Ghost of a Chance by Carolan Ivey

Author:Carolan Ivey
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter Eight

Troy didn’t wait for the disorientation to pass. As soon the stench of gunpowder hit his nose, he threw himself backward to the ground, hauling Carey with him and using his body to cushion her from the impact.

If she was screaming, he couldn’t hear it over the ear-splitting volleys of gunfire and the unearthly noise humans make when they’re dying violent deaths en masse.

He didn’t think any of the Minié balls would hurt them, but he wasn’t going raise his head and risk finding out. After all, a bullet from a Union officer’s pistol had left a mark on his shoulder when he’d put his briefly materialized self between it and Jared Beaudry. Who knows what the kinetic energy of a flying projectile might to do their astral-traveling souls.

Carey rolled off him and flattened herself to the ground, skin grey, eyes wild, hands clamped over her ears. He hauled her up so his face was an inch from hers.

“Stay down!”

A loose horse careened toward them. Troy planted one hand on Carey’s head to push it down into the furrow of earth in which they were lying. The animal’s white-ringed eye found them and it jumped at the last possible second. Troy risked raising his head to get his bearings.

They were lying in a furrow of what used to be a green, flourishing cornfield. Now it was filled with blue-coated men who were rapidly losing what little cover they had as Confederate volleys, like flying razor blades, sheared off cornstalks to the ground. All around them men stood, kneeled, lay flat, all in various stages of firing and reloading. If they weren’t already dead or writhing on the ground in their own gore.

They had landed in the infamous Antietam cornfield, where three Union regiments had marched straight into the withering fire of Stonewall Jackson’s Confederates. And left more than eight thousand of their dead behind in grisly piles. Fully one-third of the casualties on the single bloodiest day of the war had died on these scant few acres of Maryland farmland. Holy mother of God…

He swiveled his head, looking for a landmark through the choking smoke. Carey’s fingers dug into his shoulder and shook it to get his attention. Her arm shot out, pointing to their left toward a fence that bordered the field. Her lips formed two words: Hagerstown Pike.

Instantly his knowledge of the battlefield clicked into place. The fence followed a narrow road that eventually led to a farmhouse and possible shelter. He nodded and, trying to shield her as much as possible, began squirm-crawling toward the fence.

Each hard-won inch of ground they covered was accompanied by the snap and whine of bullets flying overhead, the spray of dirt kicked up by projectiles and running men. Thank God they were relatively close to the fence, but he breathed no sigh of relief when they reached it. He grabbed the seat of her pants and assisted her over the bottom rail, skinning through right behind her.

As she landed she cried out, one hand clutching her thigh.

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