Biker (15 page)

“Eric.” Pratt heard himself sob in relief. “Thank Christ. Eric, you've got to help me out of here.”

“
Just shut … the fuck up. I'm not helping … you. Gene told me … what to do. I have … my orders
.” There was an undertone of desperation to the barely human speech. Although the creature's—
the boy's
—speech lacked sibilants and all hard-edged consonants, Pratt had no trouble understanding him. Again, that sense that someone was talking to him in his head.

Pratt consciously relaxed his gut as he arched his back. “Eric, your mother sent me to bring you back. She loves you very much.”

“
I have … no mother. My mother … was a wolf
.”

“Eric. Think about this. You have a mother who loves you. You hurt all the time. She can help you get better. Think about this, Eric. What if Gene is lying?”

A hissing gasp. “
Gene … does … not … lie!
” Eric rasped. “
You are … a bad man! You came … to hurt me
!”

“Eric! How could I possibly hurt you any more than you've already been hurt?”

Pratt heard Eric's labored breathing as he leaned over the well.

Wendigo
. An American werewolf in the Old West. Pratt had read about them in a book about old legends he'd taken out of the Mayville, Iowa library once when they were stopped for a few days, Duane working at a grain elevator. Young Pratt had gravitated toward monsters like iron filings to a magnet. He sought reassurance in a world more sinister than his own.

That world never existed.

Until now.

The boy was a mental black hole. Pratt would have preferred not to think about him but that was impossible. No longer an “it.” Only the boy could help him now. Thinking about how the boy got that way accomplished nothing. Pratt was forced to compartmentalize, furiously hurrying down a mental corridor slamming doors. He had no use for the strangely intense emotions assaulting him.

The entity leaning over the well was unknown but human. Certainly the boy would respond to any sincere and meaningful overture. That was only natural. He remembered a
Fantastic Four
comic book he'd read in prison wherein Sue Richards extends the hands of kindness to some Kirbyesque monster, saying all living things responded to kindness. He'd dated a hippie once who believed all men were basically good.

What was her name? Dar something. Darryl.

Darlene. She talked a good game but when push came to shove, she folded like a cheap tent. She was proud of her “progressivism.” She made Pratt her project. When he failed to respond to her unselfish love and devotion, she waited until he was at work one day, cleaned out the apartment, sold his stereo, microwave oven and TV to a pawn shop and disappeared.

Pratt learned years later she'd died of AIDS in Mexico.

Get him talking. The more the boy talked, the more human he became.

“What do you eat?” Pratt forced a conversational tone.

“
What
?”

“What do you eat out here? What does Gene feed you?”

“
I eat … apples … protein bars … venison … peanut butter … Red Vines
.”

“You ever had a thick, juicy steak? How'd you like a thick, juicy steak?” His own stomach rumbled like a Panzer Division. He could see the steak. He could practically taste it. Medium rare with grilled mushroom topping. The boy's teeth had to be a disaster. He'd never seen a dentist. Pratt wondered if Moon had fed him lots of sweets.

“Do you like candy?” Pratt called.

“
Yeah
…”

So the boy's teeth were shot.

“How 'bout tossing down another bottle of water?”

Silence. Pratt gazed up. The shaggy outline withdrew. A sense of calm settled on Pratt like a shroud. He zoned out, momentarily unaware of his surroundings and condition. The sound of a twelve-ounce bottle of water thwacking the floor snapped his head off his chest. Pratt scooped it up gratefully and chugged it down. He looked up. No outline.

“Eric!” he called.

No answer. Was the boy even within earshot? Where had he gone? Pratt sat down Indian style. All things being relative Duane didn't seem quite so bad by comparison. Sure there'd been physical abuse—the drunken beatings, that time Duane kicked Pratt, age nine, out of the car five miles from home in the middle of a blizzard and told him to walk.

At least Duane hadn't engaged in systematic crippling torture. Yeah, Duane was a real prize. He failed the Dr. Mengele test. Pratt still had Duane's cheap digital watch. Fucking thing had been keeping time for twenty years. Go figure. An hour passed as Pratt considered his options. It was possible that all his clothes, torn into strips, might make a twenty foot rope. He had an idea regarding the discarded gallon tin.

