by Carl Hose
Two shots sounded inside the jail, then Becky screamed. Frank shouldered his way through the door.
Becky was slumped against the wall. The sheriff was face down in his own blood. A corpse was laid out on the floor in front of Becky, a gaping hole in the back of its head that leaked chunky black goo.
“I had to shoot the sheriff,” Josh said. “That thing got in, and the sheriff tried to take my gun away.”
“You did good, kid,” Frank said. “Now pull yourself together.”
Frank kicked the twice-dead corpse aside, grabbed Becky’s hand, and pulled her to her feet in a not-too-gentle fashion.
“We head west,” he said. “Shoot any damn thing that moves.”
Once outside, the three of them stayed close together, the kid watching the left flank, Frank watching the right, and Becky protected between the two of them.
The town was alive with the undead. A cowhand with a neck slit so deep his head hung to one side ambled out from behind the jail. Josh turned at the waist, bringing his rifle to hip level. He squeezed off a round that took the cowhand’s head completely off.
“Damn good shot, kid,” Frank complimented.
They negotiated a gauntlet of grotesque gore. There were walking corpses of all sorts, some in fairly good repair, save for the pasty color of their skin, others sporting everything from knife wounds to gut shots. One of the corpses was an obvious hanging victim, with the snapped cartilage in his neck allowing his head to flop side to side.
Another corpse with one leg belly-crawled up to Frank. He pumped a bullet through the top of its head, then looked up in time to see a fat woman coming at him with her flabby belly hanging open, trailing what looked like butcher’s fare between legs the size of tree trunks.
Frank was in the process of reloading when she waddled up beside him, and thank God for the kid, because Frank would’ve been a goner if he hadn’t blown a hole through the fat lady’s quivering jowls.
The undead poured out of buildings and dropped from rooftops. They seemed to be multiplying. Corpses covered in grave dirt, their rotten flesh sloughing away, advanced on the trio.
“We got trouble,” Josh hollered, pointing his rifle to the west end of town.
“It’s Jacob Hanley,” Becky said.
Frank figured as much. The man standing at that end of town was lanky and dressed in black. He had silver hair hanging straight and greasy over his shoulders. Joining Hanley from north and south were thirty, maybe forty walking corpses, all of them maggot-infested and salivating for fresh meat.
“What now?” Josh asked.
He wiped his brow with the back of one hand, then wiped his hand on his trouser leg and took hold of his rifle again.
“Ain’t lookin’ real good, is it?” Frank said evenly.
“Not real good at all,” Josh agreed.
Becky squealed and pressed herself against Frank for protection. He shook her off so he could drop a lanky corpse with its ribcage exposed. Behind that one was another, this one missing an eye. Frank obliged him by taking out the other eye. “Now you got yerself a matchin’ set,” he chuckled.
“There is no place for you to run,” Jacob Hanley spoke with the voice of a fire and brimstone preacher. “My children are everywhere. If you’d like, I will permit you to shoot yourselves before the feeding begins.”
“Thanks for the hospitality, but I ain’t real taken with the notion,” Frank called back.
He drew a cigarillo from his shirt pocket. He took a deep pull on it, sucked the smoke into his lungs, and blew it out again, then he clamped the cigarillo between his teeth and thought hard about the situation.
“The only way we’re gettin’ outta here is to go straight through ’em,” Frank said. “If we make it to the other side of that mob alive, we can outrun the bastards. Anybody up for it?”
“I can’t do it,” Becky sobbed.
“Ain’t no choice, ’less you wanna stay here and be dinner,” Frank said.
He took a handful of bullets from one pocket and handed them to Josh. “That’s all there are,” he said. “Use ’em real wisely.” He loaded his Colt and said, “We ready, kid?”
Josh nodded and braced the butt of the rifle against his shoulder. Frank took the lead, grabbing Becky by the hand and dragging her along behind him. He shouldered his way through as many of the walking cadavers as he could, using his gun only when it was necessary.
