by Bryan Smith
Maybe these people weren’t apocalypse survivors at all.
Maybe, instead, they were the Damned, those dark and tainted souls deemed not good enough for admission to Heaven. Perhaps something about his state of constant inebriation had allowed him to access pathways not available to other living beings, routes and haunted byways he’d been traveling without knowing for some time. Roads and places on the map that superficially resembled those in his world, but were subtly different in ways perceivable only by the sufficiently altered mind. This might also explain why the sky kept changing color.
Alternatively, maybe even entertaining this idea was further evidence that he’d lost his damn mind.
Someone seated at the table to his right pushed a chair back and tried to rise, but Noah was in the way. He excused himself and moved closer to the piano, positioning himself for a better look at the fat man’s face. Now there could be no doubt. The man didn’t just closely resemble Hal, it was him.
Reeling from this revelation, Noah backed away from the crowd gathered around the piano before Hal could look his way and recognize him. He didn’t want that to happen just yet. Some time to process what this revelation actually meant was needed before he started shooting up the place. In the process of backing away, however, he nearly collided with a waitress carrying a tray loaded with drinks. She gave him a withering look and told him to watch where he was going. Noah mumbled an apology and headed for the bar.
Space there was at a premium, too, but he managed to wedge himself between two men attired in standard cowboy gear—riding chaps over dungarees, boots, wide-brim hats, and vests open over wool shirts. Their skin was dark and leathery and their clothes had the trail-worn look of men who’d put in a lot of hard miles riding under the desert sun.
Many men in the Sidewinder had a similar look. However, not everyone appeared to have chosen their wardrobe from a catalogue of late nineteenth century fashions. Here and there among the crowd were a few people in garb of a more recent vintage, including a large, bearded man in a Harley-Davidson shirt and a pretty blonde girl in a Bile Lords shirt. The blonde glanced Noah’s way as his gaze lingered on her. Their eyes met for a moment. Then she smirked and went back to talking to a woman in a long black dress who wore a veil over her face.
Noah turned away from the crowd and tried to catch the bartender’s eye, getting another big shock when he saw Shane looking right at him from the other side of the bar. The house servant from Henryetta was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing extensive tattooing on the arms that hadn’t been there the last time Noah set eyes on the man. A bolo tie was cinched tight at the collar of his shirt.
Shane grinned when their eyes met. He was drying his hands on a little white towel as he said, “What can I get for you, stranger?”
Noah gaped at him in silent stupefaction, his brain temporarily incapable of cogent thought. But then he let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding and said, “You don’t remember me, do you?”
Shane frowned. “Don’t think so. But I meet a lot of people. Can’t remember them all. Sorry, friend. It’s the nature of the job.”
“You were there in Henryetta, at the mansion when the Judge was there. My sister took over the place. Aubrey. You must remember her.”
Shane leaned over the bar, dropping his voice to a whisper that was barely audible over the din of the crowd. “That was years ago. I’m someone else now.” His grin returned as he leaned back again, although the expression wasn’t as warm as before. “And that’s all I’ll say about that, friend. Now what can I get you?”
“Years ago? That can’t be. It’s only been weeks, months at the most.”
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken.” Shane’s expression darkened. “Paying customers only at the bar, sir. If you’re not ordering anything, I suggest moving along. Maybe all the way out of town.”
It was undoubtedly a wise suggestion. Noah figured it was advice he should heed. But an impulse prompted him to say, “I don’t have any money. It’s been so long since I had to pay for anything. If I’d known it was a real possibility, I’d have scavenged some along the way.”
Shane set a glass on the bar in front of Noah and poured a generous amount of tequila into it. He was smirking as he did this, the set of his features conveying a deep contempt. The texture of those features morphed as Noah stared back at him, his brow becoming ridged and more prominent. For the briefest moment, horn-like nubs were visible at the sides of his forehead. They were there and gone in the blink of an eye, so fast Noah guessed it had to have been his mind fucking with him again. Shane set the bottle down next to the glass. It was about a third full. He looked normal again as he said, “On me. For old time’s sake.”
He was gone before Noah could reply, moving down to the opposite end of the bar to take drink orders there.
Noah eyed the glass of tequila warily for a moment. He felt like he shouldn’t trust a drink offered freely in a place like this, especially one from someone as shady as Shane. But the booze was calling to him, telling him he needed a fresh infusion to start thinking clearly again.
As always, the pull of it was impossible to resist. He picked up the glass and knocked back a gulp of tequila. He shivered and clutched the glass tighter a moment before tossing the rest of it down the hatch. He then refilled the glass from the bottle Shane had left him and drank that down even faster. A couple shots later his buzz had been restored to that optimal level just shy of genuine drunkenness.
As always, he was unable to stop there.
The bottle was nearly empty when the cowboy to his left leaned close to whisper in his ear. “Heard what you told the barkeep about being broke. You want to make a few bucks?”
Noah eyed the man warily. “How?”
“By sucking my dick in the alley out back.”
