"Little Willy Harpe. Put your hands up, you are under arrest."
Harpe smiled at that and stood to his feet. He was shirtless and appeared to be rubbing some kind of long black tattoo that spread out from his armpit to cover his neck and chest. McParlan eyes narrowed when he saw the bulbous creature seated under Little Willy's armpit and that the tattoo was actually the thing's tentacles buried in his skin. "My God…is that what I think it is, you maniac?"
"Do you like it?"
McParlan grabbed for his Balrog and had the weapon aimed at Little Willy's head faster than the Customs Officers had time to react. Little Willy spoke a single word before McParlan could pull the trigger and it was as if he were turned to stone. He struggled to fire, wrapping both hands around the gun and squeezing with all his might.
Little Willy Harpe lowered his forehead against the barrel of the Marshal's gun. "I once watched a man get fed into a threshing machine. He went in feet first, and it took awhile for the gears to grind up something vital enough that he died." Little Willy looked up at McParlan and said, "Go ahead and imagine what that's like."
McParlan shrieked and flopped around in the dirt. Harpe looked down at him and said, "Welcome to Golgotha."
McParlan's chin was low against his chest but he managed to summon the strength to lift it and spit at Little Willy's face, but his mouth was too dry, and all that came out was a rasp of air.
Little Willy signaled to Hank Raddiger to bring the beams. Hank struggled to drag the enormous metal X across the dirt toward them. Hank dropped the beams and bent over to try and catch his breath. He set a drill on the ground next to the X and placed four bolts beside it. "Here you go, Elijah," he panted. "Just like you said."
"You need to get better underlings, Little Willy. This one's too stupid to remember your name."
Harpe lifted McParlan's head by a handful of hair and said, "You lack faith, my son. Use this time to reflect and repent your sins." He walked over to the X and waved to the others, "Bring him."
Hank and the two Customs Officers hoisted McParlan into the air and carried him over to the X. They laid him down on top of it and spread his arms and legs along the tops of the crossed beams. McParlan started to struggle and Harpe said, "You will lie STILL." The Marshal went limp, and Harpe said, "But you may talk. And you may scream."
"Don't hold your breath, you piece of shit," McParlan said. He watched Harpe bend over to pick up one of the thick bolts with a pointed steel tip.
Harpe notched the bolt to his drill and gave it a spin, listening to the motor whir with satisfaction. Harpe bent over the first beam and pressed the tip of the bolt against McParlan's right wrist. "You ready?"
"Go to hell."
Harpe gave the trigger a light squeeze that sent chunks of McParlan's skin flying in every direction.
"Remember you can scream," Harpe said.
19. Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned
Claire sat on her front porch, watching the sun hover over the mountains. She rocked back and forth and did not look at Jem as he came through the front door and stood by her. He dipped into his pocket for a pinch of sweet weed and tucked it into his lower lip, working it there until there was something to spit, but as he bent over the side of the porch Claire said, "Don't you get any of that filth on my steps. And I don't want it splashed all over my yard either."
Jem walked over to the other side of the porch and spat over the railing into the dirt. He wiped off his mouth and presented her with a sealed envelope that contained Old Man Willow's letter. He'd put a second letter with it that told her a bag of pure severian was under the floorboards in his old bedroom. He told her to look in the same place he'd hidden all of his secret stuff as a boy.
In his letter was a set of careful instructions on how Claire could find and hire a bounty hunter that could be trusted to dispatch two well-known politicians like Walt Junger and Billy Jack Elliot. He warned her not to reveal their identities until the bounty hunter agreed to the price and told her to keep half of the money until the deal was finished. Or, she could just let Royce Halladay read Old Man Willow's letter and he would probably take care of it for free.
"What is this?" Claire said.
"Some interesting reading in the event I don't come back. If I do come back here and it's already opened, I'm gonna be madder than hell at you."
"That stopped being a concern of mine years ago, Jem." Claire's blonde hair blew gently in the breeze and she looked up at him with eyes that were bluer than glaciers, but colder. "After all of this time waiting to hear if you were living or dead, you really think I give a rat's ass if you're mad at me?"
