Cyrus let Splinters explain the situation to Gavril, and afterwards Buckle had asked about going to talk to the witches "Well, if you insist." Cyrus let his shotgun point downwards at the ground casually. "Gavril" he spoke in a rapid manner "You want to go with him to talk to those blasted witches? I'll tell you know, most witches ain't very friendly, and they ain't open to interrogation." Cyrus leaned his shotgun against his shoulder. "You're gonna have to ask them about the zombie attacks, I don't know who else could be behind this kind of black magic, all I know is we need to get rid of these zombies before they gather up and head towards town." Cyrus began walking towards the open night outside of town, he gestured his head towards the road, signalling for anyone who wanted to head out to the graveyard to follow him. "Get anyone you can to help you with that coven" he yelled, turning his head back, "you're gonna need everyone you can get" with that, he returned to his walking.

When Gavril heard Buckel was going to talk to the witches he knew well enough that he was gonna be the one to go with him even before the preacher decided to ask him to go. If what Alucard said is true then they could ill afford for the witches to turn on them now because someone went in and ticked them off to the point of where they would attack. Gavril simply nodded his head at the preacher signifying that he would go with Buckle to speak to the witch Coven. Gavril watched silently as the rest of the group went off towards the cemetery, turning his attention to Buckle they meant eyes for the second time that night and the discomfort was probably like wise. Gavril had nothing against this man, but there was no doubt that he had never dealt with anything like this before, and if he screwed everything up then he would probably die very quickly in a Coven of witches, and there was probably nothing Gavril could do to save him in a situation like that. Aware that they were now alone on the road Gavril kept his eyes on Buckle and spoke direct.

"I don't know what your thinking right now, I don't know what you plan on doing when you finally meet this Coven of witches face to face, but Im warning you now that if you want to live, then let me do the talking. If you say even the slightest thing wrong, they will kill you without even batting an eye, I dont know if you believe in witch craft or not, but it is real and it is deadly. Witches are not particularly fond of humans outside their Coven, and they are even more unaccepting of Males. I would rather you just go hunt zombies with the rest of the group and let me deal with the Witches, but I can't stop you if you insist on going. But there are simple rules that will keep you alive around witches. One don't insult them ever, they are short tempered. Two don't ever make direct eye contact with them if you do they will put a spell on you. Three keep your hands off your gun at all times, don't even touch them they will see this as a threat. The last and final rule respect them as if they were your mother do not talk back or they will cut your tongue from your mouth. Do you understand?

Gavril looked at Buckel awaiting his answer, otherwise they would not be moving anytime soon.

"Walking hunks of bad meat trying to eat me, or a bunch of old hags that'll un-man me if I so much as look at them?" said Buckle with a jittery smile. "I think I'll stick with you. My shooter ain't got the capacity to be poking holes in the walking dead, and besides, I think you're biggest and baddest of us all. You just lead on ahead, I'll keep well back, ya get?"

Making for the doors of the church, Buckle turned and nodded his head at the others. "Pleasure, truely. Thanks for dragging me into this fucked up situation y'all got going on here, that's real swell of ya, real swell. The money better be good, Cyrus, not every day a man has to let go of everything he's ever known and then go talk to some nightmare face to face-" Buckle paused, looking at Gavril nervously. "I mean, go stare at the ground five miles back from aforementioned nightmare whilst this big fellah does the talking."

Stepping into the cold of night, Buckle went about rolling another cigarette with trembling fingers. He was half sure he was mad, and half sure that he had fallen asleep at the hands of some strong whiskey. Either way, he was here now, so until he got his entrails ripped out, or woke up from this bizarre dream, he was just going to have to ride it out. Clipping a match and holding the flame to the cigarette, he wondered if this was a sign from the Lord above - a twisted way of tormenting him for previous sins, and of those there were many.

Consumed in his own deluded thoughts, he waited for his companion to come and lead the way.

