KID NOBODY in: HEAD FER THE HILLS! - Pt. IV

Pepper had fought and scrambled her way up the platform and made short work of the knot of rope around Nobody’s wrists. Nobody got his own neck out of the noose.

“Come on,” she said, “we can jump off the back, here!”

“Wait,” he said, and he took in his arms, about to kiss her, “where’s my money?”

“I already spent it,” she said, partially stunned by the question.

He shoved her over the edge of the gallows and into the crowd with all his might. Before he turned and jumped off the back side he snatched a glimpse of her being swallowed up by scampering feet and biting jaws.

He jumped off and landed with a thud. A couple seconds after impact his feet stung. He took a moment to walk it off. The dead Indians regarded him through the support beams of the gallows, but paid little interest. He got the feeling he could have waltzed on through and been untouched, but the Kid wasn’t brave enough in years to find out.

He ran for the hills with no boots, no gun, no money and no horse.

***

Exhausted, he saw a light in one of the caves in the hills and made his way over to it. It was going on nighttime, the indigo sky had nearly sucked all the sun’s deep red blood from the clouds. It had been a long while since he’d last heard the screams of Creighton in his ears, behind him, and even longer since he’d looked back.

Looking back now, from the hill, he saw no movement, no signs of life or struggle. Just an untrustworthy kind of calm.

Even before he was eyelevel with the cave, he heard the pops and cracks of a fire. Sparks floated up and hugged the ceiling of the cave and escape into the night sky as gray smoke against the navy blanket, obscuring stars.

The black outline of a man sat facing the entrance. Kid Nobody’s eyes took a second or two to adjust to the glow of the fire. When they did, he saw a white man eating a tin of beans. He had expected to find an Indian. Off to the side was a mostly air-filled sack, loose and folded atop a stack of damp firewood.

“You from Creighton,” Kid Nobody asked, warily.

“Nope,” the man said, simply, “beans?” and the man offered up his tin.

Kid Nobody grabbed the tin silently, but gratefully, and spooned up a couple mouthfuls in quick succession, which had given the man just enough time to reach around and grab his gun.

“Those are some mighty fine duds you’re sporting there, partner,” the man with beans and the gun said, “I’ve been needing me a brand new wardrobe.”

***

Somehow, and with great effort, the Kid had made it back to Farthing, around San Alberto, over Ha’Penny Hills, and through Merryweather and Golding with no boots, no gun, no money, no horse and no clothes and made it in one piece. Refurbished after a quick stop at his apartment, he met the old wizard outside the train station. When Kid Nobody got there, the old wizard was begging for change and scraps of food, or a quick hit from a flask.

“You did good,” the old wizard said.

“Yup,” Kid Nobody said, not wanting to mention the remaining survivor from the cave. He had failed in all aspects of his job, but somehow, through the wrath of God himself, the town had been all cleaned up. Excepting the man in the cave, the sole survivor. Kid Nobody had a hard time deciding if that was an important detail or not. “I sure did take care of that town for you! Cleaned up that mess real good.”

“So I see,” the old wizard said, “there wasn’t one person left to believe in the zombies.”

“Zombies?” Kid Nobody had never encountered the word before.

“The dead things that eat people,” the old wizard answered.

“Oh,” the Kid said, “yup. I certainly took care of that.”

And Kid Nobody finally knew what his job was.

***

(roll credits)

KID NOBODY in: HEAD FER THE HILLS! - Pt. III

Kid Nobody stood, warily on the gallows, noose around his neck, hands tied behind his back, peering down at the crowd of laughing faces. The man wearing his boots, held them up, lifting his right leg by his right calf, laughing. They were all elbowing and poking each other, having a real good time. The round old man, galloped awkwardly around a corner on Leroy and smiled a broad smile, staring at the Kid. Laughing.

The only face he saw that wasn’t laughing, was the woman who took his money, and she was sneering.

“Do you, Kid Nobody,” the Sheriff stated grandly, from the gallows, “have any last statements or requests you’d like to make to the people of Creighton, before we, the people of the town, execute your sentence for the crime of Stealing the Boots Off a Dead Man? Maybe make an apology?”

Kid Nobody could taste his bile rise, his testicles ascended and shrivelled. He was too scared to be outraged. He did have one request:

“The horse,” he said, through tight vocal chords, “let him go.”

The people of the town began laughing before he could finish.

“Let him run free.”

When everybody gathered had stopped laughing, the Sheriff said, haughtily, “Boy, we’re a hungry town, cut off from our neighbors by the hills. Ain’t a horse that’s left Creighton in the past several months.”

“Don’t I at least get a trial,” Kid Nobody asked desperately.

“No trial,” the Sheriff said, mock surprised, “ain’t no need for a trial. I saw you do it.” He patted his deputy on the chest behind him, “we both saw you do it, didn’t we?”

“Yup,” the deputy said.

