The Zona Read online

  “You be a harbinger? You know the Stormbringer?” She asked. The villager who had picked Lead up, wrapped arms around him from behind.

  “You in Crystal. You look a wraith. You touch the Noumenal, we find you true or leave you to sand.” She nodded her head and hissed. The villager dragged Lead into one of the tents and dropped him into the embrace of its shade.

  Lead woke in darkness. His tongue was large and heavy. Thirst and sun stroke tilted his world on an axis appalling and unnatural. Lead turned his head and vomited into the sand. The stench turned his stomach, he vomited again.

  The tent’s flap rippled in the wind, revealing a flicker of firelight. Near the flap lay a wooden bowl of water. Lead tried to stand but couldn’t find his legs. He thought of going back to sleep but stopped by the knowledge that he would probably die if he did. He whispered a prayer for salvation and crawled out of the tent, dragging the bowl with him.

  The sun had quite the day, leaving a darkness cut only by the firelight. Nothing was visible but the tents at fire’s edge and villagers scurrying in and out of the illumination like phantoms. Lead observed and took a small sip of water. His body wanted to gulp it down but his mind knew better. He watched a group of villagers erect an iron frame and cauldron over the fire. Lead took another sip. He saw no well but knew a water source must be near. The water tasted of alkali and minerals. Water from bottle reserves did not taste this sharp and earthy.

  One of the villagers leaned back let out a long howl. Villagers answered the call and came into the firelight. They hovered near licking flames and watched the cauldron boil and hummed a song, some chorus from the Broken Times. They perpetrated a scene ancestral to all of humanity though sometimes forgotten and sometimes found again; food, and fire, and song to break the fear of the darkness. Lead watched them dance and sway to the wordless song. Arms flailed without rhythm. Feet kicked up clouds of dust which mixed with the smoke of the fire.

  “End!” shouted the old woman with the rattlesnake headband. “End! End!”

  The villagers stopped dancing, but the hums continued uninterrupted. The old woman pointed at Lead.

  “You,” she said. She licked her lips with a large pink tongue.

  “You walk from waste,” she said over the hums. “You come from land of No Man, like Stormbringer. You eat Jimson Datura. You touch the Noumenal. You people, you stay. You harbinger you become sand.”

  Lead wanted to understand, but her words were alien and his mind was bruised by the sun. He brought the water bowl to his lips and finished it in a single swallow. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

  “I’m here on behalf of our Lord and Savior,” he said.

  The old woman smiled. A villager handed her a steaming bowl of stew. She offered it to Lead, who traded it for his empty water bowl.

  “Jimson Datura,” she said.

  Lead’s stomach clenched at the smell of boiled vegetables.

  “I and the Lord thank you,” Lead said gratefully.

  The villagers hummed in unison with crickets and cicadas and all the other creatures accustomed to night.

  Lead watched villagers dip bowls and cups into the cauldron. He smelled the stew and took a sip. It tasted like water, dirt, and potatoes. On the surface, white petals of some native flower floated. Lead took another sip and chewed the petals which were thick and flavorless. The villagers danced around the fire without a break in the hypnotic humming. A primal chant rose from the dancers.

  “Noumenal, Noumenal, Noumenal.”

  Lead watched and ate.

  Lead woke with sweat pouring down his face. It was deep into the night. The stars had shifted long on their sphere and those which Lead had seen before were replaced by other gods and constellations. The fire still blazed, still cut the night, but the villagers were silent. They all stared at Lead; a sea of large misshapen eyes with pupils dilated to black pits and mouths that gave no sign of friend or foe. One of the villagers barked. Lead got to his feet.

  “You’re in violllaaa ub…” Lead’s tongue and lips were too heavy, his lungs felt tight. Words refused to take proper form in his mouth. One of the villagers smiled in the darkness, another barked. Teeth and eyes sparkled in the moonlight and all remained silent.

  “Brooooooough!”

  Gibberish spilled forth from Lead’s mouth. The villagers circled the fire, the old woman stepped forward.

  “You of Stormbringer,” she yelled with an accusing finger pointed at Lead. A low chant rose among the villagers.

