Full Wolf Moon (23 page)
Alma Curar nodded, and a flicker of revulsion tensed his face.
"Oh, God. Oh, Jesus."
Alma Curar nodded again. "Prayer's good right now. When we come face to face with the beast, it's going to be a terrible moment."
Chapter 29
David Alma Curar's Shack
Morning. Waning Gibbous Moon.
The world around Max flickered like an old silent movie, and it took a moment for him to realize this was the effect of his eyes fluttering open after deep sleep. Seizures. That's right, it was the time of his seizures. His eyes fell leadenly shut again, but he managed to force them back open as he groped to his right, where he always kept the water and wash cloth handy during these times.
But the familiar was missing, or at least out of place, and it was this little shock that opened his mind to the memory, to the horror. To what he had done. He groaned, sick to realize he was alive, that David Alma Curar had kept him safe.
He sat upright on the cot, the blanket slipping from him as he did, and recognized the metal frame's creak under his weight. He recognized, too, the gray, weathered shack as it came into fuzzy view, his feet feeling tender against the plank floor. Birds trilled morning song. Max shivered and pulled the blanket around his shoulders before groping about for his glasses.
"Here."
The voice wasn't David's. Max jerked his head incredulously toward the shape holding his glasses out to him. Like a beggar, miserable and humiliated, he took them from Mrs. Tebbe's hand and put them on, then pulled the corner of the blanket inadequately over his shorts.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, gazing at his knees, his voice thick.
"I was invited."
He still couldn't look at her. He listened as she walked away to the table and sat. Gazing downward, Max saw the bucket and scooted to the end of the cot. He bent down to swirl the washcloth in the water, then squeezed it against the back of his neck. The cold was a shock, uncomfortable, but it cleared his head.
With the rag still pressed against his neck, he said, "I guess this means you know."
"I guess so." Her voice was as cold as the water, without a trace of pity or compassion. That was fine with Max. He wanted no understanding. He wanted death.
"You're awfully damn calm," he said.
"I wasn't last night."
"Jesus." Finally he lifted his gaze to her. "Why the hell are you here?"
"You asked me that already."
"David invited you."
"Mm-hmm."
"Why'd you come?"
"Because I already knew you're the one who slaughtered them all."
And, just like that, they were back in his head, as if her words were an incantation forcing them into view. All of them. Not just Ataki and Tamura. Not just Satsugai. All of them. Those from Long Walk and Kayenta.
And Annie. God, Annie! Just as he had really, truly last seen her.
His dug his nails into his scalp, grazing the scar there. He curled as if his gut were cramping and somehow managed to say, "Are the authorities coming for me?"
A dread, bizarre hope filled him as he asked, but Mrs. Tebbe's cool reply knocked it out of him. "Not on your life."
"Why? Why not? Don't you want me dead?"
"Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do."
Max lifted his head to stare at Mrs. Tebbe, wanting to will her with his glare alone. "Then take me to them. You got your car? Take me to them, I'll confess it all."
Mrs. Tebbe was silent a moment, thinking. She uncrossed her legs, then re-crossed them. "Well, that's tempting, Captain. But Mr. Alma Curar has persuaded me to wait."
"Is he here?"
"He's in town."
"There's no one to stop us then."
"He couldn't stop us if he were here, two against one." Her voice, so cold, her posture, so rigid.
"I know what he wants to do," Max said. "It's ludicrous. It's dangerous. Just take me in..."
She came at him so quickly Max barely had time to fall back. She bent over him, hatred giving her eyes a wild gleam.
"You hurting, you son-of-a-bitch? You agonizing over your handiwork? Good! Good! You suffer in that blood for a while. What I saw last night was just bizarre enough to convince me to give Alma Curar his way. But if his little plan screws up, I'll be more than glad to take you in. I'll do better than that, I'll give you a gun, I'll help you hold it in your mouth! But until then, you just live with it. Live with it! Like I'll have to, even after the satisfaction of seeing you dead."
