Bella

by Michael Conley

  I grinned, that was getting into what I knew. Somewhere in my head something was screaming I was supposed to be terrified, but I was too excited to hear it. I started smearing the stuff on. Nothing happened. I waited and looked at her.

  She said, “Go ahead child, they are coming. Quiet as a mouse; see if you can free everyone safely. If not, at least we will know more.”

  I started walking and noticed little mist whirlwinds spinning behind me. My vision was a tad bleary, like when you first wake up, but I could see well enough; and if I tried, I could see small figures in the mist that surrounded me. I smiled so big my mouth hurt!

  By the time I was halfway to the camp I could tell the mist had engulfed me. It was tickling my skin and swirling around me. I tried to walk into the thickest parts of the fog and move as quiet as I could.

  Eventually I had to leave the ground fog and cross a large open space to get to the gate. I crept as slowly as I could and took my time. No one cried an alarm as I slipped in, keeping my back against the wall.

  I almost shrieked when I saw the first guard. It was that beast that had a giant scorpion body. It wasn't close, maybe twenty feet away, but it was the scariest thing I had ever seen. I moved on, shaking. It looked over at me and I froze, but it just kept moving its gaze past me. Neat, I thought through the fear.

  I headed for the corral I had seen previously and ducked under the rail. I had noticed Wasco’s Appaloosa earlier when I was using the spyglass, so I figured I might as well see if they left anything I could use. It was still saddled. I patted it on the nose.

  “Hey boy, they leave anything in here?” I asked him and started digging into the saddlebags. They had taken almost everything. All I could find was a handful of those colorful rifle balls that the fire rifle used at the bottom of a saddlebag. I checked the other horses and didn’t find anything useful. I patted Old Shit on the way out then headed for the main building. The fog was thick around it so once I got near it I felt safer.

  I stood still for a long time looking for guards and listening. I only saw the one I had passed before. I thought I could hear some voices inside, but I wasn’t sure. I crept along the wall and peeked in the first window. There was no one inside. The room was very clean and colorful.

  A large featherbed took up one wall and a small vanity with a glass mirror sat against another. On it was a pearl-handled hair brush, some colored powders, and a perfume bottle. A woman’s room. I hadn’t seen any women among the monsters.

  The next window was an office and also unoccupied. There was a desk made from thick-hewn rough lumber, a metal fireplace, and an old rifle hanging over the door. The door was closed and located directly across from the window. I kept going until I reached a center door that was propped open.

  There were definitely voices coming from inside. It wasn’t the others, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Risking a look around the door frame I couldn’t see anyone. It was a hall that ended in a large room. I crawled on hands and knees past it as fast as I could. Goosebumps popped up on my arms and I got a chill down my neck. I was sure someone would call out an alarm any minute. All I could think was how stupid this was and I should have stayed home. There was nothing to do but go forward and I desperately wanted to find Wasco and Jacob, so I kept moving.

  No one cried an alarm and the fog thinned out as I got closer to the end of the building. I almost let loose another scream. Bodies were piled up as high as my head; horses, cows, big bugs, snakes, all kinds of things. If I would have wanted to keep looking I could have seen if the arm I saw was as human as it looked, but I didn’t. I crept closer without looking at the pile, found the door I thought my friends had been taken in and cracked it open.

  A long dark hallway stretched from one end of the building to the other. I gagged from the smell that hit me like a wall. I didn’t see anything, so I slipped in and quietly pulled the door closed behind me. The mist still tickled my skin but seemed a little less. I moved slow as molasses, putting my feet down like Wasco had shown me. The floor was creaky as an old shoe, but I managed to avoid most of them. There was something humming down the hall that covered what noise I did make.

  I had gone about halfway when I found cages. The walls were lined with them and I found the source of the stink. Whatever had been kept in those cages had not been let out to use a chamber pot. Hadn’t even been given a chamber pot. Wasco and the others were in the last cell and it was no less filthy.

  Jacob looked likely to have jumped right out of there when I said his name. I admit I might have chuckled a little.

