Deadlands--Thunder Moon Rising

by Jeffrey Mariotte

  McKenna stepped down from the wagon and stretched. He was standing beside it, arms reaching toward the sky, when Cuttrell gave a cry of alarm. A leafy branch of an oak tree had stretched out and encircled his neck. By the time Tuck saw what was happening, the colonel was being lifted out of his saddle and McKenna was rushing toward him. The lieutenant sprang off a boulder and into the air, grabbing the branch with both hands. His weight pulled it down, and it released Cuttrell. McKenna let go with his right hand and drew a big knife. He hacked at the branch, which writhed in his grip like a kraken’s tentacle. It fought back, whipping him around, but McKenna kept stabbing and slashing. Cuttrell drew a pistol, as did Tuck, but neither man dared to shoot with the thing swinging McKenna this way and that.

  Finally, in what Tuck guessed must have been its death throes, the branch lashed out three times. On the last, McKenna lost his grip—or it let go of him—and went flying. The branch slumped beside the trunk like a relaxed arm, but McKenna slammed into a rock. Johnson reached him first, then Kuruk.

  When Johnson turned back to the others, his cheeks glistened with tears. “He’s gone,” the soldier said. “Lieutenant’s gone.”

  “Yup,” Kuruk agreed. “Hit his head pretty good.”

  “Get him on the wagon,” Tuck suggested. “I’m not leaving him. Who knows if this place will look the same next time we come through.”

  “You mean if we come through,” Delahunt said. “Trees are attacking us, now. What else’ll get after us?”

  “There’s no telling,” Tuck said. “But I have a hunch it’ll only get worse from here. Anybody want to turn back?”

  “Y’all need me,” Johnson said. “Sergeant and I are the only ones know how to operate the battlewagon.”

  The thunderous voice and strange lights had continued from the higher reaches, though Tuck had hardly noticed them while McKenna battled the animated branch. He worried about those, but even without them, he worried about being trapped here in the dark, surrounded by not-men and who could say what else? They were here, though, and he meant to see it through.

  He pointed toward the lights. “That’s where we’re headed,” he said. “No telling what the trail might be like from here.”

  “There must be a way,” Johnson said as he climbed into the cupola. “You find it, and I’ll follow it.” He slammed the hatch and worked the controls, and the wagon lurched forward.

  As Cuttrell swung up into the saddle again, an eagle swooped low, just past his head. He yanked his pistol and tried to lead it, but it flew in a zigzag pattern, gaining and losing elevation while staying close by. Just enough moonlight struck its wings to keep it visible.

  “Don’t shoot!” Kuruk shouted. “That’s Little Wing!”

  “It’s a damn bird,” Cuttrell said. “Or worse.”

  “No, it’s her! She wants us to follow!”

  “Bringloe?” Cuttrell asked.

  What makes me an expert? Tuck almost said. Instead, he shrugged. “Kuruk’s usually right about these things, seems like.”

  Cuttrell gave in. The eagle circled around until they were all in motion again, and then it struck off along a route none of them had noticed. This way offered an easier path for the wagon, which clanked and sputtered and whistled its way up into the canyon. It was noisy, but the racket from above was enough to nearly drown it out. At least, Tuck thought, anyone in the vicinity of whatever was making that noise—the voice that boomed like cannon fire, and another sound, sibilant and sinister at the same time—would be unlikely to hear them coming.

  If they were headed toward what he was starting to be afraid they were, a single battlewagon might not be enough. A dozen would be better, but he wouldn’t be entirely comfortable unless he had fifty or more on his side.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  “Some of you,” Montclair thundered, “have already eaten of my queen. My Sadie.” He made a sweeping gesture toward her, standing naked behind him on a dais formed from the bones of the dead. Thunder Moon’s skull rested on an altar of bone and skin. Before him were gathered more than a hundred of his abominations. Many of them blended together, black against black, almost invisible in the shadows except when his witch fire roiled overhead. Those of a more human cast were easier to distinguish. At the mention of Sadie’s name, the abominations chittered and hissed or shouted their appreciation. “From her, you gained the strength to capture this one and bring her to me.” This time he used the long-bladed dagger in his left hand to indicate Little Wing, who still wore the loose blouse and long skirt she’d had when they had delivered her.

