Apocalypse Then

by Al Lamanda

  Close to dusk, Lane sat on the front steps of the church with a cup of coffee and a cigarette. His Winchester rifle rested against his left leg.

  Maura came out of the church with a cup of coffee and sat beside Lane.

  “Mrs. McCain,” Lane said as a greeting.

  “I think we’ve both earned the right to call each other by our given names,” Maura said. “Don’t you?”

  “I suppose so,” Lane said.

  Maura held the cup in her left hand and extended her right. “I’m Maura,” she said. “You are?”

  Lane placed his right hand into Maura’s. “David.”

  After a quick shake, they broke apart.

  “I wanted to thank you for…for my son,” Maura said. “I thought I could do it, but…”

  “Mrs.…Maura, no mother should have to do what I did today,” Lane said. “No father should, either.”

  Maura sipped coffee and looked down Main Street at the darkening sky. “Have you a family, David?”

  “Once,” Lane said. “It was a long time ago.”

  “Children?”

  “A son.”

  “Where are they now?” Maura said.

  “I have no idea,” Lane said. “They left home the second year of the war. I guess she got tired of living in poverty waiting for me to return, or not return. Either way they were gone when the war ended and I made it back home.”

  “She didn’t write you to tell you she was leaving?”

  “No.”

  “That is a terrible thing to do to a man,” Maura said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago,” Lane said. “It’s been years since I even thought about it or them.”

  “Did you look for them?”

  “No,” Lane said. “I figured if she wanted me to look for her she would never have left in the first place.”

  “And you never remarried?”

  “No time,” Lane said. “I guess at the moment I’m married to the star on my chest. Truth is I’m a better Marshal than I was a husband.”

  Maura took another sip of coffee. “I expect that when this is over the realization of losing my husband and son will strike me hard. I have nothing to go back to even if I wanted, so I will go stay with my sister Mary in San Francisco for a time. After that I just don’t know.”

  Lane set his cup on the step and rolled another cigarette. “You’re still a young woman with a lot of years ahead of you,” he said. “Still have a lot of time to put all this behind you and make a new life.”

  “I expect so,” Maura said with sadness in her voice.

  Lane struck a wood match and lit the cigarette, picked up his cup and sipped some coffee. “Maura, do me a favor and go inside and ask my deputies to get ready to lock the doors.”

  Maura looked at Lane. “Maybe we should both go in now as its getting dark?” she said.

  Lane set the cup on the step and picked up his Winchester. He cocked the hammer and rested it against the stoop and the stood up. “I know, but I’d appreciate it if you did as I asked.”

  “David, I don’t…” Maura said just as Lane waked away.

  Maura stood and looked past Lane’s back to Main Street where several ghouls stumbled and fumbled into town. She turned and ran up the steps and into the church.

  Lane pulled his Colt revolvers, cocked them and held them loosely by his side as he walked down the center of Main Street. Directly ahead he could see four or five ghouls as they slowly lumbered toward him.

  They hadn’t seen him yet. They were still plodding along, lost inside their own diseased minds. In the last bit of remaining light, Lane recognized several of them. Even with their disfigured faces, he could make out the persons they had once been in life.

  A shopkeeper and a hotel worker.

  “Hey, over here!” Lane said, loudly.

  The ghouls heard the noise, turned and looked in Lane’s general direction.

  “Here, I’m here!” Lane shouted.

  The ghouls looked directly at Lane, focused and recognized.

  They broke into a run.

  “That’s it,” Lane said, calmly. “Come to me you gruesome bastards.”

  When they were in pistol range, Lane could see their snarling, savage faces. He raised his Colts and fired off six shots and took them down with head shots.

  “Anybody else?” Lane yelled.

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Is there anybody else?” Lane yelled.

  From around the edge of Main Street, several ghouls appeared and then several more after that. They were out of pistol range and Lane stood his ground and waited.

