Ashes of the Dead - Bucket of Blood (7 page)

“Deputy Markley,” she said, straining to get
his attention.

He looked up from his stupor, pulled
out of the daze. “Oh…yes, sorry.” He grabbed the clean towel and passed it to Rose, who replaced the blood-soaked towel on Mason’s chest and continued to hold pressure.

Johnny appeared
out of a back room with a stack of fresh white towels in his hands. “What in the hell is going on around here?” He said as he set the towels next to Mason.

Rose
grabbed a clean towel from the stack and used it to wipe blood from her face. “I don’t know. None of this makes any sense.”

“
First the doc and his wife were attacked…and now Mason?” he said, and sat down next to the deputy. “What the hell was wrong with those people in the street?”

“They looked sick,” she responded.

“I don’t know, Rose. I haven’t seen too many dead men in my life, but they sure as hell fit the bill.”

“How could they be dead? That doesn’t
make any sense,” she stated.

“I don’t know
exactly what I saw out there…but it felt evil,” Johnny said, and handed her another clean towel. “Their skin was just hanging from their bones, like it had rotted some.”

On the other side of the parlor
, the Gunman stepped over to a window and glanced through the wooden slats. Outside, several townspeople had gathered around the undead bodies and began to inspect them with caution. One of the men had kneeled down and was looking at the bullet hole through the undead’s temple.

Deputy Markley was still sitting in his stool at the bar, trying his best to regain his composure
, but he couldn’t get rid of the awful images in his mind. “
Horrible
--,” he spoke under his breath. “Just
horrible
--,” he repeated.

The Gunman turned
to Markley, very interested in what he had to say.

“
What I saw was horrible. Those people--.” Markley could only shake his head at the thought.

“
What people?” interjected Sheriff Pickett.

“I don’t know who they were
…but they were eating them.”

“Excuse me? What are you talking about, son.”
Pickett stepped closer to Markley and slapped his hands together, trying to get his attention. “Markley!” he exclaimed.

Markley snapped out of it and nearly fell
from his chair. “Sorry, Sheriff.” He leveled his eyes at Pickett. “The Miller's. They're all dead.
All of them
. There were people in their home--, I…I can’t explain it…but they were
eating
them.”

Rose turned away
from the bar and shook her head in disbelief.

“
My god, no--.” She said, eyes welling with tears.

“
What do you mean,
eating them
?” the Sheriff probed.

“That’s exactly what I saw.
It was awful.”

Rose
fell backward and stumbled into a chair. “No!” She sat down and began to cry into her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. Johnny placed his hand on her shoulder and tried to console her grief.

Cutler appeared
with Andrew from the second floor. He was still pale, but seemed fully recovered from the initial shock of Rebecca’s death. He walked over to the table where Mason lay and lifted the towel off of his chest, and then checked the wound on his thigh. Johnny could tell from the look on his face that it was bad.

“
What's wrong?” Johnny asked anxiously.

“
His wounds are deep. He's bleeding from an artery in his leg, and I don't have any surgical equipment here.” He notched the belt tighter around Mason's leg. “I’m sorry, but he’s lost a lot of blood, and there's not much I can do.”

“But, we can
take him to your office, right?”

“No, w
e'd be too late,” Andrew told him, and replaced the towel on Mason’s chest. “I'm…I’m sorry. I really am.”

Andrew walked over to the bar where Emmett
and Markley were still sitting.

“Can you get me a whiskey?” he asked.

“Um, sure doc,” Emmett responded.

Andrew turned to Markley. “
What happened, deputy?”

“It was
awful. Some lunatics attacked the Miller's--, killed em'. I was just able to get away.”

“
No. I mean what happened to your shoulder?” Andrew said, pointing to his bloody shirt.

Markley
looked down at his shoulder, just now remembering the injury. “Oh…that. One of them bastards bit me, before I could get a shot off. Just attacked me. Don't make no sense.”

Emm
ett handed Andrew a whiskey just as a woman screamed outside the saloon.

The
Gunman spun and ran back to the window, his revolver cocked and already in his hand. Several people ran down the street and disappeared around the next corner into darkness. More screams emanated from outside, followed by gunshots.

Pickett and
the Gunman both stepped onto the boardwalk. At the end of the street several people lay dead in the dirt with undead already feasting on their corpses.

“
Get inside!” Pickett yelled at a few people standing in the street, pulling out his revolver.

The Gunman fired and an undead's head exploded
on impact. He fired again and the bullet pierced another undead's eye socket. More undead appeared down the street, chasing after people and grabbing them with their decaying hands. One of the undead sunk his teeth deep into a woman’s thigh, another tore flesh from her neck, and yet another ripped into her stomach, pulling apart her skin and digging inside. She screamed in sheer agony as the three undead began to eat her alive, blood seeping into the dirt.

