"When everything's come out sideways, there ain't nothing but to take what's left and get clear. But when a man ain't got nothing left, what then?"

With my leather satchel under one arm I close my eyes and remind myself to stop smacking the peppermint Chiclet I’ve ground to dirt between my molars. The ten mils of Curare gives the syringe in my calloused hand a business-like weight. The damn guard has witnessed me do this to over a hundred others. Now he’s gonna experience the horror straight up.

Sons a bitches. I may have sold my sixty-year-old soul to the devil, but ain’t no company gonna be curator over it while I’m still living. And ain’t nobody laying a hand on my little Abby.

I catch myself grinding the spent gum between my molars again, wishing to God it was a different kind of chew. Casting a furtive glance around the basement-lab-recently-turned-death-chamber, my stomach curdles. Weeks of dried blood, human defecation and gunpowder have transformed it into a nightmare—a damned human travesty, and on Christmas Eve. Bullet holes pepper the heavily-plastered rock walls.

My last patient, if you can call the wretched things that, lies bleeding out while still bound in restraints. Her autonomic system twitches reflexively. I used the last of the morphine to sedate the whole lot of ‘em, thirty-eight souls. A damn drop in the bucket. Most of the victims aren’t even making it to the hospital, and why bother?

Come on. What the hell is he waiting for? The lab had been eerily quiet, void of moans and thrashing for several minutes. Pressed up against the chipped and peeling paint, I grip the satchel containing my medical notes—my letters to Dot—in one hand and an invitation straight to the gates of hell dripping from the other. With my shirt soaked through, suspenders irritating the skin beneath, my thoughts wander to the outside world, where they say it might snow.

I close my eyes and try to envision the intricate white flakes—anything to take my mind off the flickering electric lights and the stink of human gall. Instantly I see my Isabella, Abby cooing in her lap. The two of them represent my second chance. It's a warm October day at our favorite picnic spot looking out over Gordon Valley, the last pleasant time we shared together. We rest our backs against the giant cedar elm, dawdling fingers in the dirt while interlacing them. It's the same spot I proposed to both my wives.

Dammit, God. I done lost it all once. Ain’t that enough?

Finally a rustling comes from the hall. “Hey Doc. What’s going on in there?”

Why don’t you come and find out.

Footsteps. His shadow lengthens and then shortens on the far wall.

“Doc Quick—” I ease in behind him as he enters the room and find the fat of his haunch before he knows what’s coming. “What the—” He jerks away from the needle too late. “Doc?” He’s looking me in the eye now, trying to draw his pistol. Instead he lurches forward. I catch him, placing him gently on the floor—his eyes still riveted on mine. I don’t want him to knock his head on the tile and take the easy way out. Instead, for the next few minutes he’ll feel his heart stop and his lungs deflate as every muscle in his body stops responding while his mind’s still very much awake.

I toss the syringe and pick up my satchel before taking a final glance at the dying company goon. “Merry Christmas. Tell Beelzebub I’ll see him later.”

The temperature falls steadily as the freight elevator rises forty feet up from the hospital's underbelly to the public level, and then past it. Manned by a skeleton crew on the eve of our Savior's birth, the second floor of the facility is nearly empty. Within minutes I descend the stairwell and slip out the back door.

Wet with sweat and shivering, the first thing I do is rifle through my satchel until I find a replacement for what’s been frustrating me for the last twenty minutes. Flicking the exhausted clot from my mouth, I replace it with a fresh one before dropping the box of Chiclets in my trouser pocket next to the broken pocket watch that’s been with me through it all.

I take a deep breath and stare into the early evening darkness as the first flakes of snow drift gently to earth.

October 28th, 1919

Dearest Dot,

I don’t know what to do. The whole damn thing’s a mess. Out of the five survivors from mine #4, four are dead already. Only the woman’s alive. She’s sweating blood from her chest, shoulders and neck. Her corneas are yellow, but Vezzoni tried to tell me they’ve always been like that, God knows why.

She’s extremely sensitive to light. Her pulse is faster than a jackrabbit in a cage, and she sweats like crazy. I gotta change her IV twice a day just to keep her alive. Morphine seemed to help for the first week. But she broke free of her restraints twice, even with enough dope to drop a mule. Now the company has me shooting all of them with Curare. Damn inhumane if you ask me, but no one’s asking.

Dot, I’m just a country vet playing doctor. I know you never thought that. But dammit, I couldn’t even deliver our baby girl without losing you. And now this?