“Keep movin’,” he said, shoving fresh rounds into the Colt’s cylinder.
Josh swung the barrel of the Winchester left and right, picking off lumbering corpses one after the other, making each shot count.
Frank was impressed with the kid’s skill under pressure, but there was no time for back patting now. The shambling dead horde seemed to draw their power from Hanley, so Frank set his sights on the lanky son of a bitch. The guy was too smart to stay in the open, though, so it wasn’t an easy task.
Frank stayed patient. He continued to dispatch the walking dead until he had a clear shot at Hanley, then he wasted no time. The first bullet slammed into Hanley’s chest, knocking him backward. Before Hanley hit the dirt, Frank put a bullet in his head for good measure.
The zombies quickly became disorientated and began to wander aimlessly, bumping into each other. After some hesitation, several of the rotting corpses fell on Hanley and began ripping into him.
Frank recognized the piano player from the saloon among them. He grinned and took aim. “This is for not playin’ a different tune when I asked,” he said, and then he squeezed a round between the ivory tickler’s eyes.
He grabbed Becky by the hand again. “Let’s go,” he said.
Josh took up the rear. There didn’t seem to be much threat left, so he relaxed. When he let his guard down, a walking corpse lunged at him and took a chunk from the top of his hand. Josh brought the butt of his rifle down against the bridge of the zombie’s nose, caving the dead thing’s face in like a ripe melon.
“You okay, kid?” Frank asked.
“I’m fine,” Josh said, though there was an edge to his tone.
“Hang in there, we’re almost home free.”
“We’re gonna make it, ain’t we?” Becky asked hopefully.
“Looks like it,” Frank told her.
Josh emptied his rifle just as they left the last of the corpses lumbering behind them. Ahead lay nothing but dark, open flatland. The next town was more than two days away, but it beat hell out of what they were leaving behind. They moved through the night, putting distance between them and Deadtown, stopping only when Becky finally collapsed and couldn’t go on.
Josh held his wounded hand against his chest. He’d taken off his shirt and wrapped it around the wound to soak up the blood.
“We’ll rest here for the night,” Frank said.
He rounded up some wood and built a fire, then he squatted beside the crackling flames and stuck a cigarillo in the hot ashes to light it.
Becky sat on a rock a couple of feet from the fire, hugging herself and rocking gently back and forth. She was still in shock.
“You all right, kid?” Frank asked.
“Fine,” Josh answered. “Tired is all. I’m real tired.” He was on his back, resting his head resting against a piece of deadwood. The rifle lay across his chest. “Didn’t think we was gonna make it for a while there,” he added.
Frank stood up and stretched, then he strode over and stood beside Josh. “We didn’t all make it, kid,” he said. “I’m real sorry.” He drew his gun and put a bullet in Josh’s forehead.
Becky screamed loud enough to wake the dead. Fortunately for everybody involved, Josh wasn’t getting up anytime soon.
“He got bit,” Frank said. “I’d’ve expected the same.” He dragged the kid to the fire by his ankles. “Best be movin’ on,” he added, flipping his cigarillo into the fire. “This is gonna make one hell of a stink.”
Fool’s Gold
Buck Tyler slid from the saddle of his Morgan, took a kerchief from his ba
ck pocket, and dabbed at the sweat running into his eyes, then he gulped water from a canteen.
Shade was what he needed. A nice shade tree, an overhang, any damn thing to take the edge off the heat. He’d been riding for two days now, and near as he could figure, Durango was still another day’s ride down the road.
He dropped to his haunches, took the makings from his shirt pocket, and rolled a cigarette. He was halfway through his smoke when he saw something glinting in the sunlight, quick and then gone again.
“What the . . . ?”
He took his horse by the reins and started toward a jagged clump of rock and dirt. It was near there that he’d seen the reflection. He was almost there when he saw it again, just a quick flash of light in the sun.
He let go of his horse’s reins and squatted to look around. A nugget of gold the size of his thumb caught his eye. He held his cigarette clamped tightly between his teeth and picked up the nugget for examination.
