Hope's End

by Mark Lukens

  The thumping sounds were in the upstairs hallway now—the door had broken free and the monstrosity was working its way to the top of the stairs.

  “Kill the boy!”

  One of the front windows shattered, then the other one. Arms reached in through the broken windows, hands grabbing at the air, hands formed into claws. Bodies thudded against the saloon doors, the weight of the bodies about to force the doors open.

  “Kill the boy!”

  Jed looked at Esmerelda—her eyes were squeezed tight, and she was whispering. Billy and Sanchez were doing the same thing in their own faiths. Jed looked down at David and locked eyes with the frightened boy.

  God, Jed thought. Save us if you can, but please save David. Please let David live.

  CHAPTER 37

  “We’ve done enough praying,” Jed said, pulling his hands out of Esmerelda’s hand and Billy’s hand. “Now it’s time to fight.” He turned toward the saloon doors and drew his Colt, cocking it.

  The monstrosity from upstairs was halfway down the steps now, still hidden in the early-morning shadows. As it descended, it was somehow untwisting itself back into two bodies, flesh pulling apart, skin stretching and snapping, blood oozing, bones and joints popping—the thing was forming back into two separate people, back into Rose and the cowboy, but now their bodies were shredded mounds of gore with blood running down the stairs like a river—yet the abominations were somehow still maneuvering down the steps.

  The saloon doors gave way, crashing open. Wood splintered and glass shattered.

  “You can’t have him!” Jed yelled at the approaching horde of the dead. A stench of rotting flesh and dried blood drifted towards him like a cloud of dust.

  The pastor was the first one through the saloon doors, the whole town behind him, others crawling in through the broken windows, crawling right over the jagged shards of glass and pieces of broken wood, pushing the table tops away that blocked their way.

  “One last chance,” the pastor said as he waited in front of the dozens of dead and mutilated people behind him. “Kill the boy.”

  Jed didn’t bother glancing to his right and left, or at David behind him. He heard the windows in the back room and in Moody’s office shattering, wood splintering. The other dead townspeople were crawling in through those windows, pushing the tables away that were barricaded there. Jed kept his eyes on the pastor, his gun aimed right at the dead man’s chest. “No,” Jed told him. “We won’t kill David.”

  The pastor’s smile slipped, his face blank for just a moment. All of the dead people had stopped, frozen for a moment in their tracks, all of their expressions blank. Then the pastor smiled, the corners of his mouth jerking up violently. “Then we will kill all of you. We will find others to kill the boy. We always have before.”

  The pastor rushed at them, the others following.

  Esmerelda was facing towards the back of the saloon. The ones who had gotten in through those windows were rushing towards her. She fired the shotgun at the closest man, the blast blowing off the lower half of one of his legs. The man fell forward, crashing down to the floor, but he began to crawl towards Esmerelda, leaving a trail of dark blood behind him.

  Billy shot at the two things that used to be Rose and the cowboy. They were almost unrecognizable now, just shuddering mounds of flesh and snapped bones—they looked like they had been turned inside out. Billy emptied the bullets from Karl’s gun into those two things, but the bullets didn’t slow them down. He dropped the gun and pulled the eagle feather from his hat, waving it in front of him, chanting and singing, preparing for his journey into the next world.

  Sanchez fired all of the bullets in both of his guns in less than ten seconds. They were all clean headshots that rocked the targets back. But those bullets didn’t kill them. The dead snapped their heads forward again and they kept coming.

  Jed shot six times into the pastor’s head, blowing part of his face away. But he kept coming.

  This was it, Jed thought. The dead were all around them now, reaching for them, about to tear them apart. He could try to reload his gun with the bullets in his belt, but why bother? They were seconds away from death now, all of them in a circle around David, but with their backs to David now, protecting him as best they could in these last few seconds.

  “No!” David screamed and ran out from their circle, standing in front of Jed and Billy.

