And then the boy came back at him, but Dirker was on his feet.
As the boy charged in, Dirker unleathered his. 45 Peacemaker in one swift, easy motion. He fired once, punching a hole in the boy’s sloping forehead and blowing skull out the back of his head. The boy shuddered momentarily on all fours, gore oozing down his face. Then he pitched straight over, trembling on the blood-slicked floor.
Two of the beasts were on Crombley.
Fitch dropped another by following Dirker’s lead and shooting it in the head. Dirker put three bullets into the thing that was devouring Harmony. Then the door exploded in with a roaring wall of snow and long, furry arms powdered white took hold of both Fitch and Archambeau and dragged them screaming out into the storm.
Dirker killed one more, reloaded his Greener and ran out into the storm, the world of Deliverance a cacophony of ringing church bells, shooting, and howling.
The storm was reaching its peak out in the streets.
The snow rose up into a whipping, shrieking wall of white that cut visibility down even further now. Cabe and his crew of miners had to squint and lean into the wind to press forward. They could hear the screaming and gunfire, but with the gusting blizzard turning sound around and into itself, it was hard to say where any of it was coming from.
And the miners were panicking.
They saw shapes hobbling through the snow and were shooting randomly, even though Cabe shouted at them to stop, because they might be cutting down their own men.
They were ready to bolt and run.
But where to?
To either side they could see the vague, white-shrouded forms of buildings, but it was hard to say where they were in the town now. Paranoia and confusion had turned them back on their own tracks half a dozen times. And each time, their tracks had been erased by the storm.
“Goddammit,” Cabe cried out at them, “stop this business, we’ve got to have some order here.”
And that’s when he noticed there were only three miners with him, the fourth missing.
“Where’s Hychek? Where the fuck did Hychek go?”
“They got him! Something grabbed him…something with green eyes!” one of the miners shouted. “I’m getting out of here, I’m getting out right goddamn now…”
But before he could, a trio of riders came pounding up the street and the miners, thinking the cavalry had arrived, waltzed right out into the streets to meet them. But it was not a rescue party, but a gang of Hide-Hunters. They thundered through the storm, parting the snows like roiling mists. They wore dusters and flat-brimmed hats pulled low over wolfish, snarling faces.
One of the miners let out a strangled screaming sound as a lasso looped over his head and was pulled tight like a noose around his throat. He was yanked from his feet and pulled away into the storm by one of the Hide- Hunters. Another miner was similarly roped.
Cabe ducked under a lasso meant for him and, quickly levering his Evans. 44-40, knocked a Hide-Hunter from leather with three well-placed shots. He hit the ground, his horse racing off.
And Cabe got a good look at him.
He had the rough shape of a man, but was hunched-over and moved with a jumping, hopping side-to-side gait. His eyes blazed like wet emeralds and teeth hung over his narrow black lips like those of a jungle crocodile. With a resounding roar, he came at Cabe, the three bullet holes in him seeming to make little difference.
Cabe couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
That repulsive, shocking face and gnashing teeth, the loops of drool hanging from the crooked slash of a mouth, the furry hands with the ten-inch fingers and claws just as sharp as scalpels.
He put another round in the beast, mainly just to keep it off him.
But it didn’t even slow it down.
It slammed into him, pitching the both of them into a snowdrift. Its claws were at his throat, those fingers encircling his neck. The beast stank of tainted meat and diseased blood, saliva hung from its jaws in vile ropes.
Before it fed on him, it did something that truly sucked the wind from Cabe’s lungs: it spoke.
“Gonna die now, friend,” it said in a slavering, raw voice that was more akin to the growl of a rabid hound than the speech of a man. “Gonna die like an animal like in the old, forgotten days…”
But Cabe had other ideas.
As the beast reared up, letting out a wailing, howling noise that made Cabe’s ears explode with rushing noise, Cabe pulled his bowie knife from its sheath at his hip. And when the beast came down to fill its belly, it came right down on the blade of the knife. Nearly a foot of razored steel slid right into its throat and out the other side.
With a mewling, whining sound, it pulled away, the knife erupting out the side of its throat. Its head hung at a sickening angle, most of its neck slit clean through. It spilled blood to the fresh snow, tried to run and fell, tried to rise up and stumbled, its life’s blood running out in a torrent.
Cabe saw his chance and jumped on its back, knocking it face-first into the snow.
Before the beast could so much as whimper, Cabe drew its head back by handfgul of that filthy, greasy hair and sank the knife deeper in its throat, sawing and slitting. The creature came alive, twisting and fighting and it was its own misguided strength more than anything else that finally severed its head.
Cabe tossed it into the wind.
The body still tried to crawl, but didn’t make it very far.
The head stared up at him with those stark, green eyes and the jaws still worked.
But it was done and Cabe knew it.
Drenched with the reeking blood of the Hide-Hunter, Cabe stumbled out into the storm to find survivors.
The only survivor from Cabe’s group was Lester Brand.
He was a shift boss at the Silver Horn Mine.
And he was also a dead man.
When the Hide-Hunters attacked, he ran. He fought and blundered through the streets, ducking down when he heard a sound or sensed motion. He slipped into a doorway when two more Hide-Hunters rode by, sporting heads speared on poles. He saw the heads…they were the heads of miners, men he’d worked and drank with.
Brand was trembling badly now, wheezing, pained sounds coming from his throat. Though it was bitterly cold and his face just as stiff as leather, he was sweating profusely. Trails of perspiration ran down his spine. He had lost his shotgun and the Colt Army pistols in his gloved hands felt oily like they might jump from his fists at any moment.
He was moving down a street, but he had no true idea where he was.
The town was not that big. Though he had never been to Deliverance before, he remembered Dirker saying it was cut by a central road and that four or five other roads intersected it. So if he just kept walking, he was bound to make his way out sooner or later.
But he thought: Oh Jesus, oh Christ, what, what if I’m the last one left alive?
But he knew that couldn’t be, for now and again he could hear gunfire. So he had to keep his head. He moved forward slowly, the snow wild and flying all around him. It sculpted weird shapes and shadows. The buildings rose up like headstones, leaning out at him. He kept seeing forms moving past him, but he didn’t dare shoot. Not just yet. For there was death everywhere now, screaming white death and what it hid in that whipping white cloak was far, far worse.
He moved past a row of warehouses, then a barn, a boarded-up dry goods store. Then directly ahead he could hear a low, guttural growling sound. And then many. As if a pack of wild dogs were bearing down on him.