  “When you feast upon her heart,” he went on, “you will become more powerful still. Stronger, fleeter of foot, more cunning, more deft in every way.” And more easily controlled than ever, he thought but did not add. “You will fulfill your promise to Thunder Moon, and your promise to me, who has earned his mantle by dint of blood and fire, terror and death. You have been allowed to feed to your hearts’ content, to prey upon any beast or being you happened upon, human or otherwise. Once you have consumed the heart of one so gifted, your needs will change, as will your abilities and your mission. No longer will you be confined to these mountains and their environs. No more will the resting place of Thunder Moon’s skull bind you to it. Instead, you will be at liberty to roam, to plunder and pillage, to rend and tear and destroy whatever comes into view.”

  And they would want to, because he would so will it. His goal was for them to fan out, to Tombstone and Tucson and beyond, to every town, large and small, to every ranch and village and camp they could find. In all those places, they would indulge their deepest hungers, which were terrible indeed.

  In this way, they would—at his behest and to his benefit—spread terror and death across the land. The blood of thousands would be spilled onto the earth, and in turn, the earth would transform in the manner of his choosing.

  Finding the skull of Thunder Moon, claiming the power stored within it over the centuries, was only one step. It was a building block for his greater goal—to terrorform the land into a bridge that spanned the mystical distance between the world of humans and the supernatural plane called the Hunting Grounds. From there, he would bring knowledge into the world, and with it true, raw power, the kind never before known by man.

  And he would be its vessel. He would carry it into this world, and when he did, he would remake all he saw.

  The abominations looked on. If they’d had faces, expressions, they would have been expectant, but he could tell from the silence and the way they leaned toward him that they were waiting. He had tested their patience long enough. He spoke seven more words in the old tongue, and turned to Little Wing, standing behind him. The clouds had parted and the full light of the Thunder Moon shone upon her. He brushed her cheek with his right hand—she flinched, only slightly thanks to the spell that held her still—and then he raised the dagger high in his left and spoke one more word of power and drove it into her breast.

  For a moment, nothing happened.

  No spurt of blood. No look of shock, of pain. She wouldn’t be able to fall, but he expected that her knees would buckle. They didn’t. He tugged the blade free. It came out as clean as it had gone in.

  She looked at him and smiled. Had he missed her heart, somehow? He drove it in again, through the fabric of her blouse, through flesh and fat and muscle, felt it glance off bone.

  Nothing.

  But then he noticed that the handle was warming. No, getting hot, and in less time than it took to reach that conclusion, it was too scorching to hold. He yanked it from her and dropped it in the same motion, and in the sudden quiet it was loud against the bone dais on which he stood.

  The abominations stared. Horror gripped him for a moment, as he feared that this failure would break his hold on them and they would storm the dais, tearing him apart as they had done to so many others over the centuries.

  And yet, in the instant before panic overtook him, he caught the scent of something, beneath that of his a
bominations and the aroma of the one called Little Wing, so rich with potential. He looked to his left, where a rocky ridge overlooked the natural amphitheater in which the creatures had gathered, and he pointed toward those he knew had to be there.

  “Intruders!” he cried. He lifted Thunder Moon’s skull and shook it before returning it to the altar. “Defilers of Thunder Moon’s memory! Enemies of us all! Start there, my abominations! Feast on them, so we can continue what we came here to do!”

  Almost as one, the abominations turned and started to attack.

  * * *

  The stench was almost overwhelming, and the cold flowing from the canyon penetrated clothing and flesh alike. There were so many of the not-men, and they were packed into a clear, bowl-shaped space at the bottom of a canyon. Some looked human, or nearly so. Those wore black clothing and hats and were armed with pistols, rifles, or both. The rest were the sort of featureless, vaguely human-shaped black figures Tuck had seen before. They faced Montclair and Sadie, both naked, and Little Wing, the three of them standing on a stage made of bones. He and the others had stopped behind an outcropping of boulders big enough to hide them and the wagon, elevated slightly above the clearing, and watched the proceedings from there. Tuck hadn’t known what to expect, and the scene they had found was beyond anything that had ever haunted his worst nightmares.

