Dead or Alive
by Jim Best
Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:
They fled for the border, an empty bank vault and a dead man behind them. The money burned holes in their pockets on both sides of the line. Between whoring and booze, it was half spent by the time they reached Sonora. Bill was draining used beer onto the dusty cantina floor when he saw Earl’s face staring back down at him from the wall.
He pulled it down and studied it. Blinking through the haze of alcohol and the dim twilight, he read the words WANTED, REWARD, MURDER.
“Earl!” he said, hammering on the wall outside Earl’s room. “Get out here!”
From behind the curtain that served as a door, Earl shouted, “Fuck off! I’m paid up!”
“It’s Bill! Come out here!”
He heard grumbling and muttered curses, and then the curtain flew back, and Earl stood naked, his recently diminished manhood dangling limp between his darkly tanned legs. On the straw mattress behind him, a bare-breasted señorita leaned against the wall and absently puffed a cigar. The scent of heat, sex, smoke, and liquor poured out of the room.
“Better be fucking good!” the naked desperado said. Bill lifted the paper and handed it to his partner.
Earl shook his head. “What’s this?”
“Look.”
Earl did. His eyes scanned downwards, reading and rereading the words, drawing back to the picture again and again. “Oh, oh shit.” He lifted his eyes and looked at Bill. “What now?”
“We can’t stick to the border anymore. Gotta head into the backcountry.”
They rode hard for three days, sleeping rough and moving from daybreak to nightfall. Neither man knew the country well enough to go by moonlight, and so they roasted in the sun, cutting through walls of solid heat along the way. The desert grew large around them as the world behind them got smaller. Signs of life grew further and further between. The rocky earth sloped slowly upwards into the red-painted hills. Until the halfbreed, they met no one on the trail.
They reached a shallow creek, cutting its way through a gulley of stone and scrub, where they stopped to water the horses and take a rest in the shade of an ironwood tree. Earl was talking. He’d been talking the entire ride out. The subject shifted depending on his mood, which could change from one heartbeat to the next. The key features were always the same, though. When his mood was glum, he ranted about the unfairness of it all.
“Murder!” he would say, “do you believe that horseshit? I done tol’ that sonofawhore not to move. Then what’s he do? He reaches for his pistol! If he’d had the fuckin’ brains god gave a jackass, he’d be alive!” Then, with a sigh, he’d add, “‘sides, I only meant to wing ‘im. Not my fault he flinched.”
As the horses drank up, however, his mood brightened. “Two hundred dollars, ” he muttered reverentially. Can you believe that? I’m Jesse goddamn James!” His grin revealed a crooked row of tobacco-stained teeth. Bill sat on a stone and studied that grin.
“Mmm,” he grunted, rolling a cigarette.
“Hell,” Earl laughed, “maybe after the next job, they’ll make one up of you, pard! Then we’d be a proper gang! Just like Frank and Jesse!”
“Mmhm,” Bill grunted again as he struck a match off his fingernail, “that’d be something.” He suckled sweet smoke and studied Earl some more. The damn fool had let his bandana slip from his face. That was after he’d shot the fuckin’ teller. For that, someone would pay two hundred dollars. And here he was, grinning. When he wasn’t whining, that was. “Planning on holding up a coyote or a hare, Earl?”
Earl looked confused, “Huh?”
“We’re in the goddamn desert, Earl. How are we supposed to pull another job with the heat on you?”
Earl waved this away. “Aw, hell, we’ll head to Arizona. Do you know the stuff they’re getting out of the ground there? It’s California in ’49 all over again! Then we just hop back and forth over the border.” He nodded to himself as he spoke, a man who had completed everything in his head and now needed only to finish the simple task of doing it.
Bill nodded, spat, and sucked in more smoke. “Mmm.” At that moment he knew what needed doing. He’d probably known ever since seeing the face peering down on him from the cantina wall.
“Lemme get a nip,” Earl said, squatting to his haunches.
