Five Days Dead (24 page)

“Talents?”

“Oh yes, talents. You have many talents Harley, some you may not even be aware of. You are quite talented in making people hate you, for instance. You are a quite the catalyst. This week alone you have shaped the course of things for years to come, put pieces into play in the great and final act of this grand charade that I had not even been aware of, I’m ashamed to say. You have awakened shepherds that I wished would stay sleeping, put people on paths that may lead to ruin. Putting the genie back in the bottle is no easy thing Harley. I can’t have you mucking about freeing genies before their time.”

Harley shook his head in the darkness. Whatever was in the dark with him was completely mad. “Who are you?”

“I was born 10,000 years ago; I’ll lick the man who says it isn’t so.” The voice giggled.

“What?”

The Gray Walker sighed. “I hope to be an atheist someday Harley, that is who I am. I hope to not believe in Heaven or Hell. But I have seen the face of God and I have seen the claws of the Devil. I know something of them and they know something of me and while I do not presume to match their glory and their power and their delusion, I hope to match their persistence and that one day they might grow weary of this game and leave us alone.”

“Us?”

“Us. Humanity. The grand comedy that we are and yet may be. The Realms of Man are to come crashing down unless we find a savior. I have chosen to be that savior. Presumptuous? Probably so, but there it is. I face heaven and hell and deny them both.”

“I’ve lost my mind.”

“Quite so. But I’ve found it and now I must determine what to do with it. Should I put you on the shelf for a later day, a day when your talents might better be put to use, or should I let the sad people outside this mine dig you out and make a snack of you? Decisions are such difficult things sometimes.”

“All things considered, I’ll take the shelf.”

“Will you? Will you really? It will come with its challenges I’m afraid, considering the desires of your prayer.”

Harley shifted his legs beneath him, prepared to stand although there was no place to go. “Challenges?”

“Yes. Challenges. If I were to help you from this place, I would have but one demand of you.”

“Which is?”

“Don’t change a thing Harley. Go back to being who you are. Go back to being the boy who stepped out of the dark closet. Do not change a thing. You have displayed quite a few deviations from your true character in the past week and the chaos in your veins has made a mess of things that may yet not be undone.  But I still see value in you and will save you from your fate if you promise me that you will not be anything other than what you were a week ago.”

“And if I can’t?”

“Then I will visit you, I’m afraid.” Harley felt movement in the tunnel and a presence standing close to him. His lighter struck and a face was terribly close to his own, a dark face with gray eyes and a gaping mouth with razor teeth. “It will not be a pleasant visit for you Harley. Not pleasant at all.”

Harley scrambled back down the tunnel and his lighter clicked off.

“Are we agreed?” The voice sounded pleasant again, pleasant and friendly and tinged with good humor. 

Harley opened his mouth and sealed his fate. “Agreed.”

“Excellent.” Something scratched in the darkness likes boots against rock and the tunnel was suddenly aglow. Harley had to shield his eyes with his arm. The Gray Walker was holding lightning in his right hand and it pulsed and danced like a life all its own. The man holding the lightning looked like just an ordinary man in a long duster and jeans. He wore cowboy boots and his face was stubbled, chiseled and handsome and his hair was dark like Harley’s. He looked like someone Harley might once have known, but he didn’t know who. He grinned at Harley and his teeth were white and straight, not fanged at all, and he winked. His eyes were gray and swimming within them was humor and compassion and darkness and anger and pain and suffering and everything Harley had ever imagined and many things he hoped he never would. The Gray Walker nodded at the lightning in his hand and laughed like a schoolboy. “It’s a neat trick, don’t you think?” He turned to face the end of the tunnel that had collapsed and threw the ball of lightning.

The lightning struck and exploded outward. Not a pebble, not a speck of dust flew back toward Harley and the gray man. It all went outward, like a bullet from a gun and the mouth of the mine was laid open and Harley and the Gray Walker emerged from the dust and the coal into the midday sun.

Five of the Wrynd had been trying to dig Harley out when the mouth of the mine exploded. What was left of them to be found was now on the other side of the canyon.  The rest of the Wrynd were standing beside the two buses and among them stood Orrin and Jodi. They ducked behind the nearest bus as the rock rained down and when the shower was done they stepped back out and looked up to see Harley emerge with the gray man beside him.

