Wolves (7 page)

Rigo is tearing at his piece with abandon. The question of the meat is either lost or unimportant to him.

Over the sound of his own loud chewing, Huxley hears the gate rattling open again. He turns and sees three men entering. The first thing he notices about the men is how they smile and grin. They toss jokes back and forth with the sentries. They are well known here. They seem genuinely happy. And perhaps it has to do with the heavy satchels they are carrying—trade goods, Huxley assumes. Each of them carries a huge, reinforced canvas sack, and Huxley can tell by the way the men carry them that they are heavy. Just by sheer quantity of goods, these men could have the run of Borderline.

Huxley snorts and shakes his head.

Jay leans in close, saying exactly what Huxley was thinking. “You think they came by all that loot honestly?”

“Not a chance,” Huxley mumbles. He looks at Rigo.

Rigo is frozen in place. His dark eyes have gone wide, showing the whites all around. A piece of half-chewed salt beef hangs in his mouth. He is staring at the three men as they enter Borderline. His hands are shaking. The salt beef falls out of his mouth and onto the dusty ground.

“Los lobos,” he says.

Chapter 8

Los lobos.

The slavers.

Huxley makes the connection quickly and rips his eyes away from the three men as they walk through the gate and into Borderline. He is staring at the counter, but their faces are burning in his eyes. He cannot believe what he has just seen. The way they smile. The way they joke. All the while holding their satchels, weighed down with the belongings of people they've robbed and murdered.

Huxley forces himself to breathe.

What do I feel?

I feel like I want them to bleed.

Huxley has the presence of mind to elbow Rigo in the ribs to get him to snap out of it. “Don't stare,” he hisses. In his mind he is thinking,
What do you do? What do you do right now? They're right here. They're right behind you.

Huxley can hear the sound of their boots in the dirt behind him. It is like having his back to dangerous animals. But no, they aren't the most dangerous animals.
He
is. Because those slavers, those sadistic killers … they took everything from him and left him with nothing. And a desperate man with nothing to lose is the most dangerous animal alive.

Huxley is belly-up to the smokehouse counter, but he turns his head, discreetly, and looks at the three slavers. They are heading for the whorehouse. Still grinning. So pleased with themselves. So insolent. Huxley thinks of the jawbones clattering from the poles. The wagon is not here. Just these three. Here to sell and trade the loot. Borderline doesn't like slavers, but the slavers can always act like traders, leave their wagon out in the desert somewhere.

There is a sickness to it. To steal and kidnap from these people. And then turn around and trade and sell them back the things you took from them. All the while, their families and loved ones lie in chains somewhere out there, listening to the jawbones of dead relatives whispering to them from death.

Huxley feels like he might grind his teeth to dust. Every nerve in his body seems to be buzzing. His skin prickles as he looks at them. He leans against the counter of the smokehouse. His fingers holding on to the edge of it, painful, the knuckles crying out with white, bloodless skin.

He feels Jay stir beside him.

“Those motherfuckers,” Jay whispers under his breath. “Here. Right in front of me.”

The salty tang of the meat's aftertaste is going sour in Huxley's mouth. He can't seem to produce the saliva to swallow. He watches as one of the slavers-disguised-as-traders takes hold of one of the young prostitutes by the whorehouse and pulls her in close. She giggles in poorly feigned pleasure, but Huxley can see that her eyes are devoid of feeling. But these men do not care. They want their pound of flesh, and they have the payment to please the whoremaster.

Huxley looks sharply at Rigo. “You sure about this?”

For all his dark complexion, Rigo has gone white. But his cheeks are burning red. “Los lobos,” he says again, but this time with less fear, and more rage. He wants it. He wants the blood. Just like Huxley. Just like Jay.

Jay seems unsteady. Antsy. “They're right there. Right there. And they don't even know. They don't
know
.”

“They don't know what?” Huxley hisses at him.

Jay fixes him with a wild-eyed look. “They don't know that we want to kill them.”

The keeper of the smokehouse has stayed quiet, acting like he isn't registering anything that they're saying. Until Jay says this last bit. Then old Barry straightens pretty quick. He looks between the men at his counter, his countenance wary.

“Now, gentlemen, y'all go easy now,” he says, but something that he sees in their eyes makes his voice shake. He tries to hold up a placating hand. “You got an issue with them boys that just walked in, you should take it to the guards, okay?”

