Straight Outta Dodge City

by David Boop

  Nightmare juddered to a stop and gave a low, frightened whinny, but Red was already swinging out of the saddle. He snatched the rifle and levered a round into the chamber before his boots touched down. Red ran up the slope, scattering buzzards before him. They screeched in outrage and protest as they flapped into the air. Red skidded to a stop, the stock socketed into his shoulder.

  But his finger still lay outside the trigger guard. There was no one and nothing to shoot. The buzzards weren’t worth the bullets, and the thing on the ground was beyond killing.

  It was a horse. A big one. Part Percheron and part Appaloosa. Or, it had been.

  Now it was meat, baking in the sun, writhing with maggots and beetles. The tough hide had been peeled back to expose yellow fat and marbled red flesh, with edges of white bone sticking out like knives. He heard a gagging sound and turned to see Mathew Hollister standing a few feet behind him, one hand over his mouth. In the other the farmer held a pistol that was pointed almost at Red.

  “Stay there,” Red said, but he reached back and gently pushed the barrel away.

  “That’s…Big Al.”

  “Yeah,” said Red, “I figured it was.”

  With his rifle in both hands he moved in a slow arc around the dead horse and up a rocky slope toward the mouth of a cave. There were bloody footprints all around. Most were birds and rodents and other scavengers, but beneath these, nearly obscured, were stranger prints. Red knelt down and studied them carefully. The shape was unusual. Long and narrow at the arch, blunt and round at the heel, and with a flare across the ball of each foot to accommodate those ungainly toes. The big toe hooked around at an unnatural angle, but it was still a toe—the pressure marks showed that. That toe looked more like a thumb, but Red didn’t believe it was a creature walking on its hands. This thing walked upright like a man.

  But he was certain it was not a man. He’d hunted people more than animals, and Red was sure he’d only ever seen something like these prints once.

  Six years ago Red had gone East, all the way to Chicago, hunting for a person he thought was a monster, but who turned out to merely be mad. A peculiar kind of madman who skinned his victims alive and wore their skin like a suit. Red ended that man and was injured in the process. During his slow recovery, he spent many days walking the paths of the Lincoln Park Zoo, and there, in a big cage, he’d seen a creature who left prints similar to this. It was a kind of ape he’d never heard of before—covered in coarse orange hair and with a face like a sleepy drunk. An orangutan. But as he studied the prints, matching them against memory, he did not think apes had escaped a zoo or carnival and come out to these hills on a murder spree.

  No. And the gait was wrong. Orangutans had a curiously light rolling walk, but the impressions here—formed by dry blood—were of something that plodded heavily.

  “Not a ghost,” he murmured.

  “What’s that?” asked Hollister nervously. “What’s that you say?”

  Red stood and turned in a slow circle with the rifle. Everything around him was still except for the flies and buzzards. He faced the cave again, which was a black nothing.

  “I said it wasn’t a ghost.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Never heard of a ghost leaving footprints like that,” he said. “And, besides, why would a ghost kill a horse, skin it, and cut steaks out of it?”

  Hollister blinked at him in astonishment, then gaped down at the dead animal. Red pointed with the rifle barrel to where sections of the hide had been pulled away rather that torn through with beaks.

  “There’s knife marks on the sides there,” he said, “and on the flanks. And see those big missing sections. You’re a farmer, man, you want to tell me you never seen a cow butchered before? Or a horse, for that matter. No…something’s up here, that’s for sure, and it’s hungry and it uses tools. We’re not looking for any ghost.”

  “Then…then…what are we looking for? And where’s my brother Jack?”

  Red chose not to answer that because there didn’t seem to be anything to say that wouldn’t hurt. The farmer was a simple man—uncomplicated and honest. Red regretted ever agreeing to let him come along.

  “I’m going to check out the cave,” he said. “Stay here.”

  “But—”

  “Watch the horses. If something gets to them, we’ll never make it back to town.” He paused and looked Hollister in the eye. The man was terrified and on the verge of tears again. “I need to you to guard the horses and watch my back. If you see or hear anything—anything at all—you call out. You got that?”

