Doc extended his right arm, wrist flexible, keeping the needle point moving in a small circle. “Cursed be he that first shall cry ‘Enough,’ ” he chanted.
The man feinted to the left and came in at Doc from the right, hacking away with the long blade of the bowie knife.
Only Doc wasn’t there.
He’d ignored the feint and moved toward it, drawing back the rapier and lunging with all his strength, aiming at the point where the man’s throat melted into his broad chest.
“A hit, a palpable hit,” he whispered, smiling with delight as the Toledo steel slid into the killer like a hot needle through butter.
A turn of the wrist shredded the lungs, opening up the artery in the neck. The blade, blood slick, was withdrawn as the man dropped his knife and staggered back, hands to the pumping wounds, eyes open wide with shock at the cognition of his own imminent passing.
Doc stopped and resheathed the sword as his opponent sank to his knees. He picked up the Le Mat and turned away, looking back at the dying wretch.
“Goodbye cruel world,” he said, and moved on.
MILDRED SHOT TWO of the desperadoes as they were running for the livery stable, trying to get mounts to escape the slaughter. Ryan had told her to go there when she split from J.B., and she stood in the center of the main street of Harmony, legs slightly apart, holding the butt of her ZKR 551, looking two-eyed along the barrel of the target revolver.
“Hey!” she shouted, halting the fleeing killers in their tracks, about eighty yards away from her.
They turned, both holding single-shot cap-and-ball muskets, and started to laugh when they saw a stocky black woman in her thirties, with beads in her plaited hair that caught the rising sun, wearing a quilt-lined denim coat over reinforced military jeans tucked into calf-length boots of black leather.
The woman held a small hand blaster, and seemed to believe it threatened them.
“You got us real scared, sweetheart,” yelled the man on the left. “Little toy blaster might reach about halfway.”
Mildred shot him through his open, laughing mouth, the full-metal-jacket .38 blowing the back of his head all over the street.
His companion turned and gaped at the mist of blood and brains that hung in the air around his friend’s skull as the man began to spin and topple.
Mildred shot him through the right ear, the bullet tumbling and taking out his left eye, part of his nose and most of the left cheek as it exited.
The woman turned and moved into one of the side alleys, continuing the hunt.
KRYSTY AND CARL STAYED together. It had been his idea, pointing out that he knew the ville better than anyone and could take her along safe shortcuts.
But when they reached the neat house, with its swinging sign offering Bed and Breakfast, they discovered that the pair of stickies they’d hoped to find had already fled, leaving the married couple who ran the place lying dead in a lake of blood in the kitchen with their three young children. An attempt had been made to fire the house, but the wood the stickies used had been green and it only smoldered.
Carl had been nervous while he stamped it out, gripping his hammer so hard that his knuckles were white.
“Where do you reckon they’ve gone?” he asked, his face pale. “Think Ryan and any of the others are still alive?”
J.B’S NEXT DESTINATION was the garage where they knew the small armawag was kept, along with the two-wheeled trailer that held spare cans of gas.
He used the stock of the scattergun to break off the brass padlock, swinging the Uzi on its sling across his back. He started to pull the door open, when a bullet crashed into the woodwork eighteen inches from his head.
The Armorer spun, seeing that two of the gang had the same idea as him, realizing that the wag might give them their best chance of escaping from the massacre that seemed to have taken most of their comrades in the ville.
They were half walking, half running toward him, one of them unarmed, the other holding what looked like a remade Model 669 Taurus revolver. He fired again as J.B. turned to face them, the bullet this time hitting much closer. If the killer had stopped and taken careful aim, it was likely that the first shot would have hit J.B., but he was in too much of a hurry.