  “Ohhhh, ohhhh, ohhhh, ohhhh…”

  Panic seized Lead’s heart. He reached into his shirt and gripped the Van Cleef.

  “You no good! You no righteous! You be sand!” the old woman shrieked into the night sky.

  The chanting villagers stepped away from the fire, into the darkness. Their eyes dazzled ruby red and fierce. The teeth in their grinning mouths grew with an unnatural speed. Front teeth grew past their bottom lips and chins, enormous and sharp like rats.

  “Homme Jesus Lord Gob!” Lead screamed as the creatures lunged at him. Their legs turned pencil thin in the shadows of night, like crickets legs, yet they held the weight of their bodies inexplicably. Their teeth grew past their chests and swung like bone swords with each stride.

  One of the beasts grabbed Lead’s shoulder with a clawed hand. Lead pulled the Van Cleef and fired into the creature’s chest. The beast clutched the wound and twisted into nothingness. It burst like a sack of sand. Lead swung his gun at the next nearest monster and pulled the trigger. The crack of pistol fire broke through the villagers’ chants a second time. The wounded beast put a hand to its neck and gurgled blood before falling to its knees.

  Lead was engulfed by the horde of monsters. He screamed and whipped his pistol across the face of another beast. A glint of light reflected on teeth and blood as they showered the desert sand. Lead smashed his gun against the skull of another beast and twisted through clutching hands and gnashing teeth. He broke free bolted into the darkness beyond the fire. Behind him demons giggled and crashed through the brush.

  Lead ran with the strength of fear. He desperately tried to remember the Church’s teachings on the Devil and demons, but his mind refused to focus on anything but blind panic. Lead glanced over his shoulder. His eyes adjusted to starlight. Formless demons pursued him, their shapes bobbing like drifts of smoke, their eyes glimmered red though they had no business illuminating the darkness.

  Lead jumped to the left, a demon crashed face first in rubble and dust where he’d been running. Another demon tackled Lead to the ground. The beast glared fiercely at Lead with its ruby eyes. It spit a long tooth into its hand and raised it to strike. Lead pointed his Van Cleef, but the pistol clicked in misfire. The demon drove the tooth into Lead’s shoulder. Lead swung the Van Cleef across the demon’s face. One of the ruby eyes winked out and the demon recommitted to the sand. Lead ran on.

  The night lived a life beyond its natural duration. Lead ran past the demons and past the brush and past the limitations of his weakened body and mind. The yells and laughter of the beasts drifted away, but Lead did not slow. His vision tightened to a small distant tunnel. He repeated prayers in his mind but could not force his tongue to speak them. He prayed for safety, he prayed for God to smite all the sin and devils of this land, and when the sun’s light returned to the earth Lead was still running, fueled by fear and panic. His lungs and legs burned deep.

  In the dawn’s light Lead arrived onto a broken street which marked the entrance to Havasu Parish. Regular men in parishioner clothing stood in front a general use building waiting for morning bread. They saw Lead filthy and wounded and dismissed him as another desert crazy, another rag man.

  Lead’s legs buckled with exhaustion. He breathed long and hot and looked for aid among the men of the bread line. If he could find words, he would demand sanctuary as a Preachers’ right. Tears streamed down his face. A gun cocked behind him, its barrel pressed against his head.

  “Greetings,” Ter
ence said.

  Lead looked up to see the old man holding a four barrel pistol looped with a rawhide cord, a Van Cleef.

  “Thought you might come here, you look worse for the travel,” the Old Preacher said.

  Lead looked down at his chest. He’d lost his shirt and sombrero and his bare torso was painted with a concoction of blood and filth; a testament to the evening’s violence. His pants were torn and ragged. A wood-handled kitchen knife stood with its blade buried deep into his left shoulder. He clutched his pistol, at some point the rawhide loop had broken. It dangled from the butt of his gun. Lead raised his hands and gun into the air.

  “I have no qualm with you, mark. Leave me be and continue your retreat,” he said.

  Terence kept his pistol pressed against Lead’s head.

  “I got the drop on you. Your life is but a decision between me and this pepper box.” Terence looked up to the men in the bread line. “You gentlemen mind to your business,” he hollered at them. The morning parishioners made no move to aid.

