Zombie Blade 1 - Blood Spatter on the Criminal Negligence of Yesterday

“Looks like we got us a Mexican standoff.” The man known only as Bamburerro Blade grunted the words in a dry gravelly voice that brought to mind the scrape of an undertaker’s shove digging a fresh grave.

The tavern was abandoned; a trashed broken ruin of splintered wood. He stood in the centre of the dilapidated space, cowelled in a long traveller’s poncho and wide brimmed hat; surrounded on three sides by a groaning and shuffling throng of the recently dear and departed. Somewhat less dear now that that had been reanimated by the same foul alien brain cheggers that had infested the populous.

Bamburerro Blade made a slow movement with his left hand; pulling the poncho back to access his shirt pocket. He was reaching for something, and a few of the zombies reacted; turning to regard the interloper with increased interest. After fiddling around for a moment, his hand emerged from the pocket gripping a fresh cigarillo. He flicked the cigarillo into his mouth and slowly started reaching for a match in another pocket.

Enraged by the blatant disregard he was showing them, a zombie leapt forwards towards the lone wanderer; but it caught nothing but air in its grizzled fleshless hands.

What unfolded next was too fast for normal human eyes to catch. Bamburerro’s poncho took flight as he threw it into the air above him. Freed from its constraints, his right hand went into action; drawing an ornate 3 barrelled pistol from a holster across his body. With a flash of light, the weapon discharged; exploding his first opponent’s cranium in a hefty burst of stringy alien mucus.

In that instant, the other undead beasts turned on him; and a wall of festering corpse warriors closed around him. Bamburerro pulled a second pistol; instantly squeezing off another round into the chest of a particularly large lifeless monster. The mass reactive shell exploded outwards; leaving its torso an eviscerated mess on the other side of the room from its legs. He spun his body, moving low beneath the tide and taking out 3 more before they even realised he wasn’t in the poncho anymore as his gun discharged again.

 

 

Outside of the OK Saloon, a crowd of terrified farm-folk gathered together wielding pitch-forks and improvised scatterguns. They trembled with fright; staring with horrified rapture as the windows of the wrecked establishment flashed rhythmically in time to the sound gunfire.

It suddenly went quiet. One minute turned into two, and then into three. Still nothing but silence.

A restless murmur passed through the crowd.

“Never should’a hired that cloaked idiot” Mayor Burrows griped a little too audibly; his overgrown moustache wabbled comically in time to the words. “I gave him half the money upfront too! And now somebody is gonna have to go in there to get the money back…”. He looked around for a volunteer, his beady eyes finally settling on the least favourite of his seven daughters. Just as he was about to try to coax her into the death-trap, the saloon door was flung open from the inside.

“I reckon I’ll be taking the rest o’ that money now Mayor” Bamburerro’s low rusty voice was clearly audible as he strode through the threshold; accompanied by the sound of spurs clattering on the hard wood floor. He dumped a handful of zombified heads in front of the bumbling statesman; earning both cheers of celebration and gasps of horror from the gathered crowd of citizens.

“About that” started the mayor, shifting nervously from foot to foot. His jowly face beaded with sweat; obviously gleaming on his rapidly paling visage in the dim light of dusk.

“I don’t really have the money, I didn’t…” he stopped, swallowing loudly “…actually expect you to come back.” An idiotic grin crept across the mayor’s face.

Bamburerro’s eyes narrowed; his dry lips split and his voice was icy cold “Hiring a bounty hunter without the money to pay is against the law”. The statement hung in the air like a dead-man’s curse. There was complete silence; the villagers not daring to even breathe as the deadly tension built.

Mayor Burrows went red in the face, at once threatened and affronted by the hunter.

“Whose law? I am the Mayor!” He stomped his feet at the declaration.

Bamburerro’s poncho flew into the air.

“My law.”

The mayor’s last sight was the shinning triple barrels mere inches from his face. He never saw the finger that pulled the trigger, or his crumpled bloody remains that were left where they fell in the street for the crows.