by Danny Hogan
I gently touched the front of Alice’s chest. Her breathing seemed steady enough. Then I touched her head; it seemed a little warm but not feverish. I trolled myself up in my own bedding and closed my eyes.
Although it did not feel like it at all, I must have got some sleep because, when my eyes opened again to the crazed braying of that fucking mule, the sun was about coming up. Then my eyes shot open real wide. My head was suddenly filled with one hundred and one evil reasons why that damned mule was hollering like a mad thing.
21
I inched along the dusty wooden floor on my belly, getting near the edge of the wall to where our honking mule was tethered and, fearing the worst, slowly took the sneakiest of peeks over the edge of the broken wall.
How I hadn’t smelled or heard ’em before was anyone’s guess. There was our gallant stead dancing around and squealing like a fat old maiden only just escaping the groping hands of her molesters: a damned herd of lanky’uns. I looked over to Alice. She was still out cold, which worried me with the light coming up and all that damned noise, and all. I scuttled across the floor towards her.
‘Get up,’ I hissed, shaking Alice.
She opened eyes slowly, clutched her wrist stump, cringed and let out a moan.
‘Shhh, lanky’uns,’ I whispered.
I grabbed my carbine and looked over at the stairway. I felt totally hopeless. I had counted over a score of ’em out there. Stuck up here with just the crippled Alice, I could do nothing against those odds. We’d be overrun in seconds, and all but our boots would be in the bellies of those demons in a matter of minutes. It was my turn to groan. I did not look, but I could hear our mule letting out an agonised, high-pitched noise, which was followed by a ripping and sucking sound that I took to be the tearing of flesh. The horrible cry of triumph, from what must have been the alpha lanky’un, followed and then there was the god-awful din of them eating. I swore I could hear that poor bastard mule make sounds like it wasn’t fully dead yet. I shut my eyes as tight as they would go.
I smote my own brow when I realised that I had left most of the remainder of our water down there because it was too damned heavy to bring up. I had plain forgot about it up until now. Those monsters were sure to be washing down their mule meat dinner with its cool goodness before long, goddammit.
I crouched there in the dust, resting my forehead on the barrel of my carbine. We were fucked on all counts.
My heart raced when I heard something pad about at the bottom of the stairs and then the creak, as that something began to climb ’em, filled me with dread. I looked over at that poor bitch, face full of fear and her bedding brought up under chin. Most of all I felt sorry for myself. How in tarnation did I end up here anyway? What happened to lazing about along the trail? All I wanted was to be back in Austin, in Sal’s by myself, drinking whiskey and beer; together; a glass in each hand and a lip full of chew.
I heard the terrific roar of a high calibre weapon and the lanky’un stopped in its ascent. Then I heard the thunder of hooves and the whooping and jeering of men.
Lanky’un howls and the crack of gunfire suddenly filled the air, along with the hysterical calling of ponies in battle.
Alice slithered out of her bedding and scooted over to the wall so she could see who had, apparently, come to our rescue. Old dumbass over here should have realised what was coming. You probably have. She sat back on her haunches with her hands to her face.
‘Oh my god oh my god oh my god.’
I stepped gingerly over to the wall. There was some men all right; all astride these warhorses that were straining every nerve and glistening wet with sweat. Steam billowed from their nostrils, as it did from their riders’ guns.
The riders themselves wore rough rawhides and buckskins adorned with trail-found armour plating. They wore leather bandoliers and every man had around two-foot worth of bowie knife hanging from his bullet belt. And each one of their shots sent a lanky’un down for good. Slowly and surely, a man on a pale horse trotted into the midst of this dreadful scene as if he were promenading along the waterfront on a Sunday afternoon. He had the face of a strict schoolmaster and he wore spectacles. His features were long and joyless and his grey moustache was trimmed neat. He wore a black wide brimmed hat and leathers that I’d wager were also black beneath their coating of dust. His jacket and leggings were fringed with little stiff, rattling ornaments that, although I could not make them out clearly, I knew were human fingers.
