Devils Unto Dust(49)

I crawl toward Micah and Sam quickly, my gun digging into my hip, trying to outrun the stench of burning bodies I know is coming. Ben and Curtis are behind me, but their size makes it slower going.

“What the hell was that?” Micah asks me when I get close, his forehead beaded with sweat.

“The house is on fire,” I answer.

“Damn. They don’t play around, do they?”

“Guess not.” Smoke is trickling in through the floorboards, stinging my eyes. “Let’s just get the hell out of here before we burn, too.”

“Agreed,” Sam says wryly.

We inch forward to the edge of the house, intent on the sunlight. I don’t see any of the shakes I saw before; maybe they moved to the front, or the fire scared them off. We wait a couple feet back, close enough to reach and stick an arm out but not so anything standing can see us. Ben and Curtis finally pull themselves alongside, both breathing heavily; it’s a tight fit for them, and the guns can’t have been comfortable.

“It looks clear,” I tell them, jutting my chin forward.

“All right. Hold back a minute,” Curtis says, and with a grunt he slithers out from underneath the house and rolls to his feet, gun in hand. His boots turn in a quick circle and then his face appears as he crouches down. “Let’s go,” he says.

We crawl out quickly and get to our feet, all of us red-faced and streaked with dirt. I squint, the light bright after the dimness beneath the house, and take my first real look around Silver. There’s a large chunk of the roof missing from the house that we couldn’t see from the inside; smoke billows out of it, dark and ashy. We’re in between a number of small houses, all with damaged roofs and broken or boarded-up windows. I reckon those are the first to go; eventually the walls and the floorboards will sag and then all of these houses will crumple in on themselves.

Curtis motions us to follow him and he leads us down an alley of sorts between two rows of houses. We move quickly, and I count four places down when he calls a stop. Curtis ducks his head out of the alley and looks both ways.

“All right, we should be just off the road. Once we clear these houses, we turn right and then keep going till we make it out of town.”

“Everyone keep as quiet as you can,” Ben says. “If you see movement, call it.”

“Guns out,” Curtis says, and I pull my revolver, heavy and familiar in my hand as I reload.

“Ready? Let’s move.”

Curtis heads straight for the gap between two houses. We turn right and pop out on the main road, the lane stretching wide and overgrown with sticker grass. Curtis turns to face us and holds a finger to his lips. He points to where the road continues straight through the town, then holds up one finger, then two, then three. On three we move, as quick as we can without losing sight of our surroundings, all of us fanned out to face the town. Small houses give way to larger houses, many of them with smashed-in doors and black streaks of fire damage; they must’ve started looting the rich when everything went to hell. I glance over my shoulder to find the smoke spiraling into the sky; I guess we did our part, too.

The houses turn into shops, dilapidated with dark interiors, paint peeling from signs on the windows. We pass the law offices and the gin mill and I reckon we must be getting close to the edge of town. I glance inside a drooping building with a red door, and a face stares back at me. I halt, my eyes frozen on the sunken mouth and hollow cheeks. My gun is aimed straight at the shake, but he, I think it’s a he, only stares blankly.

“Sign!” someone yells from behind me and a gun explodes, the blast echoing sharply. I flinch and look around wildly as another shot rings out; smoke trickles from the end of Curtis’s gun, and a body slumps against a storefront. I spin back, but the shake I saw is gone, disappeared somewhere into the shadows.

“Keep moving,” Curtis calls, and I tear my eyes away. We’re almost running now, and my heart is pounding painfully in my chest. Micah is in the lead and I stay close, keeping him on my right while the Garretts take the rear. Long minutes pass without any noise, and I can see the last buildings of Silver and just beyond, the desert looms wide and empty.

“Behind you,” Ben yells, and I spare a moment to look over my shoulder: three shakes tumble out from behind a corner, separating Micah and me from the rest. I shove my brother forward and speed up, but the shakes are doing that lurching run they do, their eyes mad and roving. Ben fires and hits one of the shakes in the shoulder; it spins and screams in pain and rage, but he can’t shoot at the others without hitting one of us. Those two don’t even pause, their minds long beyond reason.

“Micah, keep going,” I order. I bring my gun up and take aim behind me, stopping for a long moment to get one in my sights. I breathe out and pull the trigger; the crack pierces my eardrums and the kick jolts my shoulder. The shake on the left goes down with a hole in his neck. I cock the trigger to shoot again when the second shake takes a running leap and slams me to the ground.

When my back hits the dirt the air goes out of my lungs and time slows down to a crawl. I can feel my chest struggling to rise with the weight of the shake on top of me, his knees digging into my abdomen. I blink, and it takes forever for my eyelids to make the journey. I stare up into the sunken face of the shake, and he stares back at me with dull eyes. But then something flickers across his face, an expression so fleeting I can’t put a name to it—recognition maybe, or regret? Time stretches between us, and as I finally manage to take a gasping breath I realize he’s not attacking me. The shake cocks his head, the gesture half animal and half human, and then there’s the familiar crack of a rifle and blood splatters across my face.