  The dead stopped, some of them collapsing, their bodies contorting as things moved underneath their skin. A wind seemed to build up around them, spinning around them, Jed could feel the force of the wind blasting them. The dead seemed to be trying to back up, but it was like they couldn’t move.

  David stood in front of Jed, his body trembling, his eyes rolling back in his head. Filaments were being pulled out of the townspeople’s bodies like iron filings being drawn towards a magnet.

  Everything around them began to swirl, everything around them turning into a blur, like they were all in the middle of a huge tornado.

  Esmerelda held Jed back as he tried to move forward to help David. “No,” she whispered into his ear. “We can’t help him. Not anymore. Let him do this.”

  The black snake-like tendrils were pulled out of the people, the tendrils collapsing into black shapes that were constantly changing. The tendrils swirled around them like black streaks in the air, twisting and turning, intertwining with each other, trying to form shapes, trying to form arms and hands with claws, faces with open mouths of sharp teeth. But the shapes didn’t hold for long, disappearing back into the black ooze that swirled all around them in the air, moving up and over them, forming over top of them like some rapidly spinning dark cloud.

  “Look,” Sanchez said, backing away.

  Underneath David, a black space was opening in the floor. It looked like a black circle at first, then a deep hole. He stood over that hole like he was floating above the darkness. The spinning mass of darkness, the Ancient Enemy in front of him, was floating towards David as he stared at it, his hair blowing around, his mouth opening wide, his eyes entirely white now, the pupils gone. David levitated up above the black hole in the floor, that fathomless void. As he rose up higher into the air with his arms out wide, the black mass of the Ancient Enemy lowered down to meet him, beginning to swirl around David.

  The thing screeched and screamed as it swirled around David, the hole from the floor rising up to engulf both the Ancient Enemy and David. Now David could barely be seen, there was only a black ball of energy spinning around above the hole in the floor, crackling with blue lightning.

  They backed away from the massive spinning ball, from the crackling lightning, from the screeches that came from outside.

  “David!” Jed yelled.

  The ball of darkness was spinning faster and faster, but it was also getting smaller and smaller. It collapsed in on itself with a blinding flash of light, and then it was gone. The Ancient Enemy was gone.

  David was gone.

  *

  Jed woke up. He didn’t know how much time had passed, but the saloon was much brighter with the morning light streaming in through the open doors and broken windows. He sat up on the floor and saw that Esmerelda was right beside him, still unconscious. Billy and Sanchez weren’t too far away, and both of them were beginning to wake up. Sanchez sat up and grabbed his pistols that were on the floor.

  Esmerelda sat bolt-upright, drawing in a quick breath. All of them got to their feet and stared at the spot where David and the Ancient Enemy used to be. There was nothing there now, no void, no hole in the floor, no black shapes, nothing.

  “He’s gone,” Jed whispered. “Where did he go?”

  Esmerelda didn’t answer.

  Jed looked at the dead people piled up inside the saloon, many of them heaped together and blocking the doorway. A few of them were stuck in the windows, one of them folded over the window sill with his arms hanging down. But none of them were moving—they were all dead now.

  “He saved us.” Esmerelda f
inally answered Jed’s question with tears running down her face.

  Jed looked at the floor where David used to be, then he looked back at Esmerelda and the others. “He gave his life for us.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Jed had to walk over the dead bodies to get out through the saloon doors. Their bodies squished under Jed’s footsteps as he walked over top of them, some of them piled two or three high in the doorway. He didn’t want to walk over them, but he had no choice, and he prayed he wouldn’t trip or lose his balance. He made his way slowly, his boots sinking down into flesh. He slipped once, almost fell, but he was able to catch himself at the last second.

  Once Jed was past the bulk of the dead bodies, he descended the wooden steps from the walkway down onto the dirt street. The two boys without their legs were out in the street, frozen in the action of crawling towards the steps—Karl’s boys.

  As soon as Jed was in the middle of the street and far enough away from the bodies, he felt like he could breathe again. But even from this distance he could still smell the stench of blood, guts, piss, and shit.

