The 9th Fortress

by John Paul Jackson

  "Why?" he rasped back.

  "It's what I do,” I exhaled. "I was a police detective, if you know what that means. The job is solving crime, observation, seeing the details. Could've made a good career if…" I forced myself to stop, to again close that painful door in my head.

  "Detectives," I resumed after a moment, "rely mostly on scientific evidence and teamwork, but old fashioned observation and instinct should still be strong in all of them. Now it's just my bad habit, I could tell you for example that Harmony scratches her elbow when she's nervous, always the same spot and with the same two fingers — although not so much since she broke her arm. Eddinray bites his thumb raw when he's lying — I'm surprised he has any left to chew on. Subconscious actions are easy to spot Kat, but they are the beginnings of unravelling a person's nature."

  Kat looked intrigued by my rambling, and I was happy to share my view on his nature. "You samurai? You Kat? You have no nerves as far as I can see, your blood runs cold. Sometimes I have seen you do things that contradict the murderer legend, but that human being doesn't hang around for too long. To be honest, you're a complete and utter mystery."

  The samurai's spirit seemed heavy against the door, and there followed a short absence of sound before his own mind ran loose from the mouth.

  "My name is Kendo Katamuro.

  Married.

  No children.

  Fifty-four years old when I passed.

  I killed men…I killed many men."

  ***

  There was rest for some and not for others that evening. For my own pleasant night's sleep, I settled our account with the barman by giving up a quarter canteen of well water, his dreg light that he was delighted to receive. The saloon was less crowded, the storm had passed, and outside is where most lingered this morning.

  Beyond the swinging doors awaited a stuffy atmosphere and strong sunlight; the grey road was beset by the mixed droves, minding their business over the thoroughfare. Before we joined them on the dust, a brisk voice called at us from the bar counter. "Away?"

  An unusual concoction leant against the bar counter. His body was lanky in denim, but at the neck grew the large head of a grunting pony, with wide nostrils and protruding teeth. It was Mr. Ed with legs, a thought I kept to myself.

  "Only here for the night,” I answered, disguising a grin. "Good-day."

  We didn't walk far before he called again, this time leaving his drink to join us at the exit. "Didn't figure you'd stay long. Nah, I didn't figure. You don't look like the staying' sort."

  "Not the talking sort either,” said Kat.

  "Just wanted to thank ye is all,” he replied, following us outside to that harsh daylight. "Name's Mothershud, and today I am grateful. Extremely grateful!"

  "Grateful?" pried Harmony. "Whatever for?"

  "For Deadeye, O' course! That cursed bastard made me what ye see! Every soul in the bar had a beef with Deadeye- nay, every soul in Breakneck! Used to have genuine human features, proper eyes and handsome too — till he struck his knifes in ma throat! Five days bed bound I woke to this face…Can still see the scars if you look close."

  Ashamed of his appearance, Mothershud lowered his long face and stammered before concluding. "This saloon is the only place I feel content. More so now with him gone so thank ye! Gather y'all headed to the fields? Guess it's the only way ye can go."

  "Is that the way?" asked Kat, eyeing a flat land out of town. The pony confirmed with a wink, and Kat nodded him a rare thanks.

  "Goodbye Mothershud,” said Harmony.

  "Y'all take care in those fields!" he yelled returning to his ale. "Dangerous, dangerous place is them!"

  Walking a while, the cosmopolitan road was an attack of the senses. To my left was the blacksmith, with an imp beating iron inside it. A little ways further was a barbershop with waiting cue; then the bathhouse, promising costumers a wash with genuine water.

  A disgusted Harmony covered her mouth as we passed the local, and extremely seedy whorehouse, where the sign "no discrimination" was planted outside its very busy door.

  "Wait!" wailed one woman. "Wait for me! Stop you folks! Please stop!"

  This female came darting through the marching and deformed. "Stop! Wait! Wait!"

  Despite Kat's reluctance, I waited for her to catch us up. The woman was middle-aged with a very normal and extremely tired face. Her eyes were reddened by a lack of sleep, and the broken lines across her forehead ran deep. Reaching us, she set a heavy hand on my shoulder. "I overheard…your discussion," she gasped, recovering. "You're headed to the fields?"

