Killer of Enemies

by Joseph Bruchac

  I push my goggles up onto my forehead, then take out my collapsible scope. I scan in all directions. The small panicky herd of deer that I spooked off the road is still hunkered down under the overhanging wall of an arroyo a mile back. If I wasn’t out searching for a monster, I could have easily taken one of them. I felt that one of them—the fat three- or four-year-old doe with no fawn—was ready to offer its body to be food for my family. Then I would have offered pollen to thank its spirit from the pouch that always hangs at my belt. But not now. What I need to hunt today has wings, not hooves.

  I’m not worried about any other kind of predator in this territory, gemod or human. Not during the day. Anything and anyone crazy enough to show itself in the daylight would be potential prey for those feathered horrors. That’s the reason those deer were so spooked before my bike ever arrived on the scene.

  But there is nothing flying. Not even a small bird circling.

  The midday sun is beating down on the dark, cracked pavement, overgrown here and there with dried grasses and brittle shrubs. The pavement’s reflection of the heat makes it even hotter than the hundred degrees it must be off the road. I cannot stand still long without being cooked. I lower the scope and push off again.

  The wind in my face feels good as I pedal faster. It brings back the memory of riding a bike with my dog Lobo loping along beside me. He loved it when I was on wheels because then he could run his fastest and I could still keep up with him. He was half wolf—running with the pack was in his blood. And I was his pack.

  I feel free, almost to the point of being carefree. But not quite. Acting carefree is the first step to being dead. And thinking about Lobo does me no good at all. It just reminds me of one more thing I’ve lost. Better to think about what I do have.

  I take one hand off the handlebars and pat my vest. I slide my palm down to shift the comforting weight of the gun belt further back on my right hip. I touch the Glock in its shoulder holster, then I reach across to my left hip where the handle of the extendable club is sheathed, just in front of the hilt of my Bowie knife. Each weapon is in place, each easy to reach.

  The soft whirring of the bicycle chain, the hum and bump of the wheels on the road, they’re almost hypnotic. It has been years since I’ve ridden a bike. That thought takes me back to another memory, of Mom and Dad as they helped me ride back and forth between them on my first two-wheeler. I pedaled a little too hard and ran into Dad. I knocked him flat on his back. His big arms embraced me and the little bike and my mom as she ran up to us to make sure we weren’t hurt. Then all three of us were laughing and laughing, laughing like idiots.

  I quickly stuff that image. No time for even the memory of laughter now. I reach up to wipe the moisture out of my eyes—darn dust. Forgot to lower my goggles. I pull them down over my eyes.

  I need to concentrate all my senses on the danger right here. I can feel it, but I can’t yet see it. I pedal slower. I’ve covered another four miles now. No visible sign of anything threatening around me. I’ve been scanning the sky above me as best as anyone can when they are pedaling a bike and trying to stay on the road, which has now begun to climb. The highway here has been cut into a lava slope. It’s winding up and around a mesa. The rusted road sign right next to me reads WATCH OUT FOR FALLING ROCKS.

  And as I read that sign, it comes to me. It is more than a tingle in my palms. It is like a current, shot through my whole body. I turn my head and see a big shape rising over the mesa, which had blocked my view of what was circling up from the canyon behind it. The giant bird heading my way has something in its talons.

  Oh crap!

  I swerve off the road hard, ditching the bike on its side, dive and roll toward a rocky outcrop that juts out like a shelf.

  THWOMP!

  The first boulder that has come plummeting down out of the sky cracks the thick pavement right where I was. It bounces once, flattening that all-too-accurate road sign, before it goes rolling off down the road. The second dropped boulder hits a split second later. It clips the edge of the rock overhang that has given me life-saving shelter, spraying me with sharp little shards of stone. Thudding into the ground, it wedges into the opening I just rolled through. It blocks the mouth of the shallow cave like a cork in a bottle.

  I wipe blood out of my eyes from a thin cut on my forehead where a razor-sharp piece of flying stone sliced me. I can see light around the edges, but the heavy boulder seems to be stuck. I manage to get my legs under me and push against the stone. It doesn’t move. I can reach my arm through the widest space between the boulder and the stone of the cave mouth. But that’s all. I’m trapped.

  I’ve chosen being buried alive as the best alternative to being flattened like a bug.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  TRAPPED

  One nice thing about being entombed when you are not yet a corpse is that it gives you plenty of time for thinking. That is also one of the worst things about being in a situation like this. It seems as if no matter what you think about, it all comes down to: Crap, I’m trapped!

  I’ve been in here for a while. Long enough to try every possible approach to moving this frigging stone. The space in here is so small that there’s just room to reach my elbows back and shift my body around. Pushing—not even an inch of give. Digging around it—lots of luck on that front with nothing but stone against stone. Prying with the extendable lance, which is strong enough to neither break nor bend, doesn’t work either. Not room for me to get enough leverage. I’ve produced no visible result other than skinned knuckles.

  Not that getting out would have been such a great thing. Only a few heartbeats after I realized I was trapped, I had a friendly visitor.

  Whomp, whomp, whomp of leathery wings. Thud of a heavy body landing. Skitter of claws on the stone outside.

