The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron (40 page)

He could stand—he was taller than all but Worm—only that would likely take things physical quick, and they were three on one. Maybe they only came to threaten him, scare him into leaving town. They could threaten away. He’d been ready to leave anyway, only
with
Tigger. But what had they done to Tigger?

She told him about the Shadow Riders almost at the start, how she hooked up with Marlo till someone tipped her off he only wanted her for some kind of sacrifice. How she found it out Dumont didn’t know but the whole story confused him anyway. Tigger was holding some big pieces back, he could tell that easy. Made it all hard to follow but main thing was he could see she was scared. Way shit scared. Now she was missing maybe worse and the Shadow Riders were all up in his face.

He never dealt with Marlo or his crew himself before, only saw them from a distance and Tigger would whisper
that’s them
or sometimes their names. There were others, Crunch and Skurd, Arkansas Jason and Jimmy Whip, more whose names he could not recall. But Marlo was supposed to be their king or ruler or some shit like that, Ratch and Worm his left hand and right.

—
Du
-mont. That girl took something from me, Du-mont. Something she shouldn’a took. Did she give it to
you
,
Du
-mont? I think she did. Hey, we understand how these things can happen. It’s
na-chur-al
. Why don’t you just let us take a look in your pack Du-mont? We’ll take what’s ours and leave you with your mutt. No harm no foul, whadda you say?

Ratch stepped hands out toward Dumont’s pack. Although he seemed to move in slow motion Dumont didn’t try to block him, but he teetered sideways away from the Rider, his bucket seat tilting almost toppling.

Marlo started to say something like
That’s it—
and nod before he saw how Dumont slid himself several inches along the wall, bent to grab the bucket handle, then pushed up the wall all the way and with his sea legs at least half back beneath him swung the bottom of the bucket at Worm. Ratch was closest but Worm was the tallest so Dumont went for him first. The bucket with its half dozen rough crusted inches of lumpy concrete at the bottom took Worm full on the side of the head and he. Went. Down.

Missy lunged for Ratch and her teeth sank into his left calf above his boot so he cursed and stumbled back a step. Marlo jerked to his right, brought the K-Bar full up just as Dumont yanked back hard on the bucket only to feel the wire handle tear free from plastic. The battered orange cylinder tumbled away into the shadows and slammed loud against a wall somewhere off in the dark. Everyone looked surprised. Everyone except Worm, who lay staring at the dirt floor. Staring at it real close, like point blank close. Staring at his blood pouring on the dirt.

Dumont yelled to Missy and grabbed the guitar case, booked it for the exit. He felt a tug on his arm as if someone grabbed him and he yanked hard to get free. He heard Ratch pound after him several steps till Marlo shouted —Leave him, asshole! Get the pack! The pack!

Missy hit the doorless doorway ahead of him and staggered as she went. As he trucked through he felt himself swing up sideways on an incline a second, the whole room pitched over the major part of 90 degrees. His applicable senses all told him brace for the fall but he did not fall. Missy yelped ahead so he knew she felt the same still they both pressed on and came level again in three more steps. His stomach prepared to purge but he fought it down one last time, staggered forward anyway. Not now. Not here.

Marlo called from behind —Run sad punk. We’ll see you again. Run run run and we’ll all have some fun. Later on down the line.

Dumont ran. At least half a dozen blocks, Missy skittering always several feet ahead before Dumont felt the warm wetness on the fingers of his left hand and held it up to see first the blood dripping off them, then the red-streaked facing crescents of pink white muscle revealed in the deep slash across his forearm. He was leaving a trail but he didn’t stop to bandage himself till he reached the yard.

***

He was pissed he left his pack.
Pissed to leave the squat.
Pissed most of all he had to leave without Tigger. Sick over Tigger and whether she was okay. Tigger mighta helped him keep it together but even that hope was gone now.

