Deadman's Crossing (21 page)

Flower set the lantern to her side quickly. She swung the
shotgun from behind her back, to her shoulder. It roared. Kobold
meat flew back against the mine walls. The Reverend’s revolver
barked. Now Flower’s Colt spoke. One of the Kobolds threw a
rock, knocking Flower’s lantern for a loop, sending it spewing
flaming oil all along the floor of the mine. Then more rocks were
flying. The Reverend’s revolver emptied and he set his Henry
to work. Kobolds dropped, but still they came. The Reverend
kicked them back, grabbed up his lantern where he had placed
it on the ground, and backed away. When the Henry was empty,
the Reverend dropped it, snatched the wick stuffed dynamite stick
from his coat pocket, and pushed the wick through an open spot in
the lantern. The fuse hissed.

“Goddamn,” Flower said, and beat at the Kobolds with her
Colt, frantically trying to retreat from the dynamite. She was so
animated, it almost seemed like there were two of her in the flickering light of the wick.

The Reverend threw the stick into the crowd of Kobolds. When
it hit and sparkled, all movement stopped. The Kobolds paused,
watched the hissing stick of dynamite with curiosity.

The Reverend backed.

The wick burned down and—

Nothing.

Just a sound like a mouse letting out a poot.

“A dud,” the Reverend said. “Run, Flower.”

Flower bolted. The Reverend tried to do the same. The Kobolds
rushed him, grabbed his legs and brought him down, knocking the
lantern from his hand, spewing its oil-lit contents across a cavern
wall.

The Reverend glimpsed the fire burning along the side of the
cavern. He felt hands grabbing at him. A foot kicked him in the
side. Another caught his shoulder. Then he saw a short bulky
shadow leaning over him.

A Kobold with a rock.

The rock came down.

The Reverend went out.

When the Reverend awoke his head felt huge and it throbbed and
ached and his nostrils were filled with a stockyard kind of stench.
There was a grunting sound and a sound of picks and shovels
striking rocks and dirt. There was light, but it was a different kind
of light than the lanterns. It was a blue glow and it filled the air.
The Reverend sat up. He was bound by silver chains, between
ankles and wrists. He saw a group of men; miners from the little
town below. They were scrawny and shirtless and shoeless, and in
some cases, without pants. They had picks and shovels and were
hard at work on the walls of the mine. A large number of Kobolds
with whips lashed out now and then, cut the backs of the workers,
screamed out something in voices as harsh as bleats from a bent
bugle.

The Reverend determined the soft blue light was radiating
from small lamps hanging on chains from the ceiling or tucked in
crannies from one end of the cavern to another.

He looked about for Flower. Nowhere to be seen. She must
have died when the Kobolds rushed them.

Then he saw something even more amazing at the rear of the
cavern. At first he thought it was part of the cavern, some natural
formation. Now he saw it was in fact a pile of living flesh. It was
in a somewhat triangular shape, wide at the bottom, flowing across
a vast patch of the cavern floor. It was as gray as ash with dark
patches within, along with strips of what appeared to be cracked
ores of silver. It looked almost like an enormous snotty booger, but
due to the silver, expensive.

At its triangular peak was a small, human head with yellow,
darting eyes and gray hair sprouting from it, tumbling over
where a human would have had shoulders. The thing had none,
just a head that tapered into a thin, short neck, and then a
spreading pile of goo. The Reverend noted something else. There
were mounded shapes at the front of the pile, not far below the
neck. Breasts, dripping what the Reverend had to believe was
milk. It trickled down the misshapen body like pus from a sore.
From time to time one of the Kobolds would approach the pile
reverently, climb up on the vibrating mass of flesh, and suckle at
one of the tits.

The queen. This thing had to be their queen. They not only
ate human flesh, but they gained sustenance from this. It was the
Reverend’s guess she was in fact the non-sainted mother of them
all.

A Kobold that looked angry enough you might think he was
forced to eat dung for breakfast grabbed the Reverend’s chains
and jerked him to a standing position. A pick was shoved into his
hands. The Reverend’s first thought was to plant it in the top of
the Kobold’s head, but considering he was more outnumbered
than before, and he didn’t have a firearm or a knife at his disposal,
he concluded that, at least temporarily, this was not the best course
of action.

The critter tugged him by the chain to a place along the wall.
The Kobold grunted and pointed at the wall. The Reverend
understood what it was indicating. Dig.

He swung the pick into the wall with a clank, and began to
mine for silver.

The Reverend had been at it for only a few minutes, when the man
beside him sagged and fell, his pick clattering to the floor of the
cave, attracting the attention of the Kobolds. They were on him
like bees on honey. They pulled him away. The Reverend turned
and watched as the man’s head and feet were literally pulled from
his body by a batch of Kobolds. They fought over the treats,
wrestling about on the floor, chewing and biting both the man’s
remains and each other.

When the Reverend noted they were watching him, he went
back to his work. He had no sooner planted the pick in the wall
then he heard:

“All right, all you midgets, and you too, you big pile of nasty-looking horse shit, here’s your warning. I don’t like you. I ain’t
showin’ mercy. And I’m gonna blow you up. So there.”

