GUN SALAD

Hiding in the safe hadn’t been Beretta’s idea. It was dark, and she couldn’t help but think about what might happen to her if Bubba Lee won out against the lawyers and her friends. Father had insisted that she have no part in the ambush, though; apparently the thought of having her locked up in a big iron box was more palatable to him than the possibility of seeing her buoyed up into the air and out of reach.

She couldn’t exactly blame him. Despite the cleverness she’d shown during Morgan’s exercise, she knew she was still, ultimately, a liability. That’s why she hadn’t complained much, and had obediently crawled into the safe the moment Mimi informed her of Bubba Lee’s approach.

At least one of the lawyers–the tall one–was a fan of pulp fiction. He had a big stack of Catastrophe Joan stories in his desk, clipped straight from the pages of the Wesson Broadside, and she had been allowed to take them into the safe with her so she could have something to read by lanternlight. It was a nice enough arrangement. She loved Catastrophe Joan stories, and the gentle flickering of the lantern’s flame did much to dispel the gloom of the safe’s interior.

…But the girl scarcely had the time to finish a single story before things started to go wrong. 

It began with a loud, violent rumbling. Beretta tensed and moved to steady the lantern, but that proved to be unnecessary; whatever force had caused it died out a second later, leaving the office oddly still and quiet. She pressed an ear to the door of the safe, straining to hear what was going on outside, but it was no use. Her ears were popping like crazy, interfering with her typically keen sense of hearing.

Thankfully, what happened next was loud enough to wake the dead: the door of the little backroom she was hiding in slammed open, and a cacophony of muffled voices filled the air beyond her safe.

“Hop to it, ya gangly yellow bastard!” growled an unfamiliar voice. She heard something slam against the door, followed by the sound of sobs and fearful gibbering.

“I-I can’t remember the code…” she heard Conrad say. “Yes. It’s utterly flown from my mind! I’m terribly sorry!”

Another slam. Beretta shrank back from the door as the man howled in pain, giving way to a loud scuffle. Strangely, the next thing she heard was someone wrenching the window open.

“Long way down, chum,” the stranger rasped. “I figure you both know that code. That means one of you’s expendable…”

“NO! PLEASE!!”

A long pause ensued. All she could hear was the sound of Conrad and Solomon crying. Her heart went out to them, and the frustration of being so helpless soon brought tears to her own eyes.

“36-24-36,” Solomon said at length, provoking incoherent burbles of protest from his partner. “That’s the code. Now let him go!”

“Heh. If you say so…”

“Wha– N-NO! CONRAD!”

Beretta’s throat felt tight. She didn’t need to see what was happening to know what the man had done; the sound of Solomon’s knees thumping to the ground made it clear enough. But there was no time to mourn–in the very next instant, she heard someone working the dial of the safe. Her sanctuary was about to be breached!

Rather than accepting the reality of her imminent capture, the girl tensed up and got into a crouch. She may be discovered, but she wouldn’t be giving up without a fight! The moment the safe door swung open she launched herself right at the big, ugly face in front of her, scratching and clawing at every inch of exposed skin she could see. The man recoiled and screamed bloody murder, struggling to get a handle on her, but she used every ounce of power in her tiny body to make it difficult for him.

Inevitably, though, he finally got a solid grip. He pitched her back into the safe with a snarl and slammed the door shut. “Little brat!” he spit, giving the dial an overly aggressive spin. “I hope you like it in there, ‘cuz that’s where you’ll stay!

“...After all, if I’m gonna get out of this mess, I’m gonna need a little leverage…”

—

Morgan threw his hands up and backed away, allowing the grizzled man before him to press the shotgun’s tip to his chest. His heels teetered on the edge of the turf at his back; if this rough-faced gentleman wanted to push him over the edge, a nudge of his gun would be all it’d take.

“What’re you doin’ up here, son?” he asked. His eyes were sharp and narrowed, and his voice had a dangerous edge to it. “You workin’ with Bubba Lee?”

“No sir,” Morgan answered. “Just a travelin’ Gunslinger. I was passin’ through town with my friends when we heard about your predicament–one of ‘em launched me up here to get at Bubba Lee.”

The man blinked at him from beneath his wiry, unkempt eyebrows. “That sonofabitch is up here? Where?”

Morgan craned his neck backward and looked to the skies. “Can’t see it from this angle–it’d be around the other side of this building I reckon. We chased him into the law office, but he bubbled it up and away before we could get in after him. Now it’s flyin’ higher than an eagle in a turpentine factory.”

That convinced the man to lower his gun. He looked down and scratched his chin, absently stowing the weapon away in a sling on his back. “Interestin’,” he muttered, eventually lifting his eyes to meet Morgan’s. “I’m the sheriff of Toothless, Caden Sorghum. Been a minute since I had any say in what goes on down there, but I never stopped lookin’ out for my people. Pleased t’meet you, mister…?”

“Sarada,” Morgan replied, inching forward from his precarious position near the gap in the earth. “Morgan Sarada.”

Sheriff Sorghum’s tongue shifted inside his mouth. It looked as though he was mulling something over. “I’ve decided to trust you, Morgan,” he declared. “Don’t make me regret it.” Then he turned and walked away, moving back around to the front of the building.

Morgan followed along behind him, peering up at the building’s ramshackle edifice. Sure enough it was the sheriff’s office, complete with a hitching post and a lengthy front porch. Its owner ambled inside without a word and began poring over the dusty mess of clutter within. It looked to Morgan as though the man had started–and abandoned–multiple carpentry projects since he’d been trapped in the skies above Toothless, such that the office’s interior didn’t really resemble an office at all anymore. 

The only thing he could see that harkened back to the building’s original use case was the row of cells along the back wall, many of which lacked any kind of floor; apparently, Bubba Lee’s bubble hadn’t done a clean job of separating Caden’s workplace from its earthly habitat.

“Surprised to see you’re still alive, Sheriff,” Morgan drawled, stepping in to lean against the doorframe. “From what those lawyers said, I gathered you’ve been up here a month or more.”

“When I first got wind of Bubba Lee’s activities elsewhere in the county,” he began, tossing aside a tall stack of chairs, “I decided it’d be prudent for the townsfolk to keep a supply of water and rations around where they lived and worked in case he stopped by. Lucky for me I led by example.”

Morgan nodded approvingly. “Good thinkin’. Probably saved a lot of lives.”

The sheriff grunted. “We’ll see,” he said darkly. “Come grab the other end of this, will ya?”

He meandered over to Caden’s side and took a look at the thing in question. It appeared to be a couple ladders fastened together with nails and leather strips.

“What’s this?”

“Escape plan number one,” the man replied. “Probably the only one that’s any good. Not nearly long enough to reach the ground, but it might just get us up to Bubba Lee’s roost if you stop gawkin’ and start liftin’.”

Morgan chuckled and took hold of the extended ladder. Together they dragged it out from beneath the pile of junk Caden had heaped atop of it over the course of the last few weeks, then moved to guide it out through the front door. It ended up being relatively easy to get the thing outside, and soon enough they had come to stand in the shadow of the law office floating just above.

“Guess Marka’s aim wasn’t so bad after all,” Morgan observed. The structure’s nearest surface was only ten feet or so distant; if they were careful, making a bridge out of Caden’s creation wouldn’t be out of the question.

Suddenly, the sheriff pointed upward in alarm. “What the hell’s that?”

Morgan looked up. Sure enough, there was something moving up there. He had to squint to make out the details, but there was definitely something dangling from one of the law office’s windows.

Unless he was much mistaken, it looked to be a terrified lawyer.