The Wolves of El Diablo. Eric Red

found himself face-to-face with five of his desperate soldiers barricaded inside the forward troop wagon. Two had rifles pointed at his nose a foot away, looking at him with terror-wracked sweaty faces, itchy fingers on the triggers.

      “Halto!” yelled Higuerra, putting up his hands.

      The ragged men half-saluted deferentially, mumbling apologies. “Sorry, sir, we thought you were one of—”

      “I know! Shut up and keep shooting!” the comandante barked. “If those monsters get in here, none of our lives is worth a burnt-out match!”

      The other Federales were kneeling on the seats at the broken windows of the passenger car, aiming rifles and pistols through the shattered frames and firing at the werewolves outside in the bloody night.

      “Our bullets do no good against these monsters, Colonel!” one despairing soldier cried.

      “Give me a rifle!” shouted Higuerra. He spotted the mauled corpse of a Federale sprawled on the seats, uniform soaked in blood, jagged raking claw marks peeling his chest open to the white ribcage in the meat, ending at the socket of his shoulder where the arm had been. A repeater rifle dangled uselessly from the gore-soaked strap on his chest, and sopping red bandoleer belts crisscrossed his torso except where the canvas and been torn by the strike of the claws. Wincing, the Colonel tore the rifle off the strap and wiped the blood off the weapon as best he could, while ripping the bandoleer belts off the mangled corpse.

      “Aim for their heads! Head shots kill all animals!” the comandante yelled, taking a battle stance at the window beside the row of Federales blasting away at the creatures outside. Jerking back the slippery blood-slick bolt of the rifle and injecting a shell into the breech, Higuerra socked the stock against his shoulder and directly began shooting.

      The entrenched garrison heard scattered gunshots coming from wagons up and down the train and glimpsed the sporadic tongues of fire lapping out of the other coaches into the night where the beasts massed. The few remaining surviving soldiers had bunkered themselves inside the fortifications of the railroad itself, taking cover and shooting through the windows at the attacking creatures.

      Sighting down his rifle as he uselessly pumped round after round into the hulking wolfmen running rampant around the train, Higuerra saw to his dismay the ground outside was piled with bodies or shorn off pieces of them. It looked like his soldiers’ decimated bodies had been hit by cannon blasts or artillery fire—a ghastly tableau pitilessly revealed in the cold stark moonlight. Most of his garrison was dead or badly wounded, he could clearly see. The werewolves looked unstoppable.

      The Colonel jacked another shell into his rifle. Kneeling shoulder-to-shoulder with his five troops in the foxhole of the train car, Higuerra loosed off shots into beasts immune to their lead slugs. The inside of the coach was a din of cocking and firing, muffled lycanthrope roars, deafening close proximity gunblasts and the chink of ejected empty casings hitting the floor. The soldiers were running out of bullets fast. All of them realized soon they would have to make a suicidal run for the armory car to get fresh ammo that would do them little good and merely forestall the inevitable bloody end. For the moment, the Federales stayed put trapped in the wagon they were holed up in, desperately defending their position.

      Sudden cries of alarm went up in the coach. A hairy talon punched through the opposite door to the train car and two Federales leapt up, heaving their entire body weight against the door to keep it closed. One soldier blasted the huge paw with his pistol, which only enraged the creature outside, who now forced its entire furred arm in.

      Tucker, Fix, and Bodie sealed the door and locked it, knowing where they were by the pungent smell of hay and dung.

      It was a horse wagon packed with twenty big cavalry quarter horses in their stalls. The unnerved animals were highly agitated by the chaos outside. The cowboys watched their step and trod carefully between the alarmed horses so not to get trampled.

      It seemed like the safest place to be.

      The gunslingers braced as they heard an enormous crash and thud of muffled weighty footfalls on the roof of the car above their heads and all three looked up. The boards of the ceiling of the wagon began to split asunder. Fangs and claws showed through wood splintering and shattering apart. Seconds later, a werewolf got in by tearing through the roof. Wood boards showered down. A huge hairy shape fell though the opening with a raging roar. The wolfman dropped into the car and all hell broke loose.

      With the monster in their midst, the army stallions flew into a panicked frenzy, trying to bolt but trapped tightly packed together in the enclosed wagon. The entire compartment erupted in a chaotic stampede of bumping, slamming horses as they reared and pawed the air, colliding together, bellowing in pain and terror. The howling vociferations of a stalking lycanthrope amongst them drowned out all those sounds. It was a dangerous place to be for the outlaws, the three quickly realized, with death by werewolf competing with death by horse trampling. It was even odds.