The Good, the Bad, and the Dead

by Bruce Campbell

  Potts waved the barber aside and grabbed a towel to wipe the soap foam off his cheeks. No sense bothering to finish the shave — no matter how many times he got his whiskers razored off, within an hour or so the stubble was back on his chin.

  He turned to go—and was confronted by Crooke City's sheriff. The feller was just a little man, dressed in an Easterner's bowler hat and a gaudy red satin vest with a big silver star pinned to it, but he carried a lot of firepower in his fist. A brand shiny new Gatling pistol, its six barrels pointed directly at Potts' chest.

  "Thomas Potts," the sheriff said in a clipped Boston accent. "You are under arrest for murder and robbery. Make one move and I'll fill you with lead."

  The red haze came over Potts' vision again. He should have been quaking in his brand-new silver-spurred boots, but instead his hand flashed down, lightning quick, for the pistol at his hip. The barber dove out of the way as flame exploded from each of the six barrels in the Gatling pistol in the blink of an eye.

  Bullets slammed into Potts' chest like the kick of a half-dozen mules. He could feel things tearing inside him, could feel his ribs splinter and his heart go burst. Then the floor rushed up at his face.

  He lay there, knowing he was dead. Funny that he wasn't laying in a pool of blood. He should have been bleeding like a slaughtered pig.

  The floor scraped by under his face as someone dragged him from the barber shop. The barber's feet and his pistol, lying on the floor unfired, disappeared from view. His head slid across the boardwalk, collecting splinters, then thumped down the steps. Then they dragged him through the mud and horse manure in the street. The muck gummed up his eyes and ears and he couldn't see for a spell, or hear much more than muffled voices. Someone pulled off Potts' brand new boots-damn his thieving hide-and someone else undid his silver-studded gun belt and went through his pockets. They stole his pocket watch and his money-everything but the gold tooth from the Chinese miner that he'd had made into a lucky charm to hang around his neck.

  Then they wiped the mud from his face and propped him up against a wall. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the sheriff standing beside him, holding him up. A bright light flashed and a puff of white smoke filled the air as a photographer took Potts' picture and a crowd watched. Then the sheriff laid Potts face-down on the boardwalk. One by one, the townsfolk came up to shake the little bastard's hand and slap him on the back for a job well done.

  Potts didn't see his fellow gang members anywhere. Anger rose inside him. God damn them for not coming to help him.

  Here he was lying paralyzed and near dead, and they'd just rode off and left him, the yellow-bellied cowards.

  Something thumped down on the boardwalk beside him. It was only when they rolled Potts over that he saw what it was. A coffin—one of the cheap pine ones they used for drifters and no-accounts who didn't have no kinfolk to pay for a proper burial. He was lifted and dumped into it on his back. Then they put the lid on top and began nailing it down.

  No! he raged inwardly. But it was no use. He couldn't move. Panic welled up inside him as he realized that he was about to be buried alive. He fought, he strained, he tried with every ounce of strength he had to move-but not a finger twitched. Everything went dark as the last nail went into place.

  A strange thought entered his mind then: he was already dead. It came home to him in that instant, as he lay inside the coffin. He couldn't smell the fresh pine sap of the wood because he wasn't breathing. He couldn't hear the beating of his own heart because it was already still. He couldn't bleed, because there was no blood left in him. He'd been dead ever since...

  Ever since he stepped out of the river, four long months ago.

  It all made sense now: the gun barrel choked with river-bottom mud; the bloating that he'd noticed in his skin; the scrip in his pocket that had turned to mush after hours or even days of being underwater.

  He was dead. But something was keeping his mangy corpse going.

  Just like the others in Gentleman Stan's gang.

  Potts was jostled to one side of the coffin as it was lifted into the air. They carried it a pace or two, and then stopped. Dimly, through ears that were filled with mud, he heard a voice.

  "Y'all don't have to bury this one, boys," it said. From the stench, Potts recognized the voice as belonging to Skinny John. "This feller has kin back in Butte-an uncle by the name of Stan Lucy. He wants the body shipped back there for burial. Jes' load that there coffin onto the next Iron Dragon freight train headed west."

