And so the mercenaries closed. Gunfire blazed. At first the enemies’ silenced weapons sounded like corn popping, but the noise steadily grew louder as they approached. Matt ran from the gazebo to the whorehouse and checked upstairs. Suzie and Jeb Pickens were holding their own, firing carefully. Jeb had a small flesh wound on one hand, wrapped with a strip of torn cloth. Matt ran back down the stairs, passing one man he didn’t know who had been injured by flying debris and a whore who had sprained her wrist while diving for cover.
He left for the old barn and loft, playing a hunch since it was poorly guarded. The defenders had thus far avoided using their Molotov cocktails. Someone else had set a fire in the straw, but when Matt arrived, the barn was empty. The fire was in a pile of straw in a small area surrounded by open dirt. Had someone, possibly Kyle, been smart enough to start a controlled blaze to light up the area? Perhaps it hadn’t been set by the enemy after all. Matt turned to go.
The red-haired mercenary dropped down from the rafters, stunning Matt and forcing the ax to fly from his hand into the straw. Red punched Matt twice in the head and rolled him over to bind his wrists with plastic cuffs, clearly intending to drag him back into the darkness and the waiting van.
Matt rolled his eyes up and went limp, and the red-haired mercenary loosened his grip just slightly. Matt head butted him, rolled back over, and kneed the man in the face-a face that was already shattered by sin, dented and weeping blood and brains. Still the man fought on. They rolled together through the fire, and Matt’s exposed flesh felt pain as it burned, but the mercenary didn’t even flinch. Matt could smell singed hair as the two men struggled and grunted. Matt got his right hand free and drove it up under the mercenary’s chin, forcing the man to bite his tongue half off. As blood spurted from the wound, he let go of Matt.
Matt spotted his grandfather’s ax lying near a pile of cow dung and crawled toward it, but the red-haired mercenary recovered enough to climb up Matt’s body, slowing him down. They both saw the.38 in the straw, and the mercenary lunged for the gun. Matt grabbed the pile of cow shit and smeared it into the man’s bloody eyes, then got his fingers around the handle of the ax.
Matt swung hard and decapitated the killer, whose head rolled away and bowled a strike in the feed bags. The mercenary’s trunk fell over and spurted blood, splattering the wooden slats of the stall. Matt threw up in the dirt but quickly gathered himself again. The battle raged on. The enemy was still out there.
Shouting and firing from outside. The smell of gunpowder and burning straw. Shaken, Matt got to his feet and ran to the front of the barn. He looked both ways. Across the street Sheriff Pickens shouted to him.
“Shit, he’s gone, Cahill!”
He had lost track of Scotty.
One down, three to go…
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Monday, 8:37 p.m.
Matt turned to run back toward the gazebo but saw movement across the way, a shadowy confrontation in the distance. Bert the grocer had been assaulted. A hunter who expected to be able to use his skills with a rifle, Bert was clearly unprepared for close fighting. So when the mercenary with the buzz cut appeared from the alley with a sawtooth knife and charged him, Bert tried to run. With a savage laugh, the killer ran him to ground, yanked his hair back, and reached across to slit the grocer’s throat. Time slowed to a crawl.
Matt raced towards the spot, his bloody ax in one hand and the.38 in the other, hoping for a clean shot. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Hog pause and turn. The big man spotted Bert and the mercenary and sent two rounds their way. One took the soldier in the Kevlar vest and knocked him backwards, stunned but still alive. Satisfied, Hog turned back to his assigned duties. Still running, Matt closed the distance. Suddenly the mercenary rolled, raised his knife to stab down at the exhausted Bert. Matt dropped to one knee and tried to get a shot, but Bert was in the way. The knife was coming down.
The missing teenager-Clete-exploded from the dark alley. He did not hesitate but attacked at once, climbing on the mercenary’s broad back. He was thrown off immediately, but he’d bought a few precious seconds. Bert’s wife came out of the alley next. Her enormous weight momentarily flattened the soldier, shoving his grinning face down into the bloody sand. He quickly threw her off, though, and lunged to gut her. Approaching fast, Matt fired twice but missed. He stopped a second time, trying for better aim. Fortunately, he didn’t fire right away. Just then another body filled his vision.
Kyle emerged from the hotel with a pitchfork. He bellowed with rage and ran the mercenary through. Then, before Matt could close the distance, Kyle pulled his own pistol and shot the man in the neck, just to make sure. Blood sprayed his face. The exhausted citizens ran back to their assigned posts, exhausted but still determined to fight back.
