Tainted Trail (27 page)

Then Ukiah was out of earshot, half-tumbling down a steep hill to the interstate with Quinn in close pursuit. He came to running, the interstate somewhere behind him and the Ontongard on his heels.

Any normal man he could have outrun. His alien biology
gave him an endurance no human could hope to match. Quinn had his every advantage, in addition to a thorough knowledge of the area and an unknown number of allies. Ukiah sent mental shouts to Rennie as he ran, hoping that the Dog Warrior was near.

Quinn chased him through the stillness of the summer dusk, running footsteps matching his, yet seeming fractions closer every moment. It was all, he suddenly realized, a matter of stride. Quinn was tall, longer-legged than him. He couldn't win.

He veered off sharply to the right, onto a street he all but passed, hoping Quinn would overshoot it. He sensed that Quinn, still fifteen feet behind him, made the turn easily and even gained distance in the move. He turned left and then right blindly, unsure where the streets led, no clear plan in mind. The last lone Ontongard that attacked Ukiah did it in a police station, chewing through a dozen police officers to get to him. Indigo saved Ukiah with a bullet to the Ontongard's head—the only person willing to shoot the man to save Ukiah. In Pendleton, he was the outsider. The police probably would shoot him, and then it would be to the coroner's office and an autopsy—or worse, into the hands of the Ontongard.

Where could he go? Where would he be safe? Silence was coming from his headset, as if it was only so much plastic. Jared's siren sang far off, nearing only to grow distant again, as if Jared searched down random streets for them.

“Rennie!”
he screamed.

“You stupid little puppy.”
A stranger's thoughts were in his mind.
“Your packmates aren't here. I'm going to cut you down to bits and burn you.”

Then the distance between them was a matter of two feet, and Quinn reached out and shoved him hard on the shoulder. Off balance, he went tumbling. As he came up, he stared into the muzzle of the pistol.

A woman screamed in rage. Quinn was smashed sideways even as he pulled the trigger. The muzzle flare nearly blinded Ukiah, but the bullet whined harmlessly past his ear. Quinn was turning, blood streaming from his forehead, to face his
new attacker. It was Cassidy, swinging a baseball bat hard for second strike.

“Leave him alone!” Cassidy struck solidly on Quinn's upraised arm, which broke with a crack. “I'm not going to let it happen again!”

The pain and shock as the arm broke would have stopped a human. From just above the wrist, Quinn's right hand dangled at a strange angle. Quinn dropped his pistol into his left hand as Cassidy stepped toward Ukiah, thinking she had stopped Quinn.

“Watch out!” Ukiah knocked her aside, leaping for Quinn even as Quinn fired. Cassidy fell as Ukiah tackled Quinn to the ground, clamping both hands on Quinn's unbroken wrist, trying to keep the gun aimed away from Cassidy.

They were outside the hardware store, Ukiah realized as he grappled desperately with Quinn. In the deepening dusk, Main Street was weirdly deserted; all the stores were closed and dark. Where was everyone? Cassidy lay on the sidewalk, the smell of blood blooming from her. Had the bullet hit her? Was she dead? Was she bleeding to death? Someone, anyone, had to help her! But no one was coming.

Ukiah could feel Quinn's arm reorganizing, healing the bone break at a speed that amazed Ukiah—far faster than any of the Pack would heal. In a few minutes Quinn would have full use of the arm.

They rolled up against the street curb, on the steel grating of a storm drain. An inch beyond the gun was the open slot of the drain.

A memory surfaced. Hex's will pressing against Ukiah's mind, making him nearly spill out secrets he'd sell his soul to keep. Ukiah clenched hard at the hand holding the gun and thought desperately,
“Release!”

And the hand obeyed him. The gun teetered on the edge of the storm drain, and then dropped into the wet darkness below.

“Ha!” Ukiah cried and then yelled in shocked surprise as Quinn spun under him and kicked him through the hardware store's window. Ukiah crashed through the plate glass, a stand of cheap Pendleton Roundup pennants, and landed
hard beneath the stuffed moose head, which gazed at him sorrowfully.

Quinn came through the window and landed lightly among the shattered glass.

Ukiah scrambled backward, up the narrow aisle of the hardware store. He needed a weapon. Unfortunately, there were many at hand. Even as Ukiah snatched up a curve-bladed sickle, Quinn picked up a six-foot-long steel bar, flattened at one end into a narrow, sharp-edged wedge. Ukiah's moms used such a bar for clearing rocks and roots from postholes and ditches. The nearly twenty pounds of forged carbon steel smashed the blade through packed earth, gnarled wood, and stones with ease.