It’s spreading. I keep telling Vezzoni they gotta find someone else, someone qualified to deal with this plague. I got three more today, including one that doesn't even work at the mine. Before this is over I think we’re all gonna need a priest rather than a doctor.

Is it airborne? It can’t be in the blood. Whatever it is, it seemed to start with the explosion. But there’s nothing left. Everything burned but the young woman strapped down and dying right under my nose.

I haven’t seen Isabella and Abby for 10 days. I miss ‘em something terrible, but I’d sooner eat my own spleen than risk infecting them. I told them to stay in Palo Pinto with her parents.

Something isn’t right, Dot. The company seems more interested in covering everything up than finding a cure. Dammit, gotta go. Thanks for listening.

Quincy

The sweat running down my back begins to freeze. I huff a cloud of breath into the darkened sky, watch it trail off while mentally girding my loins for the long night ahead. First, the Model T. Jogging across the rutted out dirt lot between the hospital and the maintenance barns behind, I try to stretch my slumped shoulders, loosen the arthritis in my joints.

With a smirk, the stiffness reminds me of the dead guard lying in the basement. Better to have stiffened muscle movement than none at all. At least he’ll make a beautiful corpse, unlike the rest of us when we finally die from the twitch.

Reaching the third stall, I lift the wooden latch and heave the heavy door open a couple of feet. It lurches in its tracks before coming to rest. The smell of oil-sodden dirt and sawdust wraps me in a familiar warmth, washing away the stench of death from the lab. The faintest of light penetrates a few feet into the gloom within, reflecting off whirling dust motes in the air. Without wasting time I duck inside, fetch a hand-held electric lamp from my satchel and flick it on.

Forgotten machines and tools cast skeletal shadows against the far wall—predatorial and lurking, or maybe just waiting for human folly to free them from their obligatorily subservient existence. But not yet. Not until you’ve helped me get my Isabella and Abby away from here for good.

In the back of the stall I tug a heavy canvas, uncovering the machine I’ve spent every stolen moment for the last month creating—a bastardized Model T with the sole purpose of escape. The weak beam of hand-held light glints off the windshield, then the gleaming headlights, all four of them. Two are the factory electric lights, but the two I cobbled to the fenders for fanning light further abroad are carbide, and hopefully bright enough to blind God himself from the deeds I’ve premeditated.

Besides a Ruckstell axle, roll cage, shaved-down head, and a Bosch timing cover, I replaced the coils with a distributer. Add a touch of alcohol in the fuel, Doc’s own Castor oil lubricant with duel exhaust and she represents my best hope. There’s no turning back now. I pop the trunk. Fumbling with a box of 12-gage shells, I manage to spill its entire contents.

“Dammit, old fart. Get a grip.” I slow down, grab the shells five at a time and load all four of the Browning Auto-5s welded onto the doors and the roof—four in the clip, one in the chamber. Finally she’s hot and ready to go, twenty shells all told. Buckshot, everyone of ‘em.

I chew the inside of my lower lip, cratered from years of tobacco. Tucking the gum away there, I eject a string of sticky spit through the gap in my teeth and onto the dirt floor—pounded over the years into a fine silt. “Pandora’s box done been opened boys, and there ain’t no closing her up. The whole state a Texas might pay fer it, but my Isabella and little Abby sure as hell ain’t.”

Time to go. A light flickers in my peripheral vision, dancing inside the garage door. I switch my lamp off and crouch behind an arc welder. Now flick my giblets. Why the hell didn’t I close that? A guard stands in the opening, silhouetted against the night sky, his shotgun poking around where it doesn’t belong.

I grit my teeth. Searching my immediate surroundings for anything helpful, my eyes locate a heavy chain. The come along. Immediately over my head dangles a hook, a series of pulleys and enough cable to get the job done.

“Anyone in here?”

I clutch a file, take a deep breath and chuck it toward the opposite corner of the garage. As soon as the sound reverberates from the recesses I lunge upward. Looping the hook with the chain, I swing the whole contraption toward the door with everything my crusty old muscles can muster.

“Hey!”

I pitch forward and down as the confines of the garage blast wide open. Ricocheting birdshot from the guard’s shotgun pings all about. But in the next instant the hook and chain find their mark. Scrambling to my feet I hurdle a work bench, pulling my damn groin in the process.

