Michael Spradlin - Blood Riders

Hollister paced back and forth, his hand on his chin, thinking.

“You do have a plan, right, sir?” Chee asked.

Hollister looked up, smiling. “Yes I do. Pete, let’s get your fire-shooting contraptions ready to go.”

“But, Major, I done told you, we can’t burn these trees. They’re too big and if-”

“Don’t worry, Pete, I got it all figured out. We aren’t going to be burning the trees.”

“All right,” Shaniah said. “The Fire Shooters, then what?”

Hollister grinned.

“Then we open the doors,” he said.

“Open the doors-are you insane?” Shaniah said.

Chee said nothing, looking away but actually thinking the same thing.

“Why would we want to do that, Major?” Monkey Pete said. “Sounds crazy to me. Like you’re letting them right in.”

Hollister smiled. Outside, the Archaics began to howl and scream, and rocks and sticks started thumping against the side of the train.

“Don’t forget, we’ve got the devil’s traps and we’ve got a little surprise for them,” he said as he shrugged into one of Pete’s Fire Shooters.

Chee picked up his Henry; he was already wearing his double-rig Colts.

“Pete, what about the horses… we can’t lose them,” Hollister said.

“No worries, Major. Them stock doors close up with solid steel, they ventilate out the top and sides. Ain’t nothing can get in there except noise. Might spook ’em a little is all.”

Hollister nodded. “Pete, you get up on the Gatling and start letting ’em have it. Shaniah, Chee, you come with me.”

They left the armory. The sounds of Archaics clamoring over the roof of the train were getting louder. Inside the main cabin, Hollister and Chee each took a door on opposite sides of the car.

Hollister glanced at the paintings and bunches of garlic around the doors and windows. “I hope those work,” he said. He worked the gauge on the Fire Shooter.

“Ready, Chee?” he shouted. The howls and squeals of the Archaics were getting louder and louder.

“Ready,” Chee shouted. “Dog! Stay!” he commanded. Dog whined and sat on his haunches as if Chee had just asked him to choose a head of lettuce over a side of bacon.

Shaniah, standing at the side of the door nearest Hollister with her blade in hand, threw it open.

Outside, a group of fifteen or twenty Archaics clustered near the train. The open door caught them completely by surprise. But they recovered quickly and launched themselves toward the train. The first one hit the threshold and bounced away, Van Helsing’s traps working, at least for now.

Hollister turned the knob on the Fire Shooter and pulled the trigger. Flames shot out through the door and Archaic after Archaic caught fire. Hollister swept the nozzle back and forth like he was watering a garden and the flames erupted, filling up the surrounding woods with light.

The noise surrounding him was nearly indescribable. Dog howled, Chee shouted for the animal to stay. Above him, he heard the sound of the Gatling as Monkey Pete opened fire and cleared the creatures off the roof of the train. Unable to use her blade, Shaniah took up a Henry and fired through the port. Outside, the screams of the Archaics became nearly unbearable; the stink of burning flesh reached Jonas’s nostrils and he thought he might retch, but he held on.

Despite the flames, the Archaics kept coming, hurling themselves at the train. Hollister looked at the gauge on his Fire Shooter. It was more than half empty. Since his field of vision was narrowed to what he could see through his door, he had no idea how many he had killed.

“Chee! How much juice you got left?” he hollered.

“Maybe a quarter tank, Major. There’s a lot of them. They keep coming,” he shouted over the din.

“When you run out of mixture, you close that door. Van Helsing’s charms seem to be working, but let’s not take any chances.”

“Yes, sir,” he shouted, triggering the Fire Shooter again. A new wave of Archaics came through the trees and Hollister bathed them in flames. Some of them began to run away, but he kept the pressure on the trigger.

“They are new! Initiates!” Shaniah shouted over the noise. “Mature Archaics would never stop. They would keep coming until they killed us or we killed them.”

Hollister filed this away. It was chaos now, but somehow this was important information. It would come in handy at some point, he was sure. For the time being, he kept pulling the trigger on Pete’s Fire Shooter.

A few minutes later, the device sputtered and the flame died. He checked the gauge. Empty. He slammed the door shut and a few seconds later Chee did the same at his end of the car. Monkey Pete was still firing the Gatling from the roof of the armory car.

“Pete! What’s going on out there?” Hollister shouted up to the engineer.

“We killed a lot of them, Major. Some of ’em took off and there’s maybe fifty of ’em left that I can see…” the Gatling fired again. “About forty left now.”

“Chee, load up and get Dog ready,” Hollister said. “Shaniah, you reload too. We’re going out there and kill the rest of them. Before they decide to retreat back to the mine.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Shaniah said. “Even forty Archaics, initiates or not, can be formidable. You do remember Absolution, don’t you?”

“I do,” Jonas said. “We just killed over a hundred of those things. Maybe more. With what we killed in Absolution we’ve taken Malachi’s numbers down a fair bit. He can’t have turned that many. We kill those left out there right now, we weaken him even further. He made a mistake. He didn’t know what our tactical capabilities are and he sent too many of his men. Just like Lee at Petersburg. We’ve got to get them now!”

Monkey Pete’s third Fire Shooter was empty, but Hollister grabbed the Ass-Kicker, and Chee and Shaniah picked up their Henrys.

“Pete! We’re going out, on the count of three you start singing with that Gatling!”

“YOU’RE WHAT?” Pete hollered back.

“One… two… three.” Hollister threw open the door.

“Dog! Hunt!” Chee shouted. Dog lunged through the door like he’d been shot out of a cannon. He leapt at the first Archaic he met, about ten yards from the train and took it by the throat. It had been a human woman and it was small but Archaic strong, and it tried to push Dog off, but the animal was too enraged. He tore the throat from the Archaic with a howl.

Hollister went out the door firing a Henry. The Archaics regrouped and charged. Chee came next, then Shaniah. The creatures lunged toward the train and Pete’s Gatling cut down the first row of them, the wooden bullets stitching them like quilts. A handful of them exploded into dust.

The trio stood with their backs to the train, firing away. When his Henry emptied, Jonas tossed it to the ground, took the Ass-Kicker by the stock, and pulled it to his hip, ready to shoot. He worked the action, the gear clicked into place, he leveled it at the Archaics, and fired.

The percussion wave blasted out of the barrel of the gun and six of the Archaics exploded in a wave of body parts. Three shots left. Maybe twenty creatures to go. He worked the action again, fired, again and again. The final shot took down the last four. It was over. They were all dead. Dog returned from somewhere, and for a moment, Hollister’s heart jumped because he had forgotten about the animal and was happy he hadn’t accidentally shot it. It loped over to Chee and dropped something at his feet. Hollister thought it might be an Archaic hand but wasn’t sure.

The area surrounding the train was a morass of body parts, burned skeletons, and piles of ash. Hollister couldn’t believe it. The four of them had beaten off a massive attack.