Empire of Wild

by Cherie Dimaline

  His breath sputtered and Joan felt a kick in the back of her seat. The car swerved as Robe tried to drive with one hand and reach for Heiser with the other. She heard desperate gurgling and strained to see in the mirror. Victor’s hands were white from strain as he dug them into Heiser’s neck.

  Robe turned back for a moment to correct their course as the car veered wildly. Then Heiser’s foot came over the seat and kicked the driver in the head. The car turned horizontal on the road, then slid fast toward the trees, tires screeching, Robe limp in his seat. Joan screamed. And then, for the second time that night, everything went black.

  VICTOR OUT OF THE WOODS

  He ran. His legs ached, his breath stung his throat, his eyes fought to close against the strain, but he kept going. This time, somehow, he knew he was getting somewhere.

  Behind him, the rogarou howled and kicked the chair clean across the clearing, where it smashed against a tree. Another howl, closer now. Fuck, it was after him again. But this time it wasn’t toying with him, so sure of its tempo and direction it practically skipped along. Now it dug claws into the soil, ripped bark from passing trees, leapt over crevices and got turned around in the fading dark. There were no more words or songs or games. It was wild, vicious and hunting. It had a job to do.

  Victor zigzagged to throw off the beast. But it had his scent. If it caught him there wouldn’t be a chance to reason or barter or delay: it would bring him down and tear out his throat. He had to get out of there, so he just kept running.

  The air was growing so cold his panting breath clouded in front of him. It was getting lighter too, like a pre-dawn morning, except this light flickered. And then he saw it, up ahead, in a circle of pines—a white car. His Jeep! He doubled his pace. If he could just make it to his Jeep.

  There was a crack from above like sudden thunder, followed by a shower of leaves, and then the rogarou jumped out of a tree. It landed right in front of him, with a thud he felt in his own kneecaps, blocking out the Jeep and the dawn and survival.

  He tried to stop but pitched forward, landing in a heap within reach of the thing. He couldn’t stand. He tried but his legs wouldn’t hold him. Instead he curled up as small as he could, put his arms over his head and shouted, “Wait!”

  He kept his eyes closed so he couldn’t see exactly how it would happen, how the rogarou would take him apart. He imagined his skin coming off like a lady unzipped from a gown. There was a long pause and then came a blow that launched him into a tree, and he fell to the ground, snagging on branches, landing on rocks. He screamed, but it was as if the volume was turned right down.

  He tried to crawl away, grabbing at shrubs, yanking grasses out of the loose soil. But it was on him. It bent down, and its breath wasn’t sweet anymore, and it grabbed him up in its jaws. There was pressure and then sick release as a long incisor popped through his skin like a blade, sliding through fat and muscle to stop at the bone.

  He came close to losing consciousness, dangling there in the mouth of the rogarou on the edge of his forest cell. It wasn’t all bad. He felt each tear in his flesh and was glad that he could feel, if only to know this terrible rending.

  And then he heard her. Joan was crying. When he opened his eyes, he was in the back seat of a moving car, bleeding through his shirt.

  23

  A DIRT-LIFTING JIG

  This time it felt like no time had passed before she opened her eyes. When she inhaled, there was a breath-snatching pinch in her chest.

  “Ow. Oh, fuck.” Joan tried to lift her bound hands to rub the spot but couldn’t get them past the airbag that had shot out of the dash and trapped her.

  “Just wait, hold on.” Victor, crouched by her open door, found her knife on the floor and picked it up. He slashed the airbag, releasing a cloud of acrid powder, and then cut the zip ties. She licked her lips and tasted the chemicals on her tongue. “What happened?”

  “We crashed. Can you move?” He dropped the knife and took her head in his hands, gently turning it right, then left.

  She realized the seat beside her was empty and the door left open, which is why the alarm was pinging rhythmically. “Where’s the driver?” Then more frantically, “Heiser? Where’s Heiser?”

