A Lust For Lead

by Robert Davis

  At supper, she picked listlessly at her food and retired early, claiming that she was fatigued by the sun and the heat. The lie gave her a good pretext to go to the well and draw some water, supposedly to cool her down but in reality to fill the canteens that would see her, Shane and Chastity safely across the desert. She hoped that her alleged sickness would also discourage Nathaniel from demanding her presence in his bed that night.

  She put Chastity to bed early and lay in the darkness, listening to the eerie melody of the town. Nathaniel and Whisperer stayed up late making preparations for the final round of the tournament and Madison fancied that it was past midnight when they finally retired. She waited a while longer to give them time to fall asleep, then threw back the bedcovers and hurriedly got dressed. She put on a pair of black pants and a black shirt that had once belonged to Kip, and tied her hair back in a pony tail.

  Grabbing her carpet bag, she filled it with the things that she did not want to leave behind and stuffed in some of Chastity’s clothes as well. She could not take everything but that didn’t matter; she figured that she could buy plenty of new clothes with her share of Nathaniel’s twenty-thousand dollars when she made it back to civilisation, and the thought lifted her spirits a little.

  She tucked her only weapon into her right boot. It was a straight razor that a previous boyfriend had given her years ago, fearing for her safety. She had seldom found need to use it and had never killed anybody before, but if Nathaniel woke while she was lifting his keys from him, she felt certain that a quick slice across the throat would deal with him.

  The hotel creaked about her, sounding as if it approved of her murderous thoughts. She shivered and made sure that Chastity was sleeping soundly. Then, with her heart beating furiously in her chest, she opened the bedroom door and crept soundlessly into the hallway.

  She timed her descent down the stairs to coincide with building’s rhythmic creaks and groans, letting them mask the sound of her footsteps. The grey light of the moon pierced through cracks in the boarded-up windows and provided the only illumination. The shadows were deep and seemed to shift in strange ways, as if the source of the faint light kept moving. Madison could not shake off the sensation that she was being watched.

  She crept up to Nathaniel’s door and put her ear to it. There was no indication that he was still awake and, cautiously, she turned the handle and opened the door a crack. Peering through, she could see that Nathaniel lay on the bed with his back to her. He looked to be asleep but Madison was not convinced. She lingered in the doorway, too afraid to go any further.

  Seconds ticked by while she wrestled with her anxiety. If somehow he had learned about her plans to escape, he might only be pretending to be asleep, waiting for her to come inside and walk into his trap. She tried to dismiss the thought as simple paranoia, but it was not easy. The fear remained and it took all of her courage to finally enter the room.

  She padded softly to the side of the bed, where Nathaniel’s waistcoat hung on the back of a wooden chair. She had seen him put the key to her room in his waistcoat pocket the day before when she had first been pressed into caring for Chastity, and hoped that he kept the rest of his keys there as well. She was right. She found three keys: one of which was probably the key to Shane’s cell, another the key to the locked room where the money was kept, and the last no doubt fit the room where she and Chastity slept. She was glad that she had made an effort to win his trust and that he had not felt it necessary to lock her in overnight.

  She pocketed all three keys and turned to leave. At that moment, Nathaniel rolled over and turned his face towards her.

  Her heart froze. His eyes were still closed, she realised with relief, but for a moment she had thought he was looking at her. Adrenaline coursed through her veins, making her feel light-headed and weak. She took a deep breath to steady herself, then crept urgently back to the doorway. She closed the door softly behind her and breathed a sigh of relief. The first step of her ordeal was over.

  Next came the tricky part.

  She woke Chastity and dressed her. The girl was docile and did not make a sound but, to be on the safe side, Madison put the rag doll in her hands. She seemed to have grown fond of it in as much as she was capable of liking anything, and she clutched it to her chest.

  Madison hefted her carpet bag over her shoulder and took Chastity by the hand. There were butterflies in her stomach as she left the room and made her way downstairs again in the dark. She raided the drinks cabinet in Nathaniel’s study and stole a bottle of cognac, which she slipped into her bag. In the kitchens, she grabbed some bacon and flour, enough to last a few days, and slipped out the hotel through the back door.

