An Occurrence in Crazy Bear Valley (9 page)

“I need more ammunition,” Johnson repeated. “Anybody got some?”

“Use your knife,” Morgan told him. “We ain’t got time to find more for you now. Gut the fuckers instead.”

The beasts approached them cautiously. One lashed out at the horse, swatting at it with an oversized, clawed hand. The horse reared up on its hind legs and struck back. The crazy bear leaped aside, and the horse turned and charged toward the wall. It crashed through the weakened structure and ran into the darkness. Immediately, a dozen furry forms flung themselves at it, crushing the poor animal to the ground as they clawed and bit and tore.

“Run for it,” Johnson yelled. “It’s our only chance. Everybody skin out.”

“No,” Morgan hollered. “You won’t make it ten feet if you—”

Above them, the roof groaned. The bunkhouse shuddered as if a tremor had passed beneath their feet. Even the marauding beasts slowed, glancing upward in sudden confusion.

“Oh, hell,” Gunderson whispered. “Boss, I think Johnson might be right. I reckon we out to go.”

Morgan opened his mouth to respond, and then, with a thunderous crack, the roof collapsed on them, burying man and beast alike. They didn’t even have time to scream.

SEVEN

When Crystal opened her eyes, she didn’t realize it at first. She couldn’t see anything. Alarmed, she wondered if she’d been struck blind. Then she wondered where the others were. She listened, but it was quiet. She heard something far away that might be a bird, but no frightened voices or groans of the injured. No growls or roars, either.

“H-hello?” Her voice was hoarse, her mouth dry. It came out more like a rasp than a shout. Working up some spit, Crystal tried again. “Hello? Is anybody there?”

No one responded.

“Anyone? I need help.”

Crystal paused, suddenly afraid as the possibility occurred to her that the crazy bears might still be lurking. If so, her cries might attract or alert them. She fell silent, and waited. After a few minutes, she decided to take a chance.

She tensed, expecting pain when she moved, but there was none. Other than her sore throat, she seemed fine. She flexed her fingers and then her feet. Finding her arms and legs unbroken, she wiggled back and forth, and then realized why she couldn’t see. There was something lying atop her face. She reached for it, and her fingers brushed against something soft and sticky. Hair? Fur? Crystal gasped, expecting it to be a crazy bear. But when she yanked it free of her face, she saw that it was nothing more than a bloodied scrap of blanket.

The daylight was so bright that it hurt her head. She sat up, blinking, and shielded her eyes with her hands. Then she looked around her in bewilderment. The entire cabin had collapsed, burying them all in a mound of debris. One of Morgan’s legs stuck out of the wreckage. A shard of bone poked from the swollen flesh. Of the others in the group, there was no sign. Neither was there any sign of their attackers.

Crystal didn’t bother to see if Morgan was alive or not. Instead, she searched amongst the rubble and scavenged what she could—food, a blanket, a knife, and a few other items, along with a bloodstained burlap bag to carry them in. When she was finished, she limped out of the wreckage. The horses all lay where they’d been slaughtered, their torn corpses already drawing a host of flies and other insects. None of the bodies of the creatures remained, although bloodstains marked where many of them had fallen.

The clearing was filled with enormous footprints—dozens, perhaps even hundreds of them, leading in every direction. She stared at the tracks, trying in vain to decipher them—trying to determine where the surviving creatures had gone. Then she decided that it didn’t matter. She knew which direction she was going, and it was a place they couldn’t follow.

Crystal limped down the hill. The forest echoed with birdsongs and other signs of wildlife, but the valley’s beauty had been tainted. The wildflowers and other plants had been trampled beneath many big feet, and what remained was withered and brown. The only color still prominent was the occasional splash of red where blood had been spilled the night before.

