Wolves (4 page)

“I'm not gonna kill him.”

“Then deal with it.”

Huxley looks quickly between the dying man and Jay. His lips are tightened to a bloodless line. His jaw muscles bunching as he grinds his teeth away—that good, cleansing pain. This is Huxley's weakness: he is still trying to have pity. He is still trying to show mercy to people. But what place does that have in this world?

He hates the slavers for what they did. But that doesn't mean that this dying man is his friend. Huxley owes him nothing. And Jay is right. He will be dead soon enough. Giving him anything would simply be a waste of their resources.

Huxley takes a breath and looks at the old Mexican man. “I can't give you water. No agua. You are going to die anyway.”

“Sí, agua,” the old man says, pointing at the water skin.

For all Huxley knows, he is the original owner of the water skin.

But not anymore.

“No,” Huxley says. “Not for you. You are going to die. You understand that, right? Comprende? You're going to die. But your water will help me live. And because I can live, I can find the people that did this to you.” Huxley shakes his head. “I know you don't understand a word of that. Or maybe you do. But that's the way it is.” Huxley points the knife between him and Jay. “We're strong. We will survive.”

The man falls silent, but breathes rapidly, shallowly.

Huxley turns his back on him.

Jay continues to pick through the wreckage looking for valuables left behind by the slavers. Huxley goes back to the ox carcass and the meat he had been able to harvest from it. He takes the meat, and he lays the pieces over a stick, and he holds the stick over the embers of one of the wagons and lets them cook. The meat chars and sizzles, fat dripping into the fire. Smoke lifts into the air.

What do I feel?

I feel ashamed. I feel ashamed that I am standing in the middle of all this death, and my mouth is watering for stolen meat, and I'm alive because of stolen water.

He should feel it stronger, he supposes, but it is a muted thing. A far-off cry.

The old dying man has been quiet since they walked away, but he begins to cry out, his voice dry and cracking. “Agua!” his voice hisses. “Amigos … amigos … por favor. Ten compasión. Agua! Agua!”

Huxley doesn't look. He keeps his eyes on the bubbling, crisping flesh.

The man's cries become faint, and then they are gone.

Huxley pulls the meat from over the coals. It smokes in the air. Huxley is starving. He cannot remember when he ate last, and whenever it was, it wasn't much. He's holding chunks of meat now, and nothing else matters.

He grabs a piece of the meat and starts shoving it in his mouth. It is burned on the outside, nearly raw on the inside. It doesn't matter. Blood and grease pour down his chin and into his beard. Jay appears at his side, drops a canvas satchel on the ground that clanks noisily, filled with pilfered items. Huxley gives him the other half of the meat. The two men squat down and tear at the chunks. If they'd been able to see themselves, they might've had pause. But their bodies need food. That is all they know.

They eat the meat. They drink more of the water. And it is only then when some of the madness of starvation has been put aside, that their eyes come up and see what is around them. Burning wreckage. Dead bodies. Blood everywhere. And out beyond the wreckage, shapes that scamper back and forth, eyes shining in the dark.

There are a lot of them.

Only when Huxley notices them do they begin to yip back and forth.

“Coyotes,” Huxley says, reaching for his knife.

Jay shoves the rest of his meat in his mouth, his cheeks bulging. He chews manically, as though he would fight these beasts for it. When he has some room around the wad of food in his mouth, he stands up slowly and speaks. “They just want to eat. Just like we did. Let's just take what we have and go.”

“Go out there?” Huxley isn't so sure, but he is standing with Jay.

Jay nods, carefully grabbing the satchel from the ground. “They won't fight us. Not with all this meat already dead. Why fight us when they can gorge themselves with no effort?”

Huxley pulls his knife from its sheath. “I'm not sure they think it through like that.”

“Trust me,” Jay says. “Let's just walk away.”

Huxley doesn't know how much he trusts Jay, but he trusts him more than he did before, and he finds his feet following Jay's as they slowly move out of the center of the massacre. The coyotes yap and bark at them, but none come close. They stay at the edges of the firelight until Huxley and Jay have given it up, and then they slink in, growling. They test the ox by taking a bite of it and then dancing back. Then another, and another. And soon a dozen brown and tan shapes are moving through the camp, grabbing at the dead oxen, grabbing at the human remains.

By morning this whole scene will be a scattering of bloody bones and patches of skin and hair.

Huxley moves backward and sideways, but keeps his eyes on the coyotes until they are so far away that the coyotes are not even paying them any mind. They are barking at each other, but they don't fight for limbs. They are efficient. They don't waste time when they know there is enough for them all to feast. They have that cold sort of intelligence about them.

Huxley turns back into the night. Jay is a few paces ahead of him. He jogs to catch up and falls in step with the other man as they pick their way through the dark desert.

Chapter 5

That night, Huxley dreams of the barley fields again.

