CRYERS (29 page)

Chapter 50

Trot had cried
when he learned the lawman was still alive, and not much to Cobe’s surprise, so
did Willem. Jenny’s father had told her the Lawson was still breathing—how
close to death he didn’t say—and Jenny had told them. That didn’t surprise Cobe
either. The lawman had said it before; he was too stubborn and too stupid to
die. They had also learned Sara was looking after him. That only left Kay
missing in their growing family of has-beens, orphans, and misfits. Cobe never
had the chance to get to know Kay better. They had only spoken that one night
before the Rites, but the girl was still on his mind. The way her fair hair
seemed to glow in the moonlight, the dusting of freckles on her forehead and on
the bridge of her nose. Those light blue eyes like two frozen pools. He wished
he could hear the soft whisper of her voice one more time.

His day-dream
ended when he remembered she was the lawman’s daughter. How would Lawson react
if he knew of Cobe’s feeling towards her? A guilty part of him was thankful the
lawman was bedridden and unable to do anything about it.

“What’re you
thinking about?”

Jenny’s voice
startled him. All had been relatively still for an hour or so. The obese woman
hadn’t come for anyone in quite a while. It was the middle of the night and the
big room was dark, enveloped completely in black. Cobe had lost count of how
many people were still left hanging in there with them. The sound of ropes
straining against wooden timber had quieted as well. Those left were either
concentrating on staying on their toes, or they had fallen asleep and choked in
their nooses.

“Someone I
met,” he finally answered. “Someone your people probably already killed.”

“What was her
name?”

“Never said it
was a girl.”

He felt her
fingers wrap around his arm. “Come on, let’s go for a walk.”

Cobe couldn’t
see a thing in the dark. His foot thumped into what he imagined was Trot’s gut.
The man made a snorting grunt but didn’t awaken. Jenny pulled Cobe along the hard-packed
ground and out into the night. The moon shone down on the streets of Rudd
painting everything a cold and oppressive grey. He breathed in fresh air,
thankful that the stink of excrement, urine, and fear was behind him, even if
just for a short while.

“I’m not like
the others,” Jenny said, leading him along the center of Rudd’s main street
towards the west. “I haven’t eaten human flesh, and I don’t plan to.”

“You look like
them. You’re holding us here when we want to leave. I can’t see a difference.

He felt her
grip on his bicep loosen. The fingers trailed down his arm and she held his
hand. “You saw me in the dream. You heard my warning.”

They weren’t
questions but Cobe nodded his head. “I remember the dream. How’d you get in my
head like that?”

“I don’t know
how I do it. I can get inside anyone’s head when I close my eyes and go to
sleep. It’s getting stronger… I think I can do it when people are still awake.”

Cobe wondered
if she was doing that right now. The feel of her hand in his was cold, but it
wasn’t repulsive. He looked at her long hair and pictured running his fingers
through it.
 
A pang of guilt flooded
through him as he thought f Kay again.

“What was her
name?”

“Huh?”

“The girl you
were thinking about, what was her name?”

“Kay.” He
almost added she was the lawman’s daughter, that she was the most beautiful
girl he’d ever met.

Jenny repeated
the name. “Kay. I always liked the sound of that. It’s an old name.”

“She wasn’t
old.” Her fingers tightened around his. “Why are you holding my hand?”

Jenny sighed.
“I’m a girl, you’re a boy. I thought it was pretty obvious.”

There had been
a strong attraction to her in the dreams, Cobe couldn’t deny it. But awake,
walking side by side in the moonlight, the reality of what she was and those
she traveled with was impossible to ignore. The millennia-old gash running from
the bottom of her ear down the greater part of her throat was hard to miss. It
was deep and lethal-looking. An injury like that would’ve killed a human, Cobe
thought
. She isn’t human. She isn’t like
me. She’s one of them.
His gaze wandered into her hair again. He couldn’t
help himself. Cobe stopped walking and Jenny faced him. He touched her hair,
ran his fingers through its length. It felt coarse, like the main on Lawson’s
ugly one-eyed horse. His fingers caught in knotted tangles. Just hair, he
realized. The dream-state vision he held her in ended.

“Yeah, I’m a
boy, but you ain’t no girl…not like any girl I’ve ever known.”

There was a
flash of something in her green eyes. Fury. Hurt. Sorrow. It was brief, but
Cobe had seen the feelings there. “I’m
not
them. How can I prove it to you?”

