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Letter regarding Bounties, 1/2Author: W. HardinUndatedTo Our Stalwart Benefactors:When I’m done here, the devil will be branded with Louisiana justice. He’ll be nothing more than a stain on your shoes, easily cleaned. I swear.The train you sent coughed enough smoke to blot out the dawn as it trundled away. The man it left behind was slender with a haughty figure, top hat and all.This can’t be who they sent, I thought. No way, no how.Instinct drew my revolver as I waded through the smog, as fine of a first impression as I can give. A whistling wind swept the air between us away to reveal his pistol pointing back at me in kind. Took all of my restraint to hold my finger steady. I asked his name instead of shooting, but he was silent. That’s when I saw what surrounded him: at least twoscore cases of ammunition and weapons around his feet. I suppose ghosts must have unloaded it—he didn’t seem the type to do it himself.I also suppose I have y’all to thank for the boon.“Which way to the Bounties?” he asked after neither of us pulled the trigger.But someone else did: a gunshot rang from the station, and a bullet ricocheted near his head. It didn’t take long to snuff out our would-be ambusher. I read her rites, tied her to a tree, and stepped back ten paces to execute. The man from the train shot her from five.“I’m a Statesman,” he said. “I know how to treat vermin.”

Exodus of the PrimalsRecorded verbally, transcriber unknown.

I tracked Hardin. I wanted his blood. His scent lingered on bushes and the insides of sheds, along with another smell, something that was like fox piss and campfire. It was easy to follow.Winds have always blown through the bayou, and Primals catch scents easily on that wind. But when Desolation bloomed, our Pact fell still, frozen and unsure. So I tread across rising ash and through parted, rotting mists. I became the wind to blow it all away when no wind would come.I found the den of Desolation, I fought against the ash. It was more of a vision than a fight, and when I returned, it was the wolf who sought me first—that boy who cries alone in the night. Lonely Howl had seen a name written on the moon.“The sheriff has risen to the top of the pack,” he said. “He got to Rotjaw before us, claimed her as his discovery. He sat back and let the Pacts take on the fires and the wrath of Desolation. He’s ready to step into the fight now, and he’s strong.”“We won’t be tamed by cowboys,” I replied.“The Death Pact seems not to mind,” said Howl. He had a vial of ash that he’d carried with him since the first blooms of Desolation appeared. I snatched it from his belt.We knelt over a stump. A slug crossed its rings, didn’t notice us.“There is no law here.” I poured the ash on the slug, and its skin hissed and bubbled. “Only nature. Only hunger. Desolation showed me unexplainable things. I see the world different now. I can feel Corruption spreading outside the bayou.”The slug crawled on and smoked like it was a train, a hexed premonition.“Let’s see how hungry Hardin is,” I said. “Let’s see how far he’ll go to eat.”

Addressed to Lulu BassettTranslated from SpanishInk on Blank Train Schedule

We held lanterns at the bottom of Kingsnake Mine. Worm Bite crouched before a mud sculpture, something like a snake eating the moon. It reminded me of how you look when you’re biting an apple.“The Graven Path is closed,” Worm Bite said. “I’ve made sure. But something is still wrong.”He was surrounded by mud art. Crude Mountains. Sludge trees and animals. The landscape of a lost mind.“It’s time for you to come out,” the Bone Mason said.“You don’t know what it was like in the Land of the Dead,” he replied, anguished. “It was a war, a religion being unmade.”“Rest,” I told him. “You walked into Death’s dream and woke him up. We’ve won.”“Every grave I’ve dug was wasted,” he said. Some tall nest of clay stood at the center of his works. He placed a pocket watch on it.“Did your mud friends tell you that?” I asked him.“This is a calendar. Just wait. In one minute, an Altar will emerge right here.”We waited. Water dripped.Each drop brought an image to my mind. Visions. Trees taller than I’d ever seen. An infected chimney with infected men crawling out from the top. Miners sipping molten metal from a cauldron until their jaws burned off.Suddenly, the mineshaft trembled. The floor bulged, and emerging spines uprooted Worm Bite’s pocket watch calendar of mud. He huddled at the foot of the Altar, looked up to it like he’d seen it a thousand times before.“You can never unsee the Mound,” he said.“Fine,” I told him. I sunk a round of Pennyshot ammo into the Altar with my Derringer. “You can’t shoot what you can’t see.”Bone Mason dragged Worm Bite away as the thing readied to explode. The sound of it echoed throughout the tunnels of the mine.

