“Hurry!” Shaniah called back to him and slowed, lessening the gap between them. An Archaic came at her and she took off its head with her knife.
“There’s too many of them,” he said. “Jesus Christ, where did they all come from?”
“Jesus Christ is not a name you should mention to an Archaic,” she said.
“Why?” Hollister asked.
“Long story,” she said.
Another Archaic charged at them from the shadows. Hollister’s gun barked and the creature spun screaming into the dirt of the street. They had another twenty yards to reach the corner, and Shaniah willed him to run faster.
“I’ve got six shots left, no time to reload,” he told her.
“Then you had better make them count,” she said.
They reached the intersection and rounded it toward the jail. She skidded to a stop and he nearly collided with her. Thirty yards away, standing in a line across the street, stood more than a dozen Archaics.
“Well, shit,” Hollister said. He threw open the cylinder on his empty Colt and pulled a speed loader pre-filled replacement from the belt Chee had given him. He slammed it into place and worked the hammer, ready to fire. “Goddamn Chee, if you were here, I could kiss you right now.”
“We’re not going to get through them,” Shaniah said. She looked behind and the Archaics that had been chasing them from the saloon, another eight in total, were advancing toward them. They were surrounded.
“We should try to make it to your train,” she said.
“Can’t. If Monkey Pete sees me running toward the train with you, he ain’t going to guess, he’s going put us both down. The jail is our only shot,” he said.
“You have a monkey on your train?” she asked, confused.
“No… it’s a… never mind.” He kept his head on a swivel, watching the Archaics at their front and back closing in fast. He fired at one of them and it flew backward, clutching at the wound in its chest. It had the desired effect, slowing the others momentarily as they warily studied the two of them.
“You’re only going to make them mad,” she said.
“I’m going to make them dead,” he replied.
Shaniah tried to think. She was not used to fighting her own kind. It was a simple matter to understand how they thought and reacted, and she had killed Archaics before. Yet it did not come easily to her. She wished Hollister would come up with a plan.
She looked at him and found him studying the rooftops of the buildings where the jail lay, fifty yards from where they stood. A few feet away, the wooden walkway ended, but it was covered by a roof all the way down to where the buildings ended beyond the jail.
“You’re pretty strong,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said, confused again. This man was unlike any she had ever met. He was about to die- horribly in fact-but he was, apparently, standing in the street daydreaming.
“Not a compliment, a fact,” he said. “All right, on the count of three, break for the roof there. You go up first, and then you’ve got to pull me up. I won’t be able to get enough lift to make it on my own. Then we go down the roof to the jail. We’ve got to be quick,” he said.
“Are you joking?” she asked.
“No,” he said, and fired at another male Archaic that had ventured too close. The creature managed to dodge the bullet aimed for its head, but they had learned his bullets weren’t like ordinary human bullets and they dropped back a bit.
“Because I can’t tell. We are not big on the use of sarcasm,” she said.
“You got a better idea? I’d love to hear it,” he said.
“They’ll be on us-”
He interrupted her. “I went to West Point. They may be on us, but we’ll have the high ground. It’s not much, but it’s better than dying here in the street.”
“Is Wet Point a place you go to learn how to die?” she asked. He fired again and another Archaic dropped to the ground, but the first two he’d shot had recovered, rejoined the pack, and looked a lot angrier.
“West Point. Not Wet Point,” he said. “Go!”
His shout spurred her to action, almost against her will. As he had suggested, she sprinted the few feet to the roof and leapt up, landing lightly on her feet. She turned immediately at the sound of Hollister’s gun, which he fired three times in rapid succession. She heard Archaic cries of pain, and then saw Hollister leap in the air below her. She grabbed his wrist and lifted him in the air, but an Archaic, a small female, grabbed hold of his legs. The creature threw back her head ready to sink her fangs into him, but with his free hand, he put the Colt’s barrel right in her mouth and pulled the trigger.
Even an Archaic could not stand unflinching at such a close-range shot. The silver bullet blew out the back of her head. She didn’t make a sound, but let go of his legs and fell into the dirt. Shaniah lifted him the rest of the way onto the roof.
“GO! Move!” he shouted. They ran along the roof, the distraction they’d created only giving them a few seconds. Archaics were running alongside them in the street below and a few were already leaping toward the roof. Shaniah took one down with her knife, and Hollister shot at three more, missing only one.
He raised his Colt and pointed at an Archaic who had reached the roof ten yards in front of him. Shaniah darted into his field of fire and he hesitated. In that instant, something clubbed him from behind and he went down.
He looked up at a face he was sure would haunt his dreams forever: long white fangs, burning red eyes, the mouth and cheeks covered in blood.
This is it, he thought. This is where I’m going to die. After surviving the war, fighting Sioux on the plains, and the encounter with Malachi, he was going to be killed here on the roof of a building in a piece-of-shit town in godforsaken who knows where.
“Huh,” he said.
Chapter Forty-four
The few minutes Hollister had been gone were some of the longest of Chee’s life. He had watched from the shooting portal at the window until Hollister had disappeared in the darkness. The women and children were quiet. He could tell none of them believed the major was coming back, but he was glad for the silence. Even Rebecca was quiet. Billy’s mother had apparently cried herself out, perhaps coming to the realization that her boy was most likely dead.
A few minutes later, gunshots sounded and his hopes rallied. Then came a few more shots a short while later and he wondered if Hollister had been overwhelmed. Not long after that, came a faint howling sound he didn’t recognize. Not a Coyote or a dog. He had no idea what it meant, but it meant something. He hoped it wasn’t an indication that the major was dead.
It would be up to him to keep these people safe, and he wondered if they could survive the night.
The young woman named Sally was suddenly at his elbow, the heavy Colt still in her small hand.
“Do you think he’s still alive?” she asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” he said. Chee was uncomfortable conversing with people. With soldiers and the major, he had no problem, but white people, even whores, generally made him nervous.
“I think he’s alive,” she said. “He seems like a smart fella.”
Chee understood the young woman had gone sweet on Hollister in the few short hours they had been here in the jail.
He kept his eyes on the outside and straightened a little when he noticed several Archaics moving into the street fifty yards down from the jail. They moved slowly toward the intersection and in the moonlight it was difficult to tell what was going on.
But he was sure this meant the major was still alive. Otherwise they would be gathering to attack the jail, not heading in the other direction. A few moments later, he heard more gunshots.