  “I’ve taken life, young man. I know the feeling and price.” The Old Preacher released the pistol’s hammer and slipped it back into his shirt.

  “You won’t die by my hands. Not today.”

  Lead looked up at the Old Preacher’s face, a leather visage of dirty creases and grey beard and yellow-blue eyes that spoke of humanity.

  “Why was I sent to apprehend you?”

  The Old Preacher’s eyes moistened. He rubbed them in irritation and looked back to the rising sun.

  “I was what you are; I preached the word of the Church. They sent you to me because of killing.”

  “What killing?”

  The Old Preacher looked into Lead’s eyes. “Killing doesn’t make me happy. Killing doesn’t make me good. I can’t kill anymore. That’s why you were sent to apprehend. I’m a rusty tool of new use or value. I need to be disposed of.”

  Lead tried to regain his feet but instead lost consciousness in the Arizona sun.

  IV. Eliphaz the Crusader comes to Havasu Parish

  Lead woke in a comfortable bed with sheets that smelled of lilacs and bleach. His room was painted a shade of green he remembered as glow-in-the-dark. The Old Preacher watched him from a stool in the corner. On a wooden plank table lay the parts of Lead’s gun, dismantled and oiled. The Old Preacher smiled.

  “What were you going to do with no ammunition?”

  Lead mumbled about demons in the night. The sliver of metal left by Century’s knife was cold in his chest. In contrast, the knife wound in his shoulder was hot and puckered.

  “Demons, boy, you should have given those Jimson eaters wide birth. That flower will make you blind or crazy as sure as it’ll make you high.”

  Lead tried to sit up but his head was too heavy. Pain shot up his arms and legs. The air in the room was musty and hard to breath. He shifted his gaze to the old Preacher. Terence had shaved his beard and combed back his white hair into a thick main. His eyes flashed ruby red and then turned back to yellow-blue. Lead whispered a prayer.

  “Preacher, you’re going to need a lot more than prayer, look at me. You’ve been poisoned. No demons. No smiting or plague. Your mind is not right and won’t be for awhile. You need to reckon this. You need to know that the wrong you’re seeing isn’t real. It’s the Jimson weed in your blood.”

  Lead lifted his hand to his face. His fingers traced rainbow afterimages of themselves. He shook his arm and watched the images overlap, turn, and flex like wings of a bird with no feathers. Sweat streamed down his face. He closed his fist and felt the numbness across his palm. The old Preacher’s words were far away. Lead closed his eyes. His dreams brought him back to the demons in the desert and running blind into the night.

  Terence examined Lead’s dismantled gun. The six-shooter was at least a hundred years old; a thirty-eight, maybe an old cop’s gun. Its barrel was scratched and pitted, the rubber grips were worn and showed metal patches. Terence reassembled the gun and slipped it into his knapsack. Somewhere outside, galloping hooves broke the silence of the day. Terence looked to the unconscious Preacher. He drew his Van Cleef and silently crept to the front door. The galloping stopped. Footsteps sounded on the front porch.

  “Speak.” Terence yelled through the door. He pressed his gun barrels against the door just below head’s height. It was an old habit of his.

  “It’s Philip, Philip Magenty, from the Dead. My news is urgent.”

  “I know you Philip, are you alone?”

  “Yes sir, I am.”

  Terence cracked the door and looked upon poor ugly and marked Philip. A cross-shaped scar ran across his face vertically from forehead to chin and horizontally under the eyes. The scar dug misshapen canals into his nose. Philip held up a metal triangle.

  “Be at peace sir, you know me.” Philip said.

  “I never forget any who I’ve set free from the Church.” Terence slipped his gun back into his shirt. He touched Philip’s triangle.

  “Whose idea was this symbol?”

  “Twas Century’s, I’ve brought you one.” Philip reached into his pocket and withdrew another cobalt triangle.

  “No. We shouldn’t be identified with symbols. Makes keeping secrets difficult.” Terence said.

  Terence admired the triangle for its beauty and simplicity. He reluctantly handed it back to Philip.

  “It didn’t help Century none. He’s dead,” Terence said.

