Wolves (15 page)

His clothing means nothing
, Huxley tells himself as he approaches.

Rigo kneels on the body's left side, holding the right shoulder so that the limp body remains in its twisted position, revealing what lies under it. Gordon stands to the right of the body, pointing with a single finger.

An infant lies in the dirt, chest to chest with the dead man. He cannot see the face because a blanket shrouds the infant's head. Below the hem of the blanket, the white arms and white legs lay loose and spread, the tiny fingers partially curled, but relaxed, motionless. Though it shows no outward signs of injury, it does not move, and the chest does not rise and fall. It has either been crushed by the weight of the man, or smothered by him.

“I don't …” Gordon's voice shakes a bit. “I don't get it.”

Huxley almost laughs, but can't quite. “There's nothing to get,” he snaps.

With that he spins back toward the house, takes the back stairs in a single heated stride and bursts through what remains of the back door. Knife and revolver still in hand, he steps over the body of the man in the kitchen and moves through the doorway, deeper into the house. He is in a dark hall that runs the length of the house, an opening on the right and another on the left. Pictures on the walls. Bullet holes sprouting from the woodwork. Gunsmoke still shifting like restless ghosts on the ceiling.

From deeper in the house, he hears the sound of a woman crying.

He can hear Tim's voice, too. Deep and harsh.

Huxley moves down the hallway, unsure what he intends to do when he gets to where he's going. Unsure of what he's gotten himself into. The front door lies straight ahead, still hanging open, and one of the guards standing on the front deck, rifling through the pockets of a body.

At the end of the hall Huxley looks right, finds the opening leads into a living area where dirty old mattresses and sheets lay bloody and still holding the forms of people shot dead before they could rise from their beds. He turns left and finds another hallway.

The guard at the front door takes no notice of him as he continues to loot the body.

Down this new hallway, Huxley can hear the voices. The desperate woman. And a very angry Captain Tim. He moves down the hall, feeling the blood on the handle of his knife, feeling the heft of his revolver.

Is this the solution for everything?
He glances down at his bloody blade and then answers his own question:
What else is there?

He passes more doors. A bedroom, a bathroom, a linen closet.

At the end of the hallway, he turns left and finds himself at the entrance to a large bedroom lit from the glow of a single oil lantern. He stands in the doorway and tries to assess what he is looking at.

The one remaining guard stands lackadaisically with his shoulder against a wall and his back turned toward Huxley. A woman kneels in the middle of the floor. Tim has a fistful of her hair, forcing her head to be cranked to one side. She weeps hysterically, her eyes fixated on a form that lies in a dark corner of the room. Huxley can only make out the naked legs of it. It is a man. The woman bleeds profusely from her nose and it mixes with snot and tears and flows into her mouth so that when she sobs and splutters the spray is a mix of all these fluids.

Tim stands before her, face hard and edged like a hatchet. He holds her hair with his left fist, and his revolver in his right fist, the hammer back and his finger on the trigger. He does not seem to notice Huxley standing in the doorway, nor does the woman, or the guard.

He twists her hair again, causing her to cry out. “Where the fuck is it? Where do you keep it?”

She sobs, tries to speak, but he backhands her and she crumples to the ground.

He bends over at the waist so that his face is close to hers. “I told you. Didn't I tell you? I told you that you could work
with
me, or you could work
against
me. I warned you. Didn't I?” He seizes her by the throat. “Didn't I fucking warn you?”

Her eyelids flutter closed, red-stained teeth bared. “Yes,” she chokes out.

Tim makes a disgusted noise and shoves her to the ground where she coughs and curls into a ball. His voice is softer now. “It doesn't matter anyway. We'll find it.” He puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head. “You know, Theresa, this makes me sad. It really does. We could've had something good. We could've had a mutually beneficial relationship. But you decided that you wanted to do things your own way. Even after I
repeatedly
explained the situation—and the consequences—to you. Now
this
has happened. And your husband, and your brothers, and your little baby girl are all dead. Because of you.”

She moans, wordlessly.

“Yes.” Tim nudges her with his foot. “You just remember that, in the little time that you have left. You just remember whose fault this is.
You
did this. It's
your
fault.”

A sound like a wounded animal escapes her lips. “I wanna die …”

Tim sniffs. “I know you do, honey.”

Then he levels the revolver at her and fires.

Huxley doesn't see the aftermath of the shot in the puff of white smoke from the revolver, but he sees how still her form becomes and knows she is no more. He must have made a sound when Tim shot her, because both Tim and the guard suddenly look in his direction.

Tim seems annoyed. “I thought I told you to get out of the house.”

Huxley stares at the other man, unmoving. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“What needed to be done, Huxley. These are bad people—very bad people.”

