by Michael Lane
The two trotted out of town on foot, leading their nervous horses. Their mounts flinched and shied, their eyes flashing over white in the dark. They turned off the road, stopping for a minute in a cluster of acacia until the horses calmed and they could mount them.
“Do we still try for the house on the hill?” Ronald asked.
“I guess so. It should be easy now. I imagine every guard in the place is down at the fire,” Harmon said.
Ronald nodded and turned his horse. They rode in a big half-circle, coming up on the second blockhouse from the dark fields surrounding Mattawa, the horses’ legs whispering in the tall grass. The pair scanned the hill’s skyline, backlit by the smoke and glare of the fires beyond. The squat shape of the building was clear against the dirty orange glow, but no figures moved around it, and no lights showed.
“We should leave the horses here and go up on foot,” Harmon whispered. “You have that bottle of gas?”
“Yeah.”
The two dismounted and started up the hill, their feet crunching through the weeds, their eyes fixed on the building. The rear windows were high up, small and covered with iron grids, and Harmon sucked air through his teeth in exasperation and gestured to the left. Ronald followed as he led the way around to the building’s shorter side, which was equally uninviting. They paused in the wedge of shadow at the corner. Beyond, the ground was lit with a diffuse orange light.
Harmon squatted, his knees popping, and edged an eye around the corner while Ronald stood, clutching two glass mason jars and feeling their contents gurgle as he shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“Do you see anything?” Ronald hissed. Harmon sat as still as a stone.
“No. Well, yes, a big fire. That blockhouse is burning like a torch. Must be a hundred people working on putting it out before it gets to the mill, but I don’t see anything moving up here.”
He leaned back into the shadows and stood.
“Give me one of the jars,” he said. Ronald did. “Just walk like you’re supposed to be here. I don’t think there’s much chance anyone will look this direction, or that they could see us from down there - it’s probably three hundred yards and they should all be glare-blind. Anyway, we need to try the door, because I don’t see any other way in.”
Ronald swallowed and felt his throat click almost painfully. He exhaled a held breath. “Okay, let’s go.”
Harmon leading, the two walked around the corner into the ochre light, not hurrying. The glare was strong enough to cast their distorted shadows on the cinderblock wall. Ronald glanced down at the fire, and could make out a crowd scurrying around the blazing building, though the ground between was lost in glare and shadows. Twenty paces along stood the building’s only door, a rusty steel one with a few flecks of green paint still clinging to its upper surface. Harmon tried the handle and cursed under his breath.
“It’s locked,” he whispered. “Back around the corner.”
A shadow rose up the door between their own, and Ronald started to turn, then froze.
“You two shitkickers? No whores up here,” said a familiar voice. “You two can turn around real slow.”
Ronald felt faint. He felt a sudden strong urge to just curl up and close his eyes and hope everything would be better when he woke up. Harmon hissed through his teeth. Ronald looked at him and saw his shadowed right hand move as he turned slowly to his left, drawing his knife from its sheath at his belt.
Oh shit, they got us, what are you doing? The young man thought as he turned. He was painfully conscious of the pistol tucked into his jeans under his jacket.
“What the hell is that? Drop the jar,” the leader said. Harmon complied, and it hit the ground with a gurgling thump. He put his hands behind his head in the same movement, facing the three backlit figures a dozen yards away with his knife now behind his neck.
Ronald turned on numb legs and dropped the second jar. It rolled a few feet before catching on some weeds. The gasoline and naptha inside it had been expensive when they’d traded for it in Potter’s Creek. A trivial corner of his mind regretted wasting it.
“You get your hands up, too,” the voice said. Ronald raised them to shoulder height.
“Earl, see what they’ve got.”
Earl handed his rifle to the guardsman who had spoken, who cradled it in the crook of his arm. His other hand held a pistol, level and steady on Harmon. The third guard stood to one side holding a rifle or shotgun shouldered and ready.
We’re going to die, Ronald thought. He wondered why he didn’t feel anything but numb.
