Wolves (29 page)

PART 4

Blood and Death

T
hey huddled in the back of the station wagon. Him and his wife and his daughter. Behind them were three weeks of disaster and a smoldering city they could no longer see. They'd crossed many horizons since they left that city behind. They were somewhere in the Sierra Nevada mountains, parked out of the way, as far off the meandering mountain road as the station wagon could get them. The night was cold and they couldn't run the car for warmth. There was less than a quarter tank of gas left. All their gas cans were empty. And they hadn't seen a gas station with any fuel left in its underground tanks in four days.

They were lucky they even had a vehicle. This car had been at the basement level of a parking garage. It was the only reason it was still running, and it was the only reason they'd managed to get out of the city. Many people had not.

He and Charity had one blanket to share, and Nadine lay nestled between them, asleep with the hard unconsciousness of a two-year-old. They were very lucky that she slept so well. But the days had been long and exhausting. When the sun went down, she passed out and didn't wake up until dawn.

He and Charity, though … they would lie awake at night, exhaustion creeping in, but their fears keeping them wide-eyed and awake.

How did all of this happen?

How did it come to this?

He and his family, crammed in a station wagon with barely any gas left in the tank, almost no food left, and just a few bottles of water to sustain them until … until … what? What was his plan? What was his endpoint here?

He didn't know. He was just running.

He looked at Charity. It was dark, but there was a moon that night and he could see his wife's face.

She was actually smiling, looking down at Nadine.

He wanted to ask her why she was smiling. But why break into her pleasant thoughts, if she was able to have them? She was strong. She had surprised him. He thought that all of this would break her, but it seemed to have done more of a number on him than her. She had taken it in stride, it seemed.

He stared at her and felt an ache in his chest.

He reached out and put his hand against her face, then pulled her into him, gently. He kissed her fiercely over their daughter. When he pulled away, Charity looked at him, her eyes searching his for a measure of what he was thinking.

“If I ever lose you …” he began.

Charity interrupted him. “Stop. Stop thinking about that. Look at our daughter.”

He looked down at her. It was astounding to watch a two-year-old sleep. They were immune to the world. And she didn't really process what was happening. This was just a long car ride, in which she got to play around in the back of the station wagon with noisy toys whose batteries were dying. She had no concept of what they were without. She didn't think about their near-empty gas tank, or their dwindling food and water. She just slept. Tight and comfortable between Mommy and Daddy.

Charity touched his face in a way that she did to get his attention, to make sure that he was listening, to let him know she had something to say.

He looked at her again.

“We're here,” she said. “We're here, and we're gonna be okay. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“We're together,” she said, pointedly. “And you're not gonna lose us.”

Chapter 1

Shreveport looms, a dark smudge at the bottom of the sky. There's the smell that always comes with human habitation in groups, but it is the visual of the city that strikes Huxley as he stands at the front of the slave barge and looks down the river to where it appears that the water ends in nothingness, a small black hole at the end of the world.

The late afternoon sun melts tiredly against a skein of darkness that seems to hover over the city. When he looks closely and squints, he can see all the individual pillars of smoke, some large, and some small, rising up into that grayish smog. Thousands of fires belching smoke into the sky, turning the clouds all around a sort of brackish tint, like dirt and dust. A fire in every home, in every business, all of them burning at once against the autumn chill. It has been a very long time since he's seen an actual city. He is not happy to see one again.

Brie stands next to him, the scattergun that she claimed resting on her shoulder. Her face is slightly pinched as she looks out at the city that continues to expand before them, swallowing their horizons.

“They took me in Nevada,” she says. “Not Bristow. He's a middleman. He bought me from a group of raiders. But still, I've been around these slavers since Nevada. Since March, actually. What month is it now?”

“October,” Huxley replies, wincing slightly as he shifts his balance and feels a throb from the wound in his side. “I think.”

Brie sniffs and wipes her nose. “The raiders killed everyone in my settlement except me and two boys, but the boys got sold off in a town, two stops before the raiders met with Bristow. They didn't even know that I had medicine skills. They were going to kill me if I didn't sell quickly as a bedslave, which they didn't think I would. And they probably weren't wrong.” She snorts and shakes her head. “Bristow was smart enough to ask them if I had any skills, and I answered for myself, and he bought me on the spot for the cost of a bedslave—significantly cheaper than you might buy a healer. So everyone left happy. Even me. I didn't have to be raped
or
killed. Lucky me.”

