Ever Onward (21 page)

Why the hell had she thought
that?!

“Make one sound and you’re dead,” a
voice said. A cool voice, lacking either hatred or the lust to
kill. She’d heard the other kinds enough times to know the
difference.

The voice was speaking again. Telling
her to nod if she understood. Nod if she agreed. She nodded both
times, not understanding a damn thing. Suddenly the gun was gone,
replaced by a knife at her throat. She was helped up, not yanked
but helped. She turned to look at her captor. It was the guy from
the bridge, the one who had called Snake out. Not handsome, not
ugly; about forty with longish brown hair with wisps of grey. No
tough guy, but obviously no pussy either.

Their eyes locked. She saw no hatred
there, just worry and concern. For her? Don’t be stupid! For the
others, for the blonde haired girl. Her stomach rumbled. His tanned
face went in and out of focus. She would have fallen if he hadn’t
caught her. His grip was strong but not hard. What would it be like
if...

Then someone else was there, binding
her hands roughly behind her. He said something and the hands
became more gentle. A bandanna was tied around her mouth, tight but
not too tight. She was led off the trail. The blonde girl and the
guitar player with long hair helped her up and walked her behind a
large boulder.

There, bound and gagged, was
Blade.

“Where the fuck are they?!”, Snake
hissed.

Bull shrugged. He didn’t know where
Blade or Flame was. He didn’t even know where he was. And right now
he didn’t give a shit. He was hungry and thirsty and tired. His
head ached like a bastard and his leg hurt worse than his head. All
he knew for sure was that he wanted to be anywhere else but up
here! High places made him want to puke.

Snake thrust a rifle at him and then
shoved him up the trail. Snake was no nice guy. He sometimes
pretended to be, but Bull knew that inside Snake was a sack of
shit.

“Move out, lard-ass,” Snake growled.
“I’m right behind you!”

Bull shuffled forward. Every step sent
rivers of pain up his leg. The narrow trail blurred. He shook his
head, but the pounding only increased. Dizziness became nausea. His
tongue felt too big for his mouth, his lips dry and cracked.
Without a warning, he up-chucked on his boots.

Then Rings was before him, hovering in
the air, smiling, holding out a cold beer. Behind her the rock
looked like a witch’s face. Bull blinked and Rings was gone. But
she’d come back. All he had to do was follow. Despite the pain, he
started to jog up the slope.

“Hey! Wait up, Bull!” Snake’s voice
sounded like a dry rasp.

Bull kept on jogging.

Cursing, Snake ran after
him, his beergut bouncing with each labored
step.

Eddy watched from his hiding place as
Bull shuffled past. His thumb rested near the safety of his rifle.
The scope attached to it dug into his chest, his knees hurt from
squatting and he had to take a leak.

‘Time enough for that later,
Eddy-boy,’ he said to himself. ‘One false move now and you could be
leaking blood!’

Snake came next, breathing hard and
sweating like the pig he was. Eddy fought down the urge to step out
and shoot the bugger in the back. Not because Snake didn’t deserve
it, but because that wasn’t the plan. He had no idea where the
others were. Blade had gone by a couple of minutes ago, then Flame.
Eddy hadn’t heard a damned thing.

The seconds dragged by. Then the shot
came, followed by Josh’s voice. Eddy leapt forward and nearly fell
on his face. His bloody knees had cramped up! Cursing under his
breath, Eddy started up the path, his Daddy’s old deer rifle held
ready across his chest.

Rounding a bend, he saw Bull and Snake
less than thirty yards away standing in a dip in the trail, guns
raised, seeking something to shoot. Rocks rose up steeply before
them and on both sides. Snake glanced back down the path and saw
Eddy. The .44 Redhawk boomed, the sound all but deafening in the
confined space. A chip of granite broke off near Eddy’s head and
fell to the ground. Eddy did the same, only needing a moment to
find Snake’s heaving chest through his scope.

Josh’s voice spoke again. Eddy
presumed he was using what Jessie referred to his ‘teacher’s
voice’. “Drop it, asshole! I won’t tell you again!”

