Chapter 18

The wall behind the hatchet-man exploded. There was no fire or heat that I could feel. It was as if the wood and glass of the wall had decided it simply didn’t like being in one piece anymore. Just as surprisingly, the ceiling above me and behind me exploded as well.

The first thing I did was flatten myself out on the stairs and cover my face as debris collapsed around me. The second thing I did was freak out as I remembered all the volatile dynamite that I had planted all over this building. I scrambled the rest of the way up the stairs and the only direction that I knew there were no explosives.

Where the hatchet-man had been was a hole in the wall. I could clearly see out into the front yard where Coot had been fighting and beyond onto the road and into the trees. I looked up and saw that whatever had blasted the hole in the wall had carved a path upward and through the roof. I still couldn’t see the hatchet-man, but he wasn’t who had my attention. Coot had just posted something to chat that was taking my head a moment to wrap around.

D0C70RC007: They have a CANON!

Sammy#0421: What the fuck? A canon? How did we not see that?

D0C70RC007: It’s on a wagon. They just pulled up.

Panda_Bear_Polka: Reinforcements? That’s too fast.

Bear was right. How did they even have time to get a message out? Maybe they were close by? We hadn’t exactly been quiet.

Another blast rocked the house, but they must have repositioned because no more debris rained down.

Why the canon was here was a question for another time. I could use it to my advantage, though.

Checking the map showed me that Anita and her two friends were still in the room, although they had spread out from the center. None of them had come near the door yet. I crouched and drew both my Farmer’s Pistols before edging my way toward the door. I stopped about a foot from it and waited.

The report of the canon was deafening, even with it sitting outside. The blast shook the house again, but the moment that I registered the sound I took off.

Leaping to my feet, I propelled my shoulder forward and into the door, hitting it as hard as I could. To my surprise, it didn’t need much force. The door slammed open and I stepped in shooting.

The room was mostly bare except for a simple wooden table in the center. Behind it stood a woman in her mid-fifties with a white cowboy hat and coveralls over a brown shirt. I figured this had to be Anita. Her two men stood to her left and right and were dressed in blues and grays but were wearing bowler hats. Before they could recover from the blast of the explosion, I had shot them both. The one on my right went down, but I didn’t get the experience notification. The other one took the bullet I sent his way directly in the face. I got the notification for his death.

I trained my left pistol on Anita while my right pistol hovered over where I expected her companion to stand up from behind the table.

“Don’t move,” I shouted at her as she started to raise her shotgun. “Drop it!”

Blinding pain hit me in the back, over my right shoulder.

Pure reaction and instinct took over. I spun around, putting my back to Anita and her shotgun. Behind me was the damned hatchet-man, sans hatchet. As I spun and the pain continued, it was an easy guess where his hatchet had ended up. If I had any rational thoughts running through my head, I would have wondered why it hadn’t been an instant kill.

With the pain shooting through my back, my right arm was useless for shooting, but I backhanded the hatchet-man as I spun around before bringing the pistol from my left around and burying it in his stomach. I shot him three times before an explosion blasted the door frame apart.

Anita’s shotgun was working overtime as I jumped out of the way of the next blast and back into the hall. I tripped over the hatchet-man’s corpse and landed on the floor. I tried to roll over so I could see Anita and her wounded friend, but the hatchet handle hit the wall and I yelped in pain.

For whatever reason, neither of them finished me off. The next thing I heard was their feet on the stairs.

Sammy#421: Bear, shoot the dynamite now.

Panda_Bear_Polka: Which one?

Sammy#421: Any of them! Now!

I didn’t hear the gunshot, but the explosions went off like a string of firecrackers loud enough to shake the entire house. It wasn’t louder than the canon, but it was definitely a longer explosion.

None of the fun experience notifications popped up to confirm any deaths by the explosions, but Horse had said something similar on the ride in. Essentially, it didn’t matter that I was the one who planted the dynamite. The experience from the kills caused by the dynamite would belong to whoever set them off.

You’re welcome, Bear.

On the other hand, I was really hoping that he didn’t kill everyone who was running down the stairs.

