Chariot - [Millennium Quartet 03] Page 19

  “But that other crap, it’s superstition, nothing more. I believe I’m going to get clobbered, so I let my guard down and I get the shit beaten out of me.” A mirthless brief laugh as he shook his head. “I’ve been around too long, seen too much, Mr. Harp. If you’re not going to tell me anything, fine. Great. Take me home.” Another half step, “That’s not a request, Mr. Harp. I mean it. Take me home.”

  Harp, slipped his hand back into the pocket.

  Trey wanted to giggle, wanted to throw a punch.

  “John,” Beatrice said from behind her hand. “For God’s sake, he’s not listening, get it over with.”

  “Not listening?” Trey’s voice rose. “Not listening? To what? I haven’t heard anything but—” He stopped when he saw the gun. “Now look . . .”

  Harp jerked his head to the right. “One or two miles that way, Mr. Falkirk, is the edge of the city. There’s no sign, but it’s there.” His voice hardened. “We’re not talking about your bloody stupid superstitions. But we are indeed talking about the end of the world.”

  Trey laughed.

  John Harp shot him.

  * * * *

  3

  He wasn’t clear what happened next.

  What he did know was that from reading descriptions of bullets entering flesh they usually mentioned a burning sensation. Which, he thought as his leg buckled and he toppled to the ground, was a crock of an understatement, because it felt as if someone had jammed a white hot poker into his left thigh so far that it popped out the other side.

  He gripped his leg above the wound and yelled, rolled onto his side, and the world began to shift into shades of white and red. A voice he couldn’t understand; the car starting and leaving; sitting up and spotting, a few feet away, a length of thin rubber tubing and a long piece of cloth.

  Obscenities he didn’t realize he knew dragged him over to the tubing, which he wrapped and tied tightly around the thigh just above the place where the blood ... he shuddered, gagged—there were holes front and back, and the blood ...

  Jesus, he didn’t know what he was doing. He had never taken first aid, had never seen a real gunshot wound, and he didn’t know what he was doing, could only shake the dirt off the cloth and wrap and tie it over the thigh and watch it turn pale, then dark red.

  And it hurt so much he could barely sit up, and his knee wouldn’t bend, and that son-of-a-bitching old man had shot him, had stood there calm as could be and shot him and left him here to die. Bleed to death. Just to prove what, that he was mortally vulnerable outside Las Vegas?

  That it was no superstition, that it was real, that he could really die?

  He was afraid to let go of his leg, thinking that if he did all the blood would run out. All of it.

  He rocked and moaned, bit hard enough on his lower lip to draw blood which, when he tasted it, he spat out as his stomach exploded bile into his throat. He spat that put as well, rocking, moaning, blinking furiously to rid his vision of the tears that blinded him. Realizing he was perilously close to hyperventilating and passing out, which would mean ...

  Swallowing hard, licking his lips, he concentrated on breathing as normally as he could. Slowly, tentatively, virtually one finger at a time, he released the grip on his leg, braced his left hand on the ground beside him, and watched the red cloth gleam in the sunset, watched streaks of red sink into his jeans. He almost panicked again, felt his breathing hitch and stutter before slowing to as close to calm as it was ever going to get. Another swallow while he wiped his face, his eyes, and understood that he was, in fact, alone.

  Get it over with, she had said.

  “Jesus,” he whispered. “Jesus.”

  They had planned it; they had goddamn planned it.

  Still rocking, no longer moaning, he looked around and saw nothing but desert, and the sun touching the top of the range far to his right.

  Alone.

  So what do you do? he asked himself.

  He answered, ask a stupid question.

  If he stayed, waiting for some miracle to provide him with a savior who just happened to be driving around the middle of nowhere, he would probably bleed to death. The tourniquet and the cloth had stemmed but not stopped the flow, and his leg grew increasingly numb . . . except for the pain.

  One or two miles that way, Sir John had told him.

  Son of a bitch, what choice did he have?

  It took several tries, several cries, before he flailed to his feet, neck muscles bulging, sweat drenching him head to foot as he waited for the poker to stop jabbing him and settle into a constant fiery throbbing.

  Another cry, less of anguish than of rage, when he took his first step and the injured leg crumpled and he fell and rolled onto his back and cursed the sky no longer sharp and blue.

  Screw it, he thought; I’m gonna stay here.

  Screw it, he thought, and cursed himself back to standing and, after a few halting tries, discovered that if he sort of dragged the bad leg he could sort of walk-hop without falling, without passing out.

  Every step reigniting the fire; every step releasing just a little more blood, he could feel it mingling with the sweat on his leg.