He actually liked that squat. Better than the Pink House, which most everyone said was haunted by ghosts of all the junkies who ODed there. His squat was a derelicted grain and feed store in the 8th Ward, right up close to the decommissioned levy that carried freights along the border strip between the 8th and 9th. The hobos hippies train kids and gutterpunks who came and went there called the location Ward 8 and ¾. The drunker Dumont got the better he liked the joke. He wasn’t stupid. He read those books when he was a kid. Some of them anyway, the ones he could find at the school library because his foster parents never bought them. Those books were Satan’s work. If wizard books were Satan’s work then what were the things they did to their foster children? Dumont had his own ideas about Satan’s work in this world.

The squat itself they called Viking House for the inked and bearded white boys who came and went there in this mostly Black and Latin town. Dumont himself bore the nickname
The Norse
for his dirty blond and tangled beard.

He found family at the Viking House. Better and truer than his birth family. Better fersure than his fosters and their own two sons. Folks came and went but they were mostly
real
people,
good
people. His people. Fucking Shadow Riders made him leave too early. Made him leave without Tigger. Tigger, mellow and quiet in spite of her name. How she held so tight to him not only when they fucked, and how she cried softly with him in her but laughed when she came. The eye of his own private hurricane. Tigger with him this shit would not be so bad. But Tigger was gone for now. Only how gone? Was Marlo for real or talking shit?

The farther he rode this freight, the less likely she’d ever find him, or he her. Her pale blue eyes. Her streaky blonde bowl cut, overgrown and combed crossways above her face. Her super old school Navajo rug poncho they used for a fuck blanket. The accustomed tang of her unwashed bod, and the way it blended with his own aromas.

In time he’d reach another yard. Once there he could aim for a freight headed back to NOLA. Back to Tigger. Yeah, and back to the Shadow Riders. Maybe. If they were even still there. If Tigger was…

Or he could strike out alone for… what did those old time writers call it?
Terro incognito?
The Territories?
He didn’t much like to ride further east or north than NOLA. His winter home for three years running. He had only a vague sense of this freight’s next destination. Mississippi somewhere maybe. Or Alabama. He felt the train was headed either north or east. Maybe northeast. When it came to a yard he’d get off, try to find where he was, maybe ask the crew if they seemed cool. Good as lost for now with only vague ideas where to go next. If Marlo and his crew were coming behind him, it might be best to switch up, hitch to the next city, get away from the freight lines a while.

***

Dumont and Missy both slept in fits. He shielded her short fur from the cold metal but it bit him where it could. His ass caught it worst, gone all numb. Legs barely responding, hard to bend. Too low to stand in the fox hole so he flexed his painful frozen legs inside, kicked numbly at the scoured wall.

The brakes screeched and he realized the train was slowing. Soon it shunted onto another track. He could tell they weren’t coming into a freight yard yet. He’d see other trains if they were in a yard. The only shapes he saw in the night were trees. The junker he was riding was just siding out to let a faster train pass.

He couldn’t see the sky much but where he could it was taking on pink. As he watched the voices came.

So faint at first he pegged the sounds as his imagination. Then he thought
bulls
, but bulls didn’t ride the trains. Mostly lazy they patrolled their yards from trucks or golf carts, checked inside cars at stations only.

Not till the volume of the voices rose did he recognize Marlo. Coming from somewhere above. Ahead or behind he could not tell, but close. No words came clear but Dumont knew. He
knew
. And somehow
they
knew.
They knew he was on this train
. They hopped out too and now they were hunting him. Coming over the tops of the cars like some idiots in a western movie. One of the craziest things you could do in real life whether the train was rolling or not.

The guitar. They’d spot it from above. Fersure. The case was too big to squeeze into the hole with him. Aw fuck. But maybe not the guitar.

He set Missy on her feet and flopped on his front. His legs remained unresponsive. Wriggling half out the hole he tugged the case close and popped the snaps. And got another surprise. Atop the soundboard was a kind of book. A grubby thing bound with crooked staples, big crude letter C backward on the cover in Sharpie. He knew it at once: a
Crew Change
. The hobo bible to hop outs. What Marlo must be hunting. When had Tigger stashed it in his case? And why? Fuck. Was that what this was all about? But a
Crew Change
was not all that hard to get. Not
easy
—he never had one himself before—but not something you followed someone over the tops of cars for. Not something you killed over…

The freight they sided out for came on now, an almost endless intermodal stacked double deep with shipping containers. Dumont tugged the book in with him, hefted the guitar by the neck and with its body pushed the case over the edge. Any sound it made was lost in the clamor of the passing train. Fucking Shadow Riders. First his pack and now his case, all his favorite stickers on it best of all the Hank III.

