Wolves (45 page)

And then it is gone.

Cartwright spins toward the door, revolver held up. “The fuck was that?”

“Sounded like a powder charge,” someone says, their voice tight.

There is stillness, all the empirical data of the moment just kind of hanging there like unpicked fruit, and Huxley plucking it down and looking at it. Because he just did this. He just used gunpowder to set fire to a house … 

There is a crackling sound, and it quickly turns to a roar.

There is angry, orange light slipping through the slatboards now, and tendrils of smoke. And it is all around them. Not just at the door, but on every wall. At the base of everything. Completely surrounding them, and the orange glow gets brighter by the second, glowing on the faces of several men who have been sitting in the darkness.

“Fire!” someone cries.

And Huxley keeps thinking,
I know this, I know this, I remember it … 

Cartwright points to someone. “Nobody move! Stay where you are!”

Someone runs for the rickety outline of the door and flings it open before he can really register Cartwright's command. He stands terrified for a brief moment. He looks back over his shoulder at Cartwright, confusion and fear on his face. He doesn't want to be caught in the fire. But he doesn't want to disobey Cartwright.

Cartwright knows something too.

He waves hurriedly to the man standing in the doorway. “Get back inside!”

The man at the door twitches—his neck explodes.

There is the ringing of a gunshot from outside.

Cartwright swears loudly, dives off to the side. He reaches out a hand and grabs the man by the collar, hauling him back inside while someone in the shadows of the hideout kicks the door closed again. The man on the ground, shot in the throat, is kicking in a panic, hands grabbing at his throat, spluttering blood.

Already the fire is licking at the walls, prying at the slats, trying to get in through the murder holes and the windows.

It has them pinned. Surrounded.

If they leave, they will be shot.

If they stay, they will be burned to death.

“Fuck!” Cartwright screams.

Huxley begins to laugh, the raw laughter that comes out of that deep, dark, hopeless place inside of him. The kind of laughter that Jay put in his chest. It starts as a wheeze, drowned out by the yelling men around him and the roar of flames as they grow and grow along the walls outside like burning vines. But his laughter grows with it, louder, into a cackle that spends every bit of air in his lungs and makes his head hurt, but he can't stop laughing at them, these huge, ironic fools.

Cartwright is staring at him, his eyes a little wider than they should be, maybe for once feeling the fear that he was so good at striking into others. Maybe for once feeling his rank fall to a position lower than the top of the food chain. Maybe realizing that he is not the apex predator. Maybe all of the things that he has done are flashing through his brain in that instant and he knows that death is chasing at his heels, and wondering, knowing, that if anything comes after, it will be punishment.

The things you do are never lost. No matter how far into the Wastelands you did them.

“The fuck are you laughing about?” Cartwright screams at him as the man in his arms splutters his last breath, drowning in his own blood.

Huxley gasps, breathless. “It's Black Heart Davies,” Huxley says. “He's come for you. He's come for us both.”

Chapter 3

The shopkeeper is determined. He drops the big scattergun on the ground. He has to hunch over as he strides quickly through the room, everyone yelling at him to get back away from the door, to get down.

They all saw what happened to the other man.

Smoke is filling the room and the shopkeeper has to duck under it, still coughing as he goes.

“I'm not a part of this,” he says, perhaps more to convince himself than anyone else. “I'm not one of your crew, Nate! I'm going out to explain myself!”

Cartwright is shaking his head, distracted, scooting himself away from the burning wall while he tries to fish a bandanna from his pocket to filter some of the smoke from his mouth and nose. “It don't matter,” he coughs once. “He'll shoot you dead as soon as you step outside.”

“I ain't burnin' alive!” the shopkeeper shouts back.

The door is on fire. He kicks it open, flinching away from a shower of embers, then plowing through a screen of smoke and into the night. His voice can be heard, and Huxley can see the silhouette of the man, made indistinct by the billowing smoke, his arms raised high above his head.

“Don't shoot! Don't shoot! I'm coming out!”

Boom.

Boom.

The shopkeeper's silhouette disappears, and so does his voice.

Another voice, belting through the night outside, loud and clear above the crackling and the roaring around them. Huxley knows that voice. He knows exactly who it is, and it dries up the black humor in his chest and he realizes that this is his time too, just as much as it is Cartwright's.

“Come out and take your justice like a man, or burn alive like a coward,” the voice calls out. “Choice is yours. By the end of tonight, you'll all be dead anyway.”