  “Just a minute. Let’s see if you can stand.” Victor took her hands and helped lift her from her seat. She placed her feet on the dirt, and he steadied her.

  “My chest hurts when I breathe in.”

  “Probably a broken rib. Everything else feel okay?”

  “Maybe.” She put weight on one leg, then the other. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  She turned back to look at the car. The front driver’s side was completely smashed, though the headlight on the passenger side still shone, tilting into the trees that bordered the road. Both airbags drooped in the front, the black interior coated with fine, white dust. Heiser was slumped over in the back, still belted in, his head touching the seat beside him at an odd angle.

  “Is he…”

  “I think so.”

  She turned away. “Victor?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you really you?” She searched his face, then reached out to feel his cheeks, his ears, the shape of his skull. He smiled at her, and yes, it was all him. She took little sips of breath, trying not to cry—it would hurt too badly to cry.

  “I think so,” he said.

  She fell into him then, and he held her, loosely, so her chest wasn’t crushed. She felt around his back for the wounds she had given him.

  “I’m fine,” he reassured her. “The bleeding’s almost stopped.”

  “We’ve got to get you patched up.”

  Someone began clapping. For a minute she couldn’t make out where it was coming from.

  A few feet in front of the car was Robe. He stood in the beam of the one remaining headlight with blood thick over a swollen eye so that his damaged face mimicked the car’s.

  “Congratulations.” He smiled real big, each tooth outlined by a frame of bright blood.

  “For what?” Victor asked, moving toward him.

  “I can’t see him anymore. Just you, now.” His smile flattened. “Too bad. He was a good one.”

  “Are we talking about Heiser?” Joan grabbed Victor’s shirt and tried to pull him back. This man could be dangerous. He was Heiser’s man. He might want to finish them both himself, right here on the side of the road.

  “Lord, no. Heiser was an ass. He should know better than to play with magic that doesn’t belong to him.” Robe licked his hands, palms to fingertips, passed them over his face, and then ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m referring to your rogarou, of course.”

  Something clicked for Victor—a memory or a recognition. He tilted his head, made his voice soft and moved slow, like he was approaching a dangerous animal. “Your name—Robe. Is that short for something?”

  Robe pushed his hands in his pants pockets and rocked heel to toe. “I used to go by Guillaume Robitaille. Heiser called me Robe, though I suppose that’s all I could manage to communicate by the time we found each other.”

  “Guillaume, I—”

  “It’s Robe now.”

  Victor put his hands up, placating him. “Fair enough. Robe, I think we can help you.”

  He laughed. “You do, do you?”

  “I think we might have the same problem, friend.”

  “Which is?” Robe sounded amused.

  “You’re being hunted by a rogarou.” Victor tapped his own temple with his forefinger, then tapped his heart. “In here.”

  Robe pulled his hands out of his pockets and copied Victor’s movements. “In here.” He tapped his head, eyes wide. “And here?” He pointed at his chest.

  “Yes,” he said. “We can help.”

  Joan pictured Robitaille’s wife somewhere in this night, curled up on a couch in a crocheted blanket, crying in a room lit by an intrusive moon. Alone. Hurt. “I got Victor back,” she said. “Maybe I can help you too.”

  “You can?” Robe s
tepped forward, his hands beseeching. “Really?”

  “Yes, I can.”

  Robe bent over, resting his hands on his knees, head hanging, and his back began to shake.

  “Hey hey, it’s okay.” Joan took a step toward him and Victor’s arm came out to bar her from getting any closer.

  A low whimper, then a whine and soon Robe’s laughter filled the entirety of the night like a howl.

  “What the fuck?” Joan watched as he stumbled around under the force of his mirth, shuffling into the road and then into the ditch.

  “You? You want to help me?” He held his stomach and after a few more chuckles, finally grew quiet. “You want to help me, kwezanz, or you want to help Robitaille.”

  It had been years since anyone had called her a little girl in the language. It made her feel small. She didn’t answer.

