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.
In last week's chapter, a posse of angry riders from the Clayton ranch gathered in front of Cork's office, seeking retribution for the death of Mr. Clayton's son Billy Bob, whom Cork had shot and killed while defending Zack. Cork and the doctor were in the bar across the street from the office when the posse threw a flaming brand through the window of Cork's office and set it afire. Matilda was still in the building and the pair rushed to aid her.
Matilda knelt in the kitchen listening to the rush of fire over her head, the crack of gunfire in the street, and the knock of strange boots in the foyer. She was trying to dimension jump out of there, but what was going on around her was holding her up. The doctor had said all she needed to do was imagine another dimension to jump to it, but he hadn't offered any tips about how to blot out her surroundings. She thought hard about Zack. She tried to remember how she had first dimension jumped, when she had slipped to the barn at his folks' place in Alabama – then the boots started down the hall.
She felt the inside of her arms dampen her blouse. She focused on Zack, but even though she had studied it, she couldn't quite see his face. Yellow hair, pained blue eyes, big mustache, but it kept leaving her mind's eye and instead she was listening to the approaching footsteps. Finally an image flitted into view: Zack standing in front of a haystack with his mouth open – it was a memory from her first jump.
Everything went still. Instead of the smooth kitchen floor she felt lumpy material sink beneath her knees. She heard a rustling to her left, and when she turned and opened her eyes she saw three calves tearing at hay in a wooden manager. Excited, she looked in front of her. She expected to see Zack leaning on the haystack, but instead she saw an old man with a pitchfork full of hay staring at her.
And here she was like a fool, kneeling with her hands clasped to her bosom. She stood up as gracefully as she could and smoothed her skirt.
“You weren't there a minute ago,” the old man said.
Matilda had no idea what to say. She stared at him and waited for the words to come, but none did. She looked around. It was definitely the barn she had first jumped to; she recognized the cupola above her head. But no Zack. She looked back at the old man, who was still staring at her, and she smiled. The man was stooped with age, and his hair was grey and thin, but she could see the family resemblance. “Excuse me, sir,” she said. “Are you Zack's father?”
The man's face lit up. “You know my Zack?” he asked. Then he seemed to remember what he had been doing and he carried the load of hay to the manager and spread it loosely from end to end. When he finished he leaned the fork against the manager. “Why don't you come up to the house?” he offered.
Matilda felt her entire body begin to relax as the tension from the violence that had so recently surrounded her left. She buried her face in her hands and cried at his kindness. Over her crying she did not hear Zack's father leave and quietly return a few moments later. When the last of the tension had shuddered through her shoulders, she looked up. He stood a few paces from her with a dipper of water. “Have something to drink,” he said. “Then we'll go on up and sit a spell.”
Next week in our story
...The constables with the handlebar mustaches were busily taking notes on the position of the men he had killed in the street, and he knew that there were others doing the same along the trail of death he had left from the street and through the saloon to the narrow space between buildings. It wouldn't be long before someone noticed the two crisp corpses in the building. “We should clear out of town for awhile,” Cork said.
Chapter XXVII (link to come)
Start at the beginning
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