Another man rose up with a woodsman’s axe and chopped down at her, but Rachael brought the shovel up in both hands, blocked the axe handle at an angle that sloughed off the brute force. Even so, the shock of it vibrated through her wrists like a thousand needles.

The axe man pulled back and tried a second and even more powerful blow, but Rachael was in motion, too. She darted sideways, reversed the shovel on her hands and rammed the blunt end of the handle into his solar plexus. He let out every molecule of air in his lungs and the axe chunked down into the dirt. Rachael spun the handle again and hit him in the back of the head with the flat of the shovel with such force that the man dove face-forward into the dirt.

A knife whipped past her head and thunked into a tree behind her, startling her so badly she dropped the shovel. Rachael turned, looking for whoever threw it, and her heart jumped painfully in her chest as another attacker burst from the woods with a knife in his hand identical to the one he’d just thrown. She backpedaled and tore the knife from the tree, did a pivot that was more like a choreographed pirouette and used the momentum to give her power for a throw of her own. It caught him four steps away and buried itself in the meat of his thigh. The leg buckled and the man screeched as he fell, dropping his own knife to try and stanch the sudden explosion of blood.

Rachael heard a cry and saw that Jason was fighting another attacker armed with another damn axe. Before she could take a step to help him, Alice rose up behind the killer and smashed him in the back of the head with the butt of her sword. The man’s eyes rolled high and he dropped senseless to the dirt.

Rachael could see the first man she disarmed scrambling to find his gun. She snarled aloud as she ran toward him, snatched up his fallen machete and skidded to a stop with the blade pressed hard to the side of his throat. He froze, his fingers on the handle of the gun.

“You can be stupid or you can be alive,” she said.

He stared at her.

“Right now none of your friends are dead,” said Rachael, pressing the edge into his skin with such force that a bead of blood broke from his skin and rolled along the steel. “It’s totally on you if you want to change that.”

Behind her, she heard someone rack a shotgun. “On your six,” said Jason.

The man on the ground drew his fingers away from the pistol.

“Good choice,” said Rachael.

— 10 —: THE SOLDIER AND THE DOG

— 10 —

THE SOLDIER AND THE DOG

Baskerville and I went looking for Old Man Church.