“I don’t think so,” Highfather said. He looked back to see if the masked stranger was following. The stranger was nowhere to be seen.
“Then why keep running?”
“Harry, shut up and run!”
And they did.
Golgotha was dying. The Earth was dying. The sky was dying. Only a few stars remained glittering in the dark heaven. The ground trembled, as if it were afraid. Many of the buildings on Main Street had collapsed; others burned. The few people in town who were still human cowered. Most of them prayed.
There was a sound—like thunder, like the roar of a cannon repeated in staccato time, magnified a thousandfold. It shook the ground as mightily as the tremors did. Those with eyes that still saw more than darkness turned to the east, to the desert, where the sound rolled in from. There was an eerie green glow, like the northern lights, billowing across the desolate peaks and dunes. The glow grew brighter, closer, and the sound rose with it.
Jim Negrey rode as fast and as hard as he ever had. Promise’s head was low and her eyes fixed with certainty and intent as they crashed through the brush, darted between the buildings at the edge of town and galloped onto Main, headed north, toward the pass, toward Argent Mountain.
Jim knew what was behind him, but he dared not look back for fear it was all a dream. That he would awake back in Albright, or in a cinder-block cell beside the gallows. Or, worst of all, that there was nothing behind him, that he was mad, like his father, and he had failed, one last time, and this was the end.
No.
He pulled the reins tight to the right and Promise turned tight and fast onto the narrow mountain road. They began to ascend Argent even as the mountain began to shake and crumble.
“Go, go, go!” Jim shouted over the sound of the world ending. He stood in his saddle, willing Promise to even greater speed.
No more time.
The Mother had no more time. The thing that had been locked in her womb since before the stars burned in the sky was free and it was killing her as it clawed its way toward the sky, toward Heaven. It had always been there, darkening her heart, poisoning her blood and dreaming its obscene dreams of a universe of nothing but endless death.
Maude crouched at the edge of the well. Constance was unconscious and slung over her shoulder. She held the ancient flask, uncorked its jeweled stopper again. She suddenly noticed that many of the symbols carved crudely onto the flask matched symbols that spiraled about the well’s mouth. The realization made her feel an odd sense of calm. This was the right thing to do; maybe this was why the blood had survived, why the line of women who carried Lilith’s Load had come into existence, had crossed the millennia.
She leaned over the well. It was coming. Rushing up out of the vertigo of darkness, free after time out of time. Maude could feel it, a roaring blast furnace in her mind, destroying reason, annihilating thought. Hungry. Enraged. It was everything she had ever feared, everything she had ever allowed to devour her, her every failure, her every mistake. The darkness had a face and it was her own.
She held the flask over the well; her hands were steady, her mind certain.
Your heart is sick, she said silently to the shuddering cavern, to the broken sky and, truth be known, to herself. Poisoned. I know that feeling, very well. This thing has wrapped itself around the core of you, black and rotten and eating away at your peace, at yourself, at your soul. It has made you weak and it has stolen your resolve, your true self. It has taken away the clear light that is at the core of you; it has stolen you from you and filled you with fear and instability.
She turned her wrist and the blood began to pour freely from the ancient vial, draining down into the darkness.
It was not here of your doing but put here, dumped here through the cowardice and weakness and fear of another, your creator, He Who you should trust first amongst all others He Who betrayed you to His own selfish goals.
More of the old blood flowed from the flask. More than could possibly be held by it. Maude could feel the heat radiating off the streaming blood of the first woman, the first rebel, the first human being to say no to the indomitable intent of the inevitable, the ineffable. The first human being with a sense of themselves and their place in the universe, alone.
The first Free Will.
And now is the time to cast it off, to heal it and kill it and take away all its power over you. The time to know yourself again, to know your core and embrace it and repair it. To be the Mother, to be the Woman, your own creator, your own author! I return this gift of power, of strength. I add it to your own endless reserve. You are the source of all strength, all weakness. All. Heal: cast the poison out. Fight. Fight!