  Hollister nodded, but Red pressed him.

  “I need you to say it, Mr. Hollister. I need you to tell me that you can do this.”

  The farmer took a breath, let it out, and then straightened. “Yes,” he said. “I can do it.”

  “Good man. Eyes and ears,” said Red. “Eyes and ears.”

  He turned and faced the black mouth of the cave. The slope rose sharply, and he carried the rifle at port arms, ready to tuck the stock into his shoulder and fire. The Marlin Hollister used was a .22; Red’s rifle was a good deal more powerful and, on the ride here, he had taken each round and used a silver knife to cut tiny symbols into the soft lead noses of every bullet. Protection symbols he’d learned about from his mother and uncles. Comanche and Celtic magic that was generations old. Sometimes that sort of thing helped. Sometimes a bullet was only a bullet. He wouldn’t know what would work here. If hot lead didn’t slow them down, then he had other tricks up his sleeve. His thrice-blessed knife, the herbs in the leather pouch hung from his belt, the tattoos drilled into his skin. The last years had taught him all kinds of techniques.

  Above him, the mouth of the cave yawned wide. The sun was slightly to the west and, from that angle, it chased the shadows deep inside the opening. Only, they retreated just so far and then coalesced into an impenetrable wall of utter blackness.

  As he raised his rifle, and took his first step toward that place of darkness, pain and mystery, everything changed.

  The shape of the day.

  The structure of the world.

  Everything.

  – 4 –

  At that moment, the screaming started.

  It exploded into the air like the shrieks of ten thousand seagulls. A piercing sound pitched so high that Red cried out, dropped his rifle, and staggered backward as if he had been punched in the head. The vultures flapped away with such terror that two of them flew into the edge of the big tumble of rocks and fell broken to the unforgiving ground.

  Blood erupted from Red’s nose and his knees buckled. He curled up into a tight ball on the ground, helpless as a stillborn baby. His own scream was lost inside that sound. No steam engine, no cannon, nor the gunfire of a thunderstorm could match that noise. It seemed to go on and on and tear the sky.

  Then it stopped.

  Bang. Like that.

  The abrupt end of the noise was, in its own way, equally jarring. It tore a gasp from him like a man on the terrible edge of drowning suddenly rising to the surface of water. The first inhalation of air burned. The second was like ice.

  Red fought to uncurl his body, to roll onto hands and knees. It was like trying to raise a buckboard with his bare hands. His muscles were locked and moving them felt like tearing the fibers. He forced his arms and legs to straight, his back to move. One hand flopped out and fumbled for his fallen rifle. He blinked and worked his jaw and wasn’t at all sure if he could hear. Had the sound blown out his eardrums? There was no sound at all, so he could not be sure.

  He turned his head, which seemed to take more effort than bending a horseshoe barehanded.

  “H-Hollister…” he groaned, but Mathew Hollister lay sprawled in the dirt at the bottom of the slope. Red had to stare at him a long time to be sure the man’s chest rose and fell, but the fellow was out. Maybe the sound had done something to him, or maybe he’d fallen and hit his head.

  The world itself was silent as a tomb. Not a fly b
uzzed, not a bird sang. There was no sound at all.

  Until there was a sound.

  Not a shriek this time, but a kind of whirling sound, like the vanes on a windmill turning in a storm breeze. A fast sound, and buried within it was a thin, high whistle that did not sound in any way natural. There were clicks wrapped round the whistle, and he had the bizarre mental image of a breeze blowing through the gears of a tower clock in windy Chicago.

  He raised his head to look.

  And very nearly died because of it.

  Something big and pale shot past him, over him, beyond him, passing so close that it slapped the hat from his head and sent it bumping and tumbling in its wake. Red cried out as he flattened, and then rolled over, his cramps forgotten as he stared in shock at the thing that had narrowly avoided decapitating him. He blinked, trying to clear his eyes because the thing they saw could not be real. Must be some kind of hallucination, the result of brain damage from that sound. A trick of the light.