“I’ll be a son of a bitch . . .”
He rolled the nugget around in his fingers and stuck it in his shirt pocket, then he searched the immediate vicinity, turning up two more nuggets.
His fingertips felt funny, sort of tingly. The tips had developed a bit of a red rash, and they felt warm. He rubbed them together and felt the calluses flake.
He shrugged it off, flipped his cigarette away, and knelt on the ground, digging around the base of the rock formation. A section of earth gave way, uncovering a hole from which a burst of cool air drifted.
Buck began to dig in earnest, then. He dug as much as he could with his bare hands, then he took his Schofield out and used the handle to dig the hole wider. When he could fit his arm down inside the hole, he reached in and felt around, coming out with a handful of dirt, a few rocks, and another nugget of gold.
“I’ll be damned, I think we got us a mine down there,” he said aloud, as if maybe his horse could understand the importance of the statement.
He rolled another cigarette and thought about it. An old mine. How much more gold would he find down there?
He finished the cigarette, contemplating the odds of getting down inside the hole. Near as he could tell, all he had to do was clear the opening. For some reason the mine had been sealed, but hell, there might still be enough gold down there to make it worth his trouble.
“What do ya think, feller?” he asked, again speaking to his horse as if the animal could understand. A passerby would half expect the horse to respond.
He patted the Morgan and began taking items from the saddlebags. He continued to widen the hole. It took him the better part of two hours to get the job done. When he finished, he slid a lantern down through the hole, followed by his rifle and a sack of ammunition.
He thought briefly about his Morgan. It wasn’t smart to leave the animal unattended, but he didn’t have much choice. If he intended to explore the mine, he was going to have to risk leaving his horse and hope nobody happened by.
He dropped to his belly and crawled head first through the opening. It was a tight squeeze, but he made it nonetheless. Once inside, he got hold of his things and continued to crawl on his stomach until the passageway expanded enough to allow him to stand almost fully erect.
He struck a match and lit the lantern. He made it a point to always carry a lantern, and now he was glad for it. Without it, there would have been no way he’d be able to see a damn thing this far underground.
He held the lantern up and looked around. Not a whole lot of space to work with. He couldn’t fully stretch his arms without hitting the wall on either side. It looked like the passage opened up a little ahead of him and then started on a downward slope. That’s where he set his sights.
He held the lantern out in front of him and stepped cautiously, feeling the loose dirt and rock give way beneath his feet. He could hear the pebbles rolling down the slope as they disappeared into darkness. He tried to judge distance by how long he could hear the rattling of the pebbles before the sound stopped.
He paused part way down the slope to roll a smoke. The ground was starting to level off. That’s when he heard something up ahead. He knew the sound of water trickling over rocks, and damned if that wasn’t what he was hearing now.
He moved on until he came to a wide opening that had been shored up with heavy wood beams. He passed under the beams and into a wide-open space that looked as if it had once been a campsite. A stream ran along the wall on his right. Beside the stream were signs there’d been a campfire. Buck even found the charred remains of a boot in the ashes.
“I’ll be damned,” he muttered, turning the boot over for closer inspection.
He set the lantern aside and went to work building a fire where the old one had been. There was plenty of kindling scattered around, and some nice timber as well, so it didn’t take long to get a respectable fire going.
Buck took some jerky from a pouch and chewed on it. He looked around, wondering what the odds were he’d strike it rich down here. He couldn’t for the life of him imagine the mine being sealed when there was still gold to be found. It just didn’t make a lick of sense.
Still, though, he’d look around. He hadn’t dragged his fool ass all this way down here just to turn around and high-tail it back again. Even if all he found was a few nuggets, he’d be ahead of where he was at the start.
He chewed a little more jerky, filled his canteen in the stream, and smoked another cigarette. After that, he set about sifting through the mud at the edge of the stream. His persistence was rewarded with a sizable gold nugget.
