by Jordan Krall
Just as he was pointing his gun to fend off the syphilitics, Calamaro heard voices from behind him yelling for help. He turned and saw the sheriff and another man surrounded by Indians. There was no good reason why he should help them. Many men in his position would simply turn their backs and get to safety. But Calamaro couldn’t turn his back on them, even though he wanted nothing else but to lie down and sleep for days.
Now the syphilitics were banging on the brothel door, flakes of skin falling to the ground with each fist-thrust. Then more yells for help from the two men.
Calamaro froze.
For once in his life, he was paralyzed by indecision.
* * *
Bluford tried holding Mrs. Duma back but her anger and insanity overpowered him. Still carrying her glass doll, she ran downstairs and out the back door, right into the clutches of an Indian.
“You goddamn heathen!” she screamed. “You cocksucking redskin! You….”
Her tirade was cut short by the Indian’s fist as it slammed into her nose. She dropped to the ground. The Indian grabbed Mrs. Duma’s glass doll from her hand and shoved it into her mouth.
She gagged on the doll, drool rising up out of her mouth and onto her cheeks. The Indian shoved it in deeper. Mrs. Duma gagged again, sounding like an out-of-breath duck.
Soon the glass doll was so far down Mrs. Duma’s throat, the Indian was able to close her mouth.
After she choked to death, Mrs. Duma’s corpse was used as a latrine by the Indian who then invited a few of his fellow invaders to do the same. When Bluford snuck down the stairs and looked out the window, all he saw was a woman’s body covered in lumps of green and pink shit.
Not wanting to succumb to a similar fate, Bluford ran out the other door. He was prepared to use all of his strength to at least put up a good fight. There was no way he was dying like an animal at the hands of those savages.
As he went out the front door, Bluford ran right into Sheriff Doyle.
“Jesus Christ!” the sheriff said. “Come on!” He grabbed Bluford and guided him into the street. “We have to get some horses and get the fuck out of here.”
Just as soon as it seemed like they’d have a clear path to a pair of horses in front of the brothel, a group of Indians surrounded them.
“What now?” Bluford said, watching as more Indians were now dismembering the pair of horses.
“I don’t know,” Sheriff Doyle said. “I don’t fucking know.”
* * *
When the Indians started to attack, Betty thought that God himself had sent the Devil and his demons into Screwhorse to pass judgment on its wickedness.
It wasn’t that she necessarily believed in any of those bible stories but just the sight of those redskins put fear into her heart. They weren’t like any other Indians she had ever seen. Their bodies contorted in grotesque ways, many of them crawling along the street like scorpions. The weapons they held were strange and seemed to be made from a combination of metal, bone, and flesh.
After the initial shock and screaming, the only ones left in the bar were Betty, Stacklee, and Black Boned Keith. Betty told the men to help her move tables and chairs in front of the doors. They moved quickly, making sure to block every possible entrance. Luckily none of the Indians were approaching them.
Stacklee said, “Looks like they aren’t attacking the brothel.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll forget about us,” Black Boned Keith said.
Betty pointed across the street. “Look at what they’re doing to Doctor West.”
Several Indians had a hold of the doctor and were impaling him with a long green spear.
Stacklee said, “Oh my god.”
Betty grabbed his shoulder. “What?”
“The Brady sisters.” He pointed down the street where a group of nude Indian men were carrying Goldie and Blanche Brady over their shoulders. The women looked unharmed.
Betty started to cry. It was one thing seeing her fellow townspeople being slaughtered but to see two of her own girls being taken away by those redskins was another. That broke her heart.
Black Boned Keith said, “You know they aren’t going to kill those girls. Not yet, anyway. Going to take them back to their camp, make them their squaws.”
Stacklee had to use all his energy not to punch the man in the mouth. “Shut up, Keith.”
“I’m just saying. Maybe they’re the lucky ones.” Keith walked away and poured himself a drink at the bar.
Both Stacklee and Betty grabbed guns, waiting by the door in case any of the Indians decided to attack. None of them did.
