LAST ONE OUT
by
EARL T. ROSKE
©2017 by Earl T. Roske
Josiah dropped the plank he’d pulled from the wall and stepped back from the building. He’d heard the shuffling begin several planks before when the shadows in the cellar were still deep. As the shuffling in the cellar became a scrabbling toward the earthen stairs, Josiah picked up the shotgun and pressed the stock to his shoulder. Rare that he had to pull a trigger in broad daylight, but he was ready if necessary.
The noises of physical movement grew louder and were joined by guttural grunts and coughs. It was a chorus of animal frustration and dislodged debris leading its conductor into the sunlight.
It howled in pain as it climbed to its feet and the sunlight bathed its eyes. Its ragged and torn hands waved and grabbed at the air looking like it was trying to shoo away an annoying fly. It looked everywhere but at the sun. Its head twitching to either side, its neck making popping sounds with each movement. Its gaze locked on Josiah.
“Nuh-uh,” Josiah said. He waved the tip of the shotgun barrel, moving air to the left. “Go that way, Simon.”
It growled and snapped its dry jaws before it turned away and shuffled, like a drunk trying to skip, around the side of the building’s foundation. Josiah kept the shotgun ready while he watched it move around the skeletal frame of the building.
It hobbled onto the one street of the town, toward the church. The church was wreathed on three sides with stacked wood beams and planks torn from the homes and businesses. That left only the front accessible and it made its way there. Seven steps led the way to the hinge-busted doors. It crawled and hopped its way up and then shoved itself past the doors into the darkness that was its salvation.
Josiah waited for several minutes, to be sure. When nothing burst forth from the church he returned to where he’d been removing the boards that had exposed the root cellar. From a distance, he studied the space beneath what had once been the town’s doctor’s home and office. Most of the cellar was illuminated with a bright light leaving only a few sharp shadows of inky blackness.
“Anyone else?” he asked. He didn’t expect a response and got what he’d anticipated. Still, best to be sure.
When nothing shuffled or growled in the remaining slivers of darkness, he set the shotgun by the wheelbarrow and pulled a small notebook and pencil stub from his pocket. He turned past several pages of names until he reached the last of them. He carefully added another name to the list.
“Simon Belverton. Bank clerk.”
With the name written and the book and pencil back in his pocket, Josiah picked up the plank he’d dropped and stacked it with the rest on the wheelbarrow. Taking up the crowbar, he went to work on the next plank.
Clayton Hodgens pulled hard on the reins, jerking the tired mare to an abrupt stop. He cocked his head, trying to listen beyond the sound of his and the mare’s breathing. He’d heard a sound. A howl? Not a dog, or wolf, or bear. Something. Something sounding like it was in pain farther on ahead. He leaned forward, hand pressed against the dust-matted mane of the horse, straining to hear anything.
Since he’d doubled back on the trail. Since he’d lost what was left of the posse. Since he’d passed the skull-and-crossbones sign with ‘Danger! Keep away!’ in dried, dripped letters on it. Since all that, he hadn’t heard a sound that he or the horse hadn’t made.
There’d been no birds chittering in the bushes, no rodents scuttling through the underbrush. It had been silent enough that he’d taken to whistling a couple of times as to ease the ache going on in his ears.
Now this howling scream ahead. Curiosity had him by the ear. The necessity to keep ahead of the posse tugged as well. He flopped the reins and the mare pushed on.
Ahead, through the brush and down the slope of the hill, lay one of the last places the posse would ever think to look for him. That made it the perfect place to rest, bathe, maybe find a little company, all before scooting north and over the border.
It had been quite a few years since he’d been here. Quite a few since he’d terrorized the miners and townsfolk with his gang. He wouldn’t have come back if he’d had much of a choice. He was sure that memories were as long as the steeple’s shadow and more enduring.
The posse had left him little choice. This route was the most unlikely. They’d think of this direction only when it was too late.