  Blinking did not change a thing.

  The thing moved past him and hit the midpoint of the rocky slope. It skidded all the way down to finally collide with the bones of Big Al.

  It was a sled, he thought, like something drawn through snow by a horse on a winter’s day in Montana. As it skidded and slewed to a stop, Red wondered how such a fragile-looking thing had not immediately smashed to pieces.

  It had a metal frame like the kind of sled horses pulled through winter snow. It was constructed of steel struts and brass tubes and coils of copper. There was ivory in there, and many crystals of exotic kinds and colors, some of which were opaque while others were as transparent as glass. He saw gears, too, like those in a clock and knew that he had not been far wrong in understanding the sound of the thing as it hurtled overhead. As much as it looked like a sled it also looked like a carriage from some fairy-tale story, with filigree that ran in lines of gold and silver. A cloud of dust rose up around it, conjured by the machine’s long skid and from some internal working that appeared to be in distress.

  All of this was amazing to him, appearing as it had from nowhere and flying over his head with the force of a cannonball. Gravity clawed it down and the sled slammed down onto the hard rock of the slope and immediately began to swerve and fishtail out of control. Showers of sparks flew up from its metal runners and the whole contraption wobbled so violently that it threatened to turn a slide into a deadly sideways roll. Red stared in horror because as it landed he could see that there was a person inside the thing. It was not a ghost or an ape-footed creature, nor even the Mu Pitz monster of his mother’s people.

  It was a woman.

  She was a tiny thing, though. Frail looking and slender as a willow wand, with masses of pale hair hanging loose around her shoulders. Red cried out for fear that she would be crushed or torn to pieces. Her hands seemed to dart and move everywhere, clutching at knobs and levers and dials as if there was something she could do to stop the mad careening of the machine. For machine it had to be, though its design was totally alien to him and its purpose beyond his understanding.

  The sled skidded down the hill and to his horror Red saw that Mathew Hollister lay in its path. The farmer’s doom seemed certain, but suddenly the woman wrenched a long lever hard to one side causing some of the crystals to suddenly pulse. The sled seemed to jump sideways somehow, as if vanishing and instantly reappearing a few feet to the left. It was surely a trick of the light, but Red could have sworn the whole thing disappeared and reappeared out of the path of Hollister’s certain death.

  The sled slithered down the far side of the slope and then jolted to a stop against a pile of rocks. The woman was jerked violently forward and back, but did not hit the metal frame. As Red hurried down after her, he could see why. There were straps holding her suspended like a spider in a web, each one fastened with such balance that they kept her from striking the metal or being hurled out. Even so, the force of the stop winded her, and she sat there for a moment, gasping and dazed.

  Red slowed and stopped a few yards away, glancing at Hollister, who was showing faint signs of returning to consciousness, and at the bizarre and improbable contraption. How had such a ponderous device been flung with such violent force—and from where? It seemed to come from the direction of the cave, but…how?

  The woman, groaning and gasping, released some control and the straps fell away. She sagged for a moment, then with a small cry of anger, pulled herself out of the machine and stood swaying on the slope.

  Her clothes were strange. She wore a simple tunic of some lavender material that shimmered like fine silk, girdled at the waist with an ornate belt of leather upon which many pouches and pockets were affixed. A small knife hung at her hip and, on her left side, she wore a kind of holster that Red thought held some kind of pistol, though it seemed to be made from green glass or porcelain.

  The woman’s face was flushed as if in fear or from exertion, but her eyes were clear and steady. Her full-lipped mouth set firm. The woman stared up at him with an expression of surprise that likely matched his own, before giving a small cry and frantically fumbling with the brass levers. If there was some purpose to this Red could not see it for nothing at all happened. Her alarm was immediate and obvious and enormous. The next cry that escaped her lips carried with it notes of terror.

  Red staggered.

