Good thing he was using it against monsters that couldn’t see in the daytime, and not the Apaches . . . or Jake Lonergan’s gang. Jake tossed a salute at the ridge, just in case Dolarhyde was looking at him. He kept his smile to himself, letting his face go sober as he turned back to his work: Time to get serious.
Jake laid his gloved hands on the rough surface of the ship. Up close it looked to be the same strange-looking patchwork as his weapon and the flyers, except on an even larger scale—an odd fusion of different metals, with grooves and protrusions he couldn’t imagine the reason for. There were circular patterns on the ship’s hide, too, something he hadn’t seen before—maybe some kind of hatches, or even weapons so large he didn’t want to think about what they could do. As long as those openings stayed shut, they weren’t his problem. . . .
He found the row of what looked like vents that rose in a convenient ladder almost to the top of the ship, where the flyer had landed yesterday. He hoped it would work like a ladder too, because the top was where they had to start—
Bronc and Hunt, the two munitions men he’d brought with him, stood ready to follow as Jake started to climb. Three other men from the gang kept watch below; though Jake hoped to God they wouldn’t be seeing anything unusual.
The vents made it easy to find the handholds and footholds he needed; he climbed almost to the top of the fortress, where he could reach the highest row of the vents he’d marked as their target. Whether the vents were just for air, or for something else, he figured that as long as they were open to the outside, they were vulnerable . . . at least, they were on this world.
He’d seen one of the flyers land on top of the ship and disappear down inside. It figured the aliens must keep the flyers in some kind of stable, and it had to be a big space, given their size. He didn’t know what else might be in there; he only hoped dynamite would be enough to blow it up. . . .
He’d noticed whole crates of the explosives back at Dolan’s camp, where the boys had sat on it like it was furniture while they waited for a good time to use it. This was as good a time as any Jake could think of.
He gestured back at the men on the ground. Bronc and Hunt hung from the side of the ship below him. The men passed the first haversack filled with dynamite up to Hunt, who passed it to Bronc, who climbed nearer to where Jake was waiting, and handed it off to him.
Bronc and Hunt each took on a bag of their own, following Jake’s lead as he pulled out bundled sticks of dynamite, laying them in vent after vent.
Bronc had been a Juarista and Hunt had been a sapper during the War. Along with Red, who was an ex-miner, they were the only three in the gang who’d been willing to admit they were familiar with dynamite, or anything else that exploded. Red was getting too old for this kind of action, but he’d spent last night bundling the individual sticks into efficient bombs, cutting fuse cord and setting fuses, doing as much of the preliminary work for them as he could.
Now, Jake and the others shoved the bundled dynamite as far down the throats of every vent as their arms would reach, and wove dangling ends into a few long braids that could be lit all at once, hopefully leaving them enough time to get away from their handiwork before it blew them up. The three men on the ground passed up the remaining bags, until they had turned as many ports as they could into time bombs.
Jake pulled a box of matches out of his second equipment bag, as the others finished doling out their explosives. He studied the label on top of the match box: Lucifer Safety Matches.
Hell if that wasn’t a contradiction in terms. He glanced up at the sky, making sure again that no flyers were heading in. The sky was perfectly clear—not even a cloud.
He suddenly thought of Meacham, what seemed like a lifetime ago, telling him another story like his own “. . . somebody who dropped out of the sky . . . fella named Lucifer. . . .”
He’d always wondered why he’d heard matches called “lucifers”; always figured it was because lit ones stank like Hell due to the sulfur.
But an odd piece of lore popped into his head, then; the kind no preacher liked to talk about: Some people called the Morning Star “Lucifer” . . . because the name meant “Light-bringer.” He smiled faintly, wondering what Meacham would think if he saw what his fallen angel was up to now . . . and he guessed that if Meacham was looking down from God’s Heaven right now, he wouldn’t mind a bit.
