“I don’t like this, Dustin,” the Gift made Luke say. “How about we just wait until we can get to a doctor?”
Dust strengthened his grip on the boy’s shoulder and took a slow breath. “I’m afraid that… that I need to give you this now,” he said, accidentally being very honest. Luke was already dead, nothing else could be done for him.
The Gift made Luke try to step away. “No, I’m not happy with this…”
“Come on, it’ll just take a mo-”
Luke wrestled within Dust’s grip, not strong enough to break it. “No! Let me go!”
“C’mon now…”
“No!” Luke roared, his voice not so much his.
Naismith clapped her hands together, quietening them both. “Luke! You will do as you’re told, mister! What would your Ma say if she saw you talking back like that?”
Dust could have shaken her until her damn spoiled head fell off. Why would she put what remained of Luke to shame? Why make-
“Yes ma’am,” Luke said, interrupting his train of thought. “Sorry ma’am.”
“Good,” Dust said after a surprised and thoughtful pause. Then he slowly put the Colt below Luke’s chin. “Well done Luke. Just be brave.”
“I’ll try, Dustin.”
They remained like that for a few seconds. Dust looked past the corruption that had overwhelmed Luke and saw the boy he’d been; a bright young man who just wanted to play with his brothers. He was a kid. Just a kid.
This was going to be tough…
His tattoo warmed again. But he wasn’t going to kill Luke because the damn tattoo wanted him to or to avoid personal pain; that would be selfish, wrong. Nor would he do it because he hated the Triangle. No, this was about protecting Luke, who wouldn’t want to join the monster that had killed his brother Matty.
“Good lad, Luke.”
Dust pulled the trigger.
The shot echoed between the Badlands’ uncaring dunes. The bullet rose through Luke’s mouth and out the back of his head, spraying human and inhuman remains into the air. His body remained upright as the Gift tried to sustain itself but it couldn’t keep the body going without a soul. Luke’s corpse fell to the floor.
Dust felt a great sorrow pressing on his chest, like he wore four fully-loaded trail packs. But there was more to do. Dust rose, swapped pistols, then fired into the corpse. The flesh spasmed and jerked in agony as the blue bolt ripped through it. He shot again and the remnants of the Gift died, releasing a mess of black spores.
This wasn’t the first time he’d a Gift try to disperse. He couldn’t let the thing spread, particularly not to Horse. So he didn’t think twice about kneeling to breathe the spores in, taking that horror into himself like an opium fiend. His tattoo writhed out a familiar spell as he knelt, one which gave the spores nowhere to go but into his lungs.
After three big breaths, he had drawn them all in.
They tasted awful, like shit-stained sawdust. And his lungs felt like they were being grated from within as he held his breath. His eyes watered as his body killed the spores.
“What are you doing?” Naismith asked, horrified
He stayed like that until the pain passed. When he breathed out, there were no spores released. They were all dead. He’d have a nasty taste in his mouth near until he chewed on a mint leaf but that was acceptable.
“What did you do?” Naismith asked.
“What needed to be done.”
Dust stood and shot Luke’s corpse again. This time it caught fire, a green flame that roared over his tiny body, encompassed it from hair to dusty toe. Most of Luke’s flesh combusted in seconds. Only the skeleton remained and even that burned like wood. There had been so little healthy flesh in the poor boy that only ashes would be left of him.
Naismith sighed, perhaps bored of watching a child burn. “Why?”
Dust couldn’t look away whilst Luke’s body still smouldered. “Why breathe in the spores?”
“No. Why go through all that ceremony? Why not just shoot him straight away?”
“I wanted to know more about the Badlands. And I wasn’t certain what it was.”
Naismith raised her eyebrows. “It was a thrall of Melting Flesh.”
The fire spluttered. Less than a handful of Luke remained. “No, it wasn’t.”
When the fire died, he turned to Naismith. She was looking at him with a strange expression.
“What?” he asked.
Naismith put her hand on her chin, splayed her fingers across her face. “You’re not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
She straightened her back. “Someone a little more… ruthless. All I’ve had to go on were the rumours that circle you, the legend of the Wanted Man. What I’ve found is someone who’s more complex than I’d been led to believe.”
He shrugged, letting her use of his nickname roll from his back. “Never trust rumours.”
“Apparently I shouldn’t.”
Dust could have sworn that she sounded disappointed. Which didn’t make much sense.
“By the way?”
“Yes?”
He took a step forward. “Don’t call me Dustin.”
“Isn’t that your name?”
Dust shook his head. “My name is Dust. ‘Dustin Longe’ died a long time ago.”
Naismith gave him a strange grin. “Did you kill him? Did he burn too?”
That seemed awfully disrespectful after what they’d just seen, what Dust had just had to do. But he refrained from saying so. “I didn’t kill Dustin; something else did. But that’s not a topic I ever want to discuss. You hear?”
“Okay,” she shrugged.
They mounted up and got back onto the Paints’ trail. As they rode off, Dust cast a final glance back to what’d once been a poor boy called Luke. He briefly played with the idea of gathering Luke’s ashes and returning them to his parents… but that wouldn’t do any good; his folks had likely already started mourning him. They didn’t need Dust bringing bad news.
No, best they hear it from this Otis, who had probably survived from the sound of Luke’s story; best they imagined their son had died instantly, eaten whole rather than nearly becoming… something else.
Dust turned away and rode on.
