Eyes not open

I suppose I should have seen it coming. Ted wasn't the same after taking a swig of that foetid brine that Burns had been carrying. A minute after leaving the shed, he started to cough terribly. He got over, waving us off, only to start hacking again. We stopped and told him to sit down, and the kid handed him a bottle of clean water. Teddy took a swig of it and I could hear it catch in his throat. He began coughing again and hacked up several disturbingly pink gobs of phlegm, with a final, violently loud cough, he keeled over and began to go into tremors. The kid leaped on him to prevent his doing himself injury, but it was pointless. He gave a few more tremors before laying still.
I told the kid to stand aside and brush himself off. He was still spooked from what was in the shed and this mess wasn't helping. No help for it now.
As the three of us took stock and began to catch our breath, I noticed a most disturbing sight - Teddy's hand had begun to twitch again. I nudged Montana and he saw where my gaze was headed. The kid hadn't seen yet, for which i was glad. I calmly drew my portable gatling to a firing position and started to connect the first round off of one of the remaining belts. Montana checked his six shooter before shaking his head and holstering it. Instead, he drew out his coach gun and checked to make certain it was loaded before cocking the hammers.
As he drew the second hammer back, Teddy suddenly lurched to his feet. Montana was quick as a wink and discharged both rounds into the corpse, but the two new holes hardly seemed to slow the thing down, though I did glimpse what appeared to be a tentacle blasted out by the second shot. The creature lifted the rifle in its hand and took sight on Montana, but Montana was quick as a fox and managed to get into a tangle with it; course, it seemed to have the strength of two men and it started to give Montana a real hiding. The kid had whipped around at the roar from Montana's shotgun, and on seeing Teddy's body, perforated as it was, lift a gun to bear, he must have broke, cause he started to book it out of there. I gave him a shout to get back in the fray, but my mind was on Montana as I fumbled the latches of the Gatling shut. The thing had gotten both its hands around his throat and, gibbering wildly, was slowly choking the life from him.
As the kid ran, the creature must of seen him over Montana's shoulder. It must not have wanted to have to deal with any survivors, because it inexplicably released Montana from the stranglehold and shoved him aside, leveling Teddy's elephant gun on the kid. It was fortunate for us, because I was sure that a second or two more of that close in fighting would have convinced Montana that it was time to become closer to god. But we were lucky and Montana was still alive and awake. Montana managed to kick it in the back of the knee as I yelled a warning, and by one or both our actions the bullet only glanced the kid's shoulder as he dodged. Course, with an elephant gun, that was still enough to send him flying head over heels.
Anyhow, the creature, although clearly strong and tough enough to have been able to rip Montana and I apart in a fair fight, was at a slight disadvantage now. It spun around and pull the hammer back, but I well knew that there was no round in the chamber. The confused look on the creature's face as the hammer's click was not followed by the normal roar was enough to make me chuckle as I pulled the trigger on my now fully loaded Gatling. Where Montana's shotgun had put two fist sized sheets of gore into the creatures, my gun began to spit out shells the size of my thumb at the rate of 4 rounds per second. I fired for about ten seconds, turning the abdomen of Teddy's corpse from steak to mince-meat. A sickly purple fluid oozed from several of the wounds, and the scroll that had been with Xavier's body was in his belt. Ah, hell, we'll have to leave the body to the mortician. Now's the time to hunt down and banish the source of this taint. And I had a feeling that the scroll was the key to it.