Withered + Sere (Immemorial Year Book 1) (35 page)

Before he left, he paused at the doorway and said, “Robot.”

“Yes, Father.”

“I gave a man butter and then killed him by driving a nail through his head. Who am I?”

“Father, may I?”

“You may.”

SIRS whirred and beeped. “Then Jael, Heber’s wife, took a nail of the tent, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died.”

“I am the evil king of Judah who was killed by his own servants. Who am I?”

“Father, may I?”

“You may.”

Something clicked in the robot’s chest and ground to a halt. Cavalo felt the robot’s grip on his wrists loosen slightly. When SIRS spoke again, Cavalo swore he heard an undercurrent of anger running through his words. “And the servants of Amon conspired against him, and slew the King in his own house.”

Wormwood
, Cavalo thought.

“They did indeed,” Patrick said. “Ten minutes should suffice.”

“Marked. Override sequence beta six three seven initiated.”

Patrick cast one last look at Cavalo before the door slid open and he stepped out into the snow.

“Father?” the robot said.

Patrick stopped. The white smoke of his breath curled up around his head.

“Why twenty-one?”

Patrick’s shoulders tensed. “You speak above your directive. I don’t…. How far did you say?”

“Ninety-six percent.”

“Make sure you are far away when it occurs.”

The robot clicked. “Is that a request?”

“A command.”

“I…. There is….” A pause. Then, “Pinocchio, spurred on by the hope of finding his father and of being in time to save him, swam all night long.” His grip tightened. Cavalo thought the bones in his wrists would shatter. He did not make a sound. “Twenty-one… days.”

“Indeed,” Patrick said and then left.

Snow blew into the room. The wind chilled Cavalo’s heated skin. The bees screamed in his head.

“SIRS,” he said. “Let me down.”

SIRS said nothing. He did not release Cavalo. His eyes flashed again and again.

From out in the snow that swirled like a globe, Cavalo heard Patrick call out, “Twenty-one days! You know how this will end, Lucas. Enough of these games. Come out now before I decide to rid you of your useless tongue.”

Only the wind responded.

“So be it. Remember this moment, because all that will follow is on your head. One wonders if you’d still be drawing breath into your body if they knew the truth of you.” Patrick spoke no further. There was only snow.

They ran
, the bees told him.
Or, at least, Lucas did
.
He probably slit the dog’s throat and fled.
The boy wears the blood of your friend as he runs through these haunted woods. Maybe he even runs back to the Deadlands and all of this was a ruse. He knows, now, how to get to you. All it took was biding his time and the scrape of knife and kiss and those walls came tumbling down.

“SIRS,” he tried again.

Nothing but flashing eyes. A steady pulse, one right after another.

Ten minutes should suffice.

Cavalo waited.

He wondered how much of him would be left when spring came. Surely someone from the town (if there was anyone left alive) would come up and find him, his body rotting, his arms held up over his head by a silent robot. Or maybe no one would come. If they survived, they owed him nothing. He had brought nothing but pain down upon them and only returned out of necessity.

Or maybe it would be years from now. A weary traveler would stumble upon the prison and find what remained, the robot holding nothing but the bones of his hands, the remainder lost to irradiated scavengers, either razor-thin coyotes or bears with hooks for claws. Maybe they would think this place haunted, like the rest of the woods. The trees would begin to dance, and they would flee this place as Cavalo screamed from inside the walls.

It would be what he deserved.

MasterBossLord!

Cavalo closed his eyes.
Foolish
, he thought.

And as the click of canine toenails on cement sounded in his ears, ten minutes passed since Patrick had given the order to the old robot, and SIRS beeped and clicked. His eyes turned orange, and he released Cavalo’s arms.

Cavalo’s hands burned. He was very tired. And very, very angry.

“Cavalo,” SIRS said. “Your hands. I….”

Blood
, Bad Dog panted worriedly.
MasterBossLord, blood. Your blood.

And from behind them all came the sound of another. Cavalo turned and as their eyes locked, and as the fury on the Dead Rabbit’s face deepened until all Cavalo could see was hatred and the black mask on a door he should have never walked through, he wondered, not for the first time, if he was a cursed man. If he was repaying some great penance from a previous life. Because in all reality, what had happened before would happen again. And again. And again.