“Let us go.
Help us out of here tonight while it’s still dark.”

Jenny shook
her head. “It’s too late. It’ll be light again soon. Tomorrow night—a few hours
after sunset.” They were walking again, approaching the western bridge. Jenny
could see Ivan Tevalov’s hunched form in the shadows. He was sitting on the
first few flat stones leading out of Rudd. She could hear him chewing on a long
piece of bone, sucking the marrow out from one shattered end. “We’ll have to
kill whichever one of them is on guard.” She hoped it would be Tevalov. She
detested the dead-eyed Russian almost as much as her great-great-grandfather.

Cobe had seen
with his own eyes how tough these things were to kill. Lode had pounded on
Jenny’s father’s face with everything he had, and the monster stood through it
all. Jenny’s mother had been blasted in two pieces, but she was still with
them. Nothing short of the lawman’s powerful guns could bring these things down
to their knees, he figured. But the lawman’s guns were gone—left behind
somewhere in Big Hole.

As if she
could read his mind—and maybe she had—Jenny whispered in Cobe’s ear. “I can
take care of him when the time comes, trust me.”

They started
back for the center of town. “Why would you let us go? I thought you said we
belonged to you.”

“You’re not
going alone… I’m coming with you.”

***

“Fuckers.”
Gertie muttered the word for about the hundredth time as she sat in the dark
plains outside of Rudd. “Filthy, murderin’ fuckers.” She watched the
white-bearded monster chew on a piece of femur like a mutt with its favorite
bone.

“We gonna get
them good, Ma,” a man said behind her. He had a growth on his neck that may
have been a forming foot thirty years earlier. It was all wrinkled over and had
hair growing out the end.

“We’re goin’
to try, Boy.” Most of her sons and grandsons were named Boy. So were the
nephews and cousins. Dirty knew them all by heart and didn’t need titles for
each. That was the
civilized
way of
doing things. “They done ate a lot of my children. It’s good we got plenty more
kin to rely on.”

Boy nodded his
head enthusiastically and the thing on his neck wagged like a thick, limp
penis.
 
“Gonna show ‘em what happens to
folks what trespass in our hills.”

Gertie grunted
and looked over the town where she’d been born, raised for a short time, and
raped repeatedly. It had taught her plenty. She’d learned how to screw in Rudd.
It was where she had learned to hate and how to kill. She loathed it, but deep
down inside her rotted soul was a part looking forward to returning one last
time.

Her remaining
children were clustered around her like ticks clinging to a host. They were
watching the town, feeding off Gertie’s need for revenge and the cold taste of
her hate. Most were waiting, some were sleeping. A few were eating the remains
of a pack of howlers they’d come across halfway between the forested hills of
home and Rudd. Others were fucking quietly in the dirt, doing their part to repopulate
old Dirty’s family.

Gertie
regarded those she could see in the moonlight, scraping that one green tooth of
hers against the wet scab of her upper lip. There were less than fifty of them
left, but those that remained were young and fast. They were the ones equipped
with spears, and bows and arrows.

“We’ll give
‘em a fight they won’t soon forget,” she mumbled. “Or we’ll die tryin’.”

Boy showed her
his toothless smile. “I love you, Ma.”

Gertie glared
back at her old home. “Fuckers.”

Chapter 51

Kay didn’t
think a human being could get so thirsty without dropping dead first. Her lips
were swollen fat and cracking, the inside of her mouth felt worse. She had only
tasted water once since fleeing Rudd, and that had been a mistake. She knew the
dirty river water wasn’t fit to drink without boiling first, but she’d done it
anyway. Most of it had come back up a half hour later, and whatever else was
left inside her came out the other end shortly after. The headache set in after
the vomiting and shitting was done, and it had stayed with her ever since. It
pounded against the inside of her skull with every step. Kay took to keeping
her eyes closed as she trudged along the dry earth, stumbling in the cracks and
ruts.

It ain’t fair. Nobody should hurt this much.
Nobody should want water so bad.

She remembered
what had likely become of her mother—of Cobe and his brother, and her father,
and all those other poor souls left behind in Rudd—and she felt ashamed. At
least Kay was still living. As horrible and painful as it was, she was still
forcing one foot in front of the other, heading shakily south, towards Burn.

She had slept
along the river’s bank the night before, grateful for the cool dark. But the
night had been too short. The much-needed rest was interrupted by the rising of
the sun. Kay knew she had to keep moving. She had to put as much ground behind
her as she could before it got too hot—before the thirst clamped her parched
throat shut and she couldn’t take another awful step.