Huxley is almost leaning across the counter, like he's about to lump Barry in with the slavers. “You know who they are?”

“They's traders, from the—”

“They're fucking slavers,” Huxley snaps.

Barry is shaking. His eyes are shooting back and forth. His voice gets real quiet. “But … the guards …”

Jay looks like he's about to reach across the counter for Barry. “You think the guards are gonna do shit to these guys? You're dreamin'. Because they bring goods to this little trading town and nobody has the balls to question where they came from.”

The three slavers enter the whorehouse. Huxley's mind is fire and ash. Like his dreams. Like his nightmares. Borderline isn't the end of the nightmares. It's just the beginning of new ones. Unfamiliar ones. At least in the desert, it was a simple nightmare. Here, it seems things have grown complicated.

Like an echo rising from the bottom of a deep well in the wilderness, he thinks of his own wife and daughter.

A tremor works its way through Huxley.

Time to stop hiding, old boy.

You're a desperate man with nothing left to live for.

Huxley's brain is on fire. It is a strange, intoxicating feeling. He has been so cautious, so careful, always trying to gain those miles, not letting anything sway him from his course … and now, just to put it all aside, to admit to himself that all is lost and that there is nothing left but blood and death, to plunge into it so heartlessly, so mindlessly … 

It feels good.

Huxley pulls the scattergun from his back and smacks it harshly on the countertop.

Barry looks terrified. “I'll call the guards.”

Huxley looks at the man that just spoke, as though he is a child that has spoken out of turn. He holds the man's gaze while he yanks out the bottle of powder that he got from the scrapper. “You call who you want. But know this …” he leans over and speaks quietly. “You know what they are now. You call the guards on me, you're just helping the slavers. And I'll kill a man for that. So maybe it'd be best if you just took cover and minded your own fucking business.”

Barry raises his hands and backs away further into his hovel, seeing the imminent violence like dark storm clouds rolling in on gale winds.

Huxley looks back to the whorehouse. The tarp is still swinging after the last slaver went in to purchase his pleasure. Eyes fixed on that piece of blue plastic, swaying in the wind, Huxley stands the scattergun up in the dirt and pours a heavy charge from the bottle of gunpowder. A page from the paperback to tamp it down.

He points to Rigo's pockets. “Batteries.”

Rigo hesitates, but produces the items from his coat pocket. The collection of batteries includes several AA and a few D-cell batteries. Huxley snatches one of the D-cell batteries from Rigo's palm and it slides easily down the barrel of the scattergun. Huxley rips another page from the paperback novel as wadding and crams it down firmly in the barrel. Then he winds the crank on the side of the weapon until the copper filament is glowing red-hot.

“Qué vas a hacer?” Rigo says.

Huxley nods toward the whorehouse. “Come with me.”

“Hokay.”

Huxley can barely even think straight. But this is good. This is better. He is so tired of running. He is so exhausted of sneaking around. Live or die in the next few seconds—it makes no difference to him. To be
moving
, to be grabbing his fear by the jugular and making it submit to him … it is like feeling the inertia breaking at the top of a hill, before you roll down the other side. It is acceleration. It is mindless. And he doesn't want to stop. Not now. Forward is the only way.

Huxley stalks toward the simple structure. The fat man in charge of the two prostitutes is inside, and to Huxley, intoxicated by the fearlessness of his own actions, the whoremaster is just an obstruction between him and the object of his hatred. Huxley is unthinking, unseeing, unfeeling. He is base, primal, and he is hot and cold all at once. He is alive and he is dead. He is everything and he is nothing.

He bursts through the tarp into the whorehouse. He can't see the whoremaster, doesn't know where he went. There is one, large, main room. Two doorways lead to smaller rooms, both shrouded by tarp. Huxley goes left. No reason at all. That's just the decision that he makes. He sweeps through the tarp doorway without a conscious thought, oblivious to his companions and whether they are following him.

Into the room.

His eyes adjust to darkness.

A man. A girl. A bed.

The girl, on her knees before the man. She's naked. He's clothed, but his pants are down. The whole room smells of body odor and sweat and spit. The girl doesn't notice when he enters, but the man does. He jerks and looks indignantly at Huxley.

“What the fuck …?”

