After all the boats had been hauled in and the people got off, we decided there was nothing left to do but throw ourselves a party. The Professor broke out all the spirits and drinks he had saved from the quake, and every restaurateur who had managed to salvage some food started giving away what they had for free. Several tables were set up, assembled from wooden boards and sets of drawers, with barrels, armchairs, and large trunks for seats, and everybody pitched in to help put out quite a spread.

Doc Torrent and Jennifer Chaos were the heroes of the hour. The two of them didn’t seem all too friendly when they was riding the MECH, but after a couple of drinks they were bosom buds. Jenny hang her arm around Doc’s neck, rocking back and forth on her stool as she described what had happened.

“Had a bit of a time getting up there. Lot of escaped convicts in the ruins, and they tried to gun us down, but I just blasted right past them. They was slower than a sloth dunked in molasses and let loose on a cold day! The Doc found the big old metal fellow over in the bushes and turned him on. Sure did take him a while!”

“Quite right! Quite right!” Doc Torrent downed another shot. “Ms. Chaos, did I ever tell you how beautiful you look?”

“And how come you made that monstrosity have my beautiful face?” Little Napoleon asked. “Not that I’m complaining or nothing.”

“I’m not sure,” Doc Torrent said. “I began preliminary designs soon after our time travel adventure in New York, and the image of you just stuck in my head. It’s like that with most of my inventions, actually. That could be why so many of them go wrong.” He looked thoughtful until someone passed him another bottle. “Ah! No matter! Drink up, my friends!”

The day was passing by mighty nicely, but I didn’t have too much to drink. Something told me I ought to be staying on my toes. I enjoyed some of the fine dishes they put out, even if seeing that monster explode did hurt my appetite a little, and soon I was comfortably bloated with food. I leaned back in my chair and looked up and down the table, seeing the Brown son talking amiably about their lives, Little Napoleon dancing a merry jig on the table, Clarence Rutherford and his wife kissing, and the kids talking excitedly about what they had seen.

But I noticed Cornelius and Catherine were there, but Charles was nowhere to be found and neither was Winston. I looked to Myrtle, who was sitting at my side. “Where’d Charles get to?” I wondered.

“Oh. The dear boy went back to the tent to get a book to show his friends.” Myrtle smiled. “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, I think. He wants to compare the illustrations of the giant squid with the wretched monster.”

“Sounds like Charles,” I agreed. But then I stopped. “How long has he been gone?”

Myrtle’s smile vanished. “Oh god. A half an hour, I think.” She stood up. “Oh my. The poor boy might have tripped or lost his crutch or injured himself-“

“Or he’s just having trouble finding the right book in the huge mess of them that he brought,” I said, chuckling. “No need to get worried, Myrtle. I’ll go and see how he’s doing. If he’s fallen, I’ll help him up.”

“Should I come with you?” she asked.

“Nah. No need for you to interrupt this merry-making.” I grabbed her shoulders and kissed her quickly on the mouth. “And I’ll be right back.”

I stood up and walked back through the rows of tents. Most of the folks were at the banquet, and it weren’t hard to find our tent, down at the far end of the park. I didn’t see any sign of Charles, and figured the boy must be inside the tent, digging through the piles of books he had brought.

“Charles?” I asked, pulling open the tent flap. “How you getting-“ I stopped as a revolver was pressed against my temple. The revolver was in the hand of a convict in a striped prison uniform, wearing bandoliers with a rifle in his back. There were three more of them convicts in my tent, and Charles sat on the tent, Big Willard Griffin holding his hook to my boy’s neck and a revolver pointed at me. Winston lay on the ground, not moving.

“Not another movement, Clark!” Griffin cried. “I’ll slit his throat! You know I will!” He pushed his elbow into Charles’s back. The boy was forced into the hook, until a trickle of blood appeared on the steel. Griffin laughed and the tentacles coming from his face writhed.

“What do you want me to do, Griffin?” I asked. “Don’t you hurt him now. Please, I’ll do whatever you want!” I tried to reason with him, even though I knew there weren’t nothing for it. The madman had me and Charles dead to rights.

“What do I want?” Griffin asked. “What do I want from you, Clark? That is a tough question, but I’m gonna enjoy finding out the answer. Oh, yes.”