  Within minutes, Main Street was filled with close to a hundred or more ghouls.

  “Hey, I’m here, come get me!” Lane yelled.

  The ghouls closest to Lane focused on him and came alive, rushing toward him with savage snarls.

  Lane picked off one or two as he back peddled. Then he holstered the Colts, turned and ran back to the church with the horde of ghouls in hot pursuit.

  Lane reached the steps, grabbed his Winchester, turned and shot a ghoul in the head at one hundred yards. The Winchester rifle held fifteen rounds in a tubular magazine and Lane fired the remaining fourteen rounds, bringing down eleven more ghouls.

  Empty, Lane turned and ran into the church where Teal and Scripture were ready to close and lock the doors.

  “Are you out of your fucking mind?” Teal said as he and Scripture dropped the heavy wood planks into place.

  “Given our present set of circumstances, who isn’t?” Lane said. “Any coffee upstairs?”

  From the balcony windows they had a clear line of sight to the ghouls below on Main Street. Once Lane was out of their view, the horde calmed down and seemed to lose interest in the church. They split up into small groups and wandered into shops and stores and along the side streets.

  Lane turned away from the windows and walked to the woodstove where a pot of coffee was being kept warm. He filled a cup and rolled a cigarette. As he struck a wood match, Maura came to his side.

  “That was quite a stunt you pulled out there,” Maura said.

  Lane took a sip from the cup and looked at Maura. “Before the war I used to read a story to my son. He wasn’t but two or three. I read it to him a hundred times and he never seemed to get tired of it. Know what that story was.”

  Maura shook her head.

  “The Story of the Pied Piper,” Lane said.

  Chapter Thirty Six

  The lawn and garden to the right of the church was once plush with dozens of different types of flowers and lush green grass. Uncared for all summer the flowers withered and died and the lawn now stood a foot tall.

  Three days after Red Foot left for Fort Keogh, Lane found a rotary push mower in the supply closet and Teal mowed a twelve foot square section of the lawn. While Teal mowed, Lane and Scripture saddled two horses and rode several hundred yards south of town to open prairie where they shot three prairie chickens.

  By noon, Maura and Little Sky had deep fried the chickens in peppered flour and the group sat on the fresh cut grass and had a picnic. Besides the chicken, there were beans, fresh biscuits and corn bread. Lane brought two bottles of red wine from the saloon, along with a bottle of brandy.

  “As quiet as the streets are now it’s hard to believe that in eight hours or so it will be filled with them,” Maura said.

  “And it seems like more of them every night,” Poule said.

  Lane filled glasses with wine and passed them around. “Something the preacher said stuck in my mind,” he said. “He said they can see light.”

  “I remember him saying that,” Teal said.

  “What of it?” Poule said.

  “Have you noticed where they come into town?” Lane said.

  “Mostly down on Main Street,” Poule said. “I’m not following you, Marshal.”

  “I think I am,” Maura said. “They come into town from the east around sunset because they’re following the su
n to the west.”

  “That’s handy information to have, but of what use is it to us in our present situation?” Poule said.

  “So I think what the Marshal is saying is that if Mr. Red Foot fails to return we can ride out and know how to avoid them,” Maura said.

  “Son of a bitch,” Teal said.

  “It’s just a backup plan,” Lane said. “Because Charlie won’t fail us.”

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  At first light, Red Foot opened his eyes and nearly fell out of the tree he spent the night in. Nestled between a split in the tree some twenty feet high, he roped his waist around the largest split to avoid falling to the ground in his sleep.

  Before settling in, he pulled the rope up so it would be impossible to climb the tree unless you had forty feet or so of rope, which he was sure the ghouls did not.

  He untied his waist, looped the rope around a thick branch and tossed it to the ground. He took hold of the rope in both hands and slid twenty feet to the ground, then pulled the rope free and wrapped it into a tight circle.

