Hope's End

by Mark Lukens

  “He’s lying,” Esmerelda said. “If we give him . . . give it what it wants, then that thing wouldn’t have any use for us anymore. It would slaughter us just as quickly as it slaughtered the rest of the town.”

  “You don’t know that for sure,” Moody said.

  “Yes, I do.” She looked at Billy who nodded in agreement.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Jed said. “We’re not killing David. We’re not giving him to that thing out there.”

  “So what are we going to do?” Moody asked.

  “David is the only thing protecting us,” Esmerelda told Moody, but she looked at the others to make sure they understood. “It’s not this saloon that has protected us, it’s not this building or the guns we have that have protected us. The only thing it’s afraid of is David.”

  “But the boy doesn’t know what to do with his . . .” Moody waved a hand in the air as he searched for the right word. “His power.”

  “There has to be some way we can fight back,” Jed said and looked at Billy for help. “You know more about what’s out there than any of us. Does it have a weakness besides David? Is there any way to kill it?”

  “I do not know if it has a weakness besides David,” Billy answered.

  “Can David kill it?” Jed asked Billy.

  Billy shrugged. “I believe David can hurt it, but I do not know.”

  “Well, we need to know more about that thing out there,” Jed said, still looking at Billy. “Tell us everything you know about the Ancient Enemy.”

  CHAPTER 31

  “The story of the Anasazi—the Ancient Enemy—is an old one,” Billy said. “A long time ago the ancient people lived in cities south and east of here. They built great cities and roads, some of them lived underground. But every one hundred years a demon came to ask for things. This demon could control the wind, animals, and sometimes even people. The demon was always changing its shape and it could inhabit dead people, making them alive again. The demon was very powerful and evil. The demon loved to kill and no one could stop it except one person. The demon would ask for things. Many in those great cities south of here thought the Ancient Enemy was a god at first, an angry god asking for offerings. They gave the god the offerings, but it did not appease the god. It always asked for more. If they refused to give offerings to the god, bad things would happen. There are stories told of whole cities being destroyed, of everyone in those cities being killed.”

  “I have heard of those stories, too,” Sanchez said. “My grandmother told me similar stories even though my mother and father didn’t like her talking about those kinds of things. She used to tell me about the Maya and other ancient civilizations, people who seemed to have vanished overnight, like they walked right into the jungle and left their cities behind that they had worked so hard to build.”

  Billy nodded. “Yes, the Ancient Enemy is found in many places.”

  “Where did it come from?” Jed asked Billy.

  Billy shrugged. “Some say the Ancient Enemy came from the stars when the Star People first came here. Others say the Ancient Enemy came after the Star People were already here. Some even say that this was the Ancient Enemy’s home long before the Star People came here and gave birth to man and woman; some say that we invaded its home, and every one hundred years we must make offerings and sacrifices to it so that we can stay here.”

  “And this time that sacrifice is a little boy,” Jed said.

  “It has always been a little boy,” Billy answered.

  Jed felt a chill dance across his skin. “What are you trying to say, that this happens every one hundred years? That someone like David is born and this thing needs to kill it?”

  Billy shrugged again and sighed. “Every one hundred years a boy is born. He will grow up to be a very powerful shaman, maybe powerful enough to kill the Ancient Enemy. The Ancient Enemy wakes up and it must kill the boy before he can grow up and become too powerful.”

  “So this has happened over and over again, every one hundred years,” Esmerelda said. “How far back?”

  Billy shook his head. “I do not know. A very long time.”

  “How do we fight it?” Jed asked Billy. “You say David is some kind of natural shaman, but he doesn’t know how to use his powers yet. Can you teach him?”

  “I am not a shaman,” Billy told him.

  “But I’ve seen you praying,” Jed said without thinking about it. He remembered Red Moon explaining that a person didn’t have to be a shaman or a priest to pray to their god.

