by Guy Adams
“I think this is everyone we could reach,” Garritty announced. “The Huxtables are just too far away and they should be safe enough on the farm.”
“There’s certainly enough of them!” one local wit suggested, to a polite ripple of laughter. “If things get worse, they can always eat Judy!”
Judy Huxtable was a large girl, and several of the gathered townsfolk found this the height of comedy.
Garritty did not. Looking at how heavily the snow continued to fall, he didn’t much like the idea of joking about such desperate circumstances. After all, give them a few days and it might seem all too possible.
“There’s also the Blackwells and the Furrows,” he continued, “and like as not they’ll have banded together anyway.”
“Don’t they always?” The same voice, the same polite laughter. Jones was finding this community spirit suffocating. He could think of nothing worse than living in a town where everybody knew one another and stuck their noses into each other’s business.
“Now, I know we’re short of space,” Garritty said, “but hopefully it won’t be for long.”
Toby was far from sure of the truth of that. He had been looking out of the window for some time and it seemed to him that the snow was falling even thicker and faster. He couldn’t help but imagine what would happen if it got so high it buried the whole building. What would they do then? He asked The Geek his opinion on the matter.
“Well,” the man replied, not particularly helpfully, “I sure won’t go hungry for a while.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BLINDMAN
THE STREETS OF Barbarossa were losing their shape completely.
The sky continued to darken, a false night brought on by the oppressive layer of cloud that sank lower and lower towards the buildings, as if aiming to meet the snow in the middle.
The wind blew, whistling between the buildings and sweeping the still-falling snow into drifts.
It was a world in which nobody could survive for long.
But the storm that was coming inside the Pine Bluff was more dangerous still.
HICKS HAD BEEN drinking steadily. The others could rely on the fire for warmth, if they wished; he took his heat from the whisky bottle.
He had spent the last few minutes talking to a woman by the name of Elsa Jackson. He liked her a great deal. She was quiet, young and possessed breasts he wanted to rest his balls on. He was telling her as much, laughing at the look of disgust that passed across her face at the suggestion.
He was aware that some of the other townsfolk were getting uncomfortable at the tables around them, but if there was one surefire symptom to his drinking whisky, it was an inclination towards single-mindedness.
“If you know a better way of keeping the cold out,” he told her, “feel free to mention it. But I reckon what we both need is a good bit of physical exercise.” He leaned in close. “Half an hour with your thighs as a muffler and I reckon I’d be as toasty as hellfire.”
“I think you need to watch your manners,” said a voice from behind him. Hicks turned to find himself face to face with Colin Bryson.
“And you need to mind your own fucking business,” the preacher replied.
“You don’t know how we like things here in Barbarossa,” Bryson said, taking Hicks by his collar. “We offered you shelter, and you owe us a little respect.”
Through the whisky, Hicks mulled over a little idea. The idea pleased him, so he acted upon it. He punched Bryson in the stomach and rose unsteadily to his feet. “If you want another where that came from, I’m only too happy to oblige,” he told the bar owner.
A number of the townsfolk got to their feet around him. Jones, sensing the way the mood was turning, also rose, pulling his gun from its holster.
Garritty, who had been waiting for just such a move, already had his gun in his hand.
“You want to place that gun on the table in front of you,” he said. “And I’d like the rest of your folks to do the same.”
Jones contemplated the suggestion. After all, he had been the one advocating a cool head earlier. But Henry Jones’ head never did run all that cool.
“I don’t give up my gun for anybody,” he said, turning it towards the sheriff. “Now I might consider not firing it, because I think we all need to take a little step back and think about this situation before it gets a hell of a lot worse. But I don’t think I’ll be giving it up; no, not for anyone in this room.”
“You tell ’em!” said Hicks, drunkenly. “About time these people learned to keep a civil tongue in their head. Nobody messes with Henry Jones, am I right?”
He was not. No sooner had he finished speaking than Jones had been grabbed from behind by three of the other townsmen. His gun was taken from him.
Harmonium reached for hers, but they were surrounded and she was no further than hoisting her skirts before she too was taken hold of and a rough hand finished the job for her, taking the small pistol from her garter holster and pointing it right at her.
There was a general sound of pistol hammers being cocked, and it was clear to the entirety of Jones’ party that they were at the mercy of the residents of Barbarossa.
“It’s always the same with you people,” said Garritty. “So full of piss and wind that you think you can take on anything. Well, not here. This town likes to stick together. We have rules. We have principles. We have a peaceful life. I think it’s time you all stepped outside.”
“Outside?” screamed Hicks. “Are you out of your fucking mind?” He grabbed an empty bottle from the table and held it up like a club. “I’d like to see you try and make me.”
“Idiot,” said Harmonium. “I knew we should have just killed him.”
“Allow me,” said Garritty, before shooting Hicks dead-centre of his forehead.
For a moment, the preacher looked confused. Then he toppled backwards, tipping up a table and chairs and falling to the floor.