/ / / /
This time, there was no euphoria after the nights of seizure. It was as if this thing inside Max, this thing David called the beast, was suddenly stingy with its macabre vitality, now that it was preparing to leave. All Max could think of was his own death and how he was being robbed of it.
To sleep would be the next best thing. To sleep hour after hour, wake only when the ache of hunger refused to leave him alone, wake only when the functions of the body insisted on a dim-witted shuffle to the outhouse. That would do until death had its opportunity.
Except sleep was not sleep. Sleep was a vivid landscape, a brilliant moon-blanched night in the Arizona desert. It was feeling himself tangled in taut muscles so powerful they could keep him crushed within and still run so effortlessly it was almost laughable that the old Navajo woman thought she could make it to her trailer. He could taste her blood, he could feel the splinters of bone pierce his mouth.
Sleep was the chill of snow melting against his silver fur. It was his body moving through the thick, white drifts with no more struggle than it took to stroll through fog. So cleanly, so smoothly, even though the drifts came up to his elbows, or what would be his elbows if these powerful forelegs were still his arms. But no, they were forelegs pulling him toward Annie, as she trudged through the shin-deep snow calling out "Max!! Where are you!" Her voice was so filled with anxiety for his sake after finding herself alone in their cabin's bed.
Annie. So frantic, so intent in her search, the beast had to draw her attention, had to make her notice, make her call up some scrap of fear for her own sake. And even after she had laid eyes on him -not seeing her husband inside the beast- even then, her first wave of terror was for Max, afraid he had been hurt by the monster that was facing her. Not until she was backed toward the cliff did the terror of her own death course through her pulse, filling Max's mouth as they tumbled together over the edge...
So. Max didn't dare sleep. The sharp-edged memories of his waking hours, at least were only memories, horrible though they were. But when he slept...
Dressed now in rumpled trousers and a shirt, he was staring out the shack's back window when he heard David's old pick-up shudder to a stop. He didn't bother to turn around as the room's floorboards thumped under the healer's boots.
Over the rattle of grocery sacks, David said, "It's good to see you up and about."
Max didn't reply. His goal was to fix his stare to the warped creases of the window's sash, the scaly bark of the cedars. Perhaps if he focused hard enough, there would be no room in his head for the memories.
The chill was still in Mrs. Tebbe's voice when he heard her say to David, "He's been staring like that for an hour."
"Did he speak with you at all?"
"He asked me to drive him back to Lakeside. I volunteered to help him kill himself in a few weeks."
David's voice came wearily above the thud of grocery sacks being set on the plank table. "That was charitable of you."
Max closed his eyes. "She shouldn't be here at all."
This must have startled the others, because there was a hushed moment before David replied, "We can use all the help we can get, Max."
Max drew a long breath, giving up his vigil. He turned toward the others. "It's dangerous for her to be here."
"It's dangerous for her to be anywhere right now, you know that."
Mrs. Tebbe warned, "Don't talk through me, gentlemen."
She and David were standing at opposite ends of the table. The healer looked over at her and said, "I'm sorry. You already know you can leave any time."
The C.A. simply reached over and jerked one of the sacks toward her. She began unloading it. "Speaking of which, I should leave for a while anyway. Who knows what Shackley's been up to this morning."
"Who's Shackley?" Max asked.
Mrs. Tebbe didn't bother to look up at him or stop unloading the sack. "Shackley's the man running the camp right now. Being the incompetent that I am, I've been relieved."
Max walked toward her. "Oh... Mrs. Tebbe... I'm sorry--"
"Don't." The venom in her voice stopped him in his tracks. "Just don't."
Max felt as if his soul was sinking through the shack's floorboards. Mrs. Tebbe's lips worked as if she might sob. She snatched up her purse and said in an unsteady voice, "I better get going," and stalked toward the door.
David called quickly, "Mrs. Tebbe. When you come back, remember the archery equipment."
