Indestructible: V Plague Book 7 (6 page)

My dizziness came and went as we ran.  For a while I felt
perfectly fine, then for no discernible reason the dark horizon would start to
tilt and I’d have to slow down so I didn’t stumble and fall on my face.  After
this happened a few times, Joe pulled up to a stop and turned to look at me.

“How bad are you hurt?”  He asked, not even breathing hard. 
I was slightly winded, nauseous and once again sweat was running off me in
buckets.

“I’m fine,” I said, fumbling for some water.  He stood
watching me drink, saying nothing.

“You’re a stupid, fucking white man,” he said.  “I don’t
know why I’m helping you, but if you want my help you need to tell me what’s
wrong with you.  I might be able to do something about it.”

“I said I’m fine!”  I snapped, starting to move past him.

He reached out, grabbing my arm as I passed him.  I spun;
fist coming up as I tried to jerk my arm from his grip, but when my body
stopped spinning the world kept going.  And accelerated.  I wobbled and his restraining
hand became all that was keeping me from falling to the ground.   Taking my
other arm he helped me to a seated position on the grass.

“Deep breaths and put your head between your knees,” he
said, moving out of range in case I decided I still wanted to hit him.  “The
gash on your head.  It’s bleeding worse.”

I reached up with a trembling hand and touched my face.  It
came away wet with blood that was running out of the wound.  Wiping higher, I
realized blood was still flowing, running into my right eye and blocking nearly
all its vision.  I took a few moments and used some water to rinse my eye out
and felt a little better when I could see clearly, but a giant bass drum was
going off inside my skull and the world around me was tilted at a forty-five
degree angle.

“Stay here,” Joe said, standing up.  “I’ll be back.”

“What are you doing?”  I asked.

“Getting something to help your big, dumb ass.”  He said,
turned and trotted off.

The headache and vertigo got worse for a few minutes, then
improved.  I sat on my ass with my knees pulled up and my head down, taking
slow deep breaths and occasional sips of water.  Eventually I started feeling
better, the dizziness passing and the headache retreating, but not leaving.  Lifting
my head I looked around, but didn’t see my companion.  I carefully used the night
vision scope to check in the direction he’d gone, but didn’t see anything.

Fuck him.  Whatever he was doing, I didn’t have time.  Katie
was shot, so was Martinez.  Rachel could have been hurt in the crash.  They
needed me and I wasn’t helping anyone sitting on my ass in the middle of a
giant goddamn prairie.  Taking another drink of water I got to my knees, still
feeling better.  Standing, I swayed like a sapling in a windstorm, but managed
to keep my feet under me until the horizon slowed down. 

Raising my rifle, I peered through the night vision scope
and started to turn to scan the area.  First, the horizon began to warp.  The
stars were whirling, phosphorescent trails tracking their path through the night
sky.  Then the soil under my feet rippled in giant waves and I was falling.  I
don’t remember hitting the ground.

When I opened my eyes I didn’t understand what the hell was
happening.  The last thing I remembered was a dark, night sky with spinning stars. 
Now there was bright sunshine.  I peered through slit lids and noted the sun
was just above the horizon, but I had no idea if that meant it had just come up
or was about to go down.

“He lives,” Joe said from somewhere off to my left.  “Here,
drink this.”

He thrust a small gourd into my hand.  Half of it had been
cut away; leaving a crude cup, which held a liquid that was reddish-brown and
stank worse than any slit trench I’ve had the displeasure of using. 

“What’s this?”  I croaked, levering myself up to a sitting
position.  It took me a moment to realize I was able to do this without my head
splitting open or the world turning upside down.

“Ancient Indian remedy, with a little help from modern
science,” he said.  “I’ve been pouring it down your throat for the past few
hours.  Feel better?”

“A little,” I grudgingly acknowledged.  “What’s in it?”

“The right roots, berries and bark,” he said, motioning for
me to drink.  “And some Tylenol I had in my pocket.”

It took a bit to get past the smell, but I raised the gourd
and sipped some of the thick liquid.  It tasted worse than I expected, and the
small pieces of whatever was floating in it nearly sent me over the edge.

