Joshua Graham vs Ray McCall
[Juarez, Mexico, 1866]
"Lord, I have failed you… All my life I have committed the sin of pride. Everything that has happened here… is my fault. Lord, I have no right to ask you this… but please… please don't allow them to die because of me, Lord. If only I had a chance… don't let anyone else succumb to the temptation of this place."
He squeezed the trigger of his revolver. A gunshot rang out in the alcazar. A single body fell.
[393 years and one apocalypse later]
The slide on the top of the pistol moved back, held with care in the bandaged hands of the ex-Legate. He released the magazine, sliding it into his waiting hand. The man was covered head to toe in ivory-white bandages, sticking to his exposed burned flesh under his cotton shirt and SWAT vest. Two pale blue eyes peered out between the bandage wraps into the open chamber of the weapon before flipping the pistol to look through the barrel. After verifying the interior of the gun was clean, the man re-inserted the magazine into the weapon and moved it to a growing stack of well-organized .45 caliber pistols on his right before moving back to his left, grabbing a pistol from that pile and repeating the process.
The man, Joshua Graham, took this chore with much reverence. While many Dead Horses had offered, begged even, to check and clean the weapons, Graham knew he had to take the responsibility upon himself. No one knew these pistols better than him, as the maintenance and use of the weapon was a New Canaanite rite of passage, an experience the Dead Horse tribe was unfortunately lacking.
Every tribe in Zion Canyon, a microcosm of the wastelands of the tribal west, were known for a specific weapon. The Dead Horses had their wooden war clubs, decorated with feathers and shell casings. The Sorrows wielded mighty Yao Guai gauntlets from the paws of the mighty beasts slain on the hunt. Yet, none could compare to the White Legs, hellbent on Graham's destruction while carrying their large submachine guns, Storm Drums in their tongue, as they vied for recognition for a place in Caesar's Legion. Graham looked at the pistols, some of which he had gifted to the Dead Horses, but knew they would not be enough to defend against the White Legs. He needed something more…
"Yah ah tahg, Joshua Graham," a Dead Horse member stepped into Graham's cave, the young man Joshua had grown to know as Follows-Chalk. His face was tattooed with tribal markings, a common practice representing great hunts, hidden in shadow by the feathered ballcap he wore.
"Follows-Chalk, how goes your search?" Joshua Graham asked, snapping out of his trance. He had sent his protégé to hunt down old legends, something to keep his and the neighboring tribe, the Sorrows, alive in the coming years. While Follows-Chalk was not the most experienced scout, he lacked the certain inhibition and fear of the old world the rest of his tribe had, making him a very useful asset to the bandaged man.
"I may have found something you'd want to see," Follows-Chalk said with a smile. He reached into the gecko skin satchel on his side, pulling out an old pre-war paper-back book with letters reading "Tourist Guide: Ciudad Juarez", flipping to a dogeared page.
Follows-Chalk laid the open book between the two stacks of pistols in front of Graham. Graham reached out, his bandaged hands pulling the book toward him slightly as he looked at the header of the page Follows-Chalk had given him. The words "Lost Treasure of Juarez" crowned the title of the page, paired with a map foreign to the bandaged man and a wall of text underneath. He briefly skimmed the page, reading about rumors of an ancient curse and gold from a bygone era, stashed in the National Museum of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
"We do not need gold, do not let greed consume you," Graham said, pushing the book back towards the scout. Follows-Chalk shook his head, his finger finding a sentence halfway down the page.
"You told me to read between the lines of history," Follows-Chalk said, pushing the book back. Graham looked at where the scout had pointed. There was a single line in the book regarding a man by the name of Juan 'Juarez' Mendoza, whose alcazar was converted into the Museum of Ciudad Juarez.
"And here," Follows-Chalk flipped to the next page, immediately pointing to the top of the page which read about hundreds of Civil War era rifles being refurbished for the grand reopening. "I believe this al-ca-zar could still hold these weapons. Even if the museum was looted before the war, the rifles were being refurbished. Meaning…"
"Meaning that the rifles would be secured outside the eye of the public…" Joshua Graham arrived at the same conclusion. He nodded approvingly at the young scout. "Good news is a most valuable commodity, for that I thank you."
"So are you headed to the civilized lands, Joshua? You will need someone to watch your back," Follows-Chalk asked excitedly. His wanderlust burned in his chest. He was all too excited to be sent on the quest for this book, and now that he could see a reason to leave the valley he could not keep it to himself.