  The sun was above the horizon now, lighting up the world and driving the freezing night air away. He trembled as he stood in the wide dirt street, his pistol in his hand even though he couldn’t remember drawing it from his holster. He was still scared, still afraid that this wasn’t really over, afraid that the Ancient Enemy was tricking them, letting them believe they were safe for the moment, and then the bodies would stir, the dead would stand up, the monster would be back and they would have no protection now that David was gone.

  He heard the noise from the saloon, turned that way and watched Sanchez step across the bodies with far more agility and grace than Jed had shown, stepping across the dead like he was hopping over exposed rocks in a creek bed.

  “Where’s Esmerelda?” Jed asked Sanchez when he was out in the street with him.

  “Billy’s with her. She’s still upset.”

  Jed nodded. He was upset about David, too. He hadn’t wanted the boy to die. It had been his mission to protect David since the day he had found him, and he had failed at that mission. He stared back at the dead bodies jumbled up in front of the saloon’s doors and windows like a logjam. He looked at Sanchez.

  Sanchez was tense, ready to go for his guns if Jed gave him a reason to.

  “I’m not taking you in,” Jed said.

  “You believe me?” Sanchez asked. “You believe that I shot that man in self-defense?”

  Jed didn’t answer. He knew he was shirking his duties as a marshal now. He was thankful that Sanchez had helped them, thankful that Sanchez had shot Moody before he could slit David’s throat, even though David was gone now.

  But it didn’t matter. He couldn’t outdraw Sanchez ten times out of ten, and he could see now that Sanchez was not going to let him get the jump on him again.

  It was more than that, though. Jed felt old and tired. He felt different, fundamentally changed in these last few days. He didn’t want to be a marshal anymore, weary of the responsibility that weighed him down now, weary of the violence that came with the job.

  Did he believe Sanchez? Yes, he did. But that wasn’t his decision to make—it was the court’s decision, a judge’s decision, a jury’s decision. Would Sanchez get a fair trial in Smith Junction, Arizona? Probably not.

  Sanchez watched Jed.

  “I believe you,” Jed finally said.

  Sanchez relaxed a little.

  “Let’s get some of these bodies out of the way of the doorway,” Jed said as he pulled a pair of gloves out of his pockets and pulled his bandana up over his face.

  *

  Sanchez helped Jed pull the bodies away from the saloon doors, pulling some of them farther down the walkway to the edges of it, rolling some of them down into the street. Flies were already beginning to swarm around the bodies. Lifeless eyes of dead people stared up at the sky, mouths open, stumps and wounds glistening with dried blood.

  Even though it was still bitterly cold, Jed was beginning to sweat a little underneath his clothes from the work he’d done so far.

  Now that the path was clear, Billy and Esmerelda left the saloon and walked out into the street.

  “We can’t leave them like this,” Esmerelda said as she looked back at the scattering of bodies all over the walkway in front of the saloon, the floorboards stained dark reds and browns, the clouds of flies visible from where they stood.

  “What are we supposed to do?” Jed asked. “Bury them? We’d be here for the next three days doing that. Ground’s probably frozen anyway.”

  Esmerelda didn’t say anything. She looked up at the sky, noticing the buzzards that were circling. “We can’t just leave them out here to be picked apart. This wasn’t their fault.”

  *

  Jed and Sanchez helped Billy build a travois so they could drag the dead bodies to the church. It was the biggest building, the only one that could house all of the dead. It was a place where the dead had already been.

  They searched a few of the buildings for supplies. In the livery they found some long, thin wooden poles they could use as the framing for their travois, and they pulled them up from the ground. The livery was empty—no sign of the horses; no dead horses or even any pieces of them. The horses were just gone.

  After the travois was built, the three men took turns dragging a dead body or two (or sometimes just pieces) up to the church in two-man teams. As they did that, Esmerelda cleaned up the saloon as best she could and started packing bags of supplies to take with them when they left.