Mrs. Tebbe turned to look at Max a moment, then nodded curtly at David before leaving.
Max moved to the table and sat down. After a moment, he drummed up the courage to ask, "Archery equipment?"
"Something we discussed last night. Do you really want the details?"
Max shook his head. "How she hates me."
David began unpacking the groceries, again. "She's strong enough to overcome it. Right now, her hatred can do us a service. It'll steady her aim when the time comes."
"My aim would be just fine if you'd give me your gun."
"We're not going to do it that way, Max. Not unless we have to."
"By then, you both might be dead."
"Both of us? I doubt it. Don't just sit there. This stuff needs to be put away..."
Max reached out and flung the nearest sack across the room, jars, cans and eggs slinging outward like the tail of a comet.
"They're away! What the hell's your point, trading your life for mine! And where do you get off, goddamnit, deciding if Doris Tebbe lives or dies!"
"I'm not making that decision, Max, she is!"
"She wouldn't have made it if you hadn't lured her here..."
The healer struggled to keep his own anger under control. "We need her. The deed's done. She's here. She wants to stay."
Max sagged against the table, anger draining into despair. "The deed's not done. It's not." He moved around to David, drawing near, his whole being a supplication. "Let me do it, David. Just let me."
"No."
Max went stony inside. "You can't really stop me."
"I can do whatever is--"
The blow hit David's jaw square and true, and Max was running out of the shack even as the healer fell to the floor. Max ignored the searing ache radiating from knuckles to wrist, the blood pearling in the tiny ruptures of the skin. What was pain to him? Soon he'd find a place to die. He sprinted over the rocky ground and headed into the trees.
He fled upward, scrambling like the hunted, aware of bramble and branch only when they slowed his progress. An exhilaration came over him, a sense of freedom, of flying. Yes, soon he would fly, rend his death-stained soul from the world. He could almost hear the earth's deep sigh of relief. He was taking the beast with him.
How far he had climbed before coming upon the burned out clearing Max couldn't say. But quite suddenly it was before him, a place where fire once scorched the earth, mottled brown and black. Corpses of trees, charred and jagged, jutted out of the earth like fractured ribs. At the boundary of green forest and wasteland Max stood panting, sucking in the cold air until his lungs ached for warmth.
The sterile, black clearing opened onto a steep, free fall to a ravine. He crossed the clearing, wiped the droplets of sweat from his glasses and peered downward. The rubble far below, the thin green ribbon of the ravine's creek was surprisingly clear to him.
Leap off, just leap off. Let gravity do the rest. He could imagine himself bouncing against the great hill's body, snapping his neck. Perhaps his spine, his legs. Would he still be alive, broken, in pieces at the bottom?
He turned to look at the fire-ravaged copse. Among the taller, scorched timbers, jagged shards of conifer trunks stabbed upward from the ground like spears and broadswords. Did he have the nerve to fall on them? Did he have the sheer, physical strength needed to impale himself, make sure the wood pierced him from belly to back?
He wandered around the clearing, confused by his choices, beginning to tremble, until at last he sank against a charcoaled stump and wept. The sound of footsteps coming to him from the forest was no surprise. Without shame, he turned his grimy, tear-streaked face to David.
"I've lost my nerve," he said.
David sat next to him, panting from the uphill climb. When he caught his breath he asked, "How were you going to do it?"
"I...I dunno. The cliff's edge..."
David glanced that way, then bobbed his head as if to say maybe. "Might've worked. But no control. Until the beast finds another host to replace you, you'll be difficult to kill. About the only way to manage it without silver is to do enough damage to the brain. If you'd thrown yourself over the cliff, there's a good chance all you'd have done was put yourself in a body cast until First Night."
Max leaned his forehead into his hand. "Doesn't matter," he said, repeating, "I've lost my nerve."
"No, you haven't. It wasn't your strength urging you to die, Max, it was the beast. When it's done with you, it has a vested interest in seeing you dead. Otherwise..." He leaned his head against the stump. "You become like me."