  "Piss off!" scowled Kat.

  "Hear me!" she begged. "You are my only hope!"

  "Hope for?" queried Harmony, happy to hear her out. "Slow down and tell us your story madam?"

  "My husband," she began, "my poor husband is lost in the fields; in one of those pits of fire and ash!"

  "Why is he there?" asked Eddinray. "And why should his soul be of any consequence to us?"

  "He is an important man," she said, desperate; "a man with much wisdom and wealth! I promise he is!"

  "But why is he in the pit?" I said, unconvinced. "No one is there by accident, right?”

  "He is there," she returned, "because he strangled me. He strangled me dead on the kitchen floor."

  "And you still…love him?" pried a very confused Harmony. "Whatever for?"

  "We belong together! He is mine and I am his! He still loves me, my dreams tell me so! Will you return him to my arms? Will you please?"

  "Fuck off!" growled Kat, dispassionately manoeuvring us away.

  "Please!" she urged, scampering after. "My heart longs for my husband! I can't go on without him! Can't breathe without him!"

  "You couldn't breathe with him!" added Eddinray. "Away with you! Shoe!"

  She did not leave us, and with her volume and desperation increasing, Kat threw his fist back into her face, and I winced upon hearing the teeth break in her mouth.

  "Kat? " cried Harmony, appalled. "That was absolutely unca — "

  "We cannot find any missing persons!" he roared over the woman, who could barely cry for the pain.

  Kat left her there, dirty and broken, then glared at any faces who judged him. Guiltily we searched amongst ourselves, knowing our temperamental leader was right — not in his actions, but in his thinking. We could not offer this woman our time or our promises, and so quickly caught up with Kat.

  "Samurai!" a furious voice declared over the crowd. "Samurai!"

  Shocked, we four turned to scrutinize strangers for any threat. We had no reason to search however, for the colorful crowd immediately parted to reveal a man lurking over a hitching post: the whale sized, self-appointed lawmaker of Breakneck, with a silver colt revolver in his grip and a belt full of silver knives.

  "Oh dear,” sighed Harmony. "Always trouble."

  "Where you think you're going? " bawled Deadeye, his voice loud, clear, and spitting.

  "We're leaving!" I yelled back. "We don't want any more trouble!"

  "This is none o' your concern mister! My business is with the chink and the chink alone! Now…step aside!"

  Kat did not express a jot of concern — he simply cracked his knuckles and prepared himself.

  "He's drunk!" exclaimed Harmony, insulted. "Our friend is Japanese, you ignoramus!"

  Bored by all this attention, Kat was keen to set on his challenger, but my clasping hand on his wrist held him at bay. "Leave it Kat, please. Let's just get out of here, eh? What do you say?"

  "He won't leave it,” he whispered back. "He cannot."

  "Yellow bastard!" cursed Deadeye, loading only one bullet into the colt's chamber. "Face me Kat, or I'll gun down any near you!"

  "Contemptible!" hissed Harmony. "Outrageous!"

  "Step aside!" Deadeye reiterated, aiming his gun at Harmony's head. "Or I blow pretties brains out!"

  "Do what he wants,” Kat said, stoney faced. "Get away from me. All of you."

  Obstinately, we stood with our def
ender as an audience appeared from every nook and cranny — the prostitutes, the bootblacks and butchers — all of them coming for a peek at any bloodshed.

  "We won't move!" I yelled to Deadeye. "Our friend doesn't have a gun! It's not a fight you're after, but an execution!"

  "Get away from me,” Kat repeated, grinding his teeth.

  "Are you faster than a bullet, samurai?" asked Eddinray. "Are you?"

  "Take them away, Fox,” he replied. "Do as I say."

  Reluctantly I escorted Harmony and Eddinray from the range of Deadeye's pistol and knives. Kat stood alone now, just as he wanted, just as he prefers.

  "The infamous Kat!" proclaimed the fat man, crowd reacting with appropriate awe. "We all heard o' him! Take a good last gander people!"

  They did. This was Kat in there nowhere, nothing town — a legend still in flesh, whose name sent more fighting for a better look at him.

