They were forty but they could have been seventy. She would not stand those who showed the least bit of defiance. With her there was no second chance. There could not be. If defiance was in them it would only grow. If they grew they would become strong. If they became strong she would not be able to control them. If she could not control them they could control her, and she could not abide that. She ruled and bowed down to no one at all.

  She took them as babies. When they were lost in the pain and confusion of transition. She killed them. Took their heads and let them continue their journey to the dead. It served a reminder to those with her, but she was not sure it mattered after a time. She had so many that were loyal to her that none could get close to her. And chief among them was the big man she had taken up north.

  The passage into death took some of what you were. You did not come through it the same. The skin pulled taught upon your bones. The fat stores were gone, and you were reduced to the basics. Not so with the big man. He had come through virtually unchanged. That and the strength that naturally came to them made him the strongest in the group. He was easily stronger than any three of her others; any five breathers. He stood beside her now. Waiting on her orders.

  The moon was new in the sky. Still competing with the setting sun. They had set out from the swamp just past twilight. She hoped the breathers were thinking that there was no need to worry until later in the evening when full dark came.

  She watched a few seconds longer. They were at their evening meal. They took them together now. Hoping for security in the numbers. Shadows moved on the curtains as she watched. They would be the most vulnerable now, and it was time to end this fight with them. The night before they had killed one of the twins. One of her twins, and they had to pay for that.

  She hesitated the briefest of seconds longer, then as a group they took the building and the feasting lasted into the early morning hours.

  ~Robert Evans Redux~

  I watched the sunrise on the wall across from me. I could have turned but my heart wasn't in it.

  The walls were plywood, scarred, gouged and in need of a coat of paint. But there would be no paint, of that I was sure. Even if it could be found no one would be bothered to take the time to put it on.

  The pain was running around in me like a live thing. A ferret gnawing its way out of a burlap sack. It was the biggest thing in my life right now, overshadowing the why and how of me seeing this sunrise and hopefully a few more.

  The sun crept a little further up the wall and the shadows in the room began to fall back under the furniture and creep into the corners, this day was coming whether I wanted it or not. Whether I was in any shape to see it or not.

  I shifted slightly and the pain became a monster. The wall flickered in my vision and then I was gone, dropping off into a deep, black void...

  ~

  My eyes came open like rusty springs on a screen door, screaming and reluctant. The shadows were coming back down the wall. Maybe I had avoided the day after all. I caught a movement to my right and turned my eyes faster than I should have. Doc Mulberry sat in the gathering shadows, chair tipped back, feet off the floor. He grinned at me when my eyes fell upon him.

  “Well now, if it ain't Robert Evans, lately of the prettty-close-to-being-dead.” He drawled.

  I tried to move my arm and the pain shot back up and into my shoulder like a live wire in the old days of electricity. It lit up the pain in my chest which I had barely even noticed at that point. I swiveled my eyes down to look.

  “It's there,” Doc told me. He quietly lowered the chair to the floor and caught it with his feet.

  My eyes found it. I had expected to see a wrapped stump somewhere below my shoulder, at least below the elbow. In fact, I had expected not to wake at all. What I saw was my whole arm. Wrist wrapped. Fingers pale and blue tinged. I recoiled and thrust my arm away despite the pain that caused the gray to seep into the corners of my vision. “What in fu... !”

  Doc leaned from the chair and spoke forcefully. “You got the blood in you now.... I left it....” He sat back and waited for me to lie back into the bed.

  I cursed, still holding the arm away from my body. But I was tired and the pain was back, and I let it down, resting it once more at my side. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

  “I thought it over,” Doc said in a soft, low voice. “If I'd taken the arm you'd a been done for. You ain't no one armed gunfighter... I watched you close.. If you'd a started to turn I'd have done you right then. Believe it...” He paused for a bit. Kicked the chair back off the floor and balanced against the wall once more.

  “Heart's still beating... You ain't dead by a long shot... But, well, you ain't exactly alive either...”

  I rubbed at my eyes. “What made you believe I'd want to live like this?” I took a deep breath, then another. “And what is this anyhow... I mean what is this going to be,” I asked?

  “Not a clue,“ the doc answered. He had closed his own eyes I noticed as I looked over at him.

  “But you left me this way?”

  “I did,” Doc agreed. “But you got your arm. You can use it. And you can't hardly tell.”

  “You mean the arm don't look all that bad? I figured you'd at least have to cut a big chunk out of my wrist... Into my arm...”

  “That too,” The Doc agreed. “But, no... I wasn't talking about the arm... You got the blood... It was bound to make some changes... Bound to.”

  “Christ on a fuckin' roller skate... What in fuck are you talkin'?”

  He came down hard, the chair legs banging the floor. He reached down and picked up an old plastic cased hand mirror where it lay on the floor next to his chair. “Here,” he said, offering the mirror. “Better take a look.” He stood and walked to me, placing the mirror in my good hand. “Eyes,” he said as he walked back to his chair, tipped it back once more, and balanced against the wall.

  The light was low in the room, but more light would not have changed a thing. They eyes that looked back at me from my own head were not my own. Pale white, washed out. Pink at the edges, and a green glow from the center that held silver irises. I blinked and refocused but it made no difference. “Christ,” I groaned.

