Chapter 26

Argus

The door wouldn’t hold for long. That much was clear. Another line of defense was necessary, so we piled the chairs up on the bar as a barricade, and ducked behind them with our gun barrels sticking out. The sodbusters turned tables on their sides in the corners and pointed their rifles outward. Everyone had their sights trained on the front door, ready to cut down the first wolf that entered. Then two wolves suddenly burst through the back door. The horse thief picked one off, then cocked the lever ejecting the spent shell, and reloaded a fresh one into the chamber. He caught the second wolf in the side before anyone else had time to take aim.

“What the hell was that?” he asked afterward.

“I tol’ ya, werewolves!” Red said. “And there’s gonna be a lot more of ’em.”

“Good shot, newbie!” Sal said. “Now go secure that back door.”

Without any hesitation, the horse thief grabbed some boards and a hammer, and went to the back room where the whacking of nails was soon heard.

“Now that’s a fella with some gumption!” Sal remarked.

A moment later, the hammering was interrupted by loud screams. His hollering was drowned out by the cracking of bones. Sal stuck his scattergun through the doorway and blasted away till the wolves fled. A couple of loggers helped him board up the door to the back room.

“Imagine that! He done died twice in the same hour,” Red declared. “It’s a shame. Seemed like a nice fella.”

“Well, if Ms. Parker’s baby don’t come soon, you might see him again,” Sal said.

“Ah, he wasn’t that nice.”

Howling came through the walls from all sides of the saloon. The whole pack was up and getting frisky. They’d already made us plenty scared and worked up an appetite in the process. They probably had more casualties on their side than they counted on. All that was left was to finish the hunt.

“You really think we’ll go to hell if they eat us?” Lucky asked.

“Could be,” I said.

“Think they have cards in hell?” he asked.

“I suppose not.”

“Good, ’cause I’m sick of beating folks anyways. I’d rather be just like everybody else for a change. Even if I gotta burn in lakes of fire, like the Bible says. Least we’ll all burn the same.”

We had neglected to shove the piano back after the horse thief came in, and a lean brown wolf squeezed through the crack. Sal caught it in the belly with a pistol shot. We provided cover as two men tried to push the piano flush against the door. The rotted-out timber walls began to buckle from the weight of the wolves’ charges. A few mutts slipped through the holes.

“You think there’ll be big ol’ cowboys ridin’ me down there, too?” Lucky asked.

“Nah, in hell them cowboys’ll be getting scalped by Indians, I suppose.”

“Good ’cause I ain’t taking no more shit from cowboys or anyone else!” Lucky climbed on top of the bar and fired a pistol in each hand. Two wolves fell. Then two more. Lucky was on a roll. There wasn’t no more fear left in the boy.

The front door broke apart, and more wolves poured through than we had hope of fighting off. They pulled down the riflemen perched on the catwalk. A wolf sunk its teeth into Lucky’s leg, then another caught him in the shoulder. He went down with a fight. When his guns clicked empty, he jabbed the barrels in their eyes.

“Guess he wasn’t no Fre after all,” Red said as he ducked to reload.

One of the wolves that got Lucky scrambled toward me. I leveled my rifle. Heaven would have to wait. The blast caught the beast in the mouth, shattering its jawbone. As soon as it fell, I regretted it. The saloon was already overrun. If I was going to get eaten anyway, it would’ve been nice to go with no blood on my hands just to see what’d happen—even if I was a few weeks shy of a year.

There was no time to reload our weapons. When they realized we were out of bullets, a dozen wolves surrounded us and stood snarling. A large white wolf marched to the center. Its withers were three hands higher than the others. He let out a triumphant howl.

“That’s Argus, the pack leader,” Sal whispered.

“We’re goners for sure,” Red said.

I dropped to my knees and clasped my hands together. I wasn’t the religious sort, but it seemed like a good time to start. The last time I prayed was when I got gut-shot by that kid for writing lies in the newspaper. Time before that was when my wife got consumption. It didn’t do any good in either case.

A racket of gunfire erupted outside the saloon. Bullets rained in through the doorway, and four wolves dropped to the ground. The rest scrambled for cover, but they didn’t know where the shots were coming from. Two more wolves were shot. I looked over to see a large round figure crowding the doorway.