The guard bounces off the door, rebounding in my direction. Limping forward I kick the shotgun from his grip before he can level it again. In a single movement I flip one end of the chain around his neck twice, catch it on the hook and straddle his midriff with my full weight. Now I ain’t as muscular as I used to be, but Isabella’s cooking has given me a healthy bulge around the middle that would take more than a month to wear off.

For a second I worry it isn’t enough. Then his legs wobble and fold. Without slack enough in the chain for his knees to find the floor, he chokes out in twenty-seven seconds. The whole time I’m counting the seconds, all I can think about is the fire emanating from the pulled muscle in my groin. And people say doctoring has become a young man’s business. There’s no doubt in my mind that killing is.

I glance out the opened door, no point in closing it now, and find the coast clear. Fat white flakes fall, only hours away from a white Christmas—the first since I was a boy. Suddenly shivering, I return to the Model T and pull a heavy wool coat from the trunk.

I hold my pocket watch up to the hand-held light. The hands are of course frozen in the same place they’ve been for the last twelve years. Looks like it ain’t time to die. Finally, I secure my satchel on the floorboard of the passenger side and hang the watch from the rearview mirror. The T starts without pause. Pedal down, I punch through the back wall, around the bone yard and gather speed, headed straight for the main gates.

November 22nd, 1919

Dot,

They’re all dying. Not just miners. Everyone. Hospital staff, town folk, everyone. I can’t stop it. They’ve given me a pistol. One bullet to the back of the head has become my only prescription. The patients are showing signs of rapid abiotic decomposition. I can’t tell what’s causing it. But it’s almost like their suffering putrefaction while still alive. Fingernails and hair fall out. Flesh turns pulpy white and cool to the touch despite the constant sweating and rapid pulse.

The floor’s been covered in blood for over a week. They’re all dying, Dot. Everyone, except the girl. Just yesterday I learned her name. Gayle. God knows why, but the process appears to have been arrested in her and only her. She doesn’t get better. She doesn’t get worse. She’s lucid, I can tell. But the twitch has taken her voice. If only she could talk. She was there, Dot, at the very beginning. I think she knows what’s happening, and I’m convinced the company knows more than they’re letting on.

What have I done? I never should have taken this job. We’re prisoners here, the healthy that is. The company has started a tent village south of town, supposedly for quarantine. But I’ve seen it. It’s a prison where the inflicted tear apart the healthy. They’re building check points around the whole area. No one in, no one out.

They knew I couldn’t cure it. They knew I would fail from the beginning, and I’ve been acting my part. But it won’t be long before it’s apparent to everyone that the hospital is a death camp. Then the players won’t be needed at all, including Isabella and Abby. At this point I wouldn’t put anything past Vezzoni and the rest of them.

Vezzoni’s been looking for my notes. He knows I’ve been keeping them. I think it’s the one loose end keeping me alive. Yesterday the idiot passed them over, dismissing them as old love letters. To think, I never wrote you one jot or tittle while you were living. Never expressed my love for you in written form until you were rotting in the ground. Now our letters are keeping us both alive.

Quincy

The empty parking lot leaves an easy approach to the main gates, including the guard booth put in last week—the whole mess flanked with cyclone fence and razor wire. Trench warfare has reached Thurber, Texas. By God, if its war they want, tonight I’ll give ‘em a taste. The guards on duty notice me moments before I smash through the rail at 40mph. Flying past the booth I lean across the passenger seat and fly my middle finger to give ‘em something to remember me by. And to all a goodnight.

After a short mile I hit Highway 1 and open her up to 55mph heading northeast, taking the paved road the long way round. It feels good to be in control of something in my life, to feel the machine respond to my every command. If only people would be as cooperative, or the weather. Snowflakes, plump with water, dance in the headlights and explode on the windshield. Mesmerized, I slow to 40mph to keep my bearings. If it weren’t for the headlights behind me, I might appreciate the beauty of it.

Before I worry too much about the lights behind me, I spot more up ahead—a makeshift road block and checkpoint. I flick the switch to cut off the carbide lights, causing them to dim slowly. By the limited glow of the electrics I search the side of the road for a turn-off I know to be there—a wagon trail heading south toward Antelope Bluff. Since they paved the #1 the older route only gets used by youth looking for a place to neck.

A flash of color arrests me. I grip the wheel and give it a yank back into the roadway too late. With a jolt I bounce over the object and catch a quick glimpse of others further afield. Slamming the brakes, I hear and feel a crunching under the tires before the T slides unevenly to a stop. The whole damn road is covered. What in God’s green earth?

