by Jordan Krall
“Betty,” he said. “June’s dead.”
“Oh my god, I’m in hell.” Betty said. “This is hell.” She let go of Calamaro and walked over to the bar.
Sheriff Doyle took Stacklee aside. “What happened to her? June, I mean.”
“I don’t know. Some strange shit’s going on. Her body’s all….messed up.”
“Cut up like the others?”
“I don’t think so,” Stacklee said. His eyes filled up with tears. “I don’t know what happened to her but I know she didn’t deserve it.”
“I know.” Sheriff Doyle turned to Calamaro. “You’re pretty quiet.”
Calamaro attempted a smile but his wounds made it appear as if he was scowling. “You want me to give a speech?” he said.
Doyle chuckled. “No, guess not.”
“Look,” Stacklee said, pointing outside. Black Boned Keith and Mary were there with some of Keith’s cattle. They weren’t alone.
A group of Indians surrounded them. Though Sheriff Doyle felt the desire to go outside and help, he knew there was no hope. The redskins had their weapons ready, giant green bones that were sharpened to points.
“We have to do something,” Stacklee said. “Can’t we open the windows, shoot some of them?”
Doyle shook his head. “So far, the Indians aren’t trying to get in here. Maybe there’s a reason for it or maybe not but I don’t think we should be attracting attention.”
“So we’re going to let them die?”
“It’s not about that. I’m thinking of me. I’m thinking of you, Betty, Bluford, and this man here.” He gestured to Calamaro. “You think he can take another fight? Look at him. His face is practically falling off, for Christ’s sake.”
Bluford broke his silence. “Can’t we do anything?”
“Not if we all want to live,” Doyle said. “Okay, well, let’s get some water and food ready for when we have to leave.”
Silently, the group gathered supplies but no one looked outside as Mary and Keith succumbed to the Indians. After it was done, their corpses were covered in the remains of the tentacled cattle and then set on fire. Blue-green smoke filled the air and sent the stench of musky seawater through the town.
* * *
Betty and Calamaro were filling canteens with water when she said, “You’re quiet. What’re you thinking about?”
Calamaro shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just all the killing. More killing than I’ve ever done and it was all in one town.”
“You had no choice.”
“I know,” he said. “But that doesn’t make it any easier.”
They were silent again as they filled a couple of canteens with whiskey.
Betty said, “Are you going to stay with me when we get to Keoma?”
“I’m not going.”
“What?” Betty nearly dropped the whiskey bottle. “Not going? What’re you talking about?”
“Before when I said I was staying, I meant for good. Once everything is clear, you all should go but I don’t think I’m fit to do any more traveling. At least not for a while.”
“So you’re just going to stay here? There’s going to be no one left!”
“I think a town of ghosts just might be what I need right now,” Calamaro said. He finished filling a canteen and then leaned over to kiss Betty. She accepted the soft kiss from those wounded and bloody lips, wishing that she’d have them for a bit longer.
“Then it’ll be goodbye for good, huh?” she said.
“I’m afraid so.”
“You know you never told me what your daughter’s name was.”
Calamaro’s head came down just a bit. The thought of his child brought heaviness to his heart and mind. “Sara.”
“And your wife’s?”
“Victoria.”
“That’s a beautiful name.”
Calamaro kissed her again. “So is Betty.”
PART THREE
Exodus of the Damned
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Sergio led Clayton and Leonard through the desert.
They were fortunate because the Indians didn’t see them leave and therefore didn’t follow them. Clayton, in particular, took this to mean that they were lucky and vowed to play a dice game in the next town they get to.
As they walked, Sergio kept his eyes forward and never attempted to add to the other men’s conversation. He didn’t say a word until he stopped next to a tall pink cactus and pointed straight ahead. He said, “Bella….”
Fifty feet away, in a haze of heat and dust, stood his sister, Belladonna Cardinale.
Sergio ran up and wrapped his arms around her. He sobbed on her shoulder, not shy about showing his tears in front of Clayton and Leonard. “Bella, I thought you were dead.”
She said, “You came to find me?”
“Yes.”
“You found the man who took me?”
“Yes.”
Belladonna ran her hand through Sergio’s hair. “And you killed him?”
“I had to.”
“You know I always hated your killing.”
“I know.” Sergio let out a deep sob. “But I had to.”
“Remember when I was a child and that preacher hurt me?”
“Of course I remember.”
“And you hurt him. You hurt him real bad. He couldn’t preach anymore. He couldn’t see, couldn’t speak. Not after you got done with him.”
“He deserved it.” Sergio gritted his teeth. “He deserved worse.”
“So why didn’t you kill him, then?” Belladonna said.
“I don’t know. Maybe I figured if I killed a man of God, something would happen to you. Now I know the truth.”
“The truth?”
“That there is no God that gives a shit about you or me or anyone,” Sergio said. “You were nothing but an angel all your life and look what happened to you and for what reason? What’s God trying to prove? That good people like you deserve to be tortured by preachers and mayors? It doesn’t make a goddamn bit of sense.”
