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.