"No, Follows-Chalk, that won't be necessary," Joshua sighed, knowing well that the young scout was not prepared for the dangers outside Zion. "This is a journey I must make alone. I entrust you with keeping the Dead Horses safe in my stead."
Follows-Chalk's shoulders slumped, but he understood. He searched his pack, quickly pulling out a small canvas sack and handed it to Graham.
"Provisions, so you will not go hungry," Follows-Chalk pushed the small bag towards the bandaged man. His hand cautiously went to his war club, but then quickly placed it on the table as well.
"May this give you strength where I cannot, ahk iss" Follows-Chalk continued. Graham looked at the club, looking deep into the visage of the horse and the bullet casings that stood as its mane.
"God will watch over me, you needn't worry," Joshua reassured the young man, but attached the war club to his hip. "But we cannot expect God to do all the work, so I accept this gratefully."
Follows-Chalk's mouth opened, but he thought better than to speak, silently nodding as Joshua rose from his chair, placing the provisions of salted meat into a pocket of his SWAT vest and began gathering his things.
"I will send for you when I find the rifles," Graham laid a hand on Follows-Chalk's shoulder. "In times of darkness, we can turn to the Lord, but it is comforting to know I have a good friend in you."
Joshua Graham had not left Zion valley in many months, but he knew the necessity of this pilgrimage. After a few more farewells to the more esteemed members of the Dead Horses, he began his journey to Mexico.
[]
"…please don't allow them to die because of me, Lord. If only I had a chance… don't let anyone else succumb to the temptation of this place."
Something was different. He couldn't place his finger upon it but it was as if he had experienced this before.
He squeezed the trigger of his revolver. A gunshot rang out in the ruins of the alcazar.
[]
Graham had traveled for nearly two weeks over the wasteland of the old American southwest. It was not easy, if any person had caught a glimpse of the man in bandages it could spread rumors back to Caesar and would only bring hell upon any place he set foot in.
Graham set up camp on a cliffside overlooking the ruins of Ciudad Juarez, a small town on the border of what was once Mexico. The sun set over the town, bathing the desert in rays of pink and orange before darkness overtook the landscape. Gazing around, he saw no signs of life as far as the horizon stretched, barring the howls of distant coyotes. He set up a small campfire, removing Follows-Chalk's salted provisions, a small portion of radscorpion he had killed on the trail, and sliced up a few wild jalapenos. He placed the food into a cast iron pan over the fire, hearing the juices sizzle as he cracked open a bottle of water that he rationed for the trip.
Graham took out the tourist guide that Follows-Chalk had procured as he removed the food from the fire, eating a small amount as he flipped to a map of the surrounding area. Among many other points of interest, Joshua noted the museum atop the hill on the other side of the town, a perfect place to overlook both the town and the small river on the other side.
He tapped this location with interest, taking a small bite of the roasted radscorpion before bundling the meal back into the cloth and placing it into a secure bag. His boot kicked sand over the fire, smothering the embers as his eyes located the eggshell white walls surrounding the old fort and began walking once again.
[]
"…please don't allow them to die because of me, Lord."
No, this time something was definitely different. He had been here before, lived through this before. Was this the chance the Lord had given him?
"If only I had a chance… don't let anyone else succumb to the temptation of this place."
He held his revolver out, ready to squeeze the trigger, when he opened his eyes.
He was alone. Just moments before, Ray McCall had a bullet in his chest, ready to finish Juan Mendoza, but now found himself hole once again. He reached his fingers to his metal breastplate where the bullet had punctured through, now a solid sheet of metal.
"What the hell happened…" Ray mumbled, grunting as he rose to his feet. The old gunslinger's black duster reached nearly to the ground, covered by bandoleers loaded to the teeth with bullets. Ray patted his holsters, finding his two trusty equalizers in their holsters, as worn as he remembered.
The room he found himself in was a small square, with two doors on opposite walls. If Ray remembered correctly, one was a dead end leading to the pit where Mendoza had kept his prisoners and the other lead deeper into the alcazar. He cautiously approached the latter door, poking it open with one of his pistols.
While Ray thought he knew where he was going, he was not prepared to see a large banner with Mendoza's image plastered onto it.
His trigger finger instinctually flinched at the sight of the man, blowing a hole into where the man's heart would've been. The smoke was still pouring from the barrel of the gun when Ray moved it to the side, realizing he had just shot a paper mural. Large letters were written in gold below the man's figure, identifying him as "Juan Mendoza: The Savior of Juarez".
