The man and the old woman went back into the carriage. The man who went in first, followed by the old woman’s curiosity, who prompted her eyes to follow him as the man crawled back into the bloody, wooden crypt. The man crouched down, fumbled around the place and began rummaging through the luggage within, now missing owners. The man had found himself had a nice, leather rucksack which he slung on his back. A thick rope was tied to the top, binding the mouth close. A deep cut was visible on the bottom of the rucksack, clumsily stitched together with an assortment of strings.

The old woman asked if he needed help. The man looked towards her, unreactive and silent. Then she asked if she could get back into the carriage. The man stood up, carried her by her shoulders and slowly lifted her into the carriage. He left the old woman where she stood and went back to digging into the wooden box. After watching him from a distance for a few seconds, the old woman sighed, walked towards the man and took a seat on the side, watching him go about his business.

The old woman found his practice of looting fascinating. Every box that passed through his arms had its contents emptied onto the floor to a pile. Then, meticulously, he picked apart anything that isn’t related to a firearm. Anything that isn’t a gun or a bullet was tossed aside like trash, no matter its external use or purpose. The old woman watched as he threw away a glass bottle of clean water out of the carriage, sending it crashing onto the road as if it was nothing but hot garbage. After a few moments, the man had nothing but one rusty, snub-nosed revolver and a few cartridges. Everything else was strewn across the carriage without a hint of care given by the man.

He then moved on to the guns, left by the men who attacked the carriage, now lying outside, exposed under the sizzling rays of the sun in perpetual lifelessness.

He held onto the shotgun and slowly inspected it.

The shotgun itself was a mix of gnarled wood and dull colours. The stock had a deep brown tinge with rough cuts raining across the surface. The grip was taped up and felt sticky in the man’s hand. As he moved his fingers towards the barrel the wooden parts abruptly transitioned to dark metal. A hammer stuck above the trigger, aligning with the sights sitting on the barrel. He stuck his fingers in the ejection and loading port, feeling the inside of it one hole at a time. He then moved his hand onto the barrel. Uniform holes permeated the surface, greatly piquing the man’s interest.

The old woman was amused. The man scanned through the shotgun with his eyes and hands like a child handed an alien tool. She was enjoying the sight before her until the man flipped the rifle over and pointed the muzzle to his face. The old woman grabbed onto the barrel with great haste, catching the man’s attention.

“Let me help you with that,” she said.

The man looked up to her, his hand still firmly grasping onto the shotgun. It took him a few reluctant seconds before he eventually let go, giving her the shotgun. She held onto the pump and faced the ejector port. With a practised grip, she pulled the pump inwards and pushed a shell out. A sharp rod pushed out from behind the hammer. Along with it came a tiny click that locked the pump in place. The old woman pushed the pump a little further to the back and everything clicked back in place; the rod retracted back into the barrel, the ejector port closed and the pump returned to its place within the magazine tube.

She repeated it several more times. Shells fell to the ground in quick successions, dropping to the ground in hollow thuds. The man watched her from his seat with great fascination, as if he's bearing witness to some mechanical miracle performed before his eyes.

The old woman then laid the shotgun on her lap and pointed to another shotgun, laying on the carriage amongst the luggage.

"Now try it yourself," she said.

As the man reached out to the other gun, the old woman examined the emptied shotgun in her lap.

She turned it around and checked its condition. It was apparent that it's been through rough use, as seen from the scratches and wear from the stock and the pump. Soot choked the barrel, growing around the insides to a dark, sticky wall. The trigger had its grooves worn thin and shallow. She pulled it a little bit and pulled the pump. She could tell the owner hasn't been forgiving with its use at all. The shotgun was no stranger to being slam-fired in its lifespan.

Most Old World weapons are like that. Robust, ingenious designs, easy to fix, with incredible flexibility with other spare parts.

It was ironic to her, that something this durable is only capable of destructive force.

Yet, she couldn’t fault the nature of the tool sitting in her hands. Only the ones pulling the trigger are responsible for it.

Plus, she had lost count of the times she survived behind the barrel herself.

She turned the gun around and found something etched into the stock of the shotgun. She peered in for a closer look. It was a poorly etched rendition of a skull with crosses for eyes. Below it was uneven, asymmetrical curves that seemed to resemble breasts but only by a long stretch.

As she saw the etching a distant memory flared behind her head. Her mouth spread to a thin smile.

Finally, she thought, Found you-

Suddenly a roar ripped through the air, snatching the old woman's attention back to reality. For a quick moment, her instincts caught up to her frail, wrinkled hands. Her weakened nerves slowed her none as she gripped onto the shotgun by pure muscle memory alone. Her bones raised themselves, grappling onto the grip and the pump from underneath her flesh, ready to pull the trigger.

She looked up to see the man, only to find him holding another shotgun in his arm. He had one hand on the butt of the stock and the other on the pump. The pump was pushed in all the way to the bottom with the rod pushing against the hammer. The barrel was pointed upwards and outside the carriage. Dust and soot trailed out of it in a light cloud along with the smell of gunpowder. A spent shell casing rolled on the floor, barreling towards the old woman as smoke poured from its every orifice.

"Too fast," the old woman said, "Do it slowly."

As if a response, a deep moo sounded off from outside the carriage. It caught both the man and the old woman's attention. Scared out of its wits, a Kertau came barrelling out to the road from the wall of scrap metal. As the two watched the creature prance out with jolted fear, they recognized who it belonged to.

Sure enough, the straw hat man came bumbling out from the wall of scrap metal, struggling to catch up to the Kertau.

