15. True Colors
Morning came too early. Roused by the sun I found Elizabeth in my arms, eyes closed, face covered by brown. Taking care not to wake her, I slipped from her side and stepped to the windows.
In the morning twilight two Vox airships hovered over the brickwork expanse of Fink-Lutece Liftworks not far away. Through a bank of clouds. a larger, more ominous shape drifted, red star upon its mighty tail. Along the aerial jetty below I saw a hundred-foot sloop moored, and from quayside came a shouting of orders. Through the jeering mob blindfolded men, uniformed and not, were led. Placed against a ruddy brick wall at the base of the Fink factory entrance, their line was dressed. A line of ragtags with weapons had assembled before them. After a short count, shots rang out. Elizabeth jolted upright.
"What was that!?" She cried out, frantic and frightened. "What was that?!"
"Firing squad." I said with little emotion, looking down the sixty feet to the ground below. "Looks like Daisy's folk have started their purge." She rose from the bed and crossed the rug meet me at the window, silk clinging to her body, feet bare upon the carpet. "The Vox have laid siege to Fink's Factories. They're massacring captured soldiers and supporters of the Founders wholesale. And they have allies."
"I thought I was having a nightmare." She glanced downward, knuckles at her mouth.
"You are."
"How...how can we stop it?" Her voice came as almost a whisper. Had she yet realized the people dying in the streets were hers?
"We can't. Maybe we shouldn't." I turned her to face me. "You should stop looking. I told you there are some things you can't unsee." From above a gunship pierced the clouds, on patrol about the island. On its tailfin it too bore a red star. Below I could see gray-uniformed men in the shadows, uniforms I recognized as Bavarian Soviet. Pulling Elizabeth away from the window, I listened as their leader bequeathed Fitzroy and her Committee for Social Justice a bound Jeremiah Fink and his family. That leader was no stranger.
It was Edmonton.
"There are no terms, my Lady." My erstwhile friend asserted. At his pause I could hear the wind whipping outside, racing above the docks below...could see his red scarf atop a black raincoat. The crimson banners his and Daisy's men carried all a flutter. "Consider this a gift. But remember, without our troops you would still be skulking in the shadows, dreaming of your revolution. Without Bavarian guns, your eyes would now be at the wrong end of a Broadsider's barrel. You should thank your lucky stars that we have a common interest in this city."
Though I couldn't hear her words clearly Fitzroy seemed to churn, eyes casting about to the fifty odd Communists with automatic rifles. "You hold Finkton and the Arsenal. Soon you shall have Emporia. Comstock is finished. And now, with the exception of one minor detail, our business is concluded."
"An' what be that 'minor detail'?" Fitzroy bridled.
"None of your concern." Edmonton said as he turned with his men, departing for the moored warship. "Now that I have the lift cell production machinery, that matter is between me and your Prophet." Halfway to the barge he stopped. Walking back slowly, he produced a handbill. "Unless, that is, you've seen this man."
Fitzroy looked at the sheaf, causing the men about her to grumble and stir. "False Shepard, eh?" She mumbled. "I heard he in town."
Edmonton smiled. "Yes. The very fulfillment of prophecy, is he not? Another niggling detail I should have to ask the Old Man about." After a hesitation, he continued. "Fitzroy, your people seem to have some reach. If you do happen to run across him, I'll pay good money for his person. More guns, if you'd like, or other sundries. There are many things a newborn nation wants for."
Fitzroy's eyes chastened her muttering men. "Why him? What he done to you?"
Edmonton shook his head. "If you must know, he happens to have something I desire." Daisy looked at him and his goons, four score bristling with weapons. "A girl." He amplified. "And a rather special one at that. Brown hair. Blue eyes. Ever so fetching. I will make it worth your effort."
"You talkin' 'bout Comstock's Lamb." Fitzroy handed the bill back to him. "I'll keep an eye out."
"Marvelous." Edmonton replied, nodding back toward the dark shape hovering over the Fink-Lutece Liftworks. "I believe you know where to find us." Without further word he turned and strode off, his platoon joining in quickstep behind him.
"That I do." She answered, staring at Edmonton's ilk as they crossed the jetty toward their waiting vessel.
