A Gunslinger's Reckoning

By Juvencio S Castro

A Gunslinger's Reckoning, a thrilling western thrown in with a tale of horror.

Clyde Tuck, a quick draw outlaw, is imprisoned at one of the worst penitentiaries in America's Wild West. Things change when he and his fellow inmates are set free by Von "The Warlock" Onslaught, a demon-possessed villain.

The Warlock wants to r

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Sep 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781636767659

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A Gunslinger’s Reckoning

A Gunslinger’s Reckoning

JS Castro

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2021 JS Castro

All rights reserved.

A Gunslinger’s Reckoning

ISBN

978-1-63676-763-5 Paperback

978-1-63676-764-2 Kindle Ebook

978-1-63676-765-9 Ebook

Contents

Note From the Author

Chapter 1.

The Eyes of the Warlock

Chapter 2.

The Joining

Chapter 3.

The Warlock’s Pick

Chapter 4.

Possessions

Chapter 5.

The Plan of Attack

Chapter 6.

The Orders

Chapter 7.

The Twins

Chapter 8.

Deceptions

Chapter 9.

Tuck’s Charge

Chapter 10.

Falsehoods

Chapter 11.

A Girl Taken in the Night

Chapter 12.

The Other Onslaught

Chapter 13.

War

Chapter 14.

Blood

Chapter 15.

The Deadly Pursuits

Chapter 16.

The Onslaught Beginnings

Chapter 17.

Incantations

Chapter 18.

The Whip Wants What the Whip Wants

Chapter 19.

For the Love of Family

Chapter 20.

The Lives of Children

Chapter 21.

The Lone Escapee

Chapter 22.

Man and Beast

Chapter 23.

The Remains at Ochoa

Chapter 24.

Kings and Queens

Chapter 25.

Hostages

Chapter 26.

Tuck’s Blood

Chapter 27.

The Sacrifices

Chapter 28.

Bible

Chapter 29.

Aftermath

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Sometimes the bad just catches up to you, then you’re just gonna have to kill it.

—ANONYMOUS

Note From the Author

My love for writing came in the early part of my childhood. I grew up in a small Union Pacific Railroad town called Sloan, Nevada. Sloan was a place in the middle of nowhere, a community of three families whose fathers worked for the Union Pacific Railroad. They would install, fix, and maintain three hundred miles of rail line in all kinds of good and horrific weather.

In Sloan, my imagination and love for storytelling took shape. I lived in an era when children would spend most of their time playing outside. My backyard was a vast desert landscape of sagebrush and tumbleweeds, which enabled my mind to imagine heroes in worlds formed in my runaway thoughts. But it was the evenings, when my two brothers and three sisters would gather around my mother and grandmother, that drove me to writing horror. They would tell us embellished ghostly tales of growing up in old Mexico. Strange, bizarre, and supernatural things that happened to them when they were young. Such stories always gave me night terrors. I would wake up screaming in the middle of the night to vivid dreams of demonic beings.

As I grew into a junior in high school, my nightmares followed along. Then one day in Mrs. Jaeger’s English lit class, we got an assignment to write a story using the week’s assigned spelling words. I took those words, reached back into my horrid dreams, and created a tale that my teacher found frightening and entertaining as she graded my work. When Mrs. Jaeger read my stories to the class, they thought she was telling them a short story from an accomplished author. That’s when my passion for writing began. As I continued to write, my hellish dreams disappeared. Who knew using a pen would turn out to be a cure for my night terrors?

After high school graduation and throughout the years, I continued to write. I created many stories, but I have never published any of them. Perhaps because of the twists and turns my life has taken over the years. Becoming a wrestler in high school, which led me straight into the military, which after I got out, led me to a civilian career I have been blessed to enjoy for some time now. That job enabled me to become a third-degree black belt in martial arts, learning techniques for ending fights in three seconds, and then teaching self-defense to children and young adults. Thank you, Grand Master Sarac and Professional Karate Centers.

Fast-forward to 2021 and the creation of A Gunslinger’s Reckoning. My first book to be published! The inspiration for this story comes from a comic book I was preparing to write back in 1985. I had just gotten out of the military and began collaborating with a tattoo artist friend of mine. He was a gifted artist who knew I had some writing skills. We decided to create a Western Comic. He would draw haunting pictures of the Old West, and I would put words to his imagery.

