by Oliver Atlas
Crazy or not, that certainly gets my attention. “Milly?”
The Banshee nods his thick head. “That vial Maplenut gave her was a mark.”
“A mark?” I say, confused. “It was a synthetic blood sample, a delivery for Schlozfield, something to help with the Cure.”
“In these parts, ‘a delivery for Schlozfield’ is always really a mark for death. Maplenut may be using her for bait, hoping to lure Schlozfield out, but it’s just as likely he’s alerting certain unsavory people that he wants her discreetly disposed of. The blood is both the assassin’s marker and payment.”
I’m about to ask about those unsavory people when I realize something. “Wait a second!” The rifle in my hands jumps up toward the Banshee’s chest. “How did you know about the vial in the first place?”
“The same way I knew you took my badge. And Clementine.”
“Clementine?”
“My pistol.” Lancaster Moon reaches into his saddlebag and produces the black revolver I’d worn for a few hours. “Do you know what happened to the last five men he gave this to?”
I shake my head, feeling my finger tense on the rifle’s trigger.
“I’ll bet you can guess,” he says.
I’ll bet I can. “You shot them,” I say.
Moon gives Clementine a quick twirl. “Good guess.”
I want to believe he’s lying about the blood Maplenut gave Milly, but I can’t help but believe him about the last five men to fondle Clementine. What does that mean? Am I about to become number six? Moon might be fast—fast enough to be a legend—but the revolver in his hand isn’t ready or aimed. The rifle in my hands is. I could cut him down. The Mayor’s advice about Yaverts leaps to mind. It definitely applies here. Shoot to kill.
Lancaster Moon must read my eyes. “I didn’t come to kill you, Blake,” he says. “I came to help you.”
“Help me?” I wince. My screaming body has begun to outshout my fear of the Banshee. “Help me with what?”
Moon raises a wry eyebrow. “With the men who strung you up, to start. They won’t be the end of it, you know. Do you think those Rubies were smart enough to track you without a tipoff? Trust me, they weren’t. Who do you think told them where and when to find you? Hmm . . . need a hint? How about the same man who gave you the badge that got its last five wearers killed. Milly’s not the only one Maplenut wants dead.”
I want to scoff. But I can’t help wondering if Moon has a tantalizing point. If it’s true about the cursed badge—and a tickling memory of newspaper headlines announcing another dead greenhorn Ranger makes me think it is—why else would Maplenut give it to me unless he wanted me dead? But why would he want me dead in the first place? Maybe he didn’t like the idea of some crazy cross-wearing Texan having saved his life. Maybe he didn’t like my skinny jeans. Who knows? But why would he give Milly an item marking her for death as well?—and something so costly? Buzz had given us the impression that chum was worth more than gold, so how much more valuable was the blood that made chum work in the first place? Why wouldn’t Maplenut have had us poisoned in his study? We both took drinks from his hand. Still, my gut is telling me to listen.
“All right,” I say, instinctively lowering my rifle again as a sign of trust. “Why?—why lure out Schlozfield? Why kill Milly? And why bother with me? I’m a nobody.”
Lancaster Moon swings off his strange horse, tossing me Clementine as he does. I reach out with my trigger hand and grab the gun, a fresh lance of pain shooting up my side. “There’s no more time for explanations,” he says. “Besides, I can’t tell you anything more. Not for now, at least.” When I open my mouth to object, Moon points a finger at Yarely. “Your friend here is going to bleed out if he doesn’t get help.”
Yarely’s eyes are glazed. The blood from his shirt has soaked down to the hem of his pants. Idiot that I am, I finally notice the rasp coming from the little man’s throat. I finally notice that although he’s kneeling beside me, there is an unsteady wobble to him. He looks bad. We’ve probably waited too long already. Bracing myself, I rise to a knee. That effort alone nearly knocks me out.
“Hold on,” orders Moon, kneeling beside us both. He’s carrying the bag I took from the vault. He reaches inside and pulls out the Bowie knife.
“For the bullet?” I wonder aloud, a small part of me still afraid the Banshee might skin us.
