Chapter 5

Finding the red bricks steps to the armorer's shop wasn't hard. The hard volcanic rock and dirt from the eruption had buried the former city to a height of about eight feet. In a few places, enterprising shopkeepers had tunneled out entrances to the original building doorways, but most just added either steps up to the new entrance, in what would have been the second floor of the old building. Joe's Armory was such a place. The old glass of the iron framed building was long gone and his walls had been replaced by dark brick, kiln hardened from the volcanic soil that covered the land as far as the eye could see, and much, much further. His door was made of good steel and I had to bang for a few minutes before anyone would answer.

"You the Witchman?" A high pitched voice squeaked from behind his fortress wall.

"Probably." I admitted. The door opened a fraction of an inch and a short weasel-looking sort of man peeked from behind it to give me a look over. With a grunt, he released his numerous other bolts, latches and chain hooks to allow me entrance in to his shop. The lighting was dim, all from oil lanterns scattered around the large display room, but from what I could tell, I'd indeed come to the right place. Hundreds of rifles were aligned in rows along the walls, and in several ancient glass display cases at least an equally large number of pistols were on display.

Even my first casual glance at the quality of the items convinced me that this was the right place to find my needed long-range rifle. Every weapon had been obviously and immaculately repaired and restored to original 'as-new' condition. His prices were indeed high, probably insanely so ... but as this was the first real weapons emporium that I'd ever found myself in, I didn't have much to compare his prices with. Besides, I had good silver ... and not so good silver, and I was quite in the mood to spend some of it, especially a good chunk of the later. Bags of silver can get heavy.

"The mayor said you'd cut me a sweetheart of a deal!" I said right off the bat, just to rile the guy up a little. There wasn't a chance that mere political goodwill was going to earn me anything here.

"That remains to be seen." The little pismire muttered. "Just what do you want, what do you have to trade, and how much silver do you have?"

"I've enough." I growled, giving a sniff of displeasure at being pushed. The room was large and very musty smelling. My little paranoid gun seller obviously didn't like much if any, fresh air in his lungs.

I started to undo my trade pack, and dumped out the few rusty pistols and the pair of ill-kept hunting rifles I'd just taken from the cannibal scouts. A miserable collection and the little weasel let me know so in very uncertain terms.

"This is crap, crap and more crap!" He angrily shouted, slamming each weapon onto the countertop so hard that I thought the ancient glass would break, but it held ... barely. "Take this shit over to Roger's general store. Let him spend the one hundred of so repair hours that it will take to make this ancient shit even barely functional! I thought you were looking for quality?!"

"I am." I sighed, and slapped a roll of the modern issue trade dollars onto the table next to him and then with blinding speed pulled my Harry Blackhawk Special .44 pistol up to his nose and the tip of the barrel inside of his left nostril, just to get his complete and undivided attention.

"What my trade value lacks, I can make up for in silver. Get your long nose out of your ass or I'll see how many buggers I can pick from your nose. Just when did you last bathe anyway?"

"Never! It's unhealthy, just like the sun! Avoid it at all cost! Your credit collateral appears to be quite good, so how can I help you Sir on this fine day?"

"Don't push it. I haven't shot anyone in over an hour and I'm already getting irritable! What I need is a top-notch long range sniper rifle, with a good scope. In case you haven't heard, there's about a thousand insane bloodthirsty cannibals just south of here, and I bet that you'll go into the pot first ... either as the mushroom dish, or some sort of exotic albino white meat that they have yet to sample. In either case, I need something to even the odds a bit, and shoot down a few hundred of the dire-rat fuckers before they gather up their cook pots and head up here."

"Alright, point taken. You need something really good then, a proper masterpiece of workmanship. Military grade ... and with sufficient available ammo to start a long range-war and hopefully win it. Lucky you! I might have just the thing! I've also got a Barrett, but that's overkill and a heavy fucker to haul around on a horse. Murder on running cars but I haven't seen one of those in years. It's also pointless if you ever want to take a live prisoner!"

