The dummy slowly advanced down the alley like a spaceman. The sandstorm blew fast strands eating away at the plaster, curling the fake hair, and eroding away painted on rosy cheeks. Mailboxes, chimes, and fence posts were ripped away into a distant tornado. The dummy’s fake leathery cowboy hat blew off, but it kept going.

Trapped into the back of the threaded monster was Mule who remained caught under a spell functioning as a reverse ventriloquist. The stitched-together thing advanced to terminate. The hooves were slowly sucked into the back of a fake cowboy get-up. The hungry smiling threaded being slurped somewhere behind a dumb slackjaw. A threaded digestion system began to process the donkey further into a stomach of needles and threading with every passing second.

The wind whipped away any exposed flesh caught in the blasts raining into the ghost town after midnight. A pack of zombies danced in the outside streets turning into skeletons from the elements. Jed was boxed into the thick of it. The thing lurking behind him that had gripped his friend in grave danger.

He had long ago dropped his armor and rifle for a bandolier and two revolvers. He needed to immediately reach better cover. He sprinted down the thin side street, and rolled into an even thinner alley. Jed was sandwiched perfectly behind two greasy bricked walls shielding him from the elements.

Time ticked by, but the witching hour had just begun. The man crept in C.Q.B. mode throughout the nearby nighttime building. No clue what else the monster was capable of doing but he turned to face the single threat advancing towards him. A sleeping shapeshifter stuck in a donkey body brayed a sinister tone projected from his nightmares. It had caught him.

Jed barged through an entrance with his armored sneakers breaking out of stealth. The dummy shot forwards in his direction. He shut the metal just as it floated at him. The lock clicked shut, while the door banged with a furry threatening to cleave off the bolt. His vision remained very poor inside the building while banging intensified outside.

Jed found himself in a store with dusted overhead signs marking tractor supply. A room stacked with hay bales, compost bags, but mostly obscured by the leaking sand that continued to sting at him. The dangerous weather conditions cut in from blinds forced open by a flurry of pounding sand like a seaswell. Luckily Jed was stocked with a stocky frame, cool eyeglasses,tough flannel, air crystals lodged in his nostrils to safely breathe in the elements, and green crystals for additional luck.

He limped past a showcase riding lawnmower covered in a blanket of topsoil. The walls were littered with similarly gunked up display models of clippers, weed wackers, and table saws defunct from neglect. Jed slid into hiding just as the top of two hoofs floated past the skylight near his head. The dummy shimmied past with its head on straight, but a single beady eye was sneaking a peek inside. It had spotted the edge of Jed’s bloodied bandage on arm while he was trying to hide underneath the tip jar.

The opposite double doors blew open. The creature entered the premises with the first caught prey still digesting. It scanned a row of old school farming tractors, and then behind the cash register. A bell rang for the manager but there was no response. Jed breathed as quietly as a mouse behind the Extra large deck of a full featured riding lawn mower.

The dummy raised itself from looking under the front desk, while something towards the back of the store loudly clanged. It charged forward, limbs jerking unnaturally on big threaded seams stitched into it haphazardly. A rat darted for the taped off restrooms.

“Where are you at?” the dummy played from its back through the donkey’s rear end speaker.

It descended to the underside of a lawnmower. The blades were brand new and a section of the dust had been cleared by human hiding now gone.

“Wirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.”

The blades of the mower began to power up, as the mower engine sputtered to life. The creature jerked back while its fake hair was buzzed off, and more. Half a fake face was cut into paste sucked into the bag on the back of the lawn mowing machine.

A remaining beady eye scanned the room. A gloved hand swiped the seat above two big cup-holders. The eye spotted Jed sprinting towards the exit. The creature continued to surge forward, as the windows around it exploded with waves of sand. It rapidly piled from the windows, and surged through the door he had been running towards. This escape path had been closed.

The wind continued whistling outside, as sand continued to pile indoors. Time was running on for Jed who was hiding inside the thin walls of a standing cheap metal gun cabinet. He watched through the keyhole for his cue to run, or finally fight. The dummy hadn’t been seen in awhile. It was certainly still hunting him that was without question. He saw the edge of the monster slowly entering the hardware section on the other end of the store. It was now or never to go.

Jed reached out and slowly let himself out of the cabinet. Thankfully the grease was still good on the hinges. His feet remained silent, while sticking to the carpeted racks of soiled clothing. Eventually the path ended at a door labeled “Emergency Exit”. He kicked it open. The outside greeted him as a wicked desert storm not fit for man. The wind whistled and cackled through a row of bending palm trees nailed with braces. One of them had already snapped into a ditch like a toothpick. His big rig truck sat a shadow further on the railway that ran beside him. Jed turned as he instinctively felt a knot of terror being unleashed inside his guts.

The dummy was lurking towards him in the hallway. It swept forward silently floating like a ghost propelled from some kind of invisible power up above. The man turned carefully aiming his duel wielding revolvers.

“Bang,bang,bang,bang,bang,bang,bang,bang,bang!”

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

There were many holes in the dummy, but nothing seemed to pause it. The creature space walked forward out the doorway that was now empty of all signs of humans. The dummy cowboy coat began to stitch back together, but the grinding weather paused the repairing process.

Jed dashed down the tracks that ran through sand dunes. The wind had died in intensity momentarily; but it still stung particularly fiercely. He breathed heavily forcing his bad leg to continue trucking. The building he had just been evicted from had been at the edge of town, and now he was headed back to the center.

