The Six-Gun Tarot

by R. S. Belcher

  Harry had expected trouble, the golden plates had said as much, but the plan was holding. Caravans of civilians were headed out of town—he estimated a good third to half of Golgotha were leaving safe and sound.

  His only concern was the other two-thirds to one-half who hadn’t attended the social, who were now out there, fair game for these creatures, and he had to admit he and Jon had never anticipated these sheer numbers coming down the mountain toward his town.

  He called out to the deputies, “They’re coming mostly down Prosperity! Set up a line and don’t let anyone cross it either way. Whatever those things are, if they don’t stop, put them down!”

  “But Mr. Mayor, that one over there is Sam Catterson, the bookkeeper over by the bank!” one of the deputies shouted. “And that’s old Otis Haglund, the butcher. You can’t mean for us to—”

  Harry’s gaze was blue fire. “I know who they are! They aren’t those people anymore. Hold that line, or all these innocent people will end up the same. We are buying time for them to get safely away. Then we will regroup with the sheriff.”

  The deputy ran off. Harry wiped his face with a silk handkerchief, his hand trembling. Everywhere there were the sounds of screams, gunshots and shouts of panic; shadows ran and were chased in primal light of the bonfire.

  “Stirring speech, Harry.” The voice carried a low growl—honey and gravel. Holly, dressed in a dark-stained military long coat, stepped out of the dancing shadows of a nearby fire. “That part about murdering those good citizens who voted for you, does that apply to me too?”

  Harry’s head spun; the scent coming off of her was intoxicating. Her eyes were weeping pools of wet pitch. Her lips were moist and black. Her pale, almost-luminous, face was veined with faint traceries, like ink, and her long hair fell loosely, wildly, around her. She had never looked more beautiful, more terrible.

  “Holly, what have they done to you?”

  “Set me free, dear,” she said, advancing on him slowly, like a cat, stalking. “I waited for you to come save me, Harry. A childish game, I know. You failed me, like you always did. I simply wasn’t important enough to come and rescue.”

  “That’s not true,” Harry said. “I, I tried to find you, Holly. I’ve been worried sick!”

  “Really? Finally, after all these years, you care about what happens to me?” She smiled a black-stained smile. “How sweet.”

  “Holly,” Harry said. “Please let me help you—let’s go home, please.”

  “I am home, Harry,” she said, reaching out to him. The coat fell open and he could see her moon-pale skin and swaying breasts, smeared with shadow. “My pain is gone, my doubts and guilt and fear—all gone. I belong now.

  “I have a new husband, a strong husband, and He’s going to devour your little pissant town, devour all these good, good people with their hymns and their prayers and their dirty, dirty little secrets and sick little souls. I don’t need an effeminate eunuch like you anymore. My husband is going to kick your coward God’s ass and then, then He’s going to burn down Heaven and piss on the ashes. Forever and ever, amen.”

  Her hand closed around his throat. He could see things moving behind the void of her eyes, like black Snakes writhing.

  “You failed me, Harry, like you failed your father, like you failed your faith, like you’ve failed everyone who ever counted on you for anything.”

  He knew he should fight, but she was speaking the truth. He knew it and so did everyone else. Why fight it?

  “I could fill you with His seed, make you a drone, like the others, but He promised me I could kill you, so, good-bye, Harry,” she whispered, and squeezed. Strong, cold hands tightened on his windpipe. Why fight it?

  Ringo, Sarah, even Holly. Maybe he could still save her; maybe no one else could. He blinked and pushed her away, a frantic strength born out of fear and something else he couldn’t articulate, even in his own mind.

  Holly was hissing in pain, like a cat crying in the night. Her hands were smoking, crisping, as if she had just tried to grab a scalding kettle instead of his neck. She stumbled backward.

  “Nice trick,” she growled. “How’d you get real power?”

  He honestly didn’t know. Maybe it was the temple vestments he had donned beneath his clothes, or the ancient breastplate he now wore under his greatcoat—the one that had once held the holy Urim and the Thummim, the seer stones, the armor taken from the chamber beneath his home. He had felt foolish girding himself for battle with holy cloth and antique armor, but he had done it anyway, as Elder Slaughter had commissioned him. There was no denying now what he had tried to hide from, to ignore, his whole life.