Huxley shifts uncomfortably, eyeing her.

She seems to realize that he is looking at her strangely. She nods toward Shreveport. “All of that to say, I've been with Bristow for a while. Learned some things about this place. Just from listening. Asking a few questions here and there, when I could. I can tell you about Shreveport. I can even show you some maps. They're in Bristow's things.”

“Okay,” Huxley prompts.

“Shreveport's run by a warlord, I can tell you that. Some guy named Overman. The slavers always called him the ‘Nigger King.' Apparently, he's not beholden to the chairman of the Riverland Nations, or any of the other councilmen. He and Shreveport are their own little state, but the Riverlands need him for slaves and cattle, and he's got no money or power without the Riverlands buying his two main exports.”

Huxley thinks of his daughter being treated like a sack of grain. An export. Something to be tallied and bought and sold and traded. He feels black and heavy inside. Like volcanic rock—dark and encrusted on the surface, and boiling hot below.

“Where do the slaves go?” Huxley asks, his voice quiet.

“The slaves themselves?” Brie touches the wooden stock of the scattergun, worn smooth by rough handling. She strokes it, almost lovingly. “Most are put up at least once at auction. Apparently Shreveport is where you get the best price, but many of the lower councilmen and clan leaders can't make the trip to Shreveport. They get the ‘second runnings': the slavers take all the slaves they couldn't sell at a Shreveport auction and take them toward the Mississippi to various points. I don't know about these towns. But they're easier for the less wealthy and powerful slave buyers to get to.”

She takes a moment to judge how her words have affected him. “I don't tell you this to upset you. I know you're looking for someone.”

Huxley jags a glance at her. “I'm not looking for a slave.”

“Oh. I thought …”

“I'm looking for a slaver,” he says, hollowly, realizing for perhaps the first time the forlorn hope of this endeavor. To find one man. One man in a hostile country. Difficult. But maybe not impossible. “A man with a scorpion tattoo on his neck. I'd like to find him.”

Brie grimaces. “Tall order. I told you about Overman because I heard that part of his treaty with the Riverlands is that he work closely and cooperate with the Black Hats.”

Huxley doesn't give her much of a reaction, though his stomach flip-flops.

“We all saw when you convinced Bristow to take you aboard,” she says, looking out at the city, from which individual buildings and the docks could not be seen. “We heard the conversation. We know that you're wanted by the Black Hats.”

She looks behind her and Huxley follows her gaze to the open doors of the former slave cages.

Of the forty slaves, only eleven have chosen to be free.

They are kids
, Huxley tells himself.
Don't judge them harshly.

“The ones that stay,” she says. “When they're found, they'll tell the slavers everything, hoping to be treated well. They'll tell them who you are, what happened on the boat, and what you're doing in the Riverlands. What
we're
doing. And then it will become a big problem. The Black Hats will be enlisted to find you. Towns will know about you. There will be a bounty on your head, most likely.” She takes a deep breath. “Unless we cut their throats and pitch them in the river right now.”

Huxley's eyes widen just a bit, shocked to hear the suggestion come from her. “Jesus Christ.”

She frowns. “You killed that other slave for diming you out. What's the difference?”

And Huxley wonders to himself if he shouldn't just do it. If they are in league with the slavers, then they're just as bad as the slavers, right? Shouldn't they be dispatched just as mercilessly? But no, there is a difference. He can feel it. Even he cannot rationalize his way around it.

“The difference is that they're not a direct threat,” Huxley says. “We'll be out of the city by the time they can spill their guts. Let them live. Let them go to their masters.”

Brie nods. “Then I wouldn't stay in Shreveport for long.”

Huxley grunts and looks down the river.

“I wouldn't go into the city at all, if I were you,” Brie continues, carefully.

“Thank you for the advice. I'll judge for myself.”

She shrugs and turns to leave him, as though she predicted this would be his response.

Huxley turns and touches her shoulder, stopping her.

“What?” she asks.

“The ones that are with me … they trust you?”

Brie considers it for a moment. “Yes.”

“You're gonna show me these maps of the city you claim Bristow has. We're going to figure out how to get out of that shithole. And you—you're going to take the freed slaves. You and Rigo will act like slavers, and you're going to get them out of the city. We'll choose a place outside to meet up again.”

“Okay,” she blinks, like she is memorizing the instructions.

