Straight Outta Tombstone

by David Boop

  “Sheriff Hicks let you off. You should be in a jail, woman.” Chad spat out the word woman as if it had been a curse. “I betcha bewitched him too. I can see it in ya even if they don’t.” Tendrils of dark smoke spiraled from the corners of his mouth as he leered at her.

  The crowd, now gathered at her door, shuddered in unison. Hot and fast whispers whipped about them, chasing after Chad’s words. Zara put her hands on her hips, but held her peace.

  “You deny you did this?” Chad pointed at his neck, the contusion still visible, but fading.

  “Quit your bellyaching. You got your ass kicked by a woman,” Bud chided from just behind Chad, before elbowing his way to the front. He tipped back his cowboy hat. “Belly back up to the bar and drink your sorrow like ever’body else.”

  “She’s a filthy witch! I tell you,” Chad repeated. His face flushed.

  Zara watched as the flush deepened to black blotches blossoming along his cheeks, across his forehead, and down into his beard. The hard green of his eyes turned dark. His hands sprawled long, beastlike claws.

  No one else noticed.

  Right before her, the wickedness consumed the rest of Chad’s humanity.

  “Eh, yeah! She’s made the dirt on my Sunday shirt disappear!” shouted Rancher John.

  Laughter.

  From the rear someone added, “Aye, ain’t that magic!”

  More laughter.

  It ripped through the group, cresting in volume before tapering off as members tired of the fun and turned back toward the saloon. The noonday sun made one thirsty.

  Zara suppressed her smile but glowed inside at their kind words about her washing skills. It failed to eclipse the mounting fear inside her. Already her hands tingled in anticipation. The being inside Chad might attack now, or wait. Most of the time, devils did things in the dark, under the cover of night, when man’s defenses were lowest.

  Chad shoved Bud away, still fixing Zara with a glare. There, the hot gaze of the other inside him, the wickedness that puppeted him. She’d seen that look on many a frustrated white man’s face. He’d meant to cause her strife, but that had failed.

  The man wanted to make her pay for that. The demon wanted to feast on what remained.

  She shuddered at the thought and the deep knowing of truth in that thought.

  With the words of her ancestors in her ear and her heart, the voice of her grandmamma spoke of their strength. Do not fear. We are one.

  “Leave. I have work to do.” Zara nodded toward the saloon.

  Chad grunted, made a rude gesture, and stormed off. The angry dark wickedness flowing behind him like a cape.

  * * *

  Dusk. Few people remained on the road. Most had retired to their homes and families. Even the saloon next door had intermittent periods of silence. Shoulders singing in fatigue, hands raw from the lye, and back throbbing from lifting and bending, Zara longed for a hot cup of coffee and a comfortable bed.

  She’d just closed the door when Chad Wilkins appeared in the road.

  “You whore! Witch!” he yelled. He clutched two lanterns, one in each hand. The flames inside each held an eerie and otherworldly green flame.

  “Go home, Chad. Just walk on back to where you came from,” Zara warned. The hair on the back of her neck stood up.

  “You know what they used to do with witches?” Chad bellowed, spittle flying.

  He raised the lanterns high in the air.

  Chad hurled the first one at her.

  She fell backward against the door. With swift hands, she turned the knob and raced inside. The lantern missed her but slammed into the store’s wall, bursting and sending the green fire and oil all over.

  “You fool!” Zara screamed as the second one shot past into the laundry.

  Fire latched onto the wooden structure as fast as lightning. It chewed, not just her store, but soon the saloon next door, too. Dry air and even drier wood burned, encouraging the flames. Growing every second, the flames spread—greedy and propelled by the desert’s high winds. Billows of smoke wafted into the sky and back into Zara’s store.

  “Fire! Fire!” Screams rose into a chorus.

  Blinded by smoke, Zara crouched down to get air. On her knees, she crawled out the door and off the porch. Fear spread as fast as the fire itself to the few who remained in town.

  Chad disappeared into the smoke and falling light.

  “What happened?” Sheriff Hicks met Zara in the center of the road.

