Withered + Sere (Immemorial Year Book 1) (3 page)

Through the trees ahead, Cavalo saw her. A doe, belly white and back brown. White spots on her sides. Little flecks of gold in the hairs. Tail raised as she slowed. Ears twitched. The doe sprayed urine as her head darted around. She would have looked normal had it not been for the two snouts on her face, one going left, the other right. The dead third eye in the middle of her forehead. The fifth leg that hung uselessly from her stomach, obscene as it kicked weakly. She wasn’t the worst he’d seen, not by far, but more often than not, the effects of what had happened in the Time Before, which had created the End and the New Beginning, were still felt every day. Were still seen every day, even a hundred years later.

The man who fancied himself a doctor in Cottonwood, the town closest to Cavalo’s home, had told him it was due to the radiation, that it messed with the genetics even years after the End.
Seems safe enough to eat
, Hank had told him.
Any poison would have been bred out generations ago.
Just doesn’t look like much.

It didn’t. It looked foul. It was grotesque. But it was the closest thing to another living creature that Cavalo had seen in weeks aside from his companion, and the bread was hard as a rock now, the mush bland. If he took her, he could avoid a trip into Cottonwood, at least for a while. He could stay away from people. He could—

The doe snapped her head toward him, and he could see the muscles under her skin begin to tense. She crouched low toward the ground, ready to spring. Her fifth leg dragged along the dirt as it twitched. Cavalo could see the flies around her eyes, the curve of her neck, the hairs standing on end. He could hear his own breaths in his ears, low and harsh. The pull of the bowstring. The arrow between his fingers. The painted black feathers brushing his cheek. The subtle strain in his arm. He was getting older, and he could feel it in every part of his body. He was weaker now. Whip thin. Veins pronounced on his arms. Hands callused. The lines around his eyes like canyons.

And as he let the arrow go, he wondered how much longer he could last like this.

The feathers burned against his cheeks. The snap of the bow twanged in his ears. He might not have been as young as he used to be, but his eyesight had yet to fade, and he tracked the arrow as it flew through the trees. Before it hit, he knew it had flown true.

He’d aimed slightly high, anticipating the doe’s sudden leap. As the muscles in her legs bunched, she rose into the air, preparing to flee the threat she felt hidden among the trees. She launched forward toward a clearing ahead. The arrow struck her in the neck. Blood pulsed around the wooden shaft. She jerked her head back, a string of saliva splattering onto a tree. She bleated as she pawed the ground. She stumbled once, twice, and then began to move away. The forest around them grew quiet as she began to die.

It was a good hit. Blood fell from her neck, spattering against the forest floor. She moved in staccato beats through the trees, each step costing her. She picked up speed. Her shoulder clipped a long hanging branch, and she almost collapsed. She shook her head, her eyes wild and frenzied. She moved again and disappeared.

The man took his time. He fastened the bow to his back. He looked back in the direction of the tree that danced like a woman. He shook his head.

He moved to where the doe had been shot. There, upon the dead leaves, upon the rotted floor, glistened the blood trail. He whistled once, a high-pitched two-syllable sound that carried north to his companion. The birds in the trees took it as the all clear to begin singing again. They whistled back at him. He started following the blood trail. She’d find someplace to die. Thick bushes. Maybe into one of the outcroppings in the hills. She wouldn’t last long as she was bleeding out. It was early afternoon, but he needed as much time as he could get.

It was a minute later when a dark dog joined him. A mutt made up of blacks and grays, hair long and damp. Bone thin, like the man. He strode alongside Cavalo, coming up to just above the man’s knees, his long tail flicking back and forth. The dog bent his head forward, sniffing at the blood. He chuffed in the back of his throat and looked up at Cavalo, grinning, eyes bright, the canine arrogance comfortably familiar. It almost made him forget the dancing tree.

“Good work,” Cavalo said quietly, reaching down to stroke along a white patch of fur between Bad Dog’s eyes, back up to his ears. Bad Dog knocked his forehead against the man’s fingers and chuffed again. Cavalo heard Bad Dog’s voice in his head saying,
Of course I did good. You did too.
What had started out years before as a way to combat the silence had turned into something the man considered real. He spoke and Bad Dog answered. He no longer questioned it.