Pratt wondered how long he should wait. It was possible Eric had deserted him, left him to die on Moon's orders. The anxiety made him thirsty. He stood, looked up, cupped his mouth.

“Eric!”

Nada.

“ERIC!”

No response. Well there you have it. He was on his own. He reached for his belt buckle.

He heard a grunt.

“Eric, is that you?”

Another grunt, imperceptibly louder as something approached the well, someone struggling with a bulky or heavy object.

“Eric, I need a rope!”

The shaggy outline appeared briefly.

“Eric?”

More grunting. A large, rectangular box hove into view as Eric rested one end atop the low well rim. The box had rounded corners. It was an animal container similar to those Pratt had seen outside the hut.

A wild feline snarl shot the tube.

Pratt watched petrified as a shaggy arm reached around to the door, which hung over the well. The arm released the latch and opened the door. An instant later Eric tilted the other end of the box up, emptying the mountain lion into the well.

Fuck.

CHAPTER 27

Pratt's head slammed into the wall as he jerked back. He pulled his Buck knife from his pocket and opened the four-inch blade.

The sinewy tan creature dropped like a load of laundry, landing unerringly on four wide-spread paws, using the impact to spring at Pratt as it was born to do. Shrieking slightly through his teeth Pratt lashed out with a right front kick that caught the cat square in the chest with a jarring thump. The cat dropped to the ground, turned around and sprang. It was a perpetual-motion machine, a foaming buzz saw.

Pratt threw up an arm. The cat's hind claws scrabbled at the duct tape, cleaved through skin and muscle leaving furrows, its yellow eyes inches from Pratt's, its breath a hot charnel wind. Pratt grabbed it by the scruff of the neck with his left hand, pulled it tight and hacked down with the knife. Each of its clawed extremities tentacled from his grip and found purchase in his skin. Pratt yanked its neck back, stopping the inch-and-a-half incisors from reaching his face. He fought a tornado of razor blades at his belly, slash after slash on his forearms and chest, the intimate shocking parting of the flesh, furiously lashing out with the knife. Over and over and over, his arm flinging blood every time he drew it back. The lion's spittle struck his face.

Would his tiny blade even penetrate to the cat's vital organs through the matrix of bone and sinew? The mountain lion dropped back snarling and spitting, limping from a slash across its forepaw and sucking holes in its side. Pratt reversed his grip so that the blade protruded from the thumb side. He grabbed the carpet segment and wrapped it around his bleeding left arm. The cat circled and pounced, jaws clamping on the carpeted forearm as he thrust it forward, nearly crushing his ulna. Pratt brought the blade up with all his force, driving it through the soft underbelly beneath the breastplate, working it back and forth like a recalcitrant cork.

The cat mewled piteously and collapsed, panting. Its torn side bellowed quickly in and out. It looked at him with an odd mix of defiance and regret, as if it knew it had burned through its nine lives in one fell swoop. A pool of blood spread across the hard-packed earth. The light in its eyes dimmed. It lay on its side, fat pink tongue protruding at an odd angle.

Pratt slumped on his ass, panting. He waited for the giant fist that had seized his heart to unclench. He practiced his square breathing. He thanked God. He examined his wounds. The gouges on his left arm had penetrated to the bone and ached in pulses with his heartbeat. His clothes were drenched with sweat and blood. The cat had ripped off his shirt and bandages.

Pratt wiped the buck knife off on the cat's fur and used it to cut his shirt into strips, which he used to bandage the wounds on his arms, the claw scrape across his hairline that sent tendrils of blood into his eyes.

Thirst scorched him to the bone. He thought about drinking his urine. He'd read a book about Marines on a prisoner-of-war ship during WWII drinking their own urine. They just puked it back up. He couldn't stop sweating despite the cool air. He looked at his buck knife, tufts of fur projecting from the serrated part of the blade.

He looked at the mountain lion. Had to weigh one hundred and fifty pounds. Cat muscle wasn't like human muscle. It was stronger and faster. The cougar was a threshing machine and somehow he'd killed it. Could you eat the meat? It didn't matter. He'd be dead of thirst long before he'd be hungry enough to eat a mountain lion.

Pratt got to his knees and straightened the big cat's body. Seven feet from tip to tail. It was beginning to stink already. Pratt must have pierced the abdomen. All that fur. What a trophy.

