Borg dropped his gaze, shuffled his feet.
“And in the mornin’,” Black buckled on his .44s, stood with arms akimbo. “You’n me are takin’ a ride out to the Circle D ranch. I’m gonna serve a warrant on J.C Dawson for incitin’ that lynchin’ and on Calloway and Fletcher for hangin’ Jack Skeet. They’ll be charged with murder. Circuit Judge Frome is due next week. There could well be another hangin’.”
The deputy licked his dry lips. Things were getting worse by the day.
Suddenly shots rang out somewhere down the long main street, rapid fire that emptied the cylinder of a six-shooter in as many seconds.
“Gawd Almighty, what’s goin’ on now,” Black jammed his hat on his head, loosened his Colt navy .44s in their holsters. He grabbed up the Greener 10-bore, handed it to his deputy. “Here, take this, and don’t be afraid to use it of you have to. Cut a swathe through ‘em whoever they are.”
Together the two men stepped out into the street then stared in disbelief at the scene down beyond the Longhorn saloon. A dusty, black clad figure, short brimmed hat jammed firmly on his head, staggered arrogantly, a heavy revolver in each hand. Shooting as he advanced, pausing to reload with unsteady hands. Yet there was nothing unsteady about his marksmanship.
Three bodies sprawled in the lamp-lit dusty street, another was draped over the handrail of the saloon. Men were crowding out of the saloon returning the gunman’s fire. He staggered, almost fell, but somehow regained his balance and came on. Firing. Reloading. Firing again.
Another body rolled into the street, followed seconds later by two more, victims of the killer’s deadly shooting.
The light from a hanging oil lamp slanted onto that figure in black as he raised his head, revealed hollowed eyes, high cheekbones and a slitted mouth.
“Oh my gawd!” Deputy Borg screamed his terror. “It’s….it’s Jack Skeet!”
“Then let ‘im have it!” Sheriff Black fired with both his .44s. “Give ‘im both barrels of the scattergun!”
Borg obliged instinctively, the double blast of the 10-gauge throwing the gunman backwards. Even as the other staggered he saw that both charges had found their mark, ripped Skeet’s shirt from his chest. But no blood spouted!
Black’s heavy slugs had found their mark, too. The grotesque, grimed features were smashed, an ear dangled by a shred of filthy flesh. The hat hung at an angle.
But still Jack Skeet advanced, firing to his right and left, crumpling more bodies, some on the sidewalk, others rolling into the dusty street.
“Jesus, look!” Borg had spotted moving shapes in the wake of the homicidal gunfighter, partially clad figures with long greasy hair, brandishing ancient carbines, knives and tomahawks. They dragged a young white woman with them; Borg thought he recognised her as Emma Blake from the hosiery store. He couldn’t be sure, her head lolled backwards and her captor was pausing to cut her throat with a rusted knife blade.
Borg bent double, threw up.
Gunfire raked the street, rifles and revolvers being fired from the safety of doorways and windows. One of the Paiutes fell, crawled. Picked himself up again and returned the fire with his carbine.
“It’s impossible,” somebody shrieked. “They’re all dead. We see’d their corpses!”
And still the attackers advanced on the besieged township. In their wake a scrawny, bent figure wearing a buffalo-horned headpiece flitted in the shadows. The shrill shrieks of Black Snake urged his army of the dead to kill. And kill. Until not a white man, woman, or child lived.
….
Black and his deputy retreated, shooting as they backed off. They had no plan, there was none. Within the hour this entire township would be wiped out, razed to the ground. Already flames were leaping from the wooden buildings as the invincible, advancing force began to torch them.
The sheriff thought about fleeing but his horse was in the livery behind the oncoming Paiutes. He could hear the animals screaming their terror as the blaze trapped them.
He did not try to understand. There was no logical explanation. Just run for the scrub on the outskirts of town, hide and hope they didn’t find you. And when daylight came…
And now Jack Skeet was advancing on the Sheriff, slow unsteady steps, his bullet shattered features gloating. Grunting.
