Title: Running For A Cause
Fandom: The Magnificent Seven
Author: Apache Firecat
Characters: Ensemble - all Seven
Rating: PG/K+
Summary: The Seven never ran before, but now they can't seem to stop...
Word Count: 2027
Written For: Ficlet Zone 53: Bon Jovi - We Don't Run
Warnings: AU, Dark Future
Disclaimer: All characters within belong to their rightful owners, not the author, and are used without permission.







Gravel spun and tires screeched as the old truck's brakes were slammed down. It almost hit the old house, but the armored car running behind it couldn't move as fast. It slammed into the house, dust, gravel, wood, and shrapnel going everywhere. The men didn't stop; they kept going even as the youngest one on the back of the pick-up whooped and hollered. "Calm down, kid," the man in black snarled, "and get down! Just because that one's down doesn't mean the rest are down!"

The silent man guided the boy downward into the truck's bed, but he couldn't help thinking that in another time, the place around them could have been beautiful. He didn't even know where they were at currently. It didn't really matter. The war was everywhere. This truck and the men around him were only a small part of the war that savaged their entire nation. Still, in another time, this little, Texas town could've been beautiful. It could have even been peaceful, but peace had died a long time ago. He lifted his old, trusty musket up and readied for the next shot. He knew there'd be more; there was always more.

"I'm not a kid," the boy they all knew only as JD argued as he shot back up next to Vin and Chris almost faster than the silent man had laid him down. Vin had never been one for speaking a lot, but the few words he had spoken had cost him his very tongue. He shook his head at the boy but knew it would be pointless to try to put him back down into the closest thing they had for safety.

"Boy ain't gonna learn," the mustachioed man sitting across from Vin shook his head, "'til he gets his head shot or his tongue taken."

"Was that a joke, Mistah Wilmington?"

Buck's blue eyes were stone cold as he turned at the man dressed in the closest thing any of them had to resembling finery. "I don't joke, mister." Losing Inez had taught him that. Her fiery spirit had gotten her killed one of countless nights that she had spoken her mind while tending their bar, much like Vin's journalism and determination to get the truth out to the people had cost him his tongue. It would've cost him his life, too, if Chris hadn't come along when he did.

A metallic sound sang through the air. Ezra started to lift his arm, but at just that time, the brakes spun again. "HOLD ON, BOYS!" Nathan hollered from the front seat. "JOSIAH, WHAT THE HELL, MAN?!"

Josiah was breathing hard when he brought the truck to a stop, his aged, blue eyes were wide and filled with terror. "Josiah," Nathan spoke slowly and calmly, "come back to me. We're here. We're all alive."

In the eerie quietness around them, his words carried easily to those in the back of the truck. None of them, suddenly, would look at each other for all of them had lost someone due to this horrible war and all of them knew what the doctor was trying to do. He was trying to bring their Preacher, the senior of them all, the one they all turned to in secrecy when they thought their comrades were not looking back to his right mind, back to the current time and place in which he was in before he started attacking them all.

The beads of Josiah's necklaces from his tour in Africa shook as he shook his head. "You didn't..." He was breathing hard and paused for a moment to draw in a shaky breath before turning wide, scared eyes onto his dearest and oldest friend. "You didn't see them, did you?"

In the back of the truck, Ezra placed one finger against his lips as he raised his arm again. A creature purely of metal swooped down and landed on his arm, its razor-sharp talons digging into the cloth of his red jacket just enough to claim its perch on its master's arm. "Sh," Ezra murmured, but none of the four men sitting around him missed how his hand gently stroked over the arch of the robot's metal neck. The sentient AI cocked its head to one side and examined Ezra through its camera lenses. It did not speak again, though, as Nathan tried to soothe Josiah in the cab.

JD and Vin both shivered. The kid had to look away. Tending horses at the racetrack had been a lot easier than watching Ezra with that robotic thing. Those had been real animals at least, not cold, metal robots that could just as easily be programmed away from them as to help them.

"I don't like that bird," Chris muttered to which Vin nodded a single jerk of his head. His partner had spoken for him, as he often did, the very words he'd been thinking.

"He serves his purposes," Ezra countered.

Buck was the first to find the words to retort what all the other men in the truck bed were thinking. "It," he hissed through teeth clenching underneath his thick, black mustache, the one thing he still believed made him a handsome man. Of course, it wasn't as if he had much with which to compete, or to compete for these days. Loving seemed more and more a thing of the past.

Meanwhile, up in the cab, Josiah was huffing. "You didn't see 'em, did you?" he demanded of Nathan. He struck the steering wheel. "NONE OF YOU SAW THEM, DID YOU?!"

JD winced as the Preacher roared like a beast. Buck and Vin exchanged a knowing look. They knew the kid had been beaten -- most of them had been when they'd been little --, but they didn't know how badly. They also knew that whenever they tried to get the boy to go home, he always acted like he didn't have a home. Vin felt a shiver cross his tailbone as he thought about that place that seemed so long ago a fairy tale. He looked around them at the abandoned buildings. This place had been someone's home once.

