November Mourns (25 page)

The Weggs reached the top of the slope and Shad stood up from behind the bushes and pounced. You didn’t get much dumber than this.

He clamped one hand around Howell Wegg’s throat. Swung wide with his other arm and knocked the shotgun aside, pointing it down toward Hart’s crotch.

The plan—such as it was—depended on whether Hart Wegg flinched at having a shotgun aimed at his nuts. If he did, Shad had another second to work on things. If not, Hart would just fire his rifle into Shad’s head and that would be the end of it.

Adept and effective, but only a man like any other, Hart Wegg tightened up, did a little hop, and twisted aside to save his dick. Shad let go of the shotgun but not Howell’s throat, reached out and put his free hand on Hart’s chest and shoved. Off-balance like that, Hart Wegg teetered on the rim of the embankment for an instant before he went over backwards and rolled down through the cedar and brush until he was out of sight.

Strangling a man was goddamn tough, but using your thumbs to press in on the Adam’s apple made it a lot easier. None of that trying to choke a guy where the muscles and tendons were rigid and well developed. Shad got in close, leaned his hip forward tying up Howell so he couldn’t move or drop. Howell brought the shotgun around once more, trying to slam the barrel of it hard against Shad’s arms and break his grip, but Shad wouldn’t let go.

Jesus,
he thought,
this is it, I’m actually going to kill a man now.

“Win what?” Shad asked, because his thoughts were all over the fucking place.

Howell’s terrified eyes spurted tears that ran into his patchy beard. Hart would be along any second. Shad didn’t have much time, he had to get the shotgun. He let loose with a shout and exerted himself even more, wondering what price would be on him now for doing this thing with his own hands.

He felt the cartilage beginning to slip beneath the pressure. Howell felt it too and his eyes lit with an anguished, living panic as he realized he was seconds away from having his windpipe crushed. He tried to slip the shotgun barrel closer to Shad’s face, on a poor angle, hoping to get a shot off. Shad pushed harder and Howell Wegg’s throat collapsed.

Hart must’ve had a pretty good view of it all because he let out a shriek from below. He couldn’t fire the rifle because Shad had Howell’s slumping body propped up in front of him. A final wheezing rustle passed into the November air and Shad took the shotgun from Howell’s dying hand, turned, and ran.

HART WEGG WOULDN
’
T COME UP THE SAME EMBANKMENT
. He’d circle tight, probably around the Catawba and slip through the woods on Shad’s left, keep no more than twenty or thirty yards off. Maybe. It didn’t matter. You couldn’t fake your way through something like this. Shad didn’t have the know-how to set an ambush or build a roost and dig in to wait. He was back to running his ass off.

Shit, extra shells. He should’ve checked Howell’s pockets. Why is it you’re so smart ten seconds too late for it to do you any good?

Somber, writhing clouds covered the sky, and the sun cowered behind the hills. Crimson light spurted distantly and leaked off in an arcing swirl like a cut carotid.

Rain started to come down again and he kept his stride as best as he could over the rough landscape. The pain slowed him some but he was working past it. He wasn’t graceful but holding the shotgun somehow helped. Carrying it gave him a subtle reassurance, the heft and weight of it connecting him to the world.

Shad continued stumbling through the woods, branches clawing at his forehead and adding to his gashes. He wouldn’t go easy, and that resistance might help keep him from going at all.

Just as Dave Fox had predicted, Shad had done little besides cause himself a lot of pain.

Soon the hitch in his side got worse and the rage deserted him, leaving only a void in the center of his chest. He bounced into jagged, rotting maple tree trunks, snarled bramble vines, red chokeberry, and wild indigo. He didn’t know how many miles he’d covered or where he might be, or whether he’d done anything besides go in one absurd loop back to where he’d started.

Whenever he came to a bank of rock that he couldn’t see over, he had to pause and check, for fear of going right over Jonah Ridge. At least then he’d die closer to home.

And as he came around through another grove of catclaw and sticker bushes the land broke wide in a series of hillocks, with the thick and menacing stands of virgin pine leading into a bleak forest of darkness that spread for miles. He slowed, stopped, and slid to his knees.

As he threw his head back gasping for air he saw Hart Wegg standing high above on a craggy bluff about a quarter mile off, sighting on him.

Shad had played it all wrong. He could see it very clearly now.

Right after killing Howell, Shad should’ve just sat down and tried to hide behind a bush. He would’ve been much better off. Now he had a shotgun that was worthless beyond twenty-five feet and Hart Wegg, the slick hunter, had a rifle good up to a thousand yards.

He wouldn’t need that much. The childishly chaotic curls of his thick hair flipped back and forth in the wind. He appeared only slightly less docile than before.

Shad knew it was already too late.

He ran for the pine, hurled himself over the rim of the slope, and saw how it eased away beneath him for dozens of feet before disappearing into shadows.

The bullet took him low in the back. He glided through the saturated air as thin wisps of mist rose from the dense, black floor of the woods and burst against his face. He watched the spray of his own blood precede him on the breeze, as he sailed for a vague and burdened eternity that ended much too soon yet not at all.

Chapter Sixteen

YOU DIDN
’
T MEET DEATH ALONE AND ALL AT
once. You met your death a little at a time over the course of years, through the loss of your family and friends, the dead pets. The death of all the Laments.