Black grabbed the shotgun from Borg. The other had reloaded but had not had time to fire. The sheriff clicked both hammers back to full cock. At under ten yards even the living dead Jack Skeet would not survive a simultaneous charge of buckshot.
A twin blast cast through the frenzied screaming and cursing of those townsfolk making a last stand. Skeet staggered back but miraculously remained upright. A gaping hole in his jacket and shirt exposed what remained of his torso, a jagged hole that should have poured blood. It did not, just congealed mulch.
His slitted lips tightened, mucus-clogged nostrils flared, and there was hatred in those sunken, dead eyes. His right arm lifted, revolver extended.
A single shot took Sheriff Black in the chest. He sagged, crumpled to the ground. Limbs twitched briefly and then he was still.
Borg turned to flee. He made but two strides before Skeet’s bullet pitched him forward.
Jack Skeet stood there in the middle of the street, .44s at the ready, searching for his next target. There was none. Those who had stayed to put up a futile resistance lay lifeless on sidewalks and in the street. None moved. Just shuffling, grunting Paiute renegades, seemingly impervious to the thick smoke which billowed from the blazing buildings. A handful of survivors had fled into the scrubland beyond, desperately seeking a hiding place where their inhuman attackers might not seek them out.
It was all over.
Now the Paiutes bunched, huddling together, bemused because their killing spree was over. Waiting for further orders from their terrible master.
A bent figure came staggering out of the smoke, silhouetted against the flames which were fast consuming this remote township, his buffalo-horned headpiece reminiscent of some prehistoric creature which had risen from the mass funeral pyre. Skeletal feet that threatened to trip him, scrawny arms waving wildly, outspread. His head was uplifted as though he sought guidance from the spirit which controlled him.
Black Snake’s blistered lips moved as he uttered silent incantations. Stooping, crouching as he approached his living dead slaves, hissing like the reptile from which he took his name, dribbling venom.
The Indians cowered, terrified of their master and the deeds which he might command them to carry out next. He ruled them in death just as he had done in life.
“You have done well,” Black Snake drew himself aloft. “The Old One is well pleased with you. But we are not yet finished!”
The Paiutes trembled. Low moans escaped their slobbering mouths.
“He who stands before you,” a bony finger pointed, directed at Jack Skeet who remained spread legged in the centre of the street, his open jacket displaying his shot-blown flesh. “It was he who killed you, every one of you, would have sent you to the happy hunting grounds had I not rescued you from your grave, given you life in death.”
Angry growls answered the witch-doctor’s words.
“I took his body after his own people hanged him so that he might serve our cause. This he did, look around you at those who have fallen to the guns of he-who-loves-to-kill. He is of no further use to us. Our vengeance upon the whites is done, now you must take your revenge upon he who sent you to your graves!”
The Paiutes no longer cowered. They were shuffling their feet, eager to obey their next command.
“Take him!”
As one they rushed forward, guttural snarls rumbling like thunder in the distance. Knives and tomahawks raised, broken carbines wielded like clubs.
Skeet saw them coming, stood his ground, as courageous in living death as he had been in life. His slender fingers had lost none of their speed as he worked the triggers of both Colts.
Crashing gunfire, stabbing flames, the bullets finding their ta
rgets, ripping into dead flesh. Then the hammers were clicking on spent shells. Renowned for his speed in reloading, the gunman never made it this time.
They were upon him, pinioning his arms behind his back just as J.C Dawson’s cowboys had done as they led him to his hanging. Strength that mocked that of living humans tore an arm from its socket, then the other, casting them aside.
Skeet’s attackers bore him to the ground, stamping on his belly until it exploded in a stinking morass. One of them grasped his neck, panting foul breath as he took the strain. Sinews strained, extended. A tongue protruded from the open mouth, dead eyes popped out on to those high boned cheeks.
Suddenly neck and head parted from the shoulders, sent the Paiute staggering back, holding it like a ball claimed in a child’s play game, hat still firmly wedged on it.
