"Alabama Zack" is a 40-chapter science fiction serial, published in the Scholar and Scribe community once a week on Wednesdays.
You can start the serial from the beginning by visiting the Curated Collection.
Alabama Zack, our hero and a war veteran, found himself standing on a train station platform in another time and dimension. At his feet lay a man in a brown suit. The man was dead, and Zack was arrested and jailed for murder.
Zack has amnesia: he can not remember how he arrived on that platform, let alone whether or not he had anything to do with the man's death.
Zack has met three people who are helping him to recover his memory and prove his innocence: the doctor, whom Zack met on the train station platform, the P.I. Cork McGraw, and Cork's maid Matilda.
In last week's chapter, Zack, angrily leaving the group behind after the doctor's revelation that he knew the dead man, made his way to the train station. The Claytons, who made a drive-by shooting attempt on Zack's life early in the story, made a second attempt as he was walking down the street. Cork McGraw saved Zack and shot one of the Claytons.
Earlier, the town drunk, who had been hired to report on the success or failure of the hit on Zack, had decided that reporting Zack's death would more likely result in another bottle of whiskey.
Mr. Clayton laced his fingers together beneath his chin and rested his elbows on the arms of his leather chair. Heavy, red-velvet drapes usually kept the sun from his office; today they were drawn so that one slit of sunlight poured over the oak desk in front of him.
On the other side of the desk, one of his men stood holding a fistful of the drunk's collar. The drunk's shirt was so wadded up that it pulled his arms back a little, so he couldn't reach his beltless pants, and they sagged to just below his hip bones. Mr. Clayton turned his head away from the hapless sight and peered through the gap in the curtain into the dusty door yard, where a group of his men worked with rope and pulley to hoist a wind turbine onto its tower.
The drunk tried to wet his lips. He had just told Mr. Clayton that Alabama Zack was dead. It had seemed like a good idea when he was talking to the lone cowboy behind the train station, but then – instead of buying him the promised bottle – the cowboy had collared him and dragged him before Mr. Clayton.
“Tell me again,” Mr. Clayton said, without turning his head from the window.
“Well, I couldn't be for sure, see, 'cuz I wuz in the saloon, just keepin' my head down with the bullets flyin', but I heard the shots and then someone cried out, 'Zack is dead!', so that's how I know.”
Mr. Clayton jerked his head around at the words 'cried out'. “You heard someone 'cry out'?” He grinned what he imagined to be his friendliest fake smile; then he let the smile fade. “What do you think this is, some kind of dime store novel? And who do you think I am, a fool?”
“No, no, Mr. Clayton,” the drunk protested with difficulty. The cowboy was twisting the drunk's collar and lifting him to his tiptoes – his shirt was choking him. “I don't think you're a fool. You're not a fool!”
Mr. Clayton did not need some hapless drunk to inform him that he was not a fool. “Take this man outside and tie him to the windmill, back facing me, and you and Jimmie lash him awhile and see what his story is then.” He swiveled his seat toward the window as they left and propped his feet on the corner of the desk. He did not open the curtain further. Through the gap he saw the buckboard pull into the door yard, with the driver gesturing wildly to something unseen in the wagon, and for a moment Mr. Clayton wondered if the drunk's story was true. Then he realized his son Billy Bob was not standing spread eagle behind the driver as he had been when the two left. He stood and threw back the curtain as his men poured in from all directions to surround the buckboard. He opened the window. He heard the driver cry out:
“Billy Bob is dead!”
Next week in our story
He sped downward, into the darkness dotted by a myriad of lights, to the center pathway where two pig-man jailers awaited him. The green light set him down gently on the rock between the pig-men; then it winked out. The jailers grabbed his arms and cuffed him while a third jailer walked up out of the darkness, and once again Zack found himself revolted by a pig-man's wet snout.
Chapter XXII (link to come)
Start at the beginning
Cover for “Alabama Zack” designed in Canva using a Pixabay photo as background (image source).
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