Death at the Pond

The Sheriff and the Outlaw -Variation n. 5

AI (and Ferdinando BDB)

Dust swirls through the bars of the tiny cell, through the clinking chains where he sits on the floor. Alone, Adam Grieg smirks into the yellow walls, into the dim corners, senses his own stink rising like smoke. A single bulb hangs limp from the ceiling, throwing ugly shadows, bruised shapes against the cinder block. Every minute stretches taut, splits open like a wound. He is ironed in cuffs, clamped around his thick wrists. It bites into him like teeth. There’s a way out, he thinks. Or not. Either way, fuck ‘em all. When Sheriff Mike Brandon shows up, Adam doesn’t look up. He already knows the man is hard, impatient, greedy to see him swinging. It drips off him like sweat.

“You comfortable?” the sheriff says, stepping closer, standing in his heat. Adam can smell his breath, whiskey and meat, masculine and unwashed.

“More than you’ll be in hell,” Adam says, rough in his throat, like the sound of a boot scraping the dirt. He spits on the floor, defiant, watches the liquid sink into the dust, leave a dark stain.

“Your last night here, Grieg,” Mike says. “Hope you enjoyed it. Last night anywhere.” He likes the sound of it, plays with it like a dog with a bone. “Tonight you’re gonna be shit and piss on the floor. That’s what’s left when you stretch out, when you dangle.”

Adam pulls against the chains, feels them digging deep. “You want it that bad?” He knows the sheriff's starving for it. The death, the dying. All he’s got to give. Adam hears it in the sheriff's voice, sees it in his eyes. Man like that can't hide his need.

“Thought you might be looking for a way out, but here you are, like a good boy.” Mike's laughter bounces off the walls. It doesn't reach his eyes. It doesn't need to.

Adam shrugs. “Fuck it.” It’s all nothing to him. Time’s not something he measures. Time’s what other men do when they’re too scared to pull iron, when they’re too slow to shoot, when they’re not him.

“Clock’s ticking,” Mike says, relishing the taunt, his words with barbed edges. He spits, sees Adam looking, knows the outlaw’s got him sized up and don’t care.

Adam shifts on the concrete, the scrape of metal against stone. He closes his eyes, opens them. “Think I’m scared, Brandon?” A quick sneer, a low laugh. “Seen you getting stiff, looking at the rope. Why wait? Bet you'd do it right here, your hands around my throat.”

“I like ‘em twitching,” the sheriff says. “Gives me a rise.” He drags a chair close to the bars, his authority pressed up against them, something dark and immovable. He stares through the cell, through Adam, to the other side, where his greedy little dreams live.

Adam lifts his arms, gestures to the cell, to his cuffs. “Can’t run from your party now, can I?” His voice drips with mockery, with something dark and thick. He spits again.

“You’re right,” Mike says. “Nothing stops this show.” He leans back, drinks in the scene, knows he’ll be getting off soon, on a scaffold, with a corpse. Adam’s big mouth, Adam’s limp body, Adam’s rebel blood running wild. All his.

Adam glares at the sheriff, his eyes burning with hatred, with life. “You gonna be under me, Brandon. Or I’ll be under you. That’s how you like it.”

Mike grins, lets the insult roll over him, lets it soak in. He’s heard it all. He’s seen it all. “Like it dead and dirty,” he says, and they both know he’s loving this moment, these moments. Loving it as much as what’s coming.

“Cocksucker,” Adam mutters, eyes averted, the words thick and fierce.

Mike smiles wider. He’s not even mad. Not even close. “That's you. My cocksucker.” He licks his lips, smooths his beard, savors every angry word. “Wanna know how it feels, Grieg? Or how it will?”

Adam says nothing. His wrists are bleeding, his mind's a thousand miles away, down some empty road where men don't fuck each other, don't twist and writhe, just lie still with bullets in them. Maybe that's how he wants it. Or maybe he wants this. Wants now, wants live, wants to spill in a lawman's hands. Or maybe he don't know. “You talk too much,” he says, because it’s the one thing he’s sure of.

“The ones that shoot their mouths off,” Mike says. “They're the best. Hang the prettiest. Kick the longest.”

“You know,” Adam says. “Killed some sheriffs, before you got me.”

The outlaw watches the other man lean forward, strong and interested, wanting more. Adam sees him clearly now, in this sad little cell. The sheriff’s hands thick, working-man hands, bulging, something clamped down and urgent under his skin. Maybe he'll kill him. Or maybe not. Adam lets a silence ride in the air, waits till it's got the room wrapped up, then breaks it open like a beer bottle in a fist. “You won't be my last.”

“You're full of shit,” Mike says, and Adam can't tell if he's laughing, but it sounds like he might be.

“They had me just like you got me,” Adam says, knowing his mouth, knowing it's gonna talk till he's done talking, till he's done. “Noose ready. Dick hard.” He grins, loose and fearless. “I'm a tough fuck, though.”

“Tough corpse too?” Mike says, his voice less sure, a little cracked around the edges, because maybe the outlaw’s right, maybe he’ll have the last word. Not if the sheriff can help it. “Guess I'll find out.”

“Hope you get off,” Adam says, because why the hell not. He's fucked every other thing, why not the law. “If not, go screw your hand.”

Mike is silent, just staring, letting the insult beat the air, getting a rise just feeling Adam's little rebel heart ticking down.

Footsteps sound outside, break into the room like thunder, drown out Adam's clock, drown out Adam. A deputy with a rawhide face, a badge and a hard-on for hanging comes in, looks first at the sheriff, then at the outlaw, chained up and breathing, both of them waiting.

“Boss,” the deputy says, nervous, high on this moment, this day, this dirty, manful world of sweat and blood and spunk. “Time to string him up.”

Mike stands, keeps his eyes on Adam, keeps Adam’s eyes on his. The air's stretched out between them, stretched long, all piss and love and death. “You ready, cocksucker?” the sheriff says.

Adam sneers, defiant, never backing down. “Always.”

Mike smirks, strong, firm, feeling big, feeling life pounding in him. “Let's go, then,” he says. He jingles the keys, opens the cell, his big hands claiming Adam’s cuffs, his big mouth claiming the last word. “Party’s started,” he says.

The outlaw laughs, a sound like wind on empty plains, a sound like nothing. “Coming!” Adam says, like an answer, like a joke, like the only goddamn thing he's got left. They drag him out, all three of them breathing, all three of them hungry. All three of them in the end.

Adam walks to his hanging like a bride to her wedding, hands tied behind him in a cruel lover’s embrace. The townspeople have blood in their eyes, vengeance like hot irons in their hearts. They call him killer, outlaw, scum, but they call him other things too, and these make him smile. The sky is as blue and cloudless as his dead body will soon be, and he enjoys every breath of it. He does not hurry. They’ve shot him once already, and the blood drips a slow trail to the place he will die.

“String him up!” A red-faced woman throws a rock, hits him in the chest.

“Fucking outlaw!”

“Killer!”

“Fucking devil!”

The words stab like needles, sharp and mean. They take the pain from his leg and spread it through him, delicious and pure. A hundred hateful eyes on him, watching his every step, waiting for him to crumble. He gives them a limp, gives them the glistening red, the slow-motion bleeding out of life. He gives them a show.

A young man spits in the dirt, aiming for Adam's feet. “Think you’re tough? Bet you piss yourself soon as the noose goes round your neck.”

Adam grins at him, a flash of teeth through black beard. “Think you know what it’s like to be a man?”

A muttering, a hissing. He's young, they say. He'll shit his pants when he's choking. Someone shrieks: I'll watch! Others call for him to die already, stop milking it. A woman laughs, calls him handsome. She’s big in the middle, small in the chest, gap-toothed and reeking. She says she loves him, wants his outlaw cock. They all want it, she says.

“Slut!” An old man shakes his cane at her, nearly falls in the dirt. “Got yourself no shame?”

She spits at the man, lifts her dress, says Adam’s got something worth spreading for. More laughs. The sound is all around him, tangled with his heartbeats, filling his lungs more than the air. He draws it in, slow and heavy. His hands jerk at the rope behind him, reflex more than real need. He’s not afraid of pain. Not afraid of anything.

The town’s a tight knot of ramshackle wood and dust, fists and curses, shotgun dreams and gritted teeth. It's full of death, like him. Adam fits here like he fits in the noose, snug and choking. He's Badlands. Even when he’s swinging, he’ll still be here. He’ll never leave.

They force him on, dragging him faster than he wants to go. His boots skid and slide through the dirt, the trail of blood growing thicker. There’s the tree, the limb heavy and swollen as a vein, a dark branch against the bright sky. Adam looks at it the way a man looks at a woman when he knows she’s bad for him and loves her more because of it. He loves the tree. Loves it like he loves the rope that hangs from it, the endlessness it promises.

There’s a man waiting by it, rope in his hands, greed in his eyes. He’s thick-necked and raw, white shirt tucked in like he thinks himself important. The sheriff, and he is, here in this shit-hole town. “You ready to die, Grieg?” The sheriff ties a knot, looks at him, looks away. He thinks he knows what Adam is. He thinks he's better. He knows better, too, when he sees it.

Adam smiles, slow, like he's got nothing better to do. “You ready to make me?”

The crowd presses in, hot and close, eager to watch. Adam feels the eyes, the hate, the blood-thirst. It wraps him tighter than any rope. It chokes him harder than a noose. This is what it means to be alive, he thinks, and he almost laughs, but they yank him on, pushing him to the sheriff.

The sheriff holds the rope up like a trophy. “How’s it feel? Knowing this is the last you’ll see of the sky?”

“Feels good, man like you doing it.”

“What kind of man is that?” The sheriff sounds mean, but there's something else too. His words stumble, slip. Adam hears it. Feels it. He's been there before. He's been everywhere before.

“A man who gets hard for other men.” Adam’s eyes cut right to the truth, right to where the sheriff’s hat hides the dark from the sun. Right to where the hardness strains against the denim, wants out.

The sheriff's mouth twitches, and Adam laughs, louder this time. “Ain’t like you didn’t know what I was, Sheriff.” He licks the blood off his lips, grins. “I’ll be seeing you. All night long.”

He goes to the horse, climbs on. He doesn’t need help. There are hands all over him anyway, hoisting and shoving, hungry to touch, to hurt, to have him gone. There’s cheering and cursing and hissing, and some of it’s the horse. The rest is the dust. He rides it like he rode his first woman, breathless and thick with the promise of something more.

“Fucking hang him!” They press in, the townspeople, the meat and bone of them, the skin and blood. They want him dead but they want him alive, want him kicking and groaning, want him slow. They want him. Adam gives them another grin. Gives them a thrill, a tent, the stiffness of his cock straining at his pants.

The noose dangles, whispering to him. He puts his neck to it, takes the Sheriff’s rope with a hungry kiss.

“Adam fucking Grieg!” The sheriff hollers. “I’m the last man you’ll ever hear!”

They shove him, pull the rope tight. The noose is hot and rough, his throat already closing. He can taste his own breaths, taste how thin and tight they are, and he’s never wanted anything more.

“Goddammit, Sheriff!” It’s the old man again, waving his hat in the air. “Fucking make him swing!”

The crowd's all over itself, fists and elbows and greedy, sweaty limbs. They call for it, for the horse to be pushed, for Adam to dance, to choke, to die. They’re animal-wild, breathing hard, hands like claws at each other’s clothes. The air’s all fur and heat, spit and dirt and ripe for bleeding. It’s full of death and fucking, everything at once, and Adam’s inside of it. Adam’s getting off on it.

He leans back in the saddle, as defiant as a bullet, lets them all see how proud and hard he is. How it excites him. The sheriff wraps the other end of the rope round the trunk, and the horse kicks, sensing something, not liking it. Adam jerks forward, knows the moment’s coming, a perfect right-now of body and rope, outlaw and air. He hears a shout, a million shouts. He hears the thick, desperate beating of his own outlaw heart.

Then he hears nothing.

The horse goes, and Adam goes with it, up and over, off his feet, body cracking. The breath gone, but everything else still there, all the pain, all the tightness, all the noose-shaped need he ever thought he’d have. The world goes narrow, a fine point, a hard line between heaven and the end of him. He’s suspended there, strung out, choking, flailing. Alive. He is the moment of death. He is the instant before.