Not bad, Kyle, Matt thought. “Kyle,” he said, “remind me not to piss you off.”
Kyle didn’t see it, but as the mercenary died, his horribly contorted features, dripping pus and writhing with worms, relaxed into a human face. Evil had departed, but so had the soul of the human the force had inhabited. Not for the first time, Matt wondered what awaited these men and women who had been possessed by the Dark Man, once they got to the other side. It surely wouldn’t be pleasant.
“Give me a hand, kid,” Matt said.
They dragged Bert back to the saloon, where Sally worked with the women who were acting as medics. Bert was going to make it. Outside, the fire was lower, becoming sporadic, but the screaming was nonstop. Where Sally tended to them, those who were cut or shot cried out and kept bellowing. They didn’t just lie down, like in the movies.
Two down, two to go.
Matt forced himself to stalk the sidewalk amongst the writhing shadows and the puffs of smoke, the reloaded.38 gripped in his right hand, the ax handy. Right now it felt like his best friend.
“Hog? Zeke? You guys okay?”
“We’re good,” Zeke called back.
Matt looked east. Sheriff Pickens and Wally were still by the parked cars, their rifles at port arms. Pickens shook his head, as if to say he’d been unable to locate his man. Zeke and Hog exchanged glances, then stood up, Hog facing into the center of town and Zeke still looking out at the city limits. A few seconds passed. Flames crackled through dry wood and a horse nickered in the barn.
A mercenary in black rolled across a parked car and took aim at the sheriff just as Pickens ducked. Pop-pop. The body was squat and compact, so it wasn’t Scotty. It had to be the one who never looked up. Matt started toward the sheriff, but instinct told him he wouldn’t make it in time. Hopefully, Pickens could handle himself. Hog fired cougar quick and nicked the mercenary’s leg. Wally fired, too, but the mercenary drove him back under cover. The street puffed dust-Jeb and Suzie were also firing down from the whorehouse, but their angle was bad, and the mercenary rolled away.
Bravely, Wally stepped out of cover and took a shot, hitting the mercenary in the other leg. The man bellowed in rage and fired back. Wally tried to duck but was shot in the face. He fell backwards into the street, twitched a few times, and lay still.
Matt charged, waving his arms, and the mercenary turned to face him. Before Matt could reach them, though, Pickens ducked and produced a wickedly short shotgun he’d had stashed beneath Sally’s car. He did not hesitate, but placed the weapon in the crotch of his enemy and discharged both barrels. The mercenary split nearly in two and splattered in the dirt like chunks of steaming meat.
Three down.
Scotty to go.
Matt swallowed more bile. All around him, the firing gradually died out again as the townsfolk realized it was nearly over. Matt whistled sharply. One enemy remained, so they were all still in danger.
“Hey, Scotty? It’s just you and me now.”
Matt walked out into the center of the street, dust spraying up around his boots. He kept walking, and then he stopped, licked his lips. He called out, “Scotty? Let these people be. Let’s finish this.”
Shit, my voice is shaking.
I sound like a poodle standing up to a Great Dane…
A kind of eerie silence fell, except for the low snapping of the steady fire in the barn. Matt could smell the wood smoke blended with the stench of death. Could faintly hear people murmuring, some crying out in pain. Dark reflections flickered up and down the empty street. Everyone held their breath. Matt Cahill waited, knowing there was only one way it could end.
“Matt?”
Scotty came out of the alley, holding a 9 mm down by his right leg, pointed at the earth. He had placed his body perfectly, between the empty movie house and the tourist shop, so none of the people defending Dry Wells had an easy shot. He was lost, looked like something dragged up from a grave a week after he’d been buried. His skin was filthy, with wounds oozing fluid and broken bones poking from torn clothing. His face was a frozen mask of shrieking horror, the countenance of a man buried alive. Matt Cahill stood out in the open, the.38 down at his own side, the ax in his other hand. The two men faced each other on the dusty, dark street. Shadows danced all around them.
“So here we are.”
“Yeah.”
“The 1972 Dolphins, dude. A perfect season. Look it up.”
“I will.”
Scotty grinned horribly, chuckling wetly from deep in his broken chest. To Matt, the laugh sounded disturbingly familiar, so much like his long-dead friend. The two enemies waited there in the street, all eyes on them. The fire made the town flicker like an old black-and-white photograph under a strobe lamp.
“I’m kind of screwed, aren’t I?” Scotty asked. He coughed. “I don’t know what’s happening to me, but it ain’t anything good, is it?”
