"Do what he wants,” Kat said, stoney faced. "Get away from me. All of you."
Obstinately, we stood with our defender as an audience appeared from every nook and cranny — the prostitutes, the bootblacks and butchers — all of them coming for a peek at any bloodshed.
"We won't move!" I yelled to Deadeye. "Our friend doesn't have a gun! It's not a fight you're after, but an execution!"
"Get away from me,” Kat repeated, grinding his teeth.
"Are you faster than a bullet, samurai?" asked Eddinray. "Are you?"
"Take them away, Fox,” he replied. "Do as I say."
Reluctantly I escorted Harmony and Eddinray from the range of Deadeye's pistol and knives. Kat stood alone now, just as he wanted, just as he prefers.
"The infamous Kat!" proclaimed the fat man, crowd reacting with appropriate awe. "We all heard o' him! Take a good last gander people!"
They did. This was Kat in there nowhere, nothing town — a legend still in flesh, whose name sent more fighting for a better look at him.
"I call his sword!" someone cried. "Boots too!"
"His boots are mine!" argued another. "Saw 'em first!"
Worrisomely, Harmony, Eddinray and I where fast surrounded by these vultures, but held together by our link of hands.
"Ladies and gents!" cried Deadeye, gripping all spectators. "Y'all know me, y'all know my name! When I came here, Breakneck was wilder than all the west — a cesspool of dirty Indians and bad men!" His colt caught the morning light and Kat grimaced down the far away barrel. "I tamed the lot with five slugs!" he continued.
"Two of ‘em spent running out the James brothers — two more burning down Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill! Light work people! Light work! Small men with big names — men like the Kat over there — and this last bullet is for you…little man!"
He left the hitching post wobbling as he lumbered toward the town's centre. "I made Breakneck what it is!" he added. "It's mine! And nobody, no outlaws, no lawmen, and no chink gone disrespect that!"
Unconcerned, Kat also moved to the center of the road, the grey smoke twirling at his heels.
"We must intervene,” whispered Harmony. "We must do something here."
"There's no changing Kat's mind,” I answered, our samurai stopping to face the baby faced giant twenty feet away. With a twitching cheek, Kat settled both arms to the side of his hips, while Deadeye holstered his revolver. The excited crowd hushed, and the only thing moving in Breakneck now was the hairy balls of occasional tumble-weed.
"Draw!" ordered an empty-handed samurai. "Now!"
Teasing onlookers, Deadeye would not draw on Kat's command. Instead, the bulging man took time to tickle the butt of his pistol, time to enjoy his spectacle and time to wise up the grim eyes of Kat. Beads of grease glistened down and over Deadeye's generous neck flesh, and when the moment could be held no longer, when instinct told him too, Deadeye pulled his silver shooter from the holster, aimed straight and flicked back the hammer. SHTUEW!
The shot echoed around town, the gasps followed. It was over now, yet crouched and panting, Kat was still alive. Gripping the katana before his face, there was a glob of spent bullet steaming by his foot.
No one could believe what they had seen, or thought they had seen: Kat had deflected a bullet with his blade, and all mouths hung open for a revered passage of time.
The wronged drinker with a pony for a head let out a hearty chortle at the saloon doors. The flabby cheeks of Deadeye jiggled as he tried making sense of it; and when he did recover his wits, he tossed his revolver at a thrilled Mothershud. "Shut…"
The saloon window shattered when the gun hurtled threw it, and as bar room bums came to peer out from the lacerated space, Deadeye reached his fast fingers to his belt, and threw every available knife there at Kat.
Those reflectors glittered toward the samurai, and his sword deflected each like troublesome mosquitoes. Embarrassed, deflated and defenceless, Deadeye stumbled back to his post, further perplexed when Kat returned the katana to his sheath. Empty handed now, the samurai strode to the amazed mob and specifically to Harmony. The angel stood stiff whilst Kat removed one arrow from her quiver, and then casually returned to the town centre.
Once there, Kat examined the strewn knives and blob of bullet on the sand, Deadeye meanwhile questioned his gifted hands in disbelief — they had never once let him down. With Harmony's sturdy arrow in his paw, Kat aimed up Deadeye with the point — and with strength and co-ordination alone — he threw it swiftly toward his chosen target.
Timid faces winced as that Indian arrow struck deep in Deadeye's plump neck — the lawmaker gargled his last curse through constricting larynges and gushing blood, and then dropped to his back with a burst of sizeable road powder. No body had ever fallen harder, and the greedy townsfolk of Breakneck quickly plundered it before the soul dispersed to imperceptible atoms.
29. The Killing Fields
The sky was pink like candy-floss and clear of cloud. We meandered over a substantial path of dirt cutting through acres and acres of tall purple grass. An old wooden fence with a stainless coat of white paint followed our flanks, a barrier to anyone fancying a stroll through the grass.
A parched Eddinray frequently halted our progress, but his flamboyant bragging made up for the inconvenience; and after witnessing Kat deflecting a bullet with his sword, his boasting only increased.
"Once wrestled a crocodile,” he said, his hands throttling thin air. "The young child was inside its belly, you see, leaving me no choice but to dive into the reptile's mouth. The scene I can barely describe to you — women folk screaming and fainting — weaker men simply applauding the bravery on display. Goes without saying that I retrieved the child alive and well, then made a coat of the crocodile…"
From time to time, my thoughts wavered to the 9thFortress, somehow expecting it to sprout over the next horizon, or the one after that. I had the general description from Sir Isaac Newton, but what did it really look like? What feelings would the immoral tower inspire? What would be waiting for us at its gates? And what of prisoner 2020? Why did this soul deserve saving? With no answers, the questions would remain a vicious circle inside my head.
We were not alone on our path. Far from it, hundreds trudged in front and behind, and like the long departed cue on the stinking shore, each man, woman and thing was unique in dress, but wearing similar expressions of demoralization. They were zombies, an endless parade of the living dead.
"Do not wake these sleepwalkers,” Kat warned. "They will not…like it."
Several black angels blotted the peachy sky, their jelly-like bodies swooping past a small airplane. My father told me stories of my Grandpa, Sgt. Archie Fox, who died a hero for the allies in the battle of Britain. This aircraft was unmistakeably a hurricane, the likes he would have fought in. Its engine dying, flames ate her wings, and there followed that horrible sound of a blaring horn as she fell to the grass.
I grimaced away as that metal bird obliterated over land. Unfortunately, the sky was filled with similar disastrous images: burning blimps and 747s; exploding Concorde and even a space shuttle breaking up on re-entry. Weirder was the alien craft — the saucers and blobs of varying color floating like un-popped balloons. I couldn't say what the point of it all was, if these objects were real or ghosts of real events, but it was certainly the most bizarre display I've ever seen.
We continued our walk with the dead; but needing more clarity than Kat was giving, I decided to question the closest traveller on the road. "Excuse me,” I said, blocking one creature with my arm. "Do you know where this road leads?"