“Your anger’s going to eat you alive someday.” Belladonna kissed her brother on the head and then gently pushed him away. “I have to go now.”
“What’re you talking about? Go where?”
“I love you, Sergio,” Belladonna said. Her body broke into dust and fell to the ground.
“Bella!”
Clayton and Leonard slowly walked to Sergio and put their hands on his shoulders. They said nothing because they didn’t think there was anything they could say.
Sergio said, “You saw her, right? I’m not crazy. You saw her?”
Leonard lowered his eyes which were starting to tear.
“Yeah, Sergio,” he said. “We saw her.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Sheriff Doyle stood watch at the front of the brothel while Stacklee took the back. Bluford and Calamaro watched from the upstairs windows.
Slowly, the slaughter in the town decreased and the streets became a cemetery with no crosses. Bodies littered the streets, some dismembered, some on fire, and some intact. Stray Indians still roamed and amused themselves by taking ears, noses, and assholes as trophies.
Then the last of the redskins left in the direction in which they came. Bluford and Calamaro came downstairs.
“Looks like they packed up and left,” Bluford said. “I don’t see any of them anywhere closer than east on the horizon. You think it’s safe to go now?”
Sheriff Doyle said, “Just as long as we travel west and keep an eye out. Could be that they’re just playing with us and will come back looking for survivors.”
Betty said, “Why didn’t they attack us? Looks like they broke into every building, every house but they didn’t come in here.”
“I don’t know and frankly, I don’t give a shit just as long as they don’t come back.”
Stacklee said, “So, we ready?”
Everyone agreed and then Calamaro said, “I’m staying.”
“Shit, are
you that stupid?” Sheriff Doyle said. “We have a better chance of getting out alive if we’re in a group. You stay by yourself here, you’re bound to meet up with those redskins or some other tribe that wants to loot the town.”
“I’m staying, that’s all.”
Stacklee walked up to Calamaro, taking him aside. “You know the sheriff’s right. It’d be foolish as hell to stay.”
“Then call me foolish. I’m staying and I wish you all the best of luck.”
“Shit, man.” He patted Calamaro on the shoulder. “Thank you for everything.”
“You’re the one who should be thanked. Betty is lucky to have a man like you working for her.”
They shook hands and then the group got ready to leave. Betty and Calamaro exchanged no more words, only another deep kiss.
Bluford approached Calamaro and said, “Thank you for saving my life.”
Calamaro nodded.
Doyle said, “We ready?”
They went out the back door, slowly and careful not to make any noise just incase there were still Indians hiding, ready to ambush.
As they walked, Bluford heard a sound coming from the church. “What the hell was that?”
They all listened and heard the same sound.
“Shit,” Doyle said. “Let’s just go. If anyone’s in the church, they can’t see us. So let’s hurry up. Go!”
The four of them ran through the sand and out of town. Betty looked back at her brothel and let herself cry for her girls one last time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
In his frenzied escape, Tom Duma thought the church was the only place he’d be safe from the Indians. Though never much of a religious man, he still held the opinion that the church itself would be untouched by the red pagans simply because God himself would protect it.
He went into the church and found it empty except for broken pews and scattered bibles. On the wall behind the altar scrawled in green paint was a scripture verse. Tom walked up to it.
“Gold is the devil with the broadest shoulders,” he read. “Jonah 7:25.”
He waited a long time while the Indians attacked the town. Then the noise lessened and he knew that they were leaving. He had been spared.
But then the sound of footsteps echoed through the room and a small Indian boy appeared in the doorway. He wore a stove pipe hat made out of cactus needles and human teeth.
Tom Duma turned around. He stared at the boy and said, “This is a place of God. Do you understand that? This is a holy place.”
The boy stood silent and held up a pink pistol.
“Your people are more savage than I ever imagined,” Tom said. He was about to pick up a bible and hand it to the heathen when a bullet went through his eyeball and out the back of his head. He screamed and put his finger to the wound and thought it felt like the inside of a wet pussy. Then he ran to his left and jumped out of a window, landing in the church graveyard.
A coffin broke Tom’s fall. He found himself in an open grave. With his eye bleeding profusely, he stood up and tried to climb out. He was too heavy for the coffin to hold and the wood broke. Tom looked down with his good eye and saw that there was no corpse in the coffin.
There was gold.
Hundreds of gold coins.
For a few seconds, Tom Duma thought himself a rich man. Then the Indian boy appeared above him, grinning and pointing his pink pistol.
A second bullet destroyed Tom’s other eye. This time, instead of screaming, he covered his head and whimpered. “Don’t break the glass dolls, mother.”
The Indian boy put his hand under his hat and pulled out a pink tentacle as long as a bullwhip.
Now blind, Tom didn’t see the Indian’s new weapon. He only heard the cracking of the whip.
“Oh please, please, please, please spare me! Please!” Tom blubbered but the Indian had no intention of sparing him.
With another crack of the whip, the top of Tom’s skull was sliced off, exposing the brain underneath. The Indian jumped down into the grave and finished the killing with a sharpened oyster shell.
