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Originally posted at IMWAN.com as part of a Western-themed writing challenge
The Last Shot
By Eric San Juan
My eyes are blind with dust. The sounds of a dozen deaths are still buzzing in my ears. Somewhere nearby, just beyond the haze that is the world to me right now, a coyote gnaws on what was once a child.
I don’t like this place. I never liked this place, but now ... now it’s a special kind of hell.
I’m still leaning against the gate, everything murky orange around me, clutching my revolver like it’s the last mother on Earth, my other hand a shaking, raw stump of meat. Goddamnit, this wasn’t supposed to happen. This was supposed to be a new life.
“I tol’ you not to stick around.” It was his voice. He did not disguise his glee. “I tol’ you I tol’ you I tol’ you to get on out, but you never did listen, did you?”
A shot rang out. Threw up my arm but it wasn’t meant to kill. It was meant to tease. He laughed.
The orange was resolving into a landscape now, barren land heavy with towers of stone and split with a hot blue above. Figures clawed out of the murk and died before me, the bodies of those who didn’t get away. I tasted vomit. Sweated pain. And suddenly his face was before me, leering.
“You didn’t want to up and leave, did you?” Two teeth missing. A grime of beard. Tangles of knotted hair like piss-stained ropes. Gin breath. “And now look, see? See what I bring you?”
“Piss off.”
He laughed at me, but what did I care? What was to care about when my world had been turned to ash and dust? When everything I ever loved had been taken away? They were gone; she was gone. They were all gone now. Let him laugh. He was giving me something. A cause or purpose, a reason to drag myself up in the morning and mount up and search, search, search until I brought this full circle and made my world his. He laughed again and I spit in his face. He didn’t like that.
“Not very friendly, noooo sir, not very friendly. At. All. Well we can do a bit of something about that, can’t we?” He gestured. “Bring ‘er here.”
Her? Please God, no. Don't let it be.
Tears, sweat, blood sweeping the dust from my eyes, the world growing clearer with each moment, and then a sound, the sound, and I could see clearer then but I didn’t want to see, not now, not with that sound, not with what I knew was coming, please God blind me again, blind me blind me please I prayed. But God did not listen.
His thugs dragged her into view. How? It didn’t matter. Lip fat. Clothing torn. Gash on her head. But alive.
“Over there,” he ordered, and I knew what was coming. I muttered something, don’t recall what, and raised the revolver.
Click.
Click click.
Click click fucking futile click.
He laughed again. “You think I’d have let you hold onto that if you hadn’t already blown your load? I ain’t that stupid. No, I’m afraid you got nothin’ to do now but watch.” He gestured. “There,” he pointed, “put her there. Right, right. Now hold ‘er down. I want him to see all of this.”
She was screaming now. The wail of an animal in the jaws of a predator; there is no escape but you cry out anyway, you can’t help it, and you’ll continue the death sound until blackness takes you.
He tossed down his gun. Tugged at his belt. Undid his trousers.
I threw my revolver at him. Staggered forward. One of his men came at me. I ducked, or stumbled, it doesn’t matter which, and slammed the flesh that used to be my left hand into his gut, and then his groin, and then his throat. Bone met neck and he fell. The other one came but I was already at his partner’s holster. Already taking his six-shooter. One hand. No fancy quick shot bullshit. Just business.
A shot. A scream. A shot. A corpse.
Now the one with the piss hair and grime beard, he wasn’t going for his belt anymore. He looked to his gun, but he knew he’d never get to it in time.
“Hey, I wasn’t really going to do it, right? Was just trying to scare you is all. Make sure you knew to leave.” He laughed, but this time it had no glee. No mocking. No cruel joy.
“Over there.” Now it was I who ordered. “Against the fence.”
She was weeping, but I no longer heard her. She was alive but I was deaf.
“Come on,” he said. “You know I wasn’t gonna …”
“The fence.”
“Listen, how about you can stay, then? There’s enough room here for all, right? I can talk to my guy and I’m sure he’ll see it my way, so let’s just leave it lie, okay?”
Around me the world stank of death. The bodies were washed with fire and touched by the kiss of a dozen bullets. Somewhere in the carnage I had two daughters. Small, frail things, and I wondered now whether they had known the pain of a quick release or if his men had ...
If they ...
It all swirled around me. I fired, but my shaking hands. My goddamn shaking hands. It was his turn to cry now.
“Come on!” Now he was leaning against the gate, holding on like it was the only ship in the sea. “We don’t need to do this.”
Behind me she started to plead. She didn’t want to see the black of this day consume me, but it was too late for that. It would forevermore be too late for that.
I fired, but the dust still stung and clouds still marred my vision. I missed again, and now he pissed his pants.
“Listen...”
I fired. The gate splintered.
“Goddamnit we was just doing what we was hired to do! It ain’t my fault! I didn’t want to do none of this!”
Somewhere above the gunshots drew eyes set deep into shriveled heads. Winged forms began to circle. Soon my daughters would be in their bellies. The thought was a blow.
The smells. The sights. The death I held in my hand. It all rushed to my head. Things started to spin. The flat towers of stone danced on the horizon, the works of God drunk with knowing that their maker had abandoned them, that he was asleep or unwatching or dead. I reeled, blind.
He struck me in the head. I toppled. Fell. The sound of his boots fleeing through the dust and debris.
No, no, I groaned to no one at all, and clawed myself up. Revolver. Five shots. One more. The neigh of horses. Fleeing. Threw my body toward the sound, not really seeing anymore, and pushed pushed through the air that was so damn thick, thick with fever and the salt taste of revenge. Pushed towards him even if my body didn’t want to.
And then she was on me, pleading, no, you don’t need to do this, don’t become them she said, and I heard not a word of it, I just heard the clop of his horse fading like memory, and she struggled with me, but I was blind now, so blind because all I saw was him, and we struggled, and we struggled, and there was a shot.
The last shot.
Four hours later she was still cradled in my arms. There were no tears left. There was nothing. The buzzards were in my yard. She lay unmoving. The buzzards were here. My daughters were in their bellies.
I don’t like this place. I never liked this place, but now ... now I have to stay. I have to stay because I realize now that God is dead and this is hell. It has always been hell.
Tomorrow I’m going to search for him.
END
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