"Who...who are those people?!" Elizabeth asked, drawing her skirt and boots on.
"Bolsheviks."
"Bolsheviks, as in German?"
I made for the bed and pulled my shirt on...grabbed my vest. She was still wearing the choker and pendant. I took my neckerchief and tied it, just in time for a knock upon the door. I handed the woman her blouse. "Things might get bad, Elizabeth. We need to be ready for anything."
#
Finnian was waiting when I opened the door, ushering us to the lift and back downstairs. As we descended, I threw my jacket over shoulder, eyes meeting Elizabeth's. Why hadn't Fitzroy cashed us in? By the time we arrived in the Good Time's lobby her rabble had taken over. I heard a deafening crash outside and Elizabeth and I turned to look, seeing the enormous bronze of Fink that had presided over the club's approach toppled to the lawn. Finnian brushed against me and nodded me inside.
The main hall was filled to capacity, the majority bawdy men with an eye for my girl. As a pair we were hustled through the raucous crowd, what had been Fink's pride now filled to capacity with his enemies and every sort of low life. Off balcony and stair they hung, leering and shouting. Drink and smoke flowed freely, the scent of vomit and cigar wafting visibly in sunbeams from the skylights above. With watering eyes Elizabeth was turning a shade of green. My friends at McSorley's would have been proud. Ushered to the front of the catwalk and waiting seats, we were sat with thin courtesy. I set the jacket upon the floor beside us.
"What is this?" Elizabeth coughed, eyes darting anxiously at the hundreds polluting the chamber.
"Don't know." I answered with a sidewise glance. "But it's either some sort of mob strategy session..." Noticing a well-dressed but haggard woman and her son under guard on the balcony, I continued. "Or a kangaroo court."
"Why would they want to punish innocent animals?"
I sighed.
The walk above us was long like a bowling lane and raised three feet, its circular end stage in the middle of the chamber. Along the far wall drapes of blue hung twenty feet from the ceiling. Amid rising acrimony Fitzroy's lieutenants parted them, dragging a black-haired fellow with a handlebar mustache forth by his arms, knees upon the ground. Cheers erupted as they approached, the men dumping him on the stage's floorboards. Of course, I recognized him...the wicked knot on his face and nose made him unforgettable. More bruises had been added.
The roar didn't subside until Daisy, Cade and an Irishman I didn't know hopped from the stairs to the catwalk. "Comstock is the god of the white man, the rich man...the pitiless man." She said loudly as she marched forward. "Today dat end! He end today!" She held her gun up, long barrel pointed at the ceiling. At my sides two heavy hitters pressed themselves and Elizabeth looked up. "Now, you all know dis fine gentleman, heah, right?"
Jeering.
"Well, if you'ins don', this be Mistah Jerimiah Fink." At her nod a nearby thug produced a chair. She knelt and brought her weapon to Fink's face, prodded it into a disjointed nostril.
"Please!" He pleaded stuffily, eyes glistening with fear. "I can make you all wealthy. I have a lot of money and if you'll just..." More jeering arose, drowning out his pathetic groveling.
"We done had 'nough o' your money, murderer. Had 'nough o' your killin' too. Was it you dat had poor Chen Lin an 'is wife throats slashed? Hmmmm?" Again, with the barrel she turned his sweaty, grimy, battered face. Accidentally his eyes came to rest on mine. "Answer me."
"No." He sobbed, recognition dawning. "I had nothing to do with that! Nothing. My Chief of Security...Sansmark...he was in charge of all of those decisions."
"Uh, huh. An what 'bout that Lutece woman?" She continued, the tip of her barrel in his nose dragging his eyes back to hers. "He do her too?"
"How'd you..."
She reveled in his astonishment. "I know 'lot o' tings, Mistah Fink. Chiefly righ' now like how you gonna die."
On the balcony a blonde woman cried out, hands upon her face and in tears. She'd been shielding a boy who also was crying, "Daddy, Daddy! Let my Daddy go!" The crowd had quieted at the child's disruption. Fitzroy turned back to Fink.
"What...what do you want?" Fink asked, shaking. My nose turned at a foul scent...he'd soiled himself.
