Bitten

by K. L. Nappier

  His injured ankle hurt worse, but was healing just as quickly. With his legs stretched out on the Buick's bench seat, he could see there was little swelling in the foot below the splint he'd fashioned out of a couple of dead juniper sticks and his undershirt. But it was throbbing mercilessly and sending shards of pain up his leg at the slightest move. If anyone found Andrew now, he'd be hard pressed to defend himself.

  In spite of it all, he knew he had taken the right risk by boarding the Greyhound. Andrew eased his legs off the seat so he could reach the car door. The same juniper that had provided the splinting during his long march from the burning bus had also yielded a walking stick. Once he had the door open and his legs maneuvered, he grabbed it off the floor board. He got a boot on his good foot, levered himself up with the makeshift crutch and pondered how to make it to the top of the mesa.

  He pondered other things as well. As soon as he had laid eyes on the compound, he knew he couldn't hope to flush the hunters from it. Even if he could have, it was better to have them corralled than scattered. What he needed was to find a way to deny them as much advantage as possible, make the way in easier for the Great Beast. Until yesterday, he hadn't been sure how to go about it. But as he was walking away from the Greyhound, all had become clear.

  For now, he'd lay low, hide out and heal. Do some prep work, map things out in his head. And wait for the last sunrise before First Night.

  Chapter Thirty Five

  The Alma Curar Ranch Compound

  Thirty Miles South of Tohatchi, New Mexico

  Spring/Early Summer, 1950

  Dawn. Full Moon.

  Max was walking the north perimeter when he heard it: a sharp crack, an echo, a sharp crack, an echo. He saw Samuel, on the roof, jerk to his left and return fire. Max started running.

  Samuel trilled out three sharp whistles, meaning from the west .

  David burst out the front door, rifle in hand, two ammo belts draped on his arm. Max yelled at him as he passed, "West!"

  David heaved an ammo belt toward him and dropped behind the porch railing, using it to steady his rifle, ready to cover everything east. Now Mina was out. Now Doris, both women still in their night wear, but also with shotguns. Mina ran south, Doris went north, bracing her gun on the porch railing like David. David let go with three sharp whistles as they ran past him, giving them the direction of danger.

  Crack, echo . Crack, echo . Samuel returned fire as Max ran. But it didn't make sense, what Andrew was doing: firing on the house in the dim light of dawn, with no clear target. Max heard another crack, echo , and then the ping of a bullet glancing off metal. And another. Suddenly, Samuel stopped returning fire. Instead he was yelling, yelling and running along the roof toward the front of the house, yelling at Max, "Get back! Get back! He's not aiming at us; he's aiming at the tank-!"

  Nothing around him but a white, hot ball. A burning blow to the front. Nothing in him but nerve endings shrieking. A bone jarring slam to the back. Max realized he'd been sent airborne, and then hit the ground. He rolled to his right. The world came back in focus. The rear of the house was all flame. Andrew had struck the propane tank, and the diesel stored below the porch had gone up with it.

  There was a body lying in the flower bed near the northeast corner of the porch. Doris had already jumped the railing and was kneeling there. Max pulled himself up, found his rifle, and stumbled toward her. The body in the flower bed was Samuel.

  David was there now, but he kept his rifle raised, watching all directions at once as Doris rolled Samuel onto his back. Mina rushed to David's side and took up half the guard. As Max knelt next to Doris, she looked up at him and yelled above the roar of the flames, "He's alive!"

  David pushed Mina toward the vehicles. "Get the cars away from the house! Max, are you okay?"

  "Yeah--"

  "Stay here and keep your guard up. I'm going in .."

  "The hell you are!"

  "We've got to get what ammo we can out of there! Help get Samuel away from the house!"

  "David!"

  David was already up the front steps. Doris had Samuel under the arms and was dragging him away, yelling at Max, "Go with him!"

  Max helped her drag Samuel into the relative safety of the sweat lodge then ran after David. Cold air sucked past him through the open door, flapping his shirt as it rushed toward the back of the house and into the flames. He lifted his arm in reflex, heat and light tearing his eyes. He found David in the living room, where the nearest citrus crate of weapons waited. They grabbed it and manhandled it through the house and down the porch steps. Max bounded into the house again, David on his heels, headed for the radio room where a second crate waited. But the heat and flames forced them back.