I got to my feet and demanded a check-in from the gang. Coot was wrestling with the wagon still. At the moment, he was moving between hiding spots and trying to snipe the person manning the weapon with his Volcanic Pistol. Bear was wounded and not sure he could do anything about it. He had cleared his room and his side of the house but someone had hit him with a poisoned arrow. It had caused him to begin bleeding out and nothing he did was slowing it down.

Standing caused a wave of nausea to come over me. At that moment, I felt more real than I had since coming to Wicked West. I knelt to collect myself and quickly check hatchet-man’s pockets before getting back to my feet and going down the stairs.

“Eleven cents?” I scoffed as I shuffled down the steps. “If Anita’s still alive, I’m going to tell her she needs to pay you guys more.”

Another thunderous roar let me know that Coot hadn’t taken out the canon yet.

It was the notification that let me know that Coot had been hit by it.

D0C70RC007 has been killed by Freya_Trippin.

Freya was here? Why the hell was Freya here?

Panda_Bear_Polka: Did you see that, boss?

With Bear bleeding out, I was about to be on my own with the Colossal Paynes just outside. If I was lucky it was just Freya, but that kind of luck didn’t exist. At the very least, someone had to be driving the wagon.

I hit the last step with my pistol in my left hand raised and looking around. My right arm was mostly staying to my side, although I still clutched my other gun. There was a dead man on the bottom of the steps. He was burned up but I recognized his hat from upstairs.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Further along, and directly in front of the door to where I had last seen Bear, was Anita’s body. Directly across from that door was where I had put the dynamite. I was mostly surprised that she was still in one piece, but she was most-definitely dead. I searched her body and came up with a dollar and what looked like a train schedule. A quick glance got me what I was looking for: the date and time for the federal shipment. I put it in my satchel and turned toward where I hoped Bear still was.

He was bleeding on the floor. Not just squirting a bit here and there, but bleeding a lot.

I ran up to him and knelt.

“What can I do?” I demanded.

“Stay alive,” Bear said. “I’ll try and meet you in Hardy. I think the fancy building was a hotel. Get a room and lay low.” He nodded toward the window. “Did you see who got Coot?”

I nodded. “Paynes are here. But how?”

He shrugged and winced with the effort. “Likely took on the same job. Probably saw us come in and are waiting to kill us and take the information.” He saw me grunting as I shifted about and said, “Turn around.”

I did and he yanked the hatchet out of my back. It hurt for a second, but then I saw my health start to drop.

“Quick,” Bear said. “Eat something.”

I grabbed a jerky and started chewing. My health stopped going down and the pain stopped almost immediately. When I was done eating the piece, my health was closer to eighty percent, but I was doing much better.

“There’s no smart play here,” Bear was wheezing. “Any way you go out, this place is likely surrounded.”

“Any suggestions?” I was practically begging for a good idea.

He reached into his satchel and pulled out a small bottle, corked and unlabeled.

“I made this before we came in. Only had ingredients for the one. I was saving it, but fuck that. You need it or you’re not getting out of here.”

I uncorked it and drank it without question. My health was suddenly glowing and completely full.

“That doubles your health,” Bear explained. “Not immortal.” He coughed and then I received the notification.

Panda_Bear_Polka has been killed by TommyGunZZZ.

Dammit.

What now?

Right, I had the location. Now I just needed to get out of here without getting killed and looted. I was crouched and that was likely to be a problem. If I was outside and saw no one on the map, I would work my way in.

I stood up and put my back to the nearest wall.

“Is Larry out there?” I shouted.

“Is that the noob?” I heard RadicalLarry19’s rough voice call back.

“You got it in one guess,” I said. “Good job.”

“Why don’t you come on out and let us kill you so we can get that loot?”

“Or, and this is just me workshopping, you let me go with it since I got here first.”

I could hear the majority of his crew laughing.

“That’s not going to happen,” Larry replied after the laughter had calmed down. “Just come on out here so we can make this quick. Believe me when I say, you do not want me riding in there and dragging you out.”

Wait, what? Riding in here? I stared at the door that to the room Bear had died in. Anita was still lying in front of it.

And yes, it was wide enough for a horse.