  “What about your prayers and songs?” Esmerelda asked Billy. “Can they help?”

  “I believe all of our faiths together could help,” Billy answered her. “But I cannot be sure.”

  “What if we ran?” Jed asked, trying to steer the ideas back to practical ones. “What if we took David with us and ran? We could all stay together.”

  “Where would we run to?” Billy asked. “We have no horses.”

  “We could go to Smith Junction,” Jed told them. “It’s probably only a two or three days’ walk from here.”

  “And then it would follow us,” Billy said. “It would kill everyone in Smith Junction when we got there.”

  Jed hadn’t thought of that.

  “That thing out there would probably pick us off one by one before we even got close to Smith Junction,” Sanchez said.

  “You just don’t want to go anywhere near Smith Junction,” Moody said, sneering at Sanchez.

  “Sanchez is right,” Jed said. “That thing would just get all of us one at a time. Just staying close to David wouldn’t be enough. It hadn’t been enough for David’s mother, father, and brother.”

  “So, we can’t run,” Esmerelda said. “We have no choice but to fight. We just need to figure out how to fight.”

  “I’m sure everyone in town was thinking that last night,” Moody said.

  “They were taken by surprise,” Jed told him. “We know it’s coming now. And we know when it’s coming.”

  “Yeah, and we know why it’s coming,” Moody said, cutting his eyes to David for a second.

  David shrank back from Moody’s stare.

  “I know you said you’re not a shaman,” Esmerelda said to Billy, “but there has to be something you could teach David. There must be something you could show him. Anything might help.”

  Billy nodded solemnly. “I could try.”

  Jed watched the old Navajo—he looked grim, like a man about to face death. But Billy wouldn’t go kicking and screaming to his death, he would be resigned to his fate, welcoming the next world that waited for him.

  And Jed decided right there on the spot that he would do the same; he would fight like hell, but when the time came he was going to die with dignity. He’d seen too many men crying and begging when they met their end, and he wasn’t going out like that. There wasn’t much hope of him living past tomorrow morning, and he couldn’t see any other conclusion besides all of them dying for defying that thing’s wishes. But he would save a bullet for himself. Earlier he had promised to save two bullets, one for himself and one for David, but now that he knew that the Ancient Enemy was afraid of David, then at least he wouldn’t have to take David’s life.

  Maybe Esmerelda was right, maybe there was something Billy could teach David, or maybe David would instinctively know what to do when the time came. He remembered the way the tarantulas had scattered away from David, hundreds of them curling up and dying. There was no denying that David had some kind of power, maybe even as much power as that thing out there did. It was a longshot that David could beat that thing, but maybe it was possible.

  Jed looked at David. The boy still looked scared, but now his attention was on the saloon doors again. Jed turned and looked at the two doors. The setting sun was shining a golden-orange light around the drawn shades. Shadows were beginning to form in the back room of the saloon and up on the balcony above them. The light was sharp but warm at the same time, a fleeting thing as the night slowly took over outside.<
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  Sanchez was tense, his hand down by the butt of his pistol. He was half-turned in his chair, ready to spring into action.

  “You hear it?” Jed asked Sanchez.

  Sanchez just nodded, not bothering to waste a bit of energy on words.

  Everyone else was quiet, all of their eyes on the saloon doors now.

  “It sounds like a stampede out there,” Esmerelda said.

  CHAPTER 32

  Jed heard the sound more clearly now. It sounded a little like a stampede, but also different. There were footsteps out there, but they sounded heavy and slow, not running. More like a march of soldiers.

  Sanchez got up, and Jed was right behind him. Billy popped up with Moody’s shotgun in his hands and Karl’s .44 stuck in his belt.

  Jed hurried to the window to the left of the saloon doors. Sanchez was at the doors, and Billy was at the window to the right. Sanchez pulled the shade of one of the doors to the side so he could look out through the window, and then he froze.

