Red River Rangers: Excerpt

The sun sank into a crimson horizon, long shadows of towering mesas fading in the dusky coming of night. A lone coyote dug into a fresh, shallow grave. The dirt he flung out behind him speckled the light of the setting sun, dark fireworks celebrating the coming meal.

 He stopped digging and nosed the dirt, sniffing to check his progress, catching the scent of leather, bourbon, and flesh. The coyote resumed his quick pace, eager to sate the ever present hunger nagging at him all the days of his lonely existence. Another coyote howled in the distance, a low growl rose up to strangle the reciprocate mournful cry in his throat.

 A different sound came from an unexpected direction, and he paused his excavation. Twitching ears picked up a gravelly sigh, followed by a soft moan beneath him. Once again he put his muzzle to the earth between his paws, smelling the same still-fresh corpse as before. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a nub of flesh growing from the dirt. He yelped and jumped aside, crouching low to watch, anticipating a fight for his meal.

 Instead of a snake as he'd expected, a hand emerged, dirt tumbling from shaky fingers. The head and elbow broke loose from the earth simultaneously, the corpse emitting a high screech. Spent, the head and arm fell back against the freshly dug ground, perhaps laid to rest for good this time.

The coyote could hope, anyway.

 He crept closer, extending his neck to sniff from a distance. He bared his teeth as he drew closer to the corpse, a low whine struggling with a growl inside his chest. Still a few feet away, he stopped to crouch again, the spindly muscles of his haunches tightly coiled and ready to spring away if the corpse moved again.

 Nothing.

 The coyote inched closer, the whine winning the battle for purchase and climbing up and out. Raised hackles doubled the appearance of his size, but did little to bolster the malnourished creature's courage. The closer he crept, the more he trembled.

 Inches away from the head, he closed the distance and sniffed his prey.

 The other hand shot up from the earth beneath him and plunged into his body, past his bony chest, gripping his spine. The already freed hand grabbed a fistful of hair at the back of his neck.

 The coyote jerked once in the grip of the corpse, ripping out his own hairs in a mindless attempt to break free. Droplets of blood from his torn flesh misted the air, falling to sprinkle the lips of the dead woman. The final rays of the setting sun revealed fleshy lids pulling apart, ripping out sutures as they opened over glazed, gray eyes.

 She got a good grip on the flesh at his neck, now that the hair had been ripped away.

He whimpered, eyes rolling back in his head, too weak to struggle. He tried lifting his head up and away from her face.

 The corpse slowly opened her mouth, tearing more stitches through the thick flesh of her lips. As though celebrating new-found liberation, the corpse grinned and drove a pair of elongated incisors into the coyote's neck, moaning as she drank from the animal.

 When he collapsed in her grip, she released his spine to seek out a more substantial source of nourishment.

 Kidney. Lung. A heart might be nice.

 Realization crept up her spine, scratching against bone with icy bladed fingers, screeching echoes in her mind.

 Monster.

Three days after Sheriff Roberts hanged her for the brutal massacre of a group of teens out at Red River Ridge, Catherine Cartwright rose from a shallow grave.

 To be continued in…

Red River Rangers

A Whiskey and Wheelguns Novelette

by Jessica West

Now available for pre-order at Amazon. Purchased e-book will be auto-delivered to Kindle on August 29, 2014.