Bill placed a reflexive hand on the leather satchel slung over his shoulder. “Only got half a bottle left.”
“Well, it ain’t doing any good in there, is it?” Earl cajoled. “C’mon, just a damn swallow.”
Earl’s swallows tended to multiply, but Bill said nothing, just shrugged and fished in the bag. He pulled out a half-empty bottle of mezcal that he offered to Earl. He watched the man’s Adam’s apple bob as the firewater glugged down his gullet. Bill’s hand slipped to his pistol.
Earl’s eyes grew wide, and Bill felt caught, but then they fixed on a spot over his shoulder.
“Who the fuck is that?” Earl barked, yanking the bottle from his lips and pointing. Bill spun, keeping his hand on the butt of the six-shooter as his eyes followed Earl’s finger.
The old man stood with his back to the gulley wall and the crack in the stone he’d emerged from. He had the copper-colored skin of an Indian, but the long white beard on his face marked him as part Mexican. Massive, bloodshot eyes oversaw the world below him, gazing in judgment like Moses from atop Sinai at the sight of the golden calf. A long shirt of linen that might have once been white hung from his frail frame as he leaned against a gnarled mesquite staff. Around his neck, a petrified scorpion dangled from a hide thong.
Silence, disturbed only by the sound of breath in the hot air, held sway as the two men stared in fascination at the newcomer. Bill felt the sweat on his back and arms go cold against his skin. His hand remained poised on the gun’s grip as he cut his eyes over to Earl. The grin was gone at last, replaced by consideration. Then the smile returned, and Bill felt some tension leave his body.
“Say, there, old-timer!” his partner called with a salute, “Don’t mind us, just wetting our whistles.” The old man said nothing, merely looked from Earl to Bill to the horses and back again. Inspiration struck Earl. “Monstrous hot out here; care for a pull? Mezcal,” he said, holding up the bottle.
Still, the old man did not speak. Earl re-corked the bottle and waited. Bill became aware of the silence in a new way. Typical desert quiet made him aware of all the little sounds, the chatter of critters in the rocks and scrub, the songs of unseen birds, and even the rustle of the wind against the dust. All that seemed gone now. The world was as silent as a Quaker meeting.
“What’s this about, Bill?” Earl asked, “deaf-mute, you figure?”
Bill snorted. “He probably doesn’t understand a damn word you’re saying,” he said, screwing what remained of his cigarette between his lips. He rested a hand on his chest and, with the other, gestured to Earl. “Amigos.” He pointed at the horses, “caballos, agua.” Leaning over, he took the half-drunk bottle and lifted it. “Mezcal, bebes?”
Nothing. Then the old man lifted a hand and pointed, first to Earl, then to Bill, and then to the northern horizon.
“Vete,” he said. His voice cracked like a pine log fire.
Bill’s eyes narrowed. “Vete, go? You want us to leave, old timer?”
“Capital fucking idea!” Earl exclaimed, “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here. Probably a goddamn leper or some shit.” As he spoke, he went for the horses. Bill rose to his feet and replaced the bottle in the satchel but kept looking at the old man on the rocks. The silence of the place was unignorable now. He pitched his smoke into the sand.
As he mounted, the halfbreed’s gaze felt like a physical force upon his body, molesting him with his eyes. The pair pointed their rides to the southern hills along the trail they’d been following all day when the old man moved. With astonishing grace, he leaped from the rocks and onto the narrow passage.
“Out of the way, hoss,” Earl said. The old man stood his ground. He lifted the twisted staff from the ground and held it lengthways before him.
“No bueno, ha-wed bad,” he rasped.
“No good?” Bill asked. “What the hell does that mean?”
“No bueno! You go vuelta, yanqui gringos! L’i-wa—wechij!”
Earl looked to Bill. “What the fuck is he saying?”
Bill shook his head. “I dunno, it’s gibberish. Something about going back the way we came.”
“Oh, fuck that,” Earl said, leaning down and riding the horse up to the old man. “We ain’t going back, you red idiot, now get the fuck out of the way. We go south!”
