The Shadow Town (An Evan Ryder Weird Western)

by J. W. Bradley

  Nina didn’t need Hoot to tell her that, she knew Evan Ryder better than anyone, but this situation was worse than anything they had ever faced. “I just hope he makes it back before you run out of bullets.”

  More of the townsfolk were making for the well and Hoot had to spin the gun around quickly to take them down. “If I do, I will just have to think of something else to kill them with.”

  The morning wind whipped some of her hair across Nina’s face and as she pulled it away she said. “Your bunch better leave us alone if we make it out of this alive.”

  “You have my word young lady that we will only come around by request forever more.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. We won’t be requesting nothing from you.”

  “One never knows Ms. Ryder, the future is a dark place.”

  “So is the past Mr. Hoot, so is the past.” Nina was proud of that last bit of brave and grown up sounding talk but before she could enjoy it further she was distracted by John Carlyle leaping to his feet.

  “Oh I ‘near shit an apple barrel full in my britches!” He screamed.

  Nina wanted to giggle nervously at the man’s crazed expression but Hoot silenced her with wave of his hand.

  “What is the matter Mr. Carlyle?” he asked.

  “She was whispering to me from the other side of the door!”

  “Who was?”

  “My dear Charlotte. She’s down there and she needs help!” He knelt suddenly and pulled open the bar on the hatch.

  “No!” Hoot abandoned the gun and ran for him but already Carlyle was toppled backwards by the rising door and instantly, grayish arms and hands burst up from the opening like the unholy birth of a many tentacled demon.

  “Why do they look so terrible?” Nina got to Carlyle first and pulled him away just as the first of the mottled townsfolk crawled free. Hoot had gone back to the gun and was desperately trying to swivel it far enough to rake the roof with its deadly shot. “I have to reposition the Maxim!”

  Nina was headed for the rope that was attached to the building next door. “Come on Mr. Carlyle, they were just fooling you.”

  The old man was shaking his head, teary eyed. “I thought…”

  She helped him over the knee wall and made sure he had a hold on the rope. “You can do it-.” Something grabbed her from behind, a woman, her long blond hair entwining with Nina’s auburn locks as they crashed to the roof. Nina reached back and was instinctively trying to get a grip on the woman’s throat when suddenly her ears were blasted with a loud sound and she felt wetness splatter around her.

  “I have you.” Franklin Hoot pulled her to her feet, the big Remington in his hand. “Get across the rope.” He pulled it out then, the ebony tomahawk that had so fascinated her before. He turned without another word and met the rush of townsfolk as they flooded across the roof. The Remington fired, and with each shot felling several at once, so tightly packed were their attackers. Up and down went his fist clutching the tomahawk, its deadly edge cleaving skull after skull. Nina watched him bring it down remorselessly on the head of a girl about her age, collapsing the skull like a rotted jack o’ lantern.

  She wanted to stop this terrible thing, but spellbound, she continued to watch until Hoot screamed at her. “Damnation Nina! You have to run! Think of Ryder!”

  That did it. Her head snapped around to the rope and she launched herself through the air, landing on it lightly where she swung under and started across hand over hand. She looked back once to see Franklin Hoot smashing the grip of his pistol against the face of a snarling man before being drug down and out of sight.

  There were so many of the mindless things pouring out of the trap door that they started spilling over the roof’s edge. Nina was almost across when several fell against the rope at once and it snapped like a strand of a spider’s web. Clinging to the rope, Nina swung around and was slammed against the adjacent building, the wind was knocked from her lungs and she tumbled to the ground.

  She lay in the dust for a moment, her arm twisted at an impossible angle below her. Maybe if she lay here among the bodies of the others long enough they might forget about her? But how would that help Ryder? She lifted her head in time to see a dozen of the rabid townsfolk hit the ground in a tangled mass beside her. They made a sound like when she had stomped hard on a dried pinecone once during a late winter.

  Using her good arm, Nina pushed herself up to a sitting position. She had to get to the well! She got to her feet and managed to stumble a couple of steps down the alley. Her hair had spilt across her eyes so it was at the last second that she saw the group of nightmarish people round the corner and come at her. Then some others hit her from behind and she was up in the air being born away somewhere, their white hands clutching her limbs tightly. Nina screamed in pain as her arm was jostled, not realizing, beneath her tender flesh, the broken bone was already knitting itself back together.

