Dugan McQueen

When the great earthquakes swept across the continent,
uplifting plates of crust country size,
steam and lava spurts piercing the overhang of clouds,
cities slid into bottomless trenches and lakes of lava.
Few survived, dotting vast regions with small settlements,
man in his near extinction...
 
Dugan sat amongst men listening to their stories
of escape and scars, hushed in the telling, shaking of heads
remembering, wiping tears from eyes, sniffing into silence,
until the wind whispered like a woman...
 
"Zargia," said one.
Everyone had heard the name.  The horrors plentiful.
A creation from the underground vaults,
freed in the chaos after the Day of Reckoning.
 
"She wants one of us," said another.
"Someone has to go out to her, or
she'll kill all of us in a rage."
 
Dugan kept his head low under his hat,
eyeing the circle of men,
campfire crackling, flaring higher.
 
The wind whistled over their heads.
This time the message more audible,
"Come out and play with me."
 
They were all too afraid to volunteer, except Dugan...
 
The woods grew thicker with each step,
his long coat down to his boots,
gun-belts criss-crossed his chest.
 
"You are not afraid of me?" asked Zargia,
stepping out of shadows.
 
Dugan didn't blink at her hideousness.
"Why should I be afraid of someone
with so much sadness inside?"
 
Zargia frowned, "You know nothing."
 
"I know what I see...
They transferred the brain of a little girl
into the body of an overgrown lizard."
 
Zargia straightened upright on her smallish hind-feet,
snake-like torso ten feet up to her head,
tiny front arms with long claws like a T-Rex,
tail coiling back into the darkness.
 
Her forked tongue fluttered out,
an effort to maintain her stout downward,
eyes glaring, tips of teeth
showing just under the seal of her thin lips.
 
She hissed, "Those little pistols won't stop me."
 
"Oh, I think so.  They'll certainly make a mess out of you.
I'll get at least one of your beady eyes, a hand, some fingers...
Even though you hate what you look like,
you don't want to be crippled and blind."
 
"You read my mind!"
 
"And you read mine.  You know I can make the shots."
 
Zargia eased forward from the trees,
her smooth underbelly gleaming like oil.
"I'm not a little girl.  I'm fifteen."
 
Dugan nodded in agreement, "A pretty girl."
 
Zargia sobbed, "I was, I was.  Look what they did to me!"
She dropped her leathered head, arms and hands held out,
hopelessly seeing herself.
 
Dugan drew his guns, aiming at her heart.
"Do you want me to put you out of your misery?"
 
Zargia raised her head, scowled at the shiny pistols.
"I would usually say yes.  It's so unbearable.
But... I sense you have another solution."
 
"Revenge," said Dugan through his teeth.
 
"That is why you are here," said Zargia.
 
"Yes," admitted Dugan.
 
"You look normal to me.  What did they do to you?"
 
Dugan swallowed, still holding his guns in position.
"My son..."  He couldn't finish.
 
Zargia nodded.  "I will go, if you tell me
what they made your son into."
 
Dugan tightened his lips.
"They're experimenting, trying to create creatures
like you to use in battle."
 
"I already know this," said Zargia.
 
Dugan cocked back the triggers of his pistols,
anger filling him.  They want young, strong soldiers,
but with experience, maturity..."
 
"Yes," said Zargia, waiting.
 
Dugan yelled, "I am my son!"
 
"What do you mean?"
 
"They took my brain and supplanted it into my son!"
Dugan lowered his guns and his eyes...
 
Zargia shook her head, understanding.
"You want me to show you where I escaped from."
 
Dugan holstered his guns.  "Please."
 
"They will destroy us," said Zargia.
 
"Maybe...  I've already killed many of them."
 
Zargia laughed girlishly, "Follow me," waving her claw hand,
turning back into the dark, her tail slithering around tree trunks.
"We have a long way to go."
 
Dugan looked back to a distant flicker of light
from the campfire and frightened men wondering his fate.
They would soon be telling the legend of
Dugan McQueen.

-- Stephen Jarrell Williams