by Mark Tufo
“Eliza,” he said as he pressed his palm down onto the heel of the print. He looked over to where the shriveled husk of a man lay. He walked over to him. “Why have the scavengers not taken your sustenance?” Tomas asked. “And more importantly, what did my sister want with you?”
Tomas gently turned the man onto his back. His facial muscles had pulled up and dried into a perpetual smile. Tomas grabbed the blankets that had been strewn around the large teepee, almost shattering an ornate bowl as he grabbed the last one.
He turned the bowl over and over. “This is ceremonial,” he said to himself. “That makes you the shaman,” he said as he picked the man up and placed him on the blankets he had piled up. “Eliza, what trouble have you gotten yourself into now?” he asked as he left the ghost town with bowl in hand.
Tomas’ next destination was Durango, Colorado it was where the Cavalry 3rd Regiment was stationed at Camp Foster. He needed to find out more information and the best place was always the local saloon. Liquor tended to make tongues wag, as did his power of persuasion.
“Who’d you say you were again?” The soldier slurred, trying his best to focus on the person in front of him. “This is some powerful whiskey.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Tomas said pouring the man, boy really, another shot. “You were saying about the curse?” Tomas asked.
“Nuffin’s been the same since we attacked that Injun village. Now I don’t normally care one way or the other about killing them, but these ones weren’t doing anything, they weren’t near to any settlement or anything. And there was something about that place.” The soldier shuddered just thinking about it. “It was dead there. Does that make sense? I mean before we even got there, you could just sense that something wasn’t right. Like the angel of darkness himself had settled upon the place.” The young soldier took another gulp of liquid courage.
“It was no angel and he was a she,” Tomas said, pouring the man another shot in his drained glass.
“What?” the man asked looking up from his glass. When Tomas didn’t answer right away, the soldier continued. “The Indians put up a good fight, but it almost felt like it was for show. That doesn’t even make sense to me.” The soldier paused, trying to grasp the correct words. “I…I mean they already seemed dead like they had nothing left to live for. Damndest thing though, we wiped out that whole village and there wasn’t a woman or a child among them. I mean normally, your first thought would be, yeah, raiding party, but it was their summer encampment. You could tell by the large gathering tent, that things means everything to them. They wouldn’t take it on raids.”
“Could the woman and children have left before you got there?” Tomas asked.
“I asked myself that,” he said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “But we hit them so fast and so hard, they couldn’t have escaped. And I know we surprised them because most of ‘em were coming out of their teepees when we hit. It wasn’t like they had any advance warning or anything.”
“And this Colonel Broward, he led the charge?” Tomas prodded.
“Yeah, funny thing that.”
“How so?”
“The colonel never went out on a mission, ever. And he was hell-bent on getting out to this little fly shit of an Indian village and destroying it. We barely slept, or hardly ate. Eight horses died from being pushed over the edge of exhaustion. Those were some good horses.”
“To say nothing of the Indians that died,” Tomas added.
“What are you trying to get at, mister?” The soldier said. “I lost four friends out there,” he said as he rose up.
“Nothing, I meant nothing by it. Please sit; have another drink,” Tomas said, smiling.
“I think maybe I’ve had enough,” the soldier said, about to turn and walk away.
“You’ll leave when I say you can,” Tomas said forcibly.
The soldier stopped mid-stride and began to size Tomas up. He quickly sat back down. “One more drink for the road sounds good,” the soldier said as if he had been thinking that all along.
“You were saying?”
The soldier was smiling as Tomas poured him another drink as if the last few seconds had not happened at all.
“I mean not only did the colonel come with us, he led the charge. He looked like a man possessed. Like the devil himself was on his tail.”
“Probably was,” Tomas said seriously.
The soldier paused to reflect on Tomas’ answer. And then nodded his head in agreement.
“The colonel almost left without even burying our dead. I think Staff Sergeant Reddings would have shot him. So we buried our men, said a few short prayers and headed back, almost as fast as we had headed out there. Would have too, if the horses could have taken it.”
“Was the colonel looking for anything?”
“Looking? No. Like I said, the colonel couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there, like he was late for his own death.” The soldier laughed at his own quip. “Which I guess he was, considering he came home to a dead family. Then he killed himself.”
“So he didn’t kill them?”
“Why would he kill them? There were rumors that he had, but I was the one on the burial detail. I had to help get those bodies out of the house. I’ve seen a lot of dead. The colonel’s brains splattered all over his portrait will be something I can never drink away,” he said brandishing his drink. “But the kids and the wife? There was something wrong there; they were all shriveled up like peaches left out in the desert sun. None of them had a drop of blood in them and there wasn’t a drop of any spilled anywhere in the house. And I got the same feeling I did at that damned Indian village, something bad had been there, it was like I could feel the evil still lurking in the shadows.”
“Did the colonel leave a note or anything?”
The soldier merely shook his head from side to side. “I have fourteen months left on my enlistment. I need to get out of this unit before it gets me,” the soldier said desperately.
“Before what gets you?”
