Confederate Vampires in Space

CONFEDERATE

VAMPIRES

IN SPACE

_______________________

CONFEDERATE

VAMPIRES

IN SPACE

_______________________

a novel

Havelock Mandamus

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, places, characters and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2017 by Havelock Mandamus

All rights reserved.

First printed 2017

ISBN 978-0-9993825-2-3 (hard cover)

ISBN 978-0-9993825-1-6 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-9993825-3-0 (mobi)

ISBN 978-0-9993825-0-9 (epub)

Sections of this book were inspired by Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

Cover art and design by Havelock Mandamus

www.havelockmandamus.com

[email protected]

For my mother

and in memory

of my father

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

-The Little Prince

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1

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TWO YOUNG MAIDENS, of which you will recall, the one being fair with flaxen hair and the other dusky and raven dark, came climbing quickly with great exertion and much effort over the rocky escarpment. Under different circumstances, the two maidens might have lingered in their traversing to admire the austere beauty of the windswept canyon and the cerulean brilliance of the clear western sky, but on this day, at this desperate hour, the maidens did not tarry, for their very lives were in danger.

Just as it seemed circumstances could not conspire in a more calamitous manner, one of the unfortunate maidens, the fair young lady with flaxen hair, caught her delicate foot on a gnarled root and fell to the ground.

Alas, she cried out to her companion. I cannot persevere in this madness. I am hobbled and well nigh unto despair. Her eyes were wild with a rampant terror, and she awkwardly turned to look over her shoulder as if she expected to find her tormenters mere steps away and stalking closer still.

The maiden with raven-dark hair paused in her flight and, too, cast a fearful glance down the winding path they had so arduously ascended. If their pursuers were there in cunning ensconcement among the rocks and junipers and sagebrush, she could not them espy. The raven-haired maiden knelt quickly by the side of her prostrate companion.

Do not leave me, the flaxen-haired maiden implored, grasping the sleeve of her companion’s calico dress. I would rather depart this life than endure the horrendous debasements that I will most surely suffer at the hands of those remorseless savages.

Her wild eyes spied a rock on the path nearby.

Look yonder at that fateful rock. You must spare me. I beseech you. Strike that rock unto my brow and free me from this impending doom.

The raven-haired maiden wore a pendant on a necklace around her neck. It was carved from quartz, a white serpent in a closed circle, with its tail in its mouth. The pendant dangled in the distances between them.

The raven-haired maiden looked down at her desperate companion. Her dark eyes were steady and grave. She laid a comforting hand against the flaxen-haired maiden’s temple and answered her with a slow shake of her head.

At that moment, there came the unmistakable call of a bird from below among the rocks and sparse trees where they had so recently idled. An ominous silence descended over the canyon, and the two maidens became like unto breathless statues and strained mightily with all their being to hear what further song the unseen bird might sing. Hearing nothing further of the bird, if indeed that was what they had heard, the raven-haired maiden offered her hand to her companion and assisted her as she rose unsteadily to her feet.

The two maidens gazed intently toward the shadows in the copse whence the call of the bird had come. In their minds, they could not forswear that the shadows did not teem with the foulest abominations of their imaginations, and for a vertiginous moment, a great whirlpool seemed to tug at the very fabric of the canyon and to pull down into the depths of that darkness, faster than the maidens could assail, the rocks, the blazing sun, and the last of the clear, cerulean sky.

But Time ticked on implacably, and the ground did not yield, and the sun continued to shine with comforting constancy. The two maidens summoned new reserves of womanly fortitude and resisted the icy fingers of terror that grasped at their souls. The raven-haired maiden pointed toward the rocky horizon and circled her arm firmly round the flaxen-haired maiden’s waist. She offered her shoulder to her companion, and with a tentative, halting locomotion, the two maidens resumed their determined ascent.

Unbeknownst to the two maidens, as they pressed onward into the labyrinth of stone, two figures emerged from the shadows in the copse below and with a swiftness that belied sinew and bone came bounding on in a straight, silent demarche along the path the maidens had trod.

The maidens climbed for long minutes with all the deliberate haste they could muster. Soon, they topped the crest and paused to recover their breath and to reconnoiter the way ahead. The trail cut back and threaded past a great boulder that all but blocked their forward progress. A sheer cliff fell away to one side, and a false step would most assuredly send a hapless pilgrim hurtling to certain oblivion. There was but one way forward betwixt the boulder and the canyon wall. A sliver of sky beckoned with the promise of a more forgiving terrain. Seeing no other course of action, the two maidens resolved to limp and stagger on in stoic persistence toward the eye of the needle before them.

As the maidens drew closer to the boulder, a seeming shadow began silently to move and then to slide away from the surface of the boulder.

