The Guns of Santa Sangre. Eric Red

against the door. Out the open window, he saw the ghostly black shapes appear and disappear, the sound of their paws pounding the ground below the thunder of the horses. Whatever these beasts were they were big and incredibly fast.

      They weren’t outrunning them, that’s for sure.

      A giant claw on a furry black paw struck the door of the stage and dragged down, cutting through the wood.

      “Get down!” Whistler roared to the shrieking hooker.

      Something landed on the side of the rig, giant and hairy and malodorous. Its great weight heaved the carriage sideways, nearly tipping it as it came up on one wheel. Leaping up, he aimed his Scofield out the open window frame and fired twice point blank into the hulking form. The darkness was total but in the split-second flash of fire from his barrel he saw the great globular red eyes and the pink lapping tongue and long extended snout. The bullets hit their mark, and the thing was off the stage, tumbling in a cloud of dust on the side of the trail receding to their rear.

      A pack of the creatures was running alongside the out-of-control carriage, like wolves at the heel of a deer, trying to take it down. The horrific roaring, snorting and snarling ripped the air.

      The woman screamed again.

      The door on her side was torn off completely. A black chasm gaped through the shattered-wood opening. Her hair and clothes were swept by the whipping wind. She clung to the frame on the door for dear life. Something had her from behind.

      Time stood still.

      Whistler stared regretfully into the hooker’s bulging eyes, seeing her fingers slip from their purchase on the wagon. He did her a kindness by shooting her once in the forehead as sinewy black furred paws snatched her out with claws the size of carving knives.

      The wolves fell back as the rig careened around a treacherous curve.

      Whistler risked it and stuck his head out the opening to look up at the driver’s perch. It was empty. The wagon was driverless, the galloping team of horses ready to send it to a ditch at any moment. Those monsters were still out there.

      The bounty hunter was alone on the speeding stage and his guns were empty.

      His Winchester carbine repeater was in the luggage on the roof.

      Swinging out the open-door frame, Whistler reached up, grabbed the roof rail and began to pull himself out of the carriage. Immediately he was blasted by the wind from the hurtling wagon. As he struggled to haul himself up into the empty driver’s perch, he used boots as well as hands for purchase but was nearly tossed off to certain death by the heaving motion of the stage. The huge bounding black shapes were everywhere behind him in the wake of dust off the wheels, resembling giant elongated wolves. As the hunter shrugged himself up with his arms and elbows onto the slatted seats, something grabbed his leg. He felt like his limb had been hit by an axe and a searing wetness spread across his entire calf. Ignoring the pain, the cowboy got all the way up on the top of the stagecoach and began reaching for his suitcase lashed to the roof. He tore off the ropes and pushed away the hooker’s satchel, knocking it off the wagon top where it bounced to the ground and flew open scattering lingerie and undies. Then with both hands, he located his own suitcase and pulled the lid of his leather case open quickly to draw out his long steel Winchester repeater rifle.

      Now armed, the bounty hunter confidently used the roof rack as a turret to steady his aim, opening fire on the rampaging creatures attacking the stage.

      “Eat lead, you ugly sumbitches!” he shouted as he squinted down the gunsight and pulled the trigger and cocked the lever again and again. Fire erupted out the barrel as spent shells flew every which way from the breech. The beasts were struck by his shots right and left and fell and rolled, but they got up again. He cocked and fired, cocked and fired, and they went down and got right up and before he even considered he was running out of bullets, he knew this was no good.

      A bear-sized black shape leaped on top of the team of horses and went to work with front and rear claws. Two more black shapes jumped at their legs and hamstrung the animals with their talons, bringing all two tons of stallion down at the same time in a terrifying jumble of harness and horse flesh and hooves. Bones snapped and bridles twisted. The chains of the harness linking the team to the carriage got tied up in the falling horses and the wagon impacted the whole huge knot of dead animals. The stagecoach flipped fifteen feet up in the air and spun twice before it came crashing to earth in smithereens of shattering wood, rent steel, flying wagon wheels and chassis parts. John Whistler was tossed a good hundred feet like a limp rag doll. He landed with a hard thud on the rocks and heard something inside him break.

      Can’t pass out, he told himself.

      The man crawled for his gun.

      His fingers touched the cold steel, and everything went funny.

      Something struck his neck, and Whistler was rolling, the world turning over and over then right side up again. The ground was sideways. He saw his decapitated body lying ten feet away from him in his good suit, neck stump cleanly cleaved as the last oxygenated blood to his brain kept his severed head conscious for a few remaining seconds. His trunk was dragged by dark paws into the inky blackness as a huge fanged red maw swallowed his head whole.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Alvarez woke to a white-hot sun searing through his eyelids.

      He was flat on his back in the burning desert sand.

      The flesh of his arm was being ripped away.

      And then the thief was screaming as he blinked his crusted eyes open to see the rotted pink head of the stinking buzzard, its foul yellowed beak tugging at a flap of wet red flesh on his bicep. God, the pain! Panic and terror turned his guts to jelly. Out of pure reflex, he grabbed for the gun in his belt, yanking it out of the holster to jam the muzzle into the vulture’s black-feathered chest, pulling the trigger again and again.

      Click click click.

      Empty.

      Shit!

      It was coming back to him now how he used up all his bullets the night before and the horror he had used them on.

      Right now he was being eaten alive by a carrion bird ripping a piece of his arm off while more vultures circled overhead. Adrenaline kicked in. Flipping the big Colt Navy pistol in his hand to grip it by the barrel, he wielded the wooden butt like a club, bringing it down again and again on the buzzard’s fetid skull, beating its brains out. The vulture flapped its wings, blowing its stench, and screeched and cawed against the blows. “I am not dead yet, you stinking bastard!” the bandit cried hoarsely. “So you don’t get to eat me! I kill you first! I kill you!” Alvarez brutally pistol-whipped the vulture until he felt the mottled skull cave in. Soft wet matter splattered his hair. Then the disgusting bird was down on the ground, not moving except for the death twitch of its limpid talons. The man laughed in demented triumph. “Who’s dead now, eh? What, nothing to say? Hahaha! That’s right, because it is you that is dead, you filthy fucking scavenger! I, Alvarez, am alive!”

      Not for long.

      Sitting up took great effort, as did staggering to his feet, but the wounded man managed to stand up. He swayed, dizzy from loss of blood, blinking away white spots in front of his eyes from the sun he’d been staring into. When his vision partially cleared he saw that he was alone in a sweltering desolate expanse of the Durango desert stretching out in all directions as far as he could see.

      The dead vulture lay at his feet.

      Alvarez shuddered at the memory of it feeding on him.

      His dangling right arm throbbed in raw, savage pain. To his horror, the awful wound from the night before was festering. Bite marks of huge teeth punctured his swollen bicep like rows of bullet holes from elbow to shoulder. Blood was caked and dried over huge raking bruises on the rent flesh. The arm bone felt broken by the clamp of those monstrous jaws. He tried to move his fingers but they were numb and not working.

      Now all at once he remembered the monster that wounded him last night; horrific memories of fangs