He is standing at the edge of them with his wife and daughter, as he always is in this memory. But this time his wife and daughter, they have no hair. It has been burned off of their scalps. Charity. Nadine. His beautiful girls. They look up at him. There is something off about their faces. Some little detail has been lost, like he cannot fully remember what they look like.

It terrifies him.

They look at him with their unfamiliar, undetailed faces, and their singed, bald heads.

They beg him for water, but he has none to give them.

“Water,” a voice says, but it is neither of theirs.

This is a real voice, not a dream voice, and it pulls him through the membranes of reality and imagination … 

He blinks. He is looking at Jay.

Jay is standing over him. The sky is light with early morning. Jay looks angry.

“What?” Huxley says, heart thudding.

“I said, ‘Where's the fucking water?'”

Huxley leans up into a sitting position, trying to shake off sleep and nightmares. Jay backs up a step, but he's still standing over Huxley.

“It's in the … the …” Huxley looks around for the water skin.

His eyes trace over Jay, and he realizes that the man is holding a knife.

Huxley reaches for his own, realizes the sheath is empty.

My knife. He's holding my knife.

His eyes go up to Jay's. “What the hell is this?” His voice is stone-cold.

Jay points at him with the knife. “Did you take the fucking water?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I went to bed with a half a skin of water and when I wake up it's gone. Did you drink it? Just be honest. Be honest, Huxley. Did you drink the water?”

Huxley lurches to his feet.

Jay backs up another step, still holding the knife.

“I didn't drink the water,” Huxley grinds out. “Now you drop the knife or we're gonna have problems, Jay.”

Jay is not going to drop the knife. He opens his arms wide. “Well then where's the fucking water? Where is it?”

Huxley wants to put his hands around the man's neck. “I've been asleep!” he snaps. “How the fuck should I know where the water is? You were the one that went to bed with it strapped to your body! I should be asking you the same question! Where's the water, Jay? Where the fuck is it?”

Jay shakes his head. “Don't try to spin this on me, Huxley.”

Huxley looks to the ground. “Did you walk off to take a piss and leave it unguarded?” he demands. His eyes fall on a set of tracks that lead away from their little camp. He points to them. “You did, didn't you!”

Jay stares at the tracks.

“Jesus,” Huxley kicks dirt. “You're about to gut me with my own knife and it's your own damn fault that the water got taken!”

Jay is looking at the tracks hard. He holds up a hand. “I didn't take a piss last night.”

“What? You sleepwalk?”

“No,” Jay is following the tracks with his eyes. “Those aren't my tracks.”

Huxley goes quiet. He looks at the tracks.

They are steady tracks, carefully tread when they are close. But as they get farther away, they get sloppier. Just general impressions in the sandy dirt as the person that made them began to run. How long ago? How old were they?

The tracks lead up to a short pile of boulders, maybe fifty yards from them.

Huxley points. “There.”

Jay nods.

In an instant, their argument is forgotten. They are both fixed on the boulders. Jay very steadily hands the knife back to Huxley. Huxley takes it, holds it underhanded.

Huxley's voice is quiet. “You think they're still there?”

Jay shakes his head. “I don't know.”

Huxley eyes the footprints in the sand again. It looks like only one set.

“Come on,” Jay says, starting toward it.

The second he steps foot in that direction, a short, dark figure bursts out of concealment behind the rocks, sprinting away.

“Shit!” Huxley leaps forward.

“He's got our water!” Jay yells and hurtles himself toward the boulders.

Huxley's feet churn through the sand, but he gets his momentum up, and then he is flying across. This is the best-fed, most hydrated he's been in weeks. He feels suddenly unstoppable. And Jay may be a stouter man, but Huxley's strides are long, and they eat up distance.

He is passing Jay in a few seconds, and already gaining ground on the running figure ahead of them. Huxley can see it is a man, a dark-skinned man. The thief's clothes seem many sizes too large for his squat figure and they billow about him as he runs. He keeps looking back over his shoulder, and all that registers with Huxley is the way the man's eyes are so wide, so white, so terrified.

It makes Huxley run harder.

“I'm gonna fuck you up!” Huxley screams at the man.

The man looks back again. More ground lost. Every time he looks back, Huxley is closer, and the man knows it. His mouth is a wide O of fear. Huxley is closing in now, within yards. In another few seconds he will be able to reach out and grab the man. And he wants to catch him. He wants it so badly, he can feel the power of it, like a dog chasing a rabbit, he wants to get his hands on this motherfucker and rip the life out of him … 

Suddenly the man stops and spins, holding up his hands. “No hay nada!” he screams, cringing away from Huxley. “Ten compasión!”

Huxley slams into the man as hard as he can. The two bodies go sprawling into the dirt, the thief toppling head over heels. Huxley slides on his belly, then rolls. He kicks sand and dust into the air as he struggles to his feet, still gripping his knife, ready to gut this thief.

