Wolf Flow (2 page)

    The hawk tilted its own head, looking into the big thing's eye. The lid had twitched and pulled open a fraction of an inch, showing a dull, unfocused stare. The hawk stared back into it, the same as he would to the bright bead eye of a field mouse he had trapped on the ground. A moan shuddered the big thing's ribs, and the dull eye closed. The sound hadn't been enough to alarm the hawk; after a few moments more, it flew back up to the pole.

    The thing on the ground beneath it had looked promising. Maybe a coyote would come down out of the hills and rip it into smaller pieces. The hawk had no taste for scavenging, but the blood-soaked ground would attract others, the smaller things that the hawk could swoop down upon.

    It was worth waiting around to see.

    

    

    In the cab of the diesel rig were three copies of
Hustler
magazine, one as old as 1979. They were part of the general mulch that had collected around and under the seats, along with flattened Dunkin' Donuts cartons and cracked styrofoam coffee containers, the big economy size, with brown sludge coagulated at the bottom; orange hamburger wrappings, shiny and translucent where the grease had soaked through; a Harold Robbins novel with the front cover torn off; a couple other strips that had cost a nickel apiece at a flea market in La Grande; and other shit. In the sleeper behind the seats was more of the same, including a black brassiere with a safety pin holding together one strap, that was a souvenir of either an ex-wife or a thirty-five-year-old road bunny working the parking lots at the Burns Brothers truckstop near Reno.

    Everything smelled like sweat and Prince Albert hand-rolleds. The driver smelled that way, too, as though he'd been steeping inside the Peterbilt's hermetically sealed box so long that the diesel stink had started to come out of the pores of his skin. The trucker had had his name painted once on the door of the cab, by a famous and expensive pinstriper named Von Dutch, but the sun had chewed away the swirling letters. Nowadays, he mainly seemed to live in the truck. There was a house somewhere, too-the remnant, along with his son, of his busted marriage. The house was good mainly for catching a shower and a three-day stretch of sleep between long-distance loads, checking out his mail, and fudging the interstate cheat sheets.

    Right now, he had to take a piss. The pneumatics on the driver's seat were about shot, and his kidneys were overstimulated from the vibration traveling up from the asphalt and concrete. The roads out here were all shit, anyway; he'd have been just as well off, he figured, barreling straight across the sand and rocks.

    The air brakes sighed as the Peterbilt came to a stop. He left the engine ticking over, its murmur and clatter the only sound in the still desert air, as he climbed down from the cab. The heels on his Dan Posts were worn round in back from working out on the accelerator and clutch pedals; it took him a moment to catch his balance when he stopped from the last chrome rung to the ground. From the open cab door above, the yellowed Robbins paperback and miscellaneous trash spilled and fluttered down.

    The trucker walked stiffly toward the rocks a few yards from the edge of the road. His spine felt as though it had been welded together into one straight rod. He was getting too old for this shit. Maybe-he'd been thinking about it a lot lately-maybe he could line up a dispatcher's job with some outfit. Sit in some air-conditioned office somewhere, letting his ass grow wide and horsing around with whatever divorcee did the bookkeeping… That'd be nice. A lizard peeped at him over the top of a rock, then scurried away, leaving an S-shaped trail in the dust.

    Over by the big rocks, he unbuttoned his fly. A little river formed at their base, flowing past the toe of his right boot. The piss rounded like a thin black snake, crawling a couple of feet before sinking into the dust. His bladder eased, signaling its gratitude. He looked around, scratching the side of his face with his free hand. He had time; this was a long one.

    He drew his squint down tighter when he spotted something lying by the side of the road, some twenty, thirty yards up from where he'd pulled the truck over. He couldn't make out what it was-just a shape sprawled out in the dirt-but he had a good idea. He'd come across shit like this before, out here. He finished his business, then did up his fly. He ambled toward the thing, whatever it was, in no hurry. It wasn't going anywhere.

