Dan rolled and barely made it out of the impact zone this time. He came up quick, wielding the knife as if he were getting ready to cut into a steak, his thumb running along the side of the blade, giving him plenty of control and movement. Loviatar was back up as well, coming towards him, holding the hammer out to his side with both hands. They circled each other as Caldwell reloaded and pumped a couple more rounds into Loviatar’s back. The behemoth lurched forward slightly as each bullet made impact, but remained undeterred; any pain he felt was concealed by the mask.
“Is this sonofabitch human?” Caldwell shouted as he worked to clear a jam in his rifle.
Dan didn’t have a chance to respond. He jumped back as the massive hammer cut horizontally through the air, grazing and tearing his shirt. The swing took Loviatar off balance and Dan seized the moment. He leaped forward, the tip of the blade leading the charge, jamming it into the front of the monster’s throat and severing his windpipe. Loviatar gurgled, giving voice to his displeasure, and dropped the hammer. He began wailing on Dan with both of his oversized fists. Dan grimaced as his bones began to give way beneath the force of the blows, but he held firm to the hilt of the blade, his feet dangling off the ground as Loviatar began to turn circles, whipping him back and forth like a ragdoll. Dan clutched the back of Loviatar’s neck with one hand and used the other to begin sawing away. The edged steel worked at a slow, but steady pace, severing muscles, tendons, and empty veins. As it reached the back of the neck, where spine met skull, Loviatar’s assault slowed, his defenses weakened, and his steps became stumbles. Dan’s feet touched down on the concrete as Loviatar fell to his knees, his arms slowly flailing. Dan gave the blade one final push, severing the spinal cord. It was if someone had pulled a plug. All movement from Loviatar ceased. His arms grew still at his sides as his head slowly fell towards his left shoulder, gradually gaining speed, like an uprooted tree, bits of tendon snapping along the way. Dan stepped back. Loviatar remained upright on his knees, dead. Aside from the partially severed head, he looked the same as he always had; eyes still blank and bulging behind the mask.
Dan took a deep breath and winced at the pain in his chest, clawing at the wall like a cat in a burlap sack. He moved cautiously around Loviatar’s corpse, scared it might suddenly reanimate.
“Dan…” Caldwell shuffled forward two steps before collapsing. He’d been shot. There was a circle of blood below his right shoulder blade.
“Oh, shit! Caldwell, hang on!” Dan fell to Caldwell’s side. He used the knife to cut the shirt away. Beneath it was the bullet wound, small and puckered, oozing blood like an erupting volcano. “Stay with me.”
“I’m with you. I’m with you,” Caldwell’s voice was muffled against the floor. “To be honest, my head hurts worse than the gunshot wound, you bastard.”
“I’m sorry about that, everyone was turning on me. I saw you move and I just reacted.”
“I said I was with you and I meant it.”
Dan used his fingers to feel around the wound, trying to find any sign of the bullet. “I’m going to have to try to cut this thing out. It’s going to hurt.”
“Can’t hurt worse than when it went in.”
“It can and it will,” Dan spoke from experience.
“Get it over with.” Caldwell pressed his forehead hard against the floor.
Soon his screams filled the lobby.
17
Newmire was the smallest settlement Dominic had ever seen. It was a single street, lined on either side by one room shacks. The shacks were made up of thatched walls and scrap metal roofs. End-to-end, the settlement took up about one-hundred yards of Wasteland. He sat on his horse at the edge of town, the sun in his eyes. Ronan stood beside him with his mule and cart.
“We shouldn’t be involved in this. This is dirty business.” Ronan rubbed the back of his neck, his face all tangled up.
“Business is business.” The horse was kicking up dust with its hooves, eager to get back on the move.
Ronan looked wounded by his response. “This is a man’s life.”
“A man made a deal, he gave his word. If a man doesn’t have his word, then he has nothing.”
“That’s real easy for you to say.”
