Sweat poured down his face as his motions slowed, letting go of the poor bastard’s jacket that he had soiled further. His attention set on the other man beside him, equally dead with an identical look of shock on his features, though this one sported an antler-handled knife embedded in his chest. Jacques heaved the contents of his stomach beside him before getting to his feet. He limped to the corpse, keeping as much weight from his wounded leg as possible, before sitting down to yank the knife, his knife, free and sliding it back into its sheath. Blood still pounded through him, tainted with an abnormal rage, but it had begun to subside.
The poison would be out of his system soon.
A Bluecoat knelt before him, checking him over with a pained smile. He spoke words of encouragement but the content was ignored, like the white noise between radio stations. Everything felt disjointed and unreal from the comedown. Even with this, Jacques recognized a hand offered towards him for assistance and accepted the help to move. It took a while to make it down the hillside and when at the platform, he fell quite unceremoniously onto his back.
One of the Bluecoat medics was called and began patching Jacques up there and then, with little disregard for the distress his stitches caused. With their supply of painkillers used up, it was substituted with the hardest alcohol that the train carried. He welcomed the sting of the needle and every pull of its thread to his thigh.
Colette sat herself beside him and wiped her face down. Then she reached for the man’s hand in comfort. Wearily he squeezed, watching the rays of the sun shimmer and crystallize in his eyesight.
‘Did we do it?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want to have been crippled for nothing.’
Her hand squeezed tighter as she watched the Bluecoats wave in celebration in the streets. The fighting was finally over. Now came the assessing of the cost.
‘We’ll find out real soon. Just you rest.’ She brushed his wet fringe away, mistaking the blood matting it together for sweat.
‘Couldn’t even lie to me, huh?’ He smiled weakly. Colette patted his chest softly, watching the medic’s needle dart in and out of his flesh.
‘I’ve never been able to lie to you and you know it.’
Chapter 33
The death in all things
The Morning Star’s funnel shot blasts of steam into the air, preparing for its leave. The desert was quiet and cold as the sun began to set, but matters were not yet concluded, not for everyone at least. The last of the injured were secured and the final corpse laid in line in one of the storage cars. The platform was tarnished with dashes of blood, the stain of which would remain until buried by the sands or destroyed outright.
Misu brushed her hands over her manager’s purpled face, delicate enough to not antagonize the protruding lumps that dominated the majority of the flesh. Her eyes flickered, restraining the grief and the guilt that resided in her being. Franco grunted in his place, giving an attempt of a smile.
‘Thank you,’ he rasped.
The eye that hadn’t been swollen over shimmered with wet, indicating his relief that the ordeal was finally over.
This was not something Corinne agreed with.
‘You look bad, Franco,’ she said, arms firmly crossed.
‘You don’t look so hot yourself. I see you’ve been tagged,’ Franco stated, wearily pointing to her bound arm.
‘He’ll heal,’ Misu added.
‘And Wilheim?’ Corinne asked in an attempt to gain closure.
Franco and Misu looked to one another.
‘We’ll be hearing no more of him,’ Misu said.
‘Did you leave him alive?’
Nothing.
‘I said is he alive?’ Corinne repeated herself, firmer.
‘He ran but didn’t get out of the shed. Like I said,’ Misu exclaimed, ‘he’s not a concern to anyone any more. Especially not us.’
‘Which is a yes. And what of all the Red Root? That factory is stuffed with it. Did you see how much of it they were managing to grow there? It’s just sitting in there waiting for the one to take Wilheim’s place to ship it off. We can’t let it be distributed!’
Misu removed her green-lensed spectacles and placed them delicately upon the bridge of Franco’s nose to ensure the harshness of the sun didn’t pain him further. No, not hers, she reminded herself once more. She had merely borrowed them from their owner, much like everything else in her possession.
And in their reflection she saw herself, dirty and red-eyed, like a stranger who’d had their very essence drained from them. The reflection stared back in equal shock before morphing to something quite different. The horror faded away, giving way to anger and that bore fury. A white-hot fire rushed through her veins, her teeth collapsing together like a bear trap.
Franco’s drifting fingers pacified her, tracing her cheek delicately. Her anger was impossible to drain away completely, especially this quickly, but it was just enough for her to relinquish its grip upon her person.
‘Well then.’ Misu turned her head in acknowledgement. ‘I’ll leave you to deal with that how you see fit.’
* * *
Corinne stormed through the carriages in turn.
She passed the swathes of showgirls who were already passing through to provide aid to Franco. Those who tried to stop her were shrugged aside in defiance.
She went through empty carriages, ones scattered with the Bluecoats, the injured being tended to and bloodying the carpets. Marshal Juniper said nothing, slouched upon a seat, assessing the cost of this raid. He saw Corinne wade through the bodies. He clearly knew the look in her eyes full well and said not a word, instead letting her go about her business.
Corinne passed Jacques, who panted like a dog, retching away the drug from his body into a pail. On her word he got to his feet and followed her in turn to her destination.