“I should have killed you,” Cavalo said. He realized that now. More than ever. “The moment I laid eyes on you, I should have put a bullet in your head and left your body among the dead trees.”

Lucas bared his teeth.

Cavalo walked toward the Dead Rabbit. The Psycho fucking bulldog. If his fingers had not been broken, Cavalo might have wrapped them around Lucas’s neck and squeezed until there was a wet snap against his skin.

There was a moment as Cavalo neared Lucas that they breathed the same air. The bees screamed in his head about a blade at his throat, of lips pressed against his own, of death and destruction.

“One day,” Cavalo said quietly. “One day I will kill you. I don’t know when, but I promise you.”

Relief and rage crossed over the Dead Rabbit’s face. It was enough for Cavalo. It was too much.

He left them then, stumbling out into the snow. It swirled all around him, and for a time, he was lost.

the scrape of knife and kiss

AS HE
moved through the thickening snow, he wrapped his broken fingers as best he could. It was a bitch of a thing, but he could still draw his bow. He could still fire a gun. It was slightly awkward, but he could function until they healed. He hoped they didn’t heal crooked. It was not the first time he’d broken a finger. It wouldn’t be the last. He pulled the cloth tight against his fingers, ignoring the flare of grinding bone.

He might have dozed as he walked, thoughts pulling him in and out of a conscious awareness of his surroundings. It was all
Warren
and
Patrick
and
Cottonwood
. There were moments he opened his eyes, sure he’d felt the press of blade against his throat. Of dry flesh against his lips.

Of course, there was no one there.

He was followed, though. He was sure of it. Whether or not what followed him was
actually
there, he didn’t know. He thought it better not to question such things anymore. It seemed dangerous.

And so he walked on.

Eventually he said, “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Warren said, walking beside him.

“I didn’t know,” he said truthfully.

“I know.” That crooked smile.

“I would have….”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

“I won’t be your second choice, Cavalo,” Warren warned him. It echoed in his head, and Cavalo could not tell if it was from then or now.

“I know. If I’d seen you first.”

“Yeah,” Warren said. “I screamed for you. When they ate my legs. When they cut off my head.”

Cavalo said nothing.

“Did you hear me?”

“No.” His voice was rough.

Warren nodded as he brushed snow from his hair. “Do you remember when you first saw me?”

He did. Warren had been leaning up against the door near his office, worn boots on his feet and dusty jeans covering thin legs. The tin star on his chest had been gleaming.

“You asked me my name,” Cavalo said.

“And you just grunted at me like I was in your way.”

“You were.”

Warren laughed. “I was nowhere near you.”

“You had my attention. That was enough.”

“But you didn’t see me first.”

“No.”

“I asked you your name again.”

“Cavalo.”

“That’s it?” Warren had said then and he said now.

“It’s all I have.”

“You have more.”

“No,” Cavalo said. “There’s nothing left.”

Warren chuckled bitterly. “And because the great Cavalo has spoken, it is done.”

Cavalo ignored this. “Was he right?”

“Who?”

“You know who.”

“Patrick.”

“Yes. He said you worked with him.”

Warren looked away. “It’s… complicated.”

“You bastard,” Cavalo said sadly.

“I know.”

“You brought this on yourself.”

“I know. I had my reasons.”

“Why?”

“What are you going to do?” Warren asked him instead.

“Walk. It seems safer.”

“Nothing is safe now, Cavalo.”

“It’s a start.”

Warren sighed. Then he was gone. Cavalo told himself Warren hadn’t really been there in the first place. How could he be? His body (
his head
, the bees reminded Cavalo) was nothing but ash spread across a forest floor miles away. He was a figment of Cavalo’s imagination. A thing of bees that screamed and rubber bands that broke.

“Lose something, Charlie?” he said aloud. He thought to chuckle but nothing came out.

“Catch me, Daddy,” Jamie called.

“I’m tired,” Cavalo said as his son ran ahead. “I can’t. Not now.”

Jamie laughed and disappeared among the trees.