"We wan' your storehouses, Fink." She said. "We got your factories. We got da Liftworks. Now we want da guns."
"Why...you...you seem to have plenty of...guns." He said, eyes fixated upon her barrel.
"Not dese peashooters, fool...we want dem automatics. Dem walkin' turrets...heavy weapons we can take Emporia wif! We barely hangin' on der and we need mo' firepowah now!"
"I can't..." He answered. "Comstock would kill me."
"I gonna kill you." Daisy retorted with the cock of her weapon, lips perilously close to Fink's ear.
From one of the Good Time's side entrances I saw men wheeling in a gray figure, balding and with an eyepatch over one angry eye. "Is this your justice, Daisy?!" He shouted. she uncocked her pistol. The chamber had fallen silent as the unwashed and bloodthirsty faces turned to look at the newcomer. From his wheelchair he tipped his chin, challenging the entire gathering.
"Go back to your damned bourgeois Army, Injun killer!" I heard rise from the back of the mob, accompanied by pockets of jeering. Although Slate was in a chair at his sides several heavily armed Founder shock troops stood guard. Like me, the men in gray wielded automatics...not peashooters.
"Aye..." Slate muttered, voice weak but determined. "Guilty as charged many times over...for a cause I believed in until I was shown by God its utter bankruptcy! And I tell all assembled here, that if you continue in this vain, one neither I nor my men subscribe to, you shall not retain our advisement and shall perish to a man when Comstock strikes back!"
Daisy and her lieutenants had remained patient as he spoke. Men peered over balcony railings to see him below. "Cornelius, we got better friends than you now...go home."
"I shall not, Miss Fitzroy. McKinnon. Downs." He said looking in turn to the three Vox leaders upon the stage. "Kill that man in cold blood and you will damn the justice of your cause!"
"Maybe we jus' kill you den." Daisy said, thumbing her big revolver. "Dozens o' my people die pullin' you ass out o' da fire yestaday and now you come a whislin' for you former masta? Or is it for da color o' his skin? You ain't worth it, Slate."
"My men destroyed the Founder's ability to bomb us by three gunships...a full half of his fleet...how many uncounted lives did that save?!" Slate rasped. "We have our differences, but if you think this war is over, you are wrong by a long shot. Comstock's believers are strong, and when word of this uprising reaches his parishioners across the North America, you can be certain retribution will be not far behind!"
"You tink anyone give a rat's ass 'bout what happen here in Columbia?" She said, brown eyes aflame. "It been ova a decade since evry'one in Comstock's inner circle killin' us dead, an no one outside here lift a finger. Dey care 'bout one ting an one ting only...whoever control dem liftcels. Dat make da rules."
"No, Daisy...you're wrong. People care, but if you act as a savage they shall be sure to treat you as one. Stop the carnage now. Reach out to Washington and appeal to them for help. Roosevelt is itching to intervene, and given the excu..."
"He ain't no better den Comstock, you ole fool. I rememba' where I came from. If we want 'quality, we gotta cut it outta here ou'self." Following her invective, the silence was deafening. The two exchanged withering stares. Suddenly the room darkened. After a moment the lights came back on, accompanied seconds later by a distant shudder and boom. Slate nodded. "What is to be, Daisy? Justice or blood? Which do you want more?"
"Blood." She said, raising the pistol as cheers rose from the mob at her words. Eye for an eye...toof for a toof...life for a life...like da life dis heah son of a bitch took from me an so many othas. I wan' blood!" Placing the gun into Fink's nose, she tipped his head back again.
"Don't watch." I said and turned Elizabeth's gaze away.
She threw me off and stood instead. "No!"
At her sides the meat thrust her back into her wooden chair. "Shut up, li'l Lamb." Fitzroy said with a snide glance over shoulder. "Now, Mistah Bigshot, where is you weapons stores?" Fink closed his eyes, trembling and terrified. "WHEA'R!?" Seeing that he was prepared to die, Fitzroy looked upward to the balcony. "Well, if you ain't gonna be coop'ratif, den I got jus da ting to loose yo' lips." With a nod her men on the balcony apprehended Fink's wife and son, leading them down the stairs. Surmounting the stage, they brought them into Fink's forefront and forcibly put them upon their knees.