  “Chad,” Zara coughed out.

  “Water! Get water! Form a line from the arroyo!” Sheriff Hicks shouted at a group of men racing from the smoking saloon.

  Horrible wickedness ravaged one building, skipping in delight from one wooden area to the other, greedily consuming all in its path.

  That’s what the Devil came to do. Kill. Steal. Destroy.

  The harshness of ignorance and hate may have come to the West, but Zara and her ancestors wouldn’t let this Promised Land be destroyed by it.

  No.

  What to do? She’d just recovered from her last attempt to fight off Chad Wilkins. That had been in anger, and the fury rolled forward in her even now.

  The Indians could call down the rain, but it was her African ancestors who controlled the wind. Even as she pulled from her inner strength, the fire began to fan back toward the already charred sections, lowering the heat. The magic pulled on her life force, and she coughed, bloody spittle dark and wet against the dirt road. She got to her feet, her lungs burning. Her ancestors had blessed her. The winds had calmed the flames. The townspeople raced to put out what remained of the blaze.

  “Thank God the whole damn town didn’t burn.” Sheriff Hicks clapped a hand on her shoulder. “You all right?”

  “That’s twice Chad tried to kill me.” The burning lessened as the wind calmed around her.

  “You sure it was him?”

  “I got two eyes, Sheriff.”

  “All right. All right.” He put his hands on his guns. “I’ll bring him in.”

  “No. Imma gonna talk to him. Alone.” Zara started toward the west. Toward the wicked Chad Wilkins. He wouldn’t get a third try.

  “Zara! Get back here. Don’t do anything foolish!”

  She paused, looked back over her shoulder, and said, “I’m not the one that tried to burn down the town.”

  Sheriff Hicks hung his head and reached for her arm. “I’ll go. You’re angry, Zara, and you’re being reckless.”

  She searched his face and saw the concern shining in his eyes. She had to be the one to settle the issue with Chad. Sherriff Hicks’s bullets wouldn’t exorcise the demon inside Chad. Only she had the power to do that, because, well, it wanted her magic, her power. White men always did.

  That demon ought to be careful what he asked for.

  “So was movin’ out to this desert.” Zara removed his hand and resumed her trek.

  Chad had presented his wickedness.

  Now, she’d show him what she had.

  As she walked down the path toward the outskirts of town, Zara called upon her ancestors, and one by one, they appeared beside her, dropping out of the sky like falling stars. Each apparition wore his traditional dress of her ancestral homeland.

  Amari

  Bwana

  Henry

  George

  Kwame

  Soon, the noise of town faded. In the distance coyotes howled, and the light faded. Once she reached Chad’s cabin, her ancestors stood with her as watery silhouettes against the velvet night, casting an eerie glow. The two-room home sat on a stretch of barren land. A few feet away, a barn sheltered the beasts, but not the one locked in Chad Wilkins’s heart. The light in the window flickered and the sky above sparkled. Zara stood at the end of the walk. The wickedness she’d hoped to avoid had provoked this confrontation. Evil. Sinful, the Christians called it.

  “I’m callin’ you out, Chad Wilkins!”

  The door creaked open. A shirtless Chad walked out onto the porch. His ba
re feet moved silently across the wood. When he saw her, he frowned.

  “You survived?”

  Her presence answered that, so she didn’t reply. She raised her hands as she came closer.

  “You always looked lived in, Chad.” Zara spied the possessing entity as it hissed out of his mouth, a spiral of buzzing darkness pouring out between his lips toward her. She pulled the wind down and spun her hands to push the attacking evil away and out of sight.

  “You oughta died in the fire. Then we’d feast on your power!” Chad screamed, but the voice no longer sounded like him.

  “Is Chad still in there?” She’d seen so much death and just plain wickedness. Despite the hard pit of anger in her gut, she wanted Chad to live.

  The glowing red eyes narrowed, suspecting she meant to trick it. Blisters lined the soles and sides of Chad’s feet. He walked as if he felt nothing. The round pus-filled sacks burst with each step, leaving wet tracks behind.

  The demon no longer cared for his host.