  “It's me, addle-brain. Now be quiet!” I scolded.

  “Topher, what in tarnation are you doing here? You need to run!” Jacob said.

  “Shh! You're too loud; there is a guard just over there. Now shut up! Here, is anybody hurt? Ying said if you're hurt to take a sip and give the rest to Wasco; if you ain't hurt then give it all to him.” I held the vial through the bars.

  Li came over and took it from me, went right to Wasco and poured it down his throat.

  “He has not been well; I think his lung is collapsing.”

  “Ain't you hurt too? You're limping!”

  “I will live without it,” he said. “He would not. Where is Mistress Ying?”

  “She's out there hidin’. How can we get out of here? Are there keys?”

  I started looking around.

  Jacob said, “Only in dime stories kid. They took them when they left like real people do.”

  “T... Topher.”

  Wasco. His voice was so small. I had never heard Wasco sound so weak.

  “Yeah Wasco, I'm here. What is it?”

  “Get Bella. I need Bella.”

  “Wha? I don’t know what she looks like Wasco, and how's a horse gonna help?

  “Not a damned horse, my rifle. I saw it when they drug me in here. It's in this building, hanging over a door,” he said.

  He could barely get the words out and he was breathing so hard!

  “Yeah, I saw it I think,” I told him.

  “Wait what?” Jacob walked over to Wasco. “You mean to tell me Bella is a damn gun?” His voice was rising. “We come all this damn way, attacked Keaton enterprises, for a damn gun! I mean a horse, ok, maybe, I get it, but it's a damn gun!” He was almost shouting.

  There was a heavy thud on the wall. “Shut yer damn mouth else I'll come in there and rip yer damn jaw off.”

  I froze. Jacob still looked incredulous. Li moved over and put his ear against the stained wall.

  “Ain't just a damned gun, now get it fer me so we can get out of here,” Wasco wheezed.

  He seemed to be breathing a little easier, but not much. Jacob walked across the cell shaking his head and kicking straw.

  “Yer getting paid, quit yer damn whinin’. Sound like a little girl,” Wasco managed to say louder than was necessary.

  “Quiet!” I near yelled, then covered my mouth and held my breath waiting for that thing to come crashing in. It didn't.

  “I'm tellin’ ya, it ain't just a damn gun, now hurry kid. I can't get any damn air. Git Bella, she'll help,” Wasco said again.

  I had no idea what to do. I figured he was delirious. I looked at Jacob and he shrugged.

  “Maybe the keys are with it,” I said. It was all I could think of. “I'll go check.”

  Jacob stared at me for a minute and then nodded and said, “Be careful kid. Those things, they are, they are not right.”

  “Nah! Really? I thought bein’ half snake was stinkin’ normal!” I said.

  I padded back down the hall and peeked out the door. I didn't see the guard, so I poked my head out, then the rest of me, and scurried down to the window where I had seen the rifle. I realized in horror that tickle on my skin was gone at the same time I saw the guard. He was looking away from me at the moment, but his head was turning my way. Had that window been open or closed? I couldn't remember. It didn't matter.

  I stood and leapt through the window waiting for the so
und of breaking glass, arms over my face, which was a good thing, because I hit the floor face-first. No glass shattered, and my face only made a little cracking noise when my nose hit the floor. I was too scared to cry out or even whimper.

  Tears were running down my face and my nose throbbed. I touched my nose and came away with blood and God did it hurt. It was bent at a weird angle and I almost puked. I couldn't do anything but lie there. I didn't even dare sniffle the blood that was running out and pooling on the floor.

  What if that thing had seen me? Or heard me and was coming right now to grab me, and put me in one of those cages, or worse throw me on the pile after it…I couldn’t complete the thought. I was panicking and shaking and about to cry, which with a broken nose would not have been quiet.

