Skin Medicine

Clay grinned. “Now mind yer manners, boy. I’m a-hear to save yer bacon.”

“The others?” Dirker asked.

But Clay just shook his head.

Together then, they went up the steps. The double-doors were locked, but Clay hit them with his massive shoulder and they flew wide open. Then the three of them charged right in, moving low, with shotguns in their hands.

Pews.

They saw the rows of pews, many of which had been busted into kindling. The altar was occupied by an immense scalp rack. There had to be fifty or sixty scalps on display. Scattered around them in carefully arranged piles, skulls and bones. On the cross there was no Jesus, but a mummified body nailed up instead. Dirker recognized it as Caleb Callister…at least he thought so.

But there was no time to find out, for James Lee Cobb and four of his Hide-Hunters stepped out from behind the altar. They carried rifles and wore gray dusters and were caught somewhere between animals and men.

“Looks like a stand-off,” Cobb said, laughing then, his laughter boomed and cackled and echoed.

Cabe got a good look at him, at the architect of this nightmare. The skin on the left side of his face was simply missing; muscle and bone exposed. It was as if some surgeon had slit a line of demarcation down the center of his face with a scalpel, leaving the right side relatively unscathed and peeling the left right to the basal anatomy. He was like some anatomical demonstration that was allowed to walk.

Clay said, “Uglier’n a trail-dead squirrel in a fat fryer.”

And then the lead started flying.

Cabe and the others dropped their shotguns and pulled their repeating rifles-Cabe’s Evans, Dirker’s Winchester, and Clay’s Henry. Bullets zipped around them like angry wasps, biting into pews and sending wood splinters spraying everywhere.

The trio returned fire.

But the Hide-Hunters were possessed of a deranged, primeval rage. They came running off the altar right into a flurry of bullets. The two leading the charge danced momentarily like marionettes as slugs ripped into them, punching holes through them and scattering blood and meat in every which direction. But Cobb was still shooting and one of his slugs caught Clay in the shoulder and another ripped a gash along the side of his head, taking his earlobe with it.

He went down, bleeding and moaning, but sitting back up and shooting a Hide-Hunter at point-blank range right in the face. The bullet cored his nose and the skull behind it came apart as the round bounced through his head like a drill bit, shredding everything in its path. Another Hide-Hunter, one with no less than a dozen holes in him, almost broached their position but Cabe put one through his throat that spun him around and finished him with a slug in his temple.

Dirker rose up and dropped the third Hide-Hunter in a mist of blood and brains and then clutched his chest, and fell over.

And then the final Hide-Hunter leaped.

Cabe put a round in him, but it didn’t even slow him down. He crashed into the bounty hunter and they went rolling in a heap. He was incredibly strong and Cabe fought and cursed and thrashed, trying to keep those teeth away from his throat.

And then Dirker, the entire front of his overcoat wet with blood, was on the beast’s back. Another slug ripped through him from Cobb, but he would not relent. His face drawn in a mask of agony, he yanked the creature’s head back as it made a lunge for Cabe’s throat. Yanked it back and pressed the muzzle of a. 45 Peacemaker to its skull. He jerked the trigger of the double-action pistol and blew the beast’s head to ribbons.

The beast fell over dead.

And Dirker with it, his hands clutching his chest, dark blood bubbling forth between his fingers.

Clay fired off two more shots at Cobb who took advantage of the confusion and ran along the far wall, firing his pistols and disappearing through a low doorway not twenty feet from the men.

But Cabe was only concerned with Dirker.

He cradled his head in his lap. “Oh, Christ, Jackson, Jesus Christ, look at you…” He felt tears coming down his face and he realized that Dirker had saved his life, but at the price of his own. “Why’d you go and do that, why’d you do that?”

Dirker reached out and found his hand. “Tyler,” he said, blood running from the corners of his lips. He coughed and choked and tried to swallow something back down. “Tyler, I’m…I’m done in, just done in-”

“No, you ain’t, I ain’t lettin’ you get away like that-”

“I am,” he insisted. “Back in town…you…you take care of my wife, take care…of Janice. Swear to me you will…”

Cabe was sobbing now, overcome with just too many damn emotions. “I will, I swear I will. But Jackson, you can’t go and die on me, not now, not now, we’re friends, we’re goddamn friends finally…”