Chapter 23

Shane ran. Every few steps, he made an abrupt right-angle turn, ran a few more steps, then turned again, trying to keep Buchanan from getting a clear shot at him.
Shots rang out frequently, some of them passing close enough that Madison yelped in panic. A quick glance over his shoulder told Shane that Buchanan was gaining on them.
Shane was out of breath. He held Chastity tightly against his chest but he wasn’t used to sprinting with her extra weight and he knew that he could not keep it up for much longer. Blasting out of the alleyway, he emerged onto West Street and ran straight into the path of a group of invigilators. They were startled to see him but quickly recognised that he was not armed and therefore not a threat to them. Shane and Madison ran between them and sprinted on towards the far side of the street. Behind them, Buchanan let out a wordless bellow and fired off a volley of shots. One of the invigilators was caught in the line of fire and fell as a bullet punched through the side of his head. Startled, the others turned and brought their guns to bear upon Buchanan. They fired and he ducked back into the alley for cover. Their shots blew splinters out of the corner of the wall.
Laughing maliciously to himself, Buchanan emerged again and fired from the hip. Both men carried breach-loading rifles that took time to reload. He shot one but his gun clicked empty before he could shoot the second.
Angry, he closed the distance between them in a loping run and smashed the barrel of his revolver into the invigilator’s teeth. The man dropped to his knees and Buchanan floored him with a devastating kick, then stamped on his neck until he felt the man’s spine break beneath his heel. He spat on the corpse while he broke open his revolver and ejected the spent cartridges.
Shane and Madison had reached the general store on the far side of the street meanwhile, and Buchanan saw them disappear inside.
‘Gotten tired of running, have you Shane?’ Buchanan crooned to himself, reloading fresh bullets into his revolver. ‘Think you can fight me, do you? Well, that’s good.’
He snapped his revolver shut and advanced towards the store.
‘Let’s finish this properly.’

Shane stood at one of the boarded-up windows, looking out through a gap in the boards as Buchanan crossed the street towards him.
Madison was on the far side of the room. There was a door behind the counter that led into an alley out back. She had hold of Chastity’s hand and urgently gestured for Shane to follow her. ‘Come on!’ she hissed, but Shane stayed where he was.
They would never escape from Covenant if they kept on running. Sooner or later, Buchanan would get a clear shot or, even worse, they would run into the Cordites. The only way they would ever get out of the town alive was if they started to take control of their circumstances, and that meant they had to deal with Buchanan.
Shane glanced over his shoulder at Madison. ‘Hide!’ he told her.
She ducked behind the counter and dragged Chastity down next to her. Shane edged to the side of the door and waited in the shadows. He did not experience the familiar calmness that usually came over him when he fought. Instead he felt a nervous chill.
He was not accustomed to fighting without a gun.
He listened to Buchanan’s footsteps as he mounted the boardwalk and approached the door. Buchanan was no fool. He could guess that Shane would be waiting for him. He hesitated at the threshold.
‘Are you in there, Shane?’
He struck the doorframe with the palm of his mutilated hand, making a loud, sudden noise. He was trying to psyche Shane out and frighten him into making a move, but Shane kept his cool and waited in the dark, his hand on the hilt of his knife.
Buchanan hit the doorframe again, harder and more aggressively than before. He had never been a patient man and Shane did not think he would wait out there for long. He gave the doorframe another strike, but when that failed to illicit a reaction, he strode inside.
Shane sprang on him the moment he entered the door, chopping his knife down in a strike aimed at the back of Buchanan’s hand. It cut the skin and Buchanan dropped his revolver and swore. Shane reversed the direction of his cut and thrust the point of his knife at Buchanan’s belly, but his adversary had recovered from the surprise of his attack and managed to turn the blow with the back of his arm. He hit Shane with his elbow and knocked him staggering across the room. The knife slipped from Shane’s fingers and slid away across the floor.
Buchanan roared in anger and charged him like a bull. He hit Shane low and scooped his legs off the ground. The wind was punched out of Shane’s lungs as Buchanan drove him backwards against a rack of shelving on the wall. Shelves broke and an assortment of dusty jars and empty bottles rained down onto them. Buchanan dumped Shane roughly on the floor and stamped on his belly.
Shane somehow managed to get to his feet, fending off the blows with his arms. He ducked and weaved and managed to avoid Buchanan’s strikes long enough to get his measure. Buchanan was a fierce and aggressive fighter, but his movements were clumsy. He made up for the disadvantage of his mutilated right hand by striking with his elbows more often than his fists.
Shane timed his moment and ducked under a wild haymaker. He seized hold of a broken shelf and swung it into the side of Buchanan’s head. The man let out a howl and staggered sideways, but he had taken enough beatings in the past that pain had little effect on him. He shook his head to clear it and waded back into the fight. Shane tried to hit him with the shelf again but this time Buchanan was expecting it. He lunged inside of Shane’s reach and hooked one arm around his head. Then, with scarcely any exertion on his part, he slammed Shane’s head against the wall.
Shane managed to break free of his grip and danced backwards across the room. He ducked and weaved past Buchanan’s strikes and retaliated with a fierce punch that struck Buchanan square on the jaw. It stunned him for a moment and Shane pressed his advantage. He snapped two fast hooks into Buchanan’s kidneys and then swept a vicious uppercut into his solar plexus.
Buchanan staggered up against the side of the counter and gave a hacking cough. He recovered quickly and caught Shane by surprise. Countering a punch, he hauled Shane in close and slammed him up against the counter. Buchanan was enraged now, and his face turned blood red. His eyes bulged and spittle flecked his lips. He cursed as he hit Shane with his elbows, driving each blow with numbing force. Shane felt his legs buckle beneath him.
Buchanan got hold of him by the collar of his shirt and threw him against the wall. Shane smacked into it, too weak and too dazed to absorb the impact. He grabbed hold of a shelf and used it to steady himself, but Buchanan was upon him again in an instant. He drove his knee into Shane’s stomach and threw him across the room into the counter again. Shane hit it and slithered to the floor. He rolled over and tried to stand but his strength deserted him. He crumpled onto the floor, breathing heavily, his whole body in pain.
‘Did you think you could beat me, Shane?’ Buchanan asked.
It took a moment for Shane to find his voice. ‘I did the last time,’ he croaked.
‘You had a gun last time, fucker!’
He swung a kick into Shane’s ribs.
‘Look at you! You’re nothing without a gun!’
‘What about you?’ Shane replied with a groan. ‘You’re nothing even with a gun.’ And he laughed, even though it hurt his ribs.
Buchanan bellowed savagely and kicked him. ‘Let’s see you laugh in a minute, after I’ve ripped out your fucking tongue.’
He was so intent on kicking Shane that he did not see Madison creep out from behind the counter, a wooden stool in her hands. She stole up carefully behind him and raised it above her head to strike. He whirled about abruptly.
‘I thought I smelled cunt,’ he snarled, and snatched the chair out of her hands.
He punched her in the face and sent her to the floor, where she sprawled unconscious. Buchanan hurled the stool across the room and it broke against the wall.
Shane tried to get to his feet but only made it as far as his knees before Buchanan kicked him back down. ‘I’ve waited a long time for this.’ Buchanan sneered, drawing a knife from his belt. It was long and the blade had a wickedly serrated edge.
‘I’m gonna carve you up slow, Shane. Starting with your fingers.’