He dances for them, arms pulling against his bonds, chest heaving. His face goes red, then blue, the sky pressed up close and tight as his own skin. The struggle is more than pain, more than blood. It’s a thick, heady rush that pushes through him like the earth and sky fucking. It’s the best kind of agony, and he kicks for all he’s worth, groans with it. His sounds are low and guttural, come from somewhere so deep that it takes him by surprise.

It takes them all by surprise. The sheriff goes stiff as the hanging rope, fists the air like it's his dick. The crowd gasps, shocked into silence by the size of it, the outlaw cock huge and obscene, pants pushed out, desperate to break free. Adam kicks and it swells. He jerks and it throbs. They want him to die, but this is even better.

“Fucking hard for it!” a man yells, strangled voice, fever-pitched. “The devil's fucking hard for it!”

The words tear through the mob, wild and hot. Adam’s body sways above them, harsh and terrible, stretching like his heart won’t stop. He feels it in his groin, in the pressure and pain. He feels it explode in him. His body strains, the blood going black and hungry. He kicks again, feels the groans slip out of him like seed, like death. He kicks. He groans. He...

Stops.

The sudden stillness. The slow twitching. Then the piss and shit running down his legs.

He’s Adam fucking Grieg, even in the end.

A long moment. No sound but the heavy breathing of the mob. No sound but the boots dangling, the quickness turned to empty, swinging.

A longer moment. His corpse in a slow arc, fading like the last traces of heat off a spent body.

The sheriff is hard and he doesn’t care who knows it. He lights a cigarette, holds the match too long, burns his fucking fingers and laughs.

“Cocky sonofabitch,” he says, licking his lips like he’s got more planned. The townspeople are still watching, waiting for something else, waiting for him. He struts, glancing up at the blue, blue sky. “Bet he still hears me,” he says. “Bet the bastard still hears.”

He gives them a smile, slow and mean, full of what they need to see. “Bet he hears you, too.”

A rough plank for a dead man. That's where they lay Adam out, naked, the outlaw's cock hard and mocking even after he's swung from the rope. Even after he's cold and past caring. The big room smells of dirt and sweat and coming rain. The bearded man looks down at the corpse and spits. He doesn't care that he's dead. He's only happy that he can finally have him. He can fuck him like he promised, like he's dreamed of doing since the outlaw spit in his face. Since he first saw him, really.

"I'll watch," Thomas says, laughing as he strips. The sheriff grins, eyes dark, full of something fierce and raw and obscene.

"Didn't take you long," Thomas says. He wipes his hands on his pants, crosses his arms over his massive chest.

Mike stands there, sizing up the dead man, Adam. The outlaw they caught. The one who was full of hate and fury and who stared him down like he wanted to kill him. Like he could.

"I like him like this," Mike says. He smirks, runs a finger down Adam's bare chest, all the way to the outlaw's stiff cock. It's like he's gloating, like he's making Adam feel it even now.

Thomas laughs. "Reckon you do," he says. He kicks a stool closer, leans on the wall. "It's what he wanted, isn't it?"

"Maybe it is," Mike says. He licks his lips, looks at Thomas. "I'm sure as hell gonna enjoy it."

Thomas nods, pulls a flask from his pocket, drinks. "Make it good, Sheriff," he says, offering the drink to Mike. "Make it real good."

Mike steps closer, takes the flask, takes a long swallow. It's hard liquor, burns going down, fuels the fire in him. He doesn't even look away from Adam's face as he drinks. The dead man's eyes are closed, peaceful. Mike sneers at that, at the idea of peace.

He hands the flask back, puts both hands on the plank. The room is big, smells of earth, a graveyard right outside.

"Think he knows?" Mike says. He means, does Adam know what he's got planned. Does he know what he wanted, what's coming?

Thomas shrugs, grins. "Doesn't matter," he says. "Not to him."

"Matters to me," Mike says, voice low, full of something that could be a growl. He breathes in, heavy and slow. "I'm gonna fuck him." He looks at Thomas, dark, serious. "I'm gonna fuck him dead."

Thomas watches, his own desires dark, unrestrained. "He ain't dead enough to stop you, I reckon," he says. His laughter is a crack of thunder in the thick air.

Mike touches Adam's body, the outlaw's skin cold, already starting to stiffen. He grips him by the waist, flips him onto his belly. Thomas gets up, helps him. Adam's ass is in the air now, dirty and covered in shit. Mike likes it like that, likes the stink of it, the rawness.

"Not gonna clean him up?" Thomas says, raising an eyebrow.

Mike grins, the look of a man who's just been dared. "No need," he says. "I'll fuck him filthy."

Thomas sits back down, nodding, watching as Mike undresses. The sheriff pulls his clothes off, all muscle and hair, cock already hard and leaking. He stands there a moment, breathing, staring at the body like he wants to eat it alive. Or dead.

"He's all yours," Thomas says. His voice has an edge of envy, of something almost like longing.

Mike gets on the plank, crouches over Adam, spreads the dead man's cheeks with both hands. There's no resistance, no struggle, just a wide-open ass waiting for him. An ass that can't say no. He spits on it, gets himself good and ready, lines his cock up with the hole.

"Goddamn," Thomas says. His hand is on his own cock now, squeezing it, feeling the heat in the room, in him.

Mike pushes in, groans loud and hard. The shit smears on him, the stink of it thick. It's good. It's everything he wanted. Adam's dead body, Adam's dead ass. He fucks him deep, each thrust shaking the plank, shaking the room. His breath is loud, animal, his beard brushing the outlaw's back.

Thomas watches, eyes fixed, not blinking. "Harder," he says. "Fuck him harder."

Mike does. He slams into the dead man like he means to split him in two. The body jerks forward with each thrust, loose and helpless, flesh moving under his hands. His grunts are like thunder, like something savage, primal. He bites Adam's shoulder, tears at it with his teeth.

Thomas is stroking himself, steady, measured, waiting for something. Waiting for Mike. "Fuck," he says, voice deep, rough. "Fuck him."

Mike does. It goes on and on, the outlaw taking it, taking it, the smell of shit and sweat and death thick in the air. Mike doesn't stop. He keeps going, relentless, each stroke harder than the last, until the room spins and the air is too thin and he feels the fire in him, the end.

He cums with a growl, raw and loud, fills the dead man's ass with his heat, with everything. He lies there, panting, not moving, savoring the quiet, the finality, the fuck of it.

Thomas waits, breath held, cock ready. Mike finally moves, pulls out slow, his dick smeared with shit, with cum. He doesn't say a word. He just nods, and Thomas knows what he means.

The sheriff steps off the plank, walks over to Thomas, drops to his knees. "Yeah," Thomas says, breathless, urgent. "Yeah."

Mike takes Thomas's cock in his mouth, tastes the salt and need and pre-cum. He sucks him deep, one hand on Thomas's balls, his own dick still filthy and dripping.

Thomas leans back, lets it happen, watches Adam's dead ass, cum leaking out. "Goddamn," he says, softer now, full of awe or lust or maybe even fear. He cums with a shout, fills Mike's mouth, spilling out the corners.

Mike swallows, every drop, then wipes his mouth on his arm. He looks at Thomas, something like triumph in his eyes. Something fierce, something wild.

The two men sit back, light cigars, the smoke mixing with the other smells. Thomas grins, scratches his beard. "Hell of a fuck," he says.

Mike nods, smiles, the dead man still naked in front of him, a dead man he finally got. A dead man he can have again, anytime he wants.

"Sometimes I think I'd like it," Thomas says, casual, but his eyes are burning. "You know. If you did me like that."

Mike blows smoke, shrugs, the answer easy, like everything else in his lawless world. "I'll do it," he says. "I'll do it good."

Cigar smoke, thick like fog. It hovers and twists in the pale lamplight, casting shifty shadows on rough-plank walls. Outlaw Adam lies on a wooden bed, dead and still handsome, cocky even in death. Two bodies face each other on the floor, naked, legs crossed. Scarred muscle and unruly hair, smoking and drinking and talking, calmly brutal, coldly vicious. The gray older man leans forward: "Admit it, Mike, you want to die." Sheriff Mike smirks, cocks his head, a lion waiting to pounce. The silence is electric. "Hell no, Thomas," he growls. "I ain't like you."

Adam’s corpse has started to smell, fresh blood turning stale and sweet. The night seeps into the room, heavy, throbbing, the kind of night that demands its pound of flesh. A dark sky outside; two men like beasts inside. "Fuck, I know you better than that," Thomas says, reaching for the bottle. "You're the one who's fuckin' lyin’.” He takes a long pull, eyes locked on Mike's. He sets the whiskey down, slow, controlled. "You got to want it. I see how you live."

Mike chuckles, low and dangerous. "Just 'cause you're a goddamn lunatic, don't make me one." He leans back, drags on his cigar. The smoke curls and snakes, mixing with sweat and gunpowder and spilt whiskey. Thomas reaches out, almost a touch, like they're brothers, like they're lovers.

They drink more, smoke more, strip down to naked, crossed-legged intimacy. Steam from the whiskey rises as it splashes across Mike's broad chest. "I was a bounty hunter once," Thomas says, breaking the lull, words like stones. "Killed plenty of bastards. Just like you." His mouth twists into a savage grin. "You think I didn't know what it felt like to want to die? Goddamn fool if you don't think you do too." He drags his cigar, lets the smoke linger between them.

Mike's eyes are fire and flint. "You're wrong, old man. I know what I want. I want to kill. I love it. Just like you." He spits the words like bullets, but they lack something—a certainty.

They recount past encounters with death. Thomas says he realized he wanted to let the outlaws he hunted kill him, that he stopped being a bounty hunter because of it. Mike denies ever wanting to be killed and insists Thomas is wrong about him.

He shrugs, grins wide. "It's the rush, ain't it? 'Bout gettin’ the upper hand on some dumb bastard, watchin' his face when he knows you're gonna fuck him over.” He looks at Adam, stretches back with his hand on his hairy belly. "When I killed those bastards, damn I came like a bull." His eyes find Mike's, dark, taunting. "What about you? Ever close your eyes and hope for a bullet?"

Mike’s nostrils flare, his cock hard and full. He pushes his legs out, a stallion ready to bolt. "Ain't like that," he says, voice tight as a noose. "I like to see the light go out. That's all." He grabs the bottle, takes a deep, hot swig. "I’m the one that makes it happen. You got that? Never the other way around."

"Goddamn liar," Thomas whispers, soft as dust.

Mike grits his teeth, knows Thomas won’t let it rest. He stares at the ceiling, draws in the whiskey-soaked air. It tastes like death and like heaven. "Think what you want, asshole" he says, words low, a growl. "Don't make it true."

The conversation goes on, endless, circling like buzzards over a dead mule. Insults like stinging blows, accusations like knives. Every word heavy, a challenge. They drink and smoke, shift on the floor, on each other, back to the wall, eyes locked, sweat-slick and unyielding. Mike can't tell if he believes Thomas. Maybe. Maybe not.

As night deepens, Thomas is more insistent. He is sure Mike wants to be killed, just like him. Mike seems unsure but sticks to his denial. The exchange is a mix of insults, admissions, and calm certainty from Thomas.

The room dims to shadows, a cave of violence and unspoken lust. Two men like one mind. "It's gonna happen, you bastard" Thomas says, dead certain. "Death's got your name, Mike. You’re in love with it and you know it, asshole.” He sets the whiskey down, nods slow, full of goddamn conviction. “Same as me."

Sheriff Mike glares, hard as iron, lips peeled back. "Go to hell, you piece of shit" he spits, but the words are tired, cracked. He leans forward, nose to nose, the room spinning, his heart a hammer.

Thomas laughs, light and breathy. "You're in denial, partner. But you'll come around. Even if it’s your last fuckin’ breath."

They fall silent, staring at each other, hard and challenging. Thomas finally says he will dig Adam's grave and leaves. Mike watches him go, thoughtful and a little unsure.

