The deputies advanced, their faces betraying their lack of belief in their own actions.

“Please don’t resist,” one said, approaching me.

I took a step back, prepared to do just that. Despite the pain still radiating from my chest, I wasn’t going to let them take me easily.

Kuros shook his head. “Best you not move around too much, Taylor,” he said. “Do as they’re asking.”

“What?” I asked. “Kuros, we’ve been through this already. If we don’t fight now…”

“Trust me,” he said, winking. “Just have a little faith.”

I hesitated, offering my hands without putting up a fight. I wasn’t sure what Kuros had in mind, but his face looked different somehow. He was anxious, and nervous, but somehow confident. He knew something I didn’t.

“You’re making a mistake,” I said. “People are going to die because of you, and not just a few. You’re dooming the entire town.”

“The only mistake I made was not putting a rope around your neck the moment you walked into this town. Guess I’ve gotten soft as I’ve gotten older. Thought maybe you could behave and be on your way, but turns out that was just another one of your lies.

The crowd became unreadable. There was an anxious energy building, and the acceptance that no matter who was right, something bad was about to happen. At this point, it didn’t really matter who they decided to believe. The outcome would be nearly the same either way.

A deputy reached out and grabbed Kuros by the wrist. As he did, a shot rang out from a distance, startling everyone. The deputy withdrew his hand, holding it to his neck. A moment later, blood began to seep through his fingers and he fell to the ground.

Chaos erupted. Everyone began to scatter, shoving others aside who were slower. Some left their sick behind to fend for themselves, while other struggled to drag them away under the stress of gunfire.

“I knew he wouldn’t run!” Kuros shouted. Who was he talking about? Could he be talking about Clarence? “Now’s our chance!”

Several of the deputies threw down their guns and ran as more bullets came. Another deputy was hit in the chest, falling to the ground clutching his wound. Only the loyalists remained now, forming a tight circle around the sheriff.

“What are you doing?” Eric shouted, shoving one of them. “Go after them. Kill any of the deserters you come across as you do. Find those shooters.”

“But… where?” Deputy Choy asked, his eyes darting in any direction he thought he might spot them.

“The direction the bullet came from, idiot!” The sheriff pointed, as the group slowly began to move toward cover, only for another shot to ring out and hit another one of the deputies from a different direction.

“They’s gotta be more than one. One man would have to be ridin’ hard on horseback to make that shot so far from the first, and that shot can’t be made by any man alive from horseback,” Choy said.

Eric shoved Choy out of the way and started screaming and firing his gun in every direction, hitting buildings, the ground, the sky, and anything that wasn’t a man.

A few others returned. Choy dropped his rifle and fell to his knees, his hands in the air. He was the last one of Eric’s deputies still standing.

Eric wheezed, pointing his gun at Choy and pulling the trigger. Only he’d run out of ammunition. He bent down, taking Choy’s pistol from its holster.

He looked like little more than a struggling husk now, carried forward only by anger and hatred. An anger and hatred he didn’t even know where to point.

He had a pretty good idea. I thought he would go straight for Kuros, but I was wrong. Turns out he hated me even more now. He stumbled forward, wiping the sweat from his eyes aggressively, trying to see me clearly. He raised his revolver and pulled back the hammer. He fired, but Kuros tackled him just before he did, sending the bullet in the dirt.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

They struggled for a moment, but the audible thud of Kuros’s fist against the sheriff’s jaw took the fight out of him. At least for the moment.

Kuros scrambled to his feet after ripping the gun from Eric’s grip, taking a few steps back.

“It’s over!” Kuros said. “Time to stop this, Eric. Time to call it quits. You’re on death’s door already. Don’t you at least want to die with some dignity. Go on. Go home and rest. Live out what time you got left in the comfort of your home. It beats getting killed in the street.”

Eric clenched his fists, his entire body shaking. He struggled to his feet.

“You’d really let me go, after all this? After everything that’s happened?” he asked.

“I’m not letting you go, Sheriff. You’re a dead man walking. How long you reckon he’s got Taylor?”

“If the stress and exertion continues, hours. If he lies down and lets someone take care of him, perhaps a few days. Maybe even a week.”

