Following a short hiatus, the official faction returns this week with "The Redfield Murders" which follows the story of Hanna & Teodor and more:
THE REDFIELD MURDERSIt was hot enough even at eight in the morning that Sam Lowery mopped sweat from his brow. Averting his eyes out of respect for his own unsettled stomach, he asked, "Who was he?"
"Just a drifter," Hanna replied. "I think his name was Henry. He hadn't been in town more than a couple of days." She paused. "So what's the Union going to do about it?"
Lowery's head snapped around, and his glare transfixed her. "Do? What is it you think we owe you people? We both know Redfield hasn't paid any dues to the Union in years. I don't figure we'll do anything."
Hanna's face, weathered and tanned by thirty years under the Arizona sun, flushed with sudden anger. For a long moment she was speechless, then she burst out: "Look at him! Henry wasn't just another murder by the Devil's Own or some CHOTA with a two-by-four!" Her voice softened, almost breaking. "He was..."
"Bled dry," Sam finished for her, his tone callous. "There's no blood around him, even on those wounds, yes, I can see that for myself. It just isn't my problem. And it isn't going to be the Union's problem, either. Seems to me you folk shoulda thought about this kind of thing before you turned up your nose at our help."
Hanna faced away from him, breathing hard. Her first few paces were just to move herself far enough away to keep from hitting him. Then she took a few more steps because the first had felt so right.
Sam called after her: "Where the hell are you going?"
She lengthened her stride. "None of your concern, Union man. Run on back to New Flagstaff now."
Hanna headed back to town, ignoring Sam Lowery's curses.
# # #The screen door shrieked and slammed as Hanna walked inside her house. She sat down on the couch carefully, avoiding the evil-looking, rusted springs that jutted through the cushions. Her breathing and her pounding pulse gradually calmed. A few minutes later, the door's protest and punctuation announced that Teodor had come back in. She opened her eyes to see him standing before her, wiping dust and sweat from his face with a rag that was only slightly cleaner.
"So did the Union man know anything?" he asked.
"Not so far as I could tell. But then, he just came out here to rub my nose in the fact that Redfield doesn't pay them. Even if he had information, I wouldn't trust him to tell me anything straight." She barely stopped herself from spitting to avert evil.
Their eyes met, and Hanna knew he saw the anxiety that her anger covered. For a moment, it made her even madder, to be so transparent, but she breathed out and remembered that she loved him for his insight, even when it hurt.
He waited. She began, "The man, Henry, he didn't have any blood left. Just like the raider that Caitlin found three weeks ago. I don't understand - who would want just the blood? They didn't even bother taking his things."
Teodor sighed and shrugged. It meant, How should I know? But keep talking and we'll figure this out. That was her husband. He had always been able to convey more with a look and a gesture than most people could by talking for ten minutes.
Hanna went on. "It's not right. That man was just a vagrant. Even unluckier than we've been, and God knows we've had it hard enough." She scowled. "Plus the neighbors like to gossip, and nobody's worse than that lot squatting in the old church. 'Vampires,' they say, 'or a chupacabra, who else comes in the night and drinks blood?'" She shook her head. "They're crazy."
"So, blood's missing. That doesn't mean someone drank it."
"Right. Right. Just that they took it." Hanna welcomed the analytical approach. "We drain blood out of deer when we clean 'em, and we drain pigs to make black pudding, right?" He tilted his head in neutral assent. "That's just as gruesome, but...I read somewhere that people used to give blood away to people who needed it, because of injuries and such."
Teodor folded his arms and gave her a wry smile. Just by that, Hanna knew he was hooked, but he confirmed it with, "So? Where do we start?"
# # #Julia leaned around the kitchen doorframe when she heard the footsteps on the bar's porch. Teodor came in through the front door, looking more serious than usual. Hanna was just behind him, waving a greeting. Julia turned her attention back to her cooking and waited; they had certainly never been bashful about coming into her kitchen before.
Hanna boosted herself up to sit on the backside of the bar, facing Julia. Straddling a chair in the kitchen, Teodor began, "Don't mean to bother you so early, Julia. But you heard about what happened to that Henry fellow, right?"
Julia grunted affirmatively, suddenly feeling every bit of her forty-five years. "Terrible, wasn't it? I reckon I saw him just a couple of hours before, when he came in for dinner. He paid with a few chips and two pans he said he got in New Flagstaff. Even scoured out the rust for me."
Quietly, Hanna asked, "Do you remember anything else?"