For a moment Ukiah hoped that Quinn wouldn't be able to handle the posthole digger with his broken arm. The Get, however, lifted the bar easily, holding it like a quarterstaff. Quinn's arm had already healed, a fact that filled Ukiah with despair. How could he win against this creature?

“You can't,” Quinn hissed. “You fight the very essence of yourself. That's Prime's madness in you, denying the truth that we're many yet one, and one yet many.”

“When we're done, you will be none.” Ukiah slashed with the sickle, aiming under the bar for Quinn's groin.

Quinn dipped the posthole digger to catch the sickle. Ukiah slid the curving blade up the length of steel, hoping to cut Quinn's left-hand fingers. Quinn realized the danger, and twisted, yanking the top of the bar back, disengaging the sickle, while swinging the bottom at Ukiah's side.

Ukiah dodged the blow, turned his wrist to backhand at Quinn's face. Quinn jerked back, and the tip of the sickle cut a shallow furrow along the Get's cheekbone. Quinn struck Ukiah hard in the head, making him reel, and then in the chest with a blow that threatened to crack ribs.

Ukiah stumbled backward, and Quinn pursued. The bar gave Quinn twice the reach as the sickle. Ukiah grabbed things at random off the shelves with his free hand—hammers, pliers, and screwdrivers—and flung them at Quinn's head. Quinn dodged them with frightening ease, thrusting at Ukiah with blows Ukiah could barely duck.

Ukiah came to the end of the aisle and ducked around. As Quinn rounded the corner too, Ukiah leapt at Quinn, pinning the bar uselessly between them. They went tumbling backward, snarling, out the back door to store's loading dock.

The buildings neighboring the store hemmed in the area to make a large, nearly enclosed courtyard. A huge woodchipper sat in one corner, a mound of woodchips stacked beyond its exit chute. Cassidy's pickup sat parked beside it, the tailgate down, ready to be loaded with woodchips.

Quinn came to his feet first, swinging the steel bar like a long baseball bat. Ukiah ducked the swing, and swung the sickle, laying open a foot-long cut across Quinn's chest. Quinn swapped his grip on the bar cocked up over his shoulder. His left hand reached high on the bar, and with the full weight of his body, he rammed the pointed tip high into Ukiah's chest.

The steel cleaved under Ukiah's collarbone, clipped the top of his lung, and punched its way out his back. He felt the bar bite deep into the wood of the wall behind him, pinning him.

Leaning his weight against the bar, Quinn kicked the woodchipper on. It roared to life, its blade ringing.

“I don't know which Pack dog made you, puppy,” Quinn said. “But I'm going to unmake you.”

A growl wouldn't come. Ukiah couldn't breathe—his right lung was collapsing. The feeling was so like when Hex had shot him multiple times in the chest that he flashed to the memory of Hex picking up the mice forming in his spilled blood.

“You're going to help me take this world,” Hex had taunted, “one way or another.”
Oh God, the Ontongard will have hundreds of mice to work with!

Quinn's eyes widened. “Who are you?”

“No one!” Ukiah whispered, desperately trying to hide the truth.
I'm just a pack dog. Just another one of Prime's rabid Gets.

Quinn pressed fingertips to the blood welling from the puncture wound, and his eyes grew wider still. “The breeder! Prime's missing breeder!”

Ukiah gripped the bar, swung both legs up and kicked Quinn hard in the chest. The Ontongard Get flew backward—and landed on the woodchipper's intake chute. His torn sleeve caught in the blades and jerked him in. The arm vanished first, in a wet chopping sound.

Quinn screamed and jerked hard, trying to rip himself free. Bone and muscle linked him still to the blades. He smashed the machine sideways in his desperate throes. The exit chute swung until it faced the hardware store's back wall. Blood, bone chips, and hunks of meat splattered like an evil rain, stark red on the white. The woodchipper pulled Quinn's shoulder then head in, chewing him down. His screaming stopped, replaced by a dull, low, crunching of the heavier bones. Bits of cloth and leather joined the rest as the machine pulled the rest of the slumped body through. Finally the blades spun clean, ringing.

Formless, though, the Get still lived. Ukiah could sense all of Quinn's surviving cells communicating, desperately trying to take shape into something that could live through the massive damage. Ukiah's own blood was forming into mice. Remembering the speed at which Quinn healed, Ukiah was suddenly sure that he only had a few minutes before Quinn reformed—and he was still pinned, helpless to the wall.

He struggled weakly with the steel bar.
Rennie!