Mike feels a heaviness, an unease. His body knows what his mind won’t accept. He takes the bottle, drinks deep, stays where he is, not moving, a hunter and prey in one skin.

Outside, the Badlands lay dark and flat as a corpse. Thomas digs with violence, his whole body thrown into the shovel, raw determination. Clay flies, the earth heavy, falling, covering him like dirt at his own funeral. He grins and thinks of Mike, his goddamn hard body and dead-set refusal. "Son of a bitch," he grunts, laughs, bends back to work. "Wants it more than me."

He thinks about the whiskey, the cigars, Mike's certainty and Mike's lies. He knows they are the same. They are, have been, will be. Blood-thick lust for death, two sides of a razor, one body and two ends. He digs deeper, stronger, until he’s satisfied and knows it’ll happen soon.

The grave yawns like a canyon, dark, empty, waiting. He stands, stretches, knows he’ll fill it soon. Knows that he’s been waiting a long goddamn time for the end. The digging is done, so is the wondering. He wipes his face, licks his lips, turns back to where Mike is waiting, always waiting, ready to kill him and ready to be killed.

Thomas goes inside, finds Mike still there, drinking and smoking. Their eyes lock. They don’t need to speak. Both men are hard again, smiling in anticipation of what's to come.

Time slows, thickens. Their bodies are heat, and death is a third body, close and breathing between them. They look at each other. They smile.

Thomas stands there with his cock out like a challenge, meeting Mike’s stare. His grin is wild, half-drunk, reckless, and they don’t have to say a goddamn thing. The understanding passes between them like whiskey between men: Thomas is going to die tonight, and Mike is going to kill him. They’ll be buried together, the outlaw and the gravedigger, sharing that dark earth like lovers share a bed.

It’s Thomas who finally breaks the silence. “Time’s come, ain’t it, son o f a bitch?” He sounds eager, strange like that, ready for death. He watches Mike, sees the muscles on his bare chest rise and fall, his breath quickening. They’re both naked, the way they’ve always been, stripping down to nothing but flesh and filth. Their bodies are brutal, marked by life’s violence. Mike nods, and it’s like an oath. Thomas is sure of his place in the ground, right beside Adam, the outlaw whose shit is still on Mike’s cock. “You’ll have to fill the grave , old bastard. And go away” Thomas says. “Like nothing happened.” Mike’s smile is a slash across his face. He doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t have to.

The night smells like dust and sweat and leather. A whisper of desert wind slips through the boards and ghosts past their skin. Thomas sways slightly, drunk on whiskey, drunk on dying, half-crazy from the excitement of it all. “They’ll wonder what happened to that piece of shit gravedigger,” he laughs. “Think he ran off or got himself shot.” He stares at Mike, who stands like a goddamn force of nature, ruthless and raw, excited and savage. “Nobody’s going to look for him down in the hole, asshole.” He sways a little closer, breathing hard, knowing Mike’s getting worked up the way he likes, like an animal, all instinct and muscle.

They close the distance between them, bare skin against skin, their cocks hard, rubbing against each other. The sweat makes them slick and gritty at the same time, and Mike can smell Thomas: sour and human and alive for now. He grunts, lets Thomas smell him back: the outlaw’s shit and everything else that’s smeared on him. “Jesus, we stink, two stinking pieces of shit.” Thomas laughs, and he doesn’t mean a word of it. The stink is what drives them on, what drives them crazy. “You ready for this, bastard?” he says, not sounding unsure but wanting to hear it. Mike grins and shoves him, hard, not a word. They know the truth without speaking.

They stand there, locked eyes, cocks like iron, hands like they want to tear each other apart. Neither one backs down, and the moment drags on like foreplay, slow and brutal and savage. Mike feels the anticipation in every inch of his skin. He can see the look on Thomas’s face: hot and insane, like he doesn’t know what he’s begging for. He watches as Thomas steps back, breaking their stare, breaking their silence. “Let’s do this, bloody bastard” Thomas growls, lies down on the corpse like a whore on a bed, and he doesn’t flinch as he fucks the dead man, making room for Mike.

The gravedigger grunts with pleasure as Mike comes down on top of him, fills him, fucks him with brutal thrusts. He can feel Mike’s cock inside him, sharp and hard, pounding. He gasps for air. He gasps for everything. He can feel the hands on his throat, gripping tight. “Come on, son of a bitch” Thomas chokes out. “Goddammit, do it. Shit!” The outlaw’s body lies there like a welcome mat. “Harder,” Thomas says, or maybe he thinks it, the words almost gone before they’re spoken.

He’s on fire now, a fire Mike lit, a fire that Mike’s making blaze hotter and hotter, the life choked out of him as the sheriff’s cock drives in, drives him past sanity, past breathing, past knowing. He comes in the dead man’s ass and goes slack, Mike’s strong hands crushing the life from him. His head falls back, and he stops breathing, and Mike is too excited to stop, too lost in it, to do anything but let himself come with one last, violent thrust.

It’s a wildfire in Thomas’s chest, burning hot, fierce, taking everything from him and giving him everything he wants. His death rattles like music. His whole goddamn body sings. Mike shouts something, far away, animal and savage. Thomas’s body goes slack, and the world goes with it, fading into dark, lovely oblivion. Mike is right behind him, letting go, and he’s shouting louder than the storm in Thomas’s chest.

His release rips through him like violence, leaves him like a bullet from a gun, and he sags down onto Thomas’s corpse, breathless, panting. It’s over. It’s goddamn over. He lies there a long moment, one body on top of another, until the frenzy in his blood slows. He pulls away, looks down at Thomas, who stares back at him, wide-eyed and gone. “Told you I’d do it,” Mike says, catching his breath, pushing himself to his feet. Thomas doesn’t answer.

The air is thick with the smell of sweat, shit and death. Mike moves Thomas’s limp body off to the side, not bothering to wipe the stink from his skin, savoring it. He stands over the outlaw, who’s not any colder than Thomas, just another dead man for Mike to enjoy. “Up you go,” he says, scooping him up, hauling the dead weight out the door, across the dirt yard. It’s a fine night for burying.

He gets to the grave, looks at the hole waiting to be filled. Tosses the outlaw’s body in like garbage, a sound like rotten fruit when it hits the ground. “There you are, Adam,” Mike grunts. “Told you he’d be joining you.” He watches the corpse for a moment, like it might spring back to life, give him another night of fun. It doesn’t. He knows it won’t.

Back inside, it’s still, quiet. The room’s lit by a sputtering lantern, shadows dancing on the wall. They don’t dance on Thomas. He lies there stiff and unmoving, but Mike’s eyes burn like he’s staring into the sun. He kicks the door shut, goes over to the corpse, squats down. “Not done with you yet,” he says. His fingers find their way to Thomas’s ass, into him, and Mike closes his eyes, leans his head back, feeling the last of Thomas’s heat.

He takes his time with the body. Rubs his hand across the gravedigger’s chest, wipes the dirt from his eyes. Flips him on his back, cleans him up. His shirt, his cock, his skin. Lets his hand wander up and down, memorizing the corpse like it’s a map. “Too goddamn bad,” he mutters, voice rough with wanting. “Too goddamn good.”

It’s a fight to drag Thomas out. His feet leave a long track in the dust, marking the trail from life to death. “Let’s get you home,” Mike says, dropping him into the hole, right on top of Adam. The bodies settle together, the living settling too. Mike spits into the grave, picks up a shovel. “Reckon this’ll be quick,” he tells them, the dead men, the night, himself.

The earth is heavy, but he’s stronger than the goddamn world. Fills the grave fast, dirt flying, sweat rolling off him. It feels like work. It feels like fucking. He finishes with the ground flat and the men buried, a small mound like a grave for the life he and Thomas fucked out of each other. The desert’s silent, a thin chill slipping under his clothes, under his skin. It’s still a fine night. It’s the best night.

Back inside, he scrubs himself, scours the filth away until he’s cleaner than a lawman ought to be. His hands are rough. They don’t need a goddamn cloth. He’s had bigger things in them. He finishes, stands there dripping, breath fogging in the chilly room. He’s so goddamn alive it hurts, and the pain makes him smile.

He dries off, clothes himself, leaves like a ghost through the still, empty town. Badlands sleeps. It snores. No one wakes when Mike walks past, no one follows when he gets to the office. He doesn’t bother to light a lamp, just strips his clothes again and lies on the narrow bed. He stares at the ceiling, remembers the way Thomas looked when he gasped for his last breath, and reaches down between his legs.

The bed creaks with his weight, the night drifts around him. He’s alone, but he doesn’t care, has what he wants right here. The dead men share a grave. He shares the excitement, the urge. It thrums through him, and he’s hard again, and it’s going to be a goddamn good night.

*

Mac rides in hard, like he owns the place. Boca Caliente, a ramshackle stack of firewood left to cook in the desert sun. Buildings crouch between rock, blistered and blistering. His black horse pants. Breath like the first exhalations of creation. Caked dirt flakes off its flanks. This is the asshole of the world, he thinks, spurring the beast on. Maybe his last asshole, but Mac Cage ain’t picky.

Wind peels the skin off his face, makes him feel new, like a good fuck. He runs a thick hand over his beard. No goddamn grit in this place. Just sand and rock and the bones of sorry fools who crossed paths with Douglas Blackthorn. The way it smells, he thinks. That’s death and fear and piss. They say Blackthorn is the best stallion in the West, a goddamn legend. That makes Mac Cage the best stallion killer. He spits, hard. It hits the ground, crackles.

A bird drops from the sky. Wings folded like the bills of the vultures pecking at a limp sack of dead flesh. Bones strain through the skin. Mac pulls his horse beside it. Eyes the name tattooed across what used to be a chest. Used to be a man. Dirty Pete. So much for the son of a bitch.

They didn’t lie about you, did they? Mac says.

He thinks he sees the meat twitch. Thinks it might get up, try to outdraw him. He laughs and loosens his grip on the Winchester. Loose. Easy. A kid playing hopscotch. Or a man with a boner. Pete’s cock got nothing to strain against now. Slit wide open, from end to end. Mac taps it with the end of his boot. Whispers something soft and obscene. They got the killer’s signature. Mac would know those marks anywhere. From Dodge to Yuma, they whisper it in whorehouses. Douglas Blackthorn. From the border to Deadwood, it’s scrawled in red and black and fuck on every wanted poster. The way he likes it.

That son of a whore, Mac says. A real piece of work.

Boca Caliente trembles like a mirage. Mac mounts his horse, kicks it hard. Knows his own name will be etched into every bedpost in the goddamn West. All that money. All that whiskey. All them whores. Once he leaves Douglas Blackthorn, cooling in the desert with cock in hand. He follows the line of vultures. Picks up a trail of bloody pearls, of gold nuggets, left to draw him in like a fifty-dollar whore with legs from here to Denver. It’s bait. It’s a gift. It’s enough to make a man wet. Mac ain’t the kind to turn it down.

A new pair of dead eyes waits for him half a mile down the road. Flies have found a home in the broken husk of a man. Mac looks into those eyes, and the eyes look back, like they see him, like they know what’s coming.

The eyes say, Cocksure bastard. Got you, didn’t he?

Mac grins, wide and mean. Sure did, he says. But he don’t know Mac Cage.

The body is trussed and stretched out like a calf, ready for branding. Mac puts a thumb on the entry wound. Stares down the length of this poor fucker. A whole lot more holes on this end. Through and through, musket balls or cannonballs. Enough to drop a goddamn bison. He wipes blood on his pants. His hands won’t be that clean when he’s done with the bastard. That thought, that filthy, sticky thought, sends a good hard rush straight to his gut.

Mac’s hands twitch. Two pistols. Four guns. A dozen gaping assholes. He don’t need a goddamn armory. Don’t need a fucking army. A bullet and a prick. The words are smooth in his head. Polished. Easy. He will engrave them on the man’s skull, sure as shit.

When he gets to the town’s edge, Mac meets a corpse he knows. Knows it like the slick insides of his boots. This one is torn up and burnt. This one, the vultures left for the wolves.

Hey there, Old Cunt.