Huxley raises the scattergun without a second thought. The huge bore of the muzzle levels out at the man and there is a brief moment when Huxley sees the realization crashing across his face, and Huxley imagines the victims of this man, the women raped, the men tortured, the children murdered and sold into slavery.

Make him bleed.

There is a great flash of light and a thick burst of gunsmoke like a thunderhead rolling down suddenly out of the sky. The D-cell battery rockets out of the barrel and cleaves the slaver's face into two bloody halves. The body pitches backward.

The naked girl screams.

Huxley turns around and finds Rigo staring wide-eyed. The Mexican utters something in Spanish and makes the sign of the cross over his face and chest. Huxley turns back to the man and the screaming girl. This slaver has a gunbelt still strapped to his pants, which are down under his buttocks, and in that gunbelt is a holstered revolver.

There are shouts from outside.

Where's Jay? Where'd he go?

He rushes past the screaming girl. She crab walks backward on the floor, up onto the filthy mattress. Trying to get away from Huxley. She doesn't understand. She doesn't get what just happened. She doesn't know who the man was, or who Huxley is.

Huxley grabs hold of the man he has just murdered. The body is still twitching. He snatches the gunbelt from the man's pants. Huxley can hear shouting behind him. He doesn't attempt to affix the gunbelt to himself, but removes the revolver and tosses the belt to Rigo.

One of the other slavers bursts through the doorway. He's bare-chested, holding another revolver, identical to the one in Huxley's hand. He cries out as he sees the body on the ground—a friend perhaps—and his cry pleases Huxley. It sounds good to him.

Huxley snaps the hammer back on his revolver and pulls the trigger.

The big revolver bucks and jumps in his grip, like a jackrabbit trying to escape.

The shot goes wide, punching a wide hole in the steel wall.

The slaver in the doorway cringes away, firing his revolver reflexively. The powder billows and the fire belches. The lead ball smacks cleanly through the head of the whore. Her screaming is silenced and she falls backward, legs bent oddly and spread crudely.

Huxley hurtles himself forward. He doesn't know what else to do, except to get close. Suddenly Rigo is there too, and they both slam into the slaver at the same time. The three bodies tumble to the wall, then to the ground. Rigo has attached himself to the slaver's wrist, struggling for the man's revolver as the slaver grunts and groans and tries to hang on.

Huxley plants the muzzle of his revolver deep into the slaver's belly and fires. The man's belly rips open with the force, and things spill out. Rigo slips in the gore once, but recovers and snatches the revolver from the man's weakening grip.

There are screams from outside the room, from the main, center room. Huxley lurches to his feet. He is standing in a cloud of gunsmoke. The room smells like bowels now, and blood, and acrid sulfurous fumes. Rigo is on his feet, fumbling with the revolver, but getting it cocked.

Huxley doesn't look down at the mess he's created. He doesn't care. He wants the blood.

He steps over the dead slaver and pushes the tarp out of the way.

In the center room, the last slaver is lying dead on his belly. Jay is mounted on the man's back. He is holding a third revolver, but he's got it like a club and Huxley can see hair and bone and blood on the curved grip of it. And when he looks down he can see that there isn't much left of the slaver's head. Jay's eyes are wild and strange. He is baring his teeth like an angered animal, and there are speckles of red all over his pale skin. He looks up at Huxley, and a little bit of humanity returns to him.

His voice is a husky croak as he rises unsteadily to his feet. “We should go.”

Chapter 9

Huxley bursts out of the whorehouse into bright, almost blinding daylight. He doesn't have time to wait for his eyes to adjust. He turns in the direction of the gate and starts running. He's got a revolver in one hand, a satchel of stolen goods in the other, and a scattergun on his back. Gunsmoke and the smell of death trail after him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see townspeople scurrying, some standing and staring in shock. But none of them move to intervene.

Up ahead, the gate is rising again. It had closed behind the slavers, but the guards had heard the shooting from inside. They are coming. They are going to fight.

The gate is about chest level now.

Huxley can only see one sentry—the other must be cranking the gate.

Rigo points his own revolver at the one standing there, just as the gate rises enough for them to lock eyes. The sentry has his rifle up to his shoulder. Rigo stutters to a stop, kicking up dust, and he aims and fires, catching the sentry in the shoulder and spinning him.