  He straightened. “Because I don’t need help from anyone. I’m kind of a free agent, a self-made man. And good old Robitaille? I left him buried in the field where he forced himself on his little cousin. He don’t need anyone’s help anymore.”

  “Joan, he’s not human anymore,” Victor said. “Human Robe got lost in his own woods and he’s not making it out.”

  “And thank the Jesus for small mercies!” Robe yelled, and lifted his arms up to the sky, then dropped them. “Man, it’ll be good to take a break from all this praying now that Hitler over there is out of commission. I was getting sick of Driving Miss Daisy too.” With an exaggerated movement, Robe bent to one side and curled a hand around his ear. “Say, can you hear that?”

  Joan strained to listen through the ringing. There it was, a small moan. Coming from the car.

  “We’d better skedaddle, friends. I need to get away from that one while the going is good.” With that same dramatic flair, Robe spread his arms straight out at his sides, bent his hands at perfect ninety-degree angles and snapped them onto his waist. Then he picked up his knees and began to dance. His feet moved so fast they became a blur, kicking up small clouds of dirt. And with graceful jumps and extravagant reels, the rogarou jigged out of the light, down one side of the ditch and up the other, and leapt into the woods. Only the stars knew which direction he took once under cover, and they weren’t talking.

  “Joan, we gotta get out of here too.” Victor pulled her arm. “Come on, before Heiser wakes up.”

  “Should we leave him like that?” She could barely think.

  “We can’t help him. And we can’t finish him off. Neither one of us is a murderer.” His face changed when he said it, his eyes filling with tears. “Joan, I’m so…”

  From somewhere in the trees came a pulse of small barks that sounded a lot like more laughter. Joan started walking back in the direction from which they’d come. “You’re right, Victor. Neither one of us is a murderer. Let’s get the Jeep.”

  After a minute, he followed.

  24

  SWOOPING IN

  Broken and weak, they carefully climbed into the Jeep and drove. All they left behind was a pool of cooling blood making mud out of the dirt, and on the other side of the trees, fire trucks dousing the blackened frame of the lodge. Soon enough, they would find the bodies.

  They drove in silence until they passed the wreck of Heiser’s car, its one headlight still beaming and no signs of life from inside. The door alarm beeped its tiny emergency into the night with no one left to take notice. When they turned onto the highway, both of them broke open. Joan knew she sounded like a madwoman, laughing and then crying, spitting out the horrors of the night, of the past year, and of her big, sad love. She couldn’t stop.

  “I can’t believe you’re here. You’re not close enough.” She reached over and grabbed his hand, putting it on her thigh, between her legs, under her arm, in her mouth.

  In Leamington they stopped at a drugstore and she bought the things she needed to patch him up, and then they sped to the motel. She texted Zeus while waiting at the red lights in town.

  Hey boy, we got him!!!!

  Nothing. She doubted he was sleeping, so he was probably still angry with her. She tried baiting him.

  Showdown with Heiser…

  Waited a minute.

  Car crash.

  Another minute.

  Found another rogarou. He got away, but WE GOT VICTOR BACK!

  I had to stab him though

  Shit, this kid was tough. She sent one more message.

  Twice…

  No response.

  * * *

  Between town and the motel, it rained again—a dying sigh at the end of the passing storm.

  The parking lot was wet, and the neon T in MOTEL stretched out over the puddles like a cobalt cross, ending on the hood of a Miata that had parked in Joan’s spot.

  They backed the Jeep in by the front office and clambered out, all adrenaline and touch, stopping near the trunk to kiss. “Let’s get Zeus and get the fuck out of here,” she said.

  And then, because a movement drew her eye, she looked up at the sign. She watched a large, dark bird alight near the green M screeching electricity from a frayed circuit. It dipped its head as if to read about the ICY AC and the COLOR TV IN EVERY ROOM.

  Her smile faltered. Odd for a crow to be active at this hour.

  Then the second crow arrived.

  In moments like this, it is hard to know if crows are a delay tactic or a true warning. The two regarded her from their pedestal, and she was judged. They each called out their verdict and then waited for a response.

