the boy'; that was simply his pet name for him. The youngster rose from his half crouch to snatch the suddenly thrown packet out of the air.
"Look after them, boy. Those pills'll let you go places that'd kill a man if he went in without 'em."
The youngster took a few steps into the firelight as he examined the packet. Almost immediately he could tell that both it and it's contents were most definitely pre-war. "Rad-X", the bold, red lettering on the front boasted; not that the boy, who had never been taught even the basics of literacy, could read it. In the upper left-hand corner, a cartoon boy offered a cheery thumbs-up and despite himself, the youngster smiled back.
He looked up to see Ketsbaia's smooth-scalped, hawk-like face staring intently into his own.
"I meant it, boy." The gang leader gently rapped his knuckles on the youngster's head. "Ray-Dee-Ay-Shun. You know what that is, don't yer?" The boy nodded his head in mute reply.
"Good," Ketsbaia returned the nod, "because it'll kill yer, or at least screw you up so you won't be bringing any kids o' yer own into this god-forsaken world."
"Take one o' these pills if y' think yer going anywhere near it. It'll keep y' safe for one whole day - sun-up to sun-down."
Ketsbaia turned away, joined the other men and began issuing threats to stay away from the crate. In the meantime, the youngster carefully tucked the pills into his pocket and quietly went to join his mother in the cave. She awoke as he entered the low chamber and smiled as he lay down beside her. She put her arm around him and the two shared their warmth against the cold of the night.
The last thing the boy did after pulling his worn, but comfortable blanket over his shoulders before letting himself drift off to sleep was to check that his radiation pills were still safe.
The boy awoke the next day to sounds of determined activity coming from outside the cave. He blinked blearily and paused to take a mouthful of water to wash away the foul, dry taste in his mouth left by sleep before he emerged into the clear, thin-aired day.
The members of the gang were gearing up for a scavenge, that was plain to see. Ketsbaia, already prepared, stood overlooking the group with his usual air of confidence, but also with a palpable sense of eagerness as the gang made its' last preparations for what appeared to the boy to be a serious journey. The raiders were carrying more guns, ammunition, food and water than the boy had ever seen them with before, enough supplies for several weeks of serious foot-travel in the wastelands.
As the last bullets were thumbed into bandoliers and necessary equipment tethered to various backs and legs, Ketsbaia turned and picked up the wooden crate that the gang had 'gathered' the day before. Carrying it, he walked through the group, gruffly ordering each man to take three pouches. The boy watched the gang members greedily snatch their share from the crate and his hand automatically went to his pocket to check that his own pouch was still there.
Once the precious radiation medicine was distributed, Ketsbaia turned to the boy and deftly drew, and reversed a pistol so that it's handle faced the youngster.
"Take it, boy."
A nine-millimetre semi-automatic. The youngster knew the gun well; he had been responsible for keeping it in good order for Ketsbaia for as long as both cared to remember. The boy took the pistol and instinctively checked the safety-catch and made sure it was un-cocked as he had been taught, before tucking it into the waistband of his trousers.
Ketsbaia looked on approvingly as the boy went through the motions. "Good. It's a fine piece, that, boy. Pre-war, and in fine working order. I want it back when we return."
The gang leader paused to take one last checking glance over the men, who were waiting for his signal to move out. He turned back to the boy with a deadly serious look in his eye, "You'll be on your own, boy. You'll have to look after your mother, y'hear?"
The gunslinger remembers with a smile how eager he had been to prove to his mother, Ketsbaia and himself how ready he had been to face the harsh reality of the wastes alone; but his smile fades as he remembers the outcome of the raiders' scavenge.
The boy relished the time he had alone with his mother. When the men of the gang were hanging around the camp, they sometimes looked at his mother in a funny way. It was as if they were suffering from a hunger the boy did not understand and he was afraid that he could not protect her if they decided to take what they wanted. Now he had her all to himself, he hoped whatever Ketsbaia and the others were chasing would keep them away for a long time.