Noah grabbed the diminished bottle of tequila and pushed away from the bar, departing without replying to this proposition. He threaded his way back through the tables, heading for the batwing doors at the front of the saloon. His intent was to keep his head down and get the hell out before he could get into any trouble, but he couldn’t resist shooting a glance in the direction of the piano, where Hal was still pounding out a relentless boogie rhythm. This time the fat man happened to look his way. Their eyes met and Hal sneered at him around a stub of smoldering cigar. Noah flashed on an image of Aubrey between his splayed legs, with his fat fingers moving around under the hiked-up hem of her dress.
Hal winked at him and looked away, pounding the keys of the piano harder than ever as the revelers gathered around him raised their voices even louder. The dismissiveness of that wink irked Noah. There was no question in his mind that Hal had recognized him. Not only that, but he was utterly unconcerned by Noah’s presence here.
Noah banged through the batwing doors and stood outside on the saloon’s porch for a few moments, swigging more tequila straight from the bottle as he stewed over that look Hal had given him. His rage kept building the whole time. When the bottle was empty, he tossed it in the street and paced back and forth across the porch’s wood planking. The tequila was gone, his common sense along with it. His head was wobbling on his shoulders and felt barely tethered to the rest of his body.
He went back into the saloon, hitting the doors with such force that the noise caused more than a few faces to turn his way. The patrons who saw Noah nudged their companions and soon all eyes in the house were on him. Conversation ebbed and faded to near silence. Even the music came to a crashing, discordant halt as Hal realized the drunks surrounding him had stopped singing. More than a few hands settled close to holstered weapons. Noah ignored the danger and threaded his way back through the tables.
Soon he’d pushed his way through the crowd around the piano and was leveling an accusatory finger at the man sitting behind the keys. “This fat motherfucker,” he said, raising his voice high enough for everyone in the joint to hear. “I don’t know what he calls himself now, but his name is Hal. A
while back he molested my sister and now I want some fucking payback.”
Noah’s gaze had been roaming about the place, briefly locking eyes with a number of onlookers. It was enough engagement to feel like they were really hearing what he was saying rather than dismissing his words as the ramblings of a drunken bum.
Now he glared at Hal, whose previous smirking expression had given way to a far more dismayed one. “I challenge you to a duel in the fucking street. Come on outside and we’ll settle this like men. Unless you’re a goddamn coward.”
Noah stomped away from him before he could reply. On his way out of the saloon, he snatched a bottle of whiskey off a tray balanced atop the upheld palm of a waitress too astonished by his behavior to rebuke him. Noah took a big gulp from it as he again banged through the batwing doors and stalked out to the street, where he waited beneath the moonlight to see whether his challenge would be accepted.
Somewhere out in the desert, a pack of coyotes started howling.
46.
No one else emerged from the saloon for several minutes. During that time, the saloon itself was mostly silent, with only the faintest of murmurs emerging on occasion. At last, however, the doors swung open and a stream of people trickled out into the street. They spread out to the left and right as they came out of the saloon, forming lines up and down the street. Still more people crossed the street and did the same on the opposite side.
Noah took one last swig from the whiskey bottle and dropped it at his feet, kicking it aside as Hal at last came out of the saloon and waddled out into the street. He hadn’t been armed—at least not visibly—while seated at the piano, but that had changed. A gun belt was strapped around his pudgy waist. Noah assumed it was the man’s own and not a borrowed one. This was based on girth alone. Hal’s belt had to be a custom job.
Hal moved to a distance of about fifty feet from where Noah stood and turned to face him squarely. Noah belatedly wondered about dueling etiquette, specifically regarding whether such a thing actually existed. He’d for some reason pictured an intermediary stepping between them to go over the rules of proper gun-fighting. Almost too late, it hit him this was a thing he knew only from stories and possibly had no real life application. Hal was already drawing his pistol from his holster as these thoughts went through Noah’s head. He had the gun up and aimed just as Noah was finally fumbling with the grip of his own weapon.
Realizing that being a motionless target at this point would seal his fate, he dove aside and rolled out of the way as the first shot rang out in the street. Another shot rang out and the bullet thudded into the dirt somewhere near where he wound up. He pulled at the grip of his gun again and this time it came smoothly clear of his holster. Hal fired again. A bullet whistled right by Noah’s ear.
Noah fired blindly as he sat up and pointed his gun in the general direction of Hal’s last known location. He did this without thinking, never expecting anything positive to come of it. But a pained cry told him the bullet had found flesh. For a flashing instant, he feared he’d shot one of the onlookers by mistake, a possibility that likely would have gotten him being lynched shortly thereafter. He was fuzzy from all the booze, which didn’t help matters.
But then his vision cleared and he saw Hal on his knees in the street, his pistol hanging loosely from a trembling forefinger as blood leaked from a hole in his gut. A nasty grin spread across Noah’s face as he got to his feet and approached the wounded man. He listed only slightly side to side as he walked, an electric thrill of triumph bringing him moments of near clarity in the midst of inebriation.
Noah stopped right in front of Hal and pointed his gun at the man’s sweat-soaked brow. Hal’s eyes were shiny with tears as he lifted his head to meet Noah’s gaze. Too weak to hold on to his pistol, it slipped from his trembling forefinger and thumped on the dusty ground.