Julia set down her spoon and turned to face both of them. "There were some men, actually. Two, might have been three, drinking with him last night. He left a good while before they did, though. It was those other wanderers, the ones who've been staying in Stan Monroe's barn for the past couple of weeks. You...you don't think it was them, do you?"
Rising from his seat, Teodor said, "Don't know enough to say, yet. But now we know where to ask more questions."
Hanna slid down from her seat on the bar. "Looks like we're headin' on. Do me a favor, though." At the older woman's quizzical look, Hanna continued, "Next time Lowery or any of his Union grunts are in here, spit in his soup for me."
With a bitter laugh, Julia replied, "Sounds like fun, since they'll probably charge me for the privilege of cookin' their dinners."
# # #Hanna knocked three times on the doors of the barn. The planks were cracked and ancient, and she felt as if she could splinter them with harsh language. When there was no response, she pulled the left door open. The barn's interior smelled of dust and sweat, and she glanced back at Teodor, who loomed behind her. He nodded his readiness, and she stepped inside the shadowy building.
A chain hung from a rafter in the center of the room. Its other end was anchored to one of the support beams of a nearby stall. There were signs all around that a few people had stayed here for some time: bedding, discarded food scraps, rags, and an unmarked, corked bottle. Teodor opened the other door, and with more light in the room, the darker spots on the dirt floor became distinguishable. A single clear wheel-track was also obvious.
Hanna moved to the darker spots on the floor, touching three fingers to a spot and bringing her hand into more direct daylight. "Brown. Tacky. I don't need to smell it to recognize blood."
Teodor nodded, troubled but entirely unsurprised. Studying the path of the wheel-rut, he stated in a distant tone, "The ground here isn't all that soft. They were moving something heavy."
"Something about five foot eight, hundred and seventy pounds?"
"Right about, yeah."
"But why didn't anyone hear Henry? If someone attacked me in the night, you'd be able to hear me clear across the Canyon." Following Teodor's gaze, she hefted the dark green glass bottle. "Also, this is still full. If he were just blind drunk, either it'd be empty or there would be other bottles."
Easing out the cork, her eyes swam and she was nearly overwhelmed. "Oh," she gasped. "Chloroform."
"I think we've got a handle on the how," Teodor muttered, supporting Hanna with one hand. "They drained him here, took his body and his blood to the dump site, left the body and made off with the blood and the wheelbarrow. So: what were they doing with his blood, and most importantly, why?"
Regaining her composure, Hanna quickly recorked the bottle and set it down. "They didn't want to get caught - the chloroform is evidence enough of that - but they didn't care about being followed. I don't think they ever planned to come back here."
Teodor cleared his throat. "So. We can follow these tracks, and we might be able to figure this out...but what we've seen so far has been pretty grim, and I don't think it's going to get any better. Is this what we're doing? What we're committing to...one more time?"
By Teodor's standards, this was an interminably long speech. She met his gaze in the half-light, saw all of his patience and sorrow. He wasn't judging anything, she realized. He already knew the answer to that question, but he was really after the question that followed it: Why? Why should they take this on? What qualified this as something for them, as opposed to the multitude of other atrocities going on each day in the Province?
Hanna exhaled, long and slowly. "We're going to track them down, yes. Not for answers. I don't need to know why people went crazy and started butchering each other after the Fall. We've dealt with way too much already to care about that." Her curiosity wasn't the main reason, so it was mostly true. "It's about justice. There are people in the world who have the power to enact laws, give justice to the weak, and rebuild everything we lost in the Fall. They won't lift a finger because they might not be in charge once it's built. We're better than Sam Lowery and his damn Union. That's why."
His eyes tightened. It meant, Every time we go after someone, we say it's going to be the last time. Despite that, there was pride and love in the way he looked at her.
"Who was Henry, anyway?" he asked quietly.
"A son, a brother. He might have been an innocent. Does it matter?"
"Not really. Daylight's wastin'. Let's go."
# # #Standing next to the window in their bedroom, Teodor loaded his revolver. In the afternoon light the gun was beautiful. They might eke out a living in one of bleakest towns in Northfields, their house might be in ruins, but by God, Teodor's revolver had never known a spot of rust. He couldn't say the same for his heavy coat or the leather breastplate he wore under it. Hanna had modified those herself, cut and stitched and patched until they were mostly plated steel.
Sitting on her side of the bed, Hanna pulled on her boots. She had found them eight years earlier, with the soles worn through but otherwise serviceable. A spare tire had served for the new soles. She stood and hefted her own coat. "Stitches are starting to go on the sleeve. That's what I get for putting so much metal in it, though," she muttered.
