The Totem 1979 (47 page)

A rock struck Slaughter’s back. Another walloped his thigh. Ignoring the pain, he pointed toward a dry streambed that veered upward away from the fire. He shouted more instructions as rocks hailed all around him, and from above, he felt the scorching heat approach the ridge. “Get moving!”

It likely wasn’t so much what he said as what they sensed. They couldn’t stay here. They were shooting less. They glanced around. They stared down at the fire. The rocks were hurtling toward them, and the blaze in the lowland kept getting wider, brighter, stronger. There wasn’t any sense in running toward it. They were forced to move along the angle of the razorback toward the dry streambed that Slaughter had noticed and that would lead them away from the fires up toward the rockwall.

“Let’s do it!”

Frantic, they started. Slaughter didn’t realize until later that the route they followed had been calculated for them, that they had been pushed in one direction and were headed for a trap. But no one else took the time to figure it either. All they knew was that they had to get away, and they were shouldering their knapsacks, grabbing rifles, stumbling across the boulders up the razorback toward the streambed and the rockwall, their silhouettes made vivid by the flames below them, easy targets as the rocks kept coming.

“Watch for anybody hurt! Make sure you bring them!”

Men were falling, moaning, others kneeling, staring at the blood on their hands and their clothes. Slaughter tugged a man to his feet and struggled up the razorback with him. Around him, others were limping, moaning, flinching.

They reached the streambed and kept going. Then the fire was a distance from them. Even so, the flames kept roaring, pushed by the wind, and the men didn’t dare rest. Soon the blaze would come for them again. The rocks continued to pelt them as they stumbled higher, on occasion shooting, mostly fleeing, working upward, and the rockwall-lit by the moon and the blazing trees-was vivid, high above them as they struggled.

Time was telescoped. It seemed like twenty minutes, but it must have taken several hours for their panicked flight. The streambed sloped high up toward the rockwall, and the rocks kept striking them all the while they ran and stumbled, screaming. Then the flames were far behind them as they came rushing from the streambed onto flat ground. They ran up to the rockwall and stopped abruptly, puzzled, gasping, staring all around.

Finally they understood.

“Christ, they’ve trapped us.”

Rocks swooped toward them from three sides. The cliff was behind them, and they bunched there, facing outward, shooting. One man and then another fell. The group consolidated, crowding closer, tighter.

Slaughter was the first to notice. Pausing to reload, he glanced to his left and saw the ancient wooden structure in the shadows that were half lit by the flames in the lowland.

“What’s this thing here?”

“It’s the railroad,” someone said and chambered a fresh cartridge.

“Railroad?”

“When they mined the gold, they built a railroad. That’s the trestle. It slopes toward the valley.”

Slaughter almost couldn’t hear him amid the rifle reports, amid the blasts from shotguns and handguns. He was almost blinded by the muzzle flashes. A rock struck his throat, and he felt as if he was being choked.

“We can climb it,” someone said.

“Climb the trestle,” others echoed.

Slumped on one knee, Slaughter fought to breathe, to overcome the swelling in his throat. A rock whizzed past his head while others clattered against the cliff behind him. He swayed to his feet, leaned against the cliff, and massaged his throat as the group surged toward the trestle. Lucas stopped to help him.

“I think I can manage,” Slaughter gasped. His voice was hoarse, disturbing him as he stumbled to catch up to the men.

They all tried to climb it at once.

“No, it won’t hold. A few men at a time,” Hammel ordered.

But no one listened. They were clustered on the trestle, on the zig-zagging beams that supported it. One beam started creaking.

Slaughter, overwhelmed by anger now, charged close and jerked several men from the trestle. ‘You and you shoot to give us cover. You get off. The rest of you stay the hell back while these men climb.”

His voice was raspy, distorted. They glared at him, and unexpectedly they obeyed. Kneeling among the beams, they shot toward the blazing darkness while above them other men climbed. Slaughter heard the scrape of their boots, the groan of old wood, the clatter of rocks striking near him. The flame-ravaged valley echoed from their shooting.

“You five men,” Slaughter groaned. “Now it’s your turn.”