"Oh, God. Oh, Jesus."
Alma Curar nodded again. "Prayer's good right now. When we come face to face with the beast, it's going to be a terrible moment."
Chapter 29
David Alma Curar's Shack
Morning. Waning Gibbous Moon.
The world around Max flickered like an old silent movie, and it took a moment for him to realize this was the effect of his eyes fluttering open after deep sleep. Seizures. That's right, it was the time of his seizures. His eyes fell leadenly shut again, but he managed to force them back open as he groped to his right, where he always kept the water and wash cloth handy during these times.
But the familiar was missing, or at least out of place, and it was this little shock that opened his mind to the memory, to the horror. To what he had done. He groaned, sick to realize he was alive, that David Alma Curar had kept him safe.
He sat upright on the cot, the blanket slipping from him as he did, and recognized the metal frame's creak under his weight. He recognized, too, the gray, weathered shack as it came into fuzzy view, his feet feeling tender against the plank floor. Birds trilled morning song. Max shivered and pulled the blanket around his shoulders before groping about for his glasses.
"Here."
The voice wasn't David's. Max jerked his head incredulously toward the shape holding his glasses out to him. Like a beggar, miserable and humiliated, he took them from Mrs. Tebbe's hand and put them on, then pulled the corner of the blanket inadequately over his shorts.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, gazing at his knees, his voice thick.
"I was invited."
He still couldn't look at her. He listened as she walked away to the table and sat. Gazing downward, Max saw the bucket and scooted to the end of the cot. He bent down to swirl the washcloth in the water, then squeezed it against the back of his neck. The cold was a shock, uncomfortable, but it cleared his head.
With the rag still pressed against his neck, he said, "I guess this means you know."
"I guess so." Her voice was as cold as the water, without a trace of pity or compassion. That was fine with Max. He wanted no understanding. He wanted death.
"You're awfully damn calm," he said.
"I wasn't last night."
"Jesus." Finally he lifted his gaze to her. "Why the hell are you here?"
"You asked me that already."
"David invited you."
"Mm-hmm."
"Why'd you come?"
"Because I already knew you're the one who slaughtered them all."
And, just like that, they were back in his head, as if her words were an incantation forcing them into view. All of them. Not just Ataki and Tamura. Not just Satsugai. All of them. Those from Long Walk and Kayenta.
And Annie. God, Annie! Just as he had really, truly last seen her.
His dug his nails into his scalp, grazing the scar there. He curled as if his gut were cramping and somehow managed to say, "Are the authorities coming for me?"
A dread, bizarre hope filled him as he asked, but Mrs. Tebbe's cool reply knocked it out of him. "Not on your life."
"Why? Why not? Don't you want me dead?"
"Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do."
Max lifted his head to stare at Mrs. Tebbe, wanting to will her with his glare alone. "Then take me to them. You got your car? Take me to them, I'll confess it all."
Mrs. Tebbe was silent a moment, thinking. She uncrossed her legs, then re-crossed them. "Well, that's tempting, Captain. But Mr. Alma Curar has persuaded me to wait."
"Is he here?"
"He's in town."
"There's no one to stop us then."
"He couldn't stop us if he were here, two against one." Her voice, so cold, her posture, so rigid.
"I know what he wants to do," Max said. "It's ludicrous. It's dangerous. Just take me in..."
She came at him so quickly Max barely had time to fall back. She bent over him, hatred giving her eyes a wild gleam.
"You hurting, you son-of-a-bitch? You agonizing over your handiwork? Good! Good! You suffer in that blood for a while. What I saw last night was just bizarre enough to convince me to give Alma Curar his way. But if his little plan screws up, I'll be more than glad to take you in. I'll do better than that, I'll give you a gun, I'll help you hold it in your mouth! But until then, you just live with it. Live with it! Like I'll have to, even after the satisfaction of seeing you dead."