  He could feel it slipping down into his boots.

  Step and grunt, step and swear.

  He felt light-headed, queasy, and furious enough not to let that stop him. It did, however, blur his thinking for a while, until he realized he could wander off in the wrong direction, and latched onto the tracks the car had made. With his left hand holding on to the back of his thigh, he soon slipped into a rhythm, a routine.

  Don’t look up; don’t look to see how far you’ve gone, how far you have to go.

  Step and grunt; step and swear.

  Thinking: Harp didn’t really want him dead. The bullet had gone exactly where it was supposed to—flesh, no bone—and they wouldn’t have left him the tubing and the makeshift bandage. The desert wouldn’t do it for them, either. The heat had lessened, it would soon be twilight and relatively, blessedly, cool.

  Harp could have shot him in the heart, in the head.

  So it was a test, right? See how strong he was, how much pain he could take, how far he could go before his injuries knocked him on his ass, put him down for the count.

  Maybe, maybe not, because Beatrice kept talking about a time factor, how little of it there was left.

  For what? The end of the world? For the test?

  Step and grunt.

  It hurt to think.

  It hurt to breathe.

  He stared at the faint tracks in the gritty sand and how his shadow flowed over them and almost erased mem; he stared at the tip of his boot, but that made him dizzy and he focused on the tracks again, for a long time thinking how the pain had finally gone away until he stumbled and cried out and realized he had gotten used to the pain that reacted now to the beat of his heart.

  Step and curse.

  Left arm swinging forward hard to pull him along.

  Left leg every so often taking a little of his weight while it bled into the sand, into his boot.

  He glanced up once, and saw nothing but smears of cacti, smears of grass, and squinting didn’t help.

  God help him, the fools had miscalculated. They had gone too far toward the mountains, and now he wasn’t going to make it. Sooner or later his strength would fail, his will surrender, his blood run out, and sooner or later he was going to drop to his knees, to his stomach, and he was, no doubt about it, going to die.

  * * * *

  Jude, he said as she walked beside him, loose dress flowing around her legs, her hips, what do you say we pool our resources and find a place together? I could hit the dragon a little more often, we might be able to get a place big enough for the girls to have their own rooms, what do you say?

  She didn’t answer, save to look at him, lift the veil and show him what was there, and what wasn’t.

  So? he said.

  She lowered the veil and walked away, shimmering into the desert until, just as he wa
s about to give chase, she raised her arms to the sky and turned into a Joshua tree. Forever rooted in one place.

  * * * *

  Jude, he said as she walked beside him, her hair loose and playing tag with the wind, you’re not going to believe this, but I’ve got nearly twenty-five thousand bucks in my stash under the bed. What do you say we grab the girls, get into the chariot, and ditch this place? Find someplace new. Someplace with. real streets and real houses. Someplace where the kids will have someone to play with besides a couple of lizards once in a while.

  She looked at him, her eyes flat above the veil. Eula, she said, wouldn’t like it.

  Who cares what Eula thinks?

  We do.

  Not me.

  I didn’t say you.

  But what difference does it make whether she likes it or not?

  Her eyes turned soft, pitying, and she walked away into the desert, spread her arms, spun in a circle, blended into a dust devil that nicked a large clump of pear cactus and fell apart without a sound.

  * * * *

  He stopped. Panting. Wiping a sleeve over his face, shoving wet hair off his brow. His back felt the strain of the left leg’s partial drag, and he found himself increasing the tilting forward until he was sure he would fall.

  No falling allowed.

  Once down, he wouldn’t get up.

  A tremor that began between his shoulder blades worked its way down his arms, and his hands began to shake as if palsied. He stretched his neck, closed his eyes, opened them as wide as he could several times, not entirely sure that the small black dots he saw up there were circling birds or just something in his eye.

  He looked at his leg and said, “Aw, Jesus,” at the red bandage wrapped around it, at the black-red jeans leg. Flesh, no bone, but that was obviously just a technicality now. He had no idea how much blood he had lost, and did not, would not look behind him to see how much had been left in his wake.

  The tremor eased, and he used both arms to swing him forward, his right knee bending so much he could hardly stand, so he braced his right hand just above it and pushed.

  Stepped.

  Pushed.

  Stepped.

  Lurching back into the rhythm, head low, lips dry no matter how often he licked them, throat dry no matter how often he swallowed, feeling things inside him contracting against the pain he couldn’t help but grow used to.

  And count on, because he knew that once it stopped, he was done.

  * * * *

  When at last he fell, he cried out softly, catching his weight on his hands, on one knee, lips working.

