Twitch and Die!

Ch.1: Angel of Death

Black smoke curled from the chimney. Approaching through a barren bramble of oak crisscrossed with grapevine and briar, McCutchen dismounted behind the barn. An angry brush stroke of tar had congealed there, slashed diagonally across the clapboards—a marker the locals had taken to leaving of late. One he neither sought nor trusted.

The dark of night had gradually bleached ash gray as the shortened winter morning crept toward afternoon on spindly fingers. Only a week ago a new decade had come concealed in cloud. McCutchen thought the gloom fitting. He looped the reins around the horn and slapped his horse, Chester, on the neck twice. The animal snorted, steam rising from his back and nostrils.

McCutchen held his breath. No bird chatter. No barking dogs. No combustion engines rattling across town. Thurber Junction, or Mingus, as the locals called it, normally boasted a busy immigrant population blackened with coal dust or caked-in mud from the kilns. But work had stopped when the company town of Thurber, two miles further south, went dark.

A Model T sat in the barn. No tracks in or out for days. He strode across the lawn. Nearer the house, a scattering of jilted whirligigs, hand-carved and painted, lay in various stages of repose. Some had fallen, some cast down violently. The front porch of an otherwise meticulous and newly built Craftsman-style home lay strewn with garbage, the door jamb marred by deep gouges. A fresh one.

Shy of the landing, McCutchen drew one of his Colt .45s. He shook out his muscles, barring the cold and replacing it with his mantra. An ornately carved plaque caught his eye. Hanging crooked on the post of the front porch, it announced, “God bless all who enter.” Not likely.

He leapt onto the porch. Bursting through the front door, he shattered the jamb. An elderly man lurched from a lounger in the living room, upsetting the tray in his lap.

Twice, McCutchen pulled the trigger, pounding the stagnant air. With two boiling holes in his chest, the man dropped into his chair—feathers and splinters exploding out the back. Next to him sat a second chair, empty. No time.

A gurgling screech pierced the air as a body slammed into McCutchen’s back. Dropping his firearm, he spun with the blow. Boney fingers clawed for his face. While pinning them against the attacker’s own neck, he clutched a hand full of scalp, dipped his shoulder and took a knee.

Using his attacker’s momentum, he flipped the old woman across the room. Lunging toward his fallen .45, he gripped it at the same time he drew his second Colt. As the old woman’s body struck the perforated tin of the pie safe, McCutchen sparked the air twice more, putting one bullet on top of the other.

A vaporous burst expelled a staggering amount of the woman’s blood in a single surge. Two more beats of her infected heart and she fell limp, draped over the shattered family heirloom.

McCutchen stood, both pistols at the ready. Choked by puffs of acrid smoke and the characteristic twitcher reek, like compost rife with mold spores, he moved into the kitchen. Newspaper and claw marks covered a small table—two place settings. Two overturned wooden chairs. Two twitchers.

The early ones had all been sick, on the verge of death. Over the last three days the majority had been like this. I’ve gotta move faster.

He left the front door open and cleared the porch in a single stride. After whistling a two-toned trill, Chester galloped around the corner of the barn. McCutchen grasped the horn, mounting on the fly. Securing the black bandana around his nose and mouth, he pulled the brim of his grandfather's Stetson down low and urged Chester out of town.