Dead in the West

by Joe R. Lansdale

The Indian took hold of the bars, and slowly, with a smile on his face, he began to bend the bars apart. He put his head through the space he had made and grinned at Matt.

  Matt dropped the shotgun, pulled his revolver, and put the gun to his own head. He cocked back the hammer. Closed his eyes. And hesitated.

  But just for a moment, then he pulled the trigger.

  Matt's hand was snatched away, and the bullet slammed harmlessly into the back wall of the cell, and Matt, his eyes wide open, saw that the Indian was in the cell—holding the revolver's barrel—smiling at him.

  The Indian snatched the revolver away. It clattered across the floor. The Indian opened his mouth. His teeth winked silver-white in the dim light made by the moon's beams struggling against the clouds and the rain, and the flickering lamp light.

  The Indian's jaws opened wider, and wider. There was a snapping sound as they came unhinged like a snake's. A loud hissing sound came up from the Indian's throat, and the head snapped forward, engulfing Matt from chin to nose.

  Matt screamed, and inside the great mouth it made the faintest of echoes as it rushed down the Indian's throat. There was a nauseating crunch as gouts of blood sprayed from either side of Matt's face.

  The Indian, who had been leaning slightly forward, straightened his head, and as he did, he lifted Matt— kicking—off the floor. The Indian shook his head like a dog worrying a bone, and Matt flopped like a wet rag.

  A last shake of the Indian's head, and Matt's face came off, and Matt splattered to the floor and slid until his head hit the far wall He was lying face up, and there was no face.

  His forehead had collapsed, and his ears seemed perched on the edge of a precarious cliff, like inept climbers about to tumble in.

  A ragged hunk of flesh poked out from beneath the Indian's big, sharp teeth, and with a quick gulping motion, it disappeared into the maw that was the man-thing's mouth. An instant later the Indian spat out a stream of Matt's teeth, like a sick man disgorging too many after-dinner mints.

  The Indian turned his bloody face toward his followers and smiled to see that Caleb was standing up, guts dripping from his belly, the wound showing backbone in its wet depths as well as a gnawed rib.

  Lifting his head to the ceiling, the Indian let forth a demonic howl that sent bloody spittle clear to the ceiling.

  The defenders inside the church heard the howl, and for a brief time they stopped ripping up the pews, hammering them over the windows and doors, and listened.

  Outside the zombies turned their heads in the direction of the howl as if it were a symphony, and this was the tune that they most wanted to hear.

  The howl went on for a long time, and it seemed to the Reverend (paused with hammer in hand, a nail between his teeth, the other hand holding a fragment of pew bottom over a barred window) that it was both a cry of mourning and triumph.

  This is how the defenders in the church prepared for the siege to come: They moved shotguns, rifles, and revolvers from the storage room, loaded them all, armed themselves with some, and placed the others down the pew rows, leaning them against or on the seats, ready to be grabbed up and used in an instant. The trick was to hold ground as long as possible, and if you had to back, you backed down that long aisle toward the storage room—the last stand—and there were weapons on either side of you as you went.

  Breaking up the first few rows of pews, they used hammers and nails in a woodpecker frenzy to barricade the door and the windows, and as the zombies had not made another move toward the church, it had given them a good length of time to prepare properly.

  Calhoun held a revolver in his hand. "I've never used a gun in my life—I can't abide them."

  "Now's the time to learn," the Reverend said. "And learn to like them. They will be your most important companion shortly, I'm sure."

  The zombies stood near the windows, looking through the cracks in the slats nailed over them.

  "What are they waiting for?" Calhoun asked no one in particular.

  "Their master," Doc said. "His word."

  "Doc," the Reverend said, "if there's anything you can tell us that might help, now is the time."