The days rolled by quietly but happily as the boy and his mother busied themselves at the camp fire-side. When they were not occupied with the camp's basic chores, his mother would tell him stories about the world before the war. The young gunslinger learned from her of an evil civilisation of beings called the Chine-Ease who lived in a land seperated from them by a huge field of water called an ocean. She told him how the Chine-Ease had built terrible flying machines like birds that had flown over the ocean and dropped weapons of unbelievable destructive power onto the world and it was these weapons that had turned the world into the wasteland. The boy looked puzzled at this; what had the world been like before the Chine-Ease had destroyed it? His mother said that she did not know very much about it, but legend had it that once upon a time there had been more people in the world than it was possible to imagine. In those times, people had lived together in huge cities which were much, much bigger than the likes of the settlements their gang had visited in the boy's short life-time.
As his mother told him of the vast towers of glittering glass and steel that the city-folk lived in, the boy dreamed of this world and wished dearly that he could have seen it for himself.
When Ketsbaia and the other men returned, it was night-time. The gunslinger remembers how he had awoke and smelt someting out of place before he had heard the group approaching, but his first thought was that he and his mother had been found by a rival raider gang. He had rushed from the cave, Ketsbaia's pistol at the ready. The boy almost jumped out of his skin when he heard the unfamiliar lowing of brahmin emerge from the darkness and he swiftly cocked the handgun and dodged into the shadows to the side of the fire.
The boy held his breath in the hope that he hadn't been betrayed by the firelight, but as the column of travellers grew close, he gave a sigh of relief as he recognised various faces of men who made up the gang. Thankfully, the boy un-cocked the pistol and returned it to his waistband.
But something was wrong. The returning gang had lost almost half it's number since it had set out from the camp however many days ago. Those who had made it back were not well, either. They staggered and lurched weakly into the camp and fell brokenly around the fire. The boy went to join them, but he went unnoticed by all except Ketsbaia, who still had the strength (or was it sheer determination not to show weakness?) to stand.
It was then that the boy realised what was making the gang ill; he had been taught the symptoms at an early age: radiation poisoning. As Ketsbaia looked at him, the boy noticed how unheathily grey the gang leader's skin was, even in the dim orange glow of the firelight. The flesh around his cheeks and eye-sockets was dark and sunken; he was a walking shadow of the man who had left the camp.
Ketsbaia took several unpleasant, wheezy breaths before he could speak. "Get... your mother, boy."
The boy immediately did so and ran back to the cave, deftly picking his way between the groaning bodies that lay around the fire.
The gunslinger remembers how his mother had listened with the calmness she always showed in times of danger, as he had told her how badly affected the gang members had been by the radiation. She responded without hesitating and went outside to Ketsbaia, who had allowed himself to fall to one knee.
The boy watched as the two spoke in low tones. He could see by the way that she tended to him that his mother felt some affection for Ketsbaia and that she was gravely worried by his sickness. The gang leader reached into a pocket in his jacket and handed her something; she nodded in reply and began walking swiftly back to the cave.
"Joey, boil some water." She said urgently to her son and without to pausing to ask why, the boy wordlessly went to the fire and began rigging the makeshift but competent iron frame that the gang used to hold pots of water over their fires for heating.
By the time the stand was assembled, and the precious, filtered water in the pot was coming to the boil, his mother had returned. She began to crumble a dried root that the boy did not recognise into the water; he guessed that the wierd-looking tubor was extremely rare and was what Ketsbaia had given to her. The parts of other plants went into the strange potion too, some of which, Xander root, Broc flower, the boy knew grew locally; others, he had never seen before.
Finally, his mother decided the brew was ready and she told the boy to scoop the infused mix into the tin cups the gang drank from and dish them out. He moved from one stricken figure to another, handing out the steaming cups as he went. He was horrified at the state the men were in; some had lost hair or even a few of their teeth. Many had dark stains running down their chins where blood had flown, coughed-up from whatever lesions the radiation had caused inside their bodies. The boy shuddered to imagine. Some of the gang members were so gone to sickness and exhaustion that he had to gently shake them and offer the cup to their lips in order that they could drink. He watched in vain hope as they drank; how could a few boiled roots save men who were so close to death?
