This is the second excerpt in Fiction Week here at The Gamer Dome (here’s Excerpt One), so read on and enjoy, and then come back each day this week to read a new excerpt from a different story. On Friday, let your voice be heard as you vote for your favorite story, which I’ll continue to write, hopefully substantially, over the Christmas holidays.

Thanks!

Propagandroid

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Like yesterday’s excerpt, this story evolved out of a spate of research and reading on a particular topic: in this case, the history of Mormons in the United States. I’m really surprised this era and story hasn’t been mined more often for historical fiction, although I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that there was a market for such, even just among Mormons (I know there is quite a Mormon film industry that you’d never hear of). It’s rife for creating American legends out of, although one has to consider that it’s a religious doctrine you’d be playing with.

This particular snippet is a prelude, so you don’t get much of a taste for what the meat of the story, but I can say that it’s a Western with fantastic elements that will explore themes of belonging and identity alongside kickass gunfights, wilderness adventure, and an epic climactic battle.

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In the year 1859 the nation’s eyes were turned inward, as the specter of civil war loomed over the states. The aftermath of Bleeding Kansas and John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, as well as the upcoming national election, dominated the scuttlebutt in local taverns. News from the West about Indian Wars and trouble in Utah territory did little but contribute to the growing sense of chaos and unease.

But maybe someone should have been paying a bit more attention.

Somewhere in modern-day Mexico, 307 AD

Oanahaxa stared out from the crowd, eyes wide and heart beating faster than the day he killed his first chirino. His hands clutched his sweaty belly as if his nervous anticipation was a hunger inside him that had to be contained.

Atop a stone platform whose construction had killed many slaves stood Anxala, the high priest of the tribe. Brightly colored feathers sprouted from his head, and his body was draped by snakeskins prepared in oil for the occasion. Anxala thrashed about and trilled, and Oanahaxa thought it looked like the man was being attacked by a swarm of feathered snakes.

All of the adults in the crowd were quietly chanting something that Oanahaxa hadn’t learned yet, not being of age. It was a quick, formless chant that rose and fall as it circled the platform, like the sound of a fly buzzing around one’s head. The combined affect of the crowd, the dancing, and the heat seemed to hypnotize Oanahaxa. He stood still, staring, and feeling at one with the tribe.

The reverie was broken by a chorus of cries raised on the right side of the platform from where the boy stood. A wild cacophony spread throughout the men and women standing there. They thrust their arms into the air like spears raised before combat.

The priest on the platform fell to the ground then with a loud slap. Oanahaxa cringed and wondered if the priest had skinned his knee. That seemed to happen every time he fell on the stone.

Showing no signs of being hurt, the priest raised his head up like a serpent surveying a field. He whipped his head this way and that, staring blindly into the crowd, refusing to acknowledge sight until it was laid upon the object he sought.

Finally, still laying belly-down on the rough stone, he turned to where the people were stirring. His hands came up above his head, fingers stiff and grasping like talons. The priest’s tongue slid out of his mouth, red with…

Was that blood, or paint? Oanahaxa had heard the tales of the creature known as couatl, half serpent, half bird, savage and magical. Was the priest a couatl? He clutched at his mother’s leg and held back a quivering cry. It wasn’t brave to give in to fear, but sometimes he needed his mother’s touch to be brave.

The crowd was parting now where they had their hands raised. A procession of warriors in full regalia marched slowly forward. Oanahaxa was fixated as usual on their clothing, the padded shoes and armor made from strips of wood. One day he would wear that armor and march through the crowd a respected man just as they were now.

At the center of the procession walked a young boy, no older than Oanahaxa and dressed in similar clothing. His head was down and his shoulders slumped as he shuffled along. Oanahaxa could see that one side of his face was bruised and swollen. One of the warriors knocked him in the back with the butt of his spear and growled, hurrying the boy on toward the platform.

The priest was back on his feet, Oanahaxa noticed. He was crouched down with his arms outstretched, bouncing on the balls of his feet like a hopping hare. Oanahaxa laughed out loud at that. His mother did not stop her chanting but reached down to pinch him on the arm as a warning. Before Oanahaxa could complain the priest raised his head toward the sky and shrieked the language of the gods. Instead of being drowned out by the hundreds of chanting voices, the priest’s howls seemed to amplify and direct them toward the heavens.

