Hunger and Thirst (7 page)

“How many people have you three killed already?” Natalie demanded, even though they couldn't speak. Jack had never seen her angry. “How many? Four? Fourteen? Forty?”

She reached behind her for the finger bones and then quickly dropped them on the leather disk.

“Nine. They've only killed nine people, Jack. Should we cut them loose with their promise to be not to kill a tenth?” Natalie looked at him a moment, all the tension went out of her, and she tossed the baton over on the sofa. She put her arms around his neck. “Okay. We'll be nice guys. We'll split them up and throw them back. Your mother would be pleased.”

“If we have to kill people in order to live here, in order to live happily....”

“It would be an ugly price.”

“It would be.”

....

The blond woman and the indeterminate companion lay on the floor, on their stomachs, hands and ankles tied, with a single line tied to the wrists, looped around the ankle ties, and then once around the neck. Any hand or leg movement would choke them; they lay motionless.

It was evening, three candles around the room, and only Jack sat watching over them. Natalie had taken the man out to the road over an hour before. He was damaged enough they suspected he would be dead of infection in a week. The plan was that Natalie would accompany him in one direction down the highway and then send the other the other direction. The blond woman didn't seem a huge danger to anyone, so they would just turn her loose.

Jack started at the noise at the door, but it was Natalie, already inside. “Okay, that's one. He was so happy to get away from me, he even said thank you. What a guy.” To the blond woman, she said, “He's stupid and cruel and he runs like a girl. I can see why you find him appealing.”

“I don't like your being out there at night. Let me take this one.” He indicated the big person. “You can rest for a bit.”

“No, no. I know the land a lot better than you do, especially at night. You can take that one out and shoo her away. Let her keep her shoes. I want her to do some traveling.”

Natalie took the man's pen knife and held it in front of their big friend's face. Natalie cut the ankle rope and the tie-line and gave the person a hard kick below the ribs. “Stand.”

Still gagged, hands still tied behind in the back, the person struggled to get on both feet and stand up.

Jack wasn't quite sure what he saw but he thought he saw Natalie in one place, and then she was another, up against the big person. One of Natalie's hands in the small of the person's back, and the other holding the pen knife tip-deep, no blood, just under the person's right eyeball.

Natalie whispered, “Don't fuss with me.”

The big person's head shook No-no-no.

“If I see you after tonight, I'll cripple you and tie you out for the dogs.”

No-no-no.

Natalie was away from her in an eyeblink. She picked up the baton and tossed it to Jack. “Take that one out to the highway in half an hour. Beat her if she gives you the slightest reason.”

“Which direction should I send her.”

“It doesn't matter. Either way, she won't last a week. She's too stupid to live.”

She opened the door for her captive, the big person, who staggered out into the darkness.

“I'll see you in an hour,” she said over her shoulder and closed the door behind her.

Jack gazed at the blond woman on the floor. She stared at him with wide dark eyes and whimpered through her wet gag.

He wondered what, for her, would be merciful?

....

The little moonlight was enough to see their way around to the highway. Still gagged with her hands tied behind her, the blond woman scuffed in front of Jack, sobbing and whimpering. At the highway, Jack cut her hands free. She threw off the gag and immediately began talking.

“Don't, please don't make me leave. I never been alone in my life! Please help me! We could still be friends. Everything was all their ideas! I never did nothing! Did I? I never did nothing!” When she stepped toward him, he poised the baton over his shoulder, like a batter.

“But I don't have no food, no water! I'll die out here! Please save me, mister! What did I ever do to you? I got hooked up with some bad people and they used me! Both of 'em used me and beat me. I got bruises all over — look.”

Jack pulled a plastic liter bottle of water out of his jacket and tossed it to her. “You're on your own.”

“I'll do whatever you want! I'll be your slave, anything, the rest of your life! I'll live outside like a dog!” She dropped to her knees. “Just don't leave me out here to die!” she bawled at him.

“Stand up.”

“Just kill me here.... Kill me now....”

Jack wondered what Natalie would do. Probably break her neck and walk away.

