It only stopped when she felt a hand grip her arm. She whirled to aim the revolver up into the face of Boats crouching over her. The hammer dropped again and again on a spent round until the SEAL gently plucked the weapon from her fingers and tossed it aside.
“That’s goddamned unfriendly, girl,” Boats said with a sloppy grin before sagging to his knees.
She crawled to him gasping as he collapsed on his back. He was spattered with blood, but there were no fresh wounds. The blood was not his own. It ran off him in rivulets carried on a lather of greasy sweat. The big sailor was breathing regularly. His fever was broken.
Bat reached over him and took the revolver from his limp fingers and reloaded it. She turned then, training it around the camp. The slope was lit intermittently by flashes of gunfire. Chaz was firing three-round bursts into the dark at targets she couldn’t see. Jimmy was walking across the camp, putting rounds from a handgun into writhing figures on the ground. The action was over for now. This was the mop-up.
Byrus strode up to her, smiling like a shy child, his joy ghastly in contrast with his gore-smeared face and body. He dropped a severed head in the dirt by her. It reminded Bat of a cat her mom had back in Cleveland—always leaving dead mice and birds on the bathroom floor.
She laughed at the memory, and Byrus nodded at what he thought was her approval.
“Good kitty,” she said and gave in at last to a blizzard of speckles that joined in a wall of white to wash away the world.
Bat came around to someone speaking her name. It was the tail end of a senseless dream, and her name was being called again and again in an endless loop.
Lee was over her, and she squinted to see him clearly. The sky was alight with the watery glow of a gray dawn. She’d either slept or been passed out for hours.
“Sit up, baby,” he said and supported her to a seated position. He undid a leather bota and held the spout to her lips.
“Take a sip. A small one.”
She did as she was told. Her mouth filled with a bitter draught. She spat it out in a spray and sat forward coughing.
“It’s watered vinegar,” Lee said. “Our visitors left it. Good for you. Electrolytes.”
“Shit,” she said and shoved him away. He made a grunting sound, and she saw for the first time that his shoulder was wrapped in a stained dressing.
“Oh my God, Lee.”
“It’s all right. Asshole got a piece of me. We’re all hurting, including you,” he said and offered her the bota again. “But we need to move now and bitch later.”
He helped her to her feet. She felt last night’s fight over every inch of her body. Each muscle was stiff in its own way, and her headache was fierce. Her fingers explored a tender spot on the back of her head. There was a burn down her leg where the skin was scorched by the muzzle blast from the snubby.
The worst was the pain between her shoulder blades where the sword had struck her at the beginning of the exchange. It hurt to lift her arms. The soreness pulsed with her heartbeat and radiated to the back of her neck, making it agony to turn her head. She was ambulatory, and it wasn’t going to get any better laying here. She’d pop some Tylenol and soldier on.
Jimbo stood further up the hill toward the crest, glassing toward the east with binoculars. He stood with the Winchester rifle cradled in his arm. Bat never really thought of him as a Native American. But right now he looked every inch the warrior brave. He would be at home in Apacheria or the Black Hills. The streaks of dried blood on his face even mimicked war paint.
The slope of the hill was a slaughterhouse. The grass was greasy with drying offal, and the flies were challenging the morning chill to begin gathering over the bodies scattered all around. There were a lot fewer of the tag-alongs than there’d been the day before. Some already lay under hummocks of fresh dirt, graves dug and filled by a burial party directed by Byrus. The stocky Macedonian was caked with blood not his own. He noticed her and smiled broadly, his few teeth showing white against the mask of carnage that painted his face.
She counted six graves. There were eight in the burial party, excluding Byrus. Two more of their volunteers sat by where Boats lay on the stretcher. Chaz was treating them for what looked like serious wounds. One man hummed to himself while holding an arm fractured in two places. The other was having his leg bound by the Ranger and was biting down on a twig, eyes wide, pellets of sweat standing on his skin.
There should be more of their militia members. They probably ran off during or shortly after the fight. They still had enough to act as bearers for the SEAL. But the two additional wounded would hold them up further. The equation was getting worse. Bat found her Sig and Colt had both been returned to their holsters while she was out. Her Winchester lay next to her pack. She picked up both and walked over to where Boats lay.
The SEAL raised himself on one elbow and smiled at her. He looked better than he had the day before, but that wasn’t saying much. There was color back in his skin, but his eyes were still red-rimmed. She crouched by him and touched his forehead with her wrist. He wasn’t warm anymore, but his skin