Cavalo said, “We’re at DEFCON 1, and this is not a drill.”

He moved through the trees.

A woman came later. She was gaunt, her dirty clothes loose in the hips, obviously scavenged from somewhere. Her eyes were sunk in their sockets and her lips two lines of white peeling skin. Cavalo did not know her. Or rather, that’s what he told himself.

“I know,” she said. “You wouldn’t. We never met. But you killed me.”

“How?”

“The snow globe.”

“It broke.”
Or I’m in it now.

“I know,” she said. She ducked under a low hanging branch. “I was caught in a storm. I found the army base and thought I’d sleep a little. Maybe find some food. A blanket, so I could be warm. I didn’t know how to build a fire. It had been a long time since I’d been warm. I thought maybe my luck was changing.”

“Coyotes,” Cavalo said.

She nodded. “I tried to run. Cut my foot on a piece of glass from your snow globe, broken on the floor. It was deep, that cut. I left little bloody footprints behind. They’re still there now. Brown and rusty.”

“They catch you?”

She shook her head. “I made it into a room along the far wall. Shut the door. They growled and scratched. For a long time, they stalked me. But they couldn’t get in.”

“Then how?”

She wiped at her eyes. “The cut got infected. I pulled out the glass, but I had nothing to clean it with. It turned green, and my ankle started to swell. It smelled bad as the skin cracked up my leg. The coyotes could smell it too. Even days later, they tried to get in. I think they took turns.”

“What did you do?”

“I let them in,” she said. “So it could be over. I thought it better to face what I knew to be coming than to spend what time I had left wondering. By the end, all I could hear was the click of their toenails and the grunts of their breath as they scratched against the doors. I lost my mind after a while. They huffed and they puffed, but eventually, it was me who let them in.

“Better the devil you know,” she said. “It hurt. At first. But then it didn’t.”

“How long?” Cavalo asked, but she was gone.

His fingers throbbed.

He scooped up some snow. He swallowed it down, and it cooled his rough throat.

“Hey, bud,” a man said.

“David,” he said, unable to keep the surprise from his voice. Cavalo hadn’t thought of him in years.

David looked over at him. One of his eyes was gone, leaving a bloody hole that dripped down his face. They’d traveled together for a time. As younger men. They’d fucked too, but it had never been anything more than that. It kept them warm at night. That’s all it was.

“Sounds about right,” David said. “Rather, you never let it be anything more.”

“You didn’t, either.”

David shrugged. “I suppose. Do you remember when you killed me?”

“Yes.”

“You shot me.”

“Yes.”

“And left me on the side of the road.”

“Yes.” He had. David had tried to steal from him. Cavalo caught him. “You drew first.”

“I wouldn’t have killed you.”

“You mean you couldn’t have,” Cavalo said. “I was faster. Always had been.”

David laughed. “Cocky bastard. You always were, bud. Do you remember what I said? When the blood poured out of my face and I began to die?”

He did. Cavalo thought on it for days after. With the sound of the gunfire still echoing in his ears, David had taken a stumbling step toward him and said, “I always wanted to be with you in your dark.”

“What did you mean?” Cavalo asked him now.

David shook his head. “They found me. Later.”

“Who?”

“Don’t know. Some people. They turned out my pockets. Took my clothes. Someone else came along days after that. Badgers had gotten to me, but there was enough left. They buried me. The cross is still standing, I think. Overrun by shrubs and weeds.”

“You tried to take from me.”

“Did I?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“I trusted you.”

“Did you?”

“No,” Cavalo admitted.

“Lose something, Charlie?” David asked, and then he left.

Cavalo’s legs were tired.

His father came next, but he smelled of moonshine, and Cavalo sent him away. He’d been a mean drunk. Big hands that could turn into big fists. Cavalo had not been sorry when he’d been found in a ditch. He felt nothing now as his father became hidden in the trees.

He told himself he’d walked for miles, so far that he was in a place he’d never been before, seeing woods and trees never before seen by his eyes. He told himself it was a start and that tomorrow he’d go even farther into the unknown. He was a little tired now, the dark clouds above starting to show the approaching dusk. Tomorrow he’d start again. Tomorrow he’d go on.