“What's your name?” Jack asked. He had to repeat the question several times, and louder, to get her to hear.

“Brigit,” she finally said.

“Brigit, if you get up and walk, I'll walk with you a while. If you don't get up, I'll knock your brains out with this and leave you here for animals.”

She slowly got to her feet. She boo-hooed shamelessly, pathetically, but she began walking, arms limp at her sides and her head thrown back. Jack asked her a few questions — how old was she, where had she been — but all she said was variations on

“You're making me die! I'm gonna die out here and you don't even care!”

Jack did care. He didn't want to do this, but he couldn't see an alternative.

He let her pull gradually further ahead. Finally, her cries were almost inaudible, their louder moments mixing with the occasional far-away bark or howl of other animals. 

She became indistinct and then vanished in the moonlit darkness. Jack scanned the desert. He thought he might be seeing the eerie beauty that Natalie saw. The desert was the color of blue ashes.

....

Sun on his face, Jack stood out in the scrub, hands in his pockets, gazing at the snowy mountains. The snowpack had reached its maximum and was probably starting to thin. From nowhere, out of silence, Natalie's arms slipped under his and clasped him to her.

“You look at the mountains a lot.”

“I think about Artie. I miss him. Sometimes I think he might have gone on without me. He's probably dead. He walked with me through rain and mud and desert all the way from Colorado. And he took shorter steps than I did. He even swam part of the way when our boat fell apart and went under on some no-name river. I miss him.”

“Maybe we could find another.”

“What friends I've had I can count on one hand, and I'm counting Artie. Most of my friends had four legs.”

“I suspect he stayed with you because you fed him. The only reason he didn't eat you is because you're bigger.”

“I gave him permission to eat me.”

“He could have stayed here with you, but Artie is a predator with certain necessities. He has to see to those.”

“He offered to feed me when he didn't have to. He brought me rats he'd killed. A couple of times it was the only thing I'd had to eat in days. He didn't have to do that.”

“Perhaps he was full. He fed you, kept you alive, and you protected him. Friendship doesn't fit all that well into the mechanics of survival. In the mouth of every living thing you find the remains of the dead. Sometimes one even has had affection for what's on one's plate. Some of the rabbits are very sweet.”

“Right up to the moment you break their necks. Everything is eaten and nothing goes to waste. It's a terrific system, but still miss Artie. Could you ask your bones if he's still around?”

She looked a bit embarrassed. “Actually, I already did. I got the equivalent of 'No comment.'”

“He was a friend.” Jack pulled back enough to look into her face. “You tell me you're the queen predator of this place. Do you love me as much as you say, or am I a necessity?”

“I love you so much you feel like a necessity. I don't want to think about going on without you, but don't hold it against me for being a part of the way the world goes. Kiss me. Let's go in.” 

He kissed her.

“I'll be in in a few minutes. I want to think about Artie a little more.”

“Don't be long.” She left him with a lingering drag of her hand across his shoulders.

Jack kicked at the dirt and looked again at the mountains. Although it didn't show, he was thinking, the snowpack had probably started to thin.

....

In their bedroom, in the middle of the night, they lay close, on their sides, their foreheads touching. Without opening his eyes, Jack whispered, “Did you kill Hewitt, a big guy in a plaid shirt, out by the highway?”

“No, I didn't.”

“I found his shirt. I'm pretty sure it was his shirt. It had blood around the collar.”

Natalie said nothing.

“Did you kill those two people, the man and the whatever?”

“No. I did what you wanted to do. I sent them in opposite directions with dire threats. It would have been safer to kill them.”

....

In their bedroom, past the middle of the night, Natalie lay spooned against Jack, her arm around his chest.

“You don't believe me, do you.”

In the darkness, Jack stared at nothing.

“Of course I do.”

....

Bright white morning sun poured through their windows. Jack stood idly at the counter watching Natalie with her bones and leather disk.

“I hope I can get you more coffee. I know how much you like it.”

“Don't trade too much for it. I can do without.”

