by RW Krpoun
The crazies dragged a horse and its rider down-a Mexican I hadn’t noticed before-who he was with I couldn’t guess. The horse managed to kick its way to its feet and escape, but its rider didn’t.
I quickly saw the advantage of the M1911, which was the ease of reloading while managing a horse. I burned through three magazines as Captain and I covered the withdrawal of the mules, the big cowman having switched to his Mauser pistol for the close-in work.
“Get one with the rope,” I yelled as the mules got clear. “Take it along.”
Captain shot me a startled look, but obligingly hung the C96 from his saddle horn and uncoiled his lasso. Neither Mac nor I could throw a loop very well but Captain was a cowboy from way back.
“What the hell?” Mac demanded, refilling belt loops from boxed cartridges, when we caught up with the main body a safe distance from the crazies.
“We get everyone?” I swung down from Pork Chop.
“Most. The Chinese lot a couple and they’re still heading for Brother Andrew at the gallop, but that’s it. Oh, and some Mex, who I dunno.”
“Yeah, I saw him, too.”
The crazy on the rope tried to get to its feet but Captain backed his horse and kept him prone.
“What are you doing?” Mac sounded irritated.
“I’m tired of people trying to kill me without me knowing why,” I methodically ejected the hulls from my Colt and loaded fresh rounds. “Brother Andrew says these guys are dead. I want to take a look for myself.” I noticed Nhi had dismounted and was standing near me, thumbing cartridges into a Luger magazine and watching the crazy.
The crazy was a Mexican, looked to be in his early twenties, tough and wiry as men usually get from beating a living out of poor soil. His left arm was broken, a compound fracture, possibly from hitting the ground when Captain roped him. Getting dragged all this way had stripped off a lot of hide, but neither that nor the arm seemed to affect his willingness to get at me. He clawed at the ground with his one working arm, hissing and gobbling, mindlessly trying to get to his feet each time Captain’s horse pulled him prone. He had a two-gun rig still strapped around his waist and wore horseman’s garb, now much ruined from his dragging.
Like the others, his face was expressionless save for a very vague sense of hostility; when he wasn’t making any sort of noise his jaw hung slack. To be honest, despite the noise and movement he looked dead. Where the skin was abraded away the under-flesh was gray and nearly dry, which wasn’t right for someone still moving.
“Can you take his good arm off?” I asked Nhi, who gave me an amused look. She gave her blade a light spin and then stepped in with a sudden coughing shout, a sort of ‘hai’ sound, and lopped off his right arm at the biceps.
Kicking the limb a safe distance from the crazy, whose fighting spirit was unaffected by the sudden loss, I examined it. There was very little blood leaking out of the cut, and for all intents and purposes it looked like it had come from a day-old corpse.
“He’s not bleeding, Seth,” Mac observed. “Not the way he should, anyway.”
He was right-the upper stump was shedding some blood, but only a dark ooze, not the bright pulses of arterial blood that you would expect.
“You ever see anything like this, Mac? Captain? Nhi?”
Three negatives. Cocking the Colt, I aimed carefully and shot him through each lung, good hits from about ten feet. It knocked him flat, but he immediately resumed his struggles to get upright, working with one broken arm, one freshly-cut stump, and two bullet wounds.
I replaced the two rounds, watching him, then retrieved the saddle Colt and reloaded it, using the rest of the box to top off the loops on my belt. Nhi finished reloading her magazines-the Luger rode in the small of her back, mostly hidden by the sash, I noticed.
“Not much blood coming through his mouth,” Captain observed. “Man with a hole through his lung starts coughing blood pretty quick.”
“Yeah.” I started refilling M1911 magazines. “They’re pretty well ruined, but those are better clothes than a peon wears. The cartridge belt’s half full, and one of those holsters still has a revolver in it. Bandit or rebel, I’m guessing. Nhi said they heard shooting last night to the southeast. Maybe one of those carriers Brother Andrew mentioned got in amongst a band of rebels?”
