The Good the Bad and the Infernal

by Guy Adams

  “Always complaining,” muttered Hicks, but he made sure he was the first to lay his hands on one, just to show he could be useful.

  “Barbarossa,” Soldier Joe muttered. “Nothing ever happens there.”

  “Sounds perfect,” said Hope, smoothing his hair back from his head.

  “Sounds boring,” complained The Geek. “Hopefully we’ll be passing right through.”

  “If we can get anywhere in this,” said Knee High, peering out at the snow.

  “The horses are taller than you, pipsqueak,” said The Geek. “They’ll manage.”

  But they didn’t. The snow continued to fall, and soon the horses were stumbling and fighting their way through it, each step a challenge.

  “What are we going to do, Henry?” Harmonium asked.

  But Jones was lost inside his own head, a place that felt smaller and smaller with each passing moment.

  His wife roared with frustration, yanking at the reins as the horses drew to a halt.

  “Damn you!” she screamed, the fury that was never far from the surface bubbling over as she jumped from the bench. She pushed and kicked at the snow as if it were an enemy she could beat into submission.

  “Hello!” called a voice from nearby, the sound flipping through the air on the back of the wind. “Can you hear me?”

  “Of course I can hear you!” Harmonium shouted. “Who are you?”

  “The name’s Garritty!” came the reply. “I’m the sheriff here.”

  Sheriff. That was not a word to which Harmonium responded warmly. Given their current situation, though, she’d rather worry about the law from within the safety of a set of walls than out here.

  “How close is the town?” she asked. “We can’t see a thing.”

  “Tell me about it,” the voice replied, this time from right next to her.

  She turned to find herself face to face with the man. He was wrapped in skins, his old face looming out from within them, salt and pepper moustache thick with ice crystals.

  “As for the town,” he said, “you’re just about stood in it. Though I figure you folks might still need a hand finding it.”

  GARRITTY WAS A man who took life in his stride. He could not explain the sudden appearance of the snow in the skies above their heads. Certainly, the way it fell so thick and so fast was beyond his previous experience. Still, the simple fact of the matter was: it had, he was wading through it, and there was little point in questioning the existence of something that was freezing your toes off.

  He had taken to the street, wrapped in as many warm clothes as he could find, and set about helping those who might struggle with the sudden change in environment.

  Within half an hour, it had gotten so that he could barely see the buildings on either side of him.

  “Well, damn,” he had muttered to himself. “If this keeps up, we’ll be buried within the hour.”

  He had helped old Mrs Keighley, who had been running around her yard trying to gather her chickens.

  “They’ll freeze their feathers off,” she had shouted, struggling to be heard over the wind. “And then where will I get my eggs?”

  One by one the birds had been grabbed and shut away in the coop, a pair of blankets thrown over it in the hope of keeping in some of the heat.

  Then he had continued on to check on Pat Farmer. Pat had broken his leg a month or so ago and refused to accept the fact. Garritty had lost count of the amount of times he had hoisted him up from where he had fallen while trying to chop wood, or feed the horse, or whatever other damn thing he had set his mind to. The man simply wouldn’t sit still. If he’d taken a tumble in this, he would need an ice-pick to set him on his feet again.

  “You alright, Patrick?” Garritty shouted through the open window of Farmer’s home. “It’s snowing like the Arctic out here, you might want to keep the windows closed before you freeze to death.”

  “Snowing?” came a voice from inside. “You been drinking, Garritty?”

  Not yet, the sheriff thought, though if the day carries on this way I may be tempted to start. “Take a look out of your window.”

  “Well, now,” the man replied. “I would, but I seem to have lost my balance.”

  Garritty sighed, went inside and helped the man up from where he had fallen behind a bookcase. “You just sit still for a while, you hear?” he told him. “I’m going to have a day from hell as it is without having to keep checking on you.”

  “I’d have got up eventually,” Pat insisted. “Just getting my breath back.”

  Garritty left him to it and stepped back outside. It was getting so he’d have to take cover himself; visibility was low and the wind so cold he’d struggle to stay out here long.