The Reverend saw Flower standing at the opposite end of the
cavern, standing near the narrow exit. She had a torch in one hand,
a stick of dynamite in the other. It was dangling a fuse. She had
gone back for the dynamite, and then come back for him.

The fool.

She touched the fuse to the torch even as the Kobolds rushed
her. She threw the stick in their midst, and the Reverend waited
for it to sputter out.

But it didn’t.

It blew, knocking rock and dust and Kobold meat in all
directions.

The force was so terrific it knocked the Reverend down and
started a ringing in his ears. He got to one knee and remembered:
He had sticks of dynamite and fuses in his coat pocket. He
glanced at Flower as he pulled them out. She was swinging the
torch, about to be overwhelmed by the surviving Kobolds, which
were plenty.

The Reverend shoved the fuses into the sticks and pulled out
his matches and lit the sticks. A man nearby said, “What the
goddam hell?”

The Reverend said, “Run.”

The man dropped his pick and tried to do just that.

The Reverend tossed two sticks with one hand at the Big
Mother, even as he watched her melting to the floor, going almost
flat, her head poking up like an island in a mass of puke. She
was flowing away, toward an exit at the rear of the cave. But the
dynamite landed in her mess of flesh, and even as he launched the
remaining sticks with his other hand at the Kobolds hastening
toward him, the first sticks thrown blew.

There was a great blast of rock and dust and flashes of blue as
the blue lights were blown out. The next thing he knew he was
on the ground, trying to breathe. Rocks and bodies were on top of
him. He couldn’t see anything but blackness.

And then he saw a light coming toward him.

It was Flower and her torch, fresh lit he presumed.

She grabbed him by the arm, “Come on, Reverend. We got to
hook ’em up and ride ’em out.”

“The other men?”

“Every man for himself, Reverend. Anyway, looks like them
others done sailed on across the river, so to speak. Dynamite got
up.”

“Damn.”

“Ah, I knowed all of ’em and wasn’t a one of ’em worth the
powder it took to blow ’em up. Come on, let’s get your big ass out
of here.”

“I’m hung.”

“I’d have to be the judge of that at another time.”

“My foot.”

She let go of him and waved the torch about. “Yeah, you got
rocks on your legs. Here, hold the torch. I think I can move them.”
She handed him the torch, and he lay on his back, holding it up as
Flower went about removing the rocks. After a moment, he felt the
pressure on his legs relieved. He sat up.

Flower took the torch and waved it over his legs. “Look there,”
she said.

A Kobold had his teeth around one of the Reverend’s boots.

“Dove for your ankle. I guess I blasted him just time.”

The Reverend kicked his foot free, and Flower helped him
up. With his arm around her shoulder, her torch to guide them,
they moved toward where Flower had entered. As they went, the
Reverend could see in the torch light that The Big Mother was
sprinkled liberally about the walls. Closer to the exit, his foot
kicked against what remained of her head, part of a jaw, half a face
with a leaky eye in it.

“Damn,” Flower said flashing the torch close to the head. “She
makes me look pretty damn good.”

“Flower,” the Reverend said. “You are beautiful.”

When they exited the cavern, into a narrow shaft, the Reverend
was strong enough to stand on his own. He turned, looked at the
gap. He said, “Flower, you got anymore dynamite?”

“Couple of sticks.”

“Give them to me.”

She did. She said, “I got a ringing in my ears like someone’s
beatin’ a bell, so I’m gonna mosey ahead there. You finish up, look
for the light from the torch.”

Flower hurried away. The Reverend lit the sticks and tossed
them, started moving as quickly as his injured leg would allow.
Behind him the dynamite blew, hurled him forward to land on his
belly. He got up and looked. He could see Flower’s torch light. He
scrambled to his feet and went after it.

When he caught up to her, the dust from the blast was flowing
up the shaft toward them. They coughed for a long time as they
went through the narrow shaft, then up a rise, and into a wider
part of the mine.

“How did you find me?” the Reverend said.

“Well, one thing I got is a good sense of smell.”

“You smelled me?”

“No. That thing. That woman, or whatever it was. She smelled,
and them Kobolds, they was no nosegay neither. I just followed
the stench. Figured anything stunk worse than me had to be
them.”

The air freshened as they went, and finally they could see a bit
of light. As they moved toward the exit of the cave, Flower tossed
the torch aside. They stopped at the mouth of the mine and sat
down on the ground.

It was daylight. Early morning. Birds were singing.

“Look here what I found,” she said and from inside her coat
she pulled the Reverend’s .36 Navy.

“Thank you, Flower. I am fond of this gun.”

“You think they’ll follow us?” Flower asked.

The Reverend shook his head. “Not in the daylight. And they
won’t be back tonight either. Or any other night. Not this pack of
Kobolds.”

“How can you be certain?”

“Well, guess I cannot be certain. But the way I remember the
text is the queen is their source of power. They may eat flesh, but
they have to suckle at her tits. Actually, the book did not say that,
but that makes sense to me, and I am going to take a flying leap
and predict that I am correct on that.”