Disclaimer: I own none of the characters presented in this story. Red Dead Redemption and all associated with said property belong to Rockstar Games.

Disclaimer: Strong depictions of violence, murder, and other such heinous and repugnant acts, very harsh language used throughout, and some taboo and offensive material occasionally presented.

Part Nineteen: Grimshaw

9:45 PM, July 22nd, 1899

If you asked Susan Grimshaw how many times she'd been in a gunfight, she'd probably answer with something short and clever that managed not to actually answer it at all. Something akin to more than I'd like.

Likewise, if you asked her how many men she's killed, you'd most likely get more than I'd like. Aloof, uncaring, she was—no wonder Arthur was the same way.

And in all her years, she'd never seen a gunfight this ugly.

They were shadows on a wall—she couldn't make out their faces or outfits, just their inky silhouettes in the blue mist. Micah fell and she pulled out her revolver, emptying it in ten seconds. She missed every shot. They were like black ghosts, whooshing by on horses made of translucent obsidian; Sadie and Bill shot at them from the balcony—of course, they missed too, you can't kill a ghost with a bullet, stupid. They fired back and buckshots were passed around like drinks at a party. The men—if they were that—whizzed by in flashing flurries, and with the way they wrapped around Shady Belle like a snake, blocking every escape, it reminded Susan of her old home back in Massachusetts—they'd had one hell of a tornado when she was a little girl.

"Tilly!" she called to the young woman who jumped out of her wagon, putting as much space between herself and the demons with suits. The others followed suit: Kieran, Strauss, Molly, Swanson, Trelawny—shit, they weren't fuckin ready! "Get Micah inside!"

The girl made it over and started dragging a screaming Micah to the front porch of that outhouse they called home. Susan reloaded and kept firing, with Bill and Sadie bolstering her, trying to create room for the others to make it back inside from the wagons.

Goddamn Micah! Goddamn Dutch! Led 'em right to us!

Kieran was first to make it to her, but inside of bolting inside for sanctuary, he spun like he was on a swivel, guns out, blasting with her against the faceless agents.

"There's too many of them!" he cried, hopelessly firing against the swarm of men.

"I see that ya goddamn stupid man!" (take note here that she called him a "man" instead of, say, "boy," "whelp," or "whore with a tiny cock." For those fluent in the phonemes and lexemes of the Grimshaw language, you know this crude sentence was actually a compliment for his valor—naturally, it went right over his head)

Still, they kept firing at the horde, their actions fruitless; they didn't seem to kill a single one—although that couldn't be right, could it? There were so many it would be like throwing a stone into the middle of the ocean and missing.

Strauss came next, clinging to the camp's corroded red funds box like it was a life vest. Of course, he didn't try to fight—you'd have a better chance of seeing God piss on an anthill than seeing Leopold Strauss in a fight.

Then Molly, releasing a piercing scream so boisterous, so obstreperous it rivaled Javier blowing up all that dynamite when the O'Driscoll's came a-knocking. Susan considered letting them take her—bitch's got to pay for what she said—but sighed and continued providing cover fire; no one deserved to die this way.

Swanson ran in after her, and that's when it started up. She'd thought it was an auditory hallucination for a moment, that her brain had started playing records instead of ideas. But she looked at Kieran and knew it wasn't in her head.

It was singing.

"O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain…"

She squinted ahead—Christ, it's so damn foggy!—through the thick blue air and saw past the ring of ghosts to another dark outline in the distance.

"For purple mountains majesties above the fruited plain!" the voice kept on. Then a crack of thunder boomed out and the white-blue light flashed so she could see the face of the man: it was Agent Ross. And following him through the blue fog into sight were a dozen more agents; it was more than fifty, far more.

"Run…" she whispered, having meant to shout but her strength had abandoned her. "Run!" she repeated to Trelawny who dropped even his small suitcase and rushed ever quicker toward the house. She and Kieran followed his suit, and inched back to the manor, to safety.

"America!" Trelawny's head exploded, and tiny chunks of his bread spiraled into Susan's hair.

"America!" She felt her left breast cuss out in agony as the cold metal dug into it and exited out her back—just aways from her rhomboid.

