The creature’s head snapped toward the rock.
Then it roared.
The sound hit them like thunder. Dust jumped on the rock’s skin. Lily’s fingers clawed at his sleeve.
“It sees us,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” he said.
He waited for his heart to kick into a run like it had when the Comanche came, for his breath to go thin and ragged.
It didn’t.
His chest rose and fell slow. His pulse thudded steady in his ears. No faster than when he’d been walking. It was like someone had taken all the fear out of him and left only the edges.
The creature moved.
It lunged straight up the slope toward the rock, like the hill wasn’t there. Its bad leg dragged worse now, but the good one drove it in great, jarring strides. Dirt fountained under its feet.
“Run?” Lily squeaked.
He thought about it for exactly one heartbeat.
“No,” he said.
He shrugged the carrying pole off his shoulders. The burlap sack slumped into the dust with a soft, heavy thud. The water jugs swung and knocked together, one sloshing. He let the pole fall. It didn’t matter if things spilled. They didn’t matter at all if the thing on the road reached Lily.
“Stay down,” he told her. “Whatever happens, you don’t move ‘til I say.”
“Brother—”
“Promise,” he snapped.
Her mouth shut. She nodded once, eyes wide, and flattened herself tighter against the rock.
He turned back to the creature.
It was halfway up the slope now, each stride rattling stones. Its claws furrowed the dirt. Breath huffed from its wide nostrils in short, angry bursts.
Then and there, the boy made a choice.
I’m gonna kill you.
He reached inward.
[Inventory]
The black-powder stick slapped into his palm, more real than anything around it for a moment. It smelled the way the hermit’s crate had smelled when he first cracked it open—sharp and sulfurous, like storms and old iron.
“Lily,” he said.
She raised her head a fraction, eyes barely clearing the rock. When she saw what he held, her expression flickered between fear and confusion.
“That’s one of his candles,” she whispered. “From the bad man’s house.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Gonna make a bigger fire with it.”
He thumbed at the stub of fuse, measuring. A couple finger-widths at least. He had no way of knowing how fast it would burn, but in his head he saw it like he saw anything that mattered: in pieces. Fuse catching. Fire racing. Charge blowing. It all had to happen when the creature was close enough it couldn’t get away, close enough it couldn’t toss the thing back at him.
“Can you light it?” he asked.
Lily stared at him. “Here?”
“Not all of it.” He held it out toward her. “Just the tail. Your [Spark].”
She pressed her lips together, then nodded. One small hand came up, fingers trembling as she pointed at the fuse.
“Hold it still,” she muttered.
“I am.”
The tip of her finger tingled. A tiny bead of light popped into existence at her nail, white-hot, then jumped.
The fuse caught.
Fire licked into the hemp, turned it coal-black, then began to crawl downward in a bright, hungry line. The smell of burning rope rose sharp and fast.
He turned and ran.
He didn’t run away from the creature. He ran at an angle, down and out from the rock, into the open where the stage road widened. His bare feet slapped mud. The cold air cut his face. The burlap sack and pole lay forgotten behind him. All that mattered in his hands was the weight of the powder stick and the little thread of fire eating toward it.
“Hey!” he shouted, voice cracking high and loud. “Hey, you ugly son of a bitch!”
The creature’s head whipped after him.
Its attention tore away from the rock, from Lily. Its eyes fixed on the skinny boy running across the trail with a burning candle in his hand.
It roared again and came after him.
The limp was worse now. The arrows and bullets in its leg and side had stolen more of it with each movement. But even lamed, it was fast. Two strides of its long legs ate the space between them that had taken him ten.
The boy ran toward the open ground at the far side of the trail. He watched the burning line.
The fuse spat and hissed, the flame crawling faster than he would have liked. Tiny sparks jumped, stinging his knuckles. He turned his wrist so the wind wouldn’t blow it out, guarding that little streak of light with his own skin.
His heart thudded.
One-two. One-two.
He could hear the creature behind him now more than see it—the ground shaking, claws scraping when its bad leg dragged, the ragged pull of its breath through its ruined throat.
He turned when he judged he’d gone far enough.
The creature bore down on him, a wall of fur and crusted blood and rage. Its muzzle wrinkled, lips drawn back from those needle teeth. One hand came up, claws spread, to swat at him. The other paw reached, as if it meant to scoop him up and tear him in half.
The fuse burned.
Almost. Almost. Not yet.
He waited one more heartbeat.