  Potts heard a faint croaking sound and realized it was himself laughing. Luke had been right. You couldn't quit this gang. Even dying wouldn't get you out of it. Not when Satan was its leader.

  Potts had gone and sold his soul to the devil.

  ***

  Potts woke up with a start. Where was he? Then he heard the rattle of train wheels and the chuffing of a steam engine. In the confines of his pine coffin, he forced his hands up to feel his chest. His suit jacket and shirt were full of bullet holes, but the skin underneath them didn't have so much as a scratch. Laughing, he heaved against the lid of the coffin. It took some pushing, but eventually the nails squeaked free and the lid fell to the side.

  Potts sat up. He was in a baggage car filled with wooden crates painted with those strange scribbly letters that Chinamen claimed was writing. Potts wondered what they held. After all he'd gone through, back when he was with Pete and Jose and the posse chased him into the river, he figured the railway owed him. He climbed out of his coffin and pried the lid off one of the crates.

  Digging through the straw that filled it, Potts uncovered a large brass box embossed with a flower pattern. That looked promising. Could be the box held something valuable. He pried off the lid and looked inside.

  A skull grinned back at him, nested in a pile of bones.

  Potts dropped the box in disgust. Then he tried another. Same thing: human bones. He spat. Damn these Chinamen and their heathen ways. Why couldn't they just leave their bodies in the ground like decent folk? Why'd they have to go digging them up again and shipping them back home?

  Potts grunted. He was starting to sound like Jose, with all these questions.

  That reminded him." He didn't have any boots.

  In stocking feet. Potts padded to the door that connected the baggage car with the rear of the train and yanked it open. He jerked back just in time to avoid falling out. There was no car behind this one. The door opened onto rails that stretched straight as an arrow across a prairie that was on fire. Embers from the train's engine drifted back in a cloud of soot, landing on the dry yellow grass and sparking it into flame even as Potts watched.

  Even if he'd been inclined to jump out, even if he'd been inclined to risk jumping from a train that was moving quicker than a bull with its tail afire, the sight of the fire stopped Potts cold. That wasn't a natural fire back there. Somehow Potts just knew that those flames would hurt like Hell.

  He closed the door and tried the other end of the baggage car. This door led to a passenger car with wicker bench seats and soot-grimed windows. And not a single passenger except Potts.

  The door at the front of the passenger car was stuck shut. Potts slammed his shoulder against it six or seven times, but it refused to budge. Exhausted, he slumped onto one of the wicker seats and forced the window open.

  The eerie wail of a ghost-rock-fired engine drifted back on a cloud of soot. When it cleared, Potts saw that the train was rounding a bend. He looked ahead to see where they were headed. The landscape was strange here, not like any part of Montana Territory he'd ridden. It was kind of flat and washed out, with a sky that seemed to fold in on itself.

  Potts cursed in amazement when he saw the tracks ahead. They just...stopped. Damnation! The train was about to run off its tracks!

  Then he saw the ghostly figures out front of the end of the line. They were laying track at an impossible speed—as fast as the train could run. Sledgehammers blurred, ties were laid and rails were slung into pla
ce by men wearing baggy pants and straw hats. Tiny men, with pigtails down their backs.

  Chinamen.

  Ghosts.

  Potts was scared now. He slammed the window shut.

  He nearly jumped out of his skin as he saw the feller sitting beside him. Like the ghosts outside, he was a Chinaman with a pointy straw hat and pigtail. But he was more solid, more real. The feller sat beside Potts on the wicker bench, hands tucked into the sleeves of his robe. Then he smiled - and Potts saw the space where his gold tooth used to be.

  The cord around Potts' neck - the one that held the gold tooth that hung under Potts' shirt—suddenly felt as tight as a noose.

  "It weren't my fault you had to die!" Potts shouted. "We didn't have no choice. We couldn't leave no..."

  But there was a witness: the ghost who sat watching Potts with an inscrutable but unforgiving face.