In the far distance lighting lit up the desert valley that had regained brief visibility. The dot of the tornado could be spotted on the horizon eating a farmhouse, barn, and grain silo like a shark takes a small fish. Jed sprinted underneath the stilts of a house. The former saloon had been at the center of town and the smoke had traveled to him.

Zombies littered the roadside ahead around the big rig that looked impossibly far from reaching. The shuffling dead looked funny on account of being sandblasted. The skin was covered with a million pieces of dirt in twisted above ground burial. And so were the eyes covered and eaten of the creatures blindly roaming around with arms flailing.

The clouds in the sky began to part. A guttural cackling began to echo around while a pair of old veiny witch hands were revealed. The fingers bent and twisted projected in the clouds, warts and all. They controlled the approaching dummy while the moonlight focused on Jed sprinting away.

The streets had filled with trash deposited from the powerful waves that had thrashed the area. Jed looked behind him to see the dummy rounding the corner furthest away. He darted over debris, jumped a car, and pounced over an industrial air conditioning unit. An alarm blasted ahead at the totaled bank. A getaway car sat encased in a block of sand while a robber dug for his trapped companion.

Jed snuck past them into the open door of the bank, surprised there was some honor among thieves. He entered the bank ripped apart by either the thieves or the storm. The floor of sand gradually cleared away for an avalanche of papers further inside the guts of the financial institution. The massive vault ahead was open, and the racks were bare of fruit. A scream rang outside as the dummy claimed another prize for itself.

The thing on invisible strings entered the bank. It floated forward with another victim added to the digestion que. The donkey was a powerful tough ancient stubborn piece of ass, and was taking a while to process. The human thugs had been chopped up and were acting as fast carbs to keep the cloth running. A clang drew the smiling dummy lashing forwards. It rapidly descended where the noise had been. The victim was trapped in a dead end.

“I’m sorry Mule, old buddy,” said Jed, as he swung the vault shut behind the puppet.

The dial spun, locking the stitched monster and its victims behind the reinforced door. A man slumped against the other side gasping for air. Jed took a breather, and was too exhausted to plan for the future while his sore limbs and back continued to hold him in place. The suns were beginning to show outside peeping through the skylights that had been blown. The sand forming beds of orange in the lobby below. It looked like the end of the road was coming, but there was still a chance of him getting off it to civilization. In order to complete his mission the truck would need to be rebuilt with parts sourced from the ghost town.

A loud screeching cut the air from the vault. A witch’s cackling filled the outside with the morning smoke. The vault door remained intact, but it didn’t sound good.

“Crash!”

The wall to the bank by the tellers was torn apart. The thing advanced again with screws, bolts and splinters stuck all over the front of the fake outfit. A face remained only half intact, but the single beady eye saw the man sprinting away from the building.

Jed ran down the street dodging zombies. A large pack of them groaned ahead, clumping together into a barrier that could not be crossed. The door of a small workshop was kicked in, and the man on the run cleared the counter. He sprinted out the back and caught sight of the big rig not far in the distance.

The heat was gradually beginning to build with all three suns now in the sky. The saloon was still smoldering, and those who died inside still slumbered aimlessly. The big rig sat where it had been left on the tracks, but was partially buried in sand. Only the tank full of juice was still above ground. Jed had reached his destination in the open, and hadn’t considered if he would have time to save himself. He began to dig frantically with his hands, while something laughed at the futile effort.

The dummy walked through the wreckage of the saloon. The dead caught in the wake were pushed away as the thing advanced. It stepped over the burning bar, while the charred pieces of zombies melted in place to the furniture. The staircase had been completely incinerated after the 2nd step.

“I’m here, c'mon on down,” called Jed’s voice loudly from the street.

“Well howdy there partner,” responded the dummy through the rear.

A board broke off, and the rest of the remaining building fell with it. The frame collapsed into a heap that added more dust to the area. Jed coughed loudly at the big rig, while his vision was cut off. His eyes darted as he kept turning to make sure he wasn’t being crept up on. The dummy rushed at him using its magic suit to glide like a flying squirrel from the roof.

Jed sprayed out a large stream of jungle juice from out of the hose he dug up and held steady. Next he used his lighter igniting the stream of fire that roared into the dummy shooting towards him. Jed rolled away just in time as the fire continued to haphazardly spray out an inferno. The melting hot wax monster continued to advance intending to smother him from top of the dune. He cut the juice flow, and aimed a revolver.

“Bang.”

The final fake eye was blasted out. The blind dummy stuttered forward like a stop motion claymation while the fires flickered slowly melting it. Jed jumped out of the picture as a glove descended on his location. The threaded monster and victims flew through the air like a wired actor in a stage production until it crashed into a building labeled “Eddie's coffin supply” that collapsed into a rubble pile.

On the horizon the witch’s cackles had been silenced. The birds cheerfully chirped while sunslight washed out everything with a drought of heat. The fires smoldered where they had burned some of the ghost town, but not all. The sky was bright blue, and not a cloud provided cover.

Jed worked while both sweating and being sunburned under the wide brimmed visor of his trusted trucker cap. He was going as fast as he could manage to uncover what remained of the truck. When that was completed he would scavenge for parts, and try his best to fix himself out of this sticky situation. If there was time he would dig a grave provided he found whatever remained of Mule.

Sundown soon arrived again. The truck had been dug out in the front, but the back-end remained well below ground buried with the tracks. Jed collapsed into a bed formed by what he had removed. This was a lot of work if he couldn’t make it work. No time for that thinking. It was time for a drink if only that hadn’t been what he had exploded. It was time for bed. A solitary seagull watched the man from a roof. Jed headed toward the covers of the deserted jail he would slumber in. The bird began to glow purple.