  The last dawn before First Night came up in the east as Max followed David, staggering toward the sweat lodge where the women hunkered, guns drawn. The smell of his own singed hair was thick in Max's nose as Doris pressed against him, and they all watched helplessly as the house burned to the ground.

  * * *

  Max stayed put by the truck's passenger side door, staring at what was sticking out of the gate post, not daring to say a word. His attention was divided by what he saw there and David leaning against the state trooper's cruiser. Max's gun lay out of sight, inside on the truck seat, and he mustered enough bluff to give the trooper a friendly wave, doing his best not to seem like someone on the lookout for a killer. But the glint of the Bowie knife wedged in the gate post was almost too much to bear.

  The trooper was young and local, with the Navajo surname of Descheny. Looking uncertain, he stood with his arms resting atop the frame of his open car door and squinted in the house's direction. Smoke rose gray and lazy from the ruins, just beyond the edge of sight.

  "I'm glad everyone made it out okay, Mr. Alma Curar, but I still say we should have the brigade come out and hose down the ashes. A wind kicks up, picks up sparks ..."

  "Well ... if you think so. But spread thin as they are, having to service the whole region, I hate to put them to the trouble when we're already dousing with buckets. We've got a hand pump next to the coop. The fire didn't reach there. Call me superstitious, but seems to me trouble comes in threes. The damage for us is already done. What if another call comes in and the brigade's all the way out here? "

  Descheny pursed his lips. "Everyone's okay? And you're not leaving until it stops smoldering ...?"

  "Everybody's good. Maybe you can have the brigade come help us sand the ashes tomorrow morning."

  The trooper cocked his head and looked at David, again. "You got a place to stay?"

  "Family. A few miles west of Albuquerque. But we'll stay here tonight, so we can keep dousing."

  "You're sure you don't need help ...?"

  "There's not much left to help with, trooper. I'm sure you've got places where you're needed more."

  Descheny pursed his lips again, as if thinking things over, and then nodded. He said he'd cruise by as often as possible during the day. David made an empty promise to hang something white on the gate if they changed their minds about help. They exchanged a few pleasantries in Navajo, and then Descheny went on his way.

  David waited until the trooper was well down the road before walking up to the gate post. Max met him there, reached up and yanked the knife out. Lloyd Stonehill's Bowie. He swallowed hard. The leather hilt was festooned with ornate silver plating and caked with blood.

  Sick, miserable, fucking bastard. I will not die tonight without taking you with me.

  David's jaw was locked and pulsing as he secured the gates. But there was no point in re-attaching the gates' batteries. A smaller, second fire had burned a gap through the western barrier while the house blazed, destroying the triplet of wire within the cactus and bramble, breaking the loop, melting the silver, making a way in for the Great Beast. More of Andrew's handiwork.

  David sat behind the wheel, hesitated, and then started the truck. Max stared at the knife in his hands and asked, "You think we should go
after the trooper, have him take Samuel with him?"

  "If we do, and Andrew's watching, he might go after them ..."

  "Not this close to First Night."

  "But he'll go after Samuel later, in the hospital. After he's done with us. And he'll go through whoever he needs, to get to him."

  Max closed his fingers around the blood stained handle.

  David muttered something in Navajo, slowed the truck to a stop and leaned his forehead against his fingers, gripping the wheel tight. "We've got to keep people away from here today. We can't let anything stop Andrew from coming for us. This has to happen tonight ... "

  Max kept staring at Stonehill's knife in his hand. Finally David pulled back in his seat and started motoring again, grim-faced and staring ahead. Rats in a trap , Max thought, nowhere to go. There was nothing they could do but wait in a burned out compound. If the hunters ran, if they scattered, they'd put anyone around them at risk.

  And the thought of the Great Beast hunting them down, one by one, was too much to bear.