The last of the bloodstream trickled out of the flask as Maude completed her healing prayer, her declaration of will. It felt as if her own blood, Anne’s blood, the vital essence of all those who had come before, had been spilled down into this wound in the world. She pulled the empty flask back from the abyss.
It’s up to you now, she thought, rising from the side of the well with her daughter on her back. Only you can heal yourself, Blessed Mother. You have to want to live, to be whole, to thrive, not merely survive, poisoned and wounded. This world, this existence, this breath is a gift, not a curse.
Maude stepped between the curtains of deadly debris and made her way toward the opening to the mine.
Breathe, Mother, live.
And Maude was gone, fighting her own way back, her daughter’s way back, to the shattering sky.
Outside the chamber, Highfather felt the last ember of hope he had to salvage this grow cold and die. He was still carrying Mutt, and Harry carried Holly’s body. It hadn’t been easy going through the narrow corridor, back to the mine shaft. He paused when he had cleared it. “What?” Harry said.
Part of the tunnel had collapsed on top of the explosives Highfather had rigged to bring down the whole level and well chamber. The long fuse he had run up the ramp to the higher levels was buried under a ton of rock.
“I can’t blow it from the upper level,” Highfather said. “There’s no more fuse to run. I used it all.”
“What difference does it make?” Harry said. “You heard Bick—you honestly think collapsing that room will make a bit of difference?”
Highfather shook his head. “It’s all we’ve got left. If Malachi or Jim or whoever is going to find some kind of solution, this might buy them a little more time.
“Here,” he said. He pulled Mutt off his shoulder and carefully laid him over Harry’s.
The mayor groaned a little under the weight of two bodies, but did not falter. “What the hell are you doing, Jonathan?” he said.
“I’m going to light what little fuse I’ve got left down here and make a run for the top.”
“You can’t outrun an explosion or a collapsing mine,” Harry said. “That’s crazy. You’ll die.”
“I don’t do that, remember?” Highfather said, handing him the last lantern they had.
“Now’s not the time for that nonsense!” Harry shouted.
The corridor shook and the horrible wet growl rumbled from the well chamber again. More debris dropped.
“Go on, Harry. Trust me, I’ll be right behind you. I’ll give you five minutes’ head start. ’Less if it sounds like that thing is coming up sooner. Now go!”
The mayor nodded. “Five minutes,” he said, and then started to run up the ramp to the higher levels as fast as his load would allow.
In a moment he was gone and Highfather was alone in the hot, stale darkness listening to the mountain spasm and heave. He fumbled around and found the other lantern, crushed by the rocks. He wrapped his kerchief around the end of the saber and dipped it in the leaking remnants of the lantern’s oil. Struck a match, and began to count.
Harry’s lungs burned, his legs and back ached, but he did not stop. He followed the bouncing circle of lantern light as it led him up the ramps, down the corridors. Support timbers crashed down around him and behind him he h
eard the crash of the rock ceiling and he feared he would never see Jon Highfather again.
Mutt groaned on his back but lay still. Holly was painfully still. This was not how Harry would have chosen to spend the last minutes on Earth, but there was a strange sense of peace in him here. It was something he hadn’t felt most of his life, only in his times with Ringo. Harry felt like he was in balance, like this was not a bad note to end on. He just wished they could have won.
Ahead was the entrance and while it was still darkness, it was discernable as open air. He trudged forward a few more steps and then he felt the charges go far below him. The mountain shook and the mine heaved and began to collapse.
“Good work, Jon,” he mumbled to no one. “Very good.”
Highfather gave Pratt seven minutes. Then he turned to light the remaining fuse. It would give him about three minutes before the blast. He knew Harry was right and his prospects were not good. But if this bought the world, bought his family and his town, five more minutes, then it was worth it. He lit the fuse and began to run up what remained of the ramp.