The creatures of the night embarked upon a frenzy of mutilation, claiming body parts as they might have done after a successful buffalo hunt. Fighting amongst themselves over their acquisitions, oblivious to all else.
Black Snake turned away, began the long walk back to his cave in the mountains. His slaves would follow when they were ready. They had done well. They deserved their reward.
PIPEWORK
by
ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY
The woman wasn't expecting us, but she thought she was. Her look was decidedly unfriendly when she opened the door.
"About bloody time," she told me. "You were supposed to be here at eight. You know that?"
"Sorry, er, traffic," I got out. It was easier than saying that whoever she was waiting for was even later, and that we were about to, as the police would say, gain access by false pretences.
She looked a little older than me, a few lines on her face, hair dyed fair. She looked as though she would be happier dressed for the office. Instead she was in jeans and a sweatshirt, defiantly 'working from home'. Most of all, she was very unhappy with me, or with the person I was supposed to be.
"I have taken the day off work," she said, letting us in. "I will be bloody well standing over you, if I have to, to make sure you actually get the work done. I have had it up to here with plumbers."
She stopped then because Walther had come in behind me. I can pass for a plumber. I was wearing dungarees and a baseball cap and carrying a toolbox. Walther in his white suit and hat could have passed for the Man from Del Monte, but plumbing was out of the question.
"Who the hell are you?" she asked.
Walther produced a card that he had printed on my home PC. It said that he was a council inspector with the department of health and safety. She accepted it blankly. "What's going on?"
"Just routine, Mrs Levinger," Walther assured her. "This week we're conducting a survey of tradesmen, making sure that everything goes according to plan. That sort of thing."
This was exactly what Mrs Levinger wanted to hear. "Good. I want to make a complaint," she said.
"Shall we let Mr Stebbins get to work first?" Walther suggested. Mr Stebbins was the plumber she was expecting.
Her place was a bungalow, not new, not old, somewhere around the seventies mark. It was newer than most places that Walther and I ended up in together. Inside, everything was aggressively neat. There weren't many personal touches. The paintings hung on the wall were splotchy modern prints that didn't match the carpet. It was very much the house of someone who lived at work.
"Through here," she said grimly.
When she opened the door I said, "Oh that stinks," which didn't help my reputation as a plumber, but it stank. It did.
"I know it stinks," she said. "That's why I called a...plumber." You could tell from the little pause before 'plumber' that she wanted to put another word in there, but was too well brought up.
It was a bathroom, a small one. There was a fair amount of exposed pipe work coming in past one wall and connecting to the sink and the bath, and some of the pipes had been taken out and were on the floor, along with some unpleasant stains. It stank to high heaven, a stomach-lurching reek that made me want to back straight out again.
Walther had a handkerchief over his nose as though trying to avoid catching the plague. "How aboud you dell ud wod habbend, Midded Lebingub," came his muffled voice.
"It's Ms. Levinger." She was obviously used to it, or more used than we were. "And it's been a bloody week now, and the pipes out for half of that. I haven't got running water to anything except the loo. It's bloody ridiculous." She glared at me. "What happened was my washing machine backed up and flooded the kitchen, and according to the first cowboy I got over here, there was a blockage down the pipe. One week later I've got no water and there's still pipes all over the floor, and I've had two plumbers bail on me. How about that, Mr-" She squinted at Walther's card, "Kinley?"
"Dad sowds absoludely derribug, Md Lebingub," Walther said indistinctly. "Why dobe we leb the expugt wug ad you cad dell me aw abowg id?"
Thanks a lot, I thought, but Walther wanted out of the smell, and so he let Ms Levinger take him into the next room, leaving me staring at the uncompleted plumbing. Needless to say, I don't know anything about plumbing. However, I put the toolkit down and got some tools out, so that when she came back it would at least show willing. What I was doing, though, was listening, because Ms Levinger was pitching her voice so that I could hear everything she had to say, as a warning to all plumbers. I sat down on the closed loo and waited.