  Doc found a pew to lean against. "All right," he said. "I'm going to cut the details and tell this quick. I can't explain it, I'm just telling it. The Indian is a shaman, a magician. He put a curse on this town and accepted a demon into his body so that he might live after death and have revenge. The demon gives the Indian powers. This church will hold the zombies for a while, but not if he pushes them. And he will. The power of this church is uncomfortable to him, and he will send them to do his bidding. If they can't, then he himself will come. And the closer it gets to morning, the more likely he is to try himself.

  When daylight comes, his powers wane. We can find him then and kill him, and there won't be much he can do against us. Sunlight is like poison to him.

  "The zombies are like bees and he's like the queen of the hive. They are of one mind. HIS.

  They can be stopped by destroying their brains. The Indian's magic only works on corpses in which the brain survives. I don't know how or why. No more than I know why some potions might call for a toad's eye or a black moth's wing. But that's the way it is. Shoot them in the head. Crack their skulls good. That's the way to stop them."

  "And the Indian?" David asked.

  "Not the same. The demon controls his body and keeps him alive, no matter how worse for wear he becomes. The only way to stop him is with sunlight, or holy objects. But the person behind those objects must believe in them. If his faith falters, they'll fail."

  The Reverend put his arm around Abby's shoulders, "You're sure about all this, Doc?"

  "Hell no," Doc said. "You think I fight ghouls every day of the week? I read it in a goddamned book." He paused. "One other thing. This walking dead business—it's like a disease. One bites you, it's like being bit by a mad dog. Only worse—you become just like them. If you should get bit—I advise you to use the gun on yourself."

  II

  The town was dead.

  And the dead walked.

  The Reverend, looking out through a crack in the wooden slats watched them. Once, in San Francisco, he had seen at least fifty rats leave a docked ship by a docking rope, and this reminded him of that time. Red, hungry eyes and all. The zombie that in life had been Millie Johnson appeared at a slit in the window and looked in at the Reverend. She licked her lips with a thick tongue. A stream of stringy snot dangled from her left nostril falling nearly to her left cheek. She moaned gently, as if the Reverend were a prize steak she coveted. Finally, she moved away to prowl about outside the church in search of a better way in, and when she moved, the Reverend saw the Indian.

  He was in the middle of the street—walking—a crate on his right shoulder, and the rain seemed to part for him.

  Calhoun (who had been watching from the other window) turned away, fell to his knees, and began to pray.

  The crowd of dead parted for the Indian, and the Indian stopped near the church steps and set the crate upright. He tore the lid off and revealed the corpse to those in the church.

  Doc, now beside the Reverend, said, "His wife— what's left of her."

  The Indian turned to the corpse, took off the strand with the ears, and slipped it over the head of the body. He then kissed the blackened, lifeless lips and looked back at the church.

  Down the street came more dead. The sheriff, faceless, among them, and Caleb, dragging guts and limping along because most of his right ankle had been chewed through.

  The Reverend and the Indian seemed to lock eyes, and Jeb was surprised to feel a wave of pity wash over him for the red man. He too knew how it was to have loved ones taken away, only in his case it had been purely emotional. As far as he knew, his family (though surely his sister had been cast out of it) were alive and well.

  Now they were both here: he, God's representative for good, the Indian, the Devil's pawn for evil. Two forces about to meet head on.

  But the Reveren
d did not feel so self-righteous, and he could not look upon the Indian as purely dark and evil.

  The Reverend turned to look at Abby. She tried to smile back at him, but the muscles in her face would not quite make the effort. The Reverend was assailed by a sudden thought that made him feel even less self-righteous, if more joyously human. He wished he had taken Abby to bed and known her in the Biblical sense.

  It seemed only fair that two people who loved one another and were possibly going to die should have had that experience. Now, unless they survived, it would never happen. He had kept the laws of God, but not the laws of his heart, and he was uncertain if he felt better for having done so.

  He looked at David. He felt a kinship for the boy, as if he were his own son.

  The boy was sitting on a pew, holding a shotgun, his face smeared with dirt, his hair streaked with the same, and love went out of the Reverend and embraced the boy.

  David, perhaps feeling the thought, turned to look at the Reverend, and he tried to smile, managing it only a little better than Abby had.