After forever the IM was past and his train lurched forward a few feet forcing Dumont to grip the rim of the fox hole. As they moved he heard the case crunch under the wheels of the next car back and right away Marlo called out. Dumont hoped the sound would draw them away. He hoped Marlo and his crew fell off, broke their fucking necks. Not likely he’d be so lucky though. Another halting advance and they pulled back onto the main track, picked up speed. He withdrew into the grainer’s next interior compartment, wiggled the guitar in after him. Missy hopped through and sidestepped a bit before she huddled with him as far from sight as they could get.

He was trapped now if they found him, no weapon in this confined space. Fists and feet, what he was best with anyhow. Missy would bite, though if he hadn’t lost her leash he would hold her back. No room to swing his smiley. Forget the guitar he couldn’t swing it in here either. He waited, listening for the sounds of their feet or Marlo’s voice above, or worse on the platform outside. Meanwhile he curled the
Crew Change
into a slit tube, slid it up his right sleeve then redid the buttons at his wrist. This might prove useful, if not for its content then as armor up his sleeve. It might save that arm from getting cut like the other. Like the padding folks wore to train guard dogs.

In his hidey hole he stayed on alert despite the sleep he needed. But the voices did not return. No voices, no footsteps above. Had they given up? Found their own car to wait out the ride? Too much to hope they’d jumped or fallen off. Most likely they’d be waiting to grab him when the train stopped and he got off.

Missy also kept alert, body tensed, ears up, but she didn’t bark or growl. He massaged the tips of her ears to calm her and whispered —Smart girl, yes you’re a smart girl—then smiled and nodded as he waved a finger before her face. She licked his hand once then paused and began to bathe it.

She curled against him next almost the same as when he met her, hiding in a shed in El Paso with another gutterpunk named Clutch, waiting for a hop out on a freight to Houston. Clutch stepped out to take a leak and came back 10 minutes later tugging Missy by the scruff, his hand streaked with blood. —Look what I found. Bitch bit me too! He dropped her and she trotted right up to Dumont, curled in his lap. The three of them hopped out right after that but Clutch parted ways at the next yard. Missy stayed with Dumont. He got her cleaned up, groomed and dewormed. Whenever they got to a field or park they played for an hour or more, her puppy energy inexhaustible.

Missy slept now, head tucked within Dumont’s secondhand army jacket. Slowly a dim pink glow began to ooze through the opening of the fox hole. The train blew its whistle more often which meant it was coming to a town or city with roads and crossings. Somewhere ahead it’d stop. They couldn’t stay on long then—they needed to get off quick but not get caught. Run like hell was not an option—no matter how he shifted his legs stayed half numb from the cold. He’d be stumbling when he hit the ground. But he couldn’t stay. If the Shadow Riders didn’t find him the bulls probably would.

He jostled Missy gently to wake her and she raised her head, rolled to one side and stood as he began wriggling back to the outer compartment. He had to be ready when the train stopped. His legs remained a mix of numb and pain. Not good. He stretched and flexed them best he could. It didn’t do much.

Outside the portal was near full light now though the sky he saw was filmed with haze and white. Beyond the tall grass he saw ranks of pine interspersed with random spreading magnolias. A highway paced them on one flank a bit, though traffic was scant. Dumont guessed westbound. The train began to slow, tempo of the trainsong diminishing. Before long they slowed to a crawl as stilled trains slipped around them right and left. A yard. Soon their train would stop and he and Missy would need to make their move. Hop out on another freight or hoof it to the highway and hitch a ride from there. No matter what, they needed to
move
. Bulls and Shadow Riders would be checking the cars.