Tom slowly raised his sword until the tip of the blade was pointed directly at the Motor City Hammer. “I’m going to give you one last chance, Marion. Let Nix go.”
The Hammer laughed, and so did the other men. “Or what?” He sneered. “You’re outnumbered and outgunned, Tom. What the hell do you think you’re gonna do?”
“Me?” Tom looked faintly amused. “Hell, I’m not going to do anything. But you will let her go.”
“Says who?”
“Says me!” A voice snarled out of the darkness, and there was a heavy whoosh as a long metal pole cut through the air, and a flash of silver as a wickedly sharp bayonet blade cut through the back of the Motor City Hammer’s left leg. His Achilles tendon parted with an explosion of blood, and he screamed—as high and shrill as a little girl—and fell. He literally threw Nix from him, and she staggered toward Benny, who rushed to catch her.
Everyone turned as a pale figure jumped forward into the firelight, her snow-white hair swirling as she landed and pivoted and slashed again with her spear. The air was suddenly filled with a new rainfall, but these drops were a red so dark that it was almost black. The Hammer clamped both of his hands around his throat. His eyes went wide and were instantly filled with the dreadful certainty that no matter who won this night’s conflict—Charlie Pink-eye or Tom Imura—he, Marion Hammer, would own no piece of either victory or defeat, and that he would play no part in whatever future was being written here. He tried to speak, to say something, to articulate the terror and need in his heart, but that bull throat of his was no longer constructed for speech.
He toppled slowly forward, like a great building finally yielding to years of corruption and decay, and then he fell into the mud.
The Lost Girl stood over him, her hazel eyes as cold as all the hatred and loss in the world, and then she spat on the unmoving back of the man who had chased her sister into the rain and then left her body in the mud, as if it was garbage.
“God,” Nix breathed, massaging her bruised throat.
Charlie Matthias stared at his fallen friend, his mouth open, disbelief painted on his features. Benny could only imagine what was going on in the big man’s mind. Benny had heard all of the stories of Charlie and the Hammer. He’d sat in Lafferty’s General Store on far too many afternoons and listened as they recounted their adventures. Always their adventures. Always together, a pair of devils, drawing power from each other, enabling and supporting each other. The right and left fist of violence out here in the great Rot and Ruin.
And now the Hammer was dead.
In a few minutes he would reanimate as a zom. As one of them, as one of the things that Charlie and the Hammer hated and humiliated and debased for fun and profit.
As Benny watched, Charlie’s face changed. His eyes went from wide shock to narrow slits filled with lethal intent, and his mouth tightened into a grimace of bloodlust.
“I’m going to rip you apart, girl,” he said. “I should have done it five years ago, and now I’m going to make sure it’s done and done right. By God you are going to scream all the way to hell!”
Lilah raised her spear, and the bounty hunters raised their guns. Benny and Nix stepped up to flank her, the three of them ready to make a stand against Charlie Pink-eye.