  Lane’s horse was munching on tall sweet grass not far from the base of the tree. Red Foot hobbled the horse the night before, giving him just enough slack so that he could walk a bit, but not run. He wasn’t worried about the animal as the ghouls showed no interest in anything other than human flesh.

  Red Foot worked the kinks from his back as he walked to Lane’s horse. He patted his neck and gave him several sugar cubes before removing the rope from around its front legs.

  “Not a one of them in sight,” Red Foot said. “I think we have time enough for some breakfast.”

  The noon sun was scorching hot on Red Foot’s back as he rode Lane’s horse at a slow pace to conserve its and his energy. Riding close to midnight every night for three days made up a lot of time, so there was no need to kill the horse to reach Keogh in another ten or eleven hours.

  “What do you say we do a quick noon and get out of the sun for a bit?” Red Foot said and patted the horse’s neck.

  Without warning, a sharp crack to Red Foot’s right ribcage dropped him off the horse. The report of the rifle followed less than one second after the bullet knocked Red Foot to the ground, telling him his attackers were close.

  Lane’s horse bucked and panicked a bit, then settled down and stayed put by Red Foot’s legs. Red Foot turned over on his left side and the pain shot through him like a hot knife. One, maybe two ribs were broken.

  “Ya got him, Pa,” A male voice said. “Ya got him good.”

  “Never mind that, boy. Check his boots.”

  Red Foot turned toward the voices just in time to see the butt of a rifle smash into his face.

  Red Foot had no idea how long he’d been out, but when he opened his eyes it was all he could do to breathe. Lane’s horse was gone, along with most of his clothes, boots and weapons.

  It took him a while to get to his feet, nearly passing out from the pain in the process, but he got there.

  He took shallow breaths and thought it through. He could continue on to Keogh on foot, unarmed and without food and water.

  Or he could track the men and try to get the horse, supplies and gear back.

  On foot and in his present condition it would take maybe thirty six hours or more to reach Keogh, if the ribs didn’t cause him to pass out and die on the trail. Worse, if he encountered some ghouls unarmed with busted ribs what chance would he have?

  None.

  He removed the long sleeve undershirt and nearly fell to his knees from the pain. The right rib cage wasn’t bleeding, but a large purple welt was swelling up where the bullet cracked bone.

  He was lucky. Damn lucky. Had the bullet struck flesh it would have traveled right through him, tearing up his insides on the way out. He would have surly bled to death by now.

  He ripped the undershirt into strips and tied them tightly around his ribcage. It hurt. A lot. But it held the ribs in place and if he didn’t take large breaths the pain was manageable.

  The tracks led in the general direction of Keogh, so he followed them. Whoever shot him were riding double on Lane’s horse, so the imprints were deep and easy to pick up in the soft Earth.

  He walked about a mile before the rifle shots echoed from the west. They came from a half mile away, maybe a bit more. Six or seven rapid shots followed by three slow fire shots and then the echo faded away.

  Red Foot did his best to hurry in the direction of the shots, but with each step he took the pain was like a needle stab. He slowed his step and covered the half mile in about thirty minutes.

  On a soft embankment Lane’s horse quietly ate sweet grass. Not fifty feet away, lower on the embankment half a dozen ghouls feasted on the two men who shot and robbed Red Foot.

  Red Foot got down on his belly and peered down the embankment through tall grass. One ghoul had ripped open the stomach of one of the men and was eating a string of long intestines. Another ghoul had removed an arm and was munching it like corn on the cob. Two ghouls tore into severed legs while a fifth ate his way through a torso.

  The one that caused Red Foot to gag and nearly vomit was the sixth ghoul. He held the severed head of one of the men in his hands and took a huge bite of an eyeball. Blood and liquid ran down the ghoul’s chin as he chewed.

  Red Foot looked away as his stomach churned.

  Forgotten, if only for the moment, was the pain in his side.