Before the maiden’s horrified eyes, the shadow resolved into the figure of a man.

Look now, the flaxen-haired maiden warned in a tremulous voice. I fear we are beset.

The figure of the man stole forward as noiselessly as a creeping panther. The sun fell full on his face, and the maidens were stricken as they beheld the fierce countenance of a red-skinned savage. The Indian’s eyes glittered darkly with an inhuman light that pierced the maidens to the marrow of their bones.

The maidens recoiled at the sight of the Indian and staggered back on quaking limbs. The Indian came pacing closer. His bare limbs were roped lean with muscle. The maidens could see his skin with its mottled and scarred patterns of mud, ochre and charcoal. As he came closer, he began to crouch down nearer to the ground, bracing in anticipation of an encounter.

The maidens were frightened most sorely and had no time to settle upon a stratagem other than a sudden and precipitous retreat. They knew the chance of escape would be slight. They would have only a few moments at best, but those moments might suffice to steal away on the flank and avoid the menacing Indian.

But there was no escape to be had. As the imperiled maidens stepped back and turned from their fearsome adversary, they confronted two more stealthy Indians creeping up from the rear. The maidens’ hearts leapt in their chests. Circumstances had turned most unexpectedly against them.

The Indians closed in on all sides, and the maidens backed slowly towards the wall of the canyon.

Indians on their front, Indians on their flanks, the maidens were surrounded.

Help! Indians! the flaxen-haired maiden cried. Save us from the unspeakable predations of these pitiless fiends.

If anyone was there in that desolate canyon to hear the maiden’s fervent entreaty, their rejoinder was not immediately forthcoming.

The Indians had no intention of retreating. They held forth with visages of the fiercest description. One carried a hefty, misshapen club of a dubious, ruddy coloration. Matters could not remain thus stationary for any appreciable length of time.

The flaxen-haired maiden cast about with a blind urgency not unlike that of a drowning woman. She sought to grasp hold of any nearby object that might serve as a crude weapon. Her frantic hand fell upon a small rock, and she clutched the rock in her fist and brandished it wildly back and forth in a semi-circle toward the ever-encroaching Indians.

The first Indian who had lain in wait against the boulder was now crouching to the left of the maidens. With the speed of a serpent, he dodged the rock-wielding maiden and reached deftly to the girdle round his waist. He drew an obsidian knife from its sheath and held it with practiced ease low at his side. The black blade glinted in the sun.

Upon seeing the obsidian blade, the flaxen-haired maiden ceased flailing about with the stone and commenced to trembling from head to toe. Unable longer to endure the shock and horror visited upon her, she fell back fainting and unconscious against the raven-haired maiden, who was much perturbed.

The Indians seized upon their advantage. The largest Indian among the three stepped over the flaxen-haired maiden and laid his hand firmly on the wrist of the raven-haired maiden. He thrust his face close to that of the maiden who had cast her gaze askance in the vain hope that her captors would somehow return to the stygian pits whence they surely had crawled.

The Indian reached toward her neck and lifted the quartz pendant from her bodice. He held the figure of the small, white snake delicately between his fingers and inspected it closely. He uttered strange words in his harsh tongue, and the maiden felt his fetid breath hot against her cheek. She slowly turned her face toward the waking nightmare beside her and forced herself to meet with a forthright steadiness the red-skinned savage’s bestial gaze.

To her surprise, she found there not the eyes of the monster she had conjured, but rather eyes uncanny in their ordinariness. In truth, they were eyes not so very different from her own. For a fleeting moment, they shared something inchoate, a hovering curiosity. She held his gaze and tried to shape what was to come despite knowing that it would all too quickly resolve into an intolerable vulnerability, some pale underbelly, the one missing scale.

Thinking: After the intravenous tessellation? The linen-white attainder? The chemo? The neuroplasty? What then? What next?

The Indian with the obsidian blade drew close beside her, and, as she had known all along, the moment was lost. He seized her hair and yanked her head back exposing the soft of her comely neck. She sank to her knees. The third Indian loomed over her, and she saw now that he held a hatchet in his hand. The big Indian still held her arm in a grip tight as a vise. The first Indian raised the obsidian blade and held it poised above the quick of her neck, the sharp edge glinting in the sun. His cruel lips spoke strange words, and she fixed her eyes on the clear, cerulean sky.

Asking: What happens next? What happens next? What happens next?

Stay your blade, you bloodthirsty cur, a booming voice thundered, and a brawny hand reached out and seized the Indian’s forearm and abruptly arrested the terrible arc of the obsidian blade.

A new figure had arrived to engage with the Indian brutes, and the course of the skirmish was perforce greatly altered. A strapping figure in buckskin had seized the Indian with the obsidian blade and was tossing him to and fro as if he were nothing more than a rag doll filled with straw.

