The Guns of Santa Sangre (4 page)

The figure of the wounded prisoner suddenly goes stiff, and then suffers a body spasm.

More sounds.

A sickening
snap
of bone.

A moist rending of flesh.

“What’s wrong with you?” shouts the other convict, his darkened figure leaping to his feet to back away in alarm from the cellmate beginning to thrash spasmodically and froth at the mouth.

“Help, oh God help me!” The afflicted prisoner shrieks in agonized, awful high-pitched cries. Terrible noises follow…bones popping, skin tearing, rapid panting, the bristly sound of thick hair pushing through pores. Pale moonlight casts the seizuring convict’s shadow across the floor and the shape begins to distort and distend, the arms and legs twisting and elongating in black exaggerated silhouettes.

In the next cell, the
borracho
has seen it all before. So he just watches. And makes himself ready.

“Help me oh God Madre Dios!”

“Shut the hell up in there!” booms the voice of one of the Federales in the other room.

“Hey, something’s wrong with him!” yells the now genuinely frightened cellmate. “Get in here!”

“I said shut up!”

The jail is a deafening cacophony of unnatural sounds; scratching, pounding, flaying, splintering, smashing and splattering. In the lightless gloom, the shadowy figure of the new prisoner is changing, losing all human form, transfiguring in violently grotesque stages of anatomical distortion; becoming something
other
. To the old man’s failing vision, this is all half-seen in shadow; quick glimpses of wiry fur and stretching flesh as the wildly flailing figure falls in and out of a thin slash of moonlight. Leg bones
crack
and reshape into haunches. The man’s chest buckles inward with a sound like breaking chicken bones to become long and tapered. Talons punch out his fingertips like blunt knives through canvas. By now, the other convict is in a total panic, pressing against the bars, screaming to the
policia federal
to release him from the cell and the thing he is trapped with. “Get me out of here! You hear me?”

In the dark shadows behind him, the pitiful wretch suffers through the last of his tortured transformation. His voice changes, becoming guttural, hoarse and animalistic.
“Oh God Oh God it hurts it hurts it Oh GGGGGGGGGOO-OOOOOOGGGG-GGHHHHHHHH!!!”
The words slur into the growling roar of a beast.

A bushy tail flicks into the moonlight.

Frothing saliva foams over jagged white canine fangs, impossibly huge, bursting through gums.

The cell is small.

There is nowhere to run.

A new bad smell arises as the cellmate shits his pants, cowering in the corner as the abomination in the cage with him grows enormous, expanding to fill the cramped space as it towers against the ceiling. The silhouette of the furry chest becomes concave and narrow as a dog rib cage in a
crick-a-crack
of a spinal cord regenerating. The skull beneath the skin of the half-human face discombobulates as jawbones dislocate and break, an extended feral wolf-like snout punching out like a clenched fist. Hunched against the roof, the monster stands eight feet tall.

The werewolf is fully born and it wants meat.

The creature falls on the other man in the cell and tears his head and half his shoulder off the torso in a grisly wet splurge of chomped flesh with a whiplash
crack
of severed spine. It hungrily swallows the mouthful in one gulping bite.

This only whets its appetite.

The old man holds his sombrero in front of his face to shield himself from the tornado of gore and shorn flesh that explodes through the bars as the wolfman rips the convict’s carcass apart in its huge talons and teeth, chewing and swallowing, reveling with feral abandon in the bloodthirsty carnage. Gallons of blood blast over the ceiling and gush down the iron bars of the abattoir of a cell like shiny black paint, splashing the sombrero but the only thing the old man feels is regret that his beloved hat is ruined for it has been with him for as long as he can remember.

All is going to plan.

It takes those damn fool Federales long enough to get there.

But now they stand in the doorway, eyes like saucers, frozen in place as they witness the monster filling the cage to bursting. The wolfman is covered with shags of flesh and ropes of eviscerated intestine, a severed half-chewed human arm in its gory mouth.
 

The old man does not move a muscle, even though the werewolf is mere feet from him. It has not seen or smelled him yet.
 

It just noticed the
policia
.

Wait for it
, he tells himself over and over.

One of the ignorant cops fumbles his pistola out of its holster and opens fire on the creature behind the bars, the bullets hammering it back, as the other officer runs to the office and quickly returns with a bolt action rifle that he has to load and fire one big round at a time as if any of those bullets do any good.

They simply punch holes through the monster’s chest that quickly heal.

And piss it off.

Inflamed by the sting of the bullets and hungry for more flesh, the werewolf leaps at the bars and the men jump back, bathed in sweat as they clumsily reload. The monster’s slavering jaws stretch impossibly wide and it emits a petrifying roar of frustration and fury. Clenching the cage in its talons, the creature yanks and jerks with all its incredible strength, trying to pry the cell door loose.
 

Those bars will not hold
. The old man smiles to himself.

You Federales should have run while you had the chance.

Werewolves are above your pay grade.

But no, the dumb cops feel foolishly secure with more bullets in their guns and they blast the monster again and again through the bars. The gunshots are ear-splitting in the enclosed space, along with the roars of the wolfman. Muzzleflashes ignite the total darkness of the room like lightning bolts, revealing the gigantic, hairy, haunched, fanged creature in strobing staccato flashes. The smoke-thick air stinks of gunpowder, cordite, coppery blood and human bile and excrement. The
borracho
covers his nose as he huddles in his cell, watching the show. The bullets take chunks of hair and skin off the beast in the cage, so out of its mind with fury its psychotic eyes bulge in mad swirls of red as it uses the talons of its massive paws wrapped around the bars to tug them free of the cement foundations.