  The night air felt hot and sultry, bitter with the coppery scent of gunsmoke. She dragged Chastity down and hid in the shadows while a couple of invigilators walked by. The town’s song growled at the furthest edge of town, the sound turning as she listened to roll back towards her like an approaching tide.

  It creaked past her as she dragged Chastity across West Street and over to the side of the courthouse. She knew that Shane was probably expecting her to bring the keys to his window, but that was not her plan. She knew what sort of a man he was and suspected that he would probably abandon her as soon as he had no more need of her. If she was going to get his help, she needed to prove her worth to him.

  Avoiding the invigilators, she crept around to the front of the courthouse and let herself in. It was dark, but a lantern burned in a distant room. As Madison made her way towards it, she freed her hair and arranged it so that it fell attractively about her shoulders. Her looks couldn’t actually kill, but they could easily stun a man for a while.

  There was only a single invigilator standing guard in the room. Madison had gotten to know several of them since her arrival in Covenant. She had flirted with the better looking ones even while Kip had been alive, favouring them with a smile and a lingering glance. She knew that this one’s name was Jeff, and she had seen him admiring her when he didn’t think she was looking.

  He looked surprised to see her. ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he said.

  Madison put a finger to her lips and shushed him. ‘The girl wouldn’t go to sleep so I thought I’d take her for a walk,’ she told him.

  ‘The Colonel’s orders are for nobody to come in here. That includes you, miss. I’ve got to ask you to leave.’

  ‘My feet are sore. Do you mind if I sit down for a moment? Come on, what harm is it going to do?’ She did her best to look helpless and appealing.

  ‘The Colonel’s orders–’ Jeff began, but she interrupted him before he could finish.

  ‘The Colonel wants Chastity fit to beat Ennis in the fight tomorrow. Please, I’ve got find a way to get her to go to sleep or he’ll be really angry in the morning. Just let me sit down for a couple of minutes. I won’t cause any trouble.’

  She picked her words carefully, knowing that Jeff wouldn’t want to do anything that might put him on the wrong side of Nathaniel. Reluctantly, he stepped aside and let Madison take his chair. She perched Chastity on her lap.

  ‘Are you any good with that thing?’ she asked, gesturing towards the Sharps rifle that he had propped against the wall.

  Like any man in the company of a pretty woman, Jeff was only too happy to boast about himself. ‘It depends,’ he said. ‘If you call twelve shots grouped in a five-inch bull at three-hundred yards good then, yeah, I am.’ He thought for a moment and decided that she might not understand what a measure of his skill that was. ‘That is good by the way,’ he added.

  She smiled. ‘I’m going to have a drink,’ she announced, digging the bottle of cognac out of her bag. ‘Would you like one?’

  ‘I can’t, miss. The Colonel’s orders.’

  She set the bottle down on the table. ‘You’re good at following orders, aren’t you,’ she teased.

  ‘The Colonel would have my hide if he caught me.’

  ‘Well, you’re a good boy. Oh!’ Madison bent forwar
d sharply as if hurt. ‘Oh, my leg! I’ve got cramp. Take the girl, quick!’

  She pushed Chastity into Jeff’s arms before he could object and stood up, making a show of stretching the muscles in her leg. Jeff held Chastity awkwardly with both hands. He bent over to put her down and, as he did so, Madison stepped behind him and grabbed the bottle of cognac. She brought it down hard across the back of his head and he sank to his knees. He was dazed but not unconscious, and she hit him again before he could recover his senses. This time, she put her weight into the blow and he collapsed against the floor. Hastily, she pulled off his belt and used it to tie his wrists behind his back, then gagged him with a neckerchief and bound his ankles. He was coming round by the time she was finished.

  She took his knife and revolver from him and opened the door that led to the cells. ‘Wait here, hon,’ she told Chastity.

