Steve Vernon Special Edition Gift Pack, Vol 1

by Vernon, Steve

  Jonah hesitated for just an instant.

  He looked back once.

  “Christ.”

  The pair of legs was nearly on him. He saw mouths, puckering and yawning like a dream of hungry cats, all teeth and lip and squeal. One in each kneecap, and a third dangling from the end of the walking leg’s man-stick.

  “Holy crapping horseshit!”

  He ran as fast as he could towards the screaming green flames. When he got close enough he closed his eyes and willed his legs to jump. He hit the green wall in midleap, his hair standing up like porcupine quills. He felt a double thousand shivering screams running through every inch of his raised up bones. He felt a cool chill washing over him, like he was dying all over again.

  And then he was through.

  Looking back he saw what was standing in the heart of the green flame. A tall Indian, hair awash with fire, eyes like burning emeralds. He didn’t know how he could see the Indian’s eyes. The brave was standing with his back to Jonah, and yet it was like he could see through him, and see all of him, all at once.

  The green ghostly warrior shouted something at that ground beef regiment that sounded something like a wildcat being skinned in reverse.

  Then the crawlers answered back, in a voice that sounded even worse.

  Then the green ghostly warrior let them have it.

  What was left of the crawlers went up in bright green flame.

  None of them made it past the burning green guardian.

  Jonah tried to speak. He moved his mouth a couple of times before he managed to croak out, “What the hell was that?”

  “That’s the Great Green Ghost,” Zachaeus said, calmly reloading the seven-barreled cannon.

  “The Green Ghost?”

  “The Great Green Ghost. Least I call him that. He guards these places. He takes care of any trespassers. He don’t like the crawlers.”

  “He owe you some kind of special favor?”

  Zachaeus snorted. “As far as I can tell he don’t know me from a hole in the ground. He just hates the crawlers is all. He puts them down every time they come close. I ain’t sure, but I think he’s guarding some kind of Indian graveyard down here.”

  “Why doesn’t he kill us?”

  “No reason to. We’re different than the crawlers. We were thorn raised, not Moon Man made like those crawlers. We’re different, is all.”

  Jonah had the feeling Zachaeus was trying to convince the both of them.

  “You know that for sure?” Jonah asked.

  Zachaeus shrugged. “Same as anything else I know.”

  Jonah stared up at the great green warrior. He thought he saw the old chief smile, for just an instant, like Zachaeus had said something funny.

  “I thought plains Indians liked to bury their dead up high,” Jonah said. “I thought they liked to leave the wind and the sun eat them.”

  “These ain’t Plains Indians. These are Pueblo Indians.”

  The old chief wasn’t smiling anymore. Jonah was certain of it.

  If Zachaeus noticed, he wasn’t saying anything.

  “They liked to bury their dead down deep in the womb-belly of the earth.”

  Then, from out of the shadows came the legs.

  “How come he didn’t catch those?”

  “Beats me, but I ain’t looking no gift camels in the mouth,” Zachaeus said. “Come on. Let’s get to it.”

  “Get to what? We’re done here, aren’t we? They’re dead, aren’t they?”

  Zachaeus snorted.

  “So were you. Let’s get to it.”

  Zachaeus fell to his knees. He grabbed hold of the right side crawler leg. It tried to bite him with its kneecap mouth. Zacheus punched the kneecap hard with his free hand.

  Jonah wasn’t certain which hurt the most - the knee, the knuckles, or the teeth.

  Zachaeus just grinned. “There’s more than one way to put down a crawler.”

  He grabbed a mouthful of the crawler’s leg. He tugged at it with his teeth. The meat made a wet sticky sound as he peeled it off. It kind of sounded like cold fried chicken, coming off the bone.

  “Come on,” he said.

  Bits of half chewed crawler meat spilled from his open mouth.

  “It’s a little more fragrant than I’m used to, but it’s still damn good meat.”

  “Meat?”

  Zachaeus swallowed what he had in his mouth. Jonah tried not to watch.

