Straight Outta Tombstone

by David Boop

  “It smells dead,” Jailak said as they looked around. The creatures were everywhere—formerly human but like rotting flesh, falling apart, worm infested, and moaning and growling instead of speech. “This is odd. We killed Hardin.”

  “Maybe we just wounded him,” Mairej suggested.

  “I keep telling you, take your time and aim first,” Jailak complained.

  “Your mother mated with three Orthonians,” Mairej snapped. “This is not my fault. The whole thing was your plan.”

  “Well then you come up with a plan to fix it!” Jailak said, ducking and jumping aside as one of the creatures grabbed at his arm, chomping its teeth in a clumsy attempt to bite him.

  Howling, another grabbed Mairej from behind, nibbling at his neck.

  Mairej felt a sharp pain and stiffened his skin, a protective instinct, then loosened his joints, bowed, and flipped the creature up over his back, slamming it down onto the dirt street. Gooey, stinky flesh rubbed his back as it slid, moaning and chomping the whole way. The thing smelled even worse up close, which was almost hard to imagine.

  Jailak turned and shot it with his blaster. “You’re welcome,” he said.

  “Terflex said ‘it’s all your fault,’” Mairej repeated. “He can’t mean this?”

  “We’re gonna have to do a lotta killing, if it is.”

  With that, they began aiming and shooting at every formerly human creature they could see, one after another, but more showed up as quick as they dispatched them. They quickly discovered that shots through the foreheads worked most effectively. Creatures shot there fell to the ground and didn’t get back up. Those shot anywhere else just kept on coming, even if they lost a limb or huge wads of flesh. One creature crawled across the ground with one arm and no legs, chomping and moaning at them the whole time. It almost made Mairej feel guilty, then he looked at Jailak and got pissed all over again. His partner had caused this and was enjoying the carnage far too much.

  “What?” Jailak asked, seeing Mairej’s glare.

  “You’re enjoying yourself.”

  Jailak grinned. “We’re hunters and the greatest shooters in the galaxy. This is what we do.”

  “My mother warned me throwing my lot in with you was dumber than a gundar, but I didn’t listen,” Mairej said, shaking his head.

  “This street’s clear,” Jailak said. “Let’s go find another.”

  It turned out no street stayed clear for long, and it took them hours and hours to kill all the hundreds of creatures wandering around El Paso. But when they went back to their ship, Terflex’s angry face filled their comm screen.

  “You’re not done. There are creatures like this all over the planet. You’ve got a lot more work to do. Get busy!”

  Mairej scoffed. “He’s got to be kidding.”

  “You know the policy. Our mess, our problem.”

  “Your mess, my problem,” Mairej muttered.

  Jailak rolled his beady eyes. “Just stop complaining. I got an idea.”

  “It’s your ideas got us into this in the first place,” Mairej pointed out.

  Jailak punched a code into the communicator, ignoring him.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Jonnapit, my cousin,” Jailak said.

  “For the love of the stars, don’t involve anyone else!” Mairej warned.

  “Meh, he has lots of friends in his hunting club,” Jailak said. “They’ll get a kick out of this. Besides, we’re stuck here until we’re done.”

  Mairej sighed and stopped complaining. Despite his anger at Jailak for getting them into this, help would be welcome and sounded like a good idea. Mairej was already exhausted.

  * * *

  Jonnapit did more than bring his club. Word spread to every flesh-hungry, gun-thirsty Andromedan on the planet, and soon, hundreds showed up with blasters to lend their aid.

  “These creatures are too damn easy, like insects or Orthonian remars,” Jonnapit complained. “I thought you offered us a challenge.”

  Jailak shot another and rolled his eyes at his cousin. “Cleaning up an accident. Good target practice. Stop complaining. It’s the most shooting you’ve done in months.”

  Jonnapit blasted three creatures with one bolt of his rifle and cackled. “Yippeee kayay, motherfucker! You’re right about that, and it’s still fun.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Jailak asked.

  “Something I heard on a human broadcast once,” Jonnapit said, smiling.

