(1995) The Oath (60 page)

“Gotcha!” he cried.

Maybe, he had to remind himself. Thirty feet above the fallen carcass, he slowed his pace, stepping carefully down over the rocks, drawing closer, the shotgun ready, his eyes glued on that beast, looking for the slightest stirring. Small fires flickered all around him, and the stench of smoke stung his nostrils and occasionally blocked his vision. He took each step only when he could see the dragon clearly. He couldn’t afford to get careless.

The monster’s tail extended up the mountainside to Steve’s right. The huge, scaled body stretched along the rocks and trees directly in front of him, the heavily plated belly toward the sky. The neck and head were out of sight in the trees lower down. Steve clicked on his flashlight and caught the right rear leg in the beam. The claws, now clutching at the air, shined silver in the light; some of the scales awakened and tried to mimic the terrain, one here, one there. Other than that, there was no movement.

Steve wanted to get closer. He wanted to find a vulnerable point somewhere to fire the finishing shot. Perhaps the belly, maybe the neck . . .

Then he hesitated. For some reason, without warning, he felt a sickening pain in his stomach, an anguish in his soul. This he didn’t need, not now. He took some deep breaths and even lowered his head a little, but it didn’t help.

He didn’t dare lose this opportunity. He prodded himself to keep approaching.

About ten feet away, he paralleled the dragon’s flank, surveying the thick scales, trying to locate the vital organs and some way to put a shot through them. Even as he did, it occurred to him that he didn’t feel good about it. The more he tried to find a point of vulnerability, the more ambivalent he became.

He shook away a cloud of doubt and forced himself to study the dragon’s anatomy as best he could. With effort, he located the rib cage and the most likely location of the heart and lungs. If he could get the shotgun barrel jammed between some scales somewhere—

He didn’t want to do it.

He focused on the shotgun in his hands. It was ready. All he needed was that final shot.

He couldn’t do it.

Stupid thought! He shook it off. He had to do it. This thing was a killer and would kill again if he didn’t kill it first. Steve forced himself to approach the chest cavity and rib cage, just below the shoulder. The jagged stump of the right foreleg hung in the air above him, the bone and torn flesh smoldering and smoking.

All right. Now to get that shot through the heart and lungs. He had to find a chink, a crack, a gap.

He couldn’t do it.

He forced himself to aim the shotgun at the massive, scaled flank. The barrel began to waver; his hands were shaking. With a frustrated sigh, he let his arm go slack. The gun barrel sank toward the ground.

There was just something about this creature, about this whole situation. He couldn’t go through with it.

“Come on,” he told himself out loud, “let’s get this done. This monster’s out to kill you, to kill everybody!”

He tried to raise the shotgun again. His hands shook, the barrel wiggled crazily, and he lowered the gun. He couldn’t kill this thing. Against all logic, all common sense, he couldn’t kill it.

He couldn’t kill this thing because this thing was—this thing was—

He couldn’t explain it, and he couldn’t shake it, but as he looked at that long, serpentine body spread out before him, he felt he was looking at a part of his own body, no different from his arm, his leg, his hand.

Yes. That was it. As strange as it seemed, he felt like he’d be killing himself.

I can’t kill it. It’s mine. It’s me.

He teetered forward, put a foot out to regain his balance, then the other foot, then stepped again. He couldn’t stand still, and it was more than just the slope of the mountain: that huge, scaled body seemed to be drawing him. He wanted to touch the creature. He wanted to feel those cold scales under his fingers. He knew better. He knew he shouldn’t. He knew it would be dangerous.

But he just had to . . .

The shotgun dropped from his hands. He reached out toward the scales, and his hand came to rest on the thick belly plating. It felt like ceramic tile, cool, hard, and impenetrable. A marvelous creature! Unbelievable. Beautiful in design!

Oh, man, I hope I haven’t killed it.

He ran his hand along the scales. The power in this thing! The incredible strength and beauty! Like nothing else in the world!

And he could sense it so clearly now as he touched it: It was a part of him; he was a part of it. He owned it. It was all his . . .

He loved this beast!

