Wolves (50 page)

He hears something crack.

Coughs.

Blinks. Stares up at the sky.

Groans, but forces himself up.

His entire body hurts. Old wounds and fresh wounds. Bullet holes and burns. But he can still move. Nothing is stopping him from moving. He manages himself into a sitting position, his revolver still in his hand, the other in his waistband, but threatening to fall out. He shoves it back into place. All around him, his situation takes on a sharp clarity, small details being processed in tiny flashes, and he pieces them together to make the full picture.

They are here
, he tells himself quickly.
The Murphys are here because the guards are here.

The complex around him is five buildings. One on each corner and one in the middle. What had once been parking areas are now covered with dirt and grass, and horses and wagons are hitched to the sides of buildings. He can see the two buildings that frame the main gate—they are to either side—and he can catch a sliver of the other two corners, but the center building blocks most of his view.

The implications of what he sees are obvious.

The four corner buildings are for the servants and the slaves and the soldiers.

The center building is for the councilman and his house.

All around him, cries of alarm are going up. The gunshots have been heard. Men will be coming. Huxley is tempted to flatten himself onto his back and to grab one of the dead guards' rifles, to post up behind him using his corpse as a sandbag and lie there, picking them off as they come. He wants that because it is comfortable. Movement is frightening.

But he is not here to kill guards.

He is here for his daughter.

He lurches to his feet. Somewhere in what could be considered the “courtyard” of this complex, he hears men running. He can see the flicker of lantern light that they are carrying. Huxley stoops down quickly, grunting in pain. Something is cracked or broken in his side. He scoops up one of the guards' rifles. It is already loaded. Huxley stuffs his revolver back into his waistband and grabs a handful of cartridges from the guard's belt.

Time's running out. Don't waste time.

He hobbles to a corner of the building to his right. There is a large wooden planter in which nothing currently grows. He half-crouches behind this and he rests the rifle on the planter and sights down it, aiming for the left side of the center building.

Door. The front door. Is it unlocked?

Only one way to tell.

A guard rounds the left corner.

Huxley fires. The rifle bucks in his shoulder. The guard stops like a gut-punch has halted him, crumples around the hot lead with a grunt. He falls forward and begins to scream.

That will stop the others from hurtling around the corner.

Huxley hurls himself away from the planter and toward the door. His side hurts, but so does his hip. But he can still put one foot in front of the other. He jacks the round from the breech, slams a new one home, aims the rifle at the corner of the building and lets it loose again, breaking off a huge chunk of red brick. Further discouragement.

He makes it to the front door of the center building.

He yanks at it. It's locked.

“Fuck me,” he mutters, blinking and squinting through the adrenaline to try and make sense of the barricade in front of him.

He kicks it, feels some give there. So he screams and kicks it again. It flies in, the glass cracking down the center and spidering across.

Someone shouts, to his right.

Huxley slips the rifle to his left hand because he hasn't had a chance to reload it. He snatches the revolver out again and holds it out with a single arm. A man's face appears around the right corner of the building, his face, then his chest, his eyes wide, searching for the threat, a rifle up and ready.

Huxley fires.

The man sees him at the last instant, tries to flinch away.

The flash of powder and smoke reach out and kiss the man's face just before the bullet obliterates it and sends him spinning backward.

Huxley shoves his way through the broken door as a smattering of gunfire lances out, sending bits of dirt and old concrete up in the spot where he'd just stood, and one of the rounds finds the glass of the doors and shatters it completely.

Huxley is inside.

They are outside.

But not for long.

Think! Think!

Run.

Huxley cries out in fear and frustration, twists, and lays eyes upon what he is looking for, recognizing and remembering all at once. “Stairs!” he shouts at the door that is clearly marked. He runs into it, shoulders through it and then spins, slamming the door behind him and fumbling around on the emergency handle for the lock … the lock … where is the lock?

There. A tab at the top.

He slams it upward, feels the metal poles slide into their places, securing the door.

A bullet lances through the door with an odd banging sound, leaving a little blossom of metal on Huxley's side. He glances at it—so close to his head—but he is already moving. Up the stairs.

Where am I going?

Where would the Murphys be?

At the highest point in the building.

He slams his feet up the stairs, two at a time, letting the rifle clatter down on a landing—it is just weighing him down—and he uses that free hand to pull himself along the old metal bannister. By the second level, his legs are aching, and the breath is raw and painful in his chest. He can feel spittle flying out of his mouth and onto his lips as he huffs, and he doesn't take the time to wipe it off.

