Wolves (9 page)

Huxley stands up, looking down at the younger man. “You want our help?”

Gordon is staring up at him. “Yes.”

“Then it's not over when they're dead,” Huxley says.

Gordon's brow creases in the center, confused.

“Where do the slavers go, Gordon? Do you know the answer to that?”

“East. They go east.”

“Yes. And we're going to go where they go. We're going to go to their doorstep, like they came to ours. And we're going to make them bleed.” He lowers his voice just a bit. “Is that what you want?”

Gordon nods, once, his lips tightening.

Huxley looks at Rigo and Jay.

Rigo puts his revolver on the table, friendliness gone from his face. “Los lobos,” he says coldly. “Make them bleed.”

Jay only smiles, a slow, steady smile. When all you can feel is hatred, only the promise of blood sets your mind at ease.

Huxley looks at Gordon. “You sleep. We'll get more bullets.”

Chapter 12

The sky is darkening. Clouds have come in from the south, a thin layer all around, and bigger ones are coming, fat-bellied with rain.

They left their horses about a quarter-mile back, at the bottom of a ridge that runs the length of what Gordon calls Dry Gulch. Here, the vegetation is slightly thicker, slightly lusher. It is still dry, but it seems a far cry from desert. There are things actually alive out here.

Huxley lies at the crest of the ridge overlooking Dry Gulch. He peers over the edge, just the top of his head and his eyes visible. He can smell the plants crushed under him, a fresh, herbaceous scent, and feel the coolness of the dirt. The wind is heavy with moisture as it blows those storm clouds in and races up from the bottom of the ridge, howling over the top like a wildcat in the distance.

At the bottom of the gulch, perhaps a hundred feet below them and a half mile away, the slavers' wagon stands. It is surrounded by five horses. The oxen are free from their yokes and are staked close by, eating the sparse vegetation. The horses are hobbled. The wagon itself provides a lean-to, the tarps that covered its bed now extended out to either side, making a roof for the slavers to shelter under. A single campfire is burning off to the side of the wagon. At the wagon's back end, the slavers' poles rise up like the masts of a ship without sails.

Huxley can see the jawbones at the top, moving in the gusting wind.

He wonders if it is his imagination that he can hear their teeth chattering together. As though the ghosts of the previous owners have much to say.

The wagon is empty.

Where are the slaves?

“How many?” A quiet whisper beside him.

Huxley glances to his left, where Jay is lying, not quite cresting the rise. To Huxley's right, Gordon and Rigo lie, just a little farther down from the ridge. Only Huxley is poking his head up. One head is less likely to be seen. The others wait in tense silence.

Huxley redirects his attention down into the gulch. He can see four men, plus the woman with the black braid. One of the men is laid out. He is obviously wounded. Huxley can make out white bandages stained red, wrapped around a large portion of his right leg. He is lying as close to the fire as possible while still being under the tarpaulin roof.

Suffer
, Huxley wills pain onto the man.
Suffer and die.

His belly is full of cold, dark thoughts. Things grown in lightless places. Things that feast on the leavings of pain and terror. And that is all that Huxley has left. Just the residual
leavings
of those human feelings. There is a fear in him, but it has nothing to do with death or what might become of his body. It has everything to do with the fact that those dark things in him are in control, and he sometimes wonders where they are taking him.

Huxley sidles back away from the ridge, down below the crest. He scoots himself through the dirt and grasses over to where Gordon and Rigo are lying, and he can hear Jay coming along beside him.

“There are five of them,” Huxley says, whispering over the wind. “Four men, and the woman with the black braid. One of the men is wounded. I don't think he can fight.”

Gordon is nodding, his eyes wide, feverish. “We can take them. Let's take them.”

Huxley makes a knife out of his hand and jabs all four fingers into Gordon's sternum. “Shut up. You do what I tell you to do, you understand that? We wait. We wait for the rain. Then we hit them hard, and we hit them fast.” He looks at each man in turn, first Gordon, then Jay, then Rigo. “Everyone dies.”

“Mi familia?” Rigo asks abruptly.

Huxley looks the other man in the eye and shakes his head. “They're gone, Rigo. All the slaves are gone. I don't know where they went.”

Rigo doesn't have much of an outward reaction. He turns his head slightly so that all Huxley can see is the man's cloudy, drooping eye. He is holding dirt between his fingers. He crushes it, rolls it around his fingertips, almost like he's fascinated by it. He doesn't weep. Doesn't get angry. He only nods one time.

