Shoveling coal was the most miserable thing he’d done in a long time, and that spoke so many volumes that it screamed. His once-quilted poncho had become pure black, and he’d had to use his handkerchief to bind his bundle of weapons together, so whenever the sun peaked around his hat, his face would burn. Even with his strength and his stamina, the shovel was becoming heavy.
Well, you ever figure that putting a pistol to someone’s head while you’re wearing someone else’s clothes, with your guns scattered on the floor might not be the best idea?
We came to an arrangement, didn’t we? Five-Thousand Dollars American. Fucking Hell.
He drew the shovel back before stabbing it into the mound of black rocks.
You know I have a point.
The sun was setting on the first day, and already he could see the bottom of the coal reserve in a few spots. He brought his hand back and slammed it into the side of the housing as hard as he could, twice.
It took another ten minutes or so, before the train came to a stop.
He heaved himself out of the coal car, Cassidy looked him up and down, seemed ready to say something, then caught Tommy’s look.
“How close are we?”
“Well, this line’s pretty straight. Reckon…three days? Four. I’m no conductor, but, far as I can tell, no one really uses this line. It was made back when people were raving about the gold rush.”
“We ain’t got three days of coal. Ain’t sure if we got one day of coal.”
Cassidy pulled out a rumpled map. It was a standard military officer’s map, but everything on the east side of the Mississippi was marked to hell. Caches, holdouts, avoid-at-all-cost areas, everything a Hunter might care about, out in the rot.
He pointed to a small dot on the regular part of the map.
“‘S a train depot, if we turn off here. Don’t imagine they’d be too stoked to service a stolen train, but either they’re locked down and will turn us away regardless, or they’re scared shitless and they’ll take a wad of cash to keep quiet.”
Tommy took a longer look at the map.
“Line broke at Fort Holden, right?”
Cassidy looked up at him. “Yeah?”
Tommy traced a different route.
“If we go the straight route, we’ll be running head-first into everyone coming this way and I don’t mean that figuratively. This rail’s east-to-west. If we head north, hit Sherman, we can refuel just the same, and then swing south. No one’s going to be using those tracks, not when Arkansas’ fucked.”
“Sherman?”
“It was founded six months ago, you won’t have heard of it. It has a small train depot. Hope is they’ll refuel any train that pays for it, but if not it’s a tiny town. How hard will they defend some coal?”
Cassidy looked strange for a moment, then nodded.
Tommy rolled his neck, making several loud snapping noises that sounded akin to distant gunfire.
“I’ll take watch tonight.”
Cassidy tilted his head.
“Thought you just came from out-country. Hell, if you can’t ride, then you walked that whole way.”
“For me, sleep’s a luxury. I can take it or leave it.”
Cassidy looked at him for a long moment.
“You look tired beyond words. Catch some shut-eye.”
His arms were leaden, so he didn’t argue. One of the great things about a passenger carriage was that there were plenty of beds. His head hit the pillow and the world went black.
He was in a train car. Shining metal, short benches. It was packed with every flavor of person, and it reeked. They were all speaking, but it was low, white-noise. Austin flew by in the distance, high skyrises breaking the outline of the horizon.
There was a man on the bench across from him, and between them was the only place where the crowd parted. The man was beautiful, like a combination of all of the best features of every person he’d ever met. He quirked a single thin eyebrow.
“This place is lovely. How do you know it?”
This dream existed on a place far deeper than skin, so he almost answered. It was still buried here, that impulse for honesty and helpfulness.
“How are you here?”
A soft smile overcame the other man’s face, patient and indulging and loving all at once. He felt the place ripple a bit.
No one smiles at you like that. Unless they want something.
“I like to look in on people. To look into people. Reminds me what I’m fighting for.”
He was still sluggish, but he felt some piece get loose.
“You’re Michael, right?”
Kill him.
The other man laughed and it was tinkling bells underlied with a slight bit of base from deep within his chest. He wiped a hand across his face and his smile went from saintly to a happy mischievous.
That’s not his real face.
“It’s not my given name, but that is what I go by.”
His name is a lie, like the rest of this.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The world sharpened slightly.
“Oh? What’s that look about?”
“You’re the person I have to kill to go home.” His tone was apologetic. He felt drunk.
Do it.
“Oh. Well, that’s a shame. I’d hate to die, I know better than most what happens after.”
“What’s that?”
The other man’s face changed to one of deep sorrow, but the sudden shift made something fall away. He felt whatever compulsion there was recede. The other man was beautiful, but he realized that it was constructed. He recognized the nose from a girl he’d dated. The eyebrows were from a model. He could almost see the seams between the pieces of the most appealing people he’d met.
“Eternity. Annihilation. One or the other.”
He reached for his pistol while the man looked down. The revolver was in his hand, he looked up. Austin was gone, it was just a desert. The train car wasn’t gleaming, it was wooden and old.
“Oh, you’ve noticed. That’s a shame.”
The car’s metal began to shriek as it seemed to be pressed in. The windows were covered by tumorous flesh. The people turned to him, and they were Hunters, bloating and rotten, but armed to the teeth.
They pulled their weapons as he pulled the trigger-
He woke to the sound of a gunshot. Then another, then the continuous booms of pistol fire. He reached for his guns.
They were still bundled in the coal car. Fuck.