The world narrowed down to the bright point where the blackened braid vanished into the fat of the powder stick. There. The light touched the paper wrapper, flared brighter.
Now.
He twisted his body and threw.
The black-powder stick flew towards the hairy monster.
For an instant it hung in the air between them, spinning end over end, fuse spitting brilliant sparks. It seemed slow to him, too slow, as if the world had gone thick.
The creature’s hand came up to bat it aside.
Its claws met the paper-wrapped charge.
The flame met the powder.
And then it detonated.
Light bloomed white and yellow. The blast hit with a flat, concussive whump that punched the air out of his lungs. Heat slapped his face. For a moment he was blind, ears ringing like church bells.
Something wet and heavy thudded into the ground a few feet away.
He staggered, half-turning on instinct to keep his feet under him.
Smoke billowed around the monster’s upper body—thick, dirty gray curling up from the explosion. The creature itself was a dark shape in the middle of it, listing.
Its roar had turned to a scream.
The hand that had tried to swat the charge away was gone past the wrist. A mess of shredded meat and bone sprayed from the stump, black blood gouting in spurts. Chunks of furred flesh and shattered bone littered the ground—a finger here, a shard of forearm there, still twitching.
The blast had knocked it sideways, killing its charge. Its bad leg buckled. Its good one tried to hold, then folded. It dropped to one knee with a crash that made the ground jump again, one huge paw digging furrows in the dirt to keep it from going all the way down.
The smoke from the blast rolled over it, hiding its head.
The boy’s ears hissed from the blast. Everything sounded far away, as if he were underwater. The world had gone soft at the edges except for one thing.
The gun at his hip.
He reached for it without thinking. His hand moved smooth and sure along the grip, thumb sliding the hammer back with a practiced click. The revolver came up, barrel leveling at the shape in the smoke.
He knew, without quite knowing how he knew, that putting bullets into its chest would be like throwing pebbles at a boulder. Maybe it would die. Maybe it wouldn’t. But he remembered the hermit on the hill, limbs broken, spine snapped.
You don’t have to kill it first, he figured. It just had to be incapacitated.
The smoke thinned.
The creature’s head lifted out of the gray, snapping around, blood and soot streaking its muzzle. One good arm braced on the ground. One good leg planted.
Its other arm ended in the ragged, pumping stump. The blast had torn away not just the hand but half the forearm, exposing splintered bone.
The boy lined up the sights on the exposed knee of the planted leg.
The world slowed.
He saw everything: the way the creature’s weight leaned, the flex of tendon through fur, the twitch of muscles trying to haul it upright. He saw a fly drift lazily between them, wings catching the light. He saw the tiny curls of smoke still rising from the blown-off hand where it lay in the dirt.
His finger tightened.
The gun roared.
The muzzle flash threw his hands briefly into stark relief—knuckles scraped, skin blackened where the fuse had spit at him. The recoil jumped up his arm, more familiar now, almost welcome.
The bullet smashed into the monster’s knee.
There was a weird, wet crunch. The joint blew apart. Bone fragments and gristle sprayed backward. That massive leg folded under it.
The creature screamed and toppled sideways.
It hit the ground hard enough to bounce, rolled once, then came to rest on its side. Its ribs heaved. Its one good arm clawed at the dirt. Its one ruined leg kicked uselessly, foot scraping deep gouges.
The boy’s hand stayed on the revolver. His ears rang so loud he could barely hear its pain.
He ejected a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
The gun felt lighter in his grip. Somewhere in the back of his mind, numbers ticked.
One shot fired. Five left.
The creature tried to stand.
It planted its one good hand, braced on its torn stump, and heaved. Its ruined knee screamed, bone ends grinding under skin. It managed to drag its chest off the ground a few inches before gravity and its own damage dragged it back down.
It wouldn’t stop.
It rolled, twisted its torso, and began to crawl towards the boy.
The sight of it made something cold crawl up his spine in a way the full-charge charge had not. Broken, bleeding, it still came on. Clawed fingers grabbed at the dirt. Its one good leg kicked, shoving. It dragged itself toward him, leaving a trench of blood and churned mud.
Its eyes found him again.
They were still red. Still burning. Full of hatred. He didn’t understand why it hated him. He wasn’t sure if he cared.
The boy took a few steps backward. He lifted the revolver again, thumb cocking the hammer.
Five bullets left.
The creature clawed closer, dragging its bulk. Blood pooled and smeared under it, thick and black-red. Its breath came in horrible, hitching pants, each one leaking steam and copper smell.
