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    Restless On Boot Hill
    Restless On Boot Hill
    Restless On Boot Hill
    Ebook30 pages27 minutes

    Restless On Boot Hill

    By James Pratt

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    About this ebook

    A zombie tale with Lovecraftian overtones set in the Old West. After the dead start to rise in the town of Purgatory, Sheriff Lucas McMasters recruits William Whateley, a gunfighter alleged to have dealings with the forces of darkness, to help him get to the bottom of things.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJames Pratt
    Release dateJun 14, 2011
    ISBN9781458128119
    Restless On Boot Hill
    Author

    James Pratt

    James Pratt likes to create realistically flawed but basically decent characters and have them cross paths with serial killer angels, redneck vampires, slithering horrors from other dimensions, and the end of the world. He also likes to write stories that demonstrate how the ever-present darkness threatening to wash over the world like a wave of endless night can be held back with a little courage and a big shotgun (assuming one hasn't already used both barrels, of course). Some take place in the distant past, others in the far future, and still others somewhere between eight minutes ago and twelve minutes from now. Whether sci-fi, adventure, or straight-out horror, the running theme is that the universe is very, very big and we are very, very small.

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      Book preview

      Restless On Boot Hill - James Pratt

      RESTLESS ON BOOT HILL

      A Short Story by James D. Pratt

      Copyright 2010 James D. Pratt

      Smashwords Edition

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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      It was on a chilly September night that Ol’ Luke Turner crawled up out of his grave. Luke was the first corpse to get all restless on Boot Hill, but certainly not the last.

      Like so many ne’er do wells before him, Luke had drifted westward years earlier with an empty pocket and a head full of dreams. Luke was a victim of gold rush fever but what he didn’t know was that said fever wasn’t so much a fever as a plague. Luke ended up at the frontier town of Purgatory, fancy dreams and get rich quick schemes safely intact, but in lieu of a steady supply of cash it didn’t take long for reality to set in. Fantasies he’d spent years lovingly cultivating, overflowing with fancy women, custom-tailored pinstripe suits, and exotic cee-gars as big as sausages, soon gave way to less lofty but more immediate goals like cheap whiskey and the occasional hot meal.

      The one light in Luke’s miserable life was Sally, a hostess at the Last Chance Saloon. Sally wasn’t exactly in possession of the proverbial heart of gold but was still willing to grace a penniless booze-hound with a wink and a few kind words. Like Luke, Sally had seen better days but in his eyes she was Mona Lisa in a corset. Again and again, he promised her that someday soon his luck would change and come that day he would make her an honest woman and all the world would be their playground. Sally would just pat his

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