Instead, a group of pale men approached the brothel doors. Their skin was falling off, ribs were peeking out of their chests, and their faces were covered in dust and spittle.
“Let us in!” they cried. “We’re paying customers!” One of the syphilitics pulled his own nipple off, holding it up as if it were a coin.
“Shoot the fuckers, Stack,” Keith said.
“That’d be pretty stupid, shooting them through the windows. Don’t you think?”
Stacklee watched closely to see just what those sick men could be capable of doing. They didn’t look strong enough to get inside so maybe the best thing to do would be to wait them out.
Betty shouted, “Calamaro!” She pointed down the street.
“I’m going out there,” Stacklee said.
Betty grabbed his arm. “Don’t you dare! I don’t need two good men dying today.”
They watched as Calamaro pulled his wooden donkey and then stopped. He fiddled with it and then struck a match.
“What’s he doing?” Betty said.
“I imagine something’s going to blow up.” Stacklee shook his head. “Blow some Indians to hell.”
Calamaro jumped away from the donkey and then it exploded, sending debris everywhere, killing several Indians.
Screams for help came from across the street. Bluford Barnes and Sheriff Doyle were surrounded by Indians.
Betty watched now as Calamaro approached the brothel. The syphilitic men at the door were getting more excited now, banging their heads until hair and scalp-flesh fell off.
“Stacklee, help me get him in,” she said.
“We can’t do it now unless we want those other bastards coming in with him.” Stacklee pointed at Calamaro. “And anyway, it looks like he’s changing his mind.”
Calamaro was frozen in place, one hand holding the pink hatchet and the other holding his gun.
Betty said, “We have to do something.”
“Yeah,” Stacklee said. “But what?”
* * *
Calamaro stood in the midst of bloodshed.
He could easily save himself and fight his way to the brothel but that wouldn’t be a choice he’d be proud of making. So he tightened his grip on the hatchet and went into the street, hacking away at one Indian after another until he got to Sheriff Doyle and Bluford.
“I ran out of bullets,” Doyle said.
Calamaro nodded. He didn’t need an explanation as to why the man couldn’t defend himself against the redskins. He handed the hatchet to Doyle. “Here.”
The three men walked the short but bloody trail back to the brothel.
Bluford stood between the sheriff and Calamaro while they chopped and shot their way through the crowd of attackers.
Limbs were hacked off, faces were blown to pieces, and screams of agony echoed through the street.
It was an unnatural to Bluford to see such violence firsthand. Calamaro, the man with the disfigured face and the burping gun was shooting Indians in the head so rapidly that the brains that splattered out of the redskin skulls looked like fast falling snow. When his bullets ran out, Calamaro had no time to reload so he used the butt of his gun to break noses and jaws.
The Indians did their best to try to kill them with their weird weapons. One in particular seemed intent on killing Doyle but the sheriff kept hacking away as if in a trance. Bluford couldn’t believe the bloodlust i
n his eyes. The pink hatchet itself glowed with iridescent blood and seemed to swell with each successful act of violence against Indian flesh.
Finally, the trio made it to the brothel steps only to be met with the syphilitics. The diseased men turned their attention to Bluford, the only unarmed man in the group. They quickly shuffled toward him.
Though Sheriff Doyle had no reason to protect Bluford, he jumped into action. It was still his town. It was bad enough he hadn’t been able to defend all the rest of the townspeople who were being dragged from their houses and gruesomely killed in the street.
With his pink hatchet in hand, Doyle struck at the syphilitics. He hit one of the men in the neck, nearly decapitating him. Blood gushed out of the wound and onto Doyle. He finished by sending the hatchet into the man’s face.
Another one leaped forward and grabbed Bluford but the hatchet came down in between his sunken eyes. Brains spilled out, covering the syphilitic’s face in grey fungi.
“Get in the fucking brothel. Now!” Doyle screamed, pushing Bluford in that direction. Behind him, Calamaro was still using his gun to finish off the attackers.