/ / / /
This time, there was no euphoria after the nights of seizure. It was as if this thing inside Max, this thing David called the beast, was suddenly stingy with its macabre vitality, now that it was preparing to leave. All Max could think of was his own death and how he was being robbed of it.
To sleep would be the next best thing. To sleep hour after hour, wake only when the ache of hunger refused to leave him alone, wake only when the functions of the body insisted on a dim-witted shuffle to the outhouse. That would do until death had its opportunity.
Except sleep was not sleep. Sleep was a vivid landscape, a brilliant moon-blanched night in the Arizona desert. It was feeling himself tangled in taut muscles so powerful they could keep him crushed within and still run so effortlessly it was almost laughable that the old Navajo woman thought she could make it to her trailer. He could taste her blood, he could feel the splinters of bone pierce his mouth.
Sleep was the chill of snow melting against his silver fur. It was his body moving through the thick, white drifts with no more struggle than it took to stroll through fog. So cleanly, so smoothly, even though the drifts came up to his elbows, or what would be his elbows if these powerful forelegs were still his arms. But no, they were forelegs pulling him toward Annie, as she trudged through the shin-deep snow calling out "Max!! Where are you!" Her voice was so filled with anxiety for his sake after finding herself alone in their cabin's bed.
Annie. So frantic, so intent in her search, the beast had to draw her attention, had to make her notice, make her call up some scrap of fear for her own sake. And even after she had laid eyes on him -not seeing her husband inside the beast- even then, her first wave of terror was for Max, afraid he had been hurt by the monster that was facing her. Not until she was backed toward the cliff did the terror of her own death course through her pulse, filling Max's mouth as they tumbled together over the edge...
So. Max didn't dare sleep. The sharp-edged memories of his waking hours, at least were only memories, horrible though they were. But when he slept...
Dressed now in rumpled trousers and a shirt, he was staring out the shack's back window when he heard David's old pick-up shudder to a stop. He didn't bother to turn around as the room's floorboards thumped under the healer's boots.
Over the rattle of grocery sacks, David said, "It's good to see you up and about."
Max didn't reply. His goal was to fix his stare to the warped creases of the window's sash, the scaly bark of the cedars. Perhaps if he focused hard enough, there would be no room in his head for the memories.
The chill was still in Mrs. Tebbe's voice when he heard her say to David, "He's been staring like that for an hour."
"Did he speak with you at all?"
"He asked me to drive him back to Lakeside. I volunteered to help him kill himself in a few weeks."
David's voice came wearily above the thud of grocery sacks being set on the plank table. "That was charitable of you."
Max closed his eyes. "She shouldn't be here at all."
This must have startled the others, because there was a hushed moment before David replied, "We can use all the help we can get, Max."
Max drew a long breath, giving up his vigil. He turned toward the others. "It's dangerous for her to be here."
"It's dangerous for her to be anywhere right now, you know that."
Mrs. Tebbe warned, "Don't talk through me, gentlemen."
She and David were standing at opposite ends of the table. The healer looked over at her and said, "I'm sorry. You already know you can leave any time."
The C.A. simply reached over and jerked one of the sacks toward her. She began unloading it. "Speaking of which, I should leave for a while anyway. Who knows what Shackley's been up to this morning."
"Who's Shackley?" Max asked.
Mrs. Tebbe didn't bother to look up at him or stop unloading the sack. "Shackley's the man running the camp right now. Being the incompetent that I am, I've been relieved."
Max walked toward her. "Oh... Mrs. Tebbe... I'm sorry--"
"Don't." The venom in her voice stopped him in his tracks. "Just don't."
Max felt as if his soul was sinking through the shack's floorboards. Mrs. Tebbe's lips worked as if she might sob. She snatched up her purse and said in an unsteady voice, "I better get going," and stalked toward the door.
David called quickly, "Mrs. Tebbe. When you come back, remember the archery equipment."
Mrs. Tebbe turned to look at Max a moment, then nodded curtly at David before leaving.
