"They say he's been to 3 towns in just as many weeks."

    "No."

    "I'm serious, Ellen, the papers just refuse to print anything. He's some sort of gun-fighter, but that just the thing. He ain't never drawn his gun. People that face off against him just end up, ya know, eerck."

    A man in a tight, gray suit sliced his thumb across his throat, miming to his wife so he wouldn't have to say it. The elderly couple continued on as the man in seat 2E slid further down with each word. It was true--well, enough to make the story worth telling. The train had made three stops, and with each one, 2E had found himself on the wrong side of someone.

    But that's where the similarities between the old man's story and his ended. 2E wasn't a gunslinger--not by any standard he could measure. If owning a gun made one a gunslinger, then plenty son'a-bitches on this raggedy pack of boxcars added to that count. And it wasn't that he chose not to draw the iron at his side--he couldn't. Not yet.

    So improvisations had to be made. Some were stealthy, like the spiked drink he'd passed down to the first guy before their duel. Others, well, sometimes 2E had to get a little rough. And that was just his line of work--getting rough with the right people. It was all toward something though, and when the time came, he'd know.

    A sales-girl passed by with her cart, hocking cigs and perishables. Many were kind enough to at least give her the time of day, but 2E just stared out at miles of empty as she stopped next to his seat.

    "Any for you, Mister? Cigs, tack, jerky? Mister?" It seemed like forever before she got the hint and moved on. Friends weren't something he could have, and acquaintances had a lower priority than that. All he needed, was to get to Pillock City at the end of the line. Then he could board another train and keep moving forward.

    The train had been out of station for 2 days now, between Colver's Prairie and Sump's Stop. From one to the other was a 4 day shot across the Big Empty, a wasteland of burning sands and starving life--ready and willing to make anything their next meal. 2E thought it best to at least try and get some shut-eye, as no doubt Sump's Stop would have just as much work for him as the last three towns.

    When he woke up, it was to the sound of gunfire. Someone was shouting, and others were hollering curses and prayers. It wasn't 2E's problem, so he just nestled down, hoping they'd pass him by.

    "Hey, this one's got a gun, boss." Shit, there went that chance. 2E turned, raising his hands above his head.

    "And 'this one' don't want trouble to boot." He moved slowly, knowing that robbers taking a train crossing the wasteland would be skittish. As he moved into the aisle, 3 men stood out, dressed in what could best be described as rags. Tattered shirts sprouted body hair and patches of sun-burnt flesh, but what made them were the pistols each held. Black-iron revolvers, spit-shined for the occasion.

    "Are you the law here?" There leader, bigger than the rest by half a foot, whistled as he spoke from behind the bandanna covering his mouth.

    "No, just a traveler, like the rest of these folk."

    "Take his gun, Jay." Jay looked a little bit more 2E's cut. Wiry, red-haired, and short, the 'bandit' moved up on him. His pistol shook with each bump in the track. When he was close enough, 2E stared the boy down, prepared more than any of them for what would come next.

    "Watch yourself boy, it don't like being touched." The next few seconds were a blur, a loud shriek deafening everyone in the carriage. The bandits, caught off guard, tried their best to focus on the source of the noise, but what few shots they fired trailed wide of home. With 3 swift cuts, 2E lashed out at the gun-hand of each one, an invisible slice taking their hands off at the wrist.

    As he holstered the gun Roy had taken, the noise fell silent, and what panic there was turned to shock as the bandits sobbed over their new amputations. It was their own fault for not leaving me be. It was a tad too much though, as he knew someone would ask him something stupid.

    "Who, who are you, Mister?" The man in his gray suit, eyes wide, tried his best to hide the plain fear in his voice. He trailed between 2E and the bandits, not sure whether to praise the 'hero' or start screaming for help anew.

    "No one, and I think it best you'd forget even that." 2E returned to his seat, pulled his wide-brimmed hat low, and focused on what he'd need to do at the next stop.

    "What is it you see out there?"

    Luna sat at the edge of the concrete wall as Derek stepped forward. Thirty feet down, tree tips swayed in the darkness, muddled green waves that lasted the long night. It had been three days since they saw the sun last, and the weather report said it'd be another three 'til sunrise.

    She turned around to his dim outline, a cut-out in front of the soft twinkle of the city beyond. "I see what we left behind--nature." She turned back again and wished she could run once more out there, like her parents had. Like she had.

    "Death you mean. That's all that's out there. A forest filled to the brim with life that wants us gone."

    Derek had been there when Luna came through the check-point. He was around the same age as her, so for lack of immediate alternatives, she had chosen to befriend him. It was still hard to know if it was a mistake. "Why are you up here then if you hate the view?"

