CRYERS (23 page)

Kill him… Kill him… Kill him
…
Kill
him.

He found a
sharp rock sticking up out of the dirt the workmen had missed. He clawed around
it with twisted fingers and pulled it free. He took it in both hands and aimed
for the center of the other man’s forehead. He missed by a few inches and it
sank into his eyeball with a dull popping sound that made both Cobe and Willem
gag. Trot vomited on Remee’s boots.

Tog roared
with laughter and clapped Willem’s back. “Welcome to the Rites, boys! It’s a
good thing your parents aren’t here. I have the feeling they
still
wouldn’t approve.”

“Our parents
are dead,” Willem mumbled.

No one had
heard him. They were too busy hoisting Bloody-nose off of his competitor and up
and into the air. The
kill him
chant
had been replaced with the victor’s name.

Arlo! Arlo! Arlo! Arlo!

Willem looked
up at his brother. Cobe saw fear and dread. The boy’s coveted seat up in the
dead tree was the last thing on his mind now.

Chapter 38

The hole in
Edna’s head had healed over well. All that remained of Lothair’s intrusion into
the woman’s brain was a patch of white skin he’d burned the hair away from, and
some dried blood. Jenny hated the man for doing it—for chipping through her
mother’s skull with a sharp stone until there was a hole big enough to feed the
pail-handle wire through. Jenny had fought in vain against the strength of her
father’s arms as her great-great grandfather burrowed in with the crude hook
and fished inside for the piece of grenade shrapnel lodged somewhere up against
the underside of her skull. He had found it, and he’d worked it deftly back
through the opening while Jenny’s mother had stared off into space with strings
of drool hanging from her chin.

Jenny hadn’t
wanted him to perform the crude operation—she didn’t believe her mother could
survive anymore trauma. She hated Lothair for proving her wrong, and she
loathed herself even more for trying to stop it. Edna Eichberg was aware now.
Her pink eyes were no longer vacant and unfocused. She could
see
Jenny, and she knew Jenny was her
daughter. But for some reason, Edna still hadn’t spoken. Perhaps there had been
more brain damage caused from Lothair’s prodding. Or maybe she had decided to
remain silent. Jenny thought it might be the latter—her mother knew who she
was, and she was keeping quiet for a reason.

She wants to talk to me alone. She doesn’t want
the others to know that she’s…back.

Edna was more
aware than even Jenny gave her credit for. It was if she could read her
daughter’s mind. The woman offered her the hint of a smile that said
follow me
, and closed her eyes.

Jenny looked
around the forest to see if anyone was watching. A number of people they’d
found living in the trees had scattered after Ivan Tevalov took an arrow in the
gut with a grim smile. He’d pulled it out and chased the boy down who’d shot
it. An even greater amount had fled when he’d grappled the boy to the ground
like a pouncing cat and torn his spine out of his back in one swift, bloody
movement. Those few brave fools left had attacked Tevalov and were quickly
brought down by Jenny’s father, Aleea Shon, and Lothair. Leonard Dutz didn’t
like killing—there wasn’t a shred of violent capability in the man’s heart—but
he ate the people the other cryers had slaughtered without hesitation.

Jenny looked
at Lenny now, sitting up against a tree with a partially consumed leg spread
across his lap. He looked dull and sleepy—gorged from eating the rotting roller
eyeballs he’d carried from the plains into the hills and on human flesh to the
point of mindless intoxication. Aleea and Ivan were nowhere to be seen. A
scream sounded from somewhere deeper in the forest—an agonizing wail of fear
cut off in mid-wail. It wasn’t the first scream Jenny had heard in the last
hour. Aleea and Ivan were hunting, and they were good at it. That only left
Jenny’s father. He was standing in front of the big tree, next to the black
slit Lothair had dragged the old woman into. The colonel was on guard—as if any
of them needed it.

Jenny gave
him a warning look, and her father turned away. He would guard over the old
fucker inside the tree with his life—that’s what men like him were trained to
do. But another part of him was her father, and she sensed he knew what Jenny
and Edna were up to.

Jenny closed
her eyes and went to see her mother.

***

Dirty glared
at the pink-eyed monster sitting across from her and showed him her green
tooth. She rubbed it along her upper lip, working up a mouthful of saliva to
either spit in his face, or swallow back the dry fear in her throat.

“We can sit
hear all day and night,” Lothair said. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell
me where the two men and the two boys went.”

“Ain’t sayin’
piss to you.”

“You will eventually.
I have all the time in the world.”

“You killed
my children…my grand-children.”

“You have
more family hiding in the forest. We won’t kill them all if you tell me what I
need to know.”