"NONE OF YOU SAW THEM!"

"Saw what?" Nathan asked, trying to keep his voice calm and just loud enough to be heard.

"THEM!" Josiah waved toward the people he had just swerved again to miss, but of course, there was nobody there now. There was never anybody there, except for the six men around him and the occasional woman who joined them. The women never seemed to last long though.

He punched open his door and jumped out, but there was nothing moving around them except the wind and the crackling fire that consumed the remains of the car that had been chasing them and the old house into which it had exploded. He could easily picture a tumbleweed blowing across this path, but there wasn't one. Just empty buildings and the hollow, aching sound of silence and solitude. The desert sun was sweltering, but they were all accustomed to heat and had been ever since they'd been little. Comfort was definitely something of the past, along with full bellies and women who actually stayed without being killed.

"NONE OF YOU SAW THEM?!" he roared, waving his hands, but slowly, one by one, the other men shook their heads in the negative.

"Josiah, come on and get back in the truth," Nathan spoke, sliding over. "I'll drive."

"I DON'T GIVE A DAMN WHO DRIVES!" The Preacher tossed his whiskey bottle to the desert ground. "I SAW THEM! THEY WERE REAL!"

And they could have been them, he realized. They could have been them easily in another time, a time not so ravaged by war, a time where hatred did not always seem to triumph over love and right. There had been seven men standing on horseback just a few feet away. That's why he'd yanked the truck again, trying to keep from hitting the men who would not move, the men who just stood there, looking like they were eyeing down impossible odds but would not move, would not run from anything that came their way. "THEY WERE THERE!"

"I'm sure they were, pard," Chris called, "but let's get on outta here, okay?"

Josiah looked around them again. "They were here..." he muttered, and suddenly, he had the distinct feeling that they had been there before.

"Well, we're here," Buck called after him, "in 2040! Let's get moving, pard!"

"We have some time," Ezra spoke, stroking the robotic bird's wings, "but -- "

"It never lasts," Buck finished for him.

"Let's get moving, Josiah!" Chris called.

"Yes, General." The Preacher gave one last look around them. The wind seemed almost to be purposefully trying to obscure his vision, but he knew they had little choice. They had to move. They always had to move. Stability, peace, full bellies, living one's life out with one woman, or man, beside you... Everything that had once represented happiness now seemed to be gone, all legends of the past.

At one time, he wouldn't have ran. At one time, he'd thought running was for cowards. They all had. But these days, running was not just the only way to survive. It was the only way to actually defy the government. It was the only way to make a stand. It was the only way, ultimately, to be free.

He shook himself and stared again at the place where he could've sworn he'd seen six familiar... Yes, the more he thought about it, the more he realized those silhouettes had been familiar. Seven men who would not stand down no matter what. Seven men who would not run. Seven men who were protecting... what? he wondered. Each other, but everything in his gut stated they'd been protecting something, and somebody, else. Had they actually had lives? Had they actually had wives and perhaps even children, cherished families of their own? And what of the wars in their time? What all, who all had they stolen from them?

"Okay," he muttered, walking away and jumping up into the cab. "Let's get out of here. I don't like ghosts."

"I don't like robots," Buck muttered, eyeing Ezra's eagle. "Still stuck with them."

"It's a shame, though," Nathan commented, slowly driving them away from the scene.

"What's that?" He hadn't seen the ghosts he had; he couldn't possibly be thinking the same as he was.

"That looked like it was a beautiful place once."

"Yeah, brother," Josiah spoke sorrowfully, "it was."

The four men in the back watched the little, Texan fade away. "Looked like it could've been a nice place to settle down."

"Yeah, but it's on their maps now."

"'Sides," Buck queried, his mustache jerking, "it's only ever a matter of time."

None of them had to ask until what. They all knew what he was thinking. They couldn't settle down. They couldn't just stay in one place and actually build lives for themselves. They'd each tried it at different times. It never worked, and whoever they tried it with was always destroyed.

Vin thought of the newspaper woman who had taught him everything he knew about unveiling the truth. Mary Travis had been a legend in the reporting field and had died horribly, burning alive with her husband and son. She'd always had a knack for seeing what other folks didn't. What would she have seen back there?

Buck watched the place fade away through sad, blue eyes filling with tears. Inez had always liked anything authentically Hispanic or Texan. She would have loved several of those old houses, loved to settle down in them, raise those kids they'd always talked about having... But such was not to be their life.

Vin's hand clamped down on JD's shoulder as he thought of Mary's son, who'd been about the boy's age when he'd been killed. It was actually the kid who broke the silence and gave them all food for thought and small, wistful smiles beginning to replace their deep frowns. "It ain't much," he said, "but we've got each other."

"Yeah," Chris agreed, "and that's worth running for."




The End