He looks at her, his eyes narrowing. “Do you know who I am?”

Her head pulls back a bit, confused. “Who you are …?”

He turns fully, squaring his shoulders to her. “Do you know who I am? Do you know how I think? Do you know what you're getting yourself into? Do they?”

The confusion fades from her face and her eyes do a circuit over him. They soften with something almost like … pity. Almost like she feels bad that he has not made peace with who he is. But she knows, and she is the same, and she has made peace with herself. Could she be that hard? Could the things in her be truly as bad?

“You're an angry man,” she says. “You have nothing left in this world but hate and a gun. You'll use your life up to inflict pain on the rest of them for taking everything from you.” Her brows furrow, creating a crease right in the center. “You think any of us are different? You think any of us have anything left in this world? No.” She shakes her head sadly. “We've had the hate, Mr. Huxley. We've had it for a long time. It kept us warm on cold nights. It was cool water in the desert. It helped us survive with our minds intact so that we didn't break like all the others that did. We've had the hate, Mr. Huxley. Now you've given us the guns.”

Chapter 2

Huxley takes the steps up from the docks two at a time, a steady pace, but he cannot deny his desire to be away from the slave barge. At the top step he stops and turns, glancing over his shoulder again at the hulking flatboat
Misery
, as it lies at berth in the North Docks of Shreveport. All around it are similar boats, in similar sizes, their cargo both human and cattle. The boats are prickly with slavers' poles, and the docks are swarming with slavers. There is little to no control over what comes and goes at the Shreveport docks. Which means that Huxley and all of the freed slaves were able to dock without question or inspection.

At the end of the pier that jutted out from the crumbling concrete of the riverside, Huxley scans the crowd and sees a trail of young men and women dressed in brown and tan tunics. Some of them are armed, others are not. A girl with a long face carries a scattergun and leads the way, while Rigo follows in the back, the two of them acting as best they can like they are the slavers in control of this string of slaves. They move quickly, not stopping, and head out of the docks and toward the nearest exit out of Shreveport. His side smarts with every step, but he keeps his wound hidden and his expression blank. This was not the place to show weakness. Beside him, Jay watches the column disappear into the streets of the city. All along the riverside, the crumbling decay of the city that had been is evident. In some places, it is “revived,” after a fashion. In others it remains decrepit and burned out. The buildings that have been reclaimed are bolstered by large timbers, others by pieces of steel and scrap. Nothing has any sameness to it. Everything is a different version of decline and reclamation.

Huxley lifts a strip of cloth to his face and holds it there at the bridge of his nose. The purpose is twofold—to relieve himself of the incredible stench of the place, and to hide his face. First and foremost, the smell is overpowering, like a physical being that hovers invisible and chokes the oxygen out of the air. Fires burn all around them belching smoke, and they are all cooking something different—strong stews, beers, liquors, roasting meat. Under the smoke and spice there is the smell of raw sewage in the streets.

Not “sewage,”
Huxley thinks.
That would imply that it came from a sewer.

Looking around, he can see it, like a slurry, on the sides and gutters of the streets, concentrated near drain pipes, piles of shit with swarming flies. Every so often, an old man or a young boy who are probably slaves, shoveling those piles of shit into the open drains for the rain to carry away during the next storm.

All around them there is some wretched form of life: drunks, fighters, whores, homeless, criers trying their best to sell what they have cooking in pots and grills or what they have dragged with nets from the sewage-polluted waters of the Red River. It is the market of Red Water Landing, but without concern for rule of law. In Shreveport, money and fear of violence are the only laws that seem to exist. There are guards posted here and there—at least they are what Huxley assumes are guards. They're armed with revolvers and wear white bands around their upper arms, and they seem to watch the people carefully. But it also seems that there is very little they are interested in stopping. Prostitutes are clearly of no concern, nor panhandlers. Even the fights they simply watch with disinterest.

Huxley and Jay continue on from the docks. They are on a wide street, crowded on both sides with shops and taverns and storefronts that have been cobbled together, sprouting from the side of the existing Old World buildings like tumors. Huxley scans them all, still keeping the cloth pulled up over his face. There are plenty of fliers posted on the outside of these things, but none of them bear his face. No wanted posters.

“Any idea where you're going?” Jay says, keeping pace with Huxley.

Huxley continues to glance around. “No. Not really.”

“Maybe we should ask someone.”

