Bottled Abyss (3 page)

Herman made a vow to not let that happen.

“Lester!”

Only the slip-sliding wind again.

Herman hurried on, thinking of drinking from his water bottle, and then dismissing it as being fidgety. A mile off he could see the procession of electricity transmission pylons marching into infinity, a gang of defunct robot warriors.

There was another paw print in an area where shadows crossed the earth in lengthy swatches. Herman followed the illogical trajectory of the prints for a few steps when he heard the call. The sound was goat-like and miniscule. He attempted to track its location, absurdly by pulling open his left ear. It seemed like it would work. The bleating came again and he quickly scaled a dune popping with soft, grainy weeds.

The bleating again. Once more. Louder? Closer? He wasn’t certain if he was getting anywhere near it.

He searched the land before him, wondering momentarily if his vision had deteriorated since his thirtieth birthday. He drew near an old rowboat half buried in the sand. Some of its wooden siding had been stripped away, making its exposed end look like the ribs of some paleontology discovery. The darker sand surrounding the boat had the unsettling look of eyeless faces screaming silent screams. Lester’s paw prints tracked through the faces, blurring some of their misery.

The bleating sound bent into a yelp that was undeniably canine.

Herman raced up an incline slashed with brittle vegetation. Just at the other side, the earth fell away in moist clumps. His ankle twisted a bit, but he kept on anyway. The next call came out, a snapping vicious growl-bark-yipe.

The foothills slowly embraced him with their craggy arms, the sun completely hidden now. He could distinguish the large open mouth of an abandoned mine shaft he didn’t recognize. Hiking on the other side of the hills, he had seen a couple of older mining shafts where teenagers had bonfires, but it was odd to find one so isolated from the others.

Just as he began hoping Lester hadn’t gone into the shaft, another cry of animal pain registered from the other side of the hill. Herman felt his mouth go dry. That one was close. He wanted to convince himself the cry had not sounded like his Border Collie, but he couldn’t delude himself.

He crossed over to a series of snapping jaws and growls. Lester lay on his side, paws up, fangs bared. His black fur was shiny with blood. Two coyotes rounded him, only to then switch postures on hearing Herman breaking down the slope. The pair of scrawny fiends took off. He tried to kick one as it shot past him, but it was quicker than him by far.

Lester rested his head and wagged his tail as Herman approached.

He dropped to his knees. “No, please, no...”

The dog, tail wagging, mouth gasping for air, didn’t seem to mind its predicament. Herman took out his water bottle, twisted off the cap and poured water over the bloody fur around its neck. Water and blood mixed pink on the badge of white on Lester’s cheek. Carefully, Herman lifted up some of the fur. It was too messy to really see any wounds.

The dog tried to raise its head and whined.

“It’s okay, buddy. I’m going to help you. Hang in there.”

Herman took out his cell phone and dialed Janet. He was only getting one bar of reception out here, but that should have been enough to call home.

Janet picked up.

Her voice was a radio transmission from Hell. The phone reception garbled and flexed and fauceted sound in torrents. Herman attempted to talk through it, but then the call was lost.

He called back.

Lester yelped and Herman pulled his fingers away from his wounds.

The next call didn’t go through.

Could you call 911 for a dog?

In the face of escalating doubt, Herman dialed and waited. His phone returned a signal transmission error. He squeezed the phone hatefully before shoving it back in his jeans.

“I’m going to have to carry you, buddy.” Herman went down on his haunches and slid one hand underneath Lester and at once felt a surge of blood around his fingers. As Herman drew his hand back, Lester snapped with a fierceness he’d never seen from the dog before. He scooted away in a rustle of dirt. “It’s okay, boy. It’s okay.”

His mind raced so fast it took a while to even define the problem. Lester was still alive, but his breathing was shallow. He was losing a lot of blood. If he left to go get help, there would be no saving the dog.

Lester whined again, as though sensing the same thing now. His eyes were wide and frightened, though his open, panting mouth betrayed him for a smile.

Herman slipped off his windbreaker and bent over the dog. He pushed the sleeve under Lester’s mouth, then took both ends and drew it around the neck. Lester snorted but made no other attempt to snap. Herman tied the sleeve together with the other sleeve, to a point where he felt it was secure but not strangling. After he was done, he looked disparagingly at his vermillion hands.

It always looks like there’s more blood than there is—isn’t that what they always say?
Herman wondered if “they” weren’t just chockfull of shit, but he hoped not.

He stood and the world blackened. His heart quaked and thundered and pounded and slammed inside his chest. Should he try to move the dog again? What if that made him bleed faster? Maybe he could just run until he got a better signal on his phone?

Lester’s breathing came slower now; it wasn’t as wild and labored, it was more deliberate, it was a last call for oxygen.

“I’m going to get help, Les,” said Herman. He could hear a tremor in his voice. God, he was so tired of the man he’d become this past year.