“Clark!” Charles cried. “They were waiting for me! They grabbed me and hit Winston with a rifle butte, but I think he’s okay, and you’ve got to run away, Clark! Run and come back with help!”

“Don’t go anywhere,” Griffin said. “In fact, why don’t you take a load off. Boys?”

One of the convicts, a thin fellow with a curved scar on his lower lip, pulled the revolver off of my hip and stuck it in his belt. “Name’s Smiling Jack,” he said. “Don’t you forget it.”

“Griffin,” I said. “The monster’s gone. You don’t got a chance. It’s over, for both of us. Just let us go, and I’ll give you all of my money and help you escape. I’ll put you back in power of Sagamore Hall and it will be just like it used to be.”

“Fool!” Griffin slapped Charles across the face and the poor kid cried out. “Controlling mere mortals is a paltry insult to the power I could have had! Existence itself was my plaything! But you burned the book and your friends killed the Old One and now I can feel the darkness within me tearing my innards apart!” He opened his mouth, revealing curved teeth, and shrieked. “The pain is unbearable! And I want the same thing to happen to you, Clark Reeper! I want you to live, but be full of death!”

I looked into his eyes and I knew there was nothing in him but the desire to see me suffer. That was the only thing keeping him up and about, and I didn’t have much of a chance. My only hope was to get Charles away from him and let the kid run to safety, and let him finish me off.

But then I heard footsteps coming down the grassy pathway, familiar light steps. My heart stopped beating as the tent flap opened and Myrtle Sherman stuck her head in. “Clark?” she asked. “Are you-“ That was as far as she got.

Griffin leveled his revolver at her and fired. Myrtle didn’t have a chance to scream. She fell forward and collapsed in front of me, landing face first on the ground.

I elbowed the throat of the thug pointing his revolver at me, and then bent down to see to Myrtle. Nobody made a move to stop me. I rolled over the love of my life and saw a red in her white dress, right in the upper chest. Her lips moved and her eyes fluttered, but no words came out.

“Myrtle!” I shouted, pulling her close to me. “Myrtle! Don’t die on me! Oh God, don’t you take the good out of my world!”

“Myrtle!” Charles cried as well. He pushed forward into the hook, cutting himself until Griffin let him go. He ran to Myrtle side and wrapped his little arms around her body. “You have to be my mother! Please!”

Myrtle’s eyes blinked and then stayed open. She couldn’t be my wife, nor could she mother my boy, no matter how much she wanted to. Myrtle Sherman was dead.

“You son of a bitch!” I stood up and ran towards, Griffin but Smiling Jack cracked his fist into my face. Charles ran as well, his little hands balled up into fists and a shout of pure rage sounding in his high voice. Another thug rammed the butte of his rifle on Charles’s back, knocking the boy out.

“Oh, Clark Reeper,” Willard Griffin said. “Your suffering has just begun.”

Then I got a blow on my head from another rifle butte, and I joined Charles in unconsciousness.

When I came too, thick ropes were wrapped around my arms and legs, and I couldn’t move to scratch my behind. I was lying outside, on top of a small hill of rubble. A small cook fire was burning next to me, and two convicts were tending it. Two more convicts stood next to Willard Griffin, the one called Smiling Jack at his right. Jack carried a large scoped rifle. Charles lay next to me, already awake. His eyes were red from crying, and I realized there were tear in my own eyes.

“Clark?” Charles asked. “Is Myrtle…I mean, is she...?” The poor kid’s voice broke and he couldn’t get the words out.

“She’s gone, Charles,” I said. I had seen enough folks shot in my time to know when one was gonna live and when one was gonna die. “She’s gone forever.”

“B-but the Fountain!” Charles said. “We could take here there and dump her in the water and-“

“No,” I said. “I don’t know where it is. My Old Man’s dead and gone, and Johnny Rabbit’s nowhere to be found. And even if we did find, the waters can only bring back a couple folks at a time. She’ll be dust by the time the Fountain is ready for her.” I shook my head. “She’s gone.”

By now Griffin had noticed we had woken up. He walked over to us, the two thugs at his side. “Lift him up!” Griffin commanded. “Hell, lift them both up! I want them to see!”

