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“You’ve got no right to do this,” Chris Larabee grated, stumbling as he was shoved into the jail cell in Galensville. “ He was the one who picked a fight with me .”
The sheriff nodded, though they both knew that wasn’t strictly true. “And you drawing a gun on the man was just, what? Your way of ending the argument?”
Chris glared at him, stumbling back a little as the cell door slammed shut.
“We’ll try to get through to your people when the telegraph lines open in the morning,” Sheriff Wilkins said. “See what they have to say. Meantime, you stay put in here where you won’t go waving guns in any more of our citizen’s faces.” He looked out at the growing dark. “You’re lucky I’m generous. Could’ve sent you out into the night instead of locking you in a nice, safe jail cell.”
Chris kicked the cot as the man walked away. He watched as the sheriff settled into the chair behind the desk in the main office and ignored him.
Sent out into the night… Funny how the world had changed so damn much in the last year or so. Used to be you’d travel anywhere. Staying in the middle of nowhere with a fire and nothing else. Now, without a rifle, a ton of ammunition, and at least one friend to help you stand guard, you stayed in a town or you…
Chris tried to block out the images that ran through his mind. He hadn’t drunk enough, clearly.
Josiah had wanted someone to travel with him to Junction City to confer with a new, young doctor who had set up a clinic for ‘the afflicted’. He had two men in his care right now, and Nathan had offered some of his cough remedies.
Chris and Josiah traveled well together, early January had been surprisingly mild, and Chris had been feeling the walls closing in lately. It was a good time to get away. Now, though, he was wishing he hadn’t come. One of the men Dr. Welton was caring for had been feverish and off his head, gnashing at people like he was a zombie already. Ezra had said something, there at the beginning, about being “bestial” during his recovery, and now Chris couldn’t think about anything but how pitiful that man had looked, how it must have been exactly like that with Ezra.
Chris’d always just assumed that Ezra’d come around one day and the two of them could have something. Couldn’t really be that he was contagious like that—that the two of them being together would pass on the infection. And Chris expected there were ways to be together without actually being together that’d suffice if that really was a danger.
Ezra was adamant, though, and his guilt about whether he might have passed on the parasite to other partners before Chris kept him from making any moves at all, which Chris thought was just stupid… But thinking of him tied to a bed, fighting to tear a throat out with his teeth turned his stomach. Standish had been badly hurt a couple of times since coming to Four Corners, and each time that dead deep sleep of his had scared the crap out of Chris, thinking on what would happen if this was the injury that killed him and turned him zombie…
And then he wondered whether Ezra had a nightmare like that about him.
He dropped down on the cot and put his head in his hands, brain already spinning from too much whiskey. He should have stayed in Junction City with Josiah and just stayed away from the clinic. Hell, if that man in the saloon had just kept his mouth shut about “controlling the monsters...”
“Trick is to nip it in the bud,” the local man had said. Chris never did get his name. Didn’t really give a damn what it was, anyway. “First sign of turning, you put the bastard out of his misery.”
“Seems damn cold to me,” one of the man’s friends said. Chris drank his whiskey and tried not to listen. “What if you’re wrong—like, what if you kill someone don’t need to be killed?”
An image of young Franklin Garrett ran through Chris’s head. A ten-year-old child left to die without even checking to see if he'd actually been bitten. Right about this time, Chris considered leaving for the first time.
“Well,” the man said, trying to think his way out of it. “I reckon you make sure he’s bit, then… Don’t you?”
Chris knew the man was drunk. He knew he was drunk. Should have left. He should have left. Ezra’s face floated in front of him. Vin and his talk of how the Indians cared for every one of the bitten until they turned fueled a feeling of anger and impotence.
“I heard where some people survive, though,” another man piped up. “Seems like maybe—”
“That there is just lies,” the man said, his words slurring. “I’m telling you, you just kill ‘em when you see ‘em. Best way of controlling the monsters is to cut ‘em down quick.”
Chris stood. He should have left. Instead he walked up to the man, leaned over him, and got right up next to his ear. “Only monster I see here is you,” he growled.
The man tried to get away from him, leaning to the side. “Who the hell are you, anyway?” he asked, too drunk to have any sense at all.