  .“This is what we do. This is what we eat.”

  “I ain’t eating that.”

  “You will, ‘cuz you’re hungry.”

  Fact is, he was.

  “Come on,” Zachaeus said. “It’s meat. Let’s eat.”

  He turned back to his grisly feast.

  Jonah waited three imaginary beats of his beat out heart. Watching the old man gnaw on those rotten bones was worse than watching flies on puke. Only it wasn’t that bad. It got to making Jonah ache in the back of his teeth.

  Ache like hunger, only worse.

  Goddamn.

  He couldn’t be wanting this.

  Could he?

  To hell with it.

  It was meat.

  It was time to eat.

  He knelt down, feeling like he was kneeling in something putrid. Like diarrheaed-out shit, only worse.

  “Hey. This is a white man’s legs.”

  “So what? Are you prejudiced? My belly’s color blind. Let’s eat.”

  Jonah picked up the leg’s foot.

  He tore it off, clean at the ankle.

  It was funny just how light the foot was. Not much heavier than a rabbit.

  He’d hunted plenty of those in his time. Hunted and eaten them.

  This couldn’t be much worse.

  He put his mouth against the foot’s instep. He tried to chew.

  It tasted rubbery.

  “Get into it,” Zachaeus ordered.

  He bit down with his teeth. He chewed harder. It wasn’t nearly as bad as he imagined. Sort of like head cheese, only slitherier.

  He gnawed it up and chewed it down.

  Every gristly little morsel.

  * A Dead Man’s Trail *

  Leadbetter rode out to where he’d last seen the missing cowboy. He’d come alone, not wanting to be slowed by the crawlers the Moon Man had ordered him to bring. Besides, it felt good to defy the Moon Man’s commands.

  He felt a shiver of fear spider-crawl up his spine bone.

  Shit.

  Halfway down the Devil’s Anvil, and he could barely manage to keep from looking back over his shoulder.

  Then he saw it.

  The hole, torn open.

  The rock, rolled away.

  The crawlers had rooted about with all the care and caution of a stampeding herd of buffalo. He headed into the tunnel, ducking his head slightly, stepping as quiet as a whispering ghost.

  The carrion stallion wanted to follow him. Leadbetter had to respect that. It was a tight fit for the beast, bones or not. It kept scuffing bits of itself off on the rock. But it kept on coming, just as loyal as a hungry hound dog.

  Maybe it just smelled the waiting meat, but he had to respect it all the same.

  “It’s no good horse. You can’t fit.”

  It still wanted to come.

  Damn. Dead or not, it was a damn good horse. It didn’t think much, but that was a good thing. When it came to getting out of tight spots, Leadbetter preferred to do his own thinking, thank you kindly.

  He tethered the carrion stallion to the pizon tree. It’d probably be gone when he got back, eaten by crawlers. That’s the way life works. Life had a funny sort of way of happening to you when you weren’t looking for it.

  To hell with it. He’d find a new horse.

  Maybe that mountain man’s camel.

  Leadbetter crawled into the tunnel hole.

  He took a look around.

  Where to go?

  The tunnel branched out ahead of him in three or four places.

  To his left he spott
ed a broken cobweb. It trailed forward and stuck to the side of the tunnel wall. He could see a pair of heel ruts, where some one had dragged a body.

  And then the body got up.

  Shit.

  There ain’t no way that cowboy could have walked on his own. Not after the way Leadbetter opened up his attic space.

  No sir.

  Somebody was raising up the dead.

  The Moon Man?

  As far as Leadbetter knew, he was the only one around here that knew the secret of raising up dead folk.

  “Baldheaded prick with ears,” he softly swore.

  There was one other.

  Zachaeus.

  He moved ahead slowly, watching the tunnel walls and floor for sign of track.

  He’d tracked more than his share of men this way. Tracked and was good at it too. Good enough to earn a living at it. Least ways until that damned Zachaeus had turned the tables on him.

  From a rope, no less.

