by Chloe Garner
“I’m here.”
There was a cardboard sound.
“I’ve got two more boxes,” Wade said. She blinked.
“Tell me what the powder load is,” she said, dropping the sight and letting her brain relax.
“Um,” Wade said. She looked at Jimmy.
“Those are motorcycles,” she said. “They’re assembling them off the train because there ain’t gonna have been space to store ‘em on the train and ride them off. Couldn’t have ridden off more than a few dozen. They’ve got a hundred they’re tryin’ to get assembled.”
“We got here earlier than they were ready for,” Jimmy said. “Just give her the box.”
Sarah turned, looking at where Wade was trying to get red dust off of the box to read the powder rating on the shells he’d brought her. She rubbed her thumb across it and nodded.
“There,” she said, pointing. “Make sure every box you give me has got that same number right there.”
“Got it,” he said. “Don’t deal with rifle ammo much.”
“Keep going after mechanics,” Jimmy said to her quietly. “I’m going to start a move. Be ready to be on your feet and going.”
“Whenever you say,” she said, putting the scope to her eye again. Both eyes open. You needed to be able to see the world around you just as much as you needed to be able to see the tiny world at the end of the scope, and it took brain training to actually see both.
Bandits had never come in numbers this big.
Three more shots, two more kills. The third, she was pretty certain she’d hit him in the chest from the way he moved, but he’d kept working after the impact. Good body armor.
Hot.
She looked up.
“Jimmy,” she said.
“I’m here,” he said from somewhere behind her.
“Get ‘em movin’, they’re gonna tire fast. Body armor like that ain’t known for breathin’.”
“And leather coats are?” Rich asked. She’d have kicked him in the side except that she was too busy shootin’ mercenaries.
“Gas,” Rich said. “If those’re motorcycles, they gotta have gas.”
Sarah pulled the trigger.
“What of it?”
“Shoot the fuel,” Wade said.
“Ain’t gonna burn,” Sarah said.
“So?” Wade asked. “Still hard to pour with holes in it.”
She smiled.
“Keep an eye out. Maybe even you can make that shot.”
He snorted, settling back down onto his elbows.
“Will you get down?” Rich asked.
“Better shot from my knee than I am from my belly.”
“Better shot alive than dead,” Jimmy said, putting a hand on her shoulder. She looked back at him, and he raised an eyebrow. She sighed, dropping forward on to a palm and settling again on her elbows next to Wade.
“How are the younger men holdin’ up?” she asked.
“When we first got here, they tried to rush us,” Wade said. “’S how we know there are so many left on the train. The guys were excited to be shooting guns, so they put down a good cover fire from the beginning.”
Sarah adjusted her hat, the squeeze of it on her head familiar and enough to help her focus again.
She was up to fifteen and thirteen. Her pocket full of shells was about done, and she was going to have to dip into the box Wade had.
“Jimmy bought good, big guns,” she said. “Not just an army’s worth of rifles.”
“We brought ‘em,” Rich said. “In a buckboard over…” She assumed he waved, but she wasn’t watching to see it. “That way.”
She took another shot, emptying her magazine again and rolling onto her back to reload.
“Jimmy,” she called. He appeared with a weapon whose barrel was almost a fist in diameter. She gave him a sideways grin, leaving her rifle on the ground for the moment and rolling up onto her knee to take it.
“Don’t like the idea of blockin’ the track,” she said.
“Better than letting them go and think they can sneak up another time,” Jimmy answered.
She looked at him and he nodded.
“Do it.”
She checked over the gun, finding all of the mechanical pieces with deft fingers, letting herself learn the way of it, then nodded, checking that it was loaded and armed, then put it to her shoulder. Jimmy stepped away, covering his ears with flat palms. Wade saw him and did the same. Rich didn’t get a chance.
The blast was impressive, low and enduring compared to a gun shot, and the missile flew away from her with a tail of flame. She put it down, kneeling to watch with her scope again as the front half of the engine blew up.