Moon ignores me and unscrews the handle. A warm light—bright enough to stand out under the afternoon sun—seeps from inside it. From the knife’s base he slides out a small syringe and hypodermic needle, aglow with fire. “Just a bit for you,” he mutters, injecting Yarely before I can object.
The effect is instantaneous: Yarely’s wobble stops, his eyes return to focus, and he stands up. “Wow,” he breathes.
“The bullet’s still in your shoulder,” says Moon. “The pain will return, but we should have you to a doctor by then. The rest,” he says, handing the syringe to me, “is for you.”
I accept the glowing tube with uncertain hands.
But Moon is all business. “Your knife doubles as a chlorotein harnesser and a neuro-EMP, similar to the pylons back at the road. Use the syringe for emergency healings. You refill it by driving the blade into good soil under direct sun. It takes a few hours to charge. The EMP works off the same energy. So you have to choose. To use it, simply squeeze the handle five times quickly, and then squeeze and hold. It temporarily knocks out any dead-heads within a quarter mile. This,” he says, producing the GPS from the bag, “gives you satellite thermal readings of all humanoids within a three mile radius.” He holds up the screen and points. “See all these red dots? Those are zombies. These two here, they’re the ones who spotted us as a late lunch.”
“So that’s us,” I say, pointing to two green dots.
Lancaster Moon nods.
“Then why . . . why does it only show two of us?”
He smiles drolly. “I’ll see your friend to a doctor. We’ll make sure your sister-in-law gets her medicine too. Abe will see us there in no time.” He motions for Yarely to mount his lanky stallion.
Now I’m confused. I try to sit up but a jolt of pain makes it clear I’ll first need the stuff in the syringe. “But I’m coming with you,” I say, a little too shrilly for my liking.
“Are you?” says Moon. “I thought you were going to help your friend Milly stay alive and look out for that little girl.”
I snort. “That’s a hero’s job. That’s your job! You could save Milly. You could track Yaverts. You could discover why Maplenut wants us dead. You’re the real Western Ranger. You should go.”
Lancaster Moon laughs silently. “You’re nearly right. The only problem is, I heard your rant on the road. That’s right. I heard it all. You say you like it when we come eye to eye with our prejudice and fear. You say you want to live out a new kind of desire and can’t understand why someone like Milly doesn’t. And yet you charge off in fear that your sister-in-law will die when she already has medicine coming to her, letting Milly try to protect a little girl and find a Cure all by herself. You talk like you’re a man of high principle and courage. And yet how convenient that the noble choice of helping your family lies in the opposite direction of the greatest risk to your own skin.” Moon swings up onto Abe and hauls Yarely up behind him. “No, Blake. If the Banshee goes after Milly, all hell will break loose. I’ll draw every snake out of the pit too soon. They all want me and Abe under thumb. If you go, you’ll simply be writing yourself back into your own story, a role that perhaps you didn’t choose, true, but a role that chose you all the same. You’ve got to get back into your place in the story. You know I’m right. You’ll never be able to be honest with yourself again if, right now, you don’t choose faith instead of fear. I’m not saying you won’t get shot or eaten or hanged the minute you cross into the Alley. You can’t control that. All you can do is be faithful. If you know what’s right, you’ve got to do it.”
I hang my head.
Crap.
> He’s right: I know what’s right. And I’ve got to do it.
Yarely agrees. Although he’s trembling, clearly nervous to be riding away with the Banshee, he says, “We’ll get the medicine to Casey and Kaite, Blake. I’ll tell them what you’re doing. They’ll be proud of you. I know they wouldn’t want you doing otherwise.”
All right. I guess that’s that. I give my noblest nod, already praying the luminous medicine actually works. And that I can chase down a horse. And that my bag is still full of food. “Mr. Moon,” I say, shielding my eyes from the dropping sun. “Do you suppose as a parting gift you could take care of those two zombies?”
The pair of dead-heads that have been drooling at us for the past several minutes have now limped into our hearing. No more than a hundred feet south, I can hear their jagged teeth clicking and their bloated bowels flagellating. I’m pretty sure I can already smell them, too.