The old man shook his head, and Bill saw something like desperation in those lamp-like eyes. “Circulo there—mad ‘o nia! Muerte in there!”
Bill rode in closer now. “Muerte? Death? What you tryin’ to say, hoss?”
“Oh!” Earl exclaimed. His mouth stretched up to his ears, and his yellowing teeth gleamed wolfishly in a snarling smile. “I get it, of course. This joker wants the reward. That right? Dead or alive, that it?”
Bill looked at him in astonishment. “Are you off your nut?”
Earl lifted his gun from his holster. “Tell him to get out of the way before I count to three.”
“Earl…”
“One…”
Bill looked down at the old man, and in his eyes, he saw fear, but not of the gun. Something else. “Move, mover, tu murres!”
The old man shook his head. “Circulo is muerte! Bad place!”
Earl lifted the gun and cocked the hammer, “two…”
“What do you mean death? Earl, wait.”
“Gringos will burn! Masa ‘am Nioki!”
“Three…”
“Por favor…No vayan! I beg you no–“
The gunshot cut him off in the middle of his sentence. The halfbreed collapsed to the dust with no more drama than a bowling pin. His shirt flew up as he hit the ground, exposing the scrawny flesh beneath. The scorpion slid up his chest and came to rest in his beard as if his still-open mouth meant to swallow it.
“Come on,” Earl said as he rode past the corpse.
Bill paused and regarded the haunted face that would go on gazing into the sky until the buzzards pulled its eyes from its head. He looked and considered the words. The circle. Death. Then, he followed on into the hills.
The sun was halfway down the western sky when they reached the standing rock. As they rode, Bill found that his nerves hadn’t settled after leaving the old man. If anything, he felt himself grow edgier. He had a sense of things moving just outside of his field of vision that went unseen and unheard. A feeling like the half-second after a streak of lightning as you predicted the thunderclap, only the thunder never came.
Then he had to put up with Earl. The encounter with the Indian had sent Earl back into one of his dark moods, and the only sound in this quiet place, besides the steady beat of the horse’s hooves on the trail, was the occasional outburst of outrage and anger from Bill’s riding companion.
“Now, what in the blue fuck was that?” Earl shouted as they crested the top of the mesa. “That goddamn leper has to go and make me shoot him, just like that idiot teller!” He pouted, his lower lip pooching out. “Dead or alive,” he muttered, “why the fuck did they have to say dead or alive? I ain’t a goddamn monster.” He sniffed, and Bill saw the man whom he had now witnessed murder two men in cold blood wipe a tear from his eye, thoughts of Jesse James forgotten for the time being. “I ain’t done nothing worth all that.”
Yeah, Bill thought, dead or alive. The words rattled in his brain along with that ever-loving hum, giving him no respite. He thought about the staring eyes and the slow leak of blood trailing out of the Indian’s back and watering the sagebrush. He looked at Earl. Around the next bend, he decided.
They came around the bend in the trail, which narrowed to a shallow rock shelf with a drop to the south and a rock wall to the north. He set his hand to his pistol, once again meaning to draw it, and once again, he stopped short. A black basalt stone filled the path from one side to another.
Both horses came to a halt in the presence of the pitch-black rock. “What the hell?” Earl asked, and for a change, he was surprised into silence.
Bill studied the object. It had been placed here, not fallen, though it looked like it was growing out of the ground, a giant, rotten tooth emerging out of a dusty earthen mouth. It stood like a hole cut into the very fabric of the world, through which one could gaze into the void of space. Its dark surface seemed to burn with the heat of the volcano that had made it. It was two heads taller than either man atop his horse and bore no trace of hammer or chisel marks, save for one.
At the very top, Bill could make out something carved into its surface. A sigil. One that he could neither decipher nor fully make out. At one glance, it looked like it was a letter. Another moment, it looked like a word. Then, it was a picture. Its shape was so completely familiar and yet so utterly alien that as he looked at it, Bill felt a wave of disgust wash over him and a twist of nausea pull at his guts. He had seen it before, hadn’t he? He knew what it meant, but what? What could it mean? What even was it? It hung just out of reach like a dream upon waking.