“Alright,” the Sheriff said, ushering the deputy down the platform, “let’s get this thing over with. Let's get a fire going, put him on the rotisserie once the hanging's finished.”

The Sheriff ambled, rocking back and forth, down the steps.

From the platform, Kid Nobody saw the shape of a man, stumbling toward the crowd.

“Look,” he cried, “he ain’t dead!”

“You stupid son of a bitch,” the Sheriff said, “I ain’t going to fall for that.”

The Sheriff grabbed the release for the trap door that would kill Kid Nobody, when someone from the back of the crowd shouted, “he’s right.”

The Sheriff made his way through the crowd, bewildered.

“It’s him,” someone else said.

The Sheriff walked right up to the man who’s boots Kid Nobody tried to steal and said, “now how in tarnation--”

And the man bit off the sheriff’s nose. No one moved to try and help him, not even the deputy.

The skinny ranting man, who Kid Nobody had only just realized was not among the crowd, ran top speed around the corner, shouting, “It’s them! They’re here! The Indians!”

The crowd, already shocked, turned to each other, confused.

“The Indians?”

“What, new Indians?”

“I thought we already killed them all.”

The vomiting man continued to tear giant chunks of flesh from the sheriff as he screamed, a high pitched pulse, one short yelp after another, followed by a long sustained one.

***

The vomiting man was just a warm-up, the Indians were in the thick of the crowd, gouging, biting, tearing. They had everybody from the town all gathered up into one neat little crowd, like cattle in a pen. And they were quite dead, too, the Indians. Some of them were missing ears, noses and whole faces. Their sickly bodies had been emaciated and bored through by itchy little maggots and worms. Ribs jutted out of most of their chests, and Kid Nobody was up there on the platform, watching it all go down. He was too frightened to feel a sense of justice, though. His hands were tied behind his back and the noose was still tight around his neck, after all.

KID NOBODY in: HEAD FER THE HILLS! - Pt. II

The woman had a room upstairs from the saloon. Her name was Pepper.

“How come they call you Pepper when your hair’s red,” he asked her.

“Well,” she said, “it’s a better name than Paprika.”

He didn’t understand what she meant and asked, “well, what about Cinnamon? Cinnamon’s a nice name.”

She laughed, one big burst of laughter, like she was getting her day’s supply out in one frantic yelp.

“Now,” she said, leaning back on both elbows on the bed, “put your money on the table.”

“Oh,” he said, pulling out his wad of cash and taking out a couple a crisp ones, “I didn’t think that, uh, you was, you know…”

“What do you think this is Mister,” she asked, “a free ride?”

She carefully removed her gun from her garter belt and said, “uh uh, sweetheart. All of it.”

He hesitated. She sat up and aimed between his eyes, her hand was steady, like a fresh ham in a display case. He did as she asked.

“Now get out of my sight,” she said, “before I change my mind about how cute I think your are.”

“Wait, but I thought we were gonna … well, you know…”

“I’m a business woman.”

“Well, I’ll just be grabbing my money and leaving, then.”

“Now you just forget about that money, Mister,” she said, walking over, slowly to grab the money, never once dropping the gun off target, “you know I’m a straight shot and I don‘t hesitate.”

He left the saloon altogether, without another moment’s hesitation, without his money.

He was still in decent shape though, he had some cash left down in his boots. With luck, the vomiting man’s body would still be in the alley and he could get his gun back.

He checked all around and saw the streets were mostly deserted, anyway nobody took much notice of him and he ducked into the alley. The body was still there. It wasn’t laid out neatly, it was hunched over, face in the dirt, one leg sticking out. Both guns were missing.

That’s when a man stepped out from behind the building and said, “well, look what I found.” He was holding the gun, Kid Nobody’s gun. “Say, those are some nice boots.”

***

Kid Nobody wandered out of the alley, bootless, gunless and moneyless. His head reeled, senses a jumble, his ears buzzed and his vision quaked.

Across the street a round man with glasses waved at him, uncertainly. He hurried over avoiding the mud puddles in the street, luckily there was no horse shit to step in.

“What happened to you, partner,” the kindly old man asked, “seems a fellow like you ought to have a comfortable pair of boots on his feet.”

“They took ‘em,” Kid Nobody answered, through clenched teeth, “took my money, too.” He avoided mentioning the gun. He didn’t want to scare the man.

“Boy, sure are a lot of cheats and crooks in this town. Here, let me fix you up. I run this here store,” the man pointed back grandly at the store with his thumb, “we’ll get some boots on your feet, real quick. Just step inside.”

Kid Nobody walked inside the store. Well stocked, everything a town could need. It was also empty, if he could get the man into a dark corner, he could cold-cock him and knock him flat on his back. Get enough provisions to make it out of town dead even, with no losses. Things were going to turn around real quick.

The storeowner hadn’t followed him in. Where the old coot, Kid Nobody thought and went to check outside. The door closed behind him with a thud.