  14

  I had made it to the top of the angled tunnel when I heard Nina scream. I hit the main passage at a dead run and ran smack dab into the chest of Michael Roy. His face was dust coated but his eyes were blazing like the thing I had escaped from below. So it had been him that had jumped me as I made it to the well. He grabbed my head with those meaty paws of his and started to squeeze. It takes roughly between one thousand and sixteen hundred pounds of pressure to crush a human skull. An acquaintance of mine, a doctor in fact, gleefully had explained it to me once, over a dinner of roast dove and peppered squash. I assumed the big Irishman had reached about fifteen hundred pounds when I shot him in the right ear. He let go, did a final little jig and then crashed over dead, or maybe dead again.

  I had dropped the lantern when Michael Roy grabbed me, but the light from the well opening was enough to see by now and I absently wiped some blood from my nose as I reached the vertical shaft. I studied the sheer walls and nearly was to the point of despair when a rope hit me in the head much like before in the alley.

  Far above, a familiar bearded face appeared. “Hey you!”

  “Carlyle?”

  “Grab the rope! There ain’t much time. Them angry rotting sons a bitches could be back anytime!”

  “What do you mean? Where’s Nina?” My head was spinning. “ Never mind!” I grabbed the rope and started climbing but my progress was agonizingly slow.

  “You hurt?” Carlyle yelled down.

  “I might be.” My vision was waxing back and forth into crimson tones. I looked down and saw I was only about three feet off the ground. What the hell? Maybe Roy had hurt me worse than I thought.

  “Oh shit! I see some of them coming out of the bank!”

  Carlyle disappeared then. I continued to climb but was doing a poor job of it when he finally reappeared. “Sorry! Had to hide out but I got a horse and tied your rope to it. And I found a gun!” He waved it around excitedly.

  Not yet recognizing Nina’s discarded derringer, I said, “Oh excellent!” I wrapped my arms around the rope. “Mount the horse, trot forward and pull me up!”

  “No sir Mister! I ain’t riding her. That filly has a crazy look in her eye!”

  Ah, he must mean Anna. “Very well. Walk beside her then. Just hurry!”

  Carlyle disappeared again and the rope began pulling upwards. Not fast enough but faster than before.

  “Damn! I got one of those nutters crawling towards me!” I heard him shout.

  “Kindly shoot them and get me up!” Even as I said it, I tried to suck the words up back out of the air. I only had a second to imagine the look on old John Carlyle’s face as he discharged his firearm in close proximity to Anna the mustang’s sensitive ears, for in the next instant I was hurtling up through the shaft with Godspeed. I shot into the sunlight, holding on for dear life and was drug savagely over the stones of the well wall only to be slammed hard upon the dirt of the street.

  “Good Lord!” Anna was just a small shape disappearing down the road, the rope leaving a snakelike trail in the dust behind her. There w
as a smoky haze about, lending an even more powerful sense of unreality to the town. But the fires seemed to have died out on their own

  I struggled to my feet, so strong was my worry for Nina I barely noticed how badly shredded my fine suite was. Then I saw John Carlyle lying close by. After a quick glance around and seeing no nearby townsfolk, I knelt at his side. Anna’s hoof had done quite a number on his skull. It looked fairly stove in on the right side but he was alive and looking at me with a smile. “When I close my eyes, Charlotte and my baby Therese are calling to me. I seen them on our porch. No wait, we lost our home-.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “No, no John. You just got lost. They’re waiting.” I so terribly wanted to question him about what happened with Hoot and Nina but I didn’t have the heart.

  “Yeah? Oh. Ahhh…who are you?”

  “Just a friend, now get home damn it.”

  “Yes, fixin’ to.”

  His eyes closed and a last breath rattled out. “Sorry, John.” I picked up his gun from the road before I stood up. I looked dumbly at the familiar little derringer for a tortured moment. Damn this town! It felt like a place cobbled together out of nightmares. Some of the people were limping and stumbling toward me now, looking much the worse for wear. Something was happening. Why did their deterioration seem to coincide with our arrival? I emptied the gun into the shambling group as they got close and headed for the bank.

