Free Summer Reading: Badlands: Chapter 2

SHADOW FALLS: BADLANDS

Read the Shadow Falls: Badlands PROLOGUE and CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

Eternity passing through his mind, the Stranger stared at the pathway to his obvious freedom before finally reaching toward it. What had appeared before his eyes was no illusion, for, while he’d been sleeping, someone had unlocked his cell.

He rose from his bunk, the ebbing fear still in his subconscious from a dream he could not remember now, though whatever it had been had left behind a dark and sticky residue of uneasiness in his mind. His foot moved closer, shuffling across the wooden floor and that’s when it hit him, a flash of white tearing through his mind like lightning.

The flash had taken him back, accompanied by the sharp crack of rifle fire and the cordite fresh in his nostrils. In the wavering heat of midday, ahead marches an infantry advancing toward them across the plain, bayonet at the ready. Behind him the rapid cannonade of artillery roars defiantly, strafing the enemy front line, hurtling shattered bodies into the air.

He turns to the soldier next to him, yet another face from his past, another ghost from a time buried in his mind, a green recruit picked up just three weeks previous while his regiment had been on the march. The rookie’s face pale, stricken with fear, unlike the face of the other soldier he’d seen in his mind the day before, a face of a predator eyeing its prey.

The Stranger remembered both men quite well, diametric opposites of one another. The recruit with his shock of red hair and crooked mouth had expelled a certain sense of panic from the first second the Stranger had laid eyes on him. This moment in time, now unearthed from the shifting sands of his memory, was no different.

From the recruit’s throat comes the breathlessly spilled words of the 23rd Psalm.

“The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want; he maketh me lay down in green pastures…”

His neck stretched so far, the muscles coiled so tightly, that each vein is clearly visible through the skin. Which is exactly where the lead ball fired from a Mexican rifle strikes him, just below the chin, felling him with no remorse. The green recruit’s body hits the ground bringing with it another flash in the Stranger’s mind, one that brings him back to his place in his cell standing halfway from the bunk to the door.

Just a random visitation to one of the many horrors stored inside the crumbling vault of his mind, the Stranger reckoned. One of those buried away under so many nights of alcohol-fueled anesthesia that somehow burrowed to the surface time and again.

The Stranger shook off the memory as if it were rain on his sleeve and stepped toward the cell door to see if that also was some kind of figment of his weary mind. As he swung the door open, listening to the iron hinges creak, one other thing became very apparent to him and it made him freeze.

There was not a single sound coming from outside.

Even in a small town such as Sagebrush, there were horses and foot traffic, buckboards and wagons transversing the main thoroughfare with reasonable frequency. There were children laughing and raised voices of the drunkards stumbling out of one of the town’s saloons.

But not today.

Today there was only the stillness inside the Sheriff’s office. With every step across the wooden floor came a creak that seemed deafening by contrast. Reaching out, the Stranger opened the door and stepped outside, taking large droughts of hot, fresh Texas air into his body. And as he filled his lungs his eyes caught on the fact his ears hadn’t lied to him. Save for the very slight breeze, he was completely alone on the street outside the jail. Nary a horse, nor man, woman, child or dog were in sight or sound. Not even the shambling sonance of the one saloon in town lucky enough to have a piano drifted through the air. The loudest thing the Stranger could hear was his own breathing which became more rapid as the anxiety of silence closed around him.

Run, he thought. You’re out. Escape before anybody sees you.

Standing in the dirt behind the town jail was the wooden skeleton of the gallows he’d been sentenced to hang from on this very morning.

Run! His mind yelled at him.

“Hello!” his voice called out.

Stupid, his mind yelled again. You’ll regret that as you dangle from the rope.

“Hello!” he called out again, more urgently.

And as no answer came, he felt the knot of panic squeeze tighter in his chest. Finally, he began to walk down the thoroughfare, his steps feeling tentative given his lack of a weapon for protection.