“More Indian shit, you figure?” Earl asked, his voice distant.
“Yeah, I guess,” Bill said. No, Bill thought. Not any Indian shit he had ever seen. What the hell am I even doing here? He asked. On the goddamn run in the fucking desert with this goddamn idiot, staring at this…this thing? His disgust turned into hatred as he stared into the revolting carving. Hatred for it. Hatred for the thing that had made it. Hatred for the man who brought him to it. Pain rang in his head, and he rubbed his chin with the heel of his hand. The other pulled the pistol. Doing this for the money. Just the money.
“Say, Earl,” he said, each word coming out as an effort, “this ain’t personal.”
Earl turned to look at him, and Bill saw it. That hateful fucking grin plastered on that idiot face. He didn’t think.
“What ain’t pers–?”
Earl was dead before he ever saw the gun. The shot rang out like the thunderclap Bill had been waiting for, and as it did, he felt a shade of relief.
Both horses did a skittish dance along the narrow trail at the sound. Bill’s legs clamped down, and he kept his place on the beast as it bucked. He watched as the corpse slipped from the saddle in a lazy slide and disappeared over the mesa’s edge.
“Goddamnit!”
Dead or Alive meant fuck all without a body. He dropped from the saddle and walked to the edge, careful to give the stone a healthy berth as he went. Reaching the lip of the cliff, he looked down. The body was sprawled face down next to a tumble of rocks, arms, and legs akimbo. He looked on for a moment, awed by the unreal power he had summoned. Here was a man who had in one moment been a living thing, speaking, thinking, breathing, and then, by his action, Bill had ended it. He had been near death many times, man, and beast, and been a party to it in more than one instance. This, however, was the first time he had been the active agent in a man’s death. The irrevocable nature of it was incredible.
Bill wiped the sweat from his brow and rubbed the stubble on his chin. The cliff face was sheer and steep. Even if he made it down, there would be no way to get the body back up to the horses. Doubling back was no good as the trail wound in the wrong direction. Ahead, though, he could make out where the rocky edge gave way to a shallow slope down to the valley floor. Nodding to himself, he turned to the horses and set out to collect the goods.
It was slow going. Neither nag wanted to go on past the slab. Bill had to give his ride the spur to get it to move, and even still, it took the trail so close to the edge he was sure he’d go tumbling over. Then he had to dismount his ride, go back, and do the same for the other. Once past it, it was easier but still a mighty pain, thanks to the unkempt nature of the narrow path and the rocky descent down the slope. The daylight was in decline by the time he started back for the body.
Facing southwards as he rode back, he saw what he’d missed from above. Earl’s corpse lay next to not a random tumble of rocks but a stack. A cairn. And it was not the only one. A few yards away was another. A few yards from that was another. Thirteen in all, arranged in a ring. A circle. As he drew nearer, Bill made out a shape at the center. A dark, gray, and black smudge against the reddish desert. Another slab of stone.
Just what the fuck is all this? He thought, trotting on his horse as he held the reins of the other. Indian shit, he replied to himself, like Earl said. Gotta be. Weak as it was, that answer would do for the time being.
As they got within ten yards of the closest cairn, the horses stopped. They whinnied and panted. Bill gave his ride the spur again, but it did nothing. The nag would not be compelled. Nor could the other when he dismounted and pulled on its reins. “What the hell is up with you?”
He knew, though. He felt it, too. The hum was back. Stronger than before. The unheard sound beneath the silence. Shuddering in the bones like a tuning fork. It thrummed in his body and brain, seeming almost to make a word.
Bill clenched painful fists and opened them again. Breathing deep, he threw up his hands in disgust, took down Earl’s sleeping roll and a length of rope and made for the body, leaving the horses at the perimeter. He’d get it done.