  The Reverend turned to look out the window again. The Indian had not moved and was still looking in his direction, as if his eyes were deliberately tracking in on the Reverend's.

  The Reverend looked away. He broke open the shotgun for the fifth time to make sure it was loaded, then he checked his revolver for the fifth time also.

  He leaned the shotgun against the wall, put the revolver in his sash, walked over to Abby, and put his arms around her. "I love you," he said abruptly. "Come what may, I love you."

  She put her weapon aside, and embraced him, kissed him long and deep—a kiss of love, and perhaps farewell.

  For the moment of truth was about to begin.

  III

  The dead began to ease forward. Very slowly at first. They went up the steps and took hold of the bars in the windows and pushed their hands out to touch the wooden slats.

  Their fingers wriggled through cracks in the boards and gently tugged and pulled out again.

  The church defenders moved back and took position in the wide center row of the church, facing the bolted doors. The Reverend and Doc stood side by side, and just behind and to the left of the Reverend was David, and to Doc's right was Abby, and dead-center-rear was Calhoun, who was shaking so hard you could hear his stiff clothes wrinkle and his teeth click.

  Now the window nearest the door creaked as a board was pushed forward, the nails flying from it like bullets, and it fell to the floor. The Indian smiled at them, his teeth colored with blood. He took hold of the bars with his hands and pushed his face close and looked inside.

  "Boo," he said.

  Trickles of smoke curled up from the Indian's hands where he touched the bars, and he removed them quickly, little bursts of fire blazing in his palms.

  The Reverend looked at Doc. "Holy ground?"

  Doc nodded. "As long as it's holy to us, it will be holy to him. But they're outside now. It's when they come inside, and you're face to face with them. That's when our faith will be tested. And if his faith is stronger...."

  "We'll die."

  "Worse."

  The Reverend looked at his watch. Dawn was just a little more than an hour away. He had just returned the watch to his pocket when the zombies began to make their move.

  The door began to bulge, as if it were a great chest trying to take a deep breath.

  Boards across the windows cracked, and faces of zombies took their places, peeking in through the bars. One zombie gnawed madly at a bar, his teeth powdering out of his mouth as he did. Others wrenched and pulled madly at the barrier.

  And now big hands appeared—the Indian's hands, and though they smoked with contact, he jerked— with a nerve grating screech—the bars from the windows one by one.

  "Reverend?" David said. He had moved up close.

  "Yes," the Reverend said.

  "Been nice knowing you."

  "Don't count yourself out till the very last, boy. Trust in God and that shotgun. Just tuck it tight against your shoulder and aim for the head. Don't panic. Keep cool, and when you've got off your two shots, load again, backing if you have to. If you're being pushed too hard, forget the shotgun. Pull the revolver and shoot point blank. Got me?"

  "Yes sir."

  "David?"

  "Yes sir?"

  "I love you, boy."

  "I love you too, Reverend."

  "Jeb. You should at least call me Jeb."

  "Jeb."

  Zombies began to push their way through the windows all around the church.

  The Reverend lifted his shotgun to his shoulder. "Hallowed be thy name, oh Lord—and shotgun do your stuff."

  The Reverend blew the head off one of the zombies who was writhing through.

  The decapitated creature slid backwards out the window and out of view.

  And the siege began.

  IV

  Zombie heads began flying to pieces. The dead were pushing hard and fast, and at first the defenders kept up with them, dropping them as they came through, holding them back, but there were so many, and they were so constant, that soon the church was full of the things, and they were without fear, for they knew only hunger and the desires of the Indian.

  The guns of the defenders roared, and soon the church was constipated with the acrid smell of gunsmoke, and the weapons were hot in the hands of the defenders, but they continued to reload and fire, and it seemed as if they might hold forever.

  Bodies were piling in front of them like dog turds, and to their left and right, bodies draped the pews or clogged the narrow aisles between them.