"This is the first charlatan," she said, for Walther's benefit. "Mr Ben Conway, who likes to tell people he's ‘Quality Plumbing and Domestic Engineering’, only it's not a real company, it's just him and his halfwit friend. He came in, dismantled my pipes, took fifty pounds in advance and then just left without so much as an excuse. So I called this one, see? John Pilling Heating and Plumbing Services, which is just this one fat man who came a day late and then kicked about for two days, gave me a quotation for two hundred pounds and then also left. Really, Mr Kinlay, I am going to go to the trading standards people. I'm going to go to the police. Look, this Pilling character was supposed to be a member of the Federation of Plumbers and Heating Engineers, but I called them. They've never heard of him." Walther no doubt said something sympathetic and consoling.
I picked up a piece of pipe. It was white plastic, a few inches across, and I saw that the inside was coated with some kind of black jelly. It didn't take much investigating to work out that this was what stank so badly. It was probably why the pipes had got blocked, too. I could see why plumbers wouldn't want to deal with it. It made me want to retch.
I peered through the section of pipe, seeing just how little room there had been for the actual water. The coating must have been a quarter-inch thick. I saw something through that choked little circle that was all the space that was left.
It could have been entirely innocent, but it made my stomach, already unsettled, turn nastily. I put the pipe down.
A handprint. There was a handprint on the wall, where someone's filthy hand had slapped onto the paintwork, and then dragged, smearing grime in a dragging tail. I stood up, feeling abruptly threatened, the room seeming too small, too confining. There was something unpleasant about the direction that the hand had been dragged down, the ragged trail it had left. A man would have had to put his wrist in a weird position to do it.
I heard Ms Levinger stomping back towards the backroom and quickly knelt down beside the tools and tried to look busy. I had hoped I'd be used to the smell, by then, but if anything it was actually getting stronger. Then she and Walther were in the doorway.
"Look at him. He hasn't even started," the woman complained. "Can you at least tell me what the problem is?"
"I'm, er, still looking," I said awkwardly.
"Perhaps you should take your ease, Ms. Levinger," said Walther from beyond the door. "I will look after Mr Stebbins and make sure that the job gets done."
She nodded, glaring at me, and retreated towards the lounge. We heard the sound of a television a moment later.
"Well?" Walther asked me, s
till in the doorway.
"You come in here and say that," I told him. "This stinks. You've discovered the world's smelliest ghost or something."
He shrugged. "There may be a ghost. It may smell. What you're smelling isn't it, though. All perfectly natural, Michael."
"Nothing that smells that bad can be natural."
"Nonsense. It's quintessentially natural." He risked stepping into the room, wrinkling his nose. "The room next to this is the kitchen. The pipes you see coming in serve all the outlets there - washing machine, kitchen sink... I'll bet Ms Levinger doesn't have anything covering the sink plug, because what happens is kitchen waste, pieces of food, all end up down the drain."
"How do you know all this?" I asked him.
"Alimentary, my dear Michael."
I looked blank. He laughed. "I knew as soon as I saw the kitchen. Think about it. The pipes here run almost straight. The food settles in the pipes."
"And turns into black sludge?"
"In a way. Bacteria, Michael. Minute, invisible bacteria. What you're smelling is millions of little creatures living and feeding, excreting and dying, whole generations on the hour. That's your sludge. A great seething city of bacteria all the way down the pipes, until eventually it closes altogether and Ms Levinger's washing machine backs up."
"Fine. In that case why the hell are we here? I'm not a plumber. Also, I don't want the police to find me here pretending to be one. Not with my record."
"Easy, Michael." Walther looked about the bathroom. "No, I'm not wrong. When I heard the man last night I had a feeling, and now I'm here it's only growing stronger. Something's not right."
I should remember that his feelings were always right, but at the time I didn’t believe him. About that time there was a knock on the front door. It didn't register until we heard Ms Levinger open it, then both of us made the connection at once.
We were waiting when Ms Levinger stormed in, the pair of us like naughty schoolboys. There was a squat, balding man with a moustache behind her, overalled and with a toolbag printed with "J Stebbins Plumbing & Heating". I recognised him, of course, from the night before.
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