  Then the two cousins opened fire again together, looking delighted as they sliced down more creatures.

  Mairej left the two cousins by themselves and wandered off on his own to clear another street. They’d finished El Paso and Las Cruces long ago and were now across the border in Mexico, clearing the streets of Juarez which made El Paso look like a rich man’s paradise by comparison.

  “How do these humans live like this?” Raijah asked. She was one of the better shooters and far less annoying than most, so Mairej hadn’t hurried off when she’d joined him.

  “Well, this is how they lived a couple centuries back, but you’re right,” Mairej agreed. “Very primitive, not very intelligent.”

  “That thing they call tequila is delicious, though,” Raijah said, taking another sip from a flask that hung around her shoulder on a strap and belching. “I’d like more of this.”

  “Once we wipe them out, maybe you can search the planet,” Mairej reminded her.

  She bounced and twirled, taking down five more creatures with a stream of laser fire as she did. “If we bring enough back, we might get rich.”

  “It’s all yours,” Mairej said, shaking his head. “I want to forget this place ever existed.” His body tensed at the thought of ever returning to El Paso or Juarez again, especially with Jailak. It was time for him to find a new pastime.

  Raijah shrugged. “There’s a reason the Andromedan Expansion Plan is so successful. We are far superior to most of the galaxy. I almost feel sorry for them. But mother of a bat do they stink!”

  It took two weeks to clear the rest of the planet, but between the hundreds of hunters, spread out, they managed it. The bigger chore was burning the bodies, which Chronogeneral Terflex insisted they do before they returned home. Raijah even managed to find a beverage she enjoyed more than tequila—vodka, made by some creatures in a very cold, rugged land to the northeast. Raijah brought back an entire ship just to transport it, and in the end, she did grow quite wealthy. She even found an Andromedan chemist who could replicate the formulas.

  * * *

  Terflex was waiting for them both in decontamination when they finished, taking no risks with the nineteenth-century Homo sapiens undead. “I suppose you’ve seen the value of correcting your work?”

  Jailak and Mairej both nodded. “We did.”

  “Good,” he said. “You’ll be needing to trade in your grays then.”

  Mairej wasn’t surprised. Purple was the color he expected. Penitentiary purple. He was surprised when Terflex nodded to two black uniforms hung up in their lockers. “Raijah’s uncle is a highly placed colonel, and she’s recently lauded your economic development strategy in facilitating the introduction of a new beverage that may indeed be an intergalactic hit. Further, Andromedan scientists concur that ending the human industrial revolution in 1895 has increased the property’s current value due to less wear and tear upon the planet. There is even talk of establishing a theme park here around this new drink.” He smiled wryly but his eyes showed clearly that he knew they didn’t deserve it. Still, he managed to say the words. “So you’ve both been promoted to special ops.” The smile widened. “Under my command, of course.”

  Mairej looked to Jailak then to the uniform and the chronogeneral. They both managed to say, “Yes, sir!” in unison and he furrowed his brow at them.

  “First things first,” he said. “Uniform up and meet me in my office. You’ve one last thing to do.”

  * * *

  John Selman had shot John Wesley Har
din, the deadliest gunman in the West, in the back, you’re damn right. He’d done what had to be done to take down a monster. To some, including Selman himself, that made him a hero. To others, it made him a target.

  So when the two odd-looking strangers with distended eye sockets and peculiar orange-tinted skin walked into the Acme Saloon and called his name, Selman knew they had come for one reason: to challenge him. He downed his latest shot in one gulp and left his cane resting against the bar as he whirled to face them. “You two must be the ugliest strangers to walk in here in months,” Selman said with a cocky smile.

  One of them looked at the other and then at Selman. “Actually, Mr. Selman, I think we look rather resplendent in our new uniforms.”

  He squinted at them, certain they were Canadians or maybe French now that he’d pegged their accents. Still, his hands itched for trouble almost as much as his throat itched for a drink. “What exactly are you?”

  One of the strangers stepped up to the bar and plunked down a stack of shiny new silver dollars. The stranger looked uncomfortable with the words that came next. “I’m someone who is terribly sorry to have inconvenienced you with my poor choices, Mr. Selman, and I am sincerely hoping this round of drinks will make amends.”