It don’t say nothing back, not with the tongue hacked off and nailed to a plank. Not with the spine slit, and the tail knotted.

Old Cunt, he says. Fancy meeting you here.

The body is half strung from the limb of a stunted tree. Mac jerks the ropes, lets it flop to the dirt. Something stirs inside. A family of rats or an army of maggots. He hears the squish of it. The sweet stink of decay. Fucker. If the man was still breathing, Mac would call it bravado. Looks like the big balled son of a bitch got to you, he says. But Mac knows. He knows the guy who does this.

Mac doesn’t stop again. He leaves the carnage of Boca Caliente behind him. An empty eye socket looks on. Three scarred assholes bend like tin badges. Mouths hang open. Eyes bulge. They want to suck him in. Like a black goddamn hole. They don’t know Mac Cage. He draws them a map.

Now he’s in town. No crowds. No ticker tape parade. Just blank storefronts and the yellow sky. The place is dust, and Mac is the wind.

It’s a ghost town, alright. Bleached down to nothing by that huge, old fuck in the sun. Where is everyone? Pissing themselves in their fancy britches. Mac don’t blame them.

He rides past a tumbleweed shack with bars on the windows. Bars like on a cage. A few chickens have taken up in there, dumb and lost and loud as a two-bit floozy. Mac shakes his head.

Too afraid to stay.

The sign creaks like an old whore’s bed. The letters are burnt off. Mac can still read them. S-h-e-r-i-f-f.

Too afraid to leave, he says. Fucking joke.

Mac wants a drink. Wants it bad. His mouth is the only dry thing in this goddamn town. He leans off the horse, lifts its lip. Not much different than his own. He takes pity on the beast, lets it lap up water from a trough, rusty as a newborn slut. It’ll have to do. The sun boils the dust, gets right under his skin. He laughs, a low growl that makes the horses shiver and buck. Ain’t nothing making Mac Cage jump. Not the sun. Not Blackthorn. Not even goddamn dynamite. He leaves the horse in front of the shithole that passes for a saloon. Paint peels from the walls like flesh. Half the chairs are empty. Half are missing.

Drink, Mac says.

The bartender is nothing but nervous hands and squinty eyes. A stiff wind would blow him straight to hell. His voice is no stronger than the rest of him. Whisper thin.

Heard that one before.

A dozen times?

More.

Not from Mac Cage.

Not yet. You should turn right around, Mister. Leave.

Mac laughs. Is that so? He drains the glass, smashes it on the floor, watches the old man jump. I want more, he says. Then a room.

Got one.

Good.

Only one.

Mac leans in. Smells fear on the bastard’s skin. Smells old cum and fresh piss. You’ll give me the fucking room.

Give you more than that. Give you the worst two days of your life.

A woman’s voice cuts in. Sexy as poison. A sweetshop drawl.

More like two hours.

Mac grabs her wrist, pulls her close. Takes in every pore on her chest, every hair on her throat, every fleck in her eye. Takes it like a drink, and his tongue is an animal behind his lips.

Didn’t hear you right, Mac says. Must have been them big tits in the way.

She shakes herself free. You heard me.

He finishes the second glass. Eyes the bartender. Stares him down. It don’t take much.

One more drink, he says.

The bartender does like Mac told him, too scared to say another word. The whore turns away. Her skirt has all the folds and wrinkles of a skinny old man. Mac stares at her ass like it’s his first meal out of prison.

Turns back, she says. Plenty of rooms in hell.

And a bitch like you, Mac says. Ain’t even there yet.

Mac drinks the last of the whiskey. Enough to make a preacher come. It burns good. Better than he expected. He likes the taste. It makes him smile. It makes him strong.

Whatcha grinnin for, Baldy? the woman says. Ain’t nothing but fuck and death in this place.

Fuck and death? Mac says. His eyes go far away, to the vultures and the half-empty chairs. He shoves the bottle between his legs, strokes it like a prize mare. That’s just what Mac Cage likes.

Mac Cage orders a bath and he does not give a fuck who hears. Thirty years of living rough have leathered his skin, not his will. He licks his lips, imagining the steaming water like a woman's tongue across him. They will know he is here, but this time he does not care. The tub is an old one, claw-footed, fit for a cattleman’s dream. A yellow-eyed boy hauls it in, sweating, struggling. The boy fills the tub from bucket after bucket. Mac's hairy arms fold, impatient, unforgiving. His cock stiffens at the thought of killing. Of finding the bastard with the scarred face and showing him just how hard a man can die.

The room is dim, even in the Mexican sun. Mac watches the curtains sag in the heat, heavy with dust and flies. He rubs a hand across his thick beard, stained with trail and blood. They will have heard of him here. Word is faster than a bullet. Boca Caliente knows what he did in Tucson, in Santa Fe, what he did to Wild Bob and those halfwit boys. He bares his teeth at the memory, a predator’s smile, and tosses his gun belt on the sagging bed. He won't need it yet.

The door creaks open, hinges screaming like a man with a knife in his gut. Mac watches the boy strain, pulling the iron beast across the floor, his shirt dark with sweat. “Hurry it up, boy,” Mac growls, like the bite of a winter wind. He wonders how many bastards Douglas has brought through this town. How many poor fuckers walked in thinking they had him only to end up chewed gristle. They call him the best stallion in the West, but Mac aims to make sure the stud never breeds again.

The kid dumps the first bucket, grits his teeth. Dumps another, face slick, breath hard. The sound is sweet, hollow, like guts spilling from a wide-open belly. “Goddamn!” Mac mutters. “This water warm or you just pissing in there?” The boy glares, one second of defiance, but lowers his head and keeps at it, a rat with no choice but to gnaw through the steel bars.

Mac watches the tub fill, watches the boy’s thin arms grow weak. He stretches his massive legs and gets up. He yanks his shirt over his bald head, chest hairy as a grizzly's back. Drops his pants to the floor, kicks them like they are last night’s trash. He is animal, brutal, untamed. The kid pours another bucket and steals a glance at Mac's hard cock. He's ashamed but curious, a virgin catching a glimpse of hell. Mac just laughs.

He slips into the water, a boulder rolling into a muddy stream. It's hot and angry, soaking into his muscle and bone. The boy leaves without a word, pulling the door shut, afraid to look back. Mac closes his eyes. He is here for Douglas Blackthorn, for the fucker with the scars, the brute who kills men, cuts their balls, and sends them to the devil with a savage grin. Mac lets his thoughts drift, his dick twitch, his skin burn. Steam curls around him, hot ghosts, sweet reminders of life.

He reaches beneath, finds himself with a strong, callused grip. He moans, low, a wolf remembering blood. The water laps at his neck, liquid mouth, red mouth, red with murder and hard vengeance. He is here, and Douglas Blackthorn will know it. The man will feel it. He rubs, slower, urgent, more urgent, until he cannot keep his head above.

A scuttling sound. Boots outside. The doorknob jiggles. A second of silence, an hour of it, then the door flies open like it's been shot.

“Mac-fucking-Cage,” a voice grinds out, and Mac's eyes snap open.

Dan Blackthorn stands there, backlit by the mean sun. A grim silhouette. A cruel outline. A nightmare fresh from a fresh grave. Massive and scarred, his arms knotted with flesh and past crimes.

“What the fuck?” Mac spits, sloshing in the tub.

The man with the big grey beard steps into the room, his gun a lover in his hands. It is not the gun that will kill Mac Cage, not alone.

Mac is slick and cornered. His guns are on the bed, wet dreams from a dead place. His own piece of cock rests against him, softer now, limp.

He stares at Douglas. Looks the bastard in the eye and stares him down. “You’re the dead one, Blackthorn.”

Dan laughs. “What you doing here, Mac? Catching me some fine fucking fish this time.”

Mac bares his teeth, all anger and promise. He pushes back against the tub. His voice doesn't tremble. “I’m taking you back north, you prick.”

“You and what fucking army?” Douglas is closer now, three steps from the tub, his boot heel crushing dirt and hope. “Wrong answer.”

“Go to hell,” Mac sneers, still not giving a fuck.

“I am your hell.” The words come soft. The words are wet.

Dan raises the gun and smiles, wide as a whore's cunt. He pulls the trigger. Again. Again. Mac Cage slams back, his stomach full of hot bullets, his breath gone. He feels the burn, a man's burn, a man who is fucked and knows it.

His fist locks around Mac Cage’s throat, grip like a pair of handcuffs. Douglas Blackthorn slams him into the ground. The world spins, wood crunches against bone. Mac wheezes and goes limp. Like catching his breath, Douglas rips the buttons from his fly and Mac’s hope from his body. He shoves him onto his stomach, the naked brutality of it.

“A last fuck for you,” Douglas promises. His cock swings free, the end of the hunt.

The floor is already wet where Mac fell, spilled bathwater soaking the boards and his shirt. Cold seeping through, making him shiver. But it's Douglas’ eyes that hold him, like a pair of gun barrels. He's heard the stories. The dead sheriffs, the mangled corpses. How Douglas leaves them broken and ashamed. Douglas leans over, grabbing a handful of hair, spitting the words into Mac’s ear.

“Don’t die too soon. I’m just starting to have fun.”

Mac claws at the floor. “You filthy son of a—”

The boot strikes his ribs. Pain lights him up and then leaves him in the dark. He's a fresh kill. Douglas throws him over, face down. Mac’s gasping, every breath a nail being driven in. Douglas covers him like a shadow, hot breath at the nape of his neck.

“Goddamn, this is too easy. Hold still or I’ll kill you fast.”

Dan’s huge hands press Mac down, wet floor sticking to his cheek. Mac shudders as Douglas pushes against him, every muscle clenching to stay alive, to stay whole. A second boot to the side and he’s gone, pain turning him hollow, nerves shredding into nothing.

“See this?” Douglas holds his cock in a massive hand, swollen and veined, the length of a barrel. It aims at Mac like a gun. “I’ll bet you never had one like it.”

Mac closes his eyes. Another yank to his hair.

“Tell me you want it. I like my bitches to scream for me.”

Mac coughs, weak, blood already seeping from somewhere deep. His voice comes in tatters. “Just get it over with, you bastard.”

Dan laughs, a sound like tearing meat. The head of his cock is at Mac’s entrance, spreading him open, driving forward with brutal slowness. Mac bites his tongue to keep from begging, teeth digging into flesh, his own iron taste on his lips.

“Oh, I’m going to take my sweet time.”

Dan digs his knees into Mac’s thighs, forcing his legs wide. His shaft presses into Mac’s insides, centimeter by ragged centimeter, claiming him. His hips slap against Mac’s ass, pinning him down, fucking him. Mac feels his body give way, splitting open for Douglas’ pleasure. He’s nothing but pain, an endless stretch of it. It feels like days, like years.

“Still breathing, Mac?” Douglas grips his hair and pulls his head back. “Or am I fucking a corpse already?”

Dan’s cock is a red-hot poker, burning him hollow, hammering deep with each thrust. He hears the tearing inside and knows it’s his own body giving up. Surrendering. Blood and water slick on the floor and on his skin. Everything is the pain and the rhythm of Douglas’ cock, pumping through him like a second heart. Mac shakes uncontrollably, cold and fire running through him at once.

He thought he knew pain. Thirty years and thirty deaths, every shot clean. This—this is like dying a hundred times.

Dan grunts, faster now, drilling hard. Mac feels him swell, impossibly, impossibly large. He fights to stay conscious, but he’s unraveling, nerves stretched past their limit. He’s already dead and dying again. He lets go, the darkness spilling over him like a mercy.

There’s a shout, a final vicious thrust, and Mac comes back to his body. Douglas comes too, flooding Mac with a sticky warmth, a drowning man pulling his victim under.

“Didn’t think you’d last this long,” Douglas says. He rolls off, pants still open, cock still half-hard. The words are almost kind.

Mac doesn’t move. He can’t. His skin is paper, soaked and tearing at the edges. Douglas grabs him and flips him over, knees on either side of Mac’s chest. One hand finds Mac’s throat again, squeezing the life out. The other cups his balls, pulling them tight, stretching them away from his body.

Mac wants to say something, a curse or a prayer, but there’s nothing left.