Her gaze rose to the moon as she collapsed onto her back, its shimmering glow was all that kept her from blacking out. The pain was exponential, it was like an anti-orgasm—misery rocketed out from her wound to the rest of her body. There wasn't a nerve inside of her that didn't scream. It hit her right in the nipple, and while there was so much blood it was hard to tell, she could've sworn it had been shaved off. The sound of gunfire never ceased, nor did that damn song, but Susan couldn't hear it over the sound of her own frenzied breathing.

Her blood-drenched left arm was yanked away from the root of her suffering and was used as a handgrip by which to pull her semi-corpse across the wet mud and onto the bumpy stairs.

Kieran shut the door behind them as he entered with Susan's body, pulling it across the rough wooden planks. Glass cut into her back—fuck you, Molly, I asked you to do one thing: sweep the goddamn floors! "They got Trelawny!" he yelled.

"Fuckin' bastards!" Tilly bellowed, grabbing one of Micah's pistols and vainly letting two fly out the practically nonexistent window.

"Shit! Shit, shit, shit…" Mary-Beth chanted as she rushed over to treat the beldame, shoving a (hopefully clean) rag into the hole to stop the bleeding, snaking another underneath her so the exit wound wouldn't leak her dry.

Her vision grew a little more than fuzzy as her eyes fluttered weakly, but she was certain she saw Micah next to her, writhing from his game leg, whispering "Amos," she could've sworn. She readjusted her head a little and saw Kieran ducking under the mostly shattered window by the front door, waiting for an opening that never came. They just kept shooting and shooting and shooting—seemed like the Pinkertons had all the guns in the world. Everyone else was huddled tightly by the walls, making themselves as small as possible as the bullets tore into the decaying mansion—not just from the front like with the O'Driscoll's, but from all sides. Shady Belle moaned and hissed and quivered and Susan really thought it would come down this time.

"You're gonna be okay, Miss Grimshaw," Mary-Beth coaxed, keeping one hand firm on the rag and the other stroking her gray-haired head. "I promise."

But Susan couldn't agree; the wicked urge to relent, to give into the exhaustion and take a long Abigail-like slumber from which she'd never awaken was almost irresistible. She was quaking horribly, partially from her torment, but mostly from the yellow shameful brand of fear.

"W-we're g-g-gon-n-na d-d-die," she choked out.

"No, we ain't—aren't, just hold it together. J—"

A round of fire cut through the door this time, if everyone wasn't keeping low, they would be dead by now. But that doesn't mean there was no harm done. A bullet ricocheted off the wall and struck Mary-Beth in the arm she was using to stop Susan's bleeding. She shrieked, gripping the slash on her forearm—it hit just above the elbow joint—and it instantly stained her hand a sickly scarlet.

The sight of the poor girl this way made Susan want to cry—or… wait, no, that couldn't be right. Susan Grimshaw was aloof and uncaring. Been that way since birth. Believe it or not, it was for those very same reasons she'd been so appealing in her younger days—well that and her more… womanly assets (I believe that's the most respectable way to put it). Ironically, it was also why those same suitors, who were the stalk of farmers or ranchers or stable hands, repulsed her; they were too nice. It was like talking to Mary-Beth, she just couldn't relate to her—the language of kindness was as foreign to her as Mandarin. Dutch, though, now he was a man she understood, understood too well. His endless bravado and wild dreams had courted her—by the imagination first then by her icy, choosy heart—and his scrappy charisma had beguiled her into swoon, and likewise, her aloofness had enticed him so as he'd spooned her and kissed her and swore to bring her a life of adventure.

The Pinkertons didn't stop; they were like the hydra: one stopped to reload and two more started shooting. Strauss tried to comfort Molly with a hug, but she wouldn't stop screaming—she had her hands to her ears, as though by drowning out all the noise it would cease to exist. Kieran's hands started to shake—he was back, alright. The courage he'd earlier was waning quickly; he spilled bullets across the floor and rummaged his vibrating hands through them. He couldn't pick any up—his palms were shivering and the lead nuggets slipped right out of his grasp. Mary-Beth was crying now, Micah was dying, Susan was dying. She felt it—it wanted her, more than she wanted to fight it.

The tears filled her eyes, made them rotund, ready to burst—but, no that can't be right. Susan Grimshaw is infamous for her aloof and reserved demeanor.