The cairns stood apart in near-perfect intervals, filling the gulley from one side to the other. The rocks that made them were the normal, reddish brown and gray of the Sonora, not the volcanic black of the monoliths. Each was stacked about six feet high, broad at the base, and tapering at the top. In the center was the black slab. Looming over all like an abandoned sentry for a long-forgotten kingdom. It bore the same carving at its top, and Bill made no effort to read it. At its base was a smaller ring of stones encircling a pit dug out for fires. He could even see several large faggots of mesquite and ironwood laid out beside it.
The corpse lay beside the cairn closest to the wall from which it had fallen. No line in the desert sand marked the spot one crossed into the circle; he merely took a few steps and was past the first pile of stones. As he did, the hum reached its highest pitch yet. It screamed inside him. He doubled over, his eyes clenched shut, and the pit of his stomach lurched as he gripped his tortured skull. The sound–it was a sound–demanded to be spoken.
“TAAAK!”
He shouted into the dying day. Then again. “TAK! TAK!”
He stood breathing, relieved. Not totally. His body kept shuddering. The edge was still there. But he was father back from it. He could think. The pain in his skull was a dull pulse. He waited for it to subside, and when he realized it wouldn’t, he reopened his eyes.
Something was wrong here. But what did it mean? Did he leave now, having shot a man just to feed the buzzards? He looked back towards the horses. He had time enough. Looking back at the corpse, he nodded. Get it fucking done.
He straightened and began walking again, the bedroll tucked under his arm. He remembered the time as a boy he’d snuck his father’s whiskey and tried to pass for sober. Each step an experiment in control and deliberation. Get it done, he repeated to himself. Strip him, wrap him, and bind him. Get it done while there is still daylight. Beneath that thought was Don’t get stuck here at night.
The corpse was belly down, arms and legs splayed. Its head rested on its chin, looking up at an inhuman angle. One could almost miss the hole in the back of the skull, mistaking the flesh and bone that pushed up and out for nothing but unkempt hair. Until one noted the gray sponge that leaked from around the torn edges. The bullet had torn through the left cheek and exited out the back of Earl’s head. It had stripped away the skin and exposed shattered, yellow tooth fragments straight to the jawbone. The rest of the face was unmarred. Mud brown eyes stared without fear or anger.
He dropped the bedroll to the earth and let it unroll. Then he pulled the poster from his bag and studied it against the corpse. He’d be buggered if they’d try to fuck him over by saying they couldn’t make out the face with the bullet wound. He looked from one to the other. Never seen a man so happy to be dead, he thought. Then, chuckling, he added, “yeah, well, never seen a wolf eat a banjo either.”
He blinked. What? What did I just say? Something about a wolf and a banjo? What the hell did that mean? Why had he said it?
“Shut up,” he muttered as he refolded the paper. “Just do this, for chrissake, get the takking thing done.”
That wasn’t right. Was it? He wasn’t sure, but it was fine; he just needed to finish this. He stooped, walking around the body to pull one boot from its foot. “This is fine. It’s all fine enough to make Mama’s tater gravy with tak.”
He rested the heel of his hand against his face. What the hell was this? What was he saying? He looked back the way he came and was appalled by what he saw. The sun rested mere inches over the horizon, a pure red, making a bloody wash over the desert. How long had he been in here?
He bent to collect the other boot, considering each movement carefully. Bill felt something cold and dry rush up his arm as the waiting thing sprang from inside it, looping itself around his forearm like a satanic tattoo. He heard the rattle the same instant he felt the fangs slide into his skin.
His entire arm seemed to burst into flames as pain overwhelmed him and, for the moment, overcame the confused nose in his brain. There was no hum. No taktaktaktak. There were only the streaks of agony enveloping his arm. Before he screamed, he saw the thing entirely. The serpent’s mouth extended, half-inch fangs dripping with hellfire, appearing and just as quickly disappearing into his body. Then he screamed.