Teodor holstered his pistol and stood, clanking dully. Hanna shrugged on her coat and picked up her rifle from where it leaned against the wall. Their eyes met as he stepped past her. Hanna saw his worry, and squeezed his hand.
He closed the front door behind him when they were outside. He didn't bother with the lock; everything of value in that house had just walked out the front door.
They walked together through town. The neighbors would ask questions later, most likely. Armored up as they were, no one thought of getting in their way. When they reached the last, abandoned house on the edge of what could really be called Redfield, Henry's body was still there, partly obscured by the thick cloud of buzzing flies. "I suppose the gravedigger will be by later," Hanna said.
Neither of them claimed any serious skill as a tracker, but it was hard to miss the trampled grass and wheel-ruts that led away from the barn. Such signs took them east, toward a column of smoke. After a mile in the blistering afternoon heat, Teodor spotted movement among the boulders ahead. As quietly as he could, he approached the boulders from the south, while Hanna circled northward.
Bit by bit the source of the smoke grew clearer: a tiny campfire, over which a man huddled, naked to the waist. Hanna could only see his back, which swayed lightly from side to side, his hands moving but concealed from her view. She thought she could hear him whispering something...some sort of chanting?
She edged nearer, silently, and stopped ten feet away. At that distance there was no possible way she could miss.
"Drop your weapons!" Hanna barked.
The man leapt to his feet and spun around to stare down the barrel of her rifle. His face and arms were covered in unmistakable streaks of red-brown. His hands were empty.
"Now, miss, I didn't do nothin' wrong," he said, his tone surprisingly calm. "Can't shoot a fellow for livin' outside town."
"Is that so? Care to tell me whose blood that is?"
He looked troubled for a moment. "That's not your business. Now just leave me be, and I won't trouble you any." As he spoke, he inched closer to her.
"Stay the hell back!" Hanna put as much command into her voice as she could, but the bloodstained man had unnerved her and she did not pull the trigger even when he eased his way a little closer.
"Too late, miss," he murmured, flashing a toothy smile. His hand darted forward to push the rifle's muzzle away.
Hanna let the rifle follow his push, and spun it so the heavy wooden stock slammed into his ribs. At the same moment, Teodor slipped between two boulders and set the revolver against the man's back. "Just looking for information," Teodor growled.
The man stopped moving, his breathing pained, and for the first time Hanna thought he looked scared. She took three steps backward to get out of his reach and give herself a moment to think. Was it possible that the first person they'd come across was the murderer, and red-handed at that? It seemed unlikely, but... "First off, where did all that blood come from?"
He glanced away. "It's nothin', just caught some dinner earlier. Had to prepare it."
Bull****, Hanna thought. She waited until he met her gaze again and asked, "What kind of game was it? Hunting's always been a bit thin in these parts."
"It was," he licked his lips nervously, "it was deer."
"That blood is dried. I'd guess you killed that deer sometime last night. That about right?"
"Yeah. Yeah, right about." This time he didn't look away.
"And why didn't you clean any of it off?"
He sighed again. "You ain't gettin' any more answers outta me. You can shoot me or let me go, but I'm done talkin'."
Hanna exchanged a look with Teodor. He shrugged and pressed the revolver's muzzle more forcefully into the small of the man's back. "You ought to reconsider, friend."
Hanna narrowed her eyes. "Now why would a man keep himself covered in dried blood? Is not telling me worth dyin' for?" The man only glared at her, so she continued. "I'll tell you what I think." Cradling the rifle in her right arm, Hanna counted on the fingers of her left hand. "First, you killed a wanderer last night. He didn't do you any harm, but you cut him open and drained his blood." Her gorge rose at the thought of the whole thing.
"Second, you brought all that blood out here in a hurry, smeared yourself with it, and didn't wash any of it off, so I'd guess you think there's something special about blood. Some kind of religious ceremony, maybe." She was just fishing now, but when the man's expression suddenly became guarded, she knew she was right.
"Third, you weren't working alone, from what we hear. So I'd say you're in some kind of cult. You're, what, pretending to be vampires? Is that it?"
At the word "vampire," the man's lips skinned back from his teeth, and he hissed: a primal, hate-filled sound. For all of that, though, his canines weren't any longer than anyone else's.
Hanna groaned quietly. It'd be nice to be wrong a little more often.
"Okay, you got anything else you want to say before we take you back to town?"
Laughing bitterly, he spat on her. "You're just meat. The Pale Ones will devour you, but they'll make you beg for mercy first."Then he lunged, hands curved into claws, and Hanna sidestepped quickly, but his blood still spattered all over her when Teodor pulled the trigger.
