Chapter 47
Chapter Forty-Seven
It was a dark and dank morning, chilled and soured by odors wafting off the Hudson River.
Zachary jumped out of the carriage a few blocks from his factory.
“Stay here, Elizabeth. I know we will not have enough men. It will be a bloodbath. I want you safe. If anything happens to me, go to Shawn Fitzgerald’s house.
He will send you to my brother’s home in Virginia. You’ll be safe there.”
Her shaking hand smoothed his brow. “Be careful. Come back to me.”
“I promise.” He kissed her soundly and moved down the block to his factory.
He swung back. Incoming Whyos passed him. Armed with clubs, swords, and guns, Dyer’s hired multitude rolled through the low mists and fog that clung to the alleys and factory.
He circumvented them, then plunged through a concealed footpath, stopped, and stared wide-eyed.
Wagons were turned over, positioned at perpendicular angles.
Like a giant viper uncoiling to strike, a legion stood battle ready–Maguire’s men, Zachary’s workers, Chen, the Lis, O’Reilly, and former soldiers from Fitzgerald Rifle Works. Shawn had come through.
Gratitude choked him. Beyond his wildest imagination were his older brothers.
General John Rourke shouted orders. Colonel Lucas Rourke and Colonel Ryan Rourke rode up and down the line behind the wagons on horseback. Despite half their numbers, the Whyos did not have a chance against seasoned soldiers of the war.
“Dear God, we might have a chance.”
Zachary swung around. “Elizabeth, I told you to stay in the carriage.”
“Maybe there is some way I can help.”
He plastered her against the wall. “You will stay here. If I must worry about you, I won’t be able to fight.”
She nodded and he kissed her again. He ducked out and darted to his brothers. Shawn tossed him a pistol. “It’s going to be a good fight. Time the city got rid of this pestilence.”
Zachary sidled up to his eldest brother, John. “How are you here?”
“We happened to be in town to fetch our wives. A Chinaman showed up at the door and told us of your predicament. We Rourke’s’ decided it was a fine day to have a fight.
Couldn’t disappoint our younger brother.
Interesting how many of my men work for Fitzgerald Rifle Works.
They were bored and happy to have a day off to fight under their former general. ”
“What is your plan?”
His brother frowned. “Tactic is knowing what to do when there is something to do. Strategy is knowing what to do when there is nothing to do.”
“They are twice our number.”
“During the war, I was up against insurmountable odds, outgunned and outmanned. For the most part, I was victorious. I have learned that great results are achieved by small forces.”
Colonel Ryan Rourke rode up, his horse prancing excitedly. “They haven’t met the fierce fighting arm of the Confederacy.”
Colonel Lucas Rourke came abreast and tipped his hat. “Or the Rourke brothers.”
Zachary tasted a power in the very air, something palpable affected by the raw sight of so many men, shifting to a single purpose.
The Whyos migrated to the front, a roughhewn pack of wild swine.
“Give up and we’ll let you go,” said the leader of the Whyos. “Send us, Zachary Rourke. Out battle isn’t with you.”
“Burn in hell,” growled General Rourke.
“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.
“She went up the stairs,” Spencer pointed. “Save her.”
Zachary darted up the stairs to his office. The whole place was ready to explode and disintegrate. The spindles and railings rose in flames. He took off his bandana, placed it over the door handle. The damned thing was welded.
“Elizabeth,” he shouted above the din. No answer. Fear rattled up his spine.
He stepped back, leaped forward, initiating a full-on flying kick.
The door splintered. He stepped through the debris, knelt by Elizabeth, placed two fingers on her neck Her pulse vibrated.
She was alive. He shook her. “Elizabeth, wake up.” How in the hell would he carry an unconscious woman with one arm?
She stirred, coughing.
Smoke burned his nose and throat. “Can you walk?” She nodded. He handed her his bandana to tie around her mouth, yanked her up and pivoted to the door. Zachary stopped.
On the balcony, Dyer stood with a gun pointed straight at them. Then came the crackle of flame followed by a loud woof sound as something exploded in fire. Zachary could not think of a more perfect background for Satan’s minion. “You won’t have her. She’s mine,” threatened Dyer.
He was lunatic. Zachary shoved her behind him. “I’m taking Elizabeth and we’re getting out of here.”
The platform shifted. Flames, crackled, licked the walls and ceiling. Dyer raised his gun higher, pointed it at Zachary’s heart. “I’ll kill you both.”
“Let us go,” cried Elizabeth coughing through a rise in smoke.
Sparks and embers rained down like winter snow.
The fire danced and waved a wicked waltz.
With his good arm, Zachary yanked a knife from his boot and threw.
End over end it twirled hitting Dyer’s gun arm.
He dropped his gun, clutched the knife where it lay buried in his bicep.
Then came an awful roar from above. Cracking, splintering wood followed by a howl of wind.
Part of the roof fell on Dyer. He pitched below. His screams lost in a fiery grave.
“Dear God,” whispered Elizabeth.
Zachary grabbed her. She stopped, jerked her hand from his and ran back into his office, emerged, grappling his designs.
He grabbed her hand, and they made their way down the stairwell just as the entire roof structure fell.
Outside, both breathed in drafts of fresh air. The tide of bucket men staring upwards, their eyes captivated and horrified by the brightness of the pyre that rose into the sky.
Zachary stomped out the blueprints. “You little fool. What made you risk your life to get these?” She was dirty, grimy, an odd spectacle in a singed wedding gown and blackened slippers, but she couldn’t be more beautiful to him.
“I had to get them so you could rebuild.”
Zachary’s chest expanded with the realization of what it meant: not the blueprints themselves, but her belief in him.
He tapped his head. “Oh, ye of little faith. I have a photographic memory. It’s all up here.”
“Oh.”
With his good arm, he pulled her tight. “I didn’t trust rich women, but you are different, Elizabeth. I had my blinders on and should have believed in you. Can you forgive me?”
“You know the answer.”
“I always want you by my side, Elizabeth. We’ll live in poverty for a while, but we’ll have Caroline and each other. I’ll work ten times harder. We will have the world before us.”
Fiona was shouting at O’Reilly for getting nicked in the head by a bullet. Her brother, Patrick ambled beside with a bullet lodged in his arm. “That is just a scratch. What about me?”
With her hands on her hips, Fiona yelled at her brother. “You were supposed to be protecting Daniel. That bullet of yours is a badge of honor. Bow to fate it didn’t hit you in other regions.”
Edward Spencer was laid out next to a carriage. Chen administered medicine to his burns and set his legs. Elizabeth knelt beside her father.
“Elizabeth, can you forgive me?”
“Were you a part of this?”
“No. That was Dyer’s doing. I received a message from him to come here. If I’d known what a monster the man was—what he’d done to you—”
“I’m glad to find out you weren’t involved. I can forgive you, but the forgiveness does not erase the pain.” The scars of betrayal would last a long time.
Elizabeth looked up. “I hope you understand it was the Lis and Chen who saved you.”
“I do.”
There was so much humility he admitted in those two words.
Caroline ran to Elizabeth and hugged her. “Oh, Momma. You’re safe.” Joseph pulled up behind her and Elizabeth hugged them both. “My saviors.” Elizabeth turned to her father. “I’d like you to meet your granddaughter, Caroline.”