“They're fucking opium farmers,” Huxley snaps back. He points his knife at Tim. “You used me and my guys to take off an opium farm.”

Tim's eyes become very suddenly flat and dark, like nuggets of coal. “I would be very cautious about fucking with me, Huxley. As a point of reference, I encourage you to look around.” He folds his arms so that the revolver is held very pointedly across his chest. “While it's inspiring to find an outlaw with a conscience, I think it's best that you leave this house immediately and wait for us outside.”

“I'm not an outlaw,” Huxley grinds.

Tim smiles patronizingly. “Of course not.”

He looks between Tim and the guard. They both have revolvers, held in the hand, and the hammers cocked back and ready. Whether they are loaded or empty could be debated. Huxley considers his odds. The problem is that they are as ready now as he is. They are tensed, fingers on triggers. If Huxley raises his revolver, he'll take one, but then the other will take him.

“Tell me what I want to know,” Huxley says, quietly.

Tim's face remains impassive. “I'll talk to you outside, Mr. Huxley. And you best start thinking about doing what I ask.”

Huxley lets out a bark of laughter. “Do what you ask? Okay, Captain Tim. I'll do what you ask.” Then Huxley backs out of the doorway.

They watch him go but don't make a move.

In the hallway, the sensation becomes worse, almost uncontrollable, like the reflex to pull your hand away from a hot object. He wants to lash out. It begins in his gut and radiates out like the feeling of phantom limbs moving into violent action, only to look down and find himself still locked in place.

He walks down the hallway, toward the open front door. It seems the only thing that he can see. His blood rushing about his head, forcing the field of his vision down and causing the edges to dance and darkle. His thoughts follow the same track and become singular.

I should kill him. I should.

Again the question:
Is this the solution for everything?

And again the same answer:
What else is there?

A man steps in front of him.

The guard.

The man smiles, obscenely. “Did you at least get some before they shot her?”

Huxley's eyes narrow. “What?”

“You get some pussy?”

The next thing Huxley is aware of, he is standing over the man, trying to pull his knife out of the man's temple where it's wedged, and not quite sure how it got there. The guard convulses on the ground. His mouth hangs open wide, his tongue lolling out, his hands contorted into weird and strenuous shapes. A nasally groan escapes his open mouth.

Frustrated, Huxley finally puts his shoe against the man's face and rips the blade hard. There is a scrape and crunch, and the knife is free of the man's skull.

Huxley looks down and spits on the body.

He looks behind him. The hallway is empty.

He steps over the dead body and moves quickly for the back door. Outside, he finds the others still standing over the body of the man they had slaughtered—had been
tricked
into slaughtering. They look up as they see him coming, and they tense because they can see the wild rage in his face, the quick movement in his step.

Huxley pushes past them, grabbing Jay's jacket as he goes and towing him along behind him as they head for the rocky slope at the bottom of which waits their horses. “We have to go,” Huxley says sharply. “We have to go now.”

Chapter 7

They clatter down the scree slope in a near panic. Any moment could be the moment that Tim and his men come after them, start winging shots at them in the dark. And any one of those shots could find Huxley's heart, or his brain, or hell, just about any part of him, and things would go downhill real quick.

They make it to their horses at the bottom of the slope. Huxley is acutely aware of the fact that his revolvers are mostly empty, and probably everyone else's as well. He runs to the horses of Tim and his men and begins unhobbling them, then swatting them on the ass to get them to run. The others join in, working quickly, getting all the horses out of there.

Not much time now.

As the last horse gives a perturbed snort and gallops off in a cloud of dust, Huxley looks at the dark, moonlit faces of his companions, his chest heaving. “Does anyone have a loaded gun?”

They trade glances. But no one does.

“Shit.”

“Should we load?” Gordon asks.

“Fuck no,” Huxley stalks to his horse and swings into the saddle with a grunt. “We need to get the fuck out of here. The sooner we can put Tim and New Amarillo behind us, the better.”

The others scramble into their saddles as Huxley's own horse, sensing the sweat and anxiety, begins to whinny and turn circles, wanting to leave just about as much as Huxley himself. It takes another twenty seconds, but each one feels like it's forcibly removed from Huxley's chest.

Then they are speeding through the dark. Cold, dark, night wind against their faces.

Huxley keeps looking over his shoulder, waiting to see Captain Tim and his men coming after them, shooting at them, waiting to see the muzzle flares and the puffs of smoke caught in the moonlight, but there is nothing behind them but dark desert.

Huxley doesn't know how far they ride, but they go until the horses demand a break, then they walk them, and then they run them again. And it must be sometime well after midnight when they finally stop, the men breathless, the beasts heaving and snorting and lathered.

“Do you think we've gone far enough?” Huxley says, looking behind them into the darkness.