A boot stomped out the lit, sputtering fuse, silencing it.
It was Phillips, or what still occupied his corpse. Fat black worms, like convulsing tentacles, pushed through the gash that ran along his throat. His expression was unchanged from the moment of his death. The deacon stumbled, dumbly, arms outstretched, toward Highfather, who stood on the ramp.
Highfather drew his pistol, took careful aim and fired. The bullet struck the dynamite. The narrow passage was filled with unbearable light and sound. The blast ripped what was left of Phillips’s body apart. It was the last thing Jon Highfather saw before the blast overtook him as well.
Outside the Argent Mine, Harry Pratt sat on a wooden bench, exhausted. His dead wife and Deputy Mutt both lay at his feet. The mine was collapsing, dust was rolling out through the yawning entrance and rock and debris began to tumble out as well. A single star remained above. It began to flare, to wobble in the firmament. Harry looked down at the blade in his hands, at Holly, and thought briefly about Sarah, about Ringo, and hoped they were somewhere pleasant in their last moments. He wished they were together.
The cacophony of hooves shook him back to awareness. Jim appeared at the gates to the mining camp, his horse in a full gallop, flecks of foam at the edges of her nose and mouth. The boy was followed by a growing nimbus of green light.
Jim pulled Promise to a stop beside the mine entrance. More rock and debris continued to fall; more dust plumed from the hole. The glowing procession following him rumbled into the camp, toward the mine.
“Here!” Jim yelled. “Down here, hurry!”
Harry could hardly comprehend what he was seeing. A glowing green spectral procession of covered wagons full of families; prospectors on shimmering horses; Indians riding bareback; Mormons; Chinamen; Buffalo Soldiers; explorers; settlers; immigrants; pioneers.
They all roared down into the collapsing mine, as if the constraints of space meant nothing to them. They traveled past in a wave of sound and fury—laughter, cussing, weeping, music, oaths, hymns, prayers. They carried the desert’s wrath with them, carried the hope of a new horizon just past the next rise, carried dreams spun of nothing more than promise and determination—dreams stronger than steel, stronger than the 40-Mile, than any desert. Stronger than death.
Then they were gone, buried under the earth beneath tons of rock. All that remained of their passing was a swirling desert wind and the fading echo of thunder. The mine entrance was sealed in debris. The ground no longer shook. Everything grew very quiet.
Jim climbed off Promise and patted her neck.
“Good girl, very good girl. I didn’t know you could run that fast. You’ve been holding out on me.”
Harry rushed over to the boy.
“Jim, what did you do?”
“Found something strong enough to hold it down there a while longer,” the boy said. “Least I expect so. Those folks don’t do nothing half-measure.”
“Where’s Jonathan?” Mutt said. The deputy was on his feet and looking better than he had in the chamber, but he was still a mess, still barely standing.
Harry looked down, and then to the mine entrance. “He … stayed to set off the dynamite. I’m sorry, Mutt.”
The deputy staggered to the entrance, he began to pull out rocks and toss them aside.
“Mutt…,” Harry said.
“Help me,” Mutt said, continuing to dig.
Jim ran over and began to work loose the debris he could manage.
“Mutt, he was my friend too, but there is no way—”
“Damn it, Harry, it’s Jon Highfather! Please!”
Pratt joined them and began to help the deputy move some of the larger rocks. The sky was lightening, but none of them had noticed.
After about twenty minutes, they heard a faint groan from about thirty feet back. They kept working, even harder now, making a narrow path through the debris. They found him in a small open space created by two support timbers falling on top of some larger pieces of debris. He was blackened, burned, scraped and cut badly. Mutt and Harry pulled him free and carried him out into the orange and indigo sky.
Highfather’s eyes were swollen shut. His lips moved, barely, and Mutt knelt to hear what he was trying to say. The sheriff muttered for a moment, tried to laugh and then, exhausted by the effort, slid back into unconsciousness.