“The curse. We’re cursed now.” The soldier sneered as if to say ‘how do you not know?’ “I’ve been hearing that the medicine man of the tribe we killed had cursed the colonel for something and that was why the colonel wanted to kill him, but the curse didn’t die with the medicine man. He was able to do some magic that made the colonel’s family dry up. And he somehow turned friend against friend.”
“How so?” Tomas asked.
“Gentry and Tenson have been friends long before I ever joined the unit. And then one morning, neither one shows for revelry. Of course, it’s me that gets to go and check in on their tent. Tenson’s still in his rack, but I know he ain’t never going anywhere again. His blanket is soaked in his own blood and Gentry is gone. At first, I just can’t believe that Gentry did it. They were as close as brothers. But he was gone and so was his stuff. I need to get out of here,” the soldier said, placing his head between his hands.
“How long ago was that?” Tomas asked.
“Almost a month,” the soldier said, looking up. “You want to see it?”
“See what?”
“The tent, it’s still there. The captain is waiting for a magistrate to come out here to witness the crime scene.”
“Yes, very much so.”
Ten minutes later a swaying, Private Bucks was at the tent flap, looking around for anyone that might catch them, unwillingly to go in where he would be less noticed. Tomas, did as the private asked and did not move or pick up anything. He could sense Eliza’s presence here, but in a much more muted form. He could not explain what he felt, just that in some shape, way or form she had been here.
“My sister was here,” Tomas said more aloud to taste the tangibility of his question in the open air.
“Your sister?” Bucks asked.
Tomas looked over to the private. “Someone you would be better off never meeting.”
“Your sister is the white witch?” Bucks asked as he let go of the tent flap a
nd began to back up.
Tomas moved quickly to halt his retreat. Bucks barely had time to register how strong the boy was.
“What do you know of this ‘white witch’?”
“Nothing. I don’t know nothing. Let me go. I knew there was something wrong with you,” Bucks said, trying his best to release the iron grip around his forearm.
“I will let you go when you tell me what you know,” Tomas said as he dragged the wide-eyed private back into the confines of the tent.
“Fine, anything that makes you go away. The night before we rode out against those Indians, I was in the tavern with Gentry and a couple of other guys. And we saw the colonel over at the far end of the place, talking to one of the prettiest women I had…or any of us had ever seen, but there just wasn’t something right with her. I wanted to get a closer look at her, but she scared the bejesus out of me. I never did get much closer than about fifteen feet. She looked up at me once, I…I felt like she wanted to kill me. And not that she ‘wanted to’, but that she could. All that beauty and she was just so cold, so deadly cold.” Bucks made a show of wrapping an imaginary jacket around his shoulders to shield himself from the memory.
“And you haven’t seen her since that night?”
“No, she’s not a face you would forget; but if I did see her, I’d be heading the other way.”
Tomas had fragments to this puzzle. Eliza had engineered a cavalry raid on the Indian village, but why? Was she looking for something? Was she afraid of someone? Impossible, Tomas thought, answering his own question. He hadn’t seen fear in her eyes since the day she bit him. Some five centuries previous. There was no doubt that something powerful that belonged to Eliza had been in this room. Is that what she was looking for? But why not come back and get it? Why go through all the trouble of setting this thing up and not following through.
“Did Tenson or Gentry say anything about the day of the raid?”
Bucks looked confused.
“Did they talk about finding anything?”
Bucks had not yet shaken the look off his face. And then a thought he might have never have retrieved, popped to the fore. “I don’t think it meant anything, but Tenson was always kind of a glum person. Always the first to bed, griped about everything, even the food, and sometimes that was actually pretty good. But after the raid, even while we were burying our dead, he was smiling from ear to ear. I thought it was strange as hell. But I was tired and we were, like I said, burying our dead. I didn’t much pay attention to him.”
“How long after you got back did Gentry go missing?”
“About a week. Come to think of it, Tenson started talking about places where he wanted to live and what he’d do when he got out of the cavalry. He even started coming to get drinks with us. He was actually turning into a pretty decent guy before Gentry gutted him like a fish.”
“Do you know where Gentry was from?” Tomas asked.
“Pretty sure it’s Louisiana. Yeah, New Orleans because he was always going on and on about the Cajun food and how he misses shrimp.”
Private Bucks thought he must have passed out for a few minutes. When he sat up, he realized he was on Gentry’s rack and the stranger was gone, if he had ever been there at all. The only thing he could focus on was the mounting headache starting to take root in the base of his skull.
Tomas headed east. Even without getting a location from Bucks, he would have been able to follow whatever Gentry was carrying. It was a faint trail, but it was there if you knew what to look for, and now he did. Did Eliza? He pushed his horse harder, but Gentry and possibly Eliza had three weeks on him.
It took Tomas nearly a week to get to Gentry’s family home. It was a ramshackle hut built of varying pieces of wood and held together more from force of habit than anything else.
A nearly toothless old woman sat on the front porch. She was strumming a banjo and stooped down every once in a while to pick up a jug with unknown contents. She would drink her fill and then put the container down to begin again on her picking.
Tomas was coming up on her blind side when she spoke. “You from the government?” she asked before turning around. When she did turn to the approaching boy, she spoke again. “No, not the government, you’re a powerful one, you are. What do you want with my boy?”