  He drew the Sword of Laban from the sheath hanging beneath his coat. It shimmered silver and gold like the sun reflected in water, too beautiful to be real, to be a part of this world. The first blade, from which all other others descended, inspiration to kings and heroes throughout time.

  “I found it,” he said, raising the blade to an en garde stance. “I was dragged to it, kicking and screaming.”

  “Very well, sodomite,” Holly cooed. She licked her charred hands with a black, segmented thing that resembled an earthworm more than a tongue. “Let’s test your faith against mine, shall we?”

  Jim stepped between them, raising the rifle to cover Holly. He cocked the lever and sighted the woman through the barrel’s sights.

  “Hold it right there, ma’am, please.” Jim said.

  Holly laughed. “Oh, Harry, he’s adorable! Is this your new conquest? Your new special friend? You’re robbing the cradle, but then again he looks so sweet, who could blame you?”

  “Shut up, Holly!” Pratt barked. “Damn it, boy, get out of here; move!”

  “What’s your name, sweet lamb?” Holly whispered.

  Jim’s arms began to tremble, just a little. “Jim,” he said. “Why don’t you put your arms up in the air, where I can see ’em?”

  “Like this?” Holly raised her arms and the coat fell open, exposing her fully. Jim gasped and then blushed. Inadvertently he looked away for an instant.

  “Damn it, Jim, move!” Harry shouted, and rushed toward the boy. “Holly, get away from him!”

  Another group of screaming townsfolk ran through the tableau. A man fired again and again into one of their stumbling, possessed pursuers. The dead man kept coming even as the bullets ripped through it, spraying black ichor everywhere.

  “I’ll see you both again,” Holly’s voice purred over the screams and gunfire, “before sunup.”

  Jim looked back down the barrel, but she was gone.

  Harry was beside him, sword in hand. “Damn!” he shouted, turning to scan for her in every direction. “Damn it all to hell!”

  “Well,” Jim said, looking around at the ever-expanding chaos, “at least we found her.”

  Maude’s arrival at the social was heralded by the screams of grown men, the sharp crack of gunfire, flames and shadows.

  She moved through the chaos like smoke. A large number of local folk had gone mad, swarming off Argent Mountain, like locusts intent on devouring the town. A substance like black oil leaked from their eyes and mouths, and she recognized the scent coming off of them as both an intoxicant and a poison. They were Stained, she somehow knew, the word coming from somewhere outside her.

  She knelt and took a neckerchief off the body of a local man whose dead-dumb face she recognized but whose name she did not know. She tied the cloth to cover her face and nose and paused for a second to put her hair in a tight bun. The infected’s body language screamed they were ill, very ill, almost dead. Lurching, halting.

  Maude was suddenly struck with the image of Arthur’s cold body on a table, draped in a shroud. Suddenly the shroud began to move, slide, as the piece of meat that had held a man’s soul rose, empty.

  The thought was brushed away by the iron grip of one of the infected on her shoulder. As she was still kneeling, her head snapped up to see it was Moses Burke, one of Sarah Pratt’s cowboys and an ex—what
did they call them? Yes, a Buffalo Soldier.

  Moses’ eyes were bleeding sticky globs of ink. His mouth yawned open and more of the evil, viscous stuff oozed out. His other hand reached for Maude’s throat.

  His head snapped back and his grip relented on her shoulder as he was lifted off the ground and backward, then falling onto his back and then still, smoke trailing from the hole in his forehead. Then, the thunder and the shock, numbing her hand, the realization that she had fired the derringer out of instinct and fear.

  Stupid old woman! From this position, she had dozens of options to free herself, to take him down. None were lethal. In losing control, in letting fear eat her up, she had ended a good man’s life, a sick man’s life. Damn it!

  That was all the time she had to reflect, to chastise herself. Two more of the Stained were on top of her, drawn by the gunfire. Familiar, daily faces, marred, obliterated, by wet masks of evil. No longer people, now part of something larger, something sinister, more driven and utterly dehumanizing.