He listened for a moment, and the gunfire was coming from the front of the train. It was still night out, pitch black.
He shifted his coal-blackened poncho and hat.
----------------
Sheriff Altera had always turned something of a blind eye to his activities. Both were well aware that his arrest would be beyond bloody. Stealing a train in the middle of a crises, however, brought down larger weight than any sheriff could resist.
There were six of them, all clad in regulation Union gear and on horseback with their rifles. Nine must have come, because three lay dead, and the rest had their weapons trained on the front, on the locomotive itself. The coal car was directly behind it, and beyond his ability to sneak to.
So he didn’t.
“Come out with your hands up! You face the gallows, but you can face them with some dignity!”
The man wore a wide hat with a mustache to match. He had the epaulets of an officer, and kept a photograph of his family in his front pocket.
Tommy’s fist entered through his lower spine and buried to the wrist. The officer didn’t have time to scream before a gloved hand grabbed the top of his head and yanked downwards, causing the back of his head to rest against his upper back.
One of the men screamed “Captain!”
Tommy grabbed the man’s rifle and worked the lever fast as any gunslinger might. A dozen bullets he fired point blank, and a single one found its way into the back left leg of a horse. The captain’s horse screamed and ran, and the man atop the struck horse spilled to the side as it toppled.
Fucking rifles.
You’ve always been shit with them, why not grab his pistol instead?
Well, there’s always second chances.
He sprinted towards the downed man, who was laying on his own rifle.
The other four men seemed to realize what was happening, just as one of them caught a round through the shoulder and went down screaming.
He reached the downed man, who looked terrified. He kept pulling on his rifle, even as he lay frozen in fear on top of it.
Not stopping his stride, Tommy reared a boot back and slammed it into the man’s face. His nose was pushed into his skull enough to make his face flat. Tommy grabbed the pistol from the man’s hip, even as the man began to convulse and grab at his head.
Two rifle rounds hit him. One cracked a collar bone, and the other punctured his right lung.
He brought the pistol up and held the trigger before pulling slamming the hammer back and forth with his thumb. Everyone else had to use both hands to fan the hammer, but he was unnatural, and the gun didn’t flinch as he dropped two men. The last barely had time to register the shock before a slug blew through his stomach, taking some of his intestines with it.
Cassidy rushed out.
“Sweet Jesus man, you’re dead!”
Tommy shot him a look, and unwound his facial covering. He was out of breath, he had a headache and he’d been shot twice.
“If this could drop me, y’figure you’d ever have heard about how tough I was?”
Cassidy looked him up and down. “Brother, there’s tough, and then there’s this.”
Tommy waved him off and spat out his blood-mixed spit, and then coughed up enough blood to coat his chest. He gasped out. “Fuck off. This is what I get for leaving you on watch.”
“Don’t matter the why as you getting shot, what matters is the what now? You ain’t in apostate-hunting shape.”
His mind went back to the train, to the dream, and his anger grew brighter, fanned by pain.
“I can be.”
“The hell’s that mean?”
He looked in his reflection. There was blood on his mouth.
Don’t. Please.
“Means that you need to get some rest. I’ll be fine in the morning.”
“The hell I will! You couldn’t fight off a one legged pacifist in your shape!”
Tommy’s look went from surface level anger, to murderous. His voice got low, his eyes got steady.
“You catch some rest. I’ll be fine in the morning.”
Cassidy looked ready to argue. Tommy clenched his gore-covered fist.
“Fine. I’ll pray for your soul before I head to bed, since I’ll wake to your corpse.”
---------------------------------------------
Out in the Rot, in the real depths of it, there wasn’t anything to be done if someone got truly injured. The people that went that far out were either the best, or the worst. Most of the best carried the best equipment. Bandages with water-activated adhesives, canteens of pre-boiled honey water, combat-ready morphine, hollow silver bullets and enough cocaine to go days without sleep.
They still died. Infection, addiction, dismemberment. They were only human.
Then, there were people like him. Hunters that stayed for too long in the Rot. Let it seep into their wounds, breathed its air too long, ate of its creatures. They came back different, inhuman. They were the rarest of the Hunters. Others treated the Rot as a profession, but the rare few adapted to it as a home.
Of all of them, it’d seeped the deepest into him. Others had grown scales to shed water or their blood became rancid to the things of the bog, but his were more insidious. Sure, there was strength, and speed, and resilience. No need to sleep, perfect sight in the dark. Sure, sunlight burned, but that would have been bearable.
He looked down at the ruined men. One of them was still gently crying as he held his blown-open guts.
And his mouth watered.
He’d be fine in the morning, there was more than enough to replenish his strength.
I don’t know how you ever thought we were human.
We were, once. Remember that.
Why?
----------------------------------------
The sun had just finished pulling itself over the horizon when Cassidy came out. Tommy looked him up and down and then gestured to himself as if saying ‘Ta-Da!’
Cassidy gasped.
“How in the holy Lord are you still alive? You’ve got more blood on you than in you!”
Tommy snorted, and, under his handkerchief some of the gore went into his nose.
“Told you I’d be fine, now mind getting this damn train moving?”
Cassidy stared at him for a second, then broke into a wide smile.
“For a man whom the Lord has interceded directly? I’ve not a qualm about getting this damn train moving.”