“You think I’d be doing this if I didn’t have to? I’m sitting here on this horse, about to go collect a man’s hand because I gave my word to a woman and this is the only way I can keep it. There are certain perils that come with making a promise. No more talking. Let’s go get this thing done.” Dominic sent the horse into a trot.
Ronan sighed and reluctantly followed, the squeaky wheels of the scrap cart piercing the morning air.
As Dominic moved deeper into the settlement, signs of life began to emerge. A disheveled woman presented herself on a nearby porch, clutching a steaming bucket of foggy liquid. She regarded Dominic with a suspicious eye, before emptying the bucket and making a hasty retreat. Dominic halted the horse as a toil-worn man crossed the path in front of him, pulling a tattered net filled with split logs. He struggled to look sideways at Dominic as if the weight of his head were a great burden.
“Old timer, give me a moment?” Dominic pulled the horse up beside the bony laborer.
“I’ll give you half,” the man said, spitting into the dirt.
“Can you point me in the direction of a Mr. Higgins?”
“He owe you something?”
“What makes you think he owes me something?”
The old man let some slack out of the net and rolled his shoulders back. “There ain’t a man or woman in the Wastes that lazy sonofabitch ain’t borrowed from. Only folks I seen calling on Higgins are looking to collect one thing or another. This town is half-dead; folks killed by bandits or run off to join the Rebels. The well has gone to shit. And, still, that sonofabitch won’t show his face or lend a hand. Him and his bastard offspring, they leave it all to an old sonofabitch like me. Look at me. How you expect me to fix a well all by my lonesome?”
“That is a predicament. My sympathies.”
“I guess I can’t hardly blame the man for trying to protect his skin.” The old timer managed another hard-won glance. “So what you want with him? You a friend?”
“No, I am not.”
“Figured as much.” He tightened his grip on the load. “He’s down there, last house on the right. Just try to keep the ruckus down; the old lady is still asleep.”
Dominic nodded. “Many thanks.”
Ronan, once more, sighed in disapproval.
“It’ll be over before you know it. You don’t even have to come in. Just stay outside and make sure no one takes the horse.” Dominic hopped down from the saddle, passing the reins over to Ronan. He softened his footsteps as he closed in on the shabby dwelling. It was a mystery to him how one person could survive in such a confined space, never mind a family of four; he was certain his prison cell had granted more leg room. Dominic was two steps from the door when it swung backward, almost pegging him in the face. The entire family emerged from the dark hole. It was like some sort of magic trick; the father first, followed by the two sons, and then the mother. They filed left and right, lining up evenly across the front of the shack. The father and the two sons had rifles. The mother was dressed up in a dirty cooking apron, wielding a knife with bits of potato peel still on the blade.
“Another fly come to pay the spider a visit?” The man stood shirtless, his chest and torso covered in a thick blanket of curly black hair. He was missing his two front teeth.
“Higgins?” Dominic should have drawn his gun after descending the horse, now there was no chance of getting to it. Even if their aim was as poor as their hygiene, between the three of them, they were bound to hit something vital.
Higgins hooked a thumb into the top of his waistband, cradling his rifle under one arm. He smiled wide, revealing more gaps in his gum line. The sweat rolling off of his forehead cut deep trenches of filth across his face. “Well, partner, I’m quite sure we’ve never met. Yet, somehow, you
know my name. Who sent you?”
“I’m just going to head out. You gentlemen obviously have some stuff—”
Higgins turned his aim slightly. “You’re in this too. Just stand your ass right there.”
The squeaky wheels on Ronan’s cart went silent.
Dominic laughed and shook his head. “You’ll have to excuse my partner, guns make him nervous.”
“All guns or just our guns? See, cause I’m thinking you two didn’t come here bearing good will for me and mine.”
The two boys, both scrawny piles of shit wearing sackcloth pants that ended around the middle of their shins, were nodding to the tune being played by their daddy’s lips.
“We came here looking to do business with you and yours,” Dominic said, presenting the scrap cart over his right shoulder.
“Then why is your partner so eager to get back on the road?”
Dominic laughed. “You present a merchant with anything other than coin and he’s likely to shit his pants.”
