George Martin - Fevre Dream

Abner Marsh eyed the shotgun again. If only he could reach it. If only he was as fast and strong as he had been forty years ago. If only Joshua could hold the beast’s attention long enough. But it was no good. The beast would not meet Joshua’s eyes. Marsh was neither fast nor strong, and his arm was broken and in agony. He could never lurch to his feet and reach the gun in time. The barrel was pointed in the wrong direction too. It had fallen so it pointed at Joshua. If it pointed the other way, maybe it would be worth the risk. Then he would just have to dive for the gun, raise it up quick, and pull the trigger. But the way it lay, he would have to grab it and turn all the way around to fire at the thing that had called itself Julian. With a broken arm. No. Marsh knew it would be futile. The beast was too fast.

A moan escaped Joshua’s lips, a half-suppressed cry of pain. He put a hand to his brow, then leaned forward and buried his face in his hands. His skin was pinkish already. Before long it would be red. Then charred and black and burned. Abner Marsh could see the vitality ebbing from him. What will kept him in that burning circle of sun, Marsh could not know. Joshua had guts, though, damned if he didn’t. All of a sudden Marsh had to say something. “Kill him,” he called out loudly. “Joshua, get out of there and go for him, goddamn it. Never mind me.”

Joshua York looked up and smiled weakly. “No.”

“Goddamnit all to hell, you stubborn fool. Do like I tell you! I’m a goddamned old man, my life don’t mean nothin’. Joshua, do like I’m tellin’ you! ”

Joshua shook his head and buried his face in his hands again.

The beast was staring at Marsh strangely, as if it could not comprehend his words, as if it had forgotten all the speech it ever knew. Marsh looked in its eyes and shivered. His arm hurt, and he had tears hiding in the back of his eyes. He cussed and swore until his face turned red. It was better than weeping like some damned woman. Then he called out, “You been one hell of a partner, Joshua. I ain’t goin’ to forget you as long as I live.”

York smiled. Even the smile was pained, Marsh could see. Joshua was weakening visibly. The light was going to kill him, and then Marsh would be here alone.

They had hours and hours of daylight left. But hours passed. Night would come. Abner Marsh couldn’t stop it coming no more’n he could reach that goddamned useless shotgun. The sun would set and darkness would come creeping over the Fevre Dream, and the beast would smile and rise from its chair. All along the grand saloon the doors would open, as the others stirred and woke, all the children of the night, the vampires, the sons and daughters and slaves of the beast. From behind the broken mirrors and the faded oil paintings they would come, silent, with their cold smiles and white faces and terrible eyes. Some of them were Joshua’s friends and one bore his child but Marsh knew with a deadly certainty that it would make no difference. They belonged to the beast. Joshua had the words and the justice and the dream, but the beast had the power, and it would call out to the beasts that lived in all the others, it would wake their red thirst and bend them to its will. It had no thirst itself, but it remembered.

And when those doors began to open, Abner Marsh would die. Damon Julian had talked of sparing him, but the beast was not bound by Julian’s fool promises, it knew how dangerous Marsh was. Ugly or not, Marsh would feed them tonight. And Joshua would die as well, or-worse-become like them. And his child would grow into another beast, and the killing would go on and on, the red thirst would flow down the centuries unquenched, the fever dreams would turn to sickness and to rot.

How could it end any other way? The beast was greater than they were, a force of nature. The beast was like the river, eternal. It had no doubts, no thoughts, no dreams or plans. Joshua York might overwhelm Damon Julian, but when Julian fell the beast lay beneath: alive, implacable, strong. Joshua had drugged his own beast, had tamed it to his will, so he had only humanity to face the beast that lived in Julian. And humanity was not enough. He could not hope to win.

Abner Marsh frowned. Something in his thoughts nagged at him. He tried to figure out what it was, but it wriggled free of him. His arm throbbed. He wished he had some of Joshua’s goddamned drink. It tasted like hell, but Joshua had said once it had laudanum in it, and that would help the pain. The alcohol wouldn’t hurt none, neither.

The angle of the light pouring in through the shot-out skylight had changed. It was afternoon, Marsh figured. Afternoon and getting later. They would have a few hours more. Then the doors would start to open. He looked at Julian, at the shotgun. He squeezed his arm, as if that could lessen the pain somehow. What the hell was he thinking about? About wanting some of Joshua’s damn drink for his arm… no, about the beast, about how Joshua couldn’t never beat it, on account. ..

Abner Marsh’s eyes narrowed, and he looked over to Joshua. He had beat him, Marsh thought. Once, he beat him once, beast or no. Why can’t he do it again? Why? Marsh clutched at his arm, rocked slowly back and forth, and tried to drive off the pain so he could think clearer. Why, why, why?

And it came to him, like such things always did. Maybe he was slow, but Abner Marsh never forgot. It came to him. The drink, he thought. He could see how it had been. He’d poured the last of it down Joshua’s damned gullet when he passed out in the sun. The final drop fell on his boot and he threw the bottle in the river. Joshua had left hours later, and it had taken him… how long?… days, it had taken him days to get back to the Fevre Dream. He’d been running, running to his damn bottles, running from the red thirst. Then he found the steamer, and all the dead, and started ripping loose them boards, and Julian had come… Marsh remembered Joshua’s own words

… I was screaming at him, screaming incoherently. I wanted vengeance. I wanted to kill him as badly as I have ever wanted to kill anyone, wanted to rip open that pale throat of his, and taste his damnable blood! My anger… No, thought Marsh, not just anger. Thirst. Joshua had been so mad he never even knew it, but he was in the first stage of the red thirst! He must have had a glass of his drink as soon as Julian stole off, so he never realized what it was, why that time had been different.

Marsh got a real cold feeling right then, wondering if Joshua had known the real reason he was ripping free those boards, wondering what would have happened if Julian hadn’t intervened. No wonder Joshua had won then, and never again. His burns, his fears, the carnage all around him, no drinks for days… it had to have been the thirst. His beast was awake that night, and stronger than Julian’s.

Briefly Abner Marsh was gripped by a great excitement. Then, rapidly, it dawned on him that his wild hope was misplaced. Maybe he had figured something out, but it wasn’t doing them a goddamned bit of good. Joshua had taken a good supply of his drink on this last escape of his. He’d drunk a half-bottle in New Orleans before they set out for Julian’s plantation. Marsh couldn’t see no way to wake the fever in Joshua, the fever that was their only chance… his eyes went back to the shotgun, the damned useless shotgun. “Hell,” he muttered. Forget the shotgun, he told himself, it ain’t no good to you, think, think like Mister Jeffers would have, figure something out. Like in a steamboat race, Marsh thought. You couldn’t just run her straight out against another fast boat, you had to be smart, you had to get a lightnin’ pilot who knew all the cutoffs and how to shave them close, and maybe you bought up all the beech so the other boat couldn’t get nothing but cottonwood, or maybe you had some lard in reserve. Tricks!