Cub?
It was a distant reply, he could barely hear.

Rennie! Help me, Rennie! I'm trapped. I'm hurt! One of Hex's Gets is here!

I'm coming, cub!

Jared and Max found him first, coming cautiously through the hardware store's back door. Jared stumbled to a halt to stare at the gore-splattered wall, slack-jawed. Max hurried to Ukiah.

“Get it out!” Ukiah whispered, tugging at the bar, sending shocks of pain through his chest that nearly knocked him unconscious. “Hurry!”

“Easy, son!” Max shouted over the woodchipper, catching Ukiah's hands and stilling them. He gingerly examined Ukiah, wincing at the damage he found. He turned, hit the
kill switch on the woodchipper, and waited for the profound silence before trying to talk. “Easy. We don't want to hurt you worse by doing this roughshod.”

Ukiah caught a newly formed mouse and pushed it at Max. “Quinn's reforming! He knows what I am!”

Max glanced at the bloody wall. The blood smear was gathering into larger clots, growing darker as the centers formed new organs. Hearts already trembled in the reforming masses, lungs sucked air through growing throats. “Oh, come on, what does it take to keep these guys down?”

“Fire. Acid.” Ukiah struggled for breath. “Just get it out!”

“Acid?” Max gave a snort bitter laugh as he tried to pull the bar free of the wood. “Damn! He really nailed you. Jared! Help me get him free before—oh, shit.”

The blood and gore had gathered into thirty or forty large clumps. Gravity pulled them down as they thickened, and as they tumbled earthward, black wings and feathers, dark eyes, and sharp beaks formed, and a flock of crows winged upward. They beat the air, a thunder of noise, and rose into a dark mob above. For several minutes they churned in the sky, an angry mass, gathering itself for an attack.

Ukiah whimpered, trying to free himself. Max shook himself out of his shock and pulled frantically at the bar. Suddenly, Rennie was there, a snarling, heavily armed presence. He emptied his handgun into the flock, so that it rained birds. The flock lifted, screaming their indignation while they fled.

“They left,” Ukiah whispered, unbelieving. Ontongard usually fought to the death.

Rennie caught his thoughts, and shook his head. “It's difficult to override hard-wired instincts. It's in birds' DNA to be naturally cautious things. I could scare him off only because he hasn't tailored their responses yet. We better go, before he gets reinforcements.”

Zimmerman Hardware, Pendleton, Oregon
Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Jared went off to check on Cassidy and returned with a new plastic drop cloth. He unfolded it as Max and Rennie freed Ukiah from the wall. “Cassidy is fine. I need to go. If Ukiah survived what happened to Magic Boy, he'll live through this—won't he?”

“Only if we keep him away from Quinn and the Brodys,” Max grunted as they eased Ukiah onto the drop cloth. Rennie gripped the posthole digger close to the wound and pulled it slowly out. The Pack leader cleaned the blood from the bar onto the plastic, where it would have the best chance of surviving. As blood flowed from the wound, and shock set in, Ukiah found the situation more and more confusing.

Where had Quinn gone to so suddenly?

Jared leaned down to grip Ukiah's shoulder hard. “Don't run off this time, and don't forget us.”

Sam arrived as Rennie mummified Ukiah in the plastic. “I heard on the scanner that Dennis Quinn was shooting at Ukiah, then nothing. What the hell happened?”

“It's all over,” Max said throwing the posthole digger, aside. “Ukiah's—fine, but Quinn got away.”

Sam glanced at the steel bar, at the hole in the bloodstained wall, then stared at Ukiah, hand over her mouth. “Oh, shit, what did Quinn do to him?”

“He tried his best to kill the cub,” Rennie said, picking Ukiah up like a child. “We need to go. Quinn will be back.”

“The ambulance crew is out at Pilot Rock,” Sam reported. “The FBI cornered Matt and Vivian Brody out there with his brother-in-law, Seth Bridges. There was a shoot-out.”

“I wondered why we weren't crawling with police,” Max said, leading the way into the hardware store.

Zoey was doctoring a swearing Cassidy as they entered, applying a butterfly bandage to a bleeding head wound while Cousin Lou looked on in concern. Jared's cruiser was pulling away from the front curb, lights going. The trio of remaining Kicking Deers looked up as Rennie carried Ukiah in through the back door.

“I'll follow you to the hospital,” Sam said.

“No hospital,” Rennie said.

“What?” Sam yelped.

“No hospital,” Rennie repeated firmly. “We'll find someplace safe to hide and tomorrow the cub goes back to Pittsburgh.”

