Burn Read online

  He stared at the pink orb of the sun as it settled into a distant hill, and repeated the facts again and again. “My name is Hank O’Dell. I was born January 11th, 2012. My father was Richard and my mother was Eileen. I had a lot of money. My favorite color was…”

  Something dark was moving towards them out of the sun. Someone riding a horse. “My favorite color was black.” His hand was resting on Trot’s body. He felt his chest twitch. Trot was trying to speak. “What did you say?”

  Trot’s eyes opened. “Black ain’t a color… My favorite is green… like grass.”

  The horse and its rider reined up in front of them, blanketing the two in dust. Hank looked up at the girl. “My name is Hank O’Dell. I was born on January 11th, 2012. My parents are Richard and Eileen.”

  She was pointing a rifle at his face. “My name’s Angel, and I don’t know when I was born. My parents are dead.”

  She was the ugliest vision of an angel Hank could imagine. “Don’t shoot… My work isn’t complete.” The memories flooded back.

  “What work is that?”

  The flash of light erupted in Hank’s mind again, and the images focused. A bomb going off, his best friend disintegrating beside him. My Vice President. He held his hands up pleadingly. “Don’t do it… I’m the President of the United States.”

  “Don’t know what that is, and I don’t much give a shit.”

  Angel pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 26

  Cobe had only been to Rudd once in his life, and when he’d left, the town had been set flames. All that remained now was smouldering ruin and the stench of death. They crossed the remains of the stone bridge and saw the carcasses of dozens of bodies left in the dried up moat on either side. The fire had been all-consuming, licking down into the chasm’s deepest pockets of waste, melting the skin from people mired in the waste-deep shit. Those that had made it through the cesspool had succumbed on the far side to smoke inhalation, their bloated bodies now being picked over by dozens of ravaging buzzards. There were hundreds more circling overhead.

  The rotted corpses of Ivan Tevalov and Aleea Shon were still lying near the end of the bridge inside town. Cobe looked over at Jenny and wondered what could be going through her mind. Tevalov had attempted to rape and murder her on that very same spot.

  Dust whinnied nervously and tried to pull away from the tangle of their bodies. Lawson reined him in. “Easy boy, they can’t hurt us now. You seen to that.”

  Cobe remembered the old cryer’s violent end with grim satisfaction. The Lawman’s horse had pulverized his skull and face into the ground. The barrel end of Lawson’s rifle had done almost as much damage to Aleea. Their bodies were twisted together now in a stinking, dried out heap. It was difficult to tell one from the other, and Cobe didn’t much care to try and figure it out.

  They rode into town.

  “He found me here,” Jenny said.

  “What’s that?” Lawson asked.

  She slid off of Dust and approached the collapsed remains of Rudd’s meeting place. “Here, in my dreams. This is where Eichberg found me.”

  Cobe had left Willem alone on Cloud to stand next to her. “Why would you come here in one of your dreams? I can think of a million better places to visit if I had a choice.”

  “I was looking for my mother… found him instead.”

  Lawson surveyed the damage around them. Ashes danced in the wind. Wisps of smoke swirled about the charred ruins. Everything was black and grey. “You ain’t going to find yer ma here.”

  “You ain’t gonna find nothin’,” Willem added. “Do we have to stay the whole night here? It’s starting to get dark.”

  The Lawman shook his head. “It’s what Eichberg expects, so no. We’ll set up outside what’s left of the town. When morning comes we’ll split into two groups and keep an eye out for him.”

  “Which way will he come from?” Cobe asked.

  Lawson looked at Jenny for the answer. The cryer shrugged. “I’ve seen him in my dreams, but he didn’t say where he was or how far away.”

  Lawson turned his back to the wind and started rolling a cigarette. “He’ll be comin’ from the west, maybe north some, maybe south a bit. If he’s on foot, we’ll have time to prepare.”

  Willem shivered. “Well let’s get outta here and start preparing. This place scares me.”

  “Nothin’ left to scare nobody,” Lawson said blowing smoke.

