Flagstaff?"
"It's a town...in Arizona...north of Phoenix."
Junior shifted his hat and scratched his head. "Oh yeah. I been to Phoenix once or twice," he said. "Shithole little town. Got no water. Too much dust. Texas is the place you oughta be. Damn pretty state."
Brian couldn't help staring at the man's face. Its battery was quite detailed. "If you don't mind me asking—" Brian said, "but how did..."
"The face?" Junior Dalton craned his head forward, bringing his puffy cheek within inches of Brian's mouth. He pointed at a darker spot on the bridge of his nose. "Scorpion bit me. Shee-it. Got me while I was sleepin. But I crushed the little bastard with the heel of my boot. I think there's still a little of him left." Junior lifted a booted foot from the river. Water cascaded out the shaft. "Wanna see," he offered, proudly.
Brian shook both hands. "No thanks," he said.
Junior settled into his tube and chuckled. "Shee-it."
The woman stayed an obscure distance behind as the three floated in silence for several minutes. Suddenly she rushed to the cowboy's side, away from Brian. She yanked Junior's plaid sleeve and pointed at the shadows behind them. Her fright immediately alarmed Brian. He stared intently upstream but saw only the hazy peach glow of the landscape they had already passed.
Junior patted the woman's head then tried to squeeze one of her breasts, but she slapped him away. "Don't know what's wrong with her," he told Brian, his hand still roaming near her skin. "She does this about every thirty minutes. Haven't seen anyone yet. Don't reckin I will. I think she's just shy and needs a little attention every now and then, if'n you know what I mean. Hell, she been on this damn river fer more'n two hundred years." He tweaked the woman's nipple, quickly, before she had the chance to retaliate.
"Two hundred years!" Brian gasped loudly.
Junior lost his smile. He glared emotionless. His eyes became lidless marbles. Although Brian could not see them, he knew that the cowboy's muscles had tensed and were rippling under his plaid shirt. He shifted forward in his tube and said, "Listen ta me, boy. You oughta not be hollerin' like that. Not in ma face."
A huge lump formed in Brian's throat that he could not swallow. He felt sure the cowboy would break him in two at any moment. Then, as quickly as he'd angered, Junior settled back into his tube and grinned. "You still don't get it, do ya?" he said. "How long you been on this river?"
"Well, I got here about ten this morning but I'm not sure what time it is now. I'd say at least twelve hours."
Junior Dalton laughed so hard he fell out of his tube. He rose from the water gasping for air and hooked the tube with one arm as he grabbed his dislodged hat with the other. "Boy, I don't know where you was or how you came to be here but you is dead." He coughed up water. "D-E-A-D, dead. Scorpion killed me. A couple'a French soldiers raped and killed her." Junior hoisted himself back in his tube and set his soggy hat in place. "You see, this here is the river Styx and we are floating straight to Hell."
Brian was shocked at the revelation. This was supposed to be The Vision before death, not death itself. And even if he really was dead, he wouldn't have been sanctioned for Hell. Brian Poletree deserved better than that. Who made the decisions around here anyway? He'd always been an asset to society. He was a loving, caring, supporting son—just ask his mother. He was honest, a devoted student, and a pretty damn nice guy...if anything, too nice. Everyone had faults. Everyone screwed up every now and then, but come on! Cheating on one test answer? Brian demanded a recount. Someone screwed up here. And if Junior was right, as long as he stayed on this river there would be no reprieve. He started paddling for the river bank.
"Hey, boy. Where you think yer goin'?"
"I don't know about you guys," Brian said, "but I'm not supposed to be here. And I'll be damned if I'm just going to lay around and allow this to happen. There's been a big mistake and I'm going to wait until whomever or whatever figures it out."
"Shee-it," Junior said. "The big mistake bein' made by you. How far you gonna get on that leg. Looks like it’s been run over by a freight train. Besides, even if you could walk, I wouldn't be up and about out there. There're things meaner'n a rattlesnake and twice as deadly."
Brian wasn't listening anymore. He beached his tube and slowly turned out of it. When his fractured leg hit the rocky, uneven surface of the riverbank, a wave of nausea sponged his body and a drip of bile rose to the back of his tongue that tasted like re-stilled Jack Daniels.
