Mark Tufo - Alive in a Dead World

“I’m sorry my friend, I really am. You saved my life once, and now I’m taking yours. It hardly seems fair. But I fucking hate it here and now I’ve got a way out and I had to take it, no matter what expense you had to pay for it.”

Gentry waited until he was completely sure his friend (although that didn’t seem like the right word anymore) was dead before extracting his knife from Tenson’s mid-section. He then wiped it off on Tenson’s blanket and covered him up with it. He quickly grabbed anything of any value in addition to the stone, which he clutched greedily, and slipped quietly into the night.

***

Eliza had watched the entire battle from her higher vantage point. She was mildly impressed with the Lakota’s savagery. Here were a people who had already lost everything dear to them, and still they fought viciously. She hoped the colonel would live, if only to be reunited with his bride, but either way, all that mattered was that the medicine man died.

She waited until the cavalry men departed as she walked amid the smoking ruins of the destroyed village. The Indians lay where they had been struck down. She checked each one of them, yet she could not find the shaman. A little known feeling rose in her breast; it was a sense of unease. She checked the only teepee that was not burning. It was the largest in the village and by its decoration, she figured it was a ceremonial gathering place.

The shaman was in there, but he was dead. He had been set in a place of honor in the center of the room, enshrouded in soft blankets made of deer and bison hide. Instead of her unease slipping away, it grew.

“This man died before the battle,” she said as she walked around him. She ripped the shroud off him, looking for a wound that could have caused his demise. She savagely ripped his clothes off, unsure as to the root of her anger. She kicked his body over onto his stomach when the front did not reveal any damage.

She kicked him again, this time from spite when she could not glean any information. His broken body hit the far side of the large teepee and rolled to a stop as Eliza strode out. Had her anger not burned so brightly, she would have been able to pick up on the faint traces of the information she so desperately sought.

***

Tomas had been one state removed when he began to hear rumors about the cursed cavalry unit. Each story sounded more fantastic than the last. But he had been around the frontier long enough to know that people with too much time on their hands like a fantastic tale. He did not sit up and take notice until some of these tales began to hint about a white witch, her cruelty only rivaled by her beauty.

“Eliza,” he muttered, draining his tankard of beer.

“Hey where you going?” the old grizzled man at the bar asked. “You’ve already paid for two drinks, I promised you the entire story.”

“Buy yourself a third,” Tomas said, flipping him a nickel and heading for the door.

The old man continued as if his drinking buddy had remained behind. “So they say that this white witch took the colonel’s family for some devilry until the colonel brought her the head of a great Indian chief. And when he came back without it, she had killed his family and then him. And then she cast some kind of spell on the men in the platoon. Seems they started killing each other. I think the witch part is made up. I think it’s more the medicine man sent some bad medicine.” The old man snorted and laughed at his own word play. “The Indians are some tricky ones. You have to be real careful how you kill them or they can rise up out their grave and get you.” He cackled. “Barkeep! Another drink for me and my friend,” the old man said, waving the nickel around.

The bartender shook his head and poured two more glasses. Who was he to judge? A nickel was a nickel.

Tomas bought the best horse he could find in the region and pushed the animal as hard as he dared. After five days of hard riding, and asking anyone he could for information on the battle site, he finally found himself amongst the ruins. Not much was left. It was mostly just pieces of shattered pottery here and there. After nearly a month, any bones of the Indians still left remaining from the scavengers had been picked clean. The village was nearly reclaimed by the land, save one large teepee. Tomas alit from his horse and strode purposefully towards it.

He said a small prayer upon entering. He noted the many footprints of animals that had entered in here previous to him, nearly obscuring the soft prints of the white witch.

“Eliza,” he said as he pressed his palm down onto the heel of the print. He looked over to where the shriveled husk of a man lay. He walked over to him. “Why have the scavengers not taken your sustenance?” Tomas asked. “And more importantly, what did my sister want with you?”

Tomas gently turned the man onto his back. His facial muscles had pulled up and dried into a perpetual smile. Tomas grabbed the blankets that had been strewn around the large teepee, almost shattering an ornate bowl as he grabbed the last one.

He turned the bowl over and over. “This is ceremonial,” he said to himself. “That makes you the shaman,” he said as he picked the man up and placed him on the blankets he had piled up. “Eliza, what trouble have you gotten yourself into now?” he asked as he left the ghost town with bowl in hand.

Tomas’ next destination was Durango, Colorado it was where the Cavalry 3 rdRegiment was stationed at Camp Foster. He needed to find out more information and the best place was always the local saloon. Liquor tended to make tongues wag, as did his power of persuasion.

“Who’d you say you were again?” The soldier slurred, trying his best to focus on the person in front of him. “This is some powerful whiskey.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Tomas said pouring the man, boy really, another shot. “You were saying about the curse?” Tomas asked.

“Nuffin’s been the same since we attacked that Injun village. Now I don’t normally care one way or the other about killing them, but these ones weren’t doing anything, they weren’t near to any settlement or anything. And there was something about that place.” The soldier shuddered just thinking about it. “It was dead there. Does that make sense? I mean before we even got there, you could just sense that something wasn’t right. Like the angel of darkness himself had settled upon the place.” The young soldier took another gulp of liquid courage.

“It was no angel and he was a she,” Tomas said, pouring the man another shot in his drained glass.

“What?” the man asked looking up from his glass. When Tomas didn’t answer right away, the soldier continued. “The Indians put up a good fight, but it almost felt like it was for show. That doesn’t even make sense to me.” The soldier paused, trying to grasp the correct words. “I…I mean they already seemed dead like they had nothing left to live for. Damndest thing though, we wiped out that whole village and there wasn’t a woman or a child among them. I mean normally, your first thought would be, yeah, raiding party, but it was their summer encampment. You could tell by the large gathering tent, that things means everything to them. They wouldn’t take it on raids.”

“Could the woman and children have left before you got there?” Tomas asked.

“I asked myself that,” he said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “But we hit them so fast and so hard, they couldn’t have escaped. And I know we surprised them because most of ‘em were coming out of their teepees when we hit. It wasn’t like they had any advance warning or anything.”

“And this Colonel Broward, he led the charge?” Tomas prodded.

“Yeah, funny thing that.”