The two Indians who had heretofore bedeviled the raven-haired maiden were filled with dismay, and the maiden dared entertain the hope that a brave paladin had come in all due haste to deliver her from the loathsome villainy of her wicked oppressors.

With tremendous force, the big man in buckskin launched the bewildered Indian through the air towards the canyon wall. The Indian struck against the rocky surface with such force as to render a man insensate. The big man in buckskin rounded on the two Indians beside the maiden and in two great strides came close enough to grapple with his overmatched foes. He grasped the awestruck Indians round the neck, one in the crook of each of his mighty arms, and knocked their heads together with a resounding thump. The Indians fell stunned to the ground and staggered back from the vigorous onslaught of the big man in buckskin.

The man leaned forward to address the red-skinned savages.

Best turn tail and run, you wretches. And when you recollect this day and speak of it to others, know that it was Kit Carson that spared yer miserable hides.

The Indians’ mouths fell agape and their eyes grew wide with amazement. They cowered in a manner most unbecoming and stumbled away in their haste to turn and flee from the big man in buckskin.

Go on and git! Kit Carson said with a dismissive wave of his stout arm.

The Indians hied away into the enfolding arms of the vast, unknown wilderness, and Kit Carson watched their retreat with narrowed, flinty eyes.

The flaxen-haired maiden was still aswoon, and the raven-haired maiden knelt by her side and endeavored to comfort her fallen companion. Kit Carson moved to join the raven-haired maiden, but as he came closer, with an unexpected suddenness, the Indian with the obsidian blade resumed his attack.

The Indian had recovered from the earlier encounter, and stepping swift on silent soles, the crafty Indian came now with deadly intent at Kit from behind. The Indian leapt from the concealment of the nearby rocks and raised high the obsidian blade to strike a killing blow.

How Kit Carson sensed the Indian’s cowardly assault is as unknowable as the Eluesinian mysteries. Perhaps it was a premonitory zephyr blowing soft against his nape. Or perhaps it was the ineffable play of light and shadow dancing at the edges of his perception that alerted him to the Indian’s evil presence. Or perhaps it was some innate goodness ever vigilant at the vital core of his mighty, beating heart. Who can say? For us, dear reader, the answer is obscured, and it must be enough for now to know that Kit Carson somehow sensed the Indian’s treacherous debouch and lived to tell the tale.

While the Indian with the obsidian blade was still in the midst of his leap, Kit spun around and met the other in midair and dealt him a mighty blow that laid him prostrate to the ground. Kit then vaulted over the other, and a pitched battle ensued. Kit suffered the other to rise properly, then rained a multitude of swift, heavy blows down upon the other’s head, neck and shoulders, uttering at the same time vociferous maledictions and adroitly frustrating the other’s feeble endeavors to seize hold.

Now, Kit Carson was not a man given to the quick dispensation of death. Indeed, if the truth be known, he had a grudging respect for the physical bravery of the Indian warriors with whom he had tangled on occasion in the past. But circumstances had answered the last of any charitable doubt. Kit knew the Indian before him sought an honorable exit. Kit pinned down the Indian’s weapon, drew his knife from its sheath and thrust the sharp tip deep into the Indian’s beating heart.

Once he was sure the Indian had breathed his last breath, Kit cleaned his knife and returned to the side of the flaxen-haired maiden. He splashed water from his canteen on her ashen face. The maiden’s blue eyes fluttered open, and she quickly came back to her senses.

We are rescued, she exclaimed, a hand at her bosom. She gazed up adoringly at the tall, broad-shouldered man in the fine-tanned buckskin hunting frock.

To whom do we own our everlasting gratitude? she asked in a voice at once both astonished and demure.

They call me Kit Carson.

The famous mountain man? she exclaimed. With the strength of a grizzly bear? Who vanquished a dozen Indians with but a single blow?

Kit laughed his hearty, booming laugh, and his great, white teeth gleamed in his round, ruddy face. He doffed his ring-tailed cap and inclined his head, displaying a shock of thick, brown curls.

Lady, I am but a humble trapper.

I know personally several red-skinned savages who might disagree, the flaxen-haired maiden quipped, struggling to arise.

Kit stooped down and placed one strong arm beneath the lady and gently raised her to her feet.

The raven-haired maiden stood silently aside, a witness to all that transpired.

By what stroke of good fortune did such a humble trapper as you come to find us so wanting and in need of protection in this hard and barren hinterland? the flaxen-haired maiden asked gamely, as she steadied herself against the burly man’s arm.

A dark cloud passed over Kit’s jovial face.