Pickett couldn’t believe his eyes. He fired as an undead approached
. The bullet careened straight through its forehead and took it down instantly. “Jesus Christ,” he said as he fired again.

The Gunman let loose four more bullets
and all of them met their targets, penetrating skulls, and painting the street with exploded brain. More townspeople were assaulted, and the undead numbers continued to swell as they turned into undead themselves, transforming before his eyes.

Across the street from the Gunman and Pickett
, a woman and her son cowered behind some barrels, the undead horde getting closer to them every second. She held her child close and covered his eyes, trying to block him from seeing the carnage that surrounded them in the street.

The Gunman fired
and stopped an undead from ripping the two apart. “Cover me,” he told the Sheriff as he fired again, taking down two more undead with a single shot, and then moved across the street. He continued to fire with precision, and three more undead fell to the ground, his revolvers now emptied. An undead woman heaved toward him as he paused in the middle of the street and reloaded without hesitation. It was an effortless task he completed in seconds, empty brass shells falling to his feet. The undead woman was nearly upon him and he fired and struck her through the forehead, and she fell only inches from him.

“
Hurry!” Pickett yelled at him.

U
ndead continued to enter the street and they started to break through windows, and tear down makeshift barricades that had been hastily constructed, ripping into people that cowered in the dark.

The
Gunman reached the opposite end of the street and grabbed the woman and the young boy. “Come with me,” he told them. He took the boy’s hand and threw him over his shoulder, and then grabbed the woman's arm and shuffled back across the street.

Pickett fired
wildly from the other boardwalk and covered their escape. Several more townspeople ran down the street looking for shelter. “Into the saloon!” Pickett reloaded and waved them inside the Bucket of Blood. He fired again as more undead approached them, ready to kill. “Quickly!”

Everybody
from the nearby street ran inside the saloon and Pickett slammed the door behind them.

Inside the saloon
, tables and chairs had already been lodged against the windows, and a number of people had crammed inside, trying to escape the slaughter.

“
Out of the way!” Cutler yelled.

Pickett and
the Gunman jumped to the side as Eric and Cutler slid the piano against the door, just in time as several undead smashed against the outside and clawed at the boards, desperately trying to get in.

The Gunman handed
the boy to his mother. “Here,” he said.

“
Thank you--,” the woman said through tears, “Thank you so much.”

The Gunman could only nod
as he started to reload his revolvers. “Don't mention it.” He turned to Cutler, who busied himself securing a long wooden table behind the piano. “That won't hold them for long.” He finished reloading his revolvers and placed the empty shells into his front shirt pocket. “We have to move upstairs. Get to higher ground.”

“Good idea,” Pickett responded from behind him.

“Sounds good to me,” Cutler added. “But I’m not sure if all of these people will fit up there. There’s just not enough room.”

“And w
hat about the people outside?” Johnny asked. “We have to do something about them.”

“Sorry
, son. There's nothing we can do about that now,” the Sheriff told him. “They’re on their own.” Pickett finished reloading his revolver with sweat dripping from his brow. His previously well-ironed pants were now soiled and bloody.

“But you’re the Sheriff,” Johnny said, “Can’t you do something?”

“I’m sorry. We have to secure the saloon before things get outta’ hand,” he told him.

Johnny conceded the point and started
to help Eric and Cutler with the barricade.

The Gunman peeked through a crack in the window into the dead world outside. “If we are going to make it through the night, we
need to reinforce these windows, and bar all of the doors.” The risen undead continued to feed outside and sonorous moaning echoed through the streets. The Gunman now faced them in the only way he knew how, with two loaded guns at his side.

Many people sat throughout the parlor in shock. The sound of the undead horde continued to grow louder outside.

The Gunman walked
over to Rose, who stood in front of Mason’s pale and lifeless body. Her eyes were red from crying as she held Mason’s hand.

“
You alright?” he said, standing next to her.

Rose tucked
Mason’s arm next to his cold body. “I don't know. This has all happened so fast. It’s too painful to be real,” she said to him, and walked into a back room and returned with a clean bed sheet under her arms.

“Here, let me help you,
” the Gunman said as he helped Rose pull the sheet over Mason's dead body. “Sorry about your friend.”

She walked
behind the bar and poured two shots, and then mechanically slid one of them across the counter to the Gunman. She put the shot to her quivering lips and swallowed it before she could start to cry again. “I just can’t believe this.”

He
sat down and sipped on the whiskey, and then placed a revolver on the counter. Rose poured two more shots before he could finish the first. She reached down and pulled out a double-barrel sawed-off shotgun from underneath the counter, old and well used. The wooden stock was cracked and faded. The barrel smelled like oil and rust. She flipped it open to check that it was loaded, and then cocked it shut and thumbed the safety over.

