Of course she would be astonished. A moment ago, this woman had been invincible. But now she was a naked target in a red dress.
Mallory raised the gun again, and the wounded woman ran screaming between the gray buildings.
They walked forward into the lull. One teenager ran in front of them, and the next missile was a brick. It hit Charles’s shoe, glancing off and doing no real damage, but Mallory drew on the assailant. Though he could only be fourteen or fifteen years old, the boy understood immediately that his tender age was not going to shield him, that when she leveled her gun at his head, she meant to kill him. He melted back behind the adults on the sidewalk. In the bar behind the boy, a wide front window broke in an outward burst of flames and flying glass. The crowd rippled in jerks and starts.
“They don’t have a leader,” said Mallory. “They’ll take their cues from us. Stay cool, Charles.”
Oh, right.
A small barrel-chested man appeared in front of them, and his rock hit Mallory in the shoulder. Retribution was swift. She leveled her gun and fired it as the man was running away. The little man fell, screaming and clutching his side where the blood was spurting between his fingers Another rock came from behind a car. She put her next bullet through the vehicle’s window. An anguished man stumbled away from the car one hand to his shoulder where the red stain of blood was spreading down the front of his shirt.
She fired another round into the crowd, at random this time, and then another shot.
Now they all stopped, beginning to sense their individual mortality in this strange lottery of bullets. She only had to raise her gun this time, and more of them fell away. By Charles’s count, her six-shooter should be out of bullets now. There were only stragglers hanging on the fringe, but at least twenty of them.
A rock hit Mallory between the shoulder blades. She turned and took aim at the man who had thrown it. He put out his hands as though this might stop a bullet, and then he faded back into the heat of the growing fire.
“Charles, take Riker’s weight for a second and don’t stop moving.” She swung out the speedloader from her belt and jammed the bullets into the free chambers of her gun. Then she picked up her share of Riker’s weight again.
Charles felt the heat at his back, and his head was turning when she said, “Don’t look. The buildings are burning. There’s nothing else to see.”
Ah, but there was, and only Charles could see it. He looked over the heads of the crowd to follow the quick lean figure with flowing white hair moving away from the most recent fire and on to another building. Augusta was carrying a gas can and a bottle with a rag stuffed in its mouth.
Another rock flew to Mallory, hitting her in the leg. Cheers came up from the crowd, hurrays for a strike. She raised her gun and fired into the clot of men on the sidewalk. One of them screamed and the rest moved away from this victim, as if bullets might be contagious. Mallory was still looking that way when Charles saw another arm rise to hurl a rock in their direction. But now this man was himself hit in the head with a rock. A light laughter was heard in the dark. The tone was young, sweet and high, but Charles knew it was Augusta.
Two rats crossed the porch of a near building, running in advance of the black smoke hugging the boards as it crawled forward. But then, the smoke sipped back under the doorsill, as though the wood structure had inhaled it. In the next second, two front windows blasted outward in a hot spray of fire and glass shards. Rolling waves of flame quickly covered the outer wall.
The fire might have been Augusta’s pet when it started, but now it went where it wanted to, spreading to the roof. A tongue of flame licked straight up in the air. He could feel the heat on his face, and his eyes stung. The wind washed over him and carried the smoke back toward the lower bayou. The acrid stench remained. The fire roared.
It was feeding.
“Don’t be afraid.” Mallory spoke in an easy conversational tone. “There’s no point in it anymore.”
He understood. He had given himself up for dead the moment he had lain down to cover Riker’s body. Mallory had given him all these remaining minutes of life – a gift she bought at great cost. And he had bought nothing for her. But while he understood that fear was pointless and almost ungrateful, his heart was racing. His body was still afraid and pounding out adrenaline.
Two young men stood close to the burning building, passing a whiskey bottle between them and laughing at the fire. They didn’t realize it was alive and hungry.
Charles knew; he could hear it eating things.
A flame stabbed straight out and ran its tongue around one man’s head, searing his flesh and setting his hair afire. They ran away together, one man madly slapping the head of the other, batting out the flames. The burning man screamed, yet he would not let go of the whiskey bottle in his hand.
For the rest, they hardly noticed the fire. They were drunk on liquor and drunk on the moment, reeling and cursing alongside Charles and Mallory, all moving inexorably along the road.
Mallory’s gun banged off a shot and cast a wider protective circle around Charles and Riker. The crowd hovered at the edge of this unseen line and came no closer, menacing only with raised fists and their mouths twisting in ugly shapes. The mob screamed, the fire roared. Mallory’s gun shattered the night and scattered them again.
But they came back, the mob and fresh fire. Another building bloomed with yellow flames as they passed it. Charles looked back over his shoulder. The blaze was beautiful, dazzling. A bottle hit the side of his head, but he hardly felt the blow. He was exhilarated; he was scared out of his mind.
A man’s shirt caught fire and he rolled in the dirt alone, left behind by the wall of people who moved with them up the Owltown road. The liquor bottles in all the bars were bursting glass bombs. But Mallory made the biggest noise of all, her gun exploding with authority.
Charles watched two large boys, nearly man size, perched on the rail of a porch, keeping to the shadows, dark as crows and watching, waiting, moving their lips in unison. And now Charles realized they were counting off her shots.
The next rock fell short of the mark. Mallory fired an empty gun. They were almost at the end of the road when the bird boys flew from the porch rail and ran forward with rocks in their hands.
“On your right,” said Charles.
She watched them for a moment and then threw the gun at the boy in the lead, clipping his head and drawing blood. The other boy stopped for a moment to look at his friend, who was sinking to the ground, blood dripping on his shirt from the head wound.
“Take Riker,” she snapped, “and keep going.” Mallory went after the boy who was still standing and holding a rock in his hand. She grabbed one of his arms and broke it over her raised leg. Charles heard the bone snap. She walked away from the boy, and left him screaming as they continued to walk, shouldering Riker between them, facing forward, both tall and taking long strides, matched horses in tandem. Charles had never felt so perfectly in tune with Mallory.
The flames were all around them now. The older men were gone, faded away in the heat. And now the younger men and a scattering of women drifted back to the edge of the road. And last, the boys, with their violent eyes and hairless bodies, took flight and entered one of the buildings.
A gunshot rang out from the upper window. Mallory talked to him across Riker’s body. “Most people can’t shoot worth a damn. These bastards couldn’t hit a moving target to save their lives.”