Ryan tried twice to close with her, to use his extra strength and height. But she was too fast, supernaturally swift.
He managed to snatch only one shot, taking advantage of a moment when Mom seemed to hesitate, pausing to draw a ragged breath. But his footing was unsure in the thick mud, and the bullet went inches wide.
If Ryan allowed the woman to dictate the course of the fight, then he was likely to go down. Mrs. Fairchild was showing no signs of tiring, and it was only a matter of time—a short time—before the hatchet would slip by his woefully inadequate guard and hack a chunk out of his flesh.
“Bitch fucker!”
He tried the risk of aggression, managing to press her back onto the streaming, shadowed porch. For the next fifteen or twenty seconds, it was like a Mexican standoff. The maniac vigor of the woman held Ryan off, wearing him down, but she was too aware of the threat of the big pistol to be able to step away for the deathblow.
He took a quick step to his left, hoping to snatch a nanosecond that would enable him to take another shot at Mom Fairchild. But some of the planks of the porch were rotten and cracked under his heel, sending him toppling away to his right. The woman whooped with obscene delight as she saw him suddenly vulnerable, and swung down with her ax, sending the SIG-Sauer spinning from his wet fingers, the blaster landing in a deep puddle a dozen feet away.
“Goodbye, you shit-for-brains dickhead!” she roared, the hatchet looping up behind her shoulder, ready for the final, lethal stroke.
Ryan lifted his right hand to try to parry the blow, realizing the futility of the gesture. His mind’s eye projected forward, seeing the steel hack clean through his wrist, leaving a blood-jetting stump, when he saw an amazing sight.
Something like a long needle of steel, smeared with blood, glistening in the lightning’s fierce dazzle, had emerged from the center of Mom’s chest, below her pendulous breasts, tearing a small, neat hole in the check shirt she wore.
“Oh,” she said in a little, gasping voice, taking a single, faltering step toward Ryan. Her fingers unclenched the murderous grip on the haft of the ax, allowing it to drop to the boards at her feet.
“Touché,” Doc said, his voice overlaid with a note of quiet triumph.
Ryan watched, seeing the rapier’s point withdrawn and then thrust in again, penetrating between the ribs, beneath the shoulder blade on the left side of the woman’s corpulent body, slicing into lungs and heart.
He managed to free his trapped boot from the splintered wood and stepped neatly to one side, looking for the blaster, which was barely visible in the pitted pool of muddied water. He picked it up, his eye on Mrs. Fairchild. Once more the heavy clouds had rolled away from the sailing hunter’s moon, flooding the wide clearing with a deliquescent, silvery radiance.
Mrs. Fairchild’s little piggy eyes had opened unnaturally wide with the shock of the attack from behind her. Her arms dropped to her sides, and she swayed backward and forward for a dozen long seconds, like a stricken tree. Her mouth opened in a great wordless cry, then she dropped facedown into the liquid dirt, sending a wave of muddy water billowing across the open space in front of the cabin.
“Sic semper tyrannis,” Doc said, stooping to wipe the blood-slick steel of his beloved Toledo rapier on the corpse’s shirt. ” ‘It was ever thus.’ Cast your bread upon the waters and you see what you get?”
“Yeah. Soggy bread,” Mildred said from behind Ryan, standing with J.B. and Krysty, all three with blasters drawn.
“All right, lover?”
“Yeah, Dad. Thought you were down and done for,” Dean added.
Ryan examined the chipped and scarred metal of his SIG-Sauer. “Yeah, thanks. And a big thanks to you, Doc. I owe you one.”
“And I owe you hundreds, my dear friend.”
“Mind explaining just what’s been going on here, bro?” J.B. asked.
Ryan stepped past Mrs. Fairchild’s body and showed everyone the concealed doorway. By now Jak had appeared, shaking his head sleepily.