  He was thinking of camping out in the Pine Bluff—better to stay central so he could keep an eye on everyone—when he heard the sound of a woman shouting. She sounded fierce as all hell. It made him think of his wife, Maggie, who was likely even now pushing curses out of the window as she looked at the snow. He loved her a great deal, almost especially because she was not a woman shy of working language.

  He followed the sound of the woman’s shouts and slowly the sight of a caravan and horses loomed up out of the white in front of him. If he didn’t get them under cover, they’d be dead of exposure; he’d just have to commandeer a corner of Sam Popewell’s shed. Sam wouldn’t mind.

  After a few minutes, he began to wonder if that was true. This was an unusual band of travellers. He’d seen a few sideshows in his day, though the freak tents had never been much to his taste. It wasn’t just the look of them, though, it was their attitude: these people were trouble and he’d stake his badge on it. He failed to see what choice he had, though. He could hardly abandon them just because he didn’t take to them.

  He’d told Pat Farmer that he expected a day from hell, and that was looking more and more likely with each passing minute.

  “Where you headed?” he asked the woman.

  “Here,” she answered, the snow matting the curls of her beard. “Though God knows why.”

  “Got a show to put on, have you?” It seemed the likeliest explanation, though he couldn’t see the residents of Barbarossa turning out today.

  “Just passing through,” she said.

  She was leading a blind man by his arm, his small, dark glasses whitening with ice crystals as she dragged him through the drifts of snow. He tried to help, but the man shook him away. “I can manage,” he insisted, though it was clear to Garritty that he could not.

  “We’re going to have to leave the caravan,” Garritty said, “though we can get your horses shelter.”

  “I’m not leaving it out here!” shouted a small, fat man. “Anyone could steal it.”

  “In this weather?” Garritty stared at him. “Son, if we can’t shift it, neither can anyone else. Take what you can carry and I’ll see about getting some help to dig it clear once the snow stops falling.”

  The man wasn’t happy about that, but Garritty didn’t care. He didn’t mind helping folk out, but if they were too stupid to know what was good for them, then he wasn’t going to argue.

  A black girl was helping another wounded man out of the back. A blind man and a cripple, Garritty thought; this is a show that’s been in the wars.

  He began unfastening the horses. “Someone want to give me a hand here?” he shouted.

  “I’ll do it,” said a young lad with skin the texture of a dried river bed.

  “To hell with the horses,” came an angry shout. “What about me? I can’t walk through this!”

  Garritty saw the final member of the party, a thin, tattooed feller, grab the dwarf who had spoken by the scruff of his neck and hoist him up out of the snow.

  “Careful!” the dwarf screeched. “I’m not your goddamned dinner!”

  “Never eaten a dwarf,” the other man said, laughing. “Maybe now’s as good a time as any.”

  These people are definitely going to be trouble, Garritty decided.

  IN
THE PINE Bluff, Colin Bryson was staying close to his stove, soaking up the heat it kicked out.

  He had taken a look outside at the weather, shivered and retired to the warmth. On days like this, he missed his youth in Texas. Texas had heat and knew how to use it. Some men couldn’t take it. They would broil under the sun and complain that the state was Hell on earth. Bryson didn’t agree. The cold, he felt; that’s what the devil would use, if he really wanted to break a man.

  The doors opened and Sheriff Garritty came in, leading a whole gang of strangers behind him.

  “This weather sure beats me, Colin,” the sheriff said. “I think you ought to prepare yourself for a full house.”

  Garritty shook some of the snow from himself and moved in alongside Bryson at the stove. “If this keeps up, I reckon we need to get everyone together. This is the kind of cold that kills folks.”

  “I’ve got the space,” Bryson admitted. “Only too happy to use it.”

  He looked at the strangers the sheriff had brought with him. “You taking in strays, too?”

  “Found them on the edge of town. Couldn’t leave them out there.” Garritty looked at Bryson and a brief glance passed between them. The sheriff knew Bryson was no idiot. Keep an eye on these folk, that look said.

