The Dead Man: Kill Them All (7 page)

“Yeah. Each of us wonders why the other one agreed to meet out here after dark. Why we’re talking for so long. Thing is, for me it was stalling for time and one other thing. When it comes to you, I already know that answer.”

Finally close enough for accuracy, Scotty made his move. His right hand darted for the tranquilizer gun on his belt, but Matt was expecting the move. He reached for his flashlight and rolled away, hearing a chuffing sound as the first dart went harmlessly into a clump of dead sage. At the same time, Matt flicked the flashlight on, temporarily blinding the men who had been focusing intently through their night-vision goggles. He rolled again and felt a tranquilizer dart thwack into his boot heel. He shined the light directly into Scotty’s hideous face.

Scotty was a gory zombie now, flesh hanging from his body, organs and excrement sagging and bulging from his bloody fatigues, a literal sack of shit. His pupils contracted in blackened sockets. Matt clumsily located the .38 and fired twice, knowing the flash would further damage the vision of the other mercenaries if they still wore the NV gear. One bullet struck Scotty in the Kevlar and stunned him. Gunfire came from Dry Wells as a few of the townspeople fired in response to the shot. Scotty was hit again, this time in the shoulder. He spun around, the dart gun dropping from his fingers, and fell flat on his back in the sand, probably just stunned.

Matt crawled over to the downed mercenary on knees and elbows. He ripped the coveted NV goggles from Scotty’s webbing, grabbed the grenade from Scotty’s chest. He’d wanted the goggles for Timmy, the town’s lookout. Matt kept moving, rolling away as fast as he could.

Scotty whispered, “Motherfucker!”

Half as a mercy, Matt brought up the .38 to blow Scotty’s head off, but he felt the sand near his own head puff up. The report followed a half second later. Someone had him zeroed in. Panicked, Matt rolled behind Scotty’s body and fired twice towards the van parked in the darkness. He flashed the light again, got to his knees, flashed it the other way.

Scotty moved, then sat up. Matt rose to his feet, decided not to waste his last two rounds so far from town. He kicked Scotty in the head and flashed the light both ways again. Then Matt Cahill raced back towards town.

Townsfolk fired past him at muzzle flashes and where they thought the enemy was parked. At the same time, the mercenaries did their best to wound Matt and bring him down. Three times bullets tugged his clothing as he pounded through the sand, but somehow Matt made it to the parked cars. He threw himself in the air, slammed onto the roof of the old Toyota, rolled over it, and landed back inside his own lines with the night-vision goggles in his hand. He was wheezing and shaking like a willow in a windstorm. The townsfolk cheered.

Soon, though, they all sat uneasily, whispering back and forth. Now there was nothing else to do but wait.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Monday, 6:22 p.m.

Dry Wells was brighter now. They’d fired up the old-style streetlights. Kyle and Wally had them all working, plus most of the fighters had their own kerosene lanterns and flashlights. The town was lit up like a modern art piece, yellow and stripes of black shadow. The defenders could now see most of what would take place. They’d created some ambient light to work with, enough to slow down the effectiveness of any night-vision equipment. Still, the mercenaries had training and superior firepower.

Zeke and Hog had parked like Siamese twins up near the sheriff’s office, holding both hunting rifles and handguns at the ready. They seemed brave enough in each other’s company. Matt hoped that would hold when the firing started.

“You two ready?”

“Shit yeah,” Zeke said. His voice cracked on the second word, but he managed a grin. Hog managed a giggle.

Matt jogged low across the middle of the street and took cover by the gazebo, kneeling down in the trash and dried sage. Doing his best to sound official, he called up to his lookout.

“Timmy? Stay down, but answer me. Do you or Clete see anything?”

“Nothing.”

The teenager was still on the roof of the hotel keeping watch. The desert floor was a gigantic ink pad in every direction. At least he now had the night-vision goggles as an edge. The mercenaries no longer had the element of surprise. They would have to be careful every step of the way.

“All clear?”

And then, ignoring the order, Timmy raised his head to answer.

“Nothing, sir.”

Chuff!

In the flickering light and shadow, the top of his head vanished, a mist of blood and bone. The kid dropped flat onto the roof like a bag of flour. He’d been shot from afar with a night-vision sniper scope. Seeing this, the prostitute called Maggie wailed and kicked at the outside wall of the whorehouse.