As the armed Wrynd raised their weapons and those that weren’t rushed toward them, the man with the gray eyes looked at Harley Nearwater, standing on the edge of the mine in soiled clothing and he winked quite happily. 

“I hate zombies. Don’t you just hate zombies?”

He unbuttoned his duster and within it looked like nightfall. There were stars blinking inside the gray man’s coat, pink stars. And then the shadows began to pour out like a flood, taking shape into something that might be a dog or a wolf or a nightmare. They turned their pink eyes to the gray man and when he nodded they leapt at the Wrynd.

The killing started.

A Feast for Shadows

Jodi shook her head to clear her vision as the mouth of the tunnel exploded. She ducked behind the bus and when the downpour of destruction ended she looked up to see Harley and the gray man walk out of the mine. The Wrynd raised their weapons and she found herself fighting a smile until the gray man opened his duster and the nightmares poured out.

The shadows fell upon the Wrynd and blood flowed as they were torn to pieces. The Wrynd opened fire, but the gray man and Harley beside him seemed oblivious and every shot went wide. The shadows continued to pour down the hillside and she watched as Wrynd tried to fight back but found nothing to bite, nothing to claw, nothing to rip. As a shadow rushed toward her, she sent her scye into it and the weapon passed through and the shadow kept coming. She flung herself back and leapt for the bus, scrambling up the open door and flipping herself on top.

Below her Orrin fired his blaster and sent his scye flying toward Harley and the Gray Walker as he dashed up the hill, screaming like the possessed.

It was a slaughter. She aimed her sidearm at the gray man’s head and fired off five quick blasts. Each shot seemed to veer away from him at the last moment and strike harmlessly to either side. He looked at her and she saw him smile and shake his head softly. A dozen shadows suddenly turned her way.

“Shit.” She called for her wing and knew it would arrive too late.

Orrin the Wrynd King dashed up the hillside, dancing out of the way as shadows leapt toward him. They were silent as they killed, but something inside his mind was screaming and he realized it was him. He was screaming and soon he would be dying. Beside him, Ralph and Nina ran as well, firing with their own blasters and every shot missed their target. Two shadows fell upon Nina and her body was turned to a mass of gore and blood as she screamed and was consumed. Ralph stopped as she fell dying, about to yell in protest and horror and anger and more shadows fell upon him and he was gone; his throat ripped away before his cry could be heard.

Orrin made it to the top and his scye flew true towards the gray man and Orrin howled in triumph. The Gray Walker reached up and caught the scye in his bare right hand. It glowed and it crackled and he squeezed. The scye crumpled like paper and Orrin cried out in anguish as the connection to his scye disintegrated. 

Orrin stumbled to the stranger and snarled at Harley cowering beside him because his time would come, as soon as he finished with this gray monster and his shadows, he would deal with Harley Nearwater. He raised his arms to lash out with his claws and the man with the gray eyes stepped forward as if to embrace him. Orrin looked into his eyes. There was sadness there as he reached up and touched Orrin Hatcher, the Wrynd King, the former marshal of the Founder Federation, on the temple, softly, compassionately.

At the Gray Walker’s touch for just a moment before he died Orrin Hatcher remembered everything he had been, everything he might have been, everything he had sacrificed for his sense of duty.  He remembered his wife and his children and the joy he had once felt at just being alive, at being one of the first marshals of the Federation. Then he remembered everything he had done in the name of the Federation since he had become a Wrynd and tears cascaded down his bloody cheeks.

“Oh,” Orrin said and then he died where he stood and crumpled at the Gray Walker’s feet.

Above them, Jodi’s wing roared into the valley and dove toward her as the shadows oozed up the side of the bus and surrounded her. She did not bother to fight them because there was nothing there to fight and as they pounced she somersaulted away and where she had been she no longer was.

The man with the gray eyes giggled happily and clapped Harley on the shoulder. “Quite nimble, isn’t she?”

Jodi was back on her feet and running the length of the bus when the wing swooped low and she jumped out to catch it. The shadows leapt after her. Two of them latched onto her legs and she screamed in agony as long gashes appeared wherever they touched. She kicked out and the shadows fell away as she was caught by her wing. Drops of blood rained down as she flew higher and rose above the canyon and disappeared into the distance.

