The Good, the Bad, and the Dead Read online

  The others ante'ed and picked up their cards. Jenkins kept talking. "Anyhow, the stakes in this game are body parts-fingers, toes, faces, what-have-you. They got a Harrowed doc there that'll stitch up whatever you need. I hear some folks walk away with everything replaced but their noggin."

  Grimme folded. Hellstromme took two cards, Raven one. Hoyle and Jenkins kept what they had.

  "This one feller had a terrible run of luck down there," said Jenkins. "Lost most everything he had, including his eyes, ears, teeth, and everything from the neck down. The doc took pity on him, and sewed his blind, deaf head onto the body of a pig. He don't have much of a social life now, but at least he's well-fed."

  "Until butchering day," said Raven. Zane swore the temperature dropped when he spoke.

  "I imagine the bacon produced would have a distinctive flavor," said Reverend Grimme. "Somewhat bitter, I would think."

  "Because of the addition of the human element?" asked Hoyle. He matched the last bet and raised twenty thousand.

  "Oh, no," said Reverend Grimme, taken aback. "I simply meant that because the unfortunate gentleman was already deceased, it would taint the meat. Human flesh is by its nature quite sweet-as long it's properly prepared."

  Zane almost dropped the deck.

  He knew who Reverend Grimme was, of course—the Tombstone Epitaph called him "the Saviour of Lost Angels". They were referring to the city of Lost Angels, the city Grimme had built and populated with survivors of the Great Quake. Some folks considered him a saint.

  "I find that smoking human meat before bleeding it greatly enhances its taste," said Grimme. He reached up to pick at his front teeth with one manicured fingernail. "A nice, slow-burning fire—preferably of hickory-works best. You have to be careful, though; too much smoke and your stock will asphyxiate quickly. You want them to last for four or five hours in order to get as much smoke as possible absorbed through their lungs and into their bloodstream."

  "Interesting," Hellstromme said. "Hard to quantify scientifically, of course. Though I suppose you could take blood samples periodically and check for metabolic changes."

  "Please, Dr. Hellstromme," said Grimme. "Culinary accomplishment is not a science; it is an art."

  Zane swallowed.

  Raven won the hand, and collected his winnings silently. Zane glanced over at Hoyle; so far, he hadn't said much, and he had yet to win a single pot.

  As the next hand started, Hellstromme spoke. "I'll admit to ignorance of certain social niceties; my work is far too important for me to concern myself with such trivial mundanities as food preparation. However, art and science are not necessarily mutually exclusive; some fields combine them both."

  "Prospectin'," said Jenkins.

  "Public speaking," added Grimme.

  "Torture," said Raven.

  "Indeed," said Hellstromme. "Art requires technique. Technique is a combination of skill and knowledge. Science gives us the tools to not only gain knowledge, but refine our skills. Painting, sculpture, literature; none would exist without artificial pigments, metal tools, the printing press. All products of science."

  "So you believe art to be a child of science?" asked Hoyle, squinting at his cards.

  "Undoubtedly. As a matter of fact, I conducted an experiment designed, to prove just such a hypothesis ...

  "I began with a human subject, an artist who did portraits of local dignitaries in Salt Lake City. If art is truly a product of science, then science is primary and art secondary; therefore, it should be possible to remove all artistic tendencies while leaving the underlying scientific foundation intact."

  Hellstromme tossed his ante into the pot. There was an irregular, charred circle there now, left by the hot chips. Zane could smell scorched fabric.

  "I used simple stimulus/response at first, exposing the subject to various paintings, statues and so on, while administering potent electric shocks to his hands, tongue and genitalia. The subject demonstrated a learned response in a surprisingly short period of time, but I was after more than a mere aversion to artistic stimulii; I intended to remove his artistic sensibilities entirely.

  "I increased the treatment to the point of sensory overstimulation. Classical music was played loudly in the next room, to prevent the subject from sleeping. When the subject had gone without sustenance or sleep for a period of forty-eight hours, I introduced a new factor; food, mixed with various paints. The subject was forced to consume these, even though he knew such pigments to be poisonous. Vomiting was then induced."

