“Well . . . sir . . . that’s what direction the bird come from, yesterday. So . . . I’m thinkin’ it’s probably all already been took by Union forces, and . . .”
A bit further back, Rook could spot more soldiers nodding. He didn’t glimpse Chess amongst them, for which he was thankful.
Cut and run, he thought. Practical as the very Fiend himself, is our little Mister Pargeter. Well, good. I should’ve too, and that’s the truth. We all should.
Too late now, though. As demonstrated.
“Plus, how’d you get new word so fast, anyhow,” someone else called out, “considerin’ you killed that damn pigeon? Let alone call in Coulson, on top — ”
The Lieut drew and shot him while he was still speaking, cleaving his jaw like a split log — then waved the gun’s barrel slightly to dispel the smoke, and told the rest of the company, “I will brook no opposition, gentlemen. We are come at last to the moment of Apocalypse, where each must make his choice. Stand together, or fall forever. Are you rabble? What say you?”
Rook caught Hosteen’s eyes, widening further than their orbits seemed made for, and shook his head just slightly, wondering: Will Bible-quoting even work here, or is the Lieut far too gone for even God’s word to resonate? Think fast, damnit: false revelation, uh — dreams sent by Satan, not by the Almighty — Daniel versus the Babylonians, Joseph in Egypt?
Before Rook could choose, however, one more shot rang out, cracking the Lieut’s head apart like a blood-orange set up for target practice. He gave a little spasmic shiver, then fell without complaint.
Behind him stood Chess, who’d simply walked up in the Lieut’s blind spot as he blathered on, clapped gun to skull, and pulled the trigger. He gave the corpse a single sharp kick and reholstered, asking it: “That do, for an answer? Sir.”
Rook felt something on his face, and found on closer inspection that it was the Lieut’s blood, already a little tacky to the touch. By mere trick of proximity, more had sprayed on him than had ever touched Chess, who looked immaculate by comparison.
“I do wish you hadn’t done that,” Rook said.
Chess shrugged. “Somebody had to.”
Then Hosteen stepped in, suggesting: “Better get goin’. We wanna be elsewheres when they find this fool’s body. Which way, Reverend?”
Chess looked to Rook, lifting a brow. Rook swallowed hard, and pointed. “That-a-way, I guess,” he said, at random.
Which did seem a good enough route, to be sure — in those few minutes before they met Captain Coulson’s boys coming back over the very same ridge, to rendezvous with the Lieut before that fabled final charge.
“Who did this?” Coulson demanded, staring right at Chess, who bared his teeth, shifting both hands to his gun-butts. But there were twenty of them, all armed, to maybe twelve of the Lieut’s ragged Irregulars, too ground down by fatigue and shock to offer much response beyond a general gasp. And Rook knew what he had to do.
“I did,” he said, at last, stepping forward.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Even long after the twister’d moved on, Rook could remember with exquisite urgency how it’d felt when Chess first knelt down in front of him in its wake and brought him to absolute ruin. How he’d fetched himself so hard he’d seen genuine stars flare like Pit-bound souls in the redness behind his eyes, then hauled Chess up by both shoulders and told him, hoarsely, “I don’t want you doin’ that with anyone else again, not ever. Hear me, Private?”
“Or what?”
“Or — I’ll find them. And I’ll kill them.”
Chess just grinned, like this threat was the best compliment anybody’d ever given him.
“Suits me,” he said, and let Rook lift him further — kissed him with the taste of Rook’s own seed sour on his breath, wound his legs around Rook’s waist, and gave him his sin again.
The decision to become outlaws proved a surprisingly practical one, in the end. By limiting Chess’s choice of partners, Rook found, he’d unwittingly created a situation of scarcity which began to wear on the gang’s remaining members, as the camp and its horrors fell steadily behind.
“Find them whores,” was Chess’s sage advice — but whores meant money, of which they currently had none.
They’d already crossed into Arizona almost by instinct, making for the empty places, and spent a length of time wandering amongst the stones there, like Legion. Occasionally, they saw what they took for Apaches off in the distance, and Rook wondered if any of these could be numbered amongst those myriad spectral intelligences he now felt crowding in on him whenever he closed his eyes — as he had almost since that first morning he woke up sprawled next to Chess, sore with love-wounds, his head already a-ring with other people’s voices.
Chess stirred and murmured, sleepily. Rook hugged him a bit closer, and knew himself reborn, in far more ways than the not-so-simple fact of having merely fucked another man could ever explain.
“Hey,” he asked Chess, poking him lightly. “You think they heard us?”
“What, Hosteen and the rest?” Chess replied, muffled, into the broad expanse of Rook’s chest. “I think dogs for a mile ’round could probably hear us, if I was doin?
?? my job right. Why — prospect of bein’ known as queer make you antsy, Reverend?”