The small but now highly animated man now darted around the store, looking carefully in turn at several dozen rifles, but it was awhile before he found just the right thing.

"I've got a couple of Remington M700's," he excitedly said, "one in .300, and this one an Army M25 fires military grade 7.62 ammo, semi-automatic with a twenty round magazine. The x51 cartridge is almost identical in size to your .308's, in your lever-rifle, and this gun could fire both rounds, fairly safely in semi-auto without jamming ... usually. This baby was found in an old National Guard vault, still factory sealed without a spec of rust on it. I've taken it apart, given it a good cleaning with fresh oil and fired four test rounds dead center into a target five full blocks away. The Bausch & Lomb 10x scope should let you hit targets at least half a mile away, but this is a heavy hitting bullet and it starts to have a bit of a drop-off after a hundred yards or so, so you will need to carefully learn to judge distance and adjust the scope for the windage, if you're wanting to reach out and touch these people properly."

Just a few minutes of handling and inspecting the weapon convinced me that this was exactly what I needed. It felt right in my hands.

Taking it upstairs to the roof, I was shown a few targets mounted upon some of the old buildings around town, at various ranges. With a little instruction on the use of the sight, I fired off two rounds at each of the five targets and nailed them dead center each time."

"Bam! Headshot!" My eager little gun seller shouted, certain that he had made a sale. Indeed he had. I wanted, yearned even to take this gun out into the wilderness and start rehabilitating a goodly number of bandits. But as we got down to haggling, I found that we still had some business left to conduct.

"Look..." He said. "This is one of the finest guns I own, and the best long range rifle I've ever had available for sale. Even with your trade, such as it is, you're going to need to cough up a lot of silver, more than just that one roll of twenty-five, or even three of them. Could I interest you in a trade for your Harry Blackhawk Special .44? I know it fits your image, the avenger of the desolate west and all that, but that's a seriously cool revolver and I would definitely have a hot-to-trot buyer for it! I'll even throw in a good Colt Army issue 1911 as a replacement! You really ought to have an automatic pistol anyway instead of revolvers, and preferably one with an extended clip for hosing down the cannibal guys in droves, because they definitely run in packs!"

He had a point about the automatic, but 'old west' image or not I just couldn't give up the scoped long barrel revolver. Like the sniper rifle and my old repeater, it just felt right in my hands.

One hundred and twenty five new trade silver dollar later, I loaded the M25 in its heavy leather gun tote bag and strapped it behind my saddle. I was much poorer in cash, but at least I had spent the modern debased silver instead of my good old antique silver.

In addition, I had a virtually 'as-new' 1911 Nighthawk Custom .45 pistol, with extended 10 round clips, and another smaller compact Glock 36.45 pistol to replace the .38 in my right boot. I wasn't sorry to see my old .38 be added into my pile of traded weapons. It didn't have that right feel, and every time I held it I remembered firing it into the unsuspecting witchhunter, while he cuckolded my so-called wife right in front of me. These nice new pistols did have those old bad memories.

That was another disturbing question that I wanted an answer to. I could sense malice and murderous thoughts around me and I knew the instant before a bullet was fired at me, and where it would go. Somehow, the previous witchhunter did not share that skill, or perhaps, while he was balls deep inside of Nancy, his secret voice of warning didn't work. I really wanted to know the answer, without finding out the hard way!

My short gun selling friend didn't sell holsters and shoulder harnesses, but he recommended a leatherworker whose shop was just around the corner. Inside there, I found a suitable gunbelt with holster for my big .45, and a shoulder harness holster that would fit the Ithaca shotgun across my back, with the handle in easy reach of my right hand. Terrified at even the sight of me in his shop, the poor leathercrafter would only accept a couple of my smaller silver coins in payment, and he closed up shop for the day the second I walked out of the store, so he could enjoy his postponed nervous breakdown. I had wanted some larger and better saddlebags for Black, but I decided to get those from another store, preferably one with a less nervous owner.

