by T. F. Torrey
She coughed and gasped and was gone again. Sank like a stone.
I scrambled, wading toward her, splashing the water trying to paddle myself faster. John dove in where he was.
It seemed like they were down there forever. John’s hat floated lazily in his ringed wake. As I splashed closer, I wondered if she’d gotten stuck. I wondered if seaweed grew in desert streams. I even wondered how I might help when I got there. “Not deep at all,” I muttered. “Probably not even up past your waist.”
Then, with a rush, John was swimming on the surface, dragging Erica behind him.
Just then I slipped into the same hole Erica had. I found it surprising, and surprisingly cold. Strangely, under the surface of the cold water, I realized that John hadn’t stepped into this hole. Only Erica and I had. We hadn’t been following him exactly.
But at least I could swim.
I got twisted around coming back to the surface and emerged facing the riverbank we’d just left.
The poacher was there. He was smiling.
I plunged back under the surface as he squeezed the trigger. Even under the water I felt the shock as the bullet hit the water, spraying a trail of bubbles down past my face.
Many things focus the mind, among them homicidal poachers hunting you down like some kind of big game. With clarion consciousness I swam underwater to the place where I remembered the wash meeting the river. I didn’t hear another gunshot. I wondered if he could track me below the surface.
He could.
As my head came up, the cannon boomed again. The bullet thwacked the water and ricocheted off the bluff next to my head.
Erica was already scrambling up the wash. John climbed ahead of her. I pulled myself out of the water. The narrow passage was at best a couple feet deep, but it angled into the face of the bluff. By squeezing into it, we could be out of the poacher’s sights. So press I did, tightly up against Erica’s legs.
“Jack, stop it!” she said.
“Get going!” I said urgently.
She stepped on my shoulder and my head and climbed higher.
Bushes clung to the sides of the wash, creosote bushes or mesquite bushes or some kind. They made great handholds, as long as you didn’t mind the thorns. I didn’t mind.
I also didn’t mind the constant pelting as John and Erica knocked loose rocks onto my head and shoulders. I ignored the pain because the truck had stopped again. The riverside poacher was moving downriver to where he could get us in his sights again.
As we climbed higher, the rocks took longer and longer to splash into the water.
John reached the top of the wash and scrambled over the rim of the bluff to safety. Erica still had eight feet to climb.
“Get going!” I shouted.
“I am going, Jack!”
“Faster!” I’d be in their sights any second.
“I can't!”
“What is your problem?”
“Thorns, Jack!”
“Ignore them!”
“I can’t.”
“You have to!”
“I can't!”
“You’re almost there!” I said, trying encouragement.
Then she was close enough. John reached down and grabbed her hand, helping and hauling her up over the edge. Suddenly, it seemed, she was gone.
One duck left.
I found out what Erica had been talking about. At the top, where she had been stuck, everything was thorns. Every species of long-spiked, thorny plant in the wild kingdom had offspring in the last eight feet of that wash. It was like some kind of powerful thorn magnet. Thorns grabbed my shirt, tore at my pants, and stabbed through my shoes into my feet. They were impossible to ignore.
The gunshot, however, focused my mind. For an instant, I wondered how these guys could be poachers with such terrible aim. They needed automatic weapons or rocket-propelled grenades or something. Maybe land mines. Somehow, they missed me again.
The bullet ripped through the mass of thorns on my right, knocking loose a huge chunk of bushes and soil and rocks. As the avalanching mass slid past me, I noticed that it left a bunch of clean handholds in its wake.
But as I reached for a clean, unthorny grip, the sliding tangle of bushes snagged my pant leg. It pulled me off balance. I teetered back on one foot, thorns firmly in my left hand, nothing at all in my right. For a split second I looked down. Below me lay a rocky fall and a watery grave.
“Jack!” It was John, leaning way over the edge, stretching out his hand to help me. “Here!”
That was the odd thing. After the drawing of Erica, after the looks, even after the full confession, he was helping me. More than that, he was putting himself in the line of fire for me. Dangling there, almost falling off the face of the bluff, a thought flashed through my head. Back in Gridlock, Macy had told me that John had caught his wife cheating on him, and he had walked away.
I heard and felt the tearing as the bushes ripped away from my pants. My hand shot up and locked onto John’s. He hauled and I scrambled and just as I cleared the rim, another bullet cracked through the air over our heads.
Erica and I lay panting on the sand. John knelt near the edge, peeking through a clump of bushes.
Several seconds passed. Finally I could talk again. “Thanks, John,” I said.
John said nothing, intently watching the poachers.
“You’re a jerk, Jack,” Erica said.
I had noticed how sexy her voice was, so I said nothing.
A few moments later, we heard the truck moving again.
“What are they doing?” I asked.
John waited before answering. “They’re going back toward our truck,” he said finally.
“What for?” I asked.
John shrugged. “I hope I don’t know.”
“Maybe they’re going to roast hot dogs,” Erica said, aiming the sarcasm at me.
I ignored her.