  I peered out through the widest crack to see what the critter looked like that had such a crush on me. An angry red eye the size of a dinner plate stared in at me. I grabbed for my lance. But the space was so constricted that by the time I got it out and extended, that eye had been pulled back and replaced by a big hooked beak.

  However, the space was so small that all my big Tweety-Bird buddy could do was reach halfway through before the width of its beak prevented it from thrusting further.

  Far enough for me to stab at the nib, the softest part of Big Bird’s bill, with the blade end of my lance. That provoked a loud, displeased protest.

  SCREEEE!

  It hurt my ears more than my lance injured it. But it did not try poking in again. Instead, it began clawing at the stone with its talons, trying to dislodge it like a bear digging for grubs in a tree trunk. But each time it poked one of its toes in far enough to reach through a crack and start to grasp the lodged-in stone, I jabbed at it with my lance.

  SCREEE!

  Turned out its feet were a little more vulnerable than its beak. Though I was never able to dig in deep, I did draw blood each time I stabbed at it. And I began to think if I did survive this, it would be with significant hearing loss.

  Well, actually, I wasn’t quite thinking that. My actual thoughts at the time were more abbreviated, profane, and monosyllabic.

  And before long, the monster bird stopped trying that approach. And it sat there thinking.

  I could hear its thoughts.

  They weren’t in words like the thoughts of people—or even the thoughts of whatever species my unidentified watcher might be. It was more like images and emotions.

  To translate it into human speech would be something along the lines of a mixture of rapacious hunger and infuriated disbelief that its attack had failed. Not only had its potential meal not been turned into a juicy pancake (pleasing mental picture of crushed flesh and protruding broken bones), it was beyond the big bird’s reach. And it had the nerve to fight back (unhappy image of sharp shiny tooth stabbing into its toes).

  Unfair, unfair!

  I leaned my face against that wide crack. Big Bird was perched on the road’s edge about thirty f
eet back from my stone sarcophagus. Far enough for me to see it, but so big that I could only lay eyes on part of it. Cross an outsized condor with an overgrown komodo dragon and you might be able to imagine the drooling, ebony-feathered monster I was observing. Its wingspan had to be at least eighty feet. The four claws on its huge feet were each the size and length of a man’s arm. Its beak, which was gaping open, was ridged with dozens of shark-like teeth that hooked backward. It was so clearly an apex predator, so perfectly designed for its task of being death from the air, that it was almost beautiful.

  But not quite. What would be beautiful to me would be seeing it in exactly the same condition it had tried to place me—deceased, defunct, and dead!

  I raised the .357. The crack between the overhang and the well-wedged stone was just big enough for me to be able to squint over the front sight and get a bead on Big Bird’s body.

  But only its body. Its head was held up too high and was also turned away from me. I couldn’t see either of its vulnerable eyes. And worse, beneath its feathers were scales. Thick enough to probably bounce a bullet off them. Still, if it just angled its head down and peered back over its shoulder, I could probably pierce one of its peepers.

  Turn around, I thought. Look at me.

  TURN AROUND, LOOK AT ME!

  But instead it made a different decision. I read the exasperated emotion that passed through its primitive mind. Translated into human speech it was:

  Aw, screw it.

  It leaped up, flapped its wings—whomp, whomp—and vanished from my view.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  More Time to Think

  There’s not a lot to do inside a shallow stone sarcophagus that is just big enough for you to turn around in. I wait for a while to see if my wide-winged nemesis is coming back. Nope.

  If I had a watch, I’d check the time. But the only clocks and watches—old-fashioned spring-powered wind-up ones, of course—in Haven belong to our benevolent overlords and their most loyal lackeys. Everyone else just uses the cycles of the day and night when they are on their own outside the walls. Inside the walls, their lives are run by the hourly bells and bugle calls that tell them when they are to work, eat, and sleep—at the command of the Ones.

  A small slant of light from the autumn sun touches the back wall of the cave. I slouch back and watch it move, counting to myself.

  One and one pony, two and one pony. . .

  When I hit sixty, which is equivalent to a minute, I make a mark on the spot the edge of that sunbeam has reached. Then I make another at one hundred and twenty. Two minutes.

  When what I estimate to be two hours has passed, I unsling my canteen and take a small sip. Aside from the air we breathe, nothing is more precious—or used to be more taken for granted—than water. It’s not taken for granted now. Water is painfully scarce in this arid land. The electric-powered pumps that brought up that liquid of life from deep aquifers lie rusted in silence. Natural springs and rivers are much harder to come by.

  I have two canteens. If I use them with care while I am trapped here I can make them last for two days. And then . . .

  If I was not in this stone rat trap, I could find water. I inherited that gift of Lozen’s, too. Water calls to me. I can hear its voice whispering that promise of quenching my thirst from miles away. Two centuries ago, when white and black cavalrymen hunted my ancestors, the soldiers often had to give up the chase and turn back because they ran out of water.

  But not us Apaches.

  Thinking about water makes me feel thirsty, even though I have just taken a sip from the canteen. I need to turn my thoughts to something else.

