The townsfolk stared with dumb eyes and open mouths at the file of ragged killers that rode into town, stared at their giant guns and rifles and hatchets and knives, their scarred faces and wild matted hair and long clayed beards. They rode in silence along the single dirt street that cut through this small city of La Luz, past the decrepit houses made of clayed bricks and thatched roofs, out of which gazed the people, the young and the elderly, all the while a small horde of half-starved street dogs went after the riders to contest the horse droppings left behind.
They came to a hold at the plaza, little more than a widening of the road, and dismounted and two of them walked into the crooked building they identified as the town hall while the others hitched their horses and some sat in the shade and smoked while others went to the tavern and others sought out local merchants and another pissed against the wall of the church nearby whilst scratching his rear.
The mayor greeted Jackson and Strauss as they entered the town hall.
“Thank god you came here so quickly!”
They shook hands.
“So, why did you call us to this shithole of yours?” said Jackson and lit a cigarette.
“Four days ago, they attacked. They took seven of our women and killed twice as many people here.”
“Took?”
“We saw them being dragged to the south. These animals have taken them. And God knows what they are doing to them…”
“Who are they?”
“Savage women…”
“Your people were killed and stolen by a bunch of cunts?”
“Don’t be mistaken, Sir. These Indians are creatures of the night. They descended upon us like harpies.”
“All right. We will get your girls back, if they are still alive that is. The price is a thousand Dollars for each of the girls. And another hundred for each Indian scalp.”
Michael stood at the door and listened to every word. When the door sprung upon, he ran after them.
“Sir, please wait”
“What you want, kid?”
“Let me join you and help bring them back”
Jackson stood there and looked at him.
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen, Sir”
Jackson spat.
“Go home kid”
“Wait. They have taken my wife, Mary Jane. We were married just a week ago. Please, Sir, let me help you bring her back”
“You ever killed somebody?”
Michael shook his head.
“You got a gun?”
“No, Sir. But I can be of assistance… I… I can pay you”
“How much?”
“I have a hundred and twenty dollars. It’s all I have.”
“Make it a hundred and fifty and you can ride with us.”
“Thank you, Sir! You won’t regret it, Sir!”
“You get killed, that’s your problem”
An old Mexican with a wrinkled face sat in the shade nearby and smoked a cigarette rolled from scraps and he listened to the Americans as they were conferring and he nodded slowly even though he did not understand a single word spoken.
An hour later saw the Americans ride out town down south into that barren furnace that goes by the name of Chihuahuan desert. The land stretched out like a hammered sheet of copper decorated with Mesquites and Yuccas and Dasylirion and the horses beneath the ragged pilgrims carefully evaded the blades of Agave Lechuguilla as they rode on across rock and bone passing coiled up rattlesnakes and poisonous lizards under the watchful eyes of redheaded turkey buzzards.
Michael carefully studied his company, studied those cut up half-witted slayers, some of whom had decorated their horses or themselves with human parts as one wore a necklace made out of dried ears and another had adorned his hat with white bones and most of them were disfigured in some way with missing fingers and eyes and ears and one did not have a nose and had no hair and under his hat across his forehead ran deep red scars and Michael wondered if this man, who went by the name of Poindexter, had been scalped and mutilated with a dull knife by some mad savage.
A sudden gunshot ripped him out of his daydreaming. Then he saw the figure in the distance some one hundred yards to the left clutching its abdomen and falling in the dust. Graham watched her fall and put his rifle back into the holster on his saddle and left the file and rode towards her. Others followed.
“Fuckin’ scout”
“Careful, there done might be mawe …”
“They see ever' single step we make- they swarming this here playe”
*****
Michael eyed the girl. She was naked save for her loincloth and leather sandals. She had decorated her arms and ankles witch bracelets made from leather thongs and colored stones and she wore tattoos that wound up her youthful body showing snakes and eagles and wild cats. Her large breasts rose and fell with her flat breathing and her skin was white and drenched with sweat, her gaze staring at the blue sky above as she murmured her prayers. The wound above her navel was small, yet more and more blood trickled out of the gaping hole in her back.
“You gonna stand there all day aw what?”
Graham walked past him and lowered himself over her. The girl looked at the killer with the long black sweaty hair as he let down his pants.
“God, what you doin’?"
With a swift movement he ripped off her loincloth.
“Wanna learn something, kid? If her cunt hasn’t been marked with three black dots, she’s never been used before. Here, look”
He tipped at her vagina with his blackened finger.
“No tattoos… as fresh as morning dew… always check, otherwise you’re in for cock rot…”
With that he thrust himself into the paralyzed girl. She moaned. She clenched her teeth as her eyes filled with water.
“And tight she is…”
“Stop it”
“You shut the hell up kid, I gotta concentrate…”
And with that he proceeded to have his way with the dying amazon in the dust. The boy looked at him with his mouth agape. Then he looked around. Some watched in silence, others saw to their horses.
