WICKER HILLS
MONTANA, 1880
CARTER COULD STILL HEAR the screams and gunshots echoing out from the fiery valley behind him and his crew. The last week had been filled with the same screams of terror and sharp cracks of any gun the terrified could get their hands on. The wind had vanished almost altogether, the autumn trees frozen in time and any flag not ripped from its base flat as a sheet of paper. Yet somehow, the stench of death and those awful sounds still carried over the mountains.
Carter's group had been riding down a rocky mountainside for the better part of a day, taking a break around noon to brew some coffee and eat the measly pickings of a few weasels shot the day before. He found it strange while chewing on the fatty cubes of weasel cut out by his uncle.
The birds.
They were there in the trees, going about their daily business of picking worms and building nests. But there wasn't a chirp to be heard. Even the birds knew to be quiet.
Carter's uncle, Barnum had ripped him out from his bed in the dead of night last Tuesday. At the time, he was angry, smelling the familiar layers of booze on his uncle’s stone face and worn farmhand clothes. But now, he was more than grateful. When they left his hometown of Deer Creek, bodies were crawling on the dirt roads like dogs and buildings were ablaze. Despite the heavy, galloping stomps of Barnum's horse, a powerful Appaloosa with spots and speckles of black and white, Carter was well aware of the shouts and hollers of the small town ripping itself apart.
"They went for the bank first. Those sons a' bitches. When the sheriff came in, I was at the bar." Barnum said as Carter returned to the present, treading along on a smaller horse found with a fully-packed saddle once the two had escaped Deer Creek.
Barnum was making small talk with the latest member of their trotting party of six, a husky brute with a thick, smelly beard who called himself Joseph. Although most of the time, he didn't respond to the name. Carter guessed he was either half-deaf from all the shooting and scares or a straight up liar.
"Shit! Having a drink right before this happened? Surprised you didn't fall off your horse.” Joseph replied to Carter’s uncle with a snort.
"Me and Hancey got a good bond. She's taken a bullet for me and I've for her." Barnum said with a small smile, gently patting Hancey's thick neck and brushing her bright white-as-snow mane. His hand was like sandpaper on her hair, years and years of lumber work turned any man's hands into a rocky riverbed.
Joseph turned back to Carter and sized him up with a twitching eye.
"How old are you, boy? Been with y'all for three days and haven't seen a spot of hair on your face."
Carter shivered at his slippery voice.
"Fifteen. Sixteen next month." Carter replied, trying to dig deep within his throat so he didn't sound like such a boy.
But he was. A boy orphan, now without a home and only an uncle he barely knew until the last year. Mom and Dad had been gone for some months now, taken by fever over Christmas. The sheriff had promised to look after him and got him a job bailing hay and keeping the furnace and lanterns burning at the local horse feed. Now he had nobody left. Except for the stern, crooked faced uncle and the random farmhand horse.
He had decided to name his horse Ashes. But calling her a horse was a stretch. She was barely more than a pony, luckily able to carry all one hundred and fifty pounds of Carter and his small collection of supplies. She had been wandering past Deer Creek’s farmland, which had been mostly burned to the ground, a cream-colored mare with gray stripes like a zebra and smoky eyes, her whole body dusted in ashes. Carter was able to calm the tiny beast down by offering her one of his uncle’s apples, keeping a steady trot next to her for a good mile. Despite the grumbles, his uncle tossed him the rottenest-looking one from Hancey’s sidebag. Good for Carter, the pony loved it.
"He ain't no boy, Joseph.” Anna Hargrave said, appearing at Carter’s left side on the trail. “Not anymore. Saved my skin."
Carter smiled.
Anna was an older woman, blessed with gorgeous red hair that came down to her waist in a braid and a velvet-smooth voice that reminded him of Mom. She had a beautiful light tan belt with two holsters at her hips. But the revolver on her right had been swiped by a bandit the day before last.
Carter had been stirred from sleep once again, hearing the nice lady scream out as the bandit was nearly wrapped up with her in the canvas blanket. Carter jumped on top and didn't even think about plunging a finger deep into his eye socket. The eye popped out pretty easy to Carter's surprise. Along with an unwelcome gush of blood and some pink strings holding the eye in place. After the struggle, Anna kicked him in the face and he crawled away, the pistol wedged between his fingers. Barnum had clipped him in the shoulder with his shotgun as he ran off into the brush, but of course, that didn't matter.
The bandit tumbled off the cliffside they were camping at, his body smacking into the boulders and rocks below. Carter could hear every bone break and the smashing of flesh. He remembered peering over the cliffside at dusk, seeing the bandit a couple hundred feet down the slope, still crawling away with a trail of dark blood behind him.
