Battle Page 15

  “Gotcha,” he murmured to himself and turned to Bumppo. “Your turn. Why ain’t you—shoot—”

  Bumppo was grabbing at his chest. His rifle was on the ground. His face was devoid of color, his eyes wide with fear, his brow crinkled in pain. His mouth was moving, but all Junior could hear was the sound of leaking air. Junior’s eyes zeroed in on Bumppo’s chest and saw the dark spreading stain from beneath his hands.

  Junior took his rifle in one hand and used the other to dismount. He moved the short distance to Bumppo but didn’t reach him before the hired gun fell from his horse. His face slapped against the road with a crack. He was gone.

  Junior slapped the back of Bumppo’s horse and the animal bolted north. He picked up the dead man’s rifle and scurried for cover to the side of the street opposite the three other men still alive.

  He pressed his back against the building and pulled Bumppo’s weapon over his head, positioning it behind his shoulder. He pulled at the sling across his chest and grabbed his own rifle with two hands. His eyes found the hired guns hiding across from him and addressed them with a sweeping gaze. “There’s only one of them. There’s three of you. Take him out.”

  * * *

  Blake gagged on the sudden rise of thick, stinging bile in his throat. He’d never seen a man killed before, let alone someone he knew. He’d seen people die from disease, come across dead bodies peppered with bullet holes or shredded with blades. He’d helped wheel them to the graveyard near town. He’d buried them, prayed for them. But to watch the life ooze from a man was something altogether different.

  One moment Aaron was healthy and breathing, raining hellfire on the invaders below. The next he was gargling and seizing, his eyes fixed and his tongue hanging to one side of his gaping mouth.

  Blake swallowed the acid and bit down hard on his lower lip. He lowered his head, fighting the flood of tears he knew was coming. His heart raced and he found himself catching his breath as it tried to run from him.

  Time slowed while Blake gathered his wits. The exhaustion of hours shrank into mere seconds while he regrouped and tried to focus on the task at hand.

  He shouldered the moisture from his eyes, blinking away the fog, and tried finding new targets. He looked south, hunting for the men who had hidden behind a building. He didn’t see them. Nor did he see the man on the horse whose shot killed Aaron.

  There were four bodies in the street, tumbled chess pieces knocked from the game. Each scan inched farther left and then farther right.

  Nothing.

  And then something.

  His peripheral vision caught the flash of a man between two buildings.

  Blake positioned his body to face the threat. He lowered his head and held his position. The man was two or three blocks closer. He held steady, as steady as he could. The wind swirled and traveled up his back, chilling the sweat on his neck and behind his ears.

  Another flash of movement.

  This one was to the side of the first, and closer. It was a different man too. Blake was pretty sure of it. The shape of the blur was bigger, more lumbering, and less certain of its movement.

  A third now, closer still. They were advancing quickly.

  Blake pivoted. His pulse pounded in his neck and at his temples.

  Were there only three? Were there more? Where was the man on the horse?

  Blake stayed put. He couldn’t chase shadows, wisps of men. He needed a solid target.

  And then he spotted it.

  One of the men stumbled as he moved into sight. It slowed him enough that Blake had time to adjust and pulled the trigger. He pulled again and again. Three shots in rapid succession. The first whizzed past the man’s head. The second hit him clean in the side at his ribs. Already off balance, he toppled over onto the street and skidded into a curb. The third shot missed high.

  A fourth shot reverberated in Blake’s ears. A fifth. Both zipped past him, humming in the air, and the bullets tore the air above their intended target. Blake tried adjusting his position to respond, but a sixth shot punched him in the top of his shoulder. His arm went numb and he dropped the front end of the rifle onto the gravelly overpass.

  He grunted and gasped for air while the muted sound of a seventh round erupted and the bullet found his side, boring through muscle to nestle in his lung. Blake’s vision clouded and blurred. His pulse slowed and weakened. His short breaths became useless puffs.

  He was dying. He closed his eyes and welcomed what was coming.