She reached the shore, knelt, and splashed water on her face. Shivering, she cupped her hands and drank. The cold water soothed her sore throat. She splashed more, washing the blood and grime from her face, arms, and hands. Then, when she was finished, Crystal clutched her burlap bag tightly to her bosom and waded into the water until only her chin remained above the surface. Closing her eyes, she went limp and let the river carry her away. As she drifted from sight, silence returned to the valley once more.

STORY NOTES

An Occurrence In Crazy Bear Valley
was written for a collection of weird western novellas published by Cemetery Dance. The book was called
Four Rode Out
and also contained stories by Tim Lebbon, Tim Curran, and Stephen Vernon (name checked here as the character Vernon Stephens).
Four Rode Out
was published as a signed, limited edition hardcover, and is long out of print.

I’ve always wanted to write a story about Bigfoot, and when I was asked to come up with a weird western novella, I figured this was my chance. I’ve been a Sasquatch aficionado since I was about six-years old. Over the years, I’ve amassed a number of books on the subject, and have even spent a considerable amount of time driving through the heart of Bigfoot country in the Pacific Northwest, hoping to catch a glimpse of one.

I drew upon that background lore during the writing of this tale. The disclaimer at the beginning of the book states that this novella is based on true events, and it is, in as much as a group of mystery hominids (which is what we serious Bigfoot researchers refer to them as) attacked the cabin of a bunch of lumberjacks after the lumberjacks killed one of the beasts. The rest of the story is fiction.

Or is it…?

Anyway, here’s another weird western story for you on the next page, complete with cowboys, zombies, and dinosaurs.

LOST CANYON OF THE DAMNED

The desert smelled like dead folks.

The sun hung over our heads, fat and swollen like that Polish whore back in Red Creek. It made me sweat, just like she had. The air was so thick, it felt like we were breathing soup. The heat made the stench worse. Our dirty handkerchiefs, crusted with sand and blood, were useless. They stank almost as bad as the desert. Course, it wasn’t the desert that stank. It was the things chasing us.

We’d been fleeing through the desert for days. None of us had a clue where we were. Leppo knew the terrain and had acted as our guide, but he died of heatstroke on the second day, and we shot him in the head before he got back up again. We weren’t sure if the disease affected folks who’d died of natural causes, but we figured it was better to be safe than sorry. Since then, we’d been following the sun, searching the horizons for some-thing other than sand or dead things. Our canteens were empty. So were our bellies. We baked during daylight and froze at night.

All things considered, I’d have rather been in Santa Fe. I knew folks there. Had friends. A girl. From what we’d heard, the disease hadn’t made it that far yet.

Riding behind me and Deke, Jorge muttered something in Spanish. I’ve never been able to get the hang of that language, so I’m not sure what he said. Sounded like, ‘There’s goats in the swimming pool’ but it probably wasn’t.

I slumped forward in the saddle while my horse plodded along. My tongue felt like sandpaper. My lips were cracked and swollen. I kept trying to lick them, but couldn’t work up any spit.

“They still back there?” I was too tired to turn around and check for myself.

“Still there, Hogan,” Deke grunted. “Reckon they don’t need to rest. Don’t need water. Slower we go, the closer they get.”

I wiped sweat from my eyes. “We push these horses any harder and they’re gonna drop right out from under us. Then we’ll be fucked.”

Behind us, Janelle gasped at my language. I didn’t care. According to the Reverend, it was the end of the world. I figured rough language was the least of her worries now.

“The good Lord will deliver us,” the Reverend said. “Even you, Mr. Hogan.”

“Appreciate that, Reverend. Give Him my thanks the next time you two talk.”

Deke rolled his eyes. I grinned, even though it hurt my lips.

We were an odd bunch, to be sure. Deke and I had come to Red Creek just a month ago. We’d bought ourselves a stand of timber there, and were intent on clearing it. Jorge had worked at the livery. The Reverend was just that—had himself a tent on the edge of town and gave services every Sunday. Terry was just a kid. Couldn’t have been a day over fourteen. No hair on his chin yet. But he shot like a man, and I was pretty sure that he was sweet on Janelle. It was easy to see why. Women like her were hard to find in the west. Janelle was from Philadelphia. Come to Red Creek after marrying a dandy twice her age. Don’t know if she really loved him or not, but she’d certainly carried on when those corpses tore the old boy apart in front of the apothecary like a pack of starved coyotes.

