IV

The main road of Calavera ran east-to-west through the town. Follow it east, and it emptied out into the desert. West, and it rose up into the chaparral hills. On any given day dozens of people would walk it, treading the hard-packed and dry earth as they went about their daily business. A dry wind would occasionally kick in from the east and spin knee-high dust devils along the thoroughfare, spooking a skittish horse or child. As Caff leaped the steps down from the Jail's stoop, he saw a crowd of people gathered ahead, flocking in his direction. Jennie darted forward, lengthening her lead on him, hand pinning her holster to her thigh as she ran.

The dull, flat roar of an 8-gauge shotgun going off scattered the crowd, giving him a clear view of Ruby Pendleton's corpse spinning on its feet from the impact of the shot. The impossibility of what he was seeing stopped him in his tracks, Jennie also slowing in front of him. The corpse clumsily kept its footing, limp arm swinging. The torn, ragged hem of its blue dress, edged with black ruffles, swung around its staggering legs. Its head hung, ruined face hiding behind its curtain of matted, tangled hair. The silence after the gunshot struck hung in the air, and in that moment nobody moved. Caff's breath caught. She had been dead. He'd seen it. She had been dead, and now her corpse was stood in the middle of the street in broad daylight.

The crowd, no more than a dozen, was still. Then someone wretched, vomiting onto themselves. The corpse's head snapped in the direction of the sound. Even from this distance he could see the eyes. Or where the eyes should have been. What was there instead were twinned glowing, orange flames. Not actual fire; but a flickering, dancing likeness of it. The crowd recoiled, half of them scattering back and away. The rest remained, frozen in place, pinned by the horror and impossibility of what stood before them.

I have to move. His legs seemed to disobey him. He urged himself to move and was unable to. Rooted to the spot. Have to pick up my damned feet! The corpse lurched forward, more falling than walking, legs scrambling to keep it upright. He saw it zero in on the man who'd been sick and stood staring, wide-eyed and helpless. Caff found his feet obeying him, and he moved into a run. His passage startled Jennie into motion, he heard her steps following behind him. Hers, and one other's, but he didn't have the time to see who else was there.

The smell returned as he closed in, thicker and stronger than before. He ignored it, seizing the frozen man by the collar and hauling him back. The corpse stumbled and staggered after, slow and uncoordinated. His free hand fell to his pistol, drawing it and pulling the hammer back with his thumb. He was no great shot with a pistol, but this close he didn't have to be. Jennie came to stand beside him, pistol also in hand. Across the street from them, Leland Heminger closed his 8-gauge with a snap and hefted it to his shoulder. “I got her once already, Sheriff!” he called out, “You seen it! Didn't do a damn thing!”

Caff hadn't seen it. Leland's shot had gone into the body near the missing arm, tearing another piece of flesh free and scattering it across the dust. He saw it now, saw that Leland was shooting slugs instead of shot. “What do we do?” Jennie asked.

About Ruby's corpse, he had no idea. About the man he had collared, he did. He pushed the man in her direction and he went, pale and stumbling. Poor fool was probably in shock, wouldn't remember much of what happened here. Caff envied him that. “Get him the hell outta here.” he ordered. Jennie took custody of the shocked man and began pulling him away.

"And her?” she asked, jerking her chin over her shoulder. He chanced a look behind him and his heart sank to see that Claudia had not, in fact, heard him. It was not a surprising sight, but a most unwelcome one. His sister had her hands to her mouth, her eyes were wide and bright with fear. Damn it, why didn't you pick today to finally listen?!

Her hands fell away from her mouth and her lips trembled for a moment before she hesitantly asked, “Ruby?”

Caff turned back to the corpse to see it much closer than it had been. He cried out and scrambled back, almost tripping over himself in his panicked haste. “Claudia, get the hell out of here!” he snapped.

"But, she–you said she was...” she stammered. He pushed her behind him as he retreated, training his pistol on the stumbling corpse. “What's–?”