Taking a quick glance back toward the lights approaching in the distance, I open the door and step onto the uneven surface of the road. After a few steps around to the front bumper I freeze. Good God.

Bodies. Cold as the grave and collecting snow, a whole slew of ‘em. Just plopped down and left in the road like rotten fruit fallen from a tree. They cover the whole road beyond the straining electric lights.

A rustling in the dark sends a sizzle of electricity jumping through my body. A faint growl encourages me back inside the T. I gun the engine. Bouncing along a road paved by the dead and dying, I notice lights from up ahead, jolting their way toward me while the lights from behind are gaining.

Finally I jerk the wheel onto the rutted wagon trail leading south to the overlook. Ghostly hallucinations dance in my peripheral vision. Mirages of former humans, the twitch infected, are piled in clumps along the side of the road. Tattered clothing flutters from mesquite branches. Ghastly faces, blurred with fury, loom out of the shadows. The countryside burns alive, flooded with spectral images—black flames of plague. And I can’t stop it. Until eventually it’s burning me.

I slam on the brakes and skid sideways, stopping short of the bluff by less than a foot. “Get a grip, you mindless ninny.” I slap myself and take a look about. Perfect. The approach to Antelope Overlook is shielded by a mound high enough to hide the cars parked there. Over the years the road has carved a notch though it like the sight on a rifle, with room for only one car to pass through at a time. Tonight I’m betting that car’s gonna be mine.

Facing out the way I came, I flick the fuel line open to the carbide lights, but wait to hit the electric ignition. I spit the spent lump of gum onto the floor and replace it. Untangling the pull chains that dangle from the two Browning A-5s welded to the roof, I give in to a maniacal smile. Two sets of beams flicker into view, energizing the steadily falling flakes of snow.

I drop the pedal to the cold metal floor, tires digging into the softening earth. The engine roars, overwhelming the duel mufflers momentarily before surging with the power reaped from a billion tiny explosions, harnessed and funneled into moving parts. Exhilarating, the feeling focuses me as well. At the crest of the notch I hit the igniter for the carbide headlights. Primed and ready, they burst into blinding stars.

Bearing down at full-throttle, the company cars falter. I clutch the pull chains and yank. Gunpowder flashes from the tips of the muzzles peeking over the lip of the roof. The windshield of the lead car explodes as the shotguns thunder their fury. Time slips into slow motion, everything happening at once.

The company car jerks wildly off the road, climbing the steep slope of the notch. I slack my grip on the pull chains. The Browning Autos kick out spent shells, loading fresh ones in the same motion. My engine growls, reaching a higher level of performance on level ground. Through all of it a smile curls my lips.

In the span of seconds, I tighten my grip on the pull chains again. Duel flares emerge. Sparking gunpowder hurdles buckshot indiscriminately through metal, flesh, bone—ripping apart the second Model T like an unopened can of beans left in the fire.

Clinging to the hill above me, the first car reaches gravity’s limit and topples over backwards. Barely missing, it smashes into the road behind me. Simultaneously the car in front snaps sideways like a horse’s ankle in a rabbit hole. Losing its purchase, it rolls. Shattering glass mingles with the snow swirling in the headlights as they illuminate the side of the notch.

Closing the gap too fast and no where to go, I choose gas over brakes. Focusing on the tumbling cars’ lights, I beg my T to climb the side of the notch. Almost too late I remember the rubber bulb added for just this occasion. Filled with extra gas for climbing uphill, I give the bulb two quick pulses. Spinning in the dryer dirt while climbing, I turn my head to follow the shattered shell of the company T, dodging it with less than a foot to spare. The wrecked auto’s electric lights finally go dead as I pass.

Letting off the gas for the first time, I pull back onto the rutted path and focus on the two company cars still in the distance. My watch swings subtly from its chain.

Snowflakes crystallize on the windshield, giving me an idea. With my left foot I work the pedal added for operating the wipers and distributing lab alcohol over the glass at the same time. If it’s freezing here, it’ll be even colder at the top of Ranger Hill. Despite the snow stealing my speed advantage, my special tires might turn the tables yet. Just last week, after word of the forecast, I embedded the rubber with pecan shells.