    As he figured-some poor sucker had been laid out here. Or thrown out: there were skid marks in the gravel, leading up to the body. The guy's arms were spread out, his face cocked into the dirt, ankles bound together with rough jute rope, a loop of the same stuff dangling from one wrist. A fly lifted from one of the red and black patches on the face and buzzed angrily away as the trucker squatted down and rolled the body over on its back.

    The guy didn't look too good, but he was still alive. Barely. The trucker could see the shallow rise of the chest, and a bubble of red at the corner of the mouth. A young guy, though you could barely tell, he'd been worked over so good. He had on jeans-the bottom few inches of one leg seam ripped open, the denim fabric darkened where the blood had soaked through-and some kind of greenish shirt without a collar. The shirt's thinner fabric had torn, showing the bruises and abraded skin across the guy's ribs. It wasn't all from getting thrown out of a car. The guy had been in bad shape before he got here.

    The trucker stood back up. His shadow fell across the guy's face. The eyes in the battered face fluttered open. They looked up and pulled into focus for a moment, then drifted back into unconsciousness.

    "Hey." The trucker prodded the guy in the ribs with the toe of his boot. Likely a couple of cracked ribs there, at the least. Maybe the new pain would bring the guy around again. "Hey, you with us, buddy?" Another poke. "Knock-knock, anybody home?"

    He didn't get an answer. The eyes stayed closed, and the guy's shallow breathing slid over the red wetness filling his mouth.

    "Well, hell…" The trucker dug out his pocket knife, bent down and cut the rope around the man's ankles. The guy's feet-one bare except for a dirty white sock, the other with a scuffed Adidas running shoe on-flopped disjointedly, as though they were held to the rest of the body by nothing but the jeans legs.

    "Come on, buddy. Let's go for a walk." He pulled the guy upright by the arms, managing to get the body's limp weight onto his own shoulders. He held the wrists in front of his chest, with the arms draped across his neck. The guy's face, open-mouthed, with a string of red spittle dangling out, lolled against his head. He carried the weight toward the truck, leaving behind him his own bootprints and two parallel lines from the guy's dragging feet.

    In the Peterbilt's cab, the body slumped against the angle of the seat and the righthand door. The trucker got in on the other side and slid behind the wheel. He could see some of the guy's injuries better now. Somebody had whaled on his head with what looked to have been a steel bar; the straight imprint was plain along the side of the guy's skull. That was what had broken open the scalp and left the hair matted and spiked with blood. If they'd wanted to, whoever had done it could just have easily taken off the whole top of the guy's head. They must have wanted to leave him alive, or just dying slowly, and then dump him out here: the high desert got cold enough at night, even at this time of year, to have finished him off. Not a fun way to go.

    The guy was moaning, his face contorting after a series of quick, gulping breaths. The trucker watched him, then rooted through the stuff behind the seat and came up with a thermos bottle. The coffee in it was over a day old and stone cold, but it was something wet at least. He poured the plastic cup half full and leaned with it toward the guy.

    "Here you go, ace." He held the cup to the guy's mouth, pulling him forward with a hand at the back of the head. "Try and get a little of this down."

    Some of the coffee dribbled out of the corners of the guy's mouth, but the muscles of his throat clenched, working the rest along. Then he coughed, shoulders jerking, and the last mouthful welled over his chin and onto the torn green shirt. The head slumped back, but the panting breath had slowed and deepened.

    The trucker screwed the cup back onto the thermos and set it down between the seats. He dropped the Peterbilt into gear and eased it back onto the road.

    They had hardly picked up any speed at all when the guy opened his eyes-slowly, as though they were working free of stitches. He winced as he turned his face toward the trucker.

    "Where…" The guy could barely speak. The voice sounded like an old man's. "Where we going…"

    The trucker grunted. "Where the hell do you think?" He glanced over at him. "I'm taking you to a hospital."

    The guy's body stiffened, the spine coming up from the seat and shoving his shoulder blades back. Underneath the dried blood, his face whitened with the sudden effort. He shook his head, teeth gritting against the pain. "No-no hospital-"

    He couldn't believe he'd heard that. "What're you talking about? You're in a world of hurt, fella. You need some taking care of."