  Hellstromme's voice was dry, methodical. He could have been discussing what he had for dinner.

  "Fifty paintbrushes, of the type favored by the subject, were sharpened on one end and driven into the subject's arms and legs. These remained for the duration of the experiment."

  Zane glanced at the others. Only Hoyle seemed to be listening with anything more than mild interest on his face; Zane saw him wince at mention of the impaling.

  "The subject's own paintings were displayed, and he was told, at gunpoint, to destroy them. He did so."

  A bead of sweat rolled down Zane's face and into his eye. He blinked it away.

  "The last phase was the most important. A young child was brought into the same room as the subject. He was compelled to watch as the child was killed in front of him and the resulting blood collected. The subject was then given a paintbrush, a blank canvas and the collected blood-and told to paint what he had just seen."

  Hellstromme stopped, considering his cards. Zane's mouth had gone too dry to swallow "What did he paint?" asked Grimme. He sounded amused.

  "Stick figures. A crude but accurate representation of the child's murder. At this point I considered the experiment a success; the subject retained his ability to understand and execute commands, while demonstrating a complete loss of artistic ability."

  The hand was over. Zane tried to gather the pile of cards together, and wound up spilling half of them onto the floor. He scrambled to pick them up, stuttering apologies at the same time.

  He still didn't fully understand what he'd gotten himself involved with-but he was starting to. All the souls west of the Mississippi, Grimme had said. Zane thought about the Reverend's taste in smoked meat and shuddered.

  When he straightened up, though, all worry had vanished from his expression. He'd played poker for too many years to let his feelings show on his bare face-but he'd come to a decision.

  He couldn't let Hellstromme, Grimme or Raven win. Even Coot Jenkins seemed to have an unhealthy interest in the walking dead; Zane couldn't imagine what the old man would do with that many souls, but he didn't figure it would be civilized.

  That left Hoyle-who, so far, hadn't won a hand. He seemed the most decent of the lot, but his pile of chips was almost gone.

  Well, that was about to change ...

  Zebediah Zane was a fair huckster and a good card player— but he was an excellent cheat. He hadn't been caught this last time, either; those cowboys had started a gunfight on sheer suspicion. It was completely incidental that they'd been right.

  He'd never cheated to help anyone but himself, before ... but he was willing to try, if it meant keeping all those souls out of the hands of the monsters sitting around the table. Zane was a few miles down the trail from what could be called honest, but he wasn't downright evil—and these snakes were. He'd be damned if he'd help them.

  Or worse.

  The next hand went considerably better for Mr. Hoyle; he came out of it ahead for the first time.

  "Looks like your luck is finally changin'," said Coot Jenkins.

  "Perhaps," said Hoyle coolly.

  Zane was careful; the last thing he wanted was to be caught. He'd cheated gunfighters, cowpunchers, riverboat gamblers and bounty hunters-he'd even cheated death on a few memorable occasions. But he'd never cheated with this much at stake before-and not with these kinds of players.

  He let Hoyle lose more hands than he won-but the pots he did win were bigger than the ones he lost. Bef
ore too long, the pile in front of Hoyle was bigger than the rest of them put together. The heat coming off the chips made the air in front of Hoyle's face shimmer like a desert mirage.

  The game had gotten quieter and quieter as Hoyle's winnings grew. There were no suspicious looks though, no hostile glances in Zane's direction. Just the quiet murmur of raise and call, of ante up and I'll see that and too rich for me.

  When he was finally exposed, no one was more surprised than Zane himself.

  "I believe, sir, that you are being less than honest." The speaker was Edmond Hoyle himself.

  "What?" said Zane. His smile froze on his face.

  Hoyle turned over his cards: three aces and two kings. "Do not attempt to play the innocent. I have been playing cards for longer than you have been alive, and I know when someone is dealing from the bottom of the deck."