Niiu had eventually made it to the abandoned shop, only to find that it'd been wiped clean in her absence. She cursed silently to herself, and decided that the best she could do was raid abandoned houses to see what has been left behind. She hated the thought, as she found it a way of invading other's privacy, and whether they were alive or not didn't matter, she didn't have a right to break into their or their former residency. Even still, she had to survive, and she knew that she was bound to Paradise. She grew up here, and she was going to stay here and avenge her parents.

The older teenager turned, only to begin to hear voices once more. Again, not wanting to be seen, she pulled her dark cloak around herself and began to head in the opposite direction of the voices, not realizing that their destinations would be the same; the graveyard. However, she would arrive their first, and fearing the undead also, she would climb on the backside of a large cemetery monument. She hoped that the size of the statue against her back would hide her from the people whom she thought would only pass by.

She began to hear shuffling steps and gurgles, a bit of growling soon following. Her muscles stiffened and she drew her other pistol as well, one in each hand. Together they equaled merely fourteen shots, seven per gun. For her own sake, she prayed that whatever creatures lurked here, there would only be a few, not too many for her to handle. Usually she had to pick off one or two creatures at most during her stocking periods, and she cursed silently at herself for having to be so nervous around actual people that she'd rather face a seemingly death wish. She flipped the safety off on both weapons, staring dead ahead, where the noises were present. With the sun already set, it was taking her eyes a little longer than usual to adjust, and it was only when one of the foul undead was 15 feet from her monument that she was able to see it. And soon she began to see the others. They moved much quicker at night... At least it seemed that way.

She took half a second to aim at the monster's head and fired a shot as she began to shuffle from behind the monument, having to jump down the few feet the ledge she'd been standing on was elevated, knowing she'd likely have to run away soon. There were clearly too many. She was a fool to have wandered this way. She should have just hidden in the shop until they'd passed by.

"They're coming, we can smell them. Why don't you go after them instead? Their hearts are still beating, after all. They'll be easier to kill...." The voices in her head mumbled, and her lip twitched slightly, but she didn't turn away from the zombies. By now she'd fired four times, only enough to keep the damned things at bay. She stopped listening for the people now, more concerned with her life than them seeing her. Then again, if they did see her it might not end well; her choice of a cloak seemed awfully...witch-ly... A mistake could easily be made in the dark like this...

Merrick shook his head in disapproval as he listened to Buckle's plan - or lack thereof - to attempt a conversation with the supposed witches. Ignoring the fact that Buckle did not seem to be the best person to negotiate with anyone, there was also the dangers inherent with dealing with anyone accused of being a witch. Even if they were just normal people, they would most likely either be dangerously crazy or pushed so far back into a corner that they would do anything to ensure their survival. The best analogy Merrick could think of was an animal caught in a snare, something which he had experienced several times in the outback of Australia. Even the tamest of critters would suddenly become ferocious monsters when faced with imminent death.

Still feeling slightly skeptical about the paranormal nature of the happenings around the town, Merrick decided against going with Buckle to deal with the witches. Chances were that they were simply Native Americans performing rituals unknown to the people of Paradise, and were thus condemned as witches. Merrick had enough close brushes with natives to know that he threaded a very fine line when dealing with them; all it would take would be one simple mention of his presence at Wounded Knee and negotiations would quickly go downhill. He did, however, feel slightly reassured when he heard that Gavril would be going along with Buckle. The red-eyed man definitely seemed odd to Merrick, but he sounded well-spoken, polite and more importantly, it looked like he knew his stuff.

"Good luck,." Merrick said to the two men with a nod as he followed the rest out of the church to deal with what the sheriff and preacher called 'zombies'. They were probably just vagrants being too aggressive in looking for food, shelter and money, Merrick guessed, but he was willing to be surprised. He had heard of strange rituals in islands and territories to the far south of the Americas which allowed shamans and witch doctors to bring the dead back to life. They were, however, just stories as far as Merrick was concerned.