Smiling Jack and another one of Griffin’s goons hauled me to my feet, while two more did the same to Charles. I looked out down the hill and saw perhaps a hundred or more convicts, all armed with the military finest weapons, and assembled like an army.

“My empire begins here!” Griffin shouted. “We’ll go deeper into the ruins to a defensible position, and I will write the Necronomicon from memory! Each infernal verse is burned into my mind, and I will craft a second copy! Then I will read from it, and bring this world to its knees!”

He turned to me. “I must go to work on it. But I will leave you in good hands.” He turned to his men. “Drop them, and cut the boy free.”

We were roughly thrown to the ground. Smiling Jack produced a knife and cut Charles’s binding. The boy’s crutch lay on the ground near the fire, and Jack handed it to him with a grin. “We’re gonna play a little game, boy-o!” he said. “It’s gonna be real fun!”

“I must take my leave now,” Griffin said. Wings sprouted from his back once more, drooping and thick with black juices, but still serviceable. “I’ll be back for you, Clark. But it will you alone that will be alive when I return.”

He launched into the air, and his army marched after him. They turned a corner behind a ruined building and disappeared. I watched them go, and then turned to Charles. The boy was frozen to the ground, his crutch held tightly against his side. Smiling Jack but a hand on my boy’s shoulder. I shook the awful feeling about Myrtle from my mind. I had to save Charles.

“You good at running, boy-o?” Jack asked. The three other thugs laughed.

“N-no, sir,” Charles whispered.

“Speak up!” Jack struck Charles across the face and knocked the boy to the ground. I struggled with my ropes, trying to come to my feet. Smiling Jack turned to stare at me. He laughed. “The boss told us all about you. Can’t kill anyone. Sworn not to take another life.” He pulled my revolver from his belt and tossed it on the ground right next to me. “What a joke!”

“Clark’s very strong!” Charles said. “He’s much better than you…you bastards! He’s a good man and he’s a hero!” He came back to his feet and planted his crutch firmly in the ground.

“Shut up!” Jack raised his hand but stopped. “No. Let me explain to you the rules of the game. You run.” Jack touched his rifle. “I shoot. If you don’t want to run, I’ll blast the legs out from under you, one at a time, and then move on to more tender spots.” He grinned, and his scar gave me a good view of his yellowed teeth.

“He’s a cripple, you goddamn psycho!” I shouted. “Let him go! Play your game with me! Let him go!”

“Why don’t you just help him, then?” Jack asked. I didn’t have an answer for that. Smiling Jack laughed again and the three goons joined in. “All right, boy-o. Enough talk.” Jack raised the rifle his shoulder. “I’ll give you a head start.”

Charles stared at me. “Go as fast as you can,” I said. “You can do it.”

“Okay, Clark,” Charles said. He headed down the hill. I could hear his crutch crunch against the stone and rubble as he moved. The ground was uneven and rocky, making it hard for even someone who didn’t have a recently broken leg to travel on. Charles moved as fast as could, but he fell over a few times, and the thugs laughed.

Smiling Jack brought up his rifle and looked down the scope. He fired, and the bullet cracked the ground near one of Charles’s legs. My son kept on running, getting as far away as he could. I tore my attention away from him and looked down at my bonds. The ropes were too thick to break, but then I remembered the familiar weight in my boot heel. The bowie knife was still there!

“Your kid’s doing good,” Jack said. “Real good.” He fired again. “Damn. Nearly parted his curly hair!”

“Just wait, you bastards,” I whispered. I forced my hands down, gritting my teeth as I reached for the knife handle. My fingers scraped against the handle as I forced it into my grip. Finally, my fist closed, and I brought the bowie knife’s blade to the ropes around my hand.

“This time,” Jack said. “This time.” He stared down the scope for what seemed hours as I sawed frantically at the ropes. They broke, and I quickly grabbed the knife with both hands and started cutting the ropes around my leg. Jack’s gun fired. Charles’s crutch cracked in two, and the boy fell hard on the stony rubble.

“He’s a sitting duck now!” The thug closest to me said. “Take off his hands next, Smiling Jack, One finger at a time! Take off his-” I got behind him and dragged the blade across his throat. He gurgled out his life blood and died in my hands.

