Wolves (2 page)

Huxley tries to stay awake—he is not completely comfortable with Jay. But exhaustion takes a hold of him after a while and he sleeps. His dreams are of fire and ashes. He is running through burning fields. The ashes are thick. His feet sink into them. They clog his nose and his mouth. He can only keep slogging through those burning fields, unending, and listening as a voice screams for him. Things are crawling through the ashes, little lumps, like things moving under a blanket. They are tracking him, chasing him. He keeps trying to move, but he can't. They come out of the ashes. They are scorpions. Hundreds of them. They crawl over him and sting him.

Huxley wakes, gasping for breath, the feeling and the taste of the ashes still lingering in his mouth. A glance at the sky reveals a glimmer of dawn. Everything is that steady gray color that it achieves as it rises out of the blackness of night.

Beneath the sky is just another empty desert landscape.

It is cold this morning. It is late October, by his best reckoning. Here in the desert, the days are still hot, but the nights dip down into chill, and the mornings ache with it.

Huxley stands up.

Where do the slavers go?

The question burns in his head.

And the image. The picture of a man with a scorpion tattoo on his neck.

Those had been Charity's last words to him. Not “I love you,” or some pleasant memory from their life together. Nothing good. Nothing beautiful. Nothing comforting. Instead, he had knelt at his wife's side, crying, weak and ineffective, and he'd cradled her head in his hands as the life flowed out of her.

“They took her,” Charity had said, and the way her voice rasped and gurgled would never leave Huxley's mind. “A man … a slaver … he had a scorpion tattoo …” Her words failed her, and her bloody fingers made a motion to her neck, and that was it.

She lived for another few minutes. Shaking. Making little noises of fear. Noises of agony.

And then … gone.

The man with the scorpion tattoo.

Out east, there is only blood and death. Maybe Huxley wants that too.

He turns himself toward the dawn, and he almost takes a step. He thinks about leaving the stranger named Jay behind him and continuing on his own. To answer the question. To find out where the slavers go. By himself, and without the influence of a man whose pale eyes burn with something terrible.

But he stops himself. He turns and looks back.

The import of this decision glides by him, unnoticed as a black cloud at midnight.

Jay is awake, sitting up and regarding Huxley with curious eyes, barely visible in the weak morning light.

“You fixin' to leave?” Jay asks.

Huxley grinds his teeth together. It feels good to him. The grating. The pain in his jaw when he does it. It braces him. He doesn't respond to Jay's question directly. Instead, he turns back east. “It's dawn. And I'm heading east.”

There is the sound of stirring behind him.

Boots stamping in the dust.

The sound of someone brushing dirt from themselves.

“Well,” Jay says. “Let's go then.”

Chapter 3

They are not the only ones on this road.

They take a break in the midmorning, and Jay takes a seat right there in the middle of the road, stretching his legs out in front of him. He has a certain lackadaisical manner to him. But it's a lie. His eyes are not lackadaisical. They are always searching. Always roaming around. It would seem that they are looking for danger, but sometimes Huxley thinks that they are looking for prey to devour.

Jay uncaps his canteen and swishes the contents around. He takes one mouthful. Holds up the canteen to Huxley, who is still standing in the road, cleaning dust and dirt out of his nose. Jay squints as he looks up at Huxley. “Probably another mouthful. You take it.”

Huxley looks at it. Even just the few hours of walking have tired him. That is dehydration. It aches through him still. A belly full of water doesn't cure dehydration. It just gave him a little more time.

He takes the canteen, tips it back without hesitation.

Warm water fills his mouth.

Huxley holds it in his mouth, trying to allow it soak into his dry tongue before he swallows it. It tastes vaguely of the old plastic canteen. But it is not the worst water Huxley has ever had. Not by a long shot.

He looks to Jay, who is staring east, across that interminable expanse, probably wondering, much like Huxley, what lays on the other side. This great southwestern desert is a vast ocean that separates worlds. Those few people who have made it across come with different rumors every time. One would say there was a king. One would say there was a president. Another would say there was nothing but wooded badlands and barbarians seeking blood. No rumors seemed the same, and so, in Huxley's mind, what had happened to the rest of the country remained a mystery. Maybe the skyfire burned everything to the ground everywhere.

“You said last night that you had a purpose.” Huxley leaves it open ended.

