Five Days Dead (21 page)

Harley had shown a change in character of late that was disturbing. He had shown a change in character when he let Quinlan and his children live after their first encounter with the Wrynd. He had even given the young man his sword! He had shown a change in character when he stopped to help the old man and his wife and Quinlan and the children. The fact that his actions resulted in the death of the old woman was the only thing of value the man with the gray eyes could see coming out of the whole ordeal. Then he waited to help the old man, to try and save him even though he knew the Wrynd were coming and that the old man wanted him dead. Why would Harley Nearwater do something like that?

The Gray Walker sat and stared in amazement from the roof of a discount store across the street from the hotel as the animals rampaged through town, a mass of nature fleeing the forces of nature. That they were all running in the same direction gave him a moment of pause to test the air and see if the old man might not be playing a part. He was surprised when he could feel nothing of his presence. Surprised, but not terribly so. It was simply a miracle and Harley Nearwater just happened to be one of the benefactors. So were the surviving non-Wrynd residents of Price, who used the opportunity to head south as well and escape the dead city by whatever means they could. That most of them would become a victim to the animals they now followed did not in the least diminish the glory of the miracle taking place.

He was also not surprised when the marshal released Harley, he knew she had the mettle to kill him, but lacked any real desire, even if not doing so was against the wishes of her master. When Harley drove into the night, the man with the gray eyes followed him with senses he had developed over countless years. The semi turned and went up the canyon toward mountains that would burn and the Gray Walker leapt from the roof of the two-story building and landed nimbly on his feet, his boots making no sound at all as they touched the ground.

He walked south humming softly to himself, as he sometimes did, wondering what he should do about Harley Nearwater.

Into the Dark

              Once outside of Price the animals scattered, most of them running west into the desert, some of them turning and going south, even more simply stopping in the fields outside of the city to rest. Harley continued down the old highway, a sense of urgency building within him. He was still hunted. He had no weapons and was driving a truck that was groaning with every mile. He was running out of options.

West of him was his pickup and his weapons. Southwest of him was home and a life he once had taken for granted but no longer did. He could continue going southeast and eventually reach Kayenta and perhaps even find his mother. But the road was long and fraught with danger and he had no way to protect her. He had no way to protect himself and if he did find his way there the Wrynd would be right behind him. He had to find another place to hide and wait for the Wrynd to lose interest, or at least lose his scent. All he needed was an opportunity to double back and reach his weapons. Then he could make a stand.

He stopped the old semi in the middle of the highway outside of the ghost town of Wellington. If he kept going southeast, he might be able to find weapons in Green River or Moab, but doubted it. Green River was already robbed of what had been there worth taking. Moab was a better choice, but it was almost barren as well and the Wrynd from the Colorado Hub were known to go there. He could find himself trapped between two tribes of Wrynd without a weapon. And to the southwest was the desert. He could take Ridge Road in Wellington and double back. The road traveled west and then linked with SR-10. It would lead him home. Harley shook his head and ruled it out. Orrin would expect as much.  

Sitting in the middle of the road in a dying semi Harley turned his eyes to the mountain of the north and a smile curled his lips. Now that, they wouldn’t expect.

He turned the big truck and headed up Nine Mile Canyon, toward a burning mountain.

Jodi watched Harley drive away in the rattling semi. The wind shifted directions and the smoke billowed behind her, clearing her line of sight, and she caught movement out of the corner of her eye, a shadow dancing in the night. She was careful not to move her head, but kept straining her eyes to see better.

There was something sitting on top of the building across the street. Something watching. It dropped off the two-story building and landed easily enough as if the drop of more than 20 feet was of little consequence. As it walked south down the middle of the street, it came more clearly into Jodi’s field of vision. It was a man of average height, wearing a long coat in the middle of summer. In the darkness she could make out none of his features, but she knew who he was.

“The Gray Walker.”  Her voice was a hush in the night. The Wrynd were starting to come out of the hotel and were making a racket but above their din she thought she might have heard humming, pleasant humming of someone quite pleased. The figure in shadows walking just out of reach of the street lights might have turned to her when she whispered, might have flicked her a wave as he walked out of sight. She could not be sure. What she was sure of was that he wanted her to see him.

Orrin pushed aside his stumbling Wrynd as he made his way outside. He was bleeding from the forehead and a gash across his abdomen. The herd of elk had trampled him to the ground and he had somehow managed to roll out of the way and crawl into the hotel lobby without being killed.

Harley had stolen away in the semi and standing in the parking lot with her hands on her hips and a smile on her lovely face was Marshal Tempest. She had let him escape.             

“Where is he?” Orrin spoke softly, coolly, but there was no mistaking the menace in his voice. Jodi didn’t seem to notice.

“Not here.” She turned to face him and she was still smiling.

In a flash, Orrin drew his sidearm and fired. The pulse blast should have cut a hole through Jodi’s chest, but her scye deflected it and the blast went wide, through a window in the hotel. Somebody screamed. Orrin’s scye dove at her head and Jodi did a summersault while her scye countered, coming up on her feet and drawing her own blaster. But she did not fire. Orrin fired again and again and each blast was countered by Jodi’s scye. The other Wrynd watched in silence as their king attacked and the marshal parried and with each attack Orrin realized the young woman was faster than him, faster than he had ever been.

“You can keep trying to kill me Orrin,” Jodi said calmly as she flipped out of the place where he had just fired. “Or we can go and get them.”

Orrin stopped firing. “Them?”

Jodi strode toward him. A lock of golden hair had escaped her ponytail and she brushed it away from her face. “Harley and the Gray Walker. He was watching from across the street.”

