Always Free Fiction: There Are Specters On My Tail, And I’m All Out Of Bullets, Ep 1
"Who doesn't love a horror western?"
It must be Wednesday morning, because it’s time for more Always Free Fiction.
If you have missed any of the previous stories, well, you are in luck! Through the miracle of modern technology, you can click right HERE, and it will magically transport you to the past. Or to the Always Free Fiction page. One of those things will happen.
And speaking of the past, AFF isn’t the only free fiction in this newsletter. Don’t forget Friday Night Drabble Party, which I am slowly populating from the archive. We’re talking drabbles since 2009! That’s a lot of 100-word stories, y’all.
Anyhoo, you want to read some free fiction, and I have a doozy for ya. A little horror western action. Enjoy.
Oh, and if you want to read all the stories in the collection I plucked this one from, then click the cover below and go get you some They All Bleed: Ten NoSleep Stories, Volume Two. Rate and review, please.
Okay, enough of all that! Here’s the story!
Cheers!
There Are Specters On My Tail, And I’m All Out Of Bullets
Episode 1:
I place the barrel of my Colt against the blaze on her forehead.
I take a deep breath, muster up the courage needed, and say, “I’m sorry, girl.”
Then I squeeze the trigger.
It breaks my heart, but it was a mercy in the end. We hadn’t seen water in three days, and the last few cacti we came across had been dry as sticks. There was nothing to forage, and the girl had started to foam at the mouth. She could still stand, but that was for my benefit, I think.
In the end, she had no more to give, and I thanked her for being loyal all these years.
She was the best horse I ever had.
And with the way things are going, she is probably the last horse I’ll ever have.
I’ve got maybe four days of hard tack and rattler jerky left and half a canteen of water.
The lack of water will get me before I run out of food.
But I ain’t afraid of dying of thirst or starvation. Nah. What’s really gonna get me are the damn specters on my tail.
The sun is just cresting over the butte to my back, and I kick sand on the small fire I’d risked lighting. I’d dug down a couple of feet into the sand and dirt so the light would be hidden as much as possible. Ain’t my first time being tracked. Just my first time being tracked by folks that is dead.
Folks that is dead because of me.
With my bedroll strapped to my back, my saddle bags draped over my shoulder, and my Winchester in hand, I set off, back into the badlands of this goddamn, never-ending desert.
My goal is to get to the mesa I see due North. From what I could see yesterday in the bright, scorching light of day, the mesa might be ten miles off. Maybe fifteen. Possibly twenty.
But first I need to scale halfway up this butte and have a looksee. The specters gained ground yesterday, because as far as I know, they don’t stop to sleep at night. I only stopped because Tammy couldn’t go no farther.
Damn, I’ll miss that horse.
It ain’t easy getting up the butte. No animal trails that I can see to follow, so I have to make my own. It’s a scrabbling affair, that’s for sure. With every six feet I manage to claw my way up, I slide back four.
But ain’t no one said that Tom Lawson is a quitter.
I been called a coward, which I take offense to because I sure ain’t no coward.
I been called a murderer, which I ain’t offended by, but I don’t rightly agree with the moniker. I prefer to consider most my kills justified as self-defense or just part of the job. Man’s gotta make a living.
I been called a whole lot more, from thief to cheat to scoundrel. In my opinion, them’s all the same thing. People use too many words for stuff these days. Now that the newspapers are making it all the way out West, folks want to sound educated even though half them can’t read and only eavesdrop as someone reads aloud in the saloon or church or barber’s.
Me? I can read just fine. It helps when you got wanted posters with your name on them.
I find a nice perch on the side of the butte and settle in for a second to catch my breath. I ain’t as young as I used to be. Thirty-five is long in the tooth out here. Or anywhere, really. My own parents died when they was twenty-three, leaving me in that Missouri orphanage for most my young life.
That’s where I met Hollis Greeves. The first man I killed.
With my boots braced on rocks and my ass planted next to a clump of sage, I fish my spyglass from my saddle bag and put it to my eye.
Speak of the Devil. There’s ol’ Hollis Greeves now, leading that pack of specters across the desert. They gained even more ground in the night than I thought. I might have half a day’s head start on them, if I’m lucky.
