River

Mason

It’s Rosy, running straight across the street at me, wearing some ridiculous matronly gown rather than the whore’s costume that I am accustomed to seeing her in. She truly is fat, is the first thing that comes to my mind, fatter than she used to be. But then I see what she is carrying and my mind snaps to attention.

I only have a split second of alarm, though. The silly girl would never be able to use a pistol properly. There is no threat here.

I don’t wait for her to get all the way across the street. Now is my chance. She is making it easy for me, offering herself up on a platter.

“Let’s go,” I bark at Stu, and charge out of our hiding place towards her.

She raises her hand, preposterously pointing the pistol at me, her plain face filled with fury, as though she thinks that this would have any power over me at all.

I don’t stop. I stride straight towards her, not even flinching when she pulls the trigger, just taking my next step in her direction. But then, after the half second of delay between the trigger igniting the first charge and then the pistol’s second flash, I feel the lead ball striking me in the upper thigh with a fiery pain.

The fucking bitch actually shot me.

It barely slows me down. I stumble briefly, but catch my balance, my hand pushing me up off the dirt street before I have a chance to actually fall. On the way back up I drag my knife out of my boot, then I close the distance to the whore. I am enraged, and she will suffer for this.

Her eyes are wild. She is still holding the empty pistol, still pointlessly aiming it at me. The moment I reach her I swat it out of her hand, yank her to me, spin her around, and squeeze my arm around her throat, choking her into submission. I keep my knife raised with my other hand, close to her face.

Moses

I am upstairs with Nadine, pulling some linens off of a shelf too tall for her to reach, when I hear a ruckus coming from out front.

Our eyes meet, and I am filled with dismay. I am already afraid that I am too far away, and then I hear a gunshot.

I dash through the hall and down the stairs, and am terrified to see that the front door is standing wide open. Rosalind is not inside the parlor where she had been when I went upstairs.

I dart to the door, and the worst imaginable sight meets my eyes. She is held in the clutches of a burly man, her back pressed against his front, her throat compressed by one of his arms while her hands helplessly claw at it. His other hand is holding a sharp knife to the side of her face. Another man is nearby, the dirty fellow that has been watching the house today.

The blood rushes to my head as I realize how thoroughly I have failed. I don’t know how I have allowed this catastrophe to occur.

I rush towards them, but the man holding her jerks her around to the side, moving his arm from her throat and replacing it with the blade. “Stay back!” he shouts at me.

Mason

I start dragging her backwards, getting a few steps up towards the north end of the street, keeping my eyes on the giant black man standing frozen in front of Gregor’s house. His hands are held in the air, powerless, stymied. He knows that I will slice her throat open if he tries to follow.

There is something strange about the way she feels pressed against my side, something distracting. It feels oddly uncomfortable, where I am holding her with her hip leaning into my thigh as I force her to stagger backwards. I try to shift her over a little, but it makes her stumble and nearly fall, and I realize when my leg loses contact with her body that the problem is not her, it is me.

Oh, right, I have a wound. With the thrill of excitement that I am experiencing, having finally achieved my goal of snatching up the little whore, I had almost forgotten that she just fired her pistol at me. I yank her back upright, and while I am doing that I see that the whole front of my leg is covered with blood, her skirt where she had been touching me is covered with blood, the dirt under our feet is even smeared with blood where we have been stepping backwards.

I don’t let go of her arm, but I pause long enough to look to Stu standing at my side. “Come on,” I tell him, “grab her, let’s go.” He doesn’t comply, just stares at me with his eyes as wide as saucers, obviously bothered by all the blood.

A wave of dizziness hits me without warning. I feel my hand slacken a little with the knife, it slips down further and is no longer pressed against her throat.

Now that I have given her an opening, she starts to struggle, lunging backwards, flailing with her free hand. What is this bitch doing? I thought I had trained her better than this, she should just be complying with me like she used to. I try to get control again, jerking her back towards me, but she uses the little distance that has grown between us to lift her knee and drive it into me as I yank her forward.

She was probably aiming for my groin, but she can’t quite reach and it lands somewhere far worse, right on the bullet wound. A searing flash of pain darkens my vision for a moment, and causes a tingling numbness in my limbs.

To my horror, I sense my hands involuntarily releasing both the whore and the knife, feel them both slipping away from me. The knife must land on the dirt of the street, I don’t see where, but I know that Rosy lunges back away from me, out of my reach, towards the big black man.

Then, to make matters worse, before I get the chance to grab her back, as my vision clears I look to the end of the street and see the foreigner round the corner at a sprint and coming charging straight towards us. Someone else is running behind him. I only have a split second to see that it is Ben, the traitor, before Stu grabs me.

He spins me around, grabbing my arm with an iron grip, and immediately starts dragging me away from the scene. “We have to go!” he shouts at me. All I can do is follow.

He’s right, I reluctantly admit to myself, we need to get out of here before the other men reach us.