To match this morbid decoration, what was sure to be human hair lined his collar and hung from his belt. The little brown beads studding his belt, hatband and horse trappings were human teeth, I’d bet you ten bits on it. He was a tall fella as it was but the huge pistol that hung at his hip was practically the length of his thigh.
‘It’s Old Man Elliot and his posse,’ Alice said, stating the obvious. She kind of looked a weird mixture of angry and terrified.
They numbered four in total, and we stood no chance going up against them. Not at all. No more than we did with the hoard of lanky’uns they had just dispatched. And that was the truth of it.
If I remembered rightly from the stories I’d heard, which it turned out I did, Elliot’s crew included Colonel Jim Croaker, Skinny Pete Jameson and Paulie Bastard.
Remember what I said about the three people you need to be worried about in a gang? Well, here’s a conundrum for you. There was the person, who I knew was the leader, over where the dangerous one usually was and behaving in the way the dangerous one usually did. And in front of me the rest of the posse all stood there behaving like the leader normally did; quiet and in command. There was no pretender with the yap and there seemed to be no general dogsbodies, apprentices and hangers on. I really had no idea how to handle this bunch.
I looked at Alice and I could not tell for the life of me what the goddamn hell she was planning in that nugget of hers as she rocked back and forth and nursed her bandaged stump. I had to think damned quick. I was in no mood to get my tush whooped just then. Then it occurred to me that, above all, Alice had a good heart. Well, at least that was what I was counting on when I removed Comeuppance from the holster on my hip.
‘Here,’ I said, handing my Ruger to her butt first. ‘Do what you gotta do.’
22
With the whooping and gunshots still sounding in the street, Alice looked at Comeuppance as the gun balanced in the palm of her good hand.
She looked up at me and went to say something about three times before finally getting it out: ‘I’m scared.’ She said it like it was a question.
‘Just know that, once you pull that trigger, in the situation we’re presently in, neither one of us is getting out of this alive. Ain’t no other way this is gonna go.’
‘Ain’t you scared?’
‘Sure I am. But I know whatever you’re thinking of doing will be righteous and that’s all I ask out of life.’ She looked at me quizzically. ‘I trust you Alice,’ I added, hoping to hell I wasn’t over doing it.
‘Oh god, I can’t do this to you, Jezebel. This is my fight,’ she said, handing me back my gun. It was all I could do not to wipe the back of my hand across my brow with relief.
‘I don’t want to let them go though. Do you reckon we should follow them, Jezebel?’
‘Man, those guys could track a frog’s fart three miles away. They’ll be wondering about that mule. They’ll have us figured out before we know it.’
‘They don’t know what I look like. They don’t know it was my family that they killed. We could go and ask to join their band, build their numbers up and then strike at them from within…you know?’
‘Sweetheart, there’s only one use they’ll have for us. I don’t know what your taste in the fellas is but none’a them down there get me excited and I’ll guarantee they ain’t gentle lovers.’
With all that nattering I had failed to notice the gunshots cease and, what was it I said before? Something about reckoning on them being expert trackers was it?
; I don’t know why but, at that moment, I looked to the left and there, staring and breathing heavy, was the ravenous looking prick who rejoiced under the name Skinny Pete Jameson. He was the youngest member of the posse, whose impressive resume included rape, torture and cannibalism; often in one sitting. Like I had guessed with Elliot, human fingers fringed this guys clothes and human teeth were his adornments.
‘Howdy ladies, mighty fine day ain’t it?’ You know when someone just sounds dog shit insane?
I was standing up by now and below I could clearly see the rest of the posse A more typical bunch of wilderness inbreeds you could not imagine. To the left was Paulie Bastard, who had been some kind of ill-reputed surgeon. According to legend his hobbies included poisoning, mutilation and collecting pox. Wearing what looked like a three piece suit and a stovepipe hat, he looked almost dapper underneath the desert dust. He had these small, leathery pouches hanging from his belt that, I’d heard told, were human hearts.
