Tin Swift(26)

“I’ll be right back,” Cedar said.

Mae poured the cold water onto a cloth.

He swung out of the wagon, caught hold of the hand bar, and leaned out so he could see up along the side it.

The three Madder brothers were clumped at the front of the wagon, Alun and Cadoc in the driving seat and Bryn on the horse just beside them. They were caught up in what appeared to be a heated argument.

While all around them the undead closed in.

Cedar couldn’t hear what they were going on about. And he didn’t care.

“Get this damn box moving!” Cedar yelled.

The three brothers looked over at him, not so much guilt on their faces as a sort of determined curiosity.

“We were just having a conversation, Mr. Hunt,” Alun said around the stem of his pipe, which was held tight in his teeth. “Involves you, as a matter of fact.”

“Do you see the dead coming our way?” he asked.

Driving the wagon through the pile had done some good to slow and muddle the unalives, but they were recovering quickly and would be close enough to take hold of the wagon and the horses in about a minute.

“Yes, yes. But now, about you,” Alun said. “You said you could feel the Holder here in town. That still so?”

“Move this wagon and get us the hell out of town.”

“As soon as you point us toward the Holder, Mr. Hunt,” Alun said. “We’ll take a path that rides us close enough that one or two of us brothers can go looking into the house you point at, or the trail you scent. Shouldn’t take long.”

Cedar bit back a curse. He’d pull his gun, but threatening the Madder brothers never got them to do what he wanted anyway.

“Rose Small needs medical attention. She needs to get to the next town as soon as possible,” he said. “To a doctor. Standing here talking about the Holder’s only going to get her dead.”

“Not if we talk fast enough.” Alun gave him a hard look. “You think the Holder is more southerly or easterly?”

“I think the Holder’s going to wait.”

“That isn’t happening, Mr. Hunt.” Alun pointed his pipe at him. “You talk, or this wagon’s not going anywhere.”

Three against one. Rose hurt, maybe dying. Mae doing all she could to stay clearheaded enough to tend her. Wil missing. The dead so close he could count their buttons. Cedar didn’t have a lot of luck going his way. Faster to get the Madders to the Holder than to argue them down to reason.

Cedar thought a moment on the draw from the Holder. Strangely, he felt pulled in two directions. One toward the wagon with Mae and Rose, and the other southeast of town.

“Southeast,” he said. “Now move this crate.”

He swung back around and into the wagon, just as the undead slapped against it with flat palms, as if they didn’t know how to crack the shell to get to the meat inside.

Alun called out to the horses, and they were off, jostling hard and fast down the rutted, muddy road. The unalives couldn’t move faster than a horse could lope, and soon they had outpaced them.

But they wouldn’t be ahead of them for long.

Cedar leaned on the inside doorway of the wagon, keeping an eye toward the darkness, looking for Wil. He reloaded his gun. His rifle was strapped to Flint. As soon as they got far enough out of town and on their way to the next, Cedar would mount up, take the guns and go looking for Wil. The wagon traveled slow enough he should be able to catch up with them soon afterward.

If he found Wil.

“Not well.” Mae knelt next to Rose and was pressing something that smelled of comfrey over her wound. “I need to boil water. I need fire. She needs fire, Mr. Hunt.”

“She’ll get it,” he said.

The wagon rumbled along at a bone-shaking pace before pulling up sharp and hard just a short while later. They were on the outskirts of town, near opposite to where they’d first ridden in.

“Mr. Hunt!” Alun yelled. “A word with you, please.”

Cedar swung out the side of the wagon again. Only this time his gun was loaded.

“You think maybe the Holder’s closer to us now?” Alun asked, completely nonplussed by the gun pointed at his head.

“Move this cart and get us out of town,” Cedar said. “All the way out of town.”

“So we’re close, you think?”

Cadoc Madder cocked back that big shotgun of his and casually aimed it at Cedar’s chest. Bryn, atop his horse, had on his shooting goggles. His rifle, also aimed at Cedar, rested across the saddle.

Cedar could kill one, but not three before he was taken down.

“That explosion you heard a while back?” Cedar said. “The one that blew a house apart? Rose and I were in that house when it happened. She’s injured, Mr. Madder, and I’m not going to argue away her life.”