The thief knows it. He jumps up from his hands and feet, trying to run again, but this time Jay tackles him, slinging him face-first into the ground.

The thief rolls, eyes squeezed shut, the skin scraped off his face, dirt and blood mixing. He holds his hands up as Jay staggers over, looking like he is about to stomp the thief's face into the dirt.

“Ten compasión!” he pleads again. “No hay nada!”

It registers through Huxley's rage.

“Wait!” Huxley reaches out and grabs Jay before he can plant his boot heel into the man's head.

“What?” Jay jerks away from Huxley. He wants blood. “He took our water!”

Huxley points the knife. “He's one of the Mexicans.”

Jay opens his mouth to say something, then looks down at the man.

Huxley steps in, breathing hard. “You one of the Mexicans?”

The man looks up at Huxley. He has round, very dark features. A wispy moustache. There is something wrong with one eye. It's cloudy and the lid looks like it droops. He looks to be about thirty, if that. He is breathing hard, hands held up and shaking as he lies on his back.

“Sí, Mexico,” he says.

“You speak English?” Huxley demands.

“Ah … a little bit.” It sounds like
ah lihl bee.

“The slavers,” Huxley says, trying to speak clearly despite his chest still heaving. “Was it your group they hit? The slavers?” For some reason Huxley mimes the word “slavers” by making a gun from his fingers and pretending to fire it. “Was that your people? Your family?”

The man's face darkens. “Los lobos.”

Jay spits into the dirt, dry and contemptuous. “This is bullshit. Where's our water?”

Huxley glances at his companion. The other man's pale, sunburned face is rocky and cruel. He doesn't care. He didn't care about the old man, and he certainly doesn't care about this one. He just wants the water. He wants to make sure that he and Huxley survive.

Can you argue with that?

Huxley addresses the lone surviving member of the caravan. “Where's our water?”

The man on the ground points to his voluminous coat. “Ayi. Lo siento. Por favor, no hay nada.”

Jay kicks the man in the leg. “Speak English!”

“Sorry,” the caravanner cringes back. “No hurt.”

“You're
gonna
hurt,” Jay says through clenched teeth.

Huxley bends over the man and pulls his coat open roughly. Inside, the water skin is hanging from the man's shoulder. Huxley rips it off of the man, feeling a little bit of his anger returning, though it's tempered now. How dare he take their water? But still … Huxley supposes it was
his
water first.

Huxley has to pull the caravanner's arm from the sleeve of his jacket to get the strap of the water skin off. When he pulls the water skin free, he hefts it, hears water sluicing around inside. It still has water in it, though less than Huxley remembers from the other night.

“Thirsty,” the Mexican says.

Jay kicks him again. “No, you're not getting any more water.” He fixes Huxley with his pale eyes. “Kill this wetback and let's get the hell out of here.”

Huxley shakes his head. “It was technically his water.”

“Technically?” Jay raises his eyebrows. “Fucking
technically?
”

Huxley glares at his companion. “Get a hold of yourself.”

Jay becomes still. “I have complete control of myself, brother. Don't think that I don't. But when someone takes something from you, they need to die. That's the law of the Wastelands.”

“Then he should've slit our throats last night.”

Jay makes an angry noise in the back of his throat, but has no verbal response.

Huxley turns back to the caravanner. He doesn't want to kill the man anymore. But that doesn't mean Huxley has any kindness for him. He nudges the man with his boot. “Go. Get the fuck out of here.”

The smaller man stands up, hesitantly at first, and then quickly. He stares.

Huxley and Jay both shoo him like a dog. “Go!” Huxley shouts at him. “Go on!”

The man runs. At first, it seems like he is trying to get away, but Huxley watches his pace slow, and then the man stops and turns and looks at them. Like he suddenly realized they let him live, which is probably far beyond what he would've gotten from anyone else in this world. And the Wastelands are a big, dangerous place for a lone man. Huxley knows this from experience.

“Fuck him,” Jay says, and puts a hand on Huxley's shoulders, encouraging him to turn his back on the caravanner. “He's wasting our time now. Already wasted our water, now he's burning our daylight.”

Huxley refocuses himself.
The slavers. That's what you're here for. To go east. To see where the slavers go. To find the woman with the black braid and make her pay for what she and her people did last night. And to find the man with the scorpion tattoo, and make him pay for what he did eighteen months ago.

To find all of them, really. To make them all bleed.

Huxley and Jay walk back to their little campsite and grab the satchel of things Jay had pilfered from the Mexican caravan the night before. Then they turn themselves toward the road again. The tire tracks are still visible on the road. Wherever the slavers camped the night before, they continued on this morning, and it doesn't seem like they know they're being followed.

Good
, Huxley thinks.
Let them get comfortable.

The two men put themselves between the tire tracks again, and start walking.

Behind them, just a dark, ghostly smudge on the pale landscape, the caravanner follows.