Sam blocked the front door. “Are you nuts? He's got to go to the hospital. He's losing too much blood, he's in shock, and—and just listen to him breathe! It sounds like one of his lungs has collapsed. He
will
die if you don't get him to a hospital.”

“Yes. That's a good possibly,” Rennie said, jerking his head to indicate she was to move.

She stood her ground. “We're taking him to the hospital.”

“
We
are not.” Rennie shifted Ukiah and pulled out a pistol, which he leveled at Sam. “And you are slowing us down.”

Ukiah tried to speak, but found he didn't have breath for it.
“Rennie! No! Please don't hurt her.”

Max caught hold of Sam and pulled her out of the way, putting himself between her and the Pack leader. “It's okay, Sam. You know I wouldn't let anything happen to Ukiah. Trust me. He'll be fine.”

She gazed at Rennie, then at Ukiah in his arms, and finally at Max. There her face crumbled into anguish, and she buried her head against Max's shoulder. “You better be right because if he dies—if he dies—I'll come kick your ass so
hard, you're going to have to stand the whole way back to Pittsburgh.”

And she fled, as if running from her trust in Max, and her helplessness in the face of Rennie's determination. Ukiah tried to call after her, to let her know he'd be fine, but only a weak strangled noise came out. As he struggled to take another breath, she was gone.

“Shit,” he hissed once he managed that second breath.

Max opened the Blazer's back and waited for Rennie to tuck Ukiah in. “Hang in there, son.”

Ukiah struggled to take another breath, and forced out, “Something's in my lung.”

“In? Something that will work itself out, or something that needs removed?” Max asked.

As if his body took it as a suggestion or perhaps a threat, Ukiah started to cough. Each cough was an explosion of pain, and he doubled over, trying to ease it. Something was forced up and out. He covered his mouth and coughed the wet, bloody mass into his hand. Immediately, he could breathe, and gasped in a huge sweet lungful of air. He slumped back in the seat, still cupping the mess, just enjoying the deep, unhindered breathing.

Max got some Kleenex and lifted Ukiah's cupped hand. “Here. Is this all—dead?”

Ukiah considered. “No. Something's alive in there.”

Max carefully cleaned away dead tissue from living. The mass resolved down to a black cocoon, which shuddered open as the air hit it. An insect, looking like a cross between a wasp and a butterfly with too many legs crawled from the thin black silk.

Max gave him a look that clearly asked, What the hell?

“It's a v'vrex.” Ukiah let Rennie coax the alien into inspecting a clean, empty Gatorade bottle. “It's from Prime's home.”

“That's new.” Max tucked the bloody tissue of dead-cells into the plastic wrapped around Ukiah.

Zoey darted to Ukiah's side and laced her fingers through his. “I know you're going to be okay. You're Magic Boy—even if you don't think you are. It's just that the scientist in
me is at odds with the granddaughter of a medicine man. But that's nothing unusual. I think this time I better listen to the granddaughter.”

“I'll be fine.” Ukiah was glad that he could reassure at least one person. “You take care of Cassidy. She actually needs you more.”

“Here, take this.” Zoey slipped a small beaded bag on a thong of rawhide over his neck and kissed his cheek. “It wards off evil spirits.”

“Evil spirits,” Rennie said, as his big motorcycle rumbled to life, “are the least of our worries.”

 

The Lyrids were falling the last time he really talked to Alicia. He had been doing a surveillance stakeout as the meteors streaked the April night sky in a rain of wishes. Since it was a matter of just sitting, and watching, it made sense that he and Max took turns.

Alicia came to him quietly, dressed all in tight black, shivering with cold and excitement.

“What are you doing here?” His breath smoked in the freezing night air. Alicia had not worked for them for nearly a year now, despite her frequent visits.

“I dropped by the office for a shoulder to cry on, or a ear to bitch into.” She pressed a tall thermos into his hands. “Max said I could bring you something to eat.”

He cracked open the thermos and found it filled with Max's beef stew, steaming hot. “What's wrong?”

“Oh, same old, same old.” Alicia peered through his telescope at the storage yard he had under surveillance while he juggled cap, lid, and spoon to gulp down the first cupful. “I really should learn not to think with my hormones. Wild and crazy guys might be oh-so-hot, and great for messing around with, but they're not cut out for stable relationships.”

He wasn't sure what to say to that. He was too new to civilization to understand the complex social dance everyone else breezed through. He wasn't even sure what “messing around with” entailed. “I'm sorry if you're hurt.”