  Damn. He felt that old familiar burning. That hollowed tunnel feeling a half a cold handspan below the nape of his neck where the bullet had punched into him. Hitting him at the bottom of his left shoulder blade. Chipping a fragment off the lower edge of the bone, angling downward and smashing a rib, bursting through the thick layers of his heart muscle, churning through the front of his stomach, just above his navel in a frothy spray of bloodpipe red.

  The bullet had hit from behind and above. The damn mountain man, swinging high and pretty above his fresh dug grave, still finding the gumption to shoot Leadbetter in the back.

  As far as Leadbetter was concerned, from behind and above was just about the only way that cantankerous old bastard Zacheus could’ve taken him. He remembered looking down for a shred of a torn up second. He remembered seeing the ruptured chunks of his heart meat, lying there in his outstretched hand.

  For a split shred he swore he saw the damn thing beat.

  Then he’d died. He’d died on his feet, too tough to fall over while his breath still pumped. He’d died, staring at the pieces of his shot-out heart, like he was getting set to eat it down.

  Damn.

  From behind and above.

  He still didn’t like being below tall places. Feeling those things looking down on him.

  And then there was nothing. Nothing until that Goddamn bastard Moon Man dug him up and raised him. Pumped him full of the blue lightning juice and set him to work.

  But who had brought back Zachaeus?

  Hell.

  Things weren’t much different than they used to be. Walking alone and heartless. Not needing nothing and knowing even less. Same as he always had, most of his life.

  Then he saw the track. A scuff of moccasin leather riffed off onto a jagged scrape of flint.

  He leaned down.

  He smelled the meat.

  Zachaeus.

  Leadbetter gripped the Springfield like a sinner hanging on to a deathbed crucifix.

  The tunnel got a little wider.

  Leadbetter quickened his step, in a hurry to get to a second funeral.

  He’d kill that bastard for good this time. Kill him and eat him. Let the Moon Man try and resurrect the old bastard back from the dead after what was dead had been chewed on and shit out.

  No sir. There was no way in hell that Leadbetter wanted Zachaeus coming back again.

  He did not care for the idea of having to work with old partner.

  Or worse, for him.

  Leadbetter sped up so quickly that he stepped right over what was left of No Ears, just a blown-out head, crawled along behind him on its lips, with the steady, dogged patience of an overweight snail.

  Leadbetter stepped right over him and didn’t even see him crawling through the shadows.

  The long dead can be so damned short sighted.

  Deeper down he smelled the stink of burnt crawler. Something was up, something for sure.

  He leaned down, searching for sign. Felt his knee creaking. Damn thing was going to pop off, one of these moments, quicker than a choirboy in whorehouse.

  He smelled it, more than saw it. That pillar of tall green fire.

  Waugh.

  It was some sort of Indian devilment. There was no sense messing with that.

  He found himself a comfortable spot, just shy of the burning Indian’s range. He hunkered down as best he could.

  This would be as good a spot for a second execution as any.

  He waited, his rifle cocked and loaded.

  Sooner or later that mountain man was coming back up this way. This far down there was no way out but up.

  He sat there and waited, gun at the ready.

  Not more than a good half a head bounce and a roll away, No Ears sat in the shadow of a mossed-over rock, waiting and watching for what was to come.

  * What The Moon Man Dreamed *

  The Moon Man sat and dreamed, eyes rolled back into his skull, like he was trying to track the trail of his memories.

  He was sitting in what used to be a graveyard. His cushion of choice was an ancient Indian woman’s torso. He’d given her just enough of the rejuvenating blue ray to make her breasts soft for him. Occasionally, she moaned slightly. She wasn’t alive enough to be hungry, but she felt his weight upon her.

  Not that he weighed that much. The radiation had eaten him down to nothing more than a scarecrow of skin and bones. Not all the rejuvenation in the universe would help him. He was dying on his feet. It was only his force of will that held his face together. Charred and running red with puss oozing from the fissures of cracked scar tissue.

