Introduction
"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.
Previously in our story
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 our hero, Zack had stood before his inquisitor in the cave and asked if dimension jumping was real. Upon asking the question, he was transported to a barn on the Clayton ranch. He did not know where he was, but he did recognize the town drunk, whom he found tied up in the hay mow.
In the hay mow, our hero heard nothing except the drunk, who sagged against his ropes in a coma apparently caused by a bloodletting.
Outside he could see the sun shining on a vast plain of golden vegetation, and on the horizon, purple mountains. He realized that he should untie the man. But something had caused the wounds on the drunk man's shoulders, and he had to figure out what threats he faced.
There was an open trapdoor in the corner, to the right of the hay door. He went to it, making fists when his boot struck a bare spot on the floor. He knelt and stretched out on the floor and listened over the trapdoor – again the only sound was the drunk – then he stuck his head through.
Nothing moved. He worked his way down the ladder and put his back to the wall. On his right, heavy bay doors were propped open so that the barn was flooded with light. A row of box stalls ran along the far wall, and the bay doors on the other end of the barn were closed. The rest of the barn was empty, except for a small corner room on the left, directly across from him.
But, he knew that barn.
Sure, he worked those stalls: he fed and groomed the horses every morning. The small room – the warehouse, they called it, though it looked like a tack room – was quiet and the horses were gone, so he reckoned the the gang must be on the range. Rustling steers? It was early for that, and why wasn't he out with them?
He heard a voice that sounded far away, like the drunk was calling out, his voice muffled by the hay. When he thought of the drunk, he thought of the doctor and Cork with him on the bench, the drunk pointing the thumb and finger gun at him, the two men on the buckboard – he knew them; they were part of the gang – but why were they shooting at him?
How had he ended up with Cork and the doctor instead of the gang?
Suddenly Zack had an image of the cave; he remembered his inquisitor and what his last question had been. He fell back against the wall and slid down till he crouched on his heels. He forced himself to look at the box stalls and the strands of hay and straw on the floor, instead of getting caught in the memory – but the doctor is wrong, he told himself, dimension jumping doesn't happen; it's not real. He sought out the black hole in his memory until the memories – even the memory of that barn – faded, and he just felt lost.
Our hero's gaze drifted absently to the corner room. Its walls were covered in a shiny, metallic-colored insulation; the door was insulated too. Above it a bare wooden sign had been nailed.
In red, hand-painted letters, it read: what exits here must be killed.
Next week in our story
In front of Cork McGraw's office, a dozen horses wheeled about beneath angry riders. The horses' were wet after the hard gallop from the Clayton ranch to town. The dust they churned up as they formed restlessly into a semicircle facing Cork's office dulled the damp sheen on their withers and flanks before drifting in a cloud up the street toward the distant train station.
Chapter XXV (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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