Dead Man’s Hand

by John Joseph Adams

  The barrels wound down.

  Wounded townsfolk scrabbled around the floor.

  “I’m standing up!” Willie shouted. He shook black goop from himself, and then shot the nearest man still stirring. He let himself out of the cell, dispatching anyone that even groaned, and stepped through the door warily.

  There was a wagon parked in the middle of the street with a Gatling gun mounted to the back. A grandfatherly black man in a duster with a marshal’s star on his lapel stood behind the still smoking and crackling barrels, reloading the ammunition belt by himself. When he saw Willie, he swung the gun at him. “Show me your neck,” he said.

  Willie leaned forward and exposed it.

  “Good enough,” the stranger said. He had a shock of white hair that he’d left long. It framed his lined and strong face, off which a strong snowy white beard hung. The eyes glinted in the firelight of the street’s torches.

  “Sheriff’s dead,” Willie reported. “My name’s Willie Kennard. Who’re you?”

  The man looked around the town warily. “I’m Frederick Douglass,” he said.

  “The abolitionist?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you for the assistance,” Willie said, surprised. What was Douglass doing out west? And at this particular moment? “Do you know what in hell is going on?”

  Douglass looked down the street. Now Willie heard a faint buzzing in the dark distance of the night lurking around the edges of the town. Like a hive of bees, but lower pitched.

  A beam of light lanced out of the sky and illuminated the scrub. Strange, haunting shadows danced and moved across the horizon.

  “We’d better get up into the crags and hills,” Douglass said, pointing Willie toward the rider’s bench and the reins. “They’ll have a harder time catching up to us amongst the rock. I’ll tell you what I know as we ride.”

  * * *

  The team of horses ran like the devil and dragged the wagon along over the rough dirt road leading out of Duffy. Willie could hardly hear Douglass over the racket of hooves, the creaking wagon, and the bouncing of his chair. Douglass was cleaning the mounted gun and arranging belts of ammunition, grunting with the effort.

  “I’ve been appointed a marshal of the District of Columbia, by President Rutherford B. Hayes,” Douglass shouted. “Ostensibly it is so I can bring more of our folk into civil service. And with those strong jobs previously denied to them, we might rise in our stations. I’m the first negro man in this position. We have had many firsts since President Lincoln—God rest his soul—passed emancipation. I see you, and I see a marshal. All over this land, even despite the fact that President Hayes agreed to end Reconstruction in the South, we are making great strides, Mr. Kennard. Great strides.”

  That flying beam of light stabbed out and lit up the world like a second sun.

  “I know. I served with the Seventh Illinois Rifles,” Willie said, urging the horses on faster. The droning sound, a hellish one if he’d ever heard it, had grown louder. It was associated with that infernal light in the sky. “What is that in the sky?”

  Douglass shielded his eyes and looked up. “They’ve spotted us.” He swung the Gatling gun up and squinted through the sights.

  The howl of the machine behind Willie deafened him. Shells bounced around the wagon’s floor, smoldering as they struck wood.

  The droning sound lessened, and the light dimmed.

  “The marshals report directly to the president,” Douglass said, clearing the gun and awkwardly loading a new belt of ammunition. “Sometimes they’re used as instruments of executive policy. In this case, I was asked to find the lost crew of an airship. And the airship, too, if possible. The president chose me because most cattle hands or cowboys in these western territories are either black or Mexican, and he felt I might better navigate these parts with my team.”

  Willie blinked. “An airship?”

  “You’ve heard of hot air balloons? Lighter than air travel?” Douglass asked.

  “I saw one once. In the war. Used to spot troop movements.” The great globule had hung impossibly in the air, tethered to a pine tree by a rope over a bloody meadow growing a black gunsmoke cloud that soon obscured the machine.

  “Our army built a rather advanced version of a balloon, one capable of moving under its own power. Like a steamship of the air. A wealthy count from Prussia who observed balloons here during the war and was quite taken with the concept of using lighter than air machines for military purposes worked with the army to help build an experimental hydrogen airship. Perfect for avoiding the treacherous and snowy grounds of the territory of Alaska.”