Orrin looked puzzled for a moment and then he smiled. “So Harley does have a friend.”

“Who’d of thunk it?”

Orrin stared into the dancing smoke, his eyes far away and his face blank and Jodi snapped her fingers. “Rally your zombies. Let’s go.”

“We’re not zombies,” hissed the woman who had wanted to make man jerky out of Harley. “We are the Wrynd.”

Jodi chuckled. “Are you sure? You look like a zombie, you eat like a zombie and you smell like a zombie. Are you sure you’re not a zombie?”

Orrin gave Jodi a sidelong glance and barked for one of his minions. “Ralph!”

The skinny young man who had summoned him when Jodi and Harley arrived pushed through the crowd. He was filthy and it looked like one of the animals, perhaps a cow, had defecated on his face. Otherwise, he appeared unharmed. Jodi marveled. 

“We need transportation for the Wrynd.”

“How many of us?”

“All of us.”

Ralph puzzled for a moment and then grinned, slapped his hands together like a happy child and pointed at Orrin. “School buses.”

Orrin nodded. “Go get them.”

Jodi sighed and looked about the parking lot. Some of Orrin’s Wrynd looked like they had seen better days. There were middle-aged, overweight men and women in the group and youth who looked no older than 12 or 13. They stumbled into each other, milling around like the mindless zombies she said they were. The only reason they were there was because they knew this was the only place they might get another taste of ink. She didn’t see how they would be of any great help in their quest.

“Do you really want to take everyone for this?”

Orrin grinned, showing his fanged teeth and Jodi scowled. He used to be a marshal she reminded herself. He had been asked to do this by their mutual master and he had obeyed. She was not sure she could do the same. She was struggling with something as simple as killing a drifter. She would not allow herself to consider the reasons why.

“I want them all. We were defeated by a little old man. What if this Gray Walker’s power exceeds his? We attack as a tribe.”

Ralph gathered up five other Wrynd and they scrambled into a truck and disappeared into the smoke-filled night.

“Whatever you say King Orrin.” Jodi strolled through the hotel doors in search of something to drink. Her scye trailed after.

Harley drove toward Nine Mile Canyon with the headlights off. Twice he had almost driven off the road and down a ravine into a dry wash. He slowed the semi to a crawl and squinted into the moonlight to make his way. The fires were behind him now and the wind had shifted, pointing them south rather than east and buying him some time. The inferno pointed toward Price and he grunted in satisfaction.

“Let them burn.”

After an hour of crawling toward the canyon, he stopped the truck and climbed out to stretch his legs and relieve himself. He had driven a little over five miles. He could have walked faster, but the truck would have been a clue he dared not leave behind. If he were found, it would be a means of escape faster than boots on the pavement. The road now offered two choices. He could continue up Nine Mile Canyon or turn right and drive up Dugout Canyon Road, which he knew led to a dead end. He aimed for a dead end.

He scanned the skies. To the north the sky was black and the fires in the mountains glowed. To the south the sky dazzled in starlight and the Milky Way was an endless ocean of calm beckoning. He sighed and leaned against the truck grill to smoke a cigarette. He had five cigarettes left and no means to get anymore. He tried to enjoy the smoke.

The moon was a half circle in the west and played peek-a-boo in the burning sky. To the south the Wheel was a glowing nickel-sized ring and he frowned staring up at it from so far below. There were 10,000 people living up there in a giant wheel in the sky, floating in the vast and endless ocean of the Outland. He had wanted to be one of them. In all his life that was the one thing he could remember that he really wanted. He wanted to live in the Wheel and look out and see the Earth floating below and know that he was not a part of it; that he was somehow separate from all the cares and turmoil. 

When he was a boy and had learned of the Wheel, learned that people lived in space, he had grasped hold of the idea tightly and would not let go. Dad had left and his mother was sad and angry and did not seem to like him very much anymore, so he held on to the thought that someday he might live in space. He knew of the Link and all the things that could be done there; that you could fly or swim under water or be an animal or anything you wanted to be. But he knew it was pretend and even though the kids at school taunted him because he was a stupid neand, he knew the Link wasn’t real. You might think in the digiverse you were doing all of these amazing things, but you were really just sitting on a chair blinking your eyes and tricking your mind. That’s all the digiverse really was; a clever trick, like when Dad told you he was coming back, but knew that he wasn’t. Just a trick, so you didn’t think about what was real.

The Wheel was real though. He could look up into the night sky and see it shining there. It was a real thing. People were living in space. They were not on this planet at all, only floating above it. He wanted that for himself.

Harley took another drag on his cigarette and remembered going to Mom as she got ready for work to tell her about the Wheel.

“Did you know there are people living in space Mom? There are people living on a giant wheel in space. It’s a wheel so it can spin and they won’t just float around, but be able to walk around. I would rather float around, but they spin it because the people there want to walk.”

“I know about the Wheel Harley.” His Mom had said in the same voice she always used after Dad left. It was a robot voice. It was a dead voice. It had been a year since Dad left and Harley didn't think he had seen her smile once in all that time. He wasn’t doing a very good job taking care of her, he knew. Dad would not be happy at all.

“I want to live on the Wheel someday. I could live on the Wheel and you could come and visit.”

“I don’t think there are any Indians on the Wheel Harley.” She was buttoning her blouse and it was a little tight. Mom had been eating a lot more since Dad left. She would sit on the couch and watch movies on the old fashioned television and she would eat Cheetos and hardly ever say a word to Harley. But that was okay because sometimes she would let him watch the movies and sometimes she shared the Cheetos. “I don’t think you would find one Navajo on the Wheel in space,” his Mom had said.