The pattern was established. Small units of men climbed in relays while the other men shot at unseen targets in the trees, guided by the trajectory of the hurtling rocks. Slaughter remained at the bottom, rasping orders, shooting, flinching from stones that periodically struck him. More men now were climbing, and again time was telescoped. The next thing Slaughter realized, Hammel was beside him.

“Now it’s our turn.”

Slaughter glanced around. He saw Hammel, Lucas, a few other men. He didn’t know where Dunlap was, or Parsons, but he understood that this was the last of the group. He gripped his rifle, and he reached up toward a beam, and he was climbing. Once he almost lost the rifle, and he wished it had a strap, but there was no way to provide one now, and he kept climbing, reaching. He felt the old beams sag, the soft wood crumble in his hands, but the trestle was holding.

When he heard the scream, he looked down, and one man slipped. Falling, the man struck two beams and thudded in the darkness, where he didn’t seem to move. Around the man, grotesque figures swirled. Can’t look down, Slaughter told himself. I have to keep climbing. He was worried that it had been Lucas or Hammel who had fallen, but as he glanced toward the beams across from him, he saw Lucas and Hammel climbing. Still puzzled about where Dunlap and Parsons were, Slaughter strained and reached and kneed and stretched.

Peering over the top, he saw the group waiting. In the moonlight and the glow from the fires below, their expressions were unnervingly stark. Slaughter clutched for a handhold, crawled up from the final beam, and limped across the railroad ties toward solid rock. The trestle never should have held. He knew that. He never understood why it had. The fire that scoured this area of mountains eventually burned the trestle, so nobody had the chance to examine it in the daylight and understand the miracle of its construction. But meanwhile the wind intensified, funneling toward them from the lowland, surging up the draw that they were in, and pushed by it, they followed its urging. One thing favored them. Whatever had attacked them was below them. Granted, the figures were no doubt climbing the trestle, pursuing, but for the moment, Slaughter and his group were safe. They struggled up the narrow pass, the glint of snow on each peak flanking them. The wind howled at their backs. They worked onward, too exhausted to run.

“We have to find cover before they catch us,” someone said.

“No,” another man objected. “We have to keep going. If we reach the other entrance to the pass, we can get the hell away from here.”

“That’s stupid. They’ll be waiting for us.”

“They’re behind us.”

“Maybe.”

They plodded forward without energy or reason.

Slaughter squinted back toward the burning lowland. As he turned ahead, the wind propelled him like a fist, and at last he saw Dunlap, Parsons, other men he recognized. But many others were missing. Some men moaned while others cursed. Still others were too weak even to murmur. They stumbled, limping, spread out through this narrow draw like refugees or soldiers in confused retreat. Then Slaughter heard the howling close behind him.

“They’re up here now,” he said. “They’ll be coming.”

“Look for cover.”

But there wasn’t any. There was just the narrow draw, the steep wind-scoured rocky slopes on each side leading toward the snow-capped peaks, and they kept moving.

Then they saw it.

“What?”

“The town. We’ve reached the town.”

One of the men had a flashlight. He scanned its beam toward a dangling weathered sign that told them motherlode. Then other men fumbled for flashlights, turning them on. They saw listing shacks, tumbled sheds, crumbled walls, toppled roofs, sagging doorways. There were slogans on them in a language no one understood and no one ever would, stark cryptic signs and scrawls and symbols, and the streets were like a midden heap, the garbage from the mining town and from the culture that had been invented up here, a sprawling mass of junk and worn-out objects which as everyone approached turned out to be huge piles of bones, some human, others unidentifiable. The curses of the men combined with the roar of the wind and the howling that approached them.

“Okay, then, damn it, if they want a fight-!”

The flashlights lanced across the darkness. In the lowland, everything was burning. From the valley far across, the night sky was pierced by lightning. Thunder rumbled toward them. It was madness. The first man who reached in his pack to pull out a bottle filled with gasoline inspired all the others. Parsons had instructed them well. They’d come prepared.

