by Chloe Garner
A gun poked around the door and Sarah stepped out of the way, planting a mighty kick in the center of the door with a satisfying thud as it slammed into the men hiding behind it. Jimmy was through behind it with a fast pair of shots, then came back out.
“Thirty-eight,” he said. She nodded, indicating a broken window at the tailor’s shop.
“Anybody in there from Lawrence, come on out so we don’t shoot you,” Sarah called.
“There are a few of us,” a voice called back.
“You’re supposed to be at the house by now,” Jimmy said.
“We got pinned in,” the voice answered.
“Come on out,” Sarah said. One by one, six men picked their way through the shattered window, hands up.
The clothing they wore was new.
She sighed.
Walked down the line of them, removing guns as she went and tossing them into the street one by one.
“Welcome to Lawrence,” she said. “Get a job or go home. We don’t give a lot of second chances around here.”
The men paused and Sarah shook her head.
“Dumber than wet dust. Git.”
She reached for her bull whip, but they scattered down the boardwalk, disappearing around the last building.
“They’re younger than I’d expected,” Jimmy said.
“Everybody’s younger than you’d expect with Perpeto involved,” Sarah muttered, going to the next door.
“Militaries prefer their men older,” Jimmy said. “Late twenties. They put on more muscle, that way. Make better decisions.”
“Knew it made a difference,” Sarah said. “Then why are they younger than new pups?”
“They all are,” Jimmy said. “Up close, you see it.”
She looked at him and he shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
“They’re pretty, too,” she said. “Not a whisker on a one of them.”
“Didn’t know that’s how your taste went,” Jimmy said, trying the next door. It was locked. Sarah got out a key and unbolted it, letting Jimmy open it for her and looking in.
“Empty,” she said.
“We aren’t going to make it to fifty,” Jimmy said.
“It’s enough,” Sarah said. “Time to go check in on Wade.”
They crossed the street, alert but confident, just about six inches apart at the shoulder, heads up, handguns out.
Jimmy tried the door at Doc’s and got no response. He knocked.
“Rich, it’s Jimmy,” he said.
There was a pause, then a mechanical noise as Rich unlocked the door and stuck his head out.
“They came tearin’ through out here a few minutes ago,” he said. “Where is everyone?”
“Just us,” Jimmy said, breezing past Rich and into the clinic. There were a handful of men in there that Sarah didn’t recognize, but she did know the wear on their clothes to be from the shantytown at the end of the street. Real Lawrence men. She could tell them from the fakes, it turned out.
“Someone from the house is going to come for one of you in a few minutes,” Jimmy said. “They’ll be on a motorcycle, so you’ll get there fast, but you won’t be able to carry a lot.”
“The supplies up at the house are decent,” Sarah said, “for patchin’, at least.”
“We can’t leave,” Doc said. “We have patients.”
Sarah’s original count had only taken in the men who were on their feet. The rest of the room was full of men in various stages of prone, and devices everywhere were scrambling to help them. Sid hadn’t even looked up when Sarah and Jimmy had come in.
“You got more up there,” Sarah said. “By a lot. And they’re dyin’ as we speak.”
“There will be more from the road,” Jimmy said. “Draft anyone you need to help. If they aren’t dying, themselves, they can help you. Use anything you need. It can all be replaced.”
Doc stood and sighed.
“All right, I’ll start gettin’ packed up, then.”
Sarah went to look at Wade. Jimmy stood across from her.
“Tell me,” he said.
“His color’s better,” she said, leaning down to listen to his breathing. “Breathin’ easy enough, too. Prob’ly got work to do, yet, but he ain’t declinin’ any more, I reckon.”
“She’s right,” Doc called from elsewhere in the room. “We’ve got him stable for now. Once we’ve got everyone else stable, I’m going to have to repair his lung, but…”
“That’s a long way out,” Jimmy said. “I see that. Is waiting going to hurt him?”
“So long as he’s getting enough oxygen, we should be able to get him back to one-hundred percent,” Sid said, finally coming to stand next to Jimmy. “We’ll keep him sedated until then, just to be sure he doesn’t hurt himself, waking up.”
Jimmy looked over at Rich, who was wrapping a bandage around a man’s arm.
“You satisfied with that?” Jimmy asked.
“They done their best,” Rich said. “Wade’s first in line when there aren’t people dyin’.”
Jimmy nodded.
“We’re going to clear out the rest of town,” he said. “How far did you go, looking for survivors?”
“Just in town,” Rich said. “Still need to get out to the train.”
“That’s where we’ll be,” Jimmy said. “Be careful.”
“Spread ourselves too thin, Jimmy,” Rich said.
“Growing this fast does that,” Jimmy answered, going to the door. Sarah took one look back, then stepped up to the door as Jimmy opened it.
The shot was high.
Or low.
There was no real telling.
Her body reacted the way it was programmed to, a surge of adrenaline that sent her heart rate fluttering that accompanied a brief loss of sensory awareness as her brain made the call between reacting and shutting down to go into shock.
Rich was talking to her.
There were more shots.