  "Damn you! Take your tooth back, then!" Potts tore the thong from his neck and hurled it at the Chinaman. The cord sailed through the feller as if he really was a ghost, and the tooth vanished. When the Chinaman smiled again, the tooth was back in his mouth.

  "Thank you, Mr. Potts," he said in a sing-song voice. "I wish you a pleasant journey"

  "Where's this train goin?" Potts asked in a fear-strangled voice. He glanced out the window. "To Hell?"

  The Chinaman just smiled.

  Suddenly the passenger car was full of people. Potts looked wildly around and saw the workers from the Iron Dragon railway crew his gang had gunned down, Jose with his stocking feet and gut wound, members of the congregations that Gentleman Stan's gang had robbed—even the preacher who had called Potts' mother a whore so many years ago. Every man, woman and child who Potts had ever shot or knifed or beaten to death was here in the train car with him. They all stared at him in silence, like they were expecting him to say something.

  Potts leaped to his feet. "I'm sorry!" he screamed. "I apologize. I shouldn't have killed you. Not a single one of you!"

  But the nibbling voice inside Potts told him he didn't mean it. His apology was born of fear—not true regret. Potts sank to the floor, sobbing, and buried his face in his hands. The dead gathered around him, crowding him close, sucking up his air. Then someone stepped forward and laid a hand on his shoulder.

  "I forgive you," a soft voice said.

  Potts looked up into the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy: the greaser kid-the one from the burning church. The one he'd tried to save.

  Tried and failed. Potts had gunned the kid down, during his blackout. He didn't deserve the boy's forgiveness. Potts was a sinner-a miserable sinner who couldn't even save one scrawny kid's life. Yet the boy's dark eyes didn't hold one speck of recrimination.

  Suddenly, Potts realized that the thing that counted was that he'd tried to save the kid's life. It was the thing inside him-the thing that was causing the blackouts-that had done the killing. The same thing that was keeping Potts alive.

  Potts decided then and there that he wanted rid of it.

  "You'll die," the kid said.

  Potts shrugged. "It don't matter. I don't want to be a killer no more."

  The kid reached down and closed Potts' eyes.

  "Thanks, kid," Potts whispered as he sank into darkness.

  * * *

  When the freight train pulled into Butte, a gentleman dressed all in black with a double-pointed, ivory-handled cane came to claim the simple pine coffin that had been shipped west with the bones of the Chinese dead. Shouldering his way through the crowd of Orientals who were unloading the crates with Chinese characters, he directed two porters to lift the wooden coffin down onto the platform and open it up.

  When the lid was lifted, a foul stench arose. The two porters backed away in disgust.

  The gentleman stared down into the box, holding a sulphur-powdered handkerchief over his nose. With a critical eye, he inspected the body. The man inside the coffin wore silver-toed boots so tight they cut into his calves, and a shirt and trousers that had popped their buttons. His fingers were swollen to the size of sausages and were folded together on his chest. His mouth was set in a serene smile, and his handlebar mustache hung limp against puffy, whiskered cheeks. The stomach was equally bloated; when the gentleman prodded it with his cane, it deflated with a sour rush of putrid-smelling gas.

  One of the porters waved his cap in front of his face to beat off the smell.

  "Whew!" he said. "I thought this was the outlaw they gunned down in Crooke City. But I don't see no bullet wounds. And it smells like he was fished out of a river."

  The gentleman straightened and tucked his handkerchief into his pocket.

  "You are correct," he said. "There has been a mistake. This wasn't the body I came to claim."

  With only the faintest hint of anger ticking the corner of his mouth, the gentleman turned and strode away, muttering under his breath.

  The porter who had commented on the body scratched his head.

  "Did I hear him say there's plenty more where he come from?" he asked the other porter. "Now what in damnation do you suppose he meant by that?"

  Cracker Barrel off 181, exit 118, in Christiansburg, Virginia, was busy as usual. Shane and his wife, Michelle, and their 2-year old son, Caden, sat across from Shane's parents one dark Sunday morning before the latter were to return home.

  Shane finished the last of his chocolate milk just as a man wearing a cowboy hat and boots sat down at the table next to him. The waitress brought the man coffee, then he opened up the complimentary newspaper and started reading.