It was what made her such an excellent… well, mother seemed hardly an apt word, but caretaker? Tutor? Whatever she was, she'd been good at it. Most of them had been a teaspoon over a child; she'd taught them discipline, gave them stability, safety. She had done good work with them, she really had—raised them right. I mean, look at Sean.

He's dead now.

W-well, yes, but he died a… well, not a gentleman, but… uh… well, he had been a damn rascal when he was younger! A thief, a killer.

And he died as one, too.

N-no. No. Yes, Dutch needed him to rob and… occasionally… put someone in the ground, but it wasn't the same. Everyone knew it. Dutch had good intentions—

The ro—

Don't you say "The road to hell is paved with good intentions," have more class than that. Dutch was different, of course, they all knew it. He had that lovely way of speaking, and he was so, so handsome…

And Sean was still dead…

Okay, maybe Sean wasn't the finest example. What about Jen—okay, not her. Uh… oh, Tilly. She has blossomed into a beautiful young woman—even with half her face mauled purple (goddamn Foreman's). And strong too. Like a bull. Remember how scared she used to cry when the baby deers were flayed for stew (oh, Pearson…)? But soon enough, she started hunting them herself!

And she hated me. She never forgave me for slaughtering that fawn in front of her; wanted to run away. Even now, she hates me. They all do. She'd rather ride with an O'Driscoll than spend ten minutes with me…

Yeah, well that isn't your fault—you know how young girls are, you were one after all.

Yeah… a long time ago.

Don't twist words, that's not—

I know… I know.

"M-Mary-B-Beth?" she murmured, thankful the sobbing girl somehow heard her amidst all the loud bangs so she wouldn't have to use any more of the paltry reserves of strength she still had. Mary-Beth sniffled before addressing her in kind, wearing a patient yet hopelessly strained smile.

"Y-yeah, Miss Grimshaw?"

"I-if it a-ain't too lat-t-te… y-you can g-go ri-ight a-ahead and i-ignore what I s-said earlier. I wa-ant you to… b-be with that O'Dr-O'Driscoll if t-that's what you want."

"I—w-what are you talkin' about?" Her eyes scanned Susan's emotional (if you can fathom it) expression for a clue that would explain what she was on about. She found nothing.

"I'm s-s-sorry…" Susan whimpered. "I j-j-just wan-n-nted you-u-u to kn-kn-know b-bef-fore…"

"Don't you say that!" Mary-Beth barked, squeezing her wound with so much pressure Susan whelped. "You-you ain't goin' nowhere." Speaking of wounds, the one on Mary-Beth's forearm was getting worse, must've hit a vein, because blood was flowing like a river out of it. She tried to plug it with her spare hand while keeping Susan's bandages tight, but the old lass could see it in her eyes—she couldn't do both.

Susan tried to fight this naive girl, tried to order her to stop, to let go. To worry about herself only. But she couldn't speak, couldn't move at all except her head; it had such a strong hold on her and she was so fatigued. She began to understand why this was so easy for Abigail.

"Milton!" came a voice that Susan couldn't help but rejoice in hearing, in believing there was still hope.

Dutch waddled from Hosea's room under the stairs where Mary-Beth had treated his injuries—the bandages were already coming loose at his bleeding shoulder. He stormed past Susan and Mary-Beth, planting a kick at Micah's side as he called out again:

"Milton! Milton!"

He pressed himself against the front double doors of Shady Belle—doors Susan had complained about so much, yet were now the only thin piece of matter standing between them and sixty guns. He leaned and aimed his mouth near the exposed window, so his voice would escape the house without putting the crest of his head in sight of the monsters outside. And final time he cried, sorrow and desperation cutting into it, making his plea jagged and hoarse:

"MILTON!"

Then, among the deafening shots, it grew, a question—no, a demand:

"Hold your fire, men! Hold it!"

And just like that, the terrible banging stopped.

Susan couldn't lift her head, but she had enough life left in her to shift it to the side so she could see out of a large Judas in the wall. It was two dark apparitions strolling closer than the rest, the pale, smug features of Agent Milton and Ross—the former was dressed just as tidy (even in a firefight, there's always time to brush your suit) as last time their paths had crossed, and correspondingly, the latter was just as ragtag.

