by Greg Dragon
He gave her a small smile and pulled her in for a half hug. She wrinkled her nose and pushed him away. As she walked toward the train, he leaned around the wall once more. Jasper’s eyes kept darting back in his direction. Jeremiah waved to catch his attention. Jasper stared at him as he held up his hand, then placed it across his chest. Tears sprang to the boy’s eyes and he nodded.
Jeremiah melted back into the alley and followed Charity to the tracks. The train was picking up speed as it went by. The passenger cars were rolling past them. He could see the passengers in the windows. Some of them were townsfolk trying to escape the bloodshed, but most of them were simply people who were heading further out west and had been caught on the wrong train at the wrong time. They pressed their faces against the glass with their eyes wide as they caught glimpses of the butchery beyond the houses. Jeremiah doubted that they knew the truth about what was happening.
“Let’s go.” He grabbed Charity’s hand and began to run. They made it to the tracks just as the last of the passenger cars flew by. He reached out a hand and gripped the railing by the stairs. Using all his strength, he swung himself and Charity up on to the small platform at the back.
Charity grinned at him as they righted themselves. “Shall we have a little fun?”
He glanced at the door. A woman was peering out the window at them. He returned Charity’s grin. “I always love a little fun.”
The screams of the passengers echoed out across the empty prairie as the train barreled west.
***
Connor reloaded his rifle once more and picked off the last of the undead that were moving around on the street below. Robert Zane and Neil Avery had formed a group to go from house to house to search for any that had been missed.
“Nice shooting,” he said as he fired one last round into a man who was flopping on the ground with a missing leg.
His sister leaned against the wall and grunted beside him. His stomach churned at the sound.
He pulled back and set his rifle down on the roof. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before looking at her. She was pale and feverish and her hands were shaking so bad she could no longer hold the rifle. She drooped against the wall, taking deep, laborious breaths.
“Shit.” Connor removed his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “I knew it.”
She offered him a weak smile, a pale imitation of her normally endearing grin. “I didn’t want you to worry.”
“Cora...” he began, but he couldn’t finish. He placed his hand on her cheek and brushed it with his thumb. “Cora,” he said again.
She patted his hand gently. “I know, little brother. I know. I never told you thank you, by the way. For the thing with Michael.”
He gave her a small smile and patted her hand. “I would do anything for you. You know that.”
She gave him a tiny laugh. “As long as I didn’t drive you too crazy.”
He smiled at her. “You always drive me crazy. That’s what sisters do.”
Her eyes shone brightly in the moonlight. “I hope I did a good job, then.”
They sat there for a few minutes before she cleared her throat. With weak fingers, she tugged her skirts up to reveal her legs. Just above the holster for her little pistol was the wound Connor had desperately feared. It was black and festering, and it smelled like days-old beef.
“Can you give me a moment please, Connor? Just a moment.”
He met Cora’s eyes again and held them as he tried to convey all the things he had never spoken aloud. Then he leaned over and kissed her forehead before standing up. As he walked to the opposite edge of the roof, he heard the gun leave its holster. The bullet that pierced her brain ripped through his heart as well.
***
Connor laid Cora’s body down on the road in front of the saloon with all the other bodies that had been gathered there. He stood and met Jasper as he was walking down the road. The young deputy carried a body in his arms. Abby Crawford. Connor was numb to all feeling by that point, so he just stroked the girl’s hair once and pointed to Cora.
“No, oh no. I’m so sorry, Connor.” Jasper’s face pinched with grief for the sheriff. Hannah wrapped her arms around Connor’s waist and gave him a big hug. He returned it, and didn’t want to let go.
“Abby?” Connor pointed his chin at the girl in Jasper’s arms. Her chest was rising and falling, albeit slowly, but it was an important detail he had missed before. “She’s not dead?”
Hannah pulled away from him and lifted up her sister’s mutilated arm. “No, but...” She paused and looked at the sheriff with tear-filled eyes. “Please don’t kill her. Please. She’s all I have left.”
Connor took the arm from Hannah and examined it. It was a rough amputation job, but he could find no bites anywhere on her body. “Take her to the saloon. Have Avery fix it up, get it sterilized and wrapped. Once that’s done, take her to the jail and lock her in a cell. She stays there for a week, until we’re sure she hasn’t become one of those things. Got it?”
Hannah threw her arms around him again. “Oh, thank you, Connor! Thank you!”
She started walking up the saloon steps. Jasper turned to follow.
“Jasper,” Connor called before they went inside. The young man turned around. “If she dies...”
Jasper pressed his lips into a tight line and nodded. Then he followed Hannah inside.
Connor turned toward the jail, but he came upon Robert Zane as he was leaving a house with a small body in his arms. “What’s the damage?” Connor asked.
“Coulda been worse,” Robert responded as he laid the boy on the ground. “I’d say we lost about a third of the town, maybe a bit more, plus all those outside town. But we got all them, so far’s we can tell. That’s a win, I guess.”
Connor frowned. “I guess. Are we sure we got them all?”