  “It’s rare to see crows at night,” Victor said. Under his feet, the reflection of the neon T pointed to the room. Joan turned toward the door.

  “Oh. Oh, Jesus.”

  Joan was running. She careened off the Miata as she dug the key out of her purse. And there, leaning against the door like a pitched tombstone with a gold epigraph, was a small, black Bible.

  “No.”

  She kicked it and it caprioled down the walkway, landing hard.

  Key in the door, shoulder against wood, and she was in. A lamp on the nightstand threw yellow light on the crumpled bed, the uneaten snacks torn from the bag, the clothes pushed to the carpet. Joan fell to her knees and the crows cackled from across the lot, watching Victor sprint through the neon puddles.

  Zeus was gone.

  She could barely breathe. She had no hymns, no prayers. Hymns only work if you can sing past the constellations named for pagan deities—Orion’s Belt, the Chained Maiden—to reach a Creator willing to listen. And what is prayer when your own god has been plucked out of the wing-dark sky? All she had was prophecy, and she placed it there, on the threshold:

  “I’m already on the way.”

  25

  ZEUS IN THE WOODS

  Zeus was not going to wait around until his auntie came back. This was his mission too, dammit. He strode along the road with the possession of a man about to deal with impertinent employees who’d slept late too often and forgot to clean the grease trap. When he got to the highway, he walked on the verge, passing clusters of trees and the reflective yellow signs where side roads splintered off like skin tags, sticking out a thumb whenever a rare car passed. The wind was up here, rustling the leaves, so he missed the footsteps. And then his feet left asphalt.

  Sleep, or something like it.

  He knew he’d been taken because he hated his mother. He tried to explain it—the hows and whys of the feeling—but there was no mercy to be had. The creature put a gloved hand on his shoulder and said, “There are no exceptions, Little Big Man.” And then laughed like there were bees trapped in its throat.

  He was hungry and then he was angry and then he was nothing. Sound existed only as echo. His eyes saw only layers of black and navy thatched over an empty space. He blinked but had to touch his eyelids with his fingertips to see if it had actually happened. He thought he heard the screech of a rusted swing set, like the one he knew sat at the back of his own yard.

  Someone was coming. At first he knew who it was: pictured the groo
ves between her eyebrows when he wasn’t coordinated enough with the playlist; smelled the Earl Grey and cigarette smoke of her shirt. But now, after hours or maybe just a minute, she was gone. Her name—he knew her name. It was important to remember her name. So he ran his palms over the dirt to smooth it into a tablet, pushed in a finger, and drew out the letters. J O A— From somewhere there was wind, carrying scent and humidity, and then hidden bugs built symphony out of scuttle and punctuated the dark like so many audible stars.

  He knew himself. He closed his eyes and knew him to be himself. And he was bound to her and she was coming. The certainty made him smile, even here.

  But by the time he finished the N, he had already forgotten. He was supine and he was lost, and the thing that sat just out of reach sang all the bees trapped in his throat back into the sky.

  epilogue

  HOME

  “A jean.” He sat up in bed and nudged her shoulder, bare where it peeked out from the heavy quilt. “Hey, Ajean.”

  “Mon Dieu, let a woman sleep.”

  “Ajean, wake up.”

  She rolled onto her back, flopping her arms down by her sides so hard they bounced on the mattress. “Rickard, you’re my booty call. Know what that means, eh? Means I don’t have to be nice to you. Go home if you can’t be still. Or else get that thing back up.” She slapped his leg under the sheets.

  “You know those pills don’t work like that.” He pushed a hand through his thin hair. “I keep telling you. Anyways, that’s not it. Listen.”

  “What?”

  He lowered his voice. “I think there’s something moving on your porch.”

  She opened her eyes then and stared up at the low popcorn ceiling, striped from the street light coming through her bedroom blinds. She stayed very still and focused. Her hair was a grey starfish on her red pillowcase.