Charlie Huston - Half the Blood of Brooklyn

I pull the hogleg from my belt and put it against his forehead.

– Tell me, do you think you clowns can stop me if I decide to blow your stomach open, rip your guts back out, stretch them across the boardwalk, and run my van over them a few times?

Lydia raises both her hands, opens her mouth to chill the situation, and something slaps the stiff canvas of the tent, whispers through the air and imbeds itself in her neck.

I blink.

– Jesus fuck, is that an arrow?

A heavy rain hits the tent, sharp reports followed by chorused sighs.

Fletched steel shafts sprout in the sand. Pepper the table and the corpse. Bristle from the Strongman’s back as he scoops Vendetta and Harm together and bends his body over theirs. Glasseater gnashes his broken teeth on the one that springs out of his mouth, and finds it inedible. They chase Stretch as he crawls under the stage. Hatter pulls one from his foot, turns and runs into a flock of them that pelt his chest and face.

I drop to the ground. One passes through my right biceps and into my side, pinning my arm to my torso.

The storm stops.

Something black flutters at the entrance of the tent. I see the Wraith in my memory, stop breathing, roll onto my left side, fire both barrels of the hogleg, the recoil jerking my arm back, the shaft of the arrow tearing flesh, the barbed tip twisting between two ribs.

The black shape in the entrance sprays a cloud of blood and explodes back into the night.

A man, a man in a cape. Only a man.

I breathe. Smell the Vyrus thick in the fresh blood.

Not a Wraith, but not a man. More are out there.

I get up. Lydia has the arrow in her neck, more in her legs and abdomen. I grab her and drag her toward the rear of the tent, kicking the brazier from its stand as I pass it, spilling flaming coals over the grease-stained carpets and under the dry boards of the stage and the bleachers.

Fire wastes no time, begins to eat the tent and its contents.

I reach the back of the tent, drop Lydia, grab the canvas at its base and heave it up, tearing long iron stakes from the sand. I look back, see more black shapes beating at the entrance, leaping across the flames, the trailing wings of one catching fire.

The Strongman rises, porcupined in steel, and takes his broadsword from the edge of the stage as Vendetta and Harm worm beneath the platform, over the coals scattered there. Two of the caped silhouettes jump, the broadsword arcs, dividing one of the shapes into two bleeding halves and imbedding in the other before it slams into him and drives him onto his back. The heads of the arrows burst from his chest and stomach and he grabs the wounded attacker and pulls him close and fire is reflected everywhere in blood.

I wrap my fingers in Lydia’s hair and duck under the edge of the burning tent, hauling her through the sand, jerking to a stop as something grabs her and she’s torn from me; dropping the fistful of her hair, snagging her wrist and digging my heel into the sand as she’s pulled back into the tent.

– Pitt.

Lydia, rasping over the arrow in her throat, reaching to me with her other hand.

– Gun. Gun.

I drop the hogleg, force my right hand across my body, ripping the hole in my biceps wider, twisting the barbs deeper. I tug the Docks Boss’ gun from my jacket pocket and toss it into the sand as the things holding her legs heave and we’re both pulled toward the flaming canvas.

She scoops up the huge revolver.

– Let me go. Go.

Three arrows pierce the tent and fly into the darkness behind me.

Lydia twists her arm to free herself.

– Go. Just fucking come back.

I let her go and she’s dragged screaming into the tent and I snag the hogleg and I run into the darkness below the boardwalk, trailing blood, the sound of the revolver crashing behind me.

Lydia, filling the blazing night with lead.

Burrowed deep in sand where it piles up high under the boardwalk, I break the hogleg, drop the spent shells and replace them. I face back on my trail and wait for something that I can blow in half.

Nothing comes.

I watch the tent burn. I watch the fluttering silhouettes hack the lines, tumbling it down so that it burns faster. I watch them gather bodies and parts of bodies. Three of them carry the Strongman and the smaller corpse pinned to him.

I listen.

– Don’t leave anything.

– I’m not leaving anything, Axler.

– We need it all.

– I never buried anyone? I never sat Shiva? I don’t know we need it all?

– Just don’t leave any of Chaim on the ground.

– It’s too late. He was sprayed all over the tent. And half of Fletcher burned before we could get to him.

– Burned. Fuck. Will the Chevra Kadisha be able to do anything?

– Ask your papa.

– Shit.

One of the silhouettes stands at the edge of the firelight, peering under the boardwalk.

– Selig, come away, we have to go.

– Some got away.

– Too late. We have to go. The fire.

– They got away. The one that shot Chaim got away. The midget got away. One of his whores got away.

A siren whines, coming closer.

– We have to go.

– They killed Chaim. They killed Fletcher. They killed Elias. We have to find them. We have to kill them.

More sirens join the first.

– We have to go, Selig.

– Chaim. They killed my brother. Chaim. I have to kill them.

He starts to scramble under the boardwalk.

I train both barrels on his shadow.

He stops, scents, his head turns toward my hiding place. Two of the others come after him and grab him.

– Selig. Ha-Makom yenahem ethem b’tokh sha’ar aveilei Tzion v’Yerushalayim, Selig. We have to go.

They pull him from under the boardwalk, dragging him away from the flames, away from my gun that killed his brother.

Lucky fucker.

I pinch the hollow shaft just below the plastic fletching and flatten it between my fingers. Sitting on the floor of the van, arm tight to my side and braced against the paneled interior wall, I grip the arrow just above the pinched alloy and begin to bend it back and forth, stressing the metal. The tip wiggles between my ribs.

When the metal bends with ease, I wrap my fist around it, take a few shallow breaths, feeling the point dig at the side of my lung, and give a single sharp yank that tears the tail of the arrow away and hurts like a motherfucker. I drop the scrap on the floor and lift my right arm and pull it free, fresh blood running from the hole that had sealed itself around the shaft that juts from my side.

I press my fingers into the hole in my side, feeling for the sharp-edged barbs, finding them. I’m lucky that they haven’t slipped in past the ribs. I won’t have to break my own bones to dig the fucker out. That would have sucked.

I take my switchblade from my boot top and it snaps open. I have to use my left hand to cut short twin seams through the skin and muscle on either side of the shaft, then drop the knife, twist the shaft so that the broad surface of the arrowhead is parallel to the ribs and jerk it and find out that it has two shorter barbs right at the tip that snag on the bone and only come free when I curse and twist my right arm around and get a two-handed grip and pull the fucking thing out along with a hunk of meat and cartilage and muscle and slivers of bone.

I pick up one of the strips I’ve already torn my undershirt into and start wrapping it around my torso. The Vyrus will seal the wounds soon, but the more blood I can keep inside, the better this will go for me. I’ve already dribbled a fair amount. And I’m likely to lose more by the time I’ve killed all the people I want to see dead right now.

Someone puts a hand on the outer handle of the rear door and tests to see if it’s locked. It is.