her, pointing the big Colt at her head.
“Rebecca, you need to shut your hole. You call that boy a name again… you open your mouth at all and I’ll shoot you myself,” Sally said.
“You whore! Don’t you point a gun…” Rebecca stood up, and while Chee kept his post at the port in the window, Hollister moved to step in. Just as he was about to put himself between them the Colt went off with a loud bang, and the wall next to Rebecca’s head exploded, with wood chips flying everywhere. Rebecca and several of the others screamed. Then it was silent a moment as the smoke cleared. Rebecca stared at Sally and the barrel of the gun, which hadn’t moved, a stunned expression on her face. But the sheriff’s wife was finally quiet.
“I have had enough of you and your mouth,” Sally said. “You’re a bitch and a bully. We are through listening to you. This woman is worried for her child and you’ll not say another word about it. Is that clear?”
“You filthy whore…” Rebecca spat, the shock from the gunshot fading.
“That’s right, I’m a whore. I ain’t filthy, but I’m a whore. And I think you know your husband was my best customer. I expect every one of us that has been shut up in this jail with you for the last four days can see why. But I ain’t like you, so I been too polite to mention it. But you say another word about anything, and I’ll go upside your head with this Colt. Do you understand?”
Rebecca had nowhere to go. She was pinned into the corner by Sally. Looking in vain around the room, she tried to find an escape and saw none. Finally she turned and faced the wall, her shoulders slumped, sobbing. Sally lowered the weapon and returned to her spot on the floor, a couple of the younger children scrambling to sit next to her. Hollister decided he liked the fact they had Sally on their side.
He returned to Chee, still at the window, apparently not having noticed the entire episode. Or not caring. Hollister couldn’t decide.
“What are we going to do?” Chee asked.
“I’m going after the kid,” Hollister said.
“I’ll come with you.”
Hollister shook his head. “No. You’ve got to stay here and protect these people. If Billy hadn’t run off, I think we probably could have lasted here until sunrise. Either way, you should be able to hole up here. Once the sun comes up, you double-time it to the train.”
Hollister checked the loads in his pistol. Chee handed him one of his ammo belts.
“All forty-five caliber, so they’ll fit your gun. Those are the bullets loaded with silver and holy water. It will slow them down until you can finish them with wood,” Chee said.
“I can see you’ve given this a lot of thought,” Hollister said, wrapping the belt around his shoulder.
“Yes, sir,” Chee said.
“All right, you have your orders. Try to keep everyone alive. If I don’t come back, send a wire to Pinkerton and have him order the army back here.”
“Sir. You really should let me go with you, I…”
Hollister held up his hand.
“Don’t worry Sergeant,” he said. “I think I’ve got some help out there already.”
“You think she can be trusted?” Chee asked. He could not believe the major would be so willing to put his life in the hands of someone he didn’t know. Especially one who was… supernatural at the very least.
“She helped us with the Utes, she killed at least three of those critters, and maybe more by now. Something tells me she needs or wants something from us. I don’t know what it is, but if she wanted us dead she would have killed us in Torson City.”
Chee could not argue the point.
Hollister was ready to go, he pulled both of the Colts. He looked at the door a moment, then at Chee.
“One thing, Sergeant. When I come back, if I do come back, you use your coin. First thing. And if I don’t have my coin or if I don’t want to switch ’em with you… and I’m not… if I’m no longer me, you shoot me down. No hesitation. Do you understand?”
Chee was staring out the port, keeping his eyes on the street. Finally he glanced at the major.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I understand.”
And with that, Hollister disappeared into the night.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Billy was nowhere to be seen. Hollister had debated bringing one of the lanterns with him, but there was no sense in giving himself away with a light-although he suspected the vampires already knew he was there. He remembered Top Hat and his leap to the roof, so once he heard Chee lock the door behind him, he turned around and backed into the street with both Colts pointed at the top of the building. When he cleared the roof over the walkway, he tensed, but no one appeared there.
He had no idea what to do. These things were so fast he didn’t know where to look first. The moon lighted the street, but there were shadows everywhere and it took every ounce of self-control not to start firing at every flickering image he saw in the corner of his eye.
Where would the kid go? What had possessed him to run in the first place? Maybe he had a father he thought was still out here. Once he was out of the jail, he might have wanted to try and find him. Maybe he wanted to get away from that bitch Rebecca. Kids do all kinds of reckless things.
He slowly moved south along the street, heading toward the saloon. A door slammed and he nearly jumped out of his boots. It had come from up ahead. Could have been the wind, but he doubted it.
He was certain they were watching him now. No way to tell how many, but certainly more than one. There was an alley between the bank and the saloon and he thought he saw movement at the end of it, but he held his fire, reminding himself not to shoot until he had something to aim at. No sense wasting bullets on shadows. Especially when he didn’t know how many of these creatures were out there.
Van Helsing had written that these things turned regular humans into vampires by drinking their victims’ blood, then making the victims drink the blood of the vampires. According to his journal, no one had been able to quite figure out how it worked, but something in the human soul was lost in the transformation. Van Helsing didn’t necessarily believe they were evil by nature, although they had been cursed, it seemed, but rather they were simply made into predators. They hunted and killed, just like a lion or a wild dog.
Reading through Van Helsing’s journal the last few days and having been one of the few humans who had survived an encounter with these creatures, Hollister didn’t believe any of it. They were evil. End of story.
Hollister was not a religious man, though he had grown up in a house run by very devout parents. There was nothing beyond chores and church in the Hollister household when he was a boy. They worked the farm six days a week and Sunday was spent at chapel. His mother and father tolerated nothing else. He remembered the countless hours sitting in the pews of the Presbyterian church in Tecumseh, Michigan, pulling at the starched collar of his shirt. Usually wearing one of his brother’s hand-me-downs, always so tight around his neck he thought he would suffocate.
He’d spent nearly every hour of his days in the house of God daydreaming. Hoping to leave the farm. He wanted to join the army and fight. So he’d never paid much attention to the sermons or the teachings of the good reverend Forsythe who was so old when Hollister was a boy, he and his brothers had wondered if the man might die on the pulpit right in front of them.
He’d been required to attend services at the Point and he’d done his duty. He’d chuckled to himself a few times then, when he’d caught himself pulling at the collar of the dress grays they were required to wear, mimicking the same thing he’d done as a kid.
The truth of it was, none of the religious teachings had stuck with Hollister much, except for one: the existence of evil in the world.
He had seen enough of it firsthand. Men who were born without souls the way some poor child might be born without a hand. They were nothing more than animals, and during the war, Hollister had put down a few. In Leavenworth he’d found even more: men with a gaping emptiness inside where their soul, the human part of them, should be.
That is what these vampires were. Cursed or not, they were evil. Whatever they represented, they would kill