Tom Duma’s blood and viscera soaked the gold. The Indian boy reached down, picked up a blood drenched coin, and put it into his mouth. His eyes watered in ecstatic joy. The taste of blood and gold was intoxicating.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“Hey Sheriff,” Bluford said. “I have to tell you something.”
“Yeah?”
“Stacklee already knows and maybe Betty, too. I just think I’d feel better if I was honest about it.”
Sheriff Doyle shrugged. “So spit it out. What?”
“I’m a cheat,” he said. “A card cheat.”
The sheriff shook his head.
“Boy, do you think I give a good goddamn about that now?”
Bluford blushed. “What do you mean?”
“We were attacked by Indians for Christ’s sake and you’re confessing that you’re a cheat? You think I’m going to arrest you now?”
“No. I mean, I think it’s just my conscience having to be cleared,” Bluford said. “And I thought maybe that this whole thing was God’s way of punishing me, sending those pagans to attack the town I was in. Maybe I brought it all down on us.”
Sheriff Doyle said, “Bluford, you think God really thinks that much of you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You think out of all the people in the world, God’s going to put a bull’s eye on you just because you’ve been cheating at some cards or something? If there really is a God, we’re all just insects to him, like scorpions. Hell, even lower than scorpions because we can’t even sting him. We’re like scorpions with no tails. So I assure you he doesn’t give a shit about you pocketing some aces in a poker game.”
Bluford dropped his head. “Well….”
“Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter now,” Doyle said. “In the long run, we’re all just insects.”
Bluford thought of Lily. It was a strange feeling finding the mutilated body of a woman you had just screwed. He felt uneasy over the fact that he was the last man she had been with. A woman shouldn’t die right after being intimate with a stranger. She should die of old age in her own home after being with her husband. The whole thing was heartbreaking.
The group was silent as they walked. Bluford was about to ask Stacklee how it came about that he was working for Betty when he saw something up ahead.
Three men.
He pointed and said, “Look.”
The sheriff squinted in the sun. “Don’t look like Indians.”
“Survivors, then?” Bluford said.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“So let’s go see.” Bluford walked over. The others reluctantly followed him.
When Bluford got close enough, he recognized the men. He had seen them in Betty’s place and talked to the tall one, Sergio. When he got in earshot of the group, Bluford said, “Hey.”
Sergio, Clayton, and Leonard looked at him but didn’t respond.
When Bluford looked at Sergio’s face, he could tell that he made a mistake in approaching them. There were tears in the man’s eyes. He looked as if he’d just been through hell, even more hell than a bunch of crazed Indians attacking the town.
The sheriff said, “Who are you?”
He got no response.
Bluford said, “That’s Sergio. I talked to him back at Betty’s.”
Then Sergio and his two partners all looked at the canteens that Bluford and Betty were holding.
Sergio grunted. “Water.”
There was even more tension in the air as Sheriff Doyle took a couple of steps to put himself in front of Betty. “Yeah, it’s our water.”
Clayton drew his pistol. None of the others even saw his hand go for it. He was that fast.
“Hey, hold on a minute,” Stacklee said. “No need for the gun. We can give you a sip of water if you need it.”
Sheriff Doyle said, “No, Stack. We’re not giving them shit.”
“Oh?”
Clayton cocked his pistol, aiming it at Doyle.
“You heard me.” The sheriff drew his gun and aimed it right back at the bastard in the donkey mask. “You want to play bullet for bullet, that it?”
Sergio said, “Hey.”
The sheriff moved his eyes and saw that he had another gun aimed at him. What a bitch it would be if he got shot down right after surviving a goddamn Indian attack.
Stacklee pulled his gun out from his waistband and aimed it at Sergio’s head.
As they all stood there waiting for someone else to make the first move, Betty said, “You know he’s the sheriff, right?”
Sergio let out a grunt that intended to be a laugh. “Sheriff? I just killed your mayor and you think I’d hesitate to kill your sheriff?”
“You killed the mayor?” Betty said. She wasn’t upset but it was still shocking to hear that Mayor Douglas was dead and that the man standing in front of her had done it.
“Yeah,” Sergio said. His gun hand was as still as stone.
More silence.
Everyone stared at each other. It was as if lifelong enemies were facing each other for the last time despite there being no history between them.
Finally Doyle spoke. “Put your guns down. I won’t arrest you.”
Clayton chuckled. “You think we’re worried about that?”
Leonard said, “Okay. Looks like we got a stalemate here. Two guns against two guns. Do you know how we solve that?” He pulled his gun and pointed it at Stacklee.
Betty stiffened. She was truly scared. The men looked like seasoned killers. Sheriff Doyle, on the other hand, didn’t seem as comfortable holding a gun. His hand trembled just enough to make her worry about the outcome.
“You’re not getting the water,” Doyle said. “Not alive, you’re not.”
Sergio grunted.
The tension broke.
Gunshots exploded as triggers were pulled.
A bullet hit Stacklee in the shoulder, knocking him down. Another bullet hit Sheriff Doyle in the chest, sending him backwards onto a cactus. Bluford and Betty jumped to the ground, hiding behind a small boulder.