(1995) The Oath (56 page)
He sat very still, trying to calm himself, trying to listen. He was still alive. Maybe, just maybe, he could stay that way if he only kept his head.
So where was the dragon? What had happened? The dragon had followed him through the forest for a time, but at some moment it had stopped the pursuit, and he wasn’t sure why. He doubted the forest had stopped it. True, the trees and undergrowth were thick and tangled—he’d had trouble getting through it himself— but he’d seen how the dragon’s lithe, serpentine body could go just about anywhere and hardly leave any sign it had been there. Steve could think of two possibilities: either the dragon had taken to the air for some aerial reconnaissance or . . .
Or it was only a few yards away, waiting for the right moment. It could tear away this little tangle of sticks with one swipe of those claws . . .
Calm down, Steve, calm down. He had to put aside the horrible images, the stark terror, the sight of Tracy being eaten alive—
No, no, he could never forget that. He would see it before his eyes forever. “Tracy.” He couldn’t help whimpering there in the cold and dark. “Oh, my God—no—”
The memory of her, the horrible images of her death, now became his enemy. The more he replayed what had happened, the more he wanted to die, just crawl out in the open and get the whole thing over with.
He shook his head, then he reached into the river and splashed water in his face. Wake up, Steve! You have to live! You have to fight and prevail! He had to stop thinking of Tracy, or he would most assuredly die of despair. He couldn’t let that happen. He had to think.
Any weapons? Any resources? Think! The shotgun was gone; he had no recollection of dropping it. All he remembered was running.
What if—he shuddered—the dragon had flown off to digest his meal?
Maybe I’m out of trouble for a while . . .
He caught himself. No. No cop-outs, Benson. No wishful thinking. Care! Remember what Levi said, Care! He had to assume the dragon was still hunting him, that the danger was not over. He’d seen the pattern: Right before Charlie died, Charlie didn’t care anymore. Maggie had been singing and carefree; so had Vic Moore. In the tavern, Harold Bly and the others were all marked, but all they did was sit there drinking beer and laughing about it. None of them cared, either.
It was that way with Tracy, too. She hadn’t cared what she said or did . . . until it was too late.
So you’d better care, Steve. You’d better care.
He felt the wound over his heart. He couldn’t see it in the dark, but it felt about the same: raw to the touch, throbbing at times, burning at other times. Sometimes he didn’t feel it at all.
I don’t feel it when I don’t care, he thought.
Tracy’s had been dripping all over her, and she hadn’t felt a thing.
So maybe Levi was right. Again. Maybe this mark was a matter of the heart. Levi had described this condition as being “hooked,” and that concept seemed to match what Steve had observed. Somehow—okay, maybe it was a spiritual matter—the victim became linked with the dragon just as a trout became linked with the fisherman. In the case of the fish, the hook became set in the fish’s mouth; in the case of the human, the hook, whatever it was, became set in the heart—the soul, the spirit, whatever—causing a festering sore. That being the case, you could fight like a fish and struggle all you wanted, but there really was no escape. You either killed the dragon, or he eventually reeled you in and you became his supper.
Unless, of course, you could get the hook out of your heart. And according to Levi, who believed the dragon was sin, the solution was to get right with God. Find Jesus.
So—what now?
Well, whether or not the dragon’s connection was spiritual or biochemical or whatever it was, this struggle was going to have some pretty weird rules. Building or finding a fortress to fend the dragon off wouldn’t work, and neither would escaping the area. Either way, the hook being set, all the dragon had to do was wait until Steve didn’t care anymore.
And there it was again, an incessant reminder: Care.
He struck himself in the chest, and the wound lashed back at him with a wave of fresh pain.
“Good,” he said. “You just keep hurting. Don’t let me forget about you.”
He had to destroy the dragon; that was clear. But he would have to do it before he no longer cared to do it. Strategy. He had to build a strategy.
If he could make it back toward the mines he’d investigated yesterday—it seemed so long ago!—perhaps he could locate the cavern Jules Cryor had mentioned, the one with the tunnels and passages that went on for miles.
An ideal home for a dragon, one would think.