Protection from what? His mind asked.

Deep inside there was a sense of what that answer may be but the Stranger shut it out of his mind. A figment caused by too much time in the stir. He stepped past the edge of the jail toward the livery when he saw them.

Feet.

Bare and still the dirty feet lay toes down in the dust, ending in a pair of brown-panted legs. Where those legs went were beyond the Stranger’s vision, obscured by the back of the building.

The Stranger ran toward them, his heart pounding, suspecting full well what he’d find. Two years wearing the uniform of light infantry had given him the opportunity to see many a pair of unmoving feet laying in the dirt, upon battlefields carved into the scarred earth. Hardly ever did any of those feet move again, more often than not, left to the maggots and vultures that would soon follow.

Even before turning the corner the buzzing filled his ears. Flies had descended upon what was left of the man, lighting upon the tacky surface of his blood-soaked back. What was left of his clothes had been shredded as if…

…attacked, thought the Stranger.

He turned and ran. Heading toward the Saloon everyone just called “The Gulch”. It was Sheriff Overton’s favorite watering hole and the most likely place to find the rotund drunkard. With each step the Stranger scratched into the dirt, it became apparent the Gulch was inexplicably silent.

The smell caught his nostrils before he even pushed past the saloon doors into the dank building. His first step allowing him to catch the gaze of a man draped across a nearby table—on his back, arms spread and dangling off the edges. Blood dripping from the mouth of the corpse, running down its chin, falling into a sticky puddle on the floor.

From one end to the other, the Gulch was strewn with bodies. Some obviously felled where they had stood. Others, given the scarlet trail left behind them, had been dragged to their final spot on the floor.

The Stranger turned away, squeezing his eyes shut as his mind flashed back to a Mexican afternoon. He had stumbled upon a similar massacre, unparalleled in its brutality until now. The scene in his memory populated by young faces—boys, girls…

Oh no. Immediately his thoughts rushed to the sound of a bell. One he’d heard every day he’d been in that jail, tolling once in the morning and again in the afternoon.

When he turned upon his heel toward the door, his eyes fell upon the body of Cherokee Sue sprawled, head down, across the wooden staircase. Her eyes glassy. Her throat laid open from ear to ear, the wound still glistening in the dust-filled rays of sunlight reaching in through the Gulch’s front door. With her body upended, her dress had fallen open, revealing, in death, the modesty she had withheld from the Stranger in life.

As fast as his feet could carry him, the Stranger ran toward the schoolhouse, along the way spotting the dead left behind by whatever had caused this. Heart pounding, he pushed himself though every fiber in his body told him to turn and run the other way—that what he would find would not be pleasant.

Turning the corner past the bell post, his feet caught upon something—a dog lying dead, its face covered in foam, legs splayed unnaturally in separate directions. The Stranger’s hands were skinned from the dirt but he didn’t wane. Back to his feet he sprang, ignoring the stitch in his knee from his awkward fall. With a trembling hand, he pushed open the schoolhouse door.

To find it empty.

Of course, he thought. It must have happened at night. Momentarily, a sense of relief washed over him for he had expected to find the young bodies of Sagebrush’s children torn and shredded, given to the same horrible end as Cherokee Sue and the rest of the dead back at the Gulch.

At night when all the children were tucked safely in their beds…

His throat dried to dust. Not a child’s cry or plaintive wail could be heard. And as the Stranger went from house to house, building to building, he found them—faces, bodies shredded, most rendered unrecognizable by any human standard. The horror that had visited under the cover of darkness had come with teeth bared. Its hunger not discriminating from young or old, helpless or innocent.

In the afternoon he found Overton, face down in the livery, sometime after the flies had. The Sheriff was sprawled naked across a girl who looked no older than a teenager. Without a second thought, the Stranger took the Sheriff’s gun, lifting it carefully from its holster while turning away from the slashes dug into Overton’s back.

