James Axler – Shadowfall

“He’s not trying to run, Dad.”

“I see it.”

“Why?”

“Times that you have to stop running, Dean. For better or worse.”

“Don’t see Straub.”

“Nor me.”

The leading pigs were beginning to emerge from the other side of the camp, hot on the heels of those brushwooders who’d taken the option of running. Behind them they left ruined tents and splintered huts.

And the dead and dying.

Because of the whirling dervish of dust and the deepening fog, it was difficult to make out the full details, but it looked as though there weren’t going to be many survivors in the settlement.

Nor any settlement to survive.

A young woman, carrying a child, was knocked sideways by a huge sow, vanishing under the trampling herd.

An old gray-haired man was tossed high in the air, his body spinning, arms and legs flailing, his guts spilling out of him in greasy cartwheeling loops, before he too was absorbed into the dust and fog.

Ryan watched Ditchdown meet his doom with an extraordinary calm, still holding the blaster, staring defiantly at the mutie pigs, standing upright until he crumpled before the tidal wall of rampaging flesh.

As the cloud of dust began to clear, it was possible to see the mangled bodies, one or two of the slower pigs pausing from the stampede to begin their snuffling, rutting feed off the smears of blood and broken bones and mashed flesh that had once been the wild brushwooders.

Ryan stood, wincing at the stabbing pain from the arrow wound, an injury that he’d managed to forget during the adrenaline rush of the deathly battle with General and then the lighting of the fires.

It had been a plan fraught with all sorts of perils and chances for spectacular failure, failure that would probably have meant their deaths as well as the destruction of the ville. But Dean had done his part perfectly, and it had worked.

The brushwooders were scattered and destroyed. Though the unseen final act was played out a mile or so farther to the west, past the territory of the scabbies, among the lethal geysers and sucking swamps of scalding, bubbling, golden mud, Ryan knew that precious few from the ragged camp would live to see the sun set that evening.

Though he would have been a little happier to have seen the man called Straub meet his own doom.

“That it, Dad?” Dean also stood, adjusting the heavy handblaster in his belt.

“That’s about as much ‘it’ as you can ever get. Yeah, it’s done.”

“Baron Weyman and Jamie’re safe?”

“For a while. Until next time.”

“Will there be a next time, Dad?”

Ryan smiled at his son. “There’s always a next time, son. Always.”

He turned away from the scene of murderous desolation, ignoring the feasting mutie pigs, leading the boy along the ridge, eastward, skirting the fire, back to the ville and their friends.

Chapter Thirty-Five

The events of the past few days had put a great strain on the frail physique of Baron Weyman, and he was only able to bid farewell to the outlanders from his bed. Bill Rainey stood by the shuttered window, and Jamie sat in a small armchair by the side of the fireplace, where a pile of weathered apple logs burned bright and clean.

The baron was pale, wearing a thick woolen shawl around his shoulders, but he seemed cheerful enough. “Well, Ryan Cawdorand all of you outlander friends, it is time to say goodbye and to thank you all, yet again, for everything that you’ve done.”

He smiled across at his son. “What would you say, dear boy?”

“That parting is such sweet sorrow, Father.”

Doc Tanner beamed at Jamie.

Mildred nodded. “Even I know that. Romeo and Juliet , isn’t it?”

Jamie blushed. “Yes, it is.” He looked at Ryan. “Forgive my asking, and I know that I’ve asked you this a lot of times in the past few days, ever since you came back from scorching the brushwooders’ camp”

“But can Dean stay here with you for a while?” Ryan completed. “And the answer’s still the same. I’d be happy enough, but the decision is my son’s. Not mine.”