“Have…mercy,” he said in a thin, squeaky voice.
“Fuck you.”
Cries of dismay rose up from the assembled onlookers as Noah shot the man in the face. The derby hat fell off Hal’s head, revealing a bald dome encircled by tufts of dirty white hair as he fell over in the street. Noah stood over him and squeezed his gun’s trigger repeatedly, emptying it into the man’s unmoving corpse.
There was a moment of perfect silence once the reports of the gun had faded away.
Then, out in the desert, the coyotes started howling again.
As if that primal sound was some kind of signal, many of the onlookers converged on Noah. Several sets of hands seized him and his gun slipped from his fingers, becoming lost in a scramble as he was bustled through the town’s streets by the angry mob. Noah’s head wobbled on his shoulders as this happened. His head felt like a balloon on the verge of sailing up into the sky. All anyone had to do was cut the string and away he’d go. He assumed he was being taken to a gallows or, if he was lucky, to a jail cell.
After a while, the mob transporting Noah reached their destination. On a dim, distant level, he was still sort of concerned about what they had in mind. But he was starting to drift away, the high level of alcohol in his system making him feel like he was floating on a cloud.
Things got fuzzier and fuzzier.
Blackness followed.
And in the blackness he stayed for a long time.
47.
When Noah came to unknown hours later, he was lying on his side on an uncomfortable cot in a holding cell. His body was tired and riddled with various aches, including the usual severe hangover throb. Moving at all inflamed the assortment of pains, but remaining perfectly still wasn’t an option. Upon waking, instinct caused him to stretch out of the tight fetal ball he’d curled into while asleep. Ensuing waves of misery made him cry out and grip at the thin, dirty mattress beneath him.
Bright sunlight was shining through the cell’s small, barred window. Noah glimpsed a sliver of sky. It was again that familiar shade of washed-out purple, which was as disconcerting as ever, but it was at least an improvement over the throbbing shade of bright red that had become so common of late. Instinct again betrayed him, making him turn his face toward the light. Another lance of pain went straight through the center of his head when he cringed against it. Sweat broke out on his brow and a tide of nausea rose up in his throat, which felt raw and sore, the way it often did at the onset of a bout of flu, the mere prospect of which made him groan with the dread of it. Getting sick on top of all this self-inflicted misery was the last thing he needed.
His bladder was painfully swollen, like always after an episode of extreme overindulgence. The number one priority in his life in that moment was taking a piss. Every drop of it was going to hurt, but there was no way around it. The only problem was getting to a toilet in a timely fashion. A glance around the little cell revealed no signs of one, though there was a scuffed and dented metal pail in a corner. Noah wondered for a moment if it was there specifically for this reason. In the very next instant, he decided it didn’t matter why it was there. It was about to get pissed in regardless.
With a groan of effort, he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the cot, his vision blurring for a moment as the throb in his head intensified. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and held them there until the increased level of ache subsided. When he took his hands away, the blurriness had abated. He got to his feet with another groan of effort and staggered over to the metal pail.
After unzipping his pants, he pulled his dick out and waited in frustration for the stream to begin. Sometimes it took a while when his bladder was this bloated. At last, however, urine started trickling out, pattering loudly against the outside of the pail. His aim had been off in the midst of his misery. He adjusted it, pissing inside the pail now as the stream started coming out faster and harder. It hurt every bit as much as he’d expected those first several moments. He screwed his eyes shut and whimpered with the ache of it.
After a seeming eternity, the forceful stream slowed back to a trickle and the pain, mercifully, began to
ease. Just as he was shaking off the last of it, he heard boots walking down the narrow hallway outside the cell. He zipped up and turned to face whoever was coming.
Three grim-faced men moved into his field of vision. They stood there facing him with nearly identical expressions of solemn purpose. Two of them wore badges pinned to black vests. One of these was a potbellied older man with a ruddy face and a thick gray beard. The other one was much younger. Noah guessed the older guy was the sheriff of Hell’s Lost Mile, with the younger one being his deputy. The third man held a bible and wore a priest’s collar.
Noah grunted. “Well, something about this just doesn’t bode well at all.”
The sheriff nodded. “You’ve been found guilty of murder. We’re here to take you to the hangman.”
“Found guilty? That’s funny. I don’t remember a trial.”
“There wasn’t one. Half the town saw you kill that man after he was no longer a threat. You did the deed. Now you’re gonna swing.”
Noah glared. “It was a vengeance thing. He hurt my sister. The motherfucker had it coming.”
The sheriff shrugged. “We’ve only got your word for that. You being a stranger here, that’s not good enough.”
“I see. Well, that certainly sounds fair. That’s sarcasm, by the way, in case you’re all too dimwitted to pick up on that. So I guess this is what they call frontier justice.”
The sheriff’s expression didn’t change in the face of the insult. He just shrugged again. “It’s apocalypse justice. Same difference, I suppose. Expediency is what we’re interested in here. Drawing it out does nobody any favors, not even you.”
“Aside from getting to live a little longer, you mean.”
The sheriff ignored this and indicated the priest with a gesture. “We’ll be off to the gallows in a moment. Father Kincaid is here to take your last confession. If you want.”