The sun beat down, brutal and sharp, on the tin roof, and found ways to slither through tiny holes and strike Seen in the eyes. He slapped at invisible flies, too weary to desire more than to roll over and try and hide his face from the glare, but the ground he lay on was just as unforgiving as the morning sun.

He rose and staggered to the entrance of the baked mud hut. The desert stretched as far as he could see in every direction, a desolate salt pan dotted with rolling tumbleweeds and bloated, greedy cacti. The horizon shimmered and swam like waves on the ocean. A trick of the heat rising off the baked earth.

Seen dug in his pocket and found a small scrap of newspaper and a pinch of tobacco. He rolled the dry leaf in the newspaper and spent a bit of moisture to lick the edge. This damn habit would kill him someday, if the heat didn't get him first. Still he struck a match and held it up to his roll. The calm of the tobacco filled his lungs.

Squinting against the sun, he waddled out to the small garden patch he kept, undid his fly, and watered the corn. His foot hit an ear lying on the ground. Seen kicked it, scattering the kernels that remained across the dirt, and a crow rose out of the corn with an indignant caw. It alighted on the scarecrow.

Seen glared at the bird as he did up his fly. The bird stared at him with beady eyes. Seen didn't need the corn, not the way he needed water or air or not to be shot. Even if the damn bird ate every ear, Seen would be okay. But it was his corn and that damn, fearless bird mocked him.

Seen went inside and filled his bucket from the pump at the back of the hut. After a few pulls of the handle, the pump sputtered out air instead of water, leaving his bucket only half full. He took a long drink, then set it next to his shovel. He decided he was done with that damn bird. He still had three bullets left. That ought to be enough to kill the thing.

His revolver led the way outside. He pointed it at the bird and pulled back the hammer. The crow tilted its head, still studying him. What did the thing want, anyway? Hadn't it stolen enough already? Seen squinted. Sun was so bright on the desert, it hurt his eyes. His hand shook.

Seen fired. The crow launched itself into the air, cawing madly.

"Fuck," Seen spat, dropping his roll. "Fucking rat with wings, get your ugly black mug down here where I can shoot it." He kicked the scarecrow. "Do your job, Sam, or I ain’t going to pay your skinny ass. All I ask of you is to keep that fucking crow out of my corn. I just want enough to not be hungry for once."

The crow circled and landed on the tin roof of the hut. "Caw," it said.

Seen pulled the hammer again, pointing his revolver at the bird. A shot echoed across the salt pan, and the bird fell, rolled down the roof, and plopped at Seen's feet. Seen lowered his weapon, his hammer still primed. His hand shook too much. He never would have hit it anyway, but someone had shot it. He squinted left and right, and seeing no one, crept around his hut, revolver first.

If it was another of those fucking Texans here to harass him, he was going to give him what for.

To the east, a man stood with the rising sun at his back. Even squinting, Seen could make out only a dark shape in the glare. A wide sombrero, and a thin man underneath it.

"Hey!" Seen shouted. "You, Mexican. You shoot my crow?"

The dark shape, still a hundred yards distant, approached slowly. Seen spat in the dust. He raised his revolver.

"You stop there. You ain’t the only one with a dead eye."

The dark shape paused, and tilted his head. "Your hand is shaking, Shaman."

Seen glanced at his hand. His revolver rattled around in his fingers. He fired anyway. The stranger's gun barked once, and Seen's revolver leapt out of his hand with a stinging blow that left his fingers numb. The revolver bounced against the side of the mud brick hut then skittered into the dirt.

Seen looked up from his revolver at the ominous click as the stranger drew back his hammer again. Seen's gun was only a few feet away.

"Don't try it," the man barked. "I didn't come all the way out here to kill you. You have water?"

Seen glared at the stranger. First the crow, now this. "I ain’t got much but I got water," he muttered. He led the way around his hut, conscious of the gun pointed at his back.

Once inside, the stranger holstered his revolver and dipped his hands in the bucket, slurping up water like he hadn't had a drink in weeks. He had another revolver, twin of the first, on his opposite hip. Seen sat back against the opposite wall of the hut. He could probably take the man, then, but if this stranger had wanted him dead, he'd have shot Seen the first time, instead of disarming him. Seen didn't see the point of it.