  She went out back behind the saloon to the small house she rented and packed her own bag. There wasn’t much to take, just a few sets of clothes and shoes, the few photographs of her mother that she still had, and the stash of money she had been saving up over the last two years.

  When she was back in the saloon, she finished packing the rest of their bags: one for each of them. In each bag she included a blanket, a bag of jerky, a canteen of water, a bottle of whiskey, coffee beans, a few pots and pans, matches, a metal plate, a tin coffee cup, a fork and knife. She set the bags by the door. They were a little heavy, but they would need everything in them when they left.

  Once the job of filling up the church with the dead was done, they closed the doors and barred them shut with slats of wood. All four of them stood there in front of the church doors.

  “Should we write something on the door?” Esmerelda suggested. “Some kind of explanation?”

  “How are we supposed to explain what happened here?” Jed asked.

  No one had an answer for him.

  Billy walked down the street to the saloon. A few minutes later he was back with the can of red paint and the paint brush. He handed it to Esmerelda and said nothing. He just stared at her like he knew she would do the right thing.

  Esmerelda dipped the paintbrush into the can and wrote words on the slats of wood barring the red doors shut: DEAD INSIDE.

  She set the paint can down on the bed of gravel in front of the church steps.

  “Explanation enough,” Sanchez said.

  “They will probably just blame this on Indians,” Billy said.

  Jed tried not to laugh, but the laughter came out. It wasn’t funny in the least and he didn’t know why he was laughing. A few seconds later Esmerelda and Sanchez joined him in his laughter. Even Billy chuckled at his own joke, but his eyes said that he hadn’t been joking.

  Jed wiped at his eyes and looked up at the sky. It was only an hour and a half away from dusk now—they wouldn’t have much light left to travel by. “We’d better get going,” he told them.

  *

  Jed knew it was going to be a long walk, and the four of them had only made it a few miles outside of Hope’s End before they had to make camp for the night. They had plans to head in different directions tomorrow, but tonight they would stay together.

  They built a fire and ate some jerky and drank coffee. The fire was warm, but not as comforting as it should have
been.

  “I’m going back to my family,” Sanchez told them after they were all quiet for a while. He’d never taken his gun belt off the whole time, and Jed was sure that had as much to do with him as any other threat out here. “I’ve had my share of adventure now. I’m ready to go back home.”

  Jed smiled and nodded. “I think I’ve had my share of adventure, too.”

  Esmerelda watched Jed, staring at him in that strange way that made him feel like she was reading his mind.

  Jed tore his eyes away from Esmerelda and looked at Billy. “What about you?”

  Billy stroked the silver charm hanging from his leather necklace, the charm that held the lock of David’s hair inside. Jed knew that Billy would always keep that silver charm with David’s hair in it, just like Jed knew he would always keep the photograph of David and his family with him.

  “I am going home too,” Billy said, but he didn’t expound on it.

  *

  Jed took the first watch while the others slept, but at some point he must’ve surrendered to pure exhaustion, nodding off during the night.

  He woke with a start about an hour before dawn. He knew something was wrong as soon as he sat up. The campfire was low, but not out yet. It provided a little light in the never-ending darkness, and even less warmth. Jed looked around at the other three. They were still sleeping, breathing heavy, curled up under their blankets.

  Jed thought of how the Ancient Enemy had made him and Roscoe fall asleep in the woods. The thought of it sent a spike of panic through his chest.

  A scuffling noise in the sand from behind Jed whirled him around. Jed had his pistol in his hand.

  A shadowy figure emerged from the darkness. Even before the man sat down in front of the embers of the fire between Sanchez and Billy, Jed knew it was Red Moon. The Navajo outlaw was naked, just like he had been the last time he had paid Jed a visit. Red Moon kept his head down, his hair covering that gigantic hole where his face used to be. The dying fire barely illuminated Red Moon, keeping him in flickering shadows. Things crawled underneath Red Moon’s skin: beetles and spiders—the Ancient Enemy itself.