I whistled.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said loudly, hoping they hadn’t heard the whistle. On my minimap I could see the symbol for Horse start moving my direction, stop, shift to a new spot and then dart toward me. “What color is your horse? I’ve always wanted to be swept away by a man on a white steed.”

“Oh, yeah?” Larry said. “That’d be more Tom’s ride than- Shoot that horse!”

“Fuck,” I hissed under my breath and ran to the door and peeked around to see Horse running up the main road and straight for me.

A bullet hit his flank, but he didn’t slow.

And then I heard him.

“Damn you. I hate you. I hate you. IhateyouIhateyou.” He only said it faster the harder he ran until he was in the house.

“Out the back,” I said to him. He didn’t slow as I grabbed his reins and jumped onto him, staying low to avoid the door frames and ceiling.

“You think?” was all Horse had to say besides the constant mumbling of hating me.

The moment his feet hit the back porch, a molotov hit the ground in front of us.

“Through it,” I said to him. The few of the Colossals that I could see, I fired on. Horse ran right through the fire as if it was nothing. I surveyed our surroundings as quickly as I could.

People lined the property edge. To the right was a thin crop of trees with fields beyond. To the left was so thick with forest and foliage that I couldn’t see through to what was past it.

“Left. Get cover.”

I was hit twice but that potion or whatever that Bear had given me was doing its job. Other than the impact of the bullets, I didn’t feel anything. My health was still glowing, but those shots would have put me below half normally, so I had to assume that it would run out soon.

I kept my head low, shooting as RadicalLarry19’s gang fired on us.

Right before we were to dive into the woods, I pulled hard on Horse’s reins and spun around, raising my Farmer’s Pistol.

Auto-Aim took over, but couldn’t decide which target to focus on. I forced it toward where I saw Larry running around the far side of the house.

I pulled up, just a bit.

The gun roared as two more bullets hit me and I saw my health go down by about a third.

Hat Shot! +10 XP!

Fuck!

I spurred Horse and we hit the woods, bursting through the foliage into a thick nest of trees and darkness. He weaved between them until he could get up to a better pace, and then opened the throttle, so to speak.

We were far from done, though. These were other players, each of whom had their own horse and actual skill on their side. Bullets, though fewer, had continued to whistle past my head.

“I’m steering,” Horse said. “Pull out your rifle.”

He was right. As long as he had control, I could focus on fighting them off. I holstered my pistols and swung the Bolt Action Rifle off my back and placed the butt against my shoulder.

Behind me, I could see three riders coming up fast but not close, yet.

Twisting in my seat, I took aim, let the auto-aim take over and pulled up for that sweet headshot action. Then reality struck me in that it was dumb to kill this guy.

So, I headshot random henchman #4, then what? He wakes in an hour and comes after me? Or his horse peels away and another takes its place? Larry had at least eight guys covering the back of Anita’s plantation house. At best, that meant the front had another eight guys. All of which would be riding after me in just a moment.

I lowered my aim, and then lowered it some more.

“Hey Horse,” I shouted.

“What?”

“What are your thoughts on me killing horses?”

I heard my usually less aggressive mount grunt a laugh before saying, “If you ride with the bad …” he stopped to pant, but I knew what he was going to say.

“Then you die with the bad.”

The horse of the first rider I was aiming at went down as the bullet passed through its chest. The rider went down, obviously hurting himself but still breathing. The rider behind him didn’t have time to adjust and his horse tripped over the still rolling corpse of the other one.

With both of them down, I had only one rider on me. A quick bullet into his horse stopped him from scooping up his companions. Now I just had to hope that none of the rest were able to catch up to me before I could get somewhere safer.

We burst out of the woods and onto an empty road.

I pulled up my minimap and looked around. Hardy was the plan, but plans could change.

If I was RadicalLarry19 and looking for, well, me, then I would check Hardy first. Assuming they didn’t have a bounty hunter and could track me wherever I went anyway. With as many people in his gang, he would have a few, likely. Hardy wasn’t safe or smart. I needed someplace close and with a fast travel.

Looking at the map, there was only one place with a fast travel that was close and also big enough that if I had to hide, I likely could for a while.

I was headed to Saint Emile.