Jake pulled open the matchbox, and stared. There was exactly one match left in it. He gestured down at Bronc, mouthing, “What the hell—?” Bronc nodded in reassurance, and patted the bulging pocket of his coat. Jake struck the single match and lit a fuse-braid, and then another, and another before he had to let the match go out.
He looked down, expecting Bronc to have the full box of matches ready. Bronc was still struggling to get the box out of his pocket, one-handed, while he hung from a vent. The matchbox resisted like a mule . . . and then suddenly it slipped free and shot straight through his fingers, out into the air.
The men hanging from the side of the ship and waiting on the ground below all watched, stupefied, as the matches arced out and down, landing somewhere in the dense scrub around the ship’s base.
“¡Mierda!” Bronc muttered, his teeth clenched around a half-smoked cigar.
His lit cigar—
As Bronc and the others looked toward Jake, their faces registering various shades of dread, Jake reached down, scowling, and jerked the cigar out of Bronc’s mouth. He lit the rest of the fuse cords within his reach, and passed the cigar back, gesturing irritably at the others to get their asses moving and finish the job.
Bronc and Hunt lit the rest of the fuses as they went, and didn’t hesitate from there.
Jake waited until both of them were down, and glanced up at the sky once more: still clear. He peered in through the opening in front of him, caught a glimpse of what he thought was a flyer’s wing, and hoped he’d made the right decision, for the right reason, just once in his life.
“Jake!” Bronc called, in an urgent whisper.
Jake climbed down, making sure all the fuses were burning like they should. He dropped to the ground, wondering why the hell the others were still waiting for him. “Run—!” he whispered.
They all took off, dodging through the brush, running for their lives. The dynamite detonated, in a deafening series of explosions, before they reached the mesa’s rim. A cloud of smoke and flame blew out of every vent, raining down bits of shrapnel. The men around him whooped in triumph.
The whoops turned into sudden loud cursing, as another explosion went off, deeper inside the ship, and another, and another, each larger than the one before, as if the dynamite had just been the primer for something much bigger and more volatile. They staggered and almost fell as the shockwaves hit them, barely keeping one another on their feet until the last explosion had passed.
Jake hesitated as they reached the rim of the mesa, as something made him look back, while the others went over the edge and down. He saw what he’d most needed to see, and been the most afraid of: The aliens. The circular patterns that ringed the base of the ship irised open, and masses of demons swarmed out, as if he’d just shot down a hornet’s nest.
The demon gun came alive and armed itself in a flare of blue as Jake, suddenly frozen where he stood, watched them come. He couldn’t think, couldn’t move, even to raise his arm and fire at them. There were so many . . . too many . . . demons.
A beam of pure blue, like the one from his own weapon, blasted the brush beside him and set it blazing. Shaken out of his trance, Jake raised the gun and fired back, before he threw himself over the rim, sliding down, leaping from rock, to outcrop of stone, to slope, as agile as any Apache when his life depended on it.
The others were almost down to the ground; he suddenly joined them, as another beam of light cut the rock out from under him, and he slid the rest of the way down on his back. He scrambled up, turned to fire back at the aliens that had reached the mesa’s edge. He hit one, saw the others draw back
, and bolted with the rest of his men, dodging through the brush, heading for the solid cover of the ridge where Dolarhyde was waiting.
More blue bolts of energy struck around them, from above and from ground level now, too—more aliens were coming out of the hidden entrance in the slot canyon. He stopped again, firing back, and went on running.
It was just what the Colonel had ordered. Except in all the planning, it had never really sunk into Jake’s mind that this time he wouldn’t be the only one with a demon gun.
The weapon’s range was at least as good as any rifle he knew, and the damage it could do was a damn sight worse—lucky for Dolarhyde, and luckier for his crew, that sunlight made the aliens half blind: Otherwise none of his munitions team would have made it back alive, including him. He caught up with the others as they reached the rocky outcrop where the cavalry was waiting, and ducked around it, finally under cover.
He leaned against the warm wall of sheltering stone beside the others, trying to catch his breath, trying to prepare himself mentally for the next thing he knew he’d have to do. He only hoped it went as well as this had.