“Won’t get far,” Cavalo said.

Bad Dog looked up at him, sniffing the air.
I know.

“We’ll follow the blood trail,” the man said, even though it was obvious.

Bad Dog panted.
Yes. Yes.

“It will be fine.”

Yes. Yes.

After a moment: “I saw the tree again.”

Bad Dog cocked his head.
Did you touch it again, MasterBossLord?

“I don’t know.” This was a lie, and they both knew it.

Oh.

He hesitated, then said, “She danced.” He didn’t look at his friend.

Bad Dog bumped his hand.
She’s not real.

“I know.”

She’s gone. They’re both gone.

“I know.”

Do you?

The man could not answer.

THE DOE
had made it farther than Cavalo would have thought. The blood trail led them to the edge of the woods. Beyond the stunted forest lay the remains of a massive old road, broken into pieces, chunks of black rock upended. Cavalo knew this was called a “freeway” in the Time Before. People used these roads for travel in motor cars. He’d seen the remains, the burnt-out husks of these motor cars, dead as the area around them. No one could remember how they worked, only that they had been. There had been rumors years ago that someone in the east had a working motorized car, but it had never appeared.

Long distances in such short time. It seemed impossible.

Now this freeway meant something different. It was a line. A division. One that was foolish to cross. To cross was to go west. To go west meant to enter the Deadlands.

Cavalo looked at the blood trail on the ground. Fresh drops at his feet. Away from the forest he knew.

Onto the freeway.

Across the freeway. Into the other side of the woods. West.

“Shit,” he whispered.

Shit
, Bad Dog agreed, sitting next to the man.

He couldn’t just let the deer go. She was fat, which was surprising. Good, but surprising. Cavalo didn’t think her pregnant, not with the deformities she had, but she had to have come from somewhere herself, so it was possible. But if she wasn’t, it would be enough meat to last weeks. He could avoid the town. He could avoid the people. Hank and Alma would be worried about him, he knew, but he’d been gone for longer. What had it been now? Three months? It couldn’t be that long, could it? They would understand. They always did.

“What do you think?” he asked.

Bad Dog rose from his haunches and sniffed at the blood again.
If we do it, we must be quick. Like the wind.

“Yeah,” Cavalo muttered. “Like the wind.” He looked across the freeway again. It looked no different than the forest behind him. But it was different, he knew. Far different.

The first deer in weeks. Probably just over the road.
Right into the tree line.
“Probably already dead,” the man said aloud. “Just waiting for us.”

Dead, dead, dead
, the dog said, rubbing against him.

“We get in and get out.”

Like we were never there.

“They won’t even know.”

No one will. In and out.

“You ready?”

Bad Dog yipped and watered a dusty bush.
I pissed
, he said proudly.
That bush is mine.
Now
I’m ready.

The man nodded. “Let’s go.” He hesitated only for a second….

… and stepped onto the freeway.

Bad Dog immediately followed, his toenails clicking against the broken road, nose to the ground against the blood trail. Cavalo looked from side to side, scanning the tree line ahead of him. The shadows were beginning to lengthen. Nothing moved among the trees aside from the birds, calling their songs as loudly as they did on the other side of the freeway. It looked the same. It looked exactly the same.

But it felt so very different.

The man felt it even as he put one foot in front of another. There was a chill here that had nothing to do with the mute sky overhead. It was darker, the trees more dense and stark. The air felt thicker, as if pressing into a barrier that shouldn’t be crossed. He looked down and saw the blood trail, still bright and fresh. He looked back up into the woods, searching for movement.

Only the birds.

He stepped off the freeway and slid down the shallow bank. Bad Dog jumped down behind him, bumping into the back of Cavalo’s legs. They almost fell.

Sorry
, Bad Dog said, looking embarrassed.

