They were on the run. A couple more dared to attack the new trio and were dispatched by the axes. After that, the passenger car emptied of the last of them. Lawson caught sight of the remaining troops, a paltry number, fleeing through the snow down the embankment into the woods. The winged shapechangers took to the air. A few half-hearted shots were fired from the rocks on the left, and then there was no more gunfire. The arms of Junior’s headless body reached out as if trying to grasp hold of a purchase enough to stand. The hands with their dirty clawlike nails closed on empty air. Then the arms fell back, as from the stump of the neck the last of his ichor oozed out like ebony mud.
Lawson stood up. As he warily watched the new arrivals, he reloaded his Colt with silvers by holding the gun as best he could in his right hand; the broken arm was an impediment but at least he had a little strength in his fingers now. Ann was standing too, her face and hair splattered with vampire gore. Her expression was eerily calm, but her hands were shaking as she fed her pistol.
The Indian pushed two more shells in the shotgun. The mountain man swung his axe back and rested it on his shoulder. The vampire in the blue jacket leaned on his axe and looked around at the carnage.
“Travel this way often?” he asked. It was the voice of a refined and educated man.
“Once will be enough,” Trevor said.
The man’s eyes were light brown. There was a combination in them of both terrible sadness and terrible ferocity. Though his mouth was stained with the ichor his fangs had sucked from the bodies that still convulsed on the floorboards, he might have given the merest hint of a smile. It was hard to tell, because the light came only from flickering pools of lamp oil.
“You’re one of us,” he said.
“I’m one,” Trevor answered. “Who are us?”
The man grunted softly. He was nearly Lawson’s height, had thick black hair with streaks of gray on the sides and a gray lock that fell across his forehead above the right eye. On the left side of his face was the puckered round hole where a bullet had made its entry, and on the right side the same where it had made its exit. Another scar was scrawled from the corner of his left eye to the left corner of his mouth, and the disfigurement of the upper lip made him appear to wear the faint and rather mocking smile.
Minie ball hole and saber scar, Lawson thought. “The War For Southern Independence?” he asked.
“The War of the Rebellion,” said the man.
“I was taken at Shiloh.”
“You mean Pittsburg Landing? I was taken at Antietam.”
“You mean, of course, Sharpsburg,” said Lawson. “I was a captain.”
“I was a major…captain.”
“Ah,” Lawson said, and returned the smile in same faint and mocking fashion. “Well…we are greatly thankful for your arrival here, major. All of us.”
“Figure you’d best see to your people,” rumbled the mountain man. “Smellin’ their blood.”
Except for Ann, the others had become a frozen tableau…and almost literally because the air was far below freezing, the snowfall heavier, and the car looked to have been busted and crushed by the fist and boot of a disagreeable giant who hated trains. It was time to count the costs.
Blue was all right, drifting in and out with no knowledge of any of this. Easterly had taken some splinters and glass cuts, but he’d had the presence of mind in the battle to draw his crucifix and use it to burn the creatures who’d tried to swarm both himself and the girl. Eric had suffered the rake of a claw from the top of his left shoulder down to the elbow and been bitten on the throat but the vampire’s thirst had been interrupted by the noise of the Indian’s shotgun. With the decapitation of Junior the creature had decided a few cupfuls of human blood was enough soup for the nightly meal and had fled the car through a window.
Mathias had fought them off as well, though he’d taken several bites to both arms, his hands and one more frenzied bite on his back. He was weak and dazed but he was alive.
“I’m all right,” said Rooster as he struggled to his feet. What had saved him was the fact that the male and female vampires who’d attacked him had started fighting each other for his blood. The female had gotten to his neck while the male’s fangs had pierced his right hand, but just after the male had been destroyed by the shotgun the female had pulled out and turned away in time to give her head to an axeblade. “I’m all right,” Rooster repeated, though he had lost a goodly amount of blood and was near falling down again. “I’m ready for the nuthouse, but I’m all right.”
“Gantt?” Lawson called. There was no answer.
The mountain man had already walked back to the strongest smell of human blood.
“This one’s gone,” he said. “Throat open…chest too. Heart’s tore out.” He glanced at Lawson with a pair of narrow pale blue eyes in the rugged and wrinkled face. “Took it and skedaddled. Blood trail goes out the window.”
Lawson had to see for himself. He hated the sight, for Gantt’s eyes were open and blood had run from both corners of his mouth. It seemed a terrible violation, worse than having your throat pierced by a pair of fangs, to have your heart torn out and stolen as one might snatch a gravy-soaked biscuit from a dinner plate. He recalled seeing a very thin female vampire with long dark hair bearing down on Gantt. He wondered if it might have been Eva, and if so…LaRouge was teaching her well.
He had no doubt LaRouge was somewhere near. Maybe not in the Montana territory, but near enough to have planned all this, and near enough to soon know that Lawson had escaped.
But he and the other survivors had not gotten out of it yet. Helena still seemed a world away…and there were these three to be considered.
“Josephus Wilder,” said the mountain man. “Your handle?”
“Trevor Lawson. Your name?” he asked the major.
The man was standing over Reverend Easterly and Blue, and the Indian was walking back and forth among the dying vampire bodies.
“Achilles Godfrey,” said the man.
That name. That name, Lawson thought. Where had he—?
Oh yes.
“Major Godfrey,” said Lawson. “Also known as ‘Godless’.”
“By some,” the major said. “Those who failed to grasp realities.”
“I read in the newspaper…somewhere…about you and your men at the battle of Boonsboro.”
“You mean the battle of South Mountain.”
“The Yankee name for it. Specifically, what happened at Fox’s Gap. September 14th, 1862…three days before Sharpsburg. Does that bring back a memory?”
“Dim,” came the answer. “All of that, except for that night on the Antietam battlefield, among the screaming wounded, when they found me under my dead horse…very dim.”
“I’ll refresh your memory. Sixty Confederate bodies thrown down a well in the aftermath of Fox’s Gap. Thrown down there like garbage. Did you piss on them afterward?”
“Trevor,” said Ann. “Don’t.”
Lawson realized that the vampire Indian had moved slightly to one side and nearer him, the better to get a clear line-of-fire with the loaded shotgun.
“I call him Smoke, because he moves so quickly and quietly,” said Achilles Godfrey, in a soft and beguiling voice. “He doesn’t speak. I saved his life many years ago from a pack of them. His own kind, turned. He has repeated the favor many times. We are all brothers here, and there are several more out there who came with us to dispatch as many as possible. We have a small community a few miles away, in the mountains. We felt them gathering. We sent out scouts. Smoke is not the only Sioux in our happy little town. Imagine our amazement…that instead of humans being trapped as food for them, aboard this train is one of us. We saw you talking to that…boy, and what happened afterward. It was quite a shock to me personally, but then again…there had to be others like us out there. Had to be.”