“Don’t matter who I am,” Chris said coldly. “It’s folk like you that’re making things worse, not better. You don’t go playing judge and jury, damn it.”
The man wormed away and stood, hand on his gun. And then he laughed. “Hell, I ain’t a judge or a jury, but I’ll sure as hell be executioner if that’s what it takes.”
Chris lunged for him, grabbing him by the collar. “Why don’t we leave you out in the night?” he asked, not drunk enough not to realize he was going too far. He started dragging the man toward the door.
Which was exactly when the man moved to draw his gun. And Chris drew his gun…
And now he was sitting in jail, not drunk enough not to care.
Night wore on, getting darker and colder. Chris was dozing, nearly asleep, when a shout from the street outside roused him.
“They’re coming!” the man from the saloon shouted. “The monsters! They’re coming!”
The sheriff dropped his feet to the ground from their perch on the desk and rose with a sigh. “Damn it, Tyrus,” he growled. “Ain’t you been in enough trouble already tonight?”
He left the door open and didn’t bring his rifle as he left the building, though his pistol hung from his belt.
Chris stood as Tyrus’s voice was joined by others—more panicked, pained, horrified… Gunfire rolled through the tiny town in uneven spurts. It seemed to go on forever.
Jesus, the monsters were there.
Chris looked around the cell for anything he might use to defend himself, wondering if the zombies could—
The doorway was suddenly full of nightmare. Sheriff Wilkins stumbled in, blood flowing too damn fast from a torn bite wound at his shoulder. The man was already half dead, and he knew it. Terror flooded his eyes and he staggered toward the keys, managing to reach them and toss them toward the jail cells. “Get out,” he rasped. “Rifle by the door, just…”
The throw was short, though, and Chris couldn’t reach them. But maybe then the zombies couldn’t reach him. Damn, to have Ezra’s ability with a lock pick…
Chris watched the sheriff fall to the ground and curl up in pain, his shock-sobered mind making the man a more familiar form. Jesus, to go through that… He wondered if Wilkins could come out the other side like Vin and Ezra had.
It was an eternity of watching the poor man lie there, not quite dying, but too scared and hurt to move, before Chris heard a rifle fire and a body drop right by the front door of the jail.
“IN HERE!” he shouted desperately. If he could get someone to—
“Chris?”
Josiah’s disbeliving voice was nearly Chris’s undoing. He sagged to the floor when the man stepped in, rifle at the ready. “Thank God—I didn’t see you out in the fight, and I feared…” Josiah took in the scene and his face drew down in sorrow.
“He’s still alive,” Chris whispered. “Get me the hell out of here.” He looked beyond his friend to the suddenly silent street. “How’s the town?” he asked, not sure he wanted the answer.
“Four bit, besides your sheriff here,” Josiah said, kicking the keys all the way to the cell door so Chris could grab them. He knelt next to the sheriff. “How you doing, sir?” he asked, clearly not expecting an answer.
“Kill me,” the man begged, pain thick in his voice. “Jesus God, please just kill me.”
Chris bowed his head. He opened the cell door silently and eased himself out.
“Well now, sir,” Josiah said quietly, watching the man try to stay conscious. “If you got the courage, might be you could get through this.”
“Nobody gets through it,” the man sobbed.
“I happen to know a couple of pain-in-the-ass survivors might disagree with you,” Josiah said fondly.
Chris gripped Josiah’s shoulder briefly before heading to the door to survey the damage. The street was still lit with street fires, and bodies littered the dirt. A dozen zombies, including the one Josiah had killed just outside the door. Three human bodies… looked like at least one suicide, damn it.
Off by the livery stood a circle of people, standing frozen and staring at a body on the ground.
Chris somehow knew it’d be Tyrus before he even saw the man’s face. A face wracked with pain and horror. The Lord has an interesting way of teaching a man his lessons, Josiah had said once. Chris crouched down before the man, noting that while Tyrus had his gun in his hand, he hadn’t thought to put it to his own head yet.
“Looks like nobody’s up to cutting you down quick,” he observed.
“Please,” the man begged. “God, please…”
Chris shook his head. “I ain’t gonna kill a man who maybe don’t need to be killed,” he said quietly. “There’s a clinic in Junction City. Reckon we can either get you there or make sure you don’t hurt anybody if we can’t.”