As the mare carried him through the last of brush and lodgepole pine stumps, Clayton yanked her to a stop once again. He’d been prepared to take his chances with the townsfolk. Now it seemed his concerns were no longer of any importance. Except for the church and the jail, there didn’t seem to be a roof to shelter under and few walls to hide behind. His hopes of finding food, a bath, company, a saddle, come to think of it, were dashed. Now he figured he’d be lucky to find water for him and the horse. Hopefully, the well still worked.
He smacked the reins and sent the mare moving down to the town once more.
The town had come into existence to serve the hermetic miners in the hills that surrounded the high valley. The miners were still mining. Well, they had been last time Clayton was in the area. The town had grown beyond depending on the miners for its survival, unlike many a rush town. So he was surprised to see such abandonment as the horse stepped from the trail to the main street.
The street cut a straight line through the heart of the town. It began to his left, at the jail on the slight rise, and ended on the other side of town at the stairs of the church.
The church this time of year spent most of the morning and evening in the shade of the hills behind it. In the middle of the day, the shadow of the steeple would slice down the street. The shadow of the cross would prostrate itself at the steps of the jail around noon.
All that worry about long memories for nothing. Everyone seemed to have up and left. If he was real lucky, the miser of a saloon owner might have forgotten one of the hidden bottles of the good whiskey. No one was supposed to know where the good stuff was hidden. Clayton knew. A couple slugs of whiskey would serve as the right kind of medicine.
He snapped the horse back into motion, guiding it toward the church. The saloon was along the way, which always made sense to Clayton. As the horse carried him along the street, he had a chance to survey the state of the town. When he’d first laid eyes on the town he hadn’t been sure if there’d been a fire or the rare tornado. It was neither. Everything was too neat for either of those possibilities.
What remained of the buildings was little more than their frames. Most of the floors and all the sidewalks had been reduced to their supporting timbers. Almost all the walls had been pulled down as well, leaving bare frames. Oddly, there was no mess. There was no random scattering of debris or household items. None of the normal hallmarks of panic or destruction. Everything was neat and orderly, which made Clayton more nervous than seeing random destruction. Another good reason to medicate with some quality whiskey.
A grin peeled his face open as he stopped the mare in front of the saloon. Whatever had happened here at least the saloon, if not intact, was still standing. The saloon doors hung in solitude on the naked door frame. The piano rested on the floor timbers and looking worse from the continuous exposure to the elements. Planks had been strategically placed to provide a trail from the door to the bar. That was mighty nice of someone.
He started to slide off the mare’s back but stopped when he heard a noise. It was a small noise. But in a place of no noise, even the smallest was worth paying attention to. He remembered the howl of pain. His hand slipped to his waist quite naturally, resting on the grip of his recently acquired Colt single-action. Purposefully, he pulled his hand back to the horse’s mane. This town was dead. Still, what was that sound? He adjusted him
self back onto the horse’s back.
The sound came from the direction of the church. A scraping of wood or a cough. Human or rodent. He wasn’t sure. But one way he’d have company, another way he’d have a meal.
Josiah was taking a break from his labors, drinking from the water pail, when he heard something he hadn’t heard in a month. He heard the gentle snuffling of a horse. If there was a horse, there was a person. That wasn’t good. He set the bucket on the ground, gently releasing the rope handle. He quietly slipped his vest on, his six-pointed star twinkling as it moved. After the vest, which made him official, he added his holster belt, buckling it while he watched through the wooden skeleton of the doctor’s house.
Out on the main street, a dusty mare moved down the center of the street. A rider held to her bare back, one hand on the reins, the other gripping the long hair of her mane. The rider looked around at the deconstructed town, an unanswered question on his face.
Josiah picked up the shotgun that was leaning against the wheelbarrow loaded with wood slats. He began to track the rider, moving enough to keep the stranger in sight. His eyes watched the rider and the bases of the buildings to his right and the church to his left. He wasn’t sure if he’d uncovered them all. A few names were still missing from his notebook. A horse, however, might be too tempting a target, luring them out even in the daylight hours.
