Gary ‘Gearhead’'s Arc

Chapter 14 of 15

Gary climbed down from the watchtower and walked back to the welding station where the woman was coiling cable. She looked up when his shadow crossed her workbench. He asked if she'd ever heard of the Ravens before coming to Rust Creek. She set down the cable and wiped her hands on her pants. She told him she rode with them for two years before she left. Gary's hand drifted toward his rifle but she didn't move. She said the Ravens had a weakness—they never fortified their camps because they relied on speed and numbers instead of walls. Their bikes were fast but their supply lines were slow, and they couldn't hold territory if someone forced them to dig in and defend it. She walked to the rusted building she'd claimed as her workspace and came back with a pistol, raven etched into the grip, polished metal catching the light. She'd taken it the night she left and kept it as a reminder. Gary asked why she was telling him this now. She said because the Ravens would come back with more riders, and if he wanted his marketplace to survive, he needed to make them fight on his terms instead of theirs. Gary took the pistol and turned it over in his hands. The weight felt wrong—too balanced, too expensive for scrap work. He asked if she thought his walls would be enough. She said the walls would slow them down, but he'd need to hit their supply trucks before they could stage a real assault. Gary handed the pistol back and told her to show him where the Ravens kept their fuel and ammunition. She nodded and said there was a depot three miles west, lightly guarded because they never expected anyone to know about it. Gary called his crew together and told them to prep the truck. He'd spent weeks building walls to protect what he had, but now he'd learned the only way to keep the Ravens out was to take the fight to them first.