Earl moved to Harmon and began to pat him down. Harmon stood still for it for a few seconds, then the pair went down in a flailing tangle of arms and legs, Earl screamed shrilly as Harmon did something to him with the knife.
The pair rolled over and there was a sharp crackling noise. Harmon howled and Ronald could smell the sour tang of gas on the air as he dropped his hand for his pistol.
Earl kicked free, rolling away from Harmon, as Ronald drew, thumbing the pistol’s safety off and crouching. He shot without aiming, twice, and the silhouette with the long gun staggered and fell. Ronald heard a bullet from the leader’s gun cut the air next to his ear. The man was firing rapidly, stumbling backward, and further bullets went wide. Ronald shot him in the chest and he fell over. He turned to help Harmon, who was yelling and kicking at Earl, knocking him sprawling before he could rise. It took Ronald a moment to grasp what he was shouting.
“He’s got a vest on! He’s got a vest on!”
Who gives a shit what he’s wearing? Ronald thought. His stomach lurched as the meaning finally sank through.
He turned back toward the fire in time to see the lead guard roll over and rise to his knees, bringing up his pistol in a two-handed grip. Ronald aimed for the black oval of his face above the too-bulky torso. Both men fired and Ronald fell backward, while the guardsman remained on his knees, his pistol sagging to the ground. Harmon cursed, trying to rise from the pool of blood and gasoline he was lying in. Earl coughed wetly, with Harmon’s knife in one of his lungs and most of his intestines trying to slither free, and gripped the little snub-nosed revolver he carried in his coat pocket. He rolled back, grappled with Harmon and pulled him down. Harmon felt something hard jab into his back, and felt more than heard the shot that shattered his spine. The muzzle flash ignited the gas that soaked his clothing, and he began to burn.
“No,” Harmon muttered, unable to move. He could smell the stink of burning wool. He tried to raise himself on his hands but could not get free. Earl had passed out lying across him and was beginning to burn as well. The pain was unbelievable. The light of his burning clothes glinted on the oiled blue of the little pistol, fallen from Earl’s hand, and Harmon strained to reach it, scrabbling at the earth and pulling himself forward an inch at a time as bone crackled in his back and the stink of burning pork joined that of wool.
He realized he was moaning, but that was a distant noise - something his body was doing while his mind was otherwise occupied. He felt a brief, clear moment of triumph as his fingers closed on the butt of the pistol. The fire had spread into the surrounding weeds now, and by its light he saw Ronald stagger upright, his left sleeve soaked with blood, his eyes wide and white and unfocused. Beyond him knelt the corpse of the guardsman in the bulletproof vest, seeming to stare with one surprised brown eye and one that was a pit of pulpy red and black. Behind him at the bottom of the slope the townspeople and garrison fought the fire, unaware of the little drama on the hillside.
He wanted to tell the boy not to worry, and to get away, but his hand was in a hurry and tucked the pistol under his chin as his hair ignited. He wished he could say goodbye to his parents. He hoped Ronald would make it out all right. He wondered if any of it made any difference, and then he pulled the trigger.
“What do you suppose they had in there?” Mal asked, looking back at the dim orange glow on the horizon. He and Grey were riding slowly, heading east and north, back to camp.
>
“No idea, but when that gas went down the chimney it got exciting in a hurry, didn’t it?” Grey asked.
“I hope we didn’t burn down the mill,” Mal said, still gazing back over a shoulder as his horse picked its way along behind Grey’s. “I think there’s a second glow over where the hill was. I guess the boys managed to get in there okay.”
Grey nodded, not looking back. “I don’t know that we needed to poke Creedy again, not with the army moving on him, but it never hurts to keep your opponent guessing.”
Mal nodded, and they rode in silence for a while. One fair-sized meteor rumbled on a long slant across the stars, shattering into a series of smaller streaks of fire and covering half the arc of sky before dying out. Both men watched it.
“Big one,” Grey said.
“Yeah, don’t see many of them anymore like that,” Mal agreed. He shifted in his saddle, his leather jacket creaking. “So what’s our play, now?”