  Food? I could take out some of the jerky I’ve brought with me, or the corn meal or fruit that has been pounded into flat strips and then rolled up. But I’m not hungry. You can go for days without food, and I’m not going to eat just because there’s nothing else to do.

  I open the pack I’ve taken off my back and spread out the contents. Fire making kit, knives, rope, ground cloth, cooking pot, cup, spoon. I arrange them in front of me. Then, one by one, methodically, I put them back in the pack.

  Look at the line of light on the wall.

  Another hour passed. I lean forward to peer outside through the crack. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Bupkis.

  No one coming to my rescue, no thing attempting to pry me out and eat me. Though I knew all that, sensed it with my powers before I looked.

  I’ve tried pushing before. But have I tried my hardest? Just one way to find out.

  I flex my muscles. Stretch as best I can in these narrow quarters. Pull one knee and then the other up to my chest. Then I put my back against the wall and my feet against the stone. Take a deep breath. Push. Push harder.

  I am stronger than anyone else in Haven, even those who, unlike me, were bred and enhanced for strength. No one, outside my immediate family, knows just how strong. Dad used to joke about how I could have been an Olympic weight lifter—if the Olympics hadn’t become a thing of the past before I was born.

  Sweat beads on my brow and the uneven rock wall digs into my back as I thrust again and again. But, powerful as I am, I can’t make this damn boulder budge.

  I lean back with the pack under my head, close my eyes. I do not sleep. I can do that when night comes if I’m still stuck in here. Instead I turn my mind to the never-to-be-forgotten sound of my father’s voice telling me a story. Although we were poor as far as money went, back pre-C we were rich with stories.

  “Dad, tell me a story,” I whisper.

  And his voice comes to me.

  The giant eagles were among the worst of the monsters in those days long ago. They built their nest on a high bluff in the top of a great tree. The mother eagle would sit on a rock on one side of the nest and the father eagle would sit on a rock on the other side. Whenever it saw smoke from a cooking fire, one of those great birds would swoop down and grab the human being who made that smoke. It would carry that person back to the nest in the big tree and feed that person to the young eagles, who were always hungry.

  Child of the Water saw this. So he made a stone club. Then he killed a deer. He pulled out its intestines. Then he cut the throat of the deer and filled the intestines with that blood, tying them at either end. Holding on to his club, he wrapped those intestines all around himself and waited.

  The father eagle saw Child of the Water lying there, not moving. That eagle flew down and picked him up. Because blood was leaking out of those deer entrails, that eagle thought Child of the Water was dead It carried him up to the nest and dropped him in among the young eagles.

  But Child of the Water was not dead. Using his stone club, he knocked the father eagle over the head and killed it. He killed the mother eagle the same way and all of their little ones. Then he used their feathers to make good eagles and other birds.

  I’m smiling as I listen to my father’s voice finish that story in my memory.

  As long as we can remember them, our families will always be with us. That is what my mother always says. Perhaps not in the same way, not so we can reach out and touch them with our hands. But we can touch them with our hearts.

  Something touches me. Not in my heart, but in my mind. It’s as if a strand of a spider’s web has just blown across my face and then rooted itself in my forehead.

  My hands are tingling.

  A heavy foot scuffs against the loose gravel on the other side of the big stone.

  Little Food, says an amused voice in my head, You are really caught now.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Rescue

  You want out?

  Duh.

  Move back.

  There’s barely time for me to do so before something is rammed into that crack through which the Monster Bird had tried to thrust its beak.

  Ka-chunk!

  This something is longer, thinner, made of metal, and it just misses me as it is pushed all the way through to bounce off the wall of rock next to my head. It takes me half a second to recognize it as th
e end of a heavy steel pry bar. Rusted, but still strong.

  What kind of monster carries around an antique wrecking bar?

  The bar slides back until it is in just the right spot. Whoever or whatever is outside is manipulating this thing as if it was as light as a splinter of wood.

  Thunk-thunk.

  The stone begins to move and I ready myself for whatever is about to happen. The image is going through my mind of a lid being pried off a jar of fruit and a hand reaching in to grab the sweet contents. Is it my image, or that of the extremely strong being outside who is helping—so to speak—me get out of here?

  Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

  That is my own thought for sure. How many times did I hear Uncle Chatto say that? Usually when talking about our history back in the last free days of our people when we alternated between trying to live in peace, fighting, and fleeing.

  Thunk-thunk!

  The big stone moves back a few more inches. And for half a second I see what is holding that pry bar. It’s a huge, hairy shape. But I can make out no more than its broad-shouldered, hulking outline before sunlight floods in and blinds me, and then the stone rocks back into place. One more pry with that bar and it will roll away.

  I cross both arms in front of my face to shield my eyes from the light. My .357 is in my right hand, my Bowie knife in my left. My back is against the wall. Whatever reaches in for me will find I am far from a piece of preserved peach!

  THUNK!

  So much force is put into the last pry of the bar that small pieces of rock are broken free and sparks fly between the steel and the stone. Like a living thing, the big rock leaps away, freed from the ledge that held it in place, and goes rolling down the slope. I stay crouched where I am.