  Selman looked down at the dollars and licked his lips. Then he looked back up to discover the strangers were gone.

  In the end, he decided they must have been French. And there was a fancy French word for thinking you’d been in the same shitter before, after all. Only he’d been certain when those ugly fellers came into the bar that they were gunning for him. The drink—and everything else he could buy with the small fortune they’d left—was a nice surprise after a long, thirsty August.

  “Viva la France,” Selman said as he knocked his whisky back.

  DANCE OF BONES

  MAURICE BROADDUS

  By the time Bose Roberds spied the lone, empty wagon, he got the nagging suspicion that he was meant to follow the stranger’s trail easily. The noon sun beat on him like a whip in a heavy hand. He’d followed the tracks across the plains for quite some time. Whoever he tracked could’ve traveled through thickets so dense that neither man nor horse could see for more than a few yards at a time. More than once, Bose feared that the man might lurk in the brush, hiding in the draws and canyons.

  The other cowhands lingered a few lengths behind him, more than a mite cranky—fueled by their rumbling stomachs—but Bose couldn’t be both cook and tracker at the same time. He ignored their grumblings until he found the wagon they were meant to find. It slumped to one side, wheels busted, like a hobbled steer. The covering still appeared new, but there were no signs of any of their horses.

  “The Ninth marched out with splendid cheer,” Bose sang to himself, a bit of a nervous habit. “The Bad Lands to explore.”

  “What’s that?” Dirk Ramey loosed a stream of tobacco juice. A big man with cruel, thin lips stained with brown spittle, an unshaven face and hard eyes, Dirk proved a difficult man to like.

  “A ditty I used to know from when I marched with the 9th.” Bose never referred to the 9th as Buffalo Soldiers. He had joined the 9th Cavalry at his first opportunity. The Cheyenne nicknamed the 9th and 10th Cavalry the Buffalo Soldiers after the noble, sacred animals they respected. If only the Army held the soldiers in similar regard. Instead, they were given old and worn saddles, blankets, and tents. Their horses often went lame. To his shame, he won a Congressional Medal of Honor for leading an attack on the Cheyenne despite he and his men being severely outnumbered. Protecting whites from Indians, forcing the Indians to move because the government found some new resource of theirs to exploit, filled him with disgust. Rather than huddle close to stoves during another winter, he deserted the Army.

  Bose adjusted the gun in his holster, loosening the leather thongs for easy draw. These Circle T boys were one step above useless, carrying only one Colt, usually wrapped in their bedrolls. Mighty handy if they had intentions on dying in their sleep. Bose swung off his horse, studying the wagon for any clue to what happened. The legs of the driver remained in his seat, the rest of his body hidden by the wagon’s canopy. Bose pulled back the tarp. Sprawled out on the seat, a man still clutched his pistol. His wife rotted behind him. Both were dressed in their best Sunday-gone-to-meeting clothes. Too dried out to be done recent. Their empty skulls screamed wordlessly at the noon sky, their dreams of a new life for themselves cut brutally short in the harshness of the West. The presentation of the bodies, so carefully staged, tickled something in the recesses of his memory.

  Bose’s mother feared such a fate for him when he first told her that he planned to venture to Los Angeles, where the laws against holding blacks as slaves were strongly enforced.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because I’ve got to find my own way.”

  Funny how memories had a way of sneaking up on a feller at the oddest times. Bose knelt beside the wagon and picked up an arrow. Scattered here and there, too carefully staged, he thought.

  “Could be Utes,” Dirk said. “This here’s Ute country.”

  “They been killing a lot of folks,” another hand echoed. He scanned their surroundings nervously as if Utes might jump out from the shadows.

  “Pile their graves high with rocks. We don’t want the coyotes to get them.” Bose turned his back to them.

  “Why?” Dirk challenged him for their benefit. They bristled at being ordered about by a Negro.