  I was cornered by a few in the bank lobby but the townspeople seemed more intent on dragging me off somewhere than killing me, so it was easier to put them down. Hell, I had reloaded the Iroquois three times by the time I found the pile of dead ones under the trapdoor in the attic.

  So they had made up to the roof! It was a morbid, heart wrenching climb up those bodies and into the sunlight for me, the whole time thinking the worst. On the roof, the amount of violence dealt must have been Biblical in proportion because bodies were just everywhere, and all showing terrible signs of being, well, killed.

  Near the edge I saw a crumpled black cylinder sticking out of a particularly heaping pile of the dead and recognized it as the top of Franklin Hoot’s hat. I pulled off maybe ten corpses and there was the W.E.r.d. inspector, snoring softly, a broken leg twisted up beside him and a few nasty gashes on his face, but alive nonetheless.

  “Franklin, where’s Nina?” I swallowed hard. “Is she…dead?”

  He opened one eye and squinted up at me. “I am dead tired.” His voice was weak, distant sounding.

  “No, Nina. Where is she?”

  He turned his head to the side and spat out some blood. “Oh, I am sorry. Not dead. Taken.”

  “Taken?” I looked up and down the street. “Where?”

  “I saw her after I went down. They-.” A wet cough exploded out of him. “They were carrying her.” He appeared to pass out again.

  Michael Roy’s Springfield rifle lay half buried beside him and I picked it up, thinking of what to do next. Never before had I felt such determination to put all my thoughts to work on something. Fresh in my mind was the fetid memory of the hellish mushrooms. I couldn’t stand the thought of Nina being exposed to them…

  Wait! The tunnel…Ah! Yes! I spun on the roof, tripping over the bodies, orientating myself. The second cave in, now I knew why it looked wrong. It wasn’t natural! The barrier had been built to look like a cave in. I spun again, surveying the layout of the town and imagining the passages below ground. The walls of the lower tunnel were made of the unique colored sandstone like some of the older buildings in town. I spun yet once more orienting myself. They had taken Nina somewhere but it wasn’t the well. I looked at it now and my eyes traced along the ground, determining the direction of that hellish tunnel, following it to the…“Sheriff’s office!”

  I had said that last aloud. And when I looked down, Hoot was awake and weakly shaking his head at me in a warning fashion. His eyes snapped across the roof and I followed their gaze. One of the townsfolk was half buried in bodies but alive on the roof, at least barely so, it was an old woman and her eyes were fixed on me.

  “Oh.” Remembering the group mind and how it must be spying on us. Something inside of me caused me to be brash then. I walked over to the eavesdropping, crippled woman and squatted beside it. “Can you understand me? I’m coming for you and if you have hurt Nina, well, I’ll figure out a really bad way to end you for sure.”

  I went back to Hoot’s side and dug out the Maxim gun, hefting it, I gauged its weight. The Inspector was watching me with tired curiosity. I told Hoot I’d be back for him, then dropped down the hatch and into the bank that had become a charnel house.

  15

  Again a wave of dizziness swept over me. What had I just threatened as it gazed at me through the eyes of an old woman? Was it a malevolent otherworldly fungus of some kind perhaps? The evil, knowing eye below the ground could be the herald of many dark possibilities.

  It was a struggle to get the heavy Maxim to ground level, but once I did, I found it to be morbidly effective. The shambling people in town were slowing a bit for some reason and with a constant bit strategic firing and running, I was able to keep them at a distance. Every part of my body ached as I lugged the gun down the street, placing it on the odd fence post in order to chop an approaching group to pieces with a buzzing storm of lead. I made a last stand of sorts on the sheriff’s office porch. The last of the ammo bandolier I had draped across my shoulder slipped free just as a final wave of folks made a charge at me. The Maxim’s barrel was red hot like the embers in a dying fire, and still it spun, dealing death in a splattering storm of blood. I hadn’t looked in the eyes of a single person I killed since leaving the bank. I hoped that didn’t make me a coward, but I preferred not to take the chance of seeing them again too clearly in my dreams.