I switch off the electric lights and cut the gas to the carbide lamps, bouncing back toward Highway 1 on nothing but touch and memory. Closing within fifty feet, I see the lead driver startle as I appear out of thin air like an apparition. He gesticulates wildly to the goon holding a rifle in the passenger seat as I pass them by.

The element of surprise gone, I veer back into the road and pull the chains to the Auto-5s, lodging a shot in the engine block of the trailing Model T. Fishtailing, I bounce across the road in front of it and gun the engine to pass them on the passenger side. Simultaneously, both goons riding shotgun find their triggers, perforating the side and trunk of my Model T.

While accelerating toward the paved surface of Highway 1, their second shots miss. My jaw pops as I unclench my teeth. A flat tire or a hole in my gas tank and the night ends sooner than later, and I still have several miles to go—several miles between me and my second chance.

December 15th, 1919

Dearest Dot,

John McCutchen showed up this morning. J.T. brought the old man in over his shoulder, asking for me by name. He flashed his irons, and the company chose to send for me rather than shoot it out in the lobby. But they warned me that they would reconsider if I tried anything funny. Funny? What the hell could I find funny about any of this?

It broke my heart, Dot. John was almost gone already. J.T. had done what he could to comfort the old man. Crossed a couple of check points to get him to the hospital, which must have been no small deed. Damn if every time I see the boy I don’t experience the grief of our Elizabeth’s murder all over. I can see it in his eyes too. After sixteen years as a Ranger I know he’s got other ghosts to haunt him, but Liz was the first. Like you were for me.

That first one’s different. I never could say goodbye to you, Dorothy. Maybe it’s punishment for the guilt. Maybe I still need your ghost to keep me alive. All I know is after today, J.T.’s got one more to add to his collection. But this one’s gonna demand blood recompense.

Dammit, Dot. There’s just certain things a man should never be asked to do. Putting a bullet in the head of his crazed old man is one of them. I tried to tell J.T. there was nothing to be done, that the twitch was a one-way road to hell, but he pleaded with me. And John had been the one to pull me out of the gutter after Elizabeth.

I really wished there was something I could do. I took my stethoscope and played the role, Doc Quick on call. But I got too close. The old man looked nearly dead, and I couldn’t picture John hurting a flea. But when the cold metal touched his chest, his eyes lit up. He seized my collarbone in his jaw, gnawing on it like a junk yard dog.

Before old John could snap the bone in two, the lobby echoed with a single shot. Just like I done thunked his knee with my hammer, J.T. dropped him on reflex alone. Not until I cradled his dead papa in my blood-stained smock did the emotion settle into his eyes—the realization of what he’d just done. And a hell of a thing at that.

It’s a shit world, Dot, and everything’s come out sideways. There ain’t nothing but to take what’s left and get clear. But when a man ain’t got nothing left, what then? You and I both know I’ve been there, and that the devil knows me by name. Well, J.T.’s there now, and poke me in the eye if I’m lying, but I fear for the devil.

Quincy

Heading southwest on Highway 1, I slow before reaching the pull-out for Ranger Hill. Just recently paved, the asphalt’s still bubbling with oil. Even cold, the moisture has made it slicker than snot on a skillet. And near the top I’m betting it’s frozen.

Sliding to a stop, I grind the gears before shifting into reverse and whipping around to face the way I’d just come. Multiple sets of headlights grow larger—bear’s eyes emerging from the back of a cave.

Like dancing on a banana peal, I back up the steep hill at full throttle, using gravity to keep gas and oil in the engine and ground up pecan shells to keep me on the road. Ranger Hill has bested stout vehicles and skilled drivers during good weather. Never me mind you, but I’ve never tried it in the snow.

After the first thirty yards it’s slow going, but I’m still going. The lead company car hits the base of the hill at full speed, trying to use its momentum to reach me. It damn near works, but as soon as a bullet spiderwebs my windshield I pull the chains dangling from the roof. With a bark, muffled by the accumulating snow, the shotguns shatter the company car’s windshield and spew an oily steam from the block, scalding both men instantly. The car careens off the road, smashing into a clump of trees.

The two cars remaining have already started up the hill in reverse, taking the slow but steady pursuit. I switch my left foot over to the gas pedal and try to lift my right to kick out the splintered glass, but the movement reminds me of my pulled groin.

Suddenly a spotlight ignites the air around me and I decide to worry more about what’s waiting for me at the top of the hill. Holding the wheel steady, I continue my slow ascent while racking my mind on how to deal with the surprise check point. As I near the crest of the hill one car has fallen away, apparently stuck, but the other is keeping pace.