“It’s okay,” he said quietly, adjusting his back. He tried not to think of the last time he’d crossed the freeway. It was almost impossible to do on this side. He could hear their voices, somewhere far off, calling for him, lost in the haze. The man named Cavalo believed his dog could speak to him and didn’t know it was his fortieth birthday, but he most certainly did not believe in ghosts. Even if he could hear them.

Bad Dog went to the tree line, following the blood trail. He reached the trees and looked back at Cavalo, his tail still, ears perked.
Coming?
he asked, unaware of the other voices.

Which means they aren’t real
, the man thought. Sweat dripped down his forehead. He wiped it away. He thought of the bow. It didn’t seem to be enough. Not with what was on this side of the woods. Not with what they could do.

He unclipped the rifle from his pack. It felt heavy in his hands. He checked the chamber. Loaded. Sight was clear. Safety off.

Bad Dog watched him, eyeing the gun warily. He did not like the noise that came from it.
Too loud
, he said, flattening his ears.
Hate the boomstick. Hate it. Hate it.

Cavalo nodded. “Can’t be helped. Not this time.”

Bad Dog sighed but said nothing. He turned and trotted into the trees.

They aren’t real
, the man thought, because he didn’t believe in ghosts.

He followed the dog into the woods.

the other side of the woods

BAD DOG
led the way through the other side of the woods, head bent low, tail rigid behind him. The blood trail fattened, as if the wound had torn, and the doe was losing blood more quickly. Cavalo knew it would be soon, and was thankful. It meant they wouldn’t have to venture far.

The rifle felt hot in his hands as he followed Bad Dog, eyes kept toward the forest floor, searching for signs of any traps. The birds were loud. So very loud, like there were thousands of them. Millions. All screeching. Warning them away.
Don’t come here!
they screamed.
You know you’re not supposed to be here!
They will
find
you.
They will
see
you.

Cavalo wished the birds would quiet. They hurt his head. They distracted him. But at least they covered the voices he knew weren’t real.

Bad Dog didn’t seem to notice. Cavalo admired him for that.

A minute turned into five, then ten, and the man grew warier the farther into the woods they went. The trees were denser here and more gnarled. Man and dog stepped over fallen logs and engorged roots. Branches clung to clothes and cut flesh. The ground grew soft, and Cavalo could see hoofprints in the dirt, spread out as if the doe was staggering. Blood splashed against a tree. The man reached out and touched. It smeared against his fingers. They were close.

They had to be close.

Cavalo looked ahead. Bad Dog was four feet in front of him, nose to ground, caught in the scent of blood. He took another step forward, and Cavalo zeroed in on a thin line stretched horizontally six inches above the forest floor, mostly hidden by leaves. The dog didn’t see it, entranced by the doe.

“Down!”

Bad Dog immediately dropped to the ground, flattening himself to the forest floor, ears back, body unmoving aside from shallow breaths. His nose almost touched the line above the ground.

“Back,” Cavalo said quietly.

Bad Dog huffed and inched his way backward, keeping his body low to the ground. His tail curled underneath him as he pushed himself away from the trip wire. Cavalo could see a splash of the doe’s blood on the wire and wondered how she’d been able to avoid it. Luck had been with her, at least at that moment.

Bad Dog whined. Cavalo looked down and saw his back leg had become caught in crude netting buried under the leaves on the ground. Cavalo followed the trip wire to a nearby tree and saw the rigging it would have triggered, pulling up the netting around whatever had clipped the wire.

“Easy,” he said. “Relax.” He placed the rifle against a nearby tree. “You’re okay.”

Bad Dog rolled his eyes.
So you say.
I almost
died
.

The man crouched low and reached out to the dog. He untangled the leg from the netting, careful not to pull harshly on the thin ropes and trigger the pulley system.

The leg came free. “Up,” Cavalo said.

Bad Dog stood slowly. The man reached under his stomach and lifted him up and away from the net. Bad Dog growled.
I can do it.

“I know you can.”

I’m not a puppy!

“I know. Just let me do this, okay?”

Bad Dog sighed but licked Cavalo’s hand once he was set back on the ground, away from the trap. He turned and sniffed at the netting hidden on the ground.