Before the sentry can recover, Jay hits him, ripping the rifle out of his hands and sending it skittering across the ground. He punches the man in the gut and shoots him in the head as he doubles over.

Too bad. We didn't have a choice.

They were dealing with slavers.

They knew. They had to know.

Huxley turns the corner, just outside the gate, sees the other sentry standing there, hand still on the cable that raises the gate. Huxley points his revolver at the sentry, finger on the trigger.

“Where'd the three men come from?” he yells.

“What?” the young sentry yells, terrified. His eyes are going back and forth between the man that Jay has just killed and Huxley. He is completely confused.

Huxley shoves the revolver barrel into the young man's face, nearly touching his nose. “The three men who just came in here with these bags of goods. Where'd they come from? What direction?”

The young man raises his hands up with his palms spread. The gate clatters down as he releases the cable. The guard closes his eyes. Like he is expecting the shot to take him. “They came from the south,” he quavers. “From the south.”

Huxley growls deep in his throat, and he does not know himself. “You move from that spot before me and my men are out of sight, I swear to God in heaven I'll shoot you dead, boy.”

“I won't move! I swear I won't!”

Huxley pulls himself away from the sentry. Rigo and Jay are already running for a group of horses strung up in a row along a trough. They weren't there before. Must have been the slavers', Huxley assumes, and so he has no issue with taking them. Huxley keeps the young man covered with the revolver while Rigo and Jay untie the horses.

From inside the town of Borderline, people are beginning to scream and shout.

Jay swings into a saddle, a little awkwardly. “We gotta go, Hux!”

Rigo pulls two horses over, one for Huxley. The Mexican shakes his revolver at the sentry, gesturing to the ground. “Abajo, pendejo! Down!”

The sentry flattens himself into the dirt.

Huxley slings quickly into the strap of the canvas satchel and he can feel it pressing the scattergun into his back. He feels cumbersome and weighed down. But he grabs the pommel of the saddle and swings in. His experience with horses is extremely limited. But he does what he's been taught, and what he's seen others do.

Rigo mounts his own ride smoothly, like he's ridden horses all his life.

Someone fires a shot and a clatter of projectiles rips up the dirt below Huxley's horse. He spins to look over his shoulder, sees gunports being flung open on the side of the walls and big bore scatterguns being thrust out.

“Let's go!” Jay shouts again.

Huxley doesn't know how to make the horse go fast, but it seems like Rigo does. Huxley copies the caravanner. He hunches down low, heels the horse in the side, and barks a syllable into its ear. The horse nearly throws him, but then suddenly he is hurtling away, like he's lit the fuse on a rocket.

After months of trudging through the desert, the horse's sprint feels blisteringly fast.

Rigo is ahead of him, Jay by his side.

Huxley squints to keep the dust out of his eyes, but he can taste it in his mouth.

Go. Just go.

More shots from behind.

The horses keep running, the men glued to their saddles like they are just barely clinging to these mad beasts.

Huxley cranes to look over his shoulder. Behind them, Borderline is already shrinking, disappearing into the dust. He can see the young sentry coming up off the ground, betraying his promise. Huxley watches him run and jump behind the five-barreled weapon. It swings in their direction.

Huxley doesn't know if he can make the beast ride any faster—everything is already a dangerous blur—so he just tucks himself as close to the horse's body as he can make himself, feeling the horn of the saddle pressing into his chest, the long hairs of the animal's mane streaking across his face. The animal is heaving, huffing, churning.

It is frightening and exhilarating.

In the increasing distance behind them, the weapon at the gate goes off with an earth-shattering boom. But Huxley, Jay, and Rigo are too far for the weapon to be effective. And they just keep going. Following Rigo.

Rigo steers them smartly toward a draw. Very briefly it makes them each an easily targeted silhouette, as it raises them up and backlights them with the sky, but they are quickly on the other side and racing down, the berm now between them and the settlement.

They race on. Rigo shows no sign of stopping.

They crest another rise, go down the other side. Run along the ravine created by two hills and enter a shallow arroyo. Huxley's buttocks and legs are burning, straining to keep himself tense over the saddle. His arms and shoulders are aching. And the horse seems like it's beginning to flag.

He looks behind them again.

Just rolling hills of low brush. He has no idea where they are, or where Borderline is behind them. He knows that they've been running for … 

Shit … how long?