They did not have to walk far before the crack of a gunshot shattered the night's silence. Immediately, Merrick pulled his rifle off his shoulder and held it at a low-ready. The group continued to advance towards the graveyard; whoever had fired the shot had obviously not aimed it at them, or they were an incredibly poor shot. Not a few seconds later, there was a second shot, then a third and a fourth. By then, it was clear to Merrick that someone was in trouble, and they were directly ahead of the group. "Let me take a look," Merrick said and moved to the front of the group. He had experience fighting in low-light conditions; in the army, nights and dawns were the only times when it was safe for he and the other scouts to do any sort of reconnaissance. Any other time and they would have been picked off by the natives.

He scanned the area ahead of him as he walked, and then he saw the graveyard. Tombstones in various states of disrepair lined the squarish plot of land, but what caught Merrick's eye was the bustle of activity around a particularly large monument. There was a person - a girl, if Merrick's guess was correct - standing on top of it with a crowd clawing just inches from her feet. It did not take a genius to know that the person was in a heap of trouble, and zombies or not, the group was going to act fast if the person was to escape unscathed. "Someone's in trouble!" Merrick shouted out and dropped to a knee, shouldering his rifle.

He opened fire on the first target he saw. The Snider-Enfield kicked hard against his shoulder as the huge .577 shot cleared the muzzle. It flew straight and true, striking his target in the arm. The target staggered from the shot, but then continued moving as though nothing had happened. That certainly came to a surprise to Merrick; the .577 was not known for its killing power, sure, but it definitely inflicted wounds severe enough to stop anyone in their tracks. It easily tore limbs from bodies, and whatever skepticism Merrick had about the paranormal vanished quickly. Anything that walked on two legs and could withstand the might of a Snider-Enfield was most definitely not human.

He unlatched the breechblock and swung it open, pulling it back to extract the shell as he did so. His left hand reached for his cartridge box to grab a new bullet while with his right, he flicked the rifle to the side to discard the used shell. Then, he returned the rifle to his shoulder, loaded a new bullet and closed and locked the breech. He took aim at the same target, but this time, he made sure to aim for the head. Whatever it was, Merrick was almost certain that it would at the very least be severely impeded by the lack of a head. Having fired at moving targets while being on a galloping horse himself, this was almost child's play. He pulled the trigger, the rifle's report echoed through the desert and a split second later, his target's head exploded.

Splinters followed Merrick to investigate the sudden gunshots. Judging from the sound, they were from the grave yard and that meant they were getting some form of assistance in killing the creatures. And when they got there, there it was: Somebody in a cloak with two guns, fighting the zombies. If it weren't for the fact she had guns and was shooting at the undead, he would've thought she was a witch raising the dead.

Splinters looked at the cloaked figure with a gun, fighting against the horde of the undead as they rised from the ground. He was going to say something, but Merrick had yelled before he could. Splinters stayed silent as he watched Merrick shoot the foul, undead creature in the arm. Splinters would have chuckled slightly when he saw Merricks' face when the damn thing didn't die--Or at least, didn't stop--when it was shot.

He took out his Winchester 1895 rifle, aimed with the sights and proceeded to shoot one bastard in the head. Another. Another. Another. Another.
Five down. Reload.
Gunshot. Gunshot. Gunshot.
Eight down. Reload.

"You weren't taking the piss," Merrick said to Splinters as he reloaded his rifle. He had dispatched two of the undead with a shot to the head each, an easy task considering that they were almost completely engrossed by the girl - he was certain that she was a girl, dressed in a cloak and armed with a gun in each hand. That was some impressive power she had at her disposal, but things were going to get ugly once she had to reload. Merrick swung the breechblock back into place and moved up to get a clearer view. Undead or not, those things were in the groups way and they needed to be eliminated. Merrick pulled the trigger and another undead's head exploded, its decayed body crumpling to the ground shortly after.

Hearing the rapid fire provided by Splinters' lever-action rifle almost made Merrick wish he had one as well, but one shot from his rifle was all it took to dispel that thought. The Snider-Enfield easily ruined the day of the bullet's intended target and the one or two others behind it. With the bodies of the undead already ravaged by decay, a bullet to the leg easily tore that limb off, slowing them down considerably. Still, there were plenty of the undead converging on the girl, and more were crawling their way out of the graves. Merrick reloaded his rifle, but instead of firing, drew his bayonet and fixed it to his rifle. He was not about to charge into the undead, but he just wanted to be prepared should they get too close.