He glanced over at his munitions crew and grinned; but he could see that knowing they’d succeeded, and lived to tell about it, was all the reward they needed. But if they wanted bragging rights, nobody was ever gonna believe them. . . .
“THEY’RE COMING OUT,” Nat said, from the top of the rocks. He watched aliens pour into the slot canyon, coming out of the hidden entrance, or scrambling down the steep slope from the mesa. He saw their weapons, the explosions of blue light, as the Apaches on the canyon rim began to fire at them.
“Let’s move—” Dolarhyde said, looking down at his contingent of volunteer cavalry; they began to mount up. Dolarhyde turned to Emmett, crouched at his other side. He handed the boy his spyglass. “Take this, go up where I showed you. If you see our people come out, you get up and wave your arms.”
Emmett nodded, taking the telescope firmly from his hand, and slipping it inside his own shirt. Dolarhyde watched the boy climb higher among the rocks, the knife at his belt, the spyglass carefully protected, and the dog still following him like his own shadow, no matter where he went.
Nat was already on his horse as Dolarhyde and Ella finished their descent from the lookout point. The expression on his face was curiously like Emmett’s as he met Dolarhyde’s gaze: as if he would have saluted, if he’d dared—and meant it as a sign of respect. He nodded to them, before he turned his horse and rode away to join the rest of Jake’s men, the riders Dolarhyde had assigned him to lead in a flanking attack.
Dolarhyde turned back as Jake and his munitions team made their way along the rocky wall toward him; he could see the satisfaction of a job well done on all their faces. Jake grinned, acknowledging the congratulations of his men, who were on their horses now, waiting to ride out with Dolarhyde. Bronc and the others were already glancing toward their own horses, ready to join the ranks. Jake put a hand on the shoulder of each man, before his nod sent them off to join the others.
He kept walking, past Doc, who glanced up with a wry grin from readying his medical kit and checking his guns—until he reached the place where Dolarhyde and Ella were waiting. “They’re all yours,” he said to Dolarhyde, gesturing toward the waiting canyon filled with aliens.
Dolarhyde smiled. “Good job.” Jake returned the smile, before he looked toward Ella. This was it.
Ella had plaited her long hair into a braid down her back. She drew her pistol, checked it a last time, and holstered it again. Her eyes shone as she looked up at Jake; but nothing more unearthly than pride and resolve lay behind them now.
Jake glanced back at Dolarhyde. “If they’re in there, we’ll get ‘em out.”
“Godspeed,” Dolarhyde said. He watched the two of them move away, heading back toward the slot canyon on their separate mission, aiming for the hidden entrance that led to all their greatest hopes and fears.
Then Dolarhyde mounted his waiting horse, steeling himself for the moment he’d thought would never come again. He raised his arm. “Let’s go!”
A dozen horsemen followed him—the kind of men who’d follow him into Hell—as he rode out to war.
NAT COLORADO ARRIVED at the spot where his unit of riders waited, at the far end of the stone ridge—the other half of Jake Lonergan’s outlaw gang, on their horses, ready and waiting. He studied the looks on their faces, faces like so many he’d seen all his adult life at the Dolarhyde ranch.
Except these men had something in their eyes the Dolarhyde hands never had—the same look that had been in the eyes of the Apache warriors he’d watched through the night. The fact that both groups were facing a kind of enemy that no one had ever faced before only added to their willingness to spit in the eye of destiny.
Whether their will to fight was born of courage, desperation, or just pure cussedness, they weren’t the kind of men who’d throw down their weapons and yield to anyone . . . or anything . . . even if they faced the end of the world.
He felt strangely honored and proud that such men were willing to follow him into this of all battles. These men wouldn’t falter, and he let them see in his eyes that neither would he. “You ready?” he said, not really a question. He turned his horse, and raised his arm, like Colonel Dolarhyde, and they followed him onto the field of battle.
