New Title 1 (10 page)

“
Lori,” she rasped in a voice so weak he could barely hear it.

Louis recognized her as the fiery redhead he’d met on the stairs during his first night in Reaper’s Valley. She tried to speak again. Louis leaned in to make sure he heard her. “Kill me,” she begged.

Louis ignored her request.

He wasn’t a doctor, but he could see she was hurt too badly to be moved. “Just try to lay still,” he told her. “We need to keep quiet until Nathan makes it up here.”

Through sheer force of will, Lori lifted her hand enough to take Louis’ wrist. “No,” she said, as loud as she could, “please kill me. I wish this torment to end.”

Louis shook off her hold. His eyes met Lori’s again and he saw the fear and sincerity in them. He looked down at her bruised and broken body, had no doubt she had suffered at the hands of the demon called Lee. He doubted she would last through the fight and did not have the heart to watch her suffer.

Finally, he nodded, shrugging off his pack of dynamite and placing it on the floor. He pulled his pistol from the holster on his hip, cocked it with his thumb, as he’d seen Nathan do many times. “I’m sorry,” he whispered as he lowered the pistol’s barrel to her sweat-drenched forehead.

He willed himself to take action, assured himself his actions were merciful, but he couldn’t bring himself to squeeze the trigger. In that split second of hesitation, Lori’s soul was consumed by the evil growing within her and replaced by something darker, beyond the realm of human comprehension. Her eyes filled with a sickly, yellow light and she lashed out, knocking the Colt from Louis’ trembling hand.

Then she was on him.

Louis cried out as her teeth tore his throat open. The thing that was Lori moaned an orgasmic whimper of pleasure as his hot blood flowed into her mouth. Louis’ vision went black as she pulled him onto the bed with her. As his life drained away, he felt each bite she took as she gnawed on him for what seemed like an eternity, until at last, he felt nothing at all.

Thirty

“
Took you longer than I expected to get here,” Lee said.

“
Did it now?” Nathan answered levelly, keeping his revolver aimed at the demon lord. Lee snatched a chair and plopped onto it with his legs spread open over its back and his arms resting across its top. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”

“
You’ve been busy,” Nathan commented. “It’s easy to see that.”

Lee’s lips split into the mockery of a smile. “And there’s much left to do. I’ve only just begun, but I suspect you already know that.”

Nathan shook his head at Lee. “What I know is you’re not going to make it out of this saloon alive.”

Lee slapped the top of his chair with a flash of anger, his eyes flashing red for a heartbeat. “Oh, come now! The time for such empty threats is over. You’re outclassed and outnumbered, gunfighter.”

“
You’re as arrogant as always,” Nathan replied with a laugh as he squeezed the trigger of his Colt. Lee’s eyes grew wide as he watched the bullet leave the gun’s barrel and come streaking towards him in slow motion. He was so stunned that, in spite of the power of speed flowing through him, he didn’t move fast enough to completely dodge it. As he dove to the side, the round smashed into his shoulder with a spray of blood and flames. His growl of shocked pain shook the very structure of the building around them.

As he clasped his wound, extinguishing the flames, Nathan was already on the move. He was over the bar and sprinting for the stairs before Lee sprung to his feet and gave chase. The lesser demons watched, afraid to interfere without being commanded to do so by their master. Lee grabbed Nathan and flung him across the saloon.

Nathan flew through the air and smashed into the far wall. He bounced off it and landed on the floor with his left arm broken and several ribs cracked. Nathan pushed himself up. “That all you got, hellspawn?”

“
Fool!” Lee roared from where he stood on the stairs. “Don’t you know when you’re beaten?”

Nathan coughed up a splatter of blood and wiped it from his mouth with the back of his right hand, which still held firmly to his Colt. Nathan closed his eyes and channeled all that remained of the power inside of him into its last round and put his faith in God to guide it. Lee sprang at him again, crossing the distance between them in the blink of an eye as Nathan fired, but he was too late.

The bullet flew upwards and tore through the wood of the ceiling. It’s path carried it straight into the pack of dynamite that lay beside Louis’ corpse, where it had fallen off the bed. The saloon exploded in a giant ball of fire that lit up the darkness of the night. In its wake, there was only the snapping and popping noise of cooking flesh and burning wood.

Epilogue

Captain Marcus Alves sat in his saddle, longing for a stiff drink. His regiment had been deployed to the town of Reaper’s Valley to investigate the claims of various travelers who had shown up at Fort Gustner. Each and every one of them had swore that Reaper’s Valley was no more, and that all of its residents lay rotting in its streets. There were numerous theories as to why it had happened, the most popular among them being an attack on the town by the Indians who lived in the desert to the west of town.

Marcus’ orders were to take his men, ride into town, and discover what had really happened there. There were simply too many accounts to disregard out of hand, and if the Indians were involved, they needed to be dealt with.

As Marcus and his men rode in, the first thing that struck him about the destruction was its randomness. Some buildings were burnt to nothing more than piles of ash and charred timber while their neighbors’ homes remained unscathed. It was true that the unburied dead were everywhere. Most of their remains were nothing more than bones, picked clean by birds and other scavengers. Marcus estimated the death toll to be in the hundreds.

Inspection of the corpses gave him no evidence to support the theory that Indians were responsible. There were no arrows or dropped weapons to point a finger at them. Many of the skeletons, however, possessed oddly-shaped, razor-like teeth. It was something Marcus couldn’t account for with any rational explanation and seeing those misshapen skulls disturbed him to the core. He made the sign of the cross over himself and prayed that whatever happened in Reaper’s Valley ended with the deaths of its residents.

Out of the corner of his eye, Marcus caught movement coming from one of the burnt buildings. Something shifted in the rubble and ash of the saloon. At first, Marcus didn’t believe what he was seeing and hearing, but something stirred again. He rode over to the pile of debris and stared in disbelief as a living human hand pushed its way out from underneath the charred and broken wood. As impossible as it was, it was happening right in front of him.

“
Help!” he shouted at the closest of his men. “Someone is still alive over here!”

Marcus and three other soldiers dug the man from the wreckage of the saloon and helped him into the street. They laid him on his back and one of the soldiers unscrewed his canteen, offering it to him. The man drank, long and hard, before handing it back. Marcus was bursting with questions for the miraculous survivor, but started with the simplest question of all as he knelt beside the man in the street. “What’s your name, mister?”

The man smiled up at him. “My dear Captain, you can call me Lee if you so choose.”

About the Author:

Eric S Brown is a 35 year old author living in North Carolina with his wife and son. He has been called “The King of the Zombies” by places like Dread Central and was featured in the book Zombie CSU: The Forensics of the Living Dead as an expert on the genre.

Some of his books include Space Stations and Graveyards, Dying Days, Portals of Terror, Madmen’s Dreams, Cobble, The Queen, The Wave, Waking Nightmares, Unabridged Unabashed and Undead: The Best of Eric S Brown, Barren Earth, Season of Rot, War of the Worlds Plus Blood Guts and Zombies, World War of the Dead, Zombies II: Inhuman, Tandem of Terror, and Bigfoot War. He was the editor of the anthology Wolves of War from Library of Horror Press. Some of his upcoming titles include The Human Experiment, Anti-Heroes, The Weaponer, and Kinberra Down.

His short fiction has been published hundreds of times. Some of his anthology appearances include Dead Worlds I,II, III, and V, The Blackest Death I & II, The Undead I & II, Dead History, Dead Science, Zombology I & II, The Zombist, and the upcoming Gentlemen of Horror 2010 to name only a few.