"No, I guess you wouldn't have a reason to."
"Then what happens when you do come back? You go running off into the same territory where daddy got killed. Then you almost get blown up by some goddamn maniac and his kid. And now you're running off to try and get yourself killed one more time. I don't love you anymore, Jem! I ran out of it when all you left me with was worry and anger."
"I understand," he said. He put his hand against the railing and looked out at the meadow. "You know, I had a dream about you last night. About the house, just like when we were little kids. He was in it too…if you know who I mean. You were just a little girl." He took a deep breath and looked down, trying to keep his voice steady, "Ever since the time I was too young to know better, death has been coming to this very door to snatch up the people I love most, Claire. First, it was the illness that took Ma. Then that native boy who I shot. Then that bastard Elijah Harpe came here and almost killed you and Frank. You want to know why I ran off when I did? Why I keep doing it? You'll laugh at this, trust me, it's a riot, but maybe if I keep running, death will follow me away. Maybe it won't come here looking for me anymore."
"That's the stupidest thing I ever heard," Claire said. She wiped her nose on her sleeve and said, "You always were stupid."
Jem smiled and nodded, "Yeah, now that I said it out loud, I guess it does sound kind of silly."
"Why are you going out there? Why does it have to be you?" Claire said. "Hasn't this family given enough already?"
"Jimmy McParlan's a good man, Claire. A lawman. The kind I ain't seen in a long, long time. Reminds me of someone."
Claire stood up out of her chair and wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his chest. He kissed her on top of the head and said, "I'll be back soon. You'll see."
There was a pretty woman hanging laundry on a line between two trees in her front yard along Pioneer Way. She smiled at Jem when he rode past and he tipped his hat to her and said, "Hello, ma'am."
He had to navigate around a crowd of miners on Pioneer Way. They carried their lunch pails and laughed loudly as they chattered back and forth, talking about their lives and work. Farther ahead, Jem passed a second group heading in the opposite direction, going home after a long shift. Their faces and clothing were black with soot.
One of those men was going home to that pretty woman, Jem thought. She would draw him a bath and he would scrub while she made dinner. There would be children racing in and out of the wash room, excited to see him. He might have just busted his ass doing thankless work for twelve hours a day in the pits of hell, but at the end of it, he came home to his family, Jem thought, and I am jealous.
Workers were still shoveling out the blast site surrounding the Proud Lady. The bar itself was quiet, with some of the patrons leaning on the porch rails to chat with the workers. A few of the men said hello to Jem. He stopped at Anna Willow's office, but no lights were on, and he decided to keep going.
The front door to the Sheriff's Office was shut. There had been no trace of Walt Junger or Billy Jack Elliot since the day the Marshal left. There was a thin man standing near the security gate, smoking a hand-rolled cigar. Doctor Royce Halladay looked up at Jem from under his hat and said, "Well, well. I was beginning to think that you had a change of heart."
"What are you doing here, Doc?"
"I assumed that we were going
to mount a rescue effort."
"Who told you that?"
"A gypsy woman read it for me in tea leaves and chicken innards."
Bart Masters led two destriers around the security gate while lugging a handheld mining device over his shoulder. "Don't listen to him, Jem. Anna told me when I went to pick this contraption up from Adam Wells."
"What the hell is that, Bart? You planning on drilling them to death?"
Bart unslung the laser's barrel and held it like a rifle. "That boy Adam is one mechanically inclined son of a gun, boy, I'll tell you. When it's time for me to show you what this puppy can do, just stand back and find something to hold onto." Bart looked over Jem's shoulder and said, "Didn't you bring anybody?"
"Claire's husband Frank wanted to come, but I told him he needed to stay and protect her. I think he's patrolling the front yard with a shotgun as we speak."
"Christ, we're gonna get crushed," Bart said.
"Jem and I have been through this type of thing before, young Bart, so look on the bright side," Halladay said. "You will probably be the first to go."