“Funny. You don’t look nervous.” Higgins removed his thumb from his waistband and cradled the under-barrel of his rifle, looking down the tip of his nose at Dominic.
“I’m not a merchant,” Dominic answered coolly.
Higgins nodded for Dominic to continue.
“I’m a guide, of sorts. I’m here to make sure commerce goes smoothly, but mostly to make sure our friend over there doesn’t go tripping over his own shadow.”
Higgins looked at Ronan cowering by the wagon and gave a cruel smirk. “He is about the most skittish damn thing I ever seen. Looks like he wears his balls up inside his stomach.”
Dominic laughed. “To tell you the truth, he might. I’ve never looked.”
“He don’t pay you enough for that?” Higgins roared along with Dominic, his rifle lowering slightly as the tension in the air melted between them. “Ah, shit, that is good,” Higgins said, the laughter drying up instantly. “But I’m afraid you and your merchant friend picked the wrong town. We’re all tapped out. Nothing to trade with.”
“That’s a shame. Old timer over there pointed us in your direction.”
Higgins signaled for his sons to lower their guns. “That old bastard is about as bright as that bundle of wood he’s always dragging around.” Higgins shook his head. “Everything around here is all dried up; picked apart by the bandits, swept up by the rebels, or whittled down by the elements. The few folks we do got left are scraping by. We’ve begged and borrowed and we’re still barely able to keep our heads above the sand.”
Dominic’s eyes drifted over Higgins’ hands. He didn’t imagine it’d be all that different from butchering a pig. Everything would fall into place after the first cut.
“Tell you the truth, that’s why me and my boys have been keeping these babies close.” He gave his rifle an affectionate stroke. “Got a few not-so-nice types out there that I owe and they’ve been getting rather aggressive with their collection tactics. I thought that, perhaps, they’d taken to hiring out.”
“Afraid I don’t know anything about that,” Dominic said. “But feel free to point me in their direction. Damn sure could use the work, I’ll tell you that much. This one isn’t exactly making me a rich man.” Dominic turned and took Ronan under one arm, locking him in a brotherly chokehold.
Ronan looked a little pale as he made a few feeble attempts to break from Dominic’s embrace.
“Actually, honey,” the woman with the butcher’s knife spoke for the first time, her voice was deeper than her husband’s, “I could use a new cook pot, one we got has been leaking.”
“You could use a lot of things, trust me, but we don’t have the coin.”
“Y’all do trade?” she asked, ignoring her husband and going straight for the source.
Dominic suddenly had a plan, and he wasn’t going to give Ronan a chance to mess it up. “Of course we trade. What you got for us?”
“Depends on what you got for me. You got a cook pot that don’t leak?”
“I’m sure he can fix you up.” Dominic released Ronan, spinning him back towards the cart.
“Yeah…let’s have a look,” Ronan mumbled as the woman approached.
Higgins slapped one of his boys on the chest with the back of his hand. “Get your asses inside and look in on dinner while the grown folks conduct business.”
The two youngsters were dragging the muzzles of their rifles through the dirt as they scooted back inside the shack, looking downright disappointed at the anticlimactic resolution.
As Ronan dug around inside of the cart, the woman and her butcher’s knife staring over his shoulder, Higgins approached Dominic, his weapon cradled in his arms. “I’d say we’re about due for some rain.”
“We had a pretty good rainfall blow through not too long ago, northwest of here.”
Higgins smacked his lips resentfully. “Shit, you should have sent some this way.”
“I’ll be sure to bottle a little next time.”
The woman hung the butcher’s knife loosely beside her right thigh as if she’d forgotten she was holding it.
Dominic moved in behind her as if he were joining in on the scavenger hunt. “Any luck?”
She shook her head, her eyes transfixed on the pile of scrap.
Dominic grabbed her wrist and snapped it with one hand. He scooped up the knife as it spun from her grasp and launched it underhanded into Higgins’ shoulder, causing him to bellow and drop the rifle as his hands grasped for the hilt of the blade.