Pratt looked up at the disc of deep blue sky. If only he could reverse gravity.

All that fur.

Using the buck knife Pratt field-dressed the carcass as he would a deer, splitting open the thorax from neck to anus. The reeking innards plopped out, a plate of purple sausage. The skin was extremely slippery and difficult to separate from bone and sinew. Pratt had to stand on the carcass to hold it in place while he drew the blade longitudinally, carefully slicing the skin into two-inch strips. It was difficult to get a grip against the slippery skin, and he slipped several times, landing hard and sending furious bolts of pain ricocheting throughout his body.

It was grueling, backbreaking work. When he was done he'd turned the cat's skin into sixteen strips varying in length from two feet to six. He looked up. The quality of blue had deepened. The sun had begun its long slide into the mountains. Weak from loss of blood and hunger, Pratt worked feverishly, fearing if he waited until morning he wouldn't make it.

The skin was already stiff as he forced it end to end, tying knots with his whole body. Blades assailed him from without, his own bones from within. The skin was as flexible as a wire coat hanger. He worked it. He bent it back in on itself like an accordion, over and over. He wrapped it tightly around a brick and smacked all sides against the hard-packed ground. When he finished he estimated he had about thirty feet.

He went to work on the gallon tin, flattening it with the brick, hacking through it with the buck knife. The well stank like an abattoir. Flies descended en masse. Flies swarmed his face and arms and settled on the bloodied carcass. It was a fly buffet. It was a fly Sturgis.

Light was fading as Pratt cut, bent and hammered the tin into a crude hook with a puncture at one end for the rope. He tied a brick fragment to the hook for weight. His fingers were torn from the lion's claws and gouged by the ragged tin edge. Slick with blood, they refused to obey him. He couldn't grip the metal. He caught himself whining, stopped, breathed, slumped. He flexed his fingers, wiped them off on his jeans and went back to work. At last he had a rope and a grappling hook. Did he have the energy to throw it and after that make the climb?

Pratt pissed again at the wall, his urine chrome yellow. He picked up his stiff, reeking lariat and stood in the center of the floor. He looked up. Using his best fast-pitch softball underhand, he heaved the hook at the sky. It clacked against the bricks several feet from the top and tumbled back to earth. Pratt stepped back to avoid getting smacked. The buzzing of the flies filled his prison with an eerie drone.

Hungrily he eyed the fly-specked carcass.

What are you, crazy?

He looked up. Second throw. Get that Zen thing going. You don't need to look—you know which way is up. Bending at the knees, he used the same technique as a kettlebell hoist, swinging straight up with his thighs, hips, whole body. The weighted hook sailed toward the blue sky, brushing the bricks just below the rim. It fell to the ground and lay in a pool of congealing blood. Pratt was at the limit of his range like a good place kicker on the fifty-yard line. He had to dig down deep and find that extra six inches.

Pratt was exhausted, weak from loss of blood and anxiety. He didn't have that many throws in him before he reached diminishing returns. Breathing deeply he centered himself and threw again. The hook cleared the rim—barely—but failed to catch. Pratt prayed for strength.

Nine tosses later his prayer was answered.

CHAPTER 28

Pratt tested the cat-skin rope with his weight. The skin stretched with a slight squeaking noise but held. Dried puma blood provided an adhesive grip. Wrapping the reeking rope around his forearm, Pratt began pulling himself up, cat rope clamped between his shoes, glad that he'd been practicing chin-ups religiously. Eight feet off the floor the chamber narrowed to a four-foot tube. The diameter was too great for him to brace himself but bricks protruded from the wall, allowing him to place some of his weight. Fifteen feet up he paused to catch his breath, each foot resting on a slight protrusion while he gripped the rope and tried to ease the screaming pain in his upper back and ribs.

Pratt craned his neck. The blue sky had darkened and deepened. A star twinkled. It was almost eight. Rationing his breath, he heaved himself up, foot by foot, brick by brick. A cramp seized his right calf, threatening to twist it into a pretzel. Pratt struggled to stretch his leg but the cramp pushed back like a steel vise. He overpowered his own alien flesh, willing the leg to relax while the rest of his body tensed and coiled like a steel spring. Cramping came from dehydration. His fingers cramped. His jaw cramped.