  “Who are you?” gasped Red, steady on his feet, but not at all sure the world followed suit. “And what is all this?”

  She stared at him and replied in a string of words so alien to him that, at first, they did not appear to be any language at all. It was more like a song, the words flowing like musical notes. It would have been quite lovely had threads of panic not been so obviously sewn through the fabric of what she said.

  “I…I don’t…” he began, and then faltered as a scuffle of noise made them both turn. Mathew Hollister was awake and stood shakily on his feet, blood painting one half of his face and his eyes glazed. He blinked several times as he looked from the woman to the machine to Red and back again.

  “What is all this?” he asked, and it came out in a thoroughly reasonable tone, as if someone on the street had merely ask what time it was o’clock. He stumbled over to stand by Red, still blinking and confused. “What’s happening? What is that thing? Who’s this young gal?”

  The woman opened her mouth as if about to answer, but then she froze and stared at them. A sound was torn from her. Not a word but a cry of mingled horror, revulsion and naked fury.

  And then the woman drew her strange pistol and fired at them.

  – 5 –

  The draw was so fast that her hand seemed to blur. No Dodge City gunman could ever hope to match the speed of that draw. No rowdy or tough or badman from the rough country could have outshot her. One moment her hand was empty, and then she held the crystal handgun out.

  The weapon had no visible cylinder, nor even a proper barrel. Instead three brass prongs were set into the snubby business end of the gun, and there was a hollow TOK! By then Red had an arm hooked around Hollister and dove for safety. They fell hard and rolled down toward the butchered horse.

  Red did not hear the whine of a bullet but instead the air above them flashed with intense light and heat. He scrambled to his knees, bringing his rifle up, ready to shoot this strange madwoman, but stopped short, the trigger half-pulled because her gun was not pointed his way. Red turned to follow her line of sight and saw a scene out of some nightmare of hell. But who’s hell was beyond knowing.

  The mouth of the cave was suddenly on fire—not only the dried weeds that grew round it, but for a moment even the rocks seemed to blaze. The blast of that crystal gun had done something, projected heat in a way totally outside of Red’s understanding. As if hellfire was its bullet. Pieces of charred rock flew through the air, raining down all around. A second blast struck the wall and nearly half of the cave’s opening cracked apart and fell with a thunderous whump, belching gas and dust into the hot air. The debris piled high, bloc
king more than half of the entrance.

  That was not the strangest part, though.

  Standing to one side of the cave mouth were three of the strangest figures Red MacGill had ever seen, and he had seen spirits and demons in the dark. The figures were pale and covered in loose skin that sagged from arms and groin and legs but which was tight across sloping and muscular shoulders. Although the skin was smooth and hairless, the hides of each monster was splashed with blood and filth, and Red knew without question what had happened to the rest of Big Al, and likely the remains of Jack Hollister.

  The heads of these monsters were not the apelike visages described by Hollister but were smooth and featureless except for a single eye that was like a bar of green glass across the upper third of their faces. These creatures—for Red could not call them men—shied back from the fire, but still held their ground. Instead, they raised weapons of their own that were similar in design to the one the woman held, however, while hers was formed from green crystal, they aimed a crude conglomeration of metals.

  “It’s them!” cried Hollister. He was on his back and scuttled away on hands and heels. It’s the ghost men! Jesus save my soul…”

  Red had never seen anything like these things. They were not like any man he had ever seen or read about in books. Frankly, he had no idea what they even could be, and that in itself was terrifying. Ghosts were something he understood—or thought he understood—and men were men. These things were…what? Demons of some kind?

  The creatures disregarded Red as if he was of no consequence, and instead aimed their weapons to fire at the woman, who took cover behind the metal sled. They hesitated, though, as if for some inexplicable reason she frightened them as much as they clearly did her. Maybe even more, because they cowered back into the cave mouth.

  The woman pointed her gun, but did not yet fire, clearly torn between conflicting thoughts the nature of which Red could not begin to guess.