by Faith Hunter
When he did, the world was wrong.
He wasn’t in the front yard anymore.
He was covered in mud, cold and sore, still dressed in filthy clothes, shoes and all. But he wasn’t outside. He was in the house. Upstairs.
On the bed where his mother died. Where his sister never even got to live.
Laid out on the bed, but he knew he hadn’t walked up here. He never came into this room. Never. He knew that he would never have gone to bed wearing muddy clothes. Never would have lain down with his shoes on.
Never.
Neb sat up very slowly. It took a lot to do it, his muscles hurt that bad. So did his head. As soon as he sat up, a cough took him and wouldn’t let him go for five long minutes. It was a bad cough. Deep and grating, and when he was done coughing there were drops of blood on the hand he’d used to cover his mouth.
Sunlight slanted through the window, and outside he could hear the morning birds. A couple of cows mooed out in the field, needing to be milked. Dunders whinnied in the corral.
Neb got out of bed, moving carefully, afraid of that cough coming back. His feet were unsteady, and his body kept wanting to fall. He stayed up, though. And he got all the way to the top of the stairs before something occurred to him. He turned and looked the way he’d come. He saw the faint dried-mud smudges of his shoes on the floorboards, but they were coming out of the room. There were none of his footprints going in. There should have been, and his feet were covered in mud.
Not that there weren’t footprints, though. It’s just that they were too big. A man’s shoes.
Like all the boys his age he knew how to hunt and how to track. He knew how to tell one set of footprints from another, animal or not. The shoes that made those prints were shoes he recognized.
“No,” he told the morning.
No.
The prints remained, however.
Frightened, Neb hurried downstairs, clutching the bannister for support. The front door was open and there was a pool of water in the living room. There was a line of muddy prints leading in through the open door, through that puddle, and on up the steps.
“No,” he said again.
Neb walked wide of the footprints and had to step over them to get out of the door.
He walked across the front yard to the little family cemetery. The muddy mound over his father’s grave was torn up and sunken in.
Neb backed away from it.
He stood halfway between the house and the corral, looking everywhere for answers, needing to find some that did not match the pictures in his head. The cough came again. Worse this time. So deep. So bad.
When it finally passed the whole yard seemed to tilt and slide sideways. It took forever for Neb to saddle his horse. Dunders kept shying away from him and he kept dropping things. The blanket, the saddle, the reins.
Finally he managed to climb up onto the horse’s back.
They rode away from the house.
The way to town took him past the Carter place. Neb stopped by the gate and studied the house. Their door was open, too. He could see faint light inside, as if no one had bothered to turn down the night lanterns.
“No,” he said one more time.
He turned the horse and walked Dunders up the lane to the Carters’ porch steps. He could see how it was. The doorframe was splintered, the lock torn clean out of the wood. The porch rocker lay on its side. There was a muddy handprint on the door.
But Neb knew it wasn’t mud. Blood turns chocolate brown when it dries.
He slid from the saddle and staggered up the steps. There was mud on the porch. Footprints in that familiar shape. Going in. Coming out. They were the only footprints on the porch.
Neb stepped over them and went in without knocking.
He stood for a long time looking at the living room. Seeing it yanked him out of that moment and took him back to his Ma’s room and how it seemed to have been painted red. This room was painted red, too.
Mrs. Carter sat on the sofa.
Some of her did, anyway.
The rest of her…
Well it was gone. Even from ten feet away Neb could tell it wasn’t a knife that did this. Nor a wood axe either. He’d seen animals in the wood that had been set upon and half eaten. He knew how that looked.
He knew what he was seeing.
Once more the world tried to tilt under his feet.
Neb hurried outside and vomited over the porch rail. Half of the vomit was red with his own blood. He gagged, coughed, gagged.
Dunders nickered and tossed his head, his big dark eyes rolling, alarmed at the smell of sickness and of death.