Standing, he reflexively grabbed the beast by its middle and pulled. He screamed again as he felt the teeth tear out of him, the heat in his arm doubling and spreading upwards. The scream turned into a howl of rage as he whipped around, bringing the rattler’s head slamming down into the top of the nearest cairn. Then he did it again. And again. Finally, he realized he could no longer hear the rattle.
Opening his hand, he let the pulpy mess that had once been the snake slide to the ground. He breathed in heavily and then looked at his arm. Two pinpricks of blood oozed from the incision points, which were already an inflamed red. Then a film of hot tears covered his eyes, and he thought, dear god, I’m blind!
“Goddamnit!” he roared. Turning to the west, he dashed towards the darkening shape of the horses, the thoughts of two hundred dollars vanishing from his mind. As he did, he saw their outlines rearing back and sensed their fear. Don’t you do it, he thought, struggling to keep his feet as he ran. They whinnied feverishly, and then he watched as they turned and galloped into the enveloping night. “No!” he screamed, continuing to run.
He fell to his knees and felt a moan of fear and hate pour out of his throat. “You sonsabitches! Goddamn you!” He balled his hands into rage-filled fists. Raising them over his head, he slammed them down to the desert floor. The sudden wave of pain that pulsed in his snake-bit arm brought him back from the edge of pure panic.
Snake bites weren’t always fatal. If he were a kid, maybe, or a sick old woman, but he could outlast this. Just had to last the night and then hike out for help at dawn. Keep his senses.
In this place? This rotten, sour place? With its gargling hillocks and its taktaktaktak-–
He ground his teeth in his jaw and slammed the arm into the sand again, forcing out the insanity with the clarity of pain. He only had to make it one goddamn night. He could do that. He would do it. He just needed–
His eyes fell on the outline of the fire pit and the bundled sticks.
“A fire!” he croaked.
He made for his feet, but the dizziness overcame him, and he elected to crawl instead, scuttling over the earth and collapsing at the ring at the base of the monolith. With trembling hands, he made a tepee of wood and fished for his matches in the satchel. Realizing he would need kindling, he searched for scrub or twigs, groping in the ever-increasing dark. He was steeling himself for another journey on his belly to find what he needed when inspiration struck. Reaching into his pocket, he brought out the poster.
He fumbled the first attempt at lighting a match. The second burst into life, only to disappear in Bill’s trembling fingers. Steady, damn it. Just do this. This last thing, and then you can rest.
Taking a deep breath, Bill struck the third match and quickly placed the flame on the edge of the paper. It caught quickly, the fire eating up the Words “Dead or Alive.” Bill dropped it under the makeshift campfire and let out a long sigh of satisfaction as he heard the crackle of the wood. Now he could sleep. Yes?
No, he thought, one more thing.
“Lying sonofabitch, said I could rest.” He muttered, reaching into the bag again and pulling out the mezcal. He pulled the cork, took a swallow, and then clenched as his entire body made to expel the liquid from his gorge as it hit his belly. Keep it down, he ordered. Keep it d-–
Shifting to his hands and knees, he turned his face away from the fire and felt a torrent of bile and acid rocket out of his guts. He heaved and heaved until nothing more came, and then still he shuddered. When he finally felt his body calm, he rolled onto his back, his head inches from the reeking puddle of sick.
He held out his arm to the fire. From the elbow to the tips of the fingers, the flesh had swollen and was turning an angry reddish purple except for the place of the bite itself. That was blue-black, the veins discolored as they sent out death to the rest of his body.
He tipped the bottle onto the spot, and a surge of liquid agony washed over him. He howled in pain. He closed his eyes and made no effort to open them again. He waited for the pain to fade from a roar to a growl, and then he drifted into the place between sleep and dreams one usually finds in the grips of a high fever.
When he opened his eyes again, it was full dark, with a blanket of stars and a reddish moon overhead. His bones felt like they’d been replaced with broken glass. The agony in his arm had spread to his shoulder. The pain was everywhere except his fingers, which he could not feel except for the faintest tingle. The fire, its flames a deep red, seemed to pulse and throb like a living thing, its heat a radiant fever. The smoke breathed out into the sky, smelling sweet and earthy. Through the haze, he saw eyes.