Running out of useful errands to do, I decided that I needed to track down next the legendary female witchhunter. I had never before heard rumors that there were woman magicians as well, and I was more than a bit curious. On the other hand, I wasn't exactly an old school friend, or from wherever witchhunters learned to do their jobs. As I had gotten my position rather irregularly, in fact via murder, I soon decided that my curiosity could wait and I'd find a different saloon to have a drink in before heading off to find her.

It didn't quite work that way. My counterpart, sensing me undoubtedly as I walked by, came outside in the street to meet me, stopping me from just passing onwards.

"I've been waiting for you, lad, and we really need to talk ... privately."

I let out a deep sigh and nodded. I was trapped and she knew it. I followed her inside of the hotel, and up a flight of stairs to her room. She had the last one down the hall, even though most of the other rooms seemed empty. I guessed she wanted to make sure that there would be no surprises and a foe could be sensed early, before reaching her room.

Once inside her room, which was fair nearly a small suite, with a small intimate dining room and a private bath, she locked the door and turned to smile at me. It was a fairly evil sort of smile, but my senses didn't detect any immanent danger.

Slowly, she unbuttoned her black leather vest, and very much to my surprise she unbuttoned her shirt beneath it, revealing a rather nice pair of breasts. Wordlessly, she pressed herself against me and we kissed and a few minutes later we were both naked or nearly so on her large soft bed.

"We do need to talk ... but later." She whispered and smiled, and for once I wasn't in the mood to argue with anyone.

It was common knowledge in my old village that witchunters had a rather highly stimulated libido and this lady was no exception. She came near to wearing me out over the next three days, despite my own amazing restorative powers of recovery. She was just insatiable and a wild lioness in bed who never seemed to need breaks for food or rest, let alone any sleep. The sheets were a very stained and sticky mess, but she couldn't have been happier. Somehow, during brief interludes, we found the time to talk.

"Who is the girl that you're thinking about?" She asked once while she was sucking my cock willingly back to life after my eighth or ninth ejaculation.

"You can read thoughts? That's a nice trick. She's a town girl that I met a few days east of here. A widow ... had to kill her husband and child — witchtaken. Left her behind and I'm wondering now if that was an unsafe decision, with all of the raiders about. I'd heard a few rumors, but nothing like this mess I seem to have ridden into."

"Just surface thoughts, more images than words. Very close range only, and really I have to touch the person to get much of anything useful. You were thinking about her lips sucking your cock right now, apparently she was quite good. I guess you didn't leave her in mourning for very long!" She giggled and took me again deeply into her throat.

"It was her idea, actually. She wanted to show her appreciation for curing her and she got the impression that I wouldn't take too much advantage of her. Back in my old hometown, we'd had local problems with witchunters being a bit forceful about selecting their recreation. Would you say that sort of experience was normal?"

"Yes and no. You're very much on the gentler and more considerate end of the scale. After a while, most of the men get to thinking that they're demi-gods on earth, and ought to have their own way with the local mortal girls. There aren't many witchunter women, girls with the talent or hint of magic seem to get called into other directions. They tend to ride the menfolk rather hard as well, I'm certainly no exception. I think I've worn out close to twenty local lads in the days before you rode into town."

"So, all witchunters tend to be oversexed?"

"Aye, and it nearly gets worse as your powers grow. They seem to work in much of the same part of the brain, or that's what an old wise witchhunter elder told me once back in school."

"Ah, so there is a school. Do they teach becoming a witchhunter?"

"Of course not silly." She giggled and gave my tender cockhead a bit of a bite. "Think of it as an orphanage from the rest of the human race. Often the ability starts to appear as a child, and the witchhunters will take us from our homes and families to the school, near old West St. Louis where they try to teach us enough to manage or control our talents, and give us enough of a civic purpose to ride out into the wastelands of the west to help where we can, and gather yet more children for the task."

"Well, I seemed to have come upon my talents very suddenly and very late. In fact, I never had any magic at all until last month!"

