Free The Crossings by Jack Ketchum

so did Hart as Mother's rifle hit the floor and we saw something the size of a railroad spike protruding from his neck. And then seeming to try to withdraw from his neck, moving side to side and up and down as though it were a living thing there trying to wriggle free, Mother's hands fisted and grasping at it as though to keep it a part of him instead, his eyes wide and blood pouring like thick bright syrup down off his mouth onto his chest and tides of it pulsing against the wall.
    He shifted his weight and there was old mad Eva behind him — tiny in his shadow, some horrible gnome who would bring a giant low — grasping at the hilt of her obsidian blade with both bony hands and trying to wrest it out of him, her lips snarled back in a feral grin, eyes squinting and twitching as though she were trying to focus on something far away in blinding light until Hart stepped over and shot directly into one of those rheumy yellow eyes and painted the wall with whatever manner of filth had come to nestle in her brain.
    She lay still and I saw what the white filmy garment was which left her long thin dugs and cascades of belly flesh so nearly and revoltingly naked.
    Flayed human skin.
    Mother fell to his knees. His hands dropped away from the dagger and his arms swayed at his sides. He seemed to gaze at Hart for a moment with puzzlement and then with slow recognition and that was all.
    His weight shifted back.
    He hung there perfectly still.
    I did not think at that moment about how Mother had cared for me, taught me. I did not think that as one is wont to love another man I perhaps had loved this one. That would come only later. I saw a dead man. Mother was fled.
    " Aw jesus, Mother ," said Hart.
    The gunfire outside had stopped. The men had retreated from the doorway and as yet we had no notion why. It didn't seem reasonable. All they had to do now was come at us from both ends of the hallway if they did it quick enough. We could retreat into one of the rooms but couldn't hold out there forever. They'd lose some men doing it that way but they'd surely have us sooner or later.
    I was aware of a tingling climbing down my leg. Not gone numb as yet but it felt as though it very well could given time. Above the wound it throbbed.
    "Can you manage, Bell?" he said.
    I nodded. I looked at the dead man kneeling before me and didn't trust myself to speak.
    I saw that Hart had been shot high in the side of his chest. I didn't want to address that either. There was a lot of blood.
    "We best try to get out of here."
    We stepped over the four bodies in the doorway acid headed for the outbuildings — expecting gunfire all the way.
    Gunfire that never came. We skirted the buildings into the brush and beyond to the clearing where we'd tethered the horses. But of course there were no horses.
    Only Elena and Celine in open moonlight.

    "Mother?" said Elena.
    Hart didn't answer. Didn't need to. His look was enough. His eyes were pure dark flint and she took his glance like a physical blow. I could almost feel her thinking, this man blames me. Of course he does. He blames me for the loss of his friend .
    It was certainly possible. You couldn't know. Sometimes you just couldn't read him.
    Her response was to get busy. She gestured toward me.
    " Ayudame, Celine ," she said, " esteuno ."
    Celine walked with a bad limp and I could see where she'd been hipshot and the hem of her slip torn off for a bandage, something brownish beneath the bandage which I learned by repeating the process later on myself was a simple mix of dirt and her own urine — but the next thing I knew she was opening my pants and rolling them gently down over my hip to get at the wound while Elena drew Hart's shirt off over his shoulders. He'd been hit just under the armpit, the bullet passing through the tissue between chest and underarm front and back. The bleeding was largely stopped by now but there'd already been a lot of it.
    "So you're Celine," I said.
    The words sounded stupid