Grey scratched in his beard before replying.
“Creedy has to move, or the CDF is going to get him. We know where he wants to end up, so we can guess his route. We need to try for him along that route.”
“Will you send someone ahead to let the people in the Okanagan know?” Mal asked. “Just in case we can’t stop a small army from riding through us?”
“I guess I better. We’ve been lucky so far, but I hate to depend on luck.”
Mal nodded in the dark. “Luck, she’s a bitch.”
Chapter 15: Punishments
Creedy had strapped Sam across the foot of the enormous brass bed that consumed much of his private quarters’ floor. He admired the strained posture of her limbs, tied to the posts, and the trembling curve of her back as she fought to shift her weight. The top bar of the foot rail cut into her waist and it pleased him to hear her gasp each time he thrust into her, the motion grinding on her bruised flesh.
He was, he admitted to himself, bored. Even the sex didn’t hold his attention the way it should. His mind wandered, pondering the upcoming move, less than two weeks away. He shifted his stance in the inverted V of her spread legs, seeking a better angle to bring more force to bear. Sam choked out a curse as his thrusts began again, but he scarcely heard.
“It’s time for a change, isn’t it, Sam?” He asked, conversationally, digging his nails into her buttocks, trying to see if he could draw blood. His nails were too short, it seemed. All they did was leave white bloodless arcs pressed into her skin.
“Time to find new pastures, new pastimes, new horizons to explore.” With each ‘new’ he thrust as hard as he could, rattling the bedframe and forcing gasps from Sam, who kept her face buried against the comforter. She heard his grunt and felt him shiver as he came. He pulled out immediately afterward, and the cool air of the room chilled her wet thighs. She concentrated on breathing and tried not to think.
She heard him rattling objects on his dresser; heard the swish as he found a belt and swung it experimentally. She set her teeth and tried to retreat into red, bloody plans for the future.
A knock at the door interrupted her thoughts.
“Come,” Creedy called. She heard the door creak open behind her. Being left exposed was somehow worse than what preceded it.
“I’m going to kill you,” she whispered into the coverlet. “I promise.”
“Fish just got back, Mr. Creedy.” She recognized Gregor’s voice. “He says that Jones wasn’t responsible for the attack on the Shell after all. It was a third party. Someone called Simmons. Some locals saw him in Potter’s Creek, and he may be one of the people from the rumors out of Vantage. They didn’t see the exchange where Jones took possession of the goods, but they think a few guards may have.”
“What do the guards say?”
“Harris strung them all up when he shot Jones.”
Sam heard Creedy sigh, and shuddered when he ran the folded width of the belt up between her legs.
“I need to get dressed, then. Gregor, can you tidy this up, please? Have one of the housekeepers neaten up the room and clean up Sam.”
“Yes, Mister Creedy.”
She heard his bare feet pad around the bed, felt his breath on the side of her face as he bent to whisper. She kept her eyes shut, but she could smell his sweat. He smelled sour and bitter under his aftershave, like bad wine going to vinegar.
“I may have to call a meeting tonight,” he said, a finger tracing her cheek. “I’ll want you looking presentable. The blue dress, I think.”
She managed a nod. Even that motion hurt the band of battered flesh across her midriff.
Word reached Harris that Creedy wanted to see the company commanders in the exercise yard. He reported within minutes, climbing up the steps from the basement barracks his men inhabited under the north wing and entering the dusty quadrangle surrounded by three-story concrete walls. Others were there before him, and more arrived over the next few minutes. Creedy stood near the raised platform of marble blocks that marked the yard’s center. It looked like the base for a statue, but had been empty when Creedy first took over. It worked well as a reviewing stand or speaker’s soapbox, whatever its original function. The square whipping post rose a few yards from its southern edge. Harris looked at it with loathing, and the scarred skin on his back ached at the memory.
Creedy stepped onto the dais and scanned the ten unit commanders and their aides. The small crowd fell silent, standing or slouching as their natures decreed, eyes on the trim man in khakis.
