Strange waved once more. “Let’s go! Skirmish order.” The Confederates formed two lines, the men well separated from one another, and rolled forward. A few shots came from in front of them, but only a few. Nate let loose with a rebel yell as the whitewashed bulk of the Notahilton began playing peekaboo through the trees.
Gunfire crackled, not far off to the left. Mollie pointed toward J. P. Strange, nodded approvingly. So did Caudelclass="underline" sure enough, the Rivington men had tried to swing back on the detachment. Always nice to have an officer who can see past the end of his beard, Caudell thought.
Something went pop under Strange. The noise was loud enough to make Caudell, who trotted along perhaps fifty yards to the right of the major, look his way. He saw a black cylinder bounce out of the ground, about to the level of Strange’s waist. A split second later came another, much louder blast. The major collapsed with gruesome bonelessness, almost torn in two. A couple of men closest to him on either side also went down. Small, deadly pieces of metal buzzed past Caudell like angry bees.
“Torpedo!” The cry rose from half a dozen throats.
Caudell wished he could glide through the air or, like Jesus, walk on water. But there was no help for it but to run on. “Once we take Rivington, we don’t have to worry about torpedoes again as long as we live!” he shouted, as much for his own spirit’s sake as for the men around him. He blinked when they raised a cheer.
And there, all at once, lay the town whose name had become a curse all through the Confederacy. Only a handful of men in mottled green were on the street. Caudell fired at one of them. Several other Confederates opened up at the same time, so even though the man fell, he was not sure his bullet had brought him down.
The other Rivington men scrambled for cover. Remembering Nathan Bedford Forrest’s orders to poor Major Strange, Caudell yelled, “Watch where they retreat to. That’ll be what the general wants us to take out.”
Following his own advice wasn’t easy. The Rivington men were far from the only people dashing this way and that: a great many shrieking slaves, some white men in ordinary clothes—the true Rivington men, Caudell thought—and a handful of women scattered in panic at the sound of gunfire.
“The railroad station!” Mollie said, and that did indeed seem to be where the Rivington men were retreating. One corner of Caudell’s mouth twisted down. He’d had a small taste of house-to-house fighting when the Army of Northern Virginia took Washington City, and he didn’t care for it of course, nobody ever bothered to ask a soldier whether he cared for the job he was doing.
He crawled down to the end of the horse trough behind which he and Mollie lay, looking for the next piece of cover he’d run to. As he did so, he saw two men in splotched green dart over the tracks. “It ain’t the station!” he said, forgetting all his carefully cultivated grammar. “They’re making for that shed across the way.”
He remembered the shed, and the armed guard who’d prowled around it, from his train trip through Rivington on the way home after the war. But for four years’ weathering, it looked the same now as it had then.
“They crazy?” Mollie said. “They can’t fight from the shed.”
She was right—the only thing that made the shed different from a big wooden box was its door. A determined squad in the train station could have held out for a long time, maybe even until the Confederates brought up artillery. But another Rivington man abandoned the station for the shed. A bullet knocked him sprawling before he got there. He crawled on, leaving a trail of blood behind him, until he made it through the doorway.
Crazy to go from the station to the shed, unless… “They must keep their time engine in there!” Caudell said. The men of America Will Break were losing their fight for Rivington, but if they’d come out of a distant time, they might be able to go back again. The idea angered Caudell—it seemed like an unfair escape hatch.
“Time engine?” Mollie said.
“Not now,” he answered absently. The tactics the Rivington men were using made him sure he’d guessed their game. The fighters in the train station were a rear guard, holding back the Confederates while their fellows, one by one, dashed for the shed. A couple of them stopped bullets and fell, but most ran the gauntlet of fire.
They knew their business. Even when but one man was left in the station, he kept firing now from this window, now from that, so his foes took a little while to realize he was alone. And he let go a long, sprayed burst before he sprinted across the tracks, forcing enough of the Confederates to duck that he made it to the shed safe. The door swung closed behind him.
Only when silence lengthened did some of the Confederates warily emerge from cover. A lieutenant—in the confusion, Caudell never had caught his name—trotted up to the shed. If any Rivington men remained inside, he was a dead man. But no one fired from in there. He waved his hat, signaling it was safe to approach.
Caudell came up slowly, wondering if things could be as peaceful as they seemed. The young lieutenant started to pull the door open, then thought better of it. He sent several rounds through the rough pine boards. When all stayed silent, he grinned and yanked on the iron handle.
A blast of yellow flame, a roar—The mine literally blew him out of his shoes. But for those shoes, all that was left of him was a great red smear on the ground and the train tracks. The three men behind him also went down as if scythed. So did the facing wall of the station.
“Another torpedo!” Half deafened by the explosion, Caudell could hardly hear himself scream.
Mollie saw something he had not. Pointing, she said,” All the blast came out in one direction. I wonder how they did that.” When Nate, head still ringing, helplessly spread his hands, she stepped close and bawled in his ear till he understood.
However the Rivington men managed their hellish tricks, he was just glad he hadn’t been right in front of the shed. Along with the four men instantly killed, several others were down, badly wounded. Their cries pierced the thick wool that still seemed to swaddle Caudell’s ears.
But the door to the shed was open—open for good now. Caudell glanced at Mollie. She nodded, though her face mirrored the dread he felt. They ran for the doorway together, shouting for all they were worth and firing as they went.
The air inside smelled hot and burnt. Caudell dove and rolled. He bumped up against a stack of crates, neatly stenciled MEALS, READY TO EAT. Mollie crouched beside him. He blinked again and again to make his eyes adapt to the sudden gloom. The shed wasn’t as dark as it should have been. Over in one corner, hidden behind more crates, a bright white light shone off the cobwebby ceiling.
Mollie pointed to it with the muzzle of her AK-47. “That’s the same kind of light Benny Lang had in his house, ‘cept he had ‘em all over, not just the one.”
“To hell with Benny Lang.” But Caudell was already scuttling forward on hands and knees. “Reckon we’ve got to find out what that is.” Mollie went right behind him, and several other soldiers, too. He waved them to a halt when he came to a turn in the maze of crates. “If I touch off another torpedo, no need for us all to go up.”
He rounded corners one by one, each time by himself. He didn’t think about bravery till long afterwards; at the time, the only thing in his mind was the luckless lieutenant’s empty shoes. If he did touch off a torpedo, he’d never know what hit him. Oddly, that helped steady him. He’d seen too many worse ways of dying.