His first sketch was a black and white drawing of an abandoned building in the middle of a bleak desert. As soon as I saw his work, the memory of a movie I once watched as a teenager came racing back to me: an old classic western that starts out within a dark prison.

The movie’s first scene starts off in the Warden’s office. He tells the worst and toughest inmate that he will set him free on one condition. The outlaw is to fulfill a quest. He will send him on a mission to cause havoc and chaos among a band of Comanchero renegades. His reward is freedom and all the gold he can steal from their looting.

The comic book never worked out because of circumstances beyond my control, but it gave me the inspiration to create Clyde Tuck, the main protagonist in A Gunslinger’s Reckoning. Tuck is a veteran of the Civil War and former Union officer decorated for heroism during the First Battle of Bull Run, but his need to avenge the death of his murdered brother takes him on a course to becoming an outlaw. He is eventually captured and sent to prison. Thus, Tuck the outlaw blossoms from there.

I set out to write a novel as a pure form of entertainment. A Western thriller with twists, turns, and adrenaline-filled action, but there is a deep meaning within this story: a message about redemption that comes from the title of my book. A Gunslinger’s Reckoning is taken from the Bible’s "Day of Reckoning," which refers to the Last Judgment of God. In Christian and Islamic belief, everyone after death is called to account for their actions committed in life. This is the foundation and lesson of this tale.

The lesson was born from my own past because I have sought out redemption myself. The hardest thing I have ever had to do was admit I was not a good person. I never felt that asking for forgiveness was in my DNA until I saw the pain I had caused others through my actions, especially those I truly loved. I had to look deep into myself and see me for who I had become. Then I had to look for the courage to change into what my wife and kids needed me to be. Fear and embarrassment were huge obstacles toward my change, but a very good church counselor once told me fear was an emotional reaction, but courage was a choice.

Through those rough years, I learned all about the difference between regret and guilt. Regret is a memory of an event you wish you could do over. But guilt is regret that leaves you feeling unworthy of life, as I once felt. You can’t live with what you have done and so going forward is painful. A part of my real self is in this story, even though my life events are different from my hero Clyde Tuck and what I have written.

There is a Christopher Cross song called Ride like the Wind about an outlaw on the run to Mexico. The melody tells the story of a man who was born the son of a criminal. He uses his gun to get his way even if it means killing others. The tale is about how he has defied death by being a gunfighter. The tune tells us from the beginning that the law is catching up to him, and so he is on the run to stay free.

My belief is that he isn’t running just from the law, but from himself and his awful past of being a killer. His end goal is to seek redemption because the day of his reckoning is finally coming to fruition.

One of the biggest, hardest, and most courageous things anyone can ask for or grant is forgiveness, not only from others but from yourself. Whether it’s a long and strained relationship you need to mend, or simply asking God to help redeem you of your present and past sins, my belief is that anyone can be forgiven. The question is: are those who are asking for it brave enough, and willing enough, to make restitution? Thank you for being a part of this book. I hope you enjoy and consume it with enthusiasm.

Your grateful author,

JS Castro

Chapter One

The Eyes of the Warlock

June 1, 1875

The morning sun rises over the earth to greet the vast expanse of an ancient and arid desert. Hard clay and white sands run for many miles in all directions within the lifeless terrain. On the westernmost boundary, a mesa with a thriving forest towers over the barren landscape, reaching a height of two thousand feet above the ground.

Two riders on horseback reach the mesa’s edge and see a prison in a place where nothing should exist. One rider is a man by the name of Von The Warlock Onslaught, a sinister sort with long white hair and piercing blue eyes that float inside empty black sockets. The other is an attractive woman Onslaught has known for an exceptionally long time: Brigida—tall, staunch, and attractive—with long, dark hair flowing beneath a riding top hat.

Below them is their destination, a prison called El Ollo, The Hole.

Tell me Brigida, what do you think? asks the Warlock in a harsh and raspy voice while straightening the cuffs of his Victorian suit.