Pressure on her shoulder.
Pain.
Bright red pain that brought her round. She struggled to sit up, people trying to hold her down, but she threw them off.
There was a gunfight, and Jimmy was in it on his own if Rich was talking to her.
“Dammit,” she roared. “Get off me.”
She threw more arms off of her and found the bright light of the open door, making sure she had a gun in her hand and blinking quickly, making her brain react to what was there, not all of the instinctive things that her body was trying to react to.
Shots.
A silhouette in the doorway.
“Sarah.”
Jimmy’s voice.
She her arm drop.
“Lock that door,” Jimmy said. “How bad is it?”
“I’m tryin’ to look, if she’d let me,” Doc answered.
“I’m with you,” Sarah said.
“I’m here, he’s dead,” Jimmy answered. “Sit.”
The sharp sound of the ‘t’ was as powerful as the crack of a whip. She let the hands that were trying to pull her to the ground take her weight, easing to the floor while a bulk of human being pressed itself in front of her, trying to get at her shoulder. Someone pulled her duster over her shoulder and down her arm. Jimmy knelt next to her.
“I been shot before, Lawson,” she said.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Not a damned clue,” she said. “How many out there?”
“Three,” he said. “Three shots, three kills.”
She wished she’d been able to see it. Close range, he was a marvel.
She nodded, pain unclouding her mind again for a moment.
“Doc,” she said. “We’re waitin’.”
There was a murmur around her that she was a little too disoriented to make sense of. Could be she’d met the bullet that was gonna kill her. Could be she wasn’t making anywhere near as much sense as she thought and the garbage language that was coming out instead was funny.
She’
d seen both.
“Through and through,” he said. “Someone find me the bullet.”
There was a shuffle behind her and Doc turned to face her, a slug in his palm.
“Reckon you want that.”
She nodded, taking it and putting it into her pocket. She reached up to grab Jimmy’s shoulder to pull herself to her feet, and while he didn’t try to stop her, Doc and Sid did.
“I said you ain’t got a bullet in you, not that you’re fit to go runnin’ out of here,” Doc said.
“Dammit, Doc,” she said. “We’re huntin’. I ain’t lettin’ him go on by hisself.”
“Sarah,” Jimmy said, reaching up to take her wrist in his hand, pulling it gently off his shoulder. “Let them look at you.”
“There isn’t much blood,” Sid said. “I don’t think it hit anything critical.”
Sarah raised her eyebrows, but Jimmy put his palm in the middle of her chest.
Doc was listening to her breathing.
“All right,” he said. “One scan to make sure I’m not missin’ anything, then I’ll let you use foam to close it and you can go.”
“She should wear a sling so she doesn’t tear any muscles worse than they already are.”
“She should wear a sling because she ain’t gonna be strong enough to lift her arm, elsewise,” Doc said. The three of them, Doc, Sid, and Jimmy hauled her to her feet, and Sarah found that her weight was surprisingly big. It always took some time to get recalibrated after a shot, especially if they forced you to stop moving. When you stopped moving, everything circling you landed and you had to deal with it.
Sid pressed more gauze to her shoulder and they lay her back on a table, a machine coming and peering at her shoulder like a giant bird. Doc looked at a screen and nodded.
“All right, Sarah.”
Sarah wrestled with her duster, trying to get her functional left hand into the right-side pocket as it hung most of the way to the floor behind her.
“For heaven’s sake,” Sid said, going to a cabinet and coming back with a canister that he pushed into her wound with a deliberate and impressive lack of sympathy, shooting her full of foam that she could feel hardening.
“Turn,” Sid said, and she turned to face the wall as he did the same from the back.
“Don’t get shot again,” the young doctor said, and she turned to face him.
“Keep yourself out of the line of fire,” she answered, clapping him on the back with her left hand, then letting Jimmy pull her duster up and over her right shoulder. Doc came back with a loop of bandages that he put over her head, then helped her tuck her wrist into it.
“Good enough,” he said. “The more you tear that up, the more you’re gonna have to do to make it right, later, but ain’t much you could do to it I can’t fix.”
She nodded.
“Thanks Doc.”
She looked at Jimmy.
She wasn’t sure if he was going to ask if she was certain she was ready.
If she wouldn’t prefer to stay here while he took care of it on his own.
She might have stabbed him, if he did, but she’d have at least understood.
“You’re covering,” he said. “I’m better with my right than you are with your left.”
She nodded, drawing her gun again and following him out onto the street.
Fresh bodies.
No noise.
Sarah stood, listening, and Jimmy waited for her.
“I think they’re gone,” she said.
“We’ll scan it anyway,” he said, and she nodded. The sense that the town was empty, though, was strong for her, and she wasn’t anywhere near as jumpy as she might have been, given her heart was still thudding in her chest from the shot.
Second Street went past without incident, then as they were heading to the tavern, a man came stumbling backwards out of it, falling off of the boardwalk and squarely onto his back in the street. Sarah looked down at him, then back at the door. Paulie was standing there with her rifle barred across the doorway.