It was the girl’s eyes that stared at him as he stood in the doorway and turned back one last time. The stunned look on her young face, searching for an answer that would never come.

The Stranger had been looking for a horse or any realistic way out of town and had found nothing. Though his mind refused to wrap itself around what he was seeing, it was apparent by the scarcity of slaughtered foal that whatever indeed had come in the night wasn’t particularly interested in anything equine. Whatever had come did not use bulk as the sole measuring stick for choosing its victims.

Perhaps all the horses were stolen, the Stranger thought, which led him to the more reasonable idea it had been men—bandits—who had done this. In his experience, there was no question men were certainly capable of such bloodshed and brutality.

But then why had I been saved? He wondered yet again. He had certainly not met all of the people of Sagebrush but all those he had, and plenty he hadn’t, had been among the victims. He searched for anybody. Any sign of life but located only corpses. As he stood in the alley between the general store and the town’s hotel, with only empty windows looking down upon him like vacant eyes, even Kentuck, the rail-thin deputy had been found, or at least most of him had.

Even though he had been beaten by the deputy, the Stranger sat and wept for Kentuck, a sheer chill clutching his spine once the finality had hit him.

And as the Stranger stumbled back to the street, he fell to his knees in the dirt, squeezing his eyes shut as his fists balled in the dust. His breath hitching, he could not make a sound, finally arching back his head and letting out a scream enshrouded in a torment beyond reason. He felt as if his jaw would rip from his face as his mouth stretched open further to let out his anguish for in the entire town of Sagebrush, he was the only one left alive.

Perhaps they left you so there’d be someone to take the blame, he thought.

Immediately his mind raced from one long-forgotten face to another. Enemies from the past, those causing him to live a life of running and hiding like an animal, traveling only under the cover of night. One of them had finally caught up with him, he was certain.

Which was even more reason to get out of Sagebrush as soon as possible.

Even more so than you being surrounded by nothing but dead folks? His mind asked.

The Stranger looked over his shoulder toward the west. The sun had hours ago reached its zenith in the sky and was headed toward the horizon. He had four to five hours of daylight left at best. Without a mount, covering the kind of distance away from here that would make him comfortable in that little time would be a problem. Having no horse meant limited supplies and with oceans of sand and scrub between here and everywhere else he began to think his prospects were looking very slim.

The air around him began to noticeably stink of death and it weighed heavy upon his mind, crushing his sanity.

“Better than staying here,” he said to himself, making the decision to leave Sagebrush as quickly as possible.

Frantically, he searched again for a horse and as he turned the corner past a house on the edge of town, he heard it. Tied to a pole was an aged grey and brown burro, its back sagging to a deep curvature. Upon the creature’s face sat the most fixed and blank stare he’d ever seen on an animal. A stare he remembered his father had a name for.

Dumb.

Careful were the steps he took toward the animal who didn’t even seem to notice his approach. Burros were slow but many a time ornery in the Stranger’s experience. As he came up to the beast and ran his hand along its neck, the burro startled and turned its lumbering head toward him slowly. It was at that point the Stranger realized the burro had not heard him approach.

“Great, you’re deaf.” He spoke and the burro didn’t react to his voice. Considering the condition of the scarred animal, the Stranger wasn’t sure if its disability was a product of age or years of abuse. He’d once seen a man take a red-hot poker to the ears of a mule that, after becoming deaf, didn’t startle too easily anymore.

The burro stared impassively at the ground as the Stranger untied him. At first the curmudgeonly animal didn’t want to move but after a few sharp tugs on its rope, it clomped off, following its new master away from its old home, one which it would never return to again.

By mid-afternoon the flies had descended on Sagebrush in thick, ungodly high-pitched buzzing black-winged clouds. Upon the ground and in the air the scavengers were approaching. As he exited the general store, carrying an armful of canned goods, he noticed three vultures on the ground standing in a circle, squawking loudly as if trying to decide where to feast first.