Something dribbled down his chest, and he looked in time to see a black stream soaking his shirt, dripping over his belt, spreading in a pool across the dragon’s scales.

For some reason, he thought of Tracy.

The scales under his hands quivered. Was this creature moving, or was it the ground?

He looked up, and saw the huge jaws of the creature opening.

He lurched backward, falling onto the rocks just as the monster’s snout fell like a tree on its own belly and the jaws clamped shut with a metallic grating.

Steve scrambled up the hill, his chest, hands, and arms spattered and slick, the dust sticking and caking on the slime. He looked back to see the long neck curled in a near circle, the head suspended just above the prone body, swaying, rubbery, weak. The eyes were half open. The dragon was trying to recover, trying to see.

He loved to look at the dragon, to watch it. He wanted to stay there forever and be a part of it.

It was trying to eat him.

He wanted to keep it.

It was trying to eat him.

He didn’t want to leave.

IT WAS TRYING TO EAT HIM!

Something in his spirit, some deeply buried sense of conscience finally prevailed, and he began to inch, then stumble, then run across the mountain slope as the beast awakened, coiled, and twisted. The tail lay across Steve’s path. He tried to work his way around it. It came alive, twisted, curled, rose into the air and then whipped, the tip just missing his head. He ducked under it, got by it.

The stupor was gone. Now his eyes were open, and all he could see was Evil. He turned and fled downhill.

HAROLD
BLY
wasn’t getting any reports. He could hear screams, shouting, even gunshots out in the streets of Hyde River, but Andy wasn’t keeping him informed, and neither was Carl, and he hadn’t seen Doug in over an hour. He didn’t want his face identified with what was going on out there, and yet he was beginning to wonder if he had trusted the others a little too much. He looked at his watch. If he didn’t get a report from somebody in ten minutes . . .

ANDY
SCHULLER’S
mob had broken up, each man looking after his own whims and desires. Andy and John Tyler were going through the Hazelett home, pawing through the handmade jewelry. Abel Hoffmeier felt entitled to a chain-saw in the front window of the hardware store and kicked the glass out to get it. The crash got people’s attention, the idea caught on, and soon the power and garden tools, housewares, and tape players started going out the door.

Kyle Figgin’s neighbor, Deke Schonley, always thought the property line was more in his favor than Kyle would admit. Well, tonight Kyle was gone, so Deke took the opportunity to sledgehammer every slat out of Kyle’s wooden fence.

Someone had stolen their car, so Becky Nelson and her four children fled on foot from their home, past Jeff’s dead and bloody body, and down the street, looking for any friendly face, any avenue of escape, the two boys running with their little sister between them and Becky carrying the baby.

“Bigots! Get out of here!” people yelled from their yards as some threw stones at them.

All Becky could do was scream at her children, “Run! Run!” as they fled south with nowhere to go but away. Ken and Cherry Hazelett came by in their pickup and stopped to help them into the truck bed. Then the Hazeletts and Nelsons fled through the opened roadblock and out of town.

Henry Gorst heard what was happening to his hardware store and finally got there, armed with a shotgun. “What do you people think you’re doing? Put that stuff down!”

No one listened.

“I’m not on the list!”

That didn’t seem to matter.

He fired into the air. Someone felt threatened and fired back. Gorst fell to the street, a bullet in his shoulder.

STEVE WAS
using Cryor’s flashlight to warn him of branches, briars, and brush, but he was driven now by enough fear that it mattered little what might be in front of him. He just kept crashing, slashing, and pushing his way downhill through the undergrowth.

He didn’t feel much pain from the wound over his heart, but it was dripping all over him as if he’d severed a black artery. His clothes were spattered with the black slime. He was leaving black handprints on the trunks of the trees. With one remaining sliver of sanity he thought, This is it, the final stage.

What had that creature done to him? He was terrified of dying but felt no fear of the dragon. He loved that beast while knowing it would eat him. He didn’t want to run even as he ran.

Ridiculous thoughts cascaded through his mind, and every one of them seemed so true and practical: Maybe there’s a way to tame it. Maybe it won’t really eat me. If I ignore it it’ll leave me alone. This mark doesn’t hurt that much, I can live with it. Maybe the dragon won’t eat me until tomorrow. . .