Michael turned away and walked up to Jackson.
“With all due respect, Sir, but you must end this! This is unworthy of civilized men”
Jackson spat.
“Is that so, lad? In that case, you might want to direct your complaint to my trusted assistant and legal representative Doc Strauss”
Michael could her Grahams grunts and the whooping of the others. Someone whistled. He turned to Strauss, who looked down on him from his mount.
“Please… this is barbaric…”
Strauss smiled at him.
"Did you read the Iliad, boy? What do you think the illustrious deeds of Achilles looked like? Take a good look. Listen closely. See what he did to merit the elysian fields. See Graham, an ancient hero, surrounded by his myrmidons”
A scream of utter desperation rang out from the girl, as Graham shot all his seed deep between her legs. Again, whooping and whistling. Graham got up und made room for the next. Michael walked a few paces away and sat down and covered his ears and closed his eyes and wept while the men behind him took their turns.
“All right, saddle up”
Arthur had to kick Michael, to get him out of his stupor. He rose and walked to his horse, past the girl in the dust. He forced himself to look at her. She was bleeding between her legs and from her nose. Her face was swollen and her skin bore the marks of knives. Yet she was still breathing.
“For heaven’s sake, put her out of her misery!”
“Sure, here you go…”
Graham threw a rock at Michaels feet and bared his golden teeth.
“After you, son…”
Michael stared at the rock when he heard a gunshot.
Standing in the smoke above the puddle of smashed bone and blood and brain at the end of the girl’s spurting neck was Arthur. He holstered his gun and walked to his horse and mounted it and fell into line with the others, heading south. Michael followed him.
Graham watched as Cletus dug his fingers through the greasy puddle and pulled out a few strands of black hair, only to toss them away again.
“Fuking waste av ayy good scalp”
*****
The girls stood in a line, all seven of them bound to wooden poles decorated with carvings displaying ancient pagan gods and goddesses and creatures and the poles were darkened with soot and old dried blood. None of them spoke but they all sucked at their teeth, mad with thirst.
The poles stood at the bottom of a cauldron surrounded by red rocks, accessible only through a narrow path. A few paces in front of them stood a wooden block and it too bore the dark shadows of blood that had been spilled over it in some barbarous ceremony.
Behind the block lay the mouth of a large cave from which three amazons emerged and the one walking at the head of the small group had her head decorated with a giant crown made of colourful feathers and the tattoos she wore on her bare chest showed a huge pair of red wings.
She walked past the row and scrutinized one girl after another and came to a halt in font of Lisa, who took the middle place in this row of condemned. The shaman grabbed her chin and looked her in the eye. Then she looked down the girl and saw the puddle of warm urine between her feet grow ever larger. She smiled and nodded to the other two Indians.
One of them held a bucket filled with a reeking viscous fluid in it and the other held a brush and dipped it into the bucket and started to smear Lisas face and hair with the liquid. The girl coughed and choked as she endured the treatment until another amazon emerged from the cave carrying by a pair of tongs a wreath made of glowing fuses. Lisa stared at the wreath with her reddened eyes and begged them for mercy and fought with her bonds, screaming ever louder with each step the Indian came closer.
With a swift move the amazon put the glowing garland over Lisas head. Immediately the skin and hair of the girl were set ablaze in hissing blue flames and the American screamed a series of cruel screams as the flames ate away her hair and skin and turned her once beautiful face into a dark charred grimace that only partially covered the skull beneath in which bubbled her cooked brain. The other girls screamed and watched in horror or looked away and one fainted and hung motionless in the ropes as their friend’s face was turned into a smoking piece of coal. The flames died out after consuming all the reeking fluid leaving Lisa standing there in her expensive blue garment and leather shoes, tied to the pole, with her head reduced to a grotesque shriveled up visage. Small stains of melted fat had hit the shoulders of her dress, which besides that had taken no damage whatsoever.
*****
Pubert and Doodle watched the fire. The others slept on the bare desert ground beneath the clear sky, huddled in their blankets close to their weapons.
Pubert munched on a tortilla and crushed the bites with his tongue, for he had no teeth, save a few yellow molars.
“Damn, that there injin gerl were darn good. Best pussy ay done had in weeks”
“Ayn' there will be mawe. Whowwl tribe av cunts”
Doodle chuckled and bit his fingernails.
The fire hissed aloud as a dark brown cloud rose from the flames. Stunned, Doodle looked into the blaze, then turned to quivering Pubert, who clutched his spurting throat and with white eyes looked up at the black shadow behind him.
“Hell fuck”
With his mouth agape, Doodle reached for his gun yet before he could raise his pistol, the tomahawk had severed his hand. He held his stump and stared at the spurting flesh, clearly seeing the white bone in its midst.
