“I gave my word. And that is something I won’t break.”
“Not even to an outlaw?”
“Not even then.”
“Ben!” Jordy called in a hoarse whisper.
“Right here, son.”
“More cars and trucks comin” at us from the east.”
“OK. Stay alert.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ben moved to the other end of the house and lifted his binoculars. That short column, ten cars and trucks, halted their movement about a mile from town. Through the long lenses, Ben caught a flash of bright red hair.
“Has to be Texas Red,” he muttered.
“Let me see,” Rani asked, holding out her hand for the binoculars. She lifted them to her eyes, focused them in, and said, “Yes. That’s him. He’s filth.”
“Then that makes our job easier, doesn’t it?”
“What do you mean, Ben?”
“I don’t take prisoners,” he reminded her.
“Ben, we’re outnumbered, or soon will be, a hundred to one. And you’re talking about taking prisoners!”
Ben grinned. “Always think positive, darling.”
She walked back to her position, shaking her head.
“Texas Red and his boys is on the other side of town, West,” one of the outlaw’s henchmen informed him.
“That was all that dust we seen comin’ down.”
“Yeah.”
“Skirt the town to the south. Make contact with Red. We gotta plan this out. We don’t wanna be shootin’ each other tryin’ to get Raines.”
From the second floor, Ben watched the lone man leave West’s column and begin his skirting of the town. He picked up his .30-06 and adjusted the scope for range. The man was a good thousand yards away. Too far. Ben let him work a little closer. The ammo Ben was using was, of course, hand-loaded, but this was beefed up to the max by his ordinance people. If the situation had been life and death, Ben would have chanced the thousand-yard shot. But he was in no hurry. He let the man get within seven hundred yards. Ben sighted him in, took a breath, released part of it, and gently squeezed the trigger, allowing the rifle to fire itself.
The man stood straight up in his boots, grabbed at his chest, then fell forward on his face.
“Shot high,” Ben muttered. “I was shooting at his stomach.”
“The son of a bitch!” West yelled.
“Bastard can shoot,” Texas Red said. He turned to a man standing by the truck. “Is them boys part of West’s bunch?”
The man lowered his binoculars. “Yeah. I can see that stump-legged bastard sitting in his van.”
Ben grinned. He called, “Everybody pick up your spare weapon. Stick both of them out the window and pull the trigger. Half of you east, the other half west. Do it!”
The old dusty littered streets of the ghost town reverberated to the drum of AR-15’S, M-16’s, 30-cj’s, and AK-47’S.
“Holy shit!” West shouted as the windshield of his van exploded under the impact of a very lucky shot from Ben’s rifle. West stared in horror at his driver. The man was slowly slumping down in the seat, a bloody hole in his forehead. Fluid and gray matter oozed out.
Texas Red did not move from his position by his truck. “Relax,” he called. “Not even Raines is good enough to make a shot at this distance. He’s just showing us he’s got enough firepower behind him to make a stand of it.”
“Red!” a man called. Red turned at the sound of the voice. “I can’t even raise West’s people at this distance. Radio has really gone to shit.”
Red nodded. “Hull? You head out to West’s position. Keep them slag piles in front of you. Or whatever them things are. When you reach the end of that last heap, zigzag into the ruins of them buildings. Stay down and you’ll make it. Take off.”
Hull wasn’t exactly thrilled with his assignment, but he obeyed. He zigzagged and crawled and ran, expecting any moment to feel the hot impact of a slug. When he reached the high-piled waste dumps, he began to breathe a little easier. He stopped to catch his breath and looked around him.
He grinned, his mouth a mass of rotting teeth. He slipped into a littered alleyway, looked around him, and stepped forward.
His screams seemed to linger in the air of the ghost town, adding to the ghosts of miners who had fallen to their deaths in the long, seemingly endless pits.
Hull bounced from side to side in the old shaft, breaking nearly all the bones in his arms, hands, and legs long before he reached the dark bottom of the shaft. Had he been able to see, he would have seen he landed among the bones of others who had taken that one long step into nothingness.
“Shit!” Texas Red said, as Hull’s screams finally faded away. “Raines has got people scattered around in the town, too. This ain’t gonna be as easy as I first thought.” The rattlesnakes that lived deep in the old mine shafts began crawling over Hull’s broken and bleeding body
…
“I think we better wait for more men, Red,” an outlaw suggested.
…
the snakes opened their fanged mouths and struck at the still-warm body, sensing food in their presence. The old mine shafts contained thousands of snakes; they slithered and rattled in the darkness …
“Who the fuck axed you?” Red snarled at the man.
…
Hull’s body was rapidly turning black from the massive amounts of venom being injected into his dead flesh
…
“Jesus!” West whispered. He had banged his still-sore stump getting away from the dead driver. “What was all that hollerin’?”
…
The rattlers, some of them eight and ten feet long, wound and coiled around Hull’s body. One stuck its head into Hull’s open mouth and sank its fangs into the dead man’s tongue …
“Let’s back off “bout another half-mile, West,” a man suggested. “We’ll cut ‘cross country and link up with Texas Red that away.”
“Damn good idea,” West said.
…
Hull’s body was now completely covered by the rattlesnakes. The swelling carcass seemed to expand with new life. And the snakes waited for yet more food to fall their way.
“One group is pullin” back, Ben!” Jordy called.
“Good boy. Keep a sharp lookout, kids,” Ben called. He turned to Rani. “We won the first round.”
“The fight isn’t over yet,” she reminded him.
“Think positive, dear. Think positive.”
Chapter 21
Ben watched the column headed by West pull back. Shortly afterward, he noticed dust from the north,
