"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.
When we left out hero, the Clayton outfit had just made a second attempt on his life and were thwarted by Cork McGraw. As Cork and Zack were walking back to town along the dusty street, Zack was whisked into the air by the realm's green tracking device.
In last week's chapter, the town drunk reported to Mr. Clayton that Zack was dead. Not believing him, Mr. Clayton ordered a whipping.
Our hero was subdued, and he moved through the air with the greatest of ease. Unlike his first flights in the cave and back to the train station platform, when the wind had torn at him, the green light formed a bubble that buffered him from the surrounding air so that the entire experience had a dreamlike quality: the terrain below seemed to flow like liquid; through the light he could barely distinguish the trees and rocks and train tracks.
The ease of his flight allowed him to wonder where he was going. By this time Zack did not remember the cave, nor did he recall the inquisitors or pig-man jailers. The images made little sense in the outside world, so his mind had rejected and forgotten them. But the memories were still there, buried in his subconscious mind, and they pricked at him with greater intensity as he moved along the tracks. When he arched down suddenly toward a small hillside, and the hillside gaped open to darkness, the cave and its thousand lights and the strange, robed inquisitors suddenly encompassed his mind like the green light encompassed his body. Then he plunged into the cave.
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.
“Zack from Alabama, aka Alabama Zack,” the third jailer said. “Do you wish to meet with your inquisitor?”
Zack looked at the pig-man's chest to avoid his nose. Memories of the setting were still flooding back to him: he remembered the tiny cell and its stench; the inquisitor who had asked him what he was curious about; the flight across the cave when he had lost his cowboy hat, the one his folks had given him at the barn dance – but suddenly he was confused about whether the barn dance had actually happened.
The pig-man put his hand on Zack's shoulder. “Do you wish to see your inquisitor?” the jailer repeated. “Or go back to your cell?”
“Inquisitor,” Zack said.
The jailer pressed his shoulder and the four of them were sucked into the air – rotating slightly as they moved over the jumble of light and rock – until they once again stood before the inquisitor lounging on his boulder seat above them.
“Ah, yes indeed, Mr. Alabama Zack has returned,” the inquisitor intoned. “And have you found your adventure satisfactory?”
Zack stared at the too white, albinolike, bald and robed inquisitor. Then, only realizing what he was saying as the words came out of his mouth, he asked: “Is dimension jumping real?”
The inquisitor nodded its head: “That is a worthy query.” It lifted its bony hand and the robe fell down to reveal a hairless and thin white arm. It snapped its long fingers. Zack felt a shudder quiver up from his gut. Nothing happened, he thought, watching the inquisitor slowly smiling, but then he gasped because instead of the inquisitor's grinning face, he was looking at a stack of hay piled taller than his head.
A floor seemed to move up against his feet and settle back down, and Zack swayed forward. He tried to brace himself, but his hands were still shackled behind him. He caught himself just before he fell into the haystack.
Something breathed behind him.
His shoulders and arms tensed. He wanted to pretend it wasn't really breathing he'd heard – maybe it was the wind whispering strangely through a crack in the wall of wherever he was – but then he couldn't deny the steady rise and fall of it. It was breathing, no question, though now he couldn't hear it over the drum in his own ears.
Carefully Zack shifted all his weight to his left leg. He paused and listened – the breathing continued, one long slow breath after another. He lifted his right foot – which he found was buried ankle deep in a layer of chaff – and slowly turned until his back was against the prickly haystack. About twenty feet in front of him, a hay door opened in a square of sunlight to reveal a vast plain, and the contrast of darkness inside and sunlight outside made it difficult to see.
The hay mow came into focus. Zack collapsed against the hay and let a big breath escape. The thing breathing was just a man, slumped against a support post halfway between Zack and the door.
“Where am I?” Zack asked in the man's general direction. There was no response. Zack looked into the dark corners of the hay mow for other signs of life, and when he found none he approached the slumping man. He saw that the man was tied to the post; then he stopped suddenly a few feet away.
He knew the man. It was the drunk, the one who had checked on him after that first shooting in front of Cork's office. The drunk slumped forward against the ropes because he was passed out, but Zack knew it wasn't from drink. The drunk's flannel shirt hung in tatters from his torso; even in the dim light he could see that the drunk's arms and shoulders were slick with blood.
The evidence of violence provoked a response he had learned in war: instantly he crouched down and took cover behind the drunk and the support post.
“Where am I now?” he muttered.
Next week in our story
From the street outside the saloon, Cork and the doctor heard the rumble of approaching hooves. They looked at each other in the mirror behind the bar as their faces turned ashen. One thought passed between them: Matilda. They had left her alone in Cork's office. They grabbed their hats and sprinted for the saloon's swinging doors.
Chapter XXIII (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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