  Cowboy boots weren't uncommon in southwest Virginia, neither were hats-though both were far less frequent here than Shane's business partners in California thought. They thought Shane was surrounded by tobacco fields, tractor pulls, and farmers with double-barreled shotguns and beautiful daughters who mysteriously could never seem to find a ma. At least that was better than his other partner from Wisconsin— the one who had actually moved to Virginia thinking he was going to the "deep South" where everyone wore sheets on their heads and hated black people. Never mind the fact that his hometown was 20 minutes away from Janesville-the geographic center of the white hate groups.

  Shane laughed quietly at that. His misconceptions of Los Angeles and their freeway cell phone culture, or Wisconsin's beer and bratwurst culture, were likely no more accurate.

  All of them had worked hard to make a western-horror roleplaying game called Deadlands. It had consumed their lives for the past five years, especially Shane's, since he lived, ate, and breathed the stuff. The realities of the game industry, with its abysmal grosses, small audience, and slow returns, caused he and his wife no end of financial grief before things finally got stable. His partners had suffered much the same fate, but Shane had started it all and likely worried about it the most. These days their game was the third bestselling product on the market, and there were talks of fiction deals, movie and television rights, comics, toys, and even an anthology or three.

  There was a light at the end of the tunnel, but these things had a way of taking over. Shane's mind could switch from the latest Washington scandal to the "Weird West" he had created in an instant. The man in the cowboy hat and boots for instance...

  ***

  "Your cousin Jeff is still driving your old car," Shane's mother said, snapping him back to reality before his mind wandered too far.

  Shane turned his attention back to the present and raised his eyebrows. "Wow. I still can't believe he fixed it. That guard rail nearly split the engine in two." Shane stared back down at his plate. Visions of his wreck at four a.m. atop Coeburn Mountain still played in his head when he thought of the accident. He had been sick with fever and following his then-girlfriend Michelle home from college. Three and a half hours of staring at her taillights in delirium had finally taken over and he plunged end-on into a guardrail atop a very steep mountain. A few feet to the right and he would have driven right to the bottom.

  "Jeff says it runs fine. It even still talks." Mom snapped he
r son back to the present.

  Shane looked over at the man in the cowboy hat. "Hmm. Think what Jeff would have looked like in the Old West."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, with that dark hair, pale skin, and goatee, he'd make a great villain. Especially if you put him in a black gambler's suit with a bolo tie. Might just look like the Devil himself. And Valerie."

  "His sister?" Michelle asked. She had only met Shane's cousins once.

  "Yeah. What a dance-hall girl she'd have made. Tall, thin."

  "Is that where you come up with all those characters in that game of yours?"

  Shane nodded, then speared a few more bites of biscuit and gravy and shoved them in his mouth. "Guess so. That and just about everything else. Every movie I see or book I read gives me some idea."

  When Shane looked back up, Cracker Barrel was a completely different place. First, the customers weren't sitting, chewing breakfast after church or some college event with their parents. They were standing, gambling, drinking, and smoking around faro tables, roulette wheels, and a long bar stocked with liquor. Second, they were all wearing Western clothes. Bar girls, cowboys, and gamblers filled the "family restaurant."

  Shane blinked, but it all stayed the same. Curiously, he didn't feel as shocked as he should have. It was more a feeling of deja vu than total disbelief that reality had changed. His mom and dad were gone, so was Caden, but Michelle was still there, and she wore the long, red saloon dress she had worn at a convention to promote Deadlands a few years back. She twirled a long beaded necklace in her hands and nodded at her husband. "You'd better find some clothes." Curiously, Shane still wore shorts and his company staff shirt.

  Cracker Barrel was a unique restaurant in that it had an old-fashioned "general store" out front. They sold everything from country dishware to tapes of old-time radio shows-and, Shane remembered, a few bits and pieces of Western clothing. He excused himself from the table and headed out into the store area. It was little surprise for him to find the serape and low-cut "Clint Eastwood, Man-with-No-Name" style hat hanging just above the wooden toy guns, bows, and arrows.