Last of the Ravagers, page 16
After looking up and down the street multiple times, Ned’s gaze finally settled on the horse hitched to the post outside his own office. His heart-rate quickened as recognition dawned at last. That was Billy Conway’s black filly. He hadn’t seen the deputy for hours, not since sending him out to the desert to burn the saloon girl’s headless corpse. The horse wasn’t there just a short while ago. He remembered that from his trip back across the street from Doc Richardson’s office.
Before he could share this insight with anyone, an agitated-looking Billy Conway came out of the sheriff’s office with a Winchester rifle clutched in his hands. He had the wild-eyed expression of a man who’d been through a lot in a short span of time. It didn’t take a huge leap of deduction to figure the rifle was the likely source of the gunshots they’d heard moments earlier.
Catching sight of them, Billy started across the street with a purposeful gait. “Y’all ain’t gonna believe half the crazy-ass shit I’ve been through since last we set eyes on each other, but I swear on my sweet grandmama’s grave every got-damn word of it is true.” He stopped abruptly in the middle of the street, turning his rifle toward the sky upon hearing the cawing of a bird. “Oh, hey, it’s you again! Well come and get me, you ugly son of a bitch!”
He sighted along the barrel of the rifle and squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Billy’s features drew downward in dismay. “Ah, shit.”
The cawing sound came again as a large shadow passed over the street. Confused about why his deputy was so jumpy about a bird circling overhead, Ned stepped to the edge of the porch and turned his own gaze skyward. He’d just started squinting against the glare of the sun when something big came swooping downward.
Ned gasped in shock as the largest vulture he’d ever seen took a screeching dive at the deputy’s head with its claws outstretched. Billy let out a startled screech of his own and tried to shield his head as he swatted at the unnaturally large winged varmint with the butt of the rifle. He managed to connect with one of its flapping wings one time, but not hard enough to disable it or knock it out of the air. The vulture continued to flit about in the air above the street, occasionally swooping in for another diving run at Billy’s face.
It was the damnedest thing. Ned had never seen a vulture—or any other type of bird, for that matter—attack a man in such a repeated, purposeful way, as if the creature had a personal grudge against the deputy. He’d call it impossible, only he knew better than to classify anything as such at this point. He yelled at Billy, urging him to run and take cover in the saloon, but the man took no heed of this advice, appearing determined to best the feathered menace in head-on confrontation. Based on what Ned had seen so far, this did not seem wise. He was about to charge out into the street and grab hold of the man when a boom of gunfire from right next to him nearly made him jump out of his skin. Two shots that sounded like a cannon going off at such close range. The giant vulture landed in the street with a heavy thud and didn’t move.
Billy gaped disbelievingly at the dead vulture a moment.
His head swiveled slowly toward the saloon and he raised a hand to point at his savior. “Sweet jumped-up Jesus on a handcart! Who is this sharp-shooting gorgeous angel?”
Ned glanced at Raven Decker, who was standing just a few feet to his right. She still had her gun out and pointed vaguely skyward, a wisp of smoke curling from the muzzle.
Quentin Brown chuckled. “A lady bounty hunter from another world.”
Billy’s face crinkled in confusion. “Come again?’
“We’ve got some crazy-ass shit to tell you as well,” Ned told him.
“Is that right?”
Ned nodded. “Yep.”
He stepped out into the street and approached the dead vulture. His brow creased as he tipped back his hat and peered closely at the perforated corpse. Other than its abnormal size, the thing looked no different from any other creature of its type native to the area. He nudged it with the toe of his boot, still amazed two bullets were enough to knock something this big out of the air. Then again, those weren’t normal bullets, he knew that. They packed a bigger punch than any sidearm available in this world.
He looked at the deputy. “This wasn’t a random attack, was it?”
Billy tore his gaze away from Raven and turned toward his boss. “No, sir. I don’t believe it was.”
Ned thought of how the man’s rifle had clicked empty when he’d attempted to fire it a few moments earlier. “We heard shots. You unloaded on something in the jailhouse, didn’t you?”
Billy grimaced. “That, sir, is part of the crazy-ass shit I was referring to before we were interrupted by this flying beast from hell. There was a blue thing in the cell with Riley. Some kind of weird little monster. It was . . . well, sir, it was eating the drunk sumbitch’s privates.”
Ned frowned, blanching at the bizarre image this description put in his head. “What?”
Raven Decker cleared her throat. “A Mog.”
They all looked at her.
Raven ignored the gazes of the other men and looked right at the sheriff. “The blue meanies I was telling you about before. Remember? That’s what he’s talking about. The transmogrified. And where there’s one, there’ll surely be more.”
Ned looked around, again scanning the quiet street for signs of activity and was disquieted to see no one at all out and about. A short while earlier he’d glimpsed a few people strolling the street and patronizing various local merchants. Not nearly as many as usual for what was typically a busy time of day on Main Street, but at least there’d been some hint of normality. Now, however, the town looked deserted, as if some virulent plague had wiped out the entire community.
He tried telling himself the spooky absence of people might not actually be as sinister as it seemed. The explanation might be as simple as pedestrians retreating to interior spaces after hearing multiple noisy shooting events. It was possible people were lingering behind the closed doors of businesses on both sides of the street, just biding their time until they were convinced it was safe to venture outside again.