Huxley can feel his heart now. It's slamming his chest. But it isn't fear that drives it. Oh, how familiar that feeling had been to him. When the beating of his chest was like that of the prey animal, running at the scent of the predator. But things change.

He has changed.

His heart beats blood, and that's what it wants.

What is this feeling? He can't quite describe it.

It is the same feeling he had when he loaded that scattergun at the smokehouse counter. When he strode into that whorehouse and took the lives of men. It is the feeling of knowing there will be violence. It is a rush. And when you have no fear of what might happen to you, the feeling of impending release dominates everything else.

They reach the bottom of the ridge where their own horses are hobbled. They check their guns. Their loads. They free the horses' legs and they mount.

Huxley stares at the crest of the ridge above them. He waits for the rain.

He thinks of Charity. He thinks of Nadine.

This is for you. This is for what they did to you.

These aren't the same people, but it didn't matter. The slavers would bleed. Eventually Huxley would find out where the slavers go, and when he did, he would find the man with the scorpion tattoo, and he would put an end to him.

Huxley closes his eyes and he tries to picture his wife.

He seems to be able to remember the details in and of themselves, but he can't put them all together. He knows she had blue eyes, but he can't remember how they looked. He knows she had a big smile, but he can't picture her mouth. He can't remember her laugh. Or her smell. Or her taste.

He can remember the color of her hair, because it was the color of the barley fields.

But that is it.

Why can't I remember you?

The rain hits them in a rush. A few fat drops, and then a huge gale of it, thundering down the ridge at them like a great, gray curtain, only slightly translucent. None of them wait a second longer. The longer they wait, the muddier the ridge will become and it will be hazardous to climb, and to descend. Now. Now is the time.

He pushes away his memories of Charity.

Gordon cannot be held back. It is like the rain has spurred his horse. He launches forward. Rigo follows, then Jay, and then Huxley. The four of them race up the hillside, reins in one hand, revolvers in the other. Their horses churn for the top. Here is that feeling, that feeling that he thought of when he was standing at the smokehouse counter. The feeling of reaching the top, of rolling over, of broken inertia, no longer fighting gravity but going with it, letting it plunge you down, down, down … 

In the downpour, the slavers do not hear the hoofbeats until it is too late.

Huxley fixes on the wounded man laid out under the awning. The other men are scurrying about, trying to keep the rain out of their shelter, oblivious to what is racing down the ridge at them. But the wounded man is staring out, and he is watching them come. He stares right back at Huxley and his eyes are wide and his mouth is working, his weak arms trying to point.

Huxley pulls up his horse as they reach the bottom of Dry Gulch.

As his horse's hooves stamp through dirt turning to mud, the slavers finally realize they are there.

The wounded man shouts out. Weapons are drawn.

Huxley extends his revolver and fires the first shot. The lead ball catches the wounded man in the throat, spurting blood, and then the world shrinks down to chaotic seconds.

Powder blooms in sharp, gray flashes. Huxley's horse folds underneath him. He is pitched over into the mud.

Horses scream.

Men scream.

And a woman … 

Huxley opens his eyes, blinks through the muddy water flowing into them.

Jay and one of the slavers are fighting on the ground beside him. Jay manages to mount the slaver, just as Huxley pulls himself out of the mud, spitting dirt and rainwater. Each of them has the other's gun hand, and they are trying to torque their wrists to get enough angle to shoot each other.

Huxley pushes his revolver out and shoots the slaver in the head.

He staggers to his feet, gasping for air.

Another gun blast to Huxley's left, this one deep and throaty.

Huxley turns and sees Rigo standing there, the scattergun raised, and out in the rainwashed gulch, a figure topples into the dirt.

Rigo looks back over his shoulder at Huxley. He is soaked with rain and blood. Gunsmoke sits in the wet air like low-slung fog and it stings in their throats as they breathe it. Dying horses paw at the ground, like they can outrun what has been given to them.

That is it.

It is over as quickly as it began.

Huxley is left there, soaked and heaving air, clutching his revolver and wondering,
Is that it?

From the other side of the wagon, Huxley hears a grunt and a swear. The sound of someone slamming up against the side of the wagon, and then feet scuffling in the dirt. Huxley cocks his revolver and runs to the other side of the wagon, Jay hot on his heels.