He continued to dig and found another nugget of gold, then another, both smaller than the first one, but nuggets all the same. He couldn’t figure out why the mine had been sealed. It obviously hadn’t been played all the way out. Even a group of inexperienced miners wouldn’t have left this much gold behind.
He listened, cocking his ear toward the back of the mine. Something was slithering around back there. The light from the fire only encompassed a few yards in the immediate vicinity. Beyond that was compete darkness. Whatever it was that slithered past, Buck wasn’t about to get a look at it from here. Wasn’t sure he wanted a look, truth be told.
He shrugged off the noise and started digging again. The fire would keep whatever was out there away. One thing he knew for sure, critters weren’t too keen on fire.
He sifted through more mud, squeezing it through his fingers, looking for more nuggets. Something moved again in the dark. He tried to ignore it, but this time it was closer, and it sounded like something pretty big.
He picked up his rifle and levered a round into the chamber. Whatever it was slithering around out there, he wasn’t about to keep his back to it. He hadn’t stayed alive thirty-three years by putting his back to trouble.
He lit the lantern again and exchanged his rifle for his Schofield. He preferred the rifle, but he couldn’t comfortably use his lantern and rifle at the same time, and he wasn’t about to head further into the mine without the light.
More noises came as he made his way further into the mine. Something slithered across the ground directly in front of him. He panicked and fired. The shot reverberated off the walls, nearly shattering his eardrums.
A stench drifted up from somewhere in front of him. He’d smelled it once before, a long time ago, at an old farmhouse in Missouri. He’d stopped after riding for two days through a thunderstorm, hoping for a bite to eat. The smell had hit him right away, and he’d gone into the house to find its occupants gutted and spread out across their beds. He never wanted to see anything like that again, but here was that same smell, the putrid death rot from the farmhouse, and that could only mean one thing.
Suddenly the gold didn’t seem all that important. He started back the direction he’d initially come from. His toe caught something solid and he pitched forward, hitting the ground before he realized he was falling. He managed to keep the lantern from breaking, but he thought sure the flame would go out.
Its light spilled across the
hard-packed floor of the mine. He sat half up and moved the lantern in a slow circle, looking for whatever it was he’d tripped on.
A human skull grinned back at him.
Buck held the lantern out to the skull for a closer look. A fat, oily gray thing came out of the dark behind the skull, its mouth yawing to display a wide circle of needle-like teeth. A viscous fluid hung from the top of its mouth to the bottom, glistening as the light of the lantern caught it.
Buck couldn’t stifle the scream that tore from his throat. He flung himself back away from the fat gray thing, but it lunged after him. He swung the lantern without thinking. It collided with the oily gray thing and broke. The creature burst into flames and began to make a high-pitched squealing sound that sent pain ripping through Buck’s head.
He still had his pistol held tightly in his hand. He’d been so gripped in fear by the sight of the thing that he hadn’t thought to shoot, but he did now, bringing the Schofield around to draw a bead on the flaming creature as it rose above him to strike.
He got off three shots and rolled out of the way just as the heavy slug crashed to the ground. Buck pushed himself to all fours, the pistol still clutched in his right hand. He was just about to stand when another one of the slugs came from his right side, wrapping around his gun hand.
Buck screamed as searing pain shot up his arm. The skin on his hand began to dissolve almost immediately, sloughing away like candle wax. The pistol fell from his grip and slid far enough away to be useless.
Buck managed to get to his feet despite the pain. He darted back toward the campfire, toward the exit, desperate to escape this maddening hell hole.
He never made three steps.
One of the creatures slithered in front of him, wrapping around his ankles. The thing tightened around him. Buck felt the searing pain again as his clothes and skin dissolved. He fell face first, arms outstretched, and another of the creatures slithered over his back.
His final scream wasn’t a long one. The things were everywhere. They crawled over him, wrapped around him, and slithered inside him. His screaming ended there, leaving nothing but the moist sounds of gray, oily, mottled creatures as they devoured him in the dark.