Panic is coursing through the men inside. The fire is burning their wits away. They are huddling now toward the middle of the shack as the walls start to sprout flame. Huxley can feel it now, the heat on his face, on his back. No one is going to cut him down. No one is going to free him. He does not have the choice that was given to Cartwright. He will die in this fire.

Cartwright holds both of his revolvers now, he fidgets on the floor, unable to get into a position where the heat is not painful. And the smoke is filling the room. They will not last much longer in here. “Davies!” he barks out into the darkness beyond the open door. “There are five of us in here. How many do you have?”

“Just myself,” the voice comes back, supremely confident. “But I got about two bullets for each of you. Think I'll use 'em all?”

Cartwright gets his bandanna over his face, muffling a string of curses as he stamps his feet. He pulls the bandanna away, his voice taking out a desperate tone. “We have Huxley!” he coughs. “Let us go and we'll give you Huxley!”

“I know you have Huxley,” Davies responds, his tone almost amused. “He ain't my problem. You are. And he's either gonna stay in there and get burned up, or come out and get his justice anyway. So you don't really have a bargaining chip there, Nate. Come on out and take it like a man.”

Niner speaks up, holding his rifle, snot and drool and tears coming out of his mouth as he coughs profusely. The words come between coughs. “We can't stay … we'll fight … fight our way out!”

Cartwright is nodding, jerking himself up onto his knees, then his feet, still bent over to avoid the thickest smoke. “Let's go,” he waves his revolvers. “Everyone ready?”

They are all ready. They do not want to be burned alive.

There is a flash of time just before they burst out of the door when Huxley can appreciate the simple efficiency of Black Heart Davies' tactic. It is cruel. But it is effective. The smoke weakens the men, fills their eyes with tears. The fire will blind them. And Black Heart Davies will be in the darkness, likely behind a thick tree, and he will pick them off casually as they funnel through the door. Their fire-blinded eyes will never be able to see where he is. They are blind men in a gunfight.

There is a reason they call him Black Heart Davies.

Even as low as Huxley's head is to the floor as he dangles upside down from the rafters, the smoke is still hitting him. His eyes are watering profusely, and his lungs are burning. He tries to take short breaths, tries to avoid that whole big inhale of smoke, but it still burns, and now it burns for oxygen too. He coughs, takes an involuntary breath, coughs again.

What do I feel?

I don't want this.

The smoke is going to choke him. And then the fire will strip the skin from his body, it will bubble him, it will cook him until his blood turns solid and the water separates and runs out of him … 

Cartwright's men stand up in halting movements, all of them coughing, bleary-eyed from the sting of smoke, and they stumble for the door, lambs to the slaughter. Their choices shrunken down to two pitiful ends. One seems like a way out if they can fight hard enough, but in reality, it is only an illusion.

There is a fusillade of gunfire from outside.

It should've been satisfying, but the fire is creeping in, and Huxley has only one thought.

Nadine.

He needs to live. Because his daughter is alive.
Might
be alive. And he is here, strung up with no way out, and flames ripping closer to him every second. She is out there. Out there somewhere in the cold, cold night. She wonders what became of her father, perhaps believes that he is already dead.

I'm not! I'm alive!

He twists and manages to catch a glimpse of Jay. The other man is jerking around, trying to yank himself free of the ropes that bind him. They are not coming loose. Huxley didn't think that they would. He catches Huxley's gaze and there is pure panic in his own.

“Help me!” he yelps. “Get me out of here!'

No,
Huxley thinks.
I need to be free of you.

Huxley can feel the heat, the horrible heat. His body is involuntarily jerking around, trying to avoid it, but it is all around him. He is trapped in an oven. It is growing, rapidly, exponentially, every half second that passes is a world of pain worse than the previous.

“Huxley!” Jay is screaming, his voice ragged. “Don't let me die like this! Don't let me die, you sonofabitch!”

Huxley does not want to scream. He does not want to scream because he does not want Black Heart Davies to hear him scream. But the pain is growing so rapidly that it becomes a battle that is fought over endless seconds. He slams his eyes shut against the stinging smoke and heat, feels the tears rush out of his eyes and immediately evaporate on his face.

Oh my God it hurts so bad

He grits his teeth together. When he bares them he can feel the heat of the flame through his teeth. It is a ripping pain now, along his back, and along his forearms. An indescribable pain. He feels his diaphragm bucking in his chest, trying to let out that scream. It ruptures through his throat, scrapes its way up and comes out through his clenched teeth, hissing spittle through them. He tries to hold it back, but the concept of it begins to elude him, why he is trying not to scream is suddenly forgotten in how monumental the pain is.

