Serious injuries could be expected, even if not bitten by one of the dead. Georgie wanted to make sure that nobody was in tremendous pain for a long period of time if we happened to be caught somewhere dangerous where there was no way we could get them to a place where they could rest comfortably.
The nerve block would be the best option, and she knew how and where to administer them for maximum effectiveness in a given area of the body.
The green, metal building had been an auto auction house, and had a hydraulic lift in it so the undercarriages of vehicles up for sale could be inspected more thoroughly before the bidding began. Garland had one vehicle up on the lift, but most of the others were wheels-up using a hydraulic floor jack.
Garland waved as we walked in, but clearly had no time to stop and chat. He hustled to the other side of the room and grabbed a low, rolling platform called a creeper, carrying it back across the shop, pausing just long enough to say, “Pull up a chair. Got my best volunteers here today, so work’s gettin’ done.”
He had two of the Nacogdoche kids with him. The girl was about sixteen years old, with her dark brown hair in a ponytail with double rubber bands. She wore a red peasant blouse and blue jeans with a rust-colored leather apron strapped over her neck and tied behind her back at her waist.
She didn’t look up when we came in, but I thought I remembered her name was Delilah.
As did most of the Nacogdoche kids most of the time, Delilah had a .22 Henry strapped across her back. She held a grinder to a flat piece of steel, sending sparks flying into the air as she cleaned the metal, expertly guiding the abrasive disc around the edges and underneath the plate.
The boy was maybe seventeen, and I knew his name was Mike. He had long, dark hair, also in a ponytail. He smiled easily and never failed to offer a helping hand, no matter what he might see you doing.
I wondered if he’d volunteer to help you brush your teeth if that’s what was happening when he walked by.
Anyway, he’d been working with Micky Rode a lot on the ham radio, something he seemed to have an interest in. I was surprised to see him here, believing he was more interested in electronics, but a good work ethic, combined with a curious mind, can really make for an especially engaged worker.
He stood, put down the cutting torch he was using to turn one piece of steel plate into two, and smiled at us.
“Hey, sirs!”
I waved at the kid and yelled over the noise of the grinder, “Mike, if you forgot our names, that’s cool, but just ask. I refuse to be called sir.”
“Yeah, sorry,” he said. “I did forget.”
I looked behind him as I said, “I’m CB. That there’s Danny.”
“Oh, hell, that’s right,” he said, looking slightly embarrassed. He pointed toward the first vehicle in the row of Toyotas, noticing where my eyes had tracked. They were backed up to the far wall, all facing toward us. There was a line of ten small SUVs, various makes and models, all in a row. Delilah lifted her head and saw us, releasing the grinder trigger and raising her clear facemask. “Hello,” she said.
In my peripheral vision, I saw Mike staring at her, and if little damned bluebirds could fly above his head in circles, tweeting like they were straight out of a Disney movie, they would be.
This explained why he was here, despite his love for all things electronic.
Hey there, Delilah. I smiled and waved back at her.
“Hey there,” I said, wondering if she’d ever heard the Plain White Tees song. “Looks like y’all are makin’ progress.”
“Garland says they’ll be ready by tonight,” said Mike. “Delilah’s really making progress with the grinder after I cut the pieces. Afterward, snow tires all around. Just in case. They’ll mess with mileage a bit, but you know what they say.”
“Yep. Better to have ‘em and not need ‘em than to need ‘em and not have ‘em.”
Garland rolled out from under one of the vehicles on the creeper he’d just carried over. He removed a pair of goggles. “Hey, Danny, CB. Both good kids and good workers, and yeah, with them goin’ at it, we’ll be set for tomorrow.”
Wasting no more time with jawing back and forth, Garland dropped back down, put his eye protection back on, and slid back under the vehicle. He reached for something and next thing I heard was a drill motor.
I pointed to a row of V-shaped metal pieces, each of them about six-feet wide. I wasn’t quite sure how he’d done it, but the angled Vs he’d fabricated for each vehicle appeared to curve forward, then straighten out at the top.
I could only compare it to a wave breaking, it was so smooth. This guy knew how to work with steel.
These were our deflectors. They’d give our caravan of vehicles the ability to push through a small crowd of the dead – maybe light debris, too. With the way they were designed, I could see how they’d force everything they hit to the sides, keeping bodies and junk from slipping under the front of the cars, thrashing tie-rods or smashing the grills into the radiators.
“Nice work,” said Danny.
“Yeah,” I said, walking forward. I kicked Garland’s feet and the motor’s whirring stopped. He rolled back out from under the car, staring up at me through his goggles.
“May I help you?” he asked, irritated.
“Now, now,” I said. “I have a quick question. Two, actually.”
“Shoot, and hurry. If y’all still want us to leave tomorrow.”
“You need more folks over here helpin’?” I asked.
“Only if you got more grinders, torches or welders.”
“I do not.”
“Then no.”
“How’d you bend those deflectors like that? Damned amazing work, man.”
He squinted at me. “That’s why you stopped me?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m impressed.”