  It felt so good to stop that he didn’t try moving, didn’t goad himself, didn’t scream the danger, didn’t give a damn because it felt so damn good.

  For a minute, maybe less, maybe more, he watched the sweat drip from his face and hair into the sand, watched the faint quivering of his locked elbows, watched his fingers dig clawlike into the sand as if afraid that if they let go he would float away.

  An unconscious shift of his injured leg spiked fire into his spine, and his head snapped up as he gasped, inhaling sharply, holding his breath, waiting for the fire to subside.

  * * * *

  He saw them.

  He saw the car.

  * * * *

  A whimper because they were too distant to see clearly, and might be only wishful thinking. A mirage. A prayer.

  A growl when Sir John took off his hat and waved it, signaling their position while Beatrice moved to one side, and he knew they were real.

  Come on, he thought; damnit, get over here, give me a hand, can’t you see, for God’s sake? Can’t you see?

  Harp waved the hat again and put it on.

  They weren’t coming. All this time, all these hours, days, they sat in their air-conditioned car and waited, maybe playing a game to see who’d be the first to spot him. It was, he thought sourly, probably the old man.

  Several hundred yards, he couldn’t crawl all that way, so he lurched back to his feet, snarling, growling, feeling a space in his skull begin to expand, empty space that made his vision unreliable, tilting the world slightly to the left, to the right, and he had to shift his concentration back to the tire tracks before the nausea in his stomach rose into his mouth.

  Step and grunt.

  I swear I will kill them.

  Step and swear.

  Him first, then her.

  Hearing a voice, urging, pleading, as if he were a marathon runner late to the finish line.

  A snarl, teeth bared, shirt half out of his waistband, covered with sand that stuck to the blood, to the sweat. Stumbling, then pausing as he straightened and swayed. He couldn’t keep them in focus, and he couldn’t keep his head up for more man a few seconds at a time, and he couldn’t keep the hot poker in his leg from making him grunt when he tried to take a normal step.

  “My dear fellow,” Harp said across the distance Trey couldn’t begin to measure. “My dear fellow, just a little more. A few more feet.” Admiration thickened his voice. “My God, man, don’t stop now.”

  And the horse you rode in on, Trey thought, and considering the conversation, that made him smile, made him break into a choking laugh that ended in simple choking which turned into a low and steady growl when Beatrice moved to help him and Sir John put out a hand to stop her, shaking his head.

  “Bastard,” Trey said.

  Sir John watched, and Trey tried to follow the direction of his gaze, seeing nothing on the ground that indicated the spot he had to reach before someone, for God’s sake, bothered to give him a hand. But wherever it was, he knew he had reached it when Beatrice yanked open the back door and swept the suitcase onto the floor.

  “Well done,” Harp said.

  Trey, with what little strength he had left, took the longest stride he could and swung at the old man’s jaw.

  He missed, and momentum kept him in motion. Turning slowly. Falling. Feeling two pairs of arms grab him and drag him and push-shove him into the backseat where he was washed with cool air and the smell of cool leather that almost masked the smell of warm blood and sweat.

  Beatrice ordered her husband behind the wheel, then leaned in and scrabbled at the bandage, cursing when she couldn’t untie the knot and demanding Sir John grab her knife from her purse. Trey, his head propped against the far armrest, watched it all with dazed dispassion—the free-flowing blood when the bandage was cut away, the boots and socks she tossed to the floorboard, her fingers moving over his belt buckle, his zipper, then grabbing his jeans and pulling them off while he yelled and tried to kick her away. Feebly, too feebly; she brushed his protests aside as if he were a child, climbed into the back with him, and closed the door behind her.

  “Drive, John,” she said.

  And he did.

  * * * *

  4

  There was, Trey thought, a lot to be said for drugs sometimes.

  Moments after Harp got the car moving, Beatrice began to work in feverish silence, pulling a number of things from a small black bag on the floorboard beside her—damp cloths to wash his leg, more cloth to wash the entrance and exit wounds, a hypodermic she filled from a tiny bottle and stabbed into his thigh without preamble, which invasion he didn’t feel at all because the fire was too strong. She neither warned him about pain, nor asked him how he felt. Yet he knew he’d gone pale when he saw the hole for the first time, and the dirt encrusted around it, the grit in the wound itself. Hell, he thought as the car slammed over the desert floor, all this damn trouble and I’m gonna die of the damn infections.

  A few seconds later, he felt a welcome lethargy; a few seconds more and the fire was nearly gone.

  “Good stuff,” he mumbled as she took a thick square of gauze and placed it over the exit wound, taking his hand to hold it in place. Another square for the front, which he held with the other hand.