Iron Dogs

Two strides into the stable, Cole stopped dead in his tracks. His ears were ringing from the blow to the head he just suffered, and his balance was way off. He leaned against a pillar for support as his eyes grew accustomed to the shadows.

The livery stable was in shambles. The horses were gone. Four of the five stalls they'd occupied had been kicked apart, and now resembled the ruined one Cole found earlier in the day. Only one stall near the back on the right remained closed and intact.

Before he'd started on the horseshoes a few hours earlier, Cole mucked out the stable just enough for it to be livable for the animals they put inside. Now it looked worse than if he hadn't have lifted a finger in the first place. Hay was strewn everywhere, and the smithy was in disarray. Horseshoes, nails and smithing tools were all over. In their panic, the horses had trampled every free square inch of the building that they could get to.

The slack tub lay on its side, its liquid contents pooled underneath and already seeping into the thirsty ground. It was a miracle that the whole place hadn't caught fire. Luckily, the brine Cole was using to cool off the metal had soaked the area around the hot coals of the forge, so none of the hay and wood strewn there had had a chance to ignite. For whatever reason, the thought that came to mind was that it would take him at least an hour to clean up the mess and get back to shoeing, as if he had anything left to shoe.

Above the pungent stench of horse piss and fresh droppings, Cole smelled something far worse. He'd gotten a whiff of it in the saloon, but it was much stronger here. A sour reek of sulphur and copper, with underpinnings of decay and rot. Cole preferred the smell of horseshit any day.

As his hearing began to return, the constant ringing was replaced by a wet slurping sound. At first he thought it must be the horse inside the stall, drinking its fill of water. The notion left his muddled head as quickly as it came when he remembered there was no water for the poor animal in the first place.

He shook his injured head to clear out the cobwebs. It only made his skull pound worse. Still, he managed to regain some focus.

The twin doors at the back lay partly open. For a moment, Cole wondered why the horses didn't bolt in that direction. Then it came to him. He'd left those doors closed when he left the stable earlier. He crept forward, at once dreading what he might find in the closed stall, and knowing full well what it would be. Unfortunately, he was right on both counts.

The undamaged stall door wasn't closed after all. It was slightly ajar, and allowed enough space for Cole to see inside. The instant he did, however, he wished with all his heart he could unsee the grisly sight.

At the far end of the pen lay most of the remains of Virgil's horse. Cole recognized the blonde mane. There was little else left to distinguish it, and Cole nearly retched at the brutality of the kill. The horse had been ripped to pieces. In one corner was a leg, in another, part of the head, and the entrails and other innards were scattered everywhere else. The stall, previously the brownish-yellow color of wood and hay, was entirely a dirty blackish red, soaked from top to bottom from the animal's considerable supply of fresh blood and feces.

The smell was god-awful, and again Cole fought back the urge to throw up. The reek of innards mixed with sulphur was overpowering. He thought of fire and brimstone in a lake of blood. The stench of Satan himself. But that was far from the worst of it.

Hunched over the horse's gaping midsection, with its back to Cole, was the creature from the saloon, gorging on the animal's insides with razor teeth and one free gaunt hand. With the other, it gripped tightly in its clutches a mass of bloodied rags and meat, at first unidentifiable amidst the carnage. Cole absentmindedly thought it more horse flesh, as the creature's head vanished inside the cavernous ribcage. With the size difference and the brutality of it all, Cole couldn't help but think of a lonely, half-starved coyote feasting on a dead deer it happened upon by chance. Only this was no coyote, and what happened was far from chance.

Horrified beyond words, he began to inch back, praying he could do so without being heard. As if on cue by a sadistic higher power, the creature stopped in mid-bite. It lifted its head and spun around quicker than Cole imagined something could move. It looked him square in the eye.