Under the Vultures Moon Page 8

“If it means helping you, I don’t care if I never see that critter again.”

  Shish’s light flashed red. With a conscious effort, he calmed it to a tranquil green. “Don’t be a damned fool.” The voice was calm and contained but Jed could see Shish was as volatile as Plisp had been. “Would you like to see him, Jed? Would you like to see your Horsey-Worsey before you make any rash decisions?”

  Jed stopped himself from answering right away. He would love to see his Horse again and Shish knew it.

  “It won’t change my mind,” Jed shrugged. “So what’s the point?”

  Shish emitted a sound that was half-grunt and half-sigh. The green light darkened. “Humans can be so... immutable. I think this will make you think again.”

  He placed a hand on the wall. The surface shimmered and an image stretched from floor to ceiling until the entire wall was filled with a picture of Horse. Jed gasped. Horse was in some kind of stall. His legs were tethered and his neck was in a yoke. Thick cables stretched across his back. Horse was completely immobilised.

  “You may have noticed he’s not been quite himself of late. He was merely answering my call. It was so easy to get him into the tunnel.”

  Jed craned his neck, trying to see the whole wall at once. The point of view changed, homing in on Horse’s head. His mouth was slack around the bit between his teeth. His eyes were open and expressionless.

  The top of his head was off.

  “You scalped him?”

  The wall filled with a view of Horse’s open skull. The brain was twitching with a slow, slow pulse.

  “What the hell are you doing to him?” Jed roared in anger. He reached for Shish - perhaps violence would get some answers and put a stop to this horror. “Where is he? Take me to him!”

  The blue mist became several smaller spheres. They circled Jed, forming a barrier between him and Shish.

  “Cast your mind back, Jed. To the time of Horse’s making. He’s a cut above others of his kind, isn’t he? There are horses and there are Horses, but only one Horse like yours. And why’s that, Jed? What makes him so special, so gifted and powerful?”

  Jed paled. He knew exactly what Shish was referring to. In his experiments on the young Farkin Plisp, old Doc Brandy had extracted something from the boy and used it to create Jed’s Horse.

  Shish didn’t need to read Jed’s thoughts to see the gunslinger understood.

  “That’s right, Jed; all this time you’ve been riding around on a piece of my brother. Your Horse is what he is because he’s part-Plisp. He’s part-Farkin.”

  “That don’t mean you should cut him up,” said Jed. “Ain’t no need for cruelty - but then you Farkins are cold-hearted varmints.”

  “We can swap insults until the cows come home,” Shish sounded bored, “or we can talk business. I want certain things and you want your Horse - don’t bother trying to deny it. Look at him, up there. Oh, he’s not in any pain - there are no nerve endings in the brain; did you know that? But his heart is broken, Jed. He wonders why you don’t come and save him. Isn’t that what you do, Jed? Save people? Save the day? Save your friend?”

  Jed was grinding his teeth. The chain of little blue spheres circled him, keeping him at bay.

  “What things?” he set his square jaw. “You said you want certain things.”

  “Oh, good,” Farkin Shish smiled, baring teeth like ice cubes. The light in his head glowed like a sapphire in the sun. “You’re becoming more open to negotiations.”

  “Just tell me!” Jed snapped. He couldn’t bear to see Horse in that position and kept his gaze averted.

  “You’ll get your Horse back, minus the Plisp, of course - oh, you won’t tell the difference. He’ll be as good as new. Really; there’s no need to look so sceptical.”

  “What,” Jed’s chest was tight and his fists were clenched, “do you want from me?”

  Shish smiled. It was almost sweet. The wall clouded and changed. The horrifying images of Horse were replaced by a picture of Wyatt.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Journey Back!

  “Thought we’d lost you for a minute there, Jed?” Clementine gave the gunslinger a hefty slap on the back. “Be quite a feat to get misplaced in a tunnel where there’s no room to turn around!”