  Jenny climbed up behind him. “That isn’t true. The town’s filled with ghosts.”

  Willem snapped at her. “There ain’t no such thing as ghosts.”

  “My mother once told me I didn’t have to be afraid of ghosts. We’re surrounded by the dead all the time, our entire lives. It’s our history, she said.”

  “The only dead person I see here is you,” Willem dropped his head almost immediately after saying the words. “Sorry. Guess that wasn’t called for.”

  Jenny shrugged a second time. “You can’t hurt my feelings. I don’t have any.”

  Cobe knew that wasn’t true. She had taken his hand and held it against her on this same burned out street many nights before. He’d seen the rage in her green eyes just hours earlier as she’d attacked the Lawman outside Burn for leaving her behind to hang. Jenny had feelings. All cryers had feelings, good and bad. Most were bad.

  They rode out of town and found a low spot of ground to the north. They built a big fire inside a pit the boys dug deep with their bare hands to keep them out of the wind. Lawson said it would be their last one before confronting Eichberg. “I reckon he’s still three or four days from here, but we can’t risk him spotting us. We may have lost the advantage of surprise, but he don’t need to know our exact location.”

  Cobe scooted back a few more feet from the heat. “We need to draw him in. We should keep this fire going, bigger and brighter than it is now, until he finds us. We got them guns of yours. He won’t stand a chance.”

  Lawson glowered at him. “You sound pretty sure of yerself. You going to pull the trigger if something happens to me? You got the killing sense?”

  Cobe stared into the flames. The Lawman thought he was pathetic—still, after all they’d been through. “I killed a bunch of howlers when we tried escaping from Big Hole that first time. I shot them all dead.”

  “Yeah, you killed ‘em alright,” Lawson rumbled. “And fired most of the bullets into dead air accordin’ to Trot’s way of telling it.”

  “What about the one I shot right in the brain ready to kill you?”

  Lawson recalled the argument the two were having in the stairwell back in Big Hole. “You were five feet from the thing. Lucky shot.”

  “I got it done. I shot the howlers. I know how to use a gawdamn gun.”

  One of the Lawman’s weapons suddenly appeared in his hand. The long grey barrel gleamed like something alive in the light of the fire. “Words is one thing. Come on over here and prove it to me.”

  Cobe hesitated a few moments and finally stood. He walked around the fire pit and held his hand out. “Tell me what you want me to shoot.”

  “Really?” Jenny was sitting a few feet away in the dark with the horses. “Do I have to be frozen another thousand years for men to stop behaving like such idiots?”

  “I’m not the idiot here,” Cobe replied with his hand still held out. “The Lawman thinks I’m a coward. I’m going to prove to him I ain’t.”

  Willem stuck one end of a thick tree branch into the flames and started turning in it slowly. He’d heard his brother and the Lawman argue before, and most often he would join in. This time he kept his mouth shut. The end of the branch caught on fire. He continued turning it.

  Lawson opened the gun and emptied the bullets into his vest pocket. “Pulling the trigger and fillin’ things with holes is only a part of it. You got to know your weapon inside and out, you have to learn how it works… what it can do, and more importantly, what it can’t.” He smacked the handle into Cobe’s palm. “Now let’s get started.”
>
  Willem left the branch in the fire and crawled over to where the Lawman had left the bag filled with ammunition boxes. He listened from the shadows as Lawson instructed his brother. When he was certain no one was paying any attention to him, he dug quietly into the burlap cloth. Willem worked his fingers between the small boxes and found the book nestled at the bottom. If it was important enough to be stored with guns and bullets, it was worth Willem’s time to see what it was all about. It wasn’t a very big book, smaller than most he’d seen in Big Hole, and no thicker than his thumb. He tucked it into the back of his pants and returned to the fire.

  Cobe’s head was leaning close into Lawson’s. Both were looking down the shaft of the partially disassembled weapon. The Lawman was going on about the necessity of keeping a weapon clean, inside and out. Willem could care less, but he saw his brother paying attention. Willem pulled his branch out of the flames. He started out into the dark, holding his torch out in front to light the way.