He aimed at its remaining arm where it bent.
If you break all the sticks on a thing, it can’t stand.
He squeezed the trigger.
The Colt cracked. The shot hit the crease of the elbow joint, where fur thinned to show gray skin. Bone shattered. The forearm swung loose, dangled by meat, then flopped uselessly as the creature tried to plant it again and found no strength in it.
It rolled, bellowing.
He walked with it, staying at its side now, careful of the flailing leg. His boots slipped once in the bloody mud; he caught himself before he fell within reach of those still-snapping teeth.
“Stay down,” he said through his teeth. “Stay down, you son of a bitch.”
He cocked the hammer a third time and moved his aim lower, to the other leg—the one the Comanche bullets and arrows seemed to have left mostly whole.
He waited until it kicked, muscles bunching, then fired.
The third bullet blew that knee apart too.
Bone shards flew. What remained of the joint collapsed.
Now the monster truly could not stand.
It lay in the road, all four limbs ruined in different ways, claw marks torn into the ground all around it. Blood poured from the stump of its hand and both knees, pooling thick, steaming in the morning chill.
It writhed.
That was all it had left. Its torso bucked and rolled. Its head whipped back and forth. It snapped at the air, at the sky, at the dirt, as if it could bite anything, everything, into submission.
It looked like a maggot on a hook, huge and hateful and helpless.
Lily crept out from behind the rock despite herself.
She stood a good distance behind him, fingers still clamped around Ember’s singed head sticking from her coat. Her face had gone pale under the ash and dirt.
“Brother,” she whispered, voice shaking, “don’t get closer. Don’t—”
He stepped closer.
The monster’s eyes rolled to fix on him again. They were the only part of it that still seemed sure of what they were doing.
He didn’t like that.
He raised the Colt, sights lining up on the first burning eye.
His finger tightened.
The fourth shot took the right eye.
The bullet punched through the pupil. The red light went out like someone had snuffed a lamp behind thin paper. Slime and blood sprayed, dark and viscous. The monster screamed, higher now, voice gone ragged. How is it still alive?
He shifted his aim to the other eye.
The fifth shot blew the other eye.
The scream turned to a blind, furious bellow. Now both sockets were black holes running with thick fluid. The creature tossed its head back and forth, teeth gnashing at nothing it could see.
“Brother,” Lily said. “It can’t… it can’t see you now. We can just go. We can…”
She swallowed hard. “We can leave it.”
He watched the thing thrash.
How many Comanche had it eaten? How many stages would it tear apart if it healed? It was hurt bad—anyone could see that—but it had been hurt bad when it walked out of the trees on two legs. Hurt didn’t mean much to its kind.
It meant less than nothing to the System.
“No,” he said quietly.
He holstered the revolver—five chambers spent, one still loaded—and reached again into the [Inventory].
He grabbed two more of the powder sticks.
He walked around the creature’s flailing head, keeping well clear of the snapping jaws, and waited.
He needed its mouth open.
It obliged as if it had heard him. Blind, it threw its head back and roared at the empty sky, jaws gaping wide enough he could have stuffed a man’s chest in there.
The boy stepped in close enough that heat breathed on his face and stench slapped him, and he hurled both powder sticks into its throat.
They hit the back of its mouth and slid down.
The creature gagged. Reflex more than sense made its throat work, trying to swallow.
The boy stepped back quickly, boots slipping a little, and raised the revolver one last time.
Sixth bullet.
He aimed not at its head this time, but at the bulge in its throat where the sticks had caught for a moment.
He drew in one long, careful breath.
His finger squeezed.
The Colt’s final shot cracked the morning open.
The bullet punched into the monster’s gullet.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Black powder ignited.
The blast didn’t have room to flare outward this time. Locked inside meat and bone, it turned everything in the monster’s head to shrapnel.
Its skull bulged. For a horrible instant its snout ballooned, skin stretching, eyesockets geysering gore. Then it blew. Blood and bone and teeth and chunks of brain sprayed in every direction.
The sound was more of a deep thud than a bang. The shockwave hit the boy, knocking him back a step. Bits of skull pattered the ground. Something wet smacked his cheek; when he wiped at it, his hand came away red.
The creature spasmed once.
Twice.
Then it stilled.
The boy stared at what was left.
The monster’s head was mostly gone. Its jaws hung in two halves on either side of a crater where its mouth had been. One ear was simply missing. Bone jutted from meat in jagged white arcs. Its chest still heaved once, twice, out of habit maybe, then stopped.