  No wonder they called him MoonMan.

  He looked comfortable amidst the heaps of bodies strewn about him. Bones worn black with age, fetid meat, the cloying reek of decay. There was nothing as fine as the stink of the long dead to make a man feel truly alive.

  Some of them were still moving, where he had touched and played with them; where he had coaxed them with the rejuvenating blue ray. He could bring them all back, if he wanted to, but this was better.

  It comforted him.

  This Goddamn age was so empty. There were so few people and so few bodies. It was worse than an emptied out tomb.

  Yes, this was better - these bodies, ancient with stink and wisdom and dreams. They whispered their dark secrets to him. Secrets nobody else could ever dream of knowing.

  Nobody knew anything any more.

  Maybe they never did. How could they? The country was so big. The sky was so damn big. It was everything he wanted, but it terrified him. The emptiness. The vastness. It would be better when he owned it.

  When he ruled it.

  When he buried it and raised it back up.

  He lay there on his heap of rotting meat and bone, listening to the sounds of his crawlers digging through the mountain. They’d level it, given time. They’d eat it right down. They’d unearth all the treasures buried here, given time.

  Time.

  He had lots of that. So did they.

  Still, it would be nice to raise up some more diggers to hurry things along.

  He’d tried that before. He had tried to raise as many crawlers as he could find. But it hadn’t worked. They’d dug until they got hungry, and then they’d started in on eating each other. It had been fun to watch. First there was a chain reaction. One bit the other and passed it on, and soon the tunnels had been clogged with thousands of crawlers, frantically eating each other.

  And then some of them had grown back together. Their pieces, chunks, stitching together.

  That had been fun for awhile.

  Then he started again. He had Learned from his mistakes. He had learned to keep his army small and manageable. He kept them in small isolated packs, digging in the dirt, with just enough found meat to let them survive.

  He dreamed of bigger things. When he was awake and asleep, he dreamed of things hidden in the mountain that he might raise up. Old things. Large things. Things without names.

  Things that would make him strong.

 
He dreamed of long slow rivers, winding across the countryside like a long and never ending snake. He dreamed of deep currents, clear water, cool air. His mind moved like a great pale shark, through the ruins of sunken cities and civilizations. Dreams built by younger men, now lying swallowed beneath a great wet hunger.

  Static scratched like nails over fly speckled glass. It reminded him of the reality he had left behind. The forever he had come to discover.

  The future was an eternity away. A nuclear waste, scorched by the sun’s blind rape. Charred bones that scuttled through heat scarred sand. People talked of trees in the same hushed whispers they used to speak of Gods. The air was thin and parched and tasted of scalded glass shards.

  Into this madness he had been born. He had dreamed large dreams. He had dreamed of bringing the dead back to life.

  Why not?

  There were so many secrets they could whisper to him.

  His seniors had not approved of his dreams of mass resurrection, so they had sent him away. They’d laid him down on a lab table, and he’d fallen asleep, bathed in a hot blue lamp.

  And he’d awoken here.

  Here and now.

  The Devil’s Anvil.

  The nineteenth century.

  Centuries of wisdom lost in the blink of a bureaucratic eye.

  He would show them.

  Sometimes he wondered if it were all just some kind of crazy heat dream. If he was still there, lying beneath that hot blue lamp, dreaming of the mountain and the crawlers and the things buried within.

  He opened his eyes. He tasted the cool thin mountain air. He looked about himself in the comforting darkness, to the cellular rejuvenation tubes and his obedient servants. He looked down to the distant valley.

  This was no dream, he told himself.

  Such a parched place, and yet compared to where he came from this was paradise. How little these children realized.

  The place where the Moon Man came from was a lot closer in scope. His homeland, so many centuries in the future had been tightly packed. You screamed for room. The place and the time where the Moon Man had come from was a long walk away from here. He’d come from a time and a place where the raising of the dead was a bad thing.

  There were just far too many living folk to put up with anyone raising up the dead.