Brigida hesitates to speak. A look of confusion comes across her face when she sees four high stone walls that surround a simple brick and mortar building. Two sentries on each barrier walk the parapets, guarding what she sees as a plain compound that isn’t worth traveling to.

Mr. Onslaught, I thought we were coming here to acquire an army of men? I only see a patrol of a few soldiers guarding no one. I am warning you, do not take me for a fool.

You are no fool Brigida, but the view of the outside blinds you from what you do not see. In a minute, those men you think aren’t there will come scurrying out like ants on fire.

The Warlock looks to the sky, raises his hands into the air, and begins to recite words of an unknown language.

While the Warlock chants, two sentries meet in the middle of the prison’s west wall.

Hey can I bum a cigarette off you? asks the guard from the northwest watch, looking bored but jittery because of a tobacco habit.

I just so happen to have one left, says the southwest sentry, smiling and knowing his fellow sentinel has an addiction to smoking. What will you give me for it?

Well, I’m desperate, so I’ll give you some of those chocolates that come with our rations.

I hate those things. They don’t even taste like chocolate.

Yeah, I hate them too. They give me the runs. The last time I ate them I was in the outhouse for half a day.

Yeah, I remember. You had it so bad your ass started to dry heave, says the southwest guard, making them both break out into laughter.

Then the Warlock yells out, Arraba Ka and unleashes a wretched curse upon the prison. The skies above him begin to darken with threatening clouds that formed from out of nowhere. Thunder and lightning echo in the barrenness of the desert.

Suddenly, in the middle of the northwest guard’s chortling, he begins to cough uncontrollably. He doubles over and grabs his stomach with both hands. A second after that, he falls to his knees gasping for air in utter agony.

The southwest sentry does not notice him right away as he looks upward and is confused by the sudden storm.

He then looks at his comrade and asks, What’s wrong, did you eat one of those chocolates by mistake?

The northwest guard cannot return an answer as he gags and looks up with a pale and ashen face. His partner takes a step to help him, but then grabs at his head with two hands. He lets out an ear-splitting yell and crouches to the ground in horrific pain. Then, one by one, the sentries on the other walls fall victim to their own kind of unbearable suffering.

Inside the building, the Warden has just thrown up, losing his lunch of chicken soup and apple cider. His body begins to spasm while the affliction tortures his muscles.

Below the stone floors of the Warden’s edifice is a large, cold, and circular cavern that is at least five hundred feet deep and seventy-five feet in diameter. Within its walls are damp and musty alcoves that serve as prison cells for murderers, rapists, and thieves. The prisoners do not bear the same infliction as the prison staff.

Hector, one of two hundred inmates whose cell is close to the top of the cavern’s only exit, places an ear between the iron bars of his cell. He can hear faint screams coming from above.

His cell mate jumps out of his cot and stands behind him.

What is it? What are you hearing? asks Hector’s cellmate, rising from his bed.

Agony, says Hector.

Then the doors to the prison holdings open by themselves. Both Hector and his cellmate take slow steps backward as their faces cringe with uncertainty. Hector creeps to the outside of his confine and is joined by many convicts who do the same.

Another prisoner yells in his direction. What’s going on Hector?

Beats me, but it looks like freedom. Let’s get the fuck out of here.

Dozens of prisoners rush out of their cells and run up the spiral steps along the walls of the cavern. Clyde Tuck, a tall inmate with broad shoulders, is the first man to reach the exit. He sizes up the manhole that leads out of the chamber and wonders how he’s going to lift the heavy metal grate that blocks the way. To make matters worse, it’s ten feet above his head, so escaping is going to require a ladder, and there isn’t one present.

Tuck calls Hector over to him with a frantic and waving hand gesture. Hector points a finger at himself as if to say, Who me? then looks behind him at his cell partner.

I’m sure he’s talking to you, asshole; Tuck can’t stand me, says his cellmate.

When Hector gets to Tuck, he tells him, Stand on my shoulders Hector.

Tuck, I don’t think my skinny ass is strong enough to remove that cover.

It’s gonna have to be you Hec. I’m six feet tall and so are you. That’ll make us the only ones tall enough to remove that lid.

Maybe you can get on my shoulders? asks Hector.

Tuck chuckles at the suggestion.

"Really Hec? You know you can’t handle