“Get Billy inside,” Hollister shouted.
He glanced back at the Archaics. They were regrouping forty yards out, the memory of Monkey Pete’s Gatling fresh in their minds. But they were getting ready to charge again. He had learned to recognize their approach.
“No time! For this! Chee! Grab the kid, the rest of you get on the train!” The children and women piled onto the train. Chee grabbed hold of Billy and followed. Shaniah waited.
“What are you waiting for?” he asked her.
“I think I should depart.”
“Why?”
“I am not welcome here,” she said.
“Maybe not. But I still need your help,” he said.
“Yes you do. But you don’t listen. You should kill the boy. He is an Archaic now.”
“For God’s sake I’m not killing a kid, I don’t care what he is,” Hollister said.
“He is turning. He has made no move yet, because his young mind can’t grasp what is happening to his body. But he will become dangerous, and soon.”
“Then we’ll tie him up or something, we don’t have time to argue. Get on the damn train!”
The roar from the Archaics sounded and they bounced forward, leaping in the air and covering great swaths of ground. Shaniah still hesitated.
“I’ve got questions, and you said you needed my help. Well, I need yours, so what’ll it be?” he pleaded, casting a wary eye toward the approaching hordes and hoping like all hell she would say yes. He needed her fighting ability if they were going to live through this.
“All right,” she said.
Hollister bounded up the steel steps and through the door. Shaniah tried to follow but was stopped at the threshold. She tried to push through but was stopped.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. The Archaics were thirty yards away.
Hollister remembered the painted markings around the doors and windows. Van Helsing had said they were designed to keep out demons and other creatures.
“Ah crap, the devil’s traps…” he said.
“What? Invite me in! Hurry!” Twenty yards.
“Invite… what the hell? Shaniah, get in here!” he shouted.
The spell broken, she burst through the door and he pulled the lever, watching the iron door slide down into place.
Billy appeared to be recovering but he was huddling in the corner by himself with no one else paying attention to him, not even his mother. Chee had gone to the armory car, and was now in the turret firing away. Hollister could hear the spit of the Gatling.
Something thudded against the side of the car and the train shook momentarily.
“Monkey Pete! Get us going! Back to Denver!”
Far ahead he heard the sounds of the engine starting up, but the train rocked back and forth and he worried it would be derailed before they could get under way.
He handed Shaniah a Colt from his holster and pulled a modified Henry from the rifle rack. Next to each door on either side of the car were small shooters’ ports that could be cranked open. It wasn’t a large field of fire, but it might drive off some of them.
He pushed the barrel through the port and it was nearly jerked out of his hands. An Archaic tried reaching through the opening, but the space was too small. With his other hand he pulled his Colt and fired point-blank, hitting it in the face and blowing the creature backward off the train.
Slowly, the engine came to life and they rolled back southward, in the direction they had come from. Hollister hoped Pete was secure in the engine room, because they were up shit creek if something happened to the engineer.
More thuds sounded as the Archaics saw their opportunity slipping away. The train gathered speed and huffed slowly away, leaving Absolution behind. After two minutes had passed with no sound from outside, Hollister thought they might have made it.
Two more minutes passed and now the train was going at a good clip. It was hard to imagine, as fast as the creatures were, that they would be able to keep up.
A few minutes later Chee entered the car. “Looks like we made it, Major,” he said. “They tried to chase us for a while, but eventually gave up.”
“Chee, would you and Sally take these folks up to the galley and get them something to eat? I reckon they’re starved. And have Pete telegraph Pinkerton about that town. The army needs to go and clear it out with artillery, nothing less than a battalion. Before somebody innocent wanders across it or that train arrives day after tomorrow. They’re going to need to burn it down.”
“Yes, sir,” he said. He opened the door to the galley and ushered the women and children into it, leaving Hollister, Shaniah, and Billy alone in the car. Billy now sat in the corner, his knees pulled up, his head down.
“I wondered how he could run so fast,” Hollister mumbled under his breath. He looked at Shaniah, who was studying the small boy. “What’s going to happen to him? Is he stuck at that age forever now? Like you?”
She shrugged. “Truly, I do not know. It has been centuries since
… my people… we… do not normally…” She struggled, trying to come up with a way to explain something horrible in a way that wouldn’t make Hollister gun her down on the spot.
“Archaics have existed for thousands if not tens of thousands of years. For the last several centuries, we have retreated high into the mountains of my homeland. Humans are too fertile, too clever, and too inventive. We could not keep up. We are hunters. Not inventors or industrialists. Despite our physical superiority, as you have just seen and as you have known from your first encounter with Malachi, we can be killed. Humans have spent many hours and resources coming up with inventive ways to kill us…”
“Kill or be killed it seems to me…” Hollister interrupted.
“I don’t disagree. For many centuries, to Archaics, humans were nothing more than prey. But we could not compete, and since Archaics cannot procreate, no matter how many other Archaics we created, we were losing. Humans found weapons: control of the elementals, ways to thin our numbers, learning that fire and sunlight may not kill us but limits us in ways it does not limit humans. While your kind spread over the globe, we retreated in order to survive. The mountains hide us, and we hunt humans no more. We simply wish to live and be left alone.”
“What’s this got to do with Billy?”
“My point is, whenever it is, or was, necessary to… create… a new Archaic, we do not normally choose a child. Our society requires adults to survive. A child would not grow, would not gain the typical strength and instincts of an adult Archaic, so there is no point. I have never seen one, in fact,” she said. “I was not able to cross the threshold over your train until you invited me. Since your man Chee carried the boy, perhaps the invitation was implied and therefore did not need to be spoken. Or perhaps your man-witch understood, and put Billy under some kind of spell and
…”
“Whoa… whoa… Chee… is a… you think he’s a
…” Hollister started laughing. He didn’t know why, but it was a relief somehow. The idea of Chee casting spells, that was rich. “Shaniah I think the only spell Chee casts comes from the barrel of a gun. But don’t change the subject-why Billy, why now?” Hollister asked.
“I have no idea, Hollister. I can only surmise Malachi’s intentions,” she said.
“Surmise away,” he said.
“He wants us to know, as you humans might say, that all bets are off. He wants to show you how cruel he is willing to be,” she said.
“But to what end? What does this Malachi want?”
“It’s quite simple really,” she said. “He wants to destroy you.”