  Even though Jed already had a pretty good idea of what he was going to see out there in the street, even though he had tried to mentally prepare himself, he still wasn’t ready.

  Every dead person in town was walking past the saloon like a big herd, all of them moving in the same direction, all of them heading down the street towards the church.

  Jed had seen the tracks in the dirt street this morning—he’d known what those tracks were; he’d seen the footprints and the drag marks. All of those tracks had been heading in the same direction: away from the church and to the other end of town, like everyone had left the church together, left the town and walked into the desert. It had been bad seeing those tracks and imagining the dead walking, but it was worse actually seeing them walk.

  The sun was still bright enough to illuminate the march of the dead. The dead kept their faces forward, their eyes towards their destination. Even the pastor was among them, at the head of the group, leading this macabre congregation back to the church. The pastor hadn’t turned towards the saloon as he walked past, hadn’t even looked their way or called out to them; he didn’t have that strange smile on his face now. All of their expressions were dead blank.

  Jed saw two boys near the back of the group; neither one of them had their legs anymore. They crawled along as quickly as they could with their forearms, dragging their torsos behind them with guts trailing and glistening with dried blood. They were Karl’s boys.

  A one-armed woman shambled not too far in front of the boys. She wore a plain dress that was stained with blood. Her blond hair looked sticky with blood, some of it matted to her neck and face. She stumbled forward, swinging her good arm wildly to overcompensate for the stump on her other side. That arm looked to have been torn off, leaving only ragged flesh and the splinters of bone sticking out like a broken tree branch.

  Even Karl was among the dead now, the newest of them. He stumbled along with his mouth hanging wide open now, like his jaw was distended when the tarantulas had poured out of his mouth. His shirt hung down from his waist in tatters from when Billy had cut it away. Karl’s torso was pale; the horrific slit in his abdomen crusted with blood and dried mucus. His belly was swollen again now, and there were things moving inside, pushing against his skin. A spindly spider’s leg poked out from the slit in his belly, and then another leg, but these legs were huge—they belonged to a much larger spider than a tarantula.

  It was almost too much for Jed to bear, but there were more sights to see. There was a headless woman who carried her head by the long hair, much of the hair tangled up in her fist.

  Other dead people limped along on one leg; others had chunks of their bodies torn away. One man was missing the skin and flesh on one side of his face, the bits of skull that were exposed gleamed in the sun like bleached-white paper.

  Three shirtless men with no arms walked in a line. There was a hole in the second man’s belly and a long string of his intestines had been pulled out and wrapped around the neck of the man in front of him. The third man had his intestines pulled out of his belly and wrapped round the neck of the second man like a leash.

  But every dead person in town wasn’t out there, Jed told himself. There were two people missing from this march through town—Rose and the cowboy. They were still upstairs in the hotel room. Maybe they weren’t out there because they were still tied to the bed, or maybe because they might not be able to walk very well because of the way they were twisted together. But Jed couldn’t help thinking that maybe the Ancient Enemy was saving them for something special when the sun came up.

  Jed heard an intake of breath beside him. He turned and saw that Esmerelda had come to stand beside him. He’d been so focused on the dead outside that he hadn’t even heard her walk up beside him.

  She didn’t meet his eyes. It was like she couldn’t look away from the show the Ancient Enemy was putting on for them outside.

  It’s giving us one last warning, Jed thought. One last spectacle to remember throughout the night, one last incentive to kill David.

  Where was David? He wasn’t beside Esmerelda.

  David screamed just as Jed turned away from the window.

  Moody was behind David with a hunting knife up to the boy’s throat. He pulled David back with his other arm around David’s shoulders, pulling him back deeper into the saloon past the table and chairs.

  “Don’t come any closer,” Moody said. “I’ll slit the boy’s throat.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Jed dropped his hand down to his Colt .45, ready to draw.