His situation becomes disastrously clear.

I am in a tower. I am running up this tower. There are men below me. And there will be more below me in just a minute. They'll seal the exits, and I'll be trapped in this tower. How are you going to get out? If you even find her, how the fuck are you going to get out?

The only problem is, he cannot stop.

All he can do is hope to God that some miracle happens.

Hope. Cling to that hope.

There has to be hope.

You are not Jay.

He can't stop. He won't stop. His legs become like unwieldy rubber. Down at the bottom of the stairs, there is a horrendous banging noise. They are trying to break through, shouting as they do, and Huxley knows that the doors won't hold forever. They are behind him, and he does not know what is in front of him, but he will find out, he has to find out.

He reaches the top of the stairs, barely able to breathe.

There is a door, marked with a big red “5.”

Huxley staggers to it and shoves it open, his revolver cocked and ready.

Men with guns. He watches the muzzles of their rifles flash.

There is a rolling boom.

Huxley tries to dodge, but he feels the bullet rip into him.

Chapter 8

I've been shot.

Booming. Crackling. Pounding. Shouting.

Huxley manages to roll himself out of the doorway. He can see the big metal door swinging leisurely closed. His left arm is hanging limp and a pain grips it, somehow both intense and distant. He thinks fleetingly that it is the intensity that makes it distant—his mind can't process it right now.

He looks at it. The blood has barely begun to well just yet. The muscle is pulverized. It is hanging to his body, completely useless and immovable.

The door is still swinging closed. There is the sound of breeches being levered. Huxley must act. There is only one way, and that is to
flow
, to never stop, to keep pressing forward, always forward, not stopping. He does what they do not expect of a dead man.

He rushes through the door, his left arm blinding pain, his right arm pointing that big cartridge revolver out. There are four men. Three of them have rifles, but in that instant, every one of them has their breech hanging open, trying to reload. They scramble for new cartridges and their eyes come up to see this broken, burned, hooded madman hurtling through the door at them.

Behind the three riflemen, the fourth man stands, somehow cold, somehow terrified, and he is not dressed like the others, not standing like the others. He is the one being protected from Huxley.

Councilman … 

Huxley punches his revolver out. Takes the shot. In the small room, the sound shatters his eardrums. The center of the three guards screams, pitching backward.

The left drops his cartridge, yelling out something in fear.

The right tries to rush Huxley.

Huxley takes it, pulling his revolver into his body as he thumbs the hammer back and plants the muzzle into the rifleman's belly, even as the man swings his rifle up and catches Huxley under the jaw. Stars dance, but Huxley pulls the trigger. He staggers back into the wall and the man's dead body collapses onto him and then slides down.

Huxley has to breathe through his mouth. Blood and spit dribble out. He's bitten his tongue.

The last rifleman almost has a new cartridge in.

The fourth man, the councilman, he is screaming, “Kill him! Kill him!”

Huxley shrugs off the body of the rifleman that had charged him, pulls the hammer back again.

Click.

Empty.

The rifleman seats his cartridge, slams the breech home.

Huxley hurls the empty revolver at the man's face.

The rifleman grunts as it strikes him square on the nose with an audible crack of breaking bone and cartilage.

Huxley snatches his other revolver out and plows two rounds into the man in quick succession, bursting his chest open.

He shifts the revolver to the councilman who stands, frozen. Now the pain is reaching him, snowballing. He wants to bend. He wants to break. His body wants to crumple under all that pressure. His vision is stars and darkness and only little tiny spots of reality that swirl. He is on the verge of passing out. Willpower is all that keeps him upright.

He tries to speak, but the breath catches, the pain making his stomach clamp down.

He takes a breath.

This is for your daughter. This is so she can have hope.

“You!” Huxley finally manages to shout. “Councilman Murphy!”

The man stares, speechless.

From the stairwell there comes a massive, shattering boom. There is the sound of shouting. Boots slamming up the stairs.

No time for words. No time for anything clever. Huxley has none of that anyway. All he has is violence and momentum.

Huxley waves his revolver at the councilman. “Go to the door. Now. Or I kill you.”

“You'll kill me anyway,” there is some defiance in the man's eyes now that the shock is fading. “Go fuck yourself. Kill me, and when they get to the top of the stairs they are going to slaughter you.”