  When that knife had gone into Little Wing’s heart, Cale had cried out so loudly that Tuck was sure Montclair would hear him. Kuruk had remained silent, but his hand had gripped Tuck’s shoulder almost hard enough to draw blood.

  Then Montclair was pointing at their hiding place and shouting, and the mass of not-men flooded toward them.

  “Bring that wagon around quick!” Delahunt ordered. He jumped into the second cupola while Johnson responded to the command, and the battlewagon chugged into a position beside the rocks from which the Gatling guns had clear lines of fire.

  Tuck, Cale, Kuruk, and Cuttrell kept their sheltered positions and opened fire with their rifles, though Tuck doubted they would be effective against those creatures. Their horses, picketed behind them, stomped and whinnied their discomfort. Tuck didn’t blame them a bit.

  The Gatling guns both opened fire at once. The automatic crank made the ratcheting sound regular and mechanical. The barrels emptied and rotated and the rounds plowed into the thick of the advancing horde, each one exploding upon impact. The effect was immediate. Not-men were blown apart, shards of black scattering everywhere, like raven feathers in a tornado.

  Tuck derived no pleasure from the sight. Even as their comrades—if that word could apply to such inhuman creatures—fell, others advanced. He reloaded his rifle, rested it back on the rock he’d been using to steady it, and continued firing. Most of the not-men were unarmed, though he’d seen enough examples of the damage they could do without guns to let that cloud his view. Others fired rifles and pistols toward the rocks. Stone chips flew up from a close one, stinging Tuck’s face. The bitter smoke of rifles and Gatling guns filled his nose and mouth, which was a marked improvement over the stink of what Montclair had called his abominations.

  To Tuck’s right, Kuruk lay atop a flat rock, firing down into the oncoming mob. Cale was on his other side, shooting and ducking, shooting and ducking. His shots were wild, and his cheeks were wet with tears.

  On Cale’s left, Colonel Cuttrell fired through a gap between two boulders that served as a natural battlement. He matched Tuck, shot for shot. Picking a target was no challenge; in that sea of black, every shot hit something. Whether those rounds did any damage was another question, but at least they were shooting, and the barrage seemed to hold the not-men back for the moment.

  Then Tuck noticed that the colonel had stopped firing. He was staring down through the gap, the rifle forgotten in his gloved hands. “Colonel?” Tuck said. “You all right?”

  “Sadie,” Cuttrell said. “She’s hurt!”

  Tuck had noticed her, there on the dais behind Montclair. But his attention had been on Montclair and Little Wing. He was embarrassed by Sadie’s nudity, and had looked away from her. He risked another glance and saw what Cuttrell must have noticed: what looked like a massive, open gash between her breasts.

  “She’s upright,” he said. “She doesn’t act injured.”

  “You can see it from here, man!” Cuttrell countered. “I’ve got to get her out of there.”

  He took a moment to reload his rifle. “Colonel,” Tuck said, “you can’t go down there. There’re too many of those things. You’ll never make it.”

  “She’s the whole reason I came, Bringloe. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve mistreated her terribly. But I need her. Without her, what am I?”

  You’re a man on your own account, Tuck wanted to say. Were before you met her and will be again. But how did you tell a man he was too late to save his wife, or that the effort wasn’t worth making? He took one more look. She was standing, all right, but stiffly, not moving. Her gaze appeared to be resting on some indeterminate point before and slightly above her, not on the abominations or Montclair or Little Wing. She seemed unconnected to anything around her. Her flesh was ghostly pale.

  He was convinced that she was already beyond help. He didn’t know how that could be, but when it came to Montclair—to anything that happened around Carmichael—he had stopped asking that question. “Cuttrell,” he said. “She’s already dead. Look at her!”

