Chapter 1.1 - The Alamo Remembers

Diego looks through the smaller boxes and finds something that looks somewhat familiar. "Pequeño burritos!" he exclaims as he grabs one of the rolls and takes a bite. "Not bad. Not a burrito, but not bad..."

Offering some of the boxes to the others he asks, "Do you think there is more food on the other side of that thing?"

Diego will follow Eli up the stairs, new machine pistol at the ready.

At the top of the stairs, Eli cautiously peers out and find the garrison still empty. At the door, you both peer through and see an alarmingly long rifle pointed at your eyeballs. Fortunately, the old man on the other side of the rifle looks familiar. Louis Garderose lowers the rifle and eyes the leather trenchcoat, then Diego's submachinegun.

He stares at Eli and Diego for a spell, and then pulls a mangled silver cross from around his neck and steps forward. "Son, I gotta touch this here cross to you both, unnerstand? I gotta know." He holds it towards Eli's left hand, shaking slightly with palsy. His rifle is lowered, but his other hand grips it firmly.

"Not a bad idea, Amigo!" Diego says as he takes his turn with the cross.

Louis quickly checks your hand and then places his own hand on the cross as if to feel it's warmth. He nods and then checks Diego and AJ. Again, he seems satisfied with the results.

He shoulders his rifle by the strap, and then looks around. "I came here a short time back and fell into the battle. Some officer lined us all up and said he was gonna fight til the end and everyone should cross some line to agree with that plan. Everyone crossed, everyone cept me. Oh I wanted to fight, but deep down I knew it weren't real, so I stood my ground and they all faded away." He frowns and continued, "I knew it weren't real, but I wanted to. I could feel the call to glory. Ain't right a man should be asked such things if it ain't real. Probably ain't real."

He turns back to you. "Well? Did ya find it?"

Later, back downstairs, as you all contemplate the riddle of the portal, he starts telling a story...

---

A road-worn traveller stepped into the room. His knee length duster blocked most of the light to the dim interior, his round hat starkly breaking his silhouette. He paused, before stepping entirely inside and closing the door behind him. His turned about the room, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He soon spotted something that held his attention, and he took two steps forward, standing square in front of an old woman knitting by the fireplace.

"Louis Garderose," he said, his thumbs sliding from chest high down to his hips, pushing the edges of his duster back and showing the modified handles on his Colt revolvers. "Ma’am," he added, a little too slowly. His wrinkled, right hand tipped his bowler hat slightly down his forehead. His hand then ran down his trimmed grey beard thinned with age.

The old woman, dressed much like a puritan, finished her knitting row, while examining Louis with her wrinkled gaze. She finished her row and set the knitting aside. "You a changing one?" she asked suspiciously.

Garderose shifted uncomfortably and shrugged a shiver off of his shoulders. "No, ma’am. I ain’t reckoned I been done changed yet."

She pointed at something above the door. "Lookee yee, there, and tell me what you see."

Garderose turned, and above the door he had just passed under, was a human skull, mounted somewhat like a deerhead. The flesh had dried and pulled pack the mouth into a demonic grimace, made all-the-more baleful for the sharp teeth, long like a wolf’s, that protruded from the top jaw.

Garderose made the sign of the cross, and turned back to the old woman. "I done run into one of them a mess back, outside Fort Alamo. I plugged it with lead square and it done got back up. I hightailed it." He pauses again, his jaw chewing itself. "It caught me up just south of San Antonio. We wrestled some, and I set it afire with a lantern. It kept coming, like it had crawled out from the Abyss with a taste for my soul. Twelve shots, the wounds closed. Kerosene burns, knitting themselves like your scarf there. Outta luck and outta time, I stabbed it with my Jim Bowie, and then it was on me and frothing at my neck."

He pauses once more, and turns back to the skull, before continuing, his voice growing quieter. "All a sudden, it just hollered like I was the devil and it was the prey. On it’s cheek, there glowed a cross like there done be a fire inside. I felt at my throat and there was my wife’s cross, hot like blood." He signs the cross again, and turns to the old woman once more. "Well, I ripped that cross off that chain and I jumped on that beast and I hammered that cross into his head with the butt of my Colt like I was driving a railroad nail. That did it. I guessed it couldn’t take the Lord’s power, ma’am."