  * * *

  The Rambler was about midway between the ruins and the north perimeter. Mina and Doris were in the front seat, the convertible top closed, all windows down with gun barrels poking out the driver and passenger sides. Samuel lay prone in the back.

  Max and David pulled up, driver's side to driver's side, but stayed in the cab. "How is he?" David asked.

  "In and out," Doris replied. "He came to a few minutes ago, but he's lost consciousness again. Who was honking at the gate?"

  "State trooper," David said. "He saw the smoke on his rounds and came to check things out. We got there just in time. He was already out of his cruiser and approaching the gate when we pulled up. If he'd gotten in and seen Samuel, I don't think we could've kept him from calling for help or from taking him with him."

  From the back seat of the Rambler came a slurred, "Naawww." Samuel tried to struggle up, but Mina twisted around and placed a hand on his chest. He didn't resist, slipping back onto the jacket that served as his pillow. "Not goin' anywhere ..."

  "Samuel," David called, "how're you feeling?"

  Max couldn't see well from where he was, but he didn't dare leave the truck's cab. Several seconds passed before he heard: "Like ... shit ..." Then Mina commanded, "Stay put, Samuel." She turned away from him, bent down to rummage somewhere around her feet and came back up with one of the sweat lodge canteens. She kneeled on the car seat, leaning over the back to help Samuel rise up enough to take some water. He sputtered a little, gulped a few times, and then sank back down, out of view.

  He repeated, "Not goin' anywhere ..."

  "Okay, buddy," Max called to him, "it's okay. We'll keep you with us as long as we can."

  "Not anywhere," Max heard him say again, but not as strongly. He was losing consciousness. He murmured something. It sounded like "Consuela."

  They all went quiet, looking tired, looking beaten. Max felt the weight of Stonehill's knife in his hand.

  No! Not beaten!

  "We can't hide in these cars all day," he said.

  He looked over where the single, saved citrus crate of silver lay, its thin boards singed; most of the bullets inside warped and useless. But not all of them. Some in the center were still intact, and the bag of silver shavings that had been tucked inside was only partially burned. It wasn't much, but it was all they had and it needed to be protected.

  So did the cars, their only shelter from the New Mexico sun and from Andrew, if he returned before First Night. Unlikely, maybe, but he had caught them off guard too many times already. They had a wounded man to care for and the women, forced from the house in their sleep wear, would need something warm after sunset. He looked over at the sweat lodge.

  "Let's pull the cars to either side of the lodge," he said to Doris. "David and me'll keep lookout while you and Mina break it down. We'll move everything over by the coop where we can be near the water pump and at least boil a chicken and some eggs."

  Doris had the Rambler in gear before Max had finished.

  * * *

  Safe atop the mesa, Andrew smiled as he looked though his binoculars.

  They were scurrying like prairie dogs forced out of their holes: heaving a small crate into the truck bed, tearing down the sweat lodge, blanket by rug by frame pole, Max and David's rifles sweeping in every direction. Andrew fantasized getting close enough to take pot shots again, but held his ground. It was one thing to approach in the dark and aim for the propane tank. Quite another to risk silver now, in broad daylight. First Night was less than twelve hours away, and the Great Beast could do so much more than Andrew ever could.

  In the middle of the compound the house was reduced to a smoldering black rectangle, nothing left upright but its two chimneys and a handful of charred timbers. Behind it, the fire Andrew had set against the barrier while the house burned had eaten a gap through the cactus and bramble. The electric fencing had been destroyed within the gap, but it hadn't been the juice Andrew wanted to interrupt. It was the breadth of the barrier itself, not an impossible jump for the Great Beast, but one that could slow it down and give the hunters an edge.

  And, of course, there was the silver, woven through the cactus and bramble; the silver, now just black, spotty droppings on the red earth, just as most of the hunters' arsenal must be within the house's ashes.

  He didn't care that Moms or the others probably realized why he'd done that. There was no way they could plug the hole effectively with First Night less than twelve hours away and the compound in ruins. In any case, Andrew believed in the superiority of the Great Beast. His sole purpose had been to eliminate as much of their advantage as he could. He was proud of how well he'd done.