Neb shambled down from the porch and climbed into the saddle. He went back out to the road. Along the way, there in the center of the road, he saw those same footprints. One set of tracks coming here to the Carter place. Another set coming out and then turning, turning, not heading home. Heading to town. There were dark splotches of dried blood mixed in with the mud.
Neb sat on the horse as more of that awful coughing tore at him. He knew he was sick. Laying out there in the cold and the storm…that had been bad. There was something burning inside his chest. In his lungs.
He sat astride Dunders, feeling lost, feeling sick, feeling like he was already falling into darkness. The footsteps went on ahead and vanished into the distance.
Neb did not follow them into town.
He knew what he would find there.
“No,” he said one last time. But this time he knew that he meant ‘yes’.
He turned Dunders around and let the horse take him home.
Once he was there he removed the saddle and bridle and let the horse go. Not into the corral. Just go.
Then Neb walked up the few steps to his porch and sat down on the chair.
And waited for his Pa to come home from town.
Mungo Snead's Last Stand
Robert E. Waters
June 18, 1885, Fort Henderson,
South Platte River, Colorado Territory
Captain Remington Alexander “Mungo” Snead peered through his binoculars toward the amassing Killajunkur horde. There was no other way to describe it, set against the backdrop of a rising orange sun and steam floating off the surrounding valley grass. To him the Killajunkur appeared as tiny specks, a jumble of blue and green and red Scalies preparing for war. Behind him, Corporal Seamus Johns cursed their bad luck and stabbed scorpions with an antique Highland dirk.
“This is what I’m going to do to them sons of bitches if they get close, Captain,” the corporal said, slicing through the creature’s tough, black carapace with a swift crunching sound.
“You better have something more than a knife, Corporal,” Mungo said, adjusting the intensity of his binoculars to get a better view of the tall Scalie inspecting the enemy ranks. “The Killajunkur wear armour.”
Corporal Johns huffed. “As if that’ll keep them safe from a blaster.”
“Aye.” Mungo nodded. “But we don’t have many; only two crates. And they have more…many, many more.”
The corporal laughed, something he did regularly. This time, though, he sounded afraid. He should be.
“Don’t you fret, Captain. The major will keep us safe from that murderous alien beast. And the 10th Royal Guard is still out there somewhere.”
The “murderous beast” Corporal Johns spoke of towered over the ranks of his Scalie spearmen by a good two feet. Mungo adjusted the right lens of his binoculars and focused in on the scores of eagle and hawk feathers that hung proudly from Arjukadembo’s prominent horns running from the crest of his skull to the small of his back. One feather for every victory against Her Majesty’s Royal North American Legion. Which one represented the Pawnee Creek Massacre, he wondered. From this distance, he could not distinguish one feather from another. And did that feather carry the blood of the innocent women and children left slaughtered and face down in the red water?
Mungo let go of his binoculars, left them hanging from his neck on a thin
cord of buffalo hide, knelt, and prayed. He prayed silently, for he could not let the men see his fear. Men and a few women serving the hospital, a handful of survivors from Pawnee Creek, a dozen missionaries who foolishly entered the territory with no survival plan save for their faith and Bibles, elements from the 7th British Expeditionary Force, and Fort Henderson’s own small garrison. Maybe a hundred and sixty, a hundred seventy souls. Barely a fighting force. Corporal Johns’ words rang in Mungo’s mind. The Major will keep us safe from those…
“Captain!”
Mungo turned and saw Sergeant Williams saluting. The young man’s tortured face told the captain everything he needed to know. “The Major will see you now, sir.”
Mungo nodded and followed the sergeant off the ramparts and into the tiny building where Major John Willoughby lay dying on a bloody, sweat-soaked cot.
“Come here, you bastard,” Quick-Shot Willoughby said, through gooey phlegm and the smoke of a blunt cigar wedged between his crooked teeth. The doctor had tried to keep tobacco away from the grumpy fool, but no one dared tell the major not to smoke.
Mungo respectfully removed his helmet and knelt beside the bed. The major placed his shaking hand on Mungo’s shoulder. “Tell me one thing, Captain. Did I do good?”