  “Don’t,” Moody warned. “Don’t any of you move.” He had the Bowie knife up to David’s throat, the edge of it digging into David’s skin a little. Moody’s other arm was around David’s upper arms and chest, holding him close.

  “What are you doing?” Esmerelda yelled.

  Moody’s face scrunched up with emotion for just a second. He looked like he was on the verge of a sob. “You saw what’s out there. We can’t defeat that. No way. Neither can this kid. We’ve only got one choice—we need to give it what it wants.”

  “Be careful,” Esmerelda said. “Moody, just stay very still and think about what you’re doing right now. You’re about to cut a child’s throat.”

  “You think I want to do that? You think I want to kill a child? I don’t. But there’s nothing else we can do.”

  “We can fight back,” Jed said with his hand still hovering over the butt of his pistol.

  “No, we can’t,” Moody snapped at him. “And this Indian boy isn’t going to save us. Billy’s not going to train him in one night to become some kind of medicine man to defeat . . . whatever that thing is out there.”

  Just keep him talking, Jed thought. He’d been in negotiations like this before, and he knew the longer he kept the attacker talking, the better his chances were with either reasoning with him or finding some way to get the jump on him. “The boy has power,” he told Moody. “You have to see that. You saw what happened with the spiders. If David hadn’t helped you, those spiders would’ve been all over you. All over both of us. You might have died if David hadn’t helped you.”

  Moody’s face scrunched up again as he teared up. He pulled David back even deeper into the saloon, closer to the blankets laid out on the floor. “I don’t want to do it, but it’s the only thing we can do to save our lives.”

  “Just let him go,” Esmerelda said. “We can talk about this.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” Moody snapped, holding on to David even tighter, the knife’s blade digging in just a little more. “Let me ask you a question, Esmerelda.”

  “Anything.”

  “Have you seen the future? Have you laid out the cards and seen our futures? Have you seen our future in your dreams?”

  Esmerelda didn’t answer.

  “Because you can’t see it,” Moody said. “You haven’t dreamed about it because we don’t have a future, do we?”

  Esmerelda still didn’t answer.

  M
oody sighed, shuddering at the same time. He stopped moving backwards with David, standing his ground at the edge of the blankets now. His eyes darted from Esmerelda to Billy. “Drop that shotgun, Billy. And take Karl’s pistol out of your belt nice and slow.” He looked at Sanchez and then at Jed. “You too, Sanchez. And you, marshal. I want your guns on the floor. Use your left hand to unbuckle your gun belts.”

  Jed and the other two hesitated.

  “You kill David and it will be instant death for all of us,” Esmerelda warned Moody.

  “You don’t know that,” Moody answered in a soft voice.

  Keep him talking, Esmerelda, Jed thought. Keep him distracted.

  “I’m serious about this,” Moody said as he looked back at Jed. He held David even tighter. It was impossible for David to move without Moody cutting into his throat. “Drop your guns right now. All of you.”

  “Okay,” Jed said. He was running out of ideas. “Just stay calm.”

  “Now!” Moody yelled. “Right now. Three . . . two . . .”

  Before Jed even started to unbuckle his gun belt, he heard the sound of metal sliding out of leather, then a gunshot. In that same instant a hole opened up in Moody’s forehead. His body went limp instantly, the knife slipping from his hand and then dropping to the floor. David bolted away from Moody.

  For a few seconds Moody stood there, his face slack, his eyes glazed over already. A trickle of blood leaked out from the bullet hole in his forehead along with a tiny wisp of smoke drifting up.

  The back of Moody’s head had exploded with the gunshot, the blankets behind him sprayed with a splattering of blood, hair, and bits of bone and brain. Some of the gore dripping down Moody’s back plopped down onto the floor right behind him. And then Moody collapsed like some invisible strings holding him up had just been cut. His legs splayed out and he fell forward, his arms straight out to the sides, his face hitting the floor with a sickening crunch. The back of his head looked like bloody hamburger with jagged shards of skull sticking up through the hair.