  This scene played out on occasion as if they needed reminding. Over six feet tall, with bulging muscles like thick metal cords and skin like smoked leather, no man ever struck fear into Bose. If there was an attack, he led the charge. When in doubt, he spoiled for a good fight just for its own sake. He turned to let them see the seriousness in his eyes before returning to his study of the trail. In the end, Bose Roberds was not a man to be trifled with.

  “Because I said to. Then we can get back to camp.”

  Bose returned his attentions to the ground. The tracks disconcerted him. The other hands thought cattle rustlers worked the trail. If that were the case, the cold thing stirring in his stomach wouldn’t bother him so. No, what disturbed him was that they had been led so far astray from the Goodnight-Loving Trail and whether or not they admitted it, no one knew much about what lay in the wilderness.

  “What’ll we say about him?” Dirk gestured at the waiting trail of the stranger for Bose’s benefit.

  “Don’t worry about him.” Bose stared at the puff of dust that rose in the distance. “We’ll catch him sooner or late. He ain’t trying to cover his trail none.”

  Things hadn’t been right since they left Abaddon three days earlier.

  * * *

  Taking one gander at the string of makeshift buildings that dared call itself a town, Bose had decided against going in. Abaddon was still as a corpse’s whisper. He’d been in this kind of place before: a town deceptively dead, yet the wrong word to the wrong person could cause the place to explode. A cemetery set the boundary on the west. Cow custom made the more respectable north side of town off limits to cattle herders. The seven buildings on the south side included a general store and a bank that begrudgingly catered to them. The saloon and gambling house that thrived on them. The building at the end of the row—the one that all the decent folk seemed to take special pains to avoid—housed girls who waited for the trail herds.

  That night, preparing to go off gal hooting, the Circle T boys cleaned their guns, washed their necks, and dusted their hats. All duded up, they hollered and carried on like young bucks in need of wrangling. When they returned, though, they avoided Bose’s eyes. He didn’t press them. Whiskey-loosened tongues allowed him to piece together a general picture of what had happened. A mean argument had erupted at the brothel, ending with the Circle T boys hightailing it out of Abaddon.

  Soon after, Bose noticed that they were being followed. Hunted.

  * * *

  The Circle T bunch was a simple contingent who took Bose on wit
hout much complaint or question. Theirs was a pretty salty outfit, reduced to a sullen, hard-bitten crew. Bose rose earliest to prepare coffee and biscuits. Years of privation at the Army’s hands trained him to go without much sleep. Most nights he stretched out on an old horse blanket when he wasn’t off stalking about in the night. Bose preferred the honesty of the range. Cow custom, the common law of the range, defined people. The trail crew needed a marksman, a handy trait in the cook. He liked the work so he settled into it first thing. It was hard, hard work, but Bose could settle into the illusion that competence, not skin color, mattered on a drive. It paid a solid $125 per month, second only to the trail boss. He didn’t mind the work, but every job had its bosses and its problem children.

  Henry McCormick, the first to arrive for chow, handled their herd of horses. Other than that, the wrangler spent too much time in a bottle, always ailing when there was work to be done. He was good with the men, though. Like a gruff mother hen.

  The relief hands ate next before relieving the night guard. Not a spine among the lot of them. A pack of wild dogs ready to piss all over everything, always in search of someone to follow.

  The son of the cattle owner, Will Grimes fancied himself the trail boss, but was more of an arrogant windbag who couldn’t stomach men who wouldn’t kowtow to him. Under the tutelage of his father, Will insured that the trail was passable for the wagon and the herd, acting as a buffer between theirs and other cattle drives. His deep-set coal eyes often peered right at Bose. He believed that the men turned to Bose when trouble arose and resented it. Bose didn’t cotton to him right away. He wasn’t much by way of good judgment. Rash the way the young and privileged could be.

  “Hand me the coffee,” Will said. Bose didn’t move or acknowledge him. “What?”

  “If you want me to do something for you, you say ‘please.’”

  “My ‘please’ is implicit,” Will said, self-impressed with what book learning he had.

  “I’m an explicit sort of cuss.” Used to all manner of gun trouble, Bose didn’t bat an eye.