Smiling Jack and the three other thugs turned to stare at me. I reached down and picked up the peacemaker. Jack stared at his dead companion, bleeding away on the ground. “The boss said…he said…”

“I’ll wipe that grin off your face,” I said. I fanned out two shots, killing the two criminals on either side of Smiling Jack. He aimed his scoped rifle at me, but I grabbed the barrel and forced it upwards, then rammed my fist into his chest. He doubled over and I took the legs out from under him with a sweeping kick, then pushed him face first into the fire. He screamed, and I put my foot on the back of his head and pushed downwards, forcing his face deeper into the flames. I held it there until his screaming stopped, then I shot him the back of the head just to be sure.

Killing felt good, like settling back into a groove. I holstered my pistol with a practiced spin and walked down the slope of the hill. Charles lay in the rubble, his broken crutch necked to him. I picked him up and carried back on top of the hill. He saw the bodies.

“Did you-did you-“ he tried to ask.

“I’m sorry, son,” I said. “I broke that promise I made with you. I’m about to break it again, many times over.”

“Clark,” Charles sobbed. “If I hadn’t made you make that promise, you could have saved Myrtle! She might be alive if I didn’t make you promise not to kill anyone ever again! You could have just killed Griffin and-“

“It ain’t your fault,” I said. “That promise was a good thing and I thank you for it. But I need you to stay here now. I don’t want you heading back over the rubble, not with Griffin’s goons about and you with a busted leg and no crutch.” I spotted a small tunnel, dug in a large hill of rubble behind ours. “You’ll stay in there until I come for you.”

I carried him into the tunnel, and was surprised to find a lantern dangling from the roof. I drew a match from my belt and lit it, and gasped at what I saw. This was the place where Custer’s army boys had stashed all of their guns. Neat rows of rifles, ammunition, newfangled grenades, cavalry sabers, shotguns and more stood against the wall.

“Son of a gun,” I whispered. I set Charles down and he leaned against a wall. “It looks like there is a god.” I swiftly grabbed a bandolier of rifle ammo and slipped it on, then another, and another still. I reloaded my peacemaker and found a rack of other pistols and plenty of bullets for them. I slipped five more holsters around my ammo belt, swung a pair of shoulder-holsters with a big Colt Walker in each over my back, and then added a belt of grenades, and then another. I selected two bayoneted rifles and swung them across by back.

“Mr. Reeper, you can’t go out and fight, not alone!” Charles was shaking and nervous. “There must be one hundred men out there!”

I slipped a Springfield Rifle on my back. “Well, there’s about to be one hundred less.”

“But you’ll die!” Charles had started crying again, and I couldn’t blame him. “I already lost Myrtle! I don’t want to lose you!”

“Don’t fret, son,” I told him. I grabbed a shotgun off the wall, and used a heavy cavalry saber to cut the butt down, sawing it off. I did the same with a second one and slid the sawed-offs into my belt, then took a normal shotgun and slipped it across my back. “This is something I gotta do. If I don’t come back, then its only a matter of time until our friends find our trail. Jennifer Chaos is a mighty good tracker, and they’ll come after us and find you and take you home. We got plenty of money and they’ll raise you well.” Lastly, I took a sword and scabbard and slipped it around my waist. “And if I don’t come back, then I want you to know that I love you more than anything.”

Charles must have heard the determination in my voice. “Okay,” he said softly, drying his eyes.

I kneeled down and hugged him fiercely, then kissed him on the forehead. I stood up. “And Charles? I’m mighty sorry I broke that promise.”

“It’s okay, Clark,” Charles said. “Please come back safe.”

I walked out of the cave. The sun was still high and there was plenty of light to get some killing done. I saw the footprints were Griffin’s army passed in the rubble, and followed them. Didn’t take me long to turn the corner, pass through a couple more ruined buildings and enter a wide avenue. I stared straight ahead and saw that Griffin’s boys had been busy.

They had created a fort in the rubble, using all the armaments and sandbags the army had brought to create their base of operations. Maxim guns stood at each corner of the square structure, and the remains of several towers had been turned into guard posts. Inside, the prisoners stood in neat rows, waiting for their boss’s commands. I saw a small cave created by the angles of collapsed buildings, and figured that must be where Griffin went. I took one of the rifle’s off of my back and started walking forward.