  He turned to look at Lane’s horse. His rifle and gear was pretty much intact. His holstered Colt was slung over the saddle horn. His boots were on the legs of a man being eaten, but he really didn’t need boots of clothes to ride.

  Red Foot slowly stood and adjusted his position so that Lane’s horse was in the line of sight of the ghouls. Then he calmly walked down the embankment to the horse and mounted it in one quick and very painful motion.

  Red Foot took a deep breath and felt as if his ribs would explode.

  “Let’s go,” he said and kicked Lane’s horse into high gear and didn’t look back at the feasting ghouls.

  Red Foot drifted into and out of consciousness for several hours. He had no idea what time it was or where he was when he spotted red lights in the distance.

  The lanterns on the walls of Fort Keogh.

  Red Foot rubbed the horse’s neck. “See those lights,” he said. “Take me to them.”

  The Corporal of the Guard was shocked to see a lone rider approaching the gates at so late an hour. “Halt or be shot!” he called to the rider below.

  Six other soldiers on the catwalk went on the immediate alert, aiming their rifles at the rider.

  The rider pulled his horse to a stop.

  “Identify yourself!” the corporal shouted.

  Red Foot looked up at the corporal.

  “I said identify yourself at once,” the corporal said.

  “I am Charlie Red Foot, Sioux scout for the US Army, honorary rank of Lieutenant Colonel,” the rider said and a moment later fell off the horse.

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  When Red Foot opened his eyes next he was in a hospital bed in the Fort infirmary. His ribs were dressed in clean wraps and they hardly hurt at all to breathe. He wasn’t alone. An Army doctor was in the room with him.

  “Ah, there you are,” the doctor said.

  “Doctor, my wife and kids are…” Red Foot said.

  “Safe and under the protection of the Army,” the doctor said.

  “Where?”

  “She and a thousand others were transported to Billings to the outpost,” the doctor said. “I was there to service the sick and noted her name on the list.”

  “How long have I been out.”

  “About fourteen hours.”

  “I need to see the fort commander,” Red Foot said.

  “I’ll send for him,” the doctor said. “Are you hungry?”

  “Hell, I aught to be.”

  Colonel Marks was a tall, ridged man just a year or two away from a star if he wanted it. He was a no nonsense co
mmander, fair, honest and tough. He knew Red Foot for a dozen years or more and respected the scout’s ability and courage.

  Red Foot was eating soup when Marks came in with the doctor.

  “Charlie, how do you feel?” Marks said.

  “Better than a day go, Colonel,” Red Foot said.

  “What were you doing riding alone and with no clothes in the middle of the night?” Marks said.

  “Pull up a chair, Colonel and I’ll tell you a story,” Red Foot said. “Doc, anymore of this soup?”

  “A detachment will leave for Big Sky first light tomorrow morning,” Marks said.

  “I’ll be going with them,” Red Foot said.

  “You’re in no condition to ride,” Marks said.

  Red Foot looked at the doctor. “Doc, if you wrap me real tight?”

  “He can ride,” the doctor said. “He’s tough as nails. Because you’re not going to talk him out of it.”

  “Very well,” Marks said. “So how many do you think there are in Big Sky?”

  “Several hundred at least.”

  “Good. That will give us a wider selection,” Marks said.

  “For what?” Red Foot said.

  “The hospital in Minnesota wants specimens to study,” the doctor said. “From various parts of the country.”

  “Various parts of…how widespread is it?” Red Foot said.

  “The virus has been found in five territories so far,” the doctor said. “That’s all the information I have at the moment.”

  “Five territories?” Red Foot said. “What the hell is causing it?”

  The doctor shook his head. “That’s what they’re trying to figure out at the hospital in Minnesota.”

  “Charlie, best get some sleep if you’re going to ride in the morning,” Marks said. “Maybe you’d like to have dinner with me tonight at my table. We can talk more then.”

  Red Foot nodded. “I could use some clothes to wear.”