The Scar Beneath Naira's Hair Was Never Meant to Heal. What Isabel Found Inside It Had Been Waiting Eight Months for Her.103 - Story221

The siege began not with gunfire, but with the hiss of escaping gas.

The first canister struck the cedar-shingle roof of the cabin with a splintering crash. It didn't explode with gunpowder; it discharged a pressurized jet of yellow-tinted aerosol that poured down through the stone chimney like liquid sulphur.

"Wet the cloths!" Isabel shouted, tearing strips from the linen tablecloth. She soaked them in the vinegar crock by the larder and shoved one into Naira's face. "Cover your nose and mouth! Don't let it touch your eyes!"

Naira pushed the cloth away.

"It doesn't hurt, Isabel," the child said, her eyes glowing with that terrifying golden ring. She inhaled the yellow mist that was already drifting down from the rafters. She didn't cough. She didn't choke. Her chest rose and fell in perfect, steady rhythms. "It tastes like cold iron."

Takoda stared at the girl in horror, but there was no time to dissect the miracle. The front door blew inward with a deafening roar as a shotgun blast shredded the deadbolt.

A figure filled the doorway.

He looked like a nightmare plucked from a mechanized hell. The man wore a heavy duster coated in glistening black pitch, his head completely encased in an iron-and-leather helmet fitted with two thick glass goggles and a snout-like brass respirator valve that hissed with every breath. In his gloved hands, he held a shortened double-barrel ten-gauge shotgun.

Before the intruder could level the barrels, Takoda fired.

The .44-40 hollow point from Takoda’s Winchester struck the sweeper dead center in his chest. The heavy lead slug punched through the pitch-soaked canvas, but the man didn't drop; the heavy steel breastplate beneath his coat absorbed the impact, knocking him back onto the porch with a grunt of pressurized breath.

Takoda didn't hesitate. He levered the rifle again, lunged forward with the speed of an uncoiling viper, and slammed the heavy walnut stock directly across the sweeper’s iron mask.

Glass shattered. The brass respirator twisted sideways.

The man screamed—a muffled, gargling shriek—as the ambient yellow gas he had brought with him rushed into his cracked faceplate. Within three heartbeats, the man’s hands flew to his throat. Blood, dark and frothy as boiling elderberry wine, erupted from the seams of his leather mask. He collapsed onto the cedar boards, thrashing violently as his lungs liquefied from within.

"Out the back!" Takoda roared, shoving Isabel and Naira toward the rear storm cellar that led into the irrigation ditch behind the corral. "Halden’s men have full pneumatic armor! You cannot trade lead with them at close quarters!"

Isabel grabbed Naira’s hand, kicking open the wooden hatch that led into the dirt trench. As she dropped into the shadow of the ditch, she turned back.

Three more sweepers were advancing through the yellow haze, their brass respirators gleaming like predatory insects. Behind them, standing atop the buckboard wagon fifty yards away, was a tall, skeletal figure in a pristine grey wool suit, completely unmasked, holding a pocket watch in one hand and a long silver-tipped cane in the other.

Elias Halden.

His face was drawn, his skin like yellowed parchment pulled tight over skull bones, but his eyes were blazing with fanatical triumph.

"Isabel!" Halden’s voice carried across the gunfire, amplified through a megaphone held by an assistant. "Do not let the savage take you into the rocks! Your mother designed you for a purpose far grander than desert dust! Bring me the child, and I will show you the new empire we have built beneath the capital!"

"Go to hell, Elias!" Isabel screamed, leveling her Colt and firing three rounds in rapid succession toward the wagon.

One slug shattered the headlamp of the buckboard; the other two whistled inches from Halden's ear, but the old man did not even flinch. He merely closed his pocket watch with a polite, metallic click.