“I marked the metal where I wanted the bends to be. With two torches bein’ used at the same time, we heated the shit out of it. Once the steel was red hot, I had Dee and Mike here keep the torches on it while I bent and beat it into the shape I wanted with a big-ass pipe wrench and a sledge.”
“Way to go. Really nice work.”
“May I get back to it now?”
“Sure. Positive you don’t need any more help?”
He shook his head, pointing. “Those eight in that row are already drilled. Different makes, but the cowling fits fine, just with different hole patterns. I got four more to go, then I start boltin’ them on. I’m drillin’ the holes for the mounts now.”
“Why not just spot weld ‘em on,” asked Danny. “It’d be quicker, right?”
“Yeah, but what if we need to take ‘em off for some reason? You hit somethin’ that pushes the metal into the tire or somethin’. Best to bolt ‘em on so they’re removable in a pinch.”
Danny nodded. “Makes sense.”
“So you’re okay for now?” I asked.
“Yep,” said Garland. “I got Jimmy and Carla comin’ over to relieve these two at 4:00. They know their shit. I’m good.”
“That you are, my friend. I promise, me and Danny’ll chip in next time.”
Lowering the goggles back over his eyes and dropping back down to the creeper, he said, “Won’t be a next time. These things’ll last forever.”
As Danny and I walked away, I mumbled under my breath, “Hell yeah they will. Why in the hell does he think I made the offer anyway?”
Ω
CHAPTER EIGHT
Henomawi Indian Reservation
The skinwalkers that he had attracted now numbered over a thousand. There had been more, but many had wandered off over time. Magi had figured out that they were largely driven by noise, so they were sure to always make a lot – just so they wouldn’t lose their army of the dead.
He sat inside the dark room at the Sweetwater Motel, where they had stopped for the night. The water in the half-evaporated swimming pool had been dark and polluted from the black rain that had fallen, so Magi Silver Bolt used bottled water t
o clean the skin paste from his body.
Others now slept in their own rooms, but Magi wasn’t tired. His mind worked over the plan, and he simultaneously hoped it was – and wasn’t – a waste of time.
He prayed to the spirits that the people searching for Climbing Fox would leave his people alone and not try to force Wattana to do the impossible. Magi had already lost all hope that the old shaman could reverse what he had done.
By the same token, he wanted the group to come seeking Mundunugu. When they arrived, the Henomawan people would punish the white-skinned men and women for all they had done to destroy his people.
He was torn. He didn’t know what the hell he really wanted. He just wanted Angeni Dancing Rain back.
The Henomawi reservation was just one example of the injustices done by the various governments. Back in the mid-to-late 1800s, California had written treaties with more than 500 Indian leaders of the many tribes whose territories patch-worked the state.
But the land, over 8.5 million acres, was less desirable; it was away from seacoasts and riverbanks, and while water could be found there, the lands were essentially the best of the leftovers.
And even those agreements turned out to be lies. Amazingly, the treaties were mysteriously lost, while U.S. officials threw their hands up and shrugged. Nobody knew what had become of them.
The documents were just gone.
No new treaties were written. Fifty years later, in 1905, when they were found at a Senate archive, a remote storage dump used by the United States government, it was discovered that the land signed to the Indians in the treaties was already taken by others.
The treaties were unsigned, so there was no obligation by the government to honor them; they ended up re-writing them, replacing the already mediocre land with utterly useless parcels, scattered over the harshest lands in the state, none more than 25,000 acres.
It was desert, arid and dry land. Their reasoning was that the Indians were not farmers anyway. Waterless, isolated earth is what the Native Americans were afforded. The people became poor, diseased, and hopeless.
Alcoholism soared. Poverty reigned. It was the beginning of the end for the original inhabitants of North America. While they were free to leave the reservation in search of their own fortunes, it was discouraged, not only by the white man, but by their own families. Outside the reservation, they were discriminated against and afforded little opportunity to find success.
For that reason, few left.
These thoughts worked over in Magi’s mind. The more he allowed himself to dwell on it, the more he wanted the skinwalkers to destroy all of them, allowing them to start over and begin again. A new plan began to work in his mind.
When Silver Bolt closed his eyes, he saw a painted pony riding across the plains, the grass wavering in the wind as the sun swept over the land.
A lone shirtless rider atop the steed, his long hair flowing behind him, feeling the clean breeze rushing past his face.
It was a fantasy, he knew. The entire Native American population in the United States was only 2% of the population in 2015, or around six-and-a-half million people. That included native Alaskans.
Maybe, with concentrated efforts to reproduce and grow the population, it would be enough to someday return the land to the original inhabitants. Wattana would not live to see it, but with a good plan and loyal followers, Magi Silver Bolt could bear witness to a new insurgency of his people.
Ω
The next day, the group of thirty men, women and now, children, awoke. They refreshed their skin paste, scavenged for food, and ate. It was their daily ritual.
The two small buses in which they traveled from reservation to reservation ran well. Four of the tribe members, all men, were tasked with carrying the containers of skin paste. They could not leave it on the bus for fear the vehicles would be stolen and the crucial mixture lost.