  Shane had been alerted by the noise and was waiting at the door to his cell. ‘What was all that about?’ he growled.

  She put her hands on her hips. ‘You had a better way of dealing with the guard?’ she challenged him.

  He thrust a hand through the bars of the cell. ‘Give me the key.’

  Madison gave it to him. ‘I’ve also brought food and water,’ she said, as he opened the door. ‘Oh, and you’ll want this.’ She offered him Jeff’s revolver.

  Shane sprang back in horror. ‘Take it away!’ he snapped.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  He pointed into one of the open cells. ‘Throw it in there. Now!’ He did not trust himself to be near a gun tonight, not when he was so close to escaping. The temptation was too strong.

  Madison tossed the gun away. ‘Jeez, I’m sorry,’ she said, a hurt look on her face. She walked back into the next room and picked up her carpet bag. Jeff had woken up and was struggling against his bonds. ‘Did he have a knife?’ Shane asked.

  ‘Do you want it?’ Madison asked.

  He held out of his hand. She gave it to him and was startled when he knelt down and slid the blade harshly across Jeff’s neck. There was a bright splash of blood and Jeff made a horrible, gurgling cry. His body jack-knifed and he flapped about like a fish thrown on dry land, his movements becoming slower as the blood drained out of him, stealing his life away.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ Madison hissed.

  ‘It wouldn’t have taken him long to work himself loose. Now, he’s no longer a problem.’ He wiped the knife off against Jeff’s shirt and sheathed it. ‘I’ll take the girl,’ he said. He lifted Chastity into his arms and carried her to the door.

  ‘Are we taking his rifle?’ Madison asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But we’ll need it.’

  ‘I said, no.’

  Madison pouted angrily. ‘How are we going to escape from this town if we don’t have a gun?’ she asked.

  ‘Very quietly,’ was his answer.

  They made their way out onto the street. The crossroads was lit by smouldering torch fires that illuminated the town with a reddish hue. Invigilators could be seen patrolling in the distance. Shane made for the nearest alley and ducked in out of sight. Madison followed and crouched beside him, pressing her body against his as she pointed over his shoulder towards the Grande. ‘Nathaniel keeps the money in a locked room on the ground floor,’ she said. ‘It’s the fifth one on the right from the lobby.’

  She dug the keys from her pocket and gave them to him. ‘One of these should open the door.’

  Shane could see that she had her mind set on taking the money. He decided not to risk starting an argument with her now and said nothing of his intention to leave it all behind. ‘Horses first,’ he told her.

  Keeping to the shadows, they made their way towards the stables. The town creaked and groaned around them, maintaining its usual rhythm. The sound crawled out towards the edge of town and then turned about and came rumbling back in again.

  In and out. In and out.

  In.

  The noise abruptly stopped. Shane looked over his shoulder in alarm. All along West Street, the invigilators were turning to face the crossroads, confused by the silence.

  And then the clock above the town hall began to chime: dull, leaden peals that echoed ominously throughout Covenant, striking the count of noon.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ Madison asked shakily.

  ‘The Cordites,’ Shane whispered. ‘I don’t think they want me to leave.’

  Chapter 21

  The silence that came after that dread tolling of the bell seemed to resonate with its memory. In dark places across the town an eerie grey smoke began to rise. It poured from holes in the ground and from the cracks between floorboards, its smell a bitter mixture of sulphur and nitric acid.

  And men emerged from that smoke.

  They strode out of it with solemn purpose in their gait: stern, wraith-like figures in clothing that was ragged with holes. Their skin was dry as parchment, pale and yellowed and stretched tight upon their bones. Beneath the shadowed brim of their hats, all that could be seen of their faces were their lipless mouths, grimacing with long, sharp teeth.

  Howard Anderson was one of the first invigilators to see them. His patrol had taken him off West Street to the yard behind the bath house and he was startled to see one of the figures striding from the alleyway towards him. Not recognising him, he shouted out a challenge and called for two of his comrades to back him up. The figure did not slow his pace. As he drew closer, his hand reached for the gun at his waist and Anderson did not hesitate to shoot him. At such close range, Anderson could not miss. The shot hit him in the chest, at a place where it should have torn through his heart, but the man did not go down. He drew his revolver and fired, dropping Anderson and his two colleagues in three deadly-accurate shots.