He had a good idea where the cavern wasn’t, which would narrow his search. The last place the dragon would look for him would be in its own lair—or so he hoped. The last thing that old lizard would be expecting was a victim on the offense.
That stoked Steve’s fires. Sure. Why be only the hunted? I’ll do some hunting myself!
He breathed one more little prayer—boy, it could get to be a habit—and carefully wriggled out from under the debris. He looked up at the ceiling of stars stretched between the mountain ridges. The stars were clear and bright, seeming so much closer in the clean mountain air. He looked for the Big Dipper, and from there found the North Star. From that he verified the most direct route to the summit of Saddlehorse.
But . . . hey, what was this?
Now here was luck. Over on the west side of the starry canopy, the stars were jiggling to one side in sequence as if an unseen object were giving each a little nudge as it passed by. Steve kept watching, training his eyes as the phenomenon continued. He could imagine the sky as a star-patterned blanket with a small animal crawling under it, creating a hump that moved along under the stars, making them rise and then subside. Incredible!
Soon he was able to discern the dragon’s flying shape, like a huge circling buzzard, high above the draw, gliding, circling, following the ridge on one side and then the ridge on the other.
Reconnaissance, no doubt. Wide sweeps.
He had to smile. That thing had lost him and didn’t know his intentions.
Well! I’m one up on him! Now if I can just keep it that way . . .
DOUG ELLIS
strode over to Elmer McCoy’s big flatbed truck and yanked the driver’s door open; Kyle Figgin, passionately embracing Carlotta Nelson, almost fell out. “What do you think you’re doing? You’re supposed to be watching this roadblock!”
Kyle grabbed the steering wheel to steady himself. “I’m watching it!”
“Get down out of there, both of you!”
Kyle clambered down from the cab under Doug’s glaring eye. Carlotta followed.
Doug shook his head and pointed at Kyle’s chest. “Man, look at you!”
Kyle glanced down and saw the slick, black stain on the front of his shirt. He immediately turned to Carlotta. “Look what you did to me!”
She touched the front of her blouse, now stained black, and the slime came off on her fingers. Now it was her turn to be outraged. “Look what you did to me!”
“I didn’t do it!”
“You did too!”
Doug broke in and grabbed Kyle’s arm. “Come on. We’ve got to move this roadblock. Some people are getting out of here.”
Kyle jerked his arm away. “Don’t you push me around!”
“Then get moving!”
“I’ll move when I feel like it!”
Doug grabbed him again and helped him move whether he felt like it or not. Kyle came back swinging. Doug only had to swing once.
Now Kyle glared up at him from the ground. “You’re dead meat, Ellis!”
“You smell like dead meat!” Doug retorted.
Kyle immediately glared at Carlotta, blame in his eyes.
“Don’t look at me!” she yelled.
Doug yanked Kyle to his feet. “Come on. You move the bus. I’ll move the truck.”
MRS.
DORNING
, the widow on the south end of town, hardly had time to mourn her broken birdbath and painted animals before Carl Ingfeldt and four other men showed up at her door.
“What is it?” she asked, standing at her door in her bathrobe.
Carl managed to sound informed. “Ma’am, the company has determined your home to be in violation of the new, retroactive setback laws. You’ll have to vacate the premises so we can tear it down.”
UP THE STREET,
Andy Schuller and his buddies were going through Levi Cobb’s garage and also his apartment upstairs, looking for anything they could salvage before somebody else did. Levi’s tools vanished quickly enough. A binder left on the workbench drew little interest. It was tossed into a big waste can in the search for more useful items.
IN THE TAVERN
, Harold Bly had scribbled out a list of names, then added more names as they came to mind.
“Dorning’s packing,” Bernie reported.
He crossed her name off. “All right, now. Who else? Who else? What about the Nelsons?”
“Andy was wondering what excuse to use.”
“He doesn’t need an excuse!” Bly said angrily. “I own that house, and I want them out! Simple enough!”
“Okay, okay.”
“Anybody else?”
Paul offered, “I think the Hazeletts ought to go.”
Bly drew a blank. “Hazeletts, Hazeletts . . . Who are they?”