  Zane couldn't believe his ears. A cold wind blew through the room, and all the lanterns guttered and died. Suddenly, the only light in the room seemed to be coming from the poker chips; they flickered with a swirling, unearthly glow "So. Our trust has been misplaced," said Hellstromme. He stared at Zane with flat, expressionless eyes.

  "Unforgivable," said Reverend Grimme. The light threw eerie shadows across his gaunt face.

  Zane tried to deny it, but terror had grabbed him by the throat; he couldn't make a sound.

  "He must pay," whispered Raven.

  "Nuthin' worse than a cheat," said Jenkins. He had a kind of unholy glee in his voice. "A feller that'll put a knife in yer back while he's shakin' yer hand-why, they deserve to suffer, they surely do."

  "I agree," said Hoyle. "And who better than we to decide his fate?"

  Zane found his voice, or something that passed for it. "Mr. Hoyle, please-I was trying to help you-"

  "Help me?" said Hoyle. "My boy, you sully the entire concept to which I have dedicated my existence: the interweaving of luck and skill, of fate and determination. Quite simply, you play the game-and you take your chances."

  "I got an idea," said Jenkins. "Saw this done once to a claim jumper down in Colorado. They stripped him naked, strapped a crate of sweaty dynamite to his back-the kind that'll go off if you look at it too hard-and tied a twenty-foot rope around his neck. They tied the other end around the neck of a hungry cougar and let both of 'em go in a cactus patch."

  "Interesting, but wasteful," said Hellstromme. "I believe we should take this opportunity to add to the sum of scientific knowledge. I could use a subject for an experiment I've been considering—it involves the capacity of the human body to endure pain without going mad."

  Zane felt like a giant snake was wrapped around his chest and starting to squeeze. He looked around wildly, but he could hear things slithering around in the darkness that surrounded them; he knew he wouldn't last a second if he bolted. Still, it might be better to die that way...

  "May I have him when you're done?" asked Grimme. "Alive, if possible. I prefer my meat cooked, but there's nothing like fresh brains served out of a warm skull..."

  "Give him to me," said Raven. The others all turned to look at him, and Zane thought his heart would stop there and then.

  Raven smiled. He locked eyes with Zane, and the huckster saw something in them that frightened him more than anything the others had said.

  "No," whispered Zane.

  Then, louder: "No. I may be a cheat-but I know what's fair."

  They were all looking at him, silently. Expectantly.

  "Mr. Hoyle is the one who caught me. He's the one I was helping. If anyone should decide my fate-it's him."

  He knew, somehow, that he'd made the right choice—but if he was expecting mercy, he didn't get it.

  "Very well," said Hoyle. "I sentence you to be buried alive. For company, you will have others of your ilk: scorpions, rattlesnakes, and hungry worms. Good day, sir-and good riddance."

  Everything went black.

  ***

  Things stayed black, too-but he could tell he wasn't standing in a saloon any more.

  He was lying down in the dark. He tried to sit up-and rapped his head against something hard.

  Something rattled, down by his feet. Something else scuttled over his face-then jabbed into his eye like a white-hot needle.

  Well. Looked like Hoyle had been a sight more honest than Zane...

  He screamed himself hoarse. That disturbed the rattlers as well as the scorpions, and venom flooded through his body from dozens of bites and stings. He was glad; at least he'd die quick...

  But he didn't.

  Strangely enough, the pain from the poison didn't feel as bad as he thought it would; more like a kind of urgency, like he had to use the toilet. It faded, eventually, and he realized he could smell something other than the pine of his coffin and the wet earth pressing down on it: the sweet smell of decay.

  It took him a while to figure it out, but he had plenty of time; he thought about it as he slowly, patiently, clawed at the cheap wood of the coffin lid.

  He'd never gotten a chance to throw that final hex. He'd been shot and killed-he could even find the bullet-hole in his chest with a finger. He didn't know much about those that came back from the dead, but he'd heard they all had a terrible nightmare before they rose from the grave. A nightmare where their worst fears came true.

  Like being caught cheating by the man you admired most.

  Guess the snakes and scorpions were a parting gift from the cowboys, thought Zane. Not that I didn't deserve it.