“Oh, and I pissed in it.”  He said with a grin after I had
swallowed.

“I don’t know whether to thank you or beat you to death,” I
said, grimacing as I drank the rest.

My stomach flopped a couple of times, but the concoction
stayed down.  Unfortunately the incredibly foul taste had coated the inside of
my mouth and didn’t seem to want to go away.  But I did feel better.  The
headache was mostly gone and the dizziness had stopped.

Joe stood up and extended a hand.  After a moment I reached
up and took it and he pulled me to my feet.  I was prepared for the headache
and vertigo to come roaring back, but they didn’t.  I turned my head to look
around us, noting that the sun was climbing higher in the sky, happy that other
than tired and weak I felt relatively ok.

“Thank you,” I finally said, looking at him.

“Let me get something to write on!”  He cried.  “For the
first time in history a white man has thanked an Indian!”

“Oh, fuck off.”  I said, unable to suppress a small grin. 
“How long was I out?”

“About four hours,” he said.

Remembering the wound on my head I started to reach up but
his hand darted out and grabbed mine, stopping me from touching it.  “It’s been
cleaned and sealed with a bark paste.  Don’t disturb it.  You were already
starting to show signs of an infection.”

I wanted to touch it, wanted a mirror to be able to inspect
my injuries, but decided to trust him and let it go.

“Drink some water and let’s go,” he said.  “We lost a lot of
time and there’s a long way to go.”

“How much farther?”  I asked between gulps of water.

“At least twelve hours, probably more like fourteen or
fifteen.  And that’s if we run the whole way.”  He said after thinking about it
for a moment.

Putting my water away I nodded and scooped up my pack and
rifle, which he had neatly stacked next to me.  Getting everything on my body
and adjusted, we set off.  I let him set the pace with his fast loping run,
content to stay on his shoulder.

“So why are you?”  I asked after we’d covered the first
mile.

“Why am I what?”

“Helping me.  You said you didn’t know why you are, and
neither do I.  You seem to have a pretty deep seated dislike of white men.”  I
said.

“Grow up on the Res and you’re taught from birth to hate the
white man.”  He finally answered after most of another mile went past.  “The
older generation still blames you for everything, and doesn’t want to take any
responsibility or do anything to make life better.  It just gets passed on from
generation to generation.  Things are changing, but very slowly.  Truth is, I
don’t really know how I feel, just know how I was conditioned to feel every day
of my life until I left.” 

I didn’t have a good answer to that.  He was describing
human nature.  I’d grown up around people whose generations old hatred of
anyone with skin a different color than theirs had been preached to them since
they could walk.  And it wasn’t isolated to a small west Texas town.  It’s just
the way people are unless something happens to open their eyes.

Personally, I’ve never understood disliking someone simply
because of skin pigmentation.  There’s a whole lot more compelling reasons.  For
example, the world’s full of assholes.  If there’s one human trait that
transcends racial and cultural divides, it’s being an asshole.  Doesn’t matter
what color your skin is, which god you worship, where you fall in the political
spectrum, who you like to get naked with or how educated you are or aren’t. 
Becoming an asshole is an equal opportunity for everyone.  But… I digress.

“You didn’t answer the question,” I said, looking around at
the sun-bleached prairie and wishing for a pair of sunglasses.

“Your wife,” he said after a couple more minutes of
running.  “They have your wife.  I couldn’t save mine, but maybe I can help
save yours.”

I’m not sure what I expected him to say, but that wasn’t
it.  I’d been prepared for a tirade about how bad the white man was, but that I
wasn’t as bad as the infected.  Something along those lines.  I certainly
wasn’t prepared for such a raw, basic human emotion, or the pain that was
obvious in his voice when he said he couldn’t save his wife.

“Thank you,” I finally said.  “Sorry I’ve been such a dick.”

“Wow.  I bet that hurt to say.”  He quipped.

“You have no idea,” I said and kept running.

The sun climbed as the morning wore on, the heat and
humidity of the day intensifying.  By mid-morning the grass in front of us
shimmered under the baking sun and my pack felt like it weighed five hundred
pounds.  But, we maintained the pace.  Joe had two canteens strapped to his
belt, but one was empty and the other he finished quickly.   