Gordon is holding the woman with the black braid down on the ground, straddling her back and wrenching her hands behind her as he wraps that long coil of hair tightly around her neck and pulls on it like a grotesque set of reins.

“Don't kill her,” Jay barks.

Huxley looks at the pale man. Fragments of brain and bone are still clinging to the side of his face. He is staring at the woman with his pale gray eyes, his nearly white hair matted down in the rain.

Gordon stops choking the woman and she breathes in ragged gasps. He looks at the rope lying in the dirt to his side. “This bitch needs to die.”

Jay nods. “Tie her up. She'll get what's coming to her.”

Huxley stares at her. He wishes he could come up with some pity. He wishes he could put a staying hand on Jay and Gordon, to tell them “no.” He wishes he had enough of himself left. But they took that away from him. They took his decency along with everything else. And for this woman? For this woman, Huxley has nothing.

Over the sound of the driving rain, Huxley hears the moaning of a man preparing to die. He walks very slowly around the side of the wagon and feels the soft squish of the mud underneath his shoes, the rain gathering in his hair and running down his back and soaking through his clothes. He holds his revolver down at his side and it dangles loosely in his grip.

Less than twenty-five yards out from the wagon he can see the hump of the man that Rigo had hit with the scattergun, sloshing through the wet dirt on his hands and knees, making slow and pointed progress away from them, leaving only a slimy trail of reddened muck behind him.

Huxley is at the back of the wagon. He looks up at the slavers' poles. Sees the jaws sitting there. He reminds himself where those jaws came from. Why they are there. Who these people are. He reminds himself that he is a ghost. He does not exist. He cannot exist. Because he is nothing. That is why he
feels
nothing.

In the back of the wagon, there is a crowbar. Huxley has seen it used once before. The hook of it is encrusted with gore, the double-pronged tip filed down to a jagged edge. Huxley slides his revolver into the wet leather of his holster and takes the crowbar with a firm two-handed grip. He looks out at the crawling man who is now rolling about in the mired plains, the sounds of his pain becoming weaker. Water gathers in Huxley's greasy hair and trails along his face, each clump of dark hair creating a tiny river of dirty water that flows into his blinking eyes and tastes salty on his tongue. He spits it out.

He walks after the wounded man. The man sees him coming, and tries to crawl again, but he knows it is over. He rolls onto his back, looks up at Huxley and then up into the rain and he becomes silent. The slaver's eyes are like emotionless glass orbs. Blood trails thinly from his lips, and when he opens his mouth, his teeth are stained with it.

“Do what you're going to do,” the slaver says.

“How many others did you do this to?”

“Plenty.” The slaver grimaces as pain racks his body. “More than I can count.”

Huxley puts the pointed hook against the underside of the man's jaw. “Where do slavers go?”

The slaver coughs, spits blood. “What are you talking about?”

“Where do the slavers go?” Huxley says louder. “Where do you take the slaves?”

The slaver blinks, then starts to laugh. It is a gurgling rasp. He leans his head back into the muddy ground. The rain lashes his face, scouring away the blood that comes out of his mouth as he laughs. “You,” he wheezes. “You fucking Wastelanders. What? Did we take one of your family? Is that what you're after?” his smile fades. “We're just the middlemen. We're just providing a service that's desired. We're not the ones castrating your sons and fucking your daughters …”

Huxley grunts like he's been punched. The words hit him hard and he doesn't think. He doesn't think about any other information he can get out of this man. The rage takes him. He kicks the crowbar with the toe of his boot, plunging it up into the slaver's mouth, hooking the jaw.

He screams at the man, wordlessly, senselessly. Then he kicks him over onto his side, the crowbar still in him, and he stomps down on the side of his head, and he rips back with the crowbar. Things pop and pull free. The slaver struggles and squirms, screams into the mud, but Huxley keeps his boot hard down on the man's head.

He waits for the man beneath him to stop moving, and then he staggers back, dropping the crowbar and staring down at what he's done. What the slavers have done to others.
An eye for an eye
, Huxley tells himself, feeling suddenly sick to his stomach.
A jaw for a jaw.

He looks up, breathing rapid, shallow breaths.

Jay and Rigo and Gordon are watching him.

The woman with the black braid is strung up to the side of the wagon, weeping.