“At this point I’m willing to believe a lot of things,” Mac said slowly. “You reckon he’s dead?”
“Well…as close as makes no difference. Break an arm, drag him behind a horse, chop off an arm, and shoot him through each lung, and he’s as full of fight as he was at the start. That ain’t normal. Fever or opium can make a man do really strange stuff, but neither one keeps a wound from bleeding.”
“Brother Andrew said it was some sort of man-made sickness. Kills him, or the thinking part of him, anyway.”
“Makes better sense than anything I can think of,” I nodded. “The dead walk. A walking dead man. Lord, where are we at?” I shot him squarely in the forehead, and replaced the round while Tobias ran forward to free Captain’s rope and rifle the dead man’s pockets. “Let’s get back to the orphanage.”
It was a slower trip back, what with loaded mules and burdened spirits, and I fully expected to see that Green Coat had the orphanage under siege, but the old presido was unchanged from our departure. They opened the gates as we approached and we dismounted while the mules made their way inside. Bother Andrew edged past the mules to greet us.
“Well done, my friends,” he smiled. “This has been a productive day.”
Tobias passed, grinning at Brother Andrew. The monk smiled in return, then seized the boy by the collar and jerked him to his tiptoes, pulling an old Adams revolver converted to fixed cartridges from beneath the boy’s long-tailed shirt. Releasing him, the monk held out his hand. Still grinning, Tobias produced a greasy blue bandana knotted to hold a fistful of cartridges. Unloading the revolver, Brother Andrew handed it to a nearby monk, who reluctantly accepted it with two fingers as if it were a dead rat.
“So what was all this about?” I asked the monk when we were all inside and the gates were closed. “I can see helping others, but that undertaking had a bit of a specific feel to it.”
“We needed both his expertise and tools. See to your captive and mounts, and then I will explain.”
Chores done, we found Brother Andrew on the parade field smoking a slender cigar and watching a detail of orphans haul down the flag as the sun fully set.
When they were done he produced a cylinder about the diameter of a shotgun shell and four inches long. “This is called a Ground Bloom Flower.” Touching the end of his cigar to the fuse, he tossed it out onto the packed sand where it spouted sparks and colored flames as it spun wildly, rising a foot off the ground. After about five seconds it subsided and the blackened hull fell smoking to the ground.
The monk gestured and Tobias trotted up to jam a stake into the ground; a pasteboard disk the size of a dinner plate was mounted on the stake. “A Spanish platter,” Brother Andrew noted as Tobias held a match to the fuse and darted away. Various fireworks attached to the disk ignited, causing the disk to spin, spraying colored sparks and small flaming balls. The display lasted about thirty seconds.
“And lastly, a sparkler.” Tobias carefully escorted the small girl we had seen before who was clutching a yard-long dowel, the latter two feet of which was coated in gray material. Tobias held a match to the end of the rod; when it caught, it burnt slowly while emitting showers of sparks. The little girl began to wave the rod with enthusiasm. “It lasts thirty seconds.”
“Let us adjourn to dinner,” Brother Andrew led us into the mess hall. “We have learned that the walking dead are fascinated by certain fireworks; so long as they are not fired upon they will watch a ground bloom flower or Spanish platter for as long as it burns, and for a few seconds afterwards, even if in pursuit of the living. Although the sparkler is essentially harmless it will hold a walking dead at bay so long as it burns. These are not a perfect defense,
as you will understand, but I believe they will give us more options. Our friend Wai is a master of the fireworks trade and with his tools and materials he can produce large numbers of these devices. This is why you rode into danger today.”
“Speaking of danger, where are Green Coat and his merry band?”
“They passed us by. Either the orphanage is too well fortified or they had business elsewhere. Our turn will come, of that I am sure.”
“Why is that?”
The monk flicked ash from his cigar. “These children…they are half-breeds, orphans, and the unwanted. That makes them very useful to the necromancer.”
“Why?”