Max moved to the table and sat down. After a moment, he drummed up the courage to ask, "Archery equipment?"
"Something we discussed last night. Do you really want the details?"
Max shook his head. "How she hates me."
David began unpacking the groceries, again. "She's strong enough to overcome it. Right now, her hatred can do us a service. It'll steady her aim when the time comes."
"My aim would be just fine if you'd give me your gun."
"We're not going to do it that way, Max. Not unless we have to."
"By then, you both might be dead."
"Both of us? I doubt it. Don't just sit there. This stuff needs to be put away..."
Max reached out and flung the nearest sack across the room, jars, cans and eggs slinging outward like the tail of a comet.
"They're away! What the hell's your point, trading your life for mine! And where do you get off, goddamnit, deciding if Doris Tebbe lives or dies!"
"I'm not making that decision, Max, she is!"
"She wouldn't have made it if you hadn't lured her here..."
The healer struggled to keep his own anger under control. "We need her. The deed's done. She's here. She wants to stay."
Max sagged against the table, anger draining into despair. "The deed's not done. It's not." He moved around to David, drawing near, his whole being a supplication. "Let me do it, David. Just let me."
"No."
Max went stony inside. "You can't really stop me."
"I can do whatever is--"
The blow hit David's jaw square and true, and Max was running out of the shack even as the healer fell to the floor. Max ignored the searing ache radiating from knuckles to wrist, the blood pearling in the tiny ruptures of the skin. What was pain to him? Soon he'd find a place to die. He sprinted over the rocky ground and headed into the trees.
He fled upward, scrambling like the hunted, aware of bramble and branch only when they slowed his progress. An exhilaration came over him, a sense of freedom, of flying. Yes, soon he would fly, rend his death-stained soul from the world. He could almost hear the earth's deep sigh of relief. He was taking the beast with him.
How far he had climbed before coming upon the burned out clearing Max couldn't say. But quite suddenly it was before him, a place where fire once scorched the earth, mottled brown and black. Corpses of trees, charred and jagged, jutted out of the earth like fractured ribs. At the boundary of green forest and wasteland Max stood panting, sucking in the cold air until his lungs ached for warmth.
The sterile, black clearing opened onto a steep, free fall to a ravine. He crossed the clearing, wiped the droplets of sweat from his glasses and peered downward. The rubble far below, the thin green ribbon of the ravine's creek was surprisingly clear to him.
Leap off, just leap off. Let gravity do the rest. He could imagine himself bouncing against the great hill's body, snapping his neck. Perhaps his spine, his legs. Would he still be alive, broken, in pieces at the bottom?
He turned to look at the fire-ravaged copse. Among the taller, scorched timbers, jagged shards of conifer trunks stabbed upward from the ground like spears and broadswords. Did he have the nerve to fall on them? Did he have the sheer, physical strength needed to impale himself, make sure the wood pierced him from belly to back?
He wandered around the clearing, confused by his choices, beginning to tremble, until at last he sank against a charcoaled stump and wept. The sound of footsteps coming to him from the forest was no surprise. Without shame, he turned his grimy, tear-streaked face to David.
"I've lost my nerve," he said.
David sat next to him, panting from the uphill climb. When he caught his breath he asked, "How were you going to do it?"
"I...I dunno. The cliff's edge..."
David glanced that way, then bobbed his head as if to say maybe. "Might've worked. But no control. Until the beast finds another host to replace you, you'll be difficult to kill. About the only way to manage it without silver is to do enough damage to the brain. If you'd thrown yourself over the cliff, there's a good chance all you'd have done was put yourself in a body cast until First Night."
Max leaned his forehead into his hand. "Doesn't matter," he said, repeating, "I've lost my nerve."
"No, you haven't. It wasn't your strength urging you to die, Max, it was the beast. When it's done with you, it has a vested interest in seeing you dead. Otherwise..." He leaned his head against the stump. "You become like me."
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