He took a couple timid steps away and Lester started whining deep from the gut. Herman closed his eyes and took another step away.
This life…oh this life…all of this in a year. In a fucking year. This wasn’t really happening, was it? People don’t suffer this much? Do they?

A rustling came from behind him.

“Is there trouble here?”

Herman turned. Parting the weeds with a dark walking stick, a gaunt middle aged man with long strawberry blond hair came into the clearing. He was dressed in a black sweat shirt and jeans that almost appeared to blend into one another like a robe. His dirty boots crunched the gravel softly and the sound stopped when he saw the dog.

“My,” he said, pyrite eyes studying the scene.

“It was coyotes—do you have cell service out here?” asked Herman.

The man hesitated, then pulled his eyes away from Lester. “I’m afraid not.”

“Can you go for help? I don’t want to leave him.”

“Of course. I was a medic once, a long time ago. Would you care for me to have a look first?”

“Oh God yes, please, thank you.”

The man dropped his walking stick back against the weeds, which kept it standing. The stick came down into a thin paddle at its end, almost making resemble an oar. Herman had never seen one like it before. Must have been handmade.

He shook the man’s ice cold hand as he walked by. “Thank you for helping. I’m Herman Erikson.”

The man mumbled something that sounded like
Charleston
and then got down next to Lester. “You mind gripping the fur behind his neck, keep him from biting me?”

Herman knelt and grabbed a wad of Lester’s dusty black fur at the back of his neck.

The man leaned over, blond ponytail hanging off his shoulder, and slowly stripped away the hasty windbreaker tourniquet. When he saw the blood he blew out of the side of his mouth and his eyes worked back and forth for a minute.

“What?” Herman asked.

“There’s a bulging here and here—I think maybe that’s internal issues. I don’t know with dogs. He’s pretty well chewed up. This needs to be shaved, cleaned up and evaluated. Have you tried to move him?”

“He’s wounded on his side too. I felt…something there.”

Charleston
’s eyes fixed on him a moment and it was a little unsettling. “Can I see?”

“Yes, go ahead,” said Herman.

The man gently lifted the dog’s hind quarters. Lester made a miserable squeal. After a moment’s study, he let him gently down.

“That’s even worse than the throat. He’s keeping himself together by laying on it. Too bad, such a beautiful, beautiful hound. How much did you pay for him?”

Herman shook his head, taken back. “We got him at a shelter.”

Charleston
looked at him a moment as though he hadn’t understood, but said, “I see.”

“So what can I do? Anything?”

The man took a long breath of air in through his sharp nose and pursed his lips in thought. “This one’s suffering…well enough, and dragging him a mile or two will probably be worse. You could chance it, possibly.”

“My wife can’t see him like this.”

“I understand.”
Charleston
got to his feet and dusted off his knees. “I’ll go ahead and head out to the main road over there. I’m not a fast traveler but I can probably make it in less than an hour or so.”

“That won’t do. Maybe I should just go. Thank you for helping.”

“It’s no problem, friend.”

Herman faded back a little bit, shaking his head. Lester’s eyes were glazing over. Herman couldn’t watch this anymore. He took one more step back and bumped into
Charleston
.

“Pardon—”

The man’s gold-flaked eyes stared into him, hard. “There’s one more thing. Not proud to say it, but I have some… liquid poppy with me.”

“Morphine?”

“Of course,
of course
. I will give some to the dog, if you like.”

Herman’s first instinct was to say no, but his merry-go-round head could not find a good reason for it. “He’s not going to make it. I guess that would be okay. He’s in pain. It’ll help right?”

“It will help,”
Charleston
said.

From inside the front pouch of the man’s sweat shirt, he pulled free an obsidian bottle. Its patina would suggest a metal composite material, although the long flutelike neck ended in a flat, circular opening which revealed the interior as glass. The bottle, without a doubt, was an archaic looking item for a hiker to carry. Herman didn’t want to ask what the deal was at this point, for fear of embarrassing the man, but he was beginning to form an impression of
Charleston
. He’d met a man who was likely an oddball coot that wandered the wastelands out here, as high as Benjamin Franklin’s electrified kite.

“That’s a beautiful bottle,” remarked Herman. He meant it, too. What he didn’t say was the bottle was also equally troubling for some reason.

 
“Thank you.”
Charleston
took a knee once more near Lester. “It’s all I have of my old home. The poppy helps my back pain and the bottle helps me remember everything that used to be good. Do you have anything like that, friend?”

Herman did indeed, but such items were landmines hidden around the house that he’d rather not encounter. “Sure,” he answered.

The man pulled out the longest, blackest cork Herman had ever seen and set it down on the pebble-shot desert floor. Lester took deeper breaths. His eyes bulged as the man tipped the bottle. Dark gray water poured from the bottle’s indifferent mouth and splashed all over Lester’s face. The dog lapped at the stream and choked raggedly.