Shane tried to scramble away as Buchanan advanced on him but he was too weak and could not move fast enough. Buchanan slammed his knee onto Shane’s chest and sank his weight on top of it, pinning him down. His face was cut and bleeding from the few blows that Shane had landed, but he did not seem to be badly affected by them. He grinned, blood dribbling from his gums.
He brandished his knife to the light, letting Shane take a good long look at it. Buchanan had never liked to kill his enemies too quickly. He much preferred to draw out their suffering, and with Shane he had a big grudge to settle.
The gunshot was sudden and abrupt. It caught them both by surprise. Buchanan blinked and looked down at his chest, where a red stain had appeared and was rapidly getting bigger. He swore quietly and looked over his shoulder to see who had shot him, but his strength gave out and he collapsed onto the floor.
Shane saw Chastity standing close to the doorway. She held Buchanan’s Smith and Wesson revolver awkwardly in her tiny hands and there was smoke curling from its barrel. Her face was like china. Her eyes were ablaze.
Shane found a hidden reserve of strength somewhere deep inside of himself and rolled to his feet just a split second before she fired at him. The heavy revolver bucked in her grasp and blew a hole in the floorboards where he had lain. It was a much bigger gun than she could handle and the recoil lifted her hands up into the air. She brought them level again and fumbled to draw back the hammer. In that time, Shane lurched for cover. He vaulted clumsily over the shop’s counter just as she fired and felt the bullet rip past the side of his head, narrowly missing him. It struck a bottle on the shelves in front of him and blasted it into shards.
He dropped down behind the counter, breathing heavily, and clutched painfully at his bruised ribs. The sudden movement had hurt him badly.
Beyond the counter, he heard Chastity cock the hammer.
The sound gripped him with a icy chill. The wooden front of the counter was perhaps an inch thick at best and offered no protection from the .44 calibre slugs that Buchanan’s revolver fired. He scrambled forward on his hands and knees, ducking flat to the ground as Chastity fired blindly at him. The first bullet smashed through the counter behind him and embedded itself in the wall beyond. The second was aimed in front of him and showered him in the face with splinters.
He came to an abrupt halt, gasping for breath. On the other side of the counter, he heard her draw back the hammer and knew that the next shot was coming straight at him. He grabbed hold of the counter and vaulted over it just as she fired. The bullet smashed through the wood, passing beneath him as he jumped.
He cleared the counter and landed running, pushing his body to the limit of his endurance. He rushed Chastity head-on and tackled her, propelling her down to the ground. The gun toppled from her hands as she tried to cock it again and she screamed with frustration. She kicked and scratched him and spat and wailed.
Shane smothered her in his grasp and pinned her to the floor, holding her immobile while she raged. She was fierce, but she was also tired and she quickly wore herself out. As she quietened down, Shane eased back and sat down with his back against the wall. He felt exhausted. Wincing at the pain in his ribs, he pulled Chastity into his lap and sat there, nursing her while he got his strength back.