Matt shook his head. “No. It’s not.”
Scotty looked down. “You remember that old movie comic, W.C. Fields? Talked through his nose?”
“Kind of.”
Hog and Zeke approached from Matt’s right, their weapons trained on Scotty, who pretended not to see them. Matt heard footsteps on the roof as the snipers moved forward, too. Sheriff Pickens stepped out of the shadows. Every gun in town was trained on Scotty now. Matt was the only one who saw the grotesque writhing of the wickedness under his putrid skin.
“W.C. Fields-he had liver disease from all the boozing,” Scotty said finally. “The man was dying in some rest home when a drinking buddy came to see him. This guy caught Fields reading the Bible.”
Matt kept his eyes on Scotty’s hands, just to be on the safe side. He wondered where the mercenary was going with all this.
“The friend says, ‘What the hell are you doing reading that, Bill?’” Scotty said.
“And W.C. Fields just smiles and says, ‘Hey, I’m looking for loopholes, friend. Just looking for loopholes.’”
Scotty raised his eyes. His shoulders sagged a bit. “Man, I really need to get this over with.”
Matt swallowed. “I know.”
Scotty jerked his weapon up, though perhaps a bit more slowly than he could have. Matt wasn’t sure. In any event, Matt was a split second faster as he threw the ax with all his might. It spun end over end, slammed into Scotty’s Kevlar vest, and stuck there, throwing his aim off, turning him to the side. His one round whizzed by Matt’s left ear. And then everyone in town opened fire at once. Scotty danced an obscene jig in the dust for a long moment, his body shredded and torn. Then he dropped to his knees and fell sideways into the dust. Matt watched his face become handsome again as the tortured soul departed.
It was finished.
EPILOGUE
Monday, 9:46 p.m.
The fires were almost out. The air had turned harsh, as sharp as a blade and filled with dark smoke and ash. Matt Cahill had already made the rounds congratulating and thanking the townspeople. He knew the military and police would be here soon. He had to leave-time was running out. A horse was saddled and ready a few yards away.
“You’d best get going,” Kyle said. “I promise we’ll all keep your presence here a secret.”
“Good,” Matt said quietly. “It’s really better that way.”
“Matt?” Sally said, her voice trembling. Kyle pulled her close. “Thank you.”
Matt smiled in the darkness. Sally and Kyle stood together, which was as it should be. Kyle was a good kid, with plenty of guts. He’d take care of Sally, no doubt about it. Matt walked down the sidewalk. Sheriff Pickens and his teenage children waved from across the street. Suzie was crying. Matt searched for something to say. He knew there were no words. Finally he just tipped his hat.
“Take care.”
“You too,” Sally said.
And with that, Matt Cahill checked to be sure he’d properly fastened his ax, pack, and bedroll to the horse. He mounted up and rode away like someone from another century. Behind him, the weary citizens waved as they watched him leave for good.
Out in the darkness Matt paused. The evening had cleared as if relieved of an evil burden. Bright stars hung like tiny diamonds in the night sky. A chill passed over his body. He turned in the saddle, took one last look at the town of Dry Wells, sparkling there in the shadows like a forlorn jewel. Leather creaked and the horse nickered. In the distance, Matt could see the highway and another long string of flickering lights closing the distance. The approaching emergency vehicles and the National Guard. The town would be safe now.
Once again, Matt wondered if perhaps it had all been meant to happen. He had come back to life for a reason-or many reasons. Perhaps this was one of them.
It was time to move on. Like an old-time cowboy, Matt kneed the horse and turned away towards the safety of the Ruby Mountains. He rode away looking forward to entering the far more familiar tree line and the comfort of the mountains. He felt satisfied in some ways, but also deeply concerned. For Matt Cahill now had a new enemy to worry about.
The university.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Harry Shannon, author of The Dead Man: Kill Them All was born in Reno Nevada. He has been an actor, an Emmy-nominated songwriter, a recording artist, music publisher, VP at Carolco Pictures and a Music Supervisor on “Basic Instinct” and “Universal Soldier.” His novels include “Night of the Beast," “CLAN," “Daemon," "Dead and Gone," “The Hungry” and "The Pressure of Darkness," as well as the Mick Callahan suspense novels “Memorial Day,” “Eye of the Burning Man,” “One of the Wicked," and “Running Cold.” His collection “A Host of Shadows” was nominated for the 2010 Stoker Award by the Horror Writer’s Association. Readers may contact him via Facebook or www.harryshannon.com
***
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