Flame, her mind awhirl, looked at
Blade moving closer to her. Something was wrong. He was supposed to
be tied. An object glittered in his hand and her wrists were
suddenly free. Her gag vanished. He pressed his mouth to her ear
and whispered.

“We’re getting out of here, Babe. Just
you and me. But first we need a few things.”

Then he was gone, moving like a shadow
through the rocks. She looked up and saw a large hound watching
her, its brown eyes puzzled. Was it real? Everything seemed fuzzy,
dreamlike. In a daze, she walked over to the dog, her head
pounding. A rough, wet tongue licked her hand. A tail
wagged.

Then she heard the shot. It sounded
like Snake’s Redhawk. Both she and the dog ran toward it. Coming
round a slab of rock, she saw two strangers below her, one on each
side of the spot where she had been jumped earlier. Using the rocks
for cover, they were both aiming down into the circular depression
where Snake and Bull stood in the open. A third one, the guitar
player, was higher up on the far side.

Then another movement caught her eye.
Off to the left Blade was suddenly standing behind the blonde
haired girl, his small, razor-sharp Boot knife pressed to her
throat. Flame, still feeling like she was caught in some weird
dream, felt rather than heard the world take on an otherworldly
like stillness. Then Snake’s arrogant voice shattered it
all.

“Well, Hayseed! Looks like we got
ourselves a real Mexican fucking stand-off! You kill me, my main
man there kills your woman! So what say we both back off, eh? Give
things a chance to cool down.”

Eddy, still sighting on Snake, heard
Josh call out his name.

“Eddy! You still have Snake in your
sights?”

“Sure thing, Josh! Lined up in the
cross-hairs!”

“I’m going to count to five,” Josh
replied; “Five, Eddy. Then you put one in his chest! Back or front,
it doesn’t maker --- just bring the bastard down!”

“No problem, boss!”

Snake, trying in vain to locate Eddy,
danced around behind Bull.

“Still got him?”, Josh
asked.

“Better than ever!”, Eddy lied, Bull
now completely blocking his view.

“One!”, Josh said coldly.

“Wait a fucking minute!”, Snake
screamed, then turned to Blade, high above him and still holding a
knife to Tina’s throat.

“Blade! For Christ sake, DO
SOMETHING!”

Flame saw Blade smile. It was not a
pleasant sight. It stirred distant memories best left
undisturbed.

“I am, Snake!”, Blade yelled back.
“I’m hauling my ass out of here. Flame’s coming with me. What you
do is your fucking problem!”

“Two!”, Josh said.

Snake glared around him, the heavy
Readhawk now held tightly by both hands. He could see the barrel
Josh’s rifle pointed at him but little else. Brad was even harder
to see, just a shadow high up on the far side. Where this Eddy
asshole was he hadn’t a clue!

“Blade, you stupid fuck! Get a gun and
shoot that prick!”

Blade laughed. To Flame it suddenly
sounded like her Daddy’s laugh. Another memory best left
buried.

“Why should I, Snake?”, Blade
demanded. “What’ve you ever done for me besides try to screw my old
lady?!”

“Three!” Josh’s voice sent a shiver
down both Snake’s and Flame’s spine.

“You can have here, Blade!”, Snake
yelled. “I swear it, man! You can have them both! Just get me out
of here!”

Blade chuckled dryly, then swung Tina
round so he was looking at Josh over her shoulder.

“You heard him, Hayseed. Tell your
boys to back off! The knife at Tina’s throat glittered in the
sun.

Josh looked up to Billy’s position
twenty feet above Brad. Something silver flashed in the sun. The
longhaired youth was sighting down the long barrel of his overlarge
handgun. Josh knew the target would be Blade’s head, but he also
knew that Billy didn’t have a chance in hell of making the shot.
Maybe if he had a rifle, but with that hand cannon he’d either miss
completely or kill them both. Maybe Brad could take Blade out, but
a rock outcropping blocked his cousin’s line of sight.

Then he saw Flame standing midway
between Blade and Billy. Instantly Josh decided to try the bluff he
had first used on The Dude back in Crown Point. “Billy, you hear
me?”

“Sure do Mr. Williams.”