He waited.
No more movement. No more sound.
He felt it then.
The world tilted.
Pressure built behind his eyes.
Level Up!
The words rang in his skull like hammer blows.
Level Up!
Level Up!
Level Up!
Level: 2 → 3 → 4 → 5 → 6.
Numbers spun up in his mind, slots ticking over like the wheels on the old scales at Cobb’s store.
Strength: 8 → 9 → 10 → 11 → 12
Dexterity: 11 → 12 → 13 → 14 → 15
Vitality: 14 → 15 → 16 → 17 → 18
Magic: 9 → 10 → 11 → 12 → 13
Then came the loose bits.
Free attribute points: 16
They lay there in his head, like sixteen little stones, each one humming with potential. He could flick them wherever he liked. Anywhere those four columns waited.
Behind him, Lily made a sound, half laugh, half sob.
“It’s… it’s shouting,” she gasped. “Brother, it won’t stop. It says we went up and up and up—”
“Don’t touch anything yet,” he said, voice rough. “Wait ‘til I’m done.”
He turned inward.
Being faster mattered. Aiming mattered. Magic mattered for Lily, for [Spark], for whatever else might come. But in the end, the thing that kept you on your feet when you should’ve fallen was meat. Muscle. Grit. How much of the world you could push back with.
He shoved ten of the stones into Strength.
12 → 22.
The change rolled through him like a flood.
His muscles tightened, not bulging, but densening, as if someone had taken slack out of them. His fingers felt like they could crush hickory if they tried. The gun in his hand might as well have been carved wood, light as anything.
The remaining six stones he rolled into Vitality.
18 → 24.
Heat bloomed in his chest.
His heart kicked once, hard, then settled into an even, powerful beat. The cuts on his knuckles stopped stinging. The exhaustion that had gnawed at the edges of him since the town burned stepped back, not gone but held at arm’s length.
He felt… big. Inside, at least. Like the world had been just his size yesterday and now it had shrunk a little.
Behind him, Lily made a soft noise. He heard her breath hitch as her own numbers shifted.
“Brother,” she whispered. “I feel… odd. Like Ember stuffed with more rags.”
“That’s ‘cause you’re fillin’ out,” he said.
“What do I do with mine?” she asked. “It says I got… sixteen. That’s more numbers than I got fingers.”
“Put half in Strength,” he said. “Half in Vitality.”
She blinked.
“Not Magic?” she asked. “It already said I was a Witch. Feels right to make that one tallest.”
“You’ll light fires just fine as you are,” he said. “If you can’t carry a sack or take a hit, don’t matter how many sparks you throw. Strength so you can haul and hit. Vitality so you don’t fall over when somethin’ breathes on you. Same as me.”
She closed her eyes, breathing a little faster, and did whatever it was inside. After a moment, her shoulders straightened. She flexed one arm and made a face of surprised delight.
“I feel like I could lift and throw Mr.Cobb’s whole store,” she said.
“Probably not,” he said. “Maybe his sign.”
She grinned, weakly. The grin slid away when she looked past him again.
The monster still lay sprawled there, a ruin of fur and bone and blood.
The boy felt it before he saw it.
[The Hollow].
That emptiness in him he’d felt twice before—once with the imp, once with the dying Comanche warrior—opened like a mouth.
From the monster’s torn-open chest, from the ragged stump of its arm, from the ruin where its head had been, something rose.
It was not like the imp’s little wisp or the Comanche’s stubborn, dense swirl.
This was huge.
A great coil of pale, shimmering smoke peeled up from the corpse. No color he could name. No real shape.It dragged at the air around it, as if the world didn’t want to let it go.
It noticed him.
The soul-echo surged toward him.
Cold slammed through him first, so bitter his bones ached. His breath frosted in the air. His fingers went numb. Then, in the same instant, heat blazed up inside his chest, so fierce his vision went white at the edges.
Images flickered behind his eyes, too fast to grasp—running on all fours through black timber, the world a smear of scents and motion; the sweet copper taste of blood on his tongue; the feel of arrows biting into flesh and shrugging them off; bullets punching through muscle and gristle and not stopping anything that mattered.
He felt the Comanche camp again, but from the other side. The shrieks sounded thinner. The bodies were just obstacles that moved and then didn’t. Hunger. Always hunger.
Then it was gone.
Nothing left but him.
Soul consumed!