They won't stay dead...
That was the first thing Barnum had told Carter once they left his house. It chilled him to the bone. Worse than the winter that killed his parents. He had seen more than twenty men, women, and children die in the last week. Only to watch them rise up seconds later, screaming in pain as they stumbled around. There was no cause he could figure. The people weren’t sick or possessed by the Devil. It was as if one day, God just decided to close up Heaven and Hell.
The worst one by far was last Sunday, the woman who was crushed by a runaway wagon with her baby in arms. Despite it being nighttime, the sky was a hazy orange from the housefires that were spreading. The four-horse wagon went through them without so much as a small bump. The driver didn’t even notice, too busy trying to tie down half a store’s worth of supplies to the wagon’s side. Carter stopped in his tracks, dropping the firewood gathered on a small wooded trail to take back to camp. He saw her pull herself from the mud that had sucked her face down, watching her spit out teeth as the remaining part of her hanging jaw tapped against a golden, heart-shaped locket. She stared right at him, her eyes caked with the black mud from rain that had stopped the evening before. She was alive. And in pain. But she didn't even blink, turning around and falling to her crooked knees and pulling her baby from the dirt. The infant was screaming, the thick mud in its throat bubbling up as the woman wiped the scum from its face.
Barnum pulled Carter away, grabbing his hand and hoisting him onto Hancey as they returned to camp. Although his uncle would probably never speak of it again, he saw tears falling down his pockmarked, scraggly face.
"Not like it matters anymore. Nobody really needs saving when you think about it. Plus, the boy here only brought a damn shovel." Joseph said, once again bringing Carter back to the present.
Carter tried his best to hide the embarrassment. Everyone else had at least two guns on them. All he had was Ashes and a shovel the previous owner used to shovel said horse’s shit.
"Whaddya' mean?" Anna asked, her kind face roughing up at the brow.
"Well, shit. As Bannen said, we can't die."
"Name's Barnum." Barnum said loudly, turning his head to face the giant as Hancey continued to lead the posse.
"Right." Joseph said quietly.
"But I guess it's hard to remember names right now. Odd times, huh?" Barnum continued.
Carter could almost feel the heat coming off from Joseph's now-red ears poking out from his obnoxious wide-brimmed hat. The man laughed in a strange rhythm, as if he had forgotten how to laugh properly. A properly creepy “Haw!… haw!… haw!…”
Barnum scared Carter quite often. But when towns were burning and the people were killing each other without any hope of actually dying... he was glad to have a scary man on his side.
_______________________________________________
THE NEXT FEW MINUTES were silent as they reached the bottom of the mountain which spilled out into the flatter plains of the greater Wicker Hills County.
Barnum had rolled a slightly damp cigarette that he shared with Anna. Joseph had just about emptied his flask that he said had wine inside. But Carter didn’t know wine smelled so much like the kerosene he used to light the lanterns at the Deer Creek stable.
The other members of the posse, an old woman named Vandy and her son, Horis were calmly humming a church hymn while sharing their family-owned horse. They hadn’t talked much. Horis couldn’t talk due to a bad cough when he was little. But while the sharply-dressed Vandy was silent, Carter knew she was always thinking. Anything to pass the time and push away the thoughts of what awaited them at the actual town of Wicker Hills. Many whispers from passerby over the last week had put Wicker Hills up on a pedestal. A fortified town that kept up the thick wooden walls for a few decades after their year-long battle against the Indians of the northwestern part of Montana.
Wicker Hills was said to be an active town of four hundred people, the local spring that sliced through the middle of the town perfect for fishing and other resources. Barnum was hesitant, joking that the only reason it was still standing was because nobody had tried killing each other yet.
Joseph finished the rest of his flask in a large gulp that made him rear his head. He shoved the flask back into his horse’s satchel. He was on Carter’s right in formation, staring at him for minutes on end before mumbling to himself followed by the occasional belch that smelled like pure fuel. He started to hum along with Vandy and Horis… not in some religious harmony… but mocking them. The rest tried to ignore it, with Vandy closing her eyes and saying a silent prayer while Horis stared the brute down.
“So… by my woes!” Joseph blurted out, interrupted the humming by singing the song in a high-pitched tone while stretching his arms up to the sky.
Barnum stopped the posse, pulling back on Hancey’s reins and turning her around to face the singing… and very drunk idiot.
“Joseph…” Barnum said calmly.