    The guy leaned forward, with agonized slowness. He twisted around so that he could reach down between the seats. The trucker saw that the guy's right arm and hand weren't working too well; they flopped loosely as the guy reached for the thermos bottle. He managed to one-hand the cup off, then the plug at the bottle's opening. He got the bottle to his mouth and gulped at what was left inside, a mix of blood and coffee running in rivulets down his throat. The empty bottle fell to the floor as he collapsed back against the seat.

    The trucker looked over at him. The road was a perfect straight line, nothing between here and the low horizon, so he could keep his eye on the guy for several seconds. "I ain't shittin' ya, man. You need a doctor."

    A smile, or the lopsided fragment of one, came up on the guy's face. Even a little laugh. "I
am
a doctor."

    He looked at the guy for a moment longer, then turned back to the road beyond the windshield.

    

    

    The hawk had watched the hurt thing being taken away. That had been hours ago-nothing to the hawk's slow patience-when the sun had still been slanting across the world. Now the hills had started to turn red, sinking toward black, and the seeing of things was getting harder.

    Nothing was left on the ground below the wire except the scuffed-up earth, the traces of the thing's impact on the ground and then its being dragged away to the road. There was still the smell of blood and meat, though, soaked into the dust where it had lain.

    Something, a loping four-legged shape, came out of the rocks at the edge of the low hills. It snuffled head-down at the discolored soil, the long teeth in its muzzle bared as it caught the scent of what had been there. Others like it were back in the rocks' hidden places, ears pricked for any sound other than the wind rising.

    The animal looked up at the hawk. For a few seconds, the two carnivores' eyes met, blank gold coins above, red dots of fire below, the reflections of the sun burning behind the hills.

    Then the hawk flapped away from the pole, turning above the shadowed ground. Its hunting was over for the day. The others could begin now.

    

    

    He woke for little bits of time. Not really waking, not sleeping, but just drifting in and out of a blackness where the pain didn't go away but became something endurable, a red tidal motion timed to the slow beat of his pulse.

    He knew he was in a truck, a big rattling diesel kind. He remembered somebody lifting, carrying him up into it, a long way from the ground. The same person was behind the wheel now, and the noise of the engine and the wind against the glass told him they were moving. Going somewhere-he didn't know. When he'd opened his eyes, he'd been able to focus for only a couple of seconds, just long enough to make out a face darkened to creased leather below one of those hick-looking billed caps. Then the double vision had come, the face blurring and splitting and dancing around with everything else inside the small space of the truck. He'd had to close his eyes and go back into the soft dark.

    Back in there… the pain came over in a slow wave, pulling him under. He let go, watching himself disappear. Then that part was gone as well.

    

    

    Harley and his buddy would be working away at the pit mine-the trucker knew it. Both of them liked to work, liked to have sweat pouring down their shirtless backs, rivulets trickling through the dust thick on their necks and forearms. The only other thing they liked to do-that he knew about-was go someplace where they could get shit-faced on cold beer, to make up for all the body fluids they'd lost out in the sun. And to make up for the time they'd lost, when they'd been in the can.

    The pit mine was a hole in the ground. With a tin shack and piles of rusting equipment up on the top level and down in the hole. Tons of stuff that was why Harley and his buddy were out here, and why he came dragging out here with his rig two times a week. As he steered the Peterbilt along the curving dirt track that led off the main road, he saw a hoisting tower at the edge of the pit sag, lean, then come toppling down, raising a cloud of dirt.

    Harley's beater, an old Jimmy pickup with bald tires, was parked by the shack. His buddy was in the little rag of shade it threw, with a welding mask over his face, working with a cutting torch on a pile of scrap. The torch hissed and sent sparks popping over the dirt.

    The trucker pulled the Peterbilt around by the shack. As he pushed the door on his side open, he saw Harley-big, hairy; both he and his buddy looked like badly shaved apes-come ambling over from the wreckage of the hoisting tower. Harley had a sledgehammer dangling from his meaty fist.