+5 Strength
+5 Dexterity
+5 Vitality
+5 Magic
The words fell one after another, each one a heavy drop into a deep well.
Strength: 22 → 27
Dexterity: 15 → 20
Vitality: 24 → 29
Magic: 13 → 18
He swayed, caught himself.
His body hummed.
The world looked… different. Not just sharper at the edges now, but brighter in odd places. He could see the way the air blurred faintly over the cooling guts of the horse. He could hear the tiny scratch of a beetle moving under a chunk of bone. The smell of Lily’s fear and sweat and something like woodsmoke came to him as clearly as if he’d stuck his nose against her throat.
He could also smell the System’s numbers on himself—Strength and Dexterity and all the rest—humming under his skin like plucked wires.
“Brother?” Lily’s voice shook. “Are you… are you still you?”
He turned toward her.
Her pupils were huge in the pale of her eyes. Ember dangled forgotten from her hand. She looked ready to run from him as much as from the monster.
He thought about lying, saying something easy.
“I don’t know,” he said instead.
She made a small, unhappy sound, then stepped forward anyway and took his hand.
“You’re my brother,” she said fiercely. “Even if your insides feel like that now.”
He squeezed back.
The stagecoach was a ruin.
All of the grown folk were dead as far as the boy could see. The driver lay where he’d fallen, neck at a bad angle. The guard who’d tried to ram the monster with his empty rifle had both arms bent wrong. The hunter with the coat lay slumped, one boot still wedged in the broken coach step, throat a ragged hole. The man with the pistol, skull caved in, stared at the sky with one eye and nothing where the other had been.
The woman in the coach was dead too, neck snapped when the box went over. A man in a good coat—her husband, maybe—had shielded her with his body and been crushed between seat and wall.
All dead. Lily prayed for ‘em. She liked praying.
“Lord, take ‘em,” she murmured. “Even the ones that were mean. Even the ones that weren’t. They’re your problem now.”
He was also quite certain she didn’t know how to pray.
“Help!” a small voice sobbed from inside the half-tipped coach. “Please, somebody get me out—Mama? Papa? It hurts—”
Lily’s head snapped up.
“Where is she?” she gasped.
The boy climbed into the broken coach box, careful of broken boards and the way the whole thing leaned. The door hung half-off its hinges. Inside, luggage had avalanched every which way—valises, carpetbags, bandboxes, a crate with the slats busted in, clothes spilling. It all had its own stink—perfume, stale sweat, wool.
He followed the sound.
Under a heap of bags near the back wall, something shifted. A small hand stuck out, fingers flailing.
“I got you,” he said.
He went at the luggage with all the strength he could muster, tossing bags into the road, ripping straps when they didn’t come easy. Lily scrambled in beside him and helped, her smaller hands more nimble in tight spots.
Soon enough they had the mound down to a pale little shape in a wrinkled dress, hair braided and coming apart, bonnet lost somewhere.
The girl clutched at them as soon as light hit her face.
“Don’t let it get me,” she sobbed. “Don’t let it—”
“It’s dead,” the boy said. “Ain’t gettin’ nobody no more.”
She tried to look past him anyway. When her gaze found the half-headless monster in the road, she screamed again and buried her face in Lily’s borrowed coat.
He helped haul the child out and down to the road.
She was about Lily’s height. Thicker in the cheeks, which were pinched from crying, but the bones underneath were about the same size. Her dress was better cloth than anything Lily had worn in years—proper calico, little printed flowers still visible through the dust and blood smears.
“What’s your name?” Lily asked softly, rubbing her back.
“Mary,” the girl hiccupped. “Mary… Hooper.”
“Mary,” Lily repeated. “I’m Lily. This is my brother.”
The boy nodded.
“My arm…” she sniffed, showing him a patch of skin gone purple where a strap had bit. “It hurts.”
“It ain’t broke,” he said. “It’ll heal.”
“Where were you goin’?” Lily asked.
Mary gulped air.
“Fort Mason,” she said. “Papa said we’d be safe there. He said the soldiers—”
Her voice broke. “He said nothin’ bad could get past soldiers.”
Lily dug in her coat and pulled Ember out.
The doll looked particularly pitiful just then—half-burned, one painted eye scratched. Lily smoothed what was left of her hair with gentle fingers.
“You hold her,” she said, pressing the doll into Mary’s hands. “Her name’s Ember. She’s brave. She’ll keep you company.”
Mary blinked down at the doll.