“I will happily do that to each and every one of you,” the sheriff said. “Or you can take the chance to walk away.”
“Out there?” asked Toby. “We’d be dead within five minutes.”
“Not my problem,” Garritty replied. “We do not tolerate your kind here. You won’t be the first we’ve run out of town, and I dare say you won’t be the last. Barbarossa is a peaceful place, and it stays peaceful because every single one of us is willing to do what it takes to keep it that way.”
“Please,” said Hope, holding on to Soldier Joe. “We haven’t got anything to do with the rest of them, we wouldn’t cause any trouble.”
“All of you,” Garritty said. “Now.”
“Jesus wept,” said Harmonium, looking around at the several guns pointing at her and her husband.
She and Henry walked towards the door, followed by Knee High, Toby and The Geek.
“He’ll die,” Hope begged, hugging her Soldier Joe. “Please... I couldn’t bear that...”
“Then you should mind the company you keep,” Garritty replied. “I don’t know a single one of you. I don’t trust a single one of you.” He looked to the rest of the gathered townsfolk. “But I’m happy to put it to the vote. All in favour of letting them stay?”
There was silence.
“I guess you have your answer.”
“You’ll wish you killed me,” said Jones. “Mark my words, old man. Because I am going to come back here and shoot every single one of you. Just you watch.”
Garritty stared at him, then came to a decision. “Colin, you want to wrap up and step outside with me? I think we should make sure these folks cross the town line and don’t come back.”
THEY MOVED IN a procession, Garritty leading them down the main street and towards the edge of town.
The sheriff was sad but resolute. No matter how many times he hoped he would be able to avoid violence, it seemed that others would make the decision for him. It had been the same with the Lansdowne boys, talking up rough every night; the Casey kid that had helped himself to a bot
tle of liquor when Bryson’s back had been turned; the Popwell twins; Sam Laker; Wade Cruse; Gard Galloway... the list went on. When would people just learn to obey the rules?
He cursed his own softness in bringing these people into the town in the first place. He had known they were trouble from the word go; hadn’t he told everyone as much? It would have been easier and fairer on them all if he had just shot them as they first got out of their caravan. But Garritty was a man of principles, all the men of the town were. You gave people a chance... just one... and let them be the best they could be.
He had some misgivings about the girl and the soldier. They might have been safe to stay, but who was to tell? They travelled together, didn’t they? How was he to know whether she would have been trustworthy or not? No. The town was everything, and he wasn’t going to take any risks. The life they had was worth fighting for, always had been.
HENRY JONES HAD fallen off the world. He stumbled forward through an unchanging landscape of emptiness, with no idea whatsoever of what was around him. He was vaguely aware of someone to his right—he thought it might just be his wife—but they were far enough away that he couldn’t be sure. All he knew for certain was the icy wind on his face and the crunch of his boots in the snow beneath him.
Once again he had let his temper get in the way of common sense. That said, he wasn’t convinced the sheriff would have treated them any differently had he agreed to give up his gun. The man had been waiting for an excuse and, as loathsome as Hicks had been, if it hadn’t been him that wore out their welcome, it would have been someone else. Barbarossa was no different from the rest of the world. He and his band didn’t belong.
And now, not for the first time, someone was out to kill them because of it.
He certainly didn’t imagine Garritty intended to let them just walk away. If that had been so, then he wouldn’t have needed to come out with them. No. He meant to make sure of things. A bullet in the back. Problem solved.
Jones had been in situations as dire before, but with the snow, with his damned blindness... he wasn’t sure how best to handle it. People had often made the mistake of assuming him incapable because of his handicap; in fact, that had often been to his advantage. Unaware of how clearly he perceived the world around him, people thought he was easy to beat. Those people were now dead. But this time he really was blind. Utterly. Even had his eyes worked, the snow was so thick that nobody could see further than a few feet. Nobody.
And with that thought came his only real chance of survival.
“That’s about far enough!” Garritty shouted behind him. They were seconds away from a bullet and the only alternative would result in his becoming even more powerless than he was now. But what choice did he have?
“Harmonium!” he shouted. “One way or the other I’ll find you, honey. Now, run!”
He flung himself forward, rolling into the deep snow before clawing himself forward on his hands and knees. A gunshot sounded, muffled and made distant by the wind and snow but surely no more than a few feet away. He had to keep moving. If they all scattered and kept running, then Garritty and the barkeep would lose sight of them, probably already had.
Keep shifting direction, zig-zagging and hoping that they were as blind as he now was.
He collided with someone, tumbling into the snow to find himself nose to nose with Knee High.
“I need you!” he said, grabbing the dwarf and pulling him onto his back. “I’m blind.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, boss.” Knee High replied, though he held on tight. He was no idiot; he stood a better chance of getting through the snow on Jones’ back than he did wading alone.
“Just tell me what you can see, you little shit,” Jones replied, running forward, lifting his legs as high as he could to try and clear the deepening drifts around them.