“I'm not hurt, just—pissed off—and mostly at myself.”
She wrapped her arms about herself and rubbed at her arms. “Damn, is it cold!”

“Where's your coat?” He finished the stew and screwed the lid back on.

“It's screaming yellow. I didn't think I should wear it up here. I might give you away.”

“Here.” He started to unbutton his coat.

“I can't take your coat!” she protested.

He stood with his coat hanging open, unsure what to do, then said, “We could share it.”

So she snuggled into his chest and he hugged her close. His coat barely covering her sides, he rubbed her back to warm her.

“You always smell so good,” she murmured.

“It's the stew,” Ukiah told her. “Max makes it with light cream and cashew paste, kind of like Indian korma.”

She laughed into his chest. She smelled of arousal, but he had lots of practice around his mothers at ignoring the scent.

“How do you feel?” he asked, steering his mind and body away from her pheromones.

She looked into his eyes. “Safe.”

He had expected “warmer” or “still cold” or something other answer. He puzzled over it. He supposed she felt that way because he wouldn't let anything hurt her.

“Look!”

Ukiah glanced up and saw another meteor streaking groundward. “Falling star, make a wish.”

She laughed. “Don't tempt me.”

“What would you wish for?”

She touched his face, tracing his smooth chin, and ran fingers over his mouth. “I wish you were older.”

“Me? Why?”

She laughed, burrowing her face into his neck, and tightening her hold on him. “Oh, no reason. I'm just being selfish. There's time enough for you to join the cruel realities of the world. But when you do, I'll be waiting.”

At the time, he didn't understand. Looking back, now he did. She was in love with him.

 

Ukiah woke in the stillness of late night, with the sense of Alicia all around him.

While mostly a blur to Ukiah, their retreat had actually been quick and orderly. Max paused at the garage where Kraynak's van was still under repair. Rennie broke in and confiscated Alicia's camping gear, and they headed out into the wilderness. The Umatilla National Forest covered 1.4 million acres land—even if the Ontongard knew it well, it would take them a while to search it all.

Ukiah now lay wrapped in Alicia's blankets, wreathed by her ghostly scent. What happened, he wondered with despair, to those that the Ontongard took over? Did their souls break free of the bodies no longer theirs to control—able to pass on to heaven? Or did they stay trapped—to be soiled by sins they had no power to prevent—doomed to hell if somehow the Ontongard died? Or were they somewhere halfway between? Pushed out of their bodies by the alien DNA and yet unable to pass on, did they cling like ghosts to the hair still caught in combs and the dead cells shed onto favorite clothing, the only DNA still solely their own?

Surely God wouldn't let such cruelty exist. There was, however, overwhelming evidence that the universe was full of such evil. Tortured by such thoughts, Ukiah slipped out of the tent and discovered the world beyond.

The campsite was high in the mountains, open to the stars. The campfire burned in a ring of stones, a low red eye in the darkness, scenting the air with wood smoke. Overhead the Milky Way crossed. The Big Dipper. The Little Dipper. Ursa Major. Ursa Minor. He gazed at the stars, homesick for Pittsburgh, Indigo, and his moms.

The campfire suddenly roared to life. It shot up as if feeding on gasoline, the flames shooting up as high as his chest. He backed away from it, looking for water or sand. A movement caught his eye, and he turned around.

A male grizzly bear towered over him.

It roared, a sound that filled his ears and senses. He saw the huge mouth open, the yellowed canines, the deep cavern of its throat, red rim of gums and the drool. The hot breath
blasted over his upraised face. The carnivore smell of old meat. The spittle touched him with information on the huge beast before him, the ancient link with all bears and the twisting path down to this giant creature before him. The sound rippled over his skin, felt as well as heard.

It stood there, real in all his senses. But its eyes—its eyes were great pools of blackness filled with stars. And into his mind he felt the firm impression of something unreal, something huge and unknowable, something beyond anything he and any of his ancestral memories stretching back eons—had ever experienced. The bear, he somehow knew, wasn't truly there. And so, where he should feel fear jazzing over his nerves like electricity, he felt only serene awe.

Threading through his mind, quiet and elusive as the whisper of wind through pines, was a thought.

Protect your people. This is why you were born.

A rustle of fabric, and Max came out of the tent behind him. “Ukiah?”

Ukiah blinked. He stood with his back to the fire, gazing up at the stars. The bear was gone, vanished completely except for a ghost heat of its breath.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.” Ukiah glanced down at the ground. Dew covered the grass evenly with no mark of the bear's passing. The memory remained, perfect as always, filling him with peace. “I'm fine.”