Jay sniffs, looks up at him. He holds Huxley's gaze for a time, then looks back east again. His hand begins to do the thing that it had done the night before—Huxley takes note of it again. The fingers flicking off his thumb.

“There's something on the other side of this desert, Huxley. And it's feeding on us. It's sucking us dry.”
Flick, flick, flick.
“It doesn't think that we will come after it. But we will.
I
will. I can bite back.”

Huxley stares at this stranger who has somehow turned into a companion. He can see the rage boiling behind Jay's eyes. This man is bitterness and hatred. He does a good job covering it up with a blanket of calm and a devil-may-care attitude. But it's there, and it only takes a little provocation to bring it out.

But his words stir Huxley. Stir that little coal-black center of him. The star that died and left a cold, carbon core. There is so little left to feel that even this phantom flame that flickers way down deep in him, even that feels heady.

What do I feel?

He has to ask himself the question. He has to search inside of himself for the emotion that he knows would make him human. He rifles through it like old junk in a basement—none of it works. The only working piece, he doesn't want. He keeps putting it off to the side.

Rage. He can feel that one clear as day.

Huxley has to force his teeth to stop grinding. “Let's keep going,” he says. “The desert can't last forever. Maybe there will be an outpost. There has to be a town or a city eventually.”

They keep walking.

Deep into the afternoon hours. Jay has a habit of humming tunelessly to himself. It is a quiet noise. Huxley should find it irksome, but the sound of another human on the road with him—one that doesn't seem to want to kill him—is pleasant.

Jay keeps looking around as is his habit, humming, and then falling silent for a while. Then he picks back up again. Maybe it is not so tuneless. There is a melody somewhere in there. Something old and familiar, but ancient and covered in the dust of memories. Some tune from the Old World. Something bluegrassy.

Jay hums. Then stops. He is looking behind them now. He squints into the west. Looks forward again. Then back behind them, scrutinizing. Finally: “Someone's coming.”

Huxley stops and looks. “Where? What do you see?”

Jay shakes his head. “Not sure. More than one person though.”

“Can you tell how many?”

“No. Several.”

Huxley starts looking around. “We need to get off the road.”

But there isn't anything to hide them. All around them it's just knee-high scrub brush, and an occasional tuft of dry grass. The rest is flat sand.

Huxley swears.

Jay is already moving to the shoulder of the road, hunching down. “Come on. Get low.”

Huxley follows him. Moving low and quick, they put distance between themselves and the road. Then they start crawling on all fours, working their way through the low scrub. Distance is their friend now. They can't truly hide—if someone looks for them, they will be seen. But maybe they can go
unnoticed
.

They find a low point in the earth, a natural ditch carved by the rainy seasons and the scrub brush is an inch or two higher here, and thicker. It is situated about fifty yards off the road. They worm through the brush into the ditch and then squirm around to face the road again.

Huxley's belly is in the dirt. He can feel the sand, hot and gritty, working its way into his pants. He is breathing hard. The ground is hot, but he doesn't have enough moisture in him to sweat, so he just bakes, his pulse rising.

He peers through the scrub. The shapes on the road are taking form now, coming out of the mirage in the western distance, becoming solid beings. Like they are forming out of thin air. Jay was right. There are several of them.

Huxley does a quick count. “Ten,” he whispers.

“Horseback,” Jay says, matching Huxley's tone.

Huxley's heart speeds up again, feels his stomach turning. He can only think of one group that would go in number across the desert, and on horseback.

A rock is poking him in the side.

He refuses to move.

Five minutes pass by. Ten.

Now the men on horseback come close enough to see in detail. And the wagon that goes along with it. Huxley has seen these wagons before, these bastardized technicals that are pulled by teams of oxen, made from the chassis of old, defunct vehicles.

From both sides of the back corners rise tall poles, about ten feet high. Hanging from the poles is a jumble of shapes, tethered to the top. And Huxley knows what they are.

Jawbones. Taken from people.

“Slavers,” he whispers, his voice barely more than a breath.

A sideways glance at his companion.

Jay is low to the ground, his chin almost touching the dirt. He stares through the scrub. His eyes are wide, but his eyebrows are cinched down. His whole body is tense and locked. But it looks less like fear and more like he might jump up and charge them.

“Jay,” Huxley whispers. “Just let them pass.”

Jay doesn't respond.

