Once again the blindfolded woman half turned in her chair, head to one side, looking toward Krysty.
“Are the ruins safe to go scavengin’ in? Friend got chilled by ghoulies.”
The yell, from a tall man with his hair dyed half green and half blue, distracted Emma Tyler. “If you go in, they’ll cut your throat before dark.”
“Aw, they ain’t that bad,” someone else shouted.
“I’m just telling him what would happen to him if he went in. He stays out of the center of the Hole and he won’t die there. Fact is, he’ll live for another twenty years or more and die in a fall from a ladder in a barn-raising in Kansas.”
“How do we know any of this crap’s true?” The whining voice came from a sour-faced man who was propping up the bar. Or, who was relying on the bar to keep him propped up.
Emma coughed, clearing her throat. “I just say that if the last man who spoke does go into the heart of the Hole, the ghoulies are going to find him and slit his throat.”
“So, tell me something?” There was a hesitation, broken only by the thudding of darts into the board, as the men there resumed their game. But Emma Tyler still held the attention of most of the crowded saloon.
“You’re sure you want me to tell you something secret? Your dusk-dark secret?”
“Sure I do.”
“Even if it will cause you pain?”
He threw back his head and cackled with laughter. “Cause me pain! Go ahead, sweetie, if you can!”
“Right. You have four children?”
“Sure.” A note of doubt crept into his voice, edging away the bravado. “So what?”
“You aren’t the father of any of them. In fact, you’ve never once managed to make love to your wife, have you? But you don’t have the same problem with the towheaded stable boy in the shantytown of Bow Regard, do you, Obadiah?”
The place was deathly still, every eye in the place turning to look at the man by the bar, who licked his lips, twin splashes of crimson highlighting his pale cheeks.
“You. Why, you.fuckin’ bitch!” He reached for a heavy revolver that was stuck down the front of his pants. “Fuckin’ kill-”
Ryan drew and fired his powerful SIG-Sauer in a single fluid action, shooting Obadiah through the center of the face. The 9 mm round tore into the top of the nose, bursting the septum, angling sideways, pushing one eye from its socket, where it dangled madly on the man’s cheek. The bullet exited from the back of the skull, removing a chunk of bone the size of a saucer, matted with blood, brains and hair. The spent bullet drove on, hitting the octagonal, green-edged mirror behind the bar and destroying it in a thousand bright shards of glass.
Before the dead man had slumped to the sawdust floor, crimson blood pumping from the exit wound,
J.B. and the others were out in the open, ranged alongside Ryan, all with blasters cocked and ready.
“Nobody do anything stupid!” Ryan called loud and clear, the barrel of the P-226 SIG-Sauer weaving from side to side like the head of a cobra. “Nobody gets hurt. Just keep still and quiet. Real still, now!”
Clinkerscales had ducked behind the bar as soon as he saw Ryan draw the automatic. Now he straightened, brushing glass from his shaved head. He was holding a sawed-down double-barrel Bernardelli Italia 12-gauge, both hammers thumbed back, waving it around at the crowd. “Guy had it coming. Saw him drawing on that poor blind girl. Stranger did well.”
“Hey, little lady, if you’re a doomie,” someone called from near the dartboard, “how come you didn’t see that coming?”
“Yeah, right!” echoed a second man. And the saloon erupted with raucous nervous laughter, the brain-dead corpse still twitching among them.
Emma Tyler had stood up, ripping away the black blindfold, golden eyes roaming over the crowd.
“Death comes faster than a ghost wind through a shotgun shack,” she said. “Comes like a stumbling heartbeat at midnight. Like a bat riding in from hell. Like a scythe through fresh corn.” Her voice was low and gentle, spellbinding with its whispering intensity, shutting up the crowd.