By noon, or
what Kay believed to be noon, she collapsed into the dirt and tried to cry. Her
eyeballs were too dry and sore to produce much in the way of tears, and it hurt
too much to wail. She curled up into a ball and made feeble choking grunts. She
waited to die.

She thought
the shadow falling across her body was a cloud. She opened her eyes and hoped
for rain. Even fire-rain would be a welcome thing now. If she couldn’t drink
it, at least the acidic drops would finish her off sooner.

The shadow
wasn’t cast from a cloud. A giant beast stood over her, blocking out the hot
sun completely. Kay had never seen a live roller before. As a child, she and
some friends had seen the remains of one in the bottom of Rudd’s moat. Its
giant skull had split open on one of the rocks after it plunged over from the
plains east of town. All that was left was a stinking mess of brain, bone, and
fur.

The thing
standing over her now dropped its long head and poked Kay’s cheek with its wet
nose. It made a snorting sound and she knew then what kind of creature it was.
She blinked until enough moisture coated her eyes to make the animal out.

“You’re not
the most handsome horse, are you?” She croaked. It made another gentle snorting
noise and stepped back. Kay managed to stand and reached out. The horse stepped
back in and allowed her to touch the side of its face. “Poor thing. You only
got one eye.” She stroked the smooth, brown hair. “What happened to you, boy?
Did a pack of howlers do that?”

Wild horses
weren’t an uncommon thing to see around Rudd. Kay had seen plenty running out
on the plains. They weren’t as common as rollers, and they travelled in far
smaller numbers, but they were out there. A few had even been domesticated by
farmers living on the outskirts of Rudd. Kay had visited one of those farms
once with her Ma on a sick call. Her ma had tended to the farmer’s ailing wife
while Kay visited with the man’s animals. He had three horses, but none of them
had allowed Kay to get close enough for a touch.

This one was
different. It was licking her cheek and prodding the side of her head and neck.

Like it
knew
her.

She kissed it
below the slit of grey scar where it had lost an eye. It hurt to speak but she
did so anyway. “That’s impossible, isn’t it, boy?” She said. “You don’t know
me…how could you?” She patted its powerful shoulder and let her hand trail down
his warm side. Her fingers hit something raised up on the horse’s hide. She
looked over and saw a wide leather strap. Kay’s heart started to race, it made
the headache pound harder. She moved in front of the horse and went to the
other side. Two big leather pouches hung there. Kay moaned when she realized
what they were. She smacked one and felt the weighty jiggle inside.

Surely the
Gods existed, Kay thought, as she lifted the flap back on top of one of the
water bags. Her fingers shook as she untied the thick strings underneath. The
horse shifted its position towards her and Kay’s forearms pressed up against
the bag. Warm water squirted out and splashed into her face. She drank down as
much as her sore, constricted throat would allow. She let it pour down the
sides of her mouth and she splashed more over the dusty mess of her hair.

She continued
to drink and splash until the big horse made a soft whinnying sound. Kay
stepped away from the bag with difficulty and wiped the water from her eyes.
She ran it back through her hair and breathed deeply.

“Thank you,”
she whispered. Kay wrapped her arms around its neck and kissed the side of its
face repeatedly. “Thank you, thank you,
thank
you
.”

The horse
stayed with Kay as the girl recovered slowly. He remained with her as she drank
more water. He stood by as she vomited, drank again, and rested in the dirt
cooled off by his shadow. When she awoke and decided the only sensible way to
Burn was to travel on top of his back, the horse waited patiently until she had
climbed up successfully after a half dozen attempts. They traveled south at a
lazy pace—less than a gallop for the horse, but considerably faster than Kay
could’ve managed on foot. Kay guided the horse along the river’s edge, hoping
it would lead them into Burn before the sun set once again.

Hours passed
and the village still hadn’t come into view. Kay spoke softly to the big horse,
stroking the hair on its mane. “Maybe I don’t need to go to Burn…ain’t nothing there
for me anyway. Maybe the two of us should head someplace else…some place where
men don’t fight to the death, and there ain’t no monsters rising up from under
the ground to eat people.”

The horse’s
head jerked back, and he made a deep snorting sound.

“You like the
idea of that, don’t you?” Kay patted his muscular back. “Something tells me you
done a lot of traveling in your day…you belonged to someone once. I bet they
named you something powerful…Something like Thunder, or Speed. What was your
name? We can’t get keep riding together with me calling you boy or horse. That
just won’t do.”