The fire is gonna burn me alive!

It's gonna eat me alive!

The scream bursts out of him, three quick screams, like they've built up, like the pressure is so great to excise the pain that he cannot contain it. He gasps and screams, gasps and screams, as fast as he can let the pain out, as fast as he can suck in the burning air. His world has become agony. But the screams give him tiny flashes of clarity, little jumps and starts for the bit of his mind that can still think beyond what his nerves are telling him.

Those clear moments flash with blood and tragedy.

Charity, his wife, bloody and broken on the floor.

No, no, no.

Think of something good.

Try to think of something good.

Because these might be his last moments.

These might be his last thoughts.

Just a picture.

Her face lifted up to the sky. Starlight in her eyes. Mouth open in wonder, a slight smile on her lips. A moment of happiness, of peace, when his little girl was just his little girl and he was just Daddy and for a brief moment things were normal, wonderful, beautiful.

“I love you more than all the stars in the sky,” he would say.

I'm sorry, sweet girl
 … 

He is floating in fire.

Then he hits the ground.

Flames. Pain. Burning.

He feels disassembled. His arms are moving free.

He can't make sense of it, but he doesn't try. His skin prickles and feels like it's cracking in the intense heat as he moves, but he pulls his head up and opens his eyes to the burning again. Everything is orange and yellow and white. Everything but that square straight in front of him. That is black. Black and cold. Cold like the ocean. Like quenching water. He wants that black square more than anything else.

Go! Go while you can!

He claws. His feet are still bound together, he can't move them. As he squints through the heat, he manages to catch a glimpse of his wrist and he plants his hand on the plank floors and pulls himself forward. He can't tell if his skin is truly burned or not—everything looks red. On his wrists are smoking threads of rope that have been burned through to ashes. That is his right hand.

He hitches himself forward. Left hand out. That one is not so bad, the rope looks less burned there.

The cold black square. The door.

He focuses on it.

Behind him, there are screams.

Is he still screaming?

No, it's Jay. Jay is screaming. Jay cannot make words any longer. He cannot shout Huxley's name. He can only scream in agony. And the sound is horrible, and perhaps if Huxley was not about to die himself he would have turned around for the man out of sheer pity, but there is something hard inside of him that blocks that thought and he keeps thinking,
I need to be free of him.

Huxley can feel the air rushing in at him. It feels arctic compared to what is behind and around him.

Just make it to the door!

Huxley cries out again as he drags himself across the planks. He reaches the door and rolls himself through it. He feels hard earth. Dusty dirt. It is cold. The wind is like ice all around him, but it soothes him, cool water on a burn. How badly is he burned? How much of his body is covered in burns? How badly are his lungs scarred? He made it out, but that doesn't mean he will live.

He hears a crumbling sound behind him, the sound of charred timbers beginning to collapse on themselves. He twists through a fog of pain and looks at the shack. It is a lonesome thing, a cube of wood, nearly entirely consumed by flames now. From inside the groaning structure, there is still screaming. Huxley stares into the flames with wide eyes and hazy vision and he lifts his hands to block his ears, but it does nothing. No matter how hard he presses his hands to his ears he can still hear Jay screaming, endlessly, painfully. And then, very suddenly, it goes silent.

Huxley gasps for breath. Coughs hard.

He realizes smoke is still trailing off of his body. Steam, too. His body is so hot that it is steaming in the cool night air. He is singed. The pain begins to center itself, not just an all-over pain now, but beginning to focus itself in certain spots—his right arm and hand, his right leg, the right side of his face.

He rolls to his left, trying to take some pressure off the skin. Everything hurts. The brush of grass and dirt is painful. The wind scouring across him is nearly unbearable. He begins to shake.

But he is exultant.

He is alive.

He curls in on himself, like a pill bug. Clutching his burned arm, wondering how badly his face is burned. He smells the stink of roasted hair. Acrid. Nauseating.

“Mr. Huxley,” a voice says.

That
voice.

He rips himself out of his pain and cranes his neck. He sees old dusty boots. Tracks them up to the torn and mended pants. And then the muzzle of a pistol. Not a revolver, but a semiautomatic pistol. One of the cartridge pistols of the Old World. Its black slide and muzzle glimmer with the light of the fire behind him. And beyond that muzzle there are two cold eyes, alight with the same fire, a sad line of a mouth, craggy, bony features.

Huxley stares into the black hole hovering over his face and says the only words that mean anything to him in that moment, the ones that have been jarred loose from their ancient, encrusted moorings and drift around endlessly in his head: “I think my daughter is alive.”