  Well, he thought as he worked at getting back to daylight, he may not have been the real Edmond Hoyle-but he was right about one thing.

  You play the game-and you take your chances.

  THE SNIPE HUNT

  By Clay and Susan Griffith '

  "E God, that is one stupid looking hat!"

  "It's a bowler," Wallace Budge clarified. He made a self-conscious adjustment atop his head, but smiled pleasantly nonetheless. Fine boned hands brushed at some unseen dust on his shoulder before dropping back to the table to cradle his brandy.

  "Well, it's still stupid." Zeke Craven threw back the last of his tepid beer and then motioned to the bartender that he needed a refill. His tall, lanky frame overflowed the small, wooden chair. Tipping his own weather-worn Stetson back off his forehead, he studied Budge across the shabby poker table. The shorter man could not have been more out of place within the Dead Eye Saloon than a zombie still lying cold and rotting in the ground.

  Budge was clothed in a brown satin hunting jacket; his pants stuffed into a pair of boots of soft supple leather that were finer than any plainsman wore. The tips of his long, reddish-brown mustache curled up slightly. He had showed up less than a week ago with more baggage than a woman and proceeded to spin yarns that grew as elaborate as some old bitty's gossip. The Easterner's cocky, smug attitude irritated Zeke.

  "If you're gonna spend time out here, you need to git yourself a real one." Zeke reached over and slapped another cowboy sitting beside him intently shuffling a deck of cards. "Right, Earl?"

  "Damn straight," Earl Whiffles muttered, his concentration centered on making his gnarled hands obey his commands as he tried for the hundredth time to make the ace of spades pop up from the deck. Instead it usually fell to the table and occasionally the floor.

  Budge tried a smile and leaned a little closer to his new compatriots. "This hat is my lucky hat. There isn't a beast that walks this earth that can stand up to this hat. And my .450 double express, of course. Elephant, lion, bear. You name it, gentlemen. I've killed it."

  Zeke chuckled along with the other fellows around the table. He caught a glimpse of the bartender on the other side of the saloon and tried again to wave him down. Zeke's humor faded as the oblivious bartender tended someone else.

  "They probably died of laughter," Zeke growled aside.

  Howling burst out around the table. Lucas Hawkins pounded the table making glasses shudder and gasped out, "Good one, Zeke."

  Budge kept the amiable expression upon his fa
ce. These men were just funning with him after all. Friends did that with one another and although he hadn't been in town but a while, he considered these men his friends. Besides, how could they know he was only telling them the truth. His skill with a weapon was renowned Back East as well as overseas. But here in this new frontier he still had to build his reputation as a Big Game Hunter.

  He regarded the men surrounding him. "I assure you the beasts were not laughing when my .450 soft nose shell hit them between the eyes."

  Zeke rolled his eyes in disbelief. "So you're tellin' me that you shot a ... what was it again? An elephant?"

  "A charging elephant," Budge added calmly. "At something under twenty paces." He took a deliberate sip of his drink.

  Zeke scowled deeper. From what he remembered through the previous night's whiskey-soaked delirium, the fancy Easterner had said it had been 100 paces. God, this man was spinning enough yarn to make new coats for everyone in the saloon. Did the little feller think they were stupid or something?

  Oblivious, Wallace Budge grinned and puffed with pride. "It was a remarkable shot. If I had missed, the bull elephant would have trampled me in seconds. A truly horrible way to die. However, I sincerely hope to further test my mettle on the dangerous game here in the West."

  Zeke ignored Budge, concentrating instead on shouting to the bartender above the din in the saloon. Still his effort was in vain as the proprietor was distracted elsewhere. "I swear, by God, that man is ignoring me!" Zeke shouted. If he didn't get more alcohol soon, trouble would be arriving in the shape of his .45.

  Budge glanced in the direction of Zeke's ire. The bartender, carting an armload of empty glasses back to the bar, half turned in their direction. Budge's hand went up with a polite, "Excuse me! Barkeep!"