  * * *

  “They’re doing what Marcus said they’d do,” said Lou. She was leading Dallas through the maze of low-slung buildings south of Fourth Street. “You hear those shots?”

  “They’re coming from the north.” Dallas’s long strides made it easy for him to keep pace with Lou, who bounced along a path only she’d memorized. “Why didn’t we stay and wait for them at the courthouse? We had a great perch up there. We were safer there.”

  “Marcus said he had his reasons. He wanted us gone once we spotted the posse.”

  “Okay. I guess we do whatever Marcus says.”

  “Yep,” she said. “That means we’re gonna have a meet-up somewhere on the south side.”

  Lou had knives in both hands and a rifle strapped across her back. She moved with purpose off Market, onto East Third Street and Chestnut, then past the old Parker Funeral Home.

  “Where are we headed?” Dallas asked.

  “South of the railroad tracks,” Lou replied. “They won’t go south of the tracks. From there we can come up behind them if we have to.”

  The tracks were only a couple of blocks ahead of them. Dallas was breathing heavily as they reached East First Street, cutting between a wide metal building and a slew of rusting silos.

  “You’re out of shape,” Lou remarked.

  Dallas shook his head as they dipped past the silos and stopped at a fence that separated First Street from the railroad easement. “No,” he said. “I’m in good shape. I’m just nervous, you know. I’m anxious about the fight. I feel like my heart is going to explode out of my chest.”

  Lou peeked through an opening in the fence. She looked both ways and pulled back inside the fence line, winking at Dallas. “That’s not the fight, Dallas,” she said. “It’s me. I’m the one who’s got you flushed and nervous.”

  Dallas’s already pink face reddened further. He looked away from Lou and kicked his foot in the dirt.

  Lou was flirting with him, but it wasn’t because she was attracted to him. The way he moved told her he was about to puke. She wanted to distract him, get his mind off the coming violence.

  “No,” he finally said. “I’m not…you’re not…never mind.”

  Lou giggled. She winked again and motioned for him to follow her south past the fence. No sooner had they reached the tracks than they saw the enemy.

  “Whoa,” she whispered. “Get down.”

  She tugged at his shirt and the two of them flattened themselves in the knee-high brown weeds that grew along the edges of the thinning ballast. Neither of them moved. Lou listened for any signs the enemy had seen them. Nothing.

  “They’re maybe a half mile ahead,” she whispered in Dallas’s ear. Their bodies were pressed side to side, hidden in the weeds. She could feel his pulse coursing through his body, smell the dirt mixed with sweat on his skin.

  “What do we do?” he mouthed. His eyes told her he was frightened more than anxious.

  Lou wanted to give him the right answer. She wanted to offer some sage advice that would calm him, make him valuable. As it was, he was trembling. He was pale. He was useless.

  “Stay here,” she said. “Don’t move unless you hear me call your name. If I do, you pop up and open fire.”

  “Marcus said we only hit them if they hit first. We’re just supposed to do recon and then head back, get a handle on the numbers.”

  “Recon can get messy,” Lou said. “If I call your name, open fire.”

  “What if I hit you?” he whisper
ed, his breathing shallow and fast. “What if I kill you by mistake?”

  “Then I’m not as smart as you think I might be.” She raised her finger to her lips, took off her baseball cap and lifted her head above the top of the weeds. She zeroed in on the spot she’d seen the men on their horses. They were closer now, six of them.

  “Six,” she muttered and lowered her head. “Six men.”

  She shrugged her shoulders to adjust the rifle sling, which threatened to blister her at the bottom of her neck, and removed the rifle. She placed it in the dirt beside Dallas and nodded at it to make sure he noticed it was there. She picked up her hat and pulled it on her head sideways.

  She raised herself on her elbows, crawled a few body lengths ahead of Dallas, and rolled north toward the fence. Staying low, she found another gap in the aging chain-link and crossed to the other side.