  “Alaska?” Willie glanced back at Douglass. “The territories we purchased from the Russians after the war?”

  “Yes. President Hayes demanded a modern day Lewis and Clarke expedition. We hardly know what, if any, resources lie in the territory, after all.”

  Willie looked up into the sky at the pursuing beam of light. It must be like a lighthouse signal, focused to become a spotting light. And behind it, a floating machine.

  “The army is chasing us?” Willie asked.

  “No, Mr. Kennard. It looks like they lost control of their machine when they were overrun, just like this town was.” He looked up into the sky and pulled the Gatling gun into position. “I need to fire off another belt to keep them farther back from us again, I’m afraid. They’re trying to get close again.”

  An ember landed in the road ahead.

  Willie squinted. Then slewed the horses off the road as hard as he could. He reached back with a hand to steady Mr. Douglass, who pitched to the side. The whole wagon tilted onto two wheels and the horses screamed.

  And then the world exploded in a rush of dirt and violence that blew Willie off the wagon.

  * * *

  “Can you hear me, Mr. Kennard?”

  Willie looked off into the night and blinked. Shook his head.

  “Are you well?” Douglass asked. The old man was holding him up, helping him stumble through the stunted, scraggly trees and toward a cut in the foothills. Blood ran from one of Douglass’s nostrils.

  Willie looked down and saw the front of his shirt stained with dark blood. “Am I hurt?”

  “Was the horse,” Douglass said.

  “I don’t remember any of it,” Willie said.

  “We took a violent tumble thanks to that damn dynamite they were tossing from the airship,” Douglass said. As if to underscore his point, a nearby explosion filled the air with a cloud of sharp-smelling dust. “Fortunately they’ve lost sight of us again, and are randomly tossing the stuff out in hopes of hitting us.”

  They hobbled together, helping each other over rocks and up scree toward the cut. The beam of light had died out—maybe they’d run out of fuel for its light. Willie could discern a large, cigar-shaped shadow gliding between the stars and him. Which meant that at any moment a lit stick of dynamite could land near them.

  “The last thing I remember is you telling me that airship thing was made by the army,” he said.

  Douglass grunted. “One of the last reports before the machine went missing was that they’d found a crater. With a large metal object buried in the center of it. One of the officers sent back a simple sketch via carrier pigeon.”

  Both men winced as another stick of dynamite exploded. But this one was farther away than the last, and Willie breathed a sigh of relief. That old instinct to shelter he’d learned from being shelled by artillery hadn’t gone away, but there was no betraying whistle of an incoming shell to help him here.

  “There’s a book by a gentleman by the name of Jules Verne called From the Earth to the Moon,” Frederick Douglass said, “where some men from Baltimore build a gun large enough to shoot a sort of bullet with men inside of it to the moon.”

  “I have not heard of it,” Willie allowed.

  “Well, the illustration the officer sent to us could have been taken right from its pages. It was a scarred and burnt tip of a bullet, nestled in the
center of a crater it caused. I believe, from what I’ve pieced together since arriving here, that the creatures that infected the crew of the airship above us, and the townspeople of Duffy, are creatures from another world that arrived on it. That arrived via some kind of machine, like Verne described.”

  “These are moon people?” Willie asked incredulously.

  “I do not know whether they are from the moon, or from Mars.

  There is an astronomer, Giovanni Schiaparelli, who said just this year that he has seen canals on the face of Mars. Maybe these things come from there. Maybe from farther away. I do not know. They do not parlay; I lost the men I traveled here with when I tried that futile initial gesture. The creatures are violently hostile.”

  Willie nodded as they struggled up loose rock and into the safety of the narrow crevices of a valley made by carved cliffs. He found himself a bit relieved they were not facing demons, but creatures. Even if otherworldly ones. Creatures could be shot. And hunted. “But why are they here?”