  From a crouch, her left leg straightened, swept, and the closer of the two shambling attackers fell. She leaned back on her hands and pushed up with her coiled right leg. There was pain, as muscles strained, tore, but held. She launched upward, let the force and the momentum drive her toward the still-standing attacker. The heel of her palm drove into its jaw with a muffled crunching sound. The force and location were sufficient to knock him out, Maude knew.

  The Stained staggered backward from the blow, and fell to the ground. She began to turn her attention to the one she had knocked down initially when she halted in mid-spin, to watch with shock and horror as the one she had just struck began to rise again. Its head lolled to one side, like a drunk’s.

  For one breath, the fear and panic returned and she thought of the gun. Moses was still. It seemed a bullet to the head did the trick.

  No. She put the fear away, boxed it. Locked it up and acted.

  Two quick, low snap kicks to the kneecaps. A crunching sound like wood striking gravel and the Stained fell to the ground again. Maude felt the other one behind her on its feet now, arms outstretched, lunging toward her neck. She balanced, a little wobbly, spun with her whole body’s mass at the hips and waist and drove a powerful spin kick into its pelvis, shattering bones needed to support legs, body weight. She stopped the kick short of breaking the spine. The blow was painful and crippling, but it wasn’t lethal.

  The one with broken knees was trying to crawl. Maude stepped over and with two quick strikes dislocated its shoulders.

  She put the gun away and continued the search for Constance in the madness. Ahead, through a curtain of smoke, Maude saw a crowd gathered. The barn was on fire, and even as they were being savaged by the Stained many townsfolk were trying to put the flames out with buckets of sand and water.

  For a moment, she wondered where Mutt was in this madness and hoped he was all right, knew he was. She selfishly wished he were with her.

  There was more shouting. She thought she heard Mayor Pratt. A wave of panicked people chased by a few Stained, surged in front of her. When they passed, she saw Constance and a few of her friends moving hesitantly away from the farm and toward Prosperity and the center of town.

  “Constance!” Maude screamed, pushing through another surge of frightened people who were blocking her way, a flood of panic and chaos.

  Constance turned back toward her mother. Her face was black and wet.

  “No!” Maude staggered, stopped. The pain was physical. The fear welled up in her again; this time it ate her whole. “Constance! No!”

  Maude ran, pushing, striking anything, everything, in her way. The mob of screaming, terrified townsfolk and the shambling things that pursued them enveloped her. The smoke from the growing fires stung her eyes, but she refused any tears in this moment. She had to reach her baby and tears would not aid her, only hinder.

  She twisted, spun and ran for all she had in her, breaking through the line, into the clear. Constance and the other Stained, her new family, were gone.

  Gone.

  Malachi Bick, Biqa, sat on a rock and watched his town glow from the fires. There was the man-made thunder of rifles and occasionally a scream would be powerful enough to reach him this far out. Ironic, he thought. Ears that once could hear particles of hydrogen colliding now had to strain to pick up the frantic barks of human suffering.

  He hadn’t eaten, slept or drank since his escape from the assassins at the Paradise Falls. He knew he didn’t need those things, but the realization didn’t keep him from craving them, especially some tobacco.

  A flash of blue light in the darkness, a bitter puff of sulphur.

  “Need a light?” the voice said. It was full of molasses and scorpion venom.

  Lucifer, beautiful in the shadows that obscured his true face, his face after the Fall, lit the cheroot he cradled in his lips with the smoking match, and puffed until its tip was cherry red. Today he was a slender man, blond and beautiful, dressed in a work shirt and denim dungarees. Bick hated to admit it, but it was hard for him to see past the illusion of mortality, just like he hadn’t seen Ambrose or his deacon for what they were until it was too late, until Caleb was gone. The Devil leaned forward and offered the cheroot to Bick. He took it and savored a long drag of its mellow smoke.

  “What a mess,” Lucifer said. “Look at you; you look half in the bag, to use the vernacular of the natives. What happened, Biqa?”

  “What do you want?” Bick sighed, exhaling the smoke.

  “It’s not what I want, this time,” the Devil said. “I was asked to come here by the home office, if you can imagine such a thing.”