"Fitzroy!" Slate bellowed.
"He say anotha word, ya'll shoot him." She said without looking. Slowly she lowered her iron to the hysterical woman's forehead. Unease overcame her people, and I saw in the crowed Joshua Cade's appalled face. She seemed to sense the danger. "They Founders, oppressors! They deserve a lot worse for what they've done to us!" She looked about to the crowd, then back to Fink...cocked an eyebrow. "You still think I bluffin', don you?" Abruptly she turned and fired point blank into the wife's head. Brains splattered across the floor and men behind her, the woman's bloody remains toppled to the floor. Beside me Elizabeth screamed
"Lilith!" Fink wailed, horror upon his face. "I'll get you for this Fitzroy!" He shouted. "If it's the last thing I do, I'll..."
Fitzroy turned and her pistol went off again, Fink's brains joining his wife's across the stage. With half of his skull removed, the dead industrialist slumped to the floor, mustache and legs twitching. Before them the boy was screaming. Wiping her face with Fink's blood like a swath of Lakota war paint, Fitzroy held her weapon aloft and roared. "For da Vox! For da People!"
Cheers rose but to the side I saw Slate's men moving. A scuffled ensued, then one of his troops made a dash for the stage. With a frustrated roll of her eyes Fitzroy shot the trooper down. Anew Elizabeth shrieked and recoiled, which only served to draw Fitzroy's venomous eyes to her. Seeing what was about to transpire, I slammed the muscle next to me in the foot with my heel and took the girl to the ground. Daisy's shot went high, plugging a man as he burst inward through the Good Time's entrance. He sprawled dead to floor.
Across the room gunfire erupted, single shots at first then the bursts of automatics. Everyone was diving for cover, and as a snake of bullets blew the side of Fitzroy's stage to splinters she fell off it onto the floor. Bullets raked the walls like hail.
"Stay down!" I screamed as one of Slate's troopers fell to the floor before us. By the way Elizabeth had sucked up to the carpet she had no intentions of doing anything but. To the side I saw Joshua's troupe working their way toward Slate's remaining ten, who though outnumbered with their military weapons were more than holding their own.
"Get the girl!" I heard and my head swiveled to see Fitzroy pointing a pair of burly Irishmen at Elizabeth and me. "And kill him!"
Her lugs were charging at me malice aforethought. With a Triple R conveniently delivered upon the floor before me, I decided to educate them on the importance of hospitality. Popping to my knee I whipped the repeater into my shoulder and opened fire, weapon slightly upon its side. Blood sprayed from the first's chest and out his back, while the recoil carried three hits across the second. As they fell several others behind howled and went down. I swung the gun toward Fitzroy. Her eyes widened. As she dove behind a table I blew it to shreds. Down the stage, amongst the feet of fighting, fleeing, dying men, I saw the blue sailor suit on Fink's boy in flight.
I yanked Elizabeth upward and threw her toward the door, firing a burst as I backpedaled toward the light. By now the Good Time Club had descended into bloody pandemonium and it was hard to tell who was shooting whom. As I pushed a bewildered Elizabeth through the threshold, the doorjamb to the right of my head exploded, stinging me with splinters. I spun backward and fired blind, eye to eye with Fitzroy as she took aim from behind an overturned table. I took wood from its top but caused her to duck. Aiming for a follow up, I pulled the trigger to a click.
Hands yanked me backward now, pulling me through the double doors and onto the ground as a bullet shattered the door glass above. Beneath me I heard a gasp, felt a small form and rolled to find that in my fall I'd landed upon Elizabeth. Above me more glass shattered and I covered us from the shards. I rolled from her chest and she gasped for breath, eyes momentarily locked in terror with mine.
Screams and the crack of firearms rose from behind us. I leapt to my feet, wrapped my arms around her and took off. Leaving Fink's smashed bronze monument behind, we staggered down the Good Time's steps past a ruined hot dog cart onto the cobbled street below. We weren't alone.
A swell of men were escaping the club, spitting forth in threes and fours, running like hell for their lives from a place filled well beyond its capacity. As I looked back, I could see a mass of flesh inside, pressed into the open doors, men screaming as they were crushed in the stampede.
