The Ancient Lawman

By Ian David Noakes

THE ANCIENT LAWMAN is a no-holds-barred tale of blood-spattered action and heart-thumping terror that unites a dubious team of allies:
–    A JADED F.B.I. AGENT WITH BLOOD ON HER HANDS
–    A SHAKEN SMALL-TOWN SHERIFF OUT OF HIS COMFORT ZONE
–    A DEATH-ROW CONVICT

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ian David Noakes
• Release date: Oct 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781684190065

Ian David Noakes

From humble beginnings as a projectionist, Ian David Noakes has taken on several feature film and television options as well as writing commissions since writing full-time in 2009. His big breakthrough came when his erotic murder-mystery, Hourglass Heights, achieved a publishing contract. It was later nominated for both the People's Book Prize as well as the National Book Awards After a wave of overwhelmingly positive reviews, Noakes experimented with many other genres as well. Most recently, he completed a dramedy pilot called Partners in Crime before adapting it into both a novel and completed series under the auspicious title Fish, Chips & Lubricating Jelly. He has also penned a fun-filled horror novella called The Ancient Lawman. Meanwhile a short drama he created, Tables Turned, has begun pre-production while he works on a re-write for his upcoming feature film, More Than Human. A serious case of indecisiveness syndrome has made it impossible to tell you what could be coming next. He is currently juggling a wide range of genres ranging from time traveling serial killer thrillers to dimension-crashing epics to supernatural horrors. When he's not immersed in one of his incredible tales, Noakes enjoys spending time with his wife, five children and a constant supply of Starbucks mochas. Recently, he has become a behavioural therapist as well, because who else would you rather discuss your problems with than a caffeinated, child-rearing, wife-doting, novella-penning, screen-writing, genre-jumper?

Book preview

PROLOGUE

TINKERHILL FALLS, 1656

THE WOOD CREAKED BENEATH HIS HUGE BLACK BOOTS as he made his way up the steps and onto a gallows that had been erected smack-bang in the center of the town’s marketplace.

The atmosphere was still and reeked of excrement, sweat, and death.

Walking in those boots was Henry The Butcher Adams—a hulk of a man sporting a tightly-strapped black leather mask to conceal his identity. Lined up like cattle were five blindfolded and trembling prisoners. Two of the prisoners were perched on stools with slackened nooses over their heads and resting on their shoulders. The remaining three were on their knees with their heads bowed.

Henry punched the air and roared, showing off his thick arms. A blood-stained shirt three sizes too small exposed his bulging gut.

Gathered around the gallows, hundreds of onlookers were baying for blood, thumping their fists and jumping up and down for a glimpse of The Butcher.

Henry lowered his arms and approached the men positioned along the edge of the blood-speckled structure. The execution platform had been built just short of a decade ago, but the tainted creation had seen its fair share of blood spilled across it—and Henry could take credit for most of it.

The crowd quieted; they knew what was coming next. Henry squatted beside a construction set up for hangings. Propped up against it, something the size of a shovel was wrapped in a black cloth.

Henry removed the cloth, revealing an axe that many a man would have struggled to even lift from the ground. It stood five feet in length with a handle that looked like it had been dipped in a barrel of blood and left to dry under the ferocity of a summer sun for many weeks. The blade appeared well taken care of. It was polished and sharpened, and it glistened with sunlight each time there was a break in the clouds overhead.

With both hands, Henry raised the axe above his head, flexed his bulky shoulders and roared. The crowd went wild, screaming for the show to begin.

The bustling crowd was riddled with writers for local handwritten news-sheets who were scribbling in their jotters, and with young children who were being forced to watch the imminent executions. Although some of the children had strong stomachs, most would rather have been playing with their friends far from here.

The crowd roared when Henry pointed to the two prisoners who were standing on stools, each with his head already positioned in a noose. He sniffed the air as he jerked the noose tighter around each of their necks. Glaring through the slits in his black mask, he drew the hefty axe back ready to strike. His arms didn’t even twitch under its substantial weight.

The blade cut through the still air in the blink of an eye as he wheeled it with so much power that the stool in front of him exploded, propelling the first prisoner backward and snapping his neck in an instant. Splinters of wood struck the other prisoner causing him to lose his balance and fall from the stool on which he was perched. He grasped frantically at the noose as it began to slowly choke the life out of him.

More! More! More, the crowd bellowed.

Henry moved on to the remaining three awaiting death. The sweat poured from their frightened faces and dripped onto the blood-stained decking. Henry had piqued early in his display and knew he needed to produce something special to keep the crowd happy.

He gripped the hair of the closest prisoner and lifted him clear off the decking. Still holding him by his scalp, he dangled the sobbing man over the side of the gallows. Henry shuffled his hand up the handle of the axe to provide accurate leverage, then hacked the blade clean through the prisoner’s neck allowing the body to fall fifteen feet to the muddy market ground below.

