Sunburned arm in front on me as I lay there on the hard packed wasteland. I was face-down, there in the pose of a dead man. Shot in the back, probably six times. It's hard to count bullets in one's back, unironically.

A scorpion was coming towards my sunburned arm. I raised my hand weakly, posturing it to imitate a huge tarantula. I watched the battle, trying not to feel like I was dying. The scorpion came to the Goliath, circling, waving the stinger on the tail and clicking the sharp claws. Then the kill, a sudden charge and a sting to the heart of the ravenous beast. I slowly lowered my hand in defeat, as the scorpion backed out from under. Then it mounted its slain dragon and planted a flag.

I saw it was a scorpion with young on its back. They danced the exact sequence of the battle like dozens of dancers. Satraps of their parent, the little scorpions accepted the generous claws as they dispensed the meat of the kill.

I did not want to die. I love this world, my desert, the moon. This is not how I will die anyway, I realized. Running away to join the circus was just the first time I ran away. I never stopped running. I am not a man, I never will be.

I change into a coyote whenever I am alone and naked in the desert.

I live as an animal, I have sired many like me; but they will never be men at-all. At least I look like a man when I am one. But truly, I am not like the others, I cannot be. Not like my brothers, master-hunters of werewolves. I hope they never dream of me and come looking for me. The Argentums.

"My sons and daughters are howling for me all across the desert." I said and then added, "If I die, they will eat me".

The scorpion knew it was time to leave, and did so, taking its brood away to safety. I only regenerate while I am feeling especially spiritual. So I said to my thoughts: "Perhaps it is my healing powers and good nature that keeps my brothers from hunting me".

I changed into my more natural and spiritual shape, losing my human form and the trappings of a man. I sniffed the bloodied rags and the handles of the gun, already repulsed my by own smell-of-man. I was already beginning to heal my own wounds.

I left the bullets out of my skin, itching them out onto the ground. By dawn I was a whole creature, although the scars would last for months, even in my human form. If I ever changed back. It was always harder to do.

I followed the riders and determined they were going to the first place the sheriff and his posse were meant to go. This meant that they hadn't believed me. I had nearly died for nothing. I hoped there was some way I could help them, but I would have to stay as a coyote until I could desire to be human. Not easy to accomplish.

Just 'wanting' to be human or 'needing' to be human didn't shift my curse. It required actual desire, from deep within my heart. Yet changing back into and remaining a coyote was easy. I wondered sometimes, if my offspring could actually turn human, and it was as simple as none of them had ever desired it.

I ran ahead of the sheriff's posse all day and that night I watched them camp. They intended to wait until daylight. I went around the ranch, sniffing the dead.

Whatever had killed these people was monstrous. It was breeding too. I could smell the stink of its pheromones. I knew things about them that I couldn't comprehend with the mind of a coyote. As an animal, listening to their powerful telepathic projections, I understood these were intelligent creatures. Ancient and cruel.

They had come from far away. They had slept until they woke up in a grave. A grave where many humans who had labored on the railroads had gotten piled and buried. A sickness had birthed them, then. They followed the railroad to where the desert was beyond. And beyond that, the first living flesh they had found to use for their purposes.

To bring Hell to Earth.

Sunrise brought the shadows of the riders to the gates. A cricket stirred and it was alone in this disturbance. Chancy Ranch was an open grave.

"Sheriff." Trimmings pointed to the first body. Browned blood stains contorted the body in the white dress.

"One of the girls." Sheriff Cornwall spat and ordered the posse: "Spread out and find the rest of the Chancys. Whoever did this is gone. Find tracks, move slow."

His grim-eyed trackers dismounted and slinked their spurs into the grave dust. Trimmings went and identified the first body, the youngest daughter, Ruth Chancy. What was left of her anyway. He was too sick after that, to look at the rest.

It was just-as-well. Her remains were the least mangled. Others were burned and melted, torn, gutted and chewed. It was inhuman, what was done to them.

"Sheriff Cornwall!" Casper called over to where Broken-Owl knelt over Tom Chancy. The Sheriff came to them.

"Muh'tah'ha" Broken-Owl pointed to something moving under the exposed flesh of the remains. He took out his knife and went to cut it open and Sheriff Cornwall drew his forty-five.

"Broken-Owl says it's a snake." Sheriff Cornwall told Casper. Others of the posse were coming closer.

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"Um." Broken-Owl hesitated with his knife and put his ear closer to the writhing flesh with something inside. His eyes rolled back and he convulsed, suddenly falling over.

"What was that?" Sheriff Cornwall went to his man while aiming at the moving bulge. He listened as Broken-Owl whispered-gasping to him. "It knows your death-name? And mine?"

He listened carefully and thought he could hear it trying to say something from inside. An inhuman, chittering voice. Saying:

"Sheriff Cornwall."

"Not my real name." Sheriff Cornwall shrugged. Suddenly the belly burst open spraying him in red fluids. He started shooting and the bullets blasted huge pieces off the corpse and missed the creature.

The massive blood-red worm was capped with a crown of protruding teeth. It spewed a hot corrosive liquid onto Sheriff Cornwall and in agony, he turned his last bullet on himself. The last shot precluded the collapse of his headless, steaming corpse.

Shotgun blasts, the percussions of the Thompson-style machinegun and several more forty-five-calibers detonated all around the writhing creature. It slithered away, burrowing into the sand.