  “Mr. Bringloe, I apologize for the way I treated you, in my office,” Cuttrell said. “I hope you’ll forgive my rudeness.” Without waiting for a response, he started around the rocks and down into the valley.

  Tuck tried to lay down covering fire for him, but without knowing if his rounds did any damage to the not-men, he couldn’t gauge its effectiveness. He raced to the wagon and pounded on Delahunt’s cupola. “Cover Cuttrell!” he shouted when the sergeant opened the door. “He’s going in there!”

  “He’s a lunatic!” Delahunt said.

  “I know! Just try to keep him alive!”

  “Got it!” Delahunt returned to his task, and started aiming his explosive rounds at anyone threatening Cuttrell. His marksmanship was uncanny, Tuck realized; each round was finding its mark. Johnson’s too. Tuck used the catapult to hurl some bombs into the crowd ahead of Cuttrell, then hustled back toward his rifle position. He paused beside Cale for a moment. “Hit what you can,” he said. “All we’re doing is slowing ’em down anyway. It’s those Gatling guns that’ll win the day.”

  Cale grunted something in response. The young man was badly shaken, and Tuck couldn’t blame him. Punching cows did nothing to prepare someone for combat against vicious, inhuman beasts. Cale had never seen war, and the kind confronting him now was nasty and brutal.

  Tuck took up his spot again, and resumed firing at the advancing horde.

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Little Wing couldn’t move, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t help.

  She didn’t believe the skull Montclair clutched was the sole source of his magic. He was too practiced, too proficient, and she could tell by the way he held it that the skull was new and unfamiliar to him. It was more of an engine, powering his existing abilities to new heights.

  He was too powerful for her to block, if that was even a capability she had. She was still learning about herself and her own gifts, day by day. There were, however, some things she did know.

  One of those was that she could share her gift, in a manner of speaking. Whatever power was in her wasn’t truly hers. It belonged to no one, but it could, on occasion, be borrowed. And what could be borrowed could be loaned. The men who were under attack—men who she could tell even from here included Kuruk and Cale and Bringloe—had gifts of their own. Not like hers, but they had their own abilities, talents, and skills. And while she could not grant them the power to do what she was able to, she could enhance their individual abilities. She reached inside herself, found the force humming at her center, gathered it and beamed it out toward the men on the hill and the
colonel, who had left his companions behind and was riding into the thick of it.

  When it touched them, she felt it, like sinking into warm water. She had to smile, despite the brutality that took place around her. Good couldn’t outweigh evil—if it did, there would be no evil left in the world. But good made a difference, just the same, and she believed that what she had done was good. No matter what else happened, she could hold fast to that.

  * * *

  Cuttrell urged his charger down into the mass of the enemy force, the men and the vaguely manlike figures trying to swarm him. He wore twin Colts, and he gripped the reins with his left hand and fired with his right. He used his ammunition judiciously, only shooting when one was close enough to be a threat, or when he saw one of the more human ones aiming a weapon at him. He wasn’t sure how much impact his bullets had; the creatures seemed able to absorb them, exhibiting little damage. The men in the battlewagon were helping, carving a path for him with their explosive rounds.

  As he emptied the last round from his second pistol and considered whether to try to reload under these conditions, an odd sensation passed through him. It was almost as if he had passed through a membrane of some kind, warm and slightly sticky. A kind of peace enveloped him, a sense that he had all the time in the world. He pulled the hammer back to a half cock, opened the loading gate, slipped bullets from the loops on his gun belt and inserted them into the cylinder, filling every chamber. His fingers were sure, his touch with the reins he held in the same hand as the Colt deft. Within moments, the gun was reloaded. He raised it, cocked, and aimed, squeezing the trigger while keeping the horse moving toward his goal with minute adjustments of his weight and the pressure of his legs. He had never in his life felt like such a skilled horseman, or gunman, for that matter.

  Every shot he fired found its mark. He could almost follow the trajectory with his eyes, though he was certain that was impossible. Where before, he hadn’t been sure his bullets had any effect, now he watched the featureless things drop before his assault.