Then there was the Colonel; a big swollen brute of a man with no hair on his head but plenty around his face. His teeth made his mouth look like a bust piano and he had this look in his eye like a retard sick with lust. He wore nothing more than dungarees, boots and a big old straw hat.
Completing the team was, of course, Old Man Elliot. There they all were, sitting on their mighty steeds amongst the mule guts and lanky’un corpses, looking up at me. And there was Skinny Pete, right in the room.
There was no way out of this situation as far as I could see and I was just about as scared as I ever had been. In a mean old world these were the very meanest bastards we were up against here and, there ain’t no point denying it, I was way out of my depth.
It was then that I noticed that I was holding Comeuppance by the barrel with the butt facing away from me. I guess old Skinny Pete just took me for some gal with a big, back to front gun and nothing more, because he didn’t look too worried.
In one smooth move I spun her around until she was in my hand right, thumbed back the trigger and peeled off a shot at Skinny Pete. He was not more than a few feet away and I missed. I missed. What? I couldn’t believe it. But, while he stood there in surprise, I grabbed Alice by the wrist, pulled her to her feet and hauled her with me through a hole in the adjacent wall. There was this terrific roar, a blast of wind and a hole I could have easily fit my head through was blasted into the roof above us.
Dragging Alice by the stump we were in what must have been another room of the house. In the wall yonder there was a big old hole where once, I imagine, there had been a window. Skinny Pete was sure to be on our heels so there was only one thing for it. Pulling Alice with me I ran as fast as I could at the gaping hole and out into the dry desert air. We were only one storey up but, when we landed, I heard the loud crack-crunch before I felt it.
23
I done broke my damn arm: my right arm, damn it, my fucking gun arm. Although my eyes were filling up with water and I was biting the hell out of my lip, I could see Skinny Pete hanging out of the window pointing a large semi-auto at us.
‘Now you just hold on there ladies, we only want a little dance and dinner is all,’ he hooted down. From around the corner I could hear the thunder of hooves approaching.
Opposite us was another ruined home and, therein, our only chance. Alice didn’t seem to be hurt by the fall so I must have provided the soft landing. I grabbed her stump again and dragged her across the street with the thumping of .45ACP shells hitting the dirt around us. I let out a pained scream when one punched a hole right through my calf. My body began to react naturally, freezing up in shock and pain but, by god, I fought right through it. And I threw both of us through the old door of the ruin. A barrage of big old lumps of lead rained after us and the Old Man and his friends caught up behind. I instinctively clasped my lame leg but I swallowed up the pain and, although blinded by tears, I grabbed Alice’s hand and continued to tug her through the ruin.
I kept a firm grip around Alice’s shoulders with my good left arm and barrelled through the ramshackle rooms of the ruin, bounding over broken furniture and dodging beams as bullets whistled around us shattering and smashing things in their path. I suppose we were lucky being girls and shorter; we weren’t so easy to get a bead on over the broken down walls. I heard at least two horses circling around the ruin we were in.
To the right of us I saw a hole in the wall that led to a little alleyway between the building we were in and the next. Feeling a throbbing, hot pain in my broken arm and with my leg all but about to give out with the piercing agony I snatched at Alice and hauled her with me through the hole into the welcome dry air of the alley. I could see an open doorway in the blackened building in front of us, just a bit of the way up. I indicated to the shaking Alice and we hurried up there and through the door into a darkened room. I had visions of the Devil’s own hounds snapping at our heels.
I could hear a great crashing coming from the house we were in before and I reckoned they were riding their horses right through it looking for us. We found ourselves in what looked like a kitchen with its storage units, though scattered around the floor, still intact. The idea seemed to come to us at the exact same time, I reckon. We both looked at each other and then I clambered into a unit I could just about squeeze into and shut the doors. Alice slithered her skinny assed body into the tiniest gap underneath a metal shelving unit heaped with burnt out, useless things.