“Hey! Hey you!” the guard in tower, a criminal wearing a tattered broad brimmed hat, called down to me. “Hey, ain’t that the fellow that-“ I leveled my rifle, looked down the sights, and squeezed off a round. The guard fell off the tower, a slug in his head. His body hit the ground hard. Now everyone knew I was there and that suited me fine.

I started running forward, firing my rifle, working the bolt and firing again. Convicts swarmed across the walls and tried to shoot back, but I kept the bullets coming. I ducked behind a large piece of rubble and reloaded as they wasted ammo at me, and then popped out and continued killing. I worked the bolt and pulled the trigger until my fingers my sore, but I didn’t feel it none. I tossed the rifle to the ground when I was finished with it and grabbed my second, going this time and picking my shots. Convicts toppled dead off of the walls or slumped over them, pierced by my rifle rounds.

When I got close enough, one of the Maxim guns started clattering away at me. I pressed myself against the wall of the fort and squeezed off some shots, killing the gunner and then the loader, and two more convicts that ran to replace them. I found a good handhold in the wall and started pulling myself up.

“He’s coming up the wall!” some of the convicts yelled. “Sweep him off!”

They leaned over with the wide muzzles of coach guns before them, and I drew one of the Walker Pistols from my coat. I fired upwards and shot a thug through the head, then pulled myself out of the way until his body toppled over. I pulled back the hammer and fired again, blowing a huge hole in a fellow’s chest and forcing him backwards. Four more shots killed four more men, and then I had reached the top of the wall.

I pulled out my remaining bayoneted rifle and charged the thugs still on the wall. I stabbed the thin blade through one, pulled the trigger and shot him while he was skewered, then pushed the body away with my foot, shot another convict, and stabbed the rifle through a convict’s neck. One more convict came towards me and I stabbed the blade in deep and it didn’t come out when I pulled. I let it fall with the body and went for my second Walker, fanning out all six shots and killed the men trying to come up the wall. I started running towards one of the Maxims, firing a sawed-off behind me and catching the crowd in the blast.

The groans of the wounded and dying were everything, almost as much as the gunshots that whizzed around me. Bullets clipped my legs and arms, and I even felt one ruffle my hair, but I didn’t pay them no heed. I hurled some grenades into the middle of the fort, sending body parts and fire all across the rubble covered ground. I reached the Maxim gun and drew out a revolver, killing all those around it, and then grabbed the machine gun and started using it.

I sprayed lead across the floor of the fort, mowing down the convicts that tried to stop me. The other three Maxims tried to focus their fire on me, and I felt the stream of lead from one cut deep in my arm. I didn’t shout from the pain and turned my Maxim on the other, killing the crew as I grabbed a grenade with my free hand. I tossed that at the second Maxim, and wiped out the third with another burst.

By then my machine gun clicked empty and it was time to get things more personal. I leapt off the walls of the fort and landed inside. I grabbed a sawed-off shotgun in each hand and fired. There were so many convicts that even the recoil didn’t make me miss any. Their ruined bodies fell to the ground, and another slug cracked against my leg and sent me to the ground.

I drew two pistols and fired from that position, killing the convicts that ran out at me. I came to feet shakily and started towards the entrance of the cave, but another slug slid in to my back. Something burst inside of me and toppled forward. Everything stopped, and I tasted iron on my tongue.

When I came to my feet, I found an eerie silence waiting for me. No groans of the wounded and dying, no gunshots thundered all about. The convicts were frozen in tableaux, some of their guns firing and bullets speeding out and stopped in midflight. I spun around and something felt familiar.

“Hello, Clark. Good to see you again.” The voice was cracked and weathered and came from my behind. I turned around and saw a thin fellow in a long brown duster. His face was snowy white and so was his hair. His eyes were deep black. He carried two colts in crossed gun belts. He walked over to me. “Goddamn. It’s been a while.”

“Not too long,” I said. I knew who this was on account of I had met him before. It was Death, and the last time I had seen him was in a dirty saloon in Little Rock, after a two-bit drunk name of Stellwater fired six shots into my back. This was Death, come to claim my soul.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Boy, you did give me a start last time. Making me wait for your son to carry you all the way to the Fountain of Youth proved mighty tiresome. Kind of relief it won’t happen this time, for my aching bones anyway.”