  I thought about Jacob and Li in that gross cage, and Ying out in the Blacklands alone, and Wasco, barely able to breathe. Then I felt, I don’t know what, something. A calmness that just fell over me like a blanket. It wrapped me up and all of a sudden I was no longer afraid. It took some time and many deep breaths, but I finally moved. Nothing grabbed me from the window and I didn't hear anyone coming, so I scooted myself over to the wall and stood up. After catching my breath and gently wiping the blood from my broken nose I quietly searched the room. It took me a long while to finally find a set of keys in the pocket of a huge coat draped over the desk chair I had no idea if they were the right ones or not, but they were all I could find. In a closet I also found Li's sword and Jacobs’s gun belt. I found a bag of rifle shot and powder charges in a desk drawer. Li's bow was not around. I gathered everything up and peeked out the window. The guard was right there almost looking right at me. I ducked back in, heart pounding, and put my back against the wall. How was I going to get out of here? I had no idea what was through the door.

  The door. With the rifle hanging above it. I had almost forgotten it!

  I set the other things down and tip-toed toward the door. I couldn't reach the rifle, so I dragged the chair over, making more noise than I wanted. The rifle was an old single shot flintlock. An antique. I had no idea why Wasco would want it so badly. The stock was carved with an animal that looked like something from one of Ying's books. Like a lion but with three different heads. One was the lions, one a goat and the last looked like a dragon head. I climbed up and reached for it, but the damn thing was on hooks and even with the chair I couldn't get it over the hooks because I was too short!

  I stretched up on my tip-toes trying to push it off the brass hooks, when all of a sudden, I knew something was wrong. I didn’t know what it was or how I knew, but something screamed in my head to move, and move now!

  I yanked as hard as I could. My feet came off the chair and it fell with a heavy thud. One of the hooks pulled free from the wall which spun me to the side and slammed my back into the wall. I slid down onto my ass, rifle in hand, as a spiked tail as thick as my torso plunged into the door where I had just been with a loud kthunk. I raised the gun. It was too long for me to hold steady and I knew it couldn't be loaded, but my body just did it. What else was it going to do? I squeezed the trigger and closed my eyes.

  It roared in my ears and kicked against the wall. I opened my eyes slowly and peeked through the smoke. The scorpion-man was five feet away, tail still stuck fast in the door, stretched taut over its head. Greenish-black ichor ran from it down the door making a sickening puddle on the floor. It tilted his head and looked at me. Then its all-too-human eyes rolled up and crossed, like it was trying to see the dime-size hole the bullet had made in the center of its forehead, then it crumpled face-first to the floor. The hole in the back of its head was not as small and not as neat. I left what I had eaten that day on the floor next to it and sat there gasping until I heard boots on wood planks outside the door.

  The body moved suddenly, and I leapt to my feet and backed away. Someone pulled on the door once more and the tail stretched tight and moved the body again. I could hear commotion starting around the camp. I slung the rifle over my shoulder by its strap as I ran across the room, picked up the gear, and climbed out the window. Once out I looked around. Nothing was looking my way, but I saw shadows moving across the light that was cast from inside. I ran as fast as I could for the cages, Jacob's gun belt bouncing along behind me. I got to the door without any of the monsters seeing me. They must have all been inside. When I reached the cage, everyone was on their feet, even Wasco. He looked very pale and was leaning heavily on Jacob.

  I dropped everything to unlock the cage, but Wasco said, “Hand me Bella, girl.”

  He held his hand out through the bars. It was trembling.

  I picked the long gun up and handed it to him, then handed the ammo and powder to Jacob. Then I went to the door with the keys.

  Jacob mirrored me to the door and I started trying keys.

  “Topher what's all that blood from?” he said.

  “Oh, I...”

  I looked down and saw I was covered in blood from my nose, but then it dawned on me that my broken nose no longer hurt, nor was it bleeding. I reached up to feel it. It was straight. Felt perfectly fine as a matter of fact.

  “I, um, I busted my nose I guess. I'm fine, now shut up. I'm tryin’ to do this!” I said.

  Eventually I found the right key and the others grabbed their belongings. By now the camp was in full uproar and I could see brighter fires flaring up through the cracks in the door.