Robert shrugged. “No, but there aren’t anymore in town that we can see. Come mornin’, we’ll set up a search party and follow any tracks we find, see if there were any stragglers we missed. Til then, not much we can do but hunker down.”
The sheriff chewed his lip for a minute. “All right. Good work, Robert. Good work.”
He patted Robert on the shoulder and walked to the jailhouse. He glanced around to make sure no one needed him before he went inside and up the stairs without removing his boots, hat, or jacket. He walked into his bedroom and locked the door behind him.
Connor pressed his hands against the wood and closed his eyes as he took several deep breaths. His chest hurt. The air burned as it entered his lungs. He captured his lip in his teeth and staggered to the dresser. With shaking hands, he jerked the bottom drawer open. He searched blindly, tossing clothing to the floor, until his fingertips brushed against the cool glass. He yanked the cork out of the bottle of whiskey before it had cleared the drawer and it was at his lips a moment later. His eyes settled on the picture of his sister tucked into his mirror. The amber liquid hovered at the edge of the bottle, teasing him, begging him to drink.
As the first drop hit his tongue, Cora’s voice echoed in his head. “Drinking again, are we, little brother?”
With a shout, Connor spun and slammed the bottle against the wall. It shattered into a million pieces and showered him with glass and ruined whiskey.
“No more,” he growled as he pounded his fist against the dresser. “I swear, no more drinking. Not until those things are wiped from the face of this earth. Not until I make them pay for what they did to you.”
Connor swore his promise to Cora’s image. Then he sank to the floor and let the tears flow.
***
“How are you feeling?” A week after the massacre at Lonesome Ridge, Connor McClane leaned against the bars to the only locked cell in the jail. His knuckles were white as he clenched his hands into fists to fight off the jitters that had taken hold.
“Tired.” Abby Crawford lay on the cot inside and gave the sheriff a weak smile. “And sore.”
The sheriff nodded as he looked
the girl up and down. She was still pale, but her color was starting to return. For the first three days, he walked into the jailhouse every morning expecting the worst, but each day she proved his fears invalid. “How’s your arm?”
She gave a small shrug and raised her left arm. It disappeared three inches below the elbow. The stump was wrapped heavily in bandages. The bleeding had only just stopped the day before and now the wound oozed, but Sylvia, the whore-turned-nurse, had kept it clean and it was starting to heal.
“Connor?”
He pulled his eyes away from the shortened limb and looked into Abby’s eyes. “Mmm?”
“When are you going to let me out?” She waved the white lump in the air. “It’s been a week. I haven’t turned. I feel fine.” She sat up and winced. “Well, as fine as can be expected. How long are you going to make me stay in here?”
He stared at her for a minute with a pinched face before he nodded. “Yeah, all right.” He took the keys off his belt and unlocked the door. “Come on.”
The young woman grunted as she raised herself into a seated position and swung her legs over the edge. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Connor walked into the cell and tucked his hand under her good arm. Her lips twitched gratefully and she leaned her weight on him as he hoisted her into a standing position. The going was slow, but they made it out onto the boardwalk.
“It doesn’t even look like anything happened,” Abby mused as she got her first glimpse of the town after the battle.
Connor shrugged. “We’ve done a lot of clean-up. We have to move on. Life doesn’t stop for us, no matter how much we want it to.”
Abby glanced up at him and he gave her a sad smile.
“What happened to...” She paused, looking for the right words. “What about all those who were bitten?”
“We had a ceremony.” His voice quivered and he pressed his lips together as he blinked rapidly before he continued. “We gave them the best death we could. Then we burned the bodies outside town. The cemetery is littered with crosses now, but no new graves.”
They watched as a three-man patrol passed in front of them. The men were bristling with weapons and moved with purpose. They all tipped their hats to Connor as they walked by. Connor steered Abby in the direction of the doctor’s old house.
“We have patrols set up all around town. And we’re building a wall. No one comes in or out without being checked for bites first.”
“This is a strong town,” Abby said as she shuffled along. “We’ll be okay. We’ll survive.”
They had reached the doctor’s home and Connor paused. “Yeah, we will.” He smiled at her as he knocked on the door. “And so will you.”
A moment later, the door flew open. “Abby!” Hannah wrapped her arms around her older sister and hugged her tight.
Abby grunted as she placed her right hand on Hannah’s back.
“Careful, Hannah,” Connor admonished. “She’s still weak. Let’s get her inside.”
Doc Whitman’s house had been cleaned up, but the door to his office remained shut.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” Hannah said as she settled Abby into a chair.
“What are we doing here?” Abby glanced around. On the wall between the windows, she noticed a photograph of her family, the one that had been hanging in their main living area. She remembered the day it was taken. Her father had saved for a long time to afford it and her mother had been in such a tizzy about Wyatt’s dirty face.
Hannah grinned as she set a cup in front of Abby. “This is our home, now. Becky is going to live with us, too.”
“I hope you don’t mind.” Connor raised an eyebrow at her, asking for her opinion.
Abby stared at the photograph, then her sister, before looking back at the sheriff. “It’s great. A new start, a new life.”
