Deadman's Road (5 page)

Then the hammer clicked empty. He realized he had already fired two other shots. Six dead silver soldiers were in his cylinders, and the thing still had hold of him.

He tried to draw his other gun, but before he could, the thing released him, and Jebidiah could hear it crawling away in the dark. The bats fluttered and screeched.

Confused, Jebidiah drew the pistol, managed to get to his feet. He waited, listening, his fresh revolver pointing into the darkness.

Jebidiah found another match, struck it.

The thing lay with its back draped over a rise of rock. Jebidiah eased toward it. The silver loads had torn into the hive. It oozed a dark, odiferous trail of death and decaying honey. Bees began to drop to the cavern floor. The hive in Gimet's chest sizzled and pulsed like a large, black knot. Gimet opened his mouth, snarled, but otherwise didn't move.

Couldn't move.

Jebidiah, guided by the last wisps of his match, raised the pistol, stuck it against the black knot, and pulled the trigger. The knot exploded. Gimet let out with a shriek so sharp and loud it startled the bats to flight, drove them out of the cave, through the burrow, out into the remains of the night.

Gimet's claw-like hands dug hard at the stones around him, then he was still and Jebidiah's match went out.

Jebidiah found the remains of the bible in his pocket, and as he removed it, tossed it on the ground, it burst into flames. Using the two pistol barrels like large tweezers, he lifted the burning pages and dropped them into Gimet's open chest. The body caught on fire immediately, crackled and popped dryly, and was soon nothing more than a blaze. It lit the cavern up bright as day.

Jebidiah watched the corpse being consumed by the biblical fire for a moment, then headed toward the burrow, bent down, squirmed through it, came up in the grave.

He looked for the deputy and didn't see him. He climbed out of the grave and looked around. Jebidiah smiled. If the deputy had lasted until the bats charged out, that was most likely the last straw, and he had bolted.

Jebidiah looked back at the open grave. Smoke wisped out of the hole and out of the grave and climbed up to the sky. The moon was fading and the pink on the horizon was widening.

Gimet was truly dead now. The road was safe. His job was done.

At least for one brief moment.

Jebidiah walked down the hill, found his horse tied in the brush near the road where he had left it. The deputy's horse was gone, of course, the deputy most likely having already finished out Deadman's Road at a high gallop, on his way to Nacogdoches, perhaps to have a long drink of whisky and turn in his badge.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joe R. Lansdale writes in many different genres — mysteries, westerns, horror — and in many different formats — novels, short stories, teleplays, comic books. Notable work in television includes writing for
Batman: The Animated Series
; in comics, the western series
Jonah Hex
. His novels include
Mucho Mojo
and
The Bottoms
, among many others. A new novel,
Leather Maiden,
was recently published, and he's currently working on a novel in his Hap and Leonard series called
Vanilla Ride
. Lansdale is also an accomplished editor, with a number of anthologies published, such as
Razored Saddles
and the award-winning
Retro Pulp Tales
. He's a seven-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, and has been named a Grand Master by the World Horror Society.
Aside from "Deadman's Road," Lansdale has authored other important works of zombie fiction, including his Stoker Award-winning story
On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks
, and his cult-classic novel
Dead in the West
.
Lansdale says that this story features lots of flashing teeth and blazing six guns, and boy, is he right. The story — which features the gun-toting reverend from
Dead in the West —
jumped into his head full-blown when he encountered a sign while traveling that read, simply: dead man's road.