The tribe members reapplied it often; it didn’t matter because the process to make it was simple and the ingredients were easy to obtain anywhere. It took some time to strip the flesh from the skinwalkers, but once that was completed, the mincing of the skin and blending with the earth was quite fast.
Two of the skinwalkers were bound and carried on a rack on the rear of one of the buses. They were for use in the demonstrations they were forced to perform at each new reservation. It was not a given that the roaming skinwalkers would always be around, though they usually were, drawn by the flesh and blood of the living.
It was inevitable; upon their arrival and explanation of what was coming, doors were slammed in their faces. It was the problem of the Henomawi Tribe, not the others.
Magi knew they did not believe Climbing Fox Wattana had caused the black rain that infected the earth. Of course they would be skeptical. The Henomawi Tribe was little known, even among the original inhabitants of the continent. That was okay. Convincing them was relatively easy.
Magi was well aware they looked as savage as the early European settlers had believed them to be. Coated in mud and half-naked, their initial appearance was shocking to the Indians they encountered, who in contrast, were relatively well-dressed in flannel shirts and blue jeans.
Dressed like those who had dominated them, thought Magi. As I once did.
It only lasted a short while, though. When the demonstration was complete, they were taken seriously.
Many joined.
They reached the tall fence that protected the entrance to the Red Sand Hintoka Reservation. Four guards were perched atop the gates, all armed with rifles mounted with scopes.
One of the men picked up a bullhorn.
“Turn around,” he commanded. “We have no room for you here.”
Magi knew that was a lie. The Hintoka had one of the largest reservations among all natives. Still, he responded, “I am Magi Silver Bolt of the Henomawi people. We do not wish to come in. We are here to make an appeal for your people to join us.”
“You’re a crazy fool!” called the man on the southeast tower. “Get out of here before you draw the creatures!”
The structures appeared to have been recently built; they were made of cinderblock, the mortar joints exposed, the two towers and the adjoining wall, around 10’ high, unpainted.
“May they come by the thousands!” called Magi. “They will not harm us. Our Mundunugu called to the spirits for the black rain to fall. For our people’s revenge for the taking of our land, the raping of our women, and the destruction of our heritage.”
“Go on!” the man said. “Leave before we use our water cannons and blow you all off your feet!”
Magi Silver Bolt turned and nodded to Tommy Rivers. Tommy walked to the bus and opened the rear door. Climbing Fox Wattana stepped out.
Together, Wattana and Tommy approached Magi.
“Tell them who you are. Tell them about the ancient book and of what we face.”
“I will not,” said Wattana. “I deserve what the people coming for me intend. I did not believe anymore. I had lost faith in the spirits, and in return, they have chosen to punish all of mankind for my error.”
“No!” insisted Magi Silver Bolt. “Don’t you get it? This is the largest reservation anywhere near us. With their warriors added to our numbers, we stand a chance against whatever forces come our way.”
Tommy turned to the old man. “Chief Climbing Fox, please do not make a decision that will seal all our fates.”
Wattana looked at Magi, then at Tommy. A pall fell over him. His eyes darkened, and something in his expression changed. He looked at Magi, then reached out to clasp his shoulders in his hands. “I will demonstrate what we have to offer them in my own way. As long as I am still chief of the Henomawi Tribe, it is my right.”
Magi stared at the old shaman. There had been no official ceremony making Silver Bolt the chief, so what Wattana said was true. He said, “How do you intend to convince them?”
“I did not say it would,” said Wattana. “But it might.”
The present chief
and former Mundunugu of the Henomawi people walked to the rear of the second bus. He unhooked the chain across the rack and motioned to a nearby guard. The guard glanced at Magi.
Magi nodded.
The guard used his razor knife to cut the zip-tie that kept the skinwalker on the rack. Stepping back, Wattana took the rope around the creature’s neck and guided the docile skinwalker from around the rear of the bus.
This skinwalker was dressed as any might have been in the oldest tales of skinwalkers told to small children. His face was peeling down to the muscle; one eye was a dark hole, a portal into the ink-stained brain that now guided his every move – his every visceral desire.
He wore the suede loincloth in which Magi had insisted he be dressed, his emaciated trunk and twig-thin legs appearing weak in contrast to his savage snapping of jaws and guttural keening.
Wattana walked toward the tower, stopping five feet below it. He turned his face upward. “I am Climbing Fox Wattana, chief of the Henomawi Tribe and all of its people. Do you see how this skinwalker does not attack me?”
The guard stared for a moment. He glanced over at the other tower, meeting that guard’s eyes. Both of them shrugged. “He’s only got one eye!” shouted the closest guard.
“Have you the water cannon you boasted about?”
The man shook his head in frustration, then nodded to another person, out of view. Ten seconds later, a third guard, this one carrying a large hose with a ball valve on the end, moved to the railing.
“Good,” said Wattana. “Rinse this coating from my body.”
“No!” shouted Magi. “Do not!”
“Why are you all covered in it?” the guard called, holding up his open palm to the man with the hose, halting him from opening the valve.
“It is my only protection against the monsters I have created,” called Wattana. He placed a hand on the shoulder of the skinwalker, but the emaciated thing beside him only stretched his neck toward the men on the tower.
Judgement Page 8
