Blood & Dust (Lonesome Ridge Book 2) (15 page)

“Check the back,” Jasper commanded to no one in particular as he waved his gun toward the ripped cover. Several men broke from the group that was gathered to move around behind the wagon.

Jasper walked around to the front of the wagon where the seat was and held his pistol on the driver. The man was shaking so hard he kept jerking the reins that were still in his hands and he was so pale he was nearly translucent. Sweat poured from his face and his eyes held the look of insanity.

“Climb down,” Jasper ordered. “Nice and slow.”

The man’s eyes rolled a moment before they settled on Jasper, particularly the sheriff’s badge Connor had given him, which he now wore. The dazed look lost its edge and the man nodded. He stumbled over to the edge of the seat and practically fell out of it to the ground.

“Were you bit?” Jasper asked. He kept his weapon up and pointed at the man as his eyes roved over the man’s body. Others did the same.

The man began to shake. He rocked on the ground and mumbled under his breath.

Jasper stepped forward and pressed the barrel of his gun against the man’s head. “Were you bit?” His shout echoed off the wall.

“N--” The man stuttered as his teeth chattered together. “No. But my wife...” His words failed him and he sank to his stomach and pressed his face into the dirt.

As if on cue, another guard walked around from the back of the wagon. He carried a young girl of about six in his arms. “Two inside, lots of blood,” he told Jasper as he set the girl down. Her legs wobbled, but she managed to stumble to her father. The man wrapped her in his arms and they huddled together in a rocking pile.

“The girl and a woman,” the guard continued. “Girl’s not bit that I can tell. Woman’s dead.” With a sick sense of timing, a gunshot rang out from inside the wagon. The girl screamed and the man pulled her closer as he sobbed audibly.

“Check him,” Jasper said as he nodded toward the newcomer.

Two others moved forward and seized the man by his arms. He shouted and screamed as he fought against them and his daughter cried.

“Stop this.” A blond head pushed through the crowd and Hannah appeared. Her face was pulled into an angry frown as she glared at the men around her. “This is no way to treat someone who has just been attacked. Shame on you all. Have you forgotten the horror of it already?” She pulled the little girl to her and brushed the hair from her face. “Are you all right, sweetie?”

The little girl sniffed and tears rolled down her cheeks, but she nodded. Hannah checked her over quickly and carefully just to be sure, then she turned to the father. “I’m sorry, but we have to know for sure if you’ve been bitten. I’m sure you understand.”

The look in his eyes made it clear that he absolutely did not understand any of what was happening to him, but he let the other men check him over. When they were certain he was free from bites, they released him. He stumbled to his daughter and snatched her up, holding her as close to him as he possibly could.

“I know this is terrible timing,” Hannah said, taking complete control of the situation. “But we need to know what happened, and we need to know right now.”

Jasper had to fight back a smile as he watched Hannah take charge. She was firm, but gentle at the same time and he couldn’t help but love her all the more for it.

The man stared at her a second before he spoke. “We were headin’ toward the hills, making our way out west. To California. It was me, my wife, and our three children. We stopped at a creek to rest the horses and have a bit to eat before we kept going. This woman, this Indian, she stepped out in front of us. Just appeared from nowhere with this wolf by her side. She grabbed my son and just...” He faltered and pressed his hand to his mouth as tears poured down his face.

“Where was this?” Jasper asked as he stepped forward. He tried to keep his voice soft, like Hannah did, but he wasn’t as good at it as she was.

“Not far,” the man said after clearing his throat. “That ways a bit.” He waved his hand in the direction he came from.

“Someone take care of the horses,” Jasper called. He stepped over to Hannah and slipped his arm around her. “Can you make sure these folks are cared for?”

She nodded. “Of course. What are you going to do?”

He pressed his lips against her temple. “Go after her.”

Hannah shoved him away. “What? You can’t! What if she hurts you? What if you get bit?” Tears mixed with anger in her beautiful blue eyes as she punched him in the chest.