Huxley shakes his head. “You can live. And so can your wife. If you cooperate. I'm not here to kill you. I'm only here to take back what you stole from me.”

Murphy thinks it over and Huxley watches his eyes stray to an adjoining room.

Mrs. Murphy is there. She's hiding in the room.

“You're not … are you … EDS?”

Huxley shakes his head. “I'm nobody. I'm just a piece of trash blown in from the Wastelands.” Huxley's voice is without emotion. “You'd have never thought I would get this close to you and I did. You'd be stupid to doubt me now. I can bring you pain. Or I can just leave with what I came for. Now … do what I tell you.”

The councilman's eyes narrow a bit and he moves cautiously at first, but he seems to understand something now, seems to be wrapping his brain around something. He moves quickly to the door, knowing that if the guards reach the top of the stairs, then things will go downhill fast.

“Close the door,” Huxley instructs.

The councilman obeys.

“Stand in front of the door. Face it.”

The councilman puts his belly to the door. He looks over his shoulder. “What is this?”

Huxley approaches on unsteady feet. He manages to pull the knife from its sheath on his belt, tucking his revolver into the armpit of his broken left arm. “Put your hand up. Palm on the top of the doorframe. Do it.”

Even as the councilman complies, putting his right palm on the top of the doorframe, he tries to crane his neck to see what Huxley is doing, why he is approaching so quickly, what the glint of steel is in his hand … 

“What …?”

Huxley slams the knife into the councilman's hand, spiking it to the top of the door.

The councilman screams, knees wobbling.

Quicker than he thought he could be, Huxley grabs his revolver, reverses his grip to hold it by the barrel, and slams the handle into the base of the knife three times, pounding it in deeper, more securely into the thick frame.

The councilman writhes against the door, but knows that he can't pull away, or the knife will rip his hand into shreds.

Huxley hears the pounding of footsteps coming up the stairwell. He jumps back, putting himself against the wall so that he can see the door to the bedroom and the councilman at the same time. He levels his revolver at the councilman. “If they open the door, it's gonna rip your hand off. And you might want to tell them not to shoot through!”

“Fuck!” Rage and terror grips the man. He is beginning to sweat profusely as blood runs down his arm in sheets. His other hand is clutching the wrist of the one that is posted to the top of the doorframe. He kicks the door viciously and yells raggedly, “Stay outside! Don't fucking come in! Do not come in!”

The footsteps clatter to the top landing.

The councilman is wide-eyed, alternately kicking the door and shouting, “You hear me? Don't come in! Stay the fuck outside, do you hear me? Stay outside! For God's sake don't open this door!”

Huxley swings his revolver over to the bedroom door of the suite. He stares at it, wondering what is behind it. Mrs. Murphy? She must be there. Where else would she be? But who else is in there with her? Are any of her slaves there? Is his daughter there?

What would she think? What would she think of me?

Huxley becomes aware of himself, amid the sound of unsure mumblings from outside in the stairwell, and the councilman's groans of desperation. Huxley is aware of how his ruined arm hangs against him, how the blood has soaked his side. His burns. His bandages. His wild eyes.

She will not know me. I would not know myself.

Huxley realizes that he is leaning his back against the wall more than he should—his knees are growing weak. He tries to moisten his tongue, but it is thick and pasty. “Councilman,” he says, unsteadily. “Councilman.”

“What?” Panic. Anger. “What do you want?”

“Tell her to come out.”

“Tell who?”

“Your wife.”

“She's not in there …”

“Councilman!” Huxley raises his voice. “Tell her to come out or I'm going in there after her, do you understand? No one needs to get hurt.”

“You spiked my hand to the fucking door!” the man screams.

“You'll live,” Huxley says, plainly. “Tell her to come out. We need to talk. All three of us together.”

The councilman moans. Finally he turns his head so that he is looking over his shoulder at the door that leads further into the suite. “Trisha,” he calls, his voice almost soft. “Trisha, come out here. Come out here,
now.
”

There is a long moment of stillness.

The door cracks.

Huxley adjusts the grip on his revolver.

The door swings open slowly.