  “Our world? I don’t know.”

  “No, I mean, why Duffy?” Willie asked. “Why did they take the airship? Why did they fly all the way down here?”

  “That I can’t tell you,” Douglass said wearily. “Come, there is an abandoned mine just ahead of us. It is stocked with supplies and weapons, and should be easy to defend from the entrance.”

  * * *

  They passed a trio of fresh graves just inside the mouth of the mine, which was located in a natural cave entrance at a high point in the rocky canyon-like area of the foothill. A very defensible spot, Willie noted with pleasure before he walked deeper inside. Willie had been around a few gold strikes before. Enough to tell that the timbers looked thick and recently placed. This one had been dug in quick for exploration, then abandoned.

  Several crates were stacked deeper inside.

  Not surprising to find a mine here, he thought. Just ten miles away was a bustling hill full of prospectors who all used Duffy as their nearest town. The camp he’d been hired to protect had been planning to try their luck there.

  “Only one way out,” Douglass said. “But it means we can stop them from coming in if they find us.”

  “For a while,” Willie observed. “But we’ll be the rats. And they have dynamite. Better for us to get our ammunition and stay out front to hold them off than try to hide. How did those men out near the front die?”

  “I brought them here. Three other marshals I took with me for this mission. They may have become those… things. But the men I’d traveled with deserved a Christian burial,” Douglass said. “Listen, we just need to last until tomorrow afternoon. Can we defend this mine that long, do you think?”

  “In a pinch,” Willie agreed. “But what happens then?”

  “Cavalry stationed at a fort forty miles away. I sent for them via pigeon.” Douglass levered open a box full of rifles and ammunition. Willie looked in with approval. He picked up a small pistol that he didn’t recognize.

  “What’s this?”

  “A Very pistol. It’s a Navy signal device they just designed. It shoots a burning flare into the sky. I’ll be using it to signal the cavalry where we are.”

  “And what do you think the cavalry will be able to do against that airship?” Willie asked.

  Douglass looked at him with troubled eyes. “Shoot it down with the rockets I ordered them to bring.”

  “Rockets?”

  Douglass sang, “‘And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air?’ They’ll get high enough.”

  It sounded possible. If the airship was still around.

  But a stick of dynamite boomed somewhere in the distance. The possessed crew of the airship seemed obsessed with finding and destroying the two lawmen.

  Willie had a feeling they would still be out there.

  They broke open a case of canned food and levered it open by candlelight, risking the flicker since they were deep in the mine for now, and ate cold canned beans with wooden spoons that Willie quickly whittled out of a piece of the crate’s top.

  “How’d you end up deputized to be a marshal?” Douglass asked.

  Willie tapped a piece of hardtack against the side of the can of beans, an old habit. The long-lasting, brick-like biscuit was fresh though, as nothing wriggled out. “After the war I came out west. Did this and that for some years. Four or so years ago I fetched up near the town of Yankee Hill. They needed themselves a new marshal.”

  Douglass raised an eyebrow. “What happened to the old one?”

  “Up and died,” Willie said, picking at the hardtack. “Lost two marshals to a gunslinger by the name of Barney Casewit. They tried to bring him in for the rape of a girl of fifteen years’ age. And killing her father when he struck out for vengeance. As well as other murderings. I figured, with the war over, our folk voting and getting jobs, that I would ask for the job. Particularly as they were a town of very scared white folk desperate for a solution, I allowed myself to think that maybe they’d overlook the color of my skin in their desperation for a marshal.”

  Douglass laughed. “This man, Casewit, though?”

  Willie didn’t laugh. “As hard a man as they come. But then, he’d never been on the other side of a Confederate line of soldiers facing a company of fellow negro riflemen, knowing that they’d never give you surrender.”

  Douglass’s smile faded.

  Willie continued, “The town’s councilmen asked me to arrest Casewit right there that minute. I don’t know if they were looking for entertainment, or desperate to end that despot’s reign. But I agreed. Took the star, pinned it, and made my way across the street to where Casewit was playing poker with two of his hands, where I then told him he was under arrest.”

