Chapter Sixteen

 

"You got a back way out of this place?" J.B. asked. He stood near one of the barred windows overlooking the main street. The hotel was only a few blocks down, ringed by gunmen who had overturned buckboards and brought out crates from the general store to build a barricade.

 

"Your friends are dead," Phillips replied. "They got no way out of that hotel. Whether Kirkland's men get them this hour or the next, it's going to happen."

 

J.B. turned a harsh glare on the gunsmith, making the other man drop his gaze. "Mebbe so. But I'm not going to sit down here all high and dry and pretend it doesn't matter to me. My place is with them, and that's bastard sure where I'm going to be."

 

Phillips stared hard at him. "Mebbe you think me and mine should throw our hand in with yours."

 

The Armorer spoke quietly. "Appears that's what you were asking Ryan to do earlier."

 

"It's different. That man is facing a certain chilling in the position he's in now."

 

"I don't see it much removed from what you were asking," J.B. argued. "Except that you aren't standing in there with him like you talked like you would."

 

"You trying to shame me?" The old man's voice grew harsh and cold.

 

J.B. shook his head. "You asked me a question, I answered it. You don't like the answers I give, don't be asking questions."

 

"If the plague isn't real," Phillips said, "then mebbe we got a chance of getting shut of this place. Start over somewhere new. Always a place in a ville for a man knows blasters."

 

"Can't argue with that," J.B. said. "And I wouldn't want to. But I got to get to my own work."

 

"You're throwing your life away, J. B. Dix," Anna told him.

 

"They aren't dead yet, and neither am I. We've come out of tough spots before. Probably going to see a few more before any of us catch the last train to the coast." He flicked his gaze back to Phillips. "Come on. You've got to have a white rabbit's bolt-hole around this place somewhere."

 

Reluctantly the old man nodded. "We got a tunnel that will get you out of here."

 

"Where does it come up?"

 

"At the blacksmith's shop next door. Got a corral there, and sells green-broke horses. Times got hard, we always figured a man a-foot wasn't going to make it. Needed him a horse if he was going anywhere."

 

"Show me," J.B. said. He readied his weapons as he walked.

 

"You're a fool, J.B." Anna grated.

 

"I guess we'll see about that after the smoke clears," the Armorer told her in a cool voice.

 

 

 

THE TRAPDOOR at the other end of the tunnel was heavy with packed earth. It took real work to get it up, and the whole time J.B. had to wonder if one of Kirkland's sec men was going to be standing at the other side of the room waiting for him.

 

Nobody was there, though.

 

He climbed out of the tunnel and brought up the duffel containing the ammo he'd gotten from Phillips and put together himself, but stopped when Anna grabbed his pants leg. She surged up out of the ground to join him, fisting his shirt.

 

"You don't have any idea what you're walking away from," Anna told him, pulling her body close.

 

J.B. felt the heavy pressure of her firm breasts against his chest. "I got an idea."

 

"And you're still going to walk? Even walk into your own death?"

 

"Made a promise," J.B. said, "that I'd be there. I'm not the kind of man to walk out on people."

 

"If things had been different, then?" She looked into his eyes wistfully, not bothering to disguise the desire burning there.

 

J.B. looked at her, admitting to himself the desire he felt for the young woman. But it was only passing fancy, and he knew himself well enough to know that. What he had with Mildred, there had never been anything like it in his life. She understood him in ways that no woman ever had, while at the same time remaining one of the most vexing creatures he'd ever encountered.

 

"Mebbe," he said, just to give her that.

 

Anna pulled him close. "There hasn't been a man for me since Eddie died. Mebbe there never will be. But if you get back this way, or you hear of Tinker Phillips's Gun Shop, you come on around for a visit."

 

"Sure," J.B. said, and the lie tripped from his lips with no effort at all.

 

She pulled his face into hers and gave him a burning kiss that he felt clear down to his toes. Then she broke the kiss and walked back to the trapdoor. Her walk suggested the curves and the passions that burned under her clothing.

 

"You put up a hell of an argument," J.B. said in a thick voice.

 

"But you're still going."

 

"Yeah."

 

Anna stepped back into the tunnel and climbed down. "I wish you well, then." She pulled the trapdoor closed.

 

J.B. went over to the horses, his Uzi canted at his hip and gripped in one hand. Anybody that came through the door while he was bridling a mount was fair game. Moonlight and lantern light drifted in through the patchwork glass windows.

 

He took down a bridle and fitted it over the head of a bay gelding that seemed gentle enough. He didn't bother with a saddle because he felt he was already working on borrowed time. Then he led the gelding to the rear doors of the blacksmith's shop.

 

Pulling himself onto the animal's back, he put the duffel across his lap, then thumped the horse in the sides with his heels and headed through the alley. Two men stood at its mouth, peering down the street at the hotel. Both turned to look at J.B., but neither of them recognized him.

 

He rode past them.

 

"Man, get your fool self chilled out there bastard quick," one of the men said.

 

J.B. ignored the warning and rode straight for the hotel, knowing there was every chance he'd get chilled in a cross fire between his friends and Kirkland's people.