Lancaster Moon shakes his head, chuckling mournfully. “I’m sorry, son. That badge is yours now. Clementine too. And if you’re going to go help your friend, you’d better figure out a better way to deal with zombies than shooting them in the shoulder. Because where you’re going, the living dead are thick as maggots on a rotting body.”
“Thanks, Lancaster,” I grimace. “Thanks for that image.”
Moon tips his hat to me. “Godspeed, Mr. Prose. And if you catch sight of anyone following you, lone riders on a black horse or a red horse . . . kiss that badge old badge of mine the Mayor gave you.”
“Kiss it goodbye,” I agree, knowing the riders he means must be the South and East Rangers. If they wanted Lancaster Moon dead and managed it, I’m as good as the trail’s next big side order of scavenger’s surprise.
“No,” says Moon, dead serious. “Just kiss it.” He wheels the severe stallion toward the fiery wall of the western sky and gallops away, Yarely bouncing along behind him. I watch them for a moment, see them shrinking in the horizon’s shimmering heat. But then I blink. And they’re gone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Western Ranger Rides Again
First things first: I have to deal with the two zombies coming at me from the south. I’m half tempted to use the glowing syringe on my tattered body, but there’s always the chance I could have an allergic reaction or discover that I pass out when administering my own shots. Maybe this liquid light causes drowsiness—who knows? In any case, I check Clementine to make sure she’s loaded, give thanks that she is, and prepare to open fire on my first living dead.
I’m not sure it helps that they’re such a slow pair. That gives the philosophical part of me too much time to deliberate on the morality of blasting two formerly-sentient-but-now-mindlessly-ravenous-beings. Even though they’re now only fifty feet away, at their dawdling pace, they won’t reach me for another few minutes. One has a full head of gray hair that shoots straight up, Einstein coming out of a mutilating dryer. The other has ratty brown hair covering her face. I think she knows where to go by bumping up against her partner. Both are emaciated, with bones breaking through skin wherever their tattered clothes reveal flesh. These are some seriously struggling dead-heads.
I feel bad. And that makes me feel ridiculous.
Here I am, the Western Ranger, sitting under a tree—a tree he was just nearly hanged from—feeling sorry for two humanoid sharks that are now capable of feeling only something vaguely resembling the thoughts chew, rip, tear, devour, destroy. Meanwhile, for all I know, a Screamer could be bearing down on me from behind.
Now that thought makes me shiver. That thought wakes me up. I grew up in a place where people don’t pay attention in crosswalks to make sure cars will stop, where we trust doctors to fix our bodily vices, lawyers to justify our social parasitism, and gurus to re-vision selfishness as something bold, sexy, and inevitable. We mistake societal laws for laws of nature and cultural plausibility for the bounds of cosmic possibility. And that’s me. As much as I’d like to imagine that it’s not, here I am trying to think my way out of a chip-toothed, milky-eyed reality—trying to project my privileged genteel perspective onto chaos itself. Here I am acting drowsy, refusing to feel my stark surroundings as anything but surreal.
I shake my head as though trying to wake up.
The sorry pair before me, I realize while studying their corroded eyes, aren’t monstrously hungry. They’ve simply become monstrous hunger.
I fire four rhythmic shots, one for each kneecap. I imagine this will slow the pair to an inchworm’s pace, but as soon as they hit the ground I almost drop Clementine from shock. Instead of arduously dragging themselves forward, they’re immediately scrambling for me, fast as knobby-legged spiders, their heads up, moaning loudly.
I fire two shots, this time where it counts. The snarly-haired woman drops, a frazzled mop suddenly gone wet. Einstein follows, his wild hair half vanished with the rest of his skull.
Welcome to Oregon, Blake.
But I never wanted Oregon. I never wanted the Territory and its horrors. I only wanted Portland. And this is why. Now I’m just another hardened realist whose actions admit it’s a dog-eat-dog world. Or maybe now I’m just another titillated tourist whose actions hint that my self-divisions regarding violence aren’t as deep or profound as part of me wants to believe. Either way, I’ve crossed a line. I’ve killed two zombies. I guess I’m in Oregon now.