It was in that dark cramped pot closet, all bent up like pretzel as I was, that the pain from my broken arm really came on and the blood from my shot up leg began to piss all over me. And, my lord, the agony was a doozey. A real goddamned toe curler, and that’s being polite. I bit my lip until I am sure it bled and I was pretty glad for the privacy as the tears began streaming down my cheeks like somebody left the faucet on. Thank god they didn’t have dogs.
Suddenly, where there had been a whole war of noise, there was now an eerie silence. I caught myself and tried as hard as I could to quiet my snivelling but it weren’t easy. My right arm was trying to unscrew itself and make off on its own and my left leg was emptying me of my life juice. My mind was full of fear and the word fuck kept repeating like a mantra. But I really began to loose my shit when I thought I heard someone creeping about. I couldn’t see anything through the gap between the doors except, perhaps, a tiny glitter from Alice’s bright eyes beneath the shelves. I wondered if she was doing OK ’cos I sure as hell wasn’t.
Outside I could hear the posse hollering after us and promising to do all the nasty things a girl wouldn’t imagine. Filthy things, scraped from the very bottom of bad men’s hearts.
It sounded like horses were braying and neighing all over town, from right near us to far in the distance. Right then it felt like some kind of living nightmare and, every time I heard one of their voices calling out their dark harangues, I felt like it was all I could to stop myself vomiting. I could hear muttering over here, calling and jeering over there and hog calls in the yonder. I felt like I was going as insane as the band of sons of bitches parading about outside. Then a voice came clearly, calling from somewhere out there:
‘Jezebel. I know you can hear me Jezebel.’ The voice had a stern, schoolhouse master tone to it but it sounded strangely empty, like the owner had grown tired of living.
‘Yep, we know who you are.’ If I had not been in white agony and feeling like I was going to die, I guess I would have been happy. They knew who I was even though I sure as hell was not the overgrown, gold headed, bull dyke of stories. ‘We have a good 10 yards of rope here. We will find you, and we will hang you for your crimes.’ My crimes? I could have hollered venom.
‘Your only chance is to try to get to Houston before we get you. Give yourself in and face a fair trial where you will be duly represented.’ My heart was trying to beat its way out of my chest and make a run for it as the voice got nearer to us.
‘But I have to tell you, to be fair, you’re too late. You should have gone with our friend Cecil when you had the cha
nce because, like I said: we will find you and we will hang you.’ There was a long pause and then from much further away: ‘and your friend.’
24
The next thing I knew I was out in the open, on my back and gazing up at that merciless sun. I felt as weak as a day old kitten and something was gripping my leg as tight as hell. I tried to sit upright and, through bleary eyes, I saw Alice looking as scared as hell as she fiercely fussed with some kind of rag, my bandanna, around my leg and pulled it tight by way of her one good hand and her teeth. I let out a yell of pain.
‘Ssshh,’ she stopped and looked up and yonder. ‘I am sure they’re long gone, but…’ Alice was speaking in barley audible tones.
‘How long I been out?’
‘I don’t know, I really couldn’t say. I was so scared.’
The skin on my legs felt like it was covered in crust. I looked down and both legs were stained deep red and brown where I had been pissing blood over myself from my wound. I was suffering almighty from throbbing pains of all stripes. I could see now that we were out in the alley.
‘What we doing out here, it ain’t safe?’ I said in a low tone, trying to get up and hissing in agony when I put weight on my broken arm.
Alice came at me with a handful of cooking utensils and some bandage.
‘I couldn’t see in there. Let me fix you up and we’ll get back inside and wait until dark. Maybe we should try and sleep so we got energy to move through the night,’ she said, as she began to lay the utensils around my broken forearm, making a frame, and then wrapping bandage as tight as Hades around the whole lot, again with her good and her teeth.