Ned sighed.
The theory was a reasonable one, but he didn’t quite buy it, at least not as something happening on a large scale. He didn’t doubt some of Snakebite’s citizens were hiding behind these doors just as he’d imagined, but the emptiness of Main Street felt too heavy to believe they were there in significant numbers. He feared that other, far stranger things might account for the current state of affairs here in town.
He locked eyes with Billy. “I want to see this blue thing you shot. Let’s go have a look.”
The deputy’s expression conveyed a distinct lack of enthusiasm for this idea, but he voiced no objection, nodding tersely instead. Raven Decker accompanied the lawmen as they started across the street. Quentin Brown remained behind, giving them a wave from the saloon’s porch.
Moments later, the three of them were inside the jailhouse, crowding into the narrow hallway for a look at the slain creature, which remained where Billy had left it, face-down on the floor.
Ned gave it a hard nudge with the toe of his boot, just as he’d done with the vulture outside. As in that case, there was no doubt this thing was deceased. The back of its head was obliterated from the several rounds fired into it from Billy’s rifle. In both cases, his tentativeness was an instinctive reaction to the alien nature of the dead things. He realized he hadn’t fully believed everything Raven had told him until just now, if only because it was all so far outside standard perceptions of reality.
In basic appearance, the thing was as she’d described it, short and roundish with hard-shelled flesh the color of the sky on a clear day. Squatting next to it, he cringed as he gripped the thing by its shoulders and flipped it over. The feel of its alien flesh against the callused pads of his fingers stirred queasy feelings. He jerked his hand away as quickly as he could. The sight of its ruined face made him gag. It wasn’t the exit wound damage that disturbed him. He’d seen enough of that in his time not to be shocked by it. What bothered him was the shape of its face and all those teeth, concentric rings of them that looked capable of shredding and devouring human limbs whole.
He looked up at Raven Decker. “This is a Mog?”
She nodded. “Yep.”
“And you’re sure there’ll be more of them around?”
Another nod. “A lot more. Without a doubt. They may be lurking in hidden places, perhaps waiting for a signal from their master, but they’re around. What happened here tells me similar things are probably happening to others in your town. The Mogs are restless and hungry. And they’re getting tired of waiting.”
Ned couldn’t help thinking of the attack on Angelina the previous evening. Based on the nature of her wounds, it was a fair guess she was the town’s first victim of these things. He got to his feet and went to the back to take a gander at Riley McKay. His deputy and the bounty hunter followed.
Again, the scene was just as Billy had described it. Bits of fabric were scattered all over the floor of the cell, undoubtedly shredded remnants of the dead man’s trousers. What remained of the area between his legs was an appalling, bloody mess.
Ned turned away from the grotesque sight and looked at his deputy. “I need you to ride out and get together a team of the sharpest shooters you know. Or, hell, anyone at all with a gun and a trace of backbone. Track down Trey Walker and have him do the same. Send them all to the Last Chance Saloon. The sooner they can get there, the better. If anyone needs extra convincing, tell ‘em their drinks are on me tonight.”
Billy snorted. “Dunno how good an idea that is, sir. Some of them boys are likely to drink you into bankruptcy.”
“I’ll take that chance. Step to it, son.”
The deputy snapped a military-style salute and hustled out of the building, the door banging shut an instant later.
Ned sighed. “Reckon we ought to get back over to the saloon. Let Quentin know what’s on the way.”
Raven smiled. “Not just yet.”
She came at him fast, seizing a handful of his shirt and pulling him close. He spluttered in surprise, but before he could say anything, her tongue was inside his mouth.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The one good thing about being double-crossed by the reanimated saloon girl was the vanishing of the pain from his cauterized eye socket. It went from nigh unbearable regardless of how much laudanum he used to simply no longer there in the wake of his own return from the dead.
Standing before the mirror in his exam room, Doc Richardson stared at the ragged gashes across his throat and shuddered in revulsion. This was the second profound violation done to his flesh in a matter of only hours. Though there was no pain from this wound either, he could still almost feel the rusty blade of the straight razor biting into his flesh. The blade was too dull to finish the job with the first slice. Charlotte had to hold him still and rip at his jugular several more times to get it done. Each cut was a fresh lance of agony. He remembered her laughing and seeming to enjoy the way he struggled in her firm embrace.
But now that pain was gone, too, just like the pain from his ruined eye.
He hadn’t been robbed entirely of sensation. His flesh wasn’t numb. Pain was something he could still experience, as he’d learned by experimentally pricking the tip of a finger with a needle. Through some process unique to life rejuvenation, however, pain from wounds inflicted prior to death did not endure after revivification. He was also no longer feeling the effects of the large amounts of whiskey and laudanum he’d ingested before being killed. Rarely in his adult life had he felt as terribly sober as he did now.
Richardson didn’t understand any of it. He’d died after bleeding out from the severed vein in his neck. That much was irrefutable. Now he was back and he wasn’t especially happy about it. Considering how much time he’d devoted to research in the area of life reanimation, the opposite should be true. Wasn’t this a validation of all the things he’d believed possible for so long?
