Rapid City, page 2
The Challenger
It took me a few seconds to realize that it was quiet. All the conversation had fallen off. The roar of the silence broke through to me. It's odd like that, ain't it? How the absence of sound can call you up out of your thinking sometimes, faster than actual noises can. This was bad though. Stupid of me. The old me would not never had been caught like that.
I looked up following the directions of the stares and heard the low clacking of new boot heels as they made the wooden steps that came into the saloon.
He was known to me, but that didn't mean I was known to him. I had seen him fight more than once. Perhaps four times total if I recalled correctly. Gunfighters were so rare now as to draw attention. I drew my share of sideways glances and small murmurings as I said. And handling my own business was nothing new for me. I did it when I had to. My guns talked for me.
John Baxter, that was the gunfighter’s name, walked in and straight to the bar. I would have liked to have thought that he had not seen me but I knew he had. He was working way too hard to not look my way. He had used his peripheral vision to check me out same as I would've. And I was caught completely off guard. I had not heard him soon enough. Not his horse coming, nor whatever it had been that had tipped off the bar crowd and caused them to fall silent. The only edge that I had if there was trouble, and in my world there always was, was that he did not know I was unprepared. And even as I thought those thoughts I prepared myself. And as far as I was concerned we were back on even ground just that fast.
In those seconds I had freed up my pistols, changed my leg position and looked over the room completely. I ended by moving my body slightly to present a smaller target. Seconds spun out. John ordered a whiskey and kept his back to me. I considered shooting him dead right in the back. I'm not above it. Better dead, no matter whether you were right or wrong in the way you got it done.
The crowd was absolutely silent and drawn back away from us. Making room. They had seen a few gunfights in the Blood and Breakfast. Even so two gunfighters in the Blood and Breakfast at the same time had to be something unheard of in a while. Most likely the whole town had been aware that something might be up, maybe from the second I come into town. Certainly before I knew.
I looked at my plate regretting that I'd saved the bacon for last as it now sat untouched on my plate along with the biscuits sopped in egg yolks. There were at least three flies having a feast. It pissed me off, but it would not keep me from eating it later. I told myself I should have shot him in the back just for the pure fact that he was making me miss my breakfast. And I would have to eat it cold later with fly shit that looked an awful lot like black pepper after we were done with our business. John turned slow from the bar. Dinner in the Blood and Breakfast was done being served.
"Come to kill you, Robert," he said easy. His eyes were gray, hard and flat. A tight smile played at his small mouth. His lips were pursed. His hat sat upon the bar where he had thrown it.
"So I thought," I said aloud. I moved not at all. My own blue eyes gave away nothing of my emotions. My hands did not shake.
Silence fell and held. Just the sliding and shuffling of the feet of the townsmen, the whores and the travelers alike sliding backwards from what they considered to be the fighting zone. I was thinking I had waited too long, that I should have shot him in the back, when a twitch of his shoulder told me he was going for his gun.
The noise was deafening. I emptied half a clip into him from under the table top. Half a modified clip was fifteen bullets. And the first four or five took the bottom edge of the table off as they flew at John.
The thing about a gunfight is that it slows down time somehow. You ask any gunfighter and they will tell you that's true. I watched as my first bullet plucked at his shirt front before his own gun had completely cleared leather. My second bullet blew his collarbone apart just a few inches from where it joined with his neck, but his gun was out and spitting fire. It was about then that two things happened.
The first was, I felt a sudden heaviness in my chest. I didn't have time to puzzle that before one more bullet found its mark and I saw John become dead. This one midway in his chest. Showing only as a tiny hole but it was like the light went out of his eyes all at once. When those two things were done it finally registered in my thoughts that I had been shot too. Hit, not killed. I was pretty sure not dead or dying. To prove it I forced myself to move and I was able to move just fine.
The smoke hung like a curtain in the air. The smell of hot metal, gunpowder expired, hung in that same air.
Someone said... "They is both hit... Lookit!" Real low... Like a whisper.
In the Alley by The Door
John finally had the sense to fall down. His gun clattered to the floor just before John himself did.
Time slipped by. I wanted to see how bad I was hit. I had no real idea. I finally stood from the table and looked down at myself. A small neat hole just below my shoulder in my upper chest. Red blooming around it like a small, spring flower. I was hurt, but not bad. I had been shot worse.
"Get the Doc," I said to some skinny, slat-sided whore crouching in the shadows. She looked scared to death or almost. She lit out, seeming glad to, and I walked over to John where he lay sprawled on the floor and put one more bullet right between his eyes. Best to do it soon. I've seen a body start turning before the life is really even done leaving it. Those bastard Zombies can't wait... Or the Dead-disease. Whatever it is that turns them. A little dog hiding under a nearby table yelped when I fired and scrambled, nails clicking on the wood floor, trying to secret itself better. I reached down and took John's guns and personals, gold mostly, set them on the table, grabbed one booted foot and dragged him towards the back door.