As the lucky ones fled past us, another boom rattled the street. People turned and looked to see a Vox gunship explode in flames, spiraling downward. From the clouds a Columbian descended, followed by another. Having spied the Vox spilling from the Good Time Club, I could see the vessel's gunners smiling as their turrets spun our way.
"Dammit!" I yelled and drew Elizabeth behind a stone wall. The big guns went off and an eight-inch shell flew into the Good Time Club's façade, right where the stampede had bunched dozens in the doorway. Fink's felled statue exploded, sending his one-ton head spinning madly in the air and limbs to the depths of the Atlantic below. Above it the marquis crashed to the disrupted steps and exploded in shards. The clock fell to the ground with a discordant bong. Slowly the building reeled and collapsed inward upon itself.
"Again, fire!" I heard from the lead gunship, a three-hundred-footer like we'd destroyed at the Arsenal. Though the pair were over two hundred yards away, for naval guns their range was point blank. With all my might I held Elizabeth to the wall and concealment, covered her head amid unending screams. The second shot lit into the club with a thunderous ball of fire and brought the whole interior down in a billowing crash.
I bolted to my feet, yanking her after me. "Come on!"
By the time the third salvo hit I'd gotten us into an alleyway, a dark but clean escape between tall brick townhouses that led to an adjacent road. Emerging behind the Good Time Club, we could still hear pistols and the occasional automatic, punctuated by the agonies of the dying beneath the collapsing, burning structure.
"We have to move." I said, realizing that even though she was with me the woman was near catatonic.
"They...she killed them. She..."
"It's war, Elizabeth. There's going to be a lot more of it." I put my hand behind her back and tried to calm her, but she suddenly sucked into me. For a moment I closed my eyes. With Elizabeth's face snug in my shoulder, I stared at the empty chamber. She pulled back.
"That's...that's the last of it?" She asked shakily.
I glanced down the alley toward the next open street. "Unless you happen to have a clip or two hiding under that skirt." She didn't answer but pointed to a stain of red upon my left arm now and wiped even more from my forehead. As much as I hurt already, I'd not even noticed.
"How much more can you take?" She said, putting my neckerchief on the wound.
"It's superficial." I gestured with the weapon down the street. She puzzled for a moment as if seeing something, suddenly scampering ten feet away beside a dilapidated waste bin. "What are you doing!?" I whispered, grabbing her by the arm for cover as she returned. In her hands she held two magazines of Triple R ammunition, 15 rounds each. "Where did you..."
"It was just lying there."
I looked to the ground where she pointed, then to her in consternation. "Don't do that again. Come on."
Behind we heard renewed explosions, big shells raking the frontages where the Vox were fighting back from. Overhead I heard a droning and looked up to see the second gunship coming in low, this one's railings loaded with Founder soldiers. Elizabeth's gaze followed.
"My father's men?" Upon a nearby building top the zepp alighted, disgorging its heavily armed troopers. "What are they doing!?"
"Looking for you. Come on!"
Soon Finkton was crawling with Comstock's counter assault, troopers spilling into the streets and alleyways, shooting anyone they came across. Whether they bothered to discriminate friend or foe I didn't stick around to find out. As the wave of gray threatened to swamp us, we ducked into a nearby frontage.
"It's okay." I said, holding her to me. With a wary eye I peered out the window, watching the soldiers in the streets.
#
Neither in a hurry to get captured nor killed, we remained there for over an hour, waiting until the commotion had died down. When we finally took to the streets, we found ourselves no longer in Finkton but Shantytown. On a good day Finkton might have passed for parts of Queens. On a good day Shantytown passed for the slums about Pittsburgh. About the streets people hovered around burning drums, trying to keep warm from the late morning chill. Bums lay in the streets, drunk, while dirty laundry hung in the air. The scent of shit and piss hung in the air. Having seen only her tower and Columbia's brighter spots, it didn't surprise me the girl was in shock.
"Lovely, eh?"
"These people..." Elizabeth asked. "They...live this way?"
"That's why half of them are turning the apple cart over." At the sound of gunfire and screams down the street I pulled her back into an alley. With the battle continuing I led her down it to the next street over. The faces on the pavement changed, the squalor didn't.
