Meet the Cast: Molly Sixkiller

So, last week I got some good feedback on my little piece about Olive. So good, in fact, that I figured I'd do another one today. So, without further ado, meet Molly Sixkiller.

“Gideon!”

Bela rolled out of her seat and dropped into the brush beside the jeep. Gideon started at the alarm in her voice and heard her hit the ground with a dusty thud. As he tossed the map into Bela’s vacated seat and snatched the old C-12 from the dash where it was humming quietly to itself in the afternoon sun, he reflected that whatever this was, it wasn’t what he had planned for the day.

Earlier that morning the three of them, Gideon, Bela and Molly had set out in the jeep with a picnic lunch, a map and some firearms for a day of range hopping in the greater Atchinson/Arlen/Big Sandy area. It was a Sunday, so Molly wasn’t at her lessons with Brandt and Gideon took the opportunity to get the shy young psychic out into the weather. Now, after a morning of target shooting, a cold lunch and a couple hours of wandering dusty old cow trails something had come to ruin their afternoon.

Gideon swung his rifle up and turned sideways in his seat. He hooked his left boot heel over the door sill, propped his left elbow on his knee and sighted through his big rifle scope. They came by the dozen; ravenous, slobbering, six-limbed things armored in dull chitin loping and gibbering down a ridge and into the little valley where they were parked.

“Well, shit” he muttered. “Grigleapers”.

“Yeah, no kidding!” Shouted Bela as she popped up over the passenger fender with her 227 out and propped her elbows on the dusty hood.

“I make about a dozen of ‘em.” Gideon said as he thumbed the safety off and the C-12 cycled up into active. The grigleapers closed on the jeep and Bela said, “That’s a lot of teeth”.  Gideon nodded and let fly. As he watched the laser bolt burn a steaming hole in the lead ‘leaper he heard a creak and a rustle and the smooth small sound of steel on leather from behind him. The jeep rocked a little and Molly slowly rose from her spot in the cramped back seat. Bela took a shot, missed, and Gideon swore quietly in anticipation.

Once, when he was younger, Gideon had traveled to the dangerous borderlands between Texas and vampire infested Mexico with a troop of mounted Simvan cavalry. There on the border they had discovered an ancient and powerful radio transmitter that had survived the cataclysm, one of those massive fifty thousand watt border radio stations that you could pick up clear in the North. The tower was faded to a desert color and bent halfway up, but the transmitter was still strong and working. Gideon had a small radio and he tuned in to hear a mix of blaring Tejano music and someone screaming the word of the Lord in alternating Spanish and English.

When they approached they discovered a withered old Mexican woman running the board and she cried and fell to her knees and beat her breast at the sight of them. She begged for mercy and cursed them as monsters at the same time, then fled from the station into the desert leaving her ancient recordings to scream and rant to no one. Gideon had stood next to the powerful generators and transmitters as they searched the place and the powerful energy fields caused his hair to stand on end and his head to swim. Since that day, the only time he had ever experienced anything like that was when he was around Molly, and there was trouble.

And here now was trouble. Molly was sixteen, orphaned, and shy yet now before she had blossomed into the full flower of her womanhood, she was perhaps the deadliest and most powerful psychic Gideon had ever known. They called what Molly was a psi-slinger in the Empire, a name Gideon found foolish and distasteful, and the few times he had seen her in the full grip of her powers it had scared the hell out of him.

With the grigleapers howling down on them Molly stood calmly in her seat and drew the two massive Colt Dragoons she wore across her slender hips. These were her father’s guns. The very ones she had drawn from his bullet riddled body and used to kill his murderers. They looked huge and strange, comical in her small brown hands. She slowly raised the massive revolvers and  took aim at the closing beasts. Gideon’s ears began to ring and Bela cried out as Molly’s power washed over them and she began to fire. There was a sharp sound as a hammer snapped down on an empty chamber and a grigleaper crumpled and was rolled along by its stampeding mates. The hair all the way down the psi-hound's backs stood straight up and their ears rang almost to the point of distraction. They gritted their teeth against it and kept up their withering fire. Gideon took another and Bela dropped a fourth and Molly kept firing and firing, accompanied only by the snap of hammers and the quiet ratcheting of cylinders.

The remaining creatures closed the distance to the jeep and broke around it in a wave of dun colored plates and flashing talons. Bela hurriedly clambered onto the jeep’s hood, narrowly dodging a swipe that would have surely disemboweled her. One ‘leaper jumped and grabbed the roll bar right in front of Molly and she fell back against the opposite bar. As it tried to climb into the seat with her she leveled a pistol, took aim and with a snap and a splash punched a hole in the thing a grown man could have passed his hand through. Gideon looked back to see if she was okay and saw that there were tears streaming down her face. She caught his gaze and her eyes widened.

“Look out!” She cried and Gideon turned just in time to catch a nasty swipe with the C-12. He bashed the ‘leaper across its teeth with the butt of the rifle and it fell into the dust where Molly proceeded to shoot it dead. Bela took another from her perch on the hood and at that point the ‘leapers decided that they had had enough. They broke off their attack and went howling off away from the jeep. Gideon caught one a glancing blow in its back but it ran on, although without the help of two of its limbs.

As they caught their breath, Bela and Gideon looked at Molly who still stood weeping and spattered with black blood in the back seat, her pistols at arms length. The ringing in their heads subsided and Molly slowly lowered the Dragoons but did not holster them. Gideon was startled to see a small trickle of blood had run from Molly’s nose and had stained her mouth bright red.

“You okay kid?” He asked. Molly seemed to snap out of a daze and wiped the blood away with the back of her hand, smearing it on to her cheek.

“Yes Mister Gideon.” she said quietly, and slid the Dragoons into their holsters.