There was nothing left living in the canyon except for Harley Nearwater and the man with the gray eyes. Harley looked at the stranger and tried to catch his breath but found it so very difficult. The Gray Walker looked at him softly and then looked down into the canyon as the shadows returned to him.

Harley felt their pink eyes upon him as one by one they slipped back within the darkness of the Gray Walker’s duster.

“Don’t lose your hat Harley.” The Gray Walker held out his right hand and resting on it was Harley’s Stetson. The man who was more than a man smiled a pleasant smile. “Har Har Har!”

Harley just stared, his mind in turmoil, his memories ravaging and the gray man nodded softly, compassionately. “Remember our bargain Harley Nearwater.” The two exchanged a glance and Harley was reminded of the face in the tunnel, a face unlike the one that looked at him now. A face he did not ever want to see again. “Remember it well.”

Harley nodded and a dust devil swirled around the man with the gray eyes and as it swirled the man within it slowly started to dissolve until Harley was alone on the side of the hill with death all around him.

“It’s a neat trick. If you know it.” The voice whispered behind Harley’s head. He turned around quickly, but there was no one there.

Five Days Dead

Sunday morning had slowly slipped into Sunday afternoon on a hot and cloudless day in July and Harley Nearwater should have been five days dead.  He wasn’t, and that was the problem. At least he thought it might be a problem, feared that it might be a problem, tossed and turned all night worrying that his not being dead might, in fact, be the biggest problem of his life.

But he was alive when he should be dead, so he decided the best thing to do on this too damn bright Sunday afternoon was sit back and get good and drunk. A waste of a perfectly nice day you might say and Harley surely wouldn’t disagree with you. Since he should have been five days dead, he hadn’t made any plans. No plans at all.

Of course, that wasn’t entirely true and a nagging voice in his head screamed the lie for what it was. He was doing his best to drown that little voice with cheap beer and cigarettes. Because admitting he had plans, admitting he had those particular plans five days after he should have been dead was completely out of character for the man who used to be Harley Nearwater and must be again. Being out of character was dangerous. Now wasting an entire Sunday drinking alone was in good character. Well, not good character, but certainly his character, something he had done all too often before the night that should have snuffed the dull and meaningless light that was his life from the world. 

Remaining in character was something, perhaps the one thing he had paused to consider in the past five days. He had chewed on that thought constantly since death had come searching and been unable to find him. He chewed on it still and just because he hadn’t completely digested the idea didn’t mean he couldn’t or wouldn’t. Remaining in character was the most vitally important thing in his life. If he wanted to have a life, that is. He remembered smiles in the dark, sandpaper laughs and whispered promises, but mostly he remembered the eyes staring at him, through him in the dark, dissecting him and he nodded slowly as he took another sip of his beer…yes, it was best to remain in character.

He stood with his cowboy boots all but buried in the fine dust of the San Rafael Swell. Before him was the Wedge and he had alternated between standing and sitting all morning, but always looking at the jagged canyon below, where the San Rafael River meandered listlessly through the canyon. He had watched as the sun crept higher in the sky, squinting as it brought tears to his dark and bloodshot eyes and when the sun snuck behind him, he continued to squint as the day brought a slight breeze, picked up dust and settled it down. All the morning and into the afternoon he had looked down on the canyon below, never once admiring its beauty, only using it as something to focus his eyes upon as he drank and thought, thought and drank over the one subject he knew would haunt him for the rest of his life: remaining in character.

When the Gray Walker was swallowed by a dust devil and disappeared from sight Harley had picked his way down the hill, trying not to look at the carnage of what remained of the Wrynd. He stopped to pick up a blaster but could not bring himself to remove the holster from the gruesome remains of the person who once owned it. He climbed into the nearest bus, started the engine and turned it around. There was blood dripping on the window and he thought that it might belong to Marshal Jodi Tempest. He turned on the wipers and washed it away.

He drove out of the still smoldering mountain in silence and when he reached the highway, he turned back toward Price. The city had burned, but not completely and he passed a family walking down the middle of the road.  The father was holding a hunting rifle; the mother held a pitchfork and the boy held a machete. He looked down at them as he went by in the school bus and recognized the boy. He had pointed him to a car lot less than a week earlier and refused his offer for lunch.