“How do you figure?” I asked. “The waters accepted me once, they’ll do it again. I ain’t too certain how the Fountain works, but I know from Johnny Rabbit’s example that one fellow can go back again and again, even if his beloved can’t go once on account of the fountains already excepted her lover at a previous time.”

“You got it mostly figured out,” Death agreed. “They won’t take too different people within a couple years of each other, but the same fellow can dip in time and time again. But that ain’t the reason why you won’t be resurrected. No one’s gonna be there to drag you down to Florida.”

“But Charles-“ I started.

Death shook his head. He drew a notebook from his jacket and checked it. “I gotta claim him next. I’m sorry, Clark. I truly am.”

“What? He ain’t but eleven years old? What are you talking about?”

“Well, after you catch a slug and die, Griffin realized that you got all them irons from the armory that he raided earlier. He goes there and finds Charles. The little kid doesn’t run or plead or nothing, just stares at Griffin and takes the bullet in the chest without complaint. It’s a quick death, I think, though it does have some pain.”

I looked around. “I can’t die, then!” I shouted. “You gotta give me some more time! Let me kill the rest of this scum and go get Griffin! I can’t let Charles die!”

“I don’t make the rules,” Death said.

“Don’t you say that to me!” I drew one of my pistols and fired at him. The bullet passed straight through him. I cried out in anger and charged him. I swung my fist into his face, but he disappeared, reappeared behind me and drew one of his pistols. He fired and blew off half of my face.

I felt the brains and eyeball fall away and saw it splatter on the ground. I looked back at him and stared. “You’ll never take me alive!” I shouted.

“I know,” he said, sighing. “I’ll keep on shooting you, Clark, until you become more agreeable. If you don’t, I’ll take the bits and pieces of you and wrap them in a bag and drag that away. Which one do you want?”

I began to despair. I had failed. Myrtle was dead, I was dead, and Charles was next. I fell to my knees and started to cry, like I had when I was just a little boy. I reached my out, and was surprised to find the hem of a familiar dress. I buried my face in it without thinking. Then I stopped and looked up. A kindly face looked down at me.

“Clark, you poor baby.” Marie Laveau stood before me. “Death isn’t that bad. You’ll get used to it.”

“Howdy, ma’am,” I said, wiping my face with my sleeves. “You caught me at a bad time.”

“Clark.” Marie Laveau helped me up. “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll take care of everything. Don’t worry.” She picked up the half of my face that had fallen off and slapped it back on. It stuck off like it had never been taken off. She picked up my eyeball and slipped it back in.

“You best stop that,” Death said. He swung a pistol at Marie. “He’s mine now. Let him be.”

Marie Laveau turned on Death. Her lips curled back and I saw the wrinkles appear on her face. “You have no place here!” She swung a fist at him and it cracked against his face. He recoiled.

“You ain’t nothing but a spirit!” Death said, spitting out a tooth. “How in tarnation did you manage to slug me?”

“Because I am not alone.” Marie Laveau snapped her fingers. “Baron Samedi! I have spent my life in your service! Please, help me now, in my hour of need!”

She asked, and he came. He appeared on the top of one of the walls, an impossibly tall, dark figure made even larger by his massive top hat that must have scraped the heavens. He walked towards us, dressed in a long dark coat with smoked glasses and white bones showing in his dark skin. He stared at Death.

“Leave this one alone,” he said in a deep rumbling voice. “You have so many others to take today. Leave this one alone.”

“The hell I will!” Death drew both of his pistols, but Baron Samedi was faster. Samedi held out his hand, and a serpent of bone and shadow streamed out and wrapped around Death’s hands, pinning them to his side. Death cursed in anger.

“Fine! You win! Get these snakes off of me and I’ll go!” Death stared at Samedi. “You got my word, big man.”

Samedi nodded and the shadow serpents vanished. Death stared at me. “And Clark, you may have cheated me twice, but I will come for you some day.”

“I know, sir,” I said. “But I hope you won’t come for Charles for a good long while.”

Death nodded and turned away and then stopped. “Oh, yes. I met Myrtle a while ago. She wanted me to tell her she loves you.”

“I know,” I told Death. “So long, now.”