  Bryson shrugged. “Like I say, I’ve got the space.”

  Harmonium Jones wrung ice cold water from her beard and sat down at a table with Henry. “It’s good to get inside,” she said. “Be even better if there was a fire going.”

  “If a couple of you are willing to help me bring some firewood in,” said Bryson, “we’ll see what we can do about that.”

  “I don’t mind helping,” said Toby. “Anything to get warm.”

  Bryson nodded, looking the kid up and down. “You’ll pardon me asking, son,” he said, “but you got anything contagious I should worry about?”

  Toby looked heartbroken. “No,” he replied, “nobody can catch what I got.”

  “We going to have a problem here?” asked Henry Jones, his confidence returning now that he was away from the snow.

  “No problem,” said Bryson, calm as you please. “Just asking.”

  “Only we don’t take kindly to people staring,” said Jones, a clear note of threat in his voice.

  “It’s fine,” Toby insisted. “I don’t mind. He was just asking.”

  “That’s right,” said Garritty, “and we don’t take kindly to trouble, so what say you settle into a tolerant mood while we all pull together?”

  Jones thought about that for a moment then nodded. “Agreed.”

  Garritty helped Hope lead Soldier Joe over to a chair. “We have a good doctor here,” he told her, “if he needs attention.”

  “Doctors can’t help him,” she said. “His wounds are twenty years old.”

  “The war?”

  She nodded.

  Garritty sighed. “Then he has my sympathy. I fought through it myself.”

  “Anyone else going to help with the firewood?” Bryson asked, looking directly at The Geek and Hicks. “The more hands we have, the quicker work it will be.”

  “Sadly I am a martyr to my back,” said Hicks, lowering himself carefully into a chair. “If I try and lift more than a glass of water I’m likely to break myself in two.”

  The Geek sighed. “I’ll help.”

  “Then let’s get to it,” said Bryson, “before the pile is buried so deep we’ll be digging an hour to get to it.”

  Garritty stared out of the window at the still falling snow. “I’m going to get back out there and start gathering folks together,” he said. “All the safer, I reckon.” He shook his head, gazing at the blank whiteness. “I’m damned if I’ve ever seen anything the like of this.”

  “I DON’T LIKE this, Henry,” said Harmonium, once both Garritty and Bryson had left the building. “You think he recognises us?”

  Her husband shrugged. “I reckon he wouldn’t have given us shelter if he did.”

  Harmonium wasn’t convinced. “Shelter? We’re as good as locked up in here.”

  “Along with everyone else in the town. Just keep calm, honey. A cool head is what we need.”

  “A cool head is sure as hell what I’ve got,” said Knee High, joining them. “Half frozen, more like.”

  “We’ll play it by ear,” said Jones. “For now, we need to keep them friendly until this weather passes.”

  “And when it does?” his wife asked, eager as always for the promise of violence.

  “Then I’ll shoot up the whole damn town if that’s what it takes, ain’t no hardship to me.”

  Though Jones was far from sure this was true. Now he was inside, he felt in control, but he knew that he would be half the man he could be once he stepped outside that door. It had been a long time since he had felt truly powerless, and he couldn’t say he liked it one bit.

  THEY HAD NOTHING to fear from Garritty, not at that moment. He had more than enough on his plate to keep him occupied.

  He had moved from one building to the next, enlisting people to help spread the word and get everyone gathered at the Pine Bluff.

  With every passing minute, it was getting more and more difficult to move, and he knew that they had maybe an hour or so before they would be completely trapped. When that happened, he would feel a whole lot more comfortable if they were trapped together. At least then he could keep an eye on everyone.

  He called in on Ellen Quarshie. She was gathering as many blankets as she could find, anything to help give warmth.

  “I’m trying to get everyone into the Pine Bluff,” he told her. “Be better for us all if you were there too.”

  She nodded. “Makes sense. I’m damned if I’m roaming the streets in this.”

  She pulled her light grey hair into a ponytail and started gathering her medical equipment. “Where the hell has this come from, Kingsland?” she asked him. “We haven’t seen weather like this in all the years I’ve lived here.”