They set out into the wasteland. Halladay inventoried the ammunition in his belt and checked the spare battery packs in his vest. He removed the rifle from his saddle and worked the action several times then inspected both of his pistols by spinning the cylinders to make sure there was a bullet in each chamber. Halladay had a small Mantis revolver tucked into the front of his waistband, and when he showed it to Jem, Jem nodded approvingly and showed him the one hidden under his shirt.
Halladay drew a knife from his shoulder holster that was the length of his forearm and he held it up in the sunlight to inspect the edge. Jem shook his head at the sight of the weapon and said, "Guess we're covered in case a sword fight breaks out, then."
"I am a practitioner of the surgical arts, young man. One never knows when he will encounter a tumor that needs to be removed."
Both men looked over at Bart Masters. Bart confidently patted the mining laser's barrel lying across his lap.
"Is that really all you brought?" Halladay said.
"Just wait and see, old man. Just wait and see."
Halladay laughed out loud. "This is quite a crew indeed. A sick old man, a miner with a homemade space laser, and an outlaw with eyes as blue as the oceans of Luatica."
"Can't you be serious for just one moment?" Jem said. "There's at least four men down in that canyon aiming to kill us, one of who has some sort of unholy weapon powerful enough to make us shoot ourselves before we even get there."
"Forgive me, Jem," Halladay said. "I will try summon the appropriate dread at our imminent demise."
"Whatever," Jem said. "Just forget it."
They rode across the grey flatland in silence. The long row of mountains ahead seemed to reach high enough to scrape the sun. The first trail up the mountain was blockaded. "What the hell?" Bart said. "It was fine last week."
"Expect all of the other paths to be blocked off as well, save for the one at the far end of the canyon. It makes perfect sense to force us up that hill," Halladay said.
Bart Masters rode ahead of them and Royce Halladay waved for Jem to wait for a moment. "I do apologize if my attitude is distracting you."
"It's nothing, Doc. I'm just wired pretty tight right now. I don't like these odds."
"I have been a dead man walking this planet ever since that awful night so many years ago. Not a single day passes that I do not ask myself why the hell I'm still alive. This is my twenty-second year with a fatal disease, Jem. It is like God prefers to see me suffer." Halladay leaned close to Jem and said, "So forgive me if I do not pay much attention to the odds. And perhaps, as I ruminate on it a bit, I come to wonder if the Lord kept me alive all this time just so I could be at your side at this particular moment."
"That's a long way to come just to be outnumbered and outgunned, Doc."
Royce Halladay's eyebrows raised. "Pardon my correction, sir, but while there have been many occasions when I have been outnumbered, I have never once been outgunned."
Hank Raddiger lifted his binoculars to check the path, but all it did was give him a sharper view of the thick brush he was hidden under. He propped up on his elbows, keeping the assault rifle steady in one hand and the wireless remote device in his other.
He was alone on the overlook, the sole guardian of the beaten up wagon that the Customs Officers left in the center of the path. It was the only access road to the canyon that hadn't been blockaded, and whoever tried to get close around that wagon was in for a hell of a surprise, Hank though. The assault rifle was for whoever survived.
Except for Jem Clayton.
Clayton was not to be harmed under any circumstances. If Hank's first round hit Jem Clayton, the second round was going into his own mouth, Hank thought. To hell with trying to explain a screw-up to Elijah or Little Willy or whoever the hell he thought he was.
Hank heard something and froze, seeing a lone figure come walking up the path. The man was unarmed except for a large industrial device strapped over his shoulders with a long hose connected to it. Was it a flamethrower? Hank wondered. It looked like something farmers used to spray down their crops.
Bart Masters paused to look over the wagon and the rocky cliffs on either side of it. He even looked in the area where Hank was hidden, but gave no notice of seeing him. Hank raised the wireless remote and held his breath, counting the number of steps the man would have to take before he pressed the detonation button.
Bart flipped a switch on his backpack and it came alive with a growling, vibrating noise like an engine. He aimed down the length of the hose at the wagon and squeezed a trigger underneath it. There was a high-pitched whine and a red circle of light appeared on the surface of the carriage.