“Most were born into paganism or utterly abandoned by their parents, then baptized by us. For the old dark arts such origins are,” he waved a hand, searching for a word. “Useful. Better than average. Special. I do not understand the specific nuances to the matter, merely the general principal involved.”
“Useful to sacrifice.”
“Yes. And for things worse than sacrifice before they die. Think of them as very good building stones for what the necromancer is building.”
“Speaking of which…”
“Power in some form, but specifically, well, I have no idea. My knowledge on the matter is very generalized. There are things of which it is best to avoid too much knowledge.”
“That sounds like the best course, under the circumstances.”
He gave me a sharp look. “What are you planning to do, Mister Peak?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I have a prisoner to tend to and duties elsewhere.”
“I will wager there are few events you will encounter in your life that are more significant than this one. You are being given an opportunity to put your skills to use in a very worthy cause-a rare opportunity.” He swept an arm to encompass the outside world. “The dead walk, Mister Peak. There are innocents on their knees tonight praying for protection. The Lord does not send armies of angels to safeguard the meek, but I do believe He will place men of violent skills in a position to do what is right. You are a violent man, Mister Peak, and for once you have the opportunity to do the work of angels. It is your choice. Ah, the food is ready.”
I joined the others. “You hear that?”
“Pretty unlikely band of angels,” Mac snorted.
Captain frowned at the tortilla he was filling with rice and black beans. “I’m no angel, but there comes a time when I’m gonna have to answer for my sins. Wouldn’t hurt to have a few good deeds to put up against the tally.”
The cabbage soup they make here in Mexico was especially good tonight, and I spooned it up gratefully while I thought. “Boys, I’m used up; fact is, I haven’t been right in some time. I see things…from China or the Islands, enemies, out of the corner of my eye. I’m going to stick around down here, see what I can do to help.” Billy’s face flashed across my thoughts. “You two are free to do what you will. Take Sibley and ride north, tell them what’s happening.”
Mac wiped his mustaches. “Hell, I don’t have any urgent plans. What do you figure to do first?”
“Green Coat. Find him and his bunch, put an end to that.” The image of that lean figure troubled me. “I had thought to go back into the town and look for survivors, but I’ve come to the conclusion that Green Coat is going about some assigned task and whatever it is, stopping it can only be a good thing.”
“What do we do with Sibley?” Captain jerked a thumb towards the engineer, who was eating quietly at the end of the table.
“I would be glad to assist,” Sibley began, but Mac held up his hand.
“Leave him here. We’ll get him on the way north. If he runs, we just track him down and kill him-the Agency will be happy enough with the account numbers.”
“All right.” I looked over at Nhi, who was sitting across from Sibley. “We could use an extra set of hands. No pay, plenty of risks, and hard living. Interested?”
She nodded solemnly.
“Women in trousers,” Mac snorted. “With swords. Tell me this ain’t the end of times.”
They gave us little cell-like rooms for the night. The next morning, shaving with tepid water in that adobe cubicle, I studied the face emerging from beneath the thin lather. It was a fact that I am a hard case, a killer, a man who followed orders because that was an easy path. I hadn’t intended to go this route-my mother had had great hopes for me, and my father had brought me up to face hard work without fear. I must have made a decision somewhere that led me to be here, but for the life of me I couldn’t see it.
I had joined the Army on a whim-my father had preached often enough on how much we owed America, and it had seemed like an adventure. The old men talked of the Civil War and fighting Indians, and the war with Spain was just over. Then China and the Philippines had taught me a set of skills that never went out of demand.
With the honesty that comes in the hours before dawn I admitted that I never was completely sure what either one of those undertakings were about. We went to China because the Boxers were killing Christians and had our people pinned in their embassy, but I wasn’t really clear why we had people there in the first place. Likewise I knew we had taken the Philippines from the Spanish and that the Moros didn’t want us there, but I have no idea why we wanted to stay there-I never saw an acre of ground in that steaming armpit that was worth a bucket of piss. I had just soldiered on as best I could, better than most as a point of fact.