“She’s ugly,” she said faintly.
“Yeah,” Lily smiled. “But she lived through a fire. That makes her special.”
Mary sniffled again and hugged Ember to her chest anyway.
While Lily worked at soothing the girl, the boy did what he did best.
He scavenged.
The guard’s rifle caught his eye, barrel short enough to manage from horseback, long enough to reach out across a stretch of road. The hunting man’s long gun was nicer—octagon barrel, good sights, stock worn smooth where a cheek had sat a thousand times.
He picked the hunter’s rifle and tucked the other back in the coach, just in case someone else came along later and needed it.
He found powder horns on both men. Those went into the [Inventory]. Same with pouches of bullets, cloth patches, tins of percussion caps.
A small wooden box tucked under the coach seat held a gun-cleaning kit—oily rags, little brushes on twisted wires, a bottle of oil for keeping metal from rusting, something that looked and smelled like soap. That went in too.
On the passengers, he found other things—watches, rings, a string of pearls sticky with blood, a brooch in the shape of a bird with bits of colored glass for eyes.
Lily caught him turning the pearl string over in his fingers.
“You can’t take that,” she said sharply.
“Why not?” he asked. “They’re dead.”
“It’s… it’s grave robbin’,” she said. “You don’t… you don’t take pretty things off the dead.”
“Fine.”
He dropped the pearls back onto the dead woman’s chest.
He did not bother with papers. There were plenty of those—letters in the gentleman’s inside pocket, a folded map near the woman’s feet, a little book with thin pages and someone’s neat writing in it. The marks might as well have been bird tracks in snow.
He shoved them aside and searched for the real wealth.
Food.
One trunk held clothes—petticoats, shirts, a coat small enough it might fit Mary if they cut it down. Another held nothing but papers. A third surprised him: rows of canned goods, packed tight in straw. Beans and salted pork and who knew what else. Some labels had words he couldn’t read. He didn’t need to.
He touched them one by one, willing them into the [Inventory], and felt the space receive them with room to spare. Whatever tether bound that strange cellar in his head to his body had stretched along with his Strength and Vitality. Where before it had pressed tight after a few cans, now it took them all and still felt like it had corners unused.
When he tried to stuff the entire trunk in on a whim, the space pushed back.
Inventory limit reached for object size.
“Huh,” he said.
“What?” Lily asked.
“Can’t put whole trunks in,” he said. “Just little things. Still a lot more room than before.”
After a while, Lily approached him. “These were gentle folk. We should bury them.”
The boy raised a brow. “Why?”
“They don’t deserve to be left out here and be picked apart by critters.”
She had that look about her. Arguing was pointless now and Lily could be very stubborn when she wanted to be. The boy sighed. “Fine.”
When they’d taken everything that mattered from the coach and the dead, he went looking for a shovel. Teams on the road usually carried one. You had to—wheels broke, ruts needed fixing, someone always needed burying.
He found one wedged in the coach’s boot, handle worn smooth, blade nicked and stained.
He started digging.
The ground there by the road was hard-packed from years of traffic, dry near the surface. A spade bit did little at first, then more as he pushed. Sweat slicked his back. The sun crawled higher.
He’d dug graves before, in the town—small pits for animals, mostly, when something died too close and Lily insisted on prayers instead of just leaving it for dogs. Those had felt like ugly, draggy work, his arms burning quickly, his breath going ragged.
This time his muscles burned, but it was a clean burn. His body felt like a machine built for this, each thrust of the shovel smooth and strong. He could feel how much easier it was now, some part of him marking it: this is what Strength 27 feels like, this is what Vitality 29 buys you.
That just means I need to get even stronger.
Lily and Mary hauled rocks and branches for markers, small hands busy. Lily murmured little prayers over each body as they rolled it into the hole as gentle as they could. Mary tried to say something for her folks, voice breaking.
“Dear God,” she hiccupped, “please… please take Mama and Papa and… and Mr. Harris and Mr. Jenkins. They were good. Mostly. Kinda. Probably. Don’t let them be scared. Don’t let them be… alone.”
The boy listened without comment.
When the last body lay in the shallow trench, he shoveled dirt back over them, tamped it with the flat of the shovel. He set rocks in a rough line, picked two larger ones and set them at the head where Mary pointed—one for her folks, one for the others.
Lily made the sign of the cross maybe wrong, maybe right; no preacher had survived to correct her.
“Amen,” she whispered.
Mary echoed it in a small, cracked voice.
