Make My World Go Black

Chapter Ten

((As I'm currently writing this chapter, this story is ranked #1 under the Joshua Faraday tag! Thank you so much to all of you for all of the support! When I first started writing this, I thought this story wasn't going to take off the way that it did so thank you so much for just simply reading!))

He honestly didn't know how he was even alive. It was like God wanted him to live despite how many arrows he took to important arteries. One minute, he remembered closing his eyes for the last time, sitting up in the middle of the dirt road, then the next he's awake in the med bay just inside the hotel of Rose Creek.

For a couple of days, Jack Horne could barely move. He felt like a pin cushion. The first motion he could ever do was sit up in bed, and when he did he couldn't believe his eyes.

Across from him were Goodnight and Billy, both unconscious and riddled with bullets and bloodied bandages from head to toe. The Angel of Death himself looked worse. His right leg and arm were splintered and had several more layers of bandages then his partner did, even around his neck. When Horne could move his head around a little better, he noticed the wounded man lying on a cot beside him.

Faraday appeared almost unrecognizable. His hat was gone and he had been stripped of all of his gear. He was only left in his undershirt and pants to make him more comfortable. Even after being cleaned up of all the dirt, grime, and blood, he was still completely covered by the vilest cuts and bruises. Similar to Goodnight, but worse, most of Faraday's limbs were splintered and bandaged as a sign of broken bones. The young gambler's face was swollen around one of his eyes, with deep cuts around his jaw, lips, and the bridge of his nose. Even if Faraday opened his eyes, despite the odds of him being unconscious, he couldn't because while his left eye was swollen, the other had a bandage wrapped around not only his eye but his entire head. Horne could tell that despite someone's best intentions, they still couldn't clean out the dried blood around and in Faraday's ear. 

"What the hell happened to them, son?" Horne finally asked Teddy when the young man came in to check up on him.

"Well..." Teddy trailed off while looking around at Horne's other three friends, "Both Billy and Goodnight were shot down by the Gatling gun from the steeple, Goodnight even took a tumble off the roof. And Faraday-!"

"Was an idiot and took down the Gatling gun with a single stick of dynamite... while he was in front of it," Emma interrupted as she walked in, sounding annoyed, "If that man can survive several bullets littered across his body AND an explosion, I honestly don't know what could kill him."

"So he will make a full recovery then?" Horne asked in his raspy voice.

"To the best of his ability at least. His wounds will probably take longer to heal than the rest of you. Leni believes that he might walk away with some scars, a limp, and possible loss of hearing in one ear. It could have been a lot worse."

"To him, that IS a lot worse," Teddy scoffed, "I can picture him yapping about how we ruined his good looks now."

"A price we'll just have to pay, Teddy," Horne smiled softly, "He's alive, ain't he? We all are."

That's when Horne suddenly realized that not all of his friends are accounted for. Looking around, he noticed that Sam, Matilda, Vasquez, and Red Harvest were missing. He looked back up at Emma and Teddy, concern in his old eyes.

"Where are the others?"

~~~~~~~~~

Matilda awoke to the light shining through the stained curtains covering the window to her hotel room. The first thing she noticed was a searing headache and the fact that she was still in all of her clothes and gear, the barrel of her pistol digging uncomfortably into her waist from the position she slept in. Moaning in pain, Tilda slowly sits up in bed, wincing from how sore and bruised she felt before she stood up. Her head swims for a moment before her vision clears back up and she walks over to the dirty, broken mirror in the corner of the room. Fixing herself up to appear presentable, she walks out of her room and down the stairs to the saloon. She faintly hears a piano playing and once she reaches the bottom of the stairs, she observes that Two-Gun Kid's body is gone and that only a few customers were lying about the area at this time in the morning. She notices the piano by the bar, a couple of empty tables surrounding it. An old man with a long, white beard and skinny arms was playing the old keys, mumbling a small tune that sounded sad and bare.