“Happy trails.” Death started walking away. He had vanished by the second step. I looked back at Samedi and found that he was gone too. It was only me and Marie Laveau in that frozen battlefield. Marie Laveau stepped up and stared at me.

“Marie,” I said. “I forgive you.”

“I knew you would,” she whispered. She reached her hand into my chest, sent it under my skin, and tore out the slug that had killed me. “Now make your old woman proud.” Then she faded away into the air itself.

I hit the ground and let the slugs whistle over me, then came up with a grenade in my hand. I hurled it at the crowd behind me and killed a dozen men in the explosion, then drew out a revolver and my sword. The ground inside the fort was already littered with bodies, but I wasn’t satisfied yet. I charged into the mass of convicts, swinging the blade and blasting with my pistols. I decapitated a pair of criminals, ran through another, and slashed a fourth apart, all while blazing away with my revolver.

Marie Laveau’s parting words were on my lips as I fought, and I knew all the sacrifices that had been made for my benefit. I fought like I never had in my entire career of bounty hunting, shrugging off wounds and killing the ones that dealt them to me. My saber sung without pause and was soon covered in blood to the hilt, and when my pistol clicked empty, I drew out a second one and emptied that.

I kept the saber going until it became stuck in some guy’s bone and wouldn’t come out. I pulled the shotgun from my back and blasted away with that, working the pump with my hand. I blasted apart a thug coming towards me with a raised revolver and then stopped after he fell to the ground. There weren’t no one left to kill.

I looked at the cave. “Griffin,” I muttered. “Your time has come.”

I walked inside, killing the three guards that tried to stop me. I walked down the cave’s narrow hall and entered a small chamber at the far end. Griffin sat there at a desk, hard at work writing in a blank book. Though I didn’t recognize any of the letters, I could see they got smudged and scratched as he wrote. Piles of crumpled papers lay around him. He looked up at me and I saw the tentacles in his face were limp and flesh-colored.

“I can’t remember the glories I saw,” he said. “They left my mind. They are abandoning me!”

“That ain’t the only thing you’ll be losing, you murdering bastard.” I drew two revolvers and fired. He rocked backwards in his chair and came to his feet, going for his pistol as a tentacle shot from under his sleeve. I got six shots into his flabby chest before the tentacle knocked me to the ground. Griffin pushed the desk out of the way and pointed his pistol at me. He fired, but I rolled out of the way and bullet cracked the floor next to me. I fired again, blasting the tentacle from his arm. I fired again and shot the revolver from his hands, and then my pistols clicked empty.

We both stared at each other. I had no guns with any ammo in them on my person, and he had six slugs in him. He had his hook and his tentacles, I had my fists and my bowie knife. It was a fair fight.

I stood up and tackled him, punching deep his face and feeling the tentacles on his face grab my fingers and yank them. I reached down for my bowie knife, but he struck my chest with his hook and cut deep. He rolled off of me and stood up.

“I won in the end, Clark Reeper!” He shouted. “I’m not dead yet!”

“Yeah, you are, you son of a bitch!” I drew the bowie knife from my boot, hacked off his second tentacle and then stabbed deep into his throat. He fell backwards as I used my fist to punch the blade in deeper I stood over him and then grabbed the revolver from the ground. I emptied the remaining five shots into his face.

I stared at the mass of blood and skull that had been his face, but I didn’t feel too happy. Griffin was dead at my hand, but there was no bringing Myrtle back. I knew there weren’t nothing to gain in getting my revenge except for a little peace of mind, but now I had my fill of vengeance, and it hadn’t changed a thing.

I felt the blood on my chest from Griffin’s wound, and then tottered on my feet. I collapsed, and the darkness took me.

We had the funeral for Myrtle a couple of days after Griffin met his end. The city was putting itself back together, and the construction crews were hard at work getting the rubble off the street and putting everything back the way it was. Well, maybe not quite the way it was. The Professor told me that the Barbary Coast had been hit particularly hard, and authorities and such were working hard to keep it destroyed. The seedy coves and dens of sin around Telegraph Hill would be back, but they would never be as grand as they used to be.