Hopefully if the engineer was in it, he would survive. She looked back at Jimmy.
“You coulda made that shot,” she said.
“You’d have hated me forever,” he answered.
Wade grunted, rolling onto his back and grabbing his shoulder.
“Dammit,” he said through his teeth as red seeped between his fingers. Sarah dropped back a step to grab her saddle bags and lay down next to him.
“Find the man who made the shot,” she said to Rich. He crowded against her, trying to see Wade, and she shoved him. “Find him or we’re all gonna fall. Do it now.”
Rich reluctantly went back to his stomach and Sarah rolled Wade onto his side. She glanced at Jimmy.
“Can you do it?”
He narrowed his eyes at the train.
“I can keep him busy at least.”
She nodded, turning her full attention to Wade.
She didn’t like to be out here without any cover at all - it wasn’t her style. In a firefight, sometimes you did what you had to, but she’d have preferred to drag Wade somewhere out of the line of fire and take her time without some animal part of her brain being distractedly aware that there was a man who had been shooting at her with that shot lining up the next one.
The bullet had hit alongside Wade’s neck, going down toward his lungs, and from the sound of things, that was exactly where it had ended up. She shook her head, rolling Wade onto his stomach and putting her head down against his back.
Gurgling.
Gurgling was never a good sign. He was gasping and struggling for breath, and she rolled him again, making sure to keep the wet lung down. No sense draining it into the other side. He looked at her with wide, frightened eyes.
A bullet will do that to you. Especially one that leaves you unable to breathe.
“Look at me, Wade,” she said, hearing in the back of her mind as Rich and Jimmy tried to figure out who was shooting at them. “Look at me.”
He blinked, his hand grasping hard at his shoulder. She nodded.
“It hurts, and it’s bad. But you know your wife. If I let you die, she’s not going to go back to the city. She’s going to stay here and she’s going to try to put me in pink dresses the rest of my life. I ain’t gonna let that happen, ‘right? You hear me?”
He blinked again, and she nodded, taking out a needle and stabbing him with it, right by the entry hole, shooting him up with a serious painkiller in a single, swift motion and moving on to the long pair of tweezers. She lay on the ground, looking at the hole, then shook her head.
“Dammit,” she said. She rubbed an antiseptic paste the length of the tweezers then pushed them into the hole, perfectly aware that she could kill him, doing that. If the bullet had gotten anywhere near his heart, if she did too much more damage to his lungs… So many important bits of Kayla’s husband between here and the bullet. Good case to be made she ought just leave it where it was, bandage him up, send him back to town and hope Doc was in.
A bullet smacked the ground not a foot away from her, kicking up sand, and Sarah put her hand over Wade’s wound, covering his face with her arm and putting her head down over him so her hat formed a lid.
“Jimmy,” she growled.
“There,” she heard Rich say. “That one. You got him.”
“Sar
ah, they’re figuring it out,” Jimmy said. “We need to scramble.”
“Not yet,” she said. “You keep ‘em scrambling on that end. Wade ain’t ready yet.”
The tweezers hit metal and Wade writhed. She put her elbow down hard on his chest to keep him from moving, pinching the bullet and pulling it out. She flung it to the side, dropping the bloody tweezers back into her bag and pulling out the hole-filling foam with the same reach. She pushed the end of the aerosol canister into his shoulder as deep as it would go, and his head rolled away. Shock, anesthetic, blood loss. Hard to tell which one was leading, but they were all going the same direction.
“Wade,” she said. “Kayla’s gonna be madder’n hell if you just give up on me here.”
His lung was gonna be a mess, but if she could get everything to stop bleeding, she could move him. He didn’t need but one to make it back to town, anyway.
She put her head down on his chest, listening to his heart beat, the sound of the other lung, then nodded.
“Best I’m gonna do.”