Please, spare me! Please don’t! sobbed one of the prisoners, but he stopped talking when Henry turned his attention to him. As the executioner stomped toward the kneeling man, the townspeople started to stamp their feet and this caused a rumble to roll through the marketplace.

Henry delivered a swift kick to the prisoner’s back that knocked him face down onto the decking. He then slammed his boot between the man’s shoulder blades, forcing a gulp of blood to ejaculate from his mouth. With his heavy boot firmly holding him down, Henry cupped his humongous hand over the prisoner’s head and prodded his fingers into the man’s eye sockets. With a powerful crack, he snapped the man’s neck, taking great care not to sever the spine. Henry jerked the dead man’s head back and forth in violent jolts to separate the spine from the ribcage and pelvis and then ripped the head clean off the body and tossed it, with the spine still attached, deep into the cheering audience.

The prisoner hanging from the noose was still struggling with the constricting rope around his neck. He started praying and begged for his life to be spared, but Henry raised his axe high above his head and swung with such great might it ripped through the man's head and neck before becoming wedged deep in his ribcage. It sliced through the rope on its descent and the man dropped to the decking in a split, bloody heap.

Doubting what their eyes had just witnessed, the crowd fell silent to absorb what they had just seen. They watched as Henry wrestled the axe out of the prisoner’s torso, snapping ribs out of the victim’s chest with a sickening crunch as he kicked him off his axe with his giant boot.

Vile chanting from the crowd demanded that more blood be spilled. There was one prisoner remaining, and Henry was looming over him, his bloody axe clutched tightly by his side.

The prisoner was breathing hard and had his eyes squeezed tightly shut. Henry kicked the man onto his back and raised the axe above his head for one final execution. He gulped in a large quantity of oxygen as he prepared to make this the swing of all swings, but then a look of confusion crossed his face as the axe started to slice through the morning’s still air. Before the lethal blade could strike his intended victim, Henry suddenly changed its trajectory so that it instead hit the decking with a deafening thud.

The crowd fell silent. Henry suddenly knelt beside the prisoner and sniffed him. Closely. Then, to be sure, he tasted him by licking the frightened man’s cheek.

What you waiting for? someone bellowed from the crowd. Kill the murderer! followed, and vehement unrest quickly spread throughout the crowd.

But this didn't sway Henry Adams’ resolve. He sniffed the man one last time before rising to his feet to address the crowd.

I cannot take this man's life! He is guilty neither of murder, nor of the rape of any woman, he boomed.

Suddenly, the crowd turned on Henry and the angry townspeople began hurling fruit, vegetables, and even rocks at him. Cries of He’s a killer! and Kill the bastard! roared from many mouths within the unruly crowd.

The ancient lawman plucked his axe from the hardwood of the gallows with one hard tug and then marched down the steps and into the crowd, his giant frame splitting a path through the crowd of people before disappearing into a building off the marketplace.

The surviving prisoner knelt silently on the platform, knee deep in blood and guts. And a young child watched as a severed head was tossed into a coffin that already had an assortment of body parts strewn over the side.

It’s all very bloody isn’t it, Mommy? said the child.

CHAPTER 1

I TILTED FORWARD OVER A BACTERIA-INFESTED BASIN in the ladies’ room of a run-down gas station and stared into the beat-up mirror. It clung to one of those battered walls you needed to inspect for pervert spanking holes. I was beyond tired and struggled to keep my eyes open. If somebody was ogling me from behind the wall, I really didn’t care. I wouldn’t have the strength to pursue him anyway, not even with his trousers sagging around his ankles.

My heels slipped and sloshed on the wet floor that was covered with mushy toilet tissue and what I hoped was dirt carried in from outside. I leaned in closer to inspect my face for signs of weakness. The whites of my eyes had formed tiny rivers of blood and the bags beneath them appeared on the verge of bursting. My head was pounding like a heavyweight’s punching-bag, and I was suffering from blurred vision after too many hours of bright headlights crashing over my windshield.

I would need to leave this restroom looking like the same confident FBI Agent, Lucinda Ackerman, I appeared to be fifteen minutes ago when I had sauntered in to freshen up. I had no choice, because if I didn’t, the two federal agents waiting in the car would witness my vulnerability and I didn’t want that to become a subject of conversation or idle gossip back at the field office in Chicago.

I couldn’t help but wonder if that was why Special Agent Helena Gray had come along. Agent Thomas was a rookie agent learning the ropes, but Gray had twenty years on me and had better things to do than join me on this ride. I shook it out of my head; I just needed to close my eyes for a few minutes to weaken the intensity of my sleep-deprived paranoia. The other two agents were there to assist me, not babysit.