She leaned back, rocking in her chair. "Maybe," she said cryptically. "You still got that cross?"

From under his shirt, he pulled out a battered cross, abused harshly but hammered roughly back into shape. It’s silver shine glowing in the light from the fireplace.

"Silver cross." She muttered. "You need to go back to Fort Alamo, and fetch me something."

"I reckon I exactly ain’t welcome back there, ma’am, but I’ll go."

"Best get some people to join you. You ain’t young no more, Moses."

"That woman I was talking about is Ida Jericho. She ain't from around here, if you catch my meaning. But she's taken it upon herself to make sure the apples and the oranges don't get to uppity with each other. Like them demons coming here and kickin all the hornets nests they can find. Well, she's against that fer some reason."

He gestures at the portal. "I reckon that's what she sent me for, but you kind folk cleared the way for me." He scratches his balding pate and says, "I just ain't sure how we is supposed to move it."

He watches your eyes, weighing your responses, verbal or otherwise. "It's mighty tempting to just tuck through that and see what's what, I bet. But them demons just don't seem like a whole lotta fun, even if I was all adventurous like. You young folk gotta choice, I reckon. You go through this and I dismantle it from this side, trappin you there til you find your way, or you can come with me. If you want off the Rio Grande, there's other ways and I can show you, just like Ida showed me."

He pauses, then says "I ain't leaving this thing going, if I have any say about it. You go through, you're on your own."

Relieved, I quickly offer Louis a clear path to the portal. "Be my guest Mr. Garderose. I don't want to know of anything on that side. If you have another way outta here, I'm all ears."

Louis nods at AJ's words, then his eyebrows furrow at Eli's words but he nods as well. Diego stares at nothing, perhaps trying to take it all in and rethink his earlier enthusiasm.

He sits in a chair and wipes his brow. "Well, let's talk about this a bit. There are many places like this place. We call it the Rio Grande, cuz we gotta call it something. The other places are nothing like this one, though. You go through that portal, and you're going to find something like a modern world, a hunnerd fifty years in the future, except where monsters of nightmare walk the streets and prey upon everything. We call that one The Gloaming. But, if I close that gate, there is no getting from there to here, leastwise not directly."

He pauses and takes a sip of water from his canteen. The canteen shakes slightly and some dribbles down his chin but he doesn't seem to notice. "Now, you don't need a gate like this to travel between these places. Back in Rio Grande City, I took Clancy and that she-wolf to a place called Ardeyn. That one's like a land where knights of old fight dragons, and people haven't figured out gunpowder or trains and instead magicians cast spells. I just concentrated and we just kinda faded out of the room at the Blue Bell and showed up in a place called Tombstone Station, and from there I went to where I last was in Ardeyn."

He sips his water again. "I can teach you to do that, but there's no way to travel straightwise between The Gloaming and the Rio Grande. You could go somewhere else, and then maybe jump between worlds to get back here somehows. But you can get to it through Tombstone Station. So if you plan on going through that thing, let me take you to Tombstone Station first, then we can come back here and you can go through that thing."

"Now, lastly, that gate is special. When you travel like I can show ya, you show up kinda like how you'd supposed to be in that world. You're still you, just a little different. You come here, you're going to just know the train schedule and about the Alamo, and how guns work. But you go to Ardeyn, fer example, you're guns are gonna become arrows or spears or swords, and you're going to know how to use 'em, maybe more. We call that Translatin'. This gate, however, don't translate nuthin'. That's why it's dangerous. Them monsters come through and they don't turn inta Mexicans and cowpokes, they stay monsters, and that's trouble."

"So, let's here from all of ya."

I eyed Eli like he has two heads. "Jumping into that thing to wherever those creatures are from is suicide! Listen to Mr. Garerose. If you're so keen to leave this place, let's try it his way. That I'm willin' to try."

"What makes any of you Gringos think fighting dragons is going to be any easier than what we been fighting? Sounds like of we go through this door aquí we would know how to fight with what we got - and we start killing now!"

Diego shoves his hands under his poncho and stands quietly for a second before adding, "But.... I'll go back to the Blue Bell if that's what you Gringos want."