She stripped her duster and lay it out next to him. Without her needing to say anything, Jimmy helped her shift Wade onto it, then he and Rich helped her carry Wade back, down a very slight drop. Just a few feet, but it was enough to put the train out of sight, so long as they stayed low. Wade’s head flopped, and Sarah shook her head.
Little Peter came running.
“They said Wade got hit,” he said.
“Get back there,” Jimmy ordered. “We’ll get him on his way, then all of us are going back. We have to execute.”
“Is he gonna be okay?” Little Peter asked.
“Won’t matter if they get out when we aren’t ready,” Jimmy said. Sarah lifted her head, and his head twisted to watch her. She shook her head.
“Too late.”
“What do you hear?” Rich asked.
“Engine,” she said. “Small. They got the motorcycles running.”
“Motorcycles?” Little Peter asked. “No one told me they had bikes.”
“They do now,” Jimmy said. “Execute. Do what we talked about, and do it right, and we might all live.”
“What’s he doin’?” Sarah asked.
“Need you getting Wade prepped and on his way,” Jimmy told her. “Then you’re with me.”
She would have argued, but Wade’s skin was going grayish and he had no muscular reaction to anything anymore.
They found four men at a buckboard and they put Wade in the back.
“Straight to Doc,” she said. “Help him unload. No jostling. Doc’ll know what to do.”
They gave her quick, nervous little nods and started off and Sarah stood for just a moment, watching them go, then turned to figure out where Jimmy had got to.
--------
As a rule, the land around Lawrence was flat and barren. The stuff nearest Lawrence was sandy over a hard, sunbaked ground; up just north of Lawrence, it was just sunbaked.
Notwisthstanding, Jimmy was managing to stand on a ridge.
Sarah could see the desert around them in all directions for miles, the low-humidity air clear to the edge of the world in three directions and only ending at the mountains in the other.
“Is he going to live?” Jimmy asked, watching the train.
Sarah could have hit the men over there at this distance, but her kill ratio would have gone through the floor.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Was a good shot. Lucky it didn’t kill him right off.”
Jimmy nodded.
“He’s going to live.”
She shrugged.
“I believe you.”
“All right,” he said. “Petey’s getting the command up and down the line. Should happen soon.”
“Any reason this needs to be a mystery?” Sarah asked. A muscle in his jaw wiggled as he didn’t look at her.
“Because you aren’t going to like it.”
As they watched, men started mounting up on motorcycles, riding them in formations like stinging insects or birds, darting out toward the line of Lawrence men, one man driving, one man shooting. They were fast and they’d be hard to hit, even as they got close. The rate of gunfire was lethal. Sarah shook her head.
“Ain’t got much time,” she said. “Gonna lose men.”
“We outnumber them,” Jimmy said. “And we outgun them. I didn’t anticipate the body armor.”
“Gotta get ‘em moving,” she said. Even as she said it, the men off to the left, the ones closest to town, started running. A bevy of motorcycles pressed after them, shooting them in the backs as they ran, and Sarah looked at Jimmy with a sense of dismay.
The line broke further and further along, and the motorcycles pressed them, taking almost no fatalities.
And Jimmy just stood.
Sarah put her rifle to her shoulder, leading one of the nearest motorcyclists and picking off the driver.
One shot, one kill. She gritted her teeth, lining up another shot.
Both she and Jimmy squatted reflexively as another motorcycle passenger returned fire at them, but she got him before he got them.
“Thought you wanted an attack dog,” she said. “What are we doin’ here, Jimmy?”
“Wait,” he said.
All of the men were running. The train began to empty, more men in black clothes chasing after the Lawrence men, toward town.
“Jimmy, where are they gonna stop?”
He glanced at her without turning his head.
“Jimmy,” she warned.
Three shots, three kills. Three bikes down.
The first one was back up, but the gunner was riding it, for now, which meant he wasn’t killing people.
She lowered the rifle, reaching into her pocket for more shells. She’d opened the box from Wade and dumped it in there, but that was getting low. She needed the second box, but she’d left it with Wade.