Professionalism, maybe, or maybe none of it really mattered. The Pinkertons were simple because the jobs they gave me were of small scope and easy to understand. Sibley was a thief and those he stole from wanted their money back-that was a cause I could understand.
I toweled my face off and took one final look. I knew even less about this undertaking than China and the Philippines combined, but I figured I knew enough for my purposes.
Like Brother Andrew had said, this was a rare opportunity.
We were leaving Trout and most our gear at the Presidio and were taking Tobias as a local guide because none of the maps available were worth a damn. Brother Andrew had offered Red Hawk but I had declined because the monk would need everyone tall enough to shoulder a rifle before this business was finished. We each had a handful of Ground Bloom Flowers in case they might become handy, although I had my doubts.
Mac and Tobias were ready when I led Pork Chop out into the courtyard. I wanted to start riding as soon as it was light enough to see, and we weren’t far from that point.
“Morning,” I grunted, checking the Krag by touch before sliding it into the saddle scabbard.
“Yeah,” Mac raised a hand to the dark outline of Captain emerging from the stables leading his horse and Perch. “I gave Sibley’s Browning to your girlfriend in case she doesn’t have enough rounds for that Luger.”
“I try to avoid women who are that good with an edged weapon.”
The woman in question emerged from the stable with her mule as we spoke. Pork Chop gave a disgusted toss of her head-I don’t know if she didn’t like the mule itself or the idea of a mule wearing a saddle.
Brother Andrew appeared carrying a lantern with a couple of girls toting baskets from which were dispensed warm bundles of breakfast. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I trust you had a restful night?”
“Restful enough,” I settled my fingerless gloves on my hands. “And you?”
“Well enough,” he nodded.
“Good, then maybe you can answer a question for me.”
“I shall do my best.”
“Why here? I don’t mean Mexico, why did the necromancer just happen to choose this area to start his…uprising? Whatever this is, why here?”
The monk shrugged. “That is a question only he could answer. No doubt this orphanage factored into his plans, but it is not unique, albeit not common, either.”
“All right, let me try again: what do you suppose the odds are that this business would start twelve miles from a Church…facility which just happ
ens to be run by two war-like monks who know about this business?”
Brother Andrew stared up at the flag-less flag pole before answering. “I told you this necromancer needs various elements for his efforts to bear fruit, did I not?”
“You did. The word wasn’t used but ‘magic’ was implied.”
“A dark art, part science, part…occult. Old powers that have not completely died, which perhaps are akin to echoes.”
“Keep talking.”
“They were never very…well, substantial even in their heyday. The Romans did much to eradicate them throughout Europe; they understood the principles and crushed anything that smacked of the business. The Jewish people did as well, and the Church in its turn took up the banner. Europe is cleansed, as are the nations of the Middle East and North Africa; the British dealt with India and the Chinese in their ambitious days dealt with much of Asia. At this time Africa, the New World, and a few pockets in very remote places are all that holds any potential. The destruction of the indigenous cultures in the United States and Canada have largely cleared those areas, leaving only the southern regions.”
“Here in Mexico and points south,” he set the lantern down by his feet. “There was a culture that was steeped in those very Arts. These days it is fashionable to decry the Spanish for their murderous ways, and indeed the number of innocent lives lost were staggering, but at the core of it they fought a war to destroy a very real and deadly evil.”
“The what’s-their-names, the Aztecs?”
“Not exactly; the nations were not part of it, but rather the inner core of the ruling circles. They built several empires and nations here under various names, but the truth is that those are simply the accomplishments of a single driving group.”
“But the Spanish broke them.”
“Broke them, yes, and in the decades that followed the Church labored mightily to sow the fields with salt, metaphorically speaking, but the fact remains that should a necromancer wish to ply his art Central America is the richest field left on Earth. I expect that every able-bodied clergyman in the Church who possesses any knowledge of these matters is in or near Mexico by now.”