“You’re a
bunch of gawdamn murderers. I ain’t talkin’ no more about nothin’.”

Lothair
looked at the collection of human skulls and bones hanging all around the
hollowed-out section of trunk interior Dirty Gertie called home. “You know
nothing about murder?”

“Trespassers
get what they got comin’. We fuck ‘em, and sometimes people get killed…at least
we don’t eat ‘em.”

Lothair
shrugged. It would’ve been a disturbing comparison for any sane human to grasp.
But Lothair wasn’t human any longer. He couldn’t see the moral difference—or
maybe he just didn’t care. “I can wait. You
will
tell me what became of these four.”

He went to
the opening and peered out. Colonel Strope asked. “Anything?”

“She knows
where they went, but she isn’t talking…yet.”

“You want me
to speak to her?”

Lothair
spotted his great-granddaughter sleeping under a tree. Jenny was sitting next
to her; the girl’s back was bent over, her head slumped down even further. It
wasn’t the first time he’d caught her like this. None of them required sleep,
so why was she napping? Perhaps she was sick. Or maybe it was something
entirely different.

Lothair
answered Strope. “No…you don’t need to talk to her. Keep an eye on your
family…I have something else to look into.”

He slipped
back inside the tree and found Gertie still huddled down in a twist of ancient
roots and rotted leaves. She reminded him of a demon-hag from a tale his mother
used to tell him when he was a small child growing up in Germany. If any small
part of him had still been human, the sight of her filth-encrusted body and
filmy grey eyes would have terrified Lothair. But a thousand years had passed
since the telling of those childhood tales, and Lothair no longer knew what
fear was.

“Get out,” he
said to her.

“Eh?”

“I want to be
alone.”

“Then go find
another fuckin’ tree. There’s plenty out there.”

“I want to be
alone in this tree. Leave now, or I’ll hunt down the rest of your family and
feed them to
mine
.”

Dirty Gertie
scrambled out on her hands and knees without further persuasion. Lothair
settled in between the roots she’d left and leaned his back against the inside
of the tree.

I haven’t slept in centuries. My eyes remained
shut most of the time in that cryo-tube because I had nothing else to look at
in the dark. But my mind never tired…I kept busy. I never once considered that
I
could
sleep. I didn’t need to sleep—I didn’t want to.

Lothair
closed his eyes and stepped into dream.

Chapter 39

“Fight!”

Lode pushed
Lawson into the clearing of dirt towards his opponent. Lawson stumbled down
onto one knee, but bounced back up quickly enough. He scolded himself inwardly.
With all the shoving, kicking, and hitting he’d received the last few days, he
figured he should’ve known by now when it was coming. He’d been humiliated and
made a fool of for too long, and there wasn’t a gawdamn thing he could do about
it—not unless he could find a big rock to hide under and left to recover for a
month or two. There were plenty of rocks circling the pit, but the lawman knew
he wouldn’t have the opportunity to hide under any of them.

The only
chance he had to rest was to go through the man standing in front of him. If he
could beat him—prove that he wasn’t too old and too busted-up to compete in the
main event—the good people of Rudd would give him the rest of the day and night
to rest. Mighty decent of them, he thought. It was a whole hell of a lot more
than Lode would grant him. But the big man had grudgingly agreed to the terms;
if Lawson bested his practice partner, he would allow the lawman a day of rest.
No one had asked what would happen if Lawson lost this preliminary. It wasn’t a
fight to the death, but the lawman figured Lode would have some fitting
punishment in mind.

Lawson’s
opponent wasn’t in any hurry to rush into things. He was young, maybe only a
year or two older than Cobe, and not much heavier. The lawman circled around
him warily, like an old wolf summing up its prey. He didn’t want to hurt the
kid too badly if he could help it.

Finish it quickly without breaking any bones.
Give the boy something to think about before he volunteers to fight in any
future Rites.

Lawson saw he
had no fingers on his right hand. The skin there was smooth and freckled. The
boy had been born that way.
He doesn’t
want to fight any more than I do. Volunteer my ass.

Lawson wanted
to incapacitate him without causing serious damage. How could he do that? He
remembered an old trick the young Cobe had retaught him days earlier out on the
plains. He smiled grimly and staggered in a ridge of dirt. The boy saw his
opening and lunged forward. Lawson fell back down onto one knee, anchored his other
boot into the ridge, and drove his big shoulder into the boy’s stomach. He
grabbed onto one of the flailing arms and flipped the kid onto his back. The
lawman crawled over his winded opponent’s body easily enough and took hold
between his legs. The boy was having enough trouble catching his breath without
the added pain of having his testicles squeezed.