The journey had been a long one, particularly with Agent Thomas’s many requests to stop for a cigarette break, but we were close to our destination—only an hour and a half left, at most. But I didn’t want to drive even a minute longer for fear of swerving into a ditch, or worse, oncoming traffic. Although a lethal accident would be tragic for me and the two agents waiting outside in the car, it may not be such a bad ending for Theodore Stone. He was a sadistic, serial-arsonist, and I was responsible for transporting him to Cressville Penitentiary for his final meal and subsequent appointment with an electric chair.

I had worked my ass off for the last five years. I started my law enforcement career back at Quantico where I was one of only two women fighting to graduate. Making a name for yourself in the FBI was hard enough with so many capable minds and bodies competing for the same recognition; being a woman added to the challenge.

I’d earned the right to be afforded the responsibility of undertaking the important task of transporting this prisoner— but I was so damn tired. Would it be such a bad thing if I just shut my eyes and let somebody else drive the last leg of the journey? Theodore Stone was handcuffed in the backseat of the SUV with highly-trained, armed federal agents watching over him. Of course it would be bad.

I doubted myself, but I refused to allow it to surface on the outside. It was my right to judge whether I was capable of undertaking such a significant, dangerous duty. I knew that a successful transportation could enhance my career prospects. After all, with more than a hundred brutal murders to his name, Theodore Stone was widely considered the most dangerous prisoner in the United States.

But I needed sleep. Just a few hours and I would feel much better. My edge would return, and maybe the rivers of blood and bulging bags would surrender to my revitalized body and mind.

Buck up and shut up, Ackerman! I snapped at my reflection, You have a job to do—so do it! You can sleep tomorrow.

I rubbed my hands over my face and scalp, pushing my fingertips into the parts that ached with exhaustion. I would have splashed my face with water, but if the state of the bathroom was anything to go by, then there was a chance I wouldn’t have lasted through the night.

I gulped in three deep breaths and allowed them to seep out slowly.

CHAPTER 2

SIX HUNDRED MILES OF CONCRETE HIGHWAY had passed by the windows of the shiny black, heavily modified Chevy Suburban I was driving. Broken moonlight sprayed through the trees, casting shadows throughout as we rolled by. A warm sensation bubbled in the pit of my stomach as I caught sight of a sign that read, WELCOME TO TINKERHILL FALLS – POPULATION: UNDER 750. I glanced back at the sign that had now been confined to my rear-view mirror. I had no intention of stopping until Theodore Stone was passed off to become somebody else’s responsibility.

The memory and stench of the gas-station restroom had been locked away and confined to history. If we’d taken the federal jet to the penitentiary, we could have been here hours ago. But when you are transporting a serial arsonist, you need to limit the potential devastation that could happen should he manage to break free and start setting things on fire.

Stone wasn’t your typical arsonist. In my experience, arsonists lived for the excitement they felt as they unleashed a powerful force of nature. They loved to watch the fire as it flourished and devoured everything in its path, knowing that if they allowed it to gain enough strength it would take a miracle to limit its destruction. But for Theodore Stone, it was different. He had no interest in how many buildings or national parks his fires destroyed. He had admitted openly, when we caught him, that he was more attracted to the suffering his fires could inflict on the living. If he ignited a building, it was because there were people inside. The same held true with the national parks he set afire. He set the fires during the busiest seasons when the parks were filled with hikers and campers. Killing people wasn’t his goal. All death did was cut short the suffering, and he took no pleasure from it. He wanted to fill hospital beds, not cemeteries.

We were nearly there and I took comfort in the fact that sleep was just around the corner. It was only just approaching 10PM, but I felt as though I’d been driving all night. None of this would matter once my head had hit the pillow.

Conversation would have helped me deal with my fatigue, but my passengers weren’t big on small talk. I didn’t know either of them very well, but the fact that neither had said more than a few words since we had left the city supported my theory that they were there to keep an eye on me. Sitting beside me was Special Agent Gray. She was a hard-featured middle-aged woman who had retained a natural beauty that I was sure served her well when she needed to call on it. She had long black hair with green eyes just like me, and when she had first slipped into the passenger seat, I found myself wondering if that was how I would look twenty years down the line. I had tried to initiate a conversation with her when we’d first met, but once she had agreed with me that the weather was nice and that we could be in for a long journey, I shut my mouth and waited for her to speak next. She didn’t.

If I’d been desperate enough, I would have started talking to the rookie, Agent Thomas, who had climbed into the back seat prior to us picking up Agent Gray. He seemed pretty normal at first sight, but my opinion of him changed as soon as he opened his mouth and shared a joke involving a strap-on, ice-cream, and a female federal agent. I didn’t need a degree in psychology to figure out that having an adult conversation with this man would have been a challenge.

After we’d collected our prisoner, it was only a few hours before Agent Thomas became bored and distracted. He was like a child stuck in the body of a big adult male. Even later in the trip, the lack of daylight didn’t stop him from wearing his shades.

As we drove on into the night, I could see that Agent Thomas was scribbling something on a notepad as he chuckled to himself. It wasn’t until he started flashing