Blood & Dust (Lonesome Ridge Book 2) (17 page)

Connor’s heart seized in his chest and his face grew hard again. The small ball of pity that was growing in his chest for Jeremiah shriveled up and died. “Dead,” he growled.

Jeremiah’s smile vanished. “She’s dead?” He ran a hand through his matted hair as best he could and sighed. “Bit?”

Connor nodded. “Shot herself so she wouldn’t turn. But only after helping us save Lonesome Ridge.”

Jeremiah groaned. “Oh, poor Cora. Poor, poor Cora. Her and Abby both. Deserved better’n that.”

“What about me?” Abby rode her horse up behind Connor. Her shotgun was pointed at Jeremiah’s head.

“Abby?” Jeremiah took another step forward as his jaw dropped. “You’re alive?” His undead eyes were wide with disbelief.

Abby glared at him. “Yeah, no thanks to you.”

“But... but I saw you get bit. The crazy Injun had her teeth in your arm. You shoulda been deader’n dead.”

Abby raised her left arm, the stump clearly visible as the sleeve fell away.

“Hannah saved me. Hannah and Jasper.”

Jeremiah’s grin returned. “That’s great,” he exclaimed. “Oh, that’s just great. That takes a big load off my mind, ya know? I was so worried, wonderin’ about everyone. That’s good, real good.”

Connor stepped between Jeremiah and Abby. Jeremiah’s slow steps had brought him up almost next to them.

“I still can’t let you go, Jeremiah,” Connor said with his gun mere inches from Jeremiah’s skull.

Jeremiah sighed. “Aww, come on, Connor. Please. If she gets away without me, there ain’t no tellin’ what she’ll do. I can’t promise she’ll still go over the mountains. Hell, she might choose to make her kingdom right here in this very city.”

“That’s not a good enough reason, Jeremiah. You kill people. You’re a murderer, and you don’t even try to deny it. I can’t let you live. Not this time.”

Jeremiah’s grin disappeared. “I understand. You let me go once. I know you can’t do it again.” His head drooped and so did his shoulders. He sighed in defeat. Then without warning, his hand shot up and slammed into Connor’s chest. The sheriff stumbled to the side and fell heavily against Abby’s horse. The creature whinnied and danced to the side.

By the time he was able to right himself and Abby calmed the horse, Jeremiah was out of the alley and in the street. Connor raised his gun and fired bullet after bullet. Jeremiah jerked as they all hit their mark right in his back, but he kept moving and kept his head low. Connor was out of bullets and had to reload. He cursed as the big man disappeared around a corner, out of sight and out of danger.

CHAPTER 23

Jeremiah raced through the streets of the city. Fire burned, shots sounded, and people screamed as their lives came to a violent end. Torches that were supposed to light the streets lay on the ground or on porches. Bodies littered the road.

“Charity!” Jeremiah shouted as loud as his baritone voice could manage. “Charity Banks!”

A woman stumbled out of a nearby house, screeching at the top of her lungs. Her hands pressed to her stomach. Her dress was flapping open and her innards spilled through her fingers. She raised her head and caught a glimpse of Jeremiah.

“Help me,” she cried as she staggered toward him. “Please.” Her eyes dropped once again to her gaping wound and her hands fell away. A piece of her intestine tumbled out of the ragged hole and plopped against the wood of the porch underneath her as an undead man shuffled out of the door behind her.

“Where’s Charity?” Jeremiah asked the man.

The woman’s eyes doubled in size and she leaned forward an inch to stare at Jeremiah. “You’re one of them,” she whispered.

Jeremiah tipped his hat in her direction. “Yes, ma’am, I sure am. Where’s Charity?” he asked the undead again.

The other man’s only response was to grip the woman’s hair and drag her to him for another bite.

“Useless,” Jeremiah sighed as the woman screamed.

He wandered through the streets in search of the woman who had become the bane of his entire existence. He finally found her standing on the porch of the saloon in the middle of town.

“We gotta go,” he called up the steps to her.

Her dress was bloody and torn and her hair was a matted mess. She looked like a wild native and it made him shudder.