He knew they were hungry, but were they hungry enough to risk the daylight?
On the street, the rider continued in the direction of the church. The street was smooth except for the crisscross furrows from the wheel of the barrow. Rain and wind had already erased the familiar horseshoe prints and wagon tracks that had battered the ground over the previous decade.
It had taken twelve years for the town to build itself up from a canvas tent outpost on the edge of the mining fields. Twelve years to build and mere months to bring about its ruin. Josiah had set himself the goal of tearing it all down before he left. He’d been allowed to work uninterrupted until now.
The stranger had yanked his horse to a stop at the saloon across from the hotel. The hotel had been the first two-story building to go up in town. It’d been the first place Josiah had started tearing down after reading the doctor’s journal.
After a few false starts, he’d learned to start with the roofs and then the southeast walls, then the floors. The process had gained momentum as more and more of them had been driven into the church where they remained until nightfall and returned to at dawn.
The bank had been a problem with its brick walls. The saloon, on the other hand, had been one of the easiest. It had been the first building to be completed in town, thrown up in greedy haste. It used to leak like a rusted bucket during the rain and needed three stoves to keep it warm come winter, even with the steady flow of whiskey to keep patrons warm on their insides.
The siding had pulled off easy, like bark from a dead tree. Quickly enough, all that remained was the skeletal studs, struts, braces, and beams. The old piano remained on a few abbreviated sections of floorboards, and he’d laid out several boards across the beams to reach the bar counter.
At one moment it seemed the stranger might dismount from his horse. But he’d stopped and Josiah knew why. He’d heard why. Chances were that they had gathered near the doors of the church, driven by hunger, restrained by fear. Josiah continued to watch as, after a long pause, the stranger turned his attention toward the church. He pulled off his hat and scratched his head, looking confused. Then, after placing his hat back on his head, he urged the horse toward the stairs that led up to the church doors. The doors were ajar, taunting the unwary.
The stranger slid from the horse’s back, his attention directed toward the front of the church. He started to loop the reins over the horse post.
“I wouldn’t go up there,” said Josiah. He stepped out from behind the doctor’s home, the butt of his shotgun pressed against his shoulder. “And I’d keep my hands clear if I was you and I didn’t want to get shot.”
The stranger turned, a tough-guy smile smeared across his face. He looked Josiah up and down before speaking. “Suddenly religion’s against the law, Sheriff?”
Josiah paused for a second. The stranger’s face looked familiar. “Nothing wrong with religion. There just ain’t any to be had in there.”
“That’s a church.” The stranger pointed a thumb over his shoulder at the building. “Churches are where you find religion, last I heard.”
“Not in this town.” He used the barrel end of the shotgun to wave the stranger back, away from the church. The man’s face was still a puzzle, though the pieces were starting to come together. However, that was less a concern than the increased activity inside the gloom infused nave.
“There something in there?” the stranger asked.
Too many questions. He was making it more problematic than it needed to be. “Doesn’t make any difference to you. Now, you’d best be moving on if you’re looking for a place to pray. I’d do it now if I were you.”
The stranger held up his hands. He pointed with one finger, wagging it toward the saloon. “Actually, that’s my place of worship, Sheriff, if you get my meaning. ‘Course, there probably isn’t anything to wash a prayer down with?”
“That all you want? And then you’ll be gone?” Small price to pay, just so he’d get gone.
The stranger shrugged, looked around. “Got no reason to stay. There don’t seem to be nothing to stay for.”
“Bring the horse.”
Josiah moved across the street toward the saloon. He kept himself turned toward the stranger and the church, the shotgun still nestled against his shoulder, ready to work if necessary. Two rounds wouldn’t do much. Pistol bullets were useless, but it made them pause and that was an advantage he could make use of.
The stranger looked back at the church and Josiah shook his head. “Whiskey’s over here.”