***
Eddie Clark sat on a hillside overlooking the prairie below. It had been his favorite place ever since he was a little boy, even though the tracks the railroad had put in a few years ago marred the beautiful landscape. His nose curled as he saw one of the offensive locomotives come into view out of the corner of his eye.
“Stupid trains,” he mumbled. “I wish they would all just blow up.”
He had barely voiced the thought when fire erupted from the smoke stack. He saw the explosion before he heard it. The locomotive at the front blew apart. Metal pieces flew out in every direction. The cars behind it screeched as they suddenly lost speed. The first one smashed into what was left of the locomotive and flipped over. It pulled the cars behind it off the tracks. The effect was spectacular.
THE END
Get Lonesome Ridge Book 2, Blood and Dust, here: http://amzn.com/B00MTW6PG0
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Samantha Warren is a speculative fiction author who spends her days immersed in dragons, spaceships, and vampires. She milks cows for fun, collects zombie gnomes, and dreams about the day she’ll meet Boba Fett. Her love is easily purchased with socks and her goal in life is to eat a Beef Wellington cooked by Gordon Ramsay.
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You Will Be Like God
Steve Stroble
1
Maybe these can be the children I never had.
Elani Graves admired the six seated in her den, all in their twenties, all wonderful, gleaned from her husband’s two decades of research and search for them. The largest, a huge Pacific Islander with a torso so massive Elani wondered how his skinny legs could support it, ended his introduction.
“Australia, the Philippines, New Zealand, and smaller island groups, like my homeland, have joined the Island Nation Federation, but Japan, Taiwan, and Indonesia are still unwilling.”
Elani twisted a strand of her shoulder length light brown hair, a habit displayed when she was happy. “It’s time for the implants that will allow us to safely communicate. Who will be first?”
Only one of the six raised a hand.
“Patrice? Follow the robot to the basement. The rest of you follow me to the kitchen for lunch.”
* * *
Dr. Graves examined the scar on Patrice Oldefarmer’s scalp, so tiny that no one would notice it. Performing surgery satisfied him, especially the delicate variety perfected over a thirty-nine year career of pioneering laser surgery to correct memories. Emerging from his boring retirement was proving better than expected.
“Computer, is the implant on schedule to become fully functional before she awakens?” Dr. Graves asked the one he trusted more than any human.
“Yes,” the computer said. “However, I detected a large exchange of pheromones between her and Ramon Zappista during the meeting upstairs with your wife.”
The doctor’s frown produced wrinkles stretching from bushy gray eyebrows to his balding head. “Double the memory suppression rates to their implants.”
“Yes, sir.”
Graves turned to his second most used machine, a robot he called the hoverbot. “Deliver her to the garage.”
The hoverbot’s plastic arms lifted the unconscious female. It began climbing the stairs by using a cushion of air blown from the metal plate on its bottom.
“Stay upstairs after you deliver her.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dr. Graves turned to the monitor displaying those who were drifting into sleep in the kitchen. “So much easier to have cooperative subjects.”
“Yes,” his computer said. “The sedative you added to their food is adequate. My sensors showed none of the other five was willing to have the implant procedure performed. You had no choice.”
* * *
Upstairs in the garage, Bud Lee combed his wavy hair and wondered if his dying of it had improved his image. He smiled when the hoverbot arrived.
“Where do you want me to deposit her?” the rob
ot asked.
“In the sidecar.”
Bud hopped onto the hovercycle’s seat and punched a button to release its kickstand and start the jets, propelling enough air to levitate it a foot off the ground. His cargo safely resting in the sidecar, Bud gunned the throttle. The cycle lurched away from what Bud called “Dr. Graves’ Nut House of Horrors.”
Bud did not consider Dr. and Elani Graves insane. Instead, it was their nonstop demands that drove him crazy.
Manservant? Slave is more like it. I’m the butler, valet, cook, chauffeur, janitor, handyman, gardener, and gofer all rolled into one. At least I’ve gotten into shape.
He flexed his biceps, two inches larger since he had taken this job. Other increased muscles on his legs, chest, and back gave him the appearance of his martial arts heroes.
Bud wondered why one as pretty and intelligent as his passenger would visit the Nut House of Horrors. Dr. Graves’ orders to deliver Patrice had included, “She must not awaken until after you have dropped her off. She cannot see you,” so the green rolling grasslands became a blur after Bud pushed the hovercycle to its maximum speed of 120 miles per hour. But the machine’s rain sensors cut that speed in half.
“Ah, man…” Bud tapped the button on the handle bar labeled Shield. A second later, driver and passenger rode encased under a thin plastic cover protecting them from the bullet-sized raindrops.
Bud admired the herd of buffalo grazing to his left. They don’t need any protection, he thought.
They arrived at the casino ten minutes later. The shuttle driver clucked as he helped Bud load the sleeping Patrice onto the bus bound for the Bismarck Airport.
“Too much party time?”
“Yeah.” Bud handed the driver her carryon bag. Now I even have to lie for the Graves. They don’t pay me enough.