"It happens." She shrugged and climbed on top of me to ride my cock once more. "No one knows why or how. Sometimes the power just leaps from one witchhunter into the body of another, as if it has chosen a better mortal husk for its carrier."

"I think that is exactly what has happened to me!" I exclaimed, while trying hard not to shoot another load of cum into her already overly saturated cunt.

"I'm sure of it too. You killed Justin, who was sort of raping your wife. He'd probably used his mental powers on her to want to be taken and used ... and to make you watch and suffer. He was an insufferable prick and no one will miss him. He was really more of a rogue bandit on the loose than a true witchhunter. You've already done more actually work than he's done in years. Now what was it you said earlier about healing her? That's a rare talent."

"She had the witch-taint, but it had not yet reached her heart and I was able to pull it from her. It was very hard to do and I'd not readily try that act again except in great need."

"Hard? Pulling out a witch-taint is nearly impossible to do and they teach us to not even try it! Most who try, fail ... and are often taken by the taint too! Only a few of the most powerful elders have ever admitted succeeding to trying to clean even the mildest cases of infection and even they weren't always successful. If so, this is a most wondrous talent! Now, at least as far as I am concerned, you're absolved for Justin's death and found not guilty by reason of sanity, now give it to me hard! You're swollen cock is finally reaching a place that I've been trying to scratch for nearly a full year!"

Well, what could I say?

It took me another day to get any more meaningful information from her, and that only came under duress. During a moment of coitus, I suddenly felt myself entering into her thoughts, much to her considerable dismay. Still as I was quite on top of her and thrusting deep at the time, she could not escape and I learned quite a bit more than she had ever willingly wished to reveal.

Angry at her deception, of the hidden thoughts and secrets that now flooded into my mind, I changed my angle of entry just a bit and dropped my cock down one hole to enter swiftly and forcefully into her ass, and she didn't like it much. At the moment, I didn't much care. Holding her arms down firmly under me and with her squirming legs upon my shoulders, I took my time and enjoyed the hour or two I took to fuck her ass, rather hard and firmly. From the wailing sounds she was making, she had stopped being angry at my sudden unexpected assault on her butt quite some time ago and now had clearly taken to rough sodomy like a duck likes a walk in the rain. After I was done spewing my load into her still tight ass, she now remembered her dignity, and the shock of my mind disclosing her secrets, and she left the bed in a rage of anger and frustration, leaving a rather liquid trail of spent semen dripping out of her ass behind her in her wake.

The information I had so suddenly discovered was disturbing but not unexpected. My 'murder' of Justin became known to one of the elders of her order the moment I had committed it. True, no one had liked him, but it was established principle that no one can be permitted to go around killing witchhunters for any reason ... it would give the sheep unhealthy ideas. Jodie, my recent bedmate and the semi-senior witchhunter on hand at the time, had been given orders to find me, investigate me, and then kill me ... not necessarily in that order. Upon finding my trail, it was undoubtedly a shock to her to find that I had assumed the persona of the dead witchhunter ... complete with abilities that seemed to far outweigh his former ones. Obviously, I was clearly not a young lamb that had merely murdered his shepherd, but had grabbed the crook as well and taken over the duties with full and utter seriousness.

Jodie had sent a rider off to St. Louis two days ago to report her findings and to get further updated orders. At the moment, she literally didn't know whether to kiss me or kill me. Now, the idea that I had now 'absorbed' some of her own magic talents as well frightened her beyond words. We eventually shared dinner together downstairs, but her hands, and mine, always now wore gloves and we did not again touch, or kiss, let alone sleep together that night.

I could feel her fear, palpable and as strong as a perfume scent even more than a few feet away from me. Unlike her talents, I soon found that I didn't need to touch her at all to know her surface thoughts. Even across the dinner table they were nearly crystal clear, as her frightened mind panicked with the decision of what to do with me, and frightened of the orders that she might receive. She feared that already her witch-talents were now no match at all for mine, even though I barely understood their use. Now that I had discovered this skill, I soon found that I could now easily read the surface thoughts of the other people in the hotel for many yards around me. What other talents did I have lying hidden, unused and dormant ... for now? That was a question I had for myself as well, but I knew I'd get no answers from anyone. I was going to have to work these answers out for myself, alone.