Addressed to Lulu BassettTranslated from SpanishInk on Blank Train ScheduleWorm Bite’s memory is bewitched from his time in the dead world. Sometimes he thinks he’s been shot and screams, remembering old wounds. Sometimes he thinks he’s just been born, forgetting his name, thinking the Bone Mason is his mother.Now he’s spread his madness on to us.When I smell one of these Spine Altars, I see a forest bent in furies of wind. Terrible machines growl and gnash the earth. Dead horses decay on high hills, ripped in half by monsters.We sought out help from our new kin, Brood and Bile—the blackbirds.“The gravedigger contains echoes of the Land of the Dead,” Bile confirmed.We pushed Worm Bite forward, and he told his tale of statue fields, of a terrible serpent swallowing a steamboat, of monsters piled so high they scarred the moon.“A ritual can show us more,” Brood said. “Let’s find out where these Altars are coming from.”The duo arranged six human skulls that were studded with gunshot wounds. From their beaked masks, they pulled tongues wrapped in sage, connecting them with wire, sliding them through the old, dead flesh. They wound the wire around a Spine Altar and shot it. The explosion made the metal hot, turned the tongues into rays of light.We were blinded by that light. Drawn into a vision.Blood gushed from a train engine and painted a red line across the desert. Hunters fled the swamps and crawled along the line towards a range of mountains. We soared over a lonely bayou: the quiet paradise the Primals hope for. Boss Targets screamed in their lairs. The Corrupted shivered and walked the woods.The only souls left were damned—The Drowned. Hunting forever through rain, fire, sunsets, and blooming ash.Our sight returned as the smoke faded.“These Altars and The Drowned are entwined,” Bile said. “They dwell in a place as broken and flooded as their souls. Darin Shipyard.”

Addressed to Lulu BassettTranslated from SpanishInk on Blank Train ScheduleWe found The Drowned banishing an Assassin in the boathouse. They peered out of openings in the walls and floor to stare at their reflections in the water. A new witch hunter was with them, that Hex Breaker. He hid beneath his hat, scribbling notes as the Drowned Rat muttered.“It’s our burden to keep the Graven Path closed,” she said. “When we breathe, mud churns. When we sleep, our eyes fill with blight. Our very lives are what have sealed the Land of the Dead away.”“Then why have the Altars returned?” Worm Bite asked. “We destroyed the Mound.”“It’s for the same reason flies come out of dead bodies,” Thirteenth Mate said. He stroked a Choke Beetle that chittered in his arms. “They spread where they can.”“We still hear Lynch.” The Drowned Kid stepped forward. “Singing as she goes about her work.”“And what work is that?” I asked.“Lynch has tossed her personhood aside,” Hex Breaker said. “If she ever had any to begin with, anyway. She’s a kind of nature we don’t understand.”“She can only exist where the Corruption exists now,” the Drowned Kid added. “We hear her voice far away. Traveling.”The new witch hunter had heard of Lynch’s work, had come to learn her ways from The Drowned. “Do you know what salvation a witch seeks?” he asked. “What makes them dance naked under a moon, or eat the heart out of a living deer?”The Banishing crackled and roared. Hex Breaker answered his own questions.“They want to taste a blackness beyond sleep,” he said. “They want to bathe in the well all curses flow from. And to do that, they cannot stay a witch. They must become a monster.”I believed him.Corruption has spread somewhere new, Lulu. I’ve dreamed it. Lynch has joined Death to grope our souls. Their fingers pry white inside my mind. If we don’t stop this, you will lose me.So I’m going to look for help.

Interview transcript, 1/3Interviewer: UnknownInterviewee: W. Hardin, UndatedI showed the Statesman where that ungodly gator gave me my limp. He wanted to know everything there was to know about Rotjaw—her lightning, her Token, her size. Eventually, we decided to hunt her for some good old-fashioned payback. It was the perfect chance for him to have his questions answered in person...and for me to grab some sway over his arrogant, prissy self.Didn’t take long before we ran into the stench of vermin. Of one mind, the Statesman and I cracked open our case of ammunition. Both of us knew the cases were supposed to last for the long, gruelling crusade ahead of us, but damn it if I can’t resist the temptation of cutting a little loose, not when we’d been blessed with the means.Just this once, I told myself.Afterward, over the bodies that were now riddled with all different kinds of bullets, we got to talking. Like equals this time. Bloodbaths always get the heart pounding and the mouth yapping. I flattered him by sayin’ he’s got a better shot than any lawman I’d seen before, save myself. He told me he’s never met a sheriff who’d stay to protect a town where only the dead remain.I told him I’d mustered at least three fine Hunters who were all for my cause of bringing back order. He told me his benefactor had plans for a lawman who can lead a slaughtering force from the front line.I told him I’d like to be privy to those plans. He said I was already doing my part.Turned out we saw the same bayou—well, almost. To him, it was the ruins of remarkable towns which were already in ruin. To me, it was chaos that needed order.At the very least, I agreed on his idea for what needed to be done about it.