The warriors stopped at the steps leading up to the platform and stared into the skies, where gray clouds seemed to swirl directly overhead. All eyes were drawn to the maelstrom except for the other boy, Oanahaxa noticed. He was still staring at the ground, and his lips were moving. Oanahaxa shook his mother’s leg, trying to get her to look over at him, but she was transfixed. Just then the boy looked up at Oanahaxa…it was his friend Tuajixa!

“Tuajixa!” he cried out over and over again, but the noisy ritual drowned out his words. Tuajixa’s lips continued to move but it didn’t look like he was speaking.

Thunder crackled through the courtyard and made Oanahaxa’s heart skip a beat. Another rumble followed the first, although now it seemed to be coming from the ground, as if heaven and earth were fighting to see which could scare him more.

The priest was still screaming, but now his eyes were wide and he was pointing at Tuajixa. His cries were more frantic than before and he was once again speaking the tribal tongue, though Oanahaxa couldn’t make out what he was saying. One of the warriors surrounding Tuajixa raised his spear to strike the boy again, but the ground beneath him bucked, sending him sprawling to the ground.

By now the crowd had stopped chanting and were looking at one another wondering what was happening. A flagstone jarred loose from the ground at Tuajixa’s feet and spun up to break the jaw of one of the warriors, who went down spitting blood through his screams. As the earth attacked them, the warriors dove onto Tuajixa, raising him above their heads and carrying him up the stairs onto the platform. The priest drew out a long knife and commanded them to pin the boy to the stage. When they did so, a hole opened in the platform and swallowed the boy. It closed quickly on the arm of a warrior, amputating it beneath the elbow with a horrible noise that made Oanahaxa want to wretch.

Oanahaxa’s mother was pulling on him now trying to run from the scene with some others in the crowd, but he was fighting her off. He was going to watch what was happening; maybe the warriors needed his help! Oanahaxa imagined himself leaping up onto the platform and fighting off whatever was attacking the warriors, and his mind wandered to the celebration that would soon follow, as well as his being recognized as a man of the tribe.

That was when it happened.

The stones that made up the platform began to pulse, almost as if they were breathing. In a split second Oanahaxa saw the stones expand outward and then suddenly it was gone in a puff of dust. The priest and warriors fell to the ground, causing the one-armed warrior to shriek in pain. Some of the crowd was still panicking while others were watching in wonder.

His mother was still pulling on him and yelling, and he decided that it was probably safe to go now since the threat was gone. He turned just in time to see a spear of rock shoot up from the ground and go straight through his mother’s chest, piercing her jaw and erupting from her mouth in a gout of red. Her eyes strained to look down at her son one last time as she gulped air and blood, but her head was pinned up by the spear. Oanahaxa screamed, and was aware of other screaming as the stones had turned their wrath onto the rest of the crowd as well. Those who ran were thrown backward by violent waves of earth, and explosions of gravel dropped entire groups at once all across the courtyard.

Onahaxa was crying and hugging his mother as he looked toward where the priest was hacking at the one-armed soldier and chanting a prayer, hoping the sacrifice would stop the curse that was killing his tribe. Then he stopped and stared at the ground in front of him. Oanahaxa could not see what the priest was looking at, but he could clearly see the terror in the priest’s wide eyes. The man stumbled backward, ripping at the snakeskins that before had seemed to give him so much power. As he threw the last one to the ground he turned to run, but the earth curled up and rolled toward him, catching him in its corkscrewing grasp and bending his bones backward until his screams ceased.

Oanahaxa felt the ground fall away beneath him momentarily before dirt and gravel shot straight up all around him, scratching at his skin. He couldn’t tell what was happening anywhere else because the entire scene was obscured by dirt. Just when he thought the entire earth was erupting to the heavens, everything started coming back down. Only it wasn’t falling harmlessly to the ground, it was clinging to his arms and back, pulling him down with it. He fought against it, climbing and scratching, but to no avail. The dirt pulled him down with it until he could see nothing, and feel nothing but the air leaving his lungs.

Then all was silence, to the ends of the world.