I want to keep it! It’s mine!

I want to live, too, said a small but powerful voice from a corner of his mind. That one little voice was enough to keep him fleeing down the mountainside.

HIGH ABOVE
, on the rocky slope of Saddlehorse, the dragon was reviving. It twisted, curled, clawed the air, and finally, with some leverage from its tail, rolled over on its belly, pushing over some small trees in the process. Then it rested, the glow returning to its eyes, the claws moving, the nostrils sampling the wind. It was drawing strength from hearts and spirits now in chaos below—from the town of Hyde River, from scattered souls up and down the valley, and from that little man now scrambling down the mountainside. It knew, it could feel, it could hear the cries, the shouts, the pain.

It raised its head high, its neck a stunning question mark against the sky, and inhaled a long breath that swelled its chest. Then it raised itself on its left foreleg and the stump of its right, and peered into the valley.

It couldn’t see the little man, but it knew where he was. It knew where he was going.

HAROLD
BLY
looked at his watch. The ten minutes were up, and the noise outside was getting worse. Like it or not, he had to get out there and take control. This was going to be his town, run his way. With the town cleared out, the dragon would be on his side again. With the hearts of the town in his pocket, the land and wealth would follow, pure and simple.

But he had to make that clear to everyone. He had to get out there.

He’d been holding a towel to his chest. He pulled it away to take a look. The wound was oozing black slime, soaking the towel, fouling the air. Well, no matter. It didn’t hurt a bit, and soon it would clear up. He threw the towel aside.

“I’m going to live forever!” he proclaimed to the empty tavern. “No rules but my rules!”

He ran out the back door to his car.

STEVE STOPPED
to rest, to get his bearings, and to listen. He couldn’t hear that thing coming after him, but right now the blood pounding in his ears and his own gasping for breath made hearing impossible.

So okay, Benson, he thought, what’s your strategy now?

The Hyde River flowed placidly below him, a black ribbon with silver sparkles of moonlight, only a few more minutes through the woods. He could follow it downstream until he found the Hyde River Road, and from there get back to town.

Yeah. Town. Hyde River, where all the dragon’s biggest defenders and concealers were, probably the least safe place on earth for a Steve Benson or any meddling outsider. But it was where this whole nightmare started, and he knew it was where it would have to end. Levi Cobb had been right about everything else. Now, having touched the beast, Steve believed. He could never run far enough to escape the dragon because it was a part of him; wherever he went he would carry the dragon with him like latent death buried in his soul. Someday, the dragon would win. It would take him and destroy him—unless he destroyed the dragon first, and now Steve knew there was only one way to do that.

So, okay. If those people loved the dragon so much, they might as well meet it face to face.

Steve started climbing down the steep slope, through the trees and brush, heading for the river. Here come your two greatest enemies, folks: the dragon you love and the man who’s trying to kill it.

THE DRAGON
carefully inspected the damage to its wings. They were broken, torn, and useless. Quickly but gingerly, it gathered the snapped bones and tattered membranes together with its mouth and folded them neatly into a close-fitting but ragged cape along its back.

Then it folded its forelegs along its side, pushed with its hind legs, and slid forward over the rocks, gliding like a serpent, its feather-light touch returning. With motion established, it folded its hind legs as well and began to slither. It wove through the trees, arcing over fallen logs, pushing with its coils against the tree trunks, moving like a sled over snow, smoothly, almost silently, picking up speed. It was following the little man who had tried to kill it.

PAUL HAD
been looking all over town for his former partner and finally found Jimmy Yates in, of all places, Paul’s own living room, going through Paul’s desk!

“I hid the checkbook, Jimmy.”

Jimmy spun around, surprised, but then bold. “Hey, Paul! How’s it going?”

“Where’s that pumper truck?”

Jimmy only smiled. “Somewhere.”

“I want it back!”

“What’s it worth to you?”

“Don’t push me!”

“Hey, I’ll make you a deal,” Jimmy said. “You give me the company checkbook, I’ll give you the truck.”