  Jenny spoke to him. “Where are you going?”

  “I need to shit. You wanna hold my hand?”

  “Don’t be long, I heard howlers earlier.”

  Willem trudged off. When he’d gone far enough that he could no longer hear the Lawman talking, or see the fire burning, he settled onto his knees next to a pile of rocks. He stood his torch against one, and pulled the book out.

  It was old and battered, the front and back covers missing. The paper was so aged it appeared brown in the burning branch’s flickering light. Willem peered closer and saw something black near the center of the page, something black, a smudge of dirt perhaps. He held it as close to the torch as he could. Any closer he feared the ancient paper would burst into flames and be forever lost. The Lawman wouldn’t care for that. The smudge turned out to be printing; the book’s title:

  Amos Hannon:

  Book 13

  Gun Fight in Oklahoma

  Willem settled the book onto his lap and went to turn the first page over. A quarter of it cracked off between his finger and thumb. His heart began to race and he cursed silently. He tried again, aware of the object’s brittleness. There was more printing. The book had been written by someone called Saul Betters. Below that was the number 1968 and the names of places he’d never heard of. There were more strange symbols and words near the bottom he didn’t know the meaning of.

  Willem turned another page. Chapter One. All books started at chapter one, he’d heard his Ma tell Cobe that once. He looked over his shoulder to ensure no one had snuck up in the dark. It was a habit he’d learned from a young age—don’t get caught reading books. Some more words his mother had spoken to Cobe on one of the frequent nights their father had gone out drinking. They hadn’t been that careful, however. Willem had sat in the shadows between bedroom and sitting room all those evenings, listening to her instruct his brothers about words and stories. It all begins with the letters of the alphabet. A, B, C, D, and so on. Them twenty-six letters made words, and there was thousands of words. The words were put together to make stories and books, and according to his Ma, there were millions of books. Or at least there had been a long time ago. Willem had never believed that part until he’d seen the shelf crammed with books on the bottom level of Big Hole.

  Don’t get caught reading books. People had been hung for that. It was a warning Willem had taken to heart. He had learned to read on those nights—perhaps even better than Cobe—listening to the soft voice of his mother, and he’d kept it secret—even from his brother.

  No one was out in the dark watching him, Willem was certain. His secret was safe. He stared back down at the faded page and started to read the words.

  Chapter One

  The fight had broken out in McKenzie Saloon on Saturday night like any other night in the town of Dead Creek, Oklahoma. It was over a hand of poker. Someone had been accused of cheating, and called out for it. The cheated and his accuser hadn’t made it out onto the muddy street to settle their differences. They began trading punches over the table, spilling drinks and upsetting cards to the floor. And like any other night of the week when tempers flared and men fought, more joined in.

  The saloon’s proprietor, Jace McKenzie, yelled some but didn’t try breaking it up on his own. He slipped out the back way and went for help.

  Willem turned the page and held the book a little closer to the burning branch. Most of the flames had sputtered out, and he was reading by the glow of embers.

  McKenzie returned minutes later through the front entrance, trailing behind the big lawman. Sheriff Amos Hannon drew his six-shooter from its holster and fired above his head. The fighting and yelling stopped in an instant. Dust filtered down in front of Hannon where his bullet had punched into the ceiling.

  “Gosh-darn it, Amos,” McKenzie whined. “I got folks staying in them rooms upstairs.”

  Sheriff Hannon surveyed the suddenly silent mob standing in front of him. “They’re all down here, I’m wagering. Unless that is you’ve taken up the prostitution business again in your rooms. You know my feelings on that don’t you, Jace?”

  The portly McKenzie waddled out from behind him and started picking up overturned chairs. “This ain’t no brothel, Sheriff. I run a law-abiding establishment.”

  “That’s good to hear.” Hannon slipped the gun back into its holster. “Now as for the rest of you… Help Mr. McKenzie clean this mess, and those that are responsible for the damage can settle up with him before closing time. Is that understood?”