The Professor was at the funeral, though it was only a mellow wine he was serving. We had the service in the outskirts of the city, in the Sherman’s plot in an upscale cemetery. It was a good, peaceful place and it was a quiet summer day that I know she would have liked. I said a couple of words, but I choked up and couldn’t go on, and everyone knew I wasn’t good at making speeches.

“Howdy, Clark,” the Professor said. “Haven’t seen you since that day.”

“Yeah,” I said. Jennifer Chaos had gone to check on me, and she found poor Myrtle. She figured out what happened and called the Browns and Little Napoleon and Doc Torrent to go after me. Winston was there, and he had recovered well enough for him to smell out me and Charles. He had led them to the armory where they found Charles, terrified and worried if I had survived or not, then they found Griffin’s fort, one hundred and sixteen corpses of the escaped convicts that made up Griffin’s private army, Griffin, whose body was already decaying, and me.

They patched me up good and took me back to the camp where Charles and I spent the day resting and cry. We were supposed to move back into our house the week after the funeral, but I wasn’t looking forward to it. The damn place was being rebuilt quickly and all the servants would be back, but I couldn’t live in it without thinking about Myrtle. Then again, I knew the servants liked me and Charles, and we liked them, and Myrtle wasn’t someone I wanted to forget ever. We would stay, and I hire some other advisers, a whole team of them, to run Winston’s Dry Goods.

“How’s Charles doing?” the Professor asked.

“He’s getting by. We all are.” I grabbed one of the bottles on the Professor table and drunk from it until the thing was empty. “Sorry. I’ve been drinking a lot lately. But I guess you can see why.”

“I don’t blame you,” the Professor said.

“Thanks.” I waved goodbye to him and walked over to Charles. My boy stood near Catherine and Cornelius, but the kids weren’t engaged in their usual excited conversation, each one standing sadly and awkwardly. I picked Charles up and hugged him tight before setting him down. He had a new crutch now, but wouldn’t need it for long. Myrtle would have loved to see him run and play like he did before Grffin’s thugs attacked him, but I guess she won’t.

“How’s Winston?” I asked. The armadillo stood near Charles’s feet. There was a small bruise on his back, but he seemed okay.

“He’s fine,” Charles said, picking up his pet. “But I think he’s sad. He misses her.”

“We all do,” I said. “What about Cornelius, how you getting by?”

“Very well, Mr. Reeper,” he said. “That fat guy, Rutherford, he and his wife want to adopt me and give me nice clothes, and even send me to Charles’s school. I think I’ll agree to it. Charles needs me around to protect him.”

“I think Mr. Reeper can do that,” Catherine said softly. “My parents are very thankful to you for taking care of me. They would like to have tea with you sometime, or maybe have you and Charles over for dinner.”

“I’d be happy to see them,” I said. “But not right now. Give it a little time.”

I looked over my shoulder at the rest of my friends. Jennifer Chaos was going out west soon, to see her beloved and her goat. She would be leaving on the next train, and thanked me for letting her have a good adventure. Little Napoleon was going with her. The diminutive desperado had dozens of schemes and plans he had to check on. Brimstone and Hellfire would be leaving as well, but they were taking the next boat out to the pacific. Seems the two of them had decided to work together to prevent other Old Ones from waking up, and there were rumors of a particularly large lizard creature spotted in Japan and they wanted to stop it. Doc Torrent was heading out, soon after the funeral. He was going back into automatons, trying to make a version of the MECH they functioned without a human pilot. I have a feeling whatever he produces will be a work of genius, but it may cause trouble.

They all came and send their condolences to me and Charles. Jennifer Chaos hugged me and kissed me on the cheek, then did the same with Charles. Brimstone and Hellfire Brown shook my hand, Little Napoleon patted my knee, and Doc Torrent nodded sadly as he wiped tears from his glasses.

Then an elderly white-haired couple joined us. I recognized Myrtle’s features in their faces, and knew these were her parents. “Hello, Mr. Reeper,” Myrtle’s father said. “I just wanted to say how sorry I am. We were so looking forward to the wedding.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Charles, let’s go on to the grave and say goodbye.”

Charles Green walked over and knelt down before the pale marble of Myrtle tombstone. I took the ring off my finger and set it down in the dirt. Charles sobbed silently and I hugged him close to me. It was right then that I knew what it was to be a civilized man.

-The End-

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