“You’ll recall we’re closed,” she said. “He ain’t welcome.”
Sarah looked down at the man in his brand new Lawrence clothes.
“You got that?” she asked. “Tavern’s closed.”
He scrambled away and she kept going, opening Granger’s shop for Jimmy. They found it empty. There were signs of bullets coming in through the walls, but nothing worse than that.
Sarah looked at the remains of the far side of the street. Kayla’s shop.
“Try not to be happy,” Jimmy said, standing next to Sarah to look at it.
“At least not in front of her,” Sarah answered.
They went on.
The dormitory had burned to the ground, as had most of the shantytown.
“They’re going to get good at building her eventually,” Jimmy said. “You want to go back for more water, or you want to keep going?”
“Take my rifle,” she said, walking through the popping remains of the pathetic shelters, improvised and sham alike. She pulled the rifle strap over her head with some difficulty and handed it to Jimmy.
They walked.
It was plenty hot out, but the sun was beginning to go down and the worst of it was past. It only took about thirty minutes to get in sight of the train, the carnage around it at various distances.
“Lotta men died today,” she said. “Lotta days, I ain’t so sure absenta’s worth it.”
“They all get to decide that for themselves,” Jimmy said. “What do you think of the train?”
“I’d shoot you from the window,” she answered, tipping her head. “Scope it.”
He raised her rifle to his eye and watched.
“No motion,” he said.
She sighed.
“Could wait it out, let them bake another day.”
“We need to get the line open again faster than that,” Jimmy said. “With any luck the engineer is still around.”
Sarah nodded and they started circling toward the train rails, walking up them to present the smallest window of space where someone could shoot at them, but ultimately they had to go through the cars one by one.
Jimmy shot four more men as they tried to flee, but that was all there was.
“Fifty,” he said.
“Thought it was forty-nine,” Sarah said dryly.
“I made up the target, I get to say we made it,” Jimmy answered, giving her a quick look to be sure she saw his half a smile.
They got to the final train car and Sarah shifted her sling, wishing she had practiced more with her left hand as Jimmy started up the stairs, but a polite cough sent him backing back down them.
Descartes emerged from the train car holding a cup of tea and a saucer, squinting up at the sun for a moment before starting down the stairs. Sarah found herself watching his shoes.
He stopped in front of them, sipping his tea again.
“You?” Jimmy asked.
“Those fish scales?” Sarah asked.
“I’m glad you noticed,” Descartes said. “It’s so hard to find something no one else has.”
She looked at him and he gave her a dry little smile before looking at Jimmy again.
“Hello, Jimmy.”
Jimmy ran his tongue along the inside of his lip, eyes down. He was thinking about the gun in his hand, Sarah knew it like her own thoughts.
“Descartes.”
“You’ve become quite interesting, and you’ve made me quite a lot of money today.”
Jimmy’s eyes came up without his face rising to match.
“Have I?”
“Yes,” Descartes said, taking another sip of tea then setting it on the train step behind him. “My brother thought he would wipe you out with a force that large. And yet, here you stand before me.”
“I know Jimmy respects you and all, but after today, you’re gonna have to talk more sense than that,” Sarah said, and Descartes laughed again, folding his hands.
“I wanted to come to s
ee for myself. At least come look at my investment, as it were.”
“Pythagoras,” Jimmy said, and Descartes nodded.
“He believes he is on the side of the angels in this, and that I am in bed with a man who will accidentally topple the world economy,” he said.
“Killing me isn’t going to change that,” Jimmy said. Descartes tipped his head slightly.
“No. You know that and I know that, but he doesn’t, does he?”
Sharp, dark eyes swerved to take Sarah in.
“You’re the one with the secret.”
“Yes.”
“The one person in the world my brother will not kill is me. If you want to stop him from ever coming after you, you can tell me how to find absenta.”
“And then you’ll go dig it out for yourself, anywhere you like,” Sarah said. “’Stead of me and Jimmy controlling the location and a bunch ‘a little yous runnin’ around with enough to cause problems, you become the big bad beast all on your own.”
“I wouldn’t interfere with Lawrence,” he said. “But yes.”
“Pass,” she said with a tight smile. He returned it, nothing malicious in his eyes, but the clever that was there enough to give her pause. This was not a man she wanted to have routine dealings with.
“You tell Pythagoras about her…” Jimmy said. Descartes sighed in a put-upon way.
“Yes, yes, you of all people would find a way to make me regret it. I know this.”
Jimmy gave him a little nod.
“It doesn’t guarantee that he won’t find out,” Descartes warned. “You haven’t exactly been secretive.”
“Most people aren’t going to know it matters,” Jimmy said.
“I ain’t helpless,” Sarah said, “bullethole aside.”
Descartes laughed.
“Yes, I can see that.”
“You sat in there, knowin’ full well they aimed to come rollin’ into town and exterminate the lot of us, and you did what, sip your tea and read stock reports?” Sarah asked.
“Would you have preferred I stay home?” Descartes answered.
“It’s a weak man what sits by while other people give up their lives on either side of him,” Sarah said.
