Hawk Henshaw and the Steam
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A Micro Short story by Sean
McGovern
For Brian Chappell – you asked
for it.
He came up the ridge, wishing
his horse hadn’t decided to up and die five miles back. Hawk Henshaw was many things – a bear of a
man, the best shot with a Spencer west of the…hell, west of the Atlantic Ocean,
and a born survivor. Currently, he was
also covered in dust and pissed the hell off.
He synched up his belt again and kept his eyes pinned to the opening in
the ridge the folks in town had told him about which he stood, doubled over,
and wheezed. He hadn’t been a young man
for a long, long time, and the last bit of this journey had reminded him of
that fact – he was on the wrong side of forty.
Adventuring
like this, hunting down what some folks were calling the Train Demon, would
have been better suited for the young bucks in town – but most of those damned
fools had gone east, hoping to prove themselves against the North. They thought that would be an adventure. Henshaw knew, though – he had seen enough
hellfire out in Mexico as a boy. This,
snipe hunting, was far better. Snipes
didn’t exist – which meant they didn’t have cannon and couldn’t turn you into a
fine paste from across the town line, wouldn’t leave you screaming with half of
something missing, or with the screams of those that were in that state. Henshaw wondered if they’d do what he had
done, and compared notes. He’d been
younger, then. He had needed to know.
But whatever
it was folks were hearing in the night, it wasn’t powder loaded, and the suited
Henshaw just fine. What didn’t suit him
all that fine was that so far eight men had vanished while looking for the
bastard up in the hills north of town, first going after two young lovers who
had taken their rendezvous in the area, then after the damned cuckold who had
gone looking for his pretty young wife and her paramour. And none of them had come back, just the
whistle and the steam of a train. “But
there ain’t any tracks up that way, Mr. Henshaw” the town crone had told
him. Miss Waits, her name had been –
practically the only person Henshaw had ever seen that would have made Methuselah
feel young. “I’ve seen’em in the paper,
and seen the tracks out east – and folks’ll watch them lay’em if they were
around here. But nothing like that’s
ever been here.”
Henshaw had
nodded, mostly watching the three legged black coydog that lay in the corner,
glaring up at him. He didn’t like that
dog. He’d seen all kinds of wounded
creatures, but the dogs always left him vaguely disgusted. Mexico.
Again. He had spit, missed the
pot Miss Waits was using as a spittoon, and shifted his bulk in the chair. He tried to ignore the dog and listen to the
crone, and he had managed, for the most part.
Miss Waits had known more than anyone else – which he had figured would
be the case. And she had sent him
towards the cave.
He stopped
and sat for a minute, catching his breath.
He kept his eyes pinned to the cave, and checked his guns blindly. They were loaded, and after a sip from his
flask, he took to his feat again, and walked to the opening. He caught the scent of blood, and
paused. He murmured a curse, and readied
the Springfield, and thought about lighting the lamp on his belt, but decided
to go with caution. He crept through,
feeling along the path with his feet. He
found what felt like a tree root, and he followed it, keeping his right foot
against it as he made his way deeper.
After fifteen minutes, he gave in, and hung the Springfield across his
back. He lit the lantern and held it in
one hand, drawing the revolver with the other.
He had painted the one half of the lantern black, keeping his eyes safe
from the glare.
And that was
when he found the first body. What was
left of it, at any rate. The torso and hips
were crushed to the point of looking like a bag of splinters. Henshaw moved the light around, and saw the
face. The lower jaw had been dislocated,
and all of the teeth had been shattered.
He came around the back of the body, and vomited. Judging from the wounds to the man’s rear end
and face, he had been treated like beast on a spit. A sick part of him wanted to see if the lamp
would shine all of the way through.
Henshaw
shuddered, keeping himself from calling out to see if anyone was alive – but whoever
had done that to the poor bastard might still be around. He couldn’t take his eyes off the body, and
ran his light over the surrounding ground, noting that the dirt was darker than
the rest – and he forced himself to not think about how the blood had gotten
there. He stood, and continued down into
the cave. There was still no sound
beyond his breathing and footsteps, but the air felt humid.
He stopped
and holstered the revolver, planning to wipe the sweat from his face, when he
heard it – a piercing whistle followed by the sound of a train chugging along
slowly. Henshaw raised up his gun,
panning the lamp forward into the darkness.
It was answered by four lights, small, distant, but getting closer.
He hadn’t thought
to look down at the tree root he had been following for so long. He knew what it was now, but he had to look
anyway – a train track. The old bastard
back there must have been hit by it – it didn’t explain everything, but it was
an answer at least. Henshaw moved to the
side, trying to pres himself into the wall as the lights coming towards him
grew, there flickers proceeded by the roar of iron and the engine. It was getting closer, close enough at he
could make out the outlines of…tube? They looked like flexible drain pipes, cut
into lengths and then hinged together so they moved like long, grotesque
fingers. He tried to count them, but
they moved to fast, and he was too damn flabbergasted to seek out their bases.
As it got
closer, he saw three of them carrying burdens.
The bodies were impaled from asshole to face, wriggling corpses that
hung like ventriloquist dummies from the mechanical arms. Henshaw gasped, guessing that two of them –
the lady, surely – were the young lovers and the other a member of the search
party. Henshaw leaned away from his
hiding spot as the iron beast passed him.
It growled at some points, squeaked at others, its metal fingers rising
up an ungodly racket as they swirled and danced.
He saw it
just after it became “too late” – one of the metal fingers lashed out and
grabbed him. He moved in a spiral as it
raised him from the ground and reeled him in like a fish, the metal and engine
deafening him as it began to squeeze, and he heard his ribs strain as the coils
of iron began to do their work.
Henshaw gripped
the revolver harder as the Springfield was forced into his back. He tried to lever the pistol at the lights,
but another squeeze unsteadied his aim.
He saw two others coming towards him, two more of the metal fingers that
parted ways to position themselves – one above him, the other below. Henshaw tried to aim the handgun again, but
the iron beast seemed to have been expecting this, and Henshaw screamed out as
the first of his ribs broke. The finger
below him began to probe around the seat of his pants, and Henshaw leveled the
gun again, this time not waiting for the perfect shot. He began blasting away, and kept at it until
the gun ran out of ammunition. The
finger above him dropped down just as the second rib broke, and Henshaw knew it
had all been a waste.
He let himself
go limp – and he dropped like a stone, his arms rising over his head as he fell
to the ground. He sat, dazed for a
second, before trying to get at the Springfield. The demon train rolled on, ignoring him as it
made its way towards the cave mouth.
Henshaw began to crawl away – he had to warn the town, had to get a
bigger search part out to where the iron beast lurked. It would be a long crawl back to town, but…he
remembered the bodies. And he followed
behind the train moving on his elbows and knees, hoping that the damned thing
would not turn around.
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