  “Well, is he?”

  No reply.

  “There’s some emptiness that can’t be filled, huh?” Zara asked.

  Every inch of her hurt. Almost all of her spiritual energy was being syphoned into holding her ancestors here. They helped guide the wind.

  “We want you dead!” Chad answered, leaping at her, claws out.

  Zara willed the wind once more. Arms heavy with fatigue, she knocked him backward.

  “Power is acquired by taking it,” Chad breathed. His descent spiraled down into the absolute wickedness that continued.

  “You can’t just take what you need. Round here that’s called stealin’.”

  “Not if you’re dead,” he screamed, stepping down the porch’s two flat steps.

  “Who’d do the laundry?” Zara wheezed and collapsed to her knees.

  So. Weak.

  He came at her once more, claws stretched out toward her neck. She pivoted to avoid his right hand, but his sharp nails caught in her left side. They shredded her thin blouse, flesh, and muscle. Chad whirled to face her, licking the blood from his fingers.

  Gritting her teeth against the searing agony, Zara pushed herself to stand.

  He rushed her again, but as he swung, Zara dropped to the dirt. Standing took too much physical strength, of which she had little left. Zara fought to keep her eyes open. She wouldn’t cower from death.

  “Wait. Who them with you?” Chad squinted, peering with red eyes into the distance.

  Zara’s ancestors moved to intercept him, and once he spied them up close, he screamed. Turning to run, he tripped and fell, his legs tangled up in each other. Scrambling to his feet, he tried to flee.

  Zara’s ancestors stepped into her, each one adding their strength of spirit into her body. One after the other, until Zara could stand on her own, full of strong magic and powerful, they joined her. Pain vanished beneath the strength of her ancestors. With them came the iron will to survive the Middle Passage, long lashes of whips, war, and torture.

  “No! More!” Zara shouted in the voice of many. With fingers splayed, she called the winds, and they readily obeyed. They rushed Chad Wilkins, pinning him to the ground. She shortened the distance between them. Once she reached him, she demanded, “Leave Chad. Leave him, now! Get out!”

  “No!” the demon spat back, laughing in glee. “Kill him. We will still live.”

  Anger pushed forward, but Zara’s ancestors soothed her. Be calm. We will force him out.

  She pushed the wind, faster. If the demon wanted to stay, it would have to stay in a wind-swept and battered host. Chad screamed until he became unconscious. Before her, the orange glow spiraled out of Chad’s body. His mouth split from the entity’s mass.

  Exhausted, Zara stumbled as her ancestors took their leave, as did her magic. She’d emptied it all.

  “Until next time…” the thing promised before slithering into the ground and disappearing from sight.

  With her entire being singing in misery, she watched the spot for a moment to make sure it didn’t crawl back into Chad. With her power temporarily spent, she couldn’t protect him.

  After a few minutes, Chad stirred awake, his face ripped raw by the wind, his clothes tattered. He glared at her with confusion that melted away to anger.

  “You did this to me!”

  She nodded, too tired and too hurt to say much more.

  “We ain’t even, bitch.” He coughed and tried to push himself to a sitting position. He collapsed backward with a thud.

  Zara studied him for a moment, before turning back to the walk. Slowly, she headed down the long path to her home.

  * * *

  “Come.” Zara sat in front of her fire, a pipe stuck between her teeth, gazing out across the dawn of a new day.

  Sheriff Hicks stood in the doorway. “Mornin’, Zara. I’m here about Chad Wilkins. I went over to arrest him this morning, and well, he’s in a bad way. Had to call out for the doctor from Tohatchi to come and take a look at ’im.”

  Zara nodded. Puffed.

  Sheriff Hicks shifted his weight to his other foot. “It’s lookin’ like a heart attack.”

  “Too much wickedness ain’t good for you.” Zara met the sheriff’s gaze before turning back to the view.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  She puffed.

  “Funny thing. You went tarrin’ after him,” Sherriff Hicks said.

  Zara puffed. “Imma uneducated person, Sheriff, but I didn’t think talkin’ to a person could cause them to have a heart attack.”