The woman was bent over at the waist, clutching her arm, taking big sucking breaths through clenched teeth.
Dominic removed his pistol and handed it to Ronan. “Keep her in your sights.” Ronan responded with a panicked shake of the head and Dominic backhanded him across the mouth. “Take it! Damn you! Or we’re both dead!” That did the trick. Dominic wrenched the knife from Higgins’ shoulder and put him on his belly in the dirt, placing a knee in the center of his back as he took up the rifle and pointed it at the shack. “You two boys come out and join your folks, hands high and empty.” Inside the small dwelling came the sound of something falling and breaking, but there was no response. Dominic pulled the trigger and the front door exploded backward in a shower of splintered wood. “Last chance!”
“Don’t hurt my boys!” the woman yelled, taking a break from sucking at her broken wrist.
Moved by their mother’s cries, the boys emerged, hands locked behind their heads.
“Take a seat where you stand. Don’t move unless you feel like being orphans.”
The boys exchanged sidelong glances. Dominic saw the seeds of defiance taking root behind their eyes, but those seeds were quickly drowned in the waters of cowardice.
“Smart move.” Dominic pressed the muzzle of the rifle into the back of Higgins’ skull. “We’ve got some unpleasant business to take care of and then me and my friend will be moving along.”
“What business?” Higgins’ spit a ball of sand and saliva. “I don’t know you.”
“My employer knows you.”
“Who you working for?”
“Randall. That name sound familiar?”
Higgins deflated, dropping his forehead against the sand. “I never should have gotten involved with him.”
“No, you shouldn’t have.”
“Says the guy that’s doing his dirty work.”
“I need the coin.”
“So did I!” Higgins whole body jerked in anger, but Dominic didn’t budge. The brief struggle left Higgins panting and half of his face coated in a sweaty layer of sand. “I was just trying to feed my family. Look around. You think I’d have shook hands with the devil if I had another choice?”
“No, I don’t. You did what you had to do. And now, here we are. It’s just business.” Dominic held a hand out to Ronan. “Toss me the machete from the cart.”
There was a prominent cut on Ronan’s bottom lip where Dominic had hit him. He wasted no time plucking the machete from the cart, keeping aim on
the moaning woman as he did so.
“Put her next to her boys. I’m going to need you to keep an eye on them while I get the hand.”
Ronan shook his head. “There’s got to be another way, this isn’t right.”
“Don’t fuck with me Ronan, not right now, not when we’re neck deep in it. You can cry later, I’ll even hold the tissue.”
Ronan had lowered the gun and was now aiming from the hip, the muzzle now pointed at Dominic’s head. “Don’t make me do this.”
“Shoot that sonofabitch!” the woman howled.
“Ronan, you ever shot a man before?”
“I don’t think it’ll be too hard to figure out and my chances of missing you at this range are pretty slim.”
“It’s not the pulling the trigger that’s hard. It’s living with the results.”
“I’ll have a harder time living with myself if I let you go through with this.”
The two boys and their mother had become Ronan’s cheerleaders, waving their fists and shouting for him to put a bullet in Dominic’s head. Even Higgins had joined in the chorus, sputtering sand clogged grunts of encouragement as Dominic’s knee pressed harder against the back of his neck.
“Ronan, I have to do this. I need those weapons. Unless you’ve got an arsenal in that cart, I’m out of options. I don’t want to kill you, but I will if you don’t point that gun somewhere else.”
“Weapons?” Higgins’ speech was garbled.
Dominic increased the pressure. “Shut the fuck up!”
“Randall’s weapons?”
Dominic lifted his knee. “What’d you say?”
“Randall promised you weapons in exchange for my hand?”
Dominic grabbed a fistful of Higgins’ shirt and turned him onto his back. “Maybe he did.”
“I know where they are, all of them.”
“Keep talking.” Dominic stood, prodding Higgins’ in the top of his chest with the muzzle.
“I tell you and then what? You take my hand anyway? Kill me and my family? How can I trust you?”
The Glass Mountains: The Saboteur Chronicles Book 2 Page 14