She turned toward him with her head cocked to the side. “Bill’s dead,” she said. A strange hurt edged her voice, one that Jeremiah had never heard before.

“Yeah, yeah he is.” Jeremiah nodded his head down the street. “Come on. We gotta get outta here quick as a whistle. We got company.”

Charity walked over to the railing and stared down at Jeremiah. “He was supposed to be with you. You were supposed to protect him. Why is he dead?”

Jeremiah sighed and shrugged. “I dunno, Charity. He wanted to go off on his own. Said somethin’ about provin’ his worth or somethin’. He’s a grown man. Was nothin’ I could do about it.” He stepped up tot he railing and looked up at her. “Listen, girl, we
need
to leave, right now. No more stallin’. We have to get outta here, right quick.”

“Why?” she hissed. Even a bobcat would’ve been afraid of her right then. “You always want to stop when we’re just getting started, when we’re having fun. You always want to hide, to be safe.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “You’re weak and pathetic, Jeremiah. You’re a shame to us all.”

Jeremiah rolled his eyes. He didn’t try to refute her. “Good Lord, woman, Connor and Abby are here.”

Charity’s smirk dropped and her whole body went rigid. “What?”

Jeremiah’s eyebrows jerked up in an I-told-you-so way. “Like I said, we gotta go. Now.”

Charity ran over to the stairs and hopped down them as quickly as she could. Her entire demeanor had changed. “Why?” she breathed. She gripped his arm so tight he thought it might snap in two and stared up at him with the fear he wished she had carried all along. “Why are they here? How did they find us?”

“Dunno,” Jeremiah said. “I’m guessin’ they tracked us, followed us from Lonesome Ridge.” He tugged her along behind him as he wound his way to the opposite end of town from where he met the hunters. “He was always a good tracker, made him a good sheriff, too. Guess he’s just doin’ his job.”

Jeremiah called to the undead as they moved toward the mountains and a pack formed up behind them.

“Wait,” Charity said as they trotted through an alley. “You said Abby was dead. She was bit, wasn’t she? She should be dead.” She eyed him with suspicion, like she’d caught him in a lie.

Jeremiah ignored the look and jumped over a fence. The others followed, one by one, climbing over or going under as their abilities allowed. “She shoulda been dead,” he grunted. “But she was only bit on the arm. Her little sister chopped it off and she lived.”

“I don’t believe it. You saw her? You saw her alive?”

He nodded. “Yup. She looked just fine to me, ‘side of a missin’ part of her arm an’ all. Had no problem holdin’ a shotgun. The path is right up here.”

A wide dirt track broke off from the main road and led up into the hills. It could be seen winding through the trees and up the side of the mountains in the clear moonlight.

Charity looked back at the undead scattered behind them. “We don’t have enough,” she cried. “We need more.”

“This’ll have to do.” Jeremiah grabbed her arm and yanked her down the road. “We don’t have time to waste anymore. Connor and Abby are lookin’ for us. They know us, they know how to handle us. If they find us, Charity, if we dawdle, that’s it. It’s over. No Callyfernya, no kingdom.”

She hesitated, staring at the city still burning behind them. “Okay,” she said after a few moments. “Okay, let’s go.”

They ran into the hills with a swarm of undead trailing out behind them. Even more stayed behind, but there was nothing to be done for it. They needed to get out and away before Connor could get to them. Jeremiah had no doubt in his mind that the next time he saw Connor would be the last, one way or another.

“Jeremiah,” Charity snapped from a few feet in front of him. “Keep up. No falling behind.”

He tore his eyes from the burning city and trotted up to Charity as they finally their way into the mountains on their way to California.

CHAPTER 24

“Cover me,” Connor called as Abby shoved her knife into the face of the undead woman she had just shot.

“Got it,” she cried and picked up a burnt out torch to wield it as a club. The wood smashed into the skull of another man while Connor reloaded.