To the burro, the Stranger affixed an old saddlebag, its ends hanging low to the ground given that said bag had been designed for a stout horse and not an old, sagging creature like the one he’d been stuck with. On one side he loaded the satchels with jerky, coffee and as much food as he dared burden the animal with. On the other he packed as much ammo as he could find—two horns loaded with black powder, a small box of bullets and a can of chamber grease. Behind the counter he’d found a pair of brand new Colt Dragoons in their original holsters, the kind meant to be strapped around a horse’s neck. In the service the Dragoons had been called “Horse Pistols” for this reason. Given the size of his burro, the holster belt hung slack. It would have to do. Lastly, the Stranger strapped four canteens of water over the burro’s already overloaded back. He then placed a mostly new hat upon his head to protect him from the beating sun.

It was getting late and the itch was great to put miles between him and this town full of nothing but the dead. He pulled on the burro’s lead but the animal continued to stare at the ground.

“C’mon, damn you stupid thing. Let’s go!” He growled and in the stillness of the air his voice boomed. A chilling thought ran through the Stranger’s mind. If whatever had committed the atrocities he’d witnessed today was still out there, he’d do best to leave quietly.

He pulled on the rope but the stubborn burro wouldn’t move.

“Now!” The Stranger hissed and when the burro refused to budge, he balled his fist and struck the beast right between the eyes, drawing back his hand from the pain he felt after connecting with the thick bone of the burro’s skull.

No matter. The burro would not move. Angrily, the Stranger shook the beast to no avail, falling exasperated to his knees, catching his breath in angry sobs. Frustrated, he struck out at the dirt on the ground with his hand.

To the scorching summer sky his eyes went. It was not his intention to fight the animal to the precipice of nightfall. Letting out a long sigh, he got to his feet and unstrapped one of the saddlebags, reaching in to find a piece of jerky, which he held out under the nose of the obstinate beast.

The burro first licked, then took the entire piece of jerky into its mouth, chewing in loud wet bites that sounded like a butter churn.

“C’mon,” the Stranger said leading the burro down the thoroughfare of the dead town last known as Sagebrush.

As night began to fall, the Stranger became worried. He looked over his shoulder across the dry plain, back in the direction of the town he’d left only hours previous. It had long ago vanished in the haze of sun beating down upon the ground, swallowed up in the rippled heat. He pushed himself and the burro, whom he’d taken to calling “Blue” due to the unchanging glum look on its face, to go further at the cost of another piece of jerky. They continued racing the setting sun until reaching the slight crest of a shallow ravine—a river run dry, chased away by the brutal Texas summer. It was here in this dry shoal the Stranger decided to stop for the night.

He built a small campfire using scrubwood and shared a meal of more jerky with the burro. Briefly he thought of tying Blue up to prevent him from escaping but given the nature of the beast, and its sheer stupidity, escape seemed very unlikely. Instead, Blue stood just outside the rim of firelight, closed its ancient eyes and fell asleep on its feet.

As the fire dimmed and the Stranger laid back to rest he stared up at the stars—a pitch-black field illuminated with millions of glowing pinpricks in space. He was a free man, but again he was on the run. This time not only from the enemies of his past, but from something he couldn’t understand—a fear. One so gripping that his heart shook in his chest like thunder. And though every fiber in his body was worn to exhaustion, he could not bring himself to shut his eyes for he was truly afraid of what lay behind the closed doors of sleep.

Finally, his will to fight it any longer gave in to his body’s desperate need for rest. His slumber came quickly, pulling him downward into the full depths of unconsciousness.

The respite was brief though, as the Stranger shot bolt upright, eyes open. But this time it was not the hammerstrike of nightmare that had awoken him but something that even asleep, his ears had caught.

Slowly, he turned his head blindly to listen again. And that’s when he heard it.

The dried snap of desert brush under someone’s boot—a footstep coming toward him in the darkness.

*****