  “Another lie,” Bick said, and took another sip of smoke from the thin cigar.

  “Surprisingly, no. I only lie when I have something to gain from it. At this point, this is such a disaster that the only thing to be gained is keeping Earth, Heaven and Hell open for business and not ripped to tatters. Again, how did this come to pass, Biqa?”

  “You know. You know everything that transpires in the spheres of matter, Lucifer. It’s your domain. Why pretend you don’t?”

  “Because,” the Devil said with a smile, “I want to hear you say it.”

  Bick felt hate well up in him. It surprised him how easily it came, how comfortable he felt in the small, petty emotion. He regarded the cheroot, shook his head and tossed it away. He stood.

  “I went native,” he said finally. “I watched them for so long, I watched them grow up, become shadows of His divinity, His mercy, His wrath. None of you were around. No one visited me after you. So I … fell into it, into becoming one of them.”

  “Fell,” Lucifer said. “Interesting choice of words. So why didn’t you seek me out? I would have welcomed you with open arms.”

  Bick’s chuckle was a dry rasp. “Please. I haven’t given up my duty to the Host, to the Lord. I have no intention of joining you and your ‘revolutionaries’ in the root cellar. I just got a little lax in how I attended to my responsibility. I had to adapt; I mean they started learning, creating settlements, exploring, expanding. They breed like prairie rabbits, you know?”

  Lucifer nodded, allowing him to continue.

  “They sensed the power of that thing beneath this land and it drew them here. They had no idea what it was or why they came—it whispered to them in dreams and spoke to the disturbed, the mad and the evil. To remain here as guardian, I had to appear as something their minds could understand, could endure. To the first people, I was a sorcerer—they called me Be’kiwa-ah. I had powerful medicine and they left me alone. Even their spirits and gods avoided me.

  “Then the white and black and yellow people came and I had to become a man named Bick for them. I became white, like the majority of them, just as I had been a red man when this land was theirs.

  “I claimed my protectorate as my own, built a homestead and worked to control the access of those who crossed these lands in search of a new home. I maintained control of who settled here as
best I could without arousing suspicion. The Bick family’s heir would ‘pass away’ and I would take on a new guise, as a new relative—a son, a distant cousin. It worked pretty well for a long time.”

  “You really didn’t have to do all that,” Satan said with a sigh. “You really have let yourself go, Biqa. I mean, ruses and charades, pretending to be a mortal. You’ve even started thinking like a monkey—why not just cast a blight upon all who live here, or fill their hearts up with terror or turn a few into pillars of salt? They’d get the idea to stay away.”

  Bick shook his head. “You never did accept it, did you? Tell me, O Prince of Darkness, why don’t you just come on up here all the time and snatch any old soul that strikes your fancy? Why don’t you set San Francisco ablaze and dance in the streets while your demons harvest sinners like wheat? Why all the contracts and fiddle contests?”

  “Free will,” they said simultaneously.

  “I hate it,” Lucifer said, kicking a rock. “Why would you give a bunch of short-lived, shortsighted murderous apes the power of cosmic veto? Why does He hold our power in check, but they can roam around and murder and lie and cheat with impunity?”

  “For someone whose domain is Earth, you have a lot to learn about humans. The bottom line is He limits us and what we can do to them with our power, His power.”

  Lucifer snorted. “For now. So you lived as one of them, came to enjoy their base pleasures. Now look at you, so weak you can actually be harmed by physical force, perhaps even killed. How did you plan to protect the land by letting human insects dig into it?”

  “That was a miscalculation,” Bick explained. “The chains of divine fire that hold the Darkling are the most tangible manifestation of the Almighty’s power within the Earth. The presence of the power turned whole veins of base matter into semi-divine material, throughout the planet.”

  “Silver,” Satan said, nodding. “That’s why it has the effect it does on preternatural creatures, and why men covet it so much.”

  “Since this is where the Darkling was cast to Earth, where the world was first built around it, there is a lot of silver here in Nevada. That eventually brought prospectors. They found their way to the mountain, discovered the silver veins. Word got out before I could deal with them. The silver boom came to my little town.”