A second amazon swung her obsidian axe and lobbed his head off his shoulders. It rolled between the legs of the Indian girl that had slit Puberts throat and stared up her naked legs right at her moonlit vagina.
Muzzle flashes lit the camp as shots thundered in the desert night and cut down the two blood-soaked Indians that stood in the light of the campfire.
“Ambush… ambush…!”
The men hollered and the horses whinnied as a rain of feathered arrows descended upon them piercing man and animal. They swore and fired at the shadows and the wounded bellowed their curses and Jackson shouted orders while others ducked the incoming arrows as best as they could.
Michael threw himself to the ground and tried to make out the attackers. The immensity of the impressions and the deafening noise dumbed him down completely. He lay there hidden behind a little rock when suddenly a hand grabbed him by the boot and made him turn around. A tall lean amazon towered above him and raised her warclub like a nightmarish ghoul in the cold moonlight. Michael couldn’t make a sound as he stared upon the instrument of his murder when suddenly the girl flinched as if struck by a shock. The boy looked into her face and gazed straight through a round hole at the white moon. The disfigured warrior dropped the club from her hand and collapsed onto him. Michael reared back and pushed the body off him. He shuddered as he touched the warm wet squishy mess that had been a beautiful woman’s face just moments ago.
Michael kept crawling through the dust, covering his ears and shielding his face whenever a piece of debris was flung his way. He clutched the sand and noticed it was warm and damp and looked around and saw himself lying in the intestines of some shot Indian and he looked down himself and saw that he had smeared himself all over with her fluids. He crawled out of the puddle, wincing at every shot, until he rolled into a small ditch where he threw up and collapsed into his vomit.
*****
A red sun rose to the east and cast its light upon the field of battle. Michael opened his eyes only to stare into she mangled visage of a dead amazon who had received a shot to her head. Half her skull was blown away and her eye hung out by a red thread. He startled and rose and looked around him.
The ground was plastered with broken bodies and horses and weapons and countless arrow shafts.
He watched Arthur as he carefully pulled out arrows of a horse and the horse stood there in silence and bore the pain as red saliva drooled from its mouth. He saw the Americans walk among the Indian girls, killing the wounded with their knifes before scalping and plundering them. He watched Graham standing above one of the girls and she raised her hands to him and was about to say something when he stepped on her throat and squeezed it with his boot. She floundered beneath him, her face turning all red and then purple as she clawed her fingers into is leather boot. As soon as she went limp, he knelt beside her and took out his knife and started cutting the skin at her hairline. When he was done, he wiped the reddened knife at her loincloth and put it in his sheath and grabbed her black hair and, with a sudden pull, ripped off her scalp. He lay it over his shoulder and opened her mouth and rose and pissed into it.
Michael turned away and shook his head only to look at Cletus throwing little pebbles into the bared viscera of an Indian girl whose belly had been ripped open by some enormous gun. The sickening sound of the little rocks hitting the girls naked entrails made his skin break out in goosebumps.
“Here, I got somethin’ for ye” Arthur said and handed him a gun and a holster.
“Take it. Doodle won’t need it no more…”
Micheal thanked him and put on the gun belt of the murdered vedette before wiping the red sand and pieces of viscera and bone off his clothes as good as he could.
Meanwhile one of the killers took one of the wounded girls who had her shoulder shattered by some wild projectile that had been fired blindly into the blackness and he had tied her hands behind her back with a rawhide strap and took a knife and scalped her and after he had done so, he thrust his taut cock between the screaming girls legs and pounded her and had the greatest pleasure doing so while he stared at her crimson red tonsure and the name of the man who did this was Mortimer Throckmorton.
The girl wound and screamed and stared at the sweating haggard halfwit until she was able to cut the leather restraints with a small obsidian knife and with a swift movement of her hand severed the man’s member. The slayer screamed a high-pitched scream and fell on his back as a crimson volcano erupted between his legs. The scalped amazon jumped to her feet with bloodshot eyes while Throckmortons dick was still clamped between her labia until it went limp and fell out of her and dropped to the ground. The bewildered men stood there stunned and watched the grotesque scenery unfold before they got a hold of themselves and muzzled the girl with a dozen shots.
“God fuckin dammit! Nobody fucks one of them girls unless she’s dead” barked Jackson.
Mortimer kept screaming and one of the Americans knelt beside him and tend to his wound while another poured him whisky.
“Saddle up”
“I can’t ride. Not like this…”
“Then go back to town”
“You know they’ll get me”
“Well, sorry Mort, but that sounds like a you-problem”
Mortimer screamed on and cursed his fate and cursed the amazon and looked at his belt to which he had bound the scalp and took it and tossed it away and cursed it too. One by one the killers got on their horses and rode on. Michael was the only one who looked back at Throckmorton who sat alone in a crimson puddle on this field of battle surrounded by slaughtered men and women…