Other than his ghostly pallor, Hollis looks the same as the last day I saw him. I was twelve, and it was my last year at the orphanage. Not because I had found a place to go but because once you is a teenager, you ain’t a child in those nuns’ eyes. To be honest, I don’t think they was real nuns. Yeah, we called them Sister and all that, but they sure didn’t act like they was servants of God. No, sir, more like they were the Devil’s concubines, considering how much they enjoyed doling out punishment to us orphans.
Hollis was the groundskeeper, and he had certain appetites. I’d avoided him for eight years. Probably due to the fact I nearly bit off one of his fingers and then burst one of his nuts after he tried to corner me in the springhouse. But that was me. The others weren’t as willing to fight. They were too afraid of what would happen if they fought. I was too afraid of what would happen if I didn’t.
Just a handful of years later, they was ready to kick me out due to my age. I decided I’d leave on my own instead. Hollis caught me sneaking out that night with a bag of loot and threatened to go have his way with Nicky Polaski if I didn’t get back to my cot right then. I remember that toothless sneer he had on his face just before I plunged that kitchen knife into his belly. One of my fondest memories is how that sneer faded away as he bled out like a stuck pig.
That was my first kill. I’d say it was justified, for sure.
The sun is getting bright, and I’ll need to go soon, but I keep watching the pack of specters. I move past Hollis to the twins behind him. Bobby and Billy Nichols. Two cattle rustlers who felt that picking on a lost and hungry kid would be mighty fun. They offered me a job with their crew, then beat the holy shit out of me every night straight for a month.
I slit their throats while they slept, took their pistols, stole one of their horses, and never looked back. I didn’t even wake up the rest of the crew. That was when I knew I had a talent for putting bastards in their graves.
Two more justified killings, as far as I’m concerned.
Off to the left of the twins is Marlene Ranger. Oh, Marlene. A sweet whore from Abelene. She popped my cherry and told me she’d be my special friend. Then my money ran out, and she kicked me to the dirt. Literally. She walked me outside that brothel, gave me a kiss on my forehead, then turned me around and kicked me so hard I went flying halfway out into the road, right into a pile of horseshit. When you’re spitting out dung and half-digested hay, you tend not to think things through.
So, I stood up and shot her in the back of the head when she turned to go back inside. The only reason I recognize her now is that dress she’s wearing. It’s the same one as that day. Otherwise, she’d just be another faceless whore. It’s amazing what a .45 slug will do when it goes in the back of a head and comes out the other side.
One more justified killing because she shouldn’t have treated me dirty like that.
Behind her is the Bordain Crew. Nasty Hal. Ugly Bill. Stuttering Carl. And that other one, what’s his name? Oh, yeah. Pissy Logan. That little shit hated me the second I joined the crew. He was the youngest until I showed up. I think he was proud to be so young and riding with a bunch of robbers and thieves. I was just happy to get fed and have a place to sleep where no one was gonna mess with me. He called me ungrateful and lazy. I called him dead when I drew and put two in his chest. The rest of the crew didn’t like that, so I had to put one between each of their eyes. I weren’t gonna waste two in the chest for them boys since I only had the six shots and didn’t want to have to reload.
I do feel bad about the crew, sure, but that’s what happens when you ride with a snotty shit like Pissy. Folks gotta take responsibility for who they associate with.
I’m on the fence on whether or not killing the crew is justified, but I ain’t lost no sleep over killing Pissy.
Bringing up the rear is the entire population of Halo, Arizona. Don’t bother looking it up on a map. The place don’t exist no more. Not after I burned it to the ground.
It was a small town. Just a general store, a livery, a hotel with a saloon, a church, and a jail. They hadn’t even bothered putting up a schoolhouse yet. Might have been thirty folks that lived there, with another twenty spread out over the landscape surrounding the town. I’d been hired to scare them off for some mining company out there looking for silver. The way I figured, no one is more scared than when their town’s on fire.
I worked all through the night, digging pits and trenches, setting clay pots here and there along with bundles of hay in just the right spots. That was a Saturday night, and folks was either in bed or getting drunk in the saloon, so no one paid me much mind even if they happened to see me out and about.
The next morning, when they was all in church, I lit the first trench. I’d set it up so those pits and trenches were connected one way or another. So when that lamp oil went up in the first trench it was just a matter of minutes before the rest of them trenches, then the pits, then the hay then the clay pots of oil, went up in flames.
