by Brian Keene
“Not much further,” I panted. “Just keep climbing.”
They nodded. Janelle tapped my shoulder, indicating that she wanted down. She was wobbly when she first tried to stand, but soon regained her footing. We scrabbled upward. The vegetation thinned to scrub, and the soil turned rocky. Huge boulders thrust from the earth. I glanced back down into the forest and saw treetops swaying back and forth as One-Eye passed beneath them. Then he lurched into sight. Without pausing, he started up the hill, thundering toward us.
“It’s no use,” Deke sobbed, mopping his brow with his shirt-tail. “That thing’s dead. It won’t tire. It’ll just keep coming until we tucker out, and then get us.”
“I ain’t gonna let that happen,” I said.
“Well, how do you reckon you can stop it?” Deke glanced back down at the dinosaur, creeping closer but still a long way off. “We ain’t got any weapons.”
“Sure we do.” I smiled, patting the boulder next to me.
“Hogan, you’ve lost your damned mind.” Deke stumbled to his feet. “What are you gonna do? Spit at it?”
“No. When it gets closer, I’m gonna drop this rock on its head. That was your idea yesterday, remember?”
“Will that work?” Janelle asked.
I shrugged. “I reckon that depends on whether I hit him or not.”
We waited for it to get closer. Janelle got nervous, but I calmed her down, assuring her that my plan would work. And it did. When the dinosaur was right below us, close enough that we could smell it again and hear the insects buzzing around its corpse, Deke and I rolled the boulder out over the ledge and dropped it right on the lizard’s head. There was a loud crack, like the sounds the snapping tree trunks had made. One-Eye sank to the ground. The boulder tumbled down the hillside. After a moment, the twice-dead dinosaur did the same.
Cheering, Janelle and Deke both hugged me. Then, before I even realized what was happening, Janelle kissed me. Her lips were blistered and cracked from the sun, but I didn’t mind. I pulled her to me and kissed her back. We didn’t stop until Deke cleared his throat.
“We ought to get going,” he said. “I reckon there will be more like him coming along shortly.”
“You’re probably right,” I agreed. “Let’s go. I’ll race you both to the top.”
We scrabbled to the summit, laughing and talking about our good fortune. It occurred to me that we should feel bad about Jorge and the others, and I did, of course. But at that moment, I was just happy to be alive, and even happier about that kiss. I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
Hope.
That sensation crumbled when we reached the summit. We stood there, unable to speak. Janelle began to cry. Instead of desert, spread out before us was more forest—an endless sea of green treetops swaying as things passed beneath them.
“No,” Deke whispered. “This can’t be right. This ain’t on any of the maps.”
I put my arm around Janelle. “I don’t think we’re on the maps anymore, Deke.”
Deep in the valley below, something roared. I glanced over my shoulder. Another dinosaur emerged from the forest. Its head was as big as a full-grown buffalo and its teeth were the size of tent pegs. It was obviously dead. It might have escaped extinction, but it couldn’t escape Hamelin’s Revenge. Death is funny that way. In the end, it gets us all.
As we ran, I wondered if one day, folks would dig our bones out of the ground like they had the dinosaurs, and if so, which kind of dead we’d be.
STORY NOTES
“Lost Canyon of the Damned” came about after Joe Lansdale asked me to write a story for an anthology he was editing for Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press. He wanted something “fun and retro-pulpy.” I wrote him this. Unfortunately, my story was too long, and there wasn’t room for it in the book. Joe and Bill were nice enough to recommend the story to John Joseph Adams, who was editing an anthology of zombie stories called The Living Dead 2. John contacted me and the story found a home. And now it’s appearing here, as well.
Although this story takes place in the Old West (or, at least, it does until they step through that dimensional doorway and end up in a world of dinosaurs), the virus that causes the zombie outbreak is the same as the one from my novels Dead Sea and Entombed. Consider it an alternate reality where the zombie apocalypse happened during the days of the Old West.
BRIAN KEENE is the author of over twenty-five books, including Darkness on the Edge of Town, Urban Gothic, Castaways, Kill Whitey, Dark Hollow, Dead Sea, Ghoul and The Rising. He also writes comic books such as The Last Zombie, Doom Patrol and Dead of Night: Devil Slayer. His work has been translated into German, Spanish, Polish, Italian, French and Taiwanese. Several of his novels and stories have been developed for film, including Ghoul and The Ties That Bind. In addition to writing, Keene also oversees Maelstrom, his own small press publishing imprint specializing in collectible limited editions, via Thunderstorm Books. Keene’s work has been praised in such diverse places as The New York Times, The History Channel, The Howard Stern Show, CNN.com, Publisher’s Weekly, Media Bistro, Fangoria Magazine, and Rue Morgue Magazine. Keene lives in Pennsylvania. You can communicate with him online at www.briankeene.com or on Twitter at @BrianKeene
Table of Contents
AN OCCURRENCE IN CRAZY BEAR VALLEY
LOST CANYON OF THE DAMNED