“You might be a boy lover.” He had said. Harley flicked them a wave as he passed and realized that was out of character and he was very much afraid.

He found his truck where he left it, half buried in the sand along the side of the highway. His sidearm and scye and eyeset were inside and so was the baseball bat he had exchanged for his sword. His hat had been there too, but the Gray Walker had magically plucked it from the seat and given it to him. “Har Har Har.” He found himself smiling for no particular reason and then had to fight to keep from crying.

He was able to get the truck back on the road and drove it home. He linked and ordered food and cigarettes and beer and tequila and rum along the way. The stork was waiting for him when he pulled into his driveway. He drank then he ate and then he drank some more until he could finally sleep. It was a fitful sleep.

He stayed drunk all the next day and in the morning of the third day he climbed in his truck and drove toward Straight Canyon. The apple orchard was there and it looked peaceful and calm and deserted. He stood on the edge of a timber bridge, smoking cigarettes. He wondered what he might find if he were to cross the bridge. Would Edward Toll be waiting for him somewhere on the other side? Would he let him pass? Would he protect him from the Gray Walker and his promises? He did not know and found that he was afraid to ask.

He went home and sat on the porch and as the afternoon began to wane he slipped on his eyeset and sent his scye south. It skirted across the desert like a firefly through the San Rafael and then chased after a train on the HSP line and then through the ruins of Moab and Monticello and into Arizona and before he knew it the scye was hovering over a dilapidated single wide trailer where he had grown and dreamed and cried. A home where he had said goodbye to his father and became hated by his mother. The dead apple tree had been cut down, but little else had changed and he let the scye hover by the front window as he peered inside. There was no one home, but he could look down the hallway and see that the closet was open; the closet where he had learned that sometimes in the dark everything wasn’t the same as it was when the lights were on.

He sent the scye downtown but, of course, there was no longer a downtown in Kayenta, if there ever had been. In the entire town, he had only seen a half dozen people milling about, looking more like zombies than the zombies he knew existed.

He was about to bring the scye home, but something made him make one last pass over the trailer and he saw movement from the window and dropped it lower. His mother opened the door and it looked like she had been sleeping. Her hair was mostly gray now and she was thin, very thin, like she was wasting away. Her mouth showed no sign that it had ever held a smile and neither did her eyes. It made Harley sad just looking at her. 

She was startled when she saw the scye floating outside of her front door and she looked frightened at first but then her brow furrowed and her eyebrows raised and she held up a finger to the scye and rushed inside the house. She came out with a notebook and pen in her hand and she turned the notebook to her and scribbled on it and turned it to face the scye.

“Harley?”

The note said, and Harley felt a sob slip from his lips.

“Just talk. I can hear you if you talk,” he said but she could not hear him. He had no idea how he could respond. Then he choked back his tears and had the scye dance across the dirt in front of his boyhood home.

“Yes.” He scribbled in the dirt.

And she smiled. His mother smiled at him. She scribbled on the notebook again and held it up to the scye. “Wheel?”

She pointed to the sky and Harley whispered “No.” He hadn’t made it to the Wheel. She had been right after all. He was a no-account. He scribbled no in the dirt with the scye.

She nodded and scribbled some more and Harley sobbed at what she had written. “Love you. Miss you. I’m sorry.”

He let the scye scribble in the earth. “Love you Mom. Don’t be sorry.”

His Mom nodded and tears were streaming down her face as she took pen to paper and held up her last note. “Come home.” The note said.

“Yes.” Harley had whispered on his porch overlooking Orangeville. Yes, he would come home and he would gather her up and he would bring her back to Orangeville and keep her safe just as he had promised his father. He would keep her safe from harm. But then he remembered the Gray Walker and the promise he had made and he wondered would keeping his mother safe be out of character? Would it be contrary to the man that Harley Nearwater was and must be?

He brought the scye home and fell asleep on the porch, crying. He slept all the next day sitting on the porch of his house and he did not dream. On the fifth day, he took his beer and his cigarettes and his fears and he went to the desert.

He was five days dead.

