Dead Remnants

Chapter 3 : BEGINNING OF THE END

Dread paralyzed Ashen. The darkness that had been the stranger's eyes spread across the bridge of his nose while the black in his mouth expanded, flowed over his cheek, and took his facial features hostage. As she watched this horror film come to life, she tried to loosen the scream stuck in her gullet, but only labored gasps escaped.

"I reckon that's quite enough, Toad Tibbits. No need to send the girl to a derned sanitarium." The cowboy stood, his once-friendly face tense. Deep lines etched into the man's dusky bronze face betrayed his age, but his eyes were youthful and alive, their luminous yellow-hazel smoldering beneath the Stetson.

Jacob blinked at the exchange as the cowboy sauntered down the aisle past them, stopping a few feet away from the shifting man before putting his hand in his duster coat. "I'd hate to ask more than once."

Fantastic. The psycho cowboy must have a weapon. Ashen inched lower in her seat, tugging on Jacob's sleeve and dragging him down with her.

"Ya trackin' me?" The pitch of the stranger's low voice mingled with a screechy mechanical hum. As he spoke, beads of sweat glistened along his greasy hairline. "Warders. You'uns know ya messin' where ya ain't belongin'. Ya best leave me ta my prey and mind ta yer own."

"Don't go patronizin' me," the cowboy said. "As soon as I stepped on this here contraption, I knew what you were. Your kind are downright atrocious at concealing yourselves. Y'all have a distinct stink."

The stranger's anger switched to warped amusement. A quiet, deep chuckle trickled through his pale lips.

"Now what's so darned funny?"

The man ignored the cowboy, his laughter growing louder as his open mouth widened. Some of the blackness peeked from the depths of his throat. Jacob flinched. He recoiled from the sight, smashing Ashen hard into the window of the bus.

"Get ofph me, Jacoph!" she said, her face squished against the cold glass.

He muttered an apology and pulled away. While she had been pinned, the cowboy had pulled out the item he'd been hiding away in his coat. As Ashen had guessed—a gun.

Or at least, she thought it was a gun.

Despite Jacob's whispered objections, she wriggled past him and craned her neck around the side of the bench seat. The cowboy's coat blocked most of her view, but she could make out the weapon. It emitted a golden glow that resembled its owner's eyes. Rationally, it shouldn't have been able to fit inside the cowboy's duster. The barrel stretched beyond four feet in length, the width more than triple that of any rifle Ashen had ever seen. As bulky and heavy as the thing appeared, the cowboy handled it with a steady arm as he pointed it at the man's head.

The man the cowboy had called Toad stopped laughing.

"You're really starting to get on my dang nerves," the cowboy said, the crevices in his face deepening. "I suggest you skedaddle at the next stop before you find yourself without the protection of a cold human shell."

Fury exploded from Toad. "We done laid claim ta her!"

"You know fine well you can't lay claim on the living. You best leave her be."

"She's ours!" Toad sneered, his lips pulling away from his yellowed teeth. "Ya and yer Warders got no idea what yer dealing with."

"Is that so? Well, by all means...," with one hand, the cowboy spun the colossal rifle, and the lever-action mechanism cocked with a click, "I reckon you'd best enlighten me."

Toad glared up the barrel. "Thaddeus Glick sends his regards. Ya recall him now, don't ya Macajah?"

The cowboy's eyes narrowed. In one smooth action, he turned the butt of the rifle toward Toad and clubbed him in the jaw. The force snapped Toad's head back. The skin around his bones rippled and a fat shadow wearing a bowler hat separated from the man's body, gnashing its long teeth. Denser than the darkness, the creature dug its claws into its host's flesh and ricocheted back into the body and away from the daylight.