The blood drained from his face. Across the street, his horse was gone, the old man nowhere in sight. What the hell kind of town was this? They got him again, but that was it. That was the last time. The town itself must be the mess the old wizard had sent him to clean up. Creighton turned out to be, by far, the dirtiest, cheatenest town he ever ran across.

At least, he wouldn’t have to wallop the old man. Well, not yet leastways, not until he found him. He went to get back into the store to grab some boots, steal what he could carry, and grab the money from the register.

He grabbed the handle but the door was locked.

***

Kid Nobody jogged across the street, back toward the alley where the body lay. It wasn’t going to be a total loss, the Kid was resourceful, he wasn’t above pulling the boots of a dead man, if he needed a pair that was. He was still dead broke, without a gun and now without a horse. He hadn’t seen a horse in town, either. He’d have to search the outlying ranches once he made it back over the hills on foot. But at least, he’d have some boots on his feet.
He knelt beside the dead vomiting man in the alley and checked the boots. Same size. He thought that maybe his luck was turning around. Until he heard a voice,

“Well look what he have here, an outta towner stealing the boots off one of our dead citizens.”

Kid Nobody turned around to see two large men with guns trained on him. It was the sheriff and deputy.

“That’s a hangable offense.”

KID NOBODY in: HEAD FER THE HILLS! - Pt. I

Kid Nobody rode over the hills and into the isolated town of Creighton on a dusty afternoon to clean up some kind of mess. He didn‘t know what kind of mess it was, but the old wizard had made it sound real important.

“I’ll meet you back in Farthing when it’s over,” the wizard told him, “and I‘ll be most interested to hear the results.” Farthing was five towns over, due north east from Creighton.

In between, he’d grifted his way through Golding, swindled by Merryweather, done a-robbin’ in Ha’penny Hills and got a bad reputation in San Alberto. Bad enough to see wanted posters with his face on them, they even printed his real name, too, instead of his handle, which he preferred to go by. Kid Nobody hadn’t spent a lot of time making friends, excepting his horse, Leroy, who he hitched outside the saloon.

***

The piano was tuneless and the women weren’t much on the eyes, but the place was plenty rowdy and well-stocked, so he sat contentedly with his pint of malt liquor, eyeballing the place, looking for a mark. Couldn’t be more than a couple hours after noon and drunken stumblebums were everywhere, plenty of marks to be found in a place like this.

One of the homelier gals gave him a shy wink from across the room. Maybe, he thought. Didn’t appear to be a lot of options, and a man can‘t be all business and no recreation.

The doors swung open. A skinny man burst in shouting about, “I have seen the face of God, and he is pissed! On account of what we done to the Indians.”

The crowd collectively bowed their heads and muttered guilty capitulations.

“Well…”

“Yeah…”

“Got a point there…”

“God’s fixing to punish us, but good,” the ranting man said. Then he ran out to tell the folks at Tibbett’s, the general store, across the street.

“Seems we’ve all done wrong to an Indian, one time or another, isn’t that right, old timer,” Kid Nobody asked the man at the next table, with a smile.

“Not like we done, stranger,” the man said, gruffly, without making eye contact.

Kid Nobody took a swill of his drink and left a decent tip, by his standards, as he got up to leave. He’d found what he was looking for. A man, stumbling for the exit.

***

Kid Nobody stood nerve steady on the boardwalk, watching the stumbling man vomit into the alley beside the saloon. The man held himself up against the wall with one hand, the other tucked into his wretching belly.

“You okay there, partner,” he asked, approaching the man from behind.

The man stumbled a couple steps into the alley. Too easy, he thought.

“Aw, you just need to find a bed to lie down in,” he said, patting the huddled man down for his wallet, “you’ll be right in no time.” Then he felt the barrel of a gun jab between his ribs.

“Whoo-hoo-hoo, too easy, boy,” the man said, wiping his mouth.

Kid Nobody raised his arms in surrender. He looked down and noticed he was standing in the man’s vomit.

“Old trick I learned,” the man said. He took a big gulp of air, swallowed it, and after a couple second began wretching violently, the vomit splattered thinly. He came up laughing, wiping his mouth.

“Gun,” he said, his free hand outstretched, fingers waving it in, “slow like. Seems you ought to know better than to flash your wad in unfamiliar territory.”

After he handed him the gun, the man said, “cash. Come on, now. Be quick about it.”

A gun cocked behind him, a woman’s voice, “it’s cocked and loaded. You scram, or I put a bullet between your beady eyes. This one‘s mine.”

The man with the gun said, “well I got two guns, n--”

She did it. Right between the eyes. The man fell in a heap. Kid Nobody’s ears rang like church bells. He turned in disbelief, arms still raised.

“You can stop surrendering now, handsome,” the woman said, tucking the gun into her garter belt. It was the woman from the bar, “I ain’t going to shoot you, less I have to.”