We wandered through the maze of brick streets, trying to find our way toward the airside and a zepp. Each time I sought the breeze I found either a dead end or gunfire. Angry voices rose and passed. We hid in the shadows. Realizing Shantytown was a dead end, I turned us back. Eventually Finkton's towers loomed over us. At the doors of a shuttered brick factory Elizabeth picked a lock. Inside we found a bloodstained lobby, a shot apart desk and stairs that led up and down. A Constable lay dead behind it, Broadsider still in hand.
"Which way?" Elizabeth sighed as I reached down and took it.
"Down."
"Why 'down?'" Elizabeth asked as we descended. The case landed us at a long service corridor, one in obvious haste abandoned. Utility carts laden with goods remained upon the floor.
"Because 'up' worked so damned well last time. Besides, if we stay up there we're going to get caught." The truth was that I had no idea where I was going. With the Vox and unexpected counterassault of Comstock's forces, I was simply trying to stay free...and alive. "Unfortunately, I'm plum out of Montgomerys this time. You need to step up, girl."
"Montgomerys?"
"The people that helped me get to you. Back in Emporia before the other day I saved a couple from being stoned.
"Stoned?"
"It's where you grab rocks and throw them at someone until they're dead." Her eyes went wide a saucers. "Fink...the man Fitzroy killed...he and his lot at the Raffle were going to murder a man and woman because they made the mistake of falling in love and happened to be of different skin colors. Anyway, bullets beat baseballs and we managed to escape. They led me to a couple that actually helped, well, me and Edmonton by that time. The Montgomerys."
"Helped you with what?"
"Get to you." I offered her the Broadsider. "This might make you a bit more comfortable."
She took the weapon, eyes agog as if it were a poisonous snake. "It didn't make me comfortable last time." In her ignorance she waved the gun at me.
Deftly I sidestepped, taking the weapon with the palm of my hand. "Elizabeth, don't point it at anyone unless you intend to kill. And don't put your finger inside the trigger guard until you're certain."
"I'm sorry. I told you before, I don't think I can do this."
"If you want to see Paris, you're going to have to."
"Where are we?" She eventually asked, still uncomfortable with the gun in hand, eyes taking in the utilitarian passageway.
"Maybe one of Fink's factory offices." We carried on down the passage, passing a pair of wide windows looking out over a floor filled with machinery. Although it was a workday the tools were still, the equipment idled. Assembly lines and workstations ran far as the eye could see. Along grated walkways I could see stairs and ladders, leading to at least three floors of the same below. At the bottom of that third I could see another passage placarded, "Emergency Exit." With my gaze I turned hers toward the sign. "That's our ticket out of here."
"A way out?" She whispered.
"Maybe. Come on."
We entered the elevator to the tremor of artillery, rounds whose distant impact knocked the dust from the overhead. As the doors closed a veneer of it settled upon us. In her palm Elizabeth traced the dirty handgun's lines. "I still...still can't believe she did that."
As the series of idled assembly lines outside slid upward, I found myself thinking the same. "Neither can I. I guess the only difference between Comstock and Fitzroy is the spelling." Studying our descent, I began to see a pattern in the steelwork. "Emporia was lifted on solid bedrock." I said, looking at the array of girders. "But this place must be built on these."
"What does that mean?" Elizabeth asked, gun close to her chest. In our flight her blue necktie had come undone, shirt unloosed. Her skin was dotted with scrapes.
"It means that Finkton is hollow...like one giant building. Maybe Shantytown too. We should be able to find a way anywhere we want to go." I caught her eye. Her face had blanched and she looked incredibly distraught. "Are you okay?"
"I don't even begin to know what 'okay' might feel like anymore."
The lift came to a halt three levels below, and as its doors opened Elizabeth and I emerged onto a deserted production line floor. All along its wood plank floor in increasing stages of assembly sat motorized turrets. "Fink must make his weapons here, like the ones we saw before." I leaned over to examine one of the device's facades, which lacking an outer skin seemed to be binoculars and inhumanly mechanical gearing. "I've never seen anything like this...how these things can move and track people."
Ahead of us I heard a scurrying. Elizabeth raised her weapon but I knocked it down, spying the pad of small feet behind a conveyor. "Fink's kid."