  “I don't think Christ has got a thing to do with it,” Doc Mulberry told me. “Was a whore... A month or two back... Got bit, same as you. Laid right there in that same bed. Those Goddamned Zombies out to the swamp...” he took a breath, pulled a stubby cigar from his vest pocket. He made them himself: Rolled from tobacco he grew out near the river. He lit it with an old lighter that he somehow managed to keep in fluid. Inhaled and blew out a cloud of blue-gray smoke that drifted up to the ceiling.

  “Bad news and don't even offer me a smoke.”

  He flipped me one of the cigars, came off the wall once more. Lit it and then rocked back against the wall. This time balancing the chair. Rocking it with the motion of his feet. “Her eyes turned.. Same as you. I come and stood looking at her... Waiting to see.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that. She turned that fast. Nearly got me. Come off that bed as strong as two men...” He inhaled deeply. “Shot her in the head as we struggled against the other wall over there. What a mess that was. Told myself this time I would not take the chance. You ain't no whore. Had the gun right to your head...”

  “Jesus,” I muttered.

  He laughed. “Yeah... Yeah... But you never turned... Never did... I can't tell you why...” He came down on the legs fast once more, banging to the floor. “You... You ain't feeling funny, right? Like... Like you want to eat me or something... Right?” His hand clutched at his belt but there was no gun there. He glanced over at the dresser where he had left it and I heard him cuss under his breath.

  “Doc.. Doc,” I told him. He finally looked over, eyes a little too wide. “I ain't... I ain't got no urges... None at all... “Cept an urge to smack the livin' shit out of you for allowing this at all. What if I had been? Been filled with urges? What the fuck would you have done then?”

  He tipped the chair back up. Chewed at the thick stump of cigar and squinted his eyes at me. “Would have got you somehow... Thing is I knew... I knew.” He took a deeper breath. Sucked at the cigar, and the tension seemed to leave him. He took the chair up full and balanced against the wall once again.

  “Chest hurts more than it did when I got shot,” I said, changing the subject.

  “Flesh wound... Bad bullet... Probably made it himself. Wonder it even went in... Dug it right out with a rusty pocket knife.”

  “Prick,” I said.

  He laughed. “Well anyhow. You ain't fit to travel for a day or three.”

  I nodded. “What about some whiskey,” I asked?

  “Sent Milly locke over for some when it became clear you was coming out... She'll be back any minuet, I expect.”

  I nodded and let the silence hold. Watching the shadows deepen in the room. “So what goes now,” I asked?

  Doc shook his head. “I do not know, Robert. I do not know,” he told me.

  RAPID CITY THREE: THE STREETS OF RAPID CITY

  The streets of Rapid City were deserted, but I paid that no mind. It could appear empty and would make no difference in reality. In my world reality did not have much of a place, being mostly a notion.

  I suspected that the dead were long gone, but that did not mean they hadn't left some for me to deal with. They were known to do that, had on more'n one occasion that I could recall. I was not about to get myself caught that easy. I had no wish to be dead for ever and ever.

  There was bodies 'bout every ten feet or so. Slaughtered. They wasn't lookin' to turn these men the way they was some you saw, no, they had meant to murder and murder is what they had done.

  In the last six months I had already begun to wear a reputation as a murderer myself. It was a hard jacket to wear at times. Some men understood it, some men were downright uncomfortable with it, some had to know if they could take me. I had gone hunting the dead. Killing the dead. And it was ironic to me that after just six months I had a reputation of killing more of the living than the dead. Wasn't true, of course, but like I say you got to wear the jacket. It ain’t a world where there is always time for questions at all. It was, in n only six months, a world where it was best to kill immediate like. Fast. No thought. If not it would be you that was dead.

  I had come across the Gulf Coast from Texas and taken some time in this town or that town. Mostly killin' what should have been already dead. It was in a little pine board town just west of what had been Natchitoches that I began to see a livin' in this. Purely by accident, but that was when I got fitted for that jacket and I been wearin' it ever since. Was a woman in that pine town that got herself bit. Her man got to thinkin' it would pass, or the federal boys had a fix up their sleeves they'd be along with right quick, so he chained her up inside their shack and waited. Love will make you do things like that. Not the only time I seen it.

  The dead came for her. Ever night they came for her, and ever night he kept them from getting' her. Drove them off, but the others in that town wanted something done about those dead that kept comin' around ever night and killin' some of their own. They didn't know what the man had done.

  There was a sheriff in that town, mostly scared of his own shadow, and it was him that come to me with the offer. I had just killed a man the day before in a gunfight. Livin' or dead, that sheriff saw no difference. I checked the street careful as I walked.

  I had taken thirteen of the dead out. Hid myself and waited for them. And then I had found the wife. Sent her on her way too. And the husband. Left me no choice. It may be that helped to fit that jacket a bit better. People get to talkin' and the leave a lot of the story out. Not that the truth always sounds better. But the towns I hit after that pegged me as a man killer and a gunfighter. Hired me more often than not. That's been six months passed now. And I had worked my way to this little pine board town. Done a little better than the others maybe... Maybe someone had a care for this place, hard to tell. What was easy to tell is they seemed all to be dead now.