  "I call his sword!" someone cried. "Boots too!"

  "His boots are mine!" argued another. "Saw 'em first!"

  Worrisomely, Harmony, Eddinray and I where fast surrounded by these vultures, but held together by our link of hands.

  "Ladies and gents!" cried Deadeye, gripping all spectators. "Y'all know me, y'all know my name! When I came here, Breakneck was wilder than all the west — a cesspool of dirty Indians and bad men!" His colt caught the morning light and Kat grimaced down the far away barrel. "I tamed the lot with five slugs!" he continued.

  "Two of ‘em spent running out the James brothers — two more burning down Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill! Light work people! Light work! Small men with big names — men like the Kat over there — and this last bullet is for you…little man!"

  He left the hitching post wobbling as he lumbered toward the town's centre. "I made Breakneck what it is!" he added. "It's mine! And nobody, no outlaws, no lawmen, and no chink gone disrespect that!"

  Unconcerned, Kat also moved to the center of the road, the grey smoke twirling at his heels.

  "We must intervene,” whispered Harmony. "We must do something here."

  "There's no changing Kat's mind,” I answered, our samurai stopping to face the baby faced giant twenty feet away. With a twitching cheek, Kat settled both arms to the side of his hips, while Deadeye holstered his revolver. The excited crowd hushed, and the only thing moving in Breakneck now was the hairy balls of occasional tumble-weed.

  "Draw!" ordered an empty-handed samurai. "Now!"

  Teasing onlookers, Deadeye would not draw on Kat's command. Instead, the bulging man took time to tickle the butt of his pistol, time to enjoy his spectacle and time to wise up the grim eyes of Kat. Beads of grease glistened down and over Deadeye's generous neck flesh, and when the moment could be held no longer, when instinct told him too, Deadeye pulled his silver shooter from the holster, aimed straight and flicked back the hammer. SHTUEW!

  The shot echoed around town, the gasps followed. It was over now, yet crouched and panting, Kat was still alive. Gripping the katana before his face, there was a glob of spent bullet steaming by his foot.

  No one could believe what they had seen, or thought they had seen: Kat had deflected a bullet with his blade, and all mouths hung open for a revered passage of time.

  The wronged drinker with a pony for a head let out a hearty chortle at the saloon doors. The flabby cheeks of Deadeye jiggled as he tried making sense of it; and when he did recover his wits, he tossed his revolver at a thrilled Mothershud. "Shut…"

  The saloon window shattered when the gun hurtled threw it, and as bar room bums came to peer out from the lacerated space, Deadeye reached his fast fingers to his belt, and threw every available knife there at Kat.

  Those reflectors glittered toward the samurai, and his sword deflected each like troublesome mosquitoes. Embarrassed, deflated and defenceless, Deadeye stumbled back to his post, further perplexed when Kat returned the katana to his sheath. Empty handed now, the samurai strode to the amazed mob and specifically to Harmony. The angel stood stiff whilst Kat removed one arrow from her quiver, and then casually returned to the town centre.

  Once there, Kat examined the strewn knives and blob of bullet on the sand, Deadeye meanwhile questioned his gifted hands in disbelief — they had never once let him down. With Harmony's sturdy arrow in his paw, Kat aimed up Deadeye with the point — and with strength and co-ordination alone — he threw it swiftly toward his chosen target.

  Timid faces winced as that Indian arrow struck deep in Deadeye's plump neck — the lawmaker gargled his last curse through constricting larynges and gushing blood, and then dropped to his back with a burst of sizeable road powder. No body had ever fallen harder, and the greedy townsfolk of Breakneck quickly plundered it before the soul dispersed to imperceptible atoms.

  29. The Killing Fields

  The sky was pink like candy-floss and clear of cloud. We meandered over a substantial path of dirt cutting through acres and acres of tall purple grass. An old wooden fence with a stainless coat of white paint followed our flanks, a barrier to anyone fancying a stroll through the grass.

  A parched Eddinray frequently halted our progress, but his flamboyant bragging made up for the inconvenience; and after witnessing Kat deflecting a bullet with his sword, his boasting only increased.