A trio of horses barreled around a corner nearby, guns blazing, men shouting. The riders were dressed in similar garb, all black, and each carried a pistol in their hand and a shotgun in their saddle. The man in front pulled his horse to a stop and dismounted. The others rode up behind and spun as they helped drop undead left and right. The man on the ground looked at the pile of bodies building up around Connor and Abby.

“You folks seem to be farin’ pretty well. Know what you’re doin’, eh?” he asked as he raised his gun and shot an undead man in the face.

“Been through this a couple o’ times before,” Connor said as he snapped his gun shut. “Connor McClane, sheriff of Lonesome Ridge.” He nodded to the man and shot another undead.

“Dirk Angle,” the man responded. “Sheriff o’ Cherbank here. I’d shake your hand, but--” He cut himself off with a shrug and a grin as he took out another undead.

The group continued firing and smashing until the undead stopped coming around the corner. They paused to reload.

“You seen these things before, you say?” sheriff Angle asked as his voice dropped and he leaned close to Connor. “Well, we could use your help then. Honestly, fella, I have no idea what’s goin’ on here. I’m so far outta my depth, I feel like I’m drownin’. My town’s overrun with a bunch of cannibals who look like they rose from the grave and the whole thing’s burnin’ to the ground before my very eyes. Seems the more we try to kill these things, the more there are.”

Connor glanced at Abby. She stood close to the main street, next to one of the sheriff’s deputies, and looked up the road. “It’s Jeremiah,” she cried and pointed.

Connor ran over to her and followed the line of her finger. Sure enough, Jeremiah had a woman by the hand, another undead from the looks of it, and was dragging her across the street to the other side.

“What do we do?” Abby asked.

Connor turned to the other sheriff. “What’s over there? Where are they headed?” He pointed in the direction Jeremiah and Charity disappeared.

“That’s the main path into the mountains,” Dirk said. “The folks lookin’ ta find California use it to cross over to the other side.”

“We have to go after them,” Abby said. “We can’t let them get away.”

Connor looked between Abby and the sheriff and the undead. “We can’t, but we can’t leave these people to their fate, either. They don’t know what they’re dealing with. We do. We have to help them.

Abby opened her mouth to protest, but snapped it shut in the next moment. She stared at the place where Jeremiah disappeared for a second before turning to Connor. “Let’s get this place under control.”

With Connor and Abby’s help and direction, the sheriff of Cherbank formed up a posse that worked its way through the besieged town. Connor instructed them to aim at the head, not the chest as they had been doing, and the undead began to drop like flies during a cold snap.

It took nearly a full day of shooting, stabbing, and killing, but the town was eventually cleared of danger. Everyone who was bitten was gathered into a storage building on the outskirts of town, away from the rest of the city. Dirk assigned a group of volunteers to take care of them, as compassionately as they could. The building was packed full and the men had a lot of trouble, but they eventually cleared it. The building was burned to the ground with the dead inside.

Another squad was tasked with fighting the fires that still blazed through the city. Nearly have the city burned, nearly half the people were lost. A pile of undead smoldered in a shallow grave at the far edge of town.

When things finally settled down, Dirk Angle found Connor and Abby again. “You folks saved my city,” he said. “Well as it could be saved, anyway. I’m beholden to ya.”

Abby shook her head. “No. Our job is to hunt those things. If we had found them sooner, you wouldn’t be in this situation.”

The man shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. That ain’t the way it worked out, though. Can only deal with what we got. Where you headin’ now? The mountains?”

Connor nodded as he glanced up at the trail behind the city. “Yeah, we have to go after them. I have a personal vendetta to settle.”

The sheriff grunted. “Winter’s acomin’, sheriff. You’ll never make it through the pass before the snow falls.”

Abby straightened her shoulders. “We’ve been through hell and back. We’ll take our chances.”

Dirk cocked a grin at her. “Brave little girl, you are, but that ain’t a smart way o’ thinkin’. Ain’t you never heard o’ the Donners? Them folks had the same idea you did. Tried to make it, tried to beat the snows. Few of ‘em reached the other side. Most of ‘em died. I heard they all ended up eatin’ each other, like those cannibals you just chased away.”