  He shook his head. “Damned if I know,” he admitted. “Seems like the sky’s gone crazy.”

  He helped her gather her belongings. “We’ve a band of strangers arrived, too,” he told her. “Look like they’re from some kind of travelling show. Can’t say I warm to them much, though they’ve got a war veteran with them that might benefit from a little attention.”

  “First the weather, now strangers,” Ellen laughed. “Seems to me like it’s a day for the unusual. What brings them here? I wouldn’t have thought we’re really on the entertainment circuit.”

  “Say they’re just passing through.”

  “Well, if you don’t like them, then I guess that’s good to hear.”

  Garritty nodded. “They’re trouble, Ellen, I know it. Just mind yourself with ’em, you hear?”

  “I can look after myself, you old woman, as well you know.”

  He did know that. Still, he worried.

  The drawback to a peaceful life, he decided, was that it made you nervous. When you lived your life as if every day might be your last, it gave you a freedom that security didn’t. Barbarossa was his home, a quiet, gentle place. The presence of these strangers within the town scared him more than the weather. Ice could be guarded against; these folk were altogether more dangerous, he was sure of that.

  BRYSON WOULD HAVE shared Garritty’s fears, though he had quickly decided that Toby—despite the look of the lad—was safe enough. He was happy to help, polite and altogether too concerned what people thought of him to be any real trouble. Toby wanted to be liked. The Geek was another story.

  Bryson knew enough about life in the sideshows to recognise the man’s act once Toby had used his name. He had met a few geeks in his time and they were not men he had warmed to. A man who had got to a stage in his life where eating live chickens was an acceptable career move was a man to be careful of. They didn’t have much to lose, and that made them dangerous.

  That said, The Geek lifted wood without complaint and they soon had a reasonable supply indoors. It wo
uld be enough, Bryson decided, to keep a fire going for a day or so. If the snow lasted beyond then, a supply of logs would be only one of many problems.

  Back inside, he watched as the dwarf, Knee High, set to building a fire, only too happy to be involved now the work didn’t involve wading through snow the height of his shoulders. Deciding that he could leave that chore to the strangers, he went into his kitchen and set to preparing some food. He figured that once the place filled up, he’d need something to keep people going.

  “Any chance of a drink around here?” a voice asked from the kitchen doorway. He turned to find the fat man stood there. Hicks, the others called him.

  “Liquor is not something I’m short of,” Bryson admitted. “Your back improved?”

  Hicks was moving freely, having forgotten to keep up the pretence. “It’s fine if I don’t bend,” he said, feigning a sudden spasm.

  “I’ll just bet it is,” Bryson replied.

  He left the beginnings of a stew and walked through to the bar, where he poured the man a small measure of whisky. “Anyone else got a thirst?” he asked, not surprised at the unanimous assent.

  He poured out several whiskies, lining them on the bar.

  “And who’s paying?” he asked, looking directly at Hicks.

  “Well,” the preacher replied, “I sort of assumed that, given the circumstances...”

  “I’m still a business, friend,” Bryson replied, “and I’m not so rich that I can afford to keep all visitors fed and watered out of my own pocket.”

  Hicks nodded. “I’ll just organise a whip round then.”

  Soon enough, the saloon began to fill up, as one by one, the residents of Barbarossa fought their way through the snow to gather inside the Pine Bluff. Every single one of them took a moment to sum up the strangers in their midst, fascinated, as only isolated communities can be, by the sight of new faces. These faces, in particular, rewarded curiosity.

  Henry Jones did his best to ignore it, though he couldn’t help but be reminded of his days as a performer, a freak to be marvelled at. He knew that it would benefit nobody if he were to lose his temper now. As the building got busier, his ability to centre himself in his surroundings began to struggle. He never did like crowds: they were too loud, too much for his brain to calmly process. He knew his wife would be hating it too. He didn’t pass on some of the comments he overheard with regards to her appearance. He knew there was nothing good to be gained from it, even though some of them had him gripping his knee between fingers that were desperate to form a fist.