  “How are we gonna get out of here? Wasco can barely walk!” I screamed.

  I was starting to panic again and would have thrown up if I had anything left in me.

  I looked over to Wasco. He was standing on his own. Not quite the rock of a man I was used to, but his breathing was normal, and he stood up straight without help. He still looked weaker than I had ever seen him, but more like a rock with a crack than the crumbled stone I had seen just a few minutes ago.

  “What in Sam Hill is that thing?” I said looking at the rifle he was loading.

  “You shot her didn't ya? Shouldn't have. Ain't time yet,” he said.

  “Wha? Listen you stupid yak, if it weren't fer me you wouldn't have that damn gun; and if I hadn't shot her — HER? What the hell, her? — if I hadn't had shot that damned gun, I'd be dead! So, shut up!” I screamed.

  He looked up at me and squinted.

  “Yeah, reckon so,” he said. “You done good, girl. Now let’s git out of here.”

  The door at the end of the hall kicked in and Wasco had Bella up to his shoulder and shot before they had taken a step. The ball took a man, just a regular looking man, dead in the chest and blasted him backward. Two men, at least their top halves were, tried to aim rifles inside but Jacob shot them first. The door slammed shut again. I, of course, had not brought the Winchester because I’m a chucklehead, so I didn't have a damn gun.

  “Not getting out that way. I will go check down the hall,” Jacob said and ran deeper into the building. The guy Wasco had shot had dropped his pistol in the door. Li ran over and picked it up, then handed it to me.

  “I can't shoot this damn thing!” I said.

  “It is better than having nothing, Topher,” he said.

  A call came in from outside. “Hey, y'all in there. We got enough men out here to storm ya. Why don't you just give up so nobody else gets shot? Ain't nowhere for ya to go. No other way out!”

  “Anyone see how many men they got?” Wasco asked.

  “From the tents and those I saw, I would guess there are about thirty men here,” Li said.

  “And a girl,” I said. “Saw her room.”

  Wasco said, “When I scouted earlier the air ship was flying away. Maybe a bunch of them are on it. How long has it been?”

  Jacob came trotting up the hall. “Been about three or four hours since we got here I’d guess,” he said. “I might have found a way out, but you will not like it,” Jacob said.

  Wasco said, “Like it better than standin’ here gettin' my ass shot off. Lead the way.”

  “There's more, Wasco.�
� He pulled him closer to talk quieter. “There is some grisly sights up there I am not sure Topher needs to see.”

  Normally I would have chimed in to let him know where he could put that talk, but after everything I had seen, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see it either.

  “Ain't like we got a choice Jacob,” Wasco said. “She's here, she's in it thick. Ain't no sense tryin’ to baby her now. Let's go.”

  Li took the keys from the door of the cage and opened the one across from it. They almost hit each other. He ran in and unlocked a pair of manacles and locked the open gates to each other, and then we ran down the hallway.

  CHAPTER TEN – BULL MCCAIN

  T he sight I ran into will never leave me. A horse was hanging in a sling some ten feet in the air. To say it was dead doesn't do justice to being dead. On a balcony to the side were large wooden tanks. Pipes ran out of them to some kind of machinery that had small tubes coming from it and going into the horse.

  The horse was exsanguinated. Its eyes were completely black, open wide in fear and panic. But that's not the worst of it. Tubes also came out of the horse and down to more machinery, then a cage. The cage, though empty, was clearly designed for a person to be chained in. The tubes dangled nearby ending in long, stained needles. There were also tables with straps, stained with red and black, with tools hanging neatly on the wall that I cannot bear to even describe. There was a large barrel with a lid that had the same dark stains down the sides. In the corner was a desk that was disturbingly neat and tidy, as was the floor around it. It stood in such contrast to the horror around it that it might have been the most sickening sight of all. Not a paper was out of place. I heaved and heaved, but there was nothing left but bile.

  “Look up there.” Jacob pointed. “That sling is on a pivot, looks like to swing the bodies out the wall over there. If you get close you can see the door that opens. I saw the pile of bodies when we came in.”