He couldn’t bring himself to see it that way.
This restoration of cognizance and physical mobility did not, he believed, constitute a true return to natural life. He had no detectable pulse or heartbeat. Yet he could still think and feel things. He breathed in and out, his lungs seeming to function normally. This was likely true of other organs in his body. In the moments after reanimation, nearly all the components of his inner workings had resumed functioning. He did not, however, believe this would last, because this form of restoration was only a semblance of life.
In other words, he was still dead.
It stood to reason, then, that over time his organs would again cease to function, winding down once it became clear they were no longer actually needed. Dumb bodily instinct would surrender to reality. His physical form would start to deteriorate. He would start to decay, like any other corpse. The realization filled him with equal parts anger and sadness, but he was grateful for the removal of his pain, if nothing else. He figured he was owed some form of compensation for being so tragically misled by the devious whore.
She’d sworn no harm would come to him so long as he assisted her with her problem. He hadn’t exactly trusted her, but circumstances forced him to give her the benefit of the doubt, albeit grudgingly. Her supernaturally-augmented strength meant she had the advantage over him. Any attempt at resistance or slipping away from her was met with a stern response. She dragged him out of his office and down to the hardware store, controlling him as easily as a child tossing around a rag doll.
That was disconcerting, but at no point prior to the actual moment of betrayal did he truly believe she’d kill him.
He sneered at his reflection, shaking his head.
And to think you believed yourself a genius not long ago. You’re no more a genius than any drooling simpleton locked away in a sanitarium.
She killed him at the hardware store because that was where he performed the patchwork repairs on her neck wound. He packed the hole with a mixture of sawdust and clay, taking care not to overfill the space and make it even more difficult for her to swallow and talk. Once he’d finished that part of the work to his satisfaction, he used a blade to mold the external part of the mixture so it would match the curvature of her neck. The final step was covering his work with a cream-colored paint that roughly matched her skin tone. He took a grim kind of pride in the finished result, which looked nearly life-like. With the blood and tissue washed out of her long hair, it would be difficult for anyone to tell she’d suffered such a grievous wound. Of course, it was only a temporary fix at best, but Charlotte didn’t seem to mind, saying it only had to last through the night.
She kissed him to show her gratitude. Or so she let him believe. In reality, the kiss was a distraction. While their lips were locked, she grabbed the rusty straight razor from the table where he’d set the implements he’d used for the repair work on her neck. This happened in the back room of the store, where the owner of the place lay dead on the floor. When Richardson’s eye opened again minutes after his death, the owner’s corpse was also up and moving around again. He was an even more peculiar case, because he no longer seemed in possession of his normal faculties. He was more like a puppet than a man, saying nothing and automatically obeying Charlotte’s every instruction.
Grimacing now at the gruesome way the movement stretched the ripped-open flaps of flesh, Richardson lifted his chin and put his face closer to the mirror. Then he took a needle threaded with a length of suture and raised a slightly shaky hand to one of the bottom flaps. He gently poked at the skin with the needle, expecting a jab of pain, but felt nothing. He tried it again and got the same result. Interesting. While he could still feel pain elsewhere on his body, the same was not true for the wounded areas. There was some level of sensation, of pressure, but nothing else. Again, he didn’t understand it, but he was grateful. No pain would make getting through this a lot easier.
He had to grip the flap of flesh between the thumb and forefinger of his other hand to slide the needle in with better precision. Now that he knew it wouldn’t hurt, his hands didn’t shake. He was also able to work faster than would’ve been possible otherwise. Sewing the ragged flaps of flesh together took around twenty minutes from that point forward. By the time he’d finished drawing the sutures tight and snipping off the ends, the zig-zag pattern of slashes across his throat no longer looked so revolting. Under dim lighting, it’d look like nothing worse than an interesting scar.
Of course, he wasn’t dumb enough to rely on favorable lighting. Anyone who took more than a cursory look at him would see something wasn’t right. Especially in combination with the new hoarseness in his voice. Given everything else that had happened today, it wouldn’t take his friends long to figure out he’d been killed and rejuvenated. They would then quite understandably decide he was a threat. Extreme measures would follow. They were apt to dismember his body and set him ablaze behind the saloon, which was not something he desired, despite the undeniably bleak current status of his situation.
He needed time to talk to them in a rational way before anything like that could happen. To convince them he was still on their side and not under the influence of Doyle. That this actually seemed true could only aid his cause. Thus far he hadn’t heard the thing’s voice in his head, nor was his body possessed by any outside entity. This had puzzled him at first, but he soon decided the reason was obvious. The saloon girls were simple women not blessed with great intelligence. Because he had a stronger, sharper mind, he was naturally more resistant to outside influence.
A cravat would hide the wound nicely, he decided. He was known to wear one from time to time, so its presence wasn’t likely to arouse suspicion. The hoarseness might require some explanation. He supposed he could simply say he’d awakened sounding this way and vaguely attribute it to the traumas he’d experienced. Whether anyone would buy so flimsy an explanation, he had no idea. Time was running short, however, and the sooner he could win over his compatriots, the better.