Somehow, despite every obstacle in my path, I needed to be able to live and learn. If the magic had selected me over Justin, then it had a will — and perhaps a purpose. With time, I could discover what that purpose might be!

Disturbed, still angry and very, very annoyed, Jodie went straight back up to her bedroom and most certainly did not offer me an invitation for the night. I made a show of taking another bedroom at the opposite end of the hall and dumped a few things out of Black's ever increasingly full saddlebags into the room to lighten up his load a little bit. After making a quick raid into the kitchen for some leftovers, I saddled up Black and we had our asses heading out of town before Jodie could realize that I was gone.

Ok, let's make this completely clear. I was not skedaddling because of a woman! I already spent three days resting up (but not actually getting much sleep) and now I needed to get out on the road to do my promised scouting mission south towards Wichita. I left a short but clear message at the gate instructing the mayor and the city council to get their asses into gear and get their scouts out to start gathering in the surrounding towns, villages and homesteads.

Like it or not, a storm was coming, and I was riding dead straight into the teeth of it. Some might call this heroic and brave, others would instead call this honorable and just duty, and the more sensible might think I was absolutely fucking nuts! Common sense had very little to do with this in any case.

My heart was telling me to ride east, back to Woodvine to gather up a certain widow into my arms so that we then together could ride far away to some unspoiled land where we could work good soil together in peace in a land without witch-taint or witchfinders. My mind, ever sharper with the memories I'd seen in Jodie's head of waste and spoil everywhere, knew that I had to find some way of stopping this migrating horde of raiders, or none of us would find safety or happiness anywhere.

Jodie and the entire Witchfinder Council could go fuck itself, I decided as I turned Black's nose south, paralleling the old great concrete highway that lead to Wichita. Trouble lay just ahead of me and I began to relax and even began to smile a bit with anticipation.

My thoughts began to clear as Black's long powerful legs began to stretch themselves out as he rode. Now I could feel his thoughts as well, how he had been well fed while in town and was quite in need of a good hard run to loosen his muscles up, and what a fine night it was for it too!

The dark clad Witchhunter and his coal black mount rode steadily long into the night, south towards certain danger, but their path was well chosen and their passage was noted by nothing other than hunting owls during the long dark night.

Black, tireless as ever even after a long night's ride, would have happily raced along all day too, despite the long hours that he had travelled, and only the comfort of a short graze in a thick patch of ryegrass convinced him that it was time to stop and take a rest, shortly before dawn.

During the night, I had vaguely sensed a watcher, perhaps a guard-scout or two at points off in the distance, perhaps at about a quarter-mile of range. This was more than adequate warning, and allowed us to bypass their positions safely during the night. Now that it would soon be day, I wanted to take a much slower, safer, and secure passage into the enemy positions. Preferably by shooting as many of these scouts as I could locate — preferably at long range well before they could see us.

Everyone tends to think that Kansas is flat, but that idea is laughable. Western Kansas has as many hills as Colorado, and even central Kansas has enough hills and gulley's to hide several armies, or countless watching scouts. Old Grampy used to tell the village boys stories about the famous Kansas outlaws of the old wild west, and how nearly every ditch, riverbed, small canyon or gulley contains at least one forgotten Confederate or outlaw treasure trove. He never found one — but he told us to never stop looking either!

Now, most of those gulley's were filled in with yards of hard volcanic ash, but the ground still undulated over those buried hills. Here and there, an especially determined tree had broken through the hard ash soil and I tried to imagine all of central Kansas as it had been in the old days, with green fertile fields and prairie with green woods under blue skies. I still couldn't quite fix that happy thought into my head, despite the hundreds of times Old Grampy had tried to describe the pre-disaster world to me. Nevertheless, seeing those few feeble trees lightening my heart and made me hope just a little for the future.