“Take that, you mangy dogs!” Buddy was wielding two pistols and a jolly grin. He unloaded them into the pack like he was picking off tin cans. Then he reached for the scattergun hanging by a rope on his shoulder. Before he could raise the barrel, Argus jumped on him and pinned him to the ground. Some sodbusters tried to help but got ripped to bits for their trouble.

The door to the upstairs room blew open, sending splinters of wood through the air. Nigel jumped down to the center of the room, hissing with his fangs out. He kicked Argus off Buddy, then impaled another wolf with the barrel of a rifle. He grabbed a third wolf by the neck and twisted its head till its spine broke.

Argus stood on his hindquarters, and the fur fell away as he took the shape of a man. He was tall, with a long white beard, but he wasn’t frail. Stood half a head above the tallest man and just as wide as Red, but with muscle instead of beer fat. Looked like he could take on five men in a fistfight.

“Surrender, vampire,” he ordered. “You’ve put on a good show, but you no longer possess the strength to defeat all of us.”

“I do after I’ve consumed warm blood.” Nigel pulled out a gooey mess from his coat pocket and held it in the air. “The afterbirth of a human child born in this underworld.” He bit into it and his eyes glowed like hot coals. His chin reddened as blood drizzled over his mouth. He grabbed the nearest wolf, lifted it over his head, then threw it across the room with ease.

“So it’s true,” Argus said.

“The remainder of your pack is no match for a well-fed vampire,” Nigel said. “Leave now or I will slaughter you all.”

Argus dropped to all fours, assuming the shape of a wolf again, and howled to the others. He snarled at Nigel as if to say it wasn’t over, then fled out the door. The rest of the wolves followed. After the last one was gone, Nigel collapsed to one knee and you could see the effort it had taken for him to stand, let alone toss that last wolf.

“I knew it weren’t no afterbirth,” Sal said. “It’s yesterday’s sloppy joe with ketchup, ain’t it?”

“So you was just bluffin’?” Red said.

Just then, a small wolf shuffled beneath a pile of wood. As soon as he got to his feet, he took a bite out of Nigel’s neck, then dashed for the back door.

“Get him before he alerts the others!” Nigel moaned.

Nobody had any bullets left, so two men tried to dive on top of the little beast as he darted by. Their heads crashed together as they missed. He was almost clear of the room when a pistol shot rang out behind me. The wolf rolled over, and the fur around the bullet hole was still smoking. At the doorway stood Whiny Pete.

“You didn’t skin out on us after all,” Sal said.

“Well, I tried to,” Pete said shamefully. “I saw Buddy creeping out the latrine window this mornin’ so I followed. Figured if he wasn’t gonna stick around, we didn’t stand no chance. Then I watched him come back when all hell broke loose. Musta been his plan all along. When the wolves left, I reckoned y’all whooped ’em, so I came back. Sorry I skinned out. I just ain’t ready to go to hell yet.”

“Ah, I don’t care if you did skin out on us,” Sal said. “Long as you came back to kill that wolf. He was the most important one. If he’d told the others Nigel tricked ’em, it woulda been the end of us.”

The gash on Nigel’s neck wasn’t too deep, but it leaked a fair amount. We helped him to a stool. Luckily, it had only been a pup that bit him and his teeth weren’t very long.

“I guess Ms. Parker didn’t deliver in time,” Buddy said.

Nigel tied a rag around his neck while Sal placed a bottle of gin in front of him. He poured a tall glass and emptied half of it in a gulp.

Ms. Parker soon started up again with her panting and yelling. It went on for nearly hour with Mabel tending to her. Finally, the cries of a baby came from the storage room, and everyone except Nigel rushed upstairs to see it. Ms. Parker had the child wrapped in a sheet and was smiling sweetly. It didn’t have devil’s horns or angel’s wings. It was just a regular boy. Seemed to have a bit of a glow around him though, perhaps on account of being the only living thing in Damnation.

“What ya gonna call him?” I asked.

“Martin,” she said, “after his father.”