ONE

Beauchamp was ready to die.

He stood at the top of the hill, staring down the wide green slope to the creek, silent in the midday heat. The birds had fallen quiet in the live oaks, and even the breeze had gone still, creating a deep, expectant hush that enveloped the entire field below. The world seemed to be holding its breath.

Then he saw them—soldiers in blue lining up along the rocky rampart on the other side of the creek. Even from this distance Beauchamp could see their muskets and the buttons on their uniforms glinting in the sun.

A moment later, they attacked.

Beauchamp didn’t think. He charged full-tilt down the hill toward the high grass along the creek. His vision jostled, jerking up and down and side-to-side with the force of his own velocity. He could see the muddy creek water now, glinting through the reeds like broken glass. Grasshoppers and tiny insects flew out of the path of his boots. His legs felt as if they had detached from him, pinioning forward hard and fast, gobbling up swathes of the uneven field in long, hungry strides.

Behind him, there was a roar as his men launched themselves over the hilltop and followed him in his headlong charge.

Down below, Union riflemen rose up and fired from the other side of the embankment, the cracks of their guns sounding like heavy books being dropped on a library floor.

Then he was in the middle of it.

Beauchamp’s own soldiers began firing back, running while they were shooting, stopping only to reload or when minie balls found them and pitched them permanently to the ground with unuttered cries of pain still lodged in their throats. Men were screaming now, letting out the Rebel yell or shrieks of agony.

Often it was hard to tell one from the other.

He sprinted the final few feet to the bottom of the hill. Breathing hard, staggering a little, he slowed his step until he was trotting, and then came to a complete halt in the middle of the clearing. All around him, his men were skirmishing hard and close, engaging the enemy on either side, filling his peripheral vision with the blurring, grunting work of hand-to-hand combat. A soldier flew past him and hit the ground, clutching his chest.

Beauchamp flicked the sweat from his eyes, focusing all his attention on one of the Union sharpshooters who stood behind the ridge, not twenty yards away.

He felt himself going absolutely still. Time seemed to freeze in its traces. He could smell the dust and gunpowder now, the cypress trees and the slow muddy odor of the creek, the smoke, sweat, and horses and coppery fresh blood, everything heightened to an almost agonizing degree. Everything else—the orders he’d been given, the town below that they were sworn to defend, the lives of the men around him—disappeared.

Even the sounds of battle dropped away until all he could hear was the pounding of his own heart.

The sharpshooter was a farm kid not much older than Beauchamp himself. He could see the Yankee’s musket, a .58 caliber Springfield like his own, pointing right at him. He saw the rifleman relax a little, confidence easing into the kid’s face as he drew a bead on his target. From this distance it would be almost impossible to miss.

Crack!

That was the Yankee’s musket, accompanied by the muzzle flash bright in the midday heat. Beauchamp saw the little puff of smoke drifting upward.

Smiling, he waited for it...

And felt nothing.

The Union soldier blinked, waiting for him to fall. Still smiling, Beauchamp reached down to pull out his bayonet. It was sharp enough that he could see the honed bevel, and he admired the way it caught the light.

Do it. Do it now.

Working carefully, he drew the tip across his own wrist, cutting through the skin so that the blood dripped directly onto his musket, running down its barrel. Then he pointed it at the Union soldier, drew in a breath, letting it out and squeezing the trigger at the same time.

The musket kicked hard against his shoulder, and the bluecoat’s head disappeared in a cloud of blood and skull fragments, his entire body blown backward by the force of the shot.

Beauchamp breathed.

Time broke and began to flow forward again. The sounds of the day returned. All around him, men were screaming—his men, the enemy’s men, all the men in this insane, blood-choked world. It made Beauchamp feel dizzy and ecstatic and drunk at the same time, as the 32^nd surged past him to overwhelm the Yankee rampart.

Beauchamp raised one hand and visored his eyes against the glaring sun. Up ahead, in the direction of Mission’s Ridge, the Confederate flag was still flying high. Glimpsing it there, unfurled across the wide blue sky, he felt the walls of his throat tighten with emotion. He raised his musket again, but didn’t reload.

Instead, he aimed the barrel outward. Somewhere to his left, one of his fellow soldiers, a private named Gamble, was staring at him, mouth half-open.

“What—” Gamble was struggling to breathe, “what happened?”

Beauchamp just grinned at him. He could feel the air around his face vibrating a little, almost as if it was coming alive against his skin. The enigmatic majesty of the day was booming through him, like a shot of adrenaline straight to his neural plexus.

“I shot him.”

“You killed him?”

Beauchamp’s grin didn’t falter.

“That’s right,” he answered.

“But how?”

“Easy as pie,” Beauchamp said, and he turned the bloody musket around so that the bayonet was pointed straight at the private’s disbelieving face. With a thrust, he shoved the blade straight into Gamble’s right eye.

The private screamed, but it didn’t sound like a Rebel yell anymore—it was a yodeling squeal of pain and terror.

Like the noise a suckling pig makes beneath the butcher’s cleaver, Beauchamp mused.

Gamble collapsed, cupping his eyes, blood pouring through his fingers, and rolled onto his side. Beauchamp rammed the bayonet between his ribs, rolled him over, and stabbed him in the heart.

Silence.

Beauchamp looked up.

A hush had swept across the open field again. There wasn’t even so much as a whisper of breeze. All around him, on both sides of the barricade, men had lowered their weapons and were staring at him with expressions of sheer disbelief. It was as if God—or some other deity—had pulled the plug on the entire enterprise.

From where he stood, alone in the open field, Beauchamp looked past the rampart to the sawhorses that divided the field from the parking lot where rows of cars and RVs and motorcycles glinted in the sun. Spectators—men and women and kids—were all gaping at him. Some of them turned away, covering their children’s eyes.

A radio played tinny music. He could hear a woman’s voice, very clearly.

“That’s real blood, ain’t it?”

“Dave...?”

Another man in a Confederate uniform and slouch cap came jogging toward him, haversack slapping against his left hip. He stopped when he saw Beauchamp standing over the bleeding corpse of Gamble at his feet. His face looked pale, and for a second he couldn’t even speak.

“Dave. Jesus. Dude... what did you do?”

Beauchamp twisted his head around. He grinned again, placing the tip of the bayonet under his own chin, feeling the sharp tip against the soft part of the flesh.

“War is hell,” he said, and he shoved the blade upward.