Interview transcript, 2/3Interviewer: UnknownInterviewee: W. Hardin, Undated

Later, the Statesman and I took turns testing his new Mako rifle on the Demented rabble scattered around Moses Poultry. They slobbered over themselves, hoping to bite the throats from the Spider, lost in their delusions of ascension.I got one in the leg, then passed over the rifle. The Statesman pumped the lever and waited, watching our prey scrabble in the dirt. It was then he told me about the benefactors. He said they were a council of rich folks playing poker with Bounty Tokens, dabbling in the occult. Well, not just the occult—our occult. Felt good to be initiated proper, to get a scrap of food after what felt like a full winter’s starving.The Statesman took another shot and passed the rifle before I registered a Demented’s head explode to pieces. I aimed for another one, wanting to see if it’d been a lucky hit or if the rifle really could fire true from three hundred yards. Took my time, just like he did, but I reckon it was too long, since the lone man standing left his dead partner to the Hunter with the wounded leg. Regardless, my shot landed true as steel, just as I heard the kicker.The idea of a new law done lit a fire in my soul. Same one as on the day I was handed a revolver and swore to protect New Orleans. Excitement is what it is. No, it’s greater than that... you might call it faith.Faith can blind you, though.Someone in the bush tagged me with a silenced rifle. The ammo was something that had me bleeding from both my ears. I took cover and patched myself up. When the dust settled, the Statesman was gone.Whoever took him only left behind a fish speared on a branch, wearing his top hat.

Interview transcript, 3/3Interviewer: UnknownInterviewee: W. Hardin, Undated

I am nothing if not a man of restraint, so the first idea that struck me was to do nothing.The Statesman knew what he signed on for, didn’t he? Knew from the moment he got swamp muck on his shiny shoes. I’d only need to write a letter to say he perished on the Hunt, and then there’d be one less person to answer to. Hell, if I’d have known how much he was still getting paid, then I very well might have gone through with it.Instead, I did what I always do: my duty.This was our opportunity, our test. Us Lawful had spread ourselves across the bayou and held guard in our own stations, but now was the time to gather and demonstrate our worth, time for me to demonstrate my leadership to those who ceded it to me. We were the beginning of a new law, so steel and gunpowder had to test the truth. I had to show that our authority would birth order.It’s true that this test would involve purging unruly citizens from the Earth. Once every green moon, duty and pleasure do happen to mix.So I investigated. Hard interrogations, not that soft jail-cell-prodding the Governor always called for. When the next train pulled in, we had to have the Statesman in tow, or else the additional arsenal he commissioned was fixing to be forfeit.

Exodus of the PrimalsRecorded verbally, transcriber unknown.We waited for Centipede’s arrival. I sat by the fire while Lonely Howl prowled the perimeter. Ants circled the coals, then broke free to flee south. They carried a mouse rotted down to just its head and spine.It was a good omen. This is how I knew she’d been successful in securing a great bounty.“They’re coming,” Howl barked.“Be still,” I said. “Yap like a cub, and your prey will sense weakness.”Howl quieted, and we heard shadows shuffle across leaves. An owl high in an elm spooked and flew off.Centipede dragged a man behind her, his hands bound, his head covered with a potato sack. The coarse material was a world away from the fine clothes the man wore. He was a well-dressed devil, or thought of himself as such.I ripped off the man’s hood.“You’ll regret this,” he snarled, eyes glancing wildly around our camp. If he was one of us, he’d have bitten off Centipede’s thumb. But he wasn’t. He was domesticated.“I’ll remember every face in this godforsaken swamp,” he went on. “We’ll chase you down like foxhounds and stomp your faces into the mud.”“You’ll forget this chase soon enough and go back to hunting money,” I said. The ants hadn’t gone far. I picked up the mouse corpse and placed it by the fire. Its spine curled from the heat. “You call yourselves the Lawful, but you bark like animals. They are barks of fear, not command.”“You’re Felis.” He spat into the dirt. “I know you. Mark your days carefully. You only have a few free ones left.”“You’re not dead yet, but you could be.” I rose from the fire and nodded. Centipede pushed the man to his knees. Sweat dripped off his face onto the mouse remains and glistened in the light. “Would you like to know why?”