Another ten minutes go by, and now the wagon and the riders have drawn abreast of Huxley and Jay. The only thing that moves on Huxley is his breath, just barely stirring the dusty ground.

The rock jabs at him.

Don't move. Don't get noticed.

There is fear in him, still. But also anger. A burning thing. He finds himself thinking about the look on Jay's face, taking a sort of inspiration from it. But what could they do? There are nine riders, and a driver on the wagon, and every one of them will be armed. They will have rifles or scatterguns, and they will have revolvers.

Huxley has nothing but his knife.

And he suspects that Jay doesn't have anything.

They'd be gunned down before they could run ten feet.

No, Jay. There is a time for blood. And this isn't it.

One of the slavers on horseback is scanning around, and his eyes land on Huxley.

Huxley stops breathing.

Don't breathe.

Don't move.

If he could've stopped his heart from beating, he would have done that too, but it's only beating faster. He can feel his muscles trembling from being locked in this position for so long, the cords at the back of his neck aching and making his head shake.

The slaver will see him. He will see him moving, trembling in the shrubs like a scared desert hare and he will call out to his comrades and they will gun Huxley and Jay down without a second thought. Because they can, and for no better reason.

The slaver looks away. He's seen nothing.

Huxley feels weak with relief.

The wagon passes by. The driver is a woman, which is unusual. The slavers are a cruel lot. He wonders what this woman had done to earn their respect. What blood was on her hands? Whose wives did she murder? Whose children did she take? She is a tall thing, and Huxley thinks she could be beautiful in a cold sort of way. She has long, raven-black hair that she keeps in a braid that goes all the way down her back. A rifle lays in her lap, a bayonet on the end.

As the wagon passes, Huxley can see the cargo in its covered bed. There are two children there. A boy and a girl. They are dressed in rags and their faces are dark with soot and dirt. Where they've come from is a mystery. And where they're going is a mystery too. Two children seems a meager prize to Huxley. Perhaps the slavers ran out of supplies. Perhaps they felt they'd ventured too far into this ocean of sand. Perhaps they just planned to cut losses and pillage on their way back east. Who knew what their motivations were? Who knew what timelines and schedules they kept, what meetings they had to make to swap flesh and barter?

Huxley realizes his fingers are in the sand, delving into it, clenching it.

He imagines it is one of the slavers' throats. How he would like to get his hands on them.

But not now. Not yet.

The children stare out the back of the wagon. The landscape goes by underneath them, receding like a tide. Everything they ever knew is gone. Now they are in the desert. Now they are heading toward … 

What?

Where do the slavers go?

“We could follow them,” Jay whispers as the last rider in the group passes by.

Huxley shoots him a look. “What do you mean, ‘follow them'?”

Jay turns his head, his eyes looking feverish and crazy for a second. “Follow them. See where they're going.” He looks back after them, even as the image of the first horseman begins to shimmer in the heat coming off the road. “I bet they have water.”

Huxley reaches up a shaky hand and rubs a bit of sand from his beard. “We can't just waltz in and take their water. There's only two of us. And we don't have guns. They have guns. They have
lots
of guns. They would murder us.”

Jay makes a face. A sort of sneer that lasts for only a moment, as though he is just briefly disgusted by the situation. “Did you see the children?”

“Yeah. I saw them.”

Jay shakes his head. “They're done.”

“What do you mean?”

“The kids,” Jay says. “They're done. They'll be dead or sold off in a month.”

Huxley feels an old familiar pull in his soul. He wants to say something back, but he has trouble forming the words. After a moment he hitches himself onto his elbows. “Okay. We'll follow them—their tracks, anyway. See where they're going. But we're not going to sneak in and try to take their water. They'd kill us.”

Jay rises from the dirt, slowly, and watches the slavers pass into the east. Because that is where the slavers go—they go east.

“Fine,” Jay says. “But we'll need water eventually.”

Huxley brushes dirt from his stomach, tries to shake it out of his pant legs. “We'll find water. We'll figure it out.”

The slavers disappear into the horizon, leaving only their tracks to be followed. They are careless, these slavers. Because they have nothing to fear. Because they are the apex predator here. And the people of the Wastelands are the prey.

But Huxley is not prey. Maybe once he was. But in the time it takes for a man to lose everything he loves, he can grow claws and teeth.

I want what Jay wants. I want to make them bleed.