The boy moved to the next man, who had managed to prop himself weakly against the face of the rock outside. The boy knew him as Keegan; a character who had joined the group when it had passed through the trading town of Lancaster's Claim only a few weeks before the gangs' last journey. Ye gods, what a dump Lancaster's Claim had been! Keegan had been the worst of a bad bunch of mal-contents, jet-heads and boozers that had been desperate to escape from their dull lives in the town and join an outfit like the raiders' gang that would be their ticket out of there. Keegan had won Ketsbaia's calculating approval with an arrogance and ruthless self-confidence the other townsmen lacked.
During his first scavenging missions with the gang, whatever it was that Keegan had said or done had a profound effect upon the other members: they feared him. When the men were at the camp, the boy noticed how no-one but Ketsbaia would meet Keegan's eye. This seemed to suit Keegan, who kept his distance from the other members and contributed nothing to the cameraderie that bound the gang together.
Keegan sat slumped like a rag doll and jerked with a mucus-soggy cough as the boy approached. Although his body was far gone with the radiation sickness, Keegan glowered balefully at the boy as he offered the cup to him. The man snatched the cup and drank greedily, screwing his face up at the taste of the brew and tossing the empty vessel to the fire once he was done. The boy hesitated in case there was more he could do for the man.
"What the fuck're you lookin' at, boy?" Keegan drawled and narrowed his eyes in suspicion. The youngster frowned and shied away from the sick man's unexpected outburst. Keegan also started back in mockery of the boy's move. "Son of a... you still here?"
Keegan's fist lashed out, striking the boy firmly in the mouth. Despite the man's sickness, he was able to deal a vicious blow and the boy slumped to the dirt behind him.
The gunslinger bitterly remembers how sudden and crucially significant the next few moments were. From behind him, the boy heard his mother cry out in rage and he turned his head to see her pull a knife he had never known about from her boot. She made to make a lunge for Keegan, her teeth bared ferally, but Ketsbaia, who sat by her side, was quicker. His atrophied hand shot out and grasped her by the arm as she rose; the gang leader was watching the boy very carefully. The boy rose to his elbows, fully aware that Ketsbaia expected him to take events into his own hands.
But to the gunslinger's shame, there was no showdown, no great battle of wills. The boy merely picked himself up, returned to the fire and began refilling the tin cups for another round of his mother's healing brew. From the corner of his eye, he noticed Ketsbaia's disapproving frown and the boy was glad the dark of the night was able to hide his humiliation.
The following morning, the boy awoke on his own in the cave. His mother had stayed awake for the rest of the night, tending to each member of the radiation-weakened gang, even Keegan, with her herbal brews and kind words. The boy emerged into the day and stole a worried glance at Keegan, who was still propped up against the side of the cave, but was now asleep. Then he noticed the brahmin that grazed lazily at the scrubby grasses that grew at the edge of the camp. The docile, twin-headed cattle were what had given off the strange, musty, manure smell the boy had detected last night before the gang had arrived. The beasts were still tethered to the crude sleds that the raiders had built to drag their scavenged stash back to the camp.
The boy briefly forgot his troubles as he marvelled at the scale of the horde. There were two sleds, each of them big enough that two brahmin were needed to pull them. Both were loaded high with various crates and fascinating, tarpaulin-covered oddities.
"Come here, boy." Ketsbaia's voice was thin and cracked. The boy turned and was shocked to see the state the gang leader was in. Whether Ketsbaia's condition had deteriorated during the night, or the daylight showed the full ravages of his sickness more clearly, the boy found it hard to decide. The gang leader's bald head accentuated his near-skeletal appearance and he now looked as if he would find rising from his crumpled position at the fire-side impossible.
The boy went to Ketsbaia's side hesitantly, deeply conscious of his lower lip, which had swollen where Keegan's fist had landed. To the boy, Ketsbaia's eyes still seemed to hold the disappointment that had haunted him the night before.
"The gun, boy... give it to me."
The boy dropped his gaze from Ketsbaia's steely eyes; he had lost the gang leader's trust and didn't deserve to carry the pistol any more. He drew the gun sullenly, checked the safety one last time, reversed it and pressed the handle into Ketsbaia's claw-like, outstretched hand.
Ketsbaia indicated the brahmin sled nearest to them with the barrel of the handgun.
"Fetch the..." He broke into a fit of ragged coughing and swallowed wetly before he continued, "fetch the hide case from the front."