As they reached the boxcar, Corinne came upon Wyld who had taken a moment to be by herself, coming to terms with the drama and the danger and all the things that it brought to a person. Her cheeks were patted with dirt, tear-stained troughs running through each one.
Corinne placed a pained hand upon the cannon’s periscope. ‘What’s the most powerful shell we have that this thing can handle?’ she demanded.
‘You’ve got three volcanoes. High explosive, delay fuse. It’s one fat ball of a TNT mixture with –’
‘Load it,’ Corinne ordered, cutting her off.
‘Does Misu know about this?’
Corinne repeated herself, sterner.
Wyld pulled the top of the ammo crate off, lifting the heavy metal weight with both arms. She passed it to Jacques who placed it with a strain upon the belt loader.
Corinne spun the periscope and in her vision centred the factory up the hillside. The shell of a structure, covered in broken windows, looked like a dead thing left to the desert to swallow it whole.
For Corinne, it didn’t look dead enough.
She pulled the firing handle and let the shell fly. In her vision, she watched the speck bite into the factory’s side. A fireball shortly followed, blasting away a hefty chunk of brickwork that sent a couple of floors of the interior down upon themselves. Blasts of dust and deep black smoke puffed from the windows.
‘Again!’ Corinne demanded. The order was complied with silently.
The Morning Star rocked with the second volley. The shell struck true this time blasting a part of the west wall to a collapse. A flood of bricks trailed down the hillside. Those that had been catapulted into the air rained down into the ghost town, punching through dilapidated roofs with little resistance.
‘Again!’ Corinne ordered, listening to the last shell loaded into the weapon. She turned the periscope to the adjoining train shed, aligning the markings to the glass and steel pointed roof. It was an easy shot and given the cannon’s precision, the entire thing would come crashing down, obliterating everything – or more specifically everyone – inside.
Her nails bit into the periscope handles. Her grip was released from one
and placed upon the firing lever beside it. She could do it. She could end it all. She could kill the villain and nobody would shed a tear. Quite the opposite in fact, she would be congratulated for doing so. Hell, they would throw her a damn parade for putting him so deep in the ground.
Wilheim deserved nothing. Even as quick of a death as this would be was far too generous for what he subjected her to. But it would be by her hand. It would be a justice of her own undertaking. She could do this and snuff him out of existence, extinguish the cruellest son of a bitch to have ever been blessed with life.
She could do it.
But it wouldn’t be what they wanted.
Instead of levelling the yard, the final shell blew apart the remaining west wall. The building leant sideways and toppled, scattering itself down the hillside with a mound of brick dust that threatened to haze the sun. From the remains trails of black smoke drifted out, the last remnants of the Red Root turning to ashes and being buried along with the corpses.
With its job done, the Morning Star pulled away, snaking through the landscape until it reached the horizon. By then the sun had crowned to an orange glow, it too meeting the horizon as it set for the day.
* * *
From his place on the floor, Wilheim had edged himself slowly to the weapon beside him. His thinking was that Franco would come back for one last gloat and would receive a bullet response. Then he would set things right once more.
He looked around, fighting with the arguments that his muscles made. He swore them into compliance, which didn’t work. He cursed and threatened their disposition, which also failed. Maybe his back was broken. Maybe this was a temporary thing. No matter, he concluded. Someone would inevitably make a run out here, no doubt one of those in his employ and as such would help him commit vengeance.
Yes, he pledged, it would be most terrible indeed.
The still corpses remained around him. Those who had groaned in injury had slipped away, their wounds too grievous to sustain and now transformed to silence. The fallen lawmen were retrieved to ensure a proper burial. Wilheim’s men, on the other hand, would fade to skeletons given time. Blood thickened the sand before him. Dead hands lay open and welcomed the Holy Sorceress Herself.
And then the silence was interrupted.
Somewhere inside the factory’s bowels, metal struck metal, and fell from a height. It struck once, twice before spinning to a halt. It came from a gantry, Wilheim assumed, high on the production level, and he held his broken breath for any other clues of noise.
More noise came.
Softer this time, light and delicate, in unison. Multiple strikes hit metal, landing on the walkways, padding in rhythm before descending to chaos.
Yet it was not these noises that concerned Wilheim.
A chill accompanied the blazing pain down his back.
It was the panting that joined them.
They turned to growls, to snarls as the desert wolves trotted through the factory. They foraged every corner of the structure, every cranny in pack mentality. Some managed to make their way into the kitchens and tear into the unprotected foods they could find. Now the factory’s owners had relinquished it, the wolves had moved in to take the territory as their own.
The smell of blood was far too appealing and as soon as the factory floor was discovered, a single, signalling howl brought the rest of the pack.
Wilheim tried his mighty best to withdraw from the sea of glowing eyes glistening from the foyer. They sparkled in the fading sun, savage and keen, their owners with bared teeth anxious at the stirring figure.
All Wilheim could do was call for them to turn away, using every curse he could muster and as loud as his throat would allow.
The pack stirred, yipping in concern at this noise, but undeterred, the braver wolves trotted inside until they reached the closest corpse. They sniffed and they licked and they bit into the welcome meal. With the first gush of red, dinner was served. The wolves disregarded their worry and set upon the dead before them, tearing flesh and splitting bone.
