Aurora Quest

THE FRESH FRUIT and vegetables, after weeks of canned foodstuffs, had a disastrous effect on their digestive systems. Kyle was particularly hard hit, having to get up several times during the night to pay visits to the pair of malodorous wooden latrines that stood close to the waterwheel.

It was on his fourth visit, just after 3:15 on a cool, clear morning, that he heard a dry branch break under a man’s heel and the stifled curse that went with it.

Kyle realized that they had company.

Chapter Four

A couple of the inhabitants of Newtown had been drinking heavily and were becoming more raucous by the minute. They made veiled jokes that the others seemed to understand, but passed by Henderson McGill and the rest of his party.

Jokes about fresh meat on the hoof.

Jokes that seemed to be going further and further, despite Jed Harman’s efforts to shut them up. Without any warning, he stood up and pulled out a pump-action Smith & Wesson 12-gauge. “That’ll about do it,” he said, his voice carrying all around the fire.

Immediately there was all sorts of chaos. Most of the Newtown folk seemed as surprised as Mac, Jeff and the McGill family. Everyone stood up and shouted, several drawing concealed automatics and waving them threateningly.

“Mike and Saul, go get the old woman. Rest of you calm down and keep our guests covered.” Seeing Paul McGill fumbling for a pistol from the back of his belt, Harman called out, “Don’t do it, friend.”

Mac had been taken by surprise, despite Nanci’s warning. He’d turned over in his mind what she said about there being no boats, although Harman had claimed they depended for much of their food supply on fish. So where were the pigs that had provided the meat for the stew? The fresh meat on the hoof that the jokes had referred to…

The penny dropped, too slow and too late.

“Holy Mary,” he said just loud enough for Jeanne McGill to hear him as they sat close together under the barrels of half a dozen guns.

“What’s going on? They aiming to rob us, Mac?”

“No.”

“What, then? For Christ’s sake, Mac, what?”

“Shut the fuck up, will you, and keep your hands out in front.” The order came from a skinny woman in a raggedy dress with an open sore disfiguring her forehead.

“What?” whispered Jeanne, one arm cuddling a crying Sukie to her.

“Eat us,” he said, hardly even believing the two small words himself.

Jed Harman was restoring a resemblance of order, but the good folk of Newtown were over-the-top excited, whooping and slapping each other on the back. The drunk couple had linked arms and were dancing around the fire, faces flushed, pointing to their mouths and rubbing their bellies.

Mike and Saul reappeared, shaking their heads. “No sign of the old bitch.”

“Must’ve heard the noise and run for it. Still, scrawny old slut like that wouldn’t have made good— ”

Mac was staring at Jed Harman while he shouted, and he witnessed a bizarre sight.

The sneering, triumphant face simply exploded, as though the inexorable hand of an invisible giant had reached into his skull from behind and pushed hard, forcing the features outward. Both eyes burst from their sockets in a mist of watery pink, and a hail of teeth erupted into the blazing fire. Bright blood fountained and hissed over the orange flames.

The sound of the shot seemed oddly delayed, as if time itself had been hindered.

The dead man hadn’t even fallen forward into the pile of burning branches, his shotgun dropping to the trampled dirt, before more shots rang out.

Illuminated by the fire, paralyzed by the hidden threat, the Newtown men and women were absurdly simple targets for someone as good with a handgun as Nanci Simms.

Mac himself hadn’t begun to react sensibly before there were six down and dying, the shots coming a heartbeat apart from the surrounding blackness.

Paul was faster. So was Pamela. Both of them snatched at their handguns and opened up on the panic-stricken mob that was vanishing in front of them.

Not a single bullet had yet been fired in retaliation.

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