Tomas saw no reason to be obtuse with her. “He has something of mine, of my sister’s, actually.”
“The stone. That damned blood stone, I knew it was bad, and now it’s brought you.”
“Better me, old woman, than my sibling. You would not be having this conversation with her.”
“I can feel that thing in my house. It itches under my skin, like a tick. It burrows under the skin and spreads.” She shivered, even though the outside temperature was hovering around the mid nineties and the humidity had drenched her clothes. “He won’t give it up willingly.”
“I can be pretty persuasive.”
“I bet you can. Step closer, boy, so I can see what you are.”
Tomas did as she asked.
She put her instrument down and grabbed both his hands in a surprisingly firm grip for someone so fragile looking. She spoke as if in a trance. “You walk in both worlds, unable to die and unwilling to live. You have light in your heart, but a darkness where your soul should be. You have seen much pain and misery, yet you try to do as much as you can to prevent it as you go about your journey. You are much, much older than I, yet you look younger than my boy. I do not know who or what you are, but you are the rightful owner of that accursed stone, I can feel it in my bones.”
“Is your son home? The sooner I get what belongs to me, the sooner I can get going.”
“I think that would be for the best. Gentry!” she yelled, never letting go of Tomas’ hands or looking away from him.
Gentry came around the side of the shack and almost started to run when he saw the stranger on his porch.
“Don’t be a damned fool,” his mother said, not witnessing one nuance on his face as he came up behind her. “This young man,” she began and then winked at Tomas. “Says that you have something that belongs to him.”
“Ma? I don’t know what either of you are talking about.”
“You’ll kill us both if he won’t give up the stone, won’t you?” The old woman asked.
“Yes, and still, it will be a better fate than the one my sister would bestow upon you.”
“You’re the white witch’s brother?” Gentry asked, almost collapsing.
Tomas did not need to answer.
“I killed my best friend for that stone and I became a deserter. Both things are punishable by death and still I don’t know why I did it. I can’t even stand to look at it, yet I carry it with me everywhere I go. It’ll be a relief to get rid of it,” Gentry said as he reached far down into his pocket and pulled out a stone, which he’d wrapped in a small piece of cloth.
Tomas took a big intake of air as the stone was placed into his hand, now that the old woman had finally yielded it.
“What will you do with me now?” Gentry asked. All the spirit had been drained from him.
“You will go on with your useless life such as it is, knowing that you killed your friend for a stone that is valuable to no one, save one. I wish that I could feel pity for you, but I don’t. Good day,” he added for the old woman as he turned to leave.
“What is it? What is the stone?” Gentry asked.
Tomas held it up to the blazing sun. Two occlusions were outlined through the fiery red brilliance. And then like a comet flashing across the sky, the answer came to him. “It is my sister’s soul and that of the medicine man that trapped her here.”
It was the old woman’s turn to breathe deeply.
“Get it off my property! It should have never been here, there are things going on that should never be!”
She was still raving as Tomas found his way down the tree lined pathway that led away.
Post Script – If you have asked yourself the meaning of the picture that
heads each of Michael’s journal entries, it is a simple and powerful explanation at the same time – it is his path home.
Check out these other titles by Mark Tufo
Zombie Fallout
It was a flu season like no other. With fears of contracting the H1N1 virus running rampant through the country, people lined up in droves to try and obtain one of the coveted vaccines. What was not known, was the effect this largely untested, rushed to market, inoculation was to have on the unsuspecting throngs.
Within days, feverish folk throughout the country, convulsed, collapsed and died, only to be re-born. With a taste for brains, blood and bodies, these modern day zombies scoured the lands for their next meal. Overnight the country became a killing ground for the hordes of zombies that ravaged the land.
This is the story of Michael Talbot, his family and his friends. When disaster strikes, Mike a self-proclaimed survivalist, does his best to ensure the safety and security of those he cares for. Can brains beat brain eaters? It's a battle for survival, winner take all!
Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/Zombie-Fallout-ebook/dp/B003A022YO/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1329095883&sr=8-4
Kindle UK
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Zombie-Fallout-ebook/dp/B003A022YO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329097365&sr=8-1
Nook:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/zombie-fallout-mark-tufo/1100731956?ean=2940011821011&itm=1&usri=zombie+fallout
Tantor Audio: Coming Soon!
Zombie Fallout 2: A Plague Upon Your Family
Zombies have destroyed Little Turtle, the Talbot’s find themselves on the run from a ruthless enemy that will stop at nothing to end their lineage. Here are the journal entries of Michael Talbot, his wife Tracy, their three kids Nicole, Justin and Travis. With them are Brendon, Nicole's fiancée and Tommy previously a Wal-Mart door greeter who may be more than he seems. Together they struggle against a relentless enemy that has singled them out above all others. As they travel across the war-torn country side they soon learn that there are more than just zombies to be fearful of, with law and order a long distant memory some humans have decided to take any and all matters into their own hands. Can the Talbots come through unscathed or will they suffer the fate of so many countless millions before them. It's not just brains versus brain-eaters anymore. And the stakes may be higher than merely life and death with eternal souls on the line.