Dan leans forward, all his weight on Mac. The grip tightens, merciless, crushing. Mac tries to scream, but it’s lost in his lungs, swallowed by the white heat of his own mutilation. He sees stars, then only Douglas’ wide grin and gleaming eyes.

“Still with me?” Douglas pats Mac’s cheek with his bloody palm. He sounds almost impressed. “You always were a tough old bastard.”

Dan gets to his feet, hitching his pants up. Mac hears a low, keening noise and realizes it’s him. The hurt is everywhere now, drowning out thought and sense and shame. He watches, dazed, as Douglas bends down and reaches for his knife.

“Now for the big finish,” Douglas says. The blade flashes in the light.

Mac tries to twist away, but his body won’t obey. Douglas’ boot plants firmly on his chest. “Nuh-uh. I want to see your face when I do it.”

Mac breathes short and fast, gasping for air and time and anything that might save him. His hands twitch on the floor, looking for a gun that’s no longer there, for a knife of his own. For anything but the truth that waits for him at the end of Douglas' blade.

Cold metal against hot skin.

One cut, two, and Mac's cock is gone. Douglas holds it up like a trophy, stringy bits still hanging, and jams it between Mac’s lips.

“Nice little cigar for you. Suck on it while I finish the job.”

Mac chokes, blood and spit pooling around his severed dick. It tastes like copper, like revenge. He’s shivering again, bones rattling against the wet floor. Douglas pulls a pistol from his belt, one hand still on the knife, twisting the old wound and making new ones.

“How about the grand finale, huh?” Douglas takes a step back and Mac rolls to his side. The cock falls from his mouth and flops to the ground, a piece of meat. “We’re going to see how far I can stick this up your ass.”

The words sound far away, everything tunneling in and out, flickering like a lantern in the wind. Mac coughs, more blood, more wet, and sees Douglas' boots stalking closer. He knows this is the end, but not the way he ever imagined it.

Another roll and he’s on his stomach again, the wet floor sticky with everything that was inside him. Now, nothing is.

Dan jams the gun barrel in Mac’s hole, the rough metal digging and scraping. Mac doesn’t feel it at first. He’s too far gone, almost out of his body. Then the cold touch becomes hot, becomes burning, becomes the final agony as Douglas pulls the trigger.

Once.

Mac arches up, every muscle tight.

Twice.

He’s free, loose, floating on his own scream.

Three times.

Then nothing.

Dan slips the gun back in his holster and pushes a boot under Mac’s ribs, rolling him like a sack of flour. Mac’s face is slack, red eyes still open. The world will never close on him again.

“You made this one fun,” Douglas says. He hikes Mac’s dead body up, throws it over his shoulder, and walks to the door.

Outside, Douglas swings the corpse over his horse’s back. Blood and come trail down its flanks as he leads it through the dirt street and out of town, past all the sagging shanties where cowards hide and look the other way.

He leaves Mac in the hills near Badlands, under a thin, pale sky. The birds come down and circle low, getting closer and bolder. One lands on Mac’s back, pecking at the soft, open holes. Another perches on his face. The rest follow.

When they scatter, there won’t be almost anything left.

*

Mike waits in the thickening cloud of cigar smoke, legs up on the desk, one boot rocking lazily back and forth. A crashing sound as the door flies open, the sheriff's star in the middle of Mike Brandon's chest glittering like it's waiting for a bullet. The messenger is just a kid, breathless, eyes big and scared. Mike can smell the piss on him before the first word comes out of his mouth. The name. Douglas Blackthorn. It drops like a body hitting the dirt. The man of the law grins wide, pushes his chair back and gets to his feet. They say the outlaw's the meanest son of a bitch around, that he's already put forty, fifty men in the ground. That there's no one better with a gun or with his cock. "Tell me where," Mike orders, but he's already reaching for the rifle, already getting stiff at the thought. He walks into the street and waits, hands on his hips.

The kid stares at him, gulping like a fish, but Mike doesn't have time for cowards. "Where the fuck's Blackthorn?" he demands, voice like a slap. The kid flinches, points west.

"They said he crossed the border. Heard he's at the river."

Mike barks a laugh, claps the kid on the back so hard he stumbles. "You’re not lying, boy, I'll give you that."

The kid runs off, and Mike stands there, breathing in the stink of fear and sweat. He loves it. Makes him think of the nights when Thomas came around. Nights that ended with a body cooling on the floor and Mike hard as a rock. The outlaw’s supposed to be a real devil. Mean enough to kill forty men. Mean enough to take on any bastard in New Mexico and not break a sweat. Mike's fingers itch for the feel of a trigger, for the moment of explosion when death tears through the air and rips a man apart. His cock stirs at the thought. He's got a half a mind to just ride out now, face Douglas Blackthorn on his own. Let it play out like he knows it will, with someone six feet under. The very thought sends a chill up his spine.

But then he remembers the last one he hunted, some piece of shit in from Arizona. What fun is it if there ain't someone to watch, someone to hear the last screams? He thinks of the look on their faces, the moment they know. He spits again and starts barking orders.

"I need men!" he yells, eyes wild and excited. We’re going after Blackthorn."

The name does what he expects. Like a dynamite blast. Most of them just fuck off right then, muttering under their breath, not even ashamed to show their backs. Mike's laughter rings through the street, harsh and unforgiving.

"The fuck you running for? Ain't even pulled the trigger yet." He grabs the closest one by the collar, a skinny little man with scared eyes and twitchy hands. "You with me, or you just another goddamn pussy?"

The man stammers something, his face pale as chalk, and Mike shoves him away with a disgusted snarl. "Knew it. No balls on you anyway."

He mounts his horse with a violent motion, hands sure and steady on the reins. He thinks about Douglas Blackthorn, thinks about what a man like that might say before the bullet hits. About whether there'll be anything left to screw once he's done. He kicks the horse into motion, the rifle hard against his back. "Goddamn cowards!" he hollers one last time at the men watching from their holes. "You're missing the best fucking show in town." He rides out, alone and eager and smiling.

Dust chokes the air, a dry throat of dirt. Mike rides into the flat New Mexico sun, all of it heat and desolation. Nothing around him, just the steady gallop of his horse, the unrelenting thirst of the ground. He shouldn’t be doing this alone. He knows it, knows it as sure as he knows how to squeeze a trigger or drive himself into a man, bloody and raw. The smart thing would be to turn back, round up more bodies. The outlaw’s the meanest bastard in the West. They say he killed forty men, perhaps fifty. They say he likes to do it slow. But there's no thrill in the smart thing, and the thought of quitting tastes like bile. He pushes on, thinks about Thomas Greendar. He'd wanted it. Asked for it, some nights. For the end to be just so. Maybe it’s the only thing a man can want.

Maybe. Or maybe it’s a crock of shit, something only the old and broken can fool themselves into. Mike feels the familiar buzz of adrenaline in his veins, each hoofbeat sounding like a heartbeat, relentless and real. Not fear, never fear. The thrill of knowing a thing can go any damn way it wants. The outlaw’s supposed to be a hell of a killer. Fast and mean and ruthless, everything a man should be. Mike wonders what he'll say when they meet, if he'll see it coming, if there'll be enough left for the vultures. The thought makes his skin burn.

His mind keeps circling back to Thomas Greendar, that crazy old bastard. He’d had it all planned, right down to the words Mike would say when the time came. All neat and tidy, the kind of death a man can live with. The fucker was smiling when it happened. When it all went red.

It was a night in July, hot as sin and thick with sweat. Thomas came by the way he always did, after hanging an outlaw, to fuck the dead man’s body. When it happened Mike had been halfway to drunk, waiting on the edge of something he couldn't name. He'd seen the shovel leaning on the old man's shoulder and known right away what was up.

"Tonight?" Mike had asked, breath quickening.

"If you've got the balls," Thomas had shot back, a dark grin splitting his face.

Mike remembers the way the gravedigger felt underneath him, all muscle and sweat, the long shudder when he grabbed his neck and went in for the kill. "Fucking finish it," Thomas had choked out, and Mike had done just that, when everything inside him erupted and went dark.

The memory pulses through him, strong and obscene, the way it always does. The way it did that night and every night since, the night he'd almost believed it himself. Maybe you want to die, Thomas had said, breathless and raw, Maybe you want to find out.

He can feel the desert swallowing him up, a vast empty mouth. Can feel the end rushing at him, faster than the wind, colder than the grave. It sends a shock through his body, fierce and electric, makes him wonder if he really does.

He kicks the horse faster, the landscape a blur of gold and dirt. It's close now, close enough to smell, close enough to feel like the muzzle of a gun against his skin. He thinks about the way it might go, a showdown under the wide-open sky, the last thing he ever sees, a man with nothing to lose. He thinks about what Thomas said, thinks about it like a dare. Like a promise he’s about to keep.

The hard weight of his own mortality presses down on him, beautiful and sure. He pictures it with brutal clarity, the bullet tearing through, leaving him hollow and spent. He pictures the outlaw's grin, the moment before the end, the moment he finally knows. He's hard now, all the way, impossibly so, harder than he's ever been.

But then he laughs, a wild sound that gets lost in the wind. Thomas could have been wrong. He could have it all turned around. It could be him standing over Douglas Blackthorn, one foot on the outlaw’s chest, a fucking smile on his face. There’s no telling till it’s done.

Mike can almost see him now, the silhouette of a man who’s got it coming. He feels the freedom of recklessness, the dark thrill of gambling it all on one last pull of the trigger. The sick twist of anticipation coils tighter in his belly, drives him forward, faster. This time tomorrow, he thinks, his grin splitting wide, this time tomorrow.

Sheriff Mike rides alone, dust and desolation his only company. Hooves pound the trail, a drumbeat announcing death. He follows Douglas Blackthorn’s wake for days, a wake of empty whiskey bottles and empty shells, a wake of decay. The outlaw’s legend spreads across the desert like bloodstain, across the little town of Badlands and beyond. The sheriff hears it whispered, from dirty saloons to dirty whorehouses, how Douglas Blackthorn gets away every time, how no sheriff alive or dead has managed to catch him. Maybe no sheriff ever will. At a pond, he finds three bloated bodies baking in the sun, bullet holes where the life leaked out.

Naked. The sheriff sits back in his saddle, eyes narrowed against the glare and the stench. One of them, maybe the oldest, floats face-down near the shore, back hunched out of the water like a rock. The other two drift a little further, twigs and slime tangled in their hair, mouths open in silent screams. Flies crowd the open wounds. Bubbles rise where gas escapes. Fucked, all of them. The outlaw even left his stink inside them, making the statement clear. Goldfor brothers. Gotta be. Mike scans the horizon, eyes fierce and hungry. He nudges his horse to the water’s edge.

“Crazy son of a bitch,” he mutters. A smile flickers beneath the wild black of his beard.

Even in the middle of nowhere, he recognizes Douglas Blackthorn’s work. The Goldfors were nothing but half-drunk saddle bums. Bathing, probably, when the outlaw found them. He imagines their shock when Douglas appeared out of nowhere, gun drawn, bullet already in the chamber with their names on it. Would have been over before they knew it started. A couple of shots each. Heads, chests. Now they rot, sunning themselves in shallow water, more dead meat on the trail. He’s getting closer. The sheriff dismounts, gives each of the brothers a closer look, looking for any sign of what direction Douglas left in. Bullet holes gape like empty eyes. The youngest, a kid with curly hair, has dried semen on his thighs. Mike grunts with something that might be satisfaction. He lifts his head and checks the distance again. The outlaw can’t be far.

The sheriff grins. A good game needs players on both sides, and he knows Douglas Blackthorn’s in this one for the long haul. Maybe even as much as Mike is. Already, he can see their eventual meeting. He wants the outlaw to try, try as hard as he wants, and then see how a real stallion handles himself. He wonders if he’ll even try to fight back, or if he’ll let it happen, like Thomas did.