"Oi!" Merrick shouted to the girl. "Can you make your way to us? We can shoot till tomorrow and these buggers'll still be going for you!"

"I'll go with you," Eliza volunteered, adressing Gavril and Bill. "From what you've said, it might be good to have a woman with you. Anyways, half the town already thinks I'm a witch." Giving a lopsided grin, she started toward the door, but hesitated and darted back to the table. She snatched the bottle of wine that Cyrus had left unfinished and tucked it into her generously-sized hip pouch. Armed with alcohol, a shotgun and a hell of an attitude, Eliza moseyed out the door.

Outside, Bill was smoking and appeared to be lost in thought. Eliza nudged him. "Can I have one of those? I'll trade ya." She showed him the wine, playfully stealthy. The poor man seemed like he needed a drink.

Buckle jumped when the church door opened, and without realising it his hand was gripping his revolver as it sat snugly in its holster.

"Sheeeeeeeeeat, lady," he said, choking on a bad intake. He eyed the wine bottle. "Hell, you can have ten of these if you'd throw some of that my way."

Looking her up and down, Buckle couldn't help but feel more drawn into the surrealism of the situation. The woman was dressed like a man, with a hat to match. A slender figure though, and the clothes had been tailored to follow her feminine curves. Raising an eye at the shotgun, he tried to gage the woman's age. Young, sure enough, but there was some of that frontier-haggardness about her.

Rolling her a cigarette, Buckle nodded at her. "How old are you Miss? Not often I see womenfolk walkin' round with guns that big. Though sayin' that, I guess vampires 'n zombies means girls gotta play soldiers too, right?"

She rotated the guns in her hands, slashed at the closest zombies with the blades as she leaped down from the statue, hearing the men and their gunshots. She glanced behind her as she once more rotated the weapons, firing a few more shots to take down the next closest 3. She was counting her shots, and now she had only half the original amount. Keeping her face hidden, Niiu turned and ran, taking care to keep from tripping over the few headstones by the front gate. She slammed it shut behind her, and started to go past the men.

She slowed down, almost to a stop, and mumbled slightly to them, "Uh...T-thanks..." With that she started to scurry off, not wanting to stick around and converse. She had to come to a stop as she looked around in the dark, her eyes almost fully adjusted; she could at least see the silhouettes of buildings. She glanced around, trying to figure out which way her boarded up home was. Her heart was starting to slow back down, her breathing steadying after the little event.

Looking over her shoulder she raised her voice just enough to hopefully be heard, "Which way is the church?" If she knew that, she could get home quickly, her mind just wasn't working too well after the shock of the zombie attack.

Merrick let out a breath in relief when the girl managed to escape the undead. He removed his hat for a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow; he was still reeling from the surprise of having to deal with the supernatural. It was not anything anyone would be - or could be - prepared for. Not anyone normal, in any case. Merrick removed the bayonet from his weapon and returned it to his sheath, then slung the weapon behind his shoulder before walking towards the girl. If he had been shaken by the mere sight of the undead, he could not imagine what state the girl would be in. Then again, if she was a native of Paradise, then this could just be another regular walk at night.

"It's nothing, not like we can just sit by and let someone cark it." He said in response to her mumbled, barely audible thanks. She had to be in a state of shock, Merrick guessed, and that was something he knew how to deal with as well. Every soldier had to, at one point or other, deal with a shell-shocked comrade. He nodded to her weapons, a peculiar mesh of a revolver and knife. Not something that Merrick would bring into a fight, but it certainly stood out as something unique. "Odd weapons you've got there," He commented.

He heard her question and pointed in the general direction at the way they had came. "Somewhere down that way, we just came from the church." He said with a shrug and cocked his head slightly to the left. "You want one of us to come along with you? I-I'm not sayin' you're not capable of doin' it on your own, but safety in numbers, yeah?"