Tears rolled down Tyrus’s face and he nodded, like a child.
Chris looked up at the people around him. “If you got a wagon, we’ll be going.” It was dismissive, demanding. He wasn’t going to have a panic on his hands when the danger had passed, and he wasn’t going to have these two men killed before they absolutely had to be.
“I’ll get mine hitched,” a large man said. He had the look of a blacksmith about him. “I’ll need it back, though.” At Chris’s nod, he darted off to get the team hooked up.
“What…” A woman dark-haired, tall, and self-possessed walked up. He’d seen her kneeling over one of the human bodies and her face gleamed with tears. “What can we do?” She spread her hands hopelessly. “We’ve never…”
Chris almost laughed. To hear Tyrus speak, they were old pros here, but the town had never had an attack? “Burn the bodies,” he told her. “The human ones, too.”
She swallowed hard in the night, but nodded resolutely.
“Chris!” Josiah’s call from the jail wasn’t panicked. Wasn’t worried. The sheriff was still kicking.
“Getting a wagon together, Josiah,” he replied, looking down at Tyrus, who looked to be falling into that Damned Sleep Ezra knew too well.
The townspeople melted away to clean up the street. Chris wanted to be gone before the bonfire started.
He wanted never to have walked into the damn town in the first place.
“Sheriff’s sleeping,” Josiah said, coming up next to him and looking down at Tyrus.
But where would these two men be if he hadn’t?
“Why’d you come?” Chris asked in a murmur. He’d told Josiah he’d meet back up with him at Hunterton in a few days.
“It got hard to think in that clinic,” Josiah said quietly. “Kept thinking on those men. And Ezra.” He snorted. “Keep trying to remember that if Vin could come out of it the way he has, maybe there’s hope, but…”
Chris turned at the sound of the blacksmith’s wagon. “Yeah.” He met Josiah’s eyes. “Thanks.”
“Anytime.”
*******
“I feel a need to write a thank you to Ezra’s cousin and his wife,” Josiah said out of the blue, as they rode the trail toward home. They’d made it to Junction City with the two men still sleeping. Dr. Welton took the survivors in and promised to let them know what happened, either way.
Josiah’d been quietly proud of them, but Chris couldn’t wait to get out of there and they’d dropped the blacksmith’s wagon off and headed for home as fast as they could.
For his part, Chris’d been thinking about the town they’d left behind. When they’d ridden back into Galensville, the bonfire had already burned down. The woman he’d spoken to that night was named Felicia Hull and she asked a lot of questions while they were packing to move on. Josiah had patiently laid out what they could do if anyone was bit, and gave her Mary, Nathan, and Dr. Welton as people she could call on should the need arise.
That town might make it, without becoming a place where a man was killed outright because of an attack. And if they could, others could, too.
“I reckon Siobhan isn’t alone,” Chris said quietly, thinking what it must have been like for the woman to guard her husband’s cousin as he lashed out. Thinking how, if they’d been farther west, where the epidemic was so feared, Ezra’d be dead of a bullet long ago.
“Reckon we’d better make sure she isn’t,” Josiah said with a smile. He looked around, at the sun that was already starting its downward slide. “Let’s push on to Hunterton,” he suggested. “If we can there before sundown, we can check the telegraph office.” The grin on his face was teasing.
Chris’d sent a telegram in Galensville, informing the group of where they were and what was happening and where they were headed next. He’d addressed it to Ezra and pretended that it didn’t really matter which of the men he addressed it to, did it? Pretended that he didn’t want to read Ezra’s wordy response just because he missed him.
Didn’t stop him from picking up the pace, though, or from being the first to dismount in front of the telegraph office the moment they rode into Hunterton. The telegram waiting for him had him smiling for more reasons than one.
Well done, says N. Come home says B. I concur with both. Also, we have a new guest of our own, who is doing well. EPS
“A new guest,” Chris murmured, handing the telegram to Josiah. Another survivor. And whoever it was was recovering, sounded like.
We might just make a world of it again, Chris thought, a spring in his step as they headed for dinner. God knows, we’re going to try.
*****
the end