  “Just like that?” Douglass asked. They both stopped, though, and cocked an ear. No more dynamite had exploded since Willie started his recollections.

  The airship was backing off from the hills. Maybe finding somewhere to drop down its crew. Douglass blew out the candle. They’d need to move out front to defend their spot soon.

  Willie grimaced and continued. “Just like that. Casewit’s sitting there and he asks if he’s just supposed to follow me. I told him it was his choice: jail or hell. So he stood and reached for a pair of Colt .44s. I shot them both in the holster.”

  “What? Why?” Douglass was engaged, but didn’t take his eyes off the entrance to the mine. With his night sight coming back, Willie could see where starlight seeped down to faintly illuminate the wooden frame.

  “The councilmen told me to arrest him, not kill him. I was trying my best to do it,” Willie said. “Casewit’s two partners drew, and since no one told me nothing about whether they were to live or die, I shot them both between the eyes. Casewit put his hands up and surrendered. I hanged him the next morning after the trial for raping that girl and his murderings. Bastard kept trying to shimmy back up the pine tree I hung him from, but after twenty minutes or so he finally gave up and hung.”

  Douglass nodded. “And then you became their marshal, just like that?”

  “Some didn’t much like me as marshal,” Willie said. “Some tried dueling me to get rid of me.”

  “Yeah? What happened?” Douglass asked.

  “They’re not here to talk about it, are they?” Willie said, leaning back against a crate. If that airship had dropped off more attackers, he needed a rest to get ready for them. “Think I’ll take advantage of your hospitality, old timer, and take the first sleep while you cover the entrance.”

  Willie settled down with one of his Colts on his chest and closed his eyes.

  * * *

  The sound of a Winchester firing and the lever-action reload snapped Willie awake with his Colt coming up in the direction of the shot. He ran up from the depths of the mine in time to see movement down the hill in the scrub. After fetching a Winchester of his own, he joined Douglass and leaned against a large slab of rock.

  “You let me sleep all night down there?” he asked Douglass. “O
r did you fall asleep on watch?”

  “I wanted the gunslinger you told me about last night to be as fresh as possible for the morning,” Douglass said with a tired smile.

  Willie sighted down the scree and rock. “Miners,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You’re holding off a band of miners. That one’s got a pickaxe.” He looked up at the morning sky and squinted with a sour expression. “Means that airship’s gonna be floating around too any moment.”

  One of the miners made a stumbling run up at them. Willie’s Winchester cracked, and the man stumbled and dropped. He began to pull himself along with his hands, fingers digging into the hard soil to drag the rest of him toward the two marshals.

  Willie snapped the lever down, back in, shot again, and the body fell still.

  There were more coming up from the scrubland. How many miners had been out at the strike outside Duffy? He couldn’t remember.

  A bullet whined and struck the ground to the left of the mine opening. Willie moved in toward the rock for better cover.

  Douglass reached inside his jacket and checked a pocketwatch on a long chain. “Six or seven hours to go, Mr. Kennard,” he said, patting the signal gun in his waistband.

  The droning sound Willie’d heard last night returned. The cigar-shaped airship passed overhead and floated over the canyon. Steam and black smoke poured from slanted, sideways stacks in a metal basket underneath the massive gas bag.

  Willie stared, the miners momentarily forgotten. The thing was the size of a large city building, floating lightly through the air.

  “What a thing,” he said to Douglass.

  But Douglass was more focused on the crowd lurking behind cover, trying to advance on them. His rifle cracked out, dirt puffed, and the possessed miners hung back.

  For now.

  * * *

  “I count a hundred figures,” Douglass said, his dust-flecked face lined with exhaustion. Red eyes betrayed the man’s lack of sleep. “I was not expecting so many, so quick.”

  And despite a full night’s worth himself, Willie was already tired of shooting at shadows.