“Tap out,”
the lawman ordered. “Smack the ground nice and hard or I’ll make jelly outta
yer nuts.”

The kid
answered by punching Lawson in the nose with the stump of his hand. The lawman
heard his nose break before the pain hit. He felt blood on his lips, and his
vision started to blur.
Gawdamn, the
kid’s dumber than he looks.
Lawson squeezed harder, and the boy thumped
against the dirt with both arms.
Dumb,
but not suicidal.

Lawson
crawled off of him and wiped the blood away from his face.

“He’s a
fucking cheater,” Lode yelled. “Make them go again!”

“Rules is
rules,” Tog said. “Young Hareld tapped out. The match is done.”

Other
competitors and workers started to shuffle away, booing and cursing at the
result. Another young man walked by Hareld and spat in his face.

“Tough
crowd,” Cobe said. He kneeled down with Willem next to the lawman. You want a
cloth, or something?”

“Ain’t the
first time I had my nose busted.”

Lode stood
over the three. “You’re a coward, lawman. You fight dirty.”

“I fight to
win.”

Trot appeared
out from the receding crowd. “
You’re
the coward.” He thrust a finger up towards Lode’s face and yanked his pants up
defiantly with his other hand. “You pick on folks when they’re down. You hurt
and kill people that can’t look after themselves.”

Cobe expected
the giant to kill him with one blow. Instead, Lode offered them all a
malevolent smile. Trot cringed as the big man’s hand patted the top of his
balding skull. “You amuse me sometimes, Trot. You shoot off your mouth without
thinking… I’m not laughing today. I want to wipe that stupid look off your
face.” He looked around at the men working in the dirt with their shovels and
spades. “But then again, if I tore your head off now, a hundred of these men
would likely be on me with their tools. I wouldn’t be around to see the lawman
properly killed tomorrow.” He leaned down into Trot’s face. “But when this
over, I’m coming for you first before the others.”

Cobe watched
the crowd give way as Lode strode through. No one said a word until the giant
had settled onto one of the higher rocks to keep an eye over things.
 

“I wish one
of them rollers had stepped on his big ugly head a few days back,” Willem said.

Cobe was
thinking the same thing. All of Lode’s men were dead. The rollers had crushed
some, and the ones that survived that night in the plains had either been
killed by Dirty Gertie’s family, or fled off into the woods to be picked off by
something equally horrible. That only left Lode. And that was more than enough
to guarantee none of the four would survive.

“You gotta
watch that mouth of yers,” the lawman said.

Cobe thought
he was talking to Willem, but saw Trot sitting next to him.

“Couldn’t
help myself,” Trot answered. I just get so mad when he picks on folks. Besides,
I don’t figure it much matters what I say now.”

Lawson spit a
string of blood into the dirt. “Yeah… I reckon you got that right.”

“Some things
never change,” a voice called out. They all turned and saw a woman with a
younger girl approaching. “You couldn’t avoid punching people when you were
younger, and I see you’re
still
at
it.”

Lawson didn’t
recognize her at first. The broken nose was still making his eyes water. He
wiped the tears away with his big knuckles and smiled when the voice from his
past matched up with the face. “Still gettin’ into trouble, yeah…but it seems
like I’m takin’ more punches these days than I give.”

He tried
standing but the woman guided him back down. “Stay where you are, old fool.
Stand too fast and your friends here will have to pick you back up.”

The lawman
did as he was told. “Sara…gawdamn…How long has it been?” He asked the woman,
but his eyes were on the girl beside her.

“I seen you,”
Willem interrupted, “you’re the woman that was gawkin’ out the window back in
Rudd.”

“Mind how you
talk, boy,” Lawson warned.

Sara waved it
off and dug into her sack for a clean shred of cloth. “It’s alright, Lawson—I
was gawking…thought I’d seen a ghost when you walked by the house.” She wet the
cloth from a bottle of clean water her daughter held out and started cleaning
the lawman’s busted face. “How long?” She glanced briefly at Kay. “At least
fifteen years.”

Cobe stared
at the young girl along with the lawman. All four of them could see plainly
enough who Kay resembled. It left an unsettled, uncomfortable silence amongst
them that Trot finally had to break. “You look just like the lawman, only a lot
prettier and a whole lot younger.”

Kay forgot
she had fingers and dropped the water bottle to the ground. “Ma?”

Lawson took
hold of the woman’s wrist and gently lowered the blood-stained cloth away from
his face. “Sara?”

“I don’t get
it,” Willem said. “What’s going on?”

Sara’s bottom
lip started to quiver. She spoke to none of them in particular and stared at
the ground. “Stupid idea…Bringing her out here like this…I knew I should’ve
left her at home.”