  “What?” Jed blinked in the dark. The snort of the horse beside him gave Jed a start.

  “How long was I gone?”

  Clementine laughed. “I’m only messing with you, Jed. Oh, I can get caught up in my thoughts just like anyone else. You were miles away; that’s all.”

  Jed glanced at the tunnel floor. “I guess I was.”

  The light ahead of them was growing larger with every step they took towards it. The air was becoming fresher and Jed thought he’d never smelled a breeze that was sweeter. When they emerged in the foothills, Clementine looked shocked.

  “Why, Jed! You have the look of a man saved from drowning who wants to chuck himself back in the creek. Are you all right?”

  Jed took off his hat and let the sun and the breeze wash over his face. The fug inside his head was clearing but he was still unsettled, as though he had been wrenched from a nightmare.

  That weren’t no dream and you know it. He could imagine the voice of Farkin Shish, smarmy and sneering. Clementine nudged him with a water canister.

  “Reckon they’ll be after us now it’s daylight?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “The good ole boys from Hellion’s Grove, of course. Who did you think I meant?”

  Jed glanced over his shoulder into the tunnel. It felt like he was teetering at the edge of an abyss.

  “Jed? I got me a couple of sticks of explosive left over. Do you reckon we should use ’em to close the tunnel?”

  Jed stared at the woman as though he’d never seen a woman before and never heard her language.

  “Jed?”

  “Best to get moving,” he said. “I’ll drive.”

  ***

  They made good time across the plain. It became apparent the good ole boys from Hellion’s Grove were not giving chase and so they were able to relax a little. Jed remained distant and unsettled. Clementine could not help noticing.

  “Where we going, anyhow?” she asked, holding onto her hat as Jed whipped the reins.

  “To safety,” Jed grunted without taking his eyes off the trail. “You cain’t go back there.”

  “Burned my bridges there, all right!” She nudged Jed and laughed. “Or blew ’em up, rather.”

  Jed did not share her amusement. He knew it was born of relief for their escape but he was not in the mood for laughter. If’n I had a light in my head, he asked himself, what colour would it be right now?

  Black, he figured.

  His plan was to drop Clementine off somewhere. Palmerston was too close - besides there was nothing there but that crazy old coot. He decided on Crosspatch Hill - there she could choose to go in any direction she liked and she’d no longer be his problem.

  That was ungenerous, he decided. Clementine wasn’t a problem. But she might prove an obstacle when he had to do what he had to do. Jed feared she would prick him like a conscience and he could do without that. Conscience was something he had to overlook when he did what he had to do.

  “Something on your mind?” Clementine had to ask the question twice, which kind of answered it for her.

  Jed set his jaw and flicked the reins again.

  “Ain’t no use whipping that poor horse,” Clementine’s voice was softer. “Sometimes it helps to talk things through.”

  “I ain’t the talking kind,” said Jed.

  They travelled in silence for a few minutes before Clementine spoke again.

  “Ten years - more! - I been living up at the Grove,” she said. “Folk didn’t take to me at first. But
I showed I was as good as any man when it came to shooting a horse, or hunting critters for dinner. Or raising a barn. Any of that I could do, better’n most men too, I reckon. And so they came to sort of respect me in a grudging kind of way. Then, when the lights went out, they would come to me for help. My practical skills were highly prized when there wasn’t no technology to cool the air and purify the water. I showed them how to heat their homes in the winter, and to keep them cool in the summer. I showed them how to set snares and track critters. I taught them how they could survive in the desert for short spells and my standing in the community sky-rocketed, you might say. I thought I was settled for life.

  “And then there was all that business with the glass heads. Folks were so desperate to get the lights back on, it was like everything I’d taught them didn’t count for squat. They were so fired up they was willing to hand over an innocent child to those monsters. That poor family!”

  Jed glanced at the weeping woman at his side.

  “You helped them get away,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  “And I’d do it again,” she sniffed. “I know you’d do the same.”