The bottles were soft-drink empties, their twist-on caps sealing their dangerous contents. The men now unscrewed the caps. They pulled out handkerchiefs or tore off strips of clothing and stuffed them into the open bottlenecks. A frantic man lit his, braced himself, thrust his arm back, and threw the flaming bottle. Others watched as it flipped blazing through the darkness and struck a shack. The shatter of the breaking glass was followed by a whoosh, a surge of light, and the shack was. suddenly in flames that shot skyward with stunning abruptness. Someone made a sound as if he watched fireworks. Another bottle had been lit, and after it arched toward the other slope, it struck a shack, exploded, and the street was flanked by flames now as the group huddled, gaping toward the trestle and what neared them: gimping, spastic, growling, frenzied, hairy figures, cloaked in furs, their mouths frothing, their limbs jerking. Lightning flashed in the valley. Ridges flamed in the lowlands. Winds fanned the burning shacks and spread destruction to their neighbors.

Slaughter shot and aimed and shot again as did the others near him. Burning bottles burst among the jerking figures. The things were moaning, howling, screaming. But they kept coming, relentlessly stumbling toward the gunfire. Nothing seemed to stop them. They had risen from the dead too many times. Confident of immortality, they were unafraid, ignoring the wounds that halted them a moment but didn’t drop them. Some were in flames as they reached the group that shot them. The things struck with clubs. They howled. They slashed. They clawed. They kicked and bit.

Slaughter shot one, then another. As his rifle clicked on empty for the last time, he drew his handgun, aiming, shooting, aiming. Other flaming bottles burst before him. Men screamed as they fought hand-to-hand with the figures. Friends around him fell back. Those behind him tried to regroup. Half the town up here was burning, cryptic symbols gone forever, as Slaughter’s handgun clicked on empty as well, and while he lurched back, attempting to reload, something struck him. It was big and solid, hairy. It was foul with stench and rot, and it was on him, slashing with its teeth and claws. He tried to push it off him, but its teeth sank into his wrist, and he was screaming.

‘Jesus, no, don’t bite me!”

But the thing braced its teeth and twisted, grinding, and the pain, the shock of fear was so intense that Slaughter didn’t realize what he was doing. When he regained awareness, he saw how he had clubbed his handgun at the figure until fluid oozed from the figure’s skull, and it was motionless on the ground beside him. Slaughter gasped, staring at his shredded wrist.

“I’ve got it!” he screamed. “I’m like them now! Christ, I’ve got it!”

That would be his most heroic moment, what in memory would be the apex of his life, the quick consideration that would save him. Thinking of the foulness creeping up his arm to reach his shoulder and his brain, thinking of the monster he would shortly be, he struck out with his handgun toward another monstrous figure, turned, saw Parsons, and ran. Parsons noticed him, Parsons who suddenly became rigid, the fear in his eyes more fierce than any emotion he’d ever displayed, for Parsons must have thought of Slaughter’s anger toward him, must have assumed that Slaughter was already maddened and changed. Parsons raised his shotgun, firing blindly. Slaughter faltered as the pellets struck his side. But the image of the two kids in that grocery store returned to him, and he mustered the strength to keep running. As Parsons pumped a fresh shell into the shotgun’s chamber, Slaughter reached him, knocked him flat, grabbed the shotgun, raised it to his shoulder, and he couldn’t have accomplished this if he had not been large and tall the way he was, but with his great reach he could manage. Flames around him, buildings burning, lightning flashing, Slaughter pulled the trigger and blew his contaminated arm off.

Chapter Eleven.

Dunlap huddled in the blackness of the tunnel. The sight of the gruesome battle had so unnerved him that he’d stumbled backward, tripped, and fallen. Raising his frightened gaze, he’d glimpsed the tunnel’s murky entrance and raced to it for shelter, so afraid that his sphincter muscle weakened, making him void his bowels, the revolting stench humiliating him as he crouched and whimpered in the tunnel.

This at last was his great truth, the story he had worked for, and he couldn’t bear to watch it. He was a loser, not because he drank too much so often or because he had that trouble with his wife or because the big investigations never came his way. He was a loser simply because he wasn’t the man he thought he was. He had run in panic with the other men toward the cliff. He had been the first man to climb in a frenzy up the trestle. He had known reporters who in Vietnam had stood with soldiers in the shriek of battle. He had known other reporters, who had clambered into burning buildings or had waded into flooding rivers or had argued with a gunman holding hostages.