The syringe, it turns out, has no side effect other than disbelief. After I’ve stuck it in my thigh I can’t believe how my body reacts, how great I feel. My aches, tears, twinges—gone. My bruises, scratches, gouges—gone. The stiffness in my back, the knots in my stomach, the searing in my neck—gone, gone, gone. I feel so good I dance a jig around the oak tree, kicking my heels and whooping. The day still has an hour or more of good sunlight, so I refit the syringe in the knife and drive it into some rich soil, following Lancaster’s instructions. I’ve just become a big believer in the unbelievable power of chlorotein—or whatever he called it—and I don’t plan on going further without a little on hand.
While I give the knife time to charge, I check the GPS. There are plenty of red dots nearby, most of them slowly converging on me. Far to the north, on the edge of the screen, I see four green dots being pursued by a swarm of red. The people press forward and stop, press forward and stop—running and shooting, running and shooting—trying to pick off the zombies while keeping distance. Their strategy is working. But then I see it: a red dot flashing toward them from the south at an alarming speed.
A Screamer.
I want to scream, to warn them. And I really cry out, caught up in the story told by the symbols on the little gray screen. I watch the fast red dot converge with the greens. For a few seconds, I hold the GPS in trembling hands. Then the green dots blip off, one at a time, until there is only a jumble of red.
I nearly toss the device against the oak, roaring and stomping, my eyes wet with disgust and fury. For all I know, those four green dots were Dirt-face’s identical twins, out prodding dead-heads, looking for trouble. But it doesn’t matter. No matter how colossal of idiots the four might have been, they were meant for more than a demise so gruesome and pointless. They were meant to know and bear the wonder of life. Now, in a few hours, they’ll bear the inverse mockery of that wonder. If there’s enough left of them to move and hunger, they’ll become teeth and nails and horror. And who knows? They may be the next ghouls to have a run-in with Clementine.
I can’t contain a sudden burst of hysterical laughter. I’m sure if someone rode by and spotted me under the tree they would think I was insane. I laugh and laugh and laugh. After killing the two slowest zombies in the Territory and watching a slaughter in 2-D, I’m already rattled. Lancaster Moon thought this role of Western Ranger and intrepid
do-gooder had chosen me. His unsaid meaning, of course, was that some Mysterious Purpose had chosen me. But that’s too rich. I double over and laugh until I’m coughing. When Mysterious Purpose chooses as champion the guy who took out student loans to study Peaceful Communi
cations with an emphasis in Music Therapy, you know you’re screwed.
When I’ve recovered from the laughing jag, I gather my things. The knife and rifle fit neatly in my Ranger pack. As I’m tucking them away, I remember how hungry I am and try one of the dried salmon meals. It is over-salted and stubbornly chewy. A few bites make my mouth pucker. But I wash it down with a bottle of water and repeat with a second.
Dirt-face’s quarter horse is still in sight, grazing, and she doesn’t run when I approach. Instead, she looks up and meets my eyes with uncanny awareness. I gather her reigns and she neighs softly. In her saddlebag is a strange assortment of gear: a box of .45 ammunition, three dried biscuits, a packet of beef jerky, a spotting scope, a fake deputy’s badge, and a wig of short black dreadlocks. Right. Well, apparently Dirt-face was a complex individual. A murderous cretan, yes, but a person with a story and a name, all the same. And since nothing on his horse marks her as having a name, I decide to call her Enemy. She’s sweet, with gentle eyes and the softest coat. She stays still as I load her with my bag and climb up. I can feel her twitch with excitement, ready to run, but a patient discipline keeps her in place. She’s submissive, and somehow her body lets me know that this submission is a gift. It’s a gift of trust, which, I suddenly realize, is a kind of belief. The little horse believes in me. Maybe she believed in Dirt-face, just the same. Maybe something in her nature chooses to trust, period, conferring that dignity upon any human, deserving or not. I’m your gain or your loss, she says with her being. You choose.
I swing her east, back toward the Wall and New Pokey. The white disk of the moon is already seeping into the blue of early evening. I lean forward to the little horse’s ear and whisper, “You’re easy to love, Enemy.”
Chapter Twenty-Three