  Jed didn’t reply. If’n Clementine hadn’t helped the family escape, lots of other people would still be alive. The folks on that shuttle, for example. And Horse wouldn’t be in his present predicament.

  And I wouldn’t be headed back to Tarnation to do what I have to do.

  He castigated himself for thinking that way. Clementine had done the right thing - of course she had - and Jed would have done the same thing. He was sure of that.

  But one good deed can lead to a world of trouble. Does that mean good deeds should go undone?

  No. Not at all.

  Folks like Farkin Shish would go about their business anyway - the business of bringing evil into the world. And a body must do everything he can to cross the work of the evil-doers.

  He felt sick to his stomach.

  Against his will he was going to perform a task that went against everything he believed in.

  He whipped the reins again, urging the horse -the ordinary horse - to go faster still. And he hated himself for that too.

  ***

  He warned Clementine to take cover as they gave Palmerston a wide berth. He told her the last time he was through here, he’d lost an eye.

  His hand flew to his face. The patch was back in place - but underneath it? He turned his face toward the sun and closed his good eye.

  The sunlight pierced the fabric of the eye patch. Jed gasped to see the orange-pink of the inside of his eyelid. He felt a surge of relief - and of other things: guilt and confusion. His restored sight made it all real. His visit with Farkin Shish had indeed taken place.

  In the blink of an eye...

  Jed chuckled bitterly. He decided to keep a lid on his new eye. Its spontaneous regeneration would be too difficult to explain.

  “Crazy old coot with a catapult. Never saw him coming.”

  “Old Zeke? Is he still kicking?”

  Jed was surprised. “You know him?”

  “Oh, Zeke and me go way back,” Clementine grinned. “Would be awful nice to drop by and say howdy.”

  “Would it?”

  “Please, Jed... He’s all on his lonesome and older than a conker tree. It would put my mind at ease to see that he’s doing all right.”

  Jed grunted. He was reluctant to delay his journey to Tarnation. It was as though he wanted to do what he had to do and get it over with as fast as possible. Before he could change his mind. Before his conscience could get in the way.

  He owed Clementine his life.

  He pulled on the reins, directing the horse towards the all-but abandoned town.

  “Half an hour,” he said.

  ***

  Jed brought the cart to a halt at one end of the main street. He unhitched the horse and led it to shelter between buildings. The critter needed watering - perhaps Clementine would be able to importune the crazy old coot to provide some.

  Without Horse, he couldn’t scan their surroundings for signs of life. If the old man was wearing his chameleote coat - and he most probably was, for his own sense of security- he could be anywhere. He could be taking aim right now...

  Surely he would recognise Jed this time. And Clementine was unforgettable, surely!

  But years of isolation can do things to a man’s mind, Jed figured. And, he asked himself a second time, who knows what the world looks like from the other side of a chameleote skin?

  Clementine adopted a less cautious approach. She stood behind the cart and shimmied out of her culottes. Jed averted his gaze. When she emerged, the culottes were back on but she was brandishing a pair of white bloomers on a stick. She walked down the centre of the street waving her flag and calling Zeke’s name.

  “You there, Zeke Palmer? It’s me: Clementine.”

  Jed hung back in the shadows, expecting the sting of a sharp stone at any second. He pulled the brim of his hat lower and kept his head ducked. He’d just been granted a new eye and he didn’t care to lose another.

  “Zeke! Come and say howdy to a lady, you old fool!”

  A chuckle like a rusty hinge cut through the air.

  “Show me the lady and I’ll say howdy to her!” Zeke was close. Jed edged around the building - a boarded up general store. A window was open at the upper storey. The sunlight caught a glimmer hanging over the sill. Jed could picture the old man’s arm taking aim. If I had my guns, he calculated, I could probably shoot that catapult from his hand...

  Clementine stopped walking and turned to face the source of the heckling. “Come down here and say that to my face, you old dog.”