Once word of Pawnee Creek had reached Fort Henderson, the major had decided to scout the enemy advance on his own, despite Mungo’s stern objection. He managed to return with a few of his men, though barely, receiving a point-blank gut shot from a Killajunkur blaster. He’d lost too much blood. He was severely dehydrated, and the wound was infected beyond medicine and God.
Mungo nodded. “Yes, major. You brought two blaster cases back. Primed and ready.”
“Very well.” The old man coughed. A trickle of blood ran down his mouth. “You have to promise me, Captain. No retreat. Promise me that.”
“Sir.” Mungo leaned in to whisper his next words so that those standing nearby could not hear. “The Scalies number in the thousands. Arjukadembo is leading the attack. We have but a handful of trained fighting men. We cannot stand. We must abandon this post, fall back, and—”
“No!” Major Willoughby’s eyes were bloodshot and violent, peering through a crust of yellow gore from the creeping blaster wound that had left him nearly blind. His breath was stagnant, his breathing hectic. He grabbed Mungo’s brass-buttoned red lapel and pulled him closer. “If you fall back, Arjukadembo will sweep down the South Platte, destroying every outpost, every town, from here to Denver. Her Majesty’s empire in America will crumble. You cannot retreat. Promise me that you will stand…and fight.”
Mungo could do nothing but nod.
A withered grin crept across the Major’s ruined face. He laid his head back into the dirty pillow, let out a final sigh, and died.
Mungo left the room, followed closely by Corporal Johns.
“Are you in charge now, Captain?”
Mungo nodded to the corporal. “It would seem so.”
“What are you going to do?”
Before Mungo could answer, a low, howling whistle climbed through the mist. Mungo looked up and saw a flash of green-and-red energy, like a lightning bolt, arc into the morning sky from the Killajunkur position. For a moment, it reminded him of the streaming fireworks he used to enjoy as a child in the streets of London. But this was no pleasant object of celebration. This was an energy spear, tossed into the air from a powerful Scalie arm with a leather atlatl throwing sling, and its message was clear.
He watched it bend through the sky, over the outer wall of Fort Henderson, and strike a wagon in the covered center of the yard. Half the wagon shattered in a cloud of smoke, broken iron, and wood. The other half burned.
When the dust and shock of the strike settled, Mungo approached the spear cautiously. Along its compound steel structure, ropes of green-and-red electricity popped. He waited until its kinetic energy waned. When it did, a small white flag unfurled out of its base and fluttered in the warm breeze.
“What is it, Captain?” Corporal Johns asked.
Mungo tried reading the charcoal scratches on the white flag. Alien words. Killajunkur words.
“He wishes to meet.”
“Who?”
“Arjukadembo.”
The corporal paused, then said, “What are you going to do?”
Mungo Snead turned and looked back up into the sky, and followed the spear’s contrail down until it disappeared behind the fort’s wall. Major Willoughby’s words raced through his mind—No retreat. Promise me that you will stand…—and the foolish promise that he had made to a dying man.
Mungo turned to Corporal Johns and tried sounding brave. “I will go and face the enemy.”
~*~
They met halfway between Fort Henderson and the Killajunkur horde. Captain Snead and Corporal Johns stood together in front of Arjukadembo. The alien chief towered over them, a seven-foot-tall cord of muscle and confidence. His red and green and black scales ran in narrow stripes down his chest and trunk and faded to dark red legs. Mungo was close enough now to see the majesty of his horn line and the long feathers that swung from them. He was impressive. Mungo could understand why the Killajunkur had made him a chief.
The Arapaho translator at his side worked his mouth furiously to give human voice to the screechy, raspy alien tongue. “I am honored to be in your presence, Captain Snead.”
“Really?” He was genuinely surprised by the statement. “I was not aware that you knew of me, sir.”
Arjukadembo nodded curtly. “Your reputation, as your people say, precedes you. The defense of Nine Pines. The counter-attack at Fordham Lodge. The retreat from Camp Smith. All impressive actions.”