Matt grimaced and took a deep breath. His anger boiled over. “Here they come!”

Sheriff Pickens called out, “Stay down, damn it! Cover, not concealment!”

Scotty and company began their attack.

In the end, the mercenaries weren’t cute about it. They just surrounded the ghost town, loaded up their weapons, and approached on foot, firing at will. They had body armor and darkness on their side, plus the ability to communicate via a group radio untouched by the jamming systems. They walked out of the shadows calmly, shooting to keep everyone down. Their fire was sparse but merciless, small dots of flame like pinpricks in a black balloon. Four tall bogeymen were striding arrogantly out of the eternal bedroom closet, shooting to kill.

They had no fear of death. They were already at its doorstep.

Matt pulled himself together. He gripped his ax handle.

The assault continued. While the townspeople handled the return fire, Matt studied the mercenaries’ approach and worked out a plan. The stoner came from the west, towards the sheriff’s office. Scotty crawled and hobbled in from the east, where he’d originally been wounded with a lucky shot. The redhead ran in from the dunes to the south, and the buzz-cut professional warrior jogged into Dry Wells from the north. From the direction and lay of the land, it seemed likely that this was the bastard who had shot Timmy. Matt hadn’t seen anything of Clete, the other teen, since his friend had died. Matt couldn’t blame him for staying hidden.

Zeke and Hog had moved and now crouched together near the old drugstore, grimly firing into the night. Hog had a small plastic tub full of extra ammunition by his massive thigh. They were surprisingly efficient, trading shots left and right in a manner that suggested they’d worked it out in advance. Still, all they could hope to do was slow things down. They had a lot of weapons, but they were still outgunned.

And so the mercenaries closed. Gunfire blazed. At first the enemies’ silenced weapons sounded like corn popping, but the noise steadily grew louder as they approached. Matt ran from the gazebo to the whorehouse and checked upstairs. Suzie and Jeb Pickens were holding their own, firing carefully. Jeb had a small flesh wound on one hand, wrapped with a strip of torn cloth. Matt ran back down the stairs, passing one man he didn’t know who had been injured by flying debris and a whore who had sprained her wrist while diving for cover.

He left for the old barn and loft, playing a hunch since it was poorly guarded. The defenders had thus far avoided using their Molotov cocktails. Someone else had set a fire in the straw, but when Matt arrived, the barn was empty. The fire was in a pile of straw in a small area surrounded by open dirt. Had someone, possibly Kyle, been smart enough to start a controlled blaze to light up the area? Perhaps it hadn’t been set by the enemy after all. Matt turned to go.

The red-haired mercenary dropped down from the rafters, stunning Matt and forcing the ax to fly from his hand into the straw. Red punched Matt twice in the head and rolled him over to bind his wrists with plastic cuffs, clearly intending to drag him back into the darkness and the waiting van.

Matt rolled his eyes up and went limp, and the red-haired mercenary loosened his grip just slightly. Matt head butted him, rolled back over, and kneed the man in the face—a face that was already shattered by sin, dented and weeping blood and brains. Still the man fought on. They rolled together through the fire, and Matt’s exposed flesh felt pain as it burned, but the mercenary didn’t even flinch. Matt could smell singed hair as the two men struggled and grunted. Matt got his right hand free and drove it up under the mercenary’s chin, forcing the man to bite his tongue half off. As blood spurted from the wound, he let go of Matt.

Matt spotted his grandfather’s ax lying near a pile of cow dung and crawled toward it, but the red-haired mercenary recovered enough to climb up Matt’s body, slowing him down. They both saw the .38 in the straw, and the mercenary lunged for the gun. Matt grabbed the pile of cow shit and smeared it into the man’s bloody eyes, then got his fingers around the handle of the ax.

Matt swung hard and decapitated the killer, whose head rolled away and bowled a strike in the feed bags. The mercenary’s trunk fell over and spurted blood, splattering the wooden slats of the stall. Matt threw up in the dirt but quickly gathered himself again. The battle raged on. The enemy was still out there.

Shouting and firing from outside. The smell of gunpowder and burning straw. Shaken, Matt got to his feet and ran to the front of the barn. He looked both ways. Across the street Sheriff Pickens shouted to him.

“Shit, he’s gone, Cahill!”

He had lost track of Scotty.

One down, three to go…

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Monday, 8:37 p.m.

