“We’ll kill all of you at our pleasure and then burn the factory to the ground,” shouted the leader of the Whyos.
Zachary saw the unmarked carriage. No doubt, Dyer had come to gloat. Zachary checked behind him, breathed a sigh of relief. Elizabeth stayed where he’d told her.
Then the battle began.
The crack of gunfire burst into the air. Dense clouds of acrid, burned gunpowder rolled upward over the men. An agonizing cry emitted from one of Zachary’s men as a bullet ripped into his arm.
“Now!” General Rourke ordered.
The response from Zachary’s side was quick in answer. Ranks of Whyos exposed across the road were reduced by the terrific gunfire of Zachary’s rifles. An awful trail of dead and wounded lay abandoned in their wake.
The Whyos again pressed to a hundred yards of his frontline before they stopped cold.
“Fire, men, fire!” General Rourke roared above the din. The order was obeyed with promptness, but still an ocean of Whyos came again and again in appalling numbers, creating frightful gaps in the line. His men labored under murderous fire, and it looked as if a thousand deaths awaited them. One of the men went down, shot in the thigh.
So near were the Whyos to General Rourke’s line that many Whyos were captured before the general’s intent to fall back. They waited for the onslaught of the next Whyos that hit like a battering ram. Colonel Ryan Rourke, astride his horse, hustled more of their men into flanking position.
“Wait ‘til close enough to fire,” shouted Colonel Lucas Rourke.
The men behind the entrenchments rested their guns upon the wagons, firing volley after volley. The Whyos fell, carried away like wheat from the chaff.
Zachary hoped they had enough ammunition with the ceaseless drumming and plowing of shot, making the street look like a boiling cauldron.
Colonel Lucas Rourke waved his sword high over his head. “Charge!”
Both Lucas and Ryan spurred their horses, leaping high over the wagons and into the terrible melee of death. With a bloodcurdling Rebel yell, the men clambered over the wagons and broke into the sea of thugs, striking, hacking, firing. On they rushed following the Rourke brothers. In retreat, the thugs melted, their distorted silhouettes twisted like blackened spirits of Dante into the distant streets, leaving a swath of Whyo carnage.
Zachary checked Dyer’s carriage. The coward had obviously turned tail and run.
Out of the corners of his eyes, four firebrands threw dozens of gas-filled bottles into his factory. The grease and oil inside the factory exploded in flames. The fight was not over. He called to his brothers. Immediately, sharpshooters felled the men. The damage was done. No. He’d not let Dyer win by destroying his factory.
“Men, get buckets! Douse all fires!”
Elizabeth watched the departing thugs and the beginnings of a fire and ran to the factory. She must get to Zachary’s office and get his drawings. No way would she allow his genius to go down in flames.
Her arm was snared, and she was jerked back in a teeth-jerking halt. Her father!
“Why aren’t you with Dyer?”
“You sold me to the man who raped me. Your best friend and trusted colleague raped your daughter in your home. He is an evil man and had horrid, unspeakable intentions for me. For what? A railroad?”
Elizabeth yanked her arm from him. Smoke circled the ceiling. Hurry. Picking up her skirts, she rushed past the clamor of men organizing a bucket brigade and up the stairs. For several seconds, she grabbed the maps, turned to leave. In a cloud of inundating smoke, the door slammed shut. Dread rioted through her veins.
She stretched out her arms for a handhold and grabbed. White-hot heat seared her hand. Palms blistering, she leaped back. The fire had been a haze when she ventured into the building but had spread much quicker than she expected. Gasping for breath, she banged on the exit. “Help, anyone?”
Smoke slid from beneath and around the frame, drifted at the ceiling, and filled the room. Coughing uncontrollably, she grabbed Zachary’s shirt, used it as a buffer to turn the knob.Damn.The handle stayed fused. Trapped. Couldn’t get out.
She gazed in horror out the office windows and below as a wall of blazing timbers crashed, possessing an otherworldly, wicked force. Fire spread across the floor in rippling sheets. Machinery and grease transformed into tongues of fire. A cabinet collapsed in an upward spiral of sparks. Bright flashes erupted from grease pots. Windows burst.
She looked up. Fire ropes chewed creaking and bowing crossbeams. Drowning in an unsung terror of thick black smoke, she couldn’t catch a breath no matter how hard she tried. Everything was hot. Her skin was hot. Sweating, her dress clung like a wet glove. Her chest hurt from the smoke she had to breathe. Fire crackled and popped. Floors creaked. The building was crumbling around her. People were screaming. The smoke obscured everything, blinding her. She had no idea what was forward or backward. Perhaps the oddest sensation was that she would die, and no one would be aware. The universe sucked the world out and, in a chest-squeezing panic, an awareness arose that the flames held all the power. Shadows blanketed and fogged at the edges in time with the undulating flames. She coughed, took in more smoke. Suffocating. To get fresh air.
Fire nipped at her skin. Her skin grew hot. Couldn’t catch a breath. Elizabeth fell, the designs clutched in her arms. As she lay there, her face pressed to the warm floorboards, she pulled in a final, reedy breath. Time slowed and darkness began to close in on her like a heavy velvet curtain that signaled the end of a theater performance.Oh, Zachary.
Zachary tripped over a dead body. He followed when he saw Elizabeth run into his factory. Rising to his feet, his bad arm reeling with pain, he blinked. Edward Spencer. Was he part of this debacle? Zachary had seen him grab his daughter. She had broken away from him and ran farther into the fire. He’d wring her neck.
At that moment, a fiery beam dropped on Edward Spencer, crushing him. The banker screamed.
Zachary hailed Chen and the Lis to lift the heavy beam off him.
