Hell Come Sundown (6 page)

The next thing he was aware of was the smell of wood smoke and the sound of a woman's voice, chanting in a language he recognized as belonging to the Comanche. It took him a moment to realize he did not need to open his eyes because they were already open, staring at what looked to be the backside of a horse blanket. He reached up and pulled it away, and found himself gazing up at the night sky.

As he sat up, he saw the source of both the smoke and chanting. An Indian woman dressed in buckskin riding trousers hunkered before a small campfire, her back to him. Her hair was long and hung down her back like the mane of a wild pony. Upon hearing him move, she turned her head to look at him, and he could see she was naked from the waist up, save for a beaded pectoral and the paint on her face.

“Who are you?” he rasped, his voice drier than ginned cotton. When the woman did not respond, he asked the question haltingly in her own language.

“I will speak in your own tongue,” she replied. “Your Comanche hurts my ears. I am called Pretty Woman.”

“How long have I been asleep?”

“You have been dead three days.”

“You mean unconscious.”

She gave him a look that would wither an apple on the branch. “I know dead when I see it.”

“How can I be dead if I am talking to you?”

“How can a rattlesnake bite after it is no longer alive?”

Yoakum blinked. “I had a dream where someone said that to me. But how—?”

Pretty Woman shrugged her shoulders and went back to poking at the fire with a stick. “Dreams tell us many things. My dream told me where to find you, and to protect you from the sun.”

“I don't understand.”

“I don't, either. For now it is enough that I saw you in my dream and found you before you burned with the rising sun.”

“And you sat with me this whole time? Three days?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I am a shaman. As was my grandfather and his mother before him. My medicine is strong, but I am still young. I am—unseasoned,” she spoke in a way that told Yoakum she was quoting someone else's words. “So I was sent out into the wilderness to seek a vision, and make its medicine my own.

“For four days and four nights I wandered without food or drink, or sleep. Then, on the fifth night, I looked up and saw the moon weeping blood. The bloody teardrops fell upon the land, and from them sprang forth a man with eyes of fire and the heart of a devil. I saw the devil-man go forth and bring pestilence and death to the Whites and the Mexicans, and to my people as well. I saw towns and villages laid to waste, filled with the dead who are not dead. I saw the fire that burned in the devil-man's eyes glowing in the eyes of all those he tainted—including my own kin.

“The vision frightened me beyond any fear I have ever known. I looked back to the moon for guidance, but it was no longer there. In its place was a man whose face was whiter than a cloud, and whose eyes blazed red, but not with the same fire that burns within the devil-man. That face was yours.”

“The devil-man you saw in your vision—he is real. His name is Sangre.” He put his hand to his throat, a baffled look on his face. “But if I am, indeed, dead—how is it I still have my wits about me? I've seen what happens to those he bites. They're little more than animals, driven by the need for blood.”

“The charm you wear protects you,” Pretty Woman said, pointing at the medallion still looped about his neck. “I do not know the medicine that worked it, but it is very old and very strong.”

He looked down at the pendant hanging against his chest, taking the stone in the palm of his hand. His flesh tingled and burned for a few seconds, as if reacting to the silver, before the pain was replaced by a familiar numbness. Where the stone had previously appeared red laced with skeins of black, now it resembled a glass filled with red and black ink that swirled together, yet never mixed.

“All I know about this necklace is that Sangre had it on him when he was found, and he didn't come back to life until it was removed. And I know that he, and the others like him, are scared of it.”

“Ah!” Pretty Woman said, nodding her head as if it all suddenly made sense. “It is a containment charm. Its medicine holds and binds evil spirits that dwell within the flesh of the walking dead. It has placed the demon inside you under a spell, so it can not control your flesh.”

“What would happen if I took it off?”

“The evil spirits would be free to do as they like.”

“I have to go back to the place where this all began. It's my job to ride the range and deal with those situations the local law can't handle. I've got to go back and see to it that Sangre doesn't do to the rest of Texas what he did to Golgotha. That son of a bitch started shit on my watch, in my territory—I'll be damned if I ain't the one who's gonna stop it.”