All three men approached the brothel door and inside, Betty and Stacklee were moving the tables out of the way so they could be let in. Calamaro held a large Indian at bay and said, “You two get inside!”
Sheriff Doyle and Bluford ran up the steps and into the brothel.
Calamaro was hit in the chest by the Indian’s weapon, a giant red claw with pink teeth sticking out of it. The wound wasn’t deep and he was able to strike back at the redskin. One more hit caused the Indian to fall backward and Calamaro ran into the brothel.
* * *
Sergio stopped walking. He crouched down next to a cactus and said, “I wish we had some water.”
Leonard nodded. “Some food, too. I’m hungry as hell.”
From behind them, there was the sound of flames. Clayton said, “Look.”
Sergio and Leonard saw the town of Screwhorse in the distance. The Indians had hoisted someone up onto the roof of the mayor’s house and then set that person on fire.
“You think that’s a warning? A sign telling people not to mess with redskins?” Clayton said.
“No,” Sergio said. “I think it’s a sign of victory.”
Leonard said, “You think we should’ve stayed? Helped some people get out?”
“Hell no. They’re not kin to us. We don’t owe them anything,” Clayton said. “And anyway, we do that, we’d probably not get out alive. Right, Sergio?”
Sergio didn’t reply. The sight of the burning corpse brought back memories of the prison camp. He had buried that part of his life as much as possible but after his time in Screwhorse, it was all coming back to him.
He remembered the confederate officer who made his life hell. There hadn’t been a day or even an hour that Captain Clark Burroughs didn’t do something to humiliate or torture Sergio. But still, Burroughs could never make Sergio Cardinale cry or beg for mercy and maybe that’s why the torture continued until the very end.
The captain was the one that told Sergio about the message he had received from a Mexican woman named Ana. Sergio’s parents had been killed and his sister Belladonna abducted. She was being held by the mayor of a desert town called Screwhorse. Captain Burroughs delighted in this information and talked about it for hours in front of Sergio, waiting for the prisoner to crack.
“Your whore of a sister must be sucking that mayor’s dick right about now. Sucking his dick while her brother is rotting away here in a goddamn prison camp. She must be so proud,” the captain had said on the last day Sergio was held captive.
Sergio had nodded slowly, sweat sliding down his face. He couldn’t think of anything to say that would have wounded the captain. So instead, he made his move and pulled out the makeshift knife he had been preparing and shoved it into Clark’s neck.
So as he watched the Indian’s slaughter of Screwhorse from afar, Sergio thought about how he slipped into the captain’s uniform and started to shoot and slash his way out of the camp. His escape route was a bloody path filled with the half-eaten flesh and bleached bones of his fellow Union soldiers.
He started feeling feverish but it wasn’t from the heat. His mouth became like cotton and the veins in his neck throbbed with uncertain anger.
Once again Sergio looked at the flaming corpse. “Yeah,” he said. “We really should’ve brought some water with us.”
* * *
Stacklee and Sheriff Doyle slammed the door behind Calamaro and then pushed the tables in front of it.
“This shit’s only going to get worse,” Sheriff Doyle said. He looked at Calamaro and couldn’t help but look at the wounds on the man’s face instead of his eyes. It took all of his self-control not to show disgust. “Thanks for getting us out of that mess. I misjudged you.”
Calamaro nodded and then turned to Betty, practically falling into her arms. His wounds were leaking blood and drool, soaking her dress.
“Honey…oh, honey,” she said, holding him in her arms.
Sheriff Doyle said, “Okay, we have to come up with a plan and fast. Those fucking bastards outside are going to eventually want in here and I don’t know if we can defend against more than a few of those redskins at once.”
Black Boned Keith walked over from the bar. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to leave this fucking town out the back. Our best chance is to leave now.”
“That’s a bad idea, if you ask me,” Stacklee said. “I think we should wait until we know what their plan is.”
