PseudoPod 927: Three Nights With the Angel of Death
Show Notes
Three Nights with the Angel of Death
by Emily Ruth Verona
Arizona, 1884—Day One
The people of Vulture City are calling him the Angel of Death. But that makes no difference to us. There’s a one-thousand-dollar reward on him, and that kind of money never comes easy. No. It comes soaked in blood. Wet and slippery. Not that it matters when all is said and done. Bloody money buys a hell of a lot more than empty pockets. I can tell you that much.
Most of the Arizona territory knows him by the name of Tom Radley, the same Tom Radley who robbed five banks in five coal mining towns in 1882. The law managed to catch up with him after that last bank in Comstock; he was rotting in Yuma Territorial Prison until about six months ago. The son of a bitch escaped. Got all the way to Clayton, New Mexico, before they snapped him up again.
That’s where the Angel of Death comes in. You see those lawmen—the ones tasked with bringing Radley back to the prison—they didn’t make it far. Started dying off one by one… in real peculiar ways too. The kind that make the skin on the back of a man’s neck shrivel and prune when he hears tell of ‘em. One fella was said to have strangled himself to death, if such a thing is possible. Another was found with his throat slit but not a drop of blood in his body or even on the ground around him.
By the time they got Radley to Vulture City, there was only one lawman left on his escort, and he was raving. Refused to take Radley any further. Said his last remaining compatriot had vanished in the night—just up and disappeared in the desert somewhere west of Wickenburg. Of course, being a mining town, Vulture wasn’t too keen on keeping Radley around for long. Put a group together as fast as it could to get him gone.
Guess that’s how we ended up here, in the very belly of the Sonoran, between Vulture City and Yuma Territorial Prison with nothing but the sky above and hell below. It’s a four-day journey, and there are five of us besides Radley, each desperate enough or stupid enough to think we can make a buck off Radley’s hide. (Continue Reading…)
