Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name by Edward M. Erdelac Page B

down
the back of the man’s left hand.
    More,
there were spots of blood dripping from the hand itself. He laid aside the
shotgun and turned the Rider’s hand over.
    Cut
into the palm, faint enough to be read but deep enough to leak blood, were
crude letters; C-O-D.
    “Cod,”
said Gersh to himself.
    Before
his amazed eyes, a fourth jagged wound opened over the underside of Rider’s
knuckles, overlapping the ‘C’ like a lightning bolt. No, it was a letter ‘S.’
    “Cods.’ He shook his head, then started. He turned the hand, looking at it from a new angle. The angle someone
writing in their own hand might see. Docs. Or, Doc S.
    Doc Sheardown.
    What
did it mean? Was Sheardown responsible for the wounds? Was he causing his own
name to appear on Rider’s flesh somehow? Gersh picked up the shotgun and
stepped out of the ruins of the saloon. He ran across the adjoining space to
the hovel where they’d left Baines and Sheardown.
    He
stormed in, making Baines jump.
    “Christ!”
    “Where’s
Doc Sheardown?”
    “Hell
if I know,” said Baines. “He slipped out not long after you did. Where’s
Rider?”
    Gersh
rushed back outside without answering. A stone shack exploded. He ducked as
bits of gravel rained down.
    Then
he noted the line of leveled structures. They were walking the artillery fire
along the outer edge of the settlement, leaving a row of craters scattered with
flaming wood and blackened stone—except for one wood shack still standing. Why
had they skipped that one?
    Gersh
started to head for that shack when the cannon burped smoke again in the
distance. He glanced at its target, and immediately shifted course and ran for
it.
    It
was the stone hut containing the woman and the boy.
    “Get
out! Get out of there!” he screamed, breaking into a full tilt run.
    The
whistling above intensified, and he saw Wilkes, the cowboy with the broken arm,
go racing out, head hunched down.
    He
was nearly at the hut when the woman Marina stumbled out, spilling the young
boy in her arms. The two of them drew themselves into a ball and pressed their
faces into the dirt and their hands over the sides of their heads and waited
for death.
    Gershom
pumped his arms, dropping the shotgun in his haste. Then he could see it. He
could actually see it—the cannonball. It was streaking through the sky in a tall
arch, and as he spied it, a tiny dot in the sky, it began its descent.
    He
screamed, as he knew he was about to see the ball strike the woman and her boy.
It would annihilate them. He was already close enough to be bathed in their
blood.
    He
heaved forward, not knowing just what he intended to do, only knowing he had to
prevent it. He supposed he meant to tackle the two of them, carry them as far
away from the explosion as he could with his own momentum, but something else,
some irrational, unearthly notion that flared like a light in the back of his
mind, made him skid to a stop over their prostrate forms and hold his hands up.
    The
ball seemed to be traveling extremely slowly, more like a child’s balloon
floating down then twelve pounds of heavy iron. It was lunacy, but he craned
his neck and raised his hands. He couldn’t say why he did it. In that
precipitous moment at the edge of the dark chasm of death, he felt the mad
inspiration that lit in his brain course like a fuse down his body till a tiny explosion
popped off in his chest like a Chinese firecracker and spread a fiery light
through his limbs. Each of his capillaries contained a trace of gunpowder that
flared and streaked in every direction and ignited charges in his arms, his
legs.
    There
was an audible thud as he brought his hands together with trip hammer speed and
force and caught the plummeting cannonball. He felt the impact in the heels of
his hands, even felt his feet sink a few inches into the sand. His hair blew
back, but there was no explosion.
    He
stood holding the humming twelve pound ball over his head, and slowly lowered
his arms, bringing the