“Fuck that. We wait, we’re going to end up trapped in here,” Keith said. “And I for one don’t want to be eaten by those fucking savages. I’m taking my cattle and getting the hell out of Screwhorse.”
Stacklee laughed. “Are you kidding me? You think you’re getting out of here with your herd?”
“Damn right.” Keith walked toward the back door. “Anyone else want to come with me, come on.”
Everyone stayed put, not trusting that Black Boned Keith’s idea was the best. But one voice interrupted the stillness.
“I’ll go with you!” Mary ran downstairs. “I’m not going to die here. I’m not going to be a whore killed by Indians.”
“Why the hell didn’t you leave before like I told you to?” Betty said.
“Timothy Horn didn’t want me to.”
“So where is that bastard?”
“Passed out drunk on the floor.”
Betty rolled her eyes. “Guess we should wake him up.”
“No!” Mary said.
All eyes were on her.
Sheriff Doyle said, “Why the hell not?”
“Because,” Mary said. She turned her back on the group. “Because he’s dead.”
Stacklee moved to comfort her but Doyle put his arm out and said, “What happened, Mary?”
“He got rough with me.”
“And?”
“I killed him.”
Sheriff Doyle shook his head. “How?”
“I stepped on his throat while he was sleeping.”
Betty let out a cry. It wasn’t that she gave a shit about Timothy Horn but to hear that one of her own girls had murdered a man in his sleep was enough to make anyone upset.
“Mary, please answer this carefully,” Sheriff Doyle said. “Do you know anything about the girls that were killed here?”
“No!” Mary said. “Of course not!”
“Did Timothy?”
“I don’t know. I mean, he didn’t say anything about it.”
Bluford said, “I know who did it.”
“What’re you talking about?” Doyle said. “Who did it?”
“Tom Duma and his wife.”
“Shit, didn’t we clear this up?”
Bluford explained about the previous night, the shadowy figure in the coat and hat, and the confrontation with the Dumas. Everyone seemed surprised that those two could’ve been capable of such atrocities but in the circumstances
, they didn’t seem to be incapacitated by the news.
Doyle looked over his shoulder. He saw the Indians outside dragging Kersey through the street. It was a horrible sight, seeing the man defenseless against those savages. And he, the sheriff, couldn’t do anything about it.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll wait. Savages or not, they probably have some sort of plan. Probably a plan that they learned from fighthing the goddamn U.S. Army all these years. Soon as we learn what they’re doing, we take off, go up to Keoma. Everybody agree?”
Black Boned Keith said, “No, you know damn well I don’t agree. And Mary can come with me if she wants. What about June? She’s still here, right?”
“She’s sick, probably still sleeping,” Stacklee said. “I’ll go get her.”
Sheriff Doyle turned to Calamaro. “What do you think, stranger? You waiting for us or going with that son of a bitch?”
Calamaro shook his head. “I’m staying. At least for a while.”
“Okay, then, Keith,” Doyle said. “You and Mary go but if you try to come back, we’re not going to let you in if there’s a hoard of Indians following you. Got it?”
“Yeah, sheriff. Sure,” Keith said. He took Mary by the arm and walked her out the back door.
“There goes two dead idiots,” Sheriff Doyle said.
“So what does that make us?” Betty said, listening to the growing noise of violence outside.
* * *
Stacklee knocked on the door. “June? You feeling any better?”
There was no answer.
He knocked again and then walked in. What he saw made him drop to his knees and vomit.
In the middle of the room, June was naked on the floor. Her breasts were bubbling, the nipples ejaculating thin pink strands of hair. Red tattoos covered the rest of her flesh.
“Oh my god,” Stacklee said. He crawled toward June but knew that despite the movement of her body, she wasn’t alive, at least not like she was before. He looked into her eyes and saw only death.
The hair that squeezed out of her nipples was now shooting onto Stacklee. He shoved it aside and shivered when he did so. Quickly, he left the room and walked down the stairs, wondering how Betty would take the news. She had already lost three girls to murder, two more to the Indians, and one just committed a murder herself.