“For unruly customers,” s
he smirked, already feeling better in his presence.

The
Gunman nodded, approving of the weapon in her hands. “Good to know.” He finished the shot and placed the glass in front of her. “Remind me not to get too
unruly
,” he said, and smiled at her as she poured him another.

Sheriff
Pickett and a few other men had started to nail boards across the doors and windows. They worked as silent as possible, none of them wanted to attract any more of the undead to the saloon. There wasn’t any more spare wood inside the saloon, so Cutler ripped more boards from the walls in a back room, and broke apart chairs. He gathered an armload of the splintered pieces of wood and carried them to the front of the parlor.

Eric
grabbed one of the pieces from him and nailed it across a window, and then looked through a space between the boards. Moonlight bathed the street outside and he could see several undead finishing the remains of a victim, eating raw intestines and brain. It was like looking into a nightmare as screams echoed through the town. Only this one had turned real and spilled into the streets.

“What are we going to do?” Johnny asked as Cutler handed him more wood.

“Definitely not go outside,” he said, and then turned and handed more wood to Pickett. “As long as those things don’t get inside we should be fine.”

“And
what if they do?”

Cutler could only shrug at this. “
Pray that we have enough bullets, I guess.”

The
Gunman finished his whiskey and turned the glass upside down on the counter.

Rose set
the shotgun down and grabbed her glass to take another sip. “You never told me where you were from.”

“I guess I didn’t. I came across the desert.”

“What brought you out here? Work at the mine?” she asked.

“No. Headed out
west,” he said.

She smiled. “You
are
out west.”

“
Well, farther out west than here.”

“Oh, I see.” Rose moved to pour more whiskey for the Gunman.

“No, thank you. Just water.”

She turned and filled a glass from a pitcher of water. “Good idea. Can’t very well fight these things if you’re drunk,” she
said, and smiled over her shoulder.

He smiled
back at her. “Exactly.”

As the Gunman reached for the glass of water and put it to his lips, the white sheet
that covered Mason began to move behind him. Rose froze in place. She dropped her glass and it smashed to the floor. “
My god
--,” she whispered, and watched as Mason sat upright and the sheet dropped from his contorted undead body. The Gunman turned just as the deputy launched toward him. He fell sideways off of the chair and struggled to get away.

Rose lifted the
heavy shotgun from the counter, “Get down!”

Everyone
jumped to the ground as Rose fired, blowing off his head. Bone fragments and brain exploded throughout the parlor. Black brain splashed across the white ivory keys of the piano. Mason’s decapitated body slid to the ground and there it remained motionless, completely dead.

The
Gunman got up and grabbed his revolver from the floor. Rose stood behind the bar holding the expended shotgun in her hands as both barrels filled the room with gun smoke. She flipped open the shotgun and the empty shells clanked onto the counter.

“Nice shot,” he told her
as he holstered his weapon.

“I think it would be hard to miss with this thing,” she said
, sliding two fresh shells into the behemoth and cocking it shut.

“I think I will take that whiskey after all,” he
said, and sat back in his stool.

Andrew and Pickett rushed over to Mason’s
mangled body. Andrew kneeled down beside it and began to inspect the damage.

“Those things that attacked him. Did they bite him?” he asked.

“They sure did,” the Gunman responded. “Took a bullet through the skull before it would stop.”

“
Interesting
,” Andrew said to himself.

“Interesting?” Pickett asked. “
This boy is dead.”

“He was already dead.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. None of this makes any sense,”
Andrew said as he covered the body with the bloodstained bed sheet. “I watched this man die. How could he come back like that?”

“I don’t know. Aren’t yo
u the doctor?” Pickett said as he turned and left Andrew to his business, and then continued to reinforce the front windows.

•  •  •

The night continued to slither forward as the Gunman watched the methodical hands of a large clock tick away from behind the bar. Only a few hours had passed since the undead had attacked, but he thought that being locked away in a saloon with nowhere to run was even worse.

Outside, the u
ndead horde continued to grow larger. Some had ripped away chunks of wood and broke through windows, and others moaned loudly as they mindlessly feasted on human remains. The initial shock of the attack had passed, but now came the slow agonizing period of waiting, and nobody seemed to know what was happening, and even worse, there were no clear ideas of what to do next. The clock continued to tick away the long night, and the undead remained.

The last
boards were nailed against the windows, and the remaining tables and chairs had already been used to reinforce the makeshift barricades that surrounded the inside of the saloon. People were forced to sit on the floor throughout the parlor or on one of the few remaining stools that were bolted to the floor.

Eric finished pounding in the last board across a front window. “
That's all of it. There's no more wood to spare,” he said.