The lawman
stood back up with a speed that defied the days of abuse his body had been
through. He gave Cobe a little shove. “Take yer brother and go fer a walk.”

“Walk where?”
Willem asked.

Cobe grabbed
his arm and started away. “Come on.” Tog and Remee fell in behind the boys and
followed them to another section of the pit where a second practice bout was
about to begin.

Trot tugged
at the lawman’s shirt sleeve excitedly. “I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but
I think this girl is a relation of yours. I think you have family in Rudd!”

“Go away,
Trot,” Lawson rumbled.

Trot gave him
a final confused look and jogged off in his awkward way to join the boys.

Kay was torn
between running after them and staying where she was. She decided to stay put.
“Ma? Is this my… Pa?”

“Yes, he’s
your father.”

Lawson dusted
off his pants and tried straightening his shirt in an attempt to come off as
more presentable. The pants were ground with mud, and the shirt was torn and
stained in blood. “You both have one on me here, I’m afraid.” He offered Kay an
apologetic look. “First I heard of it, miss.”

“I named her
Kay.”

“You told me
my Pa was dead—that a pack of howlers had caught him out on the plains when I
was just a baby.”

“I’ve had my
fair share of run-ins with howlers, but none of ‘em have finished me yet.”

He tried
smiling, but the effect only startled Kay more. He was a bloody, loose-toothed
mess. The girl ran away, skirting by workers and fighters, through the
boulders, and out into the flat lands beyond.

Lawson wanted
to go after her, but Sara held him back. “She’ll be alright. She just needs
some time to let it sink in.”

“It ain’t
safe out in the open.”

“It’s the
middle of the day. Anything and anyone that could hurt her is here, inside this
pit. She’ll run home…She’ll be safe.” Sara reached down for the bottle her
daughter had dropped and spilled the last bit of water inside onto the cloth. She
resumed wiping the blood and dirt away from the lawman’s face. “I wanted to
tell you. There were days when she was still small that I almost packed up all
we had to come south and find you.”

“Thirty
miles,” Lawson whispered. “All the places I been and seen in the last fifteen
years and I never once travelled the thirty gawdamn miles between towns. I
never knew…”

“Maybe it was
for the best.” Sara threw the wet cloth into the dirt. It was more red than
white now. “You haven’t changed…Still thinking with your fists instead of your
brains. What kind of life would that have been for her?”

“I ain’t here
by choice. I was headed west—towards Victory Island with them other three. I
was gonna start over—show them boys a different way of livin’. The older one is
special…He’s got a good head on his shoulders, and I figured I could teach him
some things…Maybe steer him on a path someday that could help all the other
folks in these shit-forsaken towns.” Lawson spit more blood and pointed to the
big figure sitting in the rocks. “That monster-sized fuck up there is called
Lode. He caught up to me and brought the four of us here.”

“You fought
and almost died in the Rites sixteen years ago. Do you remember the reason?”
Sara shook her head and answered for him. “Some people in Burn put your horse
down and you beat up half the town in a drunken rage. Now here you are, all
this time later, preparing to fight again.”

“I said it
wasn’t my fault. Not this time.”

“But your
actions still brought you back here. What kind of father would you’ve been to
Kay with that temper of yours all those years ago…with all these ideas of a
fair
new world now? No. I was right not
telling you about her.” Sara crossed her arms over her chest. She had won the
argument in her mind, but her heart was still torn.

“Freeda’s
dead. Lode and his followers killed her husband a week later.” Lawson watched
what little color was left in the woman’s face drain away. Even after all their
years apart she was still beautiful. He wanted to reach out to her—to take her
in his arms and feel the warmth and softness once again of the only woman he’d
ever loved.
 

“She was my
best friend growing up—my only friend. It hurt so bad when Rudd gave her away
that year her grand-father lost the challenge…gawdamn Rites.”

“Them Rites is
what brought the two of you together again year after year.”

Sara slung
the sack over her shoulder and the two walked slowly towards the other practice
bout that had begun in an eruption of cheers and cursing. As upset as she was,
Sara knew she would have more work in the next few minutes and hours to come.
“Freeda introduced me to the wonderful art of healing by patching you back up.”
The way she said the word wonderful came across as anything but wondrous. “I’ve
learned plenty since—tended to a lot of sick and wounded people, but no one had
the touch like her. I hate the Rites, but I’ll miss her visits.”

They didn’t
bother pushing through the back of the crowd for a better look at the fight.
When it was over, the people would move on to the next one, leaving Sara with
room to patch up the loser. In some ways the preliminary contests were as
bloody as those where men were pitted against each other to the death. There
were no rules.