Natalie dropped the bones on the disk and stared at them, motionless. Her face tightened; she looked troubled.

“What?”

“Just calculating. A woman, coming along in about half an hour.”

“A woman traveling alone. That's not everyday. She's either competent or crazy.”

“I don't need my bones to tell me which. I'll go talk to her.”

Jack noticed that she put the finger bones in her pocket. That was unusual.

“Well.” Natalie put a few canned goods in a mesh bag. “Just in case. I'll go see what I see.”

He kissed her and repeated his standard caution. At the instant the door latched between them, Jack realized that just an instant before he had glimpsed one of her hunting knives in the mesh bag. He hadn't seen her put it there, but that didn't mean anything. Natalie could have things in her hands, or out of her hands, in the middle of an eyeblink.

He circled the room once, drained the coffee down his throat and got his jacket. Things had been just two degrees off all morning; he wanted to see what she was going to see.

Out the front door, he automatically checked that the 8:00 PM food he put out for Artie was gone. It was. Natalie was already out of sight, around the hill and on the down-slope to the highway.

Twenty yards from the house, behind a large stone and a cluster of green tumbleweeds, he saw Natalie's mesh bag. Without touching it, he craned his neck to see the backside of it. The canned foods were still there, but the hunting knife was not.

He half-heartedly tried to disguise his off-trail footprints and continued on after her. He brought himself to a sudden stop. In the distance, on the highway, he saw the traveler coming from the west. Whoever it was was walking aimlessly, and her clothes seemed to be layers of long streaming rags.

A few steps further on and he could see Natalie, now at the highway, waiting, now slowly walking toward the traveler.

Within another half minute, Jack saw who it was — the blond woman that he had taken out and threatened away a few days before. She had returned. And she wasn't walking so much as shambling. Stooped a little forward at the waist, she let her arms hang among her hair and rags and shambled forward, toward Natalie.

Jack could see the moment of recognition: the young blond woman stopped in her tracks. Then she seemed to gather her focus and her strength. She raised her wraith-like arms and did a staggering run toward Natalie. Jack heard her shrieking noises, but didn't understand her words, if there were words.

Natalie waited quietly on the path beside the highway.

He heard himself saying, “Don't do it... don't....”

 The woman began windmilling her arms, closer to Natalie, and now there was just screaming. When Jack expected to see the women fall together, he instead saw Natalie simply push woman on past her. She almost fell, turned and screamed, just animal noises. Out of her rags and hair, she held up her gaunt arms like a mantis.

Passively stepping back, to one side then the other, Natalie seemed to be talking to the ragged woman who awkwardly stalked her one uneven step at a time.

All in a single fluid motion, the woman raised her arms to full height to fall on Natalie, and Natalie made an underhand sweeping gesture with her right hand. Everything froze. Then Natalie went about stooping and picking up her finger bones.

Jack's mouth had gone dry.

Natalie put her shoulder to the woman's midsection and easily hoisted her up. Jack had no idea she was that strong. She walked perpendicular to the highway perhaps a hundred yards — Jack could only guess. He watched her shrug and the body dropped out of sight onto the desert floor.

“Please...,” he said under his breath.

He watched Natalie lean over the body. He could barely see her above the scrub. Then she stood up and started back to the house. Jack moved out of her line of sight.

When he came to the rock where she had put the mesh bag, he stopped, looked down at it, then snatched it up. Green tumbleweeds clung to it, leaving shredded bits stuck on it. Jack stalked back to the house, dropped the bag on the counter, and waited.

....

Natalie entered grim-faced. Her eyes registered her bag on the counter and then focused on Jack, who stood in mid-room, his hands in his pockets. He didn't look at her.

“I didn't have a choice,” she said.

“You killed that woman with the hunting knife and she knew you were going to do it — like you kill the rabbits.”

“She was out of her mind and she was coming back.”

“Why was she coming back?”

“I didn't ask. Perhaps to kill us. But whatever her answers, they would all lead me to the same conclusion.”

“You killed her two friends. You didn't turn them loose.”