“I have to, Hannah,” he said and pulled her close once more. “I can’t let her roam free. I can’t let her hurt anyone else. She’s destroyed two families already that we know of. I can’t let her take another.”

Hannah’s tears flowed down her face and soaked Jasper’s shirt, but she understood. She was also pretty sure that it was the same woman who had almost killed Abby. The woman had to die.

Jasper pulled away. “I need a dozen good men,” he called to the group gathered around them. “Good with a gun and ready for revenge.”

He had his pick of nearly everyone in town. After selecting a dozen of the best shooters, they all kissed their wives, girlfriends, or favorite hookers goodbye and mounted up.

They followed the road to where the man had said they had stopped for a short break. They had no trouble finding it. The area was splattered with blood and strewn with body parts from the two children that were bitten.

One of the men with Jasper dismounted, ran behind a tree, and vomited for several minutes until his throat was raw and his stomach was empty.

“Only a monster would do this,” another said as he nudged an arm with the tip of his boot.

“You got that right,” Jasper said. “And it’s time that monster was destroyed.”

He walked around the area looking at the patterns of footprints and blood splatters. Jeremiah had taught him how to track, and he had to admit, he was pretty good at it. “The footprints head off this way.” He knelt beside one of the tracks. “The guy was right. Two sets of prints, side by side. The girl’s and a dog or wolf. Big prints, too, so my money’s on a wolf.”

They mounted up and followed the tracks from the death scene. Jasper wouldn’t help but glance back at the carnage behind them. He had to end this, somehow. The ride was short and ended in a shallow canyon fairly close to Lonesome Ridge. The tracks descended into the bottom, near the creek that led straight through the middle. They disappeared and mingled with dozens of other tracks of the same size and shape. The area clearly saw regular use.

“There’s a cave over here,” Nel called from further down the canyon wall. He disappeared behind a pile of rocks.

Jasper walked his horse down to where Nel disappeared and dismounted. Sure enough, a shallow cave was hidden by the pile. He wrapped his horses reins over the branch of a nearby tree and poked his head inside. The cave wasn’t deep, but it was angled so the sun didn’t shine directly inside and the rocks blocked most of the light. He let his eyes adjust to the gloom before walking further inside.

Something crunched beneath his foot. As his vision grew accustomed to the dim interior, his nose curled involuntarily. Bones littered the space from front to back.

“This is definitely human.” Nel walked toward Jasper and waved a long, thin bone in his hand. It looked like a thigh bone.

Jasper opened his mouth to respond, but he was cut off by a terrified scream from outside. It sounded more animal than human and sent shivers up his spine.

He jerked his gun from its holster and raced outside with Nel on his heels. The light was much brighter out there and he had to stop and shield his eyes from the glare of the sun. He blinked rapidly to clear the spots from his eyes as the first shots fired. A snarl to his right was accompanied by another scream to his left. His horse danced and snorted. A man’s shouts turned to strangled gurgles.

Jasper spun toward the sound. A large dog stood over a fallen body, tearing chunks from the man’s stomach. Jasper raised his gun and fired. The wolf jerked and whipped his head toward Jasper. The gray eyes settled on the young man and his knees went weak. He feared he would lose control of his bowels if he didn’t do something quickly.

The wolf walked toward him with a strange, lurching lope. Jasper’s hand shook as he raised the gun again and his next shot went wide. The wolf snarled and crouched to leap. Jasper took a deep breath, steadied his hand, and fired again. The wolf dropped like a rock as the bullet left a clean hole right between his dull eyes.

The scream behind Jasper ripped through him as the Indian woman’s nails ripped through the throat of one of the men. Her body twitched as bullets pierced her, but she refused to fall. Her grip tightened on the body in her hands and she held it up to protect herself. The rest of the men emptied their guns into the body of their fallen comrade in an attempt to take her down.