John stood up and walked away from the rim, surveying the area. Erica and I joined him.
Bluff and river to our west. Northwest, the column of black smoke from Macy’s truck rising and dispersing into the air. To the north and east, the rough hill I’d admired the day before, and beyond it purple mountains that under other circumstances would have been beautiful. To the east, a rugged series of hills and mountains, with the sun still warming up the morning. To the south—
“A million miles to Phoenix,” Erica said, reading my mind again.
“Actually,” John said, “it’s only a little over forty.”
We thought about that. Hills and mountains stretched away as far as we could see to the south. Sheep Bridge was a long way away. Horseshoe Lake was a long way past that, and civilization still farther. We now had no truck, no guns, and no Macy and Sharon. Far to the south, the mountains rose hazy and jagged in the distance. And Phoenix was a long way past them.
“Only,” I repeated.
“Seems like a million,” Erica said.
When we’d left the previous day, it hadn’t occurred to me that I might never return.
Suddenly I noticed that the desert was absolutely quiet. Deathly quiet.
Chapter 15
“Let’s just take it one step at a time,” John said.
That seemed like a good idea to me. “The first thing we have to do is find Macy and Sharon,” I suggested.
“No,” John corrected. “The first thing we have to do is get to a secure place.”
“In case the poachers come after us,” Erica said.
“Oh,” I said. I glanced sheepishly at John, then I looked again. He was wearing his hat. Somehow, while he was rescuing Erica, he’d managed to rescue his hat, too. Was there no end to this guy? “Where’s a ’secure place’?” I asked.
“Someplace where we can see them and they can’t see us,” John explained. “Someplace where they can’t sneak up on us. Someplace we can defend somehow.”
“Great,” I said. “Where?”
He nodded his head to the north. “Up on that hill.�
��
We went.
Up on the bluff, the vegetation was much more scarce than it had been by the river. I found myself wondering if water had something to do with plant growth. Then I realized I was stupid.
Like everything else, the hill was a maze of mounds and gullies and washes. It got kind of steep toward the top, but the vegetation was thin, and we made it easily. John led us around and up the east side of the hill, so we wouldn’t be walking ducks in the poachers’ sights. The smoke from Macy’s truck rose silently from behind the hilltop.
Near the peak we found a little depression. “This is perfect,” John said when he saw it. “From here we can see them coming fifty yards in any direction, and we can throw rocks at them if they come up.”
“Throw rocks?” I asked. “That’s not much compared to bullets.”
“We’re kind of low on choices,” John said.
“Jesus, Jack,” Erica said.
I sighed. “So I guess the next thing we do is get some rocks,” I suggested.
John shook his head. “Next thing is you two have to get those wounds cleaned up a bit. I’ll go and see what they’re doing.”
I was amazed. He’d climbed through the same thorns we had—unaided—and he hadn’t gotten cut up. As he walked the last few feet to the hilltop, I shook my head in disbelief.
“What’s wrong, Jack?” Erica asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Let me see that cut on your leg.”
She pulled her pant leg up. The jagged cut, about two inches long and just above her ankle, was still bleeding. Around it, a nice bruise darkened. The wound was clean, either from the river or from her pant leg or both.
“Wow,” I said. “Do you think you’ll need stitches?”
“No,” she said immediately.
I looked at the cut again. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Jack, I’m a nurse, remember? I don’t need stitches.”
“Of course,” I said. Of course she was a nurse. Of course she knew.
“What I need is something clean to stop the bleeding. Do you have a handkerchief?”
I shook my head. “Must have left it in my suit coat.”
“Don’t get sarcastic, Jack,” she said. “I need something to stop the bleeding. Give me your shirt.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No, Jack. I need it to tie against the cut.”
“No way,” I said. “I’d be sunburned to a crisp before noon.”
“Jack, don’t be a baby,” she shot back.
“Use your own shirt. It’s your cut.”
“Jesus, you two,” John interrupted. He turned and walked back to us. “We need to work together if we want to survive out here. This bickering doesn’t help a bit. They’re working together like a good team, and we need to do the same if we’re going to survive.” He stuck his hand in a pocket of his fishing vest and produced a folded handkerchief. I just blinked. “It’s a little wet,” he said, “but it’s clean.” He handed it to her.
Erica thanked him and began bandaging her wound.
“I don’t suppose you have some tweezers in there,” I said.
“Sorry,” he said. While he resumed his post, I set to work on some of the thorns that had found a new home in my hands. There were lots of them. My fingernails were cut short, and I couldn’t get a grip on most of them.
Erica finished tying the bandage to her leg and went to work on the thorns in her own hands. She couldn’t have had many; she’d had my head and shoulders to climb on.
“John,” Erica said as she worked, “who are those guys?”
“The truck is the same as the one that rammed us on the road yesterday,” John said. “I imagine the two guys shooting at us today are the same ones that were in it then.”
“Do you think they’re doing all this just because of Macy’s bumper sticker?”
John thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” he admitted, “but that seems pretty unlikely.”
“What else could it be?” she asked.