Exodus of the PrimalsRecorded verbally, transcriber unknown.The Statesman didn’t believe us at first. It was only when I had Centipede show him her tattoos that he was able to understand: insane and twisted markings of insects beheading mice, foxes, oxen, men. She had been a Demented follower once, before she was one of us.When we first found her, Howl and I had followed Hardin’s trail and come across a bloodbath, the remains of the Lawful’s “order.” A single Demented cultist was left breathing in the mess, and we took her.Centipede had earned her name for her adaptability, the quickness of her strike. She’d made poisons and worked them into bullets for the other Demented. I saw her eyes flicker with instinct. She could do more than follow madfolk chasing false prophecies.I showed her the wilds. Showed her the beauty in the chase, the kill. Showed her that the Sculptor was just one in a long chain of hunger, that there would one day be something bigger than it, too. All we could do was rise to the top of our own pack.“So you left me alive to tell me this?” the Statesman asked into the dying fire. “What good will it do you?”I knifed open a Starshell round. Ants had swarmed back to the rotting mouse, and I poured out a circle of black gunpowder to trap them there.“We tell you this because you’re not a threat,” I told him. “You’re bait. We honor our bait, respect it. Even you.”I dropped a coal on my trap and the Starshell powder flashed, incinerating the ants and setting the mouse head on fire.“Bait can be a warning and teach lessons to its kin, if it survives the bite.”

Addressed to Lulu BassettTranslated from SpanishInk on Blank Train ScheduleWhen I eventually spoke to Hardin, I was surprised he didn’t recognize me despite hunting us before. Perhaps he didn’t care about our crimes anymore. We gathered in a cabin raised high above the water. The Lawful had caught three Primals and were interrogating them.Below us, Rotjaw lumbered.“This isn’t law,” the Bone Mason told him. “It’s ruthless and unusual.”“Beg your pardon, Ma’am,” Hardin said with a tip of his hat. “If I wasn’t sworn on this badge, these degenerates would have their hands behind their backs holding nothing but toothpicks. They’re filthy kidnappers.”He asked the captured Primals questions about Felis and a stolen Statesman. Each stayed silent and was kicked off into the water with Rotjaw. We tried to get him to stop. Every Pact was needed now, but Hardin couldn’t see the bigger threat.“Do you know what makes us Hunters?” I asked him.“Sure,” he said. “Tracking, staying quiet, but you here just don’t see fit to shut up.”“It’s the inoculation,” Worm Bite said. “That concoction runs through all our blood. Gives us Dark Sight. Do you know who made that shot?”Hardin fired a shiny new rifle to send Rotjaw into her fit. “Sure I do. But if it’s all the same, I don’t care who made the gun I’m holding. I just mind if it puts a hole where I want.”“Finch’s blood was strong enough to open the Land of the Dead,” Worm Bite continued. “What do you think Lynch could do to us, with all her design flowing in our veins?”The Sheriff paused at that. “Listen,” he said. “You folks want cooperation? Answers and help? Join me in getting the Statesman back, and I’ll put you in touch with the people paying out Bounties. I heard they beat Death at poker and got all the secrets of the world in their pockets.”

Exodus of the PrimalsRecorded verbally, transcriber unknown.We took the Statesman to the rail line. “Here,” I declared as we reached the railway. “Behold the iron scar paved by your money. Behave, or we’ll feed you to the steam beast when it comes.”“You promised you’d bring me to the station,” the Statesman said. “You can’t tell me you don’t understand what a train is.”“The way of civilized man is a mystery to us.” Iron Bark laughed. “That station smells of you lawmen. They’ll leave and come to our woods for you.”We crouched behind old cannons. I found fresh bird droppings on the hot metal, could tell the Lawful scared off mallards and drove them down this way. We wouldn’t be flanked.The train should’ve been there at high noon. “They’re late,” Howl said.At all once, gunshots crackled from the tree line. Bullets glanced off the rail and hit Iron Bark in the leg. Howl flashed his revolvers in return, turned a white-shirt’s kneecaps into crumbles of gravel. Centipede threw a spear and a gurgling cry confirmed that it hit her target’s throat. I shot an oil barrel, and smoke caught the south wind, giving us cover.“Come out, Felis,” I heard Hardin call after the gunfire stopped. I peeked out over the rail. The battered Statesman held Centipede at gunpoint, three Hunters dead around her.“We bought you animals out,” the Statesman said, patting Iron Bark on the shoulder. “Turns out money talks more than mouse heads and summoning stones.”Pebbles shook along the track as a whistle shrieked like a shot dove. Guns fired from the train, and railmen fell off to the sides, dead, covered in Hive filth. Iron screeched on iron, and the train stopped.The blood-smeared freight cars shed dust from crossed deserts, and their doors burst open.