A woman. Tall. Pale. Beautiful. She wears a dress that seems odd and out of place to Huxley. It is a nice dress, with a floral pattern on it. In the Old World someone would have called it a “house dress” but to Huxley it is one of the nicest garments he's seen in a long time. But it doesn't disguise the woman's hand, the way she has it half-tucked behind a fold of her dress, and Huxley can see the long barrel of her own revolver there.

He looks at her face. The post of his own weapon's sight hovers under her chin, her long, regal neckline. Her hair is a strawberry blondish color, messy as though she's been asleep. And perhaps she has.
Opium-addled
, Black Heart Davies had told him.

And she looks it. For all her beauty, Huxley can see it in her eyes like an animal hunger. Some aspect of her humanity gone. And then Huxley can't tell if that is addiction, or if it is simply cruelty. There is something … off about her. Something that is intrinsically wrong with her that can be sensed, even through the fog of violence, immediately upon laying eyes on her.

Huxley's finger hovers over his trigger. “I see that gun, Mrs. Murphy. Put it down. Slow.”

The councilman snarls from the doorway where he is pinned like a live bug in a glass case. “Oh, for fuck's sake, Trish, put the gun down. You can't even see straight to fire the damn thing.”

Her eyes cut to her husband and there is a moment of sharp lucidity there that makes Huxley think that all the opium does not addle her as much as some believe. There is a cold, reptilian way she looks at people. Like they are just sacks of meat.

She reminds Huxley of Jay.

She looks back to Huxley. Her voice is strong, husky. “What do you want?”

Huxley winces against the pain in his arm. His own words are ragged syllables. “I want you to put the gun down. No one needs to get hurt. I want to talk. I've come all this way … just to talk.”

“To talk?” there is a scoffing note in her voice.

“Trisha!” the councilman bellows. “Put the fucking gun down!”

Her eyes, locked with Huxley's, blink slowly, leisurely, as though none of this situation matters. She smacks her lips one time and looks at her husband again, seeming for the first time to register that he is stuck to the doorframe with a knife. The smallest smirk comes to her lips, and is gone in a flash, but not before it registers with Huxley.

She brings the revolver around, casually, not moving slow like Huxley requested. But he stays his trigger finger. She is doing it to prove a point. She shifts the revolver to her weak hand, reaches back inside the doorway and Huxley can hear the thud of the heavy metal weapon being set onto some wooden piece of furniture just inside the door.

She looks boredly at Huxley. “There, big man. Now talk. What have you traveled all this way to talk about?”

Huxley licks his lips with a dry tongue. “I came for my daughter.”

His words are issued, they float out, hang in the air like dissipating smoke. No one seems to care about them. The tall, cruel woman in front of him tilts her head just slightly, eyeing Huxley up and down, looking past the blood and the grime and the heavy wool coat and the bandages.

“Oh my,” she says. “Darling, it seems we have a bandit in our midst.”

The councilman takes a few rapid breaths. “Jesus, Trisha, you stupid …” he trails off under his struggling breath.

Mrs. Murphy takes a step forward, bringing up a single index finger, which she wags at Huxley. It is as though the gun pointed at her is not making its way through her synapses. She believes herself to be in charge. She is always in charge. People are always afraid of her. Why should now be any different?

“You,” she says with some recognizance in her voice. “You must be the mysterious
Huxley
.”

He swallows. He wants to pull the trigger. But he needs answers.

“Oh, you are!” she giggles girlishly. “How exciting! Darling! A real live bandit!”

Huxley is befuddled. A million withering things come to mind, but by the time he wrestles them to his mouth, he's forgotten what to say.

“Trisha …” a warning note in the councilman's voice. “I swear to God …”

“You swear what?” she snaps at him. “You impotent prick. You're stuck to the wall like the faggot I always knew you were. Your city is falling around you and you're hiding in your fucking home, swishing your skirts.” She lets out a bark of laughter. “But here,” she motions to Huxley. “Here's a man. Look at him. Look at this man. This man from … where are you from again? The Wastelands. A Wasteland Wildman. Usually we don't meet your kind. Except in chains. Actually, I misspoke. We've met several of your kind. We
own
several of your kind.”

The revolver is getting heavy in Huxley's hand. He keeps having to bring the muzzle back up.

She's stalling. Huxley knows that she's stalling. Because he seems weak. He knows that she's hoping to say something that will make him give up. She's hoping to talk her way out of it, or maybe hoping that Huxley will run out of blood before she runs out of time.

Time is short.

Focus on what you came here for.