“We should have filled up at the river we crossed,” I said,
sharing my dwindling supply with him.

“We probably should have done a lot of things we didn’t do,”
he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.  “There’s another smaller
river a few miles ahead.  If it’s not dry this time of year we’ll be able to
fill up.”

“And if it is dry?  Where’s the next water?”  I asked.

“About an hour’s run to the north,” he said after thinking
for a moment.  “Couple of windmills that keep a stock tank filled.”

“Let’s hope the river is running,” I said, not wanting to
even think about having to detour for water.

Part of me wanted to just ignore it and focus on staying on
the trail.  But I knew better.  As hot as it was, it was hardly 10 in the
morning.  Both of us were sweating freely in the humidity and if we tried to
run through the heat of the afternoon without water we’d be in serious
trouble.  It wouldn’t do Katie and the rest any good if I showed up to rescue
them so dehydrated that I wasn’t able to fight.

We pushed on, rationing the small amount of water we had.  I
didn’t have a hat and my head was burning under the relentless sun.  The
downside to shaving one’s head.  I envied Joe his heavily pigmented hide.

I guessed it was around 1100 when we crested a small rise,
and started down into a shallow valley that was noticeably greener than the
surrounding terrain.  A ten yard wide channel of sand and rock wound along the
floor of the valley, but so far I hadn’t seen any water flowing in it.  Slowing
as we approached, we stopped on a grassy bank, looking at several small puddles
of muddy water.  They were all that remained of the river.

“We can filter the water,” Joe said, starting to jump down
into the dry riverbed.

I reached out and placed a hand on his arm to stop him,
pointing a few yards upstream.  “I don’t think we want to drink this.”

“Shit!” 

Joe was looking at a corpse lying partially submerged in the
largest puddle.  There were six distinct puddles and they were all connected
with thin tendrils of water.  Whatever bacteria were leaking out of the body
would have contaminated the entire supply.

“Is that way upstream?”  I asked, pointing to our left.

Joe nodded, turning and following the bank to the north.  We
walked for five minutes, but all we saw was dry riverbed.  Backtracking, we
moved downstream, hoping to find some isolated puddles that would be free of
contamination, but there was only more dry soil.  Pausing in the shade of a
small tree I drank half our remaining water then handed the drinking tube to
Joe.

“How sure are you that stock tank will have water?”  I asked
as he sucked the bladder dry.

“I haven’t been there in several years, but before I left
the Res it always had water.  It would freeze in the winter and someone would
have to ride out and break up the ice so the cattle could drink, but I’ve never
known it to be dry.”  He said, shading his eyes as he scanned the horizon.  “We
go there, or we go back to the river we waded across.”

Mimicking him, I raised a hand to my brow and turned a slow
circle.  Nothing but miles and miles of dry grass with an occasional stunted
tree to break things up.  He’d said an hour’s run.  That meant roughly six
miles.  Twelve mile round trip, and we’d already run at least that far.  We’d
be approaching marathon distance by the time we made it back to where we stood
and still had another ten to twelve hours of running ahead of us.

I cursed myself for not having had the foresight to refill
at the river.  Sure, I’d been hurting and dizzy and worrying about my new
companion, but that’s still no excuse.  My failure might very well cost my wife
and friends their lives.  There was nothing I could do about it other than keep
running.

“Lead off,” I said.  “And pray there’s water there or we’re
in a world of shit.”

Joe didn’t respond, just jumped down off the bank, crossed
the dry river and climbed up the other side.  Back on grass he broke into a run
and angled slightly to the east of due north.  I fell in beside him, shutting
my mind down.  It didn’t help to be chastising myself over my mistakes, and
could very well distract me to the point that I made another, even more
serious, error.

“You may be in a world of shit if we run into the a-ki-da.”

“The what?”  To my ears he had just spoken gibberish, though
I suspected it was a word or words in his native tongue.

“A-ki-da,” he repeated, slowly.  “Each Osage chief hand
picks ten warriors.  Not so much now, but a few hundred years ago they weren’t
all that different from the Japanese Samurai.  They were the best fighters from
different clans and families and it was a great honor to be chosen.