“Do you think that's wise? You don't even know if you have the power to stop this Sangre.”

“I've always done my duty by going where I was needed, no matter what the circumstances, whether it was riding down rustlers, hunting banditos or fighting redskins—no offense, ma'am. I don't see why I should stop now.”

“I know the place of which you speak. It is a half-day's ride from here—if we had horses. Besides, you can not travel during the daylight hours.”

“Who said anything about
we?
I'm the one who has to go, not you. Besides, it will be far more dangerous after dark for you than it will be for me.”

“I have ways of protecting myself against such creatures,” Pretty Woman replied. “Besides, this is part of my quest. I not only saw you in my vision, but the one you call Sangre as well. That means our destinies are intertwined.”

He dropped his shoulders in resignation. He could tell there was no talking her out of it. And, truth to tell, part of him did not want to strike out alone. They walked for the rest of that night, before holing up in an outcropping of rock that provided enough shade to wait out the daylight. Upon the setting of the sun, they resumed their march. It was close to midnight by the time they reached the outskirts of the town.

Sam frowned and paused, tilting his head. “He's gone,” he said flatly.

“How do you know?”

“I'm not sure. It's like the hairs going up on the back of your neck when you know you're close to something dangerous.

You just feel it—or, in this case, I
don't
feel him.”

It had been just over three days since Yoakum had last been in Golgotha, but the town was almost unrecognizable. Save for the church and the general store, every building had been burned to the ground. Among the still-smoldering timbers were a number of bodies covered in soot and ash, their limbs contorted and scorched.

“What happened here?” Pretty Woman asked in a hushed voice as they surveyed the carnage.

“I'm not sure,” Yoakum replied. He scanned what was left of the town, trying to apply his lawman's knowledge to an outlaw beyond human experience. “Lord knows I've seen more than my fair share of massacres, but nothing like this! Whatever happened, it looks as if they did this to themselves. It's as if they were winnowing themselves out.

“And if Sangre isn't here—where is he? I know for a fact that there wasn't a living pack animal for twenty miles in any direction. If he did leave on foot, how could he do so without the risk of exposing himself to sunlight?”

He fell silent as his gaze fell on the town cemetery, located behind the church. Cursing under his breath, he motioned for Pretty Woman to follow him. As they drew closer, Sam could see that a number of the graves had been desecrated, the bodies pulled from their final resting places and tossed about like so many macabre dolls.

“There are thirteen open graves and thirteen missing caskets,” the Ranger said. “That means, of the forty-plus people that lived in Golgotha, only twelve are left, plus Sangre. Judging by these tracks, they all headed out on foot, taking their coffins with them. That way they can travel by night and are guaranteed a place to hide from the sun during the day. These drag marks show them heading in every direction of the compass. And there's no way for me to know which track belongs to Sangre.

“Merciful God, it's like when a ship runs aground and all the rats in the hold swarm out before anyone can discover the crew is dead of the plague. How can I possibly stop this from spreading across the country? I'm just one man.”

As he stared out into the vast emptiness of the Texas wilderness, a sense of hopelessness rose within him. During his life he had never known such feelings, even after his father died. He had been faced with ruthless enemies and impossible odds before, but back then he had been part of a larger organization. If he could not handle a situation on his own, he knew there were other Rangers he could call on to back him up. But that was all gone now, sucked into the same void that had claimed his life.

There was a touch on his shoulder as light as a butterfly's. He turned to find Pretty Woman standing beside him. As she brushed back the hair from her face, he realized for the first time how true her name was.

“You are wrong about two things, Sam. You are no longer a man. And you are not alone.”

