Nick Cutter - Little Heaven

“A few gobbets of flesh missing here and there, but I feel jim… dandy .” The Englishman hummed the refrain to “Polly Wolly Doodle,” then stopped. “You were very cool in the heat of it. Your hand did not tremble.”

“I have been there before” was all Micah could say.

“Korea?” Off Micah’s nod, the Englishman said, “Me as well. Royal Marines. The 1181st. First boots on the ground. Silent as death.”

“You must have been young.”

“Oh yes. A wee stripling. But I found I had an aptitude for it. Killing, I mean. It didn’t trouble me. I woke up screaming in the trenches sometimes, yes, but not half so much as the other lads. It is horrible to have a talent for something so dreadful, but there you have it.”

Micah nodded. They were both good at the same damned thing.

“They gave me a dishonorable discharge for knobbing my CO and breaking his nose,” the Englishman continued. “He deserved it, I assure you. After that, I came here. There was nothing for me back home. The marines turned me into an agent of chaos, yes? A piranha set loose in a goldfish tank. I was not fit for polite society. But here I found a heightened need for a man with my particular skills. The land of the free and the home of the brave. Your country is still so… unformed . Even now. And that lack of form creates pockets for me to ply my trade.”

“You were cool in the cut, too,” said Micah. He did not exactly mean it as a compliment.

“Hm.”

The men kept their peace. In time, the Englishman spoke. “The doctor took your eye?”

“He took it.”

“Well then, I am sorry.”

Micah said, “They will put us in prison. Give us the electric chair.”

“Hmmmm.”

“They took our pistols.”

“Hmmmm.”

Faintly, the woman’s breathing carried over the curtain.

“We are still in Mogollon,” Micah said. “On the main strip.”

“Near the stable?”

“Near enough.”

“We could take those horses,” said the Englishman. “Light out.”

Micah frowned. “Horses?”

The Englishman grinned. “It’s a few minutes’ hard gallop to the woods. They run deep and thick in this part of the state. We could melt right into them.”

“Can you ride?”

“Capably, yes.”

Micah had some experience with horses. He was no expert, but he could ride.

He said, “You and I?”

“Why not?”

“I do not know if I can ride with the man who stole my eye,” said Micah.

“I’m humbly sorry again about your eye. We had reason to kill each other before. Money was our sole motivator, yes? Without it, there’s no reason to kill anyone or do much of anything, truth be told.”

Micah didn’t see the line being so clear-cut. There were reasons outside of money why some men needed to get themselves dead. “What about Appleton?”

“Oh, I imagine he’s well pleased by this turn of events. The prisons will eat us all up, and he won’t owe anyone a cent.”

“I still aim to kill him.”

The Englishman grinned. “What chutzpah.”

“The woman?” Micah said.

“Piss on her head. She tried to kill us.”

Micah could see the Englishman’s point of view… still, part of him rebelled at leaving her. He was curious. Clearly her attack had been planned, which meant she knew who they were—and how dangerous, too. Knowing so, why did she act so recklessly?

“I will think on it,” he said, and shuffled back toward his bed.

“Micah.”

Micah started. It had been years since anyone had addressed him by his Christian name.

“It will have to be tomorrow,” the Englishman said.

“Can you manage?”

The Englishman coughed weakly. “With some more of that doctor’s magical cocktail.”

“You know my name. I do not know yours.”

The Englishman seemed reluctant, but ultimately he spoke. “Ebenezer.”

Micah had not known that a black man could visibly blush, but Ebenezer appeared to be doing so now.

“Ebenezer Elkins. My parents were sadists,” he said with a slight shrug. “It is the only explanation. You may call me Eb, if it suits.”

“Eb. That is good.”

“Hm. So be it.”

THE DOCTOR RETURNEDthe next day. He saturated a ball of cotton in rubbing alcohol and poked it into Micah’s socket. This caused him considerable pain, as the doctor averred it would. He offered Micah another shot of morphine.

“I do not need it.”

The doctor nodded. “The US Marshals are coming to get you, is what I hear.”

“When?” Micah asked.

“Tomorrow or the day after.”

“Just me?”

“And the other fella. The woman goes someplace else.”

The doctor passed back through the curtain. Micah heard him offer Ebenezer a shot, which the Englishman happily accepted. After the doctor had left, and once Micah could hear Eb’s morphine-thickened snores, he got up and went to look in on the woman.

She lay in bed with a sheet draped over her legs up to her hips and another folded across her breasts. Her stomach was bare. An ulcerated hole lay to the right of her belly button, oozing at its edges.

Her eyelids fluttered. She saw him. Her pupils constricted.

“Come to kill me?” she croaked.

Micah was not angry at her for trying to assassinate him. He had no leg to stand on, morally speaking, having done the same thing himself. He poured water from the bedside jug and held the glass to her lips. Gratefully, she drank.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Minerva Atwater.”

“You one of the Atwater clan out of Tuscaloosa?”

“I have no family in that part of the world.” She drank some more. “So they took your eye?”

“It is gone.”

She uttered a note of sympathy. “Was it my round that—?”

Micah shook his head. “The other man. With a little derringer, concealed.”

The sun shone through a window overlooking the main street. Micah could see the back of the deputy’s head where he stood guard.

“He hired me to get you,” Minerva said. “Appleton.”

“That was my figuring.” Micah gestured to where the Englishman lay behind the curtain. “Appleton hired him, too. But it seemed you were more intent on him than me.”

She shifted her body and winced. “Goddamn Christly hell, don’t that hurt. But the doctor says no vitals were hit.”

“Will you ever dance again?”

“What makes you think I’m a dancer?”

“You should try. You are not cut out for this.”

Minerva sneered. “You figure I should be tending home fires?”

Micah offered her another drink. She snatched the glass from him. “I’m not a spit-bubbling infant.” She drank and coughed, water dribbling down her chin. “I just only started collecting bounties. I’ll get better.”

“You will not.”

“The hell I won’t.”

“You will not, because you are finished. The Feds get here tomorrow.”

She dwelled on this. “I guess that’s fair enough.”

“It is for me and the English fellow. I do not know what you have done.”

Micah was certain that she hadn’t done much. This could very well be her first transgression. They would put her away for a long time all the same.

“Maybe they’ll hang me,” she said.

“It is doubtful,” said Micah.

“They hanged a woman named Ellen Watson up in Natrona County for cattle rustling. And Lizzie Potts in California, on account of stoving her husband’s head in with a shovel. That all went down a century ago, but still.”

“You appear to have studied these matters.”

“So what, then?” she said. “We just gonna let them take us, I guess?”

“That,” said Micah, “or we slip our necks from the noose.”