And she was just going to need more, after that.
“Jimmy,” she said, watching the train through her scope.
“The train is emptying,” he said. “They have no water, no map, and are wearing equipment that is much too heavy and too dark for the desert,” he said. “Apart from the motorcycles, they’ll be slow.”
“Apart from those,” she said, taking another shot. Miss.
“Shoot the bikes,” he said. “They have plenty of men.”
“You think my rifle’s gonna take out a motorcycle?” she asked. He sighed and she looked over at him.
“I think a motorcycle is a finicky piece of machinery,” he said. “Any number of things go wrong when you put a hole in it.”
“Seat works plenty well either way,” she muttered, watching.
This was hard enough when she knew what she was shooting at.
Two more shots, both a waste, and she dropped to a knee again as one of the motorcycles turned to come straight at her. She shot the driver face-on, then discovered Jimmy was gone. He came back from behind her, leveling a rifle.
“The one you just put down,” he said.
“I’m lookin’ at it,” she answered.
“Engine block is the shiny metal part,” he said. “It will be aluminum, and will probably break if you hit it. Anything around that is good.”
She sighed, lowering her sights. Jimmy pulled the trigger before she did, and she was impressed to see the bright metallic box break open.
“Yes,” Jimmy said, like letting his breath out. “It will break.”
She looked over at him.
“Didn’t think you ever practiced with a rifle.”
“A gun is a gun,” he answered. “We need to move. Go get us motorcycles.”
She looked at him, and he raised an eyebrow, impatient.
“You just shot the one I could’a,” she said, looking through her scope again.
Most of the motorcycles were chasing after the fleeing Lawrence men, but a few were still buzzing around the men off of the train, keeping them moving. Sarah started shooting at the men on foot, not half exp
ecting to hit any of them seriously, but stirring up three motorcycles that came at her.
“You got one of these?” she asked as they raced across the desert, kicking up plumes of red dust behind them.
“Far right,” he said.
“Far left,” she said. “I’ll get the middle one, you pick up the gunners.”
“Done,” he breathed, pulling the trigger. Show off. Sarah waited for her breath to stabilize, then switched targets.
Bullets strafed across in front of her, from kick-up of sand and dust, but Jimmy was after them and she didn’t let her focus stray. The third motorcycle was most of the way to them before she hit him, and the gunner went catapulting over the driver as the bike skidded over the rough stony ground on its side. Sarah killed him before he regained his feet, checking the other two gunners and finding them dead.
“More incoming,” Jimmy said. “You know how to ride one of these?”
“Looks to me like you need someone covering you,” Sarah said, hustling down to where she’d left her saddle bags. She found the missing box of ammunition sitting next to them, and she slung the saddle bags over her shoulder and the bullets into her pocket, standing as Jimmy picked up one of the bikes and started it, driving it over to her. Motors got louder, more bullets. Sarah sat on the bike behind Jimmy, missing her duster but glad in the moment that she didn’t have it - it would have tangled in the tire. She let her hat drop back behind her head, hanging on a string around her throat, and she drew both handguns. The rifle had a strap on it that she hated to use, but there was no way in hell she’d just drop it the way Jimmy had dropped his own rifle.
You kept the gun you knew.
Sarah shot at the men, but the handguns on the bumpy motorcycle were next to worthless, other than to keep them at a distance. Their guns didn’t have big enough magazines to really keep up a sustained firefight, so eventually they were all just racing across the desert toward Lawrence.
There was more gunfire ahead of them and Sarah peered around Jimmy as the town came into view.
Men in black were everywhere, and if Sarah had gotten to pick, she would have stayed at this distance, just picking them off with her rifle until she ran out of shot, but there were Lawrence men there, too, hiding and fighting as best they could, and the mercenaries were destroying the town. She pulled her rifle up, sliding the strap along her shoulder to get a better look at what was going on.