“
Alright,” Pickett responded. “That's it then. Get these people upstairs.” Pickett wiped the grease from his forehead with a well-used handkerchief. “Okay people. Let's move upstairs. Nice and slow. Women and children
first
,” he said as he waved his arms through the air and directed them toward the stairs. The large crowd started to file up the stairs to the second floor and move into the hallway.

At the front of the Parlor, an u
ndead arm had discovered a weak spot in the barricade and burst through. It grabbed at the air and clawed wildly for anything it could get a hold of.

“
Shit!
” Pickett said. People started to panic at the sight of the undead arm. “Nice and slow people,
nice
and
slow
,” he continued, still motioning the crowd toward the stairs and trying to keep them calm.

Cutler rushed out of the parlor and into the kitchen where he grabbed
a large chopping knife from the counter. He returned to the front and sliced through the decomposing arm. Thick black blood sprayed the ceiling and dripped down Cutler's face and beard as he stabbed the arm repeatedly. The undead's rotten stump withdrew, but two more took its place. The hole grew larger as more undead hands ripped away at the wood, exploiting the weak spot and pushing their way through the barricade into the parlor. Complete chaos ensued.

People
began to scream and rush up the stairs. A woman was pushed to the ground and nearly trampled to death, but a young man pulled her out of the fray. More undead were attracted to the growing host outside and continued to rip away wood from the saloon. Undead arms from everywhere were bursting through the barricades as the onslaught of undead attackers continued.

An u
ndead store clerk managed to crawl through the hole and the Gunman fired, blowing off its head. He fired again as another undead took its place. The bullet passed through its eye, causing its head to explode against the wall.

Cutler
continued to hack with the knife, chopping off hands and slicing into forearms. He stabbed eyes and fiercely bayonetted any exposed undead body parts that appeared. Eric ran out of a back room with a fire axe he had found in the kitchen.

“
Will this help?” he asked Cutler.

Cutler
grinned maniacally. “Definitely!” he yelled, and Eric threw him the axe. Cutler began to wield it like a lumberjack and swung it wildly with both arms. His precision didn’t matter and undead body parts rained to the ground. The undead numbers continued to grow outside as they surrounded the entire building.

Johnny fought off
the undead Chinese miner as it broke through a barricaded window in the back. He plunged a knife deep into the top of its skull and twisted. Another undead man grabbed him from behind and savagely tore into his neck, blanketing the hallway in arterial red blood. He tried to push it away, but was quickly overpowered, and fell to the ground as it bit into his stomach.

Pickett and
the Gunman emptied their revolvers, but it was no use as more undead continued to arrive during the onslaught, attracted to the screaming.

Cutler hacked
again through an undead’s neck. “Upstairs! We have to cut them off!”

Pickett
reloaded and continued to fire as the undead bodies piled higher around him. The townspeople had already moved to the second floor, leaving the Gunman, Pickett, Eric and Cutler to fend them off. They moved toward the stairs and covered each other’s tracks, each taking a turn fighting as the others reloaded their weapons. Undead poured into the parlor from every direction and cut off any hope they had of escape.

Cutler
walked backward up the stairs and swung the axe, hacking and chopping at the steps in front of him. Cracked boards and wood flew in all directions. His huge arms smashed the axe through the staircase, like a child smashing a small wooden toy.

The
Gunman and Pickett covered him as he worked to prevent the undead from reaching the second floor, and gun smoke filled the room in a haze of death.

They
finally reached the second floor and all of the stairs had been hacked away by Cutler, leaving only cracked boards and splinters to hang loosely from the wall. Cutler now stood at the top with his axe in hand, grinning deeply and bathed in sweat. Below them, the undead army swarmed and reached upward for them, unable to climb up the wall. “Well…” Cutler said placing his hands on his knees, “…that should do it.”

Eric patted the big
man on the back, smiling joyously.

“For now anyways,” the Gunman replied bleakly. He turned and disappeare
d down the second floor hallway, leaving the others standing in the balcony overlooking the parlor.

Pickett
slid against the wall and sat down, finally taking the time to catch his breath. He slowly began to reload his revolver with old, tired hands. “Who knows how long it will be before they find a way to get up here.” He slid the last round in and holstered his weapon. “In the meantime, we should take stock of our supplies, especially ammo.”

Cutler
tore off a piece of his shirt and ripped it in two, and then wrapped it around his palms, bandaging wounds from the axe handle. Eric sat across from him, staring blankly at the floor, realization settling down on his shoulders like a lead weight. “What the fuck is going on? I mean…what the fuck is going on?!”

“Calm down, son,” Cutler said. “The best thing you can do in a situation like this is to collect your thoughts.”

Eric took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment, trying to slow down his racing heart. “What are those things?” he asked, finally able to calm his nerves.