Word came to the garrison at Taos, Kit said in a serious tone. We pursued them from Point of Rocks past Tucumcari. After we found their encampment, I tracked you here.

Kit paused.

He frowned and rested his hand reassuringly on the hilt of his big knife. He looked then discreetly at the raven-haired maiden standing so quietly behind. His sharp eyes glimpsed the quartz pendant carved in the shape of a circular serpent hanging round her neck. The raven-haired maiden turned subtly, shifting away from the mountain man’s eyes.

Something scared those Indians like nothing I ever seen, Kit said, shaking his head. Two of them had their throats slit from ear to ear, and the rest had run off and high-tailed it toward the river.

The flaxen-haired maiden turned, and she looked at the raven-haired maiden. The raven-haired maiden said nothing, and her face was as if cut from stone. The flaxen-haired maiden looked at the ground near her feet.

We fled. Into the night, the flaxen-haired maiden said softly.

She looked up into Kit’s trusting eyes. Her lip began to tremble.

There was naught else we could do.

He placed a comforting arm around her shoulders.

Do not be troubled, good lady. I give little credence to the superstitious vexations of the addled Indian mind, Kit said and glanced over his shoulder at the raven-haired maiden. He tried to read the expression on her face, but her face was impassive and inscrutable, and she showed him nothing in her outward appearance that would indicate the substance of her inner thoughts.

You ladies are welcome to accompany me, Kit said brightening considerably. I am expected at the Rendezvous to the North. We will find shelter and sustenance at Fort Bent four or five days hence, and there you may secure safe passage onward.

Then Kit placed his coon-skin cap back atop his flowing hair and raised one mighty arm and gestured expansively toward the horizon.

Good faith and fair dealing! Kit exclaimed, and his cheeks were ruddy, and his teeth glinted in the sun.

He turned back to the two maidens.

I will show you the way, he said

Gratitude and admiration glistened in the upturned eyes of the flaxen-haired maiden.

Our fearless protector! Thank you, Kit Carson. We will long remember this good deed and bear witness to others of your stout arm and your brave heart.

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2

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A PLUME OF BLACK SMOKE drifted eastward across the sky. Towards the river, the smoke grew diffuse, and the wind took the last of it, and the sun shone through with a weak, brown light. Where the fire still burned, the smoke billowed skyward in thick, black gouts. Cinders and ash had tinted the yucca blossoms pale blue.

Two men stood at some distance upwind from the fire. The larger of the two wore an oilcloth duster. The smaller man wore a muslin poncho. The man in the duster held a charred book in his hands and was reading aloud to the smaller man. They leaned in close over the open book, their heads bowed together, hatless, almost touching. The man with the book spoke in a deep, clear voice, and the man in the poncho listened closely.

"Gratitude and admiration glistened in the upturned eyes of the flaxen-haired maiden.

‘Our fearless protector! Thank you, Kit Carson. We will long remember this good deed and bear witness to others of your stout arm and your brave heart.’

The man in the duster stopped reading. The man in the poncho looked up at him.

What happens next?

The man in the duster closed what was left of the blackened pages.

I can’t make it out, the man in the duster said.

The man in the poncho took the charred book in his small hands and looked again closely at the cover. On the cover was a four-color illustration. A tall man in a coon-skin cap and fringed buckskin was thrusting a large knife toward a band of frightened Indians. The Indians wore feathers on their heads and their faces were painted with garish shades of red and white and green. Within the seared edges of the pages, the big letters of the title were still legible: Kit Carson and the Mountain of Gold.

So that’s supposed to be me, the small man in the poncho said.

The man in the duster smiled a wry smile.

It’s just a fiction, Kit. Like a campfire story.

The small man in the poncho put on his broad-brimmed, felt hat and looked to the west. The high mountains were lead-colored, and shadows were moving across the surface of the earth. The man in the poncho watched the play of light and shadow on the land. The deserts and mountains and mesas seemed to drift in and out of the sunlight, and it appeared as if they were constantly being reformed and recolored, as if, beyond the next rise, the whole world, everything, was fluid and insubstantial.

The small man in the poncho nodded his head toward the fire behind them.

Ask those two about their fearless protector.

On the ground near the smoldering ruins behind them were the blackened skeletons of two human bodies. Even from a distance, it was clear they had been tied to the ground and had burned alive. The structures of the trading post around them and all they had held had burned almost entirely to the ground. Great cedar beams, ox-drawn from the mountains, the fire had rendered to ash. Only blackened adobe heaps and the crushed shell of an oven remained.

The man in the duster adjusted the round lenses of the spectacles on his nose.

It’s actually rather ironic. In a perverse sort of way.

The man in the poncho turned and looked at him. His eyes were set deep and in shadow beneath the brim of his