Clayton shook his head as he pulled the horse around with the reins and started back to the saloon. The oddity of the town had fooled him into letting his guard down. Now he had a sheriff to deal with. There’d been a moment where he’d thought the sheriff had pinned his face, but then it had gone. Still, he should have heard someone approaching and been ready for them.
It was the church, distracting him. The noises he’d heard had made his skin crawl. He was as glad to ignore the church as the sheriff was for him to do so.
At the saloon, he tied the horse. He smiled benignly at the sheriff who backed his way up the single stair onto the timbers of the sidewalk. Clayton had expected the man to stumble, giving him a chance to seize the advantage. Unfortunately, and weirdly, the sheriff moved with a practiced and measured pace, stepping right where he needed to, exactly when he had to.
“Coming?” the sheriff asked as he backed through the saloon doors.
“I’ve a parched throat that needs some attending, Sheriff.” He stepped up onto the timbers of the sidewalk. His motions were not as sure as those of the sheriff. He felt like he was trying to cross a creek on a narrow, fallen tree.
When he reached the saloon doors and stepped onto the planks beyond, he couldn’t help but sigh with relief. He sure didn’t want to look the fool in front of a lawman.
Below the floor timbers was a dirt cellar. There were a couple of toppled shelves and a busted barrel. Other than that, it was a barren hole, like an oversized grave. The idea made him shudder and he turned his attention to the bar and the promised whiskey.
The sheriff was already behind the bar by the time Clayton grabbed onto it. The shotgun still pointing its greeting end in his direction. He never did like being pointed at. That was how he always got into trouble. From the priest at the school where his ma had tried to send him, to the foreman on the track-laying team. Something about it, the pointing, that got his blood up. But he’d also been careful to make sure he didn’t get himself killed in the process. So there’d be no drawing against the sheriff, not when he was so attentive, and nervous. Nervous men were da
ngerous men.
Clayton leaned up against the bar, both elbows on the stained wood. He’d chosen a spot halfway down the bar. It required standing on the beams of the floor, but he was farther from the open end of the shotgun.
The sheriff had a bottle of whiskey out and the cork already pulled. He dropped two glasses on the table and slopped several fingers of whiskey in each. He pushed one down the bar. It didn’t slide and Clayton had to reach over to grab it.
He held up his glass in salute toward the sheriff, forcing a smile of insincerity as he did. With a flourish, he dumped the whiskey into his mouth. There was the instant sterilizing burn of the alcohol as it touched his parched mouth. He swirled it with his tongue, coating and burning every inch of tongue, gums, and cheeks. There was something odd about the feel of the whiskey, a gritty feel. It took a second to realize it was dirt and dust from the glass. Having sat exposed to the disinterested actions of nature, it had become dirtier than even he would have allowed. He held the glass up.
“Now that I’ve washed the glass, might I have a proper drink?”
The sheriff moved down the bar. He pulled the shotgun with him but at least now it wasn’t pointing at Clayton’s face. The sheriff poured double the first offering and did the same for himself.
“Seems a bit unfriendly not to know who I’m drinking with,” Clayton said. He held the glass up again and took a sip, savoring the flavor this time. The sheriff had found the good stuff.
“Name’s Josiah,” said the sheriff. He took down a quaff of whiskey, his eyes never leaving Clayton’s face.
“Nice to make your acquaintance, Sheriff Josiah. Name’s --”
“I know who you are.”
Clayton lowered his glass to the bar counter. The shotgun was still on the bar and still not pointing at him. It was a matter of getting to his sidearm before the sheriff could bring the more cumbersome shotgun to bear. He stalled. “Is that a fact?”
“Clayton Hodgens. Your real name. Clay Hogan, depending on which county your poster’s in. That’s how I recognized you. From the posters in the jail. Took me a bit. But let me be clear.” He poured more whiskey for the both of them and took a sip. “I don’t care. You ain’t my problem.”
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