"Now what?" Casper yelled out, fumbling with his shotgun to reload it. Suddenly a different blood-red worm burst from the ground under him with the force of a hill's muscle. It drove its tusks into him and tore him apart with ease, his parts scattering as it tossed him about.

"Kill it, shoot!" Trimmings barked and lifted his rifle, clicking an empty chamber with the hammer. He stopped to reload as the rest of the posse tried to shoot the new creature, much larger than the first one.

Before they could hit the thing, it managed to drag most of the body back down into its tunnel and vanish. Wandering around with their weapons aimed and trembling, they realized that the missing family members must have gotten taken the same way.

"We are gonna need some help. Get back to the horses." Deputy Perkins ordered. With the sheriff dead and posse members killed, it was time to retreat from the ranch. They all made it back to the horses and rode away, leaving the ranch to the creatures.

I trotted along at my own pace, following them back. I watched as Caldwell went into a panic. They gathered and organized a militia, under the hysteric advice of the survivors. Then they started erecting barricades against the possible invasion from the creatures.

Even with a coyote's mind, I saw that they were boxing themselves in. I realized I was going to have to come back from the dead again, risking my life to do so, and be a man.

At dusk I went into the town and wandered around, easily finding a way past the barricades, unseen. I went to the brothel, that works sometimes. Women can be very kind and greet the cute dog, enticing me to desire their attention. Desiring to be a man.

It had worked before; none of the women at this particular brothel were into my stray dog act. I moved on.

I next tried to befriend an old man; but he didn't want a coyote for a pet. So I went my way.

Days went by and I accepted the charity of Father O'Brien. He noticed the coy-dog was very obedient and friendly and learned tricks quickly. So he fed me some choice steaks to keep me around the churchyard.

Eating steak just like a man.

I woke up naked and shivering on a grave. I heard someone digging and I sat up. Gravedigger Jameson was working by lantern in the mist. The churchyard was half-full already and he was adding another grave.

"I'm awake." I said out-loud. I'd slept through the change. I sometimes did that on a full stomach.

"Well! You can dig the rest of this. I've had it with you drunks." Gravedigger Jameson slurred angrily and drunkenly. He threw down the shovel and looked upon my nudity on the dust of the churchyard. He scoffed and then stormed away.

I went into the church and found a spare robe to put on. Father O'Brien was asleep. I went and sat on a pew, undecided on how to approach the people and get them properly organized.

My first obstacle would be the survivors of the posse. They had seen Perkins shoot me in the back and he was now their leader. So I was dead and the man who killed me was in-charge.

I sighed. I was going to need Father O'Brien's help to persuade the people of Caldwell to just evacuate. If the creatures came here, they would be besieged and fed upon like corralled cattle and wolves. Picked off one-by-one.

When Father O'Brien awoke I was able to get some clothes from him. I told him my story.

"My son." Father O'Brien listened to my honest story and responded by shaking his head.

"Is there some way." I gulped, changing my request. "Is there some way you can ask the Argentum brothers to come here? I think they could protect this place."

"God protects this place." Father O'Brien reminded me.

I bid him farewell and went back out into the desert. I found where I had gotten killed, or at least shot and left for dead. They should have shot me once more. Six bullets weren't enough. Perhaps a seventh would have ended me.

I reclaimed my guns and my kit and buried the bloodied clothing I had left behind. Then I returned to Chancy Ranch on foot. I stopped for the night.

As I sat with a fire I listened to my sons and daughters singing to me. I knew that the creatures would take them first. They had no idea what was coming their way in the darkness.

I slept some. I awoke to a silence. Silence can be deafening, when only a sound assures security. I stared into the moonless black ink of night. Clouds had taken most of the starlight, even. I shivered as my fire lay in embers.

Then I heard her voice, my mother, a woman of the lost tribe of Black Kittyhawk. This turned a streak of my long raven hair white. I have visited her grave and I know she is dead.

There she stood. Always so beautiful, even as a ghost. I was older now, than she was when she had died. Her ghost held her bow and arrows in one hand and her silversmith's hammer in the other. I bowed before the terrifying specter.

"My oldest son." She spoke directly to me. I could not look upon her awfulness. I clung to the ground, terrified. "Quinn."

"What do you want, Mother?" I felt tears of inner-agony and fear.

"This battle is for you. Call to both your enemies and your sons. Meet the wall of dawn with a new song. The enemy cannot abide such music to your Creator." My Mother told me.

"I will obey you." I swore.

Then the eerie light cast through things was gone. I raised my terrified and tear-streaked face. Such an apparition I had fled from long ago. To meet her from beyond the grave in my own life was appalling to me. I was haunted by the image of her youthful beauty. I had forgotten her face.

I became as the coyote again. I called to all my sons and daughters and they came willingly to my side. I could not count them as a coyote; but I knew they numbered enough to do anything together. I could feel the power of them all in one place.

Then we all turned. The ones from below were coming. We sang to them, singing from our hearts, a new song to our Creator. They could not tolerate such a noise.

They rushed to the surface, exploding into geysers of gore as they came. One-by-one all around us they died. Then the last of them had offended the Great Spirit to its last.

So forth our song carries on the wind. We protect these lands and the people who live peacefully. But our desire is not to be such a people: we who remain as a song that is the nature of the desert.