Milton spoke as Susan remembered: rigidly, flatly; like Strauss. But this time there was an undertone of white-hot rage in it, although you couldn't tell by the words he chose. "Mr. Van der Linde, hello again."

"Hello, Mr. Milton, how ya getting along?"

"Not too well, I must say…" he began, "That was you, right? The gang war?" He took Dutch's silence as confirmation. "Yeah… I figured. 'No such thing as coincidence in this world,' my mother always said. All that carnage, and for what? A couple a' bucks you'll never spend."

"Although," Agent Ross chimed in, "I must admit, I'm most impressed. Hitting the boat instead of the bank?"—he chuckled, however, Susan couldn't place if it was genuine or mocking—"You're smarter than I gave ya credit for. Nevertheless, the brightest candle still ain't all that bright, if you catch my drift."

"I do," Dutch said, venom clear in his tone. "Now if you're done with your cloddish insults, perhaps we could talk like civilized folk."

"Civilized folk? Didn't know you were acquainted with that dialect."

"Alright, I'll get the conversation cooking if you can't be a man about this," Dutch said, licking his lips nervously before he opened his mouth again. "Let's be pragmatic here. Fact one: you got us trapped here."

"Fact two," Ross added, "you are dejectedly outnumbered and outgunned, and this house you're squatting in will collapse on top of you after one more round of fire from us."

"Fact three: we are still some of the best gunslingers this country's got—a lot of your men will die here tonight."

"That's your opinion, not a fact." he countered. "A fact goes something like this: we poached two of your boys tonight without suffering a single loss."

"Milton! Say something, I want to talk to you, not your lapdog!"

He removed his hat and stroked his short, buzz-cut styled hair roughly, taking his time to answer, shy on a minute, at least. "Sure, Mr. Van der Linde."

"I-I want to cut a deal. Let's cut a deal."

Milton sighed before asking. "What deal?"

Dutch looked back at his gang, eyes soaking them in one by one, from Bill and Sadie on the stairs to Susan lying on the floor; no one was standing except for him, and it served to showcase just how they saw him. "You had said you thought I was the ringleader of this circus—"

"Never said circus. I said, savages."

"Okay… well I do recall this clear as a picture: you said you didn't want to kill everyone, just me."

"I did say that."

"So…"—Dutch licked his lips again, his eyebrows bending in a preternatural pose that made him look decades older, like he was on the brink of death right along with Susan—"how 'bout… you-you take me, and let them be."

"No!" Tilly begged, rising and rushing to him before he grabbed her by the face, fingers drilling into both her cheeks before tossing her back onto the floor. The look he gave her was so violent with fervidity you'd have thought he loathed her, deplored her with every fiber of his being.

"That is a most generous offer, Mr. Van der Linde," Milton said. Under the surface, he did reveal some surprise, but he remained as relaxed and passionless as ever. "And… I must admit… not one I expected you to make. Still, it's denied, without a moment's consideration."

"W-well…" Dutch gazed back at his friends, his family, trying to come up with some solution, trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat. "How 'bout me and Bill and—y'know what, all the men? We'll come out with our hands up and you can kill us on the spot. No tricks, just let the women go. They ain't guilty of nothing!"

"Denied."

"Th—"

"Denied! Denied!" Milton screamed, his calm facade erased; he furiously tossed his hat into the blue abyss behind them. "You could offer me anything, everything, and the answer would still be denied! All the money in Leviticus Cornwall's accounts? Denied! Eternal youth? Power? The world folded into a golf ball?! Denied! Denied! Denied!"

This can't be the same man, Susan thought, Not the same man who talked with such control, such sangfroid.

"Do you know what you've done, Dutch? Do any of you!?" he asked, breathing quickly, manically. "How many lives you've ruined? How much destruction you've caused? Can you even see the world that way: with other people takin' up room in it?!"

"That was me!" Dutch yelled, matching his intensity. "They had nothing to do with it!"

"Liar! You're a dirty, stinkin' liar! And even if you weren't, it wouldn't save them. You had your chance, ya hear?! All of you did!"

Susan couldn't help but feel as though that was for her specifically. It was happening now, the darkness was beginning to overtake the blue—she wasn't even in pain anymore, just numbing silence.

"Release us! Or I swear to God this'll be just the beginning! We'll spread hell's fire to every corner of this country!"