Mike’s blood thunders with the possibilities, and for a moment he almost forgets the decaying boys at his feet. They bob gently as his shadow passes over. Nothing to do for them, not out here. He rolls their last moments over in his mind, the sounds Douglas would have made as he grunted through them. Fucking each one. Then fucking off, into the scrubland, like nothing happened. With many dead sheriffs and many dead deputies to his name, they say he’s untouchable, that any lawman with a deathwish should stay the hell away. They don’t know Mike. He’d go after him even if he didn’t wear the badge. The outlaw has everything he wants, laid out like a trail of breadcrumbs, or corpses. He scans the horizon a final time before getting back on his horse. The saddle creaks under his weight.

His pulse kicks hard as the hunt stretches out in front of him, endless desert begging to be painted in blood. Douglas thinks he’s got something on him, but Mike knows different. Douglas might fuck his victims, might even put a bullet through them when he’s done, but Mike does them one better. Douglas might be the outlaw’s real name but it’s the Blackthorn part that’s earned. Got a rep for making lawmen suck him, making them beg for it. Mike wants to give him a run for his money, put the dog down with his own bone in his mouth. He looks back over his shoulder at the brothers. Youngest can’t be older than seventeen. He shakes his head and chuckles. It’s a rough joke but he’s heard worse.

The horse senses his urgency and keeps a steady pace. Mike rides for miles, cold and heat alternating like moods. Day and night, flashes of light and dark, a flickering loop. All he sees are mirages. The outlaw stays ahead. Water’s low when he finally stops to refill. He wipes the sweat off his neck and peers back in the direction he came from. The bodies are far enough that no one will find them. Not in time. Not until they’ve cooked in the sun and turned to ash and dirt. Even vultures will be hard-pressed.

Nothing out here but parched grass and dust for miles. That’s why Mike notices it so fast, the little speck in the distance, the small wooden building reaching up like a hand drowning in sand. A farm, maybe. He kicks his heels in. It’s waiting for him, like everything else.

They’ve all been here a while. In the baking heat, none of them smell much worse than the bodies he found earlier. The owner’s easy to recognize, his torso blown open, blood sticky in the dust around him. Lionel Kerson, in what looks like a final attempt at survival, or a failed escape. Didn’t get far. Just to the edge of the barn, pants around his ankles. Douglas takes the time to do them all. Women, kids. The outlaw really doesn’t care. The sheriff steps over a boy, maybe eighteen, small hands curled like claws, pants around his ankles. Fucked too, but Mike knows better than to hope for a spare moment. He lingers anyway, looking down at Kerson with a knowing half-grin. Lionel helped him on more than one occasion, sold him a mean rifle the last time. “Oughta have used it,” he says, voice dark and raw like dirt.

Lionel, the boy, and three others stew under the pitiless sun. Sprawled like the Goldfors. Bullet holes telling the same story. Bareassed. Bullet ridden. Lifeless. None of the wounds are in their heads, and Mike feels the same black thrill at knowing why. That takes away all the fun, ending it so fast. This way, they know what’s coming and have to lie there, unable to do a goddamn thing about it. The outlaw wants them to bleed out, wants them to realize what’s happened to them. The sheriff wants the same thing. He scratches his chin and studies the ground.

From the looks of it, some of them tried to hide in the house. He kicks the door in, hoping maybe to catch one still dying, one he can interrogate. Or finish. It crashes against the wall with a hollow thud, and dust motes swarm in the afternoon sun. No sound. Nothing moves. His fingers brush the handle of his Colt. The floorboards creak beneath his weight. Not dead weight, like the rest.

Inside, a man in his sixties leans against the wall, grey hair matted, grey blood on his shirt. Kerson’s brother, probably. Maybe his uncle. It doesn’t matter. Bullet to the chest. Caught first, before he could warn the others. No time to scream, to shout. Just die. Two women and a small girl huddle near the fireplace, lumps of meat wrapped in homespun cloth, half undressed and empty. Bullet to the chest. Bullet to the chest. “One for each hole,” Mike mutters, boots heavy on the wooden floor. None of the men were law, but Mike’s caught up enough with the outlaw’s thinking to know that’s beside the point. Bullet to the chest. The outlaw is marking territory. Daring him to follow.

The sheriff likes a dare.

Eleven bodies in one day. He’s seen carnage like this before but never a pile this high, this deliberate. More than he expected, even knowing the outlaw’s rep. Douglas could have been gone hours, could have been gone days. It doesn’t matter. Mike’s cock presses against his thigh as he surveys the bodies, running the scene in his mind over and over, every step, every shot. He’s harder than he’s been in months. Last time it got this good was with Thomas. He told Thomas it was like getting high, like a trip on peyote, but with death instead of the colors. He fucks like Douglas kills, gets a better ride when there’s no chance of survival. Like Douglas fucks too.

There’s nothing more to find. The house stands empty. The barn too. More of the same. Flies. Silence. He finishes his inspection and heads back into the scorching light. Like before, he leaves the bodies where they lie. Maybe someone will find them. Maybe they won’t. They don’t matter. None of them do. He takes the time to fill his canteen from their well before heading out.

When he’s back in the saddle, he sets his sights south, toward the border. He wonders if Douglas knows he’s out here, knows he’s coming for him. They’ve never met but there’s something. A sense. Mike imagines the outlaw will hit Mexico soon, and from there a place in Boca Caliente where the horses come cheaper than the liquor and last just as long. It’s all filth. Mike loves it. So does the man he’s hunting. When he reaches the edge of the horizon, when he finds his way to Boca Caliente, when he finally catches up with Douglas Blackthorn, they’ll finish it. But maybe not right away. Mike gets an uneasy excitement in his guts. It tightens, raw and fierce and hungry. Two weeks. Maybe more. He’ll take his time. He’s looking forward to it.

Two weeks. Maybe more. Mike doesn’t mind the time, the endless ride toward Boca Caliente, a ride marked by arid days and nights just as dry. There’s something almost pleasant in the isolation, something like peyote, something like death. The outlaw can’t be far. Mike can smell him in every dead coyote, every abandoned shack, every fucked and lifeless memory he can’t seem to outrun. But it’s not just Douglas Blackthorn on his mind. He’s been thinking about Thomas too, the gravedigger he killed in the middle of a night, in the middle of a climax. That old bear’s been haunting him as hard as Douglas, haunting him with memories and hunger and a fatal promise.

Miles fall behind the sheriff like old lovers. Broken shacks and rusted-out hulks. He finds the body of a horse, left to rot in the sun, bones visible beneath the blistered skin. Douglas has no patience for what slows him down. He guesses it won’t be the last. He guesses he knows what that means for him. Maybe his time’s as numbered as the bodies left behind, left behind by both of them. A white puff of cloud trails across the flat, distant sky. One more thing that will disappear before long.

He gives his horse a break, stops at an empty homestead to check his water and eat a piece of dried meat. He feels a little like that. Dried meat. His cock stiffens at the thought. He stretches out in the shadow of an old wooden fence and closes his eyes. Sleep doesn’t come easy, not with Douglas this close, not with his brain conjuring the kind of dreams it’s been conjuring lately. The moment he gives in, he sees it. The thin smoke rising from a black cigar, the tip of it red and bright like an exit wound. It hangs in the air, a moment of total silence, total stillness, before Thomas keels over and into his grave. Already half-buried. Already cold.

Mike blinks and rubs his eyes. “You always want something,” he growls to the memory. It’s a familiar accusation, one he used to make to the old man’s face. Thomas was a pain in the ass but never in a bad way, not really. Not until the end. He left his scar on Mike. He might as well have.

He watches the sky a while longer, taking deep breaths, settling into the emptiness and the light. He hopes this isn’t all for nothing. He hopes to catch up before Douglas gets too comfortable, gets too far. Thomas’s voice scratches at his ears, laughing, taunting. You want something too, Mikey. What you want is to be one of them. Maybe that’s true. Mike doesn’t know for sure. What he does know is the bastard outlaw is still ahead, and the bastard gravedigger is still behind, behind like the hardest fuck he’s ever had. The thought keeps him up, keeps him wide awake and aching.

Days blur into nights. When he closes his eyes, they blur too.

He rides. He waits. He thinks about his past, how his body gets so hungry when there’s so much death on the menu. He remembers the look in Thomas’s eyes the moment before it happened, the moment he began to fuck and strangle him. That mix of pleasure and gratitude and what might have been fear. He remembers another time, the last time Thomas came to his place instead of Mike sneaking over to the old man’s shack. Before the ultimatum, before the begging, before the funeral. He was helping himself to a bottle of whiskey, shoes still covered in mud from a fresh job, not a word or a knock or anything, like he lived there.

“A little early for the likes of you,” Mike said, putting his boots up on the table, showing Thomas how welcome he was.

“You know what they say about the early bird.” Thomas took a long, deep drink and settled his weight in a chair. “I ain’t no fuckin bird, Mikey.”

“I coulda told you that.”

They laughed, and Thomas coughed.

The old man had been on the skids for a while, wasn’t the same Thomas who showed Mike the ropes back when he first moved out this way, back when he wasn’t more than a dumb kid, dumb enough to have expectations. No expectations now. No dreams. Just an idea, and he knows where it leads.

Thomas got himself real comfortable, left his flannel shirt in a heap on the floor, hair gray as an empty sky and twice as cold. When they started in on each other, Mike was gentle at first, wanted to make it last. “Harder,” Thomas grunted, each time. “Harder.” So he got rough. Got as rough as the gravedigger wanted. Got rougher. Rough enough to leave marks. He fucked Thomas with the old man’s own whiskey bottle, long neck shining, then when he was ready, shot it down his throat.

It was one week after that, when he went over for a routine lay, that Thomas gave him the news. They were at it right up against the graveyard fence, practically in the grave itself.

“Fucker,” Mike said when it sank in. He thought he’d take it, but Thomas held his gaze. Even in the dark.

“I wanna go out this way. Ain’t you ever thought about it? Ain’t you ever wanted that?”

“Fucker.” But he had. He still does.

They didn’t talk much after that. They didn’t have to. Just looks. One final fuck on top of the final fuck.

Riding through the dust and emptiness, the thought of the outlaw grows thicker. He wonders if Thomas was right, if maybe he wants what the old bastard thought he did. Maybe he’ll die at Douglas’ hands and it’ll be what he deserves, what he wants. Maybe not. He gets himself closer to the edge every time, every bullet fired into flesh. One of these times, he won’t have to drag his sorry ass back from it. One of these times, he won’t have to hear the outlaw laugh. Mike strokes himself under his pants, fingers hard as bullets, face turned to the desert sky. He grunts. “Fucker,” he says, this time to the emptiness. This time to the outlaw he’s never met. This time to himself.

His horse grows tired and the heat takes its toll. He knows how much he’s got left, knows he can make it, but he gives the animal a rest. Gives himself one too, in case the wait’s longer than he expects. There’s no point killing himself before Douglas does. The time it takes gnaws at him, gnaws at him like a bullet wound. The thought of the outlaw gnaws at him even harder. When he spots the canyon, he knows it won’t be long. Mike knows more than anyone the kind of place that draws the kind of man he’s following. The shack is old, rundown, abandoned. Old, rundown, abandoned like his first memories of Thomas. The gravedigger was stronger back then, scarier, had more hair on his head and fewer coughs in his chest. He doesn’t want to see it, but he does.

The house looms like a tombstone in the orange heat, smaller and smaller and smaller as he approaches. Then, just like everything else, he’s on it. The door hangs open, nothing left to scavenge. He goes inside. Checks each room. Checks every corner. Flies and dust, dust and flies. The outlaw might as well be here, that’s how much his ghost haunts the air. Mike can almost smell him. Douglas gets around. Maybe not enough to leave eleven bodies this time, but that will change.

He splashes water over his head and rubs some into his beard, wipes his mouth, wipes his neck. He’s glad for the darkening sky and the way it cools. He can rest here before moving on, before the last push south. He tethers his horse in back and gets the saddle and bridle off, gives the animal a break and a rubdown. Even in the pale light, his arm looks as old as Thomas’s did. Almost. Just a couple more years. He traces the lines and veins with the same affection and hunger. Just a couple more weeks. It’s all there. He strokes the base of his cock.