"What is this, o Lord? Is this my punishment? Am I in purgatory?" Ray questioned, reaching for his bandoleer to reload the shot. This second room was a large square, with a pillar in the middle obscuring the other side of the room, but as far as Ray could see there were boxes upon boxes of various knickknacks and merchandise. He used his knife to pry open the top of a box, finding a peculiar assortment of glass orbs with a model of the fortress on the inside. Ray tossed it aside.
He moved his way through the almost familiar halls, the insides of the fortress now lined with what was described as ancient relics, outfits Ray had just seen the day before and newspaper clippings dated just weeks before.
"Yea though I walk through in the shadow of the valley of death, I shall fear no evil," Ray spoke to give himself confidence, passing into the fortress's courtyard. The night sky was clear, the full moon illuminating the white adobe brick wall surrounding the compound.
As Ray passed into the courtyard, there was another figure cresting the top of the wall surrounding the fortress. His hand instinctively reached for his holster as it hovered just inches above.
"Hold there!' Ray called out, not moving an inch. The figure clambered down from the wall, entering the courtyard and locked eyes with the gunslinger. "Not a step further."
The figure raised his hands, his figure obscured in darkness.
"Ease your hand, friend," the figure responded, not moving from the shadows. He pointed to the cross on Ray's chestpiece. "I expected a better welcome from a fellow man of God, but I understand one cannot be too cautious in a wasteland populated by both saints and sinners."
Ray was no more at ease by the man's voice, the creases in his cheeks from his permanent scowl growing deeper.
"You step out here and show me your face," Ray shouted. The figure stepped sideways, sticking to the shadows as he did. As he stepped, he put the alcazar's boarded up pit between the two of them. Whether that was by design or by ignorance of the pit it only irked the old man.
"I'd rather not. I imagine you'll find my face unsatisfactory or, if familiar to you, an unpleasant one," the figure said. Ray reached down, pulling the hammer back on his revolver.
"You step on out, boy, or I will unleash the wrath of God upon you!" Ray hollered. Was this the reason he was brought back to this world? Had God sent him here to rid this vermin from the world? He would hold his judgement for now.
The figure's chest raised as he took a deep sigh and muttered a small prayer under his breath, his hands dropping to his sides non-threateningly.
The man stepped into the moonlight, his bandaged face immediately illuminated by the clear sky. Ray's thoughts immediately flashed back to his old Civil War officer, Colonel Barnsby, with his face wrapped to conceal his identity to him and his brother. This truly was purgatory, his past materializing to haunt him.
"Barnsby, how the hell are you still drawing breath? I will send you to hell for good this night!" A fire lit within McCall's chest as his hand shot down for his gun. Graham saw the man's hostility and, before he could quell the man's misconception, had to reach for his own pistol at his side.
Ray, being the much faster shot, had drawn and fired his gun before Graham could clear his holster, two revolver rounds slammed into the burned man's torso. Graham staggered backwards, thankful for his SWAT vest while feeling his ribs crack beneath it.
"Die where you stand!" Graham shouted, finally clearing his holster with his custom .45 pistol, firing at center mass. Ray dove out of the way, both pistols now in his hands as he unleashed lead across the courtyard. The sound of metal ricocheting echoed through the night as most of the bullets bounced cleanly off of Ray's iron breastplate, though one punctured through grazing his side.
Ray grunted at the pain, but rose to his feet as he counted his shots down. While the bandaged man took cover behind a well, Ray slowly advanced, keeping both revolvers trained on his position.
"And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes! And they shall know that I am Jehovah when I lay my punishment upon them!" Ray shouted with a fury.
Graham had learned in his many days at war to count the shots as well, as he slid the clip out of his pistol, inserting a fresh one before sliding the first bullet into the chamber. 10 shots… 11 shots… 12. Graham took off sprinting from his position, his gun raised. He could see the eyes of the gunslinger in black, a deep rage within them.
"I will absolve you of your hate!" Graham shouted, sprinting and firing his weapon. A moment too late, however, he realized the ground he was stepping on had an echo to it, the dull thud of wood under his boots. The ancient, rotted wood gave out beneath Graham's feet and, before he could recover, dropped him 20 feet into the prisoner pit.
Joshua landed with a thud, slamming into his tailbone, but this was not nearly the worst fall he had taken as he instinctively rolled against the wall out of the line of sight of the hole he created.