  Staying low, Lou quickly traversed the mostly dirt road that was First Street. She hustled, breathing evenly in through her nose and out through her mouth until she reached the end of the street at Lombard. She was farther from the tracks at this point, elevated four feet above them, and had the cover of thick tangles of brush.

  Lou held both knives, one in each hand, and moved south back to the tracks. As she stepped quietly through the brush, searching for spots that wouldn’t rustle and give away her location, she peered through the foliage to the spots of daylight that shown through like yellow panes of stained glass.

  When she reached the edge of the brush, she squatted onto her heels and listened. At first all she could hear was the thump of her own pulse in her ears, but as she focused on the sounds around her, she could make out the breeze brushing against the brittle limbs of the yaupon, enticing them to scratch against one another. The approaching horses clopped on the tracks. There were men’s hushed voices and the subtle rattle of the large weapons in their hands or on their hips. She could even make out the squeak of leather from their movements in their saddles.

  To her left was a break in the brush, an opening through which she could clearly see the first of the riders. They were riding two by two and three deep. Lou bounced the knife in her hand. She rolled her thumb across the grip of the other blade.

  Two knives, six men. That would be tricky. But she knew what to do.

  As the last of them passed her, Lou scurried to the opening and emerged through the opening into the daylight. There was a thin ridge at the edge of the ledge on which the foliage grew. She took two broad steps and then jumped, her legs spread and her blades aimed at the back of the man on the horse closest to her. She landed awkwardly on the back of the horse and drove the knives into either side of the man’s spine to keep her from falling. The man grunted and cried out in pain, his back arching as he let go of his horse and teetered to one side.

  As quickly as she’d slammed the cutters into the man’s back, she withdrew them and kept her balance on the horse long enough to throw one of them at the target. His eyes were still narrowed with confusion when the blade sliced deep into his neck.

  Without waiting to see that man fall, she tumbled from the horse, pushed herself free, and flung her other blade. It hit the man in front of her squarely in his spine. He went limp as if someone had flipped a switch on his nervous system, and he slid from the horse to the tracks, his boot catching in the stirrup and his horse dragging him along the rails and rocky ballast.

  When she hit the ground, landing hard on her shoulder, she yelled, “Dallas!” All of it happened within seconds and before the other three men had time to react.

  Dallas popped up to unload his weapon. A flurry of shots reverberated like firecrackers, one after the other.

  Lou stayed on the ground, given cover by the horses, until she found the man with the neck wound, crawled the short distance to him, and pulled his body over hers.

  The three men around her were returning fire. She could hear their frustration in their voices as they tried to control their nervous horses. One scream followed a grunt.

  Lou lay under the dead body of the malodorous hired gun on top of her. His odor was somewhere between corn mash, urine, and vinegar. She caught whiffs of all three in varying strengths. She tried holding her breath as she listened to another volley of gunfire followed by a silence interrupted only by the clops and snorts of horses.

  “Lou?” Dallas called from far away.

  “Looouuu?” he called again, closer this time. His voice was filled with rising urgency.

  Despite her aching shoulder protesting, Lou pushed the man from atop her body and rolled free of him, gasping for clean air. “I’m here. I’m okay.”

  Holding the rifle like a grunt picking his way through a minefield, Dallas cautiously made his way toward her. He had the rifle pulled to his shoulder, ready to fire again if any of the dead men so much as twitched.

  As he reached each of the men he’d gunned down, he lowered the barrel in a cursory safety check. He sidestepped them and headed for Lou. She was on her feet when he got to her. One boot was pressed on her second victim’s neck so she could pry the blade free. She wiped both sides of the bloody steel clean on the dead man’s shirt.

  “You okay?” asked Dallas. His eyes were wide as he surveyed the damage she’d done in the blink of an eye.

  Lou rolled her shoulder and squeezed it. She winced. “Yeah. Bruised my arm pretty good. I’m fine though.”

  “Good,” Dallas said with obvious relief. “I think I got three of them. How’d you get the others?”

  Lou stepped over a body, and another, then found her second knife, prying it loose with a grunt. “Knives,” she said without looking at Dallas.

