Kill Them All

CHAPTER TWELVE

Monday, 6:22 p.m.

Dry Wells was brighter now. They’d fired up the old-style streetlights. Kyle and Wally had them all working, plus most of the fighters had their own kerosene lanterns and flashlights. The town was lit up like a modern art piece, yellow and stripes of black shadow. The defenders could now see most of what would take place. They’d created some ambient light to work with, enough to slow down the effectiveness of any night-vision equipment. Still, the mercenaries had training and superior firepower.

Zeke and Hog had parked like Siamese twins up near the sheriff’s office, holding both hunting rifles and handguns at the ready. They seemed brave enough in each other’s company. Matt hoped that would hold when the firing started.

“You two ready?”

“Shit yeah,” Zeke said. His voice cracked on the second word, but he managed a grin. Hog managed a giggle.

Matt jogged low across the middle of the street and took cover by the gazebo, kneeling down in the trash and dried sage. Doing his best to sound official, he called up to his lookout.

“Timmy? Stay down, but answer me. Do you or Clete see anything?”

“Nothing.”

The teenager was still on the roof of the hotel keeping watch. The desert floor was a gigantic ink pad in every direction. At least he now had the night-vision goggles as an edge. The mercenaries no longer had the element of surprise. They would have to be careful every step of the way.

“All clear?”

And then, ignoring the order, Timmy raised his head to answer.

“Nothing, sir.”

Chuff!

In the flickering light and shadow, the top of his head vanished, a mist of blood and bone. The kid dropped flat onto the roof like a bag of flour. He’d been shot from afar with a night-vision sniper scope. Seeing this, the prostitute called Maggie wailed and kicked at the outside wall of the whorehouse.

Matt grimaced and took a deep breath. His anger boiled over. “Here they come!”

Sheriff Pickens called out, “Stay down, damn it! Cover, not concealment!”

Scotty and company began their attack.

In the end, the mercenaries weren’t cute about it. They just surrounded the ghost town, loaded up their weapons, and approached on foot, firing at will. They had body armor and darkness on their side, plus the ability to communicate via a group radio untouched by the jamming systems. They walked out of the shadows calmly, shooting to keep everyone down. Their fire was sparse but merciless, small dots of flame like pinpricks in a black balloon. Four tall bogeymen were striding arrogantly out of the eternal bedroom closet, shooting to kill.

They had no fear of death. They were already at its doorstep.

Matt pulled himself together. He gripped his ax handle.

The assault continued. While the townspeople handled the return fire, Matt studied the mercenaries’ approach and worked out a plan. The stoner came from the west, towards the sheriff’s office. Scotty crawled and hobbled in from the east, where he’d originally been wounded with a lucky shot. The redhead ran in from the dunes to the south, and the buzz-cut professional warrior jogged into Dry Wells from the north. From the direction and lay of the land, it seemed likely that this was the bastard who had shot Timmy. Matt hadn’t seen anything of Clete, the other teen, since his friend had died. Matt couldn’t blame him for staying hidden.

Zeke and Hog had moved and now crouched together near the old drugstore, grimly firing into the night. Hog had a small plastic tub full of extra ammunition by his massive thigh. They were surprisingly efficient, trading shots left and right in a manner that suggested they’d worked it out in advance. Still, all they could hope to do was slow things down. They had a lot of weapons, but they were still outgunned.

And so the mercenaries closed. Gunfire blazed. At first the enemies’ silenced weapons sounded like corn popping, but the noise steadily grew louder as they approached. Matt ran from the gazebo to the whorehouse and checked upstairs. Suzie and Jeb Pickens were holding their own, firing carefully. Jeb had a small flesh wound on one hand, wrapped with a strip of torn cloth. Matt ran back down the stairs, passing one man he didn’t know who had been injured by flying debris and a whore who had sprained her wrist while diving for cover.

He left for the old barn and loft, playing a hunch since it was poorly guarded. The defenders had thus far avoided using their Molotov cocktails. Someone else had set a fire in the straw, but when Matt arrived, the barn was empty. The fire was in a pile of straw in a small area surrounded by open dirt. Had someone, possibly Kyle, been smart enough to start a controlled blaze to light up the area? Perhaps it hadn’t been set by the enemy after all. Matt turned to go.

The red-haired mercenary dropped down from the rafters, stunning Matt and forcing the ax to fly from his hand into the straw. Red punched Matt twice in the head and rolled him over to bind his wrists with plastic cuffs, clearly intending to drag him back into the darkness and the waiting van.

Matt rolled his eyes up and went limp, and the red-haired mercenary loosened his grip just slightly. Matt head butted him, rolled back over, and kneed the man in the face-a face that was already shattered by sin, dented and weeping blood and brains. Still the man fought on. They rolled together through the fire, and Matt’s exposed flesh felt pain as it burned, but the mercenary didn’t even flinch. Matt could smell singed hair as the two men struggled and grunted. Matt got his right hand free and drove it up under the mercenary’s chin, forcing the man to bite his tongue half off. As blood spurted from the wound, he let go of Matt.

Matt spotted his grandfather’s ax lying near a pile of cow dung and crawled toward it, but the red-haired mercenary recovered enough to climb up Matt’s body, slowing him down. They both saw the.38 in the straw, and the mercenary lunged for the gun. Matt grabbed the pile of cow shit and smeared it into the man’s bloody eyes, then got his fingers around the handle of the ax.

Matt swung hard and decapitated the killer, whose head rolled away and bowled a strike in the feed bags. The mercenary’s trunk fell over and spurted blood, splattering the wooden slats of the stall. Matt threw up in the dirt but quickly gathered himself again. The battle raged on. The enemy was still out there.

Shouting and firing from outside. The smell of gunpowder and burning straw. Shaken, Matt got to his feet and ran to the front of the barn. He looked both ways. Across the street Sheriff Pickens shouted to him.

“Shit, he’s gone, Cahill!”

He had lost track of Scotty.

One down, three to go…