Gordon, Rigo, and Jay all follow his gaze.

“I don't know,” Jay says. “I don't know how far we've gone.”

“Twenty miles?” Gordon offers, unsure. “Thirty?”

Huxley has no clue.

“And what direction are we headed?”

Huxley looks at the sky, as though he can read stars, which he can't. “Uh … east. I hope.”

“If we could find a waterway to cross,” Jay suggests. “Maybe we could break the trail.”

“But who knows how long that's going to take?” Huxley says, spitting a wad of gummy saliva. “We don't even know if they got their horses. We don't even know if they're tracking us right now. In the dark. Wouldn't that be dangerous for them?”

Gordon speaks up. “It's your call, boss.”

Boss.

Huxley looks at the man's face, his skin blue in the moonlight.

“Alright,” he says. “We'll camp here. No fire. No nothing. Just hit the sack and try to get a few hours of sleep. We'll head out at first sign of dawn.”

The group gets out of their saddles, and they hobble their horses amid grunts and groans and muted curses. In the dim moonlight, they fumble their way through reloading their revolvers. Then they collapse into the dirt with blankets as their only shelter, their bodies huddled close together.

Huxley will be able to see the dawn coming, he thinks. Because he doubts he'll be able to sleep.

But then he does.

Chapter 8

Huxley's eyes open, his veins and arteries throbbing rapidly, and he doesn't know what has jolted him awake. Above him the sky is stark black and cold, and the Milky Way is a band of dust tossed in the air that hangs indefinitely. There is no sound but the great empty sound of open spaces, which, in this moment, seems overpowering.

He exhales, watches his breath, illuminated by starlight.

He turns toward the others. Jay is lying down, but his head is turned toward Huxley and his eyes are open wide, glistening and oddly pale.

Huxley whispers, “Did you hear something?”

And the night explodes.

The air around him flares with smoke, stabbed through with red muzzle flashes. Dirt scatters into his mouth and eyes as bullets strike the ground around him. Chips of stone sting his face.

He throws his blanket off and snatches up his revolver. Without conscious thought or effort, he begins to scramble away from the camp, firing at the muzzle flashes that leap out of the darkness at him. He fires, works the hammer back, fires again.

He looks behind him as he runs. He sees Gordon trying to get to his feet, searching through his blankets for his weapon. A fusillade of gunshots rips him to pieces and he collapses back into his bed.

Huxley stands straight up, not having any conceivable reason for doing so other than panic. “Jay!” He shouts. “Jay!”

He is tackled from the side, laid out flat into the cold dirt.

A hand covers his mouth, cold and clammy. “Shut up!”

It is Jay.

The younger man holds him down to the ground and neither moves while the gunshots continue on, then slowly slacken, and eventually are silenced. As the last boom echoes back to them from across the plains, Huxley works his mouth free of Jay's hands, feels the sweat go cold as it dries around his mouth.

“What …? Who …?”

“Ssh!” Jay elbows him in the ribs. “Start crawling.”

They roll onto their bellies and begin squirming slowly in an unknown direction. The cold prickles their skin, but after a while they can't feel it from the effort of the crawling. They can hear voices coming from the campsite, loud and angry, and the beat of horses' hooves traveling back and forth. They crawl for a long time, and it seems the voices never grow quieter with distance. It seems they are always just out of sight.

They find a depression in the dirt, an old path that water flows through during the rainy seasons. They breathe heavily and have to stop to rest often. Huxley forces himself to breathe through his nose as he fears the huff of his breath in the cold air will give him away.

They follow the depression down a hill that grows steeper as they go, the depression becoming a trench, the walls of it rising over them until the ground flattens and becomes muddy. They stop there, coated in mud and desperately exhausted. Huxley tries to hear between the beats of his own heart.

No hoofbeats.

No voices.

“Get up,” Jay says, already slogging to his feet.

Huxley follows. The world spins uncontrollably around him, but Jay's voice seems utterly calm, even cold. Maybe before it would have bothered him to see Jay so unaffected, but now it is a steady thing to grasp in the middle of this maelstrom.

They jog at first, but slow to a walk. They move to the side of the gulch where the dirt is harder and drier. Their saliva dried on their tongues, and eventually the chill begins to set into their skin, their muscles, and finally their bones until they are both shivering with their arms wrapped around their chest.

It is not until this point that Huxley notices the pain in his right thigh. It began as a dull ache while they were crawling and he thought it was a bruise, but as they ran and now walk, and as his body grows colder, the pain grows sharper and more severe until it shoots up his body with every step. For a while he limps along, not saying anything, but after about an hour, he stops in his tracks.

“Wait,” he holds up a hand to Jay's back.

“We can't wait.”

“I think I've been shot.”

Jay spins. “What?”