  Philip recoiled, “How?

  “Preacher’s bullet, what’s your news?”

  “I was at the South Parish when three strangers rode in with goodly bred horses and armored vests. One wears his Cleef out of shirt. It looked sharp, probably just pre-Storms.”

  “Ah…shit.” Terence let the foul language slip out of his mouth for the first time in years. Philip winced as if struck.

  “Those are Crusaders. Leave now with discretion, leave town, I’ll not have you taken by their lot.” Terence said.

  Philip knew better than to question the panicked look in Terence’s eyes. He left immediately.

  Terence ran through the house, checking the windows. There was no time. He returned to Lead’s room. In the distance he heard the hooves of Phillip’s horse fleeing and the gallop of more horses coming from the south.

  “Shit,” he whispered.

  Havasu Parish, like most of the towns in the Zona, was full of hunger and desperation. Information and morality were made cheap by despair. Crusaders paid silver notes. Terence knew their sanctuary was defiled. He hoped Philip remained untouched. He looked again at Lead.

  Eliphaz the Crusader dismounted in front of the mark’s hideout. Terence’s horse stood tied to a pig iron fence. The creature whinnied and kept a suspicious eye on the Crusader. Eliphaz motioned for his men to circle the house. He thumbed the hammer of his Browning Hi-Power and looked to the weather-beaten front door. The house slanted as if the wind had tried to push it over and half succeeded. Eliphaz kicked the door open.

  Terence peered through tattered curtains at the Crusaders down the street. He had moved his horse to a decoy house after Philip’s warning. Terence hefted Lead over his shoulders. His back crackled in protest. He sprinted through the back door into an overgrown cactus garden. Behind the homes of Havasu Parish a natural network of flashflood washes stood as a safeguard against monsoon rivers; a holdover from the Broken Times. The floods were all but extinct with the new scalding heat, but the washes stood as a testament to what was. Terence jumped into the ditch, the soft sand gripped his boots up to the ankles, and his knees joined his back’s protests. Terence ducked and plodded through the wash.

  Eliphaz scanned each room with his Van Cleef pointed low, precise, and trained to hit sudden targets. By the second room he knew it was a ruse, an empty home, but he finished the sweep anyway. Better to be safe. Eliphaz exited the house and whistled loudly, the other Crusaders left their posts and returned to the front of the house.

  “He’s not here,” Eliphaz said. “But they are or w
ere here. Search each house up this block. Be ready for resistance.”

  Eliphaz turned and shot Terence’s horse in the face. Blood painted the house’s exterior wall. The horse’s aquiline eyes showed confusion and hurt. The horse shook its head as though it were tormented by an insect both powerful and strange. The beast stepped backwards and slumped lifelessly against the iron fence.

  The crack of a pistol shot echoed through the neighborhood. Terence quickened his pace. Running through loose sand with deadweight was a herculean task. His calves burned. The wash was intersected by an asphalt road. Terence broke into a run on the surer ground. Lead mumbled from his comatose state.

  Terence kept out of the Crusader’s line of sight by running crouched next to houses long abandoned by humanity. He cut through streets and yards layered with sand on their return to nature.

  Terence was past exhaustion by the time he laid Lead’s body down in a long abandoned mine shaft. A faded metal sign declared it BISON MINE. The shaded cavern provided cool relief. Terence took a drink from his canteen. He poured water into Lead’s mouth, over and past cracked lips. Terence leaned against the cavern wall and assessed their situation. He closed his eyes and rested. Fear warded off sleep.

  Eliphaz pushed through the bat-wing doors of the Xanadu Inn. He entered alone; his companions remained in the suburbs hunting for the ex-Preacher’s trail. Conversation stopped. The iron shod heels of Eliphaz’s boots clicked against hardwood floors. He strode to a table full of men eating from a platter of hard bread and cheeses. The men abandoned their feast at the sight of the Crusader, giving him free reign of the table. Eliphaz sat and motioned to his informant. The man was small and hunched, giving the impression that he was somehow part beetle. The right nostril of his nose was missing, a wound of syphilis or combat, one as likely as the other. Eliphaz set a roll of silver notes on the table.