The woman fired her fourth round into the back of Carter’s head; his agony subsequently ended with his life. “Don’t think I do favors very often,” she mumbled to herself and raised her gun again.
The creature turned its head; her shot grazed the side of its face. Its grip released Carter and it crumpled to the floor in a lifeless pile of Confederate clothing. Gun smoke collided with the mist and obscured the awful, malignant creature.
One more round.
“You’re quite the handsome fella,” she backed up against the supply car’s door. “Come a little closer so I can get a better look at you.”
She had to be close for her final shot. She’d missed once, and the waves of confidence that seemed to accompany a seemingly automatic, natural skill were dispelled. For only a moment, she’d felt invincible. Maybe she really was the outlaw that Carter mentioned. She wasn’t afraid, yet, she was convinced the monstrosity before her could be killed.
However, none of this was real, was it? When did people wake up and find themselves on a train without any connection to reality? Who could live without memory—without identity—and find themselves face-to-face with a nightmarish being that twitched and convulsed as it stepped over a dead man’s body? As soon as that thing held her within its foul arms, she would awaken. She would know her name, and the strange calm that cloaked her senses and shielded her from the all-encompassing fear would no longer be hers. She would awaken and find herself a normal woman with a normal life. The creature would have been nothing more than a subconscious metaphor for her human experience. Perhaps, her husband was some kind of tenacious alcoholic, or perhaps, he’d gone off to fight the Yankees or the rebels in the cataclysmic war that engulfed the country.
Maybe her husband was dead, and the creature was the war itself, a terrible threat to the entire world, as she understood it.
The gun’s grip was slick with sweat from her palm. The mist swirled around the bloody fiend—its black maw opened and its bulging eyes rested hungrily upon her. She took a deep breath. It reached for her. She took another deep breath. Her chest heaved. She had to remember the gun. She had to remember to shoot.
Blood oozed from between its teeth while it heaved; syrupy gore splashed over her face and neck. She was blinded, but there was no time to wipe the blood from her eyes and recover herself; she opened one eye, shoved the gun into its mouth, and pulled the trigger. The top of its skull expanded as shards of bone disconnected from the top of the hellish creature’s head. It immediately crumpled and lay at her feet. The barrel of her smoking gun was slick with blood. Immediately, she spat several times to get the taste of blood out of her mouth.
It was dead. Finally. She took another deep breath.
Her hands moved of their own volition; she ejected the empty cylinder and deftly removed a fresh one from her belt while returning the empty. Salty sweat burned her eyes and trickled over her nose.
The train screeched along the tracks and the gunslinger lost her balance and fell forward into one of the seats. She held on as horrified metal protested the train’s sudden desire to stop with a loud, ear-shattering scream. Something must have happened to the conductor. She could only guess what it was.
Her suspicion was confirmed as the door to the hospital car blasted open. Fleshless, bleeding, gore-soaked men with bright, white eyes clamored over one another through the cloud of sickly green mist. Mounds of melted flesh had collected along the floor as the blue-jacketed creatures toppled out of the car and piled atop each other.
She could feel her stomach betray her. It growled and churned as burning bile collected in the back of her throat. Pitching forward, she heaved and expelled whatever food she’d eaten before succumbing to the nightmare realm. How vivid was such a nightmare—how powerful was her imagination to conjure such dreadful, impossible creatures? Would her surrender into their lustful hands finally exile her from this sanity-crushing netherworld? She could feel every sensation; she could taste the sour chunks of food that were lodged between her teeth. Strands of hair stuck to her forehead, and she struggled for her balance as the tracks beneath the train complained with a long groan. She spat and steadied herself against a seat with the gun gripped tightly between her cold fingers.
Surrender? No. It wasn’t an option. If reality had spiraled into an unnamable hell, then she would resist the demonic creatures with every last ounce of strength. Dream or reality, it made no difference. Though she was unsure about her identity, she was certain that no fiber of her being was willing to give up.
Among that twisted menagerie of greedy hands, were a finite number of creatures. She counted them; five. The Remington in her fist was fully loaded.
The train groaned and crawled to a final stop. The former Union soldiers scrambled over one another to reach the woman who held a gun at her hip. They were in various states of disrepair; some of them already had their arms or legs severed. Those victims of the horrific war’s battle-machinery had been homeward bound, their sacrifice earning them a reprieve from the conflict that tore the country in two.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and cocked the hammer back.
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