Huxley sinks to the ground and places his dirt-covered fingers against his right thigh, feels the sharp tenderness just inside a gash in his pant leg. It is a long wound, mirroring the shape of the tear in his pants where the bullet slashed through him.

Jay walks to him and crouches down, peering at the leg. “Shit!”

“It's not bad.”

“Everything is bad when you're out here!” Jay hisses. “Is it bleeding?”

Huxley touches it. The wound is impacted with dirt, but he can feel the slick edges of it where wet blood is escaping. “It's bleeding, but not much.”

“Good.” Jay looks around. “We need to find some water to wash it with. Bandage it.” He offers his hand. “We should keep moving. They'll be tracking us.”

Huxley takes the hand and Jay hauls him to his feet.

They move on through the gulch, knowing that it will eventually lead them to water, but not knowing what direction it is taking them. Huxley's mind wanders to and fro through his life's history, but always comes back to the pain in his leg that continues to grow. His mind travels back to a classroom, bright and warm in the sun which shoots through a bank of windows and hangs there in the center of the glass like it was placed there as an ornament. The smell of the school—a strangely familiar mix of floor wax and chalkboards and coffee, but mostly of that heavy industrial paint that was slathered on the walls, a smell that was not overpowering, but that never seemed to lessen over the years.

Then he is there in the gulch again, dark and cold and smelling of dank earth. Pain shooting up his leg with each step, the hard grip of Jay's hand around his midsection, the fingers digging into his ribs. A skyward glance reveals no change in the sky. How long have they walked the trench? An hour? Possibly more? The passage of the day is marked by the sun, but Huxley doesn't know how to read the stars outside of their simple constellations, and to him night is a big blank period and in the time between light it seems the turning of the earth keeps no schedule, and that the sun will only rise again when it feels good and ready.

He curses the sky and wonders if this is the beginning of delirium, or just exhaustion.

Pain brings him back again. He hobbles, curses the world and everything in it, and keeps hauling each foot out of the marshy ground and planting it in front of him, shoes caked with mud, pant legs hanging heavy with it. He closes his eyes and tries to picture his little girl, tries to see the brightness of her eyes and the purity of her smile, tries to recreate in himself that indescribable feeling of belonging.

But the pieces will not come together.

“They're gone,” he whispers to the black air in front of him. “They're gone.”

Jay looks at him. “What's that?”

Huxley stares back, wide-eyed and slack-mouthed, but he doesn't speak.
All the good people are gone
, he thinks.
We killed them all. And now the only people left are the animals like me.

“No room,” Huxley mumbles to himself, looking away from Jay. “No room for weakness.”

It loops in his mind as they walk.

It becomes a mantra.

A creed.

And in the endless repetitions, at some point in time, the sky begins to gray and dawn comes lumbering over the horizon slow and leisurely, ignorant of the injured and frozen men still winding their way through a muddy arroyo. The bed of the gulch grows muddier and promises water.

They eventually find it, beginning with just an inch of standing water and then connecting to a shallower but wider streambed where a thin brook flows. They scan around them in the growing light but don't see any pursuit, so they kneel down at the brook and stick their faces into the water. It is almost ice-cold and stings their faces, but it soothes their tongues.

“We should take a look at your wound,” Jay says.

Huxley gives him a glance. “I'll take care of it.”

He pulls the knife from his belt—the only object besides his pistol that still remains in his possession. He cuts away the tattered fabric of his pant leg, exposing the dirt- and blood-encrusted wound. Despite the cold air, a single fly appears and begins to buzz desperately around it, as though it has starved in this desert just as much as they have and is panicked to sink itself into Huxley's open flesh. Huxley splashes the cold water onto the wound, rinsing it of dirt and grime as best he can. The mud gives way to the pale skin of his leg, red and raw around the wound. Moistened, the split in his leg begins to leak blood again.

“How is it?” Jay asks.

“It'll be fine,” comes Huxley's lukewarm answer.

He cuts a strip from the bottom of his shirt and uses this as a bandage to tie around the wound. It does little to stop the steady flow of blood, but Huxley is less concerned with blood loss than he is with more crap getting into the wound.

They drink again until they can hear the liquid sloshing around in their stomachs, and then they stand.

In the stillness of the dawn light, the reality of their situation seems to hit them both at the same time, and it hits hard. They are in worse shape now than when they had first encountered each other. Now they are hunted, and wounded.

“Do you have anything?” Huxley asks.

Jay shakes his head, but holds up his revolver. “Just grabbed this. What about you?”

“Same.” Huxley didn't even have time to grab the gunbelt and holster. He only has the revolver.

“Have any bullets left in it?”

Huxley eyes the unspent percussion caps set against the cylinder. “Two shots.”

“I have three,” Jay says. “Where are we going?”

“East.”