It was mighty pretty until the townsfolk came screaming out of that church. Seeing them burn wasn’t as fun. It didn’t bother me too much, but I had been having a lovely time watching the town get surrounded by flames, so all that screaming put a damper on my enjoyment.
I had my Winchester by then and decided to do the merciful thing. I shot the women and children first because I’m a gentleman. Then I shot the men folk because some were getting ideas in their heads that they could fight the flames. One even pointed me out to the others, and I couldn’t have that.
And that’s the bunch. All the specters I see trailing me like bloodhounds. Hollis, Marlene, the twins, the Bordain crew, and the entire town of Halo, Arizona. I’d be flattered if they weren’t all dead.
I let the spyglass fall from my eye and squint against the bright morning sun.
“Who sent ya?” I ask out loud.
A lizard scurries off to my right, and I glance that way. Then I narrow my eyes.
Off to the East I see a dust cloud. With the spyglass back to my eye, I curse as I realize who it is.
The Rankins.
I can tell by the coats they wear and the horses they ride. The Rankins is one of the largest private security outfits in the West. My guess is they’ve been hired by that mining company to track me down and bring me to justice. They probably brokered a deal with the Governor of Arizona that their involvement in what happened at Halo wouldn’t reflect on them if they brought me in. I’m making a guess here, but my guesses is usually right.
That means I got enemies to the South of me and enemies to the East of me. Good thing I’m headed North.
I study the side of the butte I’m perched on and see what looks like a manageable route up to the top. Won’t be easy, but I can make it if I’m careful. With two groups on my tail, a little high ground would be a good thing.
It takes both hands, which means I have to tie my saddle bags and my Winchester to my bedroll and secure it all tight against my back. That puts me slightly off balance as I scramble my way through the scrub brush and little pines. I’m almost to the top when the barrel of my Winchester gets snagged in the branches of a sage bush. It feels like all I have to do is give a hard tug, and it’ll come free. Except when I do, the barrel doesn’t come free. Instead, it slides up at a bad angle, and then the butt of the rifle gets lodged in the dirt, sort of pinning me to the spot.
Slowly, I slide myself out of the pack and get free. But when I turn to retrieve my things, my boots slip, and the next thing I know, I’m sliding halfway back down that damn butte. I tear open my left glove when I grab onto a cactus, but that stops my sliding at least. With a bloody palm and more than a few scrapes and bruises, I shift around onto my ass and look out over the landscape.
Both groups are even closer now. The specters are close enough that I can see them all looking up at me. That is, the ones with eyes left in their heads.
A shout rings out, and I turn my attention to the Rankins. Shit fire, they’re even closer. Stands to reason since they’s riding horses and ain’t a bunch of dead folk shambling on foot.
I flip myself onto my belly and crawl my way back up to my pack. I get it freed from the sage bush and keep climbing. I’d guess it’s twenty minutes before I reach the top. I’m drenched in sweat and breathing hard, but I make it.
When I find my perfect spot, and it is perfect with equal views of the specters and the Rankins, I lay out my bedroll and line my weapons and ammunition upon it. I got my Colt .45 and about two dozen rounds. I got my Winchester and about a dozen rounds for that. Last town I was in didn’t have rifle cartridges. Or at least that’s what the shopkeeper told me. He could have been lying, but I wasn’t gonna press the matter. Not after I spied a US Marshal riding into town. I got the hell outta there fast.
That’s about when the specters started following me. Maybe half a day after I left that town, I spied them on my trail. It was funny. I thought they was some religious pilgrims or something, heading out into the wilderness to talk to God like Jesus done. So I didn’t pay them much mind.
It was when Tammy got nervous that I began to worry. Tammy could smell trouble coming from ten miles off. I couldn’t tell what she was all nervous about. Not until the wind shifted and I caught a whiff of what was following me. I took out my spyglass for a better look and nearly pissed myself at the sight.
And no matter what direction I took, what the weather was like, if it was night or day, those specters stayed on my trail.
To be continued!
Don’t miss out on Part Two, and don’t let your friend miss out, either! Click a button below and make the world a better place. Seriously, it’ll save actual lives. Well…not actual lives, but maybe a life. Or not. But you never know, right?