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Now that his eyes had adjusted, Seen could see some details of the face under the sombrero. Dark eyes, mustache. A full beard. The man looked like a proper vaquero.

"You're a long way out in nowhere, gunslinger," Seen said.

"So are you," the man said. "I'm surprised to find you like this. I expected more feathers."

Seen scowled. "You come all the way out here to make fun of me, gunslinger? Cause I'm the only man stupid enough to play shaman? As if every half-wit didn't play gunslinger."

The man laughed. Seen hadn't made a joke and his scowl deepened. With his crossed bandoliers and fancy ivory revolvers, this man was obviously a gunslinger himself. And probably a half-wit.

"Aye, I'm a gunslinger," the man said. "And you're Seen Mighwood, the Shaman of Window Rock."

Seen shrugged. "So?"

"My name is James Sniper. I've been looking for you."

"I'd like it if you went and unfound me."

The man took another drink, saying nothing.

"Where you from, anyway?" Seen asked. "I know all the players in these parts."

"Jaurez," he said.

Seen snorted. As likely Jaurez as Boulder. "Jaurez is gone. The Texans destroyed it, killed everyone."

"Almost," James said with a small smile. "What are you doing out here in the desert, Seen? This isn't the place for a Shaman." His eyes flitted to the shovel next to the bucket. "You looking for something?"

"Aye, I'm looking to be left alone. I shared my water, and I ain’t got anything else. So why don't you git?"

The man stared at him, as if measuring him.

"There's miles more of this desert waiting for you," Seen continued. "Ain’t nothing out there but snakes and holes."

"You feeling inspired when you built this mud hut?" James deadpanned.

Now Seen laughed. His throat was too dry and he ended it with a cough. "I found it like this," he choked. "Corn and Sam and all. And the crow. It comes back, ya know. Shooting it don't do any good. Thought the designer was feeling a bit inspired myself. Right in the middle of goddamn nowhere and don't make a bit of sense but it has a pump that works."

James smirked. Maybe he saw the reference too.

"Truth was I was never a fan of King, but I enjoyed that series."

"You talk too much, Shaman."

Seen was about to go on, and instead he shut his mouth. James looked proper for a Mexican, but he was also baked Navajo red by the sun. He could have easily been a white boy out of Austin or Boulder.

"So what do you want, anyway?" Seen asked. He had a sense that he was doing far too much of the talking in this exchange, but if he didn't prod James, the man might say nothing at all.

"I told you the truth," James said. He took two strips of hard tack from his pocket and offered one to Seen.

Seen snatched it. He hadn't eaten in days, and this would do nothing to fill the hollow in his stomach. He couldn't starve, exactly, but that didn't make it pleasant.

James tore a chunk off his strip. "I need a shaman. Not just any. Luckily for me, the last shaman in the game is the same man I need. Do you remember the last Halloween?"

Seen spat his half chewed tack onto the floor. He grabbed his gun, but didn't draw it. Not yet. "You sure you didn't come out here to make trouble?" he growled.

James raised a placating hand. "Sensitive topic, is it? I know what you did that night. How long had you saved up?"

"Four months," Seen muttered. It had turned out to be just a special event, but at the time, it had been done so well - why hadn't he looked at a damn calendar? Then he would have known.

"I'm here because of the ability you bought that night," James said.

"If I'd known - that ability crippled my build. I maxed it out, and it's completely useless."

"But for one night, you were the hero of Window Rock."

"I tried to get the mods to give my points back." Seen eyed the wad of tack sitting in the dirt, having forgotten the anger that made him spit it out. Well, he wasn't so far gone yet. He tore another chunk off his strip instead. "They said no, of course. Laughed at me. Told me to start over. They never should have added an ability to control the undead if there weren't going to be any more undead, but for them it was more about pride than good game design. And then," he held out his arms to indicate everything around them, the hut, the corn, the desolate wasteland. "this."

"It's not useless," James said. He leaned close and lowered his voice to a whisper. "There are undead left. At least one."