"With what? Morgan's in the ground. Calendar's are in the ground. MacGuire's in the ground. You've got nothing left but an army of women and children. Don't you see? There ain't no Promised Land for you lowlifes!"

"We will kill you all, you hear me?!" Dutch bellowed with a maddening honesty.

"I hear nothing but crickets in the swamp," Milton said, cupping his hand to his ear. "And dead men. Kill them all!"

And then they let fly with everything they had.

All the familiar sounds returned to Susan as she closed her eyes: Molly's screaming, Mary-Beth's crying, Dutch's swearing, Strauss' gibberish mumblings, and of course the most boisterous sound—the unyielding bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!

She could feel the air rippling like a stone in a pond from all the ammunition—they must've brought twenty extra horses just to store all the cartridge boxes they were burning through. Fragments of rotted wood and paint chips crumpled on her wrinkled cheek, amongst her heavy, wet tears.

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!

Susan kept crying, shutting her eyes even tighter. She didn't want to die. Not when she'd just realized how wonderfully she'd wasted her life; wasted it on being a nasty crone, of being undeservingly cruel, envious, and weak.

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!

I fucked up, was all she could think. I fucked up, but I want to make amends. I want to fix things. I don't want to die, I don't want to fuckin' die.

She felt Mary-Beth's warm hand leave her chest then, and she knew the girl was dead. The thoughts made her sick, of opening her eyes to see Mary-Beth pale and stiff, or Tilly packing a half-dollar-sized hole in her forehead, or Dutch… dear sweet Dutch…

I don't want to die!

She heard it then: the ba-bang of another gunshot, but this one was different. The echo meant it came from far off. Then there was another one. Ba-bang! Then another. Ba-bang! Three more, four more, eight more, one right after the next.

What the hell is it? She heard the Pinkertons murmur, then stir into a panic as another shot pealed out. Ba-bang! There were other gunslingers encroaching near Shady Belle, and they were not friends of the Pinkertons. The shots were ringing out too quickly to be a small group, this was a large militia. Susan braved it and shot her eyes ajar, and stared out that wide crevice in the wall, seeing the outside blue world. There were dozens and dozens of black silhouettes, but they were dropping like flies, one, two, three at a time. Ba-bang! Ba-bang! Ba-bang! Thump, thump, thump. The fog was too thick, she couldn't see past it, couldn't make out even the shapes of what was coming for them, but she prayed it was friendly.

The Pinkertons turned their attention completely away from the gang then, instead focusing on this new threat invading from the north, just beyond the hills.

Ba-bang! Ba-bang! Ba-bang! Thump, thump, thump. It was unbelievable, every echoing bullet seemed to find its mark—it wasn't natural.

Marine corps? Susan speculated. Some part of the army? Whoever the hell they were that were coming, they were good, too good to be O'Driscoll's, no, this was the work of professionals—the kind of men seldom seen without a gun in their hands. Did the mayor hire some squad of assassins? Is he tying up every loose end?

Bang! Bang! Bang! Thump, thump, thump. The echo was gone, they were right on them now, probably just past that infernal blue fog. The Pinkertons were scrambling now; they were actually scrambling. Ross, she thought it was Ross anyway, was hollering orders, trying to keep everyone in line. They shot back in a large coordinated counterfire, but it didn't matter. Bang! Bang! Bang! Thump, thump, thump. They wouldn't be deterred.

Susan's eyes darted to her right and she saw Dutch, Bill, and Sadie were taking advantage now, firing back at the distracted Pinkertons—the tide had turned. They were fighting now on two fronts, out in the open with limited options for cover. She saw Mary-Beth too, bandaging her arm and very much alive.

Then the fog split and reformed as they came barreling out of it like an iron horse, unstoppable in their stride, charging right for the Pinkertons.

Only it wasn't an army; it wasn't a militia of well-trained men; it wasn't assassins; it wasn't even a group—it was two men (well, more accurately, one and a half)

It was John, and in his arms, swayed little Jack.

John's back!

Next chapter will get into what he's been up to in the meantime.

Also, one thing I want to clarify in case it's unclear here:

The narrator does not communicate with Grimshaw at any point; it's just an Avant-Garde method I wanted to try to show her two sides (the one that doubted her decisions, and one that didn't) in a moral debate.