The boy walked gloomily to the sled. One of the brahmin lifted one of it's heads, seemed to sense the boy's self-pity and lifted it's tail to deposit a steaming pile of manure as he approached.
The case was small and sat apart from the other bulky crates. The leather that covered it was of a type the boy did not recognise; it was finer, beautifully preserved and nothing like the cured brahmin hide that wastelanders used to make a good deal of their clothing. The boy carried it back to Ketsbaia and the gang leader managed to ask the boy to open it.
The gunslinger remembers how the two, oiled, brass clasps that held the box shut were exquisitely crafted and how he briefly had trouble figuring out how to work the mechanisms. The boy keenly felt Ketsbaia's eyes on him as he opened the case.
Inside was the tool that would provide the gunslinger with his livelihood: it's handle made of age-old wood and it's long, black barrel glistening with unknown years of excellent care, it was the biggest handgun the boy had ever seen.
"Take it out, boy." Ketsbaia croaked.
The boy lifted the handgun from the case, but he had to grasp the dark handle with both hands to stop the gun's weighty muzzle drooping. He noticed a row of characters punched along the length of the barrel: SMITH & WESSON .44, but to him, they meant nothing.
"I want... you to have it... and this, too." The gang leader unbuckled his bandoliered gun-belt. The boy moved to help Ketsbaia, but with a groan of pain, the man was able to shift his weight himself and pulled the gun-belt away from his body.
"I don't understand..." The boy began, but Ketsbaia shook his head,
"All you need... to know, boy," the gang leader was finding it increasingly hard to speak, "is that this gun was already old even before the war. It's a regular an-teek... y' hear?"
The boy didn't comprehend the word, but he nodded his head anyway. Ketsbaia's usually sharp eyes began to glaze over and he stared up into the morning sky.
"The pills... weren't enough, boy!" He grasped at the boy's arm, his chest heaving desperately. "The rads were too strong... we went in too far..."
The gang leader's head slumped forward onto his chest. The boy moved closer and put one hand on the man's shoulder, but the sickness had got the better of him.
The boy wept bitterly for Ketsbaia as the rest of the gang lay around him, unable to see his body shake with silent grief. His mother was away from the camp at the time of the gang leader's death, gathering more of the ingredients she had used in her remedy. By the time the boy had risen from Ketsbaia's side hours later, more of the group had died. As it hit him that others were dying, the boy ran from one prone body to another, shaking feverishly at the flaccid-limbed corpes that did not murmur or groan in response and pleading with them to awaken.
Some of the men whose grey faces stared lifelessly back at him had joined the gang fairly recently before it's fatal journey and most of these he barely knew by name. But some of the group's best and longest-surviving members had also succumed to the deadly radiation, which had shown no respect for the wasteland know-how or skirmish-hardiness that had kept them alive where others had perished.
Blake had been scavenging with the gang as far back as the gunslinger could remember. When the boy had been barely old enough to tend the camp-fire, Blake had suffered an injury during an encounter with wasteland critters that had left him unable to scavenge for several weeks. Whilst his mother patiently nursed the man back to health, the boy had listened whilst Blake told jokes, saving the cruder ones until his mother was out of ear-shot. The gunslinger smiles and realises he cannot remember a time since then when he had laughed so hard.
As the boy approached Blake, the man was on his side; curled up, so he faced the fire. With a shudder, the gunslinger remembers how he had put his hand on Blake's shoulder and lightly, then more forcefully, shaken him. When the gang-member failed to respond, the boy pulled at his shoulder until the man rolled onto his back. Blake's eyes stared unblinking into the thin blue of the afternoon sky and his arm flopped outwards onto the dust, as dead as it's owner.
The boy started back with a gasp of shock and horror and from behind he heard his mother cry in dismay. She had returned and was at Ketsbaia's side, both hands clasped over her mouth, her collected roots, leaves and flowers dropped and scattered about. The boy called to her, urgently shouting that she should help the other men. It took a few moments for her to gather herself, but shaken and white-faced, she began tending to the members of the gang who were still alive.