Red Creek wasn’t a big town, but it was large enough that none of us had known each other until we fled together. Except for me and Deke, we were strangers, thrown together by circumstance. That made for an uneasy ride.

The first any of us heard of the disease was when a man stumbled into town one night, feverish and moaning. There was a nasty bite on his arm, and a chunk of flesh missing from his thigh. The doc took care of him as best he could, but the poor bastard died just the same. Before he did, he told the doc and his helpers about Hamelin’s Revenge. That’s what folks back east were calling it, on account of some story about a piper and some rats. They say that the disease started with rats. They overran an Indian reservation back east, which wasn’t a surprise, as far as I was concerned. I’d seen the conditions on those reservations, and figured those people would be better off sleeping at the bottom of an outhouse. It was a terrible way to live. The thing is, these weren’t no ordinary rats. They were dead. Guts hanging out. Maggots clinging to their bodies. But they still moved. And bit. And whatever they bit got sick and died. Mostly, they bit the Indians. The Indians took ill and died off, and the government didn’t seem to care—until the Indians came back and started eating white folks. But by then, it was too late.

The man told the doc about this, and then died. Doc got some of the town bigwigs together, and while they were having a meeting about it, the dead fella got back up and ate the doc’s helpers. Then they came back and started eating folks, too.

Hamelin’s Revenge spread fast, hopping from person to person. Other species caught it, too. Before we hightailed it out of Red Creek, I saw dead horses, dogs, and coyotes attacking townspeople in the streets. And lots of dead people, of course. By then, there were more corpses stumbling around than there were live folks. Lucky for us, the dead moved slowly. Otherwise, we’d have never escaped. Even then, it wasn’t easy. They swarmed, trapping us inside the saloon. We had to fight our way out, and we burned most of Red Creek down in the process.

How do you kill something that’s already dead? Shooting them in the head seems to work. So does smacking them in the head with a hammer or a pick-axe or a length of kindling. You can fire six shots into their chest and they’ll keep on coming. You can chop off their arms and legs and they’ll keep wriggling like a worm on a hook. But get them in the head, and they drop like a sack of grain.

I glanced up at the sky, squinting. The sun hadn’t moved. It felt like we hadn’t, either. Our horses shuffled through the sand, wobbling unsteadily. Janelle coughed. I turned around to see if she was okay. She fanned her hand in front of her nose. When she saw me looking at her, she frowned.

“They’re getting closer, Mr. Hogan, judging by the stench.”

“I know.”

“Well, what do you intend to do about it?”

I looked past her, studying the horizon. There were hundreds of black dots in the distance. Each dot was a dead thing—the population of Red Creek, and then some. Every infected animal had joined in the pursuit, too. I’ll give the dead one thing—they’re determined sons of bitches.

“I intend to keep moving,” I told her. “Stay ahead of them. We don’t have enough bullets to kill them all, and even if we did, I reckon they’re out of range. Ain’t none of us gunslingers. Even if we were, nobody’s that good of a shot—not even your boyfriend there.” I nodded in Terry’s direction. The boy blushed.

Scowling, Janelle stuck her nose into the air. I turned around again, trying to hide my grin. Deke chuckled beside me.

“She’s taken a shine to you,” he whispered.

I shrugged. It took a lot of effort to do so. I was trying to work up enough energy to respond, when something ahead of us caught my eye. The flat landscape was broken by a smattering of low hills. It looked like God had just dropped them right there in the middle of the desert. Jorge must have seen it too, because he jabbered and pointed.

“Look there.” Deke patted his horse’s flank. “We could hole up atop one of them hills. Make a stand. Shoot them as they climb up.”