“The tradition has continued.  It’s mostly ceremonial now,
but there are some that take it very seriously.  My father was an a-ki-da and
my older brother was chosen too.”

Well, that explained a lot about Joe.  He didn’t exactly
come from a slacker family.  I didn’t need to know the details to understand
what he was telling me.  Kings, chiefs and warlords have been doing the same
thing since the dawn of history.  Select the smartest and strongest fighters to
surround you.  Hell, we’re still doing it today, only now we call it Special
Forces.

“So, if we run into one of these… ah, ah, ah… however you
say it, I’ve got a fight on my hands?”  I asked.

“A-ki-da, dumbass.  Maybe.  Probably.  If we do, do what I
say and keep your mouth shut.”  He said, sidestepping a snake that our approach
had flushed out of the shade of a bush.

I didn’t have a good feeling that if it came to a fight he
would be on my side, so I settled for keeping my mouth shut and maintaining my
pace.  The heat continued to build, the sun approaching its zenith.  Each of us
was continually scanning the horizon to our front as well as frequently
checking behind us.  When we had covered what I estimated to be half the
distance to our destination I was looking to my right and pulled to a stop with
my hand on Joe’s arm when I detected movement.

Bringing my rifle up, I could just make out a form worming
its way through the grass.  It would move for a few moments, then go still
before starting all over again.  Joe didn’t have the benefit of a scope, having
only iron sights on his rifle, and settled for peering under the shade of his
hand.  Motioning him to follow, I began moving slowly to my right.

As I walked I kept up a constant scan, looking for any other
signs of life.  But all I saw was dry grass waving in the breeze.  I flashed
back to my encounter with the razorbacks in Arkansas and asked Joe if there
were any of the animals in this part of the country. 

“Nothing big enough for us to worry about,” he said.  “Used
to be mountain lions, but they’re long gone.”

I nodded and kept walking, trying to get a better view of
what was moving.  A few yards later I was able to see enough to tell it was human. 
But infected or not?  Pushing on, I got a better look and identified it as a
male.  Then I could see something sticking up from the body.  A couple of
minutes later I was close enough to recognize an arrow sticking straight up
from the man’s back.

“Got to be an infected,” I said after I told Joe what I
could see with the scope.

Keeping a very close eye on our surroundings, we continued
on until we were within a few feet of the male.  It was infected.  An arrow was
lodged dead center in its lower back, and had presumably severed the spinal
cord.  It was pulling itself along with its arms, dead legs dragging behind it. 

The wind shifted and it must have smelled us.  Its head
raised and turned in our direction as it emitted a low hiss and began trying to
pull itself towards us.  The male was dressed in what I presumed was
traditional Osage garb.  I glanced at Joe who was staring mesmerized at the
poor soul on the ground.

“Know him?”  I asked.

“He’s a-ki-da,” he nodded.  “One of the ten for the Sky
Chief.  Never been off the Res, and didn’t even speak English as far as I
know.”

“What about the arrow?”  I pointed at the long shaft
protruding straight into the air from the male’s back.  The shaft was obviously
made from a straight tree branch and had what looked like real bird feathers. 
It was stained a bright red, a color so brilliant and deep it had to have come
from a berry.

“Traditional warrior arrow,” he said.  “May I borrow your
rifle?  Mine makes too much noise.”

I looked at him for a moment, then worked the sling over my
head and handed over the weapon.  He clicked the selector to semi, stepped
forward and fired a single round into the infected’s head.  The skull deformed
before rupturing, then the male lay still. 

Returning my rifle, Joe leaned down and grasped the arrow’s
shaft, wrenching it from the body.  When it came out the resulting wound looked
just like the wounds I hadn’t been able to identify on the female infected back
at the crash sight.  Snapping the shaft in half with his hands, he mumbled
something in Osage and tossed a piece of the arrow on either side of the
corpse.  I didn’t bother to ask what he was doing.  He’d tell me if he wanted
me to know.

“Let’s go,” he said, turned and resumed our run to water.