  He lowered the binoculars, lit another Lucky, and mindlessly rubbed his left ankle, completely healed now except for a little stiffness. Probably sore because of the predawn hike to a ridge that overlooks the wash just west of the compound. There, he'd been within comfortable firing range and had just enough elevation for a clear view of the house and, more importantly, the propane tank.

  The colored guy, Samuel, had been a good marksman. He'd come a little too close for comfort a couple of times. But with the east just beginning to lighten, Andrew had had the dark western sky on his side. He'd kept low, moving and shooting, moving and shooting, giving Samuel nothing to aim at except a brief flash where Andrew's last shot had come from.

  Thinking of Samuel made Andrew raise his binoculars again. He hadn't seen him since they'd exchanged fire. Maybe dead. Andrew could only hope. But he didn't see anything that looked like a body ... unless Samuel's ashes were one with the house's.

  It would have been nice if the fire had taken out more than one, especially David or Mina, leaving Moms and Max for the Great Beast. But Andrew wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. For now, it appeared the hunters were down to four. And only two of them were real hunters. Andrew yawned, coughed, and then took another drag as he watched the loaded vehicles drive away from the cannibalized sweat lodge toward the chicken coop. They were getting close to their only source of food and water, of course. In short order, they had raised a kind of pavilion over the Rambler and the truck.

  Digging in their heels. Just as Andrew expected.

  * * *

  The setting sun was against his back as Max finished braiding the lanyard he was making from some leather tie-downs. Lloyd Stonehill's Bowie deserved a proper sheath, but this would have to do. He threaded the lanyard through one of his side belt loops, tied it into the form of a ring and slipped the knife through.

  He walked over to the Rambler and leaned into the driver side window. With the makeshift pavilion above the vehicles, the convertible's top was lowered and Doris was in the back, one of the left over sweat lodge blankets draped like a shawl over her night shirt. Samuel's head was in her lap as she helped him sip broth from an old cake pan that, just yesterday, scooped chicken feed from burlap sacks. Now it was their only cook pot.

  "How you doing, buddy?"
he asked.

  Samuel swallowed, and then nodded sluggishly. He seemed to want to doze, but Doris touched the pan to his lips once more. He forced himself to swallow again, barely able to keep his eyes open.

  "From the looks of his eyes, it's a concussion," Doris said. Her voice was low and bland, like a doctor's. "And Mina's guess is that he must have some busted ribs, at the very least, the way he cringes when he's conscious enough to move."

  Samuel's eyes fluttered open and he slurred, "Fingers 'n' toes okay. Legs 'n' feet, too, but ... left arm ... not sure. Hurts. Like hell. Breathing hurts. Head's killing me."

  Max reached in with the handgun he'd brought to the window and gave it to Doris as he nodded toward Samuel. Doris asked, "Can you drink a little more, Sam?"

  "Naw ..."

  "Just a little ..."

  "Naw ..."

  Doris handed Max the pan and pressed the gun into Samuel's right hand.

  "The sun's rimming the mesas," Max said to him. "David'll put out the cook fire just before dark. We don't want anything messing with our night vision. Samuel ... you hearing this?"

  His eyes still closed, Samuel nodded once, gripping the gun.

  "Here's how it's gonna happen. David's got some tricks up his sleeve, but we won't work on them until after dark. By then, Andrew should be holing up to prepare for emergence, so he won't be able to see what we're doing. We'll tear the shelter down, too, so it won't interfere with anyone's sight or aim. Me, David and Doris'll move away from the cars and try to draw the Beast toward us. But no matter what happens, Samuel, you stay in the car. Mina will stay with you. Don't move, don't try to help. No matter what. Samuel? Do I have to tell you, in your shape, any heroics out of you could put us all at risk?"

  Samuel opened his eyes and looked at Max, but didn't say anything. He managed one nod of his head. Max stared at his own hands a moment, at the pan he clutched as he leaned into the open window. "If the Great Beast gets through the rest of us, it'll be up to you and Mina to finish this. You know it'll come for you. So don't try to move. Just point the damn gun and fire."