Shortly before noon on the fifth day, as he stared out over the Wedge, five scyes appeared at the overlook and hovered in a little group 30 feet from where Harley was doing his best to get drunk. He wouldn’t have noticed them had it not been for their soft hum as they bobbed softly four feet off the ground. He had a moment of fear and scrambled for his truck, but then realized they weren’t Marshal scyes, only the scyes of pilgrims on a field trip. He didn’t even try to conceal his contempt. He ignored them for a while but the longer they floated there, the more irritated he became. They had gotten the drop on him; that was the problem. He hated to admit it, but there it was. He was so drunk he had let five scyes float within 30 feet of him, five scyes in all likelihood being controlled by a paunchy husband and wife and three butterball kids. Dulled senses like that were what got a man killed. He should be experienced in all the things that got a man killed and yet they had crept right in on him.

He considered blasting a couple of them but pulse fire worried him now and he avoided it when he could. You never knew what it might attract. So instead of drawing his blaster he went to the cab of his pickup and pulled out the baseball bat from behind the seat. His own scye was stowed in his pack with his eyeset, but he knew better than to try and use it. In his condition, he would just fly it into the side of the canyon. 

He tried to be nonchalant as he walked toward the scyes, which is no easy thing to be while highly inebriated, but he must have pulled it off because the scyes didn’t fly away. One floated closer to him and he knew whoever was on the other end was trying to communicate, but since he wasn’t linked they probably thought he was just a harmless neand. After a quick scan, the scyes went back to hovering at the edge of the Wedge Overlook and Harley took a few meandering steps closer, bat in hand. He didn’t know if it was possible for a metal ball to give off an air of superiority, but the five scyes seemed to be doing a good job of it now as they tried to ignore him. He planted his feet, gripped the bat with both hands and took a swing at the closest scye.

He made good solid contact with the bat on the scye and it flew out into the canyon, wobbled for a fraction of a second and then plummeted toward the canyon floor. The four other scyes scattered, hovered over his head for a moment and when he flipped them off they flew out into the canyon and disappeared. He grinned with satisfaction and went back to his beer.

He chased his beer with a cigarette and dropped the butt into the empty can. He carefully placed the beer can on top of a beer wall he was building beside his battered blue cooler he had sat next to the boulder. The beer wall was now four stories wide by four stories tall and waved precariously in the soft breeze of the desert. He fished in the cooler until he snagged another beer and hauled it out, slammed the lid and popped the beer’s top. The vibration of the cooler’s closure rattled the beer wall and it tumbled down, 15 of the 16 empty cans clattered to a stop beside him, but the 16th can rolled toward the cliff’s edge. He stuck out his foot and caught it before it could tumble over the side.

He started to bring the fresh beer to his mouth but found himself looking at the empty can he had saved from tumbling over the side of the cliff and stopped with the new beer three inches from his mouth. Five days ago he would not have stopped the empty can from falling over the side. Five days ago he would not have built himself a beer wall. Five days ago he would have tossed the empty cans over the side of the cliff and flicked the cigarette butts over the side as well, vaguely wondering if the cigarettes would start a fire in the valley below but not really caring one way or the other. Did that matter? Was that a change in character? Was that enough to bring back the man with the gray eyes to keep his dark promises? He moved his boot blocking the empty can and let it roll off the side and then swept the rest of the cans over the side with his leg, spilling beer down his chest in the process.

He stood and paced back and forth along the cliff edge, suddenly worried and just a little bit afraid that staying in character was going to be more complicated than he had ever imagined.

The wind was picking up and a dust devil careened blindly into his truck, spewing sand through the truck’s open driver’s side window. Harley held his breath and waited for the Gray Walker to appear. The dust devil spun itself out. He sat back down, placed his beer between his legs and dug another cigarette out of his shirt pocket, cupping one hand around his lighter as he lit it up. The wind coiled around the boulder and he put his hand over the beer as dust turned his dark hair something closer to gray. Before long he wouldn’t need the dust to help turn his hair gray, no sir, before long he was quite sure he would gray without any help at all. He had never found a gray hair on his head, but five days after the day he should have died he was sure they would be coming. He had once heard stress and worry could make you go gray and he had plenty of stress, plenty of worries.