  She put her hands on her hips and lifted her face high, daring him to shoot it.

  The window closed. There was a pattering of footsteps as Zeke hurried down the stairs. The board across the door was pushed aside. Footprints appeared in the dust between the store and the woman, standing statuesque in the middle of the street.

  “Y’always were a fine-looking filly.” Clementine could feel the heat of the old man’s breath.

  “Back off,” she told him, refusing to budge herself. “And show yourself! Where are your manners?”

  The air glinted as Zeke shucked off his coat. It pooled at his feet, giving the impression that he was planted in the ground by his shins. The old man looked rather sheepish without the cover of invisibility.

  “Good to see you, Miss Clementine,” he said, bowing his grizzled head. The semi-circle of hair around his bald pate was slick with sweat. Must be hot in that coat, thought Jed.

  “And it’s good to see you again, Zeke Palmer.” Clementine extended her hand. Zeke took her fingertips in his and kissed her knuckles. The gesture was incongruous, Jed thought. Not the place - in some of these out-of-the-way settlements, folks still had old-style manners - but coming from a hardy heifer like Clementine, it didn’t seem fitting. Then Jed saw the pair were laughing - they were sharing some mock ritual of greeting, like old friends with their in-jokes and shorthand.

  Zeke offered Clementine his arm, which was accepted. Together they walked along the street to the jailhouse - the sturdiest structure in the town, fashioned from stone - where Zeke now made his home.

  “How’s life treating you, Zeke?” Clementine raised her voice - for my benefit, thought Jed. Whatever he was, Zeke didn’t strike Jed as being hard of hearing.

  “Oh, you know...” said Zeke. “Gets kind of lonesome being the king of Palmerston, when you ain’t got no subjects to boss around.”

  “I can imagine. But you’re looking well. You still doing things the way I showed you? Keeping the water clean?”

  “I ain’t dead yet, am I?” Zeke laughed, displaying teeth like a broken picket fence.

  “And is yonder cowboy going to skulk i
n the shadows all day or is he going to come in and join us for lunch?”

  ***

  The coffee Zeke made was from beans so stale they could have been museum exhibits. The old man had been hoarding supplies from the general store since the proprietor had upped and left but because this was a special occasion and he had visitors and all, he’d scraped the bottom of the final tin.

  “Only too happy to share,” he grinned his dilapidated grin.

  Jed took one sip of the tar-like substance and wished the old coot had been a lot less generous.

  Zeke and Clementine reminisced about their previous time together, watching the town die on its feet.

  “Without her to chivvy me along, I don’t know what I would have done.” Zeke’s wrinkled hand squeezed Clementine’s larger one. “She was all for moving on and giving up the ghost town but - dagnabit! - this is my town and I’ve lived her all of my days and right here is where I want to be buried.”

  A gnarled finger jabbed the table top but Jed took the gesture to mean the location in a broader sense.

  “You’ve got plenty of life in you yet, you old goat.” Clementine smiled but her eyes were wet. “You’ve got more life than me and ole Laughing Boy here put together.”

  Jed shifted uncomfortably on his stool. They had overstayed the half-hour he’d stipulated already. He was itching to get going. Clementine somehow read his impassive features. She leaned towards him and whispered.

  “Yon horse’ll be all the more rested,” she pointed out. “He’ll take you farther and faster.”

  Jed didn’t answer but he knew she was right. The old man shuffled off to the pantry; he came back with trail biscuits wrapped in a kerchief. “For the road,” he said, sliding them across the table towards the gunslinger. “I’ve filled you some cans from the well. S’all pure water, ain’t it, Miss Clementine?”

  “I done installed the filters myself,” Clementine assured him. She sent the old man a significant jerk of her head. Zeke seemed to remember something. He shuffled over to a drawer. He took out a gun belt with holsters, two revolvers and a battered box of bullets. He placed them wordlessly on the table.