"What the hell?" Hank whispered. The red circle started to smoke and the side of the carriage melted and caught flame. The light painted the interior of the carriage, directly over the stacks of plastic explosives hidden within.
The explosive's sticky linings turned to ash and the fuses and wires connecting them sizzled as they melted. Hank tried to slam the button on the remote in time but nothing happened. He cursed and threw the remote aside, lifting the rifle to aim at the head of the idiot with the backpack. He was about to pull the trigger when the sole of a boot crushed his hand against the ground.
Hank lifted his head to scream but a large blade flashed in the sunlight and all he saw was a lean, ghostly looking man holding the knife. The ghost smiled cruelly and plunged the knife in as he whispered, "Ave atque vale."
Jimmy McParlan could not tell if it was dusk or if the clouds had just rolled over the sun momentarily. He wondered if his eyesight had weakened to the point that he could no longer tell day from night. He could only take small, shallow breaths and felt excruciating pressure on his chest from his suspended shoulders. Both shoulders had already popped out of their sockets, and his arms were numb to the point that he no longer felt the pain of the steel bolts driven through his wrists.
The steel bolts in his feet still hurt, especially when he moved and they ground against his bones. The buzzards had returned. Jimmy McParlan panted like a dog and waited for death. Death was slow in coming.
Something burned brightly, high above him. He managed to lift his head enough to see flames lighting the mountainside. Whatever was on fire creaked as it rocked back and forth until finally it tumbled over the side of the cliff and smashed against the rocky walls. It fell like a dead phoenix to the desert floor.
There were figures high above on the overlook, standing where the wagon had fallen from. McParlan grunted unintelligibly and closed his eyes, worried that now he was hallucinating.
The Customs Officer sprayed the edge of the cliff with bullets, and Bart Masters dove behind the ledge. He swung the laser barrel around and charged it, about to fire over the ledge when Jem shouted for him to wait.
"They've got McParlan down there, nailed to a goddamn cross or something. Hold your fire. That ship down there
is full of fuel. If it ignites, you'll burn everything in that valley."
Bullets struck the cliff again and Halladay lifted his hand to shield his face from the rock spray. "What do you propose, then? Shall we hurl stones at them?"
A voice called out from the canyon below, "Jem Clayton! Can you hear me?"
Jem laid flat and inched close to the side enough to peer over. In the light of the burning carriage, Jem could see Little Willy Harpe standing next to a large metal contraption with McParlan crucified in the center of it. "You son of a bitch!" Jem shouted.
Harpe shrugged and said, "Don't be like that, Jem. I just want to talk to you."
"Send up the Marshal and you and me can talk all night."
"Well, I would but he doesn't seem to want to do much more than hang around down here. How about you come to me and we'll see what we can do?"
Jem tried to make out where the Customs Officers were firing from, but they were hidden in the shadows and smoke. "Set McParlan free and I'll come down."
"COME TO ME NOW!" Harpe's voice boomed.
Jem squeezed his eyes shut and braced himself, waiting to fight the irresistible command. Nothing happened. Jem opened his eyes and saw Bart Masters stand up and head down the path into the valley below. "Bart! What the hell are you doing?"
Masters ignored him and quickly began navigating the winding trail until Jem lost sight of him. "He's the next one going on the cross, Jem," Harpe said. "Unless you walk down here on your own like a man."
Royce Halladay stood up and started to follow Bart Masters. "Doc! Don't listen to him. Try and fight it."
Halladay stopped and turned around. "That is exactly what I intend to do," he said. "Now are you coming with me or not?"
They walked down into the canyon together, past the wagon's burning embers, past the rifles of the Customs Officers. As they got closer, Jem could see Jimmy McParlan's head hanging against his chest. The Marshal's head was hanging down so low that his hair covered his one eye. Firelight cast shadows across his naked, battered form, and Jem could not tell if the old man was breathing or not.
Guns of Seneca 6 Box Set Collected Saga (Chambers 1-4) Page 18