  But there was still enough time to reload and keep the zombies weeded faster than they could overwhelm the defenders, and the Reverend felt hope and even thought for a moment that things would be all right—that they would hold until daylight saved them.

  Then the door burst open, splinters raining inwards, and zombies tumbled in like little pebbles before a great ocean wave, and the Reverend and Doc tried to hold the front, firing, reloading, but the wave was furious now, and they were surrounded and nerve-wracked, and each time they reached into their coat pockets for ammo there were fewer and fewer shells, and now it was necessary for them to toss their weapons aside (though the Reverend maintained his Navy in his sash) and grab the emergency weapons leaning against the pews.

  Sometimes the smoke was so thick a zombie was not visible until his dead face and clicking teeth parted the smoke cloud and pushed near the face of one of the defenders.

  Nearly all the killing now was done at point blank. Blood, and brains, and flesh fragments were thick on the floor. The Reverend and the others found their feet slipping in the muck, but still they held.

  Now there came a pause in the attack and the gunfire died. Cool, wet wind blew in from the storm, and the smoke clouds roiled and turned clear.

  The defenders saw now that the church was full of the dead. They were as thick as seed ticks on a cow's udder.

  Outside, at the foot of the church steps, stood the Indian. The fragmented church doors flapped back and forth in the wind like ragged bat wings, giving the defenders a now-you-see-him-now-you-don't view of the man.

  The Indian raised his hands to the storm, and little blue tendrils of lightning reached out of the sky and touched them. It was as if he were drawing power from the storm. He opened his mouth, and it grew wider and wider until it unhinged. The horrible, sharp teeth were visible and a sound like a death scream magnified came out of his throat and mixed with the howl of the storm, and the storm became more ferocious. The dead, as if charged by the Indian's storm charging, began to move en masse toward the defenders.

  For a moment (too horrible a moment) the Reverend saw them as people: men, women, and children. There was Montclaire, Caleb, Cecil from over at the cafe, others he had seen about town but who he could not put a name to, and they began to cry out to the Reverend in shrill, ugly voices, cry out for him, a man of God to embrace them and save their souls.

&nb
sp; "Pay them no mind," Doc shouted. "They are beyond saving unless the Indian dies."

  On came the dead, their voices a litany of names and entreaties, spoken time and time again.

  Calhoun turned to see two zombies coming down a row of church pews, pulling aside their truly dead companions, coming with a greater determination than ever before.

  Calhoun quick-shot the one in back, missed its head, and blew away the right shoulder of the one in front. He cocked back the hammer on the double barrel and fired again, this time hitting the nearest creature in the head, sending the top of its skull flying off in a spray of brains and blood.

  Calhoun broke open the shotgun and fumbled for two shells, trying not to look up at the approaching zombie and the others coming behind him.

  His pockets were empty.

  He looked up.

  The zombie was before him, teeth bared.

  Calhoun dropped the shotgun, tried to go for the revolver in his belt, but the foul breath of the zombie froze his hand for a flash-instant too long. The zombie's head dipped quickly, took a chunk out of Calhoun's face. Then, as Calhoun screamed, the zombie hooked both of his arms around the screaming preacher, as if they were lovers, and began biting plugs out of his face like a chicken pecking grit. Abby heard Calhoun scream. She wheeled around, saw the zombie holding Calhoun.

  "Sorry," she said, and just as Calhoun turned to look at her, she shot him through the head. He flopped in the zombie's grasp.

  The zombie turned his head toward her, as if to express his disappointment at the turn of events, but the only sound he managed, before Abby shot him through the right eye, was a grunt. The zombie and Calhoun melted to the floor.

  The dead were swarming like bees. The smoke was getting thick again and it burned the defenders' eyes. The roar of the guns had nearly deafened them. They could hardly hold the weapons up, their arms were so tired. And still the dead came on. Pushing. Driving the defenders back toward the store room, causing them to lose ground so fast they no longer had time to reload at all. They were forced to snatch up new weapons from the pews (and there were few left), fire them empty, and exchange them for others.