Steel by Richard Matheson Page A

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    I stood there for another moment, staring at the door, imagining that twisted young man on the other side, sick with terror, his heart jolting like club beats in his chest, able to think of nothing but a moral quality those six men never knew.
    â€œWhat am I going to do? ” he suddenly implored me.
    I had no answer. For, suddenly, I heard the thumping of their boots as they started up the stairs, and helpless in my age, I backed quickly from the door and scuttled, like the frightened thing I was, down the hall into the shadows there.
    Like a dream it was, seeing those six grim-faced men come moving down the hall with a heavy trudging of boots, a thin jingling of spur rowels, in each of their hands a long Colt pistol. No, like a nightmare, not a dream. Knowing that these living creatures were headed for the room in which young Riker waited, I felt something sinking in my stomach, something cold and wrenching at my insides. Helpless I was; I never knew such helplessness. For no seeming reason, I suddenly saw my Lew inside that room, waiting to be killed. I made me tremble without the strength to stop.
    Their boots halted. The six men ringed the door, three on one side, three on the other. Six young men, their faces tight with unyielding intention, their hands bloodless, so tightly did they hold their pistols.
    The silence broke. “Come out of that room, you Yankee bastard!” one of them said loudly. He was Thomas Ashwood, a boy I’d once seen playing children’s games in the streets of Grantville, a boy who had grown into the twisted man who now stood, gun in hand, all thoughts driven from his mind but thoughts of killing and revenge.
    Silence for a moment.
    â€œI said, come out! ” Ashwood cried again, then jerked his body to the side as the hotel seemed to tremble with a deafening blast and one of the door panels exploded into jagged splinters.
    *   *   *
    As the slug gouged into papered plaster across the hall, Ashwood fired his pistol twice into the door lock, the double flash of light splashing up his cheeks like lightning. My ears rang with the explosions as they echoed up and down the hall.
    Another pistol shot roared inside the room. Ashwood kicked in the lock-splintered door and leaped out of my sight. The ear-shattering exchange of shots seemed to pin me to the wall.
    Then, in a sudden silence, I heard young Riker cry out in a pitiful voice, “Don’t shoot me any more!”
    The next explosion hit me like a man’s boot kicking at my stomach. I twitched back against the wall, my breath silenced, as I watched the other men run into the room and heard the crashing of their pistol fire.
    It was over—all of it—in less than a minute. While I leaned weakly against the wall, hardly able to stand, my throat dry and tight, I saw two of Selkirk’s men help the wounded Ashwood down the hall, the other three walking behind, murmuring excitedly among themselves. One of them said, “We got him good.”
    In a moment, the sound of their boots was gone and I stood alone in the empty hallway, staring blankly at the mist of powder smoke that drifted slowly from the open room.
    I do not remember how long I stood there, my stomach a grinding twist of sickness, my hands trembling and cold at my sides.
    Only when young Tarrant appeared, white-faced and frightened at the head of the steps, did I find the strength to shuffle down the hall to Riker’s room.
    We found him lying in his blood, his pain-shocked eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling, the two pistols still smoking in his rigid hands.
    He was dressed in checkered flannel again, in white shirt and dark stockings. It was grotesque to see him lying there that way, his city clothes covered with blood, those long pistols in his still, white hands.
    â€œOh, God,” young Tarrant said in a shocked whisper. “Why did they kill him?”
    I shook my head and said nothing. I told young Tarrant