The animal
reared up on its hind legs and snorted. Kay dug her fingers into its mane and
squeezed its back with the insides of her thighs. “Whoa! Settle down!”

The horse
thudded back onto all four hooves and a cloud of dust rose up around them. Kay
waved it away from her face and saw something approaching from the south. At
first she thought it might be people—folks from Burn coming out to greet her.
But as the four forms took shape Kay knew it wasn’t people; they were too big,
and they were moving too fast.
Rollers.
The creatures disappeared into a dip on the horizon. The dust continued to
rise, however, like an advancing brown cloud of death. She yanked at the
horse’s mane, pulling it to the left in an attempt to make it turn in the
opposite direction. The horse stayed put.

She pulled
some more and dug her heels into it sides.
How
do you make something so big go the way you want?
They were getting closer.
Kay could hear the rumble of their hooves. She smacked the horse’s neck a
little harder than intended. “Come on, you big thing—move!”

The animal
didn’t move an inch. Kay considered jumping off and running on her own. She
started to slide down one side, but the horse bucked up again. She buried her
hands back into its mane and held on. It was too late. They would both be
trampled in another minute or so.

The creatures
appeared above the rise less than a hundred yards away.

One of them
whinnied. They weren’t rollers.

Four more wild
horses had decided to join them. Kay grinned and twisted around on the big
animal’s back as the others trotted around them in a lazy circle. A smoky grey
one poked its wet nose into Kay’s leg and the girl laughed out loud. “I only
needed one, but you’re all welcome to tag along.” A white one with odd patches
of brown running down its long face showed Kay’s horse its big teeth. It made a
noise that sounded like a belch and a fart combined. Big One-Eye replied with a
snort of his own.

“Looks like you
might’ve found a girlfriend, boy.” She thought about Cobe. If only he had
managed to escape from Rudd with her. Guilt settled on her as the horses
continued to get acquainted. She should’ve gone to the Rites with her ma. Maybe
Kay could’ve saved them all—Cobe’s one-armed brother, Trot…her father.

What had she
been thinking? What kind of life could she hope to build with everyone she had
ever loved dead and gone? She pulled on the horse’s mane again, and the animal
turned. Kay dug her heels into its sides, and he started moving north.

“I can’t leave
them behind.” The five horses galloped together in a group. “Whether they’re
dead or alive, I have to know…I have to do
something
.”

***

Kay and her
horses found the girl less than an hour later. She said her name was Angel, but
Kay had never seen anyone uglier and less-fitted for the title. Angel could
ride a horse, however. She rode next to Kay on the white one with brown
spotting.

“The howlers
tore my Ma to little bits…been runnin’ south ever since on my own.”

Kay hadn’t
said a word as the girl told her story. It had gone worse in Rudd than she’d
imagined. A big, mean lawman had beaten her pa almost dead, and the things from
Big Hole had killed him for sure shortly after. They had killed dozens, Angel
said, maybe hundreds. Kay wanted to ask about her own ma and pa, but she didn’t
think Angel would take kindly to the fact that the big, mean lawman was in fact
her father. Now that she had agreed to travel back to Rudd with her to see who
and what they could save, Kay wasn’t sure what to say. She kept quiet and let
Angel do all the talking.

“I saw some
rollers once on the plains when Ma and Pa was still livin’. Scared the shit
outta me. But it weren’t nothin’ like the fear I felt when them grey-skinned
things came into the pit…and seein’ what the howlers did to Ma…” Angel wiped a
tear away from her face. “I guess after seein’ all that…well maybe I ain’t as
scared no more. It’s hard to explain.”

“You seen the
worst there is to see,” Kay finally spoke. “I seen some bad things, too. Once
you seen stuff like that, there ain’t nothing left to be scared of.”

“Yeah…you’re
right. That’s exactly how it is.” Angel smiled at her. “I ain’t scared no
more.”

“I’m hoping to
find survivors when we make it back to Rudd. I plan on saving anyone left. You
sure you’re up for that?”

Angel nodded.
“I met this boy awhile back… I think he liked me. He was in Rudd last I saw.
Maybe he made it out.”

“Maybe he
did,” Kay said. She couldn’t imagine any boy liking the girl. He probably
hadn’t been much to look at either. Kay prodded the horse with her heels and
they picked up speed.