Chapter Five

Texas, 1869, once more:

The sun was down. Yoakum knew this because he was able to move once more. Over the years, he had developed a means of surviving as a creature of the night in a land of relentless sunshine. Every morning, just before the dawn, he would crawl into his custom-made shroud of canvas, secured on the inside by leather laces set in metal gussets. Then Pretty Woman would sling the shroud—with him inside—over the back of his horse, so that they could continue to travel. Upon growing tired, she would find an appropriate spot to make camp. Once dusk had settled, he would awake and once more resume his semblance of life.

One of the first things Yoakum had learned upon becoming a dead'un was that despite his superhuman strength and relative immunity to physical harm, it was difficult for a dead'un to survive in the world of the living without the help of humans. He knew for a fact that he would never have survived to see his first night as a dead'un, much less his first year, if not for Pretty Woman's intervention. After all, it was she who guarded his shroud while he slept. She was the one who handled buying feed for their horses, dealing with tradesmen and other such mundane business situations that required someone able to travel about in the daylight.

Indeed, three of the original twelve Golgotha dead'uns had perished within their first week. The first had made the mistake of attempting to ford a river, unaware that running water renders dead'uns immobile. The current quickly separated the dead'un from the coffin he was carrying, sending both spinning downriver, where the casket was dashed to bits on the rocks while the creature was snared by the branches of a partially submerged tree. The dead'un remained trapped, helpless to free himself, until the sun rose. Sam and Pretty Woman found what was left of him the next evening, still entangled in the deadfall's embrace.

The second dead'un had managed to find a small cave in the foothills, where he hid in his coffin during the day. However, while he was asleep, a pack of coyotes that usually made the cave their home dragged his carcass out of the casket and devoured it. When Hell arrived, he found a pup busily gnawing away at the creature's skull as if it were a ball.

The third dead'un had more sense when it came to finding a place to hide her casket, choosing the hayloft of an old barn. However, her fatal mistake was that she lost track of time while out hunting. As the sun began to rise, her long, unbound hair caught fire. As she fled back to the safety of her coffin, her hair trailing behind her like a blazing bridal veil, she ignited the surrounding bales of hay, burning the entire structure to the ground, herself along with it.

The rest of the dead'uns spawned from the Golgotha massacre, however, proved far better at survival than those three. Over the last few years, with Pretty Woman's help, of course, he had succeeded in tracking down and exterminating the remaining nine, as well as their own unholy spawn.

While Yoakum had put his skills as a tracker to good use in hunting each of them down, what he relied on the most was a kind of sixth sense he acquired after being bitten. Whenever there was anything supernatural within a certain radius, he could feel it drawing him forward, like a magnet attracts a piece of iron. The closer he was to something of the supernatural world, the more intense the pull became. In the years he had spent hunting monsters, it had yet to let him down. And now he was feeling the persistent tug of the paranormal yet again, like an angler with a fish gently nibbling on his line.

“There's something out there,” he said. “I can feel it.”

Pretty grunted and tossed what was left of the coffee onto the campfire. “Can you tell what it is?”

“Not yet,” he replied with a shake of his head. “Might be a ghost. Could be something more tangible. Hard to tell. I need to get closer before I can draw a bead on it.”

“What direction?”

“Thataway,” he said, pointing west.

The McKinney's ranch and the gently rolling rangelands of the Lower Rio Grande Valley had long since given way to the less forgiving landscape of Western Texas. Upon crossing the Pecos River, the flatlands were replaced by the mountains that marked the boundary between the Great Plains and the Cordillera. They were now in the high desert, where the lowlands and highlands were equally bare of trees, and where only the highest mountain peaks supported stunted forest growth.

They had been following the pull for the better part of a week when they finally made the crest of a rise, and Hell found himself looking down at surprisingly familiar surroundings.

“I know this place. At least I used to, back during my Ranger days,” he said as he stared down at a large, two-story house surrounded by several smaller outbuildings. “It's called Tucker's Station. It's a trading post that doubles as a way station for the San Antonio-San Diego stage route. Fella name of Jimbo Tucker runs this place, along with his wife, Dottie. Decent folks, if memory serves.”