“To be nearer to my God… to thee!” Joseph continued, the song now turning into a drawn-out shout.
Anna got close to Carter, looking him in the eyes and shaking her head. He watched her place a gloved hand on her left side. Barnum did the same.
“Or if on a joyful wing… nearer to my… my fucking God to thee!”
He wouldn’t stop shouting. Spit sprayed out with every new verse he made up. Swaying back and forth on the poor horse. He brought his hands back down to the saddle and slowly reached into his satchel.
“Take your hands off that bag and put ‘em back on the reins.” Barnum said, the click of his pistol’s hammer making Carter jump.
His uncle locked eyes with him as Anna had done. It was about to happen. They were about to find out if this drunken creep could really die. Barnum looked back at Joseph a second too late.
A sharp POP! cracked through the air and Barnum’s forehead blew open, Hancey rising up and neighing loudly as his body fell. Barnum cried out and fired a shot from inside the holster, a small burst of dust flying up from the crunchy ground.
“No!” Carter screamed, looking back at Joseph who was grasping his pistol with both hands as he fired off the rest of the shots at Hancey and Anna. Hancey was hit several times, taking off into the woods while specks of dark red began billow across her chest.
Carter watched Anna fire all six shots of her revolver at Joseph’s firing arm, knocking him halfway off his horse. Carter’s shovel hit the grass as he leapt off of Ashes, rushing to his uncle’s side as Horis and Vandy began shooting at Joseph as well. His horse hit the ground and Joseph fell with a hard smack. His beady eyes locked onto Carter and he began crawling toward the boy across the trail, kicking up rocks and dust as the posses lost him in the cloud of chaos. Carter pushed himself away, his hand landing on the end of the shovel.
“Come here! Whaddya’ so afraid of?” Joseph mused in a low growl as he climbed over Barnum’s body.
Joseph lunged at Carter. The rusty blade of the shovel whipped across Joseph’s temple, sending him flying back as Carter gripped the shovel and stood on wobbly feet. He spotted Anna in the cloud of dust pushing through the dust cloud with a sharp dagger. Horis was gripping his neck while Vandy ushered Carter to run toward them.
Carter broke into a sprint, his eyes stinging from the kicked-up dust. As his foot left the ground, the leathery hands of Joseph grabbed him by the neck and pulled him to the ground. Carter felt his throat close and his eyes began to wander around, his vision fading like frost on a window. He kicked and stomped but Joseph was stronger. Blood from the shovel wound dripped on Carter’s forehead and he took the moment to find the wound with his hand and dig inside the evil man’s left temple, just like the bandit’s eye.
Joseph released his grip and Carter started to run again, multiple shots ringing out as tuffs of his long jacket flew into the air followed by growing patches of red. Still, he relented and aimed his pistol at Carter with three working fingers. Carter closed his eyes. He hoped. He prayed. He almost wished he wouldn’t come back.
The squeaking neigh of Ashes broke through the blood pumping through Carter’s head and he opened his eyes in time to watch the pony run headfirst into Joseph and knock him to the ground. Carter smiled until Ashes didn’t stop and plowed into him as well.
_______________________________________________
CARTER AWOKE TO THE all-too-familiar sounds of screams.
But he was somewhat relieved. They were those of Joseph. He pulled himself from the tough grass and looked up to Vandy stitching a dime-sized bullet hole in her forearm next to him. He saw Barnum wielding his hunting knife, a bloody hole in his head with a dead look in his eyes. No emotion was given as he sliced off the remaining black hissing tendrils attaching Joseph’s head to his neck. Anna was holding his body still with Horis, whose neck and ear had been wrapped with some old linen.
The screaming didn’t stop until they threw Joseph’s laughing and screaming head into the nearby river. His body kept wiggling around as well, even after the hogties.
_______________________________________________
BY DAWN THE NEXT day, the group was silent. Beaten, bloody, but alive.
They buried Joseph’s struggling, headless body in the shallowest of graves. The dirt was soft enough for the five of them to quickly dig a few feet with the help of Carter’s shovel. Mom would said that was ironic. But Carter quickly put the thought of jokes away as he watched Joseph’s body try and reach for him, those odd greasy vines sticking out through the ripped muscle and skin… hissing like snakes until the dirt muffled the sounds.
“What now?” Carter asked, patting his proud hero horse as they all approached the wooded walls of Wicker Hills, quiet thunder rumbling in the mountains, finally behind them.
“We keep on moving.” Barnum said, a tightly-wrapped bandage sticking out from under his hat.
“And why not…”
“Seems we just can’t die.”
END.