Wilheim threw forward every ounce of strength and reached for the revolver. For a moment everything was white, a brilliant fireball of agony that forced his eyes to roll back in anguish, but as he willed them open – success! He had retrieved the weapon and thumbed the hammer back with trembling hands.
The barrel waved to each of the animals in turn, but there were now over half a dozen and they had stopped their feeding. Wet maws hung open, ravenous, and all had taken an interest in the one still alive. They each approached when the threat was pointed away. The noises were hollow to them. They could identify the weak, the injured, as was their natural writ.
Wilheim Fort staggered his breathing. He watched in abject panic as the wolves advanced. Even six shots, or as many as the revolver held, would be too little to force them away. The eyes that glowed held an ambition that he was in no position to quell.
With a sharp inhalation, Wilheim accepted his defeat. Misu had orchestrated this entire ordeal, damn her. Franco had failed to ultimately pay for his insolence, damn him too. Alex Juniper had destroyed his enterprises and left them to be swallowed by the sands over time. May he especially be dragged to the deepest reach of damnation. Those loyal to Wilheim, who followed him without question, now lay butchered. His coffers of coin and power had been emptied. His body was broken beyond reasonable recovery. Yes, Wilheim accepted that this was the end, but he was not so proud as to accept it ungratefully.
Honoured by his past successes, keeping them at the forefront of his mind, the gun barrel traced over wet skin until it rested against his temple. Every effort was made to withhold the tears that flowed but they were simply brushed aside. Let the Holy Sorceress welcome me with open arms, he prayed, and let ruin fall on those who caused this tragedy!
With the prayer and a final, deep inhalation, Wilheim Fort pulled the trigger.
And then there was nothing.
No pain. No noise.
More importantly, there was no bang.
The revolver hammer hit an empty chamber.
Upon realizing, he repeated the performance and pulled the trigger.
Again, a dead click.
Frantically his finger jolted over and over. Every yank was the same, the piece now digging into the side of his skull in desperation. It was empty. It was fucking empty! The wolves continued their advance, now almost at his feet with low growls filling his ears. They knew full well what fear smelt like. Wilheim reeked of it.
His screams descended into nothing as the wolves ate their fill.
* * *
On the dining carriage of the Morning Star, Franco Del Monaire propped himself against a window and sat watching the wavy dunes in the sunset. The carriage rocked in motion as they cut through the landscape, a welcoming, comforting movement that reassured him that the horrors were over. He was home once more.
Misu sat opposite, staring at him as if he were a trick of the eyes. These long months had taken their toll, forging her into something that she never wanted to become. Lies never sat well with her, but were instead thrust upon her living to ensure a delicate balance of necessity and duty. Trust could, perhaps, be won with time. Maybe the showgirls would accept that and some friendships could be rebuilt to what they once were, before all this. She hoped at least.
Her hands slipped over the table between them and eventually Franco slowly relinquished his. She cupped them tenderly and smiled, the first genuine smile that she had yielded to in a long, long while. The showgirls passed in turn, still keen to welcome the owner of the Morning Star back to his rightful place.
Franco attempted to reciprocate, but failed. It would take a long time for these wounds to heal.
And Misu needed time of her own, to be at peace with this whole sorry affair. Decisions were made on her own part that would haunt her conscience. Staring back at the darkening landscape, reflecting on her actions, Misu reminded herself that a good person would have shown mercy to an enemy. A good person would have
chosen the just path.
But out here in the Sand Sea, good folk were few and far between.
Chapter 34
The fate of the show
‘Have you seen this?’ Franco tossed the newspaper down before Misu who was enjoying a quiet moment at the billiard table. It landed upon the red felt, away from her shot but no less bothersome by its appearance. She leant across the table’s edge and knocked the cue ball, sending a coloured ball rolling into a pocket. Finally, she stood straight, assessing the ball placement before surveying the paper itself. On the front in bold type was the following declaration:
THE MORNING STAR INVOLVED IN DESERT MASSACRE
Many lawmen and criminals dead, show owner said to be responsible.
Marshal declines to comment. Franco Del Monaire believed to be alive.
‘It’s a hell of a headline, I’ll give it that. It makes me want to read more.’ Misu pocketed her next ball, assessing the angle of her next shot.
‘No you don’t.’ Franco snatched it back up, skimming the length of each column nosily. ‘One of the Bluecoats must have sold me down the river. I figure it was too much to expect the entire thing to have a lid on it. No wonder people have been buzzing around outside!’
‘They don’t name me at least,’ Misu scoffed, amused. Despite the severity of the paper’s revelation, she found the idea of being outed surprisingly liberating. ‘Still, it pushes things forward, does it not?’
‘How can you be so calm about this?’
‘You taught me well.’ She shrugged.
‘I wanted more time to think things over,’ he contested, half watching her play, half engaged in his furore.
‘You’ve had time. It’s been weeks in fact, time you’ve spent holed up without wanting to step a foot outside.’
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