 

The sec men stared after him as he rode out into the center of the street. They froze, not knowing what to do. A ragged cheer burst out from some of them as they thought one of their own had gotten courageous enough or stupid enough to try another attack on the hotel.

 

"Go get them outie bastards!" someone yelled.

 

And that, J.B. knew, might very well be the kiss of death because Mildred and Ryan were good enough to empty the horse's saddle even now. He raised his voice. "Rider coming in! It's J.B.!"

 

It took only a moment for what was truly happening to crystallize in the sec men's minds. Then they opened fire.

 

J.B. stayed low, aiming the horse at the front doors of the hotel. He kept his stomach pressed tight against the duffel bag so he wouldn't lose it. Twisting, he brought the Uzi to bear, raking a line of 9 mm bullets across the sec men behind him.

 

The bullets chewed through kegs, an overturned buckboard, and tables that had been brought out of various establishments. A handful of sec men went down under the blasterfire.

 

J.B. didn't let up until the Uzi was empty. He turned his attention back to the hotel, holding on to the horse's mane as it vaulted up onto the boardwalk. He knew it had taken some hits during the firefight; he'd felt them shiver through the animal's flesh. Two bullets had grazed the Armorer's left side, tearing through skin and glancing off the bone beneath.

 

The doors opened ahead of him just before he thought the horse was going to smash into them. The animal struggled to keep taking steps, blood flecking from its nostrils and blowing back into J.B.'s face in warm, wet drops.

 

The Armorer tried to pull the animal up short, but it was nearly dead, ignoring the pain in its mouth from the rough handling of the bit. The horse's front legs went out from under it as it fell forward.

 

J.B. leaped off his dead mount, pulling the duffel clear. New pain flared through his bruised side when he hit the floor. He skidded across the wooden floor and smashed into a big chair. Bullets ripped through the fabric over his head. The strange thing was, the bullets came from inside the hotel.

 

"Hold your goddamn fire!" Mildred yelled. "He's one of us!"

 

J.B. glanced across the room and saw the two women huddled behind the counter. One of them sat in a wheelchair, brandishing a huge blaster.

 

Muffling a groan as he pushed himself to his feet, J.B. reached for his fedora and clamped it onto his head. He gathered the straps of the duffel and pulled it over his shoulder. His side felt as if it were on fire.

 

Doc shoved the doors back together, then put the lock bar back into place. "John Barrymore," the old man said, "I was not sure if we would see you again in this life."

 

"I'm harder to get rid of than that," J.B. declared. He stepped across the mess the dying horse left when its bowels evacuated across the wooden floor. "You get Mildred back?"

 

"The gods permitted me to perform that small task." Doc took up a position at the window and blasted a charge of buckshot that elicited a scream of pain from outside. "But I fear I have escorted your dear lady from the frying pan into the fire."

 

"You know my views on that," J.B. said, joining the old man at the window. "Get a bigger frying pan." He recharged the Uzi and hammered out a series of bursts that drove the advancing sec men back to cover. "Where's Ryan?"

 

Then he heard the distinctive boom of his friend's Steyr.

 

"Up top," Mildred said.

 

J.B. crossed to the woman and gave her a brief kiss. "Keep yourself safe until we get out of this."

 

"You do the same," Mildred said.

 

The Armorer went up the stairs, talked briefly to Krysty and found out Ryan was on the roof. He located the inside ladder and went up. "Ryan."

 

"Come ahead," Ryan called.

 

Straining, J.B. barely made out the big man in the shadows. He heaved himself onto the roof with the duffel in tow. "Got good news and bad. Which do you want first?"

 

"The good," Ryan answered. "Mebbe it'll make the bad go down easier."

 

"The good news," J.B. said, moving painfully into a sitting position, "is Tinker was willing to part with some plas ex. Got a mighty big store of it for one man. Said he's been saving it for a special occasion."

 

Ryan nodded, scratching at the rough leather of his eyepatch. "Figure on boobying the building for when they decide to rush us?"

 

J.B. grinned. "Like that song Gimball used to play back on War Wag One. 'Hotel California.' Everybody's gonna check in when they come for us, but nobody's gonna check out. If they give us enough time, I'll have the plas ex set so it'll take out the bottom three floors and leave the structure standing. If we get godawful lucky, we can get away in the confusion."

 

"Draw it up and let me know when you need me," Ryan said. "I'll get Dean up here with the Steyr. He's good enough to snipe anybody who gets to feeling too lucky."

 

"Give me a half hour." J.B. felt the warmth sticking to his side, but knew the wound was already starting to coagulate. His eyelids felt grainy from lack of sleep and overexertion.

 

"What's the bad news?" Ryan asked.

 

"If you're expecting people in this ville to rise up with us and take a stand against Kirkland, it isn't going to happen."

 

"Tinker Phillips and his family?"

 

"Dealing themselves out of it."

 

Ryan didn't look surprised. "Can't say that I blame them on the face of things. We'll do what we can."

 

J.B. nodded, reaching out to clap Ryan on the shoulder. "Over, under or around. One of them will get it done."

 

"Always has," Ryan said.