You’ve been here many times before, you just didn’t know it then because you hadn’t gone quite far enough.

Not like this.

You hold your breath for two minutes and you’re swimming and having fun. You hold it for four and you’re drowning and about to be a corpse. You can’t hold it for six. If you’ve been turning blue that long, then take a good look around, see the saints and the martyrs and all the other turquoise-colored spooks milling about, the short-diapered fat guys with tiny wings playing the harp behind you.

Shad staggered on. He’d lost the shotgun and felt a touch lonely without it. He was in shock and knew it in a remote, uncaring way. If Mags were coming she’d be here soon—first one hand, then the other, then finally she’d be whole again and standing there with her arms out to him.

He tried to hold on to himself but kept wafting off, passing out on his feet and waking up a moment later. Sometimes he found that he was crawling or propped against a tree with his blood slathered against the bark. This wasn’t good.

“Oh Mama,” he said, because that’s the sort of thing you say when you’re dying and you know it. You always want your mama before the end, even if you’ve never met her.

From his waist down he was completely drenched in blood. The rain didn’t wash any of it off the way it would’ve if this had been a sixteenth-century morality play. If he was getting close to God and cleansing his worldly sins from his soul. He’d be on his deathbed but redeemed, and ultimately filled with insight.

Since Shad was still tremendously stupid, he hoped he had a while left to go yet.

The bullet had entered above his left buttock and gone right through. The exit wound was the size of a child’s fist, punched out the right side of his belly, slightly over his hip. He tried to remember what organs were there. He thought that most of the major shit was on the left. He couldn’t remember.

It was almost a straight line through because Shad had been diving at the moment of impact. If he’d been an instant slower, he would’ve been standing upright when the bullet hit. The angle of the shot would have taken out his entire groin. Cut his femoral artery, and ended the game a whole lot quicker.

Bad enough to die, but really, did you have to go without your nuts?

He’d read a first-aid manual in the slam, toward the end of his sentence, because he’d read everything else in the prison library by then. He saw the pages of the book in his mind now, much nearer than his own pain.

He was in shock. Made you think you were wide-eyed and surprised, in your pajamas with the back door open, looking outside in the gloom and a cat springs out. “Oh!”

Like how his father must’ve felt when he found out his third wife, Tandy Mae Lusk, had skipped town with her own first cousin. Oh!

The definition had something to do with blood circulation being seriously disturbed. Symptoms included restlessness and apprehension, followed by apathy. Check. His breathing was rapid and labored. His eyes were probably glassy and dull, with dilated pupils. A person in shock is usually very pale, but may have an olive or reddish color to the skin. He glanced down at the back of his hand and saw only shadow.

Treatment included maintaining an open airway. Preventing loss of body heat. Control all bleeding by direct pressure.

Oh, the bleeding. Oh Mama.

Shad shivered uncontrollably with the cold. He had to stop the bleeding. Okay. Glancing left and right, he checked to see if Megan were drawing near. Or the elusive contradictory presence of the hills. Or Hart Wegg. Nothing yet.

He started talking to himself, hoping it would focus him, but his voice was a reedy, manic whisper. He sounded even more crazy so shut the hell up. On C-Block, guys with anxious wired voices like his didn’t last long.

Besides, the more of your voice you gave away, the more power you consigned to your foe.

He reached up and tore off his shirtsleeves, knotted them together, and looped the rags around his belly. He put a finger in the new hole in his ass and couldn’t stick it in past the first knuckle. It didn’t hurt. His muscle and tendon and fat and whatever else was in there had shifted and sort of plugged the gap. There was hardly any blood coming from the spot, and he didn’t know what it meant. You took what luck you got and tried to be thankful. Sometimes you could only shake your head.

His stomach was still seeping badly. The patch job barely covered the exit wound but maybe it would be good enough. When he drew the knot tight he heard his own scream from a distant place. He was surprised at how high a pitch he hit, almost girlish until he let out a coughing cry. It proved to be more manly, the way the tough guys died in old Westerns.

What next?

Elevating the lower extremities. Transport to a medical center as soon as possible.

Get out of the fucking woods. A good hunter didn’t let his injured prey wander around long before making sure of the kill. Hart Wegg would be coming.

Shad took two steps and leaned against a pine. He pressed himself on, got a few feet farther along, drifted to another tree.

This was going to take a while.

His feet went numb and his skin crawled. The pain got closer and finally descended. He lurched and limped through the forest. Another burst of panic filled him, and he gritted his teeth against it.

The storm rose and the wind grew stronger, driving rain hard as rock salt against him. Branches heaved and struck out, the howling becoming louder. As above, so below. He could imagine Tushie Kline sitting there reading from
A Century of the World’s Best Poetry
, the book in his lap, pulling apart symbols like tearing legs off spiders.

Shad was talking again, low but quite intelligently, as if he was back in the prison library with Tush and explaining the grandeur of literature. Shad listened to himself and thought he should shut up but realized he couldn’t stop. “A morality play is essentially an allegory in dramatic form. It shares the key features of allegorical prose and verse narratives. It’s intended to be understood on more than one level at a time.”

Shad wasn’t completely sure if he agreed with what he was saying, but decided not to argue. “Its main purpose is pedantic as well as dogmatic, and the characters are personified abstractions with aptronyms.”

He didn’t remember the word, and said, “What’s that?”