I kicked the rear screen door open, dragged him bumping down the steps and rolled him over towards the trash cans. I'd done my part and now my chest was beginning to hurt. I felt like sitting down all at once. There was a little bubbling in the lung on that side. I could both feel and hear it. It was an odd thing. And I could feel the bullet in there, wedged tight, burning. I didn’t relish Doc. Mulberry operating but the alternative was unacceptable. And I had come through much worse. Much worse.
I was turned to go back in when the Zombie got me. He must have been crouched down by the garbage cans in the shadows and I hadn't seen him. He had me by the wrist growling and snarling before I could shoot him. I got my gun up and put one through his head as fast as I could, hoping the ricochet didn't take off my hand. He let go and laid down with one leg twitching and his back arched stiff for a second. Then he was dead for good, Amen.
I stood for a few seconds wondering what the hell had just happened. But, I knew what had just happened. I had lived through a goddamned gunfight at the old age of fifty two just to get bitten by a ever-lovin' friggin' Zombie. I stood a few seconds longer thinking of how unfair that was, remembering the conversation from inside while I had been eating. A Zombie had been coming around... Going through the trash... but then the craziness of the situation hit me and I had to laugh. And laughing was how old Doc Mulberry found me.
He looked from the Zombie to my wrist dripping blood on the dirt of the back alley.
"That from the fight or the Zombie," he asked me.
"Zombie," I answered. I tapped lightly at the bullet hole in my upper chest. He nodded.
"Ain't that a bitch," he said.
I laughed. "Ain't it... Ain’t it just..."
Rapid City Two: The Beginning
~Rapid City~
They had come from north of the border. Two men and two women, and they had picked up others as they had come. They were twenty when they came to the river where it had cut into the floor of the desert and spread out nearly a mile wide.
Near the spot they had decided to build there was a set of rapids that stretched for nearly a mile. So they had named the settlement Rapid City, half joking, but it had stuck as they had worked to build their small city. And city was a kind name. Rapid City, six months later, had still been no more than a collection of ten wood sided structures, and the river had moved more than a mile away. Wetlands had formed where the river had been and they seemed to be slowly turning to swampland.
Ten had died over the last few weeks. The fight, and that was what it was, was taking a toll on them.
On this day the sun hung straight up in the sky. Dust coated the buildings and the odor from the swamp seemed to hang over the little town like a veil. Gary sat on the front porch of the church and looked out at the little town. His wooden chair leaned back into the wall, feet on the railing. And in the daylight it seemed unreasonable that there could be any such thing as the Un-Dead. It seemed, in fact, completely impossible.
~In the Beginning~
The first few deaths they had not been prepared for. The first had been Gary's friend Daniel. They had buried him in a small cemetery they had built a mile from the town to bury a few wanderers who had found the town in a half dead state and not lasted long after they did manage to find it. Daniel was the first of their own they had found a need to bury.
They had buried him in the early morning after finding him dead in his bed. It had been a horrific scene. They had thought quite possibly it had been wolves. The windows were open to let in the night breezes. The wolves, they had seen them out by the swamp, could have easily come through the window. Daniel had been savaged. His throat ripped open. They had buried him in early morning and by that evening twenty six wolves had been dragged back into town. If there were any left out by the swamp they had hidden themselves well.
Then evening had come and the whole world had changed. It was not far into the night when the noises had begun out at the cemetery.
In the desert noises carry a long way. They had been unsure of what the noises meant at first. What they had decided was that there should have been no noise at all out there in the darkness. Six of them had taken their rifles and gone out into the darkness, following the noise to its source.
When they had arrived at the cemetery the grave had been opened. But not just opened. Dug up, and dug up from the inside outward. There was no way they could deny it, although they did until a few nights later when Daniel himself had come back.
It had been deep into the night. Deep. Gary, Mitch, Sam and Freddy had had the watches. The watches, at first, had been to watch for the never ending gangs of murderers and thieves that seemed to be flooding out of the north. But by that night the watches had consisted of nothing more than hanging around in the church building, which was their newest and best built building, and maintaining a presence just in case someone happened into the town in the middle of the night. No one had in the last few months.
There was no denial after that night. Daniel had come from the shadows, stinking of the grave, and made a grab for one of the rotting corpses of the wolves that they had meant to drag back out to the swamp earlier in the day but had forgotten about. Gary had seen him clearly. He had turned to the others, but it was one of those things where everyone had just happened to be looking in the right direction at the right time. No one had missed it. No one had only partially caught it. When he had turned to them they had been turning to one another. The only thing that hadn't happened was nobody had thought to go for a weapon until a few minutes later. And even then they were not sure exactly what they were doing.