His life used to be so simple. Before he got mixed up with that old bear. Before he had anyone to share it with. Or destroy it with. Now there’s so much more, more than he bargained for. Thomas might have had it right all along. Mike can see the road ahead. It leads to Douglas Blackthorn. It leads to his own fucked corpse, naked and bullet-ridden. He can hardly wait.

He doesn’t bother going back inside the house. He sleeps under the stars.

At first light, the sky wide and open and expectant, Mike is already restless, already packing up. He splashes himself again, a quick wash, a little relief from the dust and heat. Everything else is the same. The outlaw can’t be far. The horse, rested but not for long, jerks at the tether and paws the hard-packed ground. There’s nothing but open desert for miles and miles and miles. Boca Caliente waits at the other end. It waits for Douglas, waits for the sheriff. He mounts up. His blood pulses as they take off. Faster. Faster.

A cloud of flies swarms the dead coyote, fat and fur burst open by the same buzzards that spiral like black vultures over Mike’s head. He squints against the sun. They’re waiting for him to fall like Benjamin Lockwood, a week dead and cock shot off. A true story, for once. Douglas Blackthorn bragged about it at the border saloon, already drunk when the letter from Badlands called Mike to finish this killing. Mike almost laughed; one less sheriff to chase. The one outlaw as rotten as him. A man who gets the point of dying. The law had done its work already; hell, he’d just shot his last prisoner for trying to run. Now the buzzards know the next carcass is coming.

It could have been him, not Lockwood. Maybe he wanted it to be. He prods his horse, ignoring the sun-baked crisscross of mesquite and sage. Douglas fucked Lockwood before he shot him. Maybe even after. Mike saw it, the corpse leaking red and crusted purple. All parts but one. He knows what the bullet took. Just like Blackthorn knew when he left it behind, heavy and obvious as any bloody letter to a dead man.

A single shot. Mike wonders if Douglas is slowing down. Getting soft. That could make things too easy.

Blackthorn’s tracks are clear in the dirt, horse going steady as Mike’s thoughts. A twisted needle under Mike’s skin, straight into his cock. Can’t be close enough. He left that gambler twitching in the sun, dripping out the same hole as Lockwood. That’s the way. Left another piece of himself up the trail, where Mike would see. Maybe hoping for an ambush. Maybe knowing Mike would ride into it with a smile. Either way, Blackthorn is past the ridge. Mike has no doubt.

A clot of sheep startles across his path, crowding behind the whip-cracked Mexican chasing them. A rancher’s foreman, boots loud as his mouth. “Badlands. It’s been a long ride, sheriff. Tell them I said that.” He glares at Mike with a hungry look, hot and full of question.

“Give a shit,” Mike says, not looking back.

“I heard about Benjamin. I heard Blackthorn was—”

“Give a shit,” Mike says again, with the hard click of a cocked gun.

Tracks on the trail. Not just Blackthorn's; others crossing and doubling back. The foreman must have seen more than Douglas. Mike is sure of it. But the old stories spread faster than the new ones. Last time Mike hit the border, they all knew how he killed the last bastard sheriff. How he filled the hat full of holes and the old man full of lead, buried both in a sandy grave. Badlands knew the story, knew it was true, and called him from the Mexican side to fill the badge. That was a year back. This is something else. But this is the same, too.

He sees buzzards closer down the trail, a low and living fog that shifts and rises. Nothing left for the flies, a scarecrow with a hole through the middle and pants around its ankles. Better sight than last time. Another dead sheriff might have made Mike hard; a fucked and bleeding corpse, harder. Mike rubs himself under his pants, thinking it through.

There’s an old camp to his right, right where Mike knew there would be. Smoke from the ash tells him he’s a half-day back; still more than enough time to put a slug in Blackthorn and two more in himself, where it counts. He traces the prints to a narrow gorge. He sees a dirty shack with half a roof and boards nailed wrong-side-out. Badlands people, when they can stand themselves that close. When they can’t, they get the urge to drift and then the urge to drift back. Like Mike. Maybe not like Mike at all.

He stares at the cabin, thinking maybe he’ll leave it empty, or leave it full of holes, when a man stumbles out with a raised bottle. The old sun-leathered bastard squints, sways, and laughs. “Mike Brandon! The only sonofabitch as mean as me. Maybe meaner, now he’s gone all law and order.”

“I’ll give you five seconds to take that back.”

“No, you won’t,” the drunk says, still laughing. “You’ll let me walk, same as last time. Remember?”

“No.” Mike cracks his neck. “Should I?”

“Better you don’t. That way you can tell yourself you got principles. Tell yourself this ain’t a waste of time.”

Mike isn’t telling himself anything, least of all that.

“You remember, then,” the man says, sucking on his bottle, wiping his beard. “You don’t have the badge. You’re after me. No difference.”

“Where is he?”

“Gone by now,” the drunk says. “Like you’ll be.”

Gone like Lockwood, Mike thinks. Gone like Blackthorn soon will be. He wheels his horse and doesn’t see the cabin get small in the distance. The outlaw told Mike he was chasing the wind, told Mike how he would end up as dust. Like that gambler, done for. Left with a wet stain where his big prize should be. Blackthorn laughs about it in every dive this side of Mexico. Spilled himself on the floor at the same time as his whiskey, barely noticed.

Three years Mike’s been after him. The closest call wasn’t close enough. Lead got shared, then Mike’s arm, then Mike’s saddle. Nothing scarred as deep as the last words out of Douglas’ mouth. “Better luck next time, sheriff.”

He doesn’t plan on luck this time. He’s going to make sure it hurts, for both of them.

Down in a rocky draw, there’s shade. More than that, the tracks come together where Mike thought they would. Two of them. A busted pump and some wood scraps, piled up, turned a dirt squatter camp into a dirt house with a dry well. He heads down slow, hoping for a fight, and makes out the shape of a man hiding between broken boards. No gun; arms straight up and scared. “Don’t shoot!” he yells. “We’re leaving!”

“Fuck you, leaving,” Mike says. He’s quick off the horse, quicker with the revolver. “I’ll fill you with enough metal to stay right here.”

The man steps forward, hands up, pulling a scared wife behind him. “Take it easy, Brandon. I got no quarrel. Blackthorn’s gone already. He’s gone.” His voice drops and turns sour, like he knows that wasn’t the right answer. “We’re gone, too,” he says.

Mike looks at them and spits. A little thing like this, he doesn’t bother wasting bullets. There’s time enough for what counts. “Shit out of luck,” he says, heading back to the trail.

“You are!” the man yells after him. “We saw him leaving. You’re wasting your time. The way you always do.”

Mike rides with the force of every old word. Time is the one thing he’s got, the one thing he loves to waste. Time and life and blood and seed. He’s always left a good trail, whether it’s prison or Badlands or the same shithole ghost towns full of the same ghost men. Maybe Lockwood figured him for a ghost too. And now Mike figures the law already did its work on that, if that’s what they can call it. Benjamin’s dead; now the law is just him. He’s more outlaw than Blackthorn, and closer on his heels than he’s ever been. Closer on his cock. If he just wanted Douglas’ hide, it wouldn’t have taken three years.

When he reaches the mouth of the ravine, Mike knows what he’ll find. Water, hoof prints, another red-and-purple corpse shot clean through the genitals. But not the corpse he wants, not yet.

Dirt is fresh-turned and the hoof prints are deeper than before. Mike’s sure they’re slowing down. Up a rock wall, a steady line of footsteps, and a set of drag marks where Douglas dismounted, tied the horses, took cover behind stone, lay low, hoping to make Mike sweat and fight and bleed. All the way until the end, just not the right end.

Mike sees the puddle in the distance, blue like a small piece of empty sky. He’ll make it all count this time. More than just a bullet to the prick. Blackthorn will not go soft and simple. Not like that. Mike is too close. Mike is too hard.

The trail drops over the ridge and into a low basin. He picks out the form of a brown mare, followed by another—Dan’s massive black—and he feels himself getting massive, too. Rock turns to grass, greener than it should be, fed on guts and fertilized with death. A cabin burned and gutted, left to ruin with the rest of the landscape.

He gets hard when he thinks about the killing, harder when he thinks about the rest. If Douglas plans to end things with his piece still intact, it’s Mike’s job to make sure he fails. When he hits the bottom of the basin, the law has been used and the law has been spent. By this time tomorrow, the sheriff will be dead or full of life and limp in Blackthorn’s old haunts south of the border.

“Cocksucker’s going soft,” Mike says aloud, wondering why Douglas’ so sure he won’t get the same treatment back. Three dead sheriffs on the record and one dead man of everything. “Thinks I’m soft too. Leaving me that far back. Leaving me this close.”

And it is this close. He sees Douglas in the water, lying back, letting his hair fan out around him, resting like he doesn’t have a worry. Doesn’t have a care. Doesn’t have anything but a death wish.

Buzzards gather in thick layers, a deep cloud that blends into the desert and sky. They make the whole horizon look like it’s moving and swelling, rising and lowering with each dust-breathed beat of the land. Douglas’ image, warped and melted into the same crooked shapes as the last round of air, as the last round of bullets.

They’ll get the same share, the two of them, no matter who’s on top. But this time, it’s Mike who comes on top first.

“Blackthorn!” he screams. A hard sneer curls his lip and his finger curls the trigger, but the first bang isn’t from his gun. The first bang is deep inside, wet, wrapped in tight muscle and hard veins. The first bang is this: he wants it too much.

The tracks lead to a single long scream. “fuuuck!”

And Mike thinks that might be true.

He stands, shooting already, and in the instant it takes him to lift the barrel, the screaming changes to this:

“haaah! You fucked it up, mike!”

And it might be that, too.

It echoes. Comes again and again. In a hole, like this, sound travels. In a hole, like this, something always travels.

One fast movement. He hears it through. It gets soft. Goes easy.

They’re moving.

The black horse stumbles, dust kicks, loud enough for Mike to notice, for Mike to hear, even though he’s half spent and too close.

Dust. Hooves. Real.

They’re not waiting.

He can’t keep this up.

He does.

Dan’s at the puddle.

Mike’s here.

Mike rides down with his gun ready and his dick not far behind. Blackthorn is up, quick as an afterthought, slow as his suicide wish. He stands naked in the water and invites Mike to blow it all over again.

A twisted-up grin splits his beard. “Told you I’d see you soon, sheriff.” The words come out the same time as the water. One long breath, one long life, maybe his last. “You shot yourself? Couldn’t wait for me?” The words come out the same time as his laughter. Like he’s laughing at a joke only he gets, but he’ll tell Mike the punchline soon enough. He’s dry before Mike is close, but he’s not trying to dry.

Mike jumps off his horse and the heat gets in him fast. He yanks the gun from its holster, faster. “I’m gonna do it right this time,” he says. “You’re gonna die.”

“I don’t know,” Douglas says. “I thought I was gonna die last time. I thought you shot me clean. Thought I felt it in my balls.” He drags his hand from beard to cock, like the water missed that spot.

“I’ll fix that.” Mike steps forward. “Make it hurt.” Another step. The whole basin is dead around him, quiet, the only sounds are the plunk and splash of Douglas walking his way, balls the size of grapefruits sloshing between his legs.

“Show me.” Douglas stops at the edge. “Got the balls for that, sheriff?”

“I said I’ll make it hurt. I said you’re gonna die.”

“I know what you said. You also said you’d kill me before.” Douglas leans back. His massive chest floats high and brown on the puddle’s surface. He floats high and brown on the whole surface of everything.

“Kill you, fuck you, take that big dick as a souvenir.” Mike is one long hard thing, pointing the barrel at Douglas’ chest.

“Uh-huh.” Douglas is the same. He sits up again, jerks his head forward, eyes like bright flint behind the caveman scraggle. “And fill me with lead?” He jerks his head down, eyes like bright flint on Mike’s groin. “Or just your seed?”

“What do you want, Blackthorn?” Mike is sick and savage. He’s raw. He’s raging. He’s more naked than the man in front of him.

“You already know, Brandon.” stretches his full length and lets himself go. Not just with his mouth, not just with the words. “Come on, sheriff. Prove me wrong. Put me in the dirt.”

Mike is hard. Mike is wild. “How long?” Mike says, loud as the revolver’s hammer. “How long before you scream like a bitch?”