Exodus of the PrimalsRecorded verbally, transcriber unknown.Iron Bark had sold us out to Hardin. They stood side by side. That grave-digging halfwit was at the tree line too. Seemed the Death Pact had saddled in with the lawmen.“There’s deeper evils out there,” called Hardin. “Just look at the train. Our problems here have spread.”Two Meatheads crumpled the wall of a freight car and tumbled out. One knocked a cannon onto a lawman, breaking him open. A leech fed on his exposed lung and swelled like a tick embedded in a dog ear.“Let’s compromise,” the sheriff went on. “I want to die from old age, not poison and monsters.”“Funny how compromise always involves kissing your ring, Hardin,” I said.“Let us hold Hunters accountable.” He waved a pistol in the air. “We can’t have more Demented, or another fall to the Sculptor.”“Look at your hostage,” I called back. Howl tossed a bundle of dynamite, and the Meathead split like a flower. “The only thing that saved her was the freedom to be wild. To follow her instincts.”“Hunters aren’t beyond the law,” Hardin shouted, his hand grazing his badge.“Nature is the law.” I ripped a weed from the soil. “I’m taking the train. Will you agree not to shoot?”“You calling for a truce?” A genuine ask.I stood, and some Hunter in his union suit showed up late. He stumbled from the trees and shot, maybe even by accident. The rest opened fire in response. I ran, made it to the train as the firefight went on. Howl stoked the engine, pulled me onboard.“Let’s call it more of a head start,” I shouted to Hardin, and the brakes unlocked.

Letter regarding Bounties, 2/2Author: W. HardinUndatedTo Our Stalwart Benefactors (and your many cast shadows):Never hurts to have scouts on hand, and that’s what I designated those Primals after I gave the Statesman his hat back. For now, anyway.We let the lot of them take the train—it was infected anyway, and I’d prefer a clean ride across the wests of our country.The Statesman couldn’t give a straight answer as to why our Backers would send a train in such condition. Was it a test? Some statement or warning? We agreed that at best, it was a call for aid.So, aid I’ll give, along with the official leave of absence I’m about to offer Louisiana and her mud-slicked shores.Ten years I’ve served these parts. Three now under the name Sheriff Hardin. Seen lots in the way of bedlam and betrayal in that time, with my loyalty pointed north, south, east, and west. I never considered doing more than upholding law in New Orleans until now. You’ll make a fancy man of me yet.A new law needs the sacrificing of the old one, so I’ve been told. Mark my words though, this “truce” won’t last. When it expires, I won’t need a train supply of firepower to keep it in check.I’ll need an army.See, we put down vermin here, your honor. But they breathe the same air as we do, and sometimes it’s hard to see what side of the fence you sit on. So some get let go—this time. You know what it does to a sheriff to shake the poison-marked hand of a stray, rabid lion? Swallow his pride and betray the law he was sworn to die for?Neither do I.

Addressed to Lulu BassettTranslated from SpanishInk on Unmarked MapThis letter I won’t give to you. I will keep it on me for now. My words mean nothing if not aimed at you, so I have to put them down like this.You’re asleep in the railcar and the desert passes quickly. Our hands are cold when they touch. It’s the coldness of leaving a place. No goodbyes are ever warm, even when they are from a swamp as vile as ours. The bayou will always steam with regret, taste like gunpowder. I think I’ll miss it.We both smell like low tide and rot from the Land of the Dead. Shaking hands with The Drowned has lingered on us. But the bayou is their burden for now. They’re the only guardians we could find, but they fit. They’ve earned it.Vultures are circling some animal walking across the playa. It’s following the trail of some circus caravan.Dying in the desert is dry and desperate. Death has no passion there. His kisses are cacti and blisters. He’s all heat and shimmer, thin as a snake in the distance where sand meets the sky. The Death I made my deal with was different. He was giant, a rotting skeleton who gurgled with the rasping throats of men caught in trees. He was something that lurked in floods and graveyards. That is Death in Louisiana.I do not know what Death will look like further west, but I’ve heard rumors. Sunsets paint the canyons and make the rocks bleed. The air is thin, hard to breathe. Things are alive there in a wildness the swamps forgot.On the other side of these mountains, dying will take a new shape. Its shadow will be the skeleton of you and me, back-to-back, and a thousand gun barrels waiting to sing.