They had not caught him that night, but they had caught him the next night when he had killed and was eating Barry Evers in the storage shed behind John Sampson's place. And that had been a bad deal, Gary thought now.
Gary had shot him twice. Nothing. He had not even stopped trying to eat Barry's face. Mitch had then stepped up and blew his head off.
Rapid City had no doctor. There had been a veterinarian at the first, but he had run off with Freddy's wife and that was the last he'd been seen. Together, Gary and the others had looked over the body. And body it was, and had been for several days. Daniel had died and had somehow not died at the same time. That was the first time Gary and the others had talked about Zombies. Some of the travelers through Rapid City had talked about them, it was the hottest topic, usually. It was supposed that the north was infested with them. But they had never seen one, and they had never discussed them until that night.
~The Swamp~
As it turned out the Zombies were infesting the swamp. They had buried Daniel for the second time only to find Freddy dead the next morning. His throat ripped open the same way Daniel's had been, and so Mitch had argued for taking his head off. It was the right, the smart thing to do. To make sure he didn't come back. But they had not. They had not wanted to sink to that level of barbaric depravity. Sam had argued against it, and it had not been a hard thing to get behind. But that night when the noise had started once more they had grabbed their weapons and made for the cemetery
They had found him nearly free of the grave. And there had been more with him. Six other Un-Dead had been standing close to the grave. Waiting for him.
Before the killing was over they had gotten two of those waiting and Freddy. They had dumped all three into the grave. Mitch had taken a round pointed shovel and severed their heads. It had taken forever and had been about the most gruesome thing Gary had ever seen. But he had been unable to take his eyes off the scene.
~A Day in the Sun~
Gary tipped his chair forward and stood from the chair as the legs came down on the wooden decking. A rider was approaching on the main street. Gary loosened his pistol from his holster. It was one of those nylon webbed ones. They were all wearing one kind or another now. This was surely not a Zombie but they were down to ten. They were vulnerable on many fronts now. Not just from the undead, but from the living too who seemed to have no problem killing each other for next to no reason at all. A dog. A vehicle. A horse, and horses were becoming major items, but mostly women. Women were the keys. Men could not procreate, women could. True, they could do it with any man, but a man could not do it without a woman at all. Gary had seen many men killed over a woman.
“Right there will do,” Gary told the man in a clear strong voice.
The man stopped the horse in the street but stayed on his mount looking across the short stretch to Gary where he stood on the porch. They were down to ten now. Two men and eight women. It was like the Zombies only wanted the men. Or maybe wanted the men out of the picture.
“Heard this was a peaceable town,” The man said.
“Was... Ain't now... Now it's a plague town... You best ride on,” Gary told him.
“I ain't heard of no plague,” The man said. His eyes were like diamonds looking out from under the brim of his hat. He wore no gun, but a wire stock machine pistol protruded from a scabbard off the saddle.
“You heard of this plague... They call it the plague of the dead... The Un-Dead... Zombies. Call it what you will, you heard of it or you ain't real... And I can tell you they are real and we got them right here... You don't even want to think about spending no time here at all.. We been losing a man a night lately...” Gary shifted, rocked on his heels to take the tingling out of his legs. He had sat in the chair too long. His left leg was nothing but pins and needles. He kept his eyes on the man who shifted in his saddle slightly.
“Ain't real,” He said.
“Uh huh... Got a little cemetery outside a town... Rode right by it.”
“Uh huh... Saw it,” The man agreed.
“Up until a few weeks ago that cemetery was empty. Go tell those dead men zombies ain't real.” He stepped forward and spat over the rail into the dust.
Silence held. The dust seemed to settle more fully onto the town. At last the man spoke.
“Any way I'd like a drink... Wouldn't deny a man a drink, would you,” he asked?
“No I would not. And I will tell you what you do. Point that horse due East out of town. You'll hit the river and fresh water about a mile out... Ain't been no fresh water here in months. Drink your fill.”
His eyes seemed to blaze from the brim of his hat. “I believe I'll remember you, Friend.”
“Good. You do that. Then remember I saved your stupid ass by sending you on your way... Ain't no way to fight these bastards...” He spat over the rail once more. “We expect to be dead inside of a week... Got about seven hours until full dark. That will put you up in the hills... Ain't heard of trouble from the Un-Dead up there.”
The standoff lasted a few more minutes in the hot sun and then the man turned his horse and rode away to the East without another word.
~The Evening~
Donita waited in the shadows of a building staring at the lights in the church building. They were forty now. Strong. And she was their undisputed leader.
She had undergone many changes on the journey across the wastelands of the west. Her body had finished its changes. Her mind had come back to her. And her authority had come more fully to her.