  Sherriff Hicks nodded. “It can’t.”

  “All I did was talk to ’im.”

  He studied her for a few long seconds, before asking, “You comin’ in to do the laundry? John said you can set you up in one of them back rooms until repairs are done.”

  “Sure. Ever’body deserves clean laundry.”

  CHANCE CORRIGAN AND THE LORD OF THE UNDERWORLD

  MICHAEL A. STACKPOLE

  Chance Corrigan crouched in the tall prairie grasses. So that’s what she’d meant by a Black Bart.

  The Grand Hotel in Chimney Springs, Wyoming, offered its guests a hearty breakfast with coffee “strong enough to melt a Black Bart.” He’d assumed the reference had something to do with the Dominion Brimstone Mine #1—most likely a small steam engine that hauled ore cars up from the mine’s dark depths. He’d not asked for clarification because he hadn’t wanted to alert anyone to his interest in the mine’s operations.

  Clearly my mistake. Chance clicked his mechanical left eye in, the lenses shifting to bring the dark figure closer. At the first it looked almost human, serenely patrolling with a measured pace. The figure’s stiffness—its arms didn’t swing and it walked without too much bend to the knees—planted the idea of it being a living creature firmly in the grave.

  If the coffee will melt it, I’ll order up a couple gallons.

  The automaton had been clothed as if a man, entirely in black, from boots and jeans, to gloves and even hat. Only its neckerchief broke that pattern—this one wore red. Chance guessed it was meant as a way to identify the individual automatons at a distance. The mechanical man also wore a pair of six-shooters, one on each hip. It had no face per se, just a narrow slit where eyes should have been, and a round opening for a mouth.

  It marched along a line of fence posts fitted with iron balls on top. As it approached the nearest fence post, the Black Bart paused for a moment. It looked down at the ball, then its head came up and it continued on along the path its endless trudging had worn into the ground. The pace remained steady, and the thing focused on its forward path. Its hands hung inches from the pistols, primed to draw.

  Chance remained low, letting the automaton amble past. No one had bothered to string a single strand of wire between the posts, which suggested the automatons patrolled without any rest. He figured that if he watched any longer, another would come along the same route, regular as the clockwork which drove them. All in all, wire wou
ld be cheaper, but not nearly as intimidating.

  Chance assumed that the automaton’s barrel chest concealed a small engine which drew power from the Tesla generator set up in the middle of the mine’s buildings. The engine powered the limbs through wires and gears. The torso also had to contain a couple of gyroscopes to provide balance, and a gyrocompass to aid with directions.

  That realization led to a cascade of other conclusions, prompting a smile. The iron balls had to likewise draw power from the generator, and pushed it back out in the form of Marconi’s wireless telegraphony. The automaton, in reaching a waypost, logged its arrival and likely received directions on to the next post. Somewhere inside it, through a series of gears and registers, the automaton could receive and then proceed to execute instructions. It didn’t appear to Chance that the instructions were terribly complex, but to successfully patrol the mine’s perimeter didn’t require much thinking.

  Chance waited for the automaton to reach the next waypost, then followed in its wake toward the mine facility entrance. He’d seen automatons before, but never anything quite this mobile. From the depth of the footprints, he guessed it weighed half-again as much as an equivalently sized man would. This suggested limbs made mostly of wood, with a thick armor plating on the torso—presumably to protect its operational machinery. And while its gait wasn’t that fast, he knew better than to assume the same would be true of its ability to draw and fire a gun.

  The automaton continued past the mine’s buildings. The mine’s opening—a grand earthen ramp descending to shadows—stood to the south. A tiny office building occupied the center of the compound, with the Tesla generator behind it, and a coal storage warehouse west of that. Another coal storage building stood to the north of the office, and a rail spur led away from it, to connect with the main rail line further north of the town.

  Chance knocked on the ramshackle office’s door.

  A small bespectacled man answered, smiling weakly. “How may I help you?”

  “I was hoping I could see the managing partner, Mr. Van Sloos?” Chance had to step back to read the name from the sign beside the door. “Would that be you?”