As their weapons clicked empty, Jasper strode forward. All fear dissolved, replaced by a hatred and anger so thick and strong it roiled through him like water bubbling out the spout of a kettle. The barrel of his gun pressed against the back of the woman’s head and she froze with the body still in her hands.

“This is for my brother,” he growled.

The bullet tore through the woman’s head and splattered the body in her hands with more blood. She wavered, her feet planted while her body swayed. the man fell from her grip to lie still at her feet.

Jasper raised his foot and kicked her in the back of the knee with all the force he cold muster. She toppled into a heap on top of the other man.

Jasper stared at her a moment before looking up. Nearly half of his men were dead or bitten. The ones with bites would have to be put down before they could turn. It wouldn’t be a pleasant afternoon. He ran a hand through his hair and sank against a nearby tree. He didn’t have the strength to hold himself up anymore. The Indian woman, the one who bit Jeremiah and ruined all of their lives, was dead, but the cost was higher than he wished to pay.

He closed his eyes and allowed himself a moment for the fear he had hid before to wash over him. He shook and let the tears drain themselves from his eyes. Then he took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and set to work doing what needed to be done.

CHAPTER 21

The heat of the afternoon faded quickly as the undead moved toward their destination.

“Winter’s comin’,” Jeremiah observed as the sun sank quickly toward the horizon. “Night’s are already gettin’ cooler. Sun’s settin’ a lot earlier, too.”

“Mmhmm.” Charity walked along beside him with a strange half smile on her face. It had been there ever since Norma met her violent and untimely demise. “That’s good for us,” Charity said. “Longer nights, cooler nights. We can move more, attack more. We no longer have to fear the sun.”

“I wouldn’t go that far just yet.” He glanced down at his hand where the skin was still cracked and flaking off from Charity’s crazed trot into the hottest part of the day.

Jeremiah was worried about Charity’s ability to keep leading them. The look in her eyes was unsettling, to say the least. But after her spat with Norma turned into a deadly brawl, he wasn’t brave enough to confront her anymore. She was too dangerous, too unhinged. He made his only concern be to get her into the mountains and through them as fast as he could, away from Jasper and this side of the world. He could worry about what to do next after they were safely away from everyone he cared for.

“You’ve been quiet lately.” Charity’s eyes were narrowed as she glanced over at Jeremiah.

He pressed his lips together and shrugged. “Just been thinkin’, ‘sall.”

Her eyebrows twitched, whether with annoyance or amusement, he couldn’t tell. “You? Thinking?” she snorted. “About what could you possibly thinking?” Amusement, then.

Jeremiah bristled a bit, but he bit his tongue to keep from saying something that could very well get him killed, or at least horribly maimed.

“Nothin’ much,” he said. “Just wonderin’ what it’ll be like, over there, ya know.” He bobbed his head toward the mountains. “I always wanted to go to Callyfernya, ever since my pa told me stories about all the gold and women and whatnot. Now I get the chance to do just that. Only, it’ll be different, won’t it? We won’t be goin’ to get rich, to find gold or nothin’. It won’t be like that. Not at all.”

“I’ve actually been thinking about that, too,” Charity said as she tucked her arm into his elbow and leaned against him a bit as they walked. “You see, I don’t think we should kill everyone, like we initially planned. We need people to be alive. We need people who can work during the day and people who can breed. We need people who can think. We need slaves.” She jerked her head toward the undead nearby. “These things, they’re good for killing, but that’s no way to build a kingdom. Not a real one. Sure, it’s fun to go into a town and rip it to pieces, but once we get over the mountains, we’re going to have to be more selective on who we turn, what we attack. I want to figure out how this works, why some turned and aren’t stupid, and why some are more useless than a pack of pigs. I want to know who to keep before I kill them, you know?”

Jeremiah nodded and tried to smile past the lump in his throat. Charity had put way more thought into this plan than he had, and it was really making him nervous. He wasn’t much of a thinker, never had been. He was a doer. In her new kingdom, he hoped he could retain his place by her side without compromising what little morals he had left.