“Rigo!” he calls out, standing up painfully in the saddle and pulling the reins back.

Rigo looks back over his shoulder at Huxley and pulls back on his own reins. The three riders slow out of a gallop, then canter, and then stop.

All three riders are gasping for breath, right along with their horses.

Huxley slumps into his saddle, his back cramping, his mouth dry.

Jay keeps looking behind them. “You think they're following us?”

Huxley shakes his head. “I don't know.”

The horse underneath him fidgets and whinnies.

Jay is staring, holding uncomfortable eye contact with Huxley.

“What?” Huxley says between breaths.

Laughter bubbles out of Jay. It is a mad laugh. Almost a wheeze. His eyes glimmer darkly in his pink, peeling face. It seems there is no humor in the laugh. It is the laugh that you cry out to challenge the universe. It is the laugh that comes out of you in the face of death.

“What the hell's wrong with you?” Huxley mumbles.

Jay chokes the laughter off. “Nothing,” he says, staring off into an unnamed distance. “Just … fuck them, you know? Fuck those slavers. Fuck the town. They're all in bed together.”

Huxley feels a little hollow. “Yeah. Well. We don't know that.”

“Where do we go now?” Jay asks. “He said the slavers came out of the south. We could go after them. They're three men down.”

“It's still three on seven,” Huxley says, shaking his head. “Still not smart. And you heard the scrapper. They still go east. They just stop in these waypoints.” He looks at Jay. “I don't think the town was in on it. They seemed to hate slavers. And if they were in on it, why would the slavers have to come in and act like regular traders?”

Jay doesn't seem to care too much. “Town's fucked either way. That bitch with the black braid will eventually come looking for her boys. And when she finds out what happened …” Jay whistles. “It ain't gonna be pretty, brother. Ain't gonna be pretty for Borderline.”

“Or they'll come after us,” Huxley says. “We should loop around. Get back on that road. Keep heading east.” Huxley turns to Rigo and points off toward the coming night. “Rigo. East?”

Rigo seems a little taken aback. “South,” he says. “Los lobos. Slavers. We go south.”

Huxley swipes a quick hand over his beard, holding Rigo's eyes with his. “Rigo, it's still three to seven. You understand three to seven? Too dangerous right now. Look at me.” Huxley makes his face sincere as possible. “We will get them. Okay? We will get them. I promise you.”

He spurs his horse before Rigo can answer.

They find a small outcropping of stone that will hide them, and they stop there to make camp. By then it is dark. They build a small fire, and like thieves, they huddle around it and inspect the contents of the slaver's satchels in the ruddy glow of the flames.

There is salvage in the form of tools, books, metal scrap, household chemicals, and tightly rolled animal pelts. There is also a coffee can that contains a stash of .22 caliber ammunition, which is as good a currency as any. They also find a stash of gold coins.

Huxley picks up one of the coins and inspects it. It is not something minted in the Old World, he can tell that straight off the bat. The circle of it is crude, the stamping uneven. One side looks like a cross, dividing the coin into four parts. These lines are deeply struck into the coin so that only a thin layer of gold remains there.

“It's like pieces of eight,” Huxley says. He tests his theory by taking the coin in his fingers and snapping it into two halves without much effort.

“Why'd you break it?” Jay asks.

“Pieces of eight,” Huxley repeats. “Old Spanish coins. You could break them into pieces. Like change for a dollar.”

Jay looks at the collection of coinage. “So … these are old Spanish coins someone found?”

Huxley shakes his head. “Nah. Too new.” He flips the halved coin over and looks at the back. He puts the two pieces together, squinting to read the striking on the back. “‘The Great Council of the Riverland Nations,'” he reads aloud.

“No shit,” Jay says. “Riverland coins.”

Huxley grunts and tosses the halved coin back into the sack that it came from, like he doesn't want to touch it anymore. “Come on. Let's get some rest.”

The following day they ride east and find a new road, or maybe just another portion of the same one, and where there are roads, there will eventually be towns. It is in the hot, afternoon hours when the three of them are exhausted again that they happen upon the settlement of New Amarillo.

It seems like a stroke of luck to come across a town so soon after another, but then he realizes that they must be reaching some semblance of civilization, where perhaps there are not great stretches of wilderness between everything.

Huxley guides his companions into that place, never once thinking that he should've given the place a wide berth.