“Gentlemen, good afternoon.” Creedy laced his fingers behind his back, his voice carrying well over a few whispers and the scrape of shifting feet on gravel. “I’m sorry to say that we have a disciplinary matter to address today.”
All shuffling stopped. There was one strangled, nervous cough, then absolute silence. Harris wondered where Gregor was. Gregor was the hideously efficient tool Creedy preferred to enforce discipline on his officers.
Creedy scanned the crowd, his gaze stopping on Harris. At the same time a massive hand reached around Harris’s right side and deftly took the pistol from his holster. Harris started to turn, but another huge hand gripped the back of his neck, fingers digging painfully into the muscle and tendons, and lifted him onto his toes. He was pushed forward, gasping and stumbling along. Those who stood in the way scrambled clear as Gregor, holding Harris at arm’s length, frogmarched him to the dais.
Harris opened and closed his mouth, but nothing emerged. The big man held him at the edge of the platform, and Creedy stepped forward, looking down into Harris’s eyes. The company commander was crying, Creedy noted.
“Harris killed one of my commanders for stealing from me,” Creedy said, his voice echoing from the surrounding walls as he raised it to a dramatic, amused tone. “That’s not normally a problem, except the man he killed wasn’t the thief.”
“I didn’t know!” Harris cried in a high, crackling wail.
“But you should have. That’s the point,” Creedy said in a patient tone, as though lecturing a slow student. “With minimal work, it became obvious that someone else had brought Jones the stolen items. You, however, decided to kill the garrison before you questioned them. To make you look efficient, I suppose.”
Harris started to say something, but Gregor slammed his free fist into the side of his captive’s head. It sounded like an axe hitting a tree stump.
“Don’t interrupt,” the big man whispered. Harris whimpered, blood seeping from his ear.
“Being good at the job you have means being smarter than this man,” Creedy said, eyes again scanning the crowd. “And if you’re not smarter, you’ll come to an unfortunate end.”
Harris began to flail, his hands clawing at the fingers gripping his neck. Gregor picked up his right foot and kicked, twisting his body to increase the force. His boot connected with Harris’s right leg above the ankle, and it popped with a sharp, wet sound. Harris howled, panicked and bucking against Gregor’s grip, his right foot hanging askew.
“Gregor, please illustr
ate why it’s important to use your head in the employ of the Castle,” Creedy shouted above the screaming.
Gregor nodded. He didn’t smile, but a wet gleam touched his colorless eyes as he dropped Harris. His broken leg failed him instantly and he fell in the dust, his coat rucked up around him. Gregor watched as he rolled onto his stomach and began to crawl rapidly, crablike and moaning. The big man walked after him as the crowd shifted, keeping the pair in the center of a cleared ring. He took a skipping step and kicked again, faster than his bulk would seem to allow for. Harris’s arm snapped and folded under him, dropping him into the dust again.
Creedy watched, a hint of a smile on his features, as Gregor circled Harris in a considering way, kicking him with studied disinterest. Bones continued to break and after a while Harris stopped trying to crawl. After a little longer he stopped screaming. Gregor continued on, nevertheless, working up a sweat that gleamed on his face as he reduced Harris to a semi-liquid bag of meat and bile. Eventually, the big man became bored, stepped back and mopped his brow with a sleeve.
“Harris’s men are now under Fish,” Creedy said, stepping down from the dais, tugging the bottom of his khaki jacket and straightening his collar. He stopped by the bloodied lump on the ground and considered it briefly.
“I’ll forgive any of you getting beaten by a better man,” he observed, “but I won’t tolerate stupidity. Dismissed.”
Creedy was quiet that afternoon, and Sam, barely able to walk, avoided him. After cleaning up, Gregor returned to his post outside Creedy’s office while his commander finalized lists of materials and men for the move north. The big man was surprised to see Hollis approach, escorted by one of the perimeter guards. The tiny blonde woman, dressed in her usual black, nodded to Gregor. He eyed her clothing, which was covered with dust.