"I don't know, now get the hell outta here!” he shouted. He heard her sob, then heave as the stench overwhelmed her senses. She fled, following Jennie and the shocked man, leaving him alone with the corpse. Its sole attention was now on him. He moved back and it followed. If he kept at it, though, he'd lead the corpse right to the people he'd tried to get it away from.

He needed a plan. Any plan. Shooting it hadn't stopped it. Unless where it had been shot mattered. Maybe her heart. He aimed at the corpse's chest, just to the left, and fired. The gun bucked in his hand, the corpse jerked backwards, and for a moment it looked as if it would topple over backwards and be done with. The moment ended. The corpse lurched forward. Its eyes burned.

Well, that wasn't it. Gunsmoke mixed horribly with the stench emitting from the corpse's wounds. Leland shouted something that went unheard under the ringing in his ears. He began to move to the side instead of back, pulling the hammer of his pistol back again as the corpse followed him. The bright, burning orange of its eyes burned into his mind. Another thing he would not soon forget. He had a sudden notion to put those eyes out. He changed his aim and fired again.

The corpse's head rocked backward, the back of its skull flying away. Orange flame burned in the remnants of the skull. Leland's shotgun roared and the rest of its head disappeared. Now the corpse stood, twinned balls of orange flame hanging in the air above a dangling tongue. It was still. Caff's heart thundered in his throat. Gunsmoke and stench filled his nose and turned his stomach. Just for that moment. Then the fire winked out, the corpse collapsed, and it was over.

It was over.

- - -

His hands wouldn't stop shaking. The ringing in his ears was fading. The corpse of Ruby Pendleton lay on its back on the ground in front of him. He felt weak, all over. The weight of his pistol went from manageable to overwhelming, and he let his outstretched arm fall. After several fumbling tries, he holstered it. He couldn't look away from the corpse. He sucked in air, short and fast, through his nose. A strange light-headed feeling washed over him, making his knees weak. He stumbled, failed to catch his balance, and fell on his ass in the dirt. He couldn't look away. She – it – had been walking. Had been moving. Ruby Pendleton was dead, but her body had moved.

Then there was the eyes. Her eyes had been gone, burned away by the fire that took her face. What had burned in its sockets weren't her eyes. Every time he blinked away the sting in his eyes, he saw them. The corpse lay still in the dirt, and that fact was a small measure of comfort. It helped to reassure him. To ground him. He got his feet back underneath him as the sound of Leland cracking open the breach of his 8-gauge came from behind him. “All right, Sheriff?”

"Just about,” Caff lied, and grunted to his feet. A dry, warm breeze pushed some of the corpse's unnatural stench away. The fluid that leaked from its neck and side was a clotted, black ooze that stained the hard-packed dirt road.

Leland stumped down the wooden stairs in front of his laundry, pocketing the spent shell and tucking the opened shotgun into the crook of his arm. He came to stand next to Caff and recoiled, waving his free hand in front of his nose, “Shit, what is that?!”

"I don't know,” Caff said. He couldn't pull his eyes away from the corpse, out of a fear that it wasn't over, that it would stand and walk once more. He and Leland had blown its damned head off, sure, but missing parts hadn't stopped it from chasing folk around. “Dead folk don't smell too good.”

Leland grunted. Caff studied him from the corner of his eye, puzzled at how the man was keeping his composure. Everyone who had seen the corpse, everyone, had reacted strongly. Barney had been sick, Jennie had refused to be near it, Caff himself had also been sick. To see Leland so composed didn't follow the pattern. His mouth was pressed into a thin, white line. His brow was drawn down, hooding his eyes. There was a tremble in his free hand, nothing more than a shiver. If Caff hadn't looked for it, he wouldn't have seen it. “What–” Leland cleared his throat, “What is this? What's happening, Sheriff?”

Caff pulled his gaze away from the corpse, away from Leland, and cast it around. The street was, save for Jennie, Claudia, and the man in shock, empty. As he looked, he saw folk on stoops, in open doors, and behind glass windows. Watching. The weight of their collective gaze pressed in on him. Called on him to do his damned job. “What's happening is that we need to get her covered up before folk come gawking. Got a blanket in that laundry you don't mind ruining?”