He just set the shovel back in the coach’s boot, propped the guard’s rifle beside the wreck where someone might find it.
Before they left, he sat on a rock and reloaded the Colt.
It was slow work, but steady. He popped each spent cap off its nipple with a fingernail and let them fall. He checked each chamber by eye, making sure no lingering ember hid in there to bite him.
From the powder horn he’d taken from the hunter, he poured a measure into the little brass charger, then knocked it into the first empty chamber. Powder hissed softly going in. He followed with a lead ball from the leather bag, setting it at the mouth, then pulled the loading lever down to seat it. The ball shaved a neat ring of lead at the edge. Tight fit kept powder where it needed to be.
When all six chambers were charged, he thumbed a percussion cap onto each nipple at the rear.
When he was done, he held the revolver up for a moment, feeling its weight.
Six bullets.
He slid it back into his belt.
Lily took Mary’s hand.
Mary tried to pull away at first, but Lily just tightened her grip and kept walking, Ember wedged under one arm.
“Where we goin’?” Mary asked at last, voice small.
“North,” the boy said.
“That’s not Fort Mason,” Mary said. “Fort Mason’s west. Papa said so.”
“West is where the Comanche come from,” the boy said. “North’s where we’re goin’.”
Mary looked between him and Lily.
“Can’t we… can’t we go to the fort?” she begged. “Soldiers will… they’ll help. They have guns. Real ones. Big ones.”
“They didn’t help your folks,” he said.
Lily shot him a glare.
“We can’t go where we don’t know,” she said more gently. “But we’ll keep you with us. ‘Til we find someplace safe.”
Mary’s mouth trembled.
“Is there such a place?” she whispered.
Lily didn’t answer. She just squeezed her hand.
They followed the trail until the sun was leaning west and the shadows grew long. The road crossed a shallow river where stones showed through the water. On the far bank, the land rose in a gentle slope dotted with scrub and a few twisted oaks.
The boy decided that was as good a place as any.
“We’ll camp here,” he said.
Mary sagged in relief. She’d been stumbling for the last mile, feet not used to walking so much. The boy and Lily felt fine—their legs steady, their breaths easy. The new numbers under their skin made distance feel different.
He could have walked another day. Maybe two. Maybe even three.
They climbed a little way up from the ford and found a shallow hollow between two big rocks, half-screened by brush. From there they could see the road and the river both, but anyone on the road would have to look hard to see them.
Mary sank down to the ground with a groan, rubbing her calves.
Lily went to gather wood. With her boosted Strength, she carried back more in one trip than before, small arms loaded with dead branches. She grinned at the boy over the pile.
“System did somethin’ right,” she said.
Mary watched her with something like awe.
“You’re strong,” she said.
“Lots of haulin’ water,” Lily said lightly. “And… other things.”
When the pile was built, Lily crouched and held out her hand.
“Watch,” she told Mary. “Don’t scream. It’s me doing it.”
Mary frowned, confused.
Lily concentrated. Her fingers tingled. A tiny bead of light formed in the air just above her finger, then dropped onto the tinder.
[Spark].
The grass and twigs caught with a little whoosh, flame licking up, glad for anything to eat. The fire built itself quick, small but sure.
Mary’s eyes went wide.
“You’re a witch,” she breathed, half scared, half impressed.
Lily flinched.
“System says so,” she muttered. “But I ain’t puttin’ frogs in nobody’s milk.”
“Does it… hurt?” Mary whispered. “Wish I got somethin’ nice when the System came.”
Lily flexed her fingers.
“Just tingles,” she said.
The boy pulled a can of beans and a smaller sack of pemmican from the [Inventory].
He opened the beans with his knife, set the tin by the edge of the fire, and shaved bits of pemmican into it. The smell that rose almost immediately made Mary’s stomach growl loud enough to be heard.
They ate.
Mary, hungry and young, wolfed hers at first, then slowed when Lily tapped her hand and told her to chew proper. The boy kept count the way he always did, giving Lily and Mary more spoonfuls than he took. Their bodies were smaller, but he felt as if his could live off air for a while now if it had to, which probably had to do with increased Vitality.
When the can was scraped clean, the sky was bruising purple. Bats wheeled overhead, tiny shadows darting. The river whispered over stones.
Mary huddled between them as the air chilled, blanket wrapped around all three. Ember was sandwiched somewhere in the middle, her scorched face peeking out.
“Will it come back?” Mary whispered into the dark. “Another one. Like that.”