“
Then listen up! Shoot AT
the red-head! Don’t hit her, Billy! Not YET! Just fire at the rocks
BESIDE her! Now, Billy --- NOW!”

Billy’s Python was almost as big as
Snake’s Redhawk. Out in the open it sounded like a bloody
cannon.

The heavy slug ricocheted off the rock
a hands width from Flame’s right ear. He’d been aiming at another
rock a yard to her left.

Josh played his next card. “Well,
Blade, what’s it going to be? The next one can be right between her
eyes --- or yours! But if you let Tina go, both you and the
red-head can walk away.”

“Don’t fucking believe him, Blade!”,
Snake screamed. “The bugger will kill us all!”

“Hey, Eddy,”, Josh casually called
out.

“Ya, Josh?”

“Four!”

Cursing, Snake backed up against the
rock wall, pulling a confused Bull with him. Eddy’s shot was now
completely blocked. Blade, sweat running down his narrow face,
backed over toward Flame. Just behind them the land fell away for a
thousand feet.

“She’s got a gun on her, Babe. Get
it!”

Feeling like she was trapped in some
never-ending nightmare, Flame fumbled the Glock Lightweight 9 mm
out of Tina’s small belt holster. It looked like a child’s
toy.

“Good!”, Blade growled. “Now, shoot
those fuckers!”

What must have only been seconds
seemed to stretch out forever. Then a small, distant voice, as
though it came from far away or perhaps long ago, spoke. “No.”
Flame was surprised to find it had been her own.

“What?!”, Blade demanded, disbelief
written on his sharp features. “Shoot them now!”

“I... can’t. I... I won’t!”

Blade turned toward her, his eyes
wild. Her father’s eyes. Her father’s face. Her father’s voice.
“Shoot them or I’ll slit her fucking throat!”

“No.”

“Do it, Babe, or I’ll do
her!”

“No you won’t,” Flame hissed, raising
the small gun and pointing it at Blade’s head.

“Five!”, Josh yelled.

A number of guns went off at the same
time. Eddy shot at Snake while Snake blasted away at Josh. Brad
fired at Bull who fired at Billy who fired at Flame. For her part,
Flame shot her lover point blank in the face. Three of the bullets
found their marks. Snake was hit in the shoulder, Bull in the heart
and Blade right between the eyes.

Bull died instantly, Brad’s 30-30 slug
entering the left breast and exiting through the big man’s right
hip. As for Blade, his lower forehead now had a neat 9 mm hole in
it. The back of his head, however, was gone. Punched back by the
impact, his dead arms released both the knife and Tina as he
stepped off into empty space. The body bounced twice before it
finally came to rest far below the Witch’s Face. The old stone
crone seemed to smile.

With a very large hole in his shoulder
and Bull’s two hundred plus body pinning him to the ground, Snake
wasn’t going anywhere. He still had his gun however, and as
everyone there knew, a snake is at its most dangerous when
cornered.

Stepping back from the edge of the
draw where Snake lay bleeding, Josh turned both his attention and
his rifle on Flame. He needn’t have bothered. She had slumped down,
gazing over the long fall that had claimed her lover. Tina’s pistol
lay at her feet. Both Jessie and Ken moved in beside her. The dogs
were with them. Ken had his target gun out. Jessie still carried
his bow. Og ran forward and licked her hand.

Billy had reached Tina and now sat
with his arm around her. Brad worked his way cautiously around to
his son while Jessie moved down to stand beside his father. Eddy
soon joined them. All three glanced at the depression. Out of sight
twenty feet below them they could hear Snake’s heavy
breathing.

“What do we do now, Josh?”, Eddy
asked. “Leave the snake in its pit?”

All three of them were thinking of the
man Eddy had leg shot back at the barricade less than a week ago.
It seemed like years. Josh suddenly turned away and dug out his
pipe. ‘Christ!’, he thought. ‘How many times am I going to have to
do this?!’

‘As many times as you need to,’ came
the answer. The silent voice in his head sounded a hell of a lot
like Doc Gruber’s.

“Look out!”, Billy suddenly screamed,
groping for his massive Python. Tina, sitting with Earls old .303
across her knees, was even faster.