THE FIRST WAVE of men entered Hell’s front yard, led by Dolarhyde, all firing their weapons. Across the field Dolarhyde saw Nat leading his own men in the flanking maneuver, both sides closing in on the alien front with what should have been withering fire from rifles and pistols.
Up on the ridge, Black Knife and his men supplied covering fire again: bullets from rifles, and arrows from bows that could sink a shaft into a pine tree up to its fletching caught the aliens in a crossfire.
But nothing seemed to affect the enemy. The alien demons didn’t fall like men, either to the crossfire from above, or to the guns of Dolarhyde’s cavalry—their monstrous bodies were like a natural suit of armor.
The aliens might be mostly blind in daylight, but they weren’t deaf, and they weren’t stupid. As they recovered from the surprise of the humans’ attack they began to strike back.
Dolarhyde saw one fire a weapon like the one Jake wore, blasting a man from his horse. Another man was dragged from his saddle, a third went down, horse and all, as an alien lunged at him from the side, seemingly from out of nowhere.
Suddenly they were losing men on all sides, everywhere—far more than they could afford. Dolarhyde shouted orders to his men, signaling the riders to fall back and regroup. As they closed ranks, Nat pulled his horse up beside Dolarhyde, his face tight with frustration as the two of them took stock. “They’re not going down—”
“They will—” Dolarhyde said grimly, “—just keep at it.”
He knew Meacham had made one of them bleed with just a rifle. The aliens might be wearing natural armor . . . but all armor had its weak spots. And he didn’t believe Ella would have led them into this, if she hadn’t had faith that they’d be intelligent and resourceful enough to find those spots.
The men around him were tense and angry now; but their eyes were on the enemy, and he knew that men like these were a long way from giving in to any enemy, even death itself.
He searched the steep slopes of the canyon walls, looking for the Apaches. Damn them—It was obvious they were too high up to be effective against these things. Why the hell couldn’t that Apache “di-yin of war”, Black Knife, figure it out—? He glanced at Nat, and kept his thoughts to himself.
“Regroup!” he shouted. “Let’s go—” They led the men forward again.
AMONG THE ROCKS just below the canyon’s rim, Black Knife watched the pindah riders regroup and begin another attack. He signaled his warriors to start firing again, to give them cover, as he had promised. But from here neither rifles nor bows had any effect on the sky monsters.
“No good,” one of his sub-chiefs said, looking over at him, echoing his t
houghts. “We are not hurting them. Should we join the fight?” He looked down the cliff-face at the canyon floor.
Black Knife was silent as he weighed the cost of losing warriors his people couldn’t afford to lose against his trust in the arrogant pindab he had given his word to. He meant to keep his word; but so far he had seen no signs that his own men’s weapons would be any more effective at close range than the guns of the riders below. Finally he shook his head. “Hold your position—keep firing.” He raised his own rifle again, and took aim.
JAKE AND ELLA entered the high-walled arroyo that led to the hidden entrance of the aliens’ fortress, the one he remembered from his medicine-dream. Five aliens abruptly emerged from the tunnel openings. Jake and Ella pressed back into a hollow in the eroded wall. They stood motionless in the shadows as the aliens passed them by to join the others out on the battlefield.
After the aliens moved on, so did they. This time they made it all the way to the entrance.
Just as they reached it, two more aliens came out of the dark tunnel opening. Without even time for a conscious thought, Jake’s weapon activated, and blasted them both before they could get the drop on him.
He glanced at Ella, both of them taking a deep breath as then they entered the tunnel together. The weapon’s cold blue glow illuminated the metallic ribs that supported the tunnel walls, guiding them like a lantern back down the gullet of stone to the underworld, to a place Jake remembered now all too clearly. . . .
ABOVE THE SLOT canyon, two of Black Knife’s warriors, hidden among the rocks, took aim and fired at the sky monsters far below with growing frustration, as no bullet or arrow seemed to penetrate the aliens’ hides.
One touched the other’s arm, silently nodding at the slope below them, where one of the monsters was now climbing upward. They retrained their weapons on the new target, as the unsuspecting enemy drew closer to their position.