Huxley stops again in the middle of the street. A group of slavers shoulder roughly past them, but seem to take no offense to their stopping in the middle of everything. Everyone is moving about their business, whatever that business might be. There are brothels to be patronized and alcohols to be consumed. No time to fuss with two men standing in the middle of the road.

Huxley looks about one more time, seeing if any eyes have fallen on them, but they are largely ignored. This place is a place where a man could very easily disappear. Be forgotten. Forever.

He looks at Jay. “Who the hell do I ask?”

“Wandering aimlessly will call more attention to ourselves,” Jay states.

Huxley shakes his head, exasperated. This place has a suffocating nature to it. Especially for those that don't belong. He is surrounded by men that would kill him outright if they knew who he was, or what he'd done. It sets his teeth to grinding and his muscles contract all across his body.

Another circumspection.

And there, a sign.

A handwritten sign, held by an ancient old man, skin black as charcoal and a beard white like bleached bones. Not a hair on his head. The man sits on a stool to the side of the road, snugged in between two shops hawking unknown merchandise.

INFO 4 TRADE

The old man seems to be staring right at Huxley.

Huxley stares back for a time, but the old man gives no indication that he cares. He does not beckon Huxley to him, or change his facial expression. The prolonged eye contact seems to be utterly lost on this old man.

“Infuhmation,” the old man calls out suddenly. “Infuhmation for trade.”

Huxley glances about again, and again finds the street unaware of his existence. All except for the old man with the sign. Huxley looks at Jay. His companion squints with a discerning eye at the old man with the sign, but after a moment, he can't seem to come up with an objection, so he shrugs.

“Might as well,” Jay says, gesturing toward the man.

Huxley moves slowly through the lanes of people until he reaches the curb and steps up onto it, perhaps five or ten feet from where the old man sits.

Standing up close to him, Huxley realizes just how old the man is. His skin sags like ancient leather. There is nothing under it but bones, old tendons, and swollen joints. One leg is propped on the stool, but the other is not there. Just an empty pant leg that drapes across the rough-hewn rungs of the homemade stool.

The man never breaks eye contact.

Suspicious, Huxley sways to the left and to the right.

The old man's eyes don't track.

They are dark and bloodshot and Huxley realizes they are not staring at him. They are not staring at anything.

The old man's eyebrows furrow. “Who's'at?” he says roughly. “You wah' some infuhmation?”

“He's blind,” Jay says.

The old man's mouth takes a downturn. “No shit I'm blind. Don't matter. Ol' Reggie sees e'rything.” A slight smile tweaks the man's mouth. The corners are crusted in parts, pasty white froth on the inside edges. “Ol' Reggie
knows
e'rything.” He turns his head slightly to the side. “Jerry! Jerry! Who's 'is gen'lman?”

The man at the neighboring booth leans over with a flash of annoyance, but eyes Huxley up and down. “Some fuckin' guy,” the man says. “Never seen 'im before.”

“Ahhhh,” Ol' Reggie trails off into a chuckle, his mouth gaping open in his face and revealing only two mangled brown teeth, one on the top, and one on the bottom, and both on opposite sides. His voice attains a quiet sort of introspection. “So … some li'l lost sheep tryin' to fin' his way through the big, bad forest, huh?”

Huxley glances between Reggie and the man he called Jerry.

Jerry shrugs, rolls his eyes, and returns to his own business.

“C'mere.” Reggie waves Huxley forward, setting his sign down on the ground. “C'mere, little sheep. How can I help you get through the forest?”

Huxley smirks.
Little sheep.
But he steps forward, intentionally scuffs his feet on the dirty concrete sidewalk so that Reggie knows he's there. “I'm looking for someone.”

The little smug smile fades off of Reggie's face like the last glimmers of sunlight at dusk. His blind eyes stare up at nothing, but his face shows an understanding all its own. Almost as though he had recognized Huxley's voice.

Do you know me?
Huxley is suddenly alarmed.
Do I know you?

But of course, the man is a stranger. There is no way he could know Huxley.

Reggie's lips compress and he looks suddenly very cautious. Almost frightened. “So,” he says slowly. “You're no little lost sheep after all. Are you?”

Huxley pauses, thinking about a trap. But Reggie is only one blind man. And no one else around them seems to care, or listen, or watch. “What makes you say that?”

The old man's bushy white eyebrows furrow together. “My, but what big teeth you have.”