    "The vid lot was boring. They're showing the same five films again tonight. Vines of Venus started and I thought it time to go." Derek always side-stepped the real questions. His attitude always tended toward sliding between the cracks, and his body had to shape to match. Sometimes Luna wondered if a single, strong breeze would knock him over the wall into the forest he detested.

    She looked out over the landscape. For some reason, the trees never grew above forty feet, leveling out in uniformity regardless of the terrain below. No one questioned it, just as no one moved beyond the wall.

    "I think I want to go see it." Tears began welling up, a reminder of memories she spent five years pushing to the back of her mind. There was a house, nestled beyond the boundaries of the forest, at the very edge. It was snug, or maybe it was that way when she was small. There was always a fire dwindling in the hearth, and constant stream of pictures above the mantle.

    "See what?" His voice oozed ignorance. She'd bunked with him, ate with him, but the veil never dropped between them. She was just some exotic thing, a nymph come through a portal into his world. How could he understand that there was--is--a world out there. Her world.

    "I'm leaving next week, heading back home. I think it's time." Luna raised her hand and stretched her fingers toward the horizon. It'd be out there. Somewhere.

    "You can't. They won't open the gate for people leaving. You have to stay here." He was dancing around it again. His words swirled, a vortex always pointing toward what he really wanted.

    "Is that all?" She was tired of playing. Luna needed him to say it before she could go.

    "The council--"

    "The council will let me leave. They knew it was a condition of mine in the first place. I brought them what they needed, they'd let me leave when it was time."

    "I--I," he stuttered, caught between the dazzle of the city and her. Her, enveloped in the embrace of a world he feared. A world that lacked even the basic trappings of his world.

    "Say it!" It was overdue, and he needed to understand.

    "I need you. You can't leave because I need you, Luna." He moved to the edge of the wall, standing next to her. Derek clenched his fists, a reaction he'd developed when there was nothing to hit. He couldn't fight the truth, and she knew it.

    "I'm sorry, but you need to make a choice too. I'm going, but you can come with me. I need to see it once more before I die. I need to stare into the void at the edge of the world." She stood, a wisp next to his form. "It will tell me what to do next."

    It wasn't as though we were afraid of them. When the first cases of fever and rashes broke, we, the village elders, were certain they were necessary. No one could stand by and simply allow our hamlet to vanish, not like the neighboring town had. We sent for them, and one night, after a hard rain and a deep fog rolled through the valley, they appeared. The masked men--doctors that would fight plague and rot.

    For certain, the village responded to their flock with discomfort. None of them seemed to sleep or eat, nor did any respond to polite conversation. The doctors came and went from the village, their black-beaked masks glinting under torchlight. They took the sick, those likely to die, whisking them from home and hearth to their nest. Screams echoed across the valley on nights they worked, but it was chalked up to the necessities of treatment. A few days would pass, and people returned from their house at the edge of town--miraculously cured. No one spoke of what happened there, or how the sickness was cured. It was the 'one rule,' each would say. And that would be that.

    But I had to know. Curiosity, a penchant for forbidden knowledge, drove me. I had dabbled in medicine myself, curing with leeches and the odd ether treatment, but I'd never dreamed that maladies such as this could be cured. So I sought the truth behind the doctors.

    What little sway I had with the other elders meant even less, for they just wanted to be rid of the whole mess. Each huddled inside at night and ignored the odd sounds. If it was fixed, that was good enough.

    Getting inside was a paltry task. A little guile and some dye made from local berries provided my cover. 'I have come down with the illness,' was what I told my servants. The sun slipped beyond the horizon when the doctors came, examined my symptoms, and took me like the rest. I went with a miller's daughter and a page-boy up the winding path to the silent silhouette of their make-shift ward. Aside from the occasion wheeze from the page-boy, it was though the doctors had robbed the world of sound.

    We entered and waited. And waited. Each query was met with silence, each request was waved away. As soreness nestled into my limbs, a doctor stopped and bade the page-boy away. What screams followed shook me free of the desire to sleep. Again a doctor came and took the miller's daughter. As her shrieks bounced down the hall, the only peace I could find was in reciting my prayers.

    I promised myself I would fight when they came for me, but the sandman claimed me far before I knew the doctor's touch.

    The dull glow of candles roused me to the strange surroundings of a bedroom. It was draped in heavy gray cloth, while I lay on a table as cold as ice. They were all around me, masks pointed at something of great interest that I couldn't make out. One had a knife in hand, the tip whetted in blood.

    I couldn't lift my head, but as the doctor brought the knife down, I knew why the others had screamed. A fire raged through my body, and with each stroke, a feeling of loss. They had cut me open for some purpose. These wicked creatures were taking something from me. Eventually, the pain overwhelmed me and I blacked out.

    When I awoke later, the miller's daughter and page-boy were there. Each nodded toward me, and I knew why we could not speak of this. These men, these creatures with the faces of birds had taken from us something precious to heal the illness inside. They had taken our souls.