“What did he say?” Jim asked.
“He said it’s not his time yet,” Mutt said, shaking his head and laughing.
From the east came the dawn, long denied, and even more beautiful for the waiting. It followed the laughter down the mountain, into the streets of Golgotha and across the world.
Judgment
The almanacs and the newspapers called it a solar eclipse. The sun and the moon were back where they were supposed to be, and from wherever they had tumbled to the stars had managed to make it back to their rightful places in the crown of the night sky. That was good enough for most folks.
In Golgotha, it was decided an epidemic of the Black Vomit had run through the town making folks so sick they could scarcely recall much of the last few days. At least that was the official, and loudly announced, explanation from Doc Tumblety, as soon as the good doctor himself had recovered from the malady.
Those who had been infected and managed to avoid getting killed during the madness made a full recovery complete with a terrible recollection of illness, vague nightmares of suffocating and the horrific experience of vomiting up dead worm-like things and viscous black fluid for days.
Other events could not be so easily put aside. The damage to the town, to the Argent Mine and the old Reid mansion, all was explained as caused by either locals mad with illness from the plague or earthquakes caused in some unexplainable way by the odd machinations of the eclipse—it really depended on who told you the tale as to what the explanation was. Most folk in Golgotha had learned long ago to quickly grab hold of any explanation in the daylight that might make it easier to sleep in the dark.
One fact of the dreadful mess that couldn’t be explained away or ignored was that eighty-six people had died during the “epidemic,” by most people’s accounting. Others vanished and were never seen or heard from again.
Clay Turlough kept pretty much to himself in the days following the fires and the plague, but he sent word that his main barn could be used as a morgue for the dead, until proper burials could be arranged.
Clay had moved his workshop to a smaller building and his horses to the old stables that he had used before raising the main barn. He watched, through the curtains covering the small window on the door, as families and friends wandered in and out of the barn. Most were weeping, holding each other, consoling one another. He felt a coldness slip through him; it slowly became anger, then resolve. What a waste death was.
Gillian Proctor suddenly came into view, carrying a basket. She stopped to speak with, to console, several of the mourners, hugging them, p
atting their hands, sharing a moment of despair with them, wiping tears from her eyes as she did. Also giving strength and hope to them. It had not occurred to Clay until now that Mrs. Proctor was physically perfect. Her proportions, her measurements and symmetry, were flawless. She was lovely, to be sure, if in no other way than mathematically.
She approached his workshop door and he withdrew from the curtain quickly. She rapped on the glass gently.
“Clay? Mr. Turlough?”
Clay growled and covered his work with a stained cloth. He strode to the door. The damnable woman would peck all day like a bird until he relented. He threw it open.
“Yes, Mrs. Proctor, I am in the middle of some very delicate experiments right now and—”
Gillian presented him with the basket. Clay’s nose caught the scent of ham and fresh-baked bread.
“I know; I’m sorry, Clay,” she said. “We were just worried you weren’t eating.”
“We,” Clay said.
“Auggie, me. He’s afraid you’re angry at him, still.”
Clay shook his head. “No, not angry. I just feel it is inappropriate for me to be on display given my current … condition.”
“Oh,” she said.
He had to give her credit; she hadn’t automatically lowered her eyes like everyone else who had seen him. He still wore dressings on the side of his face and on his forearms and chest where the burns were the worst. It was not for the benefit of others’ sensibilities but a matter of survival. He was working on a compound to help protect him from infections until the burns would scar over. Clay had never been a good-looking man and the burns were simply the final affirmation of his total disdain for the vanity of the flesh. They were the price he paid, and it was a cheap price.
“May I come in?” she asked.
“I, I think not,” he responded. He took the basket with one hand and began to close the door with the other. “Thank you for the victuals, Gillian.”
She pressed her hand against the door, stopping him cold. He had never experienced a display of such gentility married to such strength. Her eyes never left his.
The Six-Gun Tarot Page 39