  The Cordite stepped over their bodies without a second glance and moved onto West Street. The killing had begun.

  The sudden noise of gunfire carried clear across town and alerted the sentries who guarded the perimeter. Frank Hammill was one such man. He twisted on his rooftop perch and looked back across town, where he was surprised to see what looked like mist crawling through the streets. It was the colour of soft lead and seemed to glow softly with an ethereal light.

  Curious, Frank brought the scope of his rifle to his eye. It was a powerful German-made Vollmer sight, as expensive and precision-crafted as the rifle it was mounted on. The gun had previously belonged to another invigilator: the man called Penn, who had died in Chastity’s rampage two days earlier. Frank had traded his own rifle and the last of his tobacco to possess it. It was a .45-120 Sharps Creedmoor with a heavy thirty-two inch target barrel and gain-twist rifling. It was a truly exquisite instrument.

  The scope had an incredible twenty times magnification and the faint light of the mist made it possible to see in good detail. Frank scanned the road until he spotted two men that he recognised. They were shooting at another man who was walking down the street towards them. Frank had never seen the stranger in town before. He was thin and wiry and carried a single revolver, which he drew lazily, as if unconcerned by the shots that were being fired at him. Looking more closely, Frank fancied that he could see the man’s clothes twitching, as if the bullets were striking him, but he showed no sign of being hurt. He fired his revolver from the hip and Frank tore his eye away from the scope, unable to believe what he was seeing.

  The man’s hand moved impossibly fast, fanning the hammer in a blur. Flame spat from the barrel and a volley of shots erupted like a burst from a Gatling gun. Impossibly, he seemed to fire ten times more than just the six shots that the cylinder should have contained, and the two invigilators were ripped down where they stood, falling in a red rain of blood and shredded flesh.

  The colour drained from Frank’s face. He was no stranger to violence but he had never witnessed murder on such a scale before. It horrified him, and yet it exerted a sickening urge in him to see more. He put his eye back to the scope and watched as the man stalked past the bodies of
the men he had just killed and move on in search of more.

  The rooftop creaked behind him but, like everyone in Covenant, Frank was used to the noise of the town settling at night and he thought nothing of it, despite the fact that the buildings had all been eerily quiet since the clock tower had struck twelve. He kept his eye glued to his scope, feeling insulated from the bloodshed by his distance from it. A foul smell washed over him and, suddenly, his scope went black.

  Jerking his head back, he was astonished to see a man towering over him. He gripped the barrel of the rifle in one hand, blocking the view through the scope. ‘What the–’

  Frank’s words died in his throat as he saw the gaping hole in the man’s forehead: a wound that no man could have taken and survived. It didn’t disfigure him so badly that Frank could not recognise him. ‘Penn?’ he asked incredulously.

  Penn’s eyes were as deep and as cold as gun barrels. ‘You’re holding my rifle,’ he said.

  Frank’s mouth became too dry to speak. He scrambled to his feet in a burst of energy and tried to wrench the gun from Penn’s grasp and shoot him with it, but Penn’s grip was stronger. He twisted the rifle from Frank’s hands and turned it on him. The gun went off and Frank felt a chilling numbness engulf his chest. He stepped backwards and lost his footing. Silently, he toppled backwards from the roof and landed heavily on the sun-baked earth below, his neck snapping on impact.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Madison said.

  Shane was not running but he was walking quickly and with such long strides that she was finding it difficult to keep up. ‘I thought Nathaniel said he could control them.’

  ‘I don’t think Nathaniel ever really understood what he was doing.’ Shane told her. His words were drowned by the sound of gunfire close-by. Shane pressed himself flat against the wall as a small group of invigilators ran past him. They had only just woken and one man had not even had time to tug on his boots before joining the fray.