“Maybe,” the boy said. “Maybe a worse one.”
“Don’t say that,” Lily hissed.
“It’s true,” he said.
Mary sniffled.
“Are there angels?” she asked. “Mama said angels watch us.”
“If there are,” the boy said, thinking of the System’s cold numbers, of [The Hollow], “they ain’t been doin’ jack shit.”
Lily elbowed him hard.
“You’re awful,” she said. “Mary, don’t listen. There’s… there’s somethin’ watching, anyway. We’ll be all right.”
Mary clung tighter to Ember and shut her eyes.
Sleep came in fits. The boy dozed and woke, dozed and woke, hands never far from the gun. Each time he woke, his body felt ready, not stiff. His muscles seemed to rest quicker now, as if they’d learned how.
Once, in the deep of night, he thought he heard coyotes. He listened, judged their distance by the thin whine of their calls, and decided they weren’t interested in three skinny children and some canned beans when there was a whole dead horse and monster a ways back.
He slept again.
They woke to thunder.
Not from the sky.
But from the ground.
Dust sifted from the rock over their heads. The little fire they’d let die to coals jumped, ash puffing. The river’s song was drowned out for a heartbeat by a rolling, drumlike rumble.
The boy’s eyes snapped open.
He knew that feeling.
It was back from the town, from the day the bell had started ringing and the ground had shivered while horses poured in.
Hooves.
Lots of them.
“Up,” he said sharply.
Lily jerked awake, already grabbing for Ember. Mary came awake with a little cry, blinking in confusion.
“Wh-what—?”
“Quiet,” the boy hissed. “Both of you. Move.”
He scrambled to the lip of their hollow and peered out between the rocks.
The road below was a ribbon of dust. The dust was already boiling, the distant smear of it thickening.
They weren’t close yet, but they were coming fast.
“Down,” he told the girls. “Flat. Don’t stick your heads up, no matter what you hear.”
Mary’s eyes were dinner-plate wide.
“Is it more monsters?” she whispered.
“Worse,” he said. “People.”
“Maybe they can help us.” Mary said.
The boy shook his head. “And maybe they’re Comanche.”
He lay down between them, pressing Lily’s head gently down with his palm when she tried to look. From here, the hollow’s lip hid everything but a strip of sky. The rumble grew, shaking the earth under their ribs.
He wormed up just enough to look through a tiny gap between stone and brush.
They crested the rise like a flood.
Comanche.
At least a hundred, maybe more. He couldn’t count that fast at that distance, not with dust and speed muddling things, but it was a lot. Riders and horses seemed one thing, a flowing, muscled mass. Feathers and hair streamed behind them. Lances bristled, some bearing things that snapped in the wind—scalps, maybe, strips of cloth, trophies.
Some rode bare-chested, skin painted in handprints and stripes of red and black. Others wore shirts of buckskin fringed with beads. A few had blue army coats cut short, taken from dead soldiers and altered to fit. Rifles rode in their hands or slung across backs. Bows curved against saddle horns.
They came in little knots and clumps, three here, five there, racing each other, wheeling, darting in and out, talking in their sharp tongue, some laughing.
The boy’s heart… stayed slow.
He watched them with the same sharp, calm attention he’d given the monster.
A big man near the front rode with a lance longer than he was tall, the head glinting in the morning light. Feathers streamed from his horse’s mane. Around his neck hung a necklace of something pale. Teeth, maybe. Bones.
They splashed through the ford, water fanning up around plunging hooves. For a moment the rumble of hooves became a hiss of water, then the thunder picked up again as they climbed the far bank and kept going.
Dust rolled after them, a long, low cloud.
The boy kept his head low.
One rider—a young woman with her hair in two long braids and a rifle across her lap—looked up toward the rocks as she passed. Her gaze swept the slope once. The boy went still as stone, barely breathing.
Her eyes slid past.
She kicked her horse on.
In what felt like moments and hours both, the warband was only a smear of movement on the horizon, then a dark line, then nothing but distant dust.
The ground stopped shaking.
Crickets started up again hesitantly.
The boy let out a long breath he hadn’t realized he’d held so tight.
“Are they gone?” Mary whispered, voice dry.
“Yeah,” he said.
“For now,” Lily added quietly.
He pushed himself up on his elbows and squinted north, toward where the road went and the dust settled, toward whatever the next piece of the broken world would look like.
“Come on,” he said at last. “We got more walkin’ to do.”