"You damn Bantam," the old woman whispered.

The old woman crouched down to her feet, picking up a fresh, unspent shell from below. At the same time, the straw hat man turned back and put up quite a shocked expression as he saw that somebody managed to survive the carnage. As fast as his hunched back could carry him, he jogged his withered legs towards the Kertau, chasing it down to the best of his abilities.

By then the old woman had loaded a shell into the shotgun. She pumped it once and aimed it towards the outside of the carriage.

She turned towards the man and said, "Would you be a dear boy and hold the butt for me, please?"

The man leaned in and held the back of the stock with both hands.

The old woman shut one eye, lined her sights and dislocated her shoulders with a rocking blast that sent her bones rattling to its very core. The old woman immediately lost her grip, and the shotgun went flying upwards in the man's hands. Light smoke poured out from the barrel as the dark scent of gunpowder filled the entire carriage.

The old woman held onto her shoulder and winced. The man placed the shotgun on the floor, watching the old woman as she struggled to hold her joint in place. The old woman glanced to her back and saw the man staring at her.

She forced out a smile and said, "Well, would you mind helping me put my arm back on?"

The man grabbed onto the old woman's shoulder and arm.

The old woman pointed towards her shoulder, "Just push it upwards, yes."

In one push, the man forced her joints back into place in a single crack. The old woman felt the shock pull her pupils up behind her eyelids as the pain whipped across her senses. Soreness seared through the upper corner of her body, plucking with her nerves like thin wires.

"Ooh," the old woman commented, "I will be feeling this for the next few months."

The old woman moved her arm around. It was fine for the moment. She felt around her shoulder. A light bump formed on the top. It wasn't anything urgent, but she had a feeling she wasn't going to forget it anytime soon.

The man looked away from the old woman and gazed out to the road where the old woman had pulled her trigger towards. The straw hat man was laying on the ground, groaning in straining agony as an ever-increasing pool of blood flowed from his thigh. Everything below was blown several meters away from his vicinity, splattered across the ground either in chunks or in pieces.

"Serves him right," the old woman sighed. She turned towards the man, "Bring me down to him, please?"

With another princess carry, the man brought the old woman down the carriage. He followed her towards the straw hat man, who was still trying to fruitlessly crawl away from the approaching two.

As the man arrived, he stopped beside the straw hat man and put his palm together. The old woman stopped him before he could take a bow.

"No," she said, "We don't pray for scum like him. Their bodies are better left stomped on."

"H-hypocrite," the straw hat man croaked out.

The old lady looked down to the straw hat man, "Hm?"

"I-I saw you bowing to them bodies, j-jus' now," he stammered, "What's s-so different, huh? With t-them and I? W-we're just trying to m-make a-"

Before the straw hat man could finish the man raised his leg and shattered the straw hat man's head like a weak, wooden box filled with thick, pasty water and chunks of flesh with his boot. His words were immediately choked off with a grotesque crack breaking through from one side of his skull to the other.

The old woman only watched in awe and shock as the man pulled out his foot from the spilling butchery that was once the straw hat man's head, now just an open bunch of grey and red matter filling the inside a bloodied straw hat that had been stomped to a frizzled ball.

The old woman looked to the man, to the body, and the man again. He stared at her through his goggles with no hesitation or remorse hinted by his body. He was like a child, waiting for his parent to give him more instructions on what to do.

"He was just talking, boy," the old woman said.

The man didn't answer. He simply remained to gaze at the old woman.

The old woman sighed, "Just go get the Kertau for us, please?"

The man turned to his back, looked around and broke to a jog, chasing down the Kertau that had long since pranced its way several meters down the opposite side of the road.

She turned towards the straw hat man. She spoke, "There are good people and there are bad people. That doesn’t excuse the cowardly middleman. Just because the world is gone doesn’t mean we lose honour. Survival is one thing, but honesty is-”

Then the old woman paused. The straw hat man’s skull was starting to crumble into its fleshy insides. The pool of red had already started to pile around the old woman’s shoes. A sharp, metal stench was already fuming its way up her nose and getting more intense as the sun rays slowly cooked the straw hat man’s corpse to a dry husk.

“Oh, what the hell,” she said, “I’m talking to a dead body right now.”

Just as she finished her words, the man came back, pulling the oddly willing and obedient Kertau behind him. The old woman could see the creature clearer now that it stood closer. Flesh was barren from its head; a big skull jutted out of where its snout supposedly should be. Its skin only began to grow over its eyes; a thick, greyish hide that stretched down to its body and legs. Horns extended from the side of its head, growing horizontally before taking a curve with its tip shooting upwards. The creature slowly shambled its way towards the old woman behind the man, its comparatively skinny legs carrying its flabby body to the front. Upon closer inspection, the old woman could tell its size was just a mere illusion from its skin, wrapping over its lanky frame in rolling folds.

Unknown to her, she subconsciously blurted out, “And a retard, too.”

The creature slowly walked its way towards the old woman, poking its bony nose towards her, sniffing heavily in caution. The old woman tried extending a hand to its head, in which the Kertau quickly responded with strange noise as it frantically retreated several steps. The man grabbed onto the creature’s horns, pulling it close to his face. The Kertau gradually calmed down; its heaving gasps dropping to an even breath. The Kertau then poked its snout onto the man’s bandaged face, smudging his goggles in wet mists. Its tail seemed to swing around more energetically than before.

“It likes you,” the old woman proclaimed.

The man looked towards her in silence, the Kertau still prodding his head with its skull.

The old woman sighed and said, “Go pack up the guns. We’ve still got a place to be, don’t we?”