Seven Threads
Page 15
“Seems our jesusman is resourceful,” Hat-Trick said as Lanyard emerged from the hut. The crooked man was on horse-back, pointing his own shot-gun at him. Lanyard’s eyes were drawn to the yawning black of the double-O, briefly wondered if he’d see the flash before he died.
Before Hat-Trick could squeeze the triggers the horse reared up and threw him. Lanyard never thought he’d be happy to see the enormous grandfather snake, but as it sank its fangs into the horse he blessed every broken scale on its battered body. Against the odds, this enormous creature had found him, despite being shot at, electrocuted, and battered to within an inch of its life.
Lanyard snatched the shotgun from the limp hands of the crooked man, groaning and winded from his fall. The snake was curled around the twitching horse and hissed at Lanyard, ready to strike but wary of the enormous shooter.
It was only the arrival of the crooked mob, hollering and firing at the serpent which saved him. The snake held its ground, lashing out at any who came near, till it bristled with spears and bullet wounds.
From where he stood Lanyard spotted his old skiff, parked behind Cobbler’s workshop. He ran for it, snatching the girl on the way. The cannibals were too busy dealing with the enormous snake to stop him.
He lay her down in the spare seat and stashed the shotgun in back. He was messing around with the rigging and sails when he felt the barrel of a pistol in the back of his head.
“You’re taking me, not her,” Cobbler said, and at the tinkerman’s frantic urging Lanyard lifted the girl out, left her sobbing on the ground. Cobbler threw his crutch into the back and climbed in, ordered Lanyard to move.
The canvas sails rippled in the breeze, and as he pushed the skiff out onto the salt-pan the breeze became a strong driving wind. But not quite quick enough, and even as the little wind-cart darted across the flat salt-crust the snake was in pursuit, only pausing for a moment to snatch the girl into its mouth.
“Snake killed them all,” Lanyard realised, which certainly explained what Thomas Cobbler the tinkerman was doing holding some dead man’s pistol.
“Move this damn thing!” Cobbler said, looking over his shoulder. “Make it go faster.”
With one smooth motion Lanyard heaved Cobbler over the side, and freed of the extra weight the skiff went much faster indeed.
#
Despite his fractured apprenticeship, Lanyard knew enough to do his job. This world did not need a soft and loving shepherd, did not need a man of letters or even a man who could preach. The old morality was long dead, and the words of the jesus less than the dust he’d given them to live in.
There were creatures out there, supernatural trespassers that needed killing. He could sniff them out, make them regret the moment they trod in his world. It was a purpose, one that lifted him above being a common thug. He’d finally accepted this destiny.
He was always afraid, and often alone. But the last of the jesusmen did not need the approval or help of others. Lanyard would cheerfully kill a man over a bag of coin, but the monsters he began to murder as a community service.
He had become the last jesusman, perfectly suited for this cruel new age.
#
He had bigger problems than the Inland snake. A witch came for him the next night, openly and without fear. Lanyard had his jesusman’s gun primed, had already scratched the marks and wards into the dust when the creature sat down by his campfire, just outside of his protective circle.
“You’ve nothing to fear from the snake,” the pasty-white creature told him, in that strange static that was halfway between voice and thought. “We fed from it, my kin and I. Every last scale, every scrap of its gizzards.”
“A shame,” Lanyard said. “It was honest enough, in its own way. Wouldn’t say the same of your kind.”
It shifted forms, like runny candle-wax. The creature had become something like the dead cripple girl, but mature, lush, a vision of the future robbed from her by Hat-Trick’s crooked mob. She had both her legs, and writhed by the fire, laughing and moaning seductively. Lanyard shook his head, every nerve urging him to murder the foul creature.
“I’ve been sent to make you an offer, jesusman,” the witch said, shifting into the form of Teeth, her foul head snapping at him from the end of the grandfather serpent’s body. “We would have a settlement in the Now, and seek truce with the last of the jesusmen.”
“No truce,” Lanyard said. “When I have enough kit to do the job, I will return. I’m fixing to murder you, you and your whole bloody mob.”
“Fool,” the witch snarled. “You will never rest. We will haunt your dreams, hunt you by day and by night.”
“Your friends might. But you won’t.”
Lanyard emptied both barrels into the monster, the report scaring a flock of cockatoos out of a nearby tree and into noisy flight. Even as the witch dragged itself across the ground, whimpering and trying to open a door to somewhere else, he hammered the life out of it with the wooden stock of that holy gun. When it finally lay silent, stinking of rotten meat and stale piss, he heaved the slippery beast into the fire.
Lanyard stacked wood around the body of the witch, and sat up throughout the night to watch it burn. When he slipped into an exhausted slumber, his dreams were still.
###
About the author
Jason Fischer is a writer who lives near Adelaide, South Australia. He has a passion for godawful puns, and is known to sing karaoke until the small hours.
Jason has won an Aurealis Award and the Writers of the Future Contest, and he has been on shortlists in other awards such as the Ditmars and the Australian Shadows. He is the author of dozens of short stories, with his books “Everything is a Graveyard” and “Quiver” now available from most online retailers.
She simply won’t let the zombies stop her! Dive into the Tamsyn Webb Chronicles at https://www.tamsynwebb.com/.
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