A coyote plodded up to the edge of the circle of light and stared at him. Its head cocked stupidly to the side, and its tongue lolled from its closed mouth. It sat, motionless, regarding this strange specimen of man.
“Fuck off,” Bill muttered, his voice heavy.
Instead, the coyote stood. It rose to its hind legs with all the ease of a man rising from sitting cross-legged. Its matted brown fur shimmered behind the fire’s heat. It continued its yellow-eyed stare, moving its head from one side to the other.
Wincing, Bill waved an impotent arm. “Go away!”
The coyote opened its mouth and uttered a guttural sound, half between a word and a snarl. “TAK!” Then it smiled. Its snout pulled back, revealing two great rows of teeth dripping with saliva and the gore of its latest kill. The glee in its eyes was unmistakable and monstrous. Bill felt his stomach roll. It howled then. Throwing back its head, it gave a wail into the night that was the apotheosis of all howls. Bill’s skin crawled, and he was cold despite the fire. He closed his eyes again.
More time passed in the not-sleep. The sound of chewing wet and full, ripping at the skin, and the occasional crunch of bones brought him ’round. He expected to feel pain, new pain, fresh pain. Something to override the current misery of venom in his blood. It never came, and he realized the coyote (there had been a coyote, hadn’t there? Had it said something? That didn’t make sense; coyotes couldn’t talk, could they?) must have begun to munch on his former partner.
He turned his head towards the sound. There was no coyote. Earl was sitting upright in the glow of the fire. His head was bent, and in his hand, he held the smashed remains of the rattlesnake. He was tearing it apart with what remained of his teeth; large chunks of flesh fell out of the gaping hole in his face. Methodically, he ripped at the tough skin and gristle, taking in bone and muscle.
Bill felt an icicle slide into his heart, and his bowels turned to water. For the first time in what felt like years, he was unconcerned with the pain. Fear overrode all. He opened his mouth to scream, and all that came out was a thin gasp, “Eh!”
Earl’s head jerked up at the sound, snake meat dangling from his ruined lips. The sight of his eyes caused a further slip in Bill’s sanity. Black and doll-like, they shone with a hint of red beyond in the glimmer of the firelight. He sucked down a string of meat and spread his mouth into a grin. Yellow teeth, caked in blood, seemed to loom ten feet long from half his mouth, a shattered mess in the other.
“Hey Bill!” he said, his voice like angry wasps. “You been sleeping, pard?” Then he chuckled, “I guess we both have, eh?” He threw back his head and brayed manic, hyena-like laughter. Then he was silent again.
“Dead!” Bill sputtered, managing to push himself to his elbows. “Y-you, you-you’re-.”
“Yeah,” Earl said, “guess I am ‘pard. Shoulda listened to that ol’ halfbreed, eh?” His jaw hung open, and from his mouth came the old man’s voice, “El circulo is meurte.” He raised his arms to his sides, palms up in a childish “oh well!” gesture. Then he brayed more laughter.
“Ain’t real!” Bill said, fighting to get to his feet. “Ain’t real! None of this is fucking real, damn it!” He screamed in desperation.
Earl rose. His movements were stiff and jerky, like those of a marionette controlled by an unskilled puppeteer, limbs in uncoordinated movement. He passed over the remnants of the fire, oblivious to the heat. Thoughts fled from Bill’s mind. All reason vanished, and he was left with only the animal instinct to live—to keep breathing. The grinning thing jerked and shuffled until it loomed over him.
“This ain’t personal, Bill.” It fell on him with the speed of insanity, and then Bill’s throat was locked in its icy grip. Its eyes were so dark. So, red. Drool dangled in long ropes from its bared teeth. “Now, gimme a swallow.”
As the teeth entered his throat, Bill heard someone screaming.