Matt turned to run back toward the gazebo but saw movement across the way, a shadowy confrontation in the distance. Bert the grocer had been assaulted. A hunter who expected to be able to use his skills with a rifle, Bert was clearly unprepared for close fighting. So when the mercenary with the buzz cut appeared from the alley with a sawtooth knife and charged him, Bert tried to run. With a savage laugh, the killer ran him to ground, yanked his hair back, and reached across to slit the grocer’s throat. Time slowed to a crawl.

Matt raced towards the spot, his bloody ax in one hand and the .38 in the other, hoping for a clean shot. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Hog pause and turn. The big man spotted Bert and the mercenary and sent two rounds their way. One took the soldier in the Kevlar vest and knocked him backwards, stunned but still alive. Satisfied, Hog turned back to his assigned duties. Still running, Matt closed the distance. Suddenly the mercenary rolled, raised his knife to stab down at the exhausted Bert. Matt dropped to one knee and tried to get a shot, but Bert was in the way. The knife was coming down.

The missing teenager—Clete—exploded from the dark alley. He did not hesitate but attacked at once, climbing on the mercenary’s broad back. He was thrown off immediately, but he’d bought a few precious seconds. Bert’s wife came out of the alley next. Her enormous weight momentarily flattened the soldier, shoving his grinning face down into the bloody sand. He quickly threw her off, though, and lunged to gut her. Approaching fast, Matt fired twice but missed. He stopped a second time, trying for better aim. Fortunately, he didn’t fire right away. Just then another body filled his vision.

Kyle emerged from the hotel with a pitchfork. He bellowed with rage and ran the mercenary through. Then, before Matt could close the distance, Kyle pulled his own pistol and shot the man in the neck, just to make sure. Blood sprayed his face. The exhausted citizens ran back to their assigned posts, exhausted but still determined to fight back.

Not bad, Kyle,
Matt thought. “Kyle,” he said, “remind me not to piss you off.”

Kyle didn’t see it, but as the mercenary died, his horribly contorted features, dripping pus and writhing with worms, relaxed into a human face. Evil had departed, but so had the soul of the human the force had inhabited. Not for the first time, Matt wondered what awaited these men and women who had been possessed by the Dark Man, once they got to the other side. It surely wouldn’t be pleasant.

“Give me a hand, kid,” Matt said.

They dragged Bert back to the saloon, where Sally worked with the women who were acting as medics. Bert was going to make it. Outside, the fire was lower, becoming sporadic, but the screaming was nonstop. Where Sally tended to them, those who were cut or shot cried out and kept bellowing. They didn’t just lie down, like in the movies.

Two down, two to go.

Matt forced himself to stalk the sidewalk amongst the writhing shadows and the puffs of smoke, the reloaded .38 gripped in his right hand, the ax handy. Right now it felt like his best friend.

“Hog? Zeke? You guys okay?”

“We’re good,” Zeke called back.

Matt looked east. Sheriff Pickens and Wally were still by the parked cars, their rifles at port arms. Pickens shook his head, as if to say he’d been unable to locate his man. Zeke and Hog exchanged glances, then stood up, Hog facing into the center of town and Zeke still looking out at the city limits. A few seconds passed. Flames crackled through dry wood and a horse nickered in the barn.

A mercenary in black rolled across a parked car and took aim at the sheriff just as Pickens ducked.
Pop-pop.
The body was squat and compact, so it wasn’t Scotty. It had to be the one who never looked up. Matt started toward the sheriff, but instinct told him he wouldn’t make it in time. Hopefully, Pickens could handle himself. Hog fired cougar quick and nicked the mercenary’s leg. Wally fired, too, but the mercenary drove him back under cover. The street puffed dust—Jeb and Suzie were also firing down from the whorehouse, but their angle was bad, and the mercenary rolled away.

Bravely, Wally stepped out of cover and took a shot, hitting the mercenary in the other leg. The man bellowed in rage and fired back. Wally tried to duck but was shot in the face. He fell backwards into the street, twitched a few times, and lay still.

Matt charged, waving his arms, and the mercenary turned to face him. Before Matt could reach them, though, Pickens ducked and produced a wickedly short shotgun he’d had stashed beneath Sally’s car. He did not hesitate, but placed the weapon in the crotch of his enemy and discharged both barrels. The mercenary split nearly in two and splattered in the dirt like chunks of steaming meat.