Junior Dalton and the woman with no name floated several hundred yards downstream and were quickly approaching the first bend in the river since their meeting with Brian. Junior lounged in his tube, his straw hat dipped low over the brow, a man—or spirit—who showed little concern for what lay ahead, apparently confident that he'd tackle whatever fun fate had in store for him.
By great contrast, the woman stared directly at Brian. She looked frightened, concerned. Her dark, long-lashed eyes, smooth cheeks and pouty, thick lips were drawn into rigid suspense as if each of her facial muscles were tied by string and were being drawn forward by the hand of fear. Still, she was beautiful. Her bare-breasted, peachy glow hypnotized Brian. Her wide eyes bored straight through his head and jumped his heart a beat. Then, she screamed.
"Behind you Brian. They are coming. Get back in the water!" Her voice seemed so close. She must have followed him to the riverbank. She must be sitting right next to him. The pain had been greater than he'd thought and the ensuing shock had created this hallucination. He slapped his face and groped the rough, red rock.
"Brian! Back in the water! Hurry!" Her voice was fading.
The woman and the cowboy swung around the river bend and disappeared behind scraggly bushes. Dreaded loneliness leapt into Brian's face but only for a second.
Behind him, movement.
Pebbles bounced across rock.
And breathing, hushed but excited.
A foreboding tremble moved up Brian's spine as he craned to look behind.
He didn't know what they were—humanoid, possibly—but there was no doubt to their number. Brian could feel the presence of hundreds though he saw only a small pack.
Brian was reminded of the first time he'd seen Night of the Living Dead at the old drive-in near his parents' Idaho farm. That movie had given him nightmares. But this wasn't black and white and these corpses didn't walk mummified and act half-stupid. These humanoids dashed between peach-red jutting rocks, boulders and bushes. They flanked him; they headed him off at the pass; they sealed his fate. And Brian was playing the lead protagonist in this bizarre afterlife where dead really meant flesh-hungry and starving.
The humanoids seemed a little tentative about attacking, peering with white eyes from the corners of their hiding places, until the skeleton appeared.
Jimmy Peters.
Then, in single file, they loped, crawled, hopped (it depended on which of their appendages were missing or mangled) behind Skeleton Peters toward Brian.
"That's·s·s him. The one that keeps you here. Eat his·s·s plump flesh and be free. Quickly, while it is fresh." They rushed—all except Jimmy Peters. The skeleton stood to watch the feeding frenzy, a smile lifting its fleshless face.
Brian was paralyzed by fear until the first deformed hand grabbed his broken leg. This humanoid had most of its head but was riddled across its naked torso by large-caliber holes. Al Capone? Doubtful. Maybe one of his long dead henchmen. The thing's expressionless, molting face reminded Brian of a prohibition hit man. Its death had done nothing to decrease its powerful grip. Brian heard leg bones snapping into smaller pieces as he tried to pull free.
A tinier corpse...a child...and a tall woman with one leg rushed behind the hit man, ogled the delicacy of Brian's purpled leg and grabbed for it. The hit man back-handed the child corpse, sent it rolling into the water, then released Brian's leg to beat the woman.
Brian scurried on his elbows toward the river. Three more corpses dove crazily for his retreating flesh, collided, and fell in a heap an inch fr
om Brian's toes. Brian grabbed his tube in haste but it squirted free and spun into the flow of the river.
"Get him!" Skeleton Peters screamed.
The corpses came over the rocks in multitude like cockroaches from a hidey-hole that's been sprayed with pesticide. Brian slid into the water, his soft belly scratched and bleeding from the sharp rocks, and paddled several feet knowing that at any second he'd be pulled by a thousand hands backward. His good leg struggled to match his weight; his arms tired quickly.
Then, the child corpse—the one the hit man had slapped into the water—bobbed to the surface and Brian swam straight into it. It grabbed for his throat, wrapped its body around his, tried to vise him with its legs. But there was no strength in the child's grasp, and no skin on the child's body. What had once been a flesh-hungry corpse was now an inanimate mass of bones. Brian shoved the skeleton into the current and looked to the river bank.
There were thousands of them lined up at the river's edge watching their meal swim to safety. Skeleton Peters stood at center, its boney victorious smile turned sour. The skeleton slowly walked into the river until its skull disappeared under a lap of water.
It's coming. Where's my tube? Oh shit! Quickly—get away. Gotta find the cowboy…the woman. Damn this broken leg.
And as if by magic the tube hit him right in the face. Brian flopped inside and didn't stop