I knew these were optimistic guesses. The truth was, this man would be lucky to wake up in the morning, and it would be nothing short of a miracle if he woke up the day after.

Sometimes a lie is a kindness. In this case, a bargaining chip.

Without answering, he turned, only to walk straight into a gun barrel pressed against his head. For a moment, I wasn’t sure what was happening. Then, it hit me.

“You’re… the woman whose husband he shot for standing up for that farmer, Jim,” I said.

“My husband’s name was William. He was a good man. He always worked hard, and did the right thing. He worked for Jim, keeping this town fed. They’d been lookin’ for ways to keep feeding everyone after PanTech left. But this man…” She cocked the hammer on the pistol. “This man took it all away. My daughters don’t have a father. I have no husband. Jim isn’t around to help. This man has doomed everyone.”

Eric gritted his teeth. “They had no right talkin’ to me that way.”

I was taken aback. Even after everything. Even after the second chance Kuros gave him. He still believed those men deserved to die just for disrespecting him. He was nothing more than a thug.

“It ain’t worth it. Man’s dead already,” Kuros said. “You can put that gun down. No need for you to get blood on your hands.”

“I already got blood on my hands,” she screamed. “I killed that deputy that shot my William already. Everyone thought the Red Collar Boys did it. It was me.”

I’d had a feeling that might be the case.

“You don’t need to kill the man,” Kuros pleaded. “Taylor, tell her. Tell her what that virus is about to do to the man. It’d be a mercy to kill him now.”

I stood, silent. I could not bear to tell this woman, after all she’d suffered, that this man didn’t deserve to die by her hand. Sometimes a lie was a kindness. Sometimes the truth hurt. I believed this man deserved the bullet just as much as she did. I was not about to tell her to put down that gun. To do something I couldn’t do in her place.

Kuros locked eyes with me a moment, and I could see the pain there, but there was also acceptance. He sighed, and his shoulders slumped. He said nothing else.

Just then, a child screamed out, clutching their sibling who had just passed away from the virus. The woman looked away for only a moment, but it was enough. The sheriff tackled her to the ground, rolling once, fighting away the revolver from her grip.

I stepped forward, prepared to do what I could, even with my hands bound.

Kuros lunged, but froze where he stood, nearly falling, holding a hand out in front of him.

Eric slowly stood to his feet, his arm around the woman’s neck and the gun held to her head.

“Let yourself get distracted there. You really were gonna kill me, weren’t you?” he said, laughing. He choked on his own laughter, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, pooling on his chin and dripping steadily to the ground. He wheezed with every desperate breath now. “Nobody move, or I’ll send this woman to meet her dear ol’ William. Put the gun down, Kuros!”

Kuros took a deep breath. “No…” he said, holding the revolver down to his side, his other hand out in front of him, pleading. “This really is the last chance I can give you, Sheriff. Drop that gun and walk away.”

Sheriff’s grip loosened. “You’d… actually be fool enough to let me walk still? You might be the biggest fool I’ve ever seen, Kuros. I’m startin’ to believe you ain’t even capable of killing.”

“If you don’t drop that gun, you’ll find out,” Kuros warned.

The air itself seemed to hang heavy for a moment, as time slowed.

“You think you can pull that gun up, cock the hammer, and fire before I can just squeeze the trigger? Even in my state?”

The sheriff meant to laugh, but that laugh proved to be a mistake. Choking again, he spat blood. In the brief instant his body seized, Kuros snapped his revolver to his side, squeezing the trigger and sliding his palm across the hammer, firing from the hip for speed.

Eric let go of the woman, stumbling back. He clutched at his face, feeling the blood pooling beneath his eye and running down his cheek. He stared at Kuros, stunned. He grinned, realizing that somehow he was still alive, then moved the pistol toward Kuros. Slow, as a man’s movements were expected to be when he’d already spent all his borrowed time, somehow borrowing more. Kuros moved only slightly faster, taking his time, extending his arm out fully, turning and widening his stance. He fired just as Eric began to find his aim, hitting him in the forehead.

The sheriff stiffened and fell back flat on the ground, dead.