There was another gunshot and someone cried out. A man’s voice. Not his wife. Never let it be his wife.
He would find her. Somehow he would find her.
GARRITTY AND BRYSON were shooting into thin air. They could barely see each other, let alone their targets.
“Leave it,” the sheriff said. “They don’t have a chance out here. If they manage to make their way back to town, we’re more than a match for them.”
He kept his revolver in his hand, just in case, and the two of them returned to the warmth and peace of Barbarossa.
“RUN!”
Hope hadn’t needed telling twice. She pulled at Soldier Joe and the two of them veered off to one side, pushing their way through the snow as fast as they could. She hoped that Garritty and Bryson would shoot at the others first. It made sense. After all, how much of a threat were she and Joe? If the others kept them occupied for long enough, they just might get away.
“Got to keep moving,” she told Soldier Joe, the man shaking in her arms, his legs unsteady and his mind elsewhere as always. “Got to stay ahead.”
“Ahead,” Soldier Joe replied. “Ahead to Wormwood.”
“To hell with Wormwood,” she said. “I’m trying to make for the caravan.”
She thought she was heading in the right direction, but it was impossible to be sure. She could make out nothing around them but the never-changing curtains of snow. As far as she could remember, this was the direction they had come from.
She wondered how long they could both last out here, if she was wrong. Hope had come from Texas: snow was something she had heard about, but never seen with her own eyes. She had heard stories of people dying of exposure, and she had no doubt that was what awaited them if they didn’t find cover quickly. Every breath made her throat feel as if it was bleeding. Her body was shaking against the cold, her legs weak and unsteady already after only a few minutes. If they could just get as far as the caravan, then she might be able to wrap the both of them up. Maybe climb into Soldier Joe’s cage and surround themselves with blankets, wait the storm out.
And if the townspeople come looking while you’re all shut up in there? That was a problem she’d just have to deal with when the time came.
JONES WAS SLOWING down already, but he forced himself to keep going. The harder he moved, the warmer he would stay and the longer he would survive. Knee High was silent on his back, the man’s head pressed against his shoulder like that of a child. He considered dumping him; he would get further on his own. He couldn’t do it. All of them had looked after one another over the years. Certainly nobody else had. That had to mean something.
After they had left the employment of Dr Bliss, they had done everything together. They had robbed together, killed together, and when Jones had found himself on the wrong side of a set of prison gates, they had come for him. He wouldn’t repay that by leaving him to die. Jones was determined to be a better man than that.
Besides, they would both be dead soon anyway. There was no way they could last out here much longer.
Harmonium. If he died, he was damned if he was going to die without her.
Jones shook Knee High. “Wake up, damn you!” he shouted. “Wake up! I am Henry Jones, wanted in nine states, killer of more men than I can count and the biggest bastard this piss pot of a world has ever seen. I am not going to lie down and die. When I go, it will be screaming. It will be in fire and bullets. It will not be face down in the snow.”
“Good for you,” Knee High murmured. “Wish I could say the same.”
“You will, you little bastard,” said Jones. “You will.”
And with the anger that always burned so brightly in him, he fought his way on.
HOPE WAS LOST. However far they walked, the caravan refused to appear. It was all snow. Never changing, never slackening, just an empty, infinite wilderness.
“I think we’re done,” she said, pulling Soldier Joe close to her as her legs began to give way. “Yes. I think we’re done.”
She fell to one side, pulling him with her. Both came to rest, nestled deep within the thick blanket all around them.
“Not so cold,” she said, h
er face covered with a thin sheen of ice. She turned to face him. “Not cold at all.”
She cupped his face in her hands and looked into those sad, old eyes of his. “I love you, Soldier Joe,” she said, kissing him on the lips. “Sorry if I haven’t done right by you.”
She buried her face in his chest and held him tight, slipping out of consciousness and into the darkness beyond.
Soldier Joe lay there, his wrists beginning to bleed, blood trickling slowly into the perfect white around them.
Then he stood up, cradled Hope Lane in his arms and began to walk.
HEAVEN’S GATE
IF YOU’D ASKED me what it was I expected to see when we reached the legendary Wormwood, I’d have been hard pressed to tell you. I guess I’d been too busy not dying to give it much thought. Had I tried to predict it, though, I’m sure I would have been wide of the mark. The old man had said that the town was due to arrive soon, so I suppose I would have imagined nothing but an open plain, somewhere we would sit and wait, legendary survivors of a heroic journey. Actually, we found ourselves in the middle of the biggest camp I had ever seen.
You couldn’t move for people. Most were gathered around their caravans or tents, but some had even been there so long they had erected ramshackle homes.
“When you get to my age,” one of these house-dwellers told me, a woman the very spit of my grandmother, all thick, homespun cotton and long white hair, “you can’t move as fast as you’d like. I wasn’t going to miss this, not unless the good Lord chose to let me in early. I’ve been here six months.”