“Pull!” sounded a loud, shrill, man’s voice—and Ted felt his right ankle snared in wire, wire that bit into the uppers of his tactical boots, barbed wire, and he was slammed to his back. The snort of a mule sounded and three voices, shrill male voices, shouted, “Yehah!” and Ted was dragged across crisp snowy grass, hurtful rocks, and finally into the side of the steel-rimmed pool, with a dull thud.

His groin hurt, his neck, his back. He dialed his optic out to range with his right hand as Bad Girl screamed for attention. Ted was dragged away from the steel pool wall and his foot was yanked high and he drew her, Bad Girl, ready for action, cocked her trigger, then was yanked high in sync with the first voice yelling, “That’s it, Boys!”

Ted was hauled high and swung to the right, where his gun hand was slammed into the pump stanchion and his head too, Peep Girl blinking out and Bad Girl clattering and lost below.

There he hung, upside down, twisting on his right foot, a mule standing off to the north, a mule he had dumb-like mistook for a cow as he focused on the well remission.

Three men dressed in cowhides, complete with a cow head hood, closed in on him from the west, where cattle, and a bull, did remain grazing.

The men looked like brothers, tall, lean, wide-shouldered, long of hair and blond. The eldest, in the middle, approached first, picked up the top five feet of the pump rod and said, full of menace, “Well, now, boys, if it ain’t Ted the Fed!”

Ted looked at the man as he approached and Mumbled, “I have a sled o’ HDRs fer ya—dat were next conduction, I think.”

“Boyyy, what we wanna eat that dog food for!? You done fouled our well! Now we gonna have ta drive cattle on foot, since you all boss kind saw fit to introduce da equine flu!”

“Sorry,” mumbled Ted, right before the rod sizzled into his left knee, cracking the cap. He reached for his machete and had his hand smacked and near broken. Then he was twisted in six hands and his machete and knife were taken.

“Baby Girl, I could use a little help here!”

The ETV hummed, beeped, and then drove off a distance.

“What da blazes—its true, Ted the Fed talks to machines and, well, that bitchin’ bike seems fed up with your fed shit, don’t she, Ted! Even your gadgets know you suck!” he did snarl must unfriendly.

A hand grabbed his left hand and another Mamma, and she screeched. The hands left him as a man howled in pain, “Damn, that watch burned me.”

Psycho Girl was silent, had let these sneak him and now didn’t even bother with the burn.

“No, don’t bother with the spy glass either, bet that shit will burn.”

“What we gonna do,” asked the third voice, as the second moaned in pain.

“Kendell, what we gonna do is punish this enemy of us all, this retarded man-hunter done pushed us to extinction!”

The rod, a hollow pipe, whistled and Ted felt it bend over his head, knocking Peep Girl loose with a cold shot of pain, blood dripping down into his hair, since he was upside down and couldn’t even bleed properly.

“Look at that Uplift belt Buckle, you see that shit, storing the souls of the dearly rounded up widows and widowers and orphans!”

Ted groaned, “Oh Mamma.”

The men laughed, the second one, the burned one, with the big voice, growling, “Been burned by a Mamma’s boy,” and a big fist smashed into his groin sending Ted into a spasm of nauseating pain as he swung and his right knee was smacked with the rod.

Ted was being punched and whacked and kicked and swung into the stanchion. He held his right hand over his eye and shoved Mamma on his left hand behind the belt buckle to protect her. The punches from the big man were so strong that some ribs gave way and cracked under his armor on the left side.

They were breathing heavy.

“Break time, boys.”

There he swung, blood dripping into his eyes from his nose, which squirted with every beat of his heart.

“Let him see, let Ted the Fed go to the database in the sky knowin’ who done him in!”

The two big strong hands pressed him up, so he was bent. As he was held there, his left hand in his groin, he looked into the face of two rugged looking men of great strength and grit, dressed in denim, leather and hide.

The leader said, “Ted oh Fed, meet The Kin. Kent is da big mug holdin’ you up. I’m Kendel, and this here dead-eye shot next to me, Kenneth. We are the KKK!”

Ted had no idea what that KKK was and looked on dumb, “Oh,” admiring the flint lock pistols in Kenneth’s belt and noting a stand of three flint lock rifles.

“That’s right, Ted, we could have sniped you, even before you did in Travis, that idiot—but spending the night with Brie was the last straw. I had hopes of marrying that hussy—now ruined with your rancid seed.”

Ted simply wanted to die, was overcome by quit, and went loose, “I’m sorry, Mamma,” he drooled and gave in to those great hands holding him, hands that tensed in disgust and pushed him into the stanchion, jamming his right shoulder. There he swung, taking more kicks and rod blows.

Psycho Girl burned with ire in his brain, his right eye flamed with pain and his left hand burned like something that could not be doused with the hardest rain. His nose splattered, knocked over under his left eye, blood spraying.

“Sit up, fool,” squawked Psycho Girl, from his mouth, and he did so, doing a sit up that caused the swinging rod to miss his head it would have smashed. He grabbed the barbed wire above his feet with both hands, hands now impaled with small steel barbs through his thin silicon gloves.

He was whacked in the lower back with the rod, his legs going numb. Then he ripped his right hand and left hand free, each seeping with blood from the glove cuffs as he climbed the wire, getting the rhythm of missing the barbs. He now stood on his right foot, out of reach of abuse, so he could at least be shot.

“Shoot off a foot for me, little brother,” commanded Kendel to Kenneth.

Then a screech came from Mamma and was answered by a song of steel, a bird song, a single long scree, like a metal hawk.

“I’ll be good and goddamned,” growled Kendel, looking above Ted, who looked above also.

There Ted saw, ten feet above him, hovering over the rooster weather main and windmill, whirling in the breeze, the HEAT drone from the colony of whackados.

Kenneth drew both of his pistols and fired, one slug thudding into Ted’s chest, and cracking another rib, and the other apparently missing the winged terror above.

The HEAT drone’s eyes glowed green and four darts shot out, two from each wing. The three men were running for their stacked rifles when each was hit in the back with a dart, Kenneth with two. The men screamed, twisted, cried and moaned, down on their knees, as the white phosphorus was injected into them.

It was horrible. Ted later refused to describe the details of the minute-long deaths of those vicious Mountain Men he so admired for their freedom, for the time it did last.

Baby Girl had eased up to the stanchion and released two crab drones to climb the structure and free their meat pilot.

…

Debriefing

What would be the point?

My conductor is nearly wrecked, physically and mentally.

-M. Styer