As she began to speak I heard a door slam open. Larger feet followed. "Come on out heah, boy. You can quit runnin'...we take cah o' you good." Fitzroy's echoed. Together Elizabeth and I clung tightly to the wall, concealed by an intervening workstation's machinery. From our vantage point we peered out, barely able to see the woman and her compatriots. With a nod she sent one right, the other left around the assembly stations. Fitzroy had her weapon drawn. From the glass windows above shafts of yellow morning light streamed in.
"We have to do something!" Elizabeth whispered. "They're going to kill him!"
"Will you just give me time to think!?" I said, trying to figure out if I had a chance with the repeater against three widely separated figures.
"If you won't do something, I will!" Elizabeth cried, dashing off to our left.
"Dammit!" Belatedly my grasp caught her foot but only caused her to trip, the woman catching herself upon a wall with both hands. Loosened, her Broadsider tumbled into a nearby wall with a clatter. Elizabeth glared back to me with fierce eyes.
"Who der?" Fitzroy announced, swinging about with her weapon. Hearing Elizabeth's collision behind him, one of her lackeys turned and took aim. With no obvious target he held his fire. For a moment Elizabeth considered the weapon. Seeing its retrieval would expose her position, she squirmed off on her way. Beneath my breath I cursed.
"I heah you, boy. You come out now an' we be nice." Daisy implored. Her voice had murderous edge to it. Hearing Elizabeth off to my left, I rolled my eyes. A graceful dancer she might have been, but here she was a klutz.
"Is this it, is this your movement, Daisy?!" I shouted to pull her attention off the girl. A shotgun blast struck the worktable I'd sheltered behind, blowing wood and metal shavings into the wall before me and across the hard, cold deck.
"False Shepherd...so you heah too. What a surprise. Don' matter, cause dis what need to be done." As her men strode the creaking metal to my left and right, I heard a boy squeal. "Der you ah, you li'l shit!"
I rolled left and came up into a crouch. The man with her, one of her Irish, brought his shotgun down. I fired a burst into his thigh and groin, blowing his right leg clean off. He screamed and his gun discharged, shooting another hole in the table. Footsteps pounded from my right.
Rolling behind the blasted table, I covered just in time to avoid a barrage of rifle shot. On the work floor the Irishman was screaming, his cries lessening as his lifeblood drained into the sawdust. Anxiously I estimated how much ammo I had remaining. Floorboards creaked to my right. I looked up to see a rifle barrel poking over my head, angling downward toward me. Throwing my barrel backwards over my head, I pulled the trigger. Amid bullets and screams his rifle shot a hole in the wall. I rolled right and opened fire, seeing my assailant shot in the neck with half of his face hanging.
As he collapsed to the floor, I saw Fitzroy clutching Fink's lad by the mouth. He writhed and squealed in her arms. I stood...kicked the rifle away from her dying man.
"Let him go, Daisy. This is done." She raised her pistol at me, barrel shaking. Fitzroy was dedicated and a proven killer. I stopped where I stood.
"See, the Founders ain't nothin' but weeds." She continued, the swath of red across her face and crazy eyes marking her as out of her mind. "Cut 'em down and they jus' grow back."
"Daisy, stop!" I said, raising my weapon. For all her vitriol she hadn't shot the boy.
"If you wanna get rid of a weed, you gotta pull it up from the root! It's the only way to be..."
Without warning a pair of shears erupted from the woman's chest, their point glittering amid flowing petals of blood. Freed from the woman's clutches, Fink's son shrieked and fled, dashing past my leg and to my left while Daisy gurgled. With dumbstruck eyes Fitzroy turned, clutched at horrified Elizabeth. For an eternal moment they looked at each other, Daisy reaching out to her. She gurgled…slumped…and expired in a lifeless heap at her killer's feet. Blouse and face spattered in red, Elizabeth looked to Daisy, then wildly to me, then gazed at the dripping shears in hand.
"Elizabeth..." I reached out to touch her but with wild eyes she looked up and stepped back, glancing at both me and her bloody instrument. For a moment I thought she was going to scream. Instead, she flung the shears away with a clatter and tore off through the machinery.