  I stopped now and stared down at drag marks in the sandy street. They lead off to the shadows of an alley across the way from where I walked. I loosed my gun strap, stretched the leather of my gloved hands for a good grip, and stared hard at the mouth of that alley. Spots of blood dotted the trail. In this heat that blood would've turned to rust in no time and then been picked apart by the wind what seemed to favor this street. No sir. That was fresh. It didn't take no special sense or ability to see that.

  A second after I loosed my strap they came for me. Six from the shadows direct in front of me, and the real threat from the sides. I had my second pistol out fast and threw myself down into the dust and rolled hard to the left, firing as I went. Killin' shots, what I could see. I was up and runnin' a second after the roll began when the dead were still trying to find their asses, and when I turned around and sighted I got four more, but missed one who was on me before I could get a head shot in. I put a knee in her guts fast like, crumpled her up, and put one in her head as she lay wondering what had happened. It was over that fast, but it was not the end.

  I counted them up, nine; drug them out of the little pine board town and lined them up in the sand. Took their heads to be safe. It ain't pretty work, then went to get my horse where I had left her nearby. They had done for my horse while I was afoot in the town. Cut her throat ear to ear, left her to bleed out. A zombie don't want no horse flesh. They will partake of it, but they will not regular. And these had been feeding fine, judging from the dead that lined the streets. They killed them and ate them. They didn't kill them to turn them, unless there were more I had not yet seen. That is the way the dead do it when they want to send a message to you. The message says I can do this and you cannot stop me from it. I have my own message system though. My message is lead. Notched to fly apart and take their heads apart. And if I had not already got the ones what done this piece of work, I would.

  It took a half hour of tugging to get my saddle off'n the horse and lug it back to town. I was not sure what it was I could do with it with no horse to wear, but I was goddamned I'd leave it for the dead or time.

  I come back into the town and made my way down the street slowly. Alley to alley. Building to building. I found four of them hiding under the supports for the saloon. There was maybe a two foot high crawl space there and they had wedged in tight. I backed up and they came out fightin'. Probably knowin' they would die for sure if they did not. I checked the rest of the town, and afternoon was then comin' on strong and I began to look for a fortress, not at all sure they was done with me, or I was done with them for that matter.

  The church building set apart from the rest. The balance of the town had been slapped together, and like most pine board towns it had been done rough and slip shod. The term pine board town, or Piney as some said, had been coined to call these towns collective like. It did not mean they was pine, or even wood. It was a term only, because they was built with scavenged materials, and most of that was pre-apocalypse pine plywood. There was miles of the stuff in warehouses all over the south. There for the hurricanes that ripped through so often. The other favorite was tin roofing sheets. This town had favored chipboard. A substance that would not be long for this environment at all. A cheap alternative to the plywood. They had wrapped that with tar paper. It looked as temporary as it had turned out to be.

  I carry with me some necessaries in my saddle bags, and I took them out and set up the little town before nightfall rolled all the way out.

  It was a soft evening, and I could tell why those that still lay dead in the streets had favored it. The air rolled fine and cool off the desert working at the sweat on my brow that had risen as I had worked on the town. I sat in a wooden chair on the porch of the church and looked out at the wide sandy street and the desert that rolled away from it. Calm like. I waited for the dead that I knew would be coming for me to finish what they had started with the horse. They had cut me afoot for a purpose.

  The blue moon had rose and she had begun to sail when I spied them comin'. I would love to say you could hear them, but it ain't that way at all. They is quiet. Not like the livin'. The livin' take noise with them wherever they go. The dead take quiet. It is goddamned unnerving. They can be where they were not just a second ago.

  I had pulled both pistols and crossed them on my lap. Fingers through the guards, lightly caressing the triggers like they was a woman I favored, but I will tell you, in some ways, these were favored more and more by me over women. It seemed I got into trouble with women, out of trouble with these guns. Two of the men I had killed had been killed over women. Part of that jacket I spoke on. I believe that once you begin to kill it don't take much to cross a border. And I have crossed borders easy.

  I saw one. That one slipped just a bit out from the shadow. Another man mighta thought it was just a heat shimmer. The days heat leavin' a buildin' I've seen that too. It looks alike, but this was not that. Something told me this was not that and I took from that small look the speed of the walker and tracked slow like, and then another ripple come.. and Another. So they was there then, I told myself. They was there.

  I marked that first one and began to look earnest for the others I knew had to be there, but I could not spot them, and so I went back to trackin' the single one, askin' myself if it could maybe be just the one. If it could. It warn't though.

  When the one that I was trackin' slipped up the next time I let it begin. Best to have the odds on your side than them have them. The shadow slipped I fired. I heard the impact as the body flew back into the side of that building. Cracked the wood. That started round two.

  I had left that chair and took to the darkness at that first shot and I kept to it. If they like the dark and make it their tool you got to take that away from them. Make it your tool. Bring the fight to those godless bastards and stick it right down their goddamned throats too.

 

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