Free Ashes of the Dead - Bucket of Blood by Jake Page A

more of the undead to the saloon. There wasn’t any more spare wood inside the saloon, so Cutler ripped more boards from the walls in a back room, and broke apart chairs. He gathered an armload of the splintered pieces of wood and carried them to the front of the parlor.
    Eric grabbed one of the pieces from him and nailed it across a window, and then looked through a space between the boards. Moonlight bathed the street outside and he could see several undead finishing the remains of a victim, eating raw intestines and brain. It was like looking into a nightmare as screams echoed through the town. Only this one had turned real and spilled into the streets.
    “What are we going to do?” Johnny asked as Cutler handed him more wood.
    “Definitely not go outside,” he said, and then turned and handed more wood to Pickett. “As long as those things don’t get inside we should be fine.”
    “And what if they do?”
    Cutler could only shrug at this. “ Pray that we have enough bullets, I guess.”
    The Gunman finished his whiskey and turned the glass upside down on the counter.
    Rose set the shotgun down and grabbed her glass to take another sip. “You never told me where you were from.”
    “I guess I didn’t. I came across the desert.”
    “What brought you out here? Work at the mine?” she asked.
    “No. Headed out west,” he said.
    She smiled. “You are out west.”
    “ Well, farther out west than here.”
    “Oh, I see.” Rose moved to pour more whiskey for the Gunman.
    “No, thank you. Just water.”
    She turned and filled a glass from a pitcher of water. “Good idea. Can’t very well fight these things if you’re drunk,” she said, and smiled over her shoulder.
    He smiled back at her. “Exactly.”
    As the Gunman reached for the glass of water and put it to his lips, the white sheet that covered Mason began to move behind him. Rose froze in place. She dropped her glass and it smashed to the floor. “ My god --,” she whispered, and watched as Mason sat upright and the sheet dropped from his contorted undead body. The Gunman turned just as the deputy launched toward him. He fell sideways off of the chair and struggled to get away.
    Rose lifted the heavy shotgun from the counter, “Get down!”
    Everyone jumped to the ground as Rose fired, blowing off his head. Bone fragments and brain exploded throughout the parlor. Black brain splashed across the white ivory keys of the piano. Mason’s decapitated body slid to the ground and there it remained motionless, completely dead.
    The Gunman got up and grabbed his revolver from the floor. Rose stood behind the bar holding the expended shotgun in her hands as both barrels filled the room with gun smoke. She flipped open the shotgun and the empty shells clanked onto the counter.
    “Nice shot,” he told her as he holstered his weapon.
    “I think it would be hard to miss with this thing,” she said , sliding two fresh shells into the behemoth and cocking it shut.
    “I think I will take that whiskey after all,” he said, and sat back in his stool.
    Andrew and Pickett rushed over to Mason’s mangled body. Andrew kneeled down beside it and began to inspect the damage.
    “Those things that attacked him. Did they bite him?” he asked.
    “They sure did,” the Gunman responded. “Took a bullet through the skull before it would stop.”
    “ Interesting ,” Andrew said to himself.
    “Interesting?” Pickett asked. “ This boy is dead.”
    “He was already dead.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I don’t know. None of this makes any sense,” Andrew said as he covered the body with the bloodstained bed sheet. “I watched this man die. How could he come back like that?”
    “I don’t know. Aren’t yo u the doctor?” Pickett said as he turned and left Andrew to his business, and then continued to reinforce the front windows.
     
    •  •  •
     
    The night continued to slither forward as the Gunman watched the methodical hands of a large clock tick