Leland stepped away from the corpse, putting his heel on the first step to his laundry. He cleared his throat again, then said, “I...I think there might be an old hoss blanket nobody wants.”

"That'll work,” Caff said. Leland nodded, pressing his mouth back into a thin line as he turned and hurried up the steps. The door was opened by one of his employees, who took the 8-gauge from him and ushered him inside, leaving Caff alone with the corpse. Across the street, Claudia led the shocked man to sit on the steps leading up to a shop. She sat beside him, a reassuring hand upon his shoulder, and spoke quietly to him. The man's head sagged on his shoulders, dropping between his knees as fatigue suddenly hit him. Caff knew from experience that a blanket and a cup of coffee, maybe with a splash of whiskey, would do him good.

Jennie crossed the street towards him. She had tension in her shoulders, the set of her arms, and how tightly her hand was clenched. He didn't blame her in the least for stopping a good ten feet away from the corpse. “You alright?” she asked.

"No,” he said quietly, “not in the least.”

She grunted, then blew out a long breath. “Yeah, you don't look alright.”

He snorted. “Imagine I don't. Anyone hurt?”

Jennie shook her head. “Naw. Got lucky, I guess. She...it weren't too fast.”

"Lucky,” He nodded, “sure.” They stood in silence for a long, drawn-out moment. In her eyes he saw the questions they hadn't been able to answer, plain as day. That failure burned stronger now, with the impossible laid in the dust before him. Leland returned with the horse blanket, stopping at the peak of the wooden steps.

"Here you go,” he tossed it down to Caff, who caught it around his outstretched arm. He unfolded the brown wool and covered the corpse. In so doing, it was as if he'd turned a lamp on in the dark. Leland visibly relaxed, and he heard Jennie sigh behind him. With that impossible thing hidden, he found himself able to think more freely. To remember where Ruby's corpse had been last.

Caff spun away from Leland to meet Jennie's gaze. “Barney.”

Her eyes went wide. “You think it got him?”

"I'll go,” he said, “you stay here. Do not let anyone near this blanket until I get back, you hear me?”

- - -

At her nod he took off at a run, hauling ass down the road, his mind filled with images of what he'd find. Torn, mangled limbs, sprays of blood, that horrible stench filling the air. Barney Crabtree's sightless eyes staring from above a ruined neck. Or nothing. He would search the building from top to bottom, down to the nails, and find nothing at all. Just the space where Barney used to be.

A spray of broken glass scattered across the stoop in front of Barney's office, glinting in the sun. That wide front window he'd been so proud of was destroyed, broken from the inside. Caff's boots crunched the shards as he stepped up to and over the sill. “Barney!” he called. “You alive?!” The door to the back room hung on a hinge, rough circles punched through it. Splinters lay on the floor.

There came the sound of a muffled curse, a thump, and unsteady footsteps. For a moment he thought back to how the corpse's legs struggled to keep it upright. His hand drifted to the grip of his pistol. Barney's face, pale and ashen, appeared in the ruined door frame. “Oh, it's you,” he breathed. “Good, good.” He stepped out, clutching a wad of reddening bandages to his arm. “I...assume that you've...dealt with–with things?”

"Reckon so,” Caff said softly. He gestured to the wound. “I take it you didn't do that yourself.”

Barney laughed humorlessly. “No, no. Ah...” he took a fortifying breath. “The recently departed young woman did, after she...returned.”

"How?”

Barney lifted the bandages to reveal a quartet of long, ugly tears in the outside of his arm. The edges were ragged, dark red blood seeping forth. “Luckily,” he said, “she missed her original target, which I believe was my throat. With some stitches, I believe I shall be just fine.”

"You'd know better than me,” Caff said, “Need some help?”

"Ah...” Barney thought a moment, before nodding. “yes, if you would.” As Caff followed him into the back room, he said, “It was strange, she appeared to be mindless, but for a moment....”

"What?”

"After she struck me,” Barney said, “she...licked her fingers. She ate what she clawed from me.”