  With bodies piled knee high outside the bullet shredded fence of the porch, the Maxim clicked empty. I swung the hot gun, smashing it into the belly of the last man facing me; realizing with a small jolt that it was the bartender from the saloon, now with a face so bloated by the mysterious infection he was all but unrecognizable. He grunted deeply and collapsed to the ground in flaccid repose.

  I looked out over the field of dead, absently imagining how the buzzards would all be fat come morning. There were tears of relief and shame in my eyes as I turned to the door. Why hadn’t the sorry bunch just run for cover? No, I knew what Hoot had said was true, they were all beyond saving and I had to proceed as if Nina was not.

  With a face covered in a muddy film that we’ll call the bastard child of sweat, dirt and fear, I kicked open the door of the Sheriff’s office, Roy’s rifle now off my shoulder in one hand and my Iroquois in the other. The front room was deserted so I made my way past some jail cells and to a back door. I kicked this open too and almost fell into a black gaping pit in the floor. Its walls were lined with thousands of those grotesque pulsing mushrooms.

  Across the pit, half the office remained unscathed, furniture and all. A thin blond man was sitting in a chair there watching me. Well, a man of sorts, his eyes were wrong, they matched the one from the tunnel almost exactly and his body was slouched in a sloppy, spineless manner. I had never seen the man before, but I knew who he was.

  “I found your coat.”

  The thing that used to be Lucas Henry laughed at this. “I almost had control.” His voice sounded like it was coming from underwater and I was reminded of the woman in the saloon.

  “I’ve been…fighting it for days. See how the…people…rot.” His head rolled aimlessly as he spoke. “It has…invaded our minds, changed them. Come here.” His arm motioned weakly.

  I shook my head. “How do I destroy it?” I should have asked about Nina but I didn’t want to show my weakness until I had a grasp of what exactly I was talking to.

  Henry responded in that guttural, inhuman voice. “You would…have to destroy….everything. All…life.” A bubble of mucus formed and popped in one of his nostrils. “But…maybe.” Those strange eyes looked to the pit.
“No, it will have you…all in the end.”

  I wasn’t sure if I was actually learning anything or just being delayed. I holstered the Iroquois and raised the rifle, sighting Henry between the eyes.

  “Guns will not help…you.”

  Where’s Nina? Ask him! I told myself. Time was running out. But I couldn’t, not yet.

  “She… it needs…her. The rest of you, too weak….but….not…her!”

  What? Had the thing already taken Nina into its consciousness and found more in her that it had bargained for?

  “It..thinks. No that is…not right…think. Can it?” Henry was sliding off the chair, weakening and sounding more confused by the second.

  “Lucas, are you in there somewhere?”

  He was about to slip off the chair and into the pit. “Yes…still. Feel sick.”

  I bet he did. “Please tell me if there’s a way to stop it.” My finger tightened on the trigger.

  “Not…you, her. She will stop it, has stopped…” His eyes closed as he gathered the strength to continue speaking. “From another place, it came looking for...it was…wrong. This thing…guessed wrong about her. She is not one of you. So dark…” At this, he slid free of the chair. “Do it.” For a moment the blue intelligent eyes, I imagined were Henry Lucas’s own, were back and they pleaded with me, desperate for release. In the split second before he slipped off the chair and into the darkness, the rifle roared in my hands and his head disappeared in a fine red mist.

  My own head hung in despair. The only clue to Nina’s whereabouts was gone.

  16

  Without warning, a hauntingly familiar sound came arrowing through my misery. There was a whimper followed by a crying that might have come from Nina five years ago. It was the kind I hadn’t heard in at least that long, heartfelt, feral and helpless. It came to me weakly, her voice floating up from the darkness of the pit.

  I dropped the rifle, and with new found strength, leapt over the black opening, landing an inch past the splintered end of the floorboards. An overturned candlestick was lying on the desk and that’s what I was after. When I had it, I slipped into the hole, my fingers digging deep wounds in the fungus covered walls as I controlled my slide to the bottom.