Then the bullets stop.

The cops’ guns are empty.

It is too late to run but they try anyway.

They get maybe three feet.

The werewolf tears the cell door off the frame and pounces out, bringing both men down with two sledgehammer paws into a pool of darkness in the corner of the corridor. There are sounds of screaming and arms and legs being torn out of their sockets and skulls being crushed and rib cages splintered and bitten into amidst all the growling, slobbering and chomping. It is a hard way for the men to die, but the
borracho
has no pity for them.

The old timer guesses the creature will finish this meal in less than a minute and be looking for seconds.

It will see him then in the cell.

And break through the bars to get him.

This is the plan.

It is time.

The old man pulls off his right boot and dumps its contents out, which
clank
on the darkened floor.

The object glints in a ray of moonbeam.

A two-shot Derringer pistol.

Picking the gun up, the
borracho
snaps the twin barrels open to expose the two sterling silver bullets he has loaded there.
Clicking
the chambers shut, the old man squeezes into the corner of the cot, waiting for the monster to break into his cell.

The sounds of the feast cease. The revolting wet
slurping
of the wolfman lapping up the last morsels in the gloom of the jail.

The old man whistles.

A sudden angry growl of surprise and the monster rears in the darkness, a towering shape blacker than the other shadows. The silhouette of the huge canine head rotates, nostrils sniffing.

He whistles again, letting the wolfman know he is there. The old man understands the smell of booze on him has disguised his scent. But now the monster is alerted to his presence. Its red eyes glow like coals and fix on the
borracho
in the cell, noticing him for the first time. With a deafening throaty roar, the creature launches itself at the old man’s jail door with both talons, grasping and wrenching on the bars in berserker rage, tail swishing. It uses its ferocious razor-rowed teeth to try to bite through the iron rods, so mad and unquenchable is its appetite.

“Come and get me!” the chuckling old man taunts, egging the beast on.

It is halfway through the cage.

Readying himself, knowing he will only have two shots and mere seconds to place them, the old man raises the Derringer and settles the notches of the short muzzle on the broad furry chest of the werewolf ripping out the bars of his cell.

Patience.

Paciencia.

The wild-eyed monster pulls at the bars, prying them loose, the metal buckling against the crumbling cement of the fixture.

Esperar.

Wait.

CRRR-RRAAANK!
Three iron rods break free of the ceiling as the wolfman tears the cell door loose and shoulders through the gap like a hairy battering ram, bending the bars as it squeezes through, claws swiping a foot from the face of the old man with the pointed gun. Its snapping bear-trap jaws clamp shut so close the
borracho
feels the spray of its foul spit on his face and smells the hot stench of its gullet. Then there is the sound of tortured metal as the whole cell door collapses inward and the werewolf is inside the cage.

Now.

Ahora!

The old man fires his Derringer twice, pulling both little triggers, putting two silver bullets clean through the werewolf’s heart before it gets another step.

The wolfman drops in its tracks, instantly dead.

As the lifeless body hits the floor, there is a flurry of movement as immediately the monster’s physiognomy twists and reforms back into the crumpled figure of a dead naked human being on the ground.
 

The old man rises at last.

Everyone in the jail is dead but him.

His cell door is open, broken off the hinges.

He walks through it a free man.

The luck of the drunk. Tonight, he vows to say a prayer to the moon, the patron saint of werewolves, for the good fortune she bestowed on him.

Stopping just long enough to do a few things before his departure, the old man
is soon on his way. He rummages through the pockets of the Federales’ remains and takes their wallets. Selecting two fresh rifles and two pistols from the gun rack in the office, he takes enough ammo to last him awhile. Three bottles of whisky are now his. The last thing the
borracho
takes from the police station is the pouch of silver on the table that he stuffs in his pocket with the bullets. Then, selecting the strongest horse from the corral outside, he saddles up and rides west.

Chapter Three

The one called Tucker leaned back in the chair, put his dusty boots up, spurs clinking, and squinted out at the harsh Durango desert that lay beyond the porch of the rundown cantina. One big empty. The sun was just rising, already blinding, and he dipped his hat brim to shadow his face. It was going to be another hot damn day. The man was tall and lean, the shag of beard bare by the scar on his jaw but thick across the rest of his sunburned leathery face. He rolled a cigarette and lit it between thick fingers, with cauliflower knuckles broken several times on others’ faces, and sucked in the good hurt of the bad tobacco. His Colts hung heavy in his holsters. Flies buzzed in the air.
 

He didn’t like the way the peasant was staring at him.
 

The Mexican had been there for an hour standing across the street, sizing him up. Usually these villagers kept their distance, keeping their eyes and heads down, avoiding trouble, but this little brown man had been looking at him with interest for a while now. Maybe they didn’t get too many gunfighters around here, the bunghole of the earth.

Slapping an annoying fly on his cheek stubble, the gunfighter wiped the crushed insect off his palm on the wooden post, settling back in his chair with a creak of leather as he shifted his boots.

The dismal outpost was nestled in the desert flats one hundred twenty miles from Villahidalgo for travelers passing through on the Santa Maria Del Oro trail. It wasn’t much, just a cantina, feed store, barn and a ramshackle corral. Tucker had his horse tethered there along with those his compatriots rode. The gunfighter had been here a week, lying low with the other two, planning their next move. He wondered how the hell he’d ended up here. The only other human beings he’d seen were the occasional Mexican farmers who rode through to purchase supplies for the few poor scattered villages throughout the area. None of the peasants had given him so much as a passing glance.