  “Right,” he said, ignoring the sarcasm. “But how? Three men, two knives.”

  She tucked both knives in her waistband and adjusted her ball cap, spinning the brim to the front. “I’ve done this before,” she said. “A lot.”

  Dallas gulped. “Oh. I guess you couldn’t just observe and report?”

  “I told you, sometimes recon gets messy. We need to head back and get my rifle. Then the plan has us hustling back to the courthouse.”

  She stepped closer to her new friend and only then did she notice the bloodstain on his shirt. It was below his ribs. She stood directly in front of him and stared at the wound. She reached out her fingers as if to touch it, but stopped short. “You’re bleeding,” she said, worry creeping into her voice. “You got hit.”

  Dallas touched his hand to his shirt and looked down. “Oh, that. It’s a nick. Grazed me. I’ll be okay.”

  “It could get infected,” she said. “We gotta do something about it.”

  “When this is over,” he said, motioning toward her rifle and taking a step in that direction, “you can get me fixed up. Deal?”

  Lou looked up from the blood. It looked worse than a nick. But he was right, they had work to do. “Deal,” she said, and followed him back to get her gun.

  * * *

  Fifty bared his teeth. The hair on his neck and back stood on end. He snarled, the muscles in his legs and shoulders tensed.

  Rudy stood behind him. “He’s ready to go. I think he senses it as much or more than we do. Something big is coming for us.”

  Marcus eyed the dog and then Rudy. “You heard those shots north and south. We’ll know in a minute how big that something is going to be.”

  The three were at the edge of Fourth Street, awaiting the inevitable confrontation. If there were nineteen men coming, they’d likely split into fairly equal groups. Even if the splinter groups were smaller, they had to have taken some casualties.

  “I’m gonna guess at least a few of theirs are gone,” Marcus said, trying to convince himself as much as Rudy. “Our odds are better now than they were a few minutes ago. That’s my guess.”

  “Odds ain’t better if the boys up north are dead, and Lou and Dallas are—”

  Marcus shook his head. “Don’t say that. Lou can handle herself. You’ve seen it. Plus, she was only supposed to do recon and report the numb
ers.”

  “That’s not what happened,” said Rudy. “You heard the gunfire.”

  Marcus scowled. “She’s coming back. So’s Dallas.”

  Rudy’s eyes suddenly reflected a sadness Marcus hadn’t seen in his friend since Norma was missing more than a year earlier. Rudy nodded. “You’re right,” he said softly.

  A swell of guilt flooded Marcus’s chest. Again, he’d managed to drag others into his fight, risking their lives on behalf of his own. He pushed the thought from his mind. Now wasn’t the time for apologies or self-reflection.

  “Remind me why we stayed here while everyone else left their positions to fight up close?” asked Rudy, a hint of accusation in his voice.

  “Because,” said Marcus, his eyes training east, “if I was wrong and everyone came up Main Street, they’d be clear of a battle we can’t win.”

  “You were in the Army?” asked Rudy.

  Marcus ignored the question. There was no easy answer strategically. “I think it’s time,” he said, pushing himself from the wall. He marched out onto Fourth Street and glanced over his shoulder at Rudy. “You ready?”

  Rudy made a clicking sound and Fifty followed him into the street. They stood there for a moment and Marcus nodded at Rudy, who jogged backward two blocks and took Fifty with him around a corner.

  Marcus shouldered his weapon. Through the scope, the men approached. Five men on horseback rode toward him, all of them armed. None of them were ready to fire.

  When they were maybe two hundred yards from Marcus, two more men joined them from the north. There were seven now. The seven horsemen of the apocalypse. Only seven. But now they were galloping.

  Marcus slowed his breathing, controlling his heart rate, and focused on the rider closest to him, a man in the front on the side of the street. He was still several hundred yards away, but Marcus tracked him with the rifle until the right moment. He pulled the trigger.

  His rifle powered the round eastward until it hit its target. Through the scope, the man seized, clutched his chest, and slumped forward on his horse.