“How long until you got the balls to shoot?”

It’s out. He’s out. It’s big, it’s huge, it’s unbelievable. Douglas’ hair forms a ragged halo, gray against the sky. Douglas’ beard makes him a madman god. Douglas’ cock makes Mike hurt.

“Go on,” Douglas says, and this time his voice sounds strained, not like he’s scared, not like he’s winded, like it’s a struggle to stay this calm. Like it’s a struggle not to finish first. “Bang.”

Mike stares. He’s taken and broken by it. How big. How huge. How Douglas lets it hang, then takes it in one slow stroke. It grows and fills his hand. Grows and fills his other hand.

“I told you,” Mike says, trying to sound full of anger, trying to sound full of murder. “I’ll fill you. You’re done. I’ll fuck you before, I’ll fuck you after.”

“I don’t believe you, sheriff.” Douglas is fucking himself now, hand working smooth and sure, not the work of a man about to die. “It’s not what you want.”

“I want you dead!”

“I want you close, Mike.” His voice lowers to the deepest part of him, deep as his cum-thick veins. “Same as you want.”

“Dead!”

“Here.”

“Goddammit!” Mike screams. “Fucking—God—damn—it!”

“See?” Douglas says, and lets go. “That wasn’t so hard.”

His cock slaps his belly. He laughs. He gets it all, the whole goddamn punchline. He gets it all while Mike gets this: it was hard. It still is. Mike still is.

The whole sky blurs and moves in one heaving mass. A shifting black cloud of wings and heat, eating away the outlines of the land, leaving Mike and Douglas exposed. Nothing is safe. Nothing is set. The whole world goes for the closest meat.

Dan lays his arms back like it’s over already, like the only struggle is his struggle to hold back.

It’s not over.

He holds nothing.

“Got yourself a choice, sheriff.” He grins like it’s sure, slow like it’s fate. “Cocksucker. You know that, too.”

The sky is dark and split. Two shapes, two men, two futures. It looks like this:

Brandon. Fucking coward.

Takes aim. Flinches.

Leaves.

Dan laughs.

Strokes his cock.

The bastard won’t.

The air smells like blood. Like sweat. Like men. Mike grips his gun, but the thought is loud and clear and it's in his head and his gut and the very marrow of his bones. He can't shoot. Douglas stands by the pond, cock proud and stiff, waiting for the showdown, the moment when Mike raises his gun. The pond waits too, still as a painting. But Mike is stiller, quieter. The whole damn world holding its breath. Waiting.

"Knew it, bitch," Douglas laughs, mean and close. "Knew you were too much of a coward to kill me. Drop the gun. Get on your knees."

Mike swallows. He's wanted this from the start. Wanted to feel the killer inside him, tearing him to pieces.

"Fucking obey me," Douglas shouts.

Mike drops the gun, then the badge, then himself, kneeling, eager, ready.

Dan's laugh echoes across the water, harsh as the crow waiting to feed on the dead. "Knew you were a whore for this." His shadow falls over Mike, cock level with the other man's mouth. "Strip," Douglas says. "Everything. Bitches don't need clothes."

Mike pulls his shirt over his head, buttons snapping, cloth catching on his beard. He's breathing hard. Erect already, thick and unashamed, not even trying to hide how much he wants this. Douglas grins. "Bare your fucking ass." His voice is cruel. Flat. As violent as the rest of him.

Mike shoves his pants down, kneels in the dirt. It cuts into his knees. Sticks to the sweat on his body. He can smell Douglas now, close enough to reach out and touch. Musky.

"Open up, bitch."

He doesn't need to be told twice. Douglas is huge, the best stallion in the West, and Mike knows he won't survive this. That's what makes it so damn good. He takes the head of Douglas' cock, huge and solid against his lips, tastes the sweat and man of him. Takes it deeper, as deep as he can. He should have been scared to chase him. Should have been scared of the moment he caught him, but the whole damn point was to get caught himself.

"Good for nothing but this," Douglas sneers. He grips the back of Mike's head, slams himself deeper, until Mike gags around him.

The beard moves closer, covers Mike's face as Douglas shoves in, thick as a fist, then thicker still. He pulls out, leaves Mike gasping for air, then he's back inside. "This what you wanted? The only thing you wanted?"

He thrusts again, deep, relentless. Faster. Mike can't breathe around him, can't breathe around his own need, his own fucking cock that throbs and drips as Douglas fucks his mouth, hits the back of his throat with every stroke.

Dan moans, brutal and deep, and Mike's never heard anything better. Anything louder. He's so close. So close to passing out, to exploding without even being touched, but Douglas stops. Pulls out.

"Take it all," Douglas says. "Take it like a goddamn man."

Two fists hit Mike in the gut, quick, brutal. The air leaves him all at once and so does everything else. He’s flying, hitting the ground with his shoulder, then his head. White spots and the copper taste of blood. A rough hand on his hip.

He's on his stomach, Douglas’ weight on his back, then Douglas' cock at his hole. "Gonna rip you up. Gonna fuck you dead."

Mike arches into him. Wants every bit of it. All at once. Now.

Dan slams into him, filling him, splitting him in half. Mike grunts. Shudders. "Harder," he breathes, desperate, hoarse.

Dan gives it to him. Holds his hips, digs his fingers in. Like everything about him, it hurts. It thrills. Another brutal thrust, then another, impossibly hard. Fast. Filling him. The stretch. The scrape. The sounds Douglas makes, all groans and grunts and cussing, and the wet slap of their bodies, each thrust harder, meaner than the last.

Mike can feel himself tearing. Can feel his body bruised and broken, ripped wide open. It’s good. So fucking good. He bites his arm to keep from moaning, but Douglas hears it. Douglas always hears what he's trying to hide.

"Louder," Douglas growls. "Say it loud, bitch."

His cock is huge. Solid. Rammed in deep and pulled out fast, pounding into him like a war drum. Mike can't keep quiet. Doesn't want to.

Dan fucks him even harder, savage. He's so close. The best stallion in the West, and he's close. But he doesn't come. Not yet. Not until Mike's said it.

"Say it," Douglas orders. "Say it's all you ever wanted."

It's all Mike ever wanted. More than he dared want. It rips out of him with a groan, thick and loud as blood.

Dan's cock gets thicker, impossibly thick. Buries itself in his guts and doesn't stop. Not for a second. The last thrust, brutal as all the rest. His own wet, messy explosion as Douglas shouts, groans, comes.

It's a full minute before Douglas moves. Before the crow sounds come back to him, greedy and close. He pushes off Mike, hard, like he's disgusted. "Look at the mess you made," he says. "Like a fucking woman."

Mike's still panting. Still leaking. Still full. Still broken.

Dan stands over him. Big, solid. Smug. "Clean me up, whore." His cock's covered in shit and blood.

Mike swallows, shaky. More than he was built for, but not more than he wanted. Not enough. "Clean me," Douglas says again. He grips Mike by the hair. Pulls him up.

Mike wobbles, staggered, off-balance. He should be finished. He wants to be finished. He wants to be used up. Used and left. He looks up at Douglas, at his massive cock. The heavy, brutal hand that holds him in place. "Yes," he whispers, broken, breathless.

He leans in.

The knife is closer than a kiss. Cold, sharp, mean, and Mike wants to feel it, feel Douglas cut him down. To size. To shreds. It's what Douglas promised, what Douglas does. His chest is bloody and bare, and he leans into the pain, hard as the cock the killer forces inside him. Inside and inside and inside, deeper with every brutal thrust. Deeper and slower and longer, like Douglas' killing him by inches. By miles. He shudders. Comes.

"Harder," Mike pleads. "Fucking kill me."

The knife is closer than a kiss.

"Fuck yeah," Douglas grins. "Gonna slice you up good."

He's got Mike's arms tied. Got Mike bloody and breathless and wild for him. "Stand up," Douglas orders. He grabs Mike by the hair, yanks his head back, exposing his throat. "Stand the fuck up," he says again, tugging him to his feet. "Die like a bitch, Sheriff."

Mike staggers, but he gets up. The dirt is caked on his bare, scarred knees. "Goddamn." Douglas smirks, watching him struggle. "You're just shit, Brandon."

The knife glints in the sun. In Mike's eyes. "Just like the shit you've got on your face. On your lips." He swipes at it, leaves a trail of Mike's blood and his own mess smeared across his cheek.

He throws Mike down. Mike lets him. Lets him and wants him to. Wants all of it, all of Douglas' dirt, all of Douglas' cock and knife and all the things that kill a man.

Dan gives it to him. Cuts the rope from his wrists, gives him just enough room to struggle. Gives him just enough time to want it even more.

Mike's on his back. Douglas' over him. He shoves the dull end of the knife into Mike's mouth, deep, before pulling it out, leaving Mike raw and gasping and ready for more. Then he's inside him. Cock, not knife, splitting him open. Mike's already been fucked, but Douglas fucks him again. Fuck him dead, he'd said. Fuck him 'til he kills him, and he's damn close.

"Bleed for me," Douglas grunts, the knife at Mike's throat, his cock a knife of its own. "Want it in your guts? Or your nuts?" He thrusts harder, filling him, spilling him, slamming in deeper than Mike thought a man could ever take.

"Everywhere," Mike groans. "Want it everywhere."

Dan laughs, low, dangerous. His beard scratches Mike's neck. His voice is a whisper, filthy. "Didn't know you'd be so easy, Brandon. Didn't know you'd be so fuckin' good."

The knife slides down. Down his chest. Over his heart. Down to the cock that should be limp and useless, but isn't. "Thought you were gonna kill me, Sheriff." He doesn't stop. Not for a second. "But you just wanted me to do the killing for you. Bitch."

Mike nods, hips arching, taking Douglas as deep as he can. It hurts like nothing else. It hurts like everything else. "Wanted it," he gasps. "Fuck. I wanted it. Wanted you."

Dan moves slower. Keeps his cock inside him. Lets Mike feel every long, brutal inch, every thrust. Lets Mike want it until he's crazy, wild, moaning, exploding.

Then he stops.

Then he stabs him.

A quick slash to Mike's gut, and Mike's body arches again, not to meet Douglas' cock, but to get away from the sharp of him. The first time he's moved to get away from anything. Douglas growls. Leans down on him, heavier than ever. The knife inside him, twisting. Mike still hard. Still wanting it.

Dan shifts. Pulls out of Mike's hole, keeps him filled with everything else. Blood, cock, belly, air. His balls press up against Mike's ass, big, tight, ready. They say he's the best stallion in the West. Mike believes it.

Dan's fist closes around Mike's balls, tight as the rope he cut from Mike's wrists. His hand around the length of Mike's cock. He pulls. Mike feels it before it happens. Hopes for it. Dreads it. Hopes for it even more. He makes a sound. Pained, pleading, obscene.

Then Douglas cuts. Cuts deep.

Everything goes white. Then red. Then white again. His own cock, his own balls shoved in his mouth, wide and bleeding. Choking on himself. Choking on the blood and everything he is, everything he was, the very last taste.

Dan pushes back in. Pushes harder. A final, violent thrust.

"Dead," Douglas says. "You're fucking dead."

Then he fires.

One shot.

Two.

Three.

The shells make a scatter of holes in Mike's belly. They make a scatter of holes in Mike's back. His ass. The ground. They make a scatter of holes in the dreams he didn't know he had, in the want he did, in everything he chased and in everything he caught.

"Now you're just meat."

Mike's eyes are wide open when he dies.

Dan spits on him. Pisses on him. Watches the blood and cum and waste pool around his body, then squats. Pushes out the last thing he has to give. Leaves Mike's corpse buried under all his dirt.

The pond is just as still, just as quiet as before. The gun is empty, the same as Mike. Douglas cleans himself up. Takes his time. No reason to hurry, not when the last man in town is dead. Not when the last lawman in town is dead.

He's back in Mexico before anyone knows. Back in Boca Caliente. Badlands too far north, and not a soul left to chase him. To want him. Not a soul like Mike's.

The last man to want him that bad.

Dan grins. Rides away. He doesn't look back.

The vultures come first. Then the crow.

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