The guard booth sits on the south side of the road. A couple of company Model Ts block the road, parked grill to grill. I picture little Abby waiting for me in the cold, depending on me, and my paternal instincts clutch my guts. In a flash of orneriness, I decide the least likely approach seems the best. So I gun the engine, still in reverse, and head straight for the roadblock.

Bullets perforate the back of the cabin and the door, shattering the glass. While spinning on the ice and trying to correct, I lean across and open the passenger-side door, equipped with a fully-loaded Browning. Aiming with the door itself, I start pulling the trigger.

As long as I’m part of this gunpowder ballet, I might as well keep calling the shots. The guard booth splinters, papers exploding from the desk like geese from a pond. “Hyaw!” All five shells spent, I flop back in my seat, leaving the door open.

Without time to think I direct the T toward the guard rail on the north side of the road. There’s a tiny gap between the parked cars and the rail. Not enough to fit through, but…

The back of the car collides with the tapered end of the rail, bucking up and over the top of it. One wheel off the ground, I keep backing up the railing, clipping the passenger-side door against the parked car and tearing it off. But with two wheels off the ground and the other two slipping on the ice, the car sticks fast.

Before I can cuss I catch a flash of movement through my spidered windshield. The fool company goons in the only remaining Model T had intended on following my lead. The brakes locked and still sliding on the ice, they smash into me.

The sudden jolt squirts me through the roadblock, popping my spent Chiclet from my mouth and onto the dash. Wobbling on two wheels and watching the hard lump of gum tumble toward the missing passenger-side door, I hold my breath. Find your feet, girl.

But the T gasps and collapses to its side just behind the pile-up, spinning slowly on the frozen surface of the road. Gunfire whizzes overhead and pings off the undercarriage, coming dangerously close to puncturing the carbide reservoir I welded there—the effects of which I don’t care to explore.

I glance down at the icy surface of the road where the passenger door used to be and fend off a bout of dizziness. Up it is. Stiffly, I unfurl my legs. Standing on the frame of the car I push the driver’s side door all the way open, still clutching the Auto-5 through the hole I’d cut for it. Snowflakes rush past, stars against a canvas of black.

Gauging both the spin of the car and the direction of the incoming fire, I hold my breath until the right moment and pull the trigger. The cabin of the Model T reverberates as the sounds of gnarled metal and exploding glass fills the cramped space. The scent of sparking gunpowder wafts through the opening above me. Eventually the spotlight shatters, extinguishing the snowflakes with it. After expending all five shells and spinning slowly to a stop, I gather that all of the company cars have been disabled, but not all the company goons.

It’s dark and no one is shooting, so I climb out the door and onto the side of the car for a better view. Fifty yards on the other side of the blockade, a guard faces away from me. He gestures furiously toward the darkness enshrouding the road while the car I’d assumed was stuck crests the hill at a creep. Failing to climb in reverse, they had tried low and made it, but starved of gas.

After a few more frantic words from the guard the car accelerates slowly but steadily in my direction, the lug nuts intending to push the pile into me. I jump down and try desperately to spin the Model T so that the inevitable collision might rock it back onto its tires. But the water created by the friction of the spin has frozen it in position.

Finally there’s nothing to do but run or jump back inside and pray for the best. While not a praying man, I still choose the latter. The guard, approaching on foot, takes a couple of pot shots in the dark—enough to make my cheeks pucker as I lower myself back into the T and pull the driver-side door shut with a loud clang.

A second later the jumbled roadblock of company cars impacts mine, pushed from the other side. The jolt unsticks me from the ice, but nothing so fortunate as flip me back onto my tires. Swearing, I reach for the glove box, and the .38 caliber pistol I keep there. Soon the functional car will clear the gap and pin me in. Briefly I think of Isabella and Abby waiting for me until sunrise before retuning to Palo Pinto fraught with worry.

I swear again before realizing that I’m still moving. The icy surface of the road visibly picks up speed below the passenger door opening. Tobogganing isn’t driving, but it’s movement, and in the right direction. The slide increases to a slow jogging pace and it strikes me that I’ve got no control—over speed or direction.

Dry-mouthed and clenching my jaw, I fumble around in my britches pocket for a new peppermint Chiclet—the one damn thing I still control. Sliding faster than a healthy man can run, I shove the remainder of the box back in my pocket, and before I can wonder about the first turn in the road, the Model T strikes a rock and starts to tip—tits up.