Mungo repaid the compliment. “And your military campaigns are equally impressive, Great One. The attack at Fort Laramie. The rout on the Kansas plains. The massacre at Pawnee Creek.”
Arjukadembo took that last one for the insult intended. His powerful cheek muscles twitched beneath thick scales shifting black. “Is it a massacre when one is merely retaliating for the scores of dead women and children that my translator’s people have endured? The rapes, the murders that the Pawnee have endured? The killing that the Killajunkur have endured?”
“Do not forget, Arjukadembo,” Mungo said, “that it was your people that began this great war. Your starships dropped out of the clouds and dispersed your armies around the world. You’ve burned and pillaged for hundreds of miles, and you maintained that campaign unfettered until your ships disappeared. Will they come back? One wonders. Now that you have been abandoned and are running low on blaster fuel, with no refit coming, you’ve taken up allies in the hopes of surviving. Your decision to rely on armed conflict once again will not succeed. Your armies will—”
“This land is no more yours than it was the Americans,” Arjukadembo said, interrupting, “no more than Louisiana belongs to the French, no more than California belongs to the Spanish. Your American allies could not defeat us alone, so they sold their souls and their country to Europe just to survive. Colorado is ours, Captain Snead. The South Platte is our river, and we will take it back.
“My message to you is simple. Leave Fort Henderson. Leave it by sundown, and I give you my word of honor that no one will be harmed.”
“Why does my fort concern you so much?” Mungo asked, looking beyond the Scalie chief to the long line of skink riders waiting in multiple ranks. “Your army is so great, you can simply go around us and push up the South Platte unfettered.”
Arjukadembo flashed a tortured smile. “General Davenport’s 10th Royal Guard is out there somewhere. Without Fort Henderson to give it succor, support, they will be cut off. And then they can be routed.”
Mungo was impressed and more than a little concerned that Arjukadembo understood the strategic situation so well. Then again, he lacked the prehensile tail that the rank and file in his army possessed: a sign of high intelligence among Killajunkur. Despite their outward appearance, their horrific reptilian visage, Scalies were neit
her brainless animals nor cold-blooded lizards, despite what some in Parliament might say. What they were specifically, he did not know. But they were not stupid. And their infamous war chief was the least stupid among them.
“Let’s discuss peace,” Mungo said, taking a chance with open arms, palms spread and empty. “I invite you and your translator to dinner tonight. By parliamentary decree, I have the right, as an officer of Her Majesty’s empire, to negotiate peace terms and present agreements in writing to my superior officer, General Davenport, who then has the discretionary authority to approve such a deal. Let’s talk, eat, and drink like civilized men, Great One. We could end this bloody affair tonight.”
Arjukadembo laughed, his massive forked tongue flashing pink. “The matter has gone beyond breaking bread and drinking wine, Captain Snead. There is a saying among the Killajunkur: The mountain is only as tall as your fear. I have no fear today. How tall is your mountain, Captain? Judging by the man who sweats beside you, it must scrape the clouds.”
Corporal Johns’ face was a pale matte of cold sweat. He looked as if he were going to burst into tears. Instead, he pulled his dirk and rushed the Scalie chief. “You son of a bitch. You killed the major. You killed my wife! You—”
Before he could finish, the Arapaho translator pulled his own knife and struck Corporal Johns in the face with the bone hilt, shattering his nose and leaving him screaming on the ground. Mungo stepped in front of his corporal, shielding him from any further blows. A skink rider pulled from the ranks and raised his spear. Arjukadembo waved him off. “Halt! We will not spill further blood, nor will we waste a spear on this half a man, this coward that lies bleeding at my feet, who strikes at us under flag of truce. Take him, Captain Snead. Take your man back to your fort and consider my offer. Leave by sunset, and you will survive. Refuse, and you will die.”
Arjukadembo turned and fell to all fours, then slithered back to his army. They greeted their great chief with a solid war cry that echoed through the valley. Mungo could barely hear himself think as he pulled the corporal to his feet, and they walked together back toward Fort Henderson.