He had no answer.
“Maybe they’re not poachers at all,” I said, getting an idea. “Maybe they have a moonshine still out here and they think we found it.”
“Moonshine?” John asked mockingly. “This isn’t Tennessee.”
“No, not moonshine,” Erica said. “Drugs. Maybe we’re close to a drug lab.”
“Then why the searchlight on the truck?” John asked.
I didn’t know. We thought.
“Maybe they have a drug lab and they’re trying to disguise themselves as poachers,” I suggested.
John looked back at me quickly, silently. “That would be like a bank robber carrying a bloody knife so people would think he was just a murderer,” he said.
Stupid idea.
John turned his gaze back to Macy’s burning truck and our attackers by the river below.
“Maybe it’s not a lab,” Erica said suddenly. “Maybe they have planes flying up from Mexico and dropping the drugs near here at night.”
“And they use the searchlight to find them,” I finished.
John stared down across the river for a moment. Erica and I exchanged proud, triumphant glances. “Then what are the coolers in the back of their truck for?” he asked.
“I didn’t see any coolers in their truck,” Erica pointed out.
“I can see them from here,” John said.
“Oh,” she said. “Where are they, anyway?”
“They’re parked by Macy’s truck, looking around.”
“Maybe the coolers are for their own food and water while they’re out here,” I said.
“They wouldn’t need eight coolers for a couple days in the desert, Jack,” John said. “They must be for taking deer back to town.”
“Can’t be,” I said. “How would they fit a whole deer in a cooler?”
“They clean them out and cut them into quarters first, Jack,” John said. “Then they fit very nicely into coolers.”
I wasn’t convinced. “Maybe they’re making something in a lab, something they have to keep cold. Like LSD.”
John shook his head. “I don’t think you have to keep LSD cold, and what would the searchlight be for?”
I didn’t know.
Neither did Erica. “Maybe they have a lab and they smuggle drugs up from Mexico,” she said without conviction.
“I think,” John said thoughtfully, “that they’re just poachers. Shotguns would be better for protecting a lab. If they had shotguns instead of rifles, they’d probably have gotten us by now.”
We thought about that for a while. Erica, with her feminine fingernails, had already finished pulling the thorns from her hands. I still struggled. My left hand bled a little from when I was hanging onto the thorns to save my life. Erica watched me wrestle with the thorns a bit longer, sighed, then said she’d get them. John continued his vigilance.
With Erica pulling the thorns out of my hands, a thought came to mind. Surprisingly, it wasn’t a thought about Erica.
“John,” I said, “where are Macy and Sharon?”
John was silent.
“John?” Erica said, her face paling. “Are they in the truck?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?” I asked.
“I don’t see them,” he said, turning back to us. “I don’t see them in the truck. I don’t see them on the ground or by the river. I don’t see them anywhere.”
“You don’t think that—” Erica didn’t finish.
“No, I don’t,” John said. “I think they got away. Maybe the poachers don’t even know they’re around.”
“They saw all of us in the truck yesterday,” I said.
“If they are somewhere else,” Erica said, “how are we going to find them?”
“We’ll find them,” John said. “Macy won’t leave without us, and we’d probably be able to see them from here, anyway.”
“I hope we find them before the poachers do,” I put in.
“I hope Macy has his revolver with him,” John said.
Of course!
“Maybe he has his rifle,” I said, getting excited. “He had it with him yesterday. Shooting off his frustrations.” Erica was hopeful now, too.
John shook his head. “It kept misfiring yesterday. He threw it back into the truck when he went off to talk to you. I’m sure he didn’t take it today.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I just hope he didn’t leave his revolver in the truck like I left mine,” he continued. “These poachers would lay off if we were shooting back.”
We let that sink in. Erica finished pulling the thorns from my hand, and I wiped the blood off on my shirt. “So what do we do now?” I asked.
John had sat down on the hilltop where he could watch the poachers. “Well,” he said. “We get some rocks to use in self-defense if we have to, and we wait.”
“Wait for what?” Erica asked.
“Wait to see what the poachers are going to do. If they come after us, we run, if we can. If they don’t, we find Macy and Sharon.”
“Then what?”
“Let’s take this one step at a time,” John said again. “We’ll think of something.”
I had confidence in that man.
The fire of Macy’s truck died down while Erica and I gathered fist-sized rocks, and John reported that the poachers were sifting through the rubble. They took some things, but we couldn’t see what.
While we waited and watched, the sun climbed all the way to noon.
Then, as abruptly as they had entered, they left. They drove slowly, kicking up no dust trail. We saw them drive up the crude road Macy had driven in on. After they had gone maybe a quarter of a mile, we lost sight of them in the thick vegetation.
“Where are they going?” Erica wanted to know.
John said he didn’t know.
“They could be going back to town,” I suggested. “They might have left us here to die in the desert.”
“Could be,” John agreed.
“They might be trying to trick us,” Erica suggested.
“Into what?” I asked.
“Into going back to the truck, so they can come back and shoot us.”