“New family. They make jewelry and polish rocks, stuff like that.”
Bly looked at Paul questioningly, waiting for more information.
“Uh—their business card has a little fish symbol on it,” Paul said.
Bly nodded, writing down their name. “If they aren’t trouble now, they will be. Take them out.”
Paul went out to pass the word.
BELOW
SADDLEHORSE
, along a secluded stretch of the Hyde River, a breeze kicked up. It bent the tall grass along the riverbank and made the birch leaves tremble; it wrinkled the surface of the placid water with a thousand little ridges.
Then it ceased, and there was calm again.
On a gravel spit in the middle of the river, the dragon crouched, its belly, neck, and tail resting on the rocks, its weight so distributed and its touch so light it would not leave behind a discernible mark. It folded its wings, then relaxed its scales. The camouflage flickered out, and it became fully visible, a long, serpentine lizard stretched out flat on the sand and stone in the dim starlight.
It lay still, licking the air with slow, deliberate strokes of its tongue, quietly sniffing at the cool currents of air moving down the slopes and down the river valley. The golden eyes studied the surrounding mountain slopes, down one side and then up the far-reaching flanks of Saddlehorse.
Then the dragon settled into the gravel and became as gravel.
It could no longer feel the soiled spirit of its quarry, so it waited, continually listening, sampling for scents, listening for sounds, watching with eyes that now had the dull brown look of boulders.
MAYBE THERE
really was a God, Steve thought. If there was, He was getting a prayer of thanks from Steve Benson right now.
All the way up the slopes of Saddlehorse, Steve had tried to move as the dragon would move, staying close to the ground and carefully sneaking through the forest. Apparently it had worked, for he reached the south crest of the mountain alive and, as far as he knew, undetected. He’d gotten his bearings from his previous exploration and, figuring the dragon would never lure him to its actual home, pushed farther in the opposite direction from that first cave, down and around the south slope, around the base of a cliff—and straight to pay dirt.
As he dropped to his belly in the meadow grass among the rocks, a peculiar sense of relief trickled through the terror. At last, something had gone right.
The opening was only a few yards above him, hidden by shadows, rock outcroppings and fallen boulders. It was small—too small to be the cavern’s main entrance, but the smell drifting down the slope was as good as a signpost.
He’d found the dragon’s lair.
S
TEVE
TRIED
to act like the dragon again as he moved stealthily up the slope, through the meadow grass and the scattered rock outcroppings toward the ominous little portal in the rock. He paused at the threshold to gather any information his nose and ears might bring him. There was no sound, but he could smell the distinct odor of death drifting up from the black depths. His hand went to the left breast pocket of his shirt. He unbuttoned the flap and dug out his trusty disposable lighter, his tool for lighting campfires and just about the only piece of camping gear he still had with him. Maybe this was God again; he didn’t know. He had no food, no firearms, no coat, not even a compass, but he still had his lighter!
He extended his arm inside the opening before flicking the lighter and took his first look down a jagged, angular passage that dropped gradually and then turned a corner about ten feet down. This was obviously not the main entrance to the cavern, for it was too small, just a breach in the rock, or perhaps an old lava vent. It was big enough to accommodate him, however, so he slipped inside.
The lighter’s fuel supply was limited, so he flicked the lighter intermittently, just enough to give him an idea of what was below, then groped his way down, feeling with hands, feet, and backside. Flick, see, crawl. Flick, see, crawl.
The tunnel steepened. He extended his feet and arms to the sides of the walls to hold himself in place and not slip downward.
He progressed a few more feet. The air was cool and dank now. His clothing, wet from the creek and most recently from sweat, was beginning to chill him. He was breathing hard, either from the exertion or from sheer anxiety. He couldn’t avoid the sensation that he was going down the dragon’s throat.
With both hands and his left foot anchored, he reached down with his right foot. He could not find a foothold.
Flick. He could see his foot below him in the yellow light, but nothing beyond it. He moved the lighter closer, bending almost double in the tunnel to see what was below.
The shaft was nearly vertical from this point downward, like a crooked chimney. He would have to inch his way down, foothold by foothold, spanning the shaft with his arms and legs.