Off balance, I bellyflop onto the ceiling. Then like a pinball against the flippers, the car strikes the guard rail and spins back into the road, skidding even faster now on nothing but the two Brownings I welded to the roof like skis. At least now I can see out the shattered windshield.

But the limited scenery revealed by the headlights keeps shifting from road to ditch to road to ditch so fast I feel like a kid spinning around a bat. Rattling around on the ceiling, what I think at first is the teeth in my head, turns out to be my pocket watch. Clutching it, I focus on the busted surface, the frozen hands.

It ain’t time yet to die. I shove it in my pocket, close my eyes, clench my jaw and prepare for the impact I know’s gotta be closer than a snake bite. But rather than a sudden jolt, the car slows gradually, the sound of skidding on ice replaced by slick asphalt, then gravel. When the car finally hits, the momentum throws me against the driver-side door before slowly rolling one more time, and with a final crunch lands back on all four tires.

I open the left eye first, then the right. My butt’s back in its seat. My eyes are looking straight out the opening that used to be my windshield, the Model T planted square in the ditch at the bottom of Ranger Hill.

For a brief moment I hear nothing. Nothing at all—my mind and my senses blank, and it’s the most peaceful I remember feeling for the last thirty years. Through the corner of my eye I spot my satchel riding on the seat beside me. The burdens of the moment flood back in as I return the bag to the floorboard.

Straightening up, I grip the wheel with both hands, finally realizing the engine isn’t running. I take a deep breath and crane my neck to look back up the hill. With no signs of pursuit I turn the key. The baby starts right up, never skipping a beat.

After a blessedly uneventful couple hours, I arrive at Fort Belknap. Abandoned since shortly after the Civil War, not much of the place remains, but it makes for a meeting place I can control. Driving past the crumbling stone pillars of the entrance, my mind replays the same thoughts it’s been brooding on for the last hundred and twenty minutes—whether Isabella and Abby were able to make it. Whether they were safe. And healthy.

I hadn’t seen any signs of the plague since Breckenridge, where a sign had been posted more or less telling people to stay the hell out. I roll past the stone building that served as the magazine and park behind it. Three times I tap my dead watch, hanging again from the mirror. Turning off the engine, I step out onto the frozen ground with effort—my old body stiff, frozen and bruised. The groin pull forces me to drag my left leg like a cripple, leaving a trail through the light powdering of snow.

I duck under low-hanging live oak branches until I reach the mostly intact remains of a small stone house. In the past it might have been an officer’s. At the moment, it’s wrong. I told Isabella to light a lamp. A shiver ripples through my aching body. They didn’t make it.

I limp up to the front door. Lifting my hand to push it open, I hesitate with my fingers resting on the rough wooden grain. The clouds break, pierced by moonlight for the first time that night. Something’s not right. I glance at my feet where tracks lead to the door. It takes me a moment. A heavy boot print sunk a quarter inch into the spongy ground couldn’t be Isabella’s, and I know it ain’t mine.

A branch snaps in the trees behind me. Putting my shoulder down I burst through the door and three strides inside the single-room building before slipping in a puddle. Re-pulling my groin, I dip awkwardly to one knee and barely catch myself before tumbling into the far wall.

A skittering object comes to rest in the far corner, swept there by the door. Men’s voices drift inside, barking gruff orders and getting closer. My mind is afire with anger and fear. This isn’t the plan. Why won’t they leave us alone? Why couldn’t God honor one solitary man’s plan to protect his family?

I scuttle toward the far corner, groping for the mystery object, groping for a scrap of hope, anything. What I find is little Abby’s shoe—pink with a white buckle, her favorite. My fingers stick to it, the shiny surface smudged with blood. My whole hand and my foot are dripping with coagulating blood.

My mind screams, then my lungs, my throat, giving voice to the rage, the grief. The darkness that had been hibernating within my soul, licks the insides of the stone walls like tongues of fire, like dynamite tearing at the surface of the earth bursting through a hidden seam and into the light of day.

“Go in and get him!” The voice is Vezzoni’s. And if there is a hell, I know in that moment that it’s my new mission to put him there. Even if I have to introduce him to the devil personally. Ignoring the signals sent from my exhausted muscles, I pick myself off the floor and lunge for the back window and the trip wire set to spark off 35 pounds of TNT.

