The Zona Read Online Free PDF

to starlight.  Formless demons pursued him, their shapes bobbing like drifts of smoke, their eyes glimmered red though they had no business illuminating the darkness.
    Lead jumped to the left, a demon crashed face first in rubble and dust where he’d been running.  Another demon tackled Lead to the ground.  The beast glared fiercely at Lead with its ruby eyes.  It spit a long tooth into its hand and raised it to strike.  Lead pointed his Van Cleef, but the pistol clicked in misfire.  The demon drove the tooth into Lead’s shoulder.  Lead swung the Van Cleef across the demon’s face.  One of the ruby eyes winked out and the demon recommitted to the sand.  Lead ran on.  

    The night lived a life beyond its natural duration.  Lead ran past the demons and past the brush and past the limitations of his weakened body and mind.  The yells and laughter of the beasts drifted away, but Lead did not slow.  His vision tightened to a small distant tunnel.  He repeated prayers in his mind but could not force his tongue to speak them.  He prayed for safety, he prayed for God to smite all the sin and devils of this land, and when the sun’s light returned to the earth Lead was still running, fueled by fear and panic.  His lungs and legs burned deep.  

    In the dawn’s light Lead arrived onto a broken street which marked the entrance to Havasu Parish.  Regular men in parishioner clothing stood in front a general use building waiting for morning bread.  They saw Lead filthy and wounded and dismissed him as another desert crazy, another rag man.
    Lead’s legs buckled with exhaustion.  He breathed long and hot and looked for aid among the men of the bread line.  If he could find words, he would demand sanctuary as a Preachers’ right.  Tears streamed down his face.  A gun cocked behind him, its barrel pressed against his head.
    “Greetings,” Terence said.
    Lead looked up to see the old man holding a four barrel pistol looped with a rawhide cord, a Van Cleef.
    “Thought you might come here, you look worse for the travel,” the Old Preacher said.
    Lead looked down at his chest.  He’d lost his shirt and sombrero and his bare torso was painted with a concoction of blood and filth; a testament to the evening’s violence.  His pants were torn and ragged.  A wood-handled kitchen knife stood with its blade buried deep into his left shoulder.  He clutched his pistol, at some point the rawhide loop had broken.  It dangled from the butt of his gun.  Lead raised his hands and gun into the air.
    “I have no qualm with you, mark.  Leave me be and continue your retreat,” he said.
    Terence kept his pistol pressed against Lead’s head.
    “I got the drop on you.  Your life is but a decision between me and this pepper box.”  Terence looked up to the men in the bread line.  “You gentlemen mind to your business,” he hollered at them.  The morning parishioners made no move to aid.
    “I’ve taken life, young man.  I know the feeling and price.” The Old Preacher released the pistol’s hammer and slipped it back into his shirt.
    “You won’t die by my hands.  Not today.”
    Lead looked up at the Old Preacher’s face, a leather visage of dirty creases and grey beard and yellow-blue eyes that spoke of humanity.
    “Why was I sent to apprehend you?”
    The Old Preacher’s eyes moistened.  He rubbed them in irritation and looked back to the rising sun.
    “I was what you are; I preached the word of the Church.  They sent you to me because of killing.”
    “What killing?”
    The Old Preacher looked into Lead’s eyes.  “Killing doesn’t make me happy.  Killing doesn’t make me good.  I can’t kill anymore.  That’s why you were sent to apprehend.  I’m a rusty tool of new use or value.  I need to be disposed of.”
    Lead tried to regain his feet but instead lost consciousness in the Arizona sun.

IV. Eliphaz the Crusader comes to Havasu Parish
    Lead woke in a comfortable bed with sheets