  The patrons mumbled and started picking things up.

  Two rough-looking men sitting at a table against the far wall remained seated. Hannon had spotted them the moment he’d entered the saloon. They had a look of trouble about them, and Amos knew the look all too well. He moved towards them slowly, his right hand still resting on the gun’s handle at his side.

  “Are you men staying in town long?” He asked when he was standing six feet from the two.

  One of them poured a shot of whiskey into his glass. “Just passing through, Sheriff. Wasn’t expecting a town with the word ‘Dead’ in its title to be this lively. Me and my brother prefer things more quiet.”

  The glass of whiskey remained on the table. Amos noted the man’s hand still gripping the bottle tightly. He couldn’t see what the other one’s hands were up to under the table, but he had a pretty good idea. “Then I recommend you finish your drinks quick-like and move on out even quieter.”

  “We ain’t broke no saloon rules, lawman,” the other man spoke. “And we don’t take kindly being told where we can go and how long we can stay.”

  Hannon held a hand up peaceably. “I wasn’t accusing you of breaking any rules. Just offering you boys some good advice.”

  “Sounded more like a warning.”

  “Then take it as such and move on. This town runs on order, and I’ve been appointed to keep that order. The two of you don’t look much like the orderly types.”

  Willem looked up from the page and stared out into the cold, dark night. This Amos Hannon sounded a lot like the Lawman. So much in fact that Willem pictured Lawson in his mind as he read. He could hear the gravely rumble of Lawson as Sheriff Hannon issued his warnings. Even the words Hannon used sounded familiar—this town runs on order, and I’ve been appointed to keep that order. He’d heard it said before, or words to that effect, usually when some lawbreaker was set to hang from the tree back in Burn.

  He stared back down at the open book on his lap with reverence. This book is the Lawman. It’s him. Everything he stands for. Willem realized in that moment the book was why they had returned to Burn and risked their lives. Lawson hadn’t gone back just to retrieve his fancy old guns—he’d gone back for this, his book. His story.

  The last bit of flame went out on the branch next to him and smoke wafted into his face. He coughed and rubbed his stinging eyes with his knuckles. Something made a snorting noise off to the left. Willem shoved the book back into his pants and waited to hear the sound again.

  �
��Someone out there?” He asked the dark. “Cobe, you sombitch. You tryin’ to scare me?”

  Something scraped along the dirt for a second or two from his right. Willem fumbled for the smoking branch and jabbed it out into the air in front of him. “This ain’t funny… not after all the things we been through.”

  He remembered that first night they had run away from Burn after their father had been hung. They had mistaken Trot for a howler. Maybe Trot had followed after them once again. A second deep snorting sound put an end to that theory. Willem stepped back into the rock pile and waved the torch over his head frantically. It burst back into flame, and he saw the dull yellow reflections of a hundred sets of eyes all around him.

  He tried to scream, but a cold hand clamped over his lips and squeezed. Someone whispered in his ear. “Don’t be loud, Willem… The rollers are easily startled.” Willem jerked his head and saw the awful pink glow of Lothair Eichberg’s eyes inches from his cheek. He spoke again and his breath reeked. “You don’t have be afraid… You know I like children.”

  Chapter 27

  Sara washed her clothes in the light of the full moon. She took a handful of cold water and drank it down, even though her thirst had been sated before sunset when they’d finally come upon the river. Kay was sitting naked in the water a few feet away, still splashing her feet in the current, and dunking her head completely under every ten seconds or so.

  “You’ll catch your death of cold if you don’t get out of there soon,” she warned her daughter. “Or end up like a wrinkled old boot.”

  “Just a little while longer, Ma. I was starting to think I’d never have a bath again my whole life.”

  Sara wrung the final shirt out and spread it over the last bit of exposed rock she could find. “I wish Angel shared the same love of water you do.” She shook her hands dry and wondered where the girl had gotten to. “How long ago did she ride out?”