  "Once wrestled a crocodile,” he said, his hands throttling thin air. "The young child was inside its belly, you see, leaving me no choice but to dive into the reptile's mouth. The scene I can barely describe to you — women folk screaming and fainting — weaker men simply applauding the bravery on display. Goes without saying that I retrieved the child alive and well, then made a coat of the crocodile…"

  From time to time, my thoughts wavered to the 9thFortress, somehow expecting it to sprout over the next horizon, or the one after that. I had the general description from Sir Isaac Newton, but what did it really look like? What feelings would the immoral tower inspire? What would be waiting for us at its gates? And what of prisoner 2020? Why did this soul deserve saving? With no answers, the questions would remain a vicious circle inside my head.

  We were not alone on our path. Far from it, hundreds trudged in front and behind, and like the long departed cue on the stinking shore, each man, woman and thing was unique in dress, but wearing similar expressions of demoralization. They were zombies, an endless parade of the living dead.

  "Do not wake these sleepwalkers,” Kat warned. "They will not…like it."

  Several black angels blotted the peachy sky, their jelly-like bodies swooping past a small airplane. My father told me stories of my Grandpa, Sgt. Archie Fox, who died a hero for the allies in the battle of Britain. This aircraft was unmistakeably a hurricane, the likes he would have fought in. Its engine dying, flames ate her wings, and there followed that horrible sound of a blaring horn as she fell to the grass.

  I grimaced away as that metal bird obliterated over land. Unfortunately, the sky was filled with similar disastrous images: burning blimps and 747s; exploding Concorde and even a space shuttle breaking up on re-entry. Weirder was the alien craft — the saucers and blobs of varying color floating like un-popped balloons. I couldn't say what the point of it all was, if these objects were real or ghosts of real events, but it was certainly the most bizarre display I've ever seen.

  We continued our walk with the dead; but needing more clarity than Kat was giving, I decided to question the closest traveller on the road. "Excuse me,” I said, blocking one creature with my arm. "Do you know where this road leads?"

  He was taller than all of us, with raisin like skin. His face was freakishly pressed into the centre of his chest, and a hairless hump grew emplace of a head. He moved to pass but I blocked again, and the creature responded by pushing me back to bash my head against the white fence. Surprisingly, my lights remained on as he loomed like an enormous desert date, his gummy mouth drooling as I cowered.

  Suddenly, Harmony touched the man's thin wrist, and looking over her angelic form, the dribbling hulk did not pursue his attack on me. "Forgive our disrupt
ion monsieur." she said, calmly. "But do you know where our road leads?"

  I expected the thing to move on, but instead he answered the question from a pitiful mouth where his heart should be. "All roads…lead to Hell."

  "Please,” I said, cautiously standing with a rub at my head. "We have a destination, and this road is taking us no closer to the horizon. Can you help us?"

  "Who are you sir?" pried Eddinray. "Haven't I seen you before? Yes, I never forget a mug, and yours is very familiar!"

  "My name is Clay," he growled, with foul halitosis. "I passed you three hours ago on this road. I will pass you again in three hours time."

  "A loop!" exclaimed Harmony, clicking her fingers. "How dull of me not to notice!"

  "How do we escape?" Kat asked the raisin, wearily exhaling.

  Clay directed his finger toward the wooden fence, this boundary before the breezing grass. "You will not find better,” his chest replied. "There are no monsters on this road — there is only the road, there is only the walk, and you will not find better."

  "Thank you for your time,” said Harmony. "Godspeed kind creature."

  Clay smiled at her, then returned to his loop and thoughts.

  "The fence it is then!" announced Eddinray, slapping a fist into his palm and striding for the white wood.

  Taking pleasure in our standoffish attitude, the knight casually ascended the barrier, and the second he reached the top, his sun catching self disappeared.

  "Godwin!" cried Harmony, hurrying to the fence. "Where are you?"

  Not visible on either side of the white wood, Sir Godwin Eddinray was somewhere else…

  ***

  Last to climb the fence, the samurai broke my fall on the other side. Dusting myself off, I immediately experienced grains of sand burning through the soles of my boots. Eddinray hopped restlessly while we others got our bearings over this hot stove, this scarlet beach with assembled woe displayed over it.