By the time the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, casting a chilly, dark blanket over the deathly scene, the gang-members who had survived were becoming more stable. The herbal potion was showing signs of having taken miraculous effect; the sick mens' flesh had begun to take on a much healthier hue and they slept more easily, breathing more regularly and deeply.
But the growing contrast between the alive and dead of the gang brought home to the boy just how great their loss had been. Of the twenty or so men that had left the camp at the beginning of the journey in such optimisitc spirit, only four were left. Two of them were fairly new faces to the boy; he had learned their names, Croyff and Kennedy, whilst tending to them during the day, their strength and willingness to talk returning by each hour. Another, Robson, had been a member even before Ketsbaia had joined. His quiet confidence and familiarity with the wasteland had made him a key part of the gang's operation. He was a vast figure of a man and it was little surprise that he was amongst the survivors.
The fourth man was Keegan.
Whilst the four men and his mother slept, the boy stood over Keegan, watching the man grow stronger with rest and hating him for it. The radiation had taken Ketsbaia, but left this vicious rat. Where was the sense in that? It occured to the boy that he should not be wishing ill of Keegan, but he just felt angry and tired. His thoughts burning at the injustice of the deaths that had befallen the gang, he retired to the cave for the night.
The boy made sure he had been awake before his mother and the gang-members the following morning. During the night, he realised that during the horror of the day before, he had forgotten about the gun that Ketsbaia had given to him when first the gang leader, and then other members of the gang began to die. So as the sun began to creep over the horizon again, the boy stole across the camp-site to Ketsbaia's body, glancing furtively at Keegan, who was thankfully alseep in the same position he had sat in since his return. The boy closed his eyes in silent relief when he saw the gun-case lying as he had left it, next to the gang leader's corpse. He gathered the case up and took it to the safety of the cave, where he could hide it.
Once back inside the cave, the boy set the case down and reverently opened it. He took out the vast handgun with one hand, and checking that his mother was still asleep, he closed one eye and took aim at a group of rocks a few hundred feet from the cave's opening. He found that if he concentrated, he could muster enough strength in his young arm to keep the gun from wobbling too much.
The boy's mother began to stir, mumbling something inaudible in her sleep. Realising that he would be in trouble if he was found playing with an unfamiliar gun, the boy swiftly returned it to it's case which he hid on a small ledge at the back of the cave which he covered up with a stack of loose rocks.
By the afternoon, the rest of the gang had awoken. It was becoming clear that the four men were out of danger, thanks to the herbal potion that the boy's mother continued to feed them with. As the men dozed in the gentle heat of the midday sun, the boy sought solitude on the ridge of the rocky hill that the cave was formed in, using the brow of the outcropping as a screen between himself and the recovering gang. Once again the large, mysterious handgun was in his hand.
The boy had never seen such an old firearm before. The guns the boy was familiar with all had similar workings to the semi-automatic Ketsbaia had given to him before the fateful trip that had cost the gang-leader his life. The ammunition for the gang's semi-autos was held in the handle, fed into the breech by a spring. Once a bullet was fired, it's empty shell-casing was ejected from the gun, leaving it primed to fire again immediately. But the boy's revolver had been designed and made many years before the semi-automatics. He had worked out that it's bullets, had there been any loaded, were put in the strange, six-cylindered drum which rotated as the gun's hammer was pulled back manually to cock it.
He toyed with the hammer absent-mindedly, as the events of the past days began to replay in his mind. Why had Ketsbaia given the gun to him? The boy knew the gang-leader had been disappointed that the youngster had not made a stand when Keegan had struck him. Surely that was the reason Ketsbaia had asked for the nine-millimetre back so soon. Had he expected the boy to use the gun on the sickened raider?
The boy's thumb relaxed on the gun's hammer, which closed on the dry chamber beneath it. Perhaps he had misunderstood Ketsbaia; maybe the gang-leader had not expected so much of him. The gun was an an-teek, after all; Ketsbaia could have given it to any of the other gang-members, but chose the boy instead. The boy remembered the man's dying words:
"...This gun was already old even before the war..."
The boy had to choke back a sob as he remembered the gruff tone of Ketsbaia's voice with powerful clarity. It didn't matter why the gang-leader had given the gun to him; he owed it to the man to honour his memory by taking care of the gift he had given him with his last ounce of strength.