Immediately after my shoulder collides with the frozen ground, the stone house detonates. I crumple and skid before being tossed like a ragdoll in the shockwave pursuing me out the window. Fragments of the tattering roof whistle overhead and disappear. And then I hear nothing but ringing.

Billowing smoke and dust settles over me as I struggle to lift my battered body. Seconds later the heavier pieces of roof collide with the tops of the trees on their way back to earth. Dragging myself away from the house, I pick glass out of my arms until I reach the clearing where I parked.

Luckily the idiots ignored my auto, choosing to head straight for the stone house. Sliding through the gaping hole on the passenger side, I crank it over and gun the engine. After tearing a donut in the grass I shoot back out the way I came.

Everything goes blood red with thoughts of revenge, as the memories of my dying Dot and my murdered Liz are joined by the rotgut feeling of holding Abby’s blood-stained shoe in my hand. God dammit! Even Job had been allowed to start over!

Swinging wide around a tight corner, my watch floats across my field of vision. The frozen hands mock me. The time’s come, but I’m not going alone. There’s only one thing to do first, and it so happens it’ll fit nicely into the plan. I let up slightly on the gas, allow my racing heart to slow along with the auto.

Finally I see lights in the rearview mirror. Nodding my head in approval, I continue toward the only fitting place for it all to end. Thirty minutes later I bounce onto a dirt road, less than a mile ahead of Vezzoni and his men. I intentionally shoot gravel in an arcing rooster tail, tearing up the ground worse than a deer in rut so Vezzoni won’t lose me.

I speed up to give myself time, whipping past mesquite branches that cramp the little-used dirt road. Skidding to a stop under the giant cedar elm, I rifle thought my satchel for the bundle of letters tied off with string. It’s you and me, Dot.

Gimping toward the tree, I collapse near the rock at its base. With a grunt I tip it over and brush off the metal box I’ve kept underneath it for over 40 years. Tears are flowing freely down my grizzled cheeks, lightly slapping the slick surface. Guilt, regrets, grief, anger, loss, all colliding in the moment. A locket, a photograph, now a bundle of letters—and J.T.’s wedding ring. Just a few years ago, he’d returned, taken it off and buried it with the rest.

When he doesn’t hear from me, he’ll know. He’ll come here first. And he’ll finish the job. Hell’s gonna get crowded.

With the rock back in place, nothing’s left but to blow out the candle. And I got the perfect method in mind. Somewhere distant, cloaked by night I hear the company cars closing in. They smell blood.

My carbide lanterns were crushed on Ranger Hill, but the carbide reservoir is over three quarters full. I’ve already picked the spot—the wash. Thirty yards back, the dirt road turns sharply and crosses a dry wash before creeping steadily uphill to the edge of the bluff shaded by the giant cedar elm.

Quickly I use the camp shovel to load the trunk with a couple inches worth of gravel. Then, unraveling several feet of fuse, I rip up the cushion behind the seat and feed two feet of the wick into the reservoir welded to the bottom of the Model T. Using my forearm I measure the length of the fuse left, run the numbers through what’s left of my mind and come out with 18 seconds. Eighteen seconds.

Headlights dance through the skeletal mesquite trees and live oaks still clinging to life. I estimate the distance to the bottom of the wash. I wanna make sure I surprise the bastard, get close enough to see the piss soaking through the crotch of his pants.

With the fuse coiled on the roof, I scamper around front and start pushing the auto backwards until its rolling slowly of its own volition. Vezzoni’ll be in the lead car now that he thinks I’ve curled up under a tree to die. He’ll want to finish me himself. Headlights shine into the opening just on the other side of the wash.

I climb onto the hood, strike a match and hold it to the tip of the fuse. It sparks to life, sizzling quickly. With one last grunt I hoist myself onto the roof of the Model T on hands and knees. Vezzoni’s car slows to make the sharp turn and angle down into the wash. His cabin lights are on. The fuse burns past the edge of the roof and drops inside the auto. As I stand, stretching out to my full height, I see the man’s eyes following the road across the bottom of the wash and slowly up the other side until he finally sees me.

At first his face reveals nothing but a gloating arrogance, his work-a-day expression. But then something switches. Fear and anger crease his brow as he hits the brakes, stopping dead center in the wash. Rolling toward him at a fast run, I simply smile and nod as the flickering tail of fuse drops through the floor and into the tank.