Even a bit lost in my nostalgic thoughts, I still wasn't quite caught unawares. I had been a bit off-guard, but so too was the enemy scout who was distracted and turned away from facing me, and I dived into a nearby patch of ryegrass a moment before I would have been spotted. Black didn't mind at all having a second breakfast, and under cover I had no difficulty finding a nearby hilltop with a bit of cover where I could take a good look at my enemy with my new sniper rifle scope.

From my sniping spot, I could see that I was near dead center in front of three different scouting positions that watched over the old US Highway 135 south from Ft. Salina to Wichita. This in fact appeared to be their main defensive line guarding the north. Each camp on top of several small hills (probably ash covered buildings) on either side of the old road had excellent views to the north, and each was supported by another hidden nest of guards about a hundred yards further on either side. I suspected that about another half mile on either side, there was further guardposts to guard their flanks.

Despite the single guard who appeared to have more interest in a conversation with his buddy than watching the right side of the old road, the remaining guards appeared to be well-armed with hunting rifles and/or other military weapons, and most appeared to be unusually alert. I figured that the officers made frequent checks of the line and anyone not doing 110% of their job might end up themselves in the community stewpot. I guess it's pretty easy to maintain authority in a cannibal raider camp! The slackers, the lazy and the unwilling had probably been turned into rations long ago, leaving only the true believers, the obedient and the zealots left in their ranks. No weak sisters out here!

I was very certain that I could hit with a single shot, each and every guard, but I was concerned that this might be noisy and I didn't want one of the remote guard camps to ride back home with a warning. Plus, I wanted to get a look at some of their officers and see what the normal routines were, patrol cycles, reliefs, replacements, etc. So, I decided to make myself comfortable with a blanket or two across the rocky ryegrass and I settled myself down to watch them for the remainder of the day, but I didn't actually discover all that much that rather wasted day.

The routine seemed to be two to three men per camp, dug in inside either a large foxhole or even larger shooting trench with light brush cover concealing the position. One man always on duty, looking north, with another man ready to run south to report if anyone was sighted. The officer for this area apparently had a small tent behind a hill about a half a mile further south, and didn't seem to inspect the front line much. I got a brief glimpse of him exactly twice and it would have been a very tricky long range shot that I didn't at all feel confident about taking.

I had hoped that they would send out small scout parties of their own that I could safely and quietly ambush further north, out of hearing range, but none were sent out, at least today ... or from here. All in all, this seemed to be a rather quiet piece of real estate.

That evening, I retreated up north a little bit and did some very quiet scouting of the eastern side of the roadway and found that the guardposts over there seemed to be much identical on that side as well. I decided that this area was just a secure defensive line that probably had little if anything to do with the raiding parties that rode northwards.

I was certain that somewhere, these scouts were coming and going, and I decided that I'd retreat another half hour or so back north to try and find their main route of passage.

Tracking upon hard volcanic ash and rock is not easy, in fact you either have the knack for it or you don't. It was a skill that my village elders couldn't teach us kids, and we either learned how to do it or we didn't. This is a skill that hunger can augment, and as young boys a few of us learned to tell the nearly indistinct traces of where the elusive black rabbits or dangerous dire rats might have passed, and thus where the best place for a snare might be set. As a boy, I didn't always catch anything with my snares, but few other boys could come close to matching my hunting luck. Even now in the darkness, and on horseback, I could tell at a glance when I came to a long north-south running gulley on the western side of the side, about a mile and a half past the road, where a great many hoof prints showed that this was a regularly traveled route north for their scouts, and then back home again.

As I had seen no travelers in this area during the day from my previous watchpost, I decided that the raiders left and returned this way at night only, and I settled in to find a good shooting spot. If I ambushed them here, even a noisy shootout probably wouldn't carry far enough south for any of the defensive watchposts to hear. Or so I hoped.