He calmed his breath, looking through the sights at the hole streaming moonlight above. He saw nothing, heard nothing, for nearly a minute before he rose to his feet. Analyzing the room around him, there were dozens of shipping boxes laid around the rectangular room, with one wall outfitted with gun cleaning and maintenance supplies. A dark iron door was the only way out of this room, but Graham couldn't shake the hunch that this was what he was looking for.
Staying wary of the rotted hole above, Joshua made his way over to a box, pulling out a utility knife to pry open the top of the box. Within the box, cushioned by packing peanuts, lay dozens upon dozens of lever action rifles. Graham's heart nearly skipped a beat, the good news that he so gravely needed staring him in the face, before he replaced the lid on the box.
The sound of a distant closing door, perhaps two to three rooms away, snapped Graham to attention as he readied his pistol. His off-hand reached behind him, pulling out Follows-Chalk's war club as he slowly approached the iron door.
[]
"Damned fool," Ray muttered to himself, standing on the edge of the pit that his foe had fallen into. He spent a few seconds with his guns trained on the hole but quickly abandoned it, knowing exactly where that pit led and how easy it would be for the man to get away down there.
Ray rushed into the museum entrance, passing the paraphernalia of his past, but stopped short of entering the tunnels below as his eye caught a glass display case featuring "Guns that Won the West", inside laying various revolvers and a double-barreled shotgun with assorted ammunition. Ray holstered his pistols before smashing the glass top of the case with his elbow, grabbing the shotgun along with a few shells before descending into the basement.
Ray kicked open the door to the merchandise room, the large pillar in the center obscuring the view of the door on the other side, but he heard the creaking of footsteps in the old building.
"The Lord has made me his right hand!" Ray shouted out, keeping his shotgun firmly against his shoulder. "I am His judge, jury, and executioner! So beware, Barnsby, for I bring the wrath of God with me!"
"Make the first shot count, you won't get a second. God willing, you will not leave this building," the gravelly voice of Graham called out from the other side of the room, still in obscurity.
A shadow passed to the right of the pillar, causing Ray to instinctively pull right and blast both barrels of his weapon. He completely obliterated the tossed snowglobe, spraying glass and water against the plastered wall, before he saw his opponent sprinting at him from the left, his pistol unloading shot after shot. The bullets glanced off of Ray's metal chest plate, but he could feel the ferocity of the man behind the gun bearing down on him.
Ray flipped his shotgun to grab it by the barrel, knowing he needed to reload before letting loose another volley, and swung with the butt of it. The shotgun butt slammed into the man's shoulder, making him drop his pistol but it was not enough to stop him as he tackled Ray to the ground. Ray had only just noticed in the other hand the man wielded a wooden club as it swung down upon him.
"Ye have sown death, and now ye shall reap it!" the bandaged man shouted, slamming the war club into Ray's face. The blow knocked loose a few teeth as Ray tasted blood, but as the man raised the club for another blow Ray spat his blood into the man's face. The bandages stained red, but just enough got into his exposed eyes as Ray threw an elbow to get him off.
Still on the ground, Ray reached for his pistol and held down the trigger, fanning the hammer and sending six meteors of lead into the torso of the man, blowing him back crashing into a box and exploding into a shower of splinters and straw.
Ray took a deep breath as he laid his head back to the ground, reeling from the head injury.
"Oh, Lord, I humbly accept that the time has come for me to offer recompense for my transgressions. My anger, my hate, my pride, my arrogance…" Ray found it hard to talk with what was clearly now a broken jaw, but he forced himself to get the words out.
The crumbling of the box made Ray open his eyes again, looking up at his opponent getting up from where he had crashed into. Ray stared unbelievingly as the man reached down for his pistol, releasing the clip and inserting a new one to aim at the downed gunslinger.
"H-how? Are you the angel of death? Come to reap my soul?" Ray's voice wavered. A single gunshot rang out through the alcazar. A body slumped to the ground.
Joshua took a deep breath as the smoke from his pistol wafted upward from the barrel, closing his eyes for a moment before sliding it back into his holster. He gave a pained grunt as he knelt to close the gunslinger's eyes, the revolver's bullets lodged in various places within his body, but he would survive. He always did.
"I am sorry, my friend. An unnecessary death, that should've been avoided," Graham said to himself, pulling out a small amount of healing powder from a pouch on his SWAT vest. He would have to remove the bullets later in a more sanitary environment, but for now a gentle rubbing of the poultice on the wounds would have to suffice.
Graham stood, turning back to the room with the rifles to inspect them, remembering his confidence that the Dead Horses may finally have a defense against the White Legs.
Winner:
Joshua Graham