Huxley's face darkens.

He feels a tug at his shoulder.

“C'mon,” Jay says. “This guy's a waste of time.”

Huxley sneers down at the blind man and begins to turn, but Ol' Reggie reaches out and grabs Huxley by the wrist.

“You said you're looking for someone.”

Huxley's voice takes a warning tone. “You got a very accurate grab for a blind man.” His voice goes quiet, so that only Reggie can hear him. “Maybe you take your hands off me before I open you up right here on the street.”

Reggie immediately releases him. He wags a finger at Huxley. “Someone, you say? You're looking for someone?” His hand waggles back and forth in the air. “Jus' so happens, I know someone. Maybe it's the same someone.”

“How much?” Huxley reaches for a leather pouch filled heavy with gold coins taken from the
Misery
. The sacking of the slave barge had at least been lucrative.

Reggie holds up one of his gnarled old hands, his nearly toothless mouth working slowly.

Huxley hesitates, his hands touching the strings of the pouch.

“No,” Reggie says, finally, waving his hand once. “No payment for this. You see, I lied when I said that Ol' Reggie sees e'rything. 'Cause I'm blind. Cain't see shit. But oh, I can hear. And your eyes can tell you lies, but the truth always rings clear like a bell. So what I really should say, is Ol' Reggie
hears
everything. And I can hear inside of you, Mr. Man. I can hear the truth. And I says to myself, ‘Don't take no money from this man, but give 'im what he wants and speed 'im on his way and stay on his good side.'”

Huxley compresses his lips, picking through Reggie's odd words. “You want nothing?”

Reggie shakes his head once. His expression is grave, his eyebrows raising up. “I jus' want you to get what you came for and move along. And never have a reason to be mad at Ol' Reggie. That's what I want.”

Huxley's tongue rubs the front of his teeth. He can feel the grime on them. Taste the foulness of his own breath. What did he sound like to this old man? What did he smell like to him? Something frightening. Something unsettling. The scent of danger. Like the scent of a predator in the nose of prey.

He hears inside of you … 

“Let's just ask and go,” Jay grumbles.

“Yes,” Reggie gestures with a hand. “Ask about this someone that you're looking for. And then go.”

Huxley spits on the sidewalk at his feet. “I'm looking for a slaver.”

Reggie snorts. “Well, you're in Shreveport, my friend. Look around you.”

“A particular slaver.”

Reggie bows his head and closes his blind eyes. “A'course, a'course. Someone that's done you wrong. M-hm. And you want to know where to find this partic'lar slaver. But I says to myself, ‘Don't this Mr. Man know that these slavers get around? Here today and gone tomorrow? Ain't no tellin' where this one partic'lar slaver has gotten off to.' Maybe it might help to narrow it down a bit.”

Huxley trades a glance with Jay. The risk is there, but there is no reward without risk. He cannot find the man he is looking for without asking around. Yes, it might call attention to him. Yes, word might get back that Huxley is looking for the man. But by the same token, he cannot simply divine where the man is. He must be told. By someone.

Huxley turns his attention back to Reggie. “He's got a scorpion tattoo on his neck. That's all I can tell you.”

Reggie's bony index finger hovers in the air, quivering. “All you can tell me? Or all that you're
willin'
to tell me?”

“It's all I know.”

“M-hm.” The bony finger retracts, folds up into Reggie's fist. The ancient old man raises his head, opens his bloodshot, blind eyes, and turns his old, leathern face down the street, further away from the docks, further into Shreveport. “Haven't heard his voice in a while. But last I did, he was the number one customer over at Big Josie's tavern. Maybe you go ask around up there. And maybe you don't ever say nothin' about me, you hear, Mr. Man? That's a part of the deal. That's what you agreed to.”

“Yeah,” Huxley nods, following Reggie's gaze down the road. “I never talked to you. Where's Big Josie's place?”

Reggie picks up his sign again and sets it on his lap, as though clearing their accounts and indicating that he is done. He straightens and fixes his blind gaze out into the passing throngs. Under his breath, he says, “Two blocks down and make a right. First door on the left. And now we're done. Now you leave me be.”

Huxley looks at the man a moment longer, wondering if he should not deposit something quietly at the man's feet. But then he thinks,
Fuck this shriveled old man. He said he doesn't want anything from me but to be left alone. So I'll give him what he wants.

Huxley turns away and steps down off the curb.